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helped to undermine those oriental heresies which tampered with the truth of the Incarnation; for by their practical teaching and their example they brought out the human side of our Lord's character, and carried conviction to men's hearts of the reality of His sympathy both with mental sorrow and bodily distress.

in England.

Thirteen Dominicans, including their leader, Gilbert de Fraxineto, landed in England in the beginning of August 1221. They were welcomed by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, were permitted to preach Their arrival in London and Oxford in the same month, and soon established themselves in most of the large towns. Although the Dominicans adopted the principle of poverty, in imitation or rivalry of the Franciscans, it was no part of their original constitution, and from the nature of their work, which was confined to preaching, and this mainly to the educated and intellectual, they did not command such widespread sympathy as the Franciscans, who won the love and admiration of all classes by their homely practical teaching, and by their self-denying lives of active benevolence.

They were nine

Franciscans.

The first band of Franciscans who arrived in England landed at Dover on September 11, 1224. in number, five being laymen, and four clerics. Their leader, Agnellus of Pisa, who was about Arrival of the thirty years of age, and only in deacon's orders, had been warden of the Order in Paris, where he had gained a high reputation for piety and prudence. He had been nominated by St. Francis himself as the first minister for the province of England. Three of the company were Englishmen,-Richard of Ingworth in Norfolk, who was a priest of mature years; another, Richard, a young Devonshire man, who was an acolyte; and William of Esseby or Ashby, a novice. They were penniless; the monks of Fécamp had paid the expenses of their passage, and they were now dependent for the daily necessaries of life on the hospitality of the people amongst whom they came to minister. They asked for nothing but the coarsest fare and the meanest lodging. Five of the nine remained for a time at Canterbury, where they slept in a building which was used as a school by day. The other four meanwhile visited London, where they were lodged

X

for fifteen days by the Dominicans. Then they obtained a plot of ground in Cornhill from John Travers, Sheriff of London, where they built a little house of the meanest materials, stuffing the partitions of the cells with dried grass. Other ground was afterwards offered them, but as it was contrary to the rule of their Order to hold any property, it was invested in the Corporation of London on trust for their use. Their chief settlement was by the Newgate, near the Shambles, a most unsavoury spot, known as "Stinking Lane." In less than two years the Order had settlements in Oxford, Cambridge, Northampton, Lynn, Norwich, Yarmouth, and other towns. In less than thirty years their numbers had risen to one thousand two hundred and forty-two, with forty-nine convents in various parts of the kingdom. At first all their houses, like the one in London, were of the simplest description. Their chapel at Cambridge was built by a carpenter in a single day. A kind-hearted citizen of Shrewsbury had the walls of their dormitory built of stone: the minister of the Order required them to be removed and replaced in clay. Decorations of all kinds were strictly forbidden; a friar at Gloucester who had painted his pulpit was deprived of his hood; the warden who had allowed pictures in the chapel suffered the same penalty. Even the use of books and writing materials was denied them: their preaching was to depend not on learning, but simply on their experience and observation of the people amongst whom they lived and to whom they ministered.

Their popu

Such were the humble beginnings in England of this famous Order. No wonder that the people reverenced them and thought that they beheld in them the nearest larity and approach to the life and work of their divine Master. usefulness. With the parochial clergy they were not generally popular, for to many the activity and zeal of the Friars was a rebuke; the confessional also was interfered with, and offerings were diverted from the parish church. Some of the bishops also at first viewed them with suspicion; but by those who cared earnestly for the spiritual welfare of their people they were heartily welcomed; and by none more than Robert Grosseteste. One of his first requests, after he became bishop, addressed to his friend the learned Franciscan, Adam Marsh, and re

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peated to the Minister General in England, was that some brethren of the Order might constantly attend him to be employed in his vast diocese. In a letter to Pope Gregory IX. he speaks in the warmest terms of the value of their services; how their example promoted humility, temperance, unworldliness, patience, submission to authority. "If your holiness could but see how eagerly and reverently the people hasten to the brethren to hear the Word of Life, to confess their sins, to be instructed in the rules of Christian living, and what profit the clergy and religious derive from imitating their ways, you would indeed say that to those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death light has sprung up.'

and fall.

How the Franciscans, who began by abjuring learning, came to be the great promoters of it, and produced some of the most learned men, must be explained in the next chapter. The history of their decline and fall, Their decline how they who began as poor, self-denying missionpreachers, living on the voluntary alms of a grateful people, gradually sank into being lazy beggars, covetous and idle gossips, quack doctors, will-makers, pedlars, hucksters-all this belongs to a later period than that with which we are now dealing.1 It is a sad tale, but only one amongst the many illustrations, which meet us at every turn in history, of the mingled nobleness and meanness, strength and weakness of human nature, the mingled greatness and littleness of human life; the corruptio optimi which is pessima.

AUTHORITIES.-The notices of bishops in this chapter have been collected from a great variety of chronicles, more especially William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontif. and Gesta Regum, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, William of Newburgh, Gesta Henr. II. et Ric. I. (Benedict), Matt. Paris, and the Annales Monastici, 5 vols., with the Index, which is very full and valuable (these are all in the Rolls series). The Materials for the Life of Thos. Becket, 7 vols. (also in Rolls series), are full of information about other bishops as well as the primate, including original letters to and from Gilbert Foliot, which are particularly interesting. The story of the strife of Archbishops Baldwin and Hubert Walter with the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury, is contained in Memorials of Richard I., vol. i. (Epistolæ Cantuarienses), with preface by Bishop Stubbs (Rolls series). For all that relates to Bishop Grosseteste, see his Epistola, ed. Luard (Rolls series), and his Life by F. S. Stevenson (Macmillan, 1899). On elections to bishoprics, and papal interference

1 See vol. iii. pp. 313-320.

with them, see Bp. Stubbs's Constit. History, ch. xix. Decrees of councils, and episcopal and legatine injunctions and constitutions, will be found in Wilkins's Concilia. Interesting notices of the condition and character of the clergy are scattered throughout the writings of John of Salisbury, Walter Map, and Giraldus Cambrensis, but the statements of the two latter must be accepted with reserve, the remarks of Giraldus referring chiefly to the clergy in Wales, while both he and Walter Map were satirists and gossips who picked out extreme cases and made the most of them. For what relates to the friars the chief authority is Monumenta Franciscana, ed. J. S. Brewer (Rolls series); The Coming of the Friars, a little book by the Rev. Dr. Jessop, is a pleasantly written account of their settlement in England.

CHAPTER XVI

POPULAR RELIGION, LEARNING, AND ART

bad side.

THE most striking characteristic of religion in the period with which we have been dealing was its intense realism. The unlearned multitude were very much like Realismchildren, simple-minded, impulsive, emotional, easily its good and moved to tears, or laughter, or anger; imaginative and credulous, but most susceptible to impressions conveyed through the senses. These qualities had their good and their bad side. On the one hand, life was permeated by religion. The reality of heaven and hell, the existence and nearness of supernatural beings, were ever before men's minds. The world was full of mystery and wonder and awe. Conscience was sensitive, sin must be confessed and penitence expressed by an act of some kind, costing trouble or expense, whether it were to go on a crusade or a pilgrimage, to found a church or a monastery, or to make some offering, however small, to a shrine or an altar. The church was the rallyingpoint and centre of the common life in every place. those customs which had to be restrained or suppressed, such as holding markets, fairs, and even sports, in the precincts of the church, indicate how closely religion was interwoven with everyday life.

Even

On the other hand, realism had a tendency to degenerate into coarse materialism. The practical religion of the illiterate was in many respects merely a survival of the old paganism thinly disguised. There was a prevalent belief in witchcraft, magic, sortilegy, spells, charms, talismans, which mixed itself up in strange ways with Christian ideas and Christian worship.