CHAUCER, (CONTINUED.)--REFORMS IN RELIGION AND SOCIETY.
Historical Facts. Reform in Religion. The Clergy, Regular and Secular.
The Friar and the Sompnour. The Pardonere. The Poure Persone. John
Wiclif. The Translation of the Bible. The Ashes of Wiclif.
HISTORICAL FACTS.
Leaving the pilgrims' cavalcade for a more philosophical consideration of
the historical teachings of the subject, it may be clearly shown that the
work of Chaucer informs us of a wholesome reform in religion, or, in the
words of George Ellis,[16] "he was not only respected as the father of
English poetry, but revered as a champion of the Reformation."
Let us recur briefly to the history. With William the Conqueror a great
change had been introduced into England: under him and his immediate
successors--his son William Rufus, his nephew Henry I., the usurper
Stephen, and Henry II.,--the efforts of the "English kings of Norman race"
were directed to the establishment of their power on a strong foundation;
but they began, little by little, to see that the only foundation was that
of the unconquerable English people; so that popular rights soon began to
be considered, and the accession of Henry II., the first of the
Plantagenets, was specially grateful to the English, because he was the
first since the Conquest to represent the Saxon line, being the grandson
of Henry I., and son of _Matilda_, niece of Edgar Atheling. In the mean
time, as has been seen, the English language had been formed, the chief
element of which was Saxon. This was a strong instrument of political
rights, for community of language tended to an amalgamation of the Norman
and Saxon peoples. With regard to the Church in England, the insulation
from Rome had impaired the influence of the Papacy. The misdeeds and
arrogance of the clergy had arrayed both people and monarch against their
claims, as several of the satirical poems already mentioned have shown. As
a privileged class, who used their immunities to do evil and corrupt the
realm, the clergy became odious to the _nobles_, whose power they shared
and sometimes impaired, and to the _people_, who could now read their
faults and despise their comminations, and who were unwilling to pay
hard-earned wages to support them in idleness and vice. It was not the
doctrine, but the practice which they condemned. With the accession of the
house of Plantagenet, the people were made to feel that the Norman
monarchy was a curse, without alloy. Richard I. was a knight-errant and a
crusader, who cared little for the realm; John was an adulterer, traitor,
and coward, who roused the people's anger by first quarrelling with the
Pope, and then basely giving him the kingdom to receive it again as a
papal fief. The nation, headed by the warlike barons, had forced the great
charter of popular rights from John, and had caused it to be confirmed and
supplemented during the long reign of his son, the weak Henry III.
Edward I. was engaged in cruel wars, both in Wales and Scotland, which
wasted the people's money without any corresponding advantage.
Edward II. was deposed and murdered by his queen and her paramour
Mortimer; and, however great their crime, he was certainly unworthy and
unable to control a fierce and turbulent people, already clamorous for
their rights. These well-known facts are here stated to show the
unsettled condition of things during the period when the English were
being formed into a nation, the language established, and the earliest
literary efforts made. Materials for a better organization were at hand in
great abundance; only proper master-builders were needed. We have seen
that everything now betokened the coming of a new era, in State, Church,
and literature.
The monarch who came to the throne in 1327, one year before the birth of
Chaucer, was worthy to be the usher of this new era to England: a man of
might, of judgment, and of forecast; the first truly _English_ monarch in
sympathy and purpose who had occupied the throne since the Conquest:
liberal beyond all former precedent in religion, he sheltered Wiclif in
his bold invectives, and paved the way for the later encroachments upon
the papal supremacy. With the aid of his accomplished son, Edward the
Black Prince, he rendered England illustrious by his foreign wars, and
removed what remained of the animosity between Saxon and Norman.
REFORM IN RELIGION.--We are so accustomed to refer the Reformation to the
time of Luther in Germany, as the grand religious turning-point in modern
history, that we are apt to underrate, if not to forget, the religious
movement in this most important era of English history. Chaucer and Wiclif
wrote nearly half a century before John Huss was burned by Sigismond: it
was a century after that that Luther burned the Pope's decretals at
Wittenberg, and still later that Henry VIII. threw off the papal dominion
in England. But great crises in a nation's history never arrive without
premonition;--there are no moral earthquakes without premonitory throes,
and sometimes these are more decisive and destructive than that which
gives electric publicity. Such distinct signs appeared in the age of
Chaucer, and the later history of the Church in England cannot be
distinctly understood without a careful study of this period.
It is well known that Chaucer was an adherent of John of Gaunt; that he
and his great protector--perhaps with no very pious intents--favored the
doctrines of Wiclif; that in the politico-religious disturbances in 1382,
incident to the minority of Richard II., he was obliged to flee the
country. But if we wish to find the most striking religious history of the
age, we must seek it in the portraitures of religious characters and
events in his Canterbury Tales. In order to a proper intelligence of
these, let us look for a moment at the ecclesiastical condition of England
at that time. Connected with much in doctrine and ritual worthy to be
retained, and, indeed, still retained in the articles and liturgy of the
Anglican Church, there was much, the growth of ignorance and neglect, to
be reformed. The Church of England had never had a real affinity with
Rome. The gorgeous and sensual ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of
the Mediterranean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of
the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Institutions organized at Rome did not
flourish in that higher latitude, and abuses were currently discussed even
before any plan was considered for reforming them.
THE CLERGY.--The great monastic orders of St. Benedict, scattered
throughout Europe, were, in the early and turbulent days, a most important
aid and protection to Christianity. But by degrees, and as they were no
longer needed, they had become corrupt, because they had become idle. The
Cluniacs and Cistercians, branches of the Benedictines, are represented in
Chaucer's poem by the monk and prioress, as types of bodies which needed
reform.
The Grandmontines, a smaller branch, were widely known for their foppery:
the young monks painted their cheeks, and washed and covered their beards
at night. The cloisters became luxurious, and sheltered, and, what is
worse, sanctioned lewdness and debauchery.
There was a great difference indeed between the _regular_ clergy, or
those belonging to orders and monasteries, and the _secular_ clergy or
parish priests, who were far better; and there was a jealous feud between
them. There was a lamentable ignorance of the Scripture among the clergy,
and gross darkness over the people. The paraphrases of Caedmon, the
translations of Bede and Alfred, the rare manuscripts of the Latin Bible,
were all that cast a faint ray upon this gloom. The people could not read
Latin, even if they had books; and the Saxon versions were almost in a
foreign language. Thus, distrusting their religious teachers, thoughtful
men began to long for an English version of that Holy Book which contains
all the words of eternal life. And thus, while the people were becoming
more clamorous for instruction, and while Wiclif was meditating the great
boon of a translated Bible, which, like a noonday sun, should irradiate
the dark places and disclose the loathsome groups and filthy
manifestations of cell and cloister, Chaucer was administering the
wholesome medicine of satire and contempt. He displays the typical monk
given up to every luxury, the costly black dress with fine fur edgings,
the love-knot which fastens his hood, and his preference for pricking and
hunting the hare, over poring into a stupid book in a cloister.
THE FRIAR AND THE SOMPNOUR.--His satire extends also to the friar, who has
not even that semblance of virtue which is the tribute of the hypocrite to
our holy faith. He is not even the demure rascal conceived by Thomson in
his Castle of Indolence:
... the first amid the fry,
* * * * *
A little round, fat, oily man of God,
Who had a roguish twinkle in his eye,
When a tight maiden chanced to trippen by,
* * * * *
Which when observed, he shrunk into his mew,
And straight would recollect his piety anew.
But Chaucer's friar is a wanton and merry scoundrel, taking every
license, kissing the wives and talking love-talk to the girls in his
wanderings, as he begs for his Church and his order. His hood is stuffed
with trinkets to give them; he is worthily known as the best beggar of his
house; his eyes alight with wine, he strikes his little harp, trolls out
funny songs and love-ditties. Anon, his frolic over, he preaches to the
collected crowd violent denunciations of the parish priest, within the
very limits of his parish. The very principles upon which these mendicant
orders were established seem to be elements of evil. That they might be
better than the monks, they had no cloisters and magnificent gardens, with
little to do but enjoy them. Like our Lord, they were generally without a
place to lay their heads; they had neither purse nor scrip. But instead of
sanctifying, the itinerary was their great temptation and final ruin.
Nothing can be conceived better calculated to harden the heart and to
destroy the fierce sensibilities of our nature than to be a beggar and a
wanderer. So that in our retrospective glance, we may pity while we
condemn "the friar of orders gray." With a delicate irony in Chaucer's
picture, is combined somewhat of a liking for this "worthy limitour."[17]
In the same category of contempt for the existing ecclesiastical system,
Chaucer places the sompnour, or summoner to the Church courts. Of his
fire-red face, scattered beard, and the bilious knobs on his cheeks,
"children were sore afraid." The friar, in his tale, represents him as in
league with the devil, who carries him away. He is a drinker of strong
wines, a conniver at evil for bribes: for a good sum he would teach "a
felon"
... not to have none awe
In swiche a case of the archdeacon's curse.
To him the Church system was nothing unless he could make profit of it.
THE PARDONERE.--Nor is his picture of the pardoner, or vender of
indulgences, more flattering. He sells--to the great contempt of the
poet--a piece of the Virgin's veil, a bit of the sail of St. Peter's boat,
holy pigges' bones, and with these relics he made more money in each
parish in one day than the parson himself in two months.
Thus taking advantage of his plot to ridicule these characters, and to
make them satirize each other--as in the rival stories of the sompnour and
friar--he turns with pleasure from these betrayers of religion, to show us
that there was a leaven of pure piety and devotion left.
THE POOR PARSON.--With what eager interest does he portray the lovely
character of the _poor parson_, the true shepherd of his little flock, in
the midst of false friars and luxurious monks!--poor himself, but
Riche was he of holy thought and work,
* * * * *
That Cristes gospel truely wolde preche,
His parishers devoutly wolde teche.
* * * * *
Wide was his parish and houses fer asonder,
But he left nought for ne rain no thonder,
In sickness and in mischief to visite
The ferrest in his parish, moche and lite.
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staf,
This noble example to his shepe he yaf,
That first he wrought and afterward he taught.
Chaucer's description of the poor parson, which loses much by being
curtailed, has proved to be a model for all poets who have drawn the
likeness of an earnest pastor from that day to ours, among whom are
Herbert, Cowper, Goldsmith, and Wordsworth; but no imitation has equalled
this beautiful model. When urged by the host,
Tell us a fable anon, for cocke's bones,
he quotes St. Paul to Timothy as rebuking those who tell fables; and,
disclaiming all power in poetry, preaches them such a stirring discourse
upon penance, contrition, confession, and the seven deadly sins, with
their remedies, as must have fallen like a thunderbolt upon this careless,
motly crew; and has the additional value of giving us Chaucer's epitome of
sound doctrine in that bigoted and ignorant age: and, eminently sound and
holy as it is, it rebukes the lewdness of the other stories, and, in point
of morality, neutralizes if it does not justify the lewd teachings of the
work, or in other words, the immorality of the age. This is the parson's
own view: his story is the last which is told, and he tells us, in the
prologue to his sermon:
To knitte up all this feste, and make an ende;
And Jesu for his grace wit me sende
To showen you the way in this viage
Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrimage,
That hight Jerusalem celestial.
In an addendum to this discourse, which brings the Canterbury Tales to an
abrupt close, and which, if genuine, as the best critics think it, was
added some time after, Chaucer takes shame to himself for his lewd
stories, repudiates all his "translations and enditinges of worldly
vanitees," and only finds pleasure in his translations of Boethius, his
homilies and legends of the saints; and, with words of penitence, he hopes
that he shall be saved "atte the laste day of dome."
JOHN WICLIF.[18]--The subject of this early reformation so clearly set
forth in the stories of Chaucer, cannot be fully illustrated without a
special notice of Chaucer's great contemporary and co-worker, John Wiclif.
What Chaucer hints, or places in the mouths of his characters, with
apparently no very serious intent, Wiclif, himself a secular priest,
proclaimed boldly and as of prime importance, first from his professor's
chair at Oxford, and then from his forced retirement at Lutterworth, where
he may well have been the model of Chaucer's poor parson.
Wiclif was born in 1324, four years before Chaucer. The same abuses which
called forth the satires of Langland and Chaucer upon monk and friar, and
which, if unchecked, promised universal corruption, aroused the
martyr-zeal of Wiclif; and similar reproofs are to be found in his work
entitled "Objections to Friars," and in numerous treatises from his pen
against many of the doctrines and practices of the Church.
Noted for his learning and boldness, he was sent by Edward III. one of an
embassy to Bruges, to negotiate with the Pope's envoys concerning
benefices held in England by foreigners. There he met John of Gaunt, the
Duke of Lancaster. This prince, whose immediate descendants were to play
so prominent a part in later history, was the fourth son of Edward III. By
the death of the Black Prince, in 1376, and of Lionel, Duke of Clarence,
in 1368, he became the oldest remaining child of the king, and the father
of the man who usurped the throne of England and reigned as Henry IV. The
influence of Lancaster was equal to his station, and he extended his
protection to Wiclif. This, combined with the support of Lord Percy, the
Marshal of England, saved the reformer from the stake when he was tried
before the Bishop, of London on a charge of heresy, in 1377. He was again
brought before a synod of the clergy at Lambeth, in 1378, but such was the
favor of the populace in his behalf, and such, too, the weakness of the
papal party, on account of a schism which had resulted in the election of
two popes, that, although his opinions were declared heretical, he was not
proceeded against.
After this, although almost sick to death, he rose from what his enemies
had hoped would be his death-bed, to "again declare the evil deeds of the
friars." In 1381, he lectured openly at Oxford against the doctrine of
transubstantiation; and for this, after a presentment by the Church--and a
partial recantation, or explaining away--even the liberal king thought
proper to command that he should retire from the university. Thus, during
his latter years, he lived in retirement at his little parish of
Lutterworth, escaping the dangers of the troublous time, and dying--struck
with paralysis at his chancel--in 1384, sixteen years before Chaucer.
TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE.--The labors of Wiclif which produced the most
important results, were not his violent lectures as a reformer, but the
translation of the Bible into English, the very language of the common
people, greatly to the wrath of the hierarchy and its political upholders.
This, too, is his chief glory: as a reformer he went too fast and too far;
he struck fiercely at the root of authority, imperilling what was good, in
his attack upon what was evil. In pulling up the tares he endangered the
wheat, and from him, as a progenitor, came the Lollards, a fanatical,
violent, and revolutionary sect.
But his English Bible, the parent of the later versions, cannot be too
highly valued. For the first time, English readers could search the whole
Scriptures, and judge for themselves of doctrine and authority: there they
could learn how far the traditions and commandments of men had encrusted
and corrupted the pure word of truth. Thus the greatest impulsion was
given to a reformation in doctrine; and thus, too, the exclusiveness and
arrogance of the clergy received the first of many sledge-hammer blows
which were to result in their confusion and discomfiture.
"If," says Froude,[19] "the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had
inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would
have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve."
THE ASHES OF WICLIF.--The vengeance which Wiclif escaped during his life
was wreaked upon his bones. In 1428, the Council of Constance ordered that
if his bones could be distinguished from those of other, faithful people,
they should "be taken out of the ground and thrown far off from Christian
burial." On this errand the Bishop of Lincoln came with his officials to
Lutterworth, and, finding them, burned them, and threw the ashes into the
little stream called the Swift. Fuller, in his Church History, adds: "Thus
this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into
the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wiclif
are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world
over;" or, in the more carefully selected words of an English laureate of
modern days,[20]
... this deed accurst,
An emblem yields to friends and enemies,
How the bold teacher's doctrine, _sanctified
By truth_, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed.