What Did St. Francis Actually Wear?

As we celebrate the feast of St. Francis of Assisi during his jubilee year, 800 years since his death, let us discover his story afresh through the garments he wore. We hope that these reminders of his humanity and fragility as revealed through his garments, encourage you to seek to live the great adventure of holiness in the ordinary and surrender to Christ’s mercy. 

*The references in this article all come from the source, Augustine Thompson O.P., Francis of Assisi: A New Biography, unless noted otherwise.   

The Evolution of Francis’ Wardrobe

There is quite the evolution of Francis’ wardrobe. He first goes about life wearing vainglory on his sleeve: a silk and wool patchworked garb. After his military imprisonment, he would wear cheaper garments in his initial distaste for the world. At certain points he would take up the garments of beggars. After a deeper internal conversion, he would choose to wear the garb of a penitent brother. Eventually, he would wear a simple peasant’s garb that would come to be known as the Franciscan habit based on the T shape meant to imitate the cross. Finally, he would be buried in the grey habit that imitates the garb of a Cistercian monk. 

1. Patchwork Garments of Pride

Francis would have been an apprentice in the trade of his father and learned to sell cloth, keep financial records, and travel to France to purchase cloth. He would have known the value of different fibers and been familiar with the latest fashions through which we recognize, “Francis’s personality included a touch of vanity and narcissism. He added patches of old and faded cloth to the silk and fine wool of his cloak, producing an outlandish, even clownlike, effect. He did not care what others thought of his violations of convention and cavalier attitude toward expenses, so long as they noticed him and made him the center of attention.”* 

The fact that Francis knew the quality of fibers and chose to still damage the new cloth by attaching an old scrap, which would inevitably cause tearing in the garb, reflects his pride. He knew that “no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made” (Matt 9:16) but did so out of vanity, to prove a point that he could do whatever he wanted. 

2. Thrifted Clothing

He was only twenty-two-years-old when he served in the communal militia. During a battle, he was captured and imprisoned at Perugia for over a year. Afterward he would struggle with severe PTSD for the better part of his life. During the spring, as an attempt to break out of his depression, “Francis forced himself into military preparations necessary to join the militia…after procuring his rig and finery as a horseman, Francis turned around and gave it all away to a poor knight.”* Later that summer, he “sold his finery and arms, as well as his horse, and put on a cheaper set of clothes” and came across the run-down church of San Damiano. 

Around this time, he would begin to freely give alms to any beggar and if he did not have the funds he would “literally gave the shirt off his back.”* He pilgrimaged to Rome and threw handfuls of money through the grill before the tomb of St. Peter, “On leaving the church, he exchanged clothing with a beggar, and in fractured French, begged alms of every passerby.”

One of the more iconic moments of Francis’s life is when he publicly chooses to renounce the family business during which, “Francis withdrew into an adjoining room, removed the fine clothing typical of his family’s station, and stripped down to the penitent’s hair shirt he was wearing underneath. He came out and put his old garments at his father’s feet”* as a sign of belonging to God alone. The bishop was present during this change of garb and “performed a gesture that mimicked the ritual by which one became a brother of penance…Bishop Guido covered Francis with his mantle.”* 

3. Penitent Garb and New Mission 

It would not be until Francis had his profound interior conversion (the moment of grace which led him to embrace and care for the lepers) that he would begin to wear the garments of a brother of penance.  

Francis being trained as a merchant of cloth, knew that garments communicated a reality about the wearer. After his encounter with the leper, he realized the beauty of those in poverty, and his “aesthetic sense, so central to his personality, had been transformed, even inverted. The startled veteran senses himself, by God’s grace and no power of his own, remade into a different man.”* 

He did not wear a specific habit or uniform at this time. There was not a standard of dress for the laymen brothers of penance, “They wore ordinary clothing of a dark color…the convert continued to live in the world, while attached to the church of San Damiano.”* 

There was an organic progression of their habit. It was not designed from the beginning but slowly took shape from a poor man’s garb. As the fraternity became more structured, they had a more recognizable uniform, “the group adopted a new form of dress. In literal conformity to the Gospel reading from Matthew, which said to ‘carry the Cross,’ they used a single tunic, making it cross-shaped, roughly cut in the form of a T. This was not so much a ‘habit’ in the canonical sense as a modified peasant smock. There was no concern about the color or type of material.”  

Underneath the habit they would have worn trousers as a sign that they did not belong to a particular home or place but were roaming pilgrims, “The trousers or “braca” mentioned here means “ample pants” or “femoralia” which are thigh-covering undershorts.”*

4. Wool Cloth for Ailments and Burial Shroud

Francis towards the end of his life would have erratic moments of anger or impatience due to the sickness and pain he endured physically and mentally from partial blindness and insomnia to various bouts of malaria. 

His caregivers would line his tunic with fox fur as an attempt to keep the virus from spreading to the rest of his body. He specifically asked that they also line the outside so all would know of his indulgence in this comfort from the fur. He did not want to appear as if he was wearing the same thin cloth as the brothers in winter when in reality he was given fur to aid his recovery. Francis valued honesty and integrity even in what his garments communicated. 

He initially was resistant to any kind of balms or furs when he was ill until “one friar nurse reminded him that he could not serve God without his body.”* During another occasion of illness, his tunic was lined with patches as an extra lining.  

Francis requested to be buried in the grey robe of Cistercian monks. The grey habit of the Cistercian reflects a complete detachment from the world. Perhaps Francis wanted this robe too because it is the color of ash, just as we ponder on Ash Wednesday, “you are dust and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). In his final moments he would ask his brothers to throw ashes on him. 

As one of the brothers cared for Francis towards the end of his life, he noticed the fur-lined sackcloth cap and extra sackcloth tunic, to which he said, ‘You will sell all your sackcloth to the Lord for a good price! Many canopies and silk coverings will hang over this body of yours, now clothed in sackcloth.’”* The brother was right, as we venerate Francis’s relics in his jubilee, the bones are preserved in the gilded reliquary, covered in silk.