At the beginning Francis and his companions occupied a little cottage just outside the wall of the city of Assisi, but when their number increased they retired to a little church called Portiuncula, belonging to the Benedictine monks of Subiaco, who gave it that name because it was built on a small estate or parcel of land which belonged to them. It stands in the open plain, about a mile from Assisi. The Order increased so rapidly that the second General Chapter, held in 1219, was attended by 5000 friars. Pope Innocent III. verbally approved the Order in 1210; a like approbation was given to it in 1215 by the Fourth Lateran Council; and Pope Honorius III. confirmed the Rule by a bull dated the 29th of November, 1223. In 1212 Francis gave his habit to St. Clare, who, under his direction, founded the institute of holy virgins, which was called the Second Order of St. Francis. The nuns of this Order are now called "Poor Clares." The Third Order of St. Francis was instituted by him in 1221, for persons of both sexes, married or single, living in the world, and united by certain rules and exercises of piety compatible with a secular state. St. Francis undertook various missions to spread the knowledge of the Catholic faith. Desiring to win the crown of martyrdom, he went to Palestine in 1219, and passed into the camp of the Saracens. He was captured and taken before the Sultan, whom he earnestly exhorted to embrace the Christian religion. The Sultan granted certain privileges to the Franciscan Order, and permitted its founder to return to Italy.

Two years before his death Francis was praying on Monte Alverno, when there appeared before him a seraph, having between his wings the figure of a man crucified, with his hands and feet stretched out, and fastened to a cross. From this period, it is said, Francis bore in his flesh the " stigmata" or marks of the sacred wounds, and was more inflamed than ever with the seraphic ardour of divine charity. Owing to this circumstance, he received the designation of "seraphic," which has been continued to his Order.

This great saint was only a deacon, his humility having prevented him from being ordained priest.

He died near Assisi, on the 4th of October, 1226, and two years afterwards he was canonized under the auspices of Gregory IX.

The personal appearance of St. Francis is thus described by his friend Thomas de Celano: "He was of middle stature, rather under than over; with an oval face, and full but low forehead; his eyes dark and clear, his hair thick, his eyebrows straight; a straight and delicate nose, a voice soft, yet keen and fiery; close, equal, and white teeth; lips modest, yet subtle; a black beard not thickly grown; a thin neck, square shoulders, short arms, small hands and feet, delicate skin, and little flesh; roughly clothed; sleeping little; his hand ever open in charity."

The Franciscan Order has produced several popes and a great number

of cardinals, bishops, and other persons eminent for learning and virtue. There have been several "reforms of this famous Order, which has always maintained its popularity in the Roman Catholic Church. The Observantists, the Capuchins, the Recollets, and the Discalced Franciscans are branches of the great tree planted by St. Francis of Assisi.

Ruskin, in his "Mornings in Florence," speaks incidentally of the Reformer as follows: "Christianity went on doing her best, in Etruria and elsewhere, for four hundred years, and her best seemed to have come to very little,-when there rose up two men who vowed to God it should come to more. And they made it come to more, forthwith; of which the immediate sign in Florence was that she resolved to have a fine new cross-shaped cathedral instead of her quaint old little octagon one; and a tower beside it that should beat Babel. The two men who were the effectual builders of these were the two great religious Powers and Reformers of the thirteenth century; St. Francis, who taught Christian men how they should behave; and St. Dominic, who taught Christian men what they should think. In brief, one the Apostle of Works, the other of Faith. Each sent his little company of disciples to teach and preach in Florence; St. Francis in 1212; St. Dominic in 1220. And when they had got Florence, as it were, heated through, she burst out into Christian poetry and architecture, of which you have heard much talk-burst into bloom of Arnolfo, Giotto, Dante, Orcagna. Now the gospel of Works, according to St. Francis, lay in three things: You must work without money, and be poor; you must work without pleasure, and be chaste; you must work according to others, and be obedient."

THERE are few men of equal historical importance with Erasmus, whose position has been the occasion of so much controversy. To this day he is ranked by some writers as one of the "Reformers;" that is, as one of the group of men with Luther at their head who, by their teaching and course of action, brought about the separation of great part of Europe from the Papacy, and set up a new dogmatic system in rivalry with that of Rome. The facts, however, are that Erasmus remained in communion with the Church to the day of his death, that he disapproved and opposed the heroic method of Luther, that his beliefs and aims were different from Luther's, and that, while doctrinal reform was a main object with Luther, Erasmus was indifferent about it, and expressly submitted his own judgment to that of the Church.

Erasmus, reputed the greatest scholar and wit of his age, was one of the most powerful instruments of "the new learning." He never pre tended to be a Christian evangelist. He desired a Christian reformation, but it was chiefly a reformation of manners; and this he hoped would be brought about by forces within the Church, by the gradual spread of culture, not by schism and dogmatic revolution. He never leaned to the neo-paganism of the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, his "Ciceronianus" was a covert attack upon the neo pagans whom he dared not assail openly. By his labours as a scholar he prepared the way for the Reformation, from which he held himself aloof; and by his printed Greek Testament he furnished the Reformers with their most potent weapons.

He was born at Rotterdam on the 28th of October, about the year 1466. From the first "misfortune marked him for her own." He was a love-child; and, as his parents were never married, more by others' faults than by their own, he bore the brand of bastardy. His father's name, Gerhard, "the beloved," he translated into Latin "Desiderius," and into Greek "Erasmus." He was tenderly cared for by his parents; but at fourteen lost them both. His guardians proved unfaithful and virtually compelled him to enter a monastery; but the austerities of the monastic life were repulsive to his comfort loving nature, and, quitting his cell, he became private secretary to the Archbishop of Cambray. Soon afterwards he took priest's orders. Next he went to study at Paris, where he had the while to earn his living by teaching. Eager to learn Greek, and without the means of going to Italy, he came to England (1497 or 1498) to study at Oxford, where Greek was taught by scholars who had lately been in Italy. Here he became the warm friend of Colet and More. Colet was not only a lover of the new learning, but a fervent Christian, longing for reformation of the Church, and Erasmus was powerfully impressed by his views and aspirations.

Early in 1300 he left England for Italy, but his money was seized at Dover custom-house, and he had to stay in France. About this time he published his "Adagia," which from small beginnings grew into a large collection of extracts, with witty and learned commentaries. In 1501 appeared his "Enchirid on Militis Christiani," a tract for the times, setting forth the real nature of the Christian religion. It was translated into French, Spanish, and Gere an, and into Fglish by Tyndale. The book was condemned by the Serienne, and burnt by crder of the Petarent of Paris.

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Henry VIII. he was recalled to England, and was appointed Professor of Divinity and afterwards Professor of Greek at Cambridge. At More's house he wrote the work which he had planned during his rides on horseback across the Continent. This was the famous "Praise of Folly," entitled, with playful reference to the name of his host, "Encomium Moriæ." Brimful of wit and sarcasm, it assailed the follies of the age, condemned war and field-sports, and especially covered with disastrous ridicule the proud and ignorant scholastic doctors and the cowled monkish impostors. Printed in 1511, within a few months it passed through seven editions. Twenty-seven editions appeared in the lifetime of the author. During this period Erasmus was always in want of money, and used to beg till he was ashamed of it. He left England in 1514 on being appointed member of the Council of the Netherlands, with a sufficient pension. He went first to Basel to get his edition of St. Jerome and his Greek New Testament (at both of which he had been working hard for years) printed by Froben. They were published in 1516. To this Greek Testament, the first published, Leo X. gave his sanction by accepting the dedication. It was accompanied by a new Latin version, and by an earnest "Paraklesis," in which Erasmus set forth his object in publishing it. This work marks an epoch as the beginning of modern Biblical criticism. The edition of St. Jerome was put forth with the same object--the restoration of "the old and true theology." In the same year appeared the "Institutio Principis Christiani,” the main lesson of which was that the good of the people ought to be the chief object of a Christian ruler. It was written at the same time as More's "Utopia." During the next seven years Erasmus published his "Paraphrases of the New Testament," of which an English translation, by Nicholas Udal, was ordered to be placed in every parish church. In 1518-19, Erasmus published a revised edition of his Greek Testament, with a reply to objections and a discourse on the method of study.

About this time some friendly correspondence took place between Erasmus and Luther and Melancthon. A little later occurred the bitter quarrel with Ulrich von Hutten, to whom Erasmus, from politic motives, refused an interview. He was at this time writing his "Familiar Colloquies," a first edition of which was published without his sanction in 1518. The work was extended in successive issues, and had a very large circulation. Whispers of heresy were heard. and the book was condemned by the Sorbonne and prohibited by the Inquisition. The relations between Luther and Erasmus, at first friendly and courteous, gradually changed into open and bitter hostility; and Erasmus wrote against Luther's doctrine of the will. Luther's fancy that Erasmus led a life of learned repose without trials or difficulties was strangely at variance with facts. Early left an orphan, robbed of his small patrimony, forced into a monastery, virtually a pauper, practically without kindred,