New Book On St Francis of Assisi Breaks New Ground

I sometimes have a bad attitude on new books on famous Saints. That is the thought "Really is there really anything new under the sun to be told". That is a pretty silly attitude , and I am not sure why I think that. As we have seen forinstance Pope Benedict has shown us there is a lot of new things to know and pray about Jesus of Nazareth in his series of books.

St. Francis of Assisi is one of those Saints you would think would be explored out about his life. In this modern age of publishing he has a order to talk, mediate, and write about him. So one would think why not just go the used book store and pick up a old book about St Francis if one wants one.

Amy Welborn though profiles a book on St Francis that looks like it's worth a buy. See Francis of Assisi: A New Biography.

As Amy puts it there are :


...the challenges on the reader’s end: we think we know St. Francis, and we certainly know who we want St. Francis to be.


Fr. Thompson (a Dominican, by the way!) is forthright in his purpose. He knows the limitations of historical scholarship, comparing the search for the “real St. Francis” to the search for the “historical Jesus” over the last two centuries. He grapples directly with the research challenges. And what he emerges with is a work that is illuminating, not only about the life and person of the saint, but also about the project of history – historiography...

Think this might be my Easter present to myself this year