Francis of Assisi by Dan Lindholm Translated by Ted Warren
Storytelling in the second grade in the Waldorf schools usually consists of fables and legends. Were it only fables and legends it would be as one-sided as merely fairy tales in the first grade. We readily discover that fables and legends are opposites. Fables express human weaknesses masked in the characters of the animals. There is little to look up to and little to admire. A weak, pharisaic-like attitude might arise: We are not like them! As counter-weight we need stories with honorable characteristics, and these are found in legends. Not only because of their heartiness but also their drama, the legends of the life of Francis of Assisi are special. They have a historical core, yet he was already legendary in his own time. People must have felt the supersensible power in Francis’s messages. They experienced courage and love that won over everything else. There were miracles. People witnessed actions that did not have their origin in human desires but in spiritual, moral impulses. Where such actions take place we often have miracles. That is what children learn to admire. One fall day in 1182 in the town of Assisi a woman was giving birth to her first child but could not deliver. She labored in severe pain. That she was from a rich family did not matter; the child did not want to come forth. A pilgrim knocked on the door. When he saw the condition of the woman, he said, ”This child does not want to be born into a wealthy house. Carry the woman to the barn and have her lie in an empty stall. The new child must be born on straw. For he who shall be born shall be unlike any other who has journeyed in the Master’s footsteps.” The pilgrim left, no one knows where or who he was. The father of the house, a wealthy merchant named Pietro Bernadone, was abroad at the time. The mother, Donna Pica, moved quickly to the stall where she painlessly gave birth to a healthy boy. The child was baptized Giovanni, Johannes in Norwegian. When the father returned from France he was very happy. For his love of France, which was also his wife’s native country, he called the child Francis. In world history we know him as Saint Francis of Assisi.
49