SECULAR CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
[Illustration: Gog and Magog, the Giants in the Guildhall of London.]
If we turn from the sacred to the secular, we find the ornamentation not
less barbarous. Many readers have seen the two giants that stand in the
Guildhall of London, where they, or ugly images like them, have stood
from time immemorial. A little book sold near by used to inform a
credulous public that Gog and Magog were two gigantic brothers taken
prisoners in Cornwall fighting against the Trojan invaders, who brought
them in triumph to the site of London, where their chief chained them to
the gate of his palace as porters. But, unfortunately for this romantic
tale, Mr. Fairholt, in his work upon the giants,[5] makes it known that
many other towns and cities of Europe cherish from a remote antiquity
similar images. He gives pictures of the Salisbury giant, the huge
helmeted giant in Antwerp, the family of giants at Douai, the giant and
giantess of Ath, the giants of Brussels, as well as of the mighty dragon
of Norwich, with practicable iron jaw.
[Footnote 5: "Gog and Magog: the Giants in Guildhall," by F. W.
Fairholt, F.S.A., London, 1859.]
[Illustration: Head of the Great Dragon of Norwich.]
We may therefore discard learned theories and sage conjectures
concerning Gog and Magog, and attribute them to the poverty of invention
and the barbarity of taste which prevailed in the ages of faith.
[Illustration: Souls Weighed in the Balance. (Bas-relief of the Autun
Cathedral.)]
One of the subjects most frequently chosen for caricature during this
period was that cunning and audacious enemy of God and man, the devil--a
composite being, made up of the Satan who tested Job, the devil who
tempted Jesus, and the Egyptian Osiris who weighed souls in the balance,
and claimed as his own those found wanting. The theory of the universe
then generally accepted was that the world was merely a field of strife
between God and this malignant spirit; on the side of God were ranged
archangels, angels, the countless host of celestial beings, and all the
saints on earth and in heaven, while on the devil's side were a vast
army of fallen spirits and all the depraved portion of the human race.
The simple souls of that period did not accept this explanation in an
allegorical sense, but as the most literal statement of facts familiarly
known, concerning which no one in Christendom had any doubt whatever.
The devil was as composite in his external form as he was in his
traditional character. All the mythologies appear to have contributed
something to his make-up, until he had acquired many of the most
repulsive features and members of which animated nature gives the
suggestion. He was hairy, hoofed, and horned; he had a forked tail; he
had a countenance which expressed the fox's cunning, the serpent's
malice, the pig's appetite, the monkey's grin. As to his body, it varied
according to the design of the artist, but it usually resembled
creatures base or loathsome.
[Illustration: Struggle for the Possession of a Soul between Angel and
Devil. (From a Psalter, 1300.)]
In one picture there is a very rude but curious representation of the
weighing of souls, superintended by the devil and an archangel. The
devil, in the form of a hog, has won a prize in the soul of a wicked
woman, which he is carrying off in a highly disrespectful manner, while
casting a backward glance to see that he has fair play in the next
weighing. This was an exceedingly favorite subject with the artists of
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. They delighted to picture the
devil, in their crude uncompromising way, as an insatiate miser of
human souls, eager to seize them, demanding a thousand, a million, a
billion, _all_; and when one appeared in the scales so void of guilt
that the good angel must needs possess it, he may be seen slyly putting
a finger upon the opposite scale to weigh it down, and this sometimes in
spite of the angel's remonstrance. In one picture, described by M.
Merimee in his "Voyage en Auvergne," the devil plays this trick at a
moment when the archangel Michael has turned to look another way.
[Illustration: Lost Souls cast into Hell. (From Queen Mary's Psalter.)]
It is a strange circumstance that in a large number of these
representations the devil is exhibited triumphant, and in others the
victory is at least doubtful. In a splendid psalter preserved in the
British Museum there is a large picture (an engraving of which is given
on the preceding page) of a soul climbing an extremely steep and high
mountain, on the summit of which a winged archangel stands with
outstretched arms to receive him. The soul has nearly reached the top;
another step will bring him within the archangel's reach; but behind him
is the devil with a long three-pronged clawing instrument, which he is
about to thrust into the hair of the ascending saint; and no man can
tell which is to finally have that soul, the angel or the devil. M.
Champfleury describes a capital in a French church which represents one
of the minions of the devil carrying a lizard, symbol of evil, which he
is about to add to the scale containing the sins; and the spectator is
left to infer that fraud of this kind is likely to be successful, for
underneath is written, "_Ecce Diabolus!_" It is as if the artist had
said, "Such is the devil, and this is one of his modes of entrapping his
natural prey of human souls!" From a large number of similar pictures
the inference is fair that, let a man lead a spotless life from the
cradle to the grave, the devil, by a mere trick, may get his soul at
last. Some of the artists might be suspected of sympathizing with the
devil in his triumphs over the weakness of man. Observe, for example,
the comic exuberance of the above picture, in which devils are seen
tumbling their immortal booty into the jaws of perdition.
It is difficult to look at this picture without feeling that the artist
must have been alive to the humors of the situation. It is, however, the
opinion of students of these quaint relics that the authors of such
designs honestly intended to excite horror, not hilarity. Queen Mary
probably saw in this picture, as she turned the page of her sumptuous
psalter, an argument to inflame her bloody zeal for the ancient faith.
In the writings of some of the early fathers we observe the same
appearance of joyous exultation at the sufferings of the lost, if not a
sense of the comic absurdity of their doom. Readers may remember the
passage from Tertullian (A.D. 200) quoted so effectively by Gibbon:
"You are fond of all spectacles," exclaims this truly ferocious
Christian; "expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal
judgment of the universe. How shall I rejoice, how laugh, how exult,
when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the
lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of
the Lord liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against
Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with
their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the
tribunal; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own
sufferings; so many dancers--"
[Illustration: Devils seizing their Prey. (Bas-relief on the Portal of a
Church at Troyes.)]
This is assuredly not the utterance of compassion, but rather of the
fierce delight of an unregenerate Roman, when at the amphitheatre he
doomed a rival's defeated gladiator to death by pointing downward with
his thumb. In a similar spirit such pictures were conceived as the one
given above.
The sculptor, it is apparent, is "with" the adversary of mankind in the
present case. Kings and bishops carried things with a high hand during
their mortal career, but the devils have them at last with a rope round
their necks, crown and mitre notwithstanding!
The devil was not always victor. There was One whom neither his low
cunning nor his bland address nor his blunt audacity could beguile--the
Son of God, his predestined conqueror. The passages in the Gospels which
relate the attempts made by Satan to tempt the Lord furnished congenial
subjects to the illuminators of the Middle Ages, and they treated those
subjects with their usual enormous crudity. In one very ancient Saxon
psalter, in manuscript, preserved at the British Museum, there is a
colossal Christ, with one foot upon a devil, the other foot about to
fall upon a second devil, and with his hands delivering from the open
mouth of a third devil human souls, who hold up to him their hands
clasped as in prayer. In this picture the sympathies of the artist are
evidently not on the side of the evil spirits. Their malevolence is
apparent, and their attitude is ignominious. The rescued souls are,
indeed, a pigmy crew, of woe-begone aspect; but their resistless
Deliverer towers aloft in such imposing altitude that the tallest of the
saints hardly reaches above his knees. In another picture of very early
date, the Lord upon a high place is rescuing a soul from three scoffing
devils, who are endeavoring to pull him down to perdition by cords
twisted round his legs. _This_ soul we are permitted to consider safe;
but below, in a corner of the spacious drawing, a winged archangel is
spearing a lost soul into the flames of hell, using the spear in the
manner of a farmer handling a pitchfork.
[Illustration: The Temptation.]
These ancient attempts to exhibit the endless conflict between good and
evil are too rude even to be interesting. The specimen annexed, of later
date, about 1475, occurs in a Poor People's Bible (_Biblia Pauperum_),
block-printed, in which it forms part of an extensive frontispiece. The
book was once the property of George III., at the sale of whose personal
effects it was bought for the British Museum, where it now is. It has
the additional interest of being one of the oldest specimens of
wood-engraving yet discovered.
The mountain in the background, adorned by a single tree, is the height
to which the Lord was taken by the tempter, and from which the devil
urged him to cast himself down.
A very frequent object of caricature during the ages when terror ruled
the minds of men was human life itself--its brevity, its uncertainty,
and the absurd, ill-timed suddenness with which inexorable death
sometimes cuts it short. Herodotus records that at the banquets of the
Egyptians it was customary for a person to carry about the table the
figure of a corpse lying upon a coffin, and to cry out, "Behold this
image of what yourselves shall be; therefore eat, drink, and be merry."
There are traces of a similar custom in the records of other ancient
nations, among whom it was regarded as a self-evident truth that the
shortness of life was a reason for making the most of it while it
lasted. And their notion of making the most of it was to get from it the
greatest amount of pleasure. This vulgar scheme of existence vanished at
the promulgation of the doctrine that the condition of every soul was
fixed unalterably at the moment of its severance from the body, or, at
best, after a short period of purgation, and that the only way to avoid
unending anguish was to do what the Church commanded and to avoid what
the Church forbade. Terror from that time ruled Christendom. Terror
covered the earth with ecclesiastical structures, gave the Church a
tenth of all revenues and two-fifths of all property. By every possible
device death was clothed with new and vivid terrors, and in every
possible way the truth was brought home to the mind that the coming of
death could be as unexpected as it was inevitable and unwelcome. The
tolling of the church-bell spread the gloom of the death-chamber over
the whole town; and the death-crier, with bell and lantern, wearing a
garment made terrible by a skull and cross-bones, went his rounds, by
day or night, crying to all good people to pray for the soul just
departed.[6]
[Footnote 6: "Essai sur les Dances des Morts," vol. i., p. 151, par E.
H. Langlois, Paris, 1852.]
[Illustration: French Death-crier--"Pray for the Soul just departed."]
These criers did not cease to perambulate the streets of Paris until
about the year 1690, and M. Langlois informs us that in remote provinces
of France their doleful cry was heard as recently as 1850.
Blessed gift of humor! Against the most complicated and effective
apparatus of terror ever contrived, worked by the most powerful
organization that ever existed, the sense of the ludicrous asserted
itself, and saved the human mind from being crushed down into abject and
hopeless idiocy. The readers of "Don Quixote" can not have forgotten the
colloquy in the highway between the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance
and the head of the company of strollers.
"'Sir,' replied the Devil, politely, stopping his cart, 'we are the
actors of the company of the Evil Spirit. This morning, which is the
octave of Corpus Christi, we have represented the play of the Empire of
Death. This young man played Death, and this one an Angel. This woman,
who is the wife of the author of the comedy, is the Queen. Over there is
one who played the part of an Emperor, and the other man that of a
Soldier. As to myself, I am the Devil, at your service, and one of the
principal actors.'"
[Illustration: Death and the Cripple.]
For centuries the comedy of Death was a standard play at high festivals,
the main interest being the rude, sudden interruption of human lives and
joys and schemes by the grim messenger. Art adopted the theme, and the
Dance of Death began to figure among the decorations of ecclesiastical
structures and on the vellum of illuminated prayer-books. No sculptor
but executed his Dance of Death; no painter but tried his skill upon it;
and by whomsoever the subject was treated, the element of humor was
seldom wanting.
So numerous are the pictures and series of pictures usually styled
Dances of Death, that a descriptive catalogue of them would fill the
space assigned to this chapter; and the literature to which they have
given rise forms an important class of the works relating to the Middle
Ages. Two phases of the subject were especially attractive to artists.
One was the impartiality of Death, noted by Horace in the familiar
passage; and the other the incongruity between the summons to depart and
the condition of the person summoned. When these two aspects of the
subject had become hackneyed, artists pleased themselves sometimes with
a treatment precisely the opposite, and represented Death dancing gayly
away with the most battered, ancient, and forlorn of human kind, who had
least reason to love life, but did not the less shrink from the
skeleton's icy touch. Every one feels the comic absurdity of gay and
sprightly Death hurrying off to the tomb a cripple as dilapidated as the
one in the picture above. In another engraving we see Death, with
exaggerated courtesy, handing to an open tomb an extremely old man just
able to totter.
[Illustration: Death and the Old Man.]
Another subject in the same series is Death dragging at the garment of a
peddler, who is so heavily laden as he trudges along the highway that
one would imagine even the rest of the grave welcome. But the peddler,
too, makes a very wry face when he recognizes who it is that has
interrupted his weary tramp. The triumphant gayety of Death in this
picture is in humorous contrast with the lugubrious expression on the
countenance of his victim.
[Illustration: Death and the Peddler.]
[Illustration: Death and the Knight.]
In other series we have Death dressed as a beau seizing a young maiden,
Death taking from a house-maid her broom, Death laying hold of a
washer-woman, Death taking apples from an apple-stand, Death beckoning
away a bar-maid, Death summoning a female mourner at a funeral, and
Death plundering a tinker's basket. Death, standing in a grave, pulls
the grave-digger in by the leg; seated on a plow, he seizes the farmer;
with an ale-pot at his back, he throttles an inn-keeper who is
adulterating his liquors; he strikes with a bone the irksome chain of
matrimony, and thus sets free a couple bound by it; he mows down a
philosopher holding a clock; upon a miser who has thrust his body deep
down into a massive chest he shuts the heavy lid; he shows himself in
the mirror in which a young beauty is looking; to a philosopher seated
in his study he enters and presents an hour-glass. A pope on his throne
is crowning an emperor kneeling at his feet, with princes, cardinals,
and bishops in attendance, when a Death appears at his side, and another
in his retinue dressed as a cardinal. Death lays his hand upon an
emperor's crown at the moment when he is doing justice to a poor man
against a rich; but in another picture of the same series, Death seizes
a duke while he is disdainfully turning from a poor woman with her child
who has asked alms of him. The dignitaries of the Church were not
spared. Fat abbots, gorgeous cardinals, and vehement preachers all
figure in these series in circumstances of honor and of dishonor. In
most of them the person summoned yields to King Death without a
struggle; but in one a knight makes a furious resistance, laying about
him with a broadsword most energetically. It is of no avail. Death runs
him through the body with his own lance, though in the other picture the
weapon in Death's hand was only a long thigh-bone.
Mr. Longfellow, in his "Golden Legend," has availed himself of the Dance
of Death painted on the walls of the covered bridge at Lucerne to give
naturalness and charm to the conversation of Elsie and Prince Henry
while they are crossing the river. The strange pictures excite the
curiosity of Elsie, and the Prince explains them to her as they walk:
"_Elsie._ What is this picture?
"_Prince._ It is a young man singing to a nun,
Who kneels at her devotions, but in kneeling
Turns round to look at him; and Death meanwhile
Is putting out the candles on the altar!
"_Elsie._ Ah, what a pity 'tis that she should listen
Unto such songs, when in her orisons
She might have heard in heaven the angels singing!
"_Prince._ Here he has stolen a jester's cap and bells,
And dances with the queen.
"_Elsie._ A foolish jest!
"_Prince._ And here the heart of the new-wedded wife,
Coming from church with her beloved lord,
He startles with the rattle of his drum.
"_Elsie._ Ah, that is sad! And yet perhaps 'tis best
That she should die with all the sunshine on her
And all the benedictions of the morning,
Before this affluence of golden light
Shall fade into a cold and clouded gray,
Then into darkness!
"_Prince._ Under it is written,
'Nothing but death shall separate thee and me!'
"_Elsie._ And what is this that follows close upon it?
"_Prince._ Death playing on a dulcimer."
And so the lovers converse on the bridge, all covered from end to end
with these caricatures of human existence, until the girl hurries with
affright from what she calls "this great picture-gallery of death."
Tournaments were among the usual subjects of caricature during the
century or two preceding the Reformation. Some specimens have already
been given from the illuminated prayer-books (pp. 44, 46). The device,
however, seldom rises above the ancient one of investing animals with
the gifts and qualities of men. Monkeys mounted upon the backs of dogs
tilt at one another with long lances, or monsters utterly nondescript
charge upon other monsters more ridiculous than themselves.
All the ordinary foibles of human nature received attention. These never
change. There are always gluttons, misers, and spendthrifts. There are
always weak men and vain women. There are always husbands whose wives
deceive and worry them, as there are always wives whom husbands worry
and deceive; and the artists of the Middle Ages, in their own direct
rude fashion, turned both into caricature. The mere list of subjects
treated in Brandt's "Ship of Fools," written when Luther was a
school-boy, shows us that men were men and women were women in 1490.
That quaint reformer of manners dealt mild rebuke to men who gathered
great store of books and put them to no good use; to women who were ever
changing the fashion of their dress; to men who began to build without
counting the cost; to "great borrowers and slack payers;" to fools "who
will serve two lords both together;" to them who correct others while
themselves are "culpable in the same fault;" to "fools who can not keep
secret their own counsel;" to people who believe in "predestinacyon;" to
men who attend closely to other people's business, leaving their own
undone; to "old folks that give example of vice to youth;" and so on
through the long catalogue of human follies. His homely and wise ditties
are illustrated by pictures of curious simplicity. Observe the one
subjoined, in which "a foule" is weighing the transitory things of this
world against things everlasting, one being represented by a scale full
of castles and towers, and the other by a scale full of stars--the
earthly castles outweighing the heavenly bodies in the balance of this
"foule."
[Illustration: Heaven and Earth weighed in the Balance. (From "The Ship
of Fools.")]
One of the quaint poems of the gentle priest descants upon the bad
behavior of people at church. This poem has an historical interest, for
it throws light upon the manners of the time, over which poetry,
tradition, and romance have thrown a very delusive charm. We learn from
it that while the Christian people of Europe were on their knees praying
in church they were liable to be disturbed by the "mad noise and shout"
of a loitering crowd; by knights coming in from the field, falcon upon
wrist, with their dogs yelping at their heels; by men chaffering and
bargaining as they walked up and down; by the wanton laughter of girls
ogled by young men; by lawyers conferring with clients; and by all the
usual noises of a crowd at a fair. The author wonders
"That the false paynyms within theyr Temples be
To theyr ydols moche more devout than we."
The worthy Brandt was not the only satirist of Church manners. The
"Usurer's Paternoster," given by M. Champfleury, is more incisive than
Brandt's amiable remonstrance. The usurer, hurrying away to church,
tells his wife that if any one comes to borrow money while he is gone,
some one must be sent in all haste for him. On his way he says his
paternoster thus:
"_Our Father._ Blessed Lord God [Beau Sire Dieu], be favorable to me,
and give me grace to prosper exceedingly. Let me become the richest
money-lender in the world. _Who art in heaven._ I am sorry I wasn't at
home the day that woman came to borrow. Really I am a fool to go to
church, where I can gain nothing. _Hallowed be thy name._ It's too bad I
have a servant so expert in pilfering my money. _Thy kingdom come._ I
have a mind to go home to see what my wife is about. I'll bet she sells
a chicken while I am away, and keeps the money. _Thy will be done._ It
pops into my mind that the chevalier who owed me fifty francs paid me
only half. _In heaven._ Those damned Jews do a rushing business in
lending to every one. I should like very much to do as they do. _As on
earth._ The king plagues me to death in raising taxes so often."
Arrived at church, the money-lender goes through part of the service as
best he may; but as soon as sermon time comes, off he goes, saying to
himself, "I must get away home: the priest is going to preach a sermon
to draw money out of our purses." Doubtless the priest in those times of
ignorance had to deal with many most profane and unspiritual people, who
could only be restrained by fear, and to whose "puerility" much had to
be conceded. In touching upon the Church manners of the Middle Ages, M.
Champfleury makes a remark that startles a Protestant mind accustomed
only to the most exact decorum in churches. "Old men _of to-day_"
(1850), he says, speaking of France, "will recall to mind the _gayety_
of the midnight masses, when buffoons from the country waited
impatiently to send down showers of small torpedoes upon the pavement of
the nave, to barricade the alcoves with mountains of chairs, to fill
with ink the holy-water basins, and to steal kisses in out-of-the-way
corners from girls who would not give them." These proceedings, which M.
Champfleury styles "the pleasantries of our fathers," were among the
concessions made by a worldly-wise old Church to the "puerility" of the
people, or rather to the absolute necessity of occasional hilarious fun
to healthy existence.
Amusing and even valuable caricatures six and seven centuries old have
been discovered upon parchment documents in the English record offices,
executed apparently by idle clerks for their amusement when they had
nothing else to do. One of these, copied by Mr. Wright, gives us the
popular English conception of an Irish warrior of the thirteenth
century.
[Illustration: English Caricature of an Irishman, A.D. 1280.]
The broad-axes of the Irish were held in great terror by the English. An
historian of Edward I.'s time, while discoursing on that supreme
perplexity of British kings and ministers, how Ireland should be
governed _after_ being quite reduced to subjection, expresses the
opinion that the Irish ought not to be allowed in time of peace to use
"that detestable instrument of destruction which by an ancient but
accursed custom they constantly carry in their hands instead of a
staff." The modern Irish shillalah, then, is only the residuum of the
ancient Irish broad-axe--the broad-axe with its head taken off. The
humanized Irishman of to-day is content with the handle of "the
detestable instrument." Other pen-and-ink sketches of England's dreaded
foes, the Irish and the Welsh, have been found upon ancient vellum
rolls, but none better than the specimen given has yet been copied.
The last object of caricature which can be mentioned in the present
chapter is the Jew--the odious Jew--accursed by the clergy _as_ a Jew,
despised by good citizens as a usurer, and dreaded by many a profligate
Christian as the holder of mortgages upon his estate. When the ruling
class of a country loses its hold upon virtue, becomes profuse in
expenditure, ceases to comply with natural law, comes to regard
licentious living as something to be expected of young blood, and makes
a jest of a decorous and moral conversation, then there is usually in
that country a less refined, stronger class, who _do_ comply with
natural law, who _do_ live in that virtuous, frugal, and orderly manner
by which alone families can be perpetuated and states established. In
several communities during the centuries preceding the Reformation, when
the nobles and great merchants wasted their substance in riotous living
or in insensate pilgrimages and crusades, the Jew was the virtuous,
sensible, and solvent man. He did not escape the evil influence wrought
into the texture of the character by living in an atmosphere of hatred
and contempt, nor the narrowness of mind caused by his being excluded
from all the more generous and high avocations. But he remained through
all those dismal ages temperate, chaste, industrious, and saving, as
well as heroically faithful to the best light on high things that he
had. Hence he always had money to lend, and he could only lend it to men
who were too glad to think he had no rights which they were bound to
respect.
The caricature on the next page was also discovered upon a vellum roll
in the Public Record Office in London, the work of some idle clerk 642
years ago, and recently transferred to an English work[7] of much
interest, in which it serves as a frontispiece.
[Footnote 7: "History of Crime in England," vol. i., by Luke Owen Pike,
London, 1873.]
[Illustration: Caricature of the Jews in England, A.D. 1233.]
The ridicule is aimed at the famous Jew, Isaac of Norwich, a rich
money-lender and merchant, to whom abbots, bishops, and wealthy vicars
were heavily indebted. At Norwich he had a wharf at which his vessels
could receive and discharge their freights, and whole districts were
mortgaged to him at once. He lent money to the king's exchequer. He was
the Rothschild of his day. In the picture, which represents the outside
of a castle--his own castle, wrested from some lavish Christian by a
money-lender's wiles--the Jew Isaac stands above all the other figures,
and is blessed with four faces and a crown, which imply, as Mr. Pike
conjectures, that, let him look whichever way he will, he beholds
possessions over which he holds kingly sway. Lower down, and nearer the
centre, are Mosse Mokke, another Jewish money-lender of Norwich, and
Madame Avegay, one of many Jewesses who lent money, between whom is a
horned devil pointing to their noses. The Jewish nose was a peculiarly
offensive feature to Christians, and was usually exaggerated by
caricaturists. The figure holding up scales heaped with coin is, so far
as we can guess, merely a taunt; and the seating of Dagon, the god of
the Philistines, upon the turret seems to be an intimation that the
Jews, in their dispersion, had abandoned the God of their fathers, and
taken up with the deity of his inveterate foes.
So far as the records of those ages disclose, there was no one
enlightened enough to judge the long-suffering Jews with just allowance.
Luther's aversion to them was morbid and violent. He confesses, in his
Table-talk, that if it had fallen to his lot to have much to do with
Jews, his patience would have given way; and when, one day, Dr. Menius
asked him how a Jew ought to be baptized, he replied, "You must fill a
large tub with water, and, having divested a Jew of his clothes, cover
him with a white garment. He must then sit down in the tub, and you must
baptize him quite under the water." He said further to Dr. Menius that
if a Jew, not converted at heart, were to ask baptism at his hands, he
would take him to the bridge, tie a stone round his neck, and hurl him
into the river, such an obstinate and scoffing race were they. If Luther
felt thus toward them, we can not wonder that the luxurious dignitaries
of the Church, two centuries before his time, should have had qualms of
conscience with regard to paying Isaac of Norwich interest upon money
borrowed.