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Augustine Thompson

Author of Francis of Assisi: A New Biography

6 Works 209 Members 5 Reviews

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Augustine Thompson is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and History at the University of Virginia.

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Francis of Assisi: The Life by Augustine Thompson is a comprehensive biography about one of the Catholic Church's most beloved saints. Thompson earned is BA and MA at John Hopkins. He earned a second BA in Philosophy and a MDiv from Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology. His PhD is from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at several universities, published several book and articles.

St. Francis has quite a romanticized history. Pictures of him surrounded by small animals and a missionary of peace, kindness, and genteelness is how I remember him from my days in Catholic school. Thompson mentions some newer views of Francis:

“Francis was a free spirit, a wild religious genius, a kind of medieval hippie, misunderstood and then exploited by the”Medieval Church.” Or perhaps they know him as the man who spoke to animals, a nature mystic, an ecologist, a pacifist, a feminist, a voice for our time.”

Francis was born into a well off home, was educated, and quite a party guy. He went to war, fought, held as a prisoner, and was quite a changed man on his return. He was haunted by strange dreams and from the descriptions of his behavior sound much like post traumatic stress syndrome. Francis felt a great guilt and openly gave alms to the poor. He drifted from his family and displayed eccentric behavior. He began a life of poverty. He exchanged manual labor for food and shelter and worked with lepers. Along with two other penitents he went to Rome to ask to start an order. He managed to see the pope and was told to go on his quest see if he could bring in new followers. He spent his life dedicated to hard work, giving to the poor, and embracing the cross. Francis called this as leaving the world.

As far as the animals, Francis did have a way with them. There are numerous stores from before his sainthood that show a special connection, although not as great as his post sainthood stories. Interestingly, although he is known for releasing animals given to him and his circle for food, he had no prohibition against eating meat. Francis took the bible's “Then let us eat what is put before us.” literally when it came to eating meat.

Thompson shows that Francis did exhibit some questionable behavior that would seem not too rational. Despite everything, Francis is dedicated to his mission. He would not accept money in exchange for his labor, only food or shelter. He does many things to show his faith and never waivers. Whether or not the reader is Catholic or Christian there is much to be learned and admired from St. Francis. Thompson writes an excellent biography and documents his work very well. It is quite an accomplishment to retrieve this much detailed information on a man who lived almost 1,200 years ago. A very good read for anyone interested in the Medieval Church, the Franciscan Order, or a story of a great man.
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evil_cyclist | Mar 16, 2020 |
Francis of Assisi: A New Biography is exactly what it says it is. Why do we need a new biography about one of the most popular saints ever? Because everyone has mythologized him to the point that it's necessary for us to rediscover the actual man who inspired all these hagiographical legends.

Thompson divides his book into two parts: the actual narrative biography in the first part and the sources and his apologia for what wrote broken down chapter by chapter in the second. It is certainly an impressive piece of scholarship.

But the division also has the benefit of eliminating footnotes from the first section, which makes it very accessible for those readers who find such things intimidating. I've never had that much interest in Francis and did not know much about him at all coming into this book, and I was fine.

There is really a lot of interesting information here. The Francis who emerges may not be your Francis (according to the introduction, the myth-making is so strong that everyone these days has their own personal Francis of Assisi built up in their minds), but he's still very much a man worth knowing.

Highly recommended for everyone with an interest in the life of this most important historical figure, layman and scholar alike.
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inge87 | 3 other reviews | Mar 29, 2013 |
Augustine Thompson’s biography is “new” in the obvious sense that it is the last in a long line of biographies of St Francis going back to Paul Sabatier’s 1893 Life. Thompson’s, however, is “new” also in that it aims to go back rigorously to historical sources.

This approach is in line with other historians who recently have been sifting through historical records and chipping away at the pious accretions to produce a “plain package” St Francis.

William Hugo, for example, a Capuchin formation director produced in 1996 a “Beginner’s Workbook” "Studying the Life of St Francis", which invites novices to evaluate the historicity of early writings. The Melbourne conference in 2009, out of which came "Interpreting Francis and Clare of Assisi", was also historical in ambition, using a variety of academic approaches – documentary, art history and so on – to develop a more historical picture of the saints in their world.

These new studies are pushing out the older Lives of St Francis, which were either pious or interpretive: they sought either to show Francis as an examplar of the Christian life, or they observe St Francis through a particular lens: Jacques Dalarun on Francis and power and Francis and the feminine, and Leonardo Boff on Francis and liberation offer these interpretive visions of Francis.

Augustine Thompson is a Dominican friar, and this gives him an “insider-outsider” perspective. On one hand, he knows what it is to be a friar in an Order founded by a charismatic figure. On the other hand, he has greater clarity of vision when he writes about Francis than do many Franciscans in their familiarity with their founder.

Fr Thompson tells a plain story of a man who had no agenda and who could articulate no particular vision for the movement that formed and swarmed around him. Thompson’s Francis simply wanted to live the Gospel. Even at the end of his life, Francis is still surprised, Thompson claims, that “the Lord gave me brothers”.

Even poverty, the Franciscan value that many believe to be the base of Francis’s vision, is held up to question by Thompson. There’s no doubt that poverty was a part of Francis’s vision, but Francis, as Thompson emphasises, mentions the Eucharist much more often than poverty. Francis’s devotion to churches and priests is because of the celebration of the Eucharist – all to be venerated because there God comes to earth in a perceptible form.

The central insight for me in this “new” biography was precisely Francis’s lack of a programme. Francis, at least in Thompson’s telling, was a man who simply wanted to live the Gospel, to be radically available for God. This, I suspect, is one of the main reasons for Francis’s ongoing attraction.

Thompson’s book also has its attractions. It is divided into two halves. In the first Thompson tells the story of Francis simply and without frills or academic apparatus of any kind. Then follow a helpful list of the major biographies of Francis since Sabatier’s and a bibliography of documents from the 12th Century. In the second half of the book, Thompson argues in detail why he has included some details and discarded others as non-historical. These chapters may be mainly for scholars: most of us, I suspect, will be glad to read the first half as a self-standing account of Francis’s life and be refreshed by it.

http://tedwitham.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/a-plain-package-st-francis-of-assisi/
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TedWitham | 3 other reviews | Nov 22, 2012 |
A critical history of the life of Francis of Assisi. While the author discounts the historicity of much of what previously has been written about Francesco, he manages in eight chapters to portray a very human life which nevertheless reveals qualities that make it understandable why even during his life, Francesco was considered to be a saint. A second section of the book is filled with copious footnotes for the earlier chapters. Many of these footnotes explain why the author agrees with or disagrees with earlier historians who have written about Francis of Assisi.… (more)
 
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Jotto | 3 other reviews | Sep 29, 2012 |

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