Considering how thoroughly impractical Francis seemed to be in his life, it can scarcely help but be a source of ever increasing wonder that he succeeded in influencing, his generation so widely and so thoroughly. It is evident that there were many men of the time tired of the more or less strenuous life, which chained them either to the cares of business or tempted them for the sake of the bubble reputation into a military career. To these St. Francis' method of life came with an especially strong appeal. The example of his neglect of worldly things and of his so thoroughly maintained resolve not to be harassed by the ordinary cares of life, and especially not to take too much thought of the future, penetrated into all classes. While it made the rich realize how much of their lives they were living merely for the sake of others, it helped the poor to be satisfied, since here was a sublime and complete recognition of the fact that an existence without cares was better than one with many cares, such as were sure to come to those who wrought ever and anon increase of the goods of this world. Such ideas may seen to be essentially modern, but anyone who will turn to the chapter on The Three Most Read Books of the Century and read the passages from the "Romance of the Rose" on wealth and poverty, will know better than to think them anything but perennial. {263} Men gathered around St. Francis then and pleaded to be allowed to follow his mode of life. Some of the men who thus came to him were the choice spirits of the times. Thomas of Celano, who was to be one of the Master's favorite disciples and subsequently to be his most authoritative biographer, was one of the great literary geniuses of all times, the author of the sublime Dies Irae. While most of his first companions were men of such extreme simplicity of mind that the world has been rather in an amused than admiring attitude with regard to them, there can be no doubt that this simplicity was of itself an index not only of their genuine sincerity of heart, but of a greatness of mind that set them above the ordinary run of mankind and made them live poetry when they did not write it. The institute established by St. Francis was destined, in the course of the century, to attract to it some of the great men of every country. Besides Thomas of Celano there was, in Italy, Anthony of Padua, almost as famous as his master for the beauty of his saintly life; Jacopone Da Todi, the well-known author of the Stabat Mater, a hymn that rivals in poetic genius, the Dies Irae; Bonaventure, the great teacher of philosophy and theology at the University of Paris, and the writer of some of the sublimest treatises of mystical theology that were to be text books for the members of the Franciscan order, and of many other religious bodies for centuries after his death, indeed down to even our own times. There was Roger Bacon, in England, the famous teacher of science at