[28] At the Marriage of Cana, St. John, chapter ii., verses 3-5.
[29] St. John ii., verse 12, and St. Matthew, chapter xii., verse 46.
[30] St. John, chapter xix., verse 25.
[31] Wordsworth's "She was a Phantom of Delight."
[32] From some verses by Edith M. Thomas, "A Della Robbia Garland," printed in The Critic, December, 1901.
VIII
THE MEETING OF ST. FRANCIS AND ST. DOMINICK
BY ANDREA DELLA ROBBIA
In the beginning of the thirteenth century two men living in different countries of Europe were struck simultaneously with the same idea. They were St. Dominick, the Spaniard, and St. Francis, the Italian, and each determined to found a new religious order.[33] Hitherto the members of religious orders had shut themselves up in the solitude of monasteries and convents. In the new plan they were to mingle freely with the people, calling themselves brothers, or friars.
The first object of the Dominicans was to be preachers, and they were called Frati Predicatori. The Franciscans took the humbler name of the Frati Minori, or lesser brothers. The members of both orders were bound by a vow of poverty to possess nothing of their own. Like the disciples whom Jesus sent out, they were to carry neither purse nor scrip, but beg their food and raiment on their way. It is for this that they are called mendicant orders.