Description
What is most striking from the viewpoint of the study of international relations is that Francis of Assisi’s transformative life story began with a war - the main type of event that led to the foundingof international relations. His transformative life story took place in medieval Europe at a time of tremendous social, political, and economic changes: (i) the early medieval rise of capitalism and the market economy (as something more than a new type of economic system of organisation, but also the early rise of the cultureof capitalism); and (ii) the transition from a medieval ‘mixed-actor’ type of international system (i.e. a variety of types of political actors) to new types of political actors - the rise of the communesor city-states, and the mimetic rivalry between them, which eventually led to the Renaissance city-state type of international system. This paper revisits the Franciscan story from the perspective of international relations theory. Firstly, it begins to show how critical theory and social constructivism in international relations theory may offer a new optic for recognizing and appreciating the ways Francis offered a counter-cultural critique of Christendom (perhaps, not so readily apparent in the conventional Franciscan narrative); secondly, it establishes the elements of a ‘Franciscan’ model, or pattern of Muslim-Christian relations, and international relations – encounter, conversion, knowledge, and transformation; which, thirdly, is evident in Pope Francis’s culture of encounter, the defining concept of his papacy, and the way he has extended this concept to the Middle East with the concept of human fraternity.
