in southern Europe, where climate favoured begging, and soon the Franciscans and their more intellectual brothers the Dominicans, or friars preacher, were comfortably settled in friaries throughout western Christendom. Here the rule of St Francis could not be properly observed and a destructive internal conflict developed within the Order between the 'conventuals' (who advocated the necessity of property) and the 'spirituals' (who urged the rule of absolute, apostolic poverty upon their fellow mendicants). This split within the Franciscans was symptomatic of a more general crisis.
In a society which was developing a profit economy, where the Church itself was a beneficiary, the carrying out of Christ's injunctions to the disciples concerning poverty was more difficult to implement. It was all the more striking to contemporary minds that Francis of Assisi, a rich merchant's son, should abandon all worldly goods and follow Christ. Among the wealthier and most worldly of the urban laity, the cult and patronage of religious poverty was well advanced. Hence the initial success of the friars--the Franciscans were seen to practise apostolic poverty, while the Dominicans preached, taught, lectured, and fought against heresy. St Dominic failed, however, to eradicate the Cathar faith by preaching in the Languedoc, and the first in a series of persecutions of heretics took place under the guise of a crusade between 1220 and 1240. These laid the foundations for the creation of the Dominican Inquisition, or Holy Office, which was to dominate the Church's attempt to control error and disbelief. Although Catharism had been severely damaged by the Albigensian Crusades, it was still deeply rooted in Languedocian society. The support given to its exponents by the nobility and its concentration in rural areas, such as the dioceses of Pamiers, Narbonne, and Carcassonne, marked it off from most other later medieval heresies which tended to be centred upon towns. By 1300, the last traces of Cathar heresy were revitalized for a time in the activities of the parfait Pierre Authier and his associates, burnt for heresy by the inquisition of Toulouse in 1310. The inquisitor of that province was the Dominican Bernard Gui, whose Inquisitor's Manual (written c. 1320)
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