Volker Leppin (Yale University), “Brother Sun, Mother Church: The Mysticism of Francis of Assisi” (Saint Thomas More)

Dinner-and-Lecture

 

Yale Divinity School Professor Volker Leppin will open our series by exploring Saint Francis of Assisi’s (d. 1226) creation mysticism, its relationship with Church authorities, and its reception in his time. Leppin will also discuss its enduring influence on Catholic environmentalism under Pope Francis.

 

About Professor Volker Leppin

 

Volker Leppin is the Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology at Yale Divinity School. Professor Leppin was trained in theology at Marburg, Jerusalem, and Heidelberg where he graduated with his doctorate in 1997. He held the chair in Church History at the University of Jena in Germany and a similar chair at the University of Tübingen, the most prestigious in Germany. Professor Leppin served as the director of the Institute for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies. A prolific and field-defining scholar of Late Medieval and Reformation-era religion, he has written some 400 scholarly articles and book chapters, and more than 20 scholarly monographs, including Martin Luther: A Late Medieval Life (Grand Rapids, 2017). His biography of the mystical saint and Church reformer Francis of Assisi: The Life of a Restless Saint, first published in German in 2018, is forthcoming with Yale University Press.