An intimate friend and devoted disciple of St. Francis, he had been deemed worthy by the latter to rule the Order during his absence in Palestine. Though full of admiration for the Seraphic Father and professing intense reverence for his saintly life and Christ-like spirit, he appears never to have quite accepted his views concerning the absolute poverty and rigorous mode of life he wished to impose upon his followers. He seems to have considered that such austerity would render impossible its uniform and continued observance by any considerable body of men. Whilst a few chosen souls such as Francis himself could live up to it, the heterogeneous multitude who were flocking to the Order could not prudently be expected to do so. Hence he advocated certain mitigations in the matter of poverty. What these were we cannot definitely affirm. His views and actions are presented to us from a thoroughly hostile standpoint. His biographers, generally speaking, were his avowed opponents, and although they were men of remarkable virtue and integrity of life, we can hardly believe that they were free from the {33} influence of bias and party spirit. In their eyes Elias was a wrecker--the enemy of their Order and the destroyer of its high ideals. Hence their accounts of him must be cautiously received and allowance made for the exaggerations of pious zeal. We are told that Elias sought to introduce the use of money; that in visiting the Order he rode on horseback; that he wore a somewhat elegant habit; that there was a general tendency to relaxation discernible in his life. No doubt he was guilty of these things, but in view of subsequent developments it is not easy to determine how far they were incompatible with the spirit of the Rule. We are told that he was a man of remarkable foresight and a born ruler. Perhaps he wished to establish from the beginning what the natural evolution of circumstances was eventually to achieve. He may have foreseen that certain prescriptions theoretically feasible for all, and practically so for a few, would actually become impracticable for the general body of the Order. Thus by the very force of circumstances it soon became necessary for the Friars to use money at least indirectly. Be the country where they reside Catholic or Protestant, friendly or hostile, there are instances where to live means to use money. Nor does the Minister-General of the Order now visit the Order on foot, nor is the Franciscan habit of the present day such perhaps as would meet with entire approval from those {34} early rigorists. But there has been no substantial defection from the primitive spirit of the Rule; these modifications have arisen as the necessary result of changed conditions. Nor is this to be wondered at. Christianity itself began even as the Franciscan Order. Like to that Order it increased and developed. In course of time, whilst theoretically maintaining its highest ideals, it practically ceased to make them the guiding