with the office of
preaching and from its founder's time down to the present day the one
who acts as the Pope's Theologian has been taken from the ranks of this
order. Besides preaching to all classes of Christian society and
evangelizing the heathen, the Dominicans in Dante's day fought against
heresy and schism, lectured in the universities, toiled among the poor,
activities in which the order is still engaged.

But perhaps the man whose spiritual influence was greatest in
medievalism, if not in all the history of Christianity, was Francis of
Assisi, who "all seraphical in order rose a sun upon the world." (Par.
XI, 37.) Born at Assisi in Umbria in 1182, the son of a wealthy cloth
merchant and of Pica, a member of a noble family of Provence, Francis
grew up a handsome, gay and gallant youth "the prime favorite among the
young nobles of the town, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leader
of civil revels, the very king of frolic." A low fever contracted when
with his fellow citizens he fought against the Perugians turned his
thoughts to the things of eternity. Upon his recovery he determined to
devote himself to the service of his fellow man for the honor of God.

His renunciation of the things of this life was dramatic. To swerve him
from the new life his father had cited him to appear before the Bishop.
Francis, unmoved by the appeal of his father persisted in his
resolution. Stripping himself of the clothes he wore, the Bishop
covering his nakedness, Francis gave his clothes to his father saying,
"Hitherto I have called you Father, henceforth I desire to say only Our
Father who art in heaven." Then and there as Dante sings, were
solemnized Francis' nuptials with his beloved Spouse, the Lady Poverty,
under which name, in the mystical language afterwards so familiar to
Francis, "he comprehended the total surrender of all wordly goods,
honors and privileges." He went forth and attracted disciples. With
these partaking of his zeal and animated by his charity, he labored to
make his generation turn from the sordid to the spiritual, diffusing
over all the people a tender love of nature and God.

Among his disciples--great minds of the time--were Thomas of Celano, one
of the literary geniuses of the day, the author of the sublime Dies
Irae--a religious poem chanted to this day at every funeral high mass
in the Catholic Church, and frequently sung or played in great opera
houses,--Bonaventure, professor of philosophy