From 1248 to 1255 Bonaventure taught publicly at Paris with great distinction. About this time, however, owing to a violent outburst of opposition to the Mendicant Friars on the part of the secular professors of the University, he was compelled to suspend his lectures. This occurrence affords us a valuable insight into the condition of the Friars at that epoch. It shows us how they were regarded by their friends and by their enemies, and it enables us to form a better estimate of their merits. Their lives and actions were openly and unsparingly impeached. They were put on their trial before the entire Church, and their very existence depended on the issue. Every weak spot in their constitution was laid bare--their faults and failings were proclaimed with emphasis: Their adversaries were men of repute and learning--doctors and professors of the most renowned Theological School of Christendom. Thoroughly versed in all the {18} wiles of controversy, and apparently animated by religious zeal, they were unscrupulous in their methods, and frequently had recourse to slander and falsehood. The conflict was thorough and decisive. Issuing triumphant from such an ordeal the Mendicant Orders proved once and for all that their position in the Church of Christ is impregnable. So important an incident ought not to be lightly dismissed. Various causes tended to create a spirit of opposition to the Friars. Jealousy at their success, and a spirit of worldliness to which their lives was a constant reproach, appear to be the chief. The Friars succeeded in attracting universal admiration. Their professors were the most brilliant in the University; their lecture halls the best appointed; their audience the most enthusiastic. They enjoyed the favour of the Pope and of the King, both of whom conferred many privileges on them. They possessed neither money nor lands, yet they stood in need of nothing. They had renounced the pomp and glory of the world, but the world ran eagerly after them. Their preaching attracted immense crowds and their confessionals were thronged. They were the least by profession but the greatest by repute. To some extent they supplanted the secular clergy. The bishops and the Faithful found themselves less dependent upon the latter, for the Friars formed willing and efficient substitutes for them in almost every capacity. The spirit of {19} the secular clergy of Paris at that period was not such as to enable them to view this new development without hostility. An indevout and worldly spirit reigned amongst them, and they were profoundly indifferent to the highest maxims of the Gospel. This we learn from the strain in which Pope Alexander [Footnote 9] writes to the Bishop of Paris in the year 1256: "Concerning certain masters and scholars of Paris it is notorious that they glory not in being considered the children of peace but rather in being the authors of scandal; they glory not in being called the sons of God, but of Satan.