Book Review #17 – “St. Francis of Assisi” by G. K. Chesterton (The Story of a Great Saint)
Book Review #17 – “St. Francis of Assisi” by G. K. Chesterton, published in 1924 by Doubleday.
A heavenly version of St. Francis’ Canticle:
Patty Griffin – All Creatures God and King
“I should only be too thankful if this thin and scratchy sketch contains a line or two that attracts men to study St. Francis for themselves; and if they do study him for themselves, they will soon find that the supernatural part of the story seems quite as natural as the rest.” (G. K. Chesterton, St. Francis of Assisi).
Brief Bio of G. K. Chesterton. Gilbert Keith Chesterton was born in London and remained thoroughly British. He was a complete failure in his early school years, not reading until nine years of age and considered a “slow learner.” One particularly cruel, exasperated teacher told him that “If we could open your head, we should find not a brain but only a lump of white fat.” Wow! His parents were very concerned about his intellectual development and took him to a specialist, but once he learned to read, he never stopped. Yes, he started slowly, but he ended up becoming someone who could dictate one article to a secretary while simultaneously writing a completely different article in his own hand! G. K. had his own timetable in life, and this was true for him his entire life. He often joked about his early school record and took it with a light spirit. He never attended college, but chose instead to go to Slade Art School because of his natural gifts in the arts. He did succeed as an illustrator early on in adulthood, but soon decided he had greater gifts in the art of writing. Good choice, G. K.! He ended up authoring almost 100 books, hundreds of poems, five plays, five novels, 200 short stories, over 4,000 essays, and best-selling detective series featuring Father Brown. He nonetheless considered himself a “Jolly Journalist” throughout his writing career. His indominable spirit resulted in a personality described as jovial, good-natured, absent-minded, childlike, hilarious, charming, affable, outspoken, and completely original. Known for his eccentric public presentation, he was 6’4″, over 300 lbs., inevitably laughing while walking with a cigar in his mouth, a pistol in his pocket, a walking cane in his hand that could double as a sword, a billowing cape, a severely crumpled wide-brimmed cap, and tiny glasses that constantly pinched his nose. Because of his outgoing nature and his physical size, he was often called “an overgrown elf” behind his back. Biographers have tried in vain to categorize him as a philosopher, journalist, Christian apologist, debater, lecturer, poet, novelist and playwright. His vast intellectual skills inspired many to call him everything from “a colossal genius,” to “the best writer of the 20th century,” to even “the greatest thinker of his century.” His quick wit and prodigious breadth of knowledge made him an outstanding debater, willing to engage in public discussions with all the celebrated intellects of his era over Christian doctrine, socialism, ethics, moral relativism, scientific determinism, and just about any other topic available at the time. It’s easy to understand why he once said, “There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject.” Writers would call him everything from “the apostle of common sense” to the “prince of paradox” to the “king of logic.” It is telling that he remained in close friendships with all those with whom he debated. He would argue during the debate, and then go with his opponent to the local pub and enjoy his friendships over a pint. After being baptized early in life as an Anglican, he came to believe fervently in the Roman Catholic Church and converted to Rome when 34 years of age. But Chesterton’s focus was always on what united believers, not what divided them. So he appealed to Christians of every type, including C. S. Lewis who credited Chesterton’s “Everlasting Man” with guiding the atheist Lewis into the Christian faith; and JRR Tolkien, who grew up “devouring” Chesterton’s books, and was especially influenced by G.K.’s “Orthodoxy” and “Heretics.” Tolkien went so far as to memorize many of Chesterton’s poems and delighted audiences in narrating them from heart. Finally, at 62 years old, Chesterton died of congestive heart failure after merrily greeting his wife in bed with his final words, “Good Morning!” With a mind like that, what was his secret? Here’s his clue… “Christians are a people of the truth, always willing to open our minds to the truth. And as people of the truth, we are bound to be close-minded to lies. I refuse to celebrate the perpetually open mind, and I pray that we would be those who set our minds on God’s truth and close our minds on something solid. An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”
Some Quotable Quotes from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. Many literary scholars have said that Orthodoxy was Chesterton’s masterpiece. So instead of regaling the reader here with potentially thousands of worthy Chesterton quotes, I’ll narrow my focus to that particular favorite of mine:
Quotable Quotes from Chesterton’s Masterpiece: “Orthodoxy” – Christian Refuge
Chesterton’s Character Descriptions of St. Francis of Assisi:
(1.) “St. Francis was a Troubadour of a newer and nobler romance. He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men. As St. Francis did not love humanity but men, so he did not love Christianity but Christ. His religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair.”
(2.) “Never was any man so little afraid of his own promises. His life was one riot of rash vows; of rash vows that turned out right. In his spirit of swiftness, nearly all the errands he ran on were errands of mercy. With all his gentleness, there was originally something of impatience in his impetuosity, a preference for prompt effort and energy over doubt or delay.”
(3.) “There does indeed run through the whole of his life a sort of double meaning, like his shadow thrown against the wall. All his action had something of the character of an allegory.”
(4.) “... the beauty and originality of his strange spiritual adventure…”
(5.) “When Francis and his spiritual companions came out to do their spiritual work in the world, they were called by him the ‘Jongleurs de Dieu,’ the Jugglers of God. Of the two minstrels, the Troubadour and the Juggler or Jester, the jester was presumably the servant or at least the secondary figure. St. Francis really meant it when he said he had found the secret of life in being the servant and the secondary figure. There was to be found ultimately in such a service a freedom almost amounting to frivolity. And he would become the court fool of the King of Paradise.”
(6.) “It is not true to represent St. Francis as a mere romantic forerunner of the Renaissance and a revival of natural pleasures for their own sake. The whole point of him was that the secret of recovering the natural pleasures lay in regarding them in the light of a supernatural pleasure.”
(7.) “The whole point about St. Francis is that he certainly was ascetic and he certainly was not gloomy. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged after poverty as men have dug for gold.”
(8.) “From that cavern prison that was a furnace of glowing gratitude and humility, there came forth one of the strongest and strangest and most original personalities that human history has known. He was, among other things, emphatically what we call a character; almost as we speak of a character in a good novel or play.”
(9.) “Even among the saints he has the air of a sort of eccentric, if one may use the word of one whose eccentricity consisted in always turning towards the center.”
(10.) “He saw everything as dramatic, distinct from its setting, not all of a piece like a picture but in action like a play. We might even say that he was too dramatic for the drama. As he saw all things dramatically, so he himself was always dramatic. He was a poet whose whole life was a poem. His whole course through life was a series of scenes in which he had a sort of perpetual luck in bringing things to a beautiful crisis. He made the very act of living an art.”
(11.) “He honored all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him his extraordinary personal power was this: that from the Pope to the beggar, from the sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis was really interested in him; in his own individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously. He treted the whole mob of men as a mob of kings.”
(12.) “The whole of that higher aspect of the life of St. Francis may be called the Imitation of Christ. Christ was the pattern on which St. Francis sought to fashion himself. Compared to most of us St. Francis is a most sublime approximation to his Master, and in being a reflection is a splendid and yet a merciful Mirror of Christ. St. Francis is the mirror of Christ as the moon is the mirror of the sun.”
(13.) “In all his leaps in the dark, Francis had an extraordinary faculty of falling on his feet.”
(14.) “In everything St. Francis did there was something that was in a good sense childish, and even in a good sense willful. He threw himself into things abruptly, as if they had just occurred to him.”
(15.) “The element of the supernatural did not separate St. Francis from the natural; for it was the whole point of his position that it united him more perfectly to the natural. The whole meaning of his message is that such mysticism makes a man cheerful and humane. The whole meaning of his message was that the power that did it was a supernatural power. For he had become a vagabond for the sake of a vision.”
(16.) (At his death) “He was lifted at his own request off his own rude bed and laid on the bare ground. It was the final assertion of his great fixed idea: of praise and thanks springing to their most towering height out of nakedness and nothing.”
(17.) “It is perhaps the chief suggestion of this book that St. Francis walked the world like the Pardon of God; I mean that his appearance marked the moment when men could be reconciled not only to God but to nature and, most difficult of all, to themselves.”
(18.) “He was not a mere eccentric because he was always turning towards the center and heart of the maze; he took the queerest and most zigzag short cuts through the wood, but he was always going home.”
(19.) “He was above all things a great giver; and he cared chiefly for the best kind of giving which is called thanksgiving. He understood down to its very depths the theory of thanks, and its depths are a bottomless abyss. He is too great for anything but gratitude.”
(20.) “He was the soul of medieval civilization before it even found a body.”
These lyrics are directly attributed to St. Francis:
The Canticle of the Creatures (Metrical Version) St Francis of Assisi
Brief Bio of St. Francis (1182-1226). Born into the Italian family of a prosperous cloth merchant, Francis’ birthname was Giovanni, a name chosen by his French mother in honor of John the Baptist. It wasn’t long though that his father nicknamed him Francesco, the little Frenchman, in honor of his mother. So to most of his contemporaries he was Francis, and to his closer friends and family he was Frenchie. Francis lived an entitled life with a father who generously provided all the time he needed to be carouse, attend parties, dress well, and gather a group of friends round him who did the same. During this time, Italy was composed of a number of independent city-states who occasionally battled over local supremacy. Francis’ city-state of Assisi went into battle against a neighboring town, and Francis’ father decided the heroic thing for his son to do is become a gallant soldier in defense of his home. So his father bought Francis a complete set of armor and sent him off to fight. Francis was only too happy to accept this romantic vision of heroic warrior, and so off he went to fight. Unfortunately, Francis was soon captured by the enemy and placed in an underground dungeon. He became seriously ill while imprisoned, and his father paid a ransom to set him free and return home to recuperate. Francis felt like a complete fool and failure as the life he envisioned for himself crumbled around him. He spent a couple of years soul-searching, wondering what to do with his wasted life. During this time, he was aimlessly riding his horse down a country road one day and spotted a severely leprous man with rotting flesh stumbling towards him. Without a thought, Francis immediately dismounted, ran towards the leper and embraced him, kissing the disfigured face fully on the lips. After giving the leper a kiss of peace, he remounted his horse and looked back, and the leper had disappeared. There was no one there on the road. Francis was overjoyed with what had happened and started to sense a meaningful stirring in his heart. Soon after the kiss, Francis was wandering around the countryside surrounding Assisi, and he discovered an ancient chapel that was deserted and collapsing into ruins. He entered the chapel, San Damiano, and knelt reverently before an altar with a large crucifix above it. While adoring the image of the crucified Christ, Francis had a life-changing vison. He witnessed Christ calling to him at the altar and saying, “Francis, do you not see that My house is in ruins? Go and repair My house and restore it for Me.” This was the call that Francis had been hoping for and established his life mission. The words of Christ to Francis might have referred to a small ‘c’ church, but it became clearer as his ministry progressed that God was calling him to restore the Church with a capital ‘C.’ His worldwide mission of renewing the Christian church started with a humble caring for the poorest of the poor. Soon then, at the age of 24, Francis found himself in the village square before friends and family and the bishop, stacking what clothes he owned, topping it off with whatever money he possessed, and declaring himself to be a spiritual orphan, a man without a human family and solely a servant of God. Francis completely disrobed except for a hair shirt meant for penance, and joyfully walked into the country, naked, in homeless poverty. As he left the town square, he was heard to be singing about his deep love for the Lord of the universe. Francis soon started collecting companions who wanted to share this life of meaningful poverty dedicated to God in service to the poor. Francis never wavered from his calling, and for twenty more years sacrificed everything to be like Jesus in His love for the rejected and the “least of these.” His life was full of miracles and triumphs as well as ill health and struggle. Some of the stories surrounding St. Francis might be legend, and even with all the apparent eyewitnesses, it’s difficult to separate historical fact from fanciful legend at this point. The supernatural was so closely united with the natural in his life, that the so-called legends didn’t have to necessarily be untrue. Was Francis really able to communicate so freely with wild creatures like birds and wolves, effortlessly speaking their language? Why not? Miracles happen. We do know that Francis, feeling called to convert the Muslims during the Crusades, did indeed take two companions and march through the enemy camp in Jerusalem and Syria to preach to the sultan and his family. Francis earnestly wanted to conquer the Muslim invaders through Christ. The sultan, particularly his nephew, was quite taken with the simplicity of Francis’ message, but knew he would be executed, along with Francis, if he converted, so he gave Francis and his companions safe passage to leave the camp unharmed. Did Francis later receive the literal wounds of the crucified Christ, the Stigmata, during a spiritual retreat on a mountaintop? According to eyewitnesses, yes he did, and there’s no reason think this is a fable. The relatively early death of this great saint at 44 years of age was not surprising, since his life was one hardship after another. His close companions testified to what transpired at the death of St. Francis… he asked to be taken from his meager cot to be laid outside on the bare ground to signify that he had nothing when he began his life as God’s servant and he wanted to complete the circle and have nothing at his life’s end. Despite the drastically humble beginnings of the Franciscan way of life, or maybe because of it, the Franciscan Order continues to thrive even in 2026, dedicated to poverty, humility, and service to the poor. There are over 650,000 members of the Franciscan Order worldwide in 110 countries, with 35,000 men who take the traditional vows of St. Francis, over 20,000 women who are likewise dedicated to the sister Franciscan Order of St. Clare, and over 400,000 lay members who commit themselves to Franciscan ministry while living what is called a secular life at home and in the community of their choosing. The spirit of St. Francis lives on, because the spirit filling Francis was the Spirit of Christ.