50 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. the revolutionary doctrines commonly attributed to Olivi were entertained by those who considered themselves and were consid- ered to be his disciples, and we can only assume that in their mis- guided zeal they interpolated his Postil, and gave to their own mystic dreams the authority of his great name.* After the death of Olivi the Franciscan officials seem to have felt themselves unable to suppress the sect which was spreading and organizing throughout Languedoc. For some reason not ap- parent, unless it may have been jealousy of the Dominicans, the aid of the Inquisition was not called in, and the inquisitors with- held their hands from offenders of the rival Order. The regular church authorities, however, were appealed to, and in 1299 Gilles, Archbishop of Xarbonne, held at Beziers a provincial synod, in which were condemned the Beguines of both sexes who under the lead of learned men of an honorable Order (the Franciscans) en- gaged in religious exercises not prescribed by the Church, wore vestments distinguishing them from other folk, performed novel penances and abstinences, administered vows of chastity, often not observed, held nocturnal conventicles, frequented heretics, and proclaimed that the end of the world was at hand, and that already the reign of Antichrist had begun. From them many scandals had already arisen, and there was danger of more and greater troubles. The bishops were therefore ordered, in their several dioceses, to investigate these sectaries closely and to suppress them. We see from this that there was rapidly growing up a new heresy based upon the Everlasting Gospel, with the stricter Franciscans as a nucleus, but extending among the people. For this popular propaganda the Tertiary Order afforded peculiar facilities, and we shall find hereafter that the Beguines, as they were generally called, were to a great extent Tertiaries, when not full members of the Order. There was nothing, however, to tempt the cupidity
- Franz Ehrle (Archiv f. L. u. K. 1886, pp. 368-70. 407-9) —Wadding, ann<
1297, No. 36-47.— Baluz. et Mansi II. 276. Tocco (Archivio Storico Italiano, T. XVII. No. 2.— Cf. Franz Ehrle, Archiv fur L. u. K. 1887, p. 493) has recently found in the Laurentian Library a MS. of Olivi's Postil on the Apocalypse. It contains all the passages cited in the con- demnation, showing that the commission which sat in judgment did not invent them, but as it is of the fifteenth century it does not invalidate the suggestion that his followers interpolated his work after his death.
