While Innocent III and the more earnest members of the Curia were elaborating measures of reform and preparing for a general council which should knit together and envigorate the languid members of the Church, two spiritual agencies of another kind, but of incalculable power, whose birth could by no clairvoyance have been foreseen and whose unfolding followed no ascertainable law, were coming to maturity, the one in Languedoc, the other in the heart of Italy. While the Canterbury election, and the troubles of Evesham, and the claims of Gerald of Wales were occupying cardinals and canonists at Rome, and while the Interdict and the vagaries of John were paralysing life and growth in England, Dominic Guzman was finding his true vocation in the land of the Albigenses, and Francesco Bernardone of Assisi was passing from one stage to another of his conversion to the perfect following of Christ.

Probably no canonized saint of the Christian centuries has been the object of such widespread and enthusiastic admiration outside the circle of the devout as has Francis of Assisi. His cult, formerly purely religious in character and confined to Catholics, became during the latter half of the nineteenth century a great wave of enthusiasm which made of him one of the most familiar and admired figures in the history of mankind, while at the same time the chronological and other problems presented by the events of his life and the enigmatical circumstances surrounding the labours of his early biographers gave rise to a branch of medieval studies abounding in religious, historical and critical problems of great complexity, which attracted to itself eminent scholars of many nations and gave birth to a vast technical literature of its own.