[6.] By what right did he begin to preach? By what right did he, a mere deacon, admit to profession and cut off the hair of a young girl of eighteen? That is an episcopal function, one which can only devolve even upon priests by an express commission.
[7.] Isaiah i. 10-17. Cf. Joel 2, Psalm 50.
[8.] The chronicles of Orvieto (Archivio, storico italiano, t. i., of 1889, pp. 7 and following) are nothing more than a list, as melancholy as they are tedious of wars, which, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, all the places of that region carried on, from the greatest to the smallest.
[9.] Do not forget that in the thirteenth century Italy was not a mere geographical expression. It was of all the countries of Europe the one which, notwithstanding its partitions, had the clearest consciousness of its unity. The expression profectus et honor Italiæ often appeared from the pen of Innocent III. See, for instance, the bull of April 16, 1198, Mirari cogimur, addressed particularly to the Assisans.
[10.] Note what the Fioretti say of Brother Bernard: "Stava solo sulle cime dei monti altissimi contemplando le cose celesti." Fior., 28. The learned historian of Assisi, Mr. Cristofani, has used similar expressions; speaking of St. Francis, he says: "Nuovo Christo in somma e pero degno d'essere riguardoto come la piu gigantesca, la piu splendida, la piu cara tra le grandi figure campeggianti nell' aere del medio evo" (Storia d'Assisi, t. i., p. 70, ed. of 1885).
[11.] It remains open all night.