classes of monks, who were compelled to see themselves so largely supplanted by these intruders. On the other hand, it tended to arrogance and corruption in the orders themselves. As an example of the complaints which began to be urged against them, we may take the severe language of Matthew Paris. He charges them with having degenerated more in forty years than orders previously established had in three or four hundred years. "These are they," he says, "who in their sumptuous edifices, which they daily enlarge, and within their high walls, lay up incalculable treasures, impudently transgressing the injunction of poverty and the fundamental rule of their own profession, even as was prophesied by the German Hildegard. To the injury and loss of the ordinary pastors, they thrust themselves upon the great and the wealthy in the hour of death, greedy for a share of their abundant riches, extorting confessions and secret testaments, commending only themselves and their order, and claiming superiority to all others. Hence no one of the faithful now believes that he can be saved, unless he is under the guidance of the Preachers and the Minorites. In their anxiety to acquire privileges, they serve in the courts of kings and nobles as counsellors, chamberlains, treasurers, bridesmen, notaries of marriages, and agents of papal extortions. In their sermons they indulge at one time in flattery, at another in biting censure; they reveal the secrets of the confessional, and run into reckless accusation."

"1

In another connection the same writer speaks of the elation of the Dominicans over privileges recently

1 Sub anno 1243.

·

granted by the Pope, and pictures the arts by which they sought a monopoly in the hearing of confessions. "They proceeded," he says, "to ask any one they met, 'Hast thou confessed?' A reply being given in the affirmative, the inquiry was, 'To whom?' The person answering, To my own priest,' it was rejoined, ⚫ And who is that ignorant fellow? He has never heard lectures on theology, never studied the decrees, never learned to solve a question. They are blind, and leaders of the blind. Come to us, who know how to distinguish one phase of the soul's sickness from another, to whom things arduous and difficult, to whom the secrets of God, are made manifest.'" Many, it is added, were caught by such artifices, and confessed to the Dominican friars, to the neglect of their own priests, and the injury of the general order and discipline of the Church.1

Umbrage was taken, in particular, at the attempt of the Mendicants to gain a controlling position in the universities. At Paris a determined resistance was maintained, under the leadership of William of St. Amour. But the aggression of the Mendicants was backed by a cause not easy to resist. To say nothing of the support afforded by various of the Popes, they had the power and prestige of superior learning. unrivalled theologians and scholastic philosophers came from their ranks, the Dominicans boasting of such masters as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscans glorying in an Alexander Hales, a Bonaventura, and a Duns Scotus.

The

While becoming thus objects of jealousy to many

1 Sub anno 1246.

outsiders, the two orders were at the same time envious rivals of each other. One source of the fictitious miracles which found place in their annals was undoubtedly the desire of each to prove its title to a superior glory. The temper of the Franciscans naturally gave them a certain advantage in the race for popularity. Their tone was freer, their piety more emotional and mystical, than that of the Dominicans, who were the champions of the rigid orthodoxy of the Church. But this advantage had its offsets. The freer spirit and the mystical vein in the Franciscans gave a wider scope to vagaries in opinion and conduct, and so increased the liabilities of division.

Both orders soon found it extremely difficult to adhere strictly to mendicancy. An impracticable standard had, in truth, been adopted. The Dominicans virtually confessed as much, and explained their vow of poverty as denoting only that the individual could have no possessions. The fraternity, it was agreed, could hold property for the common use of its members. The Franciscans found greater difficulty in uniting upon a mitigation of their rule. One party, dating back even to the time of Francis, favored a measure of relaxation. Another party insisted upon keeping the vow of poverty in all strictness. The uncompromising opposition of the latter against tendencies to laxity led to various schisms, and the history is made complicated by such names as Cæsarins, Celestines, Spirituals, and Fraticelli. In some cases the schism did not stop with the mere separation from the order. The Fraticelli, for example, were denounced as heretics, and regarded as outside of the Catholic fellowship. They seem to have

borrowed from Joachim of Floris, and held such enthusiastic notions respecting the age of the Holy Spirit as came to expression in the "Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel," a book condemned by the Pope in 1254. As it seemed to be impossible to compose the differences among the Franciscans, the authorities finally concluded to recognize different branches of the fraternity. The more rigid party was recognized by the Council of Constance as brethren of the stricter observance. They were called accordingly Observants. Those representing the laxer scheme were designated Conventuals. Since the early part of the sixteenth century, the Franciscan fraternity has appeared in three divisions, the Observants, the Conventuals, and the Capuchins.

In the thirteenth century, the semi-monastic societies of the Beguines and Beghards- the former being composed of women and the latter of men - appeared in close association with the Franciscan sectaries. In some instances they entered into the relation of Tertiaries to the latter. They are supposed to have originated in the preceding century. The fact that they became a refuge for those adjudged heretics brought the hand of persecution against them, and many of their houses were suppressed.1

1 At one time the church authorities made but moderate distinction between these associations and such decided heretics as the Sect of the Free Spirit (see next chapter). But it is concluded that this was an injustice; that, while there was an outcropping of enthusiasm among the Beghards and Beguines, they did not share largely in the peculiar tenets of the Sect of the Free Spirit. (Hermann Haupt, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sekte von freien Geiste und des Beghardentums, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 1884-85.)

CHAPTER V.

THE

SCHOLASTICISM AND MYSTICISM.

HE same era which witnessed the culmination of the papal theocracy witnessed also the culmination of scholasticism. The thirteenth century was for popes and schoolmen alike the golden age. Alongside the imposing edifice of ecclesiastical sovereignty stood an equally massive and imposing edifice of ecclesiastical learning. As mutually supporting fortresses they held the field for the established polity and faith. Ecclesiastical authority may, indeed, have exhibited some jealousy toward its neighbor. For example, it looked with a measure of distrust, in the first instance, upon the alliance between theological thinking and Aristotelianism, as this became prominent in the early part of the thirteenth century. But in general mutual friendliness was maintained. Scholasticism purchased for itself tolerance and patronage by sustaining the hierarchical system in its full length and breadth. Its most renowned representatives defined papal prerogatives in terms which a Gregory VII. could hardly have wished to amend; and left as little territory to the heretic as was conceded by the decrees of an Innocent III.

Scholasticism is but another name for the mediæval system of dogmatics. It was the product of zeal for