ABSTRACT
St. Francis was born into the family of a rich cloth merchant on an undocumented day between 1181 and 1182, in Assisi in central Italy.1 Commonly portrayed as intelligent, merry, prodigal, and with a strong personality, the young St. Francis is described living the bustling (and arguably decadent) life typical of a wealthy youth of his times. Thomas of Celano, in the Vita beati Francisci, narrates how young St. Francis was educated by his parents in accordance with the vanity of the time, and how “by long imitating their worthless life and character he himself was made more vain and arrogant,” to which the hagiographer further adds: “maliciously advancing beyond all of his peers in vanities, he proved himself a more excessive inciter of evil and a zealous imitator of foolishness.”2
