St Francis of Assisi’s Repentance After Eating Animal Products. By Dr Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- 13 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 1 hour ago
St Francis of Assisi (1181/1182–1226) was renowned for his extraordinary compassion towards God’s innocent creatures. He addressed animals as his brothers and sisters, protected them from harm, and healed many of them (I:234–5). Animals, in turn, were often deeply attached to him, responding to him with devotion, gentleness, and even obedience (Bonaventure 1904:8.1, 8.6-11).
However, because the medieval Church frequently accused strictly vegetarian or vegan groups—such as the Cathars—of heresy and subjected them to persecution, Francis refrained from imposing strict veganism as an obligatory rule on the nascent Franciscan Order. In the 13th century, any group that rejected the killing of animals too strongly risked being labelled “Manichaean” or “Satanic,” and Francis was acutely aware of this danger (Bazell 1997: 90–2; Grumett 2007:4).
For the same reason, Francis occasionally took small mouthfuls of animal products, though he consistently regarded these moments as moral lapses and publicly repented of them (Francis of Assisi: Early Documents 1999-2002, I:392) (note 1). His consumption of animal products occurred only under specific circumstances:
A. On the advice of physicians, communicated through his guardian—particularly during periods of illness when medical practice prescribed animal-based remedies (II:174, 182, 183; cf. I:228, 392, 478). For example, at the beginning of a sermon, he confesses to the crowd that during the Advent fast he had eaten food cooked in lard, prepared for him by the brothers ‘because oil was very bad for him in his illnesses’ (II:183).
B. When warmly hosted by others—on such occasions, Francis would courteously “put his hand to his mouth, appearing to be eating the meat, but rarely tasting even a little bit of it” (I:392). Francis, nonetheless, insisted that meals offered in hospitality must never turn into opportunities for indulgence. To prevent this, he established a rule that when eating with laypeople, the brothers were to take no more than three small pieces of meat (Brooke 1959: 157).
One hagiographical episode further illustrates both his reverence for animals and the tensions surrounding his diet. A man once disguised himself as a beggar and asked Francis for animal flesh. Francis gave him a piece of cooked chicken. The man later tried to use this act to scandalise Francis publicly, holding up the piece of chicken before a crowd—but, according to the legend, the chicken miraculously transformed into a fish in the man’s hand. Later, Francis is said to have revived the original chicken through prayer (I:234–5).
The story of St. Francis rebuking Brother Juniper, not for cutting away a pig's foot but for damaging the property of the pig owner, comes from an unreliable source --Fioretti di San Francesco.
Although St Francis, constrained by the cultural and theological context of his age, was not strictly vegan, his compassion for animals and his repentance for causing them harm remain worthy of great respect.
Notes
1. This is the latest publication of Francis’s collected works (1999–2002). References cited in the text below are all to this collection.
References
Assisiproject (2019). "The Pig's Foot." The Assisi Project, 11 Jan. https://assisiproject.com/2019/01/11/the-pigs-foot/#:~:text=He%20cried%3A%20%E2%80%9CWhy%20did%20you,muttered%20many%20insults%20and%20threats.
Bazell, Dianne M. (1997), ‘Strife among the Table-Fellows: Conflicting Attitudes of Early and Medieval Christians toward the Eating of Meat’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65: 73–99.
Bonaventure, Saint (1904). The Life of Saint Francis of Assisi. Trans. E. Gurney Salter. New York: E.P. Dutton. https://www.ecatholic2000.com/bonaventure/assisi/francis.shtml
Francis of Assisi: Early Documents (1999–2002), eds. Regis J. Armstrong, J.A. Wayne Hellmann and William J. Short (4 vols.; New York: New City Press). https://archive.org/details/francisofassisie0000unse/page/392/mode/2up?q=fever
Brooke, Rosalind (1959), Early Franciscan Government: Elias to Bonaventure (Cambridge University Press).
Grumett, D 2007, 'Vegetarian or Franciscan? Flexible Dietary Choices Past and Present', Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 450-467.https://www.pure.ed.ac.uk/ws/files/79822354/GrumettJSRNC2007VegetarianOrFranciscan.pdf
Hudleston, Roger, ed. (1926). The Little Flowers of Saint Francis (Fioretti di San Francesco). https://pages.uoregon.edu/sshoemak/322/Texts/flowers.htm