Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/256

Rh budding life time do all the documents published by the learned Wadding in his Annals of the Minorites. Italy may claim the Founder; but England may boast that she carried out his work, at least for fourscore years after his death, better than any other land in Christendom. She gave him his worthiest disciples; the great English Franciscans, Alexander de Hales, Adam de Marisco, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Occam, were unequalled by any of their brethren abroad, with the two exceptions of Buenaventura and Lulli. Some of these men sought the mainland, while others taught in their school at Oxford: under the new guidance the rising University shot up with giant's growth, and speedily outdid her old rival on the Seine. The great Robert himself (he was not as yet known as Lincolniensis) lectured before the brethren at Oxford. English friars, being patterns of holiness, were held in the highest esteem abroad; when reading Salimbene's work, we meet them in all kinds of unlikely places throughout Italy and France: they crowded over the sea to hear their great countryman Hales at Paris, or to take a leading part in the Chapters held at Rome and Assisi. The gift of wisdom, we are told, overflowed in the English province.

It was a many-sided Brotherhood, being always in con&shy;tact with the learned, with the wealthy, and with the needy alike. The English Friar was equally at home in the school, in the bower, in the hovel. He could speak more than one tongue, thanks to the training bestowed upon him. We may imagine his every-day life: he spends his morning in drawing up a Latin letter to be