The purpose of this research is to construct a florilegium of the texts of St. Francis of Assisi. The plan of the research will be to set forth various texts relevant to the life, teachings, spirituality, and religious or secular convictions of St. Francis, whether from literary or autobiographical writings of his own, or from biographical sources treating of his life.
The impetus toward a florilegium of St. Francis (1182-1226 A.D.), plainly a medieval Christian with an insular world view, if the appellation The Age of Belief is to be taken as an appropriate description of the period not only before the Reformation but also just before the reduction and codification of orthodox Catholic theology by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), derives from the apparent philosophical anomaly between the persistent attractiveness of Francis to the popular mind amid the programmatic skepticism of the modern period that informs much of that mind. The simplicity of Francis's scheme of faith, both mystical and orthodox, and the survival of the Franciscan approach to Catholicism as a spiritual adumbration available despite the triumph of the orthodox canon in the institutional Church makes an exploration of Francis all the more a compelling subject for study. The resilience of Francis's peculiar brand of mysticism in a Church that by the end of the thirteenth century had become increasingly and militantly institutional has been noted in the past:
Two other great figures of the thirteenth century were St. Francis of Assisi and Pope Innocent III (1161-1216). The former represented contempt of self and of the earthly city carried to the supreme degree of absolute detachment required by Christian perfection. The latter was the individual, human embodiment of the concept of Christendom, the epitome and the concrete, physical expression of a society, indeed a world, belonging to God and faithful to Hi. Together they represent the Church penitent and the Church...