of St. Francis, but
also of all the Brothers. In poverty the _gente poverelle_ had found
safety, love, liberty; and all the efforts of the new apostles are
directed to the keeping of this precious treasure.

Their worship sometimes might seem excessive. They showed their spouse
those delicate attentions, those refinements of courtesy so frequent in
the morning light of a betrothal, but which one gradually forgets till
they become incomprehensible.[12]

The number of disciples continually increased; almost every week brought
new recruits; the year 1211 was without doubt devoted by Francis to a
tour in Umbria and the neighboring provinces. His sermons were short
appeals to conscience; his heart went out to his hearers in ineffable
tones, so that when men tried to repeat what they had heard they found
themselves incapable.[13] The Rule of 1221 has preserved for us a
summary of these appeals:

"Here is an exhortation which all the Brothers may make when
they think best: Fear and honor God, praise and bless him. Give
thanks unto him. Adore the Lord, Almighty God, in Trinity and
unity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Repent and make
fruits meet for repentance, for you know that we shall soon die.
Give, and it shall be given unto you. Forgive, and you shall be
forgiven; for if you forgive not, God will not forgive you.
Blessed are they who die repenting, for they shall be in the
kingdom of heaven.... Abstain carefully from all evil, and
persevere in the good until the end."[14]

We see how simple and purely ethical was the early Franciscan preaching.
The complications of dogma and scholasticism are entirely absent from
it. To understand how new this was and how refreshing to the soul we
must study the disciples that came after him.

With St. Anthony of Padua ([Cross] June 13, 1231; canonized in 1233[15]),
the most illustrious of them all, the descent is immense. The distance
between these two men is as great as that which separates Jesus from
St. Paul.

I do not judge the disciple; he was of his time in not knowing how to
say simply what he thought, in always desiring to subtilize it, to
extract it from passages in the Bible turned from their natural meaning
by efforts at once laborious and puerile; what the alchemists did in
their continual making of strange mixtures from which they fancied that
they should bring out gold, the preachers did to the texts, in order to
bri