§ 97.5. The Pataria of Milan.—Nowhere during the 11th century were simony, concubinage and priests’ marriages more general than among the Lombard clergy, and in no other place was such determined opposition offered to Hildebrand’s reforms. At the head of this opposition stood Guido, archbishop of Milan, whom Henry III. deposed in A.D. 1046. Against the papal demands, he pressed the old claims of his chair to autonomy (§ 46, 1) and renounced allegiance to Rome. The nobles and the clergy supported Guido. But two deacons, Ariald and Landulf, about A.D. 1057 formed a conspiracy among the common people, against “the Nicolaitan sect” (§ 27, 8). To this party its opponents gave the opprobrious name of Pataria, Paterini, from patalia, meaning rabble, riffraff, or from Pattarea, a back street of ill fame in Milan, the quarter of the rabble, where the Arialdists held their secret meetings. They took the name given in reproach as a title of honour, and after receiving military organization from Erlembald, Landulf’s brother, they opened a campaign against the married priests. For thirty years this struggle continued to deluge city and country with blood.

§ 98. Monastic Orders and Institutions.

In spite of the great and constantly increasing corruption the monastic idea during this period had a wonderfully rapid development, and more persistently and successfully than ever before or since the monks urged their claims to be regarded as “the knighthood of asceticism.” A vast number of monkish orders arose, taking the place for the most part of existing orders which had relaxed their rules. These were partly reformed off-shoots of the Benedictine order, partly new organizations reared on an independent basis. New monasteries were being built almost every day, often even within the cities. The reformed Benedictine monasteries clustered in a group around the parent monastery whose reformed rule they adopted, forming an organized society with a common centre. These groups were therefore called Congregations. The oldest and, for two centuries, the most important, of these congregations was that of the Brethren of Clugny, whose ardent zeal for reform in the hierarchical direction was mainly instrumental in raising again the church and the papacy out of that degradation and corruption into which they had fallen during the 10th and 11th centuries. The otherwise less important order of the Camaldolites was also a vigorous promoter of these movements. But Clugny had in Clairvaux a rival which shared with it on almost equal terms the respect and reverence of that age. The unreformed monasteries of the Benedictines, on the other hand, still continued their easy, luxurious style of living. They were commonly called the Black Monks to distinguish them from the Cistercians who were known as the White Monks. In order to prevent a constant splitting up of the monkish fraternities, Innocent III. at the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215 forbade the founding of new orders. Yet he himself took part in the formation of the two great mendicant orders, and also the following popes issued no prohibition.—The papacy had in the monkish orders its standing army. It was to them, in a special manner, that Gregory’s system owed its success. But they were also by far the most important promoters and fosterers of learning, science, and art. The pope in various ways favoured the emancipation of the monasteries from episcopal control, their so-called Exemption; and conferred upon the abbots of famous monasteries what was practically episcopal rank, with liberty to wear the bishop’s mitre, so that they were called Mitred Abbots (§ 84, 1). The princes too classed the abbots in respect of dignity and order next to the bishops; and the people, who saw the popular idea of the church more and more represented in the monasteries, honoured them with unmeasured reverence. From the 10th century the monks came to be considered a distinct religious order (Ordo religiosorum). Lay brethren, Fratres conversi, were now taken in to discharge the worldly business of the monastery. They were designated Fratres, while the others who received clerical ordination were addressed as Patres. The monks rarely lived on good terms with the secular clergy; for the former as confessors and mass priests often seriously interfered with the rights and revenues of the latter.—Besides the many monkish orders, with their strict seclusion, perpetual vows and ecclesiastically sanctioned rule, we meet with organizations of a freer type such as the Humiliati of Milan, consisting of whole families. Of a similar type were the Beguines and Beghards of the Netherlands, the former composed of women, the latter of men. These people abandoned their handicraft and their domestic and civic duties for a monastic-like mode of life retired from the world. The crusading enthusiasm also occasioned a combination of the monastic idea with that of knighthood, and led to the formation of the so-called Orders of Knights, which with a Grandmaster and several Commanders, were divided into Knights, Priests, and Serving Brethren.—Continuation, § [112].

§ 98.1. Offshoots of the Benedictines.

  1. The Brethren of Clugny. Among the Benedictines, since their reformation by the second Benedict (§ 85, 2) many serious abuses had crept in. After the Burgundian Count Berno, who died in A.D. 927, had done useful service by restoring discipline and order in two monasteries of which he was abbot, the Duke William of Aquitaine founded for him a new institution. Thus arose in A.D. 910 the celebrated monastery of Clugny, Cluniacum, in Burgundy, which the founder placed under immediate papal control. Berno’s successor Odo, who died in A.D. 942, abandoning the life of a courtier on his recovery from a severe illness, made it the head and heart of a separate Clugny-Congregation as a branch of the Benedictine order. Strict asceticism, a beautiful and artistic service, zealous prosecution of science and the education of the young, with yet greater energy in the promotion of a hierarchical reform of the church as a whole, as well as an entire series of able abbots, among whom Odilo († A.D. 1048), the friend of Hildebrand, and Peter the Venerable († A.D. 1156) are specially prominent, gave to this congregation, which in the 12th century had 2,000 monasteries in France, an influence quite unparalleled in this whole period. The abbot of Clugny stood at the head, and appointed the priors for all the other monasteries. Under the licentious Abbot Pontius, who on account of his base conduct was deposed in A.D. 1122, the order fell into decay, but rose again under Peter the Venerable. Continuation, § 164, 2.
  2. The Congregation of the Camaldolites was founded in A.D. 1018 by the Benedictine Romuald, descended from the Duke of Ravenna, at Camaldoli (Campus Maldoli), a wild district in the Apennines. In A.D. 1086 a nunnery was placed alongside of the monastery. The president of the parent monastery at Camaldoli stood at the head of the whole order as Major. The order carried out enthusiastically the high church ideal of Clugny, and won great influence in its time, although it by no means attained the importance of the French order.
  3. Twenty years later, in A.D. 1038, the Florentine Gualbertus founded the Order of Vallombrosa, in a romantically situated shady valley of the Apennines (Vallis umbrosa), according to the rule of Benedict. This was the first of all the orders to appoint lay brethren for the management of worldly business, in order that the monks might observe their vow of silence and strict seclusion. The parent monastery attained to great wealth and reputation, but it never had a great number of affiliated institutions.
  4. The Cistercians. In A.D. 1098 the Benedictine abbot Robert founded the monastery of Citeaux (Cistercium) near Dijon, which as the parent monastery of the Congregation of the Cistercians became the most formidable rival of Clugny. The Cistercians were distinguished from the Brethren of Clugny by voluntary submission to the jurisdiction of the bishops, avoidance of all interference with the pastorates of others, and the banishing of all ornaments from their churches and monasteries. The order continued obscure for a while, till St. Bernard (§ [102, 3]), from A.D. 1115 abbot of the monastery of Clairvaux (Claravallis), an offshoot of Citeaux, by his ability and spirituality raised it far above all other orders in the esteem of the age. In honour of him the French Cistercians took the name of Bernardines. The hostility between them and the Brethren of Clugny was overcome by the personal friendship of Bernard and Peter the Venerable. By the statutory constitution, the so-called Charta charitatis, drawn up in A.D. 1119, the administration of all the affairs of the order was assigned to a general of the order, appointed by the abbot of Citeaux, the abbots of the four chief affiliated monasteries, and twenty other elected representatives forming a high council. This council, however, was answerable to the general assembly of all the abbots and priors, which met at first yearly, but afterwards every third year. The affiliated monasteries had a yearly visitation of the abbot of Citeaux, but Citeaux itself was to be visited by the four abbots just referred to. In the 13th century this order had 2,000 monasteries and 6,000 nunneries.
  5. The Congregation of Scottish Monasteries in Germany owed its origin to the persistent love of travel on the part of Irish and Scottish monks, which during the 10th century received a new impulse from the Danish invasions (§ [93, 1]). The first monastery erected in Germany for the reception exclusively of Irish monks was that of St. Martin at Cologne, built in the 10th century. Much more important, however, was the Scottish monastery of St. James at Regensburg, founded in A.D. 1067 by Marianus Scotus and two companions. It was the parent monastery of eleven other Scottish cloisters in South Germany. Old Celtic sympathies (§ 77, 8), which may have originally bound them together, could not assert themselves in the new home during this period as they did in earlier days; and when Innocent III., at the Lateran Council of A.D. 1215, sanctioned them as a separate congregation bound by the Benedictine rule, there certainly remained no longer any trace of Celtic peculiarities. They were distinguished at first for strict asceticism, severe discipline and scientific activity, but subsequently they fell lower than all the rest in immorality and self-indulgence (§ [112]).

§ 98.2. New Monkish Orders.—Reserving the great mendicant orders, the following are the most celebrated among the vast array of new orders, not bound by the Benedictine rule:

  1. The Order of Grammont in France, founded by Stephen of Ligerno in A.D. 1070. It took simply the gospel as its rule, cultivated a quiet, humble and peaceable temper, and so by the 12th century it had its very life crushed out of it by the bold assumptions of its lay brethren.
  2. The Order of St. Anthony, founded in A.D. 1095 by a French nobleman of Dauphiny [Dauphiné], called Guaston, in gratitude for the recovery of his son Guérin from the so-called St. Anthony’s fire on his invoking St. Anthony. He expended his whole property upon the restoring of a hospital beside the church of St. Didier la Mothe, in a chapel of which it was supposed the bones of Anthony lay, and devoted himself, together with his son and some other companions, to the nursing of the sick. At first merely a lay fraternity, the members took in A.D. 1218 the monk’s vow. Boniface VIII. made them canons under the rule of St. Augustine (§ 45, 1). They were now called Antonians, and devoted themselves to contemplation. The order spread greatly, especially in France. They wore a black cloak with a T-formed cross of blue upon the breast (Ezek. ix. 9) and a little bell round the neck while engaged in collecting alms.
  3. The Order of Fontevraux was founded in A.D. 1094 by Robert of Arbrissel in Fontevraux (Fons Ebraldi) in Poitou. Preaching repentance, he went through the country, and founded convents for virgins, widows and fallen women. Their abbesses, as representatives of the Mother of God, to whom the order was dedicated, were set over the priests who did their bidding.
  4. The Order of the Gilbertines had its name from its founder Gilbert, an English priest of noble birth. Here too the women formed the main stem of the order. They were the owners of the cloister property, and the men were only its administrators. The monasteries of this order were mostly both for men and women. It did not spread much beyond England, and had at the time of the suppression of the monasteries twenty-one well endowed convents, with orphanages and houses for the poor and sick.
  5. The Carthusian Order was founded in A.D. 1086 by Bruno of Cologne, rector of the High School at Rheims. Disgusted with the immoral conduct of Archbishop Manasseh, he retired with several companions into a wild mountain gorge near Grenoble, called Chartreuse. He enjoined upon his monks strict asceticism, rigid silence, earnest study, prayer, and a contemplative life, clothed them in a great coarse cowl, and allowed them for their support only vegetables and bran bread. Written statutes, Consuetudines Cartusiæ, which soon spread over several houses of the Carthusians, were first given them in A.D. 1134 by Guido, the fifth prior of the parent monastery. A steward had management of the affairs of the convent. Each ate in his own cell; only on feast days had they a common meal. At least once a week they fasted on salt, water and bread. Breaking silence, permitted only on high festivals, and for two hours on Thursdays, was punished with severe flagellation. Even the lay brethren were treated with great severity, and were not allowed either to sit or to cover their heads in the presence of the brothers of the order. Carthusian nuns were added to the order in the 13th century with a modified rule.
  6. The Premonstratensian Order was founded in A.D. 1121 by Norbert, the only German founder of orders besides and after Bruno. A rich, worldly-minded canon of Xanthen in the diocese of Cologne, he was brought to another mind by the fall of a thunderbolt beside him. He retired along with several other like-minded companions into the rough valley of Prémontré in the bishopric of Laon (Præmonstratum, because pointed out to him in a vision). In his rule he joined together the canonical duties with an extremely strict monastic life. He appeared in A.D. 1126 as a preacher of repentance at the Diet of Spires, was there elected archbishop of Magdeburg, and made a most impressive entrance into his metropolis dressed in his mendicant garb. His order spread and established many convents both for monks and for nuns.
  7. The Trinitarian Order, ordo s. Trinitatis de redemptione captivorum, was called into existence by Innocent III., and had for its work the redemption of Christian captives.
  8. The Cœlestine Order was founded by Peter of Murrone, afterwards Pope Cœlestine V. (§ [96, 22]). Living in a cave of Mount Murrone in Apulia, under strict penitential discipline and engaged in mystic contemplation, the fame of his sanctity attracted to him many companions, with whom in A.D. 1254 he established a monastery on Mount Majella. Gregory X., in whose presence Peter, according to his biographer, hung up his monkish cowl in empty space, upon a sunbeam which he took for a cord stretching across, instituted the order as Brethren of the Holy Spirit. But when in A.D. 1294 their founder ascended the papal throne, they took his papal name. This order, which gave itself up entirely to extravagant mystic contemplation, spread over Italy, France and the Netherlands.

§ 98.3. The Beginnings of the Franciscan Order down to A.D. 1219.—The founder of this order was St. Francis, born in A.D. 1182, son of a rich merchant of Assisi in Umbria. His proper name was Giovanni Bernardone. The name of Francis is said to have been given him on account of his early proficiency in the French language; “Francesco”—the little Frenchman. As a wealthy merchant’s son, he gave himself to worldly pleasures, but was withdrawn from these, in A.D. 1207, by means of a severe illness. A dream, in which he saw a multitude with the sign of the cross, bearing weapons designed for him and his companions, led him to resolve upon a military career. But a new vision taught him that he was called to build up the fallen house of God. He understood this of a ruined chapel of St. Damiani at Assisi, and began to apply the proceeds of valuable cloth fabrics from his father’s factory to its restoration. Banished for such conduct from his father’s house, he lived for a time as a hermit, until the gospel passage read in church of the sending forth of the disciples without gold or silver, without staff or scrip (Matt. x.), fell upon his soul like a thunderbolt. Divesting himself of all his property, supplying the necessaries of life by the meanest forms of labour, even begging when need be, he went about the country from A.D. 1209, sneered at by some as an imbecile, revered by others as a saint, preaching repentance and peace. In the unexampled power of his self-denial and renunciation of the world, in the pure simplicity of his heart, in the warmth of his love to God and man, in the blessed riches of his poverty, St. Francis was like a heavenly stranger in a selfish world. Wonderful, too, and powerful in its influence was the depth of his natural feeling. With the birds of the forest, with the beasts of the field, he held intercourse in childlike simplicity as with brothers and sisters, exhorting them to praise their Creator. The paradisiacal relation of man to the animal world seemed to be restored in the presence of this saint.—Very soon he gathered around him a number of like-minded men, who under his direction had decided to devote themselves to a similar vocation. For the society of “Viri pœnitentiales de civitate Assisii oriundi” thus formed Francis issued, in A.D. 1209, a rule, at the basis of which lay a literal acceptance of the precepts of Christ to His disciples, sent forth to preach the kingdom of God (Matt. x.; Luke x.), along with similar gospel injunctions (Matt. xix. 21, 29; Luke vi. 29; ix. 23; xiv. 26), and then he went to Rome to get for it the papal confirmation. The pope was, indeed, unwilling; but through the pious man’s simplicity and humility he was prevailed upon to grant his request. In later times this incident was in popular tradition transformed into a legend, representing the pope as at first bidding him go to attend the swine, which the holy man literally obeyed. Innocent III. was the more inclined to yield, owing to the painful experiences through which the church had passed in consequence of its unwise treatment of similar proposals made by the Waldensians thirty years before. He therefore gave at least verbal permission to Francis and his companions to live and teach according to this rule. At the same time also Francis heartily responded to the demand to place at the head of his rule the obligation to obey and reverence the pope, and to conclude with a vow of the most rigid avoidance of every kind of addition, abatement, or change. There was no thought of founding a new monkish order, but only of a free union and a wandering life, amid apostolic poverty, for preaching repentance and salvation by word and example. On entering the society the brothers were required to distribute all their possessions among the poor, and dress in the poor clothing of the order, consisting of a coarse cloak bound with a cord and a capouch, to preach the gospel of the kingdom of God wherever their master sent them, and to earn their livelihood by their usual occupation, or any other servile work. In case of need they were even to beg the necessaries of life. Thus mendicancy, though only allowed in case of necessity, soon came to be transformed by the lustre of the example of the poverty of Jesus and His disciples and mother, who all had lived upon alms, and by the idea of a twofold merit attaching to self-abnegation, inasmuch as not only the receiver, by voluntarily submitting to the disgrace which it involved in the eyes of the world, but also the giver of alms, obtained before the judgment seat of God a great reward. But neither as wages for work nor as alms were the brothers permitted to accept money, but only the indispensable means of life, while that which remained after their own wants had been supplied was divided among the poor. From time to time they withdrew, either singly or in little groups, for prayer, contemplation, and spiritual exercises into deserts, caves, or deserted huts; and annually at Pentecost they assembled for mutual edification and counsel in the small chapel at Assisi, dedicated to “Mary of the Angel,” given to St. Francis by the Benedictines. This church, under the name of the Portiuncula, became the main centre of the order, and all who visited it on the day of its consecration received from the pope a plenary indulgence. The number of the brothers meanwhile increased from day to day. When representatives of all ranks in society and of all the various degrees of culture sought admission, it soon became evident that the obligation to preach, hitherto enjoined upon all the members of the order, should be restricted to those who were specially qualified for the work, and that the rest should take care to carry out in their personal lives the ideal of poverty, joined with loving service in institutions for the poor, the sick, and the lepers. A further move in the development of the order, tending to secure for it an independent ecclesiastical position, was the admission into it of ordained priests. Their missionary activity among Christian people was restricted at first to Umbria and the neighbouring districts of central Italy. But soon the thought of a missionary vocation among the unbelievers got possession of the mind of the founder. Even in A.D. 1212 he himself undertook for this purpose a journey to the East, to Syria, and afterwards to Morocco; in neither case, however, were his efforts attended with any very signal success. In A.D. 1218, Elias of Cortona, with some companions, again took up the mission to Syria, with equally little success; and in A.D. 1219 five brethren were again sent to Morocco, and there won the crown of martyrdom. In that same year, A.D. 1219, the Pentecost assembly at Assisi passed the resolution to include within the range of their call as itinerants the sending of missions, with a “minister” at the head of each, into all the Christian countries of Europe. They began immediately, privileged with a papal letter of recommendation to the higher secular clergy and heads of orders in France, to carry out the resolution in France, Spain, Portugal, and Germany; while at the same time Francis himself, accompanied by twelve brethren, again turned his steps toward the East.

§ 98.4. The Franciscans from A.D. 1219 to A.D. 1223.—Soon after the departure of St. Francis the report of his death spread through Italy, and loosened the bonds which, by reason of the obligation to render him obedience hitherto operative, had secured harmony among the brethren. Francis had, on the basis of Luke x. 7, 8, laid upon his companions only the commonly accepted rules of fasting, but the observance of a more rigorous fast required his own special permission. Now, however, some rigorists, at a convention of the elders, gave expression to the opinion, that the brethren should be enjoined to fast not as hitherto, like all the rest of Christendom, only on two, but on four, days of the week, a resolution which not only removed the rule altogether from its basis in Luke x. 7, 8, but also broke the solemn promise to observe the wish of Innocent III., incorporated in it, that in no particular should it be altered. And while the rule forbade any intercourse with women, brother Philip obtained a papal bull which appointed him representative of the order of “poor women,” afterwards the Nuns of St. Clara, founded in A.D. 1212 on the model of the Franciscan ideal of poverty. Another brother, John of Capella, sought to put himself at the head of an independent order of poor men and women. Many such projects were being planned. So soon as news reached Francis of these vagaries, he returned to Italy, accompanied by his favourite pupil, the energetic, wise, and politic Elias of Cortona, whose organizing and governing talent was kept within bounds down to the founder’s death. Perceiving that all these confusions had arisen from the want of a strictly defined organization, legitimized by the pope and under papal protection, Francis now endeavoured to secure such privileges for his order. He therefore entreated Honorius III. to appoint Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, afterwards Pope Gregory IX., previously a zealous promoter of his endeavours, as protector and governor of his brotherhood; and he soon with a strong hand put a stop to all secessionist movements in the community. A vigorous effort was now made by the brotherhood, suggested and encouraged by the papal chair, to carry out a scheme of transformation, by means of which the order, which had hitherto confined itself to simple religious and ascetic duties, should become an independent and powerful monkish order, to place it “with the whole force of its religious enthusiasm, with its extraordinary flexibility and its mighty influences over the masses, at the service of the papacy, and to turn it into a standing army of the pope, ever ready to obey his will in the great movements convulsing the church and the world of that time.” Honorius III. took the first step in this direction by a bull addressed, in Sept., A.D. 1220, to Francis himself and the superiors of his order, there styled “Ordo fratrum minorum,” by which a novitiate of one year and an irrevocable vow of admission were prescribed, the wearing of the official dress made its exclusive privilege, and jurisdiction given to its own tribunal to deal with all its members. Francis was now also obliged, willing or unwilling, to agree to a revision of his rule.This new rule was probably confirmed or at least approved at the famous Pentecost chapter held at the Portiuncula chapel in A.D. 1221, called the “Mat Chapter” (C. storearum), because the brethren assembled there lived in tents made of rush-mats.[283] It is, as Carl Müller has incontestably proved, this same rule which was formerly regarded by all as the first rule composed in A.D. 1209. The older rule, however, formed in every particular its basis, and the enlargements and modifications rendered necessary by the adoption of the new ideas appear so evidently as additions, that the two different constituents can even yet with tolerable certainty be distinguished from one another, and so the older rule can be reconstructed. But the development and modification of the order necessarily proceeding in the direction indicated soon led to a gradual reformation of the rule, which in this new form was solemnly and formally ratified by Honorius III. in November, A.D. 1223, as possessing henceforth definite validity. In it the requirement of the literal acceptance of the commands of Jesus on sending out His disciples in Matthew x. and Luke x. is no longer made the basis and pattern, as in the two earlier rules, but all the stress is laid rather upon the imitation of the lives of poverty led by Jesus and His apostles; as an offset to the renunciation of all property, the obligation to earn their own support by work was now set aside, and the practice of mendicancy was made their proper object in life, came indeed to be regarded as constituting the special ideal and sanctity of the order, which in consequence was now for the first time entitled to be called a mendicant or begging order. At its head stood a general-minister, and all communications between the order and the holy see were conducted through a cardinal-protector. The mission field of the order, comprising the whole world, was divided into provinces with a provincial-minister, and the provinces into custodies with a custos at its head.—Every third year at Pentecost the general called together the provincials and custodes to a general chapter, and the custodes assembled the brethren of their dioceses as required in provincial and custodial chapters. The dress of the order remained the same. The usual requirement to go barefoot, however, was modified by the permission in cases of necessity, on journeys and in cold climates, to wear shoes or sandals.

§ 98.5. The Franciscans from A.D. 1223.—There was no mention in the rule of A.D. 1223 of any sort of fixed place of abode either in cloisters or in houses of their own. The life of the order was thus conceived of as a homeless and possessionless pilgrimage; and as for the means of life they were dependent on what they got by begging, so also it was considered that for the shelter of a roof they should depend upon the hospitable. The gradual transition from a purely itinerant life had already begun by the securing of fixed residences at definite points in the transalpine district and first of all in Germany. After the first sending forth of disciples in A.D. 1219, without much attention to rule and without much plan, had run its course there with scarcely any success, a more thoroughly organized mission, under the direction of brother Cæsarius of Spires, consisting of twelve clerical and thirteen lay brethren, including John v. Piano Cupini, Thomas v. Celano, Giordano v. Giano, was sent by the “Mat Chapter” of A.D. 1221 to Germany, which, strengthened by oft-repeated reinforcements, carried on from A.D. 1228 a vigorous propaganda in Bohemia, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and Norway. In accordance with the rule of A.D. 1223 Germany as forming one province was divided into five custodies, but in A.D. 1230 into two distinct provinces, the Rhineland and Saxony, with a corresponding number of custodies. Even more brilliant was the success attending the mission to England in A.D. 1224. On their missionary tours the brethren took up their residence temporarily in hospitals and leper houses, or in hospitable parsonages and private houses, and preached by preference in the open air, where the people flocked around them in crowds, occasionally at the invitation of a bishop or priest in the churches. Presents of lands gave them the opportunity of erecting convents of their own, with churches and burying-grounds for themselves, which, placed under the charge of a guardian, soon increased in number and importance.The begging, which was now made the basis of the whole institution, was regulated by the principle, that, besides the benefactions voluntarily paid into the cloister, monks sent forth at particular terms, hence called Terminants[284] with a beggar’s bag, should beg about for the necessaries of life. With agriculture and industrial work, and generally all bodily labour, the brothers had nothing to do. On the contrary, what was altogether foreign to the intention of the founder and their rules, and so originating not from within the order itself, but from without, first of all by the admission of scientifically cultured priests, a strong current set in in favour of scientific studies, stimulated by their own personal ambition as well as by rivalry with the Dominicans. These scholarly pursuits soon yielded abundant fruit, which raised the reputation, power, and influence of the order to such a height, that it has been enabled to carry out in all details the task assigned it in the papal polity. Architecture, painting, and poetry also found among the members of the order distinguished cultivators and ornaments.—Supported by accumulating papal privileges, which, for example, gave immunity from all episcopal jurisdiction and supervision, and allowed its clergy the right in all parts, not only of preaching, but also of reading mass and hearing confessions, and aided in its course of secularization by papal modifications and alterations of its rule, which permitted the obtaining and possessing rich cloister property, the order of Minor Brothers or Minorites soon could boast of an extension embracing several thousands of cloisters.—Francis, wasted by long-continued sickness and by increasing infirmities, was found dead, in A.D. 1226, stretched on the floor of the Portiuncula chapel. Two years afterwards he was canonized by Gregory IX., and in A.D. 1230 there was a solemn translation of his relics to the beautiful basilica built in his honour at Assisi. The legend, that a seraph during his last years had imprinted upon him the bloody wound-prints or stigmata of the Saviour was also turned to account for the glorification of the whole order, which now assumed the epithet “seraphic.”—The one who possessed most spiritual affinity to his master of all the disciples of St. Francis, and after him most famous among his contemporaries and posterity, was St. Anthony of Padua. Born in A.D. 1195 at Lisbon, when an Augustinian canon at Coimbra he was, in A.D. 1220, received into the communion of the Minorites, when the relics of the five martyrs of Morocco were deposited there, and thereupon he undertook a mission to Africa. But a severe sickness obliged him to return home, and driven out of his course by a storm, he landed at Messina, from whence he made a pilgrimage to Assisi. The order now turned his learning to account by appointing him teacher of theology, first at Bologna, then at Montpellier. For three years he continued as custos in the south of France, going up and down through the land as a powerful preacher of repentance, till the death of the founder and the choice of a successor called him back to Italy. He died at Padua in A.D. 1231. The pope canonized him in A.D. 1232, and in A.D. 1263 his relics were enshrined in the newly built beautiful church at Padua dedicated to him. Among the numerous tales of prodigies, which are said to have accompanied his goings wherever he went, the best known and most popular is, that when he could obtain no ready hearing for his doctrine among men, he preached on a lonely sea-shore to shoals of fishes that crowded around to listen. His writings, sermons, and a biblical concordance, under the title Concordantiæ Morales SS. Bibliorum, are often printed along with the Letters, Hymns, Testament, etc., ascribed to St. Francis.—Among the legends of the order still extant about the life of St. Francis is the Vita I. of Thomas of Celano, written in A.D. 1229, the oldest and relatively the most impartial. On the other hand, the later biographies, especially that of the so-called Tres socii and the Vita II. of Thomas, which has been made accessible by the Roman edition of Amoni of 1880, written contemporaneously somewhere about A.D. 1245, as well as that of St. Bonaventura of A.D. 1263, recognised by the chapter of the order as the only authoritative form of the legends, are all more or less influenced by the party strifes that had arisen within its ranks, while all are equally overladen with reports of miracles. In A.D. 1399, by authority of the general chapter at Assisi, the “Liber Conformitatum” of Bartholomew of Pisa pointed out forty resemblances between Christ and St. Francis, in which the saint has generally the advantage over the Saviour. In the Reformation times an anonymous German version of this book was published by Erasmus Alber with a preface by Luther, under the title, Der Barfüssermönche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran, Wittenberg, 1542. The most trustworthy contemporary source of information has been only recently again rendered accessible to us in the Memorabilia de Primitiv. Fratrum in Teutoniam Missorum Conversatione et Vita of the above-named Giordano of Giano, embracing the years 1207-1238, which G. Voigt discovered among his father’s papers, and has published with a full and comprehensive introduction. The Franciscans of Quaracchi near Florence have re-edited it “after the unique Berlin manuscript,” as well as the supplementary document, the De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Anglia, in the first volume of their Analecta Franciscana, Quar., 1885.—Thode, in his Fr. v. A. und die Anfänge d. Kunst d. Renaissance in Ital. (Berl., 1885), has described in a thorough and brilliant style the mighty influence which St. Francis and his order exerted upon the development of art in Italy, especially of painting and architecture, as well as of poetry in the vernacular;for he has shown how the peculiar and close relation in which the saint stood to nature gave the first effective impulse to the emancipation of art from the trammels of formalism, and how the new artistic tendency, inspired by his spirit, was first given expression to in the building and adorning of the basilica at Assisi dedicated to him.[285]