warm-hearted followers of St. Francis is evident from the fact that he
gloried in his membership of the Third Order, wearing about his body the
Franciscan cincture for chastity and it is not unlikely that at Ravenna
before he finally closed his eyes upon the turmoil of the world full of
vicissitudes, he modestly requested that he be buried in the simple
habit of the order and be laid to rest in a tomb attached to their
monastery. In any event such was his burial.

For our sympathetic understanding of the supremacy of religion in
Dante's day, may I again quote Ralph Adams Cram, whose words on the
eleventh century are equally applicable to the era of our Florentine and
to his country? Dr. Cram writes: "It is hard for us to think back into
such an alien spirit and time as this and so understand how with
one-tenth of its present population England could support so vast and
varied a religious establishment, used as we are to an age where
religion is only a detail for many and for most a negligible factor. We
are only too familiar with the community that could barely support one
parish church, boasting its one-half dozen religious organizations, all
together claiming the adherence of only a minority of the population,
but in the Middle Ages, religion was not only the most important and
pervasive thing, it was a moral obligation on every man, woman and
child, and rejection or even indifference was unthinkable. If once we
grasp this fact," continues Cram, "we can understand how in the eleventh
century, the whole world should cover itself with 'its white robe of
churches.'"

The second great fact observable in the times of Dante is that it was an
age of inquiry and of efficient craftsmanship. Many of our generation
think that Dante's day being so far removed from the age of printing and
the spirit of positivism, and being given to the upholding of authority