"Thus the Friars Minor, unable to accept in full Francis's Testament,
were caught up in the more complex and more rigid network of
disciplinary and constitutional regulations. Yet the new life that
Francis himself had lived and shown to others remained and remains in
the Church...as the model for a type of sanctity which all recognize as
Franciscan. It has enriched the spirit of all Europe...as a new
manifestation of the brotherhood of all men and of the share of all
creatures in the beauty and benevolence of God; as a showing forth of
the Gospel lived in its fullness with a detail and clarity rare to equal
in any age; and as a revelation of the imitation of Christ crucified,
in love and suffering, which, though present in all Christian sanctity,
appeared in Francis in a new form." (David Knowles,
Saints and Scholars, 1962).
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