Reviews for Road to Assisi The Foundational Biography of St. Francis

The average rating for Road to Assisi The Foundational Biography of St. Francis based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-12 00:00:00 Katherine Taft Pretty good book that got better after a sort of slow start. For the first few chapters, it seemed as though the author was getting sidetracked writing about things that weren't all too relevant in regards to Francis' life. But that was just at the beginning. What I liked best about the book was that it didn't just glorify Francis. It also explored some of his flaws as well. Although I admit that I do think this was probably done completely unintentionally by the author. In many areas of the book, the author makes Francis seem somewhat bossy and possibly even power-hungry in some respects. Raising his voice to members of his order. Barking commands. Where to sleep. What to eat. When to eat. What to clean. Where to preach. What work to do. Whoaaaaaa. Easy there boss man. Have some wine and relax. It also appeared very important to him to have disciples in the same manner of Jesus, which, to me, comes across as mildly arrogant as well. I mean come on, whether you had a vision of being another chosen one or not, there's only one Jesus. He has no equals. The author also shows Francis' hypocritical side. Anybody who knows anything about Francis knows he is a devout lover of animals. There are stories of him talking to birds and wolves, and refusing to stomp on worms or spiders. He even forbid his followers to have books because a great amount of sheep-skin was used for paper. Yet he was a meat-eater and even used fox-skin for warmth during a cold period. Huh? In similar hypocritical fashion, despite trying to emulate Jesus as best he could, there are a couple stories showing his unforgiving side, even to the point of holding a grudge on one particular individual towards the end of his life. He told one of his disciples how criminals are always welcome in his order, yet he kicked out one of his members for failing to obey one of his orders. My favorite story is of him forcing one of his members to consume donkey excrement as a penalty for speaking badly about one of the other members. Hmmmmm. For someone trying to emulate Jesus in every possible way, I'm not sure if that's the way to go about doing it. I mean, I don't ever recall Jesus saying, "Hey Mary Magdalene you freaking slut, get over here and eat this sheep dung." Maybe I'm wrong though. With all that being said, Francis was an exceptional human being. Showing generosity, compassion and humility a vast majority of the time. And equally as brave and courageous to leave a life of luxury he was born into to voluntarily take up a life of poverty (not unlike the Buddha) while helping others, treating everybody equally and preaching Jesus' word. If everybody that walked the earth was like Francis, I think we'd have a pretty good world to live in. But not even saints are perfect. Just like the book itself. Very good, but short of perfect.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-05-16 00:00:00 Numer Patacsil Overall well-researched, but with some obvious biases (e.g. about catharism). I really appreciated everything Sweeney did to bring Sabatier into the modern-day. From what I can tell, Sweeney definitely made it more readable and engaging, addressed a couple of issues with the original, and made the whole text a little more trustworthy.