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RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ORGANIZATION 409
the Conquest, save perhaps in a few urban monasteries. In
the twelfth century, however, the growth of towns, and the de-"
velopment of travel and commerce, together with the appear^
ance of new diseases such as leprosy, true and supposed, and
the existence of a large class of potential benefactors, led to
the multiplication of hospitals, many ofwhich combined the
functions of hospice, clinic, and almshouse. Their organizax
tion was assisted and in some ways conditioned by the expert
ence gained in the east and by the needs of returned pilgrims
and crusaders. These hospitals gave scope for the promiscuous
services of many charitable persons who had found no scope in
the monasteries and nunneries of the age; they were staffed
almost invariably by a quasi^religious body, and founders
always made provision for the spiritual needs of the inmates;
many were served by a group ofbrethren or sisters or both, who
followed a regular life, often based upon the Rule ofSt. Augus'
tine, making it difficult for historians, as it was for contempox
raries, to distinguish between a religious house and a hospital.
Though medically primitive and entirely without influence
on the development ofsurgery or clinical
practice,
the
hospitals
are impressive in the aggregate if only by their numbers, and
their services in the reliefand consolation of the sick and aged
must not be left out ofthe reckoning when the religious balance
sheet of the age is being drawn up.
By the end ofthe twelfth century the spiritual forces released
by the revival of the previous age and by the birth of the new
monastic and canonical orders were approaching exhaustion.
The monks and canons had become possessed of a large frac^
tion of the land and potential wealth of the country; their
houses were ubiquitous, more than six hundred in number, and
their numbers formed a notable percentage of the free popular
tion. It might have seemed that the age of regression was ap'
preaching. The scene was transformed, however, by the arrival,
at the end ofthe first quarter ofthe new century, ofthe recently
founded Friars Preachers and Friars Minor or, as they later
came to be called, the Dominicans, the 'black' friars, and the
Franciscans, the *gr e y* fii^s. Their story has often been told