Saint Francis: Nature Mystic

Saint Francis: Nature Mystic, by Edward A. Armstrong, explores the origins and significance of the remarkable natural history woven into the Franciscan Legend. Although Saint Francis is today celebrated as the Christian saint most closely identified with compassion for animals, plants, and the elements, Armstrong shows that this reputation has been too often romanticized and insufficiently studied. By examining the nature stories in Francis’s biographies—the wolf of Gubbio, the sermon to the birds, and countless other tales—he asks whether they reflect fact, folklore, or a deliberate hagiographical construction designed to present Francis as a new kind of saint.

Armstrong situates Francis’s devotion to the natural world within the broader intellectual, cultural, and religious traditions of medieval Europe. He traces influences from Celtic Christianity, monastic poverty movements, troubadour culture, and Joachim of Fiore, while also exploring how Francis’s early companions and later biographers reshaped his image to serve ecclesiastical needs. The study illuminates Francis not only as a mystic whose piety embraced all of creation, but also as a figure shaped by complex historical forces. By combining perspectives from history, theology, folklore, psychology, and natural science, Armstrong recovers the depth of Francis’s vision and challenges us to see him as both a child of his age and a pioneer whose reverence for creation still resonates powerfully in an era of ecological concern.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.