ain of the Galilean, into the number of those who _give their
lives a ransom for many_.[37]

Yet this love with which at St. Damian Francis felt himself surrounded
frightened him at times. He feared that his death, making too great a
void, would imperil the institution itself, and he took pains to remind
the sisters that he would not be always with them. One day when he was
to preach to them, instead of entering the pulpit he caused some ashes
to be brought, and after having spread them around him and scattered
some on his head, he intoned the _Miserere_, thus reminding them that he
was but dust and would soon return to dust.[38]

But in general it is at St. Damian that St. Francis is the most
himself; it is under the shade of its olive-trees, with Clara caring for
him, that he composes his finest work, that which Ernest Renan called
the most perfect utterance of modern religious sentiment, the "Canticle
of the Sun."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Easy as it is to seize the large outlines of her life, it is
with difficulty that one makes a detailed and documentary study
of it. There is nothing surprising in this, for the Clarisses
felt the rebound of the struggles which divided and rapidly
transformed the Order of the Brothers Minor. The greater number
of the documents have disappeared; we give summary indication of
those which will most often be cited: 1. Life of St. Clara by an
anonymous author. A. SS., _Aug._, t. ii., pp. 739-768. 2. Her
Will, given by Wadding (_Annales_, 1253, No. 5), but which does
not appear to be free from alteration. (Compare, for example,
the opening of this will with Chapter VI. of the Rule of the
Damianites approved by Innocent IV., August 8, 1253.) 3. The
bull of canonization, given September 26, 1255--that is to say,
two years after Clara's death; it is much longer than these
documents ordinarily are, and relates the principal incidents of
her life. A. SS., _loc. cit._, p. 749; Potthast, 16,025. 4. Her
correspondence. Unhappily we have only fragments of it; the
Bollandists, without saying whence they drew them, have inserted
four of her letters in the _Acta_ of St. Agnes of Bohemia, to
whom they were addressed. (A. SS., _Martii_, t. i., pp.
506-508.)

[2] Reading the Chronicle of Fra Salimbeni, which represents the
average Franciscan character ab