The history of the popes, from the close of the middle ages : drawn ...

CHAPTER VI,
The Reform of the Religious Orders.
The Council of Trent also forms a landmark in the history
of the religious Orders, which were able to raise themselves
from the low state into which they had fallen, on the basis
of its decrees. It is true that even in the first half of the
XVIth century the monastic Orders still retained their import-
ant place in the Church ;^ they still gave to her a number of
good bishops, while they gave the Holy See its nuncios and
Cardinals, and the universities their professors of theology ;
at the Council of Trent they had been represented by dis-
tinguished and influential doctors and bishops. The Domini-
can Order in particular had distinguished itself in the years
immediately preceding the Council by a band of men who
were illustrious alike in ecclesiastical learning and adminis-
tration, and in his many rescripts in favour of his own Order,
Pius V. professed himself its grateful son and disciple, and one
who owed everything to it.^ Another proof that not every-
thing in the monasteries was corrupt and spoilt is to be found
in the many attempts made to awaken the old ideals to a new
life by the formation of reformed congregations ; the whole
of the XVth and XVIth centuries are filled with such attempts
and foundations.^
But it is plain that, although individual members of the
^ Tacchi Venturi, I., 43 seq.
^ " Unde, licet imparibus meritis, Nos etiam tamquam ex fonte
profluximus." Constitution on St. Thomas Aquinas, §2, Bull.
Rom., VII., 564 ; cf. 801, 904.
3 Tacchi Venturi, I., 45. Pius Schmieder in Studien unci
Mitteil. aus den Benediktiner-und Zisterzienserorden, XL (1890),
580 seqq. ; XII. (1891), 54 seq. For the good convents in Germany
see Braunsberger, Pius V., 70.
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