Illness & Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi by Donna Trembinski

Reviewed by: Illness & Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi by Donna Trembinski Fr. Michael W. Blastic, OFM Illness & Authority: Disability in the Life and Lives of Francis of Assisi. By Donna Trembinski. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020. Pp. x + 255. $65. In six chapters and a postscript, Donna Trembinski has constructed a very tightly argued study of the role of sickness and disability in the life of Francis of Assisi. Suggesting that both traditional and recent scholarly biographies of Francis have marginalized the reality of sickness in the experience of Francis, and by using recent theories and methodologies of disability studies, she proposes to recenter the illnesses and impairments he suffered in life. She does this through a careful reading of his own writings and the early hagiographies of the saint using the most recent critical editions of these texts available, giving attention to the problems associated with dating, authorship and the relationship between them (Introduction). She is careful not to overstate her conclusions based on these texts (which she often qualifies with "perhaps" or "it seems likely"). Her purpose is not to supply a "forensic diagnosis" (26) as some scholars have tried to do (chapter 1), but to demonstrate how the sources suggest that Francis was sick "for much of his adult life" (35), and to investigate the personal, social and political effect of these disabilities in order to better understand the man Francis of Assisi. In the brief second chapter, she treats Francis's experience of illnesses in his writings and the witness of Brother Leo, his close companion in the last years of his life. Here she points to evidence of Francis' increasing problems with his eyesight which T. suggests limited Francis from acting in "the secular, masculine, ableist realms both in the church and political society" (37). Chapter three turns to the hagiographical sources to chronicle the sicknesses of Francis from his time in prison in Perugia after the battle of Collestrada (1202) until his death (+1226). Here she shows her careful reading of the sources as well as of the secondary literature, and while not every scholar would agree with every historical conclusion, she demonstrates the growing seriousness of Francis' disability as well as the tensions around his illness—for both Francis himself, the order and the church hierarchy—which raised the question of whether he could "effectively lead his order as an infirm man" (84). These tensions also impacted the hagiographers themselves as they tended to spiritualize his sufferings as an example for his brothers and the faithful. In chapter four, T. presents her analysis of the data, framed as a contrast between the needs of Francis's sick body and his rigorous asceticism. She notes the seeming change in Francis's position from his early conviction that sickness should be accepted with patience as God's means of correction (articulated clearly in the Early Rule) to the almost frantic search for doctors who could cure his blindness in the last years of his life, suggesting that it was the church officials who insisted on finding a cure because of the biblical connection [End Page 220] of blindness with sin (86). T. also suggests that this was accompanied by Francis's understanding and practice of obedience which becomes "blind" obedience at the end of his life. Finally, she argues that because of his illnesses, the "leaders in the church and order" might have convinced Francis to withdraw from leadership which Francis himself might have "resented" (107). In chapter five, T. analyzes how the hagiographers had the task of "normalizing [Francis'] life in order to "integrate" it into the church's tradition of sanctity (109). As Francis's hagiography developed from 1228 to 1260, by analyzing Francis's disappearing blindness, the tension between asceticism and medicine, disappearing doctors and the increasing role of guardians, T. concludes that in this process, the real humanity of Francis has disappeared. She overstates the change in Francis, I would argue, when she contends that "His early work suggests an outright hatred of the corporeal body" (115), in contrast to the later hagiographers who suggested that Francis gave great attention to the needs of...

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