and praises him for wisdom, whereas he praises St. Francis for “seraphic ardour.” Instead of being above all a poet and mystic, like the Poverello of Assisi, St. Dominic was an organizer and statesman. There was a strain of ecclesiastical anarchism in the early Franciscan Order; certain “spiritual” Franciscans of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century rebelled against religious authority as no Dominicans have ever done. Where the Italian saint puts an example ahead of precept, the Spaniard put precept ahead of example. To him the weakness of the Church was that not enough of her clergy knew thoroughly her doctrine and were able to teach it. For him, as for the prophet Hosea, the “... people were destroyed for lack of knowledge.” His order was vowed to learning. Indeed, it was a Dominican, St. Thomas Aquinas, who has left us the most complete and harmonious of all human attempts to analyse the universe. Instead of attacking in flank by destroying the mood out of which the ultra ascetic, and in particular the Manichean heresies grew, St. Dominic attacked heresy in front by direct argument. His “Preaching Friars” observed strict poverty, not so much as a good in itself, as did St. Francis, but rather in the spirit of the soldier who lightens his pack the better to take the field. As they went to and fro, begging their bread, they escaped the poor man’s envy which dogged the footsteps of the wealthy bishops and the abbots of the older orders. Thus they were equally free to debate with the philosophers in the turbulent universities, or to set forth the Faith in words of one syllable to simple folk.
The organizers, those carpenters and stonemasons of history, are obscure by contrast with its artists and sculptors. Just so the personality of St. Dominic (at least in the Protestant world) has been overshadowed by that of St. Francis. Even the Church which they both served canonized Francis within two years after he was dead, and waited thirteen before canonizing Dominic.
But if the Poverello of Assisi had more poetry in him, the Spanish gentleman had more statesmanship. The organization of the Franciscan Order fluctuated violently and finally settled down into a copy of the Dominican. According to the first Franciscan Rule, that of 1221, a Friar is not bound to obey his superiors when that superior commands him to do something against the “life,” a proposition so impossible in practice that it survived only two years. On the other hand, down to 1240, the Head of the Franciscan Order was undisputed Cæsar, nominating lesser officers and legislating either without any Chapter (i.e., Assembly) or with a Chapter composed exclusively of officers appointed by himself. This again worked so badly that in 1240 the organization was changed so as to add elected representatives of the Chapter General, and to make the nomination of lesser officers a function of the Chapter General so constituted; both of which features were typically Dominican, and had been part of the first Constitution of that Order.
As with the constitution of their Order so with the Higher Learning. Here too the Franciscans found themselves compelled by force of circumstances to abandon their own founder’s distinctive teaching and follow the lead of the Dominicans. Whereas St. Francis himself feared and hated learning, even before his death some of the greatest scholars in Christendom wore the Franciscan habit.
To the subjects of representative government and of learning I shall return for a moment at the close of the chapter in the attempt to estimate the permanent value of the thirteenth century achievement. The point I now make is that, in both respects, St. Dominic builded so much better (at least for his generation) than St. Francis that the Franciscans themselves soon adopted Dominican methods. And this was true not only in regard to learning and representative government, but also with regard to the Inquisition.
Both of the mendicant orders were formed, as a modern would say, “for service.” They were democratic in constitution: the Dominicans had been so from their origin. Indeed it has been claimed with some show of reason that it was the Dominicans who first brought representative government from its original home near the Pyrenees into England. They addressed themselves particularly to the poorer and the less fortunate of mankind. Whereas the older orders of monks had retired to the wilderness, or at least to the country, the mendicants laboured chiefly in the fast growing towns characteristic of the new and sudden mediæval rise out of the Dark Ages. It is always in towns that the human struggle for life is sharpest and the results of defeat most provocative of pity.
Although the ministrations of the friars were often very different in kind from those of the “social worker” of to-day, inasmuch as they were concerned first of all to bear witness to the Faith whereas the average “social worker” is concerned chiefly with conferring material benefits (I suspect that is why he, or she, does not accomplish more), still social worker and mendicant friar have this essential in common in that the purpose of both was to “do things” for the poor. Alas! in the garden of “social service” a serpent lies in wait for poor erring humans, and his name is Tyranny. Those who are the objects of ministrations, being human, too often receive them unwillingly and prefer their own ways. And those who would minister, being equally human, when they see their good works (as they think them) rejected by those whom they would benefit, too often seek forcibly to compel acceptance.
Of course such people believe that they know better than the rejectors (who are, in practice, the more independent and self-respecting of the poor) what is good for the latter. But the student of history shakes his head sadly, in the knowledge that the innumerable oppressors of mankind have all believed that they could govern people better than those whom they oppressed could govern themselves.
The connection of St. Dominic himself with the Inquisition (using the word loosely to cover all legal and judicial action against heretics), although much disputed, is clear. The evidence consists of two documents of St. Dominic’s own, and a tradition, written down in its present form sixty-seven years after his death, which has been accepted by all students of his life, including those who hold that he had no connection with the Inquisition whatsoever. The first document is a licence to a citizen in Toulouse to board a certain converted heretic in his house until St. Dominic or the Cardinal Legate should give orders to the contrary. The second enumerates the provisions of the penance imposed upon another converted heretic.
Although this last has already been quoted in another chapter, nevertheless it may be well to repeat it here. “Until the Lord Legate (Arnaut Amalric) shall otherwise ordain” the unhappy man is to fast forever “from flesh, eggs, cheese and all which comes from flesh except at Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, when he shall eat some to protest against his former errors.” He is to keep three Lents each year, “fasting and abstaining from fish, unless from bodily infirmity or the heat of the weather he shall be dispensed.” As make-weights, he is to be beaten with rods upon his bare back, three Sundays running, by his village priest; he is forever to wear a distinctive dress marked with crosses to designate him as a former heretic, hear mass every day “if possible” and vespers as well on festival days, recite seventy paternosters a day and twenty in the middle of the night. How this last provision was to be enforced unless some almost equally unfortunate soul stayed awake to watch him is not stated. Finally, once a month he is to show the parchment on which all this is written to the village priest.