Francesco, the wolf and that peace agreement

Francis intervenes in medieval Gubbio, which is terrorised by a ferocious wolf – elusive yet deadly – that not only slaughters livestock but also preys on people.

With the strength of the cross, like a knight – though discouraged by the villagers who feared for his life – Francis stepped forward and asked the ferocious beast to make a peace pact: the people would provide for him for the rest of his life, and the animal would cause no further harm. In a painting by the French artist Luc-Olivier Merson from 1877, chosen as the key image for the recent exhibition in Gubbio, ‘Francis and Brother Wolf. Art and Legend’ (which ran until April in the Palazzo dei Priori), the wolf is being fed by a butcher, surrounded by the hard-working people of the town. Francis is not present.

This story, then, is a later addition; it finds no place in his ‘historical’ biography, and takes its place amongst the almost endless array of legends and events intended to enrich that biography and enhance the figure’s stature, who has since (very quickly) become a saint – one of the most famous in the Western world – as well as a leading figure in a religious movement, comprising both men and women, with roots throughout Europe and beyond (as far as China: the first bishop of Cambaluc – now Beijing – was a Franciscan, from as early as 1307). But historians are not merely interested in distinguishing between fact and fiction; for people in the Middle Ages, plausibility was more important, and what matters most is understanding why and how a particular story came to be widely believed.

There is no need to emphasise that this critical tool remains indispensable even today; what is striking, however, is how the wolf has once again become the focus of our deepest fears.

Newspapers are increasingly reporting on wolves roaming near built-up areas, sometimes attacking people (or, more commonly, dogs). In the pine woods of Gallipoli this summer, a little girl was reportedly attacked by one such animal: this alone is enough to rekindle those feelings of terror that we have passed down to children for centuries through stories like Little Red Riding Hood or the black wolf of nursery rhymes. But the animal in Gallipoli, it turned out, was a hybrid, most likely a canid.

The wolf, which ancient peoples and the pagan religions of the Middle Ages regarded as sacred, was demonised by Christianity and became trapped within the pastoral metaphor: if the Church is a flock of sheep, the wolf is its worst enemy, and is identified with the devil and with evil. This led to a fierce persecution, which resulted in the decimation of the wolf population in the early 20th century. It was only through the cultural, political and scientific campaigns of a handful of scholars, such as Luigi Boitani and Erik Zimen, that sensible conservation policies were put in place – but above all, that a better understanding was gained of an animal that was more feared than studied.

A great historian such as Gherardo Ortalli said that the big bad wolf is ‘a medieval invention’. That is true. But this helps us to understand how the story of the encounter and the pact between Francis and the wolf is not only unique – there are no similar stories even in other cultures – but also significant in showing how the memory of Francis has carved out an unusual, courageous and dangerous path in the Western mindset: that of trusting the public enemy, be it a menacing lord, a dangerous murderer, a stranger from afar with a different culture and skin colour, or a real animal on the verge of extinction.

To trust, to embrace new possibilities, to work towards living together. If, as Hobbes says, man is a wolf – that is, extremely dangerous – to his neighbour, it does not necessarily follow that we need a Leviathan state for our security; rather, we must build communities and foster solidarity.

(*) Antonio Montefusco, a medievalist, is a lecturer in Medieval and Humanistic Latin Literature at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice