This formal inauguration of the institute was in 1209 or (as seems more probable) 1210. Francis and his associates were first known as "Penitents of Assisi," and then Francis chose the title of "Minors." On their return to Assisi they obtained from the Benedictine abbey on Mount Subasio the use of the little chapel of St Mary of the Angels, called the Portiuncula, in the plain below Assisi, which became the cradle and headquarters of the order. Around the Portiuncula they built themselves huts of branches and twigs, but they had no fixed abode; they wandered in pairs over the country, dressed in the ordinary clothes of the peasants, working in the fields to earn their daily bread, sleeping in barns or in the hedgerows or in the porches of the churches, mixing with the labourers and the poor, with the lepers and the outcasts, ever joyous--the "joculatores" or "jongleurs" of God--ever carrying out their mission of preaching to the lowly and to the wretched religion and repentance and the kingdom of God. The key-note of the movement was the imitation of the public life of Christ, especially the poverty of Christ. Francis and his disciples were to aim at possessing nothing, absolutely nothing, so far as was compatible with life; they were to earn their bread from day to day by the work of their hands, and only when they could not do so were they to beg; they were to make no provision for the morrow, lay by no store, accumulate no capital, possess no land; their clothes should be the poorest and their dwellings the meanest; they were forbidden to receive or to handle money. On the other hand they were bound only to the fast observed in those days by pious Christians, and were allowed to eat meat--the rule said they should eat whatever was set before them; no austerities were imposed, beyond those inseparable from the manner of life they lived.