diplomat, partly as a missionary, to the Great Khan. In 1219 Francis of Assisi with mad courage went into the Sultan’s presence at Damietta and proclaimed the way of salvation, offering to undergo the ordeal of fire to prove the truth of the Gospel. The Dominican general Raimund de Pennaforti, who died in 1273, also devoted himself to missions for the Saracens, but with no success. The only missionary spirit of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was that of the Crusaders. They took up the sword