"The women live together near to cities in divers convents; they accept nought, but live by the labour of their hands. They are much disturbed to find themselves held in greater esteem, both by the clergy and the laity, than they themselves desire. "The men of this order meet once a year in some pre-arranged place, to their great profit, and rejoice together in the Lord and eat in company; and then, with the help of good and honest men, they adopt and promulgate holy institutions, approved by the Pope. After this they disperse, going about in Lombardy, Tuscany, and even in Apulia and Sicily, for the rest of the year.... I think it is to put the prelates to shame, who are like dogs unable to bark, that the Lord wills to save many souls before the end of the world, by means of these poor simple friars."[6] Certainly one of the most remarkable events in mediæval history was the result of the teaching of St. Francis upon his own and future generations. In his native city the strength of his personal influence and the love and veneration which he excited was extraordinary. But we notice even a stranger fact; with his death this holy influence apparently vanished, and it is possible that the memory of the saint is dearer to the hearts of the Assisans in what we are inclined to call the prosaic tedium of our trafficking nineteenth century, than it was in the years immediately following his death. Later centuries have shown us that his teaching and his presence there were not in vain. Assisi, down to our own times, has continued to be the Mecca of thousands of pilgrims. Her churches bear the record of infinite early piety, for when art was in its early prime the most famous masters from Tuscany were called upon to decorate the Franciscan Basilica and leave their choicest treasures there as tributes to the immortal glory of the saint. But the note of war rings louder than the song of praise and love for many years to come in all the Assisan chronicles, and grass and weeds grow up to choke, though not to kill, the blessed seed that Francis sowed and did not live to tend. No sooner did the gates of death close upon that sweet and genial spirit, than war, lust, strife and pestilence burst upon the very people he had so tenderly loved. The story of Assisi becomes, as it had never been before, a list of murders--of struggles to the death for individual power, and of wars which made the fair Umbrian country a desolate and cruel waste for months and even years.