Though Benedict was a great reformer of the monks by introducing systematic labour into the spiritual life, and though his new order of things began with so fair a promise and had done wonders, yet the monks had by degrees yielded to the treacherous influences of fame, ease, and wealth. The Benedictine monasteries were filled with scholars, whose devotion was directed more to the preservation of classic texts than the performance of the Divine office; with luxurious monks, strangers to fasting and unused to vigils, revelling in the good things of life, and in their rich revenues; then abbots were lords and rulers living in princely state, and riding out on richly caparisoned palfreys. The old humility of the monastic life was lost; they took part in state intrigues, dictated laws to kings, shook the thrones of monarchs who had offended them, and began to aspire after worldly power and dominion. At last St. Francis arose in 1180, the founder of the Friars Minors, who discovered that there was nothing in the world really great and thoroughly satisfactory except poverty and self-humiliation, accompanied with efficient street preaching. St. Dominic also about the same time introduced mendicancy, or the absence of wealth, as part of the system of life. Yet in course of time both these last systems broke down, long before the period of the Reformation. EARLY DIFFICULTIES OF MONASTERIES (A.D. 600). When the Irish abbot Columban (who died 615) left the monastery of Bangor, where he had been reared, he became at the age of thirty consumed with a zeal to found a monastery of his own; and having obtained his abbot's permission, he went off with twelve youths to France, and they betook themselves to an immense wilderness in Vosges, and chose the ruins of an old castle as a settlement. As the monks were obliged to till the adjoining land, they at first suffered greatly from hunger. At one time the monks had nothing to eat but the bark of trees and wild herbs; and what made matters worse, one of their number was sick, and the others could do nothing to relieve him. Three days they spent in prayer, seeking relief for their sick brother, when suddenly they saw a man standing at the door of the convent, whose horses were laden with sacks of provisions. The man told them that he had felt an indescribable impulse to go and assist with his means those who from love to Christ endured such privations in the wilderness. Another time they had for nine days suffered similar want, when the heart of another abbot moved him to send provisions. When a foreign priest once visited them and expressed surprise at their cheerfulness amid such trials, Columban only said, "If people faithfully serve their Creator, they will suffer no want; for in the Psalms it is said, 'I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.' He who could satisfy five thousand men with five loaves can easily fill our barns with meal."