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READING HALLTHE DOORS OF WISDOM |
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VICTORY OF THE PAPACYCHAPTER XXI.THE MENDICANT ORDERS
The “Four Orders’ were (1) the Dominicans or Friars Preachers,
often called Black Friars in England
and Jacobins in France; (2) the Franciscans or Friars Minor, called in England
Grey Friars, in France Cordeliers, and in Germany Barefoot Friars; (3) the
Carmelites or Order of the Blessed Virgin of Mount Carmel, or White Friars; (4)
the Austin Friars or Order of the Friars Hermits of St Augustine. Many smaller
Mendicant Orders also sprang up in the thirteenth century, but were suppressed i.e. forbidden to receive any more novices, by
the Second Council of Lyons in 1274.
Each of the four Orders had a separate
origin and dis tinct characteristics. All were alike in rejecting more
or less completely permanent endowments and living a life of
voluntary poverty, in being world-wide and centralised bodies, independent of
the local diocesan and parochial organisation, and in including the service of
man in the service of God.
The reconciliation of the religious
with the secular life, the possibility of which was revealed by the Crusades,
found its first expressions in the institution of the Regular Canons and of the
Military Orders and was later more fully realised by the Mendicant Friars, who
served God in the world, devoting themselves to the saving of souls by their
example and
preaching.
Many independent movements at the end
of the twelfth century show the same characteristics as the Franciscan
Order—men and women band together to lead a life of poverty and self-sacrifice
and active well-doing in
conscious imitation of Christ. Examples will be found in the Beguines
and Beghards of the Low Countries, the Humiliati of Italy, the Poor Men of Lyons. Between
the latter and the followers of St Francis there is a close similarity; but the
Poor Men of Lyons, repudiated by the official Church, were turned into
heretics, while the Franciscans, authorised by the official Church, became a
religious order.
St Francis was born at Assisi in 1181
or 1182. His name no doubt was suggested by the country with which his father,
Pietro Bernardone, a rich cloth-merchant, traded—the
country of the fairs of Champagne, of the langue d'oil and the “chansons
de geste.” Francis, though associated
in his father’s business, had no taste for a merchant’s career.
Open-handed and open-hearted, with the
gaiety and ambitions of a high- spirited youth and an attractive personality
which was later to draw all men to him, he early became the leader of the young
men of Assisi. His first idea was, of course, to be a soldier. In one of the
little skirmishes between the rival towns of Assisi and Perugia he was taken
captive; and an illness contracted in the prison at Perugia seems to have
turned his mind in other directions. But his definite “conversion” may be dated
from his meeting with the leper, as he was riding through the Umbrian plain.
The young gallant, who had been in the habit of holding his nose if he saw the
houses of lepers a mile away, dismounted and kissed him. From this day to the
end of his life the care of the lepers became a sacred duty. Later, when
praying before the crucifix in the ruined chapel of St Damian, he heard a voice
saying, “Francis, go and repair my house, which you see is falling into ruins.”
Interpreting the command literally, Francis took some goods from his father’s
shop, rode to Foligno, sold horse and stuff, and
offered the money to the priest of St Damian. This led to the final breach with
his father and the renunciation of his home.
For some time he went on with the work of repairing with his own hands the deserted chapels
round Assisi—St Damian’s, St Peter’s, St Mary of the Angels or the Portiuncula.
He assumed the garb of a hermit and thought no doubt of leading the life of a
solitary—a life which always had attractions for him. It was in the church of
the Portiuncula —probably on 24 February 1208—that his true vocation was
revealed to him in the words of the gospel for the day (Matt, X): “As ye go,
preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor scrip for your
journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is
worthy of his meat.” “This is what I want,” cried Francis. He followed the
gospel precept at once and literally, going barefoot, and preaching repentance
in “words that were like fire, penetrating the
heart.”
With the language and ideals of the
gospel were interwoven in the mind and life of St Francis the language and
ideals of chivalry. The Lady Poverty became the mistress of his heart. His
friars were sometimes “his Knights of the Round Table,” sometimes “minstrels
of the Lord, lifting up the hearts of men and moving them to spiritual gladness.”
He himself would often break forth into a French song of joyous exulting. At
times he would pick up a stick from the ground and setting it upon his left shoulder
would draw another stick after the manner of a bow with his right hand athwart
the same as athwart a viol, and making befitting
gestures would sing in French of our Lord Jesus Christ. But all this show of joyance would be ended in tears and in pity of Christ’s
passion.” “Let the friars,” he said in an Injunction incorporated in the early Rule, “take
care not to appear gloomy and sad like hypocrites, but let them be jovial and
merry, showing that they rejoice in the Lord, and becomingly courteous.”
“Courtesy is one of the qualities of God Himself, who, of His courtesy, giveth His sun and His rain
to the just and the unjust: and courtesy is the sister of charity, and quencheth hate and keepeth love
alive,Francis himself was courteous to all
alike, even to thieves and robbers. He never felt himself superior to
others, was never condescending. “More than a saint among saints” says
Thomas of Celano, “he was among sinners as one of
themselves.
The same sympathy united him with all
nature, animate and inanimate, and gave him power over beasts and birds. This
sense of kinship with all created things received its highest expression in the
Praises of the Creatures, or Song of the Sun, which he composed at the end of
his life, with its final verse of praise for “our sister Death”. He
loved especially “Brother Fire” for his beauty and strength; the
worm because it typified the lowliness of Christ.
The people of Assisi had first hooted
Francis as a madman; their scoffing soon turned to veneration, and others began
to follow his example. The first to join him was the rich Bernard of Quintavalle, who forthwith gave all his goods to the poor.
The second was Peter de Cataneo, canon of the
cathedral. A few days later these were joined by Giles, who in his bold
adventures in the service of Lady Poverty, as well as in his mystic devotion,
remains the ideal of the Franciscan friar. With him Francis made his first
missionary journey, tramping through the March of Ancona and preaching
repentance. When the number of friars reached eleven, Francis drew up a simple
rule of life, consisting apparently of a few passages from the gospels
inculcating poverty, and “the penitents of Assisi” set out for Rome
in the summer, probably of 1210, to ask for papal approbation. Innocent III
raised difficulties: the life was too hard, it was impossible to live without
possessions, they would do better to join some existing Order. But, argued the
Cardinal John of St Paul, “if anyone says that to observe the gospel and to
take a vow to do so is something new or irrational or impossible, he is convicted
of blasphemy against Christ, the author of the gospel.” Innocent knew the
danger of driving religious men into heresy. He gave a verbal sanction to the
rule, and authorised Francis and his companions to preach repentance. He also
ordered the Cardinal of St Paul to confer on them the ecclesiastical tonsure.
Francis seems to have submitted to this with some misgivings. “Take care,” he
used to say to the barber, “that you do not make me a large tonsure. For I want
my simple brethren to have a share in my head.”
The friars—now called Friars Minor,
either after the minores or lower classes, or in reference to the gospel
(Matt. xxv. 40-45)—had as their principal rendezvous, first the old leper-house
of Rivo Torto, and then the Portiuncula, where they built a few small huts of
wattle, mud, and straw, surrounded by a hedge. Here they assembled every year
at Whitsuntide for the general chapter, when new brethren were received into
the fraternity by Francis. Here in the Lent of 1212 they were joined by Clara,
a young heiress of Assisi,
who, moved by the preaching of Francis and by his personal admonitions, left
her father’s house in the dead of night and devoted herself to a life of
poverty. Francis eventually established her and those who joined her at St
Damian’s, giving the Poor Ladies a brief “formula vitae.” Clara (probably in
1916) obtained from Innocent III the “privilegium paupertatis” authorising her and her sisters, or the Poor
Ladies of St Damian, to live without possessions; the privilege was without
precedent in the Roman Chancery, and the Pope drew up the minute of the
document with his own hand. The enforcement of the strict clausura imposed on the nuns of St Damian by the Rule of
Ugolino (afterwards Gregory IX) in 1219 made the observance of absolute poverty
increasingly difficult, and though St Clare in her own convent maintained her
principles till her death in 1953, the Order generally had already by that time
become an endowed Order
Jacques de Vitry, writing in October
1916 of what he had seen at the papal court at Perugia in July of that year,
says: “One comfort, however, I found in those parts: many people of both
sexes—rich people of the world—having left all for Christ, were fleeing from
the world, who were called Friars Minor. They were held in great reverence by
Pope and cardinals. These people give no heed to temporal things, but with
fervent desire and impetuous energy labour every day to withdraw perishing
souls from the vanities of the world and lead them with them. And already, by
the Grace of God, they have borne much fruit and gained many...
They live after the model of the primitive Church... By day they go
into cities and villages that they may gain some, living the active life: at
night they return to the desert or solitary places, devoting themselves to contemplation.
The women live together in different hostels near the cities; they receive nothing, but live by the work of their hands. But they are
much grieved and distressed because they are more honoured by clerks and laymen
than they would wish. Once a year the men of this religion assemble...at a
fixed place to rejoice in God and feast together, and by the advice of good men
they make and promulgate their holy institutions, which are confirmed by the
Pope. After this for the whole year they are dispersed through Lombardy and
Tuscany and Apulia and Italy.”
The chapter of 1217 witnessed the first attempts to organise the great fraternity and to extend its activities beyond Italy. Provinces were instituted and provincial ministers elected, and missions were sent beyond the Alps and overseas to the Saracens, Giles going to Tunis and Elias and others to Syria. Francis himself, who had already made two attempts to reach Mohammedan lands, determined to go to France. Cardinal Ugolino of Ostia, who met him in Florence, forbade him to go and rebuked him for sending his brethren to die of hunger in distant lands. “Do you think, my lord,” replied Francis, “that the Lord has sent the brethren only for these provinces? I tell you in truth that God has chosen the brethren for the profit and salvation of the souls of all mankind, and not only in the lands of the faithful, but also in the lands of the infidel they shall be received and shall save many souls.” Francis, however, remained in Italy and sent to France Brother Pacifico, “the King of Verses”. In 1219 missions to Christian
countries beyond the Alps were organised on a large scale—to France, Germany,
Hungary, Spain. The Albigensian crusade was still smouldering, and the friars
in France and Germany, though furnished with papal letters of commendation,
were taken for heretics, whom they resembled in their way of life; in Hungary
they were ill-treated and robbed of their clothes, and thus in most countries
the first missions failed and the friars returned to
Italy.
Meanwhile, Francis fulfilled his
desire of going to the Saracens. With Peter de Cataneo he joined the crusading army before Damietta (August 1219) and preached before
the Sultan, who received him courteously and sent him back to the Christian
camp under military escort. He afterwards crossed to Palestine, where he
received news which called him home.
Daring his absence his vicars had
called a chapter of seniores (probably 29
September 1219) and prescribed the observance of further fasts among the
friars, while Brother Philip, Visitor of the Poor Ladies, procured a papal bull
authorising him to excommunicate their enemies; both these movements were
inconsistent with the ideals of Francis: the former tended to change the free
wandering life of the friars as strangers and pilgrims, having no fixed abode,
living on alms and the work of their hands, into a regular life resembling that
of the monastic Orders; the latter was contrary to the Franciscan spirit, which
was opposed to the use of force and the authority of the law.
On his arrival at Bologna, early in
1220, Francis found a further development, which contravened the ideal of
poverty—a house of the brethren built for permanent occupation. Francis ordered
the friars to leave the house. But feeling himself unable alone to cope with
the new situation, he appealed to the Pope to appoint Ugolino, Cardinal-bishop
of Ostia, as his adviser, “with whom I can discuss my
affairs and those of my Order.” That Ugolino was a real admirer both of St
Francis and of his ideals there can be no question; but he was above all things
a prince of the Church: he would reform the Church by giving to Franciscan
friars authority; Francis would reform the world by the power of love and
humility.
Ugolino was present at the general
chapter in May 1220 and acted as intermediary between Francis and the
provincial ministers, The latter urged the cardinal to persuade Francis to let
himself be guided by the advice of wise brethren, and instanced as models the
rules of St Benedict, St Augustine, and St Bernard. In other words, they
demanded a regular constitution and settled way of life. Francis refused in
burning words to depart from “the way of humility and simplicity” which the
Lord Himself had shown him. Yet some ordered
constitution was necessary. United solely by the personality of the founder,
the Order could hardly survive his death. Francis was “not minded to become an executioner” and to attempt to enforce his will
by punishment; he resigned the government to Peter de Cataneo and the ministers, and henceforth devoted himself to showing by his example
what the life of a Friar Minor should be, “and at the end his spirit did
therein find rest and comfort.” In August 1224 he retired to La Verna to fast
and meditate on the passion of Our Lord; during his sojourn here he beheld the
vision of the Seraph, after which there appeared on his body the stigmata or
five wounds of Christ “which he had long borne in
his heart.”
A change was made in the character of
the fraternity by a bull of Honorius III (22 September 1220), which imposed a
year’s noviciate on the friars and forbade any to leave the Order after making
profession. This decree was incorporated in the Rule at the chapter of 1221, together
with other ordinances defining the constitution of the general chapter and the
powers of ministers. In this chapter Brother Elias, who had been appointed
acting head of the Order, probably by Ugolino, after the death of Peter de Cataneo, presided, and successful missions were sent out to
Germany and other parts of Europe. Before the death
of St Francis 13 provinces had been formed, the last being England, founded in
1224. These were subsequently increased to 32, and ultimately (before 1272) to
34 provinces, of which 17 were Cisalpine and 17 Transalpine. The chapter of
1221 was probably the last of the great popular chapters, which were attended
by thousands of friars encamped in huts of wattle round the church of the
Portiuncula. Henceforth the general chapter met every three years and contained
normally (besides the minister-general) the provincial ministers, each with his socius, one custom elected by the heads of the custodies in each
province, and one discretus elected by the
provincial chapter.
It is impossible to determine the
exact part which Francis took in drawing up the Rules—the earlier and the
later—as we know them. It is clear that some things
were omitted, some inserted, against his wish, and also that Ugolino was
largely responsible for the final form which was confirmed by Honorius III on
29 November 1223. In substance, the two Rules do not differ in essentials. Both
insist on the observance of absolute poverty and on begging. More stress is
laid on the duty of labour in the early Rule than in the later; and the care of
the lepers which is referred to in the early Rule receives no mention in the
later. To both these points St Francis reverts in his Testament, written
shortly before his death. The Testament cannot, however, be regarded as a
“revocation of the Rule,” but as a protest against the
tendencies in the Order to establish permanent houses and to seek or accept
papal privileges; the friars “should not dare to ask any letter in the Roman
Curia, neither for a church nor for any other place, nor under pretext of
preaching nor on account of their bodily persecution, but wherever they are not
received, let them flee to another land to do penance, with the blessing of
God.” The policy of the Roman Curia in encouraging the Mendicants to have their
own churches and in protecting them against local opposition led inevitably to
the quarrel between them and the secular clergy; the friars became rivals
instead of helpers of the parish priests.
St Francis died at the Portiuncula on
3 October 1226; he was canonised in 1228 by Gregory IX, who in 1230 expounded
the Rule and declared the Testament to have no binding force. The Pope modified
the Rule by allowing the friars to employ an agent to receive and expend money
for their immediate necessities and by permitting them the use of furniture,
books, and other movables (though it was not made clear to whom these goods
strictly speaking belonged), and of houses and places, which remained the
property of the donors. The declaration of Innocent IV in 1245 went further,
permitting recourse to money through an agent, not only for necessities but
also for the convenience of the brethren, and making the Holy See owner of the
lands, houses, and goods used by the friars, where ownership was not expressly
reserved for the donors. In England lands and houses were often given to the
community of the town for the use of the friars.
The election of Elias as general
minister in 1232 was a triumph of the supporters of the new movement, who did
not regard poverty as an end in itself, but adhered to
it only so far as it served the great practical object of the Order—the
conversion of souls—and for this object learning seemed more valuable than
simplicity, great houses in the towns more suitable than hermitages in the
mountains. Those who upheld the primitive ideals (later known as “spiritual”
friars) were forced to withdraw more and more from a life of fruitful activity
and to seek refuge in ecstatic contemplation, and were
driven to reply to persecution by bitter controversy. Elias, however, soon
roused the opposition of others besides the extremists. He lived like a prince.
He exercised despotic control over the whole Order; he called no general
chapters; he sent visitors armed with absolute powers to the provinces and
reduced the authority and prestige of the provincial ministers. While promoting
learning, he favoured the lay element against the clerical in the government
of the Order. A revolt, led by Haymo of Faversham, was organised in the
University of Paris and the provinces of England and Germany. Gregory IX summoned
a general chapter to Rome (1239), and, yielding to the universal demand,
deposed Elias. The Franciscan Order now adopted with some modifications the
form of government set forth in the Dominican constitutions. The general
minister was now subordinated to the general chapter. Albert of Pisa,
provincial of England, was elected successor to Elias; he was the first priest
to hold this position; and under his successor, Haymo of Faversham, the
clerical element was further strengthened by a decree excluding laymen from the
holding of office in the Order. The declaration of the Rule by Innocent IV led
to a division in the Order; the stricter party demanded and were for a time
able to secure its rejection. The temporary triumph of this party is shown in
the election to the office of general of John of Parma (1247-1257), who set
free a number of “zealots” or “spiritual” friars,
imprisoned by his predecessor in the March of Ancona. John of Parma, throughout
his life a devoted upholder of poverty, did not belong to the extreme section
of the spiritual friars; he had been lecturer at Paris and held that “knowledge and good morals were the two walls out of which the Order was built”;
on the other hand, like the spirituals and indeed many of the finer minds in
the Order, he was powerfully attracted by the mystical doctrines of Joachim of
Flora.
Joachim had proclaimed the advent of
the Kingdom of the Holy Ghost. “Spiritual men,” who have entered into direct
communion with God through poverty, contemplation, and love, will preach to all
the world the Gospel of the Spirit, or Eternal Gospel, as it is called, in
contradistinction to the Gospel of Christ and the Apostles, which is
“transitory and temporal in what touches the form of the sacraments, but
eternal for the truths which they symbolise.” A spiritual Church will arise in
which the Eastern and Western Churches will be merged, and the religion of
Christ, purified by the Spirit and freed from the letter which killeth, be established for ever. The belief that St Francis
was the angel of the new revelation was widespread in the Franciscan Order,
especially among the spiritual friars. This was proclaimed by Friar Gerard of
Borgo San Donnino in his “Introduction to the Eternal
Gospel,” issued at Paris in 1254. But with an amazing misunderstanding of
Joachim’s teaching, Gerard interpreted the phrase “Eternal Gospel” as meaning
not the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but the works of Joachim himself.
Whether this misconception was general or confined to a few is not clear. But
it placed a powerful weapon in the hands of the University of Paris in their
struggle against the Mendicant Orders. Gerard’s book was condemned by the Pope;
and the community of the Order freed themselves from the suspicion of heresy
by sending the offending brother to perpetual imprisonment and by deposing the
general minister, John of Parma. Fra Salimbene, who
had been a Joachite, “entirely abandoned that
doctrine and resolved to believe only what he saw.”
Bonaventura was now elected general
and held office for seventeen years. He made no attempt to return to the
primitive conditions; in his Life of St Francis, and in the decree of the
general chapter of 1266 that all previous lives of the Founder should be
destroyed, an endeavour was made to obliterate the memory of the early
traditions so far as these were in conflict with the
present ideals of the Community of the Order. Bonaventura accepted and defended
the privileges which the Popes had granted to the friars. “If we were never to
abide in parishes but by the priest’s will, then we should scarce ever be able
to stay long; since, whether of their own motion or at others' instigation, they would eject us from their parishes sooner than heretics or
Jews”. He advocated large houses in the towns as better both for
discipline and for work, though they were inconsistent with the observance of
primitive poverty. And he gloried in the learning of the Order: “I confess
before God that it is this which has made me most of all to love the life of St
Francis, that it is like the beginning and the consummation of the Church,
which first began from simple fishermen and then advanced to the most famous
and most learned doctors: this same development you will see in the religion of
St Francis”.
On the other hand, he endeavoured with
little success to check the acknowledged abuses in the Order. Thus, the friars
were in the habit of going about attended by a servant who carried the money-box and collected the coin which the friars might not
touch. Begging had become so importunate that people feared to meet a friar as
they feared to meet a robber. Magnificence in buildings, luxury in dress, greed
for legacies, were among the evils denounced by the general. Some houses in
Italy were beginning to acquire permanent revenues and endowments in land; and the observance of poverty was reduced to a legal
technicality—the lax brethren enjoying the advantages without the
responsibilities of wealth.
When the Council of Lyons, in 1274,
was suppressing many of the lesser Mendicant Orders, a rumour spread that the
Pope, Gregory X, had decided to compel the Orders that remained to accept
property in common. The rumour was the signal for a renewed outbreak of hostilities
between the spirituals and the community, which had smouldered during the generalship of Bonaventura. The spirituals in the March of
Ancona repudiated the supposed papal decree. The provincial chapter sentenced
the recalcitrants to imprisonment, and the following
years witnessed a fierce persecution of the spirituals at the hands of their
laxer brethren in the March, in Tuscany, and in Provence. In vain Nicholas III,
for long Protector of the Order, attempted to restore peace by a stricter
definition of poverty in the Decretal Exiit qui seminat (1279), the spirituals wanted the Rule and the Testament, not papal glosses. In vain
Celestine V sought an escape from the difficulty by authorising the spirituals
to form, a separate Order, in which they might observe to the letter the Rule
and Testament of St Francis; Boniface VIII annulled all the acts of his
predecessor. At the Council of Vienne a commission of theologians not connected
with the Order examined the arguments of both sides (the spirituals being
represented by the ex-general Raymund Gaufredi and by Ubertino da Casale);
and in 1312 Clement V approved the constitution Exivi de Paradiso, forbidding the holding of lands or permanent endowments andjnsisting on the “usus pauper” in some cases, the “usus moderatus” in
others. This neither satisfied the consciences of the spirituals nor stopped
their persecution by the community. In Provence the spirituals resisted by
force. John XXII, to whom they appealed, ordered them to
return to their obedience and handed
the recalcitrants over to the Inquisition; four were
burnt at Marseilles in 1318 and many more in the next few years throughout
southern France. Others in Italy formed a separate Order under Angelo da Clareno as general, and managed to
survive in spite of Pope and community; and other groups known under the name
of Fraticelli were a constant source of trouble to the ecclesiastical authorities
well into the fifteenth century. The community had got rid of the
irreconcilable spirituals in 1318, but a new crisis arose in 1322, when the
community itself was ranged in battle against the Pope.
In 1322-23 John XXII issued two
decretals. The first withdrew from the Franciscans the right of holding
property in the name of the Holy See. The second declared the Franciscan
doctrine of the poverty of Christ and His Apostles to be heretical. The first
showed that the Franciscans were not true to their ideal in practice; the
second asserted that the theoretical basis of their ideal was heresy. The
revolt of the Order was led by the general minister, Michael of Cesena, who
with his followers joined the Emperor Louis of Bavaria in his struggle with the
Papacy, and perhaps the most permanent result was the political writings of
William of Occam, which took their origin from this theoretical controversy.
The majority soon accepted the situation, and many houses made no scruple about
owning permanent endowments. The general decline in religious fervour and
discipline was accelerated by the great pestilence and the papal schism. The
deaths of friars reported in the general chapters of 1351 and 1354 reached the
number of 13,883. The loss of so many old members, followed as it was by a
rapid accession of new recruits, involved a breach with old traditions; but the
old traditions were bad as well as good, and the breach with the past might
lead to a spiritual growth, no less than to an increase of worldliness in the
Order.
The beginnings of a new movement can
be traced from 1334 when Friar Giovanni Valle received from the
minister-general permission to found a hermitage near Foligno. The aim of the new reformers was to acquire small
houses, generally at first hermitages, in which they could observe the Rule
strictly without raising any doctrinal questions; hence their name of Friars of
the Strict Observance, while the laxer portion of the community, who lived in
larger convents, became known as Conventuals. The movement, originally lay
and eremitical, received a great extension and new direction from St
Bernardino of Siena (1380-1444), who made the Observant Friars the most
influential religious force in Italy. The relations between Conventuals and
Observants were a constant source of disputes, until in 1517 Leo X decreed
their separation into two distinct Orders. It was natural that the Observant Friars
should make most headway in countries where the Conventuals had departed most
from the primitive traditions. In England, where few Franciscan houses held
landed property, transferences of Conventual houses to the Observants were few,
and the new Observant houses established were royal foundations.
The Dominican Order, both in its
origin and internal development, offers a strong contrast to the Franciscan;
and such conflicts as arose within it were neither so violent, persistent, nor
so radical as those which divided the followers of St Francis.
SAINT DOMINIC Dominic was born at Caleruega in Old Castile in 1170. His parents were well
off, but there is no conclusive evidence that either of them belonged to the
noble family of Guzman. Educated first in the household of his maternal uncle,
the archpriest of Gumiel de Izan, he was sent at the age of fourteen to the
schools of Palencia, where he studied arts and then theology for ten years. In
1191 during a famine he is said to have sold all his
goods, including his books, to feed the starving. After finishing his studies he was made Canon of Osma,
where the Bishop Martin de Bazan was reforming his chapter according to the
Augustinian Rule and with the help of Diego de Azevedo. Diogo,
on his election as bishop in 1201, appointed Dominic as sub-prior. Being sent
on a royal mission, he took the sub-prior with him, and at Toulouse Dominic had
his first controversy with an Albigensian heretic, at whose house he lodged. At
Montpellier Diego advised the papal legates and Cistercian abbots who had come
to convert the heretics to give up their luxuries and imitate the simple and
self-denying life of their opponents. Dominic adopted the life of voluntary
poverty and went about on foot preaching and disputing. He found that the daughters
of poor noble families were being entrusted by their parents to heretics, who
maintained and educated them. He founded in 1206, with the help of Fulk,
Bishop of Toulouse, a house at ProuillÉ where such
girls could be sent. The institution by degrees changed its character and
became the first monastery of Dominican nuns. Dominic remained in the country
for ten years (1205-1216) till the death of Simon de Montfort, often in
personal danger after the outbreak of the war in 1208. He had no fear: “I have
not yet deserved a martyr’s death.” He received from the papal legate the power
to reconcile to the Church converted heretics, and all the acts recorded of him
at this period are acts of reconciliation. Whether this office also implied the
power to hand over obstinate heretics to the secular arm is not clear. Dominic
is only once mentioned expressly as present at a burning of heretics, and then
according to Theodoric of Apoldia he saved one of the
victims from the flames.
Dominic by degrees collected a small
band of preachers round him, among the first being Peter Cellani,
or Seila, a wealthy citizen of Toulouse, who in 1215
gave his house to Dominic. From Simon de Montfort he received the castle of Cassanel. Bishop Fulk in 1215 granted formal recognition to
“Brother Dominic and his companions, as preachers, to extirpate Heresy,” and allotted for their maintenance one-sixth of
the tithes of the diocese, together with several churches. In this year Dominic
accompanied Fulk to the Lateran Council, and laid before Innocent III his plan
for the establishment of an Order of Preachers who should not be confined to any diocese,
but should take the whole world as their sphere of action and be subject
immediately to the papal see. The Council passed a decree prohibiting the
foundation of new Orders. The Pope approved Dominic’s plan,
but recommended him to adopt one of the existing Rules. In consultation
with his followers, now numbering sixteen, at Prouille,
Dominic chose the Rule of St Augustine. It was the Rule under which he had
lived as Canon of Osma; it was also so vague that
those who adopted it were free to choose any organisation; and the Rule was
immediately supplemented by a body of consuetudines, which were mostly borrowed from the constitutions of PremontrÉ and regulated the ascetic and canonical life of the friars. Innocent III and
Dominic complied with the letter of the conciliar decree. The Dominicans were
nominally Austin Canons; in reality they were a new
Order of preachers, attached to no particular house, bound by no vow of
stability, and owing obedience to the head of their Order and to the Pope. They
were a powerful instrument in making the Pope the universal bishop.
Honorius III, on 22 December 1216,
“expecting that the brethren will be champions of the faith and true lights of
the world,” solemnly confirmed and took under his government and protection the
Order of “Master Dominic and the Friars Preachers,” with all their lands and
possessions. Hitherto, the friars had confined their activities to the
Albigensian land and their only monastery was at
Toulouse. Dominic now dispersed his small band, sending some to Paris, some to
Spain, while he himself returned to Italy. The opposition of the bishops to the
new preachers was met by a papal bull (11 February 1218), commanding all
prelates to assist them. Seven friars reached Paris on 12 September 1217, under
Matthew of France, and lived for some months in a house belonging to the
hospital of Notre-Dame in great poverty. John de Barastre,
dean of St Quentin (who had been appointed by the Pope theological lecturer to
the friars), and the University of Paris granted them a house originally
founded for poor strangers under the patronage of St James. Here they removed
on 6 August 1218, and from this house they derived their popular name of
Jacobins. In the same year the friars settled at Bologna, where their rapid
success, especially among masters and students of the
university, was due to the fiery eloquence of Reginald of Orleans, formerly
dean of St Aignan. “All Bologna boiled over.”
Proffered endowments, accepted by Reginald, were, however, rejected by Dominic
(1219), who wished that his sons should have no property but should live by
alms—a decision adopted with some hesitation by the first general chapter of
the Order held at Bologna in May 1220. This chapter drew up the constitutions
which regulated the organisation of the Order. Dominic had recently met Francis
and was probably influenced by the example of the Franciscan Order in adopting
the vow of absolute poverty. But while to Francis poverty was essential to
personal holiness, Dominic adopted it as a means of increasing the influence of
the preacher. Another proposal of Dominic, that the whole temporal
administration of the convents should be entrusted to lay brethren, was
rejected by the chapter. In the chapter of 1221 Dominic commissioned
thirteen friars to establish the province of England.
Dominic died at Bologna on 6 August
1221, exhorting his sons “to have charity, guard humility, and possess
voluntary poverty”. He was canonised in 1234. Of his courage, self-confidence,
zeal for the salvation of souls, there is no question, nor of his capacity as a
ruler. He was willing to learn from his enemies—both his institutions of poor
preachers and of nuns being suggested by the example of the heretics. His
brethren laid stress on his kindness and gentleness. He had great influence
over women and understood their difficulties. He admitted to Jordan of Saxony
that he liked talking to young women better than to old women—a passage that
was deleted from Jordan’s Life of St Dominic by command of the general
chapter in 1242. He made the Dominican nuns an integral part of the Order of
Preachers, subject like the friars to the master and the decrees of the general
chapters. In the Institutions which he drew up for them, generally called the
Rule of St Sixtus, he provided that at least six
friars should be attached to every nunnery, as spiritual directors and temporal administrators. The increase ot nunneries made the obligation very onerous. John the German, fourth
master-general, secured a bull from Innocent IV in 1252 freeing the friars from
the duty of governing the nuns, except those of St Sixtus and Prouille. The sisters, however, agitated against
this decree with such success that it was finally abrogated by Clement IV in
1267, and henceforth the Dominican nuns remained incorporated in the Order of
Preachers. In Germany, where most of the nunneries were situated, the learned
friars who instructed the sisters—such as the famous Master Eckehart—developed
strong mystical tendencies, and the Dominican nunneries became the homes of
German mysticism.
The Dominicans excelled as organisers.
The earliest extant Constitutions of the Order date from 1228 in the generalate
of Jordan of Saxony. They are divided into two parts, the first containing the consuetudines of 1216, the second the constitutions
of 1220. A re-arrangement on more logical lines was undertaken by the third
master-general, Raymond of Penafort (1238-1240), the
famous canonist, whose version formed the basis of all subsequent redactions.
The constitutions, though in the main
based on the statutes of the Premonstratensian Canons, contain features new to
medieval life. The first is the definite statement of the practical object for
which the Order was founded: “Our Order was instituted principally for
preaching and the salvation of souls.” The second is the importance attached to
study. “All the hours in church shall be shortened, lest the friars lose
devotion and their study be at all impeded.” The Friars Preachers were the
first religious Order to give up manual labour as one of the essential duties
of the religious life and to put
intellectual work in the forefront. A third feature, closely connected with the
first two, was the authority vested in the superior of every convent, “to grant
dispensations whenever he may deem it expedient, especially in regard to what
may hinder study or preaching or the profit of souls.” This gave a peculiar
elasticity to the Order, but was liable to abuse and
led to a more or less open division between the active and the ascetic elements
in it. The fourth feature is the large share assigned to elected
representatives in the government.
The “definitors,” or effective part of
the general chapter (which met every year till 1370), consisted for two years
out of three of elected representatives of the twelve provinces, with the
master-general; in the third year, of the provincial
priors. Any proposal, before it became law, had to be approved by the majority
in three successive chapters. A “capitulum generalissimum”
(a very rare assembly), and a general chapter called expressly for the election
of a master-general, contained both the official and the elected elements. The
business of the “definitors,” whether elected ad hoc or official, was
“to decide all things.” They not only managed the legislative business of the
chapter, but could call to account, punish, suspend, and even depose the
officers.
In each province a yearly provincial
chapter was held; this consisted of the provincial prior, the conventual
priors, and one elected representative of each convent, and the general
preachers; four definitors were elected by the assembled chapter and had within
the province much the same powers which the “definitors” of the general chapter
had within the Order. The provincial chapter elected the provincial prior and
the visitors; the convent elected the conventual prior. In fact, all administrative
officers were elected by a simple majority of authorised electors.
No other Order entrusted to elected
representatives so much power. Thus the general
chapter of definitors without officers remained a peculiarity of the
Dominicans. The Franciscans adopted the definitors, but the definitors of their
general chapter were always the provincial ministers with one friar elected ad
hoc in each provincial chapter. The general ministers and provincial
ministers were elected by their respective chapters. But the custodians (i.e, heads of the groups of houses into which each
Franciscan province was divided for administrative purposes) and guardians (i.e. heads of houses) were appointed by the provincial
minister and definitors in chapter, after consultation with some of the friars
of the custody or house. On the other hand, in the Franciscan Order, custodians
and guardians formally tendered their resignations every year in the provincial
chapter. The Franciscans generally attached great importance to the temporary
character of office, and held that “frequent change of
prelates keeps religious Orders in health.” Among the Franciscans the
constitution of provincial chapters was not defined by the general chapter, but left to the determination of the different
provinces.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the Dominican Order was
agitated by constitutional and
disciplinary controversies. The constitutional problems concerned the
relations between the Order and the provinces, the general and provincial
chapters, and centred round the rival claims of these bodies to appoint
lecturers in the universities. More fundamental was the general decay of
discipline and the common life.
In the first half of the fourteenth century not only did most
Dominican houses own some property in
common, but individual friars were allowed to have private incomes for life. It
was apparently after the Black Death that the practice was adopted of farming
out “termini” or “limites” to individual
friars: that is, the friar paid a fixed rent to his convent for the exclusive
rights of preaching and hearing confessions and taking the resulting emoluments
in a definite area, and kept the surplus revenue for
his own requirements. Sometimes these areas were put up to auction; generally the most distinguished members of the convent had
first choice. It is clear that a successful preacher
could make a very good living out of a wealthy district; he had his private
residence and servants and rarely came to his convent. A tentative reform was
introduced by Raymond of Capua (master-general, 1380- 1399), who had been
confessor of St Catherine of Siena: he established in each province one house (under
the direct control of the mastergeneral), in which
friars who desired to do so might observe the constitutions; but his authority was limited to that section of
the Order which adhered to the “Roman
obedience.” After the Great Schism the reform movement spread; and groups of
Observant houses were formed under
vicars. But the Dominican Observants were not champions of
absolute
poverty. Among their most famous houses was the convent of San
Marco at Florence, which within twenty
years of its foundation obtained a papal dispensation to hold property.
And the whole Order received with enthusiasm the bull of Sixtus IV in 1475, which authorised every convent to own permanent endowments and
expressly abrogated all constitutions, rules, and ordinances to the contrary.
After the first period of intense
religious enthusiasm which marked the beginnings of the Orders, there followed
a period of about a century in which the Mendicant Friars supplied Europe with
most of its leaders of thought and learning. The rise of the friars coincided
with the time of great intellectual activity which was called forth by the
rediscovery in the Western world of the philosophical works of Aristotle. The
Church regarded the new learning with suspicion, the more so as it first
reached the West through Arabian commentators; and after an outbreak of
heretical teaching at Paris, lecturing on the books of Aristotle on natural
philosophy was prohibited in the university by papal decrees (1215, 1231). The
reconciliation of Aristotle with Christian theology was the work especially of
the Dominicans.
The Dominicans were from their
beginning a learned Order : their first
houses in Italy, France,
and England were founded in places of learning, and it was in the university towns
that Jordan of Saxony, that “fisher of men”, made his most
successful “catches.” The Jacobin convent in Paris was the intellectual centre
of the Order. The number of friars there increased from 30 in 1219 to 120 in
1224. Every province had the right of sending students to Paris; their
maintenance soon became a pressing problem. The question of providing for
students came in some form or other before every general chapter, and a system
was gradually worked out to the minutest details. But the Paris house was
heavily in debt in the thirteenth century, and it was probably owing to the
financial difficulties that the English Dominicans resisted for many years
(1248-1261) the elevation of Oxford to the position of a studium generale in the Order.
At first the Friars Preachers were
restricted to the study of theology. “They shall not learn secular sciences or
the liberal arts, except by special dispensation.” Though this decree of the
early constitution was not abrogated till 1259, the dispensing power was
evidently freely used and a more liberal policy soon
prevailed. By the middle of the century an elaborate system of schools was
being established in the Dominican provinces. While in every convent theological lectures were held which all the friars attended, special
provision was made for those who showed aptitude for learning. These were sent,
on the report of the visitors, to a studium artium, which served a group of convents; here
they studied logic for two years. Thence promising students were passed on to
the next grade of school—the studium naturalium, where the course lasted three years and
included the works of Aristotle on natural philosophy and ethics. The third
grade of school was the studium theologiae, which might be either particulare if it drew its students normally from one province, or generaelif it drew its students from the whole Order. A general school
of theology was usually established in connexion with a university, but not
always. Thus, there was a Dominican studium generale at Cologne (where both Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas taught)
but no university. Great care was taken in the selection of students in the studium generae. Acclording to the statute of
1305, “ No one shall be sent to a studium generale unless he has made adequate progress in logic and natural
philosophy, and has attended lectures on the Sentences for two years in
a studium particulare”
The two greatest thinkers of the
Dominican Order had, however, passed their student days before this elaborate
system of schools was developed. They were Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas.
Albert (c. 1200- 1280), who belonged to a noble Swabian family, entered the
Order c. 1223, lectured in the principal Dominican schools from 1228 to
1245, and became their regent master in Paris, 1245-6; the latter part of his ife, except some eight years devoted to administrative work
as provincial of Germany and Bishop of Ratisbon, was spent in teaching,
writing, and preaching at Cologne. He was the most
learned man of his age, and his knowledge extended to the natural sciences, in
which he made independent investigations. His chief aim was “to make Aristotle intelligible to the Latins.” He wrote paraphrases and
commentaries on all Aristotle’s works, and was
probably all the more stimulating in that he often advanced and defended
inconsistent views, and failed to evolve a coherent system of philosophy. This
was the work of his pupil Thomas Aquinas.
Thomas, a son of the Count of Aquino,
was bom about 1225, and went to Frederick II's
university at Naples, where he joined the Dominican Order in 1244, He studied
under Albert at Paris and Cologne from 1245 to 1252, when he was recalled to
Paris to lecture as bachelor and then as master of theology, being finally
admitted as master in 1257; about 1260 he became master of the schools at the
papal court, and was again lecturing in Paris from 1268 to 1272; he died in
1274 at the age of forty-nine. He had not the vast range of interests which
marked Albert, but was far above him in clearness of
thinking. He was recognised by his contemporaries as an innovator; the
fundamental change which he introduced into scholastic philosophy was the
assertion of the primacy of the intellect over the will, of the true over the
good, in opposition to the hitherto accepted Augustinian doctrines. He probably
came nearer than any other thinker before or after him to establishing harmony
between reason and religion and reconciling the rival claims of philosophy and
theology.
Even in his lifetime he was accepted
as an “authority” in the schools, and the Dominican general chapter in 1286
ordered all the friars to promote and defend his doctrine, and decreed
suspension from office for any lecturers who did the contrary. This did not
encourage intellectual freedom. The Friars Preachers were distinguished by
industry and learning, not originality. They produced about the middle of the
thirteenth century a number of co-operative works—in
the preparation of which groups of friars collaborated; the chief of them were
the revision of the text of the Vulgate, the Biblical Concordances (especially
that compiled by the English Dominicans), and the great encyclopaedia, or Speculum maius, edited by Vincent of Beauvais.
St Francis opposed the forces which
made the Franciscans a “student Order.” “Tantum homo habet de scientia quantum operatur.”
Learning, he held, would be destructive of the simplicity and poverty of the
friars and his only concession to the new movement was a somewhat grudging
authorisation which he gave to Anthony of Padua to lecture on theology
“provided that the brethren do not, owing to this study, extinguish the spirit
of prayer and devotion.” The same view was taken by his immediate disciples such as Giles, to whom Paris seemed like the
Jerusalem which destroyed the prophets: “Paris, Paris, thou that destroyest Assisi!” Yet the
development was inevitable and rapid. It was necessary that the friars as
teachers and preachers should take part in the intellectual life of the time;
and the example of the Dominicans, the settlement of Franciscans in university
towns, the entry of learned men into the Order, the policy of Elias as general
minister, and the consistent encouragement of the Papacy, all helped to hasten
the change.
Two events of decisive importance in
the intellectual history of the Order occurred in 1231: Alexander of Hales
entered the Order at Paris; Robert Grosseteste became
lecturer to the Franciscans of Oxford.
The first Parisian house of the Friars
Minor was at St Denis and had no direct connexion with the university; but the increase of their numbers, and the accession of students and
masters, such as the great theologian, Haymo of Faversham, c. 1223, led them to seek a home in the university
quarter. The great convent which they built at “Vauvart”
(Jardin du Luxembourg) fell (1229), apparently before it was finished, and the
friars moved subsequently to their famous convent of the Cordeliers. The importance
of the accession of Alexander of Hales to the Order was two-fold: he was
perhaps the most distinguished professor at Paris, and he was at the time
regent master in theology. As he continued his courses
in the Franciscan convent, the Franciscan school became one of the public
schools of the university, and the friars obtained the right to have one of
their members among the regent masters in theology.
The fame of Alexander of Hales, “the
master and father” of the Franciscan School, as Bonavcntura calls him, rests on his Summa, which,
based in general on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, was the first
attempt on a large scale to incorporate in Christian theology the newly-discovcred Aristotelian philosophy. The work, which Bacon
describes as a “horseload”,was unfinished at his death (1245),
and was soon superseded by the works of later theologians, who built on the
foundations which he had laid.
Grosseteste, who was undoubtedly the
most influential man at Oxford, and probably the greatest scholar of his time,
was induced by Agnellus, provincial minister of
England, to lecture to the Franciscans at Oxford. He was a whole-hearted
supporter of the movement in favour of learning in the Order,
and used to say that “unless the brethren devoted themselves to study,
the same fate would befall us as had befallen the other religious, whom we see,
alas, walking in the darkness of ignorance.” He exercised a profound influence
on Franciscan learning, and became the founder of a
new school of thought, whose chief representatives were Adam Marsh, the first
Minorite to become regent master at Oxford (c. 1248), and Roger Bacon.
ROGER BACON The characteristics of this school
were independence of judgment, the use of the experimental method, the study of
mathematics and physics, of languages, and of the text of the Scriptures in
preference to the Sentences. Dependence on authority is placed by Bacon
first ajnong the obstacles to the progress of true
philosophy, which is defined as the effort to “arrive at a knowledge of the Creator
through knowledge of the created world.” For dependence on authority he would substitute
first-hand knowledge derived from
direct observation and experiment. Especially he insists on this in two
departments of knowledge—grammar (including the study of languages and textual
criticism) and physics. In order to understand the
Scriptures and Aristotle a thorough knowledge of Hebrew and Greek was
necessary, and Bacon himself compiled grammars of these two languages. The
basis of physics he shows to be mathematics. His theory is that all natural
phenomena are the result of force acting on matter, and force is invariably
subject to mathematical law. It follows that the method of investigation in
natural philosophy is essentially deductive; but he is never weary of insisting
on the necessity of what he calls “experimental science”, “the
queen of all the sciences,” which is in truth a method rather than a science.
The results arrived at “by argument” must always be tested and verified by
observation and experiment.
It is important to realise that the
more fruitful of the ideas advocated by Roger Bacon were not peculiar to a more
or less isolated and suspected genius, but were
derived from Grosseteste and were taught to several generations of students in
the Franciscan house at Oxford; and during this period the Oxford house
supplied teachers to Franciscan schools not only throughout England but in
France, Germany, and Italy. Survivals of the Grosseteste-Bacon tradition may be
traced into the fourteenth century, but on the whole the attempt to remedy the great defect of scholasticism by widening the bases
of knowledge was a failure. On the other hand, the Oxford Franciscan school
continued to be prolific of new ideas; and the diversity of views represented
by Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and William of Occam is evidence of a spirit of
liberty. No single teacher in the Franciscan Order acquired the oppressive
intellectual predominance which was accorded to Thomas Aquinas among the
Dominicans.
DUNS SCOTUS Duns Scotus (who was a Scot, not an
Irishman) was born about 1270, and studied and taught chiefly at Oxford till
1302. Here he lectured as B.D. on the Sentences; from 1302 to 1308 he
was at Paris, where he became master of theology; in
1308 he was sent to Cologne and died the same year at the age of about
thirty-eight. The “subtle doctor” was rather critical than constructive,
and was the destroyer of systems. He attacked especially the system of
Thomas Aquinas. It has been well said that while “Aquinas takes the doctrines which are to be proved, Duns takes the proofs of those doctrines, as the peculiar subject of study.” And proofs when they are
arranged to lead up to a preconceived conclusion seem much more convincing
than when they are examined for themselves and followed out to their natural
conclusion. Hence Duns showed that the harmony between theology and philosophy
established by Aquinas was largely illusory. The Franciscan was more of a
Realist than the Dominican, and attributed some
measure of objective reality to the concepts of the mind. This produced an
inevitable reaction, which was led by Occam.
WILLIAM OF OCCAM William of Occam lectured as B.D. at
Oxford, c. 1320-1324, when his
academic career was suddenly cut short
by a summons to Avignon to answer charges of heresy. While at Avignon he turned
his attention to the controversy on evangelical poverty; he escaped to the
court of the Emperor in 1328 and wrote the great scries of treatises against the papal power. The charges of heresy in 1324 had nothing
to do with his later anti-papal attitude, and probably arose out of his
teaching at Oxford. He went even farther than Duns in emphasising the gulf
between philosophy and theology, between reason and revelation, but he
distrusted abstractions and brought philosophy down from its speculative
heights to common sense, direct observation, and induction. To him “everything
that exists by the mere fact of its existence is individual.” Occam’s influence
lasted long after his death in 1348, but he left no successors, and may indeed
be said to have given the death-blow to scholasticism.
The materials for the history of
education among the Franciscans are far less complete than among the
Dominicans. It is probable that the educational organisation of the former was
less uniform, and that considerable variety and latitude were allowed in the
various provinces. England, which produced more original thinkers and probably
more men of learning than any other province, had the most fully developed
system of schools, and the credit for establishing this system on a wide and
lasting basis belongs above all to William of Nottingham, provincial minister
from 1240 to 1254. Later on we find an advanced school
of theology in each of the seven custodies into which the English province was
divided, and there is evidence of the existence of schools of arts and
philosophy.
The schools of the Mendicant Orders
were intended mainly for the training of their own members, but they were open
to, and during the thirteenth century frequented by, seculars. Thus Innocent IV granted license for non-residence with the
right to receive the full income of their benefices to any clerks of the
province of Lyons who studied theology in the Dominican and Franciscan houses
at Dijon. The University of Paris in 1254 attributed the scarcity of
theological students there to the fact that theology was now being taught by
the friars in every city, and Roger Bacon bears testimony to the number and
popularity of the new schools. Friars were often chosen as lecturers in the
schools of secular cathedrals and in Benedictine monasteries; the Cistercians
later protected themselves against this tendency by prohibiting the appointment
of Mendicant Friars as lecturers in any of their studia.
In the universities the friars came
into contact and often into collision with a strongly-organised corporation. At Paris the Chancellor of Notre-Dame had the right of conferring
the licentia docendi or degree of master. But the masters had limited his powers by forming
themselves into a union (society or university) and refusing to admit into it
any person of whom they disapproved. This union also enabled them to assert
their privileges and resist any encroachment whether by lay or ecclesiastical
To the constitutional question, which
affected the whole university, was added a very practical consideration which
affected the theological faculty. The friars were the most popular lecturers;
their lecture halls were crowded, while the secular masters complained that
they were left sitting at their desks “like sparrows alone upon the house-tops.’’
The secular masters of theology tried to protect themselves by passing a
statute that each religious house should be restricted to one master and one
school—a provision accepted by John of Parma on behalf of the Franciscans, for
the sake of peace. But this nei ther settled the constitutional question (though it diminished its importance) nor
helped to fill the empty lecturerooms of the secular
masters. One need not accept the Dominicans' taunt that the secular
masters were stupid and lazy from eating and drinking too much, but it is
certain that the Mendicant Orders attracted the finest minds of the time. Among
the Mendicant licentiates in theology whom the faculty refused to admit to the
Society of Masters in 1256 were Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventura.
The controversy was carried to the
papal court, and the leader of the secular masters, William of St Amour, showed
great ability in connecting— or confusing—the university question with the
grievances of the secular clergy against the friars, and thus enlisting the
support of bishops and parish priests throughout Europe. So powerful was this
combination that Innocent IV seemed on the point of
yielding to it, when he died. His sudden death in 1254 was attributed to the
prayers of the Dominicans. His .successor, Alexander
IV, was a strenuous supporter of the friars; in the bull Quasi lignum vitae (1255) he asserted the right of the Chancellor to license any regulars whom he considered
fit, and ordered the university to admit all such to the privileges of their
society. After a prolonged struggle the university was compelled to submit,
protesting that the bull was to them a lignum mortis.
There was no faculty of theology at Bologna,
and at Toulouse theological teaching was entirely in the hands of the
Dominicans. A difficulty arose at Oxford in 1253, owing to a conflict between a
statute of the university which demanded that none should be admitted to a
degree in theology unless he had previously taken a degree in arts, and the
custom of the friars which forbade a friar to take the M.A. degree. An
agreement was soon come to that the faculty of theology should grant
dispensations to properly trained candidates, but it was held that the vote of
the faculty must be unanimous; it was thus within the power of a single regent
master to prevent a friar from proceeding to a theological degree. A long and
bitter struggle ensued at the beginning of the fourteenth century between the
university and the friars, especially the Dominicans, who demanded the
application of the Parisian customs to Oxford. They failed to secure this; the
university retained its control over the granting of degrees to the friars, but accepted the provision that a majority of the
votes of the faculty—not a single adverse vote—should be required for the
withholding of a dispensation.
The relations of the friars to the
secular clergy and the diocesan organisation opened out wider questions.
Gregory IX in 1231 exempted the two Orders from episcopal visitation and jurisdiction, and assured to them full rights of
self-government. If the friars were free from the control of the bishops, it
became all the more necessary to define their
relations to the parish priests.
The controversies centred round the
claims of the friars to preach, to hear confessions, to receive offerings and
legacies, and to bury in their churches persons not belonging to the Orders.
The last privilege was peculiarly unfortunate; it led to iudecent squabbles over corpses between the friars and rectors of churches and greatly
embittered the struggle. It was granted to the Dominicans in 1227, to the
Franciscans in 1250. The latter with a sure instinct had hitherto resisted it,
“from love of the clergy, desiring to live at peace with them.”
The policy of the Papacy between 1250
and 1300 showed a curious vacillation. In 1300 Boniface VIII issued the bull Super cathedram, which remained the law of the
Church for the rest of the Middle Ages. The bull provided that: (1) The friars
should have full right of preaching to clergy and people in their own churches
and in public places—except
at certain times. In parish churches
they should only preach by invitation of the parish priest or by command of the
bishop. (2) They should choose from their members suitable persons to hear
confessions and humbly present these to the bishop of the diocese, who should
license them—the number of confessions being regulated by the needs of the
population. (3) They should have the right to bury in their churches those who
desired, it. (4) They should give to the parish priest a quarter of all
offerings and legacies. Some minor points at issue were left undecided; and the
friars persistently declared that they could not live if they gave up the
canonical quarter, while rectors of churches were continually bringing actions
to enforce their rights. But on the whole the bull
provided a statesmanlike and working settlement.
The Lateran Council of 1215 made
confession at least once a year to the parish priest compulsory on all
Christians. But the parish priests in the greater part of Europe were neither
morally nor intellectually fitted for the task imposed on them; the objections
to confessing to them were so widespread and so well-founded that it is
probable that the habit of making frequent confessions would never have been
established without the assistance of the friars. Bishops and clergy at first
welcomed their help. Many handbooks for the instruction of confessors were in
the thirteenth century issued either by the friars themselves or by bishops who
were closely in touch with the friars; bishops employed them as confessors on
their visitations, and parish priests referred difficult questions to their
judgment. Popes and kings, as well as humbler folk, had friars as their
confessors. All the English kings from Henry III to Richard II had Dominican
confessors, while their queens favoured the Franciscans. Occasionally, but
rarely, it is possible to trace direct influence of the confessional in public
affairs. Raymond of Pehafort, the Dominican confessor
of Gregory IX, imposed on the Pope as penance the duty of accelerating the
causes of poor litigants at the Roman court. But Nicholas de Carbio, the Franciscan confessor and biographer of Innocent
IV, gives in his life of the Pope no hint of his influence over his august
penitent. St Louis had a Dominican confessor; Philip the Fair had two. Friars
were, however, frequently employed both by the Papacy and by the secular
governments in diplomatic negotiations.
From the middle of the thirteenth
century onwards complaints were loud and persistent about the demoralising
influence of the friar confessors. They destroyed the authority of the parish
priests; they granted absolution on such easy terms that the confessional
became an avenue to sin; any offence could be compounded by an
alms to the friars. Plenty of evidence could be found in support of such
charges, which were made by secular clergy and are found in contemporary popular literature. There was also another side. In 1290 a
conference of French bishops and masters was held at Paris under Cardinal
Gaetani, papal legate, afterwards Boniface VIII, to consider the excessive
privileges, especially the unrestricted right to hear confessions, granted to
the friars by Martin IV. The Bishop of Therouanne (a secular) vigorously defended the privileges, and the
cardinal upheld them on the ground that “we have to consider not what is
agreeable to the clergy but what is useful to the world,” and that “ we have
found the friars the only healthy member” of the Church. The report of the
conference comes from a Dominican chronicler, but is
probably substantially true. English bishops often recommended nunneries to
choose mendicants as their confessors in the fourteenth century, and licensed
additional friar confessors in times of pestilence. But no secular clerks seem
to have defended the Orders against the attacks of Armachanus and Wyclif.
With the coming of the friars popular
preaching acquired a new importance, and their churches were designed on a new
and simple plan, suitable rather for holding large congregations who came to
hear sermons than for liturgical processions. Francis in his Rule exhorted his
brethren to make their sermons .short, “announcing to
the people vices and virtues, punishment and glory.” Of his own methods some
interesting details have been preserved. Thus, one who saw him preaching in the
public piazza at Bologna in 1222 says: “Almost the whole city had
assembled there. His text was ‘Angels, men,
devils.’...His style was not that of a preacher, but of a public speaker. The
whole matter of his discourse was an appeal to extinguish enmities and make
lasting peace....God lent such power to his words that
many bands of nobles were brought back from the savage fury of family feuds to
the way of peace.” Another auditor—a learned philosopher—stated that, while he
could remember every word of the sermons of others, “ the words uttered by the holy Francis alone escape me; and if I commit any of them
to memory, they do not seem to be the same that he had spoken.”
Many books were issued by friars on
the training of preachers, such as the elaborate and illuminating work of
Humbert de Romans. Still more numerous were the collections of notes for
sermons, with illustrative anecdotes or “exempla” to arrest the attention and
point the moral. Among the earlier ones which enjoyed a wide popularity may be
mentioned the anecdotes of Stephen of Bourbon and the virtues and vices of
William Perault, both Dominicans. The earliest extant
collection by an English Dominican (e. 1250-1260) is notable for
the number of exempla derived from the personal experience of the writer and
for the absence of references to the Virgin. The earliest collection by an
English Franciscan (c. 1275) is also drawn to a considerable extent from
personal experience and is full of stories inculcating devotion to the
Virgin—some of which carry the implication that the performance of religious
exercises compensates for an immoral life. The Dominican compilers—such as
Robert Holcot—make great use of exempla taken from
classical and semi-classical literature; it was remarked that the governing classes
were more apt to be influenced by stories of Alexander or Caesar than by the
lives of Christian saints. The Franciscans were
more in the habit of taking illustrations from the common things of daily life.
Berthold of Ratisbon: St Bernardino The most instructive sources of
information which we possess on the popular preaching
of the friars arc the sermons of the Franciscans, Berthold of Ratisbon and
Bernardino of Siena, because their sermons are preserved more
or less as they were delivered.
Berthold died in 1272; he was already
famous as a preacher in Germany in 1250, and Roger Bacon declared in 1267 that
“he is doing alone greater work in preaching than almost all the other friars
of both Orders put together.” In these German sermons the elements of the faith
are set forth, but the common people are not to probe into the mysteries; that
way lies heresy. The theology is of a popular type; the Blessed Virgin
intercedes with her Son for men, but though the first of the Saints she is
immeasurably below God. The terrors of hell are very present and very real. But
the greater part of the sermons is occupied with the duties and sins of
ordinary life. The sin which Berthold hated and denounced most is avarice—or we
might say, from the wide meaning he gives to the word, selfishness; it is this
that makes men most like devils. The style is dramatic. Berthold needs no
anecdotes to keep the attention of his hearers. His words are inspired by a
moral fervour which still retains its glowing vitality.
Bernardino of Siena began to preach in
1405; by degrees he found preaching to be his special vocation, and
concentrated on it to the exclusion, as far as possible, of all other duties.
The value he attached to preaching may be estimated from the advice he gave to those
who could not come to both mass and sermon, to “let the mass go rather than the
sermon....There is less peril to your soul in not
hearing mass than in not hearing the sermon.” His sermons fall into two classes: written
and reported sermons. The written sermons are mostly in Latin and form
theological treatises on which the spoken sermons were based. The reported
sermons (in Italian) are courses of daily sermons taken down in shorthand as
they were delivered in Lent 1424 and 1425 at Florence, and in 1427 in the Campo
at Siena. Much of the sermons is occupied with expository matter, and
Bernardino’s allegorical interpretation of Scripture is as fanciful as any. He observed also the elaborate system of divisions and
subdivisions current at the time. But in spite of this, the style is essentially colloquial, and the most interesting and
effective sermons are those which deal with the problems of daily life. When he
went to a new place to preach, he was careful to make himself acquainted with
everything that was going on there, and even to learn up local expressions. He
was very sensitive to the moods of his audience, and made full use of exempla to keep their attention alert. He shews an intimate
knowledge of many sides of life—children’s games, fashions in dress, tricks of
trade, and business methods. He was the uncompromising foe of usury (which
included almost all forms of interest), and was
merciless to witches. For the honest doubter in matters of faith
he had respect, pity, and hope. “If God does not see fit to give them back
their faith, we must take it that the palm of martyrdom is reserved for them in
heaven, since such mental distress is among the most terrible afflictions of
this life.” The charities which he specially commended to the Sienese were the
maintenance of the hospital and the care of prisoners. He often made definite
suggestions for the improvement of civic life—some of which were adopted as
laws. Like many of the Italian friars, he laboured unceasingly, with only
temporary success, to allay the constant quarrels between families, parties,
and cities, and endeavoured to substitute for the party emblems, which symbolised
and encouraged strife, the sacred monogram (which was primarily intended as an
external aid to devotion) as the symbol of peace and unity.
The friars used their influence as
confessors and preachers not only to secure benefactions for themselves and
their houses, but to promote works of public utility. Franciscans had a share
in the foundation of Balliol College, Oxford, and Pembroke College, Cambridge;
and not a few English towns owed their first water-supplies to the enterprise
of the friars. Franciscans established a hospital for leper women at Lubeck, c. 1.258, the Foundling Hospital at Venice, c. 1335, and the Monti di Pieta
in many Italian cities in the latter part of the fifteenth century.
When Gregory IX was developing the Papal Inquisition, he found in the Dominicans his first and most efficient agents. In 1237 he associated with the Dominican inquisitors of Toulouse a Franciscan colleague, who might “mitigate their severity by his gentleness.” The desired result was not achieved, and after the massacre of the inquisitors in 1242, the Dominicans prayed the Pope to release them from the dangerous office. Innocent IV refused, but in 1244 he granted to the master and provincial priors full power to remove and supersede all Dominican inquisitors. This privilege was not effective; for not only did the Popes constantly override it in individual cases, but the inquisitors did not scruple to threaten their superiors with accusations of heresy if they tried to interfere with them. The Franciscans tried to keep control over inquisitors of their Order by issuing commissions for a limited period. The practice of employing Dominicans and Franciscans together led to quarrels and scandals, and Clement IV had to forbid the inquisitors to prosecute each other. It was found wiser to define the boundaries of their jurisdictions; thus in Italy the north was assigned to Dominicans, the centre to Franciscans. Both Orders seem to have carried out their duties in the same spirit, but the Dominicans perhaps displayed greater thoroughness and persistence. The best handbook on inquisitorial procedure was compiled by a Dominican, and it was chiefly against Dominicans that outbursts of popular fury were directed. The Franciscans and Dominicans were
active missionaries to lands outside the Roman Church. The conversion of the
Saracens was one of the aims of St Francis, and each of
the two Franciscan Rules contains a chapter: “On those who go among the
Saracens and other infidels.” The first Franciscans who volunteered for this
dangerous service were probably inspired rather by the desire for martyrdom
than by the hope of converting souls, and the story of the five martyrs of
Morocco in 1220 (which induced Anthony of Padua to join the Franciscans) was
one of the most popular and stirring legends of the Order. The Dominicans, who
entered the field somewhat later, adopted more rational methods. About 1250
Raymond of Peñafort established schools for the study
of Hebrew and Arabic in which missionaries could be trained, and before the end
of the century Raymond Lull instituted a similar school for the Franciscans. In
Mohammedan lands the friars could point to a long line of martyrs but to few successful conversions. Their failure does not seem
to have been due to lack of intelligence or insufficient preparation. It may be
noted that the itinerary of the Irish Franciscan, Simon Simeonis,
proves that the writer—a mere pilgrim or tourist rather than a trained missionary—had
considerable knowledge of the Koran.
In Prussia and Lithuania the friars came into collision with the political aims of the Teutonic Knights,
who opposed the Christianisation of their Slav subjects. The Far East offered a
more fruitful field. The Mongol power threatened Europe in 1240, and Gregory IX
ordered the friars to preach a Crusade against the barbarians. But the Crusade
soon gave way to missions, which had the double object of converting the
heathen and of forming an alliance between Christendom and the Mongols against
Islam. The Franciscans, John de Plano Carpinis, an
Italian, sent by Innocent IV in 1245, and William of Rubruquis,
a Fleming, sent by Louis IX in 1253, visited the court of the Great Khan at
Karakorum, and gave to the Western world its first knowledge of the Mongol
Empire. While the Italian friar gives the more orderly and complete account of
the manners, customs, and history of the Mongols, Rubruquis' work
shows a power of observation, an insight into the principles of philology and
ethnology, and an interest in strange forms of life, which were new to the
Middle Ages. Their journeys formed the beginning of a Franciscan mission to
China, which endured at least till the overthrow of the Mongols and
establishment of the Ming Dynasty in 1368. Chief among the missionaries was
John of Monte Corvino (in Apulia), who laboured in the Far East from 1289 to
1328. He was the first Archbishop of Pekin and founder of a
number of bishoprics and monasteries in China; he also translated into
the Tartar language the New Testament and Psalter, and apparently the Latin
Office. Among the friars who joined him was Odoric of
Pordenone, who has also left an account of his journeys. The representation of Odoric on his tomb in the cathedral of Udine, clad in
Tartar garments and wearing his hair in Tartar fashion, suggests that the
Franciscan missionaries (like the Dominicans, according to a licence granted by
the Pope in 1226) adopted the way of life of the people among whom they worked. The Great Khan
treated John of Monte Corvino as a trusted councillor, and the policy of the
Mongol rulers generally was one of toleration. “For they hold this opinion, or
rather error”, writes Andrew of Perugia, Bishop of Zaitun,
in 1326, “that everyone can find salvation in his own religion. And we are at
liberty to preach without let or hindrance. Of the Jews, indeed, and Saracens,
no one is converted, but a great multitude of the idolaters are baptised,
though many of the baptised walk not rightly in the way of Christianity.”
The Dominicans were no less active. At
the beginning of the fourteenth century their eastern missionaries were
organised into a self-governing community (under a vicar, subject to the
general control of the master of the Order), known as the Societas Peregrinantium propter Christum. This was not, as
generally supposed, a joint society of Dominicans and Franciscans. There is
little trace of regular co-operation between the two Orders in the mission
field, though their relations seem to have been friendly. John XXII in 1318
allocated to them different spheres of influence by assigning southern
Asia-—including Greater Armenia, Persia, and India—to Dominican bishops, and
northern Asia to Franciscan bishops. But Franciscan missions continued to
operate in the Dominican sphere, and Dominican missions in the Franciscan
sphere. The Dominicans achieved their most permanent results among the Armenian
“schismatics,” where they did something towards founding a native pastorate.
The cessation of missionary enterprise
in the latter part of the fourteenth century was due partly to political and
religious movements in Asia—such as the fall of the Mongols and the rise of the
Ottoman Turks—partly to the Black Death, which disorganised the mission
stations in the East and dried up the stream of recruits from the West.
No modus vivendi between the
Latin and Greek Churches was found or sought for. A Dominican missionary, when
laying before Philip VI of France a plan for a new crusade against the Muslims,
urged him to begin by burning any Latins who had joined the Greek Church, suppressing
the Greek monasteries, and forcibly compelling the people to adopt the Catholic
faith.
The friars sought to secure lasting
results from the enthusiasm which their preaching and example evoked, by encouraging
the formation of fraternities of penitence. Such fraternities came into
existence in many Italian cities in the early years of the Franciscan movement.
They differed from the fraternity or Order of Friars Minor in that their members
continued to live in their own houses, did not renounce private or corporate
property, and had at first no common or central organisation: they were local
religious gilds. The earliest document on the subject dates from 1221, when
Francis had already retired from the active government of the Minorite Order ; it is a Rule drawn up by Cardinal Ugolino, probably
in consultation with Francis and perhaps with Elias. It provides that brethren
and sisters of penitence living in their own houses should dress plainly, eat
and drink with moderation, avoid dances and plays, keep certain fasts, observe
the canonical hours at home or in church, confess thrice a year, pay their
debts and restore any goods which belonged to others, live peaceably, not bear
arms, abstain from oaths, contribute to the support of poor or sick members and
other poor people, and attend the funerals of deceased members. The general
management was in the hands of two ministers, who held office for one year and
chose their successors with the advice of the brethren. Disciplinary power was
exercised by a visitor who acted on the report of the ministers; but no
indication is given as to the status or method of appointment of the visitor.
New members were admitted by the ministers, with the approval of some discreet
brethren, after promising to observe the conditions and after a year’s
probation; once admitted, no one might withdraw from the fraternity except to
join a religious Order. The defence of the privileges of the brethren against
the city authorities—e.g. in the question of exemption from military
service—was entrusted to the bishop of the diocese. The fraternity met once a
month in a church selected by the ministers, and should on these occasions, if
it was convenient, be instructed by a religious.
The Rule is remarkable for its omissions: it contains no reference to St Francis or to the Franciscan Order. But Gregory IX in 1230 refers to these fraternities as the “Third Order of St Francis,” though in 1235 he implies that the power of visitation and correction was vested in the bishop. The local fraternities claimed and exercised the right of supplementing the Rule, and used their powers sometimes to establish the closest relations with the neighbouring Minorite houses. But it is clear on the one hand that some fraternities were jealous of ecclesiastical influence, and on the other that some sections of the Minorite Order were averse from any close connexion with the Penitents. Thus there was room for much variety in different places, and recent historians have added to the obscurity of the early history of the Third Order by mistaking one of these local variations for a general rule. In 1247, when the “spiritual” John of Parma became minister-general, Innocent IV, acceding to the prayers of the ministers and Brethren of Penitence in Italy and the kingdom of Sicily, entrusted to the Minorite Order the duty of “visiting them, instructing them in regular discipline, correcting and reforming them in head and members”; but in 1248, in answer to a protest from the community of Brethren of Penitence in the province of Lombardy, he rescinded this order so far as the Lombard brethren were concerned and left them under episcopal control. Bonaventura, on behalf of the Minorite Order, repudiated any special responsibility for the Penitents. These reasons are curious. Not only would the demands of the Penitents be too exacting, and bring the friars into conflict with the civic authorities, but the Penitents despised the clergy and had lay teachers like the heretics, and close alliance with them would lay the friars open to charges of heresy. This pusillanimous attitude seems to have been maintained till 1289, when the Franciscan Pope Nicholas IV issued a revised version of the Rule of 1221. In several respects ecclesiastical control over the lay fraternities was now strengthened: thus the Rule of 1221 admitted persons suspected of heresy who had duly purged themselves before the bishop; the Rule of 1289 excluded all persons suspected of heresy, and decreed that, if any such had been admitted inadvertently, they were to be handed over to the Inquisition; further, the Rule of 1289 stipulated that the visitor must in all cases be a priest. The most important addition was the clause that “whereas the present form of living was instituted by St Francis, we advise that visitors and instructors be chosen from the Order of Friars Minor.” The circumstances and motives which
led to this change of policy are obscure. Probably the growth of lay
fraternities with a strong anti-ecclesiastical bias was the chief reason. It
may also be noted that the bull of 1289 was issued during the generalate of
Raymond Gaufredi, who as a representative of the
“spiritual” friars would be in sympathy with a closer connexion between the
Minorites and the Penitents. But, the movement was not
confined to the Franciscans. The Dominicans about the same time adopted a
similar policy. The master-general, Muño de Zamora,
1285-1291, issued a Rule for “the brethren and sisters of Penitence of St
Dominic,” ordering every such fraternity to accept as “master and director” a
Dominican friar priest approved by the master-general or by the provincial
prior. This Rule is generally ascribed to 1285, but the date is uncertain, and
until it is established it is impossible to determine the relation between the
Dominican Rule and the bull of Nicholas IV. Muño’s Rule was generally adopted by the Dominican Tertiaries, and was finally
approved, with modifications, by the holy see in 1405.
The Tertiaries suffered much
persecution at the hands of the inquisitors during the fourteenth century, and
the fear of suspicion of heresy probably helped to popularise among them a form
of life more closely resembling that of the regular Orders. Houses of
Tertiaries were established where they lived the common life—men and women in
separate houses—and eventually took the three solemn vows. So far as this
tendency prevailed, the Third Order lost its original character.
Our estimate of the influence of the
Third Order must depend partly on our estimate of the number of its members. A
letter included in the register of Peter della Vigna,
the minister of Frederick II, declared that there was hardly a man or woman who
did not belong to one of the fraternities called into being by the Dominicans
and Franciscans. But recent research has shown that this letter was not written by Peter, but emanated from the secular clergy in the north of France, c. 1245; it is merely
the statement of an excited controversialist and so loses much of the importance
hitherto ascribed to it. At Bologna the number of men Tertiaries in 1252 was
57, in 1288, 79. At Siena in 1352 a list of women Tertiaries
of the Dominican Order contains 100 names. The fraternities seem to have been
most numerous in Umbria and Tuscany, but representatives from 24 cities of
Northern Italy assembled in 1289 in a general chapter of Tertiaries at Bologna.
The Third Order was established in the thirteenth century in many of the
Rhenish cities, while in England, on the other hand, it has left few traces. It
is probable that in most centres of industry and commerce there were to be
found groups of men and women pledged to live an honest, strict, peaceable,
charitable, and devout life. Many famous men—among them Louis IX and Dante—have
been claimed as members of the Third Order, but the evidence for these claims
is rarely conclusive. It must be remembered that membership of the Third Order
normally exempted aman not only from military
service, but from the duty of undertaking many public offices; the institution,
though its conditions were too severe to attract the shirker, appealed rather
to retiring natures than to those fitted to play a leading part in human
affairs. The most notable members of the Third Order were women, such as
Elizabeth of Hungary, Angela of Foligno, Catherine of
Siena.
The Carmelites, who claimed Elijah as
their founder, took their origin from a small group of hermits established on
Mount Carmel about 1155 by a priest named Berthold, probably a native of
Limoges. The Order received an eremitical Rule, based on that of St Basil, from
the Patriarch of Jerusalem about 1210, and new communities were soon
established at Acre, Tyre, Jerusalem, and elsewhere, but most of these lasted
only a few years. Owing to the growth of Mohammedan power the brethren resolved
to leave the Holy Land, and colonies of them migrated about 1238 to Cyprus,
Sicily, Marseilles, and Valenciennes. In 1241-2 William de Vesey and Richard of Ciidnor returning from the crusade brought some of
them to England, which became for some years the centre of gravity of the
Order. The first houses were built in thinly populated districts, but a change
was made by the general chapter at Aylesford in 1247, when Simon Stock was
elected general prior. The chapter prayed the Pope to modify the Rule, and
accordingly Innocent IV in the same year confirmed to the friars of St Mary of
Mount Carmel their Rule as revised by two Dominicans; this substituted the
community life for the solitary life, mitigated the strictness of fasts and
silence, permitted the friars to found houses elsewhere than in eremo, and to beg, though they were still allowed to
hold property in common. The right to preach and hear confessions was granted
to them in 1253.
Simon Stock was successful in founding
houses of the Order in cities and especially in university towns, at Cambridge
in 1249, Oxford and London in 1253, York in 1255, Paris in 1259, and Bologna in
1260. But in the Order itself his policy roused strong
opposition, and on his death in 1265 the upholders of the old tradition were
successful in
The earliest extant constitutions date
from 1324; they are based partly on decrees by which from about 1256 the
general chapters supplemented the Rule, but show Dominican influence. The Order in 1324 was
divided into 15 provinces, including those of Ireland and Scotland, which had
till 1305 formed part of the English province. At the head of the Order was the
prior-general elected by the general chapter, which had power to depose him; at each succcessive chapter
he had to resign his seal of office to the definitors and to render an account
of his administration; if no serious complaints were made, he was generally
confirmed in his office until his death or resignation. He could depose
provincial and conventual priors, but the consent of the provincial or
conventual chapter was required for the election of their successors. He could
send visitors to a province only at the request of the provincial prior or
chapter. The general chapter assembled every third year, each province being
represented by the provincial prior and two
companions elected by the provincial chapter. The provincial chapter chose one
of these three representatives to act as definitor in the general chapter—an
interesting variation on the Dominican plan. Except in certain circumstances no
one could act as definitor in two successive chapters. While all the
representatives took part in the election of a general prior, the ordinary
business was conducted by the definitors. They received reports from the
provinces, decided whether the general prior should be confirmed or released
from office, and had the right of deposing provincial priors and appointing
others in their place.
The provincial chapter met every year,
and consisted of the provincial prior, the local priors, and one elected
representative from each house. Each local prior brought with him a report on
his convent; the definitors combined the reports into a single document, which
the provincial prior took with him on his visitations. The four definitors were
elected by the chapter; with the provincial prior they conducted the general
business and had full power to depose and appoint local priors. The definitors
could depose the provincial only with the consent of the
majority of the chapter. The provincial chapter normally elected the
provincial, unless he was appointed in general chapter; and the local chaptef normally elected the local prior, unless he was
appointed in provincial chapter. There was no time-limit to the holding of
their offices until the fifteenth century. In England the masters
of theology were ex officio members of
The Carmelite constitutions include
elaborate arrangements for the organisation of studies. Every convent, except
those in which studia generalia were established, was bound to set aside a tenth of its total income from all
sources, for scholastic purposes; this tenth formed a central fund in each
province which was administered by the provincial prior and the definitors of
the provincial chapter, and applied primarily to the
support of scholars at studia generalia, the residue being distributed among the masters, bachelors, lectors, and
students within the province. The allowances—estimated in grossi antiqui of Tours—ranged from 400 for the regent
master at Paris, and 100 for other regent masters, to 30 or 40 for students at
universities. Certain provinces were bound to send one or two students to Paris
and to pay for each 150 grossi, plus 70 grossi pro vestiario;
these sums were exacted even if the province failed to send its due quota of
students.
The studia recognised as generalia in the Order were
Paris, Toulouse, Bologna, Florence, Montpellier, Cologne, London, and the Roman
Curia. The absence of Oxford and Cambridge is remarkable. It would appear,
however, that the English province kept the control of appointments to
lectureships in these universities in its own hands, and chose candidates for degrees in turn from the four “distinctions'” into which
England was divided. The statutes of the English province, to which allusion is
often made and which would probably have thrown light on the subject, are
unfortunately lost.
In every university the regent master in theology appointed two friars bachelors to lecture
on moral and natural philosophy. And in each province the provincial prior and
definitors of the chapter had to provide schools and lecturers for grammar,
logic, natural philosophy, and theology. The insistence on the grammar schools
suggests that the Carmelite Order admitted younger or less educated persons
than the other Orders.
The most notable product of the
Carmelite schools was John of Baconthorpe (oA 1346), who was master of Paris and provincial of
England, 1329-1333. He appears to have defended the orthodoxy of Averroes and
his teaching, and to have maintained the superiority of the kingly to the
priestly power in secular affairs—a view which brings him into touch with
Occam, Armachanus, and Wyclif. It is remarkable that
a man holding such opinions should have become the great glory of the Carmelite
Order. Another of the most prominent Carmelites in medieval history was Thomas
Netter of Walden, who at Pisa in 1409 defended the rights of the Council, was confessor to Henry V and Henry VI,
provincial of England, ambassador to the King of Poland, and strenuous opponent
of Lollards and Hussites, against whom he directed his chief works—the Doctrinale Fidei Ecclesiae Catholicae and Fasciculi Zizaniorum. It is
AUSTIN FRIARS The Friars Hermits of the Order of St
Augustine, unlike the other Mendicant Orders, sprang from the union of a number of already existing and hitherto independent groups
of hermits. Many such groups came into being in Italy during the last half of
the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century. The first step
towards union was made by Innocent IV, who in December 1243 appointed the
Benedictine Cardinal Richard Anibaldi protector of
certain hermits in Tuscany, with the object of forming them into one body under
the Rule of St Augustine. During the next twelve years the cardinal gradually
extended his operations, and succeeded in bringing together early in 1256 a
general chapter containing representatives of many groups of hermits, namely
(1) the Order of St William of Malevale near Pisa (or
rather that section of the Williamites who did not follow the Benedictine
Rule), (2) the Order of St Augustine, probably the Tuscan hermits, (3) the
friars of John Bonus or Jamboniti, who were founded
about 1209, near Cesena, and are probably identical with the Friars Hermits of
St Augustine “in Lombardia et Romaniola,”
the friars of Fabali or Favali, apparently a
branch of the Williamites, the hermits of the desert
of Brittini in the March of Ancona. Of these, the Jamboniti seem to have been the most numerous and progressive; they had already begun to abandon the
eremitical life and to live in cities, and the early settlements of Austin
Friars north of the Alps (eg. in England in
1249) probably proceeded from this congregation; from it, too, was elected the
first general prior of the united Order, Lanfranc of Milan, formerly prior of
Bologna. The difficulties accompanying the union are illustrated by the action
of the hermits of Brittini, who resisted the
introduction of the common life and the practice of pastoral duties, and
eventually seceded from the Order and obtained a bull from Alexander IV in 1260
guaranteeing their eremitical life for ever. Some of the Williamite houses also
succeeded in maintaining their independence, and it appears that no attempt was
made at this time to include various other Orders in the Order of Austin
Friars. The most important of these was the Order of Friars of the Sack, but
they were not founded until 1251, when the negotiations for the formation of
the Order of Austin Friars had already made some progress, and they took their
origin in Provence while the congregations included in the union were all of Italian origin. Ou the
other hand the Austin Friars soon received notable accessions, the most
important perhaps being that of the Order of Poor Catholics, founded by
orthodox Waldensians.
The arrangements made by Cardinal
Richard were confirmed by a bull of Alexander IV, dated 9 April 1256: the Friars
Hermits were authorised to live as a Mendicant Order and to cease to carry the
staff, the sign of the hermit’s life. From this time they were hermits only in name. In 1257 they were exempted from episcopal
jurisdiction; and in 1274 they received like the Carmelites a provisional
authorisation in the Council of Lyons. The order is said to have been divided
at first into four provinces—Italy, Spain, France, and Germany; it eventually
numbered 42 provinces. England was probably a separate province by 1261,
certainly before 1289. The earliest extant constitutions of the Order—extant in
manuscript only—date from 1290. Both in their form and matter they shew
Dominican influence. The organisation, with annual provincial chapters and
triennial general chapters, closely resembled that of the other Mendicant
Orders. The general prior and the provincial priors were elected by their
respective chapters; they resigned the seals of office at each chapter, and the
definitors determined whether they should be continued or a new election be held. The definitors of the general chapter were chosen on
the same method as that already described in the account of the Carmelite
Order. New constitutions had to be approved by two successive general chapters.
The conventual priors were normally elected by the convent, but the convent
might ask the four definitors of the provincial chapter to depose its prior and
appoint another, and might submit the names of several
suitable candidates.
The provisions made for study should
be noticed. Every province had to send one student, chosen by the provincial
and definitors of the provincial chapter after due examination, to Paris to
study theology for five years. At the end of this time, the province had to
supply him with “books, lest owing to lack of books when he
returns to his province his studies should be impeded”. The general
prior had to institute four studia generalia in Italy and a suitable number in the other
provinces, and provide lecturers in theology and philosophy, the text of the
Scriptures having the most honoured place. “To these studia each province shall send one student sufficiently instructed in grammar, so
that after five years in such a studium he may
be found fit to lecture.” Priors of convents where such studia were founded were bound to promote and not hinder studies,
but might in case of need send out students to beg two or three times a
month. The provincial prior and definitors appointed lecturers in convents and
had to establish schools of logic and grammar for the instruction of “rudes scolares” of the province.
If they could not find a friar to teach them, they were to appoint other
masters at a competent salary. The Austin Friars made more provision than the
other Orders for giving elementary instruction to their ignorant members, and
there is some evidence that they taught in secular schools or admitted seculars
to their classes. The inhabitants of Breisach are said to have welcomed them to
their town (c. 1270) in the expectation that they would give goochand cheap education to their children. The tradition,
however, that the Austin Friars monopolised the teaching of grammar at Oxford
rests solely on a misunderstanding of a university statute.
The Austin Friars seem to have been
more interested in practical than in speculative questions.
Their greatest doctor was Giles of Colonna (or Aegidius Romanos),
whom they tried to place on a level with Thomas Aquinas; but the work on which
his fame chiefly rested even in the Middle Ages was his De Regimine Principium (written
for the instruction of Philip the Fair of France)—a treatise on politics or
rather on morals. The best known English Augustinian
was the historian John Capgrave. The Austin Friars
shewed themselves more open to the influences of the Renaissance and the
Reformation than any of the other Orders, though no proof has been adduced that
they were in any special way devoted to Pauline or Augustinian doctrines before
the time of Staupitz and Luther.
CHAPTER XXII.ECCLESIASTICAL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE
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