THE MENDICANT ORDERS.1

Nor long ago, the "Quarterly" contained an article on St. Benedict and his Order. It is now proposed to trace the rise of two new orders, which appeared nearly seven centuries later, those of St. Francis and St. Dominic. We may begin by connecting them with the previous history of monasticism, though they are hardly its lineal offspring, and by no means acknowledged the rule of Benedict or a place among his descendants. In the time since Benedict the monastic order had parted into many families, with other names, but in all its variations still regarding him as its patriarch and chief. No institution could last through half a millennium without corruptions, such as belonged to its very constitution and to the times. Founded in poverty, it became by the very tendencies of society one of the wealthiest of corporations. It is an observation of Sismondi that religion, from being in the beginning a matter of morals and afterwards of orthodoxy, after the seventh century was reduced to a question of liberality to monasteries. Into them religion poured its gifts, and by the commutation of vows, by fears of the end of the world, by the price paid for religious insurance furnished in one way or another by the Church, they were wonderfully enriched. The increase of wealth was naturally the relaxation of monastic rules, and even of moral obligations. Their recruits were not many of them saints, most of them of common mould, and even

1 Published in the Baptist Quarterly, vol. ii.

Monumenta Franciscana: Edited by J. S. BREWER, M. A., Professor of English Literature, King's College, London, and Reader at the Rolls. Published by the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury.

in their seclusion were open to temptations and vices belonging to their kind of life. A venal or licentious abbot would degrade the moral tone of the whole community. In the ninth century the convents were hereditary fiefs of secular princes, and suffered from their control. From many causes came loose discipline and evil manners, and with them occasion for reformation whenever nobler spirits, impatient of license and eager for sanctity, appeared. Often it was easier to form a new society than to purify the old, and new rules were invented to prevent old abuses. In the eighth century Benedict of Aniana undertook the renovation of monastic discipline in France. At Clugny, and later at Fontevraud in France, at Hirschau in Germany, at Camaldoli and Vallombrosa among the Apennines, houses arose in the tenth and eleventh centuries, restoring or increasing the severity of the Benedictine discipline. The Carthusians, with their Certosa, at Pavia, the most splendid monastery in Europe; the Cistercians, with St. Bernard to give them the lustre of his great name; the Premonstratensians, the Carmelites, the Trinitarians, the Humiliates, with the knightly orders of the Hospital and the Temple, while multiplying the orders, illustrated the growing influence of monasticism in the age when the Papacy was also waxing to its supreme power. Monasticism, which was in the beginning a reaction from the secular spirit and a refuge from civil disorders, at this epoch found in the secularization of the Church and of life, in the political storms evoked by the quarrels between the popes and the emperors, in the wild life of the knights and the degeneracy of the clergy, in the same spirit of ferment, of dissatisfaction, of compunction among the nations of Western Europe which promoted the Crusades and the rise of new religious sects, enough to stimulate its growth. Becoming secularized itself, it was constantly giving birth to new reactions against the encroaching corruption. So that at

the very period where our story begins, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, at the Lateran Council in 1215, Innocent the Third prohibited the formation of any new order, and required that whoever wished to become a monk should attach himself to some one of the already existing rules.

And yet it was becoming clear that, if monasticism kept in its old grooves, it would not meet the exigencies of the times. While the Pontiff had immensely strengthened his authority, while the Crusades were aggrandizing the Church, while monasticism was passing through these alternations of reform, and while a certain religious ardor was issuing in these results, it was also manifesting itself in a disaffection with the Church and its rule. A spiritual rebellion was breaking out in all parts of Christendom. It was not an intellectual insurrection, like that of Abelard, or politico-religious, like that of Arnold of Brescia ; it was a popular discontent with the hierarchy, a revolt against the creed, the practice, and the authorities of the Church. Whatever form it took, it was profoundly moral; the irrepressible repugnance of common people to spiritual aristocracy and secular religion; a longing for the restoration of apostolic order and faith. It was generally unsacramental, anti-sacerdotal, an anticipation in some sort of the Anabaptists, the Puritans, the Separatists of a later time. It sprung in part from the same spirit which was asserting municipal independence in Florence and Genoa, in Frankfort and Bruges, in the guilds and free cities. It was the index of still more discontent, suppressed and secret. It was sufficient to disturb the clergy, and send solicitude to the Pope. He had humbled the pride of the Hohenstaufens, but here was an enemy more difficult to reach and to crush. It was the heretic at home, and not the infidel in Palestine, calling for a new crusade. Three times in a hundred years the bishops of the Latin Church were called to the Lateran in

men.

general council to consider these dangers. Against them monasticism could not make head, unless it took new form. It was too rich and stationary. It was fixed to one spot, and encumbered with too much property to move easily. It was a band of refugees from the world, rather than an army for its conquest. If the discontented fled there, their questions were silenced rather than answered. The religion which retired into monasteries was quiet on principle and by habit. If it quarreled with the clergy, it supported the Pope, who gave it exemptions and privileges. Its charity was rather for the purchase of merit and salvation for themselves, than love to the souls of It invited men to come, but did not go after them. And to those who did not come, the poor people who had no wealth and wanted spiritual satisfaction, the sight of magnificent abbeys and idle monks, and a religion which only ate and prayed, was only an inflammation to their discontent. The Albigenses made great argument of their own poverty contrasted with the self-indulgence of the monks. Monasticism as it was had no power sufficient to convince and convert them. Something more free, more practical, less separated from life, less wedded to sacred places, less entangled by superfluous property, was needed in order to maintain the power of the Church and the Pontiff. A more militant body, a flying artillery, a corps of spiritual Zouaves, must go among the people and after them, meeting the sects on their own grounds and with their own weapons. There must be a crusade for rescue, as well as for suppression. The heresy which would not yield to the brand and the sword, might yield to the sermon and an unworldly devotion. What could not be done by monks might be done by friars. And so the friars came, and the new mendicant orders, for two centuries, play a most important part in the fortunes of the Church and the Papacy. In them the religious fervor of the Middle Age culminated. Through them it became

preaching and missionary, and arrested the dangers and losses which menaced the hierarchy. St. Francis and St. Dominic, with Benedict and Loyola, are the unordained founders of institutes as potent as the clergy, and almost as the Pontificate itself.

For the first sixteen years of the thirteenth century, the Papal chair was occupied by Innocent III. If he was not the greatest of Popes, the Pope was never greater. Never was bolder assertion of absolute power, and never, perhaps, a time more favorable for the assertion. Christendom not only assented to it, but seemed to require it,- at any rate to tempt to it. The Guelphs and Ghibellines were at strife, and Italy in political confusion; the Empire was in disorder, and claimed by rivals for the crown; John in England, and Philip Augustus in France, both provoked the terrible interdict of the Pope; heresy demanded his vigilance, and provoked wrath even to blood; and everywhere was the opportunity for his interposition. He exercised it as a right, and he exercised it with vigor. His plans did not always carry, and some of them failed after his death. And the legend, that it was only with difficulty he escaped the torments of the damned, shows that the vicar of God is not above public opinion, however safe he may be in regions beyond it. But his character and bearing fitted his great place, to which he came when he was in middle life, and which he held with serene pride and unquestioned supremacy to the end.

It was to Innocent the question was submitted whether or not the religious enthusiasm which created these new orders should be sanctioned and. used, or be turned away, perhaps to break out in new spiritual disaffection, becoming a trouble rather than a help to the Church. More than a generation ago, Mr. Macaulay, the most brilliant reviewer of his time, and in one of his most brilliant papers, drew that picture of the different policies of the Roman and English Churches which everybody has read. He says:11 Macaulay's Miscellanies, iii. 334.