Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/170

144 benefit on Christ. At matins and vespers the priest and his assistant are the only persons present. The squire of the village makes the priest wait to begin mass till he and his wife have risen and dressed. The most sacred festivals, even Christmas night, says Gerson, are passed in debauchery, playing at cards, swearing and blaspheming. When the people are admonished, they plead the example of the nobility and the clergy, who behave in like manner with impunity. Vigils likewise, says Clemanges, are kept with lascivious songs and dances, even in church; priests set the example by dicing as they watch. It may be said that moralists paint things in too dark colours; but in the accounts of Strassburg we find a yearly gift of 1,100 litres of wine granted by the council to those who “watched in prayer” in church during the night of Saint Adolphus.

Denis the Carthusian wrote a treatise, De modo agendi processiones, at the request of an alderman, who asked him how one might remedy the dissoluteness and debauchery to which the annual procession, in which a greatly venerated relic was borne, gave rise. “How are we to put a stop to this?” asks the alderman. “You may be sure that the town council will not easily be persuaded to abolish it, for the procession brings large profits to the town, because of all the people who have to be fed and lodged. Besides, custom will have it so.” “Alas, yes,” sighs Denis; “he knows too well how processions were disgraced by ribaldry, mockery and drinking.” A most vivid picture of this evil is found in Chastellain’s description of the degradation into which the procession of the citizens of Ghent, with the shrine of Saint Liévin, to Houthem, had fallen. Formerly, he says, the notabilities were in the habit of carrying the holy body “with great and deep solemnity and reverence”; at present there is only “a mob of roughs, and boys of bad character”; they carry it singing and yelling, “with a hundred thousand gibes, and all are drunk.” They are armed, “and commit many offences where they pass, as if they were let loose and unchained; that day everything appears to be given up to them under the pretext of the body they carry.”

We have already mentioned how much disturbance was caused during church services by people vying with each other in politeness. The usage of making a trysting-place of the