t days)
we should doubtless be able to find our way in the medley of documents,
more or less corrupted, from which it comes to us, and little by little
we might find the starting-point of this dream in a friar who sees
blinded humanity kneeling around Portiuncula to recover sight.[10]

It is not difficult to see in general what led to the materialization of
this graceful fancy: people remembered Francis's attachment to the
chapel where he had heard the decisive words of the gospel, and where
St. Clara in her turn had entered upon a new life.

When the great Basilica of Assisi was built, drawing to itself pilgrims
and privileges, an opposition of principles and of inspiration came to
be added to the petty rivalry between it and Portiuncula.

The zealots of poverty said aloud that though the Saint's body rested in
the basilica his heart was at Portiuncula.[11] By dint of repeating and
exaggerating what Francis had said about the little sanctuary, they came
to give a precise and so to say doctrinal sense to utterances purely
mystical.

The violences and persecutions of the party of the Large Observance
under the generalship of Crescentius[12] (1244-1247) aroused a vast
increase of fervor among their adversaries. To the bull of Innocent IV.
declaring the basilica thenceforth _Caput et Mater_ of the Order[13]
the Zealots replied by the narratives of Celano's Second Life and the
legends of that period.[14] They went so far as to quote a promise of
Francis to make it in perpetuity the _Mater et Caput_ of his
institute.[15]

In this way the two parties came to group themselves around these two
buildings. Even to-day it is the same. The Franciscans of the Strict
Observance occupy Portiuncula, while the Basilica of Assisi is in the
hands of the Conventuals (Large Observance), who have adopted all the
interpretations and mitigations of the Rules; they are worthy folk, who
live upon their dividends. By a phenomenon, unique, I think, in the
annals of the Church, they have pushed the freedom of their infidelity
to the point of casting off the habit, the popular brown cassock.
Dressed all in black, shod and hatted, nothing distinguishes them from
the secular clergy except a modest little cord.

Poor Francis! That he may have the joy of feeling his tomb brushed by a
coarse gown, some daring friar must overcome his very natural
repugnances, and come to kneel there. The indulgence of August 2d is
then the reply of the Zealots to t