In the year 1230, the body of Saint Francis of Assisi was buried in the side of a mountain. There it has remained ever since, inaccessible to any pilgrim visiting Assisi. But this year, for the first time since his interment, the saint’s relics are being publicly displayed in celebration of the eight-hundredth anniversary of his death. The story of Francis’s relics is almost as strange as that of his life.

Francis died on October 3, 1226, at the Porziuncola chapel in Assisi. In the final months of his life, the forty-four-year-old founder of the Franciscan order had suffered greatly. An eye infection had nearly blinded him, and he was unable to eat. His life had been full of drama, miracles, and visions. And two years before its end, he had received the stigmata, Christ’s wounds, which allowed him to suffer the torments of his Savior. At his death, Francis was one of the most famous men in Europe. Many already considered him a saint.

Not long after Francis’s death was announced, locals gathered at the Porziuncola to mourn with the Franciscan brothers and join their funeral procession. Carrying olive branches and singing hymns, the friars and the laity carried his body to the convent of San Damiano, where Saint Clare and her community were cloistered. They removed the iron communion grille so that Clare could touch, kiss, and say goodbye to her friend. The scene is commemorated in a painting by Giotto on the walls of the Basilica of Saint Francis, as any visitor can see today.

Soon more pilgrims came to Assisi. The Franciscans placed their founder’s body in an ancient sarcophagus that a local farmer had been using as a trough. It was then publicly displayed on a platform in the Church of San Giorgio for four years. Pilgrims were able to easily approach Francis’s body and venerate his relics, and many miracles were attributed to them. Only weeks after Francis’s death, a young girl with a deformed neck was laid in the crawl space beneath the platform. When she emerged, her neck was fully healed. Francis’s tomb became so popular that the friars placed an iron grate on top of the sarcophagus. Pilgrims were welcome to look, but they could not touch.

Since there was widespread expectation that Francis would be declared a saint, local authorities took steps to secure his future relics even before his death. As Francis’s health declined in July 1226, the civic leaders of Assisi ordered a group of knights to accompany the saint on his journey back from northern Italy to the Porziuncola. If Francis died along the way, they were to securely transport his body to Assisi. Guards were placed at Francis’s bedroom door to prevent anyone, including the friars, from stealing his body.

The Assisians believed that the biggest threat to Francis’s body was the city leaders of Perugia. The two cities were intense rivals throughout the Middle Ages. (Francis himself had fought against the Perugians before renouncing his worldly life.) There were several reasons why the Perugians would want Francis’s body. Relics, of course, were holy objects and the subject of miracles. The people of every medieval city desired miraculous sacred objects, and not always for pious reasons. Relics encouraged pilgrimages, and pilgrims spent money. While on pilgrimage, visitors spent their money at local businesses for lodging, food, and souvenirs. The more miraculous the shrine, the greater the city’s profits.

Indeed, relic theft was common in medieval Europe. Perhaps the most famous example is that of Saint Nicholas. In the eleventh century, merchants from the city of Bari snatched the saint’s body from its tomb in Myra, a city in what is now Turkey. Nicholas’s relics were re-interred in the Basilica of Saint Nicholas at Bari, where they are today. Pilgrimage to the saint’s tomb became one of the most popular routes of the Middle Ages, and his burial site remains a popular tourist destination.

Today, most disputes over saints’ tombs are handled by lawyers rather than merchants or soldiers. The case of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, whose cause for canonization is pending, is one example. In 2019, his remains were transferred from Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception in Peoria, Illinois. The re-interment ended a lengthy legal dispute between the two dioceses over Sheen’s final resting place. It is difficult to imagine the Diocese of Peoria sending troops to lay siege to Manhattan and recover Sheen’s body, but this was the sort of operation Assisi anticipated from Perugia.

In May 1230, the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi had just been completed. To celebrate the basilica’s opening, a large procession was planned in which Francis’s body would be taken from San Giorgio and re-interred in the Lower Basilica. But a few days before the celebrations, the vicar general of the Franciscans, Brother Elias, was warned that the Perugians intended to steal Francis’s body during the procession.

The friars also worried about public hysteria. Assisi was full of pilgrims eager to attend the celebrations. Franciscans and other clergy from all over Italy were in attendance. Even Pope Gregory IX had made the trip out. Chaos was imminent: Fanatic crowds might descend upon relic processions, pushing clergy aside to touch the saint and take home a piece of his remains. During the thirteenth century, relics were frequently damaged during large gatherings such as these. Only a year later, when the body of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was exposed during a procession, the crowd tore at her clothes, hair, and nails, seeking little souvenir for themselves.

Brother Elias could not risk this sort of thing happening to Francis. So he secretly asked a group of friars to move the saint’s body three days ahead of schedule. In the middle of the night, the friars transported the saint’s sarcophagus into a designated niche in the basilica. Gregory, naturally, was furious. He threatened excommunication and demanded that Brother Elias and his accomplices come to Rome and explain their behavior. In the end, no one was excommunicated, and Francis’s body remained unharmed.

The Franciscans went to great lengths to secure the relics. First, a pit large enough to fit the sarcophagus had to be carved from the mountainside. Once the sarcophagus was situated in the burial vault, three slabs of travertine, all sealed with concrete, were layered on top. The tomb was situated directly under the main altar. This arrangement profoundly affected how pilgrims prayed before Francis’s tomb. At San Giorgio, visitors could peer into the coffin and even crawl beneath his tomb. But at the Lower Basilica, Francis’s tomb was entirely inaccessible. Pilgrims were invited to pray before the main altar and were promised that Francis was buried below. This did not prevent visitors from seeking miracles, however. A thirteenth-century liturgical manuscript, now housed in the basilica’s archives, depicts three cripples sitting beneath Francis’s tomb, looking for healing. Though the saint’s remains were far from accessible, these men were confident that Francis interceded for anyone seeking his aid.

Because it was sealed so efficiently, the whereabouts of Francis’s tomb remained a mystery for most of its history. Some doubted whether the saint was actually buried in the basilica. While visiting Assisi in the 1470s, the Spanish pilgrim Pero Tafur wrote, “They say that the body of St. Francis is buried there in a place which they show, but the truth is that no one knows the exact spot, not even those in the monastery.” Some speculated that the Franciscans were hiding the saint’s tomb in a secret, third chapel located beneath the Lower Basilica. The location of Francis’s tomb was only confirmed in 1818, when, after two failed excavation attempts, archaeologists uncovered the stone coffin. Beneath the saint’s feet, the archaeologists found beads, coins, and a ring, gifts from the lucky pilgrims who visited Francis’s sarcophagus before it was sealed.

Today, pilgrims can descend into a crypt chapel, a later addition, directly beneath the Lower Basilica, to view Francis’s sarcophagus. Visitors can only see, but still not touch, the tomb. It sits on a window ledge carved out of the layers of concrete in which it was once embedded. But those who travel to Assisi this year will get to see more. They will be among the privileged few ever to view Francis’s remains.

We don’t have to see a saint’s relics to gain his intercession. But the public display of these relics does help us meditate on the nature of one of the medieval Church’s great saints. Francis is one of the most misunderstood saints of our modern era. We often imagine him as a kind of flower child, wandering through the forest and blessing animals. Francis did express a great love for God’s creation, but this depiction reduces his life to mere myth. Francis was a merchant’s son, a soldier, a reformer, and a friend to lepers. After his death, his friends spoke of him as a jokester, one who interrupted dinner parties to lead his friends in song. He bore the wounds of Christ on his own body. Perhaps most importantly, Francis was—as his relics remind us—mortal. “Welcome, Sister Death,” were the friar’s last words. It is this version of Francis, a man unafraid to meet his Lord, that the Church should recall as She unearths his holy remains this spring.