Well, it was a while back we started a new series here on five minutes in church history called trending.

We love to see what's trending today, right? Well, we're going to see what's trending in the centuries in the past.

We picked up the series a while ago, let it drop,

and now we're returning to it,

and we have trending in the 13th century.

Oh my, what a busy century the 1200s were. Let's start off with Francis of Assisi. In 1209 he made

his way to the Vatican and petitioned the Pope to start a new monastic order. He only had about a dozen monks with him so the

Pope said I'll give you a temporary order but come back let's see if this thing grows and

we'll go from there. Well, by 1210 it had grown and all of a sudden we have the new order of the Franciscans.

This was an order of mendicant or begging monks.

It was all built around Francis's regular primitiva principle

or the primitive principle.

And basically, Francis said, we need to get back to the simple life of Christ.

And rather than advocating the ostentatiousness and an apparent wealth of the church, Francis was committed to establishing this mendicant

begging order of the Franciscans.

Secondly, we have the Crusades and so tragic in 1212 we have the

children's crusade. It's a true tragedy from the pages of church history.

We also have trending in the 13th century,

the rise of Aristotle.

Now, are you ready?

This is all A's.

I'm going to give you four of them.

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