e Orders. Petty
intrigues were organized, in which the devotees had each his part, to
lead such or such a famous doctor to assume the habit.[15] If the
object of St. Francis had been scientific, the friars of Bologna, Paris,
and Oxford could not have done more.[16]

The current was so strong that the elder Orders were swept away in it
whether they would or no; twenty years later the Cistercians also
desired to become legists, theologians, decretalists, and the rest.

Perhaps Francis did not in the outset perceive the gravity of the
danger, but illusion was no longer possible, and from this time he
showed, as we have seen, an implacable firmness. If later on his thought
was travestied, the guilty ones--the popes and most of the
ministers-general--were obliged to resort to feats of prestidigitation
that are not to their credit. "Suppose," he would say, "that you had
subtility and learning enough to know all things, that you were
acquainted with all languages, the courses of the stars, and all the
rest, what is there in that to be proud of? A single demon knows more on
these subjects than all the men in this world put together.[17] But
there is one thing that the demon is incapable of, and which is the
glory of man: to be faithful to God."[18]

Definite information with regard to the chapters of 1222 and 1223 is
wanting. The proposed modifications of the project of 1221 were
discussed by the ministers[19] and afterward definitively settled by
Cardinal Ugolini. The latter had long conferences on the subject with
Francis, who has himself given us the account of them.[20]

The result of them all was the Rule of 1223. Very soon a swarm of
marvellous stories, which it would be tedious to examine in detail, came
to be clustered around the origin of this document; all that we need to
retain of them is the memory that they keep of the struggles of Francis
against the ministers for the preservation of his ideal.

Before going to Rome to ask for the final approbation he had meditated
long in the solitude of Monte Colombo, near Rieti. This hill was soon
represented as a new Sinai, and the disciples pictured their master on
its heights receiving another Decalogue from the hands of Jesus
himself.[21]

Angelo Clareno, one of the most complacent narrators of these
traditions, takes upon himself to point out their slight value; he shows
us Honorious III. modifying an essential passage in the plan at the last
moment.[22] I have alre