Francis’s animal brotherhood in Thomas of Celano’s Vita Prima

Francis of Assisi’s encounters with nonhuman animals in Thomas of Celano’s Vita Prima open into ‘contact zones’ between human and nonhuman animals that challenge traditional social hierarchies. Following Mary Louise Pratt’s and Donna Haraway’s foregrounding of these spaces as sites of contention and transformation, we explore the way that Francis’s behaviour with nonhuman animals draws attention to them as victims of economic, social, and moral...