4The familiar Francis of Assisi of popular anecdote does not begin to take into account the complexity of the real person. Why? Because St. Bonaventure, a successor of Francis who never knew him personally, put forward his own view of Francis and spread that image far and wide. Italian historian Chiara Mercuri takes the reader back in time to the real Francis. From years of research and reconstruction, Mercuri reveals the complex dynamics of the Church of the Middle Ages, the origins of the Franciscan order, and the concentric circles of those friends who knew and wrote about St. Francis from firsthand knowledge.