CHAPTER III.
THE CHURCH ABOUT 1209 St.Francis was inspired as much as any man may be, but it would be a palpable error to study him apart from his age and from the conditions in which he lived.
We know that he desired and believed his life to be an imitation of Jesus, but what we know about the Christ is in fact so little, that St.
Francis's life loses none of its strangeness for that.

His conviction that he was but an imitator preserved him from all temptation to pride, and enabled him to proclaim his views with incomparable vigor, without seeming in the least to be preaching himself.
We must therefore neither isolate him from external influences nor show him too dependent on them.

During the period of his life at which we are now arrived, 1205-1206, the religious situation of Italy must more than at any other time have influenced his thought and urged him into the path which he finally entered.
The morals of the clergy were as corrupt as ever, rendering any serious reform impossible.

If some among the heresies of the time were pure and without reproach, many were trivial and impure.

Here and there a few voices were raised in protest, but the prophesyings of Gioacchino di Fiore had no more power than those of St.Hildegarde to put a stop to wickedness.