Francis

Whatever became of Francis, the poor simple man of Assisi? How did he get turned, by the Church and some at least of the brothers, into a saint enshrined in a grand basilica?

Jacques Dalarun in his "The misadventure of Francis" says of religious founders;
"What plays out around them, case by case, blow by blow, but in exemplary fashion, is a repeat of the fate of Christianity. On the one hand, teaching the Gospel versus the need to found a Church; on the other, the holy founder’s charism and immutable teaching versus the need for a foundation, an Order, to live these demands day after day. What a founder’s death really reveals, in a fragmentary way, is the difficulty, the paradox or challenge that constitutes the very life of a Christian society."

I like this writer - he has refreshing and original insights. Here's another:
“To understand Thomas of Celano, who writes in 1228, to understand all of Francis’s later hagiographers, we must certainly still read Paul Sabatier. But at the same time we should always keep in mind the work of one of Sabatier’s contemporaries, Marcel Proust. The key to the Franciscan legends, when we reach their essence, is not so much the dialectic between oral tradition and written version, as Raoul Manselli once believed. It is another dialectic, one that is irreconcilable, between facts and remembrance of the facts. This memory, unlike the Lamb, is never perfectly immaculate and spotless. It is a memory that confirms that ‘the true paradises are the paradises we have lost.’”
(the quote within the quote is from Remembrance of Things Past)