ministration to need. Neither their "intellectualism" nor their "quietism" hindered them in their powerful preaching of mercy, but rather strengthened them in it; for they would no longer recognise any monachism, or any service of God, that disregarded the service of one's neighbour. The obligation to make one's self every man's servant in love was first plainly asserted again by Francis, and after him it was repeatedly enforced as the highest attainment of Christian life by Thomas and Bonaventura, by Eckhart, Suso, Tauler, Thomas à Kempis, and all the hundred active witnesses to Christian piety in the centuries before the Reformation.1 The simple relation of man to man, sanctified by the Christian command of love and by the peace of God, issued forth from all the traditional corporations and castes of the Middle Ages, and set itself to break them up. Here, also, the advent of a new age, in which, certainly, only a few blossoms developed into fruit, was brought about by the history of piety. But this piety, although it always continued to call more loudly for reform in the affairs of the Church, still remained under the ban of the idea that God gives grace in the measure in which a man progresses in love. How this state of things was to be remedied, no one had any inkling.

In what precedes it has already been indicated several times that, while maintaining the line of distinction, the Mendicant Orders brought about inwardly (to some extent even outwardly) a mutual approximation of monks and laity. The activity of the former among the people on the one hand, and the awakening of a strong religious life among the laity on the other, brought them together. But it was in general the characteristic of the period under review, that the laity always came more to the front, and in the fifteenth century they took their place in their free religious associations alongside the monks in theirs, though, no doubt, as a rule, there was dependence on the monastic unions. The period from 1046 to 1200 was the period of the monachising of the priests; that from 1200 to 1500 brought the monachising of the laity (notice, also, the participation of women in the Mystic and charitable movements); but the latter process 1 With Eckhart the direction originated to let even ecstacy go, though it should be as great as that of Paul, if one can help a poor man even with a sop.

was not carried out without a deeply penetrating alteration of Monachism, and it is to be observed that the charitable element was here determinative. When, in spite of earnest reforms, the Mendicant Orders were now, nevertheless, unable (from the end of the fourteenth century) fully to recover the position and confidence they had once enjoyed, the free Christian associations came quite into the foreground. But they secured, if I see aright, a large measure of influence only on German soil. What they did for the German was done for the Romanic peoples, naturally more mobile, but less susceptible of abiding impressions, by the great Preachers of Repentance, of whom there was no lack among them at any period, from the time of Francis to that of Savonarola, and who, along with their preaching of repentance, knew also how to stir national and political feeling. But it was only the Anglo-Saxons and the Czechs, hitherto kept in subjection and poverty by other nations, who understood, at this period, how to derive from the Franciscan doctrine of poverty a politico-national and an ecclesiastical programme, and among whom a great movement took place, in which the rise to independent piety united itself with a national rise and emancipation. In both countries the result, certainly, did not correspond with the first steps. In England, the movement ran its course comparatively quickly, and in Bohemia deeper religious motives were unable to hold their ground alongside the national and political aims imperiously asserting themselves, and at first, at least, were overborne by motives of an ecclesiastical, a social revolutionary, and an anti-hierarchical character, though afterwards the religious element wrought its way to the front again.

Any one, therefore, wishing to describe the stages in the history of piety during this period, must begin, by way of introduction, with a view of the Lyonnese, Lombard and Catholic "Poor." Then follows the establishment of the Mendicant Orders, who, by developing the principle of poverty, the apostolic life and repentance, as well as by preaching love (caritas) raise monachism to its highest point, and free it from its restrictions, but at the same time impart to it a most powerful influence upon the lay world. The Church succeeds in taking this movement into its service, in creating by means of it an

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interest in Church institutions among the aspiring lay Christianity, and in placing a check upon heresy. The Mendicant Orders made themselves masters of all the forces of the Church; above all, they developed more deeply the individual Mystic piety, by grasping more firmly its old fundamental elements, poverty and obedience, adding to these love, and gave it a powerful force of attraction, which united itself to the aspiring individualism and trained it. By urgent preaching of repentance, which pointed to future judgment, even the widest circles were stirred, and the new movement settled down, in part, into monk-like associations (the third Order). But the principle of poverty" embraced not only an ascetically religious, but also a social and anti-hierarchical, nay, even a political ideal, for the neutral state could be regarded as the power that had to deprive the Church of her property, or, in the event of her being recalcitrant, to execute judgment upon her. The new movement united itself therefore with the apocalyptic ideas, which, in spite of Augustine, had never died out in the West, and which had received a new development from Joachim and his following. Partly within the Order, and partly beyond it, an apocalyptic socio-political excitement grew up, asserting itself in a hundred different ways. Its relative justification over against the rich worldly hierarchy was furnished by the wide hold which it everywhere secured for itself: it made its appearance in all lands, and it continued to exist, always again gathering new strength, till far on in the period of the Reformation. In the second half of the thirteenth century the Mendicant Orders reached, at least in the Romanic lands, their highest point of influence. From that time they began to decline: after the close of the century the movement as a whole was broken up and distributed among the efforts of individual men. The great struggle about poverty in the age of John XXII. had, so far as it was religious, only a limited importance. In Germany, on the other hand, there began, from the end of the

1 See Wadstein, Die eschatologische Ideengruppe in den Hauptmomenten ihrer christlich-mittelalterlichen Gesammtentwickelung, 1896. The details of these ideas scarcely belong to the history of theology, not to speak of the history of dogma; but as was the case with the ideas about the devil, they exercised a very strong influence.

thirteenth century, the "German" Mystic movement, i.e., the introduction of the impassioned individual piety of the monastic theologians into the circles of the laity. For a century and more, the work of bringing about an inward conversion of the laity in Germany was carried on, and it was quite specially by Mendicant monks, chiefly Dominican, that this service was rendered. (David of Augsburg, Theodoric of Freiburg, Master Eckhart, Tauler, Merswin, the "Friends of God," Suso, Henry of Nördlingen, Margaret Ebner, Ruysbroek, etc.)

While in the Romanic lands the Mendicant Orders grew weaker, and in Germany the religious life, still through their influence partly, slowly advanced, the world-ruling Church pursued a course of complete self-abandonment at Avignon, and seemed to have the deliberate wish to subject the ecclesiastical fidelity of the already imperilled piety to the severest test. Nay, how firmly the papacy and the Church as an institution still held together souls and the world is shown by the confusions and complaints which, when the great schism ensued, became still more numerous. Under the impression produced by frightful elemental calamities, the apocalyptic, anti-hierarchical ideas became the real danger, especially as even Mendicant monks were regarded as enemies of the papacy. But only in England did a great movement at that time result. The law of God, poverty, the Augustinian theology-these were the dominant ideas under which Wyclif undertook his Catholic reform and preached to the reigning Church judgment and repentance-a second Francis, of more understanding but less resolute, more cautious but less free. Beyond England at first no similar movement was anywhere to be traced; but it was everywhere apparent that the world had entered upon a religious age, in which the multiplicity of aspirations testified that the dissolution of what existed at the time was felt to be the signal for a new construction-the ridicule and frivolity of some Italian poets and novelists of an inferior order have no claim whatever to be considered. In its greatest representatives, the Renaissance, especially the German, which was much more important in the realm of thought than the Italian, felt that it had outgrown neither the Catholic Church nor the Christian religion.

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What was really breaking up was medieval society, mediæval institutions, the medieval world.1 So far as the Church was interwoven with this last, nay, constituted the chief part of it, and in this form had hitherto been held as holy-a state of things on which the Mendicant Orders had been able to work no change the crisis was already prepared. But there was no proclaiming of separation from the Church; there was a seeking for means for politically reforming it (this almost alone was the question at the Reform Councils), and monachism also took itself seriously to task.2 From the end of the fourteenth century till the time of the Reformation there was a continuous succession of efficient reforms in the older Orders and in the younger, of course on the basis already laid. If the signs do not mislead, the Mendicant Orders in particular rose higher again in the course of the fifteenth century and gained an always increasing influence on popular circles, in the Romanic lands through the occasional appearing of preachers of repentance, in Germany through earnest, steady work. But it is certainly unmistakable that all this did not yet give satisfaction and rest. The proof of this lies-apart from other sectarian agitations—in the fact that the Wyclifite movement, which in literary form had crept in among the Czechs, who were already deeply infected with apocalyptic excitement and Franciscan fanaticism, could strike its roots so deeply in Bohemia under Huss, and could occasion so terrible a revolution, a revolution that shook the half of Germany. From the confused intermingling of "religious, social, national, Joachim-apocalyptic, chiliastic, specifically Wyclifite and Waldensian tendencies, thoughts, hopes and dreams," individuals gathered out what appealed to them. All shades were represented, from the wild

1 See Lamprecht, Zum Verständniss der wirthschaftlichen und Socialen Wandlungen in Deutschland vom 14. zum 16. Jahrh., in the Ztschr. f. Social-und Wirthschaftgesch. I., 2. 3, pp. 191-263. The significance of the state of the towns is specially to be observed (see the works by Schmoller).

2 Höfler, Die Romanische Welt und ihr Verhältniss zu den Reformideen des Mittelalters, 1878. Maurenbrecher, Gesch. d. Kathol. Reformation I., 1880. Kolde. Die deutsche Augustiner-Congregation, 1879. Dittrich, Beiträge z. Gesch. der Kathol. Reform im 1. Drittel des 16. Jahrh. I. u. II. (Görres-gesellsch.-Jahrbuch V. 1884, p. 319 ff., VII. 1886, p. 1 ff.).