§ 98.14. =Bridge-Brothers and Mercedarians.=--The name of Bridge Brothers, _Frères Pontifex_, _Fratres Pontifices_, was given to a union founded under Clement III., in Southern France, in A.D. 1189, for the building of hospices and bridges at points where pilgrims crossed the large rivers, or for the ferrying of pilgrims over the streams. As a badge they wore a pick upon their breast. Their constitution was modelled upon that of the Knights of St. John, and upon their gradual dissolution in the 13th century most of their number went over to that order.--Petrus [Peter] Nolescens, born in Languedoc, of noble parents and military tutor of a Spanish prince, moved by what he had seen of the sufferings of Christian slaves at the hand of their Moorish masters, and strengthened in his resolve by an appearance of the Queen of Heaven, founded in A.D. 1228 the knightly order of the =Mercedarians=, _Mariæ Virg. de mercede pro redemptione Captivorum_. They devoted all their property to the purchase of Christian captives, and where such a one was in danger of apostatising to Islam and the money for redemption was not procurable, they would even give themselves into slavery in his place. When in A.D. 1317 the Grand Commandership passed over into the hands of the priests, the order was gradually transformed into a monkish order. After A.D. 1600, in consequence of a reform after the pattern of the rule of the Barefoots, it became a mendicant order, receiving the privileges of other begging fraternities from Benedict XIII. in A.D. 1725. The order proved a useful institution of its time in Spain, France and Italy, and at a later period also in Spanish America. III. Theological Science and its Controversies. § 99. SCHOLASTICISM IN GENERAL.[290]