Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

'2-2-2 BOGEB BACON.
The Franciscans multiplied so rapidly that in 125(5
their numbers amounted to 1242 in forty-nine houses.
As their organisation became more perfect, they
were divided into seven Custodies under one provincial.
At the time of the dissolution he governed
seventy houses.1 Amongst these were the houses of
Sisters. They possessed eight convents, and were
for the most part not Poor Clare Colettines but Poor
Clare Urbanists. This branch of St. Francis' Order
was founded by St. Isabel * of France, sister of St.
Louis, and thus called after Urban IV. The Poor
Clare Urbanists were allowed endowments. The
Minories still bears the name which came to it from
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the Convent of Minor esses, for so these nuns were
known.
The abnegation of St. Francis extended to the
mind. He would not have his friars too much
attached to books and learning, yet God works by
contraries. It was the Order of Poverty which was
to give the greatest intellects to the Church in
England during the Middle Ages. Roger Bacon,
born in 1214, and called the Doctor miralilis, was a
^
man whose keen vision penetrated into the secret
forces of nature. In learning o and natural science he
was far in advance of his age, and it is no marvel
that he was accused by the uninitiated of magic and
the black art. His occult science consisted in great
1 The author of Antiquities, etc., says ninety, but Dr. Gasquet
mentions only sixty-two Franciscan houses. See Henry VIII.
and the English Monasteries, i. Appendix.