PRACTICAL-DEVOTIONAL.
Here indeed, by rule of antagonisms, may be the place to mention that,
after King Richard's return, there was a liberty of tourneying given
to the fighting-men of England: that a Tournament was proclaimed in
the Abbot's domain, 'between Thetford and St. Edmundsbury,'--perhaps
in the Euston region, on Fakenham Heights, midway between these two
localities: that it was publicly prohibited by our Lord Abbot; and
nevertheless was held in spite of him,--and by the parties, as would
seem, considered 'a gentle and free passage of arms.'
Nay, next year, there came to the same spot four-and-twenty young men,
sons of Nobles, for another passage of arms; who, having completed the
same, all rode into St. Edmundsbury to lodge for the night. Here is
modesty! Our Lord Abbot, being instructed of it, ordered the Gates to
be closed; the whole party shut in. The morrow was the Vigil of the
Apostles Peter and Paul; no outgate on the morrow. Giving their
promise not to depart without permission, those four-and-twenty young
bloods dieted all that day (_manducaverunt_) with the Lord Abbot,
waiting for trial on the morrow. 'But after dinner,'--mark it,
posterity!--'the Lord Abbot retiring into his _Talamus_, they all
started up, and began carolling and singing (_carolare et cantare_);
sending into the Town for wine; drinking, and afterwards howling
(_ululantes_);--totally depriving the Abbot and Convent of their
afternoon's nap; doing all this in derision of the Lord Abbot, and
spending in such fashion the whole day till evening, nor would they
desist at the Lord Abbot's order! Night coming on, they broke the
bolts of the Town-Gates, and went off by violence!'[21] Was the like
ever heard of? The roysterous young dogs; carolling, howling, breaking
the Lord Abbot's sleep,--after that sinful chivalry cockfight of
theirs! They too are a feature of distant centuries, as of near ones.
St. Edmund on the edge of your horizon, or whatever else there, young
scamps, in the dandy state, whether cased in iron or in whalebone,
begin to caper and carol on the green Earth! Our Lord Abbot
excommunicated most of them; and they gradually came in for
repentance.
Excommunication is a great recipe with our Lord Abbot; the prevailing
purifier in those ages. Thus when the Townsfolk and Monks' menials
quarrelled once at the Christmas Mysteries in St. Edmund's Churchyard,
and 'from words it came to cuffs, and from cuffs to cutting and the
effusion of blood,'--our Lord Abbot excommunicates sixty of the
rioters, with bell, book and candle (_accensis candelis_), at one
stroke.[22] Whereupon they all come suppliant, indeed nearly naked,
'nothing on but their breeches, _omnino nudi praeter femoralia_, and
prostrate themselves at the Church-door.' Figure that!
In fact, by excommunication or persuasion, by impetuosity of driving
or adroitness in leading, this Abbot, it is now becoming plain
everywhere, is a man that generally remains master at last. He tempers
his medicine to the malady, now hot, now cool; prudent though fiery,
an eminently practical man. Nay sometimes in his adroit practice there
are swift turns almost of a surprising nature! Once, for example, it
chanced that Geoffrey Riddell Bishop of Ely, a Prelate rather
troublesome to our Abbot, made a request of him for timber from his
woods towards certain edifices going on at Glemsford. The Abbot, a
great builder himself, disliked the request; could not, however, give
it a negative. While he lay, therefore, at his Manorhouse of Melford
not long after, there comes to him one of the Lord Bishop's men or
monks, with a message from his Lordship, "That he now begged
permission to cut down the requisite trees in Elmswell Wood,"--so said
the monk: Elms_well_, where there are no trees but scrubs and shrubs,
instead of Elm_set_, our true _nemus_ and high-towering oak-wood, here
on Melford Manor! Elmswell? The Lord Abbot, in surprise, inquires
privily of Richard his Forester; Richard answers that my Lord of Ely
has already had his _carpentarii_ in Elm_set_, and marked out for his
own use all the best trees in the compass of it. Abbot Samson
thereupon answers the monk: "Elmswell? Yes surely, be it as my Lord
Bishop wishes." The successful monk, on the morrow morning, hastens
home to Ely; but, on the morrow morning, 'directly after mass,' Abbot
Samson too was busy! The successful monk, arriving at Ely, is rated
for a goose and an owl; is ordered back to say that Elmset was the
place meant. Alas, on arriving at Elmset, he finds the Bishop's trees,
they 'and a hundred more,' all felled and piled, and the stamp of St.
Edmund's Monastery burnt into them,--for roofing of the great tower we
are building there! Your importunate Bishop must seek wood for
Glemsford edifices in some other _nemus_ than this. A practical Abbot!
We said withal there was a terrible flash of anger in him: witness his
address to old Herbert the Dean, who in a too thrifty manner has
erected a windmill for himself on his glebe-lands at Haberdon. On the
morrow, after mass, our Lord Abbott orders the Cellerarius to send off
his carpenters to demolish the said structure _brevi manu_, and lay
up the wood in safe keeping. Old Dean Herbert, hearing what was
toward, comes tottering along hither, to plead humbly for himself and
his mill. The Abbot answers: "I am obliged to thee as if thou hadst
cut off both my feet! By God's face, _per os Dei_, I will not eat
bread till that fabric be torn in pieces. Thou art an old man, and
shouldst have known that neither the King nor his Justiciary dare
change aught within the Liberties without consent of Abbot and
Convent: and thou hast presumed on such a thing? I tell thee, it will
_not_ be without damage to my mills; for the Townsfolk will go to thy
mill, and grind their corn (_bladum suum_) at their own good pleasure;
nor can I hinder them, since they are free men. I will allow no new
mills on such principle. Away, away; before thou gettest home again,
thou shalt see what thy mill has grown to!"[23]--The very reverend the
old Dean totters home again, in all haste; tears the mill in pieces by
his own _carpentarii_, to save at least the timber; and Abbot Samson's
workmen, coming up, find the ground already clear of it.
* * * * *
Easy to bully-down poor old rural Deans, and blow their windmills
away: but who is the man that dare abide King Richard's anger; cross
the Lion in his path, and take him by the whiskers! Abbot Samson too;
he is that man, with justice on his side. The case was this. Adam de
Cokefield, one of the chief feudatories of St. Edmund, and a principal
man in the Eastern Counties, died, leaving large possessions, and for
heiress a daughter of three months; who by clear law, as all men know,
became thus Abbot Samson's ward; whom accordingly he proceeded to
dispose of to such person as seemed fittest. But now King Richard has
another person in view, to whom the little ward and her great
possessions were a suitable thing. He, by letter, requests that Abbot
Samson will have the goodness to give her to this person. Abbot
Samson, with deep humility, replies that she is already given. New
letters from Richard, of severer tenor; answered with new deep
humilities, with gifts and entreaties, with no promise of obedience.
King Richard's ire is kindled; messengers arrive at St. Edmundsbury,
with emphatic message to obey or tremble! Abbot Samson, wisely silent
as to the King's threats, makes answer: "The King can send if he will,
and seize the ward: force and power he has to do his pleasure, and
abolish the whole Abbey. But I, for my part, never can be bent to wish
this that he seeks, nor shall it by me be ever done. For there is
danger lest such things be made a precedent of, to the prejudice of my
successors. _Videat Altissimus_, Let the Most High look on it.
Whatsoever thing shall befall I will patiently endure."
Such was Abbot Samson's deliberate decision. Why not? Coeur-de-Lion
is very dreadful, but not the dreadfulest. _Videat Altissimus._ I
reverence Coeur-de-Lion to the marrow of my bones, and will in all
right things be _homo suus_; but it is not, properly speaking, with
terror, with any fear at all. On the whole, have I not looked on the
face of 'Satan with outspread wings;' steadily into Hell-fire these
seven-and-forty years;--and was not melted into terror even at that,
such the Lord's goodness to me? Coeur-de-Lion!
Richard swore tornado oaths, worse than our armies in Flanders, To be
revenged on that proud Priest. But in the end he discovered that the
Priest was right; and forgave him, and even loved him. 'King Richard
wrote, soon after, to Abbot Samson, That he wanted one or two of the
St. Edmundsbury dogs, which he heard were good.' Abbot Samson sent
him dogs of the best; Richard replied by the present of a ring, which
Pope Innocent the Third had given him. Thou brave Richard, thou brave
Samson! Richard too, I suppose, 'loved a man,' and knew one when he
saw him.
* * * * *
No one will accuse our Lord Abbot of wanting worldly wisdom, due
interest in worldly things. A skilful man; full of cunning insight,
lively interests; always discerning the road to his object, be it
circuit, be it short-cut, and victoriously travelling forward thereon.
Nay rather it might seem, from Jocelin's Narrative, as if he had his
eye all but exclusively directed on terrestrial matters, and was much
too secular for a devout man. But this too, if we examine it, was
right. For it is _in_ the world that a man, devout or other, has his
life to lead, his work waiting to be done. The basis of Abbot
Samson's, we shall discover, was truly religion, after all. Returning
from his dusty pilgrimage, with such welcome as we saw, 'he sat down
at the foot of St. Edmund's Shrine.' Not a talking theory, that; no, a
silent practice: Thou, St. Edmund, with what lies in thee, thou now
must help me, or none will!
This also is a significant fact: the zealous interest our Abbot took
in the Crusades. To all noble Christian hearts of that era, what
earthly enterprise so noble? 'When Henry II., having taken the cross,
came to St. Edmund's, to pay his devotions before setting out, the
Abbot secretly made for himself a cross of linen cloth: and, holding
this in one hand and a threaded needle in the other, asked leave of
the King to assume it.' The King could not spare Samson out of
England;--the King himself indeed never went. But the Abbot's eye was
set on the Holy Sepulchre, as on the spot of this Earth where the true
cause of Heaven was deciding itself. 'At the retaking of Jerusalem by
the Pagans, Abbot Samson put on a cilice and hair-shirt, and wore
under-garments of hair-cloth ever after; he abstained also from flesh
and flesh-meats (_carne et carneis_) thenceforth to the end of his
life.' Like a dark cloud eclipsing the hopes of Christendom, those
tidings cast their shadow over St. Edmundsbury too: Shall Samson Abbas
take pleasure while Christ's Tomb is in the hands of the Infidel?
Samson, in pain of body, shall daily be reminded of it, daily be
admonished to grieve for it.
The great antique heart: how like a child's in its simplicity, like a
man's in its earnest solemnity and depth! Heaven lies over him
wheresoever he goes or stands on the Earth; making all the Earth a
mystic Temple to him, the Earth's business all a kind of worship.
Glimpses of bright creatures flash in the common sunlight; angels yet
hover doing God's messages among men: that rainbow was set in the
clouds by the hand of God! Wonder, miracle encompass the man; he lives
in an element of miracle; Heaven's splendour over his head, Hell's
darkness under his feet. A great Law of Duty, high as these two
Infinitudes, dwarfing all else, annihilating all else,--making royal
Richard as small as peasant Samson, smaller if need be!--The
'imaginative faculties?' 'Rude poetic ages?' The 'primeval poetic
element?' Oh, for God's sake, good reader, talk no more of all that!
It was not a Dilettantism this of Abbot Samson. It was a Reality, and
it is one. The garment only of it is dead; the essence of it lives
through all Time and all Eternity!--
* * * * *
And truly, as we said above, is not this comparative silence of Abbot
Samson as to his religion precisely the healthiest sign of him and of
it? 'The Unconscious is the alone Complete.' Abbot Samson all along a
busy working man, as all men are bound to be, his religion, his
worship was like his daily bread to him;--which he did not take the
trouble to talk much about; which he merely ate at stated intervals,
and lived and did his work upon! This is Abbot Samson's Catholicism of
the Twelfth Century;--something like the _Ism_ of all true men in all
true centuries, I fancy! Alas, compared with any of the _Isms_ current
in these poor days, what a thing! Compared with the respectablest,
morbid, struggling Methodism, never so earnest; with the
respectablest, ghastly, dead or galvanised Dilettantism, never so
spasmodic!
Methodism with its eye forever turned on its own navel; asking itself
with torturing anxiety of Hope and Fear, "Am I right? am I wrong?
Shall I be saved? shall I not be damned?"--what is this, at bottom,
but a new phasis of _Egoism_, stretched out into the Infinite; not
always the heavenlier for its infinitude! Brother, so soon as
possible, endeavour to rise above all that. "Thou _art_ wrong; thou
art like to be damned:" consider that as the fact, reconcile thyself
even to that, if thou be a man;--then first is the devouring Universe
subdued under thee, and from the black murk of midnight and noise of
greedy Acheron, dawn as of an everlasting morning, how far above all
Hope and all Fear, springs for thee, enlightening thy steep path,
awakening in thy heart celestial Memnon's music!
But of our Dilettantisms, and galvanised Dilettantisms; of Puseyism--O
Heavens, what shall we say of Puseyism, in comparison to
Twelfth-Century Catholicism? Little or nothing; for indeed it is a
matter to strike one dumb.
The Builder of this Universe was wise,
He plann'd all souls, all systems, planets, particles:
The Plan He shap'd all Worlds and AEons by,
Was--Heavens!--Was thy small Nine-and-thirty Articles?
That certain human souls, living on this practical Earth, should
think to save themselves and a ruined world by noisy theoretic
demonstrations and laudations of _the_ Church, instead of some
unnoisy, unconscious, but _practical_, total, heart-and-soul
demonstration of a Church: this, in the circle of revolving ages, this
also was a thing we were to see. A kind of penultimate thing,
precursor of very strange consummations; last thing but one? If there
is no atmosphere, what will it serve a man to demonstrate the
excellence of lungs? How much profitabler, when you can, like Abbot
Samson, breathe; and go along your way!
FOOTNOTES:
[21] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 40.
[22] Ibid. p. 68.
[23] _Jocelini Chronica_, p. 43.