Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

CHAFTEB
V.
THE FRIARS (1219).
IT was noticed before the French Revolution that all
France, as far as that was possible, converged round
Paris, and that life and civilisation in the provinces
were at a stand-still. Just the contrary was true o
town-life in England up to the beginning of the
thirteenth century. The monks had been the factors
of civilisation to the English people, and they had
worked exclusively in the country. In order to obey
their call, as they conceived it, they wrere bound to
retire from men and the haunts of men. Thus it
was that the whole consequences of their resolution
had fallen literally on virgin soil. The towns still
awaited their missionaries : in social status they were
at a very low ebb. Whilst they were not richer in
material appearance or construction than the most
remote Irish or Scotch village of to-day, the municipal
element was highly developed. Self-government
existed to an extraordinary extent with
ignorance, squalor, and unsanitariness. The mendicant
orders were made for the town just as the
monks for the country; and of none is this truer
than of the Franciscans. The children of St. Francis
o 19)