d to bring over the Albigenses and Waldenses to the Roman Church was
a Spaniard named Dominic, who afterwards became famous as the founder
of an order of mendicant friars (that is to say, _begging brothers_). He
also founded the Inquisition, which was a body intended to search out
and to put down all opinions differing from the doctrines of the Roman
Church. But the cruelty, darkness, and treachery of its proceedings were
so shocking, that, although Dominic was certainly its founder, we need
not suppose that he would have approved of all its doings.

The Waldenses and Albigenses had been used to reproach the clergy of the
Church for their habits of pomp and luxury; and Dominic had done what he
could to meet these charges by the plainness and hardness of the life
which he and his companions led while labouring in the south of France.
And when he resolved to found a new order of monks, he carried the
notion of poverty to an extreme. His followers were to be not only poor,
but beggars. They were to live on alms, and from day to day, refusing
any gifts of money so large as to give the notion of a settled provision
for their needs.

PART IV.

About the same time another great begging order was founded by Francis,
who was born in 1182 at Assisi, a town in the Italian duchy of Spoleto.
The stories as to his early days are very strange; indeed, it would seem
that, when he was struck with a religious idea, he could not carry it
out without such oddities of behaviour as in most people would look like
signs of a mind not altogether right. When Francis heard in church our
Lord's charge to His apostles, that they should go forth without money
in their purses, or a staff, or scrip, or shoes, or changes of raiment
(_St. Matt._ x. 9, 10), he went before the bishop of Assisi, and,
stripping off all his other clothes, he set forth to preach repentance
without having anything on him but a rough gray woollen frock, with a
rope tied round his waist. He fancied that he was called by a vision to
repair a certain church; and he set about gathering the money for this
purpose by singing and begging in the streets. He felt an especial
charity for lepers, who, on account of their loathsome disease, were
shut out from the company of men, and were subject to miseries of many
kinds; and, although many hospitals had already been founded in various
countries for these unfortunate people, the kindness which Francis
showed to them had a great effect