The Kinship of Saint Francis

These^a are some excerpts and items worthy of note taken from a compilation that was made, I believe, by Brother Arnald of Sarrant, the former provincial minister of Aquitaine and a grand master of sacred theology, on the life and deeds of our blessed father Francis and his companions not contained in his Legend, as they were written down and brought to light.

Resplendent as the dawn and the morning star,
or even the rising sun,
setting the world on fire,
enlightening and making it fruitful,
the most perfect man Francis,
the shepherd and leader of the Lesser Brothers,
arose in the city of Assisi.
[He was]
like the sun warming that world
nearly covered by a winter of cold, darkness and sterility,
giving it light with the brilliant rays of word and deed,
dazzling it with truth,
inflaming it with charity,
renewing it with abundant fruit of merits
and enriching it with a variety of fruit-bearing trees
in the three Orders established by him,
producing marvelous virtue
both renewing and making the earth attractive
with a variety of embellishments.^b

At that time, then, those two great lights, Francis and Clare, like the greater and the lesser light, shone among different stars in the

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