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Francis of Assisi: The Life of a Restless Saint
An award-winning historian reconstructs the life of Francis of Assisi, uncovering the man behind the myths
One of the most famous figures in Christian history, Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) was revered as a miracle worker during his life and quickly canonized after his death. He has inspired generations of Christians and other spiritual seekers, from medieval ascetics to 1960s hippies and modern environmentalists. The “poverello” wrote poems praising the sun, moon, and stars, spoke to the birds, and—so the story goes—even tamed a wolf. But what do we know for sure about who he was, and what is simply legend?
Drawing on centuries of scholarship, Volker Leppin pieces together fragments of Francis’s life story to find a seeker who never reached his destination, a man whose extraordinary charisma drew others in yet who was uncomfortable in the spotlight. Amazingly, Francis stayed within the fold of the church while offering a new and radical vision of Christianity that proved wildly popular.
Leppin’s Francis of Assisi sets Francis’s inner emotional and spiritual world against a broader historical background to show how the message of this inspiring and often vexing medieval saint continues to resonate in our contemporary world.
One of the most famous figures in Christian history, Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) was revered as a miracle worker during his life and quickly canonized after his death. He has inspired generations of Christians and other spiritual seekers, from medieval ascetics to 1960s hippies and modern environmentalists. The “poverello” wrote poems praising the sun, moon, and stars, spoke to the birds, and—so the story goes—even tamed a wolf. But what do we know for sure about who he was, and what is simply legend?
Drawing on centuries of scholarship, Volker Leppin pieces together fragments of Francis’s life story to find a seeker who never reached his destination, a man whose extraordinary charisma drew others in yet who was uncomfortable in the spotlight. Amazingly, Francis stayed within the fold of the church while offering a new and radical vision of Christianity that proved wildly popular.
Leppin’s Francis of Assisi sets Francis’s inner emotional and spiritual world against a broader historical background to show how the message of this inspiring and often vexing medieval saint continues to resonate in our contemporary world.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 28, 2025
About the author
Volker Leppin
150 books4 followersVolker Leppin is professor for church history in the department for Evangelical Lutheran theology at the University of Tübingen and member of the scientific advisory committee of the Luther Decade.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 14, 2026
Searching for the “historical Francis” proves elusive. A Yale professor of late medieval and Reformation theology, Volker Leppin sifts through the “fragmentary” evidence of Francis’ earliest chroniclers. He emphasizes primary sources, opting for a streamlined approach appealing to audiences ready for a cogent, compact study.. Complementing Dominican historian Augustine Thompson’s sober analysis and French scholar of spirituality Andre Vauchez’s broad survey (both appeared in 2012), Leppin alerts us to rewards of placing the Poverello within his era rather than romanticizing his appeal or rationalizing his relevance (for this, consult Patricia Appelbaum’s 2015 Francis of America).
He opens with over five pages scrutinizing the name given to the son of Pietro Bernardone. Is it Giovanni or Francesco? Thomas of Celano likely invented the ambiguity to insert parallels to the Baptist preceding the Messiah. Patient examination of these origin stories typifies Leppin’s rigor.
Relying on the Legend or Report of Three Companions (useful to remember in the later Middle Ages, “legend” meant an instructive saint’s tale to be literally read daily rather than dubiously “inspired by true events” as we regard inventive endeavors; a negative connotation arose under Anglicanism around the arrival of the King James Bible), the two Lives by Thomas of Celano, and sporadically, the Fioretti, Bonaventure, Jordan of Speyer, and John of Perugia, Professor Leppin examines their functions aligning Francis amidst scriptural and typological prefigurations.
For instance, when Francis flings the money the priest at San Damiano’s dilapidated chapel refuses onto its windowsill, this vignette superimposes levels of interpretation guiding the Friars Minor a few decades later towards pure mendicancy. Divesting himself of clothes before Bishop Guido of Assisi, Francis embodies a “medieval symbolic connection” in which performative acts asserted one’s status within feudal society beyond “merely vocalizing or gesturing” to create meaning and convey a mission. The shaggy dropout from Umbrian conventions broke with municipal and paternal propriety through a "radical ascetic lifestyle” within approved parameters. Neither heretic nor lunatic. Francis began (if briefly) as a hermit. Then, his validated religious role via “rupture” expanded into a renovator of churches, generating a fellowship of beggars for alms, and forming a squad of itinerant day-laborers underwriting their care for castoff lepers.
No wonder, as Leppin quotes Celano, that the Founder appeared as if “homo alterius saeculi,” a man from a different age. The Little Brothers’ rapid leap into prominence via papal supervision pivoted their shift from vagrants to an approved (albeit provisionally) movement announcing, as did John the Baptist, the advent of Jesus’ arrival anew. Parsing Francis’ greeting of harmony signed to all he met, Leppin reflects how Francis’ “task in life contained within it a proclamation of peace built around his call to challenge others to repent, spiritual postures that he had long since cultivated himself. This personal development in the life of Francis was shaped by a multitude of ruptures, which he pursued and cultivated to renew his creaturely experience.”
In the Admonitions, Leppin gleans hints of Francis’ preaching power. Not only angels but devils fill these excerpts. Threats of “everlasting fire” jostle beside paeans to God’s glory. For admirers who hearken only to a Canticle of the Sun as their inspirational assurance, Francis and Leppin might concur that serious discerners of the Poor Man’s message must take his blunt apocalyptic insistences alongside praises of the natural realm as inextricably tied to his stark stern mindset.
After all, these pious troubadours who spread beyond Italy played into expectations. Those they approached for donations would offer them to gain their own rewards, as the Beatitudes taught. Leppin glances at the expansion of the urban penitents beyond the formal First and Second Orders. “In a dialectical kind of way, the Franciscans were forcing the hand of others to give, even though they themselves had become beggars only by renouncing daily labor in order to receive alms. Those who sympathized with the Franciscans stood apart from the normal round of dutiful Christian giving, and therefore rushed to hear Francis preach or to offer the brothers lodging. They did both because they keenly supported the insights of Francis and his brothers, though they couldn’t live in the same way themselves.”
As education (and soon the ownership of property, an issue that gets a bit lost in Leppin’s compressed telling) had to be incorporated to enable the entrance of learned elucidators as Anthony of Padua into their ranks, so fervent restrictions of the evangelical associates who’d surrounded Francis loosened to accommodate middle-class and lay growth.
While his bold expedition to the Sultan gains ecumenical acclaim today (see my review of Paul Moses’ popular account on GR), Leppin cautions here as in our tendency to cast doe-eyed Francis as a starstruck stick-fiddler among birds and beasties that we edit cues from a few rosy highlights of a competing congeries of jumbled scripts. Leppin advises we frame such pacifying episodes as if “real people presented with dramatic license”: akin to today’s biopic film tropes.
We forget that zealous Francis got “mixed up in a crusading army.” He demanded the summary repentance and conversion of those he met in the Muslim camp. Who wouldn’t have been able to understand his “unknown tongues” of Italian or Latin. He sought martyrdom, and was lucky to have been regarded as a madman rather than another lethal threat from the Christian intruders.
Francis here exhibited “spontaneous naivete,” characterizing his urgent essence. He combined fidelity to Rome with fierce piety heedless of propriety. From the periphery, he pointed to priests and popes as necessary shepherds for the Church’s wayward flocks. Tiring of command of his jumpstart Order turned international institution, he retreated towards his internalized minimalism, his poverty integrating service with simplicity, preferring humble apostolates to the poor rather than repeating Manichean fulminations of Cathars or imitating dogged dissent by Waldensians.
Leppin delves deeply into Francis’ conformity with the Lateran Council, his “reserve” among women, his marked distrust of “sexuality” within the fraternal ministry, his followers’ conflicting testimonies of his stigmata, and his decision to step down from leadership. Even if these latter chapters get bogged down in debates within the Order rather than animating Francis’ actions, this provides needed attention to the extant and disorganized narratives assembled to posthumously advance a particular stance attributed to Francis by a faction of friars.
Leppin directs us away from exaggerating our countercultural cachet of the Founder. And as a keen biographer of Martin Luther, this German Protestant academic offers a sturdy (if in translation occasionally clunky or elusive)?style and a subtle corrective to glib hagiography. Leppin firmly sets Francis along his proper orientation: looking to Jesus first.
He opens with over five pages scrutinizing the name given to the son of Pietro Bernardone. Is it Giovanni or Francesco? Thomas of Celano likely invented the ambiguity to insert parallels to the Baptist preceding the Messiah. Patient examination of these origin stories typifies Leppin’s rigor.
Relying on the Legend or Report of Three Companions (useful to remember in the later Middle Ages, “legend” meant an instructive saint’s tale to be literally read daily rather than dubiously “inspired by true events” as we regard inventive endeavors; a negative connotation arose under Anglicanism around the arrival of the King James Bible), the two Lives by Thomas of Celano, and sporadically, the Fioretti, Bonaventure, Jordan of Speyer, and John of Perugia, Professor Leppin examines their functions aligning Francis amidst scriptural and typological prefigurations.
For instance, when Francis flings the money the priest at San Damiano’s dilapidated chapel refuses onto its windowsill, this vignette superimposes levels of interpretation guiding the Friars Minor a few decades later towards pure mendicancy. Divesting himself of clothes before Bishop Guido of Assisi, Francis embodies a “medieval symbolic connection” in which performative acts asserted one’s status within feudal society beyond “merely vocalizing or gesturing” to create meaning and convey a mission. The shaggy dropout from Umbrian conventions broke with municipal and paternal propriety through a "radical ascetic lifestyle” within approved parameters. Neither heretic nor lunatic. Francis began (if briefly) as a hermit. Then, his validated religious role via “rupture” expanded into a renovator of churches, generating a fellowship of beggars for alms, and forming a squad of itinerant day-laborers underwriting their care for castoff lepers.
No wonder, as Leppin quotes Celano, that the Founder appeared as if “homo alterius saeculi,” a man from a different age. The Little Brothers’ rapid leap into prominence via papal supervision pivoted their shift from vagrants to an approved (albeit provisionally) movement announcing, as did John the Baptist, the advent of Jesus’ arrival anew. Parsing Francis’ greeting of harmony signed to all he met, Leppin reflects how Francis’ “task in life contained within it a proclamation of peace built around his call to challenge others to repent, spiritual postures that he had long since cultivated himself. This personal development in the life of Francis was shaped by a multitude of ruptures, which he pursued and cultivated to renew his creaturely experience.”
In the Admonitions, Leppin gleans hints of Francis’ preaching power. Not only angels but devils fill these excerpts. Threats of “everlasting fire” jostle beside paeans to God’s glory. For admirers who hearken only to a Canticle of the Sun as their inspirational assurance, Francis and Leppin might concur that serious discerners of the Poor Man’s message must take his blunt apocalyptic insistences alongside praises of the natural realm as inextricably tied to his stark stern mindset.
After all, these pious troubadours who spread beyond Italy played into expectations. Those they approached for donations would offer them to gain their own rewards, as the Beatitudes taught. Leppin glances at the expansion of the urban penitents beyond the formal First and Second Orders. “In a dialectical kind of way, the Franciscans were forcing the hand of others to give, even though they themselves had become beggars only by renouncing daily labor in order to receive alms. Those who sympathized with the Franciscans stood apart from the normal round of dutiful Christian giving, and therefore rushed to hear Francis preach or to offer the brothers lodging. They did both because they keenly supported the insights of Francis and his brothers, though they couldn’t live in the same way themselves.”
As education (and soon the ownership of property, an issue that gets a bit lost in Leppin’s compressed telling) had to be incorporated to enable the entrance of learned elucidators as Anthony of Padua into their ranks, so fervent restrictions of the evangelical associates who’d surrounded Francis loosened to accommodate middle-class and lay growth.
While his bold expedition to the Sultan gains ecumenical acclaim today (see my review of Paul Moses’ popular account on GR), Leppin cautions here as in our tendency to cast doe-eyed Francis as a starstruck stick-fiddler among birds and beasties that we edit cues from a few rosy highlights of a competing congeries of jumbled scripts. Leppin advises we frame such pacifying episodes as if “real people presented with dramatic license”: akin to today’s biopic film tropes.
We forget that zealous Francis got “mixed up in a crusading army.” He demanded the summary repentance and conversion of those he met in the Muslim camp. Who wouldn’t have been able to understand his “unknown tongues” of Italian or Latin. He sought martyrdom, and was lucky to have been regarded as a madman rather than another lethal threat from the Christian intruders.
Francis here exhibited “spontaneous naivete,” characterizing his urgent essence. He combined fidelity to Rome with fierce piety heedless of propriety. From the periphery, he pointed to priests and popes as necessary shepherds for the Church’s wayward flocks. Tiring of command of his jumpstart Order turned international institution, he retreated towards his internalized minimalism, his poverty integrating service with simplicity, preferring humble apostolates to the poor rather than repeating Manichean fulminations of Cathars or imitating dogged dissent by Waldensians.
Leppin delves deeply into Francis’ conformity with the Lateran Council, his “reserve” among women, his marked distrust of “sexuality” within the fraternal ministry, his followers’ conflicting testimonies of his stigmata, and his decision to step down from leadership. Even if these latter chapters get bogged down in debates within the Order rather than animating Francis’ actions, this provides needed attention to the extant and disorganized narratives assembled to posthumously advance a particular stance attributed to Francis by a faction of friars.
Leppin directs us away from exaggerating our countercultural cachet of the Founder. And as a keen biographer of Martin Luther, this German Protestant academic offers a sturdy (if in translation occasionally clunky or elusive)?style and a subtle corrective to glib hagiography. Leppin firmly sets Francis along his proper orientation: looking to Jesus first.
September 26, 2025
“No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks, And serve Him with great humility” - The Canticle for Brother Sun
If notions of power stem from money, fame or privilege, how do we understand the outsized life of the hermetic Francis of Assisi? Despite being a renunciate of the merchant class, stripped of any financial security and one who committed to work on a leper colony, Francis somehow came into the circles of imperial pope Innocent III and Egyptian Al-Malik al-Kāmil. Some 1,200 years after the death of Jesus Christ, when the Catholic Church was prodigiously influential and influencing geopolitics, Francis established a Franciscan order rapturously devoted to penance and Christ-centered service
Volker Leppin’s “Francis of Assisi” attempts to tell the Franci’s story by focusing on the historicity by setting aside the sainthood accounts from the medieval era. Through the prism of the hagiographic writings such as Celano’s “First Life”, his apostles “Legend of Three Companions”, and Francis's penned “Testament”, Leppin (in a translation by Rhys S. Bezzzunt) shares the struggles of separating the two. He explores the “double tradition, which is characterized on the one hand by hagiographies on which everyone who wants to recount the life of Francis remains dependent (p.7). Autobiographies, he states, are interpretations, full of narrative tensions, and we must abandon these to understand reality.
Unfortunately, I was frustrated by Leppin’s circumspect approach to the historical texts. Understandably he is bound to the primary texts, but often the writings are loaded with qualifications, doubts, uncertainties. A coherent narrative of a life story is choppy, with unnecessary interludes and unrewarding transitions. The writing plods along, often with detours to side characters or papal decrees. As I read on, I increasingly became annoyed by how fragmentary Pippin’s narrative of Francis was, despite a growing interest in his Francis's story.
The primary texts may be suspect and proclaim miracles that are suspicious to the modern reader. I appreciated the insights into Francis’s personality from the historical record that are less flattering - a bizarre impulsivity, possible PTSD from an imprisonment, and early rebellions against the social order being from his father’s overbearingness instead of a deep abiding faith. Still, I kept thinking that the writing served a more niche graduate student audience, one familiar with the related texts, and that this book is less serviceable to a larger audience.
Even if we abandon the hagiography, there are remarkable writings about the visions and miracles of Francis that inform the medieval worldview. As Leppin writes “For medieval people the world was permeated by God’s rule, and that he was able to reveal himself to people in visions, dreams, and revelations (p.9)”. A dream occurs that comes to Francis as a direct message to God. Sharing the revelations of the dream with Pope Innocent III leads to the establishment of the Francisian order. Another tale, possibly apocryphal, is of a crucifix speaking to Francis, and giving him orders to repair the house of worship – (a very literal workman repairing message was received by Francis). The bizarre events of Francis’s reckless actions to convert soldering Muslims, and possibly seeking martyrdom with inspiration from the book of Daniel. There are also the multiple accounts of stigmata on Francis’s body in his late life. I share a skepticism with modern readers on these stories, but also think the purpose of the hagiography is valuable, and unexplored in this book.
Circling back to the idea of Francis’s renunciation, and modeling of a Chris-centirc life, I was fascinated by how Francis challenges the lives of the faithful in our time. Eight hundred years after his death, Christians take pilgrimages to Portiuncula and find inspiration in the saint. As Leppin points out, there are parts of Francis’s preaching that are unpleasant to contemplate such as sermons on “everlasting fire”, and “terror and anxiety” (p.111). His devotion comes across as fanatical, with strong a strong emphasis on penitence and begging as a means for survival. Nevertheless, there are areas of renunciation that still feel ahead of our culture - the reverence of nature and ecology, the renunciation of oppressive economic systems, the denunciation of hierarchy among the brotherhood, and a life of service and charity toward the dispossessed. There are parallels to our own time when Christ’s doctrines can be politicized for power or received for self-transformation
Although we have to contend with Francis’s historical life with the applied sainthood, there is no doubt that Francis aspired to be a “man-out-of-time”. The biblical passage from John 18:36 puts it best with the devotional “My kingdom is not of this earth”. In Leppin’s biography, we see the ways that Francis aspired to live a reunciate life. We are also aware of the ways in which he was not a revolutionary - the Francisean order submitted to the Church’s dogma; and we are aware that many other orders defied the Church were persecuted as heretics. Maybe mystery lies at the heart of the Francis story, but it’s a story beckoning of hope and blessing, and a reminder that our position in this world is not reflective of our power.
If notions of power stem from money, fame or privilege, how do we understand the outsized life of the hermetic Francis of Assisi? Despite being a renunciate of the merchant class, stripped of any financial security and one who committed to work on a leper colony, Francis somehow came into the circles of imperial pope Innocent III and Egyptian Al-Malik al-Kāmil. Some 1,200 years after the death of Jesus Christ, when the Catholic Church was prodigiously influential and influencing geopolitics, Francis established a Franciscan order rapturously devoted to penance and Christ-centered service
Volker Leppin’s “Francis of Assisi” attempts to tell the Franci’s story by focusing on the historicity by setting aside the sainthood accounts from the medieval era. Through the prism of the hagiographic writings such as Celano’s “First Life”, his apostles “Legend of Three Companions”, and Francis's penned “Testament”, Leppin (in a translation by Rhys S. Bezzzunt) shares the struggles of separating the two. He explores the “double tradition, which is characterized on the one hand by hagiographies on which everyone who wants to recount the life of Francis remains dependent (p.7). Autobiographies, he states, are interpretations, full of narrative tensions, and we must abandon these to understand reality.
Unfortunately, I was frustrated by Leppin’s circumspect approach to the historical texts. Understandably he is bound to the primary texts, but often the writings are loaded with qualifications, doubts, uncertainties. A coherent narrative of a life story is choppy, with unnecessary interludes and unrewarding transitions. The writing plods along, often with detours to side characters or papal decrees. As I read on, I increasingly became annoyed by how fragmentary Pippin’s narrative of Francis was, despite a growing interest in his Francis's story.
The primary texts may be suspect and proclaim miracles that are suspicious to the modern reader. I appreciated the insights into Francis’s personality from the historical record that are less flattering - a bizarre impulsivity, possible PTSD from an imprisonment, and early rebellions against the social order being from his father’s overbearingness instead of a deep abiding faith. Still, I kept thinking that the writing served a more niche graduate student audience, one familiar with the related texts, and that this book is less serviceable to a larger audience.
Even if we abandon the hagiography, there are remarkable writings about the visions and miracles of Francis that inform the medieval worldview. As Leppin writes “For medieval people the world was permeated by God’s rule, and that he was able to reveal himself to people in visions, dreams, and revelations (p.9)”. A dream occurs that comes to Francis as a direct message to God. Sharing the revelations of the dream with Pope Innocent III leads to the establishment of the Francisian order. Another tale, possibly apocryphal, is of a crucifix speaking to Francis, and giving him orders to repair the house of worship – (a very literal workman repairing message was received by Francis). The bizarre events of Francis’s reckless actions to convert soldering Muslims, and possibly seeking martyrdom with inspiration from the book of Daniel. There are also the multiple accounts of stigmata on Francis’s body in his late life. I share a skepticism with modern readers on these stories, but also think the purpose of the hagiography is valuable, and unexplored in this book.
Circling back to the idea of Francis’s renunciation, and modeling of a Chris-centirc life, I was fascinated by how Francis challenges the lives of the faithful in our time. Eight hundred years after his death, Christians take pilgrimages to Portiuncula and find inspiration in the saint. As Leppin points out, there are parts of Francis’s preaching that are unpleasant to contemplate such as sermons on “everlasting fire”, and “terror and anxiety” (p.111). His devotion comes across as fanatical, with strong a strong emphasis on penitence and begging as a means for survival. Nevertheless, there are areas of renunciation that still feel ahead of our culture - the reverence of nature and ecology, the renunciation of oppressive economic systems, the denunciation of hierarchy among the brotherhood, and a life of service and charity toward the dispossessed. There are parallels to our own time when Christ’s doctrines can be politicized for power or received for self-transformation
Although we have to contend with Francis’s historical life with the applied sainthood, there is no doubt that Francis aspired to be a “man-out-of-time”. The biblical passage from John 18:36 puts it best with the devotional “My kingdom is not of this earth”. In Leppin’s biography, we see the ways that Francis aspired to live a reunciate life. We are also aware of the ways in which he was not a revolutionary - the Francisean order submitted to the Church’s dogma; and we are aware that many other orders defied the Church were persecuted as heretics. Maybe mystery lies at the heart of the Francis story, but it’s a story beckoning of hope and blessing, and a reminder that our position in this world is not reflective of our power.
July 1, 2025
This isn’t the book I’d recommend to meet Francis of Assisi, but it is the book I’d recommend to understand what we can, do, and might know about him. Leppin excels at setting Francis within his medieval world, offering a rich explanation of his upbringing, the religious context of Roman Catholicism as he knew and shaped it, and how his legacy was formed through a complicated web of sources. Leppin is especially strong in sorting through fact, fiction, likelihood, speculation, and later embellishment—from Francis’ own words, to early biographies by his followers, to hagiographies by admirers generations later. That said, this is an academic work. It’s not devotional, it’s not meant to inspire, and you may not leave it understanding why so many people love Francis. But it is deeply insightful, well-organized (if occasionally dense), and full of careful historical analysis. Recommended for readers who want the historical Francis.
January 22, 2026
This should not be your first book on St Francis, and perhaps not even your second or third. Leppin does an excellent job of directing Francis' life into what is verifiable and what may be folklore, however in trimming off the fat he has definitely taken enough meat with it that what is left can hardly be used for anything beyond a weak broth let alone a meal. Through this book you will get the chance to touch on most of the key points of the life of Saint Francis as well as his order and the world around it. Sadly the joy of the story of his life, verifiable or not, is missed in this book. If you take any historical character and strip them down to only that which can be proven beyond doubt, no man's life will come out resembling anything recognizable or convicting. I do believe this book bares the work of countless hours of research and is likely a valuable resource to Franciscan scholars, however if you wish to learn the legacy of a saint, look elsewhere.
May 26, 2025
Hard to rate! Many parts of this biography were fascinating: stigmata, nativity scene, Francis moving worms off the road so they wouldn't get stepped on, etc.
And, I appreciate the desire to have a more scholarly consistent biography as opposed to Celano or the Three Companions.
But, in a way it felt too historical? In pushing against hagiography, the story was warped into getting bogged down into every detail. Which slowed down the entire biography, and led to a choppy read.
And, I appreciate the desire to have a more scholarly consistent biography as opposed to Celano or the Three Companions.
But, in a way it felt too historical? In pushing against hagiography, the story was warped into getting bogged down into every detail. Which slowed down the entire biography, and led to a choppy read.
April 16, 2025
The author concludes his work by saying that the few and varied accounts we have of Francis' l9ife don't allow us to really answer who he was. This is the problem I had with the gook: the writer spends so much time and effort analyzing, comparing and contrasting the various sources at each point that the final effect is pretty boring.
February 27, 2025
An excellent overview of early (12th and 13th Century) church history.
May 21, 2025
struggled with this. gets really hung up on trying to decipher the facts
May 27, 2025
Terrific insight into a “well-known” saint. The writing and organization, however, was extremely dense.
December 4, 2025
waited til the very end to mention the stigmata 🙄
December 5, 2025
I learned about Francis, the man, not the glorified saint.
June 26, 2025
Thought provoking
An excellent biography in the historical critical mold! A fleeting glimpse of the saint through fragmentary evidence. Also a study of the founder of a movement which later grew beyond his control.
An excellent biography in the historical critical mold! A fleeting glimpse of the saint through fragmentary evidence. Also a study of the founder of a movement which later grew beyond his control.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews