«Rose a sun upon the world» These words by Dante should be sufficient to understand the disruptive echo left by of the life of the Poverello of Assisi. For Christians, the sun that triumphs over the darkness is the symbol par excellence of Christ: to grant the same title to Saint Francis was a way to underline that his contemporaries considered him to be in effect an alter Christus, a man who, maybe like no other, had epitomized the figure of the Saviour on earth. In particular, in the age that saw the dawning of the first capitalist society, with the ascent of bankers and merchants, the total love of Saint Francis for God and for mankind expresses itself in his supreme love for Poverty; a love so great that it can only be compared to that of Christ: «She [poverty], reft of her first husband/ One thousand and one hundred years and more, had stood without wooing till he came».  The great appeal of his choice, that brought an immense joy in life, greater than that conferred by any richness, secured him an exceptional group of followers: «But that too darkly I may not proceed, / Francis and Poverty for these two lovers / Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse. / Their concord and their joyous semblances, / The love, the wonder, and the sweet regard, / They made to be the cause of holy thoughts; / So much so that the venerable Bernard / First bared his feet, and after so . . .