to you that Master Reynier, Prior of St. Michael,
has entered the Order of the Brothers Minor, an Order which is
multiplying rapidly on all sides, because it imitates the
primitive Church and follows the life of the Apostles in
everything. The master of these Brothers is named Brother
Francis; he is so lovable that he is venerated by everyone.
Having come into our army, he has not been afraid, in his zeal
for the faith, to go to that of our enemies. For days together
he announced the word of God to the Saracens, but with little
success; then the sultan, King of Egypt, asked him in secret to
entreat God to reveal to him, by some miracle, which is the best
religion. Colin, the Englishman, our clerk, has entered the same
Order, as also two others of our companions, Michael and Dom
Matthew, to whom I had given the rectorship of the Sainte
Chapelle. Cantor and Henry have done the same, and still others
whose names I have forgotten."[24]

The long and enthusiastic chapter which the same author gives to the
Brothers Minor in his great work on the Occident is too diffuse to find
a place here. It is a living and accurate picture of the early times of
the Order; in it Francis's sermon before the sultan is again related. It
was written at a period when the friars had still neither monasteries
nor churches, and when the chapters were held once or twice a year; this
gives us a date anterior to 1223, and probably even before 1221. We have
here, therefore, a verification of the narratives of Thomas of Celano
and the Three Companions, and they find in it their perfect
confirmation.

As to the interviews between Francis and the sultan, it is prudent to
keep to the narratives of Jacques de Vitry and William of Tyre.[25]
Although the latter wrote at a comparatively late date (between 1275 and
1295), he followed a truly historic method, and founded his work on
authentic documents; we see that he knows no more than Jacques de Vitry
of the proposal said to have been made by Francis to pass through a fire
if the priests of Mahomet would do as much, intending so to establish
the superiority of Christianity.

We know how little such an appeal to signs is characteristic of St.
Francis. Perhaps the story, which comes from Bonaventura, is born of a
misconception. The sultan, like a new Pharaoh, may have laid it upon the
strange preacher to prove his mission by miracles. However this ma