Kitabı oku: «The Eve of the Reformation», sayfa 7

To take one more example: Bishop Tunstall, on Palm Sunday, 1539, preached before the king and court. His object was to defend the rejection of the Papal supremacy and jurisdiction. He declaimed against the notion that the Popes were to be considered as free from subjection to worldly powers, maintaining that in this they were like all other men. “The Popes,” he says, “exalt their seat above the stars of God, and ascend above the clouds, and will be like to God Almighty… The Bishop of Rome offers his feet to be kissed, shod with his shoes on. This I saw myself, being present thirty-four years ago, when Julius, the Bishop of Rome, stood on his feet and one of his chamberlains held up his skirt because it stood not, as he thought, with his dignity that he should do it himself, that his shoes might appear, whilst a nobleman of great age prostrated himself upon the ground and kissed his shoes.”¹¹⁸

To us, to-day, much that was written and spoken at this time will appear, like many of the above passages, foolish and exaggerated; but the language served its purpose, and contributed more than anything else to lower the Popes in the eyes of the people, and to justify in their minds the overthrow of the ecclesiastical system which had postulated the Pope as the universal Father of the Christian Church. Each Sunday, in every parish church throughout the country, they had been invited in the bidding prayer, as their fathers had been for generations, to remember their duty of praying for their common Father, the Pope. When the Pope’s authority was finally rejected by the English king and his advisers, it was necessary to justify this serious breach with the past religious practice, and the works of the period prove beyond doubt that this was done in the popular mind by turning men’s thoughts to the temporal aspect of the Papacy, and making them think that it was for the national profit and honour that this foreign yoke should be cast off. Whilst this is clear, it is also equally clear in the works of the time that the purely religious aspect of the question was as far as possible relegated to a secondary place in the discussions. This was perhaps not unnatural, as the duty of defending the rejection of the Papal supremacy can hardly have been very tasteful to those who were forced by the strong arm of the State to justify it before the people. As late as 1540 we are told by a contemporary writer that the spirituality under the bishops “favour as much as they dare the Bishop of Rome’s laws and his ways.”¹¹⁹

Even the actual meaning attached to the formal acknowledgment of the king’s Headship by the clergy was sufficiently ambiguous to be understood, by some at least, as aimed merely at the temporal jurisdiction of the Roman curia. It is true it is usually understood that Convocation by its act, acknowledging Henry as sole supreme Head of the Church of England, gave him absolute spiritual jurisdiction. Whatever may have been the intention of the king in requiring the acknowledgment from the clergy, it seems absolutely certain that the ruling powers in the Church considered that by their grant there was no derogation of the Pope’s spiritual jurisdiction.

A comparison of the clauses required by Henry with those actually granted by Convocation makes it evident that any admission that the crown had any cure of souls, that is, spiritual jurisdiction, was specifically guarded against. In place of the clause containing the words, “cure of souls committed to his Majesty,” proposed in the king’s name to his clergy, they adopted the form, “the nation committed to his Majesty.” The other royal demands were modified in the same manner, and it is consequently obvious that all the insertions proposed by the crown were weighed with the greatest care by skilled ecclesiastical jurists in some two and thirty sessions, and the changes introduced by them with the proposals made on behalf of the king throw considerable light upon the meaning which Convocation intended to give to the Supremum Caput clause. In one sense, perhaps not the obvious one, but one that had de facto been recognised during Catholic ages, the sovereign was the Protector – the advocatus– of the Church in his country, and to him the clergy would look to protect his people from the introduction of heresy and for maintenance in their temporalities. So that whilst, on the one hand, the king and Thomas Cromwell may well have desired the admission of Henry’s authority over “the English Church, whose Protector and supreme Head he alone is,” to cover even spiritual jurisdiction, on the other hand, Warham and the English Bishops evidently did intend it to cover only an admission that the king had taken all jurisdiction in temporals, hitherto exercised by the Pope in England, into his own hands.

Moreover, looking at what was demanded and at what was granted by the clergy, there is little room for doubt that they at first deliberately eliminated any acknowledgment of the Royal jurisdiction. This deduction is turned into a certainty by the subsequent action of Archbishop Warham. He first protested that the admission was not to be twisted in “derogation of the Roman Pontiff or the Apostolic See,” and the very last act of his life was the drafting of an elaborate exposition, to be delivered in the House of Lords, of the impossibility of the king’s having spiritual jurisdiction, from the very nature of the constitution of the Christian Church. Such jurisdiction, he claimed, belonged of right to the Roman See.¹²⁰

That the admission wrung from the clergy in fact formed the thin end of the wedge which finally severed the English Church from the spiritual jurisdiction of the Holy See is obvious. But the “thin end” was, there can be hardly any doubt, the temporal aspect of the authority of the Roman See; and that its insertion at all was possible may be said in greater measure to be due to the fact that the exercise of jurisdiction in temporals by a foreign authority had long been a matter which many Englishmen had strongly resented.

CHAPTER V
CLERGY AND LAITY

It is very generally asserted that on the eve of the Reformation the laity in England had no particular love or respect for churchmen. That there were grave difficulties and disagreements between the two estates is supposed to be certain. On the face of it, however, the reason and origin of what is frequently called “the grudge” of laymen against the ecclesiastics is obviously much misunderstood. Its extent is exaggerated, its origin put at an earlier date than should be assigned to it, and the whole meaning of the points at issue interpreted quite unnecessarily as evidence of a popular and deep-seated disbelief in the prevailing ecclesiastical system. To understand the temper of people and priest in those times, it is obviously necessary to examine into this question in some detail. We are not without abundant material in the literature of the period for forming a judgment as to the relations which then existed between the clerical and lay elements in the State. Fortunately, not only have we assertions on the one side and on the other as to the questions at issue, but the whole matter was debated at the time in a series of tracts by two eminent laymen. This discussion was carried on between an anonymous writer, now recognised as the lawyer, Christopher Saint-German, and Sir Thomas More himself.

Christopher Saint-German, who is chiefly known as the writer of a Dyalogue in English between a Student of Law and a Doctor of Divinity, belonged to the Inner Temple, and was, it has already been said, a lawyer of considerable repute. About the year 1532, a tract from his pen called A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualtie and temporaltie appeared anonymously. To this Sir Thomas More, who had just resigned the office of Chancellor, replied in his celebrated Apology, published in 1533. Saint-German rejoined in the same year with A Dyalogue between two Englishmen, whereof one is called Salem and the other Bizance, More immediately retorting with the Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance. In these four treatises the whole matter of the supposed feud between the clergy and laity is thrashed out, and the points at issue are clearly stated and discussed.

Christopher Saint-German’s position is at first somewhat difficult to understand. By some of his contemporaries he was considered to have been tainted by “the new teaching” in doctrinal matters, which at the time he wrote was making some headway in England. He himself, however, professes to write as a loyal believer in the teaching of the Church, but takes exception to certain ecclesiastical laws and customs which in his opinion are no necessary part of the system at all. In these he thinks he detects the cause of the “division that had risen between the spiritualtie and the temporaltie.” Sir Thomas More, it may be remarked, is always careful to treat the writer as if he believed him to be a sincere Catholic, though mistaken in both the extent of the existing disaffection to the Church and altogether impracticable in the remedies he suggested. In some things it must, however, be confessed, granting Saint-German’s facts, that he shows weighty grounds for some grievance against the clergy on the part of the laity.

The treatise concerning the division begins by expressing regret at the unfortunate state of things which the author pre-supposes as existing in England when he wrote in 1532, contrasting it with what he remembered before. “Who may remember the state of this realm now in these days,” he writes, “without great heaviness and sorrow of heart? For whereas, in times past, there has reigned charity, meekness, concord, and peace, there now reigns envy, pride, division, and strife, and that not only between laymen and churchmen, but also between religious and religious, and between priests and religious, and what is more to be lamented also between priests and priests. This division has been so universal that it has been a great (cause of) disquiet and a great breach of charity through all the realm.”¹²¹

It must be confessed that if this passage is to be taken as it stands, the division would appear to have been very widely spread at the time. Sir Thomas More, whilst denying that the difficulty was so great as Saint-German would make out, admits that in late years the spirit had grown and was still growing apace. He holds, however, that Saint-German’s reasons for its existence are not the true ones, and that his methods will only serve to increase the spirit of division. As regards the quarrels between religious, at which Saint-German expresses his indignation, he says: “Except this man means here by religious folk, either women and children with whose variances the temporality is not very much disturbed, or else the lay brethren, who are in some places of religion, and who are neither so many nor so much esteemed, that ever the temporality was much troubled at their strife, besides this there is no variance between religious and religious with which the temporality have been offended.”¹²² Again: “Of some particular variance among divers persons of the clergy I have indeed heard, as sometimes one against another for his tithes, or a parson against a religious place for meddling with his parish, or one place of religion with another upon some such like occasions, or sometime some one religious (order) have had some question and dispute as to the antiquity or seniority of its institution, as (for instance) the Carmelites claim to derive their origin from Elias and Eliseus: and some question has arisen in the Order of Saint Francis between the Observants and the Conventuals (for of the third company, that is to say the Colettines, there are none in this realm). But of all these matters, as far as I have read or remember, there were never in this realm either so very great or so many such (variances) all at once, that it was ever at the time remarked through the realm and spoken of as a great and notable fault of the whole clergy.” Particular faults and petty quarrels should not be considered the cause of any great grudge against the clergy at large. “And as it is not in reason that it should be, so in fact it is not so, as may be understood from this:” … “if it were the case, then must this grudge of ours against them have been a very old thing, whereas it is indeed neither so great as this man maketh out, nor grown to so great (a pass) as it is, but only even so late as Tyndale’s books and Frith’s and Friar Barnes’ began to go abroad.”¹²³

Further, in several places Sir Thomas More emphatically asserts that the talking against the clergy, the hostile feeling towards them, and the dissensions said to exist between them and lay folk generally, were only of very recent origin, and were at worst not very serious. “I have, within these four or five years (for before I heard little talk of such things),” he writes, “been present at such discussions in divers good companies, never talking in earnest thereof (for as yet I thank God that I never heard such talk), but as a pass-time and in the way of familiar talking, I have heard at such times some in hand with prelates and secular priests and religious persons, and talk of their lives, and their learning, and of their livelihood too, and as to whether they were such, that it were better to have them or not to have them. Then touching their livelihood (it was debated), whether it might be lawfully taken away from them or no; and if it might, whether it were expedient for it to be taken, and if so for what use.”¹²⁴

To this Saint-German replies at length in his Salem and Bizance, and says that Sir Thomas More must have known that the difficulties had their origin long before the rise of the new religious views, and were not in any sense founded upon the opinions of the modern heretics.¹²⁵ More answers by reasserting his position that “the division is nothing such as this man makes it, and is grown as great as it is only since Tyndale’s books and Frith’s and Friar Barnes’ began to be spread abroad.” And in answer to Saint-German’s suggestion that he should look a little more closely into the matter, he says: “Indeed, with better looking thereon I find it somewhat otherwise. For I find the time of such increase as I speak of much shorter than I assigned, and that by a great deal. For it has grown greater” by reason of “the book upon the division,” which Saint-German with the best of intentions had circulated among the people.¹²⁶

Putting one book against the other, it would appear then tolerably certain that the rise of the anti-clerical spirit in England must be dated only just before the dawn of the Reformation, when the popular mind was being stirred up by the new teachers against the clergy. There seems, moreover, no reason to doubt the positive declaration of Sir Thomas More, who had every means of knowing, that the outcry was modern – so modern indeed that it was practically unknown only four or five years before 1533, and that it originated undoubtedly from the dissemination of Lutheran views and teachings by Tyndale and others. It is useful to examine well into the grounds upon which this anti-clerical campaign was conducted, and to note the chief causes of objection to the clergy which are found set forth by Saint-German in his books. In the first place: “Some say,” he writes, that priests and religious “keep not the perfection of their order,” and do not set that good example to the people “they should do.” Some also work for “their own honour, and call it the honour of God, and rather covet to have rule over the people than to profit the people.” Others think more about their “bodily ease and worldly wealth and meat and drink,” and the like, even more than lay people do. Others, again, serve God “for worldly motives, to obtain the praise of men, to enrich themselves and the like, and not from any great love of God.”

Such is the first division of the general accusations which Saint-German states were popularly made against the clergy in 1532. Against these may be usefully set Sir Thomas More’s examination of the charges, and his own opinion as to the state of the clergy. In his previous works he had, he says, forborne to use words unpleasant either to the clergy or laity about themselves, though he had “confessed what is true, namely, that neither were faultless.” But what had offended “these blessed brethren,” the English followers of Luther, was that “I have not hesitated to say, what I also take for the very truth, that as this realm of England has, God be thanked, as good and praiseworthy a temporality, number for number, as any other Christian country of equal number has had, so has it had also, number for number, compared with any other realm of no greater number in Christendom, as good and as commendable a clergy. In both there have never been wanting plenty of those who have always been ‘naught’; but their faults have ever been their own and should not be imputed to the whole body, neither in the spirituality nor temporality.”¹²⁷

Turning to the special accusation made by Saint-German that ecclesiastics “do not keep the perfection of their order,” More grants that this may “not be much untrue.” For “Man’s duty to God is so great that very few serve Him as they should do.”…“But, I suppose, they keep it now at this day much after such a good metely manner as they did in the years before, during which this division was never dreamed of, and therefore those who say this is the cause have need to go seek some other.”¹²⁸ To the second point his reply is equally clear. It is true, More thinks, that some ecclesiastics do look perhaps to their own honour and profit, but, he asks, “were there never any such till so lately as the beginning of this division, or are all of them like this now?” No doubt there are some such, and “I pray God that when any new ones shall come they may prove no worse. For of these, if they wax not worse before they die, those who shall live after them may, in my mind, be bold to say that England had not their betters any time these forty years, and I dare go for a good way beyond this too. But this is more than twenty years, and ten before this division” (between the clergy and laity) was heard of.¹²⁹ Further, as far as his own opinion goes, although there may be, and probably are, some priests and religious whom the world accounts good and virtuous, who are yet at heart evil-minded, this is no reason to despise or condemn the whole order. Equally certain is it that besides such there are “many very virtuous, holy men indeed, whose holiness and prayer have been, I verily believe, one great special cause that God has so long held His hand from letting some heavier stroke fall on the necks of those whether in the spirituality or temporality who are naught and care not.”¹³⁰

In his Apology, Sir Thomas More protested against the author of the work on the Division translating a passage from the Latin of John Gerson, about the evil lives of priests; and on Saint-German excusing himself in his second book, More returns to the point in The Debellation of Salem and Bizance. More had pleaded that his opponent had dragged the faults of the clergy into light rather than those of the laity, because if the priests led good lives, as St. John Chrysostom had said, the whole Church would be in a good state; “and if they were corrupt, the faith and virtue of the people fades also and vanishes away.” “Surely, good readers,” exclaims More, “I like these words well.” They are very good, and they prove “the matter right well, and very true is it, nor did I ever say the contrary, but have in my Apology plainly said the same: that every fault in a spiritual man is, by the difference of the person, far worse and more odious to God and man than if it were in a temporal man.” And indeed the saying of St. Chrysostom “were in part the very cause that made me write against his (i. e. Saint-German’s) book. For assuredly, as St. Chrysostom says: ‘If the priesthood be corrupt, the faith and virtue of the people fades and vanishes away.’ This is without any question very true, for though St. Chrysostom had never said it, our Saviour says as much himself. ‘Ye are (saith He to the clergy) the salt of the earth.’ … But, I say, since the priesthood is corrupted it must needs follow that the faith and virtue of the people fades and vanishes away, and on Christ’s words it must follow that, if the spirituality be nought, the temporality must needs be worse than they. I, upon this, conclude on the other side against this ‘Pacifier’s’ book, that since this realm has (as God be thanked indeed it has) as good and as faithful a temporality (though there be a few false brethren in a great multitude of true Catholic men) as any other Christian country of equal size has, it must needs, I say, follow that the clergy (though it have some such false evil brethren too) is not so sorely corrupted as the book of Division would make people think, but on their side they are as good as the temporality are on theirs.”¹³¹

On one special point Saint-German insists very strongly. As it is a matter upon which much has been said, and upon which people are inclined to believe the worst about the pre-Reformation clergy, it may be worth while to give his views at some length, and then take Sir Thomas More’s opinion also on the subject. It is on the eternal question of the riches of the Church, and the supposed mercenary spirit which pervaded the clergy. “Some lay people say,” writes Saint-German, “that however much religious men have disputed amongst themselves as to the pre-eminence of their particular state in all such things as pertain to the maintenance of the worldly honour of the Church and of spiritual men, which they call the honour of God, and in all such things as pertain to the increase of the riches of spiritual men, all, religious or secular, agree as one.” For this reason it is found that religious men are much more earnest in trying to induce people to undertake and support such works as produce money for themselves, such as trentals, chantries, obits, pardons, and pilgrimages, than in insisting upon the payments of debts, upon restitution for wrong done, or upon works of mercy “to their neighbours poor and needy – sometimes in extreme necessity.”¹³²

Sir Thomas More replies that those who object in this way, object not so much because the trentals, &c., tend to make priests rich, but because they “hate” the things themselves. Indeed, some of these things are not such that they make priests so very rich, in fact, as to induce them to use all endeavour to procure them. The chantries, for example, “though they are many, no one man can make any very great living out of them; and that a priest should have some living of such a mean thing as the chantries commonly are, no good man will find great fault.” As for pilgrimages, “though the shrines are well garnished, and the chapel well hanged with wax (candles), few men nowadays, I fear, can have much cause to grudge or complain of the great offerings required from them. Those men make the most ado who offer nothing at all.” And with regard to “pardons,” it should be remembered that they were procured often “by the good faithful devotion of virtuous secular princes, as was the great pardon purchased for Westminster and the Savoy” by Henry VII. “And in good faith I never yet perceived,” he says, “that people make such great offerings at a pardon that we should either much pity their expense or envy the priests that profit.”

“But then the trentals! Lo, they are the things, as you well know, by which the multitude of the clergy and specially the prelates, all get an infinite treasure each year.” For himself, Sir Thomas More hopes and “beseeches God to keep men devoted to the trentals and obits too.” But where this “Pacifier” asserts that “some say that all spiritual men as a body induce people to pilgrimages, pardons, chantries, obits, and trentals, rather than to the payment of their debts, or to restitution of their wrongs, or to deeds of mercy to their neighbours that are poor and needy, and sometimes in extreme necessity, for my part, I thank God,” he says, “that I never heard yet of any one who ever would give that counsel, and no more has this ‘Pacifier’ himself, for he says it only under his common figure of ‘some say.’”¹³³

In his second reply, More returns to the same subject. Saint-German speaks much, he says, about “restitution.” This, should there be need, no reasonable man would object to. “But now the matter standeth all in this way: this man talks as if the spirituality were very busy to procure men and induce people (generally) to give money for trentals, to found chantries and obits, to obtain pardons and to go on pilgrimages, leaving their debts unpaid and restitution unmade which should be done first, and that this was the custom of the spirituality. In this,” says More, “standeth the question.” The point is not whether debts and restitution should be satisfied before all other things, which all will allow, but whether the “multitude of the clergy, that is to say either all but a few, or at least the most part, solicit and labour lay people to do these (voluntary) things rather than pay their debts or make restitution for their wrongs… That the multitude of priests do this, I never heard any honest man for very shame say. For I think it were hard to meet with a priest so wretched, who, were he asked his advice and counsel on that point, would not in so plain a matter, though out of very shame, well and plainly counsel the truth, and if perchance there were found any so shameless as to give contrary counsel, I am very sure they would be by far the fewer, and not as this good man’s first book says, the greater part and multitude.” What, therefore, More blames so much is, that under pretext of an altogether “untrue report” the clergy generally are held up to obloquy and their good name slandered.¹³⁴ If he thinks that “I do but mock him to my poor wit, I think it somewhat more civility in some such points as this to mock him a little merrily, than with odious earnest arguments to discuss matters seriously with him.”

In some things even Saint-German considers the outcry raised against the clergy unreasonable. But then, as he truly says, many “work rather upon will than upon reason,” and though possessed of great and good zeal are lacking in necessary discretion. Thus some people, seeing the evils that come to the Church from riches, “have held the opinion that it was not lawful for the Church to have any possessions.” Others, “taking a more mean way,” have thought that the Church ought not to have “that great abundance that” it has, for this induces a love of riches in churchmen and “hinders, and in a manner strangles, the love of God.” These last would-be reformers of churchmen advocate taking away all that is not necessary. Others, again, have gone a step further still, “and because great riches have come to the Church for praying for souls in Purgatory, have affirmed that there is no Purgatory.” In the same way such men would be against pardons, pilgrimages, and chantries. They outwardly appear “to rise against all these … and to despise them, and yet in their hearts they know and believe that all such things are of themselves right good and profitable, as indeed they are, if they are ordered as they should be.”¹³⁵

Sir Thomas More truly says that what is implied in this outcry against the riches of the clergy is that as a body they lead idle, luxurious, if not vicious lives. It is easy enough to talk in this way, but how many men in secular occupations, he asks, would be willing to change? There might be “some who would, and gladly would, have become prelates (for I have heard many laymen who would very willingly have been bishops), and there might be found enough to match those that are evil and naughty secular priests, and those too who have run away from the religious life, and these would, and were able to, match them in their own ways were they never so bad. Yet, as the world goes now, it would not be very easy, I ween, to find sufficient to match the good, even though they be as few as some folk would have them to be.”

In the fifteenth chapter of his book on the Division, Saint-German deals specially with the religious life and with what in his opinion people think about it, and about those who had given up their liberty for a life in the cloister. The matter is important, and considerable extracts are necessary fully to understand the position. “Another cause” of the dislike of the clergy by the laity is to be sought for in the “great laxity and liberty of living that people have seen in religious men. For they say, that though religious men profess obedience and poverty, yet many of them have and will have their own will, with plenty of delicate food in such abundance that no obedience or poverty appears in them. For this reason many have said, and yet say to the present day, that religious men have the most pleasant and delicate life that any men have. And truly, if we behold the holiness and blessed examples of the holy fathers, and of many religious persons that have lived in times past, and of many that now live in these days, we should see right great diversity between them. For many of them, I trow, as great diversity as between heaven and hell.” Then, after quoting the eighteenth chapter of The Following of Christ, he proceeds: “Thus far goeth the said chapter. But the great pity is that most men say that at the present day many religious men will rather follow their own will than the will of their superior, and that they will neither suffer hunger nor thirst, heat nor cold, nakedness, weariness nor labour, but will have riches, honour, dignities, friends, and worldly acquaintances, the attendance of servants at their commands, pleasure and disports, and that more liberally than temporal men have. Thus, say some, are they fallen from true religion, whereby the devotion of the people is in a manner fallen from them.”