Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/91

75 Democratic and Secular Tendencies 75 care of the sick. Many famous mediaeval nurses who are now canonized were in their day members of the Third Order of St. Francis — for instance, Elizabeth of Hungary, and Catherine of Siena. The mediaeval scientific wizard, Roger Bacon, was also a Franciscan Tertiary. The demands made upon the Tertiaries for hospital nursing led even- tually to the formation of communities and con- vents, whose members took only simple vows. While the strictly religious orders, under the pres- sure of the clergy, were inclining more and more to the seclusion of solemn or perpetual vows, new active orders now sprang up in many directions which expressed the desire of women for self- organization and self-direction in congenial work, and these were not technically "religious" in the church sense, though they were all imbued with a religious spirit. The Beguines of Flanders were leaders among these secular orders. They antedated the Fran- ciscan Tertiaries, for their first com- The munity was built in 1 1 84, just two years Beguines after Francis was born. The organization of the Beguines seems to have been a revolt against abuses that had developed in the double monas- tery system, for their first spokesman, Lambert le Begue, a priest of Liege, asserted their claim to