person
Francis of Assisi
Saint Francis
also: the brown brother of your nightingales, the great evening-star of poverty
Saint Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226), who stripped off his clothes before the bishop to embrace Lady Poverty; for Rilke the supreme figure of holy poverty and the climax of the third book.
Reading notes
- The Book of Hours §134 went bare before the bishop's robe
Saint Francis of Assisi (c.1181-1226), who in the Assisi marketplace publicly stripped off his clothes and handed them to his merchant father, standing naked before Bishop Guido to renounce all possessions and wed Lady Poverty.
- The Book of Hours §135 the great evening-star of poverty
Francis named as the evening star (the radiant Hesperus of Poverty) whose light the waiting poor look for in their twilight; the closing image of the whole book.