erit.[442] This was the height of ascetic absurdity, since poverty is
only want, and the next step would be a cult of suicide. The mendicant
orders fought each other malignantly. Every difference of opinion made a
war of extermination. Civil contests were carried on with extravagant
ferocity as to the means used and as to the exultation of success or the
penalty of failure. What was lacking was discipline. There was no
authority or doctrine which could set limits to private passion. Life
was held cheap. The gallows and the pit were in use all the time. The
most marked product of invention was instruments of torture. Men and
women were burned to death for frivolous reasons. Punishments taught
people to gloat over suffering. Torture was inflicted as idly as we take
testimony. With all this went deep faith in the efficacy of ritual and
great other-worldliness, that is, immediate apprehension of the other
world in this one. All the mores were adjusted to these features of
faith and practice. It all proceeded out of the masses of the people.
The church was borne along like a chip on the tide. The church hung back
from the crusades until the depth of the popular interest had been
tested. Then the crusades were declared to be the "will of God." This
gave their own idea back again to the masses with the approval of the
societal authority. The masses insisted on having acts and apparatus
provided by which to satisfy their application of dogma. The power of
the keys and the treasure of salvation were provided accordingly. The
souls of the people were torn by the antagonism between the wild
passions of the age and the ecclesiastical restraints on conduct. They
feared the wrath of God and hell to come. The ritual and sacramental
system furnished a remedy. The flagellants were a phenomenon of
seething, popular passion, outside of the church and unapproved by its
authority. Antony of Padua ([Symbol: cross] 1231) started the movement
by his sermons on repentance and the wrath of God. Processions of
weeping, praying, self-scourging, and half-naked penitents appeared in
the streets of all the towns of Christendom. "Nearly all enemies made
friends. Usurers and robbers made haste to restore ill-gotten goods, and
other vicious men confessed and renounced vanity. Prisons were opened.
Prisoners were released. Exiles were allowed to return. Men and women
accomplished works of pity and holiness, as if they feared the
all-powerful God would consu