1. Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, Vol. II: The Founder, ed. Regis J. Armstrong, J. A. Wayne Hellmann, and William J. Short (New York: New York City Press, 2000), 62: this three-volume set on Francis of Assisi contains all of the early documentation of Francis’s life in the most recent edition and translation available.
2. A. G. Rigg, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature: 1066-1422 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 184.
3. Ibid., 12.
4. University of York, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage: Saints in Medieval Society, at Http://www. york. ac. uk/projects/pilgrimage/content/med_saint. html.
5. See Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 147: “[Saints] were venerated as models of charitable dedication, who suppressed the revulsion toward loathsomeness. Saint Francis. . . was portrayed as kissing a leprous wanderer (on the lips, in some iconography) and then hastening to the leprosarium of Assisi, where he distributed alms to the inmates. Saint Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-1231) reportedly nursed a leprous beggar and took him into her bed.”
6. This demonstrates that modern biographers are no more free of biases than their medieval counterparts, with some trying to ascribe behaviors and miracles to post-traumatic stress and psychoses and others eager to defend the truth of sanctity, the church, and miracles; the truth is undoubtedly somewhere near the middle.
7. Paschal Robinson, “St. Francis of Assisi,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia: Vol. 6 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909). Available at http://www. newadvent. Org/cathen/06221a. htm (accessed Nov. 18, 2010).
8. Adrian House, Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life (Mahwah, NJ: Hidden-spring, 2001), 170.
9. Ibid., 79-80.
10. Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 16-17.
11. House, Francis of Assisi, 207.
12. Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades: Volume III. The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (London: The Folio Society, 1994), 134-35.
13. “Medicine: St. Francis’ Stigmata,” in Time magazine, Monday, 11 March, 1935, available online at Http://www. time. com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,883261,00. Html.
14. “During the General Chapter of 1219 Francis sent a group of six friars to the missions of North Africa. Their names were Vitale, Berardo, Pietro, Accursio, Adiuto and Ottone. Vitale, the superior, fell sick in Spain, and had to abandon his resolve to go to Morocco to evangelise the moors. The others proceeded under the leadership of Be-rardo. They first went to Seville, in southern Spain, which was occupied by the moors, and preached Christ publicly. They were taken in front of the emir, who gave them freedom to proceed to North Africa. They crossed over to Morocco, and preached in front of the king himself. Pope Sixtus IV canonised them in 1481. The account of their martyrdom is found in Analecta Miramolin. The king expelled them from his country, but they returned in their resolve to preach the Christian faith. On 16 January 1220, after cruel torments, they were slain by the king.” Franciscana III, pp. 579-96. The Franciscan Experience, Franciscan Saints and Mystics http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/ Fra/FRAsnt03.html.
15. House, Francis of Assisi, 253.
16. Marion A. Habig, St. Francis of Assisi: Writings and Early Biographies. English Omnibus of the Sources for the Life of St. Francis (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), 1439. (References to the Rules, the First and Second Lives of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano, The Little Flowers of St. Francis, and the Canticle of Brother Sun are from this edition.), 1439.
17. House, Francis of Assisi, 258-64.
18. Cf. Joanne Schatzlein and Daniel Sulmasy, “The Diagnosis of St. Francis,” Franciscan Studies 47 (1987): 181-217; the authors make a convincing case that Francis suffered and died from leprosy.
19. Habig, St. Francis of Assisi, 130.
20. House, Francis of Assisi, 267.
21. Ibid., 276-77.
22. Ibid., 280.
23. Roger D. Sorrell, St. Francis of Assisi and Nature: Tradition and Innovation in Western Christian Attitudes toward the Environment (New York, Oxford University Press: 1988), 69.
24. Ibid., 71.
25. Saint Bonaventura, The Mind’s Road to God, trans. George Boas (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953), 1.13 (p. 12).
World History
