Paul Sabatier's fascinating and in many ways sympathetic _Vie de S. Francois_ (1894; 33rd ed., 1906; Eng. trans, by L.S. Houghton, 1901) will probably for a long time to come be accepted by the ordinary reader as a substantially correct portrait of St Francis; and yet Goetz declares that the most competent and independent critics have without any exception pronounced that Sabatier has depicted St Francis a great deal too much from the standpoint of modern religiosity, and has exaggerated his attitude in face of the church (op. cit. p. 5). In articles in the _Hist. Vierteljahrsschrift_ (1902, 1903) Goetz has shown that Sabatier's presentation of St Francis's relations with the ecclesiastical authority in general, and with Cardinal Hugolino (Gregory IX.) in particular, is largely based on misconception; that the development of the order was not forced on Francis against his will; and that the differences in the order did not during Francis's lifetime attain to such a magnitude as to cause him during his last years the suffering depicted by Sabatier. This from a Protestant historian like Goetz is most valuable criticism. In truth Sabatier's St Francis is an anachronism--a man at heart, a modern pietistic French Protestant of the most liberal type, with a veneer of 13th century Catholicism. Of lives of St Francis in English may be mentioned those by Mrs Oliphant (2nd ed., 1871) and by Canon Knox Little (1897). For general information and references to the literature of the subject, see Otto Zoeckler, _Askese und Moenchtum_ (1897), ii. 470-493, and his article in Herzog's _Realencyklopaedie_ (ed. 3), "Franz von Assisi" (1899); also Max Heimbucher, _Orden und Kongregationen_ (1896), i. Sec. 38. The chapter on St Francis in Emile Gebhart's _Italie mystique_ (ed. 3, 1899) is very remarkable; indeed, though this writer is as little ecclesiastically-minded as Sabatier himself, his general picture of the state of religion in Italy at the time is far truer; here also Sabatier has given way to the usual temptation of biographers to exalt their hero by depreciating everybody else. (E. C. B.) FOOTNOTE: [1] _The Little Flowers of St Francis._