Chapter I · THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS.

IN a former chapter we considered the Mendicants as an active agency in the suppression of heresy. One of the Orders, however, by no means restricted itself to this function, and we have now to examine the career of the Franciscans as the subjects of the spirit of persecuting uniformity which they did so much to render dominant.

While the mission of both Orders was to redeem the Church from the depth of degradation into which it had sunk, the Dominicans were more especially trained to take part in the active business of life. They therefore attracted the more restless and aggressive spirits; they accommodated themselves to the world, like the Jesuits of later days, and the worldliness which necessarily came with success awakened little antagonism within the organization. Power and luxury were welcomed and enjoyed. Even Thomas Aquinas, who, as we have seen, eloquently defended, against William of Saint-Amour, the superlative holiness of absolute poverty, subsequently admitted that poverty should be proportioned to the object which an Order was fitted to attain.[1]

It was otherwise with the Franciscans. Though, as we have seen, the founders determined not to render the Order a simply contemplative one, the salvation of the individual through retreat from the world and its temptations bore a much larger part in their motives than in those of Dominic and his followers.[2] Absolute poverty and self-abnegation were its primal principles, and it inevitably drew to itself the intellects which sought a refuge from the temptations of life in self-absorbing contemplation, in dreamy speculation, and in the renunciation of all that renders life attractive to average human nature. As the organization grew in wealth and power there were necessarily developed within its bosom antagonisms in two directions. On the one hand, it nourished a spirit of mysticism, which, though recognized in its favorite appellation of the Seraphic Order, sometimes found the trammels of orthodoxy oppressive. On the other, the men who continued to cherish the views of the founders as to the supreme obligation of absolute poverty could not reconcile their consciences to the accumulation of wealth and its display in splendor, and they rejected the ingenious devices which sought to accommodate the possession of riches with the abnegation of all possession.

In fact, the three vows, of poverty, obedience, and chastity, were all equally impossible of absolute observance. The first was irreconcilable with human necessities, the others with human passions. As for chastity, the whole history of the Church shows the impracticability of its enforcement. As for obedience, in the sense attached to it of absolute renunciation of the will, its incompatibility with the conduct of human affairs was shown at an early period, when Friar Haymo of Feversham overthrew Gregory, the Provincial of Paris, and, not long afterwards, withstood the general Elias, and procured his deposition. As for poverty, we shall see to what inextricable complications it led, despite the efforts of successive popes, until the imperious will and resolute common-sense of John XXII. brought the Order from its seraphic heights down to the every-day necessities of human life—at the cost, it must be confessed, of a schism. The trouble was increased by the fact that St. Francis, foreseeing the efforts which would be made to evade the spirit of the Rule, had, in his Testament, strictly forbidden all alterations, glosses, and explanations, and had commanded that these instructions should be read in all chapters of the Order. With the growth of the Franciscan legend, moreover, the Rule was held to be a special divine revelation, equal in authority to the gospel, and St. Francis was glorified until he became a being rather divine than human.[3]

Even before the death of the founder, in 1226, a Franciscan is found in Paris openly teaching heresies—of what nature we are not told, but probably the mystic reveries of an overwrought brain. As yet there was no Inquisition, and, as he was not subject to episcopal jurisdiction, he was brought before the papal legate, where he asserted many things contrary to the orthodox faith, and was imprisoned for life. This foreshadowed much that was to follow, though there is a long interval before we hear again of similar examples.[4]

The more serious trouble concerning poverty was not long in developing itself. Next to St. Francis himself in the Order stood Elias. Before Francis went on his mission to convert the Soldan he had sent Elias as provincial beyond the sea, and on his return from the adventure he brought Elias home with him. At the first general chapter, held in 1221, Francis being too much enfeebled to preside, Elias acted as spokesman and Francis sat at his feet, pulling his gown when he wanted anything said. In 1223 we hear of Cæsarius, the German provincial, going to Italy “to the blessed Francis or the Friar Elias.” When, through infirmity or inability to maintain discipline, Francis retired from the generalate, Elias was vicar-general of the Order, to whom Francis submitted himself as humbly as the meanest brother, and on the death of the saint, in October, 1226, it was Elias who notified the brethren throughout Europe of the event, and informed them of the Stigmata, which the humility of Francis had always concealed. Although in February, 1227, Giovanni Parenti of Florence was elected general, Elias seems practically to have retained control. Parties were rapidly forming themselves in the Order, and the lines between them were ever more sharply drawn. Elias was worldly and ambitious; he had the reputation of being one of the ablest men of affairs in Italy; he could foresee the power attaching to the command of the Order, and he had not much scruple as to the means of attaining it. He undertook the erection of a magnificent church at Assisi to receive the bones of the humble Francis, and he was unsparing in his demands for money to aid in its construction. The very handling of money was an abomination in the eyes of all true brethren, yet all the provinces were called upon to contribute, and a marble coffer was placed in front of the building to receive the gifts of the pious. This was unendurable, and Friar Leo went to Perugia to consult with the blessed Gilio, who had been the third associate to join St. Francis, who said it was contrary to the precepts of the founder. “Shall I break it, then?” inquired Leo. “Yes,” replied Gilio, “if you are dead, but if you are alive, let it alone, for you will not be able to endure the persecution of Elias.” Notwithstanding this warning, Leo went to Assisi, and with the assistance of some comrades broke the coffer; Elias filled all Assisi with his wrath, and Leo took refuge in a hermitage.[5]

When the edifice was sufficiently advanced, a general chapter was held in 1230 to solemnize the translation of the saintly corpse. Elias sought to utilize the occasion for his own election to the generalate by summoning to it only those brethren on whose support he could reckon, but Giovanni got wind of this and made the summons general. Elias then caused the translation to be effected before the brethren had assembled; his faction endeavored to forestall the action of the chapter by carrying him from his cell, breaking open the doors, and placing him in the general’s seat. Giovanni appeared, and after tumultuous proceedings his friends obtained the upper hand; the disturbers were scattered among the provinces, and Elias retreated to a hermitage, where he allowed his hair and beard to grow, and through this show of sanctity obtained reconciliation to the Order. Finally, in the chapter of 1232, his ambition was rewarded. Giovanni was deposed and he was elected general.[6]

These turbulent intrigues were not the only evidence of the rapid degeneracy of the Order. Before Francis’s Testament was five years old his commands against evasions of the Rule by cunning interpretations had been disregarded. The chapter of 1231 had applied to Gregory IX. to know whether the Testament was binding upon them in this respect, and he replied in the negative, for Francis could not bind his successors. They also asked about the prohibition to hold money and property, and Gregory ingeniously suggested that this could be effected through third parties, who could hold money and pay debts for them, arguing that such persons should not be regarded as their agents, but as the agents of those who gave the money or of those to whom it was to be paid. These elusory glosses of the Rule were not accepted without an energetic opposition which threatened a schism, and it is easy to imagine the bitterness with which the sincere members of the Order watched its rapid degeneracy; nor was this bitterness diminished by the use which Elias made of his position. His carnality and cruelty, we are told, convulsed the whole Order. His rule was arbitrary, and for seven years, in defiance of the regulations, he held no general chapter. He levied exactions on all the provinces to complete the great structure at Assisi. Those who resisted him were relegated to distant places. Even while yet only vicar he had caused St. Anthony of Padua, who had come to Assisi to worship at the tomb of Francis, to be scourged to the blood, when Anthony only expostulated with, “May the blessed God forgive you, brethren!” Worse was the fate of Cæsarius of Speier, who had been appointed Provincial of Germany in 1221 by St. Francis himself, and had built up the Order to the north of the Alps. He was the leader of the puritan malcontents, who were known as Cæsarians, and he felt the full wrath of Elias. Thrown into prison, he lay there in chains for two years. At length the fetters were removed, and, early in 1239, his jailer having left the door of his cell open, he ventured forth to stretch his cramped limbs in the wintry sun. The jailer returned and thought that he was attempting to escape. Fearing the pitiless anger of Elias, he rushed after the prisoner and dealt him a mortal blow with a cudgel. Cæsarius was the first, but by no means the last, martyr who shed his blood for the strict observance of a Rule breathing nothing but love and charity.[7]

The cup at last was full to overflowing. In 1237 Elias had sent visitors to the different provinces whose conduct caused general exasperation. The brethren of Saxony appealed to him from their visitor, and, finding this fruitless, they carried their complaint to Gregory. The pope at length was roused to intervene. A general chapter was convened in 1239, when, after a stormy scene in presence of Gregory and nine cardinals, the pope finally announced to Elias that his resignation would be received. Possibly in this there may have been political as well as ascetic motives. Elias was a skilful negotiator, and was looked upon with a friendly eye by Frederic II., who forthwith declared that the dismissal was done in his despite, for Elias was at the time engaged in an effort to heal the irremediable breach between the papacy and the empire. Certain it is that Elias at once took refuge with Frederic and became his intimate companion. Gregory made an effort to capture him by inviting him to a conference. Failing in this, a charge was brought against him of visiting poor women at Cortona without permission, and on refusing to obey a summons he was excommunicated.[8]

Thus already in the Franciscan Order there were established two well-defined parties, which came to be known as the Spirituals and the Conventuals, the one adhering to the strict letter of the Rule, the other willing to find excuses for its relaxation in obedience to the wants of human nature and the demands of worldliness. After the fall of Elias the former had the supremacy during the brief generalates of Alberto of Pisa, and Haymo of Feversham. In 1244 the Conventuals triumphed in the election of Crescenzio Grizzi da Jesi, under whom occurred what the Spirituals reckoned as the “Third Tribulation,” for, in accordance with their apocalyptic speculations, they were to undergo seven tribulations before the reign of the Holy Ghost should usher in the Millennium. Crescenzio followed in the footsteps of Elias. Under Haymo, in 1242, there had been an attempt to reconcile with the Rule Gregory’s declaration of 1231. Four leading doctors of the Order, with Alexander Hales at their head, had issued the Declaratio Quatuor Magistrorum, but even their logical subtlety had failed. The Order was constantly growing, it was constantly acquiring property, and its needs were constantly increasing. A bull of Gregory IX. in 1239, authorizing the Franciscans of Paris to acquire additional land with which to enlarge their monastery of Saint-Germain-des-Près, is an example of what was going on all over Europe. In 1244, at the chapter which elected Crescenzio, the Englishman, John Kethene, succeeded, against the opposition of nearly the whole body of the assembly, in obtaining the rejection of Gregory’s definition, but the triumph of the Puritans was short-lived. Crescenzio sympathized with the laxer party, and applied to Innocent IV. for relief. In 1245 the pope responded with a declaration in which he not only repeated the device of Gregory IX. by authorizing deposits of money with parties who were to be regarded as the agents of donors and creditors, but ingeniously assumed that houses and lands, the ownership of which was forbidden to the Order, should be regarded as belonging to the Holy See, which granted their use to the friars. Even papal authority could not render these transparent subterfuges satisfying to the consciences of the Spirituals, and the growing worldliness of the Order provoked continuous agitation. Crescenzio before taking the vows had been a jurist and physician, and there was further complaint that he encouraged the brethren in acquiring the vain and sterile science of Aristotle rather than in studying divine wisdom. Under Simone da Assisi, Giacopo Manfredo, Matteo da Monte Rubiano, and Lucido, seventy-two earnest brethren, finding Crescenzio deaf to their remonstrances, prepared to appeal to Innocent. He anticipated them, and obtained from the pope in advance a decision under which he scattered the recalcitrants in couples throughout the provinces for punishment. Fortunately his reign was short. Tempted by the bishopric of Jesi, he resigned, and in 1248 was succeeded by Giovanni Borelli, better known as John of Parma, who at the time was professor of theology in the University of Paris.[9]

The election of John of Parma marked a reaction in favor of strict observance. The new general was inspired with a holy zeal to realize the ideal of St. Francis. The exiled Spirituals were recalled and allowed to select their own domiciles. During the first three years John visited on foot the whole Order, sometimes with two, and sometimes with only one companion, in the most humble guise, so that he was unrecognized, and could remain in a convent for several days, observing its character, when he would reveal himself and reform its abuses. In the ardor of his zeal he spared the feelings of no one. A lector of the Mark of Ancona, returning home from Rome, described the excessive severity of a sermon preached by him, saying that the brethren of the Mark would never have allowed any one to say such things to them; and when asked why the masters who were present had not interfered, he replied, “How could they? It was a river of fire which flowed from his lips.” He suspended the declaration of Innocent IV. until the pontiff, better informed, could be consulted. It was, however, impossible for him to control the tendencies to relaxation of the Rule, which were ever growing stronger, and his efforts to that end only served to strengthen disaffection which finally grew to determined opposition. After consultation between some influential members of the Order it was resolved to bring before Alexander IV. formal accusations against him and the friends who surrounded him. The attitude of the Spirituals, in fact, fairly invited attack.[10]

To understand the position of the Spirituals at this time, and subsequently, it is necessary to cast a glance at one of the most remarkable spiritual developments of the thirteenth century. Its opening years had witnessed the death of Joachim of Flora, a man who may be regarded as the founder of modern mysticism. Sprung from a rich and noble family, and trained for the life of a courtier under Roger the Norman Duke of Apulia, a sudden desire to see the holy places took him, while yet a youth, to the East, with a retinue of servitors. A pestilence was raging when he reached Constantinople, which so impressed him with the miseries and vanities of life that he dismissed his suite and continued his voyage as an humble pilgrim with a single companion. His legend relates that he fell in the desert overcome with thirst, and had a vision of a man standing by a river of oil, and saying to him, “Drink of this stream,” which he did to satiety, and when he awoke, although previously illiterate, he had a knowledge of all Scripture. The following Lent he passed in an old well on Mount Tabor; in the night of the Resurrection a great splendor appeared to him, he was filled with divine light to understand the concordance of the Old and New Laws, and every difficulty and every obscurity vanished. These tales, repeated until the seventeenth century, show the profound and lasting impression which he left upon the minds of men.[11]

Thenceforth his life was dedicated to the service of God. Returning home, he avoided his father’s house, and commenced preaching to the people; but this was not permissible to a layman, so he entered the priesthood and the severe Cistercian Order. Chosen Abbot of Corazzo, he fled, but was brought back and forced to assume the duties of the office, till he visited Rome, in 1181, and obtained from Lucius III. permission to lay it down. Even the severe Cistercian discipline did not satisfy his thirst for austerity, and he retired to a hermitage at Pietralata, where his reputation for sanctity drew disciples around him, and in spite of his yearning for solitude he found himself at the head of a new Order, of which the Rule, anticipating the Mendicants in its urgency of poverty, was approved by Celestin III. in 1196. Already it had spread from the mother-house of San Giovanni in Fiore, and numbered several other monasteries.[12]

Joachim considered himself inspired, and though in 1200 he submitted his works unreservedly to the Holy See, he had no hesitation in speaking of them as divinely revealed. During his lifetime he enjoyed the reputation of a prophet. When Richard of England and Philip Augustus were at Messina, they sent for him to inquire as to the outcome of their crusade, and he is said to have foretold to them that the hour had not yet come for the deliverance of Jerusalem. Others of his fulfilled prophecies are also related, and the mystical character of the apocalyptic speculations which he left behind him served to increase, after his death, his reputation as a seer. His name became one customarily employed for centuries when any dreamer or sharper desired to attract attention, and quite a literature of forgeries grew up which were ascribed to him. Somewhat more than a century after his death we find the Dominican Pipino enumerating a long catalogue of his works with the utmost respect for his predictions. In 1319 Bernard Délicieux places unlimited confidence in a prophetical book of Joachim’s in which there were representations of all future popes with inscriptions and symbols under them. Bernard points out the different pontiffs of his own period, predicts the fate of John XXII., and declares that for two hundred years there had been no mortal to whom so much was revealed as to Joachim. Cola di Rienzo found in the pseudo-prophecies of Joachim the encouragement that inspired his second attempt to govern Rome. The Franciscan tract De ultima, Ætate Ecclesiæ, written in 1356, and long ascribed to Wickliff, expresses the utmost reverence for Joachim, and frequently cites his prophecies. The Liber Conformitatum, in 1385, quotes repeatedly the prediction ascribed to Joachim as to the foundation of the two Mendicant Orders, symbolized in those of the Dove and of the Crow, and the tribulations to which the former was to be exposed. Not long afterwards the hermit Telesforo da Cosenza drew from the same source prophecies as to the course and termination of the Great Schism, and the line of future popes until the coming of Antichrist—prophecies which attracted sufficient attention to call for a refutation from Henry of Hesse, one of the leading theologians of the day. Cardinal Peter d’Ailly speaks with respect of Joachim’s prophecies concerning Antichrist, and couples him with the prophetess St. Hildegarda, while the rationalistic Cornelius Agrippa endeavors to explain his predictions by the occult powers of numbers. Human credulity preserved his reputation as a prophet to modern times, and until at least as late as the seventeenth century prophecies under his name were published, containing series of popes with symbolical figures, inscriptions, and explanations, apparently similar to the Vaticinia Pontificum which so completely possessed the confidence of Bernard Délicieux. Even in the seventeenth century the Carmelites printed the Oraculum Angelicum of Cyril, with its pseudo-Joachitic commentary, as a proof of the antiquity of their Order.[13]

Joachim’s immense and durable reputation as a prophet was due not so much to his genuine works as to the spurious ones circulated under his name. These were numerous—Prophecies of Cyril, and of the Erythræan Sybil, Commentaries on Jeremiah, the Vaticinia Pontificum, the De Oneribus Ecclesiæ and De Septem Temporibus Ecclesiæ. In some of these, reference to Frederic II. would seem to indicate a period of composition about the year 1250, when the strife between the papacy and empire was at the hottest, and the current prophecies of Merlin were freely drawn upon in framing their exegesis. There can be little doubt that their authors were Franciscans of the Puritan party, and their fearless denunciations of existing evils show how impatient had grown the spirit of dissatisfaction. The apocalyptic prophecies were freely interpreted as referring to the carnal worldliness which pervaded all orders in the Church; all are reprobate, none are elect; Rome is the Whore of Babylon, and the papal curia the most venal and extortionate of all courts; the Roman Church is the barren fig-tree, accursed by Christ, which shall be abandoned to the nations to be stripped. It would be difficult to exaggerate the bitterness of antagonism displayed in these writings, even to the point of recognizing the empire as the instrument of God which is to overthrow the pride of the Church. These outspoken utterances of rebellion excited no little interest, especially within the Order itself. Adam de Marisco, the leading Franciscan of England, sends to his friend Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, some extracts from these works which have been brought to him from Italy. He speaks of Joachim as one justly credited with divine insight into prophetic mysteries; he asks to have the fragments returned to him after copying, and meanwhile commends to the bishop’s consideration the impending judgments of Providence which are invited by the abounding wickedness of the time.[14]

Of Joachim’s genuine writings the one which, perhaps, attracted the most attention in his own day was a tract on the nature of the Trinity, attacking the definition of Peter Lombard, and asserting that it attributed a Quaternity to God. The subtleties of theology were dangerous, and in place of proving the Master of Sentences a heretic, Joachim himself narrowly escaped. Thirteen years after his death, the great Council of Lateran, in 1215, thought his speculation sufficiently important to condemn it as erroneous in an elaborate refutation, which was carried into the canon law, and Innocent III. preached a sermon on the subject to the assembled fathers. Fortunately Joachim, in 1200, had expressly submitted all his writings to the judgment of the Holy See and had declared that he held the same faith as that of Rome. The council, therefore, refrained from condemning him personally and expressed its approbation of his Order of Flora; but notwithstanding this the monks found themselves derided and insulted as the followers of a heretic, until, in 1220, they procured from Honorius III. a bull expressly declaring that he was a good Catholic, and forbidding all detraction of his disciples.[15]

His most important writings, however, were his expositions of Scripture composed at the request of Lucius III., Urban III., and Clement III. Of these there were three—the Concordia, the Decachordon, or Psalterium decem Cordarum, and the Expositio in Apocalypsin. In these his system of exegesis is to find in every incident under the Old Law the prefiguration of a corresponding fact in chronological order under the New Dispensation, and by an arbitrary parallelism of dates to reach forward and ascertain what is yet to come. He thus determines that mankind is destined to live through three states—the first under the rule of the Father, which ended at the birth of Christ, the second under that of the Son, and the third under the Holy Ghost. The reign of the Son, or of the New Testament, he ascertains by varied apocalyptic speculations is to last through forty-two generations, or 1260 years—for instance, Judith remained in widowhood three years and a half, or forty-two months, which is 1260 days, the great number representing the years through which the New Testament is to endure, so that in the year 1260 the domination of the Holy Ghost is to replace it. In the forty-second generation there will be a purgation which will separate the wheat from the chaff—such tribulations as man has never yet endured: fortunately they will be short, or all flesh would perish utterly. After this, religion will be renewed; man will live in peace and justice and joy, as in the Sabbath which closed the labors of creation; all shall know God, from sea to sea, to the utmost confines of the earth, and the glory of the Holy Ghost shall be perfect. In that final abundance of spiritual grace the observances of religion will be no longer requisite. As the paschal lamb was superseded by the Eucharist, so the sacrifice of the altar will become superfluous. A new monastic Order is to arise which will convert the world; contemplative monachism is the highest development of humanity, and the world will become, as it were, one vast monastery.[16]

In this scheme of the future elevation of man, Joachim recognized fully the evils of his time. The Church he describes as thoroughly given over to avarice and greed; wholly abandoned to the lusts of the flesh, it neglects its children, who are carried off by zealous heretics. The Church of the second state, he says, is Hagar, but that of the third state will be Sarah. With endless amplitude he illustrates the progressive character of the relations between God and man in the successive eras. The first state, under God, was of the circumcision; the second, under Christ, is of the crucifixion; the third, under the Holy Ghost, will be of quietude and peace. Under the first was the order of the married; under the second, that of the priesthood; under the third will be that of monachism, which has already had its precursor in St. Benedict. The first was the reign of Saul, the second that of David, the third will be that of Solomon enjoying the plenitude of peace. In the first, man was under the law, in the second under grace, in the third he will be under ampler grace. The people of the first state are symbolized by Zachariah the priest, those of the second by John the Baptist, those of the third by Christ himself. In the first state there was knowledge, in the second piety, in the third will be plenitude of knowledge; the first state was servitude, the second was filial obedience, the third will be liberty; the first state was passed in scourging, the second in action, the third will be in contemplation; the first was in fear, the second in faith, the third will be in love; the first was of slaves, the second of freemen, the third will be of friends; the first was of old men, the second of youths, the third will be of children; the first was starlight, the second dawn, the third will be perfect day; the first was winter, the second opening spring, the third will be summer; the first brought forth nettles, the second roses, the third will bear lilies; the first was grass, the second grain in the ear, the third will be the ripened wheat; the first was water, the second wine, the third will be oil. Finally, the first belongs to the Father, creator of all things, the second to the Son, who assumed our mortal clay, the third will belong to the pure Holy Spirit.[17]

It is a very curious fact that while Joachim’s metaphysical subtleties respecting the Trinity were ostentatiously condemned as a dangerous heresy, no one seems at the time to have recognized the far more perilous conclusions to be drawn from these apocalyptic reveries. So far from being burned as heretical, they were prized by popes, and Joachim was honored as a prophet until his audacious imitators and followers developed the revolutionary doctrines to which they necessarily led. To us, for the moment, their chief significance lies in the proof which they afford that the most pious minds confessed that Christianity was practically a failure. Mankind had scarce grown better under the New Law. Vices and passions were as unchecked as they had been before the coming of the Redeemer. The Church itself was worldly and carnal; in place of elevating man it had been dragged down to his level; it had proved false to its trust and was the exemplar of evil rather than the pattern of good. To such men as Joachim it was impossible that crime and misery should be the ultimate and irremediable condition of human life, and yet the Atonement had thus far done little to bring it nearer to the ideal. Christianity, therefore, could not be a finality in man’s existence upon earth; it was merely an intermediate condition, to be followed by a further development, in which, under the rule of the Holy Ghost, the law of love, fruitlessly inculcated by the gospel, should at last become the dominant principle, and men, released from carnal passions, should realize the glad promises so constantly held out before them and so miserably withheld in the performance. Joachim himself might seek to evade these deductions from his premises, yet others could not fail to make them, and nothing could be more audaciously subversive of the established spiritual and temporal order of the Church.

Yet for a time his speculations attracted little attention and no animadversion. It is possible that the condemnation of his theory of the Trinity may have cast a shadow over his exegetical works and prevented their general dissemination, but they were treasured by kindred spirits, and copies of them were carried into various lands and carefully preserved. Curiously enough, the first response which they elicited was from the bold heretics known as the Amaurians, whose ruthless suppression in Paris, about the year 1210, we have already considered. Among their errors was enumerated that of the three Eras, which was evidently derived from Joachim, with the difference that the third Era had already commenced. The power of the Father only lasted under the Mosaic Law; with the advent of Christ all the sacraments of the Old Testament were superseded. The reign of Christ has lasted till the present time, but now commences the sovereignty of the Holy Ghost; the sacraments of the New Testament—baptism, the Eucharist, penitence, and the rest—are obsolete and to be discarded, and the power of the Holy Ghost will operate through the persons in whom it is incarnated. The Amaurians, as we have seen, promptly disappeared, and the derivative sects—the Ortlibenses, and the Brethren of the Free Spirit—seem to have omitted this feature of the heresy. At all events, we hear nothing more of it in that quarter.[18]

Gradually, however, the writings of Joachim obtained currency, and with the ascription to him of the false prophecies which appeared towards the middle of the century his name became more widely known and of greater authority. In Provence and Languedoc, especially, his teachings found eager reception. Harried successively by the crusades and the Inquisition, and scarce as yet fairly reunited with the Church, those regions furnished an ample harvest of earnest minds which might well seek in the hoped-for speedy realization of Joachim’s dreams compensation for the miseries of the present. Nor did those dreams lack an apostle of unquestionable orthodoxy. Hugues de Digne, a hermit of Hyères, had a wide reputation for learning, eloquence, and sanctity. He had been Franciscan Provincial of Provence, but had laid down that dignity to gratify his passion for austerity, and his sister, St. Douceline, lived in a succession of ecstasies in which she was lifted from the ground. Hugues was intimate with the leading men of the Order; Alexander Hales, Adam de Marisco, and the general, John of Parma, are named as among his close friends. With the latter, especially, he had the common bond that both were earnest Joachites. He possessed all the works of Joachim, genuine and spurious, he had the utmost confidence in their prophecies, which he regarded as divine inspiration, and he did much to extend the knowledge of them, which was not difficult, as he himself had the reputation of a prophet.[19]

The Spiritual section of the Franciscans was rapidly becoming leavened with these ideas. To minds inclined to mysticism, filled with unrest, dissatisfied with the existing unfulfilment of their ideal, and longing earnestly for its realization, there might well be an irresistible fascination in the promises of the Calabrian abbot, of which the term was now so rapidly approaching. If these Joachitic Franciscans developed the ideas of their teacher with greater boldness and definiteness, their ardor had ample excuse. They were living witnesses of the moral failure of an effort from which everything had been expected for the regeneration of humanity. They had seen how the saintly teachings of Francis and the new revelation of which he had been the medium were perverted by worldly men to purposes of ambition and greed; how the Order, which should have been the germ of human redemption, was growing more and more carnal, and how its saints were martyred by their fellows. Unless the universe were a failure, and the promises of God were lies, there must be a term to human wickedness; and as the Gospel of Christ and the Rule of Francis had not accomplished the salvation of mankind, a new gospel was indispensable. Besides, Joachim had predicted that there would arise a new religious Order which would rule the world and the Church in the halcyon age of the Holy Ghost. They could not doubt that this referred to the Franciscans as represented by the Spiritual group, which was striving to uphold in all its strictness the Rule of the venerated founder.[20]

Such, we may presume, were the ideas which were troubling the hearts of the earnest Spirituals as they pondered over the prophecies of Joachim. In their exaltation many of them were themselves given to ecstasies and visions full of prophetic insight. Prominent members of the Order had openly embraced the Joachitic doctrines, and his prophecies, genuine and spurious, were applied to all events as they occurred. In 1248 Salimbene, the chronicler, who was already a warm believer, met at the Franciscan convent of Provins (Champagne) two ardent condisciples, Gherardo da Borgo San Donnino and Bartolommeo Ghiscolo of Parma. St. Louis was just setting forth on his ill-starred Egyptian crusade. The Joachites had recourse to the pseudo-Joachim on Jeremiah, and foretold that the expedition would be a failure, that the king would be taken prisoner, and that pestilence would decimate the host. This was not calculated to render them popular; the peace of the good brethren was sadly broken by quarrels, and the Joachites found it advisable to depart. Salimbene went to Auxerre, Ghiscolo to Sens, and Gherardo to Paris, where his learning secured for him admission to the university as the representative of Sicily, and he obtained a chair in theology. Here for four years he pursued his apocalyptic studies.[21]

Suddenly, in 1254, Paris was startled with the appearance of a book under the title of “The Everlasting Gospel”—a name derived from the Apocalypse—“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Rev. xiv. 6). It consisted of Joachim’s three undoubted works, with explanatory glosses, preceded by a long Introduction, in which the hardy author developed the ideas of the prophet audaciously and uncompromisingly. The daring venture had an immediate and immense popular success, which shows how profoundly the conviction which prompted it was shared among all classes. The rhymes of Jean de Meung indicate that the demand for it came from the laity rather than the clergy, and that it was sought by women as well as by men—

Nothing more revolutionary in spirit, more subversive of the established order of the Church, can be conceived than the assertions which thus aroused popular sympathy and applause. Joachim’s computations were accepted, and it was assumed absolutely that in six years, in 1260, the reign of Christ would end and the reign of the Holy Ghost begin. Already, in 1200, the spirit of life had abandoned the Old and New Testaments in order to give place to the Everlasting Gospel, consisting of the Concordia, the Expositio, and the Decachordon—the development and spiritualization of all that had preceded it. Even as Joachim had dwelt on the ascending scale of the three Eras, so the author of the Introduction characterized the progressive methods of the three Scriptures. The Old Testament is the first heaven, the New Testament the second heaven, the Everlasting Gospel the third heaven. The first is like the light of the stars, the second like that of the moon, and the third like that of the sun; the first is the porch, the second the holy place, and the third the Holy of Holies; the first is the rind, the second the nut, the third the kernel; the first is earth, the second water, the third fire; the first is literal, the second spiritual, and the third is the law promised in Jeremiah XXXI. The preaching and dissemination of this supreme and eternal law of God is committed to the barefooted Order (the Franciscans). At the threshold of the Old Law were three men, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: at that of the New Law were three others, Zachariah, John the Baptist, and Christ: and at that of the coming age are three, the man in linen (Joachim), the Angel with the sharp sickle, and the Angel with the sign of the living God (Francis). In the blessed coming reign of the Holy Ghost men will live under the law of love, as in the first Era they lived in fear, and in the second in grace. Joachim had argued against the continuance of the sacraments; Gherardo regarded them as symbols and enigmas, from which man would be liberated in the time to come, for love would replace all the observances founded upon the second Dispensation. This was destructive of the whole sacerdotal system, which was to be swept away and relegated to the limbo of the forgotten past; and scarce less revolutionary was his bold declaration that the Abomination of Desolation would be a pope tainted with simony, who, towards the end of the sixth age, now at hand, would obtain the papacy.[23]

The authorship of this bold challenge to an infallible Church was long attributed to John of Parma himself, but there would seem little doubt that it was the work of Gherardo—the outcome of his studies and reveries during the four years spent in the University of Paris, although John of Parma possibly had a hand in it. Certainly, as Tocco well points out, he at least sympathized with it, for he never punished the author, in spite of the scandal which it brought upon the Order, and Bernard Gui tells us that at the time it was commonly ascribed to him. I have already related with what joy William of Saint Amour seized upon it in the quarrel between the University and the Mendicants, and the advantage it momentarily gave the former. Under existing circumstances it could have no friends or defenders. It was too reckless an onslaught on all existing institutions, temporal and spiritual. The only thing to be done with it was to suppress it as quietly as possible. Consideration for the Franciscan Order demanded this, as well as the prudence which counselled that attention should not be unduly called to it, although hundreds of victims had been burned for heresies far less dangerous. The commission which sat at Anagni in July, 1255, for its condemnation had a task over which there could be no debate, but I have already pointed out the contrast between the reserve with which it was suppressed and the vindictive clamor with which Saint Amour’s book against the Mendicants was ordered to be burned.[24]

The Spiritual section of the Franciscans was fatally compromised, and the worldly party, which had impatiently borne the strict rule of John of Parma, saw its opportunity of gaining the ascendency. Led by Bernardo da Bessa, the companion of Bonaventura, formal articles of accusation were presented to Alexander IV. against the general. He was accused of listening to no explanations of the Rule and Testament, holding that the privileges and declarations of the popes were of no moment in comparison. It was not hinted that he was implicated in the Everlasting Gospel, but it was alleged that he pretended to enjoy the spirit of prophecy and that he predicted a division of the Order between those who procured papal relaxations and those who adhered to the Rule, the latter of whom would flourish under the dew of heaven and the benediction of God. Moreover, he was not orthodox, but defended the errors of Joachim concerning the Trinity, and his immediate comrades had not hesitated, in sermons and tracts, to praise Joachim immoderately and to assail the leading men of the Order. In this, as in the rest of the proceedings, the studied silence preserved as to the Everlasting Gospel shows how dangerous was the subject, and how even the fierce passions of the strife shrank from compromising the Order by admitting that any of its members were responsible for that incendiary production.[25]

Alexander was easily persuaded, and a general chapter was held in the Aracœli, February 2, 1257, over which he personally presided. John of Parma was warned to resign, and did so, pleading age, weariness, and disability. After a decent show of resistance his resignation was accepted and he was asked to nominate a successor. His choice fell upon Bonaventura, then only thirty-four years of age, whose participation in the struggle with the University of Paris had marked him as the most promising man in the Order, while he was not identified with either faction. He was duly elected, and the leaders of the movement required him to proceed against John and his adherents. Bonaventura for a while hesitated, but at length consented. Gherardo refused to recant, and Bonaventura sent for him to come to Paris. In passing through Modena he met Salimbene, who had cowered before the storm and had renounced Joachitism as a folly. The two friends had a long colloquy, in which Gherardo offered to prove that Antichrist was already at hand in the person of Alonso the Wise of Castile. He was learned, pure-minded, temperate, modest, amiable—in a word, a most admirable and lovable character; but nothing could wean him from his Joachitic convictions, though in his trial discreet silence, as usual, was observed about the Everlasting Gospel, and he was condemned as an upholder of Joachim’s Trinitarian speculations. Had he not been a Franciscan he would have been burned. It was a doubtful mercy which consigned him to a dungeon in chains and fed him on bread and water for eighteen years, until his weary life came to an end. He never wavered to the last, and his remains were thrust into a corner of the garden of the convent where he died. The same fate awaited his comrade Leonardo, and also another friar named Piero de’ Nubili, who refused to surrender a tract of John of Parma’s.[26]

Then John himself was tried by a special court, to preside over which Alexander appointed Cardinal Caietano, afterwards Nicholas III. The accused readily retracted his advocacy of Joachim, but his bearing irritated the judges, and, with Bonaventura’s consent, he would have shared the fate of his associates but for the strenuous intercession of Ottoboni, Cardinal of S. Adrian, afterwards Adrian V. Bonaventura gave him the option of selecting a place of retreat, and he chose a little convent near Rieti. There he is said to have lived for thirty-two years the life of an angel, without abandoning his Joachitic beliefs. John XXI., who greatly loved him, thought of making him a cardinal in 1277, but was prevented by death. Nicholas III., who had presided at his trial, a few years later offered him the cardinalate, so as to be able to enjoy his advice, but he quietly answered, “I could give wholesome counsel if there were any one to listen to me, but in the Roman court there is little discussed but wars and triumphs, and not the salvation of souls.” In 1289, however, notwithstanding his extreme age, he accepted from Nicholas IV. a mission to the Greek Church, but he died at Camerino soon after setting out. Buried there, he speedily shone in miracles; he became the object of a lasting cult, and in 1777 he was formally beatified, in spite of the opposition arising from his alleged authorship of the Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel.[27]

The faith of the Joachites was by no means broken by these reverses. William of Saint Amour thought it necessary to return to the charge with another bitter tract directed against them. He shares their belief in the impending change, but declares that in place of being the reign of love under the Holy Ghost, it will be the reign of Antichrist, whom he identifies with the Friars. Persecution, he says, had put an end to the open defence of the pestiferous doctrine of the Everlasting Gospel, but it still had many believers in secret. The south of France was the headquarters of the sect. Florent, Bishop of Acre, had been the official prosecutor before the Commission of Anagni in 1255. He was rewarded with the archbishopric of Arles in 1262, and in 1265 he held a provincial synod with the object of condemning the Joachites, who were still numerous in his province. An elaborate refutation of the errors of the Everlasting Gospel was deemed necessary; it was deplored that many learned men still suffered themselves to be misled by it, and that books containing it were written and eagerly passed from hand to hand. The anathema was decreed against this, but no measures of active persecution seem to have been adopted, nor do we hear of any steps taken by the Inquisition to suppress the heresy. As we shall see hereafter, the leaven long remained in Languedoc and Provence, and gave a decided impress to the Spiritual Franciscanism of those regions. It mattered little that the hoped-for year 1260 came and passed away without the fulfilment of the prophecy. Earnest believers can always find excuses for such errors in computation, and the period of the advent of the Holy Ghost could be put off from time to time, so as always to stimulate hope with the prospect of emancipation in the near future.[28]

Although the removal of John of Parma from the generalate had been the victory of the Conventuals, the choice of Bonaventura might well seem to give to the Spirituals assurance of continued supremacy. In his controversy with William of Saint Amour he had taken the most advanced ground in denying that Christ and the apostles held property of any kind, and in identifying poverty with perfection. “Deep poverty is laudable; this is true of itself: therefore deeper poverty is more laudable, and the deepest, the most laudable. But this is the poverty of him who neither in private nor in common keeps anything for himself.... To renounce all things, in private or in common, is Christian perfection, not only sufficient but abundant: it is the principal counsel of evangelical perfection, its fundamental principle and sublime foundation.” Not only this, but he was deeply imbued with mysticism and was the first to give authoritative expression to the Illuminism which subsequently gave the Church so much trouble. His Mystica Theologia is in sharp contrast to the arid scholastic theology of the day as represented by Thomas Aquinas. The soul is brought face to face with God; its sins are to be repented of in the silent watches of the night, and it is to seek God through its own efforts. It is not to look to others for aid or leadership, but, depending on itself, strive for the vision of the Divine. Through this Path of Purgation it ascends to the Path of Illumination, and is prepared for the reception of the Divine Radiance. Finally it reaches the Third Path, which leads to union with the Godhead and participation in Divine Wisdom. Molinos and Madame Guyon indulged in no more dangerous speculations; and the mystic tendencies of the Spirituals received a powerful stimulus from such teachings.[29]

It was inevitable that the strife within the Order between property and poverty should grow increasingly bitter. Questions were constantly arising which showed the incompatibility of the vows as laid down by St. Francis with the functions of an organization which had grown to be one of the leading factors of a wealthy and worldly Church. In 1255 we find the sisters of the monastery of St. Elizabeth complaining to Alexander IV. that when property was given or bequeathed to them the ecclesiastical authorities enforced on them the observance of the Rule, by compelling them to part with it within a year by sale or gift, and the pope graciously promised that no such custom should be enforced in future. About the same time John of Parma complained that when his friars were promoted to the episcopate they carried away with them books and other things of which they had properly only the use, being unable to own anything under peril of their souls. Again Alexander graciously replied that friars, on promotion, must deliver to the provincial everything which they had in their hands. Such troubles must have been of almost daily occurrence, and it was inevitable that the increasing friction should result in schism. When the blessed Gilio, the third disciple who joined St. Francis, was taken to Assisi to view the splendid buildings erected in honor of the humble Francis, and was carried through three magnificent churches, connected with a vast refectory, a spacious dormitory, and other offices and cloisters, adorned with lofty arches and spacious portals, he kept silent until one of his guides pressed him for an expression of admiration. “Brethren,” he then said, “there is nothing lacking except your wives.” This seemed somewhat irrelevant, till he explained that the vows of poverty and chastity were equally binding, and now that one was set aside the other might as well follow. Salimbene relates that in the convent of Pisa he met Frà Boncampagno di Prato, who, in place of the two new tunics per year distributed to each of the brethren, would only accept one old one, and who declared that he could scarce satisfy God for taking that one. Such exaggerated conscientious sensitiveness could not but be peculiarly exasperating to the more worldly members.[30]

The Conventuals had lost no time in securing the results of their victory over John of Parma. Scarce had his resignation been secured, and before Bonaventura could arrive from Paris they obtained from Alexander, February 20, 1257, a repetition of the declaration of Innocent IV. which enabled the Order to handle money and hold property through the transparent device of agents and the Holy See. The disgust of the Puritan party was great, and even the implicit reverence prescribed for the papacy could not prevent ominous mutterings of disobedience, raising questions as to the extent of the papal power to bind and to loose, which in time were to ripen into open rebellion. The Rule had been proclaimed a revelation equal in authority to the gospel, and it might well be asked whether even the successor of St. Peter could set it aside. It was probably about this time that Berthold of Ratisbon, the most celebrated Franciscan preacher of his day, in discoursing to his brethren on the monastic state, boldly declared that the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity were so binding that even the pope could not dispense for them. This, in fact, was admitted on all sides as a truism. About 1290 the Dominican Provincial of Germany, Hermann of Minden, in an encyclical, alludes to it as a matter of course, but in little more than a quarter of a century we shall see that such utterances were treated as heresy, and were sternly suppressed with the stake.[31]

Bonaventura, as we have seen, honestly sought to restrain the growing laxity of the Order. Before leaving Paris he addressed, April 23, 1257, an encyclical letter to the provincials, calling their attention to the prevalent vices of the brethren and the contempt to which they exposed the whole Order. Again, some ten years later, at the instance of Clement IV., he issued another similar epistle, in which he strongly expressed his horror at the neglect of the Rule shown in the shameless greed of so many members, the importunate striving for gain, the ceaseless litigation caused by their grasping after legacies and burials, and the splendor and luxury of their buildings. The provincials were instructed to put an end to these disorders by penance, imprisonment, or expulsion; but however earnest in his zeal Bonaventura may have been, and however self-denying in his own life, he lacked the fiery energy which enabled John of Parma to give effect to his convictions. How utter was the prevailing degeneracy is seen in the complaint presented in 1265 to Clement IV., that in many places the ecclesiastical authorities held that the friars, being dead to the world, were incapable of inheritance. Relief was prayed from this, and Clement issued a bull declaring them competent to inherit and free to hold their inheritances, or to sell them, and to use the property or its price as might to them seem best.[32]

The question of poverty evidently was one incapable of permanent and satisfactory settlement. Dissension in the Order could not be healed. In vain Gregory X., about 1275, was appealed to, and decided that the injunction of the Rule against the possession of property, individually or in common, was to be strictly observed. The worldly party continued to point out the incompatibility of this with the necessities of human nature; they declared it to be a tempting of God and a suicide of the individual; the quarrel continually grew more bitterly envenomed, and in 1279 Nicholas III. undertook to settle it with a formal declaration which should forever close the mouths of all cavillers. For two months he secretly labored at it in consultation with the two Franciscan cardinals, Palestrina and Albano, the general, Bonagrazia, and some of the provincials. Then it was submitted to a commission in which was Benedetto Caietano, afterwards Boniface VIII. Finally it was read and adopted in full consistory, and it was included, twenty years later, in the additions to the canon law compiled and published by order of Boniface. No utterance of the Holy See could have more careful consideration and more solemn authority than the bull known as Exiit qui seminat, which was thus ushered into the world, and which subsequently became the subject of such deadly controversy.[33]

It declares the Franciscan Rule to be the inspiration of the Holy Ghost through St. Francis. The renunciation of property, not only individual but in common, is meritorious and holy. Such absolute renunciation of possession had been practised by Christ and the apostles, and had been taught by them to their disciples; it is not only meritorious and perfect, but lawful and possible, for there is a distinction between use, which is permitted, and ownership, which is forbidden. Following the example of Innocent IV. and Alexander IV., the proprietorship of all that the Franciscans use is declared to be vested, now and hereafter, in the Roman Church and pontiff, which concede to the friars the usufruct thereof. The prohibition to receive and handle money is to be enforced, and borrowing is especially deprecated; but, when necessity obliges, this may be effected through third parties, although the brethren must abstain from handling the money or administering or expending it. As for legacies, they must not be left directly to the friars, but only for their use; and minute regulations are drawn up for exchanging or selling books and utensils. The bull concludes with instructions that it is to be read and taught in the schools, but no one, under pain of excommunication and loss of office and benefice, shall do anything but expound it literally—it is not to be glossed or commented upon, or discussed, or explained away. All doubts and questions shall be submitted directly to the Holy See, and any one disputing or commenting on the Franciscan Rule or the definitions of the bull shall undergo excommunication, removable only by the pope.

Had the question been capable of permanent settlement in this sense, this solemn utterance would have put an end to further trouble. Unluckily, human nature did not cease to be human nature, with its passions and necessities, on crossing the threshold of a Franciscan convent. Unluckily, papal constitutions were as cobwebs when they sought to control the ineradicable vices and weakness of man; Unluckily, moreover, there were consciences too sensitive to be satisfied with fine-drawn distinctions and subtleties ingeniously devised to evade the truth. Yet the bull Exiit qui seminat for a while relieved the papacy from further discussion, although it could not quiet the intestine dissensions of the Order. There was still a body of recalcitrants, not numerous, it is true, but eminent for the piety and virtue of its members, which could not be reconciled by these subterfuges. These recalcitrants gradually formed themselves into two distinct bodies, one in Italy, and the other in southern France. At first there is little to distinguish them apart, and for a long while they acted in unison, but there gradually arose a divergence between them, which in the end became decisively marked, owing to the greater influence exercised in Languedoc and Provence by the traditions of Joachim and the Everlasting Gospel.

We have seen how the thirst for ascetic poverty, coupled in many cases, doubtless, with the desire to escape from the sordid cares of daily life, led thousands to embrace a career of wandering mendicancy. Sarabites and circumcelliones—vagrant monks, subjected to no rule—had been the curse of the Church ever since the invention of cenobitism; and the exaltation of poverty in the thirteenth century had given a new impulse to the crowds who preferred the idleness of the road or of the hermitage to the restraints and labor of civilized existence. It was in vain that the Lateran Council had prohibited the formation of new and unauthorized Orders. The splendid success of the Mendicants had proved too alluring, and others were formed on the same basis, without the requisite preliminary of the papal approval. The multitudes of holy beggars were becoming a serious nuisance, oppressive to the people and disgraceful to the Church. When Gregory X. summoned the General Council of Lyons, in 1274, this was one of the evils to be remedied. The Lateran canon prohibiting the formation of unauthorized Orders was renewed. Gregory proposed to suppress all the congregations of hermits, but, at the instance of Cardinal Richard, the Carmelites and Augustinians were allowed to exist on sufferance until further order, while the audacity of other associations, not as yet approved, was condemned, especially that of the mendicants, whose multitude was declared to exceed all bounds. Such mendicant Orders as had been confirmed since the Council of Lateran were permitted to continue, but they were instructed to admit no new members, to acquire no new houses, and not to sell what they possessed without special license from the Holy See. Evidently it was felt that the time had come for decisive measures to check the tide of saintly mendicancy.[34]

Some vague and incorrect rumors of this legislation penetrating to Italy, led to an explosion which started one of the most extraordinary series of persecutions which the history of human perversity affords. On the one hand there is the marvellous constancy which endured lifelong martyrdom for an idea almost unintelligible to the modern mind; on the other there is the seemingly causeless ferocity, which appears to persecute for the mere pleasure of persecution, only to be explained by the bitterness of the feuds existing within the Order, and the savage determination to enforce submission at every cost.

It was reported that the Council of Lyons had decreed that the Mendicants could hold property. Most of the brethren acquiesced readily enough, but those who regarded the Rule as divine revelation, not to be tampered with by any earthly authority, declared that it would be apostasy, and a thing not to be admitted under any circumstances. Several disputations were held which only confirmed each side in its views. One point which gave rise to peculiar animosity was the refusal of the Spirituals to take their turns in the daily rounds in quest of moneyed alms, which had grown to be the custom in most places; and it is easy to imagine the bitter antagonism to which this disobedience must have led. It shows how strained were the relations between the factions that proceedings for heresy were forthwith commenced against these zealots. The rumor proved false, the excitement died away, and the prosecutions were allowed to slumber for a few years, when they were revived through fear that these extreme opinions, if left unpunished, might win over the majority. Liberato da Macerata, Angelo da Cingoli (il Clareno), Traymondo, Tommaso da Tollentino, and one or two others whose names have not reached us were the obdurate ones who would make no concession, even in theory. Angelo, to whom we owe an account of the matter, declared that they were ready to render implicit obedience, that no offence was proved against them, but that nevertheless they were condemned, as schismatics and heretics, to perpetual imprisonment in chains. The sentence was inhumanly harsh. They were to be deprived of the sacraments, even upon the death-bed, thus killing soul as well as body; during life no one was to speak with them, not even the jailer who brought the daily pittance of bread and water to their cells, and examined their fetters to see that they were attempting no escape. As a warning, moreover, the sentence was ordered to be read weekly in all the chapters, and no one was to presume to criticise it as unjust. This was no idle threat, for when Friar Tommaso da Casteldemilio heard it read and said it was displeasing to God, he was cast into a similar prison, where he rotted to death in a few months. The fierce spirits in control of the Order were evidently determined that at least the vow of obedience should be maintained.[35]

The prisoners seem to have lain in jail until after the election to the generalate of Raymond Gaufridi, at Easter, 1289. Visiting the Mark of Ancona, where they were incarcerated, he investigated the case, blamed severely the perpetrators of the injustice, and set the martyrs free in 1290. The Order had been growing more lax in its observance than ever, in spite of the bull Exiit qui seminat. Matteo d’Acquasparta, who was general from 1287 to 1289, was easy and kindly, well-intentioned but given to self-indulgence, and by no means inclined to the effort requisite to enforce the Rule. Respect for it, indeed, was daily diminishing. Coffers were placed in the churches to receive offerings; bargains were made as to the price of masses and for the absolution of sinners; boys were stationed at the church-doors to sell wax tapers in honor of saints; the Friars habitually begged money in the streets, accompanied by boys to receive and carry it; the sepulture of the rich was eagerly sought for, leading to disgraceful quarrels with the heirs and with the secular clergy. Everywhere there was self-seeking and desire for the enjoyment of an idle and luxurious life. It is true that lapses of the flesh were still rigidly punished, but these cases were sufficiently frequent to show that ample cause for scandal arose from the forbidden familiarity with women which the brethren permitted themselves. So utter was the general demoralization that Nicholas, the Provincial of France, even dared to write a tract calling in question the bull Exiit qui seminat and its exposition of the Rule. As this was in direct contravention of the bull itself, Acquasparta felt compelled to condemn the work and to punish its author and his supporters, but the evil continued to work. In the Mark of Ancona and in some other places the reaction against asceticism was so strong that the Testament of the revered Francis was officially ordered to be burned. It was the main bulwark of the Spirituals against relaxation of the Rule, and in one instance it was actually burned on the head of a friar, N. de Recanate, who presumably had made himself obnoxious by insisting on its authority.[36]

Raymond Gaufridi was earnestly desirous of restoring discipline, but the relaxation of the Order had grown past curing. His release of the Spirituals at Ancona caused much murmuring; he was ridiculed as a patron of fantastic and superstitious men, and conspiracies were set on foot which never ceased till his removal was effected in 1295. It was perhaps to conjure these attempts that he sent Liberato, Angelo, Tommaso, and two kindred spirits named Marco and Piero to Armenia, where they induced King Haito II. to enter the Franciscan Order, and won from him the warmest eulogies. Even in the East, however, the hatred of their fellow-missionaries was so earnest and so demonstrative that they were forced to return in 1293. On their arrival in Italy the provincial, Monaldo, refused to receive them or to allow them to remain until they could communicate with Raymond, declaring that he would rather entertain fornicators.[37]

The unreasoning wrath which insisted on these votaries of poverty violating their convictions received a check when, in 1294, the choice of the exhausted conclave fell by chance on the hermit Pier Morrone, who suddenly found his mountain burrow transformed into the papal palace. Celestin V. preserved in St. Peter’s chair the predilection for solitude and maceration which had led him to the life of the anchorite. To him Raymond referred the Spirituals, whom he seemed unable to protect. Celestin listened to them kindly and invited them to enter his special Order—the Celestinian Benedictines—but they explained to him the difference of their vows, and how their brethren detested the observance of the Rule. Then in public audience he ordered them to observe strictly the Rule and Testament of Francis; he released them from obedience to all except himself and to Liberato, whom he made their chief; Cardinal Napoleone Orsini was declared their protector, and the abbot of the Celestinians was ordered to provide them with hermitages. Thus they were fairly out of the Order; they were not even to call themselves Minorites or Franciscans, and it might be supposed that their brethren would be as glad to get rid of them and their assumption of superior sanctity as they were to escape from oppression.[38]

Yet the hatred provoked by the quarrel was too deep and bitter to spare its victims, and the breathing-space which they enjoyed was short. Celestin’s pontificate came to an abrupt termination. Utterly unfitted for his position, speedily made the tool of designing men, and growing weary of the load which he felt himself unable to endure, after less than six months he was persuaded to abdicate, in December, 1294, and was promptly thrown into prison by his successor, Boniface VIII., for fear that he might be led to reconsider an abdication the legality of which might be questioned. All of Celestin’s acts and grants were forthwith annulled, and so complete was the obliteration of everything that he had done, that even the appointment of a notary is found to require confirmation and a fresh commission. Boniface’s contempt for the unworldly enthusiasm of asceticism did not lead him to make any exception in favor of the Spirituals. To him the Franciscan Order was merely an instrument for the furtherance of his ambitious schemes, and its worldliness was rather to be stimulated than repressed. Though he placed in his Sixth Book of Decretals the bull Exiit qui seminat, his practical exposition of its provisions is seen in two bulls issued July 17, 1296, by one of which he assigns to the Franciscans of Paris one thousand marks, to be taken from the legacies for pious uses, and by the other he converts to them a legacy of three hundred livres bequeathed by Ada, lady of Pernes, for the benefit of the Holy Land. Under such auspices the degradation of the Order could not but be rapid. Before his first year was out, Boniface had determined upon the removal of the general, Raymond. October 29, 1295, he offered the latter the bishopric of Pavia, and on his protesting that he had not strength for the burden, Boniface said that he could not be fit for the heavier load of the generalate, of which he relieved him on the spot. We can understand the insolence which led a party of the Conventual faction to visit Celestin in his prison and taunt and insult him for the favor which he had shown to the Spirituals. A prosecution for heresy which Boniface ordered, in March, 1295, against Frà Pagano di Pietra-Santa was doubtless instigated by the same spirit.[39]

More than this. To Boniface’s worldly, practical mind the hordes of wandering mendicants, subjected to no authority, were an intolerable nuisance, whether it arose from ill-regulated asceticism or idle vagabondage. The decree of the Council of Lyons had failed to suppress the evil, and, in 1496 and 1497, Boniface issued instructions to all bishops to compel such wanderers or hermits, popularly known as Bizochi, either to lay aside their fictitious religious habits and give up their mode of life, or to betake themselves to some authorized Order. The inquisitors were instructed to denounce to the bishops all suspected persons, and if the prelates were remiss, to report them to the Holy See. One remarkable clause gives special authority to the inquisitors to prosecute such of these Bizochi as may be members of their own Orders, thus showing that there was no heresy involved, as otherwise the inquisitors would have required no additional powers.[40]

The following year Boniface proceeded to more active measures. He ordered the Franciscan, Matteo da Chieti, Inquisitor of Assisi, to visit personally the mountains of the Abruzzi and Mark of Ancona and to drive from their lurking-places the apostates from various religious Orders and the Bizochi who infested those regions. His previous steps had probably been ineffective, and possibly also he may have been moved to more decisive action by the rebellious attitude of the Spirituals and proscribed mendicants. Not only did they question the papal authority, but they were beginning to argue that the papacy itself was vacant. So far from being content with the bull Exiit qui seminat, they held that its author, Nicholas III., had been deprived by God of the papal functions, and consequently that he had had no legitimate successors. Thereafter there had been no true ordinations of priest and prelate, and the real Church consisted in themselves alone. To remedy this, Frère Matthieu de Bodici came from Provence, bringing with him the books of Pierre Jean Olivi, and in the Church of St. Peter in Rome he was elected pope by five Spirituals and thirteen women. Boniface promptly put the Inquisition on their track, but they fled to Sicily, which, as we shall see, subsequently became the headquarters of the sect.[41]

Friar Jordan, to whom we are indebted for these details, assumes that Liberato and his associates were concerned in this movement. The dates and order of events are hopelessly confused, but it would rather seem that the section of the Spirituals represented by Liberato kept themselves aloof from all such revolutionary projects. Their sufferings were real and prolonged, but had they been guilty of participating in the election of an antipope they would have had but the choice between perpetual imprisonment and the stake. They were accused of holding that Boniface was not a lawful pope, that the authority of the Church was vested in themselves alone, and that the Greek Church was preferable to the Latin—in other words of Joachitism—but Angelo declares emphatically that all this was untrue, and his constancy of endurance during fifty years of persecution and suffering entitles his assertion to respect. He relates that after their authorization by Celestin V. they lived as hermits in accordance with the papal concession, sojourning as paupers and strangers wherever they could find a place of retreat, and strictly abstaining from preaching and hearing confessions, except when ordered to do so by bishops to whom they owed obedience. Even before the resignation of Celestin, the Franciscan authorities, irritated at the escape of their victims, disregarded the papal authority and endeavored with an armed force to capture them. Celestin himself seems to have given them warning of this, and the zealots, recognizing that there was no peace for them in Italy, resolved to expatriate themselves and seek some remote spot where they could gratify their ascetic longings and worship God without human interference. They crossed the Adriatic and settled on a desert island off the Achaian coast. Here, lost to view, they for two years enjoyed the only period of peace in their agitated lives; but at length news of their place of retreat reached home, and forthwith letters were despatched to the nobles and bishops of the mainland accusing them of being Cathari, while Boniface was informed that they did not regard him as pope, but held themselves to be the only true Church. In 1299 he commissioned Peter, Patriarch of Constantinople, to try them, when they were condemned without a hearing, and he ordered Charles II. of Naples, who was overlord of the Morea, to have them expelled, an order which Charles transmitted to Isabelle de Villehardouin, Princess of Achaia. Meanwhile the local authorities had recognized the falsity of the accusations, for the refugees celebrated mass daily and prayed for Boniface as pope, and were willing to eat meat, but this did not relieve them from surveillance and annoyance, one of their principal persecutors being a certain Geronimo, who came to them with some books of Olivi’s, and whom they were forced to eject for immorality, after which he turned accuser and was rewarded with the episcopate.[42]

The pressure became too strong, and the little community gradually broke up. An intention to accompany Frà Giovanni da Monte on a mission to Tartary had to be abandoned on account of the excommunication consequent upon the sentence uttered by the Patriarch of Constantinople. Liberato sent two brethren to appeal to Boniface, and then two more, but they were all seized and prevented from reaching him. Then Liberato himself departed secretly and reached Perugia, but the sudden death of Boniface (October 11, 1303) frustrated his object. The rest returned at various times, Angelo being the last to reach Italy, in 1305. He found his brethren in evil plight. They had been cited by the Dominican inquisitor, Tommaso di Aversa, and had obediently presented themselves. At first the result was favorable. After an examination lasting several days, Tommaso pronounced them orthodox, and dismissed them, saying publicly, “Frà Liberato, I swear by Him who created me that never the flesh of a poor man could be sold for such a price as I could get for yours. Your brethren would drink your blood if they could.” He even conducted them in safety back to their hermitages, and when the rage of the Conventuals was found to be unappeasable he gave them the advice that they should leave the kingdom of Naples that night and travel by hidden ways to the pope; if they could bring letters from the latter, or from a cardinal, he would defend them as long as he held the office. The advice was taken; Liberato left Naples that night, but fell sick on the road and died after a lingering illness of two years. Meanwhile, as we shall see hereafter, the exploits of Dolcino in Lombardy were exciting general terror, which rendered all irregular fraternities the object of suspicion and dread. The Conventuals took advantage of this and incited Frà Tommaso to summon before him all who wore unauthorized religious habits. The Spirituals were cited again, to the number of forty-two, and this time they did not escape so easily. They were condemned as heretics, and when Andrea da Segna, under whose protection they had lived, interposed in their favor, Tommaso carried them to Trivento, where they were tortured for five days. This excited the compassion of the bishop and nobles of the town, so they were transferred to Castro Mainardo, a solitary spot, where for five months they were afflicted with the sharpest torments. Two of the younger brethren yielded and accused themselves and their comrades, but revoked when released. Some of them died, and finally the survivors were ordered to be scourged naked through the streets of Naples and were banished the kingdom, although no specific heresy was alleged against them in the sentence. Through all this the resolution of the little band never faltered. Convinced that they alone were on the path of salvation, they would not be forced back into the Order. On the death of Liberato, Angelo was chosen as their leader, and amid persecution and obloquy they formed a congregation in the Mark of Ancona, known as the Clareni, from the surname of their chief, and under the protection of the cardinal, Napoleone Orsini.[43]

This group had not been by any means alone in opposing the laxity of the Conventuals, although it was the only one which succeeded in throwing off the yoke of its opponents. The Spirituals were numerous in the Order, but the policy of Boniface VIII. led him to support the efforts of the Conventuals to keep them in subjection. Jacopone da Todi, the author of the Stabat Mater, was perhaps the most prominent of these, and his savage verses directed against the pope did not tend to harmonize the troubles. After the capture of Palestrina, in 1298, Boniface threw him into a foul dungeon, where he solaced his captivity with canticles full of the mystic ardor of divine love. It is related that Boniface once, passing the grating of his cell, jeeringly called to him, “Jacopo, when will you get out?” and was promptly answered, “When you come in.” In a sense the prophecy proved true, for one of the first acts of Benedict XI., in December, 1303, was to release Jacopone from both prison and excommunication.[44]

Frà Corrado da Offida was another prominent member of the Spiritual group. He had been a friend of John of Parma; for fifty-five years he wore but a single gown, patched and repatched as necessity required, and this with his rope girdle constituted his sole worldly possessions. In the mystic exaltation which characterized the sect he had frequent visions and ecstasies, in which he was lifted from the ground after the fashion of the saints. When Liberato and his companions were in their Achaian refuge he designed joining them with Jacopo de’ Monti and others, but the execution of the project was in some way prevented.[45]

Such men, filled with the profoundest conviction of their holy calling, were not to be controlled by either kindness or severity. It was in vain that the general, Giovanni di Murro, at the chapter of 1302, held in Genoa, issued a precept deploring the abandonment, by the Order, of holy poverty, as shown by the possession of lands and farms and vineyards, and the assumption by friars of duties which involved them in worldly cares and strife and litigation. He ordered the sale of all property, and forbade the members of the Order from appearing in any court. Yet while he was thus rigid as to the ownership of property, he was lax as to its use, and condemned as pernicious the doctrine that the vow of poverty involved restriction in its enjoyment. He was, moreover, resolved on extinguishing the schism in the Order, and his influence with Boniface was one of the impelling causes of the continued persecution of the Spirituals. They stubbornly rejected all attempts at reconciliation, and placed a true estimate on these efforts of reform. Before the year was out Giovanni was created Cardinal Bishop of Porto, and was allowed to govern the Order through a vicar; the reforms were partially enforced in some provinces for a short time; then they fell into desuetude, and matters went on as before.[46]

In France, where the influence of Joachim and the Everlasting Gospel was much more lasting and pronounced than in Italy, the career of the Spirituals revolves around one of the most remarkable personages of the period—Pierre Jean Olivi. Born in 1247, he was placed in the Franciscan Order at the age of twelve, and was trained in the University of Paris, where he obtained the baccalaureate. His grave demeanor, seasoned with a lively wit, his irreproachable morals, his fervid eloquence, and the extent of his learning won for him universal respect, while his piety, gentleness, humility, and zeal for holy poverty gained for him a reputation for sanctity which assigned to him the gift of prophecy. That such a man should attach himself to the Spirituals was a matter of course, and equally so was the enmity which he excited by unsparing reproof of the laxity of observance into which the Order had declined. In his voluminous writings he taught that absolute poverty is the source of all the virtues and of a saintly life; that the Rule prohibited all proprietorship, whether individual or in common, and that the vow bound the members to the most sparing use of all necessaries, the meanest garments, the absence of shoes, etc., while the pope had no power to dispense or absolve, and much less to order anything contrary to the Rule. The convent of Béziers, to which he belonged, became the centre of the Spiritual sect, and the devotion which he excited was shared by the population at large, as well as by his brethren. The temper of the man was shown when he underwent his first rebuke. In 1278 some writings of his in praise of the Virgin were considered to trench too closely on Mariolatry. The Order had not yet committed itself to this, and complaint was made to the general, Geronimo d’Ascoli, afterwards Nicholas IV., who read the tracts and condemned him to burn them with his own hands. Olivi at once obeyed without any sign of perturbation, and when his wondering brethren asked how he could endure such mortification so tranquilly, he replied that he had performed the sacrifice with a thoroughly placid mind; he had not felt more pleasure in writing the tracts than in burning them at the command of his superior, and the loss was nothing, for if necessary he could easily write them again in better shape. A man so self-centred and imperturbable could not fail to impress his convictions on those who surrounded him.[47]

What his convictions really were is a problem not easily solved at the present day. The fierce antagonisms which he excited by his fiery onslaughts on individuals as well as on the general laxity of the Order at large, caused his later years to be passed in a series of investigations for heresy. At the general chapter of Strassburg, in 1282, his writings were ordered to be examined. In 1283 Bonagrazia di S. Giovanni, the general, came to France, collected and placed them all in the hands of seven of the leading members of the Order, who found in them propositions which they variously characterized as false, heretical, presumptuous, and dangerous, and ordered the tracts containing them to be surrendered by all possessing them. Olivi subscribed to the judgment in 1284, although he complained that he had not been permitted to appear in person before his judges and explain the censured passages, to which distorted meanings had been applied. With some difficulty he procured copies of his inculpated writings and proceeded to justify himself. Still the circle of his disciples continued to increase; incapable of the self-restraint of their master, and secretly imbued with Joachitic doctrines, they were not content with the quiet propagation of their principles, but excited tumults and seditions. Olivi was held responsible. The chapter held at Milan in 1285 elected as general minister Arlotto di Prato, one of the seven who had condemned him, and issued a decree ordering a strict perquisition and seizure of his writings. The new general, moreover, summoned him to Paris for another inquisition into his faith, of which the promoters were two of the members of the previous commission, Richard Middleton and Giovanni di Murro, the future general. The matter was prolonged until 1286, when Arlotto died, and nothing was done. Matteo d’Acquasparta vouched for his orthodoxy in appointing him teacher in the general school of the Order at Florence. Raymond Gaufridi, who succeeded Matteo d’Acquasparta in 1290, was a friend and admirer of Olivi, but could not prevent fresh proceedings, though he appointed him teacher at Montpellier. Excitement in Languedoc had reached a point which led Nicholas IV., in 1290, to order Raymond to suppress the disturbers of the peace. He commissioned Bertrand de Cigotier, Inquisitor of the Comtat Venaissin, to investigate and report, in order that the matter might be brought before the next general chapter, to be held in Paris. In 1292, accordingly, Olivi appeared before the chapter, professed his acceptance of the bull Exiit qui seminat, asserted that he had never intentionally taught or written otherwise, and revoked and abjured anything that he might inadvertently have said in contradiction of it. He was dismissed in peace, but twenty-nine of his zealous and headstrong followers, whom Bertrand de Cigotier had found guilty, were duly punished. His few remaining years seem to have passed in comparative peace. Two letters written in 1295, one to Corrado da Offida and the other to the sons of Charles II. of Naples, then held as hostages in Catalonia, who had asked him to visit them, show that he was held in high esteem, that he desired to curb the fanatic zeal of the more advanced Spirituals, and that he could not restrain himself from apocalyptic speculation. On his death-bed, in 1298, he uttered a confession of faith in which he professed absolute submission to the Roman Church and to Boniface as its head. He also submitted all his works to the Holy See, and made a declaration of principles as to the matters in dispute within the Order, which contained nothing that Bonaventura would not have signed, or Nicholas III. would have impugned as contrary to the bull Exiit, although it sharply rebuked the money-getting practices and relaxation of the Order.[48]

He was honorably buried at Narbonne, and then the controversy over his memory became more lively than ever, rendering it almost impossible to determine his responsibility for the opinions which were ascribed to him by both friends and foes. That his bones became the object of assiduous cult, in spite of repeated prohibitions, that innumerable miracles were worked at his tomb, that crowds of pilgrims flocked to it, that his feast-day became one of the great solemnities of the year, and that he was regarded as one of the most efficient saints in the calendar, only shows the popular estimate of his virtues and the zeal of those who regarded themselves as his disciples. Certain it is that the Council of Vienne, in 1312, treated his memory with great gentleness. While it condemned with merciless severity the mystic extravagances of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, it found only four errors to note in the voluminous writings of Olivi—errors of merely speculative interest, such as are frequent among the schoolmen of the period—and these it pointed out without attributing them to him or even mentioning his name. These his immediate followers denied his holding, although eventually one of them, curiously enough, became a sort of shibboleth among the Olivists. It was that Christ was still alive on the cross when pierced by the lance, and was based on the assertion that the relation in Matthew originally differed in this respect from that in John, and had been altered to secure harmony. All other questions relating to the teachings of Olivi the council referred to the Franciscans for settlement, showing that they were deemed of minor importance, after they had been exhaustively debated before it by Bonagrazia da Bergamo in attack and Ubertino da Casale in defence. Thus the council condemned neither his person nor his writings; that the result was held as vindicating his orthodoxy was seen when, in 1313, his feast-day was celebrated with unexampled enthusiasm at Narbonne, and was attended by a concourse equal to that which assembled at the anniversary of the Portiuncula. Moreover, after the heat of the controversy had passed away, the subsequent condemnation of his writings by John XXII. was removed by Sixtus IV., towards the end of the fifteenth century. Olivi’s teachings may therefore fairly be concluded to have contained no very revolutionary doctrines. In fact, shortly after his death all the Franciscans of Provence were required to sign an abjuration of his errors, among which was enumerated the one respecting the wound of Christ, but nothing was said respecting the graver aberrations subsequently attributed to him.[49]

On the other hand he was unquestionably the heresiarch of the Spirituals, both of France and Italy, regarded by them as the direct successor of Joachim and Francis. The Historia Tribulationum finds in the pseudo-Joachitic prophecies a clear account of all the events in his career. Enthusiastic Spirituals, who held the revolutionary doctrines of the Everlasting Gospel, testified before the Inquisition that the third age of the Church had its beginning in Olivi, who thus supplanted St. Francis himself. He was inspired of heaven; his doctrine had been revealed to him in Paris, some said, while he was washing his hands; others that the illumination came to him from Christ while in church, at the third hour of the day. Thus his utterances were of equal authority with those of St. Paul, and were to be obeyed by the Church without the change of a letter. It is no wonder that he was held accountable for the extravagances of those who regarded him with such veneration and recognized him as their leader and teacher.[50]

When Olivi died, his former prosecutor, Giovanni di Murro, was general of the Order, and, strong as were his own ascetic convictions, he lost no time in completing the work which he had previously failed to accomplish. Olivi’s memory was condemned as that of a heretic, and an order was issued for the surrender of all his writings, which was enforced with unsparing rigor, and continued by his successor, Gonsalvo de Balboa. Pons Botugati, a friar eminent for piety and eloquence, refused to surrender for burning some of the prohibited tracts, and was chained closely to the wall in a damp and fetid dungeon, where bread and water were sparingly flung to him, and where he soon rotted to death in filth, so that when his body was hastily thrust into an unconsecrated grave it was found that already the flesh was burrowed through by worms. A number of other recalcitrants were also imprisoned with almost equal harshness, and in the next general chapter the reading of all of Olivi’s works was formally prohibited. That much incendiary matter was in circulation, attributed directly or indirectly to him, is shown by a catalogue of Olivist tracts, treating of such dangerous questions as the power of the pope to dispense from vows, his right to claim implicit obedience in matters concerning faith and morals, and other similar muttering of rebellion.[51]

The work of Olivi which called forth the greatest discussion, and as to which the evidences are peculiarly irreconcilable, was his Postil on the Apocalypse. It was from this that the chief arguments were drawn for his condemnation. In an inquisitorial sentence of 1318 we learn that his writings were then again under examination by order of John XXII.; that they were held to be the source of all the errors which the sectaries were then expiating at the stake, and that principal among them was his work on the Apocalypse, so that, until the papal decision, no one was to hold him as a saint or a Catholic. When the condemnatory report of eight masters of theology came, in 1319, the Spirituals held that the outrage thus committed on the faith deprived of all virtue the sacrament of the altar. No formal judgment was rendered, however, until February 8, 1326, when John XXII. finally condemned the Postil on the Apocalypse after a careful scrutiny in the Consistory, and the general chapter of the Order forbade any one to read or possess it. One of the reports of the experts upon it has reached us. It is impossible to suppose that they deliberately manufactured the extracts on which their conclusions are based, and these extracts are quite sufficient to show that the work was an echo of the most dangerous doctrines of the Everlasting Gospel. The fifth age is drawing to an end, and, under the figure of the mystical Antichrist, there are prophecies about the pseudo-pope, pseudo-Christs, and pseudo-prophets in terms which clearly allude to the existing hierarchy. The pseudo-pope will be known by his heresies concerning the perfection of evangelical poverty (as we shall see was the case with John XXII.), and the pseudo-Joachim’s prophecies concerning Frederic II. are quoted to show how prelates and clergy who defend the Rule will be ejected. The carnal church is the Great Whore of Babylon; it makes drunken and corrupts the nations with its carnalities, and oppresses the few remaining righteous, as under Paganism it did with its idolatries. In forty generations from the harvest of the apostles there will be a new harvest of the Jews and of the whole world, to be garnered by the Evangelical Order, to which all power and authority will be transferred. There are to be a sixth and a seventh age, after which comes the Day of Judgment. The date of this latter cannot be computed, but at the end of the thirteenth century the sixth age is to open. The carnal church, or Babylon, will expire, and the triumph of the spiritual church will commence.[52]