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

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HISTORY OF THE POPES.
of God, he wrote on one occasion, ^ which we consider more
glorious and more useful than the flourishing of true discipline
among those who, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, have
dedicated themselves to the monastic life. In the case of
those houses which through their own fault persisted in a state
of decadence, he showed both his zeal and his ruthlessness, as
was the case with the Abbey of Fonte Avellana in the diocese
of Gubbio, once famous on account of St. Peter Damian. In
the first instance the Pope sought, through the agency of the
Archbishop of Ravenna, Cardinal GiuHo della Rovere, to
bring back the monks, who had fallen into a very bad state,
to a better manner of life,^ but when they rejected his reforms
on the pretext that their vows only bound them to the more
or less easy life then prevalent, Pius V. suppressed the abbey
and gave it to the Camaldolese ; the former monks of Fonte
Avellana were obhged either to join the latter or enter some
other Order. ^
The suppression of the Order of the Humiliati caused a
greater stir.^ This Order, which owed its origin to a body of
men of noble birth who had been taken to Germany as hostages,
and had there devoted themselves to a zealous religious life,
had adopted as their form of manual labour the manufacture
of cloth, and had in this way attained to a wealth which
brought about their ruin. About the middle of the XVIth
^ Bull of April 23, 1568 (for the Knights of the Cross), Bull.
Rom., VII., 666.
* *Brief to the Cardinal, March 26, 1568, Archives of Briefs,
Rome.
^BuU of December 10, 1569, in Laderchi, 1569, n. 52, and in
Bull. Rom., VII., 788. Cf. Alb. Gibelli, Monografia deU'antico
monastero di S. Croce in Fonte Avellana, Faenza, 1896 ; Mit-
TARELLi, Ann. Camaldul., VIII., Venice, 1764, 130 seqq.
* Sala, Documenti, I., 195 seqq., 215 seqq., 220 seq., -z^j seqq.,
248 seqq., 254 seqq.; III., 339, 383 seqq. Bascap^, i, 2, c. 4 and 10,
p. 34 seqq., 44 seqq. Sylvain, II., 17 seqq. *De reformatione
Humiliatorum in Cod. Ottob. 2519 (varia diversorum, t. XII.
cardinalis Ludovisii) p. 146--156 ;
ibid., p. 152-154, sopra le cose de
Frati Humiliati a Ms, Ormaneto, Vatican Library,