The March of Ancona and the Valley of Rieti would naturally have attracted him equally about this epoch, and finally the growth of the two branches of the Order must have made necessary his presence at Portiuncula and St.Damian.The rapidity and importance of these missions ought in no sense to give surprise, nor awaken exaggerated critical doubts.

It took only a few hours to become a member of the fraternity, and we may not doubt the sincerity of these vocations, since their condition was the immediate giving up of all property of whatever kind, for the benefit of the poor.

The new friars were barely received when they in their turn began to receive others, often becoming the heads of the movement in whatever place they happened to be.

The way in which we see things going on in Germany in 1221, and in England in 1224, gives a very living picture of this spiritual germination.
To found a monastery it was enough that two or three Brothers should have at their disposition some sort of a shelter, whence they radiated out into the city and the neighboring country.

It would, therefore, be as much an exaggeration to describe St.Francis as a man who passed his life in founding convents, as to deny altogether the local traditions which attribute to him the erection of a hundred monasteries.