Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/76

 the refuge was sought not only against a turbulent and vicious world, but also against the formal and unsatisfying character of the teaching and worship of the day. The English monasteries retained to some extent their specially defensive and social features; men and women resorted to them in order to live a peaceful, regular, and reasonably holy life; and, apart from the abuses which crept into the system, prevailing in some houses but conspicuously absent from the best, this was their object and the end which they achieved.

The Castilian Dominic had a very different aim in founding his Order of Preaching (Black) Friars. The Church had reached a stage at which the desire for protection against secular persecutions could no longer be a pressing cause of retirement from the world. What Dominic felt himself moved to establish was a mission into the world, not a refuge from it. His plan was to send forth missionaries with a distinct and well considered purpose; aggression was the moving principle of his life and of his teaching. He was the flaming sword of the Church, devoted to the persecution and destruction of heretics, for the saving of their souls and the relief of true religion. He has a threefold title to fame, such as few amongst the great military conquerors have surpassed. He it was who devised the terrible campaigns against the Albigenses, who inspired the creation of the courts of Inquisition, and who sent out the Preaching Friars against the sheep which had wandered from the fold.

The friars had his own example to guide and