structural:expansion, stylistic:style_transfer
Stigmata, final days, and sainthood

While he was praying on the mountain of Verna, during a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (29 September), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about 13 September 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. Brother Leo, who had been with Francis at the time, left a clear and simple account of the event, the first definite account of the phenomenon of stigmata. "Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ." Suffering from these stigmata and from trachoma, Francis received care in several cities (Siena, Cortona, Nocera) to no avail. He began to go blind and the bishop of Ostia ordered that his eyes be operated on which meant cauterizing the eyes with hot irons. Francis claims to have felt nothing at all when this was done. In the end, he was brought back to a hut next to the Porziuncola. Here he spent his last days dictating his spiritual testament. He died on the evening of Saturday, 3 October 1226, singing Psalm 141, "Voce mea ad Dominum".

On 16 July 1228, he was declared a saint by Pope Gregory IX (the former cardinal Ugolino di Conti, a friend of Francis and Cardinal Protector of the Order). The next day, the pope laid the foundation stone for the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Francis was buried on 25 May 1230, under the Lower Basilica, but his tomb was soon hidden on orders of Brother Elias, in order to protect it from Saracen invaders. His burial place remained unknown until it was rediscovered in 1818. Pasquale Belli then constructed a crypt for the remains in the Lower Basilica. It was refashioned between 1927 and 1930 into its present form by Ugo Tarchi. In 1978, the remains of Francis were examined and confirmed by a commission of scholars appointed by Pope Paul VI, and put into a glass urn in the ancient stone tomb.

In 1935, Dr. Edward Frederick Hartung concluded that Francis contracted trachoma while in Egypt and died of quartan malaria. This data was published in the Annals of Medical History.