were frequently recruited from the worst and most vicious classes. Such motives as sickness, poverty, crime, mortal danger, dread of hell, and desire of heaven would not furnish the best class of devotees.[517:1] In one French cloister the inmates were all professional highway robbers. Furthermore, the name monk was rendered still more despicable by the crowds of tramps palming themselves off as monks. Bearded, tonsured, and dressed in the religious habit, they swarmed throughout all parts of Christendom, begging, stealing, deceiving, and peddling false relics, and were often taken in crime and slain without mercy.[517:2] The secular priests hated the monks and the people mistrusted and despised both.[517:3] The intense speculative spirit of the age tended to create disbelief in the Church and to produce new sects which the Papacy tried in vain to suppress by force. The secular clergy were also in bad condition—the upper clergy wealthy, powerful, immoral, and worldly; the lower clergy characterised by sloth and incapacity. The need of reformation was generally recognised, but who would do it? "The Church had made no real effort at internal reform; it was still grasping, licentious, covetous, and a strange desire for something—they knew not exactly what—began to take possession of men's hearts and spread like an epidemic from village to village and from land to land."[517:4] Heresy, likewise, was making rapid strides and was propagated by sects whose austere lives and serviceable conduct were popular because in such a striking contrast to those of the monks and clergy.
The general purpose of the begging orders, which grew out of these conditions, was (1) to reform the Church from within and not by revolution; (2) to avoid the evils and corruptions of wealth by making poverty an object of admiration and sanctification; (3) to send their members out to save the Church and the world instead of shutting them up in monasteries for the selfish purpose of saving their own souls; (4) to supervise the whole system and to keep the order in a harmonious working condition by a rigidly organised monarchial government; and (5) to set on foot a great reformatory home movement which would win the Church away from the corrupting idols back to a purer and more primitive Christianity.[518:1] The two prominent begging orders were both Romanic in origin and not Germanic.
The way for the begging orders was partially prepared by antecedent reformers and orders. Conspicuous among the individuals who were forerunners of St. Francis and St. Dominic was (1) St. Bernard (1091-1153) who advocated poverty and denounced the abuses of his day. (2) Arnold of Brescia (c. 1100-1155), a priest and follower of Abélard, assailed the Pope's temporal power, attacked the wealth of the clergy, urged the secularisation of ecclesiastical property, and led a popular revolt in Rome for a republic. He was hanged, burned, and his ashes were thrown into the Tiber.[518:2] (3) Gerach of Reichersberg (1093-1169), a German monk and canon of Augsburg, left his position disgusted at the irregularity of the lives of the canons, went to Rome in 1125, and was officially appointed
by Honorius II. to reform the canonry. As the head of the canonry of Reichersberg (1132) he became an active and rigorous reformer.[519:1] (4) Foulques de Neuilly (died 1202), an obscure, ignorant priest, whose mighty conviction of the sins of the world and the Church made him a great preacher, was licensed by Innocent III. as a missionary. He converted thousands from wayward lives, reclaimed lost women and founded a convent for them at Paris, denounced the clergy without mercy, and struck at every evil in the Church. His reformation, however, was lost in the crusading zeal and he himself helped to preach the Fourth Crusade.[519:2]
Among the movements laying the foundations for the begging orders were (1) the "Poor Men," or Arnoldists, who were founded in Italy after the death of Arnold of Brescia[519:3]; (2) the "Poor Men of Lyons"[519:4]; and (3) the "Poor Catholics," who were founded by Duran de Husce, a Spaniard and disciple of St. Dominic. These "Poor Catholics" based their organisation on poverty and self-abnegation, sought to convert heretics, and were approved by Innocent III. although fought by the clergy. They appear to have been lost in the forcible effort to exterminate heresy.[519:5] (4) The Beghards and Beguins were founded in the Netherlands about 1180. At first companies of women were formed in the Belgian cities to care for the sick, to perform other acts of charity, and to aid the widows and orphans of the Crusaders. They lived together in a common house, led a pious life according to a few
simple rules, but took no vows. They were called Beguins. Early in the thirteenth century similar companies of men were formed and called Beghards. Members could leave the order at will, marry or enter any occupation after leaving. These orders had their own little houses, each one distinct in its organisation, which were frequently endowed by rich burghers. The inmates were also given to hand labour and did not neglect education, although their chief work was soul saving and charity. They spread rapidly from the Netherlands to Germany, to France, to Italy, and to Bohemia and Poland. As these associations increased, their members began to wander through the countries, begging and performing acts of mercy. After the middle of the thirteenth century, charges of heresy were made against them and they were persecuted by the Church.[520:1] (5) The Carmelites, one of the mendicant orders, according to its legendary history was founded by Elijah on Mount Carmel. The first disciples were Jonah, Micah, and Obadiah; and the wife of Obadiah was the first abbess. Even Pythagoras, Mary, and Jesus were considered members. The real origin, however, seems to lie in the fact that Phocas, a Greek monk from Patmos, in 1185 saw the ruins of a monastery on Mount Carmel and there an association of hermits was formed. The Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1209 gave the association a rule and in 1224 this rule was confirmed by Honorius III. The order played an active part during the Crusades until 1238, when it was removed to Sicily and later to England and France, where it followed the custom and became a mendicant order in 1247.
The founder of the Dominicans, or Black Friars, was Dominic de Guzman, born in 1170 in old Castile of noble ancestry. Many miraculous tales were told about his mother and his infancy.[521:1] At the age of seven he was given over to his uncle, who was archpresbyter at Gumyel de Ycan. At the age of fourteen he entered the University of Palencia,[521:2] where he remained ten years as a "laborious, devout, abstemious" student. Theology was his chief subject and he became a distinguished theologian. While a student, it was said that he sold his clothes to feed the poor in a time of famine, and on another occasion he offered to redeem a sad woman's brother from slavery by taking his place. At the age of twenty-four (1194), after having studied ten years at the University, he became a canon of the Bishop of Osma, where he helped to introduce the rules of St. Augustine. Soon he was made sub-prior of the chapter, became very active in ecclesiastical affairs, excelled in asceticism, which was inspired no doubt by reading Cassian's famous work on monasticism, and became a zealous and eloquent missionary among the Mohammedans and Jews of the neighbourhood.
In 1203 he went with the Bishop of Osma to southern France to secure a bride for the King's son. In this diplomatic venture they were successful, but the bride died before she could go to Spain. Here it was that Dominic got his first view of the aggressive Albigensian heretics.[521:3] From southern France he
accompanied the Bishop of Osma to Rome, where the bishop begged Innocent III. to permit him to go as a missionary to the Huns, or the Saracens, but the request was refused. The task of converting the heretics of southern France had been intrusted to the Cistercians, but they had utterly failed to accomplish it. As Dominic and the bishop were returning to France, they met at Montpellier three of these Cistercian abbots, who had been sent out by the Pope to superintend the duties intrusted to their order. The pomp and splendour of the abbots called forth this bold rebuke from Dominic: "It is not by the display of pomp and power, cavalcades of retainers and richly houseled palfreys, nor by gorgeous apparel, that the heretics win proselytes; it is by zealous preaching, by apostolic humility, by austerity and seeming holiness. Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth."[522:1] The abbots were advised to send out for the great work men who were imbued with apostolic poverty and zeal. The abbots accepted the advice and joined Dominic and his companion in their new conception of missionary work, but apparently their labours were checked in 1208 by the crusade waged against the Albigenses.
During the efforts to exterminate these revolters against the faith and authority of Rome, there are two accounts of the activity of Dominic,—first, that that he was a fiery leader of the crusading parties, and, secondly, that he strongly denounced the war. The probability seems to be that he lived quietly in his monastery at Prouille endeavouring to convert the