A Lowlife Against War

The etymological root of the word WAR, in romance languages such as Italian – GUERRA - as well as in English and some Slavic languages, lies in the Old Germanic WARRA, which means CHAOS. War is chaos. From when man first began to draw pictures and then write history, man has narrated stories of war, the fatal urge to shed the blood of fellow man "similar" yet "different" from them, or even literally their very brothers (Cain and Abel). Homo sapiens is, in fact, the most fearsome of predators because it has been able to put technique at the service of their strength and ferocity. Tribes, clans, ethnic groups, religious groups, economic empires, countries, and nations throw themselves wholeheartedly into conquering lands, goods, and human beings. Machines of violence and oppression cause devastation, disorder, confusion, pain, and death. Chaos, indeed. Men, in the sense of the male gender, unleash horrible chaos where the first victims are women and the defenseless, but young males are victims as well, armed and tossed to slaughter, often against their will. Sometimes, not infrequently, this chaos erupts within the same land; then the worst of horrors come about -if a qualitative ranking is permissible in the category of horror- the massacre between brothers.

There is always a reason, an excuse, or a legend that "justifies" war. All wars are "holy" in the eyes of the assassins who want them, starting with the "mythical" wars sung by poets and continuing on with those conducted by the "legendary," such as Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Innocent III, and Napoleon, to name a few, and then infamously Hitler, finally arriving to our contemporaries such as Bush, Assad, Putin and their numerous imitators, now more active than ever throughout the five continents. A phrase attributed to Genghis Khan applies to them all: "I am the punishment from God. If you had not committed noteworthy sins, God would not have sent me to punish you." The punishment is death, suffering, subjugation, violence, rape, plunder, conquest, extermination, fire, devastation, and famine.
It is easy (when there is freedom of speech) to "speak" against wars, against the criminals who unleash wars, against the merchants of death who are enriched by wars, and against the unbearable atrocities waged against the innocent. Making your voice heard is an important exercise; it is dutiful but sadly in vain. Those wielding weapons make too much noise and drown out the voices of us ordinary people, even if we are shouting. It should be possible to "take action" against wars, unarmed. But the unarmed do not invoke fear.
Following these banal, bitter reflections, I'd like to bring up an emblematic episode from history. However, before I tell the story, I must write a premise on the protagonist, who is "one of the most distorted figures in history." 
This key figure in Catholicism is St. Francis of Assisi. While I studied and reflected on who this man was underneath the distortion, recreation, and refashioning of his figure, I found myself fascinated despite being an atheist. I agree with another atheist, Chiara Frugoni, one of the most serious scholars of Francis of Assisi, when she says, "The Franciscan practice or the words of the Gospel do not need the afterlife. They apply to all of us; they are for our world."

Endless biographies, books, newspapers, novels, comic books, musicals, movies, and television series have been dedicated to Francis of Assisi. The official, popular narrative, often infused with annoying, laughable, false stereotypes, has in no small part contributed to making him into a "pastry shop saint," as Pope Bergoglio recently put it. Instead of crucifying him, they have covered the man in honey.
Yet, despite the radical cosmetics given to the saint, it took eight centuries before a pope dared to choose his name. Despite all the hagiographic manipulations of Francis' story, popes must have thought it was too risky to draw any comparisons with Francis of Assisi. The young Umbrian saint continues to frighten the Church. An exalted figure but whom the Church still finds troublesome.
I like to remember that his name was actually Giovanni -- John. "Francesco" was the nickname given to him by his father (a prosperous merchant who traveled around Europe), and it simply meant "the Frenchman"; "franceschi" deriving from the Latin "franciscus" (French). His father, Pietro di Bernardone dei Moriconi, was probably referring to his son's very close relationship with his mother, his wife Pica de Bourlemont, a French woman with whom the boy spoke in her language, la langue d'œil. His father observed their bond with ironic tenderness and perhaps, who knows, even with a tinge of jealousy, and his father mocked him for this intimacy of language with his mother. That was how, in Assisi, from the nickname "the Frenchman", the name Francis was born.

The manipulation of Francis' image and life began early on. Even before Francis died, fundamental, profound aspects of his vision of the world, religion, and life began to be stripped away. He was well aware of this; helpless on his deathbed at the age of 44, he cried out in Latin, "Who snatched my religion out of my hands?"
A young scholar from Abruzzo, Tommaso da Celano, recently returned from Germany, where he was living as a Franciscan among the Franciscans of the Rhineland, was witness to Francis' long agony. He was commissioned to write a first biography (in Latin) immediately after Francis' death. In Celano's narrative, there is much truth about Francis and his joyful, spoiled, rebellious youth, but it also recounts how Francis was a skilled merchant and warrior who loved the good life, parties, and women. Francis was a trendsetter, dictating the most eccentric and provocative of fashions. He dreamed of becoming a knight and marrying a noblewoman. Tommaso da Celano's text chronicles how Francis went to war, was wounded, and spent a year in a filthy prison. And that is where the story of his tormented choice occurs, an inner struggle (with hesitations) that lasted for at least five years before he finally faced his new life. A simple and drastic choice: to put the Gospel into practice in a radical way, witnessing it not through words but through action and behavior, and, as a religious man, renouncing every form of possession and power. "This he did, and this he asked the companions who followed him. So, for example, Francis wanted his brother friars to work with their own hands, to live with lepers considered outcasts of society, and that relationships with women were lived in extreme freedom (...) Francis and his companions were not to help the poor but to become poor themselves" (C. Frugoni).
Fifteen years passed from the first draft of the biography, and the Franciscan Order became more and more successful while continually growing further and further away from the original spirit and concept. In fact, Francis never proposed founding an Order, which was a term that did not exist in his vocabulary. Franciscans are called "minor" friars precisely because there was no need for "elders" and "priors." Everyone was the same. So, Tommaso da Celano's biography that recounted Francis' authenticity and his messages began to create embarrassment in the Franciscan Order. Tommaso da Celano was then asked to rewrite his narrative, purging and adapting it. Tommaso obeyed, and so the second biography appeared. Tommaso very specifically painted how Francis "promoted evils and foolishness..." and how much he was an "object of wonder for everyone, trying to excel over everyone else with boundless ambition..." Perhaps Tommaso emphasized Francis' fatal flaws to give more value to his transformation in the myth of the saint. Another ten years passed, and the submissive intellectual biographer was induced to rewrite the narrative once again: in this version, the number of miracles increased dramatically. Biography number three came out about the same time as one written by another Franciscan, the German musician Julian von Speyer, who lived in Paris.
However, Francis was becoming a more inconvenient conscience for the Order and the Church. Another fifteen years went by, and a character of noteworthy stature appeared on the scene: Bonaventura da Bagnoregio. A professor at the Sorbonne, where he had been a student, Bonaventura was now the general Minister of the Franciscan Order, which had become powerful and influential. In this role, Bonaventura wrote the Legenda Maior, a grandiose hagiography of Francis. At the time of Francis' death, Bonaventura was still a kid playing in the streets and gardens of Civita di Bagnoregio. Now, after a brilliant run as both a scholar and in his religious career, he built "his" saint and framed him with a sublime heavenly "halo" where the dramatic "human" force of Francis' personality and his disruptive vision evaporated into nothing. The Chapter of Pisa approved Legenda Maior. In the next Chapter in Paris, a decree was issued to destroy all previous biographies. Fortunately, fragments of the biographies by Tommaso da Celano were saved from the bonfire and have found their way to us (one was discovered in 2014, "worn, folded, creased, stained, not beautiful to look at..." and purchased by the Bibliothèque nationale de France). However, Bonaventura's work became the "true story of Saint Francis," the one everyone knew and was inspired by, starting with Giotto. Seven years later, Bonaventura was ordained cardinal-bishop, an event that would have made Francis turn over in his grave.

Among the many great "instigators" of wars and massacres, I mentioned Pope Innocent III. His name is not well known, yet he holds a significant place in modern history and a crucial role in this story. Innocent III (Lothair, of the Counts of Segni, elected pope at the age of 38) was a cultured and austere man; a theologian, he was convinced that spiritual power was superior to temporal power and should condition man because the soul is superior to the body. For Innocent, the Roman pontiff should be the most powerful man on Earth, the King to whom all other rulers must obey and offer their military strength.
Paradoxically, Innocent III was the pope Francis had to ask for the approval of his Rule. This is what more or less happened according to the “original” narration. After waiting three months sleeping in the streets of Rome, Francis obtained an audience with the pope. Innocent III received him covered in gold and precious stones, sitting on a high throne in the Lateran palace. Francis, accompanied by his first followers, “a small band of beggars” (the majority of whom were anything but ignorant and crude) clutching the pages of The Rule of Life, which he had written for himself and his companions, humbly asked the Pope for his authorization to form a community of lay people and clerics who, with no possessions to their name, would live and preach the authentic spirit of the Gospel: to love and respect others and to help and support the weak and suffering.
Francis came to Rome to prove his Rule had no heretical sentiment. This was, in Europe, an age of great moral, intellectual, and political ferment, where "heresies" arose with the intent of reforming society (towards a more just one) and religion (towards one more faithful to its roots).
Pope Innocent III had just unleashed a crusade against the Cathars of Occitania, one of the wealthiest, most cultured, and most evolved lands in Europe before it was preyed upon and engulfed by the rougher French in the shadow of the crusade of "Christians against Christians." The first act of the invasion was a massacre in the flourishing city of Beziers, not only of Cathar heretics but also of the fellow citizens who tried to protect them despite not adhering to their beliefs: 15,000 died in the destruction of the city, including women and children, most of whom were burned alive in the churches where they had taken refuge.
But back to us and that fateful audience in the Lateran. Innocent studied the young Umbrian, who was not even thirty; he wondered if Francis was a sham, just pretending to be humble, and was actually a disgrace (in his sermons, Innocent loved to use the term "opprobrium") and the beginning of a new heretical threat right here, in Italy, his home. Innocent finally answered, asking Francis how he dared to present himself, in rags, stinking, before the Pope. Innocent invited Francis to go talk to the pigs; that was the company with whom Francis should be associating rather than men. Roll in their mud, give them “the Rule”, and dedicate your preaching to them. Francis thanked Innocent and went off with his followers. But he did not go to wash off in a fountain. He went to an actual pigsty and rolled among the pigs in their manure. He returned alone to Innocent in this state. The bewildered guards let him pass along the Gallery of the Mirror: Francis walked barefoot, covered in shit, leaving behind black footprints on the white marble. Then, he kneeled before the Pope in an aura of filth and stench. We can imagine Innocent paralyzed by the behavior of the young man of Assisi, who seemed to be performing an act of extreme obedience and self-humiliation but, at the same time, was not. Wasn't this a symbolic gesture of extreme provocation? Symbols were an essential part of the wild medieval imagination. Finally... "Why don't you retire to a hermitage?" The Pope proposed under his breath, from afar, holding his nose. Francis replied that he and his brothers did not want to hide; they wanted to go into the world among the suffering; they did not want to "talk" or "meditate" but "take action," thereby giving an example of "Christian acts." This was what the Rule proposed.
This was hard to swallow for a man covered in gold who was supposed to be the guardian of the Gospel himself; he was convinced of being superior to other men and had unleashed a murderous “holy war”. 
Francis made the renunciation of power one of the key points of his Christian proposal. With this gesture, he very may well have managed to stupefy the Pope, who theorized on his absolute power and thereby made the Pope approve his Rule through a conjunction of opposites. Indeed, Innocent, this terrible intellectual, in his youth before becoming pope, had written the Liber De Contemptu Mundi, also known as "On the Misery of the Human Condition". A confirmation of the fatal flaws and contradictions of a man who has seized power.
I mentioned before the massacre of the city of Beziers, the first of many slaughters in Innocent III's bloody crusade of Christians fighting against Christians. Simone Weil argues that this event institutionalized the concept of "genocide": go and kill, remembering you are blessed because you are not killing human beings but "the evil" in them. This labeling has been mirrored and renovated in many genocides to follow (the Jews are "a parasitic species", the Indios are "beasts", the Asians are "subhuman", the Tutsis are "cockroaches to torture and kill", and so on and so forth in the endless appeals in different times and places to "clean the face of the earth from filth" as the Ishmaelites used to say). This is how radical political terrorism speaks: "... fighting is legitimatized to spread the word of God, save humanity from wickedness, and pass from the darkness of this world to the light in this world and then in the afterlife... Murder and combat are a necessity imposed to carry the banner of the Oneness of God and extend it to every hill and every plain..." These words belong to Abdallah Azzam, the al-Qaeda philosopher who laid the theological foundations of all terrorist jihadism. I heard similar words when I prepared a film on the massacres in Bosnia. I saw a video fragment where a Pope blessed the Cetnian guerrillas who went to annihilate "the devil", the Bosnian Muslims. The plutocrat Russian Patriarch Kirill's attitude is no different; he blesses Putin's soldiers who fight against the depraved culture of the liberals (which accepts homosexuality). If brave, those soldiers will fulfill their duty, die in battle, and "be cleansed of all their sins, going in glory straight to heaven and eternal life". This is what he stated in April 2022. Before all these men, a saint of the Christian churches, Bernard de la Fontaine de Clairvaux (the same Saint Bernard celebrated by Dante), had already decreed that killing pagans (referring to Muslims) was a pious act, the killing of evil, "malicide" (“in morte pagani, christianus gloriatur”).
Innocent III did not only unleash the crusade against the Cathars with its many massacres. As soon as he ascended to the throne, the pope launched the Fourth Crusade to conquer Jerusalem. This war ended in the destruction of Constantinople with appalling looting, devastation, robbery, and heinous violence, where "people carrying the cross of Christ on their shoulders" displayed the most chilling barbarity. The endless bloodshed for only predatory outcomes did not stop Innocent, who wanted to conquer Jerusalem. He unleashed the Fifth Crusade. Armies departed from all corners of Italy and Europe but found themselves blocked under the walls of the city of Dumyat, Egypt, at the mouth of the Nile. This was where Francis of Assisi came back into action. 

The following story has been gleaned from different readings, but it is primarily a paraphrased account (with direct quotations in italics) from a remarkable, well-documented book by Ernesto Ferrero, which contains a wealth of information ("Francesco e il Sultano," Einaudi) I invite those curious who want to delve deeper to read the book. A note before proceeding: a historical fact that today sounds sadly familiar. The term "crusade" was first used by historians much later than the time of our story. When Francis left for the front during the Fifth Crusade, one did not say "crusade", but one was not supposed to say "war" either. The official terms were "iter militaris" ("military expedition"), "peregrinatio" ("pilgrimage"), and finally "passagium" ("overseas passage"). The crosses worn by Western warriors were of different colors (e.g., red for French, white for English, green for Flemish) to mark their diverse interests. Wherever they may have been heading, the "military expeditions" were not only a "system" of death and destruction but also an extraordinary machine of legal, military, and financial management of the invaded lands.
The story begins on a stormy night in the belly of a ship traveling in the Aegean. Francis (then 37 years old) was lying on a rag, dealing with excruciating pain in his head and eyes. And he was having difficulty breathing. He was ill and going blind. We assume he was suffering from a syndrome now called visual aura. It causes terrible headaches where one's sight comes and goes, images blurring almost completely and then returning punctuated by flashes of light and zigzag lines. Or perhaps he was painfully and progressively going blind because of glaucoma. On this night of truce, everything Francis saw was confused and deformed. When he could focus, he would watch the horses above him, hanging from the ceiling with long ropes. The horses were strung up so they would not break their legs with the violent pitching and rolling of the ship. The horses belonged to a group of Bolognese mercenaries, passengers on the ship on their way to fight the Muslims. Mercenaries, yes, then as now, recruited and trained men who killed for money. Private militias (in Russia alone, they've counted 37 active today, including one belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church) have operated and still operate wherever and whenever the "need" for destruction and bloodshed arises.
The ship would leap into the waves in the very rough seas, and the horses would kick in the void, crazy with fear. The soldiers got drunk. Many prostitutes were on board; they embarked on the heels of the mercenaries. The armies of the West organized vast trafficking of women. In this regard, Ernesto Ferrero cites an imaginative and scandalized passage by an Arab chronicler who commented on the arrival of a ship of three hundred French women who had come to offer carnal comfort to the invading soldiers: "They were all unrestrained, superb, mocking fornicators... they took and gave, firm in flesh and sinful. Singers and flirts, fiery and inflamed, dyed and painted, desirable and palatable, exquisite and graceful, they tore and patched, they transgressed and ogled, they exerted themselves and stole, they consoled and whored."
A companion stayed next to Francis; Francis called him Illuminato. Illuminato was a nobleman and very wealthy. He was Umbrian too -- the administrator of the fief of the Arroni and the lord of lands that extended from Lake Piediluco to the Nera valley to the waterfall of Marmore. Before, his name used to be Accarino della Rocca. In order to follow Francis, he left everything: his family, his castle, his possessions, and even his name. He stripped himself of everything to put a choice of ideals into practice. When Francis decided to leave for the theater of war in the East, he chose to stay by his side. To protect him.
The two embarked at Ancona on June 24, 1219. Why? Tommaso da Celano would say that Francis had chosen "martyrdom", while Bonaventure and many after him claim that Francis wanted to convert the Sultan to "the truth of the Gospel". The Sultan governed Egypt and Syria, and all of Europe was in conflict with him (more precisely, Europe was invading the lands he ruled). Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil ("the perfect king") was, in fact, a remarkable person for his culture and humanity. Even the first chroniclers (all Islamophobes) were unanimous in mentioning his courtesy and finesse. Hagiographers and historians throughout the centuries until this day have debated the purpose of Francis' journey since there is no trace of his true intentions.
Francis was not so possessed by the Holy Spirit to embark on such a journey, only to get killed once at his destination. This was certainly not the type of martyrdom he had pledged to. Actually, it does not seem to me that Francis was aiming for martyrdom, given how laden with love he was for his God, men, life, and nature. And Francis was not even so naïve, foolish, and deluded as to think that he could "convert" the head of a world being invaded and colonized whose people were being attacked and killed in the name of his very same religion! No. Francis did not speak to birds (a powerful metaphor in the medieval spirit transformed into a sacred image); Francis, in fact, talked to everyone, from kings to the lowest of the low, from eagles to sparrows. Or, rather, he spoke to birds "as if they were endowed with reason", inviting other "insensitive creatures" to reason, another dazzling metaphor. Now, he wanted to speak up by placing himself between two opposing armies slaughtering each other. He wanted to communicate with the powerful Muslim ruler, but even more, he wanted to "take a stand" and speak to both sides. This was the purpose of his solitary march against war, even if it meant risking his life. This was a single man's powerful "gesture" in front of a world of madmen killing one another. Francis' choice to assert Christ's message strictly in every human act would most importantly entail Christ's appeal: "Thou shall not kill." Would it not?

Once they arrived in the city of Acre on the Syrian coast of Palestine, Francis and Illuminato met up with Francis' close friend and one of his first companions, the Hessian Elia Buonbarone, a jurist and Latinist. Elia had left for the East to bring new Franciscan ideas. Elia later appeared by the side of Francis' deathbed and, after his death, took his place, trying to protect the original Franciscan ideals and prevent the clericalization of the Order. Instead, he was kicked out, excommunicated, and sentenced to damnatio memoriae.
Now, in Acre, Elia accompanied Francis to meet a man who had the power to help him in his endeavor: the Bishop of the kingdom of Jerusalem, Jacques de Vitry, a passionate geographer and anthropologist who was distressed by the clash of cultures. The Bishop hated Muslims but also hated the debauchery and greed of the Christians. As chance had it, Vitry was about to leave for the theater of war where European armies had been halted at the mouth of the Nile just over a hundred miles from Cairo near the city of Dumyat, which was defended by three layers of walls.
Francis must have been convincing because Vitry (who was, as a matter of fact, the Bishop in Perugia, Umbria, three years earlier) agreed to take him and Illuminato along with him. Seeing how the events took place, the French Bishop probably reiterated that he did not have the power to get Francis in a conversation with those in command of the Christian armies, the Pope's Legate, Cardinal Pelayo Galvan, or let alone get him a meeting with "le satan musulman", the Sultan of the Saracens, otherwise known as those "infected dogs". Once they reached the front, Francis would be on his own. 
Francis and Illuminato embarked again, following Jacques de Vitry, and at the end of July, reached Dumyat, teeming with the ships and armies of the besiegers.

Francis and Illuminato wandered through a riot of faces, armor, flags, and languages. Through armies belonging to countries and mercenary armies: French, Danes, Frisians, Sicilians, Bavarians, Flemish, Germans, Genoese, Venetians, English, Cypriots, Pisans, Austrians, Hungarians, and the knights of the Teutonic Order, as well as the Templar monks who were great slaughterers born to a vow of poverty yet ended up amassing fabulous wealth and becoming renowned money lenders. The powerful armed religious order of the Hospitallers, the Chevaliers de Saint Jean, was there too. In the chaos of this army of "pilgrims armed for holy war", the fighters on the same side do not even understand one other but they all want to fight, they all want to kill, and they all want to plunder and get rich. Their "excuse" or "narrative" was always the same: to liberate holy sites. After the Roman era, the colonization of the modern era was beginning.
 
Francis found himself back at "war". He knew war. He had chosen to fight when he was twenty years old, and undoubtedly, the painful memory of wearing armor and killing returned. 
Francis and Illuminato ran out on the battlefield to rescue the wounded and help the dying. The images blurred in Francis' sick eyes. Ernesto Ferrero effectively evokes the scene: "... Twisted bodies, severed arms and legs, skulls split like pomegranates, bowels that softly unfurl displaying their iridescence, eyeballs that look like wounded snails, pools of blood so deep the earth can no longer absorb them..." 
During the night, the cries of the dying were unbearable. Men suffocated in their own blood, begging for help that Francis was unable to give.
Day after day that summer, clash after clash, Francis tried in vain to be received by the Pope's Legate, the Supreme Commander of the Christian Armies, Spanish Cardinal Pelayo Galvan, an insolent and cruel man. Ferrero describes him as "bony, hairless, small eyes and shrill voice, the Cardinal loved to wear luxurious clothes in bright colors. He had a special fondness for red, whether it was clothing or footwear, his saddle or the bridle of his horse."
When Francis finally managed to meet him, Galvan greeted him disdainfully: "Aquì està el mendigo de Asis!" (Here he is, the beggar of Assisi!"). Galvan wondered how "the beggar" could have thousands of followers. He listened to him for a moment, but when he heard why Francis came, he rudely cast him out.
The days passed with more clashes, more blood, and more death…
At the end of a tremendous battle, as the fiery sun set, Cardinal Galvan, out of his mind, took it out on the barons and captains, accusing them of being incapable cowards. In the battle that day, the losses among Christians had been frightening. 
Francis suddenly stood up before him, screaming at him to listen: “Enough blood! We must stop the fighting! Seek an agreement with the Sultan! Let a humble friar speak to him!” 
Galvan looked at Francis from atop his horse, all dressed in red, and gestured to the Templars. Two of them grabbed Francis, picked him up, and tossed him onto a pile of garbage. 
Francis heard Galvan order the killing of all but eight Muslim prisoners. Let those eight be sent back alive. But first, cut off their nose, ears, one arm, and one eye from each of them.

And days passed with more clashes, more blood, and more death…

After spending the night rescuing the wounded and dying: "At dawn, he dragged himself to the river, trying to scrape the blood and the stench from his hands, arms, and his hair. He vomited bile. Sometimes, he stretched out in the reeds and watched the movements of clouds in the opaque sky. He did not know whether the grey veil that obscured his sight came from the morning mists or his sick eyes. Illuminato, who followed him like a shadow, carried him back to the tent. Francis' slumber was torn asunder by the screams of those returning to attack. The great heat made him weak and dizzy, making his ears buzz. In his hallucinations, he saw hordes of devils wrapped in the black cloaks of the Hospitallers flying south. They had the distorted faces of the Franjis who went to the assault (the Arabs called all the Western invaders: Franjis = French, who were always the fiercest). He also poured out his mercy on men who had fallen victim to the punishment the Legatus ordered to strengthen discipline. Whoever deserted, or those who in battle did not show sufficient ardor, soldiers who retreated, and the men who did not guard the camps with a hundred eyes would have their hands amputated. The Legatus would not even spare the women who served in the camps."

And more days passed with more clashes, more blood, and more death…

"The Sultan sent his ambassadors with proposals that King Jean de Brienne and the French, English, Dutch, and German barons found tempting. He declared he was ready to surrender Jerusalem and other fortresses in Jordan if the Christians left Egypt..." Cardinal Galvan, supported by the Italian captains and the powerful Templars and Hospitallers, rejected the proposal with contempt. He found it dishonorable and insulting, even if massacres on both sides had been going on for seventeen months ever since the first "armed pilgrims" of the "military expedition" had appeared off Dumyat aboard 150 ships.

Finally, Francis obtained a real audience with Pelayo Galvan. What did he talk to him about? Or did he only implore? Did they discuss a truce? Did they talk about putting a stop to the massacres? Or did they talk about the possibility of meeting with the Sultan and making negotiations on the Sultan's proposal? Or was it about finding a possible terrain for peace? Certainly, Francis, at the very least, asked his permission to meet with the Sultan to concede Francis and Illuminato, bearing no weapons and without other soldiers accompanying them, to reach the three circles of walls protecting Dumyat and have the city gates opened. Was Francis willing to stand between the two armies? It was no small feat for Cardinal Galvan not to laugh in Francis' face. Perhaps Francis wanted to bring the Pope's Legate proof of the Sultan's good faith? Maybe he wanted to obtain his consent to meet on a ground of lasting peace for places the Christians consider "holy"? Perhaps Francis wanted to explain to the Sultan (arduous task, poor Francis) that his religion born in Jerusalem was one where love, respect, and peace reign?
"Quieres morir?" Cardinal Galvan asked. 
"Lo quiero." 
Very well, then go. Galvan would not consider himself in any way responsible if the infidels tore el mendigo de Asis to pieces. Not much of a loss -- just a shabby friar who chose poverty, preached poverty, and wanted to impose poverty as a mark of faith. The Umbrian might be educated, but he was filthy, and he disgusted the Cardinal. The steadfastness of the monk, who expressed himself passionately but sweetly, made Francis even more hateful to him. The Cardinal found the thousands of men and women who gave up everything to follow Francis an inexplicable paradox.

Dawn. A few Chevaliers de Saint Jean, wrapped in long black cloaks adorned with the sewn emblem of the large eight-pointed cross of Amalfi, waved a white flag. The slit of their cylindrical helmets was so thin that you could not even make out their eyes. Francis and Illuminato looked tiny next to their horses. From the ramparts of Dumyat, fiery projectiles flew in their direction. The two monks, ready to cross the flats where battles were waged in front of the walls, did not notice or did not want to see the balls of fire. Without waiting for the response to the waving of the white flag, they started running towards the city.
"Attendez! Pas encore! Attendez, idiots!" the cries from within the Hospitallers' helmets echoed. But those two fools did not hear them. They ran like rats across the plain, tripping over the debris from the last battle: broken spears, pieces of iron that had been weapons or shields, pierced helmets, and the carcasses of men and horses. 
Francis advanced with eyes closed, clinging to Illuminato, who guided him. He stumbled. He fell. They were close, almost there. An arrow ripped through Francis's robe. "Soldan! Soldan!" Francis suddenly cried out, breathless from the breathlessness of running. "Soldan!" repeated Illuminato with a desperate shout. Out of a crack in the door, four guards came out armed with pikes. They advanced unhurriedly on the monks, knocked them down, striking them in the chest and head with the wooden poles, grabbed them, and picked them up like baby goats. 
 
Finally, they were inside the walls, beaten, bound, and tossed into a small, dim room with painted walls, which was a relief for Francis' eyes, a refuge from the blinding sunlight. This was not a good moment for a bout of visual aura with the tremendous accompanying headache and the confused, blurred vision. 

They were led to the "unfaithful devil", as Galvan called him: Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil. He was a refined, handsome man, the same age as Francis. He was the grandson of the great Saladin, the Kurdish founder of the Ayyubid dynasty.
What did Francis and al-Malik al-Kamil talk about during those days at the Sultan's home? We do not know. In this regard, Chiara Frugoni cites a passage from Alessandro Manzoni on the "common tendency of historians to imagine what they could not see or know to make the narrative a little more complete." This inevitably happens also with the many people who have told the story of this encounter, staging opposing fantasies on what might have been the theological dispute between the two religions. The Koran gets manipulated: some say that the Sultan's wise advisers asked that the two monks be decapitated following Koranic law. Some correctly comment that the Koran oversees the dialogue between a Muslim and a Christian since it ordains, "Do not argue except in the best way". Bonaventura even invented (and Giotto painted this version) that Francis proposed a divine ordeal by fire: walking on flames! A Franciscan of great authority and power, such as Bonaventura, only 35 years after Francis' death, successfully manipulated the saint's actual personality, which could not be further from such a challenge.
The fact is we know nothing about what happened or about what was talked about in the days spent in the house of the Sultan from Francis, Illuminato, or Arab historians except for the fact that Francis and al-Malik al-Kamil spent a lot of time together. In a text called Chronicle of Ernoul, it states that the Sultan ignored the requests of his advisers who wanted to kill the two intruders, and he was passionate about discussing law with the Umbrian -- the laws that should govern life, the laws of men, religious law, and the laws of poetry. Al-Malik al-Kamil, like Francis, loved poetry and wrote verses. Francis most certainly spoke of the authentic values of his religion, those not embodied by the swords that came from the North: Christ never carried a sword.
Ernesto Ferrero imagines a fascinating version of the meeting and his discussions with the ulema, theologians, jurists, and Sufis, the masters whose name comes from "suf, which means wool. Their tunics are made of raw wool, like the monks'. When their cloaks are torn and worn out, the Sufis patch them with colored patches from found clothes and those received as alms". In his imagined debate, similarities in the sacred texts of the two religions came forth, many common values such as generosity and love of thy neighbor, and then it delved into the differences. The ninety-year-old Fakhr al-Din Farisi, "the pride of religion", a great Islamic mystic and spiritual guide to the Sultan, was present at the meeting.

How did they communicate? Probably in French, with an interpreter at the Sultan's service for those who did not know the language of Oïl. But also, this is my supposition: they spoke in Sabir. Having traveled and haggled throughout Europe with his father when he was a boy, Francis certainly knew this language well. It is the oldest and longest-lived lingua franca throughout the Mediterranean area, used in business negotiations as well as daily life for at least three centuries. It was a mixture of Italian, French, Arabic, and Spanish dialects, with a simplified structure allowing easy and safe communication- one of the many achievements of medieval civilization.
The Chronicle of Ernoul states that al-Malik al-Kamil called his doctors to treat Francis' eye disease. Meanwhile, Cardinal Galvan, tired of waiting and wanting to get rid of the "beggar" who went to talk with the "infected dog" as soon as possible, catapulted the severed heads of Muslim prisoners over the walls of Dumyat. In response, the viziers asked the Sultan to throw the flayed heads of the two monks back to the Christians.

Whether this is true or not, in the end, Francis and Illuminato were honorably escorted out of Dumyat, and the Sultan gave Francis a horn used by Muslims to call believers to prayer made out of ivory since Francis refused his gifts of gold. "Illuminato would then tell Tommaso da Celano that he had never seen Francis as pensive as in the days that followed. He seemed crushed by too much thought. He shunned all company and, in silence, dedicated himself to the care of the wounded until he fell beside their dens, prostrated by fatigue (...) He said Christians had to learn to pray with the same fervor as the Saracens (...) The horrors he saw in Egypt drove him to despair. He had come to ask God why He tolerated massacres when the message of Christian faith is to act through love."

When Francis and Illuminato left the battlefield, they met Elia again in Acre, wandered through Palestine, and finally returned to Umbria. For the historical record, at the beginning of November, the Christian armies, chanting Te laudamus, broke through the defenses of Dumyat, slaughtering and looting. Jacques de Vitry, who recounted the events, reported, among other things, that he bought five hundred surviving children at a good price and that he intended to initiate them in the true faith. But the children almost all died of hardship and disease in the following days. In any case, the Bishop was pleased to know they died after receiving the sacraments of baptism. It makes me think of Sudan in June 2023, where in a civil war between soldiers fighting for power, dozens and dozens of children from an orphanage died of hunger and thirst. They say their cries were louder than the crackle of machine gun fire. And, how many cries of children, four months later, in Israel and Gaza?

The Christian victory at Dumyat turned out to be a defeat. Violent contrasts arose between the Italians (Venetians, Genoese, and Pisans) and the French to hold commercial power over the territory. Galvan ruled over everyone with an iron fist. Meanwhile, al-Malik al Kamil, who had retreated to Cairo, was preparing to reconquer his lands, which he did with the definitive defeat and repatriation of the Christians, marking the end of the four-year-long Fifth Crusade or "military expedition”, which was not only in vain but the cause of incalculable destruction, suffering, and death.

Francis' long march into the midst of war did not bring peace. That ending was obvious before he even started. But his gesture, his "action" in extreme conditions, is so unique and symbolically powerful that even today, eight hundred years later, it touches our hearts and souls.

Epilogue

Once back in Umbria, Francis realized that the disagreements among his brothers about how to "interpret" his "Rule" were becoming fiercer. 
One can imagine Francis' bitterness lasting until the moment, as I mentioned before, he cried out as he was dying.
He was operated on his eyes, yet it was in vain. In the meanwhile, "His legs and belly were swollen. He was vomiting blood. His headaches gave him no peace, and he spent sleepless nights. He was now covered in sores and shaken with fever."
As these sufferings accumulated, Francis wrote the Song of Brother Sun, the only poem of his we still have today. It is also the oldest poetic text in Italian (in so-called “vulgar” Umbrian) with a known author. He also wrote music to it (but the score has been lost).
It is a sublime inheritance even for Italians today busy with other matters. 
I do not want to add anything to the many authoritative analyses on the complexity and aesthetic values of his poetic glorification of the universe and God that Francis sees in the sun, moon, water, wind, stars, space, and birth and death. I will only say that I am struck by the joyous exaltation of life that Francis wrote while practically blind, devastated by the pain of his ailing body, downhearted because of the emerging conflicts around him, and in a house at San Damiano that was infested by mice.
Francis of Assisi gives us a "love song" to nature, the soil we walk upon, the parts of the cosmos with whom we are brothers and sisters. There's a simple question lying in the subtext of this canto: why aren't we able to see the wonder we are all part of, and why can't we love and respect it?