The Whole World Was His Monastery

What made St. Francis of Assisi so revolutionary? Reviewing the political theorist Giorgio Agamben’s recently translated investigation of monasticism, The Highest Poverty, Nathan Schneider emphasizes that St. Francis dreamed of a way of living “beyond the reach of ordinary politics” – not by retreating from the world, but through engaging it:

The Franciscan emphasis on poverty, for Agamben, represents a critical extension of the monastic rules. Clare of Assisi, who led the female branch of the Franciscan movement, insisted that Francis had given her not a rule at all but merely a “form of life.” He taught his followers by example and by preaching, eschewing the decrees one might hear from a monastery’s abbot. When his followers failed to listen, he didn’t police or punish. “I do not want to become a persecutor to pursue and frustrate them, like the power of this world,” Francis reportedly said.

Rather than…