Bibit servus cum ancilla,
Bibit velox, bibit piger,
Bibit albus, bibit niger,
Bibit constans, bibit vagus,
Bibit rudis, bibit magus.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE FRIARS
From the twelfth century onwards one of the most conspicuous features of the internal development of the mediæval Church was the struggle to combat worldliness among ecclesiastics and to preserve the purity of doctrine and uprightness of living which had characterized the primitive Christian clergy. As the Middle Ages advanced to their close, unimpeachable evidence accumulates that the Church was increasingly menaced by grave abuses. This evidence appears not only in contemporary records and chronicles but even more strikingly in the great protesting movements which spring up in rapid succession—particularly the rise of heretical sects, such as the Waldenses and the Albigenses, and the inauguration of systematic efforts to regenerate the church body without disrupting its unity. These latter efforts at first took the form of repeated revivals of monastic enthusiasm and self-denial, marked by the founding of a series of new orders on the basis of the Benedictine Rule—the Cluniacs, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, and others of their kind [see [p. 245]]. This resource proving ineffective, the movement eventually came to comprise the establishment of wholly new and independent organizations—the mendicant orders—on principles better adapted than were those of monasticism to the successful propagation of simplicity and purity of Christian living. The chief of these new orders were the Franciscans, known also as Gray Friars and as Minorites, and the Dominicans, sometimes called Black Friars or Preaching Friars. Both were founded in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the one by St. Francis of Assisi; the other by the Spanish nobleman, St. Dominic.
The friars, of whatsoever type, are clearly to be distinguished from the monks. In the first place, their aims were different. The monks, in so far as they were true to their principles, lived in more or less seclusion from the rest of the world and gave themselves up largely to prayer and meditation; the fundamental purpose of the friars, on the other hand, was to mingle with their fellow-men and to spend their lives in active religious work among them. Whereas the old monasticism had been essentially selfish, the new movement was above all of a missionary and philanthropic character. In the second place, the friars were even more strongly committed to a life of poverty than were the monks, for they renounced not only individual property, as did the monks, but also collective property, as the monks did not. They were expected to get their living either by their own labor or by begging. They did not dwell in fixed abodes, but wandered hither and thither as inclination and duty led. Their particular sphere of activity was the populous towns; unlike the monks, they had no liking for rural solitudes. As one writer has put it, "their houses were built in or near the great towns; and to the majority of the brethren the houses of the orders were mere temporary resting-places from which they issued to make their journeys through town and country, preaching in the parish churches, or from the steps of the market-crosses, and carrying their ministrations to every castle and every cottage."
Both the Franciscans and the Dominicans were exempt from control by the bishops in the various dioceses and were ardent supporters of the papacy, which showered privileges upon them and secured in them two of its strongest allies. The organization of each order was elaborate and centralized. At the head was a master, or general, who resided at Rome and was assisted by a "chapter." All Christendom was divided into provinces, each of which was directed by a prior and provincial chapter. And over each individual "house" was placed a prior, or warden, appointed by the provincial chapter. In their earlier history the zeal and achievements of the friars were remarkable. Nearly all of the greatest men of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries—as Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Dun Scotus, and Albertus Magnus—were members of one of the mendicant orders. Unfortunately, with the friars as with the monks, prosperity brought decadence; and by the middle of the fourteenth century their ardor had cooled and their boasted self-denial had pretty largely given place to self-indulgence.