San Francesco d'Assisi

Francis was born in Assisi around 1181, the son of a wealthy cloth merchant. After a comfortable youth and a spell as a soldier, he renounced his father's wealth and chose poverty, founding the order of Friars Minor. He is the author of the Canticle of the Creatures, a praise of God through the sun, moon, water and earth, regarded as one of the earliest poetic texts in the Italian vernacular. He died in Assisi in 1226.