Exactly 700 years elapsed from the death of Theodoric to that of St Francis of Assissi, and in that period the world had been transformed. In St Francis, we are studying the sweet loving and lovable awakener of the life of the spirit, in whom there is a reincarnation of the original impulse of Christianity. The time of St Francis is a sealed book to many of us, since we carelessly class it with the dark ages, thus blinding ourselves to its light.