While it is true that a begging monk was by no means unknown, yet now,
for the first time, was the practice of mendicity formally adopted by
entire orders. Owing to the excessive multiplication of mendicant
societies, Pope Gregory X., at a general council held at Lyons in 1272,
attempted to check the growing evil. The number of Mendicant orders was
confined to four, viz., the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites
and the Augustinians or Hermits of Augustine. The Council of Trent
confined mendicity to the Observantines and Capuchins, since the other
societies had practically abandoned their original interpretation of
their vow of poverty and had acquired permanent property.
When Francis tried to enforce the rule of poverty, his rigor gave rise
to most serious dissensions, which began in his own lifetime and ended
after his death in open schism. Some of his followers were not pleased
with his views on that subject. They resisted his extreme strictness,
and after his death they continued to advocate the holding of property.
The popes tried to settle the quarrel, but ever and anon it broke out
afresh with volcanic fierceness. They finally interpreted the rule of
poverty to mean that the friars could not hold property in their own
names, but they might enjoy its use. Under this interpretation of the
rule, the beggars soon became very rich. Matthew of Paris said: "The
friars who have been founded hardly forty years have built even in the
present day in England residences as lofty as the palaces of our kings.
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