A Spirituality of Study

Abstract

As a young pastoral associate, weary from years of academic formation and struggling to keep up with the pressures of daily life in the parish, I simply had no time or desire for study. I used to take refuge from study in the fact that, as a Franciscan friar, I am the spiritual son of a man who considered himself ignorant and unlettered. But in time I came to discover that Francis was not completely unlettered, and he certainly was not ignorant. He spoke French (the business language of his day) and wrote in Latin (the academic language of his day). He was also the first person to write in an Italian dialect. In whatever language, his writings prove that while he was probably never a good student in academic circles, he was certainly a good student of life and studied human nature with care. Some would say that it was his study of human nature that led him to be so cautious of academic study. What was the source of his concern? It is interesting to note that the first Franciscans did not share Francis’s fear of education. Clare of Assisi, for example, had a very good grasp of Latin and knowledge of the great spiritual writers of the past. Despite Francis’s being contrary to academic pursuits, Alexander of Hales, Roger Bacon, and many other scholars were attracted to his way of life. The most famous Franciscan scholar of the early