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THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
BY
G. G. COULTON, M.A.
(Reprinted by permission from the Hibbert Journal of January 1907.)
In preparing an edition for English readers of that strange
autobiography which Brother Salimbene of Parma wrote for
the edification of his niece (1221-1288),1 I have often been
embarrassed by the very wealth of my material. Those portions
of the Friar's story which are most significant for the study
of thirteenth-century society are naturally just those which
need, for the general reader, most explanation and illustration
from other documents of the age. In many places, such full
illustrations would have taken me too far afield, and I have
been obliged to deal with them in separate essays.2 One of
the most important of these subjects is the rapid decay of the
Franciscan ideal — a subject often slurred over altogether, and
, never, so far as I am aware, thoroughly explained.3 The
1 See the Nineteenth Century and After of June 1905 for a brief account by
the present writer of this too little-known chronicle.
2 Medieval Studies (Simpkin, Marshall & Co.). No. 2 deals with the Guelfs
and Ghibellines of Dante's day ; Nos. 3 and 4 with Puritanism in the Middle
Ages ; No. 5 with thirteenth-century morality ; Nos. 1 and 6 with the monks.
8 Karl Midler's Anfange des Minoritenordens is confessedly a fragment.
Lempp's Frere E,lie deals with only one corner of the subject ; Father Ehrle's
articles in the Arckiv fur Litt. und Kirchengeschichte, however learned and
illuminating, are often tantalising in their avoidance of debatable questions.
Professor Herkless, in his Francis and Dominic, has no space to do anything like
full justice to the early Spirituals, whom he seems, moreover, to confound with
their less defensible followers. Miss Macdonell gives some pleasant portraits
from the earlier Spiritual circle in her interesting Sons of Francis ; but her
comparative unfamiliarity with other sides of thirteenth-century history often
prevents her from grasping the real significance of the party.
1

2 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
Friars, however they may once have been misunderstood in
an age of bitter strife, are now recognised on all hands as the
greatest of all Church reformers during the first fifteen centuries.
But, far beyond this just recognition, there is a growing
tendency to make party capital by whitewashing the Friars,
in contrast to correspondingly blackened pictures of the six
teenth-century reformers. The former, it is argued, were the
real saviours of the Church: the latter were mere bungling mar
plots. This theory, however, impinges on one serious difficulty,
for, in spite of Francis and Dominic, the Church was at least
as corrupt in 1500 as she had been in 1200 a.d. To meet this
difficulty the " Great Pestilence " theory has been devised ;
and we are assured that Luther found the Church still reeling
helplessly under the effects of the Plague of 1349. But this
again, even though supported by far more scientific evidence
than has yet been adduced, would still fail to meet the facts
of the case. Long before the Great Pestilence, good men
despaired as deeply of the Church as their pre-Franciscan
grandfathers had despaired. It would be difficult, I believe,
to find a single writer between 1250 and 1350 expressing a
real conviction that his own world was permanently better
than the world of 1200. On the other hand, it is startling to
find how many among the greatest Churchmen in this period
— and especially among the Friars — were haunted by an even
exaggerated sense of the world's almost hopeless decay. Yet
this striking fact is entirely ignored by the most popular
Church historians : and the average reader, even though he be
specially interested in Franciscan history, is seldom aware how
rapidly the Friars degenerated, or ho\v directly the Roman
hierarchy was responsible for their failure. The heroes of
the Fioretti, of Eccleston, and of other noble Franciscan
records are indeed admirable to all time. But how many
readers of the Fioretti realise that, within a century after
the Saint's death, the very existence of such Friars as Giles
and Masseo and Conrad of Offida had become illegal? So
far from condemning the sixteenth-century Reformation, the

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 3
early Friars are, in fact, among our strongest witnesses in its
favour. The story of Franciscan decay may be found written in the
plainest characters within a few dozen pages of St Bonaventura's
works : other documents (and they are many) do but corro
borate the Saint's assertions, and illustrate his protest that
only the bitterest necessity compelled him to speak. From
his two Epistles to the Provincials of the Order, and his
Qucestiones circa Regulam, we see how near the Friar of the
second generation stood already to the sturdy religious vagrant
of Chaucer and Erasmus. He speaks of the idleness and
viciousness of many, and the commercial spirit of the Order as
a whole. Their importunate begging and legacy-hunting, the
extravagance of their buildings and private expenses, their
familiarities with women, are rapidly making them "wearisome
and contemptible in divers parts of the world." The charity
of the laity is naturally grown cold ; the wayfarer fears to meet
a Friar as he would fear a robber. What is worse, these
abuses are already so chronic and so wide-spread that many
accept them as quite necessary and irremediable. So writes
St Bonaventura ; and other equally trustworthy contemporaries
give us the same picture. The Friar, whom you can no more
keep out of your private affairs than you can keep a fly out of
your plate, is often so unpopular already that the country-folk
attribute the failures of their crops to the malign influence of
these sons of Francis and Dominic. " St Francis cries aloud for
reform, and the blood of Christ that was shed for us," pleaded
St Bonaventura in 1257. Yet nine years afterwards we find
him reiterating the same complaints ; and a younger contem
porary records the Saint's cry of despair : " I would willingly
be ground to powder, if so the brethren might come to the
purity of St Francis and his companions, and to that which he
prescribed for his Order."
Paradoxical as it may seem, it was the Rule itself which
made the keeping of the Rule impossible. In framing this
code of precepts and restrictions, St Francis had deviated

4 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
from that evangelical freedom and simplicity in which lay
the real strength of his first teaching. By allowing his
brethren to be formed into an Order under a formal Rule he
assured the outward success and the essential failure of his
movement. At a very early stage, many of the most enthusi
astic Friars had either perished under their immoderate morti
fications, or only dragged on a broken existence in the
infirmary, where, in their own despite, they set a dangerous
example to the rest.1 Among " the multitude of those who
entered in," few were proof against the temptation of beginning
on that lower plane on which their worn-out predecessors
were now forced to end. The small luxuries which had
become a sad necessity to the seniors were claimed as of right
by the juniors ; and that earlier prophecy was fulfilled : " Self-
indulgence will grow in the Order as insensibly as hairs grow
in a man's beard " (Eccleston, U.S., p. 69). St Bonaventura
describes all this in detail, complaining that the new generation
of officers in the Order, themselves relaxed in discipline, are
fast teaching the novices to be no better than themselves,
" so that the early brethren, so far from being looked up to
as examples, are now treated as laughing-stocks. Nay, by
so much less the men of this new generation know the virtues
of perfect brethren, by so much the more do they imagine
themselves to be better than their forerunners; and, seeing
that they keep certain examples of outward discipline in
divine service, or in processional entrances, and in suchlike
matters, therefore they dare to assert that the Order was never
in so good a state as now" (Qucest. XIX. circa Regulam).
His contemporary, David of Augsburg, speaks even more
strongly : the most spiritual Friars " are thought lunatics and
called heretics by other Religious " : " virtue is proscribed, and
condemned as vice."
It was just this double movement in the Order which
1 Cf. Etienne de Bourhon, p. 422, for the extent to which even St Bernard,
after ruining his own health, was obliged to set a dangerous example to the
rest.

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 5
made reform so impossible: this increase of pharisaical
formalism and observances and self-satisfaction, in proportion
as the true spirit of Franciscanism decayed. This alone can
explain the headlong ruin of the strict Franciscan ideal.
Roger Bacon, writing about the time of St Bonaventura's
death, mourns that both Franciscans and Dominicans are
" already horribly fallen from their former worth " (B.S., p. 399).
Less than half a century later, Ubertino da Casale complained
to the Pope : " So high has the flood of idleness and gluttony
and continued familiarities with women risen, that I rather
wonder at those who stand than at those who fall " (Archiv,
iv. p. 80, cf. 187). Chaucer, Gower, and the author of Piers
Plowman, however much they may differ on other points,
agree in representing the Friar as a real danger to the purity
of family life. Chaucer's Friar, tramping the roads with a
sturdy fellow to bear his bag, selling imaginary spiritual
favours, and privately erasing the names of those for whom he
was publicly pledged to pray, can be exactly paralleled from
prosaic and irrefragable documents (cf. Archiv, iii. 70, 104,
and Eubel Oberd. Minoritenprovinz, p. 239). But the very
worst of these abuses is already logically implied in St
Bonaventura's complaint, only a generation after the Master's
death, that the few stricter Friars were already a laughing
stock to the superficially correct and self-satisfied majority.
The tide set more and more strongly against these " Spirituals,"
who soon became not only laughing-stocks, but martyrs in
grim earnest. Angelo Clareno's History of the Seven Tribu
lations — a book of passionate pleading indeed, but one which
only gains by comparison with official or unfriendly records —
shows what a terrible price was often paid by those brethren
who clung doggedly to the plain letter of the Rule.
" Under a pot he schal be put, in a privie chambre,
That he schal lyven ne last but litell while after ! "
writes the fourteenth-century satirist of the unlucky Friar
whom his brethren find no longer useful to them as a beggar ;
but this was a merciful process of extinction compared with

6 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
the nameless horrors inflicted in convent dungeons upon such
as refused to beg for unlawful corn and wine. It was worse
still when the Pope interfered with a decree which startled
even the mediaeval conscience. The constitution Quorundam,
published by John XXII. in 1317, made it heresy for a Friar
to disobey his immediate superior by wearing the short
garments which he believed St Francis to have commanded,
or by refusing to beg fresh stores to fill those barns and cellars
which the founder had most explicitly forbidden. In other
words, it became flat heresy for a Friar to adhere strictly to
that solemn vow from which, according to St Thomas Aquinas,
not even a pope had power to absolve him ! In accordance
with this new move, four Spirituals were publicly burned as
heretics at Marseilles (1318) for asserting that the Rule of
St Francis was identical with Christ's Gospel, and that even
the Pope could not dispense Franciscans from their solemn
vow of poverty. These four were only the residuum from a
body of sixty more who had gradually been induced to recant
by a process of intimidation, and probably torture, lasting over
six months ; and no single episode is better calculated than this
to explain the startling contrasts which we find between the
ideal Friar of the Fioretti and the real Friar even of the first
century.1 The stricter Friars pleaded for leave to form a
separate congregation of their own, in which they might live
unmolested after the tenor of their early vows : but even this
reasonable request was refused ; and Angelo Clareno, the leader
of the Italian Spirituals, though beatified by the Church after
his death, breathed his last in hiding and in apparent failure
eleven years after Dante. The persecution in England seems
to have been even more bloody, though more silent, than in
1 The whole story is fully told at the beginning of the third volume of
Lea's Inquisition : yet even Dr Lea scarcely brings out with sufficient clearness
the cynical frankness with which loyalty to the first traditions of the Order
was proclaimed to be heresy. This can only be fully realised by studying the
official declaration of the thirteen Doctors upon the case, and by noting how
distinctly they proclaiin that each one of the condemned propositions is separately
heretical (Baluze-Mansi., Misc., vol. ii. p. 271).

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 7
France or Italy. The Chronicle of Meaux (R.S., ii. p. 323)
informs us quite casually that twenty-five men and eight
women of the Spiritual Franciscans were burned " in England,
in a certain forest," about the year 1330. Facts like these are
often partly passed over in silence, partly falsified, by modern
historians. Thomas of Eccleston records how the General
Albert of Pisa praised the special zeal of the English Francis
cans, whom he found "ready to go with him to prison or
into exile for the sake of the reform of the Order." Father
Cuthbert, the recent Romanist translator of the book, has
suppressed the words italicised, thus concealing the fact that
the reform of the Franciscan Order was already a pressing and
dangerous duty, even in Eccleston's days.
It is extremely significant that a man like Salimbene, who was
on intimate terms with so many of the leading early Spirituals,
should show such an utter want of sympathy with the party as
a whole, and go on recording without remark a state of things
so glaringly at variance with the first Franciscan ideal. He
shows us incidentally, over and over again, that many of the
main precepts of the Rule were obsolete before the generation
of those who had known the living Francis was extinct. The
Order, as a whole, no longer even wished to be what it once
had been. A certain Spiritual Friar prayed long and earnestly
to see St Francis in heaven : at last his prayer was granted.
The Saint, whom he had hoped to see in dazzling glory, was
discovered in an obscure corner, tending a leper covered with
sores from head to foot ; and the disillusioned visionary fell at
his feet in bitter tears. "This leper," explained St Francis,
" is my Order, which I tend at Christ's bidding, and for which
I plead unceasingly before God."
It was partly the tragedy of all great movements — too
great, in many ways, for their age. But partly also we see
here the inevitable result of the Saint's own doubts and incon
sistencies. He had wavered to the very end of his career
between love of solitude and love of his fellow-men. He
himself lived each life so truly and so whole-heartedly that in

8 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
him we scarcely see the conflict of the two ideals ; but it came
out fatally in his Rule. The Friars must teach others, and yet
remain too poor to study themselves: they must evangelise
the whole world, and yet bind themselves by the lifelong vow
which cut them off from all natural intercourse with half of
the human race. St Francis himself was both hermit and
apostle, and a few followed him with steps not too unequal :
of the rest, the best were those who forgot only one side
of the Saint's example. Some became the most ascetic of
hermits ; others, the most adventurous of missioners ; but
vast numbers, who had no deep or enduring vocation for either
sacrifice, drifted quietly amid the general uncertainty, and
doubtless without realising clearly how far they were drifting,
into a fairly easy routine of life, safe for both worlds. Indeed,
mediaeval conditions were eminently favourable to such rapid
degeneration. Nothing contributed more inevitably to the
inward decay of the Order than the desperate resolve to
preserve an outward show of discipline and unity. In the
modern world, men agree with more or less good grace to
differ on even the most vital questions ; thus ideals apparently
irreconcilable, flourishing side by side, gradually forget much
of their differences, and have leisure to realise the likeness of
their general aim. The honest men of either party in the
Franciscan Order had much to learn from each other: a
common-sense division would have made them most valuable
competitors in the long run. The minority might have con
tinued, as they wished, to keep the Rule in all its first severity :
the majority might have formed a separate Order, frankly
avowing the necessity, to all but one man in a thousand,
of certain relaxations. The questions at issue between the
two parties were not deeper or more complicated than those
which have been left open for three centuries in the Anglican
Church under the so-called "Elizabethan Settlement." No
doubt it is in itself regrettable that two or more religious
bodies should cling with equal obstinacy to mutually ex
clusive doctrines, and pray with equal fervour for each other's

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 9
corporate, if not personal, extinction. Yet this has also its
good side; for each party thus remains a standing witness
to one side of the truth, and each, in the face of its rivals,
must needs practise to some real extent the doctrines which
it professes ; otherwise, it will surely die out in a world
which has no use for stale unrealities. In the Middle
Ages, this agreement to differ was impossible ; and St
Francis himself was too much a child of the Middle Ages
even to dream of modern freedom. He, the freest of men in
his own soul, inflicted on his brethren the bondage of a Rule
which, as the mediaeval hierarchy was certain to enforce it,
must needs become intolerable to one party or the other
within the Order. Since the Spirituals were only a small
minority,1 the large majority got their own way. Strong in
the mediaeval ideas of religious discipline and in the general
sympathy of the ruling powers, the "Conventuals" buried
their too stubborn opponents in filthy dungeons, or burned
them publicly as heretics. If the Popes had allowed the
Spirituals to form a separate " Order of Literal Observance,"
this would have kept the rest comparatively pure by the
continued protest of its mere existence. As things were,
relaxation and hypocrisy were positively officialised. The
strict Rule was still retained in name, but its strict adherents
were treated as heretics. The novice still vowed himself to
lifelong obedience: the minister who admitted him solemnly
promised eternal life as a reward for this obedience. But
meanwhile the Vicar of Christ sent him to the stake in this
world, and to hell in the next, for presuming to obey too
literally those precepts of which the Saint himself had pro
tested, on his deathbed, " By God's grace, they are plain and
simple enough to need no explanation." Nothing but the
most refined Jesuitry could reconcile this plain Rule, which all
1 Father Cuthbert's contention (p. 67) that the relaxed Friars were
always in the minority is not only contrary to all contemporary evidence, but
would also fail to explain how they became strong enough to immolate
recalcitrant Spirituals.

10 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
swore to keep, with the elaborate papal comments which
practically forbade the keeping of it ; and St Bonaventura's
writings show us how deeply this Jesuitry had penetrated into
the Order within thirty years of the Saint's death. Meanwhile,
by a common vice of human nature, the less men wrought
the works of St Francis, the more glibly they took his name
in vain. Salimbene, knowing very well in his heart that he
breaks the Rule every day of his life, vaunts quite complacently
the Saint's promise of certain salvation to all who should truly
keep that Rule. He would have made an admirable example
for Butler's famous sermon on Balaam : " Let me die the death
of the righteous, and let my last end be like his." The
fetishism of the Franciscan frock — the superstitious investiture
of dying laymen with so effective a passport to Paradise —
began at a time when only a few condemned heretics still
clung to the strict form of life which that gray frock implied.
This was the price paid by St Francis and the Franciscans
for having obediently conformed to the ruling hierarchy in
stead of going their own way like the Wesleyans. It is true
that, in the thirteenth century, the nonconformist had to face
the probabilities of helpless martyrdom or bloody rebellion.
But St Francis' divine Master had long ago shown the world
that obstinate nonconformity, even in an age of bitter intoler
ance, is quite compatible with the most lamblike innocence
and the most perfect charity. Even while we praise St
Francis as the most Christ-like figure in later Christian history,
the very comparison does but serve to show how far he stands,
in every respect, below his great Exemplar. The spiritual
iniquities of his time were almost beyond modern belief;1 but
he himself lacked the sterner fibre of a thorough reformer.
His charity and humility, his intense respect for all who sat
in Moses' seat, kept him always far above vulgar sectarianism ;
1 1 have dealt briefly with this subject in the Independent Review for June
1905. Even the third chapter of M. Sabatier's Vie de St Frangois gives, if
anything, a too favourable idea of the early thirteenth-century Church ;
and his readers are left to infer that the Franciscans and Dominicans worked
a far more thorough and lasting reform than was actually the case.

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 11
but he pushed this deference and self-effacement to an extreme
at which it became a serious weakness. In the eternal fight
against evil, obedience to an evil-doer in authority may prove
the worst of treasons to the cause. When, therefore, we hear
the Saint extolled so unreservedly for his conformity to a
system already deeply corrupted — when we are told how the
Papacy succeeded where Anglicanism failed, in keeping its
Methodists within the pale — then we may well ask : " What
was the ultimate consequence of this conformity ? " In an
independent rivalry for purity of doctrine and of works, the
Franciscans would have shamed the hierarchy out of its worst
abuses, as the Wesleyans unquestionably did much to rouse
the Anglican Church from its torpor. Instead of that, we
find the hierarchy deliberately corrupting the Rule in order
to bring the new movement into line with current traditions ;
and soon the typical Friar is no longer the reformer, but the
willing tool of a worldly papacy — the Jesuit of the Middle
Ages. The early Friars had spoken out manfully against
the growing abuse of indulgences ; their later brethren became
the busiest of pardon-mongers. Brother Berthold of Ratisbon,
St Bonaventura's contemporary, speaks quite as bitterly against
the " penny - preachers " as Luther himself. The penny-
preacher is the " devil's huntsman," who " hath murdered true
penitence."1 Yet, three centuries later, Bishop Gardiner
complained that " the devil used Friars for his ministers " in
the matter of false indulgences, " wherein heaven was sold for
little money."
The early history of the Franciscan movement — the
murderous violence with which the Papacy encouraged the
suppression of all too inconvenient reforming energies within
the Order — seems to give a very clear contradiction to Bishop
Creighton's theory that a wiser statesmanship might have
brought about the Reformation of the sixteenth century with
out any schism in the Church. Until long after that century
was out, men's minds were far too exclusively haunted by
1 Predigten, i. 208, 394 ; cf. 132, 148, 154, and ii. 12, 219-

12 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
the false conception of religious unity as an outward con
formity, and of faith as an assent to a special form of words,
to render possible such a yoking together of divergent views
as might be attempted in the present century. All unneces
sary differences are deplorable ; and yet they have their uses
in God's providence. Nothing has done more to make
Christians seek a deeper unity and a deeper faith within
their own hearts than the competition of many separate, yet un
deniably Christian, bodies during the last three hundred years
— bodies too strong and well organised for violent extermina
tion by their enemies — outwardly conflicting, yet essentially (as
even the least tolerant cannot fail to see more and more
clearly) marching towards a common goal. " When the half-
gods go, the gods arrive." The violent rending of the veil
has brought mankind one step nearer to the Holy of Holies :
our eyes may ache still to pierce the darkness ; but every day
more clearly the modern world sees God where the Middle
Ages only shuddered at a black and hopeless void. Saints of
all ages and of all creeds have taught us to look for deeper
spiritual truths in apparent spiritual failure. "Where wast
Thou, Lord ? " cried St Catherine of Siena in her passionate
welcome of Christ's restored presence after a long period of
spiritual bereavement: "Where wast Thou hidden, Lord,
these many days that I have sought Thee sorrowing?"
" Daughter," replied the Voice, " I was all the while in thine
own heart."
It has always been the worldly strength and the spiritual
weakness of the Papacy to idolise outward unity and to
sacrifice everything to that idol. For this end the hierarchy
shrank from no bloodshed, and for this end they deliberately
clipped the wings of the Franciscan reform. But, if it is
difficult to speak too strongly of the papal policy which
domesticated the Franciscan body by organising hypocrisy
within the Order, on the other hand it would be very unjust
to apply so odious a word off-hand to individual Friars. They
stood in the position of the common soldier, who must indeed

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 13
think to some extent for himself, but whose first duty is to
obey his immediate superior. If modern freedom of conscience
tempts us so often to cloak our self-will under the name of
God's will, it was still more difficult in the Middle Ages to
avoid the opposite error of mistaking a man's command for
God's. No doubt very many Friars were too earnest and
simple-minded to take much harm from a system which
solemnly promised them salvation for keeping strictly certain
prescriptions which it forbade them strictly to keep ; but the
average Friar was very much hke the average convert in any
great religious revival, and on him the official hypocrisy was
certain soon to have a disastrous effect. The fact of the
Order's rapid decay is undeniable: it stares us in the face
from official documents as plainly as from the complaints of
outsiders. The causes may not be so easy to analyse ; but
assuredly one of the most fatal was that false notion of
authority and unity which enabled the majority, while swear
ing obedience to the Rule, and boasting themselves of the
strictness of the Rule, to torture or slay those few who really
followed the Rule.

The foregoing article was attacked in the next number of the Hibbert
Journal by two Franciscan Friars, Fathers Cuthbert and Stanislaus. While
accusing me of ignorant or wilful falsification of the records, these two critics
made little pretence of producing documentary proof for their assertions,
finding it easier (as Thomas of Eccleston records of his fellow-Franciscans in
the thirteenth century) to shout me down with cries of, " Thou liest ! " Nor
have they since shown less unwillingness to face the actual evidence. I at
once wrote for their leave to reprint their criticisms with my article and
rejoinder, offering them also (what the Hibbert Journal cannot offer) the
advantage of the last word in the controversy : thus, if I had indeed falsified
the evidence, they had ample opportunity of pillorying me at my own
expense. To this request, twice repeated, Father Stanislaus opposed a
refusal ; while his fellow-Friar returned no answer to my second and registered
letter. This is all the more inexplicable because their refusal cannot be
ascribed altogether to a dislike of controversy in itself (though I believe
this has weighed to some extent with Father Stanislaus) : Father Cuthbert
plainly hints, and his friend says straight out, that they mean to pursue this
subject in the columns of magazines in which I, as a heretic, shall have

14 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
presumably no right of reply. Moreover, Father Stanislaus had himself gone
out of his way. to taunt me in the Hibbert (heaven only knows on what pre
sumed evidence !) with an habitual unwillingness to face criticism. Yet I have
put out a standing offer to his fellow- Romanists to print at my own expense
their criticisms of my writings : I had repeated that challenge on the very
page of my From St Francis to Dante from which Father Stanislaus quoted ;
and I can as little understand how he can have allowed himself this ludi
crously false insinuation as I can explain, on any theory entirely creditable to
them, the present reluctance of these two Friars to take the responsibility of
their public accusations. It is true that in this they follow the example of
the only other Romanist priests who have publicly attacked me : it is true
also that a bankrupt controversialist does gain by refusing to permit a reprint,
since the candid reader will scarcely infer, even from the severest criticisms,
how futile his arguments really were ; but one would have thought that, for
the sake of their own dignity and their authority in the eyes of the Roman
Catholic laity, men in such a position would be ashamed to play this street-
urchin's trick of a runaway knock.
On one point made by my critics, and one only, I was indeed at fault.
I had quoted as an afterthought, and entirely contrary to my usual principles,
a passage of the Meaux Chronicle which I had not personally verified,
from Arnold's introduction to the Clarendon Press edition of Wiclif (vol. i.
p. 10). The original passage, as Father Cuthbert points out, does
not give the precise number of Franciscans burned in England ; and I was
therefore wrong in stating that the persecutipn had been more bloody here
than in other countries. But, on the other hand, it entirely bears out my
main statement as to this persecution of Friars by their fellow-Friars,
and it puts the total number of victims far higher than I had put them :
for it asserts that, between 1318 and 1330, 113 Franciscans of both sexes
were burned in France, Italy, England, and the borders of Germany.
Moreover, in attempting to set aside the authority of the Meaux Chronicle,
Father Cuthbert himself commits an egregious blunder, arguing, "I do not
know any English Chronicle which bears out this statement." This kind of
argument from " I do not know " is dangerous even at the best ; but it has
no value whatever from the pen of a writer who also does not know that,
in spite of its French-sounding name, the Chronicle was written by English
monks at the Yorkshire monastery of Meaux. What is more (apart from the
passage in Eccleston which Father Cuthbert has distorted as I show on p. 7),
the poem of Piers Plowman distinctly corroborates this persecution of strict
Friars in England by their relaxed brethren (C. xxiii. 58 ff.).
As Father Cuthbert seldom vouchsafes documentary evidences for his
contentions, I must say a httle here about the work which constitutes his
only pretence, to speak on this subject — his translation of Thomas of Eccleston.
The " Introductory Essay " to this work is simply an unintelligent compila
tion, with imperfect acknowledgment, from Professor Brewer's preface to the
Monumenta Franciscana, and Dr Jessopp' s Coming of the Friars ; and the
translation itself is neither scholarly nor even straightforward. I have already

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 15
exposed a little of this in my From St Francis to Dante : I must here give more
detail, in order to enable the reader to estimate this man who claims authority
for his unsupported assertions. Most educated people, of any kind know that
the mediaeval Religious were bled periodically for health's sake. The ordinary
Latin word for such bleeding is minutio : twice our translator comes across
this common technical word ; twice he mistranslates it ridiculously — the
second, with such violence to grammar that one wonders how far he can
understand the Latin of his own service-books (pp. 210 and 214). Other
blunders in translation may be found by the curious reader on page 175
(omission of in suis locis, which seems to have puzzled him) ; 1 82, ampliatus ;
207, adinvenerant ; 210, siquidem and clam; 219, omne bonum (though he had
the Quaracchi text to show him the way); 237, penderem ; 241, note 1 ; 221,
quod. Other mistranslations seem purposely designed to soften Eccleston's
too plain-spoken text: e.g. pp. 156 and 157, where he omits the words
nimis and temptabant; 166, where by altering the tenses of the original
(dicerent — essent) he disguises a definite implication of indevotion against the
Friars; 213, where he leaves out the crucial word ordinis;1 227, where he
softens Papa quicunque, "all Popes,'' into "a Pope." Anyone who verifies
these references will understand why I do not trouble to reply in cases
where Father Cuthbert simply pledges his unsupported word against my
renderings of Latin documents.
Father Stanislaus, again, shows very great inaccuracy. On p. 667 of his
criticism, he bases attacks on my argument on the assumption that " the two
Epistles . . . were written in 1257 " : whereas the second was written in 1266,
as he might have seen on reference to any standard authority, or even from the
notes to the page from which he quotes ! Again, he assumes that in 1257 the
Order was still fresh from the baleful influence of the " relaxed " Elias : yet
Elias only held the Generalate from 1233 to 1239 ; and the eighteen years
between this date and 1257 were far more favourable to the "strict" party than
any succeeding period.
Such, then, are the two Friars who now accuse me of falsifying St Bona
ventura's words ; though one makes no pretence, and the other very little, of
confronting me fully with the original. However, fortunately for me, they both
pitch upon a passage which is not too long for me to reproduce in full : I will
therefore give a bald and literal translation here, and the original Latin at the
end of the pamphlet. It is from the first Epistle of St Bonaventura, who writes
(after a preamble setting forth the necessity of plain speech) : — " But now,
because of the urgent perils of the times and wounds of consciences, and like
wise scandals of worldly folk, to whom the Order, whereas it ought to be a
mirror of all holiness, is being turned to weariness and contempt in divers parts
1 It is quite impossible to accept Father Cuthbert's excuse (p. 664) that this omission of a
crucial word is not calculated to mislead. As his mistranslation stands, the reader is left to
infer that the English Friars were ready to surfer persecution for the reform of other people ;
whereas the whole point of Eccleston's words is that the reform of the Franciscan Order was
already a duty exposing the reformer to persecution. It is impossible not to connect this
omission with the fact that Father Cuthbert contends in his preface (in the teeth of all con
temporary evidence) that the strict Friars formed the majority of the Order.

16 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
of the world; [therefore], neither altogether keeping silence, nor altogether
expressing [what I think] ; neither making new laws nor inflicting bonds [on
the Brethren] nor binding and laying grievous burdens upon others, — but as
an announcer of truth, I briefly explain (seeing that they ought by no means
to be left unsaid) the things which seem to me, after consultation with the
Representatives of the Order, to need correction. In truth, when I seek out
the causes why the splendour of our Order is in a manner eclipsed, the Order
is tainted without, and within the clearness of consciences is befouled, there
occurs to me (1) the multiplicity of [worldly] businesses, wherein money (the
enemy above all things to the poverty of our Order) is greedily sought for,
incautiously received, and more incautiously touched.1 (2) There occurs the
idleness of some Brethren, which is a cesspool of all vices, wherein very many
being sunken, choosing some monstrous state between contemplative and
active life, not so much carnally as cruelly eat the blood of [men's] souls. (3)
There occurs the wandering abroad of very many, who, for the solace of their
own bodies, burdening those through whom they pass, leave behind them not
examples of life but rather scandals of souls. (4) There occurs importunate
begging, whereby all who pass through the lands so abhor meeting the Friars
that they fear to fall in with them as [to fall in] with robbers. (5) There
occurs the sumptuous and curious construction of buildings, which troubles the
peace of the Brethren, burdens their friends, and exposes us in manifold ways
to the perverse judgments of men. (6) There occurs the multiplication of
familiarities, which our Rule prohibits, whereby arise veiy many suspicions,
evil reports, and scandals." Then come complaints Nos. 7, 8, 9, and 10, which
would have strengthened my case, but for which I had no room ; and then a
sentence which (according to Father Stanislaus) I dishonestly refrained from
quoting, but of which he himself quotes only a fragment, breaking off at a
comma which I mark here by italics : " For though there are very many to be
found who are not guilty in any of the aforesaid points, yet this curse involves
all, unless those who do the things are resisted by those who do them not,
since it is clearer than daylight that all the aforesaid tend to the very great and in
no wise to be concealed detriment of our Order : although to the lukewarm, to the
indevout, to the worldly-wise — who consider the custom \which has grown up] and
allege the multitude [of those who do these things] — they appear easy and excusable,
nay, even as irremediable."
My brief summary of this passage, which the two Friars call a falsification,
ran as follows : — " [St Bonaventura] speaks of the idleness and viciousness of
many, and the commercial spirit of the Order as a whole. Their importunate
begging and legacy-hunting, the extravagance of their buildings and private
expenses, their familiarities with women, are rapidly making them ' wearisome
and contemptible in divers parts of the world.' " The reader can therefore
now judge for himself ; and he will probably guess not only why these two
critics refrained from proving my guilt by confronting me with St Bonaventura's
1 Apparently the Jesuitical evasion had already begun by which a Friar would put a glove
on before accepting money, or would take a stick to count it with, so as to avoid the actual
touch.

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 17
words in full, but also why one of them, when supplying what he calls a
dishonest omission in my extremely brief summary, breaks off himself
at a comma, where the Saint's sentence begins to tell far more against
his argument than the former half had seemed to tell in its favour. My
critics generally try to supply this lack of documentary evidence by mere
vehemence of assertion ; but once or twice they do venture just within arm's
length. Father Stanislaus, alluding to the ten complaints quoted above,
writes : " True, the Saint does speak (but always in qualified terms, which are
conveniently omitted in Mr C.'s precis) of all these things ; but he does not
say that these faults are rapidly making the Friars wearisome and contemptible
in divers parts of the world. As a matter of fact, Mr C. has in this passage
pieced together two wholly different contexts, and thus, consciously or
unconsciously, heightened the effect of the whole " (p. 668). Father Cuthbert
makes the same complaint in even stronger language : my summary is (he
says), " as though one would take the letters of the alphabet and toss them
up." Yet, as the reader may now see, the Saint does most distinctly assert
what these two Friars so confidently deny ; and the only possible explanation
is that here, as elsewhere, they have been unable to construe the somewhat
crabbed Latin.1 The same excuse must be made for Father Stanislaus's
assertion that on these points the Saint always speaks in qualified terms : on
the contrary, the reader may see that his vehemence on several points quite
outdoes my brief summary.
But (continue both critics) the Saint does not speak of " the idleness and
viciousness of many " ; and Father Stanislaus prints here one sentence of the
original Latin, italicising the some in one line, but quite neglecting the very
many in the next. Yet the most elementary logic might suggest that, though
some is in itself a colourless word, it takes its colour from the context. If the
Saint speaks of " the idleness of some Brethren, which is a cesspool of all vices,
wherein very many being sunken, etc., etc.," he does, in fact, speak of " the
idleness and viciousness of many," nor do I see how else his words could be
faithfully summarised. A passage from the writings of St Bonaventura's
contemporary and fellow-Franciscan, David of Augsburg (whose book was in
the Middle Ages generally ascribed to the Saint himself), exactly illustrates
his meaning here : " To acquire and foster and maintain chastity avails (among
other things) .... the avoidance of idleness, which is as it were the gate
of all vices, especially fleshly vices " (De VII. Processibus, vi. 40).
Next, in my precis I speak of " familiarities with women " : and, according to
Father Cuthbert, my insertion of these two words constitutes a serious falsifica
tion. "If," he writes, "Mr C.'s acquaintance with Franciscan hterature were
wider than perhaps it is, he would know that the word familiarities signifies too
1 As Mr M'Cabe says, speaking from his own experience as a teacher among the modern
Franciscans, "A large number of priests, secular and regular, lose all but the very rudiments
of the language in which all their prayers are couched" (Life in a Modem Monastery, p.179).
Even Abbot Gasquet, who has certainly far more scholarship than these Friars, makes a
ridiculous blunder over a word which occurs seven times in the Vulgate Bible (Great Pestilence,
p. 20, when he translates rum preco — i.e. rum prseco — ' ' no prayer was said ").

18 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS
much concern with the worldly affairs of secular men. So it is used in the Consti
tutions of the Order." This assertion, made as usual without a shred of actual
quotation or definite reference to back it up, is as false as it is absurd. I have
taken the trouble to institute a search through all the Constitutions as published
by Father Ehrle, S.J., until eighteen years after St Bonaventura's death ; and
I believe I am right in saying that the word familiarities occurs only once,
where it refers primarily to women and secondarily to similarly suspicious
intercourse with boys (Archiv., vol. vi. p. 1 1 5 ; cf. Bonav. Reg. Novit., c. x., and
Epistola de xxv. mem., 14). Moreover, the Saint's own reference to " suspicions,
evil reports, and scandals" (which Father Cuthbert suppresses) would be quite
incomprehensible on his theory. Thirdly, he makes a more serious suppression
still — St Bonaventura's direct reference to the prohibition of such " familiarities "
in the Rule. It is not possible to believe that Father Cuthbert is so unfamiliar
with his own Rule as not to know that the only prohibition of any familiarities
therein contained is in chap. xi. : " I strictly enjoin upon all the Brethren that
they have no suspicious intercourse (consortia) or counsels with women " ; and
I must confess myself utterly unable to understand how he can reconcile his
conscience either to what he says on this point, or to what he carefully leaves
unsaid. My other critic, with these facts staring him in the face, admits freely
that the Saint's reference is here to women, but contends that I have " misin
terpreted" the phrase (though my only " interpretation " was to quote the
corroborative words of other distinguished Friars) ; and that, in taking these
familiarities as something serious, I showed ignorance of the Saint's other writings.
Here again he gives no reference, but simply flings the random accusation, on
the chance that it may stick : I must therefore refer briefly to other words
of the Saint. Section xi. of his Rule for Novices, though headed simply Of
Worldly Familiarities, deals for the greater part with women : " Flee from them
as from serpents, nor even speak with any save under stress of urgent necessity,
nor ever look hard (respicias) in a woman's face : ... St Augustine saith :
Your speech with women should be rough, brief, and stiff. Nor are they less
to be shunned because they are holy women : for the holier they be, the more
do they entice, and under pretext of sweet speech creeps in the slime of most
impious lust. Believe me (saith he), I am a bishop, I speak the truth in
Christ, I lie not. I have known cedars of Lebanon and bell-wethers of the
flock ruined under this pretext, whose fall 1 should no more have suspected
than St Jerome's or St Ambrose's." Again, in his 19th Question on the
Rule, the Saint complains of the dangers of " intercourse with secular folk,
whereupon arises matter for many temptations of the flesh." In the 14th section
of his Epistola de xxv. memorabilibus he writes : " Avoid all women and beard
less youths but for cause of necessity or manifest [spiritual] profit " ; and his
language is equally plain in his Sermon on. the Rule (§ 27) and Exposition of the
Rule (cap. xi.). Again, the Pharetra, ascribed to the Saint, has a chapter
headed simply De Familiaritate, and consisting solely of seventeen quotations
from the Fathers as to the extreme perils of women to spiritual men, of the
type of that already quoted from St Augustine. Moreover, the Saint's secretary,
Bernard of Besse, is still more emphatic (Spec. Discip. I. xxx. 3) : so also is

THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS 19
David of Augsburg (De VII. Process., iv. 13, vi. 34,. and passim): indeed, a
whole volume might be filled with quotations to the same effect.
I have only one last criticism of the same type to deal with. Father
Stanislaus writes: " If Mr C. will read very carefully [chapters 18-20 of the
Quosstiones circa Regulam] he will see that St B. is not speaking of the Friars
Minor, but of Religious Orders in general, so that the evidence he adduces
therefrom is not ad rem." It is strange logic in any case to argue that, because
the Saint describes the decay of all Religious Orders without exception, he
therefore means to except his own, the Order with which the whole treatise is
concerned from beginning to end, and from which it takes its name ! But, in
fact, Father Stanislaus's criticism only shows that he himself, as usual, does
not know the contents of these three chapters which he accuses me of ignoring.
" You, you, you," says St Bonaventura's interlocutor, repeatedly ; and " We, we,
we," answers the Saint in his detailed apologies. Moreover, some of the causes
he adduces for the decay of the Orders (e.g. the " frequent change of
superiors ") can refer to the Friars alone ; and the Mainz editor plainly says
that the treatise was concerned with " all Religious, and especially the Friars
Minor" (italics mine). Once again, I must confess myself unable to under
stand this device of reviling an adversary for not having read a document
which in fact he has read only too correctly. It is, of course, no crime for a
Friar to be totally ignorant of the history of his own Order. That he should
undertake, being so ignorant, to write on the subject, is perhaps only a venial
sin : certainly it is a fault readily pardoned in the Roman communion, pro
vided only that the history so produced be thoroughly " edifying." But that,
being ignorant of certain obvious documents, and knowing himself to be so, he
should make this ignorance an excuse for baseless and unsupported accusa
tions of bad faith against a fellow-student, shows a blindness of prejudice com
paratively seldom met with outside so-called religious controversy.
The other criticisms of my adversaries are based simply on their
misunderstanding of my plain words. Because I compare the Friars in one
point only to the Wesleyans, Father Stanislaus imagines I deny that they
meant to be loyal sons of the Church ; thus showing an ignorance of early
Wesleyanism as great as his ignorance of logic. Again, he accuses me of
arguing " that the majority of the Friars were wastrels or scoundrels." I need
hardly warn anyone who has really read the foregoing article that I neither
said nor thought anything of the kind ; but I hope I have sufficiently proved
that, great as was the reforming work done by the Friars in their first few
years, they soon lost much of the virtue which had distinguished them, and that
this rapid decline may be attributed mainly to their association with a papal
court which was necessarily worldly in its methods. If anything is needed to
give force to my indictment, it may perhaps be found in the baseless and
futile accusations which it has provoked from the accredited champions of the
other side, and in their flat refusal to continue this discussion on ground which
would leave room for the production of full documentary evidence.

20 THE FAILURE OF THE FRIARS

APPENDIX
Original Text of the Passage summarised from St Bonaventura's
Epistle of 1257.
" Nunc autem quia pericula temporum urgent, et laesiones conscienti-
arum, necnon et scandala mundanorum, quibus cum Ordo deberet esse
sanctitatis totius speculum, in diversis orbis partibus in taedium vertitur et
contemptum ; quae mihi de consilio Discretorum visa sunt corrigenda, nee
penitus tacens, nee omnino exprimens, nee nova statuens, nee vincula super-
inducens, nee onera gravia alligans aliis et imponens, sed tanquam annuntiator
veritatis breviter exprimo, videns ilia nullatenus reticenda. Sane perquirenti
mihi causas, cur splendor nostri Ordinis quodam modo obscuratur,1 Ordo
exterius inficitur, et nitor conscientiarum interius defoedatur, occurrit negoti-
orum multiplicitas, qua pecunia, nostri Ordinis paupertati super omnia inimica,
avide petitur, incaute Tecipitur et incautius contrectatur. Occurrit quorundam
Fratrum otiositas, quae sentina est omnium vitiorum, qua plurimi consopiti,
monstruosum quendam statum inter contemplativam et activam eligentes, non
tam carnaliter quam crudeliter sanguinem comedunt animarum. Occurrit
evagatio plurimorum, qui propter solatium suorum corporum, gravando eos
per quos transeunt, non exempla post se relinquunt vitae, sed scandala potius
animarum. Occurrit "rmportuna petitio, propter quam omnes transeuntes per
terras adeo abhorrent Fratrum occursum, ut eis timeant quasi praedonibus
obviare. Occurrit aedificiorum constructio sumtuosa et curiosa, quae pacem
Fratrum inquietat, amicos gravat et hominum perversis judiciis multipliciter nos
exponit. Occurrit multiplicatio familiaritatum, quam Regula nostra prohibet,
ex qua suspiciones, infamationes et scandala plurima oriuntur. .... Licet
autem plurimi reperiantur, qui non sunt culpabiles in aliquo praedictorum,
tamen omnes involvit haec maledictio, nisi a non facientibus his qui faciunt
resistatur ; cum luce clarius omnia supradicta in maximum et nullo modo dis-
simulandum vergant nostri Ordinis detrimentum, hcet tepidis et indevotis et
secundum carnem sapientibus, considerantibus consuetudinem et allegantibus
multitudinem, quasi facilia et excusabilia, etiam - irremediabilia videantur.
1 So reads the Mainz edition of 1609, which I had used for my article (vii. p. 133) ; the
Quaracchi edition reads obfuscatur, " is darkened" (viii. p. 468).
8 ac, ed. Quaracchi.

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