Francis of Assisi, Sister Bird and interpretations of the founder in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sources

Christ’s famous words about money, need and excess underpin a pivotal episode in the life of St Francis of Assisi – the preaching to the birds.2 Along with the reception of the stigmata,3 this episode was the most frequently reproduced in Franciscan iconography of the thirteenth century, in frescoes, panels, manuscript illuminations and seals: it has long been recognised as a significant moment in his life, and a significant moment for interpreters of that life.4 Notwithstanding its importance, the details and meaning of this moment are not stable – they vary from teller to teller. In this chapter, I draw attention to the differences between versions of the story of Francis preaching to the birds as recorded in text and art across the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. I argue that by tracing the effect of these narrative and interpretative differences, we may read a critical history of Franciscan identity-making in these first centuries of the Order’s existence.