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1 Theater of Nudity IN 1205 Francis of Assisi stands in the piazza of his hometown, takes off his clothes, and walks completely naked before his fellow citizens. He stands naked before the people and naked before God. This undressing publicly is a crucial occurrence in the Saint’s life that later becomes a cultural icon of the Franciscan movement. Its defiance of Western social and moral codes has inspired religious and secular commentaries . Fictional renditions and cinematographic versions of Francis’s life,as well as theological and psychological interpretations of Franciscanism , have exploited this episode to stress Francis’s nonconformist attitude and technique. His public nudity in the square of San Rufino marks the beginning of an innovative theological approach.Revaluation of the human body,previously considered more a hindrance than an instrument of spiritual elevation, starts with the ostentatious display of Francis’s nakedness. The cluster of paradoxes and contradictions inherent in human nudity, particularly in the religious context,have transformed this simple episode of Franciscan hagiography into one of the most referenced and critiqued in the history of medieval mysticism.1 Francis’s act of undressing marks a turning point in his dispute with his father, Pietro di Bernardone. In 1205 Francis begins to act peculiarly. He discontinues his mercantile activity in his father’s business, moves outside the city walls to live with the poor,and works to restore dilapidated churches with his bare hands. Enraged at his son’s transformation and critical of his disreputable lifestyle,Pietro di Bernardone disinherits him,demanding restitution of all family property. Francis takes this request literally. He returns everything he owes,including the clothes his father had provided him.This is how Bonaventure’s Legenda maior narrates the undressing scene: [T]he father of the flesh worked on leading the child of grace,now stripped of his money,before the bishop of the city that he might renounce his family possessions into his hands and return everything he had.The true lover of poverty showed himself eager to comply and went before the bishop without delaying or hesitating. He did not wait for any words nor did he speak any, but immediately took off his clothes and gave them back to his father. . . . Moreover, drunk with remarkable fervor, he even took off his trousers, and was completely stripped naked before everyone. He said to his father:“Until now I have called you father here on earth, but now I can say without reservation,‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ since I have placed all my treasure and all my hope in him.” The bishop,recognizing and admiring such intense fervor in the man of God,immediately stood up and in tears drew him into his arms,covering him with the mantle that he was wearing.2 Francis demonstrates a literal understanding of the reality around him. Asked to return all properties no longer belonging to him, he responds with neither mitigation nor compromise.As he had previously responded literally to God’s command to “go and repair” the Church by manually restructuring the dilapidated building of San Damiano,so now,after deciding to embrace poverty, he radically renounces all property, including the clothes he wears.3 A metaphorical understanding of both actions will become manifest to him later.Rebuilding the Church will involve becoming the spiritual reformer of the institution, not renovating a building. Poverty, represented literally by nakedness in front of his father, will signify spiritual purity before God, his supernatural father. The stripping action carries strong symbolic connotations.Theologically , it is significant that the naked Francis receive refuge and shelter in the bishop’s open cloak, which stands for the arms of the Church welcoming a convert. On a psychological level, disrobing and returning his clothes to his father signify repudiation of the earthly paternal role of Pietro di Bernardone, in order to accept more fully the paternal role of God, which has a referent in the bishop and in the bishop’s function in the scene.4 But the return of his clothes to his biological father is even more significant, since Pietro di Bernardone was by trade a cloth merchant and had tried to train his unruly son in the same profession.By giving back his clothes, Francis renounces the family business and its source of wealth. Moreover, in the medieval social context, clothes are a powerful indicator of class and financial status; by giving up his elegant, bourgeois outfit, Francis rejects his privileged walk...

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