sent to the General Minister at Oxford or Paris, and he writes much as Adam de Marisco did. The friar of this age has no need to fear the tongue of scandal; so in the afternoon he visits the Lady of the Castle, whose dearest wish is that she may atone for the little weaknesses of life by laying her bones in the nearest Franciscan Church, mean and lowly though it be in these early days. He tells her the last news of Queen Eleanor's Court, points a moral with one of the new Lays of Marie, and lifts up his voice against the sad freaks played by fashion in ladies' dress. Their talk is of course in French; but the friar, having studied at Paris, remarks to himself that his fair friend's speech sounds somewhat provincial; and more than a hundred years later we are to hear of the school of Stratford atte Bowe. In the evening, he goes to the neighbouring hamlet, and holds forth on the green to a throng of horny-handed churls, stalwart swinkers and toilers, men who earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brows. They greedily listen when addressed in the uncouth English of their shire, English barely understood fifty miles off. Such burning words they never hear from their parish-priest, one of the old school. The friar's sermon is full of proverbs, tales, and historical examples, all tending to the improvement of morals.[1]
A new link, as we see, was thus forged to bind all classes together in godly fellowship; nothing like this
- ↑ This last sentence I take from Salimbene, who describes the new style of preaching practised by the friars his brethren. Italy and England must have been much alike in the Thirteenth Century in this respect.
