MONACHISM 7.11 a, remarkable and widespread religious revival, a dead-lift to ministerial efficiency in every direction, repaid their early labours, while they had between them almost a monopoly of the popedom for nearly two hundred years. And one peculiarity of their organization gave them a degree of strength which no other orders possessed. Each monastery of the older societies was practically isolated and independent of all others, unless it were itself a dependent priory or cell belonging to a greater house. Some societies had, it is true, general chapters, but these were rare, and at best only effectual in establishing a certain uniformity of practice in all houses of the same rule. But the Friars, like the Templars and Hospitallers of .an earlier day, and like the Jesuits of a later one, were enrolled in something of military fashion, under a superior- general, with wide powers, who directed and controlled their actions from one central point. Every group of neighbouring friaries was formed into a congregation, under a local head or provincial, and he was always in direct communication with the general, so that a common government united the whole body into a compact mass. But their very success was fatal to their character. The vow of poverty was the first part of their institute to break down. Even before they began to be counted amongst the richest orders of Christendom, there is indisputable evidence that of Bonaventura, himself general of the Franciscans that the mendicant system was working nothing but mischief. He tells us, writing while the order was still very young, and within fifty years of the founder s death, that it was even more en tangled in money cares and business concerns than the endowed communities, precisely because there were no funds available to fall back on in emergencies ; that the brethren, discouraged from work by mendicancy, were habitually idle ; that they roamed about in disorderly fashion under pretext of questing ; that they were such brazen and shameless beggars as to make a Franciscan as much dreaded by travellers as a highwayman ; that they made undesirable acquaintances, thus giving rise to evil reports and scandal ; that conventual offices had to be en trusted to untried, unspiritual, and incompetent brethren ; that vast sums were lavished on costly buildings ; and that the friars were greedy in the pursuit of burial fees and of legacies, so that they encroached upon the rights of the parochial clergy. If such were the mischiefs at work before the first zeal had begun to cool, it may readily be gathered how entire was the failure at a later time. Indeed, as regards the Franciscans, not only did they endeavour to evade the stringency of their institute even in their founder s lifetime, but the whole society was soon divided into two hostile camps, one of which desired to adhere closely to the original rule, while the other was content to fall in with the habits of the " possessioners," as they had been wont contemptuously to name the endowed orders. And what is very curious in this connexion is that the friars who were loyal to the principle of poverty broke away for the most part from the church, forming new sects, such as the Fratricelli, or attaching themselves to elder ones, like the Beghards and the Apostolici, which handed on in secret the Gnostic traditions of the third century, apparently stamped out in the crusade against the Albigenses, while those who openly disregarded the will of their founder remained steadfastly in the Latin church. No order, except the Benedictines, has had so many branches and reforms as the Franciscans ; amongst which it will suffice to name the Capuchins, the Minims, the Observants, and the Recollects ; while the Poor Clares, the nuns of the institute, have also divided into Clarissines and Urbanists. The institution of Tertiaries, -seculars affiliated to the order as honorary members, while continuing to live in the world, and adopting a certain modified daily rule, was a powerful factor in the success and strength of the order, and was adopted, but with less conspicuous results, by the Dominicans. The rivalry of these two great bodies with each other, prolonged with much bitterness for centuries, and their disputes with the parochial clergy, whom they long displaced in general repute and influence, belong rather to general church history than to the annals of monachism, and may be passed by with this brief allusion ; while it suffices to say that all the support they, and the other less important communities of the same kind, such as the Carmelite and Austin Friars, received from the popes, whose most effective allies they were in every country where their houses were found, was not able to avert their decline in general estimation ; and there is no figure in later mediaeval literature on which the vials of contempt and indignation are so freely poured as on the begging friar, and that, it must be said, deservedly. As the 13th century is the apogee of later monachism, Decline so the decline begins steadily at the very outset of the of mona- 14th (which is also the date of ordination becoming the normal custom for choir -monks, instead of the exception, t as formerly), continuing down to the crash of the Reforma tion. 1 The great schism of the West, the rise of the Wickliffites and Lollards in England, and of the body later known as Hussites in Bohemia, could not fail to act injuriously on the monastic orders ; and, though the creation of fresh ones continued, none of those founded during this era were influential, and few durable. It will suffice to name some of the more prominent : the Olivetans in 1313, who were rigid Benedictines ; the nuns of Bridget of Sweden in 1363, who followed a rule compiled from those of Basil and Augustine ; the Hieronymite monks in 1374; the Brethren of the Common Life, founded by Gerard Groot in 1376, who did much for education and in home mission work, but are chiefly famous now in virtue of one member of their society, Thomas a Kempis; the Hieronymite Hermits in 1373-1377 ; the Minims in 1435; the Barnabites, a preaching and edu cational order, in 1484; the Theatins (a body of Clerks Regular who aimed at little more than raising the tone of clerical life, made but slight pretension to austerity, and are, indeed, mainly noticeable as having suggested to Igna tius Loyola several points which he adopted in regulating the mode of life to be pursued by the members of his institute) in 1524 ; and the Capuchins in 1525. In the Reformation era itself the monastic bodies had sunk so low in the estimation of even the rulers of the church that one clause in the report of the committee of cardinals appointed by Pope Paul III. (a body composed of Sadolet, Contarini, Reginald Pole, Giberti, Fregoso, Badia, Aleandro, and Caraffa, afterwards Paul IV.), delivered in 1 538, was worded as follows : "Another abuse which needs correction is in the religious orders, because they have deteriorated to such an extent that they are a grave scandal to seculars, and do the greatest harm by their example. We are of opinion that they should be all abolished, not so as to injure [the vested interests of] any one, but by forbidding them to receive novices ; for in this wise they can be quickly done 1 The language of Nicolas de Clamenges (1360-1440) rector of the university of Paris, known as the " Doctor Theologus " in his treatise De Comtpto Ecdcsiie Statu, paints the moral decay of the monastic bodies, and especially of the Mendicants, in the very darkest colours. He not only charges them with waste, idleness, gluttony, drunkenness, and profligacy, but alleges the condition of convents of nuns to be such that there was little practical difference between allowing a girl to take the veil and openly consigning her to a life of public vice. And the Revelations of Bridget of Sweden (1302-1373), approved by the coun cils of Constance and Basel, and by Popes Urban VI., Martin V., and Paul V., fully confirm the darkest features of this testimony as regards
the religious houses of the 14th century.