which, according to circumstances, sometimes the secular clergy, and sometimes one or other of the two mendicant orders, but much more frequently the Minorite clergy, exercised visitation rights. The first attempt at effecting a definite separation arose from the Dominicans, whose seventh general, Murione de Zamorra, prescribed a rule to those Penitential brotherhoods which were more closely related to his order. Upon their adopting it they were loosed from the general society as “_Fratres de Pœnitentia_” =S. Dominici=, and described as exclusively attached to the preaching order. In A.D. 1288, however, Jerome of Arcoli, the former general of the Franciscans, ascended the papal throne as Nicholas IV., and now used all means in his power to secure to his own order the supremacy in every department. In the following year, A.D. 1289, he issued the bill _Supra montem_, in which he prescribed (_statuimus_) a rule of his own for all Penitential brotherhoods; and then, since on this point, out of regard for the powerful Dominican order, he did not venture to do more than simply recommend, added the advice (_consulimus_), that the visitation and instruction of these should be assigned to the Minorite superiors, giving as a reason that all these institutions owed their origin to St. Francis. Against both the prescription and the advice, however, the bishops, as well in the interest of their own prerogatives as for the protection of their clergy, threatened in vocation and income, raised a vigorous and persistent protest, which at last, however, succumbed before the supreme power of the pope and the marked preference on the part of the people for the clergy of the orders. Those brotherhoods which adopted the rule thus obtruded on them stood now in the position of rivals, alongside of those of St. Dominic, as “_Fratres de pœnitentia_” =S. Francisci=. The Dominican Penitentials afterwards adopted the name and character of a “_third order of St. Dominic_” or “_Tertiaries_.” In the Franciscan legends, however, the rule drawn up by Nicholas IV. soon came to be represented as the one prescribed to the Penitentials on their first appearance in A.D. 1221 by St. Francis himself, only ratified anew by the pope, and has been generally regarded as such down to our own day.--The rapid growth in power and influence which the two older mendicant orders owe to the Tertiary Societies, induced also the later mendicant orders to produce an imitation of them within the range of their activity. Crossing the Alps the Penitential brotherhoods found among these orders, on this side, an open door,--the Franciscan brothers being especially numerous,--and entered into peculiarly intimate relations with the Beghard societies which had sprung up there, forming, like them, associations of a monastic type.