Such a number of books have been written about Saint Francis, and so many of them works of scholarship, that a writer who is not a scholar should apologize for the presumption of attempting yet another. My only excuse is that I wanted to write it so much that I had to do so; my hope is that it may serve to introduce Saint Francis to a few who do not know him well and perhaps make them want to know him better. At the end of this book they will find a short list of books which will give them a deeper knowledge of him than this one can do. Though some are out of print they are all to be found in the public libraries. Where I have quoted from the Fioretti I have used the translation of Dr. Hugh Martin. The translation of The Canticle of the Sun is that of Matthew Arnold. The chapter headings from the Laude of Jacopone da Todi are from the translation of Mrs. Theodore Beck. The quotation at the end of the book is from Saint Bonaventure’s Life of Saint Francis.