y accord to you even more than you
ask."[24]

Francis and his companions were too little familiar with Roman
phraseology to perceive that after all the Holy See had simply consented
to suspend judgment in view of the uprightness of their intentions and
the purity of their faith.[25]

The flowers of clerical rhetoric hid from them the shackles which had
been laid upon them. The curia, in fact, was not satisfied with
Francis's vow of fidelity, it desired in addition to stamp the Penitents
with the seal of the Church: the Cardinal of San Paolo was deputed to
confer upon them the tonsure. From this time they were all under the
spiritual authority of the Roman Church.

The thoroughly lay creation of St. Francis had become, in spite of
himself, an ecclesiastical institution: it must soon degenerate into a
clerical institution. All unawares, the Franciscan movement had been
unfaithful to its origin. The prophet had abdicated in favor of the
priest, not indeed without possibility of return, for when a man has
once reigned, I would say, thought, in liberty--what other kingdom is
there on this earth?--he makes but an indifferent slave; in vain he
tries to submit; in spite of himself it happens at times that he lifts
his head proudly, he rattles his chains, he remembers the struggles,
sadness, anguish of the days of liberty, and weeps their loss. Among the
sons of St. Francis many were destined to weep their lost liberty, many
to die to conquer it again.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The date usually fixed for the approval of the Rule by
Innocent III. is the month of August, 1209. The Bollandists had
thought themselves able to infer it from the account where
Thomas of Celano (1 Cel., 43) refers to the passage through
Umbria of the Emperor Otho IV., on his way to be crowned at Rome
(October 4, 1209). Upon this journey see Boehmer-Ficker, _Regesta
Imperii. Dei Regesten des Kaiserreichs unter Philipp, Otto IV._,
etc., Insbruck, 1879, 4to, pp. 96 and 97. As this account
follows that of the approval, they conclude that the latter was
earlier. But Thomas of Celano puts this account there because
the context led up to it, and not in order to fix its date.
Everything leads to the belief that the Brothers retired
(_recolligebat_, 1 Cel., 42) to Rivo-Torto before and after
their journey to Rome. Besides, the time between April 23d and
the middle