Francis of Assisi

When a small village was plagued by a wild wolf, it is told that a humble friar named Francis came and met the predator with nothing but his gentle words—and turned the wolf from a menace to a welcome citizen. This graceful man, who spoke to each part of creation as a sister or brother, has become one of the most beloved of all saints.

In this towering work, André Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi produced over the past forty years as well on as his own expertise in medieval hagiography to tell the most comprehensive and authoritative version of Francis’s life and afterlife published in the past half century.