The Cloister
BROTHER CLEMENT had taught and preached in Basle more than a
twelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with a
triumphant glance in his eye.
"Give the glory to God, brother Clement; thou canst now wend to England
with me."
"I am ready, brother Jerome: and, expecting thee these many months, have
in the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tongue
somewhat closely."
"'Twas well thought of," said Jerome. He then told him he had but
delayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope to
collect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confession in
all the secular monasteries. "So now gird up thy loins and let us go
forth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans."
The two friars went preaching down the Rhine, for England. In the larger
places they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and took
different sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Both
were able orators, but in different styles.
Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religious
topics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's,
though in truth not so compared with most preachers.
Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In its
general flow tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason and
the heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at times
Clement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him.
Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we have read of inspired
prophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens,
incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiæ fluctibus
cuncta proruebat et porturbabat.
I would give liberal specimens, but for five objections: it is
difficult; time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitator
has since done it better; and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice in
books.
But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try and
learn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was to
preach in.
But Jerome the unbending scorned to go out of his way for any people's
vices. At one great town some leagues from the Rhine, they mounted the
same pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, a
favourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the people
listened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.
Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacred
from preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infected
with it, and popular prejudice protected it. Clement dealt it merciless
blows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it was
the nursing-mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. He
reminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in their
town by an honest man in liquor, and also how a band of drunkards had
roasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. "Your
last prince," said he, "is reported to have died of apoplexy, but well
you know he died of drink: and of your aldermen one perished miserably
last month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs go
bare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you the worst
of beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drive your families
to need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, and your very
nation would sink to the bottom of mankind did your women drink as you
do. And how long will they be temperate, and, contrary to nature, resist
the example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'er yet stood still.
Ye must amend yourselves or see them come down to your mark. Already in
Bohemia they drink along with the men. How shows a drunken woman? Would
you love to see your wives drunken, your mothers drunken?" At this there
was a shout of horror, for mediæval audiences had not learned to sit
mumchance at a moving sermon. "Ah, that comes home to you," cried the
friar. "What? madmen! think you it doth not more shock the all pure God
to see a man, his noblest work, turned to a drunken beast, than it can
shock you creatures of sin and unreason to see a woman turned into a
thing no better nor worse than yourselves?"
He ended with two pictures; a drunkard's house and family, and a sober
man's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wives
fell to "ohing" and "ahing," and "Eh, but that is a true word."
This discourse caused quite an uproar. The hearers formed knots: the men
were indignant; so the women flattered them, and took their part openly
against the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop: he needed it,
working for all the family. And for their part they did not care to
change their men for milksops.
The double faces! That very evening a band of men caught near a hundred
of them round brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, and
offering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, and
blessing him "for taking in hand to mend their sots."
Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.
"Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should be
preached against it."
As they went on he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sank
into his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, and
sometimes even amend their ways. "He hath the art of sinking to their
peg," thought Jerome. "Yet he can soar high enough at times."
Upon the whole, it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiority
to his tenderer brother. And, after about two hundred miles of it, it
got to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check this
sentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he,
"and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Church
open for God to pass in. And, certes, this novice hath the key to these
northern souls, being himself a northern man."
And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few miles
on the stream: but in general walking by the banks preaching, and
teaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and they
reached the town of Dusseldorf.
There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up the
Rhine. The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was "The
Silver Lion." Nothing had changed but he, who walked through it
barefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast, and
his eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and holy
Church.