suspicion. The Franciscans, in theory at least, clung to their vows of poverty. But the laymen in their ranks were soon eliminated. In 1239, the last lay general, Brother Elias, was deposed, accused of promoting laymen to positions of authority; three years later a new consti tution was adopted which made the order a bastion of clericalism. The Dominicans, for their part, took over the routine conduct of the Church's antiheretical machinery, especially the inquisition. They also invad ed the universities, which in the thirteenth century replaced monasteries as the centers of western culture. The Franciscans followed suit. Soon the two were bitter rivals for dominance of the university scene, suppl ying between ten and fifteen per cent of the total university population at Paris and Oxford, for instance. They changed the universities from traininggrounds for lawyers and financial administrators into centers of theol ogy and philosophy. Both the orders were prepared to finance the university careers of clever recruits. Hence many scholars found it convenient to abandon the clerical rat-race for benefices, and join the friars - the scient ist Roger Bacon, and the theologian Alexander of Hales being cases in point. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries most of the great university names were friars ~ Albertus Magnus, Aquinas and Eckhart among the Dominicans, Bonaventura, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham among the Franciscans. None of this was releva nt to the Original purpose of the founders. But it cost a great deal of money. Hence both orders, but especi ally the Franciscans, acquired reputations for sharp-dealing. Friars were supposed to be quite unscrupulo us in matters of wills and legacies and in persuading the gullible sons of the rich to join them. One might say that the late-medieval layman tended to regard monks as idle and friars as conmen. There were exceptions. The Brigittine nuns retained a high reputation. The Carthusians, one of the Strictest enclosed orders, were rarely criticized for laxity. It is significant that such groups were the only ones to resist dissolution during the Protestant Reformation. The rest settled, often gratefully, for liberty and pensions. The truth is, the system of regular clergy had grown almost beyond reform, except of the most drastic nature. Far too many men and women took vows for non-spiritual reasons, or without forethought of the consequences. And vows, once taken, were extraordinarily difficult to get out of, unless one had high contacts or great wealth. Thus a high proportion of the late medieval regulars were reluctant saints whose chief object was to make Their lives as comfortable as possible. One cannot reform men (or women) into piety against their will. Without the voluntary principle, the monastic movement was bound to become an embarrassment to Christianity. And then there were far too many houses, some too poor, others too rich. Rationalizing them would have involved prodigies of litigation; only the papacy could have done it without using force. The popes should have dissolved the main orders in the fourteenth century and reallocated their resources to new purposes. Instead, they milked them financially - always a temptation. They did point the way, however. Early in the fourteenth century the papacy, at the behest of the French crown, dissolved the Knights Templars. The lesson was not forgotten. During the Hundred Years' War the English crown seized the so-called alien priories - offshoots in England of French abbeys - on patriotic grounds. Legal devices were also developed within the Church for winding up groups of ecclesiastical foundations to form new and more promising ones. Cardinal Wolsey, for instance, was an adept at this type of canonical operation; and one of the legal experts he employed on it was Thomas Cromwell, who provided similar services. though on a much more extensive scale, to Henry VIII. Thus monastic dissolutions during the sixteenth-century Reformation evolved from established procedures within the Church, and were later employed by Catholic monarchs (in Austria for instance) in the eighteenth century. The monastic system, and its urban adaptations, had played an enormously important role from the sixth to the twelfth centuries; but it never recovered its pristine spirit until after radical reformation, which in some Catholic countries was delayed until the nineteenth century; and even then it survived only on a much reduced scale, as a small minority movement within the more conservative Christian communities. As a major element in western society and economy it had had its day, like, for instance, domain farming and chain-mail armor. 74