Episode Details

The garden-store Francis of Assisi — the serene figure surrounded by birds and bunnies — bears almost no resemblance to the real man. The historical Francis was a wealthy merchant's son who stripped naked in public to renounce his inheritance, lived in absolute poverty, preached to Muslims during the Crusades, and challenged the institutional Church so directly that the Pope had to decide whether to embrace him or condemn him as a heretic.

This episode recovers the radical Francis from the sentimental myth, tracing his transformation from privileged party boy to the most disruptive religious figure of the medieval world.

• Francis's wealthy youth and the public confrontation with his father that launched his mission
• The founding of the Franciscan order and the radical commitment to total poverty
• His journey to meet the Sultan of Egypt during the Fifth Crusade
• The stigmata, the tensions with the institutional Church, and the sanitizing of his legacy after death