They were violent against
heretics and enemies of the Church. They answered hate with hate. They
despised the seculars as drones and the monks as lazy and corrupt. The
dissensions between the various orders of friars, and particularly
between the sober and intellectual Dominicans and the radical and
mystic Franciscans, were soon as bitter as those between monks and
friars, or monks and seculars. But when all allowances have been made,
the good that they wrought far outbalanced the evil, and in England at
least, the mendicant orders exhibited a nobler conception of religion,
and of men's duly to their fellowmen than had as yet been set before
the people. If the main result of their influence was to strengthen
that cosmopolitan conception of Christendom of which the papacy was the
head and the friars the agents, their zeal for righteousness often led
them beyond their own rigid platform, and Englishmen honoured the
wandering friar as the champion of the nation's cause.
Like the religious orders, the universities were part of the world
system and only indirectly represented the struggling national life.
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