The history of the life and works of these two extraordinary men contains most precious teachings, the deep import of which often escapes us, because given to us in such a common way, without explaining their actual life. This seraphim (Saint Francis) and this cherubim (Saint Dominic) governed the entire thirteenth century by the extraordinary movement they impressed on souls, and by the moral conquests, political, scientific, literary, and artistic, with which their disciples enriched humanity.
The Mendicant friars, as they were later called, were not only cloistered religious, giving themselves solely to a contemplative life, and only leaving their convents for the church; they were citizens in every acceptation of the word, but vowed to no ambitions, mingling with their contemporaries, living in the forum, and mounting the tribune of the popular assemblies as well as the pulpits of the universities. When this tribune or pulpit was forbidden them, they improvised one of their own, and made appeals to the people who wished to hear the well-known voices, simple, disinterested, loving, and therefore eloquent.
Thus the Franciscans penetrated even into China, "on the horse of St. Francis"—that is, on foot—and traversing, wonderful as it may appear, the whole continent of Asia. They founded a Christian colony at Pekin, where the ships of France and England could only enter with noise of cannon—a result assuredly more imposing but not half so certain. During the Renaissance, when the first Holland vessels arrived at Greenland, they found there a convent of Dominicans.
In the thirteenth century, there were, even in civilized Europe, more Chinese and Laplanders than would be supposed. To convert them, the Franciscans and Dominicans applied themselves assiduously, vanquishing them by science, and convincing them by charity.
I understand the word science in its old acceptation; a deep rational research into the first principles of things and the origin of our knowledge. At no epoch of history, I dare to say, has this research been carried on by more passionate lovers, by more powerful intelligences, by more magnanimous hearts, than the Mendicant monks of the thirteenth century. To prove this, let me only mention four names.
The first in date is the Count de Bollstaedt, first Bishop of Ratisbon, then Dominican; a professor of Cologne, and a perfect encyclopedia; his gigantic works replete with all the ideas of his time, and the initiator of German learning.
This scientific knowledge was only surpassed by that of his pupil and companion, the Count d'Aquin, descendant of Staufen on his mother's side, and called by his comrades "the ox of Sicily," by the learned world "the angel of the schools," and by the church Saint Thomas. His principal theological work (Summa Totius Theologiae Tripartita) remained unfinished with the grand cathedrals of the middle ages; but what we know of this and the other works of this prodigious man will suffice to place him in the rank of the greatest geniuses that have appeared on the earth.
However he himself emulated in science the genius of his friend, the seraphic doctor, Jean de Fidanza, of Tuscany, professor in the University of Paris, an admirable man, of whom his master, the English Franciscan, Alexander Hales, said: "Verus Israelita in quo Adam non peccasse videtur." When they brought him the cardinal's hat, Saint Bonaventura was occupied in placing the plates on the table of his convent. He died at the general council at Lyons, (1274,) just at the moment when he was endeavoring to reunite the Greek to the Roman Church.
The fourth of these great doctors, who truly indoctrinated science, is the great English Franciscan, the admirable doctor, Roger Bacon, philologist and naturalist, who predicted steam navigation and railroads. He is also supposed to have invented the telescope, and foreseen the discovery of America. The Protestants of the sixteenth century, who pretended to shed light on the world, unfortunately burnt the convent that held the manuscripts of this precursor of natural science.