DIVISIONS AMONGST ECCLESIASTICS.--THE REGULAR AND SECULAR
CLERGY.--THE POPE FAVOURS THE FORMER.--EXEMPTIONS FROM EPISCOPAL
JURISDICTION.--HABITS OF THE FRIARS.
In tracing the progress of corruption in the English church and the
causes of it, we have hitherto had a trustworthy guide in the venerable
Bede; henceforward, to the time of the Normans, there is much in our
history that is dark, intricate, and uncertain.[64] Many early church
records have perished in the fires which on different occasions have
consumed our cathedrals;--such was the fate of the documents in the
cathedral of Canterbury (of all others the most to be desired), which
were burnt together with that primitive structure soon after the Norman
conquest.[65] A similar loss, and probably one much greater in extent,
was sustained through the great fire of London, when St. Paul’s, with
its chapter house and the writings contained in it, fell a prey to the
flames;[66] not to speak of the wholesale destruction or dispersion of
books and papers which accompanied the suppression of the religious
houses, and which left to the fell swoop of the puritans but little to
do in order to extinguish much of the ancient ecclesiastical annals of
England.
However, it was undoubtedly during the interval in question, that a
schism arose in the church, which eventually hastened the crisis
of the Reformation beyond any one thing else, by dividing the house
against itself. The famous Dunstan, who was born in the year 925, was
the man to sow the Dragon’s tooth. As yet the different orders of
ecclesiastics had lived in harmony. There were secular clergy, and
there were regulars; but the latter had not hitherto taken kindly root
in England. The great number of churches existing in this kingdom in
the middle ages[67] (of which many traces yet remain in a name, where
both the building itself and all tradition of it have passed away,)
bespeaks the popularity of the secular clergy, for it is not probable
that these churches were then served from the monasteries; and,
moreover, the lodgement which the seculars effected in the religious
houses, as the latter were from time to time evacuated of their inmates
by the exterminating sword of the Danes, was the effect as well as the
cause of their increasing influence. Accordingly Dunstan found many, if
not all, of the monasteries, as well as the cathedrals, in the hands
of the canons secular, who resided with their families, performing the
daily service, and standing upon much the same footing as such persons
now do in our collegiate churches.[68] The saint, however, was not
satisfied with the state of disorganization and decay to which the
monastic order was reduced--he determined upon its reformation. The
Benedictine rule, now become popular throughout Europe, was chosen
for his experiment, and the monks were set up against the canons and
the clergy. Dunstan was not very scrupulous about the justice of the
means he used to accomplish his end; if he could not find a way he
could make one. He would enjoin the king (Edgar) for instance, as a
penance, to suppress the seculars and introduce the monks into the
churches in their stead. It is in vain that synods are held wherein the
grievances of the ecclesiastics thus violently ejected are propounded;
it is in vain that their sufferings excite the sympathy of the nobles
and the monarch who plead for their restoration. “That be far from
you,--that be far from you,” were the inexorable words which issued
from a crucifix in the council-chamber, for Dunstan had called in
the supernatural to his help. A second effort is made in behalf of
these deprived ministers. Again the saint commits the decision of his
cause to heaven, though less innocently than before. The building
where they met is shaken; the floor, at least that part of it which
was occupied by the adversaries of Dunstan, sinks from under their
feet; and whilst Dunstan and his friends continue to sit in safety,
the rest are destroyed or disabled in the ruin. There is much in both
these adventures to fasten suspicion upon the saint; for Dunstan, like
Cromwell and many more, began his career, in all probability, as a
bold and honest zealot, till height begot high thoughts, and he ended
with being an ambitious and unflinching adventurer. He was, however,
one of the master-spirits of the age. He was, strictly speaking, the
founder of the monastic orders in England. They regarded him, whilst
living, as their fearless champion, and when dead, as their most
powerful intercessor: he gave a triumph to their party which they
never forfeited; and having once by his means taken the lead of the
secular clergy, they kept it to the Reformation. From amongst the
monks of Abingdon, Winchester, and Glastonbury, the three greatest
monasteries in England, and from the last more especially, which
was Dunstan’s own abbey, were for a long while chosen almost all the
abbots, principal ecclesiastical officers, and bishops of England;[69]
such was the influence which this extraordinary man had established
in his generation; and the natural consequence of so great and so
successful an innovation was, a deep-rooted jealousy on the part of
the ancient clergy towards the regulars, who had supplanted them,
and heart-burnings between both parties, which were injurious alike
to religion itself and to the establishment which should have been
its support. Traces of this schism, for such it really was, may be
discovered both in great matters and small. It spread through the whole
church system like a leprosy. The architecture and ornaments of the
churches bespoke it. Many of those grotesque figures which are seen
to this day decorating the spouts of the roof, or the labels of the
windows, were probably meant as a fling at the monks; and satirical
caricatures to the same effect may still occasionally be met with on
the painted glass of our cathedrals. It gives a complexion to our early
literature; and the old chroniclers, being chiefly monks, betray on
their side the same besetting sin, often without intending it, and
sometimes to their own confusion. Thus we are told by one, that as long
as the canons were in possession of the church of Winchester no notice
was taken of the remains of St. Swithin, nor had a single miracle been
wrought at his grave; but that no sooner were the monks in possession,
than they carefully deposited his honoured bones within the cathedral
in a case of silver and gold, and miracles ensued abundantly;--premises
from which the worthy Thomas Rudborne, himself a monk of Winchester,
did not mean that we should infer (what, however, we naturally must)
that the canons were the more honest men of the two. Thus, again, the
biographer of Ulstan, a bishop of Worcester in the eleventh century,
tells us that as the bishop was on a journey to court, to be present at
the Christmas festival, he halted for the night at Merlave, where he
was hospitably entertained; that he informed his attendants he should
on the morrow go to a distant church which he named; that the morning
came, and with it a heavy storm of snow and rain; that his clergy made
objections to such a journey in such weather; that go, however, the
bishop would, even though he should be alone; that they were vexed,
indeed, but held their peace; that one Frewen, a man of more audacity
and address than the others, volunteered to be the good bishop’s guide;
that he acquitted him of his office but scurvily, somewhat as Ariel
might have done, taking him by the hand and leading him by a road which
proved knee-deep in mud and mire, and wherein the bishop lost a shoe;
for it was a plan of the clergy, says William of Malmesbury, who tells
this precious story, to make the bishop repent of his resolution and
be ruled by his chaplains. Ulstan, it is to be remembered, was a monk,
and so was his biographer, and hence this impotent attempt to exalt the
order at the expense of the poor seculars.[70] Such adventures are old
wives’ tales, it is true; but they are not on that account the less
fitted for showing the quarter from which the wind was setting in. On
the other hand, the secular clergy, though on many accounts acting at
a disadvantage, and certainly as a body less literary than the monks,
could occasionally retaliate. We have seen that one of their weapons
of warfare was to decorate their churches with monkish figures in
burlesque; but their means of molestation were not confined to these
inartificial expedients. Langland, for instance, was a secular priest
and a satirical poet, and in his vision of Pierce Plowman he lashes
the regulars (though chiefly a class of them of whom we have not yet
had occasion to speak) without moderation or mercy. Their artifices
to procure endowments for their houses, their love of pleasure,
their luxury, their horses, hawks, and hounds, are all touched in a
spirit sufficiently caustic.[71] It is probable that the nobles in
general took a malicious pleasure in encouraging this exposure of a
class of men who were their rivals in wealth, and their superiors in
intelligence, and thus widened the breach. Chaucer, who was a courtier
as well as a poet, no doubt reflects the feelings of the upper ranks of
his day, and he cleaves to the seculars. Meanwhile, neither of these
ecclesiastical parties seems to have been aware that by their mutual
criminations they were preparing the nation to demand a reformation
in the manners of them all; and that each was throwing stones at the
other, when the houses of both were made of glass.
But their strife was not merely a strife of tongues; it was their
pleasure to thwart one another in deed as well as in word. Whenever the
monks got footing in the cathedrals (which in many instances they very
soon did,) they proved a perpetual thorn in the side of the bishop,
more especially if he happened to have been promoted from the secular
clergy himself. Then they carried themselves towards him in a spirit
of “untamed reluctance.” They would not have this man to reign over
them. The bishops were vexed at thus having to encounter foes in their
own households, and sometimes we find them expressing an angry but
impotent wish, that England was clear of them; and sometimes we find
them by a stretch of power expelling the whole fraternity at once, and
filling up their places with canons who were ever wont to be faithful
and obedient to their diocesan.[72] On one occasion, indeed, this
policy is not only put in practice by a bishop of Winchester, but an
attempt is made by him to induce all the prelates of England to adopt
the same. William the Conqueror (for it was under him that the thing
occurred) was nothing loth to listen to the overture of Walkelin (for
that was the bishop’s name), and to second this violent measure,[73]
probably meaning to lay claim to a lion’s share of the spoil;[74] for
the Norman princes, like some more modern reformers, had the appetite
of the dragon of Wantly--“houses and churches were to them geese and
turkeys;” but archbishop Lanfranc, the first metropolitan under the
Norman dynasty, a good man and a wise, stood in the gap, and saved his
church from the tender mercies of a reform, which, being interpreted,
would have been a robbery. He, again, had been himself a monk, and
probably would on that account view the transgressions of the monks
with more charity, and, perhaps, be personally less exposed to their
malice. And, indeed, if there must needs be this division of seculars
and regulars, it was a happy circumstance for the church, and we will
add for the country (for with all its gross defects it was the fountain
of life and light to the nation in those times), that the dignitaries
were taken from both classes, though chiefly, no doubt, from the
regulars; and that thus they mutually acted as checks upon those
classes, in any momentary ebullitions of party spirit; not to say that
those who were removed from the monastery to the mitre would find their
past prejudices corrected by a new position and new interests, and by
the discovery that men of their own order were not always the most
dutiful of their sons. Thus in the working of the system, there were
some of those selfcorrecting principles and balances brought into play
which in part protected it from itself, and the like to which (though
so often overlooked or undervalued) constitute the real worth of many a
system which wears an unpromising aspect, and which, in spite of those
querulous empirics who assure us that it ought to go intolerably wrong,
persists in going tolerably right notwithstanding. This observation
is thrown out merely to account for the long continuance of a system,
containing within itself such active elements of ruin, as, abstractedly
considered, might have been expected to put an end to it much sooner.
But this is not all. In our _post-mortem_ examination of
the Roman catholic church of England, undertaken with a view to
ascertain the complicated disorders which made a way for its final
dissolution, another feature presents itself akin to the last. William
the Conqueror, who cared as little for the discipline of the church
as for the laws of the land, thought proper to exempt a monastery
which he had founded (that of St. Martin de Bello) from episcopal
jurisdiction altogether. From this moment a mad ambition drove the
monks of the principal religious houses to seek for themselves a
similar privilege. Baldwin, abbot of St. Edmunds (Bury), at that time
one of the finest foundations in England, obtained such exemption from
pope Alexander, although, in the deed which conferred it, and which
was executed before the year 1073, the pope, as if lending himself to
a transaction hitherto unattempted and unheard of, expresses himself
with some reserve--“as far as the thing could be done, _salvâ
primatis obedientiâ_,” consistently with obedience to the primate.
Lanfranc, however, then archbishop, who watched over the interests of
the church (as we have already seen) with a cautious and prophetic
eye, took away this dangerous privilege from the abbot, on his
return to England, and reduced him to submission. But less resolute
men, such as Radulph, William, and Theobald, succeeding him in the
primacy, and the liberties of the church of England having been, in
the mean while, crippled by the machinations of Rome, the monks took
courage, and, feeling their own strength, claimed exemption from the
jurisdiction of archbishops as well as bishops, as a matter of right;
and, producing certain charters of ancient date (so they pretended),
granted to them by popes or princes, carried their suit into the courts
of Rome, and got it confirmed. This dispensation, bad in theory, was
not better in practice. The monks of Malmesbury, for instance, had
lately (about A. D. 1180) elected an abbot. The bishop of
Salisbury interdicts the abbot elect from receiving the benediction at
any other hands than his own; whereupon the latter goes into Wales,
and procures it from the bishop of Landaff (for the Welsh church was
still independent of England); on this the archbishop suspends the
abbot until he can justify his disobedience by producing his letters
of exemption. The abbot presents to the archbishop his charter, which
turns out to be faulty in the style, the thread, and the seal, and
which savours little of the court of Rome. The bishop asserts it to be
spurious, and exhibits many professions of submission on the part of
the abbots of Malmesbury, made to him or his predecessors. The abbot
is contumacious, declares that he holds himself bound to answer to no
superior, whether bishop or archbishop, but to the pope only; and adds,
“poor and miserable is the abbot who does not utterly annihilate the
jurisdiction of a bishop, when, for a single ounce of gold a year, he
may buy full liberty for himself from Rome.” The archbishop, therefore,
entreats the pope not to aid and abet this turbulent person; and, at
the same time, bitterly laments the injury done, not to the bishops
only, but to the whole church, by these papal exemptions--exemptions
which had proved ruinous to the peace, discipline, and good order of
the monasteries themselves which enjoyed them.[75]
Here, therefore, was a rift in the church, which time only widened, and
which unfitted it for sustaining a storm whenever it should come. But
the mischief did not end here. Long before the monks had escaped from
the eye of their bishop, they had relaxed from the Sabine simplicity
of their primitive institutions; now that they were left at liberty to
do what seemed good in their own sight, matters went worse. Giraldus
Cambrensis, a writer of the twelfth century, tells us, that on his
return from abroad (he had been prosecuting his theological studies at
Paris) he dined with the monks of Canterbury. Having eaten of their
bread, he lifts up his heel against them, and maliciously exposes their
bill of fare. It is curious as a picture of the times:--sixteen lordly
dishes and upwards, besides a course of herbs, which latter, however,
were not in much request; fish of divers kinds--roast and boiled,
stewed and fried; omelets, seasoned meats, and sundry provocatives
of the palate, prepared by cunning cooks; wines in ample profusion;
sicera, piment, claret, must, mede, and moretum (mulberry),--any thing
and every thing but ale, the boast of England, and more especially
of Kent. “What would Paul the Hermit have said to all this?” thinks
the splenetic Giraldus to himself, “or St. Anthony? or St. Benedict,
the founder of the order?”[76] Such evidence, however, is to be
received with considerable suspicion. There was for ages before their
suppression, a run at the monks. A strong party spirit discovers
itself in almost all that relates to the church in these middle ages,
much as we are told of the harmony that prevailed in it before the
reformation. The writer just quoted was a Welsh archdeacon, very far
from a good-natured Sir Hugh, who would “persuade a man not to make
a star-chamber matter of it;” on the contrary, he finds nothing as it
should be: he is one of those dissatisfied spirits that delight in
the study of morbid anatomy; neither monks nor bishops please him;
he vexes himself because he cannot make a hundred watches go by his
own, never suspecting that, after all, his own may be wrong; and, in
his memoir of the Rights and Conditions of the Church of South Wales,
he sums up the merits of the Cambrian Clergy with a testy anathema,
something after the manner of Bruce’s benediction of the monks of
Gondar, against the whole body, as traitors to him (though it does not
appear that they had ever trusted him,) and to the liberties of the
church to which they belonged.[77] But, when every allowance is made
for the prejudice of the witnesses of the day, it is clear that by the
thirteenth century, monks were no longer men of St. Benedict, and that
another Dunstan, or a better man, was wanted to revive the monastic
spirit, and to recover for the regulars the credit they had lost.
Accordingly, in this century, the mendicant orders recently brought
into being--the maggots not so much of corrupted texts as of corrupted
times--found their way into England. The Franciscans, or Friars Minors,
the Dominicans, or Black Friars; the Carmelites, or White Friars;
and the Augustins, or Grey Friars; were the four divisions. Of these
the two former were the most considerable; the Franciscans were the
chief of all. The first settlement of these last was at Canterbury, in
1234; that of the Dominicans, thirteen years earlier, at Oxford; at
which place, as well as at Cambridge, all the four orders soon found
themselves in possession of flourishing houses.[78] There was much
to captivate in their prospectus. All worldly views they renounced;
they depended upon the alms of the people; and the people, admiring
their disinterestedness, and reverencing their piety (which was, or
which seemed to be, much beyond that of the monks,) were cheerful
givers. They cultivated learning with great success; filled the
professors’ chairs in the universities; searched out manuscripts, and
multiplied the copies; collected libraries at any cost (for their
popularity furnished them with the means); not a treatise on the arts,
theology or the civil law appeared, but the friars bought it up. They
improved the architecture of their country; for though their vow, like
that of the Rhecabites, scarcely allowed them to sow seed or plant
vineyards, or have any, it did not deny to them the building of houses;
and, accordingly, on these were lavished the ample sums which the
munificence of their benefactors poured into their treasury. It was the
ambition of the great and noble that their bones should rest within
these hallowed walls; and sumptuous shrines bespoke the mighty dead
that slept in the chapel of St. Francis. All this might be well; but
your friar was a sturdy beggar, and prosperity made him forget himself.
He learned to drop the literary and religious character, and assume the
politician. He engaged in diplomacy; mixed in the intrigues of courts;
discussed treaties, formed alliances, and resolutely maintained the
authority of the pope (whose creature he was) against all the princes
and prelates of Christendom. He was furnished by his master with powers
for effecting all this; and these he used to the confusion both of
seculars and monks. He could preach where he would, if he could not
lawfully take possession of the church of the minister, he could erect
his ambulatory pulpit at any cross, in any parish, and rail (as he
generally did) at the supineness and ignorance of the resident pastor.
If he chanced to be received under the parsonage roof (as he seldom
was,) he was felt to be a snake in the grass ready to betray his host
in return for his hospitality; and, if he saw a fowl or a flask on his
table, to denounce him, in his next day’s harangue, as a gluttonous man
and a wine-bibber.[79] He could confess whosoever might come to him. It
was to no purpose that a parish priest refused absolution to any black
sheep of his flock; away he went to a Franciscan, and absolution was
given him at once; the more readily, indeed, as an opportunity was thus
afforded the friar of expressing his contempt of every ecclesiastical
body but his own. Nor did he enter into the labours of the parochial
minister only; he had nobler game in another class of seculars--the
cathedral clergy. These he reduced to poverty, and the venerable
edifices to which they belonged to decay. The cathedrals were erected
and maintained by the proceeds of lands--endowments for the most part
received from kings, as the parish churches were generally endowed by
_lords of manors_; and dioceses, even in this day, would be found,
we suspect, on a careful examination, to have a more than imaginary
reference in their dimensions to the limits of the several Saxon
kingdoms into which the island was divided, as parishes certainly have
a reference to the estates of individuals. They were further supported
by _pentecostals_, which was an annual composition paid by every
household at Pentecost; as an acknowledgement of attachment to the
mother church; and, lastly, by _benefactions_, _oblations_,
and _obits_, the free-will offerings of the multitude. For a long
time these two latter sources of revenue were very considerable. The
people had a pride and pleasure in contributing to the erection, the
repairs, and the maintenance of these beautiful structures, which were
at once the goodly ornaments of the districts in which they stood; the
temples of God, to whose service the pious felt themselves thus giving
back a part of what he had freely conferred on them; and the tombs of
their fathers; for it was the desire of those simple days to be buried
near the grave of some man of God, whose memory was fragrant among
them, and to lay their bones beside his bones. But the friars poisoned
the minds of the people, and shook this allegiance. St. Francis was
above all the saints, not to say above the Saviour himself. To die in
the weeds of a Franciscan, was to die the death of the righteous: and
to repose after death in a Franciscan monastery, was to have angels
for the guardians of your sepulchre. Accordingly, about the fourteenth
century, the pentecostals began to be evaded; recovery was to be made
of them by force of law; and free-will offerings to the cathedrals
ceased altogether. The number of residentiaries was consequently
reduced (a measure of necessity, which involved much subsequent
inconvenience and legal dispute,) and the buildings themselves were
with difficulty preserved from the injuries of time.[80] Neither
did the schism end here. Before, however, we go further, it may due
to ourselves to remark, that it is not because an historian of the
reformation, protestant though he be, finds pleasure in thus uncovering
the nakedness of the Roman catholic church, that he dwells so
exclusively on its peccant parts, nor yet because he is not aware that
better things may be said of it; but simply because his subject leads
him to develope those defects, both in its doctrine and discipline
which paved the way for its eventual overthrow, not to recount the
virtues which, in spite of such defects, preserved it so long. At the
same time, he naturally feels some satisfaction in vindicating his own
church from a comparison by which it is thought to suffer, and which
represents it as full of discord and division, whilst the church which
it supplanted was at unity with itself. Such was not, we see, the
case. Time has, indeed, hushed all report of the bickerings of men who
lived three or four centuries ago, and it may be invidious to awake
the echo; but tenderness to the dead must not betray us into injustice
to the living, and however error may be concealed, it must not be
consecrated by the grave. But to return: hitherto we have represented
the friars as the enemies of the secular clergy only, whether cathedral
or parochial. They had their stone, however, to cast at the monks.
It was their pleasure to contrast their own affected poverty (which
lasted just so long as they could not help it) with the gallant
bearing, profuse expenditure, and ample retinues of these latter,
who, in their turn, expressed their contempt for them, not the less
cordially, perhaps from a consciousness that the contrast was striking.
In a manuscript which once belonged to a learned Benedictine, and is
now in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a drawing
of four devils hugging four mendicant friars, one of each order, with
great familiarity and affection.[81] But other weapons, offensive and
defensive, were used besides ridicule. Thus the greater monasteries
would occasionally rouse themselves, and found a small college or
hall at the universities for their own novices, that they might not
resign to their antagonists, without a struggle, the entire possession
of those ancient seats of learning. So, again, when their members
proceeded to degrees, they would often do it with studious costs and
popular display, turning the occasion into a holiday spectacle, which
might be set in balance against the miracles, mysteries, and other
theatrical attractions of the mendicants.[82] These latter, however,
might have long laughed at such artifices, had they continued true
to one another; but the arrow which pierced them to the heart was
feathered from their own wing. Their principles, like those of modern
dissenters, propagated schism; they split amongst themselves; and
the four orders tore the coat, which should be without seam, into as
many parts. Mutual abuse, instead of cordial co-operation, was their
maxim. The poor ploughman who sought instruction in his creed at the
hands of the Friars Minors, was only told, as he valued his soul, to
beware of the Carmelites; the Carmelites promoted his edification by
denouncing the Dominican; the Dominicans in their turn by condemning
the Augustins. “Be true to us,” was the language of each; “give us
your money, and you shall be saved without a creed.”[83] Indeed, the
frailty of human nature soon found out the weak places of the mendicant
system. Soon had the primitive zeal of its founders burnt itself
out; and then its censer was no longer lighted with fire from the
altar:--a living was to be made. The vows of voluntary poverty only
led to jesuitical expedients for evading it; a straining at gnats and
swallowing of camels. The populace were to be alarmed, or caressed, or
cajoled out of a subsistence. A death bed was a friar’s harvest; then
were suggested the foundation of chantries, and the provision of masses
and wax-lights. The confessional was his exchequer; there hints were
dropped that the convent needed a new window, or that it owed “fortie
pound for stones.” Was the good man of the house refractory? The friar
had the art of leading the women captive, and reaching the family purse
by means of the wife.[84] Was the piety of the public to be stimulated?
Rival relics were set up, and impostures of all kinds multiplied
without shame, to the impoverishment of the people, the disgrace of the
church, and the scandal of Christianity.
It is revolting to bear record of these villanies--to see sordid
advantage taken of the most sacred feelings of mankind, and religion
itself subjected to suspicion through the hypocrisy of its professors.
But, however humiliating may be the confession, experience has
sanctioned it as a truth, that an indigent church makes a corrupt
clergy; that in order to secure a priesthood which shall wear well, a
permanent provision must be set aside for their maintenance--such a
provision as shall induce men duly qualified, to enter the church, for
it is visionary to suppose that temporal motives will not have their
weight in this temporal state of things; and it is unreasonable to
expect that persons who are excluded by the rules of society from the
usual inlets to wealth, the courts, the camp, or the exchange, and who
cannot but know or feel, when they are honestly doing their duty, that
they are as good commonwealth’s men, to put it upon no higher ground,
as any others, and therefore have as good a right to its liberal
regards as any others, should be content to waive this right;--such
a provision as shall be enough to ensure recruits for the priesthood
from all ranks, the highest as well as those below, and so to ensure
their easy intercourse with all ranks; for the leaven should leaven the
_whole_ lump;--such a provision as should encourage them to speak
with all boldness, crouching to no man for their morsel of bread, nor
tempted to lick the hand that feeds them;--such a provision as should
prevent the meanness of their condition from prejudicing the force of
their reasons, or give occasion to a high-minded hearer to accuse their
plain speech of unmannerly presumption. Surely, until we can find such
a church upon earth, in all her members, and in all the successive
generations of her members, as can be true to the image of our Lord,
it is a vision indeed to reject all adventitious support, such as her
condition may require, and to say with the great puritan poet, that
she should be content, as he was, to ride upon an ass.”[85]
It is needless to add, that the friars at length became as rottenness
to the bones of the Roman catholic church; that, by the time of Erasmus
and Luther, they were the butt at which every dissolute idler, on
every tavern bench, discharged his shaft, hitting the establishment,
and religion itself, through their sides; that they were exhibited in
pot-house pictures as foxes preaching, with the neck of a stolen goose
peeping out of the hood behind; as wolves giving absolutions, with
a sheep muffled up in their cloaks; as apes sitting by a sick man’s
bed, with a crucifix in one hand, and with the other in the sufferer’s
fob.[86] Still the disaffection which this ridicule both indicated
and promoted, was in some degree neutralised. There was, something,
after all, in the constitution of such an order as the friars, which
gratified the feelings of the people, and which led to their continued
toleration, if not to their aggrandisement. They were, for the most
part, men of themselves; they were the democratic portion of the
church. It no doubt flattered the vanity of the peasant or mechanic,
to see his own flesh and blood bearding the first-born of Egypt with
whom he was brought into contact, or rather collision, in the members
of the old and orthodox abbeys; nor would it be less grateful perhaps,
to an unlettered man to hear the _clerk_ of his own name, and
of his own breeding, starting and maintaining with vast pertinacity
theological subtleties, which had little other merit, to be sure, than
that of being in opposition to received opinions, and an assertion of
the right of every man to think for himself, however ill he might be
qualified for doing so to advantage.
Then, again the pope was a tower of strength to the mendicant orders.
They were the men of his right hand; and it may be observed, that when
the Reformation came on, which was, amidst other and nobler interests
concerned, a struggle in the first instance between the king and the
pope for the mastery, the smaller monasteries (which were those of the
friars) were the first confiscated by Henry; for he considered them the
barracks from which his most inveterate enemies issued to the contest,
prepared to maintain the cause of their sovereign lord the pope against
any and every antagonist. Lastly, it is not to be forgotten, that the
cloak of the friar was the refuge for a class of men who would now be
supported by parish relief, and though in both cases the idle might
often be enabled hereby to enter into the labours of others, yet often
again assistance would be thus administered to the blameless sufferer,
and the load of life on the whole be lightened to the poor.
Such were some of the circumstances that still upheld the mendicants
even in the days of their degeneracy, when the spirit was gone that
had urged them indeed to enthusiastic extravagances and puerile
superstitions, but which was respected because it was thought to be
sincere; and when little remained behind but a _caput mortuum_ of
unmeaning forms of devotion, and crafty contrivances for gain.