The Story of Liberty. Charles Carleton Coffin
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very effectively in a quiet way. He has completed his story in verse, and the people are reading it. He has written it in the East Midland dialect, adding some Norman words to give it grace and beauty. It describes a party of pilgrims who meet at the Tabard Tavern, in London, on their way to the shrine of Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was a priest, arrogant, self-willed, who refused to acknowledge the superior authority of the king, Henry II,, and who was put to death by some of the king's friends; but the Pope humbled the monarch, who was obliged to kneel naked before Becket's tomb, while the monks lashed his bare back with a bundle of sticks. He found that the Pope was more powerful than himself.
To make a pilgrimage to somebody's tomb, to say Pater-nosters and Ave-Marias over the bones of a dead monk or nun, is supposed to be a meritorious act, and so all over England — over Europe — men and women are making pilgrimages. Among the pilgrims who travel from London to Canterbury are a priest, a monk, a friar, a pardoner, and a summoner. The pardoner has pardons for sale; the summoner is the sheriff, who brings offenders before the Bishops' Court Although the monks and friars have vowed to wear coarse clothes and live on mean fare, none are better dressed than they, none live so luxuriously. The poet is one of the pilgrims, and describes his fellow-travellers:
"A monk there was of skill and mastery proud,
A manly man — to be an abbot able —
And many a noble horse had he in stable
I saw his large sleeves trimmed above the hand
With fur — the finest in the land.
His head was bald, and shone like polished glass,
And so his face, at it had been anoint,
While he was very fat and in good point.
Shining his boots; his horse right proud to see,
A prelate proud, majestic, grand was he;
He was not pale, as a poor pining ghost;
A fat goose loved he best of any roast.
* * * * * * *
A friar there was, a wanton and a merry,
Licensed to beg, a wondrous solemn man,
His pockets large — he stuffed them full knives,
And pins, or presents meant for handsome wives.
The biggest beggar he among the brother.
He took a certain district as his grant,
Nor would he let another come within his haunt.
"A summoner there was, riding on apace,
Who had a fire-red cherubin's large face;
Pimpled and wrinkled wre his flabby cheeks,
Garlic he much loved, onions took, and leeks.
Strong wine he loved to drink — as red as blood;
Then would be shout and jest as he were mad.
Oft down his troat large draughts he poured;
Then, save in Latin, he would not speak a word.
Some sentences he knew — some two or three
Which he had gathered out of some degree.
No wonder, for he heard it all the day;
And surely, as you know, a popinjay
Can call out 'Wat!' as well as any pope.
"You could not such another pardoner trace.
For in his pack he had a pillow-case,
Which, as he said, was once the Virgin's veil.
He also had a fragment of the sail
St. Peter had when, as his heart misgave him
Upon the sea, he sought the Lord to save him.
He had a golden cross — one set with precious stones;
And in a case — what carried he? Pig's bones!
He, in a single day, more money got
Than the poor parson in a year, I wot.
And thus with flattery, feints, and knavish japes
He made the parson and the people apes."
So the poet holds these pilgrims up to ridicule. The monks and friars are very angry, and lay a plan to kill Chaucer, who is obliged to flee to Holland, the land of tho windmills; but, after a, time, he returns to find that the people are fast becoming Lollards. The reading of the Bible in English has set the people to thinking about the monks, while the "Canterbury Tales" have set the community to laughing at them. From thinking and laughing the people begin to act, refusing to give to the beggars, who are so angry with the poet that lie has to flee a second time; but he returns once more to London, where he dies a peaceful death in the year 1400, having done a great deal to advance human freedom.
When Doctor Wicklif selected the Midland dialect for his translation of the Bible, and when Geoffrey Chaucer used it in writing his Canterbury
Stories, they little knew that they were laying the foundations, as it were, of the strongest and most vigorous language ever used by human beings for the expression of their thoughts; but it has become the English language of the nineteenth century — the one aggressive language of the world — the language of Liberty.
It was in 1385 that Doctor Wicklif died. The grass grows over his grave. Forty-one years pass, pilgrims come from afar to visit the spot where he is buried; they break off pieces of his tombstone, and carry them away as relics. The monks and friars will have no more of that. They will not have a man who has been dead nearly half a century keep on preaching if they can prevent it, for the doctor has a great following; half of England, and nearly all of Bohemia, have accepted his teachings. The Great Council of Constance, which we shall read about in the next chapter, has ordered that the doctor's bones shall be dug up and burned; and the monks, as we have seen, execute the order. They cast the ashes into the river, and the river bears them to the sea. They have got rid of Doctor Wicklif. Have they? Not quite.
CHAPTER III
THE FIRE THAT WAS KINDLED IN BOHEMIA
THE young man who had studied at Heidelberg, Cologne, and Paris, Professor Faulfash, of Bohemia, who came to England with the Princess Anne when she came to marry Richard II., and who heard Doctor Wicklif, and who carried some of the doctor's books to Bohemia, is a lecturer in the University at Prague. He has discovered that the monks and friars of Bohemia are as lazy and shameless as those of England. He preaches against them. He wants a reformation in the Church. He preaches that men and women, priests and bishops — all must lead pure lives. He believes that men and women should confess their sins to God, and not to a priest; that forgiveness for sin means something more than words spoken by the priests; that absolution is something more than kneeling before a confessor's box, and having a few drops of holy-water sprinkled on the head, from a sponge tied upon the end of a rod, in the hands of the priest. He does not believe that sins can be forgiven, nor that blessings can be conferred by any such mummery.
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