that it was their own vain and worldly lives which made them hate the mendicant brothers, who spent the bequests they received from the dying for the honor of God, instead of wasting it in pleasure.

The mendicant orders have counted among their numbers men of the greatest ability and distinction, — scholars like Thomas Aquinas, reformers like Savonarola, artists like Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo, and scientists like Roger Bacon. In the busy world of the thirteenth century there was no agency more active for good than the friars. Yet their vagrant lives, free from the ordinary control of the Church, and the great wealth which was showered upon them, afforded many obvious temptations which they did not long withstand. Bonaventura, who was made head of the Franciscan order in 1257, admits the general dislike aroused by the greed, idleness, and vice of its degenerate members, as well as by their importunate begging, which rendered the friar more troublesome to the wayfarer than the robber. Nevertheless the friars were preferred to the ordinary priests by high and low alike; it was they, rather than the secular clergy, who maintained and cultivated the religious life in both city and country.

General Reading. The opening chapter of Lea's monumental work, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages (Harper Bros. & Co., 3 vols., $10.00), gives a remarkable account of the medieval Church and the abuses which prevailed. The first volume also contains unexcelled chapters upon the origin of both the Franciscan and Dominican orders. For St. Francis, by far the best work is Sabatier's beautiful biography, St. Francis of Assisi (Charles Scribner's Sons, $2.50). The earliest and best source for Francis is The Mirror of Perfection (Page, Boston, 75 cents), by Brother Leo, which shows the love and admiration in which "Little Brother Francis" was held by one of his companions. See also JESSOPP, The Coming of the Friars, and Other Historic Essays (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25), Chapter I.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN

92. Since the development of the rather new science of political economy, historical writers have become much interested in the condition and habits of the farmer, tradesman, and artisan in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately no amount of research is likely to make our knowledge very clear or certain regarding the condition of the people at large during the five or six centuries following the barbarian invasions. It rarely occurred to a medieval chronicler to describe the familiar things about him, such as the way in which the peasant lived and tilled his land. Only the conspicuous personages and the startling events caught his attention. Nevertheless enough is known of the medieval manor and town to make them very important subjects for the student of general history.

There was little town life in western Europe before the twelfth century. The Roman towns were decreasing in population before the German inroads. The confusion which followed the invasions hastened their decline, and a great number of them disappeared altogether. Those which survived and such new towns as sprang up were, to judge from the chronicles, of very little importance during the early Middle Ages. We may assume, therefore, that during the long period from Theodoric to Frederick Barbarossa by far the greater part of the population of England, Germany, and northern and central France were living in the country, on the great estates belonging to the feudal lords, abbots, and bishops.1

1 In Italy and southern France town life was doubtless more general.

The manor, or vill.

The obligations of the serfs.

These medieval estates were called vills, or manors, and closely resembled the Roman villas described in an earlier chapter. A portion of the estate was reserved by the lord for his own use; the rest of it was divided up among the peasants,1 usually in long strips, of which each peasant had several scattered about the manor. The peasants were generally serfs who did not own their fields, but could not, on the other hand, be deprived of them so long as they worked for the lord and paid him certain dues. They were attached to the land and went with it when it changed hands. The serfs

In the women's buildings the daughters of the serfs engaged in spinning, weaving, sewing, baking, and brewing, thus producing clothes, food, and drink to be used by the whole community.

We get our clearest ideas of the position of the serfs from the ancient descriptions of manors, which give an exact account of what each member of a particular community owed to the lord. For example, we find that the abbot of Peterborough held a manor upon which Hugh Miller and seventeen other serfs, mentioned by name, were required to work for him three days in each week during the whole year, except one

1 The peasants were the tillers of the soil. They were often called villains, a word derived from vill.

week at Christmas, one at Easter, and one at Whitsuntide. Each serf was to give the lord abbot one bushel of wheat and eighteen sheaves of oats, three hens and one cock yearly, and five eggs at Easter. If he sold his horse for more than ten shillings, he was to give the said abbot four pence. Five other serfs, mentioned by name, held but half as much land as Hugh and his companions, by paying and doing in all things half as much service.

There were sometimes a few people on the manor who did not belong to the great body of cultivators. The limits of the manor and those of the parish often coincided; in that case there would be a priest who had some scattered acres and whose standing was naturally somewhat superior to that of the people about him. Then the miller, who ground the flour and paid a substantial rent to the lord, was generally somewhat better off than his neighbors, and the same may be said of the blacksmith.

One of the most remarkable characteristics of the manor was its independence of the rest of the world. It produced nearly everything that its members needed and might almost have continued to exist indefinitely without communication with those who lived beyond its bounds. Little or no money was necessary, for the peasants paid what was due to the lord in the form of labor and farm products. They also rendered the needful help to one another and found little occasion for buying and selling.

There was almost no opportunity to better one's condition, and life, in the greater part of the hamlets, must have gone on for generation after generation in a weary routine. The life was not merely monotonous, it was miserable. The food was coarse and there was little variety, as the peasants did not even take pains to raise fresh vegetables. The houses usually had but one room. This was ill-lighted by a single little window and had no chimney.

The manor independent

of the out

side world.

The monotmisery of the lives.

ony and

peasants'

The manor court.

The serf an inferior

farmer who could only exist when there was plenty of land.

Barter replaced by money transactions.

Yet the very dependence upon one another can hardly have failed to produce a certain spirit of brotherhood and mutual assistance in the community. It was not only separated from the outside world, but its members were brought together constantly by their intermingled fields, their attendance at one church, and their responsibility to one proprietor. The men were all expected to be present at the "court" which was held in each manor, where the business of the manor was transacted under the supervision of a representative of the lord. Here, for instance, disputes were settled, fines imposed for the violation of the customs of the manor, and redistributions of the strips of land took place.

The serf was ordinarily a bad farmer and workman. He cultivated the soil in a very crude manner, and his crops were accordingly scanty and inferior. Obviously serfdom could exist only as long as land was plentiful. But in the twelfth and thirteenth century western Europe appears to have been gaining steadily in population. Serfdom would, therefore, naturally tend to disappear when the population so increased that the carelessly cultivated fields no longer supplied the food necessary for the growing numbers.

The increased use of money in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which came with the awakening trade and industry, also tended to break up the manor. The old habit of bartering one thing for another without the intervention of money began to disappear. As time went on, neither the lord nor the serf was satisfied with the ancient primitive arrangements, which had answered well enough in the time of Charlemagne. The serfs, on the one hand, began to obtain money by the sale of their products in the markets of neighboring towns. They soon. found it more profitable to pay the lord a certain sum instead of working for him, for they could then turn their whole attention to their own farms. The proprietors, on the other hand, found it to their advantage to accept money in place of the services