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

THE VOW OF POVERTY. 26o
was no need to press him, and that there, if anywhere, he must
act with extreme care.^
In all his enactments concerning the Orders the Pope
adhered strictly to the prescriptions on which the Council of
Trent had built up its legislation for monastic hfe.^ Like
the CounciP he started with the principle that their preser-
vation as well as the guarantee of new life was not to be sought
in new expedients, but in a return to the manner of life traced
out for the Orders by their founders ;
therefore all his ordin-
ances were carefully adapted to the peculiar character of each
congregation. The great stress which Pius V. laid upon the
vow of poverty as the foundation stone of the Orders was
quite in keeping with the spirit of the Council."* In vigorous
terms he condemned the abuse which had crept in in so many
ways, which allowed to individual monks and nuns a kind of
private possession and thus undermined the community life,
and destroyed the sense of homogeneity among the members
of a rehgious house ; this abuse, he said, is the root of all
evils in any convent where it has crept in, and not even the
For 1572 : *February
gregation : he
8, to the abbot of the Cassinese con-
must reform the Benedictines at Capua ; *March
12, to the Prior-General of the Carmehtes, Giov. Batt. de Rubeis :
faculties to reform the convent at Mantua ; *April 12, to the
Archbishop of Palermo [lacopo LomeUini] ; he is to excommunicate
those who have seized the property of the monastery
of S. Martino (State Archives, Palermo). L. lacobilli, *Croniche
di Foligno, in the possession of Mgr. Faloci PuUgnani at Fohgno,
relates the reform of the Dominican convent at Foligno in 1566-
1567. For the " Constitutioni delle venerabiU monache con-
vertite di Napoli " which were corrected bj/ Pius V. himself, see
Padiglione, La Biblioteca del Museo Nazionale nella Certosa di
S. Martino in NapoU, Naples, 1876, no seq.
1 *" Nelle cose della religione, delli frati e delh preti non bisogna
toccarU et averli tutti li rispetti possibili si mai s' ebbero," Rosetti
to the Duke of Modena, State Archives, Modena.
^ Sess. 25, de regularibus et monialibus.
^ Ibid, C.I.
* Sess. 25 de reg. et mon. c. 2-3.