Indications for a Franciscan Role in the Philanthropic Activities of the Early Florentine Misericordia

Scholarship on Saint Francis of Assisi and the Franciscan movement, established in the thirteenth century, surprisingly tends to ignore his response to a central message of the Church: that we must love and care for the needy among our human brethren. Jesus himself said so, nowhere more explicitly than in Matthew, chapter twenty-five. Yet Francis’s writings repeatedly manifest his familiarity with Matthew, including that chapter. Conditions in rapidly urbanizing parts of Europe during the late-medieval period such as Northern and Central Italy rendered Christ’s mandate to “love one another” especially pertinent. Charitable confraternities played a major role in mitigating human suffering during that transitional era, providing various types of assistance community-wide to disadvantaged neighbors. Archival documents confirm that such actions performed by members of the Misericordia Confraternity of Florence followed Christ’s declaration in Matthew 25 setting forth the Corporal Works of Mercy. Inscriptions and pictorial details in the Misericordia’s frescoed Allegory of Mercy of 1342 underscore this point. Other details within that painting signal a Franciscan influence upon, and presence within, the Misericordia Company, reflecting the existence of a robust Franciscan community in Florence comprising not only members of the First and Second Orders—the Friars Minor and Poor Clares, respectively—but also laypersons of the Third Order. Passages in the writings of Saint Francis and his early biographers indicate the importance that works of mercy had for the Poverello, the six named in Matthew and a seventh commonly added to that list. In particular, Francis’s experiences, pronouncements, and efforts in regard to the fourth and sixth works of mercy, clothing the naked and aiding prisoners, exemplify the charitable activities both encouraged by the saint and, almost certainly with his background, words, and deeds in mind, actually implemented by members of the Misericordia Confraternity, as articulated in their inspirational centerpiece, the Allegory of Mercy.