It was an exceptional thing for the parish
clergymen to do more than discharge perfunctorily the routine duties of
their office, and preaching was almost unknown among them. The friars
threw themselves into pastoral work with such devotion as to compel the
reluctant admiration of their natural rivals, the monks. "At first,"
says Matthew Paris,[1] "the Preachers and the Minorites lived a life of
poverty and extreme sanctity. They busied themselves in preaching,
hearing confessions, the recital of divine service, in teaching and
study. They embraced voluntary poverty for God's sake, abandoning all
their worldly goods and not even reserving for themselves their food for
to-morrow." A special field of labour was in the crowded suburbs of the
larger towns, where so often they chose to erect their first convents.
The care of the sick and of lepers was their peculiar function. Their
sympathy and charity carried everything before them, and they remained
the chief teachers of the poor down to the Reformation. They ingratiated
themselves with the rich as much as with the poor.
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