The Mediaeval Mind/Chapter 20

by Henry Osborn Taylor

 

CHAPTER XX

THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY

The Testimony of Invective and Satire; Archbishop Rigaud's Register; Engelbert of Cologne; Popular Credences

The preceding sketches of monastic qualities and personalities illustrate the ideals of monasticism. That monastic practices should fall away, corruptions enter, and when expelled inevitably return, was to be expected. The cause lay in those qualities of human nature which may be either power or frailty. The acquisitive, self-seeking, lusting qualities of men lie at the base of life, and may be essential to achievement and advance. Yet a higher interpretation of values will set the spiritual above the earthly, and beatify the self-denial through which man ultimately attains his highest self, under the prompting of his vision of the divine. The sight of this far goal is given to few men steadily, and the multitude, whether cowled or clad in fashions of the world, pursue more immediate desires.

So human nature saw to it that monasticism should constantly exhibit frivolity instead of earnestness, gluttony instead of fasting, avarice instead of alms-giving, anger and malice instead of charity and love, lustfulness instead of chastity, and, instead of meekness, pride and vain-glory. The particular forms assumed by these corruptions depended on the conditions of mediaeval life and the position in it occupied by monks.

It has already been said that the standard of conduct for the secular clergy was the same in principle as that for monks, though with allowance made for the stress of a life of service in the cure of souls.^[1] But always the cloister and the hermitage were looked upon as the abiding-places where one stood the best chance to save one's soul: the life of the layman merchant, usurer, knight was fraught with instant peril; that of the secular clergy was also perilous, especially when they held high office. Dread of ecclesiastical preferment might be well founded; the reluctance to be a bishop was often real. This sentiment, like all feelings in the Middle Ages, took the form of a story, with the usual vision to certify the moral of the tale:

"It is told of a certain prior of Clairvaux, Geoffrey by name, that when he had been elected Bishop of Tournai, and Pope Eugene as well as the blessed Bernard, his own abbot, was urging him to take the office, he cast himself down at the feet of the blessed Bernard and his clergy, and lay prone in the form of a cross, and said: 'An expelled monk I may be, if you drive me out; but I will never be a bishop.' At a later time, as this same prior lay breathing his last, a monk who loved him well adjured him in the name of God to bring him news of his state beyond the grave, if God would permit it. Some time after, as the monk was praying prostrate before the altar, his friend appeared and said that it was he. When the monk asked him how he was faring, 'Well,' he replied, 'by the grace of God. Yet verily it has been revealed to me by the blessed Trinity, that had I been in the number of bishops I should have been in the number of the reprobate and damned.'"^[2]

Through the Middle Ages, Church dignities everywhere were secularized through the vast possessions, and corresponding responsibilities, attaching to them. The clerical situation varied in different lands, yet with a like result. The Italian clergy were secularized through participation in civic and papal business, the German through their estates and principalities. In France clerical secularization was most typically mediaeval, because there the functions and fortunes of the higher clergy were most inextricably involved in feudalism. Monasteries and bishoprics were as feudal fiefs: abbots as well as bishops commonly held lands from an over-lord, and were themselves lords of their sub-vassals who held lands from them. To the former they owed rent, or aid, or service; to the latter they owed protection. In either case they might have to go or send their men to war. They also managed and guarded their own lands, like feudal nobles, vi et armis. When the estates of a monastery, for example, lay in different places, the abbot might exercise authority over them through a local potentate, and might also have such a protector (vîdame, avoué, advocatus) for the home abbey. There was always a general feeling, often embodied in law or custom, that a Church dignitary should fight by another's sword and spear. But this did not prevent bishop and abbot in countless instances in France, England, Germany, and Spain, from riding mail-clad under their seignorial banner at the head of their forces.^[3]

Episcopal lands and offices were not inherited:^[4] yet with rare exceptions the bishops came from the noble, fighting, hunting class. They were noblemen first and ecclesiastics afterwards. The same was true of the abbots. Noble-born, they became dignitaries of the world through investiture with the broad lands of the monastery, and then administrators by reason of the temporal functions involved. As with the episcopal or monastic heads, so with canons and monks. They, too, for the most part were well-born. They also were good, bad, or indifferent, warlike or clerkly, devoted to study, abandoned to pleasure, or following the one and the other sparingly. Many a holy meditative monk there was; and many a saintly parish priest, the stay of piety and justice in his village. The rude times, the ceaseless murder and harrying, uncertainty and danger everywhere, seemed to beget such holy lives.

Invectives, satires, histories, and records, bear witness to the state of the clergy. All diatribes are to be taken with allowance. Whoever, for example, reads Peter Damiani's Liber Gomorrhianus against the foulness of the clergy, must bear in mind the writer's fiercely ascetic temper, the warfare which the stricter element in the Church was then waging against simony and priestly concubinage, and the monkish phraseology so common to ecclesiastical indictment of frivolity and vice.

One cannot quote comfortably from the Gomorrhianus. St. Bernard furnishes more decorous denunciation:

"Woe unto this generation, for its leaven of the Pharisees which is hypocrisy!—if that should be called hypocrisy which cannot be hidden because of its abundance, and through impudence does not seek to hide! To-day, foul rottenness crawls through the whole body of the Church. If a heretic foe should arise openly, he would be cast out and withered; or if the enemy raged madly, the Church might hide herself from him. But now whom shall she cast out, or from whom hide herself? All are friends and all are foes; all necessary and all adverse; all of her own household and none pacific; all are her neighbours and all seek their own interest. Ministers of Christ, they serve Antichrist. They go clothed in the good things of the Lord and render Him no honour. Hence that éclat of the courtesan which you daily see, that theatric garb, that regal state. Hence the gold-trapped reins and saddles and spurs—for the spurs shine brighter than the altars. Hence the splendid tables laden with food and goblets; hence the feastings and drunkenness, the guitars, the lyres and the flutes; hence the swollen wine-presses and the storehouses heaped and running over from this one into that, and the jars of perfumes, and the stuffed purses. 'Tis for such matters that they wish to be and are the over-seers of churches, deacons, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops. For neither do these offices come by merit, but through that sort of business which walketh in darkness!"^[5]

Such rhetoric gives glimpses of the times, but also springs from that temper which is always crying hora novissima, tempora pessima. Invectives of this nature have their deepest source in the religious sense of the ineradicable opposition between this world and the kingdom of heaven. Yet luxury did in fact pervade the Church of Bernard's time, and simony was as wide as western Europe. This crime was the offspring of the entire social state; it was part and parcel of the feudal system and the whole matter of lay investitures. One sees that simony was no extraneous stain to be washed off from the body ecclesiastic, but rather an element of its actual constitution. The eradication had to come through social and ecclesiastical evolution, rather than spasmodic reformation.

One may turn from the invectives of the great saint to forms of satire more frankly literary. The Latin poems "commonly attributed to Walter Mapes"^[6] satirize with biting ridicule, through the mouth of "Bishop Golias," the avarice and venality, the gluttony and lubricity of the Church, secular and monastic. In a quite different kind of poem the satire directs itself against the rapacity of Rome. She, head of the Church and Caput Mundi, is shown to be like Scylla and Charybdis and the Sirens.^[7] These powerful verses anticipate the denunciation of the Roman papacy by the good Germans Walther von der Vogelweide and Freidank,^[8] and, a century later, in the Vision of Piers Ploughman.

In this outcry against papal rapacity France was not silent. Most extreme is the "Bible" of Guiot de Provens: it satirizes the entire age, "siècle puant et orrible." As it turns toward the papacy it cries:

"Ha! Rome, Rome,
Encor ociras tu maint home!"

The cardinals are stuffed with avarice and simony and evil living; without faith or religion, they sell God and His Mother, and betray us and their fathers. Rome sucks and devours us; Rome kills and destroys all. Guiot's voice is raised against the entire Church; neither the monks nor the seculars escape—bishops, priests, canons, the black monks and the white, Templars and Hospitallers, nuns and abbesses, all bad.^[9]

One might extend indefinitely the list of these invectives, which, like the corruptions denounced by them, were common to all mediaeval centuries. From the testimony of more definite accounts one perceives the rudeness and cruelty of mediaeval life, in which the Church likewise was involved. In order to rise, it had to lift the social fabric. To this end many of its children struggled nobly, devoting themselves and sometimes yielding up their lives for the betterment of the society in which their lots were cast.

One of these capable children of the Church who did his duty in the high ecclesiastical station to which he was called was Eude Rigaud, or Odo Rigaldus, Archbishop of Rouen from 1248 to 1275, the year of his death. He was a scion of a noble house whose fiefs lay in the neighbourhood of Brie-Comte-Robert (Seine-et-Marne). In 1236 he joined the Franciscans, and then studied at Paris under Alexander of Hales, one of the Order's great theologians. His first fame came from his preaching. As archbishop, he was a reformer, and abetted the endeavours of Pope Gregory IX. He was also a counsellor of Saint Louis, and followed him upon that last crusade from which the king did not return alive.^[10]

The good archbishop was a man of method, and kept a record of his official acts. This monumental document exists, the Register of Rigaud's visitations among the monks and secular clergy within his wide jurisdiction, between the years 1248 and 1269.^[11] Consisting of entries made at the time, it is a mirror of actual conditions, presumably similar to those existing in other parts of France. Rigaud visited many monasteries and parishes where he found nothing to reform, and merely made a memorandum of having been there; wherever abuses were found, the entry expands to a statement of them and the measures taken for their remedy. Consequently one may not infer that the blameworthy or abominable conditions recorded in the particular instance obtained universally in Normandy. Occasionally Rigaud records in more detail the good condition of some monastery. A few instructive extracts may be given.

"Calends of October (1248). We were again at Ouville (Ovilla). We found that the prior wanders about when he ought to stay in the cloister; he is not in the cloister one day in five. Item, he is a drunkard, and of such vile drunkenness that he sometimes lies out in the fields because of it. Item, he frequents feasts and drinking-bouts with laymen. Item, he is incontinent, and is accused in respect to a certain woman of Grainville, and also with the wife of Robertot, and also with a woman of Rouen named Agnes. Item, brother Geoffrey was publicly accused with respect to the wife of Walter of Esquaquelon who recently had a child from him. Item, they do not keep proper accounts of their revenues. We ordered that they should keep better accounts."^[12]

Such an entry needs no comment. But it is illuminating to observe the strictness or leniency with which Rigaud treats offences. Doubtless he was guided by what he thought he could enforce.

Apparently near the Ouville priory, the archbishop was scandalized by the priest of St. Vedasti de Depedale, who was convicted of taking part in the rough ball-play, common in Normandy, in which game, as might easily happen, he had injured some one. "He took oath before us that it again convicted he would hold himself to have resigned from his church."^[13] Rigaud did not approve of these somewhat too merry games for his parish priests, who were not angels. The archbishop finds of the priest of Lortiey "that he but rarely wears his capa, that he does not confess to the penitentiarius, that he is gravely accused concerning two women, by whom he has had many children, and he is drunken."^[14]

Rigaud enters the cases of other parish priests as follows:

"We found that the priest of Nigella was accused as to a woman, and of being engaged in trade and of treating his father despitefully, who is patron of the church which he holds, and that with drawn sword he fought with a certain knight, with a riotous following of relatives and friends. Item, the priest of Basinval is accused as to a woman whom he takes about with him to the market-places and taverns. Likewise the priest of Vieux-Rouen is accused of incontinency, and goes about wearing a sword in shameless garb. Likewise the priest of Cotigines is a dicer and plays at quoits and frequents taverns, and is incontinent, and although corrected as to these matters, perseveres."^[15]

Sometimes accusations were brought to the archbishop by the suffering parishioners:

"Calends of August (1255). Passing through the village of Brai, the parishioners of the church there accused the rector of the church in our presence. They said that he went about in the night through the village with arms, that he was quarrelsome and scurrilous and abusive to his parishioners, and was incontinent."

Summoning this priest before his ecclesiastical tribunal, the archbishop says, "We admonished him to abstain from such ill-conduct; or that otherwise we should proceed against him."^[16]

Either this priest or another of "Brayo subtus Baudemont," named Walter, was subsequently deprived of his priesthood on his own confession as follows:

"He confessed that the accusation against him concerning a woman of his parish, which he had denied under oath, was supported by truth; item, he confessed in regard to a waxen image made to be used in divining; he confessed (various other incontinencies and his fatherhood of various children); item, he confessed his ill-repute for usury and base gain; he admitted that he had led the dances at the nuptials of a certain prostitute whom he had married."^[17]

Rigaud continually records accusations against parish priests, commonly for incontinency and drunkenness and generally unbecoming conduct, and sometimes for homicide.^[18]But his own examinations kept out many a turbulent and ignorant clerk, presented by the lay patron for the benefice; and so he prevented improper inductions as he might. The Register gives a number of instances of crass illiteracy in these candidates, a matter to cause no surprise, for the feudal patrons of the living naturally presented their relatives. Some of these candidates appealed to Rome from the archbishop's refusal, probably without success.^[19]

A monk might be as bad as any parish priest:

"Brother Thomas … wore gold rings. He went about in armour, by night, and without any monastic habit, and kept bad company. He wounded many clergy and laity at night, and was himself wounded, losing a thumb. We commanded the abbot to expel him; or that otherwise we should seize the place and expel the monks."^[20]

Life in a nunnery was the feminine counterpart of life in a monastery. There were good and bad nunneries, and nuns good and bad, serious and frivolous. Many had the foibles, and were addicted to the diversions, comforts, or fancies of their sex: they were always wanting to keep dogs and birds, and have locks to their chests!

"Nones of May (1250). We visited the Benedictine convent of nuns of St. Sauveur at Evreux. There were sixty-one nuns there. Sometimes they drank, not in the refectory or infirmary, but in their chambers. They kept little dogs, squirrels, and birds. We ordered that all such things be removed. They do not observe the regula. They eat flesh needlessly. They have locked chests. We directed the abbess to inspect their chests often and unexpectedly, or to take off the locks. We directed the abbess to take away their girdles ornamented with ironwork and their fancy pouches, and the silk cushions they were working."^[21]

Again, the picture is more terrible:

"Nones of July (1249). We visited the priory of Villa Arcelli. Thirty-three nuns are there and three lay sisters. They confess and communicate six times a year. Only four of the nuns have taken the vows according to the regula. Many of them had cloaks of rabbit-fur, or made from the fur of hares and foxes. In the infirmary they eat flesh needlessly. Silence is not observed; nor do they keep within the cloister. Johanna of Aululari once went out and lived with some one, by whom she had a child; and sometimes she goes out to see that child: she is also suspected with a certain man named Gaillard. Isabella la Treiche (?) is a fault-finder, murmuring against the prioress and others. The stewardess is suspected with a man named Philip de Vilarceau. The prioress is too remiss; she does not reprove. Johanna de Alto Villari kept going out alone with a man named Gayllard, and within a year had a child by him. The subprioress is suspected with Thomas the carter; Idonia, her sister, with Crispinatus; and the Prior of Gisorcium is always coming to the house for Idonia. Philippa of Rouen is suspected with a priest of Suentre, of the diocese of Chartres; Marguarita, the treasuress, with Richard de Genville, a clerk. Agnes de Fontenei, with a priest of Guerrevile, diocese of Chartres. The Tooliere (?) with Sir Andrew de Monciac, a knight. All wear their hair improperly and perfume their veils. Jacqueline came back pregnant from visiting a certain chaplain, who was expelled from his house on account of this. Agnes de Monsec was suspected with the same. Emengarde and Johanna of Alto Villari beat each other. The prioress is drunk almost any night; she does not rise for matins, nor eat in the refectory or correct excesses."

The archbishop thereupon issues an order, regulating this extraordinary convent, and prescribing a better way of living. He threatens to lay a heavier hand on them if they do not obey.^[22] This was what a loosely regulated nunnery might come to. We close with the sketch of a good monastery which had an evil abbot:

"Nones of August (1258). Through God's grace we visited the monastery of Jumiéges. Forty-three monks were there, and twenty-one outside. All of these who dwelt there, except eleven, were priests (sacerdotes). We found, by God's grace, the convent well-ordered in its services and observances, yet greatly troubled by what was said of the abbot within and without its walls. For opinion was sinister regarding him, and there, in full chapter, brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of the monastery, leaping up, made shameful charges against him. And he read the following schedule: I, brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of Jumiéges, in my name and in the name of the monastery and for the benefit of the monastery, bring before you, Reverend Father, Archbishop of Rouen, for an accusation against Richard, Abbot of Jumiéges, that he is a forger (falsarius) because he wrote or caused to be written certain letters in the name of our convent, falsely alleging our approval of them although we were absent and ignorant; and secretly by night he sealed them with the convent's seal.…"

The letters related to an important controversy in which the monastery was involved. Monk Peter offers to prove his case. A day is set for the hearing. But, instead, the very next day, in order to avoid scandal, the archbishop called the abbot before him and his counsellors; and

"We admonished him specially regarding the following matters: To wit: that he should not keep dogs and birds of chase; that he should send strolling players away from his premises; that he should abstain from extravagant expenses; that he should not eat in his own chambers; that he should keep from consorting with women altogether; that he should order his household decently; that he should lease out the farms as well as might be; that he should not burden the monks unduly; that he should be more in the convent with them, and bear himself more soberly. He made promises as to all these matters and took oath upon holy relics that if he failed to obey our admonition he should be held to do whatever we should decree in the premises."^[23]

Rigaud seems to have been lenient here, but may have known the wisest course to take.

A peaceful death terminated Rigaud's long career. We may leave his diocese of Rouen, and travel north-easterly to the German archiepiscopal dukedom of Cologne for a very different example of a brave prelate who brought death upon himself.

The man who was chosen Archbishop of Cologne in 1216 was of the highest birth. It was Engelbert, son of Count Engelbert of Berg. A young nobleman, related by blood to the local powers, lay and ecclesiastic, and destined for Church dignities, would be quickly given benefices. Engelbert received such, and also was appointed Provost of the Cathedral. Strong of body, rich, he led a boisterous martial life, and took a truculent part in the political dissensions which were undoing the German realm. With his cousin, the Archbishop Adolph, he went over to the side of Philip of Suavia. For this the archbishop and his provost were deposed and excommunicated by Pope Innocent III. There ensued years of turbulence and fighting, during which Engelbert's hand followed his passions. But with the turning of events in 1208 he was reconciled to the Pope, restored to his offices, and went crusading against the Albigenses in atonement for his sins. He stood by the young Frederick, then favoured by Innocent, and after some intervening years of proof, was, with general approval, elected Archbishop of Cologne. He was about thirty-one years old.

There had been power and bravery in the man from the beginning; and his faculties gained poise and gathered purpose through the stormy springtime of his life. Now he stood forth prince-bishop, feudal duke; a man strong of arm and clear of vision, steadfast against the violence of his brother nobles who oppressed the churches and cloisters within their lordships. The weak found him a rock of defence. Says his biographer, Caesar of Heisterbach:

"He was a defender of the afflicted and a hammer of tyrants, magnanimous and meek, lofty and affable, stern and gentle, dissembling for a time, and when least expected girding himself for vengeance. With the bishopric he had received the spiritual sword, and the material sword with the dukedom. He used either weapon against the rebellious, excommunicating some and crushing some by war."

Under him archbishopric and dukedom prospered, their well-managed revenues increased, palaces and churches rose. No mightier prince of the Church, no stronger, juster ruler could be found. Said Pope Honorius after Engelbert's death: "All men in Germany feared me from fear of him." From the lay and German side is heard the hearty voice of Walther von der Vogelweide, no friend of priests! "Worthy Bishop of Cologne, happy should you be! You have well served the realm, and served it so that your praise rises and waves on high. Master of princes! if your might weighs hard on evil cowards, deem that as nothing! King's guardian, high is your state, unequalled Chancellor!"^[24]

Archbishop of Cologne, duke of its double dukedom, and Regent of the German realm, Engelbert was well-nigh Germany's greatest figure during these years. If his arm was strong, his also was the spirit of counsel and wisdom. And although bearing himself as prince and ruler, he had within him the devotion and humility of a true bishop. Said one of Engelbert's chaplains, speaking to the Abbot of Heisterbach: "Although my lord seems as of the world, within he is not as he appears outwardly. Know that he has many secret comfortings from God."

The iron course of Engelbert's life brought queryings to the monkish mind of his biographer. Caesar felt that it was not easy for any bishop to be saved; how much harder was it for a statesman-warrior-prelate so to conduct himself in the warfare of this world as to attain at last "the peace of divine contemplation." Not thither did such a career seem to lead! But there was a way, or at least an exit, which surely opened upon heaven's gate. This was the purple steep, the purpureum ascensum, of martyrdom. Caesar was not alone in thinking thus, as to the saving close of Engelbert's career; for a devout and learned priest, who in earlier years had been co-canon with Engelbert, said to Caesar after the archbishop's murder: "I do not think there was another way through which a man so placed (in statu tali positus) could have entered the door of the kingdom of heaven, which is narrow."

Caesar tells the story of this martyrdom in all its causes and details of plot. That plot succeeded because it was the envenomed culmination of the hatred for the archbishop felt by the nobles—bishops among them too—whom he restrained with his authority and unhesitating hand. Frederic, Count of Isenburg, a kinsman of Engelbert as well as of the former archbishop, was the feudal warden of the nunnery of Essen, which he greedily oppressed. The abbess turned to Engelbert, as she had to his predecessor. The archbishop hesitated to proceed against a relative. So the abbess appealed to Rome. Papal letters came back causing Engelbert to take the matter up. He acted with forbearance and generosity; for he even offered to make up from his own revenues any loss the count might sustain from acting justly toward the nunnery. In vain. Frederic, so we read, would have none of his interference. The devil hardened his heart; and he began to incite his friends and kinsmen (who were also the kin of Engelbert) to a treacherous attack upon the man they could not openly withstand.

Rumours of the plot were in the air. Said a monk of Heisterbach to his abbot: "Lord, if you have any business with the archbishop, do it quickly, for his death is near." Engelbert himself was not unwarned. A letter came to him revealing the matter. Upon reading it, he threw it in the fire. Yet he told its contents to his friend the Bishop of Minden, who was present. Said the latter: "Have a care for thyself, my lord, for God's sake, and not for thyself alone, but for the welfare of your church and the safety of the whole land."

The archbishop answered: "Dangers are all about me, and what I should do the Lord knows and not I. Woe is me, if I keep quiet! Yet if I should accuse them of this matter, they would complain to every one that I was fastening the crime of parricide on them. From this hour I commit my body and soul to the divine care."

"Then taking the bishop alone into his chapel, he began to confess all his sins from his very youth, with a shower of tears that wetted all his breast, and, as we hope, washed the stains from his heart. And when the Lord of Minden said: 'I fear there is still something on thy conscience which thou hast not told me,' he answered: 'The Lord knows that I have concealed nothing consciously.' But thinking over his sins more fully, the next morning he took his confessor again into the same chapel and with meek and contrite soul and floods of tears confessed everything that had recurred to his mind. Then his conscience being clear, he said fearlessly: 'Now let God's will regarding me be done.'

"In the meanwhile some one was knocking at the door of the chapel. The archbishop would not let it be opened because his eyes were wet with tears. But the knocking continued, and it was announced that the bishops of Osnabrück and Münster (brothers of Count Frederic) were there. After he had dried his eyes and wiped his face, he allowed them to be shown in, and said when they had entered: 'You lords both are kin of mine, and I have injured you in nothing, as you know well, but have advanced your interests, as I might, and your brother's also. And look you, from all sides by word and letter I hear that your brother Count Frederic, whom I have loved heartily and never harmed, is devising ill to me and seeks to kill me.'

"They protested, trembling in their deceit: 'Lord, may this never, never, be! You need have no fear; such a thought has never entered his heart. We all have been honoured and enriched and lifted up by you.' Which last was true."

This was after the festival of All Saints in the first days of November 1225; and Count Frederic, the better to conceal his purpose, came and accepted the archbishop's terms. Together they set out from Cologne, the count knowing that the now unsuspecting Engelbert would stop the next day to dedicate a church at Swelm. So it turned out, and the count took that opportunity to excuse himself and rode off to set his men in ambush. Just then a widow rose up from the roadside, and demanded judgment as to a fief withheld from her. At once the archbishop dismounted, and took his seat as duke to hear the cause. It went against the widow, and in favour of him who sat as judge. But he said: 'Lady, this fief which you demand is taken from you by decree and adjudged to me. But for the sake of God, pitying your distress, I relinquish it to you."

The archbishop rode on. About midday Frederic came up again to see which way he was taking. Engelbert invited the count to pass the night with him. But he declined on some pretext, and rode away. The archbishop and his company proceeded on their road until the hour of vespers. Vespers were said, and again the count appeared. Observing him, a nobleman in Engelbert's train said: "My lord, this coming and going of the count looks suspicious. For the third time he is approaching, and now not as before on his palfrey but on his war-horse. I advise you to mount your war-horse too."

But the archbishop said that would be too noticeable, and there was nothing to fear. As the count drew near, they saw that the colour had left his face. The archbishop spoke to him: "Now, kinsman, I am sure you will stay with me." He answered nothing, and they went on together. Suspicious and alarmed, some of the clergy and some of the knights withdrew, so that but a small company remained; for a good part of the episcopal household with the cooks had gone ahead to prepare the night's lodgings.

It was dusk as they drew near the place of ambush. The count grew agitated, and was blaming himself to his followers for planning to kill his lord and kinsman, but they egged him on. Now the foot of the Gevelberg was reached, and the count said as they began to ascend, "My lord, this is our path." "May the Lord protect us," replied Engelbert, for he was not without suspicion.

The company was entering the hollow way leading over the summit of the mountain, when suddenly the followers of Frederic, who were ahead, turned on them, and others leaped from hiding, while a shrill whistle sounded, startling the horses. "My lord, mount your war-horse; death is at the door," cried a knight. It was indeed. The archbishop's company made no resistance, except the faithful noble who first had scented danger. The rest fled while the murderers rushed upon Engelbert, unable to turn in the narrow way, and struck at him with swords and daggers. One seized him by the cloak and the two rolled together on the ground; but the strong and active prelate dragged himself and his antagonist out of the roadway into a thicket. There he was again set upon by the mad crew, urged on by the count, and was hacked and stabbed to death. He breathed his last beneath an oak ten paces from the roadway. There is no need to recount the finding of the gashed and stripped body, its solemn interment in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter's at Cologne, the canonization of Engelbert, and the building of a chapel, succeeded by a cloister, to mark the place of his martyrdom. Nor need one follow with Caesar the banning of the murderers, and the unhappy ways in which their deaths made part atonement for the injury which their wicked deed had done the German realm.^[25]

 

The ideals and shortcomings of monasticism were closely connected with popular beliefs. The monastic ideal had its inception in the thought of sin as entailing either purgatorial or everlasting punishment, and in the thought of holiness as ensuring eternal bliss. Whatever other motives participated, the knot of the monastic purpose was held in the jaws of this antithesis, which for itself drew form, colour, picturesqueness, from popular beliefs, and was made tangible in countless stories telling of purity and love and meekness impaired by lust and cruelty and pride, and of retribution avoided by some shifty supernatural adjustment of the sin. Such stories might be accepted as well by the learned as by the illiterate. The brooding soul of the Middle Ages, with its knowledge of humanity and its reaches of spiritual insight, was undisturbed by the crass superstitions so queerly at odds with its deeper inspiration—a remark specifically applicable to thoughtful or spiritually-minded individuals in the mediaeval centuries.

As we descend the spiritual scale, the crude superstitious elements become more prominent or apparently the whole matter. Likewise as we descend the moral scale; for the more vicious the individual, the more utterly will he omit the spiritual from his working faith, and the more mechanical will be his methods of squaring his conduct with his fears of the supernatural. Nevertheless, in estimating the ethical shortcomings of mediaeval superstitions, one must remember how easily in a simple mind all sorts of superstition may co-exist with a sweet religious and moral tone.

Sins unatoned for and uncondoned bring purgatorial or perpetual torment after death, even as holiness brings eternal bliss. But how were sins thought to come to men and women in the Middle Ages, and especially to those who were earnestly striving to escape them? Rather than fruit of the naughtiness of the human heart, they came through the malicious suggestions, the temptations, of a Tempter. They were in fine the machinations of the devil. This was the popular view, and also the authoritative doctrine, expressed, re-expressed, and enforced in myriad examples, by all the saints and magnates of the Church who had lived since the time when Athanasius wrote the life of Anthony in devil-fighting heroics.

Against the devil, every man had staunch allies; the readiest were the Virgin Mary and the saints, for Christ was very high above the conflict, and at the Judgment Day must be its final umpire. The object of the cunning enemy was to trip man into hell, an object hostile alike to God and man. Saintly aid enabled man to overcome the devil, or if he succumbed to temptation and committed mortal sin, there was still a chance to frustrate the devil's plot, and save the soul by wiles or force. The sinner may use every stratagem to defeat the devil and escape the results of sins committed by himself, but prompted by his enemy. This was war and the ethics of war, in which man was the central struggling figure, attacked by the devil and defended by the saints. The latter also help man's earthly fortunes, and devotion to them may ensure one's welfare in this very palpable and pressing life of earth.

This popular and yet authoritative view of mortal peril and saintly aid is illustrated in the tales from sermons and other pious writings. In them any uncanny or untoward experience was ascribed to the devil. So it was in monkish Chronicles, Vitae sanctorum, Dialogi miraculorum, or indeed in any edifying writing couched in narrative form or containing illustrative tales. Throughout this literature the devil inspires evil thoughts, instigates crimes, and causes any unhappy or immoral happening. It is just as much a matter of course as if one should say to-day, I have a cold, or John stole a ring, or James misbehaved with So-and-so.^[26] Any man might meet the devil, and if sinful, suffer physical violence from him. If any one disappeared the devil might be supposed to have carried him off. Details of the abduction might be given, or the whole matter take place before witnesses.

"A rich usurer, with little fear of God in him, had dined well one evening, and was in bed with his wife, when he suddenly leaped up. She asked what ailed him. He replied: 'I was just snatched away to God's judgment seat, where I heard so many accusations that I did not know what to answer. And while I waited for something to happen, I heard the final sentence given against me, that I should be handed over to demons, who were to come and get me to-day.' Saying this, he flung on a coat, and ran out of the house, for all his wife could do to stop him. His servants, following, discovered him almost crazed in a church where monks were saying their matins. There they kept him in custody for some hours. But he made no sign of willingness to confess or make restitution or repent. So after mass they led him back toward his house, and as they came by a river, a boat was seen coming rapidly up against the current, manned apparently by no one. But the usurer said that it was full of demons, who had come to take him. The words were no sooner uttered, than he was seized by them, and put in the boat, which suddenly turned on its course and disappeared with its prey."^[27]

One observes that this usurer had received sentence at God's tribunal, and the devils carried it out: the sentence gave them power. Any man may be tempted; but falls into his enemy's power only by sinning. His yielding is an act of acquiescence in the devil's will, and may be the commencement of a state of permanent consent. With this we reach the notion of a formal pact with the devil, of which there were many instances. But still the pact is with the Enemy; the man is not bound beyond the letter, and may escape by any trick. It is still the ethics of war; we are very close to the principle that a man by stratagem or narrow observance of the letter may escape the eternal retribution which God decrees conditionally and the devil delights in.

The sacraments prescribed by the Church were the common means of escaping future punishment. Confession is an example. The correct doctrine was that without penitence it was ineffective. But popularly the confession represented the whole fact. It was efficacious of itself, and kept the soul from hell. It might even prevent retribution in this life. Caesar of Heisterbach has a number of illustrative stories, rather immoral as they seem to us. There was, for instance, a person possessed (obsessus) of a devil who dwelt in him, and through his lips would make known the unconfessed sins of any one brought before him; but the devil could not remember sins which had been confessed. A certain knight suspected (quite correctly) a priest of sinning with his wife. So he haled him before this obsessus. On the way the priest managed to elude his persecutor for an instant, and, darting into a barn, confessed his sin to a layman he found there. Returning, he went along with the knight, and, behold, the sin was obliterated from the memory of the devil in the obsessus, and the priest remained undetected.^[28]

Men and women sometimes escaped the wages of sin by the aid of a saint, but more often through the incarnate pity of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin and the saints were ready to take up any cause, however desperate, against the devil; which means that they were ready to intervene between the sinner and the impending punishment. People took kindly to these thoughts of irregular intervention, since everlasting torment for transient sin was so extreme; but a surer source of their approval lay in the incomplete spiritualization of the popular religion and its ethics.

To thwart the devil was the office of the Virgin and the saints. Their aid was given when it was besought. Sometimes they intervened voluntarily to protect a votary whose devotions had won their favour. The stories of the pitying intervention of the Virgin to save the sinner from the wages of his sin, and frustrate the devil, are among the fragrant flowers of the mediaeval spirit. Ethically some of them leave much to ask for; but others are tales of sweet forgiveness upon heart-felt repentance.

Jacques of Vitry has a story (scarcely fit to repeat) of a certain very religious Roman widow-lady, who had an only son, with whom she sinned at the devil's instigation. She was a devoted worshipper of the Virgin; and the devil, fearing that she would repent, plotted to bring her to trial and immediate condemnation before the emperor's tribunal, for her incest. When the widow knew of her impending ruin, she went with tears to the confessional, and then day and night besought the Virgin to deliver her from infamy and death. The day of trial came. Suddenly the accuser, who was the devil in disguise, began to quake and groan, and could not answer when the emperor asked what ailed him. But as the woman drew near the judgment seat, he uttered a horrid howl, exclaiming: "See! Mary is coming with the woman, holding her hand." And in a fetid whirlwind he disappeared. "And thus," says Jacques of Vitry, "the widow was set free through confession and the Virgin's aid, and afterwards persevered in the service of God more cautiously."^[29]

Such a tale sounds immoral; yet there is some good in saving any soul from hell; and here there was repentance. Caesar of Heisterbach has another, of the Virgin taking the place of a sinning nun in the convent until she repented and returned. Again repentance and forgiveness make the sinner whole.^[30]

The Miracles de Nostre Dame^[31] are an interesting repertory of the Virgin's interventions. These "Mysteries" or miracle plays in Old French verse are naïve enough in their kindly stratagems, by which the votary is saved from punishment in this life and his soul from torment in the next. The first "Miracle" in this collection runs thus: A pious dame and her knightly husband, from devotion to the Virgin Mary took the not unusual vow of married continence. But under diabolic incitement, the knight overpersuaded his lady, who in her chagrin at the broken vow devoted the offspring to the devil. A son was born, and in due time the devil came to claim it. Thereupon a huge machinery, of pope and cardinals, hermits and archangels, is set in motion. At last the case is brought before God, where the devils show cause on one side, and "Nostre Dame" pleads on the other. Our Lady wins on the ground that the mother could not devote her offspring to the devil without the father's consent, which was not shown.

There is surely no harm in this pleasant drama; for the devil ought not to have had the boy. But there follow quite different "Miracles" of Our Lady. The next one is typical. An abbess sins with her clerk. Her condition is observed by the nuns, and the bishop is informed. The abbess casts herself on the mercy of Mary, who miraculously delivers her of the child and gives it into the care of a holy hermit. An examination of the abbess takes place, after which she is declared innocent by the bishop. But she is at once moved to repentance, and confesses all to him. In the bishop's mind, however, the Virgin's intervention is sufficient proof of the abbess's holiness. He absolves her, and goes to the hermitage and takes charge of the child.^[32]

Such is an example of the kindly but peculiar miracles, in which the Virgin saves her friends who turn to her and repent. Many other tales, quite lovely and unobjectionable, are told of her: how she keeps her tempted votaries from sinning, or helps them to repent:^[33] or blesses and leads on to joy those who need no forgiveness. Such a one was the monk-scribe who illuminated Mary's blessed name in three lovely colours whenever it occurred in the works he copied, and then kissed it devoutly. As he lay very ill, having received the sacraments, another brother saw in vision the Virgin hover above his couch and heard her say: "Fear not, son, thou shalt rejoice with the dwellers in heaven, because thou didst honour my name with such care. Thine own name is written in the book of life. Arise and come with me." Running to the infirmary the brother found his brother dying blissfully.^[34]

There are lovely stories too of passionate repentance, coming unmiraculously to those devoutly thinking on the Virgin and her infant Son. "For there was once a nun who forsook her convent and became a prostitute, but returned after many years. As she thought of God's judgment and the pains of hell, she despaired of ever gaining pardon; as she thought of Paradise, she deemed that she, impure, could never enter there; and when she thought upon the Passion, and how great ills Christ had borne for her and how great sins she had committed, she still was without hope. But on the Day of the Nativity she began to think that unto us a Child is born, and that children are appeased easily. Before the image of the Virgin she began to think of the Saviour's infancy, and, with floods of passionate tears, besought the Child through the benignity of His childhood to have mercy upon her. She heard a voice saying to her that through the benignity of that childhood which she had invoked, her sins were forgiven."^[35]

But enough of these stories. Nor is there need to enlarge upon the relic-worship and other superstitions of the Middle Ages. One sees such matters on every side. It was all a matter of course, and disapprovals were rare. Such conceptions of sin and the devil's part in it affected the morality of clergy as well as laity. The morals of the latter could not rise above those of their instructors; and the layman's religion of masses, veneration of relics, pilgrimages, almsgiving and endowment of monasteries, scarcely interfered with the cruelty and rapine to which he might be addicted.

1. It is quite true that in the earliest Christian times the marriage of priests was recognized, and continued to be at least connived at until, say, the time of Hildebrand. Yet the best thoughtfulness and piety from the Patristic period onward had disapproved of priestly marriages, which consequently tended to sink to the level of concubinage, until they were absolutely condemned by the Church.
2. Anecdotes, etc., d'Étienne de Bourbon, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, p. 249 (Soc. de l'Histoire de France, t. 185, Paris, 1877). This story refers to the years 1166-1171.
3. Many bishops and abbots held definite secular rank; the Archbishop of Rheims was a duke, and so was the Bishop of Langres and Laon; while the bishops of Beauvais and Noyon were counts. In Germany, the archiepiscopal dukes of Cologne and Mainz were among the chief princes of the land.
4. There were, however, some (naturally shocking) instances of inheritance, as where the Bishop of Nantes in 1049 admitted that he had been invested with the bishopric during the lifetime of his father, the preceding bishop. See Luchaire, in vol. ii. (2), pp. 107-117 of Lavisse's Hist. de France, for this and other examples of episcopal feudalism.
5. Sermo in Cantica, 33, par. 15 (Migne 183, col. 958-959). With this passage from St. Bernard, one may compare the far more detailed picture of the luxury and dissolute ways of the secular clergy in France given in the Apologia of Guido of Bazoches (latter part of the twelfth century). W. Wattenbach, "Die Apologie des Guido von Bazoches," Sitzungsberichte Preussichen Akad., 1893, (I), pp. 395-420.
6. Ed. by T. Wright (Camden Society, London, 1841).
7. The poem called De ruina Romae. It begins, "Propter Syon non tacebo."
8. Post, Chapter XXVI.
9. The "Bible" of Guiot is published in Barbazan's Fabliaux, t. ii. (Paris, 1808). It is conveniently given with other satirical or moralizing compositions in Ch. V. Langlois, La Vie en France au moyen âge d'après quelques moralistes du temps (Paris, 1908).
10. Salimbene gives an amusing picture of our worthy Rigaud hurrying to catch sight of the king at a Franciscan Chapter. Post, Chapter XXI.
11. Regestrum visitationum archiepiscopi Rothomagensis, ed. Bonnin (Rouen, 1852). It is analyzed by L. V. Delisle, in an article entitled "Le Clergé normand" (Bib. de l'École des Chartes, 2nd ser. vol. iii.).
12. Reg. vis. p. 9.
13. R. V. p. 10.
14. R. V. p. 18.
15. R. V. pp. 19-20.
16. R. V. p. 222.
17. R. V. p. 379.
18. R. V. p. 154.
19. See e.g. R. V. pp. 159, 162, 395-396.
20. R. V. p. 109.
21. R. V. p. 73.
22. R. V. pp. 43-45.
23. R. V. p. 607.
24. In Pfeiffer's ed. No. 159. See also ibid. 162.
25. The above is drawn from the "Vita Sancti Engelberti," by Caesar of Heisterbach, in Boehmer, Fontes rerum Germanicarum, ii. 294-329 (Stuttgart, 1845). E. Michael, Cultursustände des deutschen Volkes während des 13. Jahrhunderts, ii. 30 sqq. (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1899), has an excellent account drawn mainly from the same source.
26. The Dialogi miraculorum of Caesar of Heisterbach, and the Exempla of Étienne de Bourbon (d. 1262) and Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240) present a huge collection of such stories. For the early Middle Ages, the decades just before and after the year one thousand, the mechanically supernatural view of any occurrence is illustrated in the five books of Histories of Radulphus Glaber, an incontinent and wandering, but observing monk, native of Burgundy. Best edition by M. Prou, in Collection des textes, etc. (Paris, Picard, 1886); also in Migne, Pat. Lot. 142. An interesting study of his work by Gebhart, entitled, " Un Moine de l'an 1000," is to be found in the Revue des deux mondes, for October 1, 1891. Glaber's fifth book opens with some excellent devil stories. As there was a progressive enlightenment through the mediaeval centuries, such tales gradually became less common and less crude.
27. Anecdotes historiques d'Étienne de Bourbon, par. 422, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche (vol. 185 of Société de l'Histoire de France), Paris, 1877; cf. ibid. par. 383.
28. Dialogus miraculorum, iii. 2. Similar stories are told in ibid. iii. 3, 15, 19.
29. Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, ed. by T. F. Crane, pp. 110-111, vol. 26 (Folk-lore Society, London, 1890).
30. Dialogus miraculorum, vii. 34. Caesar's seventh book has many similar tales.
31. Ed. in eight volumes by Gaston Paris and U. Robert for the Société des Anciens Textes Français.
32. Étienne de Bourbon tells this same story in his Latin; Anecdotes historiques etc., p. 114.
33. See Étienne de Bourbon, o.c. pp. 109-110, 120.
34. Étienne de Bourbon, o.c. p. 119.
35. Étienne de Bourbon, o.c. p. 83.