The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Religion
The Church and the Empire: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304
Medley, D. J. (Dudley Julius)
Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
[Sidenote: Need for new kinds of Orders.]
At the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued a decree which
practically forbade the foundation of new monastic Orders. The
increase of such Orders in the name of religious reform had not always
tended to the promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover, the monastic ideal was
the spiritual perfection of the individual, to be gained by separation
from the world; but the growth of large urban populations with the
accompanying disease and misery called for a new kind of dedication to
religion. There was strength in membership of an Order, and during the
twelfth century there were founded alongside of the newer monastic
Orders organisations devoted to social work of various kinds. Such was
the origin of the Hospitallers and perhaps of the Templars also, and
of a number of small Orders, most of them merely local in their work
and following, which were founded all over Western Europe for care of
the sick and pilgrims and for other charitable work.
A point that demanded even more immediate attention was the almost
total neglect of preaching by the parochial clergy and the consequent
success of the Waldensian and other heretical preachers. There were
isolated examples of missionary devotion among the clergy. Fulk of
Neuilly, a priest, obtained a licence from Innocent III to preach, and
met with marvellous success among the Cathari until he was turned
aside by Innocent's exhortation to preach a new crusade. But he died
before it set out (1202). Duran de Huesca, a Catalan, conceived the
idea of fighting the heretics with their own weapons, and founded the
Pauperes Catholici as an Order professing poverty and engaged in
missionary work. But the outbreak of the Albigensian War superseded
the work of the Order by more summary methods of dealing with
heretics.
[Sidenote: Dominicans.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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