ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the pertinent parts of the history of the Catholic Church which will help us to understand how and why St Francis became the Saint of Nature. It examines how and why subsequently he has been enlisted as a proto-ecologist by historians, by scientists, by campaigners, and by the Catholic Church. The chapter deals with just three lines amongst the many new reputations given to St Francis in the nineteenth century, though these will not exhaust the varieties of St Francis made available then. They are: Francis the Romantic, Francis the Modern, and Francis the true Catholic. By shaping new concepts of Nature, the Romantics also helped shape new characterizations of St Francis. Francis’s supposed universal love of Nature will be seen to be an important element in the first two of these lines. The Roman Catholic Church in the nineteenth century suffered a series of great crises.
