This study of the life of St Francis of Assisi comes from a scholar of international reputation, Jacques Le Goff, Director of Studies at the École des hautes Études en Science Sociales in Paris. Four studies on il poverello and his followers, published in journals and the proceedings of conferences between 1967 and 1981, form this monograph. Saint François d’Assise was published in 1999 and has been translated into English by Christine Rhone, an experienced translator. The chapters deal with Francis and medieval society, the quest for the real saint, the social categories employed by the saint and his biographers, and the use of cultural models in Franciscan literature. The impact of these new forces on the thought and behaviour of Francis is explained. One of these factors was the way in which avarice, linked to the advance of an economy based on money, supplanted pride in the list of vices. While friars’ chronicles furnish ample references to pride, “the supreme vice of feudalism”, they were much more interested in lampooning avarice and enumerated the problems which it caused in urban centres. Francis's biographers presented him as a man whose ideal of evangelical poverty castigated those who sought to amass greater wealth. Avarice was a major theme in the friars’ preaching and John Pecham maintained that the rise of the order was a providential response to the ravages of that vice.

There is a full treatment of how Francis's writings should be read and understood. The lost documents, including the primitive Rule and some letters, diminish our understanding of the saint and his message. The question of the influences at work in the composition of the Rule is explored and it is clear that there were external pressures on Francis and the fraternity in the aftermath of the rejection of the Rule of 1221. The re-drafting of the Rule in the next two years, culminating in its papal confirmation on 29 November 1223, brought many ideological views and tensions to the surface and these are described by the saint's companions, Leo, Rufino and Angelo. The friction between the founder and the ministers ultimately led to division within the order. The influence of Cardinal Ugolino was pivotal and in Quo elongati of 28 September 1230 he refers to his contribution to the Rule and his understanding of the saint's views. The saint looked upon his disciples as companions, whom he was moulding into a fraternity. Images of family life appear in his writings and his biographies. The growth of the movement and its petition for papal approbation resulted in an ordo which began to replace fraternitas in the early 1220s. The order acquired the marks of an international movement, spreading throughout western Europe, producing the adjustments and safeguards required by the papal court.

This portrait of Francis is painted on a large canvas and it contains several contentious statements on the death-knell of the monastic schools, Gregory IX's judgement on the weight to be attached to Francis's Testament, the integrity of the members of the Roman Curia, the clericalisation of the order, the friars’ promotion of annual confession (pp. 7, 19, 32–3, 59, 110, 124). Such summary treatment of major questions and the lack of due qualifications detract from the value of this otherwise attractive volume. Moreover, Le Goff is careless in his claims that the Humiliati were divided into three groups by Innocent III in 1196, that is, two years before his election, and that Laurence of Beauvais was the second brother to enter the order in England (pp. 10, 107). A similar inattention to detail results in the statements that Francis was canonised on 17 July instead of 16 July 1228 and that Richard of Bonington instead of Conington was the author of a treatise on poverty in the early fourteenth century (pp. 45, 107). It is doubtful whether the Friars Minor Conventual share the author's view that John XXII's constitution Cum inter nonnullos was a triumph for them in 1322 (p. 18). This quarrel led to the detention and eventual deposition of the minister general, Michael of Cesena, in 1328. There is some overlapping material in the four chapters and repetitions, notably on the authenticity of the letter to St Anthony of Padua (pp. 16, 84). Although some subsequent amendments were made to the first chapter, the author has not brought his bibliography up-to-date and the reader is left with references which were available in the 1970s and early 1980s (pp. 149, 155, nn. 7, 97). In the intervening quarter of a century the Messaggero Press in Padua has published the critical editions of the lives of Saint Anthony by Fr Vergilio Gamboso, OFM Conv. in six volumes. I have not been able to obtain a copy of Saint François d’Assise and remain unsure whether responsibility for Thomas of Spalato (pp. 56, 118, 149) and Sarum (p. 122) instead of Split and Salisbury lies with the author or the translator. There are some unfortunate translations, such as Humiliates for Humiliati (pp. 9, 10, 32, 40, 59), ministry general for minister general (p. 18), education for edification (p. 49) and speech for sermon (p. 100). There is some inconsistency over the name of the bishop of Assisi; Guy occurs twice and Guido once (pp. 31, 33, 35). The occasional typographical errors produce Ruffino for Rufino, largess for largesse, and happed for happened (pp. 21, 24, 39).