Ignorance Of The Clergy In The Middle Ages

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Title:     Ignorance Of The Clergy In The Middle Ages
Author: William Alexander Clouston [More Titles by Clouston]

Orl. Whom ambles Time withal?

Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily,
because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful
learning.--As You Like It.

During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names. Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words: "I, ----, have subscribed by the hand of ----, because I cannot write"; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed: "I, ----, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him."

Alfred the Great--who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be found competent to teach him the alphabet--complained, towards the close of the 9th century, that "from the Humber to the Thames there was not a priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could translate the easiest piece of Latin"; and a correspondent of Abelard, about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to him of pupils from all countries, says that "even Britain, distant as she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you."

Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[148] says that "the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in friars' cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such weapon. But how could they send ad ordos such ignorant asses? You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours. Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass. One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table: 'Es tu dignus?' answered, 'No, my Lord, but I shall dine anon with your men.' For he thought that dignus (that is, worthy) signified to dine."

[148] This is a work distinct from Henri Etienne's Apologia
pour Herodote. An English translation of it was
published at London in 1807, and at Edinburgh in 1808,
under the title of "A World of Wonders; or, an
Introduction to a Treatise touching the Conformitie of
Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise
to the Apology for Herodotus," etc. For this book (the
"Introduction") Etienne had to quit France, fearing the
wrath of the clerics. His Apologie pour Herodote has
not been rendered into English--and why not, it would be
hard to say.

Etienne gives another example, which, however, belongs rather to the class of simpleton stories: A young man going to the bishop for admission into holy orders, to test his learning, was asked by the prelate, "Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?"[149] and not knowing what answer to make, this promising candidate was refused as inefficient. Returning home, and explaining why he had not been ordained, his father told him that he must be an ass if he could not tell who was the father of the four sons of Aymon. "See, I pray thee," quoth he, "yonder is Great John, the smith, who has four sons; if a man should ask thee who was their father, wouldst thou not say it was Great John, the smith?" "Yes," said the brilliant youth; "now I understand it." Thereupon he went again before the bishop, and being asked a second time, "Who was the father of the Four Sons of Aymon?" he promptly replied: "Great John, the smith."[150]

[149] One of the Charlemagne Romances, translated by Caxton
from the French, and printed by him about the year 1489,
under the title of The Right Pleasaunt and Goodly
Historie of the Four Sonnes of Aymon. It has been
reprinted for the Early English Text Society, ably
edited by Miss Octavia Richardson.

[150] A slightly different version is found in A Hundred Mery
Talys, No. lxix, "Of the franklyns sonne that cam to
take orders." The bishop says that Noah had three sons,
Shem, Ham, and Japheth;--who was the father of Japheth?
When the "scholar" returns home and tells his father how
he had been puzzled by the bishop, he endeavours to
enlighten his son thus: "Here is Colle, my dog, that
hath three whelps; must not these three whelps have
Colle for their sire?" Going back to the bishop, he
informs his lordship that the father of Japheth was
"Colle, my father's dogge."

The same author asks who but the churchmen of those days of ignorance corrupted and perverted the text of the New Testament? Thus, in the parable of the lost piece of money, evertit domum, "she overturned the house," was substituted for everrit domum, "she swept the house." And in the Acts of the Apostles, where Saul (or Paul) is described as being let down from the house on the wall of Damascus in a basket, for demissus per sportam was substituted demissus per portam, a correction which called forth a rather witty Latin epigram to this effect:

This way the other day did pass
As jolly a carpenter as ever was;
So strangely skilful in his trade,
That of a basket a door he made.

Among the many curious anecdotes told in illustration of the gross ignorance of the higher orders of the clergy in medieval times the two following are not the least amusing:

About the year 1330 Louis Beaumont was bishop of Durham. He was an extremely illiterate French nobleman, so incapable of reading that he could not, although he had studied them, read the bulls announced to the people at his consecration. During that ceremony the word "metropoliticæ" occurred. The bishop paused, and tried in vain to repeat it, and at last remarked: "Suppose that said." Then he came to "enigmate," which also puzzled him. "By St. Louis!" he exclaimed in indignation, "it could be no gentleman who wrote that stuff!"

Our second anecdote is probably more generally known: Andrew Forman, who was bishop of Moray and papal legate for Scotland, at an entertainment given by him at Rome to the Pope and cardinals, blundered so in his Latinity when he said grace that his Holiness and the cardinals lost their gravity. The disconcerted bishop concluded his blessing by giving "a' the fause carles to the de'il," to which the company, not understanding his Scotch Latinity, said "Amen!"

When such was the condition of the bishops, it is not surprising to find that few of the ordinary priests were acquainted with even the rudiments of the Latin tongue, and they consequently mumbled over masses which they did not understand. A rector of a parish, we are told, going to law with his parishioners about paving the church, cited these words, Paveant illi, non paveam ego, which, ascribing them to St. Peter, he thus construed: "They are to pave the church, not I"--and this was allowed to be good law by a judge who was himself an ecclesiastic.

We have an amusing example of the ignorance of the lower orders of churchmen during the "dark ages" in No. xii of A Hundred Mery Talys, as follows: "The archdekyn of Essex, that had ben longe in auctorite, in a tyme of vysytacyon, whan all the prestys apperyd before hym, called aside iii. of the yonge prestys which were acusyd that th[e]y could not wel say theyr dyvyne service, and askyd of them, when they sayd mas, whether they sayd corpus meus or corpum meum. The fyrst prest sayde that he sayd corpus meus. The second sayd that he sayd corpum meum. And than he asked of the thyrd how he sayde; whyche answered and sayd thus: Sir, because it is so great a dout, and dyvers men be in dyvers opynyons, therfore, because I wolde be sure I wolde not offende, whan I come to the place I leve it clene out and say nothynge therfore. Wherfore the bysshoppe than openly rebuked them all thre. But dyvers that were present thought more defaut in hym, because he hym selfe beforetyme had admytted them to be prestys." And assuredly they were right in so thinking, and the worthy archdeacon (or bishop, as he is also styled), who had probably passed the three young men "for value received" from their fathers, should have refrained from publicly examining them afterwards.

The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus: "Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and oftentimes twice on one day. So it happened on a time, after his second mass was done in short space, not a mile from Stratford there met him divers merchantmen, which would have heard mass, and desired him to sing mass and he should have a groat, which answered them and said: 'Sirs, I will say mass no more this day; but I will say you two gospels for one groat, and that is dog-cheap for a mass in any place in England.'" The story-teller does not inform us whether the pious merchants accepted of the business-like compromise offered by "Mass John."

Hagiolatry was quite as much in vogue among the priesthood in medieval times as mariolatry has since been the special characteristic of the Romish Church, to the subordination (one might almost say, the suppression) of the only true object of worship; in proof of which, here is a droll anecdote from another early English collection, Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be readde (No. cxix): "A friar, preaching to the people, extolled Saint Francis above [all] confessors, doctors, virgins, martyrs, prophets--yea, and above one more than prophets, John the Baptist, and finally above the seraphical order of angels; and still he said, 'Yet let us go higher.' So when he could go no farther, except he should put Christ out of his place, which the good man was half afraid to do, he said aloud, 'And yet we have found no fit place for him.' And, staying a little while, he cried out at last, saying, 'Where shall we place the holy father?' A froward fellow standing among the audience,[151] said, 'If thou canst find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,' and so he went his way."--This "froward fellow's" unexpected reply will doubtless remind the reader of the old man's remark in the mosque, about the "calling of Noah," ante, pp. 66, 67.[152]

[151] There were no pews in the churches in those "good old
times."

[152] Apropos of saint-worship, quaint old Thomas Fuller
relates a droll story in his Church History, ed. 1655,
p. 278: A countryman who had lived many years in the
Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a
populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God
they did worship. They answered him, that they
worshipped Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man
asked the names of the several churches in the city,
which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they
were consecrated. "It is strange," said he, "that you
should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in
all the city dedicated to him."

Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the 16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy--such, for instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding salta per tria (skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book, deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding the title of the day's service indicated only by the abbreviation Re., read the mass of the Requiem instead of the service of the Resurrection; or that of yet another, who being so illiterate as to be unable to pronounce readily the long words in his ritual always omitted them, and pronounced the word Jesus, which he said was much more devotional.

There is a diverting tale of a foolish curé of Brou, which is well worthy of reproduction, in Les Contes; ou, les Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis, by Bonaventure des Periers--one of the best story-books of the 16th century (Bonaventure succeeded the celebrated poet Clement Marot as valet-de-chambre to Margaret, queen of Navarre):

It happened that a lady of rank and importance, on her way to Châteaudun to keep there the festival of Easter, passed through Brou on Good Friday, about ten o'clock in the morning, and, wishing to hear service, she went into the church. When the curé came to the Passion he said it in his own peculiar manner, and made the whole church ring when he said, "Quem, quæritis?" But when it came to the reply, "Jesum, Nazarenum,"[153] he spoke as low as he possibly could, and in this manner he continued the Passion. The lady, who was very devout and, for a woman, well-informed, in the Holy Scriptures [the reader will understand this was early in the 16th century], and attentive to ecclesiastical ceremonies, felt scandalised at this mode of chanting, and wished that she had never entered the church. She had a mind to speak to the curé, and tell him what she thought of it, and for this purpose sent for him to come to her after service. When he was come, "Monsieur le Curé," she said to him, "I don't know where you have learned to officiate on a day like this, when the people ought to be all humility. But to hear you perform the service is enough to drive away anybody's devotion." "How so, madame?" said the curé. "How so?" responded the lady. "You have said a Passion contrary to all rules of decency. When our Lord speaks you cry as if you were in the town-hall, and when it is Caiaphas, or Pilate, or the Jews, you speak softly like a young bride. Is this becoming in one like you? Are you fit to be a curé? If you had what you deserve, you would be turned out of your benefice, and then you would be made to know your fault." When the curé had very attentively listened to the good lady, "Is this what you have to say to me, madame?" said he. "By my soul! it is very true what you say, and the truth is, there are many people who talk of things which they do not understand. Madame, I believe I know my office as well as another, and beg all the world to know that God is as well served in this parish according to its condition as in any place within a hundred leagues of it. I know very well that the other curés chant the Passion quite differently. I could easily chant it like them if I would; but they don't understand their business at all. I should like to know if it becomes those rogues of Jews to speak as loud as our Lord? No, no, madame; rest assured that in my parish it is my will that God be master, and he shall be as long as I live, and let others do in their parishes according to their understanding."

[153] "Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that should come
upon him, went forth, and said unto them, 'Whom seek
ye?' They answered him, 'Jesus of Nazareth.'"--Gospel
of S. John, xviii, 4, 5.

This is another of Des Periers' comical tales at the expense of the clerical orders: There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be because he had seen a little more than his Cato. And this made him set up his feathers and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth in order to make people think him a great doctor. Even at confession he made use of terms which astonished the poor people. One day he was confessing a poor working man, of whom he asked: "Here, now, my friend, tell me, art thou not ambitious?" The poor man said, "No," thinking this was a word which belonged to great lords, and almost repented of having come to confess to this priest; for he had already heard that he was such a great clerk and that he spoke so grandly that nobody understood him, which he knew by the word ambitious; for although he might have heard it somewhere, yet he knew not at all what it meant. The priest went on to ask: "Art thou not a gourmand?" Said the labourer, who understood as little as before: "No." "Art thou not superbe" [proud]? "No." "Art thou not iracund" [passionate]? "No." The priest, seeing the man always answer, "No," was somewhat surprised. "Art thou not concupiscent?" "No." "And what are thou, then?" said the priest. "I am," said he, "a mason--here's my trowel."

* * * * *

Readers acquainted with the fabliaux of the minstrels (the Trouvères) of Northern France know that those light-hearted gentry very often launched their satirical shafts at the churchmen of their day. One of the fabliaux in Barbazan's collection relates how a doltish, thick-headed priest was officiating in his church on Good Friday, and when about to read the service for that day he discovered that he had lost his book-mark ("mais il ot perdu ses festuz.")[154] Then he began to go back and turn over the leaves, but until Ascension Day he found not the Passion service. And the assembled peasants fretted and complained that he made them fast too long, since it was time for the festival. "Had he but said them the service," interjects the fableur, "should I make you a longer story?" So much did they grumble on all sides, that the priest began on them and fell to saying very rapidly, first in a loud and then in a low tone of voice, "Dixit Dominus Domino meo" (the Lord said unto my Lord); "but," says the fableur, "I cannot find here any sequel." The priest having read the text as chance might lead him, read the vespers for Sunday;--and you must know he travailed hard, that the offerings should be worth something to him. Then he fell to crying, "Barabbas!"--no crier could have cried a ban so loud as he cried to them; and everyone began to confess his sins aloud (i.e., struck up "mea culpa") and cried, "Mercy!" The priest, who read on the sequence of his Psalter, once more began to cry out, saying, "Crucify him!" So that both men and women prayed God that he would defend them from torment. But it sorely vexed the clerk, who said to the priest, "Make an end"; but he answered, "Make no end, friend, till 'unto the marvellous works'"--referring to a passage in the Psalter. The clerk then said that a long Passion service boots nothing, and that it is never a gain to keep the people too long. And as soon as the offerings of the people were collected he finished the Passion.--"By this tale," adds the raconteur, "I would show you how--by the faith of Saint Paul!--it as well befits a fool to talk folly and sottishness as it becomes a wise man to speak wisely. And he is a fool who believes me not."[155]--A commentary, this, which recalls the old English saying, that "it is as great marvel to see a woman weep as to see a goose go barefoot."

[154] Festueum, the split straw so used in the Middle Ages.

[155] See Méon's edition of Barbazan's Fabliaux et Contes,
ed. 1808, tome ii, p. 442, and a prose extrait in Le
Grand d'Aussy's collection, ed. 1781, tome iv, p. 101,
"Du Prêtre qui dit la Passion."

* * * * *

They were bold fellows, those Trouvères. Not content with making the ignorance and the gross vices of the clerical orders the subjects of their fabliaux, they did not scruple to ridicule their superstitious teachings, as witness the satire on saint-worship, entitled "Du vilain [i.e., peasant] qui conquist Paradis par plait," the substance of which is as follows: A poor peasant dies suddenly, and his soul escapes at a moment when neither angel nor demon was on the watch, so that, unclaimed and left to his own discretion, the peasant follows St. Peter, who happened to be on his way to Paradise, and enters the gate with him unperceived. When the saint finds that the soul of such a low person has found its way into Paradise he is angry, and rudely orders the peasant out. But the latter accuses St. Peter of denying his Saviour, and, conscience-stricken, the gate-keeper of heaven applies to St. Thomas, who undertakes to drive away the intruder. The peasant, however, disconcerts St. Thomas by reminding him of his disbelief, and St. Paul, who comes next, fares no better--he had persecuted the saints. At length Christ hears of what had occurred, and comes himself. The Saviour listens benignantly to the poor soul's pleading, and ends by forgiving the peasant his sins, and allowing him to remain in Paradise.[156]

[156] See Méon's Barbazan, 1808, tome iv, p. 114; also Le
Grand, 1781, tome ii, p. 190: "Du Vilain qui gagna
Paradis en plaidant."

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There exists a very singular English burlesque of the unprofitable sermons of the preaching friars in the Middle Ages, which is worthy of Rabelais himself, and of which this is a modernised extract:

Mollificant olera durissima crusta.--"Friends, this is to say to your ignorant understanding, that hot plants and hard crusts make soft hard plants. The help and the grace of the gray goose that goes on the green, and the wisdom of the water wind-mill, with the good grace of a gallon pitcher, and all the salt sausages that be sodden in Norfolk upon Saturday, be with us now at our beginning, and help us in our ending, and quit you of bliss and both your eyes, that never shall have ending. Amen. My dear curst creatures, there was once a wife whose name was Catherine Fyste, and she was crafty in court, and well could carve. Hence she sent after the four Synods of Rome to know why, wherefore, and for what cause that Alleluja was closed before the cup came once round. Why, believest thou not, forsooth, that there stood once a cock on St. Paul's steeple-top, and drew up the strapples of his breech? How provest thou that tale? By all the four doctors of Wynberryhills--that is to say, Vertas, Gadatryne, Trumpas, and Dadyltrymsert--the which four doctors say there was once an old wife had a cock to her son, and he looked out of an old dove-cot, and warned and charged that no man should be so hardy either to ride or go on St. Paul's steeple-top unless he rode on a three-footed stool, or else that he brought with him a warrant of his neck"--and so on, in this fantastical style.

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The meaning of the phrase "benefit of clergy" is not perhaps very generally understood. The phrase had its origin in those days of intellectual darkness, when the state of letters was so low that anyone found guilty in a court of justice of a crime which was punishable with death, if he could prove himself able to read a verse in a Latin Bible he was pardoned, as being a man of learning, and therefore likely to be useful to the state; but if he could not read he was sure to be hanged. This privilege, it is said, was granted to all offences, excepting high treason and sacrilege, till after the year 1350. At first it was extended not only to the clergy but to any person that could read, who, however, had to vow that he would enter into holy orders; but with the increase of learning this "benefit to clergy" was restricted by several Acts of Parliament, and it was finally abolished only so late as the reign of George IV.

In Pasquils Jests and Mother Bunches Merriments, a book of facetiæ very popular in the 16th century, a story is told of a criminal at the Oxford Assizes who "prayed his clergy," and a Bible was accordingly handed to him that he might read a verse. He could not read a word, however, which a scholar who chanced to be present observing, he stood behind him and prompted him with the verse he was to read; but coming towards the end, the man's thumb happened to cover the remaining words, and so the scholar, in a low voice, said: "Take away thy thumb," which words the man, supposing them to form part of the verse he was reading, repeated aloud, "Take away thy thumb"--whereupon the judge ordered him to be taken away and hanged. And in Taylor's Wit and Mirth (1630): "A fellow having his book [that is, having read a verse in the Bible] at the sessions, was burnt in the hand, and was commanded to say: 'May God save the King.' 'The King!' said he, 'God save my grandam, that taught me to read; I am sure I had been hanged else.'"

The verse in the Bible which a criminal was required to read, in order to entitle him to the "benefit of clergy" (the beginning of the 51st Psalm, "Miserere mei"), was called the "neck-verse," because his doing so saved his neck from the gallows. It is sometimes jestingly alluded to in old plays. For example, in Massinger's Great Duke of Florence, Act iii, sc. 1:

Cataminta.--How the fool stares!

Fiorinda.--And looks as if he were conning his neck-verse;

and in the same dramatist's play of The Picture:

Twang it perfectly,
As if it were your neck-verse.

In the anonymous Pleasant Comedy of Patient Grissell (1603), Act ii, sc. 1, we find this custom again referred to:

Farnese.--Ha, hah! Emulo not write and read?

Rice.--Not a letter, an you would hang him.

Urcenze.--Then he'll never be saved by his book.

In Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel, the moss-trooper, William of Deloraine, assures the lady, who had warned him not to look into what he should receive from the Monk of St. Mary's Aisle, "be it scroll or be it book," that

"Letter nor line know I never a one,
Were't my neck-verse at Haribee"--

the place where such Border rascals were usually executed.

It was formerly the custom to sing a psalm at the gallows before a criminal was "turned off." And there is a good story, in Zachary Gray's notes to Hudibras, told of one of the chaplains of the famous Montrose; how, being condemned in Scotland to die for attending his master in some of his expeditions, and being upon the ladder and ordered to select a psalm to be sung, expecting a reprieve, he named the 119th Psalm, with which the officer attending the execution complied (the Scottish Presbyterians were great psalm-singers in those days), and it was well for him he did so, for they had sung it half through before the reprieve came. Any other psalm would certainly have hanged him! Cotton, in his Virgil Travestie, thus alludes to the custom of psalm-singing at the foot of the gallows:

Ready, when Dido gave the word,
To be advanced into the halter,
Without the benefit on's Psalter.

* * * * *

Then 'cause she would, to part the sweeter,
A portion have of Hopkins' metre,
As people use at execution,
For the decorum of conclusion,
Being too sad to sing, she says.[157]

[157] Scarronides; or, Virgil Travestie, etc., by Charles
Cotton, Book iv. Poetical Works, 5th edition, London,
1765, pp. 122, 140.

If the clergy in medieval times had, as they are said to have had, all the learning among themselves, what a blessed state of ignorance must the laity have been in! And so, indeed, it appears, for there is extant an old Act of Parliament which provides that a nobleman shall be entitled to the "benefit of clergy," even though he could not read. And another law sets forth that "the command of the sheriff to his officer by word of mouth, and without writing is good; for it may be that neither the sheriff nor his officer can write or read!" Many charters are preserved to which persons of great dignity, even kings, have affixed the sign of the cross, because they were not able to write their names, and hence the term of signing, instead of subscribing. In this respect a ten-year-old Board School boy in these "double-distilled" days is vastly superior to the most renowned of the "barons bold."

[The end]
W. A. Clouston's essay: Ignorance Of The Clergy In The Middle Ages

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