Post-Mediæval Preachers/Jean Raulin

by Sabine Baring-Gould

John Raulin, born at Toul in 1443, of noble and wealthy parents, was educated at the Navarre College in Paris, and took honours in theology in the year 1479.

In 1481 he was elected President in the place of William de Châteaufort, and he filled the position with the utmost probity, and ruled with singular discretion.

In 1497 he resigned the mastership and retired to Cluni, where he lived a life of great sanctity.

In 1501 he obtained a commission from Cardinal Ambassiani to introduce a reform into the Benedictine Order. He died at Paris in the Cluniac monastery, on February 6th, 1514, aged seventy-one.

Raulin was a man of considerable piety, of blameless life, and of the utmost integrity. He seems to have been regarded in his day as a great preacher, and his sermons have been several times republished. Those for Advent have passed through six editions, and those for Lent through five.

Besides sermons, he wrote a “Doctrinale” on the triple death,—the death of the body, the death in sin, and the last or eternal death. He is also the author of a volume of letters and tracts on the reform of the Cluniacs; also of “The Itinerary of Paradise,” “A Discourse on the Reformation of the Clergy,” and a “Commentary on Aristotle’s Logic.”

He was a dry and methodical preacher, vehement in his denunciations of the corruptions in Church and State, and ready unscrupulously to attack all abuses in ecclesiastical discipline. His style is wholly devoid of eloquence, and is precise and dull. His sermons are full of divisions and subdivisions, which could never have fixed themselves in the minds of his audience, and serve only to perplex his readers. They are wanting in almost every particular which would make a sermon tolerable now-a-days; and after a lengthened perusal, one rises from the volumes wondering how there could have been found hearers to listen to such discourses, or readers sufficiently numerous to necessitate a rapid succession of editions.

As a representative man of a type common enough in the century which produced him, he is valuable. For the age and the taste of his period, he is grave; but he sometimes sinks almost as deep in buffoonery as Menot, Meffreth, or Oliver Maillard.

As an example, taken at hazard, of one of his sermons, I will give a short outline of his Epiphany discourse on the text—“It is the Lord that commandeth the waters; it is the glorious God that maketh the thunder; it is the Lord that ruleth the sea.” (Ps. xxix. 3, 4.)

Question. Was it of necessity that Christ should be baptized?

Answer. No; for reasons taken from St. Bernard and St. Chrysostom.

Christ however consented to be baptized for three reasons,—

1. To set an example to us.
2. To conceal Himself from Satan, who beholding Him baptized might hesitate to regard Him as the Messiah.
3. To show His perfect humility.

In the baptism of our Lord, there were three manifestations: the Son in His humanity, the Father by the voice, the Holy Ghost by the descent of the dove.

Then follows an exhortation to humility, and a warning to priests and people to practise godliness instead of contenting themselves with professing it. “The hand is bigger than the tongue,” hints Raulin.

The Son was manifest in His humanity. A question is asked: Did John Baptist recognize Christ?

Answer:—

1. He recognized Him when He was unborn, “The babe leaped in my womb for joy;” but he did not distinctly know Him now, for—the reason given is perfectly monstrous—Aristotle says that the human frame changes every seven years.
2. He knew that Christ was among the throng by a sort of inspiration, but he knew not which of his hearers was Christ.
3. Knowledge is double; it arises out of

α. Demonstration, and is acquired by reason.

β. Experience.

Raulin investigates the knowledge of John, and resolves the question by stating that at first he had no certain knowledge, but that after the manifestations accompanying the baptism, he obtained it by experience.

A second question is asked: Why St. John Baptist did not venture to touch Christ?

Answer:—

1. Because he had an instinctive fear of God present in the flesh.
2. Because he was conscious of his own sinfulness.

The Father was manifest by the voice.

In holy baptism all men are made in like manner children of God. We are made children,

1. By adoption—to the Father.
2. By ingrafting—to the Church.
3. By spiritual generation to the priest who baptizes.

From this arises the question:—Did St. John the Baptist become spiritual father of our Lord by baptizing Him?

This Raulin answers in the negative; for,

1. Christ received not grace through the ministration of John; for He was full of grace from the moment of His conception.
2. The rite was imperfect.
3. It was a baptism of repentance, which could not avail spiritually one who had never sinned.

The Spirit was manifest under the form of a dove.

The dove appeared above water, and here follows a dissertation on the virtues of divers waters.

The question arises: Why did the Spirit elect the form of a dove?

This Raulin answers in the following manner:

1. A dove is without gall, and is harmless, and therefore represents the character of those born of the Spirit.

2. A dove bore the olive-branch to the ark, in token of God being reconciled. And by baptism we are reconciled to God.

3. A dove has seven qualities, resembling the Spirit’s sevenfold gifts. These are,

(1) It moans instead of warbling; this represents the spirit of holy Fear.

(2) It is a gentle bird, and is offered in sacrifice; thus representing the spirit of Piety.

(3) It is granivorous, not carnivorous; thus it shadows forth the spirit of Knowledge.

(4) It dwells in the clefts of the rock; thus exhibiting the character of the spirit of Fortitude.

(5) It brings up the young of others; thus showing forth the spirit of Counsel.

(6) It rends not what it eats, but swallows whole; a type of the spirit of Understanding.

(7) It dwells beside waters; thereby exhibiting the marks of the spirit of Wisdom.

All these points are drawn out at length, and examined minutely; Scripture is tortured to illustrate them, and illustrations of a most unsuitable nature are brought to bear upon them.

It will be seen from this abstract, how thoroughly unprofitable the sermons of Jean Raulin prove to be; they bear the character of playing and trifling with Scripture and with the most sacred subjects, and it is sad to think that a good and blameless man, such as he was, should have degraded the ministry of God’s Word to a mere tissue of Sunday puzzles.

Raulin delighted in far-fetched similes, and in tracing out types beyond all limits of endurance. That of the dove was sufficiently extravagant, but what can we say to his working out the details of the parable of the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, in such a manner as to make the little fishes resemble the faithful in the Church, because,

(1) Fish have their eyes at their sides, and so can always see about them; and faithful Christians are ever watchful.

(2) Fish advance in the water by wagging their tails; and good Christians have to advance by remembering the end of all things!!

(3) Little fish are eaten by big fish, and so of the faithful it is said, “Men shall devour you.”

Occasionally Jean Raulin tells a story to enliven his discourse—stories in the pulpit were in vogue then—and these anecdotes and fables are often exceedingly good and pointed, but they are most unsuited to a sermon.

On one occasion, when preaching on the corruptions in the Church, and declaiming against the way in which the clergy condoned moral sins of the blackest dye, but showed the utmost severity when the slightest injury was done to the temporal welfare of the Church, he illustrated his subject by a story to this effect:

The beasts were once determined to keep Lent strictly, and to begin by making their confessions. The Lion was appointed confessor. First to be shriven came the Wolf, who with expressions of remorse acknowledged himself a grievous sinner, and confessed that he had yes, he had once eaten a lamb.

“Any extenuating circumstances?” asked the Lion.

“Well, yes, there were,” quoth the Wolf; “for the mother who bore me, and my ancestors from time immemorial, have been notable lamb-eaters, and ‘what’s born in the bone comes out in the flesh,’”

“Quite so,” said the confessor; “your penance is this,—say one Pater Noster.”

The next to approach the tribunal of penance was the Fox, with drooping tail, a lachrymose eye, and humble gait.

“I have sinned, father!” began Reynard, beating his breast; “I have sinned grievously through my own fault; I—I—I—yes, I once did eat a hen.”

“Any extenuating circumstances?”asked the Lion.

“Two,” replied the penitent; “I must say, the fault was not quite my own. The hen was grossly fat, and it roosted within reach. Now, had she been an ascetic, and had she gone to sleep in some tree, I should never have touched her, I assure you, father.”

“There is some truth in that,” said the confessor; “say as penance one Pater Noster.”

Next came the Donkey, hobbling up to the confessional, and her broken ee-yaws! could be heard from quite a distance. For some time the poor brute was so convulsed with sobs that not a word she said could be distinguished. At last she gulped forth that she had sinned in three things.

“And what are they?” asked the Lion gruffly.

“Oh, father! first of all, as I went along the roads, I found grass and thistles in the hedges; they were so tempting that—that—that—ee-yaw, ee-yaw!”

“Go on,” growled the Lion; “you ate them; you committed robbery.—Vile monster! I shudder at the enormity of your crime.”

“Secondly,” continued the Donkey, “as I came near a monastery one summer’s day, the gates were wide open to air the cloisters; impelled by curiosity, I—I—I—just ventured to walk in, and I think I may have somewhat befouled the pavement.”

“What!” exclaimed the confessor, rising in his seat, and shaking his mane; “enter the sanctuary dedicated to religion—you, a female, knowing that it is against the rules of the order that aught but males should intrude; and then, too, that little circumstance about the pavement! Go on,” said the Lion grimly.

“Oh, father!” sighed the poor penitent; “the holy monks were all in chapel, and singing the office. They sang so beautifully that my heart was lifted up within me, and at the close of a collect my feelings overcame me, and I tried to say Amen; but produced only an ee-yaw! which interrupted the service and hindered the devotion of the monks.”

“Horrible!” cried the Lion, his eyes flashing with pious zeal, his hair bristling with virtuous indignation “Monster steeped in crime, is there any penance too great to inflict on you? I—” The reader may guess what became of the helpless beast.

This story, which I have related in my own words, instead of giving a literal translation, must have been a cutting satire on the practices of the clergy of that period, and as true as it was cutting; but the pulpit was not the place for it.

Another of Raulin’s beast fables is good. It occurs in a sermon on St. Nicolas. He is speaking of the persuasion which parents have that their children are perfect spiritually and corporeally. Once an old toad had a son who was fond of church-going—so fond, indeed, that in the ardour of his devotion he went one day without his socks. This troubled the old toad, as his son was liable to colds in the head if he caught chills in his feet. Seeing the hare dashing by, he called out, “Hey! you, there! going to church, I suppose? Do me a good turn and take my son his socks, or he’ll get his death of cold.”

“But how am I to know your son?”

“Nothing more easy,” replied the toad; “there’s not such a good-looking fellow in the crowd.”

“Ah! I know him,” said the hare; “we call him the swan.”

“Swan!” expressed in a tone of contempt, “swan! a fellow with great splay feet and a neck you might tie in a knot!”

“Well, let me see! I know him; he is the peacock.”

The toad screamed with dismay. “How can you insult me by thinking that cracked-voiced thing my son?” and he puffed himself up to the shape of a ball.

“Then how am I to know your son?”

“Why, look you,” pumped forth the toad with stateliness, “he is remarkably handsome—ahem! he is the image of me: has goggle eyes, a blotched back, and a great white belly!”

Now, could any congregation hear this story from the pulpit without laughing? It is sufficiently piquant, and would go home to many parents present.

There is a capital story which I believe originated with Raulin, but which has since been versified by Southey, and even dramatized; but it may be questioned whether any modern author has told it with any thing like the naïveté of the original.

It occurs in the third sermon on widowhood. I give it in the Latin of the period.

“Dicatur de quâdam viduâ, quod venit ad curatum suum (à son curé), quærens ab eo consilium, si deberet iterum maritari, et allegabat quod erat sine adjutorio, et quod habebat servum optimum et peritum in arte mariti sui.

“Tunc curatus: ‘Bene, accipite eum.’

“E contrario illa dicebat: ‘Sed periculum est accipere illum, ne de servo meo faciam dominum.’

“Tunc curatus dixit: ‘Bene, nolite eum accipere.’

“Ait illa: ‘Quid faciam? non possum sustinere pondus illud quod sustinebat maritus meus, nisi unum habeam.’

“Tunc curatus dixit: ‘Bene, habeatis eum.’

“At illa: ‘Sed si malus esset, et vellet mea disperdere et usurpare?’

“Tunc curatus: ‘Non accipiatis ergo eum.’

“Etsic semper curatus juxta argumenta sua concedebat ei. Videns autem curatus quod vellet illum habere et haberet devotionem ad eum, dixit ei ut bene distincte intelligeret quid campanæ ecclesiæ ei dicerent, et secundum consilium campanarum ipsa faceret.

“Campanis autem pulsantibus, intellexit juxta voluntatem suam quod dicerent: ‘Prends ton valet, prends ton valet.’ Quo accepto, servus egregie verberabit eam, et fuit ancilla quæ prius erat domina.

“Tunc ad curatum suum conquesta est de consilio, maledicendo horam quâ crediderat ei. Cui ille: ‘Non satis audisti quid dicant campanæ.’

“Tunc curatus pulsavit campanas, et tunc intellexit quod campanæ dicebant: ‘Ne le prends pas, ne le prends pas.’ Tunc enim vexatio dederat ei intellectum.”

In an Easter sermon, Raulin asks why the news of the resurrection was announced to women. And he replies that they have such tongues that they would spread the news quickest.

He then says that it has been asked why women are greater chatterboxes than men. And the reason he gives is certainly original, if perhaps not conclusive.

Man is made of clay, woman of bone—the rib of Adam. Now if you move a sack of clay, it makes no noise; but, only touch a bag of bones, and rattle, rattle, rattle, is what you hear.

This remark is also made by Gratian de Drusac in his Controverses des Sexes masculin et féminin, 1538, p. 25.

A story told by Raulin, with which I shall conclude, is not without beauty.

A hermit supplicating God that he might know the way of safety, beheld the Devil transformed into an angel of light, who said, “Your prayer is heard, and I am sent to tell you what you must do to be saved; you must give God three things united—the new moon, the disc of the sun, and the head of a rose.” The hermit was nearly driven to despair, thinking that this was an impossibility, but a real angel appeared to him, and told him the solution. “The new moon is a crescent, that is to say a C; the disc of the sun is an O; and the head of a rose is R. Unite these three letters, and offer to God COR, your heart, then the way of salvation is open before you.”