who had been accustomed to see in the ecclesiastic only the sensual worldling intent solely upon the indulgence of his appetites.[537:1]

In the busy world of the 13th century there was then no agency more active than that of the Mendicant Orders, for good and for evil. On the whole perhaps the good preponderated, for they undoubtedly aided in postponing a revolution for which the world was not yet ready. Though the self-abnegation of their earlier days was a quality too rare and perishable to be long preserved, and though they soon sank to the level of the social order around them, yet their work had not been altogether lost.[537:2]

The degeneration which soon crept into both orders was not allowed to increase without efforts of reformation. Within fifty years after the death of St. Francis, Bonaventura, the governor-general who succeeded him, complained that the vow of poverty had broken down, that the Franciscans were more entangled in money matters than the older orders and that vast sums were lavished on costly buildings. He declared that the friars were idle, lazy beggars given to vice and so brazen that they were feared as much as highway robbers. He said further that they made undesirable acquaintances and thus gave rise to grave scandals, and that they were too greedy of burial and legacy fees and thus encroached upon the parochial clergy. St. Francis himself had been compelled to resign his generalship on account of the abuses and offered to resume it only on condition of reformation.[537:3] The second general, Elias, the shrewdest politician in Italy, was removed by Pope Gregory IX. It was high time

therefore that a high-minded reformer like Bonaventura appeared, for by a series of steps the Franciscans changed from a body of pietists to a band of the boldest swindlers. As preaching and soul-saving died out, the begging propensities were developed. As early as 1233 Gregory IX. told the Dominicans that their poverty should be genuine and not hypocritical.[538:1] The wide use of the friars by the Pope for political purposes still further diverted them from their spiritual functions and tended to make them worldly.

As a result the Franciscans soon broke into two parties: (1) The liberals who were not averse to dropping the vow of poverty and imitating the older monastic orders were very strong. (2) The reform party who desired to adhere rigidly to the preaching and practice of St. Francis were probably a minority and were weakened by subdivisions. One faction of the strict party was called Spirituales,[538:2] and in turn was represented by the Cæsarins who revolted against the public activity of Elias and were punished as rebels; the Celestines who were permitted to exist as a separate order by Pope Celestine V. in 1294, and were later denounced as heretics; the congregation of Narbonne which was formed in 1282; the Clarenins who were accused of heresy in 1318; and the congregation of Philip of Nyarca which was formed in 1308. A second reform element within the rigid party were the Fratricelli, authorised by Celestine V., who became revolutionists, repudiated the Papacy, left the Church, joined the Beghards, thought that they were possessed with the Holy Spirit and were exempt from sin, and

repudiated the sacraments of the Church. They were condemned as heretics and the Inquisition was turned against them in Italy, Sicily, and southern France, but they lasted until the Reformation. Later reform factions among the Franciscans were the Capuchins (1526), Minims (1453), Observants (1415), and Recollects. These internal reformers failed to change the order because the rule of St. Francis was utterly incompatible with social life in any form.

For three centuries the Franciscans and Dominicans practically ruled the Church and state. They filled the highest civil ecclesiastical positions; they taught authoritatively in the universities and churches; they maintained the prerogatives of the Roman Pontiffs against kings, bishops, and heretics; and they were to the Church before the Reformation what the Jesuits were after the Reformation. The Mendicants increased so rapidly however that they soon became a burden to the Church and the people. Hence in 1272 Gregory X. in the Council of Lyons suppressed the "extravagant multitude" by reducing them to four orders: the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites, and the Augustinians.

SOURCES.