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Rh not a priest himself, simply drew up a rule of life, a modified version of his own extraordinary life, and allowed his followers, after due probation, to bind themselves by vow to its fulfilment. In it he naively proscribes study: ‘Let those who know not letters not seek to learn them.’ However, although a plenary inspiration is claimed for him in his first composition of the rule, he soon recognised the necessity of a different treatment of his clerical brethren: Antony of Padua was appointed by him ‘to teach theology to the brethren.’ He had not been many years in his grave—his premature death was not unassisted by his grief at the growing corruption of his order (the saintly Antony of Padua had already been publicly flogged in the convent of Aracæli at Rome for his dogged resistance to the corruptors)—when the intellectual fever of the thirteenth century completely mastered the fraternity. Many friars still held to the policy of holy ignorance, and Roger Bacon was imprisoned in England and Duns Scotus was buried alive by his brethren at Cologne (according to their amiable rivals—the Dominicans): however, the friars were to be found in hundreds in all the great universities, even in the professorial chairs at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne. Gradually the lay-brothers became the mere servants of the priests; the studies of the clerics were duly organised.

At that time and until the present century the neophytes were men of a more advanced age. After