Salvation (review)

Reviews Full-Length Reviews Salvation by Valerie Martin Knopf, 2001 268 pages, cloth, $24.00 Go to the American Catholics Saint Francis Internet site, and you wfll find yourself in a virtual mall of commercialized hagiography. In addition to a brief biographical sketch of the late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century saint, one will also find instantaneous connections to a product catalogue and hyperlinked directions on how to conduct a handy, do-it-yourself "animal blessing." Ifyou so desire, there are even directions on how to send an e-mail blessing, and you can accomplish aU of this while an image of the Patron Saint ofAnimals and Ecology smiles beatifically from the color monitor. This high-tech, Disneyfied rendering of Saint Francis as a sort of cheerful, carefree , and bucoUc Johnny Appleseed ofcomfortable New Age spirituality is at extreme odds with Valerie Martin's recent book, Salvation, a beautiful and elegant examination ofthe life and meaning of Saint Francis. Salvation is a difficult book to categorize. It is not a historical biography, though it comes complete with endnotes and an impressive bibliography that demonstrate the author's intention of capturing accurately and contextuaUy the life ofthis enigmatic saint. It is not a historical novel, though Martin takes fuU fictive liberties in giving detailed subjective voice to the book's protagonists , many without any voice at aU in the objective (textual) historical record. Martin does not spin a simple narrative that follows—alpha to omega—the twists and turns of a canonized life, but, rather, the author moves in reverse, like an archeologist slowly and meticulously sifting through layers of real and imagined experience. In the final estimation, Salvation is reaUy something much more than the sum of aU these approaches. It is a 261 262Fourth Genre meditation, a superbly written and engaging discussion of possibilities, possibilities that center on a man—albeit a saint—and brings us into conscious contact with issues of suffering, love, faith, beUef, sacrifice, and, of course, salvation. A briefbiography of the saint may be in order: born Francesco di Pietro Bernadone in the Italian city ofAssisi in 1281, the future saint had an ordinary and comfortable childhood. He was fond of music and parties, along with "romantic tales [and] dreams of knighthood and fantastic treasure quests and prayers in solitary chapels." The turning point of his life came when, under direct instructions from "God," he stole a few bolts of cloth from his merchant father, seUing them and using the proceeds to repair the church of San Damiano. His father pressed charges, and when young Francesco was brought publicly before the local bishop he confessed and defiantly replied that "not only will I gladly give back the money which is my father's but also my clothes." It is from this turning point that he began his nearly twenty-year ministry. But these historical facts only constitute the objective history of Saint Francis, and "facts," according to the eminent historian Edward HaUett Carr, "are nothing more than empty sacks. They won't stand up until you put something into them."This is where Salvation diverges completely from typical biography, the much-maligned red-haired stepchild ofcontemporary historical inquiry. What Martin chooses to put into the empty sack ofSaint Francis's life is a Uterary imagination, an imagination that is weU grounded in the religious and secular history of the period. Salvation is a Ufe in reverse, UteraUy, and begins as the dying, stretcherbound Saint Francis, "wrapped in foul and bloody rags," is carried, for the final time, his procession moving in the predawn darkness "like a glittering thread among the trees."This reverse narrative aUows Martin to slowly strip away the iconographie trappings of sainthood until, at the end, the reader stands face to face with a young man at the beginning of his journey. In essence, it is a return to innocence where the naïve and romantic notions of a young man are blindly poised upon the threshold of a self-annihilating greatness. What inspires Martin is not the history or the theology that surrounds the life of Saint Francis. Nor does she believe in miracles: "The laws of nature apply even to...