monks who were called the begging friars or mendicants because they had no fixed abode but wandered from place to place, preaching to the common people and dependent for their own living upon alms. These orders came into prominence in the thirteenth century and included, among others, the Franciscan, whose lovable founder Saint Francis of Assisi had urged humility and love of the poor as its distinguishing characteristics, and the Dominican, or Order of the Preachers, devoted by the precept of its practical founder, Saint Dominic, to missionary zeal. All the mendicant orders, as well as the Benedictine monasteries, became famous in the history of education, and the majority of the distinguished scholars of the middle ages were monks. It was not uncommon, moreover, for regulars to enter the secular hierarchy and thus become parish priests or bishops, or even popes. [Sidenote: Church Councils] [Sidenote: Conciliar Movement] The clergy--bishops, priests, and deacons--constituted, in popular belief, the divinely ordained administration of the Catholic Church. The legislative authority in the Church similarly was vested in the pope and in the general councils, neither of which, however, could set aside a law of God, as affirmed in the gospels, or establish a doctrine at variance with the tradition of the early Christian writers. The general councils were assemblies of prelates of the Catholic world, and there had been considerable discussion as to the relative authority of their decrees and the decisions and directions of the pope. [Footnote: Papal documents have been called by various names, such as decretals, bulls, or encyclicals.] General church councils held in eastern Europe from the fourth to the ninth centuries had issued important decrees or canons defining Christian dogmas and establishing ecclesiastical discipline, which had been subsequently ratified and promulgated by the pope as by other bishops and by the emperors; and several councils had been held in western Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries under the direct supervision of the bishop of Rome, all the canons of which had been enacted in accordance with his wishes. But early in the fifteenth century a movement was inaugurated by certain Catholic bishops and scholars in favor of making the councils superior to the pope and a regular source of supreme legislation for the Church. In this way, the councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Basel (1431 ff.) had endeavored to introduce representative, if not democratic, government into the Church. The popes, however, objected to this conciliar movement and managed to have it condemned by the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438-1442). By the year 1512 the papal theory had triumphed and Catholics generally recognized again that the government of the Church was essentially monarchical. The laws of the Catholic Church were known as canons, and, of several codes of canon law which