Whereas the love of the troubadours was romantic and chivalrous, the love of Guinicelli was intellectual and philosophical. With him earthly affections become purified and spiritualized. The old repertory of conventional expressions is gradually discarded, and new forms take their place, soon to become conventional in their turn. Love and the poet's Lady remain abstract, but have now a different signification. The Lady is still treated as a perfect being, but she becomes now a symbol of something higher. Love for her leads to virtue and to God; poetry now receives an allegorical character, and its real end becomes the inculcation of philosophical truth under the veil of earthly love. The importance of Guinicelli for us is his influence on Dante, for the new school was not continued in Bologna, but found its chief followers in Florence. We are thus led naturally up to the works of the great Florentine poet whom we shall study in the next two chapters. In the meantime, however, we must cast a brief glance at certain other early phases of Italian literature, which later developed into important branches of poetry and prose. Northern Italy, as we have seen, had no share in beginning an indigenous lyrical poetry. It did, however, have an early literature of its own, in the form of religious and didactic poetry, for the most part translations from Latin and French originals. In Umbria, the home of St. Francis, and the center of those waves of religious excitement which so profoundly affected Italy in the thirteenth century, a popular religious lyric arose. St. Francis himself deserves some mention in literary history, if only on account of his famous song of praise, which he instructed his followers to sing as they wandered, like spiritual troubadours, through the land. St. Francis was no mere ascetic, but loved the beauty of nature and had a tender love for all creatures. Quaintly enough he was wont to call birds and animals, and even inanimate objects, such as the sun and moon, by the name of brother and sister.[2] Among his followers was Thomas of Celano, who wrote that most solemn and majestic of all Latin hymns, "Dies Iræ." The astonishing popularity and spread of the new order founded by St. Francis can only be explained by the terrible sufferings of the times. All Italy was stirred by deep religious excitement. In 1233, the movement reached its high-water mark. Old and young, high and low, leaving their ordinary occupations and business, marched in processions through the land singing pious songs; the country folk streamed to the cities to hear the sermons which were given morning, noon, and night.