The power of these men sprang from their personalities and the vivida vis (their contemporaries would have said, the grace of God) realizing itself in every word and act. Bernard's power was more directly dependent upon the conditions of his epoch, and his influence was more limited in duration.
The reason is not far to seek. Both men were of the Middle Ages, even of those decades in which they lived. But Bernard's strength was part of the medium wherein he worked and the evil against which he fought—the clerical corruptions, the heresies, the schisms and political controversies, the warfare of Christ with Mahomet,—all matters of vital import for his time, but which were to change and pass.
Francis, on the other hand, was occupied with none of these. He was no scourge of clerical corruptions, no scourge of anything; he knew nought of heresy or schism, nothing of politics or war; into the story of his life there comes not even a far-off echo of the Albigensian Crusade or the conflict between pope and emperor. His life appears detached from the special conditions of his time; it is neither held within them nor compelled by them, but only by its inner impulse. For it was not occupied with the exigencies of Italy and Germany, or Southern France, during that first quarter of the thirteenth century, when De Montfort was hurling the orthodox and brutal north upon the fair but heretical provinces of Languedoc, and when
sanctorum, t. 46 (Oct. t. 2), pp. 723–742; also ed. by Amoni (Rome, 1880). (Amoni's texts differ somewhat from those of the Bollandist.) It is also edited by Pulignani (Foligno, 1898), and edited and hypothetically completed from the problematical Italian version, by Marcellino da Civezza and Teofilo Domenichelli (Rome, 1899). Perhaps most vivid of all the early sources is the so-called Speculum perfectionis seu S. Francisci Assisiensis legenda antiquissima auctore fratre Leone, as edited by Paul Sabatier (Paris, 1898). It has been translated into English several times. Its date and authenticity are still under violent discussion. One may conveniently refer to the article "Franciscan Literature" in the Edinburgh Review for January 1904, and to P. Robinson's Short Introduction to Franciscan Literature (New York, 1907) for further references, which the student must supplement for himself from the mass of recent literature in books and periodicals touching the life of Francis and its sources. See also Fierens, La Question franciscaine, etc. (Louvain, 1909). Among modern Lives, that of Sabatier is probably known to all readers of this note. The Lives by Bonghi and Le Monnier may be referred to. Gebhard's Italie mystique is interesting in connection with Francis.
