THE PARISH PRIEST.
e shall obtain further help to a comprehension of the character, and position, and popular estimation of the mediæval seculars—the parish priests—if we compare them first with the regulars—the monks and friars—and then with their modern representatives the parochial clergy. One great point of difference between the regulars and the seculars was that the monks and friars affected asceticism, and the parish priests did not. The monks and friars had taken the three vows of absolute poverty, voluntary celibacy, and implicit obedience to the superior of the convent. The parish priests, on the contrary, had their benefices and their private property; they long resisted the obligations of celibacy, which popes and councils tried to lay upon them; they were themselves spiritual rulers in their own parishes, subject only to the constitutional rule of the bishop. The monks professed to shut themselves up from the world, and to mortify their bodily appetites in order the better, as they considered, to work out their own salvation. The friars professed to be the schools of the prophets, to have the spirit of Nazariteship, to be followers of Elijah and John Baptist, to wear sackcloth, and live hardly, and go about as preachers of repentance. The secular clergy had no desire and felt no need to shut themselves up from the world like monks; they did not feel called upon, with the friars, to imitate John Baptist, “neither eating nor drinking,” seeing that a greater than he came “eating and drinking” and living the common life of men. They rather looked upon Christian priests and clerks as occupying the place of the priests and Levites of the ancient church, set apart to minister in holy things like them, but not condemned to poverty or asceticism any more than they were. The difference told unfavourably for the parish clergy in the popular estimation; for the unreasoning crowd is always impressed by the dramatic exhibition of austerity of life and the profession of extraordinary sanctity, and undervalues the virtue which is only seen in the godly regulation of a life of ordinary every-day occupations. The lord monks were the aristocratic order of the clergy. Their convents were wealthy and powerful, their minsters and houses were the glory of the land, their officials ranked with the nobles, and the greatness of the whole house reflected dignity upon each of its monks.
The friars were the popular order of the clergy. The Four Orders were great organizations of itinerant preachers; powerful through their learning and eloquence, their organization, and the Papal support; cultivating the favour of the people by which they lived by popular eloquence and demagogic arts.
Between these two great classes stood the secular clergy, upon whom the practical pastoral work of the country fell. A numerous body, but disorganized; diocesan bishops acting as statesmen, and devolving their ecclesiastical duties on suffragans; rectors refusing to take priests’ orders, and living like laymen; the majority of the parishes practically served by parochial chaplains; every gentleman having his own chaplain dependent on his own pleasure; hundreds of priests engaged in secular occupations.
Between the secular priests and the friars, as we have seen, pp. 46 et seq., there was a direct rivalry and a great deal of bitter feeling. The friars accused the parish priests of neglect of duty and ignorance in spiritual things and worldliness of life, and came into their parishes whenever they pleased, preaching and visiting from house to house, hearing confessions and prescribing penances, and carrying away the offerings of the people. The parish priests looked upon the friars as intruders in their parishes, and accused them of setting their people against them and undermining their spiritual influence; of corrupting discipline, by receiving the confessions of those who were ashamed to confess to their pastor who knew them, and enjoining light penances in order to encourage people to come to them; and lastly, of using all the arts of low popularity-seeking in order to extract gifts and offerings from their people.
We have already given one contemporary illustration of this from Chaucer, at p. 46 ante. We add one or two extracts from Piers Ploughman’s Vision. In one place of his elaborate allegory he introduces Wrath, saying:—
“I am Wrath, quod he, I was sum tyme a frere,
And the convent’s gardyner for to graff impes[280]
On limitoures and listers lesyngs I imped
Till they bere leaves of low speech lordes to please
And sithen thier blossomed abrode in bower to hear shriftes.
And now is fallen therof a fruite, that folk have well liever
Shewen her shriftes to hem than shryve hem to ther parsones.
And now, parsons have perceyved that freres part with hem,
These possessioners preache and deprave freres,
And freres find hem in default, as folk beareth witness.”—v. 143.
And again on the same grievance of the friars gaining the confidence of the people away from their parish priests—
“And well is this y-holde: in parisches of Engelonde,
For persones and parish prestes: that shulde the peple shryve,
Ben curatoures called: to know and to hele.
Alle that ben her parishens: penaunce to enjoine,
And shulden be ashamed in her shrifte: an shame maketh hem wende,
And fleen to the freres: as fals folke to Westmynstere,
That borwith and bereth it thider.”[281]