Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/147

 REACTION AGAINST DOCTRINE OF POVERTY. 131 conscientiously trained in the belief that the abnegation of prop- erty was the surest path to salvation ; but the follies of the ascetics had become uncomfortable, if not dangerous, and it was necessary for the Church to go behind its teachings since the days of Antony and Hilarion and Simeon Stylites, to recur to the common-sense of the gospel, and to admit that, like the Sabbath, religion was made for man and not man for religion. In a work written some ten years after this time, Alvar Pelayo, papal penitentiary and himself a Franciscan, treats the subject at considerable length, and doubt- less represents the views which found favor with John. The anchorite should be wholly dead to the world and should never leave his hermitage ; memorable is the abbot who refused to open his door to his mother for fear his eye should rest upon her, and not less so the monk who, when his brother asked him to come a little way and help him with a foundered ox, replied, " Why dost thou not ask thy brother who is yet in the world ?" " But he has been dead these fifteen vears !" " And I have been dead to the world these twenty years !" Short of this complete renunciation, all men should earn their living by honest labor. In spite of the illustrious example of the sleepless monks of Dios, the apostolic command "Pray without ceasing" (Thessal. v. 17) is not to be taken literally. The apostles had money and bought food (John iv. 8), and Judas carried the purse of the Lord (John xn. 6). Bet- ter than a life of beggary is one blessed by honest labor, as a swineherd, a shepherd, a cowherd, a mason, a blacksmith, or a charcoal-burner, for a man is thus fulfilling the purpose of his cre- ation. It is a sin for the able-bodied to live on charity, and thus usurp the alms due to the sick, the infirm, and the aged. All this is a lucid interval of common-sense, but what would Aquinas or Bonaventura have said to it, for it sounds like the echo of their great antagonist. William of Saint- Amour ?* In fact, the advocates of poverty did not miss the easy opportunity of stigma- tizing their antagonists as followers of William of Saint-Amour. See Tocco, u Un Codice della Marciana," Venezia, 1887, pp. 12, 39 (Ateneo Veneto, 1§86- 1887). The MS. of which Professor Tocco has here printed the most important por- tions, with elucidatory notes, is a collection of the responses made to the question submitted for discussion by John XXII. as to the poverty of Christ and the
 * Alvar. Pelag. de Planctu Ecclesiae Lib. i. Art. 51. fol. 165-9.