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

by Annie Nathan Meyer

His listener folded his arms tightly over his breast and nodded for answer.

"Ah, yes; ah, yes," continued the Bishop, musingly, "do I not know? Was I not even as thou in my youthful days? But I am an old man now, and many things lie bathed in the clear white light of knowledge that then lay darkly shrouded in mystery. My dear son, you are only one of many who fix their eyes on what should have been, instead of on what really was. Ye bury your faces within the pages of the Bible, and if ye look up once to see what is going on about you, it is only to contrast with impatience the teaching and example of the Church Visible with the teaching and example of Christ and His disciples. Ye are willing to look on the Church as it now is, and God knows there are faults and crimes enough to excuse some of your impatience, but ye refuse to look at the history of the Church, and at the magnificent service it has rendered in the cause of humanity. Ye refuse to consider gravely and seriously the work that it has accomplished, and to ask yourselves if any other human agency could have done a tenth as well. You critics are as men who have been saved by a bridge from a wild and devastating stream, and now once safely crossed, ye kneel down—not to thank God Almighty for having saved you, but to detect the flaws in the bridge."

Annys could not but be moved by the eloquence of the old man. He began to understand something of the great power which had been wielded from the throne of Ely. Yet he waited not with his answer, "Christianity is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to Christ as St. Francis did before me."

"Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?"

Annys remained silent.

"The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one Rule," went on the Bishop. "Why think you it was that the wolves of the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others. It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan, Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours, Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great when he placed the diadem of the Cæsars on the Frankish Emperor's brow; yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow that would have shattered the sword."

"Ah, but how much finer had the Church of Christ been built up even as Solomon would have had it, if it could have truly been said of the Head of the Church:—

"'He shall not put his trust in horse or rider, and bow, nor shall he multiply unto himself gold and silver for war, for he shall smite the earth with the word of his mouth.'"