t real outburst of Christmas joy in a popular tongue is found in
Italy, in the poems of that strange "minstrel of the Lord," the
Franciscan Jacopone da Todi (b. 1228, d. 1306). _Franciscan_, in that
name we have an indication of the change in religious feeling that came
over the western world, and |37| especially Italy, in the thirteenth
century.{9} For the twenty all-too-short years of St. Francis's
apostolate have passed, and a new attitude towards God and man and the
world has become possible. Not that the change was due solely to St.
Francis; he was rather the supreme embodiment of the ideals and
tendencies of his day than their actual creator; but he was the spark
that kindled a mighty flame. In him we reach so important a turning-point
in the history of Christmas that we must linger awhile at his side.

Early Franciscanism meant above all the democratizing, the humanizing of
Christianity; with it begins that "carol spirit" which is the most
winning part of the Christian Christmas, the spirit which, while not
forgetting the divine side of the Nativity, yet delights in its simple
humanity, the spirit that links the Incarnation to the common life of the
people, that brings human tenderness into religion. The faithful no
longer contemplate merely a theological mystery, they are moved by
affectionate devotion to the Babe of Bethlehem, realized as an actual
living child, God indeed, yet feeling the cold of winter, the roughness
of the manger bed.

St. Francis, it must be remembered, was not a man of high birth, but the
son of a silk merchant, and his appeal was made chiefly to the traders
and skilled workmen of the cities, who, in his day, were rising to
importance, coming, in modern Socialist terms, to class-consciousness.
The monks, although boys of low birth were sometimes admitted into the
cloister, were in sympathy one with the upper classes, and monastic
religion and culture were essentially aristocratic. The rise of the
Franciscans meant the bringing home of Christianity to masses of
town-workers, homely people, who needed a religion full of vivid
humanity, and whom the pathetic story of the Nativity would peculiarly
touch.

Love to man, the sense of human brotherhood--that was the great thing
which St. Francis brought home to his age. The message, certainly, was
not new, but he realized it with infectious intensity. The second great
commandment, "Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself," had not indeed
been