Earlier this month on Pelican Brief, I authored a piece entitled "Why St. Francis Stripped Himself in the Public Square," in which I discuss nakedness in the Franciscan tradition, especially as it relates to humiliation and the contemplation of Christ's nakedness on the cross. Multiple sources on St. Francis's life tell us that the saint was fond of meditating on Christ's nakedness. Francis considered the state of nakedness to be a particularly intimate manner of conforming oneself to Christ, specifically in His humiliation. Bonaventure relates, for example, that Francis's desire to be stripped naked while dying a deliberate means of identifying with our Lord's nakedness on the cross.
