The Life of St. Francis is less a biography than a series of hagiographic episodes from the life of the saint (who lived 1181-1226) told roughly chronologically by a Franciscan friar and saint of the next generation, Bonaventure (1221-74). He wrote this devotional work to lead the faithful to recognize Francis’s holiness and to revere his intentional imitation of Christ and so to follow Francis as a contemporary mirror of Christ--in particular in his humility, poverty, and service to others. Here Bonaventure tells the stories about Francis that made him so popular in the public imagination, including his solicitude for the poor, his love for the natural world and even his invention of the Christmas crèche. We learn, too, of his extreme measures of self-denial and humility that served then and now as a powerful counter-cultural rebuke against a world in which greed and self-aggrandizement threaten the moral order. Bonaventure also reveals how, capping a life utterly devoted to conforming to Christ, Francis received the stigmata, the miraculously received marks of Jesus’s crucifixion on his hands, feet, and body.
The stories Bonaventure tells of Francis are enjoyable, moving, edifying, even occasionally amusing. But collectively they serve as a challenge to us all: if our ultimate goal is salvation, to be with God in His everlasting glory, then what do the things of this world matter? St. Francis, through his disciple St. Bonaventure, inspires us to become humbler, to live more simply, and to love more deeply and widely.
Much has been made in other reviews of the supposed deficiencies of the brief Foreword by the much celebrated Catholic writer Donna Tartt. Her words are not a scholarly treatise to the Life of St. Francis, but a brief introduction to St. Francis and what he means to her. In other words, it’s an entirely appropriate, useful, and enjoyable way to enter the book.
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