Education was much more common among the laity of the Middle Ages than is sometimes supposed. The French books of piety and of romance in the thirteenth century presuppose people capable of reading them. Grostete’s “Castle of Love” was a religious allegory, in which, under the ideas of chivalry, the fundamental articles of Christian belief are represented. By the middle of the fourteenth century, English had become a literary language, and works of all kinds were written in it. Wiclif did not translate the Bible from Latin into English for the clergy; they would rightly prefer to continue to read it in the Latin of the Vulgate; he wrote it for the laity, and we know that it was largely circulated among them. The poems of Lydgate and Gower, “Piers Plowman,” and the Canterbury Tales, the numerous romances, and the religious tracts of Wiclif and Robert of Hampole, had numerous readers; and for those readers books of devotion were largely provided.
Robert de Brunne’s “Handlyng of Synne,” in 1303, was a translation of the French “Manuel des Pechiez” of the previous century. The “Meditacyuns of the Soper of oure Lorde Ihesu,” in 1303, was a translation of the “Meditationes Vitæ Christi” of Cardinal Bonaventure.
“The Pricke of Conscience,” by Richard Rolle, the Hermit of Hampole, and “The Ayenbite of Inwit” (Remorse of Conscience), completed in 1340,[237] are translations of “Le Somme des Vices et des Vertus,” composed in 1279. The “Parson’s Tale” in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Pilgrims,” is in part a translation from the same book. The “Lay Folks’ Mass-book,” or manner of hearing mass, with rubrics and devotions for the people, and offices in English according to the Use of York, is an evidence that pains was taken to enable the people to enter intelligently into the Latin service. It was written in French by Dan Jeremy, Canon of Rouen, afterwards Archdeacon of Cleveland, in about the year 1170, and was translated into English towards the close of the thirteenth century.
The “Lay Folks’ Mass-book” is well worth more space than we can afford it here, as a curious illustration of the popular religion. It explains the meaning of the service, and of the ritual, tells the worshipper when to stand and kneel, and puts private devotions into his mouth in rhyme, for their better remembrance. There are numerous MSS. of these books still existing, and when the art of printing was discovered, they were among the books early printed, so that we have reason to believe that they were in general demand and use among the laity.
We learn that it was the custom for the parish priest to vest at the altar—the old parish churches seldom had vestries:
When the altar is all dight,
And the priest is washed right,
Then he takes in both his hands
A chesepull[238] cloth on the altar hangs,
And comes aback a little down,
And does it upon him all aboune.
All men kneeling, but he stands,
And holds to God up both his handes.
When the priest and clerks confess to one another, the worshipper is directed also to make his confession in a form given.
After the confession the people stand, and the priest begins the service; the worshipper is told to pray for him, and the hearers, and their friends, and for “peace and rest that lastes ay to Christian souls passed away,” and to all men. Next is given a rhyming English version of the Gloria in Excelsis, to be said while the priest is saying it in Latin. The people kneel and say Pater nosters through the Collect and Epistle; when the priest crosses to the south corner of the altar to read the Gospel, then the people are to stand and make a cross, and take good heed, and say this prayer—