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

256 HISTORY OF THE POPES.
of King Sebastian, the same prescriptions were made binding
in 1567.^ In the preceding year a request had been addressed
to the Pope in the name 'of the king that he would unite all
the Benedictine houses in Portugal after the manner of the
Castilian and Cassinese congregations. Archbishop Bartolomeo
a Martyribus, the Bishop of Oporto, and two Benedictines
of the congregation of Valladolid, had introduced this reform
which Pius V. confirmed on April 30th, 1566.2 He also united
the Cistercians in Portugal to the congregation of Alcoba9a
in 1567.^ Immediately after this an exhortation was sent
to Cardinal Henry to bring back the monks and nuns of the
order of Vallombrosa to a true religious life.*
The care which Pius V. had shown for the Franciscan
Conventuals in the Iberian peninsula was soon afterwards
extended to the whole Conventual Order. At the beginning
of June, 1568, he released them from the direction of the nuns
of their Order, ^ and set himself to revive the full severity of
the Franciscan ideal of poverty by forbidding them once more
the possession of private property.^ This ordinance on poverty
found a ready welcome among the Conventuals, and the Order
of its own accord began to set about the work of reform. A
^ Brief of October 30, 1567, Bull. Rom., VII., 624 ; *brief on the
reform of convents. May 28, 1568, to Gaspare, Bishop of Leiria
in the Archives of Briefs, Rome. *Brief of December 13, 1569,
regretting that the liing has entrusted the visitation of a convent
to a young cleric, in Brevia, Arm. 44, t. 14, p. 301, Papal Secret
Archives. The reform had already been begun under Pius IV. :
*letter from King Sebastian of Portugal to Cardinal Ricci of
February 20, 1565, Ricci Archives, Rome.
^ The brief was repeated in an edict of Gregory XIII., Bull.
Rom., VIII., 3. Cf. Corpo dipl. Portug., X. (1891), 208 seq.;
ScHMiEDER in Studien und Mitteil. aus dem Benediktiner-und
Zisterzienserorden, XII. (1891), 73.
* SCHMIEDER, loC. cit.
* * Brief of July 4, 1568, Archives of Briefs, Rome.
^ June 3, 1568, Bull. Rom., VII., 674. The reform had already
begun under Pius IV. ; cf. Holzapfel, 589, and supra p. 251.
481.
« June 8, 1568. Bull. Rom., VII.. 676 ; Wadding, XX., 474,