CENT. XIII. and contentious spirit that animated their efforts, excluded them from their society, and formed themselves into a separate body. This measure was considered as a declaration of war; and, accordingly, the most vehement commotions arose between the contending parties. The debate was brought before the tribunal of the Roman pontiff in 1255; and the decision, as might have been expected, was in favor of the monks. Alexander IV. ordered the university of Paris not only to restore the Dominicans to their former place in that learned society, but moreover to make a grant to them of as many classes or professorships as they should think proper to demand. This unjust and despotic sentence was opposed by the university with the utmost vigor; and thus the contest was renewed with double fury. But the magistrates of Paris were, at length, so terrified and overwhelmed with the thundering edicts and formidable mandates of the exasperated pontiff, that. in 1259, they yielded to superior force, and satisfied the demands not only of the Dominican, but also of the Franciscan order, in obedience to the pope, and to the extent of his commands ". Hence arose that secret enmity and silent ill-will, which prevailed so long between the university and the Mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans. The Domi with a formi sary. XXVIII. In this famous debate none pleaded the nicans meet cause of the university with greater spirit, or asdable adver- serted its rights with greater zeal and activity, than Guillaume de St. Amour, doctor of the Sorbonne, a man of true genius, worthy to have lived in better times, and capable of adorning a more enlightened age. This vigorous and able champion attacked the b See Cæs. Egass. du Boulay, Histor. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. 138, 240, &c.—Jo. Cordesii, or (to mention him by the name he assumed) Jo. Alitophili Præf. Histor. et Apologetica ad Opera Gulielmi de S. Amore.-Antoine Touron, Vie de S. Thomas, p. 134.-Wadding, Annal. Minor. tom. iii. p. 247, 366, tom. iv. p. 14, 52, 106, 263.-Matth. Paris, Histor. Major, ad an. 1228. -Nangis Chronicon, apud Dacherii Spicilegium, tom. iii. whole Mendicant tribe in various treatises with the CENT. XIII. greatest vehemence, and more especially in a book "concerning the perils of the latter times." He boldly maintained, that their discipline was in direct opposition to the precepts of the Gospel; and that, in confirming and approving it, the popes had been guilty of temerity, and the church was become chargeable with error. What gave occasion to the remarkable title of this celebrated work, was the author's being entirely persuaded that the prophecy of St. Paul, relating to the "perilous times that were to "come in the last days "," was fulfilled in the establishment of the Mendicant friars. This notion St. Amour maintained in the warmest manner, and proved it, principally from the book called the Everlasting Gospel, which was publicly explained by the Dominicans and Franciscans, and of which we shall have occasion to speak more fully hereafter. The fury and resentment of the Mendicants were therefore kindled in a peculiar manner against this formidable adversary, whom they persecuted without interruption, until, in 1256, the pope ordered his book to be publicly burned, and banished its author out of France, lest he should excite the Sorbonne to renew their opposition to these spiritual beggars. St. Amour submitted to the papal edict, and retired into his native province of Franche-Comté; but, under the pontificate of Clement IV., he returned to Paris, where he illustrated the tenets of his famous book in a more extensive work, and died esteemed and regretted by all, except the Mendicants o. 2 Timothy, iii. 1. The doctors of the university of Paris profess still a high respect for the memory of St. Amour, esteem his book, and deny obstinately that he was ever placed in the list of heretics. The Dominicans, on the contrary, consider him as a heretic of the first magnitude, if we may use that expression. Such of his works as could be found were published in 1632, at Paris, (though the title bears Constantiæ,) by Cordesius, who has introduced them by a long and learned preface, in which he defends the reputation and orthodoxy of St. Amour in a tri CENT. XIII. The pride and arrogance of cants. XXIX. While the pontiffs accumulated upon the Mendicants the most honorable distinctions, and the most valuable privileges which they had to bestow, the Mendi- they exposed them still more and more to the envy and hatred of the rest of the clergy; and this hatred was considerably increased by the audacious arrogance that discovered itself every where in the conduct of these supercilious orders. They had the presumption to declare publicly, that they had a divine impulse and commission to illustrate and maintain the religion of Jesus; they treated with the utmost insolence and contempt all ranks and orders of the priesthood; they affirmed, without a blush, that the true method of obtaining salvation was revealed to them alone, proclaimed with ostentation the superior efficacy and virtue of their indulgences, and vaunted, beyond measure, their interests at the court of Heaven, and their familiar connections with the Supreme Being, the Virgin Mary, and the saints in glory. By these impious wiles, they so deluded and captivated the miserable and blinded multitude, that they would not entrust any others but the Mendicants with the care of their souls, their spiritual and eternal concerns e. We may give, as a specimen of these notorious frauds, the ridiculous fable, which the Carmelites impose upon the credulous, relating to Simon Stockius, the general of their order, who died about the beginning of this century. To this ecclesiastic, they tell us that the Virgin Mary appeared, and umphant manner. This learned editor, to avoid the resentment and fury of the Mendicants, concealed his real name, and assumed that of Jo. Alitophilus. This did not, however, save his book from the vengeance of these friars, who obtained from Louis XIII. in 1633, an edict for its suppression, which Touron, a Dominican friar, has published in his Vie de St. Thomas.--For a farther account of the life of this famous doctor, see Wadding, Annal. Minor. tom. iii. p. 366.—Boulay, Hist. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 266.—Nat. Alex. Hist. Eccles. sæc. xiii. cap. iii. art. vii. p. 95.-Rich. Simon, Critique de la Biblioth. Eccles. de M. Du. Pin, tom. i. p. 345. See Matth. Paris, ad an. 1246, Histor. Maj. gave him a solemn promise, that the souls of such as CENT. XII left the world with the Carmelite cloak or scapulary upon their shoulders, should be infallibly preserved from eternal damnation. And here let it be observed to the astonishment of all, in whom the power of superstition has not extinguished the plainest dictates of common sense, that this ridiculous and impious fiction found patrons and defenders even among the pontiffs. tween the Dominicans XXX. It is however certain, that the Mendicant Contests beorders, though they were considered as the main pillars Dicas of the hierarchy, and the principal supports of the pa- and Francispal authority, involved the pontiffs, after the death of cans. Dominic and Francis, in many perplexities and troubles, which were no sooner dispelled, than they were unhappily renewed; and thus the church was often reduced to a state of imminent danger. These tumults and perplexities began with the contests between the Dominicans and Franciscans about preeminence, in which these humble monks mutually indulged themselves in the bitterest invectives and the severest accusations both in their writings and their discourse, and opposed each other's interests with all the fury of disappointed ambition. Many schemes were formed, and various measures were employed, for terminating these scandalous dissensions; but the root of the evil still remained, and the flame was rather covered than extinguished h. Beside this, the Franciscans were early divided among themselves, and split into several factions, which gathered f See Jo. Launoii Lib. de Viso Stockii, oper. tom. ii. part ii. p. 379.-Acta Sanctor. tom. iii. Mensis Maii ad diem xvi.— Theoph. Rainaudi Scapulare Marianum, tom. vii. op. p. 614. * Benedict XIV., notwithstanding his pretended freedom from superstition and priestly fraud, deigned to appear among the supporters of this gross fiction, though he defended it with his usual air of prudence and timidity, in his book de Festis B. Mariæ Virg. lib. ii. cap. vi. p. 472, tom. x. op. edit. Rom. h See the Alcoran des Cordeliers, tom. i. p. 256, 266, &c. Luc. Wadding, Annales Minor. tom. iii. p. 380. CENT. XIII. strength and consistence from day to day, and not only disturbed the tranquillity of the church, but struck at the supreme jurisdiction and prerogatives of the Roman pontiffs. And whoever considers with attention the series of events that happened in the Latin church from this remarkable period, will be fully convinced that the Mendicant orders (whether through imprudence or design we shall not determine) gave some very severe blows to the authority of the church of Rome, and excited in the minds of the people those ardent desires of a reformation, which produced, in after-times, such substantial and such glorious effects. Intestine divisions by different of their rule. XXXI. The occasion of these intestine divisions among the Franciscans, was a dispute about the preFranciscans, cise meaning of their rule. Their founder and chief occasioned had made absolute poverty one of their indispensable explications obligations. The religious orders before his time were so constituted, that, though no single monk had any personal property, the whole community, considered as one collective body, had possessions and revenues, from which every member drew the means of his subsistence. But the austere chief of the Franciscans absolutely prohibited both separate and collective property to the monks of his order, not permitting either the individual or the community to possess funds, revenues, or any worldly goods. This injunction appeared so severe to several of the friarsminors, that they took the liberty to dispense with it as soon as their founder was dead; and in this they were seconded by pope Gregory IX., who, in 1231, published an interpretation of this rule, which con The words of the rule itself relating to this point are as follow: "Fratres sibi nihil approprient, nec domum, nec locum, nec aliquam rem; sed, sicut peregrini et advenæ in hoc sæculo, in paupertate et humilitate famulantes Domino, vadant pro eleemosyna confidenter....(i. e. let them be sturdy beggars)... Hæc est illa celsitudo altissimæ paupertatis, quæ vos carissimos meos fratres hæredes et reges regni cœlorum instituit." |