Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/34

 lg THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. ample harvest of earnest minds which might well seek in the hoped-for speedy realization of Joachim's dreams compensation for the miseries of the present. Kor did those dreams lack an apostle of unquestionable orthodoxy. Hugues de Digne, a hermit of Hyeres, had a wide reputation for learning, eloquence, and sanctity. He had been Franciscan Provincial of Provence, but had laid down that dignity to gratify his passion for austerity, and his sister, St. Douceline, lived in a succession of ecstasies in which she was lifted from the ground. Hugues was intimate with the leading men of the Order ; Alexander Hales, Adam de Marisco, and the general, John of Parma, are named as among his close friends. With the latter, especially, he had the common bond that both were earnest Joachites. He possessed all the works of Joachim, genuine and spurious, he had the utmost confidence in their proph- ecies, which he regarded as divine inspiration, and he did much to extend the knowledge of them, which was not difficult, as he himself had the reputation of a prophet.* The Spiritual section of the Franciscans was rapidly becoming leavened with these ideas. To minds inclined to mysticism, filled with unrest, dissatisfied with the existing unfulfilment of their ideal, and longing earnestly for its realization, there might well be an irresistible fascination in the promises of the Calabrian ab- bot, of which the term was now so rapidly approaching. If these Joachitic Franciscans developed the ideas of their teacher with greater boldness and definiteness, their ardor had ample excuse. They were living witnesses of the moral failure of an effort from which everything had been expected for the regeneration of hu- manity. They had seen how the saintly teachings of Francis and the new revelation of which he had been the medium were perverted by worldly men to purposes of ambition and greed ; how the Order, which should have been the germ of human re- demption, was growing more and more carnal, and how its saints were martyred by their fellows. Unless the universe were a fail- ure, and the promises of God were lies, there must be a term to — Vie de Douceline (Meyer, Recueil cTanciens Textes, pp. 142-46). Salimbene, in enumerating the special intimates of John of Parma, character- izes several of them as "great Joachites."
 * Salimbene Chron. pp. 97-109, 124, 318-20.— Chron. Glassberger ann. 1286.