[16] In or about 1210 Pope Innocent III. approved the Rule of St. Francis.
[17] “The head of the fold:” a term of the Greek Church, designating the head of one or more monasteries.
[18] In 1223, Honorius III. confirmed the sanction of the Order.
[19] Probably the Sultan of Egypt, at the time of the Fifth Crusade, in 1219.
[20] To the harvest of good grain in Italy.
[21] Mount Alvernia.
[22] The Stigmata.
[23] St. Francis died in 1226.
“Think now of what sort was he,[1] who was a worthy colleague to keep the bark of Peter on the deep sea to its right aim; and this was our Patriarch:[2] wherefore thou canst see that whoever follows him as he commands loads good merchandise. But his flock has become so greedy of strange food that. it cannot but be scattered over diverse meadows; and as his sheep, remote and vagabond, go farther from him, the emptier of milk they return to the fold. Truly there are some of them who fear the harm, and keep close to the shepherd; but they are so few that little cloth suffices for their cowls. Now if my words are not obscure, if thy hearing has been attentive, if thou recallest to mind that which I have said, thy wish will be content in part, because thou wilt see the plant wherefrom they are hewn,[3] and thou wilt see how the wearer of the thong reasons—'Where well one fattens if one does not stray.'
[1] How holy he must have been.