Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/42

26 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. cial synod with the object of condemning the Joachites. who were still numerous in his province. An elaborate refutation of the errors of the Everlasting Gospel was deemed necessary ; it was deplored that many learned men still suffered themselves to be misled by it, and that books containing it were written and eagerly passed from hand to hand. The anathema was decreed against this, but no measures of active persecution seem to have been adopted, nor do we hear of any steps taken by the Inquisition to suppress the heresy. As we shall see hereafter, the leaven long remained in Languedoc and Provence, and gave a decided impress to the Spiritual Franciscanism of those regions. It mattered little that the hoped-for year 1260 came and passed away without the fulfilment of the prophecy. Earnest believers can always find ex- cuses for such errors in computation, and the period of the advent of the Holy Ghost could be put off from time to time, so as always to stimulate hope with the prospect of emancipation in the near future." Although the removal of John of Parma from the generalate had been the victory of the Conventuals, the choice of Bonaven- tura might well seem to give to the Spirituals assurance of con- tinued supremacy. In his controversy with William of Saint Amour he had taken the most advanced ground in denying that Christ and the apostles held property of any kind, and in identify- ing poverty with perfection. " Deep poverty is laudable ; this is true of itself : therefore deeper poverty is more laudable, and the deepest, the most laudable. But this is the poverty of him who neither in private nor in common keeps anything for himself. . . . To renounce all things, in private or in common, is Christian per- fection, not only sufficient but abundant : it is the principal coun- sel of evangelical perfection, its fundamental principle and sublime foundation. Not only this, but he was deeply imbued with mys- ticism and was the first to give authoritative expression to the IUuminism which subsequently gave the Church so much trouble. • Lib. de Antichristo P. i. c. x., xiii., xiv. (Martene Ampl. Coll. IX. 1273, 1313, 1325-35).— Thomae Aquinat. Opusc. contra Impugn. Rehg. c. xxiv. 5, 6.— Concil. Arelatens. ann. 12G0 (1265) c. 1 (Harduin. VII. 509-12).— Fisquet, La France Pontificate, M6tropole d'Aix, p. 577.— Kenan, p. 254.