Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

"O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace."

Yes, peace, peace at any price. That was all that his soul now yearned for. Could anything be more divine than that exquisite refrain?

"Agnus Dei."

Could the most hardened sinner listen unmoved to that celestial music? He recalled the words of the Bishop—the savage wolves of the north pausing in the face of this—the great, visible, tangible power of the Spirit. Oh, he could not wait to confess to the Bishop how foolish and stiff-necked he had been. He, Robert Annys, could be the Archdeacon of Ely and he had refused it.

And yet, accompanying the strong emotional exaltation, there came slowly over him a sense of helplessness, as if a net were closing tightly down over him, until there was no escape from its entangling meshes. He felt the awful eye of Rome upon him, the eye before which Barbarian chiefs, and Emperors as well, had quailed. It was not alone that the Papal Legate sat there before him, the presence of Rome was felt in every one of the countless forms of the Rubric. In the ringing of the sacring bell, here twice, there thrice; the position of the deacon and the subdeacon as the celebrant chants the Introit; the kissing and the incensing of the various articles that are used in the service, the facing of the altar here, and the facing of the congregation there; the putting on of the mitre and the taking it off; the angle of the body in the various degrees of bowing; the precise position of the second and third fingers; the placing of the veil over the host, slightly lower on the right than on the left side; and finally the giving of the left cheek for the kiss of peace.

So much, so very much to come from the simple rule: "Love your neighbors as yourselves."

He could not but think of that proud boast of the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, "It is ever our fate that conquered, we conquer."

Did Rome ever more truly conquer than when apparently she lay crushed and helpless before the triumphant Church of Christ? Had not the Holy Roman Church (mark the very name!) of the fourteenth century far more in it of pagan Rome than of Hebraic Nazareth? Was there no one to tell those people gathered there that all these stately processions bringing with them light and color into the twilight of the churches, these swaying banners of gorgeous design, these choir boys in violet robes, these tall, solemn-faced priests resplendent in their vestments—all had been employed centuries before to delight and subjugate the Roman populace? Did they not know that these same triumphal trains had wound their way through gayly decorated streets to the temples of the immortal gods? The incense that was swayed so solemnly in the jewelled censers, did they suspect that this same sweet odor once rose at the feet of Roman idols? Did they dream—these simple, confiding people—that even the holy water itself was compounded from a heathen recipe? that even the very halos about their saints were copied from the statue of the wicked Nero, where it had symbolized the glory of the sun? that the devotion paid to the Pope had been received by Caligula, even down to the kissing of his toe?

The entire organization of the Holy Roman Church, what was it but the organization of Imperial Rome changed merely in nomenclature?