Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/47

FRUITLESS SETTLEMENTS. 31 directly to the friars, but only for their use ; and minute regulations are drawn up for exchanging or selling books and utensils. The bull concludes with instructions that it is to be read and taught in the schools, but no one, under pain of excommunication and loss of office and benefice, shall do anything but expound it liter- ally — it is not to be glossed or commented upon, or discussed, or explained away. All doubts and questions shall be submitted di- rectly to the Holy See, and any one disputing or commenting on the Franciscan Rule or the definitions of the bull shall undergo excommunication, removable only by the pope. Had the question been capable of permanent settlement in this sense, this solemn utterance would have put an end to further trouble. Unluckily, human nature did not cease to be human nature, with its passions and necessities, on crossing the threshold of a Franciscan convent. Unluckily, papal constitutions were as cobwebs when they sought to control the ineradicable vices and weakness of man. Unluckily, moreover, there were consciences too sensitive to be satisfied with fine-drawn distinctions and sub- tleties ingeniously devised to evade the truth. Yet the bull Exiit qui seminat for a while relieved the papacy from further discus- sion, although it could not quiet the intestine dissensions of the Order. There was still a body of recalcitrants, not numerous, it is true, but eminent for the piety and virtue of its members, which could not be reconciled by these subterfuges. These re- calcitrants gradually formed themselves into two distinct bodies, one in Italy, and the other in southern France. At first there is little to distinguish them apart, and for a long while they acted in unison, but there gradually arose a divergence between them, which in the end became decisively marked, owing to the greater influence exercised in Languedoc and Provence by the traditions of Joachim and the Everlasting Gospel. We have seen how the thirst for ascetic poverty, coupled in many cases, doubtless, with the desire to escape from the sordid cares of daily life, led thousands to embrace a career of wander- ing mendicancy. Sarabites and circumcelliones — vagrant monks, subjected to no rule — had been the curse of the Church ever since the invention of cenobitism ; and the exaltation of poverty in the thirteenth century had given a new impulse to the crowds who