Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/393

Rh CHITRCH.] ENGLAND 373 favour of the claims of the clergy. In the miserable reign of John, a vigorous pope claimed and obtained the right of nominating to the primacy and sees of England, without any regard to the king or the national church. The country was subdued by the savage expedient of an interdict, which the superstition of the age did not allow it to disregard; and the king, at length completely prostrate at the feet of the pope, made a shameful cession of his kingdom, and re ceived it back as a fief of the church. The pope, having achieve:! the right to dispose of English bishoprics, now claimed the right of disposing of English benefices, which were granted in great numbers to Italians and other foreigners, who never troubled themselves to visit the church assigned to them, but merely received the revenue through an agent. The degradation and disgrace of the Church of England reached its extreme point during the long and inglorious reign of Henry III., when the first symptoms of reaction began to manifest themselves. The most famous scholar of his day, Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, after being long a strong supporter of the papal claims, became their outspoken opponent. The extreme vigour and fearlessness of his character, and the high re putation he enjoyed, enabled Grosseteste first to break down the claims for exemption from episcopal control set up by the monastic bodies, then to bring under his control the chapter of his cathedral church, and finally to refuse to admit a nominee of the pope to a stall in Lincoln. For this last act of independence he was excommunicated, but he utterly disregarded the sentence, declared that in acting as he had done the pope was no better than antichrist, and encouraged the English to assert the nationality of their church and to disregard the claims of Rome. At the same time, violent popular tumults were excited against the foreign incumbents, and remonstrances were poured into llome from the barons and chief men against the injustice inflicted on the English Church. At the synod of Merton, h n ld in 1255, the claims of the church to a special and dominant jurisdiction were pressed to their highest point. The vigorous administration of Edward I. introduced various checks to the growing power of the clergy. Parlia ment had now become a reality, and was able to contend with and check the church synods, which about the same time were reinforced in strength by the admission of repre sentative proctors from the clergy. The Statute of Mort main (7 Edward I. c. 2) restrained the acquisition of lands by the church. That of circumspecte agatis limited the claims made at Merton. The inability of the clergy to refuse taxes to the crown, even when they were supported by a papal bull, was clearly demonstrated (1207), and a bishop of Worcester, who had ventured to accept a grant of the temporalties of his see from the pope, was obliged to renounce the bull and submit to a fine of 1000 marks. At the parliament of Carlisle (1305) stringent regulations were made with the view of checking papal exactions, and the provisor statutes of Edward III. effectually limited the papal power of disposing of English benefices. The pnemuiiire statute (16 Richard II. c. 5) opposed a firm barrier to papal claims ; and had not the necessities of the house of Lancaster obliged its princes to court the church, and the confusions of the Wars of the Roses supervened, it is probable that the teaching of Wickliffe would have inaugurated in England as complete a revolt from Rome as that witnessed in the 10th century. The immense power and wealth enjoyed by the Church of England during the Middle Ages, and its complete freedom for self-regulation, did not preserve it from great shortcomings and corruptions. A continuous catena of satirists and censors, from William of Malmesbury to I ean Colet, have brought the mosb grievous charges against the mediaeval clergy, on the grounds of simony, negligence of duty, and licentiousness. In 1250 Bishop Grosseteste, before the council of Lyons, spoke of the clergy of that day in terms which are absolutely appalling. In the 15th century the letter of Pope Innocent to Cardinal Morton describes the regulars in England in language almost as strong as that employed afterwards by Bale and Foxe. It may, however, not unfairly be alleged that these general charges are of far too sweeping a character. To the student who looks a little deeper, there are many evidences of simple and earnest devotion dis cernible in the mediaeval church. The establishment of the mendicant orders in the 13th century produced at first a great revival of religion in the church. Many of the chief towns had been utterly neglected by the clergy; and the country villages were mostly dependent on the chance ministrations of a monk of some neighbouring monastery, which had absorbed the tithes of the parish under pretence of supplying its spiritual needs. The Franciscans, obliged by their rule to tend the sick and sufl ering, ministered among a population scourged by leprosy and decimated by epidemics ; the Dominicans, or preachers, brought into use a more attractive and homely style of sermon, and conveyed instruction to many utterly dark places. Yet the corrup tion of the friars by worldly influences was very speedy, and when in the 14th century William Langland and John Wickliffe wrote, it was specially against the friars that their attacks were directed. The great work of Wickliffe was to raise a protest against Rome, to oppose the prevailing superstitions on the eucharist, and to give to his country men a vernacular version of the Scriptures. His writings were not altogether free from a communistic tinge, but they were of immense value in recalling the minds of the men of his age to scripture truth, and the vast effect they produced was not only perceptible in his own time, when it was said by the chronicler Knighton that every other man was a Wickliffist, but was also perceptible 150 years later, at the beginning of the English Reformation. There must have been, therefore, preachers or teachers of his views during all this time, though obscured and concealed on account of the persecutions which fell upon the Lollards. Indeed, did space allow it, an under-current of simple scriptural faith might be traced all through the mediaeval period, while the rulers of the church, in a spirit of thorough worldliness, were sanctioning every gainful form of superstition, and were in too many instances given to luxury and licence. In the 16th century all the old devices for upholding the faith seemed to be drooping and ready to die. The monastic system had fallen into utter disrepute, and for 150 years but six monasteries had been founded in England. The friars, changed from being preachers into pedlars and sturdy beggars, had a bad reputation everywhere. Pilgrimages had become mere promenade? for amusement and licence. Relics vying with each other in grotesque pretensions were a mere subject of ridicule to all but the most ignorant. Meanwhile the traffic in indulgences had shocked the moral sense even of that corrupt age ; and a series of popes, either soldiers, sceptics, or men of pleasure, had not availed to recommend the system of which they were the heads. In England the bishops were almost universally either states men, lawyers, or diplomatists. The clergy had absolutely abdicated the preaching function and the pastoral care, and contented themselves with a meagre circle of routine duties. When, in cathedrals or on high occasions, sermons were preached, the audience was destined to hear nothing but the ingenious subtleties of Aquinas or Scotus, portions of whose writings were often taken for a text. The church seemed to be threatened with an absolute collapse, unless some renovating power could be brought to bear upon it. Reformed Period. In this state of weakness and corrup tion, the accession to the throne of England of a young and vigorous sovereign (1509) gave an impulse towards im-