Life of St. Francis of Assisi

To feel the change which he brought about we must read the sermons of his contemporaries; declamatory, scholastic, subtile, they delighted in the minutiæ of exegesis or dogma, serving up refined dissertations on the most obscure texts of the Old Testament, to hearers starving for a simple and wholesome diet.

With Francis, on the contrary, all is incisive, clear, practical. He pays no attention to the precepts of the rhetoricians, he forgets himself completely, thinking only of the end desired, the conversion of souls. And conversion was not in his view something vague and indistinct, which must take place only between God and the hearer. No, he will have immediate and practical proofs of conversion. Men must give up ill-gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with their adversaries.

At Assisi he threw himself valiantly into the thick of civil dissensions. The agreement of 1202 between the parties who divided the city had been wholly ephemeral. The common people were continually demanding new liberties, which the nobles and burghers would yield to them only under the pressure of fear. Francis took up the cause of the weak, the minores, and succeeded in reconciling them with the rich, the majores.

His spiritual family had not as yet, properly speaking, a name, for, unlike those too hasty spirits who baptize their productions before they have come to light, he was waiting for the occasion that should reveal the true name which he ought to give it.19 One day someone was reading the Rule in his presence. When he came to the passage, "Let the brethren, wherever they may find themselves called to labor or to serve, never take an office which shall put them over others, but on the contrary, let them be always under (sint minores) all those who may be in that house,"20 these words sint minores of the Rule, in the circumstances then existing in the city, suddenly appeared to him as a providential indication. His institution should be called the Order of the Brothers Minor.

We may imagine the effect of this determination. The Saint, for already this magic word had burst forth where he appeared,21 the Saint had spoken. It was he who was about to bring peace to the city, acting as arbiter between the two factions which rent it.