" A low fever contracted when
with his fellow citizens he fought against the Perugians turned his
thoughts to the things of eternity. Upon his recovery he determined to
devote himself to the service of his fellow man for the honor of God.
His renunciation of the things of this life was dramatic. To swerve him
from the new life his father had cited him to appear before the Bishop.
Francis, unmoved by the appeal of his father persisted in his
resolution. Stripping himself of the clothes he wore, the Bishop
covering his nakedness, Francis gave his clothes to his father saying,
"Hitherto I have called you Father, henceforth I desire to say only Our
Father who art in heaven." Then and there as Dante sings, were
solemnized Francis' nuptials with his beloved Spouse, the Lady Poverty,
under which name, in the mystical language afterwards so familiar to
Francis, "he comprehended the total surrender of all wordly goods,
honors and privileges." He went forth and attracted disciples. With
these partaking of his zeal and animated by his charity, he labored to
make his generation turn from the sordid to the spiritual, diffusing
over all the people a tender love of nature and God.
Among his disciples--great minds of the time--were Thomas of Celano, one
of the literary geniuses of the day, the author of the sublime Dies
Irae--a religious poem chanted to this day at every funeral high mass
in the Catholic Church, and frequently sung or played in great opera
houses,--Bonaventure, professor of philosophy and theology at the
university of Paris, Roger Bacon, the friar, the renowned teacher at
Paris and Oxford, Duns Scotus, the subtile doctor.
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