Many publications
and several entire books have scrutinised every aspect of St
Francis' picturesque encounters with animals and birds. For some
they are merely sentimental folk tales. The church itself had to
step in to refute those who wanted to dismiss them as animist or
pantheist heresy. There are scholars who consider the stories
merely projected on to Francis a cluster of legends which
originated round the lives of early hermits and the Irish saints,
who were already well known in Europe as great lovers of the
natural world. Others still persist in regarding his sermon to the
birds and his negotiations with a wolf as allegorical.of
life in nature, of the living organisms, plant and animal, is a
reflection of the life which is in God. And so also all the love in
human nature.