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A Mended and Broken Heart: The Life and Love of Francis of Assisi | 
 enlarge | Author: Wendy Murray
Publisher: Basic Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $11.21
You Save: $14.74 (57%)
New (45) Used (10) from $7.85
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 413914
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.1
ISBN: 0465002080
Dewey Decimal Number: 271.302
EAN: 9780465002085
ASIN: 0465002080
Publication Date: June 30, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Francis of Assisi is Catholicism’s most popular saint. Tens of millions of spiritual seekers summon his name and example. But the real Francis-both his complicated personality and his complex theology-have been misunderstood for centuries.
In 1228, Pope Gregory IX rushed to canonize St. Francis only two years after his death. Soon thereafter, the Church eliminated significant aspects of his biography from the public record. For Francis’s early life was defined by his profligacy; shortly before dying, Francis himself warned his brothers: “Don’t be too quick to canonize me. I am perfectly capable of fathering a child.”
In A Mended and Broken Heart, journalist Wendy Murray slices through the bowdlerized version of Francis’s life promoted within the Catholic tradition and reveals instead a saint who was in every way also a real man. Murray stresses in particular the crucial but completely neglected role that Clare of Assisi played in Francis’s life, both pre- and postconversion, and his theology.
A profoundly humane portrait of a misunderstood saint, A Mended and Broken Heart makes a powerful case that St. Francis’s life and thought make him a role model for religious seekers of every faith.
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| Customer Reviews:
Decent Biography but Fails to Prove Major Claims October 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wendy Murray wrote her book to prove that St. Francis' deep conversion was the direct result of a platonic love affair of sorts with St. Clare. The evidence that she brings to bear is weak and rises to not more than the level of speculation and in some ways is no more than outright gossip. In addition, Murray reports that Francis' early life was whitewashed by the Catholic Church to keep the faithful from knowing the true extent of his libertine lifestyle prior to his conversion. In the end though, there is no smoking gun here either, but only a refutation from her sources that said that, despite being the leader of his partying friends, Francis was not prurient. In the end, then, the primary argument for her thesis is without claim, as are ancillary claims about Francis. The book also ends with a poor and obviously strained effort by Murray to culminate with a dramatic literary flair but the effort falls far short of the goal.
There is enough interesting history here, however, to make the book a worthwhile read: the constant warring among cities, including the involvement of Assisi; the allure of knighthood and the crusades; and the battle between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, for example. The characters that took part in Francis' life, from St. Clare to the Pope to Francis' fellow friars, are also interesting, as are, in particular, the details of Francis' life, from his early days as a partier, to his conversion, to his efforts to create an order and ultimately to his struggle with illnesses near the end of his life. Ignoring the backdrop of an attempted expose, A Broken and Mended Heart remains a good short biography of St. Francis and a history of his times.
 Thesis not Proven October 12, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author's main point, that St. Francis of Assisi was in love with St. Clare of Assisi, is not well developed. The evidence presented, praying together at the start of their religious conversions and their later contact is interesting but not convincing.
The book covers other pieces of St. Francis's life. Of particular interest to me were his experiences on a Crusade and his illnesses and their treatments.
While there is some interesting material here, it needs more content. This is more like an essay than a book.
 ah, finally...mary mag/yeshua, francis/clare, yab/yum... September 20, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
francis as a real human in touch with the divine WITHIN (himself, clare...) is about a sacred as it gets. those who see god as being outside of themselves and something to be petitioned according to dogmatic litigation won't be happy with this...
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