St. Francis, holy fool

The number of books about St. Francis of Assisi that’ve landed on my desk lately is exceeded only slightly by the number of books about Pope Francis. I have yet to see a book that is equally devoted to the two Francises, but I expect one will be published any day. In the meantime, in honor of the beloved saint whose feast day we celebrate today, here’s a roundup of the most interesting St. Francis books on my shelf.

Abigail Carroll subtitles her book “letters to St. Francis from a modern-day pilgrim” but the letters are in the form of poems. The poems beautifully interrogate the world in which we live, with all its faults and comforts—which, Carroll shows, is not so different from the world in which Francis lived. She addresses Francis with a variety of titles and names, highlighting the multiple resonances his legacy holds for Christians today. “Dear Barefoot friend,” one poem begins, “I am pressing my toes in soil / and morning grass wet with shade.” But to go barefoot is a privilege for the modern-day poet, and she recognizes that it was a hardship for the saint. “Did stones and roots not make / you bleed?” she asks before signing off as “Shoe-clad.” Another poem begins by asking Francis if he has met Job in the afterlife: “When / sleep was a lie, relief a dream, what well // did he draw his patience from?” The signature is this: “In need of hope.”

“Francis’s hand was small and smooth as that of a child,” recalls the cicada in Luigi Santucci’s collection of imaginative reflections from the animals to whom the saint preached, which was originally published in Italian in 1981. Now available in English and vividly illustrated by Brother Martin Erspamer, the book is a gentle reminder that the relationship between Francis and those he served (whether animal or human) was not only one-sided. The cicada continues: “Francis—his hand had the scent of mulberry leaves and chestnut bark. His voice was so lovely . . . when he told me to sing—to sing with my joy a praise of the Creator. After all, it is what my kind has been doing for millennia.” The nightingale expresses confidence that “like you, in some mysterious way, we will live forever; and the eternal paradise that awaits you we will share one day together.” Santucci reminds us that those to whom we preach also have voices that are worth listening to.