Francis of Assisi dies at the Portiuncula

October 3, 1226

Singing a canticle to Sister Death, the ragged mystic who had preached to birds and kissed lepers died in the tiny chapel outside Assisi where his order had begun. Two years later he was canonized. His body remains in a crypt beneath the basilica that bears his name. The enormous church built above his grave was precisely the kind of monument his life had repudiated.