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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    he should not cease to support the woman who is prevented by illness, not cast out by loathsome sin.5’ As to the “priests or bishops, involved in many vices, whose life defileth the priest¬ hood in their persons”,7 Boniface should not refuse to eat or speak with them; by kindly intercourse he might possibly gain some of them over.8 Some years later, Boniface complains that the synod he held has brought upon him “many injuries and persecutions, especially from false priests and adulterine deacons and fornicating clergy”. There is a good deal of social significance, also, in the smaller matters which troubled Boniface and his Popes, behind the great questions of religion and morality. Zacharias is so troubled by pagan customs that he forbids the consumption of “jackdaws [or jays] and rooks and storks, which Christians must by all means avoid eating: moreover beavers and hares and wild horses should be much more strictly avoided”. Patients with jaundice are to be segregated, lest others catch the contagion.9 Most interesting of all is the Pope’s attitude towards the Antipodes. A certain Virgilius or Ferghil, probably the same man of that name who was Bishop of Salzburg, had come into conflict with Boniface, whom he scandalized also by his geographical theory. The Pope’s decision ran: “concerning this man’s perverse and iniquitous doctrine, which he hath spoken against God and his own soul, if it be clearly proved that he professeth that another world and other men are beneath the earth, or a sun and moon, then do thou take counsel [or, hold a council] and expel him from the Church, depriving him of the honour of priesthood.”10 If Boniface had remained at home in England he would have been confronted with much the same problems, as we may see from his letter to his fellow-archbishop, Cuthbert of Canterbury. Among the Anglo-Saxons there was more than one bishop who cared less to feed his flock than to shear it: “Who doth not tremble at these things, save only those who have no belief in the world to come?” He exhorts Cuthbert: “Let us die, if so God will, for the holy laws of our forefathers, that we may earn with them an everlasting inheritance.” “Moreover I do not conceal from you, loving brother, that all God’s servants here [in Germany] who seem most approved in Scripture or in the fear of God, are dis¬ pleased that the good and honour and modesty of your Church are mocked; and it would be some relief from our shame if your synod and your princes would forbid to women and to veiled nuns