LECTURE XL. THE STATE OF RELIGION.

Worldliness of the Church. The monasteries. The Oxford reformers. The New Testament. Henry VIII. and Dean Colet.

1. AMONG all the changes of this period, the most important for England was that which soon took place in religion. We have not heard much about that lately, because all seemed

State of going on as before. There were still some Lollards,

religion.

who, as we know, were a sort of Protestants, and every now and then some were cruelly put to death, and some were persuaded to deny their faith and recant; but they were quite obscure, and not much noticed except to be put down. The Roman Church, meanwhile, had been going on from bad to

worse.

2. All observing and sensible men knew that the clergy, instead of being more honest and honourable than the rest of the world, were much less so. A very excellent clergyThe clergy. man, Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, of whom we shall hear more by and bye, gave a large sum of money to found a school, and, of course, wanted what we now call "trustees" to take care of it. But he would not appoint any clergyman, bishop, dean, or canon to this office; nor would he appoint any nobleman, but selected some married citizens of honest report. When he was asked his reason for this, he said that he found "less corruption in these men." This, at any rate, leads us to hope that the middle class of traders and citizens, which was so increasing in wealth and importance, was an upright and conscientious class, worthy of the name of Englishmen.

66

1492.

3. The Pope at this time was Alexander VI., whose family name was Borgia;" he was perhaps the most wicked Pope that ever existed, which is saying a good deal. The Italians and everybody else were utterly horrified at his An Italian historian, writing of him after his death (by poison which he had intended for some one else), calls him "the extinct serpent, who by his immoderate ambition, pestifer

crimes.

ous perfidy, monstrous lust, and every sort of horrible cruelty and unexampled avarice had compassed the destruction of so many persons." The next Pope, Julius II., was a great fighter, more like a soldier than a priest.

1503.

4. The higher clergy, the cardinals, bishops, and abbots, were for the most part occupied in worldly affairs, in trying to gain the favour of the king, or in increasing their own splendour and luxury. We shall soon come to a typical example of this sort of churchman in Cardinal Wolsey, who was one of the most eminent persons in the next reign.

and

penance.

5. The lower clergy naturally followed their example in a smaller way, and the power and influence they had over the laity they used greatly as a means to get money out of them. It is almost incredible how many and how shameless were their ways of doing this, by working at once on the religious fears and the sinful dispositions of their Confession flocks. It does not appear that many of the people had any great aspirations after goodness, or spiritual and moral improvement; that had all been crushed with the Lollards; nor did the priests strive to raise any such aspirations in them. All that most men cared for was to escape any dreadful punishment in hell or purgatory, and yet not have to be inconveniently pious or self-denying in this world. This paltry, mean, degrading sort of religion suited the ideas of the clergy very well. They were supposed to hold the keys of the next world; if a man confessed to his priest, and was absolved, then he felt quite safe. When he had done anything wrong, therefore, he went and confessed it; he would then be ordered some penance before he could be absolved; but if he did not like the penance he might pay money instead, and would be absolved just the same. This was very convenient to a rich man, who escaped his punishment, and very pleasant to the priest, who received the money; whether it ennobled or purified the soul of either let any honest person judge.

6. Again, the Church forbade eating meat on fast days, but rich people who did not like fish might get dispensations from fasting by paying for them. The Church forbade

relations, even rather distant cousins, to marry one another, but if they were rich they would easily

Dispensa

tions.

get permission to marry if they liked, as Richard III. expected to be allowed to marry his own niece.

7. Then there were the bishops' courts, which had been founded long ago for the improvement of morality, and in

D D

which the Church could take notice of offences The bishops' which were not punished by the law of the land. courts. In old times these courts had done good; for instance, they often punished a man for cruelty to his slaves; but now they too had become a ready means for getting money. If a man in a moment of passion or heat spoke a disrespectful word about his priest, he might be called before the court and fined; if he would not pay the fine he might be excommunicated, and we know what a dreadful punishment that was. When an unfortunate man was excommunicated, no friend might show him kindness, or even speak to him; no tradesman might sell him food or clothes; and if he died he was refused the last sacraments, and the burial of a Christian. Of course, then, people would be very slow to offend the clergy, and would rather pay almost anything to keep on good terms with them.

8. Another ingenious way of raising money was to send people on pilgrimages, as, for example, to Becket's shrine, or to a holy well or some miraculous image, to get forPilgrimages. giveness for their sins. But every one knew that it was of no use to go empty-handed. "The rule of the Church," says Froude, "was, Nothing for nothing." At a chapel in Saxony there was an image of a Virgin and child. If the worshipper came to it with a good handsome offering the child bowed and was gracious; if the present was unsatisfactory it turned away its head and withheld its favours till the purse-strings were untied again.

"There was a great rood or crucifix of the same kind at Boxley in Kent, where the pilgrims went in thousands. This figure used to bow, too, when it was pleased, and a good sum of money was sure to secure its good will. When the Reformation came, and the police looked into the matter, the images were found tɔ be worked with wires and pulleys." The crucifix from Boxley was brought up to London, and exhibited in Cheapside, where it was torn to pieces by the people.

9. But the greatest and most successful way of all was by the doctrine of purgatory, which, as is well known, was a sort of intermediate place between heaven and hell, where Purgatory. those who were not bad enough to be punished for ever in hell, and yet not good enough to go straight to heaven, were purged and purified by terrible punishments lasting through many thousands of years. The medieval writers gave most horrifying descriptions of purgatory. Dante, the great Italian poet, indeed drew a wide distinction between it and hell, though even he

said the souls there were chastised with blindness, fire, and smoke; but the English monks and old historians could hardly say enough about the tortures they endured. One of the monks who dreamt or believed that he saw a vision of purgatory in the days of Richard I., spoke of it as being filled with malicious demons, who tormented the miserable souls with every conceivable cruelty. Some were suspended over fires of brimstone by iron chains; fiery dragons sat upon some of them and gnawed them with iron teeth; some were baked in ovens and fried in frying-pans; some were immersed in caldrons of boiling pitch. All this and a very great deal more was fully believed in by the people.

There was a very famous cave in Ireland called St. Patrick's Hole, in which it was said that a view of purgatory might be obtained. Froissart fell in with a knight who, with a friend of his, had entered this cave. "I asked him," he writes, "if there were any foundation in truth for what was said of St. Patrick's Hole. He replied that there was, and that he and another knight had been there. They entered it at sunset, remained there the whole night, and came out at sunrise the next morning." But when Froissart requested farther to be told whether he saw all the marvellous things which were to be seen there, he heard that the two knights were fast asleep the whole night! But as they looked upon this as a supernatural sleep, and "imagined that they saw more in their dreams than they would have done if they had been in their beds," their faith was not at all shaken.

10. It was supposed that no one but a great saint went at once to heaven after death; but no baptized person, unless excommunicated, perished for ever; so that almost every one went to purgatory; and a priest could release him only by saying a certain number of masses, which were paid for at so much a dozen. The same monk who described his vision of purgatory 30 minutely, expressly mentioned that there was a very great difference among those who were tortured in this place; those who had not been very wicked passed through it easily, and so also did those "who were assisted by the masses of their friends." Who then could refuse money to release his dearest friend or relation from years of misery? Purgatory was afterwards not unfitly called by Bishop Latimer "Purgatory Pickpurse."

11. In the granting of all these pardons or "indulgences" it is quite true that the Church made some kind of distinction between the spiritual and temporal (or, as it were, bodily) penances. But scarcely anybody could understand what this distinction meant. According to the plain and common meaning

of the words in which they were sold, they were a "broad, plain, direct guarantee from the pains of purgatory, from hell itself, for tens, hundreds, thousands of years; a sweeping pardon for all sins committed; a sweeping licence for sins to be committed."*

12. As for the monasteries which had been founded as homes of a special holiness and purity, they too had many of them changed sorely for the worse. So bad indeed had Monasteries. some become, that even the Pope and the archbishop every now and then felt obliged to take some notice. For example, there was a famous abbey at St. Alban's, the fine old church of which has lately been made a cathedral with a bishop, but which, in the days of Henry VII., was still a very rich monastery with monks and an abbot.

13. Both the abbot and the monks were so scandalously wicked that even the Pope heard of it. This was not that Pope Alexander VI., who was himself more wicked still, but his predecessor Innocent VIII. He heard that they had neglected all the good old customs for which those places were in great measure founded-religious meditation, almsgiving, and hospitality; they had not only wasted the revenues and destroyed the property, but had stolen the sacred vessels, the chalices and jewels, from the church, and even the precious stones from the very shrine of the martyr Alban. Besides their avarice and robbery, they lived most shameful and wicked lives; and if any of the brethren tried to be wise and virtuous, religious and just, those the abbot hated and kept down.

14. The Pope commissioned Cardinal Morton to make inquiries about these charges, and to correct and reform as might seem good to him. On inquiry Morton found all 1489. the charges to be true; there seems to have been hardly any attempt at denying them. It might have been expected, therefore, that this shameless and wicked abbot would be deposed, and the monks also severely punished. But though Morton did certainly write a strong letter of reproof, still he took no other measures whatever, only inviting the abbot to consider his ways, and amend them if possible.

15. This, it is to be feared, is only a sample of what many of the monasteries were, and especially the smaller ones; and we can judge that if things were come to such a condition, and this was all the Pope or the archbishop could or would do in the way of reform, somebody else would be likely to take up the matter before long. When things in this world become intolerably * Milman.