In what appears to us as the result of our own reflections they saw inspiration; where we say desires, instincts, passions, they said temptation, but we must not permit these differences of language to make us overlook or tax with trickery a part of their spiritual life, bringing us thus to the conclusions of a narrow and ignorant rationalism.
St.Francis believed himself to have many a time fought with the devil; the horrible demons of the Etruscan Inferno still haunted the forests of Umbria and Tuscany; but while for his contemporaries and some of his disciples apparitions, prodigies, possessions, are daily phenomena, for him they are exceptional, and remain entirely in the background.

In the iconography of St.Benedict, as in that of most of the popular saints, the devil occupies a preponderant place; in that of St.Francis he disappears so completely that in the long series of Giotto's frescos at Assisi he is not seen a single time.[8] In the same way all that is magic and miracle-working occupies in his life an entirely secondary rank.

Jesus in the Gospels gave his apostles power to cast out evil spirits, and to heal all sickness and all infirmity.[9] Francis surely took literally these words, which made a part of his Rule.

He believed that he could work miracles, and he willed to do so; but his religious thought was too pure to permit him to consider miracles otherwise than as an entirely exceptional means of relieving the sufferings of men.

Not once do we see him resorting to miracle to prove his apostolate or to bolster up his ideas.