der
his account. He died A.D. 1216.

[Sidenote: Establishment of mendicant orders.] It was during the
pontificate of this great criminal that the mendicant orders were
established. The course of ages had brought an unintelligibility into
public worship. The old dialects had become obsolete; new languages were
forming. Among those classes, daily increasing in number, whose minds
were awakening, an earnest desire for instruction was arising.
Multitudes were crowding to hear philosophical discourses in the
universities, and heresy was spreading very fast. But it was far from
being confined to the intelligent. The lower orders furnished heretics
and fanatics too. To antagonize the labours of these zealots--who, if
they had been permitted to go on unchecked, would quickly have
disseminated their doctrines through all classes of society--the
Dominican and Franciscan orders were founded. They were well adapted for
their duty. It was their business to move among the people, preaching to
them, in their own tongue, wherever an audience could be collected. The
scandal under which the Church was labouring because of her wealth could
not apply to these persons who lived by begging alms. Their function was
not to secure their own salvation, but that of other men.

[Sidenote: St. Dominic.] St. Dominic was born A.D. 1170. His birth and
life were adorned with the customary prodigies. Miracles and wonders
were necessary for anything to make a sensation in the West. His was an
immaculate conception, he was free from original sin. He was regarded as
the adopted son of the Virgin; some were even disposed to assign him a
higher dignity than that. He began his operations in Languedoc; but, as
the prospect opened out before him, he removed from that unpromising
region to Rome, the necessary centre of all such undertakings as his.
Here he perfected his organization; instituted his friars, nuns, and
tertiaries; and consolidated his pretensions by the working of many
miracles. He exorcised three matrons, from whom Satan issued forth under
the form of a great black cat, which ran up a bell-rope and vanished. A
beautiful nun resolved to leave her convent. Happening to blow her nose,
it dropped off into her handkerchief; but, at the fervent prayer of St.
Dominic, it was replaced, and in gratitude, tempered by fear, she
remained. St. Dominic could also raise the dead. Nevertheless, he died
A.D. 1221, having worthily obtained the title of the burner