John Wycliffe was not a fiery reformer, not one to hurl his accusations in the teeth of established authority. He was an orderly thinker who had seen clearly what Christendom was coming to and knew what the inevitable result would be. He made no effort to turn the chapel at Lambeth into a sounding board for daring attacks on Rome. Instead he sat down and reasoned out the meaning of the words he had written or said, being willing even to have an orthodox explanation read into some of them. He was dismissed with an admonition. Never again was he to utter such dangerous and controversial views, neither from the pulpit nor in the schools where he taught, “on account of the scandal which they excited among the laity.”
This, in lieu of the vigorous action the Pope had demanded, was a tame conclusion, for which the complaisant Simon had to bear much of the blame. Wycliffe retired to his living at Lutterworth in Lincolnshire where he spent the few years remaining to him in the translation of the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, into the English tongue and in the promulgation of still more radical views rising out of the storm following the death of Gregory.
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It is difficult today to appreciate how close the relationship had become between the Popes of medieval days and the countries acknowledging their sway. The pontiffs exercised a degree of temporal power which became greater or less, according to circumstances, but was always considerable. They not only had much to do with the filling of thrones and the external problems of kings but they were consulted on appointments and they injected themselves into the private lives of the monarchs. John of unfragrant memory counted the day fortunate when no chiding epistle reached him from Innocent III, dealing often with his conduct as a man. Popes were consulted about marriages and separations. Their hand was felt in matters pertaining to wills and property.
What was happening at Rome was, on that account, of very great interest to Englishmen. The course that events took at this particular moment was watched with the deepest concern.
The Babylonish Captivity had continued for seventy years, during which time the halls at Avignon had become palaces of luxury and magnificence. The Popes had all been Frenchmen and it followed that French appointees packed the ranks of the cardinalate. In the meantime the empty church buildings in Rome had fallen into disrepair and even ruin. England had come to expect an adverse bias in all papal action.
Gregory XI, although a Frenchman by birth, had been converted to the wisdom of returning to Rome, largely by the eloquence of St. Catherine of Sienna. He died, however, within a year of the change, after issuing a bull conferring on the cardinals the power to choose the time and place for the election of his successor. This could be construed as a measure to make possible the choice of Avignon and, inevitably, the selection of a French Pope and a return of administration to the French city. At the time of his death there were sixteen cardinals in Rome, and eleven of them were French. The chamberlain, who held authority during vacancies between Popes, was a Frenchman, the Archbishop of Arles. The people of Rome, and of Italy for the most part, wanted the glory and prosperity of the Vatican restored. They saw no hope of action favorable to their cause if the Conclave were held elsewhere.
The nine days of mourning which must be allowed after the death of a Pope were days of deep suspense. St. Peter’s found itself in a state of siege. The people of Rome, armed and belligerent, surrounded the Hall of Conclave, where the cardinals had gathered, and loudly demanded that none leave until an election had been held. Even nature took a hand. Black clouds filled the sky and the roll of thunder was heard from the north and west. A bolt of lightning struck the hall where the cardinals were gathered. Not daring to venture out, the occupants of the room huddled together in a body while a fire destroyed the furnishings of the chamber. In spite of the heavy downpour, in fact encouraged by it as a sign of divine will, the mobs continued to fill the streets, chanting interminably, “A Roman Pope! A Roman Pope!”
As soon as the fire subsided, the people rushed into the building to satisfy themselves that the spiritual heads of the church were still there. They examined every foot of space with an insolent disregard for officials, tapping the walls and floors, searching behind hangings, exploring the kitchens, to make sure that there were no secret means of escape.
Finally an ultimatum was delivered to the cardinals. The Conclave must be held in Rome, and without delay. A Roman Pope must be elected. If this were not done, it would be impossible to restrain the rage of the people. A massacre might be the result.
The answer given to the emissaries of the people, who had conveyed the demands, was courageous and dignified. “Tomorrow,” said the cardinals, “we celebrate the Mass of the Descent of the Holy Ghost. As the Holy Ghost directs, so shall we do.”
There was no secret means of exit from the Hall of Conclave and so the cardinals had only two courses of action from which to choose. They could risk sitting out the storm or they could proceed at once with the election of a new Pope.
The choice of a new pontiff was not as simple as it seemed in the face of the French majority. Most of the cardinals came from the diocese of Limoges and there had been for a long time a rancor over this injudicious preference. Three of the Frenchmen were as determined as the four Italians and the one Spaniard, who completed the body, that the voice of the Limousin should not dictate another selection.
The first votes showed the Conclave to be deadlocked. Out of this situation came the inevitable solution, a compromise election. One of the four Italians was Bartolomeo Prignani, Archbishop of Bari. He was a subject of Queen Joanna of Naples, who also held the title of Countess of Provence. To that extent he had French affiliations to offset his Italian birth. When his name was proposed, the Conclave voted for him unanimously, glad of any solution.
But the tumultuous mobs, who in the meantime had broken into the Pope’s cellars and had fortified themselves with his rich malvoisie wine, were suspicious and dissatisfied. When five of the cardinals who had wanted a French Pope tried to get away, they were quickly detected and forced to scramble back to shelter.
It became apparent at once that the new pontiff, who had assumed the name of Urban VI, was going to be a sore trial to his one-time fellows. He was of common birth and had reached high rank by reason of his piety and austerity. He wore a hair shirt next his skin and did not believe the princes of the church should live in luxury. He was against any display of wealth and was determined to put an end to the packing of offices with the greedy relatives of the church leaders. He announced immediately that no more than one dish should be served at any meal.
Views of this kind generally went with genuine piety and understanding. Urban VI was harsh and domineering. He scowled blackly as he laid down the law. “I am the Good Shepherd!” he cried. He announced at once his intention to remain in Rome and to direct the church from St. Peter’s. He would be impartial in all disputes between England and France. The Babylonish Captivity was ended. “Hold your tongues!” he cried, when any voices were raised in protest. The good cardinals, to employ a modern phrase, had indeed caught a tartar.
As soon as they were allowed to leave, the French members assembled in the small city of Anagni, which stands on a hill in the valley of Tresis. It had sometimes been used as a summer home by the Popes and it was here that England’s one pontiff, Adrian IV, had died. The bitterly dissatisfied cardinals gave it out that the election of Urban had been forced on them by threats of death. The new incumbent was declared to be a tyrant and unfit to rule, and it was demanded of him that he step down at once and permit a new election, free of undue pressure.
Urban struck back fiercely and a state of war followed. The Archbishop of Arles, the chamberlain of the late Pope, stole out of Rome at night and carried to Anagni the crown and all the jewels of the papacy. Even the Queen of Naples, who had been delighted at first by the selection of Urban, turned against him. Her husband, Otto of Brunswick, had visited the new Pope to discuss the rights of succession and had been treated with indifference and even scorn. On the o
ther hand there was a sentiment throughout Christendom against the men who had permitted fear of bodily harm to influence their votes.
The dissenting cardinals moved to Fondi and here they selected a new Pope in the person of Cardinal Robert of Geneva. He took the title of Clement VII and returned at once to Avignon, thus beginning a division of the church which was to continue for thirty-eight years. He was recognized by France, Scotland, and Savoy and finally by Spain and Portugal. Italy remained loyal to Urban, as did also the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, England, Hungary, Poland, and the Scandinavian countries. Political considerations played a part in this division of the nations. England must stand against France, Scotland against England.
The events which followed this schism in the church were of such a violent nature that they are hard to believe. Urban appointed twenty-six new cardinals, which threw Avignon into a decided minority. He is said to have had Joanna of Naples smothered to death under a mattress and to have thrown six of his cardinals (who were charged with a conspiracy to depose him) into a damp cistern at the castle of Nocera which they shared with snakes. One of them was the sole Englishman wearing the red hat, Adam of Easton. Later the Pope took them with him to Genoa, had them sewn up in sacks and cast into the sea. The English cardinal was spared through the intervention of the young king.
In the meantime, Clement VII, the first of the anti-Popes, as the French pontiffs were to be designated, found himself with no revenue to maintain the magnificence of Avignon. He outdid his opponent by appointing thirty-six cardinals and proceeded to drain the French church by every form of exaction.
Partisan malice, no doubt, has lent exaggeration to this account of what followed the split in the church; but certainly they were black and bitter days for all concerned.
With the rival pontiffs waging as harsh a warfare as was possible with a spur of the Alps and the Ligurian Sea between them, it is not surprising that little attention was paid to echoes from England of the complaisance of the church heads to a growing acceptance of the teachings of a gentle scholar named Wycliffe.
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There were other reasons why the thinking of Wycliffe was allowed to sway the minds of many Englishmen and spread to the continent, there to produce a Jan Huss and to lay the first stones in the foundation of the Reformation. Wycliffe’s attacks, in the beginning, were directed at financial aspects. The church, he pointed out, was growing too rich. It was acquiring too much of the land. It was despotic in the assertion of its rights and privileges. In England this was a very sore point, for even in the highest clerical ranks there was rancor over the granting of English benefices to Italians who continued to reside in Rome and were recompensed in this way for their services to the papacy. The principle was bitter in the mouth and it was considered, moreover, that the hand of the Vatican was particularly heavy on England.
For this reason Wycliffe had a ready and favorable audience. The Lollards, who preached his doctrines, were not for the most part the aggressive type of reformers who raised passions to a fiery pitch. There was a gentle rationality back of what they said to the people. It was not until the leader began to delve more deeply and to attack the church on points of creed that the heads of the church leveled against him the charge of heresy.
There were other reasons to account for the lack of inquisitorial action. As has already been explained, Rome was too busy. The death grapple which followed the open breach between Rome and Avignon left little time for anything else. Wycliffe died before the attack reached anything like the grim and bloodthirsty fanaticism which had wiped out the Albigenses in southern France. It was forty-four years after his death before his grave was opened and his remains burned.
The lack of will to wipe out Lollardy, root and branch, may have been due to the characteristics of the two men in whose hands the decision lay. Things might have been different if the positions of Simon of Sudbury and Courtenay had been reversed, in other words if Courtenay had been Archbishop of Canterbury when the Pope delivered his attack on the apathy of the English church. Courtenay had no spiritual or social sympathy with those who espoused Wycliffean ideas. He was the first to punish spiritual derelictions with corporal penalties. No one was burned at the stake in his time, but he had opened the door to this diabolical method of stamping out heresy.
Another reason for the tolerance which wrapped Wycliffe in the folds of immunity was that he had support in high places. Duke John blew hot and cold, but it was always believed he would back the reformer if the need grew urgent. And he had highhanded ways of dealing with matters if anything went against his will.
There was, for instance, a case in which he allowed adherents of his to violate the church law of sanctuary. From primitive days there had been a belief that anyone, even a criminal with blood on his hands, attained some degree of holiness if he passed the inner portals, and this had been embodied in Roman practices to the extent of establishing certain churches in all countries as sanctuaries. There were crosses placed on all roads leading to such churches at a distance of a mile and marked Sanctarium. Although the theory accepted in the first place had been that immunity was established in any part of the edifice, it was only while seated in the frithstool, a stone chair beside the altar, that a criminal was legally safe.
The course to be pursued had been developed in considerable detail. The fugitive must present himself at the front entrance and ring the galilee bell which was reserved for that purpose. When the tolling of the bell brought a response, the desperate applicant had to pay an admission fee, make a full statement of the crime, and, before being admitted, don a black robe with St. Cuthbert’s cross on the left shoulder, a strange device in view of the dying statement of the Celtic saint that he did not want the presence of his bones to assist evil men in claiming sanctuary.
In the year 1377, Duke John, who was still actively asserting his claim to the throne of Castile because his second wife, Constance, was the elder daughter of Pedro the Cruel (thus disregarding her illegitimacy), wanted to retain in his custody the son of the Count of Denia who was related to the Castilian royal family. The boy had been left as a hostage by his father in the care of two squires named Schakel and Haule until he could raise the ransom demanded for him. The duke agreed to pay the ransom if the boy were left in his charge but, as this proposal was contrary to the established laws of chivalry, the offer was refused. The duke then used his influence to have Schakel and Haule committed to the Tower of London until they turned the boy over. They escaped from the Tower and made their way to Westminster where they claimed sanctuary. They had been followed by Lancastrian men-at-arms who secured Schakel and took him back to his cell in the Tower. Haule was less fortunate. Returning to the Abbey, the armed men found that High Mass was being celebrated and that Haule was beside the choir. They surrounded him and proceeded to drag him out. Haule drew his sword in defense and circled the altar twice before a blow from one of his assailants shattered his skull.
The incident created much bitterness and the perpetrators of the murder were excommunicated. Duke John, however, was declared exempt. Later he made the claim that Haule had sought sanctuary as a debtor and that the laws limited that right to men charged with crimes of violence, an interpretation to which the bishops servilely assented.
CHAPTER V
The First English Bible
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THE market town of Lutterworth in Leicestershire stood on an eminence around which flowed the river Swift. It has often been pointed out that its location should be considered symbolic: for the Swift joined the Avon and the Avon joined the Severn and then they all joined the sea, while on the other side a brooklet rising near the town flowed into the Soar, the Soar flowed into the Trent, the Trent into the Humber, and all of them finally were lost in the German Ocean. Was it not significant that this quiet medieval backwater, from which a prophetic voice would send its message to all parts of the world, should thus feed the waters of both east and west?
John Wycliffe did not retire
to his living at Lutterworth because of ecclesiastical pressure. He knew how little time remained to him and that he must use every hour in the completion of his great task, the translation of the Latin Bible into English. He had left followers behind him to carry on his work at Oxford, men who were sometimes more radical and outspoken than he had been. Even Dr. Rygge, the chancellor, belonged to this group. Throughout the country the Lollards, who preached his message, were being heard at village crossroads and in forest glades.
News of this reached the ears of the venerable leader, toiling in his quiet home on the glebe at the church of St. Mary’s; but the drone of the outside world came to him faintly and had, perhaps, lost some of its sense of urgency. He may have smiled approvingly when he learned that his Oxford adherents, even Dr. Rygge, had adopted a particular manner of dress, going barefoot and wearing coarse russet gowns which reached to the ankles, because he believed in simplicity and avoided for himself the use of quatrefoil decoration on his alb or the manciple he wore when serving at the altar. It was, nonetheless, a contentious day in matters of clerical apparel. At the time that Wycliffe went into retreat at Lutterworth, the amiable Archbishop Simon of Sudbury was struggling to adjudicate a dispute in St. Paul’s, finally approving the right of minor canons to sit in the choir in white surplices with almuces of black, lined with the skins of animals, and black open capes. They were all most tenacious of their little rights, these little men. The same canons had demanded, and had been awarded, seven white loaves and three trencher loaves of black bread each week, to say nothing of twelve weekly bowls of the best ale, called welkyn.
The Last Plantagenet Page 4
