Kirkpatrick, from whom the above is quoted, says elsewhere, that in 1242, a great controversy arose between the friars minors and preachers, about the greatest worthiness, most decent habit, the strictest, humblest, and holiest life; for the preachers challenged pre-eminence in these—the minors contradicted, and great scandal arose. And because they were learned men, it was the more dangerous to the church. “These are they,” says he, “who in sumptuous edifices, and lofty walls, expose to view inestimable treasures, impudently transgressing the limits of poverty, and the fundamentals of their profession; who diligently apply themselves to lords and rich persons, that they may gape after wealth; extorting confessions and clandestine wills, commending themselves and their order only, and extolling them above all others. So that no Christian now believes he can be saved, unless he be governed by the councils of the preachers and minors. In obtaining privileges, they are solicitors; in the courts of kings and potentates, they are councillors, gentlemen of the chamber, treasurers, match-makers, matrimony-brokers; executioners of papal extortions; in their sermons, either flatterers or stinging backbiters, discoverers of confession, or impudent rebukers.” Making all due allowance for the party feeling of the historian, thus commemorating the factions of the “Mother Church,” enough may be seen of the truth, to form a general idea of the condition of the brotherhoods, one of whose “palaces, supported by high pillars,” is now left us as a subject for our investigation. The order of Black Friars owe their origin to the famous Dominick, notorious for his zeal in the persecution of the Albigenses. He figures also in the “Golden Legend,” as a miraculously endowed infant; his god-mother perceiving on his forehead a star, which made the whole world light. The common seal of the Black Friars, still preserved, commemorates another miracle concerning him: “Being grown to man’s estate, he became a great preacher against heretics; and once upon a time, he put his authorities against them in writing, and gave the schedule into the hands of a heretic, that he might ponder over its contents. The same night, a party being met at a fire, the man produced the schedule, upon which he was persuaded to cast it into the flames, to test its truth; which doing, the schedule sprung back again, after a few minutes, unburnt; the experiment was repeated thrice, with the same results; but the heretics refused to be convinced, and pledged themselves not to reveal the matter;—but one of them, it seems, afterwards did so.”