THE COLLEGE ARGUS. 99 time to learn how to write. Pressure of other work has com- as the - company proceed on their way to Canterbury, the lat- pelled them to write their essays. by piecemeal, or by burning ter relates his faults :. midnight oil and thus overtaxing their strength. The latter, " Thus kan I prech agayn that same vice few wish to do ; therefore the former must be resorted to. It .• Which that I use, and that is avarice. is true, however, that- but few writers can produce a good But though myself be guilty in that synne, article at piecemeal. Could the student take his pen to write Yet kan I make oother folk to twynne feeling that he was master of his time, and could finish an entire From avarice and soone to repente ; essay at one sitting, the result would be far different. By ex- But that is not my principal entente. tensive reading, having become. acquainted with the style and I prech no thing but for coveitise." thought of the master minds of the literary world, he takes So much for the degradation of all classes of the clergy, but his pen, is soon " fired up," carries the analysis of his subject if we examine Wichliffe's writings, we shall find that he in- in his mind, writes an article whose chain of reasoning is com- veighs with peculiar bitterness against a portion of the clergy plete from Vegining to end, and rises from his writing feeling whom he calls the mendicant • friars. Now the mendicant a good degree of satisfaction at the result of his labor. How friars, or .friars simply, for none were truly friars who were not. much superior is his .article to the disconnected, detached mendicants, were a distinct class. of the clergy. They were essay written by piecemeal ! By the method of voluntary at not. a cloistered priesthood, but were bound by obligations to tendance upon recitations, sufficient time for essay writing can preach to the people. They embraced four orders, the Fran- be taken whenever it is necessary, and nothing shall prevent ciscans, the Dominicans, the Augustinians, and the Carmelite. the writing of a good article. In the time of Wickliffe. they were addicted to vice of every Such - are some of the benefits to be derived from this sort. -- change ; benefits which no one will deny are greatly desired. Further information on this subject can be found in a curious, While I admit that, should such a change be made, some of but somewhat rare, satirical poem entitled " Piers. the Plow- the students would, as they do now, abuse the privileges man's Creed." The plan of the poem is about this : A poor given them, I am confident that the college as a whole would countryman having learned his Pater noster, and Ave. Maria realize great gain therefrom ; for no good student will waste desires to learn his creed. For this purpose he applies to a his time in idle reverie when supplied with incentives to use- Franciscan friar. The friar tells him nothing about the creed, ful labor. - but inveighs against the Carmelites as jugglers and tricksters. In view, then, of the greater interest which students will Disgusted with him, the countryman goes to a great monastery take in many of their studies, the more elaborate study in belonging to the Dominicans, and applies to a fat friar there. particular departments, the more thorough preparation to be The Dominican tells hifn as little about his creed as the Fran- obtained for their life-work, the increased opportunities offered ciscan, but proceeds to abuse the Augustinians. And, so it is . them for extensive reading, and the finished and ready writers with the others. The Agustinians abuse the Franciscans ; the they may become, I do not hesitate to say that voluntary should Carmelites the Dominicans. Each order promises to save him be substituted for compulsory attendance upon recitations. without his creed. Indignant at the treatment he has re- H. C. ceived, he turns away, and finds in the fields one Piers, a Plowman, who satisfies his desire and explains to him the truths of religion. THE MENDICANT ORDERS. Now the two leading orders of the mendicant friars, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, were not near as old as the mong the many humorous satirical portraits that Chaucer cloistered orders. To give you an account of their origin A has left us, are some that reveal to us as carefully as we care I must take you back nearly two hundred years, from to have them the degeneracy of the clergy. Sometimes it is Chaucer's time at the end of the fourteenth century. to the be- a jolly picture of the hunter monk, whose 'ginning of the thirteenth. "briclel men might heere The state of the clergy was at that time about as bad as it " Gynglin in a whystling wynd as cleere, was in Chaucer's day. But we must note another thing. The And eek as lowde as cloth the chapel bell." people of Europe had grown restless under priestly oppression. A monk he was who thought but little of his " cloyster," The views of the Clergy had set them to thinking. The result and evidently much preferred his " deynti horse" and hound. was that all over Europe heresies were springing up. The Now it is a picture of a wanton, " merye " friar, Albigenses in Southern France were beginning their contest for spiritual freedom. The doctors of Bologna were commenc- a ful solempne man ing anew the study of Roman law. Paris was reviving the " That hadde i-mad ful many a marriage scholastic philosophy. Thousands of scholars were pressing Of yonge wymmen at his own cost ; " their way to Oxford. The learned everywhere showed a man that had full power of absolution without appeal to alarming signs of an heretical disposition. Pope Innocent III bishop or higher officer, a privilege likely to make him prized was in trouble. What was his relief when a cure for the diffi- by many. Furthermore the poet adds : culty presented itself! - "He knew the taverns well in every town." St. Dominic was born in Old Castile in the year 1170. At Then again the poet makes the Pardoner betray himself, for the age of fifteen he entered the University of Palmira. He .