The Founder

Including: The Anonymous of Perugia, The Legend of the Three Companions, The Assisi Compilation, The Desire of the Remembrance of A Soul by Thomas of Celano, An Umbrian Choir Legend, The Treatise on the Miracles of Saint Francis by Thomas of Celano, The Encyclical Letter of Brother Elias, The Major Legend by Bonaventure of Bagnoregno, The Minor Legend by Bonaventure of Bagnoregno, The Sermons of Bonaventure of Bagnoregno.

The Founder is the second volume of the long-awaited project Francis of Assisi: Early Documents. It includes liturgical texts, related documents, helpful introductions to each section, colored maps, and extensive annotation.

Praise of Volume 1, FRANCIS OF ASSISI ... The Saint

New City Press releases the first volume in its projected three-volume collection of the early writings of St. Francis of Assisi. Edited by Franciscan scholars ... Francis of Assisi: Early Documents contains new translations of such well-known writings as The Canticle of the Creatures, biographies of Francis by his contemporaries and The Versified Life of Saint Francis by Henri d'Avraches, translated here for the first time.

Publishers Weekly


Although its painstaking introductions and annotations are intended for scholars, the readings themselves are as vibrant, accessible, instructive and charming as St. Francis himself must have been.

America


This volume contains writings of Francis on such diverse subjects as Prayer Before the Crucifix, Exhortations to Clergy, Rule for Hermitages, and A Salutation of the Virtues. The writings afford wonderful insight into the theology and basic concerns of this important figure in church history.

Library Journal


The words of Francis and the Life of Francis by Thomas of Celano come alive in these translations as never before. The Sacred Exchange becomes a new performance in the theater of the readers mind. Henry of Avranches' poetic version of Francis' life casts him as a classical hero, a Christian successor to Odysseus and Aeneas.... In this volume we are given a new song of Francis for our time.

Ingrid Peterson, O.S.F.


This is a magnificent collection of texts which illuminate the person of Saint Francis and the beginnings of the Franciscan Order. The translators provide a wonderful balance between fluent language and scholarly apparatus.

Brian Patrick McGuire
Roskilde University, Denmark