370 HOSPITALS FOR LEPROSY. was making its most extensive ravages, Gaston, descended from a family of consideration amongst the French nobility, in gratitude for his own recovery and that of his son, which he attributed to the mediation of St. Anthony, founded and consecrated to that saint a society, of which the express object was to furnish nurses for persons sick with that disorder.* Societies were formed of laymen and ecclesiastics, who, following the so-called rule of Augustin, under the direction of a superior (magister), spent their time in taking care of the sick in hospitals; and still other societies of men, who devoted themselves more especially to taking care of the leprous, and founded large establishments for the express purpose of receiving and nursing them. societies attended to the religious wants of patients; preached The ecclesiastics in such to them, gave them the benefit of their pastoral care, and the sacraments. The laymen undertook to do everything necessary for their bodily relief and comfort; also to provide for the decent burial of the dead, according to the usual forms. The Dominican Humbert de Romanis, who lived near the close of the thirteenth century, remarks, with regard to the care of the leprous, that, "owing to the danger of infection, the impatience and the ingratitude of the victims of this disease, it was one of the most forbidding labours to wait upon them. Amongst thousands but very few were to be found who could be induced to live with them; for with many, nature itself revolts at it. And had there not been some who, for God's sake, fought down the repugnance of nature, they would have been left absolutely deprived of all human assistance." Jacob of Vitry says, concerning the persons who devoted their lives to this arduous work of Christian charity: "For Christ's sake they bring themselves to endure, amidst filth and disgusting scents, by driving themselves up to it,-such intolerable hardships, that it would seem as if no sort of penitential exercise which man imposes computrescentes exesis membris instar carbonum nigrescentibus aut miserabiliter moriuntur aut manibus ac pedibus putrefactis truncati miserabiliori vitæ reservantur, multi nervorum contractione distorti tormentantur. * See the Collections, at the 17th January, in the Actis Sanctorum. † See the work of Humbertus de Romanis de eruditione prædicatorum. c. xli. Bibl. patr. Lugd. T. XXV. f. 476. See p. 81. IMPOSTORS.-ORDER OF TRINITARIANS. 371 on himself deserved a moment to be compared with this holy martyrdom,-holy and precious in the sight of God."* Female societies, having the same object in view, were also formed. But that which began in the spirit of a Christian charity that shrunk from no sacrifice, was, like so many other noble undertakings, imitated and abused in the thirteenth century by a worldly spirit that masked itself under the seemly guise of religion. Jacob of Vitry was forced to make the bitter complaint that many who pretended to devote their lives to this nursing of the sick, only used it as a cover under which to exact, by various and deceptive tricks from the abused sympathies of Christians, large sums of money, of which but a trifling portion was expended on the objects for which it had been bestowed. Pope Innocent the Second passed an ordinance against such fraudulent collectors of alms for Spitals.‡ Among the foundations for benevolent purposes is to be reckoned the order of Trinitarians. John of Matha, a Parisian theologian, but a native of Provence, and Felix de Valois, after living for some time as anchorets at Certroy, in the province of Meaux, joined together and founded a society of monks, the principal object of which was to procure the redemption of Christians who had fallen captive to the infidels.§ In the year 1198 they submitted their plan to pope Innocent the Third, who ratified it. The society subsisting under one superior (generalis minister) was to be consecrated to the Trinity (Fratres domus sanctæ trinitatis), and a third part of their revenues was to be appropriated to the redemption of Christians held in bondage amongst infidels on account of their faith. Down to the thirteenth century the different orders of monks had multiplied to such an extent that pope Innocent the Third was induced, at the Lateran council in 1215, to enact a law to the following effect: "Whereas the excessive diversity of these institutions begets confusion, no new foundations of this sort must be formed for the future; but whoever wishes to become a monk must attach himself to some one of the already *See Hist. occidental. p. 338. † L. c. p. 339. See epp. Lib. I. ep. 450. The accounts collected in Du Boulay, Hist. univers. Paris, T. II. f. 524. Ad redemptionem captivorum, qui sunt incarcerati pro fide Christi a paganis. Epp. Lib. I. ep. 481. 372 RELATION OF FRIARS TO THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. existing rules."* And yet it was but shortly after this time that the two monastic orders were constituted which exercised by far the most powerful and most widely diffused influence; to wit, the two mendicant orders of the Dominicans and the Franciscans. In these two foundations, especially in the latter, we may observe the renascent power of that idea of following Christ and the apostles in evangelical poverty, and the absolute renunciation of all earthly goods, which from the times of the twelfth century we saw coming up under various shapes, in the doctrine of Arnold of Brescia, in the prophecies of the abbot Joachim. It could easily come about, indeed, that from this idea a tendency might spring up hostile to the dominant church, but it might also give rise to such spiritual societies as would devote themselves to the service of the church; for, according to the idea of the Catholic church at its present stage, points of view and modes of life in the greatest variety, and even opposed to one another, might subsist together, one supplying the other's defects, and the church unite all these antagonisms together in a higher unity; they would become heretical only then, when one of these tendencies came to exclude all the others, and to set up itself as the only right one. Thus, after the same manner as the married life, the family, subsisted side by side with the unmarried life as a higher stage of Christian perfection, those religious societies that renounced all worldly possessions and property might be tolerated and favoured beside the splendour of the papacy and of the hierarchy. The founder of the order of Dominicans was born in the year 1170, at Calarugna, a village in the diocese of Osma in Castile. Even while a young man, pursuing his studies at the Spanish university in Palenza, he was distinguished for his self-sacrificing Christian love. time of great famine, he sold his books and furniture, in order to provide himself with the means of mitigating the sufferings of the poor, and by his example he excited many to do the same. Didacus, bishop of Osma, was a man of severe character, and ardently devoted to the good of the church. He sought In a * In the thirteenth canon of the fourth Lateran council of the year 1215: Ne nimia religionum diversitas gravem in ecclesia Dei confusionem inducat, firmiter prohibemus, ne quis de cætero novam religionem inveniat, sed quicunque voluerit ad religionem converti, unam de approbatis assumat, to bring back his canonical clergy to the strictness of the ancient rule, and similarity of disposition united him with Dominick, whom he received into this body. A journey which he made with him in the service of his king to the south of France, gave both an opportunity of observing the great danger which there threatened the church from those heretical sects which were spreading with great rapidity, and they were excited by what they saw to direct all their attention and their energies to this one point. In the year 1208 they came, for the second time, into these regions, after pope Innocent the Third had despatched twelve Cistercian abbots, under the direction of the papal legate, to put down the sects. A council was held at Montpellier, to deliberate on this matter, and bishop Didacus was invited to assist at it. When the latter observed the great state affected by the pagal legate, and others who had been sent on this errand, he told them they could hardly succeed in this way to oppose any effectual check to the heretics; they would come off still more triumphantly in their attacks on the church, and point to all this pomp as evidence of the truth of what they had said about the worldly lives of the clergy; they would compare their own strict and abstemious mode of living in utter poverty, as the true followers of Christ and the apostles, with the splendour and luxury that surrounded those who stood up for the interests of the dominant church, and thus gain the popular feeling over to their side. He invited them to take the opposite course, to renounce all state, and by a strict and needy life place themselves on an equality with the persons extolled in those sects; thus would they accomplish more by their living than they could do by their words. His advice was adopted, and everything that could be spared sent away. Bishop Didacus was intrusted with the direction of the whole movement, and travelling on foot in voluntary poverty, they went from place to place preaching and disputing with the sects. After having laboured in this way for three years, this bishop set out on his return to Spain. It was his intention to recommend to the pope the appointment of a certain number of men who should labour for the conversion of the sects; but his death, which took place on his journey homeward, in the year 1206 or 1207,* *The death of bishop Didacus, according to the life of Dominicus, by his disciple Jordanus, the second general of this order (the authority 374 DEATH OF DIDACUS.-ORDER OF DOMINICANS. prevented him from carrying his plan into execution, and it remained for Dominick, to whom no doubt the experience which he gained in these tours had suggested the idea of his order, to realize the project which had been conceived by his bishop. The latter, on leaving the south of France, had placed him at the head of the whole spiritual undertaking. After the death of the bishop, however, he retained but few of his companions. When armed troops were called in to follow up the work of preaching and disputing, and, in the year 1209 the horrible crusade against the Albigenses was commenced, Dominick still went on with his labours, and the cruelties resorted to for the extirpation of heresy were approved and promoted by him,-a bad precedent, foretokening already the history of an order which in after times was to exercise such cruel despotism under the name of charity. He found a few still remaining here like-minded with himself, who joined with him in forming a society consecrated to the defence of the church. Several pious men in Toulouse entered heart and hand into his scheme, and placed their property in his hands, to purchase books for the society and provide them with what they needed. Fulco himself, the bishop of Toulouse, favoured the undertaking, and in the year 1215 went in company with Dominick to Rome, for the purpose of obtaining the sanction of pope Innocent the Third to a spiritual society devoted to the office of preaching. True, the canon enacted this very year by the Lateran council, forbidding the institution of any new order of monks,* stood in the way of a compliance with this demand, but at the same council † it had also been expressed, as an urgent need of the church, that the bishops should procure able men to assist them in the office of preaching and in their pastoral labours. Now the supply of this want-a want so sensibly felt on account of the great which we here follow), took place ten years before the Lateran council under Innocent the Third, s. 30, Mens. August. T. I. f. 549. A tempore obitus episcopi Oxoniensis usque ad Lateranense consilium anni fluxere ferme decem. If we take this strictly, it would be in the year 1205; but this supposition is attended with other chronological difficulties, and the ferme still renders the calculation inexact. It is very difficult to fix here the exact determination of time. See the chronological inquiries in the preliminary remarks to the Life of Dominicus, at the 4th August. |