OWST, G.R. Preaching in The Middle Ages PDF

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Preaching in Medieval England

First published in 1926, G.R. Owst’s Preaching in Medieval England has
remained a seminal work on the topic of English sermons of the period
1350–1450. In studying a largely neglected but important aspect of
the medieval religious experience, the author adds considerably to our
understanding of the pre-Reformation church. The book is in three parts
– the preachers, the circumstances of the preaching and reception, and the
sermons themselves. In the first section Owst discusses the different classes
of preacher, the secular clergy, monks and particularly the wandering friars,
famous for their preaching. In the second part he studies the experience
of sermons, how, where and when they were delivered, and to whom. The
examination of the sermons covers not only their content and language,
but also the surviving manuals on preaching and eloquence, and advice to
preachers. This wide ranging and scholarly book remains a crucial work on
medieval preaching.
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Preaching in
Medieval England
An Introduction to Sermon Manuscripts
of the Period c.1350-1450
G. R . O wst
C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R SI T Y P R E S S
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,

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© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2010
This edition first published 1926

This digitally printed version 2010
ISBN 978-1-108-01007-8 Paperback
This book reproduces the text of the original edition. The content and language reflect
the beliefs, practices and terminology of their time, and have not been updated.
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with the endorsement or approval of, the original publisher or its successors in title.
CAMBRIDGE STUDIES
IN
MEDIEVAL LIFE AND THOUGHT
Edited by G. G. COULTON, M.A.
Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge
and University Lecturer in English
PREACHING IN MEDIEVAL
ENGLAND
PREACHING IN
MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
AN INTRODUCTION TO SERMON
MANUSCRIPTS OF THE PERIOD
c. 1350-1450
by
G. R. OWST
M.A. CANTAB., P H . D . L O N D . ,
Assistant Editorial Secretary to the
Medieval-Latin Dictionary Committee
"6K6TNOI Ae e!eA9ONTec eKHpYS&N TTANT&XOY
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1926
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS
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STUDIES WITH THE AUTHOR:
1925-1926
GENERAL PREFACE
T HERE is only too much truth in the frequent complaint

that history, as compared with the physical sciences, is
neglected by the modern public. But historians have the
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who insist that the proportion of accurately ascertainable
facts is smaller in history, and therefore the room for specu-
lation wider, do not thereby establish any essential distinction
between truth-seeking in history and truth-seeking in chemistry.
The historian, whatever be his subject, is as definitely bound as
the chemist "to proclaim certainties as certain, falsehoods as
false, and uncertainties as dubious." Those are the words, not
of a modern scientist, but of the seventeenth century monk,
Jean Mabillon; they sum up his literary profession of faith.
Men will follow us in history as implicitly as they follow the
chemist, if only we will form the chemist's habit of marking
clearly where our facts end and our inferences begin. Then the
public, so far from discouraging our speculations, will most
heartily encourage them; for the most positive man of science
is always grateful to anyone who, by putting forward a working
theory, stimulates further discussion.
The present series, therefore, appeals directly to that craving
for clearer facts which has been bred in these times of storm
and stress. No care can save us altogether from error; but for
our own sake and the public's we have elected to adopt a safe-
guard dictated by ordinary business common-sense. Whatever
errors of fact are pointed out by reviewers or correspondents
shall be publicly corrected with the least possible delay. After
a year of publication, all copies shall be provided with such an
viii GENERAL PREFACE
erratum-slip without waiting for the chance of a second edition;
and each fresh volume in this series shall contain a full list of
the errata noted in its immediate predecessor. After the lapse
of a year from the first publication of any volume, and at any
time during the ensuing twelve months, any possessor of that
volume who will send a stamped and addressed envelope to the
Cambridge University Press, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, London,
E.C. 4, shall receive, in due course, a free copy of the errata in
that volume. Thus, with the help of our critics, we may reason-
ably hope to put forward these monographs as roughly repre-
senting the most accurate information obtainable under present
conditions. Our facts being thus secured, the reader will judge
our inferences on their own merits; and something will have
been done to dissipate that cloud of suspicion which hangs over
too many important chapters in the social and religious history
of the Middle Ages.
G. G. C.
Oct. 1922
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
"rT"'HERE is perhaps no greater hardship at present inflicted
i- on mankind in civilised and free countries than the ne-
cessity of listening to sermons." The Victorian Age of Trollope
is more out of date and out of favour with many people than
even the Middle Ages themselves; but the sermon, it is to be
feared, is in no better odour to-day than when the Victorian
novelist wrote his remark. The very "necessity" of hearing it
has now disappeared. What is actually the first book to be
written on the subject of English Medieval Preaching would
seem to call, therefore, for a special word of explanation. To
the average Englishman modern sermons may be dull. But the
medieval variety, if it has ever occurred to his mind, is probably
associated with "empty, ridiculous harangues, legendary tales,
miracles, horrors, low jests, table-talk, fire-side scandal," result
in the main of a long Protestant tradition, which even reckons
Paul's Cross and the Sermons on the Card among its triumphant
inventions. If still left with a taste for devotional literature,
therefore, he can hardly be expected to waste time upon
"monkish superstitions," when the works of Latimer and
Jeremy Taylor, Donne and South already stand upon his book-
shelves. Not John Wycliffe himself, "morning star of the
Reformation," if he rose from the dead, could induce Professor
Hearnshaw to listen to his homilies.
English historians and archivists have certainly done little
enough to make known what M. Lecoy de la Marche calls "the
innumerable written monuments of the pulpit." Emancipated
from religion and an old-fashioned culture (yet always the
willing slaves of public opinion), they are naturally busy to-day
with the weightier material concerns of modern politics and
industry. Hence, the whole round of medieval existence is like-
wise compassed for them in the busy tale of buyings and sellings,
the systems of the Courts, the endless reckoning of manor rolls
and taxes. Such is the latest fashion in "History," which has
now replaced one of treaties, campaigns, and royal escapades.
Medieval scholars on the continent, however, especially in
x AUTHOR'S PREFACE
France, while hardly neglectful of other branches of the great
medieval tree of knowledge, have long done justice to their
sermon manuscripts. The names of Haureau, Delisle, Langlois,
Lecoy de la Marche, Bourgain, to quote but a few, represent
but one group which worked industriously half a century ago
on the vast collections in the libraries of Paris. Thomas Wright
was apparently the first lonely antiquary in England to recognize
the value of these quaint homiletic sources. But, apart from a
few random editions of Early English Texts since his day, they
remained wholly neglected until Dr Gasquet (as he then was)
uttered a rousing plea for their study in two essays originally
published in the Dublin Review. There, again, the matter has
been allowed to rest up to the present time. For the survey so
enthusiastically planned and recommended by the eminent
Cardinal has never been undertaken. Miss Toulmin Smith's
hints at the History of Preaching in England which will one
day have to be written, in an article in the English Historical
Review called forth by the publication of Bozon's "Contes
Moralises " in 1889, still constitute a pious dream for the future.
One work by an Englishman, Mr J. A. Herbert of the British
Museum, is alone worthy to stand by the monumental produc-
tions of French scholarship in this sphere. But that, after all,
is a learned Catalogue, concerned exclusively with sermon
exempla.
What, then, are the chief contributions to our knowledge
which a study of this much-despised sermon literature is likely
to produce? First, a contribution to our knowledge of social
life and thought. Pater's "belief that nothing which has ever
interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality,—
no language they have spoken, no oracle beside which they
have hushed their voices, no dream which has once been enter-
tained by actual human minds, nothing about which they have
been passionate, or expended time and zeal" should in itself
be a sufficient inducement to study. For the English medieval
pulpit assuredly gripped men in its day, had its own peculiar
language, its oracles, its dreams, created passions, called forth
zeal, as readers will see. But, apart from the mere dilettante—
" Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto," our modern
social historians declare that they will "now welcome every
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xi
sidelight, however dim." To glance casually, then, through
M. Haureau's six volumes of manuscript extracts is to convince
oneself beyond all doubt of the wealth of illustrative social
detail which is to be got from the medieval sermon. Nor shall
we wonder at it, if we remember what the medieval preachers
were. Political and social champions of the oppressed, reformers
of abuses, distributors of news and popular knowledge, writers
in prose and verse, jesters and story-tellers, we may well expect
them to know and to disclose to us the little secrets of their age.
Listen to the preacher as he discourses on the exactions of lords
and retainers, the vices of the clergy, the wiles of merchants and
lawyers, the fashions of ladies, the sports, labours, sufferings
of the common herd! He will tell you all, if you are patient.
With Mr Bernard Shaw he would cry—" My conscience is the
genuine pulpit article: it annoys me to see people comfortable
when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making
them think in order to bring them to a conviction of sin. If
you don't like my preaching, you must lump it. I really cannot
help it!" Consequently, like Mr Shaw, he will prove a most
illuminating critic and satirist.
But, secondly, there is the contribution which our sermons
will make to English ecclesiastical history, particularly to the
much-debated problems of the state of the medieval church and
the causes of the Reformation. For such debates, indeed, the
appearance of this little book might almost claim to be timely.
For, in it, passages from English synodal sermons are printed
for the first time. They will at least serve to remind us that here
we have a literature far more intimate and telling in its dis-
closures than even the Episcopal Registers themselves; yet one
which—so far as England is concerned—has been as little
explored by the learned Editor of this series as by his critics.
Entering medieval chapter-house and church as in a magic
cloak, by means of it we are enabled to listen unseen, "behind
closed doors," to the clergy as they harangue their own clergy
with a frankness and fearlessness only equalled by the con-
fessions of memoir and diary in later centuries. Some of their
remarks make peculiarly unpleasant reading. But, until the
"ut estimo" of Master Rypon and his kind is thus given heed
to again, we shall be compelled to go on listening to the "idle
xii AUTHOR'S PREFACE
imaginacions" of professors, propagandists, and journalistic
historians on these points, a hardly less evil fate. Through
ignorance of that insight which sermons alone can give into
the popular as well as the ecclesiastical mind of the times, the
people's arguments, excuses, religious and anti-clerical ideas,
as well as the self-condemnation of the clergy, even so learned
and restrained a work as Dr Gairdner's Lollardy and the
Reformation is vitiated. To Gairdner, indeed, Dr Gascoigne's
complaints were almost as exceptional as were those of Wycliffe
himself to Professor Lechler and others. Yet, as a matter of
fact, a hundred pulpits of orthodoxy in England must have been
complaining then in exactly the same strain, if only our historians
could have known it. What shall we say, too, for example, with
the record of medieval preaching now before us, of S. R.
Maitland's pet objections to what he calls "Puritan style," the
unbridled language, and vulgar personal attacks of the Reformers
which he delighted to hold up to our scorn? Did not the
warning voices of the most faithful mariners, clinging to their
post of duty in the storm-tossed, ill-steered Ship of the Church,
ring hoarse and relentless enough, long before the Reformers'
day?
If a study of the sermons is needed to dissipate the errors of
historians, it is needed also to throw fresh light upon the con-
temporary English literature. Professor Whitney's remark in his
article on "Religious movements in the fourteenth century" in
our Cambridge History still holds good over a wide area,—that
much remains to be done in the arrangement of manuscripts.
What sermons may do to illumine the dark places of such a
poem as Piers Plowman's Vision, I have already suggested else-
where. The same fact applies, no doubt, to satire, and to the
drama; and even further to the dark places of symbolism in art.
The present study, however, does not deal directly with
evidence for any of the arguments here indicated: neither is it
concerned with any theological controversies as such. Within
the strict limits of a volume of this kind there is more than
enough to do in first introducing the subject of the Preaching. In
days when the Bar was dumb, and political eloquence unborn,
M. Victor le Clerc has reminded us—"tout discours est pres-
qu'un sermon; parler, c'est precher. L'art de la predication est
AUTHOR'S PREFACE xiii
tout l'art de la parole." The pulpit is itself a social activity,
a centre of picturesque intercourse as well as of "lovelych
talkyng" and thinking. Its literature needs much sorting and
examination. For, no illustrative material for the historian has
any right to be supplied until first the manner and purport of
its original delivery has been weighed. The preacher, a man of
like passions, prejudices, weaknesses with ourselves, is not dis-
coursing with an eye on his reporters of the twentieth century.
He speaks with exaggeration, sometimes with violence, as the
mood or the audience prompts him. The very language which
he uses may not be his own. Sermon evidence, therefore, can
never be too carefully handled, even in its most naive and
voluminous state. Finally, a word concerning the period here
chosen. With the medieval pulpit even more, perhaps, than
with medieval life and culture in general, we move in a world
the motto of which from the first might well be "tout est
donne." Hence, in view of the superabundance of our material,
it will be convenient to dispense with a chronological survey
for the present, and concentrate upon the chief types and
characters of a single century which will be broadly charac-
teristic of them all. That century, then, is to be one which saw
the full fruit of Mendicant preaching in this country, the
revival of our English tongue, an age of mysticism, of simmering
revolt, and impending reformation.
This book itself is the fruit of four years' continuous study
of the sources. It began from an essay presented two years ago
to the Faculty of Theology in the University of London, for
which the degree of Doctor of Philosophy was granted. Dr G. G.
Coulton first suggested to the author a research upon the
"Summa Predicantium" of Bromyard, the "Festiall" of John
Myrc, Bishop Brunton's Sermon manuscript, and certain others
in the Cambridge University Library indicated in a monograph
by M. Petit-Dutaillis. To the Rev. Professor Claude Jenkins,
Librarian of Lambeth Palace, he owes the idea of a study of
the Preaching itself, and that early stimulus and advice which
has led him afield to work upon many manuscripts in many
libraries. The unfailing kindness, sympathy and help of these
two scholars is to-day the writer's chief joy and solace as he
looks back,—magistri mei perhonorandi et dilectissimi! For all
xiv AUTHOR'S PREFACE
other sources used, for the method of their treatment, for the
many mistakes which recent pressure of duties has made it
impossible to eliminate, he takes sole responsibility. Miss Eileen
Power, D.Lit., has most kindly undertaken the task of proof-
reading. Further, thanks are due to Mr S. C. Roberts for the
block from his Picture Book of British History (Volume n) which
illustrates page 267, and to the University Printer for his advice.
Finally, apart from unstinted help given from time to time by
officials of the Manuscript Department in the British Museum,
acknowledgement is due to the following gentlemen for per-
mission to examine MSS., or for references generously supplied,
and in many cases for much personal kindness:
In London—the Master of the Library of Gray's Inn; and
the Rev. Dr H. B. Workman, of Westminster.
In Oxford—Mr Falconer Madan, and Dr Craster, of the
Bodleian.
In Cambridge—Sir Geoffrey Butler, Librarian of Corpus
Christi College; Mr Sydney Cockerell, Director of the
Fitzwilliam Museum; the Librarians of Gonville and Caius
College, and Trinity College (now the University Librarian).
In Edinburgh—Dr W. K. Dickson, Keeper of the Advocates
Library (now the National Library of Scotland); the University
Librarian; the Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians.
Amongst Cathedral Chapter Libraries—at York, the Rev.
H. T. S. Gedge; at Lincoln, the Ven. Archdeacon of Stow, the
Rev. Canon W. H. Kynaston, also the Sub-Librarian, and
especially the Rev. Canon R. M. Woolley, D.D., for valuable
loan of his transcripts; at Salisbury, the Rev. Canon Christopher
Wordsworth; at Worcester, the Rev. Canon J. M. Wilson, D.D.;
at Durham, Mr Meade Falkner, Hon. Librarian; at St Alban's,
the late Rev. Canon G. H. P. Glossop.
Last, but not least, to the Librarian and Trustees of Dr
Williams' Library, London, for the loan of many books; and
to my own college in Cambridge, for hospitality during several
visits,—she who stands upon the very site where the great
John de Bromyard must often have preached.
G. R. OWST.
Feast of S. Matthias, 1926.
ST ALBAN'S.
CONTENTS
PART ONE
THE PREACHERS
CHAP. PAGE
I. "BISHOPS AND CURATES" i

II. MONKS AND FRIARS 48
III. "WANDERING STARS" 96
PART TWO
THE PREACHING SCENE

IV. "INTER MISSARDM SOLLEMNIA" 144
V. "AT THE CROSS" AND " I N PROCESSION" 195
PART THREE
THE SERMONS
VI. THE SERMON LITERATURE AND ITS TYPES 222
VII. MANUALS AND TREATISES 279
VIII. SERMON-MAKING, OR THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF SACRED ELOQUENCE 309
APPENDICES 355
INDEX 363
N.B. In all quotations given, the O.E. 'p' has been

rendered by ' th,' as a concession to the general
reader.
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATES
PLATE I . THE PREACHING SCENE IN A CHURCHYARD frontispiece
From MS. Fitzw. Mus., Cambridge, 22, p. 55.
PLATE II. A PREACHING SCENE IN THE XIII CENTURY to face p. 144

From MS. Egert. 745, fol. 46.
A MEDIEVAL PULPIT OF WOOD
(East Hagbourne, Berks.)
From a pencil sketch by the author.
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

A SERMON FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY p. 242
From the Festiall, MS. Harl. 2403, If. 30 b.
A ROYAL FUNERAL SERMON IN I5O9 267

(Preached by Bp. John Fisher over the body of
King Henry VII, in St Paul's Cathedral.)
THE MASTER HOMILIST AND HIS PUPILS 287

From a XV century edition of the Meditationes
of St Bonaventura (Pseud.).
FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR
AN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP IN HIS PULPIT, 1399 9

(Archbp. Arundel) from MS. Harl. 1319, fol. 12.
THE " PREACHING FOX " 86

From a stall-arm in Christ Church Priory, Hants.
A LEARNED DOMINICAN 95
From MS. Fitzw. Mus., Cambridge, 164 (c. 1450-70).
THE HERMIT PREACHER II7

From MS. Roy. 14. E. iii, fol. 9 b.
xviii ILLUSTRATIONS
BURNHAM NORTON PULPIT, NORFOLK p. 164
(Katherine Goldale and St Ambrose.)
THE DEVILS IN CHURCH 177

From a Misericord carving in Ely Cathedral.
A FASHIONABLE SERMON AUDIENCE 186

From MS. Harl. 4380, fol. 20.
THE BLACKFRIARS PREACHING CROSS, HEREFORD 197
PREACHING WITH A CROSS 3 SO

From a stall-end in the Lady Chapel of Winchester
Cathedral.
PART ONE
THE PREACHERS
CHAPTER I
"BISHOPS AND CURATES"
can lawfully preach?" is a typical question put by
the Regimen Animarum, one of the little hand-books of
Canon Law and instruction so plentifully furnished for mediaeval
clergy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The answer is
not quite so simple as might be expected, though the main
principle underlying it is sufficiently clear and accredited.
"Priests, deacons and subdeacons, if they have preferment and
the care of souls (si habeant prelationem et curam animarum),
because those so entitled preach by reason of their preferment,
not by reason of their order."1
"Ratione prelationis," this then determines the Church's
prime choice of the men called to be her regular spokesmen in
the pulpit, the bishop and the "curate" or beneficed parson,
who have the authoritative charge of souls. The rest of that
vast preaching host of the later middle ages, monks and Mendi-
cants, University graduates in theology, vicars, chaplains,
pardoners and recluses, even the Templar and Hospitaller2, and
the rest, are but auxiliaries, to be admitted to the ranks of sacred
heraldry3 only by special privilege, and further license by their
own prelati, and those of the places where they might preach4.
1
MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9 (De Predicatoribus); compiled 1343 (?).
2
Specifically mentioned in ibid. fol. 9, also the Summa Summarum, bk. v,
cap. lix (De Predicatoribus et eorum Predicationibus), and cf. MS. Ryl. 10.
D. x, fol. 279 b.
3
A typical contemporary figure for preachers; cf. Gesta Rom.: "Pre-
cones, qui illud convivium clamabant"; Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 59):
"Nunciivel precursores, procurrentes adventum Domini"; MS. Caius Coll.
Camb. 233, fol. 108 b ; Bromyard, S.P.—Predic; etc.
4
Cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40): " Item predicatores ex privi-
legiis papalibus constituuntur, scil. religiosi mendicantes.. .hii qui per pre-
latos eorum constituuntur ad hoc.. . . Hiis tamen predicatoribus non licet
predicare in ecclesiis parochianis sine licentia rectoris,. . . " etc.; and fol. 42:
" .. .nee presbyter, nee heremita, nee quicunque alius, nisi fuerit prelatus,
populo predicare debet, nisi licentiam habuerit, ut predictum est."
2 "BISHOPS AND CURATES"
Yet, as the world knows, it was the auxiliary, in this as in other
developments in the history of the Church, who was destined
to play by far the most conspicuous part. From the point of
view of preaching, the mediaeval prelatus, whether as dignitary
or merely a humble parish priest, might well be expected to
plead before long that that sacred duty must of necessity be
shared with others less burdened than himself. If faithfully
performed, the elaborate oversight of a mediaeval diocese, the
intricate processes of the Church courts, the serving of a country
parish, scattered, divided by hill and forest and brook, abomin-
able roads, and even worse class distinctions and jealousies—
Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder,
But he ne lafte nat, for reyn ne thonder
to visyte
The ferrest in his parisshe, muche and lyte1,—
would seem to leave little time for the requisite study and
preparation. On the other hand, when we recall the actual
temptations of a secular kind that beset such persons, it is easy
to see how "the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of
riches " would often " choke the word," rendering many of them
unfruitful. The full story of how the spiritual descendants of
Francis and Dominic and of the desert hermits eclipsed, in
England as elsewhere, the efforts of the "curates" in the pro-
duction of sermons both written and spoken, will have to be
re-told in the pages that follow. But in an opening chapter
it may not be out of place to emphasize the fact that, however
great the characteristic mediaeval discrepancy between theory
and practice here as in other places, the secular clergy at least
professed an equally lofty view of the preacher's equipment,
whenever they troubled to write about it. When a simple
vernacular homilist sets out his exposition of the "fishers of
men " in the Gospel, he says, " Be thisefischersben undirstonde
doctoures, the wiche 3eden doune, thorough mekenes and grace,
to the water of wisdom and of mercy, to wasche therin ther
nettes, th4 is to dense hure beleve and to lere the Lawe of God
. . . w* the wiche thei shulden drawe in the flodes of this worlde
grete men and smale men to the londe of liff, that is, to the
blisse of heven." Again, later, " S o . . .alle doctoures shuld lat
1
Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Prol. 11. 491-4.
"BISHOPS AND CURATES" 3
owte in to the worlde holy techynge of Godes lore, for to cache
sowles fro synne in to the wey of salvacion."1 This special
association of the preacher with the learned man of the Uni-
versity, which occurs further, for example, in the Gesta Roman-
orum ("sacrae paginae doctores, scil. predicatores, qui habent
nos instruere"), and frequently elsewhere2, was to be seen in
the person of the friar as in no other of his contemporaries. The
average curatus was apparently its living negation. Such a view,
too, we might be inclined to associate with the intellectualism
of a Bishop Pecock and his marked antipathy to popular
preaching. Yet as accepted by all parties it is characteristic
of a growing dependence upon the voice of authority in the
orthodox religion of the later middle ages. From the panels of
the pulpit itself, when pulpits became fixtures in churches, the
figures of the four great doctors of the Church stared solemnly
down upon the speaker's audience. His own address was
enriched most plentifully with sayings at least attributable to
those same great doctors. Little wonder, then, if along with
the first idea of the preacher as prelate or "curate," there was
maintained this other idea of him as essentially a "doctor," no
longer indeed expositor of the rank and authority of a Gregory
or an Ambrose, but at least one who speaks out of the fullness
of his knowledge—"secundum sacram scripturam, et omnes
sacros doctores."3 This type confronts us in particular when we
meet with the select preacher for special festivals and events of
the year, for convocations and general chapters, the chancellors
of cathedral and University, the learned graduates whose visits
from Oxford are eagerly awaited. It becomes grotesque, though
vivid and amusing, in the persons of ambitious preachers of the
day, eager for pulpit fame, with their pedantic Latin phrases,
their pompous hoods and furs, their greetings as "Masters" in
the market-place.
While churchmen of almost every rank and variety, "lewd and
lered," secular and religious, might thus be formally admitted
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 150.
a
The "fishers of men" as doctors appear in a sermon of Fitzralph, MS.
Lansd. 393, fol. 26 b; in Brunton, MS. Harl. 3760; in MS. Add. 21253,
fol. 97; etc. The whole is probably derived from a passage in St Gregory.
Cf. also Cil. Oc. Sac. etc.
3
Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894).
to the task of the pulpit under one or other of these con-
ditions, others were rigidly excluded. Do you ask if laymen
can preach, then the reply is "Certainly not," for them it is
a mortal sin1. The best advice offered them by the quaint
author of an English tract on the Decalogue of the fifteenth
century is as follows: " Yf thou be a prest, and havest kunnynge
and auctoryte, preche and teche Godes worde to his peple; and
yf thou be no prest nother clerk, but on of the peple, thenne
bysy the in the halyday to here prechynge of Godes worde, and
be aboute with thy goede spekynge and styrynge to brynge thy
ney3ebores to betere lyvynge."2 The contrast in duties is
emphasized still more clearly in the opening sentences of John
Watton's popular Speculum Christiani, which run thus, in an
English translation of the period:
A grete differens es be twene prechynge and techynge. Prechynge
es in a place where es clepynge to gedyr, or foluynge of pepyl in
holy dayes, in chyrches or othe certeyn places and tymes ordeyned
ther to. And it longeth to hem th4 been ordeyned ther to, the whyche
have iurediccion and auctorite, and to noon othyr. Techynge es th*
eche body may enforme and teche hys brothyr in every place and in
conable tyme, es he seeth th' it be spedful: ffor this es a godly almes
dede to whych every man es bounde th4 hath cunnynge3.
Women as a class most people would consider quite naturally
excluded from the privilege of preaching in the middle ages.
Yet, as a matter of fact, there was then one woman who did
exercise her regular prelatio over a flock, namely the abbess
of the nunnery. Moreover, evidence is by no means lacking,
from the continent, that in earlier centuries it was not without
a considerable struggle that this right of preaching in formal
1
Cf. Summa Angelica, under " Predicare." Lyndwood, Prov. adds: " nee
publice, nee private"; the Reg. Anim.: "quacunque sciencia vel sanctitate
polleant" (MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9); Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 42).
2
3
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 91 b.
MS. Harl. 6580, fol. 2 (written by one Roger Byrde). Here is Watton's
original Latin (cf. MS. Harl. 206, fol. 17; MSS. Add. 21202, 22121, etc.):
" Magna est differentia inter predicationem et doctrinam. Predicatio est ubi
est convocatio sive populi invitatio in diebus festivis, in ecclesiis, seu in aliis
certis locis et temporibus ad hoc deputatis, et pertinet ad eos qui ordinati
sunt ad hoc, et jurisdictionem et auctoritatem habent, et non ad alios. In-
formare autem et docere potest unusquisque fratrem suum in omni loco et
tempore oportuno, si videatur sibi expedire; quia hoc est eleemosina ad
quam quilibet tenetur." Cf. also Cil. Oc. Sac. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 42 b:
" Item omnes fideles mutuo tenentur errantes corripere et egentes informare."
1
fashion in church was completely wrested from her . By the
time that our England of the fourteenth century is reached,
however, nothing so picturesque as M. Lecoy de la Marche's
episodes appears to remain. Bromyard in his Opus Trivium,
Lyndwood in his Provinciate, the anonymous author of the
Cilium Oculi Sacerdotis2, for example, all remind you, that
"although learned and holy and 'prelatical,'" she must not
preach where men are present. The Dominican Humbertus
de Romanis' remarks on this subject3 are worth repeating, if
only because they depict, beyond their immediate application
to the practice under discussion, the general attitude of con-
temporary preachers toward the opposite sex. Women must be
excluded from the pulpits, he says, first because they lack
sufficient intelligence, secondly because an inferior role in
life has been given them by God, thirdly because in such a
position they would provoke immorality; fourthly, owing to the
folly of the first woman, Eve, who as St Bernard pointed out,
by opening her mouth on a certain occasion, brought ruin to
the whole world. One is tempted, nevertheless, to notice that
in spite of these ungenerous remarks alike of the great reforming
Cistercian and the thirteenth-century friar, all following the
example of St Paul, mediaeval woman comes nigh again to
"having a last word" in the matter, even where the English
pulpit is concerned. In its final stages of neglect and decay at
the eve of the Reformation, was it not a distinguished lady, of
holy memory, the Lady Margaret Tudor, patron of no less than
three colleges at Cambridge, who founded preacherships at the
two Universities, still bearing her name, expressly to revive the
dying art? 4 Well may the future generations of men honour
her memory in the prayers and thanksgivings of Benefactors'
Day! Beyond this, indeed, an English preacher of the late
fourteenth century has a remarkable statement in one of his
own sermons to the effect that simple lay-women as well as
laymen were "teaching and spreading the word of God" in
1
Cf. Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire franfaise, pp. 32-3.
2
MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 42: "Mulieribus, licet doctae et sanctae et prelatae,
viris predicare non licet." The reference in Lyndwood, Prov, Lib. 3, tit. 4,
is to dist. 23. The passage from the Cil. Oc. Sac. is actually taken from the
Council of Carthage.
• See Max. Bibl. Patr. vol. xxv, p. 435. * 1502-3.
his day, apparently under the influence of the Lollard move-
ment, to the shame of careless and incompetent priests1. As
one thinks of Lauron's satirical print of a Quaker meeting in the
seventeenth century2, and all that has followed in Christendom
since that woman first stood upon her stool to expound the
Scriptures, there is a tragic irony in learned Doctor Lyndwood's
opening phrase: "Note that not everyone who desires to preach
ought to be admitted to that office."3
With a class of preachers firmly established in the heart
of society, a natural curiosity soon arises to discover something
of the personalities and methods of the various leading types
of which it is composed. Here, alas, in the direction of auto-
biographical detail, the contemporary mediaeval sermon proves
as disappointing as its modern counterpart. Even the very
anecdotes, numerous as they are, are borrowed as a rule from
earlier writers, and but very rarely from personal reminiscence.
Sermon diaries or note-books being rarer still, we are thrown
back on the meagre evidence of Episcopal Registers, of Chapter
Acts, upon stray portraits in the secular literature of the times,
or abnormal cases of heretical preaching which caught the
chronicler's attention. These, together with the light which
some brief introductory prologue or series of headings to a set
of homilies may throw on the habits and experiences of their
author, are the principal sources at our disposal. Fortunate
indeed might we have been, if other compilers had followed the
example of brother Robert of Ware, a thirteenth century
Franciscan, who sets forth in the preface to his Rosarium of
sermons4 a sketch of his own early life and conversion to the
Order, for the purpose of illustrating from personal knowledge
the miraculous power of the Holy Virgin he is about to extol.
While autobiography is rare, however, general "figures" and
analogues from nature depicting the kind of man a preacher
was expected to be are common enough. Such curiosities indeed
are always to be found amongst the favourite stock-in-trade of
this particular profession. In Alexander Neckham5, he had
1
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 149. See below, p. 135.
8 3
Collection of Prints at the Brit. Mus. Prov. Lib. 3, tit. 4.
1
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. No. 7, fol. 62-138. See my article in the Dublin
Review, for April, 1925.
6
(1157-1217.) £>e Naturis Rerum—under "Gallus." Cf. Bromyard,
S.P.—Predic.
appeared as the cock, with his comb and wattles, his morning
crowing, his authority in the fowl-house, all carefully delineated
in the picture to represent the right homiletical qualities. In
Rypon, he is compared to the human stomach in its work of
digesting and distributing nourishment for the system—"acci-
piens cibum, coquit eum in seipsum, et per totum corpus [i.e.
the Church] dispergit"1; a little later in the same "thema," 2 to
the teeth, with a similar duty, as "with whiteness of purity,
bony strength, and immoveable constancy they grind up and
disperse the sacred Word." If, however, you consider these a
little offensive to modern taste, Dr Bromyard, amid a perfect
riot of imagery, will present for your enlightenment the physician
to the royal household who must administer herbs and other
necessaries, with all skill and firmness, to preserve in health no
less distinguished a patient than the king's own son; or again,
the royal herald diligently crying his master's proclamations to
all men, without fear or favour. Elsewhere, the preachers are
likened to the lights of heaven by which men find their way
in the darkness of the night3, no inappropriate simile for the
work of the pulpit in the "Dark Ages," as we shall see. Finally,
the best-known type of all appears, that of the " Domini canes,"
of the noble pedigree of Francis Thompson's "Hound," here
with their relentless bark protecting the sacred sheepfolds from
wolves4, the poultry-yard from foxes5, or else full in the chase
with Christ, that great huntsman—"the wiche over al other
lovithe huntyng of soulis."6
Everywhere stress is laid in the current treatises on the fact
that before all else deeds and example of life speak as loud if
not louder than words. "3iff suche men now adayes preche and
repreve synne as holy lyvers, men wold be aferde to repreve hem
be cause of here holynes... he th* is holy of liff may boldely
speke a3eyns thoo th* be synners."7 While William de Pagula
will have even his village priest "eruditus et doctus, irrepre-
hensibilis et maturus,"8 if he can, the Dominican, Thomas
Walleys, specifies further for one modest alike in dress and
1 2 3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 200. fol. 201. Ibid. fol. 59.
4 6
Bromyard, S.P. etc. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 95.
6
Gesta Rom. Engl. vers. (E.E.T.S.), pp. n o , etc.
' MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 75 b.
8
Oc. Sacer. (MS. Roy. 6 E. 1. fol. 27 b) etc. Cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl.
4968, fol. 42): " eruditum, et prudentem, et providum. . .," etc.
manner, of frequent prayer and solitary reflection, with all the
gifts and graces of a master of elocution1. Such a man might
well claim, with a clear conscience, his prize among the special
crowns of heaven—"called aureals"—awaiting, we are told, all
faithful "prechoures, marteres, and maydenes."2 He toiled in
a world full of pitfalls and temptations for those who dared the
enterprise.
"Bishops indeed," quotes Dr Lyndwood, "can preach every-
where, unless expressly prohibited by diocesans, following that
saying in Matthew, ' Go ye out into all the world and preach!'
made to the apostles, in whose place the bishops are their
successors3. None the less they cannot bestow the authority to
preach upon others save within their own dioceses." If the
direct instruction of the people lay perforce in the hands of the
parish clergy, all prelati in the wider mediaeval sense of the
word, at the other end of the scale was the prelate in the more
restricted modern sense of bishop, archbishop, archdeacon,
and the like, pledged to find time amid his many duties to main-
tain and supervise this particular activity throughout the area
of his administration. In fourteenth-century England this
might be done in a variety of ways. In suppo rt of the programme
laid down by the epoch-making Constitutions of Archbishop
Peckham, he might encourage the publication and general
distribution of vernacular translations and treatises for his clergy
like Archbishop Thoresby of York. With Wykeham4 or Stafford5
he might check the non-residence and ignorance of individual
offenders among the rectors by sending them back to their
studies, with the added stimulus of a fine. The audiences he
might lure by the attraction of suitable Indulgences. Finally,
remembering like Chaucer's priest that practice should ever go
1
2
See MS. Harl. 635, fol. 6, et seq. in Chap, vm below.
MS. Roy. 8. C. 1, fol. 137 b, and Adv. Libr., Edin. 18. 6. 15, fol. 2; etc.
John the Baptist appears to have qualified as all three! For sources of this
tradition see Coulton, From St Francis to Dante, 2nd ed. pp. 169, 382.
3
Cf. also the Letter of Archbp. John Peckham to the Bishop of Tusculum
(Reg. J. Peckh. (Rolls S.), p. 77): " the Episcopal Order is called by the Holy
Fathers the Order of Preachers."
4
Reg. Wykeham (Hants Rec. Soc), vol. ii, p. 371, etc.
5
Reg. Bp. Stafford, of Bath and Wells (Somerset Rec. Soc), p. 180,
and frequently in Reg. Bp. Stapledon of Exeter, etc. See also Wilkins, Cone.
vol. iii, p. 605: "Item sacerdotes predicti, et alii presbyteri, curati, suis
vacent libris."
before precept, even in this duty, he might be as instant as
Grossetete or Brunton in exhorting both clergy and laity in
person. In the present chapter it is this last-named activity
that concerns us more particularly, when the bishop himself
appears in the pulpit, with all the added solemnity of some
special occasion, or special audience.
AN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP IN HIS PULPIT, 1399

(MS. Harl. 1319, fol. 12)
Two sets of episcopal sermons by Englishmen, more or less

within the limits of the chosen period, will provide some idea
of the labours of the zealous prelate as preacher1. They serve
1
At least a third series of English episcopal sermons exists for our period,
that of Philip Repingdon, Cardinal, and Bishop of Lincoln (1405 to 1419).
As, however, he was once a prominent Oxford Lollard, prior to abjuration
of heresy in 1382, and the MSS. were not conveniently to hand for con-
io "BISHOPS AND CURATES"
to remind us that even in days when those in office had become
a scandal to the whole of Christendom, there was yet here and
there a true son of the great Grossetete on English soil. He it was
who had put popular preaching first among the priestly duties;
who in the year 1238, had actually drawn up a scheme of his
own, whereby he might preach sermons to all his clergy in
turn grouped in deaneries, to show them how they should
henceforth instruct their own people, "since we are debtors
in the preaching of the Word of God to all men of our diocese,
and we are not able to fulfil this duty with our own mouth, for
the multitude of parish churches."1 Even so doubtful a
character as Bishop Thomas de Lisle of Ely, in the centuries
before us, has been described as "predicator egregius," rapidly
visiting the various districts of his diocese, a faithful and prudent
dispenser of the measure of wheat to the Lord's people, scatter-
ing the Word of God amongst those committed to his charge
with fervent spirit2.
The first of the collections just mentioned, first both in order
of time and biographical detail, contains the sermons of the
celebrated Archbishop Richard Fitzralph, of Armagh3. The
series opens just prior to his appointment to the deanery of
Lichfield in 1337. It continues until the year before his death
in 1360, when as archbishop and notorious opponent of the
friars, he was apparently still preaching at Avignon, "in the
chapel of the Lord Pope " (Innocent VI), in spite of the many
troubles he had incurred in a famous controversy. He was born
tinuous study, I have neglected these for the present. A writer in the Church
Quarterly Review (vol. xix, pp. 59-82), declares that the sermons in question
are entirely free from " Wycliffist leaven" (p. 72), as might be expected in so
ambitious a convert to orthodoxy. MSS. are Caius Coll. 246, and Pembroke
Coll. 49, Cambridge: (and also apparently in Lincoln Coll. Oxford). The
first of these is the MS. mentioned in Dr J. Venn's Early Collegiate Life
(Heffer), p. 21. Bp. Sheppey's Sermon MS. (Merton Coll. Oxford, 248)
I have not been able to examine yet (d. 1360).
1
Rypon has an interesting reference to this in one of his sermons (MS.
Harl.
2
4894, fol. 208).
See Wharton, Anglia Sacr. vol. i, p. 655. De Lisle was a Dominican.
3
The copy used here is MS. Lansd. 393 (Dr R. L. Poole, who has not
mentioned this in his interesting article on Fitzralph in the D.N.B., refers
only to MS. Bodl. 144, which is another copy of the collection): entitled
(fol. 11): "Sermones domini Ricardi Dei gratia Archiepiscopi Ardmachani
et Hibernie primati, habiti Avinione (?) et aliis locis quampluribus, de
diversis sanctis et temporibus."
"BISHOPS AND CURATES" n
at Dundalk in Ireland, became a fellow of Balliol College,
Oxford, Doctor of Divinity in that University, possibly Chan-
cellor about the year 1333, a dean in England, and an archbishop
in his native land ten years later. As in the case of another
though less exalted preacher in England, his contemporary,
whom we shall have occasion to mention, his death became the
signal for an unofficial canonization by the people amongst
whom he had toiled. "Seynt Richard Armachan"1 is indeed
almost the one historical figure we can claim to know among
the many writers of sermons to be dealt with, all too obscurely,
in this study. A single exception need be made in the case of
one actually destined to carry on his assault against the Mendi-
cants with fresh emphasis after his death—John Wycliffe. As
for our other representative bishop, Thomas Brinton, or Brunton,
of Rochester, though once, without doubt, equally eminent and
equally renowned, he is now but a dim ghost in the mists of the
past. This much, however, may be said of both of them, con-
sidered as preachers. Their stern and unsparing attacks on what
they conceived to be the abuses of their day prove them to have
been prophets indeed, fearing not the face of any man, were he
prince or ecclesiastic, who stood before them. The fragmentary
record of their journeyings and exhortations would seem amply
to fulfil that command, so applicable to the faithful bishop of
souls—"Lo thou shalt not nappe, neither slepe, that kepist the
puple of Israel."2
In the case of Fitzralph of Armagh, we have eighty-eight
sermons in Latin, most with place and occasion of delivery
noted, together with two other outlines. The earliest examples,
dating from 1335 to 1344, belong to an Avignon period, and
show visits to the convents of the Minorites and the Preachers
(one of them, at a General Chapter), to the Pope's private
chapel3, to the vice-chancellor's chapel, to the "House of the
1
This title actually occurs in one of our fifteenth-century vernacular
treatises (on the Decalogue), once ascribed to Wycliffe (MS. Roy. 17. A.
xxvi, fol. 12): "As expouneth Seynt Rich. Armachan. . . . "
2
Thus quoted in an early fifteenth century sermon (MS. Harl. 2276,
fol. 67).
3
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 153 b (Sermo. . .habitus in die cinerum in capella
domini Benedicti pape xii). Sermons preached abroad by Englishmen,
during the period, at the Council of Constance, in the year 1416-17
should be noticed in MS. Roy. Appdx. 7 (fol. 6): "per fratrem Galfridum
Apostolic Audience," and one "habitus in audientia causarum."
The remaining Avignon sermons of later date—including one
preached to the Carmelites, as well as the two famous anti-
Mendicant " Propositiones " of 1350, and 1357, in Papal Con-
sistory—can be dismissed in a sentence. It is the English and
Irish series which have the more immediate interest for the
present study. Twenty-four of these, so far as can be made out,
belong to the last two years of the Lichfield period, and illustrate
Fitzralph's homiletic activities as a dean. All seem to have been
delivered originally in English to the people, nine or more in
the cathedral church ("in choro"), two "in the cemetery of the
Hospital of St John," that is to say, from an open-air pulpit
or cross, two at other "chapels" in the city. The place-names
"Brewodde" 1 and Burford, as well as Cannok and Burton,
occurring in connection with others of the group, would appear
to denote Visitation addresses at neighbouring churches of the
diocese. Three others, identified with special processions for
public intercession—"pro rege," etc.—represent a further
typical class of sermons of more than passing interest from their
political character. Two of them delivered in London, that
centre of episcopal fulmination as Brunton reminds us, on the
eve of the preacher's consecration as Archbishop2, here suggest
perhaps an orator's sudden leap to fame and popularity.
With his new dignity, the variety in Fitzralph's sermon
entries becomes not unnaturally somewhat extended. Without
attempting any exhaustive summary, we may now watch him at
Drogheda in 1349, addressing the Carmelites, strangely enough
in the very year when the Mendicant controversy was to break
out afresh. In the year following he preaches before the clergy
"in latino," assembled at his Provincial Council in that same
city, as also in the year 1354. Several more sermons are given
"ad populum" in 1351 and succeeding years, one of them
another discourse in the open churchyard, this time of the
Schale provincie Anglie, doctorem immeritum universitatis Cantabrigie,
ordinis heremitarum sancti Augustini"; fol. 19: "per magistrum Ricardum
Flemmyng, doctorem in sacra theologia alme universitatis Oxoniensis"
(afterwards Bp. of Lincoln, 1420—31).
1
Brewood, in Staffordshire.
2
Cf. fols. 26 b (Sermo in processione facta pro rege et principibus), and
48 (Sermo Ricardi electi Ardmachani in processione Londoni facta pro
rege. . .). See here in Chap. v.
church of St Mary. Among the scenes of his Irish activity we
find such names as Dundalk, "God's Acre," Trim, Louth,
"Cowlrath," "Drumeskin," Athboy, Kells, " Tarmfeghym"
and "Maundevilleston."1 It was in London, at Paul's Cross2,
in the year 1356, however, that Fitzralph beat "the drum ecclesi-
astic" with such challenging violence that the battle over
"evangelical poverty " and the privileges of the friars was to rage
more fiercely than ever in city pulpit and University schools for
years to come. In his defence before the Pope, at Avignon,
whither the complaint of his enemies had succeeded in bringing
him, the fearless preacher explains the circumstances of that
outburst3. According to Trevisa's English version4 of his
speech, published eventually as the famous Defensio Curatorum,
he protests:
Lo, holy fader, I cam yn a tyme to London for certyn nedes of my
chirche of Armachan, and fond there wise doctoures stryve upon the
beggery and beggynge of the Lord oure Sauyour. And ofte iche was
ipreied to preche to the peple in here owne tunge with the protes-
tacioun that I have iseide, and tolde there myne concluciouns. For
the concluciouns and other thinges that I there seide, ffreres, thei
[ = though] hit torne hem to a jape, appelede to this court.
Other audiences in the metropolis besides that which met at
the "Cross" listened to the archbishop's eloquence. In 1356
he harangues a London congregation within the cathedral of
St Paul's itself, and later "in aula episcopi Londoniensis." A
year previously he had paid a visit for a similar purpose, on the
feast of Corpus Christi, to the church of the nuns "ad partem
orientalem,"5 and in 1357 "at the New Church of St Mary"
he expounds the appropriate text of the Ave Maria in the Feast
of the Annunciation. Finally, there is a sermon in the parish
church of Coventry in 1356, near the scene of his earlier
ministry. This, like the others just mentioned, may have been
the outcome of special invitations from those anxious to hear
the prominent controversialist of the day6.
1
Another is marked "apudpontem" (fol. 56, in 1348). With this compare
my reference to Thos. Richmond in Chap. v.
2
Cf. fols. 97, 112, 119, 124 b.
3
1
Nov. 8th, 1357.
MS. Add. 24194. (Latin text in MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 248 et seq.)
6
This I take to be St Helen's priory, Bishopsgate.
6
Also two others—at "Datyngton" and "Dacmexton" (?).
Such then, in brief, is the record of this interesting sermon
diary, for diary it would appear to be from such typical entries
as the following, which concludes a sermon note, for the year
1354, "apud Acrum Dei" (God's Acre):
And all the matter of the rest of this sermon was the matter of the
two preceding sermons, namely, concerning those who tithe falsely,
against whom we have published statutes, and concerning usurers
and those who accept interest, against whom we have also published
statutes; further against those who impede the judges of Church
courts from investigating any vice that ought to be amended, for
the one purpose of making amendment of the soul, and in a method
appropriate to the Church, against all of whom a Constitution has
been issued to the effect that they should be excommunicated ipso
facto, together with all who give them counsel, help, or favour;
further against those who hinder women from freely making their
wills, or Irishmen, as in the second of the two preceding sermons.
This sermon dealt with others too, against whom1 Statutes were
framed at the last General Council, a little while ago .
It discloses by no means an overwhelming programme of
preaching apart from other duties, as thus spread out over the
years. But there is good reason for considering it to be merely
a somewhat random collection of the more representative and
important discourses of the preacher's career, gathered up
perhaps at odd moments in his all too infrequent leisure. Of the
seven or eight "Paul's Cross " sermons that were mentioned, for
example, only four make their appearance in the volume before
us; while remarks such as the "sicut potui ad memoriam
revocavi" which occurs above one of them2 disclaim any pre-
tence of systematic reporting. Common-sense, too, would not
allow us to suppose that the one example provided of a " Collatio
brevis... in sua capella, ad suam familiam in die Pasche"
(1356)3, for instance, was the only collation ever given to that
household of his. In days when bishops' retainers earned a
reputation, even in the pages of sermon books, for the most
1
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 80. Cf. again, e.g. fol. 54(Dundalk, 1348): "Duplex
causa fuit assignata quare volui orationem illis predicare dominicam [here
his text,' Paternoster qui es in celis, etc. usque ad finem orationis dominice'],
sicut in sermone alio supra de hoc; et tertia ratio fuit adjecta, quia exemplo
Domini nostri, qui judeos de sanguine suo. . . ? illam orationem primo
docebat, volui eos de sanguine meo illam orationem primo docere. Cetera
sicuti in illo sermone."
2 3
Ibid. fol. 97. fol. 97.
iniquitous conduct, are we not bound to believe that so eloquent
a prelate as Fitzralph, pluralist though he may have been, gave
them more freely of his rebukes and exhortings? Behind the
eighty sermons and more that have survived, there must lurk
phantoms of at least as many others now lost and forgotten for
ever. Preaching once at Avignon of the duties of bishops, he had
declared, in the phrases of St Chrysostom:
And Jesus went about all Galilee, as a zealous physician goes about
among the sick, administering suitable medicines for any and every
complaint. The Lord Jesus indeed went about each region in turn;
but we [prelates], who are pastors of a single region each, have not
the necessity " to go about the regions." Nevertheless we ought to go
about and examine the several complaints of our people, and dili-
gently attend to those among the people who are afflicted with the
disease of avarice, that we may make some sermon concerning the
evil of avarice, to the restoration of health1.
This call to fellow-bishops of the great succession from St
Augustine of Canterbury "who converted England " and showed
a noble example to his successors, is still more characteristic
of the prelate who is now to engage our attention, Thomas
Brunton, of Rochester2. The traveller from Armagh, in north-
east Ireland, to Rochester, upon Kentish Medway, might well
prepare himself for contrasts in the change of scene. Yet, so
universal is our mediaeval Church and its institutions, when the
Kentish prelate came to his own see3 about thirteen years after
the Irish archbishop's death, he had much the same variety of
congregations to exhort as he whose bones were now said
to be working miracles among the good folk of Dundalk. The
1
fol. 14s b [from Chryst. Omel. viii]. Dr Workman takes exception to this
sketch of Fitzralph as the model preaching prelate. He has evidence that the
king actually ordered him back to his Irish province. Yet, surely this latter
injunction may have been the act of one who feared the archbishop's fearless
denunciations. (See here later.)
2
Cf. MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 60 b: " Et certe nos prelati Anglie debemus esse
valde solliciti circa curam animarum, si attenderemus sollicitudines et labores
precedentium nos prelatorum et maxime sancti Augustini et ejus sociorum
qui Angliam convertebant, de quibus non dicunt cronica quod in Angliam
venerunt pompatice cum phaleris et equis, ut sibi multiplicarent privilegia,
beneficia, et honores, sed venerunt cum letaniis et processionibus, jejuniis
et orationibus ac predicationibus, ut ostenderent se esse sollicitos circa
animas lucrandas pariter et salvandas. Quorum exemplis nos eorum
successores in onere et honore eorum facta deberemus continuare et viriliter
confirmare, viz. orando, visitando, corrigendo, predicando. . .," etc.
3
1372 or 1373 (d. 1389).
headings in Bishop Brunton's series of sermons1 are unfortun-
ately as meagre as the known facts of his history when compared
with those of Armachanus. Yet it is still possible to trace from
them the same kind of visits to friaries and to synods of clergy,
the same kind of Visitation addresses in parish churches of the
diocese2, the cathedral preachings, above all the same picturesque
London crowds that await the chosen orators of the day at that
famous pulpit-cross—"apud sanctum Paulum, Londonii," as
his own manuscript puts it. Further types of the episcopal
homily now make their appearance in the shape of funeral
orations, and sermons for ordination3, and for the election of a
new head of the monastery. Unfortunately, however, there is
not a single date to guide us throughout the series, save the
mention of an occasional festival or fast-day; and the majority
of the sermons give no hint, apart from internal evidence, of the
circumstances of delivery.
On the other hand, there is great compensation in the rich-
ness of political and social allusions in these discourses. Brunton
himself appears to have begun his career as a Benedictine monk
at Norwich4. His love for brethren of the common cloister
continues to burn brightly even after he has been raised to the
dignity of the bishop's throne. Addressing the monks of the
priory of Rochester, from the pulpit, upon the joys of brotherly
unity, and loading them with compliments, he concludes thus:
" I and my Father are one," that is to say, " I, monk of Rochester,
and my father—namely, the bishop—are one," in the unity of the
religious life, of our profession, of our dwelling together, of our
affection, and in the truth of a true love. Such is the oneness of me,
the head, with you, the members, that, because I have obtained this
comparatively small and modest church, not by prayer, nor by price,
not by letters, nor by my own endeavours, but from God and the
1
MS. Harl. 3760. These I take to be the Sermones Solemnes mentioned by
Bale. Bale, who describes Brunton as " penitenciarius papae," mentions
further " Sermones coram pontifice Romano factos."
2
Among the names mentioned we recognize Dartford (Derteford),
Pembury
3
(Pepinbery), Wrotham, Hoo and Cobham.
fol. 120 b (in celebratione ordinum). With this should be compared the
ordination address incorporated by Bromyard in his Summa Pred. (under
"Ordo Clericalis"): " Secundo prosequenda sunt quaedam themata per
modum collationum ad ordinandos et ordinatos specialiter pertinentium."
A synodal sermon of Rypon's follows the pattern of Bromyard here.
4
Cf. Bale, Scriptores, s.v.: " Thomas Brynton (qui alias vocatur Briton)...
monachus Benedictin. de monasterio Nordovicensi, episc. Roff."
Lord Pope alone, never do I intend to procure for myself a richer
benefice, but to stay with you for ever, repeating with truth that
passage of the Psalms: " One thing have I desired of the Lord, that
will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of my life."... And you are not merely sons to me, as are others
in this diocese; but you are friends, intimates, and brethren [amici
intimi, et confratres]. Therefore I can say to you that word written
aforetime for my theme: "Behold how good and how pleasant it is
for brethren to dwell together in unity!"1
For the rest, Brunton lives even nearer than Fitzralph to the
centre of stirring events in the general life of his times. John
Balle, the revolutionary, is actually preaching in his very diocese,
during his episcopacy. The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 with its
disastrous results in the capital is a matter of immediate con-
cern to him. At Canterbury, Edward, the Black Prince, that
mighty warrior, is laid to rest, not far from his cathedral.
London itself, with its streets decked for coronation in 1377, as
the bishop saw them, London with the court where as confessor
to King Richard II he must have learnt much of the current
vice and corruption—with Blackfriars, where he was destined
to take his place in the famous Council of 1382, which con-
demned the doctrines of Wycliffe, lay but a mere thirty miles
away. The atmosphere of all these happenings hangs thick
about the volume of sermons he has left us. Few of them seem
to have escaped some notice in the pulpits which he honoured
with his fiery presence. Fiery he remains to the last, in his un-
sparing denunciation of every kind of wickedness in the high
places, spiritual and temporal alike. His fellow-bishops he will
reprove again and again for their evil example, and their
silence amid great abuses of State. The royal counsellors he
warns and admonishes in an age of favourites and greedy self-
seeking, knowing well the risks of such plain language in the
pulpit. The immorality, injustice and oppression of the nobles
is his constant theme2; likewise the falsity of the middle-class
merchants3, who throng the city. Politely, yet firmly, he
suggests, on more than one occasion, that the king and his court
would do well to set the example of penitence and devotion by
1
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 31 et seq. (Sermo ad Religiosos.)
2
Cf. fols. 122 b, 124 b, 125, 128 b, 152, etc. In the sermon of fol. 187 et
seq.
3
he deals with all three classes of offenders.
Cf. fol. 124, etc.
taking their place in the intercessory processions in London
streets1. For him Ash Wednesday, with its mood of pessimism,
of the tragic sense of sin and failure, of prostration and tears,
is the typical occasion for a sermon2. His is the spirit of the
great Florentine Savonarola, ever calling men to repent and
reform lest even worse disasters fall upon them from heaven:
"Non sic, karissimi, non sic!" 3
Yet in spite of all this outspoken criticism of those in office
and high dignity in the State, "magnates"—as he often calls
them—seem to have continued to form part of his pulpit
audiences. Men felt secretly proud of the grand old warrior,
doubtless, even while they flinched before his courageous
attack. When he goes down to preach to the Carmelite friars of
"Eylisforde" (Aylesford), on the banks of the Medway, we are
carefully informed in the sermon rubric that it is "coram
domino de Grey," descendant, no doubt, of the Lord Grey de
Codnor mentioned in Dugdale as founder of their house4.
One event more in his life, recorded this time not in the sermon
manuscript, but in the entries of chroniclers, illustrates the
esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries. Both
Walsingham's Historia Anglicana5, and also the Liber Custum-
arum6 among the London Guildhall documents tell how on the
morrow after the coronation of Richard II, that is, on Friday,
the 17th of July, in the year 1377, a general procession was
formed at St Paul's, to pray for the king and the peace of the
realm. All the archbishops, bishops and abbots who had taken
part in the ceremony of the previous day, together with the
temporal nobility and a crowd of others, were in its ranks. Ac-
cording to the Liber Custumarum, the sovereign himself stayed
in his palace, while the stately cortege made its way through the
1
2
fol. 114 b and again on fol. 189 b.
Cf. actual sermons, " in die cinerum," etc. on fols. 73, (166 b), 288 b, 299,
etc.3
Cf. on fols. 128, 187: "Non sic, domini reverendi!" etc.
4
fol. 93 et seq. The descendant is John de Grey (d.c. 1392). There is a
"Narratio" here, concerning monks of Westminster and Chertsey (fol. 94),
which should interest collectors of " exempla." On fol. 300 we may indicate
another, about a certain queen of Scotland (" vix credenda!").
6
Walsingham (Rolls S.), vol. i, pp. 338-9. The sermon is wrongly
ascribed by the editor in his index to Thos. Trillek, Brunton's predecessor,
who died in 1372.
6
Munim. Gild. Lond. (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 481.
heart of the city—'' humbly and devoutly uttering fervent prayers
for the king's welfare, and the happiness of his rule, and for the
soul of the said noble lord, Edward, the king lately deceased, and
other faithful dead." At the close of it (Walsingham says, "in
progressu"), Thomas, Bishop of Rochester, preached a sermon
—"ad beneplacitum et nutum, ut creditur, Regis Regum."
Since the St Albans chronicler is good enough to make some
note of the gist of its contents, we might well try to identify
the discourse with one of the many left unidentified in our
manuscript. Meanwhile, the present writer has given his
reasons for believing that in the so-called B. text of Piers
Plowman's Vision, referred by Skeat to the same period, we have
in the "angel of hevene" that "lowed to spake in latyn," a por-
trait of this great prelate himself, arguing like Langland's
"Resoun," "with a crosse, afor the Kynge," of truth, and
righteousness, and judgement to come1. Conjecture this must
remain. But in a genuine passage of one of his own discourses,
at once intimate and pathetic, Thomas Brunton, aged and
broken in spirit, reveals to us the moral grandeur and integrity
of his soul. Mere empty greatness of reputation in the pulpit
might satisfy men of a lesser breed. But, like George Whitefield
in another age, popular triumphs there leave him strangely cold
and undeceived, as he looks back with an open mind at the actual
fruit of so much "honest talking." He is repeating the story of
Jonah and the men of Nineveh:
If any man had preached, before these times, of the ills which have
fallen upon England, and of the open vengeances of God, even of the
slaughter of the mighty, the famine, the mortalities, the storms of
winds, the internal feuds, and wars without, who would have believed
him, or made repentance with the men of Nineveh? I say for myself,
with sorrow, that continually have I preached to these Christians
against the sins thatflourishin my diocese. None the less I do not
see that any arises effectually out of sin; but for the greater part
they are like to the dead man whom Simon Magus boasted that he
could raise to life. For by means of his incantations, as it appeared,
he only moved his head; and these, when they hear good counsel,
move their heads, but do not put away their sins. For what adulterer
has put away his concubine, and now adheres to his legitimate
1
See my article "The 'Angel' and the 'Goliardeys' of Langland's
Prologue to Piers Plowman's Vision (B. text)," in the Modern Language Rev.
for July, 1925.
spouse? What usurer has restored what he unjustly took? What
unjust "maintainer" [manutentor] or false juror restrains himself
from his crimes ? What user of false measures, by means of which he
deceives his neighbours and poor strangers, is now breaking or
burning them up? Who from his heart puts away an ancient hatred,
instead "of revenging himself when he sees his time? Nay rather, of
all these cursed up risers [" surrectores ": I take it he is referring back
to the exemplum of Simon Magus, again], whose peril I have so very
often exposed in my own sermons, who is smitten with remorse, who
makes a true confession, or in any way makes satisfaction for his
wrong-doing?1
Here at least there is no false illusion of the triumphs of
sacred oratory, such as not a few have entertained in Protestant
times 2 .
Passing now from the faithful prelate to his curati, we shall
seek for evidences among the manuscripts of the "salutary
barking" of these humbler watch-dogs of the country parishes.
Dr Bromyard, the learned Dominican, by no means always free
of the charge of self-contradiction in his great preaching manual,
had remarked on one occasion that no prelate is more objection-
able than the upstart from the lower ranks of society. Be that
as it may, for once he is prepared to state that of all ecclesiastics,
those of aristocratic birth and upbringing are the worst.
"Who are these," he asks, "who spiritually speaking will have to
say (at the Doom), 'My vineyard I have not kept'? Assuredly they
who in heart and blood are nobler and of superior rank. For, as
hounds that are called ' noble'—such as greyhounds, and the like—
commonly do not guard but rather devour, not watching at the poor
man's house, but rather snatching and consuming his bread from off
the tables of lords, so do the men of noble birth, elated by their blood
and pride.... For they leave the flocks, and elect to spend their days
in the courts of the mighty, to eat the flesh of fat beasts. So, too, as
rural and simple hounds are set to protect house and flock, thus to
the guardianship of the flock of God must be elected simple men in
their humility. And Christ, indeed, appointed fishermen to keep His
church...."
1
2
fol. 287 b.
Bp. Brunton died in 1389. A modern rubbing of the indent of what was
once a fine contemporary canopied brass to his memory, in Rochester
Cathedral, is to be found, I note, in MS. Add. 37954 (B). An engraving of
this rubbing, with a short article on the Rochester indents (Sedgwick, T.E.),
is in the Home Counties Mag. vol. v, 1905, p. 301. Brunton was succeeded
at Rochester by another distinguished preacher of the day. the Dominican,
Wm. Bottlesham, like Brunton, appointed a royal confessor.
Mention in Registers and other ecclesiastical documents of the
preaching activities of these great ones is sparse enough. How
much more natural it is to find that such references in them to
the ordinary parish clergy are rarer still! If the evidence of their
delinquency, their incompetence and idleness did not abound,
on the other hand, "no news" here might well be taken as the
sign of "good news," and a general healthiness in the body
clerical. Chaucer's faithful "persoun," however, who, though
called a "lerned man" in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,
flatly disclaims such learning later on in his own prologue—
"of clerkes I am not textuel"—probably would have been the
last to think of issuing a volume of discourses of his own. In
this respect, at all events, his case must be considered typical
of the preaching curati as a whole. The elementary sermon
manuals do not represent their own work: they are usually
written for them by others. Hence while bishop and monk,
friar and anchorite, will leave behind them the monuments of
their pulpit eloquence in homily book, in tract and "summa,"
for our inspection, the preaching of the humbler seculars escapes
us practically unrecorded.
One of the rare and notable exceptions among sermon
writers of this latter category, thus voices the inferiority of his
class, in a quaint homily of his own:
And [= if] a bishoppe or a doctoure stond up to preche the worde of
God, muche pepull will drawe thetherwarde to here hym; and 3iff
he repreve vices and synne, the peple will not gruche never a dele
a3eyns hym, ne thei will not for3ett is wordes. But lat a sympull
preste as I am seth the word of God to you, and 3e sett no price
thereby.... Thus ffareth grett mens wordes now adayes, 1thei ben
taken grett hede of, and pore mens wordes ben sett on syde .
This quotation occurs in just such a manuscript as would seem
to be the work of the unpretentious homilist we are seeking.
Diminutive, unadorned, unrubricated, in faded brown ink
upon no vellum, but paper stained and coarse, inwardly in its
vernacular subject-matter as outwardly in its appearance, the
little "de tempore" series proclaims its true origin and cha-
racter :
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 75. Cf. later, also (fol. 75 b), "and another
man had done so, as I am, whos holynes had not be knowon. . .," etc.
" .. .inasmuche as 3e fynde not in me thise iii auctoritees (i.e. of a
doctor)," continues the preacher, "nother grett state of worldely
wurshippe, ne holynes in lyvynge, ne hie sotelte in connynge, ne
state, ne degre of scole have I none, but purpose to say Goddes
worde,—therfore it is nedeful to me to praye to you to preye with me
to almyghty God to sende me myght and grace "
It is the naive confession of one whom Bromyard would com-
pare to an uncouth nurse, able herself but to chew up the more
solid food of instruction before giving it to her charges.
Here is a group of discourses then—"after myne sympull
connynge"3—of the simplest and most practical pattern, save
for an element of the marvellous scattered here and there in
some miraculous legend or warning tale. But even Myrc, one
or two of whose "Festiall" sermons are recognizable in the
same volume, was simple and superstitious enough, and he was
no less than a prior of Austin canons in his day. In the case of
the former, however, the charming modesty and self-distrust
of the unknown author, as expressed particularly in his ante-
themes, disarms all criticism. When he prays in a Sermo pro
pace, that God "will of is gracious goodnes 3eve me grace in
this harde mater som wordes to speke... ffor I knowe myselfe
unabull and not sufficiente for to do this dede," we are silent,
in our sympathy with this most gentle speaker. By a quaint
coincidence, on more than one occasion he actually uses
Chaucer's famous phrase about the saintly parson, thus: "For
so dud Criste hymselfe; for first he lyvyd holyly inward, and
afterward he tauthe it forth."2 Let this, then, in itself be our
justification, that search in the dust-laden homilies of the past
will not be wholly vain. The " curate " of Chaucer after all is
no idle creation of the poet's mind; lost and obscured we have
found him among the despised treatises, once dead he lives
again, and speaketh here for evermore. His glory shall be in the
words of our fifteenth-century English version of the Gesta
Romanorum3:
I have bene a preste this fourty wynter and more, and have fastid,
1
2
fol. 67 b, and again fol. 75 b: " So that Crist may sey to all tho that
preche well, and dose evill the wordes of David the prophete, in the sawter
boke...."
3
E.E.T.S. Ext. S. No. 33, p. 389.
waked, and prayde, gone on pilgremage, and prechid, and by the
mercy of God I have tornyd many soules to God.
But by no means every rural priest would be of this humble
and unsophisticated type1. Doctors of Divinity from Oxford
like Richard Ullerston, or Simon Alcock, whose treatise on
sermon composition will be described in a subsequent chapter,
or again compilers of hand-books like the author of the Oculus
Sacerdotis, William de Pagula, who knows all the rules about
preaching, were parish clergy. Yet this, of course, did not
mean that they necessarily favoured their people with the bene-
fits of their pulpit knowledge and gifts. So many of the wealthier
and more privileged rectors were non-resident pluralists.
Furthermore, as the Cilium Oculi Sacerdotis itself reminds us,
they were explicitly allowed by the Church to hand over the
tasks of the pulpit to others, provided that these were approved
by the responsible bishop. Nor need we imagine that amongst
the numerous temporal vicars thus placed in the churches by
episcopal authority, to do duty for some minor, for some in-
competent still away "at the schools," for the careless absentee,
there would be very many of the "Doctores in Theologia,"
whom Dr Lyndwood suggests2 as so eminently suitable for the
post.
On the other hand, if the countryside be quitted for the great
city, there is every likelihood that here where crowds will
assemble, and distinguished reputations may be made, some
learned rector or vicar will be found occupying his own pulpit
at least on the greater festivals. "At Seint Marie Spitel, in
Estir Weke, the 3eer of our lorde, a thousand, four honderd,
and sixe," in London, for example, you may enjoy that "worthi
clerk, maistir Richard Alkartoun," a real prophet of terrors and
despair, who refers you in the course of his lucubrations to
1
It is worth noting that even deacons were allowed to preach, if rectors.
"Et licet rector fuerit tantum diaconus, id potest, et etiam idem orHcium in
propria persona..." in Reg. Anim. So Lyndwood: " etiamsi fuerint diaconi
tantum...."
2
The Cil. Oc. Sac. suggests: " .. .scil., alium rectorem, et magistrum in
theologia, vel de supradictis religiosis " (i.e. friars) (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41b).
In the same connection see the interesting entry re Chancellor. Peter Partriche
of Lincoln Cathedral, in Visitations of Relig. Hos. (Line. Rec. Soc.) vol. i,
p. 175, who obtains an indult in 1427 to reside at Biddenden "to recreate his
parishioners with preaching."
what " I seide late in a sermon at Poules cros."1 Like many
another, of whom nothing appears to be known, save what is
furnished by a stray sermon or so, he was doubtless a vivid
enough personality in his own day, and among his own flock.
As a specimen of the kind of fate that has overtaken the
mighty among our ancient preachers, the instance of Dr William
Lichfield might be mentioned. Rector of the church of All
Hallows the Great, in London ("ecclesia omnium sanctorum,
Londoniis"), described by Dr Gascoigne as one of several
"predicatores, famosi in vita et scientia," who dared to attack
the abuses of the time2, he is reported to have died in 1448,
leaving behind him 3083 sermons, "written in English with his
own hand," besides a collection of materials for sermons, en-
titled "Mille exempla." All that the present writer has been
able to trace of his composition so far in surviving manuscripts
is a little "tract on the Five Senses," which is to be found
attached to a copy of John Waldeby's sermon treatises3.
Obviously incorporating some of his pulpit utterances, it reveals
a vigorous emotional spirit, with a touch of mysticism4, and that
relentless scorn of evil-doers which would account for a repu-
tation gained in the metropolis, where pulpit thunders roll
unceasingly, to the days of the Puritans. Wherever such
manuscript survivals are concerned, an exception in any case
must be made for John Felton5, perpetual vicar of the parish
church of St Mary Magdalene "extra muros," at Oxford. Copies
of his SermonesDominicales6, apparently finished in the year 1431,
1
MS. Add. 37677, fols. 57-61. A Latin version of the same is said to be
in MS. Trin. Coll. Oxford, 42. The Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. Cat. admits the
unlikelihood of identification with Rich. Ulverstone (cf. D.N.B.); but with
interest I notice Miss Deanesly's reference to a "clerk Alkerton," who
attacked a Lollard sermon preached at Paul's Cross, in 1407 by Peter Payne,
from Pollard's Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse {The Lollard Bible, p. 292).
2
3
See Loci e Libro Veritatum (Rogers).
MS. Roy. 8. C. 1, fols. 122 b-143 b. Some verse of his also survives.
4
Cf. his exposition of a mystical theme from the Song of Songs (Cantic. 2),
ibid.,
6
fol. 128, etc., and see further in Chap, m, below.
I find further notice of a "perpetual vicar's preaching" in Bp. Rede's
Register (Sussex Rec. Soc. vol. viii, p. 100), where a certain discreet man,
Master Peter, perpetual Vicar of the parish church of Eastbourne ("Est-
borne") delivers "a noteworthy address" at a visitation ceremony in the
cathedral church of Chichester.
6
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 10, fols. 1-227, a collection of Latin ser-
mons "de tempore" is attributed by Dean Honeywood to the "vicar, de
Mawdelyn, Oxon."; but so far I have not been able to look into them.
abound in the libraries, as Gasquet and Cutts have already
pointed out. Of his career, beyond a word or two of reminis-
cence in the preface to this work, there is practically nothing of
certainty known1. Bale states that so great was his reputation
that after death his tomb was visited by the people in hope of
miracles. But very few of the makers of these homily books in
any order of the Church seem to have been makers of history.
Thus far it is the faithful prelate and the faithful "curate"
that have engaged our attention exclusively, in their joint
response to the great preaching task. But what now of the other
side of the picture ? A good deal might be said, it is true, against
reviving the dry bones of an old controversy over the extent of
pre-Reformation preaching in England. Yet no sketch, however
fragmentary, could claim even the shadow of faithfulness were
no hint given of the mass of evidence in sermon literature itself
of the failures, the negligences and ignorances. This same con-
troversy reaches back at least to the seventeenth century when
Henry Wharton, writing as "Anthony Harmer," championed
the Catholic side of the argument against Bishop Burnet's
attack2. Roughly two centuries later Cardinal Gasquet may be
said to have reopened it, with an article in the Dublin Review3
which was the declared fruit of his researches among English
mediaeval sermon collections. His main contention may best be
summarized, perhaps, in a reply made to Bishop Hobhouse's
assertion that preaching was then no'' regular part of the Sunday
observances as now." To the question whether the Peckham
Constitutions dealing with preaching were faithfully carried out
by the clergy, and rigorously enforced by the bishops in suc-
ceeding centuries, he replies with an emphatic affirmative: " I
think there is ample evidence that it was."4 Elsewhere he re-
peats : "in pre-Reformation days the people were well instructed
in their faith by priests who faithfully discharged their plain
1
Prof. T. F. Crane (footnote, Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, Folklore Soc.)
and the D.N.B. (Rev. Ronald Bayne) repeat an old error, already noted in one
of the manuscripts, in calling him a " Fellow of St Mary Magdalene College."
2
See Wordsworth's Eccles. Biog. vol. i, and Canon Nolloth in the preface
to E.E.T.S. (O.S.) No. 118, p. xvi. (Lay Folks' Catech.)
3
Reprinted in The Old English Bible, and other Studies. Similar statements
are reproduced in his Parish Life in Mediaeval Engl. (Ant. Ser.), and Dr J.
C. Cox's volume on Pulpits (Milford, 1915).
4
O.E.B. pp. 187-8 (ed. 1897).
duty in this regard." Here it is clearly no question of the pulpit
activities of friars or monks. From the other side Dr Coulton
has made effective rejoinder1 by exposing some of the hidden
flaws in his opponents' armoury, and bringing up fresh weapons
of his own, particularly in the shape of contemporary evidences
for the ignorant state of the clergy. A recent monograph by
Miss Deanesly tends to confirm this side of the argument2.
Most, if not all, of the sermon manuscripts put forward by
Dr Gasquet, however, seem to have remained in the state of
neglect in which he found them. It is to these, then, that the
present writer intends to turn, the very authorities upon which
the Cardinal has set, as it were, not merely his "Nihil obstat,"
but an enthusiastic " Imprimantur "!
Certain remarks in John Bromyard's Summa Predicantium
might appear to the superficial reader to confirm an impression
conveyed by familiar passages in Chaucer or Gower that the
English world of the later middle ages was indeed all too full
of preaching3. Full of the preachings of the Mendicants it
may well have been, especially in populous centres. But this is
beside our present point. Even if we have recourse to the
better-known writers, to Gower, the "moral poet," for example
in his Confessio Amantis, where the mood is by no means
violent, comment upon the attitude of bishop and "curate"
is found to be most unfavourable. Clerks of his own day he
contrasts with those of "the daies olde," whose
lust was al upon the boke,
or for to preche or for to preie.
—And now, men sain, is other wise!
As for the prelates, they cry:
Let knightes winne with her hondes
For oure tunge shal be still,
And stande upon theflescheswill.
1
Appdx. I, Mediaeval Studies, ist Series (2nd. ed., pp. 103-114).
2
The Lollard Bible, and other mediaeval Biblical versions (Camb. Univ.
Press).
3
Even a vernacular homilist, late in the fifteenth century, says to his
simple audience, " So many prechors, and so few 3evers of good ensampyll
of good lyving saw never man" (MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 184 b).
Cf. this with the earlier remark of " Piers Plowman."
It were a travail for to preche
The feith of Crist, as for to teche
The folke painim.
How these shall blush, continues the poet, at the last great
Day of Account, when, before Christ the Auditor, they have to
compare their own "voide hondes" with those of Peter and
Andrew, Thomas and Paul, so richly laden!
Turn to Hoccleve, and the complaints are the same:
The oynement of holy sermonynge
Hym loth is upon hem for to despende;
Som person is so threde-bare of konnynge
That he can noght, thogh he hym wys pretende,
And he that can, may not his herte bende 1
Therto, but from his cure he hym absentithe .
In like fashion, the author of Piers Plowman, before him, had
told of the amusing but scandalous parson of "passing thirty
winters," who could track hares in the field so very much better
than Latin case-endings in his Psalter-Book2. Without pro-
ceeding further on this line of evidence it is sufficient to say that
so far from being a fashionable literary gibe or a piece of
individual spite, the verse just quoted from the Regement of
Princes sums up to perfection the general witness of the sermon
writers themselves.
In a quaint comparison, one has distinguished thus between
the two attributes which are both necessary for the successful
preacher: "Ther is one maner tree that berith fruyt, but it is
not aptid to hous bildyng; and this tree bitokeneth a man that
is wel araied in vertuouse werkis, but he is not aptid for feble-
nesse of kunnynge to governe a puple bi wiis defence ajens
wolves, or bi discreet techyng of hooli scripture."3 More than
a chapter would be required to display adequately, from these
particular sources, what the lack of actual virtue in the con-
1
The Regement of Princes (E.E.T.S.), p. 52, 1. 1429 et seq. (Written
c. 21412.)
Cf. B text, 11. 424-6. Like nearly all the sayings of Langland this is
derived straight from the current preaching. Cf. Nicholas Philip, the
Franciscan (in MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i, fol. 89), "swifter to collect hounds,
and to track hares". . . ; Oc. Sacer. (MS. Roy. 6 E. I, fol. 24 b.), "parati ad
querendum vestigia Ieporum," etc.
3
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 114 b. These are the clergy, who have "con-
scientia," as Bromyard puts it (S.P.—Militia) but lack "scientia."
temporary priesthood meant for the prestige of the contem-
porary pulpit. Here, however, it is proposed to concentrate
solely on the question of "kunnynge" and the way it was em-
ployed. Amongst the Homily-collections recommended by
Gasquet in a footnote of his article appears the title of a capacious
volume by Master Robert Rypon, a sub-prior of Durham1. At
the end of this volume, which will be found amongst the
Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum, there are eight
synodal sermons delivered by him, apparently, at the beginning
of the fifteenth century, to secular clergy of the diocese. So
impressive are the revelations of this outspoken man, coming
as they do from one whose zeal and orthodoxy is beyond
suspicion, that we shall attempt to give them a little of the
prominence they deserve, but have hitherto lacked alto-
gether.
A good life, Master Rypon admits, is the preacher's first
essential qualification. But because instruction cannot be rightly
given without competent knowledge, "restat quod scientia est
curato necessaria."2 Two further qualifications added, and we
have what may be considered the sine qua non of this profession:
"Knowledge, election, and the continuance of firm, fixed, and
immoveable operation are requisite in advance... .But few
priests possess or exercise these three qualifications."3 This
latter, of course, is merely a judgement that any idealist might
pass upon the average man. But to continue, what, in actual
detail, is to be comprehended by this "essential knowledge"?
Rypon would reply, first, an adequate knowledge of the Scrip-
tures: "Curati are required to have a knowledge of Holy
Scripture with which they may preach to the people the Word of
God." 4 For the rest he falls back upon the books prescribed by
the Canon Law, incidentally thus introducing to us the mediaeval
1
2
MS. Harl. 4894. See here later in Chaps, n, vi, etc. (fl. c. 1401).
Ibid. fol. 197 b et seq. (Sermo z° in Sinodo).
3
fol. 202 b : " Scientia, et electio, ac firme fixe et immobilis operationis
continuatio requiruntur antecedenter.. . . Sed pauci sacerdotes habent vel
exercent
1
ista tria." Cf. below, p. 35, n. 5.
fol. 197. Cf. also: "Hec scientia scripturarum que verius dicitur sapi-
entia"; and, quoting Lincoln (GrossetSte): "Exsollicito studio scripturarum
habebis scientiam in memoria quam non decipiet oblivio." Again, fol. 205:
"Prudentiam, autem, que est mater virtutum, generat lectio scripturarum et
frequens et assidua inspeccio." With these, cf. elsewhere, Cil. Oc. Sac.
(MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 45 b); Reg. Aram. (MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 2), etc.
preacher's essential library: "And this knowledge, according to
the Canon (dist. 38), consists specifically in the following—
' The books which it is necessary for priests to study and know
are the Book of the Sacraments, the Lectionary, the Antiphoner,
the Baptisterium, the Compotus, the Canones Poenitentiales, and
Homilies throughout the year for Sundays and Festivals
\Homelie per annum dominicis et singulis festivitatibus].''*- And if
the priest's or ' curate's' knowledge of any single one of these
is lacking, hardly is he worthy of the name of priest."2 " I do
not say," adds the speaker, "that he is bound to know all these
things by heart; but it suffices that he should know how to read
them distinctly, understand them clearly, and expound them
plainly as often as it is his duty."
How far then do the pastors carry out such a prescribed
standard in real life? As the sub-prior sees it, by their very
assumption of the pastoral office "they are binding themselves
to feed a flock already in danger of starvation for the word of
God, through lack of the food of instruction, true faith, and
moral precepts, in which the soul's salvation consists."3 Yet,
"Assuredly, some of them [the pastors] are destitute of this food,
because many know not how to expound a single article of the Faith,
nor one precept of the Decalogue; and—what is worse—when they
lack 'this bread' themselves, they neglect to learn what they do
not know. Nay, rather, what is worst of all, many of them
despise knowledge and teaching, and reject knowledge; or, if
by chance they have any knowledge, or a moderate amount of it,
by entangling themselves in secular affairs, or giving themselves
up to pleasures, they cast that little away in their folly." In yet
another sermon he returns to the charge: "But—what is to be
deplored—to-day, some (they ought to learn before they teach!),
led on by the spirit of ambition, take upon themselves the afore-
said office who do not know how to preach, nor wish to learn,
1
Gratian's Decretum, Pars i, dist. xxxviii, c. 5.
2
Cf. the quaint vernacular version in a " Mirror " of Sermons, in MS. Harl.
5085, fol. 201: "Thes ben the bokes that the prest schal hav and conen—
'Libri sacramentorum, lectionarium, baptisterium, compotum, canonem
penitencialem, psalterum, omelias of the dominikes of the 3er, and of
other festival daies,' and mani other thinges that ben necessarie bothe in the
old lawe and the newe...." For a popular account of these works see in
Wordsworth and Littlehales, Old Service Books of the English Church.
3
fol. 208. (Quoting freely from Bp. Grossete'te.) Cf. again, fol. 194.
3o "BISHOPS AND CURATES"
whether they be young or old."1 What, then, is the result of
all this clerical "unconnynge"? Rypon replies: "Without a
doubt, if each churchman had the knowledge appropriate to
his rank, there would not spring up so many errors in the
Church as spring forth in these days."2 In another sermon he
goes so far as to suggest that God in his mercy may actually
permit the Lollard to flourish "that those fools who have taken
upon them the care of souls may be roused to acquire a better
knowledge."3
But further, how comes it, we ask, if, as Gasquet asserts,
"they would have to prove themselves to be sufficiently lettered,
and of good life before they would be accepted for ordination,"4
that such priests as these should ever arrive in office at all?
Rypon has no hesitation in declaring that there is no such
working system in fact, whatever be the Church's theory.
"There are some clergy," he says, "who rise to these grades,
and yet they are ignorant of the duties of the same."6 As an
illustration of what he means, he comments thus upon the office
of the lector: "And since it is commonly said 'The lector is
blamed, if his lesson is not read over beforehand,' in truth most
blameworthy are those who aspire to this grade—and a fortiori
to a higher—and yet have never read the Old Testament, nay
rather, scarcely their Psalter-Book through to the end!" 6 As
for the efficacy of the test: "The clergy ought to be examined in
their duties before they rise to that grade. And if this were done
strictly, assuredly there would not be so many ignorant priests
in the Church." Quoting from Chrysostom7, he warns the
authorities responsible for such admissions that those who ordain
the unworthy are liable to the same penalties as the ordained.
1
fol. 216. Cf. also Bromyard, S.P.—Predic: " Fidem predicabunt qui vix
unquam unum verbum de Christo vel fide in scholis theologiae audierunt,
sicut sacerdotes, qui statim post parvam informationem vel fundationem in
grammaticalibus, ordinantur. Oportet quod sicut tales semper fuerunt surdi
ab audiendo verbum Dei, ita etiam sint muti ad bene illud loquendum."
2 3
i
fol. 197. See below, p. 135,5n. 2.
6
Parish Life (Antiquary's Ser.), p. 78. fol. 209.
Cf. here the fifteenth-century English MS. (written by a scribe Stillyng-
flete) entitled: "Exposicio verborum difficilium Temporalis Legende tocius
anni, et eciam correpcio et produccio dubii accentus eorundem, ne materia
risus audientibus ministretur, vel pudor legentibus aut fatuitas imponatur"
(MS. Add. 14023, fol. i, 128 b, and again on fol. 154).
7
" In libello suo de dignitate sacerdotali."
If they plead ignorance of the true condition of the latter, let
them recall the words of St Paul to Timothy, "Lay hands
suddenly on no man." 1 "For thus what was thought to be an
excuse becomes an accusation [excusatio fit accusatio]; and
assuredly the law requires an examination to be held for four
days preceding the celebration of Orders."2
Finally, with clerics who could once boast of a competent
knowledge and the best intentions, three vices play sad havoc in
these days—"sloth, inconstancy and negligence." Oh, the
tragedy of the forgotten! " Utinam sacerdotum nostri temporis
non obumbraret memoriam in sciendo debite sciencie oblivio!"
Parish clergymen can hardly be blamed for bad memories, it is
true. Yet Rypon gives more than a hint that they should realize
before taking office so lightly that "the activity of preaching
presupposes memorized knowledge."3 What, too, of the
poison of actual vice in the matter?—"But, in returning to our
theme, let us see how knowledge of any kind is obscured,
through negligent forgetfulness. Forgetfulness is caused some-
times through the omission of study, and sometimes by frequent
drunkenness, or by some other evil indisposition of the brain."
So he goes on with the tale of shortcomings. As soon as the
ambitious hardworking clerk gets into his comfortable benefice,
the feverish activity in both preaching and study by means of
which he had contrived to win the attentions of the influential
and secure the prize, ceases4. If it is not actually followed by a
period of lustful self-indulgence, at least "all here studie is
granges, shepe, nete, and rentes, and to gadre togedre gold and
sylver."5 " I am a ferde," comments our simple parson in his
1
2
1 Tim. v, 22.
Cf. also, in this connection, another sermon warning in MS. Caius Coll.
Camb. 334: "Ecce quam expresse hie in sacra scriptura Deus homines vetat
super se accipere statum sacerdotis, nisi scientiam habeant competentem."
3
4
fol. 202 b.
fol. 203 b: "Experiencia enim docet quod nonnulli priusquam promoti
fuerint ad beneficia cum cura vel sine cura, nonnunquam gradum sacerdo-
talem ascendunt, et tune quasi cotidie celebrant missas suas, vacant studio
scripturarum, devotioni intendunt, et plerique sufficientem scientiam habentes
plerumque in adjutorium curatorum predicant verbum Dei. Sed quid?—revera
postquam promoti fuerint, hec omnia quasi totaliter praetermittunt, sacer-
dotes solum nomine, non re.. . . " So again on fol. 166 b: " Sed certe multi
sunt qui sequuntur verbum Dei,.. .donee veniant ad pingues promotiones..."
So also Bp. Brunton, in MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 125 b, etc.
6
From the Gesta Rom. (Engl. vers.). Rypon himself thus comments on
quaint vernacular sermon, "leste all thre degrees of holy
churche arn gilty in this synne of slowth, as well prelates,
prestes, and religious." And "slowth" he interprets here as
"occupacioun vel ny3 alle to the worlde."1 Rypon, as a matter
of fact, is remarkably broad and generous for an ecclesiastic in
his attitude towards worldly knowledge; but he loses patience
with these priests who thus forget the wisdom of God. Well
may the prophet cry over them, "Non est scientia domini in
terra"!—"How, I ask you, shall they, who are either ignorant,
or forgetful of the Law of Christ, rightly lead others to their
true end or beginning, which is Christ? Or how, I ask, shall
they be confident in their deeds who are made drunk by the
cups they have quaffed?" With the drunken cleric all is soon
lost: "Voice and senses fail, and so from forgetfulness of
knowledge, and indirect and uncertain choice, without doubt
error occurs in speech, error in sign, error in deed."2
Myrc, who befriends the country parson with his handy
book of instructions, still finds it worth his while to bid him
take care when he may be too tipsy to repeat the baptismal
formula properly3. We can guess what such a man would be
like on the Sunday when he has managed to mount the pulpit
stair.
From Bromyard and from Wimbledon we learn that the case
of the "curate" who could boast of a University education
might be often little better, at any rate as regards that theo-
logical and biblical learning which should be the groundwork
of every sermon. Both preachers have the same story to tell
as Roger Bacon in an earlier century, of the general neglect and
decay of theology in the schools, of the general pursuit after
more lucrative knowledge which qualified its owners for worldly
office in state or on the manor. Both ask the same kind of
a famous passage, often quoted from St Bernard in our sermons: "'Plus
student in salmone, quam in Salamone.' Haec Doctor, quasi sic concluderet
' in Salamone,' qui scripsit,' Libros sapientiae scripturarum non student, sed
potius in hiis quae sapiunt voluptatem vel sapientiam hujus mundi.'" Cf.
similarly, Oc. Sac. (MS. Roy. 6. E. I, fol. 24 b, etc.; MS. Harl. 2276, fols.
107 b—108): "gret occupacioun aboute worldli thyngis," etc.
1 2
MS. Roy. 18. B xxiii, fol. 67 b. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 204 b.
3
See Instructions (E.E.T.S.), p. 19. B. L. Manning, who refers to this
remark in his People's Faith in the age of Wycliffe, does not tell us that it is
practically a repetition of earlier legislative phrases. See, e.g. Council of
Berkhamstead, A.D. 696 (Wilkins, Cone. vol. i, p. 60), etc.
question: "Why do men apply their sons more readily to Civil
Law, to the king's court, to the work of secretaries and notaries
rather than to philosophy or theology?"1 Or, "Why does the
Law School have a hundred or two hundred pupils, where the
School of Theology has not evenfive?" 2 It is a cry not unheard
in our own day. And each time the mediaeval churchman replies
that it is all due to insatiable avarice, the mad craving for tem-
poral wealth and position which like another Black Death is
spreading to every class of society, not least to that of the priest-
hood. As the earnest evangelist looked out on the seething world
about him, he beheld it with the eyes of St Chrysostom poisoned
at the very cradle-side. "Mothers care only for the bodily
success of their boys in the world. Of their spiritual welfare
they care nothing3. Some ordain for them great worldly
possessions here; but none ordain them to Godward." "For
this Hagar hath brought forth temporal profit," cries one
English preacher. ("Ex ideo dominam suam sterilem in hac
vita, scientiam viz. divinam contemnit.") Cries another:
" Our stars, that is our clergy, have so fallen from the height of
clerical dignity, as from heaven to earth, that they have nought but
earthly wisdom, loving earth, thinking of earth, speaking of earth....
Behold among them, these days, no tonsure on the head, no garment
of religion, no restraint in speech, no sobriety in food, no modesty
in gestures, nor even continence in deeds."4
The inevitable reaction of this state of things upon the out-
look of those who took the duties of the pulpit seriously is not
hard to understand. Wherever the homilies of an outspoken
prophet of righteousness have survived from this period, a mood
1
2
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, and Engl. versions.
S.P.—Advocatus. Cf. Bromyard again, beginning: "Et haec causa est
quare tanta multitudo, et quasi omnes, volunt leges audire lucrativas, quare
parentes et amici filios et nepotes suos ad legum mittunt audientiam,. . . " etc.
3
Cf. also the complaint of the MS. St Albans Cath. (15th cent.) Treatise
on the Decalogue, fol. 24: "But alasse, for sorowe, that fadris now a daies,
ther thei schulden teche her children Cristis lore,...thei teche hem the
devellis lore of helle;. . .and thou3 thei seen and heeren her children breke
the commandementis of God fro morowe til even, thei chargen not a pese,
but Iau3en and iapen, and ioien there inne, and conforte hem thereto. But
if thei seen her children have a worldeli schame or velany, thanne thei wepen
and maken sorowe ynou3. . . . "
4
Cf. further in this connection MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 230, fol. 35; MS.
Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, sermon on fol. 127 b et seq. (Wimbledon?)
of passionate resentment and gloom shows itself, often giving
vent to the language of sheer despair. Unless he stood out like
Elijah gaunt and forbidding, his god a threatening Jove with
lightnings and tempests in his hand, the world would sink to
perdition. In the boiling depths of such a cauldron we discern
the magic potion which can produce heroes and saints, stern
leaders of men, for which our poor hysterical civilization is still
crying, after five centuries more. The price to be paid then was
the unlovely Puritanism of the reformers; and the Puritan
temper of the seventeenth century can only be fully ex-
plained by reference to the pulpit message of the later middle
ages.
Meanwhile the youthful curatus of the future and the already
beneficed1 cleric "ad scholas" themselves gave heed to no one.
University preachers in their turn, like William de Chateau
Thierry2, at Paris, for example, would warn them that they
were sent to the seats of learning, the one at his parent's expense,
the other at that of his Church, for the purpose of "working
in the vineyard of the Lord, that is, in Holy Scripture, and of
bringing back with them in due time to their home churches
the wine of knowledge." Otherwise they were thieves and
robbers. John of St Giles3, the Englishman, would tell them
from the very pulpit that those who prolonged their studies to
the neglect of the cures they had left, even when officially
licensed, were but licensed for hell. But all in vain. Freed
by bishop's license, either from the restraints of an omnipresent
schoolmaster's rod, or the boredom of a lonely parish, they found
themselves transplanted to a new and fascinating world of gay
1
" Beneficiati, ne dicam maleficiati!" cries the indignant English preacher
(MS.
2
Caius Coll. Camb. 230, fol. 35).
c. 1250. See Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xxvi.
3
This interesting sermon, apparently, from the one extant MS. in the
Bibl. Nat. at Paris, is given by Haurâu, Quelques Manuscrits: " .. .Christus
scolaris fuit, matrem suam dimittens propter scolas, et non uxorem, i.e.
ecclesiam pro scolis dimittere voluit. Immo, intantum earn dilexit quod, licet
lacrymas matris suae et Johannis videret, tamen propter sponsam passus est,
in hoc dans exemplum illis qui habent curam animarum, quod ecclesiam non
debent dimittere propter scholas. Sed tales objiciunt quod in hoc licentiati
sunt a suis prelatis. Sic et multi licentiam habent eundi in infernum!. . . "
Cf. also, for our period, the similar warnings of Bromyard, S.P.—Operatio:
"Contra illos, cum quibus episcopi dispensant quod causa eruditionis scolas
exercere poterunt per septennium, vel alium terminum," etc.
scenes and hot-headed young men1. So, as even sermons
describe2, together they romped and raged in Oxford or Parisian
streets, sat idly mocking the passers-by from their windows, or
wasted their goods in riotous living, in the far country. How
much of an advance was this, indeed, for Master Rypon's
"lectio scripturarum frequens, et assidua inspectio" over the
degraded, bookless, ignorant "curate" of Myrc, who spits in
church like his modern confrere of the Balkans, and may leave
foul even the sacred Host and vessels3? If Thomas Wimbledon
ventures to speak of contemporary clergy as "priests of Nanea
in their ignorance,"4 still more common is his bitter pulpit
censure—"For now as the people are, so also is the priest.
'They are mingled among the heathen, and have learnt their
works' (Ps. cvi, 35). Now are our priests as dissolute, as greedy,
as ambitious—alike of riches as of honours—as are the common
people: and would that they were no worse! " 5
Most of the comments provided so far, come, it is true, from
the ranks of those who were often the parish priest's most in-
veterate enemies and rivals. Moreover, the ecclesiastical, like
the political, rostrum is a place where loose and exaggerated
statements may always occur. Yet the sceptical reader who
prefers to seek the opinion of bishop and rector themselves in
the matter will get little comfort from their utterances. So
unanimous and unqualified, indeed, is the verdict of all sections
against what a simple vernacular preacher calls "the lewidnesse
of many personys and vikaris,"6 that it is no longer possible to
1
Cf. the innumerable cases of such licenses mentioned in Episcopal
Registers; and for further sermon evidence, Rypon in MS. Harl. 4894, fol.
194: " u t . . .in Universitatibus.. .lautius vivant," etc.
2
See especially the article by Haskins in the American Hist. Review,
vol. x (1904), pp. 1-27: "The University of Paris in the Sermons of the
XIII Cent." Also Brunton, in MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176. (As given here in
Chap. VIII, p. 332, n. 1.)
3
4
Instr.for Parish Priests (E.E.T.S., as before).
(2 Maccab. i, 13.) MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 130.
6
fol. 145: "Jam enim sicut populus, sic etiam sacerdos. Commixti sunt
inter gentes et didicerunt opera eorum (in Ps.). Jam sunt nostri sacerdotes ita
dissoluti, ita cupidi, ita ambitiosi, tam divitiarum quam honorum, sicut
communis populus; et utinam non pejores." Again,fol. 128 b: "jamlaicis
sunt tenebrosiores, et in omni genere viciorum dissolutiores "; " Sed num-
quid predicatores moderni et curati has conditiones [i.e. of holiness]
observant?—certe timeo quod nunc pauci!" and Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894,
fol. 194): "Quod dolendum est quod sicut populus 6
sic sacerdos; populus
insolens, insolencior est sacerdos. . .," etc. MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 107 b.
3-2
doubt its accuracy. Bishop Brunton is not alone in his solemn
complaints in Latin against the appointment of so many unfit
and unworthy ministers to the guardianship of the temple,
blind in ignorance, dumb from lack of eloquence. Neither is
the Berkshire vicar1, who confesses that many are the priests
in these days who neither know nor teach the law of God.
But what is sadly true of the "curate," is true also of his
bishop. From sermon evidence alone, the former could retort
with justice, "like father, like son." This will hardly surprise
the student who remembers that we are dealing with the age of
the notorious Robert Stretton2, nominee of Edward III and the
Black Prince. Rejected for his utter illiteracy by the Bishop of
Rochester, by papal examiners at Avignon, and again by the
English Primate, after as many re-examinations more in the
effort to promote him to the see of Coventry and Lichfield,
nevertheless he triumphed in the end. The Pope yielding to the
royal pressure, he was consecrated "sine examinatione," and
made his profession of obedience at Lambeth, "another reading
his profession for him, because he himself could not read."
In his Summa Predicantium, Dr John Bromyard, pillar of
orthodoxy both at Oxford and at Cambridge, produces an in-
dictment against the bishops which can only be described as
terrific and overwhelming. He who had once sat with leading
bishops of the day, to consider the heresies of Wycliffe, can
hardly contain himself when he comes to speak and write of
the Prelati as a whole. Dr Gascoigne's scorn, which Cardinal
Gasquet treats so lightly, is as nothing when compared with it.
The present chapter is no place, however, in which to set forth
from the English Dominican's pages the brutal lust and ex-
cesses, the swarm of illegitimate offspring, the fleecing of the
poor, the flattering of the rich, the bribes, oaths, insatiable pride
and greediness of these incestuous monsters3. If the charges
1
William de Pagula, in Oc. Sacer., cf. MS. Ryl. 6. E. 1, fol. 24: "propter
eorum ignoranciam predictam non exponunt, nee predicant." See further,
Cil. Oc. Sac, mentioning the darkness of ignorance in many preachers
(MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 45 et seq.).
2
Died 1385. Cf. others, Corresp. Bekynt. (Rolls S.) vol.i, p. 23, etc.
3
Still more glaring in the sermons of a fellow prelate, Archbp. Fitzralph
of Armagh! (MS. Lansd. 393). Cf. the appalling revelations of his sermon
(fols. 62-64 b, etc.) delivered appropriately, in latino, at the Prov. Council at
Drogheda, 1350-51.
be true, and there is a considerable body of current homiletic
evidence alone in support of them, they constitute a tragedy
indeed. If, on the other hand, they be false, the treachery and
insolence of the groups of preachers that made them can hardly
be considered less tragic. In either case the Church would suffer
the scandal. But, to return to the more immediate questions of
episcopal fitness to teach, Bromyard declares unreservedly that
in no other profession would such appalling ignorance be
tolerated for a moment. This inefficiency, he says, is deliberately
preferred if not fostered, alike in prelate and ordinary priest,
in the interest of those who wish to see as holders of ecclesi-
astical dignities lavish and easy-going relatives, boon com-
panions of the table or the chase, flattering dependents, not
stern rebukers of evil. "And this is why more insufficient and
ignorant persons find their way into this profession than in any
other in the world."1 Similarly, the great Franciscan, Roger
Bacon, had told in an earlier age how prelates, "not much
instructed in Divinity at the Schools," would borrow, or beg
" the notebooks of boys," when they had to preach, discoursing
"with an infinite childishness, and a vilifying of the word of
God." 2
A Cambridge manuscript of Latin homilies3 compares the
prelates to sailors responsible for the safe steering of the ship
of the Church across a perilous sea into port. But alas! " a great
part" of these sailors know nothing of seamanship, and some,
even if they know, neglect their duties. Little wonder then, we
may add, that it came to be looked upon by some as "the ship
of fools." For this same preacher continues: "Thus the ship
of the Church left derelict without helmsmen, and beset on
every hand by the waves and billows of a tempestuous sea,
beyond hope of recovery, is on the brink of destruction; unless
the Lord be pleased to rescue her, and all that are within." " Oh,
how many souls in these days we believe to be drowned in this
sea [i.e. of worldliness]. Assuredly it is to be feared almost the
whole world, and that chiefly through the failings of the shep-
1
Bp. Brunton (MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 191) speaks of the "inhabiles gene-
rosi" among them who win office by influence. Sim., Wimbledon.
2
Cf. Wood [Gutch], Hist, and Antiq. of Oxford, vol. i, pp. 176-181, with
references.
3
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 145.
herds of the Church." Cries yet another, in almost a Lollard
strain, that as Christ was once mocked by the Jews in the High
Priest's house "with veiled face," even so is He mocked again
to-day by modern prelates and priests of the Church, when
teaching and knowledge of Holy Scripture is "veiled" by those
whose express duty is to preach it1. The quaint metaphors
which follow can only be reproduced satisfactorily in the original
Latin:
Pontifex interpretatur "pontem faciens," et presbyter, "prebens
iter." Facerent enim pontes et itinera ultra tempestuosa flumina
hujus mundi! Sed prothdolor ports est fractus, et plurimum ruino-
sus, et via est vepribus et leonibus, i.e. peccatis et malis hominibus,
circumcepta. Nam in domibus nonnullorum prelatorum sacra
scriptura non exprimitur aut legitur, et plurimum non habetur, aut
saltern velatur in codicibus et in archis. Immo quasi tota confabu-
latio seu locutio est in nonnullis hujuscemodi domibus de curis et
vanitatibus hujus mundi2.
The stream of blazing indignant words pours out from the
contemporary pulpit in every direction, as from a volcano. The
very heavens seem blotted out from sight; horror and despair is
on every face. Men do not hesitate to attribute almost all the
ills in Church and State to the "lost understanding and wit" of
the episcopacy—heresy, schism, strife, and bad government3.
He who sat, as we have said, with ten of their number in judge-
ment on the arch-heretic of the day is not afraid to declare
openly that "prelates lead more folk to the devil by the cor-
ruption of their foul behaviour and example, than ever to God
by preaching or holiness of life."4
1
Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 198). Cf. also Gesta Rom. Engl. vers.
(E.E.T.S.), p- 368, of the bishops: " Theyr gostly eyen are made blynde and
putt oute" (by the devil).
2
The MS. St Albans Cath. treatise makes the same remark in English
(fol. 8 b).
3
Dives et Pauper: "They have lost understanding and wit to teche the
peple; and so al ther flocke is disperplid by eresie, debate, division, and dis-
cencion." Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 197): "Et indubie, si quilibet
ecclesiasticus haberet scientiam suo gradui competentem, non pullularent
tot errores in ecclesia, quot pullulant hiis diebus." Thos. Wimbledon, at
Paul's Cross: " Et haec est causa multorum errorum.. .," etc. In the opinion
of a fellow bishop, in 1326, they are universally detested in England for their
sloth, folly, and ignorance (cf. Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 533)- It is of the
prelates essentially, too, that the text (Hosea, iv) is repeatedly quoted in the
sermon literature (cf. Bromyard, Rypon, Wimbledon, etc.): "Quia tu scien-
tiam repulisti, ego repellam te!"
4
S.P.—Ordo Clericalis: " Nonnulli (prelati). . . libentius ducunt canes et
But so far little has been said of the actual outcome of this
ignorance in deliberate abstention from preaching of any kind.
Archbishop Peckham had raised the hue and cry against the
non-preaching bishops of England in the thirteenth century1,
while, as the pages of Haureau show, others were doing the
same thing on the continent. ' These cocks which neither crow
nor generate shall be swept off to the infernal market, head
downwards'2. It was only in typical pre-Reformation fashion,
after all, that Bishop Latimer pointed out three centuries later
to his fellow-prelates how the busy activities of the devil himself
in this respect put them to shame. For the chosen centuries of
this study, there is no need to have recourse to John Bromyard,
and what might appear to be the personal animosity of friars,
to show that the bishop was capable of being both " dumb dog,"
and "dog in the manger" as well. In the first case it is a dis-
tinguished archbishop of the day who says that they are for ever
crying " Tonde, tonde! Tolle, tolle!"—"et nunquam exercent
'Pasce, pasce!'" 3 It is none other than the indefatigable
Brunton himself, with the most dignified conception of the
status and calling he represents4, who is for ever saying, "We
prelates are afraid to speak out," when it comes to the further
question of denouncing abuses in the pulpits5. His explanation
of the causes of this muteness, of which he was certainly not
falcones ad venationem, quam Christianos ad devotionem. Et quod pejus
est, plures greges ducunt ad dyabolum pravis moribus et exemplis eorum
corrumpendo, quam ad deum predicando. . .," etc. And compare Rypon,
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 196 b: "Vide! inquit [Bernardus], ut in hiis cotidie
videtur, meretricius, nitor, histrionicus habitus, et quasi regius apparatus. Plus
fulgent calcaria quam altaria. Vide! mense splendide cibis et ciphis; vide,
commessaciones et ebrietates; vide, redundancia torcularia et plena promptu-
aria.. . . Fiunt ecclesiarum propositi, archiepiscopi, episcopi, archidiaconi,
decani, quo facto, quidam citius inveniantur in stabulo quam in choro,
quidam citius currant ad coquinam quam ad missam, plus respiciunt piscem
assum quam Christum passum, plus agunt elixum, quam Christum cruci-
fixum, plus student in salmone quam in Salamone.. .."
1
See letter to the Bp. of Tusculum aforementioned; also from the De
oculo morali (in Martin, C.T., 1884, preface to vol. v, pp. Hi—lxxxi): "No
longer brazen in eloquence, but iron and clay," etc.
2
See Haureau, QuelquesMSS. vol. iii, p. 100, and compare with Neckham's
fig. aforesaid; also vol. iv, p. 245, etc.
3
Fitzralph of Armagh (MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 64).
4
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 96: "Nos prelati, quia a Christo nominamur sal
terrae, et lux mundi, qui ex officii dignitate, habemus primatum Abel,
patriarchatum Abrahe, gubernationem Noe, ordinem Melchisedech, digni-
tatem Aaron, auctoritatem Moysi, potestatem Petri. . .."
5
Cf. ibid. fol. 217 b, etc.; and fol. 61 b et seq. (tanquam canes muti).
guilty himself, agrees with that of Gascoigne, Rypon and others.
The very "figure " he uses for his Third Reason is to be found
again in an anonymous Latin homily series of the century, even
the bone flung into the gaping ecclesiastical jaws—that is to say,
the lordly gifts, good dinners, and rewards, which effectually
stop the dog from barking1. In one of his most striking oratorical
efforts this Bishop of Rochester again deplores that those who,
like columns, should bear the Church upon their shoulders,
ready ever to give life itself, if need be, in defence of her
liberties, and to rescue the poor and the innocent from their
daily spoliation and sufferings, now hold their peace2. And all
"because they yearn for great offices, or aspire to be promoted
to richer sees." Others have spoken, too, besides him, of the
swift penalties that awaited the too fearless court preacher, of
the inspection of sermon manuscripts by suspicious courtiers,
or the oaths extracted beforehand that nothing derogatory of
the sovereign, his acts and his ministers might be uttered in the
royal presence3. A sermon delivered at Paul's Cross thus pic-
tures these episcopal sycophants and idlers at the Day of Doom,
favourite scene for both the sacred orator, and the sacred artist
who paints upon church walls. A voice is heard questioning
them from that awful judgement-seat:"' How hast thou governed
the people of God committed to thy charge ?... Say whom thou
hast converted from his evil way by thy faithful preaching;
whom thou hast instructed in the law of God'... .In that place
1
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 58 b, etc. Rypon's version is MS. Harl. 4894,
fol. 217 b. Cf. also Thos. Gascoigne, Loci e Libro Verit. ed. Rogers, p. 41,
who speaks elsewhere of their drunkenness, etc.
2
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 187. See also his denunciation of unfit bishops as
given in Gasquet, O.E.B. 2nd ed. p. 68; and cf. also fol. 118. See also
Bromyard, S.P.—Prelatus, and MS. Harl. 2398: "And specially prelates that
sleeth here brother in many weyes. For they scholde preche hem, and teche
hem godes lawe; and by neglygence of hem they both gostlych sleye. And
thes scholde stonde as postes a3enst tyrauntes, and telle hem how by Godes
lawe they scholde lede the peple. And this is a pryvy synne that prelates
reccheth nou3t.. . . " Finally, see MS. Add. 9066 (15th cent. Engl. vers. of
Gesta Rom.) in E.E.T.S. p. 178.
3
Cf. Brunton (MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 187 b et seq.): "Tacent predicatores,
quia multi eorum, si ante haec tempora in sermonibus apud Crucem
vicia dominorum generaliter tetigerunt, statim isti tanquam malefactores
arestati coram regis consilio erant ducti, ubi examinati, reprobati, banniti,
vel a predicandi officio perpetuo sunt suspensi... . " Also Gascoigne (as
above), p. 38.
shall be heard a dreadful charge, and a most grievous allega-
tion." 1
Though much more remains in the same vein2, enough has
been said to justify both the popular view of prelates, and in
particular the outburst of a scholar like Dr Gascoigne, when in
1449 the tireless sophistry of Bishop Pecock sought for argu-
ments in defence of this episcopal muteness, and expressed
them in public. Looking back from this episode at the very
limit of our period, the Oxford Chancellor sums up for us what
he conceives to be the results of an iniquitous piece of legisla-
tion, introduced originally to suppress the Lollard. For to his
eyes Archbishop Arundel's Constitution of 1409, which en-
forced a rigorous system of episcopal preaching licenses, was
little else than the official seal of approbation upon this policy of
silence. The non-preaching bishops had at last their full oppor-
tunity, and, according to him, right well they used it. Hardly
for great sums of money or gifts would they now concede even
a temporary license to preachers, much less preach themselves.
Pulpit silence became golden. Worthy and unworthy together
were excluded from the privilege of exhortation and rebuke,
the word of God was as it were imprisoned and in chains with
the prophet, and evil ran riot unchecked. With Brunton
Gascoigne bewails the reign of the wicked counsellors; with
Bromyard he denounces the absentee; with Wycliffe3 he agrees
that the futility of preaching has become a general argument
amongst those who fear and neglect it. Finally, with all three,
he attacks the worldliness which keeps shut the mouths of God's
spokesmen. As for the bishops' prohibition of others, this, in
1
Thos. Wimbledon. Bromyard posits the same Judgement-Day question
of his cleric (S.P.—Ordo Clericalis).
2
In sermons of the time, quite apart from those attributed to Wycliffe,
I find the bishops called, for their lack of preaching, amongst other names:
"dumb dogs" (MS. Add. 21253, fol. 141; Bromyard, S.P. etc.); "the ab-
homination of desolation in the holy place " (MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8);
"blind watchmen" (MS. Add. 21253); "Anti-Christs" (MS. Camb. Univ.
Libr. Ii. iii. 8); "manslayers" (MS. Harl. 2398).
3
Cf. the Speculum de Anti-Christo, Matthew's ed. p. 109 (E.E.T.S.).
Though their anti-Mendicant attacks may tend to obscure the fact, the
Lollard preachers were really as virulent towards the bishops. Cf. MS. Trin.
Coll. Camb. 60, fol. 2 b: "And these secular prelates may well be cleped
scribes; for they both more and less writen the money that they pilen of the
people more busily than they printen in their souls the knowing of God's law."
See further here in Chap. III.
effect, springs from a well-grounded fear that their own ignor-
ance and vices may be exposed, and that eventually they will
have to leave their concubines!
Those of us, on the other hand, who live in an age when a
popular press exercises much of the cheap sensational influence
of the mediaeval pulpit, which in more than one direction it has
superseded, may well feel inclined to sympathize a little with
the attitude of Pecock. We have every reason to believe that the
"bawlers," the vulgar charlatans, the "grete and thikke ratelers
out of textis" were just as shallow, just as illogical, just as
offensive then as they have been ever since. Would not able
prelates, like William of Wykeham for example, be far more
useful about the court than busying themselves in their dioceses
with such an inherently "vulgar " occupation? Be that as it may,
however, though we may find it hard to believe Gascoigne when
he says that the bishops' negligence of preaching was prominent
among the grievances that gave rise to the Commons' revolt of
1450, there can be no doubt about Bishop Pecock's mistake.
Around the episcopal palace left silent, or filled only with
ribald sounds, from the empty cathedral chair and rostrum,
the neglected village church, there had grown up in the popular
mind a well-grounded suspicion of luxury, indifference, waste
and extortion in high places. Where was this pulpit champion
of their rights, this publisher of good tidings, this father to his
people, of whom the faithful spoke? Heir of the apostles, "fed
of the patrimony of Christ," to support which they still sweated
and toiled and paid their offering, the bishop, they knew, had
certainly harried the Lollard and tried to suppress the un-
conventional preachers of the day. But what had he put in their
place ? They had seen him ride off with his horses and sump-
tuous retinue to some palace by the Strand in London. Learned
and responsible churchmen had been known to say openly in
the pulpit that some of his kind were actually squandering that
holy patrimony upon their own sons and daughters, their
prostitutes and bastards1. Meanwhile the inferior clergy were
1
Cf. Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 216): "Moderni ecclesiastici,. . .qui
patrimonium crucifixi nedum male tractant, sed negligentissime dispendunt
in meretricibus, cum filio prodigo in pompa seculi.. . . " fol. 195: "Nonne
bona ecclesie per insolenciam et superbiam sacerdotum in potentibus seculi,
immo in propriis consanguineis et nepotibus, nedum in filiis et filiabus ac
doing much as they pleased at home, after their own tastes. Our
simple village priest, of the Chaucerian model, shakes his head
over the painful prospect, as he addresses his parishioners on
the Sunday, in much the same language as we have already heard
the distinguished London preachers use. "How wolt thise gret
clerkes answere, and thise gret persons that dwellen in lordes
courtes, that preche not one in thre 3ere or foure?—I trowe
full harde I"1 Once again the student of history listening closely,
thinks he hears an ominous sound. It is the early rumbling of
that "Mar-Prelate" storm which did not cease in its fury until
it had caused the death of one more Archbishop of Canterbury,
in Puritan England. For generations it was to be part of the
traditional atmosphere in which Protestant Nonconformity grew
up, not therefore, we must admit, without certain historic reasons.
What, in closing, may be said more especially of the muteness
of the curati} Priest and prelate we have seen inseparably
linked together in the great pulpit indictment. The foreign
pluralist in an English living, whose complete ignorance of the
language, and inability or lack of desire to instruct his parish-
ioners figure amongst the abuses mentioned in the Oxford
petition of 14142, is in no way different from the non-resident
prelate; save, perhaps, as Bromyard remarks, that those who
drew the highest pay of all in the Church Militant, usually did
the least fighting3. But the meaner and obscurer class of clergy
concubinis meretricibus notabiliter sunt consumpta?" And again, fol. 202:
" . . . Dant, inquam, bona pauperum et crucifixi patrimonium, quidam con-
cubinis, quidam cognatis et amicis, et quidam ea dispendunt in excessibus
carnalium voluptatum." The same occurs in Bromyard, S.P.—Ordo Cleri-
calis, etc.; in Archbp. Fitzralph, cf. MS. Lansd. 393, fols. 144 (63 b, as
before), etc.; MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 11; etc.
1
MS. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 63 b. He adds, further, the typical "Doom" of
God upon them: " I deme the, of thin owne mowthe, that kowdest and
myghteste teche, and hydest thi kunnynge, and wold not show it." Read
also in connection with the above the sketch of a Sermo adprelatos given here
in Chap, vi, pp. 252, 253; and cf. the complaints of the Commons in 1397
against bishops at court (Rot. Parl. p. 339, col. 1).
2
"Quidam,. . .quandoque promoventur in regno Angliae ipsius regni
idioma penitus ignorantes, quique ad informandum subditos indisponuntur
et m u t i . . . , " etc. (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 360 et seq.).
3
S.P.—Bellum: "Et qui plura stipendia ecclesiae militantis, militanti-
busque ejus a Deo deputatis, recipiunt, minus predicando vel bona exempla
dando contra vicia et viciosos pugnant. Sed heu! de patrimonio Christi
incrassati, impinguati, dilatati, dereliquerunt Deum factorem suum in bello,
et fugerunt."
not unnaturally, were just as prone to the same sloth, under the
influence of their own special temptations. The Registers and
the homilies are equally agreed on that point. Apart from the
prospects of a pleasant stay at the University, or a well-con-
ducted living where a certain amount of producing and even
trading could be done, there were other attractions from which
the work of the pulpit suffered. Some could find more profitable
tasks as manorial officials, with the ability to make an entry,
or keep an account1. Others would stroll off to enjoy the
pleasures of the world for a season, in the populous cities and
ports2. The tavern, the show, the wrestling match, even the
brothel, took their full toll of those who went, or those who stayed
behind. And when they had had their fill of these, there must
have remained the additional inhibition of a guilty conscience3.
"As the people are, so is the priest. Would that he were no
worse!" It is easy to understand what ripe fields the parishes
served by such ministers must have been to the sickle of the
industrious charlatan, the heretic4, and the mischief-maker.
Towards the end of the fifteenth century, a homilist, alluding
to the famous prophecy of St Boniface concerning "the londe
of Albany," which he calls a "bye-worde," has a sad confession
to make. "Presthode," he tells his audience, on the fourth
Sunday after the Octave of the Epiphany, "w* moche pepil is
had in grete dyspyte; for seen [since] holy chyrche was firste
ordende, presthode was never had in so lityll reputacion."5
1
I may take this opportunity to indicate, in connection with one of our
preachers, MS. Add. 5666,—" in the Handwriting of the famous John Brakley,
Frier Minor of Norwich, Tutor and Master to Judge Paston, whose accounts
these are, when he was at the Inns of Court, at London."
2
The evidence of the Episcopal Registers, of Langland, etc. is well known,
but our sermon evidence will be fresh. Rypon remarks, for example (MS.
Harl. 4894, fol. 194): "Sunt enim nonnulli, qui raro vel nunquam ad sua
beneficia accedunt. Tamen sui cubilis stramenta, hoc est fructus et emolu-
menta sui beneficii, ut in curiis, vel universitatibus seu civitatibus lautius vivant,
avidius exigunt, et requirunt." Cf. also Brunton (Harl. 3760, fol. 125 b):
"Contra multos ecclesiasticos qui. . .ad beneficia pinguia exaltati, vix
missam audiunt, nullam dicunt, mundum diligunt, carni inserviunt. et
magnatum obsequiis occupati, sua beneficia derelinquunt, et ea officiari per mer-
cenarios faciunt et permittunt." Wimbledon, etc. See further p. 47, below.
3
This is actually alluded to in one sermon (MS. Add. 21253, fol. 59):
"Praeterea conscientia proprii peccati multos facit obmutescere a predica-
tione."
4
6
As in MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 108 et seq. See here in Chap. m.
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 59 b.
The remark is at least typical1. If half the allegations of ser-
mons and Registers are true, who could be much surprised at
this confession, or, indeed, at the subsequent turn of events in
Church and State ?
From this point we must sink even lower in the ecclesiastical
scale to the level of the temporal vicars2, and stipendiary clerks.
If these proved incompetent, as was likely in mere hirelings or
mercenaries, then, as Bromyard argues, the absentee rector
shall himself answer before God for every fault or omission
from which his flock has suffered. If, on the other hand,
they were competent, then, says the Dominican, they are super-
fluous : " For what can be done by one, reason forbids to be done
by many." Nevertheless the rector had certainly the law on his
side, if he answered as Rypon tells us that he did, "Licet ali-
quando non predicem in persona propria, dum tamen alius
suppleat vicem meam, satis est michi."3 There, as we shall see
further, at his door stood the itinerant friar, as anxious to take
his place in the pulpit, as ever the other may have been to
vacate it4, ready indeed even to strive with him for it, on
occasion, if he rejected his overtures5. After all, perhaps, it was
sometimes better that rectors should not return to occupy a
neglected village pulpit. Their song on such random visits
was apt to be all of one tune and that an exceedingly bad one:
1
I hope to deal with the widespread pulpit evidences of anti-clericalism
in the age, in some later study. Cf. the remarks added in a fifteenth-century
metrical treatise based on the Handlyng Synne (MS. Arundel 20, fol. 49 b):
"To2
se a prestly prest yt were grete deynte.. .," etc.
Cf. the provision for preaching supplies as laid down in the Oil. Ocul.
Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41 b, etc.), beginning: "Item vicarii temporales
per episcopos positi in ecclesiis quarum rectores infra aetatem fuerint, vel
quia scolas exercent, vel quia absentes fuerint, populis quibus proferuntur
predicare licet" (sic).
3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 161. Rypon himself returns to the charge again,
relentlessly:
4
"Quero a tali utrum scit predicare, vel non... !"
The Reg. Anint. itself reminds him (MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9): "Quilibet
sacerdos habens curam animarum, potest alteri dare licenciam predicandi suis
parochianis." Similarly Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41 b).
6
Cf. here Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 195): (In margin: "Nota contra
fratres mercenarios non curatos".) " Omnes qui venerunt comederunt eos,
—hoc est, eorum fructus. Considerate, queso, qui iam propter desidiam,
insolenciam, et superbiam curatorum comedunt suos fructus. Nonne quidam
mercenarii in domo, immo verius extra, iam officia curatorum usurpant, utpote
in confessionibus audiendis, et in aliis sacramentis ecclesie ministrandis ? Et
quos et quantos fructus diripiunt, vos novistis." [He is addressing the clergy,
in synodol]
But ever among al othur nede
His owne erende wol he bede,
That thei brynge heore offrynges
To chirche, and heore tythinges1.
We are even told that the bishops themselves prompted them
to make such topics the subject of discourse, in place of the
more dangerous censure of abuses2. Master Rypon of Durham,
not without a touch of sorrow in his voice, bemoans the rector's
lack of sympathy with his flock, and wishes that he would yearn
to set eyes on them for the welfare of their souls, rather than for
the material gifts they supply3.
Indications are not lacking in the kind of literature before us
that the results of this seemingly widespread neglect of holy
instruction were patent enough to the eye of the faithful ob-
server. More than a hundred years after Peckham's elaborate
Decrees, it is possible for the writer of a vernacular treatise to
declare that none but a few of the common people knew even
their Paternoster, Ave or Creed4. Little wonder, then, that the
same "Ignorantia Sacerdotum" is sounded again with stern
emphasis in 14665 and even later, at the end as at the beginning
of our period: "There be a lawles people entred into thy
sanctuarie, that neither keepe in themselfe the law of God, ne
konne teachen other."6 Above the plaint of Wimbledon at
1
The Despite (E.E.T.S., O.S.), 98, p. 348. Cf. also MS. Add. 21253,
fol. 145; MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 198 b (quoting Gorham); and Myrc's In-
structions
2
(E.E.T.S.), p. 11, 1. 356, etc.
Bromyard, S .P—Prelatus.
3
" Et utinam omnes beneficia ecclesiastica curam habentiam occupantes,
haberent istam mutuam consolationem cum suis parochianis, ut viz.—
desiderarent eos videre potius propter lucrum animarum quam fructum;
—ut, scil. eis evangelium predicarent, ut in fide confirmarent, et sic se alter-
utrura consolarentur,—scil. curati subditos, per bonam predicationem, et
bonae conversationis exemplationem;—et subditi curatos, per bonam opera-
tionem, et fructuum dationem.. . . Sed, quod dolendum est de multis ecclesiis
potest dici illud lamentabile,. . . Non est qui consoletur earn (suple ex omni-
bus curis ejus)." Cf. also the plaint of MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol.
129 b: "Sed multi patres ecclesiae militantis sunt qui hiis diebus non com-
patiuntur filiis.. . . "
1
MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 1 (and MS. Land. Misc. 23). Cf. this with
Archbp. Thoresby's comment, Lay Folks' Cat. p. 41: "And forthi that
mikill folke...."
6
Constit. Archbp. Neville of York. See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 599
(repeated again as late as 1518).
6
Wimbledon's sermon, 1388 (printed Engl. text). Latin version in MS.
Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, etc.: " Gentes illegales intraverunt in Templum,
qui non in seipsis legem Dei custodiunt, nee alios instruere sciunt." (Cf.
Lament, i, 10.)
Paul's Cross, the awful judgement of the sub-prior at Durham
rings in their ears:
What punishment therefore do the priests of to-day merit, who
enter upon their churches with the cure thereof, and rarely or never
preach the word of God? Forsooth, neither do they preach a good
life by their actions, which is called the preaching of an examplary
life. Assuredly, they are worthy of the everlasting death of the soul,
which is the death of Gehenna1.
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 214 b : "Quam poenam ergo merentur sacerdotes
moderni ingredientes ecclesias cum cura, et raro vel numquam predicantes
verbum Dei? Immo nee opere in se predicant bonam vitam, que dicitur
predicatio vite exemplaris. Certe merentur mortem anime sempiternam,
scil. mortem Gehenne!" Cf. further fol. 203 b : " Sed quidam nee verbum
dei predicant, nee per bone conversacionis exempla ducunt, nee sacramenta
personaliter administrant...." etc., etc. Along with these remarks should be
read such evidence from the Registers as the following (Reg. Bp. Grandisson,
Exeter, Pt. ii, p. 1140, A.D. 1354-5): "Nonulli nostre Diocesis, nomen
Presbyteri inaniter defferentes {sic), set tanti nominis affectu inmeriti,
prochdolor, et indigni, omissis animarum curis et ecclesiis parochialibus et
collegiatis, propter que ad tantum ministerium ordinati sunt principaliter
et assumpti, ad Annualia celebranda et obsequia laicorum mercatorum
potissime juxta portus marinos ubi calices exhaurire fecundiorespresupponunt
infeliciter se convertunt, conviviis et tabernis communiter gaudentes pocius
quam ecclesiis vel divinis officiis interesse. Quorum exempla perniciosa
populum, quem nedum Ewangelii predicacione set vite integritate exhortari
deberent ad salutem, ducunt...ad ruinam." Sim., in Reg. Wykeham, Winch.,
p. 21, A.D. 1367 ("in locis aliis inhonestis evagantes" "annualia pro
animabus defunctorum in locis remotis pro stipendiis excessivis " etc.).
Our preachers, then, do not appear to exaggerate here.
The unpublished Latin Manuale Sacerdotum of John Myrc, linked far too
closely by Warner and Gilson (Cat. of Roy. MSS.; following Bradshaw)
with his Engl. Instructions, contains separate chapters dealing with such
topics as the following, in remarkably outspoken fashion:—" Quod moderni
sacerdotes magis indulgent mundanis vanitatibus quam divinis exercitiis."
" Quod per ignoranciam sacerdotis devocio sacramenti patitur detrimentum."
" De prophetia modo completa—'et erit sicut populus ita etiam sacerdos'."
" De sacerdote qui plus diligit tabernam quam ecclesiam." "De sacerdote
aliatore." "De sacerdote fornicatore." " De sacerdote negocia tore." "Quare
permittuntur sacerdotes fornicarii celebrare in ecclesia." etc. [MS. York
Cath. Libr. xvi. O. 11, described in the Explicit as—"Libellus dictus
Manuale Sacerdotis Kirkestall," I have found to be another copy of this
work. Does this provide an interesting link between Yorkshire and our
Shropshire canon, the author, who tells us in the Preface to his Festiall that
he had cure of souls?] Friar John Lathbury (see below, p. 305, etc.) is
reported author of a treatise—-"De luxuria clericorum."
CHAPTER II
MONKS AND FRIARS
F every bishop had been a Brunton, and every parish priest
IRypon's
had been like the parson of the Canterbury Tales, Master
sad confession about the excesses of "the mercenary
brethren" in the parishes1 might never have been made, and
Jack Upland's complaint about the burden of so many extra
evangelists in the land would have been well justified:
And Crist himselfe was apaied
With twelve apostles and a fewe disciples
To preach and doe priest's office
To all the whole world.
Then was it better 2doe than is nowe at this time
By a thousand dele .
The same sermon-writers whose evidence has helped to
enlighten such a statement may be expected with good reason
to tell us something about those other preachers, "es esglises,
et cimitoirs, einzes Marches, Feires et autres lieux publiques,"3
the itinerant friars. But first a glance will not be inappropriate
at the older and less mobile Orders, "the monkes and cannons,"
who, as the rude satirist reminds his friar opponent, are still a
regular part of the swarming clerical throng.
Under the Cluniac and Cistercian revivals monastic oratory
had enjoyed its golden age a full century before the successes
of the Mendicants. Apart even from its substantial contribution
to homiletic literature, its queer mystical and allegoric moods,
its unquestioned influence upon the purity and zeal of monastic
life, it had had even a series of popular triumphs. For at one
time vast throngs had welcomed St Bernard in his missionary
campaigns, as later they were one day to welcome the Poverello
and his sons. In England, Joscelin of Brakelond's picture4 of
the twelfth-century Abbot Samson, setting up his pulpit in
1
2
See above, p. 45, n. 5.
See Wright's Polit. Poems and Songs (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 30. (Date
1401.) Cf. Oc. Sacer.—"multi sunt nomine, et pauci sunt in opere."
3
4
(1382.) Rot. Parl. vol. iii, p. 124.
Cronic. Jose, de Brak. (Camd. Soc. No. xiii) (1187, etc.), p. 30.
MONKS AND FRIARS 49
the abbey of St Edmund from which to address the lay-folk
"in the Norfolk tongue," gives a hint in itself that the activity
knew no mere national or continental bounds. Is there not a
healthy scorn in the question of another: "How can a man who
is unlettered deliver a sermon in Chapter, or to the people on
feast-days?"1 Here in England, indeed, there had been a
tradition of monastic preaching at least as old as the Venerable
Bede. So in the century of Bernard, Stephen Harding, and
Richard of St Victor, the last two themselves British by birth,
there were other English preachers who made a similar reputa-
tion in their own native land2. By the time, however, that the
age of Fitzralph and of Wycliffe has begun, all the great names in
the history of monastic eloquence have disappeared, and the
pulpit here seems to share in the general decline of cloister
fame and cloister influence. As in the case of the abbey at
Westminster3, Palm Sundays and Good Fridays may still have
remained important occasions for a sermon to the inmates of
Benedictine establishments, when some special visitor from the
Universities might be expected to declaim. As at St Albans4,
there was no doubt another formal declamation in the chapter-
house whenever a new abbot or prior was elected. But vital,
potent interest in preaching, whether to those from within or
from without the sacred cloister, appears to be dead. This fact
may possibly be reflected in the actual dearth of fresh monastic
sermon literature for the periods under our examination.
In the thirteenth century, current "sermones ad claustrales"
or "ad religiosos," of English origin, are exceedingly rare. For
the century that follows they are practically non-existent.
Such a situation indeed is not difficult to explain. In the first
place, such a work as the Sutntna Predicantium, for example,
will probably suggest to the reader, beyond any mere question
of rival authorship, how far out of touch with the contemporary
scene, its characters and its interests, the older monastic ideal
1
2
Ibid. p. 9.
Cf. Ailred (or Ethelred) of Rievaulx, Geoffrey of Mailross, Gilbert of
Hoyland, etc. The foreigner Eustachius, Abbot of Flay, preached in England
with phenomenal success, his sermons accompanied by signs and wonders.
See under year 1222, Higden's Polychron. (Rolls S.), vol. viii, pp. 182—5.
3
See Pearce, Monks of Westminster, pp. 27, 113, 144, etc.
4
Cf. Reg. Whethamstede, vol. ii, pp. 30, 146, etc. Also, MS. Harl. 3760,
fol. 276.
5o MONKS AND FRIARS
had grown1. There was now little enough cause for fresh pulpit
energy on the part of the isolated monk; little enough inspira-
tion to be got from many in the monkish audience facing
him. On the other hand, in the convent library, as contrasted
with the homes of secular clergy, lay ready for his daily use a
comparatively rich selection of earlier homilies, expositions,
"exemplaria," and the like, with all the added sanctity of age
and reputation upon them. "We have in oure libraries," says
John Capgrave, speaking of the Canons of St Victor in Paris,
in a sermon at Cambridge, "many sundry bokes that to
[ = two] chanones of that hous mad, on of hem hite Hewe, the
othir hite Richard; notabel clerkis thei were and men of holy
lyf ."2 Such works by the two famous Victorines, by St Bernard,
or the earlier Fathers remained the favourite reading of our
homilists alike in the friary or the monastery. Why be bothered
then, to compile new ones ? The old wine was best, and in this
case the cloister scribe might be trusted to maintain a sufficient
supply on tap.
The Dominican's Summa just referred to, expresses doubtless
a much wider view than that of his Order, when, not without
a touch of malice, it describes the monk as one wishing to lead
a quiet life, and escape the sweat and toil of "the preaching
men." He is made to say: " I wish to live in peace in a convent;
to read and sing. I don't want to rush through the world, with
all its wearying labours!" Even the very knowledge and virtues
these cloisterers acquire, we are told, are but weapons of defence,
not of offence. They resemble that knight who, on asking his
squire whether anyone could now hurt him in his new harness
received the reply, "No; nor will you be able to hurt anyone
else!" One thing alone could really keep active the stimulus
for original and up-to-date preaching, and that was an intimate
contact and sympathy with the lot of the people, their sufferings
and yearnings, their good and evil, such as the friar enjoyed
1
Bp. Browne compares Chrysostom's sermons, teeming with allusions to
the social life of the towns, with those of Bede, compiled in the monastery
and lacking all such. See Browne, Ven. Bede (S.P.C.K.), p- 231. The same
applies to the friars' and monks' sermons of our period respectively.
2
MS. Add. 36704, fol. 119. From "a tretis of the orderes that be undyr
the reule of oure fadyr seynt Augustine, drawe oute of a sermoun seyd be freer
Jon Capgrave at Cambridge, the 3ere of oure Lord a MCCCCXXII." Capgrave
was an Austin friar, of Lynn, author of the well-known Chronicle.
MONKS AND FRIARS 51
constantly, but the monk scarcely ever, save in so far as he
violated his own Rule. We catch a significant glimpse of this
monastic " innocuousness " amid the conflict, in one of the later
chronicles of St Albans Abbey1. On his re-appointment to
office in 1452, that abbot, whom Bishop Bekynton once playfully
offered to chastise for his bad Latin2, questioned his monks on
the subject of internal reforms. "And they said there were
three things amongst others, which had now been neglected
for a long time, and stood in need of great reformation." One
of them was "the preaching of the sacred word by the brothers
in the pulpit." " Quia jam itaque per annos varios et multifarios
vix fuit confrater ullus qui vellet in se assumere illud onus, et
verbum Dei ibidem tempore Quadragesimali coram populo
declarare." Possibly the recent unpopularity into which preach-
ing had fallen through the Lollard propaganda, of which this
same district had had its share, may have had something to do
with the matter. But still it is none the less the note of decay
that is sounded. One further fact concerning the delivery of
sermons in the greater monastic churches may suggest the same
disinclination of the inmates to preach. In spite of a historic
rivalry it is clear that the Mendicant friar was quite frequently
to be found occupying a Benedictine pulpit. As early as the
beginning of the fourteenth century a license is granted to the
Carmelites to preach at Winchester Cathedral, after the Domini-
can and Franciscan brethren have had their turn, "provided
that none of the monks wishes to preach in person on that
day." 3 Similarly, we have record at Canterbury of "the friars
who preached in our church on divers occasions this year " 4 ; and
the same feature applies further to such establishments of canons
secular as the collegiate church of Ottery St Mary5, in Devon.
1
2
Reg. Whethamst. (Rolls S.), vol. i, pp. 24-5.
See Correspondence of Bekynton (Rolls S.), vol. i, p. 116. (A.D. 1440.)
3
1316/17, Reg. Sandale, of Winch. (Hants. Rec. Soc), pp. 32-3; 1321,
Reg. de Asserio (ibid.), pp. 41 j , 422—3: " . . .qualibet tertia vice post fratres
Pred., et Minores... . "
4
Cf. 1458, in Woodruff and Danks, Memorials of Cant. Cath. p. 264. See
below
6
an Austin friar preaching at Tynemouth priory (Bened.), p. 64.
1382, 1383, etc. (Domin. preachers). Statutes of Ottery St Mary, ed.
J. N. Dalton, p. 102. Cf. here the typical clause of the Statuta " De sermo-
num provisione per Canonicos ": " Provideatur eciam quod per aliquem de
collegio, aut alium, sermones solempnes fiant ad populum. .. "; and below,
p. 156, n. 1. [Lincoln, etc.]
4-2
52 MONKS AND FRIARS
Mention of preaching "coram populo" however serves to
remind us of one of two interesting branches of monastic
pulpit activity for which evidence does yet survive from our two
centuries. In the Rites of Durham1 there is an account of the
regular sermon delivered by members of the fraternity in their
abbey church on Sunday afternoons; also of other sermons on
special occasions in the city churches—the "Bowe" church,
St Oswald's "in elvett," St Margaret's "in framwelgate," St
Nicholas' in the market place, preceded by solemn processions
through the streets. At Durham, too, in connection with the
Registers of Archbishop Melton in 1327, and Bishop Hatfield in
1346, we hear of the typical forty-days' Indulgence granted to
those who attend the preaching of the monks2. With merry
Lydgate, then, we may believe that for the period: "Sumtyme
is a folle (he means sarcastically a monk, like himself!) as good
to here as the word of a fryer."3
But apart from sermons to be delivered in the monastery,
the monk figures as a special preacher for visitations and for
synods of clergy. At a synod held in London in 1402, for
example, no less than half of the six special preachers mentioned
in the report are monks from Canterbury4. There, and at the
visitation, where he acts as a helpmate for the bishop5 in the
work of the pulpit, the monk is at last officially outside his own
cloister wall, a step nearer, as it were, to that " instabilitas loci,"
so definitely forbidden in St Benedict's Rule6. Personal touches
are so scarce in this branch of our survey that it is interesting
to meet with a letter of the early part of the fourteenth century,
from the Bishop to the prior of Worcester, which deals with a
1
2
Rites of Durham (Surtees Soc), pp. 46, 104, etc. See below, p. 146.
See Fasti Ebor. vol. i, p. 419, note. Cf. also MS. Ashmole (BodL), 750,
fol. 140 b, for mention of similar Indulgences for those present at "the
Monasterie of Syon" (Isleworth), "whenne the worde of God is preched by
the brethren of this Ordre" (15th cent.), etc.
3
See Merita Missae, in E.E.T.S. (O.S.), 71, p. 148, l.g. (This is un-
doubtedly
4
a rhymed sermon.)
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 273.
6
Cf. Cone. Later. (Innocent III), Cau. x (repeated among the Consts.
of the Council of Trent): " Unde precipimus, tam in Cathedralibus, quam in
aliis conventualibus ecclesiis, viros idoneos ordinari quos episcopi possint
coadjutores et cooperatores habere, non solum in predicationis officio... . "
And in our Cil. Oc. Sac. fol. 41 b (" .. .per parochias suas ad predicandum
verbum Dei").
6
See Reg. S. Bened. cap. lxvi.
MONKS AND FRIARS 53
case in point. "We sent in your absence," writes the bishop,
"for T. de B., to come to us for the purpose of preaching on
Monday, in the monastery of O., on the occasion of our visita-
tion there. He has now arrived. Pray excuse his absence, as he
is upon an errand of piety. He shall return as soon as he has
discharged it." 1 With this can be coupled another letter of
approximately similar date, written by Archbishop Thoresby,
concerning a certain monk of York,'' frater J. de G., commensalis
noster carissimus."2 It was an ancient institution that bishops
should constantly retain about them discreet and honest men,
as witnesses of their life and conversation3; and right healthy
and laudable had been the influence of this brother beloved
upon the archiepiscopal household during his Christmas visit.
"Nedum Divini verbi pabulo, sed gestus honesti modestia tam
salubriter quam laudabiliter nos refecit." In fact, so far had he
become the darling of that prelate, that other members of the
convent appear to have grown jealous of him, and to have
murmured that he had been publishing abroad in his palace
sermons some of the monastery scandals, thus bringing down
upon them correction at the visitations in chapter. However
that might be, the enthusiastic archbishop is now asking to
have him back "about the beginning of Lent"—"nobis ad
magnum nostrum solatium assistentem "—in that great preach-
ing and penitential season. Still more interesting would this
document be, if, as has been actually suggested, the mysterious
initials stand for the name of John Gaytrige, or Garryk4. As
the archbishop's literary henchman, this monk of St Mary's
Abbey, York, at his request, had translated his edition of the
Peckham Constitutions into English in 13 57, for the benefit of the
more ignorant parish clergy. His work, then, brings to notice
the further fact that even monks have their share in the great
1
See Letter-Book of the Priors of Wore. (Wore. Hist. Rec), p. 40.
2
3
See E.E.T.S. (O.S ), 118, p. xx. (Lay Folks Cat.)
4
Cf. Wilkins, Cone. vol. i, p. 382, etc.
His name is spelt in the MSS. in a variety of ways. In addition to the
above, I note "dan Jon Gaytryge" (Thornton MS., Line. Cath. Libr.);
"J. de Gaysteke" (MS. Harl. 1022, fol. 73b, and dated 1357); " J . de
Caterige" (MS. Arundel, 507, fol. 50); "J. de Taystek" (MS. Harl. 1022,
fol. 80, with date). Other MSS. of his work appear to be MS. Trin. Coll.
Camb. B. 10; MS. York Minster, xvi. L. 12; MS. Add. 25006; MS. Lambeth
408 (Lollard vers.). See also Notes in J. E. Wells' Manual.
54 MONKS AND FRIARS
output of vernacular sermon literature1 which helped to prepare
men's minds for the coming era of lay-reading and reformation.
One dignified sermon collection2, alluded to in the previous
chapter, though written in Latin throughout, would yet seem to
illustrate both types of monastic preaching that have just been
emphasized. These are the discourses of Master Robert Rypon,
sub-prior of the monastery of Durham3, and prior of Finchale
in the years 1397 and following4, of whom nothing further
appears to be known. The presence of English words and
phrases in the chief group of homilies here collected suggests
that they were intended for lay ears, after the Durham practice
for Sundays described in " the Rites "; while in addition we have
the separate synodal addresses to parish clergy with which the
volume closes. In his pages there is to be noted, furthermore,
that overwhelming conservatism of the mediaeval preachers of
the convent to which allusion has been made. No mere inde-
pendent statement is good enough for the writer, but above it
and below he must quote from "Lincoln," or Bernard, or
Gorham, the very commonplaces of doctrine that few men
would debate. In the matter of making acknowledgement,
however, he is certainly above the average.
Rypon himself5 brackets the canon with the monk as a typical
preacher at the clerical synod; but pulpit references or examples
in the case of the former are even more difficult to find than in
that of the Orders we have dealt with. Another vague figure,
of an Austin canon regular of Lilleshall Priory in Shropshire6,
can stand appropriately by the side of Gaytrige. He is John
Myrc, the author of the popular Festiall, an English homily
1
Cf. also the earlier South-English Legendary (ed. from MS. Laud. 108,
in E.E.T.S. (O.S.), 87), the work of monks of Gloucester Abbey (Bened.);
and others noted here in Chap. vn.
2
MS. Harl. 4894. One sermon introduces the date 1401, with reference
to a comet, then appearing. See here, p. 208, Chap. v.
3
For his preaching activities, cf. Durham Account Rolls, vol. iii, p. 596:
" Item in expensis domini Roberti de Ripon.... predicant(is) apud
Heghington. . . . " etc.
4
Cf. Charters of Finchale (Surtees Soc), pp. xxviii, cxix, cxxxiii, etc.
(Compotus
5
Dom. Roberti Rypon prioris de Fynkhall).
Cf. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 161 (sermo in Sinodo): "iste monachus sive
canonicus sic redarguet."
6
See article on "Mirk" (or Myrc, J.), in D.N.B.; fl. c. 1403 (Pits). His
letter to "Sir J. de S., vicar of A." in which he expresses the hope that he
will turn his Manuale into English, is in MS. Harl. 5306.
MONKS AND FRIARS 55
collection in which the saint's-day is especially provided for,
as common in the libraries as Felton's Latin Sermones dominicales,
and a good deal more picturesque. A manual of instructions for
parish priests also bears his name, which was quaintly compiled
by him in the vernacular in easy verse after the pattern of de
Pagula's prose. A copy of his Latin Manuale Sacerdotis in York
Minster Library may suggest an earlier connection with York-
shire1. But that is all2. He is a name, insignificant apart from
the wider movement with which his works are connected3.
The reader who has turned to the company of the Mendicants,
on the other hand, will feel himself at last amid familiar sur-
roundings. Here, looming from the pages of history are com-
paratively well-known types and personalities, never more
familiar perhaps than when they lean from "pulpitum" and
"scaffaldus," in church or open piazza. Who does not recognize
such geniuses of the preaching art when he looks abroad at the
Italian scene in the fifteenth century, at the Franciscan Ber-
nardino or the Dominican Savonarola, or two centuries earlier,
at the great Berthold of Regensburg, in Germany? In England,
almost every dispute in which the activities of the friars reach
historical proportions—-and they were not few—seem to have
raged around pulpit steps. They dispute long with the Uni-
versities, and the question of the examinatory sermon must
enter in4. They dispute with the secular clergy, and it becomes
a struggle amongst other things for right of way to the parish
pulpit. They dispute with prelates and scholars over the subject
of evangelical poverty, and a London preaching-cross becomes
a strategic point in the campaign. In politics, behind the throng
of noisy rebels and discontents, whether in the rebellion of
Simon de Montfort5, the Peasants' Revolt6, or the risings which
1
See above, p. 47, and below, p. 297. The Instructions have been edited in
E.E.T.S. (O.S.), No. 31, his Festiall in E.E.T.S. (Ext. S), No. 96.
2
Among special matters to be inquired into at visitations, in a record of
Austin canons about the year 1395 to 1404, I notice: "An prelatus. . . pre-
dicat." But this probably refers only to preaching to the brethren. (Appdx. 1,
Salter, Chapters of Aug. Canons, Oxf. Hist. Soc. 1920.)
3
Canon Walter Hilton, of Thurgarton, the well-known author of mystical
treatises, was no doubt a preacher, but I know
4
no record of actual sermons by
him. See also here later in Chap. vi. Cf. Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 400.
6
Cf. Little, The Grey Friars in Oxford (Oxf. Hist. Soc), p. 32 (quoting
Stubbs, in footnote 6, etc.).
6
There is almost a literature on this subject. Cf. Jusserand, English Way-
56 MONKS AND FRIARS
follow the deposition of Richard II 1 , we catch glimpses of
passionate eloquent friars stirring men on to resist the tyranny
or the usurpation which mars the hour. Finally, their way of
preaching with jests and collection-bags had much to do with
Wycliffe's general attack on their system. Look where you will,
wherever "a flye and eke a frier" fall into the mediaeval dish,
there you may be sure to hear a sermon on the matter from one
of the Orders. Scarcely a phase of current thought, scarcely a
habit, pastime, occurrence, fails to find a place among their
homiletical maxims and reflections.
If the monastic preacher in fourteenth-century England
could look back to a distinguished past, so also could the Men-
dicant. Etienne de Bourbon, on the continent, tells how he had
seen noble ladies, in days of early enthusiasm, so affected by
the word that they donned the vilest garb of poor women, to
follow with greater freedom the steps of the preachers as they
went, far and wide, from town to town, themselves like beggars
on foot2. But the unknown author of a Franciscan Liber Ex-
emplorum3 too, had seen great crowds flocking after a "most
famous " evangelist of the Order in Ireland in much the same
fashion; and there were tales still told of the signs and wonders
that attended the efforts of others who preached the Crusades
in this country. The Speculum Laicorumi, a work of English
origin, narrates how when a certain friar (in Anglia) was busy
thus with his message, one in his audience, who had been to
the Holy Land, attempted to dissuade the others. He was a
" cementarius " by trade, and paying no heed to a warning vision
that night, but continuing his evil detraction, he fell one day
faring Life, pp. 302,306, 308, etc. andL' Epopee mystique, p. 158, etc.; Ch. Petit
Dutaillis, in a series of Essays offered to A. Monod; Powell and Trevelyan,
Peasants' Rising, pp. 45, etc. For original sources see Walsingham, Hist.
Angl. (Rolls S.), vol. ii, pp. 10 and 13; Fascic. Zizan. (Rolls S.), pp.
292—5, etc.
1
See Eulogium Hist. (Rolls S.), vol. iii, p. 392 et seq. (For a further case
of the political preaching of the friars, see letter of Archbp. Greenfield to the
Dom. prior of York, 1315, in Letters from Northern Registers (Rolls S.),
pp. 238-9.)
2
Begin. " Item vidi ego nobiles mulieres amore verbi Dei sic affectas ut,
assumpto pauperum mulierum habitu vilissimo. . . . " See Anecdotes Hist. ed.
Lecoy de la Marche, p. 75.
3
Ed. A. G. Little (Brit. Soc. Franc. Studies). A work of c. 1275.
4
Ed. J. Welter (Paris, 1914).
MONKS AND FRIARS 57
to the ground from a height and bit through his tongue1!
Matthew Paris2 describes how in 1235 a compassionate Fran-
ciscan restored whole a paralyzed woman who had punctuated
his address with her groans; while versions in the sermon
literature are not uncommon of the story of a wanton woman,
some say in Northumberland3, which bears rich testimony to the
speaker's power. So moved was she by his words that she died.
On being restored to life to make her confession, the words
'' Ave Maria " were found inscribed upon her tongue. Tales such
as these, it is true, have often been used by later critics to mock
the men who spread and maintained them in their preaching.
But, for our present argument, they at least bear witness to a
great tradition in the minds of those credulous enough, if you
like, to believe in them then. They came from an age rich in
the emotions and that "suggestive" power which kindle men
to do great things for the Faith, even if mountains were never
removed beyond the mountains of vice and selfishness in human
hearts4. Master John of St Giles, John of St Albans, as Matthew
Paris would proudly acclaim him, was surely no phantom of the
imagination. Royal physician, learned doctor of the schools of
Paris, sometime Treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral, about this
time, he had not feared to step down from his pulpit in the
midst of a sermon on holy poverty, in a Dominican house, to
receive the lowly habit of a friar5. Little wonder that such a
man converted Alexander of Hales by one of his discourses6,
and became "a master perfect in theology," "discreet and holy "
1
One MS. version localizes this story near Cambridge (MS. Harl. 2385,
fol. 95 b [Contigit in partibus Cantebrigie]).
2
3
Chron. Maj. (Rolls S.).
4
Sic MS. Harl. 2316 (14th cent.), fol. 59.
Cf. the miracle of the old man, a sermon-goer, transported over a moun-
tain, or hill, and other miracles of sermon-goers, in Etienne de Bourbon
(Anecdotes, as above, pp. 74—5).
6
Doctor of Medicine to Philippe Auguste: returns to England from Paris,
1235. See references in Chron. Maj. and GrossetSte's Letters (both Rolls S.),
pp. 60, 62, 131. This incident in Qu£tif et Echard, vol. i, p. 100, quoted from
N . T r i v e t ' s Chrons. of the Kings of England, p . 573 : (Annales ? ) " . . . Joannes
in Domo Fratrum Predicantium sermonem faciens ad clerum, cum suasisset
paupertatem voluntariam, ut verba sua exemplo confirmaret, descendens de
ambone habitum Fratrum recepit, et in eodem regressus ad clerum ser-
monem explevit."
6
Besides the former references, see Hist. Lift, de la France, vol. xviii, p.
397-
58 MONKS AND FRIARS
for the work of the Gospel, even in the estimation of a Bene
dictine monk none too friendly to the new Orders.
Biographical incidents of this nature are again all too in-
frequent for the later mediaeval centuries, in the history of our
Mendicant pulpit in England. The numerous entries of sermons
by friars, "coram rege," among the Rolls and Accounts of the
Record Office, the long lists of sermon-writers in Bale or Pits,
even the great Latin example-books themselves, are all calcu-
lated to mislead the student who hopes for vivid material from
which to reconstruct their careers. The actual sermons them-
selves that can be identified with a particular author are very
few and far between. The stories are drawn from extraneous
sources; while the writer's own personality lies hidden usually
beneath a mass of orderly tradition and a laborious rechauffi of
earlier expositions. Of the thousand "exempla" and more
which fill the Summa Predicantium, only one or two here and
there could be recognized as drawn from the personal remini-
scence of the learned Dominican chancellor, who is otherwise so
free with his comments on the general life of his day. It was the
literary industry of the friars themselves, as seen in their
weightier compositions, doubtless, which had much to do with
this extinction of that naive realism and vivid self-expression
which had inspired the verse of Jacopone da Todi and the
painting of Giotto. They still think and speak of the sufferings
and sin of the world in which they preach, but only in general
and unoriginal terms. Their very "jests " are now at second or
third hand.
Meagre and unsatisfying though they are, we must again
fall back on odd headings and notes upon the sermon page, if
we would revive from contemporary record the activities of the
brethren, as they "travayle from towne to towne in the Sunday
and greate festes, to teche the people goddes lawe."1 In the
library of Caius College, Cambridge, is a diminutive manuscript
of outline addresses2 which might well have lain open before
some Dominican missioner in the pulpit, and reposed on the
journey in his tippet, where the unfaithful, as Chaucer reminds
us, carried their fascinating "knyves and pinnes." Most of the
sermons are unlabelled, as if suitable for any kind of audience.
1 2
Dives et Pauper, Prec. iii, cap. xvi. MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233.
MONKS AND FRIARS 59
But a few proclaim now and then, as if with a pardonable pride,
some particularly honoured occasion of delivery. Here, for
example, is a "sermo in cathedrali Sancti Petri," and another—-
"ad predicatores in Oxonia." Others bear the rubricated notes
—" insynodo," "in electione prelati," " in dedicatione ecclesiae,"
"ad claustrales," and so forth. Two more, entitled "secundum
fratrem Hugonem (or H.) predicatorem," given at much greater
length, suggest instances where our preacher, now one of the
audience, is noting down with especial care, for future use, the
inspiring words of another. The actual contents of these out-
lines, however, prove quite disappointing to the modern reader.
Another manuscript which partakes of the nature of a sermon
diary as well as of a sermon series is to be found in much-
defaced condition in the Bodleian Library at Oxford1. From
the frequency with which the name occurs, it would appear
to contain the discourses of one Nicholas Philip, a Franciscan,
and records visits to Newcastle ("quod Phelip Novicastri,
1433," etc.), Oxford ("sermo quam predicavi Oxon." etc.),
Lynn, Lichfield, and Melton. Besides these we note a synodal
address2, a processional sermon3, several more at visitations of
the brethren4 and one at the profession of a novice5. His in-
flammatory attacks on the wealthy, the lawyers, the clergy and
others have been noticed by Dutaillis in connection with a study
of clerical influences upon popular agitation for social reforms6.
The present writer has also inspected a sermon note-book
among the Caius College manuscripts at Cambridge7, which
was kept on even more systematic lines, probably by some un-
known Austin friar of the district, who regularly jots down place
and season above the sermons, whether of his own or of others,
that he enters8. So illegible is his writing, unfortunately, that
little or nothing can be deciphered at any casual examination
of the work. Dr James calls attention in his Catalogue, however,
to a sermon here by the Chancellor of the University ("sermo
1 2
3
MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i. 4
Ibid. fol. 83.
6
fol. 141. fols. 98, 102 b, etc.
fol. 151 (In professione novitii).
6
Other dated entries in this MS. are: "Oxon. 1432" (fol. 51), and
"Lechefeld, 1436" (fol. 113-14).
7
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 356. (Late 15th cent. (?).)
8
Among churches mentioned are Bury, Colchester, Melbourn, Coton,
St Botolph's and St Mary's, Cambridge.
60 MONKS AND FRIARS
cancellarii")1, a processional oration—"pro belli victoria in
francia"2—a funeral sermon for the Master of King's Hall,
and a sermon "in the feast of Relics, at Bury," amongst others
of a more usual type.
If, with the itinerant preacher, we take the road which leads
from the eastern University town to London, that road of which
Richard Whitford, the monk of Sion, has memories, as he writes
his religious treatise for householders3 a century later, there
awaits us now in the possession of the Society of Gray's Inn
a little treatise on the Decalogue4 which incorporates a few
personal reminiscences in the text. Once part of a library of
Greyfriars in Chester, it claims to be the work of "brother
Staunthone," whom from internal evidence we gather to have
been a Franciscan in the early part of the fourteenth century5.
The place-names he mentions," Frawisham," " Ravenyngham,"
and Hale, seem to indicate a special connection with Norfolk.
Scattered in the pages of this treatise are a number of illustrative
anecdotes which for once would seem to have been gleaned not
from the pages of other writers, but from the lips of contem-
poraries, his friends and acquaintances. If we proceed further
to put side by side with Staunton 's tract a group of five manu-
scripts in the British Museum containing collections of sermon
tales by English Dominican and Franciscan friars, then submit
to careful analysis all narratives which claim to have been
derived in a similar way, some interesting results may accrue6.
In the majority of such cases, which are introduced by the
characteristic "Retulit mihi quidam religiosus," or equivalent
phrases7, we behold the animated talk, the intimate exchange of
confidences and experiences between Religious, in the convent, or
1
Ibid. p. 38.
2
p. 70. There is also a sermon "at the city of London" noted, with this
charming comment: "Item homines London, sunt newe fangul." Did he
feel a little boorish and out-of-date on his visit?
3
4
A Werkefor Housholders (W. de Worde, 1533; 1537; 1538; etc.).
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15 (15th cent.).
6
See my article, " Some Franciscan Memorials at Gray's Inn," in the
Dublin
6
Review, April 1925, pp. 278-80.
These are MSS. Roy. 7. D. 1 (by a Dominican of the Cambridge dis-
trict (?)), Harl. 2316 (Domin. (?)), Harl. 2385 (Dominican of Cambridge
district (?)), Add. 33956 (Franciscan (?)), Burney 361, pt ii (Franciscan (?)).
' Cf. numerous examples in MSS. Roy. 7. D. 1; Add. 33956, etc. (similarly
"Sicut a quodam religioso didici," etc.); or MS. Gray's Inn. Libr. 15, fols.
5 b (religiosus Gilbertus de Massingham), etc.; MS. Burn. 361, fols. 149, etc.
MONKS AND FRIARS 61
in the open world. Safely returned from some preaching tour,
or some journey to the bedside of the dying, the brethren have
ever their little tale to narrate of things seen or heard upon the
road. Brother John of Chester, the Dominican, has been told
of a lady's pet monkey that strayed into church, swallowed the
Host and was burnt by its mistress. With his own eyes he has
seen that same Host which was rescued from the animal's
stomach unchanged1. Brother Ralph of Swyneland tells brother
Staunton2, on his return from London, how when he and the
companion friar travelling with him had entered a certain village
at nightfall on their route, the good woman who gave them
lodging for the night had recounted a domestic tragedy. It was
the old story of a disobedient son cursed by his mother, and
carried off by the devil. Did they rise next morning before dawn,
we wonder, to turn aside into some pleasant meadow and enjoy
the prospect of nature, there, like two other friars, once on a
preaching tour, to behold an apparition of their own3? Master
Robert of Burwell will speak of what once befell him by the
way4, or the writer himself perhaps "of what I heard in Essex
by the Thames-side."5
Journeys abroad to foreign parts will bring, as is natural,
many fresh marvels to enrich the conversation and the common
stock of anecdotes for the pulpit. Thus Master Robert Cursun,
"while travelling about as legate to preach the Crusade" in
France, is a welcome raconteur on his return6. Peter of Juynes-
feld, and his fellow, brother Adam, are naturally full of the won-
drous miracle that occurred while they were passing through
Rimini, in the year 12687, likewise others "from parts beyond
1
MS. Harl. 2316, fol. 12 (Joh. de Cestria, fr. pred. vidit istud).
2
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15, fol. 31: "Item frater Radulphus de S., cum
socio suo semel veniens Londoniis, intravit villam quemdam...." The
recurrence of a similar tale to this in another MS. collection of this group, and
a further parallel noted here later (with MS. Harl. 1288, see p. 63, n. 11),
shows the connection of this Gray's Inn treatise with the B.M.MSS. indicated.
3
MS. Roy. 7. C. xv, fol. 10 b: " . . .summo mane surgentes ante auroram,
putantes tempus illis esse diluculum, deviaverunt, gradientes per quoddam
pratum."
4
MS. Roy. 7. D. 1, fol. 124 b ("Hanc narrationem retulit Mag. Rob8, de
Burwelle de seipso contigisse.. . " ) .
6
MS. Add. 33956, fol. 85 (" Narratur sicut simile egomet audivi in Exsexia
juxta Thamisiam ").
6
Ibid. fol. 84 b; cf. fol. 85. His Summa is in MS. Roy. 9. E. iv.
' MS. Sloane, 2478, fol. 14 b (Two Franciscans).
62 MONKS AND FRIARS
the sea."1 Such foreign adventure, however, will be only for
the few. But even at home the pleasing narration may be in-
troduced in a variety of ways. Some noble knight, perhaps,
falls into a reminiscent mood over the guest-chamber fire, like
him who once "coming to besiege the castle of Kenelworth,
on the king's behalf,... related a story to the brethren of the
convent, asking them to publish it in their sermons."2 Those
who come fresh to the cloister have memories of their native
place3, marvels of the outside world now forsaken, which will
be welcome enough in times and places unenlightened by the
newspaper. Brother Hugh of Hereford has not forgotten yet a
certain horror of his earlier days as a layman, the very sight of
that toad which fastened itself to the face of an undutiful son
for two whole years4. The brother, who writes, has chatted
more than once with those who have information of old mutual
acquaintances now passed away5. Nor does the tale told by the
Lombard Hubert de Lorgo of his own squire die with him, when
he is buried among the Friar-Preachers of London6.
Some story has been received at fourth hand. But the friar
narrator can still trace its long journey: "A certain trustworthy
man of religion, a great preacher and a dependable witness, who
learnt this same story from the priest who heard the confession
of the woman mentioned, in her last infirmity, related it to me." 7
All and sundry in that richly-varied world of the middle ages
bring grist to the Mendicant homilist's mill. Brother tells tales
about brother8. Rectors and village priests9, friendly Cistercian
monks10, the Visitor of the Order when he comes11, religious of
I
Cf. MS. Burney 361, fol. 153 (Fr. Walterus narravit de London, quod
contigit in partibus transmarinis); similarly fols. 149, 156, etc.; MS. Roy.
7. D. i, fol. 96 b (ab hospite suo); cf. Add. 33956, fols. 24, 84 b, 85; etc.
a
3
MS. Add. 6716, fol. 39 b (Canons of Kenilworth, Warwickshire).
Cf. MS. Add. 33956, fol. 82; and MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 84 b.
4
MS. Burn. 361, fol. 152 (Fr. Hugo de Hereford laycus audivit, qui vidit
bufonem in facie ejus).
6 6
7
Cf. MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fols. 107 and 113. MS. Add. 6716, fol. 5 b.
MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 76; cf. fols. (77), (107), 137 b; MS. Add. 33956,
fol.8 88; etc.
Cf. MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 107.
9
Cf. MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15, fols. 36 b, 38; MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fols. 67 b
and 139 b; MS. Add. 33956, fol. 86 b.
10
Cf. MS. Harl. 1288, fol. 44 (ut dicit quidam sisterciensis ordinis, A.D.
MCCCC11110, in comitatu Cantabrigie. . .); MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 104.
II
MS. Burn. 361, fol. 149 (Item quidam frater visitator ordinis ejusdem
retulit).
MONKS AND FRIARS 63
every kind, the nun, the layman, the gossiping housewife acting
as host, even the midwife1, divulge the little tragedies or
successes of the family circle or the group of their intimates2.
With interest we observe how the speaker frequently requests
here the name of a witness, or a place, there the name of the
chief character discussed, to be kept secret. The sufferer may be
living still3; or if not, at any rate to name him would cause
scandal for the dead man's friends4: "He who told me the
foregoing wished that the place where these things befell, and
the name of the aforementioned woman should not be dis-
closed, for a time."5 Then there are the tender revelations of
the confessional6, and of the last shrift of the dying7. Well
may the busy Dominicans of Cambridge make use of them dis-
creetly to warn the stubborn, and encourage the good8. Finally,
much will be gleaned from the hearing of others' sermons9.
When some distinguished preacher fills the pulpit, there is often
a harvest for the eager story-collector in his audience10. But our
preacher himself, on occasion, returning home from his own
preaching, brings fresh illustrative material with him for the
next. Friar Walter of Raveningham had thus to relate how a
certain cleric interrupted his discourse, contradicting the
preacher's argument, only to repent later, when sickness drove
him to his bed11. Friar Baudellzinus tells the assembled bre-
thren, surely not without a laugh, how once he was due to preach
on Sunday, in a Lincolnshire church, six miles from Stamford12.
1
MS. Add. 33956, fol. s (ut dixit mihi ilia matrona que obstetricandi causa
presens erat).
2
Cf. MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fols. 93 b, 113, 137 b ; MS. Add. 33956, fols. 83,
86 3b ; MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15 as before, etc.
MS. Add. 33956, fol. 82 b (. . .qui adhuc superstes est. . . ) ; MS. Roy.
7. D. i, fols. 114 b, 119 b.
4
MS. Add. 33956, fol. 82 (propter scandalum amicorum defuncti).
6
MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 119 b; cf. similarly, fols. 122, 137 b; MS. Add.
33956, fols. 82, 86 b; etc.
6
Cf. MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fols. 75, 76, 77, 82, 92, 119 b; etc., etc.
' Cf. MS. ibid. fol. 108 b and MS. Add. 33956, fol. 14; etc.
8
9
Cf. MSS. ibid, passim.
Besides references in note following, cf. MSS. Add. 33956, fol. 28 (in
publico sermone), Harl. 273, fol. 175 (en sermun).
10
Cf. Cardinal William of Savoy, at Cambridge (MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fols. 87,
87 b); "Line, dixit in sermone" (i.e. Grossetete), (MS. Harl. 2385, fol. 120),
etc.
11
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15, fol. 10 b {also in MS. Harl. 1288, fol. 56,
without name of preacher).
12
Described as "juxta Scholthrop" (Sculthorp?).
64 MONKS AND FRIARS
A kinswoman of his who lived at that place, very naturally
requested her husband to come with her to the sermon. But he
refused, preferring to spend Sunday, in the open, with his bow
and arrows. On entering a wood to enjoy the chase, who should
face him but the devil himself in the form of an immense hare.
He shot; the devil vanished; but the arrow rebounding pierced
his clothes. How well deserved a shock for the ill-mannered,
impious vavasor, Robert! * Thus does the pulpit secure its
"examples" for the morrow.
John Waldeby's prologue to his homilies on the Creed
introduces us to a fragment of contemporary autobiography
from the life of a distinguished preacher and Oxford doctor of
the "Friar Hermits of the Order of St Augustine."2 In con-
temporary records he appears to be occasionally confused with
his brother Robert, Archbishop of York, and member of the
famous anti-Wycliffite Council of 1382, who retired eventually
to the same peaceful Yorkshire friary at Tickhill. The dedica-
tion of the work is appropriately made to an Abbot of St
Albans3, since the monks of Tynemouth ("ubi regis Oswini
martyris sunt ossa venerabiliter translata"), at whose request
the writing was undertaken, belonged to an ancient cell of the
great abbey4. They had invited him to preach to them, and had
been impressed by his eloquence. Waldeby then, who calls
himself " ordinis Sancti Augustini minimus, inter sacrae paginae
professores indignissimus " in the fashionable University style5,
provides an interesting example of an Austin friar in the pulpit
of a Benedictine priory6. It reminds us that in spite of the bitter
things which a son of St Albans could say of the objectionable
behaviour of the friars, and of the contempt which the latter
1
MS. Add. 33956, fol. 82: "Hec narravit fr. Baudellzinus Cubaud (?)
coram multis fratribus."
2
MS. Roy. 7. E. ii, fol. 50; MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 150, etc.
MS. Bodl. 687 is described as a Latin set of sermons on the gospels, through-
out the year, by John de Waldeb}, and is stated to have been written in 1365
(Western MSS. Bodl. Cat. Madan and Craster). This I have not seen as yet.
His order is that generally known as the Austin friars. (MS. Roy. 7. E. ii,
calls him in the explicit, " ordinis heremitarum.")
3
4
This will be Abbot Thomas de la Mare (1349—96).
Granted to the abbey in 1093.
6
Rev. H. S. Cronin's attempt to read a special meaning into similar
phrases used by Roger Dymmok at the opening of his Liber contra Errores. ..
Lollardorum, just published for the Wyclif Society
6
(1922)—see p. xii—is
quite mistaken. See above, p. 51.
MONKS AND FRIARS 65
could show in return, it was yet quite possible for happier
relations to exist between them. These twelve sermons, as the
author tells, had been delivered originally to lay-folk in York.
Hence the good monks of Tynemouth may have wanted to make
use of them from the manuscript for a similar kind of audience
in their own convent church. Waldeby explains, at all events,
that he had not forgotten to do their bidding. When on his return
to the friary at York he found himself overwhelmed with the
crowds, he fled away to "Tikkille, our solitary place," and there
amidst a peace suited to contemplation, drew up from scattered
notes "in cedulis et membranis," what he calls "a serious tract."
A Cambridge manuscript of the treatise contains, in addition to
this and companion expositions on the Lord's Prayer and the
Ave Maria, a dozen extra sermons on independent themes,
which reveal an ascetic mind of even more than the usual mor-
bidity and pessimism. Such texts as "Better is death than a
bitter life,"1 " I t repenteth me to have made man,"2 "Be not
conformed to this world,"3 and that unending cry of the
mediaeval preacher—"The days are evil!"4—suggest a verit-
able Jeremiah in the midst of the city. There is certainly nothing
of the popular dealer in "fablis or flaterynge" about this friar.
In one of these discourses5 Waldeby himself repeats an old
pulpit warning against over-emphasis of the mercy of God, and
neglect of the terrors of future punishment. It is a justification
of his own favourite method. "Wherefore," says Bartholomew
{On the Properties of Things), "that bells sound better when a
North wind is blowing, than when it is a South wind."6 " Note
further, that if the master is away, boys in school fail to apply
themselves to their books. But as soon as they hear his stern
voice, their eyes are on the page. So is it with the frightening of
sinners, who at present do not study the Commandments of
God, which are their lesson-books." A brief note upon a
1 2
3
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 188 b.4 Ibid. fol. 185 b.
fols. 176 b and 193. fol. 195; cf. in Bromyard, S.P.
6
A sermon on preaching (fol. 177 et seq.). Text, simply " Jhesus." This
sermon contains English phrases, as do some others, cf. his opening: "Tria
me movent accipere hoc thema, viz. dede, nede and spede. Primo dede, scil.
predicationis. . .," etc.
8
" Sic in proposito, ventus Borialis est frigidus, et asper, et significat
verbum predicationis asperum contra vicia, et talis aliquando ad correctionem
viciorum melius sonat." See further in Chap vm, below.
66 MONKS AND FRIARS
manuscript in the British Museum records the year and place
of the author's death: "Johannes Waldebeius obiit Eboraci,
I393-" 1
John Bale's manuscript catalogue of Carmelite writers2, may
serve in the place of actual sermons, to remind us here of the
one remaining Mendicant Order of importance. For the years
1350 to 1450 there may be reckoned from it roughly no less than
forty names of sermon-compilers, many of them responsible for
more than one collection. Cardinal Gasquet is surely right when
he argues that if such lists survived for the other Orders,
especially those of the Preachers and Minors, the total output
would amount to a figure considerable indeed. To-day it is
difficult to trace any of these Carmelite productions among the
manuscripts that are left. The authors and their work are alike
forgotten. But here and there Bale himself preserves a note on
some great pulpit reputation of the past. William Badby,
Richard Maidstone, John Swaffham, for example, were once
distinguished preachers of the court. Two of them are declared
to have been the especial favourites of John of Gaunt, "time-
honoured Lancaster," while the last-named appears to have won
a bishopric on the strength of his abilities in haranguing before
these great men of the realm3. Another, Robert Mascall, ex-
cellent "in reproof of vice and dissemination of virtue,"4 like-
wise attained to the see of Hereford in 1404. In the light of
such triumphs it is easy to understand the ceaseless warnings of
others against pulpit pride and pulpit flattery, against those who
are the very devil's own horns in his hunting after souls—
"blandientes in predicationibus suis, et querentes ab hominibus
gloriam."5 Bromyard, the friar doctor, knows as well as any
man the cunning hypocritical ways by which the unscrupulous
rise to power and dignity in the Church. On the small scale
Rypon's unbeneficed clerk had preached so lustily for the parish
1
MS. Roy. 8. c. i, fol. 1. With Waldeby compare Thos. Scrope, the Car-
melite recluse, as described in Chap, in here. Another sermon by an Austin
friar of the period, one Mag. Walter Herdeby ("in ecclesia virginis,"
i.e. St Mary the Virgin, Oxford) is reported in MS. Digby, clxi, fol. 2,
which I have not seen (cf. History of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, 1892,
P- 149)-
2 3 4
5
MS. Harl. 3838. Bangor, c. 1376. Ibid. fol. 83 b. fol. 90.
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 54: "Tales predicatores lactant homines lacte
adulationis."
MONKS AND FRIARS 67
"curates," until with the coveted living won, he lapsed into
silence and idleness for the rest of his days1. So now others,
"whose duty it is to be harsh as lions against sinners, are fawn-
ing hounds that wag their tails, not faithful sheep-dogs but lap-
dogs, eating up the luscious tit-bits that lords and ladies throw
to them." 2 Some were only willing to preach to the rich, not
to the poor. Some made especial point of rebuking and ex-
aggerating the vices of the lower classes, while keeping a tactful
silence about the sins of more favoured aristocrats3. Woe to the
fashionable sycophants of the pulpit!
In contrast to this mood Bale mentions a characteristic
feature of a good deal of Mendicant preaching when he says of
John Thorp, 'a very frequent preacher to clergy': "He did not
fear to reproach even the bishops for their sins and short-
comings." In the Sumtna Predicantium of the English friar
preacher we have remarked already upon the full blast of the
trumpet against the monstrous "regiment" of prelates, and
these outspoken denunciations are amongst the most curious
phenomena of the mediaeval pulpit. Of all examples in our
sermons themselves, none is more striking and unexpected
than one which occurs in a vernacular homily collection of the
fifteenth century.4 A preacher, presumably of quite inferior
rank, if not the humble priest of the parish, acting as sub-
stitute in the pulpit for the bishop on an emergency, ventures
to criticize the conduct of both Pope and prelates before lay-folk,
in the very presence of the same visiting bishop himself. From
the speaker's own remarks we happen to know that this was the
case. Similarly, though in less spectacular fashion as we read
it to-day, Brother Staunton, aforementioned, in his discussion
of the Sixth Commandment, summarily consigns to the gallows
of hell "the bishops and other prelates," who refuse to correct
their people's sins, adding that this will be the just judgement
of the Lord 5 ! However well-justified such statements may have
been, there can be no doubt that with the friar especially there
was also a bitter personal feeling in the matter. We have only
to listen to Bromyard's account of the kind of treatment meted
1 a
3
See above, p. 31. S.P.—Predic.
Bromyard adds here: " Non sic Johannes, qui arguebat Herodem."
4 E
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii. MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15, fol. 47.
5-3
68 MONKS AND FRIARS
out, for example, to his fellow-preachers by those holding the
keys which could unlock to them the diocese, to discover that.
Human wolves like the usurer and the prostitute, he asserts,
find in the bishops supporters rather than enemies. As for
the faithful dogs, in their attempts to keep such away from the
flock of Christ, these they will "assault, restrict, expel." "More
willingly would they keep a thousand usurers and as many
prostitutes in their own city than twenty friars." In spite of its
obvious malice, Matthew Paris' description of the friars'
preaching does seem to have a certain resemblance to the facts
that have just been cited—'' in predicationibus suis vel adulatores,
vel mordacissimi reprehensores!"
Enough has been said already to make it clear by now that if
the author of the ponderous Summa just quoted, will tell us
nothing about himself, his book will prove a veritable "specu-
lum vitae " from the point of view of the Mendicants of his
time1. The ascertainable facts of John Bromyard's own life,
apart from his writings, are soon exhausted2. The tradition of
his early associations with the county of Hereford, in which
lies the village whose name he bears, can now be substantiated
by reference to the Ordination Lists in the Episcopal Registers
of the diocese. His reputation as a formidable opponent of
John Wycliffe3, together with the fact, already noted, of his
presence at the Second Session of the famous London Council
at the Blackfriars in 1382, is important when his revelations on
the state of the Church are in question. So, too, is his tenure
of the Chancellorship at Cambridge4, about the year 1383.
1
MS. Roy. 7. E. iv, originally belonging to Rochester priory, is the great
Brit. Mus. MS. of this work. MS. Harl. 106 contains numerous odd excerpts
(cf. fols. 34, 75, 263, 313, etc.). For the numerous printed editions see my
note in the opening of Chap, vi, here. MS. Roy. 10. c. x is a fine copy of his
Tractatus Juris Civilis et Canonici, apparently identical with the printed
Opus Trivium, which seems to be a shortened compendium, with extra
subject-headings, of the Summa Pred. (ed. Paris, 1500 etc.).
2
Oudin {Comment, de script, eccl. antiq.) gives the best account, I think.
See also Qu£tif et Echard. Bede Jarrett {Engl. Domins.) confuses him with
a Robert de Bromyard, an earlier figure (see Roll of Household Expenses of
Rich. Swinfield (Camden S.), vol. i, p. 145), D.D. Oxon. 1289, Prov. 1304,
died 1310.
3
It is worth noting that Bromyard occurs amongst the distinguished
opponents of Wycliffe given in J. Hurter, Theologiae Cathol. Nomenclat. Lit.
vol. ii (1906), col. 680.
4
Appointed c. 1380—90. See Fuller, Hist, of Univ. of Camb. (ed. 1840),
pp. 69, 122 (he suggests Bromyard was sent to Cambridge from Oxford
MONKS AND FRIARS 69
Mr Fletcher, in a sketch of the Blackfriars of Oxford, mentions
that "when the Fifth Visitation of the English Dominican
province was made, by cutting off the dioceses of Bath and Wells
and Exeter from the old Oxford Visitation, John Bromyard was
appointed vicar in 1397."1 Finally, the date which is given on
a manuscript of his work in the Bodleian Library suggests that
he was still active in the year 14092. With the Summa in hand
let us now review the more general features of the situation
as presented to the sight of this distinguished son of St
Dominic.
First, the life of the faithful friar evangelist remains an
arduous one. He need not even set out with Robert de Braibrok
or John de Stone on an expedition to distant Saracens3 to realize
that, as long as some bishop's license throws open to him an
English diocese. If that fails he might yet turn his attention to
the Jews, who since the first days of Dominican enterprise at
Oxford had been the especial care of that Order, so well fitted
by its learning to wrestle with the arguments of "blinded"
" on design, to ferret out the Wicklivists (to whom he was a professed enemy)").
Wood (Athen. Oxon. vol. i, p. 161) states that Bromyard was also sometime
Chancellor at Oxford; but there seems to be no foundation for this tenure
which Wood calls probably unique. See also Bale, Pits, etc. For the Black-
friars' Council of 1382, see Fascic. Zizan. (Rolls S.), p. 289. As this describes
him as "fr. Praed. Joh. Bromyerde, Cantabrigiae," Fuller's date (c. 1390)
for his transference to this university is probably too late.
1
2
Blackfriars of Oxford, p. 11.
MS. Bodl. 859, fols. 44—227 (Distinctiones mag. Joh. Bromyard, A.D.
1409). I believe that I have now traced Fletcher's mention of the year 1419
as a last date connected with the career of Bromyard, to its probable source,
in W. Eisengrein's Catalogus testium veritatis.. ., ed. 1565, p. 160. Oudin
refers to " Eisengrenius " for mention of this date. When, however, we turn
to the Catalogus in question, we find that it is the habit of the compiler to
group his writers "before the year so-and-so," and under the particular
heading "ante. . .1419" occur the names of Rich. Rolle, Thomas Netter of
Walden, and John of Bromyard, in this order. Now since Rolle lived c. 1290—
1349, Netter c. 1380—1430, and Bromyard would come somewhere between
them, this date 1419 can have no claims to any precision. My final reference
to the Bodleian MS., date 1409, therefore still holds the field for the present.
The Dominican writers in The English Dominican Province (Cath. Truth
Soc), 1921 (cf. p. 75, etc.) have obviously taken their reference blindly from
Fletcher's article in the Reliquary.
3
Close Rolls (Record Off.), 14 Edw. II (c. 1321), p. 326. Cf. Reg. Anim.
(MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9): "(Religiosi) de licencia suorum prelatorum,. . .
possunt licite accederead saracenos pro verba Dei predicando." Cf. Cal. of
Pap. Records, vol. iv, p. 106, for a license to an English monk and twelve
others " to go and preach the Word of the Lord in the lands of the Infidels,"
in 1373, etc.
70 MONKS AND FRIARS
children of the synagogue1. Bromyard himself, who reckons
preachers amongst the seven classes of good labourers in the
world, seems to speak with personal acquaintance of the toils
of worthy religious, "attenuati et vexati laboribus et infirmi-
tatibus," true followers alike of the Man of Sorrows and their
own indefatigable Founders. Passages like that which discusses
with an intimate knowledge and sympathy not unworthy of the
best type of modern social worker the problem of the prostitute2,
compel us to believe that there were still friars of the noblest
pattern, consecrated to holy service amid the mediaeval slum and
its outcasts.
'Twas August, and thefiercesun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green.
I met a preacher there I knew, and said—
"111 and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?"
" Bravely!" said he; " for I of late have been3
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ "
Among their number there would be those who might com-
plain with justice that they had toiled all night and gained
nothing but kicks and blows, and insults:
Messangers to bid men come to heven, as doctors and prechers of
the word of God, as thei do now daye by daye, but 3e sett not by hem,
the more harme is. Som go yn to youre citte, that is to youre unclene
felishippe, as to the taveron, and to other unhoneste place. Som to
youre unthrifty merchandize, full of usure, okre, and other falsenes.
Some taken is prechers and punyssh hem unto the dethe. But what
shall the kynge do thereto, this kynge of kynges ? Certeyn, sir, as4Criste
hymselfe seid, he shall lat slee hem, and brenne the cite of hem .
Though Bromyard, in common with his fellows, speaks more
than once of the heavenly pilgrim fleeing through the pestilent
scenes of earth, his mind stopped, as the cautious traveller
1
There is interesting evidence of this in the S.P.-—Fides, where Bromyard
developes lengthy arguments for the benefit of their conversion, doubtless
intended to be used in sermons addressed to them. For the London " Domus
Conversorum," given by Henry III, in 1233, see M. Paris, Chron. Maj.
2
Cf. S.P.—Luxuria: " . . .Aliae dicunt quod si peccatum illud dimitte-
rent, non haberent unde viverent cum prole sua, quia, si homines illos, qui eas
propter illud exhibent, vel munera eis dant, derelinquerent, paupertate
deficerent... .Aliae, quod vi opprimuntur...," etc.
3
Matthew Arnold, East London.
4
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 56 b. Cf. the Vernon MS. poem in E.E.T.S.
117, p. 684; and Gesta Rom., 15th cent. Engl. vers., E.E.T.S. ed., pp. 30, 31.
MONKS AND FRIARS 71
stops his nose, from the noisome places, yet he knows also the
value of the good life in a naughty world, lived out'' inter malos."
"As the brightness of stars and candle is better seen and shines
more brightly by night than by day," he says, "so are they who
dwell in the midst of a perverse people."1
The obstacles and counter-attractions that beset the preacher's
path and made it thorny enough, were many. There were the
smartly-dressed ladies who with bewitching looks led onlookers
away to the dances2. Not even the twelve apostles themselves,
says Bromyard bitterly, would have held the attention of an
audience in their presence. There were the shows, the miracle-
plays, the taverns, the witches and magicians, Sunday dinners
and Sunday sports, the summer joys of the open-air, and many
things more, permanently arrayed against them3. Hark to the
devil's bell calling the worshippers to his evil sanctuary, the
merry beat of the drum, the ribald songs of the dancers, the
tempting wares and dainties of the world's great Vanity Fair!
" .. .Thei taken noon of goddis word; thei rennen to interludes
with gret delijt; 3he—that is more reuthe!—to strumpetis
daunce. The preest for hem mai stonde alone in the chirche; but
the harlot in the clepyng [chepyng? = market-place] shal be hirid
for good money to tellen hem fablis of losengerie."4 But
even within the pale of the Church itself was another foe, the
hostile parish rector, who could often bar access to the very
pulpits the friar was most anxious to command. So formidable
became the struggle between them that it passes into the pages
of contemporary literature as a byword of the times. The
author of Piers Plowman's Vision repeats Fitzralph's complaint
about the rival popularity of the friar confessors, and describes
1
2
S.P.—Conversatio.
Cf. the earlier story told by Etienne de Bourbon (see Anecd. Hist. p. 161)
of the dancers who interrupted an open-air sermon with their songs—
developed into a favourite sermon exemplum of later times.
3
Such references are most numerous, especially in the S.P. (cf. Audire,
passim): " Loquitur trufator, loquitur vetula, loquitur detractor, loquitur
sortilega de his quae ad damnationem pertinent animarum, et multos habent
auditores;. . .loquitur Christus, et ejus ministri,. . .et dicunt 'quis est hie?'
(Eccl. 13)." " [Diaboli] volentes ire ad verbum Dei ducunt ad tabernam vel
spectacula.. . . " Cf. Brunton, MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176: " Isti tamen ad
longam dietam libenter vadunt ad luctas, nundinas, et spectacula, ad vanam
recreationem corporum, ubi vix ad unum miliare laborant ad audiendum
sermonem."
1
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 37.
72 MONKS AND FRIARS
the ravages of Wrath in terms of the ensuing contest between
them and the outraged parsons. In the "Crede," the arch-
enemy of Mendicants tells how "thei comen in to combren the
chirche by the coveiteise of his craft, the curates to helpen. And
now they haven an hold, they harmen full many."1 Chaucer's
friar of the Somnour's Tale must repeat the well-worn charge—
" Thise curats been ful negligent and slowe."2 By the time John
Skelton is reached, the application of friars to hold forth in the
parish churches furnishes a whole episode of humour for a
"Merrie Tale." 3 Even bishops' Registers are not without
their side-light on the matter. Laymen explain at a parochial
visitation, for example, with regard to the preaching of their
vicar, that whereas his predecessors had been wont to call on
friars for the purpose, the present incumbent did not care for
them, and gave little encouragement if they happened to appear
on the scenes4.
Into the general history of this unhappy struggle, it is im-
possible to enter fully. The main issue at stake can be traced
with ease in the records of Conciliar and Papal decrees5. It is
concerned with the question as to whether friars had the right
to preach, and, incidentally, to hear confessions, without the
special leave both of the bishop of the diocese and the particular
"curate" concerned. Before our special period has dawned,
however, an elaborate body of legislation has made its appear-
ance, to safeguard the situation6. The Mendicant preacher must
not preach in the parish church itself without the rector's per-
mission. Neither may he preach to parishioners in some other
spot, when the rector or his chosen substitute wishes to address
them. This was even made to apply to conventual houses in the
neighbourhood, except where situated in University towns7.
1
2
Skeat's ed. (E.E.T.S.), 1. 461, etc. 3
1
Cant. Tales, Somn. Tale, 1. 1816. Merrie Tales of Skelton, No. 8.
6
Colyton, Devon, 1301. (Reg. Bp. Stapledon, Ex. vol. ii.)
Cf. in our period a mandate of Simon Langham, Archbp. of Canter-
bury, "contra fratres mendicantes," 1366 (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 64).
Also the limiting Bull of Pope Martin V, in 1418; and, for the earlier Papal
privileges granted, relevant Bulls of Gregory IX, Alexander IV, Boniface
VIII, etc.
6
7
Cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. here (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40 b, etc.).
" . . . [nee] in habitaculis suis juxta parochiam ipsam constitutis, nisi loca
ipsa in studiis generalibus fuerint. Tune enim licet eis in loco et tempore
consuetis ad clerum facere publicam sermonem sine licentia rectoris." (Ibid.)
MONKS AND FRIARS 73
If, furthermore, the prelates have convoked their clergy for the
same time of day, then must the friars desist also. At other
times, it is true, they may preach lawfully in public streets, in
their own houses, at funerals, and at their own celebrations.
"Yet this restriction must be observed, that wherever they
preach, they shall not disparage the 'curates,' nor draw away
their parishioners from the churches, nor say anything calcu-
lated to discourage them from payment of tithes or other
ecclesiastical dues, nor otherwise corrupt their minds." 1 Behind
the careful summary, as a matter of fact, there lay a world of
violent speech and opposition. On the one side, Fitzralph of
Armagh, arguing fiercely in London against those who deny that
"the ordenary persoo'n is more worthy to be chese than any
freris person" as the parishioner's shrift-father2, is followed by
a line of successors. Over fifty years later, indeed, a prominent
doctor like John Whitheyd, S.T.P., copies Fitzralph in a Sunday
sermon at Dublin, and gets summoned before Convocation for his
pains3. On the other side, the reminder to friars that" alle men of
religion beeth acorsed that speketh in sermons other elliswhere
a3enst payenge of tythinges" might only appear to have in-
flamed them to fiercer opposition. Mr A. G. Little, quoting
from Anthony Wood, describes how "in the years 1423 and 1424
there were nothing but heart-burnings in the University
occasioned by the friars, their preaching up and down against
tithes."4 The same scholar gives us, in his study of the Oxford
Greyfriars, the story of William Russell5, Warden of the London
House, of William Melton6, and others, arrested now by the
archbishop, now by the University itself for a similar offence;
finally of the Graduation oath at Inception imposed on all
faculties at Oxford, explicitly disavowing the views of Russell.
1
Further: " . . .Alioquin, si presumant aliquid dicere in sermonibus
contra solutiones decimarum, ipso facto excommunicati sunt."
2
3
See MS. Add. 24194, fol. 8.
See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, pp. 334—5. He seems to have spoken of the
friars, "qui dicunt subditis non teneri confiteri eorum curatis," as "thieves,
wolves and robbers." He may be called "prominent," as he appears among
the archbishop's special "consiliarii et ministri," who conduct the trial of
Sir John Oldcastle for heresy, in London, 25th September, 1413. (See
Fascic. Ziz. (Rolls S.), p. 443.)
4
5
See Grey Friars in Oxford, especially pp. 85, 86 and 257.
For the sermon of 1425 see Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 434.
6
See also Bekyng. Corresp. (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 248 et seq.
74 MONKS AND FRIARS
The Mendicant campaign, however, had not been without its
effect. Says a contemporary document:
There has arisen in the province of Canterbury no little scandal,
and serious revolts against the clergy have appeared. Many there
are who are striving to withdraw such tithes; many have already
actually withdrawn them; and in truth it is feared that more will be
hindered from payment of such tithings, to the very great impoverish-
ment and obvious injury of curates and particularly of vicars1.
Armagh's own description of the kind of propaganda referred
to had been clear enough:
And so dooth, as we seith comounliche, confessoures of freres,
and telleth openliche that 3evers of almes in tythinge, of wynnynge
of chaffare, beeth nou3t i-holde to paie tithynges of breed, of wyn, of
ale, and of other smal thynges2....
That the homiletical attacks of the friars do often throw grim
light on the unquestionable vices and degradation of the seculars
will have been gathered from an earlier chapter. The heretical
theme of brother Thomas Richmond of the Friars Minor of
York is an example, only too well justified indeed by accumu-
lated evidence of every kind. Preaching in the vernacular in
the year 1426, to a vast concourse of clergy and laity in a
picturesque spot on the outskirts of the city, he had declared
in Waldensian fashion: "A priest fallen into mortal sin is not a
priest. Again I say that he is not a priest; and thirdly I say that
before God he is no priest."3 His attack, which broadens into
1
2
See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 452. (Prov. Conv., London, 1425.)
MS. Add. 24194, fol. 9 b. With this compare the interesting warnings
of the fifteenth century vernacular homily collection Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S.,
O.S. No. 115, p. 33): " . . .And all religious persons that in preaching or in
any other place say any words to make the people of evil will to pay their
tithes" (from Extrav. de poenis, Clem. c. 3, de pp. 5, 8). Again: "And all
religious men that stir not them that are shriven of them to pay their tithes,
if they preach afterwards—'till they have stirred their consciences to amend-
ment." Similarly (in Latin) in MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40 isb: specifying—"scil.
j a dominica, iiijlsa, et ultima Pasche, et in festis Ascens Dom1, Pentecostis,
Nativit S" Joh Bapt., Assumptis et Nativit18 Beate Marie, studeant expresse
18
informare audientes ut decimas persolvant, ac etiam sibi confitentes similiter

instruant...." Notice how the monk Rypon, at Durham, in his sermon
(cf. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 109 b) does his duty in this respect, warning his
congregation against depriving the Church of "decimas, oblationes, pos-
sessiones, cantarias, vel talia debita."
3
" Sacerdos in peccato mortali lapsus, non est sacerdos. Iterum dico quod
non est sacerdos; et tertio dico quod non est sacerdos coram Deo."
MONKS AND FRIARS 75
a developed argument for the right of secular judges and lay-
folk to cleanse the Church of its immoral priesthood, by laying
hands on the offenders and clapping them into jail, may savour
of Lollardy, but it is only one step, a logical and practical step,
beyond the denunciations of the eminent anti-Wycliffite Brom-
yard. Of incontinent priests the latter had himself asserted that
the "swinish life" ("vitam porcinam") many of them led, had
infected the whole Church, and threatened its downfall.
Although such proposed violation of the Rights of Clergy as
Richmond suggested would not have commanded his assent,
yet Bromyard, like other orthodox, turns sometimes with a
wistful eye, as Wycliffe and the Reformers turned, to the civil
princes1, hoping that with their aid it may be possible to achieve
what a vice-ridden, demoralized prelacy could never do by its
own effort. The pulpit relations between curatus and itinerant
fill him with dismay. Many rectors and "curates" care little
enough about the spiritual welfare of their folk. They think
only of what profit may be made out of them.
And this is clear from daily example and experiment. For, the
dogs who are willing to guard the flock, that is to say, the poor
Mendicants, they restrict, because they fear that their own emolu-
ments will be less. But "there were they in great fear, where no fear
was." Because the richer gain would have been theirs, as much
through the instruction as the good example of the preachers. This
is obvious in their action, however, that more do they fear the loss
of moneys than of souls. And thus, contrary to the practice of good
shepherds, they neither cherish nor support 2such dogs, that is, the
preachers, but rather hinder and harass them .
1
Cf. S.P.—Juramentum: "Si principes et domini moderni talia (punish-
ments) nunc ubique terrarum contra turpiter jurantes ordinarent, citius ipsi
quam predicatores corrigerent; quia citius metu poenarum sensibilium
quam metu poenarum eternalium quas predicatores eis minantur talia
dimitterent. . .," etc. See also under Nobilitas. For the same in other sermon
collections, cf. MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 146 b : " . . .And trewly this gret
wronge and myscheff may not be amended withouten he[l]pe of temporall
lordes,—as, wold Jhesu, that thei wold do here besenes to amende it. And
3iff thei see prestehode defawtiff, or unclene of lyvynge, and thei wold
compleyne to the bishoppes, I wene fully that itt shuld be amended; for I
wene the faders of the churche wold punysche as the law wold, iff thei were
spoken thus to, and trewly.. .. And iff it so happe that anny of the prelatis
wold be negligent, and not amende thise defawtes, me semeth, an oure
soneraygne lord of is goodness wold bid them take hede to suche defawtes,
I have no dowte that it shuld sonne be amended."
2
S.P.—Custodia. Cf. above, p. 46 (Rypon, etc.).
76 MONKS AND FRIARS
A Cambridge manuscript, containing sermons and a short
" Ars Predicandi," will be found to provide an illustration of the
arguments on the other side1. They are embodied here in an
interesting Petition of the Rectors of London against the Men-
dicant inroads, undated, but belonging apparently to the early
fourteenth century. From its clauses we may gather that
"the said friars in their public preachings maliciously slander
the rectors of the churches in the aforesaid city, with evil
reports of their vice and folly; and frequently in hateful manner
they preach foul and scandalous things about them, to their
prejudice, no little hurt, and annoyance." Some of these Men-
dicants are suspected of having no proper preaching license
from their superiors2. Moreover, they are accused, in addition,
of tacitly deluding their audiences into the belief that they
possess special authority to give a general absolution3 beyond
anything in the power of the ordinary "curate." Finally, when
haranguing, or hearing confessions, they fail to warn the people,
as indeed they are bound to do, to confess to their own parish
priest at least once in the year; and this to the imminent peril
of their souls. Another anonymous tractate, now in the British
Museum, of about the year 1383, "against the friars' license to
preach,"4 calls to witness the gentle advice of St Francis himself
in his Rule5 and Testament6. The writer then proceeds in a
similar spirit:
After all, are not the friars linked with the priests in the preaching
office to be their helpers? And if so, then the latter still remain the
true pastors and principal labourers, nor has any man the right to
take from them that preaching office. But they alone are the reapers
in the Lord's field and the brothers are there to collect the ears that
1
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg. iv. 32, fol. 124 et seq.
2
Cf. the warning of the Council of Salzburg, 1386 (Labbe, S. Cone.
vol. xxvi, col. 729): " Volumus tamen quod nequaquam dicti rectores ipsos
(i.e. mendicants) invitent, vel admittant, nisi de proponendo verbum Dei a
suis superioribus licentiam habeant."
3
Cf. here Reg. Bp. Brantingham (Exet.), pt. i, p. 567 (entry for 1384-5);
and pt. ii, p. 711 (entry for 1390): Chaucer,4 Cant. Tales: James the Cistercian
in MS. Roy. 6. E. vii, fol. 162. MS. Roy. 7. E. x, fol. 63 et seq.
6
Reg. ii, cap. ix (ed. Quaracchi, p. 71): "Let the brothers not preach in
the diocese of any bishop, when he shall have forbidden it."
6
Ed. Quaracchi, p. 78: "If I had the wisdom of Solomon, and I came
upon poor priests of this world in the parishes in which they dwelt, I would
not preach against their will."
MONKS AND FRIARS 77
1
escape the reapers' hands ... .As often as the priest, then, is as
sufficient to preach in his own person as the friar, I do not see that
the latter ought to interfere with the preaching, thrusting his sickle
into another's harvest.
We may be still left wondering at the end which party was the
more justified in its complaints2. But in the Summa Predican-
tiutn there is manifest at least in one place a wiser tone, even
as in the above quotation from the side of the rectors. Its
Dominican author confesses of his party, "there are some who
preach with hatred in their hearts towards others. Let them
avoid all such hatred and contention (ne rector ecclesiae, dum
soli sibi jus predicationis vendicat, etiam aliis recte predicanti-
bus invidia se mordente contradicet)."3 A letter from Thomas
Netter of Walden to the prior and brethren of the Carmelite
house at York shows that even a friar superior was prepared
sometimes to correct such hostile attitude in a brother of his
own Order4.
Of pulpit controversy between the friars and the older
monastic Orders in the Church, one instance must suffice5.
In the year 1445 a certain leading Franciscan of Coventry,
John Bredon, S.T.P.6, preached a sermon, on the Sunday
before the Feast of St Andrew, in the parish church of St
Michael, attacking a jealously-guarded privilege of the prior
and convent of the cathedral church ostensibly in the public
interest:
1
"Ut dicitur in figura, Ruth v."
2
See also, in connection with the controversy over Confession, the opinions
of Henry Crump in Fascic. Ziz. (Rolls S.), p. 351.
3
4
S.P.—Predicatio.
c. 1426, Epist. Waldensis, in Mon. Hist. Carmel., pt v, pp. 474-5 (ed.
1907). (Thos. Walden to Mag. Jo. Bate, etc.): " . . .Communis plurimum
patrum nuper ad me pervenit querela, de verbo quod predicando Doncas-
triae in conventu frater Joh. Leysingus, in Purificationis festo elapso, pro-
tulit in prejudicium ecclesiae parochialis, dicendo oblationes ejusdem festi
ad arbitrium offerentis equa licentia posse fieri in aliis ecclesiis sicut in paro-
chiali, ut aliae oblationes votivae. . . (etc.). Et sequitur, debuit filius noster
eo cautius previdisse et vitasse periculum, quo audivit presentius constitu-
tionem capituli nostri jam ultimo Oxoniae celebrati, contra tales in prelatorum
prejudicium predicantes... . " (These Chapter Acts mentioned (Oxford,
1426) are now missing, see note, p. 475.)
5
This should be read in connection with Mr Little's Studies in Engl.
Franc. Hist. Chap, in, upon which it throws some fresh light.
8
He appears again, reported as "cursing" the preaching of the hermit
John Grace, at Coventry in 1424. See reference below, p. 127, n. 1.
78 MONKS AND FRIARS
Hyt is not unknowen that where the prior and covent of the
church Cathedral of our lady seynt Mary of this cite of Coventre,
persones proprietaries of the parishe chirches of the same, and their
predecessoures have had, posseded, and used to have as in rygth
of the seid chirche, of time that no minde of marine is the contrarie,
th* what person dye w' in this seide cite, suburbes, and hamelettes
of the same hath ben first brought to the seid cathedral chirche w*
apparail of wex, ther to a byde tille the masse and other observaunces
to cristen pepul perteynyng be complete, and had the corps ther
of then to be beried other at the same Cathedral chirche, or elles at
on of the parishe chirkes or chirche 3erde wer the person of the dede
corps was conversant, or ther wer in his live he chase his sepultur,
the seid apparail of wex remaynyng w* the seid Cathedral chirche to
the use of the same with taile and possession,—is gode as wele be the
lay (sic) spirituale as by the lawe temporal.
Against what may have seemed to some of the laity merely a
tiresome habit of the past involving unnecessary expense, and
to the Mendicants of the city the unfair advantage of rivals,
friar Bredon now thundered in no measured language, as we
shall see. Enemies from the convent itself were amongst his
audience, ready to snatch at his words. On the Sunday following
the feast, he repeated his challenge in the church of Holy
Trinity. Masters John Wardale and Richard Newport, we note,
are again present to witness against him, along with others.
Bredon's subsequent recantation which records the principal
statements of his two harangues is sufficiently interesting and
suggestive to justify further quotation at length:
" I frer Jhon Bredon," he confesses, "of the convent of this same
cite in the time of the holy advent of our lorde last passed [last], in
the parish chirches of this same cite, a3ennes the seid custom and
titul, as our soverain lorde the king, and the lordes spiritual and
temporal ben a certed, opunly prechid and affermed th' all maner
offeringes owed to be geven al only (to) theam that ministren the
sacramentes to the parishones. Also th* nether the pope, ne all the
world may compelle any man to offer any thing in the seid Cathedral
chirke. Also th* neither the pope, ne all the world may make but
that a fre man in his laste wille may dispose the lightes perteynyng to
his cors wher so ever he wille.
"And so I, inducing the parishons of the seid parishe chirches to
excute my purpose, bot that thei schulde boldely ber the lightes of
the cors fro that tyeme forward to their parishchirke or whether thei
elles wolde, not wythstondyng any contrare use, promitteng my self
MONKS AND FRIARS 79
to defende thaem th' so did, seyng that in Englond was not so leude
a cite as this cite of Coventre is, in keping and observyng the seid
customme, and promiteng my selfe to make this same cite free, so th'
the said prior and covent schuld not prevale to have theire said cus-
tomes, wich seyng mygth cause the pepul to turne their hertes fro
the seid prior and covent, and fro observyng the seid lawful custom.
And also that I seid that in Englond was not so covetous a plase as
was the priory of Coventre. Also that I, impugnyng the seide custom
by a nother unlawfull mene, seid and affermed that any custom how
long so ever hyt be, thogth hit be a hunderth 3eres, if hit (be) in
preiudice of comune wele, it is unlawfull. And that the seid custom
is in preiudice of comune good, by cause hit is preiudiciall to the
parish chirkes of holy Trinitee and sent Michel of Coventre, and
therfor that hit is unlawfull. Also that I seid that all onely thei that
ministren the sacramentes and ministren abowte the cors, as vicaris
and parish preestes schuld have the obevenciouns and profetes of
the cors, and not the monks of the priory which may not minister the
sacramentes. Also that I in my billes that I made to be sette upon
the chirke dores in the seide cite promised to deliver the pepul of the
same cite fro the thraldom of Pharoo, the whiche sownyth ajaynes the
seid Cathedral chirke and the lawful custom of the same.
" In all theis promisses by the lordes spiritual and Temporal, by
the commawment of our seid soveran lorde the king, duly examined,
is fownden mater upon the which mygth swe grete inconveniences
a3aynes the lawes of good, and of the chirke, and of our saide soveran
lorde, and also preiudiciall to the seid prior and convent.... " 1
The heavy hand of the temporal authority was evidently
ready this time to descend with that of the spiritual upon this
would-be liberator of the people. The outraged monks appealed
to the sovereign with success. Like the majority, when the heat
of the pulpit is over, Bredon recants, and "Pharaoh" triumphs
again for a season. But even this did not save the condemned
from the penalty of banishment from the town. John Law-
erne, S.T.P., monk of the convent of Worcester, not far away,
whom we shall meet again preaching his doctor's sermon at
Oxford, proceeds to enter the friar's recantation in his common-
place book 2 , not perhaps without some inward sense of jubilation.
1
The above is taken from a transcript of MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 4. 16,
generously supplied to me by the Rev. Canon R. M. Woolley, of Lincoln.
The recantation alone is printed in Leland's Collectanea, vol. v, p. 303. See
also in M. Dormer Harris, Life in an old English Town, pp. 326-27, with
reference to the Coventry Leet Book, etc.
2
It is from this Bodl. MS. that Leland has taken his copy of the Recanta-
tion. See here again later, in Chap, vi, below.
80 MONKS AND FRIARS
Finally, the story of this preaching rivalry has to be carried one
step further. For there is actual evidence that the friars quarrelled
among themselves, over "the limits " assigned to their houses—
'' for the purpose of making procurations of alms, or preachings." x
But enough of controversies and rivalries! It is to the glory
of the Mendicant preachers of all the Orders that, as champions
of the poor, they attacked the tyranny and oppression of lords,
the weaknesses of knights, the ravages of retainers, the cunning
and extortion of merchants, the corruption of the law, in short,
every conceivable form of injustice in the land. With passionate
violence they arraigned the social frivolities of the age in high
and low alike, the amusements men preferred to the holy
services of the Church. Nothing escapes their notice. To set
forth the details would require a volume as large as the present.
Nor, in very different vein, do we miss evidences of that more
frivolous, jesting element in their sermons, which, with the
elaborate theological "divisions," and hair-splittings over a
debased Scholasticism, was pilloried by Wycliffe, and has
passed into history, perhaps, as the chief feature of their
preaching, to the prejudice of the rest. This element, as might be
expected, however, is anything but characteristic of the Men-
dicant sermon literature as a whole. Like the tombs and in-
scriptions that perplexed the youthful Charles Lamb when in
church, the manuscript homily collections are naturally apt
to be recorders of the good, and let the evil be forgotten. Yet
indeed few English orthodox moralists of the age failed to in-
corporate their own rebuke for the preacher of "fablis and
lesyngis" and indecencies in some section of their written
sermons2. If we are inclined to associate such offences rather
1
From a Papal Inhibition of September 1395, drawn up "at the recent
petition of the custos, guardian, and brethren of the House of Friars Minor
at Cambridge," complaining of their impoverishment "by a certain small
House of the Order" at Ware, in Herts., "whose brethren extend the bounds
of their procurations so far toward Cambridge" that very great loss to the
former results. See Cal. of Papal Letters, vol. iv, p. 517.
2
E.g. Bromyard, S.P. (Audire, Predic. etc.)—("Aliqua grossa, et foeda,
et putrida, sic paleas, et hujusmodi": "apertam fatuitatem": "curiosa et
vana (et jocosa) quae aures demulcent auditorum," etc.) Rypon, MS. Harl.
4894, fol. 84 ("Non linguas turpia loquentes;. . .frivolas sive vanas. . . ").
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 54 ("Trufas et fabulas"). MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 46
("avertent ad fabulas"). MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 150b ("fables and
tryfuls"). So, too, the writers on Sermon Construction, like Walleys,
mentioned below, in Chap, vm, q.v.
MONKS AND FRIARS 81
with the pardoner than with the friar, it was at least the latter
who systematized the collection and preservation of the witty
and improper stories on a grand scale. Moreover, there is the
contemporary witness of the Council of Salzburg (1386) to
support the Wycliffite assertion: "religiosos, precipue fratres
mendicantes."1 In a world devoid alike of the newspaper and
the printed book, of the means of rapid communication by land
or sea, the itinerant orator had surely an opportunity which
any man of ambition might envy. The sermons themselves
show, it is true, that there were plenty of active sports, shows,
folk-dances, jugglers, to amuse the holiday crowd. But while
the rich could enjoy in the leisure and comfort of their own hall
the more substantial provision for the mind of minstrel's songs,
the wonders of costly romances, the actor's miming, if they
cared, for the poor there was little or nothing but the coarsest
fare in this direction. The bard of the courts had himself
degenerated. But the "joculator's " jokes and comments were
unspeakable for decent ears. He who would escape, in an age
of mental awakening, from the narrow round of daily manorial
duties, from the mere idle chatter of the pedlars and the inns,
the obscenities of the street entertainers, into a wider, more
fascinating world of interest and of wonder, might find it as he
listened to the Preachers. Here was a man trained in the schools
who could tell him of all the marvels of creation, from Bartho-
lomew or Cantimpratanus, in earth and sea and firmament2,
mighty " gestes " of the Romans, wondrous miracles of the saints
and martyrs. Modern preachers, eyeing the spoilt children of
the modern pew, may well envy the prospect that lay before our
mediaeval friar. Traveller, friend of the outcast, master alike
of the ecclesiastical and the popular tongue, with intimate
knowledge of the world as well as of books, he could mingle in
his discourse the latest "narration" with the mysteries of
nature, "to please in method and invent by rule"—"joculator
1
" . . . Saepe divagandi et dissolutions materiam mutuantur, ad scandalum
aliorum, et tanquam pseudo-prophetae fabulosis predicationibus audientium
animos plerumque seducunt."
2
Cf. Bromyard's own confession (S.P.—Predic.): " . . . curiositates et
declarationes et rationes philosophorum, et dubias naturas animalium, quae
omnialiteratorumaures demulcent . . . vel predicantium gloriam querunt. . . , "
etc.
82 MONKS AND FRIARS
Dei" of St Francis and sacred pedlar rolled into one—for ever
bringing forth out of his treasure things new and old1.
The age of Bromyard is actually an age when manuscripts
of the Travels of Maundeville can challenge the popularity of
almost any other work and come off triumphant, at least in
surviving numbers. Quite naturally, then, it is also the period
when great English versions of the preachers' "exemplaria"
are undertaken—such as Bartholomew's standard De Proprieta-
tibus Rerum2, the Gesta Romanorum and the Alphabetum
Narrationum. The very fact that the Church itself was driven
to combat both actor and acrobat in the open, would have
suggested to her in time the way in which to compete with them
for the ear and eye of the idle onlooker. Our learned Dominican
himself, who disapproves most heartily of all "light and shame-
less persons," like the "mimi et trufatores" (whether in the
pulpit or out of it)3, and with charming satirical humour likens
the idle prattler to a draughty vacant barn4, yet uses hundreds
of fables, anecdotes and "figures" natural and domestic in his
sermon book. Now and again the reader pictures the awakened
congregation, eagerly leaning forward to catch some fragment of
a traveller's reminiscence, as he describes the perils of Italian
roads, a vineyard custom in France he has observed, or some
game which is "commoner in parts beyond the sea."
John Bromyard belongs to a race of preachers who, for all
their learning, yet live close to life and nature beyond the pages
of books. They know all the everyday sights of the streets, the
ways of simple folk, even of domestic animals5, and can re-
produce them by way of illustrating a point with astonishing
charm and vividness. If, however, the Summa Predicantium
1
This very phrase of scripture is applied to the preacher's task by Odo of
Cheriton, in the Prologue to his Fables: "Paterfamilias debet proferre de
thesauro suo nova et vetera verba et exempla, quibus reficiatur fidelis
anima." (See Hervieux, Fabul. Lat. vol. iv, p. 174.)
2
Translated by Trevisa, 1398—9. Examples are MSS. Add. 27944, Harl.
614 and 4789. For the other works mentioned see here in Chap, vn,
below.
3
Yet, characteristically enough, is not above recommending their methods
in his
4
hints to preachers, elsewhere. (S.P.—Predic.: " sicut ergo mimus... . ")
"Grainge voide venteuse"; apparently a French proverb ("sicut venti
plus abundant in grangia vacua quam plena,. . .ita ventus verborum. .. ").
6
Bromyard actually mentions some disease of sheep, and describes the
altered habits of the pet monkey in its old age.
MONKS AND FRIARS 83
and the Gesta Romanorum represent the least harmful side of
this concession to the popular taste, there is also a worst. The
scandalous sermon parodies reproduced in the Reliquiae Antiquae,
the famous Sermons Joyeuses on the continent, would be almost
pointless if they had not had some kind of a real counterpart
in the contemporary pulpit. As a matter of fact we have better
reason to know that they did. There are even a few sermons in
English collections that remain1 which would fully justify the
rebuke of a fifteenth-century English preacher for those who
play to a vulgar gallery in the churches, "si come le cordelier
fesoit devant-hier."2
Maybe such specimens are in a very marked minority in the
manuscripts; yet so important for the subsequent history both
of preaching and of the Orders is this disastrous outgrowth of
vulgarity in the wider sense that its prevalence cannot be
doubted. This need not necessarily take the form of what
Higden calls "puerilis scurrilitas."3 Wherever in any age the
spirit of genuine piety and true learning is at a low ebb in the
Church, there is a tendency for the preachers to become mere
charlatans, masters of cheap emotions rather than of the arts,
with eyes set on the face of the crowd instead of the Crucified.
This was eminently Pecock's complaint of the preaching of his
day:
For manye, which nevere leernid ferther in scolis than her gram-
mer, kunnen syche textis bi herte and bi mouth, and kunnen, bi
textis, and by narraciouns and parabolis, and lijknessis, preche ful
gloriosely into plesaunce of the peple, and into profite of the peple,
and semen therfore and therbi ful wise. And if thei were weel
1
Cf. one or two sermons of the Festiall; Nich. Philip's Synodal sermon
in MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i; etc. For the far more numerous foreign examples,
cf. Hist. Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxvi, pp. 407, etc. (pr£dic. bouffon.); Meray's
Les Libres precheurs, vol. ii, chap, xi; Coulton, From St Francis to Dante,
p. 358, n. 7 (Appendix A).
2
From MS. All Souls Coll. Oxf. 182, quoted in Revue Crit. d'hist. et de
litt. (1870), vol. ii, p. 405. (A few lines are in P. Meyer's edition of Bozon's
Contes, p. xxviii, n.): "Mon amy, il m'est avis que un precheur ne devroit
mye parler si ordement devant le comon peuple.. . . Car combien que n'en
parle le plus honestement qu'ils pourront, il en y a encores des aucunes qui
le vueillent espondre malveysement; et pour cela il s'enfaut estre bien avysee
qui parlera devant les gens. Mieulx vault par raison fortune attendre, que
hastyvement ramper et sodoynement descendre."
3
MS. Bodl. s, fol. 2.
6-2
84 MONKS AND FRIARS
apposid in any of the textis, and parabolis, and othere precheable
processis, thei couthe not defende and meyntene eny oon of hem.
If, however, the opinion of such a man be held suspect, we can
match it from the other end of the intellectual scale with the
regret of our simple non-graduate preacher that "doctours and
wyse men of holy scripture " are so scarce. " 3iff suche men were
now adayes that the pepull myght fynde suche truste in, than
myght thei well say as holy scripture seyth—'Magister, scimus
quod verax es, et viam Dei in veritate doces.' 'n
Time was when the University friar had bid fair to be the
only serious champion of Biblical studies left. But the neglect
which in its hold upon the seculars had once given Adam de
Marisco and Roger Bacon their great opportunity to distinguish
themselves, together with this fatal attraction of "fables and
flattering," had now gripped the friars also. The great tradition
was allowed to perish, as we saw in discussing the clergy, at the
expense of more lucrative sciences. Richard de Bury's words,
in the first half of the fourteenth century, form a solemn in-
dictment of the Orders and the lack of adequate preparation for
their preaching task2. Books they now count as superfluities,
except for the few treatises of little worth on which they rely
for the "strange heresies " and "apochryphal imbecillities " they
scatter, "not for the refreshment of souls, but rather for tickling
the ears of their listeners." This same Holy Scripture, he de-
clares, is treated as though it were a commonplace, known to
everybody, though in reality its depth can never be probed by
lifelong study. Mere boys who have been attracted to the Order
are sent out on offensive preaching-and-begging expeditions,
without any proper instruction at all. Hence those who have
learnt least are often to be found the most aggressive in their
instruction of others. "For there grows up among your promis-
cuous flock of laity a pestilent multitude of creatures, who
nevertheless the more shamelessly force themselves into the
office of preaching, the less they understand what they are saying,
to the contempt of the Divine Word and the injury of souls."
("Resipiscite, pauperes Christi, et libros inspicite studiose!")
So doubtless the abuse spread, as the moralized story-books,
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 75. (Text, Matthew xxii, 16.)
2
Philobiblon, cap. vi (now attributed to Dominican authorship).
MONKS AND FRIARS 85
and the little sermon manuals (Bury's "quidam quaterni" per-
haps) , multiplied.'' Wax-Doctors," in the open pulpit, would after
all look precisely like other doctors, with the pillion of authority
on their heads, however little of real knowledge there might be
under it1. Judicious use of those gentle arts of "showing off
one's own knowledge " to advantage2, or of pleasing the crowd
with "vanities and curiosities," as described by Thomas
Walleys and others, would be almost sure to produce the de-
sired impression. So alas! "grees groon on out of gree, and
prechingis rennen arere, as hereof experience is over ofte in my
daies at Poulis Crosse takun."
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that even an element
of skilful stage-craft has its place along with the low-comedy of
the narrations or the high-flown phrases of the schools, in the
developed preaching of the friars in the open air3. Be that as it
may, the fact remains that judged by worldly standards it had
become at length a paying profession, capable of stimulating any
pride or avarice that its successful exponents might possess :
Certes many a predicacioun
Cometh ofte tyme of yvel intencioun4.
What clearer justification could there be for the poet Chaucer's
comment on " alle tho that prechen for to get worshipes, honour,
and richesse," or for Wycliffe's complaints of the friar's pride,
than the Austin friar preacher's own revelations in one of his
sermons5? Many, smitten with this most hidden disease, he
admits, will study nowadays not to serve God and their neigh-
bour better, as they ought, but to acquire a solemn name for
themselves, to "make themselves great," display their person,
1
See especially in this connection, (beside R. Pecock), Close Rolls,
13 Rich. II (Record Off.), p. 217, dated 1390, re false degrees purchased at
Oxford and Cambridge.
2
As Bromyard puts it (S.P.—Predic): "commiscendo cum semine Dei
subtilitates philosophicas, et vanitates...," etc. (See also note, above, p. 81.)
3
4
See here in Chap, v, below.
Chaucer, Cant. Tales (Pardoner's Prol.), 1. 407, and Romaunt of the Rose,
11- 5763-4-
5
Dr John Waldeby. MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 187: "Hec enim
occultissima pestis [temptatio vanae gloriae], ut arbitror, multos studiosos
viros latenter invadit et decipit, qui obtentu laudis aut favoris humani
aliquam scientiam seu doctrinam vigili studio querunt, non ut de se ipsis
humilius sentiant, nee ut magis in Dei et proximi dilectione proficiant, ut
deberent, sed ut solenne sibi nomen adquirant, ut se magnificent et ostendant,
et alios ibi in honore precellant" (cf. also MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 119, etc.).
86 MONKS AND FRIARS
and to be esteemed above other men. It was a day when the
devil could tempt men even to boast about their pulpit prowess1.
THE "PREACHING FOX"

(Christchurch Priory, Hants)
Worse still, apart from fame and promotions, there was wealth
too to be made out of the business. Again, it might surprise
1
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 52 (" quando temptat hominem ut glorietur de sua
predicatione"); cf. also Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 196 b (" ambitionem,
MONKS AND FRIARS 87
many to discover how often in a single composition Chaucer
refers to the ease with which friar and pardoner managed to
extract money and gifts from the credulous poor by their un-
scrupulous eloquence1—"prechinge the peple for profyt of
heore wombes," as Langland called it. Friar Bromyard and the
anonymous author of a Lollard tract entitled " Contra mendica-
cionem fratrum propter predicacionem verbi Dei" (probably
Purvey's) amongst the manuscripts of Trinity College, Cam-
bridge, use virtually the same phrase: "Preachers must not
preach for the gain of money, but for the gain of souls."2 A
vernacular sermon-compiler, no friend of Lollards, repeats the
typical warning that " he that will not preach God's word but he
be paid for his travail" is guilty of simony3. For the rest, a
clause in the Petition of Oxford University to Henry V, pre-
sented in 14144, bears out the direct statement of Wycliffe that
it was the Mendicant here who was the prominent offender.
In the picturesque language of his vernacular homilies the
fearless Reformer tells how friars "prechen the peple fablis and
falshede to plesen hem. And in tokene of this chaffare they
beggen after that thei have prechid, as who seith—' Gyve me thi
monei, that Y am worthi, bi my prechyng.' And this chaffare
is selling of preching, however that it be florished."5 It was,
gulam, et inanem gloriam inhiant et affectant"); Bromyard, S.P.—Predic. (" ut
piscarentur...laudeshumanas;. . . gloriam propriam querunt, etc."); Higden,
MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 2 ("fabulosa vanitas"); Walleys, MS. Harl. 635, passim;
MS. Harl. 45, fols. 70, 136, etc. ("As when a man precheth goddes word
to that entente to have worldliche mede or worschip therfore" (especially
mentions " mendinantes" later) etc.). Also Piers Plowman, A Text, 1. 55
et seq.; Ploughman's Crede, 11. 497, 574, etc.; Gower; Chaucer.
1
2
I have noted casually half a dozen in the Cant. Tales.
Bromyard (S.P.—Audire). Anon. Lollard (MS. Trin. Coll. bCamb. 333,
fol. 65 b). Cf. the Cistercian James (MS. Roy. 6. E. vii, fol. is7 ): "Fratres
mendicantes predicantes propter lucrum seu ad ostentacionem, et se com-
mendantes in suis predicacionibus, vel detrahentes prelatos...."
3
Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S., O.S. 115), p. 127. Cf. also Higden's warning for
the "Dei Venditores," in his Ars Comp. Serm. MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 1 b.
4
Artie. 35 (concerning friar preachers). (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 360):
" Quia verbum Dei, ut venale, contemnitur; dum plerique predicantium sine
mora et medio post sermonem mendicant, igitur, ut vitetur scandalum,
expedire videtur ut a mendicatione in ecclesiis fratres abstineant in futuro."
5
Vernac. Sermons (ed. Matthews, E.E.T.S.), p. 282; Latin Sermons
(ed. Wicl. Soc), vol. ii, pp. 57-58, etc. Cf. also A Poem on the times ofEdw. Ill
(Wright, Pol. Songs, Camden S. p. 331): "freres,. . .that wolde preche more
for a busshel of whete, than for to bringe a soule from helle." Jack Upland
(as before), p. 30: "Freer, what charite is this, to overcharge the people by
mightie begging, under colour of preching?"
88 MONKS AND FRIARS
then, but one natural step further for the worldly preacher who
had succeeded, to adopt a deliberately "lucrative" style of
preaching. This is half the secret, no doubt, of the ceaseless
warnings against pulpit flattery, flattery not only before lords
but the common people also1. "Pauper" indeed, in the cele-
brated dialogue attributed by some to Franciscan authorship,
goes so far as to suggest that the stern, health-giving element of
moral censure in the contemporary pulpit had thus been
actually driven from the scene altogether. With money-changers
and evil merchants in the midst of Holy Church2, the cry of the
faithful few grew louder and hoarser—"as friends cry to their
friend when they see fire or burglars threatening his house."3
The world, to them, was staggering on the brink of Doomsday
and final destruction, while everywhere, even in the very pulpits,
men scrambled madly after the gold that perisheth.
But to return from the circumference to the centre: it is
common knowledge how the Mendicant fell from his lofty
pinnacle of holy poverty, and how great was the fall thereof,
whether in respect of his character, his friends, his house, his
methods, or his organization. Difficult would it be to over-
estimate the effects of this calamity upon the reputation of the
Mendicants' preaching as a whole. Here, after all, was a funda-
mental discrepancy between word and action which no amount
of glossing or argument could conceal. In England the glaring
contrast was at least as old as the day of Matthew Paris, who
with malicious zeal recalls the lordly buildings erected but a
bare twenty-four years after the first Dominicans had set foot
on English soil. Even Eccleston, the Franciscan chronicler,
gives his strange witness to the fact that, through the worries of
house building, more than one gifted spokesman of his Order
1
MS. Add. 9066 vers. (c. 1440) of the Gesta Rom. (apparently added to the
original) has: "Prelates and prechours that in thise daies dare not, ne wille
not sey the trouthe, but flattre the peple. Wo shall be to such at domesday "
(E.E.T.S. p. 178). Dives et Pauper, prec. 5, cap. v, has: " I daresay that
flateringe of false prophetis and prechours, and of other spekers that blynde
the peple with plesaunt lesinges, ne wyl not undo to them ther wickednesse,
s principal cause of destruction of many realmys, and londes, people and
cetyes into thys day; as we might se at iye, if flateringe and lesingis blent us
not." See here, especially, the passage from MS. Salisb. Cath. 103, fol. 143
(unpublished Jacob's Well) as given on p. 189, Chap, iv, below.
' MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 119.
* Bromyard, S.P.—Predic.
MONKS AND FRIARS 89
had lost the inclination to preach, or at any rate to speak of the
more spiritual things1. From thence the contagion had spread
to their rich clothes and haughty mien, the company they
aspired to keep, even to the very trappings of their steeds. So
fastidious had the Mendicant become that the satirist of "the
Order of Bel-Eyse" hints that he might now object to any
preaching that involved exposure in the open air, or the risk
of an empty stomach2.
With the reopening of the long controversy over "wilful
beggary" in the heart of our period, whether in Oxford schools
or London church-yard, the prestige of friars in the pulpit
must have suffered a tragic blow. They might almost be said to
be ventilating their own hypocrisy. "Oon of that ordre (i.e.
Minors) prechede on al halowenday, as hit was reported to me,
and discreved foure degrees of povert, and seide that the fourthe
degree is of most parfit3nes of the gospel, and is to have nothing
in this world in propre nother in comyn, but begge with Crist."3
What if even Roger Conway, Minorite, "in concione Londini
nuper habita," or Richard Maidstone, Carmelite, elsewhere,
were theoretically right in their wearisome " conclusions " ? The
noble proportions of a Greyfriars tower at Richmond or the
pillared splendour of a Blackfriars church in Norwich, all the
little details of elaboration carefully noted down by the shrewd
author of the Ploughman's Crede, were further proof enough,
then, as now, that: "thai preche alle of povert, but that love
thai noght."4 Yet as late as the year 1464, we find the Car-
melite Henry Parker, with curious persistency, still joining
issue with the seculars over the same old problem, from the
cross at St Paul's. Actions, however, as even friars are ready to
admit, speak as loud as words, especially with the unsophisti-
cated layman. There can be little doubt, therefore, that the
somewhat overdrawn Lollard picture of Mendicant hypocrisy
represents none the less a very formidable widespread im-
pression made by this blatant inconsistency5. Apart from lofty
1
2
See De Adv. Minorum, cap. ix.
From MS. Harl. 2253, fol. 121, as quoted in Wright's Pol. Songs
(Camd. Soc), p. 146 (cf. Chaucer, Romt. of the Rose, 11. 6486-88).
3 4
6
MS. Add. 24194, fol. 15 b. In Reliq. Ant. vol. i, p. 323.
Cf. Chaucer, Romt. of the Rose, 11. 6181 et seq.; 11. 6482 et seq.; also
Jack Upland (p. 23, Rolls S., as before): "And in this minstrels ben better
90 M O N K S AND FRIARS
towers and sumptuous convents, the sermons give us hints of
growing partiality for the rich, in confessions and burials, in
letters of fraternity, in hospitality, and the like. More par-
ticularly in the habits of the preacher, men noted that the so-
called preaching expedition began to look dangerously like a
triumphant progress from house to house, and court to court,
"a3enst cristes owne sentence that sente his disciples to preche
the gospel, and seide 'passe 3e noujt from hous to hous.'" 1
Quant il vont par le pays
Al chief baroun ou chivaler
Se lerrount il herberger,
Ou a chief persone, ou prestre
La, ou il purrount acese estre. [acese = l s'ese?]
Mes, par seint Piere de Romme,
Ne se herbigerount ou povre homme,—
Taunt come plus riches serrount
Ostiel plustost demanderount2.
This gibe was intended for the friars Minor. But Dr Brom-
yard of the Blackfriars, also, has some very significant things to
say of Religious "who love rather to be with those reclining at
the court tables along with Herod, than in the prison-cell with
John." 3 He is speaking, in particular, of the friar who fawns
upon the rich for the good dinner he gets from them—"as
many do still."
than ye. For they contrarien not to the mirths that they maken. But yee
contrarien the gospell both in word and deed." (See, too, Wright, Pol. Songs,
Rolls S. vol. ii, p. 251.)
1
2
MS. Add. 24194, fol. 13 (Archbp. Fitzralph of Armagh).
Order of Bel-Eyse, as before. (Wright's Pol. Songs, Camd. Soc. p. 145.)
3
Cf. again, Chaucer, " to haunten other mennes table " (Romt. of the Rose,
1. 6600). In 11. 6171 and following, the poet is almost repeating Bromyard's
criticism:
" I dwelle with hem that proude be,
And fulle of wyles and subtelte;
That worship of this world coveyten,
And grete nedes cunne espleyten;
And goon and gadren greet pitaunces,
And purchase hem the acqueyntaunces
Of men that mighty lyf may leden;
And feyne hem pore, and hemselfe feden
With gode morcels delicious,
And drinken good wyn precious,
And preche us povert and distresse,
Andfisshen hem-self greet richesse."
MONKS AND FRIARS 91
For though in that place, namely at court, he may not behold the
head of John (i.e. the Baptist), yet he sees the widow's cow and the
poor man's pig. The poor man is imprisoned and spoiled for the
benefit of his master's table, and while the religious eats of the poor
man's substance, andflattersthe master, the rich man is lying in wait
to plunder the poor again.... And aflattererof this kind sits with the
rich in secret, and slays the innocent while he is in agreement with
the slayer. But, in truth, better it is1 to go to the house of weeping
than to the house of such a banquet .
One of the few "exempla" at first hand in the Sumtna deals
with a certain conversation which arose when in the writer's
presence a fellow friar was seeking hospitality for the night
from some man of property. If, however, the rich repelled him,
as on this occasion, the itinerant orator stood a reasonable
chance of sleeping in one of the "courts"—as the critic now
called them—of his own Order, so numerous had friaries
become2. These were the "Caim's Castels" so vigorously de-
nounced by Wycliffe, in which the newer Orders had now en-
trenched themselves in comfort, as we have seen, almost like
any Benedictine or Cistercian in his country retreat. Chaucer,
contrasting the apostles' practice with this luxury of the
modern preacher, in the Romaunt of the Rose, says sarcastically:
They neither bilden tour ne halle,
But leye in houses small withalle3.
Once again, then, the sorry tale has to be told, as in the case of
bishop and "curate," of decline, negligence, and corruption.
But the very voice of the Mendicant prophet crying of sin and
judgement to come, amid the failure and desolation, reminds us
that there were still able and fearless champions of virtue left—-
preching dayly sermondys inough,
with good examples full graciously4,
after the best traditions of their art.
1
S.P.—Adulatio. Bromyard here seems quoting from some tractate:
"de 12 abusionibus." See also A. G. Little, Stud, in Engl. Franc. Hist. pp.
128-9. (Jo. Wallensis, Ordin. Vitae Relig.)
2
Jack Upland, as before, p. 20: "And yet ye have more courts than many
lords of England; for ye now wenden throgh the realme, and ech night will
lig in your own courts; and so mow but right few lords doe."
3
1. 6571. For Wycliffe, see passim, especially Vernac. Sermons, ed. Matth.,
cf. pp. 58, etc. ("leve her heye housis that thei propren unto hem; sith Crist
hadde no propre hous to reste in his hede.. . ")•
• God spede the Plough (MS. Lansd. 762), 11. 62-63 (E.E.T.S. ed.).
92 MONKS AND FRIARS
The learned biographer of Bunyan, writing apparently under
the influence of Brewer's then newly-published Monumenta
Franciscana, hazarded a suggestion that the friars might be
considered the pulpit-forerunners of the nonconforming
Puritans of the seventeenth century1. He was writing even better
than he knew, without the added evidence of the sermon manu-
scripts themselves. In the chequered romance of mediaeval
preaching, the Orders provide a remarkable link between the
first great mediaeval heresy which did much to prompt their
own founding, and the last great heresy before the Reformation
which was born in England; a link, if you will, between the
Poor Men of Lyons, and the so-called Poor Priests of the
rector of Lutterworth. The history of the Christian pulpit,
indeed, will be found to take wondrous little heed of the
great historic cleavages in doctrine and order which loom
so prominently in the history of Christendom as a whole.
Of all weapons this "liberty of prophesying" was clearly the
most dangerous to entrust to those whose learning and enter-
prise were to be the match of any Order in the world. Freer, in
effect, than any sectary to wander abroad, gathering unlimited
impressions of men and things beyond a mere episcopal or
baronial domain, to-day in a University in England, to-morrow
they might be lecturing or studying at Paris or Padua. If to-day
they shared the poor man's lot in his hovel, the next day they
might be guests in the very castle of his feudal sovereign. It is
nothing less than a panorama of these proportions that stretches
before us in the chapters of the Summa Predicantium. Looking
back now across the years at Giotto's portrait of the somewhat
diffident Pope before whom the Poverello stands preaching,
with his companions, at that first appeal to Rome, we may well
see wisdom and foresight in the frown on that papal brow. For
the time being the friars may have rescued the tottering ecclesi-
astical edifice from the Albigensian attack. But, what of the
future? Once planted firmly in every quarter of the civilized
community, with the world for their parish, and almost the
width of God's heaven for their pulpit-canopy, there was no
privileged class they might not dare to assault, no private folly
they might not expose, no sacred dogma they might not dare to
1
J. Brown, Puritan Preaching in England (Lyman Beecher Lect.).
MONKS AND FRIARS 93
discuss "before all the people." If some churchmen in authority
were continually complaining that there was not enough preach-
ing by the seculars, others indeed might well complain that
from some other quarters there was a great deal too much. In
view of this outspoken attitude of the friars, therefore, it is
hardly possible to doubt the immense significance of their
preaching, at any rate in England, for the future movements
toward Reformation and Dissent. For, Englishmen, then as
now, illogical in the average, and inclined to be contemptuous
of mere theory, would probably choose to remember the
practical criticism, the daring abuse, and let the more subtle
doctrinal arguments go. Even Wycliffe and his followers owed
a good deal to the very men they abused the most; and it would
be interesting to know how many adherents the Mendicants
did actually supply to his party of reform1. At any rate, had
not these very friars cried aloud from the house-tops, what every
man felt in his heart to be the truth, even if he was afraid to
confess it—that the bishops were a curse and a scandal, that
avarice and lechery were ruining the life of the clergy, and
imperilling the health of the Church? So, where these had
preached through fields and streets, at market crosses, perhaps
in the "natural amphitheatre of Gwennap,"2 there later could
others—Bunyan, Fox, Wesley, Whitefield, and a host of the
nameless—preach freely too, especially when once more the
parish pulpits were to be closed against the unconventional
itinerating evangelist. The lesson was obviously never for-
gotten. For here we deal with no mere external coincidence
of history, but rather with a potent, undying influence.
In the first place, individuals among the friars, directly
anticipating Lollardy, had adjusted the balance between Mass
and sermon in the services of the Church, had sometimes even
ventured to give the latter a place of distinct superiority3. In
1
Cf. Nicholas Weston, "fryer Carmilett, apostate, and Lollard," at
Northampton (Powell and Trev. Docs. p. 45); Peter Pateshul, ex Austin friar
(Wals. vol. ii, p. 157; and Foxe's Acts andMons.); (cf. also Thos. Richmond,
Minor, of York (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 487)).
2
3
Diary of John Wesley (Sunday, 14th of September, 1766, etc.).
Cf. S. Bernardino of Siena (quoted in Ferrers-Howell's Life, p. 319);
Dives et Pauper, which may be a Mendicant work, prec. v, cap. x. Others in
G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, vol. i, p. 124. (One not mentioned
is brother Whitford, monk of Syon, in his Werkefor housholders: "Let them
ever kepe the prechynges rather than the masse.") Mr Coulton reminds
94 MONKS AND FRIARS
that position it has remained to the present day in the systems
of Protestant Dissent1. Secondly, they accustomed the ears of
the laity to open criticism of the bishops, and other dignitaries
of the Church, who might be identified with her authoritative
voice in all matters of religion and conduct. That criticism is
most characteristic of Brownism and all the more violent forms
of Puritan faith from Tudor times onward. A bishop of
Rochester, or a sub-prior of Durham, in the middle ages, might
denounce clerical vices with perfect propriety before suitable
audiences. That was one thing. It was quite another matter
when some less dignified preacher essayed to do the same before
a mixed congregation which included lay-folk. That this was a
frequent enough occurrence, the explicit warnings in the ser-
mons and manuals, in episcopal licenses, in official condemna-
tions of heresy, are all sufficient to testify. Again, thirdly, our
comparison applies equally to the political sermon, with its
constant discussion of governments and much-needed reforms.
"Paul's Cross," as will be seen subsequently, was no innovation
of the Reformers in this respect. Nor need the modern " Non-
conformist conscience," inclining heavily in the pulpits to the
Liberal and democratic side, fail to find its counterpart among
the Mendicant supporters of popular liberties in mediaeval
times. If the friars did not actually preach communism, some of
their remarks might easily have been taken to recommend it.
Ancestors, too, of those unfortunate heads of State, assize-
judges, mayors and aldermen, and the rest, who were compelled
to listen to harangues and exhortations from the Common-
wealth preachers at unendurable length, had themselves suffered
a like fate, we may be sure, whole centuries before, at the hands
of Dominican and Franciscan. Further, all that that unpopular
word "Puritanism" has ever stood for, to the minutest detail,
shall be found advocated unceasingly in the preaching of the
pre-Reformation Church2. The long face, the plain diet, the
me further that it begins with Gratian's quotation from Augustine, long
before the friars appeared.
1
One might almost consider the Puritan " Lecture-courses " foreshadowed
by such a fifteenth-century homily series as that of Jacob's Well, MS. Salisb.
Cath. Libr. 103.
2
For a single example, cf. MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 153 : " to worship thy
God. . .in ffastynge and in wakynge, and almes dede doynge, in levynge of
swerynge, and in syn blamynge, in symplenes of clothynge, and in sylence
holdynge in etynge and drynkynge, and from worldly conformyng. . .," etc.
MONKS AND FRIARS 95
plainer attire, the abstention from sports and amusements in
company, the contempt of the arts, the rigid Sabbatarianism, the
silence at meals, the long household prayers, the stern dis-
ciplining of wife and children, the fear of hell, the heavy mood
of "wanhope," are typical of the message of the faithful
friar, as it may be read to-day. Finally, unenlightened Catholic
partisans of every shade may have good reasons of their own
for still proving to the world that Puritanism and the sects are
wholly abnormal outgrowths of religion. The student, however,
who knows his sources at first hand must be allowed to smile
a little to himself, when he hears them. For, claim though she
might in theory a seamless robe, what unhappy feature of the
later warfare of the sects, we may ask, did the Church of the
middle ages lack, within her own ranks ? Members of different
Orders, as jealous1, bigoted and self-centred as any Particularist
sectaries, damned each other in sermons, even struggled with
each other in church, for possession of the pulpit. Has the
history of Nonconformity itself anything worse to show us in
this respect?
1
Cf. further the remarkable sermon ad derum of MS. Camb. Univ. Libr.
Ii. iii. 8, fol. 128,which describes "our clergy" as—"invicem invidentes et
alterutrum detrahentes," etc. to the utter confusion of the Church : similarly
the vivid passage in Rypon's sermon given below, Chap. VI, p. 250.
A LEARNED DOMINICAN
(MS. Fitzwilliam Mus., Cambr., 164)
CHAPTER III
"WANDERING STARS"
INCapella
the great fourteenth-century fresco of the Florentine
1
degli Spagnuoli , the Dominican preacher stands in
fair white tunic and black cloak amid the architectural splen-
dours of the city, pointing the way to heaven. In the chapter-
house of San Marco, not so far away, the visitor sees the founders
of all the four great Mendicant Orders, with St Bernard, prince
of monastic orators, and many more, in glory around the Cruci-
fixion scene, each with his own genius vividly portrayed by the
brush of the more spiritual Dominican painter. In the ranks of
the English clergy, secular as well as regular, we have found at
the least a few worthy to be called sons of these prophets,
personalities that we can just recognize upon the wall of history,
with spiritual garments perhaps as little stained as those of Fra
Angelico's heroes. But in the great procession to the pulpit
there are behind them, Italians and Englishmen alike, a host of
the unnamed and unremembered, lacking sometimes even the
distinction of a famous habit upon their shoulders. There are
men as eccentric as St Francis, without his gentleness or his
genius; wild, restless spirits whose vision shifts and fades in an
impatient age. The mere villain and the heretic will be among
their number, too, worried as in Andrea di Firenze's picture
by the Hounds of the Lord, whether the inward preacher of
conscience, or the outward "preachers" in the ecclesiastical
courts. With such homilists, misunderstood as often by the
modern historian, as by the ancient disciplinarian, the present
chapter will be mainly concerned. An English sermon-
writer of our period sums up the types for us in caustic fashion:
But it is to be known that there are some preachers who sow
nothing but oats, which are the food of horses, that is to say, words
stirring to lechery. Others too, there are, who sow barley, that is to
say, swelling words, haughty, and stinging. There are others who
sow only for the sake of vainglory. Of such speaketh Hosea, viii:
" They sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind." There are
1
I.e. in the Dominican Church of S. Maria Novella.
"WANDERING STARS" 97
others who sow tares, that is to say, the seed of infidelity... .AH
these are the preachers of the devil."1
To the faithful son of the Church, looking out upon a stormy
and perilous age, all irregular ministries good or bad doubtless
would be of the devil. But though nothing will be too bad for
some of the "libres precheurs" we shall have to consider, our
criticism in an age of psychology and detachment can hardly
be so sweeping as that. They have but one vague feature in
common, these pardoners, heretics, and "Gyrovagi"—"who
call themselves hermits,"2 and that feature is their abnormality,
their "extravagance." Yet, as little is said to distinguish the
aberrations of genius from those of mere insanity under certain
conditions, even so here, more especially among devotees of the
last-named class, we shall find a few rare examples of the sub-
limest devotion and the most heroic self-sacrifice. It is from
the pages of Bishop Grandisson's Register that this threefold
group stands out together, a queer medley of preachers. To the
eye of the writer they are the woeful heralds of Anti-Christ3.
No official enterprise blessed by the authorities has called them
forth to labour, it is true. None the less their number and in-
fluence are an undoubted sign of the times, and the call of men's
hearts. Sparse as the contemporary records are concerning
them, it is not difficult to account for their presence in an age
in some respects not unlike our own. In the aftermath of a war
the cry of the noisy desperate agitator is being heard again.
Many, on the other hand, have promptly set about the task
of making their own profit out of the cheap credulity and
emotions of the hour; while yet others feel called away in broken-
hearted despair of humanity and of the Churches to the solitary
place, and the practice of contemplation. For the men of the
opening fifteenth century, and earlier, there had been pesti-
1
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 43.
2
" Secta Gerevagorum (sic!) qui se heremitas nominant, et questorum,
qui se pardonistas vocant.. .," etc. (Reg. Grandisson Exeter, pt ii, p. 1198).
And again (ibid. p. 1208): "Nonnulli habitu religiosi nostrae diocesis mendi-
cantes... . "
3
1358. Reg. Grand. (Exeter), pt ii, pp. 1197—8. He mentions first the
heretical sects now abounding, and amongst others those who, "per dulces
sermones et benedicciones seducunt corda innocencium " (i.e. Rom. xvi, 18):
" .. .quos supra generaliter designavimus Anti Christi precones," especially
the Pardoners, and "Gerevagi" aforementioned.
98 "WANDERING STARS"
lences, famines, tempests, comets1 enough to terrify the
stoutest hearts, in the world of natural events. In the world of
politics there had been ceaseless foreign wars, internal risings,
great social wrongs and oppression, corrupt and incompetent
government. Against these, and against the equally disastrous
corruption and decay in the Church we have already heard the
thunder of the preachers. Yet even with them it is the tale of
despair, of worse horrors to come, of impending judgement,
not of hope, that the most fearless of all has to tell. What is
likely to be the result then upon the minds of the ecclesiastical
rank and file? For the careless worldling bent on his own in-
terests there is money to be gained by the pulpit, if one can
satisfy the popular demand, especially where others have
failed. A world that is over-wrought calls like the individual
for sudden diversion from time to time, in which its sorrow and
disappointment may be cheerfully swallowed up. The peasant
too needs even more his charm and his wonder-working relic-
monger to overawe the powers he cannot move by appeal or by
effort. Here is a chance for the successful "tub-thumper,"
indeed. But to the earnest and highly sensitive man of religion,
on the other hand, the situation will probably seem at first too
deep for word or action of any kind. He is tortured by the
suffering he sees around him, by his very knowledge that if an
adequate message could be found, the world would be in no
mood to receive it. At all events he will have to find his place
in one of the established Orders of Christendom. But in which?
If he has already entered, he knows better than anyone their
disappointments, their hypocrisies, their formalities. He be-
comes introspective, moody, isolated—as they called Rolle in
his day, "self-centred"—inevitably unbalanced, like the over-
wrought prophet of Israel—"I have been very jealous for the
Lord God of hosts: for the children of Israel have forsaken thy
covenant, thrown down thine altars, and slain thy prophets with
the sword; and I, even I only am left." Under the spell of such
1
The preachers themselves refer to these terrors. Cf. Bp. Brunton, MS.
Harl. 3760, fol. 191 b, etc. ("Haec pestilencia"; "certis planetis et con-
stellationibus," and those who ascribe the disasters to them, etc.). Also
Robert Rypon's mention of the warning comet of 1401, in MS. Harl. 4894,
fol. 116 b ("Stella comata"). Pestilences of the period are frequently men-
tioned in the Episc. Registers (cf. Wykeham (Winch), for 1374, 137s, etc.).
See below in Chap. v.
a crisis as this, little wonder that the most timid and orthodox
churchmen have flung every ordinance, every recognized means
of grace to the winds, and dared to speak direct to the Almighty
upon his mountain, that at such a moment eloquent preachers
have learnt an eloquence of silence, in some tremendous
mystical vision of their own. This is indeed the genuine glory
and transfiguration of the Dissenter in history, though but few
boasting that name have been found worthy to receive it.
The pardoner is our first type to be dealt with, more properly
the "questor," and as the official pen describes him—"vul-
gariter vocatus perdoner"1—-often indeed as unlicensed in his
general behaviour as in his offices. So familiar is he in the pages
of Chaucer or Langland, so easily may his spiritual descendants
be recognized to-day at Islington Market, or Barnet Fair, still
declaiming from open-air platforms, "with many quaint subtle
words, and with false behesting," the potency of magic cures,
that the type needs little explanation. The charlatans indeed,
like the poor they deceive, are ever with us. If, however, it is
a matter of surprise that he should be included among the
mediaeval preachers, the reply is simply that to the contem-
porary eye such an one he invariably was2. With confidence it
may be said that no entry in Episcopal Registers concerning him
ever omits to speak of this side of his activity, and in the usual
terms3. In addition we are informed that, along with parson and
friar, he would share the very pulpits in parish churches, at the
regular sermon-time—"intra missarum sollempnia." In this
respect as in every other, Chaucer's famous picture in the
Pardoner's Prologue is to be verified fully by the official declara-
tions of the Church. But not unnaturally, in modern record, the
actual relic-mongering and begging have been allowed almost
to eclipse the rest. Since, for one reason, the ways of tricksters
are safest when kept secret, the pardoner has not obliged us, ap-
parently, by leaving any manuscript of his discourses behind him.
1
2
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 429, and cf. in n. 2, p. 97, above.
Cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40 b (De Predic.): " Item sunt alii
predicatores scil. questores, i.e. pardoniste.. ."; and Reg. Aram. MS. Harl.
2272, fol. 9 b: "Quid juris de questoribus qui discurrunt per ecclesias cum
literis remissionum, et predicant abusiones... . "
3
"Predicatio," "orficio predicandi," "Sermones," etc. In at least one
entry they are distinctly referred to as "predicatores questuarii."
7-2
ioo "WANDERING STARS"
In the majority of cases, at all events, the "questor " appears
on the scene as a "special preacher" for what might be called a
"Hospital-Sunday sermon"; and the collection that follows in
due course is as natural a part of such proceedings as it would be
to-day. A passage in the Summa Predicantium itself, the more
valuable because quite casually introduced into the discussion,
puts this beyond doubt. "We see," says the writer, "that
messengers come round to the churches [per ecclesias], from
diverse hospitals, and preach that they have many weak and
impotent inmates, and display large Indulgences, and many
things are given them—in truth, rightly enough."1 They were
the proctors (procurators), or in modern parlance agents and
"organisers of appeals" for such establishments, charged
primarily with the agreeable task of collecting "broche, rynge,
poke, belle, candell, vestimente, bord clothe, towelle, pygge,
lambe, wolle, peny, or penyworthe," and the other offerings of
the faithful, for their dependents2. How little need we be sur-
prised that their reputation fell so low as it did, when, in an age
notorious for its avaricious and lustful clergy, as the sermons
bear witness, there were many "faire wyves" to appreciate the
rings and brooches, besides others who might bestow them, and
extensive clerical appetites to make use of the good fare:
But, sirs, o word forgat I in my tale;
I have relikes and pardon in my male
As faire as any man in Engelond3!
The appearance of relics is easy enough to explain. " Relikes,"
explains one of our preachers, are "to the.. .profite to man,
bothe bodily and gostily."4 Hospitals were their natural
repositories, particularly since the former seem on the whole to
have enjoyed a far better reputation than the doctors for effecting
a cure. Moreover, they attracted the wealth from visitor and
pilgrim, as in the better known instance of the monastic and
cathedral shrines. The pardoner himself, therefore, was only
acting on the business-like principle that if the money will not
come to Lourdes, then Lourdes must go in search of the money.
The sacred collection became a travelling peep-show, and the
1
2
S.P.—Mors.
3
Cf. Miss Clay, The Mediaeval Hospitals of England, p. 189, etc.
Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Pard. Tale, 11. 919-31.
4
MS. Harl. 2247, fol. 169 b.
proctor, leaving the hospital gate, went on tour in the provinces.
With relics as numerous as they were already, a few more in his
wallet could hardly create a scandal. The method was that of an
up-to-date advertiser, it is true. But there was one difference
which made the pardoner even more "modern" and "com-
mercial " than ourselves. Understanding as well as we the power
of an appeal to the eye, he did not shrink from making good use
of that piece of knowledge, when in the pulpit1. As for the
pardons or Indulgences, these had had already a long and
perhaps none too honourable connection with the ordinary
sermons of bishops and Mendicant friars. Archbishop Fitzralph
preaching in London himself alludes to their abuse by the latter,
and is inclined to shrink from bestowing them at his own ser-
mon's end2. However, most people in the "ages of faith"
were no more anxious to give their money for nothing in return
than they are to-day. Hence the pardoners' Indulgences were
granted in effect to stimulate generosity; and how little the ques-
tion of theology entered into the matter can easily be seen when
we observe how the generosity of their terms was increased
as the world grew older and less willing to give3.
The pardoner might be licensed, in the first instance, either
by papal bull, or episcopal letters4. The mandate of a London
1
For the further association of relics with preaching, see below, in Chap,
vni, pp. 349-351.
2
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 112: " Indulgenciam quasi vereor conferre peni-
tentibus, quia non nisi pauci dies sunt lapsi cum, meis quibusdam ibidem
astantibus, unus de istis ordinibus mendicancium concessit audientibus suum
sermonem centum dies, et alius die altero octoginta et plures, et puto quod
prudenter et caute attendendum esset ab eis numquid in impetratione huius
potestatis symonie labes non mediet. Indulgenciam tamen exhibere, quam
nos prelati conferre valemus omnibus vere penitentibus, vel qui infra viii
dies fideliter penitebunt, vobis concedimus, in nomine patris et filii et spiritus
sancti qui est benedictus in secula seculorum—Amen." There is an in-
teresting illustration of Canon Wordsworth's point about "unscrupulous
or ill-advised persons, too often adding up the grants of pardon by all the
prelates collectively, and parading them before the ignorant, as if the sum
total were available to any of the faithful" (see Yorkshire Arch. Journal,
vol. xvi, p. 376) in a Preaching indulgence "of the monasterie of Syon"
(Isleworth) in MS. Ashmole, 750, fol. 86. See below Appdx. III. Canon
Wordsworth himself kindly supplies me with a notice from his own MS.
Transcripts of the Regs, of a forty-days' Indulgence for those hearing the
Canons' sermons (c. 1319-20) at Salisbury. Cf. sim. at Durham, etc. above
p. 52, n. 2.
3
4
Most in our period are for forty days; cf. W. Streche, 1419, as below.
Cf. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40 b, again: "quidam per bullas pape, quidam
per litteras diocesani, episcopi, vel metropolitani constituuntur... . "
IO2 "WANDERING STARS"
Convocation for the province of Canterbury, in 1424, grants
recognition to the representatives of three hospitals alone—
"Domus S. Johannis Jerusalem in Anglia, vulgariter dicta Le
Frary, S. Antonii, aut hospitalis S. Thomae Martyris in urbe
Romana." Although these have special prominence of their
own in the entries of Registers1, especially the last-named which
was devoted to the needs of English pilgrims in the Holy City,
the names of hospitals in this country occur as well. Among
such licenses or letters of protection granted by individual
prelates, we may notice one—"pro procuratore leprosorum de
Romesie"2—another for a forty-days' Indulgence bestowed
on Walter Streche, "proctor of the master and brethren of the
Hospital of Saints Wolstan and Godwal of the City of Wor-
cester."3 Apart from hospital needs altogether, the pardoner
might be making his special plea, as a bishop's diocesan emissary,
"for the fabric of our cathedral of Exeter, in Lent, when other
quests cease for the time being," 4 for the fabric of York
Minster6, for the maintenance of lights in Winchester Cathedral6,
for the repair of a parish church in Herefordshire7, or even for
the support and repair of the great bridge of the city of Exeter,
and the chapel of the Blessed Mary situate upon it8 .
The ordinary license takes the form of a request to local
clergy,
That you set forth [exponatis] in good faith, and permit the same
persons (proctors or messengers) to set forth to clergy and people
committed to your care, the Indulgences and privileges duly granted
1
For the first, cf. the Bull of Pope Urban V, 1369 ("contra questores
hosp. Jerus. in Anglia") in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 84. For the Hosp. of
St Anthony, cf. Reg. Archbp. Melton, in Fasti Ebor. vol. i, p. 421 (1334—6),
Reg. Grandisson, Exeter, pt ii, p. 1179 (1355-6) and Reg. Spofford, Here-
ford, p. 25 (1422), etc. For the Hosp. of St Thomas the Martyr, at Rome, cf.
Reg. Episc. St David's, p. 69 (1398); and see an interesting article in the
Dublin Review for April 1904, p. 274 et seq. With the latter is often associated
the Hosp. of the Holy Ghost, also at Rome; cf. similarly, Reg. Brantingh,
Exeter, pt i, p. 566 (1384-5); Regs. Grandiss. ibid, pt ii,p. 1178 (1355-6)and
Melton, Archbp. of York, in Fasti Ebor. vol. i, p. 421 (1334-6).
2
Hosp. of the Blessed Mary Magdal. and St Anthony, 1316-17. (Reg.
Sandale,
3
Winch, p. 268.)
4
Reg. Lacy (Hereford), p. 59 (1419).
Reg. Brantingh. (Ex.), pt i, p. 566 (1384-5).
5
6
Reg. Wykeham (Winch.), p. 12 (1367).
7
8
Reg. Spofford (Heref.), p. 49 (1424). Richard "Byschope," procurator.
Reg. Grandisson (Ex.), pt i, p. 351 (1328).
to the said hospital, during the solemnization of Masses, on Sundays
and Festivals, and at other places and times, where, and as often as
a great number of the faithful shall be present; minor Masses, and
preachings of friars, with other businesses and briefs ceasing in the
meantime until the said business be plenarily set forth.... x
In some cases the actual right of exposition appears to have
been restricted to the local clergy alone2. In others it is left a
matter of option, for the visitors to decide according to their
own preference3. The parish parson, if popular, we can well
believe might succeed better than a stranger in exciting the
generosity of his flock; while such a restriction as the first-
named would be a wise safeguard against scandals in the pulpit,
for which pardoners were all too notorious in their day4. Of the
three most prominent abuses connected with them, little need
be said of the first, the counterfeit pardoner in person, "cum
falsis et fictis literis, sigillis fabricatisque, quae nostra esse
mendaciter asserunt, sigillatis." Nearly every properly author-
ized license seems to contain its own warning against such pests,
and almost every Register and manual repeats some mandate
insisting on the more careful examination of credentials before
admission is granted to the applicant5. The indefatigable
1
Besides Regs. Sandale (Winch.) and Brant. (Ex.), as given above, cf.
also Reg. Lacy (Hereford), (Cant, and York S.), p. 59. (Hospitale
degentium); Reg. St David's, 1398, and 1402 (p. 273: "Hosp. of Bl. Mary
of Bethleem withoute Bishopsgate, Lond."); Melton in Fasti Ebor. vol. i,
p. 421; (Hosp. of St Thomas the Martyr, Eastbridge, near Canterbury,
1336), etc.
2
Reg. de Asserio (Winch.), p. 423 (1321—St Leonard's, Bedford).
3
Reg. Wykeham (Winch.), p. 12 (1367): (" . . .populo per se permittatis,
vel4 vos, si hoc voluerint, exponatis").
This is stated specifically in the Decrees of the Synod of Exeter (Quivil.
1287), in Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 137, cap. 47: "Wherefore we forbid our
subjects to admit any collector of alms without our letters; and even then let
him not be permitted to preach, but let the parish chaplains faithfully ex-
pound to the people his business." Cf. also the Summa Angelica, under
" Questuarii."
6
Cf. Reg. Grandisson (Ex.), pt ii, p. 1198: (1359). Let them not be admit-
ted—"absque literis nostris manu nostra subscriptis, sigilloque nostro, cum
impressione anuli in dorso, more solito consignatis: nee ipsis aut ipsorum
alicui ultra ea quae in literis nostris hujusmodi continentur fidem adhibeant
aliqualem." Also in Reg. Anim. MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9 b : " Questores eleemo-
sinarii non debent ab aliquo admitti nisi exhibuerint literas episcopi diocesis
nee licet eis populo predicare,. . . et debent episcopi dioc. diligenter examinare
literas apostolicas, ne quaequam fraudes committi valeant per easdem." Cil.
Oc. Sac. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 40 b.
Grandisson lays bare, in a document glowing with indignation,
the system he has detected at work in his diocese, by which a
whole army of false questores, many of them mere laymen, were
being encouraged by the archdeacon's officials, who pocketed
the proceeds that came their way from this monstrous invasion
of the preaching office. Thus had the laymen actually succeeded
at last in reaching the pulpit, with the support of ecclesiastics
in office, a pulpit that was forbidden even to the sub-deacon1.
Well might the Lollard complain in future of the iniquity of
prelates, who prevented the simple priest from proclaiming
the Gospel, only to promote the endeavours of such lay scoun-
drels as these. Meanwhile the unauthorized pardoner, in
evidence at least as early as the first half of the thirteenth century,
flourishes to the end of our period, in the words of the Neville
Constitutions of 1466—"licet ex statutis concilii generalis et
Clementis papae prohibitum sit expresse."2
But not only might seals and letters of authority be abused.
The preacher might deal equally falsely with the Indulgence,
expanding its efficacy in his predication,—"to deceive the simple,
and the better to extort from them their gold and silver."3
Here was a fine field for the bombast and exaggeration of the
popular orator. The friars themselves had been held guilty of
such a trick, at the expense of the seculars. An article of the
Oxford Petition of 14144, entitled "contra falsas predicationes
quaestorum," will explain the method adopted, in typical long-
winded fashion:
1
Ibid. p. 1178 (1355-6): "Nos tamen, non sine gravi cordis inquietudine,
ex querelis, denunciacionibus, et clamoribus plurium et facti quasi notorie-
tate, intelleximus et in parte ex inspeccione cedularum hujusmodi experti
sutnus, quod vos archi-diaconorum officiates, vestrive commissarii et regis-
trarii, saeva cupiditate dampnabiliter excecati, pecunie sic collecte vel verius
seductoris 'totam' vobis pro iniquo labore sub colore infidelis feodi reser-
vantes, questores hujusmodi tarn Hospitalis Sancti Spiritus, St Johannis,
quam aliorum Privilegiatorum, ut dicunt, nedum fratres aut clericos, set
multociens laicos aut conjugatos, ipsorum negocia diebus sollempnibus, intra
Missarum solempnia, predicandi officio, (quod) non inferioribus diaconibus est
permissum, tenore presumpto publice exponere non tantum permittitis, set ipsis
nephandissime assistitis, consulitis, etfavetis...."
2
York. Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, pp. 602—3.
3
Reg. de Asserio (Winch.), p. 474 (" . . . questores in suis proponunt predi-
cacionibus ut simplices decipiant, et aurum vel argentum subtili vel fallaci
pocius ingenio extorqueant ab eisdem.. .," etc.). A " Monicio facta ne ques-
tores admittantur ad predicandum.. .," 1321-2.
4
Artie. 39. (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, pp. 360 et seq.)
Whereas the shameless pardoners purchase their vile traffic in
farm with Simon, sell Indulgences with Gehazi, and squander their
gains in disgraceful fashion with the Prodigal Son: but what is more
detestable still, although not in holy orders, they preach publicly,
and pretend falsely that they have full powers of absolving both
living and dead alike from punishment and guilt [the technical " a
poena et a culpa"], along with other blasphemies, by means of which
they plunder and seduce the people, and in all probability drag them
down with their own person to the infernal regions, by affording
them frivolous hope and an audacity to commit sin: therefore, let the
abuses of this pestilential sect be blotted out from the threshold of the
Church1.
This is strong language, even for the University petitioners,

who would be specially interested, no doubt. Yet the Con-
cordat of Pope Martin V to the English Church, five years later,
proclaims that England had an evil notoriety for such pests,
and that her people were becoming contaminated 2 .
If we seek further details of their method, something may
be gleaned from the Regimen Animarum3 and the Cilium Oculi
Sacerdotisi, which reproduce phrases to be met with again in
the Register of Bishop Brantingham of Exeter (1385-6)6, and
in papal decrees. Besides granting Indulgences to the people
"motu proprio" to the manifest deception of souls, they dis-
pense with vows, absolve those who confess to them from the
worst kind of sins, even perjury and homicide, and in return
for sums of money remit the third or fourth part of penances
enjoined by others. The souls of parents and friends, whose
1
The Quivil Decrees (Exeter, 1287) are even more emphatic in their
charges: "Amongst other errors, they mendaciously assert that they have
many more and greater Indulgences than they really have, that thus they may
induce simple persons to give more generous alms."
2
" Whereas in consequence of divers Indulgences granted by the Apostolic
See.. .and the number of pardoners, who at this time abound more than
usual in England, persons frequently become hardened in vice. . . " (Wilkins,
Cone. vol. iii, p. 391). Cf. also London Convocation, in 1424: "Nonulli
pretensi questores.. .populum decipientes plus solito, per provinciam Can-
tuar., transeunt hiis diebus." These reports throw an interesting light on
Chaucer's famous portrait.
3
De Questoribus, MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9 b et seq.
1
MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41 ("asserunt se posse indulgentias concedere vel
super nota dispensare a perjuriis. . . ").
6
Reg. Brantingh. (Ex.), pt ii, pp. 607-8. The following provide shorter
variations of the same: Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41) and the
Neville Constit. of York (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p . 602).
io6 "WANDERING STARS"
relations have given them alms, they profess to rescue from the
pains of Purgatory, translating them to the joys of Paradise;
and those benefactors (!) who provide them with places in which
to carry on their craft, get a plenary remission of all sins—
"a poena et culpa," as they say. Finally, in addition to the falsely
augmented Indulgences they offer from Popes and bishops, they
do not fail to contrast the sweeping absolutions they confer on
their supporters with the ' curate's' power to absolve his folk, in
general, but once in the year1. Gascoigne recalls the fragment
of a sermon from one of them, "that I heard lately in the year
of Christ, 1453 ." 2 "Know all of you here present," the preacher
had declared, "that if any one of you shall give a penny [unum
denarium] to me or to any member of my house, he is freed from
all penance3 enjoined on him by his 'curate,' or by any other
priest."
The third outstanding offence lies in the disturbance and
conflict they created with the other candidates for the Sunday
sermon. This ended sometimes in nothing less than a most
unedifying scramble for possession of the parish pulpit itself.
John Heywood's scandalous interlude4 in which a pardoner and
a friar each struggle for the privilege of addressing one and the
same audience, and come to blows within the sacred edifice,
is surely no mere dramatic invention. Careful and repeated
warnings in the licenses that preaching of friars and others must
stop meanwhile, "that no other questor is to be admitted"5
at the time when the licensee makes his visit, are in themselves
suggestive of the danger, had we not the more explicit statement
of such an entry as that concerning the Dominican brothers of
Guildford (Guldeforde). They "are in no wise to be impeded
from preaching the word of God by collectors of alms, or by begging
1
See also a letter of the Archbp. of Cant. 1378, "contra questores," in
Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 131 (deceptione multiplici...ac elusione...).
2
3
Loci e Libra Veritatum (ed. Rogers), p. 125.
Cf. (e. 15th cent.) MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 141; (ibid, in MS. (Bodl.)
Laud. Misc. 23): " Many men weenen if thei 3even a peny to a pardener, thei
schulen be asoylid of the brekinge of alle the commaundementis of God for
the takinge of that peny."
4
" The Pardoner and the Frere," printed in Pollard's Engl. Miracle Plays,
pp. 114-125.
6
Cf. Reg. Wykeham (Winch.), p. 12 (1367). Read also the situation in
Heywood's instructive play, e.g.: "(Pard.). • .'Mayster parson gave me
lycence before the, and I wolde thou knewyst i t ! ' " . . . etc.
1
preachers." More pointed still is the official injunction else-
where, that "if, while making a sermon, the pardoners are
warned to keep silence and yet are unwilling to do so,
the inquisitors have power to suspend them from that
office."2
If the friar had thus to suffer one more competitor, the
secular parson of the place was even more liable to further
insult and annoyance. The Church had once urged upon parsons
the duty of giving sustenance to travelling preachers3. But
under stress of subsequent abuses she had eventually released
them from it. Now no prelate nor rector need supply hospitality
or bodily provisions to the pardoner when he came4. Nor again
were they bound to summon their parishioners to listen to his
exhortations, even if the pardoner's letters made reference to
that duty5. Yet from the written complaints of rectors and
vicars in London, Exeter, Norwich, and elsewhere6, it is clear
that when the clergy failed to satisfy the visitor's own require-
ments, or were too strict in their examination of his letters and
seals, the infuriated man was still not above open retaliation. He
would proceed to excommunicate those not to his liking, or else
take up a position in their churches particularly at offertory
time, on some feast-day, there by his vociferous begging, and
reading out of the names on his bede-roll, to hold up the
1
Reg. Rig. de Asserio (Winch.), p. 406 (1321). Cf. also the warning, 1424:
"tali tempore omnino quod divinum servitium ex hoc seu predicatio verbi
Dei in aliqua ecclesia non impediatur ullatenus, vel turbetur" (Wilkins, Cone.
vol. iii, p. 429).
2
Cil. Oc. Sac., MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 45: " Quodsi quicumque predicatores
vel perdoniste sermonem facientes moniti ipso tempore silere noluerint, ipsi
inquisitores
3
eos ab hujusmodi officio suspendere possunt."
Cf. Peckham's Constitutions, 1281 (De hospitalitate tenenda): "Et ut
qui ibidem transeunt et predicant verbum Dei necessaria recipiant corpori
alimenta...," etc. (quoted in Lyndewood, Prov.).
4
Cf. Reg. Anim. (MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9 b): "Statuitur quod prelati,
rectores, et alii clerici curati non tenentur eos recipere in hospiciis, nee eis in
necessariis providere, etiam cuiuscumque religionis sint aut condicionis "; and
Summa Angel. § Questuarii.
5
MS. Harl. 2272, ibid.: " . . .nee tenentur facere convocationem populi
ad sermones vel exhortaciones eorum, etiam si de tali convocatione mentio
fiat in litteris eorum, quia papa revocat."
6
Cf. Bull of Pope Urban V, 1369 (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 84). The
London complainants included the Rectors of St Dunstan's in the West,
and St Mary's " Wolnoth." See also Reg. Anim. (as above): " si propter hoc,
alia sententia excommunicationis vel interdicti promulgatur, irrita est et
inanis," etc.
service, until it was too late to celebrate Mass for that
day1.
Than adew to the devyll, tyll we come agayn!2
The " ensamples many oon of olde stories " 3 seem to be further
reflected in an episcopal reference to "nonnulla frivola et men-
dacia" in the contemporary pardoners' preaching. Their ex-
hibition of false relics finds a place in our Cilium Oculi Sacer-
dotisi; while the fondness of Chaucer's particular hero for
"the licour of the vyne" seems to derive fresh emphasis from
a passage in the Regimen Animarum, again, which tells—"de
questoribus"—of drunkenness and sojourning in inns and
places of evil repute5.
Signs are not wanting that in course of time our preaching
fox did not always get away so smartly with his prey. The later
papal legislation swept aside a mass of the privileges thus abused,
and insisted that all his irregularities should be punished by the
bishop of the diocese, "privilegio quocunque non obstante."6
In a letter of Archbishop Sudbury in 1378, we find that prelate
ordering all pardoners who have, misused their privileges to be
cited7. Bishop Grandisson of Exeter issues a mandate in 1328
requiring all goods which remain in the hands of any of them,
within his diocese, to be sequestrated, save only in the case of
those who are collecting for his bridge over the "Exse." 8 The
Council of the Province of Cashel, in Ireland, in 1453, enjoins
that all pardoners shall pay tithes of all their gains to the parish
in which they happen to reside9. Finally, their relics were no
1
" . . .Ibidem questuare, seu nomina fratriae seu fraternitatis suaelegere
incipiunt, et continuant usque ad talem illius diei festi horam qua missa
ibidem pro illo die convenienter non potest celebrari." Surely the "Rag-
man's rolles" of the Pardoner in Heywood's play, refer to these "nomina
fratriae seu fraternitatis," and not, as Dr A. W. Pollard suggests in his notes
(p. 212), to "a long unintelligible story."
2 3 4
6
Heywood, as above. Chaucer. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41.
MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 9 b : (" Illi questores vacantes commessationibus et
ebrietatibus"; and again: " .. .non in tabernis et aliis locis incongruis hos-
pitari debent, nee inutiles aut sumptuosas facere expensas, nee habitum false
religionis portare"). Similarly MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 41 (Cil. Oc. Sac).
6
MS. Harl 2272, ibid. (" Dominus papa volens huiusmodi abusus abolere,
per quos vilescit ecclesiastica censura et auctoritas clavium ecclesie deducitur
in contemptum, expresse revocat omnia et singula privilegia... ") MS. Harl.
4968, fol 41: ("Nam omnes bulle super articulos predictos quibuscunque vel
quomodocunque facte revocantur et dampnantur.").
7
8
Reg. Grandiss. (Ex.), pt i, p. 351. • Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 567.
longer to be revered without the seal of episcopal approbation
upon them 1 ; while, in the official order which prohibits their
bestowal of blessings, we are forcibly reminded of Langland's
shrewd impostor again2. Even more galling than the laughter
over a certain Canterbury pilgrim, rebuked by mine host, must
have been the jeers of a London crowd at the expense of the
"falsifier" John Watte, riding in disgrace through Cheapside,
with his face to the wrong end of his horse, in tall paper hat
suitably inscribed, the forged Indulgences dangling about his
neck.
Of the pardoner, so it seems, few had a good word to say.
The almost complete silence with regard to him in sermons,
otherwise so full of the current abuses, may be only another
indication of the general disdain. He was too bad even to be
denounced. He wears the "dunce-cap," as well as the devil's
horns amongst the preachers. His efforts are beneath contempt3,
even the contempt of the none-too-squeamish mediaeval pulpit.
When the friar preacher in the Ploughman's Crede starts to
ridicule the claims and methods of the Augustinians, he has
nothing worse to say than, " I t is a pur pardoner's craft!" To
the plaint of the Petition of Oxford that he was often not even
a clerk in holy orders, may be added that of the synod of Exeter
which pointed out that "with a presumptuous audacity they
usurp the office of preaching, whilst totally ignorant of the Word
of God." 4
In a vernacular sermon collection5 there is one slight reference,
after all, which may be worthy to take its place alongside the
more witty and elaborate portrait of the Canterbury Tales. The
writer is busy enumerating the types of thieves, and has come
to his third division:
Sothell theves beth the men that slyly can robbe men with many
queynt sotell wordes, and with fals behestynge; and sum with fals
letters and seeks, with crosses, and reliques that thei bere abowten
1
MS. Had. 4968, fol. 41: " Item prohiberi debent populi ne reliquias
eorum revereantur nisi sub testimonio predictorum prelatorum mittantur."
2
3
Ibid.: " Nee benedictionibus eorum populus se prosternat."
Cf. MS. Bodl. s, fol. 1 b (Higden's Ars componendi sermones): "sicut
faciunt principaliter questores...." Cf. also Mine Host's outspoken con-
tempt for his relics, at the end of the Pardoner's Tale in the Canterbury Tales.
4
6
(Quivil), 1287, Cap. 47. (Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 137 et seq.)
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii.
no "WANDERING STARS"
them, and sei that thei be of seyntes bones or of holy mens clothinge,
and behoteth myche mede that will offre to hem, and hire the letters
of pardon, ichon of other, as a kowe or a nox that men lat to hure;
the wiche thei sell all for the penny, and fo no mans mede, with
many fals lesynges, as the feend here maister techeth hem, for to
robbe the pore pepull sotelly of ther goodes. And therfore said
Crist, "Beware of false prophets...," etc.1
From the extreme of folly it is now time to turn to the extreme
of zeal. If the increased brutality and chaos of the world had
hastened men in the last days of the Roman Empire into an
ascetic and anchoretical life, the voices of the pulpit towards the
end of the middle ages, heralding another world cataclysm, might
be expected to coincide with its revival. "Dies mali sunt." This
stern impression—that on earth they are fighting a losing battle
after all, that the powers of evil are too powerful, that the world
must soon come to its end in horror and confusion—gives a
prevailing gloom to the utterance of bishops like Brunton, or
friars like Waldeby. In the body corporate there appeared to
be now no healthy member to provide a rallying point from
disease, and the preachers speak as men who expect that at any
moment the great Physician may pronounce life extinct. At the
outset of our period stands Richard Rolle, an English Jacopone,
clad in his sister's frock. Towards the close of it we catch sight
of strange, boding figures that flit about the court of King
Richard II's successors, prophesying fresh disaster. The age of
hermits has returned. We need not believe that all those irregular
"habitu religiosi mendicantes" in Grandisson's Register, all
those "eremytes on a hep, with hokide staves" cursed by
Langland2, were necessarily of the evil sort. Even if the
majority were out to enjoy the indolency and vagrancy of the
tramps' life, there must have been others, like Rolle, to whom the
return to nature, to quiet, to simplicity, was something at least
as genuine as the piety of him who in his solitary vigil at
Northaw had once objected to the very songs of nightingales.
One of our noted London preachers already referred to,
1
Cf. also in a Lollard Collection, MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. 14, 50, fol.
65 b : " Quidam enim sunt mercenarii munera querentes per mendacia et
falsas reliquias, sigilla, litteras, et per falsa miracula, ut homines deludant,
et eis bona sua furentur."
2
Piers Plowman, Prologue (A. text), 1. 50; also B. text, pass. vi. 1. 190:
(An heep of heremites), etc.
"WANDERING STARS" in
Dr William Lichfield, describes the two types thus in a quaint,
picturesque exposition of the text, " T h e foxes have holes" 1 :
.. .And, that mor is to sorow, sum crepen in to holis of the erthe,
as Saul enterid in to a cafe—1° Regm. 24—for to do his fil3te therin,
and to defoule that stede. Thus sum entren to presthod, sum to
religion, sum to be ankers and ankereses, qwech maner of states shold
be not of comyn lufyng of the worlde, bot as contrary to the worlde,
and hid fro the world, as folke that dwellens in cafes. And 3k
many prestes, many monkys, chanons, ffreres, ankyrs, and ankeresses,
nunnys, and heremytes are more worldly, lifen more lustily, are more
delavy2 in curiose talkyng of the world, an(d) luken more after
worldly reverense and honour then thay shold have done, dwellyng
stil in the state of the world that they were first in, or ellys in any
worldly state that ever thay shold have comen to. In such private
astates may thay do many privey unleveful thinges, more then thay
my3t do if they were in myddys the world. Nethles a3eynwarde,
many a man takys the ordre of prest, many ytaken the state of reli-
gioun, or of recluse, as David entred in to the same cafe in to wiche
Saul entred.... [He] fled theder to defend hym selfe fro the tyraun-
tith of Saul that porsewed hym. Thus sum enteren into Degre or
State before-rehersed for ease and lust; and thes defilen her astate.
[But others enter for the highest motives]—for to lyf in chastitie, in
penaunce, in prayeres, in holy redynges... .These devout men and
wemen are no ffoxes in condicions; bot thay may be called brydes of
heven... .They forsaken the erth, and fly in the eyre, and fer fro the
erthe most parte of briddes maken her nestes... .They desiren
hevynly thinges....TI10U3 they sit and syng on grene bowes, 3k
most hem, for ned of mete and drinke, Ii3t downe to the erthe. But
whiles thay are upon the erthe, they ben besy lokynge on ich side of
(hem), for enmyes and caching of harme....
Yet, especially as it concerns our study, this movement may
have been one deliberately turned as much away from the
ordinary pulpit as from the other haunts of men. If we lacked
the testimony of Hampole there would be still the statement of
Wycliffe that this "feigned contemplatif lif," as he called it,
was definitely inimical to the preaching of God's law. No better
understanding of the issues here involved could be obtained
than by listening to these two great prophets of righteousness,
the mystical and the more logical thinker, respectively.
Richard Rolle of Hampole has been described more than once
1
MS. Roy. 8. C. i, fols. 130 b-131. For Dr Lichfield himself, see above,
2
p. 24. Here he is quoting from the Ancren Riwle. = immoderate.
ii2 "WANDERING STARS"
in modern literature as the typical hermit-preacher, by those
writing doubtless too hastily under the influence of the early
scene of the Officium1. Rolle himself is not above the minor
inconsistencies, perhaps characteristic of the religion of his age.
His own career suggests many restless changes of mind. But if
he is to be taken at his word at all, we must believe that, after
the first phase of youthful enthusiasm, such a title would hardly
have pleased him.
"Sum for soth," he argues, "gaynselland, says, 'Active Iyfe is
more fruytfull, for werkis of mercy it doys, it prechis, and slike other
dedis wyrkis; qwharfore more meritory it is.' I say nay; for slyke
warkis longis to accidentale rewarde, that is, joy of thinge wroght
Als oft tyems it happyns that sum of les meed is guyd and preches;
another prechis not, that mikyll more lufys. Is he not this bettir for
he prechis? No, bot he 2this that more lufys hyar and bettir is, thof
he be les in prechynge."
This enthronement of the contemplative life of love has been
spoken of as a reaction from the wearisome logic of the schools3,
in one who had actually left them in a fit of disgust. With no
great stretch of imagination and with equal truth it might be
described as a reaction from the japes and learned fatuities,
perhaps the idle denunciation of the contemporary pulpit*.
Miss H. E. Allen, indeed, whose researches have gone far to
relieve Rolle of the authorship of a more or less commonplace
homiletic treatise, believes that this view of his need not be in-
consistent with the preaching of "mystical discourses" which
would have little in common with the ordinary sermon. Be this
as it may, however, we trace in his attitude a definite phase in
the history of the pulpit, when "the foolishness of preaching"
becomes apparent again after two centuries of the most brilliant
efforts, if not by the seculars, at least by monk and Mendicant.
It had promised so much; but now, apart from the merely
spectacular, it was achieving so little that men turned in despair
1
Cf. G. G. Perry (preface to Engl. Prose Treatises of R. Rolle, E.E.T.S.
(O.S), No. 20); and Miss R. Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England
(Antiquary's Ser.), P- 161, "Certain hermit-preachers."
2
From The Mending of Life, p. 48.
3
4
Cf. Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, vol. ii, p. xxxv.
Cf. in " a notabell tretys off the ten comandementys drawene by Richerde
the hermyte off Hampull" (ed. Perry, p. 10; and Matzner, p. 129): "new
prechynge that es vanyte and undevocyone."
to look for a better way. Instead of seeking crowds, they sought
the wilderness; instead of a vapid, bookish knowledge hastily
acquired and fluently delivered amid bustling scenes, they waited
alone for the still small voice that never shouts or hurries for
any man, for the slow leavening process of personal contact,
so "unbusinesslike," so individual, often reticent indeed like
the God that hideth himself, patient with the eternal patience
of His universe "groaning and travailing in pain together until
now."1 "Behold my servant whom I uphold; mine elect in
whom my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him: he
shall bring forth judgement to the Gentiles. He shall not cry,
not lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street."
In the Latin Melum, Rolle himself seems to take a further
step. Having declared in favour of the mystic life of contem-
plation, he now decides that it is actually incompatible with that
of the active preacher:
Good it is to be a preacher, to run hither and thither, to move
about, to be wearied; but it is better, safer, and sweeter to be a con-
templator, to have a foretaste of eternal bliss, to sing the delights of
the Eternal Love... .If any one could attain to both, moreover, so
much the more praiseworthy would he be. But this would not happen
unless he first became a contemplator, before a preacher. And,
without doubt, when the sweetness of the divine Love shall have
absorbed the mind, thefleshfails, and will now no longer be strong
enough to sustain outward labours.
The busy church-going Protestant of our own age, viewing
for the first time some Quaker meeting, without previous know-
ledge of their social service, would be inclined to condemn
this rejection of the preacher's activity and the practice of
Quietism as a waste of time and opportunity, if not offensively
egotistical as well. This, significantly enough, is the attitude of
John Wy cliffe towards the mystical recluses of his day. "What
1
So vivid and charming is Dr Horstmann's description of this method on
its active side, that I make no apology for quoting from it: "He appeared in
the manor-houses of the neighbourhood, made friends with the lord, chatted
with the women, knacked jokes with the girls, but all with that intent to
preach his love, chastity, and charity.. . .He appeared in the villages and
mixed with the people, colloquially (as Socrates) not from the pulpit, incul-
cating love, loving-kindness, peace. He formed connections with clerics
—one of his epistles (Cupienti mihi) is addressed to a young priest...."
This is only Rolle's own confession from the Melum (see Yorkshire Writers,
vol. ii, pp. xvi-xvii).
ii4 "WANDERING STARS"
charite is it," he asks, "to a kunnynge man to chese his owene
contemplacion in reste, and suffre othere men to goo to helle ? . . . "
Priests nowadays "close hem in stonys or wallis for al here lif,"
or else, "wolen alle be wommen in ydelnesse," when the times
cry out for prophets "to schewe tothepepleherefoulesynnys."1
Indeed, we must believe that he has Rolle directly in mind
when he describes how they say concerning the respective
merits of contemplation and preaching, "sith it is the best, and
thei may not do bothe togidre." To Wycliffe no less than to the
dreamer of Hampole it was high time to reject the note of for-
malism and unreality in the pulpits of the day. But for him the
immediate alternative to be undertaken was the preaching of a
simple vernacular message to the people, based on the text of
Scripture.
It can hardly be considered our duty here as mere historians
to decide which policy was right. Yet it is impossible to over-
look the fact that whereas the attitude of Wycliffe became the
attitude of the Protestant Reformers, and has been tried upon
the grand scale in history, that of Rolle remained, as indeed was
only too natural, the ideal of a few isolated spirits. Apart from
the numerically small but conspicuous success of the Quakers
it has scarce been tried by Churches at all. Looking back again
at the Reformation across three centuries of Evangelical
tradition one cannot but feel perhaps that, like most "cruel
necessities " of history, in its turn it was clever with the sword,
but clumsy enough with the ploughshare. "Simple gospels"
of the literal pattern, once in the people's hands, soon become
much as the commoner mediaeval sermon hand-books, the
matter of a few crude ideas and favourite quotations, oft-
repeated and almost as often misapplied. As catchwords for
revolutions and mass-movements, indeed, they may even prove
1
See Tract on Feigned Contemplative Life in Matthew (E.E.T.S., O.S.,
No. 74, p. 187 et seq.). Cf. also the attitude of Langland in Piers Plowman:
"Ac Robert Renne-aboute shal nowjte have of myne,
Ne 'posteles,' but they preche conne, and have powere of the bisschop."
(B. text, pass, vi, 11. 150-51.)
(For all Prof. Skeat's anxiety (in his notes) that "posteles" = apostles
should not be confused with "postills," there is no reason, to my mind, why
Langland should not intend the word here to be a pun upon Rolle's "postil-
lator" (see below,p. 116), in characteristic mediaeval fashion. N.B. Skeat's
own confession in the Glossarial Index: "the reason for its use here is not
clear.")
fraught with a deadly explosive energy, fit companions for the
dry powder in the soldier's flask, as Cromwell discovered. But
there their potency ends. The acute mind of Pecock in the
fifteenth century had already noticed this about the Lollard,
who could be just as "clamorous " and shallow as the friar in his
pulpit1. Moreover, the later spokesmen in our churches, too
often lacking the mellow scholarship of Wycliffe or Calvin
with their somewhat narrow zeal, have continued to rely upon
the little "hand-books" along with their texts. So short and
fussy is our life; so long and difficult to master is the real art of
the Spirit; so exciting and popular are the party cries and creeds,
ready-made for the pulpit, for the jaded religious nerves of our
modern "men of business." What, on the other hand, we are
tempted to wonder, would have happened, if instead of the noisy
aggressiveness of Geneva, the Wartburg, and Mr Burnet's
chapel, bristling cities, castles, conventicles, pulpits, the Pro-
testant era had chosen the unsacerdotalism of Rolle? His
gentle contact with those around him, his independent spiritual
life, lived in the peace of the open country, with time and taste
for reflection, for the quest after beauty2 and truth, as well as
mere "goodness," all these, no doubt, are things far too aristo-
cratic, too slow, too unobtrusive, and too individual for the in-
dustrial plutocracies, bureaucracies, democracies of to-day.
"Ego dormio, et cor meum vigilat,"3 the hermit's favourite
watch-word, rings sadly "out-of-date," like bells of rustic
England in summer-time, a dreamy sweetness that is passing,
too, for the majority of men.
Yet in further justice to Rolle, his type of religious mysticism
was to be as fruitful and as active for others as that of earlier
visionaries of the Church, like St Francis or St Bonaventura.
There is a mysticism which merely aggravates the condition of
the diseased and the weak-willed. But in the healthy spirit it
can breed so divine a discontent with the things of earth that
1
2
"Clamatores in pulpito!" he calls them.
It is necessary to bear in mind, however, that Rolle retains the harsh
mediaeval view of womanly beauty, and indeed of the sex as a whole, from the
earlier churchmen (cf. Horstmann, as above, vol. ii, p. xi). But see later, also,
on p. 123 below.
3
" I sleep, and my heart keepeth watch," Cant. v. 2, a text frequently
used by Rolle. Cf. too, the quaint English drawing in MS. Add. 37049,
fol. 30 b, which illustrates it.
n6 "WANDERING STARS"
only the most active labours will satisfy the mystic. Such was
Richard Rolle of Hampole. By somewhat of a strange para-
doxical turn of fortune, the hermit who may have declined to
preach was destined to become through his writings one of the
greatest influences in our history upon the development of the
vernacular sermon. Horstmann declares that there are indica-
tions that he did still occasionally exhort the people; after the
manner, we may imagine, then, of Diirer's John the Baptist,
who preaches to his visitors amid the forest trees. Nor is there
wanting in some of his works that denunciation of wanton
prelates, or of popular vices and frivolities, that championship
of the poor and needy, that sense of an approaching end to evil
times, that has been noticed elsewhere. In the Form of Perfect
Living or in his translation of St Edmund's Speculum, there is
not a little homely practical teaching of the Puritan kind.
Pressure of circumstances, after all, may have had something
to do with his decision not to deliver regular exhortations1.
"Non sum episcopus, nee prelatus, nee rector ecclesiarum.
Tamen sollicitus sum pro ecclesia Dei, si possem, aliquo bono
modo quidquam facere aut scribere quo ecclesia Dei augmentum
capiat in divina dilectione."
So the mystic sets out, in his own words, "Probatus postil-
lator (strictam scripturae masticans medullam, ut degam delicate
dulcoribus divinis)," to write expositions, homilies, postils,
and commentaries—"for you who have need to preach."2 As
enriched and multiplied by the co-operation of other pens, they
were destined "to make the North a literary centre for half a
century." The extraordinary extent of that influence will be
better realized when we come to deal with the actual sermon
literature. For what Wycliffe himself proposed to do with the
Latin Scriptures, Rolle and his followers did with the Latin
treatises of the friars, until hardly an English homily of the new
century lacked some affinity with their work. In the wider
history of religion, as elsewhere in life, diversity of tongues and
1
" Hi qui praeferunt (i.e. prelati) maxime me odiunt." " Putant quod non
potui pure praedicare nee sapere ut ceteri qui sancte subsistunt," etc. See
Horstmann, vol. ii, pp. xxiii and xxiv. (The bishops may actually have pro-
hibited him at one time.)
2
In the Cupienti mihi: " ut, quod ego nondum in publico predicando cogor
dicere, saltern vobis ostendam scribendo, qui necessitatem habetis predicare."
'WANDERING STARS" 117
diversity of gifts may go to the enrichment of the one body.

May we not believe that these two literary branches—to change
a metaphor—grew together as part of the great tree of Reforma-
tion piety, blossoming afresh in Bunyan and in Fox?
If some left preaching alone with the world, other hermits
would choose the life, realizing with Waldeby1, "that solitarines
THE HERMIT PREACHER

(From MS. Roy. 14. E. iiijol. o6.)
is profetable to contemplacioun, where a man may geder by
prayer, study, and meditacioun, what he schal sey to the peple
in sermonyng."2 The hermit moreover was not enclosed like
the anchorite3, and his wanderings and haranguings in the
twelfth century had for a time almost rivalled those of the
subsequent friars. Such had been the Frenchman, Vital of
1
2
See here in the previous chapter, from the Prologue to his Treatise.
MS. Roy. 8. c. i. (Lichfield).
3
Yet even these may have left their cell to preach, apparently. Cf. the
cases of Scrope and Swinderby following.
n8 "WANDERING STARS"
Savigny1, who had addressed audiences in England divinely
assisted, as in that other case described by Gerald of Wales2,
to understand his Latin. It is a Lollard who complains that
"heremites and pardoners, ankerers and strange beggars are
licensed and admitted of prelates and priests for to beguile the
people with flatterings and leasings slanderously3." On the
other hand, Rolle had complained of precisely the opposite—
"heremitas abjiciunt"; and such an episcopal prohibition as
that which concerns friar Henry Staunton, in a York Register4,
under the year 1334, would seem to bear him out. The situation
turned, no doubt, on the kind of message they were ready to
proclaim. Of more value and interest than any scattered
references, however, for a true estimate of the hermit as preacher,
are certain biographical details recorded of these who for other
reasons figured more prominently in the life of the times. In the
story of Thomas Scrope on the one side, and of William Swin-
derby on the other, re-told, though only in outline, by writers
of recent date5, we are provided with an arresting contrast in the
careers of two ascetical men. The former succeeds to a suffragan
bishopric—indeed he might have enjoyed higher dignities still
if he had liked—with a universal reputation for holiness, which
survived to his death-bed. The latter, spurred on by a restless
excitability, ended his days in ignominy and heresy, that par-
ticular heresy with which the present survey closes.
Scrope, or Bradley, to call him by the name of his birth-
place, the first of the two mentioned, though of noble parentage6
and happier fate than his fellow, seems to have been equally
extravagant in the words and actions of youth. Indeed, he is said
1
See Bourgain, La Chairefr. p. 181.
2
Giraldus Cambrensis Opera (Rolls S.), vol. vi, p. 83.
3
From Thorpe's Testament (see Foxe, Acts and Monum.).
4
Reg. Archbp. Melton, in Fasti Ebor. vol. i, p. 421. An order forbidding
anyone to listen to the preaching of friar Henry de Staunton, hermit. Cf. also
the action taken at Coventry against the preaching of the hermit John Grace,
1424. (See M. Harris, Life in an Old English Town, p. 141 and footnote
references.)
5
For Swinderby, see Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reform., vol. i; for Scrope
(or Bradley) see Miss Clay, The Hermits and Anchorites of England, p . 163 et
seq. and D.N.B. My own account is written from original sources.
8
"Ex nobilissimo Scroporum genere natus, relicto patrimonii jure cum
ceteris fortunae dotibus, in Carmelo Nordovicensi anachoritam professus
est." Bale in MS. Harl. 3838, fol. 107 b.
to have called down upon himself the wrath of the cautious Netter,
his Carmelite provincial minister. George Fox's famous ap-
pearance in the "bloody city" of Lichfield, when "the word
of the Lord was like a fire in me: so I put off my shoes,.. .and
went into the market-place and to and fro in the several parts
of it," 1 is the dark shadow of our Whitefriar in the streets of
Norwich about the year 1425. In sackcloth and chains he goes,
crying that "the new Jerusalem, bride of the Lamb, would
shortly come down from heaven, and be prepared immediately
for her spouse," adding "that with great joy he saw her in the
spirit." "Apart from his singular doctrine, he was assuredly
a most kindly, affable, modest man, and worthy of much vene-
ration," says Bale, who speaks later in glowing terms of his
"incredible sanctity of life, and his profound learning." In
spite of such eccentricity, and Netter's rebuke, after fourteen
years of inclusion2, somewhere about the year 1446, or subse-
quently, Pope Eugenius IV compelled him to leave his anchorite's
cell, and become Bishop of Dromore in Ireland. But "this
most humble man" named a substitute of his own Order3,
and managed to get free of the unwelcome dignity in a very
short time. Nevertheless, for twenty years he was constrained
to work as suffragan bishop in the diocese of Norwich, an honour,
however, which in no way damaged the beauty and simplicity
of his character. The last picture of him, which Bale supplies,
before his death in 1491, "non sine magna sanctitatis opinione,"
is that of a venerable figure, going the round of his
native district, "with bare feet, after the apostolic practice,"
preaching the commandments of God to the common people.
The fact that a collection of Sermones de Decent Preceptis is
specifically mentioned by Bale amongst his compositions, to-
gether with this curious devotion to the Decalogue on the part
of ascetics4 which applies to his case, might prompt us to
1
2
1651. (See Geo. Fox's Journal, under date.)
Miss Clay says that Bale speaks of 20 years, but he says clearly "post
xiiii inclusionis annos." This must be her mistake for the 20 years, which he
mentions later, for his tenure of the suffragan bishopric.
3
According to Bale, Richard Misyn, Carmelite, possibly the same as the
translator of Rolle's Incendium Amoris, see here, n. 3, p. 226.
4
Cf. MS. St John's Coll.; Oxford, 94. (Printed by J. F. Royster as
a Midd. English Treatise on the X Commandmts; No. vi of Studies in Philology,
Univ. of North Carolina.) Written by a Northern recluse, c. 1420-34
izo "WANDERING STARS"
identify with his name one of the several surviving vernacular
tractates on this subject. One group, which has come under
the present writer's notice more than once, contains passages
which recur again and again in the several versions, thereby
suggesting that behind them there must lie unquestionably
some common source. In proximity to one of these tracts,
which may well be the actual De Decent Mandatis of Scrope,
there may be found references to the life of the " contemplatyf
men, that delyteth hem in contemplacions, and in devotions,
and delyteth hem onlyche in God, and in none other thyng,
ry3t as it were an aungel of hevene." Not without intimate
acquaintance with its perils, the holy man, whoever he be, warns
the ordinary layman that he "be nou3t to muche alone in
solitarye lyvyng, in musyng to muche, and to feer of Godes
my3t and his privetees." He is not called like Lichfield's
anchorite to be a lonely bird upon the tree-tops. Let him
"drawe to wyse and devout cumpanye," when tempted1. On
the other hand, the writer insists on the "privy place from al
maner noyse, and tyme of reste, without eny lettynge " for the
practice of prayer. Posture matters nothing but to free the
senses—"Sytte ther or knele as ys most ese!" Whether it be
the voice of the kindly old Carmelite friar or not that speaks, here
surely we catch the sighing of gentle winds, the rustle of trees,
the silent passage of the clouds about some hermit's cell. Ap-
pealing descriptions of the sacred Agony recall at once the
language of the mystical Yorkshire school2: "Behold with thy
gostly eyje, his pitous passion!" In the sufferings of the Virgin,
"the teers of Maudelyn, and of hure other frendes," the preacher
Domin.; (cf. fol. 101 b: "Preyeth for the saul of frere Jon Lacy, anchor
(fol. I adds ' de ordine fratrum Predicatorum') in the New Castell upon tynde,
the wiche that wrooth this book. . ."(fol. i adds"A.D. 1434"). May we identify
the friar Staunton, hermit, of the Melton Reg. (see n.4 above, p. 118) with
the author of MS. Gray's Inn Library 15, "Staunthone de Decem Pre-
ceptis" who was almost certainly a friar Minor? (see here, Chap. n). As for
Scrope, his name actually occurs twice in an " Orate pro anima " added to a
MS. (Harl. 211, fols. 174 and 191 b), containing one variety of the Tract on
the Decalogue here referred to.
1
Cf. MS. Harl. 2398, fols. 182, 186; cf. also fol. 69 b ("a woman recluse
and solitarye... "). (The Tract on the Commandments is on fols. 73—106.)
2
We must not forget to add to the same group of writings by hermits the
much shorter " notabill Tretys off the ten Comandementys: drawene by
Richerde, the hermyte off Hampull," in MS. Thornton (fol. 192 ff.) printed
in Horstmann, vol. i, pp. 195, etc.
reaches his emotional climax: "And I trowe amonges alle these
thou shalt have compu(n)ccioun, and plente of teerys. Whenne
ther cometh suche devocion, than is tyme that thou speke for
thyn owen nede, and for alle othere lyves quyke and dede, that
tristeth to thyne prayer. Caste down thy body thanne to the
grounde, and lyft up thyn herte on hy, with dolful chere thanne
make thy mone.... 'n But it is the Mosaic Decalogue above all
else, stern, forbidding, self-controlling like the hermit's own
life, that must be preached: "Prestes scholde teche thes com-
mandementes of God, and publissche hem with al here my3t
to the commune peple... .But I drede me that we beo bailleys
of erroure for thes commandements."2
With William Swinderby we reach what Carlyle called "the
fierce lightning of the Reformer." "No wild Saint Dominies
and Thebaid Eremites, there would have been no melodious
Dante." 3 We do well to remember this fact, however un-
fashionable the bitter Lollard and the somewhat morose
Reformers may be in these days. The long story of Swinderby's
picturesque, stormy career opens in the pages of Henry Knigh-
ton's Chronicle4, and closes, for us, in the Hereford Episcopal
Registers of Bishop Treffnant, from which Foxe took the
greater part of his narrative in The Acts and Monuments5.
Allowing for the fact that Knighton naturally liked him as
little as the good wives of Leicestershire whom he insulted, or
the bishops, troubled with his heresies, we see at the least a
brave impetuous man of the typical stuff of which "obstinate
heretics" are made. Acquainted alike with the solitude of
hermit's cell and forest clearing, with the ways of the world
whether in town, or country, or monastery, he burns un-
1
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 186. Cf. too the Passion scene in the St Albans
Cath. MS. Treatise on the Commandments, fol. 20; also in MS. Laud.
Misc. 23 (with the ''litil processe" for prayer (fol. 46b ), as above).
2
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 74. Some of these tracts have been quite ground-
lessly ascribed to Wycliffe, at all events no friend, as we have seen, to the
" contemplatyf men." See further in my article in the Transactions of the
St Albans and Herts. Archaeological Society, for 1924 ("A 15th-century
MS. in St Albans Cathedral"), and on p. 281, et seq., below.
3
Heroes and Hero-Worship," Lect. IV, "The Hero as priest."
1
5
Under 1382 (see Rolls S., Chron. Knightn. p. 189 et seq.).
The reference to the account of Proceedings before Bishop Trefnant
against William Swinderby, the heretical preacher, is from Reg. Treffnant
(Hereford), pp. 231, et seq. (publ. Cantilupe Soc. and Cant, and York Soc).
ceasingly with a genuine passion over the corruptions of Church
and State, without ever being able to hold his peace about it.
If ever clamour could save the world, the pulpit Swinderbys
might be justly hailed as its redeemers. " Cry aloud and spare
not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their
transgression!" Silenced in one diocese, he breaks out in another.
Expelled from the churches, he appears upon the highways or
in the fields. Hustled and rejected by one crowd to-day, he
has a new following by to-morrow. In short, his whole life is
at once a lesson in the growth and development of Lollardy,
and a curious foreshadowing of the Dissenting type of Tudor
and early Stuart times.
A certain mystery seems to hang about his very origin,
obscure like that of so many later sectaries. "There was in those
days (c. 1380) at Leicester," says the chronicler, "a certain
priest William de Swynderby, whom men called William the
Hermit, in that he had practised the heremitical life for some
time in that place. But when he came hither, or from whence
he derived his origin is unknown." Restlessness seems to have
been the one certain feature of his early life. Many occupations
he had tried; but none satisfied him. Here is the roving in-
constant mind of the heretic-preacher at its first stages, as seen
by an opponent1. He is an undisciplined man, possessed of that
fatal spirit of "curiosity " and enquiry, which will always be the
foe of religions of authority. His first recorded preaching topic
—"de mulierum defectibus et superbia"—merely alluded to by
Gairdner, is of interest to us in view of its regular occurrence
in every type of contemporary sermon:
Nam ornatum mulierum multum despiciebat, superbiamque, et
actus earum aspernabatur, lasciviasque earum aspernabatur; et
quamvis bene agebat, tamen nimis importune de hac materia tracta-
1
There is an interesting passage in Dr Lichfield's Tractate which throws
a quaint contemporary light on the psychology of men like Swinderby
(MS. Ryl. 8. C. i, fol. 124 b): "Mich peple that are bonden to cylence, as
religyouse folke, ankyres and ankereses, are like to floode 3atys of a mylne,
wyche long tyme withstandith the water and kepith it, that it flow not. Bot
wen the flowde3atys ar opened, then shotys the watir oute at onys. Thus
many suche peple kepyn silence for a tyme in certen places. But wen the
place or occacion of spekyng comith, then they speke to myche and veyn. Thus
did the frendes of Job, that were comen to confort hym. They sate still vii
dayes; but wen they begonnen to speke, thay couthe not stynt her tonges."
bat, quia finem facere nesciebat, sicuti nee in quacumque alia
materia quam in predicatione tractabat.
That was the whole tragedy of his career. Others, we know
for certain, denounced unsparingly the wanton fashions, the
wigs, the paint, the "horns," the long-flowing trains, the rich
furs and wasteful sleeve-lengths, as well as womanly pride and
passion. They "did well."1 But he "never knew when to stop."
So heavily did these rebukes from the pulpit weigh upon the
minds of the townswomen, good, bad, and indifferent, that they
actually proposed to stone him out of the place. But scenting
the danger in time, says Knighton, he turned his attentions
instead to the wickedness of merchants and plutocrats, "fre-
quently asserting in his sermons that no one could enjoy the
riches of this world, and affluence of temporal goods, and attain
to the kingdom of heaven." This, again, is only one step beyond
the accusing language of Bromyard himself, who, like others,
would well nigh damn the merchant and his kind with charges
of lying, perjury and the basest forms of deceit chiefly at the
1
It is only possible to give one or two illustrations from orthodox preach-
ing here. Dr Bromyard makes most amusing reading; cf. S.P.—Bellum
(The devil's Amazons): " Adducens... militissas suas,. . . habentes, pro galea,
cornua, et capitegia, et frontalia; et sic de alia armatura,—intantum quod a
planta pedis usque ad verticem capitis, nihil in eis invenies nisi sagittas
diaboli acutissimas. . . Mulieres in habitu meretricio, ludentes seu chorei-
zantes, vel cum signis levibus incedentes. . . Tripudiatrices et fatuae mulieres
.. .," etc. S.P.—Luxuria (The devil's incendiaries): " In muliere namque
impudice ornata ad capiendas animas, sertum in capite est quasi unus carbo
vel titio inferni pro igne illo accendendo, sic cornua alterius, sic collum nu-
datum, sic firmaculum in pectore, sic de omnibus curiositatibus totius cor-
poris.. .. " (The devil's Apostles): "Sic diabolus eas ad hoc ornat, et per
villam, tanquam apostolos suos, mittit, repletas omni iniquitate, malitia,
fornicatione. . .," etc. Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 181:" Sed quid dicam de
modernis mulieris (sic!) ? Certe nedum quod ' mulier erat in civitate peccat-
rix,' sed quod mulier est in civitate peccatrix.. .," etc. MS. Add. 21253,
fol. 45 b, etc. ("de muliere fatua, garrula, et vaga, quietis impatiens, nee
valens in domo consistere, pedibus suis nunc foris, nunc plateis.. .," etc.).
Ibid. fol. 54 b: " Isti insidiantes, et aucupes, et venatores sunt demones;
laquei eorum, discipulae et pedicae sunt malae et fatuae mulieres, quae in
apparatibus suis et deceptionibus suis capiunt homines et decipiunt.... "
The writer actually speaks here of the " many sermons " which deal with this
subject. MS. Harl. 45, fol. 96, also calls them " the develis grenes " or snares,
even if the wearers are not lecherous themselves. MS. Harl. 1197, fol. 1 b :
("women that arayin hem nycely to be seen of foolis"). MS. Roy.
8. C. i, fol. 123 : ("strumptes aray, to gret boldenes,. . .nyse japynge, nyse
cherynge, and sych othere"). MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 9 "Jacob's Well"
(ed. E.E.T.S. p. 150, etc.).
expense of rustics and the unsuspecting poor1. So far, then, the
actual content of Swinderby's message is strangely faithful to
the directions for preaching laid down by the great orthodox
manuals. It is at least a tribute to his pulpit forcefulness that
the chronicle pays, when it informs us that certain honest souls in
Leicester were well-nigh driven to desperation by his indictment.
Next follows a period of solitude, first in a hermitage on the
Duke of Lancaster's estates, afterwards in a cell within the
precincts of Leicester Abbey, set inside or against the con-
ventual church2. There is further proof that there was no heresy
about his utterances, when we read that the canons received him
as a holy man, and continued to supply him with the necessities
of life ("victum cum pensione")3. This period coincides with
a spell of village preaching, and would lead us to suppose that
even recluses sometimes could be active to this extent. From
the chronicler's lines, one would gather, further, that it was this
missionary contact with the outside world that brought him
into touch with the Lollard movement, then rapidly spreading
through the district. At all events he fell under the spell of
one William Smyth and other Wycliffites, dwelling "in a cer-
tain chapel of St John the Baptist near a Leper-house," and so
became one of their modest company4.
Little imagination is needed to understand how restless, dis-
1
Bromyard (S.P.—Mercatio) accuses the merchants of profiteering in
corn; of using false weights and measures; tricking the balances with the
hand; mixing goods with sand, or wetting them to increase weight; mixing
new goods with old; miscounting coin, or including bad coin with good;
tricking the rustics; selling goods in " locis obscuris " to disguise their real
quality and colour, etc. So Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 68 b: "Nonnulli
mercatores committunt furtum, qui per falsa pondera, per falsas mensuras,
per falsa mercimonia circumveniunt populum.. . . " Cf. also ibid. fol. 36,
etc. MS. Harl. 45, fol. 71: "lienge" and "forswerynge," "false-sche-
wynge," as in Bromyard: " as doth drapers, mercers, and many other suche,"
etc. MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 36: " wei3tes and mesures ben yvel weied and
fillid; as tapsteris don"; false weights and measures again in MS. Caius Coll.
Camb. 334, fol. 178 b (Waldeby); MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 100 b; Jacob's Well
(E.E.T.S. ed.), pp. 133, 118, 212, etc. (Also here cheating the rustics again,
and forcing up prices, etc.) I hope to deal with this subject in a subsequent
study of "English Society in the Sermons."
2
3
" In quadam camera infra ecclesiam."
Cf. Clay, The Hermits, etc. p. 104 et passim, for other examples.
4
For another interesting case of a recluse (this time female) suspected of
Lollardy in this very district, cf. that of the anchoress Matilda, in the church-
yard of St Peter's Church, Leicester (mentioned by Foxe, Acts and Monums),
see Knighton's Chron. (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 312. (1393.)
satisfied preachers, like the Leicester hermit, found a fresh and
welcome rallying point in the new sect, if such it can be called.
Knighton himself, speaking of the situation, tells us so greatly
was it multiplied, by now, that of every two men that you might
meet on the road one would be almost certainly a follower of
the Oxford reformer. Dissatisfaction, indeed, is sown broadcast
over our sermon literature, as well. No sinister motives there-
fore from Knighton are needed to explain the adhesion of such a
character. The patience of many churchmen might be long. That
might only prove how passive if not positively indifferent they
could become under the yoke of familiar evils. Less tolerant
souls, however, writhing under the same rotten and foetid
ecclesiastical system that bishop and friar had cursed, would
grow tired at length, and have none of it. Why then should they
not welcome with outstretched hands the first signs of this
" reformacion without tarying for anie"?
With Swinderby, as we should expect, the new move was to
be the signal for a fresh outburst of preaching. How should he
contain himself? The new theme was "contra libertates
ecclesiae, et contra ecclesiasticos personas," continues our
indignant narrator, "to blacken the reputation of the church-
men, by asserting that they lived a shameless life, appropriated
church goods in evil manner, and expended them in worse."
Indeed! Dr Gairdner may be a little shocked and impressed;
but we can hardly be deceived at this stage by the crafty
Knighton. Was there a single eminent preacher of the day on
the side of orthodoxy who was not speaking, even writing for
the future instruction of others, in precisely the same strain1?
1
See here, in Chap. I. For the rest I can only take that orthodox enemy
of Lollards, Master Rypon of Durham, to illustrate further (MS. Harl.
4894, fol. 213): " Quod dolendum est, nonnulli, et forsan sacerdotes et clerici,
potius voluptati quam castigationi corporum inherentes in dicto bello per
gladium carnalis concupiscentie miserabiliter sunt devicti, et in carnalibus
peccatis, presertim in gula et luxuria, quasi bestiales effecti, in tantum quod
de gulosis sacerdotibus verificatur illud prophete—' Sacerdotes pre ebrietate
nescierunt,' et de luxuriosis sacerdotibus. .. (Bernardus)—' In multis sacer-
dotibus regnat fornicatio.. . . ' " Page after page can be found in the same
strain. So Bromyard, Waldeby (see especially MS. Roy. 7. E. ii, fol. 31:
"wicked and lascivious priests expending church possessions in fornication
and other uncleanness," etc.), Wimbledon, Lathbury, and a host of others.
Archbp. Fitzralph's accounts of his fellow prelates ("tarn majores quam
minores") beggar all description. Cf. also here, in Chap. 1, pp. 35, 42-3,
and Chap, vi, pp. 248—253, etc.
iz6 "WANDERING STARS"
However, it was certainly one thing for the doctor and the prelate
to make such remarks before suitable congregations, and quite
another thing in Swinderby's case to cry them from the house-
tops. Matters grew far more serious, when he and his associates
proceeded to tell their lay audiences that old heresy that the
priest who lives contrary to the law of God is no priest at all,
and that it is a positive sin to give tithes to the immoral, to the
absentee, to the ignorant and non-preaching curate1. For it
was this and not the clerical condemnation that constituted the
ravings of a heretic. The message2 was proclaimed alike to the
citizens of Leicester, and to the country-folk of Melton and
" Loughtborowe," in hospital chapel, in parish church, and
cemetery. For once his historian bears eloquent witness to his
successes: "He captured the affability of the crowd, and attracted
their friendship to such an extent that they would say that never
had they seen or heard anyone expound to them the truth like
him; and thus he was revered as another god among them."
Strange contrast to earlier results in the same district!
Notoriety of this kind naturally attracted the attention of
the Bishop of Lincoln, and at length led to an injunction of
silence and ostracism. Then occurred that amazing scene, as
dramatic surely as anything in the annals of covenanting Scot-
land, or Puritan England, when the preacher seized upon two
mill-stones which lay for sale in the high street, outside his
chapel, and setting them up for a pulpit, summoned the crowd,
and preached in defiance of all bishops '' that he was able and
willing to preach in the king's high-way in the teeth of a hostile
bishop, if only he retained the good-will of the people." "Then
you should see the throngs of people from every quarter, from
town and countryside alike, flock to his preaching in number
twice as great after this inhibition and sentence of excommuni-
cation as ever before it." What a theme for Carlyle to have
conjured with! "He is the warfaring and battling Priest, who
1
Yet as regards the first statement we find Master Rypon saying in his
sermon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 207 b): " Tales ideo mali sacerdotes sunt solum
nomine tenus, et non realiter sacerdotes, quia nee bene vivunt, nee bene
docent." (But here in a sermon to the clergy themselves only, not "ad
populum "!)
2
Cf. also his advanced views on the subject of debtors: " Item predicabat
quod homines possunt debita sua cum caritate petere a suis debitoribus, sed
nullo modo aliquem propter debita implacitare aut incarcerare."
led his people, not to quiet, faithful labour, as in smooth times,
but to faithful, valorous conflict in times all violent, dismem-
bered: a more perilous service, and a more memorable one, be
it higher or not."
Unfortunately in Swinderby's case the note of triumphant
leadership was not to last. He was only rescued, after fresh
citation and examination, from the fate of burning, by the kindly
offices of the aforesaid Duke of Lancaster, and was forced to
make an ignominious recantation of his heresies and errors. In
later years he told how the false witnesses arrayed against him
then were "five friers or more, that some of them never saw me
before, ne heard me, and three lecherous priestes opanlie
knowen, some living in their lecherie twenty yeare, men sayden,
or more, as by their childer was openly knowen." Space forbids
that we follow him further afield with the same precision as
hitherto. There is another period of silence and retirement,
like that of Luther after Worms perhaps, when he dwelt at the
old Leicester chapel again—"sad and mournful, to such an
extent that those of his friends who formerly saw him in his
prosperous days, now left him as it were desolate, neither
visiting, nor consoling him, nor ministering to him his wonted
sustenance." That is the tragic fate of the preacher whose
triumphs have been achieved on the strength of pulpit reputation
alone. Now out of his throne, too broken in spirit and hedged
about with enemies to maintain further resistance in the open,
the spell is broken and the reputation blasted. His friends
forsook him when the old defiance perished. The tale of his
recovery, of his flight to Coventry, "where in a short time he
was held in greater honour than before by the laity, and preached
for about a year " with striking results, of his subsequent alarms
and incursions in the diocese of Hereford, all can be read in the
pages of Foxe, of Gairdner, or of the original Registers them-
selves1. Nor is it within our present scope to consider the
character of his erroneous opinions.
1
With Swinderby cf. further the case of Jo. Grace, and the popularity of
his preaching in the Little Park, at Coventry, in 1424; first monk, then friar,
then recluse. For references to the Leet Book, etc. see Harris, Life in an Old
English Town, pp. 140-41; and Clay, The Hermits..., p. 164. Cf. further
MS. Harl. 6388, fol. 16, "A Hermit preached in the Parke and there was a
great audience."
iz8 "WANDERING STARS"
The actual style of Swinderby's preaching may be gathered
from what, though called A Letter to the Nobles and Burgesses
of the Parliament, is obviously compiled from a typical discourse
of some kind1. Its tenor agrees well with the spirit of the
hunted man. Picture him, now in "a desert wood cleped
Derwaldswood," "and there in a certain chapel not hallowed, or
rather in a profane cottage,"—"accurset shepheardes hulke,"
some called it, now "in an unhallowet chappell that stonds in
the parke of Newton2, besides the towne of Leyntwarden of this
same dioces"; now, on his own confession, "preaching to the
people in the church of Witney of your dioces." He cries to the
Parliament men:'' This land is full of ghostly cowards, in ghostly
battaile, fewe dare stand. But Christ, the comforter of all that
falleth (to that his heart brast for our love) against that fiend,
the doughtie duke, comforteth us thus, Estote fortes in bello....
' Be ye strong in battaile,' he saies, ' and fight ye with the old
adder.'" The speaker knows there is little need to describe the
abuses of the times. No one would deny them. Rather does he
challenge the secular arm, in characteristic Lollard fashion, to
defend the right: "Awake ye quickly and slepe nought, and
stand now strongly for God's law," even as "Judas Machabeus,
that was God's true knight, that comforted hartely God's true
people to be the followers of His law." The whole is couched
in the most violent threatening language as we should expect, of
fierce penalties from God3, of impending vengeance on those
"that breake his bidding, and dispiseth his lawes and his domes."
The thunders of the persecuted sectary are added to those of
the erstwhile hermit. His regular denunciations after the old
prophetic manner, his solid array of Israelitish heroes well
foreshadow that element of Old Testament Judaism which was
to permeate alike the preaching and the practice of the Reformed
1
See Foxe, Acts and Monums. bk. v (Ch. Hist. Ed. 1855, vol. iii, pt i,
pp.2 128-30).
Swinderby himself seems to have denied preaching in this chapel
("Truely I wot not where that place stands"). From W. H. Summers,
Our Lollard Ancestors (1906), it would appear that remains of both these
chapels survive, the former (Deerfold Forest, W. Herefordshire) known as
"the Lollard's Chapel" (pp. 51-2).
3
" If that ye wenden against me and will not heare me, I shall adde hereto
seven fold woundes for your sinnes. I shall send amongest you beestes of the
field that shall devour you and your beestes. I shall bring you into afield,and
wayes shuln be desart...."
Faith for centuries to come. But, as we have seen, it is no ex-
clusive cry of the disappointed fanatics. The great churchmen
of the court and the Universities, judges and opponents of
Wycliffe, were equally disappointed in their way, certainly
equally violent and threatening with tongue and pen. Such is
the last word of too many, be they high-placed, or low, for a
world that snuffs out their fond enterprise, that rejects their
little plan of salvation. With it go the vision and the hopes too
often built like those of the petulant child upon a here-and-now,
an outward manifestation, an external Civitas Dei, that is
soon denied them. For all their talk of a future life, Heaven to
Bromyard or Waldeby is little better than a welcome vindictive
triumph over an evil generation and a perverse world that
opposed them. Such it has remained to a large extent in the
old-fashioned Protestant theology.
Once more we are brought face to face then, in the history of
our pulpit, not with mere picturesque trifles of antiquity, but
fundamental issues of life, that cannot be relegated to any
"dark ages." For hard it is in every period to find the correct
mean between an excessive tolerance, and an excessive out-
spokenness. This impetuous believer, to whom the religious
solution and its God seem clear as daylight, stark realities,
imperative and intimate as the moral law within, will fight all
the braver for his narrow creed. He may succeed to a "crown-
ing mercy" of his own, and beyond it. Sooner or later there
comes the moment when his little arrogant schemes may be
shattered at a stroke. Who was he to set right the world, and
pose as the champion of the Almighty? This other, a scholar,
large-minded, patient, diffident, a respecter of institutions,
shrinks and does nothing aggressive—" waiting for the consola-
tion of Israel." Who shall choose between them, for a despair-
ing world? Too seldom at all events has the disappointed
preacher—like Milton, or an almost forgotten liberal Germany
—had wit and courage enough to break forth into singing, when
outward hopes were destroyed. If we mistake not, it is here that
the "Incendium Amoris" proves its vast incomparable superi-
ority over the theology and the ethic of the "Dies Irae." For
the "idly contemplative" Rolle, with his steady glow, continues
to warm and cheer our spirits, long after the flaming Lollard
i3o "WANDERING STARS"
and Anabaptist have burnt themselves and their propaganda—
not their enemies—to ashes. To the perspiring Swinderbys
the time is so short, the day of the Lord is always "at hand";
not some gentle day of inspiration leading to long summer
moods and mellow autumns, but a sudden violent act of de-
struction, a storm designed to suit a peevish temper, and a petty
grievance against the creation: "And therefore, sith our time
is short, how short no man knowes but G o d . . . . " The real
seer and man of faith, soothed and uplifted by the majestic silences
and travailings of God and Nature, will leave to the future in
song, in poem, in sonata, or in the fragrant memories of his few
intimate friends what the present refused to hearken to, or
understand. "And now I have told you before it come to pass.
. . .Hereafter I will not talk much with you."
But what of the Lollard, and his place in the English pulpit,
now that we have come to him? When Dr Gairdner wrote his
learned study from a ripe acquaintance with almost every kind
of document that might be associated with ecclesiastical and
public Records1, it is safe to say that the rich contemporary
evidence of great orthodox sermon collections in this country
had not lain open before him, nor probably before anyone else.
Though a peep into this other chamber would certainly not have
intoxicated him, it could hardly have failed to enhance that sense
of "much moral evil," in the Church, "which the best men in
her knew not how to remedy."2 However exaggerated, however
antiquated in its forms of speech, this particular literature has
an intimacy not merely with outward facts but with the inward
thoughts and feelings of reputable churchmen of the day which
cannot be ignored3. In the light of it therefore the deeper
1
Except the Registers, I understand, which he confessedly had not
studied.
2
See Lollardy and the Reform., vol. i, pp. 36, 37.
3
See especially above in Chap. 1. Here is another sample from Rypon
(Syn. Serm. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 198): " . . .Omnes gradus ecclesiae mili-
tantis, quorum quilibet indubitanter Christum male vivendo in multis
personis illudit. Sed quilibet conqueritur de alio dicens, 'Vath qui destruis
templum Dei!' Clerici imponunt defectus regnantes in ecclesia laicis, et
laici clericis econverso, superiores inferioribus, inferiores superioribus. Sed
certe possum vere dicere illud, quod dixit mulier de infante in presencia
Salomonis, 'Nee mihi, nee tibi, sed dividatur!' Nullus gradus in ecclesia se
potest totaliter, ut estimo, excusare. Sed comparando laicos clericis, timeo
quod clericorum peccata sunt graviora criminibus laicorum...," etc.
history of such movements for reform will have to be re-written
or expanded. With the witness of these English preachers of
eminence before us, now supplementing the evidence of the
Registers, it is certainly quite impossible to dismiss the Reforma-
tion as any mere act of wanton cupidity or destructiveness,
from without. Meanwhile, we are faced, roughly speaking, with
three groups of new material; first, the utterances of men whom
we can recognize directly as the outspoken enemies of Wycliffe
or his party—Bromyard, Brunton, Rypon, Myrc, Lathbury1,
and others, whose words make clear confession of their attitude;
secondly, the equally indubitable homilies and tracts provided
by the Lollards themselves. But between the two, as it were,
there appears a third group of manuscripts, written in the
vernacular, whose authorship may be a matter of some debate.
Hitherto usually attributed to the reformer, when noticed and
attributed at all, by reason of their demand for more scriptural
preaching, and their independent criticism of abuses, they
reject none the less what the records of trials and sentences
declare to be the characteristic Lollard attitude towards images,
lay-reading of Scripture, veneration of saints, and so forth.
These will be discussed and explained in a subsequent chapter,
but for the present we may safely discard for them a heretical
authorship. All three groups are remarkably unanimous upon
one point, the disastrous corruption in the Church. There is
little attempt to hide any of it, and many of the statements have
a similarity which is positively arresting. In favour of Lollardy,
then, viewed as a first deliberate attempt to do something
practical2 and immediate to remove abuses, where others merely
threatened and denounced, they constitute a very formidable
argument. Yet with drastic proposals for reform, however
well-grounded, there must always be the further question of
1
Although in the case of Rypon, and Myrc, practically nothing is known
of their careers, their writings contain definite attacks on the Lollards, as
heretics of the day (similarly with the unknown author of Jacob's Well). This
is especially marked in the case of Rypon (cf. p. 138, n. 1, below).
2
This essentially practical aspect of their religious view is well brought out
in the Lollard preaching. The homilist of MS. Add. 24202 contrasts with the
idle folly of pilgrimages what to him are the real religious duties: "to kepe
Goddis hestis, and mayntene oure lawe, and help faderlis and moderlis
children and pore widowis, and to releve hor tenauntis of chargis and taxis
that thei may not wel bere. . .," etc. (fol. 28 b).
9-2
i32 "WANDERING STARS"
appropriate means. Here the follower of Wycliffe seems to have
proved himself as prone as any reforming agent of history, to
that excessive insolence and tyranny which so often ruins the
success of the cause. There are preaching scenes, indeed, as
vivid as those of Swinderby which testify to that fact. A mayor
of Northampton and his friends, for example, are not above
arresting a vicar by armed force in his own church, in the middle
of the service, to compel a hearing for the Lollard preacher
they have introduced, "the said maior remaining in the pulpit
hard by the preacher, till he had finished his sermon." And now
"the whole town is become Lollardes, no man dareing open his
mouth against theire likeinge for fear of the said maior and
Lollards."1 Moreover, once outside the schools, it was so
subversive a movement from below, that who, amongst persons
of any responsibility2, recalling the Peasants' Revolt or the
murder of Sudbury, could fail to be suspicious of the results?
The task of a Treffnant was unenviable indeed, when further
"stirring up of schism between clergy and people" might well
provoke a revolution. But when all is admitted, Carlyle's
dictum about the Reformation has to stand for the historian,
however little to the liking of the ecclesiastical "clothes-philo-
sophers" of to-day: "When Hercules turned the purifying
river into King Augeas' stables, I have no doubt the confusion
that resulted was considerable all around. But I think it was not
Hercules' blame; it was some other's blame!"
The first point to be noticed in the general contribution of
Wycliffe to English mediaeval preaching is his insistence on
"the naked text," or exposition of the Gospel message "per
nudum textum," freed of the accumulation of foreign matter
from without. On the one hand, the ignorance and silence of
parochial clergy, on the other, the scholastic refinements and
1
See Powell and Trevelyan (Docs, re Peasants' Revolt), p. 46. The whole
account is worth reading (c. 1393). Cf. (after the fray): "The said maior gat
him up into the pulpit to incourage the said preacher to goe forward with his
sermon, etc. and commaunded the people to keep silence, and give heed to
the sermon uppone the paine of death.. . . "
2
Cf. Letter of the Archbp. of Canterbury, 1382, in Fascic. Ziz. (Rolls S.),
p. 272: " . . . p e r predicationem suorum et sibi (Wycl.) adherentium, qui
semper dissencionem pretendebant, et plebem ad insurrectionem provoca-
bant ita ut vix aliquis eorum predicaret, quin ad pugnam inter se audientes
provocarentur, et schismata in villis fierent."
analogues of the doctors and friars had made such a demand
sooner or later inevitable. " Sermones de tempore " in manu-
script will prove how widely the reformer's challenge was to be
taken up. Furthermore, from it can be traced each successive
step in the Lollard conception of the pulpit. Though neither
his Evangelicalism nor his Puritanism were by any means
original, as we have seen, this adhesion to the scriptural phrase
as ultimate standard of religion itself, revived and maintained
the superiority of pulpit evangelism over ceremonial, and with
it every element of mediaeval Puritanism which had flourished
in the past. True theology, argues Wycliffe, needs no "Forma"
for its presentation. "Goddes Law" alone has power of
regeneration. " Debet evangelisator predicare plane evangelicam
veritatem."1 Therefore very naturally it follows that "this
veyn novelrie" in song and Use and furniture, this "deschaunt,
countre note, orgon, smale brekynge," these prayers and
Masses "withouten cessynge," and the rest, are as superfluous
and as evil a concession to the sensuous spirit of the age as the
japes and "glosing" and "argumentis that foolis maken," in
the pulpits. Nay, rather they are all hindrances abominable
to the proclamation of the Word. If, further, with Sautry, for
example, " I say that each deacon and priest is held to preach
the Word of God rather than to say matins and canonical hours,"2
why should not worship of images, places, and relics, "pro-
cessions, genuflections, inclinations, censings, kissings, oblations,
kindling of lights, pilgrimages," and the rest go the same way
eventually as the canonical hours ? So with regard to the actual
manner of sermon delivery, there were other simplifications to
be made. Preachers "shulden preche opinli...and drede no
worldeli muk in houses." They should "algatis beware that
the peple undirstonde wel, and so use comoun speche in ther
owne persone." They must not fail to speak to audiences,
1
De Off. Pred. n, c. 3. Cf. here also MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. 60, fol. 4 b
(Lollard sermons): 'For Christ's preachers should cleanly tell God's law,
and not meddle with man's law that is troubled water. For man's law con-
taineth sharp stones and trees by which the net of God is broken.. . .For
virtues and vices and truths of the Gospel be matter enough to preach to the
people.' See further Loserth's Introd, to Wycl. Serm. Lat. (Wycl. S.) vol. i.
2
See his Conclusions, No. 3, in Fascic. Ziz. (Rolls S.), p. 409. Wycliffe
makes the remark that Christ says nothing of these things in the Gospels, but
only of preaching.
"for thei be fewe, and oure fame shulde be litil." Did not
Christ himself go to "smale uplandishe towns, as to Bethfage,
and to Cana in Galile," while "he traveilide not for wynnynge
of moneie " ? They must be set free for the work of the ministry,
from taint of simony, from benefices, and—here we reach what
is perhaps the crowning heresy of the Lollard position—from
episcopal control and interference: " Crist was not lettid thanne
bi feigned jurisdiccioun to preche amonge the folke, al if he
wrathide the prelattis; for this use in jurisdiccioun was not yit
brought in by cautel of the fiend, as it now is, to lette trewe
prechinge." This sentiment, expressed thus in a sermon of
Wycliffe, became a challenge in the mouth of every follower
after him, to flout the episcopal license, and preach, like
Swinderby, "withouten leefe of byschoppes."1
Now much in the new programme might find a parallel in
the work and life of the early friars. In its Puritanism it recalls
the tone of St Bernard and the primitive Franciscans. The in-
dependence and stern moral teaching of its spokesmen reminds
us also of the hermits2. But this last persistent attitude erected
into a doctrine was an innovation indeed. In the long history
of the pulpit it was the bishop who by his apostolic rank, his
primal cure of souls, was from the first looked upon as chief
preacher of all. It was only at his will and pleasure that the
Mendicants, in all their glory, had been allowed to exercise
that privilege in the dioceses. The defiance of the Lollard, then,
we must consider as a last word in that long pulpit condemna-
tion of prelacy, its utter incapacity, its foul behaviour, and its
negligence of this same instruction. Heresy, with support from
the civil arm, was now to attempt what friar and hermit would
1
Cf. e.g. also Wycliffe, Lot. Sermones (ed. Loserth), vol. ii, Sermo
xxxviii, etc.; Fascic. Ziz. passim; the Lanterne of Light (MS. Harl. 2324, is
a copy of this, ed. E.E.T.S., O.S., No. 151):" Sacerdotes simplices et fideles
contra prohibitionem episcoporum, et absque predicandi licentia possunt
predicare cum voluerint" (quoted in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 374), etc. Cf.
also Swinderby's typical argument: " I say that no bishop oweth to let a true
priest that God hath giffen grace, wit, and cunning to do that office; for both
priestes and deacons that God hath ordained deacons or priestes bene holden
by power given to them of God to preach;... for this is due to the people
and the parisheners to have it, and aske it."
a
Their fondness for the Commandments (seeabove,p. 119) descends to the
Lollards. See MS. Add. 24202, fol. 32 [rather even than paternoster, or
bileve, etc., " it is most nede to teche hem the hestis of God " ] ; also Wycliffe's
De Mandatis, recently published by the Wyclif Society.
often have done themselves if they had dared. It was to attempt,
it is true, but to fail—until the Reformation. In similar fashion,
that other great innovation, the gift of vernacular Scriptures
direct to the laity, might be looked upon as an equivalent sen-
tence passed upon the notorious failure of the parish clergy to
instruct. Finally, if according to the original Lollard plan,
deacon and unbeneficed priest might preach as freely as any
"curate," what should stop an extension of the privilege to the
very layman himself? This, as we know, is where the daring
enterprise ended1. No testimony is more fresh and impressive
in its way perhaps, than that of a Latin homily in an anonymous
collection of the period. The speaker beholds in the lay evange-
lists another warning sign of the times:
Behold now we see so great a scattering of the Gospel, that simple
men and women, and those accounted ignorant laymen [laici ydiote]
in the reputation of men, write and study the Gospel, and, as far as
they can and know how, teach and scatter the Word of God. But
whether God would appoint such, as the world grows old, to con-
found the pride of the worldly-wise, I know not. God knoweth!2
In closing, we can only afford to glance at the Lollard
preacher, as his opponents see him, and at the practical outcome
of his propaganda. Knighton's account of their discourses as
opening with much sweetness and devotion, and closing with
much subtle ill-will and detraction, does agree on the whole with
the great doctor's own method as set forth, for example, in his
vernacular homilies. Wycliffe's Gospel expositions develope,
almost invariably, into some censure or other of current abuses,
before they end. Sometimes the reader is left to amplify it
himself: "Here the preacher may touch upon all manner of
sins, especially those of false priests and traitors to God." Not
unnaturally this feature of abuse grows rather than diminishes
1
E.g. cf. the famous case of Walter Brute, "a lay person, learned, of our
diocese," etc. See Reg. Bp. Treffnant, pp. 278 et seq. (1391).
2
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 149. The preacher goes on to refer
to the Abbot Joachim of Fiore (c. 1145—1202) "in expositione Joann." (i.e.
the Expos, in Apoc. or the pseudo-Joachite additions). Rypon, speaking of
their activities, as "Lollardi," adds (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 77 b): "Et forsan
Deus misericorditer hoc permittit, ut illi insipientes, qui super se curas
animarum assumunt, ad perquirendam meliorem scientiam excitentur." Cf.
also Jacob's Well (ed. E.E.T.S. p. 276): " But some laymen kun better knowen
hem-self in governaunce from sin than some gret clerkes...," etc.
in the sermons of his followers1. Hence what we have seen
illustrated in the career of Swinderby became the regular com-
plaint of those of responsible position in the Church, who saw
in every Lollard an active centre of dissension, even of popular
revolt, in the towns. As Bishop Brunton reminds us again, the
middle and lower classes with their strong anti-clerical bias were
all too ready to give ear to his sweeping accusations2.
Political and social revolt was bad enough; but what of
revolution in theology? From what has been said so far in the
present chapter of the characteristic message of Lollardy, and
indeed from a more prolonged study of Wycliffite literature, the
impression will be gained that this movement was in its own way
as completely dependent upon traditional authority and the
influence of the past as orthodox Catholicism itself. The in-
fallibility of the Scriptural text had merely taken the place of
the infallibility of an inspired organization, which further pro-
fessed to hold the one key to its correct interpretation. This is
true. But modern historians of the Church in their portrait
of the Lollard as a narrow "Evangelical," are sometimes too
apt to overlook another side to his appeal. It was a side of
which neither he nor his opponents were able to miss the
significance in their own day. The Lollard preacher himself
cries, like the prophetic Joachim, that it is now high time for
men to put away childish things, the external machinery of
worship, and develope a more inward and spiritual religion:
"And now men shulden be more gostly."3 Though in almost
the same breath he proclaims his challenge a return to the
golden age of the Church—"as dyden the apostlis of Crist,"
it involves none the less an advance towards the spiritual
1
Cf. e.g. MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. 60, its bitter attacks on the Pope, etc.:
fol. s, prelates and "new religious" are "the fiend's church," etc.; fol. 112 b,
"Pope is Anti-Christ, and cardinals are his 'wicked limbs,"' etc.
2
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 217 b : " Immo mediocres et populares citius audiunt
clamores docentium errores, quam veros predicatores." See here above,
p. 132, n. 2.
3
MS. Add. 24202, fol. 26 b (a Lollard sermon treatise on Images). Cf.
also the significance of the statement a line or two later: "for oure lord God
dwellis by grace in gode mennes soulis," etc. This is the interesting MS.
purchased by the British Museum from Archbp. Tenison's Library at the
church of St Martin-in-the-Fields from which Halliwell printed the sermon
"of miraclis pleyinge" (fol. 14 et seq.) in Reliq. Antiq. vol. ii, p. 42 et seq.
(copied by Matzner, Altenglische Sprachproben, pp. 222 et seq.).
independence of the future. T o go back was but to go forward.
It is in the sermons of opponents, however, that he is made to
appear as the veritable champion of what to-day might be
called "modernist" opinions. Of all his heresies the most
grievous lay in his attitude toward the Holy Mysteries of the
altar. Here he is heretic indeed, eternal type of those accounted
proud in their own conceits, who put reason before revelation,
and take sides with "Science" in her notorious conflict with
Religion. Says the orthodox homilist:
Bot this luf and drede [of Christ in the Sacrament] wantes many
gret clerkes, the which leven so mich upon ther owne kindely resoun,
and the princepales of philosophi th* is mannes wisdom groundede
onely in kindely resoun of man, th' thai wil not leve [i.e. believe]
the trew feith taght be holy chirch of this blessed sacrament. And
therfore thai fele not the sothfast confortable effecte of the mervailes
and miracles before saide, neither opun nor privey, toching this holi
sacrament. Wherfore mich folk is deceyvet in that party, th* rather
3iven credence to th* a gret clerk teches acording to kindely resoun,
then to th* holy chirch teches here of onely in bileve above resoun.
For ther may no man soner erre in bileve of the sacramentes of
holy chirch, and specialy in this hie wonderful sacrament of cristes
precious flesh and blode, then may gret clerkes, bot thai have grace
of trew mekenes and luf drede, whereby thai leve ther owen wit
and kindely resoun, and submitt thaim lowly be trew bileve to the
doctrine of holy chirch. That grace god graunt us specialy of his gret
mercy in thees last dayes, th* bene as it semes nihe the commyng
of anticrist and his disciples, the which shal princepaly founde to
destruy the trew feith of this blessed sacrament
We have sene in our dayes how the disciples of anticrist that bene
clepede lollardes hase made mich dissensione and divisione in holy
chirch and puttes many men in to errour of this blessed sacrament
be the fals doctrine of ther maistre, the which thurgh his gret clergy
and kunnyng of philosophi was deceyved, in that he 3afe more
credence to the doctrine of aristotel th* stant onely in naturele resoun
of man then he did to the doctrine of holy chirch and the trew doc-
tours therof, touching the precious sacrament.
ffor aristotel teches, as kindely resoun acordes, th' the accidentes
of brede or wyne, th1 is (to) say the colour, the savour, and so forth
of other, mowe not be bot in substance of brede or wyne after ther
kinde. Bot the doctrine of holy chirch is th* in this blessed sacrament,
be special miracle of god above kinde, the colour, the savour, and
other accidentes of brede and wyne bene ther w* out the kindely
subjecte, th* is to say w4 out the substance of brede and wyne th*
was before the consecracioun. And for als mich as this doctrine of
holy chirch is a3eyns the principals of philosophi th* is naturele
science, therfore the forsaide maister of lollardes repreved it, and so
he erred himself, and many other made to erre touching the bileve of
this holiest sacrament, the whech 3iven more credence to him for the
opinion of his gret clergy than to the trew doctrine of holy chirch1.
And thus 3it in our dayes have anticrist wroght in the first maner
before saide be this fals maister of lollardes and many other of his
disciples into destruccioun of trew cristeen bileve touching this
blessed sacrament of cristes body, and many other poyntes a3ens holy
chirch... . 2
Five hundred years have passed; but the speaker's sad com-
plaint, here uttered without malice, is uttered still, where the
disturbing "modernist" raises his head. How small the gulf
that divides us in some matters from our pre-Reformation
ancestors!
Perhaps the commonest portrait of the ordinary Lollard
preacher as drawn by orthodox hands with less restraint is that
of the hypocrite, who feigns piety in order to indulge his secret
pride or become the darling of the people. Thus Walter
Hilton, Canon of Thurgarton, in a tirade against boasting and
pride, supplies a quaint illustration of Pecock's comment upon
the ignorant preachers, which, had it not been for a marginal
note3, we might hardly have identified with the followers of
Wycliffe at all. In its light we seem to be looking at the notorious
1
Thus Rypon, discussing Superbia (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 77 b): " Quidam
sunt increduli, ut pote in fide multipliciter aberrantes, et simplicem populum
faciunt varie aberrare, utpote Lollardi, qui contra constitutiones patrum et
oppiniones antiquas de sacramentis ecclesiae, praesertim de Sacramento
Eucharistiae, confirmatas, contrarias asserciones et opiniones publice et
privatim docent pertinaciter et affirmant" (and ibid. fol. 32 b, etc.).
2
MS. Add. 19901, fol. 84 b et seq. (e, 15th cent.). From "a short tretis
of the hiest and most worthi sacrament of crist(es) blessede body, and the
merveiles there of." Another copy in MS. Arundel 364, fol. 204 et seq.
adds that it is written " to confusioun of alle false lollardes and heretykes "
(fol. 204 b). Also in MS. Arund. 112. [It usually follows the Engl. transl. of
the Spec. Vitae Christi, attributed to S. Bonaventure, a translation made
(perhaps by John Morton, Austin friar) by a friend or admirer of " Maister
Walter Hylton, the Chanon of Thurgarton."] Cf. also with the above, Rypon,
as before; a sermon "de solempnitate Corporis Xti," in MS. Line. Cath.
Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 167 b (truths of the Sacrament "denyed by Eretykis");
Jacob's Well, E.E.T.S. ed. p. 19; (also pp. 59, 156, etc.); and the elaborate
arguments of Bromyard. Lathbury, in MS. Roy. 11. A. xiii, fol. 236b.
3
"Contra ypocritas et Lollardos."
preaching laymen of Bunyan's day, or the democratic orators
of a still later period:
Thare er some that semes as thai had forsakene the werld, bot thai
hafe na cure ne bysenes aboute the clensyng of thaire conscience....
Bot all thaire stody es outward for to seme haly to the sygth of the
werld; and thai er besy for to visete haly men and wyse men and see
thaim, and for to here of thaim some gud wordis of edificatione, that
thai mygth preche and telle the same wordis that thai have herd to
other men with avauntynge and vayne glory of thaim, that thai can
sai sa wele. And perchaunce some of thaim when thai hafe herd or
rede a litele of haly write or has gettyne a litele cynnynge of techyng
of holy faders, alstite thai make thaim-self doctours and wille teche
other men, nogth that thai hafe fulfilled in werkes, bot that thai haf
herd and sene in bokes. And sa thai presome of thaire aghene [i.e.
own] connynge and despice other that er synfull; and thai covete
state or prelacy, that thai mygth teche all men1.
Equally illuminating is the account of them given at greater

length in a manuscript of vernacular homilies on the Sunday
Gospels, which themselves exhibit a renewed enthusiasm for the
simple exposition of Scripture 2 . The author says much of their
"feyned holiness," of their "shepes clothynge," and their
pursuit of "symple men that ben as sheep." In a striking
analogue he lays stress on those very Lollard features which we
should have expected to see condemned by moralists on the
other side. He describes how the wolf takes advantage of the
sleeping watch-dog and the absentee shepherd in the night,
like the heretic with "his false turnyng of hooli scripture" :
But he is aferd to openli come among stedfast men in bileve, and
therfore he awaiteth whan men berken nou3t a3ens synne and false
techyng, but slepen in synful lustis of flesshe, and if he se shepardis
slowe either absent from trewe techyng of her sheep....
Impatience and ill-temper, especially in the evil day, are other
well-marked traits suggesting the unbalanced, nerve-wracked
character of the fanatic, now hugely elated, now gloomy and
cast down:
1
MS. Rawl. C. 385, fol. 69. See Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, vol. i,
p. 123. Cf. again Jacob's Well, p. 164 (feigning holiness, to deceive the people
by false teaching, " as Lollards do "), etc.
2
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 113, et seq. (sermon for the 8th Sunday after
Trinity).
Also the wolf in kynde is buystouse1 and stif in bodi; and so an
heretik is strong and stif in falshed,.. .hasti in techyng.... With her
tunge thei magnifien Cristis martiris, but thei wolen not have herpacience.
And so speciali 3e shuln knowe hem bi her unstedfastnesse, and un-
pacience in adversite.... Anoon as ony thyng fallith to hem to wordli
welthe, thei waxen proude, and thei ben travelid with boost and with
veyn glorie. Thei ben hogeli2 angwisshid in adversite, and un-
mesurabli ioyful in prosperite .
Finally their sharp heresies prick and rend men's consciences
"as thornes and breris pricken men, and torenden her clothes."
Face to face, at last, with a situation in which the fundamental
notion of "prelatio et cura animarum" was thus being defied
by evangelists of heresy and strife, the Church was bound to do
something to cope with it, beyond the mere punishment of
individuals. Episcopal mandates like that of the Bishop of
Worcester issued in 1387—"ne Lollardi predicent infra suam
diocesim"—whether openly in churches, or church-yards,
streets, or other secular places, or secretly in halls, chambers,
gardens or closes ("gardinis") 3, follow the example of Arch-
bishop Courtenay's better-known Monitio*. But the out-
standing measure is that of Archbishop Arundel published in
14095. Three main provisions are set out in its clauses. First,
there is to be a rigid tightening up of the system of licenses,
by which no secular or regular might now venture to preach
under any circumstances, to clergy or people, in church or
outside, without prior examination by diocesans, and the sub-
sequent issue of letters of authority. Moreover, there is further
stipulation that licenses should be granted "to one specified
parish, or more, as seems expedient to the Ordinary afore-
1
2
boisterous = powerful (cf. Shakespeare and Dryden).
We might see quaint illustrations of this latter point, perhaps, in Fascic.
Ziz. (Rolls S.), p. 307. The Oxford Chancellor, at Repyngdon's public
preaching, "post sermonem vultu jocundo ei applausit"; or (Powell and
Trev. pp. 46-7) at Braibrok's preaching at Northampton, c. 1393: "And
after the said sermon, the said maior and Lollardes with great pride and
jollite ledd the fals preacher to the howse of the maior. And after the said
Lollards retourning to the churchyard of the said church, and with haustie
wordes threatened bloues to any that would gainsaye in any point touching
the said sermon."
3
Cf. also the warning of the Cil. Oc. Sac. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 44, § 4:
"ne suspicio heretici oriatur, non in loco clauso vel occulto."
4
6
See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, pp. 183, 202, 215, etc.
Ibid. pp. 314-19 (cap. 1, etc.).
mentioned, according to the quality of the person to be ad-
mitted." Henceforth any "curate" who admitted a preacher
lacking adequate credentials was to be dealt with severely.
Secondly, parish clergy, who continue quite naturally to enjoy
the old privileges with regard to their own people, are yet to
confine their discourses strictly to the simple topics of the lay-
folk's faith as outlined by the Peckham Decrees. This may be
looked upon as a measure at once checking the more aggressive
and speculative spirits among them, and also urging the rest to
fulfil their long-neglected duties, from omission of which the
cause of heresy had grown and benefited. Lastly, comes that
most significant order1, "Predicator conformet se auditorio,
aliter puniatur." That is to say, let him confine his attacks
on clerical vices to audiences of clergy, on lay vices to laymen,
and so forth. When dealing with matters of doctrine, the
sacraments, articles of the faith, etc. he is to keep rigidly within
the limits of discussion prescribed by Holy Mother Church
("quod per sanctum matrem ecclesiam reperitur discussum")2.
Gascoigne's view of this legislation we have considered above.
To him it was a cruel death-blow to English preaching3. Even
if he seems to have exaggerated, there is sufficient in it to
account for the decline which did undoubtedly take place.
The prelatical enemy of preaching had at least a plausible
excuse for his actions; the able spokesman might well keep his
mouth closed for fear of violating the new restrictions. Thus
the last hope of this particular ministry, its art, its flavour
of originality in thought and presentation, its fearless ventila-
tion of public and private sins was doomed. Art, at all events,
it could remain no longer, crushed beneath the weight, not
merely of that formal tradition and authority which had stifled
scholasticism, but now of solemn prohibitions and episcopal
threats. A virile pulpit cries out for freedom, for the right of
a man to declare the vision that God has given him in His own
way, provided he first gives full consideration to the claims of
his Church and of other people. Now, however, if popular
rumour carried the news of some too outspoken address to the
1
Ibid. cap. in and iv.
8
" . . .quod per ecclesiam terminatum fuerit, aut decisum; nee verba
scandalosa
3
circa eadem scienter proferat publice vel occulte...."
See p. 41, and cf. Wycl. Serm. Lat. No. lvii, vol. i, p. 377.
ears of the bishop or his officers, there would be a Henry
Wynnegode, some Official-Peculiar1, at the offender's heels.
The suspicious prelate might even summon a synod in a
neighbouring church, and have up the " pseudo-predicatores "
at almost a moment's notice2. Who could afford to preach,
without thinking twice, and more, in such circumstances? Sic
transit gloria pulpiti!
Space has prevented all mention hitherto of the individual
preaching licenses to be found in bishops' Registers3, and else-
where. For the first half of the new century after Wycliffe's
death, there is a certain number of such entries, it is true. One,
dated 1418, for Lewis Newchirch, priest, bachelor in arts,
"nobis testimonio fidedigno multipliciter commendatus," in-
troduces a long and wordy preface on the recent iniquitous
scattering of the tares—'' per varios ecclesiae catholicae degeneres
et privignos, emulosque, et detractores."4 This is now to be
followed by dissemination of the true and divine seed. Another,
of the year previous, recommends the celebrated Dr William
Lyndewood to the whole area of the province of Canterbury,
for preaching in Latin or in English, to clergy and lay-folk5.
But we judge of the straits to which bishops were put to find
adequate missioners, by the fact that the last-named license
expressly violates in its scope a principle of the Arundel Con-
stitutions: "Non obstante constitutione provinciali Oxoniensi
nuper per bonae memoriae dominum Thomam Arundel Can-
tuar. Archiepiscopum, predecessorem nostrum, edita," etc.
Still more flagrant is the case of a general license to preach in
1
Cf. Reg. Bp. Stafford (Bath and Wells), p. 298. (1412.)
2
Cf. the Abbot of St Albans, at St Peter's Church, St Albans, in Amun-
desh. (Rolls S.), vol. i, pp. 222-4.
3
I have extracted the following number of licenses to preach from the
Registr. Comm. of Bp. Lacy of Exeter, between the years 1420 and 1440:
1420-21 . . . ... ... ... 6
1421-22 . . . ... ... ... 2
1432 2
1436-37 I
1438 2
1440 ... ... ... ... I
Total 14
1
Reg. Lacy (Hereford), p. 25.
6
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 389: " Vobis, quem Iitterarum scientia, morum-
que laudabilis vitae meritis, aliisque virtutum praeconiis sufficienter novimus
insignitum...."
the diocese granted to the four chief Mendicant Orders, in toto,
by the Bishop of Bath and Wells1, within a year of the great
measure. In like manner Bishop Repyngdon, of Lincoln, him-
self once a noted Lollard in his youth, but now zealous enough,
had granted permission to all graduate and non-graduate
theologists of Oxford in the year 1405 to preach anywhere
within his jurisdiction2. And we are told that Lollardy was by
no means extinct in the University!
Under the force of circumstances, one at least of Arundel's
safeguards had thus actually broken down already. The same
urgency which had brought that situation about, is reflected
again in a Papal Bull of 1428. It urges the appointment of
special "heralds of the cross," without delay, "in each separate
city, diocese, estate, walled town, and village of England," to
combat the Wycliffites and Hussites, with no less than a hun-
dred days' Indulgence for those who will listen to them. It
was all too late, however, to check the current stagnation, or
stave off the Reformation of the future. Benefactions of private
individuals toward the work of the pulpit might increase3; a
bright particular star like Colet might arise in the homiletic
firmament, seeming to presage the dawn of a new day in the
Church. But it was not to be just yet. When dawn came at
length, it was red and fiery, storm-presaging. The star of promise
had gone out, doomed to a lonely fate until the hour of its
eclipse, like those other stars of our survey—"sidera errantia,
quibus procella tenebrarum servata est."
1
Reg. (Bath and Wells) Bp. Bubwith (Som. Rec. Soc), p. 65. See also
ibid. p. 112, 1411-12, license to the Provost of Oriel College, Oxford.
2
Reg. Repyngd. (Line), quoted in Ch. Quater, Rev. vol. xix, art. iv, p. 74.
The writer is wrong in speaking here of Arundel's recent policy of restricted
licensing. It was only framed in 1407, and issued two years later (cf. Gairdner
(as above), vol. i, pp. 62, 107, 545, etc.).
3
Cf. 1446, Bequest of Wm. Estfield, Knt., citizen, mercer and Alderman
of the City of London (twice Mayor): "for sermons to be preached at St
Paul's Cross, and in the pulpit at the Hosp. of S. Mary without Bisshopes-
gate; and also to the clerks of the Univs. of Oxf. and Cambr. coming to
London to preach the Word of G o d . . . . " 1486, Another similar (Padyngton).
See Sharpe's Cal. of Wills (Lond.), vol. ii, pp. 510, 589. 1490, The Recorder
of Coventry, Henry Butt, "left land to pay for 3 Sermons to be preached
yearly in this cittie for ever" (MS. Harl. 6388, fol. 25). Cf. also the Bequests
at Oxford and Cambridge Universities themselves: [1446, Thos. Collage,
£40 bequest to preachers of Univs. of Oxf. and Camb. (to encourage Divinity,
now at a low ebb, etc.). See Wood (Gutch.), Hist, and Ant. of Oxf. vol. i,
p. 596; and Cooper, Annals of Camb. vol. i, p. 198, etc.].
PART TWO
THE PREACHING SCENE
CHAPTER IV
"INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"

Hit was uppon an holy-day, in an hei3 feste of the 3ere,
Muche folk was to churche gon, godes word for to here;
The preeste of the chirche undude the gospel,
And lerede the parischens, as he couthe wel1.
T7VERY preacher, if he be worthy of the name, will have an
I - ' audience of some kind. Nor indeed will that audience be
the only thing that casts an influence, for better or for worse,
upon his endeavour. Unless he be a man of unusual obtuseness,
he will respond somewhat to his material environment also; he
will at least be limited by times and seasons and regulations of
worship. Thus the natural curiosity arises, as we proceed, to
see something of these "parischens " and others who hang around
him, something, too, if we can, of the place where he stands,—
all, in fact, that may contribute to what past experience of the
gay company of the middle ages would lead us to imagine as a
picturesque if not actually another gay scene in itself. On this
matter the reader shall now be allowed to make judgement.
The question must first be asked, what of the place of
preaching in the religious services of the day? More than one
ecclesiologist has remarked on the extreme paucity of references
to the sermon in the great ritual books. It has suffered precisely
that fate of being overwhelmed by the grander spectacles of
"ordynall" and "uss," which Wycliffe himself deplores. Yet
with regard to regular Sunday and feast-day, two formal
occasions of preaching can be discerned. The first is that
occurring "inter missarum sollemnia," as the Registers say.
Here the sermon of the period was delivered in England, so far
as we can make out, either between creed and offertory, or else
1
Vernon MS. fol. 288, printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 329.
"INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA" 145
1
after the latter . The second occasion is an affair for the Sunday-
afternoon, a self-contained service following the ordinary
Sunday dinner, eaten after "matyns and masse," a little before
noon2: "After mete loke thou go to the prechynge, 3if eny beo
in toune: lette for no thynge."3 The characteristically different
requirements of these two situations themselves go far to ex-
plain the great divergence in sermon length to be found among
the written collections of our manuscripts. The five or ten
minutes' discourse4 of him who will let "thus myche of this
gospell suffice at this tyme " contrasts in its obvious suitability
for the morning Mass, with the lengthy orations of a Rypon or
a Brunton. The poet's "3if," too, is an important reminder
that the Sunday sermon "ad populum" remained none too
common even at its most impressive hour. It finds echo in the
"si placuerit5" of the ceremonial books at the cathedral. Even
in the greater churches, indeed, the Durham custom of a sermon
for every Sunday in the year would seem to have been the ex-
ception6. As for the village church, it is enough to repeat that
the Peckham Constitutions of 1281, which remained the basis
of all future legislation on the subject until the Reformation,
required the "curate" to expound his programme of in-
struction but "four times in the year, that is once in every
quarter, on one solemn day or more."1 Subsequent Constitutions
1 2
See Appendix i, below. See Appendix ii, below.
3
Vernon MS., E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 351.
* Cf. MS. Harl. 1197, "Short Homilies or Postills on the Gospels and
Epistles for all Sundays in the year," etc. MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, provides
examples of very different lengths.
6
" Fiat sermo, si placuerit" (cf. Sarum Ceremonies, Sarum Pontifical, etc.).
For a late example (1522) cf. the "quandoque continget" in Thorpe's Registr.
Roff. p. 276.
6
To take two examples: (a) Lincoln Cath., in the older thirteenth-century
"Consuetudines," once provided for a sermon "ad populum" each Sunday
{Liber Niger, p. 284, De officio Cancell. (Line. Cath. Stat.) and cf. pt. ii,
pp. 158-9); but in the fifteenth-century Novum Registr. pt. i, Sermon Sundays
are limited to four in Advent, ten from Septuag. and continuously throughout
Lent to Easter, inclusive; (and Ash Wednesday). (6) Colleg. Ch. of Ottery
St Mary, Devon, in the Grandiss. Foundn. Statutes (1342) (see Dalton,
p. 102): Sundays for " Sermones ad populum" are 1st and 3rd in Advent,
Septuag., 1st, 3rd and 5th in Lent; (Assumpt. of B.V.M. and Feast of St
Edw. the Confessor). Cf. also Erasmus on Dean Colet at St Paul's: "He
resolved (which was not usual in those times) to preach every holiday in his
cathedral." Wordsw. Eccles. Biogr. takes it in the above sense. But may it
not mean merely unusual for the Dean? See below p. 156.
7
So also in Pagula's Oc. Sacer. (MS. Ryl. 6. E. i, fol. 27 b, etc.).
146 "INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"
do furnish several variations on the original theme here, it is
true, some of them in the direction of greater frequency1.
Nevertheless, a general survey leads to the conclusion that
Myrc's own pulpit comment that "each curatour is holden by
all the law in Holy Church, for to expound the Pater Noster
to his parishioners once or twice in the year,"2 represents the
actual state of affairs far more accurately than Cardinal Gasquet's
theory of a minimum total of sixteen sermons per annum. Of
the continual complaints, lasting down to the time of Wolsey,
that the Peckham decrees were not being properly observed,
something has been said in an earlier chapter. Special exception
certainly must be made for the greater festivals, such as Easter,
Whitsunday, and Christmas, and for the processions of Palm-
Sunday and Rogationtide, when, as Walleys reminds us, many
would be preaching3. But there was one season of the Church's
year which easily eclipsed all others in this respect. This was
Lent, great season of fast and shrift—still pretty faithfully
observed from what one gathers in the sermon literature—
when it was intended that there should be daily sermons in
all the churches4. It provided the earnest preacher with his
great opportunity to stir the solemn crowds, now haunting
the sanctuary, to prepare themselves for the great acts of
Confession and Easter Communion which would follow,
preaching vehemently—
1
Cf. here, Russell (Sodor and Man), 1350, " Omnibus dominicis diebus, et
festivis"; Thoresby (York), 1357, "Saltern diebus dominicis"; Langham
(Ely) 1364, "Frequenter predicet et exponat"; Nevill (York), 1466 (back to
the original Peckham "once in each quarter"). See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii,
pp. io, 59, 599; and Lay Folks Cat. (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 118), p. 6.
2
8
Festiall (ed. E.E.T.S.), p. 282. For Gasq. O.E.B., p. 191.
Cf. MS. Harl. 63s, fol. 8b(" Tuneenimquiaplures solentpredicare. . . " ) .
Easter sermons are most numerous. Isolated examples are frequently to be
found in MSS. (cf. MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 7. 12, fol. 181; MS. Harl.
2398, fol. 175 b ; etc.). Cf. also in Lincoln Cath. Stats. (Blk. Bk. etc.): Stations
and Processions outside the Minster, with sermon, Palm Sunday, Easter,
three Rogation Days and St Mark's Day (Greater Litany, see below, p. 201).
(Chancellor also to give a month's notice to priors of the Mendicant friars of
Lincoln to arrange sermons in their churches, if stations are to be held there.)
Cf. also Rites of Durham (Surtees Soc. p. 104) for similar sermons in parish
churches, for these Processions, at Durham (see above, Chap. 11, p. 52).
4
See Cone. Arl.; Cone. Later. (Innocent III), etc. repeated at Cone.
Trident. (Sess.xxiv, cap.iv); sermons " saltern omnibus diebus festis,tempore
autem Jejuniorum, Quadragesimae (et Adventus Domini) quotidie, vel
saltern tribus in hebdomade diebus.. . . "
.. .as freres doon in Lente,
To make us for our olde sinnes wepe1.
The work of the Mendicants undoubtedly takes first place
where Lenten oratory is concerned. Its greatest monuments are
their immense " Quadragesimalia," with elaborately divided
discourses for each of the forty days2. Examples of unquestioned
English origin appear to be now extinct. But the numerous
entries in Bale's list of Carmelite writers compel us to believe
that once they were as common as the examples surviving from
the continent. Signs of a like activity are to be noticed on every
hand. The very numerous Lenten sermons surviving, both in
English and in Latin, concern themselves naturally with ex-
hortations to come to shrift, and to the hearing of God's Word,
to avoid the hiding of sins from the priest, to make amends
in prayer and penance, in abstinence and almsgiving, for the
evil of the past year:
Good men, the tyme of lenten [is] entred, the wiche tyme we must
dense us of all our mysdedis that we have done before; and this
holy tyme we shuld absteyne us more from synne and wrechednes
than another tyme of the 3ere... .Now shall we strength us to faste,
to come to the churche, and to serve God in holy preyours, and to
shryve us of oure mysdedis....3
Thoresby's "Catechism" for simple lay-folk had made their
instruction and due examination in matters prescribed by
parish clergy, a necessary preliminary to Confession "in the
lentyn tyme." So Bishop Grandisson, granting a year's license
for non-residence to a West Country parson, for example, in-
sists that notwithstanding he shall return to his church in Lent,
to instruct his parishioners "in those things that pertain to the
1
Canterbury Tales, Clerk's Prologue, 11. 12, 13. Cf. in sermons, Rypon,
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 1 b: " (predicatores) movent suos auditores utpoenitendo
ad Christum redeant,. . .sicutforsan erit de multis in Quadragesima." Also in
Bromyard, S.P.
2
Among numerous contemporary continental examples, cf. Ambrose of
Spiera (d. 1454), a little-known Servite (my edition of his Quadr. is Venice,
1476 (Vendelinus)); John Gritsch, of Basel (d. c. 1430), Franciscan; Robert
Caraccioli, Franciscan of Lecce, Bishop of Aquino, Italy (c. 1470); etc.
Booksellers' Catalogues of Incunabula frequently contain notices of them.
The sermon-books themselves include vivid descriptions of social excesses,
fashions, amusements, etc.
3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 100. (Beginning of sermon for Lent: Text,
" Ductus est Jesus in desertum... . ")
10-2
cure of souls."1 At Norwich we are informed that out-door
Sunday sermons were delivered annually at this season from the
Greenyard preaching Cross, hard by the Cathedral—"pro tota
civitate Norwicensi."2 A similar practice holds at Northampton3;
and the St Albans abbot, as we have seen, makes fresh efforts
to revive what was once thus provided regularly for laymen in the
nave of his own abbey church*.
Of ordinary week-day sermons at the great pulpit-crosses
outside, we catch but a few stray glimpses in the accounts of
Lollard trials. With the possible exception of Friday5, however,
no one particular day seems to have been preferred. Choice
was probably determined here by events of special importance
in the calendars of Church and State. When Erasmus explains
in his Dialogue, in a later century, that one of the advantages of
remaining in the world, in place of entering a monastery, was
that a man might still choose his favourite preacher, or when
Dr Bromyard upbraids those who have not troubled to go to a
sermon for a month6, we are forced to believe that in the larger
towns at any rate regular preaching-courses were no rarities
of the day.
The typical sites of English mediaeval preaching are almost
as varied as the different groups of the preachers themselves. If
we begin with Religious and canons secular, there is, besides
the church, the chapter-house in monastery and cathedral
1
Reg. Grand. (Exeter), pt. ii, p. 827.
2
3
"everie Sunday during Lent, at the cros in the churchyarde." Powell
and Trev. Docs. p. 48.
4
Whethamst. Reg. (Rolls S.), vol. i, p. 25 (omni dominica Quadrag.).
Note too the Ash Wednesday sermons, "in die cinerum," or "in capite
jejunii," in Brunton (MS. Harl. 3760); MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. G.g. vi. 16,
fol. 51 (see quotation given below, Chap, v, p. 244); Myrc's Festiall; MSS.
Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 84 b, 90 b; and Harl. MS. 2247, fol. 49 b, etc.
6
Cf. " A Sermon in the Cathedral, or at the Cross in the same churchyard,
on every Friday for ever" (1459). See Valentine Green, Hist, of Worcester,
vol. i, p. 55. A Friday sermon at Paul's Cross (1419) in Wilkins, Cone.
vol. iii, p. 394. A Friday sermon at Oxford, in Snappe's Formul. (ed. Salter,
Oxf. Hist. Soc. Tr.), from MS. Cotton Faust, c. vii, fol. 128 b, Archbp.
Arundel writes: " On this very day, Friday,... I was in the church of St Mary,
the University was present, the sermon was begun, the text being ' Come into
the garden'...."
6
S.P.—Audire (verbum Dei). Jacob's Well, MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr.
103, (c. 1440) suggests a daily series, on the general outline of Faith, delivered
"this hool tweyne monythys and more" (fol. 214 b).
precinct. For the monk and friar, here, as a rule, was the
scene of the daily morning "lectio," and the evening " collatio,"
which, though it may have involved often enough the reading of
sermons and expositions, need hardly concern us on that
account. Rather we shall turn to behold it at some holy festival
when the chancellor is haranguing, or the eloquent brother is
expected from Oxford, to provide a homiletic feast at the cost
of twenty shillings or more1; or again, at the episcopal visita-
tions, or the still rarer election of a new head. Thanks to such
entries as those of the recently published Diocesan Registers
of Lincoln, the Visitation preaching scene may be conjured up
with a certain distinctness2.
First comes the splendid procession of robed dignitaries—
bishop, dean, chancellor, treasurer, sub-dean, archdeacons,
canons, prebendaries, or possibly abbot and prior, and all the
officials of a monastic establishment, along with the brethren—
filing slowly into the " parlement-hous," rectangular and sombre
as at Gloucester, or exquisitely polygonal as at Westminster,
with central pillar like some great tree-stem branching into a
forest of vaulting ribs, and glorious window-tracery. The
presiding prelate then sits him down in his "fair stall or seat of
stone,"3 and the rest of the audience follow his example, ranging
themselves about the wall in order of seniority, and overflowing
into the centre. The chosen preacher of the occasion now
advances, possibly one of the doctors resplendent, as a simple
preacher had seen them elsewhere, in their furred "tabbardys,
hodys, chymerys, and pylyouns."4 On bended knee and with
bowed head before the'' reverend father'' presiding, he " humbly
beseeches of him the wonted blessing, that he might preach the
word of God in the beginning of the said visitation."5 After the
1
Cf. Pearce, Monks of Westm. p. 113 (solut. fratri W. de S. veniendo de
Oxon. predicando, et redeundo, xxvi. s. viii. d.; Palm S. and Good Friday,
1386); p. 144 (pro sermone in die parasceves. . .xx. s.; 1440-2).
2
Cf., as used here, Reg. Bp. Gray, Line. Dioc. Regs. If visitation takes
place in a nunnery, the sermon is made in the vernacular (cf. Reg. Bp. Aln-
wick, ibid. (1442), pp. 46, etc.).
3 l
Cf. the Rites of Durham (Surtees Soc). Jacob's Well.
6
Cf. Cone. Lat. Sess. xi, ult.; and Cone. Trid. Sess. v. ("Ab (episcopis)
benedictionem petere teneantur antequam predicare incipiant"); visitation
sermon in Line. Chapt. House, 1439, Bp. Alnwick presiding (Line. Cath.
Stat. pt. ii) before the usual throng: "egregius vir magisterThos. Duffeld,
in sacra theologia bacallarius, accepta a dicto Revdo. patre benediccione con-
sueta, juxta actus futuri congruencium proposuit verbum D e i . . . , " etc.
blessing, he moves either to some temporary pulpit, or else, no
doubt, to the stone lectern with richly carved desk-head, that
stands in the middle of the area, facing the president's chair1.
Then the Latin discourse begins: " Reverendi patres, fratresque
perdilecti, quia ante quamlibet visitationem ordinariam saltern
in publico laudabili consuetudine solent visitatores per modum
collacionis ad visitandum proponere, igitur ut conformem me
aliqualiter eisdem, sit hoc thema...." 2 "The which being
ended, the same master... betook himself to the place where he
was wont to sit," and the visitation business begins.
Very similar will be the opening sermon before a synod or
general convocation of prelates and clergy, as in the case of that
held, for example, in the chapter-house of York in 1426, when
the "venerable man of rare learning, Master John Roxby, a
famous doctor in theology," preached from the text "Vocavit
Josue majores."3 Sometimes the visitation sermon had ap-
parently to do duty for regulars, seculars and lay-folk together,
as in the case of Bishop Alnwick's visitation of the Austin priory
of Bicester, on the 28th of May, 1445, where there were but
eight canons in the house. In this case the parish church was
used for the purpose, and the sermon was delivered "in the
vulgar tongue... there being present in that place the prior
and convent of the said priory, and a throng of clergy and
people."*
1
Cf. the remarkable examples now in the churches of Crowle and Norton,
in Worcestershire, probably originally in the Abbeys of Pershore and
Evesham respectively. See Viet. Hist. Co. of Wore. vols. ii and iii; and Cox's
Pulpits and Lecterns. An old discussion in Notes and Queries decided, and
rightly, that there was no permanent pulpit in the chapter-houses. However,
there was certainly one used by the preacher in the chapter-house of Lincoln,
in 1432. See Line. Dioc. Registers, as above ("pulpitum ascendit").
2
MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i, fol. 107 (the opening of Nich. Philip's Sermo
pro Visitatione fratruni). Notice that sometimes the presiding prelate himself
will preach on these occasions; cf. 1314, Beverley Minst., Archbp. of
York (Chapter Act Book, Surtees Soc).
3
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 487 (the text is apparently from Joshua i, 10).
Cf. another series of synodal sermons, in London, in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii,
p. 273. (1402.)
4
Reg Alnwick, Line. Dioc. Regs. vol. xxiv, p. 34 (see also editor's note
here). For other sermon notices of this class, cf. Cathedral Visitation,
Lichfield, 1428, in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 509 (de modo et negotio visita-
tionis episc). After the reception of the visiting bishop, and certain prayers
at the cathedral high altar, the company is to pass to the chapter-house
for a sermon, in the presence of bishop, dean, chapter, vicars and others.
Cf. at Claremont, 1283, in Baluze, Misc. vol. i, p. 279; here, too, another
If we turn to reports of the general chapters of Benedictines
or Augustinians in the same century, we shall find that a whole
series of official sermons has become formal part of the pro-
ceedings ; and the task of appointing the special preachers for
the next provincial assembly is definitely recorded as a piece
of the necessary business. Thus, at the Benedictine chapter-
general held at Northampton in 1423," there were then assigned
to the sermons for the next provincial chapter, first, that is to
say, for a sermon to clerics and literates, delivered in Latin,"—-
three Bachelors of Sacred Theology, and the'' Prior Studentium "
at Oxford. Secondly, "a sermon to be given in the vulgar
tongue" was allotted to another Bachelor, to two Doctors
in the same Faculty, and to the "Prior of the Students" in
Cambridge, making a total of eight in all, for the two groups.
Two sermons are mentioned in connection with this particular
meeting. One is an opening discourse on the first day, after
Mass, to the clergy—"stilo satis commendabili mentales
delicias universis presentibus affluentissime propinans verbum
Dei ibidem fructuose proposuit Dom. W. Waldens, in Latinis."
The other again follows celebration of Mass at the close of the
proceedings, this time in the parish church of All Saints, ad-
dressed in the vernacular to clergy and people, together1.
A chapter of Austin canons2 at Osney, in 1443, is of particular
interest as it appears in the character of a model chapter for
future occasions, and its regulations for procedure were for-
tunately noted down at the end of the official report—"ne
processus presidentium ruat, vel ordinationes et statuta negli-
gantur." Although no less than three distinct sermons make
their appearance in the report, the added "Forma Capituli"
mentions only two. Yet even here it is prescribed that persons
shall be nominated for three sermons for the coming chapter3.
After the year 1446, however, subsequent accounts take notice
of but the one "in Anglicis." Looking back at "Oseney"
sermon "ad populum,"in the vernacular, at the close. The sermon by the
Archbp. of Canterbury in 1408, at Paul's Cross (in Wilkins, Cone, vol . iii,
p. 310), to clergy and people, was probably part of the official proceedings
at the close of a Convocn. of the Prov.
1
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, pp. 419 et seq.
2
F01 these details see Chapters of Austin Canons, ed. Salter (Oxf. Hist.
Soc. vol. 74).
3
Cf. also ibid. Appdx. i (c. 1370): "per quos sermones fieri.. .debeant."
again in 1443, we find first the great opening procession of
prelates, procurators, and inferior clergy to the number of two
hundred. These make their way on the Sunday afternoon—
"ad secundam horam post nonam"—to the preaching cross in
the cemetery of St Frideswide's, Oxford, where the presiding
Abbot of St Osyth's delivers "a solemn sermon in English" to
the assembly. Besides the aforesaid distinguished company of
abbots and priors of the Order, there are present the Chancellor
of the University and a vast crowd of doctors, masters, scholars
and others, a truly magnificent setting, in scarlet and vestments
of gold, for the "concionator." Mass follows within the
church. On the Monday, "about the seventh hour," in the
Osney chapter-house, a canon of Leicester, and scholar in the
University, as deputed at the last chapter meeting, bowing
before the presiding abbot for his blessing, proceeds to his "very
useful" sermon, in Latin, "with some brilliance of style"
("sermonem valde utilem, dictamine non carentem"). Finally,
at the same hour of the morning, on Tuesday, and in the same
building, the Abbot of St Osyth harangues them again, "re-
freshing their souls with nourishment of the word of God"
most elegantly before they part1. It had been a long and doubt-
less an exhausting session continued from the previous day, with
little rest. Were there any nodding heads, we wonder, canons
"ponderosi et etiam somnolenti," at sermon-time2, in the long
canonical rows, under that great lord abbot's searching eye?
Alas, that the Chapter Acts do not tell us, though our popular
sermons will be more generous in this respect:
A holy man went on a day
To here here sarmone at ane abbay,
And als he sat with simple mode
Him thoght the sarmon wonder gude.
Bot als he luked in that tyde
He saw the fende cum him biside
With a picher in his hand,
And a cup ful fast birland [= poured out]
And ilk one that his cop wald kepe
And drank thar of, sune was in slepe3.
1
In the same volume, cf. also Chapter at Northampton, 1446. The earliest
mention of chapter legislation re the sermon here (apart from a Sermo
Commonitorius,
2
prior to 1250) is under Newstead, 1356.
Cf. MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 181.
3
MS. Harl. 4196, fol. 88 b (Engl. Metr. Horns.).
Mention of St Frideswide's Cross serves to introduce us to
the Universities, as another busy centre of preaching "ad
cleros." At Oxford, within the church of St Mary the Virgin,
still crowned with its majestic spire erected in the early four-
teenth century, the torrent of sacred eloquence has never
ceased to flow from that day to our own. The chancellor's
and proctor's books1 of the first quarter of the century following
require a public sermon to be given here in Latin on every
Sunday during full term, roughly from the Feast of St Denis
to that of the Translation of St Thomas, before noon, and in the
presence of the Chancellor and University. All students were to
attend2, and in proper academic dress, if they occupied the body
of the church3. The actual arrangement of this sermon—-"ad
honorem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et sacrosanctae Matris
ecclesiae, necnon ad profectum studii"—to be made by a
Doctor or Bachelor of Sacred Theology—was in the hands of
the chancellor assisted by two "collatores sermonum" who
were to be seculars, if possible4. The selected preacher was to
receive two months' notice beforehand, and, according to a later
version of the rules, if unwilling to perform, was to be deprived
of all University privileges for a year. The Cambridge Statutes
of the period 1303-1306 relating to this subject were obviously
framed on the same pattern. Besides the Sunday sermons they
provide in addition for one to be delivered similarly "on the
day of the Translation of the Blessed Virgin Ethelreda."5
These Latin orations, however, seem to have shared in the
general decline of pulpit exercises, which, in the country,
resulted from Lollard propaganda, and Archbishop Arundel's
1
See here Munim. Acad. Oxon. (Rolls S.), vols. i and ii. The earliest
reference to University sermons at Cambridge appears to be of the year 1303
(cf. Documents relating to the Univ. and Colls, of Cambr. (H.M. Stat. Off.
1852), vol. i, p. .397, and Bass Mullinger, Hist. p. 299 note). At Oxford
apparently, from the end of the twelfth century (see Rashdall, Univs. in
Midd. Ages, vol. ii, p. 344, etc.).
2
3
See Rashdall, ibid. vol. ii, p. 625.
Cf. Anc. Stats, of Univ. of Cambr. St. 175: "Insuper omnes gremiales
. . .etiam sermonibus ad clerum, si pro tempore sermonum hujusmodi in
corpore ecclesie locum habere voluerint, in suis habitibus scholasticis per-
sonaliter sint presentes."
4
Two "Collatores sermonum in ecclesia Beatae Mariae Virginis,"
Masters Pray and Herlow, appear in a list of University officers appointed
by the Proctors for the year 1457 (see Munim. Acad. Oxon. vol. ii, p. 749).
6
" De Sermonibus ad clerum diebus Dominicis in ecclesia Beate Marie,"
Stat. 169 (Documents, etc. as above, vol. i, p. 398).
policy. For, in the year 1444, we find the sovereign himself
writing to the Oxford chancellor, "that ye with ripe and
suffisant maturite advise a sure remedy in that party." 1
On certain high festivals or important fasts of the year, on
Ascension Day2 and the Feast of Corpus Christi3, for example,
a sermon in English at the open-air cross of St Frideswide's,
for the benefit of "town and gown" together, seems to have
been substituted at Oxford. These were special occasions
when, precisely as in the case of the cathedral system, the
preacher was expected to be one of particular dignity, here at
the Universities either the chancellor himself, or one of the
Masters Regent in Theology ("tune actualiter regentem"). At
Cambridge a special Statute gives us four such days in the year—
the First Sunday in Advent, Septuagesima Sunday, Ash-
Wednesday, and the Festival of Corpus Christi—although the
audience named is purely clerical, and the place of delivery
St Mary's, the University church, as usual4. Among the pub-
lished correspondence of Thomas Walden, the Carmelite, there
is a letter of the year 1421, addressed to him as Provincial
Minister (or rather "ad diffinitores et provincialem, in capitulo
Northampton," to be precise) from the University of Cam-
bridge. It complains that a certain friar of the Order, William
Bekle5, in open violation of the University Statutes, had failed
to appear at a convocation in the first year of his regency, when
the sermon had been allotted to him (" non obstante sermone sibi
assignato"). In spite of the fact that there had been postpone-
ment "ex gratia" for a month, the general procession had to
take place at length incomplete and sermonless6. We can
imagine the feelings of those in authority who had been so
rudely flouted!
1
Letter of Henry VI to the Chancellor of Oxford University: " . . .For-
asmuch as We be enformed that the Sermons in latin, which were before this
tyme, save now of late, be now gretly discontynued, to the gret hurt and dis-
worship of the same, we therefore. . .wol and commande you straitly...,"
etc. See Munim. Acad. Oxon. vol. ii, p. 541.
2
Cf. 1382, Chanc. Peter Stokes nominates Nich. Hereford to preach
here, "praecipuum sermonem anni." See Fascic. Ziz. (Rolls S.), p. 306.
3
Cf. 1382, sermon here of Phi. Repingdon. See ibid. pp. 299, 306, 307.
4
6
Stat. 168: De sermonibis ad clerum quater in anno.
A short account of him will be found in Bale's MS. Harl. 3838, fol. 97
(d. 1438).
6
"Ac tandem generalis processio sine sermone... peracta fuerat incom-
plete.. .. " See Mon. Hist. Carmelit. pt. v (1907), p. 465 (Epist. Waldensis).
Besides the "University sermons" proper, there were also
the regular Latin examinatory sermons, specimens of which
we shall examine later1. These were required of all Bachelors
proceeding to incept in Theology; other sermons also of the
Doctors in the same Faculty upon graduation2. At Oxford,
indeed, a notable struggle had ensued between the friars and
the University authorities at the beginning of the fourteenth
century over the place in which they should be conducted. The
latter had now decided to transfer the official site from the
Dominican and Franciscan convents to the more central
University church of St Mary. But the Mendicants objecting to
this blow to their power and prestige, argued that the change
was to less peaceful and commodious quarters. A long and
bitter controversy, however, involving many grievances, and
charged with not a little pulpit recrimination into the bargain,
ended at last in victory for the University side. It was agreed
that each incepting friar, for the future, should preach two
sermons in St Mary the Virgin's, "ad clerum," in addition to
the examinatory discourse itself3. Here the latter continued to
be given from the year 1311, until the erection of the famous
Divinity School, completed about 1480, which with its fan-
traceried roof is one of the architectural glories of this most
distinguished nursery of the preachers4.
Passing now to the scenes of preaching "ad populum," we
find that, at the cathedrals served by secular canons, this task
is in the hands of the chancellor. When not preaching in person
1
2
See here Chap, vi, pp. 259-262, Sermones examinatorii.
Munim. Acad. Oxon. vol. i, pp. 307—8; vol. ii, p. 392, etc. and Canib.
Documents, vol. i, p. 397. Cf. also John Lawerne's " Grace," printed in
Leland's Collectanea, vol. v, p. 301, from a Bodl. MS. 692 (fol. 36): "Ista
gratia conceditur a congregatione prefata, A.D. mill0 cccc0 xxxviii0, eidem
Johanni sub ista conditione, quod dicat sermonem praeter formam, in ecclesia
beatae Virginis post susceptionem gradus, et sub hac forma registratur in
universitate nostra Oxoniensi." 1438. His " Sermo Examinatorius " has been
already mentioned earlier in the same MS.
3
See also a Letter from the University to the Archbp. of Canterbury, 1421,
in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 400: "quod quilibet frater de ordine Mendi-
cantium talker incepturus...," etc.
4
Since the above was first written, Mr Falconer Madan has kindly drawn
my attention, at the Bodleian, to two books which will be found to
supply some references to this subject: Rev. LI. Bebb's Preface (History of
the Institution) to Univ. Sermons, Oxf. (Geo. Allen, 1901) and a History of
the Ch. of St Mary the Virgin, Oxf. by Rev. E. S. ffoulkes (especially Chap,
in, p. 140 et seq.).
on the days carefully specified for such exercises in addition
to the sermons "ad cleros," he it is who must usually appoint
a substitute from among the canons, or from outside1. In the
York Statutes, however, it is prescribed that the dean shall
occupy the pulpit on Palm Sunday2; in the Statutes of Lichfield,
he was to preach, if he wished, on the First Sunday in Advent,
and on Ash Wednesday, if not, the nomination of the sub-
stitute for these occasions lay with him, and not with the
chancellor. The Novum Registrum of Lincoln prescribes further
that the latter shall have the consent of the dean when choosing
other preachers for the sermons "ad populum."3 For the rest,
as we have seen already, in the case of monastic cathedral
churches, the Mendicant friar might be invited to preach,
whenever no approved member of the foundation was found
ready to fill the post4. For the pulpit scene itself we must be
content to allow the practice as described in the case of Durham5
to illustrate what might take place at these abbey churches and
cathedrals of England. "Every Sunday in the year," we are
told, "there was a sermon preached in the Galilee at afternoon,
from one of the clock until three, and at twelve of the clock the
great Bell of the Galilee was tolled every Sunday, three-quarters
of an hour, and rung the fourth quarter till one of the clock, that
all the people of the town might have warning to come and hear
the word of God preached." Furthermore, "adjoining unto the
lower part of the great window in the West end of the said
Galilee was a fair iron Pulpit with bars of iron for one to hold
them by, going up the steps unto the pulpit, where one of the
monks did come every holyday and Sunday to preach at one
of the clock in the afternoon." Here, then, in this very pulpit,
we picture Master Rypon, the sub-prior, whose sermon manu-
script has been so fortunately preserved for us after its ejection
1
Cf. in Line. Cath. Stats, pt. ii, pp. 158, 301, at Lincoln (" predicate velper
se, vel per alium quem de ecclesia elegerit") and ibid. vol. i, p. 284; at York,
ibid. pt. ii, p. 96 (" . . .et aliis qui predicare debent assignare dies," etc.);
at Lichfield, ibid. pp. 25-32.
2
3
Ibid. p. 92, "per se, vel per alium."
Ibid. p. 301, "per se, vel de consensu Decani per alium.. .. "
4
See above, p. 51 and cf. Lincoln (ibid, pt.i, p. 284; pt. ii, p. 158): "Et hoc
fiat vel per canonicos, vel per alios viros autenticos, si inveniantur qui velint,
et sciant."
6
See the Rites of Durham (Surtees Soc), p. 46, etc.
from the Durham monastic library. Let us hope he had not to
complain, like others elsewhere1, of many absenting themselves
from so edifying an exercise, about the year 14002. In the record
of a visitation held by Bishop Alnwick, at his cathedral church
at Lincoln, in the year 1437, we are afforded a further glimpse
of the difficult task of keeping order and silence amongst the
crowds that visit these great churches at sermon-time. Com-
plaint is made that the vergers are not fulfilling their duty in this
respect. Therefore they are to be threatened with penalties to
stir them to action3!
Apart from cathedral and older convent, our townsman would
be still more likely to find himself at this period in one of the
great "preaching-naves" of a friary church, lofty English
equivalent of the Franciscan Santa Croce, at Florence, or the
church of the Cordeliers at Toulouse. Such are the "large and
wyde chirchis whiche religiose persoones, namelich of the
begging religiouns, maken, that therebi the more multitude of
persoones mowe be recevyed togidere, for to here theryn pre-
chingis to be mad in reyne daies."4 The cross in the open
convent-yard would be used if the weather was fine6. Pecock's
description suggests at first sight another curious parallel
between friar and later Dissenter. Indeed without the striking
beauty of St Andrew's Hall, a Dominican fragment left to us in
Norwich, and the testimony of The Plowman's Crede,—
.. .wonderly well y-beld,
With arches on everiche half, and belliche y-corven
With crochetes on corners, with knottes of golde
1
Cf. Evrard du Val, French preacher of the thirteenth century (in Haur£au,
Quelques MSS.. . ., vol. iv, p. 47): " Contra multos... qui retrahunt se a
monasteriis, diebus dominicis, propter sermones."
2
Cf. however, below p. 216, his complaint of recent laxity in the attend-
ance
3
of clerics at the annual Patronal Festival, with its procession.
"Virgarii non faciunt silencium tempore predicacionis verbi Dei, sicut
in sermonibus et predicacionibus, et quia plus timetur quod specialiter in-
jungitur quam quod generaliter imperatur, ideo videtur statuendum et
injungendum fore quod sub pena amissionis proximorum obituum post
negligentiam commissam diligentius intendant ad faciendum silencium
debitum." See Line. Cath. Stat. (Bradshaw and Wordsworth), pt. ii, p. 386.
4
Pecock's Represser (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 553. Cf. also such entries as
1311, Church of the Franciscans, at Oxford: "A vast multitude of people
there assembled on the occasion of a public sermon to the clerks," in A. G.
Little, Grey Friars in Oxford, p. 39.
5
Cf. the interesting note in the Cambridge friar's sermon notebook:
"Die vacat sermo propter pluviam." MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 356, p. 58.
Wyde wyndowes y-wrou3t, y-written full thikke,
Tombes opon tabernacles, tyld opon lofte—
we might have ventured to compare these capacious halls of
sacred oratory to the eighteenth century meeting-house. Very
possibly, too, the earlier mediaeval examples, with the narrow
tunnel-like crossing to the chancel which remained a feature to
the end1, were of this appearance, in days when "the visitor
acted with great severity because of the windows," or some other
Franciscan enthusiast "ordered the embossments in the cloister
to be scraped away."2 Now, however, in the centuries before us,
those fascinating little coloured shields of arms, those "lovely
ladies y-wrought" in alabaster upon their tombs,
In many gay garmentes that weren gold-beten,
raised the homiletical ire of Wycliffe, precisely as similar
offences in the monastic cloister had called down the fury of
another great Puritan preacher in St Bernard. Both would
condemn them as a wanton feeding of the senses3, and a mon-
strous hindrance to the attention of sermon audiences:
His si3t schal so be set on sundrye werkes;
The penounes and the pomels and poyntes of scheldes
With-drawen his devocion and dusken his herte;
I likne it to a lym-3erde to drawen men to hell41
1
Clearly seen in the ruined towers of Greyfriars, at King's Lynn, and
Richmond. See also an article by Ian Hannah on Irish Mendicant Houses in
the Archaeol. Journal, vol. lxxii, 19,15, pp. m—126.
2
See Eccleston's De Adventu Minorum, caps, vii and ix. (The windows
were "in the chapel at Gloucester.") There is perhaps no more vivid wit-
ness, in its way, to the subsequent ornateness in Mendicant churches than
the two little scrolls, of early Tudor date, comprising MS. Egerton 2341,
which give instructions for "all the Images of Seyntes, th4 shal be made in
the V panes of the wyndow in the grey fryers at Grenewych," with other royal
figures. Here are actually the notorious "schapen scheldes" of arms, to
accompany them, set out for the glass-painter in their colours!
3
For Wycliffe in our period, cf. Liber Mandat.: "Nimis hodie pascunt
sensus, ut visum spectaculis ornamentorum ecclesiae sumptuosis... . " For
St Bernard, see references given in Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion,
vol. i and Bernard's Apologia ad Gulielmum.
Our preachers frequently comment, sometimes disparagingly, on the rich
tombs in the churches; cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Mors. etc. (painted and fair
without, but foul within); Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 19 b (the carved
figure contrasted with the skeleton within); Myrc's Festiall, p. 85; Gesta Rom.
(especially 15th cent, addition, Engl. vers.), p. 305; Spec. Laicorutn, § "De
sepultura."
4
The reference here (Ploughman's Crede, 11. 560-65) is really to those who
The poet-moralist's soul swells with indignation. Looking
the great Dominican Chancellor Bromyard full in the face,
would he not have dared him to deny that the lovely ladies and
their finery were the preacher's greatest enemies outside, as
it was?1 " Gentes illegales intraverunt in templum!"
The churches of the Blackfriars at Norwich or of the Austin
friars in London, however, unlike Santa Croce, are probably
no exotic Mendicant growth on the national soil. They are one
with the huge naved parish churches of the last great archi-
tectural style, well-known feature alike of Cotswold hills,
Lincolnshire fens, or Norfolk countryside. Some of the earliest
of these latter, St Nicholas, North Walsham2, and St Nicholas,
King's Lynn3, were probably being planned while our Summa
Predicantium, English culmination of formal homiletic art, was
being penned. In the case of the last-mentioned edifice,
church-building reaches a point where the distinction between
nave and chancel finally disappears but for a wooden screen,
leaving one immense broad gallery of stone and glass, but lightly
arcaded, which was to be the prototype of many churches
more4. If, now, we recall the generally recognized influence
of ritual upon the much earlier development of the chevet, for
example, why should we not proudly claim for this new feature
the influence of the contemporary pulpit? Unfortunately the
architectural experts have explanations of their own. In the
case of King's Lynn, a whole volume of quite special, plausible
reasons has been advanced, for its adoption5. Yet, on the other
hand, there are still those very real arguments of Bishop Pecock
upon our side, about preaching and about the English rain.
are attending Mass. But I have found among the MS. Sermon Excerpts
of M. Haurâu an interesting equivalent for the sermon-hearers, in France:
"Quando veniunt ad sermonem in quo deberent se speculari, et videre
defectus suos, tune advertunt se et respiciunt marmosetos, et columnas
claustri et ecclesiae." (From a sermon before the canons of St Victor,
Paris, end of thirteenth century; in Haureau, Quelques MSS. vol. iv,
P- 1I39-) 2
3
Cf. above, p. 123. 1382-1404 (?).
4
1414—1418: perhaps planned as early as 1399.
Called by Bond " The Aisled Chapel" type. Cf. St Stephen's Bristol;
Gresford, Cheshire; St Andrew Undershaft, and St Margaret's, West-
minster, in London; and Long Melford, Suffolk, to mention a few scattered
examples.
5
E. M. Beloe, Lynn St Nicholas.
Without giving offence, therefore, to Mr Beloe, or to the archi-
tects1, it may be said that here was the splendid coincidence of a
building-plan evolved to do precisely what wealthy clothiers
and burgesses wished done with their bequests, for the crowded
sermon audiences. With another splendid coincidence we shall
content ourselves, and pass on. Churches at Northleach and
Cirencester in Cotswold, or Banwell beneath the Mendips,
with these stately rebuilt naves, have each their own contem-
porary pulpit in stone, conspicuous features of the permanent
architectural scheme!
Mention of the pulpit as part of the furniture of churches
serves to remind us that it too was evolved from earlier forms.
"Debet autem predicator in loco eminentiori esse, sicut et
evangelium legens," says Durandus2. In pointing to the
"gospel" ambo as the most suitable spot from which to deliver
a sermon in church, he is also pointing to the probable arche-
type of "pulpitum" as screen and "pulpitum" as ordinary
pulpit. Stone and marble ambos, in groups of two and even
three intended for the reading of Gospel, epistle, etc. at Mass3,
and said to date from at least the sixth century onwards, are
still to be found, as the tourist knows, in earlier basilican
churches of Italy. Chrysostom, it has been said, was the first
to exchange the elevation of the altar steps, when preaching, for
a more prominent place "super aquilam," in the loftier, that is
to say, of the two regular ambones ("paulo altior et ornatior,
pro evangelio"). This was done deliberately to make himself
the better heard. In the land of the Pisani, then, those master-
craftsmen of pulpits, it is easy to trace the great thirteenth-century
cattedra at Pisa or at Siena in the north, that of Ravello
in the south, to this natural origin. But in England4, where
the earliest surviving pulpits date from about the beginning
1
See, however, Prof. E. S. Prior's Eight Chapters on Engl. Med. Art
(Camb. Univ. Press, 1922), pp. 125—6.
2
3
Rationale (c. 1286).
Cf. Martene's description (Ant. Eccles. Rit.) of the San Clemente Trio, at
Rome: one on the right of the chancel, facing the altar for the Epistle, a
second facing the people, " pro legendis prophetiis "; a third on left of the
chancel, facing the choir, for the Gospel.
4
The present writer makes no apology for introducing this little sketch,
as Dr J. C. Cox's book, Pulpits, Lecterns and Organs (Milford), 1915, even
apart from its historical inaccuracies, makes little attempt to trace the develop-
ment of English pulpits.
1
of our period , the capacious ambo type is not to be found.
The smaller varieties here, in both stone and wood, nevertheless,
would seem to appear appropriately enough at a time when the
preaching movement inspired by the friars was at its height.
Their present rarity is easily accounted for, in the case of the
timber constructions—undoubtedly cheaper and commoner,
when the wholesale destruction of carved and painted wood-
work in later centuries is called to mind2. For the rarer, more
permanent erections in stone, a source of development from the
monastic pulpit-lectern in the wall, where, as one of our preachers
reminds his audience, "men of religion have a lesson read at
meat to feed the soul,"3 might well be looked for. Splendid,
indeed, are such structures remaining at Beaulieu, Shrewsbury,
and Chester. But as a matter of fact very few of our parish
pulpits could be derived from this type4. From manuscripts,
on the other hand, we get a clear idea from even earlier times,
of a simple, light, panelled platform of wood, mounted on legs5,
which could be moved with ease, outside as well as inside the
sacred building, as required. This agrees with contemporary
descriptions of "setting u p " the pulpit in different places, and
with the variety of sites necessary to suit the various audiences
to be addressed. In the absence, then, of any great decorative
scheme, in which the pulpit might participate, this serviceable
unadorned pattern would be likely to hold the field. When,
however, such interior schemes were developed eventually in
the fifteenth century, notably in East Anglia and in the western
counties, exactly as we might have expected, the pulpit, whether
1
Fulbourn, Cambs. (c. 1350), and Mellor, Derbyshire (c. 1360), have
been put forward as amongst the earliest. The pulpit of Upper Winchendon,
Bucks., may well be added to the list of earliest examples (c. 1340). It will be
found illustrated in the recently issued volume of the Ryl. Comm. on Hist.
Mons. for Buckinghamshire.
2
From Mr Keyser's well-known List, I have estimated for our period
(c.3 1350—1450), roughly fifteen in stone, and thirty-five in wood, surviving.
4
Jacob's Well (ed. E.E.T.S.), p. 144.
Dr Cox suggests Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset, and others (see p. 32).
Staunton, Glos. might be added, perhaps, for the general type. MS. Add.
25089, fol. 79, has a crude illustration, showing a friar preaching "ad popu-
lum" from a stone pulpit of this kind.
6
At least two pulpits thus mounted survive, at Worstead, Norfolk, and
Wenden's Ambo, Essex. For miniature illustrations from MSS., reproduced
in print, see references supplied by Lecoy de la Marche, La chaire franc.
pp. 229—33. They are common in the illuminated MSS. themselves.
of wood or stone, shares in the glory of chancel-screen and
bench-ends, with only a slight modification of the former plan.
The ordinary mediaeval bracket would suggest the replacement
of corner-legs by a central pedestal, when the pulpit was now
set permanently against pier or wall. Sometimes, even the
typical canopy is reproduced above it1. For the rest, panels
here, as on the screen itself, lent themselves naturally to en-
richment with figure-painting and carved work, while mouldings
blossomed into foliage. Thus the preacher's rostrum takes its
place of honour, as it were, in the general ensemble2. Towering
above him at a point, in smaller buildings, not so far from his
head, is the great Rood itself. From his feet in triumphal
procession goes the long line of apostles, martyrs, doctors,
saints. Ever about him are the "sermons in stone, books in the
running brooks" of vine-trail and beading. God is in every-
thing. What finer background could be sought for the silvery
eloquence of preaching?
Stern moralists of the middle ages, however, were no more
apt to be deceived by mere outward brilliance in such places
than their successors, who talk sometimes as though the middle
ages had had no conscience. There was a limit even to church-
decoration. When the Lady Meed declares to her confessor,
"that ther nis nouthur wyndou, ne auter that I ne schulde
maken othur mende, and my nome write," for the admiration
of future generations in the holy place, she was giving voice to a
common conceit of the wealthy. Dr Bromyard himself wittily
declares in his Summa Predicantium that in justice these would
do better to inscribe thereon the names of the poor they have
defrauded in their progress to such ill-gotten magnificence3.
1
Cf. Edlesborough, Bucks, and Cold Ashton, Glos. The former is in
wood, the latter in stone. Original bases to wooden pulpits of the "wine-
glass " variety are naturally rare in situ. But a fifteenth century specimen from
the church of Moreton Hampstead, Devon, will be found among the English
woodwork exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum, S. Kensington
(Exhibit No. 126 [1907]).
2
In spite of a considerable discussion over the point in Notes and Queries,
it is easily proved that either the north or the south side of the chancel arch
was used for the pulpit-site here, entirely according to convenience, not
according to any rigorous ecclesiastical regulation. The "mediaeval mind"
was not so chained to petty points of ritual as some of our modern " ritual-
istic" minds, nor by any means so fearful of divergence.
3
This is a common and interesting enough point in our sermon literature
to justify further illustration: Bromyard, S.P. (as above), Fama bona:
Furthermore, if the same practice were extended to the fine
apparel they wear, the names of the sheep that provided the
material would have to appear. Stains and defacement were the
only genuine contribution of the owners. But to return to church
memorials. Bromyard and Langland might have referred their
condemnations of "suche writynge" to the very pulpits. For
more than one of mediaeval date still bears this quaint feature
upon it. The height of personal vanity is reached surely in the
case of the donors of a remarkable little painted pulpit at
Burnham Norton, in Norfolk1. Here, apart from the inscription,
" Aliquis opus ab alio factum adornat, vel aliqua de suo addit fenestram,
forte, vel vitrum, vel aliquid tale, ad laudem et memoriam nominis sui; vult
nomen suum in opere illo imprimere. Dicit lex quod in titulo illo inscrip-
tionis solum inscribere debent quantam summam ipsi expendiderunt de suo,
et quantam ipsi fecerunt; et non totum opus ei ascribere, nee de alieno opere
famam et gloriam acquirere. Huic concordat optime sacra scriptura.. . . "
A remarkable parallel to Piers Plowman as above! He continues as in the
text above, concluding: "vix invenirent in operibus et edificiis suis spatium
in quo nomen proprium insculperent. Sed satis longa invenirent spatia
in quibus nomina pauperum et simplicium, et etiam dominorum quibus
serviunt, quos defraudaverunt, inscriberent." See again under Acquisitio
(mala) ("Robbing Peter to give to God," and the story of the devil who
claimed a church). Wimbledon, in his Paul's Cross sermon, quoting Hugh of
St Victor (who apparently himself borrows from St Jerome): " Poor men are
often spoiled to clothe timber and stones." Jacob's Well, quoting St Bernard,
" Thou makest clad the church walls of dead stone with painture of brightness,
shining with gayness, and lettest the quick stones of God, the poor, go naked
and needy," (E.E.T.S. ed. p. 306); ibid.pp. 203 and 175-6 ("Robbing Peter
to give to Paul," (a) " to make therewith churches," (6) "to friars, and houses of
religion"). Sermon in MS. Line. Cath. Libr.A. 6.2,fol. 198 (Theextortionate
and the trickster at the market, when "put to examynacion" for their in-
justice "wyll sey. . . ' I wil gyffe a boke or a chalys to the chyrche, or a bell
or a vestment, and so schall I be prayed for every sonday, or ells I wyll do
some other good deede lyke to the same'.").
1
Other examples, Rossington, Yorks. (15th cent.), "Orate pro anima Ric.
Stansall et uxoris ejus"; and Heighington, Durham (e. 15th cent.), "Orate
pro animabus Alex. Flettcher et Agnetis uxoris ejus." The Burnham Norton
example besides the "Orate pro animis" for John and Catherine, exhibits
the words "fecerunt fieri..." along the lower border. On the pulpit at
Cranborne, Dorset, on the other hand, an Abbot of Tewkesbury, Thos.
Parker (d. 1421), puts but a modest " T . P." Dr Cox dates the Burnham
Norton pulpit, c. 1475; but too much credence must not be given even to his
archaeological judgements, e.g. (p. 68) of the Lutterworth pulpit he objects
that " the embattled transom across the centre of each panel" must make it
of late fifteenth century workmanship. But this is a characteristic feature of
the tracery on the lower stages (particularly at the back) of the St Alban's
Feretrar Chamber, at least early fifteenth century work (cf. Ryl. Comm. Hist.
Mon. Report, etc.), and from detailed evidence probably to be ascribed to the
end of Richard II's reign. The tracery is singularly like that on " Wycliffe's "
pulpit. Mr Patrick, A.R.I.B.A., I notice, states in a volume of the Brit.
11-3
164 'INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA'
the figures of husband and wife share its panels with the four
great doctors of Latin Christianity, in equal dimensions.
Preaching from those oaken panels whereon the rustic con-
gregation beholds each holy-day John and Catherine Goldalle
amid such exalted company in glory, could any friar have found
BURNHAM NORTON PULPIT, NORFOLK

ready to hand a more solemn object-lesson for his discourse on
" Superbia"? In the early days of Franciscan enterprise in this
country, a brother had been severely punished for the very act
of "decorating a pulpit with pictures."1
Arch. Assoc. (N.S. No. 7 (1901), p. 210): " In the pulpit are preserved all that
remains of the carved panels of what is said to have been the original pulpit
used by Wycliffe; which is quite likely to have been the case, as they are
elegant in design and of the date of the fourteenth century."
1
(Though doubtless of saints.) Eccleston, De Adv. Minorum, cap. vii.
Keyser's List gives forty-one pulpits with traces of painting on panels still left.
If preaching is to be held responsible for the appearance of
the pulpit, it may also claim its share in the production of the
pew. One thing at all events seems clear from documentary
evidence both here and abroad. Whereas kneeling was the
characteristic posture of audiences for Mass1, sitting was the
posture for sermon-time. Even at a comparatively early date
there is little to bear out the statements made that the majority
of the congregation was wont to remain standing. William of
Auxerre, a Dominican preacher, about the year 1273, f° r
example, inveighs "against some who when they come to church
for the sermon stand, and do not wish to sit down, thus pre-
venting the others from being able to hear."2 The mediaeval
miniatures, moreover, depict listeners as seated, though what
they are actually sitting upon may be by no means clear. Turn-
ing to archaeological evidences, we possess several fragmentary
sets of heavy wooden benches in parish churches which ap-
parently cannot be later than the end of the thirteenth century,
and must be distinguished from the priestly furniture of the
chancels3. In addition there are interior wall-ledges of stone,
even earlier in date, which would have been used for a similar
purpose, though most likely by the more aged and infirm who
were present. Taken together, however, these are sufficient to
explain that scuffling after vacant seats and ensuing quarrels
in the middle of the service which was sometimes the disgrace
of English as well as continental church-going4. The clergy,
of course, by virtue of office, enjoyed the use of pleasant stalls
or sedilia of some description in the sanctuary. But the noble-
1
2
Cf. Myrc's Instructions (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 9, etc.
Hist. Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxvi, p. 429. See some other references in Lecoy
de la Marche, pp. 209—10, who does not give the above. Also for Engl. MS.
Vernon (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 117, p. 476), "At a sarmoun ther I seet";
Gesta Rom. (E.E.T.S. p. 391); A litel soth sermoun (E.E.T.S. No. 98),
"And sit ye still adown"; Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 140, and vol. iii, p. 434,
" continuing on their seats." See also in the text below, p. 167.
3
See Cox, Bench-ends (Milford, 1916), p. 6. But why has he omitted all
mention of the early specimens at Chelvey, Somerset, a set of ten? (cf.
Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. Trans, vol. xxix, pt. i (1906), p. 41).
4
Wilkins, Cone. vol. ii, p. 140, Synod of Exeter, 1287: "The inhabitants
of parishes quarrel repeatedly about seats in the church, two or more persons
laying claim to one seat, which is a cause of much scandal, and often pro-
duces an interruption in the service." For abroad cf. Haureau, Quelques
MSS. vol. iii, p. 125, and examples from the preaching of St Bernardino, in
Italy.
men and patrons of churches, too, could claim in true feudal
fashion a regular seat as their own. Sir Richard L'Estrange
might be seen, for example, in the year 1417, at the sermon in
St Dunstan's, at London, in the dignified seclusion of his
family (?) pew, "locum sive sedile dictum vulgariter 'Le
Closette,'" his mind then innocent enough of that disgraceful
outrage which was to follow upon Sir John Trussel later in the
day. Likewise Sir John, when he comes in to church at Vespers
sits down "super quendam descum," afterwards mentioned in
connection with a certain bench (or stool?) opposite ("quoddam
scamnum1 ex opposite ipsius desci existens")2. By the middle
of the fourteenth century, at least, the wives and widows of
Piers Plowman's acquaintance were provided with pews of the
ordinary sort, as noble dames of former generations had sat in
state on their own cushions, brought in for them by the ser-
vants. But what would be the lot of the ordinary folk in the
rural districts? One of our contemporary treatises in re-telling
a popular story from the Vitae Patrum may provide a hint. When
the "holy Abbot Artemus" sets out with his companions to test
the efficacy of the sacrament, "they come alle thre to churche,
the Sonday, and sette hem togedere upon a sete of rysches."3
From the rushes of summer-time, from the straw of winter4,
covering the stones of the rude pavement beneath him, our rustic
villager would heap together sufficient to keep off the cold and
damp, and mitigate the hardness. There he would squat, as the
sermon proceeded, listening or sleeping, or chatting, according
to his taste. A few at the back would prefer to defy orders and
stand, lolling against a pillar, or strolling with acquaintances,
the more devout and well-mannered gazing at the preacher,
1
Mr Hamilton Thompson's explanation of this word as "simply a stool"
(cf. Gloss. Line. Rec. Soc. vol. vii, p. 248) is inadequate. Cf. O.E. Vocs.
(ed. Wright-Wiilcker), "bynk," "benche," "bynke"; sim. Prompt. Parv.
2
Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 385. Cf. also the warnings in our Manuals,
e.g. Jacob's Well, that only priests and patrons are to sit in the chancel.
3
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 48 b. Mr Coulton calls my attention to evidence in
Salimbene's Chronicle (sub anno 1248) that sermon audiences then sat fre-
quently on the ground, abroad.
4
Cf. Church Wardens' Accounts, e.g. All Saints, Bristol: 1408, For one
trusse of stree, vi d.; 1427, For rushes at Easter, vi d.; 1427, For straw at
Chrystmas, ix d., etc. And see also A. Burton, Rushbearing. (For fresh green
rushes strewn in the house, at Easter, cf. Myrc's Festiall, E.E.T.S. ed. p. 129;
and again in MS. Ryl. 18. B. xxiii, Easter sermons.)
as we behold them in pictures, over the heads of the ladies
seated immediately around his pulpit1. The extensive series of
pews, sufficient for all, which fill the naves of many churches
by the second half of the fifteenth century, reflecting much of
the carven beauty of clerical stall, pulpit, and screen, are testi-
mony in themselves to the place which preaching has come to
take in the religious life of the people.
With a place for the priest and a place for the people thus
provided in our scene, it is time to give heed to the living beings
who occupy them. We may follow, indeed, the steps of that
pathetic figure, moving—-familiar enough to the ears of ancient
English sermon-goers—towards the church-yard gate; or "the
chyrche style" 2 :
As she wente in the strete, she sawe mych folke go in to a chirche.
Thought she, "I wil go wete what this folke do there," and wente
here into the chirche, and sette here downe, as othere didden. Sone
after come a persone into the pullpite and prechid3.
As likely it might have been the Franciscan "ffrere Henri,"
that "comeli clerk," with girdle of knotted cord, grey-brown
habit, and "come les autres, nuyj peez." Or equally likely a
pardoner, with his sly bag of tricks. "The lewede men likede
him wel, and leeveth his speche." Best of all, it might have
been that rare and splendid occasion when no less a dignitary
than my lord bishop is due to preach in that parish church on a
visitation. Thus did Bishop Grandisson come to St Buryan, in
1336, "exercens suam jurisdiccionem ordinarium et diocesa-
nam," in those remote parts of Cornwall, first to absolve the
guilty, then to preach, with his sermonfinallyinterpreted for him
"in lingua Cornubie," for the benefit of his outlandish subjects4.
1
Cf. even such late illustrations as the Woodcut, 1528, reproduced in
Meray's Libres Pricheurs, vol. ii, title-page, or Luther preaching (MS. Add.
4727). Also Myrc's warning for Mass-time: "Ny lene to pyler, ny to wal"
{Instr. E.E.T.S., p. 9).
2
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 125 b. Again in MS. Roy. 18. B.
xxiii, fol. 108 b.
3
Gesta Rom. Engl. vers. (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 391. For other versions of this
story, besides MS. Harl. 2316, fol. 59, mentioned here in Chap, n, see
Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 174 and MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, etc.
4
See Reg. Grandiss. (Exeter), pt. ii, p. 820, and cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS.
Harl. 4968, fol. 45): "Episcopi debent singulis annis omnes parochias sue
diocesis visitare, et scrutatis erroribus (sic!) remedia et correctiones adhibere,
et singulis ecclesiis sermonem facere, aut per se, aut per alium ydoneum.. . . "
With this, cf. re Bp. Grossetete, above, p. 10.
His train of twenty or thirty mounted clerics and attendants1
would be as good as a Lord Mayor's show to see. As for the
sermon, the ladies, faithful souls, have been in a flutter of
excitement over it for weeks. Did not Master Humbert de
Romans tell us a story of how a certain noble dame herself once
rebuked a corpulent archdeacon, because he dared to disappoint
them? He had come, with a brilliant retinue to a certain parish,
"sub nomine visitacionis"; really, however, to enjoy the
splendid visitation dinners that he knew awaited him there.
The first evening passed cheerfully enough, eating and drinking
at his host's expense. The intention was to repeat the operation
next day. However, certain noble ladies had gathered already
in the church that morning, expecting that the visitor would
preach them the usual sermon. What was their horror and
amazement to find that, when Mass was ended, which he had
insisted on being said "sine nota," in a hurry, he was preparing
to get back to his table again! Up rose an angry female and
addressed him thus: " Behold, lord archdeacon, for a whole day
have we waited in silence, expecting you to preach the word of
God, and perform your proper office!" His curt reply was
profoundly true to type: "We never meddle with such things."
But she, noble lady, was not to be put off in that manner. The
last word was hers, and a good one: "Little did he care for us
that committed the care of our souls to you. See, here you
are leaving behind you from your visitation nothing but the
dung of your horses! " 2
That all happened in France a long while past. But the
prelate's sermon has still its ancient power of attraction in our
own period and country. "For to suche men of grett powere
and my3the," an English preacher assures us, "men takes hede,
and 3eveth grett audience. To ensample,—and a bishoppe or a
1
2
Cf. legislation, Wilkins, Cone. vol. i, p. 505.
From Etienne de Bourbon (Tractatus). Cf. ibid.: "Sunt autem prelati
aliqui, cum visitant, magis solliciti quomodo visitentur loca in quibus est
abundantia caponum et anserum et gallinarum pinguium, quibus pascantur
et impinguentur, quam loca famelicarum animarum, ut verbo Dei reficiantur
ab eis." Also Bromyard, S.P.—Predicatio: "Contra illos qui non visitant,
nee curant infirmos sicut aliqui medici, nisi ubi sunt loca pinguia ubi bene
procurantur, et lucrantur." See, too, the story of the greedy archdeacon who
eats up the parish priest's substance, on a visitation, in MS. Harl. 3938,
fol. 119.
doctoure stond up to preche the worde of God, muche pepull
will drawe thetherwarde to here hym; and jiff he repreve vices
and synne, the peple will not gruche never a dele ajeyns hym,
ne thei will not foêtt [h]is wordes."1
He preched on sa fair maner
That it was joi for to her,
And quen his sermoun ended was
The folc wit mikel joi up ras
And thankid Jesus in that pla3
That gaf thair bischop sli[che] gra32.
The bishop's visitation address, like all good things, will,
naturally, be rare enough. Even when one of the preaching
sort has arrived in the town, being only human at the best, a
severe cold in the throat may prevent his speaking, when every
arrangement has been made. This seems to be the situation
indicated by one of the most naive and vigorous little remarks in
all our English sermon literature. At the end of a vernacular
homily with an unmistakeable "visitation" text, the village
parson or some other substitute at hand for the emergency,
strives to allay the general disappointment. They shall have
their special Indulgence all right! "Sirs, my lord shuld have
preched here hym selfe, that is here presente now, but he is a
litill dezezed. And therfore he ordeynt me to preache in is
stede; and he granteth you as muche pardon as tho3 he had
preched hym selfe."3 No doubt the attention had flagged. For
the mood is as clear as when to-day the village flower-show is
bereft of its great lady, or the political meeting of its carefully
advertised speaker.
How, then, will our audience behave? Whether within the
sacred precincts or upon the public square, in its motley
character it will probably reflect most of the great feudal
class distinctions and class prejudices which seem to run
deeper in mediaeval flesh and blood than even differences of
1
2
Engl. Metr. Horns, ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, p. 90. This is from a
curious narratio of a bishop (or archbishop), famed for his sanctity, who
eventually confessed in the pulpit, before his people, to an act of gross
immorality committed by him with a nun.
3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 69 b (text, " Visitate. . . "). For the concluding
grant of the Indulgence itself here, see in Appendix iii, § (1).
nationality. Some of the portraits sketched in our manuscripts
are wonderfully realistic and amusing. The lord and lady of
the manor with their circle will probably be present. They have
a bad habit of sleeping late in those too cosy new-fangled
bedrooms of theirs. By the time my lady has completed her
extravagant toilet, and sets out churchward with her spouse,
the parson and all the people of the parish are weary and
exasperated with waiting for them1. There is a sermon story
of a certain lady of Eynesham, in Oxfordshire, "who took so
long over the adornment of her hair, that she used to arrive at
the church barely before the end of Mass." One day "the devil
descended upon her head in the form of a spider, gripping with
its legs," until she well-nigh died of fright. Nothing would
remove the offending insect, neither prayer, nor exorcism, nor
holy water, until the local abbot displayed the holy sacrament
before it. Then it disappeared, leaving my lady cured for ever
of her temptation, we imagine2. For the dame who knows
that she is the best-dressed woman in the parish, however, there
is a certain satisfaction in entering late; this too, quite apart
from the flattering thought that God's service has been delayed
out of respect to your rank and person. The eyes of the village
are now centred anxiously upon the south door. "Ther is
most pryde in entrynge of holy churche with pompe, vayne
glorie, with noble atyre, for to be miche yset by amonges the
peple, more than for eny devocion to god. And most in his
festys!"3 Lords and ladies, they are all alike, these "folke
of grete estate." Says another preacher: "Also grete lordes and
ladies that cometh to holy chirche in riche and noble apparaile
of gold and silver, purles and riche stones, and other worldliche
worschipful atyre byfore oure lord god all mighti, schulde take
1
Cf. S.P.—Ociositas: "Tales ociosi, qui sunt.. .in lecto calido, qui tarde
surgunt, intantum quod quandoque sacerdos et missa, immo ipse Deus in
missa oblatus, eos, ultra horam debitam, cum totius parochiae detentione, et
offensione exspectabunt...," etc. (and elsewhere in S.P.). This explains
cap. xxxi of The Bk. of the Knt. of La Tour-Landry. Cf. the amusing story
in MS. Harl. 2391, fol. 233, of the priest "who often began Mass before the
proper time, so as not to vex a knight by keeping him waiting!"
2
MS. Add. 11284, fol. 64. Cf. also MS. Add. 27336, fol. 70.
3
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 9 b. Cf. again, MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 19:
"...onthe holy day...long ligging in bed, with myche pryde in gay clothing,
myche wast in iaggid [i.e. 'jagging'] anddagging, in late commynge to chirche,
and ovyr this more to be seen theere, than for ony soule heelthe...."
ensample of the noble quene Hester." For "sche dede away all
hir riche apparaile, and lowed hir mekeliche byfore God," when
she came into his house. " Sotheliche so may be grete abhomy-
nacioun to God of thilke that in suche thing haveth pryde or
likyng, and of thilke that so attyreth hem to be seiefn] of foles
as thei beth hemselfe. And theigh thei seye that thei doth it
forto worschipe God therwith in his chirche [Oh! eternal
sophistry of women!], thei schulde understonde that God
taketh none hede of suche worschip." "And therfore thei
schulde at chirche.. .noght be proude in herte, nother of her
astates, ne of her apparaile."1 Up the nave they go to their
seat. How awful is that lordly eye that searches the con-
gregation in its way, whenever "ther come a grett lorde into a
churche"; even as he that "loked on ys on side, and saw where
a grett gentill [lady] satt on knees, and red on hure primore,"
according to one preacher's story2. The lady at his side "stir-
ring up the dust with her train, makes the good laymen, the
clerks, and the priests all drink of it, often makes it fall too upon
the altar of the Lord." 3 Oh! the abominable dust of the churches,
and the ways of our ancient nobility! Once in her place she may
not keep still for long: "But ever as anny man com in to the
churche, or wente oute, she loked after hem,.. .and toke none
hede to hur preyours."4 The preacher will not forget to warn
his people again of such haughty misbehaviour: "And therfore,
ffrendes, cownte not hem that are absente fro the churche, ne
beholde hem now3th that goyth owte. But only, when thou
arte comon to the chirche, prey to God of is mercy for thin own
synnes and trespase, and loke that thin herte and thi tonge
acord bothe to thether!" 5
But such is human nature, merchant and bailiff, if they be
there, even the labouring men, with their "rude minds," as
1
MS. Harl. 45, fol. 113 et seq. (cf. fol. m : "And also he schulde with
glad chere hyre sermones and goddes wordes, and in that tyme sette his thoght
and his wille to hyre and understonde the wordes of God that there schulde
be seide....") Cf. MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 125b (Jacob's Well)
" Lordys and ladyes schulde for3etyn here ryalte and here powere. . . " etc.
2
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 105 b.
3
Cf. MS. Add. 21253, fol. 106 (sermon): "Ipsae [dominae] caudis suis
moventes pulverem, et ilium faciunt bonis viris laicis, clericis, et sacerdotibus
bibere; ilium faciunt saepe super altare Domini cadere."
4
6
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fols. 105 b—106 (a " Narratio contra ficte orantes ").
Ibid.
Pagula describes them1, have all their own little faults and
weaknesses, in the place of worship, "yvel to be ocupied when
thei come in thedir, with myche iangling and iapinge, and many
othere vanytees, settynge nou3t bi prechinge and techinge of
goddis word, but wenynge that it is an ydil thinge."2 It is
hard enough to get some of them to the church at all: "Anone
he wyll make hys excuse and sey, ' I am olde or sekely, or the
wedir is colde and I am febyll.' Or ells he will excuse hym and
sey thus,' I have a grete howsholde,' or ells he hathe some other
ocupacion to do, but, for all these excusacions, and a man wolde
com and hyre hym, and sey,' I wil gyffe good wagys,' then wyll
thei ley all maner of excusacions a bak and com un to theyre
dyvyne service acordyng to theyre dutye." 3 Middle-class
wives, too, will ape the grandeur of their superiors, and the
Sunday finery of the servants almost vies with that of their
mistresses:
Seynt poule techith how women schulde araye hem when thei goo
to chirche, for to preye god. Thei schulde have, he seith, clothinge
and atyre after that her astate asketh,—that were honeste and with
oute to outrageous coste; and that is to understonde after the estate
that thei beth of. ffor that that is mesure to one is outrageous to
another, ffor more falleth to a queene then to a countesse; and more
to a countess than to another symple lady; and more to a lady than
to an other symple woman, ffor seynt poule techith hem to be symple
in si3t, that is to seie, meke and schamfaste, and no queyntise seche,
ne devise for her hevedes—as tressis, philettis, [as in the year 192-!]
and othre suche wrecchidnes, as many foles doth, that strecchith the
nekke as an herte, or kambreth the nekke as an hors. And also seint
poule seithe and counsaileth hem that thei nogth atyre her hedes,
neither with silver, gold, ne purle, ne other riche stones; but that
thei cover her hedes with clene veyles, and nameliche at the chirche,
when thei beth to fore God, and schewe hem there as good women
schulde doo4.
After all the preacher can afford to take more pains with the
1 2
3
Cf. MS. Roy. 6. E. 1, fol. 28. MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 19.
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 197. Cf. Myrc's Instructions (E.E.T.S.,
O.S. No. 31, p- 37): "Hast thou spared for hete or colde to go to chyrche
when thou were holde?"; also MS. Harl. 2398,fol. 27; Jacob's We/Z(E.E.T.S.
ed. pp. 261, 291), etc. For the counter-attraction of Sunday Sport, etc., see
my article on "The People's Sunday Amusements in the Preaching of
Medieval England," in the Holborn Review, Jan. 1926.
4
MS. Harl. 45, fol. 113 et seq.
female element than with the male. For Bishop Brunton makes
it clear that then, even as now, men were in a minority, and the
churches were attended mainly by the womenfolk1. The sexes
are probably separated, the latter "sitten all a rewe,"2 as we
have seen, and with good reason. For strange things are done
in churches3 and strange folk go there. Gower's lover, like
Dante, is amongst those "in chirches and in minstres eke, that
gon the women for to seke,"4 harmless enough, in his case, it is
true. But the "lechour " may go, too, as the preacher describes,
under an otherwise calm exterior, thinking his evil thoughts,
and finding the very journey thither irksome enough: "Hym
thynketh the tyme of a myle the space of thre myle weies."5
Even the heretic, the infidel, and the excommunicate, may enter
the church expressly to hear the sermon alone, though on no
other account. "For that purpose they ought to be received by
all."6 It is a remarkable throng that faces him who stands in
a mediaeval pulpit, disturbing, heedless, vicious, perhaps dan-
gerous—who knows? Men can quarrel and strive, as well as
drive their bargains in this "hous of praier."7
The sermon has now begun. A busy hum of conversation
rises, at times well-nigh drowning the voice of the gesticulating
speaker. So common an occurrence is it that hardly an English
1
Cf. MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 125 : " Sed homines, et maxime juvenes otiosi a
deo subtrahunt servitium debitum...."
2
Gower, Conf. Amant. bk. v.
3
Cf. MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 9 b: "Lecherye and glotenye beth ofte tyme ydo
in holy places"; MS. Harl. 45, fol. 68: "lecherie in holy chirche"; fol. 120:
do. "inholy stede, as chirche.. .," etc.; MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 42 b: " . . .lygge
by a woman in churche "; MS. Vernon, fol. 366, as given in Horstmann,
vol. ii, p. 341, a "Forma Confitendi": "disyryng wimmen in chirche"; etc.
Cf. with these the Ely Misericorde-carving on p. 177 below. This also
explains the presence of such unpleasant stories, as of caps, xxxv and xxxvi,
in The Bk. of the Knt. of La Tour-Landry.
1
6
Gower, as above.
6
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 36 b.
Cf. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 42 b (Cil. Oc. Sac.): " Hereticis, et excommuni-
catis, et infidelibus licet ecclesiam ingredi, ut sermonem audiant tantum, et ad
hoc ab omnibus recipi debent" (from Grat. Decret.). With this compare the
sermon story (originally from Greg. Dial.) of the preacher who requested all
excommunicated persons to leave the church, before his sermon began
(MSS. Add. 11579, fol. 140 b and Harl. 2851, fol. 103 b, etc.).
7
Cf. MS. Roy. 6. E. 1, fol. 26 b: "seditio, clamor, impetus, contentiones,
rixae, confabulationes, negociationes, nundinarum mercata," etc.; MS.
Harl. 2398, fol. 91: "merchandyse in the churche"; MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 119:
"stryves and debates,. ..biyngis and sellyngis. . . " ; MS. Add.21253, fol. 136:
" . . .non litigent, vel rumores narrent, vel res suas ibi vendant." MS. Salisb.
Cath. Libr. 103, fol. is8 b . All these are carefully denounced.
sermon collection fails to deal with it. Perhaps he is old and
inaudible, and half the village congregation, freed on the holiday
from the heavy labours of the week, sleeps fitfully. However
rich and impressive the background and the ceremonial of the
parish church may be, it is certainly no meekly reverent audience
that the English preachers are prepared to reveal to us in their
homilies. Awed ourselves by what we may see to-day, we are apt
to forget that the response in alert spiritual fashion to what is
beautiful in art and ritual is itself largely a modern growth.
Intimate quality of soul, it is not to be bred suddenly or auto-
matically by any form of mass-religion, where the first primitive
fear has disappeared. Our mediaeval Catholic, the homilies tell
us, can snore as heedlessly, gape as incessantly in his Gothic fane,
as ever Hogarth's Protestant worshippers amid the horrors of
box-pews and cushioned "three-decker."
Men suld be bowsum [i.e. buxom] in thaire mode,
And gladly go to gostly fode,
That es to say to goddes worde
That prechores gaders of goddes horde.
Bot Crist gifes tham no sight perfite [i.e. of himself]
That in sarmon has no delite:
ffor many foles will here sarmowne
With owten any devociowne.
Devociowne es a luf langing
That out of a mans hert suld spring
To 3erne the blis that lastes ay
And put all vanitese oway.
Sum men at sarmones er to blame
And war wele better be at hame:
Sum other unto sarmon cumes
Bot in thaire brest no thing it blomes;
ffor slepe thai may no tent take,
(Bot at the taverne will thai wake.)
mil light thai er, ill laykes to lere,
And hevy sarmons for to here.
His hevide than may he noght hald up, [=head]
But wele he kepes the fendes cup.
That the fendes cup, call I,
That makes tham slepe and be hevy1.
1
MS. Harl. 4196, fol. 88 b (Engl. Met. Horn.). To complete our com-
parison, Bp. Brunton mentions in a sermon (MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176) those
who go to church, or to sermon, merely "pro forma."
These two old vices of sleeping and talking are an irresistible
temptation to the mediaeval sermon-goers. No one knows it
better than the father of all wickedness himself:
In dayes that bethe now, prechours may seye Alias! for while they
.. .speke the wordes of God, there comithe an hisser, scil. the devil,
and he whistelithe so swetly that.. .synners herithe no worde of God,
but turnithe hem to dilectacion of synne, to which the devil temptithe
hem. For the devil hissithe be mony diverse weyes in the sermon;
and how? For he makithe some to slepe that they her not the wordes
of God; and some he makithe to chatir faste; and hem that he may
not make chatery ne slepe,1 he makithe hem to have litle swettnesse or
non to the worde of God .
There is no end, in fact, to his ingenuity, and that of his
assistants in this direction. Who has not heard the oft-repeated
sermon story of how once a certain preacher, seeing how
drowsy and sluggish his irreverent congregation had become,
was granted by God to know the cause of their indevotion then
and there? Thus it was that he saw with his own eyes the little
black fellow that runs around, and puts his fingers over the
ears and eyes of the people, making them deaf and sleepy.
Asked who he might be, the " Aethiopian " replied he was a devil,
and his name "obturans aures et oculos." Had he any friends?
Yes, indeed, at work with him there. One called "indurans
cor" hardened people's hearts; another, "obturans os," pre-
vented them from confessing; and a third "obturans bursam"
hindered the making of amends and restitution due2. Old
1
Gesta Rom., Engl. fifteenth century vers. (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 138. Cf.
further, Brunton, MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 124 b, etc.: "sompnolenti otiosi, et
ponderosi"; Bromyard, Waldeby, and Rypon, as above, in text; MS. Camb.
Univ. Libr. G. g. vi. 16, fol. 49: "oft in church jangelling or sleeping";
MS. Harl. 45, fols. 57 b, 58, n 1, etc.: "Pledinge and janglynge in holy
chirche," " Speke harlottrye, and foule wordes of villany and synne in
chirche; (to studie more in brekynge of voyse than in devoute singynge),"
"Jangle, lawghe, bourde, and tryfle there, as many fooles doth"; MS. Harl.
2398, fol. 3: "Harletrye and unskylful jangelynge in holy churche"; Jacob's
Well, passim: "Sleepen in church, singen, rownyn, jangelen"; idle play;
sleeping in church in time of preachings; idle words, chidings, reprovings in
holy church; telling tales, japing in divine service; voice-breaking in church;
etc., etc. oft repeated; Myrc's Festiall, p. 116: talking, joking, and "chaff-
aryng," and Instructions, pp. 36 and 45 : disturbing the priest; MS. St Albans
Cath. fol. 19 and Bodl. 5: jangling and japinge, etc., etc.; MS. Line. Cath.
Libr. B. 5. 8, fol. 850: "jangelyng, and trifels"; etc., etc.
2
Bromyard, S.P.—Audire (verbum Dei); again in Engl. vers. of Alphab.
Narrat. (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 126), p. 66 and Myrc, Festiall, etc., etc.
Abbot "Macharye" had seen much the same sight when he
went into a church. But there the fiends were small as children,
and blue as men of "Inde," running all about, and scorning
there every man, making faces at them ("making a mowe"),
and as they awoke greasing their lips with ointments from a box,
until "the folk jangelyd and telde talys" again1. Thus does
pixie-land re-invade the churches, after fourteen centuries of
Christianity in the world2. For a parallel to-day we must seek
out the peasant churches of Southern Italy3, or the " Orthodox "
folk of the Balkans with their Rain-maiden, and their Yuletide
"Badgnak."
When the same preacher comes to recite yet another similar
tale, he is rapidly losing patience, and his " moralization"
becomes the more violently personal as the din increases. How
shall we stop this intolerable chattering? Oh, tell them Vora-
gine's tale4 about the devils that collect in sacks and record on
their scrolls, "the words of the people which they jangleden and
rownedyn in church." "Forsoothe then," cries he, getting his
thrust in, " I drede me the feend hath a gret book ajens 30U,
wretyn of 3oure ianglynges in cherch; & 3k ê excusyn 30W
therein, & seyn 'Me muste speke to hym that spekyth to me'!
Bethware, and levyth suche talys for dreed of God, & for rewthe
of 3oure soule!" That devil once had a most strange accident.
The audience pricks up its ears again. "The feend seyde: ' I
wryte thise talys of the peple in this cherche to recordyn hem
afore God at the doom for here dampnacyoun, and my book is
to narwe to wryten on alle here talys, thei say so manye.'" And
1
Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 337- I give this to illustrate two interesting
variations of the same " exemplum," originally from the Vitaspatrum.
2
In Bromyard's version of a similar "exemplum" {S.P. s.v. Ferie, seu
Festa.)
3
the devil who busies himself thus with the lay-folk is called Grisillus.
A friend of the present writer who recently visited Palermo, in Sicily,
described to him precisely such a scene at a sermon in the cathedral. The
preacher was quite inaudible, half-way down the church, from the chattering.
Guides were calmly prepared to take one round the building, while the preach-
ing proceeded. Cf. again in Coulton's Mediaeval Studies, No. 2, p. 24.
4
Cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Exemplum. This is his cure for those who play
games during sermon-time: " Expediret forte talia audire exempla quia
terribilia exempla finis et poenae malorum citius a peccatis revocarent."
Caesarius of Heisterbach tells of Abbot Gerard, rousing his dozing congrega-
tion at Heisterbach by crying: "There was once upon a time a King called
Arthur!" and then rebuking them for awakening to hear "fables"! {Hist.
Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxiii). Cf. Waldeby quoted below, p. 333.
straightway in drawing out the parchment with his teeth, he
struck his head against the church-wall behind him, and made
the others laugh to see it. Then the homilist returns to the charge
again: " I trowe the feend hath nede to drawe lengere & brad-
dere his rolle here; for it is ellys to lytel to wryten on alle the
talys tolde in this cherch. For it is nevere lefte, but it be at
sacre, for prechyng, ne shryfte, ne schame, ne dreed of God,
ne of the world. But they amendyn hem, thei schull be pery-
sched both body and soule!" 1 That picturesque little "ex-
emplum "—devil's teeth and all—has found its way on to a
misericorde among the stalls at Ely2; into how many religious
treatises it would be hard to say.
THE DEVILS IN CHURCH

(Ely Cathedral)
But if these abominable disturbers could put their noses
into Hell, and there learn their fate, they might amend them
right quickly:
And tho that were up to the lippes blak,
Stryf and jangeling in chirche dude make;
Uche to othur jangled with scorn,
To heere godus wordus thei hav for-born3.
Those that sleep "as a beast, in God's service," may be only
an offence to themselves. The worst of the talker is that he may
1
2
Jacob's Well, pp. 115 and 232.
By overlooking the side carvings, Bond, in his Misericordes (Frowde,
p. 166) has missed the full significance of this scene. One devil records
on a scroll, while the other, on the left, draws out the parchment with his
teeth.
3
MS. Vernon (eleven pains of hell); E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 107, etc.
"let others from the hearing of God's word."1 And here the
rich and powerful are no better than their poorer neighbours,
when they condescend to be present at the sermon2. Worse
yet than either sleeping or chattering, from his lofty position
the friar has actually espied some playing at chess, or gambling
with dice, while he is discoursing. Little use is it to argue with
such. They only retort: "What do we want to listen to sermons
for?" "Each man has five senses, and knows when he has
done what is wrong or right. Well enough does he know when
he commits fornication, or steals, or gets drunk, that he is
sinning."3 How foolishly they talk, argues the learned Domini-
can. A craftsman desiring to learn his craft might just as well
say: " I have my senses. I don't need to listen to the master."
Never mind! Those who refuse to give heed to their lesson in
this life, shall receive a worse in the next. Do the village women-
folk bring their needlework with them, we wonder, to beguile
the often weary sermon-time? "Longe me thought the preest
in prechyng! " 4 Alas, how heavily it weighs upon those who have
no "swetnesse,.. .in heryng Goddys woord, no more than a
beeste, but evyl apayed & wery in.. .herte therof."5 Cries
John Waldeby to his hearers: "Oh, how many, in listening to
the word of God... are heavy and even somnolent! For one
hour seems terribly long to them. Yet to dwell for a day and a
night at the tavern, in lust and song, and other vain amuse-
ments, does them no hurt; for in these days men like a short
sermon, or no sermon at all, when in church, and long drinking
in the ale-house."6 Dr Bromyard had protested once that
1
Jacob's Well (p. 103); cf. also p. 108: "Letters of others' prayers and
devotions, and troublers of divine service." But even in the era of Protestant
respectability things could be apparently as bad; cf. in a visitation at Lincoln,
of the year 1607: "that the prechers are usuallie much troubled in ther ser-
mons by the prophane walking and talkinge of idle and irreligious persons,...
as also for drunkenes, talkinge, and going out in service time," etc. (Line.
Cath. Stat. pt. ii).
2
S.P.—Predic: "Sic magni tyranni, divites, et potentes,. . .si veniunt ad
predicationem, dormiunt vel garrulant, et illam aure capere nolunt."
3
S.P.—Exemplum (begin. " Illis enim qui ad scacos vel taxillos, dum pre-
dicatur, ludunt. . . "). Cf. Jacob's Well, "idle play" in church, etc. (p. 304).
4
From a contemp. Forma Confltendi, in MS. Line. Cath. Libr. B. 5. 8,
fol. 850.
6
6
Jacob's Well, p. 280.
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 181.
1
Englishmen were the worst sermon-goers in the world , and
Nicole Bozon, Franciscan, that "many are more grieved by a
short homily than by six week-days of labour and bodily
affliction."2
Not content, however, with merely "passive resistance" to
the preacher's effort, with late coming and scant attention, the
congregation apparently will take matters into its own hands on
occasion, with shocking aggressiveness. That an English king
of notorious impiety should send to the preacher, "demanding
vehemently that he should put an end to his discourse," might
excite little surprise3. That ordinary lay-folk should do the
same is a somewhat different matter:
Sometimes they say to the priest, "Let us out of church quickly,
because one of our friends is having a banquet, and we have to rush
off thither!" If, to be sure, a sermon, which concerns the soul's
salvation, is due to be given, they strive to prevent it, with various
excuses, saying, "The day has gone!" ["Dies transiit"], and such
like, or, at the least, they are annoyed. In truth, if by no possible
means they can escape from staying a brief hour in the church,
then they spend the short time there in empty gossip, and unprofit-
able chattering, heedless that the House of God is the House of
Prayer. But afterwards, away to dinner and the tavern; no hurrying
in this fashion there. Rather do some spin out the rest of the day,
even far into the night, eating and drinking, as though celebrating a
feast4.
"So many solicitations, so many expenses, so many toils, so
many courses to be prepared and so often," with these gluttons,
that "by reason of this they frequently desert the things which
1
S.P.—Audire (Verb. Dei): The Queen of Sheba and "omnes nationes
Xianitatis—in causa ista possunt surgere contra Anglicos, quia vix invenitur
natio Christiana quae ita raro et invite audit verbum Dei."
2
See ed. Contes Moral, P. Meyer (Soc. des anciens textes fr.), § 26. Cf.
also Bp. Brunton, MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176: "Isti tamen ad longam dietam
libenter vadunt, ad luctas, nundinas, et spectacula, ad vanam recreationem
corporum, ubi vix ad unum miliare laborant ad audiendum sermonem... ";
Bromyard (Aud.): " Sed heu! Homicida stat per 40 dies in ecclesia ut mortem
evadat temporalem, et vos non libenter statis in uno sermone, ut temporalem
eteternamevadatis!"; MS. Add. 21253, fol. 140 b : "Certemultisuntnolentes
audire predicatores Christi." B. L. Manning is certainly too sweeping in his
essay, on this subject. (See The People's Faith. . .) and perhaps A. G. Little
(cf. Stud, in Engl. Franc. Hist. p. 133).
3
Kg. John at an Easter sermon by St Hugh (Mag. Vita S. Hug. Line.
Rolls S. p. 293: "Tarn materiam quam moram sermonis non aeque ferens,
tertio misit ad eum, flagitans obnixe ut sermoni metas ponat. . . ").
4
S.P.—Ferie seu Festa.
pertain unto the honour of God, such as the hearing of God's
Word, and the like, saying or thinking that they want to hurry
away to luncheon lest the food should go bad, or their belly grow
famished and ache."1
These great Sunday dinners and subsequent revelry were
amongst the devil's worst snares for the ruin of devotion.
Robert de Sorbon, an old Parisian preacher of the thirteenth
century, says to his congregation, with a merry twinkle, no
doubt, when Easter Sunday comes round, " I know well that
to-day you want a short sermon and a long table!" But when
this gluttony became the habit of every English holy-day, it
was beyond a joke.
At her mete, meche more waast, myche cost, myche glotenye,
mony idil oothis, lecherous wordis, and othere vycious wordis. Soone
aftir at the ale, bollynge and synginge, with many idil wordis, as
lesynggis, bacbitinggis, and scornyngis, sclaundris, yvel castingis,
with al the countenaunce of lecherie, chidingis, andfi3tingis,with
many othere synnes; makinge the holi daye a synful daye. And so it
semeth now a daies that the holi daye may be clepid the sory day.
For of alle the daies in the 3eer, the holidayes ben moost cursidli
dispensid in the develis servyce in dispite of God, and alle his seyntis
in hevene.... It is wondre that god suffrith the peple to lyve up on
erthe2.
That was no proper sequel for the sermon at Mass.
The subject leads us on to notice a further vice of leaving
the church before the sermon had actually finished, or indeed
before it had even begun. "Here je may se that 3e that heryn
no3t full dyvyne servyse in 3oure parysch-cherche, but a
morwe-masse, & gon and fyllen 3oure bely,... how 3e have
drunkyn of the develys crewettys and arn empoysouned in
slowth."3 That it was the sermon that generally suffered the
most, in this respect, is clear from evidence stretching back to
very early times. Durandus, at the close of the thirteenth century,
repeats a Statute of the Council of Carthage4, belonging to
the fourth, that "he who goes out of the audience in disdain
1
2
Ibid. Gula.
MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 19. Cf. also for Sunday Ale-house scene,
MS. St Johns Coll. Oxf. 94 (fol. 123) as printed in Edit. Royster, pp. 21-3
(as before), and my art. in the Holborn Rev., as above, p. 172, n. 3.
3
Jacob's Well, p. 116.
* A.D. 398. (Here from the Rationale)
while the priest is delivering his homily in church shall be
excommunicated." Caesarius of Aries is said to have had the
church-doors shut after the Gospel on many occasions to prevent
anyone leaving before the preaching had begun1. According to
M. Langlois, the people of Paris were once in the habit of doing
this regularly, only to make confusion worse confounded by
returning at the Creed. In this case, however, the thirteenth-
century preachers so grossly insulted had a ready retort: "Thus
do the toads, when the vineyards blossom. The perfume of the
flower drives them off, and kills them, even as the sweetness of
the Word of God puts these townsfolk to flight." The evidence
for such conduct in the England of Langland and Chaucer is
sufficiently plain. " Some," adds a contemporary version of the
Gesta Romanorum in English, concerning the devil's activities
in the churches, " he maketh for to go away from the sermon."2
Master Rypon of Durham has a whole paragraph dealing with
this and kindred behaviour in a theme on the text: "Tempore
accepto exaudivi te." These words may well be applied, he
argues, to both preacher and hearers, if the preaching is
pleasant and acceptable to the latter, and they listen to the end
("usque finem; quia haec est 'exaudire,' i.e. usque ad exitum
audire"). He proceeds to explain further that the reason why
the speaker is not heard "intelligently, gladly and obediently"
to the end may often be traced to faults on his side as well as
theirs. Conceivably he may be preaching for vain glory, or for
gain, or may even be notoriously vicious himself. His audience,
on the other hand, may spend the time chattering or sleeping, or
else withdraw before the end of the discourse3. The "animae
rudes," doubtless would excuse themselves, as Bromyard
describes, on the score of "being rude, and therefore of not
knowing, understanding, or being able to carry away what is
being said."4
Then, as now, people objected to being "preached at," with
this difference, that in the later middle ages they had to put
1
2
From Martene, Ant. Eccl. Bit. (Predicatio).
MS. Add. 9066 vers., E.E.T.S. ed., p. 138.
3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 17 b, etc. Cf. Jacob's Well, p. 11: "When thy
curate showeth thee the articles of the Curse, go not out of the church, till
they be showed, for no cause, but hear them with full will."
4
S.P.—Audire (Verb. Dei).
182 " I N T E R MISSARUM S O L L E M N I A "
up with a vastly greater amount of it and were sometimes not
afraid to object vociferously in front of the preacher. Confronted
by such clearly-defined classes, with corresponding duties and
corresponding shortcomings, all equally clear and definite, it
was only natural that those charged with the duty of sacred
reproof in a less democratic age should be equally direct in
their criticism. From the general documentary agreement of
the latter we can see that so habitual became this practice of
class rebuke that it produced among our sermon-goers certain
characteristic reactions and moods on their part, varying from
laughter to threats. We can observe the somewhat risky pro-
cess at work as well in the pages of Rypon, again, as indeed
anywhere else:
" Truly some folk to-day" (" nonnulli moderni"), he explains from
his pulpit, " are not ashamed to sin. Repentance they despise. But
beyond everything else they hate to hear anyone speak of their own
vices. If I speak to the ecclesiastics, some of whom are simonists,
some lascivious, some greedy, some drunken, some lustful, some
avaricious, some men of merchandize, some men of the chase, yea,
I should rather say more given up to the world and its pomp than are
secular folk; again, if I speak to temporal lords, knights and squires,
yes, and to other men, too, how lords oppress the poor, tyrannically
robbing them of their possessions in their unbridled greed, how they
promote and maintain quarrels with their neighbours, yea, and pro-
tect the most abandoned of their officials in causes the most unjust,
through their pride defending them; how, too, they are a prey to
wrath and envy amongst themselves; yet, again, if I speak to the
lawyers, how they defend false cases for sake of profit, and to jurors,
how for similar ends, through their perjury, they cause the upright
to lose their wealth; how merchants and other men of craft deceive
each other with false oaths and fictitious goods; finally, how all the
aforesaid, and all the common people also, make abominable use of
false swearing, lies, yea, and every kind of mortal sin;.. .how this
realm is in perdition—and who doubts but that the aforesaid sins
are the cause?—if I say all this and more to them, he who is accused
will instantly complain, he blushes with shame, yea, he is ill at ease,
he at once decries the preacher, attacking either his person or his
status, thus, ' I have never known worse, prouder, or more greedy
men than the churchmen!' "1
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 180 b et seq. Also fol. 174: " Audientes sua facinora
obstupescunt, et ex hoc predicatori,.. .aut clam, aut publice obloquuntur."
Cf. here MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 129: "He that is a Curate,...
soche as ow3te to rebuke synfuU pepyll and sey the trowthe un to hem in
" I N T E R MISSARUM S O L L E M N I A " 183
As Bromyard says, the whipped horses have kicked out; the cry
of the stricken from the crowd tells whose head the stone has
struck 1 . The word of the preacher has "gone home," as we say.
It has hit the target, and, being human, the target objects.
On the other hand, to behold one's neighbours struck in this
fashion created a considerable amusement:
"When their own sins are preached against, they get angry,"
declares the Summa Predicantium; "when it is against those of others,
they are pleased. In spiritual 'goods' they consider others' welfare
before their own, but not in temporal, for it seems that they would
rather that others were healed than themselves, and that all the afore-
said benefits should be the lot of other men rather than theirs. This
is obvious enough when the clergy endeavour to get the laity re-
buked from the pulpit for wrongful tithing, and the laity try to get
the clergy preached against for giving evil example."
So our Dominican proceeds, mingling drollery with satire:
The men are delighted when the preacher harangues against the
women-folk, and vice versa. Husbands are pleased when their wives'
pomposities are denounced in the sermon, how perchance they may
spend the half of their wealth upon their own adornment. Wives
rejoice to hear the preachers attacking their husbands, who spend
their goods upon the ale-house2. Those who know that they are
guilty of some crime try to get the detractors denounced in the pulpit,
because they think that men will talk of their deeds. And so what is
preached against others' vices, gives pleasure, but what is said
against their own, displeases. Thus when the preacher attacks all
vices, everyone is displeased3.
Rypon, describing the same situation, tells us how he has seen
the lay-folk laughing ("tune rident laid"), when the ecclesi-
remission of theire synnys,.. .oftentymes he schall be blamyd, and peraven-
ture for his tru sayng he schall be gretely trowbelyd...."; MS. Add.
21253, fol. 64 s (lapidant eos lapidibus detractionis).
1
S.P.—Audire and Detractio. Cf. also Thos. Walleys, in MS. Harl. 635,
fol. 7 et seq: "Si aliqui quorum reprehenduntur vicia, irascantur"; and
Waldeby, in MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 179.
2
To complete the picture, the S.P. mentions under Acquisitio (mala):
" Quando pauperes seu simplices audiunt predicare contra divitum injusta
acquisita, inaniter gloriantur...." Finally, cf. Bp. Brunton in MS. Harl.
3760, fol. 176: "Et tales, licet pro forma vadant ad.. .ecclesiam vel ad ser-
monem, non tamen student in libro conscientie ut per auditum verbi Dei
propria crimina recognoscant, sed ita judicant proximorum crimina et
defectus. . . "; also Gasquet's extract in O.E.B. (2nd. ed.), p. 82.
3
S.P.—Audire (Verb. Dei). Again in a sermon of Bp. Brunton (MS. Harl.
3760, fol. 186). Part of this will be found translated in Gasquet, O.E.B.
pp. 96-7.
astics are in for a bad time, because they love to hear them
accused of precisely the same vices—greed, immorality, and so
forth. With the more accomplices in the world, the happier they
feel. We are actually permitted to see them storing up the
choice tit-bits of the discourse in their minds, chuckling over
them, repeating them to their acquaintances, when it is over:
" Oh! how trulythepreacherspoke,to-day!"... Shameon them,
hypocrites! They ought to be sorry to hear such things, as well
for their own wretched condition, as for that of their fellows1.
Such allusions to the frequency of this perilous method of
address are apt to puzzle the modern reader. Clear it is from
such testimony, at all events, that while a few heretics were
being condemned for it, and licences warned men "that you in
no wise loosen your tongue over those matters by means of
which scandals in some way or other have been able to arise
among clergy and people,"2 the practice must have continued
almost unabated.
But besides gratifying denunciations, there could be grati-
fying jokes and trifling. Reference has already been made, in
the chapter dealing with the friars, to "ridiculous old wives'
fables" and obscenities which cause "loud roars of laughter"
("risus cachinnationesque") amongst the audiences. Meray
has attempted to illustrate them in the case of the country
where later met the Council of Sens3 to condemn all such
scandals. What, however, was true of Dante's Florence long
before4 will still be true, in a measure, of Chaucer's England.
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 174 b: " Si predicentur eis peccata taliumecclesiasti-
corum bene reportant ilia, et rident, et de eis confabulantur, dicentes quod
verum dixit; ubi tamen de ratione verecundarentur et dolerent. . .," etc.;
cf. MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 142 b (unpubl. Jacob's Well): "Ry3t
so whan a preest prechythe trouthe, and truly repreuvythe synne in prelatys
and in other grete men, other peple no3t gylty in the poyntys arn glad, and
turnyn hem Iy3tly to here the trouthe...." Similarly, too, Bp. Brunton,
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176 b: " . . .Semper defectus judicant sacerdotum."
2
Cf. Preaching License for John Borard, c. 1381, in Reg. Wykeham
(Winch.), vol. ii, p. 326. Cf. also Walleys' warnings in his Forma Predicandi
(MS. Harl. 635 ; Lathbury, MS. Roy. II. A. xiii, fol. 188 C'nulla scandalosa,
vel invidiosa.")
3
4
1528. Labbe, Cone. vol. xxxii, col. 1199, § xxxvi.
Paradiso, Cant, xxix (11. 88—120). Cf. also Piers Plowman (A. text),
pass, xi, 11. 24 et seq. for the friars' popular "harlotries"; and Cil. Oc. Sac.
(MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 42): "Predicator debet utiliter docere, et prudenter
tacere, ne per defectum sane doctrine errores firmentur."
In the spirit of those careless Athenians who assembled to hear
a Christian preacher on Mars Hill, our mediaeval townsmen
would stroll off casually to "Predicacion," on the chance of
hearing "some humorous remark" ("aliquid verbum jocosum")1.
Otherwise, well-dressed like the worldly wife of Bath, it was a
pleasure merely to see and to be seen, in any such fashionable
and highly reputable assemblies2, where news and mirth might
be provided. When they should be like glass windows letting
in the light, excluding the tempests3, they are only wretched
sieves retaining, while steeped in the waters of preaching,
nothing from without but the filth ("nisi aliqua grossa, et foeda,
et putrida, sicut paleas, et hujusmodi"). "If anyone tells
some open folly in the pulpit (in predicatione apertam fatuitatem
diceret), they retain it in the memory well enough; not so the
useful things." "As in the case of those who, lacking appetite,
prefer to eat fruit and delicacies in place of the heavier and
more solid food which is more sustaining, so these folk hearken
with the greater zest for vain, quaint, and laughable matter in
the sermon, which may provoke them to mirth."4 Unlike him
whom the devil found reverently pondering "that the prest
spake" on his way from church5, they go home bursting with
the jokes, there to retail them at leisure: " The good things they
fail to bring away. The remarks that were out of place, they are
all too ready to seize upon, to repeat them again and again with
glee." Evil generation! Sermons are not to be listened to
lightly, like the heroic deeds narrated by actors and heralds,
or idle readings from the Romances, cries the preacher. Know
you not that "he who listens negligently to preaching is no less
guilty than he who lets fall to the ground the Body of
Christ."8
1
Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 119 b : "Illi ergo qui non audiunt verbum
Dei bona intentione, sed forte ut audiant aliquid verbum jocosum...." Cf.
Bromyard: "jocosa, quae eos ad risum provocarent."
2
Rypon, in continuing the above quotation, I find, actually refers to this
motive in sermon-going hinted at by Chaucer (fol. 119 b): " u t ibi cum aliis
videantur."
3
Bromy. S.P.—Predic.
4
S.P.—Audire.
6
MS. Vernon, fol. 288, in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 329, etc.
6
Quoted by Bromyard, without reference to source (from Pseudo-
Augustine, Horn, xxvi in Psalmo, and Gratian's Decretum).
i86 'INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"
Since laughter over sermons apparently was so common1,
since homilists railed so fiercely, and men of the pew were not
afraid to check them sometimes with their " Dies transiit!" and
even worse, it would be interesting to know how far these
obstructions and this personal raillery could be pushed in the
contemporary scene. Jacques de Vitry had been wont to rouse
his audience with such pointed remarks as: " Do you want me
A FASHIONABLE SERMON AUDIENCE

(MS. Harl. 4380, fol. 20)
now to talk to you about worthy womanhood? I'm going to say

something instead about that old dame whom I see asleep over
there!.. .For God's sake, if anyone has a pin, let him wake her
up! Those who sleep at sermon-time take good care not to
sleep at the table."2 St Bernardino in Italy, during the early
1
Besides Rypon, etc. above, cf. here also the quaint title of MS. Add.
14023, as given above in Chap. 1, p. 30, n. 6 " .. .ne materia risus audientibus
ministretur...." Notice, too, that Master Rypon himself has his own narra-
tion, which, in the sermon, he admits is "in parte jocosa"; MS. Harl. 4894,
fol. 103 b (marked Narratio jocosa in the margin!).
2
Cf. also (reported by Langlois, etc.): "He who is sleeping over there in
that corner will not know my secret!"
fifteenth century could cry: " Come, woman, don't go to sleep!"
or "Drive away that dog!" in the midst of his orations, as
readily as anyone1. Mr Ferrers Howell tells a yet droller tale
of the great Franciscan's pulpit experiences. In this incident
the congregation rose from its seats, in the open-air, to stare
at an unhappy usurer sitting beneath the pulpit, who had be-
come the unintended butt of the speaker's scorn. With shouts of
laughter and a buzz of conversation they pointed him out to
their friends, "while he with bowed head and closed eyes
eagerly longed for the sermon to be over."2 Turning to
Chaucer's Pardoner, it is therefore with interest that we note
how for frankly vicious ends it is now the orator's set purpose to
produce just such another situation:
For whan I dar non other weyes debate,
Than wol I stinge him with my tonge smerte
In preching, so that he shal nat asterte
To be defamed falsely, if that he
Hath trespased to my brethren or to me.
For though I telle noght his propre name,
Men shal wel knowe that it is the same
By signes, and by othere circumstances.
Thus quyte I folk that doon us displesances3.
Our English poet had obviously seen the practice at work in his
day.
From the side of the listeners, again, rude interruption and
contradiction might break into the sacred discourse4. Even
ladies had been known to retaliate in the past, when the pulpit
grew too insolent. A certain lady of rank in the thirteenth
century interrupted a Dominican in the midst of his sermon,
in spite of the fact that he had been invited thither to preach
1
2
Cf. Ferrers-Howell, St Bernardino of Siena, p. 281, etc.
Ibid. p. 128.
3
4
Prol. to Pard.'s Tale, 11. 412-420 (Cant. Tales).
Cf. my example from an English friar's " narratio" in the fourteenth-
century treatise, "de Decem Preceptis," in MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15, fol.
10 b, given in " Some Franciscan Memorials at Gray's Inn" (Dublin Review,
April, 1925). Stories of such sermon interruption from the audience are quite
common in exempla. Cf. MS. Add. 28682, fols. 210 b (story of the hostile
rustic who sneered at the preacher's remarks on Hell-pains " because the
latter had never been there," to see for himself), 264 b ; MSS. Add. 11872,
fol. 88 b ; Burney 361, fol. 151 b ; etc.
in her chapel expressly against the sins of the opposite sex.
Another, we are told, had ventured to "hold u p " the preacher
for scriptural evidence in support of his arguments—"and he
was exceedingly confused!" ("et ipse fuit valde confusus")1.
With these examples we must be content to compare the story
of early Tudor times, believing that it may possibly be typical
of other English occasions too. A poor wife had been personally
rebuked for her chattering by the friar in the pulpit. Her angry
retort rang through the building for all to hear: "Marry, sir,
I beshrew his heart that babbleth most of us both! For I do
but whisper a word with my neighbour here, and thou hast
babbled there all this hour." Such conduct may be implied,
indeed, in a passage of the Fons Jacob, which has not yet been
published, though here one would have associated it rather with
the sermon's end. Those who have been stung by his words,
"turnyn awey wrothly fro the preest, and defendyn here
dyffaujtys, with false colourys, and excusyn, and turnyn to
tellyn talys and iapys, and to deprave theprest, and the woorde of
trozothe."2 Still more vivid and curious is the suggestion given
in the same treatise that the congregation was not afraid to
propose sly subjects of discourse to the preacher himself: "So
suche folk askyn a prechour of an other mannys defaw$te, and
preyin [him] to towche ther of trowthe in his sermon that day, y.f
this be gynne on hem. First thei byddyn hym seyn trouthe, and
tellyn hem the truthe of here vyces." Unfortunately, like Pilate,
however, they are not prepared to wait for the full answer.
"Therfore prechourys hye and lowe arn aferyd to sey the
trouthe, bothe seculere and relygious; and stodyin how in here
sermouns they mown with flateryng colourys, symylacyouns,
and fals excusacyouns, favouryn and plesyn the peple, grete
and smale, leryd and lewyd, in here synne, and so excusyn here
vyces, wrongys, and here falsnesse"3—precisely as we saw else-
where in the case of the court preachers.
Of applause, shouts and hand-clappings, notable habit at
1
Given by Lecoy de la Marche, La ch.fr. pp. 216—19. The second is of
Robert de Sorbon, again. Cf. also Berthold of Ratisbon, in Coulton's
Mediaeval Studies, No. 2 (2nd ed.), p. 25.
2
MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 142 b.
3
Ibid. fol. 143. See also the sermon-story, with similar advice offered to
preachers by an inhabitant, in MS. Harl. 1288, fol. 56.
sermons in the neighbourhood of Parisian schools1, borrowed,
no doubt, from the scholastic disputations of less sacred
character, little need be said. We notice in passing the applause
of procurators and chancellor when Nicholas Hereford preached
at Oxford in the church of St Mary the Virgin, and Philip
Repyngdon at St Frideswide's Cross in the year 13822. These,
however, were special occasions when party feeling ran unusually
high, as five years later in the case of Peter Pateshul, the Austin
friar in London. He had appeared in the pulpit of St Christo-
pher's, to expose the vices of the very Order which he had
recently quitted, and his words had drawn excited members
from the friary where he had dwelt3. When these objected from
the body of the audience, as the sermon proceeded, they were
promptly set upon by the crowd, and chased ignominiously back
to their convent through the London streets. A threat to burn
it to the ground was only averted by the personal appeal of two
well-known and respected friars, and a city sheriff. It is a scene
which illustrates, at all events, the sudden notoriety which a
sermon might attract for its author in a city church, and the
inflammatory passions to be excited, still hot and threatening
from the pages of Walsingham4. But excitement might take a
different and a less harmful, though not necessarily a less
destructive turn. As in the days when the Breton Thomas
Couette preached, and French womenfolk, stung to the heart,
made public bonfires of their favourite ornaments and vanities5,
so two centuries later their sisters of Italy were wont to do the
same in the piazzas of Siena and Florence at St Bernardino's
bidding. "Tables, cards, dice, false hair, rouge-pots, and other
1
Cf. Haureau, Quelques MSS. vol. ii, p. 108; vol. vi, p. 257, etc: "Velut
fragores quosdam tonitruorum, claraores in sermonibus et disputationibus,
complosionesque manuum emittunt." See also Haskins, in Amer. Hist. Rev.,
as before. The phrase "cunctis acclamantibus" is used of the end of St
Hugh's Easter sermon, described in Mag. Vita S. Hug. Line. (Rolls S.),
P- 293-
2
3
Fasc. Ziz. (Rolls S.), pp. 305, 306, etc.
See Walsingham (Rolls S.), vol. ii, pp. 157, 158; and Foxe, Acts an dMons.
* Cf.: "Cum furore clamantes, et dicentes—'Disperdamus homicidas,
incendamus sodomitas, suspendamus Regis et Angliae proditores!' Cum isto
itaque furoris clamore currentes, ignem in habitacula Fratrum injicere pro-
ponebant.. .. " See also the Northampton incident I refer to above in Chap,
in,6 pp. 132, 140 (n. 2), above.
Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xxiii, p. 248, etc.
io.o "INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"
tribulations, even to chess-boards " had been known to enter the
flames. But with the enthusiasm of the sermon over, and the
preacher gone, they were liable to that same reaction which
befell certain remorseful ladies once driven to make good the
loss of their horned head-dresses', of whom it was written that
"like snails in a fright they had drawn in their horns, but shot
them out again as soon as the danger was over." Subsequent
"revival" methods in the history of evangelism have never
allowed us to forget how deadly can be that reaction, where a
shallow excitable oratory and shallow audiences are concerned.
The age of the great crusaders and the early Mendicants over, it
would seem that the more phlegmatic, calculating Englishmen1
had grown tired or suspicious of the type. Dr Bromyard,
though forceful enough on the subject of warnings and "terrible
words," yet, without either M. le Bon or the social-psychologists
to inspire him, rejects the "revivalist" in suitable terms. He is
an earthen vessel rilled all too quickly with hot liquid. Therefore
he will be emptied again all too soon, when he has cracked2.
The Dominican knows, too, the essential difference between the
unstable excitable Italian and his own countrymen. The
English ladies would never destroy their best bonnets for any
man.
Preachers and writers of moral treatises in the nature of
things, driven to expose, denounce, purge, are bound to pay
more attention to current vices than virtues. It has been ever
our aim in the present study, therefore, with this in mind, to
do justice alike to the whimsicalities, the confidences, the sad
confessions, and the triumphs of the pulpit as they are presented
to us, but to emphasize that little in the way of comprehensive,
statistical information should be pressed from them as a whole.
We are reminded of the fact anew, when we would deal with
the happy sermon scene, rich in the fruits of the Spirit; for
naturally there is so little about it. She is a modest maiden,
1
Bromyard is always appealing to the " business " instincts of his audience,
especially when threats fail. His argument continually is " This does not pay,"
or " God is not a bad business man, he will have all debts paid," etc.
2
S.P.—Conversatio. Cf. also remarks in Chap, vm below (such is goo&only
as "a beginning dread," it cannot save the man). Cf. also S.P. ibid: "Alii
sunt qui ad tempus totaliter convertuntur, quia cum magno fervore con-
fitentur, et bona vota faciunt, et quandoque opera incipiunt; sed cito ad
peccata revertuntur.. . . "
an unobtrusive Cinderella pushed into the background by her
more noisy aggressively-attired sisters1. But we shall not forget
to wait for her at the homiletic feast. The faithful quiet work
has been done, we believe, by more mediaeval preachers than
some would believe, though there were none but the angels in
heaven to record it. Does not the eminent Dr William Lichfield
declare that "a man herynge holy sermonys is ofte by such
herynge stired in his herte to repentaunce and gode lyvynge"2?
ffor he that goddes wordes preches
unto the sinful man, he teches
sune out of his sin to rise
and be lastand in goddes service3.
When the gracious figure of a youthful Rolle steals into the
village pulpit, men and women alike will be unable to refrain
from tears. "And they all said that never before had they
listened to a sermon of such power and efficacy."4 So was it,
again, with the poor woman, whom first we followed into church
when our sermon began. "This woman was right sorye and
wepte faste,... and longe she thoughttillthe sermone were done.
And when it was done, she wente to the prechoure, and prayde
hym for the love of God to here a synfull wreche" "Quando
predicator descendit de pulpito, totus populus recedit"5 . The
preaching is over then, and "the folk wend homeward." There
is the listener who can "with glad chere hyre sermones and
goddes wordes, and in that tyme sette his thoght and his wille
to hyre and understonde the wordes of God that there schulde
be seide."6 There, too, beside others we have mentioned, is
one observed by Bromyard, who knows that the message was
1
For the benefit of collectors of " exempla," I note that this famous story
occurs in a sermon of Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 27).
2
MS. Roy. 8. C. i, fol. 122 b (cf. Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 174 b:
" . . .quando audientes sua facinora statim compunguntur, et penitent.. .. ")
Cf. stories of individuals moved by sermons, in MSS. Roy. 7. C. i, fol. 101 b;
Add. 11284, fol. 21 b; ibid. 33956, fol. 21 b (women); ibid. 18364, fol. 40 b
(nobleman);ibid. 15833, fol. 173 (drunkard); Cotton Cleop. D. viii, fol. 113 b
(priest); Add. 27336, fol. 76 (knight); etc.
3
MS. Harl. 4196, fol. 88 b (Engl. Metr. Horn.).
4
See the OfHcium S. Ricardi, in Yk. Breviary (Surtees Soc), vol. ii,
Appdx. 5: " . .. ut multitudo audientium sic esset de ipsius predicatione
compuncta, ut se non posset a lacrimis continere.. . . "
6
Rypon, in MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 84.
6
MS. Harl. 45, fol. i n b.
good and true, and cries at the end: "Happy is he who can
carry that out! This is good food, if anyone can eat it," adding
in his heart, "but it is not for me!"
But what savour hathe a synnefull man in prechynge? For sooth
litill or noon. No, but as a n]asse hathe in pipynge. Bartholomeus, de
proprietatibus rerum, seyth, thow that an]asse had ryght good lykynge
in ys mete, and he hard a pipe or a trumpe, anone he wille lyfte is
hed oute of the mawgere, and be full glad in is kynde as [l]one[g?] as
that he hereth itt. But anon as that he hereth that the pipe or the
trumpe is sesed, than anon he putteth down is hed a3eyn to is mete,
and thenketh no more thereof. Forsothe ryght so itt fareth by a
synnefull man, thow3 he listen never so well goddes worde and holy
prechynge for the tyme that a man precheth. Hope thou that itt fedes
is soule goostely? Nay, forsothe; but itt commeth in at the on ere,
and goyth oute at the othere1.
The duty of practice thus follows the preaching, but there
is another small duty for someone yet towards the preacher,
especially if he be a Mendicant visitor. In the latter case, of
course, all should contribute something to his maintenance, if
they can: " T o the pore prechoure thou owyst to geve (alms),
though he axe the nat. And therfore loke that the pore pre-
choure, goddes knight, nede nat to axe for thy defaute.... For,
as the apostle saith, it is due dett to the pore preachour of goddes
worde to lyve by his prechyng."2 One type of almsgift, how-
ever, is sure to be acceptable, and that is a good dinner, when
the work is done. Some knight or squire of the parish will
possibly entertain him on this occasion3. From a remarkable
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. n o b (in margin " Asinus amat melodiam").
Cf. the "bacbiters" in MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 130: "ne they take
none hede to the worde of God, be it prechid never so often to them; they
may well here it w* theyre eerys, but it synkythe not in theyre herttis."
Similarly, too, thefigureof the ass that likes harp-music, yet tramples on the
harp, MS. Harl. 1288, fol. 44 b.
2
Dives et Pauper, prec. ix, cap. xv. The Dominican friar, Thos. Stubbs
(d. c. 1360), is said to have written a tract, "de Stipendiis debitis Predicato-
ribus Verbi Dei." For those interested in fees paid to special preachers,
examples will be found: for ecclesiastical establishments, at Westminster
(see Pearce, Monks of W. pp. 27, 113, etc.), at Canterbury (Woodr. and
Danks, Mem. p. 264), at Ottery St Mary (Dalton, p. 102). Here the editor
reckons a sermon fee=2 guineas in modern money. For court preachers
see below, p. 219, and for city preachers, Munic. Records of York, etc.
3
Cf. the case of R. Rolle, as above: "Post missam igitur predictus ar-
miger ipsum ad prandium invitavit." Also the case of the Lollard preacher
mentioned in Chap, in, entertained thus by the mayor.
little warning in the pages of the Summa Predicantium1, prepared
apparently for him who might thus find himself a guest at some
noble or fashionable table, we can follow the preacher further
into the very place of hospitality. It shows once more how little
our human nature changes through the centuries. Freed now
from his cares and worries, the man of God throws off his air
of pious detachment, and expands rapidly towards his fellow-
creatures under the influence of the meal. He is a genial guest,
with an ever-welcome fund of news and anecdotes. He has all
the gossip of the countryside ("omnes rumores patriae") to
narrate to the more select and intimate audience around him.
"If there is any strife or warfare about, he will defend the one
side, and damn the other," as bravely as any layman. Nor will
he fear, when the company rises to his jokes and waxes merry,
to poke fun at parsons and preachings too! Beware, my friend!
"Frequently those who laugh pleasantly when such are story-
telling and jesting in their presence, laugh scornfully at them,
when they are gone; judging them to be fools, for all the pleasure
that their gossip may have given. No wonder! For 'their
speech bewrayeth them.'" The quaint warning was apparently
framed for a very good reason. Mr Little gives us an anecdote
from Eccleston's Chronicle about a warden who " after preaching
to the people made jokes with a monk, after dinner, in presence
of a secular," to his own lasting shame and remorse2. More
pointed yet is the sermon story told of Master Walter of
London, who, "when he was invited to lunch, after his preaching
at London, by a certain burgess, was made almost drunk with
'wesseyl' by the master of the house, his wife, and daughters.
At length, in taking his leave, he drank 'horssub.'" But, once
mounted on his steed and riding homewards, he was to learn
that even a horse might preach sermons to its clerical master, by
a noble example of abstinence along the road3.
So, too, let the layman keep serious and fruitful the rest of
his Sabbath day, when he has returned. His final task will be
to repeat the sermon to such of his household, children and
domestics, as could not come to church to hear it 4. That done,
1 2
s.v. Predicatio. See Studies in Engl. Franc. Hist. p . 127.
3
1
MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 131 b-132.
Cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Audire: " . . .Et narrabis ea filiis tuis; quia, illi,
qui tenentur esse in ecclesia, tenentur remanentibus in domo, filiis suis et
o 13
i94 " I N T E R MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"
there must be no idle sporting, but errands of mercy and piety,
till the bell rings for Evensong1:
Aftir 3oure mete, visite them that ben sike, and in myschef; and
speciali tho that god hath mad nedi, other bi age, or bi syknes, as
pore feble, pore crokid and pore lame. Hem thou schalt releve with
thi goodis, aftir thi power, and aftir her nede, for thus biddith the
gospel... .So men schulde not be idil, but as besi on the holi day
about the soule, as men ben on the werk day about the bodi 2 .
familiae, cum rediverint, quae in ecclesia circa predicationes.. .audiunt,
narrare." Cf. in MS. Add. 27336, fol. 61 b, the amusing story of the devout
woman who regularly repeated the sermon to her worldly husband. One day
he complains that she thus spoils his meals,—and then chokes!
1
Cf. MS. Vernon (Dispute), printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 351:
"Aftur, whon thei rynge, go to Even-Song.
Whon Evensong and Complyn bothe ben ido,
Horn to thi soper then wel mai3t thou go."
2
MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 22; cf. also MS. Harl. 2398 (Mem. Credentium),
fol. 2 b ; Ibid. fol. 92 (Tract on the Decalogue); MS. Add. 24202, fol. I4et
seq.; MS. Lamb. 408 (version of Thoresby's Catech.), E.E.T.S. ed. p. 41;
MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 104b; etc.
CHAPTER V
"AT THE CROSS" AND " I N PROCESSION"
ROM conversation to sleep or to amusement, from eager
Ftears,attention to scorn and to laughter, and from laughter to
we have seen the sermon audiences in church pass almost
the full cycle of human emotions while the priest was busy with
his theme. For his part, however, he might naturally expect to
have still more to complain of in the way of disturbance and dis-
traction when the place of his harangue is transferred to the
open air, whether of churchyard or market square. How diffi-
cult it will be to reconstruct from English sources the chief
features of this other preaching scene may be judged perhaps
from a recent work, which, though it provides us, amongst other
things, with an excellent sketch of the architectural evolution
of the Preaching Cross, yet leaves unrealized an ambition ex-
pressed in the preface to provide adequate documentary
references1. With the particular sources at our command,
however, it is yet possible to go further than this.
The identification of a preaching station has for long been
recognized among the many purposes served by the erection of
stone crosses in the open from very early times 2.
"The venerable father and bishop Kentigern," wrote Joscelin
of Furness, five centuries later, " had a custom in the places in which
at any time by preaching he had won the people to the dominion of
Christ, or had imbued them with the faith of the cross of Christ, or
had dwelt for any length of time, there to erect the triumphant
standard of the holy cross... .Therefore among the many crosses
which he erected in several places where the Word of the Lord was3
preached, he erected two which to the present time work miracles."
From such a record, it might be inferred that even when the
primitive site of the village cross-roads had become a thriving
market-place, and the early monolithic cross had blossomed, as
1
Old Crosses and Lych-gates, by A. Vallance, F.S.A. His statements
about the earliest record of Paul's Cross as preaching-place, and about R.
Wimbledon's sermon as Wycliffite are incorrect.
2
Marking burial-places, boundaries, cross-roads, fords, stations in funeral
processions, assemblies, etc. Cf. Baldwin Brown, The Arts in Early England.
8
Historians of Scotland,\o\. v,cap. xli (Life of St Kentigern, fl. c. 6oo A.D.).
13-2
196 " A T THE CROSS"
it were, through subsequent stages of expansion into a market-
cross of the full-blown canopied style, they remained the scene
of the preachers' activities. Such lofty structures as may be seen
at Winchester, or Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire, appear
naturally suited to such a purpose. But the present writer can
find no evidence for any regular use of these civic crosses other
than "for the reading of public proclamations."1 The wander-
ing preacher "in the street" ("in platea")2, or at the fairs
(" ad macellas in publicis mercatis "), may well have climbed its
steps to deliver what M. Lecoy de la Marche and others de-
scribe as "allocutions improvisees dans une foire, dans un
march.6, dans une traversee."3 This, however, would make
them but temporary expedients from our present point of view,
like any wall upon which brother Benedict might find it con-
venient to standwhen addressing the randomcrowd. Wherever,
on the other hand, we find definite mention of the regular out-
door pulpit4, it is at a spot "in cimiterio," on hallowed ground
beneath the shade of some church or convent. One of the most
interesting of such entries combines both sites in its purview,
"at the cross in the churchyarde, in the market-place of North-
ampton" 5 ; but none the less "in cimiterio" that cross remains,
wherever the audience may happen to be.
Fate has left us just two unquestioned examples of the outdoor
pulpit of stone with canopy above, as permanent as the lofty
cross which once surmounted it: "A curious cros craftly en-
tayled, with tabernacles y-tijt, to toten all abouten."6 Strangely
1
I have come across a quaint reference to this in a contemporary sermon,
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 85 b : " Trust trewly iche worde that 3e speke, God
hereth hem as lithly as thoo that thei were cried at the crosse."
2
Cf. MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 45 (Cil. Oc. Sac), § 4 : "Ubi predicandum
est? In loco publico debet sermo fieri, sive in ecclesia, seu in platea, seu alibi
multis saltern congregatis...."
3
Cf. excerpt from Rot. Part, above in Chap. 11, p. 48. See here also below
under J. Ball, p. 209, n. 4.
* I give what may be a first list of such, from contemporary records casually
collected: St Paul's, London; " L e Greneyard," Norwich (1405, Wilkins,
Cone. vol. iii, p. 282); Hereford Cathedral (1393, Reg. Trefnant, p. 360);
Worcester (1459, Valentine Green, Hist. vol. i, p. 55); St Frideswide's
Priory, Oxford (1368, Mun. Ac. Ox. vol. i, p. 6; 1382, Fascic. Ziz. p. 306, etc.);
(6) AH Saints' Church, Northampton (c. 1393, Powell and Trev. Docs.
p. 48); Hosp. of St John, Lichfield (1345), and St Mary's Church, Drogheda
(1355, both in MS. Lansd. 393, Fitzralph's sermons). Hosp. of St Mary of
Bethlehem, St Michael's, Cornhill, and St Mary Spital, London (cf. above,
e
pp. 23, 143, and Vallance). Ploughman's Creed, 11. 167-8.
AND " I N PROCESSION" 197
1
enough, the one at Iron Acton in Gloucestershire belongs to
a parish church-yard; the other stood in what was once the open
convent-yard of the Dominican friary of Hereford2. Both would
THE BLACKFRIARS PREACHING CROSS, HEREFORD

seem to have been erected in our period, at the opening of the
fifteenth century, while Bromyard, himself a native Dominican
of Herefordshire, was still preaching. Add to these, then, "the
great crosse in the Minstar Cemiteri of Hereforde," as Leland
beheld it3, and we are furnished with the three recognizable
1
Square; stem and cross surmounting destroyed. Illustrated in A. Rim-
mer,
2
Ancient Stone Crosses of England (1875); A. Vallance, as above, etc.
Blackfriars (or Redcoat Hosp.); hexagonal; cross and pulpit restored in
1806. Illustrated in Bede Jarrett, English Dominicans, and A. Vallance, etc.
3
Itinerary, vol. viii. Originally a stone-covered pulpit in the centre of the
Bishop's Cloister; now demolished. Canon Wordsworth, of Salisbury, kindly
sends me a reference to it in F. T. Havergal's Hand Guide to Hereford
(1863), p. 82.
varieties of sites—cathedral, conventual1, parochial. Again, it
is easy to account for the paucity of survivals, by considering
the feelings of Reformers, or of Puritan Dowsing and his kind
when they beheld so large and public a cross defying them in the
open, even "as the image of the crucifix in the highway by
Coggeshall,"2 that was "cast down" as early as 1532.
Of the most famous example of all, in St Paul's cemetery in
London, there is early documentary evidence as to its exist-
ence from the year 1241, and to its use for preaching from
1330 onwards. But Mr Baildon reminds us in a recent paper 3
that the form and appearance of the original "crux alta in
majori cimiterio," damaged by earthquake and tempest in 1382,
repaired in 13874, but superseded between 1449 and 1470 by
Bishop Kempe's inferior wooden structure, is still quite un-
known. In the absence of any discovered miniature illumination
it has been suggested that it may have resembled the Edinburgh
Mercat Cross. But this theory is quite without foundation5, and
rests on an unnecessary confusion between what is for secular
usage in the street, and what is pre-eminently for the preacher
in the hallowed church-yard. May we not see rather in such
lordly and suitable erections as the so-called "Baptistery" in
the parish church of Luton with its fine panels and tracery com-
parable to the refectory pulpit-lectern of Shrewsbury, or again
the splendid canopied pulpit of stone in the collegiate church at
Arundel, Sussex6, so scantily treated by Dr Cox, types of the
1
To complete my list of contemporary references to pulpit-crosses, I add:
In Friary Yards: Blackfriars, Cambridge (now Emmanuel Coll.), 1247, MS.
Ryl. 7. D. i, fol. 87, A Sermon by Cardinal Wm. of Savoy: "predicatione sua,
dum transiret per Cantebrigiam, in cimiterio fratrum Predicatorutn, coram
multis et magnis"; Blackfriars, Ludgate, London (1411, Will of Roger
Jaket, in Sharpe's Cal. of Wills {Court of Husting), vol. ii, p. 391).
2
Foxe, Acts and Mons. vol. iv. I notice that A. Rimmer (Stone Crosses,
as above, p. 197) says of our Iron Acton pulpit-cross, "it has been mutilated
designedly... by heavy missiles; there are marks on the upper part where
stones have struck."
3
W. P. Baildon, F.S.A., "Early Hist, form, and function of Paul's Cross,"
in Proc. of Soc. of Antiq. (London), 1918.
4
See Archbp. Courtney's Indulgence, in Dr Simpson's Docts. illust. Hist,
of 5St Paul's Cath. (Camden Soc), p. 7.
The reference "super crucem" put forward in support by Mr Baildon
is equally pointless. It occurs in the case of the Minster Cross, Hereford.
See Reg. Trefnant, p. 360, as before.
6
This appears to be equally unique among the pulpits of England. In a
Topogr. of Arundel, I read that it was screened off and used as a pew (!) in
the eighteenth century, while a more central pulpit of deal took its place.
structure that is being sought? If this be so, then Kempe's
fifteenth-century wooden substitute would reflect, however
crudely, the general features of the earlier Paul's Cross.
What was said in another connection of the likely preference
for light and modest pulpits of wood over the more permanent
and costly varieties applies here undoubtedly with equal force1.
From the days of early Crusading eloquence one may be familiar
in the manuscripts with the legged "pulpitum" or the more
spacious "scafaldus" placed temporarily in the open to ac-
commodate now a preacher, now a royal party 2. Thus the
miniature paintings of our own fifteenth century show the
homilist, perched hard by the sacred edifice itself, within the
walls of the church-yard, in the same kind of wooden pulpit
as we found him using in the nave3. Such, then—and only
such—will be set up for temporary occasions, for some Lenten
course or other, as when the churchwardens of St Margaret,
Westminster, pay 2s. Sd. in the year 1478, "for a pulpite in the
Chirche Yerde, agenst the preching of Doctour Penkey."4
When would these church-yard crosses and pulpits be most
in request? That part of the question which concerns regular
Sunday and work-day use we attempted to answer in the open-
ing of the previous chapter. But a word might be added con-
cerning the festival and procession of Palm Sunday, which was
perhaps the most typical occasion of all. Even in rural dis-
tricts, this celebration was likely to involve some kind of an
out-door sermon. Martene speaks of it as a feast observed with
1
The external pulpits of stone, set in the wall, like Refectory pulpits, as
e.g. that at Magdalen College, Oxford (c. 1480); at St-L6 or Vitr6, in France
(15th cent.; external wall of church), or again in the cloister of St-Die
(illustrated in Viollet-le-duc, Diet.) may be borne in mind, also. It is clear,
I think, that the stone pulpit was rare at any time, in the open.
2
An interesting MS. illustration of the "scafaldus" used in the open, as
at the preaching of the Crusades, will be found in the Bk. of Hours of the
Queen of Navarre, pt. ii, Plate XXVII.
3
See especially the remarkable scene in MS. Fitzwm. Mus. Camb. 22,
reproduced above as Frontispiece: also Chaucer in a pulpit, " in a feir feld
ful of folk," in MS. Corpus Chr. Coll. Camb. 61; and cf. the record of brother
Berthold's wooden " belfry," complete with pennon, in Coulton's Mediaeval
Studies, 1st ser., No. 2 (2nd edit.), p. 20.
4
Churchwardens' Accounts, Cox (Antiq. Bks.), p. 155. In this connection
cf. also S. Anthony of Padua's moveable pulpit, Wadding, vol. i, p. 24. At
the Greneyard, Norwich, in 1405, the recanting heretic speaks, "super
quoddam scamnum, seu scabellum ad hoc sibi deputatum in medio cleri et
populi" (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 282).
200 "AT THE CROSS"
peculiar care and honour in England1, where the Host would be
carried in procession "to some church or station" ("ad aliquam
ecclesiam aut locum"), at which the gospel would be read, a
sermon delivered, and the palms blessed. The humbler kind
of church-yard cross, with simple stem and base, it has been
thought, may have been often the particular "locus" chosen2.
In the cathedral cities no less a dignitary than chancellor or dean
or even bishop would be expected to occupy the pulpit; and
sometimes, as at Hereford in the year 1419, he might have im-
portant political matters to discuss in his theme3 . The Palm
Sunday sermon in some collections bears distinct reference to
its delivery under special conditions. "Hodierna die de more
processionem fecimus. Ideo nota de tribus processionibus quas
Christus fecit," cries Master Rypon4. Do his opening refer-
ences here to the sepulchres, with their rotting corpses within,
reveal the preacher "in cimiterio," pointing to the graves about
him? "Dominica in Ramis Palmarum. Sermo super evange-
lium, qui est inprocessione," is the heading of another5. Because
the Palm Sunday service is so long, Myrc will "shortly" ex-
plain to his country-folk why it is so-called, and the ritual in-
volved6. Other processions of a similar kind would take place
at Rogationtide, and the patronal festival, or anniversary of
church dedication.
Processions held annually in connection with the Rogation
Days had at least one feature in common with the more pro-
minent group which follows in our survey. They were designed
1
Ant. Eccl. Rit. vol. iii, p. 202. He refers to Archbp. Lanfranc's Statutes,
an ancient Salisb. Missal, and Matthew Paris'account of the rich "vasculum"
or "scrinium" used for the host at St Albans on this festival, in the Bk. of the
Lives of the xxiii Abbots. (Also to Normandy.)
2
Cf. with this an entry in the Observances of the Austin priory at Barnviell
(trans, and ed. J. Willis Clark, 1897, Camb.), pp. 150—51: "On Palm Sunday
a procession of great solemnity is held, on account of which, if weather per-
mit, a cross is to be set up in the outer court, and the convent are to walk
round the cemetery as far as that cross."
3
Reg. Lacy (Hereford), pp. 63-4. A Mandate received from the arch-
bishop for prayer to be offered for the peace proposed between the King of
England and the Dauphin, after the surrender of Rouen: " Quod vero man-
datum dominus ipsemet (i.e. episc. Heref.) per omnia ut supra scribitur
exsequebatur, in predicatione sua publica, habita die in ramis palmarum in
civitate sua Herefordensi."
4
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 124. Later he explains the symbolism of the Psalm
and the cry of " Osanna."
6 6
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 73- Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 115.
AND " I N P R O C E S S I O N " 201
to ward off specially impending danger, so far, that is to say, as
public intercession might achieve that end. A delightful
homily, hitherto unpublished 1 , will explain:
Good men and women, 3e schal have this weke that is commyng
iii holsome dayes of prayers, that is Monday, Tewysday, and Wed-
nysday, that holy chyrche callythe rogacion dayes, or in ynglysche
tong the dayes of prayers. And 3e schall understonde that holy
chyrche makythe ii latynes [i.e. litanies] in the 3ere, a more latyne,
and a lesse latyne. And there a3enste we have ii procescion dayes,
the firste is the olde gang day on the whiche we sey the more latyne,
when we halow and faste on seint Markis day when it fallythe not in
Ester weke, ne on the Sonday. The secunde procession day is on
these iii worthi dayes2, and they be callyd the new gang dayes, and
the lesse latyne. A latyne is no more to sey but as a prayer or a
besechyng. And whi the firste is callyd the more latyne and the tother
the lesse latyne I schall tell 30W. As for the first th' is the olde gang
day, that day is the procescion that men use on Seynt Markis day,
and that is callyd the more latyne for iii skyllys... . 3
In these processions the clergye of holy chirche prayethe in theyre
latynes for the helppe of all seyntis; and so scholde all other pepyll
do that folow the procession, for many dyverse skyllis. ffirste that
God scholde withestonde the batell of owre enmyes bothe bodyly
and gostly. ffor in that tyme of the 3ere the devylls and other wickyd
spryritis are moste besy a bowte for to drawe a man in to synne and
wrechednes. Also holy chyrche prayethe that criste scholde kepe the
tender frutis that be done on the erthe to mans helppe, and so scholde
al cristen pray for the same
Also in these processions baners and crossis ben borne and bellis
rong th* the spyritis that flye above in the eyer as thyke as motis in
the sonne scholde flee a wey frame us, when they see baners and
crossis on lofte, and heryng the bellis ryng 4 . for lyke as a kynghathe
in his oste baners and trompettis and claryons to the drede of his
enmyes, Ry3te so in lyke wyse almy3tti god that is kyng of all kyngis
hathe bellis for his clarions and for his tromppis, and a cros reysed
for hys banere. ffor lyke as a tarrant scholde be a drede if he herde a
1
Although the MS. (Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2) from which this sermon
(headed Dies Rogacionibus) is taken, is itself a very late fifteenth century
production, the style of this and one or two other homilies in it suggests that
we have here re-copied some further examples of John Myrc's composition,
unknown to the published Festiall series. See later here, also, on p. 215.
2
3
See above, e.g. in Chap, iv, p. 146, n. 3.
fol. 133 et seq. The explanations that follow here from history (?), are
full of interesting allusions to quaint contemporary custom and folklore.
4
As in the Rogationtide sermon in Myrc's Festiall. See E.E.T.S. ed.
pp. 149, 150 and 151.
nother lordis clarion, and see a nother lordis banere in his londe,
ry3te so in lyke wyse the devyllis and the spyritis that flyethe on lofte
in the eyer dredythe moche more cristis clarions and his tromppytt is
that ben the bellis, and cristis baners that ben the crossis a reysed....
Wherfore 3e schall come to the chirche these iii dayes, as I have
tolde 30W, that 3e may go devowtely in 3owre procession praying to
all the seyntis in heven to pray for 30W to criste that he wolde have
mercy and pite on 30W as he bow3te 30W on the roode,... etc.
Amen, etc. 1
The other great class of processions involving a sermon is
that which follows some special mandate from headquarters for
public intercession. Wars, pestilences, the inclemency of the
weather, the health of the king, queen, and royal household,
some expedition about to cross the Channel, demanded that
the whole nation should signalize publicly its loyalty to the
throne of Heaven, repent, and pray upon its knees2. The Arch-
bishop of Canterbury writes to the bishops, and they to their
principal clergy, that they arrange "solemn processions,...
with ringing of bells, and customary chanting... .And let them
exercise other pious works of devotion, humbly and devoutly,
so that amongst other things the nourishment of God's Word
may be publicly set forth." 3 In the Register of BishopSpofford
1
Ends (MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2) on fol. 138. Cf. two vernacular
sermons for Rogationtide in MS. Harl. 2247, fol. 105 et seq., etc. For Latin
examples, with similar explanations of ritual, etc. cf. Archbp. Fitzralph, in
MS. Lansd. 393,fol.45, etc. (feria 2"in Rogat".): " .. . quare rogamus sanctos;
quare crucem portamus ante processionem; quare vexillum; quare draconem
duobus diebus ante processionem, et tertio die post processionem; quare
primis diebus cum cauda plena, et tertio die cum vacua; et quare campanas
pulsamus. . .," etc. Also Rypon in MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 144, etc.
2
Cf. here the sermon themes suggested by Higden's treatise on the Art
of Preaching (in MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 5 b, etc.) for these special occasions: " In
processionibus 'pro pace'—Rogate quoad pacem; vel 'contra pestem,'
—Domine, salva nos, perimus," etc.
3
1401 (Jan. 14). Reg. Bowet, Bath and Wells (Somerset Rec. Soc), p. 24.
Cf. also, e.g. Reg. Wykeham, Winch. (Hants. Rec. Soc), pp. 89, 105, 109,
etc. (1369, for peace; 1374, 1375, etc. for pestilence; etc.); Reg. Thoresbv,
York (Fasti Ebor. pp. 460, 461, 463), (1361, for removal of wars, pestilences,
and other troubles of the kingdom; 1368, for pestilence; 1369, for the king,
queen and prince); Reg. Melton, York (ibid. p. 415), (1319, for fine weather,
because of the rains); Reg. Zouche, Yk. (ibid. p. 443), (1345, for the king and
his army); Reg. de Asserio, Winch. (Hants. Rec. Soc. pp. 576, etc.), (1321,
for peace); Reg. Rede, Chichester (Sussex Rec. Soc. p. 75), (1400, for
weather, and the king's prosperity); Reg. Spofford, Hereford (1431, for
wars, pestilence, and other ills; 1436, for the Duke of Gloucester's expedition
to relieve Calais); and many in Reg. Grandiss. Exeter, etc. In Wilkins,
Cone. vol. iii, note especially p. 42 (1359, on resumption of the war with
of Hereford there appears an interesting example of a Royal
Letter of the year 1443, of this kind, written in the vernacular,
requesting processions and prayers for the resistance to be made
to "our adversary of France, and his oldest son that calleth
himselfe Dauphin," who, "with all the myght and puissance
that they can and may assemble,.. .enforcen hem, and maken,
and be disposed to make, in this season that now is at hande,
unto us as soore and as myghty werre bothe by water and bi
lande as they can divise, and namely in our duchies of Nor-
mandie and Guienne." The bishops are accordingly exhorted,
required, and prayed to
do all the devoir and diligence possible to yow in this behalve, making
all thoo that be called ministers of Goddis Chirche, seculiers and
reguliers, withyne your diocise, to go openly and devoutly [in]
procession divers daies in the weke al this yere next folwyng, and to
pray especially for the prosperite of us and of all oure reaumes, landes,
and subgects, and especially for the good and gracious spede of all
thoo that shal laboure and aventure their personnes to the with-
standyng of the forsaid malicious purpos of our said adversari, and
of his helpers
An Indulgence of forty-days' pardon is granted "to induce
hem the more effectually and with the more desire to entende
to alle the things abovesaid." Finally comes the reference to
the preaching: "And to enable hem the more diligently to con-
tinue theyr devocion in alle the thynges abovesaide, us semeth
that hit shuld be ful expedient that ye ordeyned from time to
time good and sturyng precheris of Goddes word to go abrode
in your diocise, that might and wold remembre hem and exhorte
hem to the said continuance."1 Acquainted thus with the cir-
cumstances of delivery, the reader is now in a position to deal
with such sermons as remain in the manuscripts from these
occasions.
At one procession, "pro rege et principibus," about the year
1345, we are enabled to listen to Archbishop Fitzralph of
Armagh, in London, as he expounds to the people what they
France; mentioning " predicationes "); p. 177 (1383, "for the Bp. of Norwich
setting out against the heretics" ("sermonibus")); p. 195 (1386, for the ex-
pedition of Lord Arundel, Admiral of England, crossing the sea (" sermoni-
bus")).
1
Reg. Thos. Spofford, Bp. of Hereford (Cantilupe Soc. etc.), pp. 252—54.
204 "AT THE CROSS"
should pray for, and their manner of praying1. Amongst other
things let them intercede on behalf of the sovereign, he says,
"that he may live justly and sincerely in his own person." For
sometimes God punishes the nation for its sovereign's sins.
Let them ask that "he be directed with prudent and sane
counsel"; "that he may obtain a just and happy issue in his
military campaigns." With memories of war-time sermons
still fresh, we are driven to confess that the mediaeval preacher
here shows a spiritual discernment, a breadth of vision, and a
self-control, which might have put to shame many another
occupying a pulpit in England but eight years ago. "Where-
fore men pray improvidently," he cries, "that he [the king]
may overcome his enemies, and also slay in battle. For those
who pray thus, in their praying offend God, and hinder their
lord the king. They offend God, in acting contrary to his com-
mand—' Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Matt. xxii)....
They hinder the king, withdrawing from him their spiritual
petitions." Such men who beseech God " to pour out the blood
of their adversaries " are violating that rule of prayer that in-
sists "that each shall seek and pray for all men that which they
would desire to be done to them by others." And "there is no
one who would desire that others would pray for them in the
aforesaid fashion." "But prayer is to be made that [the king]
may obtain a just peace, that we, as the above-mentioned
authority of the Apostle states, may live a quiet and tranquil
life,.. .and that so we may live piously and chastely... .And
indeed less learned men often err greatly when they pray for
the king and his nobles, demanding from God that he give them
corporal triumph in battle over their foes." None the less the
preacher is equally emphatic that "the Law of Nature requires
that we pray for the king, and also support our troops—in
facultatibus; for he is the protector and defender of the people."
Is there after all a conflict of loyalties in the archbishop's own
mind, as he preaches?
Interest quickens as Fitzralph goes on to deal with the
"pacifists" of the day. Someone has declared that a war of
1
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 26 b. See also ibid. fol. 48, for another of his
processional sermons, in London (Text: "Offerant oblationes deo celi,
orentque pro vita regis," 1 Esdr. 6.)
defence is right enough, but this attacking of France across the
channel is indefensible. The prelate replies that "according to
the judgement of our realm" the territories of England and
France are properly one kingdom, the indivisible realm and
dominion of the English king. By hereditary right the rule over
both devolves upon him and his successors1. For all his lofty
religious impartiality, our preacher is ever the loyal English-
man at heart. His remarks are interesting evidence for the work
of the pulpit in the political sphere, here dealing with the argu-
ments of a peace-party that doubts the justice of the campaign
very probably on religious grounds, as in subsequent Lollard
days.
Turning to Bishop Brunton's sermons, we find him discussing
the topic of the hour in a similar situation, though not in so
argumentative a mood 2 : "How the nobles of England but
recently sent to Brittany have been besieged by our adversaries,"
he says, "the news informs us clearly enough. I know of no
better refuge for their liberation or defence than to be watchful
with one accord in prayers [his sermon-text is "Vigilate,"
1 Petr. v, 8] for a twofold reason: first because the prayer of the
besieged availeth much, if they prove stable in faith.... 3
Secondly, because vigils of prayers kept by us can help them "4
Besides the lordly orators of the Church, however, a "good and
stirring preacher of God's Word " of the simpler sort has left
us his "Sermo pro pace" in manuscript5. Nor does a com-
parison between the two end in his disfavour, for it is full of
1
" . . . Si objiceretur quod verum est pro defensione regni sui, non pro
invasione regni alieni, responsum fuit quod, juxta judicium regni nostri,
unum fuit regnum sive imperium aut dominium utriusque regni. Ex quo
utriusque regni jus hereditarium in una persona pro se et suis successoribus
residebat. Et ob hoc, licet dua sint regna, non minus unum sunt regnum
ipsa dua, et membra unius regni, sive unius imperii aut unius dominii. Et
ita in persona sui regis se mutuo sicuti membra unius corporis se juvare
tenentur...."
2
3
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 193.
He goes on to give an exemplum:—" Hoc patet in Historia Romanorum
de4Theodosio imperatore. . .."
Another "exemplum" follows here concerning "Clodovecus, rex Fran-
corum," who, amongst other things, "transmisit litteras ad ecclesiasticos et
religiosos, ut pro sua expeditione in orationibus vigilarent," we notice, in the
approved fashion.
6
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fols. 123 b-126. (Text: "Quis ibit ad rogandum
pro pace?" Jer. xv, 5.)
2 o6 "AT THE CROSS"
homely, practical instruction, exactly suited to the congregation
before him. His report is in the original English of delivery,
therefore the more attractive. A brief excerpt which contains
the chief topical reference of the address will illustrate the
preacher's style. He has been discussing the lustful men, who
" whils that thei are in that synne,... are not worthy to be herde
to prey ffor the pece." He goes on:
But, I preye the, who shall goye to preye for the pees? Trowly,
cristen men, I see iii thinges th* god hath take grett vengeaunce [for];
and 3iff we will loke to this londe of ynglonde this tyme, I drede me
th* thise iii synnes are overmoche reynande in this londe. But what
is the cause that we have not these dayes no pees as we were wonte
ffor to have? Certenly synne is the cause; ffor ther as this londe was
wonte to be plentewous of goodnes and holynes in lyvynge, Nowe
is this goodnes growon in to grett malice and shrewdenes, and holynes
is turned in to synnefull wrechednes: bot how shall we dryve avey
thise iii synnes th 4 1 have spokon of?—trewly w' iii vertewes....1
When, on the other hand, the procession gathers under the
cloud of plague, of bad harvests, floods, or warning signs in the
heavens, the "Sermo in processione" will naturally make
equally significant reference to these ills2. Bishop Brunton's
own solemn discourse, when the terror of a raging pestilence is
added to the anxieties and sufferings of the war abroad3, gives
us some vivid insight into the perplexed, horror-stricken
minds of his listeners. He begins by pouring scorn upon those
who attribute it to planets and constellations in the sky ("illi
qui talia ascribunt certis planetis et constellationibus"), and
not to the nation's sins:
Therefore, since the corruption of lust, and designs of wickedness
are greater to-day than in the days of Noah—for a thousand fashions
of vice which assuredly did not exist then are rife to-day,... since,
too, greater to-day is the cruelty of lords than in David's time, let us
not impute the scourges of God to planets or elements, but rather
to our own sins, saying, "Worthily do we suffer these things, for we
1
Ibid. fol. 125 b. Cf. further, the rare practicality and soundness of the
following (fol. u126): " Ryghtso, ho wolde th u prey the ffadere of heven for the
pees, when th will not latt thi ney3bore be in pees?... "
2
Cf. in MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 125: "Unde igitur in regno Anglie tanta est
fructus diminutio, tam crudelis pestilentia.. . "; fol. 189 b, etc.: "Quantum
ad processiones, si fiat processio pro quacunque tribulatione...."
3
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 191: "ex parte nostri imminens est pestilencie
periculum, ex parte adversarii malitiosa impugnatio.. . . "
AND " I N P R O C E S S I O N " 207
have sinned" ["Merito haec patimur, quia peccavimus"] But
you say, " If sin was the occasion of the aforesaid, by the just judge-
ment of God the notorious sinners should perish, not children, or
the just who have not sinned in this way!" I make reply and say
that the children are dying not for their own sins, but for those of
their parents... .The little ones would have wished to follow in their
steps, after all; and in truth God does them no wrong, when death
may be the way out from the prison-house, the end of exile and toil,
the escape from all perils, the return to the father-land, the entrance
into glory. Or let us say that God punishes the innocent that he may
chastise us who are the worst, and the offenders [nocentes]. For in
the manner of the bowman, God who "hath stretched and made
ready his bow" sometimes shoots the arrow of death beyond the
mark, that is, in his striking of the sinner, whether father or mother,
or some older person, sometimes " on the near side of the mark," by
smiting son or daughter or someone younger, sometimes on the left
side, by smiting their neighbours, sometimes upon the right side
by smiting brother or sister. But at length he hits the mark itself,
when he carries off the sinner asleep in sin, from the midst, by
awful death. Thus it happened to King William Rufus....
The typical exemplum terribile follows. Eventually he reaches
the immediate problem of the moment: " B u t someone asks—
' Since sin is the outstanding cause of the pestilence, what are
to be the remedies, that the Divine hand may cease?' I reply
that the chief remedy would be the confession of the sinners.
For how should the scourge of God cease at the people's prayers,
while a third part of them are in mortal sin? > n The sins of the
nation are the one cause of every form of disaster, to the mind of
these English preachers. No formidable Jeremiah in ancient
Palestine, no eloquent Savonarola in mediaeval Italy ever em-
phasized this gospel of divine retribution more incessantly.
Master Rypon, preaching in Lent of the year 1401, of a certain
vice which here shall be nameless, can be as relentless in his
expositions as my lord of Rochester. Attention is riveted now
upon the appearance of a comet in the sky 2 :
Would that that cursed sin were not subverting the realm of
England! And this sin, it is said, has grown to be so much of a habit
that it is scarcely reckoned a sin at all. And without doubt, although
the destruction of the kingdom has not happened yet, perchance for
the merit of certain just persons dwelling therein, none the less a
1 2
Ibid. fols. 191 b-192 b. Cf. Dives et Pauper, prec. i, cap. xxix.
208 "AT THE CROSS"
certain earnest [quedam arra] of destruction has come to pass, and
this is appearing over the greater part of the kingdom, as is well
known, from day to day in signs, as for example in the water-floods,
in the bad harvests [fructuum paucitate], and in the comet now
appearing, viz. A.D. 1401 in Lent. As for this star,—according to the
Venerable Bede, in his book, de ymagine mundi (lib. i, cap. ult.),
"Comets," he says, "appearing towards the North in the Milky
Way with flaming tails, and portending revolution or pestilence, or
wars, or tempests in summer-time, are seen for a week; if for longer,
they portend, according to others, a mortality among the nobles, or
barrenness in the land." These things, says he, are certain earnests
and signs of the destruction of kingdoms; oh that they may come not
to pass in this kingdom! And if they should do,—which God forbid!
—assuredly, if the experience of the past according to the blessed
Gregory is that of the future, the aforesaid crimes and vices of the
inhabitants will be the cause thereof1.
To deal adequately with the many stirring scenes around
Paul's Cross in London would demand something even more
than an independent chapter. There might almost be said to be
a literature on the subject already. Bishop Brunton himself
had urged on all bishops the prime value and importance of
preaching in this London pulpit, a century and a half before
the Reformation:
At London, because it is the principal city of England, and in that
place there is a greater devotion and a more intelligent people, and
therefore, it is to be presumed, greater fruit. Moreover, because each
bishop of England has subjects or parishioners in London, therefore,
when he gives instruction there, it is as though he were preaching to
his own people and to the other churches of England in addition, so
that in effect, by so doing, each of us may apply to himself that word
of the Apostle [2 Cor. xi, 28]—" that which cometh upon me daily, the
care of all the churches"—of England2.
The famous church-yard Cross itself is a veritable mirror of
mediaeval life and thought, reflecting the many moods and
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 116 b. Bp. Brunton also is inclined to associate
the occurrence of pestilence with the reign of this "peccatum sodomiticum "
(MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 191 b) in England.
2
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 60 b. For the original Latin see my article afore-
mentioned in the Mod. Lang. Rev., July, 1925. I notice the following at the
Cross (from Wilkins, Cone): (in our period), besides Bp. Brunton, and
Archbp. Fitzralph of Armagh (variously, as noted elsewhere); Bp. of Car-
lisle (1378); Archbp. of Canterbury (1408); Bp. of Llandaff (1419); Bp. of
Rochester (1428).
opinions of those who crowded around it. Great processions
of rejoicing and of lament as well as great preaching, recanta-
tions, sentences of excommunication—like those passed upon
"Robert de Bras, and all Scotsmen" in 1318, or the mur-
derous clerics in the church-yard a century later—expositions
and burnings of "many bokes of eryses,"1 unhappy delinquents
"with faggottes and tapers," 2 all figured there during its long
history—"in the prechenge tyme." Finally, it would not be
fair to omit all mention of cemetery preaching of an irregular
kind, with the classical instance of John Ball before us, "a
preacher for twenty years,"3 he who collected his audience as
the parishioners came streaming on Sunday from the church
door4. There rustic and pedlar sit together on the gravestones,
in the warm sunlight, as Dr Bromyard must have seen them in
his travels, "sicut homines super tale lignum vel lapidem ad
solem in estate,"5 listening to wandering friar, pardoner, and
Lollard—"apud crucem in cimiterio," where the rude fore-
fathers sleep, the living among the dead.
In closing it is proposed to attempt a reconstruction of the
outdoor scene around the pulpit cross, from current sources,
as it would have presented itself in some English town during
the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. Thus may the "certain
very religious father William Melton, of the Order of the Friars
1
Notably of Bp. Pecock, in 1458. Cf. also the case of R. Walker, 1419
(Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 394). Of the former, see the account given in the
Grey Friars Chr. of London (Camd. Soc).
2
Cf. the picturesque little ceremony of a later period, in Hall's Chron. of
the Reign of King Henry VIII (xxv yere), 1533/4: The guilty (the '' holy maid
of Kent" and her adherents) are " by the kynges counsaill adjudged to stand
at Paules Crosse, wher thei with their owne handes should severally deliver
eche of them to the preacher that should bee appoynted a bill declaryng
their subtile craftie and superstitious doynges." Which they did, " standyng
on a stage at Paules Crosse made for that purpose."
3
4
Cf. MS. Harl. 6388, fol. 11; etc.
Froissart, ed. Lord Berners, cap. 381, p. 641 (ed. 1812): "This preest
used often tymes on the Sondayes, after masse, whanne the people were
goynge out of the minster, to go into the cloister and preche, and made the
people to assemble about hym... .Thus Johan sayd on Sondayes, whan the
people issued out of the churches in the vyllages...." Also, in his " Denun-
ciatio" by the archbishop, 1381 (Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 152, etc.):
" . . .Ibique aliquando in ecclesiis et cemeteriis, praeter et contra ipsarum
ecclesiarum presidentium voluntatem, aliquando ad macellas in publicis
mercatis, et aliis locis profanis, aures mulcendo laicorum opprobriis. . .
predicare et dogmatizare nullatenus pertimescit...."
6
S.P.—Ociositas.
o 14
2io "AT THE CROSS"
Minor, S.T.P.... a most famous preacher of the word of God "
have delivered those sermons to the people of York which
actually persuaded them to change a pageant-day, and purify
their city1. Thus did many a great one of the Greenyard at
Norwich, or of the market-place at Northampton. First, as
likely as not the preacher would arrive on horseback. This is
not always in the mind of our modern "text-book" writers of
social history, but it is too frequent a detail of the original docu-
ments to be a matter of doubt. The well-known French minia-
ture of John Ball preaching astride his steed—"palefridus suus
pinguis, et rotundus, et faleratus," as a preacher's mount was
once described,—may be grotesque enough of the socialistic
clerk, but none the less will be a true portrait of the more
fashionable Mendicants of the age. Denunciations of this pom-
pous, spectacular way of arriving and departing about the pulpit
are to be met with from the thirteenth century onwards. Stephen
of Bourbon has a delightful story of "what a little old woman
did to a certain great theologian, who, when he had preached
about the humility of Christ on Palm Sunday, and the ass,
straightway mounted a richly caparisoned palfrey2. The old
hag then ran up, and taking hold of his bridle, questioned him
in the midst of the crowd, 'Master, was the Lord's ass like
that?'" But he was silent. St Dominic himself, troubled pro-
foundly over the spread of heresy, had noticed this particular
failing in the case of the bishops who had preached all in vain
to the Albigensians3. An English satirist at the beginning of the
fourteenth century could tell how his spiritual offspring rode
the whole day long—
1
In 1426. His influence here reminds us of a Bernardino or a Savonarola
again. Like them too he seems to have suffered his reverses; see here, p. 73.
The account of his preaching in York in Drake's Eboracum (appdx. p. xxix,
from the City Records) tells how " coming to this city," he " recommended
the aforesaid [Corpus Christi] play to the people, affirming that it was good
in itself, and very laudable," then proceeded to rebuke their licentious
behaviour. The sermon for the Procession-Day itself, in the year 1478, was
preached in the cathedral, however. See Davies, Extracts from Munic.
Records, p. 77, and cf. p. 43.
2
"Ipse preciosis vestibus similiter ornatus." See Anecdotes, p. 216. Ct.
also Matthew Paris' description of the friars arriving at St Albans in 1247,
their steeds, "sellis deauratis falerati" (Chronica Maj. Rolls S.).
3
See also the similar tale of St Bernard and a heretic of Languedoc, in
G. G. Coulton, Five Centuries of Religion, vol. i, p. 287.
Yl purrount, s'il ount talent,
Chevalcher tot plenerement
Tote la jornee entiere.
on the plea that they had sore feet, not like the Minors bare-
footed, but well shod1. The complaint of Wycliffe, in one of his
vernacular sermons, brings the practice down to our own par-
ticular epoch: "And here thenken many men that siche pre-
chours shulden be war that they come not with myche peple,
ne many hors to preche thus." 2
Once the faithful steed had been known to prey on its owner's
mind in the middle of his sermon3. A certain good man, in this
case no worldling, left the ass which carried him on his preach-
ing tours ("per quem portaretur per parrochias ubi predicare
deberet") outside the church, when he went in. As the service
proceeded, he became unable to shake off a haunting anxiety as
to its fate. Perhaps some thief would carry it off, or some wolf
devour it. With a sudden noble effort of self-renunciation he
mastered his mood. Going outside, he set the animal free to
wander away, remarking as he did so that he would rather lose
his ass than his heart. Not every preacher would have been able
to say that.
But to return to our scene. Before the preacher's arrival, the
church-yard pulpit cross where he will appear has first been
"solemplie decked.. .with Tapestrie, and other furniture,"4 for
the occasion. Prominent among these, as in every manuscript
illumination of the kind, is the great embroidered pulpit cloth,
rich and spacious as a cope, covering almost the whole of the
central panel from top to bottom: "in circuitu vero summitatis
pulpiti dependentur panni serici et inaurati."5 Now he comes
escorted by the mayor and his fellow-clergy," with great solemp-
netie, arrayed 'en une cloke, une taberd, et une chapon furres
1
The Order of Fair Ease (MS. Harl. 2253), in Wright's Polit. Songs
(Camd. Soc), p. 146. For the mounted preacher, cf. also MS. Vernon
(E.E.T.S.,
2
O.S. No. 117, p. 784): "The monck rod ni3t and day," etc.
Ed. Matthew (E.E.T.S.), p. 200. Cf. also in the story told of Master
Walter of London, and his horse, above in Chap, iv, p. 193.
3
More usually the preacher is at prayer in this story, but one MS. version
has "aut predicans."
4
Powell and Trev. Docs, (as before), p. 48, etc.
5
From "Officia in Coronationem," Rich. II, 1377, printed in Maskell's
Mon. Rit. vol. iii, pp. 68—9.
14-2
2i2 "AT THE CROSS"
de pellure,' and with a capp uppon his head, as.. .a Doctor or
Master of Divinitie."1 These robes are the crowning glory of
pulpit pageantry. They are also the outward badge of authority
and learning in the speaker. Preachers of the sort that—
. . . loveth in markettes ben met with gretynges of pouere
And lowynge of lewed men, in Lentenes tyme2,
—and they are not few—know well their value in attracting and
impressing the crowds, "therebie to be reputed of the common
people for great clerkes."3 Repeated comments of the Domini-
can sermon-writers as well as the notorious traffic in University
degrees about this time show clearly how coveted was the
honour of wearing them. Thomas Walleys thus warns his would-
be preacher—"de predicatoris habitu"—against pulpit robes
too brilliant, or too wondrously wrought, such as might induce
the people to attribute to him those very vanities of the world
which he must bid them avoid. Full of sanctified common-
sense are the warnings of these old orators of the Church.
Higden declares that such who appear with pompous gesture,
elaborate adornment, and superfluous train were better termed
"the ministers of Anti-Christ."4 Bromyard points the ab-
surdity of the richly-decked preacher denouncing, as we have
seen elsewhere, the pride of fine clothes in the laity ("vestium
religiositas et decentia, quern predicantes contra vestium super-
biam illam non ostendant"), likewise of the lover of good dishes
"who proclaims the poor man Christ, with a fat belly and ruddy
cheeks."5 Such incongruities did not always pass unheeded by
the man in the street:
1
Powell and Trev. p. 49. In this case the Lollard preacher, Wm. North-
wold, is thus accused: "whereas he never took anie degree in scoles." Cf.
also the description quoted above in Chap. IV from Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S.ed.),
p. 276.
2
Ploughman's Creed, 11. 566-7. Cf. Bromyard's parallel to this whole
passage, in S.P.—Avar.: " . . .sciunt quod magis sunt in honore, vocantur
ab omnibus 'Rabi,' et habent primos recubitus in coenis et salutationes...."
(From the Gospel Pharisees, of course.)
3
Powell and Trev. (as before): " Diverse of which said preachers were
faine to borrowe in the said toune of Northampton furred hodes and habites
for the time of their sermones"; and later (p. 49): " . . .repaired again to
preach at the said crosse arraied in his furres as before."
4
MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 11.
6
S.P.—Predicatio," cf. Chaucer's gibe (Romt. of the Rose, 11. 6486-8):
" fillen. .. my paunche of gode mete and wyne, as shulde a maister of divyne."
Ye poope-holy prestis fulle of presoncion,
With your wyde furryd hodes, voyd of discrecioun,
Unto your owyn prechynge of contrary condicioun,
Which causeth the peple to have lesse devocioun1!
One curious little scriptural comment in a contemporary homily
—"de inani gloria"—is surely a fragment of the writer's own
personal reminiscences of these preaching-cross vanities of the
day. Says Scripture, the devil placed Jesus upon a pinnacle of
the temple. "Where the preachers were wont to ascend, and
where many had inane glory " (" ubi solebant predicatores ascen-
dere, et ubi multi inanem gloriam habuerunt"), explains the
homilist2.
And in worchipe of the worlde her wynnynge thei holden;
Thei schapen her chapolories, and streecheth hem brode,
And launceth heije her hemmes, with babelyng in stretes;
Thei ben y-sewed with \vhi3t silk, and semes3 full queynte,
Y-stongen with stiches, that stareth as silver .
With the typical bidding-prayer for "al the clergise, al the
knithhode, and al the gode comenalte, with al tho that ben went
out of this world,"4 and so forth, the sermon will begin. It
is not our business to give heed to it now, but to take a parting
look at the brave spectacle around with its life and colour. No
wonder the wife of Bath liked such preachings so well. Not to
speak of a city mayor and corporation, the clergy and the bur-
gesses and the ladies, as at "Le Greneyard," in Norwich, on
Palm Sunday of the year 1405 there might be present in addition
a bishop, the prior of a cathedral convent, and some noble
knight of the shire, each with his appropriate body of attend-
ants 5 . How, then, is the distinguished audience seated? Look-
ing at the well-known painting of the Paul's Cross preaching
scene at London, executed early in the seventeenth century, one
would imagine that the long covered gallery-boxes of timber, set
against the transept wall of the great church to accommodate
1
Wright, Polit. Poems and Songs (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 351. Also Jack
Upland's question: "Why make ye so many 'maisters' among you?" and
Ploughman's Creed, 11. 497, 574, etc.
2 3
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 51. Ploughman's Creed, 11. 550 et seq.
4
MS. Wore. Cath. Libr. F. 19. Cf. other examples given below in Chaps.
VI and VIII. Also Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 440 (concerning a sermon at
Paul's Cross, 1425): "Inter preces et inchoationem processus sermonis."
5
214 "AT T H E
CROSS"
the royal party, might be the natural survival of a pre-Reforma-
tion custom1. But this is apparently not the case. The erection
of these permanent wooden galleries and pews, which con-
verted the chapter-house at Canterbury, for example, into a
regular "sermon-house" for lay audiences in the same century2,
was a device of Protestant and Puritan times. An interesting
record of the year 1650, concerning the Greenyard at Norwich
above-mentioned, makes clear the distinction between earlier and
later practices. First we are informed of the subsequent in-
novation here, in an account which agrees perfectly with the
painter's testimony in the case of London: "The great pulpit
was set up, and galleries were made next the walls on the East
and South sides, for the mayor, aldermen, common-councillors,
liverymen and wives to sit in, and hear the sermon." Now
follows the mediaeval custom, agreeing strangely with our
account of the contemporary practice in church: "But in old
time they had a moveable pulpit, which was carried into the
yard, and set up in Rogation-week, as were also forms and
benches to sit on. And the ground about the pulpit was strawed
with green sedges, the two first days. It was carried back again
(into the chapel, I suppose) on Ascension-day."3 St Bernardino
of Siena, it has been stated, was the first "in modern times"
to introduce the separation of the sexes in public worship*.
But if the cord mentioned in connection with Thomas Couette's
preaching in the thirteenth century before audiences of thou-
sands in the open air 5 was intended to serve the same purpose
as Bernardino's low canvas screen set up between men and
women in the piazzas6, this can hardly be the case. Since we
have seen that this separation probably obtained within the
churches in this country, it is only likely that it would be the
custom here also in the open.
Much that was said about the character of the sermon-goers
in the sacred edifice, in the first part of our sketch, will apply
1
1616. (In possession of the Soc. of Antiquaries, London.)
2
3
See Woodruff and Danks, Memorials of Cant, Cath, pp. 301 and 323.
See Kirkpatrick, J., Relig. Orders of Norwich, 1845, pp. 64, 65.
* See reference in Ferrers Howell, St Bern. p. 281.
6
The other theory advanced seems absurd, "that they were obliged to
suspend the orator in the air by a cord, that he might make himself heard by
everyone!" See Hist. Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxiii, p. 248.
6
Cf. the well-known paintings by Sano di Pietro, and Vecchietta.
with equal force to the new scene outside. Direct information
on this aspect of the subject is considerably harder to obtain,
for the simple reason that, in the harangues concerned with a
wider public than that which assembles at the church, the
former intimacy between speaker and hearers seems to have dis-
appeared. One Rogation-tide sermon, however, noted by the
present writer whilst at work in the cathedral library at Lincoln,
thus prepares its hearers for the coming procession in the open
with quaint warnings in the style of Myrc. The preacher bids
them
not to come and go in procession talkyng of nyse talysr and japis by
the wey or by the feldes as 3e walke, or to bacbyte 3o even cristen.
Or to go more for pompe and pride of the worlde then for to plese
God, or for helpe of theire owne sowlys. Soche processions are but
veyne and litill worthe for the helpe of man. but 3e scholde come
mekely and lowly wl a good devocion, and folow 3owre crosse and
3owre belles in 3owre bedes biddyng and good prayers, that almy3tty
god will the rather thorow3e 3owre prayers stynt the grete perells
and myscheves that ben a mong mankynde, and to bryng 30W to the
blis1.
If, on the other hand, we may combine such preachers'
evidences as that of Bishop Brunton on the London intercessory
processions, "pro tribulatione," with Master Rypon's com-
plaints at Durham concerning the decay of the great annual
procession to the minster, it would appear that such gatherings
were increasingly avoided by the more genteel classes. Brunton
tells us, indeed, that at London only ecclesiastics, religious,
and a few middle-class persons take part. The "magnates," who
are the worst offenders before God, and therefore the most be-
holden to show repentance, will crowd to a tournament, but
keep carefully away where any public prayer or acts of penitence
are concerned. Even the bare numbers attending, these days,
are most unsatisfactory:
Does it not seem abominable that, if there should be a duel held
to-morrow in the city of London, by every law prohibited, so many
1
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 136. Cf. Jacob's PFetf (E.E.T.S. ed.
O.S. u s , P- I 9 I ) : "rounnynges,"janglings, idle words, chidings, reprovings
. . . in processions, etc.; also Rypon in a Palm-Sunday sermon (MS. Harl.
4894, fol. 124 b, etc.)
2 i6 "AT THE CROSS"
rich men and nobles would congregate there, that there would scarcely
be room enough to hold the multitude of them? But if a procession
is arranged at London to pray for the king and the peace of the
realm, altho' the bishop may be present with the clergy, yet scarcely
do a hundred men of the populace follow him1.
Turning to Durham, we find that it is the clerical element
this time which absents itself from the sacred ceremony in the
open. The words of the sub-prior's sermon, hitherto unpub-
lished, are sufficiently vivid and interesting to justify further
quotation at some length:
And truly, in this case almost all the rectors and vicars of this
diocese are guilty of sin, for this reason. It is well known among you
that there was an ancient custom, nay rather, it is a synodal constitu-
tion, that all rectors and vicars of this diocese should come in person,
or at least send in their place some honest priest and clerk to this
monastery—as it were to their chief place of rest—at least once in the
year, namely in the week of Whitsuntide, with banners and crosses
erect, to march in procession, with a view to more devout prayer to
the Blessed Mary, Saint Oswald, and Saint Cuthbert, patrons of this
church, for the peace and tranquillity of this realm, and especially
of this our own district [huius patrie]. But now assuredly, that
devotion is well-nigh wholly swept away. Neither rectors nor vicars
come hither, as I have just said they are bound to do in person, but
send as intermediaries laymen, sometimes shameful persons [in-
honestas], with little or no devotion. And, without doubt, one is
forced to believe that the withdrawing of this devotion is the great
cause wherefore this district is infested with wars, pestilences and
other ills more than it was wont. And little wonder, surely! for these
saints—Oswald and Cuthbert—withdraw from us their wonted
suffrage. Thus it is commonly said, "Saint Cuthbert sleeps,"
because he shows forth no miracle, nor lends aid to his people, as
formerly he was wont to do. In very truth we are the cause, because
we do not lend our devotions in wonted fashion, as we ought. Let us
therefore lend to him the wonted devotions and prove that he sleeps
not, but will be ready to bring us aid even as he once was, or yet more
fully. And you, my reverend lords, who regulate this synod2, stir up,
I beseech you, the incumbents [curati] here present, and absent,
1
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 189 b: "Nonne apparet abhominabile quod si in
civitate Londonii eras fieret duellum omni jure prohibitum, tot ibi congre-
garentur divites et magnates, quod vix eorum multitudinem vix capere
posset locus? Sed si Londonii ordinetur processio ad orandum pro rege vel
pace regni, etiamsi episcopus sit ibi presens cum clero, vix sequuntur eum de
populo centum viri."
2
This is the first synodal sermon of this most interesting series.
that they be no longer forgetful of their home [cubilis], I mean, this
monastery, or of their former benefits, but do their proper duty and
service, as they are bound1.
The great and aristocratic might at least make it their excuse
that the evil behaviour of the processional crowd kept them
away. Clubs, drawn swords, blows and even bloodshed had
not been unknown at such times within the sanctuary itself2.
The "banners and uplifted Crosses" were themselves on oc-
casion little better than standards of revolt, emblems of local
jealousies and party feeling. Dr Bromyard informs us further
that for one who prays devoutly in the procession there are many
who chatter idly and offensively. For one who sings, beseeches,
blesses with devotion, there are many that laugh, scorn and curse.
Even the very crowd that may come is itself an offence to God,
because it represents a majority of the vicious and the careless,
alien to the true spirit of prayer. He would rather listen to the
pleadings of a few righteous men than this company—"Multi-
plicasti gentem; non magnificasti laeticiam."3 It is the sorrow
that is increased thereby, not the joy; for these undo the good
which the faithful few might achieve, if they were left unhindered.
Better would it be if they remained at home. Then the true
worshippers would have a chance to make their prayers heard 4.
Of the fine clothes and the pride of the ladies we may be
expected to know something by this time. There was an old
preachers' story on this topic, which, since it is to be found in
the Florarium Bartholomei of our English John of Mirfield5,
we may claim the right to repeat. A certain dame, well past
middle-age, had decked herself to excess for a procession of the
kind we are describing. As it wound its way through the narrow
mediaeval street, she in its ranks, it happened to pass the house
of a certain ecclesiastic who kept a pet monkey. It was a clerical
monkey, and therefore should have known better, except of
course that in the first place it was strictly against the rules for
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 194 b, etc.
2
Cf. disorders at a Procession, at Southwell, Reg. Zouche (in Fasti Ebor.
p. 3444), May n t h , 1348. 4
Isa. ix, 3 (quoted here by Bromyard). S.P.—Oratio.
6
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Mm. ii. 10 (Cat. No. 2305), De Indumentis.
This tale appears in another sermon encyclopaedia considered to be of English
origin, the Spec. Laic. See MS. Add. 11284, fol. 64; see also Et. de Bourbon
(Anecd. p. 229).
218 "AT THE CROSS"
such persons to keep any. However, sitting at its master's
window, it espied the old lady, and, sliding down from its perch,
snatched off her brightly-tinted wig and leapt back again. In
the merry laughter of onlookers and marching throng, in her
own utter confusion and shame, that foolish dame had her
deserts. If, immortalized by the preachers, she still lives on,
it may at least be accounted to her righteousness that she has
provided a warning to many generations of sermon-goers, if not
a little innocent amusement too. Unfortunately, however, such
warnings appear to have proved ineffective: "The women of
our time," the preacher goes on, "when they are at home with
their husbands take no trouble over their adornment, but when
they display themselves in public, they wish to go forth adorned;
—and yet they say that they adorn themselves for the benefit of their
husbands! " (ettamen dicunt quod ornant sepropter maritos suos)1.
Sadly Dr Bromyard is driven to a similar confession: "As
against one who comes and goes to church or procession chastely,
humbly and in orderly fashion, there are many, foul within, and
proud without, displaying in their garments and all things more
of pride than of humility."2 Who can wonder, then, at tem-
pests, or reverses in war? Who can be surprised that victory
comes not in France, with such treachery at home in the camp ?
Finally, there is the rank scepticism of the day to be dealt with.
Those who come to pray, frankly disbelieve in the efficacy of
the Church's prayers. The pious they deride, and wish out of
their sight for ever. "They say that never were there such evil
times nor so many tempests, as have occurred since men of
religion, and those who pray for the world were multiplied
throughout it."
The preacher whose eye is open to facts has no easy task
before him. In the very best of audiences, moreover, there will
always be those whose pleasure it is to distort the speaker's
words in order to create some new scandal for the dinner-table
or the shop. A public sermon of Bishop Brunton illustrates
how tactful the reputable preacher must be where such news
spreads like wildfire in a great city. He is discussing the pro-
cessions again: "But perchance some will say—'Rochester in-
tends to prove by his sermon that kings and nobles are obliged
1 2
Ibid. col. 4. S.P.—Orptio.
to come to procession; but for all that, before these days such
a thing was not commonly seen.' "* (Ah! Be careful! It is not
what Mr Spurgeon thinks of the Gospel narrative, that these
mischief-makers are waiting to hear; but what he thinks of the
government or the court.) " I reply—'It is not my intention to
compel anyone to come to procession, but rather to persuade
them to devotion.'" Woe to those who deal falsely with the
word of God. "Thei depravyn it, and the prechour also, and
mysreportyn it." 2 For the rest, in English towns as in Siena
or Florence, ordinary noises and disturbances of the street must
be expected to distract both preacher and congregation. Yelping
dogs will have to be driven away3. Children must be quieted.
Even a lordly prelate's discourse might suffer rude interruption
at the cross from some artificers' brawl—"in which place
because of such conflict, and the wounded fleeing thither, with
very great outcry, no little tumult and alarm" could ensue4.
Church and cemetery, chapter and " chepinge," through them
all we have followed the steps of preachers and people in our
mediaeval England. Though quite the most normal and im-
portant, yet they by no means exhaust between them the places
where sermons will be made. Sermons there will be in the
private chapels of palaces and manors, royal, ducal, episcopal.
Even so, "fr. John Dymmok, ord. pred.," like many another,
"did preach before the king in the Chapel within the Manor of
Shene at Pentecost, and receive the Royal alms of a mark."5
Sermons there will be at Westminster, when Richard II 6 or
Henry IV 7 is crowned; sermons at the opening of Parliaments8.
1
This passage occurs in two of his sermons (MS. Harl. 3760, fols. 114 b
and 189 b : "Sed aliquis forsitan dicet, 'Roffensis intendit probare per ser-
monem quod reges et proceres obligantur venire ad processionem, quod
tamen, ante haec tempora, communiter non est visum.'"
2
3
MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 157 b (Jacob's Well, unpublished part).
Cf. the Paul's Cross picture, 1616; and remarks in S. Bernardino's
preaching.
4
Thos. de Appleby, Bp. of Carlisle, preaching at Paul's Cross, 1378. See
Riley, Memorials of London, p. 415.
6
Lib. de Recept. in Ryl. Wardrobe Accts.; 13-14 Rich. II, as quoted in the
Reliquary, vol. xxii, p. 89 (Palmer): sim. at Berkhamsted Castle, 1384; etc.
6
By an unnamed prelate. See Walsingham, Hist. Angl., vol. i, p. 332.
' By Archbp. Arundel. See Twysden's Decent Scriptores (ed. 1652),
cols. 2743—62; and Dean Hook's Lives of the Archbps. vol. iv, p. 479, etc.
(Text of sermon: " Vir dominabitur populo," 1 Sam. ix, 17.)
8
Cf. Archbp. Sudbury, 13th of Oct. 1377 (see Hook, as above, vol. iv,
220 "AT THE CROSS"
A sermon at the very foot of the scaffold, indeed, in Tyburn,
long before the days of Protestant and Catholic martyrs. For
here in the year 1402, "in the sight and following of many
thousands," an aged Master of Theology, condemned to the
gallows with eight other friars for preaching treason, actually
"made a devout sermon on the text—' Into thy hands, O Lord,'
and swore by the salvation of his soul that he had committed
no crime against King Henry, devoutly commending all who
were the cause of his death."1 Against this tragic spectacle, set
now for contrast the absurd caricature of a "Boy-Bishop" in
the pulpit, on St Nicholas' Day, "preaching with such childish
terms as make the people laugh at his foolish counterfeit,"2
when, for example, they "come every Childermas daye to
Paull's churche, and hear the childe-bishoppes sermon."3 Alas!
that we lack "all the quires of sermons for the Feast of the Holy
Innocents, which in my time [i.e. c. 1300] the Bishops of the
Boys used to preach."4 Who shall now deny an element of
romance in the history of our venerable pulpit?5
On serious occasions, everything clearly depended, then as
indeed ever, within or without the sacred building, upon the
reputation and the personality of the speaker. No vulgar tricks
of oratory or personal adornment, no immensity of tradition,
form, circumstance, could hypnotize men for long, or make
what later ages delighted to call "a painful preacher," in the
p. 268). Cf. also MS. Thornton (Lincoln), version of Morte Arthure, ed.
Banks (1900), p. 18, 1. 636, etc.:
" In the palez of 3orke a parlement he haldez,
With all the perez of the rewme, prelates and other
And aftyr the prechynge in presence of lordes.... "
1
2
Eulog. Hist. (Rolls S.), vol. iii, p. 392 et seq.
Puttenham's Arte of Poesie.
3
4
Stats, of St Paul's School, 1512.
From the Will of Wm. de Tolleshunte, almoner of St Paul's, 1328. See
an interesting little pamphlet, The Boy-Bishop at Salisbury and elsewhere,
by Canon J. M. J. Fletcher (1921), to which Canon Wordsworth has kindly
drawn my attention. The author describes three late examples of the
Boy-Bishop's sermon, with further references to the subject.
6
Another curious preaching site is afforded by the case of Thos. Rich-
mond, Franciscan, who discoursed "in quadam capella de novo constructa
super pontem stagni fossae civitatis (York)... coram clero et populo in multi-
tudine copiosa" (1426; see Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 487). This is a bridge-
chapel, of course (cf. at Wakefield and Huntingdon). But where did "the
copious multitude" stand? There is also record in MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 56,
of a sermon by Archbp. Fitzralph "apud pontem" (1348).
finest sense, out of an "evil liver."1 As regards the respective
advantages of the two situations, it would seem that the amazing
irreverences of which men were capable in church, the added
splendour and attraction of the scene in the open must have
tended to equalize them from the point of view of the pulpit.
At the best of times, however, its work was never easy, or too
eagerly applauded. Of one Carmelite orator of the later four-
teenth century it is written that the people flocked to hear him
"as to a show," so great was the universal admiration he com-
manded2. The same could be said of the great clergyman from
Gloucester who, four centuries later, was to number a Chester-
field, a Garrick, and a Hume among his fascinated listeners in
their thousands on the greensward3. But mere numbers without
quality, as Bromyard rightly pointed out, do not necessarily
constitute a preacher's greatest compliment, from the spiritual
quarter. Otherwise we might all have to bow the knee to Messrs
Moody and Sankey, to the many short-lived heroes of Exeter
Hall, or the Tabernacle in Brooklyn. Where the audience is
concerned, however, the pulpit giants of modern time may surely
humble themselves at thought of these by-gone preaching scenes.
How gentle the manners, how comfortable the surroundings of
the tamed listeners of to-day!
1
Our preachers do not fail to emphasize this point themselves: cf. Brom-
yard's story (S.P.—Pred.) of the woman, who, when she had listened to a
certain preacher, whom she had known in his youth, would say to her
neighbours—•" Don't believe him, nor fear his words, for in his youth he
was a terrible liar" (maximus mentitor)! "Tales heraldis assimilantur
armorum, qui facta clamant armorum quae non faciunt. Et sunt sicut
' cymbalum tiniens, aut aes sonans,' quod extra ecclesiam sonat, et homines
ad ecclesiam vocat, et nee ecclesiam intrat, sed seipsum sonando consumit."
See also Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fols. 84, 215, etc.; and anon, on p. 7,
above. Also Walleys, below, p. 352.
2
Wm. Badby (fl. 1380), Oxf. Doctor; in MS. Harl. 3838, fol. 79 b.
3
Of George Whitefield, Garrick is reported to have said: " I would give
a 100 guineas if I could say 'Oh!' like Mr Whitefield." Chesterfield and
Hume were equally impressed. No ordinary judges surely!
PART THREE
THE SERMONS
CHAPTER VI
THE SERMON LITERATURE AND ITS TYPES
AFTER the activities of the mediaeval preachers and their
l \ . audiences have been considered, the next task is to sort
out and arrange the heterogeneous mass of special literature
created to help them. That this is not so easy as might appear,
the often arbitrary classifications of Mr J. E. Wells in his useful
manual of Middle-English works, or some editors' extrava-
gances in their prefaces to texts, can testify. Too often the cry
of originality has been raised over a phrase or a preacher which
would have been checked by any careful survey of this much-
despised class of writings. Even for so short a period as that
chosen out for our particular study of the subject, there will
have to be considered under the heading of sermon material
much that might justly seem irrelevant at first sight. Beside
the obvious variety in language and in the object of address
already suggested in previous chapters, we shall have sermons
reported at the time of delivery, sermons systematically collected
and re-edited afterwards, sermons in skeleton for later amplifica-
tion, expanded sermons, both in prose and verse, arranged to
be read aloud in their entirety. But apart from all this there
are numerous treatises and manuals to be dealt with, now a
veritable encyclopaedia of the art, now the simplest outline of
the lay-folk's faith roughly cast into didactic form, now a mere
collection of moralized stories, or an index of themes. In
external appearance alone, contrasts are not wanting. On the
one hand, a dignified and embellished folio, with flourished title-
page, former treasure, very likely, of the great library at
Durham, contains the collected orations of a learned sub-prior
in church and synod1. On the other, vernacular treatises of the
1
MS. Harl. 4894. Gasquet supplies a reading (O.E.B. 2nd ed. 1908, p. 24)
of the half obliterated title, which after treatment of the MS. he says, showed
THE SERMON LITERATURE 223
same age, often providing after all the most vivid and attractive
reading to-day, may be drab and unadorned little octavo manu-
scripts on paper, "robed in russett," as M. Jusserand would say.
The problems of language, which raised a small controversy
during last century among the French archivists concerned,
have in our case been shorn of most of their difficulties already.
M. Lecoy de la Marche's original view of the vernacular as the
invariable medium for preaching to lay-folk, and of Latin for
sermons to the clergy, monks, and scholars is clearly vindicated
in the similar literature of this country, which affords repeated
examples of both types from Anglo-Saxon times. True it is
that we shall have to make one slight alteration in adjusting
to our later centuries the summary conclusion of the Abbe
Bourgain1 who supports him, that is to say, in the case of the
nuns, who must now be transferred to the vernacular side2.
But otherwise the verdict for twelfth-century France remains
equally good for our fourteenth-century England. The real
difficulty which the learned author of Notices et Extraits de
queiques Manuscrits Latins felt in the argument of one whom
he treats somewhat caustically as "ce jeune erudit," was
occasioned by the great Latin sermon collections and manuals
issued often explicitly for the benefit of those preaching "ad
populum."3 Is it reasonable to suppose, argues M. Haureau,
that, after having been delivered originally in the vernacular,
these sermons were translated by their authors into Latin, thus
rendering them less intelligible and less handy for the average
priest who was to rely on their help for his own vernacular
addresses to precisely the same kind of audience? In reply,
La Marche and Bourgain point us to actual cases where such
translation is admitted by the compilers themselves. They go
further and adduce some important reasons for the practice.
Universality of appeal, for example, throughout clerical Christen-
dom, might thus be commanded by means of the power of
agreement with an entry in the Durham Catalogues (See Catalogi Veteres,

Surtees Soc. p. 76) of the " Sermones Mag. Roberti Rypon," thus: " Librarie
Monachorum Dunelm., cum tabula." Traces of this full title are still dis-
cernible, but Gasquet has misread "Librarie" for "de communi Libraria."
1
See La chaire frang. au xiie siecle, p. 186.
2
See below, p. 258.
3
See Hist. Lift, de la France, vol. xxvi, pp. 388-9, etc.
T H E
224 SERMON LITERATURE
"Latinity" in the middle ages, as Bourgain puts it 1. Again
the suggestion is made that, in using this language for their
manuscripts, the preachers confined them almost exclusively
to clerical readers, and thus kept them away safely from the
inquisitive eyes of the laity. Antony Meray, indeed, when
speaking of the latest pre-Reformation sermon-writers, has here
made valuable contribution to the debate. For in the Intro-
duction to his Libres Precheurs he points out how many Latin
editions of sermons full of the typical attacks on current ecclesi-
astical abuses and the general state of the Church have escaped
the expurgation which has fallen on their vernacular neighbours2.
In other words, our preacher, warned so repeatedly against
encouraging an anti-clerical temper among the lay-folk by
indiscreet revelations in the pulpit, could thus shield from the
vulgar gaze what he had written down, when out of it, for the
use of his clerical brethren before special audiences "in synodo''
or "in capitulo." How thoroughly pertinent to the situation in
England this whole question remains, even with the full tide
of the vernacular movement set in, will only become clear as
we proceed. What in fact is incomparably the greatest homiletic
production of Chaucer's era by an Englishman, was written not
in English but in Latin, and apparently never presented in the
vernacular at all. For actual proof of the width of appeal in the
case of this volume, we have only to point, in the days of the
printing press alone, to the significance of at least nine successive
editions, none of which are English, but issued abroad in places
so scattered as Basle, Liibeck, Nuremberg, Paris, Lyons, Venice
and Antwerp3.
Gasquet, rejoicing with a new enthusiasm over the re-
discovered treasure of pre-Reformation preaching, would have
us believe that his erudite fourteenth-century parson went so far
as to prepare his popular sermon in Latin 4. But this is surely as
wide of the truth as Haureau's assertion that he sometimes
1
For illustration, in the case of English authors here, we might point to
the Summa Pred., to Wycliffe's sermons (see here, on p. 239, n. 1), and to
such foreign MSS. as the fifteenth century German MS. (Add. 21429) of
Holcot's Moralitates, now in the Brit. Mus.
2
La vie au temps des Libres PrScheurs, vol. i, pp. 18-19. Geiler von
Kaiserberg is given as an illustration.
3
I.e. Bromyard's Summa Predic. cf. below p. 306, n. 7 (Destr. Vic.)
4
O.E.B. p. 204.
AND ITS TYPES 225
preached in it to the laity. At all events we can find no facts to
support the theory. Is it not possible rather to recognize the
typical order of events in such cases as the following, where the
friar Thomas Richmond of York1 exhibits at his trial the sermon
he had preached and afterwards written out with his own hand
"in quodam papyro"; or where another friar, John Russell2,
two years earlier, confesses, in a like situation, that he had " upon
Corpus Christi day, in this town of Stamford taught and openly
preached (in vulgari) 'evel et wekkedly' this errour.. .and
afterwards wrot this conclusion in Latyn, and so hit was sette
up on this churche dore"? First the sermon is prepared for
delivery in English. Then if it is to be perpetuated in writing,
it is carefully set out afresh in Latin, like the challenge to an
ecclesiastical debate or the conclusions of any thesis in the
schools3.
But, beyond surmise, there is positive evidence in our cen-
turies for the making up of the "clerical" versions in this very
fashion. The imposing series of over eighty Latin sermons by
Archbishop Richard Fitzralph * declares explicitly that in every
case these were delivered "in vulgari," with the exception of a
paltry half-dozen or so. When, again, at the request of the Tyne-
mouth monks, John Waldeby throws into book-form the dis-
courses on the Creed, "which I had preached not long ago to
1
1426. See Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p, 487.
2
At St Paul's, London, 1424. See ibid. vol. iii, p. 435. An interesting
parallel case seems to be recorded of sermons preached by John Bredon,
S.T.P., a Franciscan, in the parish church of Coventry, in 144s, involving
"offensive" opinions, which the preacher had subsequently to recant
(MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 4. 16; printed in Leland, Collectanea, vol. v,
p. 303): "Also that I in my billes that I made to be sette upon the chirche
dores in the seide cite. . .," etc. See above, pp. 77-^9. Rev. H. S. Cronin's
recent discussion of the fastening of the twelve Conclusions of the Lollards
on the doors of Westminster Hall and St Paul's Cathedral, in 1395 (see
Rogeri Dymmok Liber, Wyclif Soc. 1922, pp. xxvi—xlii) should be read in the
light of these other English examples.
3
So, too, Cruel (Geschichte der Deut. Pred.): "The Latin language there-
fore belongs here, as in all similar cases, only to the written report, not to the
public delivery." For the writing out of sermons after delivery, cf. in Bp.
Pecock's Folewer to the Donet, recently printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 164
(1924), p. 104, and the Prologues to various sermon collections, I mention,
besides that of friar Waldeby above, e.g. John Felton, Robert of Ware,
etc. For the use of Latin for this purpose (in the case of sermons preached
specifically in the vernacular) cf. again the sermons of St Bernardino (e.g.
Ferrers-Howell's Life, Chap. in).
4
MS. Lansd. 393. See above, pp. 10-15.
o IS
226 THE SERMON LITERATURE
the people in York,"1 very naturally it is in Latin that they now
make their appearance, although English must necessarily have
been the language of original delivery. In the history of this
particular work we can go actually a step further, and behold it
turned back into English again, though now in a very free and
divergent metrical edition:
Ye that have herde, I you pray
That ye wald pray specialy
ffor freer John['s] soule of Waldby,
That fast studyd day and nyght, [nyght and day
And preched it wt. full good cheer
To lered and lewed that hymn wold here.
Ther Jhu Crist graunt hym mede
In hewyn for his good dede.
Prays also wt. devocion
ffor Williamf's] soule of Nassyngton,
That gaf hym als full besyly
Night and day to grete study,
And made this tale in Ynglys tonge,
Prays for hym old and yonge2.
William, the Yorkshire notary, from the above would seem to
imagine that Waldeby actually preached his "tale" in Latin to
the unlettered in the first instance. But this would be palpably
absurd, even had we not the friar's own account of the Tyne-
mouth origin, which the other must have lacked. With the full
evidence of both versions before us, however, it is easy to see
that here is a worthy illustration of two important and dis-
tinctive classes of homiletic composition. The one, in Latin, is
restricted to the mediation of the educated "clericus," and
always characteristic of the friar. The other is issued in the ver-
nacular, and characteristic of the great Yorkshire school of
didactic writers which included hermit and secular, monk and
canon in its ranks, but not the Mendicant as a rule3. From this
conclusion there arises a fresh point which the researches of the
1
2
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 150; MS. Roy. 7. E.ii (B.M.), fol. 50, etc.
3
MS. Roy. 17. C. viii (dated 1418), fol. 335.
An exception must be made for John Lacy, who though a recluse, was
also Dominican friar (see above, Chap, in, p. 119, n. 4); also, as translators,
for one Richard Misyn (see ibid., p. 119), who translated works of Rolle
(cf. MS. Add. 37790, fol. 95: "Liber de incendio amoris Ricardi Hampole,
translatus in Anglicum, instanciis domine Margarete Heslyngton recluse, per
fratrem Ricardum Misyn, S.T.B., tune priorem Lyncoln., ordinis Carmeli-
AND ITS TYPES 227
present writer have induced him to add to the discussion, per-
haps for the first time. This writing-out of sermons and manuals
in Latin may well be an important mark of the friar's exclusive-
ness, as it certainly is of his vastly superior educational attain-
ments. It reflects the desire to keep the fruits of his own
labours to his equals if not entirely to his own orders, away from
the half-literate priest or the layman, of whose progress in
theological mysteries he became so jealous1. It may be one more
quiet thrust at his old enemies the parish clergy, for whom
others were now writing in the vernacular. Think, for example,
of the best-known authors of these innumerable little treatises
now issued in English, primarily for their use, as we shall see—
Michel, Mannyng, Gaytrige, Rolle, Nassyngton, Hilton, Myrc,
and the rest2. The Mendicants seem to be conspicuous for their
absence. Then turn to such Mendicant works as have little of
the more specialized character of Conciliar or University dis-
putations about them. The sermons, tracts, story-books of
Gorham, Holcot, Bromyard, Ringstead, Waldeby, Walleys3,
Hugh of Newcastle4, Robert of Ware5, Philip, Brackley, Spicer6,
and the throng of anonymous Dominican or Franciscan authors,
are in the official language of the Church. If translated eventu-
tarum, A.D. 1435"), and Jo. Morton, Austin friar, probable translator of
Bonaventura's Spec. Vitae Christi. As these works belong to the fifteenth
century, they suggest that here and there a friar ventured at length to follow
the popular movement.
1
Cf. Wycliffe's remarkable testimony to the friars' desire to preach in a
manner superior to that of the " sacerdos ruralis exiliter literatus " (Sermones,
vol. i, pref. p. xvii), and see further above, p. 229.
2
Of these, Michel, translator of the Ayenbite, was a monk of Canterbury
(1340); Robert Mannyng (Handlyng Synne, etc.), a Gilbertine canon (1303);
Gaytrige (see above, p. 53; below, p. 282), monk of St Mary's Abbey, York
(I 3S7); Rolle, a hermit (d. 1349); Nassyngton (Spec. Vitae, etc.), an advocate
of York (1384); Hilton, Austin canon of Thurgarton (d. 1396?); Myrc(Festiall,
etc.), an Austin canon of Lilleshall (c. 1420?). To these we may add the trans-
lators Nich. Love, Carthusian prior of Mount Grace, and another Yorkshire
monk (of Sawley), translator of the Chasteau d'Amour (see below, p. 288, n. 5),
and perhaps Jo. Walton, Austin Canon of Osney (see below, p. 291).
3
John, a Franciscan (fl. 1280), author of the Tractatus de Viciis, etc. (cf.
MS. Roy. 4. D. iv), here referred to, must not be confounded with the
Dominican, Thomas, mentioned elsewhere.
4
Franciscan author of a Liber de victoria Christi contra Antichristum
(fl. 1320) (MS. Add. 36984).
6
Franciscan author of a Rosarium of sermons on the B.V.M. (fl. c. 1280)
(MS. Grays Inn 7).
6
Spicer (or Selke?), author (Franc.) of the Fasciculus Morum, fl. c. 1320.
For full description, see A. G. Little, Studies in Engl. Franc. Hist. pp. 139—57.
15-3
ally, it is by other pens, like those of the former group, or of
Trevisa, and Chaucer1. Even friar Staunton, whoever he is, in
a world of similar treatises in the vernacular, chooses to write
thus on the Ten Commandments2, though in the most simple
and anecdotal way, in the language of his Order. Bozon, with
his moralized tales in French, seems to be almost a lonely ex-
ception; and French after all is no tongue for the common
herd, though the more educated townsmen might perhaps
read as well as speak it3.
But on the other hand, it will be retorted that Latin remains
the language of secular parsons like Pagula or Burgo, manual-
writers, even of John Felton with his ever popular "Sermones
Dominicales." The answer is that the Oculus Sacerdotis and
the Pupilla Oculi of the former are in truth much more akin to
cut-and-dried legal compendia for priests—like the "Summae
de Divinis Officiis " or the Canon-Law Books—than readers of
Cutts or Gasquet might imagine; while the perpetual Vicar of
St Mary Magdalene, Oxford, states expressly in his prologue
that his work is for the student. Further exceptions on this side,
too, we might expect. For the mere ability to write in the
language of the learned could win the esteem of men, and be
hailed as a mark of distinct superiority over the ordinary run of
parochial clergy. If our theory be correct, however, its signi-
ficance does not end here. The deadening effects of a high-and-
dry isolation upon the monastic pulpit have been noticed
already. Here there is an indication that the same danger was
threatening the friars, however much their present proud position
was due to faithful and hard-won achievements along the high-
ways of the past. For all their continuous preaching at street-
corners, they were now losing touch with the deeper religious
life and needs of the masses. The mysterious mantle of prophecy
1
Cf. the poet's own confession (explic. of the Cant. Tales) " of the transla-
cion of... .bokes of Legendes of Seintes, and 2
Omelies, and moralitee, and
devocioun" he had made. MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15.
3
Cf. below, p. 265 (Nassyngton's Spec. Vitae, and the N. Engl. Homily
Collection). MS. Bodl. 90 is said to contain sermons in French, in an English
MS. of the late 13th century, (i.e. a little earlier than Bozon's day.) Mr
Chaytor's assumption (Troubadours & Engl., p. 12, quoting P. Studer) that
the merchant's oath must necessarily have been administered to all in the
language of the written document seems to me doubtful. What about our
Latin sermon MSS. here?
AND ITS TYPES 229
received by their humble and heroic predecessors was gradually
slipping, slipping from them on to other shoulders—those of
the mystical hermit and his kind, of the Lollard, and soon of
others "smelling somewhat of the pan,"—as the most illustrious
preacher of the English Reformation was once described by
a prelate in his audience1.
One further reason suggests itself in the second half of our
period for the continued preference for Latin—a fear of the
taint of heresy. No one indeed expressed more vividly a sense
of this haughty exclusiveness of the friar and his orthodox
preaching than did the Lollard. It became one of the principal
targets of his own homiletic assault—"sith prelates as scribes,
and religious as Pharisees sayen it falleth not to hem [i.e. the
laity and simple priests] to know God's Law; for they sayen it
is so high, so subtle, so holy, that all only scribes and Pharisees
should speak of this law... .And these religious ben Pharisees,
for they be divided fro common men of living."2 "They hyden
trewht," complains another, "as seith Isaie the profite—'this
peple is of high sermone,' so that we may not undirstonde the
sleghtnes of her tong in whiche is no wisdome."3 Accordingly
in days when the little vernacular books won an evil repute, and
were cause of so much suspicion on the part of the authorities4,
small wonder that the champions of orthodoxy and status
shunned anything that savoured of the opposite camp. The very
closeness of the relations between much writing of the Northern
vernacular school and that of the Wycliffites, which often
constitutes our difficulty to-day in distinguishing what is really
orthodox from what is not5, would appear to justify such an
attitude up to the hilt.
An interesting sidelight on this situation is afforded us by one
of the rare cases in which both Latin and English versions still
survive of the same sermon. Cambridge libraries possess at
1
I.e. Latimer (by Bp. West of Ely). My theory re Mendicant sermon
literature helps to explain Little, Studies in Engl. Franc. Hist. p. 135.
2
3
MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. 60, fol. 2 b.
MS. Laing 140, Univ. Libr. Edinburgh, fol. 3 b [the glosers]. Cf.
further, Loserth's references to Wycliffe himself in Sermones J. W. (Wyclif
Soc), vol. i, p. ix, etc.
4
Cf. Amundesham, Annales (Rolls S.), vol. i, p. 232 et seq. and Wilkins,
Cone. vol. iii passim.
6
See above, p. 131, Chap, in, and pp. 292-4, in Chap. vn. below.
least three copies in manuscript of Thomas Wimbledon's
popular tirade at Paul's Cross in 1388. Of these, the two in Latin
are to be found in collections of apparently unquestioned ortho-
doxy, one containing Waldeby's well-known Treatises1. The
version in English, however (that is, the original language of
delivery), appears at the end of a volume of Lollard treatises2.
Although elsewhere3 vernacular copies can be seen in quite
unexceptionable company, the fact remains that the Latin
versions are at the least symptomatic, in this respect, of a desire
to keep inflammable material away from the people.
It might seem only natural to follow up what has been
suggested in explanation of this survival of Latin, with some
account of the renewed activity towards an English sermon
literature, from Rolle to Wycliffe. So much depends in this
case, however, upon the details of the texts concerned, that the
subject will be postponed. Until the vernacular religious
renaissance has begun in the North, about the middle of the
fourteenth century, we shall expect to find few fresh sermon
collections in Old English, after the age of Aelfric. But when
once the movement has started, in spite of this policy of the
friars, it needs little explanation. It springs naturally from
ordinances for the instruction of the more ill-equipped
preachers, like that of Archbishop Peckham, himself a friar, and
spreads to the reading layman, as, in an age of growing enlighten-
ment, it was at length bound to do. Before, however, the ques-
tion of language is finally put aside, one or two special features
call for remark. The kind of Latin itself used in the sermons
has been well described by other writers4, and the centuries
1
MSS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, and Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8.
2
MS. Sidney Sussex Coll. Camb. 74, fols. 168-79. The vernacular copy
in MS. Roy. 18. A. xvii, again, is in once-suspect Lollard company. Curiously
enough, a parallel case is afforded by a sermon of Richard Alkerton, which
appears in English along with the above, and sermons attributed to Wycliffe
himself, in MS. Add. 37677, fols. 57-61 (fragmentary); but in Latin appa-
rently in MS. Trin. Coll. Oxf. 42 (cf. Cat. Add. MSS. in B.M., 1906-10,
p. 102, and see above, p. 24).
3
Notably at the Brit. Mus. (MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 39; 18. A. xvii,
fol. 184 b ; MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 140, etc.); also Univ. Coll. Oxf. 97 (in com-
pany with Michel's Ayenbite, an Austin friar's sermon, etc., noted in Horst-
mann, vol. ii, p. 455, n.). See below, Appdx. v. Since writing the above, the
author has noticed another English version of Wimbledon at Cambridge, viz.
in MS. Corpus Christi Coll. 357. ii.
4
Cf. Bourgain (La Chairefranp. au xiie siecle), p. 193 et seq.; Lecoy de la
Marche; Hist. Lift, de la France, etc. passim.
AND ITS TYPES 231
here show little change. The non-classical constructions, the
literal transference of popular idioms of speech into the Latin,
the numbers of words of a Romance form, which seem to find
no place even in the glossary of Ducange, are all aptly illustrated
in the single case of the Summa Predicantium. As in earlier
macaronic homilies abroad, vernacular phrases and quotations
occur frequently, untranslated, in the body of the Latin text.
The sermon-compiler is recording some favourite bon-mot or
proverb of the day, some carefully chosen word, that it may
spring again to the preacher's lips at the critical moment.
Bromyard provides us with a vast number of these sayings in
French as well as English, and in respect of the latter he follows
the rule rather than the exception of his time1.
Now and then a quotation from contemporary English verse
finds its way to the end or the middle of a Latin discourse2,
thereby calling to mind, perhaps, Archbishop Stephen Langton's
still more novel use of the refrain of a popular ditty for his
theme, in an earlier century3, or St Francis' text borrowed from
the couplet of a love-song. But the quaint mixture of tongues
appears occasionally from the opposite side. An artless preacher
in the vernacular will introduce a few Latin words into the
structure of his narrative, for no apparent reason other than to
impress his audience with some high-sounding dignified syllables
in the speech of the learned4: " Hereto have we story acordynge
the wiche telleth a grett clerke: Et est Anselme in ecclesiastica
Historia, and also the maister of stories...." 5 The titles of
1
Cf. Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fols. 84 b, 92, etc.; Bp. Brunton, MS. Harl.
3760, fol. 62b ("et sic precipue hiis diebus"—"flatrie flowrith, treuthe
plourith"); MS. Add. 38819, fols. 228, 229 ("of gode 3er and of plente3"),
231, etc.; anon., MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 146 b ("now nys no
God but gold alone"), etc.; Philip. MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i, passim; Waldeby,
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fols. 173, 176 ("feynt and feeble," etc.), 179 b ;
etc., etc.; many with the much-loved alliteration.
2
3
Cf. below, p. 272, etc. (MS. Worcester Cath. Libr. F. 19, etc., etc.)
"Bele Aliz matin leva." Cf. Lecoy de la Marche, La Chaire franp.
pp. 91-3.
4
Cf. here Chaucer's Pardoner (Cant. Tales, Pardoner's Tale, Prologue,
1-344):
"And in Latyn I speke a wordes fewe,
6
To saffron with my predicacioun."
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 82 (again, fol. 119), etc.; cf. also MS. Camb.
Univ. Libr. Gg. vi. 16, fol. 40: "Quia secundum canones—there should no
creature hear this name.. .," etc.; another given below, p. 270, etc. Simi-
larly, regularly in the vernacular sermons of MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2
books comprised about all the Latin he knew outside the Offices,
no doubt! Finally, we may have even an echo of the popular
love for macaronic poetry so well exhibited in Christmas carols,
or in that scandalous little fifteenth-century satire against the
Cambridge Carmelites, beginning, "Flen, flyys, and freris,
populum Domini male caedunt!" 1 For such is suggested by
the quaint jumble of Latin and old English verse which occurs
in some versions of Watton's Speculum Christiani2, and in even
greater quantity in friar Grimston's Sermon Commonplace Book3.
What sermons, it will be asked, if any, could fairly claim to
have been set down precisely as they were delivered in the first
case? The answer is not so simple. English utterances "ad
populum " recast in Latin form are obviously out of the running;
so too are others left untranslated but reduced to skeleton out-
line, even when directions for future amplification by the
preachers using them, like those given in Wycliffe's4 homilies,
may be few and far between. Another Latin collection5 with
a uniform length of discourse agreeing with the likely require-
ments of monastic audiences for which it appears to have been
composed, might suggest itself at first sight. But when we come
suddenly upon cross-references in the text, in the manner of
Fitzralph or of the Summa Predicantium—"De hoc quere in
sermone 'Redde rationem villicationis tuae,'"6—we know that
this is the sign of a later editorial pen. Sermons again in the
popular idiom, having none of these indications, and retaining
a peculiar directness of style, may yet be no nearer the mark,
so far as we know, than any one of the several later variations
of the celebrated Festiall. Textual criticism may disclose the
earliest and purest manuscript in our possession; but how many
(cf. fol. 21: "Et est Petrus Blesensis in a sermon that he made," etc.). Cf.
also the rude copying of scholastic forms of disputation in these sermons
mentioned in Chap. vm.
1
In Reliquiae Ant. vol. i, p. 91. Mr H. B. Collins (Director of Music at
the Birmingham Oratory) tells me there are numerous Old English Christmas
Carols of this character. See also E. Rickert, Ancient English Christmas
Carols (Chatto and Windus).
2
3
Cf. MSS. Harl. 206, 2250; Roy. 8. E. v; Add. 15237, 21202, etc.
MS. Advoc. Libr. Edinburgh 18. 7. 21 passim.
4
See above, Chap, ill, p. 135. Cf. also Felton ("Note about the man in
Bristol," etc. with Gasquet's comment in O.E.B. p. 209), and Bozon's "Ici
on peut conter de. .. " (cf. P. Meyer's ed., Introd. p. x, etc.).
6 6
MS. Add. 21253. Ibid. fol. 166 b (cf. also fol. 171, etc.).
AND ITS TYPES 233
more, nearer to the original, may have been lost altogether,
leaving behind them problems of construction or of authorship
as acute perhaps as those of the Gesta Romanorum? Do they
not all belong to a day when copyists and translators dealt much
as they liked with their sources?
For practical purposes, however, the appearance of some
little remark which could only apply to one particular audience
or occasion, some special plea in an Invocation—"for the good
and virtuose prosperite and encrese of owre soveraygne here
presente,"1 for example—must be taken as adequate testimony.
Here at last survives the undoubted work of a reporter or else
of some very conscientious sermon-diarist. The same may be
said, too, of the quaint and fulsome repetitions of an anonymous
preacher in a certain Cambridge manuscript, with his "moste
worchifull ffrendys," and his homely directions in the style
of Myrc2. But these primitive collections are comparative
rarities. In one such, Thomas Looke, a self-assertive scribe,
whose frequent name in its pages we could well spare for that
of the unknown preacher himself, appears on more than one
occasion to have finished off, later, the incomplete report of the
day, by copying in the preacher's "exemplum," direct and in full,
from some Latin source book, without even troubling about a
translation to fit the rest3. A new kind of sermon macaronic, to
be sure!
The comments which give to the Fitzralph collection the
character of a personal sermon-diary put together apparently
by the preacher, were noticed in a previous chapter. Evidences,
on the other hand, of the systematic "reportatio" of sermons,
by scholars and clerics in earlier periods, on the continent, may
be taken as reasonably applicable to our own case. After all,
other University students, like those to whom the famous English
Dominican, John of St Giles, cried in his day from a Parisian
pulpit—"I say to you scholars, put these sermons in your
hearts, if not in your note-books! (in quaternis)"—must have
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 129 b; and many others here (cf. quotation
given on p. 169, above). Cf. the repeated }e, sirs (fols. 57, 142, etc.).
2
MS. Camb. Univ. Lrbr. Gg. vi. 16.
3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fols. 71 b-72, 117, 122 b, etc. Here an extra
"exemplum" is frequently given in Latin, towards the sermon's end, while
the conclusion returns to the vernacular again.
T H E
maintained the practice of note-books in Oxford and in Cam-
bridge. So the taking down of sermons in outline would soon
grow to be a popular habit elsewhere, first learnt, like so much
else in our mediaeval preaching, in the lecture-room of the
schools. However, the custom at Paris, described by Lecoy de
la Marche1, of employing special writers to report the University
sermons of its members seems to have had no place here. For,
according to an Oxford Statute of 14322, doctors and bachelors
concerned were to furnish their own copies ("veras et integras
copias"), within eight days of their delivery in the Church of
St Mary the Virgin—"ad utilitatem studentium in sacra theo-
logia, necnon quorumlibet aliorum predicare volentium saltern
graduatorum." Nevertheless, while these are busy writing out
their Latin effusions, and the occasional re-copying of older
homilies goes on from time to time in the cloister, we may yet
picture some faithful monk or clerk in a prelate's following,
busily engaged at sermon-time in monastery, church, or church-
yard, jotting down the words of his bishop or prior, with the
regularity of a private secretary. From the results of these
labours will come some at least of our more ambitious sermon
manuscripts. Others will be copies supplied by the author to
personal friends3. If they seem dry and unenlivening to us now,
may it not be sometimes because we miss many of the more
subtle touches in narrative and colour, the pointed "asides,"
the delicate amplifications, which our scribe lacked either time
or ability to preserve?
On turning to examine in detail the chief manuscript types
and classes, it will be natural to begin with what are usually
termed "Sermones de tempore" ("sive in dies Dominicos et
festivales per anni cursum ") 4 . These may be taken to represent
a model equipment for the priest of Sunday and feast-day
1
2
See La chaire franf. au moyen dge, p. 326.
See Munimenta Acad. Oxon. (Rolls S.), vol. i, p. 307. The Doctors
were preachers for special Sundays, the Bachelors were delivering Sermones
Examinatorii. See below, p. 259.
3
Cf. friar Robert of Ware, for his brother (Rosarium, MS. Grays Inn Libr. 7,
fol. 62), like the author of the Fasciculus Morum; friar John Waldeby for trie
monks of Tynemouth (see above, Chap. 11, p. 64); the author of Spec. Laic.
in Prol. (MS. Add. 17723, fol. 1); etc. And see Prologue to Spec. Sacerd.
here following, p. 244 (MS. Add. 36791). There are many others.
4
MS. Arundel 206.
AND ITS TYPES 235
1
addresses —generally an admixture of both—prepared for the
Church's preaching year, with themes drawn as a rule from the
Gospel or Epistle at Mass, or else made appropriate for the
occasion in some other way. More often than not the series
as we find it is incomplete. The compiler may well have grown
weary with such a task before the end. But it is easier to recog-
nize that in most cases, as preacher, he has had some special
preference or duty for certain seasons rather than for others.
When his collection is finally put together, he does not trouble
to fill up the gaps. It is another silent witness, perhaps, to the
fact that continuous Sunday preaching was still quite the ex-
ception, never the rule. The sub-prior, Master Rypon, thus
displays a quite disproportionate activity, for Lent2 ; while his
incomplete "de tempore" series, closing with a sermon for
Trinity Sunday, is followed up by a curious little isolated set of
six Saint's-Day homilies—three for St Mary Magdalene, and
three, as befits a monk of Durham, for the Festival of St Cuth-
bert.
No better illustration could be chosen of this particular class
as a whole than the Latin Sermones Dominicales of John Felton3.
These are fifty-eight in number, provided with short Prologue,
and comprehensive alphabetical index. For all their overloading
with quotations and authorities, "figures" and divisions, and
their abbreviated style, they formed a remarkably popular
production in their day. Another and more diminutive con-
temporary series4, covering the same ground, brings us one
stage further in the process of dry-compression, until practically
all the sixty or seventy " Narrationes " which helped to enliven
the former have now disappeared. The discourses, like those
of other little duodecimo volumes, are clearly meant to be
expanded by the preacher, as he stands, book in hand, to deliver
his address. The bare skeleton character of the work is enhanced
1
2
Cf. above, Chap. iv. Sometimes as many as five for a Sunday.
MS. Harl. 4894. Sometimes as many as eight sermons supplied for a
single occasion.
3
Some MSS. are: Harl. 861, 868, 238, 5396; Add. 20727, 22572; Corpus
Christi Coll. Camb. 360; Bodl., etc. However, Gasquet's inclusion of MS.
Harl. 5396, fols. 143-209, must now give way to Herbert's correction in his
Cat. of Romances in the Brit. Mus. vol. iii, p. 117 et seq., where authorship is
attributed to Holcot.
4
MS. Add. 21253.
still further by diagrammatic "schemata" of the sermon divi-
sions sketched out over the lower margins of the pages, such as
attain to really baffling proportions in taller manuscripts1. It
was by glancing at these marginal diagrams from time to time,
that the speaker prompted his memory as he discoursed2.
As soon as the text is given out, the preacher proceeds at
once to develope his exposition along the lines of a formal
symbolism suggested therein. This leads up to almost invariable
discussion of typical vices and virtues, and closes generally on
a note of rewards for the righteous, and penalties for the wicked.
No truckling to the pretty fancies and tastes of the audience
shows itself here in this little pulpit volume. A short marginal
"scheme" occurring in a sermon on the well-known text: "Hi,
qui in stadio currunt" 3 will illustrate "diagrams," "divisions"
and "figures," without need of further comment for the
present:
i-Lutum luxurie.
Pulvis inanis glorie.
5 impediunt cursum hominum J Spine avaritie cupiditatis
Lapides obstinationis et duritie
[Zabulum accidie4
Struggling along the heavy, lifeless course of so "painful"
a preacher with his tedious maze of tropes and allegories, we
are reminded of the prudery of a Franciscan sermon-writer
of the thirteenth century, whose dull Sermones Dominicales in
Evangelia were destined to exercise as strong an influence on the
English pulpit as on the French. Nicholas de Aquavilla5, or
"Waterton," as English moralists often prefer to call him6,
attacked " trufas et fabulas " in his sermons, warning his listeners
that the preacher's duty was to instruct, not to amuse or even
terrify. But what is far more remarkable and unusual, Fran-
1
2
Cf. Harl. 1483, etc.
Cf. in Cruel (Geschichte der Deut. Pred. § 633),3 referring to the Manuale
Curatorum of Ulrich Sargant. 1 Cor. ix, 24.
4
6
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 36 b (cf. also MS. Roy. 8. A. v, fol. n o et seq.).
Some MSS. in English Collections are: Gray's Inn Libr. 20 (xiii c ) ;
Brit. Mus. Roy. MSS. 8. F. iv and 5. F. xvii (xv c.) etc.; C.C.C. Oxon.;
Lincoln Coll. Oxon., etc.
6
Cf. Jacob's Well, E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 115, p. 168, etc. ("Secundum
Watertoun") and MS. Gray's Inn 20. This throws valuable light on Lampen's
recent discussion of the identity of "R. Middleton" (de Mediavilla), in
Archivum Franc. Hist., xviii (ii), pp. 298-300.
AND ITS TYPES 237
ciscan as he was, he did not hesitate for once to adhere rigidly
to his own principle, and exclude the stories altogether. M. Victor
le Clerc's comment, after remarking on his dulness, is quite the
best that can be said of him and his kind:" Le nombre des MSS.
atteste combien les sermons dominicaux de Nicholas d'Hacque-
ville furent goutes au xiiie et au xive siecle: on ne peut done
s'etonner de voir un copiste les honorer de cette qualification,
'valdeboni.'" 1
The interest evinced by the last-named work but one in
matters relating to the life of Religious2, and further the sub-
sequent ownership of the manuscript in question, might go
to prove that it was both used and intended for monastic
audiences. But the same cannot be said of famous collections
" de tempore " and " de sanctis," which under the somewhat droll
names of Dormi Secure and Abjiciamus et Suspendium became at
length by-words for mediocrity and uninspired traditionalism
in preaching. An English authorship has actually been claimed
for the former, that of the Carmelite Richard Maidstone, who
flourished as a prolific homilist about the year 1396. But it is
now more than probable that this and similar works had their
origin on the continent. Dormi Secure was to be a handbook
of outline sermons for the parish parsons, who thereby might
sleep out their Saturday nights in peace, in sure and certain
knowledge that a message needing no prolonged preparation
lay ready for them on the morrow3. So dreary, however, is this
once so welcome compilation, with its thirty printed editions
and more—at least fourteen of which may be found in the British
Museum alone4—that there has been manifested, since the days
of its usefulness, the keenest anxiety on the part of Franciscans
1
Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xxxi, p. 95 et seq. For further details see
Wadding, p. 262; Tanner, p. 46; Fabricius, vol. v, p. 103.
2
Cf. MS. Add. 21253, fols. 19, 22, 22 b, 39, 72: "obedire superioribus
nostris, ut quilibet religiosus. . .," etc.; 79 b, 135: "et maxime viri religi-
osi.. ."; 146: "Castellum religionis," in full.
3
" Sermones dominicales cum expositionibus evangeliorum per annum,
satis nobiles, et utiles omnibus sacerdotibus, pastoribus, et capellanis,
qui alio nomine Dormi secure, vel Dormi sine cura, sunt nuncupati, eo
quod absque magno studio faciliter possint incorporari et populo predicari
incipiunt feliciter."
4
Cf. A. G. Little in D.N.B. (under "Maidston, R."), 147s (?)-i53°;
and M. le Clerc, in Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xxv, p. 74 et seq.; Sbaraglia;
Hartsheim, J.: "comme dispensant de tout travail ceux qui pr6chent."
and others to disclaim any responsibility for it. But if the name
of a friar Minor, John of Werden (or Verdena)1, has been men-
tioned most freely in this connection, he can at least have been
only the first of a subsequent line of writers to employ the
seductive title. For not a few different collections have been
observed to make use of it, with little in common but the name
and the purpose2. The equally commonplace Abjiciamns and
Suspendium courses3 have here at least one small service to do.
Their very titles, representing the opening word of the "de
tempore " and the " de sanctis " themes respectively4, remind us
that even the choice of texts for regular seasons became stereo-
typed in due time.
Amid days of conventionalism and stagnation of mind in the
pulpits, little wonder that audiences turned to their gossip and
other diversions again, as the preacher mounted the stairs.
Where newspapers and periodicals did not exist, and the
practised memories of laymen were not infrequently exercised
in storing up sermons and other pious instruction5, they must
often have known what was coming, almost as well as the
speaker himself. It is the first Sunday in Advent. Then
' ' ' Behold thy King cometh' (Ecce Rex tuus venit)6, is your theme
for the day," echo the Fortnae Predicandi, as with one voice, and
innumerable sermon collections after them. From the text
itself the same fatal influence of the past seems to creep onward
through the discourse: the same allegorical turns of exposition,
the same " figurae " from animals or things, the same old sayings
of "the great clerks," the same anecdotes, where anecdotes are
to be found. The landscape is barren and monotonous to a
degree. He who boldly sets out to follow the dust-laden tracks
1
B. at Cologne, apparently, fl. c. 1300 (?). Or was the author another J.
de W., fl. c. 1440?
2
As witness the present author's own 15th cent. MS. Dormi Secure, which
would appear to be by Ludolph of Saxony (d. c. 1370). Le Clerc mentions
(p. 77) 1481 as the earliest dated MS. known.
3
Attributed to William of Mailli, Dominican (1294). Numerous MSS. in
England. Cf. MS. Roy. 3. A. xiii (c. 1300), etc.; MS. Bodl. 29 (fol. 168 et
seq.).
4
" Let us cast away the works of darkness " (Rom. xiii, 12), First Sunday
in Advent.
6
Cf. the interesting thirteenth century example cited in Coulton's From
St Francis to Dante, p. 302: "Learned by heart within that year 40 Sunday
gospels.. .and other extracts from sermons and prayers."
6
Matth. xxi, 5.
AND ITS TYPES 239
of the ancient preachers, will pass by these dry bones, that whiten
the road still further with their testimony to a decaying art, not
without some sign of relief. Fortunately, there are better sights
in store for him. Yet we fail to do justice even to the authors of
such tedious stuff, unless we see in their efforts a genuine desire,
like that expressed in Felton's Prologue, to serve their poorer
brethren, who especially in penurious student days "are de-
prived of a sufficiency of books." Who knows but that the
writer may have found his work wearisome, too. Often he is
little more than a mere compiler himself, and, in an age of
plagiarism wholesale, sometimes open enough to admit the
fact. His own sermons or treatises are only "ex variis diver-
sorum doctorum sermonibus collecti, et in unum compilati."
In the face of such degenerate tendencies in the pulpit of
the day, the idea of fresh "de tempore" collections, adhering
more faithfully to the plain text of Scripture, and now written
in the vernacular, might well be expected to have commended
itself to the reforming genius of Wycliffe and his party. This
idea may be said to have been fully embodied in the Reformer's
own English sermons; although his more imposing Latin series
was compiled, as befits a great schoolman, appealing to the mind
of clerical Christendom rather than to the common people, in
the language of the De civili Dominio1. John Purvey and others
eventually added further popular English contributions to the
same literature2. Our present interest lies, however, not with
these, but with some less-known vernacular sets of the period
which, while they bear no distinctive mark of heterodoxy about
them, yet show clearly the influence of the Lollard enthusiasm
for "Goddis lawe," and of the new demand for English. In
1
These Latin sermons provide a most interesting illustration of our
remarks, above, on "universality of appeal." Prof. Loserth of Cernowitz
describing their influence in Bohemia (Wyclif Soc. Sermones, vol. ii, p. xx),
says: " There (among the Hussites) they were passed from hand to hand by
the learned.. . . From the pulpits, the public mind was excited by these
sermons of Wyclif, and inflamed with hatred for many decades against the
prelates and monks. The effect of these sermons must have been the greater,
that they were taken by many for sermons of Hus, as is evident from the
marginal notes of our MS. D." (i.e. Codex pal. Vindobonensis 3928). See
further the parallels given in Loserth's preface to Wycliffe's Sermones, vol. i.
2
Cf. MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. B. 14. 50 (James' Cat. No. 333). For similar
Lollard development of the vernacular religious treatises, see in Chap, vil,
pp. 283, 291, below.
view of what has been said in modern times about the treatment
of scripture narrative in mediaeval preaching, they receive an
additional interest and importance. One of them, still "of the
dominical gospels and of other certeyn grete feastis th* ben
comynli rad thorou3 out the 3eer in holi chirche,"1 has already
furnished us with a lengthy and vivid picture of the contemporary
heretic that is anything but flattering2. Yet at the same time its
author declares unreservedly that "the vertu of doctours
techyng shuld be in the bokis of the foure evangelies," and
declaims the Gospel text as loyally as ever Wycliffe himself in
the pulpit. The elements of miracle and legend, of story-telling
from the example-books, and learned arguments from the great
clerks are here reduced to a minimum, or else disappear out of
sight altogether. Symbolic interpretation, and analogues from
nature, the latter often of a most charming and delicate kind,
survive, as with the Reformer. But, in addition, we have each
discourse opened with a brief outline of the literal Gospel
narrative for the day, reinforced later on by careful translations
of all separate texts as they occur, and generally rounded off
with some appeal for more faithful instruction along these same
lines. Other vernacular sets disclose the identical feature, where,
indeed, "These wordes of this pistell buth thus muche to dey
on Englische to 3our understondyng,"3 or "This is thelitterall
sence off the gospell off thys deye," and "undurstond qwhat
scripture seythe,"4 are no mere empty phrases, but represent
genuine attempts at their fulfilment. "Cristene men, as I have
ydo her byfore, I wole do 3k thurgh the grace of God, I wole
first telle 30W the gospel as it was red byfore 30W. After, I wole
expoune it to 30W and opene it to 30W.... " 5
A "mirour" among the Parker MSS. 6 at first sight looks like
1
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 146 b. Another copy is MS. Roy. 18. A. xvii, fols.
1-184.
2
3
See above, Chap, in, pp. 139-140.
4
MS. Bodl. 95, fol. 104. Cf. also MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 105 b, etc., etc.
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg. vi. 16, fols. 44 b and 47, etc. Cf. again
MSS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2 and A. 7. 1: "So gostly to our purpose, the
understondyng of this gospel qftyr the litterall sence [and the sayng of
docturs. . . ] , " fols. 9 b-10, etc.
6
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 175 b (an Easter sermon in Myrc's style).
6
MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 282. Other copies are MSS. Harl.
5085, Magd. Coll. Camb. 2498 and Holkham Hall. See Miss Deanesley's
Lollard Bible (Camb. Univ. Press), pp. 315-16, where she points out that the
AND ITS TYPES 241
one of the several larger English treatises which frequently
bear that name. It turns out on inspection, however, to be none
other than an interesting "de tempore" sermon-series of this
very class, concluding with simple material—"de sanctis," in
the shape of homilies "in makyng mynde of apostoles," and
"in the comune of on martir," "mani martir," and "one con-
fessour." The unknown author's attitude to Scripture is ex-
pressed in the Prologue, where his elaborate insistence on the
efficacy and authority of the divine message, however evil the
life of the priest who delivers it1, sounds like a rejoinder to the
Lollard attacks, and an echo of Myrc himself on the Sacrament:
All ne hav nou3t al holi writ, ne alle ne understonde nou3t lettrure:
swiche hereth the gospelles and redeth hit, that ne understondeth
nou3t what he saith. And for to don alle understanden hit, in
God ich dar wel taken this werk underhond, that alle may heren
opinliche what the gospel techeth hem and al he 2mai sen in this
writ that the Latin spekith and seithe suffisantliche .
Apart, however, from vernacular sermon collections which
show something of the Lollard devotion to 'naked scripture'
and contempt for the 'chronicle,' the 'comedy,' and the 'fable,'
there are others in the same tongue, of a more picturesque
character, which provided the unlettered parson with everything
needed to instruct and satisfy a popular audience along the old
lines: "Wherfore, sires myne, taketh here youre werke, occu-
pacion, and besynes, that ye mowe have ther by a more profitable
forme and better matere; that is to say, of the pronunsyng of
solempnitees and festyvall tymes, right as ye have hadde and
saide sermones in the same tymes here afore endytid to your
honde in latyn or romayne tonge."3 Whether for Saints' Days
work is based on Robert of Greatham's Mirror. When to these we have added
such further collections of vernacular (non-Lollard) sermons as I have just
indicated, however, Miss Deanesley's original "few" are found to be steadily
mounting up, and her remarks (pp. 344—5) to the effect that the English lay-
folk had no sermons in which the Sunday gospel was closely translated are
found to be untenable. The Wycliffite agitation did bear fruit in this direc-
tion. See too the quotation from Walleys below on p. 311, espec. n. 3.
1
The statement is clearly derived from Augustine, De Doctr. Christiana,
lib. iv.
2
MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 282, fol. 7. Another MS. series "de
tempore" and "de sanctis" originally belonging to Wyggeston Hosp.,
Leicester, should be noticed in The Old Service Books of the English Church,
p. 140. Cf. also MS. Bodl. 806.
3
MS. Add. 36791, fols. 2-2 b. {Speculum Sacerdotale of sermons.)
o 16
t*>-
A SERMON FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY

(from the Festiall, MS. Harl. 2403, If. 30 b)
AND ITS TYPES 243
or for the ordinary Sunday, these English homilies have all of
them one marked feature in common. They set out to give the
common people that simple instruction in points of ritual and
religious duties—the coming to Easter Communion or Lenten
shrift well prepared in mind and conscience, the proper obser-
vance of the Sunday, the meaning of the Mass, the tasks of
parents and servants, the avoidance of witchcraft and super-
stition—in short everything1 that the Church deemed needful
for the ordinary man and woman to know. When their worst
crudities and most extravagant "examples" have been duly
noted, the general verdict upon them must be one of generous
approval. In an age of wild manners, untamed passions, open
vice, it is the glory of the Catholic Church that she did clearly
set herself to redeem the peasant and the labourer from the
primitive error of their ways with direct, practical warnings and
advice, wherever such homely sermons were preached. They
must be judged in the light of what subsequent generations
have been able to accomplish towards gentler modes of life and
conduct, greater education and spiritual achievement, among
the masses. Without their quaint thunder, their homely thrusts,
their melodramatic narrations to hold the rustics' attention
to higher things, our social progress might have been even
slower.
To the modern reader, however, their greatest attraction will
lie, probably, in the naive explanations given of the various
feasts and observances of the Sacred Calendar as they occur.
Thus when "Newe-3er" day comes round, one simple homilist
tells his flock that he has found "iiii causes in special," in the
Legenda Sanctorum, why they should hold in great reverence and
worship this feast of Our Lord's Circumcision2. On Ash Wednes-
day he is busy again with the quaintest information, teeming
1
The body of instruction as outlined from previous Constitutions in such
manuals as the Cil. Oc. Sac. (MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 43 b) should be compared
with the sermons themselves.
2
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg. vi. 16, fol. 40. See also sermon for " Neweris
Day" in MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 22 et seq.; though the only reference to the day
itself seems to be in the opening sentence: " 3k we owen to hau this maidens
sone freisshe in mynd, bi cause of newnesse of this feest" (i.e. Circum-
cision). Cf. also ibid. fol. 29 b ("Candelmasse Day"). Another "New3eres
day" sermon in Myrc, Festiall, p. 44 (E.E.T.S., Ext. S. No. 96), and in MS.
Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 30 b.
16-z
T H E
with repetitions, much as John Myrc will explain in his Festiall1
the mysteries of "Teneblus," or of "Astyr-day":
Worchypull ffrendys, 3e shall East on Wedunsdaye as the com-
mendabyll constitucion off holy ffaders off holy chyrche hathe
ordenyd. It is called caput jejunii, the principall and the begynynge
off that holy ffaste that our soffereyne saveour Criste Jhu halwed in
hys manhode, quhan he fastyd... .This faste is called also Dies
cinericins, Pulver Wedunsdeye, or ellys Asche Wedunsdeye; ffor
that deye every man off goode condicions shulde dispose hym to
cum to God and holy chyrche mekely to take the halwed asches in
syne to token of grete mekeness: ffor that the mynystres of holy
cherche exorte and styrr men to mekeness, qwhen thei leyd the
halowed asches up on theyr hedys, seynge thus—Memento homo
quod cinis es, et in cinerem reverteris—"Remembyr thou man that
thou art hot erthe, and to the erthe thou shake turne a3en."2
So another explains, with regard to "The Commemoracioun of
Alle Sowles," that "the memorye of the departynge of all
Cristen Sowles ys establyssched to be solempnysed in the
cherche of Cryste on thys daye to the ende th* they maye hafe
generall ayde and comforte.... " 3 Examples could be multi-
plied with ease 4 .
It is time to turn, however, to the "de sanctis" sets, in par-
ticular. Here, in a hitherto unnoticed and unprinted Speculum
Sacerdotale of English homilies, for Festivals of Apostles and
Martyrs, the author sets forth in a Prologue the reasons for his
work:
. . . In alle the chirches of the worlde, the prestes of hem, whiche
are sette to the governaunce of the parishenes,.. .schulden comende
and prayse the solempnitees of god and of his seyntes excellentely
with all here myghtes, and the cause wherfore they ben ordeyned
openly to schewe and for to declare schortly some myracles that
perteyneth un to the festes, that the peple of God may be lyghtenyd
with, unto the knowlige of sothfastnes, and to the love therof be
inflamyd and styred. Therfore the serteyn prestes which ben dere
and famyliare un to me be fore alle other, unto you I redresse my
speche, and seeth [i.e. since] that for the instance and prayers whiche
1
E.E.T.S., Ext. S. xcvi, pp. 117 and 129. Many examples elsewhere in
this2 work.
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg. vi. 16,fol.51.
3
MS. Lansd. 379, fol. 21 b. Others in MS. Roy. 18. B. xxv, fols. 134 b
and 137.
4
Cf. e.g. MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fols. 49, i n (the "crisome," etc.); MS.
Harl. 2247, fol. 49 b ; MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 84 b, 90 b ; etc., etc.
AND ITS TYPES 245
that ye have makyd un to me for this present werke, I have here dis-
posyd and writen aftur my sympilnes of the solempnytees of alle
seyntes, the whiche schulden worshipfully eche Sonneday be schewid
un to youre peple.... x
The Festiall of John Myrc2, from its printed editions, both in
earlier and modern times, has almost come to be looked upon by
some as comprising everything characteristic of mediaeval
preaching as a whole. In reality, of course, it is but the out-
standing example of the popular festival sermon-book. To
compare it to the English sermon collections recently men-
tioned, is but to compare the Blickling homilies of the tenth
century to the homilies of Aelfric over again. One need not
turn many pages of the Austin Canon to discover the secret of
his vast popularity five centuries later. A description once
given of the Blickling homilies themselves fits equally well in
respect of his work:—"The festival group with its fantastic in-
cidents indicates the vogue of narrative sermons based on the
lives of holy men: it also shows lack of restraint on the part of
the preachers, and the marvellous credulity of contemporary
audiences."3 With Myrc the text of canonical scriptures would
seem almost out of favour. He revels in the most fanciful and
impossible anecdotes about sacred characters; he is fascinated
irresistibly by the lurid and the painful; he seems to offer his
listeners little short of a new superstition and wizardry blessed
by the Church, in place of the old forbidden paganisms to
which they still cling so lovingly. In a word we feel transported
back again, at times, with all the suddenness of one of his
favourite "steyngs up" (like the Arabian traveller on the magic
carpet who actually figures in the Gesta Romanorum*), to the
ages when Egyptian Isis first became a Christian Virgin Mary,
or the Pantheon at Rome, rehallowed "in the honoure of oure
lady, Saynt Marye and all the Martyrs" became christened as
Sancta Maria Rotunda.5 Are we not given in the Festiall a
1
2
MS. Add. 36791, fols. 1 b-2.
E.E.T.S., Ext. S. No. 96. To Dr Erbe's six MSS. there must be added,
amongst others, at Oxford, Bodl. MS. Rawl. A. 381 (wrongly catalogued as
Disciplina Simplicium) and MS. Hatton 96; at the Brit. Mus.: MSS. Roy.
18. B. xxv, and 17. C. xvii.
3
J. A. Mosher, The Exemplum in England, p. 28.
4
E.E.T.S., Ext. S. No. 33, p. 181 et seq.: "a rialle clothe "
5
I have deliberately selected these two pagan creations, because they
whole sermon on the death of Nero, full of the most unsavoury
matter, in between the Feast of the Blessed Apostles Peter and
Paul, and the Translation of St Thomas1! Yet the extra-
vagances of pardoner and "jesting" friar, along with the sub-
sequent complaints of the Reformers, ought to have prepared
us for such an apparition, no worse than some of the original
monstrosities of the Exemplaria themselves, behind their more
sombre veil of Latin. A "de sanctis" collection of this kind is
valuable just because it reveals how, in this particular instance,
the sober author of the Manuale, set free, as it were, from the
constraint of quasi-legal programmes of instruction for preachers,
and stimulated by the popular passion, could indulge in the
marvels and even some of the indecencies of the travelling enter-
tainer. It is the stern Cromwell of the "de modo inquirendi de
vii peccatis mortalibus,"2 if you will, unbending at his ease,
astride a pulpit instead of a table, to "jest" in homely fashion
with his fellows. From the side of the mediaeval audiences, it
is eloquent of the ineradicable popular love of saints and saint-
lore. For the Sermo de Sancto is here one with the rejoicing of
the patronal festival, the gay procession of the relics, the
brilliant shrines, the pilgrimages, the guardian spirits of the air,
or the great miracle-collections of a Gautier de Coinci.
Nevertheless, if it were not for a certain genuine though
morbid zeal that peeps out here and there between the legs of
devils, or the flames of an unending hell, we might find it hard
to forgive the Shropshire canon, for all his entertainment. In
fairness to him, and in spite of our knowledge of the "risus et
cachinnationes " which greeted even the very solemn thunder
of the preachers on occasion, the possibility of a complete
though credulous faith in his own legends and absurdities on
happen to find curious mention in our sermon literature—of the style and
period of0 Myrc. For the first, see MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 172: " Austinus,
libro 19 , cap. 4, seth that men of Egipte worshipped a woman for a godesse
whos name was Ysys.. . . " For the second, MS. Lansd. 379, fol. 18 (Myrc?
as in the Festiall), in a sermon "in die Omnium Sanctorum" ("when the
Romayns reseyvyd Crystyn feythe. . . "). Also in Bromyard, S.P.—Dedicatio.
(The vernacular preacher carefully translates the new title for his folk, thus:
" that ys, ' Maria, holy, the rounde!'")
1
E.E.T.S., Ext. S. No. 96, p. 191: "De narratio de Morte Neronis
Sermo."
2
Instructions for Parish Priests (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 31, p. 33, etc.), by the
same author; see below, p. 297.
AND ITS TYPES 247
the part of the author must always be admitted. His mind
was obviously steeped in the crude realism of mural paintings
and carved grotesques that everywhere adorned the sacred
places; although, on the other hand, something a little superior
to such primitive naivete might well be expected of an Austin
canon, who became prior in his day, with the ability both to
read and to write treatises in Latin1. Yet in spite of an orthodox
Chaucer, a Lollard Oldcastle, the massive University Brom-
yards of the same generation warn us now and then in their own
simplicities not to expect too much from those who perforce
lacked the more independent and matter-of-fact mentality of
the educated laymen. So much, then, for the element in sermon
books of what the English Reformer meant perhaps by the
"drowsye dreams and idle imaginacions of Antichriste."2 It
should be clear that in this literature, as prepared for the Sunday
and Saint's-Day preaching to popular audiences, there are
already present a good many of the leading features that will
attract our attention in the rest.
We are following what is actually a contemporary, course,
when passing next, in our survey, from the previous group, to
the " Sermones ad Status," and the special occasions of preaching
which found a place in the last chapter. In an Ars Predicandi
attributed to Ranulf Higden3, monastic author of the famous
Polychronicon, a discussion on the proper choice of sermon
themes leads up to the following three-fold division: "Sermo
dominicalis, sermo festivalis, et sermo ad diversos status homi-
num, sive ad diversa negocia rerum."4 Immediately after,
there follows the programme of the "negocia rerum " in question
—visitations, elections, synods, processions and funerals—a
queer medley perhaps, but one that corresponds most admirably
with our sketches of the preaching scene. Sermons which bear
specific evidence that they were intended for such times and
audiences, will require a little more searching after than the
previous. But, on the other hand, the strong family likeness,
1
In addition to the fact of his own Latin Manuale Sacerdotum, he shows
acquaintance with the usual fathers, Augustine, Gregory, Bede, etc., though
he quotes them, no doubt, merely from other hand-books, and excerpts, at
second-hand.
2
Becon's Supplicacyon (Parker Soc).
3 4
MS.Bodl. 5. Ibid. fol. s b .
that generally pervades each group, makes any exhaustive search
superfluous for such a purpose as the present. It tells us that
when once we are acquainted with two or three, we may con-
sider that we are acquainted with all. A certain conventionality
indeed of topic and treatment has almost a right to be expected
at visitation, for example, where the address is the prelude to
business of a regularly recurrent sort. The thoughts of all
present in the church or chapter-house flow in one particular
direction. The speaker himself is drawn into the same stream.
It is his task to prepare minds and stir hearts again to combat
the old evils, to revive the old courage and open vision towards
duly authorized reforms. If he deals only with side-issues, or
delivers a pretty gospel exposition that is beside the point, he
will be little better than a rock of offence or an eddy in the
current. Mediaeval preachers at synods and visitations would
seem to be singularly free from such faults. Their very texts
still sound quaintly apposite. The freedom and violence of
their denunciations and exposures startle us, and as a rule not
a single anecdote relieves the sternness and the directness of
the appeal. When Bishop Brunton holds a visitation of clergy
in his cathedral church at Rochester, his chosen theme is
"Appropinquaverunt visitationes urbis." 1 At another time it
is the formidable "Visitabo in virga."2 The regularity with
which the same topic came to be used here, as at the special
festivals, must have tended to introduce the same kind of mono-
tony into the proceedings, even when it was all "very elegantly
delivered in the Latin tongue." "Vide et visita vineam istam,"
an ever-popular example, will reappear now in a sermon
manuscript of the thirteenth century3, now in the visitation
records of an Episcopal Register for the year 14384. As for the
violence, it is sufficient to say that no less a subject of
discourse than the famous "Devil's Letter" itself—according
to one version of the story—was thrust by the Prince of
Darkness into a preacher's hand, as he made his way to the
synod of clergy where he was due to deliver the opening
1
Part of Ezech.ix, i. Harl. 3760, fol. 51: "Sermo 23US ad clerum in visita-
tione apud Roff."
2
Ps. lxxxix, 32. Ibid. fol. 205: "Sermo 75 in visitatione."
3
MS. Roy. 8. F. ix.
4
Line. Dioc. Reg. vol. xxiv, p. 10.
AND ITS TYPES 249
sermon: "The Princes of Darkness to the Prelates of the
Church send greeting!"1
Two further distinctions require to be made in this category
of addresses before we proceed, namely, between utterances
directed to the lower clergy, and those intended chiefly for the
ears of prelates and superiors. A favourite burden of the first
group indicated is the plea for greater purity in life and example,
and an end to the appalling current immoralities of the priest-
hood, couched usually in the blazing, indignant words of St Ber-
nard. Higden suggests characteristically in his guide-book,
"Mundamini qui fertis vasa Domini" 2 for a model text for the
occasion. He knows, doubtless, how swiftly the storm can break
then in all its fury on the tonsured heads. " Sicut populus, sic
sacerdos." To speak of the rating of schoolboys in such a
case would be almost to make a frivolous comparison. The
lives of the clergy are declared to be the scandal of Christendom,
and a leading cause of the people's ruin: divine punishment
hangs over the nation for the vices of both! 3 Then the long and
oft-repeated procession of clerical sins is made to repass, the
vanities and irregularities in dress, the absenteeism, the pro-
fanity, the lust, the worldly covetousness and occupations, the
illegitimate offspring, the horses, hawks, hounds, huntings,
drinkings, gamblings, buyings and sellings, and what not.
"The layman would not dare to spend his goods and his
time as do the ecclesiastics on the lusts of the flesh and the
vanities of the world!" 4 Another passage from the synodal
sermon in the Oxford Manuscript of the Franciscan Nicholas
Philip will illustrate the kind of language that could be em-
ployed, although by no means the worst in this particular tirade,
be it noted. The preacher has chosen a typical theme5—" Sacer-
1
MS. Harl. 268, fol. 10 b: " . . . Demon obviavit ei, cui dixit,' Quo vadis?'
Dixit sacerdos, 'Ad sinodum, ut ibi predicem.' Dixit Demon, 'Dabo tibi
sermonem bonum quern dices in sinodo,' et tradidit in cedula.. . . " See also
Haureau, Quelques MSS.... vol. iii, p. 120, Contes Mor. de N. Bozon
(ed. Meyer), p. 269, and Coulton, 2From St Francis to Dante, 2nd ed.
p. 398, n. 8. Isaiah Iii, 11. MS. Bodl. 5. fol. 6.
3
See above, p. 35; also Philip, MS. Bodl. Lat. Th. d. i, fol. 87 et seq.;
MS. C.C.C. Camb. 282, fol. 4; Bromyard; Rypon, MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 194,
etc. (pena imminens propter peccata sacerdotum et populi).
4
Philip, ibid.; cf. Rypon:—" Non est genus peccati ins populo quin tale
vel pejus exercetur in clero." Exod. xix, 22.
dotes sanctificentur." After quoting from the book of Joel
(ii, 17): "Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar,
saying ' Spare, spare thy people, O Lord!'" he goes on:
But where, I ask, will you find many of the priests of to-day?
Think you, mourning between the porch and the altar? Assuredly, I
fear, in no wise [minime], but rather playing lasciviously around the
prostitute and the brothel-house: nor by any means praying in the
choir, but in truth wandering about the market-place; nor in the
sanctuary, the temple of God, but rather in the tavern and the ale-
house, where sometimes they imbibe so much that they can say
neither vespers, nor matins properly1.
Are we really to believe that English clergy listened regularly
to such indictments from the lips of friar and monk? There
seems to be no avoiding such a conclusion; and the fact that
they were prepared to do so may well be in itself an argument
for the ultimate truth of the charges. Master Rypon's eight
synodal sermons at Durham, quite the most striking of the
period so far disclosed, have already supplied us in an earlier
chapter with much light on the curatus as a preacher. Each text
in the series here is drawn from our Lord's Commission to the
Seventy, according to the account in the third Gospel2, and the
whole is made to serve as the basis of a tremendous appeal for
faithful parish preaching, and a judgement on the current
apathy and ignorance. But what is still more to the point, the
Benedictine sub-prior actually anticipates, in one of them3, the
hostility of many in his clerical audiences, much as we have seen
him do with regard to the indignant layman:
If a religious possessioner preaches that word of truth, many will
at once reply: " It is a shameful mockery [turpis est derisio] that this
monk or canon should rebuke us thus! A single one of us has a
better right to expend money than half his house. He thinks more
of his goods than of his Order; and if he happened to know how to
reckon correctly, or by what title he keeps his possessions, he would
discover, perchance, that he owned scarcely three-pence on a just
claim." Another will say: "Lo! that monk reproves us! There are
none who live worse lives than monks and canons, because they do
nothing that they are held to do!"4
1
" With lips that have just kissed their mistresses, they kiss the Son of
Mary. With hands that have embraced them they turn to embrace Jesus on
2 3
the altar. . ." Luke x, 1-7. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 161 et seq.
4
Cf. also ibid, later: "Ista predicari murmurant moderni curati quam-
plures!"
AND ITS TYPES 251
In spite of this interesting and forcible comment, however,
one alternative explanation of the state of affairs in these synods
might be offered. Evidence there is in plenty that the knowledge
of Latin possessed by even the average priest would hardly
enable him to follow the intricacies of a Latin oration with any
ease. Are we to believe, then, that, after all, little attention was
paid to such indictments? The more ignorant among the par-
sons, who, as likely as not, would be the more worldly, too, and
therefore the most guilty, sat heedless and unmoved while the
storm lasted. The rest took it all much as an ordinary matter
of course, in keeping with the general formalism and routine in
organized religion, especially in the preaching "ad cleros" of
the age. The very preacher himself was only fulfilling the duty
which was there and then expected of him, and he might know
the futility of his efforts, as well as a Brunton or a Bromyard.
Familiarity, alas! still breeds inattention if not contempt as much
around the pulpit as elsewhere. Had not these heard the same
old denunciations of Bernard and the others, times without
number, of which no manuscript record greets us to-day? The
very fact of this continual haranguing in borrowed words,
however authoritative they might be, would of itself tend to
reduce the sting of the reprimand, even if once calculated to
reinforce it. "Habent.. .aures ad audiendum, et non audiunt;
quia domus exasperans est!" 1 As for that earnest monk,
master Rypon, he at least was not incapable of pleading, at
synod, in a more winsome and attractive tone2 :
You priests, therefore, "tarrying in the same house"3 of this
church, beseech more devoutly, I beg of you, the Lord of the harvest,
that is, Christ,.. .to send preachers into his harvest4, that is, to send
forth among the people of this church such preachers, I say, or
labourers, as, in the words of Gorham, shall seek principally labour
not leisure, burdens not honours, souls not tithes [opus non otium,
onus non honores, animas non decimas];—for such men, I say,
make your prayer....
1
Ezech. xii, 2. Bede's Epistle to Egbert (cf. Browne, p. 279, etc.) gives a
similar impression, I think, that this episcopal and clerical denunciation is
mainly a tradition to be maintained.
2
3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 199.
4
He refers to Luke x, 7; his text.
Thus used also by Odo of Cheriton, in the Prologue to his Fabulae.
See Hervieux, Fabul. hat. vol. iv, p. 174.
"All prelates of the Church, greater as well as lesser, are
guardians,"1 begins a conciliar preacher. The task of illustrating
the exhortations to prelates is a comparatively easy one. Two
favourite "figures," borrowed from Scripture, frequently set
forth for their benefit the contemporary ideal of this guardian-
ship. At least as far back as a papal legate's sermon before a
council in St Paul's, at London, in 1237, we find the faithful
prelates compared to the Beasts of the Apocalypse, "full of eyes
before and behind," ever watchful alike in things temporal and
things spiritual2. In an anonymous manuscript sermon of the
early fourteenth century, now in the library of Gray's Inn, which
the present writer has traced through the pages of Haureau to
Jacques de Lausanne, preaching "in capitulo," at Reims in
1307, they are identified with the Christmas shepherds "keeping
watch over their flocks by night."3 Both are the favourite
analogues for such occasions. Archbishop Fitzralph combines
these images, and adds a third, in a curious little sermon outline
of only fourteen lines which stands at the head of his collected
homilies:
Prelates, or whoever have the spiritual care of others, in holy
scripture are called sometimes "eyes," sometimes "shepherds,"
sometimes " mediators." The reason is that they are the eyes of the
mystical Body of Christ.... Because you are eyes, behold your flocks,
visiting them with the greater solicitude... . Because you are shep-
herds, keep watch over your sheep, the more prudently guarding
them... .Because you are mediators, pray, making peace the more
devoutly with God and man....*
Before a Provincial Council held at Drogheda in 13505, he
developes the second figure of the shepherds at greater length,
according to a narrative in the book of Genesis6. Bishop Brunton,
in his turn, shows what excellent pungent use can be made
1
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 12. iii., fols. 12 a—13 b. Text, " Super Muros tuos
. . 2.constitui custodes," Isa. Ixii, 6.
Ottobon in M. Paris, Chron. Majora (Rolls S.) Text from Rev. iv, 6;
cf. also MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 206. MS. Roy. 7. E. ii, fol. 70 (Waldeby).
3
MS. Gray's Inn. Libr. 12, fol. 13. See Haureau, QuelquesMSS. . ..vol. iii,
pp. 118—21. It is worth noting that the Gray's Inn MS. in question once be-
longed to the Franciscan Convent Library at Chester. MSS. abroad are
Bibl. Nat. Paris, Nos. 18181 and 14799; Imper. Libr. Vienna, 631.
4
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 11 b. Text: "Videte, vigilate, et orate," Mark
xiii, 33-
5 6
Ibid. fol. 62 b et seq. Gen. xlvii, 3. (His text.)
AND I T S TYPES 253
of each detail in the Gospel Nativity scene 1 . " T h e r e were
shepherds in that same region, keeping watch over their flocks,"
he quotes (Luke ii, 8).
"Shepherds they were, not hirelings," he continues, "to whom the
sheep do not belong2; nor were they thieves and robbers, entering
not by the door but by some other way—some by deceitfulness,
like the crafty, some by influence, like the unfit of noble birth, some
by worldly wisdom, like the ambitious. But they were shepherds
feeding their flocks with the word of instruction [on fol. 60, 'preach-
ing'], by example of life, and temporal support. 'In that same
region.'3 He [i.e. the evangelist] does not say 'in a distant place,'
where they could not exercise their pastoral office effectually. He
does not say 'in the courts of princes and noblemen,' for prelates
at court do not usually visit their flocks, except in the person of the
sheep-shearers."
"Keeping watch," the Evangelist continues. Yes, indeed!—
Not as the voluptuous keep watch over their delicacies, not as the
lecherous keep watch over their filthy lusts, not as the ambitious
keep watch over the gathering together of their riches, not as the
hypocrites keep watch to cultivate the praises of men, not as the vain
keep watch, in huntings, dances, wrestlings and other excesses.
A relentless sermon this, for a prelate to make to his fellow-
prelates ! Bitter, no doubt, for the conscience-smitten were the
stinging blows of that episcopal lash as wielded in Bishop
Brunton's pulpit. M . Haureau has a comment on the sermon of
friar Jacques de Lausanne aforementioned, to the effect that
these tirades against episcopal vice were characteristic of hostile
Mendicant preaching in the chapter-houses, "behind closed
doors." Such may well apply in this country to the case of
Philip, the Franciscan, or of Bromyard, the Dominican. But
however true here, or at Reims in 1307, it has certainly no place
where, as at Rochester, it is a bishop who so fiercely denounces
his own kind.
From the heat and condemnations of clerical assemblies, we
think to turn now to the comparative placidity of the cloister.
1
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 191 et seq. This exposition is repeated again with
only the slightest verbal alteration in another sermon, fol. 60.
2
Cf. here the "fol. 60" version: "Pastores erant, non mercenarii qui ser-
viunt ecclesiis pro propriis mercedibus et emolumentis, et non curant de
animabus, et ideo tanquam fures sunt et latrones.. . ."
3
Fol. 60: "in hac auctoritate tangitur curatorum habitacio."
Do not the preachers themselves love to speak of its inmates as
dwellers in a peaceful vineyard? "Operarii et cultores istius
vineae sunt domus Israel, i.e. viri claustrales, contemplativi et
videntes Deum per veram fidem et per veram contemplatio-
nem." 1 This may be true enough; but at the same time we must
not forget that for the monk too there was the stern message of
the visitation sermon. An interesting specimen in a fifteenth-
century manuscript, apparently once connected with the priory
of Ely2, sets out in its opening lines a threefold conception of
the task in hand: "Ponam visitationem tuam pacem"3 (Isaiah
lx, 17). "My beloved brethren, a visitation is ordained for a
threefold purpose—that delinquents may be recovered from
their sin, that the proficient may be encouraged in their good
work, and that those who dwell together may be kept in rightful
order." These points then furnish the speaker with the three
"divisiones" of his discourse. Bishop Brunton's "Sermo ad
religiosos,"4 however, for once forgets the delinquents alto-
gether, and, in its rejoicing over an act of virtue, employs a
congratulatory tone together with a theme in the major key,
which would appear to have been much in favour with monastic
audiences5. The special cause of this outburst is explained in the
sermon itself:
" The regular profession of true obedience," says the preacher, " is
of such efficacy and power that it renders the man of religion as free
as a little child at baptism from the stain of punishment and guilt.
That unity of obedience and a pure conscience abounded in special
degree among you, my brethren and friends, when your church was
lately left destitute of the solace of a shepherd, and you did not
decline to the right hand of favour, to elect him who if he had been
1
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 39. Cf. the frequent texts: " Visita vineam istam"
(Ps. lxxx, 14) as above, p. 248.
2
MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 357, fol. 125 et seq.: " Amantissimi
fratres mei, ratione triplici visitacio ordinatur, ut delinquentes a suo scelere
retrahantur, ut proficientes in bono opere foveantur, et ut conviventes in
debito ordine custodiantur." Others in MS. Roy. 7. A. viii, fols. 310 b-335.
3
I find this same text recorded of a visitation sermon at Lincoln, preached
by Mag. Thos. Duffeld, 1439; see above, p. 149, n. 5.
4
5
" Ecce quam bonum et quam jucundum est habitare fratres in unitate"
(Ps. cxxxiii, 1); cf. also in MSS. Roy. 3. A. x, fol. 91, and 5. E. vii, fol. 100
(two thirteenth-century English Monastic sermon series); 4. B. x, fol. 48 b
("Sermo ad claustrales," early 13th cent.); MS. Harl. 52, fol. 37 b (a Sermo
Brevis, in an English Monastic MS.).
AND ITS TYPES 255
elected, would not have looked upon you personally. Nor did you
decline to the left hand of fear, by reason of the King's Letters sent
to you, to the end that you should elect him whom you knew to be a
man of not unstained reputation1. But rightly 'walking in the way,'
you elected as your prior a learned man and one circumspect in
things temporal; on account of which happy deed I shall love you
the more eagerly, and deal with you the more gently, for the rest of
my life. And there is good reason: for by this election you have kept
your good name unspotted as much with regard to the world and
your own conscience, as to God Himself. So that I may justly com-
pare you to those kine [illis vaccis!] that went direct along the high-
way, bearing the ark,' and turned not aside to the right hand or to the
left.'"2
All this and much else in the same quaint strain is pleasant
reading enough. But unfortunately such happy little incidents
in the literature are as rare as the genius of Brunton himself.
The dullness as well as the scarceness of the monastic sermon
of the period has already been noted elsewhere; and, so far as
we can judge from what remains, it is a pulpit that suggests
something of cloister stagnation, as well as cloister calm. The
word " exemplum " is probably still associated in most minds to-
day with the literary activity of monks. Yet only fifteen exempla
are tabulated for all the four hundred pages in modern reckon-
ing, of Rypon's substantial Folio; and other monastic sermon
compilations appear to tell the same tale, in spite of the early
example set by our English Odo of Cheriton. It is the friar,
indeed, who had actually bought up that market. On the other
hand, the very convent library which presented the preacher
with so much patristic and illustrative material ready to hand,
may also explain, of course, why it became unnecessary to
commit to parchment again the old narrations along with the
new sermon. " Exemplaria," "Bestiaria," "Lapidaria," and
the rest were to be found in the cloister book-presses, not a
stone's throw from the place of declamation. Perhaps, after all,
there is a still better reason in support of the theory that in
convent preachings "exempla" were practically never used at
all. The brethren had quite enough of them out of the pulpit,
as it was, in the evening glow of the "calefactorium," that
1
"et disparis religionis" is added in the margin.
2
See 1 Sam. vi, 12.
ancient manufactory of " gestes " and fables, and friendly gossip.
Their secrets were out; and the little points and conclusions
of the stories that were wont to arrest men's attention in church
were here common property already. However, if anecdotes
are scarce, " similitudines " abound1. Whether it be actually the
work of Dominican friar or monk, a Cambridge manuscript
sermon-book2, containing at least two addresses or postills
labelled definitely "ad claustrales,"3 presents a whole series of
these expanded "figures," apart from the ordinary themes, and
apparently complete in themselves. They compare the monk or
his vocation, amongst other things, to fire, money, a tree, a
gardener, and a draught of medicine! Besides "figures" and a
typical "Consolatio religiosorum,"4 the reader is supplied
further with useful illustrations in outline of the kind of topic
which would make special appeal to the monastic mind, "on
the spiritual sacrifice of the monk," on his tonsure as a crown,
on the familiar vices and virtues of cloister life. Here is " Accidia
in genere," and that "Presumptio" which so often marks the
reaction of some straitened and aggravated spirit in the cell.
Among ideals of the straitened, "the curbing of desire," "the
abnegation of one's own will," "fasting and abstinence," and
others tell a similar tale, well summed up in a further heading
of this same collection, " Admonitio ad fugam mundi."5 Other
homilies elsewhere of similar appearance and character remind
us further, with a detailed list of no less than "ten mortal sins
which often beset men of religion" ("peccata mortalia, quae
saepe occupant homines religiosos"),6 that monk as well as
curate requires sometimes the note of solemn warning from
his preachers.
1
With this should be compared an interesting " Similitudinarium" by
Wm. de Montibus [du Mont, of Leicester], in MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 13. ii
(14th cent.): " ad declarandum in sermone quocunque propositorum similitu-
dines," probably from a Franciscan Convent Library.
2
3
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233.
Another Sermo ad claustrales in MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 14, fols. 106 a—
107 b (and Roy. 4. B. x, fol. 48); and a Sermo ad religiosos appears in the early
fourteenth century MS. Arundel 206, fol. 65. Also Sermones ad contempla-
tivos in a fourteenth-century (Engl.) MS. in the Univ. Libr. Edinburgh
(MS. Db. iv. 17, fols. 111-115 b).
4
6
Ibid. (Caius Coll. Camb. 233), fol. 131 b.
Ibid. fols. 108 b-109.
6
Cf. MS. Add. 21253, fol. 146 et seq.
AND ITS TYPES 257
In happier strain, and no less suggestive of the peculiar
psychology of the convent, is the extraordinary warmth and
delight manifested in frequent sermons on Our Lady, and indeed
on the female saints generally. We never needed a monastic
preacher, it is true, to tell us how fierce and relentless could
be the battle there in the heart of the faithful to preserve un-
harmed their original vow of a perpetual chastity. Yet the
annals of the cloister, too, confirming the view of common-
sense, are full of such testimonies. So, for that same privileged
spokesman there lay an unparalleled opportunity of bringing
with his customary praise of the state of virginity, and its
"hundred-fold," some gentler and less formal word of consola-
tion into the pulpit. If, like that tempted clerk of Rome in the
sermon-story1, his audience might behold the radiant Queen of
Heaven, as in a vision, coming to claim them in that very church,
surely, as with him, their trials would be at an end, and their
compensation full. "Nunc autem, fratres karissimi, semper
tali serviamus reginae, quae nunquam dereliquit sperantes in
se!" 2 In like fashion the penitent Mary Magdalene becomes
an ever welcome subject of discourse. A homilist of our period,
for example, who introduces her into an Easter sermon on " the
three Maries,"3 applies her discovery of Christ in the house of
Symon to the case of men of religion, "bewailing their own sins
in the cloister."4
That dwellers in the friaries as well as in the houses of older
Orders looked for similar discourses from their distinguished
visitors, there can be little doubt. Brunton5, who like Arch-
bishop Fitzralph6 again, is a special preacher at the Carmelites
on the Feast of the Annunciation, takes for his theme the'' Nomen
1
This actually occurs in a monastic sermon, for a feast of the B.V.M. in
an early 15th cent. English MS., Add. 37787, fol. 27 b ; cf. MSS. Harl. 2851,
fol.2 87 b and Add. 11579, fol. 11 (both fourteenth century).
Ibid. (MS. Add. 37787). This early 15th cent. MS, promises us great
things: " Hie incipiunt sermones anni festivitatum," but only one appears (for
Advent)!
3
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 79 b. Another sermon on the three Marys, for
Easter Day, this time in the vernacular, may be found in MS. Roy. 18. B.
xxiii, fol. 97 b et seq.
4
Ibid. fol. 22 b. Cf. also Rypon's three sermons on the Magdalene in
MS. Harl. 4894; and several in Brunton.
6
6
Drogheda, 1349. M S . Lansd. 393, fol. 58. (Text: " Ave Maria.")
o 17
Virginis Maria" of St Luke1, which a Franciscan, brother
Robert of Ware, had once used for the opening text of his
Rosarium of twenty-five sermons on the Blessed Virgin2, penned
in an earlier age of enthusiastic devotion to her memory and her
miracles. This was a cult well suited to blossom continually in
all such "gardens of holy religious orders."3 Would that St
Catherine of Siena, Italian contemporary of our good Bishop of
Rochester, who uses the phrase4, had not been compelled to tell
so sorry a tale of some of them! Sermons at the election of
abbot or prior gave the preacher his opportunity to hold up
afresh before his brethren a picture of the true ideal of monastic
manhood. "Eligite ex vobis virum!" 5 An unknown Abbot of
Dore in Herefordshire, probably of the early fourteenth cen-
tury, singles out, for his topic, the virtue of humility, as that
which is the most desirable of all in one about to be chosen for
such an office. "Ideo licet in viro ecclesiae Dei preficiendo
vigere debeant omnia virtutum genera, in eo tamen maxime
humilitas est querenda."6 Nor is there lacking a real significance
in his emphasis; for it was an age by no means innocent of the
sumptuous prelate riding to hounds or to court from his own
convent-gate, with the air and circumstance of a Wolsey.
A word must be added to this section with regard to preach-
ings in the nunnery. Judging from the language in which
official correspondence was usually carried on with the sister-
hood, we may believe that religious instruction was often given
to them in French7, save when some special occasion which
brought laity from the outside world into the nunnery chapel
demanded a use of the vernacular. The latter was the case, no
1
Luke i, 27.
2
MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 7, fols. 62-138. See Dublin Review (Apr. 1925),
as before.
3
The anon. Religious, author of MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233, shows a
similar
4
fondness for St Katherine.
Dialogo, cap. cxxv (1370).
6
Brunton, in MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 267 et seq.: "Sermo. . .apud Roff., in
electione prioris Roff." This same text is reported of a sermon at the election
of Abbot Wm. Albon, at St Albans Abbey, 1465 (see Reg. Whethampst.
vol. ii, p. 30). For other similar sermons and themes, cf. MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 6,
and MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233: "in electione prelati."
6
MSS.Roy.8.A.v,fol. 129 band7. A. viii,fol.335: "in electione Abbatis."
7
Cf. here the French Sermun del secle in verse, with other religious in-
struction, in the thirteenth century MS. Egerton 2710 (fol. 145, etc.), which
belonged to the nuns of the priory of Derby in the fifteenth century.
AND ITS TYPES 259
doubt, when Archbishop Fitzralph preached "in vulgari" on
the Feast of Corpus Christi in 1355—"in ecclesia Monialium
Londini."1 Apart, however, from this quite characterless
example, the present writer has found but two sermons defi-
nitely addressed to Nuns in English manuscripts even approxi-
mating in date to the chosen period of his study. One is a
"Sermo in velatione monialis," on the text—"Vadet ad re-
quiem suam." 2 The other is a short homily in Latin on the Lily,
written down in a bare outline of thirty lines ("Florete flores
quasi lilium, date odorem")3 . If they are to be taken as repre-
sentative of the species, we may gather that the nun was treated
to the same high-and-dry formality of "figures" and exposi-
tions as her brother of the cloister. There is the usual plea for
the appropriate religious virtues—purity of heart, holiness of
conversation, white radiance of humility and innocence, and the
rest—"ad modum lilii," in the latter case.
University sermons of the age would seem nowadays to be
almost as hard to discover as those delivered in the nunneries.
But a careful examination of forms of address might well reveal
further examples scattered here and there in various Latin
collections, which lack the more definite labels of " Oxon." or
" Cantebrygge,"1 at the head of the page. An interesting little
volume in the Harleian collection5, which so far appears to have
escaped attention altogether, deserves to be singled out for its
short series, all six of which were apparently delivered in Oxford
about the year 1432, three being further detailed as "Sermones
examinatorii." This date, it may be remembered, is none other
than that of the introduction of the University Statute which
required henceforth of each Oxford preacher a written copy
of his oration, to be registered by the proctors, and preserved
1
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 96 b et seq. (Text: John vi, 54.)
2
3
MS. Roy. 7. A. viii, fol. 307 b.
(Ecclesiasticus xxxix, 14.) MS. Harl. 52, fol. 128. Both aie in MSS. of
early 14th century date; but they may be copied from earlier models. Along
with Sermones ad contemplativos in MS. Univ. Libr. Edinburgh, Db. iv. 17
(Engl. 14th cent.), there is a Sermo ad virgines (fols. 116—18, incpl.), which is
unnoticed in the Cat. of MSS. Further themes for nunnery visitation
sermons may be found in the Alnwick Episc. Reg. (Dioc. Line), vol. xxiv,
pp. 46, 89, etc.
* As in MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 392; cf. fol. 217 (Cambridge, in
Lent), etc.
6
MS. Harl. 5398, fol. 20 b et seq.
17-2
in the Common Library1. From the fact that the second of these
sermons is further identified with " the First Sunday in Advent"
(which is also the first occasion in the year to be mentioned in
this particular decree), there is good reason for believing that
we have actually before us in this manuscript the earliest fruits
of the new regulation.
All that can be learnt from the opening number of the series
is the name of its author, "Master John Shyrborne."2 His use
of such phrases of address as "peritissimi domini, patres, et
magistri," "prestantissimi domini,"and the like, however, agrees
with the others. Turning to the second3, we find from a more
elaborate heading that the preacher in question is a Regent-
Master, of the Carmelite convent in the city: "Sermo formalis
et ordinaria magistri Johannis Haynton regentis claustralis
Ordinis Carmelitarum Oxon.; dominica prima adventus, A.D.
1432." His ante-theme takes the form of a quaint Invocation
in verse addressed to the Almighty as "Jupiter Omnipotens,"
"dux exercitum," and so forth. Though characteristically
affected, it yet agrees with the topic of his discourse, the Holy
Warfare and its weapons4, thus beseeching Him to grant victory
to His warriors, and peace to clergy, king and people5. The
exhortation itself closes with a " Recapitulacio," first "in prosa,"
then "in metro."6 The next sermon on the list is a Benedictine
effusion "of the monk Rainold of Gloucester," beginning
"Optulit immaculatum," ad Hebr. 90 [verse 14], "et pro
hujus examinatorii sermonis themate designato, Reverendi
magistri, patres, et domini.... " 7 He sets out his two main
1
See above, p. 234. Cf. further Munim. Acad. Oxon. (Rolls S.), vol. ii,
p. 751 (1458). Moneys authorized from the University chest: "pro novo
registro fiendo, in quo debent inscribi omnes sermones examinatorii."
2
MS. ibid. fol. 21, etc. (See Explicit, fol. 26.)
3
Ibid. fol. 40. For Hayntcn himself, see in MS. Harl. 3838, as before.
1
6
Text: "Induamur arma lucis," etc. (Rom. xiii, 12).
Cf. 11. 7 etseq.:
" Assis nunc bellis mentis, carnisque duellis,
Desque trophea tuis militibus meritis.
Vince tuos hostes, ut sors tua sit tibi sospes,
Lucis et exsortes sint modo participes.
Des pacem famulis, clero, regi, quoque regnis,
Praemia defunctis, cum sanctis luce perunctis
Pelle tenebras mentis, et ornes dote superna...," etc.
6
fols. 44 b-45.
7
Ibid. fol. 45 b.
AND ITS TYPES 261
divisions, the "legal act" involved in the "Obtulit," the moral
purity of the " Immaculatum," then proceeds to apply them
in regular formal style, first to the Son of God, and secondly
to the case of each sanctified Christian. Authorities freely
quoted include the works of Augustine, Peter of Blois1, Gregory,
and Gervase of Tilbury (De ordints sacerdotalis Instructione),
The theme developes finally into a plea for the religious life,
supported by "contempt of the world," not unsuitable indeed
for an incepting monk: "And what shall it profit a man, if he
have the riches of Croesus, the glory of Solomon, whatever
Julius Caesar, or Alexander the Great, and other mighty men
possessed of lands, of treasures, and delights, if he suffer loss to
his own soul?"2 The discourse following3, another "incultus
sermo examinatorius," as the speaker himself terms it in
addressing the "most distinguished lords, fathers, and masters "
before him in the opening of his "processus," unfortunately
lacks any descriptive rubric. With its discussion of the prin-
ciples of "good stewardship," of the kind of wisdom required
in the preacher, and especially of the "modus eligendi," it looks
at first sight absurdly like a wordy and gratuitous charge de-
livered by the candidate to his own examiners. But the con-
clusion of the harangue suggests that nothing more unusual is
implied by the "dispensatio" in question than that "of God's
holy word and sacraments " by priests in the ordinary course4.
The fifth is the examinatory sermon of the same brother John
Haynton aforesaid, now appropriately described as "Bachelor
of the faculty of Theology," without the title of Master5. Once
again he employs verse for his ante-theme. In three plaintive
little lines preceding his text, the anxious candidate, in typical
mediaeval fashion, commends himself devoutly to his God, his
"alma mater," and the saint of his own name, at the outset of
1
2
Quoted no less than nine times.
"Et quid prodest homini, si habeat divitias Cresi, gloriam Salamonis,
quicquid Julius Caesar, aut Magnus Alexander, ceterique potentes in terris,
in 3thesauris, in deliciis possiderunt, si suae animae detrimentum patiatur?"
Ibid. fol. 51. (Text: "Estote boni dispensatores. .. " (i Pet. iv, 10).)
4
Ibid. fol. 53: "Vobis, qui dispensatores estis instituti, hoc ministerium
specialius convenit de custodia et preparatione, ut et vos preparetis in ad-
ventu Judicis, quia pauci sunt qui commissam fideliter administrant dis-
pensationem. Ille autem qui repertus fuerit annonam verbi administrans, et
circa greges vigilans, eterna beatitudine glorificabitur."
6
Ibid. fol. 54. (For the Fourth Sunday after Easter, 1432.)
1
the ordeal . After the text there are another dozen lines of
Latin, concluding, this time, with an offering of "the humble
calves of his lips"2 to the Deity. Fulsome self-depreciation,
fatuous metaphors, lavish titles of honour for his auditors,
stilted Latin verses, and a plentiful use of superlatives in the
body of the discourse, reproduce the current affectations of the
schools. The auditors are now "veritatis spiritus dulcedine
delibuti doctissimi theodocti magistri, patres, atque domini,"
etc. or " perhonorandi magistri, ac sacrae milites disciplinae! " 3
His own effort is "this most unpolished examinatory colla-
tion," or "this exceedingly poor collation." Let us hope, at all
events, that he met with the success for which he was obviously
labouring so hard. Neither this sermon, nor the one which
follows, need detain us any longer4. They suffice to illustrate
the extravagances of scholastic preaching as satirized by Erasmus
in the Encomium Moriae.
A little manuscript of the fifteenth century in the Library
of Caius College, Cambridge, with matter relative to St Alban's
Abbey, contains one Latin sermon for the Feast of the English
proto-Martyr which must have been delivered before the Uni-
versity by some Bishop of Ely of the day5. From it we stop
merely to take an unpublished example of the University
Bidding Prayer, which preceded these orations, best left in its
original Latin:
1
" Me doceant hii tres Jhesus, alma mater, Johannes;
Spiritus omnidocens assit, modo nubila pellens,
Hayntoun dictantem. . . "
(Another triplet on fol. 40.) Cf. a similar Invocation at the head, appa-
rently, of another University sermon exercise in MS. Corpus Christi Coll.
Camb. 392, fol. 253: "Maria, Jhs, Johannes, Thomas, Dunstanus assint
principio meo."
2
See Hosea xiv, 2.
3
4
MS. Harl. 5398; ibid. fol. 56 b : (fol. 51 "serenissimi doctores").
It may be worth remarking, however, that Haynton makes use of Uni-
versity imagery here; cf. God as the " doctor omnisciens et eternus"; " Uni-
versitas angelica," or " cherubica"; " Magister Veritatis," etc. For an Oxford
sermon exercise for the D.D. degree, cf. John Lawerne's notes in MS. Bodl.
692, fols. 122-23 (H38).
6
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 230, fol. 130 et seq. (Begin: "Cani sunt sensus
hominis"—Sap. iv—"et in epistola quam hodie in memoriam Passionis
Sancti Protomartyris Anglorum, Albani, sua et suorum monachorum legit
ecclesia. . ..") By a Bishop of Ely, apparently because of the "jurisdictionis
nostrae" following mention of the University (see Fuller's History, p. 55,
etc.). Or was it an Archbishop of Canterbury, visiting the University, as in
1401?
AND ITS TYPES 263
In huius igitur collationis nostrae exordio, recommendo orationi-
bus vestris sensus1 brachii clericalis, dominum nostrum Papam,
cardinales, et omnes prelatos ac ministros ecclesie, dominum nostrum
cancellarium, caput hujus Universitatis venerabilis jurisdictionis
nostre, cum omnibus scolaribus qui ad frugem meliorem scientiae
laborant in ipsa. Ex alia parte commendo orationibus vestris pre-
dictis sensus brachii secularis, dominum nostrum regem, atque
reginam, dominam matrem, dominum ducem, et omnes proceres
hujus regni, cum omni populo Christiano. Et tertio commendo vobis
omnes animas in purgatorio divinam misericordiam exspectantes....
The preacher ends with the usual request for Paternoster and
Ave. "Sermones ad scholares"1 may be detected in the
catalogues, but they belong to other centuries than ours. There
is, however, one of the kind—"to the Preachers (i.e. Dominicans)
in Oxford,"2—in an anonymous collection presumably of the
fourteenth century, to which repeated reference has been made
in these pages. But beyond well-marked divisions and quota-
tions from "Tullius," Seneca, and Isidore, in addition to the
regular Fathers, no special feature appears. After so much
wearisome prolixity at the seats of learning, we may be for-
given if, in passing from the scene, we refresh ourselves—
according to the best models of homiletic art—with somewhat
of a light and merry contrast. It comes from a vernacular homily
of the period, which requires, for all its quaint eccentricity, as
will be noticed, a University audience of some kind or other for
its setting3. In expanding the story, from the " Legenda Aurea,"
of St Clement's conversion, among the philosophical students
of Rome, the speaker has progressed as far as the unfriendly
reception given to the preaching of St Barnabas," for oure fey3the
may not be preved by reson, and philosofres granteth no thinge
but that resone enformeth hem." (Was all this the little scheme
of a modest preacher, we are tempted to ask, tactfully intro-
duced to smooth the way for his own simplicity4 before another
critical audience of students ?)
Than oon of these philosofres come to Seynt Barnabe and asshed
hym what was the cause that afleethat is so lityll a beeste hathe sixe
1
Cf. the sermon text opps., p. 262, note 5.
2
Cf. MS. Corpus Christi Coll. Camb. 217 (13th cent.).
3
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233, fol. 229.
4
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 52 b. Cf. here, for his "uncunning," etc.
Chap. I, pp. 21-22, above.
fete, and a camell that is so grete a beeste hathe but fowre. Than
Barnabas answerd and seid, " I wolde answere 30U to youre sotell
question, 3iff 3e had ashed me for cause of knolache of the trowthe.
But for all so muche that 3e knowe not that God that made 30U,
therfore it is well worthye that 3e erre in knolage of is creatures."
Than Seynt Clement herde this wise answere of seynte Barnabe, and
become oon of his disciples... .The questioun that the philosofres
ashed of Seynt Barnabe, I can not asoill it; but I preye the phylosofres
of this worthy universite to asoyll itt, whan tham semeth good.
The Sermones ad Status thus passed rapidly in review, deal
only with the cleric. Nor can we find to correspond to them a
similar literature of the pulpit in this country as distinct in its
application to the various ranks and professions of the laity1.
At the same time we are by no means far from it, when we find
ourselves listening to some mediaeval preacher in the open-air,
at a public Intercessory procession, or at the regular sermon-time
beneath the shadow of St Paul's. Here and in other places, as
likely as not, description of one of the several familiar "figures "
of the mediaeval realm will lead up to special counsel addressed
in turn to the three principal estates that compose it, to clergy,
nobility, and common people2. The speaker may possibly go
further to differentiate the classes more minutely3, to remind
knighthood with Rypon4, for example, of its particular duties
and its present shortcomings; or with Brunton5 to take the
English "magnates," or the merchants to task, for their palpable
lapses from the Christian ideal. " Sed ut veniamus ad exempla
1
An interesting exception may have to be made in the case of MS. Add.
15095, a fifteenth-century series of "Sermones varii ad mercatores," in Latin,
at all events written out here by an English scribe (Fleknowe). I have yet to
discover whether from internal evidence they may be classed as an English
production of the period.
2
Cf. Wimbledon at Paul's Cross, 1388; Bromyard, S.P. s.v. "Com-
passio," "Miles," etc.; Rypon in MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 187; Brunton, as
below; Myrc in the Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed. p. 65); MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii;
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 68; etc., etc. Cf. also in the frequent
Moralization of Chess (references below, on p. 326, n. 3).
3
Cf. Bp. Brunton, in MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 6i, where, in the favourite
simile of the Body and the Members, he differentiates the king, princes and
prelates, the judges, counsellors, doctors, knights, merchants and faithful
mechanics, citizens and burgesses, peasants and labouring men. (Abroad,
the Prologue to Jacques de Vitry's Sermones Vulgares, and Lecoy de la
Marche, La chairefr. pp. 133 et seq.)
4
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 188 b et seq. followed by a similar discussion of the
"officium agricultorum " (and Brunton, MS. Harl. 3760, fols. 96, 152, etc.).
6
MS. Harl. 3760, fols. 117, 124, 190 b, etc.
AND ITS TYPES 265
magis domestica," cries the latter, proceeding to discuss the
"milicia Anglicana," now weak and degenerate in these days1.
Much in the same way, the village preacher, whose detailed
warnings in the Great Sentence have covered practically every
activity and every walk of life, may put into his discourse a
word for the young and for the old2, or join with the friar in
denouncing the characteristic enormities of the shop-keepers
or the Law. The keen class-consciousness of feudalism is never
very far from his mind, or his arguments.
Higden, whose programme of themes has been our guide thus
far, passes finally from sermons at processions to sermons at
funerals3. Again the list of examples is a small one, although,
to judge from the researches of Bourgain for an earlier century4,
time was when these latter were numerous enough. Such re-
mains as we possess, even for the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, are yet sufficient to indicate how suitable themes—
like the "Mortuus est in senectute bona, plenus dierum, divitiis
et gloria," pronounced by Bishop Grandisson over the body of
the Earl of Devon in 1341—were treated, "by applying them
to the virtues and merits of the deceased."5 In the case of this
burial of Sir Hugh de Courtenay we are told that the funeral
oration was given first in Latin, and then in French. The latter
tongue was evidently a respectful concession to the nobility,
who would share with the clergy present the places of honour
and of chief mourning for the occasion. But one might have
expected so enlightened a bishop to have suited himself to the
condition of everyone in that "copious multitude" at once, by
using English:
ffor why that is your kyndly langage,
that 3e hafe here mast of usage,
that cane ilk man undirstand,
that is born in ynglande:
ffor that langage is mast shewyd
As wele amange lerede as lewede;
1
2
Ibid. fol. 152.
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii. Cf. also the special warnings for "domesmen" in
MS. Harl. 45, fol. 86, or for servants (ibid. fol. 65), etc.
3
4
Theme suggested, "Amicus noster dormit."
Cf. La chairefranf. au xiie s. p. 202 et seq.
5
Burial of Sir Hugh de Courtenay, Earl of Devon, at "Cowyke," near
Exeter (Reg. Grandisson, Exeter, pt. ii, p. 939).
ffor Latyn as I trowe cane nane
Bot thai that hafe it of scole tane.
Some cane franche, and na latyn,
that used has court, and dwelled therin.
And some cane of latyn a party
that cane franch but feberly.
And some undirstandye ynglych,
that nouther cane latyn ne franche.
Bot lerede and lewed, aide 8c yonge,
All undirstandys ynglych tonge1.
The explanation is evident, however, that in such pomps and
ceremonies the vulgar tongue was looked upon as too out-
rageously vulgar. Latin and French alone would befit the digni-
fied exequies of noble persons. Sir Thomas More's delightfully
sarcastic picture, in a later day, of the "high solemne cere-
monies about our funeralles, whereof the glory standeth us here,
God wot, in very little stede, but hath on the tother side done
us greate displeasure," comes forcibly to mind 2 . As a matter of
fact his own complaint is heard already in the sermons of the
period before u s :
"Much superfluous charge used for boast and ostentacion,"
declared the great man, "namely, devised by the dede before his
death, is of God greatly misliked;.. .as how we might be solemnly
borne out to burying, have gay and goodly funerales, with herawdes
at our hearses, and offering up our helmets, setting up our skouchin
and cote armours on the wall, though ther never came harnesse on
our backes, nor never ancester of oures ever bare armes before. Then
devised we some doctor to make a sermon at our masse in our monthes
mind, and there preache to our prayse, with some fond fantasy
devised of our name; and after masse, muche feasting, ryotous and
costly, and finally like mad men make men meri at our deth, and take
our burying for a brideale."
Foxe makes some mention of Archbishop Arundel's eulogy
at the burial of good Queen Anne of Bohemia in 1394, when
that prelate, of doubtful virtue himself, actually "blamed in
that sermon sharply the negligence of the prelates and other
men," after the manner of our conciliar preachers, so stirred was
he by the evidences of piety in the life of that lady 3 . But the
1
MS. Roy. 17. C. viii, fol. 3 (Nassyngton's Speculum Vitae): cf. the un-
identified quotation in Chaytor's Troubadors and England, p. 19, from MS.
Camb. Univ. Libr. Ff. iv. 9.) 2 Supplication of Souls, p. 33s (Engl. ed. 1557).
8
Acts andMons. vol. iii, p. 202, ed. (1855) Seeley (Ch. Hists. of Engl.), and
compare Dean Hook, Lives of the Archbishops, vol. iv, p. 430.
AND ITS TYPES 267
ofoutlojbegoD .S0.CCCCC4f.tt) I) tcije fetmonlUas

cnp^ntcD atrtjcfprcvalltcqutft of^ tpgl)tcfcellentp^»
ceOeâcgaeete moDecbnto tl)e fapD noblep^nce anO
C u ( T f U t U D 3 © b
A ROYAL FUNERAL SERMON IN 1509
(ed. Wynkyn de Worde)
"locus classicus" for the period, will be Bishop Brunton's great
funeral oration for the Black Prince, in his manuscript of
sermons1, with its echo of Poictiers, its rich praise for the up-
rightness, generosity, and loyalty of the great soldier "who
loved the Holy Trinity above all things." It presents an in-
teresting parallel to Bossuet's more famous utterance over the
body of the Prince de Conde, with the victory of Rocroi ex-
tolled in the place of Poictiers. Thus were the mighty laid to
rest. Yet the simple man, with no famous deeds to praise,
might have a sermon, too. Myrc's Festiall offers one in which
the grim fact of death itself, "the whiche iugylithe and sleithe
us alle,"2 irrespective of rank, together with the meaning of the
last rites on earth, furnishes an equally potent object-lesson
for the bystanders, where noble birth and rich pageantry are
not. Who indeed was ever more eloquent in urging the efficacy
of "the syght of corses and wepyng, that makyth a man to
thenke on his deth, that ys the chefe helpe to put away synne3,"
than our mediaeval preacher himself? And his words are a vivid
commentary on the more famous morality Everyman. The
opening lines of Myrc's "In die sepulturae,"4 then, strike the
same familiar chord:" Gode men, as ê alle se, here is a myrroure
to us alle; a corse browth to the chyrch. God have mercy on
hym for hys mercy, and bryng hym into hys blysse that eure
schal laston." It remains also the burden of his plaintive
ending: "Wherefore uche man and womman that us wyse,
make hym redy therto; for alle we schul dyon, and we wyte
note how sone."
As the burial of the dead, with its grim spectacular appeal,
was thus pressed into the service of preaching, in typical
mediaeval fashion, so also was the marriage of the living. A
" Sermo de Nupciis " in the Festiall5 makes a precisely similar
use of the situation, with details of the homely wedding cere-
1
MS. Had. 3760, fol. 212 et seq. (1376). Cf. fol. 213 : " ' Laudemus viros
potentes et gloriosos " ; et precipue in victoria apud Peyteris, ubi licet cum
rege Francie tantus esset cuneus armatorum quod semper [the MS. here is
corrupt, but the meaning is clear, 'there were 10 Frenchmen on their own
soil opposed to one Englishman'], tamen, favente Deo justitie exercitui
Anglicano, exercitus Francorum fuit dissipatus mirabiliter, et rex captus.. . . "
2
Gesta Rom., 15th cent. Engl. vers. (E.E.T.S. ed. Ext. No. 33), p. 135.
3
Festiall (E.E.T.S.
4
ed.), p. 64. Cf. further in MS.6 Roy. 18. B. xxv, fol.
138, etc. Ibid. p. 294 et seq. Ibid. p. 289 et seq.
AND I T S TYPES 269
mony in place of the last rites of the dead. " B u t for ther ben
many that takuth this sacrement and wyttuth lytal whatte
charge is therwyth, therfore I wil schortely at this tyme schew
30U what this sacrament is, that 3e schullon in tyme comyng
drede God the more and kepon 3oure ordur the bettur." For
the sake of variety and the unpublished page, a contemporary
manuscript homily, " i n solemnizatione matrimonii," will here
best serve our purpose, as an illustration 1 of the discourse
to be given:
"Most worchifull ffrendys," says this quaintly verbose homilist,
" we be cume hedyr at this time in the name of the fader, son, & holy
gost, in the honerabyll presens of our moder gostly, holy chyrche,
to conjoynyn, knytt, and combyne thyse 2 persawnes by the holy
sacrament of matrimonye, grauntyd to the holy dignite & ordyr of
presthode. Qwyche sacrament of matrimonye is of this vertu and
strengthe that thise 2 persawnes of whyche be nowe too bodyes and
too sawles, durynge theyr lyves togeder schall be.. .one fflesche and
too sawles."2
After what might be called a short historical preface, sketching
the Genesis account of the creation of the sexes 3, he proceeds
to elaborate three bonds or yokes of God which should unite
the wedded—"honeste and worchep in werkynge," "true luff
and ffeythefull in lyvynge,.. .obediens and continuall abydynge."
The reader must rest satisfied with two excerpts, introducing
typical features relative to the service itself. First of the ring:
And ffor this cawse is the ryng putt and sett by the husbonde upon
the iiiite finger off the woman, ffor to showe that a true luff and pre-
cordiall affection must be betwyne hem. Cawse qwhy, as doctors
sey, ther is a veyne cummynge frome the herte off a woman to the
iiii'e ffinger; and therfore the ringe is putt on the same finger, that
sche shulde kepe unite and luff with hym, and he with hyr.
1
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg. vi. 16, fol. 32 et seq. With this, and the
specimen in the Festiall, should be compared the relevant passages in MS.
(Brit. Mus.) Add. 30506, leaf 25 (printed in E.E.T.S. 90, p. 5), a manual
written for St Aldate's Church, Gloucester, in the fifteenth century.
2
Cf. with Myrc's opening: " As 3e here all seyne, a man and a woman ben
weddut togydur, os the lawe of holy chyrch techuth.. . . " Notice a sermon,
"de matrimonio et ejus operibus," in MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fols. 167—
170 (e.g. (fol. 168): "aforn the sollemnyzacyon of weddyng, the banys owyn
to ben askyd thre solenne dayes in holy cherche aforn the peple.")
3
Begin: "This is wele figuryd—Gen. 4to—qwhan allmy3ty God had
fformyd our forme-fadyr."
More on, ffor iiii cawses we do grettly to have thys sacrament of
matromony in reverens and worschep. One cawse is ffor God hym-
selff was ffyrst fownder and maker of the sacrament of matrimonye.
The secunde, for it was made and ordeyned off God in the most
precious place that he wroghyt upon ertrie, ffor it was "in paradiso
terestre." The iiide cawse, for it was the ffirst sacrament that God
ordeynde; and the iiiite, ffor holy chyrche hathe admytted it to be one
of the vii sacraments off holy chyrche. And for thys cawse is the palle
holden on theyr hedys in the messe tyme; ffor the palle representethe
the dignite of matrimony. Also it is to wyte that this holy sacrament
off matrimony muste be reseyvyd with a devoute herte and clene
sawle, and a pure entente. Therffore holy chyrche exorteth, cown-
selythe, and ordenythe that bothe man and the woman be reconcylyd
to clennes of lyffe by confessyon beforne the matrimony is solemnisyd
ffor the encresynge and augmentynge off grace.
The learned Martene, who is not usually so generous in this
respect, favours us, in his account of the dedication of a church,
with a hint of the matter dealt with in the bishop's charge to
the parishioners, which should form part of such proceedings1.
When the procession, with relics, around the sacred edifice, has
returned to the church-door, and the people are silent, let the
prelate "have a word" to them "de honore ecclesiastico,"
concerning church tithes and oblations, and the anniversary of
that dedication service to be observed. Let him announce to
clergy and laity together in whose honour the fane has been built
and consecrated, and the names of the saints whose bones are
to repose there2. The fact that a good many of these dedicatory
sermons actually remain in our manuscripts, suggests that in
this country the practice was faithfully and continuously carried
out3. Myrc's ever-ready Festiall again comes to the rescue, not
of the bishops, of course, but rather of the parish priest, faced
with the duty of supplying fresh explanatory addresses, "in
memoriam," as the " chyrche-holyday" anniversary comes
round4. That credulous ecclesiastic, yielding perhaps, even
1
Ant. Eccl. Rit. vol. iii.
2
For "Relike Sonday" sermons, see below in Chap, vni, p. 351.
3
At Cambridge alone, examples include: MSS. Jesus Coll. 65 (fol. 38 b);
Corpus Christi Coll. 439 (fol. 141 b), 509 (fol. 244 b) and 524 (fol. 132);
Caius Coll. 140, iii, 803 and 356; Camb. Univ. Libr. Dd. ix. 70.
4
E.E.T.S. p. 277. Beginning: "Goode men and woymen, such a day N.
3e schull have your chyrche-holyday. The whech day 3e schull come to
chyrch to worschyp God, hauyng yn mynde thre causes why the chyrche ys
halowed...."
AND ITS TYPES 271
more than usual, to the festive mood of the hour, increases his
racy anecdotes to the unprecedented number of five, until the
expository section of his address is of the scantiest1. The fiends
are wont to play such pranks on these occasions, and the old
canon obviously enjoys the fun, as they run "among the
pepullys fete hedyr and thedyr," and away out by the church
door, sit on their shoulders at Mass-time, like gargoyles on the
church-tower, or play the solemn bogey o' nights. So short is
the little outline "in dedicatione ecclesie," of a more serious
nature, in one of our Latin collections, that it seems justifiable
to reproduce it here in toto2. For, apart from the interest of its
references to contemporary custom, which, by the way, appear
again in the Summa Predicantium, it serves to show how terse
and vivid our Latin sermon-note can be:
"Sapientia edificavit sibi domum, excidit columpnas septem."3
Cum aliquis princeps venturus est ad aliquem civitatem, ut teneat
ibi curiam suam, cives illius civitatis preparant hospitia sua, et
scutum sive aliud signum ante ostium ipsius constituunt, ad desig-
nandum ad cujus opus sit hospitium captum. Ita preparemus
hospitia nostra ad recipiendum Dei sapientiam, qui hodie in nobis
templum suum dedicare dignatus est. Egregium autem scutum ostio
domus sue affigit, qui pallium vel tunicam utcunque vetustam collo
pauperis suspendit. Premittendi sunt et precones qui moneant ut
fiat panis et potus ad habundantiam. Precones sunt predicatores, de
quorum numero, licet peccatorum summus, ego sum, qui moneo ut
istafiant—scil.bona opera et lacrime habundantes—quibus satiari
et inebriari anima debet. Que ut nobis concedat dominus, dicat
quilibet—"Pater Noster."
Our last group of sermons proper is to be determined not by
subject-matter, but by style. These are the sermons in verse;
therefore, presumably, in further contrast to the preceding,
intended for reading or recitation in their entirety, without any
expansions or amendment. The pulpit, as indeed we have seen
already, was quite unable to escape a general contagion which
involved alike the song of the minstrel, the cries of the street,
and even such prosaic necessities as medical receipts. Stray
1
These tales include a ghost-story from the neighbourhood (" Lulsull," or
Lilleshall), and others from Leg. Aurea, Gestes of Fraunce, etc.
2
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 233, fols. 108 b-109. (It is likely, I think, that
the ending proves this to be only an ante-theme, jotted down by the writer.)
3
Prov. ix, 1.
verse in a Latin prose homily may denote one of two purposes.
As in the recapitulation of a University sermon, recently men-
tioned1, the lines, in this case themselves in Latin, may be there
to assist the preacher, by recalling to his mind the chief divisions
of his theme, as he progresses. On the other hand, and far more
often, when appearing in English, they may serve to do a kin-
dred work for the listeners, especially if the quotation takes
the form of a popular rhyming summary of the day. Such, for
example, are the quaint verses which repeatedly epitomize the
Sacraments2, or the Ten Commandments3. A homily collection
in the Worcester Cathedral Library, containing an example of
the latter, introduces similarly a warning quatrain for parents,
calculated no doubt to arrest attention at the time of delivery,
and afterwards to remain, "running in their heads," as the vulgar
expression goes, until practice has become second nature:
Chaste well (?) 3oure childeryn, wyll thay ben 3ong,
Of werke, of dede, of speche, of tong:
For yf 3e leten hym be to bold
Hyt wol 30W greve wen they ben olde4.
Of all such collections of popular rhyming verse probably
none can compare with that of friar John of Grimston's pulpit
Commonplace Book, now in the Advocates' Library, in Edin-
burgh5. Its pages teem with crude English rhymes of anything
from two to six lines, as well as longer and more tasteful com-
positions akin to the poetry of the better known Vernon MS.
1
See above, p. 260.
2
Cf. MS. Add. 24660, fol. 39 (a Sermo de vii Sacramentis).
3
Cf. MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 15 (fol. ult. of Staunton's tract); MS. Bodl. 410,
fol. 21 (Fascic. Morum); MSS. Add. 25031, fol. 5 b ; 37049, fol. 20 b; Harl.
6580, 7578; Lansd. 344; Roy. 8. E. v; etc.; MS. Advoc. Libr. Edinburgh,
18. 7. 21, fol. 128 b (Grimston); Reliq. Antiq. vol. i, p. 49 (MS. Jesus Coll.
Camb.).
4
MS. Wore. Cath. Libr. F. 19, fol. 166. (This and a previous quotation
have been kindly supplied to me by Canon J. M. Wilson.) Among transcripts
kindly sent me by Canon R. M. Woolley, of Lincoln, I find the verse again in
a Sermo de Primo Mandato 2e Tabule, MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 19, fol.
164:
" Chasteyz 30w children wyl thei be 3ownge
Of werk, of dede, of speche, of townge.
ffor 3if 3e lete them be to bolde,
Thei wole 30W greveyn wan 3e be hold."
Again
6
in MS. Bodl. 410, fol. 9 b (Fasc. Mor.).
MS. 18. 7. 21. (Some French verse on fol. 46.)
AND ITS TYPES 273
at Oxford. Indeed, the compiler of a recently issued volume
of English Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century has actually
gone to the former and to other homiletical works in Latin for
no less than thirty of his pieces1. Furthermore, he is of the
opinion2 that friar Herebert's English translations of Latin
hymns in Phillipps MS. 8336, "were designed primarily for
pulpit use," and represent an early Franciscan attempt to in-
troduce them thus to popular sermon audiences3.
Such versifying, then, is but part of the orator's regular mode
of strengthening the failing memories, or driving home particular
points in a popular way. But now we are to be concerned with
something on a much larger scale, where the entire homily
becomes metrical. "Sermones Rimati," Latin sermons in
rhymed prose, that is to say, and "Versus Colorati," had been
the objects of special attacks on the part of the pulpit purists of
the thirteenth century4. Considered by them as theatrical and
unspiritual, grotesque enough to us nowadays, they were yet
very much to the liking of audiences then. As Peter of Limoges
pointed out, they had become a deadly snare for the fashionable
preachers who sought to seduce the ear, rather than to convert
the soul. But those early critics would have found little of the
sort to distress them, had they been able to look into our own
Latin compilations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries5.
1
Carleton Brown (Oxf. Univ. Press, 1924).
2
3
Ibid. Introd., p. xiv.
Herebert died in 1333. Among further examples of stray verse in Latin
sermon collections, I note such, for example, as:
" Godes grete godnysse and hys longe abydynge,
Crystes open exemple, & hys holy techynge
Hard dom ordayned for oure punyschement
And grete mede y-schape for oure amendement"
(MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 179b), or in a Sermo de Primo Mandato:
" Alas, alas, that ever I was born
ffor body and soule I am forlorn."
(MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 19, fol. 163). Cf. also further in the Franciscan
Fasciculus Morum.
* Cf. Lecoy de la Marche (La chairefr.), pp. 279-85: "Quod est contra
illos qui faciunt sermones rimatos," etc.; Haur6au, Quelques MSS. vol. iv,
p. 6139; etc., etc.
There is still, however, an interesting reference to be found to them in
Thomas Walley's tractate on preaching (MS. Harl. 63s, etc.; first half of the
fourteenth century). He says: " . . .et tune confunditur predicator; quia se
verbis plus quam sententia alligavit, quern defectum specialiter inducunt ser-
mones multum rithmici, vel nimis politi; et est culpa predicatoris, qui in curio-
sitate conatur excedere." Cf. further, below, pp. 328-9.
o 18
T H E
In the vernacular literature of religious instruction, on the other
hand, we are faced with a persistent and well-marked English
metrical tradition; and the first task is to decide how much of
this literature can be definitely ascribed to the actual work of
the pulpit. Very few of these so-called didactic poems, to begin
with, bear the titles of "sermon" or "homily." Nevertheless,
many of them can be shown to possess important features which
they share in common with those that are thus labelled. A good
illustration occurs in the case of the Prologue to the so-called
North-English Homily Collection, edited by John Small from
a manuscript in the Library of the Royal College of Physicians
in Edinburgh, which is repeated again and again, in some form
or other, elsewhere. Clerks, it declares, in effect, can look into
the mirror of their Latin and French books, and understand
what they read, or else what is read to them in lessons at the
Mass-time. " Bot all men can nought, i-wisse, undirstand latyne
ne frankisse," especially the "lewid men" who long in vain to
know the message of the gospels. Therefore for these is the
work undertaken, while the "lered" may profit as well1. But
although we may be well aware that of the many who could
understand English, only a comparatively few could read it,
such comments as these need not imply more than domestic
reading aloud by the sufficiently literate "householder," who,
as brother Whitford has depicted2, religiously gathers his folk
around the board at daily prayers, or on a Sunday afternoon.
Yet for once it is possible to go farther. This same collection
offers us a fragment of clearer evidence as to its use in church,
in the shape of a direction to the preacher—for little else can it
be—to omit certain Latin passages before lay-folk, which, by
1
Engl. Met. Horns, ed. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, p. 3. By the kindness of
the Librarian of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, I was recently
able to examine this most interesting early 14th cent. MS. for myself. Since
Small's day it has been handsomely remounted, page by page, in a quarto
volume. Cf. with the above a French example:
" A la simple gent
Ai fait simplement
Un. simple sermon.
Ne l'fiz as letrez
Car il mit assez
Escriz et raisum."
(Lecoy de la Marche, p. 283.)
* Werkefor Housholders.
AND ITS TYPES 275
implication, he very naturally means would only be suitable for
the clerical audiences: "Isti versus omittantur a lectore quando
legit Anglicum coram laycis."1 When, therefore, further parallels
of treatment in the earlier prose homily collections of this
country have been duly noted, and parallels of form, as offered
by the "Li sermons" of Geoffrey of Waterford, and other
sermons in rhymed verse on the continent2, we may rest con-
vinced that these English metrical lives of saints and gospel
expositions were undoubtedly read or recited "ad populum"
on feast-days and Sundays, in our own churches3. The same
practice is reflected again in the closing lines of that highly
apocryphal poem known as The Develis Parlament. Its ex-
travagances and popular superstition are certainly no worse
than much in the Festiall:
This song that y have sunge 30U heere,
Is clepid the develis perlament:
Thereof is red in tyme of 3eere
On the first Sunday of clene lent4.
Finally, if a suspicion still lingers that the use of such rhyming
verse as medium for serious and formal doctrine would be
beneath the dignity of the priesthood, it is only necessary to
point to Myrc's Instructions for Parish Priests, or Gaytrige's
1
MS. Roy. Coll. of Phys. fol. 22 b, a rubric written between the lines of
verse (Engl. Met. Horns, p. 26). Cf. also Miss Deanesly's remarks in her
"Gospel-Harm, of Jo. de Caulibus," in Collect. Franc, vol. ii, p. 19.
2
Lecoy de la Marche, p. 282, etc.
3
Compare, for example, the Prologue to Nassyngton's Spec. Vitae,
MS. Roy. 17. C. viii, fol. 2:
" Good men and women, I yow pray,
Takys goode keep to that I say,
And takys no reward to my dedys,
All if I be synfull that redys:
Bot to my wordes anely takes kepe,
And whiles I speke, kepe you fro slepp.".. .
or The Spore of Love (St Edmund's Spec.) in E.E.T.S., O.S. 89, p. 268:
" God that art of mi3tes most,
Ffadir, and sone, and holi gost,
Thow graunte hem alle thi blessynge,
That herken wel to this talkynge."
(cf. Myrc's regular phrase for preaching ("honest talkyng") Festiall,
E.E.T.S. p. 191; and elsewhere, in a sermon in MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 175 b—
"goede & lovelych talkyng").
4
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 24.
18-2
Sermon, two works of this character definitely "propter presbi-
terum parochialem instruendum,"1 and not intended for direct
consumption by the lay-folk at all. The rhyming sermons of the
friars, indeed, had been one of Wycliffe's complaints2.
When once the theory has been accepted, much in the
structure of the poems and treatises themselves goes to confirm
belief. Sometimes the opening lines have all the marks of the
formal sermon ante-theme. This is clearly shown in Robert
of Brunne's free translation of what is known as St Bonaven-
tura's Meditations on the Supper of Our Lord3:
Alle my3ty God yn trynyte,
. Now and ever wyth us be;
For thy sones passyun,
Save alle thys congregacyun;
And graunte us grace of gode lyvyng
To wynne us blysse wythouten endyng.
Now every man, yn hys degre,
Sey amen, amen, pur charyte....
Sometimes the typical Latin theme from Scripture stands at
the head; and even so lengthy a work as the Halt Maidenhed* is
rightly described, in the words of Ten Brink5, as an alliterative
homily on a text. Everywhere a use of "exempla" and the ser-
mon-conclusion proclaims the same kinship. In our period the
several versions of the metrical Sermo de festo Corporis Christi6
incorporate every one of these traits, for an occasion, too, not
out of keeping with the more festive spirit of song and poem.
Fortunately there is little need to add anything here in illustra-
tion of a literature so well represented in modern reprint, apart
from what has just been said of its relations with preaching7.
1
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 31, p. I; cf. again in the Preface to MS. Add. 36983
(c. 1442):
" Bothe for clerkys and for lewed men
2
This Englysch tale ys yfounde."
I take it his remarks apply to metrical sermons in English, not Latin
"sermones rythmici" (cf. his phrase "apocryphal poems"). See the refer-
ences collected in Miss Deanesly's Lollard Bible, from Loserth, etc., pp. 148
and3 244.
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 60. But see for authorship here, p. 288, n. 2.
4
B
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 60.
See also his own discussion of the verse homily, p. 211 et seq. and p. 280
et seq. {Hist, of Engl. Lit. vol. i).
6
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 168 ff.
7
See especially the numerous references given in Carleton Brown's Register
of Middle English verse.
AND ITS TYPES 277
The Ormulum of the thirteenth century, for example, whose
somewhat long-winded author is at pains to explain himself
in his preface, is again clearly homiletical in its intention:
Ice hafe sammnedd of thiss boc [gathered]
Tha goddspelless neh alle,
That sinndenn o the messe boc, [that are within]
Inn all the 3er att messe:
Annd azz affterr the goddspell staunt
That tatt te Goddspell menethth,
Thatt mann birrth spellenn to the folk [ought to preach]
Off the33re sawle nede.
At the beginning of the next century the Cursor Mundisets out
for a similar mission, with the whole Scripture, both of Old
Testament and New, as its message1. By the time that the age
of Rolle and the Yorkshiremen is reached, the little one has
become a thousand, overflowing the land, and blotting out all
valid distinctions between treatise and poem and sermon
proper2. Dan John Gaytrige's Sermon, which Skeat was
apparently the first to recognize as imperfect alliterative verse,
in spite of its being written in prose form in the manuscripts,
belongs equally to all three categories3. So, too, Robert of
Brunne's metrical translation of Waddington's Manuel des
Pechiezi, the Ayenbite of Inwyt, or the Pricke of Conscience,
various English versions of Lorens' Somme des vices et des
vertus, or Nassyngton's Speculum Vitae, and many treatises
more with names now familiar in English literature5. All might
well have been read from the pulpit in sections of suitable
length, by priests more or less incapable of independent speech.
Some works, like Lydgate's Merita Missae for example6, have
1
An incomplete text of this work is to be found alongside the Engl. Met.
Horns, in the MS. Roy. Coll. of Phys., Edinburgh, recently alluded to, i.e.
with definite pulpit matter.
2
Thus, too, Ten Brink, Hist, of Engl. Lit. vol. i, p. 211.
3
Cf. also the Didactic verse with "Tabula super Omelias" which accom-
panies
4
it in MS. Add. 25006 (fol. n b).
I.e. the Handlynge Synne (E.E.T.S., O.S. Nos. 119 and 123).
6
Cf. the Speculum of St Edmund, two metrical versions of which may be
found in the Vernon MS. (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 89, pp. 221 et seq. and 268
et seq.); also the Speculum of Guy of Warwick (MS. Arund. 140, fol. 147 et
seq.; also publ. in Horstmann, vol. ii, p. 24 et seq.); Spiritus Guydonis (Horst-
mann, vol. ii, p. 292 et seq.); a metrical Engl. vers. of Grossete'te's Castel of
Love in the Vernon MS. (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98, p. 355); etc., etc.
6
Printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 71, p. 148 et seq. (from MS. Cotton,
Tit. A. xxvi, fol. 154).
278 THE SERMON LITERATURE AND ITS TYPES
actual length as well as style ready in their favour. Nor are
there wanting here and there, in what are obviously preachers'
manuscripts, rude and little-known metrical homilies, like one
in a fifteenth-century Bodleian codex whose doggerel lines begin
thus:
My dere frendis I 30U pray
ffoure thingis in 3<3ur hertes bere away.... 1
Of the vernacular treatises in verse, something more will be
said in the chapter that follows. Together with others in prose
they constitute the important link between literature for the
pulpit, and literature for the pew or the domestic hearth.
1
MS. Douce, 107, fols. 62—65. Mem. also Bozon's seven little metrical
sermons in French; see P. Meyer's ed. of the Contes, p. xlv, etc.
CHAPTER VII
MANUALS AND TREATISES
rT->HE place of honour next to the sermon in any survey of
x mediaeval pulpit literature should go by right to the great
Latin sermon "encyclopedias," which, though comparatively
few in this country, can yet boast of the Summa Predicantium
among their number, as an English chefd'ceuvre. In the present
case, however, it is proposed to deal first with the more com-
plicated question of the ordinary religious treatises, leaving the
Summa and its kind to be viewed as the final culmination of all
types and tendencies in contemporary homiletic composition.
The student who gets to work in the later mediaeval library
finds before long that he has exhausted all the more concentrated
and independent sermon collections of his period. He has then
to fall back upon odd specimens and little isolated groups
scattered about among the pages of various volumes of devo-
tional tracts and commentaries. Sooner or later the question
arises—should he include in his examination these tracts too?
The prospect is sufficiently unattractive to compel some pre-
liminary taking of thought: "Ther beth so manye bokes and
tretees of vyces and vertues and of dyvers doctrynes, that this
schort lyfe schalle rathere have an endeof anyemanne,thanne he
maye owthere studye hem or rede hem." 1 That, indeed, was a
contemporary opinion; but it seems almost as true to-day among
the Harleian Manuscripts at the British Museum, or the several
mediaeval Bodleian collections at Oxford. Many of these works
are in English, and would seem intended for devotional reading
by the lay-folk. Yet a sentence or two in a Prologue, the setting
of a text or a rubric, the turn of phrases, much as we have seen
in the sermons in verse, will show that their affinity with the
actual discoursing of the preachers cannot really be questioned2.
1
Orologium Sapientie, MS. Douce 114, fol. 90, printed in Anglia, vol. x,
p. 328.
2
Cf. MS. Harl. 45, fol. 167 b : "he that wole ofte and devoutliche hyre
and understonde this writyng," etc. Even the Ayenbite of Inwyt is concluded
by a sermon from the author (MS. Arundel 57). Furthermore, compare the
frequent pulpit modes of address in such treatises as Jacob's Well in MS.
Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, or the St Alban's MS. treatise on the Command-
ments: "A, dere frendis!"; "The other day I tolde 30U.. .," etc.
2 8o MANUALS AND TREATISES
Nor, moreover, do they raise merely the question of supplies
for the pulpit. As often they are an important supply from it as
well. They reveal to us how, as lay-reading increased, the sim-
pler message declaimed in church passed eventually into the
religious handbook of the home, there indeed to play no small
part in creating in turn that peculiarly English type of staid and
independent domestic piety which blossomed out into the
Puritanism of subsequent centuries. When the present survey
is complete, it will be seen that, in this work of evangelization by
means of the vernacular page, Piers Plowman's Vision is as much
the direct offspring of English mediaeval preaching as the most
commonplace tracts on the Commandments, or the Pricke of
Conscience. To be able thus to throw so remarkable a bridge
across the chasm of the Reformation is no small achievement
for our little sermon-books and treatises, and will be recognized,
it is hoped, as one more justification of their study. This after
all is where our stubborn Puritan temper comes from—not
from Protestant Geneva or Wittenberg, but mediaeval York-
shire. It is the vigorous unsacerdotalism of Rolle, coupled
with the strict religious discipline for the household which he
handed on from St Edmund Rich and others, that re-emerges,
by means of this homely literature, in the sturdy sixteenth and
seventeenth-century yeomen of England. His mystical fire may
burn low for a while; but it will leap again in Bunyan and in
Penn. Sometimes the subsequent careful notes and scoring,
the rare erasures, the names entered by later hands in these
very sermons and handbooks, seem to give almost tangible
evidence of the continuity of use1. Their influence stalks on
silent, but wonderfully real and alive from generation to gene-
ration, troubling little about the noisy clash of theologians and
parties without. For round the family board, and in the hearts
of the peasantry, the Reformation meant no such break with the
past as many would have us believe.
1
Cf. a marginal note in the Brunton sermons, MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 96:
" Moderni papistae haec attribuunt papae.. . . " An amusing case which has
come to my notice is in MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 38. Against the
passage in the sermon text—"To this we have a glorius exsampyll of our
blessid lady. . . "—is a neat marginal comment, in a sixteenth century (?)
hand—"Here begyndes a notabell lye. .. !" Evidently the same hand has
cancelled the words "Pope of Rome," on fol. 133 b, etc. See also below in
Appdx. v, and compare the Tudor editions of Piers Plowman, etc.
MANUALS AND TREATISES 281
To speak thus early in generalities, while the task of investi-
gating the tracts themselves remains still unattempted, might
seem strangely out of place. Yet, as a prelude to what must
follow, it is not so fanciful or irrelevant after all, since there is
a smaller, though not dissimilar, gap bridged by them within
the limits of our own two mediaeval centuries. The vernacular
treatise itself, indeed, is often at first sight a strangely com-
posite structure of mingled Wycliffite and Orthodox elements.
More than twenty-five years ago, in an article published in the
Dublin Review, Dr Gasquet attacked the "unwarranted assump-
tion" with which many tracts and booklets of the period, as he
said, which dealt openly with abuses needing correction, were
ascribed to the Lollards1. Although some amends have been
made since then, in the case of English tracts wrongly attributed
to the Reformer himself, it would seem that there is more yet
to be done in vindication of Dr Gasquet's words. The amazing
charges and self-criticism that come from within the Church
itself, from the lips of friars and prelates, have been pointed out
already in some of our Latin sermons. But so far little has been
heard from the sermon-books of the inferior clergy. We have
now to learn that in these very "tracts and booklets" we have a
pulpit literature, prepared for them by equally zealous writers,
an activity in fact, already referred to in the opening sketch of
the last chapter as an important parallel development which
must not be overlooked.
Just because it is deliberately designed for the use of the
simpler village parson who speaks only to his lay parishioners,
it is natural enough that there should be comparatively very
little actual criticism of fellow " clerici" in his preaching-guide.
Yet, although its work lay elsewhere with elementary religious
instruction, and its revelations come rather in the nature of
casual "asides," the fact remains that the hypercritical Lollard
himself on occasion found their spirit sufficiently to his liking
to make use of them for his purposes. The history of a single
composition of this kind exhibits, in most illuminating fashion,
every distinctive stage in the process we are about to trace. The
thirteenth-century Constitutions framed in Latin by Arch-
bishop Peckham2, himself a friar, for the non-preaching clergy,
1
Dublin Review, 1897, art. i, p. 258.
2
For similar earlier Constitutions, see in Wilkins, Cone. etc.
282 MANUALS AND TREATISES
and re-stated by Archbishop Thoresby of York half a century
later, were translated into English in expanded form, at the
latter's request, for the benefit of those priests unable to under-
stand them in their original tongue. Thus fashioned ready for
the pulpit, and multiplied, "Dan Gaytrige's sermon" as the
translation was sometimes called, survived long enough to un-
dergo a further expansion at Lollard hands1.
In the first place, then, Peckham's original outline of 1281
may be held to represent for us the several Latin tracts of his
day, written by friar and bishop, which Rolle and his York-
shire contemporaries were to offer at length to clergy and laity
in a homely English2. The actual clauses of the Decree remind
us that, whereas the polished argumentative utterances of men
trained in the schools were not for such as these, even the most
ill-equipped priest of all was expected to give his outline in-
struction to the parish, four times annually, on Paternoster, Ave,
Creed, Commandments, vices and virtues, and the rest. But
his knowledge of Latin was execrable, if not in many cases quite
useless. Therefore the monk of St Mary's, the hermits, canons
and other kindly folk, subsequently taking pity on him and his
flock, give him outlines in English, and even better things,
vernacular expositions enriched with charming "exempla" and
similitudes, vying with the "beutis" of the Latin preachers,
sometimes indistinguishable from the regular sermon courses
themselves. So Myrc can cry in his rhyming manual:
Wharefore, thou preste curatoure,
3ef thou plese thy sauyoure,
Loke thou moste on thys werk;
For here thou my3te fynde and rede
That the behoveth to conne nede,
How thou schalt thy paresche preche,
And what the nedeth hem to teche, 3
And whyche thou moste thy self be .
1
All the versions appear in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 118. In one form or
another this programme remains the backbone of every subsequent treatise.
For another English translation made of the Peckham Decrees, see a letter
from Bp. Stafford (Bath and Wells) to his archdeacon, 1435 (Reg. Stafford,
Bath and Wells, Somerset Rec. Soc. p. 173).
2
For a fifteenth century French example, cf. MS. Add. 29279 (fol. 49 b):
"L'abc des simples gens.. .qui contient la patenostre.. .et l'ave Maria.. .et
le credo. .. et les x commandemens, et plusieurs autres poins de nostre religion
cretienne."
3
E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 31, p. 1.
The introduction of these vernacular instruction-books,
blessed by episcopal authority as we said, at length gave the
Lollard his chance to adapt them for widespread propaganda
among the reading lay-folk. With "enlightened" criticisms and
doctrines added to the original texts, with fresh treatises of his
own compiled on the old familiar lines, with a Bible in the
vernacular, Wycliffe's dream of a reformed Christian people
might well seem capable of realization by means of the written
word alone, without waiting for a reformed hierarchy.
In accord with the more literary purposes of the present
review, it is advisable merely to establish what relationship we
can between these religious treatises and the pulpit proper,
leaving their actual contents for some later study. First, then,
of the relations of external form and style—a problem no harder
than that presented by the metrical pieces. The method of
explaining the Creed, clause by clause, in a sermon, is at least
as old as the Sermo de Symbolo ad catechumenos, attributed to
Augustine: commonsense suggests that it is a great deal older.
Here, in later mediaeval England, a set of the briefest Latin
sermons of the fourteenth century1 will deal exclusively with
each leading point of doctrine prescribed by the Peckham
Decrees, in turn; while a later vernacular preacher of Myrc's
style builds a continuous course of instruction on the Ten
Commandments into the fabric of some consecutive Sunday
discourses2. On the other hand, what are already familiar to us
as John Waldeby's Latin treatises on the Lord's Prayer, Angelic
Salutation (Ave), and the Symbolum (Creed), apart from their
obvious structure and their source as popular sermons in York,
may be seen still coupled with the word "Homilia" in the
margins3.
Furthermore, the metrical Sermo de Festo Corporis Christi,
for example, in its various manuscript editions, ostensibly
illustrates the very process of transformation from sermon to
1
MS. Add. 24660, fols. 35-42. Cf. the late fifteenth-century vernacular
preacher's presentation of the same in outline in a sermon, " Dom. va post oct.
Epiphanie" (MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 64, 64 b).
2
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 86 et seq.; cf. also Rypon, in Latin (MS.
Harl. 4894, fols. 67 and 187).
3
Cf. MS. Roy. 8. C. i, fol. 46.
treatise, in the making1. In the oldest version of the text,
apparently that of MS. Harl. 4196, the title "Sermo" stands
clearly as above, and is followed by a Latin text from Psalm
Ixxvii, 252. By the time MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Dd. i. i is
reached, the word "Sermo" has disappeared, although the text
is retained, and the homily opens with a short Latin "exordium"
—"In nomine summi salvatoris...." Finally, the Vernon
Manuscript version (f. cxcv b), the latest of all, dispenses alike
with " Sermo " and text. Our homily has now become a tract—
de festo Carports Christi. The composition which happens to
follow this one in the Vernon MS. would seem to afford us a
glimpse of the reverse process. For here an account of the seven
miracles of the body of Christ is extracted from Robert of
Brunne's Handlynge Synne, and given a formal sermon ante-
theme and ending of its own by the new writer. In a similar way,
it would be easy to show, in the case of compositions by Rolle,
how frequently, with the omission of a name or the re-setting
of a title, the adaptation of tract to sermon or sermon to tract
is repeated according to the immediate intent of the compilation
in hand3.
Sometimes the treatise gives more special indication of the
body of readers—clergy or laity—it was intended to serve. Wher-
ever the familiar rubric occurs—" Sacerdos parochialis tenetur
per canones docere et predicare in lingua materna quater in
anno," etc.4—at the head of a typical instructional programme,
the purport has been inscribed in the first word. Equally
clearly for the priest alone are the treatises in Latin, such, for
example, as a "Compilatio brevis et utilis," on the usual lines,
by no less interesting a personage than the energetic friar,
1
I follow, as to dates of the various MSS. concerned, the editor's
judgement here: for the theory he is not responsible (E.E.T.S., O.S.
No. 98).
2
"Panem angelorum manducavit homo." ("Man etith (!) aungelis
brede.")
3
Cf. the Judica me, Deus in MS. Add. 21202 (fol. 87), identified by me
with Rolle's Libellus, and other parallel MS. versions illustrated in Horstmann,
again called "Sermo ejusdem Ric. Hampol," in MS. Douce 107, fol. 14b.
Cf., too, such Adaptations as supplied in MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 166, fol.
133, and below, p. 306, n. 2.
4
Cf. MS. Bodl. n o , fol. 155; MS. Lansd. 379, fol. 23 (beginning " Con-
stit. provinc. Johan. Peccham, de officio archipresbyteri, capitulo—Ignoranc.
sac. . . " ) ; MS. Burney 356, p. 80, and tracts by Burgo, Watton, etc.
"Thomas Brakkele," of the Paston Letters1. Its language con-
firms the statement of the Prologue—"ad instruction em juni-
orum, quibus non vacat opusculorum variorum prolixitatem
perscrutari de dictis Catholicorum magistrorum, haec sequentia
compilata sunt"—as expressed likewise in the Prologue to
Felton's Latin Sermones. A vernacular Memoriale Credentium,
on the other hand, followed in the manuscript volume2 by a
tract on the Commandments, and some odd sermons, gives
significant advice direct to the layman, and throws further light
on the dual use of these writings, which we have been trying to
emphasize:
Al that is y-wryte may be expounyd and y-seyde. Yf 3e conneth
nou3t understonde what is y-wryte, thenne hyre 3e blythely the
goednesse that men seyth, when them hyrest eny thynge of holy wryt
in commune sermones, other in pryvy collatiouns3.
Passing to relations in matter and authorship, we propose to
deal only with some leading examples of the literature before us.
If these can be connected together, and shown to spring from
a general desire to supply the wants of the English pulpit in
our period and the century preceding it, there is little need to
worry about the rest. They are mere insignificant imitations
that continue to increase through the remaining years. For
the centuries thus selected we cannot do better than start with
Rolle himself, and his ringing challenge: "Saltern vobis osten-
dam in scribendo, qui necessitatem habetis predicare!" The
very fact that, like another Wycliffe, he has been loaded with
too many anonymous works in the past, is only one more tribute
to his lasting genius. Manuscript after manuscript of the fifteenth
century will be found to contain some treatise or homily which
at one time or another has been attributed to his authorship,
especially those most likely to have constituted, within the one
pair of covers, the "Preacher's Library " of some more fortunate
1
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ff. i. 18, fol. 7 et seq. (Readers will recall the
report of his sermon in MS. Add. 34888, fol. 171.) See also Bennett, The
Pastons and their England (1922), passim.
2
MS. Had. 2398. This, I find, is, after all, only a free rendering of a
passage of Rolle's (?) translation of the Speculum of St Edmund (see E.E.T.S.
O.S. No. 26, p. 22). It provides therefore one more interesting link with the
Yorkshire writers.
3
Ibid. fol. 61 b. See further, above, Chap. VI, p. 274, etc.
1
parish priest . Horstmann has called him a link between Bona-
ventura and the Reformers. But his significance, and that of his
Yorkshire fellow-writers for the mediaeval pulpit in England,
is something far wider. The treasured piety and mysticism
from the last great preaching revival of the thirteenth century,
as stored in the smaller French or Latin tracts, was now to be
opened up, as we have seen, to a much larger public, by the
medium of a virile English dialect2. The very words of earlier
friars and their friends were to be made available for the use
of their rivals, the "seculars," though no subsequent friar might
be found willing to do the work of such translation and
"vulgarization."
Early English tracts on vices and virtues3 there had been,
indeed, even before Mannyng undertook his translation of
William of Waddington's Le Manuel des Pechiez in 1303; but
nothing in any way comparable to the really generous output
of these later popularisers, so well represented in Horstmann's
two capacious volumes. Leaving on one side the more slender
mystical pieces which may best stand for the hermit of Ham-
pole's own unique personality, there is really little else than a
mass of translations, adaptations, expansions of the literature
of earlier moralists. Through these and successive vernacular
manuals of all kinds, there recur now and again certain marked
features betraying the common ancestry and kinship. Vivid
1
Cf., for example, the MS. Add. 21202 (15th cent.) aforementioned, con-
taining Watton's Spec. Christ, (fols. 1—70), a Forma Sermonum (fols. 71—73),
and the odd sermons (fols. 73-99), which include the Libellus of Rolle. This
MS. bears the name (15th cent.) of dom. Wm. Woddrest, doubtless a priest
of very modest learning, and certainly no graduate. Cf., further, MS. Line.
Cath. Libr. C. 4. 6, containing much the same as in the Flos Florum, men-
tioned below on p. 298 (works of Rolle, Medit. of St Bernard, Anselm's
Elucid); MS. Laing 140, Univ. Libr. Edinburgh; etc., etc. The examples of
this type of MS. in the Bodleian collections are exceedingly numerous. See,
for example, the revised edition of the Catalogue of the Western MSS. here
(Madan and Craster), vols. i and ii, etc.
a
Even the mystical treatises of great fourteenth-century preachers of the
continent like Suso and Ruysbroek were made available for the English
pulpit, in English translations (cf. MS. Add. 37790, containing Ruysbroek's
Trettesse of perfection off the sonnys of God (fol. 115), Suso, Horolog. Sapien-
tiae (fol. 135 b ; part only as in MS. Add. 37049; but all in MS. Douce 114),
etc.; two of these translations here bear the dates 1434—5).
3
Cf. Vices and Virtues, a middle Engl. Dialogue, c. 1200 (E.E.T.S., O.S.
Nos. 89 and 159); or Sawle viarde (early 13th cent.) (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 34);
MS. Stowe 34.
THE MASTER HOMILIST AND HIS PUPILS

(From a XV century edition of the Meditationes of
St Bonaventura (Pseud.))
sketches of the suffering Jesus in the Courtyard or on the Cross,
plaintive appeals from the Virgin's woes1, re-echo to us the
original eloquence of St Bernard, or the so-called Meditations
of St Bonaventura2 in the naive language of the translators. The
somewhat ascetic piety of St Edmund Rich breathes likewise
afresh through the many English versions of his Speculum in
prose and verse—for at least one of which Rolle himself has
been considered responsible3—or again, in the typical directions
for private prayer incorporated elsewhere. A conclusion to the
English version of the Speculum Vitae Christi acknowledges, in
illuminating fashion, that free-and-easy treatment of the older
sources by mediaeval translators, which has so often perplexed
the modern investigator. Says the writer: "for als moche as hit
ys here thus wreten in englysshe tonge, lengere in many parties,
and in othere maner thanys the latyn of Bonaventure, therefore hit
semeth not convenient to folowe the processe there of by the
dayes of the wyke, aftir the entente of the forsayde Bonaventure,
for hit were to tediose, as me thenketh.... " 4 The formal
treatment of virtues and vices will probably hark back most often
to the famous model of Lorens; or the writer may prefer, with
Lydgate, the method of personification that was used in Bishop
Grossetete's Castel of Love (Chasteau d'amour)5. The tradition
of the Speculum or Mirrour goes on and expands, as indeed every
1
Cf. MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fols. 83, 84 b (here the reference is to St Ber-
nard by name), 88 b et seq.; MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 186 et seq., etc.; MS. St
Albans Cath. fol. 20 (MS. Laud Misc. 23), etc., etc.
2
These were apparently first translated by Mannyng, c. 1320
(E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 60). For a scholarly account of the English versions
of this work and its original author, see Miss Deanesly's "Gospel-
Harmony of John de Caulibus," in Collect. Francisc. (B.S.F.S.), II, ii,
pp. 10-19.
3
See Horstmann, vol. i, p. 219. Note also, in addition to metrical versions
mentioned above, a prose version, in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 26, p. 15 et seq.
(from Thornton MS. Line. Cath. Libr.). The meditations for the hours in
Memoriale Credentium (MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 64 et seq.) seem to show the
direct influence of this work.
4
MS. Arundel 364, fol. 204.
5
It is worth noting here, for our general argument, that a prose version
of this work was made by another Yorkshire monk (of Sawley) with additions
(MS. Egerton 927; see E.E.T.S., O.S. 98, Appdx. p. 407): "of al that a lewed
man has nede for to knawe for hele of soule." Cf. also the survival of the same
method of treatment in another work once attributed to Rolle, The Abbey of
the Holy Ghost (in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 26, p. 48 et seq.); see especially the
Prologue of MS. Lamb. 432, fol. 37 b.
mediaeval student knows to his cost, who has ever had to do
with them1.
Exchanging these older influences for John Gaytrige's very
free translation of Thoresby's Latin text in the middle of the
century, here in his treatment of the Decalogue, we come
actually upon a work which figures independently in the
"Yorkshire" Collections2, while his regular scheme of vices
suggests once more the pattern of the Somme le Roi. Associated,
it is believed3, with Gaytrige, was William of Nassyngton,
lawyer, of the same city, whom the researches of Miss Allen4
would now make responsible for the Prick of Conscience, once
ascribed to Rolle, but of a style too practical and commonplace,
she well argues, for so individual and mystical a character.
Her conclusion was based upon the remarkable likeness which
that work bears to Nassyngton's own Speculum Vitae. The
latter, in its turn, is found to be derived, not from any surviving
treatise of Waldeby, as its author would suggest, but from
the Somme of the Dominican Lorens, itself inspired by the
Summae of William Perrault5. So we are back again to the
original of Dan Michel's Kentish Ayenbite of Inwyt, of William
of Waddington's Manuel des Peches translated as the Handlyng
Synne by Robert Mannyng of Brunne, and the prime model of
many tractates more6. "The first three hundred lines of the
1
On mediaeval "Specula," see P. Perdrizet, Ittude sur le Spec. Human.
Salv. Paris, 1908. MS. Add. 20771, Notes on Specula, by an English antiquary
of the nineteenth century, J. Holmes, though incomplete, will be found
useful.
2
See Horstmann, vol. i, pp. 104 and 108; also pp. 132, 157.
3
See Canon Raine (Fasti Ebor. vol. i, p. 470); Horstmann, vol. i, p. 104
and vol. ii, p. 274, n.
4
Radcliffe Coll. Monographs, No. 15, p. 115 et seq. (Allen, H. E.); cf.
(p. 144): " nearly 1000 lines on most elementary questions of the ' active life,'
. . .such as might be the concern of the commonest parish priest"; also
p. 162, etc. ("a 'commonplace book'"). Cat. of Roy. MSS. in B.M.
(1921), vol. ii, p. 140, suggests that Nassyngton is the same as the chaplain
of Jo. Grandisson, Bp. of Exeter, who died in 1359. But this would seem to
give him far too early a date (cf. footnote following, also Waldeby's date).
5
Cf. ibid. p. 169. A colophon in MS. Bodl. 446, a copy of Nassyngton's
Speculum, is quoted in the Thornton Romances (Camd. Soc. p. xx), to the
effect that in 1384, this work was examined at Cambridge for heresy ("ne
minus literati populum per earn negligenter fallant, et in varios errores
fallaciter inducant") for four days, but declared sound and orthodox by all.
Copies are numerous: cf. MSS. Add. 22283, 22558; Ryl. 17. C. viii.
6
It is quite impossible here to give any adequate indication of the in-
fluence of the Somme of Lorens through its English translations, among
O 19
Speculum Vitae," we are told, "and pages 98 to 105 of the
Ayenbite of Inwyt may be said to be close enough to each other
to make them appear translations from the same work."1
William of Nassyngton himself is an all too elusive figure2. Yet
some further metrical works of his seem to provide a connection
with the so-called Northern Homily Collection, edited by Messrs
Small and Gerould3; while the Mirror of MS. Harl. 45 has
been found, by the present writer, to be a most striking link
midway between Michel's Ayenbite and the interesting homily
series Fons Jacob in the Salisbury Cathedral Library4. Moreover,
it is by no means impossible to justify Horstmann's inclusion
of John Myrc's name amongst those who reflect the influence of
Rolle and his associates, even if the emphasis has to be laid on
the Instructions5, at the expense of the Festiall. The mixed
further varieties and adaptations of which should be noticed those of MSS.
Harl. 435 (metrical), Add. 17013 (andBodl. 283) (early 15th cent.), Add. 37677
(along with Wimbledon's famous sermon, etc.), and Harl. 45 (see here
below). Even the fifteenth-century tract "de v Sensibus" of so individual
an orator as Dr Lichfield, already mentioned (see Chap. 1) in MS. Roy.
8. C. i, shows the same debt to it. As far as I understand, the development
of the chief treatises may be represented thus:
Summae de Vidis et Virtutibus
(Guil. Perrault [Peraldus])
written before 1261
I I
Le Manuel des Somme des Vices et des Vertues
Peches (Pechiez) or Somme le Rot
(Win. of Waddington) (Fr. Lorens, dominican)
not before 1272 (?) 1279
I I
Handlyng Synne Ayenbite of Inwyt
(Robert of Brunne, (Dan Michel of
translator of above) Northgate)
1303 134°
(See especially, Herbert, Cat. of Romances, vol. iii, pp. 273—4, etc.)
1
"That is," she continues, "practically everything in the Spec. Vitae
can be found in the Ayenbite, though the reverse is not true."
2
See Miss Allen again, pp. 166—8.
3
See Horstmann, vol. ii, p. 274 et seq. (poems from MS. Tib. E. vii),
and Perry's Rel. Pieces, E.E.T.S. 1867, p. 60 for the De Trinitate et Unitate or
Bande of Lovynge (fromMS. Thornton, fol. 189). The latter poem also appears
in MS. Add. 3399s, with the Mirror of Life and the Prick of Conscience.
4
Dr Brandeis, the editor of pt. i of this MS. for the E.E.T.S. has not
realized that its "perfect little pictures" too are derived from the Mirrour of
MS. Harl. 45.
6
E.g. the layman's prayer at consecration here cited (see E.E.T.S., O.S.
No. 31, p. 9) is Rolle's ("Welcome, Lord, in form of bread"). The vivid
sermon collection of MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, which Horstmann
may never have seen, with its few unquestionable homilies
from the Festiall series, among a host of others, brings us, indeed,
very close to their spirit again. Here may be discerned the same
detailed agonies of the Passion, the same touch of delight in the
Nativity scene, or in the charms of childhood1, the same pic-
turesque treatment of "God's privities," or of the Lord's
Prayer. Nor, finally, need we leave outside the charmed circle
John Watton's popular Speculum Christiani2, another manual
drawn up explicitly for preachers, with its crude rhymes and
its medley of Latin and English, which, as Miss Deanesly
reminds us, "did for the south of England and the fifteenth
century what Gaytrik's treatise had done for the north and the
fourteenth." For Horstmann himself has discovered for us
that passages of Rolle's Form of Living occur in it. How true
the same kind of facts may be of many other smaller treatises
and sermons, only a more protracted research is probably
needed to show. Ten Brink, another student in the same field,
does not exaggerate when he declares, "during the first half of
the fifteenth century, the orthodox homily... still felt the pre-
vailing influence of Hampole."3 As we have said, there are
Lollard affinities with this literature, too. But time permits only
a passing reference to Wycliffe's own vernacular sermons, or to
the Lambeth MS. version of Gaytrige's tract4, done, so the
editor of the Lay Folks' Catechism believed, by WyclifFe himself,
at least with the archbishop's consent (!)5; or again to the record
passion scene of the Festiall (E.B.T.S., Ext. S. No. 96, pp. 121-2) should also
be 1compared with the Rolle equivalent, etc. See also above, p. 47.
Cf. the Festiall description of the Holy Innocents, and of the " Nativity "
scene ("the oxe and the asse," etc.; see pp. 22—3).
2
Numerous copies in the Brit. Mus. in Latin and English versions (cf.
MS. Add. 22121, written by a Carthusian monk of Shene, as a penance, etc.
For other MSS. and the above remark, see Miss Deanesly's Lollard Bible
(Camb. Univ. Press), p. 346). Warner and Gilson suggest Jo. Morys of Wales
as a more likely author (and Wallensis for "Watton"); but I notice that the
15th cent. MS. Line. Cath. Libr. C. 4. 2, contains the sermons of Doctor
Watton (in Latin). Further, a note in Sir Frederick Madden's hand (I am
told) in MS. Add. 14408, suggests Jo. Watton as author of this English
version of Vegetius,rfe re Militari. I suspect myself that he is really the "John
Walton, Canon of Osney," reported translator of the Consol. Boethii, 1410.
(Cf. Cat. of Roy. MSS. ii, p. 267.)
3 4
5
Hist, of Eng. Lit. vol. ii, p. 329. MS. Lamb. 408.
See E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 118, p. xxiv (Canon Nolloth).
19-2
of Lollard tamperings with the text of Rolle which dismayed the
good nuns of Hampole1.
In closing the present section it is proposed to illustrate the
significance of some remarks already passed on the subject of
pseudo-Wycliffite ascriptions, by the case of a little manuscript
which came accidentally to the present writer's notice in the
course of his researches. It belongs to the category of doubtful
works which cannot be identified at all confidently either with
the party of strict orthodoxy or its opponents. There is in the
Bodleian Library an insignificant Tractatus in English on the
Ten Commandments2, many passages of which may be found
in generally similar works in the British Museum3. These
anonymous treatises have been attributed in the catalogues,
hitherto apparently without much hesitation, to Wycliffe him-
self, and one of them was actually shown and described as such
-by Sir E. Maunde Thompson in the Wycliffe Exhibition of
18844. Less than a year ago, however, another copy, which
turned out to be identical, within limits, with the version in the
Bodleian (when compared by the present author), was placed
under glass in St Alban's Cathedral5. This time, incorporated
in the text itself, at the end of the exposition, and in the same
fifteenth-century hand, there appeared the following curious
addition: " Thes beutis of this book, the whiche maister Wiliam
Trebilvile, doctoure of decrees, Official of Seynt Albons, hath
decreed necessarili and bi hovely cristis people to kunne in her
modir tunge."6 Now it is hardly to be believed that an Official
of the Archdeaconry, connected with an institution whose action
against Lollards and suspected literature was so notably
1
See Horstmann, vol. ii, p. xxxiv. It is worth noticing also that works by
Rolle and Wycliffe sometimes appear together in the same MS. (cf. MSS.
Bodl. 52 and 938, etc.). Dr Craster reminds us, too, in a recent catalogue of
Western MSS. in the Bodleian, that up to and including that of 1697 Rolle's
Commentary on the Psalms and Canticles was definitely attributed to Wycliffe
himself, in the Bodleian catalogues, so complete was the later confusion.
2
3
MS. (Bodl.) Laud. Misc. 23.
MS. Roy. 17. A. xxvi and MS. Harl. 211 (fols. 47-65). These and the
foregoing are obviously related to the treatise of MS. Harl. 2398, also.
4
See Guide (Thompson), p. 52; and reference to No. 40, Shirley's Cat.
of Wycl. Works.
6
Here regularly referred to as MS. St Albans Cath. See my article on this
MS.6
in the Trans, of the St Alban's and Herts. Archaeol. Soc. for 1924.
Ibid. fol. 44 b.
vigorous in the same century1, would be found recommending
a tract by the arch-heretic himself, or one of his followers. Nor
can it be said, in spite of some frank remarks, that its contents
in any way resemble those of the little Lollard books "in the
vulgar idiom" which were actually condemned by the Abbot of
St Albans at the Synod of 14272. Unless the Official's name has
been introduced without proper authority3, we may consider,
therefore, in the absence of any information respecting the said
'Trebilvile,'* that we have here a vernacular treatise which was
deemed not merely respectable, but highly salutary in its day.
Since, furthermore, it seems clear on inspection that the work
was somewhat loosely constructed out of pulpit matter, we may
well stop to ask what may be the worst that this author, once
mistaken for Wycliffe, has to say to his readers. Its agreement
with the tone of Bromyard and the Latin homilists is certainly
most suggestive for the present study. While no definitely
Lollard tenet is expressed throughout, there is the same fearless
attitude of mind towards clerical shortcomings, with the hated
friar now often bracketed with the much criticized parish
"curate." "Loke what companye thu comest inne," says the
irate moralist, this time sparing none, "be thei lordis, bischopis,
personnys, vicaries, prestis, or freris, (which wolen be holde holi
men in lyvynge), and thou schalt se for the moost part that al her
daliaunce schal be of triflis, and of iapis, of nycyte, and othere
syche vanytees, and not 00 word of God, ne of his commaunde-
mentis."5
Besides worldliness, the writer is not afraid to accuse the
prelates of a disastrous laxity in the performance of their duties;
and prelates, we may remind ourselves, would assuredly be no
more to the taste of monks of the great abbey6, than to Bromyard,
or to the hermit of Hampole. No attempt is made to conceal
1
Cf. 1436-7, trial of suspects at St Peter's, St Alban's, by the abbot;
1429, similar enquiry at St Peter's again, Bp. of Lincoln presiding; 1431,
similar enquiry at Hertford, for measures against Lollards, the abbot present;
1464, a Commission to three abbey officials for a like purpose, etc., etc.
See Amundesham, Annales (Rolls S.), vol. i; Whethamstede, ibid. vol. ii
(p. 22); Walsingham, etc.
a
3
Amundesham, vol. i, pp. 322-4, etc.
See my article aforementioned, p. 48. * Turberville.
5
6
Ibid. fol. 8 b. Cf. with this the Latin passage given above, p. 38.
The officers of this archdeaconry were selected from their number.
the existence of immorality among priests and friars; while
there is much of St Francis' charming spirit in the love and
respect described as due to their ghostly father from parishioners,
in the sorrow, and in the gentle reproof to be given in private,
when he shows evil example. But even he is to be obeyed only
in as myche as he techith thee goddis lawe1. Alms should be
given to the helpless and crippled poor, but not to sturdy
beggars well arrayed—"whether thei ben lewid prestis or
freris."2 There is scant respect for the pardoner and his
penny3. As for "dede ymages" they seem to fare little better
at first sight; but it is only the false rendering to them of
"that worschipe and praier that is oonli dew to god and to his
seyntis," and foolish miraculous honours, that are really con-
demned. Images, as elsewhere in orthodox literature, are to be
rightly maintained as "lewid mennes bokes."4 Antichrist's
laws are further said to be rampant in the land. But that is a
vague phrase, for all its taint of Lollardy almost as often used
by their opponents, as by the Lollards themselves. As against
it, we have to notice a surer test-case in favour of orthodoxy,
namely, that the command "to rede goddis lawe" is carefully
qualified by the previous condition—"if thou be a prest."5
Such criticisms of lay vices as follow in its pages, with pictu-
resque reference to current fashions in dress, in witchcrafts,
in oaths, in domestic life, in buying and selling, the daily
activities "in halle and in chambre, in chirche and in chepinge"6
will be found scattered under the appropriate Prohibitions in
almost every tractate of this kind. The student of social custom
who turns to the great Latin Summae of the preachers will
therefore do well to include these more modest little works on
the Decalogue in his survey, also7.
1
Ibid. fol. 25. Cf. here, MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 34: " No man shuld have the
offis of prechyng, neither cure in holi chirche, that wolde presume to teche or
do besides that Crist hath tau3t hym bi his word," etc.
2 3
4
Ibid. fol. 22. fol. 41. See Chap. m.
fol. 10:" for suche dede ymagis ben lewid mennes bokes to lerne bi hem
hou thei schulden worschipe the seyntis in hevene, aftir whom these dede
ymagis ben mad, and also that men, whenne thei biholden these dede ymagis,
schulden have. . .the more mynde of the seintis lyvynge that ben in hevene,
and make these holi seintis her meenys bitwix God and hem, and not these
dede ymagis, for neither thei mowe not helpe hem silfe, ne other men."
6 6
fol. 21. fol. 24.
' Besides MSS. already indicated in Chap. Ill, cf. MS. Camb. Univ. Libr.
The English pulpit which thus gave birth to a didactic
literature both in prose and verse, in Latin and in the vernacular,
is as much the true parent of the contemporary satirical poem
or the allegoric vision. To glance at that section of Mr Wells'
manual of Middle-English writings which is entitled "Satire
and Complaint," is merely to read a subject-index of typical
sermon matter1. Here are the preacher's diatribes "against the
pride of the Ladies, their luxury in dress," "the retinues of the
great," the Church courts, "the evil times," the mendicant
friars; his regular moralizings alike in the "Song of Nego," or
the "Narration of Sir Penny," upon "The Devyl of Hell," or
"The Earthquake of 1382." Whether the poems themselves
were his own composition or that of others in his audience is
a question to be left for some future discussion. A word can
only be added in passing concerning the Vision of Piers Plowman,
which as the greatest product of all has here rightly a final place
in Mr Wells' series. Half a century and more of learned criticism
has been expended on Langland's famous Vision. But, through
modern contempt for a pulpit now shorn of its ancient glory,
the one complete clue to the poem is still persistently ignored.
In reality, it represents nothing more nor less than the quin-
tessence of English mediaeval preaching gathered up into a
single metrical piece of unusual charm and vivacity. Hardly a
concept of the poet's mind, an authority quoted, a trick of
symbolism, or a satirical portrait but is to be found characteristic
of the literature of our present study. The fact applies equally,
and indeed adequately, to the loosely-quoted references from
"great clerks,"2 or from Scripture, the quaint "saffron" of
French3 and Latin phrases, the knowledge of legal1 or commercial
Ii. iii. 8 (two tracts); MS. Laing 140, Univ. Libr. Edinburgh; etc., and several
more in the Bodleian.
1
2
pp. 227-70.
Which do not mean, as M. Jusserand imagined, that Langland has read
them, " but quotes from memory." He is simply using the preachers' ordinary
Sententiae Patrum and the popular treatises, with all their inaccuracies.
(Ten Brink is equally misleading here. Cf. E. E. Lit., ed. 1887, p. 354.)
3
Which does not mean that he "knew French"; but that he used the
popular
4
bons-mots like other preachers.
Which does not mean that he had special knowledge of lawyers or the
law, as both Skeat and Jusserand suggested. That very acquaintance with
"what renders a Latin charter challengeable," which impresses Jusserand,
could have been derived direct from the pages of the " Summa Predicantium "!
practices, the mildly conservative attitude towards Authority
as divinely constituted in Church and State, the passion for
reforms1, the biting satire of the classes2, the criticisms of the
churchmen, the whole apparatus of imagery3, the stress on Love
and good works, the unqualified praise of the virtuous labouring
poor. To crown all, the very recensions, expansions, alterations
of the original text which have raised mountains of difficulty
in the critic's path, have been but the common fate, as we have
seen, of every popular religious treatise of the age, copied and
re-copied again. But to illustrate and develope this parallel
would require the space of an independent volume. The task
must wait4.
In explaining how the needs of the ordinary parish priest
were met by the Peckham-Thoresby outlines of Faith, allusion
might have been made to clerical manuals which include in
addition rules and directions for the whole round of parish
duties. These handy little directories are best treated, perhaps,
in a small class by themselves. Their common characteristics
are that, with one exception, they are in Latin, and that amid
a wealth of pithy information, the regular Peckham outline of
instruction always finds a place to itself, normally accompanied
by the articles of the Great Sentence5. In brief, they must be
considered, for the most part, as still smaller and handier
abridgements of the Summae Juris Canonici on the one hand, and
compilations like John Beleth s Rationale Divinorum Officiorum
on the other, a writer repeatedly quoted by Myrc in the course
of his Festiall sermons. The Oculus Sacerdotis of William de
1
Which, linked with the foregoing, is not in the least unique, as Prof. Ker
stated. On the contrary, it is typical of every sermon collection we possess.
2
Which does not make his poem a satire distinct from "the devotional
treatise," as Mr Chambers suggests, and Mr Wells' classification also.
3
None of which requires any acquaintance with " French allegory," to
explain it, apart from the stock-in-trade of English homilists of the day.
4
I have essayed a beginning in my article in the Mod. Lang. Rev. for
July, 1925 (vol. xx, No. 3), pp. 270-279.
6
The author is here inclined to disagree somewhat with Mr Littlehales
(see The Old Service Books, p. 270), who says: " It would be expected that the
text of the Great Sentence would be supplied in MS. Manuals, but this is not
s o . . . . " He goes on to admit that it is to be found "at times," however.
See below, Appdx. iv. However, there is evidence in the Registers that the
custom of reading out the Great Sentence publicly in the churches had fallen
into neglect, and lapsed in the fifteenth century (cf. Reg. Spofford, Hereford,
p. 199 [1435]; and Wilkins, Cone, passim).
Pagula (or Page) would seem to be our oldest example of these
English manuals, and the parent of not a few later varieties1.
If the Regimen Animarum is dated correctly in the Harleian
manuscript of that work, then Pagula's book could hardly be
later than the middle of the first half of the fourteenth century2.
For the former claims to have made use of it. It is perhaps the
most comprehensive of the series, furnishing the parson with
a wonderfully complete "vade-mecum" based upon the ap-
propriate provincial and synodal decrees. In spite of Mr
Peacock's difficulties in the matter3, Myrc's vernacular Instructions
for Parish Priests, after all, merely embodies a verse "transla-
tion," in the regular loose fashion of the day, of Part II of the
former, preceded by the Latin rubric: "Quid et quomodo debet
predicare parochianos suos." The essential knowledge here
arranged for transmission to the laity embraces the proper
method of baptism and the bringing up of children, marriage
and confession, reverence and ritual in the church, cemetery
behaviour, payment of tithes and even the conduct of secular
business, from the ethical point of view4. The Regimen Ani-
marum which, as its unknown author informs us in his Prologue,
owes much to this same part of the Oculus Sacerdotis in its com-
pilation, was written apparently in the year 1343, and based
mainly upon the Summa of Raymund of Pennaforte5. Its
second principal section6 is concerned with "exhortations and
1
MSS. are numerous (cf. MS. Roy. 6. E. i (B.M.); MS. Adv. Libr. Edinb.
18.2 3. 6; MS. Guildhall Libr. London, 249; etc.).
The date hitherto usually ascribed to it—c. 1350 (cf. Cutts, ed. 1914,
p. 224)—will therefore be too late.
3
See E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 31, pref. The editor says here (p. vi): "Mirk
tells us that he translated this poem from a Latin book called 'Pars Oculi.'
Some people have therefore thought that it is a versified translation of John
de Burgo's 'Pupilla Oculi.'" (But why?) Peacock himself does not realize
that Myrc refers to "Pars ii" of Pagula's work. Concerning further confusion
over Myrc's Latin Manuale Sac, see above, p. 47. (MS. Camb. Univ. Libr.
Ff. 1. 14, and MS. York Cath. Libr. xvi, L. 8 contain copies of this latter.)
4
Cf. here, e.g., MS. Roy. 6. E. i, fol. 25 b et seq. (Pagula), with Myrc's
Instructions, p. 3 (E.E.T.S.) et seq.
6
Cf. the typical Prologue of MS. Harl. 2272, fol. 2: " O vos omnes sacer-
dotes qui laboratis et onerati et curati animarum estis, attendite et videte
libellum istum.... Nam in isto opusculo perhibentur pericula et medicine que
ad animas pertinent, et ideo Regimen vocatur Animarum. Compilavi enim
hoc opusculum ex quibusdam libris, viz. Summa Summarum Raymundi,
Summa confessoris et veritatis theologie, Pars Oculi sacerdotis, et de libro
venerabilis Anselmi. . .," etc.
6
Ibid. fol. 88 et seq.
good teaching" for the parishioners, and, after mention of the
preacher's task, the usual Latin programme follows, with a
particularly liberal treatment of the Deadly Sins and the subject
of Temptation. Some quasi-legal advice on preaching and its
privileges, which falls early in the first half of the book1, intro-
duces to the reader the curt method of question and answer
typical of the Canon Law manuals, to which this class of
treatises has already been compared2. The Pupilla Oculi of
John de Burgo, Chancellor of Cambridge University (c. 1384),
the popularity of which is clearly attested by printed editions
in the sixteenth century3 as well as by numerous earlier manu-
scripts, also claims kinship with Pagula's earlier work. It is,
however, much less of a preaching manual, and much more of
the compendium of legal information4. The early fifteenth-
century Flos Florum5, on the other hand, save for its intro-
duction of the " Layfolk's Faith " (here partly in Latin, partly in
English), and of other compositions directly intended for the
preacher, seems to have but little right to be included in the
group at all. For its character is simply that of an ample
collection of earlier "libelli" and sermons put together in
twenty-three books, without any attempt at literary unification
1
Ibid. fol. 9 et seq.
2
Cf. for a foreign example, the popular Summa Angelica, by Angelus of
Clavasio
3
(d. 1495).
Cf. 1510 (Wolffgang), 1518 (Paris). The work occurs in Wills of the
period; cf. arector's will of 1410 (Great Heylingbury, Essex), with a " Legenda
Sanctorum " (Sharpe's Calendar of Wills, London, vol. ii, p. 385). Cf. also an
interesting note in MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 18, fol. 229 b, a volume of Sermones
Domin. per totum annum by Januensis (i.e. Voragine): "A.D. millesimo
ccccm0 lxxv0, M. Jacobus Base emebat istum librum [i.e. the sermons, as
above] de M. Thoma Boteler, in hospitio Sancti Nicolai de Civ. Cantabrigge,
et alium librum vocatum Pupilla Oculi, et alium librum vocatum Casus
Bernardi [i.e. Casus super Decret., by Bernard of Parma], et unum Decretum
[i.e. ex Corp. Jur. Canon.], cum uno doctore vocato Brexiensis." [Gloss, on
Decret. by Bartholomew of Brescia.] In short, a modest preacher's library!
4
(Pars x here gives the "Peckham" programme.) Cf. MS. Roy. II. B. x;
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Kk. i. 14; MS. Durham Cath. Libr. B. iv. 32, MSS.
Salis. Cath. Libr. 126 and 147; etc. To the list of these works must be added
the Cilium OculiSacerdotis,MS.Harl.4968,MS. Guildhall Libr.London,249,
fols. 391-484 (here described as "quoddam additamentum Oculo Sacerdotis ").
6
MS. Burney 356 (over 400 pp.). The "Peckham" programme is No. 5,
on p. 80 et seq. Cf. again the Prologue of the Reg. Anim. (MS. Harl. 2272,
fol. 2): " . . . Omnia precipua que per canones et constituciones provinciales
precipiuntur scire, et parochianis exponere, et inter ipsos in ecclesia pre-
dicare, in hac modica summa per ordinem conscribuntur."
whatever. None the less it shows the same intention of grouping
together under one heading all that the average priest requires
for his guidance in the sacred office of instruction.
We take our final leave of the treatises, then, with the Flos
Florum, a choice garland of homiletic flowers culled from Rolle,
Grossetete, Anselm, and others, but one most loosely and pro-
miscuously strung together. In the literature that closes the
present survey, it will be the elaborate and finished systems of
tabulating, alphabetical indexing, cross-referencing, as well as
summarizing, linking up every detail of the whole in a truly
wonderful order, that will impress us. "Exemplaria" or books
of moralized stories and analogues for sermon illustration com-
prize the only branch of that literature that may be said to have
attracted adequate attention in modern times. In the ordinary
course of our survey the use and development of the "ex-
emplum" would require more than a chapter to itself. But the
published researches of Prof. Crane in America1, and the
learned volume in the Catalogue of Romances in the British
Museum, by Mr Herbert2, apart from single monographs,
happily will enable us to dismiss the leading English collections
here, in a sentence or two:
Mira parabolica, que sunt racionis arnica,
Colligo per multos libros reddencia cultos,
Et quasi mellitos sermones luce pollitos,
Que faciunt mentes populi recreamen habentes... . 3
Although in a direct line with the Dialogues of Gregory or
the primitive Greek "Physiologus,"4 these were, in England as
on the continent, the special fruit of Dominican and Franciscan
1
The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (Folklore Soc. 1890) and several later
pamphlets, especially Mediaeval Sermon Books and Stories, and their study,
since 1883. (Reprinted from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Soc.
vol. lvi, No. 5, 1917.)
2
Cat. of Romances in the Dept. of MSS. of the B.M. vol. iii. (An analysis
of 109 "exempla" MSS., with reference to over 8000 stories!) See also J. H.
Mosher, The Exemplum in England (Columbia Univ. Press, 1911), a short
study from printed sources only. The author has missed at least one printed
series of English sermons, containing "exempla," viz. those of Bp. Herbert
de Losinga of Norwich (in Life, Letters, and Sermons of Bp. Herbert de
Losinga, vol. ii, ed. Goulburn and Symonds; J. Parker, Oxf. 1878), c. 1050-
1119.
3
4
MS. Arundel 506, fol. 40.
See art. "Physiologus" in Encycl. Brit, n t h ed.
labours. Even before the Mendicant appeared, however, in the
opening years of the thirteenth century, Alexander Neckam of
St Albans, in his De Naturis Rerum1, and the Cistercian fabulist
Odo of Cheriton2, had produced between them, besides many
examples of the weird symbolic animals of the bestiary, and the
fable proper, a handful of entertaining "narrations," biblical,
historical, monkish or purely legendary. When Bartholomew's
vast treasure-house of natural wonders3, in the shape of the
De Proprietatibus Rerum, has been added, somewhere about the
year 1230, already English authorship can boast of all the great
Latin " exempla " types which eventually go to enrich the Summa
Predicantium of our noteworthy Dominican chancellor. Two
anonymous collections, most probably the work of a Franciscan
in each case, mark a further stage, especially in their use of
subject-headings, alphabetically arranged. These are the
Liber Exemplorum (c. 1270-79)4, and the Speculum Laicorum
(c. 1279-92)5. The origins of the more famous Gesta Roman-
orum are still wrapped in mystery, in spite of the fact that a
whole group of scholars has been busy upon them during the
last fifty years or so6. But the latest and best opinion, at all
events, is in favour of original compilation in this country. Amid
the truly brilliant assemblage of tales, in its pages, from many
nations and many periods, each followed by its own moraliza-
tion, East meets West, and classical names parade in feudal
habit. The whole provides a most entertaining and ever
popular spectacle, of which subsequent English preachers were
not slow to avail themselves.
All the collections so far named were written in the ecclesi-
astical tongue, and lay therefore at the disposal of the clerical
reader alone7. By the time, however, that the age of Mannyng
and Rolle is reached, and the "exempla" naturally appear in
1
Ed. Wright (Rolls S.).
2
See Hervieux, Les Fabulistes Latins, vol. iv. (Odo bids the preacher supply
"auctoritates et exempla scripturarum," in his Prologue; see ibid. p. 174.)
3
For treatises on "Moralized Properties of Things" consult M. L. De-
lisle in Hist. Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxx, Introd. p. xxxvi, etc.
4
Ed. Little, A. G., Br. Soc. of Franc. Studies, 1908. See also his sketch of
the "Fasciculus Morum " in his Studies in Engl. Franc. Hist. There are several
MSS. of this work in the Bodleian, some explicitly called "Sermons."
6
Ed. J. Th. Welter, Paris, 1914.
6
One need only stop to mention here such names as Oesterley, Herrtage,
Swan, Douce, Warton, Tyrrwhitt, and Madden (from 1879 back to 1838).
7
Cf. here such headings as "Liber Exemplorum ad usum predicantium."
English among their treatises, another collection of "fabliaux"
arrives on the scene, this time in French—language of the court
and perhaps of the traders. But this is apparently as far as the
Mendicant ever got in the direction of popularizing the example-
books themselves1. Nicole Bozon's Contes Moralizes2 are the
last as they are the first known collection by an English friar to
be issued, apparently, by the author himself, in anything but
Latin. Unless, therefore, the explanation already offered—of
the friar's unwillingness thus to give away his pulpit specialities
—be accepted, we are at a loss to account for the situation3.
Two Latin books of moralizations by the Dominican Robert
Holcot*, about this time, further typify admirably the kind
of stiff and formal pedantry beloved of the contemporary
university friar, even in so trivial a sphere. This writer takes
particular delight in historical "exempla" from classical or
pseudo-classical sources. His moralizations and metaphors
must be full of the absurd extravagances and wearisome multi-
plicity of scholastic divisions and scholastic symbolism5. The
same thing is largely true of Bromyard. But to look back again
at Bozon, for a moment. Besides the Natural History, the animal
fables, the anecdotes, the "canonization of hard work" and the
rest, he is interesting for the violence of his attack on abuses in
Church and State. The bailiff, the bishop, and lawyer, the
usurer, all come in for their share. So, while we may not agree
with M. Meyer over the originality of all this criticism in what
he claims unhesitatingly to be nothing less than a book of
sermons actually preached6, we gladly recognize the importance
of its anticipation of another distinct element in the make-up
of the Sumtna Predicantium. For Bozon's work is no mere
1
It is worth noting, however, that French proverbs are sometimes quoted
in the text of Latin sermon collections; cf. Bromyard, S.P., and MS. Add.
24660, fol. 40, etc.
2
Ed. P.Meyer and L.T. Smith (Soc. des Anciens Textes fr.), 1889. An im-
portant manuscript of this work is MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 12. iv. An English
translation of this text has been published as The Metaphors of Brother
Bozon, a Friar Minor, by J. R. MS. Harl. 1288 contains a Latin version.
3
4
See above, Chap, vi, pp. 226-8.
6
Liber de Moralizationibus and Opus super Sapientiam Salomonis (d. 1349).
Cf. here Crane {Exempla ofj. de Vitry), pp. xcviii—xcix, etc. See also the
printed editions (Venice, 1505; Paris, 1510) of the Moralitates pulchrae His-
toriarum in usum. Predicatorum.
6
"Et, sans doute, plus d'une fois, avant d'etre e'crit," adds M. Meyer
(p. xxviii). (For his claim of originality, see pp. xxvi (and xxii).)
3O2 MANUALS AND TREATISES
sermon-series, but shares the character of the more or less
systematic guide-book. No less worthy of the comparison are
his strong popular sympathies; although his simple practical
teaching may be more in a line with Myrc and the vernacu-
larists. Even apart altogether from features noticed in the learned
editor's preface, the Contes Moralizes are significant for their
union at this stage of the fables, the moralized "narrations " and
"properties of things" along with this strong topical interest.
As a last word in connection with the history of the greater
example-books in our period, we call attention to the remarkable
activity displayed in making English translations, and in
multiplying generally the number of available copies. More
often than not the thirteenth-century Speculum Laicorum will
turn up in a fifteenth-century manuscript 1 ; or we may find that
the copy of the sixty fables in Latin elegiacs that we may be
reading—known as Aesopus in Fabulis and compiled probably
by one Walter the Englishman between the years 1169 and
1190—is in the hand of an Austin canon of the priory at Kenil-
worth, some two and a half centuries later 2 . Among notable
translations are the two earlier vernacular manuscripts of the
Gesta Romanorum, of about the year 14403, and contemporary
English versions of Voragine's Legenda Aurea* and the Alpha-
betum Narrationum5. This last-named work, with a title that
commands our notice, is now believed, in its Latin form, to
have been put together originally by a Frenchman at the end
of the fourteenth century 6 . Its two hundred "exempla" neatly
arranged, "secundum ordinem alphabeti," from "Accidia" to
" X p s " (Christ), are a not unworthy prelude to the volume
which now claims our notice.
1
Cf. MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 141; MS. Roy. 7. C. xv, and others in the
Brit. Mus. (see Cat. of Rom. vol. iii, p. 408, etc.); MS. Bodl. 474, etc.
2
MS. Add. 38665, fols. 41-56 b, by John Strecch (cf. MS. Add. 35295,
c. 1422). Strecch[e] is known as a chronicler: see Kingsford, Eng. Hist. Lit.
in XV cent., p. 39.
3
4
MSS.Harl. 7333 and Add. 9066. (See E.E.T.S. reprint, Ext. S. No. 33.)
MSS. are Add. 11565 and 35298, Harl. 630 and 4775, Egerton 876, Douce
372, and Lamb. 72. See Pierce Butler, Leg. Aur., Baltimore, 1899, pp. 50—75.
6
MS. Add. 25719 (see E.E.T.S. ed. Banks, O.S. Nos. 126, 127). MS.
Harl. 268 is said to be the Latin original of this particular version.
6
See J. A. Herbert in The Library, New S. vol. vi (1905), p. 94 et seq. Mr
Herbert, who here suggests Arnold of Liege as author, adds: "English
preachers held it in even greater esteem than the Speculum Laicorum."
"Examples move men more than precepts" is a favourite
quotation of the preachers from St Gregory onward; and the
statement would seem equally true of the modern litterateurs
who profess to have looked into the books of Jacques de Vitry,
or John de Bromyard to-day. In fact, it might come as a sur-
prise to some of them to hear that the Summa Predicantium of
the latter contained anything but what one has termed the
"histories." None the less, this colossal undertaking, with its
hundred and eighty-nine topics disposed alphabetically, and
its "exempla" now swollen to over a thousand, gathers up into
itself practically every feature of importance in the literature
with which we have been concerned. Hence, while defying any
adequate analysis, it will yet serve us here as both final illustra-
tion and summary. In the first place, its Dominican authorship
asserts once more the unrivalled supremacy of the Mendicants,
not merely in the preservation of tales and wonders, but in
everything that pertains to the formal preaching art. Secondly,
its wholesale plagiarism, and with it the decay in originality
of treatment, which resulted from a profusion of hand-books
and helps for the pulpit, though not always clear to the casual
reader, becomes more and more evident, as careful investigation
proceeds. Acknowledged quotations from other sources are, to
begin with, numerous enough. But, not content with these, the
author must borrow in addition the most homely and natural
little comparisons and sketches of every-day life from other
minds. We fix with an innocent enthusiasm upon some vivid
portraiture of the well-bred hounds of the chase, with the
domestic dog lying asleep, in the foreground, by way of con-
trast, upon his cottage dung-heap. At another time it is a
passage on the increased activities of bear-baiting on Sundays
that arrests us. In each the lines of our British "primitive" of
the middle ages are as few and as skilful as those of the con-
temporary wall-painting, or monumental brass, with a sympathy
as keen as Landseer's. Yet to our surprise, and no little dis-
appointment, the very phrases of Bromyard's Latin will turn
up in French sermon manuscripts of at least a century earlier.
Everywhere an unrestricted use of anterior forms seems to be
the order of the day. The art of the pulpit has passed its zenith.
If we turn next to principles of style and construction, each
topical section of the work, however uneven in length, is found
to reproduce the invariable pattern of the elaborately "divided "
sermon, with the chief heads of divisions set forth in the opening
paragraph. The allegoric interpretations, noticed repeatedly
elsewhere, reach the most tedious and absurd proportions
imaginable in such "figures" as those of the well-known
chess-men and their moves, reminiscent of de Cessolis; the
Devil's Castle; or the separate hands, fingers, even finger-joints
of God and the Evil One, subjected in turn to the same highly
grotesque treatment as symbols of the truths to be imparted.
The quintessence of the treatises we may consider incorporated
and expanded under the headings of vices and virtues, which
in all alphabetical "encyclopedias" of this kind occupy the
chief place in the contents-tables. Bromyard has an eye not
merely for their branches and characteristic penalties or prizes,
but even for the regular excuses men make for them in the one
case, or the widespread social advantages in the other. Further-
more the Sermones ad Stattis are not missing. For, scattered
amongst the former, appear'' capitula " with such titles as " Ordo
Clericalis," "Judices," "Advocati," "Mercatio," "Nobilitas,"
"Militia," containing an ordered mass of detailed criticism,
advice, warning, applied to the particular class concerned. That
they are often intended to equip the preacher for the special
occasions and audiences we have mentioned, there can be little
doubt. The second " Divisio " of the subject" Ordo Clericalis," for
example, is thus outlined:" Secundo prosequenda sunt quaedam
themata per modum collationum ad ordinandos et ordinatos
specialiter pertinentium." Emphasis of the way in which every
conceivable history-book, example-book, legendary, bestiary
and the rest seem to have been ransacked to provide adequate
illustration for this huge enterprize, on an unprecedented scale,
will be unnecessary. The writer repeats an old phrase in his
own Prologue to the effect that "it is no sin to be taught by the
enemy, and to enrich the Hebrews with the spoils of the
Egyptian." Little wonder, therefore, that the sayings of pagan
philosophers and men of letters1, as well as fabulists, jostle
quotations in his pages from Scripture, from the Fathers, or
1
Cf. the Prologue: " Est aliud etiam advertendum quod frequenter in hoc
tractatu adducuntur gentiles et eorum opera. . . , " etc.
from Canon Law to all appearance, sometimes, with an equal
authority and importance.
The thirteenth-century Speculum Laicorum1 aforementioned,
of all the antecedent compositions by Englishmen which
adopted an alphabetical system, is perhaps most worthy to be
singled out as the genuine prototype of our Summa. Here not
only are the "exempla" but the typical opening definitions and
divisions, the fondness for the citation of authorities, and the
special warnings to social groups as well. With Bromyard,
however, in the matter of arrangement, we go further, to mark
how by means of a method of index-letters and numbers he
heightens the possible efficiency of his book for the preacher
with continuous cross-referencing in the body of the text2 .
Moreover, he informs us in his Prologue that his references to
Canon Law are so ordered " that those who possess a sufficiency
of the said books [lawyers' hand-books to the Digest, etc.] but
have little skill or experience in turning them up, to find what is
referred to, may not spend too much time in hunting about."
While so many libraries still remain unsearched, it is im-
possible to say how many attempts were made in this country
to emulate the great achievement of the Dominican. Bromyard
himself has been mentioned as author of a set of Distinctiones
Theologicae, name common enough in recent Bodleian Cata-
logues of manuscripts for an encyclopaedic work of similar
description. Three English Franciscans of the period, at the
least, produced Summae of sermon-material alphabetically
arranged—John of Lathbury3, John de Grimston, whose small
volume rich in vernacular verse, now in the Advocates' Library
in Edinburgh4, was compiled in the year 1376, and the Minorite
1
Cf. the writer's preface (ed. Welter): " . . .et ut facilius inveniantur a
querentibus optata, per modum alphabeti compegi tractaculum, materiarum
capitula preponens ibi contentarum "; and that of MS. Roy. 6. E. vi. Sim.
the mid. 14th cent. Tabula Exemplorum of MS. Add. 37670 (fol. 125): "ad
omnem materiam in sermonibus secundum ordinem alphabeti ordinata," and
MS. Add. 18351. See also Cat. of B. M. Romances, vol. iii, pp. 414, 422.
2
Cf. his Prologue: " . . . compilationem a me prius collectam in isto libello
ad meam et aliorum utilitatem emendavi et augmentavi, ponendo certas
materias sub determinatis literis secundum ordinem alphabeti, per propria
capitula distinguendo. Et quia frequenter contingit mittere de una litera et
de uno capitulo ad aliud, propter similitudinem materie de qua agitur in loco
de quo agitur et mittitur, quotantur litera et capitulum ad quod mittitur, et
numerus in margine signatus sub quo queritur invenietur... . "
3 i
C. 1350, MS. Roy. 11. A. xiii. MS. 18. 7. 21, with 143 topics.
Gilbert1, author of a more substantial" Summa Sermonum which
is called the Summa Abstinentiae." Of the latter work the Bodleian
Library contains more than one copy2. In addition to these, a
bulky though sadly fragmentary Folio, not unlike the old
Rochester Priory manuscript3 of the Summa Predicantium, has
come under the notice of the present writer, in the Cambridge
University Library4. Though figuring under the dull name of
"Sermon Commonplaces" (Loci Communes) in Mr Luard's
catalogue, in reality it has nothing of the untidy notes and
abominable jottings at volume-ends that one is wont to associate
with that title. Unhappily stripped alike of opening and closing
pages, it is yet recognizable as a finely executed copy of the
Florarium Bartholomei of John of Mirfield, an Austin Canon
of St Bartholomew's, Smithfield (c. 1370?). If its chapters are
more skeleton in character than those of Bromyard, the variety
of subjects in its alphabetical scheme far outshines his own5.
Very similar but larger still is the dictionary of Canon Law
and Theology by one James, a disciple of Fitzralph, bitterly
hostile to the friars6. Further, there is the Destructorium
Viciorum by an Englishman known variously as Alexander
Anglus, Fabricius, or Carpenter, compiled in the year 14297, a
vast unoriginal compendium of the vices, boasting an almost
unrivalled succession of printed editions down to the year 15218.
Finally, a work in the Bodleian drawn from the Pera Peregrini
1
"...edita a quodam fratre de Ordine Minorum, nomine Gilberto."
(The earlier Franciscan Fasciculus Morum, c. 1320 (?), I have omitted in my
sketch, as it is fully described by Mr Little in his Studies in Franc. History
(Oxford), pp. 139-157-)
2
MSS. Bodl. 45 and 542 (130 chapters, intended to be followed by
" Adaptaciones omnium sermonum in hoc libello contentorum prout com-
petunt sabbatis dominicis et feriis tocius anni." Cf. MS. Bodl. 45, fol. 117).
3 4
MS. Roy. 7. E. 4. MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Mm. ii. 10.
6
I have identified it from the later and inferior copy, MS. Roy. 7. F. xi,
in the B.M. (Cambridge cataloguers please note!) Cf. here such fresh topical
headings as: De conviviis, decimis et oblationibus, indulgenciis, labore
manuum, matrimonio et sponsalibus, medicis et medicinis, monachis et
regularibus, mortificatione carnis, negociis secularibus, penis inferni, pollu-
tione nocturna, purgatorio, sera conversatione ad Deum, sompniis. Another
MS. is Gray's Inn Libr. 4.
6
MS. Roy. 6. E. vi and vii (with numerous miniatures): by an Engl.
Cistercian of the mid. 14th cent.? 23 Bks. corresponding to 23 letters of the
Alphabet; with valuable lists in the Prol. of the sources used.
7
Exolic: " . . .a cuiusdam fabri lignarii filio,. . .A.D. MCCCCXXIX collecta."
8
Cologne, 1480, 1485; Nuremberg, 1491, 1500; Paris, 1497, 1500, 1505,
1509, 1516, 1521.
of John Felton recalls the abridgements made of these great
pulpit compendia1.
Prompted, no doubt, by the example of the Summae, and
the current activity in reducing to handy proportions the vast
stores of accumulated pulpit learning, sermon-writers and
copyists now proceeded to furnish their homily sets with goodly
alphabetical Tabulae or Indices2. This improvement naturally
heightened the variety and suggestibility of their contents for
the homilist, until the ordinary De Tempore volume in its turn
could itself be used as a veritable encyclopaedia, by working
from the table at its end, if the student so preferred3. Master
Rypon's imposing Tabula to be found at the end of his volumes
of sermons is actually furnished with a descriptive Prologue of
its own4. The greatest achievement in systematic tabulation,
of the period, however, stands apparently to the credit of a
Carmelite Doctor of Theology, Alan of Lynn5 . It was he who
compiled the contents-table6 for the immense Reductorium
Morale of the monk Berchorius (Peter Bercheur)7, French
counterpart of the Summa Predicantium, whose fourteenth-
century writer indeed has actually been put forward, like Brom-
yard himself, as the likely author of the original Gesta Roman-
orutn. With his labours successfully accomplished, brother
Alan could well boast in his preface: "per juvamen tabule
supradicte, singulus predicator poterit processum super-
effluentem ad omnem quasi materiam reperire...." To the
same era belongs the list of monastic libraries, made in con-
nection with a catalogue of theological literature, probably by a
Franciscan, showing by reference numbers in what place each
work was to be found8. Such might be thought to serve the
1
MS. Laud. Misc. 389 (" ex procuration fratris T., Rome S.T.P."). (Cf.,
in the realm of mediaeval medicine, the Rosula Medicine (MS. Add. 33996,
fols. 168 b-210 b), abridgement of John of Gaddesden's Rosa Anglica, etc.)
2
Cf. the MSS. of Armagh, Brunton, Waldeby, Felton, etc., etc.
3
Cf. here the footnote added to the sermon, MS. Arundel 384, fol. 28:
" Require
4
tabulam horum serfmonum]... ad tale signum."
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 217. Even the little sermon-book, MS. Add. 21253,
has an alphabetical index (incomplete), giving an outline idea of each subject
item, generally the form of imagery used in the text. The method of actual
reference is to the particular sermon-number and the particular principale.
6 6
fl. 1420 (N.B. another friar) MS. Roy. 3. D. iii.
7
8
Thereare several printed editions of this immense work(cf. Cologne, 1477I.
MS. Roy. 3. D. i, with an erased subscription (fol. 234 b): " Finitum (?)
needs of the man of letters rather than of eloquence. But we
have no right to forget the sevmon-writer, while remembering
the preacher only, especially where Mendicants are concerned;
and, as Gasquet points out, it is only another valuable witness
to the painstaking efforts made for his equipment1. This very
volume, as a matter of fact, in the early years of the next cen-
tury, came into the hands of at least one "famous preacher."2
To similar ends the multiplication of Biblical Concordances
and Glosses were contributing; likewise the first English-Latin
Dictionary that we possess, compiled by another friar of Lynn,
this time a Dominican, somewhere about the year 14403. Of
Treatises on the Art of Preaching itself nothing need be added
for the present. They will appear in due course in the final
chapter that follows.
Looking back over our long survey with all its varieties we
must admit that, whatever has to be said about the decline of
notable preaching as the Reformation approaches, the pulpit
reference-books have a career which only flourishes the more as
later years increase the power and efficiency of the printing-
press. Nevertheless, it is not hard to understand why, as an
independent art, preaching wellnigh perished, overwhelmed
with such a surfeit of written material. Over-refinement and
development of the homiletic armour now hampered or even
suffocated its wearer, instead of equipping him the better for the
battle. To the eye of Richard de Bury, as early as the year 1334,
his contemporaries were already spoilt children, degenerate
sons of the great "Fishers of Men" in the past:
0 idle fishermen, using only the nets of others, which when torn
it is all ye can do to repair clumsily, but can net no new ones of your
own! Ye enter on the labours of others, ye repeat the lessons of
others, ye mouth with theatrical effort the superficially-repeated
wisdom of other men!4
per Ricardum Bottisham. . .A.D. 1452. . .[in] collegio Annunciationis Beatae
Mariae, [Canta]brigie, nuncupato Gonnvillhalle." See further, Dr M. R.
James' article, "List of Libraries prefixed to the Cat. of Jo. of Boston," in
Collect. Franc. (B.S.F.S.), vol. ii, pp. 39-60.
1
See O.E.B. (2nd ed.), pp. 188-98.
2
As entered on fly-leaf here—Ralph Collingwood (Dean of Lichfield,
1512-21)—"famosus predicator et S.T.D."
3
See ed. E.E.T.S. (Prompt. Parvulorum), Ext. S cii, 1908.
4
Philobiblon, cap. vi.
CHAPTER VIII
SERMON-MAKING, OR THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF SACRED ELOQUENCE
OFsurvey
the several impressions left upon the mind, after a first
of mediaeval sermon literature, that which is most
likely to attract the reader further will be concerned with the
sacred eloquence of the special occasions, or the words directed
to some particular class of the community with their reference
to current habit and idea. If he holds to the pursuit at all,
he will henceforth be impatient to follow up suggestive tracks
observed to lead whither a more familiar literature was leading
him already; or to be away down the wind after fresh quarry
like the ecclesiastical revelations we have sighted. True it is
that the hunting over these much despised literary preserves
may not prove as bad as some imagine. For what game there
is has really been little disturbed as yet, and here fortunately
the less painstaking huntsmen of letters do not venture as a rule.
Conscientious research, on the other hand, requires that, before
the pleasures of the chase, there shall be some preliminary
groundwork. However dull the task, we must proceed to examine
the various modes of actual sermon construction.
Three great influences in the matter of style can be detected
at work among the sermon-types which fouud their place in
the previous chapters. Ever since the thirteenth century, at
least, they had stood offering their services, as it were, to
the would-be preacher, waiting upon him not like the three
friendly graces with linked arms, that Master Rypon describes1,
but rather as jealous rivals, each claiming from him an exclusive
choice. The first was the genius of exposition "secundum
ordinem textus," based, like the postill in its original sense2,
1
Cf. MS. Had. 4894, fol. 59: " Ad modum ymaginum de quibus loquitur
Seneca, in libro i°, de beneficiis. Erant tres ymagines que vocabantur
beneficiorum, depicte ad similitudinem trium virginum quarum quelibet
habuit manus insertas in manibus alterius, ad modum tripudiencium in
rotundo, sive in circulo. Habuerunt hillares vultus, et fuerunt iuvencule, et
depingebantur tres virgines, et non plures.. . . "
2
I.e. "post ilia—verba (textus)," etc.
3io SERMON-MAKING
on the text and narrative of Scripture, treated more or less
in straightforward and simple fashion. To it preachers of our
period, struggling in a wilderness of "divisions," allegories,
and other subtleties, looked back sometimes as to a golden
memory of the past. Dr Gascoigne, who can be as loquacious
as ever on these points1, bewails the hopelessness of the present
style, the lost advantages of the old, as though there had never
been any serious attempts made to revive the latter. Yet we
must agree perhaps that even the reforming Wycliffe, his enemy,
had been as careful as any other schoolman to maintain the
scholastic divisions as well as the tropology intact in his preach-
ing, in spite of all his zeal for the naked Biblical text. It was the
complete freedom from logical thematic development and the
regular constraints of "form,"—such as the Abbe Bourgain
actually deplores in his twelfth-century preacher2,—that the
Oxford Chancellor would have men strive after in the fifteenth.
Now among the Rivers of Babylon3 he sighs after the ancient
music they cannot sing:
Which method the saints of old did not use, as is seen in the ser-
mons and homilies of St Augustine and St Bernard, who preached
to clergy and people by the method of " postulating " and expounding
the text of some apostle, according to the order of the text. And
sometimes they used to preach, neither postillating nor expounding
the text of any chapter, but making straightforward assertion—when
they used to declare the points pertaining to those matters which
they set forth, without any text, before clergy and people, to be
asserted according to reason and Scripture4.
In another place5 he speaks of the free, unconventional methods
of Christ. His comments might equally well be those of the
Reformer himself:
For Christ, in the gospel preached by him, preserved such order
in his speaking that within a short space of time he would discourse
1
2
See Loci e Libro Veritatum (ed. Rogers, as before).
Cf. La chairefratif. p. 261.
3
I venture to use the phrase because it is the theme of a remarkable
sermon by him, incorporated in his Diet. Theol. (" Super flumina Babylonis,"
Ps. 137). The Seven Rivers here stand for the seven great contemporary-
ills of the Church.
4
Ibid. (Rogers), p. 42. (Begin.: "Predicare modo usitato, scil. accipiendo
thema et uti inductione thematis per narrationem materiae quae concludit
verba thematis repeti et recitari, et tune divisiones facere....")
5
Ibid. p. 179.
SERMON-MAKING 311
of matters, diverse, dissimilar, and unlike, as is clear in different
parts of the Gospel. For a fanciful method of speaking hinders
perception of the matter to be grasped, and does not manifest the
truth, as it is manifested in plain words and good modes of speech
when instruction is given and the hearers understand1.
Strangely enough, on the outskirts of the period we have chosen,
there seems to be an echo of the same judgement. A private
letter, dated 1329, appears among the correspondence of good
Bishop Grandisson2, which hitherto probably unnoticed, assumes
in the light of our enquiry a new interest. He is writing to
thank Master Richard de Ratforde for securing for him a
Liber Sermonum "of the blessed Augustine," which he now
proposes to buy. To his directions, however, he adds a further
request, which shows where his preference lies: "Libros etiam
theologicos originales, veteres saltern et raros, ac sermones
antiquos etiam, sine divisionibus thematum, pro nostris usibus,
exploretis." Furthermore, the Dominican Thomas Walleys
refers in his Ars Predicandi to this "method of the Saints in
their Homilies," with strong approval of those who are still
"wont to expound the whole Gospel or Epistle in regular order "
after their pattern 3. The influence of this traditional mode,
then, in our centuries is genuine enough. As for the talk of a
golden age of oratory in the past, apart from the triumphs of
leading individuals, we do well to be a little suspicious about
it. For the gold here as in other cases has ever a habit, like
Maeterlinck's Blue Bird, of disappearing on our approach. The
phantom will draw us further and further into the dim recesses
of religious history, until we find ourselves, with a shock, at
the gate of that first mythical garden with its golden fruit. We
may believe that the art of homiletics has had always a majority
of the rambling unpolished speakers among its disciples of the
1
Derived from Augustine, De Doctr. Christiana.
2
3
Letter 169, Reg. Grandiss. (Exeter), pt. i, p. 240.
Cf. MS. Harl. 635, fol. 8 b: "Aliqui solent totum evangelium vel
epistolam ordinatim exponere, et bene proficiunt, et forte saepe vulgo
utilior... . " This is further orthodox evidence, from the first half of the
fourteenth century, of that close exposition of the scriptural text by the
preachers which Miss Deanesly is inclined to deny (see above, Chap, vi,
p. 240, n. 6). I should understand the above method to be one with Colet's,
as described by Erasmus (expounding the Scriptures, not by retail, but by
wholesale), or indeed with that of Wycliffe himself, as described by Miss
Deanesly (p. 317).
312 SERMON-MAKING
rank and file. The rambling catechetical address was possibly
as common and as dull in Augustine's day as were the later
" divisiones "; and Bernards or Bernardinos have been the rarest
exceptions in any era of faith.
The second great style is that to be associated intimately
with the method of the University schools. Gascoigne does not
hesitate to identify its influence with the work of the earlier
friars: "This modern mode of preaching came into fashion
after the coming of the Orders of friars into the Church."1
Nor is it likely that the innovation, when it came, was looked
upon other than as a welcome improvement on the disjointed,
ill-planned efforts that preceded. Indeed, there is positive
evidence that the new way, with its logical distinctions, and its
pretty formality—with what Wycliffe scorns in his preaching
as "the argumentis that sophistis maken"—proved so much to
the taste of learned and fashionable audiences, that many were
in the habit of overlooking the sermon-matter, in their rapt
appreciation of the form. Says one, preaching before the canons
of St Victor in Paris, at the close of the thirteenth century:
There are many, who, when they come to sermon,.. .do not care
what the preacher says; but only how he says it. And if the sermon
be well "rhymed," if the theme be well "divided," if the brother
discourses well, if he pursues his argument well, if he "harmonizes "
well, they say: "How well that brother preached!" "What a fine
sermon he made!" That is all they look for in the sermon, nor do they
attend to what he says2.
Such worldly preoccupation could be still charged against
English sermon-critics a century and a half later3. Side by side,
too, with this dry pedantry of form, must be put the famous
extravagances of scriptural interpretation, "historial," "alle-
gorik," "tropologik," and "anagogik"—"foure reulis of holi
scripture, th* ben clepid foure maner undirstondyngs; and these
1
Rogers, p. 44, etc.: and again,—"Modus enim predicandi per divisiones
et per theme incepit circa annum Domini 1000 et fere 200, ut patet per
auctores talium sermonum."
2
Haure'au, Quelques MSS vol. iv, p. 139.
3
" Moderni enim inimici veritatis, audientes sermonem veritatis, dicunt,
' Iste sermo non habet formam, sed locutus est, et nescivit quae dixit, nee
intellexit quae dixit, nee habet formatum ingenium': (quia predicavit ea
quae sunt contra eorum appetitum)." Gascoigne (ed. Rogers, p. 179).
SERMON-MAKING 313
1
as it were foure feet, beren up the bord of Goddes lawe." Like
the amazing accumulations of imagery and quotation2, which
grew from cultivation of the same habit of mind in other depart-
ments of knowledge, they reflect directly the vast commentaries
and encyclopaedias which now brought the current learning to
the preacher's study desk. For "glosing was a glorious thing,
for certain" in days when the "naked text" might shame the
none-too-exemplary clerk. From being the fashion of the hour
among "literati," we shall see how the "modus predicandi per
divisiones" and the rest creep into what appears to be the
simplest kind of homily series in the vernacular, with even an
occasional caricature of the lordly theological argument itself:
Thise cokes, how they stampe, and streyne, and grinde,
And turnen substaunce into accident3.
The anecdote, the fable, the entertaining legend and marvel
provide us with our third great element from the sermon-
making of the past, in a word everything that sprang from
contact with the people and the popular taste. Those who had
made good one deficiency in the art by introducing the method
of the schools into the pulpits, were destined to satisfy another.
For the sermon of the early thirteenth century, besides lacking
style, lacked also that bright familiarity and raciness which
when once developed would be capable of holding the attention
of the masses. This the friar had been able to provide, fresh
from his further contact with the mean and vulgar in country
lanes and crowded areas. Regret it as the mere stylists may,even
his written homily collections in Latin retain yet their little
popular idioms of speech, saws and couplets, preserved in the
vernacular along with the old wives' fables so dear to the
common heart. His moralized story and miracle books became
at length models for sermon-writers in English, as was indicated
above. Here, then, was a substantial, not to say formidable
threefold heritage for every future preacher. We now proceed
1
MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 32 b. (Yet a sermon collection notably simple in its
expositions!)
2
Cf. here Luther: "When I was young,. . .1 dealt largely in allegories,
and tropes, and a quantity of idle craft; but now I have let all that slip, and
my best craft is to give the Scripture with its plain meaning, for the plain
meaning is learning and life."
3
The Pardoner's Tale (Cant. Tales), 11. 538-9.
SERMON-MAKING
to enquire what use they could make of it in the two centuries
that concern us, and in what particular framework it was to
appear.
A prominent English Dominican has declared in a recent
book1 that in mediaeval England strictly formal preaching had
little or no place. But, even if he had disdained the evidence
of Gascoigne and Grandisson, and had never looked into a
manuscript of Latin homilies in his life, one would have
imagined it impossible for any Catholic to have made such a
statement. Tracts by Englishmen on the formal art of preach-
ing, on dilating and dividing the sermon are so numerous from
the second half of the thirteenth century onwards, that the
practice might almost be looked upon as a speciality of our
pulpits. Langlois2 has even noticed in France a Tractatus de
dilatione sermonum of about the year 1288 or so, by brother
Richard the Englishman. To the same epoch belong Forntae
Predicandi by Richard de Tefford or Thetford3, and by Robert
of Basevorn (?)4, who appears to have dedicated his com-
position to an Irish Cistercian abbot. There is also another
work on the subject variously ascribed to the same Richard,
and with less authority to the Franciscan Richard Middleton,
and to one Thomas Lemman, of whom nothing appears to be
known6. A discourse "de artificioso modo predicandi" by a
1
2
Bede Jarrett, The Engl. Domin. (Burns and Oates), 1921.
3
Article in Revue des deux mondes, Jan. 1, 1893, pp. 170-201.
MS. Bodl. 631, fol. 4. Inc. "Primo per qualemcunque termini notifica-
tionem...."
4
Cf. MS. Roy. 7. C. i, fol. 215 b, etc. (belonged to Romsey Abbey); and
MS. Add. 38818, fol. 191, etc.
6
Inc.: " Quoniam emulatores estis spirituum ad edificationem ecclesie...."
Starting with MS. Roy. 4. B. viii (fol. 263 b), an anon, copy, we find that
the editors of the new Cat. of Royal MSS. in the B. M. (Warner and Gilson),
basing their reference on Mr Little's Initia Op. Lat. (ed. 1904, p. 200), refer
solely to Richard Middleton, or Thomas Lemman, apparently ignoring the
fact that in MS. Harl. 3244 (fol. 186) they have a copy of the work viith a
contemporary rubric heading ascribing it to Richard of Thetford (secundum
Ricardum de Theford). Furthermore, Mr Little's ascription to Rich. Middle-
ton is apparently based on nothing else than the heading to MS. Merton
Coll. Oxf. 249 (fol. 175), which reads "Sermo fratris Ricardi de dilatatione
sermonum" (see Oxf. Greyfriars, p. 215), properly referring, I take it, to
R. de Thetford, as above. MS. Bodl. 848 is anon, again. As for Thos.
Lemman, this ascription must be based on MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 10
(fol. 227 b), from which Tanner got his one reference to Lemman, of whom
he admits further nothing is known. Now I have seen this MS. at Lincoln,
and I find the ascription is in the hand of Dean Honeywood (late in the
SERMON-MAKING 315
"Prior de Essebi"* is a further example. Coming to our period
we find besides the works, already familiar in these pages, of
Ranulf Higden2, monk of Chester, and Thomas Walleys,
Dominican3, more than one copy is extant of Simon Alcock's
"Tractatus de modo dividendi thema, pro materia sermonis
dilatanda."4 Bale's lists again provide us with some further
authors—"de Arte Predicandi," a Dominican Doctor, Hugo de
Sueth, or Suexth5, and a Carmelite, John Folsham6, of Norfolk
(d. 1348). How many anonymous tractates on the subject7,
apart from mere summaries of Alain de Lille's best-known
directory of all, are to be discovered in our mediaeval libraries
to-day, it would be hard to estimate. A work like the Summa
Predicantium itself is a monument of the formal style in its most
lengthy and "divided " state. Butfinally,who shall assess, when
all is examined, the number of the lost and destroyed, of which
John Bale's list of Carmelites is so mournful a reminder? Dull
and dreary enough in their treatment, these little guides for the
sacred orator, spread over a folio or two, are none the less
witness that there must have been more genuine declamation
seventeenth century), who cannot be trusted in these matters (cf. other
ascriptions by him in the same MS. here). Clearly, then, for the present,
evidence favours Rich, of Thetford as author.
1
Mr Little (ibid. p. 126) repeats Tanner's suggestion of the Franciscan
William of Esseby as author of this tract preserved in MS. Camb. Univ.
Libr. Ii. i. 24, p. 332 (14th cent.). But he adds, " ' Prior' was a title unknown
in the Franciscan Order. The author was probably a prior of Canons Ashby."
Reference to Bale, I think, proves this latter supposition to be correct. I
identify him with one Alexander of Ashby (fl. 1220), called " Essebiensis,"
and also " prior de Essebi," precisely as above, and reported author of a
treatise on the art of preaching. (See Bale, Oxf. ed. 1902, p. 22).
2
MSS. Bodl. 5 and 316. The latter (with the Policronicori) begins: "Circa
sermones artificialiter faciendos," and ends: "Expl. ars comp. serm. . . "
(fol. 176). I have used the Bodl. MS. 5. See also MS. Harl. 3634 (c. 1388).
3
Cf. MS. Harl. 635, fol. 6, etc. ("De theoria, sive arte predicandi.")
4
MS. Harl. 635, fols. 1 b—5 b ("editus a magistro Simone Alcok, sacre
pagine professore"); and MS. Bodl. 52, fol. 102 b, etc.
6
Of whom nothing further is known (Quetif et Echard, vol. i, 471 A).
6
In MS. Harl. 3838, only. Notice also Jo. Goldstone (fl. 1320), author of
Divisiones Sermonum.
7
Cf. MSS. Caius Coll. Camb. 240, fol. 525, etc. and 407; MSS. Add.
21202, fol. 71 and 24361, fol. 52 (a Tractatus de sermonibus fadendis, in a
fifteenth-century MS. once belonging to St Mary's Abbey, York); MSS.
Roy. 5. C. iii; Cotton, Vitell., C. xiv, fols. 72 b-78 (unfinished); MS. Gray's
Inn Libr. 12. ii; (an Ars dividendi themata, by Cardinal Bertrand de la Tour,
Franciscan, may be noticed in MS. Balliol Coll. Oxf. 179; his Collations (de
temp, et de sanct.) appear in MS. Gray's Inn Libr. 7. ix, a MS. from an
Engl. Franciscan convent).
316 SERMON-MAKING
and less reading of "homiliaria" than many would have us
believe. They tell us that, apart altogether from the village
"curate" with his manual of outlines, childish in their sim-
plicity, friar and bishop and graduate priest still demanded
their set of instructions, to deal correctly with themes of their
own. The speaker himself needed preparation as well as his
address, sometimes for that most awful duty of dilating "when
one has really nothing to say."
Our mediaeval preacher, then, is sitting down to his lesson
in sermon construction. His Tractatus de forma Sermonum
lies open before him: "Preaching involves the taking up of a
Theme, the division of the same theme, the sub-division of the
theme, the appropriate citing of concordant points, and the
clear and devout explanation of the Authorities brought for-
ward."1 It is obviously no light task that he is to undertake.
Preaching, his instructor goes on, must have proper form and
order. The first step is to put forward a theme, or text from
Scripture, "in which the message is virtually contained."2
Walleys say.3 on this point: "And this theme may be taken from
the lesson, the epistle, or the gospel of that day, with the ex-
ception of the very solemn days, such as Easter, Whitsunday,
or the like. For then, because many are wont to preach, they
may take their theme as they wish." 3 Such, at all events, is the
"approved modern style." Of the actual choice of suitable
subject-matter for these special occasions, nothing further need
be added. The care with which it was expected to be done has
been amply illustrated in a previous chapter from the pages of
Higden4.
Next follows the ante-theme. Here there is general agreement
among the authorities that prayer and invocation are to be the
keynote, so that at the very outset "divine help may be im-
1
MS. Add. 21202, fol. 71: "Predicatio est thematis assumpcio, ejusdem-
que thematis divisio, thematis subdivisio, concordantiarum congrua citacio,
et auctoritatum adductarum clara et devota explanatio."
2
Cf. Walleys, cap. ii, MS. Harl. 635, fol. 8: " Consuetudo est apud moder-
nos3 approbata primo thema proponere.... "
Ibid. fol. 8 b : " Quod thema accipiatur de lectione, epistola, vel evangelio
illius diei, exceptis diebus multum solemnibus, ut paschae, pentecostes, vel
similibus. Tune enim, quia plures solent predicare, accipiant thema ut
volunt."
4
See above, Chap, vi; and MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 5 b, etc.: "De congruitate
thematis."
SERMON-MAKING 317
plored," and " t h e word of the Lord have free course and be
fruitful." 1 Actual examples, abounding in both Latin and
English collections, show us, as a rule, ante-themes of the
briefest pattern, in which the preacher's call to intercession is
directly followed by the repetition of " Pater " and "Ave " by all
present: "Devoto corde simul omnes offeramus Christo ora-
tionem quam docuit, et matri ejus ac virgini salutationem angeli-
cam, qua ilium ipsa concepit, dicentes pr. nr., et a v e . . . . " 2
This habit often led to two very natural elaborations of the
ante-theme prayer, one for special help for the speaker himself,
the other calling to remembrance before the Mercy-Seat all
the people of God, that mighty audience of the living and the
dead, seen and unseen. A charming invocation of the first type,
not unworthy of our Prayer-Book Collects, stands at the head of
an English homily on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin:
All my3hty God, to whos powere and goodenes ynfinite all creatures
bethe suget, at the besechynge of thi glorious modur, gracious lady,
and of all thi seyntes, helpe oure febulnes with thi powre, oure
ignoraunce with thi wisdom, oure freelte with thin sufficiaunt good-
nes, that we may resceyve here thin helpe and grace continuall, and
finally everlastynge blisse. To the wiche bliss thou toke this blissed
lady this day as to hur eternall felicite. Amen3.
From the same manuscript we venture to borrow an equally
pleasing illustration of the second type:
. . .But forasmuche as grace in this acte is to us ryght nedefull,
pray we to God specially for grace, havynge recommended to oure
devoute prayours all the parties of cristis church, the clergy from the
hiest astate unto the lowest degre, seynge thus, " Sacerdotes tui in-
1
Cf. MS. Add. 21202:" quaedam via ad divinum auxilium implorandum'';
Walleys: "ad invitandum ad orationes"; Higden: "Posuerunt nonulli post
thema propositum statim promittere orationem, et hoc quidem bene";
Felton, beginning a sermon (MS. Harl. 5396, fol. 55): "quod predicator
debet ante sermonem orare, ut sermo Dei currat et fructiferat in auditoribus."
Ibid. MS. Roy. 8. B. xii, fol. 73.
2
MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 27 (Fitzralph). Cf. again MS. Harl. 5398, fol. 21:
"ei offerentes illud sacrificium orationis consuetum," and, for vernacular
example, MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 121: " .. .and therefore, that we better
love God and oure sowles, iche man, per charite, sey a ' pr. nr.' and ' ave.'"
3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 13s b. For a Latin example, cf. MS. Add.
21202, fol. 74: "Nunc in principio sermonis invocabimus ut impetret
[Xtus.] nobis gratiam, mihi ad dicendum, et vobis ad audiendum, et
intendere quod sit Deo et sibi ad laudem et gloriam, et nobis omnibus ad
salutem."
3 i8 SERMON-MAKING
duantur justitiam," etc.—"Lord, late thi prestes be of such lyvynge
in right wisnes that every good man may have ioye thereof " (Ps.
13IJ2]). The second, pray we tendirly for oure sovereyn lorde the
kynge and all is lege peple, saying thus, " Domine salvum fac re-
gem. ..,"—"Lord God, save oure most cristen kynge, and here us
cristen peple, what day that ever we call upon the" (Ps. 19); and
for all is lordes; and in especiall pray we for the sowles that ben
passed hens, ffor tho we pray for the sowles that ben in heven, other
in hell, our prayoure is not lost. Loo a full fayre figure here of!...
[The preacher breaks off most quaintly here with his figure of
"Noe's culver," or dove.].. .Praye we than for1 all thise, and for
grace to us necessare, with "pr. nr." and "ave."
No happier hunting-ground for those interested in quaint and
picturesque forms of the Bidding Prayer could be found than
amongst these Old English sermon ante-themes. Metrical
homilies naturally employ a metrical ante-theme to fit, if such
appears2. The University preacher in prose,however, may fancy
some pious Latin couplet in rhyme to suit the affected taste
of his hearers:
Per consueta suffragia pulsentur mente pia,3
Pater, proles deifica, spiramen cum Maria .
Robert Rypon's manuscript possesses many homilies where
the ante-theme, which is here regularly marked "Ante-thema"
or "Prologus" in the margins4, has often some message of its
own in keeping with the chosen theme. In one of his eight
sermons on the preaching task, for instance, where the text is
a single word—-"Ite," interpreted according to the gloss—
'' ad predicandum," he has something to add both of the subject-
matter to be preached, and the supply of the preachers, thereby
opening up the way to his threefold " divisio " of the theme. In
place of the more sober prayer for speaker and listeners, the
"Prologus" ends here with an arresting appeal to his audience
1
For a Latin example of contrasted brevity, cf. MS. Camb. Univ. Libr.
Ii. iii. 8, fol. 126: " I n principio hujus collationis, recommendatis omnibus
quae debent hie recommendari, dicat quisque mente pia—' pater nr.' e t ' ave
maria.'"
2
Cf. MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Dd. i. 1, version of the Sermo festo Corp.
Christi,
3
printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 89, p. 168.
MS. Harl. 5398, fol. 51 (cf. again fol. 54).
4
The word "Prologus" is here preferred where the preacher is long-
winded ; " ante-thema" for the shorter openings, sometimes only of a line or
two.
SERMON-MAKING 319
to pray that the Almighty may send true "preachers of his Word
among Christian people."1 From the vernacular side, this might
be matched with another good illustration of the shrewdness
and force of which the contemporary pulpit was capable. Rather
than waste even the breath of an Introduction upon hackneyed
phrases, the homilist seizes his opportunity to recall men to the real
meaning of the " Pater Noster." It is a prayer these wandering,
unlettered minds have repeated so often and so carelessly in
their crude Latin, and have forgotten so soon. They are now
about to repeat it again, as the sermon opens. With spiritual
discernment he would make it not the mere idle passing repe-
tition of phrases, but a common act of worship:
Good men and good women, oure Lord Jhu Crist techyng his
disciplus, and by hem alle cristyne, that in every good werk ferst
godus worschep and afturwarde hele of soule principalyche is to be
desyred, seyet hem in this wyse, "pater n. qui es in celes (sic!),
sanct. nomen t." etc., that is to seyngge, "ffader oure, that hert in
hevene, y halwed by thi name, thy kyngdom be ous to commyng";
werfore, suth no werk is of more vertu tha[n] the word of God,
skylfullyche in the bygynnyngge of godus word, we schulde desyre
to worschepe god and helpe oure soules. Werfore, suth oure purpos
at this tyme is to speke sumwhat to the worschep of God and help
of oure soules, it is ful skylful that we sey and wt. oure herte desyre
as Crist us hath y-tawyth, that is to wyte—pat. nr... .etc.; havyng
in 3oure prayre y-recommendyd alle lyves and dethus, the wyche
Go(o)d wole at this tyme that we have in mynde... .2
An almost infallible indication that the ante-theme has ended
and the processus of the theme has begun is afforded by a
clear repetition of the text: "After the prayer, the principal
theme ought to be repeated again. Then let some brief, fitting
introduction be made, so that the theme may seem to have been
1
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 195 b. A Forma Predicandi thus describes how the
more stylish ante-theme should be constructed (MS. Add. 31202, fol. 71 et
seq.): " U t haec clarius videantur, ponamus exemplum; et proponatur hoc
thema—'Beatus vir qui timet dominum' in proposito. Et accipiatur pro
themate haec auctoritas—' Beati qui audiunt verbum Dei,' Luc. vi. Sic in
hoc verbo potestis videre quod devota auditio verbi Dei inducit nos ad eter-
nam beatitudinem. Ideo, si voluistis eternae beatitudinis esse participes,
oportet vos libenter et devote audire verbum Dei. Ideo in principio nostrae
sermonis rogemus Deum ut mihi det gratiam proponendi, et vobis audi-
e n d i . . . " etc.
2
MS. Bodl. n o , fol. 168.
32O SERMON-MAKING
opened in a reasonable fashion." 1 Preliminaries are now over,
and the real preacher will begin to disclose himself. So much
hangs for our human nature upon the starting-point, the first
impression made, the first stride which will proclaim the master
or the tyro. Our orator is upon his trial. The real battle in actual
preparation, no doubt, which wages around the division of the
theme, has been fought and won before ever the time comes to
mount the rostrum. But equally vital must be that psychological
moment in the pulpit which may win or lose a sympathetic
hearing for the rest of sermon-time. Thomas Walleys is per-
fectly candid in his guide-book about the fact that "many have
difficulty in introducing their themes in a pertinent manner." 2
He therefore offers his reader a choice of three pleasing ways—
" b y an authority" (that is a quotation, of course) 3 , " b y an
'exemplum,'" or " b y natural reason." These are illustrated in
turn. If, for example, it please you to select the last named,
what could be better than some appropriate little message for
the particular occasion or audience of the day? There lie the
sick or infirm. Let the preacher then win his way to their hearts
with a word of the divine consolation, "something useful for
them to know," such as the future joys of heaven that await
the patient and the faithful. Argument for the mind, kindling
emotion, the attraction of the illustrative story might well be
expected to play their part together. In view of what has been
said by way of modern comment 4 upon the wiles and eccen-
tricities of the mediaeval "preambulum," the " Q u o nunc se
proripit ille?" and so forth, it is worth noting that something
akin to this appears to be suggested by our English Higden:
" A t the beginning it is expedient that the preacher, so far as he
can without giving offence to God, should win the good-will
of his hearers, rendering them apt to hear, and eager to pursue
his words to the end." 5 This can be accomplished by de-
1
MS. Add. 21202, as before. "Post orationem debet repeti thema princi-
pale etiam. Tune fiat aliqua brevis decens introductio, ut videatur quod thema
fuit rationabiliter sumptum."
2
MS. Harl. 635, fol. 9.
3
MS. Add. 2120Z is more explicit: "per auctoritates Bibliae vel alicujus
doctoris."
4
See e.g. J. Ker, Hist, of Preaching (1888), p. 143.
5
MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 12: "Expedit in principio predicatori ut, quantum
poterit, Deo inoffenso, auditores reddat benevolos et aptos ad audiendum, et
sollicitos ad exequendum."
SERMON-MAKING 321
scribing "something strange, subtle, and curious," or else by
startling them into attention with some terrible anecdote as
example. For the latter there were plenty to hand of ghoulish
devil-stories, terrifying death-bed scenes, the graves of " wormes
mete and rotye,"1 the tortures of an enduring hell, all calculated
to freeze the blood and raise the hair of the simple. Long before
black-gowned Calvinists started to gnash teeth in the pulpit,
or Protestant parents and nursemaids held up an awful fiendish
finger at their charges, like the archdeacons and others in our
miniatures2, the same threatening of sinners was almost a
commonplace of religious instruction. For openings subtle and
curious on the other hand we might turn back to Thomas
Walleys. He advises that after the preacher has laid out in his
own mind the groundwork of a suitable Introduction, he should
proceed to cover it, as it were, with a purely ornamental super-
structure, in such a way that when presented in the pulpit to
his audience, only the sharpest intellects among them will
detect at once what lies beneath3. As illustration of the method
in actual practice, we have only to listen to some Introductions
of Bishop Brunton, with their weird galaxy of the most diverse
metaphors imaginable. Thus does he seek on occasion to dazzle
and arouse the half-awakened congregation before him 4 :
"Whither is he hurrying now?"
But Introductions, as Walleys reminds us, should never be
long5. "Causa brevitatis," indeed they may sometimes be
omitted, when the preacher is pressed for time6. From the
making of divisions for the "processus thematis" following
there can be no escape. When the sermon is based upon an
ordinary text of Scripture, the task of extracting three con-
venient ideas, upon which to hang the rest of the discourse
1
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 91. (And see below, pp. 336—344.)
2
Cf. MSS. Roy. 6. E. vi, fol. 132 and 6. E. vii, fol. 197. Reproduced in
Cutts' Parish Priests (ed. 1914), p. 167; etc.
3
MS. Harl. 63s, fol. 11: " . . .quod non apparebit statim audientibus nisi
bene intelligentibus."
4
Cf. e.g. his strange opening for the striking sermon on " Simul in unum
dives et pauper" (MS. Harl. 3760, fol. m b): "Sicut ab uno mari manant
diversi rivuli, ab una luce diversi radii, ab uno puncto diverse linee, multa
opera ab uno artifice, ab uno Deo procedunt omnia. . . , " etc.
5
MS. Harl. 63s, fol. 14.
6
Cf. Waldeby, MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 195 b: "Omissa thematis
introductione causa brevitatis, pro processu.. .," etc.
322 SERMON-MAKING
does not appear very difficult. For three, with that character-
istic mediaeval love of symbolic numbers1 perhaps, is a regular
choice for the main "divisio." If "Dies mali sunt" be your
theme2, for example, you may observe a threefold evil, which
flourishes in these days, to wit "excessus voluptatis," "defectus
sanitatis," and "contemptus humilitatis." They may sound a
little vague and dreary, it is true. To those, doomed like our-
selves to look back over five centuries more since friar John
Waldeby preached upon them, the whole world still lying, as
he saw it then, "in wickedness, with these three vices," they
may be even a little futile and annoying. But sermon-headings
after all are not expected to be as provoking as the head-lines
of the news-sheets. Once let the mediaeval homilist get astride
the vices, and then the virtues which ever accompany them,
and he may be safely trusted to gallop triumphantly to his con-
clusion3. What a vista of separate crimes, follies, excuses, pains
and penalties, they open up to Dr Bromyard, with his searching
eye ever upon the contemporary scene! By thus "dividing the
branches of the vices" with him, as with Gower4, you may
obtain a dozen sub-headings, figures, and examples more, with
the minimum of reflection. The relentless Dominican doctor,
indeed, urges his pupils to make pointed attacks on specific
evils: "As the mummer when describing or mocking anyone
1
Cf. for a curious example of "Holy Numbers" in a sermon, Myrc's
Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed. p. 215,1. 28). (Three children and no more, in worship
of the Trinity.)
2
3
Cf. MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 195 b (as treated above).
This and the Decalogue (together with Heaven and Hell) in a word are
considered the marrow of all preaching by contemporaries; cf. Rypon, MS.
Harl. 4894, fol. 130 b: "ad mores instruere, vicia reprehendere, et ad peni-
tentiam excitare"; MS. Add. 21253, fol. 140: "vocem predicatoris Xti de
poenis inferni, et gloria paradisi, et de virtutibus, et viciis, et judicio";
similarly Cil. Oc. Sac, MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 43 (answering—"Quid sit pre-
dicandum?"); and similarly Walleys in MS. Harl. 635, fol. 17 b; Spicer (?) in
Fascic. Morum, Prologue: "in regula beati fratris Francisci, et. ..alibi,
tenemur primo denunciare, et predicare vicia et virtutes, penam et glor-
i a m . . . " ; Myrc's Festiall, E.E.T.S. p. 161: "tell the people their vices";
Dives et Pauper, prec. x, cap. x: "For it longeth to the prechoure of goddis
worde to commende vertuis, and despise vices," etc.; MS. Harl. 45, fol. 77:
" . . . how thei schulde flee synne, and use vertu, and so schone the pyne of
helle, and come to the blisse of hevene"; MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol.
64b: " the seedys and cornys of the doctrine of God "; etc., etc.
4
Conf. Amant. bk. v, etc. Cf. any of our moral treatises, e.g. MS. Harl.
2398, fol. 21 b (five types of covetousness, etc.); MS. Harl. 45 and the
works mentioned here in Chap. vil.
SERMON-MAKING 323
recites intimate details about him, as the doctor gives his specific
prescriptions, so let the preacher deliver a detailed account of
the sinner's state and its dangers, with special reproofs."1 Thus
do the greatest homiletical works of the age resolve themselves
very naturally into vast repositories of current criticism and
rebuke—for the mediaeval cleric his chief weapons, "smooth
stones out of the brook"—not five, but five hundred for the
holy warfare of the pulpit, for the modern social historian a
mine of fresh and illuminating facts2.
Not every text, on the other hand, may yield so easy a solu-
tion. Like the blessed Edmund of old, worn out with the burden
of his Oxford lectures and other duties, faced with the task of
preparing a sermon for the morrow, our preacher too, "bur-
dened with drowsiness" as he sits at his desk in the night-
watches, may drop off to sleep. He can hardly expect a visit
from that heaven-sent dove, however, which brought inspiration
to the saint of old, at his prayer3. Nevertheless, for the clerk
who struggles helplessly, with the nightmare of the "divisio"
and the "subdivisio" before him, an empty head, and time fast
running out with his ideas, there is a further expedient at hand.
Kindly "Professors of Sacred Theology" and other learned
persons have evolved for his use cunning Latin verses, usually
of eight lines or so, which are to be found in most treatises on
sermon division and dilation4. A compiler shall explain the
scheme in his own pious way:
1
S.P.—Predic. (Cf. also, preaching should be—"contra vicia,...in
speciali.")
2
For further illustration, I submit the following numbers of references to
the chief vices extracted from the contemporary Tabula to MS. Roy. 8. C. i,
a copy of Waldeby's well-known sermon-treatises. They refer to passages
occurring in the text:
Avaritia ... ... 56 Invidia ... ... 23
Luxuria ... ... 33 Gula ... ... 19
Superbia ... ... 32
(The leading two are here characteristically the most common English vices
to be denounced by our pulpit. For " Luxuria " we are even told England has
the worst reputation of any country in the world! (cf. frequent references to
St Boniface's prophecy). "Homicidia" might have figured as the third to
be representative, perhaps.)
3
MS. Roy. 7. D. i, fol. 92. A sermon story of St Edmund of Canterbury
in an English Dominican collection, told to the writer by the Saint's confessor.
4
Cf. Simon Alcock, S.T.P. in MS. Harl. 63s, fol. 1 b: "Ad quare, per,
propter notat.. .,"etc. I give Thos. Walleys' verse as it is shorter (MS. Harl.
635, fol. 15 b):
324 SERMON-MAKING
In the aforesaid verses hints are contained, by means of which a
division in the sermon matter can be fashioned from the theme; and
in addition, by means of the same hints the preacher can multiply
his matter, and dilate the same. And although not every theme can
be easily "divided" by any one of the aforesaid hints, nevertheless
rarely is a theme assigned which cannot be " divided" by many ways
indicated in the verses aforesaid, if the preacher's effort1 is directed
by the noblest Master of all, who is the Spirit of Truth .
Now take, for example, the second word "quare" as supplied
in such verses as are referred to. This should prompt you "to
seek for 'questiones' in the theme, and to give reasons in the
reply." When the ordinary meanings of Scripture have been
exhausted, further points of discussion can be raised by deve-
loping the various symbolic meanings2. To these can be added
in due time imagery from nature and social life, duly expanded
in its turn, authoritative statements or examples from the
Fathers3, the Histories, the "Exemplaria," until the whole
becomes as intricate, though hardly as beautiful as the tracery
of a Gothic "rose-window." Leaving aside the latter, perhaps,
as something too choice and unspoilt for the comparison, it
is possible for us to see in the riot of shallow, trivial ornamenta-
tion, the petty groupings and lack of dignified proportion in
the last great decorative styles, the fondness for diagrams,
" Catherine-wheels," emblems and devices4, and further in these
same fantastic niceties of later preaching and Scholasticism in
general, some common expressions of the Age-Spirit.
"Regule dilatande materie in sermonibus patent in hiis versibus:
Hie dilatandi modus est sermonibus aptus,
Divide, diffini, tribus argue per methaphoras,
Bis binos sensus expone, triformiter adduc,
Conjuga, multiplica, die facta rei quoque causas."
1
MS. Roy. 8. E. xii, fol. 53 et seq.
2
To indicate the importance of this sermon dilation and division in the
eyes of English preachers, one has merely to point to the headings of sections
in so diminutive a work as Higden's Forma Pred. (cf. MS. Bodl. 5, fols. 16-
26 b: " De thematis divisione; de clavibus divisionis; de sermonis dilatatione;
de membrorum subdivisione; de dilatacione per auctoritates; de regulis
dilatationum," etc.). Cf. alsoWalleys, in his final summary (MS. Harl. 635,
fol. 17 b) on the Causa Formalis of the sermon art.
3
Such simple collections of sayings as the Sententie ex patribus in MS.
Line. Cath. Libr. C. 4. 6, fols. 47-62 b (here adorned with little marginal
portraits, occasionally!), or The Vertewes of the Mass, ed. from MS. Camb.
Univ. Libr. Kk. i. 5, in E.E.T.S., Old S. No. 43, p. 113, etc. illustrate per-
fectly where the " great clerks'" sayings come from in the vernacular sermons.
4
Cf. the favourite devices of the Trinity, emblems of the Passion, Vices and
Virtues, etc. in ecclesiastical art, with the typical sermon schemata described.
SERMON-MAKING 325
The final method of dilating suggested by Walleys is that of
developing the several features of some natural object chosen as
symbol, a scriptural method easy to apply, as he points out1.
The formal preachers seem to have seized upon it with avidity.
Prominent among the homiletical conceits of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries had been the curious Heavenly Chariot,
with its four wheels, their spokes and axles, the body of the
conveyance, its occupants, its team of oxen and much else, all
discussed allegorically in turn2. There is an echo of "the verb
and its tenses," from the same period, in a comparison of the
six noun-cases of the school grammar-books with the "Six
Cases of Pride " which is to be found in the Gesta Romanorum3.
Similarly, in English homilies of our period, familiar objects,
whether from Scripture or from every-day life, provide the
preacher with a whole series of pegs upon which to hang the
chief points of his theme. From Scripture comes Jacob's Ladder,
or that Galilean boat of the Gospel story in which Christ sat
to preach, as figured by Rypon. From current life come the
" Castellum Diaboli," or " Castellum Religionis," and the social
parable set forth by the chessmen and their moves. As Dr Bran-
deis says, the symbol "is set in motion, as it were, by expanding
it into a sort of allegorical action." Mention of the " fortress "
leads on naturally to a description of its formidable walls, the
hardened sinners, built of stone of the hardest vices, joined
together with the cement of impiety. Then there is the " dych,"
or moat, with its symbolic water, the "drawbryge," the inner
and outer keep, the lofty tower, and within "capten," and
constable, officials and garrison troops4. Forced though many
of the analogues may be, all this is certainly an improvement
over "the beeste" that "hath not but oon fote," with five
1
MS. Harl. 635, fol. 17 b, cap. ix: " . . .Restat ergo in talibus locutionibus
considerare proprietates et conditiones rerum ex quibus accipitur similitudo,
et conditiones illas aptare ad propositum. .. " (e.g. qualitas, operatio, finis,
causa efficiens, etc.).
2
Cf. Bourgain, p. 256, etc. Cf. here the weird drawing of "the Cart of
the Fayth" in a fifteenth-century English MS.—Add. 37049, fol. 81.
3
Cf. MS. Add. 9066, fol. 82 b (E.E.T.S. ed. O.S. No. 33, p. 416) from
the Donet. (Nominatif = pride of name; Genetif = pride of birth; Datif = of
gifts; Accusatif = in false accusations; Vocatyf = of being called to the king's
counsel; Ablatif = in theft and confiscation!)
1
Cf. Bromyard, S.P. s.v. Anima; MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol.
150; MS. Add. 21253, fol. 146 et seq.; Myrc's Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed. p. 228:
the Castle of Our Lady): the latter derived from Grossetete's Castle of hove.
326 SERMON-MAKING
tediously moralized toes1 on it, or the ringers and finger-joints
of the Almighty2. But for its familiarity, one could imagine that
the favourite Moralization of Chess3 excited a considerable
interest among the contemporary sermon audiences, when
developed in the same fashion. It must surely have been other-
wise with that rural congregation treated for "this hool tweyne
monythys and more " to a sermon course which dilated upon the
single figure of Jacob's Well* with talk of "skeet and skavel,"
"spade and laddere," "wyndas," "roop," "bokett" and all
manner of soils and deposits, as well. We are left wondering
at the first how intelligent persons could have survived the
practice. But the mediaeval preacher generally knows well
enough what is best suited to his age. Here was a scheme
cleverly calculated to stimulate memories. Those two compass
points5 you despise, those three corners of the shield6, those
"dyvers drynkes" of the Devil7, those "sixe leves" and "thre
greynes,.. .faire endored " of the lily-flower8, when the sermon
was over, would be remembered yet. Behold the pious mediaeval
household seated around the Sunday dinner-table recalling the
speaker's points: "Lust consumes the body. It destroys the
tongue of confession,... the eyes of the intelligence, the ears of
obedience, the nose of discretion, the hairs of good thoughts,
the beard of fortitude, the eyebrows of holy religion.... " 9 It
may seem trivial, but you cannot stop till the whole physiog-
nomy has been accounted for. When books were rare, amuse-
ments childish, and the summer evenings long, how many
ancestors of the race may have gained their religious instruction
that way? Brick by brick the simple mind builds up its
" Castellum Diaboli" or its " Castellum Religionis " again, with
all the child's delight in his plaything upon the hearth-rug.
However, for those who discard clear logical thinking and
1
2
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 77. The 'Cyclops.'
Cf. Bromyard, above, on p. 304; and MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 141 b, etc.
3
Cf. Bromyard, S.P. s.v. Mundus; the Communiloquium of Jo. Walleys (see
Little, Studies, Appdx. 5, p. 232); Gesta Rom. (E.E.T.S. ed. pp. 70-71);
MSS. Harl. 2253, fol. 135 b, Bodl. 52, fol. 59 b, Bodl. 58, fol. 51 (Engl. MS.
of de Cessolis, c. 1400). See also Archaeol. vol. xxiv, p. 203.
4
See MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 214 b (and ed. of Pt. i, E.E.T.S.).
5
Lichfield, in MS. Roy. 8. C. i; MS. Harl. 45, fol. 131.
6
8
Bromyard, S.P. s.v. Fides. 9
' MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 131 b.
MS. Harl. 45, fol. 124 b. MS. Add. 21253, fol. 27 b.
SERMON-MAKING 327
precise observation for such strings of analogies where more
educated audiences are concerned, there can be little praise. Such
is invariably the mark of puerile, undisciplined thought. With-
out doubt, the contemporary pulpit shows us its worst side in
its "scholastic" preaching; and puerility of style becomes the
more glaring, as the fashion increases. Where English survivals
of this class occur, the passion for shaping everything " secundum
formam syllogisticam,"1 or according to the method of pro-
pounding questions and defending conclusions "in the schools
of Theology at Oxford,"2 is not concealed. Master Rypon
actually borrows the whole syllogistic machinery, with talk of
major and minor premise, qualities and essence of things, to
demonstrate an initial point—that the priest should be what he
calls "sacer dux, sacra dans, et sacra docens."3 A more ridicu-
lous admixture of the trivial and the pompous it would be hard
to imagine. Hear him, again, as he discourses on what the
mediaeval logician calls the "propria passio" of a subject. The
sermon is proceeding:
...In qua quidem demonstratione, sicut satis moverunt logici,
concluditur propria passio de subjecto per medium quod est diffini-
tio. Et voco propriam passionem proprietatem specificam, quae
convenit uni soli specie, ut, verb, grat., risibilitas, vel esse risibile
est propria passio seu proprietas spedei humanae, cujus speciei
diffinitio est haec—homo est animal rationale mortale—per quam
diffinitionem concluditur dicta passio seu proprietas de hoc subjecto
"homo," ut verb. grat. haec est demonstratio sillogica: Omne animal
rationale mortale est risibile. Omnis homo est animal mortale. Igitur,
omnis homo est risibilis. Hinc concluditur propria passio de sub-
jecto per medium quod est diffinitio....
So he goes on to the end of his "demonstratio sillogica." But
further, in gross defiance of Father Bede Jarrett, and even of
1
Cf. also Hist. Litt. de la Fr. vol. xxiv, p. 363 et seq.
2
Cf. Walleys' reference to the Oxford style of preaching, or Gascoigne
(in Rogers' ed. Loci e Libra Ver. p. 183, etc.). Similarly in Richard of Thet-
ford's treatise.
3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 205 et seq.: "Sic igitur, pro presenti subjectum
nostrae demonstrationis similitudinarie 'Sacerdos,' cujus propria passio sive
proprietas est ut sit sacer dux, sacra dans, et sacra docens. Et in hoc 'est
operarius dignus mercede.'" (This is his text—another violent clash of ideas
and tastes!) N.B. also, here, he starts off with the typical "scholastic"
questions: "Quae est propria proprietas per quam res est?"; "Quid res est,
scil. in sua essentia vel diffinitione ?"; etc.
328 SERMON-MAKING
their own manual writers in the centuries concerned1, the sim-
pler preachers in the vulgar tongue, copying their "Masters,"
with little pretence of scholastic achievement themselves, will
sometimes fall into the same habit of procedure. Now they
will talk of "my anteteme" in the body of their address2, or
again, with carefully "divided" subject-matter, of "resonable
certeyn questions " couched superbly in Latin, one by one, to
impress their admiring hearers: "'Beatus est rex....' Uppon
thise wordes may be moved resonable certeyn questions:
' Quis est rex iste ?';' Qualis est ?';' Quantus est ?'; et' Ubi ?'
The firste question is of personall dignite; the secounde is of
is maner of lyvynge; the third is of is auctorite; the fourthe is
of is dwellyng."3 What would Bishop Croft of Hereford have
said to them4?
The more practised orators of the pulpit were never slow to
make whatever " play " they could out of carefully chosen words,
forced etymologies5, and the like. Reference has been made
already to a theme of the Durham sub-prior which was
fashioned of a single word of three letters. So Fitzralph and
others had based their discourses upon "texts" of a like sim-
plicity for listeners to recall, such as the name " Jhesus."6 Clear
enunciation of the headings of "divisiones" which, by right,
followed immediately upon the opening of the theme itself, was
sometimes made even more impressive by repeated use of end-
syllables in rhyme. Such had been the method of the Sermones
1
Cf. Cil. Oc. Sac. in MS. Harl. 4968, fol. 43: " . . .Nam laicis gramatica,
fabule, nee alia subtilia, ut divisiones vel conclusiones scolastice, predicari
non debent." Apart from the above, if a general scheme of construction for
the simple vernacular sermons were to be made out from surviving examples,
it would be roughly as follows: (1) a paraphrase of the Gospel (or Epistle, etc.)
for the day; (2) an exposition of the same, with the usual practical instruc-
tion; (3) two or more "exempla" to end the sermon.
2
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 53. Cf. also what might be a quaint imitation
of Rypon's style above (MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 86): " The name of God ys the
wisdom of the fader; for as phylosophers seyth, the propre name of a thyng
ys the forme that ys y-founded in that and non other... . "
3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 129 b, etc. Cf. also ibid. fol. 136: "In thise
wordes ben moved iiii questions. . .," and fol. 59 b, etc.
4
The Naked Truth, 1675, Chap, vn, "Concerning Preaching." (A plea
for simple religious instruction, versus those who preach " in demonstration
of their Learning." Curiously like mediaeval attacks on those who have
" learnt a little to chop Logick," in the pulpits.) Ed. Hensley Henson, 1919.
5
6
As satirized by Erasmus (Enc. Moriae). Cf. examples above, pp. 38, 327.
Cf. another, simply "Videte!" (Mk. xiii), (MS. Lansd. 393, serm.
xxvii); and Waldeby, in MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 177 (Jhesus).
SERMON-MAKING 329
Rimati. Punning upon words is a not infrequent device, and
actually figures in at least one funeral oration of the times, where
one would have thought the solemnity of the occasion might
have forbidden it1. The versatile Rypon of Durham, preaching
on the text, "Ecce ego mitto vos," reads his clerical congrega-
tion what sounds strangely like a lesson in grammar, on the
triple uses of the adverb "Ecce," and the pronoun "Ego." 2
Finally we get an element of acrostic-making, when each letter
of sacred names like "Maria" or "Jesus," 3 ordinary nouns like
"Cor," 4 are made to introduce significant words of their own,
thereby supplying the speaker with sermon divisions of a most
facile sort. If used with a measure of reverence, we need not
sneer at these little tricks of oratorical ingenuity, as nothing
more than idle vanities on the part of the speaker, mere offences
against good taste. They had their value, then, like the ser-
mons in verse and the narrations, which aided the attention and
the memory of all too human audiences. What may be written
down as oppressive and scandalous, indeed, is the case of the
sermon-compiler who inflicts upon us his serried ranks of
divisions, threefold for almost every word of his text, plenti-
fully besprinkled with superlatives, and grossly artificial in their
relations5.
So much then for what one preacher, in his discourse, calls
1
MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 214. Bp. Brunton—for the death of the Black
Prince: "Edwardus, dum vixit, nos wardavit." For another, cf. Rypon,
above ("sacerdos"), etc.
2
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 214b: "Pro fundamento processus, breviter est
notandum quod hoc adverbium—' ecce' in scriptura sacra, sicut et pronomen
—' ego,' tripliciter est acceptum. Sumitur enim admirative, demonstrative,
et excitative.... Conformiter, hoc pronomen ' ego,' congruenter ad hoc
adverbium ' ecce,' secundum grammaticos, accipitur trino modo: est enim
discretivum, demonstrativum, et super se alterius nominis susceptivum.. . . "
With this cf. the treatment of the Donet case-endings of nouns in the Gesta
Rom. aforementioned. Anything and everything could be "moralized."
3
Cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Maria; also in Juramentum: " Fatuum et Idonea,"
treated similarly. In Rypon (MS. Harl. 4894): "De significatis litterarum
hujus nominis ' Jhesus.'" (See Tabula at end.)
4
MS. Roy. 8. C. i: "This latyn worde 'Cor,' that betokyneth a hert in
Engliche, hath iii letteris—C, O, R. C for camera, that is 'chaumbre'; O
for Omnipotentis, that is 'Almyghty'; and R for regis, that is 'of a kyng.'
So that' Cor,' that is to mene ' manes herte,' scholde be the chaumbre of the
kyng almy3ty...." (This is another vernacular address in formal style.)
Cf. also the sermon-story of MS. Harl. 2316, fol. 3, and of MSS. Roy. 8. F. vi,
fol. 13 b ; Harl. 219, fol. 14 b ; etc.
6
Cf. the amazing schema of a sermon "on St Bernard," in MS. Roy.
8. A. v, fol. 128. (On the text: "Ecce vir unus vestitus lineis," Dan. x, 5.)
330 SERMON-MAKING
"the gronde and the substaunce of my sermon."1 The theme
is now ended, and there remains but to add the appropriate
finishing touch to the homiletic masterpiece. The tactful
preacher has probably taken care to leave as his parting impression
the bold, stark outline of future penalties and future bliss. If
this latter be mentioned last, then "Ad quem nos perducat, qui
sine fine vivit et regnat. Amen." will be an effective yet simple
conclusion, whether expressed in the language of the Church
or of the common people2. Dignified and more polished speakers
on the other hand may indulge in a more stylish peroration with
some final reference to their original text, and the chief points
of discourse. Thus Rypon concludes a synodal oration:
"Redeundo igitur ad propositum principale, et finem faciendo,
vos sacerdotes et curati—'Dicite'! [i.e. the text, 'Dicite—"pax
huic domui"']—primo mentaliter, pacem internam in domo
conscientiae mentem a contagione purgando contra insolenciam
et superbiam. 'Dicite,' secundo, vocaliter, pacem externam in
domo ecclesiae gentem predicatione informando... " 3 and so
on, through the heads of divisions once more. There may even
be a tactful politeness about the orator's mode of cessation, as
when Archbishop Fitzralph commends his earnest appeal to the
distinguished throng at Avignon4, with a final gesture, thus:
" But I have i-travailled 3owre holynes inow, and the reverens of
my lordes the cardenalis. Therefore I conclude, and pray meke
liche and devout-liche as I prayde in the firste that I touchede,
'Demeth nou3t by the face, but netful doome je deme.' Qui
cum patre..., etc." 5 The English is the graceful English
of John de Trevisa, translator, but behind it we discern the
grace of a no less polished master of assemblies, who "lowed to
speke in latyn" before the rulers of the Church.
1
2
Cf. our Tractatus de Forma Serm. as quoted here, MS. Add. 21202, fol.
73; or Waldeby, e.g. MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 198: "Ad quam Dei
laetitiam nos perducant beata Trinitas, pater, et films, et spiritus sanctus.
Amen."
3
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 195.
4
In the year 1357. This sermon is wrongly dated in the published Brit.
Mus. Cat. of Add. MSS. It may easily be corrected by reference to the Latin
version in MS. Lansd. 393 (8th Nov. 1357), or in the D.N.B. (Fitzralph of
Armagh).
6
MS. Add. 24194, fol. 21. For "rhymes coueV endings to vernacular
SERMON-MAKING 331
If there was no chapter in the mediaeval Ars Predicandi
actually entitled "The Psychology of Preacher and Congrega-
tion," 1 yet it is a fact that a remarkable amount of attention was
paid by those practising as well as teaching the art, to the
mentality of audiences, and the effects of varying modes of
presentation. This has been well illustrated already in our
pages in the case of the sermons in procession. The principle
laid down by Walleys and others—"the conditions of the
hearers are to be carefully pondered, and in accord with these
the sermon is to be set forth" ("Auditorum etiam condiciones
ponderande sunt, et juxta has proferendus est sermo")—
usually referred to the more urgent matter of certain vices for
certain audiences, but may here be taken to apply with equal
force on a wider scale. In a previous account of the mediaeval
preaching scene2 we had occasion to notice the external be-
haviour of those present, more particularly as viewed from the
speaker's standpoint. Wycliffe, then, is probably voicing the
general opinion of preachers of his age, when, despairing of the
manners of the unrepentant, he decides to concentrate upon the
men of good will: "Where a gedrynge of peple is, summe
comynly ben goode, and for hem principaly men prechen goddis
word, and not for houndis that berken a3enst God and his lawis,
ne for swyn that bathen hem in synne, and wolle nevere leven
hem for drede of peyne ne hope of blisse."3 The learned doctor
was apparently no more anxious to play the part of a Salvationist
Booth than was friar Doctor Bromyard to become a foreign
missionary. But those who might abstain when in Church from
the grosser sins of laughing, chattering, sleeping, or fooling,
were always liable to wandering thoughts, if not deliberate
homilies, cf. Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 76: " . . .Qui se humiliat, ex-
altabitur":
"This lownes here in oure lyvyng
That we mowe be heyghed in hevene in oure endynge,
Graunte us he
That for us deyed on rode tre."
For metrical endings to metrical homilies, cf. E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98,
P- 333-
1
Cf. chapter in The Minister in the Mod. World (1923), by Rev. R. C.
Gillie, a readable little modern book on the subject.
2
Chaps, v and vi,
3
See ed. Matthew {English Works), E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 74, pp.
IIO-II.
332 SERMON-MAKING
1
inattention . The mediaeval pulpit delights to compare the
guilty who will not heed its rebukes to the asp that stops her
two ears, one with the "tail of vicious habit," the other against
the "ground of sensuality," when the charmer mutters his in-
cantation2. More particularly your "great rich and powerful
noblemen " though sitting peacefully in their pews, as Bromyard
sees them, may yet have no inclination to attend to the sermon.
They indulge their fancy with dreams of avarice and carnal
delights3. A rustic preacher knows too the fickle moods and
day-dreams of his humble villagers, moods that will play like
shifting sunlight and shadow among the trees: "for hevynes
sumtyme, settyst no pryce be thi lyif; and sumtyme thou art to
overdone mery, and sumtyme to ovyrdone sory, and to ovyrdone
hevy." Even thus will they come to church, from their labours
or their holiday sports; and "thof the tunge praye, the herte
prayeth nojt." 4 Perchance the air is heavy with summer heat,
and the dreary voice is irksome to listen to. Then
the feendys skyppedyn aforne hem in lyknes of wommen, and
thanne tho men in here herte were temptyd to leccherye. Afore
summe the feendys drovyn beestys, and thanne thei thoirjtyn on
here beestys. Aforn summe the feendys teldyn nobelys, and thanne
tho men settyn here thou3t on here tresoure. Afore summe feendys
komyn as merchauntys; thanne the folk thou3tyn all on byggyng and
sellyng. Afore summe feendys komyn as tylmen wyth here hors and
carte, and thanne tho folk settyn all herte on husbondrye, on here
lond and tylthe, on here howsyng, and on5 here worldly good. So
the feendys made hem ydell.. .in thou3tys .
The preacher sums up the several types of these day-dreams
with almost the care of a psychologist. Idle thoughts them-
selves lead on to drowsiness again:
And men may call the fendes drink
on vanitese thare for to think
1
Cf. Bp. Brunton's quaint simile (MS. Harl. 3760, fol. 176): "Sed est
hodie de multis auditoribus verbi Dei, sicut de fatuis scolaribus per parentes
missis Parissiis, in expensis maximis, ad studendum, qui licet pro forma ad
scolas vadant, nee tamen student in libris, nee attendunt verba doctorum, sed
vage respiciunt fenestras, et indicant transeuntes.. . . "
2
Cf. MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 17 b. So, too, Fitzralph blames the simple, who
fail to learn from preaching, through their own fault: MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 43 b.
3 i
6
S.P.—Predicatio. Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 115, p. 107).
Ibid. p. 237. From a tale of Macarius, the abbot. Sim. p. 231 ('thinking
on thy muck')- Cf. Piers Plowman, C text, pass, vii, 11. 282-5.
SERMON-MAKING 333
and on thaire tresore in thaire hord
so that thai here noght Goddes worde.
And when that idell thoght es levid
a hevynes cumes in thaire hevid, [head]
that thai may noght thaire eghen lift
to here no wordes of goddes gift.
Thus drink thai of the devils gowrd
that unto him es nobill bowrd.
Thus dose the fende the folk to1 lett,
when thai er at the sarmon sett .
For rich and for poor alike, then, the old problem is continually
facing the preacher, how to unstop the ears of the deaf, and out-
wit the diabolical plan. The use of the story and the subtleties
to arrest attention have already been dealt with sufficiently:
"Modo audite narrationem in cronicis!"2 There remain, how-
ever, certain other appeals to the senses,and through them to the
emotions, of which the mediaeval homilist is by no means slow
to take advantage. These can be collected together for our
present purpose under two heads—oratorical and visual.
An ardent champion of the formal theory of sermon con-
struction like friar Walleys is yet in no way scornful of the
emotional element in sacred oratory. "The preacher's task is
not only to stir the intelligence towards what is true by means
of the inevitable conclusions of arguments, but also, by means of
narrative and likely persuasion, to stir the emotions to piety." 3
He is to keep to a middle course in this respect, declares the
Dominican, employing both methods, as he sees fit, for the
audience before him. Earlier in the same work Walleys' in-
terpretation of the phrase, "ad cor principaliter loquitur" goes
straight to the root of the matter. It is the goal to which he
would lead his pupils by way of the primary elimination of
faults in elocution, memory, and gesture. Then "in fervour of
spirit," the speaker's heart will become one with the hearts of
his hearers4. "Distinctions of tongue and listening ears dis-
1
MS. Harl. 4196, fol. 88 b (Eng. Met. Horns.), and compare a little earlier,
here:
" On werldis welth thai think so mekill,
That ever es fail and fals and fekyll,
And thar on thai sett thaire thoght.
That sarmon savers tham right noght."
2
Waldeby, in MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334.
3 4
MS. Harl. 635, fol. 11. Cf. here the language of mysticism.
334 SERMON-MAKING
appear, as it were, and to him it seems that the message wells
up in his own soul, and flows direct into those of his audience,"
without any intermedium. Then come the "brennyng wordys,"
such as Myrc mentions1, kindled with apostolic fire, making the
cold, hard hearts "nesch," and fervent. Two great contrasted
types of emotional appeal force themselves upon our attention
in the pages of the sermon-books2. There is the threat of terror
and reproof, and there are the gentle references to the love and
mercy of the Crucified, both methods fundamentally as old
and as primitive as the human race. Among the preachers
themselves there seems to be no small difference of opinion on
their respective merits. Dr Bromyard may be taken as a typical
supporter of the opinion of the majority in favour of that "sad
undirnymyng" which, in the words of another, "letteth freyll
peple from synne, and in speciall from lechery, and therefore...
shuld be had in every prechoure of the worde of God." 3 His
motto for the pulpit is "Primo, argue frequenter; secundo
obsecra importune; tertio increpa perseveranter."4 It is to be
pre-eminently a system of forcible feeding for the young. As
the nurse fails not ever to put more nourishment to the wilful
infant mouth that has stubbornly rejected the previous help-
ings, so let the preacher persevere with the food of the Word,
until successful. There is to be no pampering here with soothing
sweetmeats. To spend the greater part of one's sermon in com-
mendation of the saints, who need no such commendation from
us mortals, he declares, is nothing less than sheer folly. The
proper duty of preaching is the reproof of vice, and beyond
reproof, the threat of divine fury and future punishments5.
Victorian Evangelicalism has twitted the "modernist" for
his wholesome contempt of the stimulus of hell-fire and eternal
damnation as a pious means of frightening sinners into the
1
The Festiall, E.E.T.S. ed. p. 161: "The Apostolys, and all othyr pre-
chours aftyr horn schold speke brennyng wordys...."
2
Cf. Prologue to MS. Add. 33956, fol. 2: " . . .auditores aliquos feriant
timoris malleo, alios autem alliciant amoris incendio...." The interesting
contemporary discussion of the elements of Passion and Anger in the work of
preaching, and the praising and blaming of the preachers, as recently pub-
lished in the new E.E.T.S. ed. of Pecock's Folewer to the Donet (O.S. No. 164,
pp. 102—7) should be consulted in connection with my remarks here.
3
4
S.P.—Predic. Cf. 2 Timothy iv, 2.
6
Cf. other statements given here in a recent footnote. (Vices and virtues.)
SERMON-MAKING 335
kingdom of Heaven. It is at least fitting for her to know that
the whole weight of mediaeval Catholic tradition lies at her back.
Our popular friar, Dr John Waldeby, voices the general opinion:
There is a fish in the sea1, in whose mouth the bitterest water
turns to sweetness. Therefore on account of the sweet water the
little fishes are attracted to his mouth. But when they have got inside
it, he swallows them up, rends them with his teeth, and slays them.
So, spiritually speaking, the preacher who always talks of the piety
and pity of God, and of the sweetness of the Lord Jesus to sinners,
pleases them hugely and right gladly do they listen to him But
assuredly when the preacher dwells too much on the divine mercy,
and says nought of punishment, he makes the people presume too
greatly on the mercy of God, and thus to lie and perish in their
sins2.
A curious agreement manifests itself among contemporary
moralists of all classes with regard to the fact that this " p r e -
sumpcion and over-hopynge in the mercy of G o d " is one if
not actually the most potent and deadly of current popular
heresies 3 . Bromyard recognizes it as a characteristic subtlety
of the devil's predication, and of all heretics after him:
" Howsoever great thy sins may be,greater is His mercy." And in this
third point he deceives many, nay rather well-nigh the whole world.
And therefore more preaching is to be made against this deception
of the devil's, and little or nothing of the mercy of God. Because, as
against a hundred who attend preaching, and sin in presuming over-
much upon the Divine mercy, there is not one who sins in despera-
tion.
The mediaeval preacher then is prepared at all times to
combat the fallacies of the ever-forgiving Redeemer, the "large
lyf," and its many opportunities of repentance, with a terrifying
1
Quoted here from Solinus, de mirabilibus mundi. The figure occurs
also in MS. Arundel 231. ii, fol. 69, containing Odo of Cheriton's sermons,
though not in Hervieux's ed. of them.
2
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 177 et seq.
3
Cf. MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 46: "Some men weneth that God be so merci-
able that he wol nou3t punysche a mannes synnes " ; Myrc's Festiall, E.E.T.S.
ed. p. 55: " God will not lose that he hath bought with his heart-blood," they
say; MS. Add. 37049, fol. 96: "Mykil folkes theris that hopes that God wil
dampne no men.. . ."; MS. Harl. 211, fol. 50b: "God is merciful, they seyn,
& iust, & therfore he wil not dampne no men for a Iy3t ooth...."; Bromy.
S.P.—Damnatio, etc.: " Deus nullum Christianum, quern ita care redemit,
perdere vult vel damnare," they say; and see my article, "Some Franciscan
Memorials," Dublin Review (April, 1925), p. 279.
336 SERMON-MAKING
message of death, burial, judgement and hell-pains. Students
of the tenth-century Blickling homilies1, and subsequent early
English collections, which have been edited by Messrs Morris2
and Belfour3 will have noticed the sudden amazing warmth
which the homilists bring to the subject of these tragedies. The
rest of the series may have been dull and commonplace enough.
In a moment one sees the eye flash, the body sway and tremble,
as with a native eloquence, almost prophetic in its grandeur,
the lurid tale is re-told. No sceptical mind is needed to realize
how clumsy and artificial is the vast formal theological super-
structure that weighs upon the mediaeval pulpit. Yet, here
freed for an hour from pious platitudes and points of doctrine,
the preacher shall escape, if he will, into a world of primitive
human nature, ancient as the Sagas, and the curse of black
death-dealing Alberic:
Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world
And wastes the narrow realm whereon4 we move
And beats upon the faces of the dead ?
Gazing into the unknown abyss, helpless upon his death-bed,
the devils whirling above him, or lurking under the furniture,
friends and acquaintances waiting at his side, the stoutest
mediaeval sinner becomes a trembling savage again5. There in
the awful air, in every nook and cranny we behold primeval
monsters of the past, implacable spirits returned to haunt the
enfeebled race.
First, not in order of the time, but in oratorical force and
picturesqueness for the preacher's appeal, undoubtedly stood the
horrors of Hell. If all else failed to carry the day, this would not :
And be oon wey I shall meve men to drawe thereto [contrition],
and that is for the drede of the peynes of hell. I trow ther is no man
that leveth, and he wold considre ynwardly what peyn is ordeynt for
1
E.E.T.S., O.S. Nos. 58, 63, 73; cf. pp. 60, 92 et seq., 112, 194, etc.
2
Old English Homilies, E.E.T.S., O.S. Nos. 29, 34, etc., p. 172 (The Fate
of the Wicked), etc.
3
12-century Homilies, ibid. No. 137, p. 125 (The Voice from the Tomb;
Doom and Hell, etc.).
4
Tennyson, The Passing of Arthur.
5
H. S. Bennett brings this point out well in his recently published
Pastons and their England, cf. p. 196 (Camb. Univ. Press). See also my
sermon evidence here following, and the vivid illustrations in the block-books
of the Ars Moriendi treatises.
SERMON-MAKING 337
synnes in hell, I trowe a wold drede hym sore and full sone amende
hym. I shew this by ensampull. Iff ther were here a towne [tun]
so ordeyned that it were full of nayles longe and sharpe, the poyntes
beyng inward, and that all thise nayles were fure hote, I trow ther is
no man that wold be rolled a myle wey in this tonne for all the reame
of ynglonde. And 3itt were this peyn but in towchynge all-on,... and
bot a myle wey! A good lord! How gret peyn shall ther be eternally in
every parte of mans V wittes, not only a myle wey, but while god is god
in heven.. .3iff that a dampned man desire to se delectabull thinges,
ther shall oribull devels be seyn, whos faces ben brent and blake in
semblance; ffacies eorum combustel ys. 13... .Certeyn the sijth of
hem is so orybull that a man wold for all the world [not] ons loke on
hem: as it is rad of a religius man that saw on, and seid that he had
lever to renne in to the hote fuyre than ons see hym ageyn. What
trowe we than what si3the woll it be thousaundes of dewels that bethe
ther. 3iff a dampned man coveyt to here delectabull thinges, ther
is no songe but oribull rorynge of dewels, and wepynge, and gnas-
tynge of tethe, and weylyng of dampned men, crying: " Ve, ve, ve,
quante sunt tenebre!"—"Vo, Vo, Vo, how gret is this derkenes!" 1
3iff a dampned man coveit to tast swete metes and drynkes ther is no
swetnes, ne delicacye, but fuyre and brymston is parte of ther drynke.
. . -3iff on of hem wold 3eve a thousaund ll [i.e. pounds] for on drope
of water, he 3ettes non. The riche gloton ashed a drope of water, as
the gospell seyth, more than a thowsaund 3ere agoyn, and 3k had he
non. And 3iff anny dampned men desiren anny delicate clothinge
and riche, thei shall fynde non ther. Undir hem, I rede, shall be flies
that shall bite ther flessh, and ther clothynge shall be wormes....
And shortely to sey, ther is all maner of turmentes in all the V wittys;
and abowen all this, ther is pena dampni—"peyn of privacion of the
blis of heven," the wiche is a peyn of all peynes. For jesu cristes
love, remember inwardly on thise peynes; and I trust to God that
thei shall stere the to a vomyte of all thi dronkelew lyvyng2!
1
Apparently derived from Chrysostom. It occurs again in Jacob's Well,
E.E.T.S. ed., pp. 228, 319: "Yelling, roaring, and weeping, thou shalt cryen
with fiends in hell, without end—'Ve, ve, ve! Quantae sunt tenebrae!'—
'Wo,
2
wo, wo, great are my "therknessis" in pain!'"
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 134 b et seq. Again, fol. 113 et seq.: "Ryght
so thei that shall be dampned in hell shall have dyvers peynes and turmen-
tynge, som with smale devels and som with grett devels, so beynge in sorowe
and care with owten ende. And som shall brenne in the grett flameth of fyre,
the wiche is ix tymes hotter than is anny fyre in this worlde; ê, and som
shall be hangged be the necke, and devels with owte nowmbre shall all to
drawe hure lymmes in sondre, and shall smyte here bodies thorowe with fury
bronndes. Tho be thise proude men that falsely robben other men in this
world to make hure wreched bodies gaye and hure eres ryche. And som shall
be hanged be the tonge, and devels inow to turment that membre. . . Som shall
also be drawen in to the fyre. . .and here bowels. . .drawen owte. . .," etc.
338 SERMON-MAKING
Much indeed could be reproduced to show how fascinated
the preacher became by this " Inferno "-scene. Almost every-
thing in the current decorative and histrionic arts tended to
encourage him. Myrc indeed seems to be actually reading off
to us from the walls of some ancient Shropshire church, where
he is preaching1, the fiend, pitch-black "as a man of Inde,"
with sharp nose, loathful face, and blazing eyes, blowing flames
of fire from his mouth2, the burning brands thrust into men's
throats, the boiling cauldron3, the worms and adders4 that come
out of it. Few laymen then but must have known the formal
Pains by heart, as well as any "Paternoster" and "Ave":
"Caligo, vinculum, flagellum, frigor, flamma, timor, vermis,
confusio, fetor,"5 etc.
Except for the fact that the state of the damned was that of
"Ending and none end,"6 —"per milia milium annorum cruci-
andi...nec unquam inde liberandi,"7—the General Doom
which preceded, would seem to present almost as many terrors
for the unregenerate. Fifteen days of as many terrifying por-
tents in the world of nature were to usher it in, the sea standing
up and falling again to turn to blood, the fishes crying upon the
land, grinding rocks and falling castles, earthquakes, tempests,
fires, waning constellations, opening graves, men going mad,
1
Cf. St Alkmund (mentioned in this sermon; E.E.T.S. ed. p. 240, 1. 29).
Besides the numerous "Doom" paintings in churches showing Hell-Mouth,
etc., cf. the typical drawings in such English MSS. as Add. 37049, fols. 17
and 74, and Line. Cath. Libr. C. 4. 6, fols. 34 and 120.
2
See Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed., p. 238).
3
Ibid, (in a Narratio). Cf. again Gesta Rom. (Engl. vers.), E.E.T.S. ed.
p. 384, etc.: "And sone aftyr come ii devyls yellyn, and broughtyn a caw-
deron full of hote wellyng brasse, and sette it downe besyde the stone....
Than the ii devyls tokyn bothe the man and the woman that they brought,
and caste hem into a cawderone, and helden hem there, till the fleshe was
sothyn fro the bone. . .," etc. See also Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S. ed.), "the
wicked clerk Odo."
4
Cf. MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 81: "an untollerabyll tormentis
of devylls, and grete multitude of serpentis and dragons, wormys th* turment
the sowlys that ben ther in." Cf. also R. Alkerton in MS. Add. 37677,
fol. 60 b : "Venemous wormes and naddris shul gnawe alle here membris
withouten seessyng; and the worm of conscience,... shal gnawe the soule...,"
etc.
5
Cf. MS. Add. 21253, fol- 163, etc. Also MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Gg.
vi. 16, fol. 49, etc.
6
Ibid. (Camb. Univ. Libr.), quoted from St Gregory; MS. Line. Cath.
Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 81 b.
7
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 172.
SERMON-MAKING 339
like the beasts, for fear 1. "Alwey when I thenke on the last
Day, for drede my bodie quaketh." 2 A favourite thrust in this
connection was to remind men that all sin unconfessed at death
would be made public then before the whole universe assembled
at that awful bar of justice 3 . " A n d behold that terrible word
which the Lord shall speak in the Day of Judgement to each
Christian: 'Give account of thy stewardship!'" 4 No secret
bribes, no private meddling with judge or jury there!
The angell shall blowe afore God that all the world shall rise;
when Criste shall sey thise wordes, " . . .Arise 3e dede, and comyth
to the dome!" Ther shall be no man askape with no meynprise, for
no drede ne favour of lordeshyppe, ne for no mede. For ther shall
noon be saved but thoo that be owte of dedely synne. For and thou
be than foundon in anny dedely synne, thoo oure ladie, and all thouw3
seyntes, that been in hevene, prey for the, thei shall not be herde5.
The same naive homilist is equally certain that there is really
little to choose in sheer discomfort between the two situations
in hell or in actual Judgement:
Sirs, I counsell all maner of men fully to thenke on this dome....
I concell and I preye everich on of you to conceyve and knowe that
oure lorde God at the day of dome shall shewe ryght withoute mercye,
full rygorysly, full sturnely, and aske of us howe that we have spende
the vii workes of mercy8. .. .He shall seme so cruell, 3e sir, he shall
be to hem as styborne as a wode man... .As a grete clerke Barnard
seyth, the dampned had lever be in hell withowte ende than ons loke
1
Cf. MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 11-13: " .. .as Seynt Jerom
seythe, th* xv dayes by fore the dredfull dome, almy3thi god wil schewe xv
mervellus tokens.. . ." Similarly, MS. Harl. 4196, fol. 4 (Eng. Met. Horns!);
MS. Arund. 506, fol. 29 (ibid.), and MS. Harl. 3232, fol. 1 b. (All from St
Jerome.)
2
MS. Roy. i8.B.xxiii,fol. 169, quoted from " Seynte Barnarde." Again,in
a sermon in MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 10 b : " of the whiche rehersithe
Seint Barnarde in the personys of synfull pepyll, and seythe thus—Et est in
sermone de adventu iudicis, ubi sic semper inquid (sic), 'diem ilium extre-
mum considerans, toto corpore contremesco. . . . ' "
3
Cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Contritio\ Myrc's Festiall (E.E.T.S.), pp. 89, 95;
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 45 b; etc.
4
MS. Add. 21253, fol. 130. See also Wimbledon's sermon at Paul's
Cross, and cf. above, p. 40.
6
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 89 b. Cf. again, fol. 113 b.
• Ibid. fol. 57. Cf. also MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 29 b : "Which of us
thinkith on the dredfull day of doom ?—and we witen not whethir it fallith
to ny3t or to morowe.. . .But yit for al this, who takith heede of this dredful
day of Doom, who dradith it, who purveieth eny thinge bifore it? As who
seith but fewe or wel ny3 noon...."
34O SERMON-MAKING
hym in the face.... For sothe that chastismente is full harde ther—
as shall be everelastynge peyne withowte anny reste, other ese1.
A London preacher we have met, one Richard Alkerton,
appropriately likens his Doom-scene to a Parliament sum-
moned by the sovereign. His congregation would recall the
familiar bustle and excitement, the splendid progress of the
mighty through the streets:
ffor these defautes and other it behoveth that this king make his
parlement in schorte tyme. Wherfore this king ordeineth with assent
of his councel that a parlement be maad; and for this parlement the
kings writtis ben sent out thoni3 out al the worlde bi the hooly gos-
peleris, apostlis and prophetis, which hav writyn of the day of
doom... .And al the worlde is somoned, but no day is sette to hem.
. . . The cause of delaying of this parlement is noon other, no, but
the abidyng of kni3tis of the king, that n^tin 3k in werris of the king
in diveris cuntrees. And whan thei comen and been redi to go with
the king to the parlement, outhere than to meete him there, than the
parlement schal be maad....And anone the king schal come fro
heven to the doom, and schal be compacid with al the chevalrie of
heven2.
With blare of trumpets, and the rest, it was an impressive
spectacle; for none knew better than our mediaeval preacher
how to choose a telling simile. Guilty souls, listening in that
city church 3 , might well shrink at thought of so formidable an
array at the bar of Heaven.
Amid the ever-growing scepticism, concerning which our
sermon-makers are by no means silent, the ideas of Doom and
Damnation might seem to many a trifle absurd and old-fashioned
in their way 4 . " N o t to say a little humorous by now," some
1
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 60 b. David is also quoted here, concerning a
God that "shalte seme wode" in his fury. The preacher explains that the
Almighty permits such horrors—"for to shewe is lordshype, and that he ys
lorde of all the worlde," etc. An arbitrary mediaeval tyrant! Cf. MS. Line.
Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 82 b: "God as chefe justice, sittyng in his mageste,
all this worlde demyng." See also the Doom scene in MS. Camb. Univ.
Libr. Gg. vi. 16, fol. 50 b (including the fact that "all the world shall be
burning, all on fire"); and Myrc's Festiall, p. 15s, etc. (E.E.T.S. ed.).
2
MS. Add. 37677, fol. 59, etc.
3
4
St Mary, Spital. See Chap. I above, p. 23.
In an illuminating passage, Bromyard provides for precisely this situa-
tion (S.P.—Ebrietas): " Et ponatur quod aliqui ita sunt illo peccato excoecati
quod infamiam vel inferni poenas non timeant, quia forte eas non vident, vel
non credunt. Saltern timeant rerum et bonorum diminutionem.... Ideo istam
poenam post precedentes posui, quia plus apud mundiales timetur...," etc.
SERMON-MAKING 341
would add, thinking, perhaps, of the roaring demons and gaping
canvas hell-mouths that ran about town from time to time, like
Parisian revellers and their properties in "mi-careme." But
who could deny the grim reality of the valley of the shadow of
Death, the Tomb where none shall give praise? Here was the
unfailing cure for the flippant, as well as for human pride and
self-complacency in general. When the pulpit was not actually
raised amid the tombs, as it must often have been, or over some
freshly-dug grave, the mournful cry of its occupants was ever
calling men back to the same scene:
Go to the buryeles of thy fader & moder; and suche schalt thou be,
be he never so fayr, never so kunnynge, never so strong, never so
gay, never so Iy3t. Loke also what fruyt cometh of a man at alle
yssues of his body, as at nose, atte mouthe, at ey3en, and atte alle
the othe y33ues of the body, and of othe pryvey membres, and he
schall have mater to lowe his herte1!
It is all the same sad story from cradle to grave:
Ri3t as a worme is but litel and a foul thinge and of no prise, and
cometh crepynge naked bare out of the erthe where he was bred,
ri3t so a man at his begynnynge is a foule thing, litel and pore....
Therfore seith the holy man Bernard thus: "Quid est homo nisi
sperma fetidum, saccus stercorum, esca vermium?" What is man,
he seith, but a stynkynge slyme, and after that a sake ful of donge, and
at the laste mete to wormes2.
"Wormes mete and rotye!" "Stinking frog's meat,"3 says
another, who in his sermon bids men "see folk die!" "Thise
3onge peple weneth that thei shall never die, and specially
afore that thei be old! And treuly thei ben oft beguiled." They
protest: " I am 3onge 3itt. When that I drawe to age I will
amende me." 4 Ah! How soon that sense of longevity perishes!
1
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 11 (cf. Bromyard, S.P.—Mors, as quoted here later:
"Nos vero debemus speculum nobis facere—et exemplum accipere de mor-
tuis et pulverizatis..."). See, too, above, Chap, vi, p. 268.
2
MS. Harl. 45, fol. 112 b; and again, fol. 106 b ; and MS. Line. Cath.
Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 31 and 121. The first part of the above (as " Seint Austen
seythe"), on fol. 36 b. See also MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ee. vi. 29, as given
in Reliq. Ant. vol. I, p. 138, and John Lydgate's (?) poem with the alluring
title, "Remember man thow art but wormes mete" (MS. Add. 29729,
fol. 7).
3
Jacob's Well (E.E.T.S. ed.), pp. 217, 218. Again, Myrc's Festiall, p. 64;
Bromyard, S.P.—Mors, Exemplum, etc.
4
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 145; also fol. 142 b.
342 SERMON-MAKING
"For who so had lyved an hondred yere, whan he cometh to the
dethe, hym shall seme that he hath lyved but the space of an
houre." 1 To modern ears this tragic sentiment of death and
the grave will sound pagan indeed coming from such lips. But
an uncritical use of the Old Testament, and the surviving in-
fluences of classical literature2 are together quite sufficient to
account for the strange liberties taken. Apart from such evil
accompaniment of healthy life in the healthiest of mortals as
has been mentioned, Bromyard3, Wimbledon4 and Myrc5—to
take three random examples—all tell eloquently of the wrinkled
face, the hoar head ("quae secundum libros medicorum est
vexillum mortis"), the bent back, the failing sight, hearing,
limbs, the livid nose and nails, the evil breath, the hollow eye,
one of them, even the crazy mirth that seems to forget its
approaching end. Behold now, "how that at the last death
cometh and casteth him down, sick in his bed, groaning and
sighing... .And so at the last, with deep sobbing yieldeth up the
ghost." If that were all indeed, the dying might almost count
themselves happy as they pass. "Knowe all men, doubtless,
that men that dyen, in her last siknesse and ende have grettest
and most grevouse temptacions, and such as thei never had befor
in all her lyfe."6 Alas, the "harde storme of the perilous assaut
of the fende" is upon them! "And it is to suppose that thes
fendes beth most aboute to tempte men and women in the houre
1
2
Gesta Rom. (15th cent. Engl. vers.), E.E.T.S. ed. p. 439.
Thus Bromyard, S.P.—Exemplum, quotes the famous saying: " Count no
man happy before his death " though here probably from the Bk. of Wisdom.
3
S.P.—Mars. (Cf., in verse, examples in Rel. Antiq. i, 64—65, ii, 211.)
4
Paul's Cross sermon, 1388. (N.B. Here especially the famous "Three
Messengers.") Cf. sermon for First Sunday in Lent in MS. Camb. Univ.
Libr. Ii. iii. 8, fol. 127 b (Latin).
6
Festiall (E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 84. Cf. similarly, MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A.
6. 2, fols. 5, 46, etc. (sermon for Second Sunday—"post Oct. Epiphanie,"
fol. 46): " ffor then is chaungyng of chere; for he that was be fore full roddy
& wel colowrde then becommythe he all pale, then the yeen wynkythe, the
mowthe frow*, the tethe gryndythe, & the hed schakythe, & the armys
spredithe abrode, the hondythe (sic!); pullythe & pluckythe, the feete
rubbythe, the herte sy3hethe, the voyce gronythe, & gruntithe. & thus
all the lymmys of the body schew4 the grete sorow3e of his departyng."
6
From The Boke of the Craft of dying (MS. Rawl. C. 894, etc.), cap. ii
(printed in Horstmann, Yorkshire Writers, vol. ii, p. 406 et seq.; see especi-
ally cap. ii). See also some useful notes in The Bk. of the Craft of Dying, and
other Early Engl. Tracts concerning Death, taken from MSS. and printed books
in the Brit. Mus. and Bodleian Libraries (now first done into mod. spelling), ed.
F. M. M. Comper, Longmans, 1917.
SERMON-MAKING 343
of here deth; and never in here lyf so fast aboute to combre
men as at the laste stounde to make hem to have an yvel ende
and so be dampned." 1 Of the wretched victim himself, drama-
tically pourtrayed by Bromyard, we have spoken already:
so feeble that scarce can he think of anything but his own weak-
ness, or utter a last confession to the priest, or even move a
limb. Not merely does he see a crowd of grinning demons
waiting to snatch away his soul with their infernal claws, but
hard by his own friends and executors waiting too with "adhesive
fingers" (manibus viscosis!) to burst open his coffer and his
money-bags, and carry off his worldly possessions How can
such an one turn to God with all these conditions about him? 2
How, indeed!
Last of all come bitter humiliations beneath the sod. " And the
prophet seythe he schall have somewhat w4 hym, and that is but
smalle. firste he schall have vii foote of erthe to ley his body in,
and a wyndyng schete." 3 After a particularly long and sorrowful
glance at the "good old days"—"when the earth possessed a
more long-lived race which could attain to ninety years and
more," and was not overcrowded, as he believes, our English
author of the Summa Predicantium seems to take positively
savage delight in mocking the material state of the dead. But he
is no exception.
If we would but consider well how quickly we shall be placed
beneath the feet not only of men, friend and foe alike, but of dogs, and
the beasts of the field—where he who now rears and possesses
mighty palaces shall have a hall whose roof touches his nose—he
who now can hardly decide which robe he wishes to wear, shall have
a garment of earth and worms—he who now, taking offence at a
word, fights the offender, then if he have a sword in his hand, could
not defend himself from the vilest beasts, even the worms,—we
should find little reason for pride.... Sic transit gloria mundi!
1
MS.Harl. 2398, fol. i8i,etc. (The author proceeds to deal at length with
the correct arguments with which the dying must meet the taunts of the
demons.) Cf. also MS. Add. 21253, fol. 134; Myrc's Festiall, p. 84, etc. (The
fiends sit at the dead man's head, raking after his soul, etc.)
2
S.P.—Mors, Desperatio, etc. Cf. again: "Videbunt demones ipsos
irridentes et in desperationem ponentes.. .. " For the false Executors around
the death-bed, see ibid.—Executores; MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 80; MS.
Harl. 45, fol. 66, etc. With these compare the quaint English drawings of the
death-bed scene in MSS. Cotton Faust. B. vi, pt. ii, fol. 2; Stowe 39, fol. 32 b,
etc.
3
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fol. 6.
344 SERMON-MAKING
little later he will point his audience to the skulls and bones of
the departed, bidding them reflect how through the mouth
once so delectable to kiss, so delicate in its eating and its drink-
ing, through eyes but a short while before so fair to see, worms
now crawl in and out. The body or the head, once so richly
attired1, so proudly displayed, now boasts no covering but the
soil, no bed of softness, no proud retinue save worms for the
flesh, and, if its life was evil, demons for the soul. Therefore
let all going forth to God's eternal banquet prepare themselves
beforehand—by looking into the mirror of the Dead2. Two
centuries and more before the age of this learned friar, some
English preacher had proclaimed a similar message from the
Tomb: "Look on my bones here in this dust, and think of
thyself. Before I was such a one as thou art now. Look on my
bones and my dust, and leave thy evil desires! " 3 His warning
is reiterated in Bromyard's own day by the Franciscan John of
Grimston in his Sermon Commonplace Book:
Wat so thu art th' gost her be me
W*stand and be hold and wel be thenk the
Th* suich as thu art was i wone to be
And suich as i am nou saltu sone be4.
He, too, lay in his turn under the greensward where perchance
the Dominican now paces, fashioning his message for the
morrow: "Loca et specula sepulcrorum et cimiteriorum viridia,
ubi illi qui nos precesserunt sunt sepulti."5
From the dignified but morbid language echoing St Bernard,
1
Elsewhere, under Mors, he cries to the fine ladies, etc.: "Utinam haec
saperent et intelligerent, qui nunc de pulchritudine inaniter gloriantur, et
quae se pingunt, et superbe ornant, ut pulchriores appareant quam sint;
cogitare deberent tales quomodo erit pro crispanti crine [the ' crespine' head-
dress, perhaps] calvitium. . .," etc. (cf. Isaiah iii, 18—24).
2
Under Exemplum he says quaintly: "Sicut ergo qui vult statum suum
speculari, respicit speculum quod est in plumbo vel ligno positum, ita
spiritualiter speculum nostrum debent esse mortui, qui in plumbo vel ligno,
i.e. in cista plumbea vel lignea positi sub terra, conducuntur!" With these
references cf. the weird " disputacion betwyx the body and wormes," with
crude illustrations, in MS. Add. 37049, fol. 33, and the very numerous tales
in sermon "exempla" collections of the toads and worms found upon the
dead when tombs are opened, etc.
3
12th cent. E. E. Homilies, in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 137 (ed. Belfour), pp. 125,
etc.
4
MS. Advoc. Libr. Edinburgh, 18. 7. 21, fols. 87-87 b. There is a
quantity of vernacular verse here on the subject {Mors).
6
S.P.—Gloria.
SERMON-MAKING 345
if not those earlier churchmen, too, troubled witnesses of the
fall of a great world-empire, it is still possible to descend to
lower forms of the coercive "verba terribilia." We need go no
further than the pages of the Fons Jacob to guess of the hectoring
tone which the pulpit could adopt sometimes toward the pew1.
Yet its author declares that the mere deterrent dread of hell is
not in itself sufficient to bring a man to heaven, although valuable
as what he calls "a beginning dread." When all is said, however,
the radical failure of scolding and threats was sufficiently clear
even to those who were loudest in their support. Dr Bromyard,
always ready to give us the fashionable excuses and opinions
of his day, tells how "glosing their consciences" his contem-
poraries were capable of doubting the divine threat of Damna-
tion as expressed in the very Scriptures2. It was bad enough
when they sniffed audibly at the men in the pulpit: "Those
things which God teaches we believe. But there is no need to
put faith in the narrations and exempla of other preachers
because they only narrate such terrible things to terrify the
sinner, or for some other purpose!" 3 Such at long last will
always be the result of expedients used in sacred oratory,
however swift and impressive their early promises of success,
which yet do an inward violence to the moral sense. The far-
reaching evils and aggravations of this particular resort need
little comment from us. For, it would not be wholly unjust to
say, in modern parlance, that the acerbity of Reformation Pro-
testantism was only the acute neurosis of once-terrified children
reared in the mediaeval nursery.
Though much less is said in the homiletic guide-books about
what old brother Whitford of Syon would call "a solempne and
mervaylous swete sermon, makyng speciall mencion of love,
1
Cf. E.E.T.S. ed. p. 111 (in a sermon-ending, following the Narrationes):
" Chese thou thanne whethir thou wylt be slaw3 and sluggy in goddys
servyse, in gode werkys, and prayerys, and usyn iangelyng in cherche, and be
dampned; or ellys to leve thi sleuthe,. . .and be savyd in blysse. Here thou
may chese. 3if thou chese to be dampnyd, wyte it thi self, and no3t God!"
2
They say: " .. .Exempla in libris posita et scripturis sunt ad timorem!"
3
S.P.—Damnatio: "His quae Deus dicit credimus. Sed narrationibus
et exemplis aliorum predicantium non oportet fidem adhibere, quia ipsi, vel
ad terrorem peccatorum, vel propter alias causas talia terribilia narrant."
(" Sed quae major stulticia quam cogitare quod aliquis mendacio suo se per-
dere velit, ut alios salvet..." is his retort!)
346 SERMON-MAKING
unite, peace, and concorde,"1 it is worth noting that Thomas
Walleys, Dominican as he is, does warn the preacher against
being "too austere or harsh in his rebuking of vice." There is
special danger, says he, that simple folk in the audience may
think that all his remarks are levelled at them, and shrink
accordingly from making their confessions to him later on. Every
sermon, too, that omits to make mention of Our Lady of Grace
and of Christ, the Redeemer, is to be censured2. The criticism
of opponents, on the other hand, witnesses itself to the use of
this gentler mode of appeal, as well as the familiar eloquence
of the Yorkshire pietists, dwelling sweetly upon Our Lady's
tears, the humility and frailness of the Christmas babe, or the
anguish of the Crucified. A like sermon it must have been that
touched the poor harlot of our "Preaching Scene," till she " was
right sorye and wepte faste," a sermon "mych of the mercy of
God," 3 of how in His great love He would pardon the contrite.
"And patientlyche he suffreth despyt from dey to dey, of alle
maner false peple." 4 Who could help confessing, with her, to
so gentle a parson, true "mirror of the Christian"?
He was to sinful man not despitous, 5
Ne of his speche daungerous, ne digne .
With a charming disregard of the risks of inconsistency,
John Waldeby, the Austin friar, who warned us of " the fishes "
that turn the bitter waters of their preaching to a fatal sweetness,
has yet tender passages in his own Latin homily series in the
best manner of his northern fellow-countrymen. He, too,
appeals to the sufferings of Jesus—at birth, in His labours, at
His Passion6. First, then, of His birth:
satis penalis quoad tria, locum, apparatum, tempus. Quia fuit in
maximo frigore, utpote in medio yeme, et media nocte. Locus fuit
stabulum et presepe. Apparatus in quo erat involutus pauper, coram
1 2
A Werkefor Housholders. MS. Harl. 635, fol. 11.
3
4
Gesta Rom. (Engl. vers. E.E.T.S. ed.), p. 391. See above, pp. 167, 191.
MS. Harl. 2398, fol. 20 b.
6
Chaucer, Cant. Tales, Prologue, 11. 516—17.
6
Cf. also, in the vernacular, MS. St Albans Cath. fol. 20 (printed in my
article, q.v.); MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 103, fol. 103; MS. Line. Cath. Libr.
A. 6. 2, fol. 41 et seq., and the works of Rolle, etc.; also above, pp. 120-1.
In friar Grimston's Sermon Note Book there is more vernacular verse on
this subject than on any other (MS. Advoc. Libr. Edinburgh, 18. 7. 21, fols
116-26).
SERMON-MAKING 347
bove et asina. O quam dura initia tenerrimo puero, utpote virginis
filio!
Of his progress:
nos docuit penitenciam in deserto, fatigationem etiam in discur-
rendo, pernoctationem in orando, que satis videntur multum
laboriosa.
Finally, of his ending:
Quanta sustinuit nullus sermo explicare potest. Cogitare tamen
aliqualiter possumus, scil. sputa, flagella, et dura crucis tormenta.
Sed, O bone Jhesu, quomodo potest humana mens sine lacrimis
cogitare quomodo pulchritudo talis conspuitur, mansuetudo flagel-
latur, et innocenti morti crudelissime condemnatur. Ecce bene-
dictum caput, summis splendoribus reverendum, spinis pungentibus
coronatum, manus et pedes confossi, et latus perforatum, totumque
corpus tenerrimum dire cruentatum... . 0 bone Jhesu, durior est
finis tuus quam principium! Ecce, Maria mater, Jhesus quem pannis
involvisti pendet omnino nudatus; quem reclinasti in presepio,
plenus crucis supplicio; quem etiam suaviter fovebas in gremio,
dilaceratur et distenditur, latere ejus transfixo1.
Now, for those to whom the Latin makes no appeal, we choose
another unpublished example—in English—from a "Sermon
on the Passion." Belonging to the very eve of the Reformation,
late in the fifteenth century, when preaching was supposed to
be at its lowest ebb, it reminds us that, even if all originality
has disappeared, the "solempne and mervaylous swete sermon "
yet persists:
What defawte fynde 30W in me, seithe Crist, and why go 3e a wey
fro me, and will not kepe my preceptis and my commawndementis ?
If I have trespasyd to 30W, tell it me. Se now the goodnes of almy3thi
god, and beholde the pride of man, and se the mekenes of criste. And
3k he is in the ry3te, and tretithe feyre w* us, and proferythe us mercy,
or that we aske it. He mekythe hym to us, and we be obstynate and
rebell to hym. ffor the herd stonys brake in the tyme of cristis
passion; but oure herttys ben herddar in synne then the stonys, for
they wyll not breke w' contriscion. Crist is oure moste special
frende, and we be to hym worse then the jewys were, he is passyng
lovyng to us, and we schewe to him grete unkyndnes. he schewythe
to us obediens, and we schewe to hym disobediens. he is ever to us
gracius and good, and we be to him wickyd and ungentill. Ever th'
good lorde that is mercyfull callythe to us and seythe: "loo, I am
1
MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 334, fol. 80 et seq.
348 SERMON-MAKING
lyfte up on hy3e up on the cros for the, synfull creature, that th u
scholde here my voyce, turne to me a 3ene, and I wyll 3iffe the
remission and mercy, loo, myne armys ben sprede a brode for to
clyppe the and to take the to grace, and myne hedde I bow doune
for to gyfe the a kisse of luffe. And my syde is openyd for to schewe
how kynde I have ben to the, and how lovyng, and myne hertt is
clyfte a two for the love of the, my hondys and my feete bledythe for
to schewe what I suffyrde for the. And yt th u turneste a wey, and
wil not come to me at my callyng. 3k turne to me, and I wil gyfe
the joye and reste perpetually.... >n
Type of wellnigh all in the contemporary oratory—perhaps
all in contemporary art—that avoids the harsh and the grotesque,
this fragrant appeal has remained characteristic of the finest
Catholic preaching in subsequent ages. Whatever the critics
may say, its glory will never fade until the Cradle and the Cross
alike have disappeared from human experience.
For sheer tenderness and delicacy of speech in a simple
homilist, it would be hard to improve upon what, in its detailed
account of the calling of Samuel, is in effect a "Children's
Sermon " of the middle ages:
. . . But trowe we that God calleth this 3onge peple? 3e, sirs. Every
gracious sterynge to God is the callyng of God. I rede that almy3thy
God called Samuel, when that he was 3onge So dothe thise fresh
3onge peple, when God calleth hem in here soul, and meveth hem to
vertewe.... It is prophetabull to a 3onge man to be vertewous in is
3onge age. I shall tell the cause why: for he that refuseth grace and
goddes callyng in 3oug3, grace is not with hym in is old age... ," 2 etc.
Chaucer's parson must have talked in that tone to the folk he
loved and served so well, easily but none the less earnestly.
For simple and honest men and women of toil there is not a
trick of oratory or argument to compete with the eloquence of
true sympathy, be it that of scholar, or of clerk that "can nat
geste—rum, ram, ruf—by lettre."
Thus trewe doctours in hooli chirche hav as it were firen tongis;
for whil bi trewe love thei prechen God, thei enflawmen the hertis of
her herers. For if ferventnesse of love be not in the doctour that
prechith, thanne it falleth ful ofte that his word is ful idil to the
puple 3.
1
MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2, fols. 130-31.
2 3
MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 142 b, etc. MS. Harl. 2276, fol. 92.
SERMON-MAKING 349
Of appeals to the visual in English mediaeval preaching direct
evidence may be scarce; but there are tales enough of graphic
appearances in the clouds, spectacular sights in the audience
at sermon-time to indicate their importance in the contem-
porary view1. What we know of the popular love of pictures
and relics as aids to devotion leads to the same conclusion. In
Italy of the early fifteenth century, St Bernardino's monogram
painted on tablets, itself devised in part to replace the current
fondness for badges and charms, became, for a time at least,
the triumphant standard of his preaching tours. Exposed above
the pulpit, it filled men with wondrous emotion as they listened.
But this particular emblem was admittedly an innovation. None
the less in Sano di Pietro's paintings at Siena we behold the
saint again upon his rostrum in the market-place, pointing this
time like any other preacher of the day to the wooden crucifix
he holds. It is a regular companion of the preacher's art,
greeting us alike upon the wall of Savonarola's Florentine cell
in the monastery of San Marco, or carved in a bishop's hands
as he leans from his miniature pulpit upon a stall-end in the
Lady Chapel of Winchester Cathedral2:
For I sauh the feld ful of folk, that ich of bi-fore schewede,
And Conscience with a crois com for to preche3.
The case of the Pardoner whose oratorical efforts depended
so much for their ultimate success upon the relics and seals
that he could exhibit, has been immortalized already in the
Canterbury Tales. But it would seem that more dignified and
reputable speakers made a good use of such objects "in the
sermon-time," like the Archbishop in Cretan's illumination,
with his Papal Bull, forged but none the less imposing for that4 .
An entry in the French Chronicle of London5 describes how
somewhere about the year 1314 certain relics were found in the
old Cross on the steeple of St Paul's Cathedral6. They were
1
2
Cf. MS. Add. 26770, fol. 77; MS. Egert. 117, fol. 177 b; etc.
When I visited the cathedral in 1924, this cross appeared to have been
knocked off. See illustration over, p. 350.
3
Piers Plowman (A text), pass, v, 11. 10—11.
4
MS. Harl. 1319. See illus. in Chap. 1, above, p. 9.
5
Ed. H. T. Riley (Camden Soc), p. 251.
6
For relics in so seemingly unexpected a place (as protection against
lightning!), cf. Prof. Jenkins, The Monastic Chronicler (S.P.C.K.), p. 75.
35° SERMON-MAKING
of the usual rarity and splendour. A piece of the true Cross,
a stone of the Holy Sepulchre, other stones from the place of
Ascension and the Mount of Calvary, bones of martyred Virgins
were amongst them. "These relics Master Robert de Clothale
PREACHING WITH A CROSS

(Lady Chapel, Winchester Cathedral)
(Chancellor of the Cathedral) showed to the people during his
preaching on the Sunday, before the Feast of St Botolph, and
after the same the relics were replaced in the cross." Occasion-
ally a sermon for the Feast of Relics makes its appearance in our
manuscripts to remind us further of their connection with the
pulpit:
Syrres, than on relike Sonday next commyng we shall reverens,
honour, and worship the precius sacrament of the awter, verey Goddis
body,.. .and in generall all the reverent relikes of patriackes, pro-
SERMON-MAKING 351
phetes, apostelles, martirs, confessours, and virtuous virgins, and
other holy and devoute men and women, whoos blessid bodyes, holy
bones, and other relikes th* be left in erth to cristen mannes socour,
comfort, and recreacion, and their names be regestrede in the boke
of life1.
A century after the incident at St Paul's, we have the interesting
information from a chronicler of St Albans that a certain book
left defaced by Lollards and forwarded to the king by the abbot,
was sent on to the Archbishop of Canterbury "to be displayed
at the sermons to be delivered at St Paul's Cross in London."2
From events like that in which Bishop Pecock and his volumes
figured at the same spot, it is reasonable to believe that their
exhibition would be used directly by the spokesman of the
occasion to enliven the point of his anti-Wycliffite arguments.
Book in hand, he could give the crowds such an object-lesson
in heresy as would not fail to impress many, to whom mere
words meant little. More arresting still might be the object
chosen for some humbler occasion. There is a story told by way
of "exemplum" in a fifteenth-century manuscript entitled
Tractatus de Abundantia Exemplorum, of "a certain preacher
who to strike terror into his audience"—the holy terror of
earthly vanities—" suddenly displayed the skull of a dead man
which he had been carrying under his cloak."3 If the Pardoner
brought the contents of the reliquaries into the pulpit, this man
could claim to have brought with him the gruesome content of
the cemeteries, another dramatic warning in the midst of a
sermon of the fate that no man can avoid. Finally, where litera-
ture itself fails, the manuscript pictures prevent us from forget-
ting further details of the scene which once helped to keep the
attention in similar ways. Such was digital mnemotechny, for
example. With a finger for each leading point in his discourse,
1
MS. Harl. 2247, fol. 170 b ; sim. in MS. Roy. 18. B. xxv, fol. 108 b. Cf.
the notes of a sermon at Bury, in MS. Caius Coll. Camb. 356, mentioned above
on p. 60. A sermon "de Reliquiis" (text: "Reliquias dedit eis," Luc. ult.)
occurs in MS. Salisb. Cath. Libr. 174, fol. 286, a Liber Sermonum (early 14th
cent.), which belonged to one of the canons, who flourished c. 1431.
2
" . . . ut in sermonibus faciendis ad crucem Sancti Pauli, Londoniis, osten-
deretur, ut vel sic civibus innotesceret quanta furia Lollardi vehebantur. . ."
Walsingham (Rolls S.), vol. ii, p. 326 (c. 1417).
3
MS. Sloane 3102, fol. 80: " . . .caput defuncti quod sub capa ferebat
subito ostendebat... . " This collection has been identified by Mr Herbert
with the Liber de Dono Timoris.
352 SERMON-MAKING
the priest is rallying his hearers again; or some friar handles
the beads of his long rosary in the pulpit, like the cowled
preaching fox before his audience of fowls, on a Misericord
carving at Beverley Minster. Nothing was too trivial for the
art of these ancient sermon-makers.
Rules for elocution, and rules for deportment are not omitted
from Thomas Walleys'1 careful tractate for the pupil in homi-
letics. Some of them, indeed, have been translated and set
forth already in the volume of essays by Dr Gasquet. Neither
the mediaeval friar nor the modern cardinal, however, afford
us the hint, given by Higden in his own Ars componendi ser-
mones2, that they are probably inspired by the De Institutione
Novitiorum of Hugh of St Victor. Walleys begins with the usual
remark about purity of life and example—"munditia quedam
vite ultra homines quos habet informare."3 His next is a warn-
ing against vainglory and ostentation in the pulpit. Thirdly,
let the preacher seek the wisdom that comes from God through
frequent prayer. Fourthly, let him seek moderation in dress,
to avoid any charge of hypocrisy; fifthly, in the matter of
gestures, a like classical mean between the immobility of a
statue on the other hand, and the restless jerking of a fighter,
on the other. His deportment in public is to be nothing less
than that of an angel or messenger, sent from on high. As for
elocution itself, sixthly, the greatest stress is laid on the necessity
and value of a clear enunciation:
Therefore let him not speak too noisily, or too softly: not too
noisily lest he confound the hearing of those near him, not too softly
lest those standing far off cannot understand; neither let him sud-
denly raise his voice from low pitch to high, or vice versa. The
method of speaking, therefore, although not entirely uniform, is to
be at least not too varied as regards elevation and depression of the
voice4.
1
Capit. i, " de qualitate predicatoris," is devoted to this subject (MS. Harl.
635,
2
fols. 6—8). See also here, below, note on p. 362.
MS. Bodl. 5, fol. 3.
3
Cf. also Rypon's most forcible manner of pointing the same truth in a
synodal sermon to clergy, on preaching (MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 215).
4
"Igitur non nimis clamose, aut nimis submisse loquatur; non nimis
clamose ne prope sibi assistencium auditum confundat, aut nimis submisse
ne procul stantes non intelligant; nee subito vocem exaltet ab ymo in altum,
aut econtra. Modus igitur loquendi, etsi non in toto uniformis, saltern non
multum difformis quoad elevationem et depressionem est servandus." Cf.
again on fol. 17 b.
SERMON-MAKING 353
Another most subtle mean for the beginner! Seventhly, equal
care is to be expended upon questions of pace and emphasis.
Let there be appropriate pauses at appropriate stages; no
unintelligible gabbling, "like a school-boy reading his Donet
and not knowing what he is uttering." Some preachers merely
fill their listeners' ears with sound, and nothing else. Hearts
remain empty because the message has no chance to sink gently
and intelligently into them. Would that some of our modern
missioners indeed, had given heed to the fourteenth-century
missioner's advice, in this as in so many respects! " Si incertam
vocem dat tuba," he would quote to them, "quis parabit se ad
bellum? " x There is more than one good meaning to be got out
of most texts.
Quality, not quantity, then, is to be the great aim:
Wherefore saith the Apostle—[1 Cor. xiv, 19]—" I would rather
speak five words with my understanding, that I might instruct others,
than ten thousand words in a tongue." Therefore let the preacher
weigh his words, and utter them with due weight; because, if he
himself ponder not, how shall the others ponder? And the more that
things are to be pondered, the more must they be lingered over: if
it should seem necessary, he should repeat them twice or thrice2.
The theme, its divisions, and leading ideas should be emphasized
with especial care, lest the audience fail to get the hang of what
is to follow. It is either ignorance, indevotion, or the bad habit
of indecent haste that is responsible, we are told, for this lack
of due emphasis and reflection. The eighth section of the work
is a lesson on the memory. Here the proud and affected who
busy themselves over little tricks of speech, the pretty polished
phrases, the "sermones rithmici," the too-lengthy quotation,
are warned to beware. They may suffer a fate their self-ambition
deserves. He, on the other hand, who attends chiefly to the
meaning of what he has to say, putting choice of words in a
second place, and not talking like a magpie—ex solo usu—•
need fear little. Once again to our mind the ancient preacher,
1
1 Cor. xiv, 8.
2
"Unde apostolus, 'Malo 5 verba sensu meo loqui, ut alios instruant,
quam decem milia verborum in lingua.' Ponderet ergo predicator verba sua,
et cum debito pondere proferat; quia, si ipse non ponderet, quomodo alii
ponderabunt? Et in magis ponderandis magia immoretur, ut, si necesse
videatur, ea bis vel ter replied."
o 23
354 SERMON-MAKING
from his close observation of human nature, and his sound
common-sense, is a pattern for all the generations.
In view of what has been said elsewhere, we pass over his
treatment of the "vanities and curiosities," of tact and restraint
in giving rebuke, of the choice of special matter for special
audiences, and the avoidance of too-learned argument. The
eleventh section broadens out into a warning against undue
length1; for this only wearies the congregation and spoils their
future appetite. As Higden reminds us, he who clumsily
stretches " the strings of the mind " too far may end in snapping
them2. With his word of advice on the subject of private
practice beforehand, we may leave the astute Dominican and his
remarkable booklet. The tyro is here bidden to betake himself
to some quiet spot, where there will be none to mock him, there
to accustom his speech and gesture to their proper use. Thus
do the knights who go through their paces before the contest.
Then, if he throws to the wind his fears, as he mounts the
rostrum—that faintheartedness which vexes the memory, brings
on forgetfulness, impedes the work of tongue and members—
all will be well. "PROCEDAT ERGO PREDICATOR!" 3
1
Cf. the tactful homilist of MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 134b: "Sirs, the
right order of prechyng wold aske too ordinate remedies.. ., but the tyme
suffreth not now." See also above, p. 179, etc.
2
MS. Bodl. 5, fols. 4—5. Bromyard also warns against a long theme
(S.P.—Predic). Cf. here the story in MS. Cotton Cleop. D. viii, fol. 113 b—
of a sinful priest struck with remorse during the hearing of a sermon. He
resolves to confess. But the sermon is so long that he puts confession off till
next day, with disastrous results!
3
MS. Harl. 635, fol. 8. The treatise ends (fol. 18) with a model sermon.
(I have deliberately abstained from speaking of pulpit satire here, as the
manuals themselves do not really prescribe it, and an adequate account of its
use in the sermons would require almost a whole chapter to itself. I hope to
discuss this subject, with further aspects of the preaching, in its relation to the
general literature, art, and life of the times, in a later study.)
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
CHAPTER IV
FOR the place of the sermon at Mass, I have collected the following:
(i) Durandus, ''Rationale" (c. 1286):
Quoniam ut praemissum est Evangelium praedicatio est, et
symbolum fidei professio, ideo post ilia fit populo praedicatio,
quasi evangelici verbi et simboli sive novi et veteri testamenti
expositio... . Communiter tamen post predicationem simbolum
decantatur.
(Canon Simmons in The Lay Folks Mass Book, E.E.T.S., O.S.
No. 71, Notes, pp. 317, etc. seems to have overlooked this last
alternative. Otherwise he would have been compelled to
modify his remark on the existing Roman practice, in con-
nection with this subject.)
(ii) Officium S. Ricardi, York Breviary, Surtees Soc. vol. ii,
Appdx. 5, col. 791:
Cum autem in Missa Evangelium esset lectum, petita prius bene-
dictione presbyteri, pulpitum predicantium adiit, et sermonem
. . .fecit ad populum.
(iii) Acts of a Chapter of Canons, 1446 (Salter, as in Chap, iv):
"Sermo in Anglicis," in the parish church of All Saints,
Northampton:
Missa vero ibidem de sancto spiritu solemniter inchoata, et
usque ad post offertorium continuata, ven. pater Mag. J. Kynge-
stone, S.T.P solemnem sermonem in Anglicis in pulpito
ejusdem ecclesiae. .. proposuit.
(iv) Powell and Trevelyan, Docs, on the Peasant Revolt, p. 46
(c. 1390):
. . .which preacher did assend the pulpit to preache, when the
viccar of the church after the effertorie in the masse parochiell
retourned to the aulter....
(v) Prologue to the Speculum Sacerdotale, a fifteenth-century
collection of English festival sermons (MS. Add. 36791,
fol. i b ) :
. . .the prestes.. .aftur the redyng of the gospel, and of the offer-
torie at masse, turne hem unto the peple and schewe openliche
unto hem alle the solempnitees and festes whiche shall falle and
23-2
356 APPENDICES
be hadde in the weke folowyng. And afturwarde.. . pray for
pees,. . .the clergie,.. .the peple.. ., etc.
Then preach (fol. 2). (See above, Chap, vi, pp. 244-5.)
(vi) Sermon after the offertory in: Wm. Lyndwood's Provinciale,
bk. v, § v; Sarum Pontifical (1315-29), Office at the Consecra-
tion; and similar Office (c. 1500) for St Mary's, Winchester1.
Thomas Netter's Doctrinale, vol. i, § iv, chap. 33. The Book of
Precedence (ed. Furnivall, E.E.T.S.) (after 1386), for funerals.
Sir David Lyndesay's Testament of Squyer Meldrum (see
E.E.T.S. ed.). [All these are given by Canon Simmons, as
above, in reference i.]
(vii) J. D. Chambers, Divine Worship in England in the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries, p. 337, declares that a sermon (if any)
after the Creed, and before the offertory sentences was the
usual custom in England and France.
APPENDIX II
CHAPTER IV
For the sermon on Sunday afternoons:

(i) References given above in Chap, iv, from The Rites of Durham
(Surtees Soc); and MS. Vernon, in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 98,
P-35 1 -
(ii) Rich. Whitforde's Werke for Housholders (early 16th cent.).
From directions for the Sunday afternoon:
Appoynt them also the place (for their pastime, after luncheon),
that you may call or sende for them whan case requyreth. For
yf there be a sermon ony tyme of the daye, let them be there
present.. ..
(iii) The case of violent assault in St Dunstan's Church, London,
1417, in Wilkins, Cone. vol. iii, p. 385, and here in Chap. iv.
This occurs "hora quasi vesperarum, post solennem verbi Dei
predicationem, in ecclesia Sti. Dunstani.. .populo in ibi con-
gregato factam," on Easter Day. This agrees with the 'MS.
Vernon' Sunday, of vespers following the afternoon sermon.
(iv) Powell and Trevelyan (as in Appdx. I, ref. iv):
And the same daie, after dynner, the saide parson came. . .to
preach in the said church.
1
In Maskell's Monum. Rit.
APPENDICES 357
(v) For Sunday sermons at Paul's Cross, cf. 1408 (Wilkins, Cone.
vol. iii, p. 310); 1417 (ibid. p. 388: "cum major ibidem ad
sermonem audiendum affluent populi multitudo"; 1424 (ibid,
p. 439); 1425 (ibid. p. 437); 1428 (ibid. p. 502), etc.
APPENDIX III
CHAPTER III, etc.
Types of sermon indulgences.

(In addition in Archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh's sermon indul-
gence, quoted from MS. Lansd. 393, fol. 112, above, p. 101, n. 2.)
N.B. The pardon is never given for mere hearing alone.
(i) At the Sermon Close (MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii, fol. 69 b):
.. .And all that have herde my sermon, and waketh oute of
synne, and preyth to God V tymes here "pr. nr." and here
" Ave ", with a good herte in the maner as I have seid before, and
name Goddes hi3 name Jhs in the ende of the Ave Maria, divers
popes have granted hem CCC daies to pardon, and Goddes
blissynge and pees. And ther fore wake 3e and preye, and kepe
you owt of synne, as I seid you afore, and than 3e shall com to the
blisse that ever shall laste. Amen.
Qui cum deo, patre, etc. In nomine patris.
Cf. also the indulgences at the end of the metrical sermon—
"de festo Corporis Christi"—for hearing or reading "this
servise," etc. (MS. Harl. 4196 vers. "De Indulgenciis inde
concessis," also MS. Camb. vers.) printed in E.E.T.S., O.S.
No. 98, pp. 95-97.
(The total here seems to mount up to 41 years 60 days!)
(ii) Among The Indulgences of the Monasterie ofSyon (MS. Ashmol.
750, fol. 140 b):
Also to all verraie contrite and shryven that arne present with
devocion whenne the worde of God is preched by the brethren
of this ordre, so often pope Boniface the IX relesseth mercifullie
an C daies of penaunce enioynded, wyche al other popes sithen
have confermed. And the Archebysshop of Cauntirburye hath
graunted with the same XL daies of pardon, and the Arche-
bysshop of York also XL dayes, and the Bysshop of London XL
dayes, and the bysshop of Duram XL dayes.
(iii) With these compare further the Thoresby Indulgence (1357.
Cawode, York.) accompanying the English version of the
Lay Folk's Faith, as printed in E.E.T.S., O.S. No. 118, p. 98.
358 APPENDICES
Omnibus subditis nostris infra nostras civitatem, diocesim, et
provinciam constitutis, et aliis quorum diocesani hanc nostram
indulgentiam ratam habuerint, de peccatis suis vere confessis
poenitentibus et contritis, qui praemissa in predicando, docendo,
audiendo, et erudiendo devote servaverint et adimpleverint XL
dies indulgentiae misericorditer duximus concedendos.. . .
Nostrae tamen intentionis non existit aliquibus personis ad pre-
dicandum per praesentes in aliquo prejudicare.
(iv) Also the terms of such a preaching license, as that granted to
John Borard, S.T.P., Canon of Twynham, by William of
Wykeham, c. 1381; printed in Reg. Wykeham (Winchester
Record Soc), vol. ii, p. 326:
. . . Hiis quoque, qui predicacioni tuae interfuerint, volentes
per hoc te favore prosequi gracioso, de peccatis suis vere con-
tritis etiam et confessis indulgencias concedimus in talibus con-
suetas. . . , etc.
See also other preaching indulgences in Cal. of Papal Registers,
(cf. vol. iv, p. 165 [1371]).
(v) Finally, compare this remarkable comment on indulgences in a
Sermon by Master Robert Rypon, Sub-prior of Durham (fl. 1401),
MS. Harl. 4894, fol. 102 b et seq.:
. .. Ideo illi qui in indulgenciis spem venie reponunt quandoque
multipliciter sunt decepti. Praesertim illi qui optenta Domini
pape indulgencia a poena, ut vulgariter dicitur, et a culpa, cre-
dentes quod virtute bullarum indulgentie una cum verbali con-
fessione facta electo sacerdoti, omnis tam poena quam culpa eis
totaliter remittetur. O spes frivola atque vana, cum in hujusmodi
litteris indulgentie scribatur, "vere" nedum "confessis" sed et
" contritis," quibus predictus dolor secundus est omnino neces-
sarius ad hoc quod per confessionem seu pena remittetur vel
culpa!
Quod si vera precedat contricio, tune cum confessione electo
scienti sacerdoti jurisdictionem sui officii legitime exercenti,
virtute papalis indulgentie, commutatur pena perpetua in tem-
poralem; et insuper pena temporalis peccatis debita et condigna
remitti potest, magna contricione preveniente in penam modicam
ad discretum arbitrium sacerdotis, et hoc ex meritis totius
ecclesiae militantis.
APPENDICES 359
APPENDIX IV
CHAPTER VI
The "Great Sentence," or Curse, in preachers' manuals:—

Two examples (unpublished) of the Introduction:
(i) MS. Rawl. A. 381, fol. 1 b. (With a copy of Myrc's Festiall,
wrongly catalogued as Doctrina Simplicium):
Gode men and women, I do you to understande we tha[t]
have care of your soulles be commaundet of our ordinaries, ande
by the constituciouns and lau of holy churche, to shew to you
foure tymes in the 3ere, in eche quarter of the 3ere onys, whan
the peple is moost plenerye in holy churche, the artycles of the
sentence of cursynge; so that not for our defaut, no man nor
woman fal there.
(ii) MS. Burney 356, fol. 50 b (Flos Florum):
Gowd men, thees poyntes and artycles that y shal to yow shewe
of corsynge or mansynge beth y-ordeyned, and y-stabeled, and
y-confermyd of popes, herchebysshopes, bysshopes, and pre-
lates of holy cherche, hotynge and comawndynge alle thulke
that haveth cure of mannys saule, as persones, vicares, and
par[i]she prestes, that they shewe hare par[i]shones fowre tymes
in the 3ere thes poyntes and artycles of corsynge, that they thorw
onknowynge or defawte of techynge falle in to no corsynge... .
A Conclusion (with special heading): MS. Advoc. Libr. Edin-
burgh, 18. 3. 6, fols. 7 b-8. (With the Oculus Sacerdotum, here
mistakenly entitled Grosseti Oc. Sac. from the last item—
"Diversitates.. .Rob. Grossete" [sicI]):
Nota, dicitur ulterius in pronunciacione. Be the autorite of oure
lord jhesu crist, and of his modur seynte marie, and of alle the
holy companye of hevene, be angeles, archangeles, evangelistes,
apostolis, and martyres, and confessoures, and virgines, thei ben
acorsed fro the heyyst her of here hed to the sole of here fot,
etyng, drynkyng, sitting, stonding, sleping, and wakyng. Ant
rith as the lith of this candel sal ben for don by fore oure sith,
rit so al here godnes and alle here soules ben departed fro godes
face til thei hau mad s. . . [satisfacioun?], or comen to amende-
ment. Fiat, fiat. Amen.
[For a further contemporary example of the " Great Sentence,"
with full details of the custom, see Jacob's Well, pt. i, E.E.T.S.,
O.S. No. 115, p. 13 et seq.]
360 APPENDICES
APPENDIX V
A NOTE ON THOMAS (OR RICHARD) WIMBLEDON
AND HIS SERMON AT PAUL'S CROSS IN 1388
No direct reference to the preaching of any Chaplain has yet been
made in the course of our survey. It may happen, however, that in
a certain sermon of the year 1388-9, which seems to have enjoyed a
popularity out of all proportion to its apparent value, we may have
an example.
Among the preaching licenses of William of Wykeham for his
diocese of Winchester, appears one granted, in the year 1385, to
a certain Thomas Wymbledone, Chaplain to Sir John Sandes. The
terms in which it is set out require, in usual fashion, that the preach-
ing of rectors and vicars shall in no way be interfered with in the
parishes he visits. There is also a clause "expressly inhibiting you
from asserting or preaching any heretical conclusions or errors,
which might subvert the state of our church of Winchester, and the
tranquillity of our subjects."1 Now there can be so single sermon
by an Englishman of our two centuries of which so many copies in
contemporary manuscript, and later printed book can be found than
one on the favourite text: "Redde rationem villicationis tuae,"2—
"prechyd atte Paulis crosse, at two tymes, of maister Thomas
Wymbilton."3 Preached at a time when Lollard influences were
strong in the city, it seems innocent nevertheless of any taint of
heresy. Its solemn warnings of Judgement, its attacks on ecclesi-
astical corruption, its call to all classes to give "reckoning of thy
Bailiwicke," when compared with the utterances of Bishop Brunton
and others we have considered, can hardly be called extreme. Yet
it made considerable stir at the time, and according to Foxe 4 was
afterwards exhibited to Archbishop Courtney. Otherwise there is
no reason to suppose the faith of its author was ever called in question.
Rather must we believe that the personality and status of the speaker
may have had as much to do with its fame as the unbroken note of
gloom and foreboding with which it seems to voice the religious
1 2
3
See Reg. Wykeham (Winch. Rec. Soc), vol. ii. Luke xvi, 2.
From vers. MS. Roy. 18. A. xvii (fol. 184 b et seq.); cf. "apud crucem
in cimiterio," MS. Harl. 2398 (fol. 140). MS. Sidney Sussex Coll. Camb. 74
(fol. 168) adds, " Quinquagesima Sunday." " Explicit sermo factus et compi-
latus per maister Thomam Wymbeldon." (Engl. vers.) The "two tymes"
correspond to the two parts into which the sermon is divided. The Christian
name Richard has somehow replaced that of Thomas in the printed
editions.
4
Who reproduces it in his Acts and Mons. (Seeley's Ch. Hist. ser. 1885,
vol. iii, pt. i, pp. 292-307).
APPENDICES 361
mood of the times. Once again, like the preaching in public places
which brought others to trial for definite heresy, it may have seemed
daring and impertinent enough for a mere priest to utter from so
prominent a pulpit. He was crying from the house-tops what others
less exalted than Brunton whispered before nobility or clergy in
inner chambers, things fit for select prelatical lips to utter, and select
ears to hear.
Be this as it may, the Word in this case had free course, and was
multiplied indeed. The sermon appears again and again in Latin
dress in the most respectable homily collections1. The Lollards liked
it apparently, and preserved it with the discourses of their great
master2, as they did the sayings of Rolle. Finally, "found out hid
in a wall,"3 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it was again brought
into the open to stir the hearts of the Reformers. Edition after
edition4 was issued in print, and subsequent Puritans seem to have
delighted to bind it up with their own volumes of sermons 5. From a
copy of the 12th edition, of the year 1617, by W. Jaggard, in the
University Library at Cambridge, I take the following from a charac-
teristic preface which now recommends it—"to the Christian
Reader":
Lo, Christian reader, while the worlde not slumbred, but routed
and snorted in the deepe and dead sleep of ignorance, some lively
spirits were waking, and ceased not to call uppon the drowsie multitude
of men, and to stirre them up from the long dreames of sinfull living,
that once at the last they would creepe out of darknesse, and come forth
to the hot shining Sunne of God's Word, that both the filthy mists
of their harts might be driven away, and also their heavy and dying
spirits recreated, refreshed, and quickened. So that no man can alleadge
that in any age there wanted Preachers of God's word. For he that
keepeth Israel sleepeth not, nor slumbreth... .
Reade, therefore, diligently this little sermon, so long since written,
and thou shalt perceive the same quicke spirit in the Author thereof
that thou now marvailest at in others of our time. He sharply, earnestly,
and wittily rebuketh the sinnes of all sorts of men, and speaketh as one
1
See above, Chap, vi, pp. 229-30. Also found with Waldeby in MS. Caius
Coll.
2
Camb. 334; and in MS. Roy. 18. B. xxiii with Myrc (?).
3
Cf. MS. Sidney Sussex Coll. Camb. 74; and possibly MS. Add. 37677.
4
This is the normal way in which it is described in the printed editions.
The first seems to be J. Kynge, c. 1550-60. Others in 1563, 1570, 1572,
1575. 1582, 1584, 1603, 1617, 1629, 1634, 1635, 1738, etc.
5
An interesting case in which whole sections of the sermon have been in-
corporated practically verbatim by a pre-Reformation preacher in his own
vernacular homilies, is afforded by MS. Line. Cath. Libr. A. 6. 2. Here the
simile of the Vine and the labourers (the three orders of Holy Church, and
their tasks) appears on fols. 67 b-70 (Serm., Dom. Septuages.); and the
"iii maner of baylis" summoned to " 3elde rekenyng" at the Doom, on fols.
217 to end (Serm., Dom. ixa post fest. S. trinitatis).
362 APPENDICES
having authority, and not as the Scribes and Pharisees, which, with their
leaden and blunt dart, could never touch the quicke, tho' they have
occupied the Pulpets for many yeares... .
Thus speak the sons of gospel liberty, the really superior preachers,
as Presbyterian Mr Stalker1 would insist, certain themselves, at any
rate, of their own salvation and superiority. For our own part we will
feel grateful to them for their contribution to the little romance of a
mediaeval sermon, and there let the matter rest.
One point more. The present writer has found a Latin version of
this work in the heart of a series of Latin sermons of the period, with
the same vigorous style, amongst the manuscripts of the Cambridge
University Library2. In this case no identification of preacher or of
place of delivery is given. The anonymous collection in question was
actually used to good purpose by Petit-Dutaillis for a study we have
alluded to, concerning the influences of the pulpit upon the Peasants'
Revolt. With a certain interest, therefore, a likely name for its author
can now be put forward, that of Thomas Wimbledon, the pulpit-
hero of 1388. Among the "gravamina" presented by the inferior
clergy to the Bishops in Convocation in 1399, was a request that
unbeneficed chaplains should not be licensed to preach for the future 3 .
Was the relentless denunciation of Thomas and his kind too much for
their nerves?
1
Article on "Preaching" (Hist, of Christian) in Hastings' Encycl. of Rel.
and Ethics, all too scanty of mediaeval preachers and preaching.
2
3
MS. Camb. Univ. Libr. Ii. iii. 8 (also used in this study: see passim).
See also the complaint in Reg. Brantingh. (Exeter), pt. ii, p. 692.
NOTE. AS I go to press for the last time, my attention has been

drawn to a recent article by M. Etienne Gilson, in Revue d'histoire
frandscaine (Paris), for July, 1925, vol. ii, no. 3, which should be
worth consulting, on:—"Michel Menot, et la technique du sermon
medieval."
INDEX
Abbess, 4 Anthony, St, Hospital of, 102
Abbey of the Holy Ghost, 288 Anthony, St, of Padua, 199
Abbot, see Elections, Monks, etc. Anti-Christ, 41, 97, 212, 247, 294
Abjiciamns et Suspendium, 237—238 Anti-clericalism, 44,45,74,130,136,
Absolutions, false, 76, 105, 106 178, 218, 239
Acrostics in sermons, 329 Anti-mendicant controversy, see
Actors, 81, 82, 322 Friars
Adam, see Marisco Antiphoner, 29
Advent sermons, 146, 154, 156, 238, Applause at sermons, 189
257, 260 Appleby,Thomas of (Bp.of Carlisle),
Aelfric, Homilies of, 230, 245 208,219
Aesop, 302 Aquavilla, Nicholas de, 236, 237
Ailred, see Rievaulx Archbishops, sermons by, 150, 151,
Alan (Alain), see Lille, Lynn 169, 208, 219, 262. See also
Albigensian heretics, 92, 210 Fitzralph, etc.
Albon, William (Abbot of St Albans), Archdeacons, preaching of, 8, 168
2 8
5 Architectural influence of preaching,
Alcock, Simon, De dilatione ser- 159-160
monum of, 23, 315, 323 Archivum Franc. Hist., 236
Aldermen, 94, 213, 214 Aristotle, 137
Ale-houses, see Tavern Aries, Caesarius of, 181; Council of,
Alexander IV, Pope, 72 146
Alexander, see Ashby, Hales Armachanus, see Fitzralph
Alkerton, Richard, 23-34; sermon Armagh, see Fitzralph
of, 24, 230, 338, 340 Arnold, see Liege
All Saints' Festival, sermons for, 246 Arnold, Matthew, 70
All Souls' Festival, sermons for, 244 Ars Moriendi, 336, 342
Allen, Miss H. E., art. by, 112, 289- Art of Preaching, treatises on, 314-
290 316. See also Higden, Walleys, etc.
Alms for preachers, see Begging, Arundel, Sussex, 198
Money Arundel, Archbp. of Canterbury, 9,
Alnwick (Bp. of Lincoln), 149, 150, 148, 219, 266, 349; Constitutions
157, 259 of, 41, 140-143
AlphabetumNarrationum,82,17 5,302 Arundel, Lord, Admiral, 203
Ambo, 57, 160—161 Ash Wednesday, sermons for, 11,
Ambrose, see Spiera 145, 148, 154, 156, 243, 244
American Hist. Review, 35 Ashby, Alexander of, prior, 315
Amundesham, Annales of, 142, 229, Ass, 192, 210—211
293 Asserio, Rigaud de, Bp. of Win-
Amusements, see Sports chester, Register of, 51, 103, 104,
Anchorites, i n , 114, 117—119, 122, 107, 202
124, 226 Athboy, Ireland, 13
Ancren Riwle, 111 Attendance at sermons, 21, 56, 57,
Andrea di Firenze, 96 71, 126, 136, 146, 157, 165-169,
Angelo, see Clavasio 172, 173, 179-182
Animal 'figures' in sermons, 81, 82, Audiences at sermons, behaviour of,
i n , 139, 140, 192, 238, 252, 300, 21, 56, 57, 63, 81-83, 123, 124,
303, 318, 335, 346. See also 126, 144, 152, 157, 158, 165-192,
Hounds 195, 196, 206, 208-210, 212-219,
Anne, Queen (Anne of Bohemia), 221, 250, 251, 331-333
266 Augustine, St (of Canterbury), 15
Anselm, St, 231, 286, 297, 299 Augustine, St (of Hippo), 50, 94,
Ante-themes, 260, 261, 271, 276, 284, 241, 247, 261, 283, 310, 311,
316-319,328
364 INDEX
Augustinian canons, 22, 54, 55, 227, Bequests for preaching, 5, 143
245-247, 302, 306, 355; sermons Berchorius, Reduct. Morale of, 307
to, 1507152, 355 Berkhampstead, Castle of, 219;
Augustinian friars, 109; sermons of, Council of, 32
12, 50, 59, 60, 64-66, 93, 189, 230 Bernard, St, 5, 39,48-50, 54,96,125,
Aureals for preachers, 8 134, 158, 163, 210, 249, 251, 286,
Austin canons, friars, see Augus- 288, 310, 329, 339, 341, 344
tinian Bernardino, St, of Siena, 55, 93,165,
Auxerre, William of, 165 187, 190, 210, 214, 219, 225, 349
Ave Maria, sermons on, 13, 65, 282, Berthold, see Ratisbon
283 Bertrand, see Tour
Avignon, 10-12, 15, 330 Bestiaries, 300, 304
Aylesford, Kent, 18 Beverley Minster, 150, 352
Bible, see Scripture
Bacon, Roger, 32, 37, 84 Bicester, Oxon. (Austin priory of),
Badby, William, 66, 221 ISO
Baildon, W. P., art. by, 198 Biddenden, Kent, 23
Bale, John, Scrip tores of, 16, 58, 315; Bidding Prayer, at sermons, 213,262,
List of Carmelite writers, 66, 67, 263, 317-319
119, 147, 154, 260, 315 Bishops, 25, 52, S3, 108, 116; at
Balkans, 35 sermons, 67, 169, 213; ignorance
Ball, John, 17, 196, 209, 210 of, 37—38; neglect of preaching,
Baluze, Misc. of, 150 39—43, 293 ; preaching of, 1, 8—20,
Banners in processions, 201, 202, 134, 167—169, 200, 208, see further
216, 217 Brunton, etc.; vices of, attacked in
Bangor, Bp. of, 66 sermons, 17, 36—43, 67, 68, 93,
Baptisterium, 29 94, 134, 169, 353, 293, 301, see
Barnabas, St, 263-264 further Prelates
Barnwell, Cambridge (Austin priory), Blessing, episcopal, before sermon,
200 149, 152
Bartholomew, Anglicus, De Propr. Blickling Homilies, 245, 336
Rerum of, 65, 81, 82, 192, 300 Blois, Peter of (Blesensis), 261
Basevorn, Robert of, Forma Pred. of, Boasting of preachers, see Pride
3H Bonaventura, St, 115, 286; Spec.
Bate, John, 77 Vitae Christi (or so-called Medit.
Bayne, Rev. Ronald, 25 of), 138, 227, 276, 287, 288
Becon, Thomas, Supplicacyon of, 247 Bond, Francis, 159, 177
Bede, Venerable, 49, 50, 208, 247, Boniface, St, prophecy of, 44, 323
251 Boniface VIII, Pope, 72
Bedford (Hosp. of St Leonard), 103 Boniface IX, Pope, 357
Beds, 170 Borard, John, 184, 358
Begging of preachers, 80, 84-90, Bossuet, 268
99—11 o Boston, John of, Catalogue of, 307,
Bekle, William, 154 308
Bekyngton, Bp., Correspondence of, Bottisham, Richard, 308
36, Si) 73 Bottlesham, William (Bp. of Ro-
Beleth, John, Rationale of, 296 chester), 20
Bells, for sermons, 156; for Roga- Bourbon, Etienne de, Tractatus of,
tiontide Processions, 201, 202, 215 56, 57, 168, 210, 217
Beloe, E. M., 159, 160 Bourgain, Abbe, La Chaire franc, au
Benches in churches, 165—166 xti™ siecle, 118, 223, 224, 230, 265,
Benedict, St, Rule of, 52 310, 325
Benedict XII, Pope, 11 Bowet, Bp. of Bath and Wells,
Benedictine monks and convents, 16, Register of, 202
49, 51-54, 64, 65, 151, 156, 157, Boy-Bishop, preaching of, 220
260, 261. See also Brunton, Bury, Bozon, Nicole, Contes Moral, of,
Rochester, Rypon, St Albans, 179, 228, 232, 249, 278, 301-302
Westminster (London), etc. Brackley, John, 44, 227; Compilatio
Bennett, H. S., Pastons and their of, 285
England of, 285, 336 Bradley, Thomas, see Scrope
INDEX 365
Braibrok, Robert de, 69 Byschope, Richard, 102
Braibrok, Thomas de, 140
Brakelond, Joscelin of, Chron. of, Cade, Jack, 42
48-49 Caesarius, see Aries, Heisterbach
Brandeis, Dr A., 290 " Cairn's Castels," 91
Brantingham, Bp. of Exeter, Register Cambridge, Augustinians at, 59, 60,
of, 76, 102, 103, 105, 362 157; Carmelites at, 232; Domini-
Bredon, John, 77-79, 225 cans at, 60, 63, 68, 69, 198; Fran-
Brewood, Staffs., 12 ciscans at, 80
Bridge-chapels, 102, 220 Cambridge, Emmanuel Coll., 198;
Brinton, Thomas, see Brunton Gonville Hall, 308; King's Hall,
Brittany, 205 60; St Botolph's Ch., 59; St
Bromyard, John de, 68—69; Distinct. Mary's Ch. (Grt.), 59, 153, 154;
Theol. of, 69; Opus Trivium of, 5, St Nicholas' Hosp., 298
68; Summa Predicantium of, 1, 6, Cambridge, MSS. at: Corpus Christi
7, 20, 22, 26, 27, 30, 32-33, 36-41, Coll., 199, 230, 235, 240, 241, 249,
43. 45-46, 49-5°, 58, 65-71, 75, 259, 262, 263, 270; Fitzwilliam
77,80-82,85-88,90-92,100, 123- Mus., 95, 199; Gonville and Caius
125, 129, 131, 138, 147, 148, 158, Coll., 10, 31, 33, 34, 58-60, 64, 65,
159, 162, 163, 168, 175, 176, 178- 85, 124, 152, 157, 179, 183, 226,
180, 182—186, 190, 192—194, 209, 230, 231, 256, 258, 262, 263, 270,
212, 217-219, 221, 223, 224, 227, 271, 273, 315, 321, 322, 338, 333,
231, 232, 246, 247, 253. 264, 271, 335, 347, 35i, 361; Jesus Coll.,
279, 293, 295, 300, 301, 303-307, 270, 272; Magdalene Coll., 240;
315, 322, 323. 325. 326, 329, 331, Pembroke Coll., 10; Sidney Sussex
332, 334, 335, 339. 341-345, 354; Coll., 230, 360, 361; Trinity Coll.,
Tract. Juris Civ. et Canon, of, 68 41,53,87, n o , 133,136,229,239;
Bromyard, Robert de, 68 Univ. Libr., 6, 33, 35, 37, 41, 43,
Brown, Carleton, 273, 276 46, 76, 77, 95, 135, 148, 175, 217,
Brown, John, Puritan Preaching of, 230, 231, 233, 240, 243, 244, 266,
92 269, 270, 284, 285, 294, 297, 298,
Browne, Bp., 50 3°6, 315, 318, 325, 338, 340-342,
Brownists, 94 357, 361,362
Bruce, Robert, 209 Cambridge, sermons at, 50, 57, 59,
Brunne, Robert of, see Mannyng 60, 63, 153, 154, 259, 262, 263
Brunton, Thomas (Bp. of Rochester), Cambridge University, iity, 55, 12, 85,
11,15—20; sermons of, 3,9, 12,15— 2<p ;Char
143, 151, 234, 289; Chancellors of,
20, 31, 35-37, 39, 40, 41, 44, 49, 59, 68, 69, 298
98, 136, 145, 148, 173-175, 183, Cambridge University and Colleges,
184, 205—208, 215, 216, 218, 219, documents relating to, 153, 155
231, 248, 251-255, 257, 258, 264, Cambridgeshire, 62
268, 280, 307, 321, 329, 332, 360 Candlemas Day, 243
Brute, Walter, 135 Cannock, Staffs., 12
Bubwith, Bp. of Bath and Wells, Canon Law, 28, 29, 31, 74, 173, 186,
Register of, 143 228, 298, 305
Bulls, Papal, 72, 108, 143, 349, 358 Canons, regular, preaching of, 54,62,
Bunyan, John, 92, 93, 117, 139, 280 151,152
Burford, Staffs., 12 Canons, secular, 51, 148, 149, 155,
Burgh (or Burgo), John de, Pupilla 156
Oculi, 55, 228, 284, 297-298 Canterbury, Cathedral church and
Burnet, Bp. Gilbert, 25 monastery of, 51, 193, 214; monks
Burnham Norton, Norf., 163—164 of, 52, 227
Burton-on-Trent, 12 Canterbury, Province of, 74, 102,
Burwell, Robert of, 61 105, 142
Bury, Richard de (?), Philobiblon of, Canterbury Tales, see Chaucer
84-85, 308 Cantimpratanus, 81
Bury St Edmunds, sermons at, 49, Capgrave, John, 50
59, 60, 351 Caps, doctors', 85, 149, 212
Butt, Henry, 143 Caraccioli, Robert, Bp. of Aquino,
Byrde, Roger, 4 147
366 INDEX
Cardinals, 330. See further Reping- Chrysostom, St, 15, 30, 33, 50, 160,
don, Savoy, Tour, etc. 337
Carlisle, Bp. of, see Appleby Church and State, 75, 128, 204, 205,
Carlyle, Thomas, 121, 126, 127, 132 264, 296, 301, 361
Carmelites, 232; preaching of, 51, Church, corruption in, 130-131.
66, 67, 77, 89, 93, 154, 22i, 260- See further Curati, Vices, etc.
262, 315; sermons to, 12, 18, 257; Church, parish, preaching in, 159,
Monum. Hist. CarmeL, 77, 154 et seq.
Carols, 232 Church Quarterly Review, 10, 143
Carpenter, Alex. (Fabricius), De- Church-going, 170-173
structorium Viciorum of, 224, 306 Church-wardens'Accounts, 166,199
Carthage, Councils of, 5, 181 Church-yards, see Cemeteries
Carthusians, 227, 291 Cicero, 263
Cashel, Ireland, Council of, 108 Cilium Oculi Sacerdotis, 1, 3, 4, 5, 7,
Cathedral preaching, 12, 155-157 23, 28, 36, 45, 52, 72, 74, 99, 101,
Catherine, St (of Alexandria), 258, 103, 105-108, 140, 173, 185, 196,
324 243, 298, 322, 328
Catherine, St, of Siena, 258 Circumcision, Feast of, 243
Caulibus, John de, 288 Cistercians, 48, 62, 306
Cemeteries, preaching in, 12, 48, Civil Law, 33
126, 140, 152, 154, 195-200, 208- Claremont, France, 150-151
219 Classical references in sermons, 246,
Chancellors as preachers, at cathe- 260, 261, 263, 300, 301, 304, 309,
drals, 3, 146, 155, 156, 200; at 326, 342
Universities, 3, 59, 68, 69, 154 Clavasio, Angelo of, Sumrna Angel.
Chapels, sermons in papal, 10-11; of, 4, 103, 107, 298
sermons in other private, 14, 219 Clay, Miss R. M., 100,112,118,119,
Chaplains, as preachers, 1, 360—362 124, 127
Chapters of monks and friars, Clement, St, 263, 264
preaching at, 3, 11, 49, 149-152 Clergy, see Curati, Prelates, Synods,
Chapter-houses, preaching in, 148— etc., Manorial officials, Punish-
152, 214, 248, 253 ment, Vices, etc.
Chasteau a Amour, see Grossete'te Cloisters, preaching in, 199, 209
Chateau-Thierry, William de, 34 Close Rolls, 69, 85
Chattering, at sermon-time, 172- Cloth, pulpit, 211
178, 180, 181, 187; in procession, Clothale (Clothall, Herts.), Robert
215, 217 of, 35°
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 26,199,228,247; Clothing, 94, 211. See also Fashions,
Canterbury Tales of, 2, 8, 21, 22, Robes
43, 48, 58. 72, 76, 85, 87, 99, 100, Clovis, 205
105, 108, 109, 147, 185, 187, 213, Cluniac revival, 48
228, 231, 313, 346, 348, 349; Cobham, Kent, 16
Romaunt of the Rose of, 85, 89—91, Codnor, see Grey
212 Coggeshall, Essex, 198
Chaytor, H. J., Troubadours and Coinci, Gautier de, 246
England, 228, 266 Colchester, 59
Chelvey, Somerset, 165 Cold Ashton, Glos., 162
Cheriton, Odo of, Fabulae of, 82, Colet, John, 143, 145, 311
251, 255, 3°o. 335 Collage, Thomas, 143
Chertsey Abbey, 18 Collegiate churches, 51, 198
Chess, 178, 190, 264, 304, 326 Collingwood, Ralph, 308
Chester, 60, 252 Collins, H. B., 232
Chester, Johnof,6i. See also Higden Colyton, Devon, 72
Chesterfield, Lord, 221 Comets, 54, 98, 207—208
Chichester Cathedral, 24 Commandments, see Decalogue
Children, 33, 95, 207, 219, 272, 291, Commons, see Petitions, Revolts, etc.
297. 322, 334, 348 Compotus, 29
Choir, preaching in, 12 Conclusions of sermons, 330
Christmas sermon-themes, 146, 252, Cond<§, Prince de, 268
253. 291, 346 Confessions, 62, 63, 72-74, 76, 77,
INDEX 367
105,146,147,173.178, 243, 270, Crump, Henry, 77
297.346,358 Crusades, preaching of, 56, 61, 199
Constance, Council of, 11—12 Cubaud, Baudellzinus, 63-64
Constitutions, see Arundel, Neville, Curati: neglect of preaching, 21, 27,
Peckham, Thoresby, etc. 43-47, 48, 126, 135, 250, 251;
Contemplation, 97, m - 1 1 7 , 120, preaching of, 1-3, 7, 20-25, 145-
121 146, 237, 281, 282; relations with
Convents, see Monks, Nuns, etc. friars, 55, 71-77; relations with
Convocations, sermons at, 3, 150, pardoners, 102-109; trading of,
151.'54 44, 249; vices of (drunkenness,
Conway, Roger, 89 ignorance, inchastity, non-resid-
Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, 143 ence, sloth, worldliness), 27-36,
Cornwall, 167 43-47. 74-75, 125-127, 130, 135,
Coronations, 211, 219 182-184, 216, 241, 249-251, 253,
Corpus Christi, festival of, sermons 293-294
at, 13, iS4> 21°, 225, 259, 276, 283, Curiositates, in sermons, 81-85, 354
284,318,357 Cursor Mundi, 277
Coton, Cambs., 59 Cursun, Robert, 61
Cotswold churches, 159—160 Cuthbert, St, 216, 235
Couette, Thomas, 190, 214 Cutts, Rev. E. L., Parish Priests, 228,
Coulton, G. G., Five Centuries of 297, 321
Religion, 93, 158, 210; From St
Francis to Dante, 8, 83, 238, 249; "Dacmexton," 13
Mediaeval Studies, 26,176,188,199 Dalton, Canon J. N., 51, 193
Councils, sermons at, n , 12, 36, 252, Dancing, 71, 123, 253, 309
253. See further Aries, Carthage, Dante, 173, 185
Cashel, Constance, Lateran, Trent, Dartford, Kent, 16
Salzburg, etc. "Datyngton," 13
Counsellors, 17 Dauphin, 200, 203
Court royal, 17, 40, 66, n o ; Deacons, as preachers, 1, 23, 134,
preachers at, 17, 20, 40, 66, 67, 90, 135
91; prelates at, 42, 43, 90, 91, 253 Deanesly, Miss M., The Lollard
Courtenay, Sir Hugh de, Earl of Bible, 24, 26, 240, 241, 276, 291,
Devon, 265 311; art. by, 275, 288
Courtenay, William, Archbp. of Deans, as preachers, 12, 145, 156,
Canterbury, 140, 198, 360 200
Coventry, sermons at, 77-79, 118, Death, 207, 268, 321, 336, 339, 3 4 1 -
127, 143; cathedral and priory, 344
77-79; Holy Trinity Ch., 78-79; Debtors, 126
St Michael's Ch., 13, 77-79, 225; Decalogue, in sermons, 29, 65, 119-
Leet Bk., 79, 127 121, 134, 273, 282, 283, 289, 322;
"Cowlrath," Ireland, 13 tracts on, 4, 33, 60, 67, 112, 119-
Cox, Rev. J. C , 25, 160, 161, 163, 121, 187, 228, 279, 280, 285, 2 9 2 -
165, 198 294; verses on, 272
Craft of Dying, 342 Decoration of churches, 89,157,158,
Cranborne, Dorset, 163 162-164
Crane, Prof. T . F., 25, 299, 301 Dedications of churches, sermons
Creed, sermons on, 64, 225, 282, 283 at, 59, 270, 271
Creton, (9), 349 Defensio Curatorum, 13
Croft, Bp. of Hereford, 328 Degrees at Universities, false, 85,212
Cromwell, Oliver, 115, 246 Delisle, M. L., 300
Cronin, Rev. H . S., 64, 225 Derby (nunnery), 258
Crosses, preaching, 12, 55, 148, 157, "Derwaldswood" (Deerfold Wood,
195—200, 208—214, 219, 2 2 1 ; pro- Hereford), 128
cessional, 201, 202, 215—217; used Develis Parlament, 275
by preachers, 349 Devils, 6 1 , 66, 170, 175-177, 181,
Crowle, Worcs., 150 201, 202, 246, 248, 249, 271, 295,
Crucifix, used by preachers, 349 304, 326, 332, 333, 335-338, 342-
Cruel, Geschichte der Deut. Pred., 344
225, 236 Devil's bell, 71
3 68 INDEX
Devil's Castle, 304, 325 Durham, Rites of, 52, 54, 146, 149,
Devil's Letter, 248, 249 156, 356
Devon, Earl of, 265 Dutaillis, Ch. Petit, 56, 59, 362
Diagrams, marginal, in sermon-books, Dymmok, John, 219; Roger, Liber
236,324 contra Errores Loll, of, 64, 225
Diaries, sermon, 14, 233
Dice-playing, 47, 178 Earthquakes, 198, 295, 338
Dictionaries, Engl.-Latin, 166, 308 Eastbourne, St Mary's Ch., 24
Dilation of sermons, 314-316, 323- Eastbridge, Kent (Hosp. of St
329 Thomas the Martyr), 103
Dinners, preachers , 90, 91, 107, 168, Easter sermons, 146, 166, 179, 180,
193;on Sunday, 14s, 179-180 189, 240, 244, 257, 316, 356
Diocesan preaching, 10, 143 Eccleston, Thomas of, De Adventu
Distinctiones Theolog., 305. See Minorum of, 88, 89, 158, 164, 193
further Lathbury, etc. Edinburgh, Mercat Cross, 198
Disturbance of sermons and services, Edinburgh, MSS. at: Advocates'
63, 106-108, 157, 165, 176-183, Libr., 8, 232, 272, 297, 305, 344,
187-189, 195, 219 346, 359; Royal Coll. of Physicians,
Dives et Pauper, 38, 58, 88, 93, 192, 274, 275, 277; University Libr.,
207, 322 229, 256, 259, 286, 295
Divisiones of sermons, 304, 305, 310— Edlesborough, Bucks., 162
313, 315. 3i6, 318, 320-330, Edmund, St, see Rich
353 Edward I I I , King of England, 19, 36
Doctors, as preachers, 2, 3, 21, 23, Edward, the Black Prince, 17, 36,
57, 64. 84, 153, 155, 169, 212, 234, 268, 329
240, 348; of the Church, four, 3, Egypt, 245, 246
164 Eisengrein, W., 69
Dogs, disturbing sermons, 187, 219. Elections of abbots and priors,
See also Hounds sermons on, 59, 247, 254, 255, 258
Domestic life, 63, 82, 95, 170, 194, Elizabeth, Queen, 361
218, 294 Elocution, rules for, 352—354
Dominic, St, 210 Ely, Cathedral, 173,177;priory,254;
Dominicans, preaching of, 2, io, 51, Bps. of, 10, 262
55-64, 66 et seq., 106, 165, 211, Emblems, sacred, 324, 349
and see further Bromyard, Walleys, Emotional preaching, 190, 191, 333-
etc.; sermons to, 11, 57, 59, 263 348
Doncaster, 77 Encyclopedias, preachers', 279, 303—
Donet, 325, 329, 353 307; see also Bromyard, S.P., etc.
Doom, see Judgement-Day English phrases in Latin sermons,
Doors, fastening of Conclusiones to 54, 65, 231
church, 79, 225 English Domin. Prov., 69
Dore Abbey, Hereford, 258 Englishmen, vices of, 179, 206-208,
Dormi Secure, 237-238 323; as sermon-goers, 179
Dress, see Clothing, Fashions, Robes Entertainers, street, 71, 81
Drogheda, Ireland, 12, 252; Carme- Erasmus, 145, 148, 262, 311, 328
lites of, 12, 257; St Mary's Ch. Essebiensis, see Ashby
and Cross, 12, 13, 196 Essex, 61, 298
Dromore, Bp. of (Ireland), 119 Est6eld, Sir William, 143
Drumskin, Ireland, 13 Etienne, see Bourbon
Dublin, 73 Eugenius IV, Pope, 119
Dublin Review, 6, 25, 60, 102, 188, Eulogium Hist., 56, 220
281, 335 Eustache, see Flay
Duffield, Thomas, 149 Everyman, 268
Dundalk, Ireland, 11, 13, 14, 15 Evesham Abbey, Wore, 150
Durandus, Rationale, 160, 181, 355 Evrard du Val, 157
Durham, Cathedral and monastery, Examinations for preachers, 30, 31
52, 54. J45. 156, 157, 215-217, Examinatory sermons, 55, 155, 234,
235, 250; churches at, 52 259-262
Durham Cathedral Library, MS. at, Excommunicates, 173
298; Catal. Veteres, 54, 223 Exempla, 7,18,19, 20, 37,40, 50, 56—
INDEX 369
58, 60-67, 7°, 7 1 . 80-85, 108, i n , 349; Santa Croce, 157, 159; Santa
123, 168-171, 175-178, 181-183, Maria Novella, 96; sermon audi-
185, 186, 191, 192, 205, 207, 217, ences at, 185, 190, 219
218, 221, 233, 235-238, 240, 243, Florarium Barthol., see Mirfield
245-247. 252, 255-257, 271, 276, Flos Florum, 286, 298, 299, 359
299-305, 309, 313, 320, 321, 323- Folk-lore, 176, 201, 243, 245-247,
326, 328, 332, 333, 335, 337-341, 294,336
344, 345, 351 Folsham, John, 315
Exeter, bridge and chapel of B.V.M., Foreigners, 43
102, 108; Cathedral, 102; rectors Foulkes, Rev. E. S., 66, 155
and vicars of, 107; Synod of, see Fox, preaching, 86, 108, 352
Quivil Fox, George, 93, 117, 119
Expositio verborum Legendae, 30 Foxe, John, Acts and Monums. of,
Eynesham, Oxon., 170 93, 121, 124, I 2 7 , 128, 189, 198,
266, 360
Fables, 80-85, 236, 241, 300-302, " Fra Angelico," 96
313 . France, wars with, 200, 202-205, 268
Fabricius, see Carpenter Francis, St (of Assissi), 48,76, 82,96,
Fairs, sermons at, 48 115, 231, 294, 322
Famines, 206—208 Franciscans, 6, 44, 300, 305-306,
Fanatical preachers, 97, 128—130, etc.; preaching of, 2, 51, 55—64,
139, 140 66, et seq., 167, 220, 225, 236, 237;
Fasciculus Morum, see Spicer sermons to, 11, 59; Collectanea
Fasciculus Zizaniorum, 56, 69, 73, 77, Franc, 275, 288, 308
132-134. H ° , 154. 189, 196 Fraunsham, Norfolk, 60
Fashions, evil, in dress,71,133,170— French, as medium for sermons, 228,
173, 183, 190, 212, 217, 218, 294, 258, 265, 266, 301; popular know-
295. 344 ledge of, 228, 266, 274; quotations
Fasting, 147, 244 in sermons, 82, 231, 272, 295, 301
Fees for preachers, 149,192,193,219 Friars, accused of hypocrisy, 88—91;
Felton, John, 24—25; Sermones Do- Anti-Mendicant controversy with,
minicales of, 24, 25, 55, 225, 228, 12-13, 41, 55, 73, 89; begging of
232, 235, 239, 285, 307; Pera alms by, 56, 80, 192, 294, 295 ; and
Peregrini of, 306 Holy Poverty, 88-91; partiality
Ferrers-Howell, 93, 187, 214, 225 for the rich, 66, 67, 90, 91
Festivals, sermons at, 3, 49, 58, 60, Friars, preaching of, 12, 45, 48, 50—
235, 241-247, 270, 271. See 5 ' , 55-95, I O I , 104, 134, 146, 147,
further Corpus Christi, etc. 154-158, 185, 192, 210, 2 i i , 219-
Fighting at religious services, 217, 221, 227-229, 250-253, 276, 286,
219 303, 312, 313; restrictions re, 7 2 -
Finchale Priory, Durham, 54 74
Fines, 8 Friars' relations with: bishops, 67-
Fiore, Joachim, Abbot of, 135, 136 68, 87, 253 ; curati, 55, 71-77, 227,
Fitzralph, Richard, Archbp. of 250; monks, 51, 64, 65, 77-79,
Armagh ,10-15; sermons of, 3,1o- 293; pardoners, 106, 107, 109;
15. 36, 39. 43. 7 i . 73, 74, I ° I , 125, universities, 55, 73, 155
196, 202—205, 208, 220, 225, 232, Friaries, buildings of, 88-91, 157-
233, 252, 257, 259, 307, 317, 328, 159,196-198; preaching in, 11, 12,
33O. 332, 357 18,72,73, 157-159,257
Flattery, sermon, 36, 40, 66-67, 88, Friday sermons, 148
91, 189 Froissart, 209
Flay, Eustachius, Abbot of, 49 Fulbourn, Cambs., 161
Fleknowe, 264 Fuller, Thomas, Hist, of Cantb.
Flemmyng, Richard, Bp. of Lincoln, Univ., 68, 69, 262
12 Funerals, 44, 78, 79, 266, 341;
Fletcher, Rev. J. M. J., 220 sermons at, 16, 60, 73, 247, 265—
Fletcher, Rev. W. G. D., 69 268, 329, 356
Flettcher, Alexander and Agnes, 163 Furness, Joscelin of, 195
Floods, 206, 208
Florence, San Marco, convent of, 96, Gaddesden, John of, 307
24
37° INDEX
Gairdner, James, Lollardy and the Greenwich (London), Greyfriars, 158
Reform., 118, 121, 122, 125, 127, Gregory, St, 3, 173, 208, 247, 261,
130. 299. 303,338
Galleries, 213—214 Gregory IX, Pope, 72
Games at sermon-time, 178 Grey de Codnor, Lord, 18
Gardens, preaching in, 140 Grimston, John de, 232, 272, 273,
Garrick, David, 221 3°5. 344. 346
Garryk, see Gaytrige Gntsch, Johan, 147
Gascoigne, William (Loci e Libro Grossetete, Robert, Bp. of Lincoln,
Ver.),2,$, 36,40—42,106,141, 310— 9, 10, 28, 29, 54, 57, 63, 299, 359;
312, 314, 327 Chasteau d'Amour of, 227, 277,
Gasquet, Cardinal F. A., Old Engl. 288, 325
Bible, etc., 25-26, 28, 40, 66, 146, Guildford, 106, 107
184, 222-224, 232, 235, 352; Guy, see Warwick
Parish Life, etc., 25, 30; art. by, 36, Gyrovagi, 97
228, 281
Gaunt, John of, Duke of Lancaster, Hale, Norf., 60
66, 124, 126 Hales, Alexander of, 57
Gautier, see Coinci Halt Maidenhed, 276
Gaytrige, John de, 53, 227, 275-277. Hall, Edward, Chron. of, 209
282, 289, 291 Hamilton-Thompson, Prof., 166
Geiler, see Kaiserberg Handlyng Synne, see Mannyng
Geoffrey, see Mailross, Waterford Harding, Stephen, 49
Gerald, see Giraldus " Harmer, Anthony," 25
Germany, 55 Harris, Miss M. D., 79, 118, 127
Gervase, see Tilbury Harvests, bad, 206, 208
Gesta Romanorum, 1, 2, 7, 22, 23, 31, Haskins, Prof. Charles, 35, 189
38,40,70,82,83,88,158,165,167, Hatfield, Bp. of Durham, 52
175, 181, 233, 245, 268, 300, 302, Haur6au, J. B., Notices et Extraits de
3°7, 325, 326, 338, 342, 346 Quelques MSS. Latins..., 34, 39,
Gilbert, 306. See also Hoyland, 157, 159, 165, 189, 223, 249, 252,
Massingham 253, 273,312
Giotto, 58, 92 Haynton, John, 260—262
Giraldus Cambrensis, 118 Heighington, Durham, 163
Gloucester Abbey, 54, 149, 260; Heisterbach, Caesarius of, 176
Greyfriars at, 158; St Aldate's Ch., Hell, 95,178,188, 246, 306, 321, 322,
269; Rainold of, 260—261 334,336-338, 345
God spede the Plough, 91 Henry III, King of England, 70
God's Acre, Ireland, 13, 14 Henry IV, 219, 220
"God's Privetees," 120, 291 Henry VI, 154, 203
Goldalle, John and Catherine, 163— Henry VII, 267
164 Heralds, 1, 7, 221, 271
Goldstone, John, 315 Herbert, see Losinga
Gorham, Nicholas, 46, 54, 227, 251 Herbert, J. A., Cat. of Romances in
Gower, John, Confessio Amant., 26, B.M., 235, 290, 299, 3°5, 35i;
87, 173, 322 art. by, 302
Grace, John, 77, 118, 127 Herdeby, Walter, 66
Graduation at universities, 73, 155 Herebert, 273
"Grammar" in sermons, 325, 329 Hereford, Cathedral Cross, 196, 197,
Grandisson, John, Bp. of Exeter, 167, 198; Blackfriars' Cross, 197;
265, 289; Register of, 47, 97, 102- sermon at, 200
104, 108, n o , 147, 148, 167, 202, Hereford, Bp. of, 66; Hugh of, 63;
265,311 Nicholas, 154, 189
Gray, Bp. of Lincoln, Register of, 149 Herefordshire, 68, 102, 127, 128
Gray's Inn, see London Heresy, 97, 121—143, 209, 210, 229,
Greatham, Robert of, 241 289, 339, 360, 361. See also
Greed of preachers, 31,35,47,87,89, Lollards
90, 168, 212 Hermits, 97-98, no—128; Order of,
Green, Valentine, Hist, of Wore, 64; preaching of, 1,2,77,112-128,
148, 196 229
INDEX
Hertford, 293 Ignorance, of preachers, 8, 27—38,
Hertfordshire Archaeol. Soc. Trans., 43, 46, 47, 83-85, 109, 282;
art. in, 121, 292, 293, 346 popular religious, 46, 182
Hervieux, L., Fabulistes Latins, 82, Images in churches, 131, 133, 136,
251, 300, 335 294
Heslyngton, Margaret, 226 Immorality, clerical, see Curati, etc.;
Heywood, John, 106, 108 of Englishmen, 207, 208, 323; in
Higden, Ranulf, Ars Compon. Serm. churches, 173
of, 83, 86, 87, 109, 202, 212, 247, Inattention at sermons, 172-179,
249, 265, 3iS~3i7. 320, 321, 324, 331-333
352,354; Polychron.oi, 49,247,315 Incepting for degrees, 73, 155
Hilton, Walter, 55, 138, 139, 227 Indecencies, sermon, 80-83, ^ 5 , 299
Histoire Litt. de la France, 34, 57, 83, Indices of sermon-books, 222, 277,
165, 176, 190, 214, 223, 237, 300, 3°5. 3°7
327 Indulgences, 198, 203, 306; for
Hobhouse, Bp., 25 sermons, 8, 52, 99, 101-110, 143,
Hoccleve, Thomas, 27 169, 357-358
Holborn Review, 172, 180 Infidels, see Saracens
Holcot, Robert, 224, 227, 23s, 301 Innocent VI, Pope, 10
Holiday behaviour, 4, 170, 180, 194, Introductions, sermon, 319—321
243, 297 Ireland, 12-14, 56, 73
Holkham Hall MS., 240 Iron Acton, Glos., 197, 198
Holmes, J., 289 Irreverence in church, 83, 157, 171-
Homilies, Old Engl., 336, 344 189
Honeywood, Dean, 24, 314, 315 Isidore, St, 263
Hoo, Kent, 16 Isis, 245
Hoods, see Robes Isleworth (Syon monastery), 52, IOI,
Hook, Dean, 219, 266 357
"Horns," ladies', 123, 190, 295 Italy, 55, 82, 190
Horologium Sapientiae, 279, 286
Horses, preachers', 89,168, 193, 194, Jacob's Well, 74, 87, 88, 94, 123, 124,
210,211 131, 135, 138, 139, 148, 149, 161,
Horstmann, Dr C , Yorksh. Writers, 163, 166, 167, 171-173, 175-179.
112-116, 120, 139, 230, 277, 284, 181, 182, 184, 188, 212, 215, 219,
286, 288-292, 342 236, 279, 29°. 326, 331, 332, 337,
" H o s p i t a l " sermons, 100 338, 34i, 345, 359
Hospitals, preaching at, 12, 126; Jacopone da Todi, 58, n o
procurators of, 100—102 Jacques, see Lausanne, Vitry, Vora-
Hospitality for preachers, 90, 91, gine
107, 192, 193 James, Distinct. Theol. of, 76, 87,
Hospitallers, 1 306, 321
Hounds, preachers compared to, 7, James, Dr M. R., 59, 308
20,40,41, 67,75, 96, 139 Jangling, see Chattering
Hoyland, Gilbert of, 49 Jarrett, Bede, O. P., 68,197, 314, 327
Hubert, see Lorgo Jenkins, Prof. Claude, 349
Hugh, see Courtenay, Hereford, New- Jerome, St, 163, 339
castle, St Victor Jerusalem, Hosp. of St John of, 102,
Hugh, St (of Lincoln), 179, 189 104
Humbert, see Romanis Jesting, sermon, 80-83, l%5
Hume, David, 221 Jews, 69, 70
Joachim, see Fiore
Hunting, 7, 27, 38, 39, 66, 249, 253,
258 John, King of England, 179
Huntingdon, 220 John the Baptist, 8, 67, 90, 91, 116
Hurter, J., 68 John, see Boston, Bredon, Bromyard,
Husbands and wives, 170, 171, 183, Burgh, Caulibus, Chester, Fol-
218 sham, Gaunt, Grimston, Kynge-
Hussites, 143, 239 stone, Lathbury, Mirfield, St Giles,
Hymns, 273 Shyrborne, Stone, Swaffham, Tre-
Hypocrisy of preachers, 88—90, 138— visa, Werden, etc.
139, 212-213, 229 Joscelin, see Brakelond, Furness
24-2
372 INDEX
Judgement, Day of, 27, 40, 41, 43, Lay Folks' Catechism, 46, 146, 147,
88, 338-340, 360,361 357
Jugglers, see Entertainers Laymen and women, preaching of,
Jurors, false, 20, 182, 265, 339 5, 6, 104, 135; excluded from
Jusserand, J. J., 55, 56, 223, 29s preaching, 4
Juynesfeld, Peter of, 61 Le Clerc, V., 237, 238
Lecoy de la Marche, La chaire franc.
Kaiserberg, Geiler von, 224 aumoyendge, 5,161,165,188,196,
Kells, Ireland, 13 223, 230, 231, 234, 264, 273-275.
Kempe, Bp. of London, 198 See also Bourbon (Tractatus)
Kenilworth, 62 Lectionary, 29
Kent, Maid of, 209 Lector, 30
Kentigern, St, 195 Legenda Aurea, see Voragine
Ker, Rev. J., 320 Legenda Sanctorum, 243, 298
Ker, Prof. W. P., 296 Legendary, Sth, Engl., 54
Keyser, C , 161, 164 Leicester, 121-127; Abbey, 124;
King (of England), intercessions for, St John the Baptist, Hosp. of, 124;
12, 200, 202-205, 233, 318; St Peter's Ch., 124; Wyggeston
sermons before, 40, 179, 214, 219, Hosp., MS. at, 241
233 Leighton Buzzard, Beds., 196
King's Lynn, see Lynn Leintwarden, Heref., 128
Kirkstall, Yorks., 47 Leland, John, 79, 155, 197, 225
Knighton, Henry, Chron. of, 121— Lemman, Thomas, 314
127, 135 Length of sermons, 145, 178, 180,
Knights, 62, 80, 170, 191, 193, 213, 354
264, 265, 304, 340, 354, 360 Lent, sermons in, 51, 53, 145—148,
Kyngestone, John, 355 199, 212, 235, 259, 342
L'Estrange, Sir Richard, 166
La Tour-Landry, Book of the Knight Letters, 53, 56. See further Beckyng-
of, 170. .173 ton, Grandisson, Grossetete, Peck-
Labour, virtues of, 296, 301, 306 ham, etc.
Lacy, Bp. of Hereford, Register of, Letters and seals, forged, 103, 104,
102, 103, 142, 200 T IO
? ' 3 4 TJohn,
9
,
Lacy, John, 119, 120, 226 Leysmg, 77
Lancaster, see Gaunt Liber de Dono Timoris, 351
Landaff, Bp. of, 208 Liber Exemplorum, 56, 300
Langham, Simon, Archbp. of Can- Libraries of preachers, 29, 50, 84, 85,
terbury, 72, 146 286, 298, 311
Langland, William, Vision of Piers Licences, for non-residence, 34, 147;
Plowman, 19, 26, 27, 44, 71, 72, for pardoners, 101—104, 106—109;
87, 99, 109, n o , 114, 162, 163, for preaching, 1, 41, 45, 69, 72, 76,
166, 185, 280, 295, 296, 332, 94, 118, 134, 140-143, 184, 360
349 Lichfield, 119; Hosp. of St John, 12,
Langlois, C. V., 181, 187, 314 196; sermons at (Cathedral, etc.),
Langton, Stephen, Archbp. of Can- 12, 59, 150, 156
terbury, 231 Lichfield, Dean of, 10, 12
Language of sermons, 223—232 Lichfield, Dr William, 24; Tract, de
Lanterne of Light, 134 V Sensibus of, 24, i n , 117, 120,
Lateran Council, 52, 146, 149 122, 191, 290, 326
Lathbury, John, 47, 125, 132, 138, Liege, Arnold of, 302
184, 305 Lights in churches, 78, 79, 102
Latimer, Bp. Hugh, 39, 229 Lille, Alain de, 315
Latin, as medium for sermons, 223— Lilleshall Priory, Salop, 54, 227
231, 361; phrases in English Limoges, Peter of, 273
sermons, 231—233, 270, 295 Lincoln, Diocese of, Registers, 149,
Lausanne, Jacques de, 252, 253 150; Visitations, 23, 293
Law, see Canon, Civil, Schools Lincoln, sermons at: Cathedral, 145,
Lawerne, John, 79, 155, 262 146, 149, 150, .156, 157, 178, 179.
Lawyers, 59, 80, 182, 265, 295, 301, 189, 248; friaries, 146
3°4 Lincoln Cathedral Library, MSS.
INDEX 373
at, 24, 26,44, 53,79,120,138, 146, 288, 291, 302; St Martin-in-the-
148, 163, 167, 172, 175, 178, 183, Fields, 136
192, 201, 202, 215, 220, 225, 231, London, rolls and accounts at the
232, 240, 243, 244, 264, 272, 273, Public Record Office, 58, 69, 85,
280, 283, 286, 288, 290, 291, 314, 219
322, 324, 338-343. 346-348, 361 London, various records of, 18, 19,
Lisle, Thomas de, Bp. of Ely, 10 219, 349
Litanies, 146, 201 London, Walter of, 62, 193, 194, 211
Little, A. G., Grey Friars in Oxford, London rectors, petition of, 76
55, 73, 157, 3.14, 315; Stud, in Looke, Thomas, 233
Engl. Franc. Hist., 77,91,179,193, Lords, see Nobility
227, 229, 300, 326; other works of, Lorens, friar, Somme of, 277, 288-
237,314 290
Littlehales, Henry, 296. See further Lorgo, Hubert de, 62
Wordsworth and L. Loserth, Prof., 133, 229, 239, 276
Loci e Libro Veritatum, see Gascoigne Losinga, Herbert de, Bp. of Nor-
"Logic" in sermons, 327, 328 wich, 299
Lollards, 30, 38, 41, 42, 92, 93, 104, Loughborough, Leics., 126
118, i a i , 122, 124-143, 148, 230, Louth, Ireland, 13
281-283, 291-294, 351, 360, 361; Love, Nicholas, 227
preaching of, 6, 9, 10, 24, 41, 51, Luard, H. S., 306
87. 89-91. " ° . Ii5. 130-142, 193. Ludolph, see Saxony
212, 229, 239, 241 Luther, Martin, 127, 167, 313
London, 60, 61, 73, 105, 107; Luton, Beds., 198
sermons in, 12-14, 60, 73, 101, Lutterworth, Leics., 163
n o , 193, 215, 216, and see below Lydgate, John, 52, 277. 288, 341
London, AH Hallows the Grt., 24; Lyndesay, Sir David, 356
Austin Friars, i59;BethlemHosp., Lyndwood, Dr William, 142; Pro-
see St Mary of Beth.; bishop's vinciate, 4, 5, 6, 8, 23, 107, 356
palaces, 13, 42; Blackfriars, 62, Lynn, King's, Norf., 50, 59, 158-
198, (Council at) 17, 64, 68; 160, 307, 308
Cheapside, 109; Domus Conver- Lynn, Alan of, 307
sorum for Jews, 70; Greyfriars, 73 ;
Inns of Court, 44; St Bartholo- Macarius, Abbot, 176, 332
mew's Priory, Smithfield, 306; Macaronic sermons, 231-233
St Christopher's Ch., 189; St Dun- Madan, Falconer, 155
stan's in the West, 107, 166, 356; Madan and Craster, Cat. of Western
St Helen's, Bishopsgate, 13, 259; MSS. in Bodl., 64, 292, 305
St Mary of Bethlehem, 103, 143, Madden, Sir Frederick, 291, 300
196; St Mary, Spital, 23, 196, 340; Magdalene, St Mary, 120, 235, 257
St Mary, Woolnoth, 107; St Magus, Simon, 19, 20, 105
Michael's, Cornhiil, 196; St Paul's Maidstone, Richard, 66, 89, 237
Cathedral, 13, 18, 220, 225, 252, Mailli, William of, 238
267, 349, 35°; Paul's cross, 13, 14, Mailross, Geoffrey of, 49
16, 24, 38, 40, 41, 46, 47, ss, 85, Manning, B. L., 32, 179
89, 94, 143, 148, 151, 163, 195, Mannyng, Robert, of Brunne, works
196, 198, 199, 208, 209, 213, 214, of, 45, 227, 276, 277, 284, 286,
219, 230, 264, 339, 342, 351, 357, 289—290
360, 361; Soc. of Antiquaries, 214, Manorial officials, 44, 182
219; Tyburn, 220; Viet, and Mar-Prelate controversy, 43
Albert Museum, 162; West- Mare, Thomas de la, Abbot of
minster: Abbey, 18, 49, 149, 192, St Albans, 64
St Margaret's Ch., 199, Palace, Margaret Tudor, the Lady, 5, 267
219, 225. See also Greenwich Marisco (Marsh), Adam de, 84
London, MSS. at: British Mus., Markets, at churches, 173; sermons
passim; Gray's Inn Libr., 6, 60- at, 48, 93, 195, 196, 209, 212, 219
63, 67, 120, 187, 227, 228, 236, Marriage, 268-270, 297, 306
252, 256, 258, 272, 298, 301, 306, Martene, Ant. Eccles. Rit., 160, 181,
315; Guildhall Libr., 297, 298; 200, 270
Lambeth Palace Libr., 53, 194, Martin V, Pope, 72, 105
374 INDEX
Mary, B. Virgin, 6, 120, 121, 257, Modern Language Review, 19, 208,
258, 288, 317, 339, 346, 347 296
Mascall, Robert (Bp. of Hereford), Money, gained by preaching, 85—88,
66 98-110, 149, 181, 192
Maskell, Monum. Ritual., 211, 356 Monks, as preachers, 1, 48-54, 69,
Mass, negligence of, 31, 39, 44, 47, 149, 151-152, 156, 157, 211, 227,
170; preachers' views on, 93, 94, 250, 255; relations with friars, 51,
J 64, 65, 77-79; relations with
33, J37. 138, 24i» 243; sermons
at, 99, 103,104,144,14s, 266, 3S5, secular clergy, 250-251; sermons
356 to, 16,17,49, 50, 59,148-152,232,
Masses for the dead, 44, 47 237, 253-258; vices of, 50, 256-
Massingham, Gilbert of, 60 258
Matilda, 124 Monkeys, pet, 61, 82, 217, 218
Matthew, see Paris Mont, William du (of Leicester), 256
Matzner, 112, 136 Montfort, Simon de, 55
Maundeville, Sir John, 82 More, Sir Thomas, 266
" Maundevilleston," 13 Moreton Hampstead, Devon, 162
Mayors, 132, 140, 143, 211, 213, Morte Arthure, 220
214 Morton, John, 138, 227
Meals, see Dinners Mosher, J. H., 245, 299
Medicine, see Physicians Mount Grace Priory, Yorks., 227
Melbourne, Cambs., 59 Myrc, John, 47, 54, 215, 227, 246,
Mellor, Derby, 161 247; Festiall of, 22, 47, 54, 55, 83,
Melton, Archbp. of York, Register of, 131, 146, 148, 158, 166, 175, 200,
52, 102, 103, 118, 120, 202 201, 227, 232, 233, 241-247, 264,
Melton, William, 73, 209, 210 268-271, 275, 290, 291, 296, 322,
Melton Mowbray, 59, 126 325, 333. 335. 338-343, 359. 361;
Memoriale Credentium, 194, 285, 288 Instr.for Parish Priests, 32, 35, 46,
Memory aids in sermons, 236, 272, 47, 55, 165, 167, 172,175, 246, 275
273. 326, 329, 352 282, 290, 297; Manuale Sacerdotis,
Mendicants, see Friars 47, 55, 247, 297
M£ray, Anthony, 83, 167, 224 Mystical preaching, 24, 55, 115, 116,
" Mercenaries," preaching, 44,45,48 120, 121, 333, 334
Merchants, frauds of, 17, 20, 80,123,
124, 163, 182, 264, 265; sermons Narrations, see Exempla
to, 264, 304 Nassyngton, William of {Spec. Vitae,
Mercy, preaching of, 33s, 346—348 etc.), 226-228, 266, 275, 277, 289,
Merita Missae, see Lydgate 290
Metrical Homilies, Engl., 152, 169, Navarre, Bk. of Hours of Queen of,
174, 191, 228, 274, 275, 277, 290, 199
333,339 Naves of churches, 157—160
Metrical sermons, 271, 273-278, 318, Neckham, Alexander, 6, 7, 300
331 Nero, 246
Meyer, Paul, 83, 232, 301 Netter, Thomas, of Walden, 69, 77,
Michel, see Northgate " 9 , 154, 356
Middle-class sermon audiences, 136, Neville, Archbp. of York, Const, of,
172, 215 46, 104, 105, 146
"Middleton, Richard," 236, 314 New Year's Day, sermons for, 242,
Midwife, 63 243
Miracles, at sermon-time, 56, 57, Newcastle, Hugh of, 227
349; narratives, 244, 246 Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 59, 120
Mirfield, John of, Florarium Barthol. Newchirch, Lewis, 142
of, 217, 306, 321 Newport, Richard, 78
Mirk, see Myrc Newstead Abbey, Notts., 152
" Mirrors " (Sermons and Treatises), Newton Park, Heref., 128
29, 240, 241, 288, 290. See also Nicholas, see Aquavilla, Hereford
Specula Nobility, at church and sermon, 18,
Misericord carvings, 173, 177, 352 170-172, 178, 191, 215, 216, 217,
Misyn, Richard, 119, 226 220, 265, 332; vices attacked in
Mnemonics, see Memory sermons, 17, 182, 264, 294, 304
INDEX 375
Nolloth, Canon C. F., 25, 291 Oxford, MSS. at: All Souls Coll., 83;
Nonconformity, 43, 92-95, 99, 115, Balliol Coll., 315; Bodleian Libr.,
122, 157, 158 10, 27, 52, 54, 64, 66, 69, 79, 83,
Non-residence, 8, 27, 41—45, 47 87, IOI, 106, 121, 139, 144, 145,
North Walsham, Norf., 159 I5O, 155, 165, 173, 175, 178, 185,
Northampton, All Saints' Ch., 196, 194, 211, 212, 228, 231, 235, 238,
355; Benedictine and Augustinian 240, 241, 245, 247, 249, 258, 263,
Chapters at, 151-152, 154; sermons 272, 273, 277-279, 284, 286, 2 8 8 -
at 29O, 292, 295, 302, 305-307, 314-
> 93, 132,140, 148,151, 189, 212,
355 316, 319, 320, 326, 342, 352, 354,
Northaw, Middsx., n o 356, 357, 359; Corpus Christi
Northern Homily Collect., see Metri- Coll., 236; Lincoln Coll., 10, 236;
cal Homilies Merton Coll., 10, 314; St John's
Northgate, Michel of, Ayenbite of Coll., 119, 180; Trinity Coll., 24,
Inwyt of, 227, 230, 277, 279, 289, 230; Univ. Coll., 230
290 Oxford, Petition of, 43, 87, 104, 105,
Northumberland, 57 109
Northwold, William, 212 Oxford, sermons at, 55, 59, 73, 79,
Norton, Worcs., 150 148, 152-155,. 157. 234, 259-263
Norwich, Benedictine monks of, 16; Oxford University, 5, 9, 11, 12, 23,
Bp. of, 203; Blackfriars (St An- 35,68, 69,73, 85, 89,143,149,151,
drew's Hall), 89, 157, 159; Car- 323, 327; Chancellors of, n , 41,
melites of, 118, 119; Greenyard 69, 153, 154, 189, 310
(cross), 148, 196, 199, 213, 214; Oxford University, Munim. Acad.
rectors and vicars of, 107; suffragan Oxon., 153-155. 196, 234, 260
of, 119
Notebooks, preachers', 37, 59, 233, Pagan influences in sermons, 245,
234 304, 342
Notes and Queries, 150, 162 Pagula (Page), William de, Oculus
Numbers, sacred, 322 Sacerdotis of, 7, 23, 27, 36, 48, 55,
Nuns, 4, 63, 292; sermons to, 13, 145, 172, 228, 296-298, 359
149, 223, 258, 259 Pains of Hell, 337~33»
Nurses, 22, 334 Palm Sunday sermons, 146,149,156,
199, 200, 210, 213, 215
Oaths, 183, 294 Papal Letters, Calendar of, 69, 80
Oculus Sacerdotis, see Pagula Papal Registers, Calendar of, 358
Odo, see Cheriton Pardoners, 1, 81, 97-110, 167, 187,
Offerings to the Church, 42, 46, 74, 246, 294, 349
77T79> 270 Pardons, see Indulgences
Officials (of Archdeaconry), 104, 292, Parents, 33, 243, 272
293 Paris, MSS. at Bibliotheque Nat.,
Old age, 342 34, 252; St Victor, canons of, 50,
Oldcastle, Sir John, 73, 247 312; sermons at, 34, 180, 181, 189,
Order of Bel-Eyse, 89, 90, 211 233, 234, 312; Univ. of, 34, 35,
Ordination, sermons at, 16, 304 57, 189, 233, 234, 332
Ormulum, 277 Paris, Matthew, Chron. Majora of,
Osney Abbey, Oxford, 151—152 57, 58, 68, 70, 88, 200, 210, 252
Oswald, St, 216 Parish preaching, 2, 55, 72-77
Ottery St Mary, Devon, 51. 145, 193 Parker, Henry, 89
Ottobon, 252 Parker, Thomas, 163
Oudin, 68 Parliaments, 128, 219, 220, 340
Oxford, Carmelites at, 77, 260; Partriche, Peter, 23
Divinity School, 155; Dominicans "Passion," the, iao, 121, 288, 291,
at, 68, 69, 155, 263; Franciscans 346-348
at, 73, 155, 157; Magdalen Coll., Paston, Judge, 44
199; Oriel Coll., 143; St Frides- Paternoster, sermons on, 14, 65, 145 ,
wide's Priory, 152, 154, 189, 196; 282, 283, 291, 319
St Mary Magdalene, Ch. of, 24; Pateshul, Peter, 93, 189
St Mary the Virgin (University Paul, St, 5, 31
Ch. of), 66, 148,153-155, 189, 234 Payne, Peter, 24
376 INDEX
Peace, sermons for, 22, 200, 202, Pollard, Dr A. W., 24, 108
204—206 Poole, Dr R. L., 10
Peacock, E., 297 Poor, sufferings of, 17, 40, 80, 87,
Pearce, Bp., Monks of Westminster, 91, n o , 131, 162, 163, 182
49, 149, 193 Pope, sermons before, 10—13, r6> 92,
Peasants' Revolt, 17, 55, 132, 362 330; attacked by preachers, 78,
Peckham, John, Archbp. of Canter- 136, 280
bury, Consts. of, 8, 25, 26, 46, 53, Postills, 114, 116, 145, 309, 310
107, 141, 14s, 146, 230, 281-284, Poverty, Evangelical, see Friars
296, 298; writings of, 8, 39 Powell and Trevelyan, Docs., 56, 93,
Pecock, Reginald, Bp. of Chichester, 132, 148, 196, 211, 212, 355, 356
3> 4i, 42, 83-85, u s , 138, 157, Prayer, 120, 121, 147, 217, 218, 290,
159, 209, 351; Folower to the 319,352. See also Bidding Prayer
Donet, 225, 234 Prayers, household, 95, 274
Pembury, Kent, 16 Preachers, their equipment and
Penances, 105, 106, 291 duties, 2, 3, 7, 27-29, 221, 352-354
Penkey, Doctor, 199 Preaching, neglect of, 5, 25-48, 51,
Penn, William, 280 75, 89, 141, 145, 146, 153, 154,
Pennaforte, Raymund of, 297 235, 251, 253; obstacles to, 71,
Penny for pardoners, 100, 106, n o , 116, 118, 141, 142, 157, 221;
294 penalties for, 40, 70, 71; to whom
Perdrizet, P., 289 permitted, etc., 1-6, 72, 73, 116,
Perrault, William, 289-290 118
Perry, G. G., 112 Preambidum, 320, 321
Pershore Abbey, Worcs., 150 Prelates, 1, 2, 8, 55, 116, 118, 167-
Pessimism of preachers, 34, 37, 38, 169; non-preaching, 26, 27,39-43 ;
65, 98, n o , 128-130, 183, 207, sermons to, 67, 249, 252, 253;
208, 249, 295, 322, 323 vicious, 20, 36—43, 67, 68, 75, 130,
Pestilences, 98, 202, 206-208 182-184, 253, 266, 293
Peter, Master, 24 Preparation of sermons, 224, 225,
Peter, see Blois, Juynefeld, Limoges 316-330
Petitions, clerical, 43, 76, 87, 105, Pricke of Conscience, 277, 280, 289
109, 362; of Commons, 43 Pride of preachers, 3, 36, 66, 81, 85,
Pews, 165-167, 198, 214 86, 89, 96, 138—140, 181, 210—213,
Philip, Nicholas, sermons of, 27, 59, 352-354
60, 83, 150,227,231,249,250,253 Prior, Prof. E. S., 160
Philippe Auguste, King of France, 57 Priors, 54
Philosophy in sermons, 81, 327, 328 Processions, intercessory, 18, 200-
Physicians, 7, 57, 306, 323 206, 215—219; sermons at, 12, 59,
Physiologus, 299 60, 146, 154, 199-208, 210, 215—
Pictures (miniatures), in MSS., 115, 218, 247, 270, 331
161, 165, 167, 199, 321, 324, 325, Proclamations, 196
343, 344, 349, 352 Profession of novices, 59
Pierce the Plowman's Crede,j2, 87,89, Prologues to sermons, 6, 47, 64, 65,
109, 157, 158, 196, 212, 213 234, 239, 241, 244, 245, 251, 264,
Piers Plowman's Vision, see Lang- 275-277, 279, 285, 288, 298, 300,
land 304, 3O5-3O7, 318, 322, 334, 361,
Pilgrimages, 131, 133 362
Pisa, 160 Promotions, clerical, 31, 37, 40, 66,
Pisani, 160 67, 86
Pits, 54, 58 Promptorium Parvul., 166, 308
Plagiarism of sermon-writers, 6, 54, Prostitutes, 42, 44, 57, 70, 167, 191,
58, 222, 239, 303, 308 250, 346
Planets, 206 Protestantism, 113—115, 129, 178,
Pluralists, 15, 43 321, 345
Poitiers, 268 Psychological method of preachers,
Political Poems and Songs, 48, 87, 89, 33',332
90, 211, 213 Pulpits, 3, 156, 160-164, I 99, 214;
Political preaching, 17, 55, 56, 80,94, in chapter-houses, 150; open-air,
136, 200, 202-206, 264 12,55,148,196,199,200,208-214,
INDEX 377
219, 221; painted and inscribed, Repingdon, Philip, Bp. of Lincoln,
162-164 9, 140, 143, 154, 189
Punishment of clergy, 8, 75 Reporting of sermons, 232—234
Punning, 38, 114, 327, 329 Retainers, 14, 15, 80, 295
Purgatory, 106, 263, 306 Retinues of preachers, 168, 211, 212
Puritans, 34, 43, 92-95, 126, 158, Revolts, popular, 42, 56, 136. See
198, 214, 280, 361, 362 also Peasants' Revolt
Purvey, John, 87, 239 Revue crit. d'histoire et de la litt., 83
Puttenham, 220 Rhymed sermons (Latin), 273, 276,
312, 328, 329, 331, 354
Quadragesimalia, 147 Rich, St Edmund (Archbp. of Cant.),
Quakers, 6, 113, 114 275, 277, 280, 285, 288, 323
Quarrelling, in church, 165, 173, Richard II, King of England, 17-19,
175; at processions, 215-217 56, a n , 219
Qu6tif and Echard, 57, 68, 315 Richard, see Bottisham, Bury, Maid-
Quivil, Bp. of Exeter, 103, 105, 109, stone, Middleton, Newport, Rat-
165 ford, St Victor, Thetford
Richmond, Yorks., Thomas of, 74,
Rain, 157, 202 75, 93, 220, 225
Raine, Canon, Fasti Eborac, 52, 102, Rievaulx, Ailred of, 49
103, 202, 217, 289 Rigaud, see Asserio
Rainold, see Gloucester Rimini, 61
Ralph, see Swyneland Rimmer, A., 197, 198
Rashdall, Dean H., 153 Ring, wedding, 269
Ratforde, Master Richard de, 311 Ringstead, Thomas, 227
Ratisbon (Regensburg), Berthold of, Ritual, 133
55, 188, 199 Robert, see Basevorn, Braibrok, Brom-
Ravello, Italy, 160 yard, Burwell, Clothale, Greatham,
Raveningham, Norf., 60, 63 Mannyng, Rypon, Sorbon, Ware
Raveningham, Walter of, 63 Robes, preachers', 3 , 149, 210-213,
Raymund, see Pennaforte 352
Reading of sermons, in church, 222, Rochester, Cathedral and priory, 16,
274-278, 316; in the home, 274, 17, 20, 68, 248,253-255, 258, 306;
278-280, 283, 285 Bps. of, 20, 208, 267, and see
Recantations, 78, 79, 127, 199, Brunton; Registrum Roff., 145
209 Rogationtide sermons, 146, 200-202,
Recapitulation of sermons, 260, 272, 214, 215
33O Rolle, Richard, 69, 98, no—120, 129,
Recluses, see Anchorites 191, 193, 227, 277, 280, 285;
Rectors, see Curati works of, 112-116, 119, 120, 129,
Rede, Bp. of Chichester, Reg. of, 24, 226, 227, 230, 282-292, 299, 346,
202 361; Officium S. Ric, 112,191,355
Refectory pulpits, 161, 199 Romanis, Humbertus de, 5, 168
Reformation and Reformers, 92, 93, Rome, Hospitals at, 102, 104; Pan-
114, 115, 128, 129, 131, 132, 135, theon, 245 ; San Clemente, Ch. of,
143, 198, 229, 247, 280, 286, 308, 160
345, 361 Romsey, Abbey, 314; Hosp. of Bl.
Regimen Animarum, 1, 4, 23, 28, 45, Mary Magd., etc., 102
69, 99, 103, 105—108, 297, 298 Rossington, Yorks., 163
Reims, 252, 253 Rotuli Parl., 43, 48, 196
Relics and relic-mongering, 98—101, Roxby, John, 150
108-110, 133, 246, 270, 349-351 Rushes, 166, 214
Relics, sermons for Feasts of, 60, Russell, John, 225
35°, 35i Russell, William, 73; Bp. of Sodor
Reliquary, the, articles in, 69, 219 and Man, 146
Reliquiae Antiquae, 83, 89, 136, 232, Rustics at ch., and sermon, 166, 171,
341, 342 172, 176-178, 182, 188, 209, 332,
Reminiscences, preachers', 6, 58-64, 333
82 Ruysbroek, 286
Repeating of sermons, 194, 238, 326 Rypon, Robert, 54, 156, 157;
378 INDEX
sermons of, i, 3,10, 28-32, 35, 38- "Scholastic" preaching, 260—263,
40, 42-48, 66, 67, 74, 80, 86, 98, 301, 312, 313, 324, 327-329
123-126, 130, 131, 135, 138, 145, Schools, Univ., of Law, 33; of
147, 157, 158, 175, 181-186, 191, Theology, 30, 32-35, 37, 84, 85,
2OO, 2O2, 2O7, 2O8, 215-217, 221- 327
223, 231, 235, 249-251, 255, 257, Schoolboys, 65
264, 283, 307, 309, 318, 322, 325, Scotland, 18, 209
327-33O, 352, 358 Screens in churches, 160, 162
Scribes, sermon, 4, 30, 233, 234, 264,
Sacraments, Bk. of, 29; verses on, 291, 302
272 Scriptural preaching, simple exposi-
St Albans Abbey, 49, 51, 64, 142, tion, 114, 132, 133, 239-241, 309-
148, 163, 200, 258, 262, 292, 293, 313; symbolic interpretation, 312,
351; MS. at, 33, 38, 46, 106, 121, 3.13, 325
124, 170, 172, 175, 180, 194, 279, Scripture, Holy, ignorance of, 3, 28—
288, 292-294, 339, 346; St Peter's 38,46,83,84,109, 241; lay reading
Ch., 142, 293 of, 116, 135, 283, 294
St Buryan, Cornwall, 167 Scrope, Thomas, 66, 117—121
St David's, Registers of Bps. of, 102, Sculthorp (?), Lines., 63
103 Seneca, 263, 309
St-Die, France, 199 Sens, Council of, 185
St Giles, John of, 34, 57, 58, 233 Sentence, The Great, 182, 265, 296,
St-L6, France, 199 359
St Mark's Day sermons, 146, 201 Sermones, ad status, 247—265, 304;
St Nicholas' Day sermons, 220 de sanctis, 235, 241, 243-247;
St Osyth's Priory, 152 de tempore, per annum, 29, 133,
St Victor, Hugh of, 50, 163, 352 234—243. For other classes see
St Victor, Richard of, 49, 50 Examinatory, Funeral, Monks,
Saints, 244-246, 257, 334, 351 Rhymed, etc., etc.
Salimbene, 166 Servants, 172, 243
Salisbury Cathedral, 101,145; MSS. Sexes, separation of, 173, 214
at, 88, 148, 171, 173, 184, 188, Sharpe, Cal. of Wills, 143, 198, 298
194, 219, 269, 284, 290, 298, 302, Shene (Sheen), Richmond, Surrey,
326, 346, 351. See also Jacob's 219
Well Sheppey, Bp., 10
Salzburg, Council of, 76, 81 Shows, 44, 71, 179, 210, 221
Samson, Abbot of Bury, 48, 49 " Showing off" in the pulpit, 81, 85,
Sanctuary, 179 139, 231, 232, 328
Sandale, Bp. of Winchester, Reg. of, Shrewsbury, 161, 198
51, 102, 103 Shropshire, 338. See also Lilleshall
Sandes, Sir John, 360 Shyrborne, John, 260
Sano di Pietro, 214, 349 Siena, 160
Saracens, 69 Similitudines, 256
Sargant, Ulrich, 236 Simmons, Canon T. F., 355, 356
Sarum Pontifical, 145, 356 Simon, see Magus, Montfort, Sud-
Satire in sermons, 295, 296, 354 bury
Sautry, William, 133 Sion, see Isleworth
Savigny, Vital of, 117, 118 Sitting or standing at sermons, 165—
Savonarola, 18, 55, 207, 210, 349 167
Savoy, Card. William of, 63, 198 Skeat, Prof. W. W., 19, 114,277,295
Sawle Warde, 286 "Skeleton" sermons, 222, 232, 235
Sawley, Yorks., 227, 288 Skelton, John, 72
Saxony, Ludolph of, 238 Sleeping at sermon-time, 152, 174—
Sbaraglia, 237 176, 178, 179, 181-187, 332, 333
Scafaldus, 55, 199 Smyth, William, 124
Scaffold, sermon at, 220 Solinus, 335
Scamnum, 166, 199 Song of Songs, 24, 115
Scepticism, popular, 218, 340, 345 Sorbon, Robert de, 180, 188
Schale, Geoffrey, 11, 12 Southwell Minster, 217
Scholars, see University Specula, 288-289
INDEX 379
Speculum, de Anti-Christo, see Wy- Taystek, see Gaytrige
cliffe; Christiam, see Watton; "Teaching and preaching," 4
Laicorum, 56, 158, 217, 234, 300, Tempests, 98, 202, 338
302, 305; Sacerdotale, 234, 241, Templars, 1
244, 24s, 3SS; Vitae, see Nassyng- Ten Brink, B., 276, 277, 291, 295
ton; Vitae Christi, see Bonaven- Tennyson, 336
tura (?) Themes (or texts), sermon, 231, 235,
Spicer, friar, Fascic. Morum, 227, 238, 247-249, 252-262, 265, 310,
234, 272, 273, 300, 306, 322 316, 319, 320, 324, 328, 353
Spiera, Ambrose of, 147 Thetford, Richard of, 314, 327
Spofford, Bp. of Hereford, Reg. of, Thomas, see Appleby, Braibrok,
102, 202, 203, 296 Eccleston, Lisle
Sports, 44, 64, 71, 80, 81, 95, 172, Thompson, Sir E. Maunde, 292
179, 194. 253, 3°3. 356 Thoresby, Archbp. of York, 8, 46,
Spurgeon, 219 53, 146, 147, 202, 282, 289, 357
Stafford, Bp. of Bath and Wells, Reg. Thorp, John, 67
of, 8, 142, 282 Thorpe, William, 118
Stalker, Rev. J., 362 Threats in preaching, 34, 65, 334-
Stamford, Lines., 63, 225
Stansall, Rich., 163 T ickhill,
i , Yorks.,, 64,4, 655
Stapledon, Bp. of Exeter, Reg. of, 8, lb
Tilbury, G
Gervase of,f 261
6
72 Times and seasons for preaching,
Staunton, Henry, 118, 120; De 144-148, 156, 235, 282
Decent Mandatis, 60—63, 67, 120, Tithes, 46, 73, 74, 251, 270, 297, 306
228, 272 Toads, 62, 341, 344
Staunton, Glos., 161 Tolleshunte, William de, 220
Stile, church, 167 Tombs in churches, 158, 344
Stillingflete, 30 Tour, Card. Bertrand de la, 315
Stipendiary clerics, 45 Tournaments, 215-216
Stokes, Peter, 154, 189 Translating of sermons and treatises,
Stone, John de, 69 82, 116, 227-228, 277, 282, 286-
Straw, 166, 214 291
Streche, Walter, 101, 102 Trebilvile, William, 292, 293
Strecch, John, 302 Trefmant, Bp. of Hereford, Reg. of,
Streets, preaching in, 73, 93,140, 196 121, 127, 135, 196, 198
Stretton, Robert, Bp. of Coventry Trent, Council of, 52, 146, 149
and Lichfield, 36 Trevisa, John de, 13, 82, 228, 330
Stubbs, Thomas, 192 Trillek, Thomas, Bp. of Rochester,
Sudbury, Simon of, Archbp. of 18
Canterbury, 106, 108, 132, 219 Trim, Ireland, 13
Sueth, Hugh de, 315 Trivet, Nicholas, 57
Summa Summarum, 1 Trussel, Sir John, 166
Sunday, see Holidays Twysden, Decent Scriptores, 219
Superstition, see Folklore Tynemouth Priory, 64, 65, 225
Suso, Henry, 286
Swaffham, John, 66
Swinderby, William, 117-118, 121- Ullerston, Richard, 23, 24
130, 134, I 36 Ulverstone, see Ullerston
Swinfield, Richard, 68 Universality of Latin, 224, 239, 306
Swyneland, Ralph of, 61 University, sermons, 153—155, 233,
Syllogism, 327 234, 259—264, 312, 318; preachers,
Synods, sermons at, 28 et seq., 45, 1, 3, 23, 49, 83-85, 143, 149, 151,
52, 54. 59. 15°. 216, 217, 247-253, ^S3~I55> 211-213, 234, 260-262;
33°. 352 struggles with friars, 55, 73, 155;
students, 34-35, 44. *53, 233, 234,
Tabulae, see Indices 239, 259-263, 332. See also Cam-
Tanner, Bibl. Brit., 237, 314, 315 bridge, Oxford, Schools, etc.
Tarmfeghym, Ireland, 13 Upland, Jack, 48, 87, 89-91, 213
Taverns, 44, 70, 71, 108, 179, 180, Urban V, Pope, 102, 107
183, 250 Usurers, 14, 20, 68, 70, 187, 301
3 8o INDEX
Val, Evrard du, 157 Walsingham, Hist. Anglicana of, 18,
Vallance, Aymer, 195—197 19, 56, 93, IIO> l 8 9 , 219, 293, 351
Vecchietta, 214 Walter the Englishman, 302. See
Vegetius, 291 also London, Raveningham.
Venn, Dr J., 10 Walton, John, 227, 291
Vergers, 157 Wardale, John, 78
Vernacular, as medium for sermon Ware, Herts., 80
literature, 226-228, 230, 282-286; Ware, Robert of, Rosarium of, 6,
sermon sets, 239—247, 328 225-227, 234, 258
Verses in sermons, 231, 260—262, Warner and Gilson, Cat. of Roy.
271-273, 305, 318, 344, 346 MSS. in B.M., 47, 289, 291, 314
Vicars, 1, 35, 72, 74, 107; perpetual, Wars with France, 200, 202—206
24, 25; temporal, 23, 45 Warwick, Guy of, Speculum of, 277
Vices, clerical, pulpit denunciation Waterford, Geoffrey of, 275
of, 17, 20, 25-47, 53. 67, 68,73-79, Waterton, see Aqua villa
83-95, 125, 126, 130, 131, 135, Watte, John, 109
14I, 182-184, 187, 189, 224, 248- Watton, John, Spec. Christiani, 4,
254, 256, 281, 293—296, 3OI, 304, 227, 232, 284, 286, 291
360-362 "Wax-doctors," 85
Vices, lay, pulpit denunciation of, Wedding sermons, 268—270
11, 17-21, 24, 33, 65-67, 70, 71, Weights and measures, false, 20
130, 141, 182-184, 188-190, 294- Wells, J. E., Manual of Mid. Engl.
296, 323, 346 Writings, 53, 222, 295, 296
Vices and virtues, 236, 279, 282,286— Wenden's Ambo, Essex, 161
290, 304, 322-324,334 Werden, John of, 238
Vienna, MSS. at, 239, 252 Wesley, John, 93
Viollet-le-Duc, 199 Westminster, see London
Virgin Mary, see Mary Weston, Nicholas, 93
Visitations, clerical, 53, 55, 62, 149, Weston-in-Gordano, Somerset, 161
150, 247, 248, 254; parochial, 72, Wharton, Henry, 10, 25
167—169; sermons at, 12, 16, 24, Whethamstede, Abbot of St Albans,
52, 53, 149, 15°, 167-169, 247- Reg. of, 49, 51, 148, 258, 298
248, 254 Whitefield, Rev. George, 19, 93, 221
Visual, appeals to the, 349—352 Whitford, Richard, Werke for Hous-
Vitaspatnim, 166, 176 holders, 60, 93, 274, 345, 346, 356
Vitry, Jacques de, 187, 264, 303 Whitheyd, John, 73
Voragine, Jac. de, 176, 263, 298, 302 Whitsuntide sermons, 146, 216, 316
Vulgarity, sermon, 80, 83 Wilkins, Bp., Concilia Mag. Brit., 8,
38, 43, 46, 52, S3, SS, 72-74, 87,
Wadding, Annales, 199, 237 93, 99, 102-109, 134, 140, 142,
Waddington, William of, Manuel des 146, 148, 149—151, 155, 165, 166,
Pechiez, 277, 286, 289, 290 168, 196, 199, 202, 203, 208, 209,
Wakefield, 220 213, 22O, 225, 229, 281, 296, 356,
Waldeby, John, sermon-treatises of, 357
24, 64-66, 85, 86, 117, 124, 125, William, see Auxerre, Chateau-
129, 175, 176, 179, 183, 225-227, Thierry, Lichfield, Mailli, Mont,
230, 231, 243, 252, 283, 289, 307, Nassyngton, Pagula, Savoy, Swin-
321-323, 328, 330, 333, 346, 347, derby, Tolleshunte, Waddington,
361 Wykeham
Waldeby, Robert, Archbp. of York, William Rufus, King of England, 207
64 Wills, 14, 143, 198, 220, 298
Waldens, William, 151 Wilson, Canon J. M., 272
Walker, R., 209 Wimbledon, Thomas, sermons of,
Wall-paintings in churches, 96, 163, 32, 33, 37, 38, 4°, 4i, 46, 47, 12s,
247, 338 163, 195, 230, 264, 290, 339, 342,
Walleys, John, 91, 227, 326 360—362
Walleys, Thomas, Ars Predic. of, 7, Winchendon, Upper, Bucks., 161
8, 80, 87, 146, 183, 184, 212, 22i, Winchester, Cathedral, 51, 102, 349,
241, 273, 3 " , 315-317, 320-327, 360; Butter Cross, 196
33i, 333, 346, 352-354 Windows, church, 158, 162, 163
INDEX
Withdrawing from the sermon, 157, 69,75,80,85,87,91,93,111, 113-
180-182 116, 121, 137, 144, 163, 164, 230,
Witney, Oxon., 128 240, 281, 283, 285, 291; Sermones
Women,I22attacked in sermons, 5, 71, Latini, 87, 133, 134, 141, 224, 227,
115, > '23, 170, 172, 183, 188, 239; sermons, vernac, 87, 91,211,
190, 218, 295, 344; excluded from 232, 239, 291; other works of, 41,
preaching, 4, 5; in sermon audi- " 4 . 133, 134. 158, 292, 33i;
ences, 56, 57, 166—168, 170—173, views on preaching, 114, 132—135,
185, 188, 190, 191, 217, 218; 227, 239, 276, 310-312, 331
preaching of, 4, 5, 6, 135 Wykeham, William, Bp. of Win-
Wood, Anthony a, 37, 69, 143 chester, 42; Register of, 8, 47, 98,
Woodruff and Danks, 51, 214 102, 103, 106, 184, 202, 358, 360
Woolley, Canon R. M., 79, 272 Wynnegod, Henry, 142
Worcester, Bps. of, 52, 53, 140;
Cathedral Library, MSS. at, 213, York, sermons in, 65, 66, 74, 150,
231, 272; Cross, 196; Hosp. of 156, 193, 210, 220, 226; Austin
SS. Wolstan and Godwal, 102; friars at, 65, 66; Carmelites at,
priory, 52, 53, 79; sermon at, 148 77; Franciscans at, 74, 210;
Wordsworth, Canon Christopher, Minster, 102, 156; Minster Libr.,
101, 197, 220 MSS. at, 47, 297; St Mary's
Wordsworth and Littlehales, Old Abbey, 53, 227, 315
Service Bks., 29, 241, 296 York city records, 193, 210
Worms, 321, 337, 338, 341-344 Yorkshire Archaeol. Journal, 101
Worstead, Norf., 161 Yorkshire translators, 116, 120, 227,
Wrestling, see Sport 277, 282,285—291, 346
Wright, Thos., see Polit. Poems
Writing of sermons, 116 222-234 Zouche, Archbp. of York, Reg. of,
Wrotham, Kent, 16 202,217
Wycliffe, John, n , 17, 36,41, 56, 68,
count*.
tifliim
THE PREACHING SCENE IN A CHURCHYARD.
(From MS. Fitzwilliam Mus., Cambridge, 22, p. 55.)
A PREACHING SCENE IN THE XIII CENTURY.
(From MS. Egert. 745, fol. 46.)
- 132.3
A MEDIAEVAL PULPIT OF WOOD.

(From a sketch by the author.)

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CAMBRIDGE LIBRARY COLLECTION

Books of enduring scholarly value

Preaching in Medieval England

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore,

© in this compilation Cambridge University Press 2010

This edition first published 1926

ISBN 978-1-108-01007-8 Paperback

"6K6TNOI Ae e!eA9ONTec eKHpYS&N TTANT&XOY

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

T HERE is only too much truth in the frequent complaint

I. "BISHOPS AND CURATES" i

THE PREACHING SCENE

N.B. In all quotations given, the O.E. 'p' has been

PLATE II. A PREACHING SCENE IN THE XIII CENTURY to face p. 144

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

A ROYAL FUNERAL SERMON IN I5O9 267

THE MASTER HOMILIST AND HIS PUPILS 287

FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR

AN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP IN HIS PULPIT, 1399 9

THE " PREACHING FOX " 86

THE HERMIT PREACHER II7

THE DEVILS IN CHURCH 177

A FASHIONABLE SERMON AUDIENCE 186

THE BLACKFRIARS PREACHING CROSS, HEREFORD 197

PREACHING WITH A CROSS 3 SO

AN ENGLISH ARCHBISHOP IN HIS PULPIT, 1399

Two sets of episcopal sermons by Englishmen, more or less

informare audientes ut decimas persolvant, ac etiam sibi confitentes similiter

THE "PREACHING FOX"

This is strong language, even for the University petitioners,

diversity of gifts may go to the enrichment of the one body.

THE HERMIT PREACHER

Equally illuminating is the account of them given at greater

THE PREACHING SCENE

"INTER MISSARUM SOLLEMNIA"

BURNHAM NORTON PULPIT, NORFOLK

THE DEVILS IN CHURCH

A FASHIONABLE SERMON AUDIENCE

now to talk to you about worthy womanhood? I'm going to say

THE BLACKFRIARS PREACHING CROSS, HEREFORD

agreement with an entry in the Durham Catalogues (See Catalogi Veteres,

A SERMON FOR NEW YEAR'S DAY

ofoutlojbegoD .S0.CCCCC4f.tt) I) tcije fetmonlUas

THE MASTER HOMILIST AND HIS PUPILS

PREACHING WITH A CROSS

For the sermon on Sunday afternoons:

Types of sermon indulgences.

The "Great Sentence," or Curse, in preachers' manuals:—

NOTE. AS I go to press for the last time, my attention has been

A MEDIAEVAL PULPIT OF WOOD.

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