Awards

• Winner of *Winner, 2013 Ennio Flaiano Prize in Italian Studi.
• Winner of •Winner, 2013 Ennio Flaiano Prize in Italian Studi.

Overview

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9780801450709

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Reviews

<p> Francis of Assisi so impressed the people of his own time that even before his death a rich field of stories, images, anecdotes, and reports of miracles had sprung up. These so enveloped the saint that many scholars have despaired of uncovering the man behind the legends. But this new, lucid study by Thompson largely achieves this goal. A distinctive feature of the project is its division into two complementary parts. Part 1 is an engaging, well-written new biography of the saint. Part 2 is a closely annotated examination of the sources and debates about Francis. The advantage of this division is that the biography stands alone, unencumbered by scholarly apparatus, yet in the second part the author displays the reasoning that leads him to believe that he gives a truer picture of the man Francis than other biographers do. -Choice (October 2012)

The book's division into two sections, the biography proper followed by the critical apparatus, gives Thompson greater freedom to engage both the primary sources and the tangle of modern Franciscan scholarship more vigorously. Such an arrangement also renders the book eminently accessible to the general reader while maintaining its status as a substantial contribution to a variety of academic disciplines, including Medieval history, cultural studies, Christian spirituality, and Italian literature. . . . By contextualizing and grounding Francis in his precise historical and cultural milieu, Thompson gives us a Francis who is more human, more alive, and more relevant to our own times and no less a saint. Scott Surrency, Canadian Journal of History (Spring/Summer 2013)

<p> Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this book will set a new standard for all studies of the famously familiar and yet deeply enigmatic Francis of Assisi. Avoiding both romantic piety and academic hypercriticism, Augustine Thompson, O.P., a master historian who knows the Italy of Francis as well as anyone, painstakingly assembles a credible portrait. His method is at once simple and sophisticated: Part One comprises a concise biography; Part Two comprises learned explorations of the evidence and of what that evidence does and does not permit us to say. Thomas F. X. Noble, University of Notre Dame, author of Images, Iconoclasm, and the Carolingians

<p> Augustine Thompson, O.P., presents us with a compelling Francis. This is not the heroic founder of a religious order, but an imperfect, yet sensitive individual who is trying to understand how a Christian should live in a thirteenth-century Italian town. Thanks to this impressive biography we have a very new and moving picture of St. Francis of Assisi. -Duane J. Osheim, University of Virginia, author of A Tuscan Monastery and Its Social World, San Michele of Guamo (1156-1348)

<p> Among Thompson's many keen yet painful insights into the historical Francis, one stands out and serves to bind together the entire narrative and to shed light on the discordant history of the Franciscan order: Leadership was an 'intolerable burden' to Francis, spiritually, 'one he wished to be rid of as quickly as possible.' . . . The stripped-down, bare-bones historical Francis of this biography is at once immensely likeable and deeply disturbing. He is appealing insofar as Thompson makes him seem much more like an ordinary man who accomplished extraordinary things rather than a heaven-sent, self-assured prophet. His befuddlement, his inner turmoil, his inability to control events make him seem not just very human but also much like nearly anyone who is likely to pick up this book. -Carlos Eire, First Things

Author Information

Augustine Thompson, O.P., is Professor of History at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California. He is also the author of Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125-1325.

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