[250] Wood. Antiq. of Oxford, lib. i. p. 135.
[251] Ralph Bocking was a Dominican Friar and a native of Chichester, and wrote the life of the Saint (whose confessor he was) with great feeling and devotion.
[252] He adds that this decking of the well was prohibited by the Parliament, as a popish abomination, after which “the water shranke up.” On this the rustics set the Parliament at defiance and revived the ancient custom, whereupon, to their inexpressible consolation the water recommenced flowing.
[253] For a statement of the arguments by which this opinion is supported, see Rohrbacher, Histoire Eccl. t. xviii. pp. 478-482.
[254] Fleury, who in his fifth Discourse has spoken with equal contempt of the theological and literary merits of the scholastics, winds up by reminding the reader that they wrote at a time when everything exhibited the same bad taste as was displayed in Gothic architecture, that absurd assemblage of petty ornaments “which no architect would ever dream of imitating.” Nothing endurable in point of style or art was, according to him, to be seen in Europe from the fall of the Roman empire until the fifteenth century, that is, during the whole essentially Christian period. With what amazement would he have beheld the Christian Renaissance of our own days, and the reflux of taste into mediæval channels!
[255] Godwin, and some other writers, claim Kilwarby as a Franciscan. But the evidence in favour of his being a Dominican is irresistible. He was present at the general chapter of the Order of Preachers held at Barcelona in 1261; he attended the Provincial chapter of Montpelier in 1271, and is named in the acts of that council among other distinguished men of the Order then present. He was discharged from his office of Provincial in the General Chapter held at Florence, 1272, but was re-elected by the Provincial Chapter of England the same year. He is described as a Friar Preacher in the Patent Rolls of Edward I., when the temporalities of Canterbury were restored; and Nicholas Trivet, the historian of the Order, who lived only fifty years after the archbishop, distinctly names him as a Dominican. Finally, his name does not occur in the Catalogue of English Franciscan Provincials.
[256] Collier, Eccl. History; vol. i. Book 5, p. 484.
[257] Nich. Trivet. Annales regum Angliæ.
[258] For the beautiful narrative of this event see the Life of St. Edmund, by the Abbé Massé.
[259] His name appears in the MS. Catalogue of Fellows of Merton under Edward II., preserved in the College Library.