THE MENDICANT ORDERS.
In the struggle which the Church was making to regain its forfeited hold
upon the veneration of Christendom its most efficient instrument was not
force. It is true that the dignitaries at its head relied solely on
persecution, and by skilful use of popular superstition and princely
ambition they succeeded in crushing the open revolt which threatened its
supremacy. Something more was required to render that success permanent
by arousing anew the trust and confidence of the people, and that
something could not be supplied by a worldly and ambitious prelacy. Far
down in the ranks of the Church, however, were men with truer insight
and nobler aspirations, who saw its fatal omissions and who sought in
their humble spheres to do the work which lay immediately around them.
They builded better than they knew, and to them rather than to the
Innocents and the de Montforts did the hierarchy owe the restoration of
the tottering edifice. The response which they met showed how deep was
the popular longing for a church which should in some degree fitly
reflect the precepts of its Founder.
It is not to be supposed that the corruption of the ecclesiastical body
was allowed to pass unnoticed and unreproved by the pious among the
orthodox, and that occasional efforts at reform were not made by those
who would have shrunk with horror from open opposition or even secret
dissidence. The free speaking of St. Bernard, Geroch of Reichersberg,
and Peter Cantor show how deeply the offences of priest and prelate were
felt and how sharply they were criticised. The self-imposed mission of
Peter Waldo was an effort to evangelize the Church, which in its
inception had no thought of antagonizing the existing order, and was
forced into schism by the obstinacy of the disciples in recurring to
Scripture, and the natural dread which conservatism feels of all
enthusiasm that may become dangerous. As the twelfth century drew to an
end there appeared another apostle whose brief career for a space seemed
to give assurance that both clergy and people might be aroused to a
practical sense of the changes requisite to enable the Church to fulfil
its bright promises to mankind.
Foulques de Neuilly was an obscure priest, with little education or
training and with profound contempt for the dialectics of the schools,
but whose conviction of the sins of Church and people led him to abandon
the cure of souls for the more arduous duties of a missionary. Moved by
his enthusiasm, Peter Cantor procured for him from Innocent III. a
license to preach, but at first his success was disheartening. He had
not discovered the secret of reaching the hearts of his hearers, but the
experience gained by earnest work acquired it for him, and his legend
explains it in the customary shape of a special revelation from God,
accompanied with the gift of working miracles. He caused, it is said,
the deaf to hear, the blind to see, and the crippled to walk, but he
selected his subjects and ofttimes refused to work cures, telling the
applicant that his time had not yet come, and that health would but give
him fresh opportunity to sin. Though popularly known as "_le sainct
homme_," he was no ascetic, and at a time when maceration was popularly
deemed an indispensable accompaniment of holiness, it was remarked with
wonder that he would eat thankfully whatever was set before him, and
that he was not observant of vigils. Yet he was irascible, and was wont
to give over to Satan those who refused to listen to him, when it was
observed that they would shortly perish through the divine vengeance.
Thousands of sinners flocked to hear him and were converted to
repentance, though few of them persevered in the path of righteousness,
and he was so successful in reclaiming women of evil life who became
nuns that the Convent of St. Antoine in Paris was founded to receive
them. Many Cathari, also, were won over by him to the faith, and it was
through his exertions that Terric, the heresiarch of the Nivernois, was
discovered in his cave at Corbigny and was burned. He was especially
severe on the licentiousness of the clergy, and at Lisieux he so angered
them with his invectives that they seized and threw him in a dungeon and
loaded him with chains, when his miraculous powers stood him in good
stead and he walked forth without difficulty. The same thing occurred at
Caen, when the officials of Richard of England imprisoned him, thinking
to gratify their master, who was supposed to be offended by the
preacher's plain speaking. Foulques warned him to marry off his three
daughters lest worse should befall him; and when the king retorted that
Foulques was a hypocrite who knew that he had no daughters, the monitor
rejoined that the first daughter was pride, the second avarice, and the
third lust. Richard, however, was too keen-witted to be overcome in a
war of words; he assembled his court, and solemnly repeating what
Foulques had said, added, "My pride I give to the Templars, my avarice
to the Cistercians, and my lust to the prelates in general."
Foulques suffered somewhat in public estimation from the backsliding of
Pierre de Roissi, whom he had taken as an associate, and who in
preaching poverty amassed wealth and obtained a canonry at Chartres,
where he rose to be chancellor. Yet he might have accomplished much had
not Innocent III., who thought more of the recovery of the Holy Land
than of the spiritual awakening of souls, sent him, in 1198, an urgent
request to preach the crusade. Into this work Foulques threw himself
with all his enthusiasm. It was owing to his eloquence that Baldwin of
Flanders and other magnates undertook the crusade; he is said with his
own hand to have imposed the cross upon two hundred thousand pilgrims,
taking the poor by preference, as he deemed the rich unworthy of it, and
the Latin Empire of Constantinople, which was the outcome of the
crusade, was his work. Scandal said that of the immense sum which he
raised he kept a portion, but this may be safely set to the account of
malice; certain it is that never was money more joyfully received by the
struggling Christians in Palestine than the large remittances from him
which enabled them to rebuild the walls of Tyre and Ptolemais, recently
overthrown by an earthquake. As the crusade was about to set out, which
he proposed to accompany, he died at Neuilly, in May, 1202, leaving
whatever he possessed to the pilgrims. Had his life been lengthened and
had he not been diverted from his true career, he might possibly have
accomplished permanent results.[214]
Wholly different from Foulques was Durán de Huesca the Catalan. Despite
the persecuting edicts of Alonso and Pedro, the Waldensian heresy had
taken deep root in Aragon. Durán was one of its leaders, who took part
in the disputation held at Pamiers about 1207 between the Waldenses and
the Bishops of Osma, Toulouse, and Conserans, in the presence of the
Count of Foix. It is probable that Dominic also took part in it, and as
the two men had so much in common, one is tempted to believe that to
Dominic's eloquence was due the conversion of Durán, which was the only
substantial result of the colloquy. Durán was too earnest a man to
remain satisfied with assuring his own salvation, and sought thenceforth
to win over other erring souls. He not only wrote various tracts against
his recent heresy, but he conceived the idea of founding an order which
should serve as a model of poverty and self-abnegation, and be devoted
to preaching and missionary work, thus fighting the heretics with the
very weapons which they had found so efficacious in obtaining converts
from the wealthy and worldly Church. Filled with this inspiration, he
labored among his brethren and brought many of them over to his way of
thinking, from Spain to Italy. In Milan a hundred of them agreed to
return to the Church if a building erected by them for a school, which
the archbishop had torn down, were restored to them. Durán, with three
companions, presented himself before Innocent, who was satisfied with
his profession of faith and approved of his plan. Most of the associates
were clerks, who had already given away all their possessions in
charity. Renouncing the world, they proposed to live in the strictest
chastity, to sleep on boards, except in case of sickness, praying seven
times a day and observing specified fasts in addition to those
prescribed by the Church. Absolute poverty was to be enforced; no
thought was to be taken of the morrow, all gifts of gold and silver were
to be refused, and only the necessaries of food and clothing were to be
accepted. A habit of white or gray was adopted, with sandals to
distinguish them from the Waldenses. Those of them who were learned and
fit for the work were to devote themselves to preaching to the faithful
and converting the heretic, pledging themselves not to attack the vices
of the clergy. Laymen unable to serve in this capacity were to live in
houses and labor with their hands, giving due tithes, oblations, and
first-fruits to the Church. The care of the poor, moreover, was to be a
special duty, and a rich layman in the diocese of Elne proposed to build
for them a hospital with fifty beds, to erect a church, and to
distribute garments to the naked. They were to elect their own superior,
but were to be in no wise exempt from the regular jurisdiction of the
prelates.[215]
In this institution of the "Pauperes Catholici," or Poor Catholics--as
they called themselves in contradistinction to the "Pauperes de Lugduno"
or Waldenses--there lay the possibilities of all that Dominic and
Francis afterwards conceived and executed. It was the origin, or at
least the precursor, of the great Mendicant Orders, the germ of the
great fructifying idea which accomplished results so marvellous; and
while it is not likely that Francis in Italy borrowed his conception
from Durán, it is more than probable that Dominic in France, where he
must have been familiar with the movement, was led by the plan of the
Poor Catholics to that of the Preaching Friars, which was so closely
modelled on it. Yet though at the start Durán had apparently far better
prospects of success than either Dominic or Francis, his project was
foredoomed from the beginning. Already in 1209 he had communities
planted in Aragon, Narbonne, Béziers, Usez, Carcassonne, and Nîmes, but
the prelates of Languedoc were universally suspicious of the project and
secretly or actively hostile. Cavils were raised as to the
reconciliation of converted heretics; complaints were made that the
conversions were feigned and that the converts were lacking in respect
for the Church and its observances. The crusade was on foot; it seemed
easier to crush than to persuade, and in the tumultuous passions of that
fierce time the humble methods of Durán and his brethren were laughed to
scorn. In vain he appealed to Innocent. In vain Innocent, who viewed the
project with the intuition of a Christian statesman, assured him of the
papal protection, and wrote again and again to the prelates commanding
them to favor the Poor Catholics, reminding them that wandering sheep
were to be welcomed back to the fold, that souls were to be won by
gentleness and mercy, and commanding them not to insist on trifles. In
vain he even conceded to Durán that secular members of his society
should not be required to join in war against Christians, or to take
oaths in secular matters, in so far as was compatible with justice and
with the rights of their suzerains. The passions and the prejudices
which he had unchained in Languedoc had grown beyond his control, and
the Poor Catholics disappeared in the tumult. After 1212 we hear little
more of them. We find Gregory IX., in 1237, ordering the Dominican
Provincial of Tarragona to reform them and let them select one of the
approved Rules under which to live. A mandate of Innocent IV., in 1247,
to the Archbishop of Narbonne and Bishop of Elne to restrain them from
preaching shows that when they attempted to perform the function for
which the order had been established they were promptly silenced. It was
left to other hands to develop the enormous possibilities of the scheme
which Durán had devised.[216]
Far different were the results achieved by Domingo de Guzman, whom the
Latin Church reverences as the greatest and most successful of its
champions.
"Della fede Christiana santo atleta,
Benigno a' suoi, et a' nemici crudo--
--E negli sterpi eretici percosse
L'impeto suo più vivamente quivi
Dove le resistenze eran più grosse."
--PARADISO, XII.
Born at Calaruega, in Old Castile, in 1170, of a stock which his
brethren love to connect with the royal house, his saintliness was so
penetrating that it reflected back upon his mother, who is reverenced as
St. Juana de Aga, and at one time there was danger that even his father
might be drawn into the saintly circle. Both parents were buried in the
convent of San Pedro de Gumiel, until, about 1320, the Infante Juan
Manuel of Castile obtained the body of Juana to enrich the Dominican
convent of San Pablo de Peñafiel which he had founded; when Fray
Geronymo Orozco, the Abbot of Gumiel, prudently transferred the remains
of Don Felix de Guzman to an unknown spot in order to preserve it from
an extension of acquisitive veneration. Even the font of white stone,
fashioned like a shell, in which Dominic was baptized could not escape.
In 1605 Philip III. transported it with much pomp from Calaruega to
Valladolid. Thence it was translated to the royal Convent of San Domingo
in Madrid, where it has since been used for the baptism of the royal
children.[217]
Ten years of training in the University of Palencia made of Dominic an
accomplished theologian and equipped him thoroughly for the missionary
work to which his life was devoted. Entering the Chapter of Osma, he was
speedily made sub-prior, and in this capacity we have seen him accompany
his bishop, who from 1203 onward for some years was employed on missions
that carried him through Languedoc. Dominic's biographers relate that
his career was determined by an incident in this first voyage, when he
chanced to lodge in the house of a heretic of Toulouse and spent the
night in converting him. This success, and the sight of the wide extent
of heresy, led him to devote his life to its extirpation. When in 1206
Bishop Diego dismissed his retinue and remained to evangelize the land,
Dominic alone was retained; when Diego returned to Spain to die, Dominic
remained behind and continued to make Languedoc the scene of his
activity.[218]
The legend which has grown around Dominic represents him as one of the
chief causes of the overthrow of the Albigensian heresies. Doubtless he
did all that an earnest and single-hearted man could do in a cause to
which he had surrendered himself, but historically his influence was
imperceptible. The monk of Vaux-Cernay alludes to him but once, as a
follower of Bishop Diego, and the epithet there applied to him of "_vir
totius sanctitatis_" is but one of the customary meaningless civilities
of the day. That he was one of the preachers licensed by the legates
under the authority granted by Innocent, in 1207, is shown by an
absolution issued by him which has chanced to be preserved, in which he
styles himself canon of Osma and "_prædicator minimus_;" but his
subordinate position is indicated by the absolution being subject to
the pleasure of Legate Arnaud, from whom his authority was derived. This
and a dispensation to a burgher of Toulouse to lodge a heretic in his
house are the only extant evidences of his activity as a missionary. Yet
already his talent for organization had been shown by his founding the
Monastery of Prouille. One of the most efficient means by which the
heretics propagated their belief was by establishments in which poor
girls of gentle blood could obtain gratuitous education. To meet them on
their own ground, Dominic, about 1206, conceived the idea of a similar
foundation for Catholics, and with the aid of Bishop Foulques of
Toulouse he carried it out. Prouille became a large and wealthy convent,
which boasted of being the germ of the great Dominican Order.[219]
For the next eight years the life of Dominic is a blank. That he labored
strenuously in his self-imposed mission we cannot doubt, gaining, if not
souls, at least skill in disputation, knowledge of men, and the force
which comes from the concentration of energies on a task of conscience;
but of results there is not a trace in the wild tumult of the crusades.
We may safely dismiss as a fable the tradition that he refused
successively the bishoprics of Béziers, Conserans, and Comminges, and
the legends of the miracles which he wrought in vain among hard-hearted
Cathari. He emerges again to view after the battle of Muret had
destroyed the hopes of Count Raymond, when the cause of orthodoxy seemed
triumphant and the field was unobstructed for conversions. In 1214 he
was in his forty-fifth year, in the full strength of mature manhood, yet
having thus far accomplished nothing that gave promise of what was to
follow. Divested of their supernatural adornments, the accounts which we
have of him show him to us as a man of earnest, resolute purpose, deep
and unalterable convictions, full of burning zeal for the propagation of
the faith, yet kindly in heart, cheerful in temper, and winning in
manner. It is significant of the impression produced on his
contemporaries that with scarce an exception the miracles related of him
are beneficent ones--raising the dead, healing the sick and converting
heretics, not by punishment, but by showing that he spoke by command of
the Almighty. The accounts of his habitual austerities may be
exaggerated, but no one who is familiar with the self-inflicted
macerations of the hagiology need hesitate to believe that Dominic was
as severe with himself as with his fellows, even though we may not place
faith in the legend that his constant falling out of bed when an infant
was caused by an early ascetic development which led him to prefer
mortifying the flesh on a hard floor to the luxury of a soft couch. His
endless scourgings, his tireless vigils, and, when exhausted nature
could bear them no longer, his short repose on a board, or in the corner
of a church where he had passed the night, his almost uninterrupted
prayer, his super-human fasts, are probably only harmless exaggerations
of the truth. So, too, may be the legends which tell of his boundless
charity and his love for his fellows; how, when a student, in a time of
dearth he sold all his books to relieve the distress around him, and
would, unless divinely prevented, have sold himself to redeem from the
Moors a captive whose sister he saw overwhelmed with grief. Whether
these stories be true or not, they at least show us the ideal which his
immediate disciples thought to realize in him.[220]
The brief remaining years of Dominic's life witnessed the rapid
garnering of the harvest sowed in the period of humble but zealous
obscurity. In 1214 Pierre Cella, a rich citizen of Toulouse, moved by
his earnestness, resolved to join him in his mission-work, and gave for
the purpose a stately house near the Château Narbonnais, which for more
than a hundred years remained the home of the Inquisition. A few other
zealous souls gathered around him, and the little fraternity commenced
to live like monks. Foulques, the fanatic Bishop of Toulouse, assigned
to them a sixth of the tithes, to provide them with books and other
necessaries, that they might not lack the means of training themselves
and others for the work of preaching, which was the main object of the
community. By this time Durán de Huesca's attempt had proved a failure,
and Dominic, who must have been familiar with it, doubtless saw the
causes of its ill-success and the means to avoid them. Yet it is
noteworthy that in the inception of the plan there was no thought of
employing force. The heretics of Languedoc lay defenceless at the feet
of de Montfort, an easy prey to the spoiler, but Dominic's project only
looked to their peaceful conversion and to performing the duties of
instruction and exhortation of which the Church had been so wholly
neglectful.[221]
All eyes were now bent on the Lateran Council which was to decide the
fate of the land. Foulques of Toulouse on his voyage thither took with
him Dominic to obtain from the pope his approval of the new community.
Tradition relates that Innocent hesitated; his experience with Durán de
Huesca had not taught him to expect much from the irregular action of
enthusiasts; the council had forbidden the formation of new orders of
monkhood, and had commanded that zeal for the future should satisfy
itself with those already established. Yet Innocent's doubts were
removed by a dream in which he saw the Lateran Basilica tottering and
ready to fall, and a man in whom he recognized the humble Dominic
supporting it on his shoulders. Thus divinely warned that the crumbling
church edifice was to be restored by the man whose zeal he had despised,
he approved the project on condition that Dominic and his brethren
should adopt the Rule of some established order.[222]
Dominic returned and assembled his brethren at Prouille. They were by
this time sixteen in number, and it is a curious illustration of the
denationalizing influence of the Church to observe in this little
gathering of earnest men in that remote spot that Castile, Navarre,
Normandy, France, Languedoc, England, and Germany were represented. This
self-devoted band adopted the rule of the Canons Regular of St.
Augustin, which was Dominic's own, and elected Matthieu le Gaulois as
their abbot. He was the first and last who bore this title, for as the
Order grew its organization was modified to secure greater unity and at
the same time greater freedom of action. It was divided into provinces,
the head of each being a provincial prior. Supreme over all was the
general master. These offices were filled by election, with tenure
during good behavior, and provisions were made for stated assemblies, or
chapters, both provincial and general. Each brother, or friar, was held
to implicit obedience. Like a soldier on duty, he was liable at any
moment to be despatched on any mission that the interest of religion or
of the Order might demand. They deemed themselves, in fact, soldiers of
Christ, not devoted, like the monks, to a life of contemplation, but
trained to mix with the world, exercised in all the arts of persuasion,
skilled in theology and rhetoric, and ready to dare and suffer all
things in the interest of the Church Militant. The name of Preaching
Friars, which acquired such world-wide significance, was the result of
accident. During the Lateran Council, while Dominic was in Rome,
Innocent had occasion to address a note to him and ordered his secretary
to begin, "To brother Dominic and his companions;" then, correcting
himself, he said, "To brother Dominic and the preachers with him," and
finally, considering further, "to Master Dominic and the brethren
preachers." This greatly pleased them, and they at once commenced
calling themselves Friar Preachers.[223]
Curiously enough, poverty formed no part of the original design. The
impulse to found the order was given by Cella's donation of his property
and the share of the tithes offered by Bishop Foulques; and, as soon as
it was organized, Dominic had no scruple in accepting three churches
from Foulques--one in Toulouse, one in Pamiers, and one in Puylaurens.
The historians of the Order endeavor to explain this by saying that its
founders desired to make poverty a feature of the Rule, but were
deterred for fear that so novel an idea would prevent the papal
confirmation. As Innocent had already approved of poverty in Durán de
Huesca's scheme, the futility of this excuse is apparent, and we may
well doubt the legends about Dominic's rigidity in requiring his
brethren to dispense absolutely with the use of money. Certain it is
that as early as 1217 we find the friars quarrelling with the agents of
Bishop Foulques over the grant of tithes, and demanding that churches
with only half a dozen communicants should be reckoned as parish
churches and subject to their claim on the tithes. It was not until the
success of the Franciscans had shown the attractive power of poverty
that it was adopted by the Dominicans in the General Chapter of 1220. It
was finally embodied in the constitution adopted by the Chapter of 1228,
which prohibited that lands or revenues should be acquired, ordered
preachers not to solicit money, and classed among the graver offences
the retention by a brother of any of the things forbidden to be
received. The Order speedily outgrew these restrictions, but Dominic
himself set an example of the utmost rigidity in this respect, and when
he died in Bologna, in 1221, it was in the bed of Friar Moneta, as he
had none of his own, and in Moneta's gown, for his own was worn out and
he had not another to replace it; and when the Rule was adopted in 1220
such property as was not essential for the needs of the Order was made
over to the Convent of Prouille.[224]
All that now was lacking was the papal confirmation of the Order and its
statutes. Before Dominic could reach Rome on the errand to obtain this,
Innocent had died, but his successor, Honorius III., entered fully into
his views, and the sanction of the Holy See was given on December 21,
1216. Returning to Toulouse in 1217, Dominic lost no time in dispersing
his followers. It was not for them to practise the strenuous idleness of
conventual life, in a ceaseless round of barren liturgies. They were the
leaven which was to leaven Christianity, the soldiers of Christ who were
to carry the banner of salvation to the farthest corners of the earth,
and for them there was no pause or rest. The little band seemed absurdly
inadequate for the task, but Dominic never hesitated. Some were sent to
Spain, others to Paris, others again to Bologna, while Dominic himself
went to Rome, where, under the favor of the papal court, his enthusiasm
was rewarded with an abundance of disciples. Those who went to Paris
were warmly received, and were granted the house of St. Jacques, where
they founded the famous convent of the Jacobins, which endured until the
Order was swept away in the Revolution. The state of mental exaltation
in which laymen and ecclesiastics of all ranks hastened to join the new
Order is shown by the persecutions which the early brethren of St.
Jacques endured from Satan. Frightful or sensual visions were constant
with them, so that they were obliged by turns to keep watch at night
over each other. Many of them were diabolically possessed and became
mad. Their only refuge was the Virgin, and to the gracious assistance
which she rendered them in their trials is attributed the Dominican
custom of singing "Salve Regina" after complins, during which pious
exercise she was frequently seen hovering over them in a sphere of
light. Men in such a frame of mind were ready to suffer and to inflict
all things for the sake of salvation.[225]
It is not worth while to follow further in detail the marvellous growth
of the Order in all the lands of Europe. Already in 1221, when Dominic
as General Master held the second General Chapter in Bologna, four years
after the sixteen disciples had parted in Toulouse, the Order already
had sixty convents, and was organized into eight provinces--Spain,
Provence, France, England, Germany, Hungary, Lombardy, and Romagnuola.
The same year witnessed the death of Dominic, but his work was done and
his removal from the scene made no change in the mighty machine which he
had built and set in motion. Everywhere the strongest intellects of the
age were donning the Dominican scapular, and everywhere they were
earning the respect and veneration of the people. Their services to the
papacy were fully recognized, and they are speedily found filling
important offices in the curia. In 1243 the learned Hugh of Vienne
became the first Dominican cardinal, and in 1276 the Dominicans rejoiced
to see Brother Peter of Tarentaise raised to the chair of St. Peter as
Innocent V. Yet the delay in Dominic's canonization would seem to show
that personally he made less impression on his contemporaries than his
followers would have us believe. Dying in 1221, the bull enrolling him
in the calendar of saints only bears date July 3, 1234. His great
colleague, or rival, Francis, who died in 1226, was canonized within two
years, in 1228; the young Franciscan, Antony of Padua, who died in 1231,
was recognized as a saint in 1233; and when the great Dominican martyr,
St. Peter Martyr, was slain, April 12, 1252, proceedings for his
canonization were commenced August 31 of the same year and were
completed by March 25, 1253, less than a twelvemonth after his death.
That thirteen years should have elapsed in the case of Dominic shows
that his merits were recognized but slowly.[226]
* * * * *
If the Franciscans were in the end closely assimilated to the
Dominicans, it was through the overmastering demands of the work to be
accomplished by both, for in their origin the Orders were destined to
objects as diverse as the characters of their founders. If St. Dominic
was the type of the active practical missionary, St. Francis was the
ideal of the contemplative ascetic, modified by boundless love and
charity for his fellows.
Born in 1182, Giovanni Bernardone was the son of a prosperous trader of
Assisi, who trained him in his business. Accompanying his father on a
voyage to France, he came back with the accomplishment of speaking
French, which gained for him among his companions the nickname of
Francesco, a name which he adopted as his own. A dissipated youth was
brought to a sudden close in his twentieth year by a dangerous illness
which resulted in his conversion, and thereafter he devoted himself to
works of mercy and charity, earning for himself with no little
verisimilitude the reputation of insanity. In order to restore the
dilapidated church of St. Damiani he stole a quantity of his father's
cloths, which he sold at Foligno, together with the horse that carried
them. Finding him irrevocably bent on following his own devices, the
exasperated parent took him before the bishop to make him renounce all
claim on his inheritance, which Francis willingly did, and to render the
renunciation more complete stripped off all his clothes, save a hair
shirt worn to mortify the flesh, when the bishop, to cover his
nakedness, gave him the worn-out cloak of a peasant serving-man.[227]
Francis was now fairly embarked on a life of wandering beggary, which he
used to so good an account that he was able to restore four churches
which were sinking to ruin. He had no thought other than to work out his
own salvation in poverty and acts of loving charity, especially to
lepers; but the fame of his holiness spread, and the Blessed Bernard of
Quintavalle asked to be associated with him. The solitary ascetic at
first was indisposed to companionship, but to learn the will of God he
thrice opened the Gospels at random, and his finger lit on the three
texts on which the great Franciscan order was founded:
"And Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that
thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in
heaven: and come and follow me" (Matt. XIX. 21).
"Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what
things ye have need of before ye ask him" (Matt. VI. 8).
"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt.
XVI. 24).
The command was obeyed and the recruit accepted. Others joined from time
to time, till the little band numbered eight. Then Francis announced
that the time had come for them to evangelize the world, and dispersed
them in pairs to the four points of the compass. On their reuniting,
four more volunteers were added, when Francis drew up a Rule for their
governance, and the twelve proceeded to Rome, according to the
Franciscan legend, at the time of the Lateran Council, to procure the
papal confirmation. When Francis presented himself to the pope in the
aspect of a beggar the pontiff indignantly ordered him away, but
tradition relates that a vision that night induced him to send for the
mendicant. There was much hesitation among the papal advisers, but the
earnestness and eloquence of Francis won the day, and finally the Rule
was approved and the brethren were authorized to preach the Word of
God.[228]
Even yet were they undecided whether to abandon themselves to the
contemplative life of anchorites or to undertake the great work of
evangelization which lay before them in its immensity. They withdrew to
Spoleto and counselled earnestly together without being able to reach a
conclusion, until a revelation from God, which we can readily believe as
actual to a mind such as that of Francis, turned the scale, and the
Franciscan Order, in place of dying out in a few scattered hermitages,
became one of the most powerful organizations of Christendom, though the
abandoned hovel to which they resorted on their return to Assisi gave
little promise of future splendor. The rapidity of the growth of the
Order may be measured by the fact that when Francis called together his
first General Chapter in 1221, it was attended by brethren variously
reported as from three thousand to five thousand, including a cardinal
and several bishops; and when, in the General Chapter of 1260, under
Bonaventura, the Order was redistributed to accord with its growth, it
was partitioned into thirty-three provinces and three vicariates,
comprehending in all one hundred and eighty-two guardianships. This
organization can be understood by the example of England, which formed a
province divided into seven guardianships, containing, as we learn from
another source, in 1256, forty-nine houses with twelve hundred and
forty-two friars. The Order then extended into every corner of what was
regarded as the civilized world and its contiguous regions.[229]
The Minorites, as in humility they called themselves, were so different
in their inception from any existing organization of the Church that
when, in 1219, St. Francis made the first dispersion and sent his
disciples to evangelize Europe, those who went to Germany and Hungary
were regarded as heretics, and were roughly handled and expelled. In
France they were taken for Cathari, to whose wandering perfected
missionaries their austerity doubtless gave them close resemblance. They
were asked if they were Albigenses, and, not knowing the meaning of the
term, knew not what to say, and it was only after the authorities had
consulted Honorius III. that they were relieved from suspicion. In Spain
five of them endured martyrdom. Innocent had only given a verbal
approbation of the Rule; he was dead, and something more formal was
requisite to protect the brethren from persecution. Francis accordingly
drew up a second Rule, more concise and less rigid than the first, which
he submitted to Honorius. The pope approved it, though not without
objecting to some of the clauses; but Francis refused to modify them,
saying that it was not his but Christ's, and that he could not change
the words of Christ. From this his followers assumed that the Rule had
been divinely revealed to him. This belief passed into the traditions of
the Order, and the Rule has been maintained unaltered in letter, though,
as we shall see, its spirit has been more than once explained away by
ingenious papal casuists.[230]
It is simple enough, amounting hardly to more than a gloss on the
entrance-oath required of each friar, to live according to the gospel,
in obedience, chastity, and without possessing property. The applicant
for admission was required to sell all he had and give it to the poor,
and if this were impossible the will so to do sufficed. Each one was
permitted to have two gowns, but they must be vile in texture, and were
to be patched and repaired as long as they could be made to hang
together. Shoes were allowed to those who found it impossible to forego
them. All were to go on foot, except in case of sickness or necessity.
No one was to receive money, either directly or through a third party,
except that the ministers (as the provincial superiors were called)
could do so for the care of the sick and for provision of clothing,
especially in rigorous climates. Labor was strenuously enjoined on all
those able to perform it, but wages were not to be in money, but in
necessaries for themselves and their brethren. The clause requiring
absolute poverty caused, as we shall see, a schism in the order, and
therefore is worth giving textually: "The brethren shall appropriate to
themselves nothing, neither house, nor place, nor other thing, but shall
live in the world as strangers and pilgrims, and shall go confidently
after alms. In this they shall feel no shame, since the Lord for our
sake made himself poor in the world. It is this perfection of poverty
which has made you, dearest brethren, heirs and kings of the kingdom of
heaven. Having this, you should wish to have naught else under heaven."
The head of the Order, or General Minister, was chosen by the Provincial
Ministers, who could at any time depose him when the general good
required it. Faculties for preaching were to be issued by the General,
but no brother was to preach in any diocese without the assent of the
bishop.[231]
This is all; and there is nothing in it to give promise of the immense
results achieved under it. What gave it an enduring hold on the
affections of the world was the spirit which the founder infused in it
and in his brethren. No human creature since Christ has more fully
incarnated the ideal of Christianity than Francis. Amid the
extravagance, amounting at times almost to insanity, of his asceticism,
there shines forth the Christian love and humility with which he devoted
himself to the wretched and neglected--the outcasts for whom, in that
rude time, there were few indeed to care. The Church, absorbed in
worldliness, had outgrown the duties on which was founded its control
over the souls and hearts of men, and there was need of the exaggeration
of self-sacrifice taught by Francis to recall humanity to a sense of its
obligations. Thus, of all the miseries of that age of misery, the
hardest lot was that of the leper--the being afflicted by God with a
loathsome, incurable, and contagious disease, who was cut off from all
intercourse with fellow-men, and who, when he wandered abroad for alms
from the lazar-house in which he was herded, was obliged, by clattering
sticks, to give notice of his approach, that all might shun his
pestiferous neighborhood. It was to these, the most helpless and
hopeless and abhorred of mankind, that the boundless charity and love of
Francis was especially directed. The example which he set in his own
person he required to be followed by his brethren; and when noble or
simple applied for admission to the Order he was told that prominent
among the obligations which he assumed was that of humbly serving the
lepers in their hospitals. Francis did not hesitate to sleep in the
lazar-houses, to handle the dangerous sores of the afflicted, to apply
medicaments, and to minister to the sufferings of the body as well as of
the soul. For the sake of the leper he relaxed the rule as to receiving
alms in money. Yet his humility led him to forbid his disciples from
leading in public the "Christian brethren," as he called them. Once,
when Friar James had taken with him to church a leper who was shockingly
eaten by disease, Francis reproved him; then, reproaching himself for
what the sufferer might regard as a slight, he asked Friar Peter of
Catania, at that time the minister-general of the Order, to confirm the
penance which he had appointed for himself, and when Peter, who looked
upon him with too much reverence to deny him anything, had assented, he
announced that he would eat out of the same dish as the sick man. At the
next simple meal, therefore, the leper was seated among them, and the
brethren were terrified to see a single dish set between the two, and
the leper dipping his fingers, dripping with blood and purulent
discharge, into the food common to both.[232]
It would perhaps be too much to assert one's faith in the absolute
veracity of such stories, but that makes little difference. If they be
but legendary, the very growth of the legend shows the impression which
Francis left on those who followed him; and the value of such an ideal
on an age so hard and cruel can scarce be exaggerated. We know as a fact
that the Franciscans were ever foremost in the cure of the sick, that
they tended the hospitals in the midst of pestilence, and that to their
intelligent devotion is due whatever progress the science of healing
made in the dark ages. We are told, moreover, that the tender love of
Francis lavished itself on the brute creation as well as on man--on
insects, birds, and beasts, whom he was wont to call his brethren and
sisters, and for whom he was never weary in caring. All the stories
related of him and his immediate disciples, in fact, are instinct with
infinite love and self-sacrifice, with the perfection of humility and
patience and long-suffering, with the control of the passions, and with
endless striving to subdue all that renders human nature imperfect, and
to realize the standard which Christ had erected for the guidance of
man. Viewed in this aspect, even the semi-blasphemy of the "Book of
Conformities of Christ and Francis" loses its grotesqueness. We may,
indeed, smile at the absurdity of some of its parallels, and they may
seem shocking enough when cleverly presented, stripped of all that
softens them, in the "Alcoran des Cordeliers." We may doubt the verity
of the Stigmata which it took so long and so many miracles, and
repetition of papal bulls, to impose upon the incredulity of a
hard-hearted generation. We may think that Satan showed less than his
usual shrewdness when he so repeatedly wasted his energies in seeking to
tempt or to terrify the saint in the crude form of a lion or of a
dragon. Yet, in spite of all the absurdities of the cult of St. Francis,
we recognize the profound impression which his virtues made on his
followers in the vision which showed the heavenly throne of Lucifer,
next to the Highest, kept vacant to be filled by Francis.[233]
To the pride and cruelty of the age he opposed patience and humility.
"The perfection of gladness," he says, "consists not in working
miracles, in curing the sick, expelling devils, or raising the dead;
nor in learning and knowledge of all things; nor in eloquence to convert
the world, but in bearing all ills and injuries and injustice and
despiteful treatment with patience and humility." So far from valuing
himself on his virtues, he humbly confesses that he had himself not
lived up to the Rule, and apologizes for it through his infirmity and
ignorance. To what extravagant lengths his disciples carried this
striving for humility is shown by Giacomo Benedettone, better known as
Jacopone da Todi, the author of the Stabat Mater, an active and
successful lawyer, who, crushed by the death of a lovely wife, entered
the Order, and for ten years feigned idiocy in order to revel in the
abuse and ill-treatment that were showered upon him.[234]
Obedience was taught and enforced to the utter renunciation of the will,
and many are the stories related to show how completely the earlier
disciples subjected themselves to each other and to their superiors.
When, in 1224, the Franciscans were first sent to England, Gregory, the
Provincial Minister of France, asked Friar William of Esseby if he
wished to go. William replied that he did not know whether he wished it
or not, because his will was not his own, but the minister's, and
therefore he wished whatever the minister wished him to wish. Somewhat
similar is a story told of two brethren of Salzburg in 1222. This
blindness of obedience produced a discipline in the Order which
increased incalculably its importance to the Church when it grew to be
an instrument in the hands of the papacy. St. Francis was especially
emphatic in urging upon the brethren the most implicit devotion to Rome,
and the Franciscans became an army which played in the thirteenth
century the part filled by the Jesuits in the sixteenth.[235]
It was no part of Francis's design that the friars should live by idle
mendicancy, and we have seen that the Rule expresses the obligation to
labor. This was obeyed by the stricter members. Thus his third disciple,
the blessed Giles, earned his subsistence by the rudest work, such as
that of carrying wood, and he always adhered to the precept not to take
wages in money, but in necessaries for his support. When he had earned
more than enough for the scanty subsistence of the day, he would give
away the surplus in charity, and trust to God for the morrow. It was
well that, in an age of class distinctions so rigid, there should be
some to teach practically the dignity of labor as a Christian doctrine.
When St. Bonaventura was elevated to the cardinalate, in 1273, he had
for seventeen years been the head of what by that time was the most
powerful organization in Christendom, yet the messengers sent to
announce to him his promotion arrived while he was engaged in his daily
task of washing the dishes used in the frugal dinner of his convent. He
refused to see them till his work was finished, and meanwhile the hat
which they had brought was hung upon the branch of a tree.[236]
Thus the aim of St. Francis and his followers was to realize the
simplicity of Christ and the apostles, and in nothing was this
manifested with so much fervor as in their seeking after poverty. They
argued that Jesus and his disciples owned nothing, and that the perfect
Christian must likewise divest himself of all property. Of food and
clothing and shelter he might have the use, as likewise of books
requisite for his religious needs, but property of all kinds was
absolutely prohibited, and the Christian's trust in God rendered
forethought for the morrow a sin. As a protest against the avarice and
worldliness of the Church, this was of exceeding value, but it was
pushed to an extravagance which idealized poverty as an intrinsic good,
and the greatest of all goods. "Brethren," said St. Francis, "know that
poverty is the special path to salvation, the inciter to humility, and
the root of perfection.... He who seeks to attain the height of poverty
must, in a sense, renounce not only worldly prudence, but the knowledge
of letters, so that, divesting himself of these possessions, he may
offer himself naked to the arms of the Crucified.... Wherefore, like
beggars, build little hovels in which to live, not as in your own, but
as strangers and pilgrims in the houses of others." His prayer to Christ
for poverty is a curiously earnest rhapsody. She is Lady Poverty, the
Queen of virtues, for whose sake Christ descended unto earth, to marry
her and beget on her all the children of perfection. She clung to him
with inseparable fidelity, and in her arms he died upon the cross. She
alone possesses the seal with which to mark the elect who choose the way
of perfection. "Grant me, O Jesus, that I may never possess under heaven
anything of my own, and sustain the flesh sparely by the use of the
things of others!" This exaggerated lust of poverty he carried out to
the last, and on his death-bed stripped himself naked that he might die
possessing absolutely nothing. Poverty thus was the corner-stone on
which he founded the Order, and, as we shall see, the effort to maintain
this super-human perfection led to a schism and gave to the Inquisition
an ample store of victims whose heresy consisted in fidelity to the
precepts of their founder.[237]
With all this there was too much kindliness in his nature for gloom, and
cheerfulness was a virtue which he constantly inculcated. Sadness he
held to be one of the most deadly weapons of Satan, while cheerfulness
was the Christian's thankful acknowledgment of the blessings bestowed by
God upon his creatures. This was consequently a distinguishing
characteristic of the Friars in the early days of the Order. In
Eccleston's simple and quiet narration of their advent to England, in
1224, when nine of them crossed to Dover without knowing what their fate
might be from day to day, there is something singularly beautiful in the
picture of their zeal, their trustfulness, their patience, their
unfailing cheerfulness under privation and disappointment, and in their
tireless activity in ministering to the spiritual and corporeal wants of
the neglected children of the Church. Such men were real apostles, and
had the Order continued to follow the lines laid down by its founder its
services to humanity would have been incalculable.[238]
* * * * *
The Mendicant Orders were a startling innovation upon the monastic
theory. In its essence monachism was the selfish effort of the
individual to secure his own salvation by repudiating all the duties and
responsibilities of life. It is true that at one time it had earned the
gratitude of the world by leaving its retreats and carrying civilization
and Christianity into barbarous regions, under such men as St. Columba,
St. Gall, and St. Willibrod, but that time had long past, and for ages
it had sunk into worse than its primitive selfishness. The Mendicants
came upon Christendom like a revelation--men who had abandoned all that
was enticing in life to imitate the apostles, to convert the sinner and
unbeliever, to arouse the slumbering moral sense of mankind, to instruct
the ignorant, to offer salvation to all; in short, to do what the Church
was paid so enormously in wealth and privileges and power for
neglecting. Wandering on foot over the face of Europe, under burning
suns or chilling blasts, rejecting alms in money but receiving
thankfully whatever coarse food might be set before the wayfarer, or
enduring hunger in silent resignation, taking no thought for the morrow,
but busied eternally in the work of snatching souls from Satan, and
lifting men up from the sordid cares of daily life, of ministering to
their infirmities and of bringing to their darkened souls a glimpse of
heavenly light--such was the aspect in which the earliest Dominicans and
Franciscans presented themselves to the eyes of men who had been
accustomed to see in the ecclesiastic only the sensual worldling intent
solely upon the indulgence of his appetites. It is no wonder that such
an apparition accomplished much in restoring to the populations the
faith in Christianity which had begun to be so sorely shaken, or that it
spread through Christendom the hope of an approaching regeneration in
the Church which greatly lessened popular impatience under its
exactions, and doubtless staved off a rebellion which would have altered
the aspect of modern civilization.
It is no wonder, moreover, that the love and veneration of the people
followed the Mendicants; that the charitable showered their gifts upon
them, to the destruction of the primal obligation of poverty; that the
men of earnest convictions pressed forward to join their ranks. The
purest and noblest intellects might well see in such a career the
realization of their loftiest aspirations; and whenever in the
thirteenth century we find a man towering above his fellows, we are
almost sure to trace him to one of the Mendicant Orders. Raymond of
Pennaforte, Alexander Hales, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas,
Bonaventura, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, are names which show how
irresistibly the men of highest gifts were led to seek among the
Dominicans or Franciscans their ideal of life. That they failed to find
it goes without saying, but their presence in the Orders is at once an
evidence of the impression which the Mendicants made upon all that was
worthiest in the age, and an explanation of the enormous influence which
the Orders obtained with such marvellous rapidity. Even Dante cannot
refuse to them the tribute of his admiration--
"L'un fu tutto serafico in ardore,
L'altro per sapienza in terra fue
Di cherubica luce uno splendore."
(PARADISO, XI.)
There was another instrumentality of vast importance, in utilizing which
both Francis and Dominic manifested their organizing ability--the
Tertiary Orders through which laymen, without abandoning the world, were
assimilated to the respective brotherhoods, aided in their labors,
shared in their glory, and added to their influence, thus stimulating
and utilizing the zeal of the community at large. There is a trace of an
order of Crucigeri or Cross-bearers, laymen organized for the defence of
the Church, claiming to date back to the time of Helena, mother of
Constantine, and revived in 1215 by the Lateran Council, but there is no
evidence of its activity or usefulness. Francis, however, who, though
unlearned in scholastic theology and untrained in rhetoric, excelled his
contemporaries in insight into the gospel and possessed a simple,
earnest eloquence which carried the hearts of his hearers, on one
occasion produced by his preaching so profound an impression that all
the inhabitants of the town, men, women, and children, begged admission
to his Order. This was manifestly impossible, and he bethought him of
framing a Rule by which persons of both sexes, while remaining in the
world, could be subjected to wholesome discipline and be connected with
the fraternity, which in turn promised them its protection. Of the
restrictions placed on them perhaps the most significant was that they
should carry no weapons of offence except for the defence of the Roman
Church, the Christian faith, and their own lands. The project and the
Rule were approved by the pope in 1221, and the official name of the
organization was "The Brothers and Sisters of Penitence," though it
became popularly known as the Tertiary Order of Minorites, or
Franciscans. Under the more aggressive name of "Militia Jesu Christi,"
or Soldiery of Christ, Dominic founded a similar association of laymen
connected with his Order. The idea proved a most fruitful one. It
reorganized to some degree the Church by removing a portion of the
barrier which separated the layman from the ecclesiastic. It brought
immense support to the Mendicant Orders by enlisting with them
multitudes of the earnest and zealous, as well as those who from less
worthy motives sought to share their protection and enjoy the benefit of
their influence. Types of both classes may be found in the royal house
of France, for both St. Louis and Catherine de Medicis were Tertiaries
of St. Francis.[239]
To comprehend fully the magnitude and influence of these movements we
must bear in mind the impressionable character of the populations and
their readiness to yield to contagious emotion. When we are told that
the Franciscan Berthold of Ratisbon frequently preached to crowds of
sixty thousand souls we realize what power was lodged in the hands of
those who could reach masses so easily swayed and so full of blind
yearnings to escape from the ignoble life to which they were condemned.
How the slumbering souls were awakened is shown by the successive waves
of excitement which swept over one portion of Europe after another about
the middle of the century. The dumb, untutored minds began to ask
whether an existence of hopeless and brutal misery was all that was to
be realized from the promises of the gospel. The Church had made no real
effort at internal reform; it was still grasping, covetous, licentious,
and a strange desire for something--they knew not exactly what--began to
take possession of men's hearts and spread like an epidemic from village
to village and from land to land. In Germany and France there is another
Crusade of the Children, earning from Gregory IX. the declaration that
they gave a fitting rebuke to their elders, who were basely abandoning
the birth-place of humanity.[240]
But the most formidable and significant manifestation of this universal
restlessness and gregarious enthusiasm is seen in the uprising of the
peasantry--the first of the wandering bands known as Pastoureaux. The
helpless and hopeless state of the lower classes of society in those
dreary ages has probably never been exceeded in any period of the
world's history. The terrible maxim of the feudal law, that the
villein's only appeal from his lord was to God--"Mès par notre usage
n'a-il entre toi et ton vilein juge fors Deu"--condenses in a word the
abject defencelessness of the major part of the population, and human
degradation has never, perhaps, been more forcibly expressed than in the
infamous _jus primæ noctis_ or "droit de marquette." The bitter humor of
the trouvère Rutebœuf describes how Satan considered the soul of the
villein too despicable to be received in hell; there was no place for it
in heaven, so that, after a life of misery on earth, it had no refuge in
the hereafter. It is noteworthy in many ways that the Church, which
should have been the mediator between the villein and his lord, and
which, in teaching the common brotherhood of man, should have earned the
gratitude of the miserable serf, was always the special object of
aversion and attack in the brief saturnalia of the self-enfranchised
wretches.[241]
Suddenly, about Easter, 1251, there appeared a mysterious preacher,
known as the Hungarian, advanced in years, and clothed with the
attributes which most excite popular awe and veneration. In his clenched
hand, which never was opened, he carried a paper given to him by the
Virgin Mary herself, which was his mandate and commission. Yet men said
that he had from his youth been an apostate from Christ to Mahomet, that
he had drunk deeply of the poisonous wells of magic flowing at Toledo,
and that he had received from Satan the mission of carrying the unarmed
populations of Europe to the East, so that the Soldan of Babylon should
find Christendom an easy prey. Remembering the Crusade of the Children,
people leaped to the conclusion that it was he who had devastated so
many houses with his magic arts, leading forth the tender youth to
perish of starvation and exposure. Tall and pale, gifted with eloquence
to win the hearts of the multitude, speaking like a native in French and
German and Latin, he set forth, preaching from town to town the
supineness of the rich and powerful who allowed the Holy Land to remain
in the grasp of the Infidel and the good King Louis to languish in his
Egyptian dungeon. God had tired of the selfishness and ambition of the
nobles, and he called the poor and humble, without arms and captains, to
rescue the Holy Places and the Good King. All this found ready response,
but even greater applause followed his attacks upon the clergy. The
Mendicant Orders were vagrants and hypocrites; the Cistercians were
greedy of money and lands; the Benedictines proud and gluttonous; the
canons wholly given to secular aims and the lusts of the flesh; the
bishops and their officials were money-seekers, who shrank from no
trickery to accomplish their aims. As for Rome, no terms of objurgation
were too strong for the papal court. The people, whose hate and contempt
for the clergy were unbounded, listened to this rhetoric with delight,
and eagerly joined a movement which promised a reform in some unseen
way. Shepherds left their sheep, husbandmen their ploughs, deaf to the
commands of their lords, and followed him unarmed, taking no thought of
the morrow, nor asking how they were to be fed.
There were not lacking those high in station who, carried away with the
general enthusiasm, imagined that God was about to work miracles with
the poor and helpless after the great ones of the earth had failed. Even
Queen Blanche, eager for any means that promised to liberate her son,
looked upon the movement for a while with favor, and lent it her
countenance. It swelled and grew till the wandering multitudes amounted
to more than a hundred thousand men, bearing fifty banners as an emblem
of victory. It was impossible, of course, to confine such an uprising to
the peaceful and humble. No sooner did it assume proportions promising
immunity than it inevitably drew to itself all the disorderly elements
inseparable from the society of the time--the "ruptarii" and "ribaldi,"
whom we have seen figure so largely in the Albigensian troubles. These
flocked to it from all sides, bringing knife and dagger, sword and axe,
and giving to the immense procession a still more menacing aspect. That
outrages were committed we can well believe, for the wrongs of class
against class were too flagrant to remain unavenged when opportunity
offered for reprisals.
On June 11, 1251, they entered Orleans, against the commands of the
bishop, but welcomed by the people, though the richer citizens
prudently locked their doors. All might have passed peaceably there as
elsewhere but for a hot-headed student of the flourishing university of
the city, who interrupted the preaching of the Hungarian to denounce him
as a liar, and was promptly brained by a zealous follower. A tumult
followed, in which the Pastoureaux made short work of the Orleans
clergy, breaking into their houses, burning their books, and slaying
many, or tossing them into the Loire; and, what is most significant, the
people are described as looking on approvingly. The bishop, and all who
could hide themselves from the fury of the mob, escaped during the
night, and valiantly laid the city under interdict for the guilty
complicity of the citizens.
On hearing this the Regent Blanche said, "God knows I thought they would
recover the Holy Land in simplicity and holiness. But since they are
deceivers, let them be excommunicated and destroyed." Accordingly they
were excommunicated, but before the anathema could be published they had
reached Bourges, where, in a tumult, the Hungarian was slain, and they
broke up into bands. The authorities, recovering from their stupor,
pursued the luckless wretches everywhere, who were slain like mad dogs.
Some emissaries who penetrated to England, and succeeded in raising a
revolt of some five hundred peasants, met the same fate; and it was
reported that the second in command under the Hungarian was captured in
a vessel on the Garonne, while endeavoring to escape, and on his person
were found magic powders and strange letters in Arabic and Chaldee
characters from the Soldan of Babylon promising his co-operation.
The quasi-religious nature of the uprising is shown in the functions
exercised by the leaders, who acted the part of bishops, blessing the
people, sprinkling holy water, and even celebrating marriages. The favor
which the people everywhere showed them was attributed principally to
their spoiling, beating, and slaying the clergy, thus indicating the
deep-seated popular antagonism to the Church, and justifying the
declaration made by prelates high in station that so great a danger had
never threatened Christendom since the time of Mahomet.[242]