le generation. In the middle
of the century Bonaventura had to reprove the Franciscans for their
greed of property, their litigation and efforts to grasp legacies, and
for the splendor and luxury of their buildings.[2200] The two great
orders of friars became an available power by virtue of their hold on
the tastes and faiths of the people. They became the militia of the pope
and helped to establish papal absolutism. They "were perfectly adapted
to the world conditions of the time."[2201] The doctrines of poverty
were at war with the character, aims, and ambitions of the church. The
Franciscans, in order to establish the primitive character of their
system, asserted that Christ and his disciples lived by beggary in
absolute renunciation of property. This was a Scriptural and historical
doctrine and question of fact, on which fierce controversy arose. It
divided the order into two schools, the conventuals and the spirituals.
In 1275 the spirituals, who clung to the original ideals and rules of
Francis, were treated as heretics and persecuted. They rated Francis as
another Christ, and the rule as a new revelation. They always were
liable to fall into sympathy with enthusiastic sects which were rated as
heretical.[2202] The Franciscans also, in their origin, were somewhat
independent of hierarchical authority and of established discipline. It
was necessary that the order should be brought into the existing
ecclesiastical system. The popes of the thirteenth century until
Boniface VIII accepted the standards of the age and approved of the
mendicant friars. In 1279, in the bull _Exiit qui seminat_, the
Franciscan rule was ascribed to revelation by the Holy Ghost, and the
renunciation of property was approved. The use of property was right,
but the ownership was wrong.[2203] Boniface was of another school. He
was a practical man who meant to increase the power of the hierarchy.
Absurd as was the notion of non-property, it was at least germane to the
doctrine of Christianity that Christians ought to renounce the pomps and
vanities of wealth and the struggle for power, and to live in frugality,
simplicity, and mutual service. The papal hierarchy was in pursuit of
pomp and luxury and, above all, of power and dominion. Boniface ordered
the spiritual Franciscans to conform to the rule of the conventuals.
Some would not obey and became heretics and martyrs. Their zeal for the
ideas and rule of Francis was so great that they welcomed m