150 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
Iestations. Alciato denies that monasticism was an institution
of the primitive church but even after it was established, it
existed in a purity which has sadly degenerated in recent
times. Although monks in the early days were ready to suffer
martyrdom for the faith, the monks of today shrink from any
sacrifice even when much of Christian Europe is oppressed
by the alien Turk. Monasticism in the time of St. Francis was
devoted to the poor and St. Francis himself lived by this rule.
If he could return to life now what would he think of the Fran-
ciscan order? Turning to a different line of argument and one
which was to find an echo in the eighteenth century in Gib-
bon, Alviato voices the opinion that perhaps the Roman em-
pire fell because there were too many monks and men were
deflected from patriotic and military service. He maintains
that it requires no courage to embrace the monastic life and
concludes that on every ground—historical, moral, or dog-
matic—there is no justification for the step his friend has
taken.
Alciato confided his treatise to a scholarly friend of his
who was a bookseller in Bologna. This friend in turn sent the
manuscript to Erasmus who he rightly thought would be in-
terested in it because of the strictures on monasticism in tire
Praise of Folly which was then circulating in the European
world. After the condemnation of Luther, Alciato began to
fear for his own reputation and he wrote to Erasmus to see
whether he could recover the manuscript of this work on so
dangerous a subject. Erasmus replied saying that Alciato’s
work was in safe hands and that he need fear nothing; but
he did not return the manuscript. Later appeals met with a
similar fate and Erasmus in fact never returned the treatise
nor did he destroy it as Alciato had begged him to do. On
Erasmus’ death it passed with his other manuscripts to his