1181 - 1226
Friar And Preacher

His Conversion. One of the most striking embodiments of evangelical revival in the Middle Ages is Francis of Assisi. In his youth, Francis experienced a radical upheaval in his values and assumptions about life. In his Testament (1226), he attributes this change to his attitude toward lepers: "When I was still in the world, it was too bitter for me to see lepers; after the Lord granted me to show mercy to lepers, that which had first seemed bitter to me now changed into sweetness of the soul and of the body and a little while later I went out of the world." The reason for Francis's conversion, then, was not so much poverty, for love of which he later became famous, as the awareness of human suffering and its importance as a means of union between the Christian and Christ. With...