Towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during two-thirds of the fourteenth, many reforms took place in the monastic orders, especially in that of the minor brothers (Fig. 261), who changed their name with each change of rules. The new orders, however, obtained but a slight celebrity, and lasted only a short time, with the exception of that of Mercy, for the ransom of the captives—an eminently charitable work, instituted by St. Nolasque, a Languedoc crusader, who died in 1256. We must not, however, forget to mention St. Bridget, the inspired Scandinavian (1302–1372), who, during a journey to Jerusalem, conceived the idea of founding the order of St. Saviour, which she established in Sweden; nor Gerhard Groot, surnamed the Great (1340–1384), founder, in Holland, of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devoted their time to the teaching of the poor, and whose chief occupation was to copy the books of the Fathers and of other ecclesiastical writers.
Fig. 261.—St. Anthony of Padua, a Franciscan Friar, anxious to demonstrate to a heretic, who asked him to perform a miracle, the truth of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar, commands a mule to adore the Eucharist. The mule, though ravenously hungry, refuses the oats that his master is sifting, and kneels down at the bidding of the saint.—Miniature from the “Heures” of Anne of Brittany (Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century), National Library, Paris.
The disorder prevalent in that century extended unfortunately to the Church; the priests—notably the monks and the regular canons—gradually laid on one side the spirit of holy meditation, the habits of prayer, seclusion, and pious works. Young men were admitted into the abbeys without having gone through the period of novitiate; the monks were not compelled to be resident, and many members of a chapter or of a congregation were never or rarely present at the services. An increase of the penalties for breach of discipline failed to suppress these abuses, and in some churches and communities, those monks who attended the services were provided with counters, each of which, when given up in the chapel, entitled the holder to a small sum of money. Leave of absence was also granted quarterly and half-yearly, on condition that the rest of the year should be passed in residence. Different abbeys formed mutual communities for prayer and good works, which bound them closely together; while, at the end of the thirteenth century, several diocesan chapters had drawn up new constitutional codes, which were to be read each year, and adopted for guidance; but the external troubles were always reacting upon the internal quiet of the religious houses. The abuses which had crept into many of them, in reference to the distribution of the property belonging to the monks in each monastery, also added fresh elements of discord; for the laymen often retained possession of these portions and diminished by so much the resources of the community, which none the less continued to shelter the needy, to feed the hungry, and to bestow alms.
Whilst Battista Spagnuolo, of Mantua, General of the Carmelite Order, and one of the most celebrated Latin poets of the fifteenth century, vainly endeavoured to reform his ill-disciplined monks, St. Bernardine of Sienna (1380–1446), more fortunate if not more gifted, set a practical example by joining the order of St. Francis, with the intention of introducing the needed reforms. He founded three hundred houses of the Brethren of the Stricter Observance, which were urgently needed at a period when Europe was being devastated by three scourges—the plague, famine, and the sword. At about the same epoch, St. Colette of Corbie succeeded, by the exercise of an angelic sweetness, in correcting the abuses which had found their way into the convent of the St. Clare and many other female congregations, more recently formed under the Franciscan rules; St. Francis, of Romagna, instituted the Collatine order (1425), and St. Jeanne de Valois, daughter of Louis XI. (1464–1505), founded the community of the Sisterhood of the Annunciation, at Bourges, where her husband, the Duke of Orleans, had banished her, previous to repudiating the marriage. This virtuous princess was guided by the counsels of the Calabrian, St. Francis of Paula, the celebrated founder of the order of the Minimi (1416–1507), who, when summoned to France by Louis XI., and resident in Touraine under the eye of that most suspicious and mistrustful of monarchs, had so far won his confidence as to induce the king to prepare for death like a Christian.
The Barnabites, and other religious institutions of more or less importance, which had principally in view the conversion of heretics by preaching, date from the close of the fifteenth century, and the origin of many of them was due to the spirit of morality and philanthropy then in vogue. Thus the first house of the Penitents, founded at Paris in 1496 by a Gray Friar under the name of Tisseran, afterwards became celebrated for its wholesome example amid the dissolute morals of the sixteenth century.
Fig. 262.—St. Theresa, the Reformer of the Carmelites, who died in 1582.—From a Portrait of the period engraved in the “Iconografia Española” of M. Carderera.
Fig. 263.—The Great Martyrdom of Nangasaki (Sept. 10, 1622), in which twenty-two missionaries and native Christians were burnt to death, and thirty others, including several women and children, beheaded, in presence of a vast crowd.—From a Japanese water-colour Drawing of the period, preserved in the Gésu Convent at Rome.—Pope Pius IX. commemorated this event by the beatification of two hundred and five martyrs, which was decreed at Rome on the 7th of July, 1867.