Medieval panorama : the English scene from conquest to Reformation / by G.G. Coulton.

  • George Gordon Coulton
Date:
1947
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Medieval panorama : the English scene from conquest to Reformation / by G.G. Coulton. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    such. In one well-known preface he repudiated care for mere moods and tenses; the Oracles of God must not be enslaved to the rules of the grammarian. In another often-quoted letter, he rebuked the bishop of Vienne: “We hear that thou expoundest grammar [that is, classical literature].... Our former good opinion of thee is turned to mourning and sorrow. The same mouth singeth not the praises of Jove and the praises of Christ.... [Cast away] the idle vanities of worldly learning.” Those who read this too literally do not realize how much religious reason underlies it all; for it was common to give boys Virgil’s Eclogues to begin upon for their next step after the rudiments, and here they found : “We begin with Jove, O ye Muses; all things are full of Jove.” Yet John of Salisbury records the tradition that Gregory burned the great Palatine Library as a hindrance to Bible studies; and, though there is no real evidence for this, the very legend is significant. But the greatest of all his own books is that on Pastoral Care, of which our Alfred gave a translation to his people; a book which starts from the maxim that the art of arts is the rule of souls. He had lived this book before he wrote it; his contemporaries called him Argus luminosissimus; his eyes were everywhere: even in remote England. He is the first Pope of whom we know that he kept a thoroughly businesslike register of all his important letters. There were other imperfect registers before him, but this of Gregory’s marks an epoch. He supervised the vast papal estates (many as far off as Sicily) as carefully as the hardest business-man could have done, grudging the waste of every farthing that might have been collected and given to the poor. He kept his hand tightly over every bishop in the West. As a ruler, he held his own in diplomacy against the Emperor on the one side, and the half-barbarous Lombards, Visigoths and Franks on the other: and the term Gregorian Chant reminds us of his love of sacred music, though it may be doubtful how far he was in fact its active reformer. In those days, there still remained much of the original demo¬ cratic spirit—or, at least, egalitarian—in Christianity. At first all Church offices had been elective, just as the State offices had been for centuries before Christianity was born. Priests and bishops were chosen by their flocks, and for many centuries men saw no reason whatever why the bishop of Rome should be chosen differently from any other. They did not even trouble to keep