It was in reality the laying of the strong hand of the papacy upon the Brothers Minor.
From this time, in the very nature of things it became impossible for Francis to remain minister-general.

He felt it himself.

Heart-broken, soul-sick, he would fain, in spite of all, have found in the energy of his love those words, those glances which up to this time had taken the place of rule or constitution, giving to his earliest companions the intuition of what they ought to do and the strength to accomplish it; but an administrator was needed at the head of this family which he suddenly found to be so different from what it had been a few years before, and he sadly acknowledged that he himself was not in the slightest degree such a person.[13] Ah, in his own conscience he well knew that the old ideal was the true, the right one; but he drove away such thoughts as the temptations of pride.

The recent events had not taken place without in some degree weakening his moral personality; from being continually talked to about obedience, submission, humility, a certain obscurity had come over this luminous soul; inspiration no longer came to it with the certainty of other days; the prophet had begun to waver, almost to doubt of himself and of his mission.

Anxiously he searched himself to see if in the beginning of his work there had not been some vain self-complacency.