The poor and docile religious militia organized by St. Francis of Assisi under the name of Minors or Franciscans (1208), at that time set the world an edifying example of Christian humility and self-denial. The chief characteristic of the Franciscans was their complete renunciation of all worldly goods. This mendicant order increased so rapidly that their saintly founder was able to gather round him, in his monastery of Assisi, five thousand delegates from religious houses which had been built in nine years from the founding of the order. There were occasionally some unfortunate quarrels between the secular clergy and the monastic orders. One of the most notorious was that which broke out between the University of Paris and the mendicant orders. The university was in the habit of suspending its lectures when it had any dispute with the government. The Dominicans and the Franciscans having refused to submit to this practice, their priests were deprived of their professorial chairs, and all their monks excluded from the university. A doctor, William of St. Amour, published a violent diatribe against the mendicant orders. The quarrel lasted a long time, and Popes Innocent IV. and Alexander IV. supported the cause of the monks in several bulls issued upon this subject (Fig. 260). The university, in the end, consented to reopen its doors to them, but only on the condition that they should always occupy the lowest rank, and in the public disputations not urge their views until the other doctors had had their say. It may be imagined how this petty restriction was put up with by these humble monks, when we remember that among those whom the doctors treated with so much contumely were such men as Roger Bauer, Duns Scotus, and St. Bonaventura among the Franciscans; and Albert the Great, Vincent of Beauvais, and St. Thomas of Aquinas among the Dominicans. It was the last-mentioned of these who defended the mendicant orders from the attacks of William of St. Amour. Towards the close of the thirteenth century, and during two-thirds of the fourteenth, many reforms took place in the monastic orders, especially in that of the minor brothers (Fig. 261), who changed their name with each change of rules. The new orders, however, obtained but a slight celebrity, and lasted only a short time, with the exception of that of Mercy, for the ransom of the captives--an eminently charitable work, instituted by St. Nolasque, a Languedoc crusader, who died in 1256. We must not, however, forget to mention St. Bridget, the inspired Scandinavian (1302–1372), who, during a journey to Jerusalem, conceived the idea of founding the order of St. Saviour, which she established in Sweden; nor Gerhard Groot, surnamed the Great (1340–1384), founder, in Holland, of the Brethren of the Common Life, who devoted their time to the teaching of the poor, and whose chief occupation was to copy the books of the Fathers and of other ecclesiastical writers.