“A good man there was of religioun,
That was a poure persone of a toun;
But riche he was of holy thought and werk.
He was also a lerned man, a clerk,
That Criste’s gospel trewely wolde preche,
His parishens devoutly wolde he teche.
Benigne he was and wonder diligent,
And in adversite ful patient;
And such he was yproved often sithes.
Full loth were he to cursen for his tithes,
But rather wolde he given out of doubte
Unto his poure parishens about,
Of his offering and eke of his substance.
He could in litel thing have suffisance.
Wide was his parish, and houses fer asunder,
But he ne left nought for no rain ne thunder,
In sikenesse and in mischief to visite
The farthest in his parish much and lite,[285]
Upon his fete, and in his hand a staff.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gaf[286]
That first he wrought, and afterward he taught.
Out of the gospel he the wordes caught,
And this figure he added yet thereto,
That if gold rusté what should iren do?
For if a priest be foul, on whom we trust,
No wonder is a léwéd man to rust;
Well ought a preest ensample for to give,
By his clenenesse how his shepe shulde live.
He sette not his benefice to hire,
And lefte his sheep accumbered in the mire,
And ran unto London, unto Seint Poules,
To seeken him a chanterie for souls,
Or with a brotherhede to be withold,
But dwelt at home and kepté well his fold.
He was a shepherd and no mercenare;
And though he holy were and vertuous,
He was to sinful men not despitous,[287]
Ne of his speché dangerous ne digne,[288]
But in his teaching discrete and benigne.
To drawen folk to heaven with fairénesse,
By good ensample was his businesse.
But it were any persone obstinat,
What so he were of highe or low estate,
Him wolde he snibben[289] sharply for the nones,
A better preest I trow that nowhere none is.
He waited after no pomp ne reverence,
Ne maked him no spiced[290] conscience,
But Christés lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, but first he followed it himselve.”
Thus, monk, and friar, and hermit, and recluse, and rector, and chantry priest, played their several parts in mediæval society, until the Reformation came and swept away the religious orders and their houses, the chantry priests and their superstitions, and the colleges of seculars, with all their good and evil, and left only the parish churches and the parish priests remaining, stripped of half their tithe, and insufficient in number, in learning, and in social status to fulfil the office of the ministry of God among the people. Since then, for three centuries the people have multiplied, and the insufficiency of the ministry has been proportionately aggravated. It has been left to our day to complete the work of the Reformation by multiplying bishops and priests, and creating an order of deacons, re-distributing the ancient revenues and supplying what more is needed, and by effecting a general reorganization of the ecclesiastical establishment to adapt it to the actual spiritual needs of the people.
CHAPTER IV.
CLERICAL COSTUME.
e proceed to give some notes on the costume of the secular clergy; first the official costume which they wore when performing the public functions of their order, and next the ordinary costume in which they walked about their parishes and took part in the daily affairs of the mediæval society of which they formed so large and important a part. The first branch of this subject is one of considerable magnitude; it can hardly be altogether omitted in such a series of papers as this, but our limited space requires that we should deal with it as briefly as may be.
Representations of the pope occur not infrequently in ancient paintings. His costume is that of an archbishop, only that instead of the usual mitre he wears a conical tiara. In later times a cross with three crossbars has been used by artists as a symbol of the pope, with two crossbars of a patriarch, and with one crossbar of an archbishop; but Dr. Rock assures us that the pope never had a pastoral staff of this shape, but of one crossbar only; that patriarchs of the Eastern Church used the cross of two bars, but never those of the Western Church; and that the example of Thomas-à-Becket with a cross of two bars, in Queen Mary’s Psalter (Royal, 2 B. vii.) is a unique example (and possibly an error of the artist’s). A representation of Pope Leo III. from a contemporary picture is engraved in the “Annales Archæologique,” vol. viii. p. 257; another very complete and clear representation of the pontifical costume of the time of Innocent III. is engraved by Dr. Rock (“Church of our Fathers,” p. 467) from a fresco painting at Subiaco, near Rome. Another representation, of late thirteenth-century date, is given in the famous MS. called the “Psalter of Queen Mary,” in the British Museum (Royal, 2 B. vii.); there the pope is in nothing more than ordinary episcopal costume—alb, tunic, chasuble, without the pall—and holds his cross-staff of only one bar in his right hand, and his canonical tiara has one crown round the base. Beside him stands a bishop in the same costume, except that he wears the mitre and holds a crook. A good fourteenth-century representation of a pope and cardinals is in the MS. August. V. f. 459. We give a woodcut of the fifteenth century, from a MS. life of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, in the British Museum (Julius E. iv. f. 207); the subject is the presentation of the pilgrim earl to the pope, and it enables us to bring into one view the costumes of pope, cardinal, and bishop. A later picture of considerable artistic merit may be found in Hans Burgmair’s “Der Weise König,” where the pope, officiating at a royal marriage, is habited in a chasuble, and has the three crowns on his tiara.
