to the chair of St. Peter as Innocent V. Yet the delay in Dominic's canonization would seem to show that personally he made less impression on his contemporaries than his followers would have us believe. Dying in 1221, the bull enrolling him in the calendar of saints only bears date July 3, 1234. His great colleague, or rival, Francis, who died in 1226, was canonized within two years, in 1228 ; the young Franciscan, Antony of Padua, who died in 1231, was recognized as a saint in 1233 ; and when the great Dominican martyr, St. Peter Martyr, was slain, April 12, 1252, proceedings for his canonization were commenced August 31 of the same year and were completed by March 25, 1253, less than a twelvemonth after his death. That thirteen years should have elapsed in the case of Dominic shows that his merits were recognized but slowly.[1]
If the Franciscans were in the end closely assimilated to the Dominicans, it was through the overmastering demands of the work to be accomplished by both, for in their origin the Orders were destined to objects as diverse as the characters of their founders. If St. Dominic was the type of the active practical missionary, St. Francis was the ideal of the contemplative ascetic, modified by boundless love and charity for his fellows.
Born in 1182, Giovanni Bernardone was the son of a prosperous trader of Assisi, who trained him in his business. Accompanying his father on a voyage to France, he came back with the accomplishment of speaking French, which gained for him among his companions the nickname of Francesco, a name which he adopted as his own. A dissipated youth was brought to a sudden close in his twentieth year by a dangerous illness which resulted in his conversion, and thereafter he devoted himself to works of mercy and charity, earning for himself with no little verisimilitude the reputation of insanity. In order to restore the dilapidated church of St. Damiani he stole a quantity of his fa-
- ↑ Bern. Guidon. Tract, de Magist. (Martene VI. 403-4). — Ejusd. Hist.'Convent. Praedic. (lb. 459).— Nic. de Trivetti Chron. ann. 1221, 1243, 1276.— Hist. Ordin. Praedie. c. 7.— Mag. Bull. Roman. I., 73, 74, 77, 94.
An enumeration of the Dominican Order made in 1337, at the request of Benedict XII., showed about twelve thousand members. Preger, Vorarbeiten zu einer Geschichte der deutschen Mystik (Zeitschrift fiir die hist. Theol. 1869, p. 12).
