Monks and Friars (1095–1300)

Monks and Friars (1095–1300)

I – Monastic Life

Perhaps the Church was saved from destruction not by the tortures of the Inquisition but by the rise of new monastic orders. These orders immediately adopted the heretics’ claims about apostolic poverty and for a century served as striking examples of sincerity for the old monastic orders and for priests who served governments.

Monasteries multiplied during the Dark Ages and reached their peak in the turbulent tenth century when Europe was at its lowest point. Thereafter, as governments succeeded in restoring order and establishing prosperity, the number of monasteries decreased. In France around 1100 there were 543 monasteries, but by around 1250 the number had fallen to 287. The factor that compensated for this decrease was the increase in the average number of monks in each monastery. Nevertheless, monasteries with a hundred monks were rare. In the thirteenth century it was still customary for pious parents or families with many children and little means to offer children of seven years or more as “gifts” to monasteries. Saint Thomas Aquinas was among those who began monastic life in this way. The Benedictines believed that if a child had been offered to a monastery by his parents for the sake of God, he could not, upon reaching maturity, abandon monastic life under any circumstances. But Saint Bernard and the new orders held that such a child, upon reaching adulthood, could return to ordinary life without incurring anyone’s reproach. In general, an adult monk who wished to leave the monastic circle and avoid committing sin by breaking his vow had to obtain permission from the pope.

Before 1098 most monasteries of Western Europe followed, with varying degrees of sincerity, one type of Benedictine rule. One year was allowed as a period of probation for each novice. During this time the candidate could leave the monastery without difficulty. Caesarius of Heisterbach records that a knight abandoned monastic life “cowardly on the excuse that he feared the lice in the monastic habit, for our woolen garments are the refuge of many lice.” About four hours of the day were devoted to prayer. Food was usually vegetarian and meager. The rest of the day was allocated to work, reading, teaching, caring for the sick, charitable works, and rest. Caesarius describes how his monastery, during the drought of 1197, distributed 1,500 “per capita” rations daily to the poor and “kept all the poor people who came to us in search of bread alive until the harvest was gathered.” During this great famine a Cistercian monastery in Westphalia slaughtered all its flocks and herds and sold its books and sacred vessels to feed the poor. The monks, through the sweat of their brows and the labor of their serfs, built monasteries and churches large and small, made vast lands fertile, turned marshes and forests into arable fields, promoted countless handicrafts, and produced very pleasant beers and wines. Although outwardly the monastery removed many upright and capable individuals from the world and immersed them in a kind of self-centered holiness, it taught thousands of them intellectual and moral discipline and then returned them to the world to serve bishops, popes, and kings as counselors and ministers.

With the passage of time, increasing wealth engulfed monastic communities, and the generosity of the people sometimes allowed monks to enjoy the luxuries of life. The monastery of Saint-Riquier, not among the richest in Europe, had 117 vassals and 2,500 houses from whose tenants it received annually ten thousand chickens, ten thousand capons, and seventy-five thousand eggs. The rent, a fair sum for each house, amounted to a considerable total. Monasteries such as Monte Cassino, Cluny, Fulda, Saint Gall, and Saint-Denis were far wealthier. The abbots of such houses, like Suger (abbot of Saint-Denis), Peter the Venerable (abbot of Cluny), or even Samson (abbot of Bury Saint Edmunds in England), were lords with great material wealth and considerable political and social power. Suger, after feeding his monks and building a magnificent cathedral, still had enough wealth to pay half the cost of the Crusades. It was perhaps about Suger that Saint Bernard wrote: “If I say that I have never seen an abbot traveling with a retinue of sixty horses or more, I would be lying.” But Suger was a prime minister and appeared in public in this way to impress the people, while in private he lived with complete simplicity in a small cell and, as far as his official duties allowed, followed all the rules of his order. Peter the Venerable was a gentle man. Despite repeated efforts, he could not prevent the monasteries subject to Cluny (which had once been pioneers of reform) from tending toward worldly corruption, and it was because of these tendencies that the monks, although owning nothing, fell into idleness and gradually became corrupt.

As wealth increases, morals decline, and nature reveals itself according to individuals’ capacity. In every large community some individuals can be found whose instincts are far stronger than their vows. While most monks followed the rules of their orders to a considerable degree, there was also a minority inclined toward the world and self-indulgence. In many cases, lords or kings chose abbots from a class accustomed to idleness. Such worldly abbots stood above monastic rules. They enjoyed hunting, falconry, participation in military feasts, and politics. Many monks, imitating them, became corrupt. From what Gerald of Wales wrote about the abbot of Evesham, it is clear that this particular individual was a merry and pleasure-loving man, for “no one was safe from the demon of his lust.” People in the neighborhood believed that the number of his children reached eighteen. Finally they were forced to remove him from office. Such worldly abbots, that is, fat, wealthy, and powerful individuals, became the target of popular humor and literary satire. The strangest and most merciless satire in medieval literature is a description of an abbot that flowed from the pen of Walter Map. Some monasteries were famous for their fine wines and excellent food. If the monks sometimes enjoyed a small share of life’s pleasures, we should not reproach them, for we can well understand how tiresome they found the monotonous eating of vegetables and how they longed for meat. And if they sometimes spent their time in idle talk or arguments, or fell asleep during Mass, we should not blame them.

The monks, who upon entering the monastic circle vowed to remain celibate, had underestimated the power of the sexual instinct, which was repeatedly aroused by the sight of lay women and married men. Caesarius of Heisterbach recounts a story often mentioned in medieval events. He says that an abbot and a young monk rode out of the monastery together. The young man, seeing women for the first time, asked: “What are these?” The abbot replied: “These are devils.” The monk said: “It seems to me they are the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen.” Peter Damian, one of the famous hermits, said at the end of a life spent like one of the saints but with bitterness:

I, who have now become an old man, can look without harm at the wrinkled and withered face of an old woman with sunken eyes. Nevertheless I avoid pleasant and adorned faces as children shun fire. Shame on this wandering heart of mine that cannot retain the secrets of the Holy Scripture after reading them a hundred times, yet cannot erase from its tablet a body that it has seen only once.

For some monks, virtue consisted of a struggle with the self in choosing between woman and Jesus. Renunciation of interest in the female sex was an effort to make oneself completely safe from the enchantments of women. Their pure commandments sometimes became light with the dew of desire, and what they saw with innocent spiritual insight was accompanied by expressions borrowed from human love.

In some monasteries the works of Ovid were widely read, and his devices of love were not among the matters that monks passed over with indifference. Sculptures in some cathedrals, carvings on their furnishings, even images drawn in some prayer books showed monks and nuns in various ways: pigs were depicted in monastic habits, under monastic robes phalluses were shown in erection, and nuns were shown warmly flirting with devils. A relief on the famous “Last Judgment” portal at Reims depicts a devil dragging condemned men to hell; among this crowd a bishop with his long hat can be clearly seen. Medieval clergy—perhaps secular priests who envied the hermits—had no objection to such caricatures, whereas to the clergy of the new age the removal of most of these figures would have been commendable.

The important point is that the Church itself was the harshest critic of its sinful members. A group of high-ranking reformers of the Church, one after another, tried to force monks and abbots to return to the ideals of Jesus.

II – Saint Bernard

At the end of the eleventh century, simultaneously with the purification of the papal curia and the rise of enthusiasm for the First Crusade, a self-reform movement swept the entire Christian world, greatly advanced the morals of secular priests or those who had not completely cut themselves off from the world, and led to the creation of new monastic orders that devoted all their zeal to carrying out the rules of Saint Augustine or Saint Benedict. Before 1039, at a date not precisely known to us, Saint John Gualbert founded an order in the wooded valley of Vallombrosa in Italy, and decreed that laypeople could enter the monastic circle while continuing to engage in manual labor. This later developed fully at the hands of the Poor of Christ. The Synod of Rome in 1059 encouraged priests who shared in the affairs and revenues of a cathedral to live collectively and to hold their property in common like the apostles of Jesus. Some were reluctant and remained attached to worldly possessions, but many answered the call and adopted a set of monastic rules attributed to Saint Augustine, forming communities similar to monasteries that were collectively called Austin or Augustinian canons.

In 1084 Saint Bruno of Cologne, after refusing the archbishopric of Reims, founded a monastery in a completely deserted place called Chartreuse near Grenoble in the Alps and established the Carthusian order. Other pious men, tired of worldly struggles and the self-indulgence of the clergy, built hermitages for Carthusians in remote and secluded places. Each monk worked, ate, and slept in his separate cell. They fed on bread and milk, wore garments of horsehair, and almost constantly kept silence. These monks gathered three times a week for Mass, vespers, and midnight prayers, and on Sundays and feast days they freed themselves from solitude and silence to converse and take communal meals. Among all Christian monastic orders, this one was the most ascetic, and over eight centuries it has, with complete sincerity and fidelity, not deviated in the slightest from the original rules of the community.

In 1098 Robert of Molesme, who presided over several Benedictine monasteries and had grown weary of reforming them, founded a new monastery in a deserted wilderness called Cîteaux near Dijon. Just as the Carthusians took their name from Chartreuse, the followers of Robert called themselves Cistercians. The third abbot of Cîteaux, an Englishman from Dorsetshire named Stephen Harding, expanded and reorganized the monastery, opened branches for it, and drew up a charter called the Charter of Charity that guaranteed peaceful cooperation and mutual assistance among Cistercian monasteries and the mother house of Cîteaux. Among the followers of this new community the Benedictine rules were revived with the same severity and strength as at the beginning: absolute poverty was required, meat of any kind had to be avoided, the acquisition of learning was not encouraged, the composition of poetry was forbidden, and the followers were obliged to refrain from luxurious religious garments, fine vessels, or presence in luxurious places. Every healthy monk was required to share in manual labor and gardening with others so that the product of their work would make the monastery independent of the outside world, and there would be no excuse for a monk to leave the monastery in search of something.

The Cistercian monks surpassed all orders, whether monastic or secular clergy, in strength and skill in agriculture. Members of this community founded new centers for their order in uninhabited areas. They prepared marshy, wooded, and thicket lands for cultivation and played an important role in converting the regions of eastern Germany into settlements and in repairing the damage caused by William the Conqueror in northern England. The noble efforts of the Cistercian monks to spread civilization were assisted by a group of lay brothers or conversi who vowed to remain celibate, observe silence, and not seek learning, and who worked as farmers or servants for their housing, clothing, and food.

These austerities frightened potential novices. For this reason the small number of Cistercian monks grew very slowly, and perhaps the new order would have declined in its youth if it had not been for the appearance of a zealous man like Saint Bernard. Bernard was born in 1091 near Dijon into a knightly family. As he grew up he became a modest and pious young man who greatly enjoyed solitude. Because Bernard found the secular world uncomfortable, he decided to take refuge in a monastery. But before carrying out this decision he began to preach among his relatives and friends so that they would join him in the Cistercian order, as if he wanted, even in silence, not to be deprived of the company of companions. It is said that mothers and marriageable daughters trembled when they saw him nearby, fearing that he might deprive their husbands or lovers of worldly pleasures. Despite their tears and enchantments, Bernard succeeded in his task, and when he was admitted to the Cistercian brethren (1113) he brought with him twenty-nine volunteers, including his brothers, an uncle, and a group of friends.

Later he persuaded his mother and sister to join a nunnery, and sent his father to a monastery with the threat that “if you do not make atonement for your sins, you will burn forever in fire … and smoke and stench will emanate from your corpse.” Stephen Harding, upon seeing Bernard, was so filled with admiration for his purity and strength that he immediately sent him with twelve monks to build another monastery and raised him to the rank of abbot (1115). Bernard chose a dense thicket 145 kilometers from Cîteaux for the new monastery—a place known as Clara Vallis or “Bright Valley”—and from then on he became known as Bernard of Clairvaux. In this place there was no dwelling or inhabitant. The first duty of these hermit brothers was to build the first “monastery” with their own hands. It was a wooden building with a chapel and a refectory under one roof, and the upper part was a dormitory connected to the lower by a ladder. Each individual’s sleeping place was a wooden box whose floor was covered with tree leaves. The windows of this monastery were no larger than a man’s head, and its floor was earthen. The monks’ food was vegetarian, except on certain occasions when they obtained fish. There was no sign of wheat bread or spices in their provisions. Wine was scarce, and these monks, who were restless lovers of otherworldly salvation, fed exactly like philosophers who desire a long life. The monks themselves were responsible for preparing their food, and each time one of them rolled up his sleeves as cook. According to the rules that Bernard established, the monastery was not permitted to buy property; it could only own what someone gave to the monastery. Bernard desired that his monastery should have only enough land for the monks to cultivate with their own hands and simple tools. In that silent valley, Bernard and his ever-increasing companions worked in silence and contentment, far from the “storm of the world,” clearing thickets, sowing and harvesting crops, making necessary furniture, and gathering for the performance of religious duties to sing the “psalms” and spiritual hymns without an organ. William of Saint-Thierry said about Bernard’s followers: “The more carefully I observe them, the more I believe that they are true followers of Christ … a little less than angels, but far above ordinary men.” The fame of this Christian monastery, filled with peace and independence, spread around, so that before Bernard’s death Clairvaux had seven hundred monks. Certainly individuals felt happy in such an environment, for almost all those who were sent from this communal oasis as abbots, bishops, and assistants to other parts of the Christian world counted the days until they could return to Clairvaux. Bernard himself, who was entrusted with the highest offices of the Church and traveled to many lands at the popes’ request, always longed to return to his cell in Clairvaux so that, as he himself said, “the hands of my children may close my eyes, and my body may be buried in Clairvaux beside the bodies of the poor.”

Bernard was a man of considerable wisdom, firm belief, and a very prominent and unwavering personality. He paid no attention to sciences or philosophy. In his view the human mind was so small and insignificant a particle of creation that it was impossible for it to judge creation or claim to know such a phenomenon. He was astonished at the foolish boasting of philosophers who prattled about the nature, origin, and destiny of the world. He was horrified by Abelard’s proposal that the reins of faith should be placed in the hands of reason, and he fought fiercely against the ideas of the rationalist school, considering such opinions an insult and affront to the Creator of the universe. Instead of trying to know the world of existence, he preferred to hold his tongue and, relying on divine graces, walk in the light of the miracle of revelation. Bernard accepted the Holy Scripture as the word of God, for otherwise, in his view, life would be a dark desert full of wandering. The more he preached that childlike faith, the more he became convinced that this must be the way to reach the abode of truth. When one of his monks confessed with great terror that he really could not believe that a priest could transform bread into the body and wine into the blood of Jesus during the sacred sacrifice, Bernard did not reproach him but instructed him to participate in the ceremony nevertheless “with the help of my faith.” The chroniclers assure us that Bernard’s faith was so abundant that it penetrated the doubting monk’s soul and made otherworldly salvation certain for him. His hatred of heretics like Abelard or Arnold of Brescia was so great, and he inflicted such torment on such individuals, that their death did not weigh on his conscience, for these heretics weakened the Church—and the Church, with all its defects and shortcomings, was in his view the means of conveying the wishes of Jesus. On the other hand, he could love people with almost the same tenderness that was characteristic of the Virgin Mary, whom he worshiped with all his heart. It is related that he saw a thief being led to the gallows. To save him he appealed to the count of Champagne and promised to make the man perform a far more severe atonement than a death that lasted only a moment.

Bernard preached before kings and popes, but he derived greater pleasure from guiding peasants and shepherds in his valley. He was lenient toward the lapses of such simple men, made his own method an example for them, and in return for the faith and love he gave them, won the silent affection of this group. Bernard carried his piety to the highest levels of asceticism, fasting so much that his senior abbot in Cîteaux was forced to order him to break his fast. He lived for thirty-eight years in a small, narrow cell in Clairvaux that had a bed of straw and, except for a hole in the wall, no place to sit. All worldly comforts and possessions were nothing and void compared to the thought and promise of Christ. On this subject he composed several spiritual hymns that indicate perfect simplicity and delightful tenderness. Among them are these verses:

Jesus, the sweet remembrance of you gives true joy to the heart, you whose presence is sweeter than honey and all sweetnesses.

No melody is more delightful, no voice more pleasing, no thought sweeter than Jesus the Son of God.

Jesus, hope of the repentant man, how merciful you are to those who entreat you! How generous you are to those who seek you, so what must you be to those who find you!

Despite the power of discrimination that Bernard had in verbal arts, he attached no importance to any beauty or delicacy unless it had a spiritual aspect. He placed his hands over his eyes lest his eyes derive too much sensual pleasure from seeing the lakes of Switzerland. His monastery was devoid of any decoration except the figure of the crucified Christ.

He reproached the monastery of Cluny for the vast sums it had spent on architecture and the decoration of its cathedrals. He said: “The church has built its walls with splendor and has completely forgotten its poor. It adorns its stones with gold and leaves its children naked. With the misfortune of the wretched it enchants the eyes of the rich.” He complained that the great monastery of Saint-Denis, instead of being a place for sincere believers, had become the base of a large crowd of armed and arrogant knights, and for this reason he called that monastery “a barracks, a school of the devil, and a den of thieves.” Suger, abbot of Saint-Denis, who in his humility was affected by these criticisms, reformed the rules of his church and monks and was still alive when he was praised by Bernard.

The reform of monasteries and monastic communities that originated from Clairvaux, and the improvement of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that was made possible by placing Bernard’s monks at the head of episcopal and archiepiscopal sees, was only part of the influence of this extraordinary man who expected nothing but a loaf of bread, and that influence took root in all affairs of the ecclesiastical institution during half a century of his life and compelled individuals at all levels to perform their duties. Henry, brother of the king of France, went to see him. Bernard conversed with him for a while. That same day Henry joined the monastic circle and busied himself with washing dishes in Clairvaux. Through sermons so eloquent and rich that they were almost poetry, he captivated the hearts of all his listeners. Through his letters, which were masterpieces of fiery petitions, he influenced councils, bishops, popes, and kings. And through private communications he determined the policies of the Church and government in the desired manner. Bernard never agreed to hold any office other than that of abbot, but he was the one who raised people to the papacy or removed them from it. His words were heard with such respect as had never been the case with any pope. He left the seclusion of Clairvaux ten or twelve times at the Church’s invitation. Each time his presence was essential for carrying out a critical diplomacy. When two opposing groups simultaneously raised Anacletus II and Innocent II to the papacy (1130), Bernard supported Innocent. When Anacletus occupied Rome, Bernard entered Italy and, merely by the power of his words and personality, stirred the Lombard cities to rise in support of Innocent. The people, intoxicated by his eloquence and purity, kissed his feet and tore his garments into pieces so that each fragment could be preserved as a memento of that innocent for their descendants. A flood of sick people turned toward Milan, and epileptic, paralyzed, and other afflicted believers declared that they had all been healed by the touch of his hand. Each time Bernard returned from such victorious diplomatic journeys to Clairvaux, farmers left their fields and shepherds left the mountains to come to him, seek his blessing, and after his prayer, pure and carefree, return to their work.

When Bernard died in 1153 the number of Cistercian monasteries, which in 1134 (the year of Stephen Harding’s death) did not exceed thirty, had reached 343. The fame of his holiness and power attracted countless people to the new order, so that by 1300 there were altogether sixty thousand monks and 693 different monasteries.

In the twelfth century other monastic orders also appeared. Around 1100 Robert d’Arbrissel founded the order of Fontevraud monks in Anjou. In 1120 Saint Norbert renounced his father’s great inheritance and founded an order in Prémontré near Laon that became known as the Premonstratensians. In 1131 Saint Gilbert formed the English Sempringham order in imitation of Fontevraud, which became known as the Gilbertines. Around 1150 some hermits from Palestine adopted the rules that Saint Basil had established for hermitage and spread their ideas throughout Palestine. When Palestine fell to the Muslims, the Carmelites moved to Cyprus, Sicily, France, and England. In 1198 Innocent III approved the rule of the order known as the Trinitarians and gave that order the mission of solely preparing ransom and freeing Christians who fell into Saracen captivity. These orders we have mentioned were all saving factors and means for purifying and elevating the position of the Christian Church.

The zeal for monastic reform, which reached its peak at the hands of Saint Bernard, gradually declined with the progress of the twelfth century. The younger orders preserved their strict and severe rules to a reasonable degree with fidelity, but in that turbulent age it was difficult to find anyone who could, like Bernard, abstain from the pleasures of life and submit to asceticism. Over time the Cistercian monks—even in Clairvaux itself, Bernard’s monastery—became rich through the gifts of hopeful people. Since groups of people donated their property to the Church and monasteries in exchange for “bread to eat and not to die,” the monks gradually managed to add meat and large quantities of wine to their table, and from then on all manual work was assigned to lay brothers, that is, non-clerical individuals dressed in monastic habits and obliged to observe the monastery’s rules. Four years after Bernard’s death his monks bought a group of Saracen slaves. Through the sale of goods they collectively produced within the four walls of the monasteries they engaged in major trade, and because of their social position they were exempt from transport duties, arousing the enmity of the guilds. As a result of the failure of the Crusades, unity of faith decreased, and to the same extent the number of new entrants to the monasteries diminished and the spirit of all monastic orders became unstable. But the ancient ideal of living according to the way of the apostles of Jesus in a communal society free of individual ownership was not forgotten, and the belief that a true Christian should avoid wealth and power and always be a man of peace with steadfastness remained in the minds of thousands of people. At the beginning of the thirteenth century a man appeared among the mountains of Umbria in Italy whose simplicity of life, purity, holiness, and love so strengthened these ancient Christian ideals that people involuntarily said that perhaps Jesus Christ had again set foot in the world.

III – Saint Francis

Giovanni di Bernardone, son of a wealthy merchant named Ser Pietro di Bernardone who had extensive trade with the land of Provence, was born in Assisi in 1182. His father, while staying in Provence, had fallen in love with a French girl named Pica and had married her and brought her to Assisi. When he returned from another journey from Provence and learned that his wife had given birth to a son, apparently out of respect for his wife he changed the name to Francesco, that is, Francis. This child grew up in one of the most beautiful regions of Italy and never, as long as he lived, lost any of his affection for the delightful landscapes and clear skies of the Umbrian foothills. He learned Italian and French from his parents and Latin from the parish priest, and received no further regular education. Soon he became a partner in his father’s business, but he disappointed Ser Pietro because he was far more agile in spending money than in earning it. Francis was the richest and most generous young man in his hometown. For this reason friends gathered around him, shared meals and drinking with him, and joined him in singing troubadour songs. In those days Francis sometimes wore garments reserved for minstrels. He was a handsome youth with black hair and eyes, an open face, and a pleasing voice. Those who wrote the biographies of his youth emphatically state that he had no relations with the opposite sex, and in reality he knew only two women, but it is clear that this claim is unfair to Francis. It is probable that in those years, that is, his years of growth, he heard something from his father about the Albigensian and Waldensian heretics of southern France and their preaching of evangelical poverty.

In 1202 Francis joined the troops of Assisi in the war against Perugia, was captured, and spent about a year in solitude in reflection. In 1204 he volunteered to join the troops of Pope Innocent III. While lying ill with fever in Spoleto, he imagined he heard a voice saying: “Why do you leave the master and serve the servant? Why do you abandon the lord and submit to the command of his subject?” He asked: “Lord, what do you want me to do?” The voice replied: “Return to your homeland. There it will be told to you what you must do.” Francis abandoned military service and returned to Assisi. Now his interest in his father’s business was far less than before and his interest in religion greater. Near Assisi there was a small chapel called the chapel of San Damiano. In February 1207, while Francis was praying there, he imagined that Jesus spoke to him from the chapel’s altar and accepted the rest of his life and soul as a pious endowment. From that moment he felt that he had devoted himself to a new life. He immediately gave all the cash he had to the custodian of the chapel and hurried home. One day on the road he encountered a leper and, disgusted at the sight of him, turned aside. But a few moments later, repentant for this breach of his vow to Christ, he returned, emptied his purse into the leper’s hand, and kissed his hand. It is related from Francis himself that this act was the beginning of his spiritual life. From then on he often visited the dwellings of lepers and gave them alms and charity.

Shortly after this event he spent several days in the chapel itself or around it and apparently did not touch familiar food. When he returned to Assisi again his clothes were so tattered and he himself so thin, worn, pale, and disheveled that the mischievous children in the city’s public square, upon seeing his appearance, cried out: “Hey, madman! Hey, madman!” There his father found him, called him a foolish son, dragged him home, and imprisoned him in a cupboard. As soon as his mother freed him, Francis hurriedly took the road to the chapel. When his father learned of the matter he went after his son and reproached him for making the family a laughingstock by his actions and for not having amounted to anything in return for all the money spent on his upbringing, and ordered him to leave the city. Francis, who had sold all his personal possessions to help the chapel, handed the money over to his father, but the son who now considered himself Christ’s could no longer obey his father’s commands. The dispute between father and son was brought before the bishop’s court in the square of Santa Maria Maggiore. While a crowd watched, Francis humbly appeared before the bishop. This is the same trial session that the famous Italian painter Giotto immortalized on his beautiful panel. The bishop heard the son’s words and ordered him to hand over all his possessions to his father. Francis went into a room in the bishop’s palace, and shortly afterward returned naked and placed the clothes he had folded, along with the few remaining coins, before the bishop and said: “Until now I called Pietro Bernardone my father, but now I wish to rise to the service of God. For this reason I return to him this money … and also my clothing and everything I had from him, for from now on I wish to say nothing but ‘Our Father who art in heaven.’” While the bishop covered the young man’s naked and trembling body with his own cloak, Bernardone took the clothes and returned home. Francis again turned toward the chapel of San Damiano, sewed a garment for himself in the style of hermits, begged from house to house to satisfy his hunger, and began to repair that ruined chapel with his own hands. Several residents of the city also came to his aid, and while working they sang hymns to God together.

In February 1209, while Francis was attending Mass, he suddenly felt transformed upon hearing verses that the priest was reading from the Gospel about Jesus’ advice to his apostles. Those verses were as follows:

And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Provide neither gold nor silver nor copper in your money belts; nor bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs; for a worker is worthy of his food. (Matthew 10:7-10)

Suddenly Francis imagined that these words were coming from the mouth of Christ himself and were addressing him. He decided to obey those words exactly, that is, to own nothing and to busy himself with preaching to people for the attainment of the kingdom of heaven. He resolved to go back 1200 years through the centuries and tear the veils of ambiguity that had been woven around Jesus Christ, and to rebuild his life according to the way of that heavenly being.

With this thought, in the spring of that year, Francis, who had endured the taunts and mockery of the vulgar people, began to preach the teachings of Christ and call people to poverty in the squares of the city of Assisi and nearby towns. Because he had grown weary of people’s unrestrained pursuit of wealth, which was the distinguishing feature of that age, and was disgusted by the ceremonies and luxuries of the lives of some clergy, he himself regarded wealth as the snare of the devil and a curse, and instructed his followers to look upon money with the same contempt as upon dung, and invited all men and women to sell what they had and give it to the weak. Small groups of people listened to his sermons with wonder and admiration, but most considered him a fool in love with Jesus and went about their business indifferently. The good bishop of Assisi advised him: “Your way of life, without any property, seems to me very unpleasant and burdensome.” Francis replied to the bishop’s words: “Your Excellency, if all of us had a share of the world’s goods, we would need weapons to defend those possessions.” The hearts of some people were moved by his sincerity.

Twelve men were willing to follow his teachings. Francis received them with open arms and made the advice that Jesus had given to his apostles—the one mentioned above—their motto and rule. This group sewed brown garments for themselves and built huts from branches and leaves of trees. Every day Francis and his companions, who had abandoned the old monastic tradition of seclusion, went on foot and without a penny in their possession to various places to guide people. Sometimes they were absent for several days and slept in haylofts or in leper hospitals or under the porches of churches, and when they returned Francis washed their feet and gave them food.

Francis’s followers, when meeting one another and when encountering someone during travel, used the ancient Eastern phrase “Peace of God be upon you” as a greeting. The followers of this order were not yet called Franciscans. The members of this community called themselves Friars Minor or “lesser brothers.” They were brothers in that they differed from ordinary priests, and for this reason they called themselves lesser or minor because they believed they were the least servants of Christ’s court. They never claimed higher power for themselves but were obedient to the commands of higher authorities. Every friar was obliged to obey the commands of priests, even if they were in a very low and small position, and to kiss the hand of every priest he met. Very few of the first members of the Franciscan order held holy ranks. Francis himself never rose above the rank of deacon. The followers of this order served one another in their small community and engaged in manual labor. Someone who was self-indulgent would not last long in such an environment. They discouraged individuals from studying sciences and wisdom. Francis himself attached no superiority to non-religious knowledge except for acquiring wealth or gaining power, and he said: “My brothers who pursue the desire for knowledge will find themselves destitute on the day of judgment.” For many years before Goethe’s short saying about speech without action—knowledge that does not lead to action is useless—Francis said: “A man has only as much knowledge as he puts into practice at the right time.” None of the followers of the order had the right to own a book, not even a prayer book. During sermons they could use singing in addition to ordinary speech. Francis even permitted them to imitate the lyric singers of the age and entertain people with singing and become “minstrels of God.”

Sometimes people mocked the friar monks, beat them, and even stole their garments. Francis’s advice to them was that they should show no resistance. In many cases these irreligious individuals were astonished at the superhuman indifference of the monks to arrogance and worldly goods, asked for forgiveness, and returned the stolen property. It is not known whether the following example from the Little Flowers of Saint Francis has a historical basis or is legendary, but whatever it is, it is a good measure of the holiness mixed with ecstasy that shines through all the events of this great saint: One winter day, as Francis was leaving Perugia and was greatly distressed by the severe cold, he said: “Brother Leo, although the Friars Minor are good examples of holiness and moral purification, nevertheless write down with all diligence that true joy should not be sought among the members of this order.” And Francis walked a little further and said: “Brother Leo, even if the Friars Minor make the blind see, the crooked straight, expel demons, make the deaf hear, and heal the lame … and give life to those who have been buried for four days—still write that true joy is never found among them.” And he walked a little further, and then cried out loudly: “Brother Leo, even if the Friars Minor become familiar with all languages and the sciences of the Holy Scriptures and by virtue of this knowledge can not only foretell future events but also uncover the secrets of the mind and soul—write that true joy is not there.” … He went a little further again, and once more raised his voice: “Brother Leo, even if the Friars Minor become so skilled in preaching that they can convert all the infidels to follow the faith of Jesus—write that true joy is not in this.” And when they had spoken in this manner for two leagues, Brother Leo asked: “Father, I swear to you by the name of the Lord, tell me where true joy can be found.” And Francis replied: “When we reach the chapel of the Blessed Virgin of the Angels [which at that time was the monastery of the Franciscan order in Assisi], and we arrive completely soaked from the rain, frozen from the cold, covered in mud, and suffering from hunger, we knock on the door and the angry doorkeeper comes and says: ‘Who are you?’ and we answer: ‘We are two of your brothers,’ and he replies: ‘You lie, you are two swindlers who go everywhere deceiving people and stealing the alms of the poor. Go about your business!’ and does not open the door for us and leaves us all night in the rain and snow, hungry and cold, then we bear this injustice with patience … without complaint or lament, and with complete love and humility believe that it is God who has blocked our way through the doorkeeper—Brother Leo, write that true joy is there. And if we persistently continue to knock on the door, and he comes out and angrily drives us away, curses us and spits on our cheeks, and says: ‘Go away, you wicked thieves!’ and if we bear this rebuke with love and joy—write, Brother Leo, that this is true joy. And if we, with our souls on our lips from cold and hunger, knock on the door again and with abundant tears beg that for the love of God he open the door, and he … comes out with a thick, knotted club and seizes our hoods and throws us to the ground, rolls us in the snow, and with that heavy club beats all our bones, and we, remembering the sufferings of the blessed Christ, for the love of him, bear all this with an open face and patience—write, Brother Leo, that it is here and in such a state that we have sought true joy.”

The memory of the frivolities of his early youth caused a sense of guilt to take hold of him that constantly tormented him, and if the contents of the Little Flowers of Saint Francis are to be taken as credible, he was sometimes perplexed whether God would ever forgive his sins. This same book relates a delightful story to this effect: In the early days of the Franciscans, since there was no prayer book from which to read prayers and perform the offices, Francis composed a litany of repentance in a state of prayer and instructed Brother Leo, one of the monks who was his companion in travel and at home, to repeat those phrases one by one after him. Each sentence contained words indicating Francis’s sinfulness, and each time Leo went to repeat those phrases in imitation of his master, he noticed that instead he said: “The mercy of God is endless.” In another instance, while Francis was recovering from a four-day fever, he ordered that he be taken naked to the public square of the city of Assisi, and commanded one of the brother monks to pour a bowl full of ashes on his face in public, and addressed the people saying: “You think that I am a holy man, but I confess before God and you that in my illness I ate meat and broth cooked with meat.” The people became even more convinced of his purity. They explained to one another how a young monk had seen Jesus and the Virgin Mary conversing with Francis. Many miracles were attributed to him. The sick and those possessed by the devil were brought to him for healing.

His care for the poor became legendary. He could never see others poorer than himself. He took off his own garments so often and gave them to destitute passersby that his disciples could hardly keep him constantly clothed. In the Mirror of Perfection, which is probably legendary, it is related that once:

As he was returning from Siena, on the way he met a poor man and said to the monk who was with him: “We must return this cloak to its owner, for it was only held by us in trust until we reached a man poorer than ourselves … now if we do not give it to someone who is more needy than we are, it will be counted as theft in the book of our deeds.”

His love was so boundless that it extended beyond human beings to animals, plants, and even inanimate objects.

In the Mirror of Perfection a narration from him is recorded whose authenticity is uncertain, and in any case it is a kind of prelude to the piece that Francis later composed under the name of the Canticle of the Sun: In the morning when the sun rises, everyone should thank God, who created it for our enjoyment … When night comes, everyone should thank God for the existence of brother fire, whose light illuminates our eyes, for we are all like blind men and God, with the help of these two, who are our brothers, makes our eyes bright.

He was so fascinated by fire that he was reluctant to extinguish a candle, believing that the candle might object to being extinguished. He felt a kind of attachment and kinship toward every living being. He wanted to petition the emperor (Frederick II, who had a great interest in killing birds) and tell him: “For the love you have for God and for me, enact a law so that no one may catch, kill, or harm larks, who are our sisters; and also command that all governors or rulers of cities and lords of castles and villages oblige people to scatter a quantity of grain every year outside the cities and walls so that our sisters, the larks and other birds, do not remain without food.” It is also related that one day Francis encountered a young man who had caught several doves and was taking them to the market to sell. The saint encouraged the young man to entrust the birds to him, and himself arranged a nest for them so that “they might be fruitful and multiply.” The doves obeyed the master’s command well and lived near the monastery with great affection toward the monks and sometimes picked up crumbs from their table. Many legends have arisen about his love for birds. One of them relates how, on the road from Cannara to Bevagna, Francis preached to “my little sisters, the birds” and “those who were on the branches came down to hear his words; and remained silent until Saint Francis finished his sermon.”

My little sisters, the birds, you are greatly indebted to the Lord your Creator, and you must always be grateful to him because the Lord has given you double and triple garments. He has given you freedom to go wherever you wish. … Moreover, you neither sow nor reap, and the Lord feeds you. He gives you drink from rivers and springs. He has made mountains and valleys your refuge. He has given you tall trees to build your nests there. To the same extent that you are unable to spin or sew, the Lord has given clothing to you and your children. … So, my little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude, and always try to give thanks to the Lord.

Two of the friars, James and Masseo, assure us that the birds bowed their heads with great respect before Francis, and did not leave him until he blessed them. The Little Flowers of Saint Francis, from which this story is taken, is an Italian expanded version of the Latin book Actus Beati Francisci (The Deeds of Blessed Francis) (1223). These stories in the life and virtues of Francis have more of a literary character than historical events, but from the point of view of literary criticism they are among the most interesting compositions of the age of faith.

Since Francis had been advised that to establish a religious order he needed the pope’s permission, in 1210 he set out with twelve of his disciples for Rome and presented his request and that of his disciples to Innocent III. That great pope gently advised them to wait so that time would first prove the practicality of the order’s teachings. Innocent said: “My dear sons, your life seems to me exceedingly hard. I see that you truly have great zeal … but I must consider the situation of those who will come after you, lest your way of life be beyond their power.” Francis insisted, and the pope finally yielded to his request—that is, embodied power bowed before embodied faith.

His followers shaved the middle of their heads in the manner of other monks and obliged themselves to observe a hierarchy, and from the Benedictines of Mount Subasio near Assisi they accepted the chapel known as “Saint Mary of the Angels” as their place of worship. This chapel was so small (its length did not exceed a few meters) that it was called the Portiuncula or “little portion.” Around it the monks built huts for themselves, and these huts formed the first monastery of the first Franciscan order.

From then on not only did new members join the newly founded order, but the saint was happy that an eighteen-year-old wealthy girl named Clara di Scifi asked his permission to found the second order of Saint Francis for women (1212). This maiden, after leaving home, vowed to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience. She became the head of a Franciscan monastery that was built around the chapel of San Damiano for the nuns.

In 1221 the third order of Saint Francis (known as the Third Order) was formed. The members of the latter order were from the class of laity who, while wishing to live “in the world,” wanted to follow the Franciscan rules to the maximum extent possible (without completely obliging themselves to observe those rules) and at the same time wanted to help the first and second orders in manual labor and charitable works.

Now the ever-increasing number of members of the Franciscan orders caused the spread of their ideas and teachings to the cities of Umbria (1211) and later to other towns of Italy. This community had brought no heresy with them, but what they said about theology in their sermons was very little—the more important point was that the Franciscan preachers did not expect from their listeners the same purity, poverty, and obedience that was their own motto. They said: “Fear God and honor him, praise and glorify him. … Repent … for you know that we shall soon die … avoid evil and pursue good.”

The people of Italy had heard such words many times, but rarely from the lips of individuals whose sincerity was so evident. Crowds gathered in their preaching assemblies. The people of one village in the Umbrian foothills, as soon as they heard that Saint Francis was heading for their village, all together, young and old, with bouquets of flowers and banners, singing, went out to welcome them. In Siena, Francis found the city caught in a civil war. His sermon caused the opposing groups to fall at his feet and, at his encouragement, forget their old enmity for a few days. During such journeys in Italy Francis contracted a fever and died prematurely because of it.

Nevertheless, Francis, encouraged by his success in various parts of Italy and having little knowledge about Islam, decided to travel to Syria in order to persuade the Muslims and even the sultan of that land to accept the Christian faith. In 1212 he boarded a ship from one of the ports of Italy bound for Syria, but a storm drove the ship to the coast of Dalmatia, and Francis was forced to return to Italy. On the other hand, it is related how “that saint made the king of Babylon a follower of the faith of Jesus.” Another probably legendary account states that in the same year Francis went to Spain to convert the Moors of that land, but upon arrival he became so ill that his disciples were forced to return him to Assisi. Another doubtful account relates that he went to Egypt and passed unharmed through the army that was fighting the Crusaders at Damietta and proposed to the Muslim king that he was willing to pass through fire and suffer no harm, on condition that the king and all his troops become followers of the Christian faith, but the king refused, and at his command Saint Francis was safely sent back to the Christian camp. Francis, disgusted at the sight of the horrific massacre of Muslims by the soldiers of Jesus’ army in the capture of Damietta, returned to Italy heartbroken and ill. It is related that during the journey to Egypt an eye disease was added to his fever, and for this reason in the last years of his life he was almost deprived of the blessing of sight.

During the saint’s long absences the number of his followers increased more rapidly than was beneficial and advantageous for his order. The fame of his reputation caused individuals to join the Franciscan order who swore the oath of fidelity without sufficient consideration. Some later regretted this haste, and some complained that the order’s rules were too severe. Francis reluctantly showed concessions. Also, undoubtedly the expansion of the order and its division into various branches scattered around the foothills of Umbria required great presence of mind and skill in administration that could never be achieved by a reclusive mystic. It is related that once when a monk spoke ill of another before him, Francis ordered him to eat a piece of donkey dung so that his tongue would no longer desire ugly speech.

The monk obeyed the master’s command, but his companions were more disgusted by the greater punishment than by the fault itself. In 1220 Francis relinquished leadership of the order and instructed his followers to choose another as head of the community, and from then on he himself withdrew like an ordinary monk into the corner of prayer. But a year later, disturbed at seeing new systems that had weakened the original rules (dated 1210) of the order, he drew up new regulations known as the “Testament” of Francis. His purpose in this was to compel the monks of his order to observe the vow of poverty completely and to prevent them from leaving their huts in the Portiuncula and settling in more pleasant places that the townspeople had built for them. Francis presented his new rules to Pope Honorius III, and the pope sent them to a council of chief priests for review. When the result reached Francis it contained ten or twelve phrases in praise of him, besides weakening ten or twelve articles of his rules. In this way the predictions of Innocent III were fulfilled.

Francis, seeing the situation this way, reluctantly but with complete humility devoted the rest of his life to seclusion, solitary reflection, and worship. The intensity of his devotion and the power of his thought were such that he sometimes imagined he saw Jesus Christ, or the Virgin Mary, or the apostles. In 1224 he left Assisi with three of his disciples, rode through mountains and plains, and reached a hermitage on Mount La Verna near Chiusi. Here Francis took up residence in a remote hut beside a deep precipice and allowed no one to visit him except Brother Leo. He gave him strict orders to visit him only twice a day, and each time as he approached the hut and raised his voice, if he heard no response he should not go further. On September 14, 1224, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, after Francis had fasted for a long time and spent the whole night in prayer and worship, he imagined that one of the cherubim of heaven descended carrying an image of the crucified Christ.

When that angel disappeared from his sight he felt a strange pain in himself and noticed that wounds had appeared on the palms and backs of his hands, on the top and soles of his feet, and on his body that in his opinion resembled the wound of the spear that had pierced Christ’s side, and he thought that the wounds caused by hanging his body on the cross had also appeared on his body.

After this event Francis returned to the monastery of La Verna and then to Assisi. A year after the appearance of the stigmata he gradually lost his sight, and during a visit to the nunnery of Saint Clara he became completely blind. Clara restored his sight by caring for him and kept him for a month in the monastery of San Damiano, and it was there that one day in 1224 while he was recovering, out of joy he composed in rhythmic Italian prose his famous piece, the Canticle of the Sun:

Most high, all-powerful, good Lord,

Yours are the praises, the glory, and the honor, and all blessing,

To You alone, Most High, do they belong,

and no human is worthy to mention Your name.

Praised be You, my Lord, with all Your creatures,

especially Sir Brother Sun,

who is the day and through whom You give us light.

And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor;

and bears a likeness of You, Most High One.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,

in heaven You formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,

and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather

through whom You give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,

which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,

through whom You light the night,

and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Mother Earth,

who sustains and governs us,

and who produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,

and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace,

for by You, Most High, shall they be crowned.

In 1225 some physicians of Rieti, after unsuccessfully drawing “the urine of an immature child” into his eye, prescribed for treatment that red-hot iron rods should be drawn across his forehead. It is said that Francis appealed to “Brother Fire” that “you are the most beautiful of all creatures; show me a favorable face at this hour, for you know how much I have always loved you.” After this operation he stated that he felt no pain. His sight returned enough that he was able to undertake another journey to preach to the people. It was not long before the difficulties of travel exhausted him, fever and dropsy weakened him, and his disciples returned him to Assisi.

Despite his protests, Francis was bedded in the bishop’s palace. He asked the attending physician to reveal the truth of his condition to him, and the doctor told him that it was unlikely he would live until the end of autumn. Upon hearing this news he sang with a voice that astonished everyone. Then it is related that he added another stanza to his Canticle of the Sun with this content:

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,

from whom no one living can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin!

Blessed are those whom death will find in Your most holy will,

for the second death shall do them no harm.

It is related that in these last days of his life he asked forgiveness for the austerities he had imposed and for this reason “had afflicted Brother Body.” When the bishop was away from his palace, Francis encouraged the monks to carry him to the Portiuncula. There, at his direction, they wrote his will, which was insignificant and at the same time commanding. In this will Francis ordered his followers to be content with “poor and abandoned churches,” not to accept dwellings incompatible with their vow of poverty, to hand over any heretic or apostate monk in their order to the bishop, and never to change the rules of their order.

On October 3, 1226, at the age of forty-five, while singing a psalm, he closed his eyes to the world. Two years later the Church numbered him among its saints. In this turbulent age two other prominent men were also unique in the field: one was Innocent III, and the other Frederick II. Innocent raised the Church to the highest positions, but a century later the Church fell from that rank. Frederick raised the empire to its highest levels, but this progress lasted only ten years. Francis exaggerated the virtues of poverty and ignorance, but it was by introducing these original teachings of Jesus that he gave new life to the Christian world. Today, after centuries, only scholars are aware of the life of that pope and that emperor, whereas the spark of the influence of that guileless saint, Francis, is still burning in the hearts of millions of people around the world.

The order founded by Saint Francis had about five thousand followers at the time of his death and its influence had extended to Hungary, Germany, England, France, and Spain. The existence of this order was a strong barrier for the Church, saved northern Italy from the danger of heretics, and made it again a follower of the Catholic faith. Only a few people could accept the head of this order’s teachings, which were poverty and ignorance. Europe insisted on following the exciting arc of wealth, knowledge, philosophy, and doubt. At the same time the rules that Francis himself had reluctantly accepted were further relaxed (1230). It could not be expected that individuals, especially in the necessary numbers, could endure for long periods in the same lofty position of asceticism that was almost bordering on madness and had shortened Francis’s life. With the moderation of the rules the number of Friars Minor increased to two hundred thousand or eight thousand monasteries by 1280. The followers of this order became skilled preachers, and it was in imitation of their method that secular priests learned the art of preaching, which until then had been reserved for bishops. It was from this community that saints such as Bernardino of Siena and Anthony of Padua, and scholars such as Roger Bacon, philosophers such as Duns Scotus, and teachers such as Alexander of Hales arose. Some members of this group became agents of the Inquisition. Some rose to the ranks of bishop, archbishop, and pope. And many were sent on dangerous missions to foreign and distant lands to propagate religion and spread the faith. Gifts and offerings were given to Franciscan monasteries by pious and devout people. Some of their great men, like Brother Elias, became fond of luxury. Elias, although Francis had forbidden the building of magnificent and decorated churches, in memory of that saint laid the foundation of a magnificent basilica that to this day is the ornament and decoration of the mountain of Assisi. The history of events and legends of Saint Francis influenced the fine arts of Italy, and the panels of great painters such as Cimabue and Giotto were the first products of the great and lasting influence of that great man.

Many Franciscans opposed any action to reduce the severity of Francis’s rules. While the vast majority of the order’s followers preferred life in large monasteries, members of the minority, with various names such as “Spirituals” or “Zealots,” lived in groups in small hermitages or monasteries located among the Apennine mountains. The “Spirituals” claimed that Jesus and his apostles owned nothing of the world’s goods. Saint Bonaventure agreed with this view, and Pope Nicholas III accepted the same theory in 1279, but in 1323 Pope John XXII declared it a false notion, and from then on anyone from the “Spirituals” who insisted on propagating this subject was called a heretic and suppressed. A century after Francis’s death his most faithful followers were burned alive by order of the Inquisition.

IV – Saint Dominic

It is unfair that the name Dominic in history should be linked with the Inquisition and evoke it in the mind. He was neither the founder of that institution nor responsible for the horrifying actions committed by its agents. All his own efforts were devoted to guiding people to the right path through preaching and being a good example for others. Dominic was a much stricter man than Francis, but he was honored as a purer saint, and Francis in turn loved him. Essentially the work of both was the same: each founded a great community whose members’ task was to strengthen, preach, and spread the faith among Christians and infidels, not to hide in seclusion and save their own skins. Both adopted the sharpest weapon of the heretical community, namely the veneration of poverty and putting sermons into practice, and the efforts of both saved the Church from destruction.

Domingo de Guzmán was born in 1170 in Caleruega in Castile and was raised under the supervision of a priest who was a relative of his. He was one of the thousands of individuals who in those days followed Christianity with all their heart and soul. It is related that when a drought occurred in Palencia he sold everything he had, including his valuable books, to feed the poor.

At the beginning of his work he was one of the permanent canons of the Augustinian order and resident in the cathedral of Osma. In 1201 he accompanied his bishop on a mission to Toulouse, which at that time was considered an important center of the Albigensian heresy; even its host was a follower of those heretics. It is related that Dominic guided him to the right path in one night, but it is probable that this account is legendary. Dominic, who had seen the bishop’s advice and the way of life of some heretics as a source of inspiration for himself, voluntarily chose poverty, went about barefoot, and tried with complete calm to bring people back to the faith of the Church. In Montpellier he met three representatives of the pope, Arnaud, Raoul, and Peter of Castelnau, and was extremely displeased and disgusted by their luxurious appearance and fine clothes, and considered this the reason for their failure in the struggle against the heretics. Dominic, with the courage characteristic of a Hebrew prophet, reproached them and said: “It is not by showing power and splendor, or a large crowd of attendants, or lining up magnificent and well-formed horses, or by colorful and luxurious clothes that the heretics call people to their new faith, but the reason is their zeal in preaching, their humility according to the way of the apostles, their severity toward themselves, and their purity.” It is related that the pope’s embarrassed representatives dismissed their attendants and threw away their footwear.

For ten years (1205–1216) he remained in Languedoc and busied himself with preaching with great zeal. The only instance mentioned during the massacres and persecution of heretics in which his name is mentioned is when some of them were being burned, and it is said that Dominic saved one of them from the flames. Some of his followers after the death of their master called him “persecutor haereticorum,” which does not necessarily mean torturer of heretics but pursuer of heretics to show them the way. Dominic gathered a community of like-minded preachers around him. Their sermons were so effective that Pope Honorius III (1216) recognized the community of Preaching Friars as a new order and approved the rules that Dominic had established for this newly founded order. Then Dominic, who had established the center of his work in the city of Rome, gathered volunteers, taught them, inspired them with a zeal mixed with fanaticism, and sent them to various parts of Europe and even to the East as far as Kiev and to foreign regions to call apparently Christian people and pagan nations to follow the teachings of Jesus. In the first general chapter of the Dominicans, held in Bologna in 1220, Dominic encouraged his followers to agree unanimously to recognize absolute poverty as the head of their creed and the most important rule of their order. It was in this same place that he died a year later.

The Dominicans, like the Franciscans, were Poor of Christ who were soon scattered in all directions. Matthew Paris, the English medieval chronicler, writing about this community in England in 1240, says:

They were men who were sparing in food and clothing, owned no gold or silver or anything, moved among small and large cities and villages and preached about the teachings of the “Gospel” … lived together in groups of seven or ten … they thought neither of the morrow nor stored anything for the next day … whatever was given to them as alms and remained on their table they immediately gave to the poor. Their only provision for the journey was the “Gospel.” They slept on their clothes on a mat and placed pieces of stone under their heads as pillows.

The Dominicans played an effective role in the work of the Inquisition that was not always accompanied by gentleness and mildness. They were appointed by the popes to high offices and diplomatic missions. They entered the universities and produced two of the greatest men of scholastic philosophy—Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. These were the ones who placed Aristotle in a Christian mold and freed the Church from the bondage of his philosophy. It was this same community that, together with the Franciscans, Carmelites, and Austin friars, mingled with the people in daily affairs, brought about a revolution in monastic life, and raised monasticism in the thirteenth century to such a degree of power and glory as had never been seen before.

V – Nuns

Even from the time of the apostle Paul it was customary in Christian communities for widows and other solitary or pious women to devote part or all of their time and property to charitable works. In the fourth century some women, imitating the method of monks, abandoned the world and prayed in seclusion or in communities and bound themselves by vow to poverty, chastity, and obedience. Around 350 the twin sister of Saint Benedict, named Scholastica, under the guidance and direction of her brother, founded a nunnery near Monte Cassino. From that time onward Benedictine nunneries spread throughout Europe, and the number of women nuns of the Benedictine order became almost as large as the number of monks of that order. The Cistercian order founded its first women’s monastery in 1125 and its most famous one, known as Port-Royal, in 1204, and by 1300 the total number of nunneries of that order in Europe had reached seven hundred. In these older orders the nuns were often women of the upper classes, and every aristocratic or wealthy woman who had no place or contentment in her family was sent to one of these nunneries. In 458 Emperor Majorian was forced to prevent guardians from forcibly sending maidens who remained at home to nunneries. Although the Church had stipulated that nothing should be taken from women upon entering these nunneries except what the newcomers voluntarily offered, entry of women into the Benedictine order usually required a dowry. For this reason the abbess of a nunnery, as the English poet Chaucer brought in his poems, was a woman proud of her noble lineage and bearing many responsibilities, who administered a vast domain as a source of revenue for her nunnery. In those days a nun was usually addressed as lady or mistress rather than sister.

Saint Francis brought about a revolution in both men’s and women’s monasteries. In 1212 when Saint Clare came to him and expressed her desire to found a monastery for women similar to what he had built for men, Francis, although he himself was only a deacon, set aside ecclesiastical rules and accepted her vow and admitted her to the Franciscan order, and instructed Clare to proceed with building a monastery for the “Poor Clares.”

Innocent III, who usually closed his eyes to such violations of ecclesiastical rules as long as they were done with sincerity and purity of intention, confirmed Francis’s command (1216). Saint Clare gathered a group of chaste women around her, none of whom had any share of the world’s goods, lived in common, spun wool, wove cloth, cared for the sick, and distributed alms. Almost in the same way that legends were made about Francis, legends also arose about this woman. It is related that: Once a pope went to her monastery to listen to that woman’s words about spiritual and heavenly subjects … Saint Clare spread a table and placed loaves of bread on the table so that the holy father might bless them. … Saint Clare knelt with great respect and asked him to kindly bless the bread. … The holy father replied: “Sister Clare, most pious of believers, I wish you yourself to bless this bread and draw the most pure sign of the cross of Christ upon it, for you have completely devoted yourself to it.” And Saint Clare replied: “Holy father, forgive me, I am a poor sinful woman; if I ever dare to perform such an act in the presence of the vicar of Christ I will be worthy of much reproach.” And the pope said: “So that others do not take this as presumption but consider it the reward of obedience, I command you by the vow you made for obedience to bless this bread in the name of the Lord.” And then Saint Clare, exactly like a true obedient daughter, with piety blessed the bread with the most pure sign of the cross of Jesus. The amazing thing was that immediately upon all the loaves of bread the sign of the cross appeared in the most beautiful way. And the holy father, when he saw this miracle with his own eyes, ate the bread and, while thanking God and blessing Saint Clare, left that place. Clare closed her eyes to the world in 1253. Shortly afterward she was numbered among the saints of the faith. The Franciscan monks in various places formed similar communities of nuns that became known as Clarisses or “Poor Clares.”

Other orders of the Poor of Christ—the Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites—each founded a “second order” for nuns and by 1300 the number of nuns in Europe was equal to the number of monks. In Germany the women’s monasteries, because of women’s natural disposition, became centers for the outpouring of mystical thoughts. In France and England these kinds of monasteries mostly became shelters for noblewomen—who turned their backs on worldly interests, or became solitary and desperate or bereaved. The book Ancrene Wisse is representative of the spirit that should be expected from English nuns in the thirteenth century. It is probable that this book was written by the bishop of Por for nunneries in Trent in Dorset. What makes this book tedious is the detailed description of sins and hell, and some unseemly insults about the female body; but the very beautiful and sincere tone of this book covers its defects, and it is counted among the oldest and most authentic examples of English prose.

It is easy to gather from ten centuries of history some interesting cases of the debauchery of a handful of nuns. Some nuns were sent to monasteries against their will, and such women found entering the circle of the pious burdensome. Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, and Egbert, bishop of York, found it necessary to prevent bishops, priests, and abbots from forcing nuns to commit unchaste acts. Bishop Ivo of Chartres reported that the nuns of the monastery of Saint Fara were engaged in prostitution. Abelard also held the same view about some French nunneries of his own time. Pope Innocent III described the monastery of Santa Agata as a brothel that had contaminated the entire surrounding region with its immorality and notoriety.

The report of Rigaud, bishop of Rouen (1249), about the religious communities of his diocese was generally favorable, but he mentions one nunnery in which out of thirty-three religious women and three lay sisters, eight were suspected or guilty of fornication and “the abbess was almost drunk every night.” Boniface VIII (1300) tried to improve the discipline of women’s monasteries by obliging monks and nuns to complete seclusion, but the implementation of this command was not possible. For example, in the bishopric of Lincoln, when the bishop went to a nunnery to place there a scroll containing the pope’s command, the nuns threw the command on the bishop’s head and swore that they would never obey it, for they did not count such solitary life among their initial commitments for monastic life. In the Canterbury Tales by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer, one of the main characters of the tale is the prioress of a nunnery who should not have been among the pilgrims to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, for the Church had forbidden nuns from going on pilgrimage to holy places.

If historians had recorded obedience to those rules with the same accuracy with which they recorded violations of the rules of women’s monasteries, we could probably cite thousands of cases of the chastity and purity of women in contrast to every lapse and sin. In many cases the rules were savagely severe, and individuals considered themselves justified in violating them. The nuns of the two Carthusian and Cistercian orders were obliged to remain constantly silent, not to open their lips except when absolutely necessary, and naturally this was a command whose execution was burdensome for the fair sex. Usually the nuns spent their time attending to their own needs such as cleaning, cooking, laundry, and sewing, and sewed clothes for monks and the poor, wove cloth for altars, spent time preparing chasubles for priests, and with delicacy and great patience spent half of the events of world history on such tapestries. In addition, these kinds of women occupied themselves with copying and illuminating books, supervised children for education, and taught them literature, medicine, and household arts. For several centuries these kinds of monasteries were the only centers of higher education that existed for girls. Many nuns cared for patients in hospitals. All of them rose from sleep at midnight and again before dawn for worship and performed the offices according to the Church’s commands. Many days of the year they fasted, and from dawn until evening, which was the time of breaking the fast, they did not touch food.

If sometimes some violated these hard and severe rules, this very fact should be a cause for hope. If we look at the history of nineteen centuries of Christianity—with all the heroes, kings, and saints of the Christian world—it is difficult to name among the male class a number whose names we can mention who have reached the perfection and ultimate goal of Christianity like these nuns. Their lives filled with piety and their cheerful performance of the duties they had undertaken brought happiness to individuals of several generations.

When all the sins of history are weighed in the balance of justice, the scale of the virtues of these women will outweigh the vices that have been enumerated from them and will be the cause of humanity’s salvation.

VI – Mystics

Many of these kinds of women can be counted among the saints, for they felt that the essence of the Lord was closer to them than their limbs. The imagination of the medieval human was so aroused by all the latent forces in word, image, statue, ceremony, and even in the color and quantity of light that those perceptions beyond the five senses of man were easily obtained, and the believer’s soul felt that it was entering the realm of the supernatural from within the fortress of nature. The human mind itself, with all the mystery of its power, seemed something supernatural and spiritual, and undoubtedly like a dark role, only a small part of the universal intellect that governs the world and had a place in the heart of essence.

Therefore it was possible for the tip of the intellect to kiss the foot of the divine throne. In the world of mysticism where humility was combined with high aspiration, the mystic’s heart burned with the hope that when the soul is freed from the burden of sins and is elevated by the blessing of prayer, it can, by the grace of the Lord, attain the sight of the eternal beauty and become a companion of the courtiers of the Most High. The sight of eternal beauty was never possible through the senses, reason, natural sciences, or philosophy, for all these were connected with time and creatures and earth, and it was impossible for it to reach the essence and power and unity of the universe of existence. The mystic’s problem was to purify the soul, as an inner means, for spiritual perceptions, to remove every stain of individual self-love and deceptive multiplicity from the mirror of the self, to expand the scope of its action and love to the utmost degree, then to look clearly and with the eye of meaning at the divine, eternal, and celestial Beloved, and in this way, like a stranger who returns to his homeland after a long time, to join the Lord from whom human birth has meant separation for a lifetime. Did not Christ promise that whoever has a pure heart will attain the grace of seeing God? Therefore mystics appeared in every age, religion, and region. Greek Christianity, despite the rational heritage left from ancient Greece, was filled with the existence of such mystics and their ideas. Saint Augustine was the source of mysticism for the West. His book Confessions is the story of the soul’s return from creature to Creator. Until then it had rarely happened that one of the mortal beings had spoken so much with his Lord. Saint Anselm the statesman and Saint Bernard the capable administrator both chose the mystical way and, in contrast to the rationalist school of individuals like Roscelin and Abelard, preferred following love to reason. When William of Champeaux was unable to resist Abelard’s logic and left Paris, he founded the monastery of the Augustinian canons called Saint Victor in one of the suburbs of the city as a school for teaching theology (1108). Here his successors, Hugh and Richard, ignored the controversial story of untried philosophy and established the foundation of religion not on discussion but on the understanding of the grace of the presence of the Truth through mysticism. Hugh (d. 1141) observed in every stage of creation supernatural and symbolic signs of the rites of religion. Richard (d. 1173) rejected logic and knowledge, preferred love to reason according to the way of Pascal, and with scholarly logic described the inner elevation of the soul to the court of the Truth.

The passionate feelings of Italy turned the spark of mysticism into the burning flame of revolution. Joachim of Fiore, who was from the nobility of Calabria, was very eager to see Palestine. During this journey he was so affected by the misery of the people that he dismissed his attendants and continued the journey as a penniless pilgrim. The legends that have reached us relate how he spent the entire days of fasting in a dry well on Mount Tabor and how on Easter Sunday a great light appeared before him and immersed him so much in divine lights that he immediately gained knowledge of the entire Holy Scripture and all past and future events. Upon returning to Calabria, Joachim entered the circle of the Cistercian monks and priests, became extremely fond of an unadorned life, and took refuge in the corner of a monastery. A group of his disciples gathered around him, and soon Joachim founded a new order called Flora. The foundation of this new order was on poverty and prayer, and these rules were accepted by Pope Celestine III. In 1200 Joachim sent a series of his works to Pope Innocent III and wrote that although the contents of these books had been inspired to him by God, he considered it necessary that the pope should look at them and delete whatever he did not deem appropriate. Two years after this date he died.

The basis of Joachim’s writings was the Augustinian hypothesis that most circles of pious people accepted. According to this hypothesis there was a kind of symbolic agreement between the events mentioned in the Old Testament and the history of Christianity from the birth of Jesus to the establishment of the kingdom of God on earth. Joachim divided the history of humanity into three stages: the first stage under the rule of the first person of the Trinity, that is, God the Father, ended with the birth of Jesus from the mother. The second stage, in which rule was with the second person, that is, the Son, according to apocalyptic calculations, lasted one thousand two hundred and sixty years. The third stage was the rule of the Holy Spirit, before which a period full of the calamities of war, poverty, and corruption of the clergy would come. Following these hard times a new order of monks would step onto the stage that would purify the Church from all impurities and would establish an ideal city throughout the world that would be based on peace, justice, and happiness.

Thousands of Christians, including the great and famous of the Church, believed with all their hearts that Joachim had been inspired by God, and they eagerly awaited the year 1260 as the beginning of the second Advent (the second coming of Christ). The community known as the “Spiritual Franciscans,” confident that the purpose of the new order was nothing but their own community, became strengthened by Joachim’s teachings, and when the Church called the members of that order illegitimate and rebellious, they also began to spread their ideas and opinions in the name of Joachim. In 1254 a copy of Joachim’s collected works was published under the title of the Eternal Gospel, accompanied by a commentary to the effect that when a pope tainted with the sin of simony ascends the throne of the caliphate, such an event will be the end of the second stage, and in the third stage of history, since the rule of love becomes universal, there will no longer be any need for religious rites and the existence of priests. The Church rejected this book and imprisoned for life a monk of the Franciscan order named Gerardo da Borgo, who apparently was its author. But the secret publication of this book continued and, from the time of Saint Francis to the time of Dante (who considered Joachim a resident of paradise), it influenced the thoughts of mystics and heretics of France and Italy.

Probably because of the excitement of the approaching kingdom of heaven, in 1259 a kind of madness of religious repentance like a storm rose around Perugia and swept through all of northern Italy. Thousands of repentant people, young and old, poor and rich, moved in a disordered social state. These people, who were only covered with a loincloth, all wept, asked God for mercy, and returned to their rightful owners whatever they had taken in anger from others. Criminals who had been affected by this contagion of repentance knelt before the relatives of the murdered and begged to be killed by their hands. Prisoners were freed, exiles were summoned, and enmities were forgotten. This movement took Germany from Italy and reached Bohemia. For a few days it seemed as if a new faith and mysticism had ignored the Church and would conquer all of Europe. But it was not long before human nature regained its lost power. New enmities began, sin and crime regained their vogue, and this madness of the fanatics, the scourge of women, retreated to the same corners of the human psyche from which it had emerged.

The flame of mysticism in the Flanders region became less turbulent. A priest from Liège named Lambert le Bègue (or the Stutterer) in 1184, on the banks of the Meuse, founded a house for women who wished to live in small semi-communal communities with others of their sex without taking a vow to abandon the world, where such women spent their days spinning wool and weaving nets. Soon similar houses called Maisons-Dieu or “houses of God” were also founded for men.

The men who lived in these kinds of houses called themselves “Beghards” and the women “Beguines.” These communities, like the followers of the Waldensian order, condemned the Church’s practice of owning worldly goods and had voluntarily made poverty their motto. Another similar order called the “Brethren of the Free Spirit” rose around 1362 in Augsburg and spread in the cities on the banks of the Rhine. Both of these movements claimed a kind of divine inspiration by virtue of which they were freed from the supervision of the clergy and even the government or the bonds of moral laws.

The government and the Church joined hands in suppressing these communities, but the followers of both movements secretly spread their ideas, and their opinions repeatedly rose with new names and helped the emergence and zeal of the Anabaptists and other radical sects that had a hand in the great “Reformation” movement.

Germany was the desired land of mysticism in the Western world. Hildegard of Bingen, famous as the “Sibyl of the Rhine,” lived eighty-two years and, except for eight years, was one of the Benedictine nuns and at the end of her work rose to the presidency of the Rupertsberg nunnery. This woman was a strange mixture of a manager and a visionary woman, pious and at the same time a supporter of fundamental reforms, a poetess and scholar, a physician and at the same time a saint of the faith. She wrote letters to kings and popes and always used a commanding tone in her correspondences, and her Latin prose had a masculine power and firmness. Hildegard wrote several books about her dreams or visions that she claimed had all been written with the help of an invisible hand. The priests were greatly annoyed at hearing such words, for within Hildegard’s revelations the wealth and corruption of the Church were severely condemned. She said with a tone indicative of eternal hope: The time of God’s justice will come … soon the commands of the Lord will be put into effect. The empire and the papal institution, both tainted with sin, will be destroyed and annihilated together. … But upon their ruins a new people will rise. … Pagan people, Jews, worldly people, and heretics will all together follow the faith of Christ. Upon a world that has regained its youth, spring freshness and peace will rule and the angels will return with confidence to live among the children of men.

A century later Elizabeth of Thuringia, daughter of Andrew, king of Hungary, with her short life that was entirely holiness and asceticism, stirred the people of Hungary. This princess was thirteen years old when she was married to a German prince, and at fourteen she became a mother and at twenty a widow. Her brother-in-law plundered her property and deprived the woman of any penny, sending her from home and possessions. Elizabeth became a wandering ascetic who devoted the rest of her life to attending to the poor, gave housing to leprous women, and washed their wounds. This woman also mostly in the world of revelation saw herself united with the Truth, but she said nothing openly about this and claimed to have no supernatural powers. When Elizabeth saw Conrad of Marburg, the fiery inquisitor of the Inquisition, she madly fell in love with his sincerity and ruthless devotion to the principles and foundations of the faith and became his obedient servant. Conrad beat Elizabeth for the slightest deviation from what in his view were the standards of purity, and Elizabeth with complete humility was satisfied with whatever Conrad said and submitted more and more to asceticism until she died at the age of twenty-four because of this practice. The name Elizabeth became so famous in purity and piety that during her funeral the fanatics almost madly cut off her hair, ears, and nipples as sacred mementos and preserved them. Another Elizabeth at the age of twelve (1141) went to the Benedictine nunnery of Schönau near Bingen and remained there until her death in 1165. Because of the weakness of her body and the severe austerities that this Elizabeth imposed on herself, in a state of ecstasy and rapture she spoke with various spirits of saints, almost all of whom were opposed to the clergy. It was in one of these states of ecstasy that Elizabeth’s guardian angel told her: “The vine of the Lord has withered. The father of the Church is ill, and its members are dead … O kings of the earth! The cry of your injustice has even reached my court.”

Near the end of this period the waves of mysticism surged in Germany. The ideas of Meister Eckhart, who was born around 1260, reached their peak sixty-six years later in 1326 and led to his trial and death in 1327. His disciples, Suso and Tauler, spread the mystical ideas of their master on the subject of the unity of existence, and it was on the basis of this same piety and religiosity that, without relying on priests, one of the pillars of the Reformation was established.

Usually the Church’s approach to mystics was accompanied by tolerance and patience. The Church had no compromise with any severe deviation from its official doctrinal principles and was not willing to recognize the anarchic independence of some religious orders, but it did not deny the mystics’ direct relationship with God and was willing with an open face to hear the words of saints who condemned the errors of the servants of the fallible ecclesiastical institution. Many clergy, even the great and famous of the priests, sympathized with the opponents, were aware of the Church’s situation, and wished that they too could abandon the tools and burdensome duties of the political affairs of the world and enjoy the security and peace of the monasteries, which by the blessing of the piety of the people were stable and safe within the sanctuary of the Church’s power. Probably these kinds of patient clergy were the ones who kept Christianity stable amid the delirious revelations that every now and then threatened the medieval human mind. When we read the ideas and opinions of the mystics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we naturally reach the conclusion that correct doctrinal principles were often a barrier against contagious superstitions, and from one point of view it can be said that, amid the chaos of various and scattered opinions, the Church was organized opinions (just as government was organized power) that wanted to keep individuals away from the abyss of madness.

VII – The Ill-Fated Pope

When Gregory X ascended the papal throne in 1271 the Church was again at the height of its power. Gregory was both a Christian and a pope; that is, he was a man of peace and friendship who loved justice more than victory. Because he hoped to regain Palestine with a collective effort, he encouraged Venice, Genoa, and Bologna to end their disputes. He stirred up means to raise Rudolf of Habsburg to the imperial throne and at the same time consoled the other defeated claimants to that throne with politeness and kindness. He reconciled the Guelfs and Ghibellines of the two opposing and hostile cities, and as a result the two cities themselves, Florence and Siena, and reminded his own supporters, the Guelfs, that “the Ghibellines are your enemies, but at the same time they are your fellow human beings, fellow citizens, and fellow believers.” Gregory invited the chief priests to the Council of Lyon (1274). One thousand five hundred and seventy people were present at that assembly. Every major kingdom sent one representative to that council. The Greek emperor sent the leaders of the Greek Church to Lyon to prove their obedience and submission to the papal curia of Rome. Latin and Greek priests sang hymns in praise of God together. The bishops were invited to submit a list of existing wrongdoings and necessary reforms for the purification of the Church to the spiritual assembly, and that group also answered the spiritual assembly’s call with remarkable zeal. As a result laws were approved to remove these corruptions. Now all of Europe had united in a magnificent way to fight the Saracens. But Gregory died on his way back to Rome (1276). His successors were so busy with the political affairs of Italy that none of them paid any attention to Gregory’s plans.

Nevertheless, when Boniface VIII was elected to the papal throne in 1294 the papal institution was still the most powerful government in Europe and had no equal in organization, good administration, and abundant revenues. Fortune was not with the Church, for at this time when a century of activity and progress was almost coming to an end, the papal throne fell into the hands of a man whose purity of intention and love for the Church was exactly equal to his imperfect morals, personal pride, and unrestrained will to acquire power. Such a man was not without grace, that is, he loved knowledge and in the breadth of his information and skill in legal matters he equaled Innocent III. It was he who founded the University of Rome, repaired and expanded the Vatican Library, encouraged artists such as Giotto and Arnolfo di Cambio, and took upon himself the expenses of building the astonishing façade of the cathedral of Orvieto.

He prepared the preliminaries for his own elevation to the papal throne by encouraging an innocent but incompetent pope like Celestine V to resign after five months of papacy. This completely unprecedented act from the beginning created an environment full of ill will for Boniface. The new pope, to prevent any action aimed at returning Celestine to the papal throne, ordered that the eighty-year-old man be kept imprisoned in Rome.

Celestine escaped from prison, was captured, escaped again, wandered for several weeks in the county of Apulia, reached the Adriatic, tried to cross the sea to reach Dalmatia, the ship he was on broke in a storm, the waves of the sea returned him to the shores of Italy, and finally he was captured and brought before Boniface. The pope condemned him to imprisonment in a very small prison in Ferentino, and it was there that ten months later Celestine died (1296).

A series of political failures and costly victories further sharpened the fire of the new pope.

He tried to dissuade Frederick, king of Aragon, from accepting the crown of Sicily. When Frederick refused, Boniface excommunicated him and prohibited all religious ceremonies in the island of Sicily (1296). Neither the king of Aragon paid attention to these commands nor did the people of Sicily pay heed to the pope’s decrees. Finally Boniface was forced to recognize Frederick’s position. To prepare the preliminaries for a crusade the new pope ordered Venice and Genoa to cease their hostilities. The two cities continued their disputes for three more years and paid no attention to his mediation for reconciliation. Because Boniface was unable to restore calm in Florence in the desired manner, he prohibited all religious ceremonies in that city and invited Charles de Valois to enter Italy to restore calm (1300). Charles not only gained no benefit from this military expedition but also aroused hatred against himself and the pope.

Boniface, in order to establish calm in his own papal states, had tried to end the disputes that were taking place among the members of the powerful Colonna family. Pietro and Jacopo, members of that family, who both held the rank of cardinal, rejected his proposals. Boniface, seeing the situation this way, removed both from their positions and excommunicated them (1297). The two rebellious nobles drew up a declaration and posted copies of it on the doors of the churches of Rome, and placed the original on the altar of the church of Saint Peter and appealed from the pope’s command to a general spiritual council.

Boniface repeated the excommunication sentence, extended it to five other rebels as well, ordered that their property be confiscated, attacked the territory of the Colonna family with papal troops and captured their fortress, leveled Palestrina to the ground, and ordered that salt be scattered on its ruins. The rebels surrendered, were pardoned, rose in rebellion again, were defeated again by that fighting pope, and finally fled from the papal states and sought revenge.

It was amid these hardships that Boniface suddenly faced a great crisis from France. Philip IV, determined to unify his realm, had seized the English province of Gascony. Edward I, king of England, declared war (1294). Now the two kings decided, in order to prepare the preliminaries for their struggle, to impose taxes on the property of the Church and the revenues of its servants. The popes had previously approved the taking of such taxes only for crusades, but it had never happened before that taxes were taken from the Church for non-religious struggles. The French clergy considered it their duty to contribute sums for the defense of the government that protected their property, but they feared that if the government’s power to collect taxes was not blocked, such authorities would become deadly and destructive. Before these events Philip had deprived the French clergy of some of their privileges and removed them from seigneurial and courtly tribunals and from their old positions in the governmental apparatus and the royal council. The Cistercian order, which had become disturbed by these developments, refused to answer the king’s call and deliver one-fifth of all its income, which Philip demanded for the war with England. Therefore the head of that order took refuge with the pope. Boniface was forced to act with great caution, for France had always been the most important supporter and backer of the popes in their struggles with the emperors of Germany. But at the same time he felt that if without the pope’s consent they took ecclesiastical revenues through governmental taxes, it would not be long before the economic foundation of the power and freedom of the ecclesiastical institution would collapse. In February 1296 Pope Boniface issued one of the most famous papal bulls in the history of the clergy. This bull, because of its first words, became known as Clericis Laicos or “To the Laity.” Its first sentence contained a foolish confession and in general its tone recalled the unsound statements of Pope Gregory VII.

The bull began as follows:

Our predecessors have reported that the laity are exceedingly hostile to the clergy; and what we have learned by experience certainly confirms the truth of this saying at the present time. … After consulting with our brothers and relying on the power that has come to us from the apostles, we decree that if any priest … without the permission of the pope … delivers any portion of his income or property … to the laity, he shall be subject to the sentence of excommunication. … We also decree that all those who demand or receive such taxes, or confiscate the property of the Church or the clergy, or stir up means for the confiscation of such property, whatever their rank or degree may be, … shall be condemned to the sentence of excommunication.

Philip for his part had no doubt that the Church with its abundant wealth in France should bear part of the kingdom’s expenses. As a countermeasure to the papal bull he ordered that from then on the export of gold, silver, precious stones, or foodstuffs be prohibited and that no merchants or secret agents of foreigners have the right to remain in France. These decisions blocked a major source of the pope’s income and expelled his representatives, who were busy collecting funds for the preparation of a crusade, from French soil. Boniface, seeing the situation this way, retreated and in another bull dated September 1296, with “inexpressible love” allowed the clergy to voluntarily place sums in the king’s treasury for the payment of necessary expenses for the defense of the kingdom, and left the judgment of necessity and the determination of necessary cases to the king’s decision. Philip also canceled the retaliatory commands he had issued. He and Edward I accepted Boniface not as a pope but as an unofficial arbiter in their disputes. Boniface settled most issues in favor of Philip. England temporarily submitted to the pope’s views, and all three combatants enjoyed the blessings of a short-lived peace.

Perhaps to fill the papal treasury after the reduction of revenues from England and France, and probably to provide the expenses of a war aimed at recapturing Sicily and turning it into a papal fief, and also perhaps for the cost of another struggle to expand the papal states into the interior of Tuscany, Boniface declared the year 1300 a year of celebration and joy for the Christian world. His plan was completely successful. The city of Rome in its long history had never seen such a dense crowd. It was in this year that apparently for the first time regulations were put into effect for the purpose of preserving order in the movement of travelers. Boniface and his assistants succeeded well in this matter. They imported foodstuffs in large quantities and, under the supervision of papal agents, placed them at fair prices at the disposal of the people. It was to the pope’s advantage that he had not allocated the vast funds obtained to any specific work but could spend these abundant revenues as he wished. Despite incomplete conquests and severe defeats, Boniface had now reached the height of his power.

Meanwhile the exiled members of the powerful Colonna family entertained Philip, king of France, with stories of the injustice, greed, and private heresies of the pope. A dispute arose between Philip’s attendants and the pope’s representative, Bernard Saisset, as a result of which the pope’s representative was arrested on the charge of inciting the people to rebellion. Bernard was tried in the royal court and handed over to the archbishop of Narbonne to be imprisoned (1301). Boniface, disgusted by this quick trial and the unhesitating verdict regarding his representative, demanded that Bernard be immediately released and ordered the French clergy to temporarily refrain from paying ecclesiastical revenues to the government. In the bull known as Ausculta Fili or “Son, Listen” dated December 1301, Boniface wrote to Philip that out of humility he should listen to the words of the vicar of Christ, who is the spiritual king above all kings on earth. He objected to the trial of a priest in a civil court and the continued use of ecclesiastical revenues for non-ecclesiastical purposes, and declared that he would ask all the bishops and heads of French monasteries to “take the necessary actions for the preservation of the liberties of the Church, for making fundamental changes in the kingdom, and for the reform of the king’s person.” When this bull was presented to Philip, the count of Artois snatched it from the hand of the pope’s envoy and threw it into the fire, and prevented the publication of another copy that was to be delivered to the French clergy for public information. After this event the publication of two forged documents further inflamed the anger of both sides. The first, which apparently had been issued by the pope to Philip, ordered the king of France to be obedient even in non-ecclesiastical matters to the pope, whereas in the second letter Philip wrote to Boniface that “we inform that pole of foolishness and stupidity that we are not subject to any individual in non-ecclesiastical matters.” Most people accepted these forged letters as ones that had really been exchanged between the pope and Philip.

On February 11, 1302 the bull “Ausculta Fili” was officially burned in the city of Paris in the presence of the king and a large number of his subjects. Philip, in order to prevent the formation of a council of clergy that was the pope’s aim, ordered that representatives of the three estates of his realm assemble in Paris in the month of April. In the first “Estates General” in the history of France all three estates—the nobility, the clergy, and the common people—each separately wrote a petition in defense of the king and his civil authorities to the pope. Despite Philip’s strict command, about forty-five French bishops, whose property had also been confiscated because of disobedience, were present at the spiritual council in Rome in October 1302. It was in this council that the famous bull Unam Sanctam or “One Holy” was drawn up and the claims of the papal institution were defined in a very precise and clear manner. This bull declared that there is only one true Church and outside that Church otherworldly salvation is not possible. Christ is only one person who has only one head and not two.

The head of the Church and the head of the faith is Jesus, and his representative is the pope in Rome. In the world there are two swords or two kinds of authorities, one spiritual and the other worldly. The first belongs to the Church and the second is held by the king on behalf of the Church, but this worldly government depends on the will and consent of the priest. Spiritual authority is placed above civil authority, and the spiritual ruler has the right to guide kings toward the highest purposes and to warn them whenever they step outside the path of righteousness. The bull ended with this phrase: “We declare, affirm, and decree that for the sake of otherworldly salvation it is necessary that all individuals be obedient to the pope of Rome.”

Philip’s reaction was the formation of two assemblies (March and June 1303) in which the present declared Boniface officially guilty and called him a tyrant, sorcerer, criminal, deceiver, fornicator, sodomite, simoniac, idolater, and infidel, and demanded from a general spiritual council his removal. The king of France ordered Guillaume de Nogaret, who was the head of his judiciary, to go to Rome and inform the pope that Philip had made such a demand from a general spiritual council. Boniface, who at that time was residing in the papal palace in Anagni, declared that only the pope had the right to summon a general spiritual council, and immediately began to prepare the excommunication sentence of Philip and the prohibition of religious ceremonies in the churches of France. But before he was able to publish the sentences of excommunication and prohibition, Guillaume de Nogaret, together with Sciarra Colonna, at the head of a group of two thousand mercenary soldiers, rushed into the palace of Anagni, presented Philip’s notice to the pope, and demanded his resignation (September 7, 1303).

Boniface refused. A “very reliable” account relates that Sciarra slapped the pope’s face and if Nogaret had not intervened he would certainly have killed him. Boniface at this time was seventy-five years old, physically weak, but still unwilling to bow his head before his opponent. For three days he was kept imprisoned in his palace, and during this time the mercenary soldiers continued to plunder the palace. Then the people of Anagni, with the help of four hundred horsemen from the Orsini family, routed the mercenary soldiers and freed the pope. Apparently during these three days his jailers had given him no food, for when he was freed, in the middle of the city’s public square he raised his voice saying: “If among you there is a good woman who gives me a morsel of bread and a cup of wine, I will send the blessings of God and my own blessing on her way.” The Orsini family members lifted him up and returned him to the city of Rome and the Vatican. There Boniface was seized by a severe fever and died within a few days (October 11, 1303).

His successor, Benedict XI, excommunicated Nogaret, Sciarra Colonna, and thirteen others who had rushed into the palace of Anagni at the head of the mercenary army. One month later Benedict died in Perugia. It is said that the Ghibellines of Italy poisoned him. Philip agreed to support the election of Bertrand de Got to the papal throne on condition that when the archbishop ascended the papal throne he would adopt a conciliatory policy, pardon all those who had been excommunicated for the crime of attacking Boniface, allow the French clergy for five years to deliver ten percent of their annual income to the government of France as tax, restore the positions and properties of the Colonna family, and curse the soul of Boniface. It is not known to what extent Bertrand agreed with these demands of Philip. Nevertheless he was elected to the papal throne, and Bertrand took the name Clement V (1305). The cardinals warned him that remaining in Rome was dangerous for his life, and for this reason after a little hesitation, and perhaps also because of implicit suggestion from Philip, Clement transferred the papal seat from Rome to Avignon, located on the eastern bank of the Rhône River and just outside the southeastern border of French territory (1309). In this way the sixty-eight years of the “Babylonian Captivity” of the papacy began. The papal institution, which had freed itself from the clutches of Germany, now bowed its head before France.

Clement, with his weak will, became a submissive tool in the hands of a man like Philip whose appetite had no limit. He pardoned the king of France, restored the Colonna family to its former position, canceled the papal bull of 1296 known as Clericis Laicos, permitted the plundering of the property of the Knights Templar, and finally (1310) agreed that a council of clergy in Vienne near Avignon should undertake the trial of Boniface after his death. During the preliminary investigations that took place in the presence of the pope and his agents, six clergy testified that a year before ascending the papal throne they had heard from the mouth of Boniface himself that all laws that had apparently been sent down from God were inventions of human beings to force the common people to good conduct out of fear of hell. He had also said that it was “foolish” for a person to believe that God is at the same time both one and three, or that a virgin should be a maiden and give birth to a child, or that God has become a human being, or that it is possible for bread to be transformed into the body of Christ, or that there is an afterlife. He had also said: “I believe and know this, just as every educated person knows it. The common people think otherwise. We must speak like the common people, but our way of thinking and belief should be as a few think and believe.” In this way these six quoted from Boniface, and three of them who were questioned again repeated their testimony. The head of the monastery of Saint-Gilles in San Gimignano reported that Boniface, when he was still known as Cardinal Caetani, had denied the resurrection of the body or the soul. Several other clergy confirmed this point. One of them stated that he had heard with his own ears from Boniface referring to the sacred bread and saying that “this is nothing but dough.” Individuals who had previously been servants in Boniface’s house repeatedly accused him of committing sexual sins and perversions of intercourse. Others said that in their opinion Boniface was a skeptic who wanted to connect with “demonic powers” through the force of magic.

Before the trial itself took place, Clement encouraged Philip to refer the issue of Boniface’s guilt to a general spiritual council that was to be held in Vienne. When that council convened (1311), three cardinals testified in the presence of the people to the orthodoxy and chastity of the deceased pope, and two knights, according to medieval custom, threw down their gloves as a sign of the innocence of the deceased pope so that if anyone denied it they would rise to fight them. None of the present accepted the invitation to fight and the council declared the matter closed.

VIII – A Review of Past Events

The reasons brought against Boniface, true or false, are representative of a wave of skepticism that had begun to move beneath the flow of events of the age and was preparing the ground for ending the age of faith. In the same way the blow that was struck at Boniface VIII in Anagni, whether physical or political, from one point of view is representative of the beginning of the “modern ages.” This was the victory of supernationalism, the triumph of government over the Church, the victory of the power of the sword over the magic of the word. The papal government had been weakened by its struggles with the Hohenstaufen family and by its failures in the Crusades. France and England had become stronger as a result of the collapse of the empire, and the wealth of France had increased by the seizure of Languedoc with the help of the Church. Perhaps the support of the masses for Philip IV in his struggle with Boniface VIII was a manifestation of general disgust at the excesses of the Inquisition and the war against the Albigensians. It is said that some of Nogaret’s ancestors had been burned alive by agents of the Inquisition. Boniface had not realized that participating in all these numerous struggles would naturally blunt the weapons of the papal government. Industry and commerce had caused the emergence of a class that was far less bound by religion than the class of farmers and villagers. People’s lives and ways of thinking were becoming more and more inclined toward worldly government day by day, and the laity were gradually gaining wings, for it was seventy years after these events that government saw the Church dissolving within itself.

Now that we look back and pass all the events of the history of Latin Christianity before our eyes, what affects our memory more than anything else is the relative unity of religious faith that existed among different and varied peoples, and the power of the Church of Rome that with an extensive hierarchy gave such unity of thought and morals to Western Europe—that is, a world empty of Slavic peoples and far from the Byzantine Empire—as had never been seen. No other case has been seen in human history in which one organization has had such deep influence on so many people and for such a long period.

The power of the empire and the republic over its vast territory from the time of Pompey to Alaric was 480 years. The Mongol Empire or the British Empire in the modern age did not last more than two hundred years, whereas the Roman Catholic Church from the death of Charlemagne (814) to the death of Boniface VIII (1303) was the most powerful government in Europe for 489 years. Its organization and administrative apparatus apparently did not have the capacity of the Roman Empire; its agents and officials did not reach in competence or learning the level of the individuals who with their competence managed the provinces and territories of the Caesars, but the Church inherited a noisy world in which barbarism ruled in all its affairs, and it had no choice but to lead people through a hard and difficult path to the valley of peace and civilization. With all this, the priests of that institution were the most educated men of their age, and during five centuries of the supremacy of the Roman Catholic Church the only education that existed in Western Europe was the result of their great efforts. The verdicts of ecclesiastical courts were the fairest type of their kind in that age. Its papal court, although sometimes bribe-taking and at other times incorruptible, to some extent performed the work of a world court for mediation in international disputes and limiting conflicts, and although that court always had an Italian aspect, it must be kept in mind that the Italians were the foremost intellectuals and thinkers of those centuries, and moreover in the Latin Christian world anyone from any rank or nation could rise to membership in that court.

Despite deceit, which is usually one of the appendages and adjuncts of collective human power, it was to the advantage and benefit of all that there should exist a government above the governments and kings of Europe that could, if necessary, call them to account and alleviate the differences between them. If a world government was to step onto the stage of existence, what would be more worthy than that it should make the throne of Peter its resting place, so that from there individuals, even if their viewpoint is limited, can look at matters with a regional view and relying on the precedents of several centuries. What decisions were there that, like the verdicts of a man whom they honored as the vicar of God, were accepted without any opposition by almost all the people of Western Europe or were easier to implement than his commands? When Louis IX left France in 1248 with the intention of a crusade, Henry III, king of England, made very heavy demands on France and prepared to attack that country. Pope Innocent IV threatened that if Henry insisted he would prohibit all religious ceremonies in England. Henry, seeing the situation this way, refrained from carrying out his plan. Hume, the skeptical philosopher, said that the power of the Church was a strong refuge against the oppression and injustice of kings. If the Church had used its influence solely for spiritual and moral purposes and had never pursued material interests and purposes, it is probable that it would have reached the same lofty position that was the ultimate hope of Gregory VII, and it would not have been far-fetched that its spiritual authorities would prevail over the physical powers of the kingdoms. When Urban II united the Christian world against the Turks, Gregory’s hopes had almost been realized, but when Innocent III, Gregory IX, Alexander IV, and Boniface VIII applied the name “crusade” to their wars against the Albigensians and also to their struggles with Frederick II and the members of the Colonna family, that great ideal in the hands of the popes, tainted with Christian blood, was shattered into pieces.

Wherever the Church was not under threat, it showed tolerance toward different opinions, even the ideas of heretics. Among the philosophers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, even among the professors of universities that had been founded by the efforts of the Church and were administered under the supervision of its authorities, we encounter an unexpected freedom of opinion. The only thing the Church demanded was that such discussions should be limited only to the educated class and comprehensible to them, not that they should be in the form of revolutionary statements asking the people to abandon their faith and let go of the Church.

One of the most hardworking recent critics of the Church writes about this foundation: “Since the Church included all creatures, it necessarily embraced every kind of opinion from the most superstitious thoughts to the most extreme doubts and skepticism, and many of these non-contradictory elements, as long as they observed all kinds of appearances, had far more freedom of action than was generally thought.” On the whole the image that forms in our mind of the Latin Church of the Middle Ages is that of a complex organization that, despite all the defects and errors of its fallible followers and leaders, tried to the highest degree to establish a social and moral system and, amid the ruins of an ancient civilization and the passionate feelings of a young society, to spread a faith that would elevate the foundation of thought and soothe the soul. The Church of the sixth century saw Europe swept by waves of wandering barbarian tribes, a mixture of different languages and faiths, and a bewildering world of unwritten and unaccountable laws. The Church gave such a world a moral principle based on supernatural decrees so powerful that it could block the anti-social motives of reckless individuals; it granted such a world the safe corners of monasteries so that men and women and classical book manuscripts could be protected from the harm and assault of time. The Church administered such a world with its episcopal courts, educated its people in its schools and universities, and calmed the kings of the earth so that they would rise to perform their moral responsibilities and the heavy duties of peace-making. The Church illuminated the lives of its children with poems and drama and melodies, became the source of inspiration for them in creating the highest artistic works in human history, and since it was unable to create an ideal city of equality among individuals who were not equal in competence, it devoted attention to charitable organizations and the improvement of the condition of the weak, and to some extent protected the weak against the strong. Undoubtedly the Church was the greatest factor in the spread of civilization in the history of medieval Europe.