§ 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]

§ 98.6. Party Divisions within the Franciscan Order.—That the founder was by no means wholly in sympathy with the tendency which prevailed in his order from A.D. 1221, and only tolerated what he was no longer in a position to prevent, might have been guessed from the fact that from that time he withdrew himself more and more from the supreme direction of the order, and made it over to Elias of Cortona, as his general-vicar, who in existing circumstances was better fitted for the task. But from his Testament it appears quite evident that he strictly adhered to the views of his early days, and even attempted a last but fruitless reaction against the tendency to worldly conformity that had set in. Thus, for example, it still puts all the brethren under obligation to perform honourable labour, and will allow them to beg only in case of necessity, but especially forbids them most distinctly by their sacred vow of obedience from asking any privilege from the papal chair, or altering the simple literal meaning of the rule of the order, and of this his last will and testament by addition, abatement, or change. After his death, on 4th October, 1226, Elias retained in his hand the regency till the next meeting of the Pentecost chapter; but then he was deprived of office by the election of John Pareus as general-minister, a member of the stricter party. Meanwhile the increasing number and wealth of their cloisters and churches, with their appurtenances, made it absolutely necessary that the brethren should face the question how the holding of such possessions was to be reconciled with the strict injunction of poverty in the sixth chapter of their rule, according to which “the brothers are to possess nothing of their own, neither a house, nor an estate, nor anything whatsoever, but are to go about for alms as strangers and pilgrims in this world.” At the next general chapter, in A.D. 1230, this question came up for discussion, along with that of the validity of the testament above referred to. When they could not agree among themselves, it was decided, in spite of all the protestations of the general, to request by a deputation the advice of the pope, Gregory IX., on this and certain other disputed questions. With reference to the testament, the pope declared that its demands, because issued without the consent and approval of the general chapter, could not be binding upon the order. With reference to the property question, he repudiated the rendering of the rule in such a way as if in this, just as in all other orders, only the possession of property on the part of individual brothers was forbidden; but the membership of the order as a whole could not be prevented from holding property, as directly contrary to the literal statements of the rule, without, however, entering upon the question as to whose property the movables and immovables standing really at the call of the order were to be considered. And as he had at an earlier date, on the occasion of sending a new Minorite mission to Morocco, granted as a privilege to the order to take alms in money, which was allowed by the rule only for the support of sick brethren, for the reason that without money they would not be able there to procure the necessaries of life, so he now extended this permission for other purposes essential to the good of the order, e.g. building and furnishing of cloisters and churches, as not contrary to the rule, if the collecting and spending of the money is carried on, not by members of the order, but by procurators chosen for the work. It was probably to this victory of the lax party that Elias owed his elevation at the next election, in A.D. 1332, to the office of general. It also enabled him to maintain his position for seven years, during which he showed himself particularly active and efficient, not only as general of the order, but also in political negotiations with the princes of Italy, especially as mediator between the pope and the emperor, Gregory IX. and Frederick II. But his government of the order in a despotic and lordly manner, and his reckless endeavours to conform to worldly customs, intensified the bitterness of his pious opponents, and his growing friendliness with the emperor lost him the favour of the pope. And so it came about that his overthrow was accomplished at the general chapter in Rome, in A.D. 1239. He now openly passed over into the service of the emperor, against whom the ban had anew been issued, accompanied him on his military campaigns, and inveighed unsparingly against the pope in public speeches. As partisan of the banned emperor, already de jure excommunicated, the ban was pronounced against him personally in A.D. 1244, and he was expelled from the order. He died in A.D. 1253, reconciled with the church after a penitential recantation and apology. His four immediate successors in the generalship all belonged to the strict party; but the growing estrangement of the order from the interests and purposes of the curia, especially too its relations to the Evangelium æternum, pronounced heretical in A.D. 1254 (§ [108, 5]), produced a reaction, in consequence of which the general, John of Parma, was deprived of office in A.D. 1257. With his successor, St. Bonaventura, the opposition succeeded to the undisputed control of the order. The difficult question, how the really pre-eminently rich cloister property was to be reconciled with the rule of the order requiring absolute abandonment of all possessions, found now among the preponderating lax party, the so-called Fratres de communitate, its solution in the assertion, that the goods in their hands had been bestowed upon them by the donors only in usufruct, or even that they were presented not so much to the order, as rather to the Romish Church, yet with the object of supporting the order. Nicholas III., in A.D. 1279, legitimated the theory, for he decided the question in dispute in his bull Exiit qui seminat, by saying that it is allowed to the disciples of St. Francis to hold earthly goods in usufruct, but not in absolute possession, as this is demanded by the example of Christ and His apostles. But now arose a new controversy, over the form and measure of using with a distinction of a usus moderatus and a usus tenuis or pauper, the latter permitting no store even of the indispensable necessaries of life beyond what is absolutely required to satisfy present needs. Those, on the other hand, who were dissatisfied with the principles affirmed in the papal bull, the Spirituales or Zelatores, with Peter John de Oliva and Ubertino de Casale at their head, assumed an attitude of open, fanatical opposition to the papacy, identifying it with antichrist (§ [108, 6]). A section of them, which, besides the points about poverty, took offence at the lax party also over questions of clothing reform, obtained permission from Cœlestine V., in A.D. 1294, to separate from the main body of the order, and, under the name of Cœlestine Eremites, to form an independent communion with a general of their own. They settled for the most part in Greece and on the islands of the Archipelago. Boniface VIII., in A.D. 1302, peremptorily insisted upon their return to the West and to the present order. But as he died soon after, even those who had returned continued their separate existence and their distinctive dress.—Continuation, § [112, 2].

§ 98.7. The Dominican or Preaching Order.—St. Dominic, to whom this order owes its origin, was born, in A.D. 1170, at Calaruega, in Old Castile, of a distinguished family (De Guzman?). As a learned Augustinian canon at Osma, he had already wrought zealously for the conversion of Mohammedans and heretics, when Bishop Diego of Osma, entrusted in A.D. 1204, by King Alphonso VIII. with obtaining a bride for his son Ferdinand, took him as one of his travelling retinue. The sudden death of the bride, a Danish princess, rendered the undertaking nugatory. On their homeward journey they met at Montpellier with the Cistercian mission, sent out for the conversion of the Albigensians (§ [109, 1]), the utter failure of which had become already quite apparent. Dominic, inflamed with holy zeal, prevailed upon his bishop to enter along with himself upon the work already almost abandoned in despair; and after the bishop’s early death, in A.D. 1206, he carried on the enterprise at his own hand. For Albigensian women, converted by him, he founded a sort of conventual asylum at Prouille, and a house at Toulouse, which was soon afterwards gifted to him, became the first centre where his disciples gathered around him, whence by-and-by they removed into the cloister of St. Romanus, assigned to them by Bishop Fulco. During the Albigensian crusade, the thought ripened in his mind that he might secure a firmer basis and more powerful support for his enterprise by founding a new, independent order, whose proper and exclusive task should be the combating and preventing of heresy by instruction, preaching, and disputation. In order to obtain for this proposal ecclesiastical sanction, he accompanied his patron, Bishop Fulco of Toulouse, in A.D. 1215, to the Fourth Lateran Council at Rome. But pope and council seemed little disposed to favour his idea. The former, indeed, sought rather to persuade him to join some existing ecclesiastical institution, and carry out his scheme under its organization. Consequently Dominic, with his sixteen companions, resolved to adopt the rule of St. Augustine, augmented by several Præmonstratensian articles. When, however, Honorius III. had ascended the papal chair, Dominic hastened again to Rome, and in A.D. 1216 obtained from this pope without difficulty what Innocent III. had refused him, namely, permission to found a new, independent order, with the privilege of preaching and hearing confession everywhere. Then, and also subsequently, he preached frequently with great acceptance to those living in the papal palace, and thus an opportunity was afforded of establishing the office of a magister sacri palatii, or papal court preacher, which was immediately occupied, and has ever since continued to be held, by a Dominican. At a later period the supreme censorship of books was also assigned to this same official. The first general chapter of the order met at Bologna in A.D. 1220. There the vow of poverty, which was hitherto insisted upon only in the sense of all the earlier orders as a mere abandonment of property on the part of individuals, was put in a severer form, so that even the order as such kept itself free from every kind of possession of earthly goods and revenues, except the bare cloister buildings, and exhorted all its adherents to live only on begged alms. Thus the Dominicans, even earlier than the Franciscans, whose rule then permitted begging only in case of need, constituted themselves into a regular mendicant order. Dominic, however, chose voluntary poverty for himself and his disciples, not like St. Francis simply for the purpose of securing personal holiness, but rather only to obtain a perfectly free course for his work in the salvation of others.The official designation, “Ordo fratrum Prædicatum,” was also fixed at this chapter.[286] At the second general chapter, in A.D. 1221, there were already representatives from sixty cloisters out of eight provinces. Dominic died soon after, at Bologna, on 6th August, 1221, uttering anathemas against any one who should corrupt his order by bestowing earthly goods upon it. He was canonized by Gregory IX. in A.D. 1233. His immediate successor, Jordanus, wrote his first biography, adorned, as we might expect, with endless miracles.

§ 98.8. According to the constitutional rules of the order, collected and revised by the third general of the order, Raimund de Pennaforte, about A.D. 1238, the general who stands at the head of the whole order, residing at Rome, magister generalis, is elected to office for life at the general chapter held annually at Pentecost, and he nominates his own socii as advisory assistants. The government of the provinces is conducted by a provincial chosen every four years by the provincial chapter, assisted by four advisory definitores, and each cloister elects its own prior. The mode of life was determined by strict rules, severe fasts were enjoined, involving strict abstinence from the use of flesh, and during particular hours of the day absolute silence had to be observed. In the matter of clothing, only woollen garments were allowed. The dress consisted of a white frock with white scapular and a small peaked capouch; but outside of the cloister a black cloak with capouch was worn over it. From the favourite play upon the name Dominican, Domini canes, in contrast to the dumb dogs of Isaiah lvi. 10, the order adopted as its coat of arms a dog with the torch of truth in its mouth. The special vocation of the order as preachers and opponents of heresy required a thorough scientific training. Every province of the order was therefore expected to have a seminary capable of giving a superior theological education to the members of the order, to which they gave the name of a studium generale, borrowed from the universities, although the predicate was here used in a sense much more restricted (comp. § [99, 3]). But ambitious desires for scientific reputation incited them to obtain authority for instituting theological chairs in the University of Paris, the most celebrated theological seminary of that age. The endeavour was favoured by a conflict of Queen Blanca with the Parisian doctors, in consequence of which they left the city and for a time gathered their students around them partly at Rheims, partly at Angers, while the Dominicans, encouraged by the bishop, established their first chair in the vacant places in A.D. 1230. The Franciscans too accomplished the same end about this time. The old professors on their return used every means in their power to drive out the intruders, but were completely beaten after almost thirty years of passionate conflict, and the nurture of scholastic theology was henceforth all but a monopoly of the two mendicant orders (§ [103, 3]). The art of ecclesiastical architecture and painting, which during this age reached a hitherto unattained degree of perfection, found many of its most distinguished ornaments and masters in the preaching order. And in zeal for missions to the Mohammedans and the heathen the Franciscans alone could be compared with them. But the order reached the very climax of its reputation, influence, and power when Gregory IX., in A.D. 1232, assigned to it exclusive control of the inquisition of heretics (§ [109, 2]).—The veneration of the devout masses of the people, who preferred to confide their secret confessions to the itinerant monks, roused against both orders the hatred of the secular clergy, the preference shown them by the popes awakened the envy of the other orders, and their success in scientific pursuits brought down upon them the ill-will of the learned. Circumstances thus rendered it necessary for a long time that the two orders should stand well together for united combat and defence. But after all those hindrances had been successfully overcome, the rivalry that had been suppressed owing to temporary community of interests broke out all the more bitterly in the endeavour to secure world-wide influence, intensified by opposing philosophico-dogmatic theories (§ [113, 2]), as well as by the difference in the interpretation and explanation of the doctrine of poverty, in regard to which they strove with one another in the most violent and passionate manner (§ [112, 2]). From having in their hands the administration of the Inquisition the preaching order obtained an important advantage over the Minorites; while these, on the other hand, were far more popular among the common people than the proud, ambitious Dominicans, who occupied themselves with high civil and ecclesiastical politics as counsellors and confessors of the princes and the nobles.—Continuation, § [112, 4].

§ 98.9. To each of the two mendicant orders there was at an early date attached a female branch, which was furnished by the saint who founded the original order with a rule adapting his order’s ideal of poverty to the female vocation, and therefore designated and regarded as his “second order.”

  1. The female conventual asylum, founded in A.D. 1206 at Prouille, may be considered the first cloister of Dominican nuns. The principal cloister and another institution, however, was the convent of San Sisto in Rome, given to St. Dominic for this purpose by Honorius III. In all parts of Christendom where the preaching order settled there now appeared female cloisters under the supervision and jurisdiction of its provincial superior, with seclusion, strict asceticism, passing their time in contemplation, and conforming as closely as possible to the mode of life and style of clothing prescribed for the male cloisters. This institution was presided over by a prioress.
  2. The order of the Nuns of St. Clara, as “the second order of St. Francis,” was founded by St. Clara of Assisi. Born of a distinguished family, endowed with great physical beauty, and destined to an early marriage, in her eighteenth year, in A.D. 1212, she was powerfully impressed by the teaching of St. Francis, so that she resolved completely to abandon the world and its vanities. She proved the earnestness of her resolve by obeying the trying requirement of the saint to go through the streets of the city clad in a penitent’s cloak, begging alms for the poor. On Palm Sunday at the Portiuncula chapel she took at the hand of her chosen spiritual father the three vows. Her younger sister Agnes, along with other maidens, followed her example. Francis assigned to this union of “poor women” as a conventual residence the church of St. Damiani restored by him, from which they were sometimes called the Nuns of St. Damiani. When in A.D. 1219 St. Francis undertook his journey to the east, he commended them to the care of Cardinal Ugolino, who prescribed for them the rule of the Benedictine nuns; but after the saint’s return they so incessantly entreated him to draw up a rule for themselves, that he at last, in A.D. 1224, prepared one for them and obtained for it the approval of the pope. Clara died in A.D. 1253, and was canonized by Innocent IV. in A.D. 1255. Her order spread very widely in more than 2,000 cloisters, and can boast not only of having received 150 daughters of kings and princes, but also of having enriched heaven with an immense number of beatified and canonized virgins.