tal force had become
as far as the most learned were concerned a knowledge of historical
events. Many saw in a return to evangelical simplicity and love the only
remedy; but it was the life, not the preaching of a man, which once
again was vouchsafed to the world as a great example. "Nobody has shown
me what I should do; but the Most High Himself has commanded me to live
according to the Gospels." Francis of Assisi accepted the accounts of
the life of Christ with the utmost naivete; he neither searched for an
allegorical meaning (as the theologians did), nor did he subordinate the
man Jesus to the divine principle of the _logos_ (in the manner of the
great mystics). To him the imitation of Christ meant a ministry of love;
he did not conceive religion as dogma and the political power of a
hierarchy, but as a state of the heart. This is a characteristic which
he shares with Eckhart, the great recreator of European religion,
although he was fundamentally alien to him. St. Francis never uttered a
single hostile word against tradition or the clergy; he never inveighed
against the corruption of morals and religious indifference, as other
reformers did; he exerted a reformatory influence solely by his life,
for he possessed the secret of the great love. During his whole life he
was averse to laying down rules for his followers, although continually
urged to do so by popes and bishops. His importance does not lie in the
foundation of an order with certain regulations and a specific object,
but in the fact that he was a vital force. He broke the norms of the
Church whenever it seemed right to him to do so, for he was absolutely
sure of himself; without being ordained he preached to the people in his
own tongue, probably the first man (after the Provencal Peter Valdez)
who did so; without possessing the slightest authority he consecrated
his friend Clara as a nun. Innocent III., who made the suppression of
heresy the task of his life, showed great intelligence and wisdom in
sanctioning St. Francis' sermons to the people and acknowledging his
unecclesiastical brotherhood. This probably transformed a dangerous
revolutionary into a faithful servant of the Church. Maybe the Church
was indebted to St. Francis for being saved from a great early
reformation; signs of it were not wanting, and another Arnold of Brescia
might have arisen and brought about her overthrow. It is doubtful
whether the Church would have come out of a Franciscan cr