Eliminating gross exaggerations, lies
and calumnies, there still remains a body of evidence that compels the
verdict of guilt. The legislation of the church councils, the decrees of
popes, the records of the courts, the reports of investigating
committees appointed by various popes, the testimony of the orders
against each other, the chronicles, letters and other extant literature,
abound in such detailed, specific charges of monastic corruption that it
is simply preposterous to reject the testimony. All the efforts at
reformation, and they were many, had failed. Many bishops confessed
their inability to cope with the growing disorders. It is beyond
question that lay robbers were encouraged to perpetrate acts of
sacrilege because the monks were frequently guilty of forgery and
violence. Commenting upon the impression which monkish lawlessness must
have made upon the minds of such men as Wyclif, Pike says: "They saw
with their own eyes those wild and lawless scenes, the faint reflection
of which in contemporaneous documents may excite the wonder of modern
lawyers and modern moralists." The legislation of church and state for a
century before Henry VIII. shows that the monks were guilty of brawling,
frequenting taverns, indulging in licentious pleasures and upholding
unlawful games.
Bonaventura, the General of the Franciscan Order in its earliest days,
and its palmiest, for the first years of a monastic order were always
its best years--this mendicant, their pride and their glory, tells us
that within fifty years of the death of its founder there were many
mendicants roaming around in disorderly fashion, brazen and shameless
beggars of scandalous fame.
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