ABSTRACT
Discussion of the relation of science and the Christian religion in the past, especially in the medieval and early modern periods, is receiving renewed attention currently, at least among Anglophone scholars. The modern historian who has had the most impact in encouraging people to think of St Francis as a proto-ecologist is Lynn White, Jr., an academic historian of medieval technology. The new historical reputation of St Francis as having a supposed universal ‘love of Nature’ derives from moments in the great revival of interest in him which took place in the course of the nineteenth century. Indeed, Francis acquired a whole range of new reputations, of which this was only one. The legends and other historic material on the life of Francis proved rich enough to be used to fashion many new, and sometimes contradictory, images of the saint.
