Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/390

386 FAMILIAR COLLOQUIES. time or another- they might unawares tread upon money lying on tVe ground. Th. Well, but then they do not touch it with their hands. Ph. Why, pray is not the sense of touching common to the whole body ? Th. But in case any such thing should fall out, they do not officiate after it till they have been at confession. PA. It is con- scientiously done.

Th. But, without cavilling, I will tell you how it is. Money ever was and ever will be the occasion of very great evils to many persons. Ph. I allow it ; but then, on the other hand, it is an instrument of as much good to others. I find the inordinate love of money to be con- demned, but I nowhere find money itself to be so. Th. You say very well ; but that we may be kept at greater distance from the disease of covetousness, we are forbid to touch money as we are forbid by the gospel to swear at all, that we may be kept from perjury. Ph. Why, then, is not the sight of money forbidden too,? Th. Because it is easier to govern our hands than eyes. Ph. And yet death itself entered into the world at those windows. Th. And therefore your true Franciscans pull their cowls over their eyebrows, and walk with their eyes covered and fixed upon the ground, that they may see nothing but their way, just like carriers' horses that have winkers on each side of their head-gear, that they may see nothing but what is before them and at their feet.

Th. But tell me, is it true, as I hear, that they are forbidden by their order to receive any indulgences from the pope 1 Th. They are so. Ph. But, as I am informed, there are no men in the world that have more of them than they have; so that they are allowed either to poison or bury alive those that they themselves have condemned, with- out any danger of being called to account for it. Th. What you have heard is no fiction ; for I was told once by a Polander, and a man of credit too, that he, having got drunk, fell fast asleep in the Franciscans' church, in one of the corners where the women sit to make their con- fessions through a lattice ; and being awakened by the singing of their nocturns, according to custom, he did not dare to discover himself; and when the office was over, the whole fraternity went down into the vault, where there was a large deep grave ready made, and there stood two young men with their hands tied behind them. There was a sermon preached in praise of obedience, and a promise of God's pardon for all their sins, and some hope given them that God would incline the minds of the brotherhood to mercy, if they would voluntarily go down into the grave and lay themselves upon their backs there. They did so, and as soon as they were down the ladders were drawn up, and the brethren altogether flung the dirt upon them.

Ph. Well, but did the Polander say nothing all the while ? Th. No, not a word ; he was afraid if he had discovered himself he should have made the third person. Ph. But can they justify this? Th. Yes, they may, as often as the honour of the order is called in ques- tion ; for he, as soon as he had made his escape, told what he had seen in all the companies he came into, to the great scandal of the whole seraphic order. And had it not been better now that this man had been buried alive 1 Ph. It may be it had ; but omitting these nice- ties, how comes it that when their patriarch has ordered them to go barefoot, they now go commonly half-shod? Th. This injunction was