The Cathedral, in the midst of the City, belonged to all alike: its splendid services, the singing of the choir, the rolling of the organ, the procession of priests with their white and gold copes, the ringing of the bell every day seven times from daybreak till curfew for as many services, the shrines of the saints, flaming with gold and precious stones and rich embroideries, especially those of St. Erkenwald, St. Ethelburga, and St. Mellitus, all these things appealed to the citizen and kept him loyal to the faith.
THE PRIORESS
From the Ellesmere MS.
THE MONK AND HIS GREYHOUNDS
There were, after the Cathedral dignitaries, the parish priests and the chantry priests, with the great army of those who lived by the altar; the anchorites and the hermits, the monks and friars, the nuns and sisters, all the people who formed the service of the monastic houses, the hospitals for the sick, the houses for the insane, the lepers’ houses, the schools, and the colleges. The last named were not places of education, but colleges of priests, of which All Souls, Oxford, and the College of Dulwich are two survivals. In London there were the Colleges of St. Thomas of Acon, in Cheapside, where is now Mercers’ Hall; that of St. Spirit and St. Mary founded by Whittington for a Master and four Fellows with clerks, conducts, choristers, and an almshouse; St. Michael’s, Crooked Lane, for a Master and nine Fellows; Jesus’ Commons for priests; and St. Augustine’s Papey for old and infirm priests. Quiet and pleasant places all, where life gently glided along; where there were no duties but the daily mass, no Rule, no Austerities—the ideal life for the scholar among the books of the library; and for those who loved to sit apart and meditate among the trees and flower-beds of the garden in summer, or in the glazed cloisters sheltered from the cold wind and frost of winter. Outside, in the work-a-day world, what did the people think and believe? The history of religion, or of religious thought, in London, cannot be separated from that of the whole country. It is a history of enthusiasms in successive waves. When the whole of England—in the eighth century—understood, with a new and overwhelming sense, the reality of Christianity; when Kings and Queens, Earls and Thanes and noble ladies crowded into the monasteries, there to prepare for the next world, compared with which this present world is not worth considering, then the people of London for their part rebuilt the Abbey of Westminster, and founded the House of St. Martin-le-Grand; they divided London into parishes and erected parish churches; they created guilds for the spiritual nourishment of those who could not enter the Religious House.
During the two hundred years of struggle with the Danes and Normans, these Houses were destroyed, or, if they survived, were carried on with fewer brethren and a more slender endowment.
When order returned, and a strong King made it possible for men to live without the weapons of war at hand, the mind of the people, always a profoundly religious people, turned again to the realities of the unseen world. Once more there awakened the sense of change and decay and the worthlessness of things fleeting. The Court Jesters—converted—founded hospitals; the City Fathers handed over the lands of the City to the newly founded House of the Holy Trinity. Monasteries, nunneries, and colleges sprang up everywhere. The new foundations satisfied the people for another hundred years or so. Then they woke up once more in the old way. The religious life, they discovered, is not always found in the Religious House; the hood does not make the monk. The Friars came over to the country; they showed the people a new kind of religious life; one not separated from the world, but moving and living in the world; one that saves the soul by losing it and mounts to Heaven by the prayers and gratitude of men and women whom it has lifted from the mire and slough of sin and disease and misery. No more noble form of Christianity can be presented. Francis discovered the very mind of the Founder.