My visit to the monastery of Santa Sabina had the effect of making some quit the habit, and others open their eyes to a better mode of life. The General made some changes in the plans, but not such as I pointed out to him. In short, the same system was practised everywhere by monastic bigotry, and what the followers of it desired least of all was to reform themselves. The institution of monastic fraternities was a bad thing from the very commencement: they were devised about the beginning of the thirteenth century, by that knave, Innocent III., who commissioned the wild fanatics, Domenico di Gusman and Francesco di Assisi, to establish, as to them seemed best, a body of idle fellows especially calculated to maintain the cause of popery; principally in Italy, and from thence to propagate their doctrines over all the world. Hence these two orders have ever been rivals. If one had a saint in a particular branch, the other wanted one directly. For example: the Dominicans lauded to the skies the doctrines of their dear Thomas Aquinas, whom they call the angelic doctor; and behold, the Franciscans immediately cry up their Bonaventura da Bagnorea, whom they dub the seraphic: so the Franciscan order chose to have a _thaumaturgus_ (a grand miracle worker), in the friar Antonio da Lisbona, or da Padova; and the Dominicans, not to be behind-hand with their rival brethren, immediately exalted Fra Vincenzo Ferreri to the same dignity. Whoever wants to see how far the art of publishing fables as things divine has gone, let him read the lives of these two, let him compare one with the other, and see which could draw the longest bow.