Chapter XIII Pilgrimages and Relics
Pilgrimages and the honour shown to relics are frequently pointed out as, with Indulgences, among the most objectionable features of the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical system. It is assumed that on the eve of the religious changes the abuses in these matters were so patent, that no voice was, or indeed could have been, raised in their defence, and it is asserted that they were swept away without regret or protest as one of the most obvious and necessary items in the general purification of the mediæval church initiated in the reign of Henry VIII. That they had indeed been tolerated at all even up to the time of their final overthrow was in part, if not entirely, due to the clergy, and in particular to the monks who, as they derived much pecuniary benefit from encouraging such practices, did not scruple to inculcate by every means in their power the spiritual advantages to be derived from them. That the objectionable features of these so-called works of piety had long been recognised, is taken for granted, and the examinations of people suspected of entertaining Wycliffite opinions are pointed to as proof that earnest men were alive to these abuses for more than a century before religion was purified from them. As conclusive evidence of this, the names, too, of Chaucer for early times, and of Erasmus for the Reform period, are given as those whose condemnation and even scornful rejection of such practices cannot be doubted. It becomes important, then, for a right understanding of the mental attitude of the people generally to the existing ecclesiastical system at the time of its overthrow, to see how far the outcry against pilgrimages and the devotion to relics was really popular, and what were the precise objections taken to them by the innovators.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance attached to pilgrimages by our pre-Reformation forefathers. From very early times the practice was followed with eagerness, not to say with devotion, and included not merely visits to the shrines situated within the country itself, but long and often perilous journeys into foreign lands—to Compostella, Rome, and to the Holy Land itself. These foreign pilgrimages of course could be undertaken only by the rich, or by those for whom the requisite money was found by some one unable to undertake the journey in person. Not infrequently the early English wills contain injunctions upon the executors to defray the cost of some poor pilgrim to Spain, to Rome, or to some of the noted shrines on the Continent. The English love for these works of piety in nowise showed any sign of decadence even right up to the period of change. Books furnishing intending pilgrims with necessary information, and vocabularies, even in Greek, were prepared to assist them in their voyages. The itineraries of William Wey, printed by the Roxburghe Club, give a very good idea of what these great religious pilgrimages must have been like at the close of the fifteenth century. In 1462 Wey was in the Holy Land, and describes how joyfully the pilgrims on landing at Jaffa sang the “Urbs beata Jerusalem in faburthyn.” In 1456 he took part in a large English pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, leaving Plymouth with a shipload of English fellow-pilgrims on May 17. William Wey’s ship was named the Mary White, and in company with them six other English ships brought pilgrims from Portsmouth, Bristol, Weymouth, Lymington, and a second from Plymouth. They reached Corunna on May 21st, and Compostella for the great celebration of Trinity Day. Wey was evidently much honoured by being pointed out to the church officials as the chief Englishman of note present, and he was given the post of first bearer of the canopy in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Four out of the six poles were carried by his countrymen, whom he names as Austill, Gale, and Fulford.
On their return the pilgrims spent three days at Corunna. They were not allowed to be idle, but religious festivities must have occupied most of their time. On Wednesday, the eve of Corpus Christi day, there was a procession of English pilgrims throughout the city and a mass in honour of the Blessed Virgin. On Corpus Christi itself their procession was in the Franciscan church, and a sermon was preached in English by an English Bachelor in Theology on the theme, Ecce ego; vocasti me. “No other nation,” says William Wey, somewhat proudly, “had these special services but the English.” In the first port there were ships belonging to English, Welsh, Irish, Norman, French, and Breton, and the English alone had two and thirty.
Such journeys were not, of course, in those days devoid of danger, especially from sickness brought on, or developed in the course of the travels. Erasmus, in his Colloquy on Rash Vows, speaks of losing three in a company. “One dying on the way commissioned us to salute Peter (in Rome) and James (at Compostella) in his name. Another we lost at Rome, and he desired that we should greet his wife and children for him. The third we left behind at Florence, his recovery entirely despaired of, and I imagine he is now in heaven.” That this account of the mortality among pilgrims is not exaggerated is shown in the diary of Sir Richard Torkington, Rector of Mulbarton, in Norfolk. In 1517 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and records on “the 25th of August, that was Saynt Bertolmew’s day, deceased Robert Crosse of London, and was buried in the churchyard of Salyus (in the island of Cyprus); and the 27th day of August deceased Sir Thomas Tappe, a priest of the West country, and was cast over the board; as were many more whose souls God assoyl; and then there remained in the ship four English priests more.”391
If Englishmen went abroad to the celebrated shrines, foreigners in turn found their way to the no less renowned places of pilgrimage in England. Pilgrims’ inns and places of rest were scattered over the great roads leading to Glastonbury, Walsingham, and Canterbury, and other “holy spots” in this island, and at times these places were thronged with those who came to pay their devotion. At one time we are told that more than a hundred thousand pilgrims were together in the city of Canterbury to celebrate one of the Jubilee celebrations of the martyr St. Thomas; whilst the road to Walsingham was so much frequented, that in the common mind the very “milk way” had been set by Providence in the heaven to point the path to Our Lady’s shrine.
With the very question of pilgrimages, Sir Thomas More actually deals in the first portion of his Dyalogue, and it would be difficult to find any authority who should carry greater weight. He first deals with the outcry raised by the followers of Luther against the riches which had been lavished upon the churches, and in particular upon the shrines containing the relics of saints.
Those who so loudly condemn this devotion shown by the church to the saints should know, he says “that the church worships not the saints as God, but as God’s servants, and therefore the honour that is done to them redoundeth principally to the honour of their Master; just as by common custom of people we sometimes, for their master’s sake, reverence and make great cheer for people to whom perhaps except for this we would not have said ‘good morrow.’
“And sure if any benefit or alms, done to one of Christ’s poor folk for his sake, be reputed and accepted by His high goodness, as done unto Himself: and if whosoever receiveth one of His apostles or disciples receives Himself, every wise man may well think that in like manner he who honours His holy saints for His sake, honours Himself, except these heretics think that God were as envious as they are themselves, and that He would be wroth to have any honour done to any other, though it thereby redoundeth unto Himself. In this matter our Saviour Christ clearly declares the contrary, for He shows Himself so well content that His holy saints shall be partakers of His honour that He promises His apostles that at the dreadful doom (when He shall come in His high majesty) they shall have their honourable seats and sit with Himself upon the judgment of the world. Christ also promised that Saint Mary Magdalene should be worshipped through the world and have here an honourable remembrance because she bestowed that precious ointment upon His holy head. When I consider this thing it makes me marvel at the madness of these heretics that bark against the old ancient customs of Christ’s church, mocking at the setting up of candles, and with foolish facetiousness (fallacies) and blasphemous mockery demand whether God and His saints lack light, or whether it be night with them that they cannot see without a candle. They might as well ask what good did that ointment do to Christ’s head? But the heretics grudge the cost now as their brother Judas did then, and say it were better spent on alms upon a poor folk, and thus say many of them who can neither find in their heart to spend on the one nor the other. And some spend sometimes on the one for no other intent, but the more boldly to rebuke against and rail against the other.”
After pointing out how riches were lavished on the temple by God’s special ordinance, Sir Thomas More continues: “If men will say that the money were better spent among poor folk by whom He (i.e. God) setteth more store as the living temples of the Holy Ghost made by His own hand than by the temples of stone made by the hand of men, this would perhaps be true if there were so little to do it with that we should be driven by necessity to leave the one undone. But God gives enough for both, and gives divers men divers kinds of devotion, and all to His pleasure. Luther, in a sermon of his, wished that he had in his hand all the pieces of the holy cross, and said if he had he would throw them where the sun should never shine on them. And for what worshipful reason would the wretch do such villainy to the cross of Christ? Because, as he says, there is so much gold now bestowed on the garnishing of the pieces of the cross that there is none left for poor folks. Is not this a high reason? As though all the gold that is now bestowed about the pieces of the holy cross would not have failed to be given to poor men if they had not been bestowed on the garnishing of the cross; and as though there was nothing lost except what is bestowed about Christ’s cross. Take all the gold that is spent about all the pieces of Christ’s cross through Christendom (albeit many a good Christian prince and other godly people have honourably garnished many pieces of it), yet if all the gold were gathered together it would appear a poor portion in comparison with the gold that is bestowed upon cups—what do we speak of cups for? in which the gold, though it is not given to poor men, is saved, and may be given in alms when men will, which they never will; how small a portion, ween we, were the gold about all the pieces of Christ’s cross, if it were compared with the gold that is quite cast away about the gilding of knives, swords, &c.”
Our author then goes on to put in the mouth of the “objector” the chief reasons those who were then the advocates of the religious changes were urging against pilgrimages to the shrines of saints and to special places of devotion to our Blessed Lady. Protesting that he had, of course, no desire to see the images of the saints treated in any way disrespectfully, the objector declares that “yet to go in pilgrimages to them, or to pray to them, not only seemed vain, considering that (if they can do anything) they can do no more for us among them all than Christ can Himself alone who can do all things, nor are they so ready to hear (if they hear us at all) as Christ that is everywhere.”… Moreover, to go a pilgrimage to one place rather than to another “seems to smell of idolatry,” as implying that God was not so powerful in one place as He is in another, and, as it were, making God and His saints “bound to a post, and that post cut out and carved into images. For when we reckon we are better heard by our Lord in Kent than at Cambridge, at the north door of Paul’s than at the south door, at one image of our Lady than at another,” is it not made plain that we “put our trust and confidence in the image itself, and not in God and our Lady,” and think of the image and not of what the image represents.
Further, “men reckon that the clergy gladly favour these ways, and nourish this superstition under the name and colour of devotion, to the peril of people’s souls for the lucre and temporal advantage that they themselves receive from the offerings” (p. 120).
Lest it may be thought that these objections to places of pilgrimage were merely such as Sir Thomas More invented to put into the mouth of the “objector” in order to refute them, the reader may like to have the words of a known advocate of the new ideas. Lancelot Ridley, in his expositions of some of the Epistles, states his views very clearly. “Ignorant people,” he writes, “have preferred the saints before God, and put more trust, more confidence, (look for) more help and succour, in a saint than in God. Yea, I fear me that many have put their help and succour in an image made of stone or of wood by men’s hand, and have done great honour and reverence to the image, believing that great virtue and great holiness was in that image above other images. Therefore that image must have a velvet coat hanged all over with brooches of silver, and much silver hanged about it and on it, with much light burning before it, and with candles always burning before it. I would no man (should put out the light) in contempt of the saint whose image there is, but I would have this evil opinion out of the simple hearts that they should esteem images after the value they are, and put no more holiness in one image than in another, no more virtue in one than in another. It holds the simple people in great blindness, and makes them put great trust and (esteem) great holiness in images, because one image is called our Lady of Grace, another our Lady of Pity, another our Lady of Succour or Comfort; the Holy Rood of such a place, &c.” And this he maintained, though he did not condemn images generally in churches. These he thought useful to remind people of God’s saints and their virtues, and “to stir up our dull hearts and slothful minds to God and to goodness.” What he objected to chiefly was the special places of pilgrimage and special images to which more than ordinary devotion was shown.392
In another of his Expositions, printed in 1540, Ridley again states his objections to the places of pilgrimage. “Some think,” he writes, “that they have some things of God, and other part of saints, of images, and so divide God’s glory, part to God and part to an image, of wood or of stone made by man’s hand. This some ignorant persons have done in times past, and thanked God for their health and the blessed Lady of Walsingham, of Ipswich, St. Edmund of Bury, Etheldred of Ely, the Lady of Redbourne, the Holy Blood of Hayles, the Holy Rood of Boxley, of Chester, &c., and so other images in this realm to the which have been much pilgrimage and much idolatry, supposing the dead images could have healed them or could have done something for them to God. For this the ignorant have crouched, kneeled, kissed, bobbed and licked the images, giving them coats of cloth, of gold, silver, and of tissue, velvet, damask, and satin, and suffered the living members of Christ to be without a russet coat or a sackcloth to keep them from the cold.”393
Again in another place he says that his great objection to images is not that they may not be good in themselves and as a reminder of the holiness of the saints, but that they are used as a means of making money. “Who can tell,” he writes, “half the ways they have found to get, yea to extort money from men by images, by pardons, by pilgrimages, by indulgences, &c. … all invented for money.” The above passages may be taken as fair samples of the outcry against shrines and pilgrimages raised by the English followers of Luther and the advocates of the religious changes generally. It will be noticed that the ground of the objections was in reality only the same as that which induced them to declare against any honour shown to images, whether of Christ or His saints. There is no suggestion of any special abuses connected with particular shrines and places of pilgrimage, such as is often hinted at by those who refer to Chaucer and Erasmus. In addition to the general ground of objection, the only point raised in regard to pilgrimages by the advocates for their suppression was that money was spent upon them which might have been bestowed more profitably on the poor, and that the clergy were enriched by the offerings made at the shrines visited. Sir Thomas More’s reply to the latter suggestion has been already given, and elsewhere his views as to the general question of the danger of people mistaking the nature of the honour shown to images of the saints have been stated at length. With regard to his approval of the principle of pilgrimages there is no room for doubt.
“If the thing were so far from all frame of right religion,” he says, “and so perilous to men’s souls, I cannot perceive why the clergy, for the gain they get thereby, would suffer such abuses to continue. For, first, if it were true that no pilgrimage ought to be used, no image offered to, nor worship done nor prayer offered to any saint, then—if all these things were all undone (if that were the right way, as I wot well it were wrong), then to me there is little question but that Christian people who are in the true faith and in the right way Godward would not thereby in any way slack their good minds towards the ministers of His church, but their devotion towards them would more and more increase. So that if by this way they now get a penny they would not then fail to receive a groat; and so should no lucre be the cause to favour this way if it be wrong, whilst they could not fail to win more by the right.”
“Moreover, look through Christendom and you will find the fruit of those offerings a right small part of the living of the clergy, and such as, though some few places would be glad to retain, yet the whole body might easily forbear without any notable loss. Let us consider our own country, and we shall find that these pilgrimages are for the most part in the hands of such religious persons or of such poor parishes as have no great authority in the convocations. Besides this you will not find, I suppose, that any Bishop in England has the profit of even one groat from any such offering in his diocese. Now, the continuance or breaking of this manner and custom stands them specially in the power of those who take no profit by it. If they believed it to be (as you call it) superstitious and wicked they would never suffer it to continue to the perishing of men’s souls (something whereby they themselves would destroy their own souls and get no commodity either in body or goods). And beyond this, we see that the bishops and prelates themselves visit these holy places and pilgrimages, and make as large offerings and (incur) as great cost in coming and going as other people do, so that they not only take no temporal advantage, but also bestow their own money therein. And surely I believe this devotion so planted by God’s own hand in the hearts of the whole Church, that is to say, not the clergy only, but the whole congregation of all Christian people, that if the spirituality were of the mind to give it up, yet the temporality would not suffer it.”
It would be impossible, without making extensive quotations, to do justice to Sir Thomas More’s argument in favour of the old Catholic practice of pilgrimages. He points out that the whole matter turns upon the question whether or no Almighty God does manifest His power and presence more in one place of His world than in another. That He does so, he thinks cannot be questioned; why He should do so, it is not for us to guess, but the single example of the Angel and the pool of Bethsaida related in St. John’s Gospel is sufficient proof of the fact—at least to Sir Thomas More’s intelligence. Moreover, he thinks also that in many cases the special holiness of a place of pilgrimage has been shown by the graces and favours, and even miracles, which have been granted by God at that particular spot, and on the “objector” waiving this argument aside on the plea that he does not believe in modern miracles, More declares that what is even more than miracles in his estimation is the “common belief in Christ’s Church” in the practice.
As to believing in miracles; they, like every other fact, depend on evidence and proof. It is unreasonable in the highest degree to disbelieve everything which we have not seen or which we do not understand. Miracles, like everything else, must be believed on the evidence of credible witnesses. What in their day, he says, is believed in by all would have been deemed impossible a century or two before; for example, that the earth is round and “sails in mid-air,” and that “men walk on it foot to foot” and ships sail on its seas “bottom to bottom.” Again, “It is not fifty years ago,” he says, “since the first man, as far as men have heard, came to London who ever parted the silver gilt from the silver, consuming shortly the silver into dust with a very fair water.” At first the gold and silver smiths laughed at the suggestion as absurd and impossible. Quite recently also More had been told that it was possible to melt iron and make it “to run as silver or lead doeth, and make it take a print.” More had never, he says, seen this, but he had seen the new invention of drawing out silver into thread-like wires. The “objector” was incredulous, and when More went on to tell him that if a piece of silver had been gilded, it could be drawn out with the gilding into gilt wires, he expressed his disbelief in the possibility of such a thing, and was hardly more satisfied that he was not being deceived when the process was shown to him the next day.
These and such like things, argues More, show us that our knowledge is, after all, very limited, and that while some supposed miracles may be doubted, it is most unreasonable to doubt or deny the possibility of miracles generally. If nature and reason tell us there is a God, the same two prove that miracles are not impossible, and that God can act when He wills against the course of nature. Whether He does in this or that case is plainly a matter of evidence. The importance of Sir Thomas More’s opinion on the matter of Pilgrimage does not, of course, rest upon the nature of his views, which were those naturally of all good Catholic sons of Holy Church, but upon the fact that, in face of the objections which were then made and which were of the kind to which subsequent generations have been accustomed, so learned and liberal a man as he was, did not hesitate to treat them as groundless, and to defend the practice as it was then known in England. That there may have been “abuses” he would have no doubt fully admitted, but that the “abuses” were either so great or so serious as to be any reasonable ground against the “use” he would equally have indignantly denied.
No less clear and definite are his opinions as to “relics” and the honour shown them. The “adversary” in the Dyalogue takes up the usual objections urged against the reverence shown to the remains of the saints, and in particular to the wealth which was lavished upon their shrines. “May the taking up of a man’s bones,” he says, “and setting his carcase in a gay shrine, and then kissing his bare scalp, make a man a saint? And yet are there some unshrined, for no man knoweth where they lie. And men doubt whether some ever had any body at all or not, but to recompense that again some there are who have two bodies, to lend one to some good fellow that lacketh his. For … some one body lies whole in two places asunder, or else the monks of the one be beguiled. For both places plainly affirm that it lieth there, and at either place they show the shrine, and in the shrine they show a body which they say is the body, and boldly allege old writings and miracles also for the proof of it. Now must he confess that either the miracles at the one place be false and done by the devil, or else that the same saint had indeed two bodies. It is therefore likely that a bone worshipped for a relic of some holy saint in some place was peradventure ‘a bone (as Chaucer says) of some holy Jew’s sheep.’” More’s “adversary” then goes on to say that our Lord in reproving the Pharisees for “making fresh the sepulchres of the prophets” condemns the “gay golden shrines made for saints’ bodies, especially when we have no certainty that they are saints at all.”394
What all this really amounts to, replies More, is not that your reasons would condemn honour and worship to true relics of the saints, but that “we may be deceived in some that we take for saints—except you would say that if we might by any possibility mistake some, therefore we should worship none.” Few people would say this, and “I see,” says More, “no great peril to us from the danger of a mistake. If there came, for example, a great many of the king’s friends into your country, and for his sake you make them all great cheer; if among them there come unawares to you some spies that were his mortal enemies, wearing his badge and seeming to you and so reported as his familiar friends, would he blame you for the good cheer you made his enemies or thank you for the good cheer you gave his friends?” He then goes on at great length to suggest that, as in the case of the head of St. John the Baptist in which portions only existing in each place are each called “the head,” so, very frequently, only a portion of the body of a saint is called “the body.” He mentions having himself been present at the abbey of Barking thirty years before (i.e. in 1498), when a number of relics were discovered hidden in an old image, which must have been put there four or five hundred years since “when the abbey was burned by the infidels.” He thinks that in this way the names of relics are frequently either lost or changed. But he adds, “the name is not so very requisite but that we may mistake it without peril, so that we nevertheless have the relics of holy men in reverence.”
In replying to Tyndale also, More declares that he had never in all his life held views against relics of the saints or the honour due to their holy images. Tyndale had charged him with being compromised by the words used by Erasmus in the Enconium Moriæ, which was known to have been composed in More’s house, and was commonly regarded as almost the joint work of the two scholars. If there were anything like this in the Moriæ—any words that could mean or seem to mean anything against the true Catholic devotion to relics and images—then More rejects them from his heart. But they are not my words, he adds, “the book being made by another man, though he were my darling never so dear” (p. 422). But the real truth is that in the Moriæ Erasmus never said more or meant more than to “jest upon the abuses of such things.”
In this regard it is of interest to understand what was the real opinion of Erasmus in regard to devotions to particular saints and their images and relics. This is all the more important, as most people regard the account of his two pilgrimages to Walsingham and to Canterbury as full and conclusive evidence of his sentiments. In his tract Enchiridion Militis Christiani, published at Louvain in 1518, his views are stated with absolute clearness. “There are some,” he says, “who honour certain saints with some special ceremonies.… One salutes St. Christopher each day, and only in presence of his image. Why does he wish to see it? Simply because he will then feel safe that day from any evil death. Another honours Saint Roch—but why? Because he thinks that he will drive away infection from his body. Others murmur prayers to St. Barbara or St. George, so as not to fall into the hands of any enemy. One man fasts for St. Apollonia, not to have toothache. Some dedicate a certain portion of their gains to the poor so that their merchandise is not destroyed in shipwreck,” &c.395
Our author’s point is that in these and such-like things people pray for riches, &c., and do not think much about the right use of them; they pray for health and go on living evil lives. In so far such prayers to the saints are mere superstitions, and do not much differ from the pagan superstitions; the cock to Æsculapius, the tithe to Hercules, the bull to Neptune. “But,” he says, “I praise those who ask from St. Roch a life protected from disease if they would consecrate that life to Christ. I would praise them more if they would pray only for increased detestation of vice and love virtue. I will tolerate infirmity, but with Paul I show the better way.” He would think it, consequently, a more perfect thing to pray only for grace to avoid sin and to please God, and to leave life and death, sickness, health and riches to Him and His will.
“You,” he says farther on, “venerate the saints, you rejoice to possess their relics, but you despise the best thing they have left behind them, namely, the example of a pure life. No devotion is so pleasing to Mary as when you imitate her humility; no religion is so acceptable to the saints and so proper in itself as striving to copy their virtue. Do you wish to merit the patronage of Peter and Paul? Imitate the faith of the one and the charity of the other and you will do more than if you had made ten journeys to Rome. Do you wish to do something to show high honour to St. Francis? You are proud, you are a lover of riches, you are quarrelsome; give these to the saint, rule your soul and be more humble by the example of Francis; despise filthy lucre, and covet rather the good of the soul. Leave contentions aside and overcome evil by good. The saint will receive more honour in this way than if you were to burn a hundred candles to him. You think it a great thing if clothed in the habit of St. Francis you are borne to the grave. This dress will not profit you when you are dead if, when alive, your morals were unlike his.”
“People,” he continues, “honour the relics of St. Paul, and do not trouble to listen to his voice still speaking. They make much of a large portion of one of his bones looked at through a glass, and think little of honouring him really by understanding what he teaches and trying to follow that.” It is the same so often with the honour shown to the crucifix. “You honour,” he says, “the representation of Christ’s face fashioned of stone or of wood or painted in colours, the image of His mind ought to be more religiously honoured, which, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is set forth in the gospels. No Apelles ever sketched the form and figure of a human body in such a perfect way as to compare with the mental image formed in prayer.”
Erasmus then passes on to speak at length of what should lie at the foundation of all true devotion to the saints. The spirit which actuates is that which matters. To put up candles to images of the saints and not to observe God’s laws; to fast and to abstain and not to set a guard on the tongue, to give way to detraction and evil speaking of all kinds; to wear the religious habit and to live the life of a worldling under it; to build churches and not to build up the soul; to keep Sunday observances externally but not to mind what the spirit gives way to—these are the things that really matter. “By your lips you bless and in your heart you curse. Your body is shut up in a narrow cell, and in thought you wander over the whole world. You listen to God’s word with the ears of your body; it would be more to the purpose if you listened inwardly. What doth it profit not to do the evil which you desire to accomplish? What doth it profit to do good outwardly and to do the opposite inwardly? Is it much to go to Jerusalem in the body when in the spirit it is to thee but Sodom and Egypt and Babylon?”396
In his tract De amabili Ecclesiæ concordia, printed in 1533, Erasmus lays down the same principle. It is, he writes, a pious and good thing to believe that the saints who have worked miracles in the time of their lives on earth, can help us now that they are in heaven. As long as there is no danger of real superstition, it is absurd to try to prevent people invoking the saints. Though superstition in the cultus of the saints is, of course, to be prevented, “the pious and simple affection is sometimes to be allowed even if it be mixed with some error.” As for the representations of the saints in churches, those who disapprove of them should not for that reason “blame those who, without superstition, venerate these images for the love of those they represent, just as a newly-married woman kisses a ring or present left or sent by her absent spouse out of affection for him.” Such affection cannot be displeasing to God, since it comes not from superstition, but from an abundance of affectionate feeling, and exactly the same view should be taken of the true devotion shown to the relics of the saints, provided that it be ever borne in mind that the highest honour that can be paid to them consists in imitation of their lives.
Considering the importance of “indulgences” or “pardons,” as they were frequently called, in the Reformation controversies, it is curious that very little is made of them in the literature of the period preceding the religious changes. If we except the works of professed followers of Luther, there is hardly any trace of serious objection being raised to the fundamental idea of “indulgences” in their true sense. Here and there may be found indications of some objection to certain abuses which had been allowed to creep into the system, but these proceeded from loyal sons of the Church rather than from those ill affected to the existing ecclesiastical authority, or those who desired to see the abolition of all such grants of spiritual favours. The lawyer Saint-German, for instance, may be taken as an example of the acute layman, who, although professing to be a Catholic and an obedient son of the Church, was credited by his contemporaries with holding advanced if not somewhat heterodox views on certain matters of current controversy. What he has to say about “pardons” and “indulgences” is neither very startling nor indeed very different from what all serious-minded churchmen of that day held. He considered that the people generally were shocked at finding “the Pope and other spiritual rulers” granting “pardons” for the payment of money. This, he considered, had been brought prominently into notice at the time he was writing, by the indulgences granted to those who should contribute to the building of St. Peter’s when “it has appeared after, evidently that it has not been disposed to that use. And that has caused many to think that the said pardons were granted rather of covetousness than of charity, or for the health of the souls of the people. And thereupon some have fallen in a manner into despising ‘pardons’ as though pardons granted upon such covetousness would not avail … and verily it were a great pity that any misliking of pardons should grow in the hearts of the people for any misdemeanour in the grantor or otherwise, for they are right necessary. And I suppose that if certain pardons were granted freely without money, for the saying of certain appointed prayers, then all misliking of pardons would shortly cease and vanish away.”397
Christopher Saint-German speaks much in the same way as to the evil of connecting payment of money with the granting of indulgences, in the work in connection with which his name is chiefly known, A Dyaloge in English between a Student and a Doctor of Divinity. “If it were so ordered by the Pope,” he writes, “that there might be certain general pardons of full remission in diverse parts of the realm, which the people might have for saying certain orisons and prayers without paying any money for it, it is not unlikely that in a short time there would be very few that would find any fault with ‘pardons.’ For verily it is a great comfort to all Christian people to remember that our Lord loved His people so much that to their relief and comfort leave behind Him so great a treasure as is the power to grant pardons, which, as I suppose, next unto the treasure of His precious body in the Sacrament of the altar, may be accounted among the greatest, and therefore he would labour greatly to his own hurt and to the great heaviness of all others also who would endeavour to prove that there was no such power left by God.”398
In the literature of the period, it must be remembered, there is nothing to show that the true nature of a “pardon” or indulgence was not fully and commonly understood. There is no evidence that it was in any way interpreted as a remission of sin, still less that any one was foolish enough to regard it as permission to commit this or that offence against God. Tyndale, indeed, had suggested that by purchasing an indulgence “thou mayest quench almost the terrible fire of hell for three halfpence.” But Sir Thomas More meets the point directly. “Nay, surely,” he says, “that fire is not so lightly quenched that folk upon the boldness of pardons should stand out of the fear of purgatory. For though the sacrament of penance is able to put away the eternal (nature) of the pain, yet the party for all that has cause to fear both purgatory and hell too, lest some default on his own part prevented God working such grace in him in the Sacrament as should serve for this. So, though the pardon be able to discharge a man of purgatory, yet there may be such default in the party to whom the pardon is granted that although instead of three halfpence he gives three hundred pounds, still he may receive no pardon at all, and therefore he cannot be out of fear of purgatory, but ever has cause to fear it. For no man without a revelation can be sure whether he be partaker of the pardon or not, though he may have and ought to have both in that and every good thing good hope.”399
Bishop Gardiner in 1546, in writing against George Joye, incidentally makes use of some strong expressions about the granting of pardons for the payment of money, and blames the friars as being instrumental in spreading them. He has been asserting that by every means in his power the devil, now in one way and now in another, attempts to prevent men from practising the good works necessary for salvation. “For that purpose,” he says, “he procured out pardons from Rome, wherein heaven was sold for a little money, and to retail that merchandise the devil used friars for his ministers. Now they be all gone with all their trumpery; but the devil is not yet gone, for now the cry is that ‘heaven needs no works at all, but only belief, only, only, and nothing else.’”400
This, after all, was very little more than the abuse which previously was pointed out by the cardinal who, conjointly with Cardinal Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV., had been directed to draw up suggestions for improvement of ecclesiastical discipline. The document drawn up by Caraffa himself was submitted to the Pope by his command, and amongst the points which were declared to need correction were the granting of indulgences for money payments and permission given to travelling collectors, such as the Questors of the Holy Spirit, &c., to bestow “pardons” in return for subscriptions. This, in the judgment of the four cardinals, is likely to lead to misunderstandings as to the real nature of the indulgences granted, to deceive rustic minds, and to give rise to all manner of superstitions.401
Cardinal Sadolet, one of the four cardinals who formed the Papal Commission just referred to, in an appeal to the German princes makes the same adverse criticism about the money payments received for the granting of indulgences. “The whole of Germany,” he says, “has been convulsed by the indulgences granted by Pope Leo. X. to those who would contribute to the building of St. Peter’s. These indulgences,” he says, “and consequently the agents in distributing them, I do not now defend. And I remember that, as far as my position and honour would then allow, I spoke against them when those decrees were published, and when my opinion had no effect I was greatly grieved.” He did not, he continued, doubt the power of the Pope in granting the indulgences, but held that “in giving them, the manner now insisted on with every care by the supreme Pontiff, Paul III., ought to be maintained, namely, that they should be granted freely, and that there should be no mention of money in regard to them. The loving-kindness and mercy of God should not be sold for money, and if anything be asked for at the time, it should be requested as a work of piety.”402
The above will show that earnest-minded men were fully alive to the abuses which might be connected with the granting of indulgences, and no condemnation could have been stronger than that formulated by the Council of Trent. At the same time, it is clear that the abuses of the system were, so far as England at least is concerned, neither widespread nor obvious. The silence of Sir Thomas More on the matter, and the very mild representations of his adversary, Christopher Saint-German, show that this is the case. Saint-German’s objection was not against the system, but against the same kind of abuses against which subsequently the Fathers of Trent legislated. The reformers attacked not the abuses only but the whole system, and their language has quite unjustly been frequently interpreted by subsequent writers as evidence of the existence everywhere of widespread abuses. In this regard it is well to bear in mind that the translation of the works of the German reformers into English cannot be taken as contemporary evidence for England itself.
The cry of the advanced party which would sweep away every vestige of the old religious observances was certainly not popular. One example of a testimony to the general feeling in London is given in a little work printed by one of the reforming party in 1542, when it was found that Henry VIII. did not advance along the path of reformation marked out by the foreign followers of Luther as quickly as his rejection of papal supremacy and the overthrow of the religious houses had caused some people to hope. The tract in question is called The lamentation of a Christian against the Citie of London, made by Roderigo Mors,403 and some quotations from it will show what view an ardent reformer took of the spirit of Londoners towards the new doctrines. “The greater part of these inordinate rich, stiff-necked citizens,” he writes, “will not have in their houses that lively word of our souls404 nor suffer their servants to have it, neither yet (will they) gladly read it or hear it read, but abhors and disdains all those who would live according to the Gospel, and instead thereof they set up and maintain idolatry and other innumerable wickedness of man’s invention daily committed in the city of London.
“The greatest part of the seniors and aldermen, with the multitude of the inordinate rich … with the greatest multitude of thee, O city of London, take the part and be fully bent with the false prophets, the bishops and other strong, stout, and sturdy priests of Baal, to persecute unto death all and every godly person who either preaches the word or setteth it forth in writing … O Lord! how blind are these citizens who take so good care to provide for the dead which is not commanded of them nor availeth the dead.405… When they feel themselves worthily plagued, which comes of Thee only, then they will run a-gadding after their false prophets through the streets once or twice a week, crying and calling to creatures of the Creator, or with ora pro nobis, and that in a tongue which the greatest part of them understand not, unto Peter, Paul, James and John, Mary and Martha: and I think within a few years they will (without Thy great mercy) call upon Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinal, and upon the unholy (or as they would say holy) maid of Kent. Why not, as well as upon Thomas Becket? What he was, I need not write. It is well known.406
“And think ye not that if the Blessed Virgin Mary were now upon earth and saw her Son and only Redeemer robbed of His glory, which glory, you blind citizens give to her, would she not rend her clothes like as did the Apostles, for offering oblations with their forefathers’ kings’ heads unto the Queen of Heaven? How many queens of Heaven have ye in the Litany? O! dear brethren, be no longer deceived with these false prophets your bishops and their members.”407
“The great substance which you bestow upon chantries, obits, and such like dregs of … Rome, which most commonly ye give for three causes, as ye say, first, that you will have the service of God maintained in the church to God’s honour, and yet by the same service is God dishonoured, for the Supper of the Lord is perverted and not used after Christ’s institution … and the holy memory turned into a vain superstitious ceremonial Mass, as they call it, which Mass is an abominable idol, and of all idols the greatest; and never shall idolatry be quenched where that idol is used after antichrist’s institution … which no doubt shall be reformed when the time is come that God hath appointed, even as it is already in divers cities of Germany, as Zurich, Basle, and Strasburg and such other.”
“The second cause is for redeeming your souls and your friends, which is also abominable.… The idolator nowadays, if he set a candle before an image and idol, he says he does not worship the image, but God it represents. For say they, who is so foolish as to worship an image? The third cause of your good intent is that the profit of your goods may come to the priests; as though they were the peculiar people of God and only beloved; as indeed to those who preach the Gospel the people are bound to give sufficient living … but not that their prayers can help the dead no more than a man’s breath blowing a sail can cause a great ship to sail. So is this also become an abomination, for those be not Christ’s ministers, but the ministers of a rabble of dirty traditions and popish ceremonies, and you find a sort of lusty lubbers who are well able to labour for their living and strong to get it with the sweat of their face.”408
“… O ye citizens, if ye would turn but even the profits of your chantries and obits to the finding of the poor, what a politic and goodly provision! whereas now London being one of the flowers of the world as touching worldly riches hath so many, yea innumerable poor people, forced to go from door to door and to sit openly in the streets begging, and many not able to do otherwise but lie in their houses in most grievous pains and die for lack of the aid of the rich, to the great shame of thee, oh London!”409
After exclaiming against the amount of money spent by the authorities of the city of London on civic entertainments, and railing against the support given to “the Mass of Scala cœli, of the Five wounds, and other such like trumpery,” our author continues: “Have you not slain the servants of the Lord, only for speaking against the authority of the false bishop of Rome, that monstrous beast, whom now you yourselves do, or should, abhor? I mean all his laws being contrary to Christ and not His body, and yet you see that a few years past you burnt for heretics abominable those who preached or wrote against his usurped power, and now it is treason to uphold or maintain any part of his usurped power, and he shall die as a traitor who does so, and well worthy.”410
After declaiming against the Mass and confession, and declaring that the bishops and cathedral churches should be despoiled of their wealth as their “companions and brethren in antichrist, the abbots” had been, the author of the tract goes on: “God gave the king a heart to take the wicked mammon from you, as he may rightfully do with the consent of the Commons by Act of Parliament, so that it may be disposed of according to God’s glory and the commonwealth, and to take himself as portion, as (say) eight or ten of every hundred, for an acknowledgment of obedience and for the maintenance of his estate. The rest politically to be put into a commonwealth, first distributed among all the towns in England in sums according to the quantity and number of the occupiers and where most need is, and all the towns to be bound to the king so that he may have the money at his extreme need to serve him, he rendering it again. And also a politic way (should be) taken for provision of the poor in every town, with some part to the marriage of young persons that lack friends.”411
The bishops the writer considers to be the greatest obstacles to the reformation of religion in England on the model of what had already taken place in Germany. “You wicked mammon,” he continues, “your inordinate riches was not of your heavenly Father’s planting; therefore it must be plucked up by the roots with the riches of your other brethren of the Romish church or church malignant, which of late were rightfully plucked up. I would to God that the distribution of the same lands and goods had been as godly distributed as the act of the rooting up was; which distribution of the same I dare say all Christian hearts lament. For the fat swine only were greased, but the poor sheep to whom that thing belonged had least or nothing at all. The fault will be laid to those of the Parliament House, especially to those who bear the greatest swing. Well, I touch this matter here, to exhort all that love God’s word unfeignedly to be diligent in prayer only to God to endue the Lords, Knights, and Burgesses of the next Parliament with His spirit, that the lands and goods of these bishops may be put to a better use, as to God’s glory, the wealth of the commonalty and provision for the poor.”412
The above lengthy extracts will show what the advanced spirits among the English followers of Luther hoped for from the religious revolution which had already, when the tract was written, been begun. It will also serve to show that even in London, which may be supposed to have been in the forefront of the movement, the religious changes were by no means popular; but the civic authorities and people clung to the old faith and traditions, which the author well and tersely describes as “the Romish religion.”
The readers of the foregoing pages will see that no attempt has been made to draw a definite conclusion from the facts set down, or expound the causes of the ultimate triumph of the Reformation principles in England. It has already been pointed out that the time for a satisfactory synthesis is not yet come; but it may not be unnecessary to deprecate impatience to reach an ultimate judgment.
The necessary assumption which underlies the inherited Protestant history of the Reformation in the sixteenth century is the general corruption of manners and morals no less than of doctrine, and the ignorance of religious truths no less than the neglect of religious precepts on the part of both clergy and people. On such a basis nothing can be easier and simpler than to account for the issue of the English religious changes. The revival of historical studies and the alienation of the minds of many historians from traditional Christianity, whether in its Catholic or Protestant form, has, however, thrown doubt on this great fundamental assumption—a doubt that will be strengthened the more the actual conditions of the case are impartially and thoroughly investigated. Many of the genuine sources of history have only within this generation become really accessible; what was previously known has been more carefully examined and sifted, whilst men have begun to see that if the truth is to be ascertained inquiries must be pursued in detail within local limits, and that it does not suffice to speak in general terms of “the corrupt state of the Church.”
If we are to know the real factors of the problem to be solved, separate investigations have to be pursued which lead to very varying conclusions as to the state of the Church, the ecclesiastical life and the religious practices of the people in different countries. It is already evident that the corruptions or the virtues prevailing in one quarter must not straightway be credited to the account of another; that the reason why one country has become Protestant, or another remained Catholic, has to be sought for in each case, and that it may be safely asserted that the maintenance of Catholicity or the adoption of Protestantism in different regions, had comparatively little to do with prevalence or absence of abuses, or as little depended on the question whether these were more or less grievous.
Unquestionably those who desire to have a ready explanation of great historical movements or revolutions, find themselves increasingly baulked in the particular case of the Reformation by the new turn which modern historical research has given to the consideration of the question. Recent attempts to piece up the new results with the old views afford a warning against precipitation, and have but shown that the explanation of the successful issue of the Reformation in England is a problem less simple or obvious than many popular writers have hitherto assumed. The factors are clearly seen now to be many—sometimes accidental, sometimes strongly personal—whilst aspirations after worldly commodities, though destined not to be realised for the many, were often and in the most influential quarters a stronger determinant to acquiescence or active co-operation in the movement than thirst after pure doctrine, love of the open Bible, or desire for a vernacular liturgy. The first condition for the understanding of the problem at all is the most careful and detailed examination possible of the state of popular religion during the whole of the century which witnessed the change, quite apart from the particular political methods employed to effect the transition from the public teaching of the old faith, as it was professed in the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII., and the new as it was officially practised a dozen years after Elizabeth had held the reins of power.
The interest of the questions discussed in the present volume is by no means exclusively, perhaps to some persons is even by no means predominantly, a religious one. It has been insisted upon in the preceding pages that religion on the eve of the Reformation was intimately bound up with the whole social life of the people, animating it and penetrating it at every point. No one who is acquainted with the history of later centuries in England can doubt for a moment that the religion then professed presented in this respect a contrast to the older faith; or as some writers may put it, religion became restricted to what belongs to the technically “religious” sphere. But this was not confined to England, or even to Protestant countries. Everywhere, it may be said, in the centuries subsequent to the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, religion became less directly social in its action; and if the action and interference of what is now called the State in every department of social life is continually extending, this may not inaptly be said to be due to the fact that it has largely taken up the direct social work and direction from which the Church found herself perhaps compelled to recede, in order to concentrate her efforts more intensely on the promotion of more purely and strictly religious influences. It is impossible to study the available sources of information about the period immediately preceding the change without recognising that, so far from the Church being a merely effete or corrupt agency in the commonwealth, it was an active power for popular good in a very wide sense. At any rate, whatever view we may take of the results of the Reformation, to understand rightly the conditions of religious thought and life on the eve of the religious revolution, is a condition of being able really to read aright our own time and to gauge the extent to which present tendencies find their root or their justification in the past.
Footnotes
1 Opera (ed. Frankfort), tom. x. p. 56, quoted by Janssen.
2 J. L. Andre, in Sussex Archæological Journal, xxxix. p. 31.
3 The use of the expression “New Learning” as meaning the revival of letters is now so common that any instance of it may seem superfluous. Green, for example, in his History of the English People, vol. ii. constantly speaks of it. Thus (p. 81), “Erasmus embodied for the Teutonic peoples the quickening influence of the New Learning during the long scholar-life which began at Paris and ended amidst sorrow at Basle.” Again (p. 84), “the group of scholars who represented the New Learning in England.” Again (p. 86), “On the universities the influence of the New Learning was like a passing from death to life.” Again (p. 125), “As yet the New Learning, though scared by Luther’s intemperate language, had steadily backed him in his struggle.”
4 Sermons. London: Robert Caly, 1557, p. 36.
5 The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christ, sig. Aij.
6 R. V. The olde Faith of Great Brittayne, &c.—The style of the book may be judged by the following passages:—“How say you (O ye popish bishops and priests which maintain Austen’s dampnable ceremonies)—For truly so long as ye say masse and lift the bread and wine above your heads, giving the people to understand your mass to be available for the quick and the dead, ye deny the Lord that bought you; therefore let the mass go again to Rome, with all Austen’s trinkets, and cleave to the Lord’s Supper”.… Again:—“Gentle reader: It is not unknown what an occasion of sclander divers have taken in that the king’s majesty hath with his honourable council gone about to alter and take away the abuse of the communion used in the mass.… The ignorant and unlearned esteem the same abuse, called the mass, to be the principal point of Christianity, to whom the altering thereof appears very strange.… Our popish priests still do abuse the Lord’s Supper or Communion, calling it still a new name of Missa or Mass.” The author strongly objects to those like Bishop Gardiner and Dr. Smythe who have written in defence of the old doctrine of the English Church on the Blessed Sacrament: “Yea, even the mass, which is a derogation of Christ’s blood. For Christ left the sacrament of his body and blood in bread and wine to be eaten and drunk in remembrance of his death, and not to be looked upon as the Israelites did the brazen serpent.… Paul saith not, as often as the priest lifts the bread and wine above his shaven crown, for the papists to gaze at.” All this, as “the New Learning” brought over to England by St. Augustine of Canterbury, the author would send back to Rome from whence it came.
7 Urbanus Regius, A comparison betwene the old learnynge and the newe, translated by William Turner. Southwark: Nicholson, 1537, sig. Aij to Cvij.
8 Opera (ed. Le Clerc), Ep. 583.
9 Ibid., Ep. 751.
10 Remigio Sabbadini, La Scuola e gli studi di Guarino Guarini Veronese, pp. 217-18.
11 R. Sabbadini, Guarino Veronese et il suo epistolario, p. 57.
12 The Earl was a confrater and special friend of the monks of Christchurch, Canterbury. In 1468-69, Prior Goldstone wrote to the Earl, who had been abroad “on pilgrimage” for four years, to try and obtain for Canterbury the usual jubilee privileges of 1470. In his Obit in the Canterbury Necrology (MS. Arund. 68 f. 45d) he is described as “vir undecumque doctissimus, omnium liberalium artium divinarumque simul ac secularium litterarum scientia peritissimus.”
13 Leland (De Scriptoribus Britannicis, 482) calls him Tillœus, and this has been generally translated as Tilly. In the Canterbury Letter Books (Rolls Series, iii. 291) it appears that Prior Selling was greatly interested in a boy named Richard Tyll. In 1475, Thomas Goldstone, the warden of Canterbury Hall, writes to Prior Selling about new clothes and a tunic and other expenses “scolaris tui Ricardi Tyll.” In the same volume, p. 315, is a letter of fraternity given to “Agnes, widow of William Tyll,” and on February 7, 1491, she received permission to be buried where her husband, William Tyll, had been interred, “juxta tumbam sancti Thomæ martyris.”
14 Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), pp. 13, 15.
15 C. C. C. C. MS. 417 f. 54d: “Item hoc anno videlicet 6 Kal. Oct. D. Willms Selling celebravit primam suam missam et fuit sacerdos summæ missæ per totam illam ebdomadam.”
16 Literæ Cantuarr. (Rolls Series), iii. 239.
17 Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis, p. 482. Cf. also Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.
18 Leland, ut supra.
19 Umberto Dallari, I rotuli dei Lettori, &c., dello studio Bolognese dal 1384 al 1799, p. 51.
20 Serafino Mazzetti, Memorie storiche sopra l’università di Bologna, p. 308.
21 Leland, ut supra.
22 B. Mus. Arundel MS. 68, f. 4. The Obit in Christchurch MS. D. 12, says: “Sacræ Theologiæ Doctor. Hic in divinis agendis multum devotus et lingua Græca et Latina valde eruditus.… O quam laudabiliter se habuit opera merito laudanda manifesto declarant.”
23 In the Canterbury Registers (Reg. R.) there is a record which evidently relates to Selling’s previous stay in Rome as a student. On October 3, 1469, the date of Selling’s second departure for Rome, the Prior and convent of Christchurch granted a letter to Pietro dei Milleni, a citizen of Rome, making him a confrater of the monastery in return for the kindness shown to Dr. William Selling, when in the Eternal City. This letter, doubtless, Selling carried with him in 1469.
24 The Old English Bible and other Essays, p. 306.
25 B. Mus. Cotton MS. Julius F. vii., f. 118.
26 One of Prior Selling’s first acts of administration was apparently to procure a master for the grammar school at Canterbury. He writes to the Archbishop: “Also please it your good faderhood to have in knowledge that according to your commandment, I have provided for a schoolmaster for your gramerscole in Canterbury, the which hath lately taught gramer at Wynchester and atte Seynt Antonyes in London. That, as I trust to God, shall so guide him that it shall be worship and pleasure to your Lordship and profit and encreas to them that he shall have in governance.”—Hist. MSS. Com. 9th Report, App. p. 105.
27 I. Noble Johnson, Life of Linacre, p. 11. Among the great benefactors to Canterbury College, Oxford, was Doctor Thomas Chaundeler, Warden of New College. In 1473, the year after the election of Prior Selling, the Chapter of Christchurch, Canterbury, passed a resolution that, in memory of his great benefits to them, his name should be mentioned daily in the conventual mass at Canterbury, and that at dinner each day at Oxford he should be named as founder.
28 Galeni, De Temperamentis libri tres, Thoma Linacro interpretante, is dedicated to Pope Leo X., with a letter from Linacre dated 1521. “The widow’s mite was approved by Him whose vicar on earth” Pope Leo is, so this book is only intended to recall common studies, though in itself of little interest to one having the care of the world.
29 G. Lilii, Elogia, ed. P. Jovii, p. 91.
30 Ibid., lxiii. p. 145.
31 Sir Thomas More writing to Colet says: “I pass my time here (at Oxford) with Grocyn, Linacre, and our (George) Lilly: the first as you know the only master of my life, when you are absent; the second, the director of my studies; the third, my dearest companion in all the affairs of life” (J. Stapleton, Tres Thomæ, p. 165.) Another constant companion of More at Oxford was Cuthbert Tunstall, one of the most learned men of his day, afterwards in succession Bishop of London and Durham. Tunstall dedicated to More his tract De arte supputandi, which he printed at Paris in 1529.
32 Reg. Warham, in Knight’s Erasmus, p. 22 note.
33 Encyclop. Brit. sub nomine.
34 Ibid.
35 Ugo Balzani, Un’ ambasciata inglese a Roma, Società Romana di storia patria, iii. p. 175 seqq. Of this an epitome is given in Bacon’s Henry VII., p. 95. Count Ugo Balzani says: “Il prior di Canterbury sembra essere veramente stato l’anima dell’ ambasciata.” Burchardus, Rerum Urbanarum Commentarii (ed. Thuasne), i. p. 257, gives a full account of the reception of this embassy in Rome and by the Pope.
36 Harl. MS. 6237, and Add. MS. 15,673.
37 In the same beautifully written volume is a printed tract addressed to the Venetian Senate in 1471 against princes taking church property. The tract had been sent to the Prior of Christchurch by Christopher Urswick, with a letter, in which, to induce him to read it, he says it is approved by Hermolaus Barbarus and Guarini. Christopher Urswick was almoner to Henry VII., and to him Erasmus dedicated three of his works.
38 Leland, De Scriptoribus Britannicis, 482.
39 This information I owe to the kindness of Dr. Montague James.
40 Canterbury Letters (Camden Soc.), p. xxvii.
41 Ibid., p. 36, a letter in which Dr. Langton asks Prior Selling to “attend to the drawing of it.” The draft sermon is in Cleop. A. iii.
42 Richard Pace, De Fructu, p. 27. The work De Fructu was composed at Constance, where Pace was ambassador, and where he had met his old master, Paul Bombasius. He dedicates the tract to Colet, who had done so much to introduce true classical Latin into England, in place of the barbarous language formerly used. The work was suggested to him by a conversation he had in England two years before, on his return from Rome, with a gentleman he met at dinner, who strongly objected to a literary education for his children, on the ground that he disapproved of certain expressions made use of by Erasmus. The tract shows on what a very intimate footing Pace was with Bombasius.
43 De Fructu, p. 99. Pace published at Venice in 1522, Plutarchi Cheronei Opuscula, and dedicated the work to Bishop Tunstall. He reminds the bishop of their old student days, and says the translation has been examined by their “old master, Nicholas Leonicus.”
44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid., p. 51. “Quas vocant proportionum inductiones … antiquitatem superasse.”
47 More to the University of Oxford, in Knight’s Erasmus, p. 31.
48 Bishop Fisher’s love and zeal for learning is notorious. He did all in his power to assist in the foundation of schools of sound learning at Cambridge, and especially to encourage the study of Greek. Richard Croke, the protégé of Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fisher, after teaching Greek in 1516 at Leipzig, was sent by Fisher in 1519 to Cambridge to urge the utility of Greek studies at that university. In the Orationes he delivered there, after speaking of the importance of Greek for all Biblical study, he says that Oxford had taken up the work with great avidity, since “they have there as their patrons besides the Cardinal (Wolsey), Canterbury (Warham), and Winchester, all the other English bishops except the one who has always been your great stay and helper, the Bishop of Rochester, and the Bishop of Ely.” It was entirely owing to Bishop Fisher’s generosity, and at his special request, that Croke had gone to Cambridge rather than to Oxford, whither his connection with Warham, More, Linacre, and Grocyn would have led him, in order to carry on the work begun by Erasmus.
49 Thomas Lupset was educated by Colet, and learnt his Latin and Greek under William Lilly, going afterwards to Oxford. There he made the acquaintance of Ludovico Vives, and at his exhortation went to Italy. He joined Reginald Pole in his studies at Padua, and on his return, after acting as Thomas Winter’s tutor in Paris, he held a position first as a teacher and then in Cardinal Wolsey’s household. In his Exhortation to Young Men, persuading them to a good life, “written at More, a place of my Lord Cardinal’s,” in 1529, he gives a charming account of his relation with a former pupil. “It happeneth,” he says, “at this time (my heartily beloved Edmund) that I am in such a place where I have no manner of books with me to pass the time after my manner and custom. And though I had here with me plenty of books, yet the place suffereth me not to spend in them any study. For you shall understand that I lie waiting on my Lord Cardinal, whose hours I must observe, to be always at hand lest I be called when I am not bye, which would be straight taken for a fault of great negligence. I am well satiated with the beholding of these gay hangings that garnish here every wall.” As a relief he turns to address his young friend Edmund. Probably Edmund doesn’t understand his affection, because he had always acted on the principle he has “been taught, that the master never hurteth his scholar more than when he uttereth and sheweth by cherishing and cokering the love he beareth to his scholars.” Edmund is now “of age, and also by the common board of houseling admitted into the number of men, and to be no more in the company of children,” and so now he can make known his affection. “This mind had I to my friend Andrew Smith, whose son Christopher, your fellow, I ever took for my son.… If you will call to your mind all the frays between you and me, or me and Smith, you will find that they were all out of my care for ‘your manners.’ When I saw certain fantasies in you or him that jarred from true opinions, the which true opinions, above all learning, I would have masters ever teach their scholars. Wherefore, my good withipol, take heed of my lesson.”
50 John Clement, a protégé of Sir Thomas More, was afterwards a doctor of renown not only in medicine but in languages. He had been a member of More’s household, which Erasmus speaks of as “schola et gymnasium Christianæ religionis.” He is named at the beginning of the Eutopia, and Sir Thomas, in writing to Erasmus, says that Linacre declared that he had had no pupil at Oxford equal to him. John Clement translated several ancient Greek authors into Latin, amongst others many letters of St. Gregory Nazianzen and the Homilies of Nicephorus Callistus on the Saints of the Greek Calendar. Stapleton, in his Tres Thomæ (p. 250), says he had himself seen and examined with the originals these two voluminous translations at the request of John Clement himself. He had married Margaret, the ward of Sir Thomas More, and in the most difficult places of his translation he was helped by his wife, who, with the daughters of Sir Thomas, had been his disciple and knew Greek well. Mary Roper, More’s granddaughter, and the daughter of Margaret Roper, translated Eusebius’s History from Greek into Latin, but it was never published, because Bishop Christopherson had been at work on a similar translation. On the change of religion in Elizabeth’s reign, John Clement and his wife, with the Ropers, took refuge in the Low Countries. Paulus Jovius, in his Descriptio Britanniæ, p. 13, speaks of all three daughters of Sir Thomas More being celebrated for their knowledge of Latin.
51 Erasmi Opera (ed. 1703), Col. 40.
52 Ibid., Ep. 241.
53 Ibid., Ep. 363.
54 To take one example, Thomas Millyng, who as Bishop of Hereford died in 1492, had studied at Gloucester Hall, Oxford, as a monk of Westminster. During the old age of Abbot Fleet, of Westminster, he governed the monastery, and became its abbot in 1465. He was noted for his love of studies, and especially for his knowledge of Greek. This, says the writer of his brief life in the National Biographical Dictionary, was “a rare accomplishment for monks in those days.” He might have added, and for any one else!
55 Dennistoun, Memorials of the Dukes of Urbino, iii., pp. 415 seqq.
56 Erasmus to Abbot Bere. Opera, Ep. 700.
57 MS. Bodl. 80. It is the autograph copy of Free, cf. J. W. Williams, Somerset Mediæval Libraries, p. 87. It was Abbot Bere who, in 1506, presented John Claymond, the learned Greek scholar, to his first benefice of Westmonkton, in the county of Somerset. In 1516 Claymond became first President of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, often after signing himself, Eucharistiæ servus. Dr. Claymond procured for his college several Greek manuscripts which had belonged to Grocyn and Linacre, which are still possessed by it. At the end of MS. XXIII., which is a volume containing ninety homilies of St. John Chrysostom in Greek, is an inscription stating that this, and MS. XXIV., were copied in the years 1499 and 1500 by a Greek from Constantinople, named John Serbopylas, then living and working at Reading.
58 Ludovico Vives had been invited over to England by Cardinal Wolsey to lecture on rhetoric at Oxford. He lived at Corpus Christi College, then ruled by Dr. John Claymond, whom in his tract De conscribendis Epistolis he calls his “father.” The fame of this Spanish master of eloquence drew crowds to his lectures at the university, and amongst the audience Henry and Queen Katherine might sometimes be seen. For a time he acted also as tutor to the Princess Mary, and dedicated several works to the queen, to whose generosity he says he owed much. He took her side in the “divorce” question, and was thrown into prison for some weeks for expressing his views on the matter. Fisher, More, and Tunstall were his constant friends in England, and of Margaret Roper he writes, “from the time I first made her acquaintance I have loved her as a sister.” Among his pupils at Louvain, besides the above-named Canterbury monk, John Digon, he mentions with great affection Nicholas Wotton, whom the antiquary Twyne speaks of as returning to England with Digon and Jerome Ruffaldus, who calls Vives his “Jonathan,” and who subsequently became abbot of St. Vaast, Arras.
59 J. Venn, Gonville and Caius College (1349-1897), Vol. I.
60 Ibid., p. xvi.
61 Ibid., p. 18.
62 Ibid., p. 23.
63 Ibid., p. 21.
64 Ibid., p. xviii.
65 Sermons (1557), f. 54.
66 A. Chalmers, History of the Colleges, &c. of Oxford, ii. p. 351.
67 Hearne, John of Glastonbury, ii. p. 490; from MS. Cott. Vitellius c. vii.
68 Saint-German was born 1460. He was employed by Thomas Cromwell on some business of the State, and died in 1540. The Dyalogue was printed apparently first in Latin, but subsequently in English. It consisted of three parts (1) published by Robert Wyer, (2) by Peter Treveris, 1531, and (3) by Thomas Berthalet, also in 1531.
69 Dyalogue, ut sup., 3rd part, f. 2.
70 One of the first Acts of King Henry VII. on his accession, was to obtain from the Pope a Bull agreeing to some changes in the Sanctuary customs. Prior Selling of Canterbury was despatched as King’s Orator to Rome with others to Pope Innocent VIII. in 1487, and brought back the Pope’s approval of three points in which the king proposed to change these laws. First, that if any person in Sanctuary went out at night and committed mischief and trespass, and then got back again, he should forfeit his privilege of Sanctuary. Secondly, that though the person of a debtor might be protected in Sanctuary, yet his goods out of the precincts were not so protected from his creditors. Thirdly, that where a person took Sanctuary for treason, the king might appoint him keepers within the Sanctuary.
71 Robert Keilway, Relationes quorundam casuum, f. 188, seqq.
72 Dyalogue, ut sup., f. 12.
73 Dyalogue, f. 23.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid., f. 23.
76 Ibid., f. 21.
77 Ibid., f. 21.
78 A treatyse concerning the power of the clergie and the laws of the realme. London, J. Godfray.
79 A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. 4.
80 A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. xii.
81 A treatyse, &c., ut supra, cap. xii.
82 Ibid., cap. xiii.
83 Ibid., cap. vi.
84 English Works (ed. 1557), p. 1017.
85 A treatyse, &c., ut sup., cap. vi., sig. E. i.
86 Salem and Bizance, a dialogue betwixte two Englishmen, whereof one was called Salem and the other Bizance (Berthelet, 1533), f. 76.
87 Ibid., f. 84.
88 English Works, p. 892.
89 Ibid.
90 A Dialogue, &c., ut sup., f. 8.
91 Ibid., f. 11.
92 Ibid., f. 14.
93 A Dialogue, &c., ut sup., p. 17.
94 History of English Law, i., p. 93-4. Mr. James Gairdner, in a letter to The Guardian, March 1, 1899, says: “There were, in the Middle Ages, in every kingdom of Europe that owned the Pope’s jurisdiction, two authorities, the one temporal and the other spiritual, and the head of the spiritual jurisdiction was at Rome. The bishops had the rule over their clergy, even in criminal matters, and over the laity as well in matters of faith. Even a bishop’s decision, it is true, might be disputed, and there was an appeal to the Pope; nay, the Pope’s decision might be disputed, and there was an appeal to a general council. Thus there was, in every kingdom, an imperium in imperio, but nobody objected to such a state of matters, not even kings, seeing that they could, as a rule, get anything they wanted out of the Popes—even some things, occasionally, that the Popes ought not to have conceded.”
95 William Bond, The Pilgrymage of perfeccyon, 1531, f. 223.
96 Roger Edgworth, Sermons, 1557, fol. 102
97 Edward Powell, Propugnaculum summi sacerdotii, &c., adversus M. Lutherum, 1523, fol. 22 and fol. 35.
98 English Works, p. 171.
99 Ibid. p. 185.
100 Ibid., p. 528.
101 Ibid., p. 538.
102 English Works, p. 616.
103 Ibid., p. 798.
104 Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries (popular edition), p. 367.
105 In his work against Luther, Bishop Fisher teaches the supremacy of the Pope without any ambiguity. In the Sermon had at Paulis against Luther and his followers, he also put his position perfectly clearly. The Church that has a right to the name Catholic has derived the right from its communion with the See of Peter. Our Lord called Cephas, Peter, or rock, to signify that upon him as a rock He would build His church. Unto Peter He committed His flock, and “the true Christian people which we have at this day was derived by a continual succession from the See of Peter” (fol. e. 4. d.).
106 Simon Matthew, Sermon made in the Cathedrall Church of Saynt-Paule, 27 June 1535 (Berthelet, 1535).
107 Joannis Longlondi Tres conciones (R. Pynson), f. 45.
108 Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Luther (translation by J. W., 1687), f. a. i.
109 A treatise of the donation or gift and endowment of possessions given (by Constantine) with the judgement of certain great men, 1517, Thomas Godfray.
110 London, Thomas Berthelet.
111 A dyalogue, ut sup., ff. 3-7.
112 f. A. ii.; c. i.; c. iiij. The author recommends those who would understand the Pope’s power to “resort unto The glasse of truth or to the book named the Determinations of the universities.” The book named here A glasse of truth is written in favour of the divorce. “Some lawyers,” the author says, “attribute too much to the Pope—at length there shall be no law, but only his will.” The work was published by Berthelet anonymously, but Richard Croke, in a letter written at this period (Ellis, Historical Letters, 3rd series, ii. 195), says that the book was written by King Henry himself. It was generally said that Henry had written a defence of his divorce; but Strype did not think it was more than a State paper. Croke (p. 198) says that people at Oxford, “Mr. John Roper and others,” did not believe that the king was really the author. He says that the tract has done more than anything else to get people to take the king’s side.
113 Of the olde God and the new, B. 1. As another sample of what was at this time said about the Popes, we may take the following: Rome, says the author, “was by Justinian restored from ruin and decay, from whence also came the riches of the Church. At the coming of these riches, forthwith the book of the gospel was shut up, and the Bishops of Rome, instead of evangelical poverty, began to put forth their heads garnished with three crowns.” This is taken from the preface of Hartman Dulechin, who claims to have “taught the book to speak Latin.” It was originally printed and published in German. The English version is a translation of the Latin.
114 The Defence of Peace, written in Latin more than 200 years ago, and set forth in the English tongue by Wyllyam Marshall. R. Wyer, 1535, folio.
115 The Defence of Peace, f. 42. The well-known anti-papal opinions of Marsilius of Padua are, of course, of no interest in themselves, but their publication at this time in English shows the methods by which it was hoped to undermine the Papal authority in the country.
116 Exposition, &c., ut supra, f. i.
117 Johann Sturmius, Epistle sent to the cardinals and prelates that were appointed by the Bishop of Rome to search out the abuses of the Church. Translated by Richard Morysine. Berthelet, 1538.
A later copy of the Concilium de emendanda Ecclesia, printed by Sturmius with his letter in 1538, in the British Museum, formerly belonged to Cecil. The title-page has his signature, “Gulielmus Cecilius, 1540,” and there are marks and words underlined, and some few observations from his pen in the margin. It is interesting to note that what struck the statesman as a youth were just the points which could be turned against the temporal claims of the Roman See.
The special evils needing correction which the committee of cardinals note, and which they call abuses, are collected under 22 headings, some of which are the following:—
(1) Ordination of priests without cure of souls, not learned, of lower order in life, and too young and of doubtful morals: They suggest that each diocese should have a magistrum to see that candidates are properly instructed—none to be ordained except by their own bishop.
(2) Benefices, and in particular, episcopal sees, are given to people with interest, and not because their elevation would be good for the church. They suggest that the best man should be chosen, and residence should be insisted on, and consequently “non Italo conferendum est beneficium in Hispania aut in Britannia aut ex contra.”
(3) Pensions reserved from Benefices. Though the Pope, “who is the universal dispenser of the goods of the church,” may reserve a part for a pious use, e.g. for the poor, &c., still not to reserve sufficient for the proper purpose of the beneficiary, and still more to give a pension out of a benefice to one rich enough without, is wrong.
(4) Change of benefices for the sake of gain, and handing on benefices by arrangement or always assigning episcopal sees to coadjutors, is the cause of outcry against the clergy, and is in reality making private property out of what is public.
(5) Permission to clergy to hold more than one benefice.
(6) Cardinals being allowed to hold sees. They ought to be counsellors to the Pope in Rome, and when holding sees they are more or less dependent on the will of the kings, and so cannot give independent advice and speak their minds.
(7) Absence of bishops from their sees.
(8) Such religious houses as needed correction should be forbidden to profess members, and when they die out, their places should be taken by fervent religious. Confessors for convents must be approved by the ordinaries of the place.
(9) The use of the keys ought never, under any pretext, to be granted for money.
(10) Questors of the Holy Spirit, St. Anthony, &c., who foster superstition among the poor people, should be prohibited.
(11) Confessional privileges and use of portable altars to be very rarely allowed.
(12) No indulgences to be granted except once a year, and in the great cities only.
Finally they say of Rome: “Hæc Romana civitas et ecclesia mater est et magistra aliarum ecclesiarum,” and hence it should be a model to all. Foreigners, however, who come to St. Peter’s find that priests “sordidi, ignari, induti paramentis et vestibus quibus nec in sordidis ædibus honeste uti possent, missas celebrant.”
Cardinal Sadolet, on receiving a copy of Sturmius’s letter, replied in kindly terms. He had, he declared, a high opinion of “Sturmius, Melanchthon, and Bucer, looking on them as most learned men, kindly disposed, and cordially friendly to him. He looked upon it as the peculiar characteristic of Luther to try and overwhelm all his opponents with shouts and attacks.” He speaks of the great piety of Pope Clement from personal knowledge. His wars were, he said, rather the work of his adversaries than his own (De consilio, ed. J. G. Schelhorn, 1748, p. 91).
He also, in 1539, penned the De Christiana Ecclesia (in Specilegium Romanum, ii. p. 101 seqq.), sending it to Cardinal Salicati, and asking him to pass it on to Cardinal Contarini. It was the outcome of conversations about the troubles of the Church, and the result of the movement was the Council of Trent, to restore, as Sadolet says, ecclesiastical discipline “quæ nunc tota pæne nobis e manibus elapsa est.”
118 Sermon on Palm Sunday, Berthelet, 1539.
119 Lancelot Ridley, Commentary in Englyshe on Sayncte Paule’s Epystle to the Ephesians, L. 4.
120 This important paper was printed for the first time in the Dublin Review, April 1894, pp. 390-420.
121 A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualtie and temporaltie. London: Robert Redman, f. 2.
122 English Works, p. 871. In the quotations made from the works of Sir Thomas More and other old writings, for the sake of the general reader the modern form of spelling has been adopted, and at times the words transposed to ensure greater clearness.
123 Ibid., p. 875.
124 Ibid., p. 882.
125 Salem and Bizance. A dialogue betwixte two Englishmen, whereof one was called Salem and the other Bizance. London: Berthelet, 1533, f. 5.
126 English Works, p. 934.
127 Ibid., p. 870.
128 Ibid., p. 877.
129 Ibid., p. 877.
130 Ibid., p. 878.
131 Ibid., pp. 937, 938.
132 A treatise concerning the division, f. 8.
133 English Works, p. 880.
134 Ibid., p. 951.
135 A treatise concerning the division, f. 3.
136 A treatise concerning the division, f. 41.
137 English Works, p. 884.
138 Ibid., p. 895.
139 Ibid.
140 Ibid., p. 896.
141 Ibid., p. 885.
142 Bishop Fisher gives much the same testimony to the moral character of the religious generally in his sermon against Luther. After praising the state of virginity, he continues: “And it is not to be doubted but that there is in Christendom at this day many thousands of religious men and women that full truly keep their religion and their chastity unto Christ.… If Almighty God did reserve in that little portion of Jewry so great a multitude beyond the estimation of the prophet, what number suppose ye doth yet remain in Christendom of religious men and women, notwithstanding this great persecution of religious monasteries, both of men and women, done by these heretics by this most execrable doctrine? It is not to be doubted but in all Christendom be left many thousands who at this hour live chaste, and truly keep their virginity unto Christ.” (A Sermon had at Paulis, Berthelet, f. g. ii.)
143 Ibid., p. 735. Sir Thomas More, in his Dyalogue, thinks that the number of priests without very definite work had tended to diminish the respect paid to them by the laity. “But were I Pope,” he says, … “I could not well devise better provisions than by the laws of the Church are provided already, if they were as well kept as they are well made. But as for the number, I would surely see such a way therein that we should not have such a rabble that every mean man must have a priest in his house to wait upon his wife. This no mean man lacketh now, to the contempt of the priesthood, (placed) in as vile an office as his horsekeeper. That is truth indeed, quod he, and in worse, too, for they keep hawks and dogs.” If the laws of the Church were kept, there would not be the excessive number of priests for fit and proper positions, so that “the whole order is rebuked by the priests’ begging and lewd living who are either obliged to walk as rovers, and live upon trentals or worse, or serve in a secular man’s house” (English Works, p. 223).
144 A treatise concerning the division, ff. 14-16.
145 Dyalogue, &c., f. 2.
146 A treatise concerning the division, f. 23.
147 Ibid., f. 25.
148 Ibid., f. 26.
149 English Works, p. 936.
150 English Works, p. 620.
151 A Sermonde … made in 1538. By John Longlande, Bishop of Lincolne. London: f. 2.
152 Henry VIII., vol. ii. pp. 50-1.
153 Ibid., vol. i. p. 600.
154 Ibid., ii. p. 470.
155 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. 717.
156 Sermo Exhortatorius, W. de Worde.
157 Gairdner, Calendar of Papers Foreign and Domestic, v., preface, ix.
158 Froude’s translation.
159 Opera, ed. Leclerc, iii. col. 102.
160 Ibid., Ep. 144.
161 In one of his works Erasmus gives the highest praise to English ecclesiastics for their single-minded devotion to their clerical duties. He contrasts them with clerics of other nations in regard to worldly ambitions, &c. “Those who are nearest to Christ,” he writes, “should keep themselves free from the baser things of this world. How ill the word ‘general’ sounds when connected with that of ‘Cardinal,’ or ‘duke’ with that of ‘bishop,’ ‘earl’ with that of ‘abbot,’ or ‘commander’ with that of ‘priest.’ In England the ecclesiastical dignity is the highest, and the revenues of churchmen abundant. In that country, however, no one who is a bishop or abbot has even a semblance of temporal dominion, or possesses castles or musicians or bands of retainers, nor does any of them coin his own money, excepting only the Archbishop of Canterbury, as a mark of dignity and honour, which has been conferred on him on account of the death of Saint Thomas; he is, however, never concerned in matters of war, but is occupied only in the care of the churches.” (Consultatio de Bello Turcico. Opera, ed. Leclerc, tom. v. p. 363.)
162 Opera, &c., ut sup., Ep. 149.
163 Ibid., Ep. 175.
164 Ibid., Ep. 216.
165 Ibid., Ep. 272.
166 Ibid., Ep. 474.
167 Thomas More, Epigrammata (ed. Frankfort, 1689), p. 284 seqq.
168 Ibid., Ep. 148.
169 Erasmus, p. 63.
170 Quarterly Review, January 1895, p. 23.
171 The question about Erasmus’s translation of this word came up in the discussion between Sir Thomas More and Tyndale about the use made by the latter of the word congregatio for Church in his version of the New Testament. More writes: “Then he asketh me why I have not contended with Erasmus, whom he calls my darling, all this long time, for translating this word ecclesia into this word congregatio, and then he cometh forth with his proper taunt, that I favour him of likelihood for making of his book of Moriæ in my house.… Now for his translation of ecclesia by congregatio his deed is nothing like Tyndale’s. For the Latin tongue had no Latin word used before for the Church but the Greek word ecclesia, therefore Erasmus in his new translation gave it a Latin word.… Erasmus also meant no heresy therein, as appears by his writings against the heretics.” (English Works, pp. 421, 422.)
172 Ep. 384.
173 Ep. 423.
174 Ep. 531. Lee’s account of his quarrel with Erasmus is given in his Apologia, which he addressed to the University of Louvain. He states that Erasmus had come to his house at that place, and had asked him to aid in the corrected version of his New Testament which he was then projecting. At first Lee refused, but finally, on being pressed by Erasmus, he consented, and began the work of revision, but Erasmus quickly became angry at so many suggested changes. Reports about the annotations and corrections proposed by Lee began to be spread abroad, and Erasmus hearing of them, suspected some secret design, and came from Basle to try and get a copy of the proposed criticism. Lee wished that it should be considered rather a matter of theology than of letters. Bishop Fisher wrote, on hearing rumours of the quarrel, urging Lee to try and make his peace with Erasmus, and in deference to this, Lee informed Erasmus that he would leave the matter entirely in the hands of the bishop, and had forwarded to him the book of his proposed criticisms. Erasmus, however, did not wait, but published the Dialogus Domini Jacobi Latomi, which all regarded as an attack upon Lee. The latter would have published a reply had he not received letters from England from Fisher, Colet, Pace, and More, begging him to keep his temper. Lee agreed to stop, and only asked Fisher to decide the matter quickly. On returning to Louvain, Lee found that Erasmus had published his Dialogus bilingium et trilingium, in which Lee was plainly indicated as a man hostile to the study of letters in general. This Lee denied altogether, and in brief, he does not, he says, condemn Erasmus’s notes on the New Testament so much as the copy he had taken as the basis for his corrections of the later text. “Politian,” says Lee, at the end of his Apologia, “Politian declares that there are two great pests of literature—ignorance and envy. To these I will add a third—’adulation’—for I have no belief in any one who, having made a mistake, is not willing to acknowledge it.”
Lee’s criticism of Erasmus’s translation appeared at Louvain in January 1520. It produced an immediate reply from Erasmus, published at Antwerp in May 1520—a reply “all nose, teeth, nails, and stomach.” In this Erasmus says that 1200 copies of the New Testament had been printed by Froben. In the collation he had been much assisted by Bishop Tunstall, who had, in fact, supplied the exemplar on which he had worked. Erasmus then gives what he thinks is the correct version of the differences between Lee and himself. Lee, he says, was only just beginning Greek, and Erasmus, who had been working at the correction of his version of the Testament, showed him what he was doing. The margins of the book were then full of notes, and here and there whole pages of paper were added. Lee said that he had a few notes that might be useful, and Erasmus expressed his pleasure at receiving help and asked for them. Lee thereupon gave him some miscellaneous jottings, and of these, according to Erasmus’s version of the facts, he made use of hardly anything. Soon, however, reports were spread about that out of some three hundred places in which Lee had corrected the first edition of the translation, Erasmus had adopted two hundred. Bishop Fisher tried to make peace, and to prevent two men who both meant well to the cause of religion from quarrelling in public. His intervention was, however, too late, as already the letter of Erasmus to Thomas Lupset had appeared and thus rendered reconciliation impossible.
175 Ep. 231.
176 Ep. 380. This bishop must have been the Spaniard, George de Athegua, who was appointed to the see of Llandaff in 1517, and held it for twenty years.
177 Ep. 380.
178 Ep. 453.
179 Ep. 416.
180 Ep. 547.
181 Ep. 529. Erasmus wrote strongly against anything that seemed to favour the idea of national churches. After declaring that national dislikes and enmities were unmeaning and unchristian, he continues: “As an Englishman you wish evil fortune to a Frenchman. Why not rather do your wishes come as a man to a fellow-man? Why not as a Christian to a Christian? Why do these frivolous things have greater weight than such natural ties, such bonds of Christ? Places separate bodies, not souls. In old days the Rhine divided a Frenchman from a German, but the Rhine cannot divide one Christian from another. The Pyrenees cut off Spain from France, but these mountains do not destroy the communion of the Church. The sea divides the English and French peoples, but it cannot cut off the society of religion.…” The world is the fatherland of all people; all men are sprung from a common stock. “The Church is but one family, common to all.” (Opera., tom. iv. col. 638.)
182 Ep. 715.
183 Ep. 723.
184 Ep. 477.
185 Ep. 528.
186 Ep. 656.
187 Ep. 334 (second series.)
188 Spongia (Basle, Froben, 1523), c. 5.
189 Ibid., sig. d. 4.
190 Ibid., sig. e. 2.
191 Ibid., sig. e. 2. The supreme authority of the Pope is asserted by Erasmus in numberless places in his works. For example, in the tract Pacis Querimonia, after saying that he cannot understand how Christians, who understand Christ’s teaching and say their Pater noster with intelligence, can always be at strife, he proceeds: “The authority of the Roman Pontiff is supreme. But when peoples and princes wage impious wars, and that for years, where then is the authority of the Pontiffs, where then is the power next to Christ’s power?” &c. (Opera., tom. iv. p. 635). So too in his Precatio pro Pace Ecclesiæ, after praying that God would turn the eyes of His mercy upon the Church, over which “Peter was made Supreme Pastor,” he declares that there is but “one Church, out of which there is no salvation.”
192 Ep. 478.
193 Ep. 501.
194 Ep. 563.
195 Ep. 600.
196 Ep. 563.
197 Ep. 667.
198 Ep. 501 (Mr. Froude’s translation).
199 Ep. 793.
200 Ep. 823.
201 Ep. 751.
202 The Pope himself read the Enconium Moriæ and understood the spirit of the author; at least so Erasmus was told. He wrote at the time “the Supreme Pontiff has read through Moriæ and laughed; all he said was, ‘I am glad to see that friend Erasmus is in the Moriæ,’ and this though I have touched no others so sharply as the Pontiffs” (Ep. p. 1667). What Sir Thomas More thought about it may be given in his own words, written some years later. “As touching Moriæ, in which Erasmus, under the name and person of Moria, which word in Greek signifies ‘folly,’ merely touches and reproves such faults and follies as he found in any kind of people pursuing every state and condition, spiritual and temporal, leaving almost none untouched. By this book, says Tyndale, if it were in English, every man should then well see that I was then far otherwise minded than I now write. If this be true, then the more cause have I to thank God for the amendment. God be thanked I never had that mind in my life to have holy saints’ images or their holy relics out of reverence. Nor if there were any such thing in Moriæ this could not make any man see that I were myself of that mind, the book being made by another man though he were my darling never so dear. Howbeit, that book of Moriæ doth indeed but jest upon abuses of such things.… But in these days, in which men by their own default misconstrue and take harm from the very Scripture of God, until men better amend, if any man would now translate Moriæ into English, or some work either that I have myself written ere this, albeit there be no harm therein, folks being (as they be) given to take harm of what is good, I would not only my darling’s books, but my own also, help to burn them both with my own hands, rather than folk should (though through their own fault) take any harm of them.” (English Works, pp. 422-3.)
203 Opera Omnia (Froben’s ed., 1540), i. p. 831.
204 Pp. 832-33.
205 P. 837.
206 A case in point was the finding of the celebrated statue of the Laocöon on January 14, 1506. This discovery was accidentally made in a vineyard, near Santa Maria Maggiore, and no statue ever produced so general and so profound an emotion as the uncovering of this work of art did upon the learned world of Rome. The whole city flocked out to see it, and the road to the vineyard was blocked day and night by the crowds of cardinals and people waiting to look at it. “One would have said,” writes a contemporary, “that it was a Jubilee.” And even to-day the visitor to the Ara Cœli may read on the tomb of Felice de Fredis, the happy owner of the vineyard, the promise of “immortality,” ob proprias virtutes et repertum Laocohontis divinum simulachrum (I. Klaczki, Jules II., p. 115). It is not at all improbable that in the above passage Erasmus was actually thinking of the delirium caused by the finding of this statue.
207 Ibid., p. 838.
208 For example, the Rev. W. H. Hutton states in the Guardian, January 25, 1899, as the result of his mature studies upon the Reformation period, that “the so-called divorce question had very little indeed to do with the Reformation.” Mr. James Gairdner, who speaks with all the authority of a full and complete knowledge of the State papers of this period, in a letter to a subsequent number of the Guardian, says, “When a gentleman of Mr. Hutton’s attainments is able seriously to tell us this, I think it is really time to ask people to put two and two together, and say whether the sum can be anything but four. It may be disagreeable to trace the Reformation to such a very ignoble origin, but facts, as the Scottish poet says, are fellows you can’t coerce … and won’t bear to be disputed.” What “we call the Reformation in England … was the result of Henry VIII.’s quarrel with the Court of Rome on the subject of his divorce, and the same results could not possibly have come about in any other way.” When “Henry VIII. found himself disappointed in the expectation, which he had ardently cherished for a while, that he could manage, by hook or by crook, to obtain from the See of Rome something like an ecclesiastical licence for bigamy,” he took matters into his own hands, “and self-willed as he was, never did self-will lead him into such a tremendous and dangerous undertaking as in throwing off the Pope. How much this was resented among the people, what secret communications there were between leading noblemen with the imperial ambassador, strongly urging the emperor to invade England, and deliver the people from a tyranny from which they were unable to free themselves, we know in these days as we did not know before.”
209 Camden Society, p. 163.
210 The same high authority, in a letter to the Guardian, March 1, 1899, says, “People will tell you, of course, that the seeds of the Reformation were sown before Henry VIII.’s days, and particularly that it was Wycliffe who brought the great movement on. I should be sorry to depreciate Wycliffe, who did undoubtedly bring about a great movement in his day, though a careful estimate of that movement is still a desideratum. Even in theology the cardinal doctrine of the Reformation—justification by faith—is in Wycliffe, I should say, conspicuous by its absence. But, whatever may be the theological debt of England to Wycliffe at the present day, twenty Wycliffes, all highly popular, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries would not have brought about a Reformation like that under which we have lived during the last centuries. That was a thing which could only have been effected by royal power—as in England, or by a subversion of royal authority through the medium of successful rebellion—as in Scotland.”
211 Henry VIII., i. p. 51.
212 Roger Edgworth, Sermons (London: Robert Caly, 1557), preface.
213 English Works, p. 339.
214 Strype, Eccl. Mem. (ed. 1822), I. i. p. 254.
215 This book was apparently condemned for reflecting on the king’s divorce rather than for its Lutheran tendencies. “The Soul’s Garden,” as Bishop Tunstall calls it, was printed abroad, and “very many lately brought into the realm, chiefly into London and into other haven towns.” The objectionable portion was contained in “a declaration made in the kalendar of the said book, about the end of the month of August, upon the day of the decollation of St. John Baptist, to show the cause of why he was beheaded.” (Strype, ut supra, ii. p. 274.)
216 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 737.
217 Ibid., 720.
218 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 727.
219 Richard Smythe, D.D., The assertion and defence of the Sacrament of the Altar, 1546, f. 3.
220 English Works, p. 940.
221 English Works, p. 921.
222 English Works, pp. 341-344.
223 Ibid., p. 346.
224 Ibid., p. 351.
225 Germen Gardynare, A letter of a yonge gentylman, &c. London: W. Rastell, 1534.
226 English Works, pp. 257-259.
227 Ibid., p. 1035.
228 Ibid., p. 409.
229 The Werke for Householders. London: John Waylande, 1537.
230 Richard Whitford, Dyvers holy instructions. London: W. Mydylton, 1541.
231 Sermons, sig. h. vij.
232 English Works (ed. 1557), pp. 233-4. This positive declaration of Sir Thomas More is generally ignored by modern writers. In a recently published work, for example (England in the Age of Wycliffe, by George Macaulay Trevelyan), it is stated that “we have positive proof that the bishops denounced the dissemination of the English Bible among classes and persons prone to heresy, burnt copies of it, and cruelly persecuted Lollards on the charge of reading it” (p. 131). In proof of this statement the author refers his readers to a later page (p. 342) of his volume. Here he culls from Foxe (Acts and Monuments) the depositions of certain witnesses against people suspected of teaching heresy. Amongst these depositions it is said by a few of the witnesses that some of these teachers were possessed of portions of the Scriptures in English. Mr. Trevelyan assumes, because witnesses speak to this fact, that it was for this they were condemned, or, as he puts it, “cruelly persecuted,” by the ecclesiastical authorities. Had he examined his authority, Foxe, more carefully, he would have found the actual list of articles formulated against these teachers of heresy. These alone are, of course, the charges actually made against them; and the mere deposition of witnesses in those days were, no more than they are in ours, the charges upon which the accused were condemned. In the articles or charges we find no mention whatever of the English Bible, and, according to the ordinary rules of interpretation of documents, this absence of any mention of Bible-reading in the indictment, formulated after the hearing of the evidence, and when witnesses had testified to the fact, should be taken to show that the mere possession of the vernacular Scriptures, &c., was not accounted an offence by the Church authorities. The real charge in these cases, as in others, was of teaching what was then held to be false and heretical, teaching founded upon false interpretations of the Scripture text, or upon false translations.
233 Ibid., p. 235.
234 Ibid., p. 240.
235 Ibid., p. 241.
236 Ibid., p. 240.
237 Ibid., p. 241.
238 Ibid., p. 245.
239 Ibid., p. 510.
240 Ibid., p. 678.
241 Roger Edgworth, Sermons, London, Caly, 1557, f. 31.
242 Sir Thomas More, English Works, p. 108.
243 Thomas Lupset, Collected Works, 1546. Gathered Counsails, f. 202.
244 Ibid. An Exhortation to young men, written 1529. He insists much on the obligation of following the teaching of the Church.
245 John Standish, A discourse wherein is debated whether it be expedient that the Scripture should be in English for all men to read that wyll (1555), A. iij.
246 English Works, p. 850.
247 J. S. Brewer, Henry VIII., vol. ii. p. 468.
248 Dore, Old Bibles, p. 13.
249 P. 15.
250 Ellis, Historical Letters, 3rd Series, ii. p. 71.
251 Johannes Cochlæus, An expediat laicis legere Novi Testamenti libros lingua vernacula, 1533, A. i. The warning of Cochlæus was addressed to the Scotch king, and as a result of this letter, pointing out the Lutheran character of the English version of Tyndale, the Scotch bishops in the Synod of St. Andrews in 1529 forbade the importation of Bibles into Scotland.
252 Ibid., L. iij.
253 Wilkins, Concilia, iii. p. 727.
254 Cf. Parker Soc. Tyndale’s Doctrinal treatises, &c., preface xxx.
255 Probably on Sunday, February 11, when Cardinal Wolsey, with six and thirty bishops and other ecclesiastics, were present at the burning of Lutheran books before the great crucifix at the north gate. Amongst the books, according to Tyndale, were copies of his translated Testament.
256 Dore, Old Bibles, p. 26.
257 Dore, ut sup., 32.
258 English Works, p. 422.
259 Dore, 35.
260 English Works, p. 849.
261 English Works, p. 341.
262 Ibid., p. 410.
263 Ibid., p. 416.
264 Ibid., p. 417.
265 Ibid., p. 419.
266 Ibid., p. 422.
267 Ibid., p. 424.
268 Ibid., p. 425.
269 Ibid., p. 427.
270 Ibid., p. 435.
271 Ibid., p. 437.
272 Ibid., p. 493.
273 Ibid., p. 422. For examples of other false translations, see also p. 449.
274 Standish, A discourse, &c., ut supra, sig. A. iiij.
275 English Works, p. 223.
276 Ibid., p. 223.
277 Standish, ut supra, sig. E. iiij.
278 Roger Edgworth, Sermons, f. 31.
279 The assertion and defence of the Sacrament of the Altar (1546), f. 3. The amateur theologians and teachers who sprung up so plentifully with the growth of Lutheran ideas in England seem to have been a source of trouble to the clergy. There was no difficulty in Scripture so hard which these “barkers, gnawers, and railers,” as Roger Edgworth calls them, were not ready to explain, and even women were ready to become teachers of God’s Word, “and openly to dispute with men.” Speaking in Bristol, in Mary’s reign, he advises his audience to stick to their own occupations and leave theology and Scripture alone, “for when a tailor forsaking his own occupation will be a merchant venturer, or a shoemaker will become a grocer, God send him help. I have known,” he says, “many in this town that studying divinity has killed a merchant, and some of other occupations by their busy labours in the Scripture hath shut up the shop windows, and were fain to take sanctuary, or else for mercery and grocery hath been fain to sell godderds, steaves, pitchers, and such other trumpery.”
280 A Commentary in Englyshe upon Sayncte Paule’s Epistle to the Ephesians, 1540.
281 An Exposition in Englysh upon the Epistle of St. Paule to the Colossians, 1548.
282 An Exposition, &c., upon the Philippians, 1545.
283 As an example of the open way in which the reading of the Bible was advocated, take the following instance. Caxton’s translation of the Vitæ Patrum, published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1495, contained an exhortation to all his readers to study the Holy Scripture. “To read them is in part to know the felicity eternal, for in them a man may see what he ought to do in conversation … oft to read purgeth the soul from sin, it engendereth dread of God, and it keeps the soul from eternal damnation.” As food nourishes the body, “in like wise as touching the soul we be nourished by the lecture and reading of Scripture.… Be diligent and busy to read the Scriptures, for in reading them the natural wit and understanding are augmented in so much that men find that which ought to be left (undone) and take that whereof may ensue profit infinite” (p. 345).
284 B. Mus. Harl. MS. 172, f. 12b.
285 Harl. MS. 115, f. 51.
286 Ibid., f. 53.
287 In speaking of the third Commandment, The art of good lyvyng and good deyng (1503) warns people of their obligation to “Layr the holy prechyngys, that ys the word of God et the good techyngys, and shoold not go from the seyd prechyngs” (fol. 8. 2).
288 Ibid., f. 1.
289 The Myrrour of the Church (1527), Sig. B4.
290 Exornatorium Curatorum. W. de Worde. In 1518 the Synod of Ely ordered that all having the cure of souls should have a copy of this book, and four times a year should explain it in English to their people. (Wilkins, Concilia, III., p. 712.)
291 The Prymer of Salisbury Use. Rouen: Nicholas le Rour, f. b. vij.
292 The art of good lyvyng and good deyng. Paris, 1503, f. g. 2.
293 English Works, p. 116.
294 English Works, p. 117.
295 Ibid., p. 121.
296 Ibid., p. 420.
297 Sermons, fol. 40.
298 English Works, pp. 196-7.
299 Ibid., p. 198.
300 Ibid., p. 199.
301 Ed. W. de Worde, 1496.
302 William Bond, The Pilgrymage of Perfeccyon, Wynkyn de Worde, 1531, fol. 192.
303 Ibid., fol. 196.
304 Ibid.
305 English Works, p. 408.
306 The full title of this book is: Pupilla oculi omnibus presbyteris precipue Anglicanis necessaria. It is clear from the letter that W. Bretton had already had other works printed in the same way, and it is known that amongst those works were copies of Lynwode’s Provinciale (1505), Psalterium et Hymni (1506), Horæ, &c. (1506), Speculum Spiritualium, and Hampole, De Emendatione Vitæ (1510), (cf. Ames, Ed. Herbert, iii. p. 16). Pepwell the London publisher, at “the sign of the Holy Trinity,” was the same who published many books printed abroad, and had dealings with Bishops Stokesley and Tunstall.
307 For further information upon popular religious instruction in England, see an essay upon the teaching in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in my The old English Bible, and other Essays. The Rev. J. Fisher, in his tract on The Private Devotions of the Welsh (1898), speaking of the vernacular prayer-books, says, “they continued to be published down to the end of Henry’s reign, and, in a modified form, even at a later date. Besides these prymers and the oral instruction in the principal formulæ of the Church, the scriptorium of the monastery was not behind in supplying, especially the poor, with horn-books, on which were, as a rule, written in the vulgar tongue the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Hail Mary.” In 1546 appeared a prymer in Welsh in which, amongst other things, the seven capital or deadly sins and their opposite virtues are given and analysed. This book, consequently, besides being a prayer-book afforded popular instruction to the people using it. The prymers in Welsh, we are told, were usually called “Matins’ Books,” and continued to be published long after the change of religion. A copy published in 1618 is called the fifth edition, and copies of it are recorded under the years 1633 and 1783. “It is rather a curious fact,” writes Mr. Fisher, “that nearly all the Welsh manuals of devotion and instruction, of any size, published in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, were the productions of Welsh Roman Catholics, and published on the Continent. In Dr. Gruffydd Roberts’s Welsh Grammar, published at Milan in 1567, will be found poetical versions of the Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Ten Commandments and the Seven Sacraments. This work was followed by the Athravaeth Gristnogavl, a short catechism of religious doctrine, translated or compiled by Morys Clynog, the first Rector of the English College in Rome. It was published at Milan in 1568, and contains the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Ten Commandments, &c., in Welsh, with expositions.”
The above, with the prayer-books of 1567, 1586, 1599, were all the works of religious instruction and devotion (private and public) that appeared in Welsh down to the end of the sixteenth century. I might add that there is in the Earl of Macclesfield’s collection a large folio volume of Miscellanea (Shirburn MS. 113, D. 30), written between 1540 and 1560, which contains a prymer occupying several pages. There is also in the Swansea Public Library a Welsh-Latin MS. of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, written in different hands and in the South Walian dialect, which forms a manual of Roman Catholic devotion, containing in Welsh devotions for Mass, the usual meditations and prayers for various occasions, instructions, &c.
With the seventeenth century there is a good crop of manuals of devotion and instruction, such as the catechisms of Dr. Rosier Smith (1609-1611) and Father John Salisbury (1618 tacito nomine), both Welsh Roman Catholics (pp. 24-26).
308 A Werke for Housholders. London, R. Redman, 1537, sig. A. 8.
309 Ibid., sig. B. i.
310 Ibid., sig. C. 8.
311 Ibid., sig. D. 5.
312 B. Mus. Harl. MS. 2125, f. 272.
313 Penny Cyclopædia. Art., “English Drama.”
314 A Relation of the Island of England (Camden Society), p. 20.
315 Ibid., p. 23.
316 Venetian Calendar, ii. p. 91.
317 Works on the Supper (Parker Society), p. 229.
318 To take one instance: the church of St. Neots possessed many stained glass windows placed in their present positions between the years 1480 and 1530. Almost all of them were put in by individuals, as the inscriptions below testify. In the case of three of the lights it appears that groups of people joined together to beautify their parish church. Thus below one of the windows in the north aisle is the following: “Ex sumptibus juvenum hujus parochiæ Sancti Neoti qui istam fenestram fecerunt anno domini millessimo quingentessimo vicessimo octavo.” Another window states that it was made in 1529, “Ex sumptibus sororum hujus parochiæ”; and a third in 1530, “Ex sumptibus uxorum.”
319 History of Modern Architecture, pp. 37, 87.
320 Archæologia, vol. xli. p. 355.
321 Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage (“Nineteenth Century,” March 1898), p. 433.
322 Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), ed. Bishop Hobhouse, p. 200, seqq.
323 Ibid., p. xxi.
324 Ibid., p. xii.
325 Archæologia, vol. xli., p. 333 seqq.
326 Somerset Record Soc., preface, p. xi.
327 J. W. Cowper, Accounts of the Churchwardens of St. Dunstan’s, Canterbury (Archæologia Cantiana, 1885).
328 Siméon Luce, Histoire de Bertrand du Guesclin, p. 19.
329 The words of Pope Leo XIII. as to the Catholic teaching most accurately describe the practical doctrine of the English pre-Reformation Church on this matter: “The chiefest and most excellent rule for the right use of money,” he says, “rests on the principle that it is one thing to have a right to the possession of money and another to have the right to use money as one pleases.… If the question be asked, How must one’s possessions be used? the Church replies, without hesitation, in the words of the same holy doctor (St. Thomas), Man should not consider his outward possessions as his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without difficulty when others are in need. When necessity has been supplied and one’s position fairly considered, it is a duty to give to the indigent out of that which is over. It is a duty, not of justice (except in extreme cases) but of Christian charity … (and) to sum up what has been said, Whoever has received from the Divine bounty a large share of blessings … has received them for the purpose of using them for the perfecting of his own nature, and, at the same time, that he may employ them, as the minister of God’s Providence, for the benefit of others.”
330 The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 63.
331 Churchwardens’ Accounts (Somerset Record Soc.), p. xxiv.
332 Roger Edgworth, Sermons, London, R. Caly, 1557, p. 309.
333 Parish Life in England before the Great Pillage (“Nineteenth Century,” March 1898), p. 432.
334 English Gilds (Early English Text-Society), pp. lxxx.-civ.
335 Ibid., p. xiv.
336 The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 306.
337 English Gilds (Early English Text-Society), p. 3.
338 Ibid., p. 6.
339 Ibid., p. 8.
340 Ibid., p. 48.
341 Egerton MS., 142.
342 The existence of which I know from Mr. Francis Joseph Baigent, who with his usual generosity allowed me to examine and take my notes from the copies which he has among his great collection of materials for the history of Hampshire.
343 One example of this latter, or as I might call it, ordinary expense of the society, is worth recording. In 1411, and subsequent years, an annual payment of 13s. 4d. is entered on the accounts as made to one Thomas Deverosse, a tailor, and apparently a member of the fraternity. The history of this man’s poverty is curious. When Bishop William of Wykeham, desiring to build Winchester College, purchased certain lands for the purpose, amongst the rest was a field which a tailor of Winchester, this Thomas Deverosse, subsequently claimed; and to make good his contention, brought a suit of ejectment against the Bishop. The case was tried in the King’s Bench, and the tailor not only lost, but was cast in costs and so ruined. With some writers, William of Wykeham’s good name had been allowed to suffer most unjustly for his share in the misfortunes of the unlucky tailor; for the Bishop not only undertook to pay the costs of the suit himself, but agreed that the college should make the unfortunate claimant a yearly allowance of 8d. to assist him in his poverty. The Tailors’ Guild secured to him a pension of 13s. 4d.
344 Here is the bill for the annual feast in the Guild of Tailors of Winchester in 1411. The association was under the patronage of St. John the Baptist, and they kept their feast on the Day of the beheading of the Saint, August 29. In this year, 1411, the 29th of August fell upon a Saturday, which in mediæval times, as all know, was a day of abstinence from flesh-meat. It is to be noticed, consequently, that provision is made for a fish dinner: “6 bushels of wheat at 8½d. the bushel; for grinding of the same, 3d.; for baking the same, 6d.; ready-made bread purchased, 12d.; beer, 7s. 1d.; salt fish bought of Walter Oakfield, 6s. 8d.; mullet, bass, ray, and fresh conger bought of the same Walter, 6s. 8d.; fresh salmon of the same, 8s.; eels, 10½d.; fresh fish bought of John Wheller, ‘fisher,’ 2s.; ditto, of Adam Frost, 9s.; ditto, bought of a stranger, 2s. 8d.; beans purchased, 9d.; divers spices, i.e. saffron, cinnamon, sanders, 12½d.; salt, 2d.; mustard, 2½d.; vinegar, 1d.; tallow, 2d.; wood, 18d.; coals, 3½d.; paid to Philip the cook, 2s.; to four labourers, 2s. 6d.; to three minstrels, 3s. 4d.; for rushes to strew the hall, 4d.; three gallons and one pint of wine, 19d.; cheese, 8d.” Making in all a total of £3, 4s. 3½d. This, no doubt, represented a large sum in those days, but it is as well to remember that at this time the guild consisted of 170 men and women, and the cost of the feast was not one-sixth part of the annual income.
345 Harl. MS. 4626, f. 26.
346 Ibid., f. 29. This was confiscated to the Crown on the dissolution of the Guilds and Fraternities under Edward VI.
347 Introduction to English Economic History (2nd ed.), i. pp. 100-101.
348 Old Crown House, p. 36, cf. pp. 37-39.
349 See the remarks in regard to France of M. Charles de Ribbe, La Société Provençale à la fin du moyen age, 1898, p. 60. Speaking of the fifteenth-century wills, he says: “Nous en avons lu un grand nombre, et nous avons été frappé de la haute inspiration, parfois meme du talent, avec lesquels des notaires de village savaient traduire les élans de foi et de piété dont ils étaient les interprètes chez leurs clients.… Cette foi et cette piété; trouvé d’abord leur expression dans le vénérable signe de la sainte croix (lequel est plus d’une fois figuré graphiquement). Suit la recommandation de l’âme à Dieu Créateur du ciel et de la terre, au Christ rédempteur, à la Vierge Marie,” &c. (p. 91).
350 Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtees Society), vol. iv. p. 21.
351 Ibid., p. 127.
352 Ibid., p. 127.
353 Ibid., p. 170.
354 Ibid., p. 27.
355 Ibid., p. 60.
356 Ibid., p. 335.
357 Ibid., p. 277.
358 Ibid., p. 139, seqq.
359 Ibid., p. 61 and note.
360 Ibid., p. 69.
361 Ibid., p. 89.
362 Ibid., p. 132.
363 Ibid., p. 149.
364 Ibid., p. 208.
365 Ibid., p. 215.
366 Ibid., p. 230.
367 Ibid., p. 119.
368 Ibid., p. 160.
369 B. Mus. Harl. MS. 670, f. 77 b.
370 Yorkshire Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc.), ii., preface, p. xiv.
371 The Economic Interpretation of History, p. 306.
372 J. S. Burn, History of Henley on Thames, pp. 173-175.
373 R. O. Chantry Certificate, No. 13 (account for year 37 H. VIII.), No. 17.
374 Ibid., No. 30 and No. 95, M. 6.
375 Ibid., No. 37, M. 12; also No. 95, M. 7; and No. 13 (38) Mins. Accts. 2, 3, Ed. VI., shows that the king received £11, 19s. 8d. for the property of this chapel, which was granted to Robert Swift and his brother.
376 R. O. Chantry Certificate, No. 45 (m. i. d.).
377 Ibid.
378 Ibid.
379 Ibid. (18).
380 Ibid. (20).
381 This was owing to the recent dissolution of the Abbey.
382 In one case it is said: “Mem.: The decay of rent is caused by the fact that most came from lands in possession of the abbey; since the dissolution these have been sold, and the purchasers do not allow that they are liable to pay.” The hospital called St. Parvell’s, without the south gate, also had been dissolved by Henry VIII., and the property granted to Sir George Somerset (6th July, 37 H. VIII.). It had produced £16, 13s. 4d. a year, with £5, 10s. “paid out of the late abbey of Bury to the sustentation of the poor.” The whole charity, of course, by the dissolution of the abbey and the grant of the remaining property as above, had come to an end.
383 Ibid. (No. 44).
384 Yorkshire Chantry Surveys (Surtees Soc.), p. 213.
385 Ibid., p. 214.
386 Ibid., p. 215.
387 Ibid., p. 216.
388 Ibid., p. 11.
389 Ibid., p. 12.
390 Ibid., p. 13.
391 Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. lxxxii., ii. 318. Quoted in J. Gough Nichol’s Pilgrimages, &c. Introduction, xcv.
392 Lancelot Rydley. Exposition in the Epistell of Jude. London, Thomas Gybson, 1538, sig. B. v. In sermons and writings, pre-Reformation ecclesiastics strove to impress upon the minds of the people the true principles of devotion to shrines and relics of the saints. To take one example beyond what is given above. In The Art of Good Lyvyng and Good Deyng, printed in 1503, the writer says: “We should also honour the places that are holy, and the relics of holy bodies of saints and their images, not for themselves, but for that in seeing them we show honour to what it represents, the dread reverence, honour and love of God, after the intention of Holy Church, otherwise it were idolatry” (fol. 6).
393 A Commentary in Englyshe upon the Ephesians, 1540, sig. A. ii.
394 P. 190.
395 Opera omnia (ed. Leclerc), tom. v., col. 26.
396 Col. 37.
397 A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualitie and the temporalitie. London, R. Redman (1532?), fol. 27.
398 Dyaloge in Englyshe, 1531. Part 3, fol. 23.
399 English Works, p. 476.
400 Stephen Gardiner. A declaration of such true articles as George Joye hath gone about to confute as false. 1546, f. 2.
401 Consilium de emendanda ecclesia (Ed. 1538), sig. B. 4.
402 Jacobi Sadoletti, Opera Omnia, Verona (1737). Tom ii., p. 437.
403 It is said to be “printed at Jericho in the land of Promes, by Thomas Treuth.”
404 The English Testament.
405 Sig. A. 3.
406 Ibid., sig. A. 4.
407 Ibid., sigs. A. 5 d., A. 6 d.
408 Ibid., sig. B. i.
409 Ibid., sig. B. ii.
410 Ibid., sig. B. viii.
411 Sig. D. vii.
412 Ibid., sig. D. viii.