§ 62. MONASTICISM AND THE PAPACY. 327
It was the shrewd wisdom of the popes to encourage the orders, and to use them to further the centralization of the ecclesiastical power in Rome. Each order had its own mo nastic code, its own distinctive customs. These codes, as well as the orders, were authorized and confirmed by the pope, and made, immediately or more loosely, subject to his sovereign jurisdiction. The mendicant orders of Sts. Francis and Dominic were directly amenable to the Holy See. The Fourth Lateran, in forbidding the creation of new orders, was moved to do so by the desire to avoid con fusion in the Church by the multiplication of different rules. It commanded all who wished to be monks to join one of the orders already existing. The orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic, founded in the face of this rule, became the most faithful adherents the papacy ever had, until the So ciety of Jesus arose three centuries later.
The papal favor, shown to the monastic orders, tended to weaken the authority of the bishops, and to make the papacy independent of the episcopal system. Duns Scotus went so far as to declare that, as faith is more necessary for the world than sacramental ablution in water, so the body of monks is more important than the order of prelates. The monks constitute the heart, the substance of the Church. By preaching they start new life, and they preach without money and without price. The prelates are paid.1
Papal privileges and exemptions were freely poured out upon the orders, especially upon the Mendicants. They were the pets of the popes. They were practically given freedom to preach and dispense the sacrament in all places and at all times, irrespective of the bishops and their juris diction. The constant complaints and clashing which re sulted, led to endless appeals of monasteries against the decisions of bishops, which flowed in a constant stream to Rome, and gave the members of the curia a rare chance to
1 See the remarkable passage quoted by Seeberg, Duns Scotus, 478 sq.
328 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
ply their trade.1 The convents, by their organization and wealth, and by the number of their constituents, who were free to go to Rome and spend an indefinite time there, were able to harass and to wear out the patience of their oppo nents, the bishops, or prolong the cases till their death.2
The riches, luxury,3 and power of the great convents be came proverbial. In Lorraine and other parts of Europe they were the leading influence.4 Abbots often took prece dence of bishops, just as the general chapters of the orders,5 made up of representatives from the farthest East to the Atlantic, were more imposing than the diocesan and even the provincial councils.
A little earlier than our period the abbot of Weissenburg was able to muster as many men as his diocesan bishop of Spires, and the three abbots of Reichenau, St. Gall, and Kempten, three times as many as the bishop of the extensive diocese of Constance.6 In the twelfth century the abbot
1 Matthew Paris gives one case after the other, as do the other English chroniclers. Jessopp, Coming of the Friars, says that the history of mediae val English monasticism is made up of stories of everlasting litigation. The convents were always in trouble with their bishops.
- Bishop Stubbs, Const. Hist., III. 329, says of the English monasteries that they were the stronghold of papal influence which the pope supported as a counterpoise to that of the diocesan bishops. For this reason the popes never made appointments of English abbots, and seldom, if ever, interfered with the elections by the monks.
3 Dr. Jessopp, p. 155, says of the English monks: "After all, it must be confessed that the greatest of all delights to the thirteenth-century monks was eating and drinking. The dinner in a great abbey was clearly a very im portant event of the day. It must strike any one who knows much of the literature of this age, that the weak point in the monastic life of the thir teenth century was the gormandizing." He says, however, that little is heard of drunkenness. The ale brewed in the convents was an important item in the year's menu. Richard of Marisco, bishop of Durham, gave the Abbey of St. Albans the tithes of Eglingham, Northumberland, to help the monks make a better ale, " taking compassion upon the weakness of the convent's drink."
4 See Hauck, III. 493. " Das Monchthum," he says, " ivar in Lothringen die fuhrende Macht."
5 The Fourth Lateran instructed them to meet every three years.
6 Hauck, III. 442.