Life of St. Francis of Assisi

About the book

Paul Sabatier follows Francis of Assisi from youth and conversion into the growth of a movement centred on poverty, fellowship, and religious renewal. The biography also asks how later organization and surviving sources shape what can be known about its subject. Its narrative warmth should be read alongside its historical argument: Sabatier is interpreting a life and a tradition, not simply repeating an uncontested sequence of facts. Louise Seymour Houghton's English translation includes the work's scholarly apparatus and discussion of sources. Readers can approach it as both a portrait of devotion and a study of the difficulty of preserving a founding impulse. The changing relationship between personal example, followers, and ecclesiastical authority supplies much of the book's continuing interest.

• Religious vocation
• Poverty and community
• Ideals and institutions

Why read it

For a historically engaged biography that keeps the relation between a life and its later tradition in view.

English translation by Louise Seymour Houghton · 1919 edition text