Saint Francis of Assisi: A Biography

At the beginning of his classic biography of “le jongleur de dieu,” G. K. Chesterton sets forth three ways in which a “sketch of St. Francis of Assisi in modern English may be written.” First, the author “may deal with this great and most amazing man as a figure in secular history and a model of social virtues”; second, “he may go to the opposite extreme, and…be defiantly devotional”; and third—by the “ordinary” route—“he may try to use what is understood to explain what is not understood.” The achievement of Johannes Jørgensen’s Saint Francis of Assisi is to have employed all three of these methods to weave a harmonious account of one of the most beloved saints of all times. Artfully examining the four major phases of St. Francis’s life—Francis the Church Builder; Francis the Evangelist; Francis, “God’s Singer”; and Francis the Hermit—the biography produces a striking portrait of the genuine character of Francis, the grand romance of his faith in Christ, and the tireless devotion of his love for the Church.

The fruit of years of studious pilgrimage through the source material, Saint Francis of Assisi (which first appeared in T. O’Connor Sloane’s elegant English translation in 1912) has endured as an immensely popular treatments of one of the Church’s most beloved servants, the saint known as “Il Poverello.”