ABSTRACT
Rule and our poverty. Everything which displeases God in possessions and deportment I condemn.’5 The Minister General’s sentiments are irreproachable, but reveal how to many, mendicant churches might already appear excessive. By 1243 that inveterate friar-baiter Matthew Paris was inveighing against the friars’ ostentatious buildings, regal in their height.6 By 1300 the Dominicans had quietly excised their earlier prohibitions against height, which had once seen the enforced lowering of important Dominican church choirs such as at Cologne, and in the dormitory at Barcelona.7
