[915] Alnwick’s Visit. MS. f. 1d; but some of these would be absent from the monastery.
[916] Ib. ff. 71d, 72. For other injunctions against “cutting” services, see Heynings, 1351 and 1392 (Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d, and Bokyngham, f. 397), Elstow 1387 and 1421 (ib. Bokyngham, f. 343 and Linc. Visit. I, p. 51), Godstow 1279 and 1434 (Reg. J. Peckham, III, p. 846, Linc. Visit. I, p. 66), Romsey 1387 (New Coll. MS. f. 84), Cannington 1351 (Reg. R. of Shrewsbury, p. 684), Nunkeeling 1314, Thicket 1309, Yedingham 1314, Swine 1318, Wykeham 1314, Arthington 1318 (V.C.H. Yorks. III, pp. 120, 124, 127, 181, 183, 188), Sinningthwaite 1534 (Yorks. Arch. Journ. XVI, p. 443), etc.
[917] See e.g. Linc. Visit. II, pp. 1, 8, 67, 131, 133, 134-5, Linc. Epis. Reg. Memo. Gynewell, f. 34d, Sede Vacante Reg. (Worc. Hist. Soc.), p. 276, Reg. Epis. J. Peckham, II, pp. 651-2, etc.
[918] V.C.H. Lincs. II, p. 131. For other instances of lateness at matins, see Heynings 1442 (Linc. Visit. II, p. 133), Godstow 1432 (Linc. Visit. I, p. 66), Flixton 1514 (Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 143), Romsey 1302 (Liveing, Records of Romsey Abbey, p. 100), Easebourne 1478, 1524 (Sussex Arch. Coll. IX, pp. 17, 26-7), St Radegund’s, Cambridge (Gray, Prior of St Radegund, Cambridge, p. 36).
[919] Linc. Visit. II, p. 48; Jessopp, Visit. of Dioc. of Norwich, p. 209; Arch. XLVII, p. 55; compare Romsey 1387, 1507 (New Coll. MS. f. 84; Liveing, op. cit. p. 231), St Helen’s Bishopsgate, c. 1432 (Hist. MS. Com. Rep. IX, App. p. 57).
[920] “These are they who wickedly corrupt the holy psalms: the dangler, the gasper, the leaper, the galloper, the dragger, the mumbler, the foreskipper, the forerunner and the over leaper: Tittivillus collecteth the fragments of these men’s words.” G. G. Coulton, Med. Garn. p. 423. He also collected the gossip of women in church. On Tittivillus see my article in the Cambridge Magazine, 1917, pp. 158-60.
[921] Myroure of Oure Ladye, ed. Blunt (E.E.T.S.), p. 54.
[922] Greek ἀκηδία; whence acedia or accidia in Latin; English accidie. It is a pity that the word has fallen out of use. The disease has not.
[923] An interesting modern study of this moral disease is to be found in a book of sermons by the late Bishop of Oxford, Dr Paget, The Spirit of Discipline (1891), which contains an introductory essay “concerning Accidie,” in which the subject is treated historically, with illustrations from the writings of Cassian, St John of the Ladder, Dante and St Thomas Aquinas, in the middle ages, Marchantius and Francis Neumayer in the seventeenth century, and Wordsworth, Keble, Trench, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson and Stevenson in the nineteenth century. See also Dr Paget’s first sermon “The Sorrow of the World,” which deals with the same subject. He diagnoses the main elements of Accidia very ably: “As one compares the various estimates of the sin one can mark three main elements which help to make it what it is—elements which can be distinguished, though in experience, I think, they almost always tend to meet and mingle, they are gloom and sloth and irritation.” Op. cit. p. 54. On Accidia, see also H. B. Workman, The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal (1913), pp. 326-31. During the great war the disease of accidie was prevalent in prison camps, as any account of Ruhleben shows very clearly. For a short psychological study of this manifestation of it, see Vischer, A. L., Barbed Wire Disease (1919).
[924] See book X of Cassian’s De Coenobiorum Institutis, which is entitled “De Spiritu Acediae” (Wace and Schaff, Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, 2nd ser., vol. XI, Sulpitius Severus, Vincent of Lerins and John Cassian, pp. 266 ff.; chapters I and II are paraphrased by Dr Paget, op. cit. pp. 8-10); Book IX, on the kindred sin of Tristitia is also worthy of study; the two are always closely connected, as is shown by the anecdotes quoted below.