St. Francis of Assisi, GK Chesterton Christian Church History Bible PDF CD

St. Francis of Assisi

by GK Chesterton

With The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi by Father Paschal Robinson as bonus!

G.K. Chesterton is one of the best Christian writers of the twentieth century, ranking high among the most entertaining and insightful Christian writers in history. Prolific and artistic, he had the knack for combining a classic British commentary sense to any historical Christian subject, making it both the object of cultural interest and often historic reverence.

As St. Francis of Assisi was one of the primary influences on Chesterton's decision to convert to Roman Catholicism (Chesterton once described his conversion as being largely due to wanting to belong to the same institution that had produced St. Francis), it makes sense that Chesterton would devote considerable energies toward this biography. Indeed, Chesterton resides not far behind the venerable CS Lewis as an icon of Christian literature. His St. Francis of Assisi proves no exception.

Chesterton's intent is clearly not a comprehensive biography, but an introduction to the remarkable career of Francis Bernardone. The author hits only the highlights expecting these examples to accurately portray the whole. He easily succeeds. St. Francis of Assisi is a concise, enjoyable look at a saint who brought the principles of Christ back to a Catholicism which had long before started to wander.

Chesterton said that there are essentially three ways to approach a biography of a figure such as St. Francis - one can be dispassionately objective (or at least as much as can pass for such a stance), looking at things from a 'purely' historical standpoint; one can go to the opposite extreme and treat the figure as an object of devotion and worship; or one can take a third path (and you've guessed correctly if you assumed this was Chesterton's route) of looking at the character as an interested outsider, someone in the modern world but still one involved in the same kinds of structures and virtues as the one being studied.

Chesterton's prose is snappy and lively, witty and bit sardonic at times. Chesterton is not afraid to digress to make his own points, and like the intellectual critic who cannot contain the myriad of responses to particular points, Chesterton treats us to a generous collection of tangential observations. One discovers, for instance, Chesterton's opinion of modern British history (that it reads more like journalism than like a developed narrative) - he makes the observation that journalists rarely think to publish a 'life' until the death of the subject; this of course cannot be helped in the case of Francis of Assisi, but the method of the media serves to highlight the difference in world-view between then and now.

Hard cover versions of these works have sold for 10 times or more the cost of this disk.  With our CD, you can read, study, and print out the pages as many times as you want.