Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life

After visiting Assisi recently, I became fascinated and motivated to learn more about the life of Saint Francis. Most important, I was looking for a biography that would attempt to pierce through legend to find historical facts, while at the same time giving respect to the religious life and saintly accomplishments of Francis. This book exceeded my expectations. I highly recommend it. Very accessible, very easy to read, sequenced logically, and informative.

Powerful details of this saint's life. First to receive the stigmata. His prayer composition which begins, "Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace..." was known by me my entire life before realizing it was penned by St. Francis. Humbling in his devotion to God and his fellow man.

I checked out this book at the library a couple of years ago and was so impressed by it that I had to have a copy of it in order to reread it at my leisure. That's saying something, my friend. This biography is written for the non-religious and the pious alike. The author approaches Francis' life as he would anyone else's. This is refreshing to me because, especially if it is a religious figure, I want to see the subject of a biography in all his foibles. Why? Probably because I have many foibles also and I can relate to and consequently be more inspired by a real human being who, in spite of his or her foibles, was able to transcend them to do great things. The author does a fine job of putting the reader inside the time, place and family in which Francis grew. Though he doesn't go into as great a depth about it as I'm sure other biographies do, Francis spiritual growth is well-written. His prayer life must have been genuinely awesome. The author at one point cites a person who peeked in on one of Francis' hidden prayer session and was in awe of it all, stigmata and all. I think Francis has so much to say to us today. I really believe that any Christian who does study his life is the spiritually richer for it--and that probably goes double for any unbeliever as well.

This biography of Francis is written for all readers, whether religious or not, and covers the life and times of Francis, who lived from 1182-1226. From his devotion to the poor and sick to the relationship between him and Clare and his journey over the Pyrenees barefoot, Francis Of Assisi provides a lively reading of his experiences.

Adrian House saunters through the life of Francis of Assisi pretty much as I imagine Francis himself traveled the Italian countryside. He is in no particular hurry, he takes time to digest the curiosities of his journey, and on occasion he stops altogether to sing and celebrate what he had discovered. House is deeply respectful of his sources--Thomas of Celano and Bonaventure of the thirteenth century, for example, or Bishop John Moorman of our own day-and he is less skeptical than other biographers of devotional sources like The Little Flowers. He has produced a biography that neither labors under its own gravity nor settles into the bog of ecclesiastical mush.It is House's periodic detours that also distinguish this work. We get a primer of Italian city-state politics, street life in the towns, the idiosyncrasies of bishops and noblemen, and the temper of contemporary church life and piety. We get a very thorough immersion into the appalling poverty that was the routine lot of most grim souls in the thirteenth century. We get descriptions of the papal court on vacation, the atmosphere of a medieval ecumenical council, and the eccentric sumptuousness of the Sultan's war camp. We learn probably more than we want to know about the horrors of the siege of Damietta during the Fifth Crusade. We also enter into the private musings of the author himself who takes time to speculate on such matters as whether Francis had some premonition of the Big Bang Theory.House's Francis is a saint in every sense of the word: a humanitarian of historic proportions whose religious commitment to Gospel and Church almost single-handedly redeemed medieval Catholicism as a holy communion. In retelling an oft-told tale, House succeeds in giving us new ways to look at Francis. He attributes to the saint the same quality that Shelby Foote sees in Abraham Lincoln: the ability to stand outside of himself and understand how he looked and sounded to others. Francis was the master of the symbolic gesture: preaching naked, taming animals, singing and dancing. Spontaneous as he was, Francis knew exactly what he was doing and precisely what he hoped to communicate.Where many biographers find Francis the soul of innocence, House understands that his subject was brilliant. It is no coincidence that Francis cultivated precious relationships with men who could do him much good: Guido, Bishop of Assisi; Innocent III; Cardinal Ugolino/Gregory IX. It was the influence of these men who preserved Francis from the fate of many other like-minded reformers of his time: the brand of heresy. How is it that Francis "happens" to be in Rome for the Fourth Lateran Council to protect the interests of his new order, or at Damietta to serve as missionary-negotiator on behalf of Christian crusaders with the Sultan? House's interpretation of the "later Francis" is intriguing. In Chapter 21, "The Small Black Hen," Francis chooses discretion over valor. He decides, albeit resignedly, that absolute poverty