Colet was wearied with all this, and when an arm was brought forward to be kissed which had still the bloody flesh of the martyr clinging to it, he drew back in disgust. The priest then shut up, locked, and double-locked his treasures, and showed them the sumptuous articles, the great wealth of gold and silver ornaments, kept under the altar. Erasmus thought that in the presence of this vast assemblage of precious things even Midas and Crœsus would be only beggars, and he sighed that he had nothing like them at home, devoutly praying the Saint for pardon of his impious thought before he moved a step from the Cathedral. However, they had not yet seen all. They were led into the Sacristy, and “Good God!” exclaims Erasmus, “what a display was there of silken vestments, what an array of golden candlesticks!” Saint Thomas’s pastoral staff was there, a quite plain stick of pear-wood, with a crook of black horn, covered with silver plate, and no longer than a walking-stick. Here, too, was a coarse silken pall, quite unadorned, and a sudary, dirty from wear, and retaining manifest stains of blood. These things, relics of a more simple age, they willingly kissed, and were then conducted to the Corona, where they saw an effigy of Saint Thomas, “that excellent man,” gilt and adorned with many jewels. But here Colet’s anger broke forth, and he addressed the priest in this wise. “Good father, is it true what I hear, that Saint Thomas while alive was exceedingly kind to the poor?” “Most true,” said he, and he then began to relate many of his acts of benevolence towards the destitute. “I do not imagine,” said Colet, “that such disposition of his is changed, but perhaps increased.” The priest assented. “Then,” rejoined the Dean, “since that holy man was so liberal towards the poor when he was poor himself and required the aid of all his money for his bodily necessities, do you not think that now, when he is very wealthy, nor lacks anything, he would take it very contentedly if any poor woman having starving children at home should (first praying for pardon) take from these so great riches some small portion for the relief of her family?”
The priest pouted, knitted his brows, and looked upon the two friends with Gorgonian eyes, and he would probably have turned them out of the building had it not been for the Archbishop’s letter of introduction which they carried with them. Erasmus was alarmed at his friend’s free speech. He was pacifying the priest when the Prior approached and conducted them to the Holy of holies, Becket’s Shrine. A wooden canopy was raised, and the golden case enclosing the martyr’s remains disclosed. The least valuable part of it was of gold: every part glistened, shone, and sparkled with rare and immense jewels, some of them exceeding the size of a goose’s egg. Monks stood round, and they all fell down and worshipped, after which they returned to the Crypt, to see the place where the Virgin Mother had her abode, a somewhat dark one, hedged in by more than one iron screen. “What was she afraid of, then?” asks his interlocutor, and he replies, “Of nothing, I imagine, except thieves,” for the riches with which she was surrounded were a more than royal spectacle. Again they were conducted to the Sacristy; a box covered with black leather was brought out, and again all fell down and worshipped. Some torn fragments of linen were produced; most of them retaining marks of dirt. With these the holy man used to wipe the perspiration from his face and neck, the runnings from his nose, or such other superfluities from which the human frame is not free. The Prior graciously offered to present Colet with one of these dirty rags, and, indeed, to the devout such a gift would have been of a quite inestimable value. But Colet, handling the rags delicately as though they might possibly infect him, replaced them in the box with a contemptuous whistle. The Prior was a man of politeness and good breeding. He appeared not to notice this rude, not to say heretical, rejection of his gift, and, offering them a cup of wine, courteously dismissed them.
XXXVIII
Soon after this came the downfall. With the struggles of the Reformation went the relics, the gold and jewels, and—worse than all—the decorations and painted windows of the Cathedral. With many abuses and with the disgusting humbug of the old order of things went also, it is sad to think, much of the living reality of religion; and Canterbury Cathedral is to-day an historical museum to the crowd of tourists, and an architectural model for students of that first of all the arts. Curiosity, and little else, draws the crowd. Byron has caught the spirit of the times happily enough (although “beadle” and “cathedral” are not among the elegancies of rhyme) when he says of Don Juan and his companion:—
They saw at Canterbury the Cathedral,
Black Edward’s helm, and Becket’s bloody stone,
Were pointed out as usual by the beadle,
In the same quiet uninterested tone:—
There’s glory for you, gentle reader! All
Ends in a rusty casque and dubious bone.
And how very dubious are the bones that are said to be those of Becket is a question that may not be enlarged upon here.
For the rest, a holy calm reigns unbroken in the Cathedral Close. Hemmed in and surrounded[7] by massive walls, modernity has no place here, and if the interior of the building is somewhat disappointing, the exterior and its surroundings, especially the north-east aspect, viewed from the Green Court, must be seen to be appreciated. To be sure, this part of the building is Norman and Early English, and no other periods produced such wildly irregular masses. Added to the original irregularity of outline are the puzzling ruins—ivied wall and broken window—dating from the time when Henry the Eighth’s Commissioners destroyed the monastery. Queer passages, dark and tortuous, giving suddenly upon little cloisters and grassy quadrangles, are to be found everywhere; conspicuous among them the “Dark Entry,” immortalized by Tom Ingoldsby in his Legend of Nell Cook.
THE CITY SERGEANT