of their convent, their attachment to it often indis- posed them to stand forward and do battle with the numerous sects that threatened to subvert Christianity itself. Something ruder and more practical, less wed- ded to peculiar spots and less entiingled by superflu- ous property, was needed if the Church was to retain its rigid and monastic form (comp. Hardwick, Ch. Hist. .1/. .1. p. 230). The want was made peculiarly ap- parent when the Albigenses began to lay unwonted stress on their own j)overty and to decry the self- indulgence of the monks ; and the Church itself, fear- ing for its safety, declared against the further extension of the monastic power in the Lateran Council of 121.5. At this juncture arose the two mendicant orders, (1) the Minors or Franciscans (q. v.), and (2) the Preach- ers or Dominicans (q. v.), both destined for two centu- ries to play a leading part in all the fortunes of the Church. See Mkndicants. They aimed at being ; the best soldiers of the Church militant, and they had I therefore a marked influence on subsequent Church history. Thej' renounced every kind of worldly goods, and founded what was termed an " order of penitence" (the third estate of friars), composed of the laity (espe- cially the working classes), who, while pledged to do the bidding of the pope and to observe the general regulations of the institute, were not restricted by the vow of celibacy, nor compelled to take their leave en- tirely of the world. AVe thus sec that the spiritual egotism, so to speak, of the early monachism, which in some sense limited the work of the cloister to the sanctification of the individual, gave place to the more comprehensive range of spiritual duty, and made the spiritual and even the temporal necessities of one's neighbor, equally with if not more than one's own, the object of the work of the cloister. But more than that. The mendicants thus created for themselves a numer- ous and influential party among the laity by these ter- tiaries, and the Church, prizing this hold on the com- munity, stood ready to give place to such aids. They wandered overall Europe, instructing the people, both old and young, and exhibiting such an aspect of (sanc- tity and self-denial that they speedily became olijects of universal admiration. Their churches were crowd- ed, while those of the regular parish priests were al- most wholly deserted ; all classes sought to receive the sacraments at their hands ; their advice was eagerly courted in secular business, and even in the most intri- cate political affairs ; so that in the 13th and two fol- lowing centuries the mendicant orders generally, but more especially the Dominicans and Franciscans, were intrusted with the management of all matters both in Church and State. They also secured many of the chairs of the theological schools in spite of the secular clerg}', and the most illustrious representatives of the 1 13th and 14th centuries (Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventu- ra, Albertus Magnus, Alexander of Hales, etc.) were either Dominicans or Franciscans. Several of their number tilled the highest ecclesiastical positions, even the papal chiir. They certainly raised monachism to I the zenith of its power, influence, and prosperity. Be- j sides the Franciscans and the Dominicans, there were I the Carmelites and the Hermits of St. Augustine, but I both of these were much inferior in number, reputa- tion, and influence to tlie Franciscans and Dominicans. Having thus become both important and powerful, the mendicants rapidly multiplied, and the most seri- I ous results were likely to arise, as they were generally independent of episcopal jurisdiction, and were rivals to bishops and priests. The high estimation, more- over, into which monachism had risen, more particu- larly through the wide-spread influence of the bogging friars, awakened a spirit of bitter hostility, not simply in all orders of the clergy, but also in the universities. In England the University of Oxford, and in France the University of Paris, arduously laliored to overthrow j its now spreading ])Owcr. Pope (iregory X, with a I view to check the overgrown evil, went so far even as
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to issue n. decree prohibiting all the orders which had originated since the time of Innocent III (A.D. 1200), and reduced the mendicants to four orders — tlie Do- minicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, and Augustinians. 'I he Church of Rome, says Butler, " has acknowledged onlv these four orders to be mendicant," and the rea- son given is that "an order is considered to be mendi- cant, in the proper import of that word, when it has no fixed income, and derives its whole subsistence from casual and uncertain bounty, obtained by personal mendicity'. To that St. Francis did not wish his breth- ren to have recourse till they had endeavored to earn a competent subsistence by labor, and found their earn- ings insufficient. But soon after the decease of St. Francis, the exertions, equally incessant and laborious, of his disciples for the spiritual welfare of the faithful appeared, in the universal opinion of the Church, to be both incompatible with manual labor and much more than a compensation to the public for all they could possibly obtain from it by mendicity. This opinion was unequivocally expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas, and sanctioned by a bull of pope Nicholas III ; since that time the friars have not used manual labor as a means of subsistence, but resorted in the first instance to mendicity." Mendicitj' seems to have made no part of the original rules of the Dominicans, Carmel- ites, or Hermits of Augustine ; and, in consequence of the evils attendant on it, the Council of Trent confined mendicity to the Observantines and Capuchins, allow- ing the other Franciscan establishments, and almost all the establishments of the three other orders, to ac- quire permanent property.