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

ABUSES IN THE ORDERS. 265
permission from the Penitentieria to lay aside their habit,
and had then obtained a cure of souls. Italy was full of such,
and they provided heresy with its ablest preachers.^ The
Council had set up a barrier against this fatal tendency by
making it very difficult to leave an Order, and by declaring
that for the future all vows of religion taken before the age of
sixteen were invahd.^ The Pope carried the matter a step
further by fixing the age of nineteen as that necessary for
religious profession in several Orders.^ Paul IV. and Pius IV.
had already issued ordinances against monks living out of their
monasteries, and it only remained for their successor to put
these laws into force, a thing which Pius V. proceeded to do
in the first months of his reign.'* He also removed another
abuse which had in various ways given occasion for apostasy
from the religious life. It often happened that monks, on the
pretext of seeking a higher state of perfection, passed to
another Order, and then easily obtained permission to live
outside their monastery, when they began to lead an unsettled
life, and even to put aside the religious habit altogether. The
Council of Trent had already taken steps against this abuse,
but several superiors of Orders, on the strength of certain
pretended privileges, continued to accept such monks who
had left their monasteries. Pius V. put an end to this by
declaring all such privileges invalid.^
In the case of the convents of nuns, the decrees of Trent,
besides securing freedom of entry into an Order, had strongly
insisted upon enclosure, by which no nun, once she had taken
her vows, could leave her convent, and no stranger could enter
^ Cf. infra, p. 299.
^ Sess. 25, de rag. et men, c. 15 and 19.
^ Bull. Rom., VII., 692, § 5
(for the Servites :
convents to their home.")
(for the Conventuals), 825, § 23
" youths under 15 must be sent back from their
* *Avvisi di Roma of March 23 and December 8, 1566, Urb.
1040, p. 197b, 337b, Vatican Library.
^ Bull of October 14, 1569, Bull. Rom., VII., 783 seqq., issued
on December 2, 1569. *Avviso di Roma of December 3, 1569,
Urb. 1041, 193b, Vatican Library.