08 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and of rank,
the other a priest. They gave all to the poor, and took up their abode
near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the chapel of the
Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning of the great
order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.

Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech--a poet who was
inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the author of
a recent monograph on St. Francis says, "destroy or tread on a written
page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain the name of God;
even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained the letters that
make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the people and singing
for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked Fra Pacifico, who
had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his verses to the rules
of metre."

St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the author
of the 'Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his footsteps.
"The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well as offensive.
The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with respect, was not
far from Christendom." Frederick of Sicily, with his Saracens, menaced
Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices were rife; and the
thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled themselves in the band of
Francis gained the love of the people, preached Christianity anew,
symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read, and, as St. Francis
had done, they appealed to the imagination. The legends of St.
Francis--one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of which there are
at least two good English translations--became the tenderest poems of
the poor.

If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of a
saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1226: he asked to be buried on
the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest;
"and," he said, "sing my 'Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a
song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be
found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole.'"

Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best
known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive 'Life' is by
the Abbe Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been
translated into English.

[Signature: Maurice Francis Egan]

ORDER

[_Our Lord Speaks_]

And though I fi