When I was a child, about 11 or 12, I was unfortunately subjected to a purported film known by the alias Brother Sun, Sister Moon, which claims to be a retelling of the life of St. Francis of Assisi. I’ve encountered more historical accuracy from 20-minute children’s cartoons, and I knew hardly anything about the history of the medieval Catholic Church at the time, so that’s saying something. (Though I should add that I was living in Italy at the time, not that far from Assisi, and St. Francis was and probably still is very popular there.)
The film was pretty much a retelling with a focus on a message more appropriate to the 1960s than the 13th century. Seriously, there are so many details it got wrong, and I doubt by sincere error, that any time I’m reminded of it I get a migraine. But today I shall embrace that pain, because one error in particular stands out as an example of today’s topic.
As a young man, St. Francis participated in a battle where he was captured and had a life-altering spiritual awakening. This is depicted in the film in such a way that I suspect the director intended the audience to be on drugs, but it’s accurate in broad strokes . . . very broad strokes. Yet even as a pre-teen, the armor the young Francesco wore drove me to distraction. It’s not just that it’s not accurate 12th-century Italian armor; at that age, I couldn’t have told you what was accurate, after all. It was that I immediately saw it was inaccurate because of the human factor.
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