The Spiritual section of the Franciscans was rapidly becoming leavened with these ideas. To minds inclined to mysticism, filled with unrest, dissatisfied with the existing unfulfilment of their ideal, and longing earnestly for its realization, there might well be an irresistible fascination in the promises of the Calabrian abbot, of which the term was now so rapidly approaching. If these Joachitic Franciscans developed the ideas of their teacher with greater boldness and definiteness, their ardor had ample excuse. They were living witnesses of the moral failure of an effort from which everything had been expected for the regeneration of humanity. They had seen how the saintly teachings of Francis and the new revelation of which he had been the medium were perverted by worldly men to purposes of ambition and greed; how the Order, which should have been the germ of human redemption, was growing more and more carnal, and how its saints were martyred by their fellows. Unless the universe were a failure, and the promises of God were lies, there must be a term to human wickedness; and as the Gospel of Christ and the Rule of Francis had not accomplished the salvation of mankind, a new gospel was indispensable. Besides, Joachim had predicted that there would arise a new religious Order which would rule the world and the Church in the halcyon age of the Holy Ghost. They could not doubt that this referred to the Franciscans as represented by the Spiritual group, which was striving to uphold in all its strictness the Rule of the venerated founder.[20] Such, we may presume, were the ideas which were troubling the hearts of the earnest Spirituals as they pondered over the prophecies of Joachim. In their exaltation many of them were themselves given to ecstasies and visions full of prophetic insight. Prominent members of the Order had openly embraced the Joachitic doctrines, and his prophecies, genuine and spurious, were applied to all events as they occurred. In 1248 Salimbene, the chronicler, who was already a warm believer, met at the Franciscan convent of Provins (Champagne) two ardent condisciples, Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino and Bartolommeo Ghiscolo of Parma. St. Louis was just setting forth on his ill-starred Egyptian crusade. The Joachites had recourse to the pseudo-Joachim on Jeremiah, and foretold that the expedition would be a failure, that the king would be taken prisoner, and that pestilence would decimate the host. This was not calculated to render them popular; the peace of the good brethren was sadly broken by quarrels, and the Joachites found it advisable to depart. Salimbene went to Auxerre, Ghiscolo to Sens, and Gherardo to Paris, where his learning secured for him admission to the university as the representative of Sicily, and he obtained a chair in theology. Here for four years he pursued his apocalyptic studies.[21]