oblid-ed him to defer his departure. Innocent III had approved of his order h}' word of mouth. Honorius III who sufccedod Innocent in 1219, had appointed cardinal Ugolino to the post of protector of the Minor- ite bretlireii, and approved of tlieir missions. Francis set sail with lUuminatus of Keate and other compan- ions from Aiicona, and landed at Acre or Ptolemais in Palestine. Tlie Christian arm}' in the sixtli crusade laj' at that time before Damiaetta. Francis was taken by tlie infidel scouts, and brought before the sultan, who treated him as a madman, and sent him bade to the Christian camp. He returned by Palestine into Italy, where he had the affliction to lind that Elias, whom he had left vicar-general of his order, had intro- duced several novelties and mitigations, and wore him- self a habit of finer stuff than the rest, with a longer capuche or hood, and longer sleeves. Francis called such mnovators bastard children of his order, and de- posed Elias from his office. Resigning tlie general- ship that year (1220), he caused Peter of Cortona to be chosen minister general, and after his death, in 1221, Elias to be restored. Francis continued always to di- rect the government of his order personally while he lived. Having revised his rule and presented it to Ho- norius III, it was confirmed liy a bull dated tlie 29th of Novem'.ier, 1223. In 1215, Count Orlando of Cortona had bestowed on Francis a secluded and agreeable res- idence in Mount Alberno, a part of the Apennines, and built a church there for tlie friars. To this solitude Francis was accustomed to retire. Shortly before his death, according to his monkish chroniclers, he had a vision of Christ under the form of a sirapli. " The vision disappearing, left in his soul a seraphic ardor, and marked his body with a figure conformed to that of the crucified, as if his body, like wax, had received the impression of a seal ; for soon the marks of the nails began to appear in his hands and feet, such as he had seen in the image of the God-man crucified. See SnuMATA. His hands and feet were pierced with nails in the middle : the heads of th-i wi'ls, round and black, loere on the palms <flke hands and fore part <fthe fet. The points ofth'i nails, which were a little long, and tvhich appeared on the other side, were bent bach- wards on the wound which they made. He also had on Ms right side a 7'ed wound, as if he ha I been pierced with a lance, which often shed swrel blood on his tunic," Francis is said to have concealed this singular favor of heaven ever after b}'' covering his hands witli his habit, and by wearing shoes and stockings^a modesty which pi'evented otiiers from seeing, and therefore from bearing witness to the marks, for wiiose existence we have no evidence. The bisliop of Ohnutz denounced the miracle as irrational. A papal bull in 1255 vindi- cated the claims of the miracle. "The Dominicans I'eprescnted tlie whole affair as an imposture, the in- vention of the new order of Franciscans to raise their credit, but it is now generall}' believed in the Romish Church." Worn out at last, Francis retired to Assisi. In a j'ear he began to act as an itinerant preacher throughout Umbria, and it was "during this time that a woman of Bagnarea brought an infant to him that it might be healed. Francis laiil his hands on the child and it recovered : that child grew to l)e a man, and that man Bonaventura ((]. v.), who proved his grati- tude liy liecoming the biographer of Francis, carefully recording all the wonderful circumstances of his life, and working them up into a beautiful fiction." In the latter part of his life he " attriliuted no value to self-mortilication, in itself considered, but regarded it solely as a means for overcoming sensual desires and for promoting puritj' of heart. Love appeared to him to be the soul of all. Once, when one of the monks, who had carried his fasting to excess, was deprived l>y it of his sleep, and Francis perceived it, he lirought him bread with liis own hands, and exhorted him to eat ; and as the monk still shrunk from touching it, he set him the example, and ate first. On the next morn-
ing, when he assembled his monks, he told them what he had done, and added, 'Take not the eating, but the love, my brethren, for 3'our example.' Later in life, he did not shrinlc from preaching before the pope and the cardinals. 'His words,' says Bonaventura, 'pen- etrated, like glowing fire, to the inmost depths of the heart.' Once, when he was to preach before the Ro- man court, for which occasion he had committed to memoiy a carefully written disaiurse, he felt all of a sudden ;.s if he had forgotten the whole, so that he had not a word to say. But after he had openly avow- ed what had occurred to him, and invoked the grace of the Holj- Spirit, he found utterance for words full of power, which produced a wonderful effect on all present. Again, as the ascetic bent admits of being easily converted into a contempt of nature, so we can- not but regard as tlie more remarkable that love, push- ed even to enthusiasm, with which Francis embraced all nature as the creation of God ; that sympathj' and feeling of relationship with all nature, by virtue of its common derivation from God as Creator, which seems to bear more nearly the impress of the Hindoo than of the Christian religion, leading him to address not only the brutes, but even inanimate creatures, as brotliers and sisters. He had a compassion for brute animals, especiallj' such as are employed in the sacred Scrip- tures as symbols of Christ. This bent of fanatical sympathy with nature furnished perhaps a point of en- trance for the pantheistic element which in later times found admission with a party among the Franciscans" (Neander, Church History, Torrey's transl. iv, 273 sq.). Francis died in 122(3, and was canonized b}- Gregoiy IX in 1230. His order soon rose to great power and splendor. See Franciscans. His writings (epistles, sermons, ascetic treatises, discourses, poems, etc.), with his life by Bonaventura, were published by La Haj'e, general of the Minorites (Par. 1611, fol.). His life will also be found in Wadding, Annales Minorum, vol. i (Roma, 1731); Voigt, Leben von Franz von Assisi (Tubing. 1810); Chavin de MalanjTlJe de St. Francois (Par. 1811, 8vo) ; and in Bohringer, Kirche Christi in Biograph'en, vol. ii, pt. ii, p. 489 ; Hase, Franz von As- sis, ein HelUgenhild (Lips. 1856). — Hase, Ch. History, p. 265; Mosheim, Ch. Hist. cent, xiii, pt. ii, ch. ii, n. 49; Jortin, Remarks on Eccles. History, vol. v ; Hook, Ec- cles. Biography, v, 206.