Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/119

 GHERARDO SEGARELLI. 103 About the time when Griiglielma settled in Milan, Parma wit- nessed the commencement of another abnormal development of the great Franciscan movement. The stimulus which monachism had received from the success of the Mendicant Orders, the exal- tation of poverty into the greatest of virtues, the recognition of beggary as the holiest mode of life, render it difficult to apportion between yearnings for spiritual perfection and the attractions of idleness and vagabondage in a temperate climate the responsibil- ity for the numerous associations which arose in imitation of the Mendicants. The prohibition of unauthorized religious orders by the Lateran Council was found impossible of enforcement. Men would herd together with more or less of organization in caves and hermitages, in the streets of cities, and in abandoned dwell- ings and churches by the roadsides. The Carmelites and Augus- tinian hermits won recognition after a long struggle, and became established Orders, forming, with the Franciscans and Dominicans, the four Mendicant religions. Others, less reputable, or more independent in spirit, were condemned, and when they refused to disband they were treated as rebels and heretics. In the ten- sion of the spiritual atmosphere, any man who would devise and put in practice a method of life assimilating him most nearly to the brutes would not fail to find admirers and followers ; and, if he possessed capacity for command and organization, he could readily mould them into a confraternity and become an object of veneration, with an abundant supply of offerings from the pious. The year 1260 was that in which, according to Abbot Joachim, the era of the Holy Ghost was to open. The spiritual excitement which pervaded the population was seen in the outbreak of the Flagellants, which filled northern Italy with processions of peni- tents scourging themselves, and in the mutual forgiveness of inju- ries, which brought an interval of peace to a distracted land. In such a condition of public feeling, gregarious enthusiasm is easily directed to whatever responds to the impulse of the moment, and Last, Mary Ann Girling." At one time her sect numbered a hundred and sev- enty-five members, some of them rich enough to make it considerable donations, but under the petty persecution of the populace it dwindled latterly to a few, and finally dispersed. Aberrations of this nature belong to no special stage of intellectual development. The only advance made in modem times is in the method of dealing with them.