Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/499

ENGLAND can now form no conception. In the early part of the thirteenth century nearly all the oldest and most influential men in England had made at least part of their studies in Paris. The two Archbishops of Canterbury, Stephen Langton and St. Edmund Rich, both men of pure English descent, might be instanced as conspicuous examples, and if Englishmen had to complain of the many foreign ecclesiastics provided for in England, it must not be forgotten that there was quite a considerable number of Englishmen occupying foreign sees and other positions of emolument on the Continent. The fact is indisputable—as indisputable as the fact that Englishmen formed a large proportion of the freebooters who roamed through Italy a century later and accepted the pay of anyone who would hire them—but it is interesting to find it proudly insisted upon by Matthew Paris, who in his indignation at the nomination of foreign ecclesiastics to English benefices, declares that England has no occasion to go abroad to beg for suitable candidates, seeing that she herself was rather accustomed to supply dignitaries for other distant lands ("Nec indiget Anglia extra fines suos in remotis regionibus personas regimini ecclesiarum idoneas mendicare, quae solet tales aliis saepius ministrare".—Historia Major, IV, 61).

The cosmopolitan tendencies just alluded to were very much increased in the thirteenth century by one of the greatest religious revivals which the world has seen, viz., that resulting from the foundation and rapid development of the mendicant orders. There is no reason to suppose that the effects produced by the preaching of the Franciscan and Dominican friars, who first came to England in 1224 and 1221 respectively, were more remarkable in this country than abroad, but all historians are agreed that the impressions produced by this popularizing of religion were very marked. The work of spiritual regeneration which they performed at the first was wonderful, and they were warmly encouraged by such holy men and patriotic prelates as the great Bishop Grosseteste. It is perhaps more important to note that, despite the accusations of idleness and worldliness made against them at a later date, their zeal was not extinguished, even if it flagged. An impartial historian who has given special attention to the subject says: "For more than three hundred years the mendicant Friars in England were on the whole a power for good up and down the land, the friends of the poor and the evangelisers of the masses. During all that long time they were supported only by the voluntary offerings of the people at large—just as the hospitals for the sick and incurable are supported now,—and when they were driven out of their houses and their churches were looted in common with those of the monks and nuns, the Friars had no broad acres and no manors, no real property to seize, and very little was gained by the spoiling of their goods, but inasmuch as they were at all times the most devoted servants and subjects of the Pope of Rome, they had to go at last, when Henry VIII had made up his mind to rule over his own kingdom and to be supreme head over State and Church" (Jessopp, "History of England", 34).

It was during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that the relations between the medieval English Church and the Holy See may be considered to have assumed their final shape. At least this was the period when with such an outspoken champion as the great Bishop Robert of Lincoln (Grosseteste), or later, under so masterful a ruler as Edward I, or, again, amid the growing independence of Parliament, encouraged by such promoters of ecclesiastical disaffection as Wyclif and John of Gaunt in the reign of Edward III, the "Ecclesia Anglicana", according to the theory recently most prevalent, began to assert herself and resolutely set to work to put the pope in his place. And here it may be said once for all that the not unnatural impatience of papal supervision and papal interference which was often shown by strong kings like Edward I, and also at times by the clergy themselves, proves absolutely nothing against the acceptance of the pope's supreme authority as head of the Church. That subordinates should wish to be left free to enjoy a large measure of independence is a law of human nature. England's colonies, for example, may be quite loyal. They may fully recognize in principle the supreme right of the imperial Government, and yet any dictation from home which goes beyond what is customary, and especially when it is of a kind which touches the colonial pocket, provokes resentment and is apt to be angrily resisted. Even in a fervent religious order a proposed visitation of some outlying house or province may be met with remonstrance and an appeal to precedent on the part of those who, however docile, are doubtful of the ability of a foreign authority to understand local conditions. An entire acceptance of the spiritual supremacy of the Holy See is not in the least inconsistent with the belief that an individual pontiff, and still more the officials who form the entourage of that pontiff, may be influenced by mercenary or unworthy motives. There is not any form of authority in the world which is not at times disobeyed and defied under more or less specious pretexts by those who fully recognize in principle their own subordination. Thus it happens that the supporters of "Anglican Continuity" theories are able to quote many utterances of medieval writers that sound disaffected or rebellious in tone, they are able to appeal to many individual acts of disobedience, but they fail altogether in producing any, even the faintest, repudiation in principle of the pope's spiritual supremacy by the accredited representatives of the pre-Reformation Church. By no historian has this truth been more clearly recognized than by the distinguished jurist, F. W. Maitland. Challenging the statement of the Ecclesiastical Courts Commission of 1883, which, largely under the guidance of the eminent historian, Bishop Stubbs, reported that "papal law was not binding in [medieval] England even in questions of faith and morals unless it had been accepted by the national authorities", Professor Maitland, with an irrefragable array of illustrations drawn mainly from the classical canon-law book of the English pre-Reformation Church, the "Provinciale" of Bishop Lyndwood (1435), maintains the exact contrary. According to Lyndwood, as Dr. Maitland clearly proves, "The Pope is above the law, ... to dispute the authority of a papal decretal is to be guilty of heresy, at a time when deliberate heresy was a capital crime". "The last", Dr. Maitland continues, "is no private opinion of a glossator, it is a principle to which archbishops, bishops and clergy of the province of Canterbury have adhered by solemn words" (Roman Canon Law, 17). As the same authority goes on to show, not only did the pope claim and obtain recognition of his right to take into his own hands the judgment of every ecclesiastical cause over the head of the bishop, but it was largely through the questions and appeals of English bishops to Rome, asking for decisions, that the fabric of Roman canon law was built up (loc. cit., 53, 66, etc.). In full accord with this we find Archbishop Peckham telling such a monarch as Edward I that the emperor of all has given, authority to the decrees of the popes, and that all men, all kings are bound by those decrees. So we find the Archbishop of Canterbury with all his suffragans writing a joint letter to the pope and telling him that all bishops derived their authority from him as rivulets from the fountainhead (Sandale's "Register", 90-98), We find the pope carving a big slice from the jurisdiction of English bishoprics, as in the case of the Abbey of St. Albans or of Bury St. Edmunds, and making it absolutely and entirely exempt from episcopal authority. We find the very kings who are supposed by their Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire to have