Dominic, of Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas. It was a vast revival,
bearing fruit in a new ardour of pity and charity, as well as in a
healthy freedom of thought. The Church, in recognising the new
charitable orders of Francis and Dominic, and the Christianised
Aristotelianism of the schoolmen, retained the loyalty and profited
by the zeal of the more sober reformers, but was unable to prevent
the diffusion of an independent critical spirit, in part provoked
and justified by real abuses. Discontent was aroused, not only by
the worldiness of the hierarchy, whose greed and luxurious living
were felt to be scandalous, but by the widespread economic distress
which prevailed over Western Europe at this period. The crusades
periodically swept off a large proportion of the able-bodied men, of
whom the majority never returned to their homes, and this helped to
swell the number of indigent women, who, having no male protectors,
were obliged to beg their bread. The better class of these female
mendicants soon formed themselves into uncloistered charitable
Orders, who were not forbidden to marry, and who devoted themselves
chiefly to the care of the sick. These Beguines and the
corresponding male associations of Beghards became very numerous in
Germany. Their religious views were of a definite type. Theirs was
an intensely inward religion, based on the longing of the soul for
immediate access to God. The more educated among them tended to
embrace a vague idealistic Pantheism. Mechthild of Magdeburg
(1212-1277), prophetess, poetess, Church reformer, quietist, was the
ablest of the Beguines. Her writings prove to us that the technical
terminology of German mysticism was in use before Eckhart,[2] and
also that the followers of what the "Theologia Germanica" calls the
False Light, who aspired to absorption in the Godhead, and despised
the imitation of the incarnate Christ, were already throwing
discredit on the movement. Mechthild's independence, and her