Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/346

 2 9 $ THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE terbury became the great resort of pilgrims in England throughout the remainder of the Middle Ages, and has been immortalized in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, although the shrine itself was plundered and destroyed by Henry VIII after his break with the Church of Rome. Henry II found it necessary to say no more about the Constitutions of Clarendon, to allow clergy accused of crimes to be tried in the ecclesiastical courts, and to permit appeals to Rome. He also did penance both before papal legates at Avranches in Normandy and later at Becket's tomb, where he was scourged so that he was ill the next day. Henry, however, laid the foundations in England of the common law and its courts, destined in the end to prevail throughout all England, and no future Archbishop of Canterbury was so aggressive against the Crown as Becket had been. From the strife of Church and State let us revert a mo- ment to Cluny, where the movement for church ~ f orm and Monastic ecclesiastical independence and suj. acy had movements fi rst become apparent. The Con- gation of twelfth Cluny, because of the too great wealth it had acquired, had itself declined in influence and in popular esteem. But many new monastic orders with stricter rules came into existence in the twelfth and thir- teenth centuries, especially in France. Prominent among these were the Carthusians, who wore haircloth shirts and lived each in a separate cell, and the Cistercians, who even gave up education and all ornamentation in their churches, where there must be no sign of wealth. There was now also a widespread movement to revive the custom that priests and other secular clergy in any town should live together under a monastic rule, especially those clergy called canons who formed the chapter of the cathedral church. We saw that Augustine introduced this practice into Africa about 400 a.d. and that consequently such clergy called them- selves "Augustinian" or "Austin" canons. More than one such order of canons was founded, however. Especiall} prominent were the Premonstratensians, founded aboul 1 1 20 at Premontre, in northeastern France, by Norbert