Preaching to the Birds

"Thereupon St. Francis went up naked into the pulpit, and began to preach so marvelously of the contempt of the world, of holy repentance, of voluntary poverty and of the desire of the celestial kingdom, that all they which were at the sermon, men and women in great numbers, began to weep very bitterly, with wonderful devotion and compunction of heart…"

The 12th century Italian mystic, St. Francis, is said to have preached to the song birds of Assisi. The image of the barefoot friar talking to the forest animals is spellbinding. For hundreds of years, Francis has inspired artists and charmed the meek of the Earth, especially children.

What can it mean for a man — a purported spiritual genius— to preach to birds? Perhaps it only means he understood them deeply, as Jane Goodall understands chimpanzees, as Mark Bekoff understands coyotes and as Irene Pepperburg understands African Greys. Perhaps when villagers saw Francis “preaching” he was just communicating attentively in compassion and respect.

The traditional view of the church is that Francis was teaching the birds human morality. But such an interpretation, consistent with the view that the pyramid of creation has “man” (in God’s image) at the top, seems at odds with the saint’s radical compassion and creativity.

Francis was a visionary who sang joyously on his pilgrimages through the Italian countryside, nursed lepers, gave away his father’s riches to beggars, mediated between Crusaders and Muslims, and became a lifelong barefoot mendicant. Such a person seems more likely to have been an iconoclast who questioned conventional notions of morality than a priggish conformist who enforced them.

Was Francis a pedant and a fanatic who tediously urged animals to tame their desires and behave more like Christians? Or was he so connected to the feelings of both humans and non-humans that he felt compelled to genuinely interact with his fellow beings rather than to hunt, domesticate and exploit them? Did Francis simply include the birds, sheep, wolves and donkeys in his community, his flock? Is it blasphemous to think that he —like us— was shocked and dismayed by the mistreatment of animals?



Francis is the patron saint of animals. Children take their pet pigs and kitties and parrots to church to be blessed in his name. But what would it mean for adults to take “preaching to the birds” seriously? Would we change our attitudes and behaviors? Would we, like Francis, approach them in humility, wonder, grace and poverty – in loving relationship to other beings?

“All these people accuse you and curse you,” Francis said, “But brother wolf, I would like to make peace between you and the people.”

On his deathbed Francis thanked his donkey for a lifetime of service. The donkey, according to legend, wept. The story may well be apocryphal, but its theme – that animals experience grief and other deep emotions and that Francis was intensely aware of animal feeling and consciousness – still moves us and instructs us, almost a millennium later.