By of Assisi Saint Francis; Vauchez, André; Cusato, Michael F.; of Assisi Saint Francis
First released in France, the place it was once offered the Prix Chateaubriand, this masterful new biography of Francis is now on hand in English
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30 These remarks on taste are not hagiographical or literary clichés. There is in Francis a knowledge of people and things according to taste, smell, and flavor which places him miles apart from any purely intellectual knowledge of the divine mystery. At the end of this evolution, Francis is thus both the same person and yet another person. To the end of his life, he was to maintain (using the vocabulary of courtoisie), the lyrical sense of happiness and the taste for conquering heroism. But the encounter with the lepers changed his perspective by leading him to reestablish a communion with the most wretched of human beings via the free gift of love, and to “leave the world” in order to devote himself to this task.
Thus a contentiousness developed among the laity that took progressively more radical forms, depending on the region. But the same themes were found almost everywhere: all these movements were in agreement about taking the clergy as a group to task for its wealth, lavishness, and thirst for power, as well as for its overinvolvement in political issues, often leading it to neglect its pastoral duties and to lead lives contrary to the precepts of the Gospel. Certain groups, like the Italian Patarini, even went so far as to deny the validity of the sacraments conferred by morally unworthy priests—indeed, to deny the very reality of the sacraments, like the “bons hommes,” whom learned clergy were beginning to call Cathars.
The importance of these confraternities in the life of the city is attested by the fact that they possessed their own statutes and that the communes, in many cases, recognized their existence, if only to try to redirect their excesses. 16 A Biographical Sketch In Assisi the leader of such a confraternity was elected by its members and carried a staff as the sign of his authority. He thus had the power to condemn one of the revelers to pay all expenses of the group’s partying. Francis, affable and charming, soon rose to this position.