[19] This view harmonizes in every particular with the witness of 1 Cel., 36 and 37, which shows the Third Order as having been quite naturally born of the enthusiasm excited by the preaching of Francis immediately after his return from Rome in 1210 (cf. _Auctor vit. sec._; A. SS., p. 593b). Nothing in any other document contradicts it; quite the contrary. Vide 3 Soc., 60. Cf. _Anon. Perus._; A. SS., p. 600; Bon., 25, 46. Cf. A. SS., pp. 631-634. The first bull which concerns the Brothers of Penitence (without naming them) is of December 16, 1221, _Significatum est_. If it really refers to them, as Sbaralea thinks, with all those who have interested themselves in the question to M. Mueller inclusively--but which, it appears, might be contested--it is because in 1221 they had made appeal to the pope against the podestas of Faenza and the neighboring cities. This evidently supposes an association not recently born. Sbaralea, _Bull. fr._, 1, p. 8; Horoy, vol. iv., col. 49; Potthast, 6736. [20] Bull _Supra montem_ of August 17, 1289, Potthast. 23044. M. Mueller has made a luminous study of the origin of this bull; it may be considered final in all essential points (_Anfaenge_, pp. 117-171). By this bull Nicholas IV.--minister-general of the Brothers Minor before becoming pope--sought to draw into the hands of his Order the direction of all associations of pious laics (Third Order of St. Dominic, the Gaudentes, the Humiliati. etc.). He desired by that to give a greater impulse to those fraternities which depended directly on the court of Rome, and augment their power by unifying them. [21] Vide Bull _Significatum est_ of December 16, 1221. Cf. _Supra montem_, chap. vii. [22] The Rule of the Third Order of the Humiliati, which dates from 1201, contains a similar clause. Tiraboschi, vol. ii., p. 132. [23] In the A. SS., Aprilis, vol. ii. p. 600-616. Orlando di Chiusi also received the habit from the hands of Francis. Vide _Instrumentum_, etc., below, p. 400. The Franciscan fraternity, under the influence of the other third orders, rapidly lost its specific character. As to this title, Third Order, it surely had originally a hierarchical sense, upon which little by little a chronological sense has been superposed. All these questions become singularly clearer when they are compared with what is known of the Humiliati. * * * * * CHAPTER XVI THE BROTHERS MINOR AND LEARNING Autumn, 1221-December, 1223 After the chapter of 1221 the evolution of the Order hurried on with a rapidity which nothing was strong enough to check.