Professor Leppin Lends a Historian's Perspective to Interreligious Dialogue in Assisi

Alexander Ford '29 M.Div.
A group of people sitting in a circle

Interreligious dialogue at the Elijah Summer School. Photo provided by Prof. Leppin.

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the death of Francis of Assisi—the saint, mystic, and reformer whose vision and lived witness of a life of holy poverty shook the Church during his life and has deeply shaped the world in the eight centuries that followed. To celebrate the anniversary, students and teachers from Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions gathered for ten days of reflection and interreligious dialogue at the Elijah Summer School in the saint’s birthplace of Assisi, Italy.  

Yale Divinity School’s Professor Volker Leppin participated in the School as a historian. As the author of a recent biography on the subject (Francis of Assisi: the Life of a Restless Saint), Leppin laid the groundwork for discussion of the saint’s contemporary impact by providing a historical reconstruction of Francis’s life using methods of critical research. 

Professor Leppin describes the gathering as “an experience of hope for peace in a depressing time.” For Professor Leppin, that hope stems from the active interaction between the event’s attendees: students and teachers from a variety of backgrounds across the US, Middle East, and Europe. There were no classes at the School. Instead, the teachers engaged in discussion rounds, which allowed their various religious traditions to find surprising similarities and differences around the concept of sainthood. 

“We listened to each other, and my feeling was that all answers were real responses, on the spot,” said Professor Leppin. “There was no way of excluding others, nor did anyone try to hide differences. It was just seeking a common understanding of the divine on different paths. To me, this is, however small, a contribution to a more peaceful world.” 

Prof. Volker Leppin is a leading historian of medieval and Reformation Christianity, the Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor of Historical Theology, and Director of the M.A.R. Program at Yale Divinity School. Educated at the University of Marburg, Heidelberg University, and in Jerusalem’s Theological Academic Year program, he has held chairs in Church History at the University of Jena and the University of Tübingen, where he also directed the Institute for Late Middle Ages and Reformation. His scholarship emphasizes the continuity between the medieval world and the Reformation, particularly in the areas of spirituality and mysticism. Among his many publications are Martin Luther: A Late Medieval Life and a recent biography of Francis of Assisi published by Yale University Press.