Kitabı oku: «The Eve of the Reformation», sayfa 12

“The orator’s design,” he continues, “was to represent to us Jesus Christ, at first in the agony of His Passion, and then in the glory of His triumph. To do this, he recalled the memory of Curtius and Decius, who had given themselves to the gods for the salvation of the Republic. He reminded us of Cecrops, of Menelaus, of Iphigenia, and of other noble victims who had valued their lives less than the honour and welfare of their country. Public gratitude (he continued, in tears and in most lugubrious tones) had always surrounded these noble and generous characters with its homage, sometimes raising gilded statues to their memory in the forum; sometimes decreeing them even divine honours, whilst Jesus Christ, for all His benefits, had received no other reward but death. The orator then went on to compare our Saviour, who had deserved so well of His country, to Phocion and to Socrates, who were compelled to drink hemlock though accused of no crime; to Epaminondas, driven to defend himself against envy roused by his noble deeds; to Scipio and to Aristides, whom the Athenians were tired of hearing called the ‘Just one,’ &c.

“I ask, can anything be imagined colder and more inept? Yet, over all his efforts, the preacher sweated blood and water to rival Cicero. In brief, my Roman preacher spoke Roman so well that I heard nothing about the death of Christ.²⁰⁴ If Cicero had lived in our days,” asks Erasmus, “would he not think the name of God the Father as elegant as Jupiter the almighty? Would he think it less elegant to speak of Jesus Christ than of Romulus, or of Scipio Africanus, of Quintus Curtius, or of Marcus Decius? Would he think the name of the Catholic Church less illustrious than that of ‘Conscript Fathers,’ ‘Quirites,’ or ‘Senate and people of Rome’? He would speak to us of faith in Christ, of the Holy Ghost, or the Holy Trinity?” &c.²⁰⁵

At considerable length Erasmus pours out the vials of his scorn upon those who act so foolishly under the influence of the false classical spirit. He points out the danger to be avoided. People, he says, go into raptures over pagan antiquities, and laugh at others who are enthusiastic about Christian archæology. “We kiss, venerate, almost adore a piece of antiquity,” he says, “and mock at relics of the Apostles. If any one finds something from the twelve tables, who does not consider it worthy of the most holy place? And the laws written by the finger of God, who venerates, who kisses them? How delighted we are with a medal stamped with the head of Hercules, or of Mercury, or of Fortune, or of Victory, or of Alexander the Great, or one of the Cæsars,²⁰⁶ and we deride those who treasure the wood of the cross or images of the Virgin and saints as superstitious.”²⁰⁷ If in dealing with his subject Erasmus may appear to exaggerate the evil he condemns, this much is clear, that his advocacy of letters and learning, however strenuous and enthusiastic, was tempered by a sense of the paramount importance of the Christian spirit in the pursuit of science.

CHAPTER VII
THE LUTHERAN INVASION

It is not uncommonly asserted that the religious changes in England, although for convenience’ sake dated from the rejection of Papal supremacy, were in reality the outcome of long-continued and ever-increasing dissatisfaction with the then existing ecclesiastical system. The Pope’s refusal to grant Henry his wished-for divorce from Katherine, we are told, was a mere incident, which at most, precipitated by a short while what had long been inevitable.²⁰⁸ Those who take this view are bound to believe that the Church in England in the early sixteenth century was honeycombed by disbelief in the traditional teachings, and that men were only too ready to welcome emancipation. What then is the evidence for this picture of the religious state of men’s minds in England on the eve of the Reformation?

It is, indeed, not improbable that up and down the country there were, at this period, some dissatisfied spirits; some who would eagerly seize any opportunity to free themselves from the restraints which no longer appealed to their consciences, and from teachings they had come to consider as mere ecclesiastical formalism. A Venetian traveller of intelligence and observation, who visited the country at the beginning of the century, whilst struck with the Catholic practices and with the general manifestations of English piety he witnessed, understood that there were “many who have various opinions concerning religion.”²⁰⁹ But so far as there is evidence at all, it points to the fact, that of religious unrest, in any real sense, there could have been very little in the country generally. It is, of course, impossible to suppose that any measurable proportion of the people could have openly rejected the teaching of the Church or have been even crypto-Lollards, without there being satisfactory evidence of the fact forthcoming at the present day.

The similarity of the doctrines held by the English Reformers of the sixteenth century with many of those taught by the followers of Wycliffe has, indeed, led some writers to assume a direct connection between them which certainly did not exist in fact. So far as England at least is concerned, there is no justification for assuming for the Reformation a line of descent from any form of English Lollardism. It is impossible to study the century which preceded the overthrow of the old religious system in England without coming to the conclusion that as a body the Lollards had been long extinct, and that as individuals, scattered over the length and breadth of the land, without any practical principle of cohesion, the few who clung to the tenets of Wycliffe were powerless to effect any change of opinion in the overwhelming mass of the population at large. Lollardry, to the Englishman of the day, was “heresy,” and any attempt to teach it was firmly repressed by the ecclesiastical authority, supported by the strong arm of the State; but it was also an offence against the common feeling of the people, and there can be no manner of doubt that its repression was popular. The genius of Milton enabled him to see the fact that “Wycliffe’s preaching was soon damped and stifled by the Pope and prelates for six or seven kings’ reigns,” and Mr. James Gairdner, whose studies in this period of our national history enable him to speak with authority, comes to the same conclusion. “Notwithstanding the darkness that surrounds all subjects connected with the history of the fifteenth century,” he writes, “we may venture pretty safely to affirm that Lollardry was not the beginning of modern Protestantism. Plausible as it seems to regard Wycliffe as ‘the morning star of the Reformation,’ the figure conveys an impression which is altogether erroneous. Wycliffe’s real influence did not long survive his own day, and so far from Lollardry having taken any deep root among the English people, the traces of it had wholly disappeared long before the great revolution of which it is thought to be the forerunner. At all events, in the rich historical material for the beginning of Henry VIII.’s reign, supplied by the correspondence of the time, we look in vain for a single indication that any such thing as a Lollard sect existed. The movement had died a natural death; from the time of Oldcastle it sank into insignificance. Though still for a while considerable in point of numbers, it no longer counted among its adherents any men of note; and when another generation had passed away the serious action of civil war left no place for the crotchets of fanaticism.”²¹⁰

On the only evidence available, the student of the reign of Henry VII. and of that of Henry VIII. up to the breach with Rome is bound to come to the same conclusion as to the state of the English Church. If we except manifestations of impatience with the Pope and Curia, which could be paralleled in any age and country, and which were rather on the secular side than on the religious, there is nothing that would make us think that England was not fully loyal in mind and heart to the established ecclesiastical system. In fact, as Mr. Brewer says, everything proves that “the general body of the people had not as yet learned to question the established doctrines of the Church. For the most part, they paid their Peter pence and heard mass, and did as their fathers had done before them.”²¹¹

It may be taken, therefore, for granted that the seeds of religious discord were not the product of the country itself, nor, so far as we have evidence on the subject at all, does it appear that the soil of the country was in any way specially adapted for its fructification. The work, both of raising the seed and of scattering it over the soil of England, must be attributed, if the plain facts of history are to be believed, to Germans and the handful of English followers of the German Reformers. If we would rightly understand the religious situation in England at the commencement of the Reformation, it is of importance to inquire into the methods of attack adopted in the Lutheran invasion, and to note the chief doctrinal points which were first assailed.

Very shortly after the religious revolt had established itself in Germany, the first indications of a serious attempt to undermine the traditional faith of the English Church became manifest in England. Roger Edgworth, a preacher during the reigns of Henry and Queen Mary, says that his “long labours have been cast in most troublesome times and most encumbered with errors and heresies, change of minds and schisms that ever was in the realm… Whilst I was a young student in divinity,” he continues, “Luther’s heresies rose and were scattered here in this realm, which, in less space than a man would think, had so sore infected the Christian folk, first the youth and then the elders, where the children could set their fathers to school, that the king’s Majesty and all Christian clerks in the realm had much ado to extinguish them. This they could not so perfectly quench, but that ever since, when they might have any maintenance by man or woman of great power, they burst forth afresh, even like fire hid under chaff.”²¹²

Sir Thomas More, when Chancellor in 1532, attributed the rapid spread of what to him and most people of his day in England was heresy, to the flood of literature which was poured forth over the country by the help of printing. “We have had,” he writes, “some years of late, plenteous of evil books. For they have grown up so fast and sprung up so thick, full of pestilent errors and pernicious heresies, that they have infected and killed, I fear me, more simple souls than the famine of the dear years have destroyed bodies.”²¹³

We are not left in ignorance as to the books here referred to, as some few years previously the bishops of England had issued a list of the prohibited volumes. Thus, in October 1526, Bishop Tunstall ordered that in London people should be warned not to read the works in question, but that all who possessed them should deliver them over to the bishop’s officials in order that they might be destroyed as pernicious literature. The list included several works of Luther, three or four of Tyndale, a couple of Zwingle, and several isolated works, such as the Supplication of Beggars, and the Dyalogue between the Father and the Son.²¹⁴

In 1530 the king by proclamation forbade the reading or possession of some eighty-five works of Wycliffe, Luther, Œcolampadius, Zwingle, Pomeranus, Bucer, Wesselius, and indeed the German divines generally, under the heading of “books of the Lutheran sect or faction conveyed into the city of London.” Besides these Latin treatises, the prohibition included many English tracts, such as A book of the old God and the new, the Burying of the Mass, Frith’s Disputation concerning Purgatory, and several prayer-books intended to propagate the new doctrines, such as Godly prayers; Matins and Evensong with the seven Psalms and other heavenly psalms with commendations; the Hortulus Animæ in English,²¹⁵ and the Primer in English.

In his proclamation Henry VIII. speaks of the determination of the English nation in times past to be true to the Catholic faith and to defend the country against “wicked sects of heretics and Lollards, who, by perversion of Holy Scripture, do induce erroneous opinions, sow sedition amongst Christian people, and disturb the peace and tranquillity of Christian realms, as lately happened in some parts of Germany, where, by the procurement and sedition of Martin Luther and other heretics, were slain an infinite number of Christian people.” To prevent like misfortunes happening in England, he orders prompt measures to be taken to put a stop to the circulation of books in English and other languages, which teach things “intolerable to the clean ears of any good Christian man.”²¹⁶

By the king’s command, the convocation of Canterbury drew up a list of prohibited heretical books. In the first catalogue of fifty-three tracts and volumes, there is no mention of any work of Wycliffe, and besides some volumes which had come from the pens of Tyndale, Frith, and Roy, who were acknowledged disciples of Luther, the rest are all the compositions of the German Reformers. The same may be said of a supplementary list of tracts, the authors of which were unknown. All these are condemned as containing false teaching, plainly contrary to the Catholic faith, and the bishops add: “Moreover, following closely in the footsteps of our fathers, we prohibit all from selling, giving, reading, distributing, or publishing any tract, booklet, pamphlet, or book, which translates or interprets the Holy Scripture in the vernacular … or even knowingly to keep such volumes without the licence of their diocesan in writing.”²¹⁷

About the same time a committee of bishops, including Archbishop Warham and Bishop Tunstall was appointed to draw up a list of some of the principal errors contained in the prohibited works of English heretics beyond the sea. The king had heard that “many books in the English tongue containing many detestable errors and damnable opinions, printed in parts beyond the sea,” were being brought into England and spread abroad. He was unwilling that “such evil seed sown amongst his people (should) so take root that it might overgrow the corn of the Catholic doctrine before sprung up in the souls of his subjects,” and he consequently ordered this examination. This has been done and the errors noted, “albeit many more there be in those books; which books totally do swarm full of heresies and detestable opinions.” The books thus examined and noted were eight in number: The Wicked Mammon; the Obedience of Christian man; the Revelation of Antichrist; the Sum of Scripture; the Book of Beggars; the Kalendar of the Prymer; the Prymer, and an Exposition unto the Seventh Chapter of I Corinthians. From these some hundreds of propositions were culled which contradicted the plain teaching of the Church in matters of faith and morality. In this condemnation, as the king states in his directions to preachers to publish the same, the commission were unanimous.²¹⁸

The attack on the traditional teachings of the Church, moreover, was not confined to unimportant points. From the first, high and fundamental doctrines, as it seemed to men in those days, were put in peril. The works sent forth by the advocates of the change speak for themselves, and, when contrasted with those of Luther, leave no room for doubt that they were founded on them, and inspired by the spirit of the leader of the revolt, although, as was inevitable in such circumstances, in particulars the disciples proved themselves in advance of their master. Writing in 1546, Dr. Richard Smythe contrasts the old times, when the faith was respected, with the then state of mental unrest in religious matters. “In our days,” he writes, “not a few things, nor of small importance, but (alack the more is the pity) even the chiefest and most weighty matters of our religion and faith are called in question, babbled, talked, and jangled upon (reasoned I cannot nor ought not to call it). These matters in time past (when reason had place and virtue with learning was duly regarded, yea, and vice with insolency was generally detested and abhorred) were held in such reverence and honour, in such esteem and dignity, yea, so received and embraced by all estates, that it was not in any wise sufferable that tag and rag, learned and unlearned, old and young, wise and foolish, boys and wenches, master and man, tinkers and tilers, colliers and coblers, with other such raskabilia might at their pleasure rail and jest (for what is it else they now do?) against everything that is good and virtuous, against all things that are expedient and profitable, not sparing any Sacrament of the Church or ordinance of the same, no matter how laudable, decent, or fitting it has been regarded in times past, or how much it be now accepted by good and Catholic men. In this way, both by preaching and teaching (if it so ought to be called), playing, writing, printing, singing, and (Oh, good Lord!) in how many other ways besides, divers of our age, being their own schoolmasters, or rather scholars of the devil, have not forborne or feared to speak and write against the most excellent and most blessed Sacrament of the Altar, affirming that the said Sacrament is nothing more than a bare figure, and that there is not in the same Sacrament the very body and blood of our blessed Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, but only a naked sign, a token, a memorial and a remembrance only of the same, if they take it for so much even and do not call it (as they are wont to do) an idol and very plain idolatry.”²¹⁹

As to the date of the introduction of these heretical views into England, Sir Thomas More entirely agreed with Dr. Smythe, the writer just quoted. He places the growth of these ideas in the circulation of books by Tyndale, Frith, and Barnes, and even as late as 1533, declares that the number of those who had accepted the new teaching was grossly exaggerated. He states his belief that “the realm is not full of heretics, and it has in it but a few, though that few be indeed over many and grown more also by negligence in some part than there has been in some late years past.”²²⁰ It was, indeed, part of the strategy pursued by the innovators in religion to endeavour to make the movement appear more important than it had any claim to be. It is, writes More, the “policy” of “these heretics who call themselves ‘evangelical brethren,’” to make their number appear larger than it is. “Some pot-headed apostles they have that wander about the realm into sundry shires, for whom every one has a different name in every shire, and some, peradventure, in corners here and there they bring into the brotherhood. But whether they get any or none they do not hesitate to lie when they come home, and say that more than half of every shire is of their own sect. Boast and brag these blessed brethren never so fast, they feel full well themselves that they be too feeble in what country so ever they be strongest. For if they thought themselves able to meet and match the Catholics they would not, I ween, lie still at rest for three days.”

“For in all places where heresies have sprung up hitherto so hath it proved yet. And so negligently might these things be handled, that at length it might happen so here. And verily they look (far as they be yet from the power) for it, and some of them have not hesitated to say this, and some to write it, too. For I read the letter myself which was cast into the palace of the Right Reverend Father in God, Cuthbert, now Bishop of Durham, but then Bishop of London, in which among other bragging word … were these words contained: ‘There will once come a day.’ And out of question that day they long for but also daily look for, and would, if they were not too weak, not fail to find it. And they have the greater hope because … they see that it begins to grow into a custom that among good Catholic folk they are suffered to talk unchecked.” For good men in their own minds indeed think the Catholic faith so strong that heretics with all their babbling will never be able to vanquish it, “and in this undoubtedly their mind is not only good, but also very true. But they do not look far enough. For as the sea will never surround and overwhelm all the land, and yet has eaten it in many places, and swallowed whole countries up and made many places sea, which sometime were well-inhabited lands, and has lost part of its own possession again in other places, so, though the faith of Christ shall never be overwhelmed with heresy, nor the gate of hell prevail against Christ’s Church, yet as in some places it winneth in new peoples, so by negligence in some places the old may be lost.”²²¹

Sir Thomas More is all for vigilance on the part of the authorities. He likens those who are in power and office to the guardians of a fertile field who are bound to prevent the sowing of tares on their master’s land; and the multiplication of evil books and their circulation among the people, cannot, in his opinion, have any other effect than to prevent the fertilisation of the good seed of God’s word in the hearts of many. “These new teachers,” he says, “despise Christ’s Sacraments, which are His holy ordinances and a great part of Christ’s New Law and Testament. Who can place less value on His commandments than they who, upon the boldness of faith only, set all good works at naught, and little consider the danger of their evil deeds upon the boldness that a bare faith and slight repentance, without shrift or penance, suffices, and that no vow made to God can bind a man to live chastely or hinder a monk from marriage. All these things, with many pestilent errors besides, these abominable books of Tyndale and his fellows teach us. Of these books of heresies there are so many made within these few years, what by Luther himself and by his fellows, and afterwards by the new sects sprung out of his, which, like the children of Vippara, would now gnaw out their mother’s belly, that the bare names of those books were almost enough to make a book. Some of every sort of those books are brought into this realm and kept in ‘hucker mucker’ by some shrewd masters who keep them for no good. Besides the Latin, French, and German books of which these evil sects have put forth an innumerable number, there are some made in the English tongue. First, Tyndale’s English Testament, father of them all by reason of his false translating, and after that, the Five Books of Moses translated by the same man; we need not doubt in what manner and for what purpose. Then you have his Introduction to Saint Paul’s Epistle, with which he introduces his readers to a false understanding of Saint Paul, making them believe, among many other heresies, that Saint Paul held that faith only was always sufficient for salvation, and that men’s good works were worth nothing and could not deserve thanks or reward in heaven, although they were done in grace… Then we have from Tyndale The Wicked Mammona, by which many a man has been beguiled and brought into many wicked heresies, which in good faith would be to me a matter of no little wonder, for there was never a more foolish frantic book, were it not that the devil is ever ready to put out the eyes of those who are content to become blind. Then we have Tyndale’s Book of Obedience, by which we are taught to disobey the teaching of Christ’s Catholic Church and set His holy Sacraments at naught. Then we have from Tyndale the First Epistle of Saint John, expounded in such wise that I dare say that blessed Apostle had rather his Epistle had never been put in writing than that his holy words should be believed by all Christian people in such a sense. Then we have the Supplication of Beggars, a piteous beggarly book, in which he would have all the souls in Purgatory beg all about for nothing. Then we have from George Joye, otherwise called Clarke, a Goodly Godly Epistle, wherein he teaches divers other heresies, but specially that men’s vows and promises of chastity are not lawful, and can bind no man in conscience not to wed when he will. And this man, considering that when a man teaches one thing and does another himself, the people set less value by his preaching, determined therefore with himself, that he would show himself an example of his preaching. Therefore, being a priest, he has beguiled a woman and wedded her; the poor woman, I ween, being unaware that he is a priest. Then you have also an Exposition on the Seventh Chapter of Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, by which exposition also priests, friars, monks, and nuns are taught the evangelical liberty that they may run out a-caterwauling and wed. That work has no name of the maker, but some think it was Friar Roy who, when he had fallen into heresy, then found it unlawful to live in chastity and ran out of his Order. Then have we the Examinations of Thorpe put forth as it is said by George Constantine (by whom I know well there has been a great many books of that sort sent into this realm). In that book, the heretic that made it as (if it were) a communication between the bishop and his chaplains and himself, makes all the parties speak as he himself likes, and sets down nothing as spoken against his heresies, but what he himself would seem solemnly to answer. When any good Christian man who has either learning or any natural wit reads this book, he shall be able not only to perceive him for a foolish heretic and his arguments easy to answer, but shall also see that he shows himself a false liar in his rehearsal of the matter in which he makes the other part sometimes speak for his own convenience such manner of things as no man who was not a very wild goose would have done.

“Then have we Jonas made out by Tyndale, a book that whosoever delight therein shall stand in such peril, that Jonas was never so swallowed up by the whale, as by the delight of that book a man’s soul may be so swallowed by the devil that he shall never have the grace to get out again. Then, we have from Tyndale the answer to my Dyalogue. Then, the book of Frith against Purgatory. Then, the book of Luther translated into English in the name of Brightwell, but, as I am informed, it was translated by Frith; a book, such as Tyndale never made one more foolish nor one more full of lies… Then, we have the Practice of Prelates, wherein Tyndale intended to have made a special show of his high worldly wit, so that men should have seen therein that there was nothing done among princes that he was not fully advertised of the secrets. Then, we have now the book of Friar Barnes, sometime a doctor of Cambridge, who was abjured before this time for heresy, and is at this day come under a safe conduct to the realm. Surely, of all their books that yet came abroad in English (of all which there was never one wise nor good) there was none so bad, so foolish, so false as his. This, since his coming, has been plainly proved to his face, and that in such wise that, when the books that he cites and alleges in his book were brought forth before him, and his ignorance showed him, he himself did in divers things confess his oversight, and clearly acknowledged that he had been mistaken and wrongly understood the passages.

“Then, we have besides Barnes’s book, the A B C for children. And because there is no grace therein, lest we should lack prayers, we have the Primer and the Ploughman’s Prayer and a book of other small devotions, and then the whole Psalter too. After the Psalter, children were wont to go straight to their Donat and their Accidence, but now they go straight to Scripture. And for this end we have as a Donat, the book of the Pathway to Scripture, and for an Accidence, the Whole sum of Scripture in a little book, so that after these books are learned well, we are ready for Tyndale’s Pentateuchs and Tyndale’s Testament, and all the other high heresies that he and Joye and Frith and Friar Barnes teach in all their books. Of all these heresies the seed is sown, and prettily sprung up in these little books before. For the Primer and Psalter, prayers and all, were translated and made in this manner by heretics only. The Psalter was translated by George Joye, the priest that is wedded now, and I hear say the Primer too, in which the seven Psalms are printed without the Litany, lest folks should pray to the saints; and the Dirge is left out altogether, lest a man might happen to pray with it for his father’s soul. In their Calendar, before their devout prayers, they have given us a new saint, Sir Thomas Hytton, the heretic who was burned in Kent. They have put him in on St. Matthew’s Eve, by the name of St. Thomas the Martyr.

“It would be a long work to rehearse all their books, for there are yet more than I have known. Against all these the king’s high wisdom politically provided, in that his proclamation forbade any manner of English books printed beyond the sea to be brought into this realm, or any printed within this realm to be sold unless the name of the printer and his dwelling-place were set upon the book. But still, as I said before, a few malicious, mischievous persons have now brought into this realm these ungracious books full of pestilent, poisoned heresies that have already in other realms killed, by schisms and war, many thousand bodies, and by sinful errors and abominable heresies many more thousand souls.

“Although these books cannot either be there printed without great cost, nor here sold without great adventure and peril, yet, with money sent hence, they cease not to print them there, and send them hither by the whole sacks full at once; and in some places, looking for no lucre, cast them abroad at night, so great a pestilent pleasure have some devilish people caught with the labour, travail, cast, charge, peril, harm, and hurt of themselves to seek the destruction of others.”²²²