frequently, together with his monks, on
beechtree-leaves and coarse barley bread.
When he took, for the strengthening of his
weakened stomach, some flour prepared with
oil and honey he cried bitterly. He
enjoyed a very high reputation, and when he
once entered Milan his hands and arms were
sore from the kisses with which they were
covered by the faithful. He might have
become archbishop, or even pope, but he
refused all such honours. Neither pope
nor emperor dared enter his convent at
Citeaux on horseback; both walked. He
was the soul of the second crusade, and his
persuasive tongue caused so many men to
take the cross, that in some cities only one
remained for every seven women. But the
statistics of the sexes in those cities
previously, are not recorded.

All the good, or at least all the best part
of the good, which the Benedictine and
Cistercian convents might have effected,
was annihilated by the convents of the
mendicant orders, which combined the most
servile submission of reason to the worst
superstition with scandalous morals.

The idea of the mendicant orders originated
in the head of Johan Bernardoni, the
good-for-nothing son of a shopkeeper in
Assisi, in Umbria. He is known under
the name of St. Francis of Assisi, or the
"seraphic father." Not doing well in his
father's business, he became a soldier, and
was taken prisoner, and fell sick: It is not
clear how he became a saint, for at first he
appeared to be an idiot: of whom the
infallible Pope Honorius himself said, "that
he was a simpleton." He kept the lowest
company, wore the most filthy rags, and
piously robbed his father to get means for
the restoration of a ruined church.
However, the Bishop of Assisi took the simpleton
under his protection, and he went about
the country begging for his church, with
such unexpected success that he conceived
the idea of instituting a mendicant order.
Though Pope Honorius despised him,
Innocent the Third, equally infallible,
confirmed the code which Francis drew up for
his new order, notwithstanding His
Infallibility's having called it at first, "a rule
for pigs, but not for human beings."

"Alms," Francis declared, "are our
heritage, alms are our justice, begging is
our purpose and our royal dignity;
ignominy and contempt are our honour and our
glory on the day of judgment." Francis
was the best example of humility. In the
commencement he was very much laughed
at, but after three or four years, the reputation
of his sanctity stood so high, that the
clergy and people came to meet him in
procession when he approached a city, and the
bells of all the churches welcomed him.
The more the street boys teased him, or
pelted him with mud, the better he was
pleased. When he went about begging in
Assisi, he put everything eatable that he
received into the same pot, and when he
became hungry he fed from the
heterogeneous mess. Once, invited to dinner by
a cardinal, he did not touch any of the
dainty dishes but stuck to his pot, to the
disgust of all the guests. He loved the
lower animals very much, and called them
his brothers and sisters. He frequently
preached to geese, ducks, and hens, and
when once the swallows and sparrows
disturbed him by their twittering, he asked his
"dear sisters" to keep quiet. For recreation,
he rolled himself on thorns, went up
to the neck in freezing ponds, and slept in the
snow. He died in 1226, but during his life
the number of Franciscan monks was very
great, and after his death increased like the
sands on the sea shore. The Franciscan-
General offered Pope Pius the Third an
army of forty thousand Franciscans for the
war against the Turks. Though a great
many convents were destroyed by the
Reformation, there were still existing, at the
beginning of the last century, seven
thousand monasteries, and nine hundred
nunneries of this order.

The sworn enemies of the Franciscans
were the Dominicans, whose origin dates
from about the same time. They are
named after St. Dominicus, a Spaniard,
whose name was Dominicus Guzman. He
was sent to France to convert some heretics
(the Waldenses), and there conceived
the idea of instituting a monks' order for
the instruction of the people. He received
permission from the Pope, and to this
order the Romish church owes the
introduction of the Inquisition and the censorship
of books.

To conclude, politely, with a few female
saints. St. Theresa was a noble Spaniard,
born in 1515. Her admirers give her very
high-sounding names, as Ark of Wisdom,
Heavenly Amazone, Balingarden Organ,
and Cabinet Secretary of the Holy Ghost.
When still quite young, she intended to
run off to the Egyptian desert; but, at
seventeen years old, her parents thought
it best to place her in the Carmelitan
nunnery at St. Avila. The host flew on its
own account from the hand of the administering
bishop into her mouth, and then