the plain. There they gathered
around their master to receive his spiritual counsels, and thither they
retired to meditate and pray.[3] It would be a gross mistake, however,
to suppose that contemplation absorbed them completely during the days
which were not consecrated to missionary tours: a part of their time was
spent in manual labor.

The intentions of St. Francis have been more misapprehended on this
point than on any other, but it may be said that nowhere is he more
clear than when he ordains that his friars shall gain their livelihood
by the work of their hands. He never dreamed of creating a _mendicant_
order, he created a _laboring_ order. It is true we shall often see him
begging and urging his disciples to do as much, but these incidents
ought not to mislead us; they are meant to teach that when a friar
arrived in any locality and there spent his strength for long days in
dispensing spiritual bread to famished souls, he ought not to blush to
receive material bread in exchange. To work was the rule, to beg the
exception; but this exception was in nowise dishonorable. Did not Jesus,
the Virgin, the disciples live on bread bestowed? Was it not rendering a
great service to those to whom they resorted to teach them charity?

Francis in his poetic language gave the name of _mensa Domini_, the
table of the Lord, to this table of love around which gathered the
_little poor ones_. The bread of charity is the bread of angels; and it
is also that of the birds, which reap not nor gather into barns.

We are far enough, in this case, from that mendicity which is understood
as a means of existence and the essential condition of a life of
idleness. It is the opposite extreme, and we are true and just to St.
Francis and to the origin of the mendicant orders only when we do not
separate the obligation of labor from the praise of mendicity.[4]

No doubt this zeal did not last long, and Thomas of Celano already
entitles his chapters, "_Lament before God over the idleness and
gluttony of the friars_;" but we must not permit this speedy and
inevitable decadence to veil from our sight the holy and manly beauty of
the origin.

With all his gentleness Francis knew how to show an inflexible severity
toward the idle; he even went so far as to dismiss a friar who refused
to work.[5] Nothing in this matter better shows the intentions of the
Poverello than the life of Brother Egidio, one of his dearest
companions, him of whom he sai