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.

    793/842 (page 759)
    CHAPTER LI (pp. 705-719) continued Isabel of Rome, Gabriela of Cremona”, side by side with “Raphael the Jew”. In this, which was the quarter of the Vatican Palace, 155 out of the 563 houses are thus kept by single women. For the whole city, with its 9285 houses, 1455 are similarly occupied. In many cases the census records their origin: 816 from different parts of Italy and 272 from abroad. These last range from 116 Spaniards, 56 French, 52 German, to 1 Englishwoman. See Archivio della soc. rom. di storia patria, xvii (1894), 375 ff.; and G. de Manteyer, Le Livre-Journal tenu par Fa^y de Rame (Gap. 1932), 1. 353. (18) Opp. x. 1201. (19) Loci e Libro Veritatum (ed. J. E. T. Rogers), 24, 32, 63. (20) J. H. Lupton, Life of Colet, 71. (21) Loci e Libro Veritatum, 123. Gascoigne held the Chancellorship of Oxford University for many years; and his book, apart from its pessimistic bitterness, is essentially true to its title. Compare this testimony with the bold denial of Cardinal Gasquet {Eve of Ref 437): “In the literature of the period [preceding the Reformation], there is nothing to show that the true nature of a * pardon * or Indulgence was not fully and commonly understood. There is no evidence that it was in any way interpreted as a remission of sin, still less that any one was foolish enough to regard it as permission to commit this or that offence against God.” It is charac¬ teristic that the pontifical confidence of this assertion has led two other prominent Roman Catholic scholars into the same ditch of error; Bishop Hedley in his article on Indulgences in The Nineteenth Century for Jan. 1901 (p. 170) and Fr H. Thurston, S.J., in his attack upon Dr H. C. Lea {Dublin Review, Jan. 1900, art. no. 1). In Belgium, Charles V himself complained in 1515 of the Indulgence system as working “to the great burden, damage and loss of my subjects and of this country, which would end by involving their complete ruin”. And on Aug. 18, 1517, more than two months before Luther’s appearance on the scene, a Dutch monk wrote in the same sense: “ Great sums are taken out of the country: it is difficult to say or write how much.... Inconsiderate layfolk chatter unwisely about this.... Contributions [are raised] for fighting the Turks or for Indulgences, but, alas! without ever reaching the effect and the holy object in the name of which they send us these pardons....I maintain that the Netherlands famed beyond all other countries for the independence and pride of their inhabitants, were never shorn and burdened yearly by such heavy tributes under the tyranny of the pagan Emperors of Rome, as they have been for the last 200 years, thanks to these ruses and intrigues.” Moreover, in 1516a book was printed at Deventer, under the rule of the Prince-bishop of Utrecht, by the Benedictine Abbess of Mariendaal. Writing in Flemish, for popular reading, she tells how a monk came back after death to his friend in the cloister, and told how he had been turned back by St Peter because his Letter of Indulgence, though perfectly en regie so far as the papal chancery was concerned, lacked the seal of Jesus Christ. Again, how another was cast, Indulgence and all, into the bottomless pit by a devil of Teutonic speech, who knew no Latin. Upon which the abbess comments “Alas! how often must this German-speaking devil have dragged down to hell these folk who believe not in what the Bible teaches, but who trust to the bulls of pardon which they have gotten!” P. Fredericq, Bull. Classe Lettres de VAcad, royale de Belgique (1899), 42,6. (22) Crump and Jacob, Legacy of the M.A. 39. CHAPTER LII (pp. 720-731) (1) Erasmus, Opp. X. 1208-9. (2) Jortin, Erasmus, 11. 695-6. (3) Rashdall, Universities, 1. 362, note. (4) Direct. Inquis. pars ill, q. cviii, § 3 (ed. 1585, p. 708); cf. Lea, Inquis. M. Agesy 1. 530: “But nowadays, since heretical pravity hath been so far extirpated that pertinacious heretics are rare, and rarer still those who relapse, and rarest of all are rich heretics, but [such as we have] are poor (to