The spread of heresy and the feeble attempts of the bishops to use the machinery at their disposal for dealing with it, caused the gradual growth of the system known as the Papal Inquisition. This was feasible, partly because the civil government, led by Frederick II, were enacting severe laws against heresy, but chiefly because in the new Mendicant Orders there were now to be found men of sufficient knowledge and training to cope with the difficulty of unmasking heresy. But it is a mistake to suppose that the inquisitorial work was a perquisite of the Dominicans. Both Orders alike were employed by the Papacy in the unsavoury duty, although ultimately the Dominicans took the larger share. For the service of the wretched, to which the Franciscans primarily devoted themselves, soon necessitated a study of medicine in order to cope with disease and a study of theology in order to deal with heresy. If as a body they never came to represent learning like the Dominicans, the names of Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, and Duns Scotus sufficiently prove that there was no necessary antagonism between learning and the Franciscan ideal.
[Sidenote: St. Francis.]
The modern and the Protestant world apparently finds the life of St. Francis as interesting and wonderful as his contemporaries found it. It seems no exaggeration to say that "no human creature since Christ has more fully incarnated the ideal of Christianity" than he. Even the extravagances of himself and some of his followers, scarcely exaggerated by the mass of legends which has grown up around him and the Order, cannot conceal the real beauty of his life; while they bear eloquent witness not only to the impression which he made on his own and succeeding generations, but also to the fact of his attempt to realise the standard set up by Christ for human imitation. His devotion to the wretched and the outcast, especially the lepers; his deep humility; his childlike faith and absolute obedience, were the outcome of a desire to attain to the simplicity of Christ and the Apostles. But the essence of his system lay in the idealisation of poverty as good in itself and the best of all good things. Poverty was, indeed, the "corner-stone on which he founded the Order." But this did not imply sadness, which St. Francis considered one of the most potent weapons of the devil. Sociability, cheerfulness, hopefulness were characteristics of himself and of the Order in its early days. Here it is impossible to tell the fascinating story of his own life, to describe his own graphic preaching, or to illustrate his instinctive sympathy with animal life. But it must be noted that his passionate love for Christ the Sufferer caused him to desire to reproduce in detail the last hours of the Saviour's life on earth, until the ecstasies may have ended in producing those physical marks of the crucifixion upon the body known as the Stigmata. The evidence is conflicting and not above suspicion, and the Dominicans always treated the claim with ridicule. Certainly the Franciscan Order exalted their founder with an extravagance which ultimately (1385) ended in the production of a Book of Conformities, some forty in number, in which, by implication, the simple friar becomes a second if not a rival Christ.
It was in 1210 that Francis and the Brotherhood of Penitents which he had founded at Assisi appeared in Rome, and obtained from Innocent III a verbal confirmation of their rule and authority to preach. This rule seems to have comprised nothing more than certain passages of Scripture enjoining a life of poverty. The first disciples of Francis were drawn from a variety of social classes, and a revelation from God is said to have decided him and his little company to abandon their first notion of a contemplative life in favour of one of active service along evangelical lines. The missionary work began at once, and they wandered in couples through Italy, finding their way quickly into France, England, Germany, and all other European lands.
[Sidenote: Franciscan Rule.]
The future organisation of the Order was determined by a definitive Rule sanctioned by Honorius III in 1223. Francis refused to alter any of the clauses at the Pope's request, asserting that the Rule was not his, but Christ's; whence it became a tradition of the Order that the Rule had been divinely inspired. It was strictly enjoined that the brethren should possess no property, should receive no money even through a third person, and that all who were able to labour should do so in return not for money, but for necessaries for themselves and their brethren. And as if these plain directions were not enough, St. Francis in his will enjoins that the words of the Rule are to be understood "simply and absolutely, without gloss," and to be observed to the end.
[Sidenote: Organization]
The organisation aimed at being non-monastic; the houses, which should be mere headquarters of the simplest kind, were placed under guardians who had neither the title nor the powers of the monastic abbot, and were grouped into provinces; while the provincial ministers were responsible to the General Minister stationed at Assisi, who was himself chosen by the General Chapter of the provincials and guardians called every three years, and could also be deposed by them. A Cardinal watched the interests of the Order at Rome. The rapid spread of the Franciscans is shown from the fact that the first General Chapter in 1221 is said to have been attended by several thousand members, while in 1260, when Bonaventura as General reorganised the arrangements, a division was made into 33 provinces and 3 vicariates which included in all 182 guardianships. England, for example, comprised 7 guardianships with 49 houses and 1242 friars.
The Order included other branches than the fully professed friars. Some time before 1216 a sisterhood was added in the Order of St. Claire under a noble maiden of Assisi, who put herself under the guidance of Francis and received from Pope Innocent for herself and her sisters the "privilege of poverty." They observed the Franciscan Rule in all its strictness, and their founder was canonised in 1255, two years after her death.
[Sidenote: Tertiaries.]