There have always been wanton waste and destitution side by side; and on the prophecy of the One to whom all things were revealed, we know that the poor shall be always with us. Yet we must honour those who, like their Master, strive to smooth away the anxious wrinkles of the world.
CHAPTER III
THE COMMUNISTS
There have always been religious teachers for whom all material creation was a thing of evil. Through the whole of the Middle Ages, under the various names of Manicheans, Albigensians, Vaudois, &c., they became exceedingly vigorous, though their importance was only fitful. For them property was essentially unclean, something to be avoided as carrying with it the in-dwelling of the spirit of evil. Etienne de Bourbon, a Dominican preacher of the thirteenth century, who got into communication with one of these strange religionists, has left us a record, exceedingly unprejudiced, of their beliefs. And amongst their other tenets, he mentions this, that they condemned all who held landed property. It will be here noticed that as regards these Vaudois (or Poor Men of Lyons, as he informs us they were called), there could have been no question of communism at all, for a common holding of property would have been as objectionable as private property. To hold material things either in community or severalty was in either case to bind oneself to the evil principle. Yet Etienne tells us that there was a sect among them which did sanction communism; they were called, in fact, the Communati (Tractatus de Diversis Materiis Predicabilibus, Paris, 1877, p. 281). How they were able to reconcile this social state with their beliefs it is quite impossible to say; but the presumption is that the example of the early Christians was cited as of sufficient authority by some of these teachers. Certain it is that a sect still lingered on into the thirteenth century, called the Apostolici, who clung to the system which had been in vogue among the Apostles. St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, 66, 2) mentions them, and quotes St. Augustine as one who had already refuted them. But these were seemingly a Christian body, whereas the Albigensians could hardly make any such claim, since they repudiated any belief in Christ's humanity, for it conflicted with their most central dogma.
Still it is clear that there were in existence certain obscure bodies which clung to communism. The published records of the Inquisition refer incessantly to preachers of this kind who denied private property, asserted that no rich man could get to heaven, and attacked the practice of almsgiving as something utterly immoral.
The relation between these teachers and the Orders of friars has never been adequately investigated. We know that the Dominicans and Franciscans were from their earliest institution sent against them, and must therefore have been well acquainted with their errors. And, as a fact, we find rising among the friars a party which seemed no little infected with the "spiritual" tendency of these very Vaudois. The Franciscan reverence for poverty, which the Poor Man of Assisi had so strenuously advocated, had in fact become almost a superstition. Instead of being, as the saint had intended it to be, merely a means to an end, it had in process of time become looked upon as the essential of religion. When, therefore, the excessive adoption of it made religious life an almost impossible thing, an influential party among the Franciscans endeavoured to have certain modifications made which should limit it within reasonable bounds. But opposed to them was a determined, resolute minority, which vigorously refused to have any part in such "relaxations." The dispute between these two branches of the Order became at last so tempestuous that it was carried to the Pope, who appointed a commission of cardinals and theologians to adjudicate on the rival theories. Their award was naturally in favour of those who, by their reasonable interpretation of the meaning of poverty, were fighting for the efficiency of their Order. But this drove the extreme party into still further extremes. They rejected at once all papal right to interfere with the constitutions of the friars, and declared that only St. Francis could undo what St. Francis himself had bound up. Nor was this all, for in the pursuance of their zeal for poverty they passed quickly from denunciations of the Pope and the wealthy clergy (in which their rhetoric found very effective matter for argument) into abstract reasoning on the whole question of the private possession of property. The treatises which they have left in crabbed Latin and involved methods of argument make wearisome and irritating reading. Most are exceedingly prolix. After pages of profound disquisitions, the conclusions reached seem to have advanced the problem no further. Yet the gist of the whole is certainly an attempt to deny to any Christian the right to temporal possessions. Michael of Cesena, the most logical and most effective of the whole group, who eventually became the Minister-General of this portion of the Order, does not hesitate to affirm the incompatibility of Christianity and private property. From being a question as to the teaching of St. Francis, the matter had grown to one as to the teaching of Christ; and in order to prove satisfactorily that the practice of poverty as inculcated by St. Francis was absolute and inviolable, it was found necessary to hold that it was equally the declared doctrine of Christ.
Even Ockham, a brilliant Oxford Franciscan, who, together with Michael, defended the Emperor, Louis of Bavaria, in his struggle against Pope John XXII, let fall in the heat of controversy some sayings which must have puzzled his august patron; for Louis would have been the very last person for whom communism had any charms. Closely allied in spirit with these "Spiritual Franciscans," as they were called, or Fraticelli, were those curious mediaeval bodies of Beguins and Beghards. Hopelessly pantheistic in their notion of the Divine Being, and following most peculiar methods of reaching on earth the Beatific Vision, they took up with the same doctrine of the religious duty of the communistic life. They declared the practice of holding private property to be contrary to the Divine Law.
Another preacher of communism, and one whose name is well known for the active propaganda of his opinions, and for his share in the English Peasant Revolt of 1381, was John Ball, known to history as "The Mad Priest of Kent." There is some difficulty in finding out what his real theories were, for his chroniclers were his enemies, who took no very elaborate steps to ascertain the exact truth about him. Of course there is the famous couplet which is said to have been the text of all his sermons:
"Whaune Adam dalf and Eve span,