Paul Sabatier

Paul Sabatier (1858–1928) was a French Protestant pastor and historian, the founder of modern Franciscan studies. Trained at the Protestant faculty in Paris, where he attended the lectures of Ernest Renan, he served parishes in Strasbourg and the Cévennes until ill health sent him to Italy, where he began the research that produced his Life of St. Francis of Assisi (1893). The book, which treated Francis as a historical figure and his movement as a revolt against institutional religion, was placed on the Index and translated across Europe. Sabatier edited the early Franciscan sources, founded a society for Franciscan studies and became professor of Protestant theology at Strasbourg in 1919.