anch of the great Franciscan Order, founded early
in the thirteenth century by Saint Francis of Assisi. Saint, hero, or
madman, according to the point of view from which he is regarded, he
belonged to an era of the Church when the tumult of invading heresies
awakened in her defence a band of impassioned champions, widely
different from the placid saints of an earlier age. He was very young
when dreams and voices began to reveal to him his vocation, and kindle
his high-wrought nature to sevenfold heat. Self-respect, natural
affection, decency, became in his eyes but stumbling-blocks and snares.
He robbed his father to build a church; and, like so many of the Roman
Catholic saints, confounded filth with humility, exchanged clothes with
beggars, and walked the streets of Assisi in rags amid the hootings of
his townsmen. He vowed perpetual poverty and perpetual beggary, and, in
token of his renunciation of the world, stripped himself naked before
the Bishop of Assisi, and then begged of him in charity a peasant's
mantle. Crowds gathered to his fervid and dramatic eloquence. His
handful of disciples multiplied, till Europe became thickly dotted with
their convents. At the end of the eighteenth century, the three Orders
of Saint Francis numbered a hundred and fifteen thousand friars and
twenty-eight thousand nuns. Four popes, forty-five cardinals, and
forty-six canonized martyrs were enrolled on their record, besides about
two thousand more who had shed their blood for the faith. Their missions
embraced nearly all the known world; and, in 1621, there were in Spanish
America alone five hundred Franciscan convents.

In process of time the Franciscans had relaxed their ancient rigor;
but much of their pristine spirit still subsisted in the Recollets,
a reformed branch of the Order, sometimes known as Franciscans of the
Strict Observance.

Four of their number were named for the mission of New France,--Denis
Jamay, Jean Dolbean, Joseph le Caron, and the lay brother Pacifique du
Plessis. "They packed their church ornaments," says Champlain, "and
we, our luggage." All alike confessed their sins, and, embarking
at Honfleur, reached Quebec at the end of May, 1615. Great was the
perplexity of the Indians as the apostolic mendicants landed beneath the
rock. Their garb was a form of that common to the brotherhood of Saint
Francis, consisting of a rude garment of coarse gray cloth, girt at the
waist with the knotted cord of the Order, a