The next three years he spent in the neighbourhood of Assisi in abject poverty and want, ministering to the lepers and the outcasts of society.
Outcasts alone, the offspring of irregular unions, could be ignorant of the blood which ran in their veins, of the unseen ancestors to be fed and tended in family and gentile rites.'
Already, in St Francis's lifetime, his friars had grown into an order dedicated to spiritual ministrations among the poor, the sick, the ignorant, the outcasts of the great cities; while by the very conception of their institute the Dominicans were dedicated to the special work of preaching, especially to heretics and heathens.
This led him into the society of those outcasts who were condemned and rejected by the respectable and righteous classes.
Rejected by the Yahweh who became the Christian God, they have remained to the present day, in Sunday schools and in common opinion, not nations of living men, with the culture of arts and sciences, but outcasts who do not enter into the divine scheme of the world's history.