^'^^^^^^^mm^m^^WMW ' ■ o^ BLUNDERS AND FORGERIES. BV THE SAME AUTHOR. HISTORY OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST IN GREAT BRITAIN. Two Vols. Demy Svo. 18s. London : KixJAN Paul, Thench, Tuubneu, & Co., Lt"? BLUNDEES AND FOEGEEIES: HISTORICAL ESSAYS BY II EV. T. E. BllIDGETT, OK THE CONGREGATION OF THE MOST HOLY REDEK.MEK, " Mhat blundrer is yonder that playetli diddil, He /yndeth false mesurcs nut cf his fond liddil." Skklton {Jhc Cruwne of Lawrell). SECOND EDITION. LONDON: KEOAN PAUL, TliJCNCII, TKl^BNEr, Sc CO. \71' J'ATEKMJSTER HOI HE, CUAKINO CROSS UOAU. 1S9I. PERMISSU SUPERIORUM. The rights of translation, and of reproduction are reserved. « « ■ • 3 A T!-7 ■ g^/ S PREFACE. to The seven Essays that make up this volume are reprints, enlarged or curtailed, of papers that have appeared in various Reviews and Magazines. I have „ selected them as bearing on one subject — misunder- ^ standing and misrepresentation of the Catholic Church, § for the most part as regards historical facts. There -J is, however, a notable difference between the two parts into which the volume is divided. In the second part I expose some deliberate perversions of truth, forgeries conceived in open-eyed malice, and handed on to our own days by prejudice wilfully blind. I3ut the first part treats merely of blunders, neither con- scious lies nor yet innocent mistakes. To err is human, but there is alwavs blame attached to blun- dering. In the examples which I have given, the blame varies from that of haste, or undue self-reliance, to that of prejudice and willingness, or even eager- ness, to believe evil. Several of the writers whose blunders I have L-xiii- bited are eminent in literature, and of course far o751il9 vili TREFACE. superior to myself iii general learning ; yet a common sailor may set right a philosopher or a statesman as regards nautical terras and facts. My contention tliroughout the volume is this, that the landsman sliould not swagger about the deck as if he were bred to the sea, while he cannot distinguish between a binocle and a binnacle. There is a well-known saying attributed to a great scholar : Verify your quotations. Quotations must not only be verified, but traced to their origin. The last Essay in this volume will show that writers of our own day, who take pride in accuracy, are perpetuating old calumnies because, while they verify the correctness of their quotations from Strype, they are content to take on trust the references of Strype himself. A second rule, not less important to the historical or theological student, is : Consult. " There is no such folly," writes Mr. Mozley, " no such cause of utter breakdown and disgrace, as the silly pride of doing things quite by oneself, without assistance." ^ In addition, then, to the various historical points recorded in my Index, there is a general maxim enforced throughout these Essays, and which is one of charity as well as of accuracy, a maxim I would willingly have printed on my title-page : Consult and Verify, Verii-'y and Consult. ' Reminiscences of Oriel, p. 358. CONTENTS. PART I.— BLUNDERS. KSSAT PAGE I. A Mare's Nest — A Priest with Two Wives . , i (From the " Irish Monthly^) II. Another Mare's Nest— The Sanctity of Dirt . . 20 {Enlarged from the " Contemporary Review.") III. A Dozen Dogberry-isms .... {Erdarrjed from "Irish Monthly.") 51 IV. A Saint Tkansfoumed S7 (From " Dublin Review.") 114 V. " Infamous Publications " . . . . (From " Irish Ecclesiastical Record.") PART II.— FORGERIES. VI. The RooI) of IJoxley ; on, lluw .\ J.,iic (inows . . 159 (From " Duhlin Review.") VII. Robert Ware; or, A Koaun AN» IMS Dui'Es . , . 209 (Prom "Titljict.") PART I. BLUNDEES. BLUNDEPiS AND FOEGEKIES. ESSAY I. A MARE'S NEST— A PRIEST WITH TWO WIVES. The TJev. W. Stephens published, in 1876, "Memorials of the South Saxon See and Cathedral Church of Chi- chester." In his notice of Ralph Neville, who was bishop from 1 222-1 244, he " paraphrases, in an abridged form," some familiar letters written to that prelate by his steward. The bishop was residing in London, engaged upon his duties as Lord Chancellor, and his steward, an ecclesiastic, makes him acquainted with the temporal administration of his estates, and incidentally with some diocesan news. In the midst of a letter, detailing the havoc committed by the foxes, and ask- ing for dogs to hunt them down, he writes (in Mr. Stephens's version) : " I think you ought to know that the Vicar of Mundham keeps two wives; he pretends to have a papal dispensation, contrary to the statutes of a general council."^ Such a plum as this could scarcely escape the fingers of the " little .Jack ]Iorners" who review for the, weekly periodicals. Thus the notice of Mr. Stephens's book iu ' Memoriftlo, p. 80. A 2 BLUNDERS. the Spectator,^ though a very short one, iincls room for the " cui'ious report," and for the remark that " The Vicar seems to have been in his way an Infallibilist," to which wise or witty reflection it is strange that the reviewer did not also add another — that the bishop's steward seems to have been a Gallican, in placing the autliority of a general council above that of the Pope. The letter which Mr. Stephens abridges was first printed by Dr. Shirley, in his " Collection of Royal and other Historical Letters illustrative of the reign of Henry III.," edited by him for the Master of the Eolls ; and the learned editor was himself so struck by the paragraph that, in the preface to his second volume, he especially mentions "the report of the audacious chaplain who keeps two wives and claims a papal dispensation " among the " details which bring home with vividness the domestic life of the period,"^ a remark which shows that learned editors may make sad blunders no less than anonymous reviewers. It would be well if those who deal in ecclesiastical documents of the middle ages would remember that every profession has its technical language or its slang phrases, the force of which has to be carefully learnt ; and that the proper persons from whom to learn it are generally those who have inherited the profession and its mysteries. This very obvious reflection would have saved Dr. Sliirley from falling into a trap, by inter- preting a technical phrase literally, and thus mistaking two benefices for two women, and a pluralist for a bigamist. A remark of an Archbishop of York, who lived only a few years before the period at which the Chichester ' Jan. 6, 1S77. - At p. xxv. A PRIEST WITH TAVO WIVES. 3 steward's letter was written, may be here appropriately quoted, William of Newburgh states that Arclibisliop lioger was a great enemy of monks, and that he once said that his predecessor, Turstin, had never more grievously erred (nunquam gravius deliquisse) than when he built the Monastery of Fountains. When he noticed that the bystanders were scandalised at this word : " Bah ! " he said, " you are laymen if you cannot perceive the meaning of a word."^ Before establishing the metaphorical character of tlie Vicar's wives, let us ascertain the exact text under discussion. It is thus printed by Dr. Shirley : " Nolo domine excellentiam vestrara [latere quo] d . . . , qui- dam capellanus, Willelmus Dens nomine, vicarius eccle- sia3 deMimdeham, duas habet uxores, ut dicitur, quarum . . . . ns apud Cicestriam, Qui quidem Wilhelmns literas detulit a summo pontilice, ut dixit, sed in parti- bus Sussexias . . . nt quod nunquam litene ilia) a con- scientia domini papio eraanaverunt, sed contra statuta concilii generalis fuerunt impetratiu. Unde," &c.'^ " Your excellence ought to be informed that a certain chaplain, William Dens by name (or William Tooth), has two wives, as the saying is, of whom ... at Chi- chester. This AV'illiara has brouglit letters from the Sovereign I'ontifF, so he has said, but in the parts of Sussex .... that those letters never emanated from the conscience of the Pope (or, never came from the ]'(jpo duly informed), but were obtained contrary to the decrees of the general council. Hence, if it seems good to your holiness, please to make known to your ' Laici esti«, nisi jiercipere potestis vim vt-rbi. Do Rebus Aiiglicis, ]. iii cap. 5. - Letter 230tli, vnl. i. p. 277. 4 BLUNDERS. ofticial whatever you may determine in this matter." The original of this letter is preserved in the Eecord Oflice, and is partly illegible. Tlie gaps, marked above by dots, are a little more than an inch in length. Tiie word quaruvi, printed by Dr. Shirley, can no longer be deciphered; but that is unimportant, for the words duas liahd uxorcs are quite distinct. But it is very important to remark that the transla- tion adopted both by Dr. Shirley and Mr. Stephens is misleading to the mere English reader. Duas hahet uxores is simply " has or possesses two wives." If those wives are figurative, the expression will mean "holds" two benefices. If it is not figurative, it may well be translated "keeps" two wives. But let it be remem- bered that the original is more ambiguous than the word used by these authors. But it is still more important to notice that Mr. Stephens has omitted altogether the words ut dicitur which follow uxores. As he was only abridging, he no doubt passed them over as unessential. I suppose he considered them as equivalent to ut fertur, " as it is reported." Probably this was also the view of Dr. Shirley, who speaks of " the report," though his words luay refer to the report of the steward to the bishop rather than to the rumour current in Sussex. Yet, when I shall have shown how common was the use of the metaphor of " having two wives," the reader will probably agree that the words should be thus trans- lated : " The vicar has two wives, as the saying is," and not " as is reported." I will not, however, insist on this translation, but will argue out the matter even in the other interpretation. Let us, then, first consider what are the intrinsic pro- A PRIEST WITH TWO WIVES. 5 babilities of the case. Tliat there should have been a clerical delinquent in the thirteenth century is, of course, just as natural as that he should be found in the nineteenth. That a priest at that date should have wished to call his concubine his wife was far more natural then than now, since histoiy bears abundant witness to the attempt. But where did Dr. Shirley find anything to show that it was according " to the domestic life of the period" for priest or layman to claim to have two wives at once ? However, had this been all, the interj^retation might have stood. Extraordinary or monstrous impudence, though it does not illustrate the manners of any period, is at no time impossible. The incestuous Corinthian who claimed to have his father's wife is no fair specimen of the first Cliristians, yet he was found in the early Church. It is not supposed — at least I trust it is not, even in the nineteentli century — that any pope really did grant to William Tooth a licence to marry two wives at once. But the notion that any English priest dared openly claim to have received such a grant from Inno- cent III. or Gregory IX. is just as absurd as it would be to imat'ine that the incestuous Corinthian ixave out publicly that his conduct had been specially aulliorised by St. I'aul. But there are other expressions in the letter whicli should have made iJr. Sliirley pause. What general council had forbiddcm clerical bigamy ? What general council had forbidden popes to dispense with priests to retain two wives at once ? AVhat example is there of a pope of tlie tiiirteenth century granting a ])riest a dispensation to have even one wife? The trutli is that, if the grave Dr. Shirley, and the facetious writer in tlio 6 BLUNDERS. Spectator, liad only asked themselves wliat was the general council alluded to by the Chichester steward, they would have found a clue to the mystery. They would have discovered, or recollected, that only a few years before, in 121 5, the fourth Lateran Council had been held under the presidency of Innocent III., and that in this council the decrees against plurality of benefices, already issued by the third council of Lateran, in 1 179, had been renewed. They would then, perhaps, have conjectured that the two wives were really two churches, parishes, or benefices ; and they would have been streno-thened in this view when they noticed that the council of Lateran had reserved to the Pope the power to dispense in this decree. Then all would have been plain. William Tooth held two benefices, con- trary to the decree of a general council, which the bishops were just then busy in enforcing ; but he claimed a papal dispensation. This was no very mon- strous claim, but it was reported in that part of Sussex that he had got his dispensation by false representa- tions, and that it was invalid. There is not a particle of doubt that this is the real meaning of the letter, and it may, perhaps, be interest- ing, and even useful, to trace the rise and progress of the metaphor used by the bishop's correspondent, and to show that the interpretation I have given is not merely plausible, but perfectly natural, and indeed the only possible interpretation. The letter of the steward is without date, but, in the very year in which Ralph Neville became Bishop of Chichester, 1222, a great national council had been celebrated in Oxford under Archbishop Stephen Lang- ton. In this council an abuse, the reverse of that of A PRIEST WITH TWO WIVES. 7 uniting benefices, though proceeding I'rom tlie same source of avarice, had been condemned. The wording of this decree will make it clear that the steward was not making use of a new or unusual metaphor when he spoke of the two wives of the Vicar of Mundeham. "According to canonical decrees," so runs the 13th canon, or as the Latin might be freely but accurately translated, " in the language of canon law (juxta cano- nicas sanctiones) a similarity is sometimes remarked between carnal and spiritual matrimony. Hence, since nature does not allow one wife to be shared by two husbands, it is altogether iinfitting that the Church of God, which ought to be the one bride of one husband, should be, as it were, the concubine of many." The metaphor here referred to is not unfamiliar to us at the present day. Burnet, in his " History of the Ileformation," ^ tells us that Bishop Fisher used to say that his church was his wife, and that he would never part with her because she was poor. The same thing is reported of him in a contemporary account preserved in the Vatican, and published by ]\Ir. I'ocock.- It is probable that it was in direct imitation of this example that Thomas Wilson, the Pi'otestant Bishop of Sodor and Man, when Queen Caroline offered to translate him to a richer see, replied, " I will not leave my wife in her old age because she is poor." Pope Callixtus 111., when Bishop of Valencia, Imd used very similar lan- guage.^ The metaphor is tlius elaborated in the iliird Provin- cial Synod celebrated by the l^higlish Catholic hierarcliy in 1859: "As the Bishop's diocese is the spouse to ' Book III., vol. i. p. 708. " Kcconl'*, vul. ii. p. 55). ' liainaldiiH, an. 1 458, 11. 4. 8 BLUNDERS. whom God ]ias united liim in the bonds of conjugal love ; and as no more precious diadem can crown her than the ecclesiastical virtues everywhere resplendent, no more beauteous zone can gird her than a circling band of pious clerics, he will not be able to offer her a more acceptable gift than a holy household." The origin of this metaphor is to bo found in the fact that the bishop or pastor represents our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Bridegroom of the Church; but, perhaps, its great prevalence in canon law, whenever the question of plurality of benefices is under discus- sion, may be due to the letter of St. Jerome to Oceanus, in which he discusses at considerable length the mean- ing of the words of St. Paul (i Tim. iii. 2; Tit. i. 6), that a bishop must be "the husband of one wife." Amongst various interpretations, he alludes to one which he acknowledges to be forced : " Some," he says, coade, " interpret wives as churches, husbands as bishops, so that churches are called bishops' wives. According to this sense, the Apostle would mean that a bishop is not to be translated from one see to another, ne virginis paupercula) societate contempta, ditioris adulteras quterat amplexus.^ However far-fetched might be this interpretation, it was too convenient to be neglected, at least as an accommodation of holy words, when the endowments, first of bishoprics and afterwards of parishes, introduced the abuses of translations and pluralities. Thus Ger- bert, afterwards Pope Silvester IT., who died in 1003, writes on the words, " Husband of one wife," as follows : " If we look to the mere letter, these words forbid a man who has been twice married to be ordained a 1 Ep. 69. A PRIEST WITH TWO WIVES. 9 bishop; but if we ascend to a higher sense, the j fori) id a bishop to usurp two churches ; and if you will go still deeper into the very heart of the matter, they warn the bishop, lest, after having espoused the true Catholic dogma, he take up heretical opinions." ^ This treatise of Gerbert was soon attributed to St. Ambrose, and being full of weighty matter, pithily expressed, was frequently quoted, and texts from it introduced into the canon law. But it was believed in the middle ages that the con- venient metaphor was derived from higher and earlier authorities than even St. Jerome or St. Ambrose, The famous Isidore Mercator, in the ninth century, gives, in his decretals, letters which he attributes to Popes Evarist and Callixtus. Pope Evarist has a long drawn-out comparison be- tween the duties of husband and wife, and the recipro- cal duties of a bishop and his church. From this foundation he concludes that a bishop must not leave his diocese to take another, and compares such conduct to divorce and adultery. Pope Callixtus is made to say : " As a wife must not be led into adultery, and as she must not be judged or governed except by her own husband, so also the hishop's wife, which is his church or parish." These passages, being attributed to popes and mnr- tyrs, were received with the greatest veneration, and are found in all subsequent collections of canons, as in that of Purchanl, liishop of Worms, who died in 1025, as well as in (iratian.- ' Do dignitate Bacerdotftii, in Appcndice Openun S. .Ambrosii {Va\, IJ.n). ^ Causa 7, qii. I, cm. 39. lo BLUNDERS. Another great authority, who had given popularity and weight to the metaphor, was Ilincmar, Archbishop of liheims in the ninth century. lie is writing about Actard, who, having been Bishop of Nantes, had been cliosen Archbishop of Tours, and who wished to retain his old see alond his hair on Easter Sunday, and never washed his clothes at all, but let them fall to pieces by rottenness. St. Anthony never washed his feet. St. Thomas a Becket, when martyred, had under garments in a state which makes one shudder in the remembrance. And so the monks, up to the time of the Keformation, and indeed in part up to the present day, thought, or professed to tlunk, that by antithesis, pollution i>f the body indicated cleanliness of the soul. Practically, imleed, it helped Uj it ; liecause the odour of sanctity which infested these old monks and hermits, helped to keep them apart from the temptations of the world, for the world scarcely cared to come into too close contact with these odoriferous saints. But this association of filth with religion was unhappy in its consequences, for men ceased to connect disease with uncleanliness, and resorted to shrines and winking virgins for cures of maladies which wt^re produced by tlieir own physical and moral impurities." — Speech of the Ri'jht Hon. Dr. Lyon J'ktii/dir, M.I'., (It Glaxi/itir, October 5, 187.1, on the ProjrcHS of Sanitary Reform. (Hardwick, 192 Piccadilly.) In the address of Dr. Playfair to the Social Science Congress at Glasgow, on sanitary reform, there is much tliat is original and excellent, and for which every sen- THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 21 sible man will be grateful. In the remarks that I am about to make I confine my attention to a portion of his address which is not excellent, not original, and which every truthful man must regret — his observations on the Middle Ages, and on the connection between their supposed filthiness and the Catholic religion then dominant. Mr. Hallam, m his supplementary volume on the Middle Ages, wonders that ecclesiastics have been so warm in defending those ages from the charge of ignorance, since the ignorance, whatever it may have been, was not caused, but rather mitigated, by the action of the Church. The same remark might perhaps be made with regard to mediaeval filthiness. Why should an accusation of the nature of Dr. Playfair's rouse the zeal of a Catholic clergyman ? Is it the duty of the Church to introduce sanitary reforms ? Is she responsible for the dirtiness of her barbarous or semi- barbarous children ? Did she invite into Europe the hordes of wild men who overthrew Eoman civilisation ? Is it not enough that she converted them, mitigated their cruelty, taught them letters, and gi'adually formed them into the nations of modern times ? Was it her business to cut and comb their hair, wash tlieir bodies, and supply them with clean linen ? I reply that, as a matter of fact. Dr. liayfair lias blamed the Catholic Church for tiie dirt of the Middle Ages. The dirty millennium which he depicts is exactly coincident with her unrivalkid supremacy in Europe. The state of things he imagines is jKjintedly said to have been "pre- vious to the Keformafinii," as if that event set free, not (tidy the thoughts of men, Itut the chok(!d up fountains of water; and if dirt and disease still ])revailcd in Kurojte in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they 22 BLUNDERS. were but a " heritage of the centuries of gloomy dark- ness" when the Catholic Church bore sway. The fathers of that Church laid down filth-producing prin- ciples : the saints of that Church were filthy ; and the monks were and are filthy. " Filth was associated with religion." "Filth was almost sanctified." These are definite and grave charges. They touch the Church, too, in a tender point. When she has been accused of superstition and idolatry, she has been accustomed to point to her works of charity, and to reply : " He that abideth in charity abideth in God, and God in him." But if Dr. Playfair's charges were well founded, a part at least of her defence would fail. The frightful epide- mics of the Middle Ages would be upon her conscience. Should she say, " I did it in ignorance of science, I knew not the consequences," such a plea would ill befit her claim of divine guidance. If her teaching directly leads to consequences disastrous to the human race, it can scarcely have come from a beneficent Creator. To have invented hospitals, and orphanages, and asylums is much ; but to have spread pestilence through the nations and blighted them physically and mentally, more than cancels such benefits. The Catholic Church just now is attacked on many sides. I do not think, therefore, that I shall be accused of officious zeal if I endeavour to check the spread of a new calumny — for calumny of the most reckless kind is certainly contained in Dr. Lyon Playfair's accusations. Two matters have then to be investigated. First, were our medieval ancestors really so dirty ? Secondly, did the Church teach them to be dirty ? These two questions are quite distinct. Men may have been dirty, and yet the Church free of all blame in the THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 23 matter. Or they may have been clean in spite of the Church's teaching. Let us inquire into facts and prin- ciples. As to their dirtiness, Dr. Playfair makes a broad assertion : " For a thousand years there was not a man or woman in Europe that ever took a bath." Is this true ? If it is true, was it because the Church forbade or discourao;ed baths ? I. Antecedent Imiorobahility. Not a bath for a thousand years ! In the whole of Europe ! Xot a man or woman ! Ever ! Here are startling assertions. As they were made by a scientific man in the presence of scientific men, most readers will suppose that they had been well considered before being written. Yet the words are but a thoughtless echo. " Pds un lain en milk ans ! " wrote I\I. ]\Iichelet some years since in La Soreitre. Dr. Playfair lias taken liis history at second-hand, and at a very untrustworthy source. A little reflection would have raised a douljt in his mind. Dr. Playfair knew how fond the Eomans were of baths. He has justly praised them for their " sanitary works " and " hygienic appliances." He would douljtless also have recollected, had he weighed the suljject in his mind, that the Germans were accus- tomed to take warm baths immediately after rising, according to the testimony of Tacitus.^ And since the Cath(jlic nations of mcdia-val Europe were composed in great measure of these two races. Dr. Playfair might naturally have inquired by what influences they wen; led to relinquish what they had liitherto prized. I'y * "Statim e 8omn» lavantur, sfEpius caliiJfi" (TacitiK, Gcnnani.a, cnp. xxii.). 24 BLUNDERS. the influence, of their new rehgion, he says. But even supposing that their new religion had commanded them to abstain from warm water, is it not strange that it should have been so faithfully obeyed, that not a man or a woman e^■er violated the prohibition for a thousand years ? This is certainly a triumph of the Church such as none of her panegyrists has yet dared to claim for her. If Dr. Playfair will look into John of Salisbury's Nugm Curicdiuni he will find that our ancestors were not without some acquaintance with ancient Greek and Itoman manners, that if they had little science they had some cultivation in the arts, and some appreciation of the amenities of life. They sometimes strove to revive all the luxuries of pagan Eome. They even gave Horatian banquets. Did no one ever attempt to revive the Eoman bath ? Grant that it was looked on as a sin, yet was there no man or woman in Europe bold enough so far to rebel against the Church's laws as to indulge even once in the luxurious crime of "a warm bath ? ye knights and soldiers, ye rich merchants and fine ladies, ye kings and queens of mediaeval Em-ope, we had thought you, in spite of your faith, somewhat self-willed and rebellious, and requiring now and then to be coerced by the censures of the Church for your obstinate clinging to tournaments, to usury, to concubinage, and adultery, and the rest ; but we nmst make amends to you, for at least in the matter of warm baths — so says modern science — you were as guiltless as the angels in heaven ! Certainly the charge is antecedently improbable. Even could I discover no positive proof of the use of the bath in the ]\Iiddle Ages, yet unless I could find clear evidence of the abolition of the ancient pagan THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. ^5 practice, together with clear legislation against its re- vival, I should not be able to persuade myself that the mere glorification of dirty saints had produced so re- markable a revolution. And even though the clearest denunciations of the sinfulness of baths were forth- coming, yet I should expect to find many instances recorded of the rebellion of human nature against such a discipline ; and 1 should curiously seek, in the peni- tential codes, to know what punishment was inflicted on the rebels. Has Dr. Playfair consulted the writings of the fathers, the legislation of councils and popes, the penitential codes ? Has he looked into monastic re- cords or saints' lives ? I think not. He only quotes examples of two Egyptian hermits, and one English saint of the twelfth century. This is a slender founda- tion on which to base so serious a charge as that which he has directed against the whole of Europe, and a thousand years of its history. 1 must, then, do what Dr. riayfair has not done. I must cast at least a glance into these various sources of information. I am no antiquarian. I have no note-books stufiled with curious details of medi;eval life. I have never examined the (jue-stion of European cleanliness ; but having met sijiue years since with M. Michelet's accusation against the Church, I have noted a few facts in my reading which I should otherwise have probably overlooked; uiid if my information is scanty, it would seem that any in- formation may be of value wlien siuli statements as that of J)r. J'layfair can l»e made before a scientific congress and pass uncontradicted. 26 BLUNDERS. 2. Baths never Abolished. Dr. Playfair has not restricted his statement to warm baths, yet I will not seek to take advantage of that circumstance. To sustain his charge against the Church it would, indeed, be necessary to prove that she for- bade her children to bathe in rivers or in seas ; but I suppose Dr. Playfair would not venture on such a state- ment. " This country once gloried in her beautiful rivers," he says, " but they are now mere open ditches which pollute the districts through which they flow." No doubt ! And all Europe in the Middle Ages was watered by pure streams, and mediaeval youths, at least, could swim and wash in them. And was it for- bidden to warm this water in the winter ? Where is the evidence of this ? Again, what are we to say of medicinal springs and wells ? Dr. Playfair, as a medical man, has examined and reported on them ; has he never looked into their history ? Many, still in use, were known to the ancients. Has he any proof to adduce that for a thousand years they ceased to be frequented, and were restored to humanity by modern science ? Catholics, he thinks, when they were ill, " resorted to shrines and winking virgins" for their cure. But is there not a St. Anne's well at Buxton ? ^ Is there not a St. Anne's well at Great Malvern ? Were these names ' In 1536 Sir William Bassett was employed by Thomas Cromwell, Vicar-General of H(.nry VIII., to suppress superstition in Derbyshire. He not only took down the statue of St. Anne, and the votive offer- ings, but stopped the bathing. " My Lord, I have also locked up and sealed the baths and wells at Buxton, that none shall enter to wash them, till your Lordship's pleasure be further known." See " Wright's Letters on the Suppression of Monasteries" (Camden Society), p. 143. THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 27 given by modern Protestants or by ancient Pagans ? There is a St. Winifred's well, too, in North Wales, and there are Lady wells everywhere. Indeed, it has been a custom to accuse Catholics of superstitiously connectmg, not filth, but pure wells with religion. Which charge is to prevail ? It is hard to have to bear both at once. I will pass on to warm baths used specially for cleanliness. I suppose that Dr. Playfair alludes to these only, when he afiirms that no man or woman ever used one in Europe for a thousand years. But when did tliis dirty millennium begin ? when did the clean centuries come to an end ? The lionie of the Emperors had splenchd bathing establishments, as it had splendid theatres for gladia- torial combats. The Church, from the conversion of Constantine, strove against the theatres, and they resisted all her efforts for a century. It was not until A.D. 404, when the Monk Almachus rushed between the combatants, and was slain in liis attempt to stop the effusion of human blood, that they were finally abolished by a decree of tlie Emperor Honorius. Put no martyr or confessor is lionoured for denouncing the Iloman baths, no decree of Emperor was issued to abolish them. Towards the end of the fifth century St. Sidonius Apollinaris, who, before he was made Bisho]) of Auvergne or Clermont, had been Senator and I'refect of Rome, and whose father and grandfather liad been (.'hristians, writes verses in prais(^ of the elegance of the baths in his villa in Ciaul. He says that liner ones are not to be found at I>ai;e. In a letter tn his friend Domitius he enters into more details, and we 28 BLUNDERS. tiiul that water was brought from a mountain summit, that the baths were both hot and cold, and especially that they were Christian, There are no immodest paint- ings on the walls, he says, nor combats of gladiators, but only a few elegant verses inscribed.^ Evidently, Christianity had purified but not abolished baths. Nor did the advent of the Barbarians make any change. Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus was principal minister of Theodoric, and Prefect of Eome under Athalaric, He died in 562. His writings were esteemed second to none in the Middle Ages. Our own Bede calls him a doctor of the Church. This eminent Christian be- comes quite eloquent in praise of the Eoman aqueducts, which carry cleanliness through the city as the muddy waters of the Nile carry fertility through Egypt ; and he warns the city architect to keep them in good repair.^ From a letter written by him as secretary to Athalaric, we find leave of absence given to an officer to go to the baths at Baia3, which are minutely described and greatly extolled. Again, as secretary to King Theo- datus, he gives leave to Count Vuinusiadus to visit the baths at Bormio, in order to cure his gout.^ Cassiodore built a monastery, into which he retired in later life. Amongst other things, such as labora- tories and observatories, he took care to construct baths, " with water so clear running through them " — these are his own words — " that it might serve for drinking as well as for bathing."* This did not pre- vent him from having the reputation, and with some even the honours, of a saint. 1 Sidonius, Carmen, XVIIT. Ep. lib. ii. : 2. Ed. Sirinond. ^ Cassiodorus, Variarum, lib. vii. n. 6 : Ed. Garetius. 3 [hid., lib. ix. 6; lib. x. 29. * Lib. div. lit., cap. 29. THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 29 St. Gregory of Tours, in his history, makes frequent mention both of pubhc and monastic baths in Gaul. A poet of the sbcth century, Venantius Fortunatus, an Italian priest residing in Bordeaux, where Leontius was bishop, describes the beauty of a small town called Bissonum a few miles distant, where Leontius had restored some old portico and made beautiful baths — " Reddit interea prisco nova balnea cultii Quo recreant fessos blanda lavacra viros." ^ Perhaps it may be said that these were the last remains of Paganism. But when, I ask, did these come to an end ? The year 800, and the establishment of the Christian Empire of Charlemagne, bring us far into Dr. Playfair's millennium. Yet, on opening the works of Alcuin — our own Saxon Alcuin, the friend and adviser of Charlemagne and the master of the Palace school — I find a copy of Latin verses which that good priest wrote for his royal and noble pupils in praise of warm Ijaths ; and Eginhard, in his life of Charlemagne, tells us tlie nature and magnificence of the Ijaths Iniilt by the Emperor at Aix-la-Chapclle. " He u.sed to invite to take baths with liim not only his sons, but his friends and courtiers, and sometimes even his soldiers and Ijodypuard, so that often a Imndred and more were in the bath at once." ^ Xor were baths merely an Imperial luxury. An author who lived some time ])et\ve('n the ciglith and the tenth centuries at Kennes, in Brittany, in relating an incident connected with St. Melanius, writes aa follows : — ' P<><-m«, lib. ii. iS. * iigiiiliard, Vita Karoli, nee. xii. 30 BLUNDERS. " It is the custom of Christians, who everywhere venerate the Lord's day in honour of His resurrection, on Saturday to take a hath, by which they cleanse and refresh their bodies after the labours of the week ; and instead of their soiled clothes to put on clean ones, that they may enter the Church, which is the Palace of the heavenly King, more clean in body as well as in heart." ^ This is the language of a mouk in the very darkest of the Dark Ages. This was, according to an eye- witness, the conduct of Christians in those days. Dr. Playfair says that no man or woman ever took a bath for a thousand years. The eye-witness says that in the tenth century Christians generally took a bath every Saturday. Could the same be said at the present day ? M. Viollet le Due, a French architect, who is one of the highest authorities on mediaeval subjects, tells us that— " In the twelfth century bath-rooms were built in houses as at the present day, though they were probably more commodious than ours." And he thus sums up the result of his architectural researches : — " From all the quotations which I have given we may con- clude that, during the Middle Ages, the use of baths as they are now taken was very common ; that there were public bathing establishments, in which there were vapour baths, and every- tliing that belongs to the toilet, where refreshments could be had and where people could even spend the night ; that in the castles and great houses there were rooms set apart for baths, nearly always in proximity of the bedrooms ; that the use of baths during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was much h'ss common (beaucoup mimia repanchi) than it had been before that period, and was confined almost exclusively to the higher classes." ^ • Bolland, Acta SS., torn i. p. 334. 2 Uictiomiaire de rArchitecture Frungaise, art. Etuve. THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 31 M. Viollet le Due's testimony refers more directly to France. Mr. Wright has made a special study of the History of Domestic Manners and Customs in England; and in his book on this subject he arrives at conclu- sions very different from those of Dr. Playfair. " We know," he writes, "from many sources, that washing and bathing were frequent amongst the Saxons." And again, of a later period : — " Tlie practice of warm bathing prevailed very generally in all classes of socut^i/, and is frequently alluded to in the mediaeval romances and stories People sometimes bathed imme- diately after rising in the morning, and we find the baths used after dinner and before going to bed. A bath was also prepared for a visitor on his arrival from a journey." ^ After statements so explicit and wide-reaching of well-informed antiquarians, it is unnecessary to give instances, yet the following may impress the general fact on the imagination and memory. Venerable Bede, in his description of Britain, writes : " Warm foun- tains and the streams of warm baths flowing from them, in diflerent parts of the country, with various dis- tinctive qualities, are useful to every age and sex ; for as St. Basil says, ' Water receives certain fervid influ- ences by the metals through which it permeates, and becomes not only warm but hot.' " ^ Henry of Huntingdon, in 1 146, after referring to this passage of V>oAv., remarks that in his day the virtues of the hot sjirings and their use still continued. Alex- ander Neckam, about the year 1 200, in his poem " De Laudiltus Divinte Sapientia-," writes very fully of the sulplnir springs at Jiath.^ " Tlie warm springs (thermae) ' Pp. 59 and 260. ' Viiilc, Hist. Keel., i. I, quoting St. Basil. Haxfcm. iv. 6. ' .Ste hii* treatise in the KoIIh ycrita. 32 BLUNDERS. of Baili are not inferior to those praised by Virgil. They are good for worn-out old age, for the bruised and broken and weak, and for all whose diseases are caused by cold. Steadfast nature here anticipates human labour, and art only aids the laws of nature. The powers of nature precede, the industry of man is added, and from the union of both a noble work arises. People say that subterranean fires cause the water to boil in metallic caldrons far down in the earth. In such matters there are always tales and popular errors. But, in any case, we know the place to be sulphureous. Nevertheless every kind of sweet odour is redolent there — cinnamon, myrrh, cassia, &c.; for devotion there pours out a sweet odour to the Lord : ' Nam suavem Domino devotio reddit odoreni, Et floret saucta religione locus.'" ^ In another place the same author describes the therms at Paris,^ which from the Mount of Mars are conveyed by art even under the river Seine — " E>t ibi therniarum muiiitio maxima quondam, Quce Monti ^Martis ferre ti^olebat opem ; A quo sub terris ad Thermas ars iter aptum, Duxerat, atque tuas, Secana, subius acjiias." Allusions to these hot batlis occur frequently in popular literature. Thus William de Waddington, at the end of the thirteenth century, tells some stories of departed souls having to do their penance by serving the frequenters of the baths. The old French verse may be literally rendered : " There was a priest, his name was Felix ; close by where he lived there was ' Treatise in Rolls Series, p. 40. - Ibid, p. 454. THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 33 a boiler of hot water, where the people used to go to bathe — ' Un hoilinn de chant ewe surdeit, Ou ]a gent se alerent baiuer.' " One clay when he went there a man met him wlio served him just as he liked, but he never asked who he was. This man took off the priest's boots, and he gave him his dress when he rose from the bath, &c. Antl in another place a second story, which Robert Manuyug de Bruune thus puts into English — " For there be-ide in a path Was a wasshyng at an liote bath, 'Tennes' men call that watyr wasshele For many one had thereat their heal. Then the holy bisliuj) St. Gerniyne Came thither to be washed therein," &c.^ The point to be remarked is not so much the legend, though it is instructive that souls shduld In- divinely deputed to serve hot baths, not for their own scalding but for the leathers' cleansing and healing. Such legends, however, presuppose the use by the people of baths, and that, too, with the encouragement given by priests and holy bishops. Consequently, we come incidentally on instances of b;ith-taking in the Middle Ages quite as frequently as in modem times. In the " Life of St. Elphege," written by Osbem, it is said that in 1023, on the vigil of iN'ntecost, King Cnut sent for Arciibisiiop KgehK^tli to London. When his arrival was announced the; king Was just entering the bath— in bidnca roitc descen- ' See " iramllynt; Syiim," by K<>))ert de Hruniic-, udittd for the lii)xburjjh C'hib by Ivl. Kurnivul. jtp. 319, 340. 34 ELUiNDERS. deiiti — and he immediately came out — sine mora de lavacro surgit. Among the list of articles given in a roll preserved in the Queen's Eemembrancer Office are two folding chairs, with washing bowls and a bath. These formed part of the travelling furniture of Joanna, daughter of Edward III., on the occasion of her journey to Bayonne for her marriage. It would be easy but wearisome to multiply such examples. 3. Baths never Discountenanced. Dr. Playfair is perhaps already sufficiently refuted, but let us now see whether the Catholic Church dis- couraged baths ; whether she taught principles on the sanctity of dirtiness, which make the use of the bath an imperfection, if not a sin. And, first, I gladly admit that her doctrine is not that of ancient or modern Pagans. She did not teach that to have had a good wash makes one nearer heaven, like a Protestant clergyman at a Church Congress at Brighton. She knew well that Dives, in spite of baths and fine linen, went to hell; and Lazarus, in spite of the dirt he contracted from lying in rags on the pave- ment, went to heaven. Yet she did not, on that account, teach that dirt is necessary to sanctity or a help to it. The Latin Church — and it is of Europe that Dr. Playfair spoke — counts four great Doctors. The simplest way, therefore, to ascertain the Church's doctrine, since no Council has spoken on the subject, will be to let St. Ambrose and St. Jerome, St. Augustine and St. Gregory speak in her name. St. Augustine tells us how, in his great sorrow at his THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 3 mother's death, he had recourse to a bath, having heard that its Latin name was derived from a Greek word signifying refreshment; but that he found in it no reUef. In the " Book of Confessions," where he relates this, he accuses himself of faults so slight that to others they would be imperceptible, but he does not accuse himself for taking baths, though the instance related was doubtless no solitary one. In the rule he drew up for nuns, he writes : — " Let the washing of the body and the use of baths not be too frequent, but keep to your old regulation of taking them onct a month. But if any sickness demand a more frequent use, let it be done according to the prescription of the doctor ; and even if the sick nun be unwilling, in such matters she must obey her f-uperioress. But, on the other hand, if she wisli it, and it is judged liurtful by the doctor, she must not follow her own inclination." ^ St. Jerome does not write about ordinary civil life, nor about monastic discipline, but in the directions which he gives to consecrated virgins and widows, living in the world, he certainly dissuades them from the luxury of Roman baths, served as they were by eunuchs, and public to all. Even though his counsels were taken in a stricter sense, they can neither be interf>reted as opposed to cleanliness, wliich can be obtained without such means, nor can they be drawn into a general rule, since the saint often says that there is one rule for ascetics and another for seculars. St. Ambrose does not write on this subject ; but in commending the modesty of Susanna, lie finds no la nit. with her for taking a bath St. Gregory writes as Tope, with authority, and lie ' St. Aug. \:\>. 211, Ed. l'.tn. 36 BLUNDERS. falls within the thousand years of evil note. This is his language : — " It has been reported to me that some perverse men have been giving out that no one ought to take a bath on tlie Lord's day. Now, if the bath is taken for mere hixiiry, I do not grant it to be taken on any day. But if it is taken for the require- ments of the body, tlien I do not forbid it even on the Sunday. It is written : ' No man ever hated his own flesh, but nourisheth and cherisheth it ' (Eph. v. 29), and again : ' Make not provision for the llesh in its concupiscences' (lloui. xiii. 14). He, there- fore, who forbids the care of the flesh in its hists, certainly per- mits the care of the flesh in its needs. Surely, if it is a sin to wash the body on the Lord's day, then it must be a sin also to wash the face. But if leave is given for a part of the body, why not for tlie wliole, when it is needful i " ^ This is the most authoritative declaration we have on tlie subject of baths. It is that of a Pope and a Doctor, Surely no one will pretend that the authority of St. Gregory was not great in the Middle Ages. He wrote the above when the old Eoman civilisation was coming to an end ; and he lays down the principles which always governed the Church in her endeavours to reform the world — distinguishing between the Pagan luxury which he reproves, and the natural cleanliness which he commends. Dr. Playfair will, of course, know far better than 1 the history of the practice of medicine, and may there- fore be able to correct me when I suggest that physi- cians rather than priests were the enemies of frequent bathing. The words just quoted from St. Augustine, that the doctor might restrict the use of the bath, can- not perhaps be adduced in proof; but I find in old calendars such medical rules as the following : — ^ St. Greg. Ep. lil). xiii. i. THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 37 " January. — Balnea tutius intres et venam findere cures. " March. — Balnea sunt sana sed qua3 superflua vana. " May. — Scindatur vena sed balnea dentur amoena. " July. — Venam non scindat et balnea cuncta 2Mvescaf. " August. — Balnea non curd nee multum comestio duret." Hence warm baths were held in horror by the facully in the hot months of the year. In the " Liber de Cal- chou, or Kegister of the Abbey of Kelso," there is a " Noble Tretyse agayne the Pestilens." It was written by the " gud phesician, John of Burdouse." When the pestilence reigns men that will be kept from the evil must not only avoid outrageous excess in meat and drink, but " na oyse na bathys, na swete noeht mykill " (neither use baths nor sweat much), " for all this" (says John) " opens the pores of the body and makes tlie venomous air to enter, and destroys the lively spirit." ^ On the other hand, Bishop Eamicus of Arusiens, in Dacia, wrote in Latin a book against the plague, of which more than one translation was printed long before the Eeformation. Mr. Philip Bliss, in giving an account of tliis Ixjok, says : " Among other remedies cleanliness., constant u-ashings, and temperance are strictly enjoined;" and this good bishop, well knowing liow much the well-being of the body depends upon tlie ease of the mind, tells his patients tliat " to lie merry in the lieart is a great remedy for health of the body."- ]>nt this i.s a digression- Let me return to the fatlicrs of the (Jhuich. ' Liber de Calchon (T'nnnatyne Club), ii. 448. ' bliHs'H Ucli<{uia; Hfarninnie, p. 447, note. 38 BLUNDERS. 4. Apparent Bxcejytions. No doubt, at the same time, Christian writers, while allowing and even praising cleanliness, have extolled those who, in certain exceptional circumstances, have endured dirt as a penance of the flesh. Let this not be misunderstood. They have never praised the love of dirt for its own sake. They have never praised the endurance of dirt from sloth and immortification. They have never recommended neglect of the person as a general mortification. But they exhort Christians, espe- cially those who lead an ascetic life, not to be too deli- cate and fastidious. They have praised some who, by an exceptional impulse, and. living apart from others, have mortified their flesh after this fashion, as in the case of St. Hilarion and Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre, and certain hermits and recluses. The case of St. Thomas of Canterbury, mentioned by Dr. Playfair, was an exceptional one. His biographers tell us of his luxurious habits in his youth ; and they relate that when he changed all this, after being made bishop, the weakness of his stomach still obliged him to live on delicate food and wine. Hence he was not judged to be an austere man, even by those who lived with him ; and when they found at his martyrdom that his body was covered with a hair shirt, which had remained long unchanged, they were filled with admiration at the circumstance, which showed both his real spirit of mortification, and the humility with which he had so long concealed it. But against this singular example let me set another one, also belonging to English history. St. Thomas, as THE SANCTITY OF DIRT. 39 I have said, had ])eeu broiiL^dit up in the hixury of the court, but St. "Wilfrid had learut monastic discipline from his youth. His biographer, (Eddi, also a monk, relates that he not only cherished moral purity, but that '' every night both in winter and sunmier it was his custom to bathe his body in holy water, until Pope John counselled him to discontinue the practice in his old age." ^ I am far from pretending that his was a typical case, but it deserves to be cited in proof of the sanctity of cleanliness quite as much as that of St. Thomas in proof of the sanctity of dirt. The truth is that cleanness and dirt are matters morally indifferent — that is to say, their moral goodness or Dadness depends upon their use. In the case of St. Wilfrid great cleanness of body was cultivated, not without some mortification in winter, in honour of chastity and in honour of the priesthood. In the case of St. Thomas discomfort of the body was endured to chastise over-sensitiveness and former indulgence, and also in honour of the priesthood. Tlie endurance of dirt could only be a virtue as fast- ing is a virtue. Just as fasting presupposes the natural (lc.>?ire of food and the denial of tliis appetite,so endurance of filth presupposes the natural desire of cleanliness. It may be indeed said that many persons do not care to be clean, and are dirty from sloth. I admit it ; l»iiL I deny that such dirtiness was ever praised as a virtue in priest or layman, monk or hermit. ' '* Corpti8 in aqua benedicta et sanctificata nocturnis horis iiule- Hin^nter a.'«tntk c'liitainH much infuniintion iiboiit tnonaHtic hfitiis, ♦ English (Juiitl-*, by Tmilmin Smith, p. 231. D 50 BLUNDERS. of dirt frum imperfect (liaiiiiijj;e or scanty water supply. That is a scientific question whicli I leave to scientific men. I contest merely the connection between the Catholic religion and the prevalence of dirt. As one whose work has been for years among the poorest and dirtiest of the dwellers in our large cities, I have long been convinced that no small portion of the drunken- ness of the poor is the result of filthy occupations and squalid homes. Knowing, therefore, how gladly the Catholic clergy will welcome every measure of sanitary or moral reform, I am pained at seeing the Catholic Church treated as a foe, when she has been, and is still, a most cordial ally. ESSAY III. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. There are few characters of Shakspere's creation that cause more genuine mirth than Dogberry and Verges, the foolish constables in the play, Much Ado about Notliinfj. It is not so nmch their stupidity, their Ijlundering, or their self-conceit that are ludicrous, as their seriousness and unsuspiciousness of the fun they create. Now, it has often seemed to me that Protes- tants miss some of the very best literary fun in the language because they are not aware how many Dog- berries there are among historians. Just as a foreigner, imperfectly acquainted with our language, and assisting at a performance of Shakspere's play, might well catcli the wit of Benedick and Beatrice, while he would only wonder at the laughter caused by the dialogue of the constables, so Protestants, from an imjierfect acquaint- ance with Catliolic matters, may "miss tlic fun," when respectable autliors blunder, with ludicrous gravity and with perfect good faith, over some tech- nical Catholic phrase or historical allusion. H()W(!ver, I am nut here concerned with Dogberries, but with Dogberryisms. I am not going to record the l)lunders of silhy authors, but the foolish slips of clevei- iind learned writers, not mere slips, but foolisji ;iiid faulty slips, the ininisbment of undue trust in ih.ir own cleverness aiul learning. BLUNDERS. I. Indulgence to Sin. Here, then, is a fair sample of Dogberryism : — A work well got up, and of considerable pretension, ap]>eared in 1870, on the "History and Antiquities of C'ttventry." The author, Mr. Poole, thus writes regard- ing the ]\liracle-riays of the Middle Ages: "These sacred mysteries were introduced at Chester some time before they were got up at Coventry, and it is alleged that IJanulf Higden, a Benedictine monk, had to visit Eome three times before he could get the Pope's permission to have the plays done in English. It also appears that by this time the head of the Church had come to the conviction that the effect of these performances was far different from that hoped for on their first introduction — the religious edification of the people; for the moral deterioration resulting therefrom had become so manifest, that a thousand days' pardon from the I'ope, and forty days' pardon from the bishop of the diocese, was necessary to wipe out the sin of attending them. But the evil had gone too far to be jiut down, and the only alternative was the granting of pardons or indulgences to excuse an offence so habitual that the temptation to its commission was irresistible." ^ This was written by an educated man, and a pains- taking and generally competent historian, and yet Mr. I'oole must not be offended if I say that I can find no better illustration of his attack on the citizens of Chester tlian that of Dogberry against the villains arrested in Messina. ' Covc-ntry, History ami Antiquities, p. 38. A DOZEN DOGBEKRY-ISMS. 53 Don Pedro. — " Officers, what offence have these men done ? " Doyhcrrij. — " jMany, sir, they have committed false report; moreover, they have spoken untruths; secon- darily, they are slanders ; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady ; thirdly, they have verified unjust things ; and, to conclude, they are lying knaves." Do7i Pedro. — "Whom have you offended, masters, that you are thus bound to your answer? This learned constable is too cunning to be understood. What's your offience ? " Yes ! what was the offence ? Mr. Poole, reading of indulgences, feels sure there must have been offences ; and finding the indulgences granted to those who frequented the miracle-plays, he concludes that the miracle plays were the " habitual offence and irresis- tible temptation." I cannot help conjecturing that the historian of Coventry must have had in his mind the famous Coventry pageant of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, and that he has thrown back, in his mind, the riot and indecencies of this entertainment, of Pro- testant origin, upon tlie pious and edifying represen- tations which were the delight of Catholic times. Catholics, at least, do not require to be told that, though indulgences sup])ose ofrences to have been com- mitted, yet they are neither given for their connnission nor in palliation of them, but are granted to encourage works of charity and piety, among which was reckoned assisting at a Scriptural pageant. Dogberry might, indeed, have brought a true chai-ge against the auth(jrities in Coventry, of late years, that they had " behed a lady" as well as a nobhjman, for most assuredly tlie amiable and holy Le(jfric, husband 54 BLUNDERS. ni" ihe L;ulv Goik'ilu ur Godiva, never exacted from her the abominable sacrifice which the modern pageantry commemorated, ami which Tennyson's poem has so marvellously depicted.^ As to the miracle-plays, they represented the Life and Passion, Death and Triumph (if our ])ivine Kedeemer, the joys and sorrows of His blessed mother, or other pious incidents in the legends of the saints. For being present at these representa- tions indulgences were granted; not to all, but to those only who rendered themselves capable of the grant. .\iul for this it was required that the candidate should confess liis sins with true contrition and purpose of amendment, make restitution of any ill-gotten goods, seek reconciliation with any whom he had offended, grant pardon to his enemies, and, in a word, set his whole life in order. It is now, and was then, and ever has been, an undisputed maxim among theologians, and a public doctrine impressed upon the people, that no indulgence could be gained by any who were not already reconciled to God — not, as Mr. Poole supposes, obstinately bent on satisfying their own sinful desires, Itut, on the contrary, penitent for past sins, and resolved on a virtuous life. The indulgence was a remission of the temporal penalty, still, perhaps, due to those for- given sins. Surely it is unworthy of an historian, writing at the present day, to repeat exploded fables originated by we know not what calumniator, in the heat of controversy two centuries and more ago. Even ' See Freeman's Old Knglish History, p. 278. He calls it a " silly c^lry." It is first mentioned by Roger of Wendover, but Peeping T"'m is of po8t-Reform;ition origin, as is the pageant. Lady Godiva denuded herself of her jewels and personal property to endow the f'lmrch. An expression inisund'rstood may have been the origin of the legend. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 55 Luther, who, in the most unmeasured language, poured out contumely against indulgences, never pretended they were permissions to commit sin. He denied that they have any value at all, and asserted that they were fictions and devices to raise money ; but there he stopped. The nearest approach to the later calumnies which can be found in the writings of Luther is the following, which it may be worth while to give, both because of the answer it elicited, and because it shows how very different were the objections of those who knew the workings of Catholic doctrine and discipline from the dreams of those who only read of them in books. Luther writes in his Defence, or " Assertion," of the articles which Leo X. had condemned : " Even if in- dulgences were anything, what would they be but remissions of good works ? For, are they not supposed to remit works of satisfaction ? And what are works of satisfaction but good works and good sufferings? So tlmt, even thus, if indulgences were really something, they would be more pernicious than now that they are nothing. What more wicked fraud, then, than to remit men's good works, and to grant them freedom to be indolent, under pretext of piety, only to suck money out of them ? " Luther understood the Catholic doc- trine that, when the guilt of sin has been remitted, there may be, and generally are, relics and penalties which must be cleansed away in this life or the next. He knew how this doctrine was urged U) induce men to fast, to i»ray, to give alms, to do works of mercy, to deny themselves and be patient in afflictions. Since, therefore, it was also taught that an indulgence remits a part at least of such penalties, Luther, with his usual 5') BLUNDERS. s()i)histic rhetoric, tries to set one doctrine in opposition to liie other, that he may ridicule them both. But of course it is a very diH'erent thing to pretend, as Luther does, that an indulgence makes Catholics less austere, or less fruitful in works of mercy than they other- wise would be, or at least ought to be, and to assert, as some I'rotestants have done, that an indulgence is a direct perudssion to sin, a license to do wrong without its being wrong, or, as Mr. Poole seems to think, a tolerance of sin, and an attempt to make it not less wicked but less penal. I fear that the exposure of Dogberry's blunder is in\ulving me in a serious discourse instead of a merry laugli. But, in truth, while I cannot but smile at such curious stumbling over words, my heart is sad to think that prejudice, not stupidity, has caused the stumbling. I would fain say : " Goodman Verges, sir, speaks a little off the matter . , . but in faith honest." But is it honest to write about Catholic matters without having an even elementary knowledge of them — a knowledge which may be obtained in every Catholic manual, and perhaps in every respectable Protestant cyclopedia ? Should any Protestant inquirer suspect that the doctrine on indulgences has been purified by the Council of Trent because of the outcry of the Eefor- mation, I assure him that the practice indeed was reformed, but the doctrine taught now was always taught. In proof of this I will quote the answer to Lutlier of one who was his contemporary, and whose noljle freedom of speech, whose saintly life and death, suffered for conscience, put him far above the suspicion of palliating evil. This witness is John Fisher, Bishop of liochester, whose zeal was aroused by Luther's A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 57 mendacity, and who, in 1523, published a reply to the work of Luther from which I have just quoted. He first reminds the German reformer of his inconsistency ; since by his new doctrine about justification he gives a plenary and universal indulgence from all temporal penalties whatever, making every pardoned soul free from every debt to the justice of God. If, then, Luther's argument against the use or grant of indul- gences were good, it would tell tenfold against himself. But Fislier answers more directly that the object of the Pope is not to make Christians slothful in good works, but, on the contrary, more alert in the service of God, from finding themselves so mercifully freed from debt. And lest this should be called an empty theory, he appeals to experience. " Indulgences," he says,^ "are never granted except in favour of some good work which has the form of piety. "^ Now, who- ever is penitent for his past sins, is in that state of charity in which he is capable of merit ; and, therefore, when he undertakes, in such a state, the prescribed work for the glory of God he will merit an increase of charity. Besides this, it must be remembered that the hope of gaining an indulgence causes many to raise their souls to God, and to prepare themselves to gain it by a good repentance and confession, which they would not have done had tlioy not liccn ui^vd by the grant of tlie indulgence. And, again, I lie renewal ut' 1 AssertioniH Lutheranse Confutatio, fol. 90 (<(i. 1523). ^ Ho mi-atiH tliat thi; work nftiuired as a comlitioii for gaining the indulgencu ninst bu good in itself, aB taking part in a crusade against the Turks, anHJHting at a miracle-play, and the like. But as these works were not neccMsarilj good, Ijut might be badly done, he sayH they must at least have the form of piety, the candidate for the indul- gence BUppl} ing the substance. 58 BLUNDERS. t';iith in God, which the gaining of indulgences requires, is no slight spiritual fruit. Christ promised to St. Peter and his successors that they should loose sinners from every bond.^ A sinner, conscious to himself of his fearful sins, and knowing what penalties he must have incurred, draws near and asks from the Sovereign routiff the pardon which Christ has authorised him to give, and believes without the slightest doubt in Christ's word. Such faith, when joined to charity in the sacrament of penance, will not only insure him remission of pam, but a large grant of grace from God." Fisher then goes on to show that the gaining of indul- gences leads to joy, to peace, to longanimity, patience, benignity, and all the other fruits of the Holy Ghost. And if these fruits are not found in all, if many abuse these pardons, in that they think more lightly, perhaps, of sin now that indulgences are so commonly granted, and the old canonical penances remitted, this is merely what may be said of the clemency of God. The ingra- titude of sinners who abuse that clemency is greatly to he deplored, but God's clemency must not, therefore, be abolished or denied. This is what the martyred Fisher thought of indulgences at the beginning of the sixteenth century ; and that the priests and people of Chester and Coventry were well instructed in the nature of true repentance, Mr. Poole may assure himself if he will study in Wilkins' " Concilia " the treatise on the sacrament of penance, which Alexander Stavenby, bishop of those cities in the thirteenth century, had drawn up for the use of his diocesans. * Matt. xvi. 19. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 59 2. A Critic at Fault. Let me pass to a second example of Dogberryism. The numerous writings on antiquarian subjects of Mr. Thomas Wright, ]\I.A., F.S.A., are extensively known, and in general deserve their reputation. It is only when he has to speak of the Catholic Church that he is bitter and unfair. Yet in the passage I am about to quote he is not led astray by bitterness, but blunders from self-sufficiency. In 1842, Mr. Wright was employed by the Council of the lioyal Society of Literature to compose his "Biographia Britannica Literaria." It was to be a standard work, a work of reference, the leisurely pro- duction of a scholar superintended by other scholars. (Ii\ang, then, an account of St. Aklhelm, Abliot of Mahnsbury and Bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, Mr. Wright discourses as follows : " Aldhelm's writings, popular as they once were, exhibit a very general want of good taste. For an example of this we need only cite one of the embellishments of his metrical treatise, I)e Laude Virginum, where he tells the story of St. Scholastica, how, when she had failed by her arguments and persuasions in prevailing on her brother to embrace Christianity, she fell on her knees in prayer by his side : how a fearful storm immediately burst over the house, and how the unV)elieving l)rother was convinced by the miracle. A l)elter poet would have dwelt upon the terrors of the storm — on its eflect upon the house which held Scholastica and her brother — and on the finalins which the roaring of the tliundci' and l In- flashing of the forked b'ghtnings struck inlo his heart. 6o BLUNDERS. ]'.ut Aldhelin loses sight of his immediate subject in liis eagerness to describe a real storm. It is true he tells us there was wind, nnd thunder and lightning, and that they affected both heaven and earth ; but he linds out that there was rain also, and that the earth was moistened, and he goes out of his way to calculate its effects in swelling; the rivers and tiooding the distant valleys, all which circumstances have nothing to do with the virgin saint or her unbelieving kinsman. Aldhelm certainly describes a storm, but it is not a storm made for the occasion. The lines taken by themselves are comparatively a favourable specimen of the poet's talents." ^ I will not say that the above is comparatively a favourable specimen of Mr. Wright's critical talents, but rather — to borrow Dogberry's phrase — that it is " Hat burglary as ever was committed." " Unbelieving brother!" "Arguments and persuasions to embrace Christianity ! " Why, the brother in question is no other than the famous St. Benedict, at the time d this history an old man, and an abbot renowned for sanctity. As to the storm, overilowing streams and impassable roads had everything to do with the occasion, and were the very answer to St. Scholastica's prayer, whereas " roaring of thunder and flashing of forked lightnings," which Mr. Wright desiderates, were no more the sub- stance of the miracle than " qualms of conscience " were its effects. For the sake of those of my readers who may be unfamiliar with the life of St. Benedict, I will transcribe from the " Dialogues of St. Gregory the Great" the history of which St. Aldhelm made a metrical paraphrase : — ' Biographia Britannica Literaria, vol. i. p. 45. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 6l " The sister of St. Benedict, called Scholastica, dedi- cated from her infancy to our Lord, used once a year to come and visit her brother. To whom the man of God went, not far from the gate, to a place that did belong to the abbey, there to give her entertainment. And she, coming thither on a time, according to her custom, her venerable brother, with his monks, went to meet her, where they spent the whole day in the praises of God and spiritual talk, and when it was almost night they supped together. And as they were yet sitting at the table, talking of devout matters, and darkness came on, the holy nun, his sister, entreated him to stay there all night, that they might spend it in discoursing of the joys of heaven. But by no persuasion would he agree unto that, saying that he might not by any means tarry all night out of his abbey. At that time the sky was so clear that no cloud was to be seen. The nun, re- ceiving this denial of her brother, joining her hands together, laid them upon the table, and so, bowing down her head upon them, she made her prayers to Almighty God, and lifting her head from the table, there fell suddenly such a tempest of lightning and thundering, and such abundance of rain, that neither venerable liennet nor his monks that were with him could put their head out of the door. The man of God, seeing that he could not, by reason of such tlmnder and light- ning and great alnmdance of rain, return back to his abbey, Ijcgan to be heavy, and to com[)lain of his sister, saying: 'God forgive you, what have you done?' To whom she answered: '1 desiied you to stay and you would not hear me ; I have desired our good Lord and He ha.s vouch.safed to grant my iietition ; wherefore, if you can now depart, in God's name return to your 62 BLUNDERS. monastery, and leave me alone.' And so by that means they watched all night, and with spiritual and heavenly talk cUd mutually comfort one another."^ It woidd seem, then, that Mr. Wright's criticism of St. Aldhelm's taste, however just in principle, was singularly misapplied ; for St. Aldhelm has carefully avoided the snare, which might have entangled many a modern poet, of dilating on the terrific peals of thunder, and has confined himself to that which con- cerned his subject, the downpour of rain and the swollen streams. It need scarcely be said that the poet does not enter into the same detail as St. Gregory, otherwise Mr. Wright could not have made the mistake he did. The story was so well known to his readers that St. Aldhelm only treated it by allusions.. He does not give the name of the brother, yet he calls h.m\ fidus f rater, her faithful, or at least her trusted brother, and certainly says nothing of a nature to suggest Mr. Wright's strange imagination, that he was an unljeliever refusing to em- lirace Christianity. He says also that the story of St. Scholastica's triumphant prayer had attained a world- wide renown. Why, then, did not Mr. Wright, before penning his criticism, make some endeavour to ascer- tain the original form of the story ? Why did he not read some life of St. Scholastica ? If he had consulted P)Utler's " Lives of the Saints," he would have found the story related almost as in St. Gregory. But no! Had it been a legend of Venus or Diana, of Proser- pine, or of Friga — in a word, of heathen goddess or nymph, Greek or Roman, Celtic or Scandinavian — he would have carefully verified every allusion, he would ^ St. Gfpgory's Dialogues, book ii. ch. 33. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 63 have been ashamed to be found tripping in pagan mythology. But it does not occur to him to inquire into the legend of a saint. He needs no apparatus of learning. He can interpret everything by intuition, if, indeed, he should deign to interpret it at all, which is almost too great a condescension.^ o* 3. A Visionary TJieory. This is the way in which Catholic hagiology is gene- rally treated, and hence comes Dogberryism. Take the following passage from a grave and very learned work, dedicated by permission 10 her Majesty the Queen, " The Saxons in England," by Mr. Kemble. The author has been discussing with much erudition and ingenuity the religious belief and superstitions of the pagan Saxons. With these he compares the doctrines which prevailed after their conversion to Christianity. He speaks with great severity and disgust of certain visions of the pains of the next world, seen l)y a man named Drithelm, and which are related by Venerable Bede in his " Ecclesi- astical History." Hereupon Mr. Kemble philosophises as follows : — " No doubt the distempered ravings of monks, made half-mad by inhuman austerities, un- natural restriction, and wretched themes of contem- plation, would in themselves be of little wortli. We can comprcliend tlie visions of a St. Francis of Sales, an Ignatiu.s Loyola, a I'cter the Hermii,a Santa Teresa, or even more readily those of a Drithelm or a Madame Guyon ; but how shall we understand the record of them * Since writinis' the above, I find that Linganl, in hin " Anj^'lo-.Saxoii Chiirch," ban calltd attention to Mr. Wright'8 blund'-r. It is not im- pr(il)ahle that T have been anticipated in other inatanctJB. But of tlii.s I aiij ignorant. 64 BLUNDERS. liy a Bede or a Feiielon?"^ Mr. Kemble's meaning seems to be, that we Protestants, freed from supersti- tion as we are, or we men of literature and philosophy, can comprehend any mental aberrations of crazy monks and nuns, so that when we read the visions of a St. Francis of Sales, a St. Ignatius, and the rest, we at once render ourselves an account of the wretched origin tif such phantasmagoria. But there is a subject which almost baliles our philosophy — the shocking power which Catholicity exerts of warping minds otherwise intelligent, such as those of Bede and Fenelon, until they become the dupes of fanatics, and record their ravings with respect. Before examining Mr. Kemble's instances, let me say that what fills me with wonder is the power of prejudice and self-conceit, to reduce writers like Kemble, Hallam, or Macaulay to Dogber- ryise whenever they try to construct brilliant theories about Catholic faith or history. " What an array of names has Mr. Kemble here drawn out! What wide reading, what penetration, what philosophy he dis- plays!" will be the reflection of many a reader. And yet there is scarcely a name on the list which does not show that Mr. Kemble was writing at random, what St. Paul calls " the vain babbling of those who understand neither the things they say nor whereof they affirm." "WTiat does he mean by choosing, out of the long calen- dar of Catholic saints, St. Francis of Sales, the accom- jilished nobleman and saintly Bishop of Geneva, as an example of a monk driven half-mad ? St. Ignatius certainly had revelations, but it was on his first con- version to God, and not as the result of a long course of monastic disciijline ; and they had far more to do * Kemble's Saxons in England, vol. i. ch. xii. p. 386. A DOZEN DOGBEERY-ISMS. 65 with the life of our Lord than the pains of hell. Peter the Hermit is famous for rousing Europe by his report of infidel atrocities, not for visions of the other world. And as to Drithelm, whose visions were the occasion of all this theorising, alas for theory! for when he had the visions related by Bede he was not a monk at all, but a pious layman, a married man, and the father of a family.^ I may add, that any one who should seek, by a careful reading of Venerable Bede, really to com- prehend Catholic matters, instead of thinking that he already comprehended them, would find that the austere monks and nuns whom he commemorates are all re- markable for their sweet and hopeful spirit. Their favourite subject of conversation and contemplation is the kingdom of heaven, just as we have seen in the interview of St. Benedict and St. Scholastica. Sweet music and angelic voices are heard by their brethren and sisters as they pass out of this world. Our Pro- testant historians are free to call these contemplations dreams, and the music high-wrought fancy; but, at least, they are not " distempered ravings," nor did they arise from " wretched tliemes of contempla- tion." It is, indeed, a singular proof how carelessly Mr. Kemble must have studied his facts before spinning his theory, that while the monks, who practised "in- human austerities" and the rest, are represented by Bede as rapt in hcaveidy .j(;ys, the revelations of future wrath arc repoited by liim to have been granted to pious laymen or to profligate .sinners. One of these latter was an officer of King Coenred, who during hi.s life had always refu.sed confes.sion and amendment of ' Bede's EccleMiiiatical History, book v. cli. 12. E 66 BLUNDERS. life, even at the kind's repeated instance,^ and at his death sees fearful visions and dies in despair. Another example is thus related by Bede : — " I knew a brother myself — would to God I had not known him — whose name I could mention if it were necessary, and who resided in a noble monastery, but lived himself ignobly. He was frequently reproved by the brethren and elders of the place, and aduionished to adopt a more legular life ; and though he would not give ear to them, he was long patiently borne with, on account of his usefulness in temporal works, for he was an excellent carpenter. He was much addicted to drunkenness and other pleasiu'es of a lawless life, and more used to stop in his workhouse day and night than to go to church to sing, and pray, and hear the Word of Life with his brethren. For which reason it happened to him, accord- ing to the saying that he who will not willingly and liumbly enter the door of the church, will certainly enter the door of hell against his will, and be condemned for ever. For he, getting sick, and being reduced to ex- tremity, called the brethren, and with much lamenta- tion, and like one damned, began to tell them that he saw hell ojjen, and Satan at the bottom thereof, as also Caiaphas and the others that slew our Lord, by Him delivered up to avenging flames. ' In whose neigh- bourhood,' said he, ' I see a place of eternal perdition provided for me, miserable wretch ! ' The brothers, hearing these words, began seriously to exhort him that he should repent even then whilst he was in the flesh. He answered in despair, ' I have no time now to change my course of life, when I have myself seen my judgment passed.' Whilst uttering these words he died without ^ Bede, book v. ch. J 3. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 67 having received the sacred Viaticuiu, and liis body was buried in the remotest part of the monastery ; nor did any dare to say masses, or sing psalms, or even to pray for him." 1 How different is all this fiom the theory of Mr. Kemble. The \4sion of hell is seen, not as the result of " inhuman austerities and unnatuial restrictions," but of a life which knew neither ausleiity nor restraint; not by a mind crazed with " wretched themes of con- templation," but by a man who shunned the church and neglected the Word of Life ; so that the reflection of Venerable Bede, after relating this history, is the very reverse of what occurred to the modern writer. He remarks that whereas the bright soul of St. Stephen saw the heavens open, and the glory of God revealed, the dark soul of the sinner saw the darkness of hell. Such critics as Mr. AVright and Mr. Kemble would do well to remember a saying of St. Jerome about Vic- torinus, a famous heathen rhetorician, who in his old age became a Christian, and thoreui)on wrote a com- mentary on St. Paul's Epistles, deferring to these, St. Jerome says that, engaged as Victor! nus had been all his life in secular literature, he was little acquainted with Holy Scripture; "and no man, however eloquent, can discourse well on matters of which he kncnvs nothing." ^ Dogberry was of a contrary opinion : " To be a well-favoured man," he says, " is the gift of fortune, but to write and read conies by nalun;." ^ This view is shared by many as far as regards (';iih(»lic matters. ' Plccleaiastical lIJBtory, book v. cli. 14. - " Neiriot>o.scit co bene flisimtare rmod nesciat," S. Ilieron, I'rivf. Cdih. in Lp. ad (Jul, ^ Act iii., scent- 3. 6S BLUNDERS. 4. Aricicnt Tales. If Dogberry does not shine as a critic of style, when his critical faculty is found " beating the air," neither is he a Daniel on the judgment-seat, when he passes sentence on men without weighing facts. Shakspere had, no doubt, certain justices of the peace in his mind when he described the trial of Conrade and Borachio : — Dogberry. — " We are now to examination these men." Verges. — " And we must do it wisely." Dogberry. — " We will spare for no wit, I warrant you ; here's that [touching his forehead] shall drive some of tliem to a non com." ^ To ourselves, both the self-conceit and the method of conducting the examination are rather a parable of certain literary men dealing' with Catholic saints, or popes, or religious orders. I am sorry, indeed, to find Washington Irving guilty of a Dogberryism. The affec- tion I bear him would make me hide this slip of his, but that the lesson I would enforce is derived, not from the blunders of the ignorant and foolish, but from the prejudices of the otherwise amiable and well informed. Who has visited Newstead Abbey in Nottingham- shire, during the last half century, without recalling the lines in which its noble owner. Lord Byron, sought to palliate his own bold immorality by a sneer at the hypocritical immorality of its former occupancs ? " Mona.t at Drink water, but "one Drinkwater." * Iiitroductiou to vol. iii. p. cxxii. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 77 very insufficient record of his occupations or his aspira- tions. I can see no proof that the Duke of Buckingham had a passion for shrines, unless a traveller's bills prove that he has a passion for hotels. The duke was con- stantly moving about, and was entertained at various monasteries, which in those days were the hotels of travelling nobles no less than houses of relief for the neighbouring poor. There is no entry in the steward's accounts of payment of expenses incurred by the duke's hosts. The least, therefore, he could do was to make offerings at the shrines. He did not select these and send messengers to them on pilgrimage. In that case there would have been some ground for Mr. Brewer's remark regarding the " passion for shrines." This, however, is a mere difference of opinion, nor am I finding any fault with Mr. Brewer's view. But his asser- tion about the idiots is a different matter. What riarht has he to say that " idiots were regarded with supersti- tious reverence ? " This is a pure assumption, a reckless assumption, to account for an abbot keeping an idiot. 1 have no doubt whatever that the idiot was the profes- sional fool ; but were these idiots mere objects of charity and compassion, they were certainly in no other sense objects of reverence ; and in that case not superstition, but " religion pui'e and undefiled," would have been exercised in their relief. The entries in the duke's accounts on this subject are as follow. In 1 508 he gives '* to an idiot " of the abbey of Glastonbury 2od. In 1520, "To one Drink- water, an idiot, at tlie vie.s, 20d. To an idiot of the abbot of Chichester, 4d ; and to another like fool of Sir Edward Wadain, 4d." 'i'lie words then, fool and idiot, whatever their meaning, were at that time interchange- 7S BLUNDERS. fil)le. The idiot Drinkwater, " at the vies," receives five times as much as the other fools. " The Vies" was the ancient form of the town Devizes ; but I should conjec- ture here another sense. The Vice was the clown or buffoon of the old moralities. Perhaps, then, the word may here mean a masque, for in January 1521 we find the entry, " To certain Frenchmen and two French- women playiuof before the duke the Passion of Our Lord hj a vise, 40s." Hence the idiot was one who could take a part in a play. Even in our own legal language an idiot is not one entirely destitute of reason, but one who is void of sense, judgment, and self-control from his birth. He may be otherwise smart and witty enough. A man might therefore play the idiot and be a merry fellow. IMr. Oliphant remarks that tlie word idiot was in the earliest copy of the " Cursor Mundi," but was afterwards changed into " fole." ^ Yet the older use of the word remained, for in the will of T. Goldesburgh (now in Somerset House), of the very year of Buckingham's death, 1 521, there occurs the following item: "To Richard Carlton my Idyot ; " ^ who was clearly the family buffoon. Addison also used the word in the same sense. In the 47th number of the Spcdator he writes : " It was formerly the custom for every great house in England to keep a tame fool dressed in petti- coats, that the heir of the family might have an oppor- tunity of joking upon him, and diverting himself with his absurdities. For the same reason idiots are still in request in most of the courts of Germany, where there is * Old and Middle Knglish, p. 567. * Information receive(l by the courtesy of Dr. Murray, editor of the Philological Dictionary. A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 79 not a prince of any great magnificence who lias not two or three dressed, distinguished, undisputed fools in his retinue, whom the rest of the courtiers are always breaking their jests upon." Mr. Brewer, then, has mistaken a professional idiot, a butt of raillery, for an object of compassion. This is only a slip ; but to invent a superstition and charge it offhand upon the Church by way of an easy explana- tion can hardly be qualified as an innocent mistake. 7. Edigious Tolerance. Who would imagine that anything deserving the name of Uogberryism could be found among the writ- ings of Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy ? If there is any name that we connect with vast erudition and almost unvarying accuracy, it is his. I should say, however, that the following illustration belongs to the early years of Sir Thomas. It was in 1835 that he pub- lished for the Government the " Rotuli Litterarum I'atentium." Among these is one of King John in 1 20 1: "Sciatisnos dedisse licentiam I'etroBuillo trans- ferendi se ad quamvoluit religionem" — i.e., of entering any religious order whatsoever, or of passing from his own to any other. This is the ordinary use of the word religio. Yet Sir Thomas Hardy must certainly have understood it in the modern sense of religion when, in his Introduction,^ he selected it as a curious illustration of " reli(jlov.s tolerance." John would probably have had no objection to his subjects becoming Jews or i\Ioham- raedans. I le is said to have contemplated sucli a course himself, and to liave been in communication with tho ' Rotuli Litt. Pat, Introd, to vol. i., purt i, ji. xvii. 8o BLUNDERS. Emir of Morocco. Yet this was certainly not the licence granted to Peter. In the same year, 1835, the Rev. W. L. Bowles, M.R.S.L., published the " Annals and Antiquities of Lacock Abbey." Having to explain the words of a monastic rule forbidding those who make profession in the order "to pass to another religion," Mr. Bowles makes the following reflection: "Thus in the Church of Rome a still stronger term was in use for different monastic societies than in these days of modern tolera- tion is even applied to the sects into which the Christian Church is now divided," The meaninar of this reflection apparently is that Catholics were so bigoted that, though they could not attain uniformity, they applied stronger terms of reproach to varieties of discipline than Christians now do to the utmost diver- gence in doctrine. Anglicans would not say that Scotch Presbyterians are of a different religion from themselves ; yet Augustinians would have said this of Benedictines. Now, even in 1835, Mr. Bowles should have known that the various " religions " or religious rules and orders were approved in the Church, though it was not thought advisable that members should run from one to another on light pretexts, any more than the commanders in our own army approve of frequent changes from regiment to regiment. 8. Serving at Mass. A blunder nearly akin to the preceding is made by Canon Jenkins in his " History of the Diocese of Can- terbury." He quotes Cardinal Pole's inquiry, " Whether there is, in every parish church, at least one clergyman A DOZEN DOGBERRY-ISMS. 8i serving at the mass in a clean and decent surplice." From this he deduces " the completeness of the destruc- tion of the vestments and instruments of the Roman service " during the reign of Edward VI. " When we read how vast a number of the ancient vest- ments were still in existence in 1552, this visitation question, only four years after, seems suggestive of a sad destruction."^ The facts were, no doubt, as Canon Jeffries states ; but, unless I entirely misread him, he implies that the " clergyman serving at mass " is the parish priest, and that he says mass in a surplice in default of other vest- ments. Otherwise how can the absence of vestments be deduced from this ordinance ? Now, the cleric " serving at mass " — i.e., assisting the celebrant priest, was merely the parish clerk, having the tonsure, or at most the minor orders, and his dress was cassock and surplice. Assuredly Cardinal Pole never gave leave to any priest to say mass without alb, maniple, stole, and chasuble. The difficulty at that time was to get servers who could repeat the Latin responses. The mass had been interrupted since the death of Henry, and the tradition had been lost. Therefore in another place the Cardinal orders the children to be taught to serve mass at school. From a somewhat similar misconception a very pains- taking antifpiary, seeing that a foundation was made in the time of Mary for the support of "the priest and minister," i.e., the mass-sei-ver, thinks that the founder was hesitating between the Catholic term i^t'^cd fi^nd the ' HistiTV of DioceBe of Ciinterbury (S.l'.C.K.), p. 2 r. 376. 2 P. 227. A SAINT TEANSFORMED. 99 of St. Hugh's character, mentions that " ascetic though he was, he thought it far better that a priest should break his fast before communion tlian be tasked beyond his strength in the performance of his functions." Evi- dently the thing is already growing. Mr. Mullinger's statement is far wider than Mr. Perry's. The latter limits the breakfasting to " hot weather " and " great Church ceremonials," the former allows a general discre- tion to the priests to take care not to overtax their strength, and assures them St. Hugh was quite decided on the matter. He thought it " far better " to say mass with a full stomach than to endanger health. And this, too, " ascetic though he was ; " as if the fast of asceticism which is undergone in order to subdue the body to the soul were identical with the fast of reverence which is prescribed for communicants. And yet the account given of St. Hugh's opinions and con- duct, both by Mr. ]\Iullinger and Mr. Perry, is as truly " misleading fiction" as anything of Scott's, though certainly not so " brilliant." What Adam, the con- temporary biographer of St. Hugh, says, is this — not that the saint ever dispensed a priest to offer mass, or either a priest or layman to receive communion after breaking fast, for the saint had neither will nor power to do this, except for viaticum — but that he allowed or obliged occasionally his assistant priests, deacons, or subdeacons to serve at mass after a slight refec- tion, but of course without couuniinicating. First, I will give an exact translation of Adam's words, and then explain whatever may be obscure to modern readers. *' Vcrv oftfii " (h(; nnyH) " in tin- <^re;it heatP of suniincr In- lorccd Bome of the luiiiislera of the altar to laate u liltlu bread and w ine. loo BLUNDERS. For he fearoil lest, bein;^ overcome by tlie heat, llie fast, and the labour, tliey might not, after sucli oft-repeated circuits (as tliey make) in the dedication ofchurclies, be able to assist and minister to the celebrant of tlie solemnities of the mass, without danger. And when he perceived that, aftt-r having at his order tasled bread, some of them felt a horror and a dread of touching during the canon the sacred chalice, or the Lord's winding-sheet (i.e., the corporal), he reproveil them as men of little faith and discretion, who had neither learnt to obey a superior without hesitation nor could jienetrate the reason of a prudent command (circumspectae jussionis)." * Several tliinjrs must be at once evident to anv one who considers aitcntivcly what is here said. First, those who broke their fast were not the " celebrants of masses," they were " some of the ministers of the altar," which is especially the name given to deacons and sub- deacons, or to the priests who take the functions of deacons and sub-deacons at mass. And though the celebrant may also be called the minister of the altar, vet here the ministers are distinp'uished from the cele- brant and have to assist him. Next, it is quite clear that they were not communicants. Otherwise the autlior, instead of relating their dread of touching the corporal and chalice (which are the especial functions of the deacon and sub-deacon) would have told of their horror at receiving our Lord's body and blood after eating. Further, the peculiar occasions on which St. Hugh departed from the ordinary rule are mentioned. He did not publish a general dispensation to all the ordinary ministers of the altar. It was only to some (quosdam) — to those, namely, who had to assist at his Pontifical Mass, after having taken part in the labori- ous ceremonies of the consecration of a church in ' Magna Vita, p. 140. A SAINT TRANSFORMED. loi summer. The frequent circuits (toties repetitos cir- cuitus) are not frequent journeys in the country, but the circuits made round the church, both inside and outside, and round the altar with a thurible. The ceremony of consecrating a church with several altars may last from three to five hours. Besides the nume- rous circuits made by the assistant priests in company with the bishop, at each altar, after a certain point in the service, a priest with a thurible continues the incensation begun by the bishop, moving round and round, or from side to side, not for a few minutes mily, but for an hour or more. It was probably those to whom this function fell who were excused from the fast, when, besides the part they took in the consecra- tion of the church, they had to assist the bishop after- wards in the Pontifical Mass. Now, the command of the bishop that they should take a little refreshment was a circumspect one, not merely because the heat, fatigue, and giddiness caused by this long and peculiar function was a sufficient reason for dispensing, but especially because the bishop only dispensed in a matter to which his power extended. Since the Church, guided in this by the Holy Ghost, requires that the priest who celebrates mass, and the ]ieople who communicate, should be fasting from mid- night at least, it is absolutely necessary that this rule should be enforced with the utmost rigour. Were there the least loophole of interpretation, or could cir- cumstances justify a dispensation, in a very short time the exceptions would become so numerous that the rule itself would disappear. Hence, frdni the earliest ages t(; the present day, one exception only has been ad- mitted which lends itself to no abuse — viz., the case of I03 BLUNDERS. those in extreme and dangerous sickness.^ The obliga- tion is of course ecclesiastical, not Divine, and as such it is in the competence of the Sovereign Pontiff to relax it. But it is only on the rarest occasions that he has exercised this power. The authority of a bishop does not extend to the relaxation of a law so stringent and universal. Had, therefore, St. Hugh obliged priests who celebrated late masses to spare themselves by vio- latincr the rule of fast, his command would not have been circumspect but sinful, and his clergy would not have been free to obey him. It was otherwise as regarded the assistant priests, deacons, and sub-deacons. The custom which then existed, that they should be fasting when serving at mass, was not of the same stringent nature as the law which bound the celebrant and the communicants. In the earlier ages, indeed, they com- municated with the celebrant ; but in the time of St. Hugh this was no longer the case, though those at least who acted as deacon and sub-deacon were still expected to be fasting. It was from this custom rather than obligation that St. Hugh dispensed. It is evident that the exercise of such a dispensing power was then unusual ; but the saint had good reason for chiding the reluctant and scrupulous. If they could not appreciate his reasons, they might have trusted his judgment. At the present day, the custom or law of fasting, as regards the assistants at the altar, is no longer known, though that which binds the celebrant is rigidly ob- served. And this confirms what has been said regard- ing the necessity of rigour. History shows that where ' I do not allude to abnormal cases, such as concluding the sacrifice when a celebrant falls ill at the altar, or consuming the sacred species to save tbein from profanation, &c. A SAINT TRAXSFORMEIX 103 a dispensing power was once admitted, the gradual, but inevitable result in such a matter, was the final cessa- tion of the law, or inobservance of the custom. Dispen- sation was given at first only under rare and urgent circumstances. But when a precedent could be found, and the authority of a saint alleged, the dispensations would be given and asked, under circumstances always less and less urgent ; and thus becoming always more and more frequent, in no considerable time they were looked on as a matter of course, or, in other words, the law ceased to bind. So would it have been with regard to the celebrant's fast had St. Hugh acted as his modern biographer supposes. The law of fasting does press hardly on priests, and still more so on bishops. Were exception lawful in any case, there are many, very many circumstances in which it could be lawfully granted. Frequently both bishops and priests have to remain without tasting food or drink until two o'clock in the afternoon. To fast until one o'clock is a usual occur- rence. And often the distress of the long fast is in- creased by hours of labour or journey, by weakness or racking headache. There can be little doubt that the health of the clergy does suffer from this discipline. Yet if a remedy is desirable, it must be sought, not in a dispensation, which would soon lead to the destruction of a most wise, reverent, and holy discipline, but in a movement on the part of the laity. It is for their con- venience that the priests say mass so late. In some cases this is necessary ; but in very many the late mass is imposed on the clergy merely by the indolence and luxurious iiabits which now prevail. However, I have not to discuss the reasons of the Church's discipline, but matters of historical fact. The I04 BLUNDERS. blunder of Canon Perrv was not simply the result of inadvertence, but of that self-satisfied erudition which disdains to seek instruction. He was not obliged to know Catholic discipline ; but if he chooses to write the life of a Catholic saint, he must not think to interpret it aright by his own lights.^ That Canon Perry should have blundered over one author is bad enough ; but his determination to find Protestantism in mediaeval writers is so great, that he has repeated the blunder where not even a shadow of ambiguity or difficulty exists. He points out that Gerald Barry, a contemporary and friend of St. Hugh, held exactly the same lax views as the Bishop of Lincoln about pre-communion fasting. Yet, in the work to which refer- ence is made, Gerald says that no one except in danger of death may receive after breaking his fast : " Nullus nisijejunus accipiat excepto mortis urgentis periculo."^ Nor does he contradict himself in the place indicated by Canon Perry. He merely remarks that if a priest ' Mr. Perry, in a letter to the Tahkt, Nov. I, 1879, defends his in- terpretation as " possibly the correct one,'' because for a very Inn-^' period it was a common practice for priests to celebrate with the bi-hop, for which he refers to Martene. Such erudition is misleading. There was no such thing as concelebration in England in the twelfth century, except at ordinations. Mr. iJiiiiock, who edited the Latin " Life of St. Hugh," has been far more modest and careful, and he has avoided such errors. His marginal abridf,'ment of the passage of Adam, over which Canon Perry has stumbled, is as follows : " His consideration for others compelling them to take food even before the celebration of mass." Though these words have probably misled Canon Perry, still they are accurate ; for he does not say " before celebrating mass," which would indicate that they were celebrants. Yet, if the words cannot be charged with error, it would have been well had they been less ambi- guous. " Before assisting at mass " would have been a more exact summary. • Gemma Ecclesiastica, p. 29. (Rolls Ed.) A SAINT TRANSFORMED. 105 acted otherwise, his consecration would be valid, though illicit. " Hanc devotionem sacerdotes omnes exhibeant, ut contriti (et) jejuni celebrent. ... Si quis tamen pransus celebraret nihilominus conficeret." ^ The same Gerald, in order to amuse his readers, when discoursing on the necessity of clerical science, has given a list of blunders in translating Latin committed by illiterate priests. These were, of course, jokes current at the University of Paris, where Gerald had been educated, or in clerical circles all over Europe, just as at the present day the supposed blunders of undergraduates are collected in the " Art of Pluck," or as good stories of Scotch and English ministers are strung together in books of anecdotes. One priest, for instance, confounds Barnabas with Barabbas, and in- structs his audience that " he was a good man and a holy, but he was a robber." Another, referring to our Lord's words to Simon the Pharisee about the two debtors, was unable to distinguish between the Latin numerals quingenta (500) and quinquaginta (50), and translated them both fifty. A shrewd magistrate who was present, on hearing Simon's reply that the debtor to whom most was forgiven would love the creditor most, objected that both were forgiven tlie same amount. The priest, however, was equal to the occasion, and silenced his oVjjector by saying that in one case they were pence sterling, in the otlier pence of Anjou. Canon Perry has given a few of these stories to illus- trate the extreme ignorance of the clergy in the twelfth century. It is to be hoped that no future historian will illustrate the literary attainments and critical acumen of Anglican clergymen of the nineteenth ' Gcinma EccltbiaHticu, p. 25. io6 UlANDERS. century by means of the real blunders of Canon I'errv. I have shown that St. Iluf^h did not merit the praise bestowed on hitn by Canon Perry, but I do not so much care to defend him from blame, since the qualities which fall under the Canon's censure are often pre- eminently Catholic. Yet the censor's judgments are not always consistent, and when placed side by side present a strange contrast. Take his account of the entry of St. Hugh into the Carthusian order. In very early life he had been placed with the Canons Kegular, but on making acquaintance with the Carthusians, when he was already a deacon, he felt greatly attracted to their austere life. As Mr. Perry puts it : — " The useful occupations in which Hugh was now engaged did not satisfy his mind. He craved for something higher, more romantic, more difficult, in the way of religious life For Hugh had completely imbibed the prevalent opinion of his age, that there was no true religion without complete self- immolation." 1 His prior became aware of his desire, and exacted from him an oath that he would not carry out his pro- ject during his (the prior's) lifetime. Hugh, accus- tomed ever to yield to obedience, took the oath. But on calm reflection he considered that he was not bound by it, since it interfered with a higher state of per- fection, and his prior had no right to require it from liim. Canon Perry, after relating this conduct of the saint, writes as follows : — " No plain person would hesitate to pronounce this a siniul action, yet the biographer of Htigh, in his too eager desire to 1 Pp. 176, 177. A SAINT TRANSFORMED. 107 make everything redound to liis honour, pretends that he acted by an inspiration from on hi,L,'h. What is more remarkable is that the saint himself, when appealed to in after life as to whether he had ever felt any scruple as to thus breaking his oath, declared that it had never caused him any regret, but only joy. No doubt there is something to be alleged in excuse for Hugh as to this transaction. In the notions of those days plain morality held but a'very low ])lace as compared with the glories of the "spiritual life," and Hugh may have been utterly unable to see how any irregularity wliich led directly to great spiritual triumphs was to be condemned." ^ I can only say that^ if no better apology than this is forthcoming for St. Hugh, then Canon Perry requires to apologise for writing his life. Why choose for the subject of biography, among innumerable Christian men and women, one who is " utterly unable " to see that he must not do evil that good may come ; one who can see no harm in what every " plain person " will condemn without hesitation ; one whose first principles about morality and the spiritual life were confused and topsy-turvy ? To Catholics, indeed, who share St. Hugh's inability to take the unhesitating view of all plain persons, it will appear tliat the saint requires no apology. He broke no onerous contract, and he con- sidered that an oath thus taken indiscreetly, and which was a hindrance to higher good, could have no binding force before God. I must add that I have been so accustomed to hear the conduct of such men as Cranmer and Luther lauded, that I am perplexed at this sudden outburst of J'rotestant zeal for the binding power of a promissor}'' oath. l?ut in a later page Canon J'erry seems himself" to have forgotten wliat lie has said of St. Hugh's utter inability to take straiglitforwurd views ' Pp. 179, 180. loS BLUNDERS. find of his contempt for ortlin.ary morality in comparison with the spiritual life. For after relatinc^ how St. Hugh, when bishop, would retire periodically to the Carthusian monastery for prayer and mortification, he says — and here he copies the Catholic biographer, though not quite accurately : — " Out of the abuiitlance of the heart the month would speak, and his words wouKl come forth like new wine, fiery and sweet, tempered with the honey of heavenly wisdom. To the laity, anil to secular persons unable to })raclise the more perfect life, lie would speak in thiswise: 'Not alone monks and hermits shall obtain the kingdom of God. God will not require of any man to have been a monk or hermit, but to have been truly a Christian. That which is truly indispensable in all is that they shall have had Inve in their hearts, truth in their mouths, purity in their lives.' Upon this teaching he wo.uld constantly dwell. He would tell the married that if they lived virtuously they were to be held no way inferior to virgins."^ As regards this last saying, it is another proof how incompetent is Canon Perry to write a Catholic bio- graphy. He intends to set down what he finds in his authorities, but he cannot understand it, and, there- fore, cannot reproduce it correctly. To say that virtuous married people are to be held no way inferior to virgins is either to assert what has no meaning, or what is a heresy. If such a proposition is meant to regard persons it is foolish, for a married person may be, of course, far superior in virtue, in grace, in charity, in merit, and in glory, to a virgin. Lut if it is intended to speak of the state of marriage as compared with that of virginity, then it is a plain contradiction of the words of our Lord and of St. Paul to assert that the ^ Pp. 247, 248. A SAINT TRANSFORMED. icg married state is in no way inferior to virginity. St. Huofh, however, said something very different. " He taught married persons," says Abbot Adam, " that if they restrained themselves within the limits of what was allowed them, they would not be deprived of the beauty of chastity, but would receive the glory of eternal beatitude together with both the virgins and the continent." Here is a perfectly Catholic statement that there is a conjugal as well as a virginal chastity, not that they are of equal excellence, though they will both find a reward in eternal glory. St. Augustine had long ago put the matter clearly in his own pithy language : " Minorem locum habebit mater in regno coelorum, quoniam maritata est, quam filia, quoniam virgo est. Si vero mater tua fuerit humilis, tu superba, ilia habebit qualemcunque locum, tu nullum locum." ^ But to go back to St. Hugh's instructions, how does Canon Perry reconcile the statement that to the end of his life St. Hugh, being under the influence of low Catholic morality, never could see the evil of breaking an oath, though every " plain person " understands its sinfulness now without hesitation, through the higher Protestant instincts, with his other statement that the saint's constant teaching was that it is truly indispens- able in all to have truth in their moiUlis, as well as love in their hearts ? And why does he in one place repre sent the saint as making naught of ordinary morality in comparison with the spiritual life, and in another place make him exalt ordinary Christian life to the same level as that of virgins ? And if he was so intoxi- cated with the " glories of the spiritual life " as to lose common sense, how is it that all this sober teaching ' Serin. 354. Ad coiitiucntes. no BLUNDERS. came from the abundance of his heart, just when he had drunk deepest of that life in a time of retreat ? This is but a specimen of the contradictions into which a writer must fall who tries to praise a Catholic saint from a Protestant point of view. The book abounds in contradictions. They begin in the dedica- tion, in which Dr. Wordsworth, who has throughout his life been possessed with a mania of reviling the Holy See, and proving that the Church of Rome is the Babylon of the Apocalypse, is represented as the suc- cessor of the virtues of St. Hugh, who was a most devoted adherent and subject of the See of Rome. Over and over again Canon Perry asserts the corrup- tions and degradation of the English Church were due to its slavery to Rome ; yet, over and over again he brings facts which show it was the influence of the Holy See which alone rescued it from the tyranny of kings and the corrupting influence of courtly bishops. He tells us how much better fitted secular canons must be to advise bishops than monks — " growing up in a routine of duties which narrowed and dwarfed the mind, without any opportunity of seeing the world and studying the manners and minds of men.^ And yet not only the subject of this biography was a monk, but all the greatest of his predecessors, and very many, if not most, of the great bishops of England ; while the chroniclers, whose keen remarks on " the manners and minds of men " he frequently quotes with approbation, are nearly all monks. There is, in fact, an unreality, an inconsistency, I had almost said an insincerity, about these Anglican accounts of Catholic saints, which must necessarily 1 P. II. A SAINT TRANSFORMED. in tend to utter confusion as to doctrine, and consequently to indifference ; while this giving of alternate praise and blame is destructive of any consistent standard of right and wrong. In a chapter devoted to the state of the clergy in the time of St. Hugh, Canon Perry has gathered out of a treatise of Giraldus a long list of possible, or actual, abuses or irreverences committed against the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, He remarks that " Such tricks played about the holiest things gives us a very low idea of the reverence and devotion of the time." ^ In this remark every Catholic will cordially agree, provided only that the historical authority of Giraldus is admitted. But we know too well his reckless exaggerations about Ireland to trust him easily when he speaks of England, or even of his native Wales. Admitting, however, the facts as Canon Perry gives them, on the testimony of Gerald Barry and Walter ]\Iapes, how do they in any way bear out Canon Perry's view, that such deeds were the result of the low material views of the Eucharist — i.e., as he explains, of the belief in Transubstantiation ? Nestorians used to write in language very like that of Canon Perry, regard- ing the " many revolting details which spring naturally from the material view of" — the Incarnation! And many infidels have enumerated the crimes of Christians as an argument against their faith. Christians at the present day take the name of their lledeemer in vain, abuse His festivals by profligacy and by quarrels, and persecute each other through a misconceived zeal lor IliH glory. Suppose now that Canon Perry, instead of rak- ing up the crimes of Catholics in the twelllh century, » F. 148. 112 BLUNDERS. should have the moral courage to write a book like that of Giraldus, euuinerating the crimes of men of his own time and his own Church, and should denounce them in the same bold and perhaps exaggerated language used by the priestly writers of the Middle Ages. And suppose that some writer of the twenty-fifth century, wishing to depict the life and times of Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, should discover this imaginary treatise of Canon Perry, and should pick out all its worst passages, and string them together, and call it a picture of the English Church in the nineteenth century. Suppose he should also indulge in reflections that such abomina- tions are just what might be expected from the gross material belief in the Incarnation which was then pre- valent in the Church of England. And if, after these reflections, he should go on to eulogise Dr. Wordsworth, in spite of his having held the same views of the Incar- nation which the author has pronounced low and de- grading, and should do this by catching at certain words and acts which he could twist into proofs that he was in reality superior to the superstitious views held by his Church in the nineteenth century, and did not really believe in the material view of the Incarnation at all — would Canon Perry consider this a fair proceeding ? Yet if a writer in the twenty-fifth century should do this, he will simply follow the precedent set him by Canon Perry. For St. Hugh held exactly the same faith about the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Mass which was held by the sordid and unworthy priests whom he denounced and suspended. But they joined to a true faith, i^-reverence, avarice, and impurity, whereas St. Hugh shows in his life what should be the conduct A SAINT TRANSFORMED, 113 of a true priest to wLoui such mysteries are comnntted. Tliat is the simple, straightforward view taken by St. Hugh's contemporary biographer, Abbot Adam. I have shown how different, and consequently how inconsistent and how false to history, is the view worked out by Canon Perry. ESSAY V. ''INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." ]\[r. Gerald Fitzgibbon, Master in Chancery, pub- lished, iu 1872, a pamphlet entitled " Roman Catholic Priests and National Schools." His object was to call public attention to certain " Infamous Publications," by Roman Catholic priests. He says that he became aware of these publications for the first time on read- ing Mr. Lecky's " History of European Morals." He quotes from Mr. Lecky the following passage : — " It was the custom then {i.e., iu the twelfth and following centuries), as it is the custom now, for the Catholic priests to Btain the imaginations of young cliildren by ghastly pictures of future misery ; to imprint upon the virgin mind atrocious images, which they lioped, not unieasonahly, might prove indelible. In the liours of weakness and of sickne>3 tlieir overwrought fancy seemed to see hideous beings hovering around, and hell itself yawning to receive its victim. Few Englishmen, I imagine, are aware of the infamous j^ublications, written with this object, that are circulated by the Catholic priests among the poor. I have before me a tract ' for children and young persons,' called 'The Sight of 11(11,' by tlie Rev. J. Funiiss, C.S.S.K., published 'per- viissu sujjtriorum,' liy Uuffy, Dublin and Loudon." From this !Mr. Lecky makes extracts, which we shall see later on. " Of this terrifying theology," says Mr. Fitzgibbon, *' 1 knew nothing until I read Mr. Lecky's note. But "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 115 I aiu not so iudiflerent to the condition of my fellow- creatures, both present and prospective, as to be satis- fied with reading the small portion set out in his note, of what he designates as the ' Infamous Publications ' to which he refers. I have, therefore, read all the books written by Father Furniss." Fermenting with this newly-acquired knowledge — " Protestants and Dissenters," he cries, " believing that both you and your representatives in Parliament were ignorant of tlie kind of lessons prepared for the schools now imperatively, not to say insolently, demanded at your expense, I felt it as a duty to communicate to you the knowledge of these books to which my own attention was but recently and accidental!}'' called." He considers that his discovery throws quite a new light on the question of National Education : — " I therefore say to all, whether Protestants, Presbyterians, or Roman Catholics, who would not send their children to the priests' scliools to learn the terrifying theology which they claim a right to teach, that the time has come, and the battle is at hand, in which it must be decided whether your children and your cliildren's children are to be the religious and rationally adoring worshippers of an Almighty wiiose attributes are in- finite wisdom — inexhaustible goodness and mercy — boundless benevolence — and forbearing grace and indulgence to the frailties of His fallen creatures — or whether they are to be the benighted, (piailing, terrified, and conscience-stricken slaves of a crafty and mendacious priesthood. These are the issues to be decided in tliis battle of the prifsts, whicli must now be fought, and which must decide tremendous iasues." What, then, lias ]\Ir. Fitzgibbon discovered? What are these " Infamous J'ublicatious " whicli have excited such horror in his soul, and have arou.«ied him to go forth to battle? They are the well-known work of the Jesuit Father I'iuamoiiti, called " Hell opened to ii6 BLUNDERS. Christians," and ten little " Books for Chiklrpn," by tbe late Father Furniss, of the Cougregatiou of the Most Holy lledeemer. These books treat of many things besides hell. Their venerated author, who had consecrated the last fifteen years of his life almost exclusively to the care of children, has poured out his piety and the tenderness of his loving heart in the first two books, called " Al- mighty God," and "God Loves Little Children." Few men have ever loved and laboured for children as did Father Furniss. But as it suits the purpose of Mr. Fitzgibbon to represent the good priest as a kind of ogre or child- devourer, he has carefully abstained from quoting either of these books, though he says that he has read them. He has made no attempt fairly to represent Father Furniss's moral or dogmatic teaching. But he has searched through his books for extracts which would tell with his Protestant readers, even for mere expres- sions on which he could found a charge or an insinua- tion. Thus, if Father Furniss speaks of a child having " the misfortune to fall into mortal sin," Mr. Fitz- gibbon prints the word misfortune in capital letters, because it suits him at that place, where he is giving the history of a horrible and deliberate murder, to insinuate that Father Furniss considers such mortal sin as rather a weakness than a crime. On the other hand, where it suits him to accuse Father Furniss of absurd and atrocious rigorism, he himself speaks, as we have seen, of God's " forbearing grace and indulgence to the frailties of His fallen creatures;" and then, be(;ause Father Furniss has spoken of a child in hell as " it," Mr. Fitzgibbon fastens on this pronoun, prints it for half a page in capital letters, and not merely "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 117 insinuates, but declares, that Father Fnrniss must speak "of an infant so young, as not to be, as yet, entitled to be designated as a person — i.e., a rational and accountable agent." Candour would have taught Mr. Fitzgibbon that, as Father Furniss is writing for children of both sexes, he uses sometimes the con- venient "it" to be more general, and not in order to designate infancy. Mr. Fitzgibbon has here made, not a mistake, but a deliberate perversion, for Father Furniss expressly explains that he is only speaking of children old enough " knowingly and willingly to break God's commandments." Mr. Fitzgibbon has also read the examination which precedes the final sentence to hell, in which the plea of ignorance (a good plea sometimes) is supposed, in the case, not to be valid. But, in reading this examination, Mr. Fitzgibbon was looking, not for explanations of difficulties, but for materials of accusation. lie therefore finds a paragraph called "Examination about sins," and another called " Examination about good works." Father Furniss has, of course, only enumerated such sins or good works as belong commonly to children. Remembering how Jesus Christ has taught us that, on the one hand, we shall give account even for " an idle word" at the day of judgment, and that, on the other hand, even " a cup of col and powerful body of Wesleyan I\Ietli(jdists, but it is evident that they cannot agree with him in calling Father Furniss's pictures of hell *' infamous publica- tions," without branding the writings of their founder with the same censures. No doubt, as Mr. Lecky says, these are "ghastly ' ScrmonH of Wesley, vol. ii. p. 176. 142 BLUNDERS. })ictures;" yet they were neither invented by Catholic priests, nor used only by them. If Mr. Lecky believes that no reality corresponds to them, let him give us his reasons for believing so, and let him give some philo- sophical explanation of the fact that one so loving and gentle as Jesus Christ made use of such "atrocious images ; " but let him not pretend to philosophy and impartial research, when he attributes to the twelfth century what is older than Christianity, and when he tries to fasten on Catholic priests an odium which must be borne, if at all, not only by them, but by the greatest and most honoured of almost every Christian sect. One who writes on morals might have remembered the old saying, " Divers weights and divers measures, both are abominable before God" (Prov. xx. lo). If Catholic priests preach more frequently or dwell more minutely and urgently than Protestants on this fearful subject, it is not for the butchery of the con- science, but for its ultimate tranquillity. The celebrated Archdeacon Paley also, a man who will scarcely be accused of fanaticism, thus writes in a sermon on hell : — "Now if any one feel his heart struck with the terrors of the Lord, with the consideration of this dreadful subject, and with the declarations of Scripture relating thereto, which will all have their acconiplisliment, let him be entreated, let him be admonished, to hold the idea, tremendous as it is, fully in his view, till it has wrought its effect — that is, till it has prevailed with him to part witli his sins ; and then, we assure him, tliat to alarm, frij^ht, and horror, will succeed peace, and hope, and comfort, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Having now seen what Protestants have written on the existence and nature of hell, let us see if they have "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 143 been less infamous than Catholics in declaring for whom it is reserved. Father Furniss warns the rich. But here I must explain. He did not write for the rich but for children. He knew, however, that sometimes a poor boy may, in course of time, become a rich man. He does not con- demn the industry or talent which thus changes his lot, but he warns him of a danger in these words : — " Perhaps some little boy who reads this book, when he f^rows up to be a man, may work hard and become rich ; now I ask that boy a question. Mj' dear boy, when you shall come to lie on your death-bed, will you say to yourself, ' I have laboured hard in my lifetime, and worked much, and now I am rich ? I am going to die ; and, because I am rich, I die contented and hapi^y?' My boy, I will answer the question for you — 'Tlie rich man died, and was buried in hell.'" This passage has greatly angered Mr. Fitzgibbon. I would advise him to read the sermon preached by liishop Andrews before the Court of James I., on the history of the rich man and Lazarus, or the excellent commentary published on the same history by the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Trench. Tliere is not an image in Father Furniss's chapter on " The History of the Uich ^lan " — a chapter which seems most to have offended !Mr. Fitzgibbon — that may not be found in tliose writings of prelates of his own Church. J3ut Arclibishop 'JVench goes furtlier tlian Catholic theologians ; for whereas the Council of Florence teaches tliat those who die in mortal sin go at once to hell, and therefore that our Lord, in His picture of tlio state of "the rich man" after death, paints hell itself, tlu? Anglican theologian, following iJishop liull and others, considers that there is something far worse to come for 144 BLUNDERS. Dives after tbe general judgment. His words are these : — "He that had that gor<:reous funeral is now Hn hell,' or in ' Hades,' rather ; I'or as '■Abraham's bosom' is not lieaven, though it will issue in heaven, so neither is Hades ' hell,' though to issue in it, when death and Hades shall be cast into the lake of fire, which is the proper liell (Rev. xx. 14). It is the place of pain- ful restraint, whore the souls of the wicked are reserved to the judgment of the great day ; for as that other blessed place has a foretaste of lieaven, so has this place a foretaste of hell. Dives being there is 'm torments,' stripped of all wherein his soul de- lighted and found its satisfacticjn ; his purple robe has become a garment of fire ; as he himself describes it, he is ' tormented in this flame: "^ Such is the language of the ecclesiastical superior whom Mr. Fitzgibbon acknowledges, and the several editions through which his "Notes on the Parables" have passed, and the dignity he attained since he wrote them, show that his words were not rejected by his own communion. Why, then, if Mr. Fitzgibbon is afraid to attack openly our Lord Jesus Christ, the orit'inal author of the " History of the Rich Man," does he not turn his indignation a'^ainst his own Arch- bishop's commentary ? What crime has Father Furniss committed that Dr. Trench is not guilty of? In order to impress upon children that "a man's life consisteth not in the multitude of the things which he possesseth," Father Furniss has developed in a picturesque manner our Lord's brief history of " Dives." He has described his house, how he dressed and feasted, how he got sick, died, and was buried, and then he proceeds as follows (and these are the words quoted by Mr. Fitzgibbon) : — ^ Trench, Notes on the Parables, \>. 471 (3rd ed.). "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 145 "Eut down in hell the pouI of the rich man is lying in a coffin of fire ! Around the coffin, in that room, stood the people of the world, the friends of the rich man. They talked together, they spoke of the coffin. How beautiful it was, they said — what a line coffin ! But in hell the devils were standing round the coffin of fire, and they talked also, and said — What a hot coffin — what a burning coffin this is ! How terrible to be shut wp in this coffin of tire for ever and ever, and never to come out of it again. Such was the end of the rich man. He lived in riches, and he died, and he was buried in the fire of hell ! But why did that ricli man go to liell 1 What was the reason 1 The reason was, because the rich man did not know the great thing he had to do while he lived. He made a great mistake. He thought the great thing of all was to be rich ; and he was rich, and he went to hell." After quoting this passage, Mr. Fitzgibbon exclaims : — " Ricli men of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who out of your riclies replenish the treasury of this realm, are you prepared to draw upon that treasury for the support of State schools in which this view of your predicament — this statement of your destiny — this wholesale damnation of your class, is to be taught, and indelibly impressed upon the infant minds of the poor children in Ireland, who are commanded to believe as a Gospel truth that the tortures prepared for you were visibly demonstrated to St. Frances by the angel Gabriel, sent from heaven for the purpose ? " Mr. Fitzgibbon should know that no such authority is claimed for the visions of St. Frances of Home as to put them on an erpiality with the Gospel, and that no Catholic writer who should attempt to do so would oscajxi the severest censure of the Church. ]\Ir. Fitzgibbon also knows very well that there is not a word in the passage he has quoted takeii from tjie visions of tlie saints. He knows that Father Furniss in this portion K 1^6 BLUNDERS. of his book, where alone he speuks of riches or of rich men, makes not the most distant allusion to any private revelations, but has taken the Gospel as his only guide. He knows also that Father Furniss does not in any way pronounce the " wholesale damnation " of the rich. In the very page from which IVIr. Fitzgibbon has quoted, Father Furniss writes as follows, and I must give the passage at length, because without doing so I cannot convey to my readers the extent of Mr. Fitzgibbon's dishonesty, in drawing false inferences and suppressing evidence. " Sect. xxi. Can a rich man he saved? " Without doubt it is possible for a rich uian to be saved, for even among the saints are to be found those who were rich. But they made a good use of their riches ; they used it in the service of God ; they were kind to the poor ; they led good lives. But why is it so difficult for a rich nian to go to heaven ? Is there something bad in gold and silver ? Were not gold and silver created by God like the stones and the trees ? Gold and silver are not bad in themselves, but people generally make a bad use of them, and commit sins because they have riches or want too much to get them. Therefore Jesus Christ bays : ' Woe to you that are rich' (Luke vi.). " A word to the Poor. " But it io not only those who have money whom God accounts as rich. At the day of judgment many of the poor will be con- demned as rich. But how can a poor man be called rich ? he has no money in liis pocket, his chest is empty. It \z true that he has no money ; but it is true also that he has in his heart a great strong desire of money. This great desire of money leads people into many sins. For example, there are many poor men whose thoughts are all about money. Then they forget God, and think no more about going to Mass and the Sacraments. A man is out of work, he loses his wages, he becomes impatient, and blasphemes God. A.iiother man takes a false oath in order to get what does not « INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 147 belong to him. Here is a man who loves to drink in the public- house, so he steals and robs and cheats, that he may have money to spend in the public-house. There are people who were friends ; they had a quarrel about money, and now they have a deadly hatred against one another. So it is money, money, money ! and then — curses, false oaths, stealing, cheating, drunken- ness, neglect of God and the soul, and then — hell ! Therefore, St. Paul says, i Tim. vi. : ' They that will become rich fall into temptation and the snare of the devil, and into many unprofitable and hurtful desires, which drown men in destruction and perdi- tion. For the desire of money is the root of all evil.' " Let us now hear an Anglican bishop on the same subject : — " If you call him (i.e., the rich man of our Lord's parable) to account by the writ of redde rationem, this must be his audit : in purple aiid linen so much, and in belly-cheer so much ; so much on his back and so much on his board, and in tlieni endeth the total of his receipts ; except you will put in his hounds too, which received of him more than Lazarus might. Therefore is this party now in the gulf, because living himself was a gulf. Ilemeinber tiiis, for it is a special point. For if our purple and fine linen swallow up our alms, if our too much lashing on to do good to ourselves make us in a state to do good to none but our- Felvcs, if our riotous wasting on e.xpenses of vanity be a gulf and devour our Christian em])loying in works of charity, there is danger in recepisti, even the danger of 'Now, therefore,' a gulf thou wert and into a "ulf shalt thou go." o Bishop Andrews preaclied the above, and much more to the same purpose, before the Court, yet he was not accused of infamy by any Master of Chancery of that day. Bishop Sherlock, too, in the presence of the monnrch whom Irish Protestants venerate so much, William III., and of his consort, preached a series of discourses on the future judgment, lie speaks often of hell, and 148 BLUNDERS. frequently in words and images like those of Father Furniss. Yet their majesties took no offence, but asked him to publish the sermon in which he thus spoke : — "ConsiJer this, ye rich and prreat men, who .ire so apt to forc^et God and a future j ud,<,'nient : Riches i^rofit not in the day of wrath ; they cannot bribe God as tliey do men ; no power can prevail against the Almighty ; proud and swelling titles are mere empty bubbles, which burst and vanish into nothing in the next world : men ye are, and ye sliall die like men, and shall be judged like men, and have much more reason to think of judgment than other men have, for ye have a greater account to give, and are in more danger of giving a very bad account, if you do not frequently and seriously think of judgment." Nor has Archbishop Trench been accused of " whole- sale damnation of the rich," nor could such accusation be made without gross injustice ; yet his words are more open to such a charge than those of Father Fur- niss; for, in explaining the sins which brought the rich man to hell, he says : — " It cannot be observed too often that he is not accused of any breach of the law ; not like those rich men in St. James (v. i-6), of any flagrant crimes. . . . There is nothing to make us think him other than a reputable man, one of whom none could say worse than that lie loved to dwell at ease, that he desired to remove far off from himself all tilings painful to the flesh, to surround himself with all things pleasurable." ^ Certainly quite as little as these or any other writers does Father Furniss either calumniate the rich or flatter the poor. Surely, then, the " infamy " is alto- gether in ]Mr. Fitzgibbon, who tries, by presenting false issues, to move the prejudices of those rich Protestants who may read his pamphlet, and who know nothing * Trench on the Parables. "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 149 of the writings of Father Furuiss, nor, indeed of the teaching of Catholic priests. I must give one more instance of ^Ir. Fitzgibbon's fairness. Father Furniss, among other pictures, repre- sents a girl in hell who has been a prostitute on earth. After describing her feet as especially tormented, be- cause they first led her into the ways of sin, he intro- duces the following imaginary dialogue between her and the devil : — " ' Oh I that in this endless eternity of years, I mi«,'ht forget the pain only for one single moment.' The devil answers her ques- tion. ' Do you ask,' he says, ' for a moment, for one moment, to forget your pain ? No, not for one single moment, during the never-ending eternity of years, shall you ever leave this red-hot floor ! ' * Is it so ? ' the girl says, with a sigh that seems to hreak her heart. ' Then, at least, let somebody go to my little brothers and sisters, who are alive, and tell them not to do the bad things which I did ; so tliey will never have to come and stand on the red-hot floor.' The devil answers her again, ' Xour little brothers and sisters have the priests to tell them those things. If they will not listen to the priests, neither wouM they listen even if some- body should go to them from the dead.' " Of course this dialogue is merely an imitation of that described by our Lord between the rich man and Abra- ham. The rich man had asked for one drop of water to cool his tongue, and was refused. The girl asks for one moment of relief for her feet, and is refused. The teach- ing of Father Furniss is identical with that of Jesus Christ. The rich man then prays for his brothers, and is told that his brothers have suflicient means of grace. The girl prays for her brotiiers and sisters, and receives the same answer. But here Mr. Fitzgibbon detects what he thinks a weak point, of wliich he can take advantage. Our Lord makes Abraham reply : ^' H' lliey I50 BLUNDERS, hear not Moses and the propliets, neither will they believe if one rise again from the dead ;" which Father Furniss thus traiiforms : " Your little brothers have the priests to tell tliem those things. If they w'ill not listen to the priests, neither would they listen even if somebody should go to them from the dead." " Thus," exclaims Mr. Fitzgibbon, " substituting the priests for Moses and the propliets." And then he adds : " It is the main object and purpose of these books, plainly discoverable from the whole tenor of them, to exalt the priests, and to impress upon the infant mind a deep and indelible con- viction that they, and they alone, have the power to save the soul from the tortures and eternal perdition described in this hideous detail." Now, what crime has Father .Furniss here committed ? The " hideous detail " is substantially not his, but our Blessed Saviour's. Father Furniss substitutes such ex- pressions as Christian children will understand, in the place of expressions that were adapted to the circum- stances and education of our Lord's Jewish hearers. He says nothing here about the power of the priests, except that they faithfully preach what Moses and the prophets, and our Lord Jesus Christ, taught. Certainly, when our Lord said : " They have Moses and the pro- phets," he made no distinction between those who had them by private reading, or those who had them by public teaching. It was in this last way that the majority of the Jews had them, that is, knew their doc- trine, as St. James informs us : " Moses, of old time, hath in every city them that preach him in the syna- gogues, where he is read every Sabbath " (Acts xv. 2i). Who, then, but a caviller would lay hold of a change of word that implies no change of meaning ? "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 151 I can conceive no sadder spectacle than that here given us by Mr. Fitzgibbon. Our Lord is teaching us that forgetfulness of that hell, revealed in Holy Scripture, brought the rich man into endless torments. A faithful priest of the Catholic Church is doing his best to enforce the same lesson. Knowing how, in the great cities of England, Scotland, and even Ireland, quite young girls are being led into every foul corrup- tion, and addressing these poor children, already fallen or in danger of falling. Father Furniss puts before them both the terrors and the mercies of God. Mr. Fitzgib- bon hates the " hideous detail " of this lesson. He has not the courage to say so directly of our Lord's teacli- ing; so by absurd cavils and misrepresentations he attacks the very same thing in the priest which he affects to revere in the blaster. I have certainly nothing but loathing for the blas- phemies of Shelley, but I respect him for his consistency compared with Mr. Fitzgibbon. Shelley calls the God of the Bible "a vengeful, pitiless, and almighty fiend," but he represents Moses, wlio made known to us this God, as a bloodtliirsty impostor, and our Lord Jesus Christ, who appealed to Moses, and revealed to us more fully both the mercies and the terrors of the God of Moses, he calls " a village demagogue." Here is, at least, consistency in horrid bhisphemy.^ But Mr. Fitz- gibbon, who, throughout his pamphlet, heaps epithets just as blasphemous on the God of Catholics, pretends to do so in the name of the " patient, the gentle, the nil-perfect suffering Lamb — the inliiiitely benevolent Redeemer." It is really sickening to any straightforward honest ' The above exprcMgions are in Queen MaO. 152 BLUNDERS. man to hear the modern teachers of God's pure bene- volence — opponents not only of eternal torments, but of any future torments whatsoever — daring to appeal to the spirit of the Gospel and of Jesus Christ. Was not Jesus Christ first announced by His precursor as hav- ing the winnowing fan in His hand, about to burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire? (Matthew iii. 12). And are we not told by His Apostle to expect Him at His second coming " in a flame of fire, yielding ven- geance to them who know not God, and who obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall suff'er eternal punishment in destruction, from the face of the Lord and from the glory of His power " (Thess. i. 8, 9). Who is there, forsooth, among Catholics, who does not know as well as Mr. Fitzgibbon that Jesus Christ loved and embraced little children, that He was full of tenderness, full of mercy and compassion, that He was the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for His sheep ? But to dwell on these things only is to conceal at least one-half of the words and of the character of Jesus Christ, and completely to misunderstand the rest. Mr. Fitzgibbon would do well, instead of railing at the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin for giving his " impri- matur " to a book on hell, if he would meditate on the following sentences with which his own Protestant Archbishop concludes his " Notes on the Parables." Having explained our Lord's parable of the king who took account of the conduct of his servants during his absence. Dr. Trench writes : — "When the king had thus distributed praise and blame, rewards and penalties, to those who stand in the more immediate relations of servants to him, to those of his own household— for the Church is the household of God— he proceeds to execute «' INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." '3J vengeance on his euemiea, on all who had openly cast oft' allegiance to him, and denied that they belonged to his house- hold at all (Prov. xx. 8). At his command they are brought before him and slain before his face ; as their guilt was greater, so their punishment is more terrible, than that of the slothful servant. . . . This slaying of the king's enemies wi /iisp-esence is not to be in the interpretation mitigated or explained away as though it belonged merely to the outer shell of the parable, and was only added because such things were done in Eastern courts (l Sam. X. 27. xi. 12. ; Jer. lii. 10), and to add an air of truthful- ness to the narrative. Ratlier it belongs to the inmost kernel of the parable. The words set forth, iearfuUy indeed, but not in any way in wliich we need shrink from applying them to the Lord Jesus, His unmitigated wrath against His enemies — but only His enemies exactly as they are enemies of all righteousness, which shall be revealed in that day when grace shall have come to an end, and judgment without mercy will have begun (Rev. xiv. 10)." I had thought of going into the theology and philo- sophy of the matter, and of endeavouring to suggest some reflections that might help to remove, or at least to diminish, a great difliculty felt by many — how the infliction of such terrible and everlasting torments can be reconciled with the iniinite mercy of God. Btit on further consideration I relinquish this endeavour. There are, indeed, souls that deserve this help, souls not self-confident, scornful and presumptuous, but which are agitated with doubts regarding the Christian re- velation. Jjut few of those who rail at hell are capable of any stich assistance. They are too shallow even to admit tin* possibility that tliere are tilings in God's dealings with men undreamt of in their philosophy, or they are prejudiced men, who scorn even to inquire. If such men are capable of any help, I believe it is only such as I have here attempted to impart. They must 15+ BLUNDERS. be reminded that the doctrine they object to is not peculiar to the Church and priesthood which they hate and revile ; but that wondrous and awful as it is, it has been taught by men whom they themselves revere, men of many varieties of religious opinion and natural char- acter, men renowned in literature, men famous for their tenderness and charity, quite as much as by men morose and bigoted, and most assuredly by the first preachers of Christianity, and its great founder, our Lord Jesus Christ. So long as men talk in a scoffing manner, like Shelley, "Of the strange things priests hold so dear, Because they bring them land and gold, Of devils and saints, and all such gear ;" so long as they arrogantly affirm with Byron, that they Who doom to hell, themselves are on the way ; Unless these bullies of eternal pains Are pardoned their bad hearts for their worse brains ; " so long as they most falsely and most unphilosophically imagine that only fools, knaves, and bigots have preached on hell, or described its torments, so long they are in- capable of considering the subject in that calm and serious spirit which alone is capable of having a diffi- culty explained or a prejudice removed. I do not, assuredly, maintain that hell is never in- voked by bigotry or abused by spiteful feeling — the example I have quoted from Milton is a proof to the contrary. But if Milton's admirers can extol his genius and his character in spite of his faith in hell, which never wavered to the end of his life, and in spite of his "INFAMOUS PUBLICATIONS." 155 vindictive mention of it in his youth, it would seem reasonable that they should suspend their judgment before they call Catholic priests infamous for a faith in hell, which is generally allied with charity just in pro- portion to its liveliness. Coleridge speaks of Jeremy Taylor as " a man con- stitutionally overflowing with pleasurable kindliness, who scarcely, even in a casual illustration, introduces the image of woman, child, or bird, but he embalms the thought with so rich a tenderness as makes the very words seem beauties and fragments of poetry from Euri- pides or Siraonides." It seems, then, reasonable that those who admire Taylor, whether as a man or as an author, when they learn that he both believed in hell and described its tortures with a force and minute- ness never surpassed, may hesitate before they rail at Catholic priests for a similar faith and language. And thus a wider acquaintance with facts may lead to more sober and less prejudiced judgments; and by degrees dispassionate study of present facts or past history may bring home to such men's mind the un- doubted, thougl), to them, perplexing truth, tliat tlie greatest heroes of charity whom the world has ever known, men whose hearts felt sympathy for every sor- row, and whose whole life was self-sacrifice for its relief — men such as St. Vincent of Paul, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Alphonsus de I.iguori, St. Francis de Sales — have had the firmest faith, and have been the most powerful preachers of the fearful \)aiuH of liell. When they have recognised this tlicy may, perhaps, proceed a step further, and reflect tliat no one spoke so gravely, so terribly, and so frequently of hell as He whose whole life was love and mercy — our Tjord Jesus 156 BLUNDEUS. Christ. They may reflect that Jesus Christ is so far from seeing incousisteucy in attributing the infliction of eternal torments to a God of infinite love, that lie generally brings the two ideas into the closest contact, and denounces "judgment tvithout mercy to those who do no mercy." They may reflect that the denunciations of hell made by Jesus Christ and by His faithful fol- lowers are intended to have, and in reality have, this effect ; that they strike terror into the sensual, selfish, unforgiving, and hard-hearted, and bear fruit all over the earth in works of love and mercy. When they have reflected on these things, which are not opinions, but facts that all may verify, they will then see that whether they can bring themselves to believe in hell or not, the epithet " infamous " ought not to be bestowed on the publications that produce these salutary fruits, but on those that seek to destroy them by destroying or vitiating the tree on wliicli they grow, which is faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. PART II. FORGERIES. ESSAY VI. THE ROOD OF BOXLEY ; OR, HOW A LIE GROWS. " These accretions on divine worsliip went on accumulating like a snowball, till one day a crowd was gathered in St. Paul's Churchyard ; and a great image was drawn in from Boxley, in Kent, with all its secret wires and pulleys complete ; and the Bishop of Rochester put it through all its religious antics, and made it bow its head and roll its eyes and weep out of a sponge cleverly concealed behind. And then what wonder that it, and all the like of it, were tossed with ribald insults into the flames! What wonder," &c. &c. — Speech of the Eev. (j. II. Curtiis, Canon of Lichfield, and Professor of New Testament Exeijesii, King's College, London, before the Anglican Church Congress. [The Guardian, Oct. 5, 18S7.) In the spring of 15 38 Thomas Cromwell, Vicar-General in things spiritual of Henry VIII., now by Act of Par- liament supreme head on earth of the Church of England, provided, for the edification of the King's ilock in Lon- don, a solemn spectacle. A crucifix, which had long borne the name of the Hood of Grace, was brought from the Cistercian Abbey of lioxley,^ between i\Iaidstone and Rochester, and exhibited at St. Paul's Ci'oss, as u sample of monastic imposture. " On Sunday, the 24th February," writes Stow in his Annals, " the Rood of lioxley, in Kent, called the liood of Grace, made vntk divers vices to move the eyes and lip^, was showed at I'aul's Cross by the preacher, which was ' HiiHted, in his IliHtnry of Ki'Ut (vol. iv.), crriincously nays the rood wan in i\v p.uinh church of lioxky. It wum in tlie abbey cliurcli, now destroyed. i6o FORGERIES. the Bisliop of Rochester, and there it was broken and plucked to pieces." ^ It was asserted by Cromwell, his partisans and agents, at the time of its exhibition and destruction, that the movements of the Rood were the only miracles ever performed in Boxley abbey church, and that the pilgrims and the whole world had been cheated by the monks into the belief that these mecha- nical movements, produced by the trickery of a con- cealed monk, were Divine manifestations of favour or displeasure. It is maintained by the writer of this paper that the miracles wrought, or supposed to have been wrought, or graces obtained, before this crucifix, had nothing whatever to do with these movements, which were perfectly well known by all who ever wit- nessed them to be merely mechanical. It must be premised that the question is of more importance than the mere vindication of the good name of the monks of Boxley. From the days of the suppres- sion of the monasteries to the present time the frauds of the monks have been the theme of our historians. The accusation is nearly always a general one, but the soli- tary example, always brought forward as a mere speci- men, is the Rood of Grace. There is no need to turn to Burnet or to Strype — the story is told in every history, ecclesiastical or secular. It is not one of the slanders current while passions were still hot after the change of religion, and then rejected or silently dropped in less bigoted times. It is taken for a proved and universally accepted fact, and narrated at the present day either with fiery invectives, scoffs, or pious lamen- tations, according to the character of the writers.^ ^ Stow : Annals, p. 575. Vices are screws, joints, mechanisin. '^ I know only one honourable exception. Collier writes as follows of THE ROOD OF BOXLEY. i5i Tiefore examining the evidence we must hear the accu- sations, and take note of the points requiring proof: " A miraculous crucifix " (writes Hume) " had been kept at Box- ley, in Kent, and bore the appellation oi' ihe Rood of Grace. The lips and eyes and head of the ima^e moved on the approadi of its votaries. Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, broke the crucifix at St. Paul's Cross, and showed to the whole people the springs and wheels by which it had been secretly moved." In this pas!=iage Hume makes two, or rather three, assertions. That there was a mechanical or puppet crucifix at Boxley, that it was shown and destroyed in London, I admit; that the eyes, &c., "moved on the approach of its votaries," is what I deny. Russell, another historian of the last century, writes as follows : — "At the visitation of the monasteries, prior to the suppression, several astonishing discoveries were made, which tended greatly to lessen the authority of the Romisli Priests in the eyes of the people. One of the most singular instruments of deception was found at Boxley in Ketit." Let the reader mark that there are said to have been "several discoveries," while the single instance of Box- ley is given, no other instance being ever adduced either by Kussell or any other historian. He goes on — "It was a remarkable cruciiix, held in the highest veneration, and diitingiiished by the appellation of the Rood of Grace. It the inona>«tic churchoM : " Tlie mistaken reliance and superstitious prac- tice with respect Ut images and relics is not tu be denied, but whettier the impostures above mentionfid are matter of fact will \n\ a ([ucstion : for William Thomas, citfd by Lord Herbert, is sonicwliat an exc<|' tional authority." The imiiostures were the Holy Blood of Hales and the KruA i)f Grace of ISoxley, an. (jl. 1(^6 FOIIGEIUES. tlien the imposture is proved. For what otlier purpose could such a crucifix serve than to deceive pilgrims ? And what other object could there be in the deception than to get their money ? So, having assured them- selves that there really was such a crucifix, they think the exact particulars are immaterial, and that they may freely enlarge on the fashion of the Rood and on the credulity of the worshippers. The story, they think, will be substantially true, though some few details may not be capable of proof Nor should I contest the matter with them were the question merely as to the more or less of an admitted imposture. I admit the mechanism, but maintain that the existence of the mechanism gives no presumption whatever of trickery, that it had a perfectly ]egitim.ate purpose and use; and I deny that there is any particle of evidence of a siugle case of imposture, or even to justify a suspicion of imposture. In a passage just quoted an author speaks of the Rood of Grace as having been " an ingenious piece of mechanism for an age in which the general ignorance of mechanical science was gross enough to allow of its being put forward as something supernatural." Now, if the mechanism did not go much beyond what is described by Stow, the movement of eyes and lips, and perhaps of some joints — and that it did not shall soon be proved beyond gainsay — it was in no way extra- ordinary for that age, and there was no more likelihood of its being considered supernatural on that account than there is of the waxwork figures in Madame Tussaud's exhibition being taken for living men and women by modern visitors. ] tippets and pageantry were more familiar things then than now. Let any one open the THE ROOD OF BOX LEY. 167 pages of Hall the chronicler and read his long and (to us) tiresome accounts of the pageants of Henry VIT. and Henry VIII., and he will see at once how de- lighted both people and princes were with ingenious mechanism. The accusers of the monks seem instinctively to have felt this difficulty, and have therefore not been satisfied with describing the Rood as it was. They have vied with one another in inventing details — such as smiling, frowning, weeping, expanding the mouth — the con- trivance of which would baffle any artificer of the present day. Though such things were historically impossible, they were necessary for consistency, seeing that the pilgrims to Boxley were not mere country bumpkins, but lords aud ladies, kings and queens, bishops and archbishops ; and it had to be made plausible how all these should have been taken in by the wonderful imposture. The mechanism was not in any way wonderful, nor adapted for deception. What, then, was its purpose ? I will explain. Pageantry and mechanism in that age were not con- fined to marriage and coronation processions of kings and fjueens. They had been used in churches, in tniraclf-plays (as they were called), and even in per- manent contrivances of devotion. Alderman Gosiman, of Hull, left in 1502, by his will, a sum of ^40 in honour of the I'lessed Sacrament, in order to construct at the high altar some machinery by which angf'ls should ascend to the roof of the church and descend again, from the elevation of the Sacred Host to the end of the Pater Noster.^ Even in our own day, ' TestatiKiita Eborac, p. 209. i6S FORGERIES. in some cliurclies in Bavaria and the Tyrol, as I Lave learned ironi eye-witnesses, a figure above the high altar representing our Lord in Ilis agony in the garden is made to kneel, to prostrate itself, and to rise again, while the preacher describes the scene; and on the Ascension a figure rises into the air and disappears in the roof. A gentleman informs me that lie has seen in Belgium a crucifix used formerly in the ceremonial of Holy Week. On Good Friday the arms could be depressed, so that it could be laid, together with the Blessed Sacrament, in the sepulchre until Easter Sun- day morning. The Sacred Host was placed inside the breast of the figure, behind a crystal. At the Resur- rection the figure was gorgeously dressed, and placed seated above the high altar, with one arm raised in benediction. It is needless to say that in all this there was pageantry, childish pageantry if you like, but no imposture. In England the rood was generally laid, together with the Blessed Sacrament, in the sepulchre on Good Friday ; and in some of the greater churches the Sacred Host, when taken from the sepulchre early on Easter morning, was enclosed, behind a berill or crystal, in the breast of a figure of our risen Lord. Now it would be antecedently probable enough that, in some cases, instead of using two distinct figures, one figure, with eyes made to open and close, and jointed limbs, might serve for both purposes. By a fortunate chance the record of one such figure has survived, and it was in existence at St Paul's Church, London, at the very time that the Boxley Rood was burnt at St. Paul's Cross. Wriothesley records in his Chronicle that on the 29th of November 1547, the first of Edward VL, being the THE ROOD OF BOXLEY. 169 first Sunday of Advent, Dr. Barlow, Bishop of St. David's, preached at Paul's Cross — "Where he showed a picture (i.e., painted figure) of the resur- rection of our Lord made with vices (i.e., movable joints), wliich put out his legs of sepulchre and blessed with his hand, and turned his head, and there stood afore the pulpit the image of our Lady, which they of Paul's had lapped in cere-cloth, which was hid in a comer of Paul's Church, and found by the visitors in their visi- tation. And in his sermon he declared the great abomination of idolatry in images, with other feigned ceremonies contrary to Scripture, to the extolling of God's glory, and to the great com- fort of the audience. After the sermon the boys broke the idols in pieces." ^ Dr. Sparrow Simpson, a recent historian of Old St. Paul's, after quoting this passage, makes the following reflection : " It is easy to understand that the exhibi- tion of these mechanical figures, skilfully contrived to deceive the worshippers, must have greatly stimulated the zeal of the reformers."- Dr. Simpson has clearly not understood the words he quoted, or he could never have made such a comment. " Skilfnllv contrived to deceive the worshippers " ! Why ! there is not the most distant hint at deception. Barlow denounced idolatry and feigned ccrcmvnies, not imposture. As well say that an artist's lay-figure, with its movable joints and neck, is a delusion and a snare. The vices or screws of the joints would be visible to the most shortsighted ; and really Englishmen before the Refor- mation were not the idiots that some would seem to suppose. lle.sides this use of the crucifix, it must be remeiii- bered that in the Middle Ages the rood did not merely ' Wriolhesley'H Chronicle, vol. ii. p. i (Camdrn Soc). ' Chajiters in the Histury of OKI St. I'aulH, \i. 290. 170 FOrdEPJES. call to niinJ our Divine Redeemer's sufTerings, but especially His triumph ; the cross had become a throne : llegnat a ligno Deus. Hence the figure was sometimes crowned, not with thorns, but with a diadem of gold or silver, and wore royal robes. This was the case through- out Europe, and may be illustrated by Kentish docu- ments of the sixteenth century. In Archbishop War- ham's visitation of 1511, a charge was brought against a layman for neglecting to furnish " a pair of silver shoes for the Rood of Chislet," in accordance with an obligation left on a house he had inherited.^ When Richard Master, the rector of Aldington, in Kent, was, just four years previous to the suppression of Boxley^ attainted and executed for high treason in the affair of the Maid of Kent, an inventory was made of the goods in his presbytery. Among them were found "two coats belonging to the Cross of Rudhill, whereupon hung thirty-three pieces of money, rings and other things, and three crystal stones closed in silver." ^ The purpose of these coats and shoes was evidently for dressing up the crucifixes on Easter Day or other i'estivals. If, then, a figure could be made at one time to represent death by closed eyelids, fallen jaw and drooping neck ; at another life, by mouth closed, opened eyes, head erect and hand raised in benediction, it would carry out more vividly the purposes for which we know that roods were used, and would have no touch of tricKery about it. Whether the Rood of Boxley was ever thus treated cannot be now shown ; but that it was originally designed for some such purpose will be made clear by the documents that I shall now adduce. ^ Diocesan History of Canterbury, by Canon Jenkins, p. 230. * Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. vii. n. 521. THE ROOD OF BOXLEY. 171 First of all must coine the witnesses for the accusa- tion, and I shall not pass over any one that I have seen quoted or referred to. The following- is a letter of one of the commissioners sent out by Cromwell for the sup- pression of the monasteries. As it is of great importance, I shall give it in the original spelling : ^ "Jeffrey Chambers to T. Cromwell, Feb. i5ih.'- " Upon the defacing of the late monasterye of Boxley aud pluck- ing down of tlie images of the same, I found in the Image of the lloode of Grace, the which lieretofore hatlie ben hadde in great veneracion of people, certen ingynes and olde wyer with olde rotou stykes in the backe of the same tliat dyd cause the eyes of the same to move and stere in the hede therof lyke unto a lyvelye thyng. And also the nether lippe in lykewise to move as tlioughe it shulde speke. Wliicli so founde was nott a lille strange to me and other that was present at the pluckinge downe of the same. "Whereupon tlie abbott heryn;je this brut [i.e. rumour] dyd thether resorte whom to my litle wit and conyng with other the olde monkes I dyd examyen of ther knowleg of the premisses. Wlio do declare themselfs to be ignorant of the same. So remyt- tyng the furtlier^ of the premisses unto your goode lordeshipe when they slial repayer unto London. Neverthelesse the sayde abbot is sore seke that as yett he is not able to come. "Further, when I liad