Franciscan Studies

Introduction

The literature on religious conversion shows that there is no comprehensive inventory of individual conversion stories that may provide the basic materials for a genealogy of Christian conversion, or of a further examination of its tradition.¹ The scholarly interpretations that we have almost exclusively concern conversion narratives about anonymous masses, such as the Saxons under Charlemagne, or the conversions of a limited number of famous people.² These include the "usual suspects" such as St. Paul, whose conversion led him to become a follower of Jesus,³ St. Augustine, who also converted to Christianity,⁴ John Wesley, whose conversion led him to begin his own ministry,⁵ and Thomas Merton, who converted to Catholicism and became a priest.⁶ To this exclusive crowd of icons of Christian conversion certainly belongs St. Francis of Assisi (†1226), [End Page 171] whose exemplary conversion experience centers on penance (recognition of himself as a sinner, conversion of the heart, rejection of worldly life, imitation of Christ) and whose case is special and exceptional in that the event of the commencement of his penitential life remains the essence of the core of his spiritual preaching and teaching.

In this article, I will therefore deal with Francis's penitential turn transmission—his communication of a spiritual propositum based on conversion from sin to virtue—and thus with his main spiritual message.⁷ I will start with a short description of how Francis turned his conversion experience, an episode that has been studied extensively as an important part of his biography, into the cornerstone of his spiritual transmission, viz., his promotion of a new religious program. I will continue with a contextualization of Francis's communication of conversion from a broader historical-theological perspective. I will then analyze the deeper dimensions of his call to conversion, viz., his instruction of "doing penance" in terms of turning from sin to virtue. I will conclude with a reflection on the continuation of his spiritual transmission within the Franciscan order and, furthermore, on the comparison with other "conversional communications" in the Christian tradition.

Francis's Communication of Conversion

Francis described his conversion to a life of "doing penance" as the outcome of an encounter with outcasts, after which "what had seemed bitter to me was turned into sweetness of soul and body" and he "delayed a little and left the world."⁸ In this confession, he conceptualized his religious [End Page 172] turnabout as the start of the penitential life and, with this, as an invitation to his readers to also change the orientation and direction of their lives and to switch from worldliness to otherworldliness—to the realization, from now on, not of worldly but of heavenly goods. It is very likely that Francis had already heard the call to conversion and penitential life in the encounter with certain Gospel texts.⁹ As is evident from his conversional account, however, he truly "first recognized himself as a sinner"¹⁰ in an encounter with lepers. It was this spiritual event, causing a moral shift from selfishness to social concern,¹¹ that brought about a radical reorientation toward a life of faith, a remarkable religious renewal, and a rapid replacement of sin with salvation. It was also this existential experience, this self-perceived transition "from damnation to redemption," that came to represent the essence of the evangelical program that Francis developed in the following years. In the words of André Vauchez:

The text of the Gospel to which Francis and his companions never ceased referring in their preaching included this dimension: "Do penance! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (or "is coming," according to the other version of Matthew 4:17 then in circulation). But the conversion to which they were inviting [End Page 173] their listeners was not presented as a simple preparation or preliminary step that was necessary to pass through in order to attain perfection. It already included entry into this "kingdom of heaven," which it was helping to create here and now (hinc et nunc). Far from any millenarian speculation or complex divisions of the history of salvation which certain ecclesiastical authors...