the franciscan conspiracy

 
I would recommend the following books to learn more about the life and times of St. Francis. The primary sources are works by or about Francis by his contemporaries; the secondary sources are later Franciscan biographies and other historical or background information about his world. A third group of sources includes information about leprosy (Hansen's Disease), its causes, symptoms, treatment in Medieval Europe, and so forth.

This is only a sampling from an immense Franciscan canon, much of which is not translated into English. Essentially, I have included only some of those works most useful to me in writing The Franciscan Conspiracy. A detailed bibliography can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.

See also the "Note on Bibliography," pp. 227-229 of E. M. Almedingen's St. Francis of Assisi. It offers a good summary of the available literature, including comments on the accuracy of the early biographies.

John Sack