Ver.10/04/01*END*
Etext prepared by Dianne Bean, Prescott Valley, Arizona.
STUDIES FROM COURT AND CLOISTER BEING ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND LITERARY,
DEALING MAINLY WITH SUBJECTS RELATING TO THE XVITH AND XVIITH CENTURIES
BY J. M. STONE
AUTHOR OF "MARY THE FIRST, QUEEN OF ENGLAND," "REFORMATION AND
RENAISSANCE," ETC.
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
SANDS AND COMPANY
ST LOUIS, MO.
B. HERDER, 17 SOUTH BROADWAY
1908
PREFACE
These studies on various crucial points connected with the history of
religion in Europe at the close of the Middle Ages, its decline,
revival, and the causes which led to both, have already appeared in
print as regards their general outline, although they have for the most
part been rewritten, added to, and in each case subjected to a careful
revision.
Three of them were originally published in the Dublin Review, four in
the Scottish Review, two in Blackwood's Magazine, and three in the
Month. One was a contribution to the American Catholic Quarterly
Review. By the courtesy of the respective editors of these publications
I am enabled to gather them together in this volume.
It will be seen at a glance that a certain cohesion, historical and
chronological, exists in their present arrangement, especially with
reference to Part I.
The two first studies concern Henry VIII. and his sister the Queen of
Scots, the significance of their matrimonial affairs, and the relations
which their policy created between England, Scotland, France, and the
Empire. The third study has for its subject the distinguished and
much-maligned Lieutenant of the Tower of London, who contributed so
largely to the accession of the rightful sovereign, and who was
appointed to be governor of the Princess Elizabeth during her captivity
at Woodstock. His subsequent persecution for the sake of religion was
the consequence of Henry VIIIth's rupture with Rome, and Elizabeth's
repudiation of England's Catholic past. And as we can only gain an
intelligible view of any historical movement by studying its context,
its broad outlines, and its connection with foreign nations, the fourth
essay describes the condition to which the religious revolution had
reduced Germany in the sixteenth century, and the reconversion of a
great part of that country, as well as of Austria and Switzerland, to
the Catholic faith. This was the work of the Jesuit, Peter Canisius,
and we are thus led to a consideration of the newly-founded Society of
Jesus and its methods. Its members soon became noted for sanctity and
learning, and emperors, kings, and royal princes clamoured for Jesuits
as confessors. The manner in which these acquitted themselves of the
difficult and unwelcome task imposed on them, is unconsciously revealed
by themselves, in the private correspondence of members of the old
Society, which has now been given to the world by one of their Order.
Selections from this correspondence are contained in the fifth study.
As a further result of the revolution that had been effected in the
casting off of old beliefs and traditions, we note the revival of
Pantheism, an ancient, atheistic philosophy, whose modern apostle was
the celebrated Giordano Bruno. His otherwise fruitless visit to England
left a deep impression on certain minds, learned and ignorant, and we
begin for the first time to hear of examinations and prosecutions for
atheism in this country. And this forms the subject of the sixth essay.
The recoil that invariably takes place after any great political,
social, or religious upheaval was not wanting to the Reformation in
England, and in the reign of Charles I. High-Churchism, under
Archbishop Laud, was thought to indicate a desire on the part of the
royalists for a return to Catholic unity. A Papal agent was dispatched
to England to negotiate between the Catholic Queen, Henrietta Maria and
Cardinal Barberini, with a view to the conversion of her husband, which
would, it was hoped, ultimately issue in the corporate reunion of the
country with Rome.
Thus, Part I. deals with some of the persons who had "their exits and
their entrances", who made history during this interesting period. Part
II. treats more especially the books and manuscripts connected with it.
The theme is therefore the same.
Even before England was England, she was the Isle of Saints, and
throughout the Middle Ages religion was her chief care, in a manner
almost incredible in this secular and materialistic age. She not only
covered the land with magnificent churches and cathedrals, to the
architecture of which we cannot in these days approach, even by
imitation, distantly, but she also built huge monasteries, and these
monasteries were the cradles, the homes of vast stores of
ever-accumulating knowledge. A system of philosophy, to which the world
is even now returning, recognising that there is no better training for
the human intellect, is so distinctly mediaeval, that all that savoured
even remotely of St. Thomas Aquinas or Duns Scotus in the University
was utterly destroyed in a great bonfire made at Oxford in 1549. At the
dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII., the labour, the
learning, the genius of centuries were as nought. Exquisitely written
and illuminated Bibles, missals and other choice manuscripts,
displaying a wealth of palaeographic art to which we have lost the key,
were torn from their jewelled bindings, and were either thrown aside to
spoil and rot, or to become the prey of any who needed wrappers for
small merchandise. It is a marvel that so many should have escaped
destruction, to be collected when men had returned to their sane
senses, and formed again into libraries for the delight and instruction
of posterity to the end of time. And almost as strange as this
circumstance, is the fact that so few among us know of the existence of
these treasures which have become our national inheritance. Otherwise,
how could the reviewer of one of our foremost literary publications, in
his notice of the exhibition of medieval needlework at the Burlington
Fine Arts Club, in the spring of 1905, have discovered in it a
surprising revelation of the "refinement" of the Middle Ages?
The three last studies in the present volume are, therefore, devoted to
a description of some of the precious spoils of mediaeval refinement.
Where all is so splendidly beautiful, so deeply erudite, or so tenderly
naif, choice is difficult; but at all events, here are a few of the
priceless gems with which the Dark Ages have endowed a scornful
after-world.
And lest it should be supposed that all this mediaeval piety and
devotion sprang up suddenly, with no apparent raison d'etre, I have
gone further back, and have shown that with the first dawn of
Christianity over these Islands, religion was no other than in the
twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Arthurian legends,
which Sir Thomas Malory wove into one consecutive whole, had been
handed down from generation to generation for many hundreds of years.
Sometimes they had been written in the French language, but they lived
in the minds of the people, and Sir Lancelot, who died "a holy man,"
was as vivid and real to them as was Richard, the troubadour king. With
the story of his sharp penance, his fasting and prayers for the soul of
Guinevere, was also handed down incidentally the tradition of Britain's
obedience to the "Apostle Pope".
Some time after the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the eighth century, was
set up a wonderful churchyard Cross at Ruthwell in Scotland, a
"folk-book in stone," alluded to in the Act passed by the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1642, "anent the Idolatrous
Monuments in Ruthwell," and already two years previously condemned by
that enlightened body to be "taken down, demolished, and destroyed."
The story of this ancient Cross, and that of the runes carved upon it,
form the subject of the opening study of Part II.
Little need be said here of Foxe, the great calumniator of Queen Mary's
bishops. His book, which so long deceived the world, is no more the
power it once was, but in it lay the venom which poisoned the wells, as
far as the ill-fated reign of Mary was concerned; and the essay which
deals with it could scarcely have been omitted.
In the hope that I have been enabled to throw a faint ray of additional
light on some vexed but interesting questions, this volume is put
forward.
J. M. S.
September 1905.
CONTENTS
PART I
I. MARGARET TUDOR
II. NOR WIFE NOR WIDOW
III. A NOTABLE ENGLISHMAN
IV. THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION IN GERMANY
V. JESUITS AT COURT
VI. GIORDANO BRUNO IN ENGLAND
VII. CHARLES THE FIRST AND THE POPISH PLOT