This essay intends to show what kind of social influences affected the ideal of poverty of St.Francis. There are many opinions about this problem. The first opinion is that Franciscan ideal stood for the religious movement of the city proletariates against the feudal nobles and richer bourgeois. The second is that the ideal of St.Francis stood for the democratic movement of citizens against the feudal nobles. The third is that his ideal showed the romantic chivalous reaction against the mammonism of wealthy citizens. The fourth is that his ideal corresponded to the attitudes of conscientious upper and middle classes who were trying to renounce spontaneously their own property in order to reform the church which was suffering from moral corruption resulting from the accumulation of wealth. However, it seems to me that all these opinions are insufficient to answer the whole of this problem. It is true that the ideal of poverty must have had some connection with its social environment. However, when we closely examine the process of conversion of St. Francis, that at first he began to renunciate the secular world at large in order to enter into the life of purely religious piety. Only after this fundamental conversion, the ideal of poverty appear as one of many virtues which St.Francis adopted in order to develop his imitation of the life of Christ. Therefore, we can infere that his intention was wholly religious and hardly included the elements of social reform or social reaction. Of course this is not to say that his ideal had no connection at all with its social environment. St.Francis was born as the son of a very rich merchant in Assisi. But, before his conversion, he has great ambition to become a knight' of the highest rank. For this reason, I think that his religious ideal is the sublime transfiguration of this secular ambition. Therefore, we must conclude that the ideal of St.Francis indirectly reflects the great ambition of the rich merchants who formed the ascending class in Italy during the 13th century.

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