Francis of Assisi

Adrian House

• 01 maart 2001
• 9781856194891

Samenvatting:

Although Francis of Assisi (1182-1226) was canonised two years after he died, and the eminent atheist Ernest Renan wrote: 'After Jesus, Francis was the only perfect Christian', this book is written for readers of any faith or none. Francis was the least dogmatic of saints, seeing himself as God's troubadour or fool.
Francis's feelings for creation, epitomised in his sermon to the birds, stimulated the realism of the Italian Renaissance artists; his vernacular poems inclined Dante to write The Divine Comedy in Italian not Latin. The first religious order he founded, for men, had a radical effect on social justice and the developing universities in Europe; his second order, the Poor Clares, soon numbered hundreds, including royalty and half a dozen saints; his third, for laity sworn to peace, helped destroy the military power of feudalism. But above all it is through his universal love that he has influenced the world for nearly eight centuries, drawing more than three million people every year to his tomb in Assisi.