СНАР. The Everlasting condemned. That thei shall all comen thereto, And ben brought to confusioun. ver. 7291. It is obvious that the mendicants by the Gospel publication of this book of the Everlasting Gospel, with the comments of John of Parma, afforded their adversaries a great advantage against them. The doctors of the university of Paris immediately began the cry of heresy and blasphemy; and so importunate were they in their representations to the holy father, that pope Alexander IV. was compelled much against his will, in 1255, the year after the publication of John of Parma, to order the book to be suppressed'. He however took care that the mandate should XXV. be executed with all possible mildness, lest CHAP. such a measure might in any way contribute to tarnish the reputation of the mendicants. Whatever might be the sentiments respecting the new orders, of the doctors of the university of Paris, who were principally interested for the cause of general learning and the good government of the church, the Roman pontiffs well knew that the friars were to be ranked among their steadiest troops, and would prove the most strenuous abettors of the declining authority of the visible head of the church. condemn ed. The friars were sensible of the advantage St. Amour they possessed in so powerful a patronage; and the Everlasting Gospel having been condemned in 1255, a memorable embassy appeared before the pope in the following year, to complain of William de St. Amour's treatise De Periculis Temporum. Albertus Magnus was at the head of this embassy, and Thomas Aquinas the reporter of the * Casimirus Oudinus, apud Cave, art. Aquinas, nota n. XXV. the mendi cants. CHAP. cause. The representations of these illus trious pleaders were attended with perfect Victory of success: St. Amour's book was pronounced libellous and heretical; it was ordered to be burned by the common hangman; and sentence of banishment from France was issued against its author. Humbled by this proceeding, and deprived of their leader, the doctors of the university in 1259 gave up their cause in despair, and not only admitted the Dominicans to the professorships in question, but at the same time conceded equal privileges to the order of the Franciscans", In the following year, which had been specified in the predictions of the Everlasting Gospel, the spiritual party among the Franciscans gained a victory over their opponents, and the decree of Innocent IV. mitigating the severity of the rule of St. Francis was solemnly annulled, XXV. St. Amour No sooner however had pope Alexander CHAP. IV, the great adversary of William de St. Amour, expired, than the latter returned to reinstated. Paris, and was reinstated in his former dignities. The university was now, less strenuous and peremptory in her opposition to the mendicant orders, but she received St. Amour with open arms, as the most generous of her champions, and the martyr of her cause. On his part, he shewed himself by no means subdued by the adversity he had sustained, and persisted as long as he lived in the most galling and unintermitted attacks upon the mendicants, the authors of his disgraced. ab censure of the Reman de la Rose. Gerson, the most active and eloquent Gerson's leader in the council of Constance in 1414, has expressed himself with the greatest abhorrence against John de Meun for his share in the composition of the Roman de la Rose, alleging that," if he thought the author did Mosheim, §. 28. XXV. CHAP not repent himself of that book before he died, he would no more vouchsafe to pray for his soul, than he would for that of Judas who betrayed Christ." This antipathy of the orthodox divine has sometimes been ascribed to the licentious sentiments occasionally interspersed in the work. But it is probable that it rather arose from the free insinuations of the poet respecting religious hypocrisy, and his attacks upon those orders of men, which Gerson well knew had essentially contributed to the prosperity of the Catholic Church. These particulars relative to the history of the mendicant friars, obscure and personal as on a superficial view they may appear, tend eminently to illustrate the state of the church, and the temper and feelings which at this time prevailed respecting the practices of the Roman Catholic religion; and will probably be found, not only to fur Rubric of Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose. |
