Gibbon has delineated, with his usual accuracy, the origin and progress of monastic life;[28] and to his elegant pages I must refer you for information on the historical part of my subject. But his account does not come down to the establishment of the Mendicant Orders of Friars. The distinction, however, between these and the Monks is not very important. The Monks, as the original name implies, retired from the world to live in perfect solitude. As these fanatics increased, many associations were formed, whose members, professing the same rule of religious life, were distinguished by the appropriate name of _Cœnobites_.[29] When, at length, the frantic spirit which drove thousands to live like wild beasts in the deserts, had relaxed, and the original _Eremites_ were gradually gathered into the more social establishment of convents, the original distinction was forgotten, and the primitive name of Monks became prevalent. Still holding up their claims to be considered _Anachorites_, even when they had become possessed of lands and princely incomes, their monasteries were founded in the neighbourhood, but never within the precincts of towns: and though the service of their churches is splendid, it is not intended for the benefit of the people, and the Monks are seldom seen either in the pulpit or the confessional. [28] Chapter xxxvii. [29] Persons who live in common. The Friars date their origin from the beginning of the thirteenth century, and were instituted for the express purpose of acting as auxiliaries to the clergy. Saint Dominic, the most odious, and Saint Francis, the most frantic of modern saints, enlisted their holy troops without any limitation of number; for, by quartering them on the productive population of Christendom, the founders took no concern for the daily supply of their numerous followers. The Dominicans, however, having succeeded in the utter destruction of the Albigenses, and subsequently monopolized, for more than three centuries, the office of inquisitors, enriched themselves with the spoils of their victims, and are in the enjoyment of considerable wealth. The Franciscans continue to thrive upon alms; and, relying on the promise made to Saint Francis in a vision, that his followers should never feel want, point to the abundant supplies which flow daily into their convents as a permanent miracle which attests the celestial origin of their order. With the historical proofs of St. Francis’s financial vision I confess myself perfectly unacquainted. But when I consider that the general or chief of these holy beggars, derives from the collections daily made by his friars, a personal income of twenty thousand a year, I cannot withhold my assent to its genuineness; for who, except a supernatural being, could possess such a thorough knowledge of the absurdity of mankind?