Una rivoluzione interrotta. Attorno alla riedizione della Vita di San Francesco d’Assisi (1978)

This contribution focuses on the cultural context of the second Italian edition of Paul Sabatier's Vie de S. François, published by Mondadori in 1978 and edited by Lorenzo Bedeschi. It was, by the Bedeschi's own admission, a “historical-ideological” operation, intended to revive the “missed revolution” (the “Franciscan” one) hoped for by the Reformed pastor himself vis-à-vis the modernist renewal, by subjecting the “unfinished revolution” of Vatican II to criticism. In the context of the long 1968 and post-conciliar contestation, Sabatier's work responded to a Left Catholic need at once historiographic, ecclesiological and political, aimed at the civil and religious renewal of Italy.