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.

    48/842 (page 28)
    system persisted, the idea crept in that such elections took place in peculiar conditions, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, whose invocation was always the first of electoral acts.... The election must needs be unanimous, but God provided for that.” Yet “this unanimous election was at the same time informal. Votes were not collected and counted. It is possible that, in the earliest ages, there had been a show of hands; but [in the early Middle Ages] the popular voice was expressed by clamours, by acclamations or by hooting. That was one of the reasons which facilitated unanimity: it was enough that the choice should appear unanimous. It sufficed that there should be no manifest opposition; or, if any such appeared, that it should be silenced. This latter result might be obtained by the exhortations of the [presiding] bishops: it might also be due to other methods, such as the fear of one’s opponents.” Those were the practical facts underlying this very rudimentary procedure in one of the matters most important for the well-being of Christendom; for the Pope was a bishop, and all that is said here applied to him also. It took many centuries to bring Europe to the idea of majority-election, whether in the barest sense or in any clear and business-like form. Meanwhile the Church, so meticulously prudent and business-like in some ways, neglected human nature in some of its most obvious im¬ pulses, and left things to arrange themselves in one of the most vital fields, the election of “Christ upon Earth”. She deified Chance under the name of Holy Ghost. Stephen VI (886-9) decreed: “The election pertaineth to the priests, and the consent of the faithful populace must be obtained; for the people must be taught, not followed.” Very similar, at this period, was the election of civil magistrates: on the Continent the count proposed the candidate and the people acclaimed him, and things seem to have followed much the same course under the sheriff (viscount) in early England.5 St Leo the Great (440-61) had ruled that, where the election was not unanimous, the archbishop should choose the fitter of the two candidates. The fact that this decretal was enshrined in Canon Law and became the foundation of future legislation shows how embryonic the whole system was. Even when the great Lateran Council of 1215 had fixed new and preciser methods for eccle¬ siastical elections, it still left room for the old idea of unanimous acclamation; the electors need not follow the new forms “if the