Fashion Advice from St. Francis

Francis wore fancy silks when he was the playboy son of a thriving cloth merchant in 13th century Assisi.  On his dramatic conversion day, he stripped naked in public.  From then on, his closet had only one item - a simple brown wool robe, symbol of poverty, which he also required as the uniform for the tens of thousands who came to follow him before he died.  (That's a silly joke - his whole point was letting go of ownership. He never had a closet, just that one robe on his back.). Finally at death he asked for his naked body to be laid right `on the ground as he died.  

Born naked, clothed in riches, naked on conversion day,  20 years of a poor scratchy robe, then naked again. 

So what would be Francis' faithful fashion advice?

The sweet saint stories written about Francis of Assisi all include how twenty-something Francis took off all his clothes one day in a public square.  Defiantly he handed his fancy-pants silk robes to his ritzy cloth merchant father, who was demanding repayment of an admitted theft by the rebel son. Francis then declared to the crowd that from now on he would call only God his father. 

Pretty scandalous, not just because this well known local playboy was naked in public, but because his performance art took place in the middle of a trial, an attempt by the local bishop to mediate between Francis and his father.  

Fuck You Dad, is essentially what Francis said, with a nice Italian accent.  Or maybe a song, since Francis called himself a troubadour for Christ. 

This is not the kind of Christian behavior from potential saints that immediately recommends them to the canonization judges, but it's central to who Francis was -  bold, dramatic, rejecting everything about his previous life, down to his underwear. 

Giotto Giotto painted this famous fresco version of the stripping encounter and it hangs in a prominent place in the massive basilica built within a century after his death to honor Francis and house his (naked) body.

RivestitiFrancis' close friend Thomas of Celano wrote that the bishop immediately threw his own "mantle" around Francis, not just to cover him from shame, but to "reclothe him in Christ" in the language of the scriptures.  That's the reference in this sign in a local Assisi church - to follow Francis (and Christ) we too must strip naked from the old and then reclothe ourselves, "revestito" into a new life. 

Francis grew up in a clothes conscious household. He travelled with his father yearly to the big cloth trade shows in France, meeting other cloth merchants there, learning about commerce and multiculturalism.  He probably also figured out, as they all tried to get the best deal, that clothes actually do not make the man - you might look great on the outside, but be a cheating scoundrel underneath.

Even before the piazza strip scene Francis had performed another faithful strip act, in a clothes exchange with a beggar in Rome.  He had not yet finally rejected his family and former life, but he was trying to find himself by taking a do-it-yourself pilgrimage to Rome.  Outside the fancy churches he watched the crowds of faithful rich and poor.  It's another story that's so famous and so outrageous it must be true -  he went up to a beggar and said, let's trade clothes, my fancy smooth silks for your dirty rough wool, thinking, I want to see what it was like to beg.  Quick lesson that in this case, yes, clothes do make a man.  If you don't have the clothes, you beg. 

I'm a Protestant minister, and I bet I'm not the only clergy person to have a recurring dream (nightmare) that I am going up into the pulpit to preach.   And I am naked.  An anxiety dream about being late and unprepared, but also an uncanny statement about the life of faith - we actually are naked before God.  In my dreams I am embarrassed, trying to hid behind the lectern, but I don't run and hide, I stay there and preach.  Naked.

Clothes serve many functions.  They kept us warm, they protect us from unwanted attention, they say something about who we are, how much money we have, whose style we emulate.  Some clothes serve to make us shine, stand out.   Others help us hide, blend in.  Francis chose brown woolen clothes to blend in, I am a nobody.  Most people use their clothes to say, I am somebody.

Clothing verbs and metaphors are interesting - put on, take off, cover, make a man, make a statement, reveal, hide. 

I googled "Francis and cloth" to see what others had to say about this incident, and it led me to threadjustice.org and the Human Thread Campaign.  Like Francis, these folks favor simple clothes, not fancy.  And that's because they advocate for justice for garment workers, and encourage us to chose clothes made with less environmental damage and less worker degradation.  They connect this with Francis because of his wise yet casual attitude toward clothing. They say he should be the patron saint of low impact, local sourced clothes. 

(Facts from their website: It takes 700 gallons of water to make one T-shirt.  Millions of gallons of oil end up each year in your polyester clothes.  Microfiber from washing our fleece and other plastic clothes makes up a huge part of the ocean plastic crisis.)

Would Francis have endorsed the Human Thread Campaign?  He was not a leader of political marches or signer of petitions.  But he knew the human cost of greed and pride, and called them sins for which we should repent.   The wool of his robes killed no workers or animals, their brown had no lethal dye.  I guess, as in so many ways, he was a man before his time. 

He clothed himself in righteousness and humility.  Actually he WAS a fashion plate - for simplicity and solidarity.  I can get behind that kind of fashion craze. 

Copyright © 2018 Deborah Streeter