It is hardly necessary to say that the secular clergy took these encroachments very ill. They repeatedly appealed to the pope to abolish the orders, or at least to prevent them from enriching themselves at the expense of the parish priests. But they got little satisfaction. Once the pope quite frankly told a great deputation of cardinals, bishops, and minor clergy that it was their own vain and worldly lives which made them hate the mendicant brothers, who spent the bequests they received from the dying for the honor of God, instead of wasting it in pleasure. The mendicant orders have counted among their numbers men of the greatest ability and distinction,--scholars like Thomas Aquinas, reformers like Savonarola, artists like Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolommeo, and scientists like Roger Bacon. In the busy world of the thirteenth century there was no agency more active for good than the friars. Yet their vagrant lives, free from the ordinary control of the Church, and the great wealth which was showered upon them, afforded many obvious temptations which they did not long withstand. Bonaventura, who was made head of the Franciscan order in 1257, admits the general dislike aroused by the greed, idleness, and vice of its degenerate members, as well as by their importunate begging, which rendered the friar more troublesome to the wayfarer than the robber. Nevertheless the friars were preferred to the ordinary priests by high and low alike; it was they, rather than the secular clergy, who maintained and cultivated the religious life in both city and country. General Reading.--The opening chapter of Lea's monumental work, _A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_ (Harper Bros. & Co., 3 vols., $10.00), gives a remarkable account of the mediæval Church and the abuses which prevailed. The first volume also contains unexcelled chapters upon the origin of both the Franciscan and Dominican orders. For St. Francis, by far the best work is Sabatier's beautiful biography, _St. Francis of Assisi_ (Charles Scribner's Sons, $2.50). The earliest and best source for Francis is _The Mirror of Perfection_ (Page, Boston, 75 cents), by Brother Leo, which shows the love and admiration in which "Little Brother Francis" was held by one of his companions. See also JESSOPP, _The Coming of the Friars, and Other Historic Essays_ (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $1.25), Chapter I. CHAPTER XVIII THE PEOPLE IN COUNTRY AND TOWN [Sidenote: Little known of the life of the people in the Middle Ages.]