The story of the Dominican Order in the thirteenth century is one of continual progress. It was devoted to poverty no less than its companion Order. But circumstances soon showed that this was a principle which in its strictness made too great a demand upon human nature. Relaxation of the Rules was obtained from more than one pope; the popularity of the Orders brought them great wealth, and land and other property was held by municipalities and other third parties for the use of the friars. Their houses and their churches became as magnificent as those of the monks. But while this grave departure from the original ideal gave rise to no qualms among the more worldly and accommodating Dominicans, it rent asunder the whole Franciscan Order in a quarrel which forms perhaps the most interesting and important episode in the religious history of the Middle Ages. [Sidenote: Development of extreme views among Franciscans.] The conflict began at once after St. Francis' death. His successor as General of the Order, Elias of Cortona, desired to supersede the democratic constitution of the Order in favour of a despotic rule, and obtained from Gregory IX a relaxation of the strict rule of poverty: while he raised over the remains of the founder at Assisi a magnificent church which the saint would have repudiated. The bitter complaints of the Franciscans who wished to observe the Rule in the spirit of their founder obliged the Pope to depose Elias, who took refuge at the Court of Frederick II. But the tendency towards relaxation continued and was favoured by the Papacy. For the Spirituals--those who clung to the strict Rule and regarded it as a direct revelation to St. Francis--by the severity of their practices tended to isolate themselves from the life around them and so to escape the discipline of the Church. In addition to this they became involved in heresy by identifying themselves with the prophecies attached to the name of Joachim de Flore. He was the Abbot of a Calabrian monastery, who founded an Order at the end of the twelfth century. He depicted the history of mankind as composed of three periods--the first under the dispensation of the Father ending at the birth of Christ; the second under the Son, which by various calculations he determined would end in 1260; and the third ruled by the Holy Ghost, in which the Eucharist, which had itself superseded the paschal lamb, should give way to some new means of grace. Joachim also foretold the rise of a new monastic order which should convert the world, and this the Franciscans concluded to mean themselves. Curiously enough, the Church did not condemn Joachim for his prophecies: popes even encouraged him to write. In 1254 there appeared in Paris a book entitled the _Introduction to the Everlasting Gospel_, a name taken from a passage of the Revelation (xiv. 6). We know it only from the denunciations of its enemies; but it was apparently intended to consist of three undoubted works of Joachim