Abstract

Catholic modernism, an intellectual trend that developed within the Catholic Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, sought to rebuild the Church and to modernise its teaching methods. It combined tradition and modernity, and it was at the level of literature that such link was made – a medium whose effect on religious belief was significant. Due to its reformist tendencies modernism was often called “the new Protestantism.” St. Francis was also the patron of the quest for renewal. A resurgence of interest in the saint was noted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century among Anglicans, Lutherans, and Protestants. St. Francis represented such qualities that all Christians, regardless of denomination, see as a perfect incarnation of the principles of the Gospel. Protestants portrayed him as a reformer of the thirteenth-century Church and a patron of the “new reformation.” In a natural way, he combined and renewed, or actually restored the teaching of Christ. In the Young Poland era, the approach to St. Francis was largely shaped by the book Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier. Traces of its reception can be found in most Catholic publications of the period devoted to the life and work of the saint.