The Story of Liberty. Charles Carleton Coffin
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rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_b0c7dc91-1cd1-5803-b5af-930924f455a1.gif" alt=""/> THE WAY ST. DUNSTAN SERVED THE DEVIL.
They have a marvellous story to relate of St. Dunstan, who was a blacksmith, and very wicked, but afterward became a good man, and was made Archbishop of Canterbury. One day the devil came and looked into the window where the saint was at work, trying to tempt him, where-upon St. Dunstan seized his red-hot tongs and clapped them upon the devil's nose, which made the fiend roar with pain; but the saint held him fast till he promised to tempt him no more.
The people are very ignorant. There are no schools; there are none to teach them except the priests, monks, and friars, who have no desire to see the people gaining knowledge, for knowledge s power, and ignorance weakness. The people are superstitions, as ignorant people generally are. They believe in hobgoblins and ghosts. They have startling stories to relate of battles between brave knights and dragons that spit fire, and are terrible to behold. St. George, the patron saint of England, had a fierce encounter with a dragon, and came off victorious. The peasants relate the stories by their kitchen fires; the nobles narrate them in their castles; the poets rehearse the exploits of the brave knights in verses, which the minstrels sing from door to door. Although no one ever has seen a dragon, yet everybody believes that such creatures exist, and may make their appearance at any moment.
The people believed in witches. Old women who are wrinkled and bent with age are supposed to sell themselves to the devil, and he gives them power to come and go through the air at will, riding a broomstick, at night, bent on mischief; with power to fly into people's houses through the keyholes, to betwitch men, women, children, horses, dogs, cattle, and everything. If a horse is contrary, the people Bay old Goody So-and-so has bewitched it; if the batter will not come In the churn, the cream is bewitched; if anything happens out of the usual course, the witches are the mischief.
"There is mischief in the air."
King, priest, nor people will not suffer witches to live,, for the Bible commands their destruction, say the prelates of the Church, who alone have the Bible; and many a poor, innocent woman is put to death.
The monks and friars having been recognized by the Pope, and holding their authority directly from him, assert their right Co preach in the churches, crowding out the parish priests.
Little good does their preaching do. It is mostly marvellous stories about the saints, and what happened to people who did not feed them; or about the wonderful miracles performed by relics. They sell pardons for sins committed or to be committed; and they have indulgences absolving men from all penalties in this life, as well as after death. The monks drive a thrifty trade in the sale of relics. The good people who believe all the stories of their wonderful power to cure diseases, to preserve them from harm, bow down before the bits of bone, and pieces of wood, and rusty nails, and rags which they exhibit; but there are so many relics that some of the people begin to see the tricks which the monks are playing upon them, for it is discovered that John the Baptist had four shoulder-blades, eight arms, eleven fingers, besides twelve complete hands, thirteen skulls, and seven whole bodies — enough almost for a regiment! It is discovered that some of St. Andrew's bones once belonged to a cow; that St. Patrick had two heads — one small, preserved when he was a boy, and the other large, the one he wore when he became a man!
Some of the monks spend their time in writing books — printing the letters with a pen; but many of them are lazy. The abbots and bishops are fond of hunting foxes, and ride with the country gentlemen after the hounds, and sit down to good dinners in the barons' halls. The parish priests, for the most part, are ignorant. Their sermons on Sunday are narratives of monkish traditions, stories of the saints, with commands to attend mass. They get up spectacles called "miracle plays," acting them as dramas. They ask the women and girls indecent questions when they come to confession, and their lives are very far from being pure. They are so debased that they drink themselves drunk in the village ale-house.
If the monks, or priests, or bishops commit a crime, even though it be murder, the king cannot arrest them, for the bishops have their court, and a man who enters the priesthood is not amenable to civil law. They are let off with a light penance, and then may go on saying mass, and absolving the people from their sins. But if one of the people commits murder, he will have his head chopped off by one of the king's executioners.
The priests, however, are not all of them wicked. There are some who, instead of spending their time in the ale-houses, or in plundering their parishioners, look kindly after their welfare. Some arc learned men, educated at Oxford or Cambridge, who exhort the people to lead honest lives. The man whose bones the monks are burning was a good priest, a learned man. We may think of him as attending school, when a boy, at Oxford, graduating from one of the colleges; and, after graduating, he studies theology, and becomes a priest, and preaches in the Oxford churches. He is so learned and eloquent that the people come in crowds to hear him. There are students at Oxford from all over Europe — from France, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Bohemia — thirty thousand or more — who listen to his preaching. His fame reaches London; the king (Edward III.) sends for him, and he preaches to the court.
A girl, who is as good as she is beautiful — Anne, the daughter of the King of Bohemia — comes to England to be the wife of the Prince of Wales, Richard II. She listens to Doctor Wicklif, and becomes his friend. With her come many of the nobles of Bohemia, and learned men. One of them is Professor Faulfash, who has been to the universities of Heidelberg, in Bavaria; Cologne, on the banks of the Rhine; and to Paris. He listens with great pleasure to the eloquent young preacher, and, when lie goes back to Bohemia, carries with him some of the books which Doctor Wicklif has written.
Let us not forget Profrasor Faulfash, for we shall see him again by-and-by.
Doctor Wicklif is a good man, and preaches against the immoral practices of the monks and friars. He does not arraign them before the Bishops' Court for their extortion, drunkenness, or infamous living; but he arraigns them at the bar of public opinion, and that is a great offence in the eyes o£ the monks, who say that the people have no right to have an opinion. The Pope decreed that men must believe in religion as he believes. there is no appeal from his decree. If a man believes differently, he shall be thrown into prison, tortured till he makes confession, and then he is the burned to death, and all his property confiscated. Who gave the popes this authority? No one; they took it, and, having taken it, they intend to keep it.
The Pope commissions a set of men to hunt for heretics. They are Inquisitors, or men who ask questions, and have power to put men to death, to torture, to confiscate property, We shall fall in with theirs farther along in the story.
Notwithstanding the Pope professes to be holy and incapable of doing wrong, Doctor Wicklif informs the people that the priests, the monks, the bishops, and the Pope himself, are sinful, like other men. They belong to a holy office, but that alone does not make them holy men. To be holy they must lead righteous lives. It is not right for them to extort a living from the people, by threatening them with the loss of their souls if they do not supply their wants. Doctor Wicklif denounces them as a set of robbers who live upon the fat of the land, while the people are in poverty and wretchedness. They take from the people, and give nothing in return. They are ignorant; many of them cannot read, and can only mumble a few prayers. They manifest no desire to acquire knowledge, and would like to keep the people in ignorance. He maintains that