Learned friars as practical workers among the people.--Their sermons.--Educational organization throughout the country.--Relations of the Oxford School to the Franciscan Schools of Europe.--English Franciscans teach at foreign Universities.--Oxford as the head of a _custodia_.--Provincial chapters held at Oxford. If the Franciscans became leaders of scholastic thought, they were first and foremost practical workers. ‘Unfitted as the works of Roger Bacon or of Raymond Lully might seem to the practical divine, it was for him, not for the philosophic disputant, whether as a missionary among the Saracens or a combatant of error and heresy at home, that these works were written[431].’ In the case of Roger Bacon this is abundantly evident. ‘Before all,’ he writes[432], ‘the utility of everything must be considered; for this utility is the end for which the thing exists.... The utility of philosophy is in its bearing on theology and the church and state and the conversion of infidels and the reprobation of those who cannot be converted[433].... The end of all sciences, and their mistress and queen,’ is moral philosophy, ‘for this alone teaches the good of the soul[434].’ It is difficult to resist the temptation of quoting more passages of this kind[435] (illustrating as they do the Franciscan view of life), especially as, in the dearth of records, actual instances are hard to find: one proof however may be brought that it was not all theory. Among the twenty-two Oxford Minorites, for whom in the year 1300 the Provincial, Hugh of Hertepol, claimed the episcopal licence to hear the confessions of the crowds who thronged to the church of St. Francis, eight were then or afterwards doctors of divinity and theological lecturers to the Friars at Oxford, and among the others were two names of yet greater fame, Robert Cowton and John Duns Scotus[436]. It must however be added that, of the eight friars who were actually licensed by the bishop to hear confessions, none appears as having subsequently lectured or taken a degree[437]. Here however we may see how the Franciscans brought their philosophy to the test of experience in the details of everyday life; and they possessed to a remarkable degree, in spite of--perhaps because of--their learning, the power of appealing to the hearts of the people. ‘It is the first step in wisdom,’ said Roger Bacon, ‘to have regard to the persons to whom one speaks[438],’