Christianity · Origins & people
Francis seeks recognition for his community
1209 CE
Francis of Assisi traveled to Rome with a proposal for a community shaped by poverty and Gospel preaching. Pope Innocent III welcomed the movement. Francis’s followers helped establish a distinctive model of religious life that worked among wider society rather than only within secluded communities.
Why it matters
Francis shows how a fresh reading of Gospel demands could generate new communal practices and institutions within the existing medieval church.
About the date
Traditional date of Francis’s meeting with Innocent III.
Rome
City of Francis’s encounter with Innocent III; his home community was in Assisi.
city orientation
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