Over the centuries, Francis of Assisi has become perhaps too iconic, and the many accounts and legends of him do not begin to take into account the complexity of the real person. A successor of Francis who never knew him personally, St. Bonaventure put forward his own view of Francis and spread that image far and wide. From years of research and reconstruction, Italian historian Chiara Mercuri introduces the real Francis, and reveals the complex dynamics of the Church of the Middle Ages, the origins of the Franciscan order, and the concentric circles of those friends who knew and wrote about St. Francis from firsthand knowledge.