Instead of seeking the seclusion of the convent to save his own soul, the friar displayed remarkable zeal trying to save mankind.  He became the arbiter in the quarrels of princes, the prime mover in treaties between nations, and the indispensable counselor in political complications.  The pope employed him as his authorized agent in the most difficult matters touching the welfare of the church.  His influence upon the common people is thus described by the historian Green:  “The theory of government wrought out in the cell and lecture-room was carried over the length and breadth of the land by the Mendicant brother begging his way from town to town, chatting with the farmer or housewife at the cottage door and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or market-place.  The rudest countryman learned the tale of a king’s oppression or a patriot’s hope as he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous discourse of the beggar friar.”

By these methods the Mendicants were enabled to render most efficient service to their patrons at Rome in their efforts to establish their temporal power.  They were, in fact, before the Reformation, just what the Jesuits afterwards became, “the very soul of the hierarchy.”  Yes, they were immensely, prodigiously successful.  The popes hastened to do them honor.  Because the friars were such enthusiastic supporters of the church, the popes poured gold and privileges into their capacious coffers.  Thankful peasants threw in their mites and the admiring noble bestowed his estates.

The secular clergy, with envy and chagrin, awoke to the alarming fact that the beggars had won the hearts of the people; their hatred was increased by the fact that when the Roman pontiffs enriched these indefatigable toilers and valiant foes of heresy, they did so at the expense of the bishops and clergy, which, perhaps, was robbing Paul to pay Peter.

Baluzii says:  “No religious order had the distribution of so many and such ample indulgences as the Franciscans.  In place of fixed revenues, lucrative indulgences were placed in their hands.”  So ill-judged was the distribution of these favors that discipline was overturned.  Many churchmen, feeling that their rights were being encroached upon, complained bitterly, and resolved on retaliation.  It is just here that a potent cause of the Mendicant’s fall is to be found.  He helped to dig his own grave.

Having elevated monasticism to the zenith of its power, the Mendicant orders, like all the other monastic brotherhoods, entered upon their shameful decline.  The unexampled prosperity, so inconsistent with the original intentions of the founders of the orders, was attended by corruptions and excesses.  The decrees of councils, the denunciations of popes and high ecclesiastical dignitaries, the satires of literature, the testimony of chroniclers and the formation of reformatory orders, constitute a body of irrefragable evidence proving that the lowest level of sensuality, superstition and ignorance had been reached.  The monks and friars lost whatever vigor and piety they ever possessed.