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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 118-119



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Book Review

Francis of Assisi:
A Revolutionary Life


Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life. By Adrian House. (Mahwah, New Jersey: Hidden Spring, Paulist Press. 2001. Pp. xv, 336. $28.00.)

The sights, sounds, and smells of the piazza in Assisi, the cloth fairs in Champagne, the prison in Perugia, the papal court at the Lateran palace, and the battlefields of Damietta come alive in Adrian House's new book, Francis of Assisi: A Revolutionary Life. Political intrigues, conflicts, and personalities that defined the context of Francis's life are presented for the non-specialist in lucid and dynamic format. House highlights Francis's interaction in all of these situations, and this is indeed a unique contribution not found in other lives of Francis. His description of the military movements and strategy of the Fifth Crusade at Damietta is the best this reviewer has read.

House's development of the historical context of Francis's life is the strength of his book, but his use of primary texts to illustrate the specifics of Francis's life is uncritical and therefore a weakness. This reviewer does not agree that House's life of Francis is based on "careful study of the earliest sources." He moves back and forth indiscriminately between thirteenth- and fourteenth-century [End Page 118] sources, without indicating any reason or rationale for specific uses of specific texts. He makes no reference to recent studies on the sources he cites. In his narrative about Francis's life, he offers specifics about Francis that "Angelo reports," when it is today clear that a third of The Legend of the Three Companions, which House uses extensively, is taken from Thomas of Celano's Life of St. Francis and the other third is taken from The Anonymous of Perugia. The text he most often cites is not from Angelo and it is not from the three companions. House does not take into account the nature and the genre of the texts from which he draws.

Throughout his book House casually repeats that in his youth Francis slept with women. Whether Francis did or did not is not the point in this critique, buthis use of two sources, Thomas of Celano's Life of Francis and Henri d'Avranches's Versified Life as "clear indication" for this position is questionable. First of all neither text states this, and secondly the traditional hagiographical genre Thomas uses to describe a pre-conversion state and the poetic genre and purpose of versified lives are not considered. In general, House's use of Thomas of Celano is confusing. On the one hand, following the Bishop Moorman line, House indicates that Thomas and Bonaventure are simply "propagandists and hagiographers, not historians" (p. 261), and yet on the other hand, he argues from Thomas that Francis lost his virginity, maintaining that "this must be accurate" (p. 24). In any case, it is interesting that House overlooks another source, namely, Bernard of Besse's thirteenth-century Book of Praises, dated earlier than other fourteenth-century texts he uses throughout his book, that states (n. 14): "he [Francis] was in every way a mirror of holiness, and also a virgin in the flesh."

 



J.A. Wayne Hellmann
Saint Louis University

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