l of piety, which had
amongst its objects the restoration of discipline in the monasteries and
a monastic training for the secular clergy. To this Augustinian thought
led the way. "Christianity was asceticism and the city of God" (Harnack
vi. 6). A new religious feeling took possession of the general mind, a
regard and adoration of the actual, the historic Christ. Of this St
Bernard was the expositor. "Beside the sacramental Christ the image of
the historical took its place,--majesty in humility, innocence in penal
suffering, life in death." The spiritual and the sensuous were
intermingled. Dogmatic formulae fell into the background. The picture of
the historic Christ led to the realization of the Christ according to
the spirit ([Greek: kata pneuma]). Thus St Bernard carried forward
Augustinian thought; and the historic Christ became the "sinless man,
approved by suffering, to whom the divine grace, by which He lives, has
lent such power that His image takes shape in other men and incites them
to corresponding humility and love."

Humility and poverty represented the conditions under which alone this
spirit could be realized; and the poverty must be spiritual, and
therefore self-imposed ("wilful," as it was afterwards called). This led
to practical results. Poverty was not a social state, but a spiritual;
and consequently the poor generally were not the _pauperes Christi_, but
those who, like the monks, had taken vows of poverty. From these
premisses followed later the doctrine that gifts to the church were not
gifts to the poor, as once they had been, but to the religious bodies.
The church was not the church of the poor, but of the poor in spirit.
But the immediate effect was the belief for a time, apparently almost
universal, that the salvation of society would come from the monastic
orders. By their aid, backed by the general opinion, the secular clergy
were brought back to celibacy and the monasteries newly disciplined. But
charity could not thus regain its touch of life and become the means of
raising the standard of social duty.

Next, one amongst many who were stirred by a kindred inspiration, St
Francis turned back to actual life and gave a new reality to religious
idealism. For him the poor were once again the _pauperes Christi_. To
follow Christ was to adopt the life of "evangelical poverty," and this
was to live among the poor the life of a poor man. The follower was to
work with his hands (as the poor cler