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Rating: 
Summary: The Road to Assisi
Review: I found this book to be the best overall introduction to the life of the saint I've ever read. The editor has taken the best of all of the other books on Francis and incorporated quotes, historical tidbits, literary allusions (i.e. Umberto Eco), maps, and helpful information for anyone headed to Assisi in with Sabatier's classic (and somewhat tragic) story of Francis. A gem.
Rating:
Summary: The Road to Assisi
Review: I found this book to be the best overall introduction to the life of the saint I've ever read. The editor has taken the best of all of the other books on Francis and incorporated quotes, historical tidbits, literary allusions (i.e. Umberto Eco), maps, and helpful information for anyone headed to Assisi in with Sabatier's classic (and somewhat tragic) story of Francis. A gem.
Rating: 
Summary: Invaluable text, invasive editing
Review: Professor Sabatier's long-out-of-print work is the ur-text of Francis biographies, the one to which most of the contemporary biographers refer most centrally in their own work (Julien Green in particular). Therefore, reading this text in its particular historical and scholarly context is essential; to truly appreciate Sabatier's intervention into the popular and scholarly understanding of St. Francis is to have ready reference to the body of work, and the weight of tradition, to which Sabatier was responding. Unfortunately, Mr. Sweeney sees fit to excise just this apparatus in his "edition" of Sabatier; he cuts out Sabatier's Introduction, condenses several chapters, and replaces Sabatier's footnotes and bibliography with his own commentaries and explanations of the text, set right into the margins of Sabatier's own text, and a cursory bibliography that cuts out the vast majority of Sabatier's own points of reference. Scholars are left without resources for critical or comparative study, and readers who wish to learn more about Francis are pushed into Mr. Sweeney's particular framework of understanding with little warning. I hope another more reputable publisher sees fit to reprint Sabatier's seminal work in an uncompromised edition; until that happens, let the reader beware.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Biography
Review: The Road to Assisi is a factual, well-researched, unsentimental biography of St. Francis. Written in 1894 by Paul Sabatier, the book became a bestseller throughout Europe and made the Vatican's infamous "index" of forbidden books. Sabatier, a French Protestant wrote a very objective biography that portrays Francis favorably, but tells how his order of spiritual brothers was challenged by ecclesiastical authorities. I was surprised to learn that meek and gentle Francis could also be bold, stern, and assertive in many situations. He did not go gently when he reprimanded his brothers and there were several occassions when he did so. It's a good translation and finely edited by John Sweeney, who has added sidebar annotations that contribute to understanding the people and places in Francis's time.
Rating:
Summary: An Essential Biography
Review: The Road to Assisi is a factual, well-researched, unsentimental biography of St. Francis. Written in 1894 by Paul Sabatier, the book became a bestseller throughout Europe and made the Vatican's infamous "index" of forbidden books. Sabatier, a French Protestant wrote a very objective biography that portrays Francis favorably, but tells how his order of spiritual brothers was challenged by ecclesiastical authorities. I was surprised to learn that meek and gentle Francis could also be bold, stern, and assertive in many situations. He did not go gently when he reprimanded his brothers and there were several occassions when he did so. It's a good translation and finely edited by John Sweeney, who has added sidebar annotations that contribute to understanding the people and places in Francis's time.
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