Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography
Type
Book
Authors
Category
Catholic Saints
[ Browse Items ]
Publication Year
1965
Publisher
Pages
616
Description
New translation by Eve-Marie Cooper, second English edition. Texts and Notes revised by Ignatius Brady, O.F.M. and Raphael Brown. New introduction, appendices, and comprehensive bibliography of modern research on St. Francis by Raphael Brown.
Librarians and booksellers either take an attitude of mock despair or are mildly amused each time a new biography of St. Francis is announced. Ordinarily, several times a year. The librarian knows, however, that it will be off the shelves constantly; and the bookseller wonders how a new wave of Francis of Assisi's clientele has suddenly broken along the literary beach to gather to itself another "life" of the Poverello.
The facts are simple: there are some two and one half million followers of St. Francis who belong directly to the various orders he founded, now flung throughout the world; besides that, there are millions of Catholics who consider St. Francis, as Pius XI named him, "another Christ" - so closely did he follow the footsteps of his Master; Protestants, Pantheists, Rationalists, and indifferents have their place also among his admirers. Even certain Buddhists fell themselves akin to him.
Simply, Francis of Assisi is one of those men of whom humanity will always be proud. His qualities compel sympathy; even his defects seem to be the homely kind everyone loves; his sanctity has nothing esoteric or effeminate or intimidating; his natural gifts rouse general admiration; his teaching has so much freshness, so much poetry and serenity that even the most blase can find there reasons to love life and to believe in divine goodness.
He attracts all by his nobility, his disinterestedness, his goodness.
And because he so attracts, each age - like children who have heard a story they love - wants to hear it told again and again by a good story teller. Yet the events of his life are singularly undramatic. But chosen and told by Omer Englebert, they are the high stuff of drama - for they move to a crest and produce an accumulation of simple facts which shatter definition and which leave with each man the yearning to become similar to the Little Poor Man of Assisi. The popularity of the Peace Prayer attributed to St. Francis best sums up the aspirations of the human heart struggling with itself, and best spells out the image of success achieved which millions have associated with St. Francis of Assisi. For, truly, he lived; and knew hot to live in the world - but not of it.
Omer Englebert is one of the greatest of modern-day hagiographers. He follows in the noble tradition of the great literary men of the last 125 years who have written "lives" of St. Francis - Catholics, Protestants and unbelievers: from the Protestant Karl Hase, to the Catholic Chesterton, Ozanam, Joergensen, and the unbelieving Renan who commissioned his pupil Paul Sabatier to write a life that set off a whole new era of research into the life of St. Francis when published in 1894.
And the research has gone on. Intensively during the last 25 years. It needed summary and synthesis. In editing this translation of Omer Englebert's work, Raphael Brown and Ignatius Bradly O.F.M. - both eminent scholars of Franciscan sources - have made of this book a definitive biography of St. Francis for our generation. It is a book that can never be overlooked by any serious scholar of St. Francis and the sources of his life and spirit.
This edition contains a condensed summary and guide to all the important new studies on St. Francis which have resulted from extensive research and various controversies during the last twenty-five years, especially on his home and family, Assisi in his time, the chronology of his life, the problem of the Canticle of Creatures, and the studies on the last years of the Saint's life. For the general reader, all of this material is presented succinctly in the new introduction, notes and appendices by Raphael Brown. For students, historians, researchers, medievalists, librarians, the book is a must primarily for its 1000-item bibliography, arranged by topics, covering all the rich research of 1939-1963, with important older items. Raphael Brown, research librarian for the Library of Congress, has compiled the first and only comprehensive bibliography ever published on St. Francis of Assisi.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Librarians and booksellers either take an attitude of mock despair or are mildly amused each time a new biography of St. Francis is announced. Ordinarily, several times a year. The librarian knows, however, that it will be off the shelves constantly; and the bookseller wonders how a new wave of Francis of Assisi's clientele has suddenly broken along the literary beach to gather to itself another "life" of the Poverello.
The facts are simple: there are some two and one half million followers of St. Francis who belong directly to the various orders he founded, now flung throughout the world; besides that, there are millions of Catholics who consider St. Francis, as Pius XI named him, "another Christ" - so closely did he follow the footsteps of his Master; Protestants, Pantheists, Rationalists, and indifferents have their place also among his admirers. Even certain Buddhists fell themselves akin to him.
Simply, Francis of Assisi is one of those men of whom humanity will always be proud. His qualities compel sympathy; even his defects seem to be the homely kind everyone loves; his sanctity has nothing esoteric or effeminate or intimidating; his natural gifts rouse general admiration; his teaching has so much freshness, so much poetry and serenity that even the most blase can find there reasons to love life and to believe in divine goodness.
He attracts all by his nobility, his disinterestedness, his goodness.
And because he so attracts, each age - like children who have heard a story they love - wants to hear it told again and again by a good story teller. Yet the events of his life are singularly undramatic. But chosen and told by Omer Englebert, they are the high stuff of drama - for they move to a crest and produce an accumulation of simple facts which shatter definition and which leave with each man the yearning to become similar to the Little Poor Man of Assisi. The popularity of the Peace Prayer attributed to St. Francis best sums up the aspirations of the human heart struggling with itself, and best spells out the image of success achieved which millions have associated with St. Francis of Assisi. For, truly, he lived; and knew hot to live in the world - but not of it.
Omer Englebert is one of the greatest of modern-day hagiographers. He follows in the noble tradition of the great literary men of the last 125 years who have written "lives" of St. Francis - Catholics, Protestants and unbelievers: from the Protestant Karl Hase, to the Catholic Chesterton, Ozanam, Joergensen, and the unbelieving Renan who commissioned his pupil Paul Sabatier to write a life that set off a whole new era of research into the life of St. Francis when published in 1894.
And the research has gone on. Intensively during the last 25 years. It needed summary and synthesis. In editing this translation of Omer Englebert's work, Raphael Brown and Ignatius Bradly O.F.M. - both eminent scholars of Franciscan sources - have made of this book a definitive biography of St. Francis for our generation. It is a book that can never be overlooked by any serious scholar of St. Francis and the sources of his life and spirit.
This edition contains a condensed summary and guide to all the important new studies on St. Francis which have resulted from extensive research and various controversies during the last twenty-five years, especially on his home and family, Assisi in his time, the chronology of his life, the problem of the Canticle of Creatures, and the studies on the last years of the Saint's life. For the general reader, all of this material is presented succinctly in the new introduction, notes and appendices by Raphael Brown. For students, historians, researchers, medievalists, librarians, the book is a must primarily for its 1000-item bibliography, arranged by topics, covering all the rich research of 1939-1963, with important older items. Raphael Brown, research librarian for the Library of Congress, has compiled the first and only comprehensive bibliography ever published on St. Francis of Assisi.
Taken from the inside flaps.
Number of Copies
1