A PEASANT REBUKING A POMPOUS BISHOP (A.D. 1035).
Fulgosius gives a story how a peasant in the electorate of Cologne puzzled his bishop. The peasant was at work in his field, when he saw his bishop pass by, attended by a train more becoming a prince than a successor of the Apostles. He could not forbear laughing loud and long, which caused the bishop to ask the reason. The peasant answered, “I laugh when I think of St. Peter and St. Paul, and see you in your equipage. Sure, they were ill advised to trudge on foot when they were heads of the Christian Church, the lieutenants of Jesus Christ, the King of kings; and here is yourself, only a bishop, yet so well mounted and with such warlike attendance that thou resemblest a prince rather than a pastor of the Church.” To this his reverence replied, “Nay, my friend, thou dost not consider that I am both a count and a baron as well as your bishop.” The rustic laughed still louder at this, and added, “Yea, but when the count and the baron, which you say you are, shall be in hell, where will the bishop be?” This rather confounded the bishop, who rode off without answering a word.
ST. MARGARET OF SCOTLAND LEARNED IN THE SCRIPTURES (A.D. 1080).
St. Margaret, a great-niece of Edward the Confessor and granddaughter of Edmund Ironsides, married Malcolm, King of Scotland, in 1069. She was of a saintly mind, and showed a genius for self-mortification and fasting, and also for charity to the poor. The King was accustomed to offer coins of gold in the church at High Mass, but the Queen devoutly pillaged them and bestowed them on the beggars who besought her help. The Queen and the ladies of her Court were constantly employed in making vestments and other ornaments for Divine service, and her attendants were taught frequently to exercise themselves in works of piety and charity. She was not only a model mother of a family, but she had a wonderful gift of eloquence, and could teach the most learned doctors of her time out of the Holy Scriptures things that they never knew or had forgotten. Her views about the right way of observing the forty days’ fast of Lent carried conviction to all the wise men, for before her time fewer Sundays used to be computed in the forty days, so that she added four days, and thereby made the Scotch conform to the rest of the world. She also taught her subjects to be more sound and rigid in observing Sunday, so that no one should on that day carry any burdens himself or compel others to do so. She was a great friend of the monasteries, and also of the hermits who lived in cells, and whom she often visited and begged to remember her in their prayers. As they would not on principle accept any gift from her, she begged them to bid her perform some alms deed or work of mercy, and she would do it forthwith. She erected some convenient dwellings to entertain the many pilgrims who visited the church of St. Andrews, and even chartered ships to bring the pilgrims from afar. She also rebuilt the monastery at Iona. She died in 1093, aged forty-seven, and in 1250 she was declared a saint and her body placed in a silver shrine in the abbey of Dunfermline.
ALAS FOR THE VANITY OF GREAT CONQUERORS! (A.D. 1087).
When William the Conqueror had reigned seventeen years, his Queen, Matilda, died in 1083, after a long sickness. She was buried in her own church at Caen, where her eldest daughter was already a professed nun, and William erected a tomb over her resting-place, rich with gold and gems. After this blow he never recovered his spirits. In 1087 he was resting at Rouen, under medical treatment for his corpulency, and King Philip made a jest of it by saying that William was only lying in! William, stung by this levity, swore that he would rise up again and have his revenge. He did rise, and set about harrying and devastating the vineyards and harvests of France, gladdening his sight with burning and demolishing castles, churches, and monasteries in his enemy’s country. But one day his horse stumbled, and his heavy body fell among some burning cinders. He was carried a dying man to Rouen, and for quietness was tended for some weeks in the priory of St. Gervase. His physician gave him up. He made his will and spoke his last wishes, and many a crime of his earlier days rose up against him. One morning he heard a great minster bell sounding for prime; and after inquiring what it was, he commended his soul to the Holy Mother of God and passed away, aged sixty-three. No sooner was the breath out of his body than his trusty chiefs took to their horses and scampered home, foreseeing that anarchy was at hand and self-preservation their first duty. The weeping attendants took care to pillage the weapons, clothes, and furniture in his room, leaving his body to lie a day on the bare floor. An archbishop at last took on him to order the body to be borne to Caen, but all the household had vanished, each carrying off as much booty as he could stow away, and not a vassal was to be found ready to help. A strange Norman knight, moved by natural piety, at last volunteered to wash, anoint, and embalm the royal corpse, and to find a carriage to convey it. But as the bier approached the abbey of St. Stephen, where monks and clergy stood ready to receive it, and were singing the office of the dead, a fire broke out near hand, and the members of the procession had to leave and assist in that emergency. At last the Mass of the dead was sung, and a bishop mounted the pulpit to harangue the audience on the mighty deeds of the great King. No sooner had this concluded when a knight stood forth and claimed the ground in which the King’s body was about to be laid, saying it was his property, of which he had been robbed by the King, and he challenged all and sundry to interfere with it, and swore that no robber’s body should ever be covered with his mould. The company were staggered, and yet feared it was too true, so that the bishops and nobles deemed it prudent to make a bargain on the spot and to pay a suitable purchase money. But this was not all. Some unskilful workmen had made the coffin too small to hold the great mass of flesh which William left behind. The body burst in the process of handling, and a fearful stench filled the church. The rest of the holy office was therefore hurried over, and this was the end of all. It was afterwards left to William Rufus to erect a fitting monument and shrine to the mighty dead, with some verses from the archbishop, reciting how small a house was now enough for the great King William. The monk Orderic, a contemporary, thus moralises on this career: “O secular pomp, how despicable art thou, because how vain and transient! Thou art justly compared to the bubbles made by rain; for like them thou swellest for a moment to vanish into nothing. Survey this most potent hero, whom lately a hundred thousand knights were eager to serve, and whom many nations dreaded, now lying for hours on the naked ground, spoiled and abandoned by every one! The citizens of Rouen were in consternation at the tidings. Every one fled from his home and hid his property or tried to turn it into money, that it might not be identified.”
AN ENGLISH KING MARRYING A NUN (A.D. 1100).
When Henry I. of England at the age of thirty-one suddenly succeeded to the crown on the death of William Rufus, he demanded in marriage Matilda of Scotland, daughter of King Malcolm and of his saintly Queen Margaret. It was rumoured that she was a nun, and Henry persuaded Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, to question her, and see if this scandal could be avoided. On inquiry she explained that the rumour had no foundation, and all that happened was that, when she was a girl of eight, her aunt one day put a piece of black cloth over her head, and she sometimes kept it on as an excuse for unsuitable marriages, and as a protection against the rudeness of the Norman nobles. This being deemed a satisfactory explanation, the chronicler William of Malmesbury thus described the wedding that took place in 1100 as follows: “At the wedding of Matilda and Henry I. there was a most prodigious concourse of nobility and people assembled in and about the church at Westminster, when, to prevent all calumny and ill report that the King was about to marry a nun, the Archbishop Anselm mounted into a pulpit and gave the multitude a history of the events proved before the synod and its judgment, that the Lady Matilda of Scotland was free from any religious vow, and might dispose of herself in marriage as she thought fit. The archbishop finished by asking the people in a loud voice whether any one there objected to this decision, upon which they answered unanimously with a loud shout that the matter was rightly settled. Accordingly the lady was immediately married to the King and crowned before that vast assembly.” It was said that this virtuous Queen took a leading part in persuading Henry to grant Magna Charta. She died in 1118, aged forty-one.
AWAKING A BISHOP FOR EARLY MASS (A.D. 1100).
An old chronicler, Helmandus of Froidmont, about 1100, relates that “Philip, Bishop of Beauvais, once tarried with us—not, we suppose, for enjoying our hospitality, but for devotion. ‘Now,’ said the bishop, ‘call me to hear early Mass.’ On going to him on the morrow when primes had begun, I found him still sleeping, and none of his household dared to disturb him. But I drew near him, saying in joke, ‘The sparrows have long risen to praise the Lord, and our bishops still snore in bed; listen, father, to the Psalmist: “Mine eyes prevent the night watches, that I meditate on Thy word.” Upon that the gloss of Ambrose says, “It is indecent for a Christian to be found by the sun’s rays lying slothful in bed.”’ The bishop, waking up, was confused and wroth for my reproving him so freely, and said angrily, ‘Be off, you wretch, and kill your lice.’ But I turned his anger into a joke, and forthwith rejoined, ‘Beware, father, lest your worms kill you. It is the worms of the rich that kill the rich, but the poor kill theirs. Read the history of the Maccabees and Josephus, and the Acts of the Apostles, and you will find that the most powerful kings Antiochus and Herod Agrippa were eaten by worms.’ Crushed by this reason and the authorities, the bishop straightway held his peace.”