John Moorman distinguished himself as a bishop and an Anglican ecumenist during his lifetime – but it was his devotion to St Francis and the exploration of the life and legacy of the saint which were the passion of his intellectual concerns. He was by his own admission brought up a ‘staunch Protestant’ within the Church of England, yet he found himself attracted to the life of St Francis of Assisi, despite that saint's association with medieval Roman Catholicism. This was in common with many other Christians outside the Roman Catholic Church, and was a phenomenon evident since the mid-nineteenth century. But when and how was Moorman's own passion for St Francis first ignited?

Unexpectedly perhaps, it is possible to trace his Franciscan journey because Moorman began to keep a journal when he was still at school, and continued to do so for most of his life. It is not merely a chronology of appointments but an account of his doings and thoughts day by day. He noted the books he read and the people he met. He recorded the routine but also illuminated the important developments in his life. On some things he was reticent but on others, including his interest in St Francis, he was forthcoming in what he wrote. The journal allows the historian to glimpse his world as it enfolded from the 1920s onwards and reveals much that shaped his attitudes and enthusiasms.

Moorman was born in June 1905 into a middle-class family, his father a professor of English Literature at Leeds University.