It is very probable that this confusion of terms corresponds to a like confusion of facts.

Perhaps it was even intentional.

After the chapter of September, 1220, the affairs of the Order pass into the hands of him whom Francis had called minister-general, though the friars as well as the papacy gave him only the title of vicar.

It was essential for the popularity of the Brothers Minor that Francis should preserve an appearance of authority, but the reality of government had slipped from his hands.
The ideal which he had borne in his body until 1209 and had then given birth to in anguish, was now taking its flight, like those sons of our loins whom we see suddenly leaving us without our being able to help it, since that is life, yet not without a rending of our vitals.

_Mater dolorosa!_ Ah, no doubt they will come back again, and seat themselves piously beside us at the paternal hearth; perhaps even, in some hour of moral distress, they will feel the need of taking refuge in their mother's arms as in the old days; but these fleeting returns, with their feverish haste, only reopen the wounds of the poor parents, when they see how the children hasten to depart again--they who bear their name but belong to them no longer.
FOOTNOTES: [1] Giord., 14; _Tribul._, f^o 10.
[2] Any other date is impossible, since Francis in open chapter relinquished the direction of the Order in favor of Pietro di Catana, who died March 10, 1221.
[3] This too short fragment is found in Sec.vi.of the Rule of the Damianites (August 9, 1253): Speculum, Morin, Tract.iii., 226b.
[4] 2 Cel., 2, 3; Bon., 162; cf.