e organization, others joined them. They passed
that spring and summer going up and down the country, sometimes
assisting the harvesters and haymakers, and everywhere entering into the
common life of the people. The Bishop of Assisi, however, remonstrated
with Francis, saying that to him it seemed very harsh and unwise to try
to live without owning anything. To which Francis replied that he did
not desire temporal possessions, as these required arms for their
defence and were an obstacle to the love of God and one's neighbor. It
has remained for later years to discern the still truer significance of
the teachings of Jesus, that neither possessions nor the lack of
possessions form the real test, but the use which is made of them. As
spiritual insight is developed it is more and more clearly realized that
the quality of the life lived is the sole matter of importance, and not
the conditions that surround it.

The brotherhood increased. The abbot of the Benedictines on Monte
Subasio ceded to Francis and his order the little chapel called the
Portiuncula, now enclosed within the vast and magnificent church of
Santa Maria degli Angeli. M. Paul Sabatier, in his admirable biography
of St. Francis, points out clearly that the founder of the Franciscans
contemplated a laboring and not a mendicant order. During the decade
1211 to 1221, which Francis and his followers passed at the Portiuncula,
a portion of the time was constantly passed in industrial pursuits.
"With all his gentleness, Francis knew how to show an inflexible
severity toward the idle," says Sabatier, "and he even went so far as to
dismiss a friar who refused to work." Although Francis espoused poverty,
declaring that she was his bride, he was unfalteringly loyal to the
ideals of honest industry and integrity.

[Illustration: ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI, THE DUOMO, ASSISI
Giovanni Dupre
_Page 366_]

The mystic legends of the life of their saint that abound in Assisi are
touched with poetic romance in that a companion figure is always seen by
his side, that of Santa Chiara. Not more inseparable in popular thought
are Dante and Beatrice, or Petrarca and Laura, than are Francis and
Clara. Their statues stand side by side in the Duomo; they are
represented together by both painter and sculptor in the churches of
Santa Chiara and Santa Maria degli Angeli in the old hill town. Chiara
was the daughter of a noble family, and as a girl of sixt