General Description:

This warm, richly detailed biography brings the beloved saint alive in all his human and profoundly spiritual dimensions.

"God's Fool is a labor of love, a quest to discover the nature of a man who inspired so many throught the ages . . . (Mr. Green) tells it, as he does all the great legends, in detail and with gusto." - New York Times

"Green has produces a radiant life of St. Francis of Assisi, one that no else could have written . . . like carefully chosen glasses of many colors and stains, arranged with art . . . and lifted . . . so that the sun streams through." - Boston Globe

"Julien Green's book . . . is beautifully written, well-researched, and altogether a masterpiece. Readers of it have the priviliedge not just of learning all about St. Francis, but of seeming to participate  in his sublimely crazy ministry. To say that it is finely done is not enough; it is enchanting." - Malcolm Muggeridge

About the author:

Julien Green, novelist and diarist, is the celebrated author of more than forty books, including The Closed Garden, The Transgressor, Moira, The Other Sleep, and Journals, 1938-1971. A pivotal figure in the Paris literary scene of the 1920s and 1930s, he became in 1971 the only American writer to be elected to the Academie Française.

St. Francis of Assisi

Feast Day: Roman Rite Calendar - 10/04 Tridentine Calendar - 10/04 Patron Of: Animal Welfare Society, Animals, Birds, Catholic Action, Fire, Merchants, Needle Workers, Solitary Death, Zoos Profile Son of Pietro Bernadone, a rich cloth merchant. Though he had a good education and became part of his father's business, he also had a somewhat misspent youth. Street brawler and some-time soldier. Captured during a conflict between Assisi and Perugia, he spent over a year as a prisoner of war. During this time he had a conversion experience, including a reported message from Christ calling him to leave this worldly life. Upon release, Francis began taking his religion seriously. He took the Gospels as the rule of his life, Jesus Christ as his literal example. He dressed in rough clothes, begged for his sustenance, and preached purity and peace. His family disapproved, and his father disinherited him; Francis formally renounced his wealth and inheritance. He visited hospitals, served the sick, preached in the streets, and took all men and women as siblings. He began to attract followers in 1209, and with papal blessing, founded the Franciscans based on a simple statement by Jesus: "Leave all and follow me." In 1212 Clare of Assisi became his spiritual student, which led to the founding of the Poor Clares. Visited and preached to the Saracens. Composed songs and hymns to God and nature. Lived with animals, worked with his hands, cared for lepers, cleaned churches, and sent food to thieves. In 1221 he resigned direction of the Franciscans. While in meditation on Mount Alvernia in the Apennines in September 1224, Francis received the stigmata, which periodically bled during the remaining two years of his life. This miracle has a separate memorial on 17 September. In the Middle Ages people who believed to be possessed by Beelzebub especially called upon the intercession of Saint Francis, the theory being that he was the demon's opposite number in heaven. Born 1181 at Assisi, Umbria, Italy as Francis Bernardone Died 4 October 1226 at Portiuncula, Italy of natural causes; relics in Assisi, Italy All information used with permission of the Patron Saint Index.

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