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St. Francis of Assisi
St. Francis of Assisi (Aug 2019)
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In the first chapter Chesterton mentions two authors, Renan and Matthew Arnold, whose writings on St. Francis he finds lacking. Do we know who they were? So far I haven't found anything.
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Ernest Renan was a French writer of the nineteenth century, famous for his "Vie de Jesus" (Life of Jesus) which he deals with in a purely rationalistic way. Matthew Arnold was an English writer of the same century who also discounted all supernatural elements in religion. Both authors keep a strong interest in religion, but from a sociological point of view.
Thank you, Manuel! I assumed they had written about St. Francis, but it looks like Chesterton made a more general remark.
Perhaps Francis Assisi was the closest saint to Jesus Christ.
For Chesterton, Francis is a great paradoxical figure, a man who loved women but vowed himself to chastity; an artist who loved the pleasures of the natural world as few have loved them, but vowed himself to the most austere poverty, stripping himself naked in the public square so all could see that he had renounced his worldly goods; a clown who stood on his head in order to see the world aright. Chesterton gives us Francis in his world-the riotously colorful world of the High Middle Ages, a world with more pageantry and romance than we have seen before or since. Here is the Francis who tried to end the Crusades by talking to the Saracens, and who interceded with the emperor on behalf of the birds. Here is the Francis who inspired a revolution in art that began with Giotto and a revolution in poetry that began with Dante. Here is the Francis who prayed and danced with pagan abandon, who talked to animals, who invented the creche.