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🇭🇷 Croatia /Culture & Society

Le Goff brings us into the world of Francis of Assisi and his first friars as if he witnessed it all

From Večernji List · () Croatian

Translated from Croatian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Miljenko Jergović reviews Jacques Le Goff’s 1999 book Saint Francis of Assisi, published in Croatian in 2010 by Demetra.
  • The review praises Le Goff as a leading medievalist and gifted writer who combines historical scholarship with narrative imagination.
  • Jergović says Le Goff evokes Francis, Assisi and Umbria with the immediacy of an eyewitness.

Jacques Le Goff brings readers into the world of Francis of Assisi and his first friars as though he had witnessed everything himself, Miljenko Jergović writes in a literary recommendation.

Le Goff, one of France’s leading historians associated with the Annales school, worked across a remarkably broad range of subjects and figures. Jergović presents him not only as a medievalist and Europeanist, but also as a brilliant popularizer and, above all, a major writer with the imagination to shape historical material into narrative.

Saint Francis of Assisi, first published by Gallimard in 1999, consists of four previously published texts. Le Goff regretted in the introduction that he had never managed to write a large, definitive biography of the saint. The Croatian edition appeared in 2010 in Zvjezdana Spasenović’s translation, published by Zagreb’s Demetra.

The friend and brother of all creatures and everything created, he showed such care and fraternal understanding toward everyone, such mercy in the highest sense, that is, love, that history in turn granted him equal sympathy, affection and universal admiration.

· Jacques Le GoffLe Goff’s characterization of Francis of Assisi captures the saint’s broad human and spiritual appeal.

Le Goff describes Francis as “the friend and brother of all creatures and everything created,” a figure whose care, compassion and love earned sympathy and admiration across religious boundaries. Jergović notes that Le Goff does not shy away from grand language or from portraying a historical figure and his surroundings with the richness more often associated with novels and travel writing.

His Assisi stands beside roads, close to both plain and mountain, near people yet not far from solitude. His Umbria is filled with silence and sound, light and shadow, farmers and merchants, animals and winding rivers. Jergović admires the way Le Goff shifts between short and very long sentences, playing with story and atmosphere like a lyric poet discovering an epic rush.

Situated beside roads, in contact with the plain and the mountain, close to people and not far from solitude.

· Jacques Le GoffLe Goff’s description of Assisi illustrates the book’s vivid geographical and atmospheric writing.
About this summary

Originally published by Večernji List in Croatian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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