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.

    792/842 (page 758)
    CHAPTER LI (pp. 705-719) continued may be pleaded: ‘If any man be aggrieved by these things, he hath a remedy: let him buy permission to eat from the pope at Rome.’ Very true: but not all men have the opportunity or the money to buy an indulgence of this kind: and here, again, the upshot is the same; the rich man, who most needed a flesh- prohibition, who most needed to fast, commonly enjoys relaxation of this decree, while the grievous yoke presses only upon the humble poor man.” If relaxation is just at all, let the parish priest have that power, for he knows his man; and let it be granted without fee. The parson has rights of absolution from far worse offences than this: “if he be unfit to grant dispensation in these slight cases, then the fault lies with the bishop who has committed Christ’s flock to such a man.” The tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse imposed a network of laws, with the set purpose of reaping rich revenues from the multitude who would certainly break them; therefore “for the purity of Church discipline, it would be most advantageous that no just relaxation should be sold for money, and that the power were committed to those who know the man”. Moreover, priests and bishops some¬ times preach that violation is actually a mortal sin; that the fast-breaker will go to hell. To this Erasmus recurs over and over again in this treatise. “God”, he pleads, “is not so severe or irritable as that he should, for any fault, cast those into hell whom He hath redeemed with His own blood.” Yet “the bishops, whose office it is to defend men with the sword of God’s word, claim for the sake of food and drink, which Christ hath put into our own power, that whosoever breaketh their decree goeth utterly to hell.... Paul is indignant that any man should judge his brother in the matter of meat and drink; and shall I for the sake of these things thrust my brother into hell?... The flesh-eater we execrate as though he had ceased to be a Christian, though the Gospel forbiddeth us to judge any man in things not evil in themselves.... Certainly he who condemneth his brother, who revileth him and bringeth railing accusation against him, sinneth against both Gospel teaching and the Pauline precept; and, in my opinion, his is a more grievous trespass than if he ate flesh for ten years on end. Men call flesh-eaters Lutherans and heretics', but to speak thus is to gnaw the flesh not of calves but of our own brother. Which is the greater crime? Yet no man is troubled in spirit by that which the Gospels and St Paul forbid, while we are as horrified in these matters which human custom has brought in, above and beyond the Gospel teaching, as if the whole Christian religion were about to fall at one stroke!” (11) Opp. X. 512. (12) Jortin, Erasmus, II. 170, 668. (13) Ibid. 670-3, 636. (14) English Works (1557), 873, 937. (15) Encyc. Brit. IX. 731. (16) G. Durandus, De Modo Generalis Concilii habendi (Paris, 1671), 11. 10, 46. (17) It was under Clement VII, the Pope who negotiated with Henry VIII, that the earliest surviving census of the city of Rome was made (1527). The total population was a little over 55,000. The document is specially valuable as giving the households one by one, with the number of souls in each, and usually the occupier’s profession and place of origin. The editor notes how the clergy and papal courtiers were mainly congregated in the three districts of Borgo, Ponte, and Parione, where twenty of the cardinals had their palaces, the remaining five being scattered over eleven other districts. Concerning these three specially clerical districts he writes: “In these, which were populated mainly by celibates, it was natural that there should be a greater number of courtesans, who however abounded in the other districts also. In most cases they are not distinguished here, as in [another census], by their professional title; but all these single women may be easily recognized by their plain noms de guerre—Imperia, Lucrezia, Giulia, Alessandra, Pipa, Nanna—with the country of their origin.” In the first half¬ column of Borgo, for instance, we find that Baldassena has indeed a trade, of spice-seller; but there are three others registered simply as “Lucia of Bologna,