A Bold Retelling of a Familiar, Beloved Story

It’s a small building, really, nothing more than a one-room chapel, of simple construction. For hundreds of years, supplicants and pellegrini--the Italian word for pilgrims--have flocked to this place, called the Portiuncula, on the plains below Assisi, at the base of Mt. Subasio. They touch its doors, bend in prayer in front of its altar and honor Francesco di Pietro Bernardone, the man who died there in October 1226 and was canonized as a Catholic saint less than two years later. In its austere design, with wooden plaques bearing words of the Bible, the Portiuncula pays tribute to how Francesco, whom we call Francis of Assisi, lived.

But these days, the Portiuncula is a building within a building: A gaudy Romanesque church, Santa Maria degli Angeli, was constructed over the Portiuncula, and as a result, the message Francis preached, of poverty and devotion, of virtue in destitution, seems to be lost in a rococo confusion of marble altars, vaulted ceilings and ornate biblical paraphernalia.

In a way, the same sort of historical reconstruction has befallen St. Francis of Assisi, patron saint of Italy, founder of the Franciscan order. His life has long been fodder for countless frescoes, paintings and other works of art, which collectively resurrect the saint as a kind of Roman Catholic superhero who talked to birds, bore the stigmata on his hands, feet and side and died singing the words of Psalm 142: Educ de custodia animam meam--Bring my soul out of prison.

For Valerie Martin, author of “Italian Fever” and “Mary Reilly,” these works of art were both inspirational and informative. Living in Italy, she was drawn to churches and monasteries that had particularly worthy depictions of the saint’s story. She began to seek out the personal history of Francis. “The various frescoes drew my attention to the character of San Francesco,” she writes. “A lifelong interest in hagiography did the rest.” Reading biographies written by Francis’ contemporaries, she sensed an “urgency to get down for posterity this remarkable personality, which was unlike any they had ever known.”

“Salvation” represents Martin’s attempt to synthesize these histories with other, more contemporary works to create “a somewhat personal alternative exhibit of scenes from the life” of Francis of Assisi. It is a bold retelling of a story that is familiar to us all.

Martin repeats many of the well-known tales about Francis--his relationship with St. Chiara, a childhood friend; his failure to convert the Sultan al-Kamil in Egypt who, after listening to the saint preach about “Christ’s poverty, his suffering, his cruel death and miraculous resurrection,” thanked Francis for the “beautiful story” and then offered him and his followers opulent gifts; and Francis’ celebrated embrace of a leper on the road to Assisi. At each turn, Martin attempts to bring us fully into the story itself, to give us a snapshot understanding of the texture of Francis’ life and his mission to “bring the mighty, the indifferent, the proud, the heretical, into the loving embrace of Christ’s church.”

Martin has eschewed traditional chronology, choosing instead to recreate Francis’ story in nine distinct chapters that progress from his death toward his conversion as a young man. The effect of this literary device is both the book’s strength and its weakness. On the one hand, we move through Francis’ story from darkness--the crippling illnesses that plagued him late in life, the fracturing of the Franciscan brotherhood even before his death--into the light--the exuberance and mission of his early ministry, the momentum that built as he gathered disciples around him--and there is a certain excitement intrinsic to this rhythm. But the actions of the saint and his followers often make no sense until a few chapters later, when anecdotes gain meaning in experience.

Francis inspired countless generations of men (and women) to leave behind homes and wealth and families in pursuit of something greater. But why, hundreds of years after his death, does Francis still engender such passion among his followers?

Unfortunately, reading “Salvation” is much like staring at one of the famous Giotto frescoes that adorn the basilica in Assisi: We revel in the details, in the rich colors of the skies, the scope of the story. But to be truly inspired, and to truly understand, we must be called to make a certain leap of faith. The question that “Salvation” never answers is whether faith is enough to explain the devotion exhibited by this extraordinary personality.