The galley for Augustine Thompson, O.P.’s new biography of Francis of Assisi arrived the other day. I am reviewing the book (Francis of Assisi: A New Biography; Cornell University Press, April 2012) for America.
It is a curious book right from the start, as Thompson claims, from page one of the Introduction, to be the first person writing in English (he points to only one to have done this before him in Italian) who has sought to uncover the real, historical Francis behind the legends. He writes: “This life is the first sustained attempt in English to treat these medieval sources for Francis in a consistently, sometimes ruthlessly, critical manner.” An odd claim, certainly, if you consider that Paul Sabatier claimed to have been the first to do the same (although he was writing in French), more than a century ago.
