In his new essay, the Capuchin friar and scholar of Franciscan sources Pietro Maranesi analyzes the full meaning of poverty as understood by the Saint
by Luigino Bruni
published in Agorà di Avvenire on August 3, 2026
The past is the most distant and unknown of all. This is a principle that history professors teach on the very first day of class, and without this awareness of our lack of knowledge regarding the often most important aspects of the past, it is impossible to write any good page of history. If, moreover, many centuries have passed between us and that distant past, and the sources are few and complex, our ignorance of the essentials grows, becoming almost complete when the figure we wish to study and understand is someone who received an immense spiritual calling—and perhaps goes by the name of Francis, in the city of Assisi.
In the Franciscan case, however, there is also something important that tends to bridge this gap and reduce this ignorance. Francis is, in fact, among the medieval historical figures about whom we have the most information and sources, because his extraordinary personality and the astonishing success his movement achieved in a very short time gave rise to many biographies, legends, and hagiographic accounts, and ensured that direct and indirect testimonies, poems, prayers, letters, and documents concerning him were preserved with great care—among these, the two rules (the approved and the unapproved versions). Not to mention Dante’s verses (Paradiso, XI), which alone would suffice to convey the heart of the experience and the soul of the “poor man” and his revolution. Although, despite the great abundance of sources, until the early 20th century Francis was known more for his hagiographic tales, legends, and stigmata than for his thought and his radical and revolutionary vision of poverty—we had to wait for Paul Sabatier, and thus the modernist movement, for a scientific breakthrough in the use of Franciscan sources.
Pietro Maranesi, a Capuchin friar and scholar of Franciscan sources, has written extensively on Francis and the origins of the Franciscan movement. Thanks to Aboca, and to an explicit request from its CEO, Massimo Mercati—to whom we owe a beautiful, lively, and compelling afterword—we now have this new essay, titled Senza nulla di proprio, built around the fundamental Franciscan concept of sine proprio (without anything of one’s own), which is the Franciscan version of the vow of poverty (the friars still commit themselves today to living sine proprio).
The sine proprio intended by Francis (which is also present in his first rule) is not, in fact, equivalent to the vow of poverty observed by all Catholic religious, nor is it merely evangelical poverty—there are many legitimate ways to interpret poverty within the Church, as already attested by the Church Fathers, the Doctors of the Church, the disputes both within and outside Franciscanism, but also the Gospels (“Blessed are the poor” in Luke, which in Matthew becomes “in spirit”). As Maranesi demonstrates with tenacity and an analytical spirit in the first part of his book (chapters 1 and 2), sine proprio is a way of being in the world, a “form of life,” as Giorgio Agamben would say (*Altissima povertà. Regole monastiche e forma di vita*), and thus much more than a simple, frugal lifestyle; it is the “foundation of the Franciscan way of proposing and ensuring the proclamation of the Gospel.” “Sine proprio” is the concrete embodiment of the Franciscan charism, of Francis’s marriage to Lady Poverty, the path-method he indicated to the Church to try to pass through the eye of the needle and find, on the other side, the kingdom. This is why “sine proprio” becomes a form and an ethic even for institutional life, for theusum pauper, and for the “management of power.” It is no coincidence, then, that in Francis’s *Regola non bollata*, the two paradigms he identified for good governance are “the servant” and “the mother”—a personal note: Maranesi likes to reflect on the relationship between Francis and Bernardone, but this emphasis on paternal and patriarchal symbolism makes the first chapter less accessible, particularly in the lengthy quotations from sociologist P. Bourdieu and M. Recalcati.
The most beautiful and original pages of the book are found in the third chapter, where Maranesi offers his interpretation of the final phase of Francis’s life, when he did everything possible—and even the impossible—to remain faithful to his sine proprio. Particularly evocative is the analysis of the well-known parable of “perfect joy,” situated within a broader discourse that we might summarize in a tiny detail: the name Francis gives himself in his Testament: “I, Brother Francis, the little one (parvulus).” The conflicts and tensions of the final years of Francis’s life, his renunciation of the leadership of the Order, emerge in that wonderful parable, in that admirable and prophetic dialogue with Brother Leo. Here are the key passages: “A messenger comes and says that all the masters of Paris have entered the Order; write: this is not true joy.” And he adds: likewise, “archbishops and bishops, and even the King of France and the King of England” have joined the Order; write: “this is not true joy.” And so he asks himself and asks Leo: “What is true joy?” And here is the famous reply, which conveys the full flavor of Francis’s words: “I am returning from Perugia, and in the dead of night, I arrive here, and it is a muddy and bitter winter… I reach the gate, and after knocking and calling for a long time, a friar comes and asks, ‘Who is it?’ And I reply, ‘Friar Francis,’ and he says, ‘Go away… we are so many and such that we have no need of you.’” And he concludes: “And I tell you that this is where true joy lies.” A new renunciation, as Maranesi points out, both similar to and different from the one he made in his youth before his father: “On that terrible night, Francis [realized that]… the Order was not his, nor should he defend the Franciscan experience as if it were his property.” A rediscovery and refounding of the sine proprio, his first love now become a mature love. By then, his Order had grown, had achieved great successes, and many thought they “no longer needed” little Francis and his sine proprio.
A decisive moment not only in Francis’s personal journey but in the entire Franciscan movement. And in this, Francesco was a great and shining exception in the history of the Church—perhaps even of humanity. Instead of pushing forward to the very end and cultivating his success, as virtually all founders do, at the moment of his experience’s greatest splendor and triumph, he knew how to stop, to observe a “Shabbat,” to make a U-turn; like an old, new Nicodemus, he wanted to return to the womb, as a little one. Perhaps he had never stopped being “little,” but, being human, he could not help but feel the allure and seduction of greatness, of numbers, of self-importance—perhaps even Jesus felt them. Perhaps at the outset he thought that everything was solely for the glory of God, but, as Maranesi also suggests, we cannot understand the conclusion of Francis’s life unless we take seriously his need to return, once again, sine proprio. He then intuited (and it was all charis) that this new conversion must also be a refounding of his community, ending his life on the road and alongside the poor, just as he had begun it after his conversion. And so, in his Testament, he chose to leave to his followers and to the world only the “sine proprio,” returning to live and die among the lepers, as in the days of his first love. This creative destruction was fundamental, and his charism is alive after eight hundred years: “Francis had returned to being a free and lighthearted man… On La Verna he returned to being Brother Francis”; the head of the Order became “little Francis” once more. In the Franciscan world, one begins to see advertisements for “Franciscan leadership” courses, forgetting that Francis’s message is one of anti-leadership, because he reminded us, right to the end, that the only true Christian art is that of discipleship.
And this is where a broader discussion should begin. Too many communities and movements—both Christian and lay—fail to move beyond the founding phase because their founders, before completing their journey, do not return to being “little Francis.” Instead of dismantling, diminishing, and disappearing—without intending to and almost always in good faith—they build up, expand, and do not step down from leadership; instead of leaving only the sine proprio (that is, only the Gospel), they leave behind directives, norms, complex spiritualities, detailed rules, and many books, convinced that this is the best way to leave a good legacy (gift/munus from the fathers). Instead, they should do only what Francis did: try to understand that perfect joy does not lie in winning over doctors and kings, but in returning to be among the lepers and the poor of youth. With nothing, naked, light, and free. The law of life is that of the grain of wheat: to bear fruit tomorrow, today one must disappear beneath the earth, sine proprio.
Francis is still alive because one day he understood where perfect joy lay. He felt a poignant, infinite longing for it. He left everything behind once more, stripped himself bare, and withdrew beyond the eye of the needle.
Photo: Ludovico Cigoli, “Francis of Assisi” / WikiCommons