The Eve of the Reformation
by Francis Aidan Gasquet · English · Gutenberg #50328 · 903,680 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Eve of the Reformation
Author: Francis Aidan Gasquet
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION ***
THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION
FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D., O.S.B.
THE EVE OF THE
REFORMATION
STUDIES IN THE
RELIGIOUS LIFE AND THOUGHT OF THE ENGLISH
PEOPLE IN THE PERIOD PRECEDING THE
REJECTION OF THE ROMAN JURISDICTION
BY HENRY VIII
BY
FRANCIS AIDAN GASQUET, D.D., O.S.B.
AUTHOR OF
“HENRY VIII. AND THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES,” ETC.
LONDON
JOHN C. NIMMO
14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND
MDCCCC
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
At the Ballantyne Press.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION 1
II. THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN ENGLAND 14
III. THE TWO JURISDICTIONS 51
IV. ENGLAND AND THE POPE 78
V. CLERGY AND LAITY 114
VI. ERASMUS 155
VII. THE LUTHERAN INVASION 208
VIII. THE PRINTED ENGLISH BIBLE 236
IX. TEACHING AND PREACHING 278
X. PARISH LIFE IN CATHOLIC ENGLAND 323
XI. PRE-REFORMATION GUILD LIFE 351
XII. MEDIÆVAL WILLS, CHANTRIES, AND OBITS 387
XIII. PILGRIMAGES AND RELICS 415
THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The English Reformation presents a variety of problems to the student
of history. Amongst them not the least difficult or important is the
general question, How are we to account for the sudden beginning and
the ultimate success of a movement which, apparently at least, was
opposed to the religious convictions and feelings of the nation at
large? To explain away the difficulty, we are asked by some writers to
believe that the religious revolution, although perhaps unrecognised
at the moment when the storm first burst, had long been inevitable,
and indeed that its issue had been foreseen by the most learned and
capable men in England. To some, it appears that the Church, on the
eve of the Reformation, had long lost its hold on the intelligence and
affection of the English people. Discontented with the powers claimed
by the ecclesiastical authority, and secretly disaffected to much of
the mediæval teaching of religious truth and to many of the traditional
religious ordinances, the laity were, it is suggested, only too eager
to seize upon the first opportunity of emancipating themselves from
a thraldom which in practice had become intolerable. An increase of
knowledge, too, it is supposed, had inevitably led men to view as false
and superstitious many of the practices of religion which had been
acquiesced in and followed without doubt or question in earlier and
more simple days. Men, with the increasing light, had come to see, in
the support given to these practices by the clergy, a determination to
keep people at large in ignorance, and to make capital out of many of
these objectionable features of mediæval worship.
Moreover, such writers assume that in reality there was little or no
practical religion among the mass of the people for some considerable
time before the outbreak of the religious difficulties in the sixteenth
century. According to their reading of the facts, the nation, as
such, had long lost its interest in the religion of its forefathers.
Receiving no instruction in faith and morals worthy of the name, they
had been allowed by the neglect of the clergy to grow up in ignorance
of the teachings, and in complete neglect of the duties, of their
religion. Ecclesiastics generally, secular as well as religious, had,
it is suggested, forfeited the respect and esteem of the laity by
their evil and mercenary lives; whilst, imagining that the surest way
to preserve the remnants of their former power was to keep the people
ignorant, they had opposed the literary revival of the fifteenth
century by every means at their command. In a word, the picture of
the pre-Reformation Church ordinarily drawn for us is that of a
system honeycombed with disaffection and unbelief, the natural and
necessary outcome of an attempt to maintain at all hazards an effete
ecclesiastical organisation, which clung with the tenacity of despair
to doctrines and observances which the world at large had ceased to
accept as true, or to observe as any part of its reasonable service.
In view of these and similar assertions, it is of interest and
importance to ascertain, if possible, what really was the position
of the Church in the eyes of the nation at large on the eve of the
Reformation, to understand the attitude of men’s minds to the system
as they knew it, and to discover, as far as may be, what in regard
to religion they were doing and saying and thinking about, when the
change came upon them. It is precisely this information which it has
hitherto been difficult to get, and the present work is designed to
supply some evidence on these matters. It does not pretend in any sense
to be a history of the English Reformation, to give any consecutive
narrative of the religious movements in this country during the
sixteenth century, or to furnish an adequate account of the causes
which led up to them. The volume in reality presents to the reader
merely a series of separate studies which, whilst joined together by a
certain connecting thread, must not be taken as claiming to present any
complete picture of the period immediately preceding the Reformation,
still less of that movement itself.
This is intentional. Those who know most about this portion of our
national history will best understand how impossible it is as yet for
any one, however well informed, to write the history of the Reformation
itself or to draw for us any detailed and accurate picture of the age
that went before that great event, and is supposed by some to have
led up to it. The student of this great social and religious movement
must at present be content to address himself to the necessary work of
sifting and examining the many new sources of information which the
researches of late years have opened out to the inquirer. For example,
what a vast field of work is not supplied by the _Calendar of Papers,
Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII._ alone! In many
ways this monumental work may well be considered one of the greatest
literary achievements of the age. It furnishes the student of this
portion of our national history with a vast catalogue of material,
all of which must be examined, weighed, and arranged, before it is
possible to pass a judgment upon the great religious revolution of
the sixteenth century. And, though obviously affording grounds for a
reconsideration of many of the conclusions previously formed in regard
to this perplexing period, it must in no sense be regarded as even an
exhaustive calendar of the available material. Rolls, records, and
documents of all kinds exist in public and private archives, which are
not included in these State Papers, but which are equally necessary
for the formation of a sound and reliable opinion on the whole story.
Besides this vast mass of material, the entire literature of the period
demands careful examination, as it must clearly throw great light on
the tone and temper of men’s minds, and reveal the origin and growth of
popular views and opinions.
Writers, such as Burnet, for example, and others, have indeed presented
their readers with the story of the Reformation as a whole, and have
not hesitated to set out at length, and with assurance, the causes
which led up to that event. Whether true or false, they have made their
synthesis, and taking a comprehensive view of the entire subject,
they have rendered their story more plausible by the unity of idea
it was designed to illustrate and confirm. The real value of such a
synthesis, however, must of course entirely depend on the data upon
which it rests. The opening up of new sources of information and the
examination of old sources in the critical spirit now demanded in all
historical investigations have fully proved, however, not merely this
or that fact to be wrong, but that whole lines of argument are without
justification, and general deductions without reasonable basis. In
other words, the old synthesis has been founded upon false facts and
false inferences.
Whilst, however, seeing that the old story of the Reformation in
England is wrong on some of the main lines upon which it depended,
it is for reasons just stated impossible at present to substitute a
new synthesis for the old. However unsatisfactory it may appear to be
reduced to the analysis of sources and the examination of details,
nothing more can safely be attempted at the present time. A general
view cannot be taken until the items that compose it have been proved
and tested and found correct. Till such time a provisional appreciation
at best of the general subject is alone possible. The present volume
then is occupied solely with some details, and I have endeavoured
mainly by an examination of the literature of the period in question
to gather some evidence of the mental attitude of the English people
towards the religious system which prevailed before the rejection of
the Roman jurisdiction by Henry VIII.
In regard to the general question, one or two observations may be
premised.
At the outset it may be allowed that in many things there was need
of reform in its truest sense. This was recognised by the best and
most staunch sons of Holy Church; and the Council of Trent itself,
when we read its decrees and measure its language, is sufficient
proof that by the highest authorities it was acknowledged that every
effort must be made to purify the Church from abuses, superstitions,
and scandals which, in the course of the long ages of its existence,
had sprung from its contact with the world and through the human
weaknesses of its rulers and ministers. In reality, however, the
movement for reform did not in any way begin with Trent, nor was it
the mere outcome of a terror inspired by the wholesale defection of
nations under the influence of the Lutheran Reformation. The need had
long been acknowledged by the best and most devoted sons of the Church.
There were those, whom M. Eugène Müntz has designated the “morose
cardinals,” who saw whither things were tending, and strove to the
utmost of their power to avert the impending catastrophe. As Janssen
has pointed out, in the middle of the fifteenth century, for instance,
Nicholas of Cusa initiated reforms in Germany, with the approval--if
not by the positive injunctions--of the Pope. It was, however, a true
reform, a reform founded on the principle “not of destruction, but of
purification and renewal.” Holding that “it was not for men to change
what was holy; but for the holy to change man,” he began by reforming
himself and preaching by example. He restored discipline and eagerly
welcomed the revival of learning and the invention of printing as the
most powerful auxiliaries of true religion. His projects of general
ecclesiastical reforms presented to Pius II. are admirable. Without
wishing to touch the organisation of the Church, he desired full and
drastic measures of “reformation in head and members.” But all this was
entirely different from the spirit and aim of those who attacked the
Church under the leadership of Luther and his followers. Their object
was not the reform and purification of abuses, but the destruction and
overthrow of the existing religious system. Before, say, 1517 or even
1521, no one at this period ever dreamt of wishing to change the basis
of the Christian religion, as it was then understood. The most earnest
and zealous sons of the Church never hesitated to attack this or that
abuse, and to point out this or that spot, desiring to make the edifice
of God’s Church, as they understood it, more solid, more useful, and
more like Christ’s ideal. They never dreamt that their work could
undermine the edifice, much less were their aims directed to pulling
down the walls and digging up the foundations; such a possibility was
altogether foreign to their conception of the essential constitution of
Christ’s Church. To suggest that men like Colet, More, and Erasmus had
any leaning to, or sympathy with, “the Reformation” as we know it, is,
in view of what they have written, absolutely false and misleading.
The fact is, that round the true history of the Reformation movement in
England, there has grown up, as Janssen has shown had been the case in
Germany, a mass of legend from which it is often difficult enough to
disentangle the truth. It has been suggested, for instance, that the
period which preceded the advent of the new religious ideas was, to
say the least, a period of stagnation. That, together with the light
of what is called the Gospel, came the era of national prosperity,
and that the golden age of literature and art was the outcome of
that liberty and freedom of spirit which was the distinct product of
the Protestant Reformation. And yet what are the facts? Was the age
immediately before the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century
so very black, and was it the magic genius of Luther who divined how
to call forth the light out of the “void and empty darkness”? Luther,
himself, shall tell us his opinion of the century before the rise of
Protestantism. “Any one reading the chronicles,” he writes, “will find
that since the birth of Christ there is nothing that can compare with
what has happened in our world during the last hundred years. Never
in any country have people seen so much building, so much cultivation
of the soil. Never has such good drink, such abundant and delicate
food, been within the reach of so many. Dress has become so rich that
it cannot in this respect be improved. Who has ever heard of commerce
such as we see it to-day? It circles the globe; it embraces the whole
world! Painting, engraving--all the arts--have progressed and are still
improving. More than all, we have men so capable, and so learned, that
their wit penetrates everything in such a way, that nowadays a youth of
twenty knows more than twenty doctors did in days gone by.”[1]
In this passage we have the testimony of the German reformer
himself that the eve of the Reformation was in no sense a period of
stagnation. The world was fully awake, and the light of learning and
art had already dawned upon the earth. The progress of commerce and
the prosperity of peoples owed nothing to the religious revolt of
the sixteenth century. Nor is this true only for Germany. There is
evidence to prove that Luther’s picture is as correct in that period
for England. Learning, there can be no question, in the fifteenth
century, found a congenial soil in this country. In its origin, as
well as in its progress, the English revival of letters, which may be
accurately gauged by the renewal of Greek studies, found its chief
patrons in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries among the clergy
and the most loyal lay sons of the Church. The fears of Erasmus that
the rise of Lutheranism would prove the death-blow of solid scholarship
were literally fulfilled. In England, no less than in Germany, amid
the religious difficulties and the consequent social disturbances,
learning, except in so far as it served to aid the exigencies of
polemics or meet the controversial needs of the hour, declined for
well-nigh a century; and so far from the Reformation affording the
congenial soil upon which scholarship and letters flourished, it
was in reality--to use Erasmus’s own favourite expression about the
movement--a “catastrophe,” in which was overwhelmed the real progress
of the previous century. The state of the universities of Oxford and
Cambridge, before and after the period of religious change, is an
eloquent testimony as to its effect on learning in general; whilst the
differences of opinion in religious matters to which the Reformation
gave rise, at once put a stop to the international character of the
foreign universities. English names forthwith disappeared from the
students’ lists at the great centres of learning in France and Italy,
an obvious misfortune, which had a disastrous effect on English
scholarship; the opening up of the schools of the reformed churches of
Germany in no wise compensating for the international training hitherto
received by most English scholars of eminence.
In art and architecture, too, in the second half of the fifteenth
century and the beginning of the sixteenth, there was manifested an
activity in England which is without a parallel. There never was a
period in which such life and energy was displayed in the building
and adornment of churches of all kinds as on the very eve of the
Reformation. Not in one part of the country only, nor in regard only
to the greater churches, was this characteristic activity shown, but
throughout the length and breadth of England the walls of our great
cathedrals and minsters, and well-nigh those of every little parish
church in the land, still bear their testimony to what was done out
of love for God’s house during the period in question by the English
people. Moreover, by the aid of the existing accounts and inventories
it can be proved to demonstration that it was a work which then, more
than at any other period of our national existence, appealed to the
people at large and was carried out by them. No longer, as in earlier
times, was the building and beautifying of God’s house left in this
period to some great noble benefactor or rich landowner. During the
fifteenth century the people were themselves concerned with the work,
initiated it, found the means to carry it out, and superintended it in
all its details.
The same may be said of art. The work of adorning the walls of the
churches with paintings and frescoes, the work of filling in the
tracery of the windows with pictured glass, the work of setting up,
and carving, and painting, and decorating; the making of screens,
and stalls, and altars, all during this period, and right up to the
eve of the change, was in every sense popular. It was the people who
carried out these works, and evidently for the sole reason because they
loved to beautify their churches, which were, in a way now somewhat
difficult to realise, the centre no less of their lives than of
their religion. Popular art grows, and only grows luxuriantly, upon a
religious soil; and under the inspiration of a popular enthusiasm the
parish churches of England became, if we may judge from the evidence of
the wills, accounts, and inventories which still survive, not merely
sanctuaries, but veritable picture galleries, teaching the poor and
unlettered the history and doctrine of their religion. Nor were the
pictures themselves the miserable daubs which some have suggested.
The stained-glass windows were not only multiplied in the churches
of England during this period, but by those best able to judge, the
time between 1480 and 1520 has been regarded as the golden age of the
art; and as regards the frescoes and decorations themselves, there is
evidence of the existence in England of a high proficiency, both in
design and execution, before the Reformation. Two examples may be taken
to attest the truth of this: the series of paintings against which the
stalls in Eton College Chapel are now placed, and the pictures on the
walls of the Lady Chapel at Winchester, now unfortunately destroyed
by the whitewash with which they had been covered on the change of
religion. Those who had the opportunity of examining the former series,
when many years ago they were uncovered on the temporary removal of the
stalls, have testified to their intrinsic merit. Indeed, they appeared
to the best judges of the time as being so excellent in drawing and
colour that on their authority they were long supposed to have been
the work of some unknown Italian artist of the school of Giotto. By a
fortunate discovery of Mr. J. Willis Clarke, however, it is now known
that both these and the Winchester series were in reality executed by
an Englishman, named Baker.
The same is true with regard to decoration and carving work. In
screen-work, the Perpendicular period is allowed to have excelled all
others, both in the lavish amount of the ornament as well as in the
style of decoration. One who has paid much attention to this subject
says: “During this period, the screen-work was usually enriched by
gilding and painting, or was ‘depensiled,’ as the phrase runs, and many
curious works of the limner’s art may still be seen in the churches of
Norfolk and Suffolk. In Sussex, the screens of Brighton and Horsham
may be cited as painted screens of beauty and merit, both having
been thus ornamented in a profuse and costly manner, and each bore
figures of saints in their panels.”[2] The churchwardens’ accounts,
too, show that the work of thus decorating the English parish churches
was in full operation up to the very eve of the religious changes.
In these truthful pictures of parochial life, we may see the people
and their representatives busily engaged in collecting the necessary
money, and in superintending the work of setting up altars and statues
and paintings, and in hiring carvers and decorators to enrich what
their ancestors had provided for God’s house. It was the age, too,
of organ-making and bell-founding, and there is hardly a record of
any parish church at this time which does not show considerable sums
of money spent upon these. From the middle of the fifteenth century
to the period described as “the great pillage,” music, too, had made
great progress in England, and the renown of the English school had
spread over Europe. Musical compositions had multiplied in a wonderful
way, and before the close of the fifteenth century “prick song,”
or part music, is very frequently found in the inventories of our
English parish churches. In fact, it has been recently shown that
much of the music of the boasted school of ecclesiastical music to
which the English Reformation had been thought to have given birth,
is, in reality, music adapted to the new English services, from Latin
originals, which had been inspired by the ancient offices of the
Church. Most of the “prick song” masses and other musical compositions
were destroyed in the wholesale destruction which accompanied the
religious changes, but sufficient remains to show that the English
pre-Reformation school of music was second to none in Europe. The
reputation of some of its chief masters, like Dunstable, Tallis, and
Bird, had spread to other countries, and their works had been used and
studied, even in that land of song, Italy.
A dispassionate consideration of the period preceding the great
religious upheaval of the sixteenth century will, it can hardly
be doubted, lead the inquirer to conclude that it was not in any
sense an age of stagnation, discontent, and darkness. Letters, art,
architecture, painting, and music, under the distinct patronage of the
Church, had made great and steady progress before the advent of the
new ideas. Moreover, those who will examine the old parish records
cannot fail to see that up to the very eve of the changes, the old
religion had not lost its hold upon the minds and affections of the
people at large. And one thing is absolutely clear, that it was not
the Reformation movement which brought to the world in its train the
blessings of education, and the arts of civilisation. What it did for
all these is written plainly enough in the history of that period of
change and destruction.
CHAPTER II
THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN ENGLAND
The story of the English literary revival in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries is of no little interest and importance. The full
history of the movement would form the fitting theme of an entire
volume; but the real facts are so contrary to much that is commonly
believed about our English renaissance of letters, that some brief
account is necessary, if we would rightly understand the attitude of
men’s minds on the eve of the Reformation. At the outset, it is useful
to recall the limits of this English renaissance. Judged by what is
known of the movement in Italy, the land of its origin, the word
“renaissance” is usually understood to denote not only the adoption of
the learning and intellectual culture of ancient Greece and Rome by the
leaders of thought in the Western World during the period in question,
but an almost servile following of classical models, the absorption
of the pagan spirit and the adoption of pagan modes of expression so
fully, as certainly to obscure, if it did not frequently positively
obliterate, Christian sentiment and Christian ideals. In this sense, it
is pleasing to think, the renaissance was unknown in England. So far,
however, as the revival of learning is concerned, England bore its part
in, if indeed it may not be said to have been in the forefront of, the
movement.
This has, perhaps, hardly been realised as it should be. That the
sixteenth century witnessed a remarkable awakening of minds, a
broadening of intellectual interests, and a considerable advance in
general culture, has long been known and acknowledged. There is little
doubt, however, that the date usually assigned both for the dawning
of the light and for the time of its full development is altogether
too late; whilst the circumstances which fostered the growth of
the movement have apparently been commonly misunderstood, and the
chief agents in initiating it altogether ignored. The great period
of the reawakening would ordinarily be placed without hesitation in
post-Reformation times, and writers of all shades of opinion have
joined in attributing the revival of English letters to the freedom of
minds and hearts purchased by the overthrow of the old ecclesiastical
system, and their emancipation from the narrowing and withering effects
of mediævalism.
On the assumption that the only possible attitude of English
churchmen on the eve of the great religious changes would be one of
uncompromising hostility to learning and letters, many have come to
regard the one, not as inseparably connected with the other, but the
secular as the outcome of the religious movement. The undisguised
opposition of the clergy to the “New Learning” is spoken of as
sufficient proof of the Church’s dislike of learning in general, and
its determination to check the nation’s aspirations to profit by the
general classical revival. This assumption is based upon a complete
misapprehension as to what was then the meaning of the term “New
Learning.” It was in no sense connected with the revival of letters, or
with what is now understood by learning and culture; but it was in the
Reformation days a well-recognised expression used to denote the novel
religious teachings of Luther and his followers.[3] Uncompromising
hostility to such novelties, no doubt, marked the religious attitude
of many, who were at the same time the most strenuous advocates of the
renaissance of letters. This is so obvious in the works of the period,
that were it not for the common misuse of the expression at the present
day, and for the fact that opposition to the “New Learning” is assumed
on all hands to represent hostility to letters, rather than to novel
teachings in religious matters, there would be no need to furnish
examples of its real use in the period in question. As it is, some
instances taken from the works of that time become almost a necessity,
if we would understand the true position of many of the chief actors at
this period of our history.
Roger Edgworth, a preacher, for instance, after speaking of those who
“so arrogantly glory in their learning, had by study in the English
Bible, and in these seditious English books that have been sent over
from our English runagates now abiding with Luther in Saxony,” praises
the simple-hearted faith that was accepted unquestioned by all “before
this wicked ‘New Learning’ arose in Saxony and came over into England
amongst us.”[4]
From the preface of _The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman_, dated
February 1531, it is equally clear that the expression “New Learning”
was then understood only of religious teaching. Like the Scribes and
Pharisees in the time of Our Lord, the author says, the bishops and
priests are calling out: “What ‘New Learning’ is it? These fellows
teach new learning: these are they that trouble all the world with
their new learning?… Even now after the same manner, our holy bishops
with all their ragman’s roll are of the same sort.… They defame,
slander, and persecute the word and the preachers and followers of
it, with the selfsame names, calling it ‘New Learning’ and them ‘new
masters.’”[5]
The same meaning was popularly attached to the words even after the
close of the reign of Henry VIII. A book published in King Edward’s
reign, to instruct the people “concerning the king’s majesty’s
proceedings in the communion,” bears the title, _The olde Faith of
Great Brittayne and the new learning of England_. It is, of course,
true, that the author sets himself to show that the reformed doctrines
were the old teachings of the Christian Church, and that, when St.
Gregory sent St. Augustine over into England, “the new learning was
brought into this realm, of which we see much yet remaining in the
Church at the present day.”[6] But this fact rather emphasises than
in any way obscures the common understanding of the expression “New
Learning,” since the whole intent of the author is to show that the
upholders of the old ecclesiastical system were the real maintainers
of a “New Learning” brought from Rome by St. Augustine, and not the
Lutherans. The same appears equally clearly in a work by Urbanus
Regius, which was translated and published by William Turner in 1537,
and called _A comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe_. As
the translator says at the beginning--
“Some ther be that do defye
All that is newe and ever do crye
The olde is better, away with the new
Because it is false, and the olde is true.
Let them this booke reade and beholde,
For it preferreth the learning most olde.”
As the author of the previous volume quoted, so Urbanus Regius compares
the exclamation of the Jews against our Lord: “What new learning is
this?” with the objection, “What is this new doctrine?” made by the
Catholics against the novel religious teaching of Luther and his
followers. “This,” they say, “is the new doctrine lately devised and
furnished in the shops and workhouses of heretics. Let us abide still
in our old faith.… Wherefore,” continues the author, “I, doing the
office of Christian brother, have made a comparison between the ‘New
Learning’ and the olden, whereby, dear brother, you may easily know
whether we are called worthily or unworthily the preachers of the
‘New Learning.’ For so did they call us of late.” He then proceeds
to compare under various headings what he again and again calls “the
New Learning” and “the Old Learning.” For example, according to the
former, people are taught that the Sacraments bring grace to the soul;
according to the latter, faith alone is needful. According to the
former, Christ is present wholly under each kind of bread and wine,
the mass is a sacrifice for the living and the dead, and “oblation is
made in the person of the whole church”; according to the latter, the
Supper is a memorial only of Christ’s death, “and not a sacrifice, but
a remembrance of the sacrifice that was once offered up on the cross,”
and that “all oblations except that of our Lord are vain and void.”[7]
In view of passages such as the above, and in the absence of any
contemporary evidence of the use of the expression to denote the
revival of letters, it is obvious that any judgment as to a general
hostility of the clergy to learning based upon their admitted
opposition to what was then called the “New Learning” cannot seriously
be maintained. It would seem, moreover, that the religious position of
many ecclesiastics and laymen has been completely misunderstood by the
meaning now so commonly assigned to the expression. Men like Erasmus,
Colet, and to a great extent, More himself, have been regarded, to
say the least, as at heart very lukewarm adherents of the Church,
precisely because of their strong advocacy of the movement known as the
literary revival, which, identified by modern writers with the “New
Learning,” was, it is wrongly assumed, condemned by orthodox churchmen.
The Reformers are thus made the champions of learning; Catholics, the
upholders of ignorance, and the hereditary and bitter foes of all
intellectual improvement. No one, however, saw more clearly than did
Erasmus that the rise of Lutheran opinions was destined to be the
destruction of true learning, and that the atmosphere of controversy
was not the most fitting to assure its growth. To Richard Pace he
expressed his ardent wish that some kindly _Deus ex machinâ_ would
put an end to the whole Lutheran agitation, for it had most certainly
brought upon the humanist movement unmerited hatred.[8] In subsequent
letters he rejects the idea that the two, the Lutheran and the humanist
movements, had anything whatever in common; asserting that even Luther
himself had never claimed to found his revolt against the Church on
the principles of scholarship and learning. To him, the storm of the
Reformation appeared--so far as concerned the revival of learning--as a
catastrophe. Had the tempest not risen, he had the best expectations of
a general literary renaissance and of witnessing a revival of interest
in Biblical and patristic studies among churchmen. It was the breath of
bitter and endless controversy initiated in the Lutheran revolt and the
consequent misunderstandings and enmities which withered his hopes.[9]
There remains, however, the broader question as to the real position
of the ecclesiastical authorities generally, in regard to the revival
of learning. So far as England is concerned, their attitude is hardly
open to doubt in view of the positive testimony of Erasmus, which is
further borne out by an examination of the material available for
forming a judgment. This proves beyond all question, not only that the
Church in England on the eve of the change did not refuse the light,
but that, both in its origin and later development, the movement owed
much to the initiative and encouragement of English churchmen.
It is not necessary here to enter very fully into the subject of
the general revival of learning in Europe during the course of the
fifteenth century. At the very beginning of that period what Gibbon
calls “a new and perpetual flame” was enkindled in Italy. As in the
thirteenth century, so then it was the study of the literature and
culture of ancient Greece that re-enkindled the lamp of learning in
the Western World. Few things, indeed, are more remarkable than the
influence of Greek forms and models on the Western World. The very
language seems as if destined by Providence to do for the Christian
nations of Europe what in earlier ages it had done for pagan Rome. As
Dr. Döllinger has pointed out, this is “a fact of immense importance,
which even in these days it is worth while to weigh and place in its
proper light,” since “the whole of modern civilisation and culture is
derived from Greek sources. Intellectually we are the offspring of the
union of the ancient Greek classics with Hellenised Judaism.” One thing
is clear on the page of history: that the era of great intellectual
activity synchronised with re-awakened interests in the Greek
classics and Greek language in such a way that the study of Greek may
conveniently be taken as representing a general revival of letters.
By the close of the fourteenth century, the ever-increasing impotence
of the Imperial sway on the Bosphorus, and the ever-growing influence
of the Turk, compelled the Greek emperors to look to Western
Christians for help to arrest the power of the infidels, which, like
a flood, threatened to overwhelm the Eastern empire. Three emperors
in succession journeyed into the Western world to implore assistance
in their dire necessity, and though their efforts failed to save
Constantinople, the historian detects in these pilgrimages of Greeks
to the Courts of Europe the providential influence which brought about
the renaissance of letters. “The travels of the three emperors,” writes
Gibbon, “were unavailing for their temporal, or perhaps their spiritual
salvation, but they were productive of a beneficial consequence, the
revival of the Greek learning in Italy, from whence it was propagated
to the last nations of the West and North.”
What is true of Italy may well be true of other countries and places.
The second of these pilgrim emperors, Manuel, the son and successor of
Palæologus, crossed the Alps, and after a stay in Paris, came over the
sea into England. In December 1400 he landed at Dover, and was, with a
large retinue of Greeks, entertained at the monastery of Christchurch,
Canterbury. It requires little stretch of imagination to suppose that
the memory of such a visit would have lingered long in the cloister of
Canterbury, and it is hardly perhaps by chance that it is here that
half a century later are to be found the first serious indications
of a revival of Greek studies. Moreover, it is evident that other
Greek envoys followed in subsequent times, and even the great master
and prodigy of learning, Manuel Chrysoloras himself, found his way to
our shores, and it is hardly an assumption, in view of the position
of Canterbury--on the high-road from Dover to London--to suppose to
Christchurch also.[10] It was from his arrival in Italy, in 1396,
that may be dated the first commencement of systematic study of the
Greek classics in the West. The year 1408 is given for his visit to
England.[11]
There are indications early in the fifteenth century of a stirring of
the waters in this country. Guarini, a pupil of Chrysoloras, became
a teacher of fame at Ferrara, where he gathered round him a school
of disciples which included several Englishmen. Such were Tiptoft,
Earl of Worcester;[12] Robert Fleming, a learned ecclesiastic; John
Free, John Gundthorpe, and William Gray, Bishop of Ely; whilst another
Italian, Aretino, attracted by his fame another celebrated Englishman,
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to his classes. These, however, were
individual cases, and their studies, and even the books they brought
back, led to little in the way of systematic work in England at the old
classical models. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 gave the required
stimulus here, as in Italy. Among the fugitives were many Greek
scholars of eminence, such as Chalcocondylas, Andronicus, Constantine
and John Lascaris, who quickly made the schools of Italy famous by
their teaching. Very soon the fame of the new masters spread to other
countries, and students from all parts of the Western World found their
way to their lecture-halls in Rome and the other teaching centres
established in the chief cities of Northern Italy.
First among the scholars who repaired thither from England to drink
in the learning of ancient Greece and bring back to their country
the new spirit, we must place two Canterbury monks named Selling and
Hadley. Born somewhere about 1430, William Selling became a monk at
Christchurch, Canterbury, somewhere about 1448. There seems some
evidence to show that his family name was Tyll, and that, as was
frequently, if not generally, the case, on his entering into religion,
he adopted the name of Selling from his birthplace, some five miles
from Faversham in Kent.[13] It is probable that Selling, after having
passed through the claustral school at Canterbury, on entering the
Benedictine Order was sent to finish his studies at Canterbury College,
Oxford. Here he certainly was in 1450, for in that year he writes
a long and what is described as an elegant letter as a student at
Canterbury College to his Prior, Thomas Goldstone, at Christchurch
Canterbury.[14] He was ordained priest, and celebrated his first mass
at Canterbury in September 1456.[15]
In 1464 William Selling obtained leave of his Prior and convent to go
with a companion, William Hadley, to study in the foreign universities
for three years,[16] during which time they visited and sat under
the most celebrated teachers at Padua, Bologna, and Rome.[17] At
Bologna, according to Leland, Selling was the pupil of the celebrated
Politian, “with whom, on account of his aptitude in acquiring the
classical elegance of ancient tongues, he formed a familiar and lasting
friendship.”[18] In 1466 and 1467 we find the monks, Selling and his
companion Hadley, at Bologna, where apparently the readers in Greek
then were Lionorus and Andronicus,[19] and where, on the 22nd March
1466, Selling took his degree in theology, his companion taking his in
the March of the following year.[20]
Of this period of work, Leland says:--“His studies progressed. He
indeed imbued himself with Greek; everywhere he industriously and at
great expense collected many Greek books. Nor was his care less in
procuring old Latin MSS., which shortly after he took with him, as the
most estimable treasures, on his return to Canterbury.”[21]
His obituary notice in the Christchurch Necrology recites not only his
excellence in learning, classical and theological, but what he had
done to make his monastery at Canterbury a real house of studies. He
decorated the library over the Priests’ Chapel, adding to the books,
and assigned it “for the use of those specially given to study, which
he encouraged and cherished with wonderful watchfulness and affection.”
The eastern cloister also he fitted with glass and new desks, “called
carrels,” for the use of the studious brethren.[22]
After the sojourn of the two Canterbury monks in Italy, they returned
to their home at Christchurch. Selling, however, did not remain
there long, for on October 3, 1469, we find him setting out again
for Rome[23] in company with another monk, Reginald Goldstone, also
an Oxford student. This visit was on business connected with his
monastery, and did not apparently keep him long away from England,
for there is evidence that sometime before the election of Selling
to the Priorship at Canterbury, which was in 1472, he was again at
his monastery. Characteristically, his letter introducing William
Worcester, the antiquary, to a merchant of Lucca who had a copy of
Livy’s _Decades_ for sale, manifests his great and continued interest
in classical literature.[24]
At Canterbury, Selling must have established the teaching of Greek on
systematic lines, and it is certainly from this monastic school as
a centre, that the study spread to other parts of England. William
Worcester, keenly alive to the classical revival, as his note-books
show, tells us of “certain Greek terminations as taught by Doctor
Selling of Christchurch, Canterbury,” and likewise sets down the
pronunciation of the Greek vowels with examples evidently on the same
authority.[25]
Selling’s long priorship, extending from 1472 to 1495, would have
enabled him to consolidate the work of this literary renaissance which
he had so much at heart.[26] The most celebrated of all his pupils
was, of course, Linacre. Born, according to Caius, at Canterbury, he
received his first instruction in the monastic school there, and his
first lessons in the classics and Greek from Selling himself. Probably
through the personal interest taken in this youth of great promise
by Prior Selling, he was sent to Oxford about 1480. Those who have
seriously examined the matter believe that the first years of his
Oxford life were spent by Linacre at the Canterbury College, which was
connected with Christchurch monastery, and which, though primarily
intended for monks, also afforded a place of quiet study to others who
were able to obtain admission.[27] Thus, in later years, Sir Thomas
More, no doubt through his father’s connection with the monastery of
Christchurch, Canterbury, of which house he was a “confrater,” became
a student at the monks’ college at Oxford. In later years Sir Thomas
himself, when Chancellor of England, perpetuated the memory of his
life-long connection with the monks of Canterbury by enrolling his name
also on the fraternity lists of that house.
Linacre, in 1484, became a Fellow of All Souls’ College, but evidently
he did not lose touch with his old friends at Canterbury, for, in 1486,
Prior Selling being appointed one of the ambassadors of Henry VII. to
the Pope, he invited his former pupil to accompany him to Italy, in
order to profit by the teaching of the great humanist masters at the
universities there. Prior Selling took him probably as far as Florence,
and introduced him to his own old master and friend, Angelo Politian,
who was then engaged in instructing the children of Lorenzo de Medici.
Through Selling’s interest, Linacre was permitted to share in their
lessons, and there are letters showing that the younger son, when in
after years he became Pope, as Leo X., was not unmindful of his early
companionship with the English scholar.[28] From Politian, Linacre
acquired a purity of style in Latin which makes him celebrated even
among the celebrated men of his time. Greek he learnt from Demetrius
Chalcocondylas, who was then, like Politian, engaged in teaching the
children of Lorenzo de Medici.[29]
From Florence, Linacre passed on to Rome, where he gained many friends
among the great humanists of the day. One day, when examining the
manuscripts of the Vatican Library for classics, and engaged in reading
the _Phædo_ of Plato, Hermolaus Barbarus came up and politely expressed
his belief that the youth had no claim, as he had himself, to the title
Barbarus, if it were lawful to judge from his choice of a book. Linacre
at once, from the happy compliment, recognised the speaker, and this
chance interview led to a life-long friendship between the Englishman
and one of the great masters of classical literature.[30]
After Linacre had been in Italy for a year or more, a youth whom he had
known at Oxford, William Grocyn, was induced to come and share with him
the benefit of the training in literature then to be obtained only in
Italy. On his return in 1492, Grocyn became lecturer at Exeter College,
Oxford, and among his pupils in Greek were Sir Thomas More[31] and
Erasmus. He was a graduate in theology, and was chosen by Dean Colet to
give lectures at St. Paul’s and subsequently appointed by Archbishop
Warham, Master or Guardian of the collegiate church of Maidstone.[32]
Erasmus describes him as “a man of most rigidly upright life, almost
superstitiously observant of ecclesiastical custom, versed in every
nicety of scholastic theology, by nature of the most acute judgment,
and, in a word, fully instructed in every kind of learning.”[33]
Linacre, after a distinguished course in the medical schools of Padua,
returned to Oxford, and in 1501 became tutor to Prince Arthur. On the
accession of Henry VIII. he was appointed physician to the court, and
could count all the distinguished men of the day, Wolsey, Warham, Fox,
and the rest, among his patients; and Erasmus, Sir Thomas More, and
Queen Mary among his pupils in letters. In his early life, entering
the clerical state, he had held ecclesiastical preferment; in advanced
years he received priest’s orders, and devoted the evening of his life
to a pious preparation for his end.[34]
Grocyn and Linacre are usually regarded as the pioneers of the revival
of letters. But, as already pointed out, the first to cross the Alps
from England in search for the new light, to convey it back to England,
and to hand it on to Grocyn and Linacre, were William Selling, and
his companion, William Hadley. Thus, the real pioneers in the English
renaissance were the two monks of Christchurch, and, some years after,
the two ecclesiastics, Grocyn and Linacre.
Selling, even after his election to the priorship of Canterbury,
continued to occupy a distinguished place both in the political world
and in the world of letters. He was chosen, though only the fifth
member of the embassy sent by Henry VII. on his accession to the Pope,
to act as orator, and in that capacity delivered a Latin oration before
the Pope and Cardinals.[35]
He was also and subsequently sent with others by Henry on an embassy to
the French king, in which he also fulfilled the function of spokesman,
making what is described as “a most elegant oration.”
That as Prior, Selling kept up his interest in the literary revival is
clear from the terms of his obituary notice. There exists, moreover,
a translation made by him after his return from his embassy to Rome,
when he took his youthful protégé, Linacre, and placed him under
Chalcocondylas and Politian in Florence, which seems to prove that
the renewal of his intimacy with the great humanist masters of Italy
had inspired him with a desire to continue his literary work. Even in
the midst of constant calls upon him, which the high office of Prior
of Canterbury necessitated, he found time to translate a sermon of
St. John Chrysostom from the Greek, two copies of which still remain
in the British Museum.[36] This is dated 1488; and it is probably the
first example of any Greek work put into Latin in England in the early
days of the English renaissance of letters. The very volume (Add. MS.
15,673) in which one copy of this translation is found shows by the
style of the writing, and other indications, the Italian influences at
work in Canterbury in the time of Selling’s succession at the close
of the fifteenth century; and also the intercourse which the monastery
there kept up with the foreign humanists.[37]
It is hardly necessary to say more about the precious volumes of the
classics and the other manuscripts which Selling collected on his
travels. Many of them perished, with that most rare work, Cicero’s
_De Republica_, in the fire caused by the carelessness of some of
Henry VIII.’s visitors on the eve of the dissolution of Selling’s old
monastery at Canterbury. Some, like the great Greek commentaries of
St. Cyril on the Prophets, were rescued half burnt from the flames;
“others, by some good chance,” says Leland, “had been removed; amongst
these were the commentaries of St. Basil the Great on Isaias, the
works of Synesius and other Greek codices.”[38] Quite recently it has
been recognised that the complete Homer and the plays of Euripides
in Corpus Christi College library at Cambridge, which tradition had
associated with the name of Archbishop Theodore in the seventh century,
are in reality both fifteenth-century manuscripts; and as they formed,
undoubtedly, part of the library at Christchurch, Canterbury, it is
hardly too much to suppose that they were some of the treasures brought
back by Prior Selling from Italy. The same may probably be said of a
Livy, a fifteenth-century Greek Psalter, and a copy of the Psalms in
Hebrew and Latin, in Trinity College Library.[39]
Prior Selling’s influence, moreover, extended beyond the walls of his
own house, and can be traced to others besides his old pupil, and, as
some think, relative, Linacre. Among the friendships he had formed
whilst at Padua was that of a young ecclesiastical student, Thomas
Langton, with whom he was subsequently at Rome. Langton was employed
in diplomatic business by King Edward IV., and whilst in France,
through his friendship for Prior Selling, obtained some favour from
the French king for the monastery of Canterbury. In return for this
the monks offered him a living in London.[40] Prior Selling, on one
occasion at least, drafted the sermon which Dr. Langton was to deliver
as prolocutor in the Convocation of the Canterbury Province.[41] In
1483 Langton became Bishop of Winchester, and “such was his love of
letters” that he established in his own house a _schola domestica_ for
boys, and himself used to preside in the evening at the lessons. One
youth especially attracted his attention by his music. This was Richard
Pace, afterwards renowned as a classical scholar and diplomatist.
Bishop Langton recognised his abilities, and forthwith despatched him
to Italy, paying all his expenses at the universities of Padua and
Rome.[42] At the former place, he says: “When as a youth I began
to work at my humanities, I was assisted by Cuthbert Tunstall and
William Latimer, men most illustrious and excelling in every branch of
learning, whose prudence, probity, and integrity were such that it were
hard to say whether their learning excelled their high moral character,
or their uprightness their learning.”[43]
At this university he was taught by Leonicus and by Leonicenus, the
friend and correspondent of Politian: “Men,” he says, as being unable
to give higher praise, “like Tunstall and Latimer.”[44] Passing on to
Bologna he sat at the feet of Paul Bombasius, “who was then explaining
every best author to large audiences.” Subsequently, at Rome, he formed
a lasting friendship with William Stokesley, whom he describes as “his
best friend on earth; a man of the keenest judgment, excellent, and
indeed marvellous, in theology and philosophy, and not only skilled
in Greek and Latin, but possessed of some knowledge of Hebrew,” whose
great regret was that he had not earlier in life realised the power of
the Greek language.[45] At Ferrara, too, Pace first met Erasmus, and
he warmly acknowledges his indebtedness to the influence of this great
humanist.
In 1509, Richard Pace accompanied Cardinal Bainbridge to Rome, and
was with him when the cardinal died, or was murdered, there in 1514.
Whilst in the Eternal City, “urged to the study by that most upright
and learned man, William Latimer,” he searched the Pope’s library for
books of music, and found a great number of works on the subject.
The cardinal’s death put a stop to his investigations; but he had
seen sufficient to be able to say that to study the matter properly a
man must know Greek and get to the library of the Pope, where there
were many and the best books on music. “But,” he adds, “I venture to
say this, our English music, if any one will critically examine into
the matter, will be found to display the greatest subtlety of mind,
especially in what is called the introduction of harmonies, and in this
matter to excel ancient music.”[46]
It is unnecessary to follow in any detail the story of the general
literary revival in England. Beginning with Selling, the movement
continued to progress down to the very eve of the religious disputes.
That there was opposition on the part of some who regarded the
stirring of the waters with suspicion was inevitable. More especially
was this the case because during the course of the literary revival
there rose the storm of the great religious revolt of the sixteenth
century, and because the practical paganism which had resulted from
the movement in Italy was perhaps not unnaturally supposed by the
timorous to be a necessary consequence of a return to the study of
the classics of Greece and Rome. The opposition sprung generally from
a misunderstanding, and “not so much from any hostility to Greek
itself as from an indifference to any learning.” This Sir Thomas More
expressly declares when writing to urge the Oxford authorities to
repress a band of giddy people who, calling themselves Trojans, made
it their duty to fight against the _Grecians_. It is true also that
the pulpit was at times brought into requisition to decry “not only
Greek and Latin studies,” but liberal education of any kind.[47] But,
so far as England is concerned, this opposition to the revival of
letters, even on the score of the danger likely to come either to faith
or morals, was, when all is said, slight, and through the influence of
More, Fisher, and the king himself, easily subdued.[48] The main fact,
moreover, cannot be gainsaid, namely, that the chief ecclesiastics of
the day, Wolsey, Warham, Fisher, Tunstall, Langton, Stokesley, Fox,
Selling, Grocyn, Whitford, Linacre, Colet, Pace, William Latimer, and
Thomas Lupset,[49] to name only the most distinguished, were not
only ardent humanists, but thorough and practical churchmen. Of the
laymen, whether foreigners or Englishmen, whose names are associated
with the renaissance of letters in this country, such as, for example,
the distinguished scholar Ludovico Vives, the two Lillys, Sir Thomas
More, John Clement,[50] and other members of More’s family, there can
be no shadow of doubt about their dispositions towards the ancient
ecclesiastical régime. A Venetian traveller, in 1500, thus records what
he had noticed as to the attitude of ecclesiastics generally towards
learning:--“Few, excepting the clergy, are addicted to the study of
letters, and this is the reason why any one who has any learning,
though he may be a layman, is called a _clerk_. And yet they have great
advantages for study, there being two general universities in the
kingdom, Oxford and Cambridge, in which there are many colleges founded
for the maintenance of poor scholars. And your magnificence (the Doge
of Venice) lodged at one named Magdalen, in the University of Oxford,
of which, as the founders having been prelates, so the scholars also
are ecclesiastics.”
It was in England, and almost entirely among the ecclesiastics of
England, that Erasmus found his chief support. “This England of yours,”
he writes to Colet in 1498, “this England, dear to me on many accounts,
is above all most beloved because it abounds in what to me is the best
of all, men deeply learned in letters.”[51] Nor did he change his
opinion on a closer acquaintance. In 1517, to Richard Pace he wrote
from Louvain in regret at leaving a country which he had come to regard
as the best hope of the literary revival:--“Oh, how truly happy is your
land of England, the seat and stronghold of the best studies and the
highest virtue! I congratulate you, my friend Pace, on having such a
king, and I congratulate the king whose country is rendered illustrious
by so many brilliant men of ability. On both scores I congratulate this
England of yours, for though fortunate for many other reasons, on this
score no other land can compete with it.”[52]
When William Latimer said in 1518 that Bishop Fisher wished to study
Greek for Biblical purposes, and that he thought of trying to get a
master from Italy, Erasmus, whilst applauding the bishop’s intention
as likely to encourage younger men to take up the study, told Latimer
that such men were not easy to find in Italy. “If I may openly say my
mind,” he adds, “if I had Linacre, or Tunstall, for a master (for of
yourself I say nothing), I would not wish for any Italian.”[53]
Not to go into more lengthy details, there is, it must be admitted,
abundant evidence to show that there was in the religious houses of
England, no less than in the universities, a stirring of the waters,
and a readiness to profit by the real advance made in education and
scholarship. The name of Prior Charnock, the friend of Colet and
Erasmus at Oxford, is known to all. But there are others with even
greater claim than he to be considered leaders in the movement.
There is distinct evidence of scholarship at Reading, at Ramsey, at
Glastonbury, and elsewhere.[54] The last-named house, Glastonbury,
was ruled by Abbot Bere, to whose criticism Erasmus desired to submit
his translation of the New Testament from the Greek. Bere himself had
passed some time, with distinction, in Italy, had been sent on more
than one embassy by the king, and had been chosen by Henry VII. to
invest the Duke of Urbino with the Order of the Garter, and to make
the required oration on that occasion.[55] He had given other evidence
also of the way the new spirit that had been enkindled in Italy had
entered into his soul. It was through Abbot Bere’s generosity that
Richard Pace, whom Erasmus calls “the half of his soul,” was enabled
to pursue his studies in Italy.[56] Glastonbury was apparently a soil
well prepared for the seed-time, for even in the days of Abbot Bere’s
predecessor, Abbot John Selwood, there is evidence to show that the
religious were not altogether out of touch with the movement. The
abbot himself presented one of the monks with a copy of John Free’s
translation from the Greek of _Synesius de laude Calvitii_. The volume
is written by an Italian scribe, and contains in the introductory
matter a letter to the translator from Omnibonus Leonicensis, dated
at Vicenza in 1461, as well as a preface or letter by Free to John
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester.[57]
At St. Augustine’s, Canterbury, also, we find, even amid the ruins
of its desolation, traces of the same spirit which pervaded the
neighbouring cloister of Christchurch. The antiquary Twyne declares
that he had been intimately acquainted with the last abbot, whom he
knew to have been deeply interested in the literary movement. He
describes his friend as often manifesting in conversation his interest
in and knowledge of the ancient classical authors. He says that this
monk was the personal friend of Ludovico Vives, and that he sent over
the sea one of his subjects at St. Augustine’s, John Digon, whom he
subsequently made prior of his monastery, to the schools of Louvain, in
order that he might profit by the teaching of that celebrated Spanish
humanist.[58]
Beyond the foregoing particular instances of the real mind of English
ecclesiastics towards the revival of studies, the official registers
of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge furnish us with evidence
of the general attitude of approval adopted by the Church authorities
in England. Unfortunately, gaps in the Register of Graduates at Oxford
for the second half of the fifteenth century do not enable us to gauge
the full extent of the revival, but there is sufficient evidence that
the renaissance had taken place. In the eleven years, from A.D. 1449
to A.D. 1459, for which the entries exist, the average number of
degrees taken by all students was 91.5. From 1506, when the registers
begin again, to 1535, when the commencement of operations against the
monastic houses seemed to indicate the advent of grave religious
changes, the average number of yearly degrees granted was 127. In 1506
the number had risen to 216, and only in very few of the subsequent
years had the average fallen below 100. From 108 in 1535, the number of
graduates fell in 1536 to only 44; and the average for the subsequent
years of the reign of Henry VIII. was less than 57. From 1548 to 1553,
that is, during the reign of Edward VI., the average of graduates was
barely 33, but it rose again, whilst Mary was on the throne, to 70.
If the same test be applied to the religious Orders, it will be found
that they likewise equally profited by the new spirit. During the
period from 1449 to 1459 the Benedictine Order had a yearly average
of 4 graduates at Oxford, the other religious bodies taken together
having 5. In the second period of 1506-1539 the Benedictine graduates
number 200, and (allowing for gaps in the register) the Order had thus
a yearly average of 6.75, the average of the other Orders during the
same period being 5.2. If, moreover, the number of the religious who
took degrees be compared with that of the secular students, it will be
found that the former seem to have more than held their own. During
the time from 1449 to 1459 the members of the regular Orders were to
the rest in the proportion of 1 to 9.5. In the period of the thirty
years immediately preceding the general dissolution it was as 1 to 9.
Interest in learning, too, was apparently kept up among the religious
Orders to the last. Even with their cloisters falling on all sides
round about them, in the last hour of their corporate existence, that
is in the year 1538-39, some 14 Benedictines took their degrees at
Oxford.
In regard to Cambridge, a few notes taken from the interesting preface
to a recent “History of Gonville and Caius College” will suffice to
show that the monks did not neglect the advantages offered to them
in the sister university.[59] Gonville Hall, as the college was then
called, was by the statutes of Bishop Bateman closely connected with
the Benedictine Cathedral Priory of Norwich. Between 1500 and 1523 the
early bursars’ accounts give a list of “pensioners,” and these “largely
consisted of monks sent hither from their respective monasteries for
the purpose of study.” These “pensioners paid for their rooms and their
commons, and shared their meals with the fellows. All the greater
monasteries in East Anglia, such as the Benedictine Priory at Norwich,
the magnificent foundation of Bury, and (as a large landowner in
Norfolk) the Cluniac House at Lewes, seem generally to have had several
of their younger members in training at our college. To these must be
added the Augustinian Priory of Westacre, which was mainly frequented
(as Dr. Jessopp tells us) by the sons of the Norfolk gentry.”[60]
The Visitations of the Norwich Diocese (1492-1532), edited by Dr.
Jessopp for the Camden Society, contain many references to the monastic
students at the university. In one house, for example, in 1520, the
numbers are short, because “there were three in the university.” In
another case, when a religious house was too poor to provide the
necessary money to support a student during his college career, it
was found by friends of the monastery, until a few years later, when,
on the funds improving, the house was able to meet the expenses. This
same house, the Priory of Butley, “had a special arrangement with the
authorities of Gonville Hall for the reservation of a suitable room
for their young monks.” One object of sending members of a monastery
to undergo the training of a university course “was to qualify
for teaching the novices at their own house”; for after they have
graduated and returned to their monastery, we not infrequently find
them described as “_idoneus preceptor pro confratribus_”; “_idoneus
pro noviciis et junioribus_,” &c. Moreover, the possession of a degree
on the part of a religious, as an examination of the lists will show,
often in after life meant some position of trust or high office in the
monastery of the graduate.
Nor was the training then received any light matter of form; it meant
long years of study, and the possession of a degree was, too, a public
testimony to a certain proficiency in the science of teaching. Thus,
for example, George Mace, a canon of Westacre, who became a pensioner
at Gonville Hall in 1508, studied arts for five years and canon law for
four years at the university, and continued the latter study for eight
years in his monastery.[61] William Hadley, a religious of the same
house, had spent eleven years in the study of arts and theology;[62]
and Richard Brygott, who took his B.D. in 1520, and who subsequently
became Prior of Westacre, had studied two years and a half in his
monastery, two years in Paris, and seven in Cambridge.[63]
“With the Reformation, of course, all this came to an end,” writes
Mr. Venn, and we can well understand that this sudden stoppage of
what, in the aggregate, was a considerable source of supply to the
university, was seriously felt. On the old system, as we have seen, the
promising students were selected by their monasteries, and supported in
college at the expense of the house. As the author of the interesting
account of Durham Priory says: “If the master did see that any of
them (the novices) were apt to learning, and did apply his book and
had a pregnant wit withal, then the master did let the prior have
intelligence. Then, straightway after he was sent to Oxford to school,
and there did learn to study divinity.”[64]
Moreover, it should be remembered that it was by means of the
assistance received from the monastic and conventual houses that a very
large number of students were enabled to receive their education at the
universities at all. The episcopal registers testify to this useful
function of the old religious corporations. The serious diminution in
the number of candidates for ordination, and the no less lamentable
depletion of the national universities, consequent upon the dissolution
of these bodies, attest what had previously been done by them for the
education of the pastoral clergy. This may be admitted without any
implied approval of the monastic system as it existed. The fact will
be patent to all who will examine into the available evidence; and the
serious diminution in the number of clergy must be taken as part of the
price paid by the nation for securing the triumph of the Reformation
principles. The state of Oxford during, say, the reign of Edward VI.,
is attested by the degree lists. In the year 1547 and in the year 1550
no student at all graduated, and the historian of the university has
described the lamentable state to which the schools were reduced. If
additional testimony be needed, it may be found in a sermon of Roger
Edgworth, preached in Queen Mary’s reign. Speaking of works of piety
and pity, much needed in those days, the speaker advocates charity to
the poor students at the two national universities. “Very pity,” he
says, “moves me to exhort you to mercy and pity on the poor students
in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. They were never so few in
number, and yet those that are left are ready to run abroad into the
world and give up their study for very need. Iniquity is so abundant
that charity is all cold. A man would have pity did he but hear the
lamentable complaints that I heard lately when amongst them. Would to
God I were able to relieve them. This much I am sure of: in my opinion
you cannot bestow your charity better.” He then goes on to instance
his own case as an example of what used to be done in Catholic times
to help the student in his education. “My parents sent me to school in
my youth, and my good lord William Smith, sometime Bishop of Lincoln,
(was) my bringer up and ‘exhibitour,’ first at Banbury in the Grammar
School with Master John Stanbridge, and then at Oxford till I was a
Master of Arts and able to help myself.”
He pleads earnestly that some of his hearers may be inspired to help
the students in the distress to which they are now reduced, and so help
to restore learning to the position from which it had fallen in late
years.[65]
Of the lamentable decay of scholarship as such, the inevitable, and
perhaps necessary, consequence of the religious controversies which
occupied men’s minds and thoughts to the exclusion of all else, it is,
of course, not the place here to dwell upon. All that it is necessary
to do is to point out that the admitted decay and decline argues a
previous period of greater life and vigour. Even as early as 1545 the
Cambridge scholars petitioned the king for an extension of privileges,
as they feared the total destruction of learning. To endeavour to save
Oxford, it was ordered that every clergyman, having a benefice to the
amount of £100, should out of his living find at least one scholar at
the university. Bishop Latimer, in Edward VI.’s reign, looked back
with regret to past times “when they helped the scholars,” for since
then “almost no man helpeth to maintain them.” “Truly,” he said, “it
is a pitiful thing to see the schools so neglected. Schools are not
maintained, scholars have not exhibitions.… Very few there be that help
poor scholars.… It would pity a man’s heart to hear what I hear of the
state of Cambridge; what it is in Oxford I cannot tell.… I think there
be at this day (A.D. 1550) ten thousand students less than there were
within these twenty years.” In the year 1550, it will be remembered,
there was apparently no degree of any kind taken at the university of
Oxford.
This fact appears patent on this page of history; that from the time
when minds began to exercise themselves on the thorny subjects which
grew up round about the “great divorce” question, the bright promises
of the revival of learning, which Erasmus had seen in England, faded
away. Greek, it has been said, may conveniently stand for learning
generally; and Greek studies apparently disappeared in the religious
turmoils which distracted England. With Mary’s accession, some attempt
was made to recover lost ground, or at least re-enkindle the lamp of
learning. When Sir Thomas Pope refounded Durham College at Oxford
under the name of Trinity, he was urged by Cardinal Pole, to whom he
submitted the draft of his statutes, “to order Greek to be more taught
there than I have provided. This purpose,” he says, “I like well, but
I fear the times will not bear it now. I remember when I was a young
scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace, the study of which
is now of late much decayed.”[66]
The wholesale destruction of the great libraries in England is an
indirect indication of the new spirit which rose at this time, and
which helped for a time to put an end to the renaissance of letters.
When Mary came to the throne, and quieter times made the scheme
possible, it was seriously proposed to do something to preserve the
remnant of ancient and learned works that might be left in England
after the wholesale destruction of the preceding years. The celebrated
Dr. Dee drew up a supplication to the queen, stating that “among the
many most lamentable displeasures that have of late happened in this
realm, through the subverting of religious houses and the dissolution
of other assemblies of godly and learned men, it has been, and among
all learned students shall for ever be, judged not the least calamity,
the spoil and destruction of so many and so notable libraries wherein
lay the treasure of all antiquity, and the everlasting seeds of
continual excellency in learning within this realm. But although in
those days many a precious jewel and ancient monument did utterly
perish (as at Canterbury that wonderful work of the sage and eloquent
Cicero, _De Republica_, and in many other places the like), yet if
in time great and speedy diligence be showed, the remnants of such
incredible a store, as well of writers theological as in all the other
liberal sciences, might yet be saved and recovered, which now in your
Grace’s realm being dispersed and scattered, yea, and many of them in
unlearned men’s hands, still even yet (in this time of reconciliation)
daily perish; and perchance are purposely by some envious person
enclosed in walls or buried in the ground.”
The scheme which accompanied this letter in 1556 was for the formation
of a national library, into which were to be gathered the original
manuscripts still left in England, which could be purchased or
otherwise obtained, or at least a copy of such as were in private
hands, and which the owners would not part with. Beyond this, John
Dee proposes that copies of the best manuscripts in Europe should be
secured. He mentions specially the libraries of the Vatican, and of St.
Mark’s, Venice, those at Florence, Bologna, and Vienna, and offers to
go himself, if his expenses are paid, to secure the transcripts.[67]
The plan, however, came to nothing, and with Mary’s death, the nation
was once more occupied in the religious controversies, which again
interfered with any real advance in scholarship.
One other point must not be overlooked. Before the rise of the
religious dissensions caused England to isolate herself from the rest
of the Catholic world, English students were to be found studying in
considerable numbers at the great centres of learning in Europe. An
immediate result of the change was to put a stop to this, which had
served to keep the country in touch with the best work being done
on the Continent, and the result of which had been seen in the able
English scholars produced by that means on the eve of the Reformation.
Taking a broad survey of the whole movement for the revival of letters
in England, it would appear then certain that whether we regard its
origin, or the forces which contributed to support it, or the men
chiefly concerned in it, it must be confessed that to the Church and
churchmen the country was indebted for the successes achieved. What put
a stop to the humanist movement here, as it certainly did in Germany,
was the rise of the religious difficulties, which, under the name of
the “New Learning,” was opposed by those most conspicuous for their
championship of true learning, scholarship, and education.
CHAPTER III
THE TWO JURISDICTIONS
The Reformation found men still occupied with questions as to the
limits of ecclesiastical and lay jurisdiction, which had troubled
their minds at various periods during the previous centuries. It is
impossible to read very deeply into the literature of the period
without seeing that, while on the one hand, all the fundamental
principles of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church were fully
and freely recognised by all; on the other, a number of questions,
mainly in the broad borderland of debatable ground between the two,
were constantly being discussed, and not infrequently gave cause for
disagreements and misunderstandings. As in the history of earlier
times, so in the sixteenth century ecclesiastics clung, perhaps
not unnaturally, to what they regarded as their strict rights, and
looked on resistance to encroachment as a sacred duty. Laymen on
the other part, even when their absolute loyalty to the Church was
undoubted, were found in the ranks of those who claimed for the State
power to decide in matters not strictly pertaining to the spiritual
prerogatives, but which chiefly by custom had come to be regarded as
belonging to ecclesiastical domain. It is the more important that
attention should be directed in a special manner to these questions,
inasmuch as it will be found, speaking broadly, that the ultimate
success or ill-success of the strictly doctrinal changes raised in
the sixteenth century was determined by the issue of the discussions
raised on the question of mixed jurisdiction. This may not seem very
philosophical, but in the event it is proved to be roughly correct. The
reason is not very far to seek. In great measure at least, questions
of money and property, even of national interest and prosperity,
were intimately concerned in the matter in dispute. They touched the
people’s pocket; and whether rightly or wrongly, those who found the
money wished to have a say in its disposal. One thing cannot fail to
strike an inquirer into the literature of this period: the very small
number of people who were enthusiasts in the doctrinal matters with
which the more ardent reformers occupied themselves.
We are not here concerned with another and more delicate question as
to the papal prerogatives exercised in England. For clearness’ sake
in estimating the forces which made for change on the eve of the
Reformation, this subject must be examined in connection with the whole
attitude of England to Rome and the Pope in the sixteenth century. It
must, consequently, be understood that in trying here to illustrate the
attitude of men’s minds at this period to these important and practical
questions, a further point as to the claims of the Roman Pontiffs
in regard to some or all of them has yet to be considered. Even in
examining the questions at issue between the authorities--lay and
ecclesiastical--in the country, the present purpose is to record rather
than to criticise, to set forth the attitude of mind as it appears in
the literature of the period, rather than to weigh the reasons and
judge between the contending parties.
The lawyer, Christopher Saint-German, is a contemporary writer to
whom we naturally turn for information upon the points at issue. He,
of course, takes the layman’s side as to the right of the State to
interfere in all, or in most, questions which arise as to the dues
of clerics, and other temporalities, such as tithes, &c., which are
attached to the spiritual functions of the clergy. Moreover, beyond
claiming the right for the State so to interfere in the regulation of
all temporalities and kindred matters, Saint-German also held that in
some things in which custom had given sanction to the then practice,
it would be for the good of the State that it should do so. In his
_Dyalogue between a Student of Law and a Doctor of Divinity_,[68] his
views are put clearly; whilst the Doctor states, though somewhat lamely
perhaps, the position of the clergy.
To take the example of “mortuaries,” upon which the Parliament had
already legislated to the dismay of some of the ecclesiastical party,
who, as it appears, on the plea that the law was unjust and beyond
the competence of the State authority, tried in various ways to evade
the provisions of the Act, which was intended to relieve the laity of
exactions that, as they very generally believed, had grown into an
abuse. Christopher Saint-German holds that Parliament was quite within
its rights. The State could, and on occasion should, legislate as to
dues payable to the clergy, and settle whether ecclesiastics, who claim
articles in kind, or sums of money by prescriptive right, ought in
fact to be allowed them. There is, he admits, a difficulty; he does not
think that it would be competent for the State to prohibit specific
gifts to God’s service, or to say that only “so many tapers shall be
used at a funeral,” or that only so many priests may be bidden to the
burial, or that only so much may be given in alms. In matters of this
kind he does not think the State has jurisdiction to interfere. “But
it has,” he says, “the plain right to make a law, that there shall not
be given above so many black gowns, or that there shall be no herald
of arms” present, unless it is the funeral of one “of such a degree,”
or that “no black cloths should be hung in the streets from the house
where the person died, to the church, as is used in many cities and
good towns, or the prohibition of such other things as are but worldly
pomps, and are rather consolations to the friends that are alive, than
any relief to the departed soul.” In these and such like things, he
says: “I think the Parliament has authority to pass laws, so as to
protect the executors of wills, and relieve them from the necessity of
spending so much of the inheritance of the deceased man’s heirs.”[69]
In like manner the lawyer holds that in all strictly temporal matters,
whatever privilege and exemption the State may allow and has allowed
the clergy, it still possesses the radical power to legislate where
and when it sees fit. It does not in fact by lapse of time lose the
ordinary authority it possesses over all subjects of the realm in
these matters. Thus, for example, he holds that the State can and
should prohibit all lands in mortmain passing to the Church; and that,
should it appear to be a matter of public policy, Parliament might
prohibit and indeed break the appropriations of benefices already
made to monasteries, cathedrals, and colleges, and order that they
should return to their original purposes. “The advowson,” he says,
“is a temporal inheritance, and as such is under the Parliament to
order it as it sees cause.” This principle, he points out, had been
practically admitted when the Parliament, in the fourth year of Henry
IV., cancelled all appropriations of vicarages which had been made from
the beginning of Richard II.’s reign. It is indeed “good,” he adds,
“that the authority of the Parliament in this should be known, and that
it should cause them to observe such statutes as are already made, and
to distribute some part of the fruits (of the benefices) among poor
parishioners according to the statute of the twentieth year of King
Richard II.”
In the same way, and for similar reasons, Saint-German claims that the
State has full power to determine questions of “Sanctuary,” and to
legislate as to “benefit of clergy.” Such matters were, he contends,
only customs of the realm, and in no sense any point of purely
spiritual prerogative. Like every other custom of the realm, these
were subject to revision by the supreme secular authority. “The Pope
by himself,” he adds, “cannot make any Sanctuary in this realm.” This
question of “Sanctuary” rights was continually causing difficulties
between the lay and the ecclesiastical authorities. To the legal mind
the custom was certainly dangerous to the well-being of the State,
and made the administration of justice unnecessarily complicated,
especially when ecclesiastics pleaded their privileges, and strongly
resisted any attempt on the part of legal officials to ignore them.
Cases were by no means infrequent in the courts in the reigns of Henry
VII. and Henry VIII., which caused more or less friction between the
upholders of the two views.[70] To illustrate the state of conflict on
this, in itself a very minor matter, a trial which took place in London
in the year 1519 is here given in some detail. One John Savage in that
year was charged with murder. At the time of his arrest he was living
in St. John Street (Clerkenwell), and when brought to trial pleaded
that he had been wrongfully arrested in a place of Sanctuary belonging
to the Priory of St. John of Jerusalem. To justify his contention and
obtain his liberty, he called on the Prior of the Knights of St. John
to maintain his rights and privileges, and vindicate this claim of
Sanctuary. The prior appeared and produced the grant of Pope Urban
III., made by Bull dated in 1213, which had been ratified by King Henry
III. He also cited cases in which he alleged that in the reign of the
late King Henry VII. felons, who had been seized within the precincts,
had been restored to Sanctuary, and he therefore argued that this case
was an infringement of the rights of his priory.
Savage also declared that he was in St. John Street within the
precincts of the priory “pur amendement de son vie, durant son vie,”
when on the 8th of June an officer, William Rotte, and others took
him by force out of the place, and carried him away to the Tower. He
consequently claimed to be restored to the Sanctuary from which he had
been abducted. Chief-Justice Fineux, before whom the prisoner had been
brought, asked him whether he wished to “jeopardy” his case upon his
plea of Sanctuary, and, upon consultation, John Savage replied in the
negative, saying that he wished rather to throw himself upon the king’s
mercy. Fineux on this, said: “In this you are wise, for the privileges
of St. John’s will not aid you in the form in which you have pleaded
it. In reality it has no greater privilege of Sanctuary than every
parish church in the kingdom; that is, it has privileges for forty days
and no more, and in this it partakes merely of the common law of the
kingdom, and has no special privilege beyond this.”
Further, Fineux pointed out that even had St. John’s possessed the
Sanctuary the prior claimed, this right did not extend to the fields,
&c., but in the opinion of all the judges of the land, to which all the
bishops and clergy had assented, the bounds of any Sanctuary were the
church, cloister, and cemetery. Most certain it was that the _ambitus_
did not extend to gardens, barns, and stables, and in his (Fineux’s)
opinion, not even to the pantry and buttery. He quotes cases in support
of his opinion. In one instance a certain William Spencer claimed
the privilege of Sanctuary when in an orchard of the Grey Friars at
Coventry. In spite of the assertion of the guardian that the Pope had
extended the privilege to the whole enclosure, of which the place the
friars had to recreate themselves in was certainly a portion, the plea
was disallowed, and William Spencer was hanged.
In regard to the privilege of the forty days, Fineux declared that it
was so obviously against the common good and in derogation of justice,
that in his opinion it should not be suffered to continue, and he
quoted cases where it had been set aside. In several cases where
Papal privileges had been asserted, the judges had held “quant à les
Bulles du pape, le pape sans le Roy ne ad power de fayre sanctuarie.”
In other words, Fineux rejected the plea of the murderer Savage.
But the case did not stop here, both the prior and Savage, as we
should say, “appealed,” and the matter was heard in the presence of
Cardinal Wolsey, Fineux, Brudnell, and several members of the inner
Star Chamber. Dr. Potkyn, counsel for the Prior of St. John, pleaded
the “knowledge and allowance of the king” to prove the privilege. No
decision was arrived at, and a further sitting of the Star Chamber was
held on November 11, 1520, in the presence of the king, the cardinal,
all the judges, and divers bishops and canonists, as well as the
Prior of St. John and the Abbot of Westminster. Before the assembly
many examples of difficulties in the past were adduced by the judges.
These difficulties they declared increased so as to endanger the peace
and law of the country, by reason of the Sanctuaries of Westminster
and St. John’s. To effect a remedy was the chief reason of the royal
presence at the meeting. After long discussion it was declared that as
St. John’s Sanctuary was made, as it had been shown, by Papal Bull,
it was consequently void even if confirmed by the king’s patent, and
hence that the priory had no privilege at all except the common one of
forty days. The judges and all the canonists were quite clear that the
Pope’s right to make a Sanctuary had never been allowed in England, and
that every such privilege must come from the king. On the other hand,
the bishops present and all the clergy were equally satisfied that the
general forty days’ privilege belonged by right to every parish church.
The Abbot of Westminster then proved by the production of charters and
other indubitable evidence that the Sanctuary of Westminster had its
origin in the grants of various kings, and had only been blessed by the
Pope.
Fineux pointed out that Sanctuary grants had always been made to
monasteries and churches “to the laud and honour of God,” and that it
was not certainly likely to redound to God’s honour when men could
commit murder and felony, and trust to get into the safe precinct of
some Sanctuary; neither did he believe that to have bad houses in
Sanctuaries, and such like abuses, was either to the praise of God or
for the welfare of the kingdom. Further, that as regards Westminster,
the abbot had abused his privileges as to the _ambitus_ or precincts
which in law must be understood in the restricted sense. The cardinal
admitted that there had been abuses, and a Commission was proposed to
determine the reasonable bounds. Bishop Voysey, of Exeter, suggested
that if a Sanctuary man committed murder or felony outside, with
the hope of getting back again, the privilege of shelter should be
forfeited; but the majority were against this restriction. On the
whole, however, it was determined that for the good of the State the
uses of these Sanctuaries should be curtailed, and that none should be
allowed in law but such as could show a grant of the privilege from the
crown.[71]
In the opinion of many, of whom Saint-German was the spokesman, to go
to another matter, Parliament might assign “all the trees and grass in
churchyards either to the parson, to the vicar, or to the parish,” as
it thought fit; for although the ground was hallowed, the proceeds,
such as “trees and grass, are mere temporals, and as such must be
regulated by the power of the State.”
Moreover, according to the same view, whilst it would be outside the
province of the secular law to determine the cut of a priest’s cassock
or the shape of his tonsure, it could clearly determine that no priest
should wear cloth made out of the country, or costing above a certain
price; and it might fix the amount of salary to be paid to a chaplain
or curate.[72]
There were circumstances, too, under which, in the opinion of
Saint-German, Parliament not only could interfere to legislate about
clerical duties, but would be bound to do so. At the time when he was
writing, the eve of the Reformation, many things seemed to point to
this necessity for State interference. There were signs of widespread
religious differences in the world. “Why then,” he asks, “may not
the king and his Parliament, as well to strengthen the faith and give
health to the souls of many of his subjects, as to save his realm
being noted for heresy, seek for the reason of the division now in
the realm by diversity of sects and opinions?… They shall have great
reward before God that set their hands to prevent the great danger
to many souls of men as well spiritual as temporal if this division
continue long. And as far as I have heard, all the articles that are
misliked (are aimed) either against the worldly honour, worldly power,
or worldly riches of spiritual men. To express these articles I hold it
not expedient, and indeed if what some have reported be true, many of
them be so far against the truth that no Christian man would hold them
to be true, and they that do so do it for some other consideration.”[73]
As an example, our author takes the question of Purgatory, which he
believes is attacked because men want to free themselves from the
money offerings which belief in the doctrine necessitates. And indeed,
“if it were ordained by law,” he continues, “that every curate at the
death of any of their parishioners should be bound to say publicly for
their souls _Placebo_, _Dirige_ and mass, without taking anything for
(the service): and further that at a certain time, to be assigned by
Parliament, as say, once a month, or as it shall be thought convenient,
they shall do the same and pray for the souls of their parishioners and
for all Christian souls and for the king and all the realm: and also
that religious houses do in like manner, I fancy in a short time there
would be few to say there was no purgatory.”[74]
In some matters Saint-German considered that the State might reasonably
interfere in regard to the religious life. The State, he thinks, would
have no right whatever to prohibit religious vows altogether; but it
would be competent for the secular authority to lay down conditions to
prevent abuses and generally protect society where such protection was
needed. “It would be good,” for example, he writes, “to make a law that
no religious house should receive any child below a certain age into
the habit, and that he should not be moved from the place into which he
had been received without the knowledge and assent of friends.” This
would not be to prohibit religious life, which would not be a just law,
but only the laying down of conditions. In the fourth year of Henry IV.
the four Orders of Friars had such a law made for them; “when the four
Provincials of the said four Orders were sworn by laying their hands
upon their breasts in open Parliament to observe the said statute.”[75]
In the same way the State may, Saint-German thinks, lay down the
conditions for matrimony, so long as there was no “interference with
the sacrament of marriage.” Also, “as I suppose,” he says, “the
Parliament may well enact that every man that makes profit of any
offerings (coming) by recourse of pilgrims shall be bound under a
certain penalty not only to set up certain tables to instruct the
people how they shall worship the saints, but also cause certain
sermons to be yearly preached there to instruct the people, so that
through ignorance they do not rather displease than please the
saints.”[76]
The State “may also prohibit any miracle being noised abroad on such
slight evidence as they have been in some places in times past; and
that they shall not be set up as miracles, under a certain penalty, nor
reported as miracles by any one till they have been proved such in such
a manner as shall be appointed by Parliament. And it is not unlikely
that many persons grudge more at the abuse of pilgrimages than at the
pilgrimages themselves.” Parliament, he points out, has from time to
time vindicated its right to act in matters such as these. For example:
“To the strengthening of the faith it has enacted that no man shall
presume to preach without leave of his diocesan except certain persons
exempted in the statute” (2 Henry IV.).[77]
There are, Saint-German notes, many cases where it is by no means
clear whether they are strictly belonging to spiritual jurisdiction
or not. Could the law, for example, prohibit a bishop from ordaining
any candidate to Holy Orders who was not sufficiently learned? Could
the law which exempted priests from serving on any inquest or jury
be abrogated? These, and such like matters in the borderland, are
debatable questions; but Saint-German makes it clear that, according
to his view, it is a mistake for clerics to claim more exemptions from
the common law than is absolutely necessary. That there must be every
protection for their purely spiritual functions, he fully and cordially
admits; but when all this is allowed, in his opinion, it is a grave
mistake for the clergy, even from their point of view, to try and
stretch their immunities and exemptions beyond the required limit. The
less the clergy were made a “caste,” and the more they fell in with the
nation at large, the better it would be for all parties in the State.
On the question of tithe, Saint-German took the laymen’s view. To the
ecclesiastics of the period tithes were spiritual matters, and all
questions arising out of them should be settled by archbishop or bishop
in spiritual courts. The lawyer, on the other hand, maintained that
though given to secure spiritual services, in themselves tithes were
temporal, and therefore should fall under the administration of the
State. Who, for example, was to determine what was payable on new land,
and to whom; say on land recovered from the sea? In the first place,
according to the lawyer, it should be the owner of the soil who should
apportion the payment, and failing him, the Parliament, and not the
spirituality.
In another work[78] Saint-German puts his view more clearly. A tithe
that comes irregularly, say once in ten or twenty years, cannot be
considered necessary for the support of the clergy. That people were
bound to contribute to the just and reasonable maintenance of those
who serve the altar did not admit of doubt, but, he holds, a question
arises as to the justice of the amount in individual cases. “Though
the people be bound by the law of reason, and also the law of God,
to find their spiritual ministers a reasonable portion of goods to
live upon, yet that they shall pay precisely the tenth part to their
spiritual ministers in the name of that portion is but the law of man.”
If the tithe did not at any time suffice, “the people would be bound
to give more” in order to fulfil their Christian duty. Some authority
must determine, and in his opinion as a lawyer and a layman, the only
authority competent to deal with the matter, so far as the payment of
money was concerned, was the State; and consequently Parliament might,
and at times ought, to legislate about the payment of tithes.[79]
In a second _Treatise concerning the power of the clergy and the laws
of the realm_, Saint-German returns to this subject of the relation
between the two jurisdictions. This book, however, was published
after Henry VIII. had received his parliamentary title of Supreme
Head of the Church, and by that time the author’s views had naturally
become somewhat more advanced on the side of State power. In regard
to the king’s “Headship,” he declares that in reality it is nothing
new, but if properly understood would be recognised as implied in
the kingly power, and as having nothing whatever to do with the
spiritual prerogatives as such. He has been speaking of the writ, _de
excommunicato capiendo_, by which the State had been accustomed to
seize the person of one who had been excommunicated by the Church for
the purpose of punishment by the secular arm, and he argues that if the
Parliament were to abrogate the law, such a change would in no sense be
a derogation of the rights of the Church. Put briefly, the principle
upon which he bases this opinion is one which was made to apply to many
other cases besides this special one. It is this: that for a spiritual
offence no one ought in justice to be made to suffer in the temporal
order.[80] Whilst insisting on this, moreover, the lawyer maintained
that there were many things which had come to be regarded as spiritual,
which were, in reality, temporal, and that it would be better that
these should be altogether transferred to the secular arm of the State.
Such, for example, were, in his opinion, the proving and administration
of wills, the citation and consideration of cases of slander and libel
and other matters of this nature. “And there is no doubt,” he says,
“but that the Parliament may with a cause take that power from them
(_i.e._ the clergy), and might likewise have done so before it was
recognised by the Parliament and the clergy that the king was Head of
the Church of England; for he was so before the recognition was made,
just as all other Christian princes are in their own realms over all
their subjects, spiritual and temporal.”[81]
Moreover, as regards this, “it lieth in princes to appease all
variances and unquietness that shall arise among the people, by
whatsoever occasion it rise, spiritual or temporal. And the king’s
grace has now no new authority in that he is confessed by the clergy
and authorised by Parliament to be the Head of the Church of England.
For it is only a declaration of his first power committed by God to
kingly and regal authority and no new grant. Further, that, for all the
power that he has as Head of the Church, he has yet no authority to
minister any sacraments, nor to do any other spiritual thing whereof
our Lord gave power to His apostles and disciples only.… And there is
no doubt that such power as the clergy have by the immediate grant
of Christ, neither the king nor his Parliament can take from them,
although they may order the manner of the doing.”[82]
The question whether for grave offences the clergy could be tried by
the king’s judges was one which had long raised bitter feeling on the
one side and the other. In 1512, Parliament had done something to
vindicate the power of the secular arm by passing a law practically
confining the immunity of the clergy to those in sacred orders. It
ordained “that all persons hereafter committing murder or felony,
&c., should not be admitted to the benefit of clergy.” This act led to
a great dispute in the next Parliament, held in 1515. The clergy as
a body resented the statute as an infringement upon their rights and
privileges, and the Abbot of Winchcombe preached at St. Paul’s Cross to
this effect, declaring that the Lords Spiritual who had assented to the
measure had incurred ecclesiastical censures. He argued that all clerks
were in Holy Orders, and that they were consequently not amenable to
the secular tribunals.
The king, at the request of many of the Temporal Lords and several
of the Commons, ordered the case to be argued at a meeting held at
Blackfriars at which the judges were present. At this debate, Dr.
Henry Standish, a Friar Minor, defended the action of Parliament, and
maintained that it was a matter of public policy that clerks guilty of
such offences should be tried by the ordinary process of law. In reply
to the assertion that there was a decree or canon forbidding it, and
that all Christians were bound by the canons under pain of mortal sin,
Standish said: “God forbid; for there is a decree that all bishops
should be resident at their cathedrals upon every festival day, and yet
we see the greater part of the English bishops practise the contrary.”
Moreover, he maintained that the right of exemption of clerks from
secular jurisdiction had never been allowed in England. The bishops
were unanimously against the position of Standish, and there can be
little doubt that they had put forward the Abbot of Winchcombe to be
their spokesman at St. Paul’s Cross. Later on, Standish was charged
before Convocation with holding tenets derogatory to the privileges
and jurisdiction of ecclesiastics. He claimed the protection of the
king, and the Temporal Lords and judges urged the king at all costs to
maintain his right of royal jurisdiction in the matters at issue.
Again a meeting of judges, certain members of Parliament, and the
king’s council, spiritual and temporal, were assembled to deliberate on
the matter at the Blackfriars. Dr. Standish was supposed to have said
that the lesser Orders were not Holy, and that the exemption of clerks
was not _de jure divino_. These opinions he practically admitted,
saying with regard to the first that there was a great difference
between the greater Orders and the lesser; and in regard to the second,
“that the summoning of clerks before temporal judges implied no
repugnance to the positive law of God.” He further partially admitted
saying that “the study of canon law ought to be laid aside, because
being but ministerial to divinity it taught people to despise that
nobler science.” The judges decided generally against the contention
of the clergy, and they, with other lords, met the king at Baynard’s
Castle to tender their advice on the matter. Here Wolsey, kneeling
before the king, declared “that he believed none of the clergy had any
intention to disoblige the prerogative royal, that for his part he owed
all his promotion to his Highness’ favour, and therefore would never
assent to anything that should lessen the rights of the Crown.” But
“that this business of conventing clerks before temporal judges was,
in the opinion of the clergy, directly contrary to the laws of God and
the liberties of Holy Church, and that both himself and the rest of the
prelates were bound by their oath to maintain this exemption. For this
reason he entreated the king, in the name of the clergy, to refer the
matter for decision to the Pope.” Archbishop Warham added that in old
times some of the fathers of the Church had opposed the matter so far
as to suffer martyrdom in the quarrel. On the other hand, Judge Fineux
pointed out that spiritual judges had no right by any statute to judge
any clerk for felony, and for this reason many churchmen had admitted
the competence of the secular courts for this purpose.
The king finally replied on the whole case. “By the Providence of God,”
he said, “we are King of England, in which realm our predecessors
have never owned a superior, and I would have you (the clergy) take
notice that we are resolved to maintain the rights of our crown and
temporal jurisdiction in as ample manner as any of our progenitors.”
In conclusion, the Archbishop of Canterbury petitioned the king in the
name of the clergy for the matter to rest till such time as they could
lay the case before the See of Rome for advice, promising that if the
non-exemption of clerks was declared not to be against the law of God,
they would willingly conform to the usage of the country.
On this whole question, Saint-German maintained that the clergy had
been granted exemption from the civil law not as a right but as a
favour. There was, in his opinion, nothing whatever in the nature of
the clerical state to justify any claim to absolute exemption, nor was
it, he contended, against the law of God that the clergy should be
tried for felony and other crimes by civil judges. In all such things
they, like the rest of his people, were subject to their prince,
who, because he was a Christian, did not, for that reason, have any
diminished authority over his subjects. “Christ,” he remarks, “sent His
apostles,” as appears from the said words, “to be teachers in spiritual
matters, and not to be like princes, or to take from princes their
power.”[83] Some, indeed, he says, argue that since the coming of our
Lord “Christian princes have derived their temporal power from the
spiritual power,” established by Him in right of His full and complete
dominion over the world. But Saint-German not only holds that such a
claim has no foundation in itself, but that all manner of texts of Holy
Scripture which are adduced in proof of the contention are plainly
twisted from their true meaning by the spiritual authority. And many,
he says, talk as if the clergy were the Church, and the Church the
clergy, whereas they are only one portion, perhaps the most important,
and possessed of greater and special functions; but they were not the
whole, and were, indeed, endowed with these prerogatives for the use
and benefit of the lay portion of Christ’s Church.
Contrary to what might have been supposed, the difficulty between
the clergy and laity about the exemption of clerics from all lay
jurisdiction did not apparently reach any very acute stage. Sir Thomas
More says that “as for the conventing of priests before secular
judges, the truth is that at one time the occasion of a sermon made the
matter come to a discussion before the king’s Highness. But neither at
any time since, nor many years before, I never heard that there was any
difficulty about it, and, moreover, that matter ceased long before any
word sprang up about this great general division.”[84]
One question, theoretical indeed, but sufficiently practical to
indicate the current of thought and feeling prevalent at the time, was
as to the multiplication of holidays on which no work was allowed to be
done by ecclesiastical law. Saint-German, in common with other laymen
of the period, maintained that the king, or Parliament, as representing
the supreme will of the State, could refuse to allow the spiritual
authority to make new holidays. About the Sunday he is doubtful, though
he inclines to the opinion that so long as there was one day in the
week set apart for rest and prayer, the actual day could be determined
by the State. The Sunday, he says, is partly by the law of God, partly
by the law of man. “But as for the other holidays, these are but
ceremonies, introduced by the devotion of the people through the good
example of their bishops and priests.” And “if the multitude of the
holidays is thought hurtful to the commonwealth, and tending rather to
increase vice than virtue, or to give occasion of pride rather than
meekness, as peradventure the synod ales and particular holidays have
done in some places, then Parliament has good authority to reform
it. But as for the holidays that are kept in honour of Our Lady, the
Apostles and other ancient Saints, these seem right necessary and
expedient.”[85]
In his work, _Salem and Bizance_, which appeared in 1533 as a reply
to Sir Thomas More’s _Apology_, Saint-German takes up the same ground
as in his more strictly legal tracts. He holds that a distinction
between the purely spiritual functions of the clergy and their position
as individuals in the State ought to be allowed and recognised. The
attitude of ecclesiastics generally to such a view was, perhaps not
unnaturally, one of opposition, and where the State had already stepped
in and legislated, as for instance in the case of “mortuaries,” their
action in trying to evade the prescription of the law, Saint-German
declared was doing much harm, in emphasising a needless conflict
between the ecclesiastical and secular jurisdiction. “As long,” he
writes, “as spiritual rulers will pretend that their authority is so
high and so immediately derived from God that people are bound to
obey them and to accept all that they do and teach without argument,
resistance, or murmuring against them” there will be discord and
difficulty.[86]
Christopher Saint-German’s position was not by any means that of one
who would attack the clergy all along the line, and deprive them of
all power and influence, like so many of the foreign sectaries of the
time. He admitted, and indeed insisted on, the fact that they had
received great and undoubted powers by their high vocation, having
their spiritual jurisdiction immediately from God. Their temporalities,
however, he maintained they received from the secular power, and were
protected by the State in their possession. He fully agreed “that such
things as the whole clergy of Christendom teach and order in spiritual
things, and which of long time have been by long custom and usage in
the whole body of Christendom ratified, agreed, and confirmed, by the
spirituality and temporality, ought to be received with reverence.”[87]
To this part of Saint-German’s book Sir Thomas More takes exception
in his _Apology_. The former had said, that as long as the spiritual
rulers will pretend that their authority is so high and so immediately
derived from God that the people are bound to obey them and accept
all that they do and teach “there would certainly be divisions and
dissensions.” “If he mean,” replies More, “that they speak thus of all
their whole authority that they may now lawfully do and say at this
time: I answer that they neither pretend, nor never did, that all their
authority is given them immediately by God. They have authority now
to do divers things by the grant of kings and princes, just as many
temporal men also have, and by such grants they have such rights in
such things as temporal men have in theirs.”[88]
Some authority and power they certainly have from God, he says, “For
the greatest and highest and most excellent authority that they
have, either God has Himself given it to them, or else they are very
presumptuous and usurp many things far above all reason. For I have
never read, or at least I do not remember to have read, that any king
granted them the authority that now not only prelates but other poor
plain priests daily take on them in ministering the sacraments and
consecrating the Blessed Body of Christ.”[89]
Another popular book of the period, published by Berthelet, just on the
eve of the Reformation, is the anonymous _Dialogue between a Knight
and a Clerk concerning the power spiritual and temporal_. We are not
here concerned with the author’s views as to the power of the Popes,
but only with what he states about the attitude of men’s minds to the
difficulties consequent upon the confusion of the two jurisdictions.
_Miles_ (the Knight), who, of course, took the part of the upholder of
the secular power, clearly distinguished, like Saint-German, between
directly spiritual prerogatives and the authority and position assured
to the clergy by the State. “God forbid,” he says, “that I should deny
the right of Holy Church to know and correct men for their sins. Not
to hold this would be to deny the sacrament of Penance and Confession
altogether.”[90] Moreover, like Saint-German, this author, in the
person of _Miles_, insists that the temporality “are bound to find the
spirituality that worship and serve God all that is necessary for them.
For so do all nations.”[91] But the direction of such temporalities
must, he contends, be in the hands of the State. “What,” asks the
conservative cleric, in the person of _Clericus_, “What have princes
and kings to do with the governance of our temporalities? Let them take
their own and order their own, and suffer us to be in peace with ours.”
“Sir,” replies _Miles_, “the princes must in any wise have to do
therewith. I pray you, ought not men above all things to mind the
health of our souls? Ought not we to see the wills of our forefathers
fulfilled? Falleth it not to you to pray for our forefathers that
are passed out of this life? And did not our fathers give you our
temporalities right plentifully, to the intent that you should pray
for them and spend it all to the honour of God? And ye do nothing so;
but ye spend your temporalities in sinful deeds and vanities, which
temporalities ye should spend in works of charity, and in alms-deeds to
the poor and needy. For to this purpose our forefathers gave ‘great and
huge dominions.’ You have received them ‘to the intent to have clothes
and food … and all overplus besides these you ought to spend on deeds
of mercy and pity, as on poor people that are in need, and on such as
are sick and diseased and oppressed with misery.’”[92]
Further, _Miles_ hints that there are many at that time who were
casting hungry eyes upon the riches of the Church, and that were it
not for the protecting power of the State, the clergy would soon find
that they were in worse plight than they think themselves to be. And,
in answer to the complaints of _Clericus_ that ecclesiastics are taxed
too hardly for money to be spent on soldiers, ships, and engines of
war, he tells him that there is no reason in the nature of things why
ecclesiastical property should not bear the burden of national works
as well as every other kind of wealth. “I pray you hold your noise,”
he exclaims somewhat rudely; “stop your grudging and grumbling, and
listen patiently. Look at your many neighbours round about you in the
land, who, wanting the wherewith to support life, gape still after your
goods. If the king’s power failed, what rest should you have? Would not
the gentlemen such as be needy, and such as have spent their substance
prodigally, when they have consumed their own, turn to yours, and waste
and destroy all you have? Therefore, the king’s strength is to you
instead of a strong wall, and you wot well that the king’s peace is
your peace, and the king’s safeguard is your safeguard.”[93]
The foregoing pages represent some of the practical difficulties
which were being experienced on the eve of the Reformation between
the ecclesiastical and lay portion of the State in the question of
jurisdiction. Everything points to the fact that the chief difficulty
was certainly not religious. The ecclesiastical jurisdiction in
matters spiritual was cordially admitted by all but a few fanatics.
What even many churchmen objected to, were the claims for exemption
put forward by ecclesiastics in the name of religion, which they
felt to be a stretching of spiritual prerogatives into the domain of
the temporal sovereign. History has shown that most of these claims
have in practice been disallowed, not only without detriment to the
spiritual work of the Church, but in some instances at least it was the
frank recognition of the State rights, which, under Providence, saved
nations from the general defection which seemed to threaten the old
ecclesiastical system. Most of the difficulties which were, as we have
seen, experienced and debated in England were unfelt in Spain, where
the sovereign from the first made his position as to the temporalities
of the Church clearly understood by all. In Naples, in like manner, the
right of State patronage, however objectionable to the ecclesiastical
legists, was strictly maintained. In France, the danger which at one
time threatened an overthrow of religion similar to that which had
fallen on Germany, and which at the time was looming dark over England,
was averted by the celebrated Concordat between Leo X. and Francis
I. By this settlement of outstanding difficulties between the two
jurisdictions, all rights of election to ecclesiastical dignities
was swept away with the full and express sanction of the Pope. The
nomination of all bishops and other dignitaries was vested in the king,
subject, of course, to Papal confirmation. All appeals were, in the
first place, to be carried in ordinary cases to immediate superiors
acting in the fixed tribunals of the country, and then only to the Holy
See. The Papal power of appointment to benefices was by this agreement
strictly limited; and the policy of the document was generally directed
to securing the most important ecclesiastical positions, including even
parish churches in towns, to educated men. It is to this settlement of
outstanding difficulties, the constant causes of friction--a settlement
of difficulties which must be regarded as economic and administrative
rather than as religious--that so good a judge as M. Hanotaux, the
statesman and historian, attributes nothing less than the maintenance
of the old religion in France. In his opinion, this Concordat did in
fact remove, to a great extent, the genuine grievances which had long
been felt by the people at large, which elsewhere the Reformers of the
sixteenth century skilfully seized upon, as likely to afford them the
most plausible means for furthering their schemes of change in matters
strictly religious.
CHAPTER IV
ENGLAND AND THE POPE
Nothing is more necessary for one who desires to appreciate the true
meaning of the English Reformation than to understand the attitude of
men’s minds to the Pope and the See of Rome on the eve of the great
change. As in the event, the religious upheaval did, in fact, lead
to a national rejection of the jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff,
it is not unnatural that those who do not look below the surface
should see in this act the outcome and inevitable consequence of
long-continued irritation at a foreign domination. The renunciation
of Papal jurisdiction, in other words, is taken as sufficient
evidence of national hostility to the Holy See. If this be the true
explanation of the fact, it is obvious that in the literature of the
period immediately preceding the formal renunciation of ecclesiastical
dependence on Rome, evidence more or less abundant will be found of
this feeling of dislike, if not of detestation, for a yoke which we are
told had become unbearable.
At the outset, it must be confessed that any one who will go to the
literature of the period with the expectation of collecting evidence
of this kind is doomed to disappointment. If we put on one side the
diatribes and scurrilous invectives of advanced reformers, when the
day of the doctrinal Reformation had already dawned, the inquirer in
this field of knowledge can hardly fail to be struck by the absence of
indications of any real hostility to the See of Rome in the period in
question. So far as the works of the age are concerned: so far, too, as
the acts of individuals and even of those who were responsible agents
of the State go, the evidence of an unquestioned acceptance of the
spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope, as Head of the Christian Church, is
simply overwhelming. In their acceptance of this supreme authority the
English were perhaps neither demonstrative nor loudly protesting, but
this in no way derogated from their loyal and unquestioning acceptance
of the supremacy of the Holy See. History shows that up to the very
eve of the rejection of this supremacy the attitude of Englishmen, in
spite of difficulties and misunderstandings, had been persistently one
of respect for the Pope as their spiritual head. Whilst other nations
of Christendom had been in the past centuries engaged in endeavours by
diplomacy, and even by force of arms, to capture the Pope that they
might use him for their own national profit, England, with nothing to
gain, expecting nothing, seeking nothing, had never entered on that
line of policy, but had been content to bow to his authority as to
that of the appointed Head of Christ’s Church on earth. Of this much
there can be no doubt. They did not reason about it, nor sift and sort
the grounds of their acceptance, any more than a child would dream of
searching into, or philosophising upon, the obedience he freely gives
to his parents.
That there were at times disagreements and quarrels may be admitted
without in the least affecting the real attitude and uninterrupted
spiritual dependence of England on the Holy See. Such disputes were
wholly the outcome of misunderstandings as to matters in the domain
rather of the temporal than of the spiritual, or of points in the broad
debatable land that lies between the two jurisdictions. It is a failure
to understand the distinction which exists between these that has led
many writers to think that in the rejection by Englishmen of claims put
forward at various times by the Roman curia in matters wholly temporal,
or where the temporal became involved in the spiritual, they have a
proof that England never fully acknowledged the spiritual headship of
the See of Rome.
That the Pope did in fact exercise great powers in England over and
above those in his spiritual prerogative is a matter of history. No one
has more thoroughly examined this subject than Professor Maitland, and
the summary of his conclusions given in his _History of English Law_
will serve to correct many misconceptions upon the matter. What he says
may be taken as giving a fairly accurate picture of the relations of
the Christian nations of Christendom to the Holy See from the twelfth
century to the disintegration of the system in the throes of the
Reformation. “It was a wonderful system,” he writes. “The whole of
Western Europe was subject to the jurisdiction of one tribunal of last
resort, the Roman curia. Appeals to it were encouraged by all manner
of means, appeals at almost every stage of almost every proceeding.
But the Pope was far more than the president of a court of appeal.
Very frequently the courts Christian which did justice in England
were courts which were acting under his supervision and carrying out
his written instructions. A very large part, and by far the most
permanently important part, of the ecclesiastical litigation that went
on in this country came before English prelates who were sitting not as
English prelates, not as ‘judges ordinary,’ but as mere delegates of
the Pope, commissioned to hear and determine this or that particular
case. Bracton, indeed, treats the Pope as the ordinary judge of every
Englishman in spiritual things, and the only ordinary judge whose
powers are unlimited.”
The Pope enjoyed a power of declaring the law to which but very wide
and very vague limits could be set. Each separate church might have its
customs, but there was a _lex communis_, a common law, of the universal
Church. In the view of the canonist, any special rules of the Church of
England have hardly a wider scope, hardly a less dependent place, than
have the customs of Kent or the bye-laws of London in the eye of the
English lawyer.[94]
We have only to examine the _Regesta_ of the Popes, even up to the dawn
of difficulties in the reign of Henry VIII., to see that the system
as sketched in this passage was in full working order; and it was
herein that chiefly lay the danger even to the spiritual prerogatives
of the Head of the Church. Had the Providence of God destined that
the nations of the world should have become a Christendom in fact--a
theocracy presided over by his Vicar on earth--the system elaborated by
the Roman curia would not have tended doubtless to obscure the real and
essential prerogatives of the spiritual Head of the Christian Church.
As it was by Providence ordained, and as subsequent events have shown,
claims of authority to determine matters more or less of the temporal
order, together with the worldly pomp and show with which the Popes of
the renaissance had surrounded themselves, not only tended to obscure
the higher and supernatural powers which are the enduring heritage
of St. Peter’s successors in the See of Rome; but, however clear the
distinction between the necessary and the accidental prerogatives might
appear to the mind of the trained theologian or the perception of the
saint, to the ordinary man, when the one was called in question the
other was imperilled. And, as a fact, in England popular irritation at
the interference of the spirituality generally in matters not wholly
within the strictly ecclesiastical sphere was, at a given moment,
skilfully turned by the small reforming party into national, if tacit,
acquiescence in the rejection of even the spiritual prerogatives of the
Roman Pontiffs.
It is necessary to insist upon this matter if the full meaning of the
Reformation movement is to be understood. Here in England, there can
be no doubt, on the one hand, that no nation more fully and freely
bowed to the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See; on the other, that
there was a dislike of interference in matters which they regarded,
rightly or wrongly, as outside the sphere of the Papal prerogative.
The national feeling had grown by leaps and bounds in the early years
of the sixteenth century. But it was not until the ardent spirits
among the doctrinal reformers had succeeded in weakening the hold of
Catholicity in religion on the hearts of the people that this rise of
national feeling entered into the ecclesiastical domain, and the love
of country could be effectually used to turn them against the Pope,
even as Head of the Christian Church. With this distinction clearly
before the mind, it is possible to understand the general attitude of
the English nation to the Pope and his authority on the eve of the
overthrow of his jurisdiction.
To begin with some evidence of popular teaching as to the Pope’s
position as Head of the Church. It is, of course, evident that in many
works the supremacy of the Holy See is assumed and not positively
stated. This is exactly what we should expect in a matter which was
certainly taken for granted by all. William Bond, a learned priest, and
subsequently a monk of Syon, with Richard Whitford, was the author of
a book called the _Pilgrimage of Perfection_, published by Wynkyn de
Worde in 1531. It is a work, as the author tells us, “very profitable
to all Christian persons to read”; and the third book consists of a
long and careful explanation of the Creed. In the section treating
about the tenth article is to be found a very complete statement of
the teaching of the Christian religion on the Church. After taking
the marks of the Church, the author says: “There may be set no other
foundation for the Church, but only that which is put, namely, Christ
Jesus. It is certain, since it is founded on the Apostles, as our Lord
said to Peter, ‘I have prayed that thy faith fail not.’ And no more it
shall; for (as St. Cyprian says) the Church of Rome was never yet the
root of heresy. This Church Apostolic is so named the Church of Rome,
because St. Peter and St. Paul, who under Christ were heads and princes
of this Church, deposited there the tabernacles of their bodies, which
God willed should be buried there and rest in Rome, and that should be
the chief see in the world; just as commonly in all other places the
chief see of the bishop is where the chief saint and bishop of the see
is buried. By this you may know how Christ is the Head of the Church,
and how our Holy Father the Pope of Rome is Head of the Church. Many,
because they know not this mystery of Holy Scripture, have erred and
fallen to heresies in denying the excellent dignity of our Holy Father
the Pope of Rome.”[95]
In the same way Roger Edgworth, a preacher in the reign of Henry VIII.,
speaking on the text “_Tu vocaberis Cephas_,” says: “And by this the
error and ignorance of certain summalists are confounded, who take
this text as one of their strongest reasons for the supremacy of the
Pope of Rome. In so doing, such summalists would plainly destroy the
text of St. John’s Gospel to serve their purpose, which they have no
need to do, for there are as well texts of Holy Scripture and passages
of ancient writers which abundantly prove the said primacy of the
Pope.”[96]
When by 1523 the attacks of Luther and his followers on the position
of the Pope had turned men’s minds in England to the question, and
caused them to examine into the grounds of their belief, several books
on the subject appeared in England. One in particular, intended to
be subsidiary to the volume published by the king himself against
Luther, was written by a theologian named Edward Powell, and published
by Pynson in London. In his preface, Powell says that before printing
his work he had submitted it to the most learned authority at Oxford
(_eruditissimo Oxoniensium_). The first part of the book is devoted to
a scientific treatise upon the Pope’s supremacy, with all the proofs
from Scripture and the Fathers set out in detail. “This then,” he
concludes, “is the Catholic Church, which, having the Roman Pontiff,
the successor of Peter, as its head, offers the means of sanctifying
the souls of all its members, and testifies to the truth of all that
is to be taught.” The high priesthood of Peter “is said to be Roman,
not because it cannot be elsewhere, but through a certain congruity
which makes Rome the most fitting place. That is, that where the
centre of the world’s government was, there also should be placed the
high priesthood of Christ. Just as of old the summus Pontifex was in
Jerusalem, the metropolis of the Jewish nation, so now it is in Rome,
the centre of Christian civilisation.”[97]
We naturally, of course, turn to the works of Sir Thomas More for
evidence of the teaching as to the Pope’s position at this period; and
his testimony is abundant and definite. Thus in the second book of his
_Dyalogue_, written in 1528, arguing that there must be unity in the
Church of Christ, he points out that the effect of Lutheranism has
been to breed diversity of faith and practice. “Though they began so
late,” he writes, “yet there are not only as many sects almost as men,
but also the masters themselves change their minds and their opinions
every day. Bohemia is also in the same case: one faith in the town,
another in the field; one in Prague, another in the next town; and yet
in Prague itself, one faith in one street, another in the next. And yet
all these acknowledge that they cannot have the Sacraments ministered
but by such priests as are made by authority derived and conveyed from
the Pope who is, under Christ, Vicar and head of our Church.”[98] It
is important to note in this passage how the author takes for granted
the Pope’s supreme authority over the Christian Church. To this subject
he returns, and is more explicit in a later chapter of the same book.
The Church, he says, is the “company and congregation of all nations
professing the name of Christ.” This church “has begun with Christ, and
has had Him for its head and St. Peter His Vicar after Him, and the
head under Him; and always since, the successors of him continually.
And it has had His holy faith and His blessed Sacraments and His holy
Scriptures delivered, kept, and conserved therein by God and His Holy
Spirit, and albeit some nations fall away, yet just as no matter how
many boughs whatever fall from the tree, even though more fall than be
left thereon, still there is no doubt which is the very tree, although
each of them were planted again in another place and grew to a greater
than the stock it first came off, in the same way we see and know well
that all the companies and sects of heretics and schismatics, however
great they grow, come out of this Church I speak of; and we know that
the heretics are they that are severed, and the Church the stock that
they all come out of.”[99] Here Sir Thomas More expressly gives
communion with the successors of St. Peter as one of the chief tests of
the true Church.
Again, in his _Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer_, written in 1532
when he was Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More speaks specially about
the absolute necessity of the Church being One and not able to teach
error. There is one known and recognised Church existing throughout
the world, which “is that mystical body be it never so sick.” Of this
mystical body “Christ is the principal head”; and it is no part of his
concern, he says, for the moment to determine “whether the successor
of St. Peter is his vicar-general and head under him, as all Christian
nations have now long taken him.”[100] Later on he classes himself with
“poor popish men,”[101] and in the fifth book he discusses the question
“whether the Pope and his sect” (as Tyndale called them) “is Christ’s
Church or no.” On this matter More is perfectly clear. “I call the
Church of Christ,” he says, “the known Catholic Church of all Christian
nations, neither gone out nor cut off. And although all these nations
do now and have long since recognised and acknowledged the Pope, not as
the bishop of Rome but as the successor of St. Peter, to be their chief
spiritual governor under God and Christ’s Vicar on earth, yet I never
put the Pope as part of the definition of the Church, by defining it
to be the common known congregation of all Christian nations under one
head the Pope.”
I avoided this definition purposely, he continues, so as not “to
entangle the matter with the two questions at once, for I knew well
that the Church being proved this common known Catholic congregation
of all Christian nations abiding together in one faith, neither fallen
nor cut off; there might, peradventure, be made a second question after
that, whether over all this Catholic Church the Pope must needs be
head and chief governor and chief spiritual shepherd, or whether, if
the unity of the faith was kept among them all, every province might
have its own spiritual chief over itself, without any recourse unto the
Pope.…
“For the avoiding of all such intricacies, I purposely abstained from
putting the Pope as part of the definition of the Church, as a thing
that was not necessary; for if he be the necessary head, he is included
in the name of the whole body, and whether he be or not is a matter to
be treated and disputed of besides” (p. 615). As to Tyndale’s railing
against the authority of the Pope because there have been “Popes that
have evil played their parts,” he should remember, says More, that
“there have been Popes again right holy men, saints and martyrs too,”
and that, moreover, the personal question of goodness or badness has
nothing to say to the office.[102]
In like manner, More, when arguing against Friar Barnes, says that
like the Donatists “these heretics call the Catholic Christian people
papists,” and in this they are right, since “Saint Austin called the
successor of Saint Peter the chief head on earth of the whole Catholic
Church, as well as any man does now.” He here plainly states his view
of the supremacy of the See of Rome.[103] He accepted it not only as
an antiquarian fact, but as a thing necessary for the preservation
of the unity of the Faith. Into the further question whether the
office of supreme pastor was established by Christ Himself, or, as
theologians would say, _de jure divino_, or whether it had grown with
the growth and needs of the Church, More did not then enter. The fact
was sufficient for him that the only Christian Church he recognised had
for long ages regarded the Pope as the _Pastor pastorum_, the supreme
spiritual head of the Church of Christ. His own words, almost at the
end of his life, are the best indication of his mature conclusion on
this matter. “I have,” he says, “by the grace of God, been always a
Catholic, never out of communion with the Roman Pontiff; but I have
heard it said at times that the authority of the Roman Pontiff was
certainly lawful and to be respected, but still an authority derived
from human law, and not standing upon a divine prescription. Then, when
I observed that public affairs were so ordered that the sources of the
power of the Roman Pontiff would necessarily be examined, I gave myself
up to a diligent examination of that question for the space of seven
years, and found that the authority of the Roman Pontiff, which you
rashly--I will not use stronger language--have set aside, is not only
lawful to be respected and necessary, but also grounded on the divine
law and prescription. That is my opinion, that is the belief in which,
by the grace of God, I shall die.”[104]
Looking at More’s position in regard to this question in the light of
all that he has written, it would seem to be certain that he never
for a moment doubted that the Papacy was necessary for the Church. He
accepted this without regard to the reasons of the faith that was in
him, and in this he was not different from the body of Englishmen at
large. When, in 1522, the book by Henry VIII. appeared against Luther,
it drew the attention of Sir Thomas specially to a consideration of the
grounds upon which the supremacy of the Pope was held by Catholics. As
the result of his examination he became so convinced that it was of
divine institution that “my conscience would be in right great peril,”
he says, “if I should follow the other side and deny the primacy to
be provided of God.” Even before examination More evidently held
implicitly the same ideas, since in his Latin book against Luther,
published in 1523, he declared his entire agreement with Bishop Fisher
on the subject. That the latter was fully acquainted with the reasons
which went to prove that the Papacy was of divine institution, and that
he fully accepted it as such, is certain.[105]
When, with the failure of the divorce proceedings, came the rejection
of Papal supremacy in England, there were plenty of people ready
to take the winning side, urging that the rejection was just, and
not contrary to the true conception of the Christian Church. It is
interesting to note that in all the pulpit tirades against the Pope
and what was called his “usurped supremacy,” there is no suggestion
that this supremacy had not hitherto been fully and freely recognised
by all in the country. On the contrary, the change was regarded as a
happy emancipation from an authority which had been hitherto submitted
to without question or doubt. A sermon preached at St. Paul’s the
Sunday after the execution of the Venerable Bishop Fisher, and a few
days before Sir Thomas More was called to lay down his life for the
same cause, is of interest, as specially making mention of these two
great men, and of the reasons which had forced them to lay down their
lives in the Pope’s quarrel. The preacher was one Simon Matthew,
and his object was to instruct the people in the new theory of the
Christian Church necessary on the rejection of the headship of the
Pope. “The diversity of regions and countries,” he says, “does not
make any diversity of churches, but a unity of faith makes all regions
one Church.” “There was,” he continued, “no necessity to know Peter,
as many have reckoned, in the Bishop of Rome, (teaching) that except
we knew him and his holy college, we could not be of Christ’s Church.
Many have thought it necessary that if a man would be a member of the
Church of Christ, he must belong to the holy church of Rome and take
the Holy Father thereof for the supreme Head and for the Vicar of
Christ, yea for Christ Himself, (since) to be divided from him was even
to be divided from Christ.” This, the preacher informs his audience, is
“damnable teaching,” and that “the Bishop of Rome has no more power by
the laws of God in this realm than any foreign bishop.”
He then goes on to speak of what was, no doubt, in everybody’s mind at
the time, the condemnation of the two eminent Englishmen for upholding
the ancient teachings as to the Pope’s spiritual headship. “Of late,”
he says, “you have had experience of some, whom neither friends nor
kinsfolk, nor the judgment of both universities, Cambridge and Oxford,
nor the universal consent of all the clergy of this realm, nor the laws
of the Parliament, nor their most natural and loving prince, could by
any gentle ways revoke from their disobedience, but would needs persist
therein, giving pernicious occasion to the multitude to murmur and
grudge at the king’s laws, seeing that they were men of estimation and
would be seen wiser than all the realm and of better conscience than
others, justifying themselves and condemning all the realm besides.
These being condemned and the king’s prisoners, yet did not cease to
conceive ill of our sovereign, refusing his laws, but even in prison
wrote to their mutual comfort in their damnable opinions. I mean
Doctor Fisher and Sir Thomas More, whom I am as sorry to name as any
man here is to hear named: sorry for that they, being sometime men of
worship and honour, men of famous learning and many excellent graces
and so tenderly sometime beloved by their prince, should thus unkindly,
unnaturally, and traitorously use themselves. Our Lord give them grace
to be repentant! Let neither their fame, learning, nor honour move you
loving subjects from your prince; but regard ye the truth.”
The preacher then goes on to condemn the coarse style of preaching
against the Pope in which some indulged at that time. “I would exhort,”
he says, “such as are of my sort and use preaching, so to temper their
words that they be not noted to speak of stomach and rather to prate
than preach. Nor would I have the defenders of the king’s matters rage
and rail, or scold, as many are thought to do, calling the Bishop of
Rome the ‘harlot of Babylon’ or ‘the beast of Rome,’ with many such
other, as I have heard some say; these be meeter to preach at Paul’s
Wharf than at Paul’s Cross.”[106]
The care that was taken at this time in sermons to the people to
decry the Pope’s authority, as well as the abuse which was hurled at
his office, is in reality ample proof of the popular belief in his
supremacy, which it was necessary to eradicate from the hearts of
the English people. Few, probably, would have been able to state the
reason for their belief; but that the spiritual headship was fully and
generally accepted as a fact is, in view of the works of the period,
not open to question. Had there been disbelief, or even doubt, as to
the matter, some evidence of this would be forthcoming in the years
that preceded the final overthrow of Papal jurisdiction in England.
Nor are direct declarations of the faith of the English Church wanting.
To the evidence already adduced, a sermon preached by Bishop Longland
in 1527, before the archbishops and bishops of England in synod at
Westminster, may be added. The discourse is directed against the
errors of Luther and the social evils to which his teaching had led in
Germany. The English bishops, Bishop Longland declares, are determined
to do all in their power to preserve the English Church from this
evil teaching, and he exhorts all to pray that God will not allow the
universal and chief Church--the Roman Church--to be further afflicted,
that He will restore liberty to the most Holy Father and high-priest
now impiously imprisoned, and in a lamentable state; that He Himself
will protect the Church’s freedom threatened by a multitude of evil
men, and through the pious prayers of His people will free it and
restore its most Holy Father. Just as the early Christians prayed when
Peter was in prison, so ought all to pray in these days of affliction.
“Shall we not,” he cries, “mourn for the evil life of the chief Church
(of Christendom)? Shall we not beseech God for the liberation of the
primate and chief ruler of the Church? Let us pray then; let us pray
that through our prayers we may be heard. Let us implore freedom for
our mother, the Catholic Church, and the liberty, so necessary for the
Christian religion, of our chief Father on earth--the Pope.”[107]
Again, Dr. John Clark, the English ambassador in Rome, when presenting
Henry’s book against Luther to Leo X. in public consistory, said that
the English king had taken up the defence of the Church because in
attacking the Pope the German reformer had tried to subvert the order
established by God Himself. In the _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_
he had given to the world a book “most pernicious to mankind,” and
before presenting Henry’s reply, he begged to be allowed to protest
“the devotion and veneration of the king towards the Pope and his most
Holy See.” Luther had declared war “not only against your Holiness
but also against your office; against the ecclesiastical hierarchy,
against this See, and against that Rock established by God Himself.”
England, the speaker continued, “has never been behind other nations
in the worship of God and the Christian faith, and in obedience to the
Roman Church.” Hence “no nation” detests more cordially “this monster
(Luther) and the heresies broached by him.” For he has declared war
“not only against your Holiness but against your office; against the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, against this See, that Rock established by
God Himself.”[108]
Whilst the evidence goes to show the full acceptance by the English
people of the Pope’s spiritual headship of the Church, it is also
true that the system elaborated by the ecclesiastical lawyers in
the later Middle Ages, dealing, as it did, so largely with temporal
matters, property, and the rights attaching thereto, opened the door
to causes of disagreement between Rome and England, and at times open
complaints and criticism of the exercise of Roman authority in England
made themselves heard. This is true of all periods of English history.
Since these disagreements are obviously altogether connected with the
question, not of spirituals, but of temporals, they would not require
any more special notice but for the misunderstandings they have given
rise to in regard to the general attitude of men’s minds to Rome and
Papal authority on the eve of the Reformation. It is easy to find
evidence of this. As early as 1517, a work bearing on this question
appeared in England. It was a translation of several tracts that had
been published abroad on the debated matter of Constantine’s donation
to the Pope, and it was issued from the press of Thomas Godfray in
a well-printed folio. After a translation of the Latin version of a
Greek manuscript of Constantine’s gift, which had been found in the
Papal library by Bartolomeo Pincern, and published by order of Pope
Julius II., there is given in this volume the critical examination of
this gift by Laurence Valla, the opinion of Nicholas of Cusa, written
for the Council of Basle, and that of St. Antoninus, Archbishop of
Florence. The interest of the volume for the present purpose chiefly
consists in the fact of the publication in England at this date of
the views expressed by Laurence Valla. Valla had been a canon of the
Lateran and an eminent scholar, who was employed by Pope Nicholas V.
to translate Thucydides and Herodotus. His outspoken words got him
into difficulties with the Roman curia, and obliged him to retire to
Naples, where he died in 1457. The tract was edited with a preface
by the leader of the reform party in Germany, Ulrich von Hutten. In
this introduction von Hutten says that by the publication of Pincern’s
translation of the supposed donation of Constantine Julius II. had
“provoked and stirred up men to war and battle,” and further, he
blames the Pontiff because he would not permit Valla’s work against
the genuineness of the gift to be published. With the accession of Leo
X. von Hutten looked, he declares, for better days, since “by striking
as it were a cymbal of peace the Pope has raised up the hearts and
minds of all Christian people.” Before this time the truth could not be
spoken. Popes looked “to pluck the riches and goods of all men to their
own selves,” with the result that “on the other side they take away
from themselves all that belongs to the succession of St. Peter.”
Valla, of course, condemns the supposed donation of Constantine to the
Pope as spurious, and declares against the temporal claims the See of
Rome had founded upon it. He strongly objects to the “temporal as well
as the spiritual sword” being in the hands of the successors of St.
Peter. “They say,” he writes, “that the city of Rome is theirs, that
the kingdom of Naples is their own property: that all Italy, France,
and Spain, Germany, England, and all the west part of the world belongs
to them. For all these nations and countries (they say) are contained
in the instrument and writ of the donation or grant.”
The whole tract is an attack upon the temporal sovereignty of the head
of the Christian Church, and it was indeed a bold thing for Ulrich von
Hutten to publish it and dedicate it to Pope Leo X. For the present
purpose it is chiefly important to find all this set out in an English
dress, whilst so far and for a long while after, the English people
were loyal and true to the spiritual headship of the Pope, and were
second to no other nation in their attachment to him. At that time
recent events, including the wars of Julius II., must certainly have
caused men to reflect upon the temporal aspect of the Papacy; and
hearts more loyal to the successor of St. Peter than was that of Von
Hutten would probably have joined fervently in the concluding words
of his preface as it appeared in English. “Would to God I might (for
there is nothing I do long for more) once see it brought to pass that
the Pope were only the Vicar of Christ and not also the Vicar of the
Emperor, and that this horrible saying may no longer be heard: ‘the
Church fighteth and warreth against the Perugians, the Church fighteth
against the people of Bologna.’ It is not the Church that fights and
wars against Christian men; it is the Pope that does so. The Church
fights against wicked spirits in the regions of the air. Then shall
the Pope be called, and in very deed be, a Holy Father, the Father of
all men, the Father of the Church. Then shall he not raise and stir up
wars and battles among Christian men, but he shall allay and stop the
wars which have been stirred up by others, by his apostolic censure and
papal majesty.”[109]
Evidence of what, above, has been called the probable searching of
men’s minds as to the action of the Popes in temporal matters, may
be seen in a book called a _Dyalogue between a knight and a clerk,
concerning the power spiritual and temporal_.[110] In reply to the
complaint of the clerk that in the evil days in which their lot had
fallen “the statutes and ordinances of bishops of Rome and the decrees
of holy fathers” were disregarded, the knight exposes a layman’s view
of the matter. “Whether they ordain,” he says, “or have ordained in
times past of the temporality, may well be law to you, but not to us.
No man has power to ordain statutes of things over which he has no
lordship, as the king of France may ordain no statute (binding) on the
emperor nor the emperor on the king of England. And just as princes of
this world may ordain no statutes for your spirituality over which they
have no power; no more may you ordain statutes of their temporalities
over which you have neither power nor authority. Therefore, whatever
you ordain about temporal things, over which you have received no power
from God, is vain (and void). And therefore but lately, I laughed well
fast, when I heard that Boniface VIII. had made a new statute that
he himself should be above all secular lords, princes, kings, and
emperors, and above all kingdoms, and make laws about all things: and
that he only needed to write, for all things shall be his when he has
so written: and thus all things will be yours. If he wishes to have my
castle, my town, my field, my money, or any other such thing he needed,
nothing but to will it, and write it, and make a decree, and wot that
it be done, (for) to all such things he has a right.”
The clerk does not, however, at once give up the position. You mean,
he says in substance, that in your opinion the Pope has no power over
your property and goods. “Though we should prove this by our law and
by written decrees, you account them for nought. For you hold that
Peter had no lordship or power over temporals, but by such law written.
But if you will be a true Christian man and of right belief, you will
not deny that Christ is the lord of all things. To Him it is said in
the Psalter book: ‘Ask of me, and I will give you nations for thine
heritage, and all the world about for thy possession’ (Ps. ii.). These
are God’s words, and no one doubts that He can ordain for the whole
earth.”
Nobody denies God’s lordship over the earth, replied the knight, “but
if be proved by Holy Writ that the Pope is lord of all temporalities,
then kings and princes must needs be subject to the Pope in temporals
as in spirituals.” So they are, in effect, answered the clerk. Peter
was made “Christ’s full Vicar,” and as such he can do what his lord
can, “especially when he is Vicar with full power, without any
withdrawing of power, and he thus can direct all Christian nations in
temporal matters.” But, said the knight, “Christ’s life plainly shows
that He made no claim whatever to temporal power. Also in Peter’s
commission He gave him not the keys of the kingdom of the earth, but
the keys of the kingdom of heaven. It is also evident that the bishops
of the Hebrews were subjects of the kings, and kings deposed bishops;
but,” he adds, fearing to go too far, “God forbid that they should
do so now.” Then he goes on to quote St. Paul in the Epistle to the
Hebrews to prove that St. Peter was Christ’s Vicar only in “the godly
kingdom of souls, and that though some temporal things may be managed
by bishops, yet nevertheless it is plain and evident that bishops
should not be occupied in the government of the might and lordship of
the world.” And indeed, he urges, “Christ neither made St. Peter a
knight nor a crowned king, but ordained him a priest and bishop.” If
the contention that “the Pope is the Vicar of God in temporal matter
be correct,” then of necessity you must also grant that “the Pope may
take from you and from us all the goods that you and we have, and give
them all to whichever of his nephews or cousins he wills and give no
reason why: and also that he may take away from princes and kings
principalities and kingdoms, at his own will, and give them where he
likes.”[111]
This statement by the layman of the advanced clerical view is somewhat
bald, and is probably intentionally exaggerated; but that it could
be published even as a caricature of the position taken up by some
ecclesiastics, shows that at this time some went very far indeed
in their claims. It is all the more remarkable that the argument is
seriously put forward in a tract, the author of which is evidently a
Catholic at heart, and one who fully admits the supreme jurisdiction
of the Pope in all matters spiritual. Of course, when the rejection
of Papal jurisdiction became imminent, there were found many who by
sermons and books endeavoured to eradicate the old teaching from
the people’s hearts, and then it was that what was called, “the
pretensions” of the successors of St. Peter in matters temporal were
held up to serve as a convenient means of striking at the spiritual
prerogatives. As a sample, a small book named a _Mustre of scismatyke
bysshops of Rome_ may be taken. It was printed in 1534, and its title
is sufficient to indicate its tone. The author, one John Roberts, rakes
together a good many unsavoury tales about the lives of individual
Popes, and in particular he translates the life of Gregory VII. to
enforce his moral. In his preface he says, “There is a fond, foolish,
fantasy raging in many men’s heads nowadays, and it is this: the Popes,
say they, cannot err. This fantastical blindness was never taught by
any man of literature, but by some peckish pedler or clouting collier:
it is so gross in itself.” And I “warn, advise, beseech, and adjure all
my well-beloved countrymen in England that men do not permit themselves
to be blinded with affection, with hypocrisy, or with superstition.
What have we got from Rome but pulling, polling, picking, robbing,
stealing, oppression, blood-shedding, and tyranny daily exercised upon
us by him and his.”[112]
Again, as another example of how the mind of the people was stirred
up, we may take a few sentences from _A Worke entytled of the olde
God and the new_. This tract is one of the most scurrilous of the
German productions of the period. It was published in English by
Myles Coverdale, and is on the list of books prohibited by the king
in 1534. After a tirade against the Pope, whom he delights in calling
“anti-Christ,” the author declares that the Popes are the cause of many
of the evils from which people were suffering at that time. In old
days, he says, the Bishop of Rome was nothing more “than a pastor or
herdsman,” and adds: “Now he who has been at Rome in the time of Pope
Alexander VI. or of Pope Julius II., he need not read many histories. I
put it to his judgment whether any of the Pagans or of the Turks ever
did lead such a life as did these.”[113]
The same temper of mind appears in the preface of a book called _The
Defence of Peace_, translated into English by William Marshall and
printed in 1535. The work itself was written by Marsilius of Padua
about 1323, but the preface is dated 1522. The whole tone is distinctly
anti-clerical, but the main line of attack is developed from the
side of the temporalities possessed by churchmen. Even churchmen, he
says, look mainly to the increase of their worldly goods. “Riches
give honour, riches give benefices, riches give power and authority,
riches cause men to be regarded and greatly esteemed.” Especially is
the author of the preface severe upon the temporal position which
the Pope claims as inalienably united with his office as head of the
Church. Benedict XII., he says, acted in many places as if he were all
powerful, appointing rulers and officers in cities within the emperor’s
dominions, saying, “that all power and rule and empire was his own, for
as much as whosoever is the successor of Peter on earth is the only
Vicar or deputy of Jesus Christ the King of Heaven.”[114]
In the body of the book itself the same views are expressed. The
authority of the primacy is said to be “not immediately from God, but
by the will and mind of man, just as other offices of a commonwealth
are,” and that the real meaning and extent of the claims put forward by
the Pope can be seen easily. They are temporal, not spiritual. “This
is the meaning of this title among the Bishops of Rome, that as Christ
had the fulness of power and jurisdiction over all kings, princes,
commonwealth, companies, or fellowships, and all singular persons, so
in like manner they who call themselves the Vicars of Christ and Peter,
have also the same fulness of enactive jurisdiction, determined by
no law of man,” and thus it is that “the Bishops of Rome, with their
desire for dominion, have been the cause of discords and wars.”[115]
Lancelot Ridley, in his _Exposition of the Epistle of Jude_, published
in 1538 after the breach with Rome, takes the same line. The Pope has
no right to have “exempted himself” and “other spiritual men from the
obedience to the civil rulers and powers.” Some, indeed, he says, “set
up the usurped power of the Bishop of Rome above kings, princes, and
emperors, and that by the ordinance of God, as if God and His Holy
Scripture did give to the Bishop of Rome a secular power above kings,
princes, and emperors here in this world. It is evident by Scripture
that the Bishop of Rome has no other power but at the pleasure of
princes, than in the ministration of the Word of God in preaching God’s
Word purely and sincerely, to reprove by it evil men, and to do such
things as become a preacher, a bishop, a minister of God’s Word to do.
Other power Scripture does not attribute to the Bishop of Rome, nor
suffer him to use. Scripture wills him to be a bishop, and to do the
office of a bishop, and not to play the prince, the king, the emperor,
the lord, and so forth.”[116] It is important to note in this passage
that the writer was a reformer, and that he was expressing his views
after the jurisdiction of the Holy See had been rejected by the king
and his advisers. The ground of the rejection, according to him--or
at any rate the reason which it was desired to emphasise before the
public--would appear to be the temporal authority which the Popes had
been exercising.
In the same year, 1538, Richard Morysine published a translation of
a letter addressed by John Sturmius, the Lutheran, to the cardinals
appointed by Pope Paul III. to consider what could be done to stem the
evils which threatened the Church. As the work of this Papal commission
was then directly put before the English people, some account of it
is almost necessary. The commission consisted of four cardinals, two
archbishops, one bishop, the abbot of San Giorgio, Venice, and the
master of the Sacred Palace, and its report was supposed to have been
drafted by Cardinal Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV. The document
thanks God who has inspired the Pope “to put forth his hand to support
the ruins of the tottering and almost fallen Church of Christ, and to
raise it again to its pristine height.” As a beginning, the Holy Father
has commanded them to lay bare to him “those most grave abuses, that is
diseases, by which the Church of God, and this Roman curia especially,
is afflicted,” and which has brought about the state of ruin now so
evident. The initial cause of all has been, they declare, that the
Popes have surrounded themselves with people who only told them what
they thought would be pleasant to them, and who had not the honesty
and loyalty to speak the truth. This adulation had deceived the Roman
Pontiffs about many things. “To get the truth to their ears was always
most difficult. Teachers sprung up who were ready to declare that the
Pope was the master of all benefices, and as master might by right sell
them as his own.” As a consequence, it was taught that the Pope could
not be guilty of simony, and that the will of the Pope was the highest
law, and could override all law. “From this source, Holy Father,” they
continue, “as from the Trojan horse, so many abuses and most grievous
diseases have grown up in the Church of God.” Even pagans, they say,
scoff at the state of the Christian Church as it is at present, and
they, the commissioners, beg the Pope not to delay in immediately
taking in hand the correction of the manifest abuses which afflict and
disgrace the Church of Christ. “Begin the cure,” they say, “whence
sprung the disease. Follow the teaching of the Apostle St. Paul: ‘be a
dispenser, not a lord.’”
They then proceed to note the abuses which to them are most apparent,
and to suggest remedies. We are not concerned with these further
than to point out that, as a preliminary, they state that the true
principle of government is, that what is the law must be kept, and that
dispensations should be granted only on the most urgent causes, since
nothing brings government to such bad repute as the continual exercise
of the power of dispensation. Further, they note that it is certainly
not lawful for the Vicar of Christ to make any profit (_lucrum_) by the
dispensations he is obliged to give.
Sturmius, in his preface, says he had hopes of better things, now
that there was a Pope ready to listen. “It is a rare thing, and much
more than man could hope for, that there should come a Bishop of Rome
who would require his prelates upon their oath to open the truth, to
show abuses, and to seek remedies for them.” He is pleased to think
that these four cardinals, Sadolet, Paul Caraffa, Contarini, and
Reginald Pole had allowed fully and frankly that a great portion of
the difficulty had come from the unfortunate attitude of the Popes
in regard to worldly affairs. “You acknowledge,” he says, “that no
lordship is committed to the Bishop of Rome, but rather a certain cure
by which he may rule things in the church according to good order. If
you admit this to be true and will entirely grant us this, a great part
of our (_i.e._ Lutheran) controversy is taken away; granting this also,
that we did not dissent from you without great and just causes.” The
three points the cardinals claimed for the Pope, it may be noted, were:
(1) that he was to be Bishop of Rome; (2) that he was to be universal
Bishop; and (3) that he should be allowed temporal sovereignty over
certain cities in Italy.[117] Again we find the same view put before
the English people in this translation: the chief objection to the
admission of Papal prerogatives was the “lordship” which he claimed
over and above the spiritual powers he exercised as successor of St.
Peter. On this point we find preachers and writers of the period
insisting most clearly and definitely. Some, of course, attack the
spiritual jurisdiction directly, but most commonly such attacks are
flavoured and served up for general consumption by a supply of abuse
of the temporal assumptions and the worldly show of the Popes. This
appealed to the popular mind, and to the growing sense of national aims
and objects, and the real issue of the spiritual headship was obscured
by the plea of national sentiment and safeguards.
To take one more example: Bishop Tunstall, on Palm Sunday, 1539,
preached before the king and court. His object was to defend the
rejection of the Papal supremacy and jurisdiction. He declaimed against
the notion that the Popes were to be considered as free from subjection
to worldly powers, maintaining that in this they were like all other
men. “The Popes,” he says, “exalt their seat above the stars of God,
and ascend above the clouds, and will be like to God Almighty.… The
Bishop of Rome offers his feet to be kissed, shod with his shoes on.
This I saw myself, being present thirty-four years ago, when Julius,
the Bishop of Rome, stood on his feet and one of his chamberlains held
up his skirt because it stood not, as he thought, with his dignity
that he should do it himself, that his shoes might appear, whilst a
nobleman of great age prostrated himself upon the ground and kissed his
shoes.”[118]
To us, to-day, much that was written and spoken at this time will
appear, like many of the above passages, foolish and exaggerated; but
the language served its purpose, and contributed more than anything
else to lower the Popes in the eyes of the people, and to justify
in their minds the overthrow of the ecclesiastical system which had
postulated the Pope as the universal Father of the Christian Church.
Each Sunday, in every parish church throughout the country, they had
been invited in the bidding prayer, as their fathers had been for
generations, to remember their duty of praying for their common Father,
the Pope. When the Pope’s authority was finally rejected by the English
king and his advisers, it was necessary to justify this serious breach
with the past religious practice, and the works of the period prove
beyond doubt that this was done in the popular mind by turning men’s
thoughts to the temporal aspect of the Papacy, and making them think
that it was for the national profit and honour that this foreign yoke
should be cast off. Whilst this is clear, it is also equally clear
in the works of the time that the purely religious aspect of the
question was as far as possible relegated to a secondary place in the
discussions. This was perhaps not unnatural, as the duty of defending
the rejection of the Papal supremacy can hardly have been very tasteful
to those who were forced by the strong arm of the State to justify it
before the people. As late as 1540 we are told by a contemporary writer
that the spirituality under the bishops “favour as much as they dare
the Bishop of Rome’s laws and his ways.”[119]
Even the actual meaning attached to the formal acknowledgment of
the king’s Headship by the clergy was sufficiently ambiguous to
be understood, by some at least, as aimed merely at the temporal
jurisdiction of the Roman curia. It is true it is usually understood
that Convocation by its act, acknowledging Henry as sole supreme Head
of the Church of England, gave him absolute spiritual jurisdiction.
Whatever may have been the intention of the king in requiring the
acknowledgment from the clergy, it seems absolutely certain that the
ruling powers in the Church considered that by their grant there was no
derogation of the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction.
A comparison of the clauses required by Henry with those actually
granted by Convocation makes it evident that any admission that the
crown had any cure of souls, that is, spiritual jurisdiction, was
specifically guarded against. In place of the clause containing the
words, “cure of souls committed to his Majesty,” proposed in the king’s
name to his clergy, they adopted the form, “the nation committed to his
Majesty.” The other royal demands were modified in the same manner,
and it is consequently obvious that all the insertions proposed by the
crown were weighed with the greatest care by skilled ecclesiastical
jurists in some two and thirty sessions, and the changes introduced by
them with the proposals made on behalf of the king throw considerable
light upon the meaning which Convocation intended to give to the
_Supremum Caput_ clause. In one sense, perhaps not the obvious one,
but one that had _de facto_ been recognised during Catholic ages, the
sovereign was the Protector--the _advocatus_--of the Church in his
country, and to him the clergy would look to protect his people from
the introduction of heresy and for maintenance in their temporalities.
So that whilst, on the one hand, the king and Thomas Cromwell may well
have desired the admission of Henry’s authority over “the English
Church, whose Protector and supreme Head he alone is,” to cover even
spiritual jurisdiction, on the other hand, Warham and the English
Bishops evidently did intend it to cover only an admission that the
king had taken all jurisdiction in temporals, hitherto exercised by the
Pope in England, into his own hands.
Moreover, looking at what was demanded and at what was granted by the
clergy, there is little room for doubt that they at first deliberately
eliminated any acknowledgment of the Royal jurisdiction. This deduction
is turned into a certainty by the subsequent action of Archbishop
Warham. He first protested that the admission was not to be twisted in
“derogation of the Roman Pontiff or the Apostolic See,” and the very
last act of his life was the drafting of an elaborate exposition, to
be delivered in the House of Lords, of the impossibility of the king’s
having spiritual jurisdiction, from the very nature of the constitution
of the Christian Church. Such jurisdiction, he claimed, belonged of
right to the Roman See.[120]
That the admission wrung from the clergy in fact formed the thin end of
the wedge which finally severed the English Church from the spiritual
jurisdiction of the Holy See is obvious. But the “thin end” was, there
can be hardly any doubt, the temporal aspect of the authority of the
Roman See; and that its insertion at all was possible may be said in
greater measure to be due to the fact that the exercise of jurisdiction
in temporals by a foreign authority had long been a matter which many
Englishmen had strongly resented.
CHAPTER V
CLERGY AND LAITY
It is very generally asserted that on the eve of the Reformation the
laity in England had no particular love or respect for churchmen. That
there were grave difficulties and disagreements between the two estates
is supposed to be certain. On the face of it, however, the reason and
origin of what is frequently called “the grudge” of laymen against
the ecclesiastics is obviously much misunderstood. Its extent is
exaggerated, its origin put at an earlier date than should be assigned
to it, and the whole meaning of the points at issue interpreted quite
unnecessarily as evidence of a popular and deep-seated disbelief in the
prevailing ecclesiastical system. To understand the temper of people
and priest in those times, it is obviously necessary to examine into
this question in some detail. We are not without abundant material in
the literature of the period for forming a judgment as to the relations
which then existed between the clerical and lay elements in the State.
Fortunately, not only have we assertions on the one side and on the
other as to the questions at issue, but the whole matter was debated at
the time in a series of tracts by two eminent laymen. This discussion
was carried on between an anonymous writer, now recognised as the
lawyer, Christopher Saint-German, and Sir Thomas More himself.
Christopher Saint-German, who is chiefly known as the writer of
a _Dyalogue in English between a Student of Law and a Doctor of
Divinity_, belonged to the Inner Temple, and was, it has already been
said, a lawyer of considerable repute. About the year 1532, a tract
from his pen called _A treatise concerning the division between the
spiritualtie and temporaltie_ appeared anonymously. To this Sir Thomas
More, who had just resigned the office of Chancellor, replied in his
celebrated _Apology_, published in 1533. Saint-German rejoined in
the same year with _A Dyalogue between two Englishmen, whereof one
is called Salem and the other Bizance_, More immediately retorting
with the _Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance_. In these four treatises
the whole matter of the supposed feud between the clergy and laity is
thrashed out, and the points at issue are clearly stated and discussed.
Christopher Saint-German’s position is at first somewhat difficult to
understand. By some of his contemporaries he was considered to have
been tainted by “the new teaching” in doctrinal matters, which at the
time he wrote was making some headway in England. He himself, however,
professes to write as a loyal believer in the teaching of the Church,
but takes exception to certain ecclesiastical laws and customs which
in his opinion are no necessary part of the system at all. In these he
thinks he detects the cause of the “division that had risen between the
spiritualtie and the temporaltie.” Sir Thomas More, it may be remarked,
is always careful to treat the writer as if he believed him to be a
sincere Catholic, though mistaken in both the extent of the existing
disaffection to the Church and altogether impracticable in the remedies
he suggested. In some things it must, however, be confessed, granting
Saint-German’s facts, that he shows weighty grounds for some grievance
against the clergy on the part of the laity.
_The treatise concerning the division_ begins by expressing regret
at the unfortunate state of things which the author pre-supposes as
existing in England when he wrote in 1532, contrasting it with what
he remembered before. “Who may remember the state of this realm now
in these days,” he writes, “without great heaviness and sorrow of
heart? For whereas, in times past, there has reigned charity, meekness,
concord, and peace, there now reigns envy, pride, division, and strife,
and that not only between laymen and churchmen, but also between
religious and religious, and between priests and religious, and what is
more to be lamented also between priests and priests. This division has
been so universal that it has been a great (cause of) disquiet and a
great breach of charity through all the realm.”[121]
It must be confessed that if this passage is to be taken as it stands,
the division would appear to have been very widely spread at the
time. Sir Thomas More, whilst denying that the difficulty was so
great as Saint-German would make out, admits that in late years the
spirit had grown and was still growing apace. He holds, however, that
Saint-German’s reasons for its existence are not the true ones, and
that his methods will only serve to increase the spirit of division.
As regards the quarrels between religious, at which Saint-German
expresses his indignation, he says: “Except this man means here by
religious folk, either women and children with whose variances the
temporality is not very much disturbed, or else the lay brethren, who
are in some places of religion, and who are neither so many nor so much
esteemed, that ever the temporality was much troubled at their strife,
besides this there is no variance between religious and religious
with which the temporality have been offended.”[122] Again: “Of some
particular variance among divers persons of the clergy I have indeed
heard, as sometimes one against another for his tithes, or a parson
against a religious place for meddling with his parish, or one place
of religion with another upon some such like occasions, or sometime
some one religious (order) have had some question and dispute as to
the antiquity or seniority of its institution, as (for instance) the
Carmelites claim to derive their origin from Elias and Eliseus: and
some question has arisen in the Order of Saint Francis between the
Observants and the Conventuals (for of the third company, that is to
say the Colettines, there are none in this realm). But of all these
matters, as far as I have read or remember, there were never in this
realm either so very great or so many such (variances) all at once,
that it was ever at the time remarked through the realm and spoken of
as a great and notable fault of the whole clergy.” Particular faults
and petty quarrels should not be considered the cause of any great
grudge against the clergy at large. “And as it is not in reason that it
should be, so in fact it is not so, as may be understood from this:” …
“if it were the case, then must this grudge of ours against them have
been a very old thing, whereas it is indeed neither so great as this
man maketh out, nor grown to so great (a pass) as it is, but only even
so late as Tyndale’s books and Frith’s and Friar Barnes’ began to go
abroad.”[123]
Further, in several places Sir Thomas More emphatically asserts that
the talking against the clergy, the hostile feeling towards them, and
the dissensions said to exist between them and lay folk generally,
were only of very recent origin, and were at worst not very serious.
“I have, within these four or five years (for before I heard little
talk of such things),” he writes, “been present at such discussions in
divers good companies, never talking in earnest thereof (for as yet
I thank God that I never heard such talk), but as a pass-time and in
the way of familiar talking, I have heard at such times some in hand
with prelates and secular priests and religious persons, and talk of
their lives, and their learning, and of their livelihood too, and as
to whether they were such, that it were better to have them or not to
have them. Then touching their livelihood (it was debated), whether it
might be lawfully taken away from them or no; and if it might, whether
it were expedient for it to be taken, and if so for what use.”[124]
To this Saint-German replies at length in his _Salem and Bizance_, and
says that Sir Thomas More must have known that the difficulties had
their origin long before the rise of the new religious views, and were
not in any sense founded upon the opinions of the modern heretics.[125]
More answers by reasserting his position that “the division is nothing
such as this man makes it, and is grown as great as it is only since
Tyndale’s books and Frith’s and Friar Barnes’ began to be spread
abroad.” And in answer to Saint-German’s suggestion that he should
look a little more closely into the matter, he says: “Indeed, with
better looking thereon I find it somewhat otherwise. For I find the
time of such increase as I speak of much shorter than I assigned, and
that by a great deal. For it has grown greater” by reason of “the book
upon the division,” which Saint-German with the best of intentions had
circulated among the people.[126]
Putting one book against the other, it would appear then tolerably
certain that the rise of the anti-clerical spirit in England must be
dated only just before the dawn of the Reformation, when the popular
mind was being stirred up by the new teachers against the clergy.
There seems, moreover, no reason to doubt the positive declaration
of Sir Thomas More, who had every means of knowing, that the outcry
was modern--so modern indeed that it was practically unknown only
four or five years before 1533, and that it originated undoubtedly
from the dissemination of Lutheran views and teachings by Tyndale and
others. It is useful to examine well into the grounds upon which this
anti-clerical campaign was conducted, and to note the chief causes of
objection to the clergy which are found set forth by Saint-German in
his books. In the first place: “Some say,” he writes, that priests and
religious “keep not the perfection of their order,” and do not set
that good example to the people “they should do.” Some also work for
“their own honour, and call it the honour of God, and rather covet to
have rule over the people than to profit the people.” Others think more
about their “bodily ease and worldly wealth and meat and drink,” and
the like, even more than lay people do. Others, again, serve God “for
worldly motives, to obtain the praise of men, to enrich themselves and
the like, and not from any great love of God.”
Such is the first division of the general accusations which
Saint-German states were popularly made against the clergy in 1532.
Against these may be usefully set Sir Thomas More’s examination of the
charges, and his own opinion as to the state of the clergy. In his
previous works he had, he says, forborne to use words unpleasant either
to the clergy or laity about themselves, though he had “confessed what
is true, namely, that neither were faultless.” But what had offended
“these blessed brethren,” the English followers of Luther, was that “I
have not hesitated to say, what I also take for the very truth, that
as this realm of England has, God be thanked, as good and praiseworthy
a temporality, number for number, as any other Christian country of
equal number has had, so has it had also, number for number, compared
with any other realm of no greater number in Christendom, as good and
as commendable a clergy. In both there have never been wanting plenty
of those who have always been ‘naught’; but their faults have ever been
their own and should not be imputed to the whole body, neither in the
spirituality nor temporality.”[127]
Turning to the special accusation made by Saint-German that
ecclesiastics “do not keep the perfection of their order,” More grants
that this may “not be much untrue.” For “Man’s duty to God is so great
that very few serve Him as they should do.”…“But, I suppose, they keep
it now at this day much after such a good metely manner as they did
in the years before, during which this division was never dreamed of,
and therefore those who say this is the cause have need to go seek
some other.”[128] To the second point his reply is equally clear. It
is true, More thinks, that some ecclesiastics do look perhaps to their
own honour and profit, but, he asks, “were there never any such till so
lately as the beginning of this division, or are all of them like this
now?” No doubt there are some such, and “I pray God that when any new
ones shall come they may prove no worse. For of these, if they wax not
worse before they die, those who shall live after them may, in my mind,
be bold to say that England had not their betters any time these forty
years, and I dare go for a good way beyond this too. But this is more
than twenty years, and ten before this division” (between the clergy
and laity) was heard of.[129] Further, as far as his own opinion goes,
although there may be, and probably are, some priests and religious
whom the world accounts good and virtuous, who are yet at heart
evil-minded, this is no reason to despise or condemn the whole order.
Equally certain is it that besides such there are “many very virtuous,
holy men indeed, whose holiness and prayer have been, I verily believe,
one great special cause that God has so long held His hand from
letting some heavier stroke fall on the necks of those whether in the
spirituality or temporality who are naught and care not.”[130]
In his _Apology_, Sir Thomas More protested against the author of
the work on the _Division_ translating a passage from the Latin of
John Gerson, about the evil lives of priests; and on Saint-German
excusing himself in his second book, More returns to the point in
_The Debellation of Salem and Bizance_. More had pleaded that his
opponent had dragged the faults of the clergy into light rather than
those of the laity, because if the priests led good lives, as St. John
Chrysostom had said, the whole Church would be in a good state; “and
if they were corrupt, the faith and virtue of the people fades also
and vanishes away.” “Surely, good readers,” exclaims More, “I like
these words well.” They are very good, and they prove “the matter right
well, and very true is it, nor did I ever say the contrary, but have
in my _Apology_ plainly said the same: that every fault in a spiritual
man is, by the difference of the person, far worse and more odious
to God and man than if it were in a temporal man.” And indeed the
saying of St. Chrysostom “were in part the very cause that made me
write against his (_i.e._ Saint-German’s) book. For assuredly, as St.
Chrysostom says: ‘If the priesthood be corrupt, the faith and virtue of
the people fades and vanishes away.’ This is without any question very
true, for though St. Chrysostom had never said it, our Saviour says as
much himself. ‘Ye are (saith He to the clergy) the salt of the earth.’
… But, I say, since the priesthood is corrupted it must needs follow
that the faith and virtue of the people fades and vanishes away, and
on Christ’s words it must follow that, if the spirituality be nought,
the temporality must needs be worse than they. I, upon this, conclude
on the other side against this ‘Pacifier’s’ book, that since this
realm has (as God be thanked indeed it has) as good and as faithful a
temporality (though there be a few false brethren in a great multitude
of true Catholic men) as any other Christian country of equal size has,
it must needs, I say, follow that the clergy (though it have some such
false evil brethren too) is not so sorely corrupted as the book of
_Division_ would make people think, but on their side they are as good
as the temporality are on theirs.”[131]
On one special point Saint-German insists very strongly. As it is
a matter upon which much has been said, and upon which people are
inclined to believe the worst about the pre-Reformation clergy, it
may be worth while to give his views at some length, and then take
Sir Thomas More’s opinion also on the subject. It is on the eternal
question of the riches of the Church, and the supposed mercenary spirit
which pervaded the clergy. “Some lay people say,” writes Saint-German,
“that however much religious men have disputed amongst themselves as
to the pre-eminence of their particular state in all such things as
pertain to the maintenance of the worldly honour of the Church and
of spiritual men, which they call the honour of God, and in all such
things as pertain to the increase of the riches of spiritual men,
all, religious or secular, agree as one.” For this reason it is found
that religious men are much more earnest in trying to induce people
to undertake and support such works as produce money for themselves,
such as trentals, chantries, obits, pardons, and pilgrimages, than in
insisting upon the payments of debts, upon restitution for wrong done,
or upon works of mercy “to their neighbours poor and needy--sometimes
in extreme necessity.”[132]
Sir Thomas More replies that those who object in this way, object not
so much because the trentals, &c., tend to make priests rich, but
because they “hate” the things themselves. Indeed, some of these things
are not such that they make priests so very rich, in fact, as to induce
them to use all endeavour to procure them. The chantries, for example,
“though they are many, no one man can make any very great living out of
them; and that a priest should have some living of such a mean thing
as the chantries commonly are, no good man will find great fault.” As
for pilgrimages, “though the shrines are well garnished, and the chapel
well hanged with wax (candles), few men nowadays, I fear, can have much
cause to grudge or complain of the great offerings required from them.
Those men make the most ado who offer nothing at all.” And with regard
to “pardons,” it should be remembered that they were procured often
“by the good faithful devotion of virtuous secular princes, as was the
great pardon purchased for Westminster and the Savoy” by Henry VII.
“And in good faith I never yet perceived,” he says, “that people make
such great offerings at a pardon that we should either much pity their
expense or envy the priests that profit.”
“But then the trentals! Lo, they are the things, as you well know, by
which the multitude of the clergy and specially the prelates, all get
an infinite treasure each year.” For himself, Sir Thomas More hopes and
“beseeches God to keep men devoted to the trentals and obits too.” But
where this “Pacifier” asserts that “some say that all spiritual men
as a body induce people to pilgrimages, pardons, chantries, obits, and
trentals, rather than to the payment of their debts, or to restitution
of their wrongs, or to deeds of mercy to their neighbours that are poor
and needy, and sometimes in extreme necessity, for my part, I thank
God,” he says, “that I never heard yet of any one who ever would give
that counsel, and no more has this ‘Pacifier’ himself, for he says it
only under his common figure of ‘some say.’”[133]
In his second reply, More returns to the same subject. Saint-German
speaks much, he says, about “restitution.” This, should there be
need, no reasonable man would object to. “But now the matter standeth
all in this way: this man talks as if the spirituality were very
busy to procure men and induce people (generally) to give money for
trentals, to found chantries and obits, to obtain pardons and to go on
pilgrimages, leaving their debts unpaid and restitution unmade which
should be done first, and that this was the custom of the spirituality.
In this,” says More, “standeth the question.” The point is not whether
debts and restitution should be satisfied before all other things,
which all will allow, but whether the “multitude of the clergy, that
is to say either all but a few, or at least the most part, solicit
and labour lay people to do these (voluntary) things rather than pay
their debts or make restitution for their wrongs.… That the multitude
of priests do this, I never heard any honest man for very shame say.
For I think it were hard to meet with a priest so wretched, who, were
he asked his advice and counsel on that point, would not in so plain a
matter, though out of very shame, well and plainly counsel the truth,
and if perchance there were found any so shameless as to give contrary
counsel, I am very sure they would be by far the fewer, and not as this
good man’s first book says, the greater part and multitude.” What,
therefore, More blames so much is, that under pretext of an altogether
“untrue report” the clergy generally are held up to obloquy and their
good name slandered.[134] If he thinks that “I do but mock him to my
poor wit, I think it somewhat more civility in some such points as this
to mock him a little merrily, than with odious earnest arguments to
discuss matters seriously with him.”
In some things even Saint-German considers the outcry raised against
the clergy unreasonable. But then, as he truly says, many “work rather
upon will than upon reason,” and though possessed of great and good
zeal are lacking in necessary discretion. Thus some people, seeing the
evils that come to the Church from riches, “have held the opinion that
it was not lawful for the Church to have any possessions.” Others,
“taking a more mean way,” have thought that the Church ought not to
have “that great abundance that” it has, for this induces a love of
riches in churchmen and “hinders, and in a manner strangles, the love
of God.” These last would-be reformers of churchmen advocate taking
away all that is not necessary. Others, again, have gone a step further
still, “and because great riches have come to the Church for praying
for souls in Purgatory, have affirmed that there is no Purgatory.”
In the same way such men would be against pardons, pilgrimages, and
chantries. They outwardly appear “to rise against all these … and to
despise them, and yet in their hearts they know and believe that all
such things are of themselves right good and profitable, as indeed they
are, if they are ordered as they should be.”[135]
Sir Thomas More truly says that what is implied in this outcry against
the riches of the clergy is that as a body they lead idle, luxurious,
if not vicious lives. It is easy enough to talk in this way, but how
many men in secular occupations, he asks, would be willing to change?
There might be “some who would, and gladly would, have become prelates
(for I have heard many laymen who would very willingly have been
bishops), and there might be found enough to match those that are evil
and naughty secular priests, and those too who have run away from the
religious life, and these would, and were able to, match them in their
own ways were they never so bad. Yet, as the world goes now, it would
not be very easy, I ween, to find sufficient to match the good, even
though they be as few as some folk would have them to be.”
In the fifteenth chapter of his book on the _Division_, Saint-German
deals specially with the religious life and with what in his opinion
people think about it, and about those who had given up their liberty
for a life in the cloister. The matter is important, and considerable
extracts are necessary fully to understand the position. “Another
cause” of the dislike of the clergy by the laity is to be sought for
in the “great laxity and liberty of living that people have seen
in religious men. For they say, that though religious men profess
obedience and poverty, yet many of them have and will have their own
will, with plenty of delicate food in such abundance that no obedience
or poverty appears in them. For this reason many have said, and yet
say to the present day, that religious men have the most pleasant and
delicate life that any men have. And truly, if we behold the holiness
and blessed examples of the holy fathers, and of many religious persons
that have lived in times past, and of many that now live in these
days, we should see right great diversity between them. For many of
them, I trow, as great diversity as between heaven and hell.” Then,
after quoting the eighteenth chapter of _The Following of Christ_,
he proceeds: “Thus far goeth the said chapter. But the great pity is
that most men say that at the present day many religious men will
rather follow their own will than the will of their superior, and that
they will neither suffer hunger nor thirst, heat nor cold, nakedness,
weariness nor labour, but will have riches, honour, dignities, friends,
and worldly acquaintances, the attendance of servants at their
commands, pleasure and disports, and that more liberally than temporal
men have. Thus, say some, are they fallen from true religion, whereby
the devotion
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