His spiritual family had not as yet, properly speaking, a name, for, unlike those too hasty spirits who baptize their productions before they have come to light, he was waiting for the occasion that should reveal the true name which he ought to give it.[19] One day someone was reading the Rule in his presence. When he came to the passage, "Let the brethren, wherever they may find themselves called to labor or to serve, never take an office which shall put them over others, but on the contrary, let them be always under (sint minores) all those who may be in that house,"[20] these words sint minores of the Rule, in the circumstances then existing in the city, suddenly appeared to him as a providential indication. His institution should be called the Order of the Brothers Minor.
We may imagine the effect of this determination. The Saint, for already this magic word had burst forth where he appeared,[21] the Saint had spoken. It was he who was about to bring peace to the city, acting as arbiter between the two factions which rent it.
We still possess the document of this pace civile, exhumed, so to speak, from the communal archives of Assisi by the learned and pious Antonio Cristofani.[22] The opening lines are as follows:
"In the name of God!
"May the supreme grace of the Holy Spirit assist us! To the honor of our Lord Jesus Christ, the blessed Virgin Mary, the Emperor Otho, and Duke Leopold.
"This is the statute and perpetual agreement between the Majori and Minori of Assisi.
"Without common consent there shall never be any sort of alliance either with the pope and his nuncios or legates, or with the emperor, or with the king, or with their nuncios or legates, or with any city or town, or with any important person, except with a common accord they shall do all which there may be to do for the honor, safety, and advantage of the commune of Assisi."
What follows is worthy of the beginning. The lords, in consideration of a small periodical payment, should renounce all the feudal rights; the inhabitants of the villages subject to Assisi were put on a par with those of the city, foreigners were protected, the assessment of taxes was fixed. On Wednesday, November 9, 1210, this agreement was signed and sworn to in the public place of Assisi; it was made in such good faith that exiles were able to return in peace, and from this day we find in the city registers the names of those émigrés who, in 1202, had betrayed their city and provoked the disastrous war with Perugia. Francis might well be happy. Love had triumphed, and for several years there were at Assisi neither victors nor vanquished.
In the mystic marriages which here and there in history unite a man to a people, something takes place of which the transports of sense, the delirium of love, seem to be the only symbol; a moment comes in which saints, or men of genius, feel unknown powers striving mightily within them; they strive, they seek, they struggle until, triumphing over all obstacles, they have forced trembling, swooning humanity to conceive by them.
This moment had come to St. Francis.