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The Lady Poverty

A Thirteenth-Century Allegory

by Montgomery Carmichael (translator)

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ISBN, perfect bound
978-1-61956-749-8
ISBN, EPUB ebook
978-1-61956-303-2
ISBN, PDF ebook
978-1-61956-304-9
Pages
78
Size
6 × 9 in
Edition
Perfect bound, Tau Publishing edition, 2026 (translated 1901)
Language
English

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About this book

“And they, leading her to the Summit of a Hill, showed her the wide World, saying: This is our Cloister, O Lady Poverty.” — The Sacrum Commercium

Written by an unknown friar within a few years of the death of Saint Francis, the Sacrum Commercium is the first great allegory of the Franciscan movement. Francis goes through the city asking where the Lady Poverty may be found, climbs a mountain with his first companions and wins her as his bride. She tells them her long history, from Paradise to the Apostles and the martyrs, and then comes down to share the brothers’ crusts of bread, their bare ground and their cloister: the whole wide world.

Montgomery Carmichael’s 1901 translation, steeped in the cadences of the English Bible, became the classic English version. This edition presents it complete, with his introduction, Father Cuthbert’s essay on evangelical poverty, the prayer of Saint Francis to obtain holy poverty and Dante’s canto of Francis and his bride, together with a new Note to This Edition.

Inside

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