Road to Assisi: The Essential Biography of St. Francis

The classic biography first published in 1894 is now updated for the twenty-first century reader, supplemented with insights, quotes, comparisons, illustrations, and explanations, and showing the relationship between the foundational biography and other great works on Francis, from Dante to G.K. Chesterton.

Jon Sweeney is an author and editor recognized for his ability to communicate religious and theological ideas in uncomplicated language. He is the editor-in-chief of Skylight Paths Publishing and the author of Praying With Our Hands: 21 Practices of Embodied Prayer from the World’s Spiritual Traditions, which was featured on PBS’s weekly television newsmagazine, Religion & Ethics Newsweekly. He has also co-authored a book for spiritual seekers, Who Is My God? An Innovative Guide to Finding Your Spiritual Identity, and edited a book for young adults, God Within: Our Spiritual Future—As Told By Today’s New Adults. He writes for various magazines, including Spirituality & Health, The Merton Seasonal, and Sacred Journey.

Sweeney lives in a log cabin in Vermont, with his wife, Danelle Sims Sweeney and their two children.

Paul Sabatier (1858-1928) was the first modern biographer of St. Francis of Assisi. A French Protestant, he was raised in the Cevennes, a mountainous region of southern France, educated in theology at Paris, and served as a pastor in Strasbourg. In mid-life, he dedicated the rest of his life to research and writing. His life of Francis, Vie de S. Francois d’Assise, was first published in French in 1894, and then quickly translated and published into English, Swedish, German, and Italian. Within a few years, it was a bestseller around the world. Sabatier’s pioneering work has influenced, and made possible, the work of generations of scholars and biographers since his time.