Francis’s missionary rule made silent witness of Christians a radical alternative to preaching

Evidence

‘Spiritually they can behave among other people in two ways. One way is not to make disputes and controversies, but to be subject to every human creature for God’s sake, and to witness that they are Christians. The other way is, when they see that God pleases, to preach the word of God …’ They were to remember that they had given themselves and their bodies to Christ. If St Francis himself once chose the second of these two methods, the idea of silent witness, which is what the first amounts to, was even more revolutionary. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 670