BONAVENTURA'S EFFORTS. 29 Bonaventura, as we have seen, honestly sought to restrain the growing laxity of the Order. Before leaving Paris he addressed, April 23, 1257, an encyclical letter to the provincials, calling their attention to the prevalent vices of the brethren and the contempt to which they exposed the whole Order. Again, some ten years later, at the instance of Clement IV., he issued another similar epistle, in which he strongly expressed his horror at the neglect of the Rule shown in the shameless greed of so many members, the importunate striving for gain, the ceaseless litigation caused by their grasping after legacies and burials, and the splendor and lux- ury of their buildings. The provincials were instructed to put an end to these disorders by penance, imprisonment, or expulsion ; but however earnest in his zeal Bonaventura may have been, and however self-denying in his own life, he lacked the fiery energy which enabled John of Parma to give effect to his convictions. How utter was the prevailing degeneracy is seen in the complaint presented in 1265 to Clement IV., that in many places the eccle- siastical authorities held that the friars, being dead to the world, were incapable of inheritance. Relief was prayed from this, and Clement issued a bull declaring them competent to inherit and free to hold their inheritances, or to sell them, and to use the prop- erty or its price as might to them seem best.* The question of poverty evidently was one incapable of per- Ratispona Sermones, Monachii, 1882, p. 68. — H. Denifle, Archiv fiir Litt.- u. Kirchengeschichte, 1886, p. 649. To the true Franciscan the Rule and the gospel were one and the same. Ac- cording to Thomas of Celano, "II perfetto amatore dell 1 osservanza del santo vangelio e della professione della nostra regola, che non e altro che perfetta osservanza del vangelio, questo [Francesco] ardentissimamente amava, e quelli che sono e saranno veri amatori, dono a essi singular benedizione. Veramente, dicea, questa nostra professione a quelli che la seguitano, esser libro di vita, speranza di salute, arra di gloria, melodia del vangelio, via di croce, stato di perfezione, chiave di paradiso, e patto di eterna pace." — Amoni, Legenda S. Fran- cisci, App. c. xxix.
- S. Bonavent, Opp. I. 485-6 (Ed. 1584).— Wadding, ann. 1257, No. 9; Re-
gest. Clem. PP. IV. No. I. Pierre Jean Olivi states that he himself heard Bonaventura declare in a chap- ter held in Paris that he would, at any moment, submit to be ground to powder if it would bring the Order back to the condition designed by St. Francis.— Franz Ehrlc, Archiv fiir L. u. K. 1887, p. 517.
