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.