Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, known as Francis of Assisi, was an Italian mystic, poet and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. He was inspired to lead a Christian life of poverty as a beggar and itinerant preacher. One of the most venerated figures in Christianity, Francis was canonized by Pope Gregory IX on 16 July 1228. He is commonly portrayed wearing a brown habit with a rope tied around his waist, featuring three knots that symbolize the three Franciscan vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
A painting of Saint Francis by Philip Fruytiers
The oldest surviving depiction of St. Francis is a fresco near the entrance of the Benedictine abbey of Subiaco, painted between March 1228 and March 1229. He is depicted without the stigmata, but the image is a religious image and not a portrait.
São Francisco das Chagas, painted by Ducarmo Teles.
The house where Francis of Assisi lived when young
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.
Liber Divinorum Operum, or the Universal Man of St. Hildegard of Bingen, 1185 (13th-century copy)
The Appearance of the Holy Spirit before Saint Teresa of Ávila, Peter Paul Rubens
Shaman
Life of Francis of Assisi by José Benlliure y Gil
