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.

    791/842 (page 757)
    CHAPTER L (pp. 695-704) (1) The best book on this subject is still that of R. G. Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible (1906). (2) E. Michael, Salimbene und seine Chronik (Inns¬ bruck, 1889), 123. (3) B. F. Westcott, Hist. Eng. Bible (2nd ed.), 82. (4) Quoted in Camb. Hist. Eng. Lit. IV. 42. CHAPTER LI (pp. 705-719) (1) B, 1. 7. (2) See my Medieval Study, xix, “Mr Belloc as Historian” (72 Kimberley Road, Cambridge, 6d. post-free), 4. (3) Foxe’s Martyrs (Parker Soc. 1844), III. 594; Social Life, 462. (4) A. Jessopp, Diocesan Hist. Norwich^S.P.C.K.), 148. (5) Tyndale’s Answer to More (Parker Soc. 1850), 97. (6) Some readers may be glad to have further details of Erasmus’s agreement on many points with Margery Backster, with references. Pilgrimages, or Becket, Ep. 592 (Jortin, Erasmus, II. 194, 207). Bishops (Jortin, 11. 226). Bible-reading by the unlearned he constantly advocated, and reprobated its prohibition. As to Images and Saints, he points out in “The Praise of Folly” that the first Christians “ prayed to God: they did not know that to pray to a figure drawn with charcoal on a wall would be equally efficacious”. Compare Ep. 1072 (c. 1227): “while our churches are filled everywhere with unseemly [indecoris] paintings, we are falling almost into idolatry of these superstitions”; cf. Jortin, 11. 198: “These things are remnants of ancient paganism” and Ep. 974 (c. 1104). Fasting, Ep. 974 (c. 1100, a.d. 1528): “In France, as men write [to me], two men are in danger [of death? periclitantur\ for no other cause than that, compelled by sickness, they have eaten flesh on two days in Lent”; cf. Jortin, 11. 210. Clerical morals and impurity; he speaks of “those who by artifice or by fear are thrust into celibacy, so that they have licence to fornicate [scortari liceat] but not to marry: thus, if they profess concubinage, they are Catholic priests, but, if they prefer to take wives, they are cast into the fire” (Jortin, 11. 206; cf. 214: “nowadays the number of incontinent priests is so enormous [ingens] as contrasted with such rarity of those who live chastely”). Monastic morals are attacked with equal force. (7) Jortin, Erasmus, 11. 226. Compare the quotations from Sir John Fortescue printed in my Social Life, 31. (8) Cf. his Paraphrase on St Matthew xxiii. 27 and F. Seebohm, Oxford Reformers (Everyman), 179 ff. (9) Opp. (1703), 1. 787ff.; cf. 800-2, x. 502. (10) Opera, x. 1202ff. The reference to Jews in my text is reinforced by a passage elsewhere (note on Matt. xi. 30, Opera, vi) where Erasmus points out a text from St Augustine, who complained that the Church, even in his day, had so many petty observances “ that it is more intolerable than the condition of the Jews, who, though they have not recognized the days of [Christian] liberty, are yet subjected to burdens of [God’s] law, not to human presumptions”. In this letter to the Bishop of Basel he points out how such superfluous traditions defeat their own purpose. “On no day are the kitchens more busy than on a fish-day, nor is the elaboration ever greater or the expense heavier.- The upshot is, that poor folk hunger, and the rich live even more delicately. Who would not rather eat a silurus (which the common folk call sturgeon) or a trout or lamprey, than smoked swine-flesh or mutton?... To forbid flesh in regions where fish are rare is in effect to decree famine... .Nowadays St Paul’s saying is everywhere fulfilled: One is hungry and another is drunken. To the rich, change of food is a pleasure and a relief from monotony: nor do they ever lead a more delightful life than when they abstain from flesh food. Mean- I while, however, the indigent husbandman, gnawing a raw root or a leek, adds this as a seasoning to his black bran-bread; and, instead of the rich man’s wine, he drinks buttermilk, or pond-water, while with unceasing sweat of his brow he scarce maintains his wife and litde children and die rest of his household... .It