PRIESTS AND PEOPLE
"Charity is a childlike thing, as Holy Church witnesseth;
As proud of a penny as of a pound of gold,
And all so glad of a gown of grey russet
As of a coat of damask or of clean scarlet.
He is glad with all glad, as girls that laughen all,
And sorry when he seeth men sorry; as thou seest children ...
Laugh when men laughen, and lower where men low'ren....
And in a friar's frock he was found once,
But that is far and many years, in Francis' time;
In that suit since too seldom hath he been found."
"Piers Plowman," B., xvii., 296, 352
When the greatest Pope of the 13th century saw in his dream a vision of
St. Francis propping the tottering church, both he and the saint augured
from this happy omen a reformation more sudden and complete than was
actually possible. Church historians of all schools have often seemed to
imply that if St. Francis had come back to earth on the first or second
centenary of his death, he would have found the Church rather worse than
better; and certainly Chaucer's contemporaries thought so. It is probable
that in this they were mistaken; that the higher life was in fact
unfolding no less surely in religion than in the State, but that men's
impatience of evils which were only too obvious, and a restlessness bred
by the rapid growth of new ideas, tempted them to despair too easily of
their own age. The failure of the friars became a theme of common talk, as
soon as enough time had gone by for the world to realize that Francis and
Dominic had but done what man can do, and that there was as yet no visibly
new heaven or new earth. Wycliffe himself scarcely inveighed more
strongly against many of the worst abuses in the Church than Bonaventura a
century before him--Bonaventura, the canonized saint and Minister General
of the Franciscans, who as a boy had actually seen the Founder face to
face. The current of thought during those hundred years is typified by
Dante and the author of "Piers Plowman." Dante, bitterly as he rebuked the
corruptions of the age, still dreamed of reform on conservative lines. In
"Piers Plowman" it is frankly recognized that things must be still worse
before they can be better. The Church is there described as already
succumbing to the assaults of Antichrist, aided by "proud priests more
than a thousand"--
'By Mary!' quoth a cursed priest of the March of Ireland,
'I count no more conscience, if only I catch silver,
Than I do to drink a draught of good ale!'
And so said sixty of the same country,
And shotten again with shot, many a sheaf of oaths,
And broad hooked arrows, '_God's heart!_' and '_God's nails!_'
And had almost Unity and Holy Church adown.
Conscience cried 'Help, clergy,[279] or else I fall
Through imperfect priests and prelates of Holy Church.'
Friars heard him cry, and camen him to help;
But, for they knew not their craft, Conscience forsook them.
One friar, however, is admitted, Brother "Creep-into-Houses," but he turns
out the worst traitor of all, benumbing Contrition by his false
absolutions--
Sloth saw that, and so did Pride,
And came with a keen will Conscience to assail.
Conscience cried oft, and bade Clergy help him,
And also Contrition, for to keep the gate.
'He lieth and dreameth,' said Peace, 'and so do many other;
The friar with his physic this folk hath enchanted,
And plastered them so easily, they dread no sin.'
'By Christ!' quoth Conscience then, 'I will become a pilgrim,
And walken as wide as all the world lasteth
To seek Piers the Plowman;[280] that Pride may be destroyed,
And that friars have a finding,[281] that for need flatteren,
And counterplead me, Conscience. Now, Kind me avenge
And send me hap and heal, till I have Piers the Plowman.'
And sith he cried after grace, till I gan awake.
So ends this dreamer on the Malvern Hills, and so thought many more good
Christians of Chaucer's time. It would be tedious even to enumerate the
orthodox authorities which testify to the deep corruption of popular
religion in the 14th century. Two books of Gower's "Vox Clamantis" (or
one-third of the whole work) are devoted to invectives against the Church
of his time; and he goes over the same ground with equal minuteness in his
"Mirour de l'Omme." The times are out of joint, he says, the light of
faith grows dim; the clergy are mostly ignorant, quarrelsome, idle, and
unchaste, and the prelates do not correct them because they themselves are
no better. The average priests do the exact opposite of what Chaucer
praises in his Poor Parson; they curse for tithes, and leave their sheep
in the lurch to go mass-hunting into the great towns. If, again, they stay
unwillingly in the villages, then instead of preaching and visiting they
waste their own time and the patrimony of the poor in riot or debauchery;
nay, the higher clergy even encourage vice among the people in order to
gain money and influence for themselves. Their evil example among the
multitude, and the contempt into which they bring their office among the
better laity, are mainly responsible for the decay of society. Of monks
and nuns and friars, Gower writes even more bitterly; the monks are
frequently unchaste; nuns are sometimes debauched even by their own
official visitors, and the friars seriously menace the purity of family
life. In short, the reign of Antichrist seems to be at hand; if the world
is to be mended we can only pray God to reform the clergy. Wycliffe
himself wrote nothing more bitter than this; yet Gower was a whole
horizon removed from anti-clericalism or heresy; he hated Lollardy, and
chose to spend his last days among the canons of Southwark. Moreover, in
the next generation, we have an equally scathing indictment of the Church
from Gascoigne, another bitter anti-Wycliffite and the most distinguished
Oxford Chancellor of his generation. St. Catherine of Siena, who knew Rome
and Avignon only too well, is proportionately more vehement in her
indignation. Moreover, the formal records of the Church itself bear out
all the gravest charges in contemporary literature. The parish churches
were very frequently reported as neglected, dirty, and ruinous; the very
service books and most necessary ornaments as either dilapidated or
lacking altogether; priests and people as grossly irreverent.[282]
Wherever we find a visitation including laity and clerics alike, the
clergy presented for unchastity are always numerous out of all proportion
to the laity; sometimes more than ten times as numerous. Episcopal
registers testify plainly to the difficulty of dealing with monastic decay
and to the neglect of proper precautions against the intrusion of unworthy
clerics into benefices. Many of the anti-Lollard Articles solemnly
presented by the University of Oxford to the King in 1414 might have been
drawn up by Wycliffe himself. These pillars of the Church pray Henry V.,
who was known to have religion so much at heart, to find some remedy for
the sale of indulgences, the "undisciplined and unlearned crowd which
daily pressed to take sacred orders"; the scandalous ease with which
"illiterate, silly, and ignorant" candidates, even if rejected by the
English authorities, could get ordained at the Roman court; the system
which allowed monasteries to prey upon so many parishes; the pardoners'
notorious frauds, the irreverence of the people at large, the embezzlement
of hospital endowments, the debasement of moral standards by flattering
friar-confessors, and lastly the numbers and practical impunity of
fornicating monks, friars, and parish priests. As early as 1371, the
Commons had petitioned Edward III. that, "whereas the Prelates and
Ordinaries of Holy Church take money of clergy and laity in redemption of
their sin from day to day, and from year to year, in that they keep their
concubines openly ... to the open scandal and evil example of the whole
commonalty," this system of hush-money should now be put down by Royal
authority; that the ordinary courts of justice should have cognizance of
such cases; and that such beneficed clergy as still persisted in
concubinage should be deprived of their livings.[283]
To comment fully on Chaucer's clerical characters in the light of other
contemporary documents would be to write a whole volume of Church history;
but no picture of that age could be even roughly complete without such a
summary as I have just given. We must, of course, discount to some extent
the language of indignation; but, to understand what it was that drew such
bitter words from writers of such acknowledged gravity, we must try to
transport ourselves, with our own common human feelings, into that strange
and distant world. So much of the old framework of society was either
ill-made or long since outworn; a new world was struggling to grow up
freely amid the mass of dying conventions; the human spirit was surging
vehemently against its barriers; and much was swept boisterously away.
[Illustration: THE CLERGY-HOUSE AT ALFRISTON, SUSSEX, BEFORE ITS RECENT
RESTORATION
(FOR PLAN AND SECTION SEE P. 97)]
Think for a moment of the English boy as we know him; for in most
essentials he was very much the same even five hundred years ago. At
fifteen or sixteen (or even at an earlier age, if his family had
sufficient influence) he might well receive a fat rectory or canonry.
Before the Black Death, an enormous proportion of the livings in lay
advowson were given to persons who were not in priest's orders, and often
not in holy orders at all.[284] The Church theoretically forbade with the
utmost severity this intrusion of mere boys into the best livings; but all
through the Church the forbidden thing was done daily, and most
shamelessly of all at the Papal court. A strong bishop in the 13th century
might indeed fight against the practice, but with slender success. Giffard
of Worcester, a powerful and obstinate prelate, attempted in 1282 to
enforce the recent decree of the Ecumenical Council of Lyons, and declared
the rectory of Campden vacant because the incumbent had refused for three
years past to qualify himself by taking priest's orders. After four years
of desperate litigation, during which the Pope twice intervened in a
half-hearted and utterly ineffectual fashion, the Bishop was obliged to
leave the case to the judgment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose
court enjoyed a reputation for venality only second to that of Rome. Other
bishops seem to have given up all serious attempts to enforce the decree
of the Council of Lyons; Stapeldon of Exeter, for instance, permitted
nearly three-quarters of the first presentations by laymen to be made to
persons who were not in priest's orders; and he commonly enjoined, after
institution, that the new rector should go forthwith and study at the
University. To appreciate the full significance of this, we must remember
that boys habitually went up to Oxford in those days at from thirteen to
sixteen, and that the discipline there was of almost incredible laxity.
The majority of students, after inscribing their names on the books of a
master whose authority over them was almost nominal, went and lodged where
they chose in the town. At the time when Chaucer might have gone to Oxford
there were, perhaps, 3000 students; but (apart from the friaries and
collegiate provision for a few monks) there were only five colleges, with
accommodation in all for something less than eighty students. Only one of
these was of stone; not one was yet built in that quadrangular form which,
adopted in Chaucer's later days by New College, has since set the pattern
for both Universities; and the discipline was as rudimentary as the
architecture. A further number of students were accommodated in "Halls" or
"Hostels." These had originally been ordinary private houses, rented by
two or more students in common; and the Principal was simply an older
student who made himself responsible for the rent. Not until thirty years
after Chaucer's death was it enacted that the Principal must be a B.A. at
least; and since we find that at Paris, where the same regulation was
introduced about the same time, it was necessary even fifty years later to
proceed against women who kept University halls, it is quite probable that
the salutary statute was frequently broken at Oxford also. The government
of these halls was entirely democratic, and only at a later period was it
possible even to close the gates on the students at night. These boys
"were in general perfectly free to roam about the streets up to the hour
at which all respectable citizens were in the habit, if not actually
compelled by the town statutes, of retiring to bed. They might spend their
evenings in the tavern and drink as much as they please. Drunkenness is
rarely treated as a University offence at all.... The penalties which are
denounced and inflicted even for grave outrages are seldom severe, and
never of a specially schoolboy character." "It is necessary to assert
emphatically that the religious education of a bygone Oxford, in so far as
it ever had any existence, was an inheritance not from the Middle Ages but
from the Reformation. In Catholic countries it was the product of the
Counter-reformation. Until that time the Church provided as little
professional education for the future priest as it did religious
instruction for the ordinary layman."[285] The only religious education
was that the student, like other citizens, was supposed to attend Mass
regularly on Sundays and holy days, and might very likely know enough
Latin to follow the service. But the want of proper grounding in Latin was
always the weak point of these Universities; it is probable that at least
half the scholars left Oxford without any degree whatever; and we have not
only the general complaints of contemporaries, but actual records of
examinations showing that quite a considerable proportion of the clergy
could not decently construe the language of their own service-books.
How, indeed, should the ordinary idle man have learned anything to speak
of, under so rudimentary a system of teaching and discipline? Gower
asserts as strongly as Wycliffe that the beneficed clergy escaped from
their parishes to the University as to a place of riot and
self-indulgence. If Exeter was a typical diocese (and there seems no
reason to the contrary) there must have been at any given time something
like six hundred English rectors and vicars living at the Universities
with the licence of their bishops; and the Registers show definite traces
of others who took French leave. Here, then, was a society in which boys
were herded together with men of middle or advanced age, and in which the
seniors were often the least decorous.[286] No doubt the average boy
escaped the company of those "chamberdekyns," of whom the Oxford
authorities complained that "they sleep all day, and prowl by night about
taverns and houses of ill fame and occasions of homicide"; no doubt it was
only a small minority at Cambridge of whom men complained to Parliament
that they scoured the country in gangs for purposes of robbery and
blackmail. But the average man cared no more for learning then than now,
and had far fewer opportunities of study. The athleticism which is the
refuge of modern idleness was severely discouraged by the authorities,
while the tavern was always open. The Bishop himself, by instituting this
boy in his teens, had given his approval to the vicious system which gave
the prizes of the Church to the rich and powerful, and left a heavy
proportion of the parish work to be done by a lower class of hireling
"chaplains." These latter (who, like Chaucer's Poor Parson, were mostly
drawn from the peasant class) were willing to accept the lowest possible
wages and the smallest possible chance of preferment for the sake of a
position which, at the worst, put them far above their father or their
brothers; and meanwhile the more fortunate rectors, little controlled
either by their bishops or by public opinion, drifted naturally into the
position of squarsons, hunters, and farmers. The large majority were
precluded from almost all intellectual enjoyments by their imperfect
education and the scarcity of books. The regular and healthy home life,
which has kept so many an idle man straight in the world, was denied to
these men, who were professionally pledged to live as the angels of God,
while they stood exposed to every worldly temptation. The consequence was
inevitable; orthodox writers for centuries before the Reformation
complained that the real fount and origin of heresy lay in the evil lives
of the clergy. In outlying districts like Wales, probably also in Ireland,
and certainly in parts of Germany, clerical concubinage was systematically
tolerated, and only taxed for the benefit of the bishop's or archdeacon's
purse. The reader has already seen that this same system was often
practised in England, though with less cynical effrontery.