The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology)

leondumoulin.nl: The Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology) (): Kenneth Baxter Wolf: Books.
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Wolf's point of departure is a series of simple but hitherto unasked questions about the precise nature of Francis's poverty: How did he go about transforming himself from a rich man to a poor one?

How successful was this transformation? How did his self-imposed poverty compare to the involuntary poverty of those he met in and around Assisi? What did poor people of this type get out of their contact with Francis? What did Francis get out of his contact with them?


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Wolf finds that while Francis's conception of poverty as a spiritual discipline may have opened the door to salvation for wealthy Christians like himself, it effectively precluded the idea that the poor could use their own involuntary poverty as a path to heaven. Based on a thorough reconsideration of the earliest biographies of the saint, as well as Francis's own writings, Wolf's work sheds important new light on the inherent ironies of poverty as a spiritual discipline and its relationship to poverty as a socio-economic affliction.

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To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Poverty of Riches , please sign up. Be the first to ask a question about The Poverty of Riches. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Nov 27, Katie rated it it was ok Shelves: This is a rather odd book. In it's first half, Kenneth Baxter Wolf examines Francis's view of poverty and comes to the conclusion that Francis was far more concerned about acting poor than helping the poor. While this is certainly true, it's not a terribly helpful observation - 13th century ideas of social justice are not 20th century ideas of social justice, and this part of the book occasionally reads as if Wolf is chastising Francis for not solving poverty.

Poverty of Riches: St. Francis of Assisi Reconsidered - Oxford Scholarship

While I guess it's a bummer that he This is a rather odd book. While I guess it's a bummer that he didn't, it's never what Francis or his followers were attempting to do, so it seems like an unhelpful thing to point out. Wolf also suggests that Francis actively damaged the situation of the poor - he diverted funds via donations that would otherwise gone to the poor, and he closed off spiritual poverty to the involuntarily poor by redefining it as the willing sacrifice of wealth you can't give up all your possessions if you never had any to begin with.

The book picks up a bit in its second half, in which Wolf claims that Francis really wasn't all that innovative. Instead, he was in a long line of religious men who sought the contemplative life in preference to the active life removing oneself from the world rather than engaging in it. The only thing that distinguished him from the older orders of monks was his transplantation to the city.

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Wolf establishes this by comparing biographies of Francis to previous saints and contemporary examples of urban, lay piety that took a more active role in helping the poor. This is a more interesting idea, though it's damaged by the fact that Wolf never really accounts for the fact that preaching was an essential part of his mission, something that definitively separated him from hermit heroes or cloistered monks.


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    • More broadly, Wolf's frequent refusal to deal with the problematic nature of his sources also weakens his case. The hagiographies that Wolf uses to describe Francis's thoughts and opinions were written after his death, sometimes by decades, in a context in which poverty was a very sensitive and mutable topic. While Wolf acknowledges this in his appendix, it is not sufficiently integrated into his argument and does not seem to particularly impact how the sources are used.

    That said, Wolf raises some important questions, and his positioning of Francis in the contemplative rather than active tradition is intriguing, if not quite fully demonstrated. Jan 12, Willa Grant rated it it was ok. He also doesn't seem to see any good in the "vita passiva" or contemplative life- I mostly felt annoyed reading this book. Izbicki - - Speculum 80 4: Macdowell Demosthenes the Orator. Oxford University Press, , Pp. Ix, ; 2 Genealogical Charts.

    Jane Sayers and Leslie Watkiss. Lxxxix, ; 1 Table. Beginnings to Ad Marincola Oxford Readings in Classical Studies: Greek and Roman Historiography. Collins, The Order of the Garter, — Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval England.

    The Poverty of Riches

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