To bring the world back again within the pale of the Church was the aim of
two religious orders which sprang suddenly to life at the opening of the
thirteenth century. The zeal of the Spaniard Dominic was roused at the
sight of the lordly prelates who sought by fire and sword to win the
Albigensian heretics to the faith. "Zeal," he cried, "must be met by zeal,
lowliness by lowliness, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching lies by
preaching truth." His fiery ardour and rigid orthodoxy were seconded by the
mystical piety, the imaginative enthusiasm of Francis of Assisi. The life
of Francis falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the
time. In the frescoes of Giotto or the verse of Dante we see him take
Poverty for his bride. He strips himself of all, he flings his very clothes
at his father's feet, that he may be one with Nature and God. His
passionate verse claims the moon for his sister and the sun for his
brother, he calls on his brother the Wind, and his sister the Water. His
last faint cry was a "Welcome, Sister Death!" Strangely as the two men
differed from each other, their aim was the same--to convert the heathen,
to extirpate heresy, to reconcile knowledge with orthodoxy, above all to
carry the Gospel to the poor. The work was to be done by an utter reversal
of the older monasticism, by seeking personal salvation in effort for the
salvation of their fellow-men, by exchanging the solitary of the cloister
for the preacher, the monk for the "brother" or friar. To force the new
"brethren" into entire dependence on those among whom they laboured their
vow of Poverty was turned into a stern reality; the "Begging Friars" were
to subsist solely on alms, they might possess neither money nor lands, the
very houses in which they lived were to be held in trust for them by
others. The tide of popular enthusiasm which welcomed their appearance
swept before it the reluctance of Rome, the jealousy of the older orders,
the opposition of the parochial priesthood. Thousands of brethren gathered
in a few years round Francis and Dominic; and the begging preachers, clad