Here and there in the world there are many souls capable of all heroism,
if only they can see before them a true leader. St. Francis became for
these the guide they had longed for, and whatever was best in humanity
at that time leaped to follow in his footsteps.

This movement, which was destined to result in the constitution of a new
family of monks, was in the beginning anti-monastic. It is not rare for
history to have similar contradictions to record. The meek Galilean who
preached the religion of a personal revelation, without ceremonial or
dogmatic law, triumphed only on condition of being conquered, and of
permitting his words of spirit and life to be confiscated by a church
essentially dogmatic and sacerdotal.

In the same way the Franciscan movement was originally, if not the
protest of the Christian consciousness against monachism, at least the
recognition of an ideal singularly higher than that of the clergy of
that time. Let us picture to ourselves the Italy of the beginning of the
thirteenth century with its divisions, its perpetual warfare, its
depopulated country districts, the impossibility of tilling the fields
except in the narrow circle which the garrisons of the towns might
protect; all these cities from the greatest to the least occupied in
watching for the most favorable moment for falling upon and pillaging
their neighbors; sieges terminated by unspeakable atrocities, and after
all this, famine, speedily followed by pestilence to complete the
devastation. Then let us picture to ourselves the rich Benedictine
abbeys, veritable fortresses set upon the hill-tops, whence they seemed
to command all the surrounding plains. There was nothing surprising in
their prosperity. Shielded by their inviolability, they were in these
disordered times the only refuge of peaceful souls and timid hearts.[4]
The monks were in great majority deserters from life, who for motives