The Battle of Collestrada

 Nonviolence often arises in the context of violence.  In his book, Francis of Assisi, Arnaldo Fortini illustrates the barbarity of the era in which Francis lived.  He quotes warriors of that time: “It is good to see war tents spread out in the meadows, to hear the cry of an attack, to look at the dead lying in trenches, pierced by the stumps of bannered lances.”  No torture seemed too great as the perpetrators and bystanders gloried in the blood and gore. They rejoiced in battle and body count, which Fortini insists they saw as giving joy to life. It also gave power and riches.

At the time of Francis, civil war existed in Assisi between the rich and poor, the haves and the have-nots.  These were wars fought for power and economic gain.  The new merchants fought the nobility. A bloody war between Assisi and Perugia broke out in 1202. A 20-year-old Francis marched off in a spirit of exhilaration and glory. 

But the Assisians were overrun and beaten. Fortini writes that the “sight of those killed on the field where the fighting took place was horrifying beyond words...all [the fields] were covered with the dead. ‘How disfigured are the bodies on the field of battle, and how mutilated and broken the members.’...Assisi was appalled by the massacre... A great many of Assisi were taken prisoner.... Among them was Francis....  That battle with all its raw ferocity and bloodthirsty pride, the sight of the dead, and the infinite grief made in Francis’s warm and generous spirit a wound so deep that time never healed it. ...Anyone who lives through the soul-searing instant of madness when meeting an enemy knows the nightmare that comes later.”

After the battle of Collestrada, Francis was taken to Perugia and imprisoned. He was one of the fortunate ones. The archers and infantrymen were butchered, but the knights and those riding horses were held for ransom. Francis’s prison was miserable, crowded and brutal.  Francis made efforts to overcome the brutality and lift the spirits of his fellow-prisoners. Nevertheless, he succumbed to severe illness. This ultimately enabled his father to ransom him. Francis had to suffer through a long convalescence, attended to by his loving mother.  He did recover his health. But Celano notes: “From that day  he began to regard himself as worthless and to hold in contempt what he had previously held as admirable and lovable.”