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.

    772/842 (page 738)
    CHAPTER XIV (pp. 171-178) continued know no English”. In another village, the priest had celebrated a clandestine marriage for 12c/. (444) and the parishioners report two other clandestine marriages. The servant of another kept a tavern in the rectory (445). Of another it is reported “he merchandized!, to wit, buyeth and selleth divers goods to get gain thereby” (446). Another “refused burial to Jane, daughter of Davy Godemon, without just cause, and left her body unburied” (447). At another parish “the rector resideth not, and they know not where he dwelleth; otherwise all is well there” (447). At another (448) the outgoing curate “carried off with him from the church two silk chasubles, one red and one white, with a new surplice, to the grievous damage of the parishioners”. Another had forged a will (449). Another “came, vested in his surplice, as is customary, with bell and lantern, to visit a certain Alice Clerke at the point of death, with an empty pyx, without the Body of Christ, to the great scandal [of the parish], causing the people to adore the Sacrament where it was not” (449). In that same parish “R. R. smote one J. S. violently with his fist in church, before the high altar.... Moreover noon was sometimes past before Mass was finished on Sundays and holy-days ”; one priest had refused to purify a parishioner and the vicar “ absenteth himself from his post, notwithstanding his oath” (449-50). Another (450) “is drunken and continually frequenteth the taverns, against clerical decency, nor doth he duly perform divine service”. At Dymock, “The rector is bound by ancient custom to distribute weekly to the poor two bushels of mixed rye and wheat, which hath now been withdrawn for 20 years and more.... Richard Stokke, lately promoted to Holy Orders, keepeth a certain Isabel Llarau, with whom he hath contracted (as he asserts) before such ordination, but the marriage was not yet celebrated between them” (453). Another priest extorted money from his parishioners for giving them Holy Communion (99). At Leominster, one priest is (99) “a common trader in beasts and sheep, buying and selling for profit, and partner in the gain accruing in the parish from baggers”; so also is another; a third is incontinent and a fourth haunts taverns “and other indecent \inhonesta\ places ”. Another “ threatens those parishioners who are in the bishop’s service for the reporting of the transgressions and defaults of delinquents [i.e. the sidesmen] because they reported his transgressions”. Another (445) receives 7 marks a year as chantry chaplain for the late vicar’s soul, and breaks the oath which binds him to celebrate duly. At Staunton Lacy (432) the priest is “a common trader”. (6) Reg. Stapeldon, 107, 133; Reg. Grandisson, 570. CHAPTER XV (pp. 179-186) (1) Wadding, Annales Minorum, an. 1242, § 17. (2) Catholic Dictionary (Addis and Arnold, 1885), 782 a. (3) The story has been told by the Bollandist Fr H. Delehaye with his usual exhaustive learning (Acad. Royale de Bruxelles, Bulletin, Classe des Lettres (1899), 171). A summary by Fr H. Thurston, S.J., with useful further information as to English conditions, may be found in The Nineteenth Century for July 1899. Fr Thurston writes concerning Innocent Ill’s patronage of this epistle: “There is not the least foundation for such a statement, and as a matter of fact the fabrication was one of very ancient date, which may be traced back to the time of Licinianus, Bishop of Carthagena at the end of the sixth century.” But Fr Delehaye, who has traced the letter in all its ramifications, permits himself no such scepticism: and, after all, Eustache’s mission happened in the lifetime of both Wendover and Matthew Paris. The fact that nobody now believes Christ to have written this letter is no proof that Innocent did not believe ft, as these two first-rate chroniclers apparently did. The astounding vogue of this almost incredible forgery for a thousand years, in spite of papal and conciliar