Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/44

 28 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. tory, a spacious dormitory, and other offices and cloisters, adorned with lofty arches and spacious portals, he kept silent until one of his guides pressed him for an expression of admiration. " Breth- ren," he then said, " there is nothing lacking except your wives." This seemed somewhat irrelevant, till he explained that the vows of poverty and chastity were equally binding, and now that one was set aside the other might as well follow. Salimbene relates that in the convent of Pisa he met Fra Boncampagno di Prato, who, in place of the two new tunics per year distributed to each of the brethren, would only accept one old one, and who declared that he could scarce satisfy God for taking that one. Such exag- gerated conscientious sensitiveness could not but be peculiarly exasperating to the more worldly members.* The Conventuals had lost no time in securing the results of their victory over John of Parma. Scarce had his resignation been secured, and before Bonaventura could arrive from Paris they obtained from Alexander, February 20, 1257, a repetition of the declaration of Innocent IV. which enabled the Order to handle money and hold property through the transparent device of agents and the Holy See. The disgust of the Puritan party was great, and even the implicit reverence prescribed for the papacy could not prevent ominous mutterings of disobedience, raising questions as to the extent of the papal power to bind and to loose, which in time were to ripen into open rebellion. The Eule had been pro- claimed a revelation equal in authority to the gospel, and it might well be asked whether even the successor of St. Peter could set it aside. It was probably about this time that Bert hold of Katisbon, the most celebrated Franciscan preacher of his day, in discoursing to his brethren on the monastic state, boldly declared that the vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity were so binding that even the pope could not dispense for them. This, in fact, was admitted on all sides as a truism. About 1290 the Dominican Provincial of Germany, Hermann of Minden, in an encyclical, al- ludes to it as a matter of course, but in little more than a quarter of a century we shall see that such utterances were treated as her- esy, and were sternly suppressed with the stake. + Salimbene, p. 122. t Wadding, ann. 1256, No. 4; Regest. Alex. PP. IV. No. 66.— Bertboldi a
 * 1) Wadding. Regest. Alex. PP. IV. No. 39-41; Annal. ann, 1262, No. 86.—