The antagonism between the two Orders did not stop here, and in many of the great questions of the day they are found on opposite sides. The Oxford Franciscans, as we have already seen, were among the staunchest supporters of Simon de Montfort; the Oxford Dominicans seem to have sided with the King. The famous Mad Parliament, which Henry III summoned to Oxford in 1258, met in the convent of the Black Friars, and Prince Edward and his retainers stayed there before the battle of Lewes[497].
The same rivalry made itself felt in the sphere of philosophy, and the Franciscans dealt a heavy blow at their more orthodox adversaries by impugning successfully an important doctrine of Thomas Aquinas[498]. The Angelic Doctor had held with Aristotle and against Averroes that the individualising principle was not form but matter. How then, asked his opponents, could the individual exist in the non-material world[499]? Such a doctrine was in contradiction to the mediaeval theory of heaven and the life after death; and the Church rallied to the side of the Franciscans. At Oxford, Archbishop Kilwardby, Dominican though he was, condemned this among many other errors in 1276, but the sentence seems to have had little effect at the time[500]. It was chiefly against this opinion that Peckham’s measures in 1284 were directed[501]. If the Dominicans had allowed the aspersion cast on their greatest teacher to pass without serious protest when the condemnation came from one of themselves, they were anything but content to submit to the adverse judgment of one of their rivals. Peckham was attacked both by the Provincial of the Black Friars in a congregation at Oxford[502] and in an anonymous pamphlet apparently by a Cambridge Dominican[503]—‘a cursed page and infamous leaf,’ as he describes it, ‘whose beginning is headless, whose middle malignant, and whose end foolish and formless.’ His action further involved the whole of the Franciscan Order in England in the storm. He was accused of ‘having sown discord between the Orders[504];’ and to defend himself against the charge of unduly favouring the Franciscans, he denied that he had consulted the latter on the subject and insisted on the previous condemnation of the same error by his predecessor[505]. He claimed to be actuated by no personal animus against the dead, whom he held in high honour and whom he had himself defended; his attack was directed against ignorant and arrogant men who presumed to teach what they did not know and to entice youths to the same errors. ‘We cannot and dare not,’ he urged, ‘fail to rescue our children, as far as we can, from the traps of error;’ and he forbade ‘curious theologians’ to defend the condemned doctrines in ‘the disputes of boys’ (in certaminibus puerilibus) at Oxford.
‘We by no means,’ he adds, ‘reprobate the studies of philosophers, so far as they serve the mysteries of theology, but the profane novelties which, contrary to philosophic truth, have been introduced into the heights of theology in the last twenty years, to the injuries of the saints.’
The question became a matter rather of feeling than of argument; the esprit de corps of the rival factions was involved, and the two Orders further estranged[506].
Peckham lost few opportunities of advancing the interests of the Mendicants at the expense of the monks and secular clergy, and of his brother Franciscans against the other Orders. The discipline and morals of the nuns of Godstow had suffered owing to the proximity of their house to the university-town, and the Archbishop, in his injunctions for the better government of the same, appointed two Friars Preachers and two Friars Minors (or four of each if necessary) as permanent confessors to the Convent[507]. In 1291 he wrote to the Prior of St. Frideswide’s urging him to confer the church of St. Peter le Bailey on some one devoted to the Friars Minors and nominated by them[508]. While strenuously asserting the right of the Minorites to hear confessions in spite of the opposition of the parish priests[509], he forbade the Carmelites and Austin Friars at Oxford to hear any confessions of any persons whatsoever, regular or secular, clerk or lay, male or female, and ordered the Archdeacon, if they disobeyed, to pronounce public sentence of excommunication on them[510]. Arguing that ‘it was lawful to change a vow for a better one[511],’ he maintained that the Franciscans might, as they had hitherto done, admit members of other religious bodies to their Order; he would, he wrote to the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, himself admit them, if he were still Provincial Minister.
‘We have heard with great surprise,’ he proceeds, ‘that the Prior and friars of the Order of St. Augustine in Oxford are imposing the mark of excommunication on the Friars Minors of Oxford, and defaming them in many ways, for receiving one of their friars in the aforesaid canonical form. We therefore order you to go in person to the Austin friary and warn them, in our name and by our authority, to cease from these detractions. But if they assert that they have raised this tumult against the Minorites on the ground of some privilege of theirs, you shall ask them to let me have a copy of their privilege to compare with those of the Minorites which we have to maintain; and we will certainly not allow them to be molested in contravention of their privilege; nor will we endure that the Friars Minors be injuriously oppressed, for by so doing we should break the commands of the Pope[512].’
Peckham further, while condemning the erroneous opinions of the Dominicans at Oxford, denied the claim to superiority which they put forward[513]. The Franciscans claimed precedence on the ground of their humility (which of course dwindled in inverse ratio as their assertion of it grew), and of their absolute poverty. The Archbishop enunciated the formula which was condemned by the inquisitors and the Pope in the next century, and which formed, so to speak, the text of the controversy, ‘De paupertate Christi.’ He defined the poverty of the apostles to be
‘having no title to the possession of any property real or personal, private or common[514];’
the Minorites in following this example were in a state of ‘perfection,’ and lived a holier life than any other Order in the Church.
The claim was generally admitted, and led to the exaltation of the Minorites in the eyes of the world at the expense of the other Orders[515]. As early as 1269 a controversy on this point arose between the convents of the two Orders at Oxford. A Dominican named Solomon of Ingeham accused the Minorites of receiving money either with their own hands or through a third party[516]. The Franciscans denied the charge and demanded the punishment of Friar Solomon. The Dominicans asked them to prove the falsehood of Solomon’s assertion and promised then to punish him. ‘The burden of proof,’ replied the Franciscans, ‘lies with you who affirm, not with us who deny.’ The Dominicans brought forward many instances in which they maintained that the Minorites had actually received money. These, answered the latter, were merely personal transgressions, and affected the community no more than any case of carnal sin or disobedience. The Dominicans, however, based their contention mainly on the argument that money bequeathed to the Franciscans must be received either by them in person or by intermediaries on their behalf. The Minorites answered