FATE OF THE WELL-DISPOSED CLERGY. 285 contented themselves with a seeming obedience, and those to whom a regular marriage was not allowed, abandoned themselves, in private, to excesses so much the worse,-sought in gorgeous apparel, outward splendour,* revelry, and noisy amusements, an indemnification for the enjoyments of domestic life, which were forbidden them. The dissolution of the canonical life continually went on increasing. The prebends were by many considered as only a means of good living, and they either did not concern themselves at all about the ecclesiastical functions incumbent on them, or performed them in a mechanical way, without devotion or dignity, or else got them performed by hirelingt job-working substitutes. Those who would not follow the example of the rest, who exhibited in their whole manner of life a seriousness corresponding to their vocation, who dared to converse about spiritual things, were decried by the latter as singular fellows and pietists;§ or, if they ventured to stand forth as censors, exposed themselves to hatred and persecution; for men dreaded a spirit of reform supported by popes and monarchs which might bring down a severe chastisement on the heads of the corrupt clergy. 66 Behold," said the others, "how this man departs from our customs; he wants to convert us into monks. We must at once take our stand against him. If we do not, it will go with us as it has done with others before us. The pope and the king will unite against us, they will deprive us of our livings, * In opposition to these, see, e. g., the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, ep. 2, s. 11: Conceditur tibi, ut si bene deservis, de altario vivis, non autem, ut de altario luxurieris, ut de altario superbias, ut inde compares tibi frena aurea, sellas depictas, calcaria deargentata, varia griseaque pellicea a collo et manibus ornatu purpureo diversificata. † We have an example in a church at Gubbio in the twelfth century, in the account of the life of bishop Ubald, written by his successor Tebald: Nulla tunc temporis ordinis observantia, nulla prorsus religionis colebatur memoria. Mercede annua erat conductus, qui campanas pulsaret in hora officiorum et quia clericorum unusquisque in domo propria epulabatur et dormiebat, tota fere observantia ecclesiastici cultus custodiebatur in pulsu nolarum. See Acta Sactor. Mens. Maj. T. III. f. 631. Clerici conductores and conductitii, as Gerhoh says in his Dialog. De differentia clerici sæcularis et regularis, Pez, Thes. anecd. noviss. Ï. II. f. 482. Si non facio, quod cæteri, de singularitate notabor. Bernard. ep. 2, s. 11. 286 LAWS AGAINST ABUSES OF NO EFFECT. and other fashions will be introduced here. We shall become a laughing-stock to all the people.' When the popes had succeeded in banishing the direct and arbitrary influence of the princes on ecclesiastical appointments, another not less pernicious mode of arbitrary proceeding often took the place of that which had been suppressed. The bishops and chapters of the cathedral often suffered themselves to be determined by family interests and worldly considerations more than by any concern for the good of the church. The older ecclesiastical laws respecting the canonical age were neglected, and boys under age promoted to the first offices of the church.† Canonical priests made it a rule amongst themselves, that none but persons of noble birth should join their class, and so the ostentatious display and luxurious modes of living practised in the higher ranks were introduced amongst the clergy. Nepotism, and the spirit of gain, led to the accumulation of several benefices, often involving the duties of incompatible callings, on one person. Respecting the so-called plurality of benefices, and the non-residence of clergymen near the church with which their official duties were connected, various complaints were offered. Peter Cantor, in the work wherein he combats the ecclesiastical abuses of his times,§ resents it that, in a respectable church, the five offices of greatest income had been given to absentees. The popes * See Life of the abbot William Roskild, who belonged to the times of pope Innocent the Third, in the Actis Sanctor. M. April. T. I. f. 625; and what Jacob of Vitry says of those corrupt ecclesiastics: Hi autem, qui inter eos viri justi et timorati super abominationibus eorum lugent et contristantur, ab iis irridentur. Hypocritas et superstitiosos dicunt, reputantes pro magno crimine, quod divinæ scripturæ verbum vel ipsum Dei nomen inter eos ausi sunt nominare. Hist. occidental. c. xxx. The words of Bernard, in his tract, De officio episcoporum, c. vii.: Scholares pueri et impuberes adolescentes ob sanguinis dignitatem promoventur ad ecclesiasticas dignitates et de sub ferula transferuntur ad principandum presbyteris, lætiores interim, quod virgas evaserint quam quod meruerint principatum. The complaints in Peter de Blois, ep. 60: Episcoporum nequitia, qui circa parentum promotionem sunt adeo singu lariter occupati, ut nihil aliud affectent aut somnient, atque indigentiam scholarium vel in modica visitatione non relevent. Purpurata incendit parentela pontificum et elata de patrimonio crucifixi in superbia et in abusione ad omnes vitæ sæcularis illecebras se effundit. See, e. g., Yves' letters, ep. 126. The Verbum Abbreviatum, already several times referred to. Pro quibus (reditibus) perceptis in ea nec per vicarium nec per alium LAWS AGAINST ABUSES OF NO EFFECT. 287 Alexander the Third and Innocent the Third passed laws at the Lateran general councils, in the years 1179 and 1215, for the suppression of the above-mentioned abuses; but, by all the outward measures that were applied, little could be effected so long as the sources of the evil were still left behind; and the bad example which the arbitrary proceedings of succeeding popes presented would only contribute to promote such abuses. Bishops who had the good of their communities at heart, as, for example, Robert Grosshead, we hear complaining bitterly on this subject.* In the contest with the great mass of the secularized clergy stood forth, in the twelfth century, men who sought to bring back the old canonical life to a still greater degree of strictness, to reform the clerical body still more according to the pattern of the monastic life. Such a man was Norbert, the founder of a new and peculiar congregation, which became a place of refuge for many who were dissatisfied with the then existing condition of the clergy. Of him we shall have to speak more at large in the history of monasticism. But there were also other men of the more rigid tendency, who professed no wish of founding a new institution, but only desired to bring back the clergy to a mode of life and of association corresponding to their original destination. Among these, the individual of whom we have so often spoken as an enthusiastic champion of the Hildebrandian system, the provost Gerhoh of Reichersberg, deserves particularly to be mentioned. The greatest part of his life was spent in struggling servitur. Non dico, non cantatur, non legitur tantum, sed nec etiam consiliis ejus assissitur, quippe nulla personarum quinque semel in anno præsens in ea invenitur. L. C. c. xxxiv. *See his letter to his archdeacon, ep. 107, in Brown, in which he calls upon him to exercise severity towards the clergy who neglected their duty, and complains of their incontinent lives, their worldly pursuits, and their trifling amusements: Ex relatu fide digno audivimus, quod plurimi sacerdotes archidiaconatus vestri horas canonicas aut non dicunt aut corrupte dicunt, et id quod dicunt sine omni devotione aut devotionis signo, imo magis cum evidenti ostensione animi indevoti dicunt nec horam observant in dicendo, quæ commodior sit parochianis ad audiendum divina sed quæ eorum plus consonat libidinosæ desidiæ. Habent insuper suas focarias, quod etsi nos et nostros lateat cum inquisitiones super ejusmodi fieri fecimus, his per quos fiunt inquisitiones perjuria non timentibus, non debet tamen vos sic latere. 288 CLERICI REGULARES AND SÆCULARES. for the reformation of the clerus,* and the storms which agitated that body proceeded from this very cause-he is in this respect to be compared with Ratherius. The apostolical community of goods, as men conceived it, was to him the type of the union which ought to exist amongst the clergy. The rule ascribed to Augustin, he represented as the law for the community of the clergy; they should own no sort of property; strangers to all luxury and splendour, they should be contented with the simple necessaries of life: it was what Arnold of Brescia wanted to bring about, only in a more liberal spirit. To the clerical rule drawn up at Aix-la-Chapelle, Gerhoh referred back, as a lax rule, originating in the court of a prince, not in the church.† Considered from this point of view, those ecclesiastics alone who subjected themselves to this stricter rule, were recognized as genuine canonicals, as clerici regulares; all the rest were placed in the class of irregulares sæculares-secular clergymen; but among the latter, too, there was a great diversity as to their habits of living. This, even the zealous advocate of the stricter rule, the provost Gerhoh, little as he was inclined to do them justice, was forced to acknowledge. There were, amongst the secular clergy, men of spiritual feelings; and a distinction is to be made between those whom the love of freedom and those whom an inclination to licentiousness led to choose this mode of life; of which latter Jacob of Vitry says, that they were very properly called canonici sæculares because they belonged entirely to the sæculum-to the world; but that they were incorrectly styled canonici, for they led a life altogether without rule or law.§ It so happened, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that, *He has himself related the history of his contests with bishops, canonicals, and princes, in his Commentary on the Psalms. See Pez, Thes. anecd. noviss. T. V. f. 2039. + Illam clericorum regulam, non in ecclesia, sed in aula regis dictatam. In Ps. lxviii. Pez, Thes. T. V. f. 1352. He says: Non eos omnes damnamus, cum ex ipsis agnoscamus aliquos, licet paucos, esse ita disciplinatos, ut licet habeant propria, quasi non habentes, habeant ea et studeant in sectanda morum disciplina. In Ps. lxvii. 1. c. f. 1353. § From that better class he distingnishes these: Multi autem temporibus istis reperiuntur canonici vero nomine sæculares, quorum regula est, irregulariter vivere. C. XXX. FULCO'S EDUCATION. HIS PREACHING. 289 from the body of these secular clergymen came individuals awakened to repentance by peculiar impressions upon their minds; filled with abhorrence of the worldly pursuits of the clergy, they turned all at once to an entirely different mode of life. The duties of the spiritual calling, their guilt in having hitherto so neglected them, pressed with their whole weight upon their consciences: they felt constrained to exert themselves the more earnestly to make good their own deficiencies, and to exhort clergy and laity to repentance, and to a serious Christian deportment. They travelled round as preachers of repentance; by their words of exhortation, coming warm from the heart, many were moved, awakened to remorse for their sins, and to resolutions of amendment; though the powerful impressions of the moment did not always endure. A circle of young men was formed around them, and they became the objects of enthusiastic veneration; by which, however, such of them as lacked firmness of Christian character might easily be intoxicated, and, quitting the paths of humility and discretion, be led into dangerous self-delusions; so that what had begun in a holy enthusiasm might gradually become vitiated by the intrusion of impure motives. Near the close of the twelfth century, a great stir was produced in France by a person named Fulco. He was one of the ordinary, ignorant, worldly-minded ecclesiastics, the priest and parson of a country town not far from Paris; afterwards he experienced a change of the nature we have described, and, as he had before neglected his flock, and injured them by his bad example, so now he sought to build them up by his teaching and example. But he soon became painfully sensible of his want of that knowledge which he had taken no pains to acquire, but which was now indispensable to him in order to instruct his community. In order to supply as far as possible this deficiency, he went on week-days to Paris, and attended the lectures of Peter Cantor, a theologian distinguished for his peculiar scriptural bent, and his tendency to practical reform; and of the knowledge here acquired he availed himself, by elaborating it into sermons, which he preached on Sundays to his flock. These sermons were not so much distinguished for profoundness of thought as for their adaptation to the common understanding, and to the occasions of practical life. He was a man of the people, and the way in which he spoke made what VOL. VII. U |