archy. Francis
renounced all property. Poverty was idealized and allegorized. Since he
would not produce or own things, he had to beg or borrow them from
others who were therefore obliged to sin for him. The first corollary
from the admiration of poverty was the glorification of beggary and its
exaltation above productive labor.[2195] There is a rhapsody on poverty
in the _Roman de la Rose_. If it is base and corrupting to admire
wealth, it is insane to admire poverty. It never can be anything more
than a pose or affectation. The count of Chiusi gave to Francis the
mountain La Verna as a place of retirement and meditation. Armed men
were necessary to take possession of this place on account of beasts and
robbers.[2196] Here, then, we have all the crime, selfishness, and
violence of "property." The legendary story of Francis is fabulous. It
is a product of the popular notions of the time. He was said to perform
miracles. Crowds flocked to him. His order spread with great rapidity
and without much effort on his part. Evidently it just met the temper,
longings, and ideals of the time. Its strength was that it suited the
current mores. Unlimited money and property were given to it. Francis
died in 1226 and was canonized in 1228. Dominic (1170-1221) aimed to
found an order of preachers in order to oppose the Albigenses and other
heretics. He wanted to found a learned and scholarly order which should
be able to preach and teach. He made it a mendicant order in order to
preserve it from the corruptions to which the conventual life was
exposed. The two orders of friars became fierce enemies to each other
and fought upon all occasions.[2197] In their theory and doctrines they
exactly satisfied the notions of the time as to what the church ought to
be, and "they restored to the church much of the popular veneration
which had become almost hopelessly alienated from it."[2198] The age
cherished ideals and phantasms on which it dwelt in thought, developing
them. Suffering was esteemed as a good, and self-denial with suffering
made saintliness. Francis and his comrades cherished all these ideals
and had all these ways of thinking. Francis became the ideal man of his
time.[2199]

+695. The Franciscans.+ Other mendicant orders prove the dominant ideas
of the time. These were the Augustinian hermits (1256), the Carmelites
(1245), and the Servites, or Servants of Mary (c. 1275). The mendicants
did not live up to their doctrine for a sing