How soon the Dominicans gave in their adhesion to the distinctive
tenet of the Minorites will never now be known, nor how far St.
Francis himself adopted it from others; but a conviction that
holiness of life had deteriorated in the Church and the cloister by
reason of the excessive wealth of monks and ecclesiastics was
prevalent everywhere, and a belief was growing that sanctity was
attainable only by those who were ready to part with all their
worldly possessions and give to such as needed. Even before St.
Francis had applied to Innocent the Third, the poor men of Lyons had
come to Rome begging for papal sanction to their missionary plans;
they met with little favour, and vanished from the scene. But they
too declaimed against endowments--they too were to live on alms. The
Gospel of Poverty was "_in the air_."
In 1219 the Franciscans held their second general Chapter. It was
evident that they were taking the world by storm; evident, too, that
their astonishing success was due less to their preaching than to
their self-denying lives. It was abundantly plain that this vast army
of fervent missionaries could live from day to day and work wonders
in evangelizing the masses without owning a rood of land, or having
anything to depend upon but the perennial stream of bounty which
flowed from the gratitude of the converts.
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