Yet with all the lack of the modern necessities of life, human nature was still much the same. The antagonism between rich and poor, which the collapse of feudal relations had strained to breaking-point, was not perhaps normally so intense as it is to-day; yet there was certainly much oppression and unnecessary hardships to be suffered by the weak, even in that age. The Ancren Riwle, that quaint form of life for ankeresses drawn up by a Dominican in the thirteenth century, shows that even then, despite the distance of years and the passing of so many generations, the manners and ways and mental attitudes of people depended very much as to whether they were among those who had, or who had not; the pious author in one passage of homely wit compares certain of the sisters to "those artful children of rich parents who purposely tear their clothes that they may have new ones."
There have always been wanton waste and destitution side by side; and on the prophecy of the One to whom all things were revealed, we know that the poor shall be always with us. Yet we must honour those who, like their Master, strive to smooth away the anxious wrinkles of the world.
There have always been religious teachers for whom all material creation was a thing of evil. Through the whole of the Middle Ages, under the various names of Manicheans, Albigensians, Vaudois, &c., they became exceedingly vigorous, though their importance was only fitful. For them property was essentially unclean, something to be avoided as carrying with it the in-dwelling of the spirit of evil. Etienne de Bourbon, a Dominican preacher of the thirteenth century, who got into communication with one of these strange religionists, has left us a record, exceedingly unprejudiced, of their beliefs. And amongst their other tenets, he mentions this, that they condemned all who held landed property. It will be here noticed that as regards these Vaudois (or Poor Men of Lyons, as he informs us they were called), there could have been no question of communism at all, for a common holding of property would have been as objectionable as private property. To hold material things either in community or severalty was in either case to bind oneself to the evil principle. Yet Etienne tells us that there was a sect among them which did sanction communism; they were called, in fact, the _Communati_ (_Tractatus de Diversis Materiis Predicabilibus_, Paris, 1877, p. 281). How they were able to reconcile this social state with their beliefs it is quite impossible to say; but the presumption is that the example of the early Christians was cited as of sufficient authority by some of these teachers. Certain it is that a sect still lingered on into the thirteenth century, called the _Apostolici_, who clung to the system which had been in vogue among the Apostles. St. Thomas Aquinas (_Summa Theologica_, 2_a_, 2_ae_, 66, 2) mentions them, and quotes St. Augustine as one who had already refuted them. But these were seemingly a Christian body, whereas the Albigensians could hardly make any such claim, since they repudiated any belief in Christ's humanity, for it conflicted with their most central dogma.