Chronicles the life and legacy of the famed Christian saint and places him in historical context by examining writings by contemporaries and noteworthy people.

After a detailed and yet engaging reconstruction of Francis's life and work, Vauchez focuses on the myriad texts -- hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc. -- of writers who recorded aspects of Francis's life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. We see varying versions of his life reflected in the work of Machiavelli, Luther, Voltaire, German and English romantics, pre-Raphaelites, Italian nationalists, and Mussolini, and discover how peace activists, ecologists, or interreligious dialogists have used his example to promote their various causes. Particularly noteworthy is the attention Vauchez pays to Francisʹs own writings, which strangely enough have been largely overlooked by later interpreters. -- Publisher description.