Tells the story of the man who became one of the most famous saints in the world, from his fun-loving youth through his career as a soldier to the years he spent serving God.

What it means to be a man or a woman is questioned today like never before. While traditional gender roles have been eroding for decades, now the very categories of male and female are being discarded with reckless abandon. How does one act like a gentleman in such confusing times? The Catholic Gentleman is a solid and practical guide to virtuous manhood. It turns to the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to answer the important questions men are currently asking. In short, easy- to-read chapters, the author offers pithy insights on a variety of topics, including • How to know you are an authentic man • Why our bodies matter • The value of tradition • The purpose of courtesy • What real holiness is and how to achieve it • How to deal with failure in the spiritual life

Among the most beloved saints in the Catholic tradition, Francis of Assisi (c. 1181-1226) is popularly remembered for his dedication to poverty, his love of animals and nature, and his desire to follow perfectly the teachings and example of Christ. During his lifetime and after his death, followers collected, for their own purposes, numerous stories, anecdotes, and reports about Francis. As a result, the man himself and his own concerns became lost in legend. In this authoritative and engaging new biography, Augustine Thompson, O.P., sifts through the surviving evidence for the life of Francis using modern historical methods. The result is a complex yet sympathetic portrait of the man and the saint. Francis emerges from this account as very much a typical thirteenth-century Italian layman, but one who, when faced with unexpected crises in his personal life, made decisions so radical that they challenge his own society-and ours. Unlike the saint of legend, this Francis never had a unique divine inspiration to provide him with rules for following the teachings of Jesus. Rather, he spent his life reacting to unexpected challenges, before which he often found himself unprepared and uncertain. The Francis who emerges here is both more complex and more conflicted than that of older biographies. His famed devotion to poverty is found to be more nuanced than expected, perhaps not even his principal spiritual concern. Thompson revisits events small and large in Francis's life, including his troubled relations with his father, his contacts with Clare of Assisi, his encounter with the Muslim sultan, and his receiving the Stigmata, to uncover the man behind the legends and popular images. A tour de force of historical research and biographical writing, Francis of Assisi: A New Biography is divided into two complementary parts-a stand alone biographical narrative and a close, annotated examination of the historical sources about Francis. Taken together, the narrative and the survey of the sources provide a much-needed fresh perspective on this iconic figure. "As I have worked on this biography," Thompson writes, "my respect for Francis and his vision has increased, and I hope that this book will speak to modern people, believers and unbelievers alike, and that the Francis I have come to know will have something to say to them today."

All Christians know his name. Few truly know the man. Francis of Assisi was not even five feet tall. He was not well educated. And yet he is the one saint commonly recognized as Alter Christus, the “other Christ.” Francis is not just any saint—he’s a saint for everyone, whatever your place or position in life. But do we really know him? Who was this man at his core? What was it that thrust this little man from a little town to the heights of sanctity, into a place of high honor among the celestial court? In this riveting biography, author Bret Thoman accomplishes what few biographers have. He pierces the inner life of Francis, revealing his deepest passions, his unquenchable love for poverty, and his unshakable grip on the core of the Gospel. The life of Francis, so often festooned with spectacle and miracle, is in reality the story of a soul yearning for God in every moment and glimpsing His presence in all creation. If you want to see the hidden life of the greatest saint, if you want to hear his thoughts, if you want to feel the fervor that blazed within his soul, you must readSt. Francis of Assisi: Passion, Poverty, and the Man who Transformed the Catholic Church.

He has inspired countless films, paintings, poems and novels. But who was Francesco Bernadone, now known as Saint Francis of Assisi? Despite the wealth of writing on the life of this great saint, many still don't know the man. They know the legend: a Francis made palatable to modern sensibilitiesùthe happy friar who carols to the birds and writes poems to the sun and moon. This is the image of the saint that is usually presented, even though it fails to encompass the true personality of Francis. Ivan Gobry, Ph.D., takes on the task of revealing the real man, the man who abandoned wealth and chose to live a beggar's life. Saint Francis lived a life that was full of danger and adventure, ministering to lepers and even traveling to Egypt in an attempt to convert the Muslims. Disciples flocked to him, drawn by the radical challenge of living the Gospel in a world that had become attracted to decadence. Francis rejoiced in nature and animals, but also fought spiritual battles against temptation and vice. Dr. Gobry restores a profoundly human dimension to the Little Poor Man of Assisi: a far cry from the image that has become conventional.

A biography of the saint as both mystic and man: “The single best book about Francis now available in English” (Commonweal). In this towering work, Andre Vauchez draws on the vast body of scholarship on Francis of Assisi, particularly the important research of recent decades, to create a complete and engaging portrait of the saint. He also explores how the memory of Francis was shaped by contemporaries who recollected him in their writings, and completes the book by setting “il Poverello” in the context of his time, bringing to light what was new, surprising, and even astonishing in the life and vision of this man. The first part of the book is a fascinating reconstruction of Francis’s life and work. The second and third parts deal with the texts—hagiographies, chronicles, sermons, personal testimonies, etc.—of writers who recorded aspects of Francis’s life and movement as they remembered them, and used those remembrances to construct a portrait of Francis relevant to their concerns. Finally, Vauchez explores those aspects of Francis’s life, personality, and spiritual vision that were unique to him, including his experience of God, his approach to nature, his understanding and use of Scripture, and his impact on culture as well as culture’s impact on him. “Considered one of the great spiritual leaders of humankind, Francis of Assisi was also a man of many faces and personas: ascetic, the founder of a religious order, a romantic hero, a mystic, a defender of the poor, a promoter of peace. But as Vauchez emphasizes—and this biography constantly reminds us—Francis was also a flesh-and-blood human being . . . A bracing, erudite account of a mystic’s life.” —Booklist