When Saint Francis of Assisi died in 1226, the accounts of his life had already begun to multiply and, in places, to disagree. In 1260 the General Chapter of the Friars Minor charged one man - Bonaventure, its Minister General, whom the Church honours as the Seraphic Doctor - with composing a single authoritative Life. The Legenda Maior, or Major Legend, which he completed in 1263, was received by the Order as the official life of its founder. It follows Francis from his worldly youth in Assisi through his conversion, the founding of the Order and its Rule, his poverty, humility, and burning love, to the sealing of his body with the sacred Stigmata upon Mount Alvernia, his death, and his canonisation - and closes with the narration of the miracles wrought at his tomb. Presented complete and unabridged, in the translation of E. Gurney Salter.