and theology at the
university of Paris, Roger Bacon, the friar, the renowned teacher at
Paris and Oxford, Duns Scotus, the subtile doctor. In the Third Order
established for those not following the monastic life the membership,
in the course of time, embraced among others St. Louis, King of France,
St. Elizabeth of Hungary, and Dante.

He, towards the end of his exile, footsore, weary and discouraged,
buffeted by the adverse winds of fortune knocked, a stranger, at the
gates of the Franciscan monastery at Lunigiana. "As neither I nor any of
the brothers recognized him," writes Brother Hilary, the Prior, "I asked
him what he wished. He made no answer but gazed silently upon the
columns and galleries of the cloister. Again I asked him what he wished
and whom he sought and slowly turning his head and looking around upon
the brothers and me, he answered 'Peace.'"

The monks spoke gently to him, ministered with kindly and delicate
sympathy to his bodily and spiritual needs. His reticence left him and
his reserve melted away. Here the object of loving hospitality, he
remained finding means and opportunity for profound study. Before he
departed he drew from his bosom a part of the precious manuscript of
Divina Commedia and trustingly giving it into the hands of the Prior
said, "Here, Brother, is a portion of my work which you may not have
seen: this remembrance I leave with you: forget me not."

That he himself was not unforgetful of the sympathy of the simple and
warm-hearted followers of St. Francis is evident from the fact that he
gloried in his membership of the Third Order, wearing about his body the
Franciscan cincture for chastity and it is not unlikely that at Ravenna
before he finally closed his eyes upon the turmoil of the world full of
vicissitudes, he modestly requested that he be buried in the simple
habit of the order and be laid to rest in a tomb attached to their
monastery. In any event such was his burial.

For our sympathetic understanding of the supremacy of religion in
Dante's day, may I again quote Ralph Adams Cram, whose words on the
eleventh century are equally applicable to the era of our Florentine and
to his country? Dr. Cram writes: "It is hard for us to think back into
such an alien spirit and time as this and so understand how with
one-tenth of its present population England could support so vast and
varied a religious establishment, used as we are to an age where
religion is only a detail for