After a detailed and yet engaging reconstruction of Francis's life and work, Vauchez focuses on the myriad texts -- hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc. -- of writers who recorded aspects of Francis's life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. We see varying versions of his life reflected in the work of Machiavelli, Luther, Voltaire, German and English romantics, pre-Raphaelites, Italian nationalists, and Mussolini, and discover how peace activists, ecologists, or interreligious dialogists have used his example to promote their various causes. Particularly noteworthy is the attention Vauchez pays to Francisʹs own writings, which strangely enough have been largely overlooked by later interpreters. -- Publisher description.
Chronicles the life and legacy of the famed Christian saint and places him in historical context by examining writings by contemporaries and noteworthy people.
Biographical sketch, 1182-1226 -- Francesco di Bernardone -- Brother Francis: a layman in the Christianity of the early thirteenth century -- Death and transfiguration of Francis, 1226-1253 -- Becoming Saint Francis, 1226-1230 -- Second death of Francis, 1230-1253 -- Images and myths of Francis of Assisi: from the Middle Ages to today -- Medieval interpretations of Francis: thirteenth to fourteenth centuries -- Francis between history and myth: sixteenth to twentieth centuries -- Originality of Francis and his charism -- Writings of Francis -- Experience of God -- New relationship to scripture: the spirit of the letter -- Francis, nature, and the world -- Francis and the church: the charism within the institution -- Gospel in the world: a transformation of religious anthropology -- Cultural mediator of a new religious sensibility -- Francis, prophet for his time... or for ours? -- Testament of Francis of Assisi, september 1226.