as we have seen, abounded with men whose only object was to mount to the highest offices of state; but though those offices were often filled by such worldlings, it quite as often happened that the ecclesiastical occupants of these supreme places were bishops of untarnished morality and sincere devoutness. And when such a model of episcopal excellence sat in the marble chair, or journeyed on an embassy to a foreign court, it never occurred to him that he was less becomingly engaged than he would have been had he remained in his diocese and thought of nothing but its wants.

Carnal warfare is unquestionably the pursuit which, in our time, is deemed most incongruous to the clerical character; but in the middle ages it was not excepted from the avocations which priests might religiously follow. This opinion found expression in the military-religious orders, whose establishment recognised the sacredness of warfare-waged with muscles of flesh and weapons of steel-that had for its sole end the glorification of the Church. The distinctions between Holy and Secular warfare are plainly stated in St. Bernard's treatise in behalf of the New Chivalry. As often,' says the abbot, as thou who wagest a secular warfare marchest forth to battle, it is greatly to be feared lest when thou slayest thine enemy in the body, he should destroy thee in the spirit, or lest, peradventure, thou shouldst be at once slain by him both in body and soul. From the disposition of the heart, indeed, not by the event of the fight, is to be estimated either the jeopardy or the victory of the Christian. If, fighting with the desire of killing another, thou shouldest chance to get killed thyself, thou diest a manslayer; if, on the other hand, thou prevailest, and through a desire of conquest or revenge killest a man, thou livest a man

rant packmen throughout Christian Europe. In one of the broadest and least presentable anecdotes to be found in 'The Actes of Englysh Votrayes,' Bishop Bale says of this holy man, Saint Godryche, borne at Walpole, in Northfolke, went first abroad with pedlary wares, and afterwards on pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. On his return he professed the chaste life of an hermyte at Fynkale, in Durham, and became the great founder of dyspersed hermytes here in England.' The means by which Saint Godryche disciplined his body so that it should render obedience to his pious will were grotesque; but an enthusiast's habitual self-denial and courageous persistence in what he believed to be the path of duty did not merit the ridicule which the Protestant bishop cast upon it.

slayer. But the soldiers of Christ, indeed, securely fight the battles of their Lord, in no wise fearing sin, either from the slaughter of the enemy, or danger from their own death. When, indeed, death is to be given or received for Christ, it has nought of crime in it, but much of glory."* This utterance of opinion in behalf of the Templars represented the view which the most devout of the medieval clergy took of carnal warfare a view that survived the extinction of the Knights Templars, which occurred in Chaucer's childhood; that was universally accepted by the military prelates of feudal England, of whom Henry Spenser of Norwich was not the last; and that after outliving, by many generations, the century in which Edward the Third ordered the parochial clergy to don armour for the defence of the realm, received its death-blow, together with sundry other medieval notions, in the successive convulsions which resulted in our Reformed Church. That it lingered amongst living opinions in this country to a still more recent date, we have evidence in the cases of the several Royalist clergymen of the seventeenth century, who felt themselves justified in rendering military service in Charles the First's forces. As soldiers, fighting against those whom they reasonably esteemed to be the enemies of their Church, these Caroline priests deemed themselves engaged in such warfare as St. Bernard commended.

* The Knights Templars. By C. G. Addison, Esq. of the Inner Temple.

GAZ

CHAPTER V.

POLITICAL DIVISIONS.

AZING at the majestic beauty of a Gothic cathedral, reared in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and discerning in its stately and harmonious proportions a work that could only have resulted from the steady co-operation of many forces; or musing amidst the silent ruins of an abbey that has been slowly falling into picturesque decay for more than three centuries; an uninformed person is apt to attribute the solemn serenity of his mind to the period of which such objects are a tranquillising memorial, and to imagine that buildings, which alike in perfectness and in dilapidation are eloquent of unity and peace, must have been produced by generations ignorant of such divisions and warfare as distract and perplex the religious minds of our own time. A superficial survey of those centuries, however, dispels the agreeable illusion, and teaches the inquirer that the bickerings of our existing parties and sects are little more than the faint echo of storms that were rising to their full fury in those medieval days which fancy would fain invest with the charms of spiritual peace coexisting with spiritual fervour.

But though no minute and protracted investigation is needful for the discovery that the period, of which Wycliffe's career is a central fact, was pregnant with religious doubts and disturbances, a longer and more careful examination must be made of the principal religious phenomena of the epoch, before the student can appreciate the universality and violence of the contentions that occupied the minds, and consumed the energies, of the majority of our clergy in the centuries under consideration. Even when he has read all the evidence, the young inquirer is reluctant to accept the conclusion which it forces. upon him, and to allow that the Church which perfected our

ecclesiastical architecture was a Church rent and riven, from roof to basement, by intestine commotions. The facts, however, are so clear and decisive, that after a struggle he relinquishes pleasant misconception for instructive certainty.

Throughout the feudal period our clergy were divided into two political parties,—the Papal Party, consisting of the ordained persons who supported with various degrees of vehemence, but seldom with lukewarmness, the pretensions and encroachments of the Popes; and the National Party, who, whilst concurring in the universal sentiment of the Western Churches that recognised the Pope as an authority on matters of faith, were in continual indignation against his exactions, and in perpetual contest with the emissaries of the Papal court, by whose intrigues and unscrupulous employment of force the policy of the Popes was pushed forward in this country. To draw an exact line between these irreconcilable armies of politicians is difficult, because in the long series of their contentions it often happened, that on a particular issue large sections of the Papal party were found siding with the defenders of national privileges; and again, it often happened that ecclesiastics of the national party, whose natural position was with the Antipapal clergy, gave their influence to the Pope's friends. In political warfare, sections of parties are usually found to prefer the pursuit of sectional interests to a course of fidelity to supreme principles. But though each of the two great political parties of the medieval English clergy was constantly receiving help from individuals within the lines of its opponents; and though there were occasions when both parties would momentarily combine, with an appearance of almost unbroken unanimity, to protest against some especially obnoxious Papal exaction, the two sides were, upon the whole, marked by a solidarity and separateness which seldom characterise two large multitudes of political contendants. As soon as the momentary combination of irreconcilable partizans had effected its purpose, or (which was more usually the case) ascertained that its end could not be achieved by an unnatural coalition of implacable enemies, it came to an end; and its liberated elements returned to their old antagonisms and rivalries.

Due allowance being made for these incessant exchanges of

force between the two divisions, the Papal party consisted of the regular clergy, whether monks or friars ; whilst the National party was composed of the secular priests. Though their influence in this country was fraught with ruin to the Papal dominancy, the mendicant brothers were the consistent supporters of those pontifical pretensions, to which they were largely indebted for their prosperity and existence, and from which came their mischievous power of interference with the parochial clergy. Since it sanctioned their insolence, and expressly authorised their extortions, it is no wonder that they loudly magnified the virtues and rights of the Papal supremacy. For awhile they were most serviceable agents of the Popes, in whose behalf they laboured with a success commensurate with their unscrupulous zeal-a success that, so soon as their purpose was understood and their temper revealed, earned for them the vindictive hatred of the secular priests.

Whilst the friars thus distinguished themselves by audacious advocacy of pontifical pretensions, and by proceedings that struck at the very roots of the authority which they strove to extol until it became their interest to degrade it, the monks were far less turbulent, but much more dignified supporters of the Papal throne. There was no feature of the monastic system which the monks regarded with greater complacency, and for the preservation of which they were more ready to contend as a vital principle of religious association, than their independence of the national bishops, whom they never permitted to exercise any control (in their episcopal character, i.e., upon the strength of authority derived from the national episcopacy) within the monastic houses. As great landowners, they would support the Crown and contribute to the well-being of the community; but the bishop of the diocese in which they resided was, in his character of bishop, no more to them than any bishop in the south of Spain. The Crown might select its own policy with respect to the secular clergy, and decide how far it should endeavour to control the national bishops and parochial priests; but though for the most part of English birth, and participating to some extent in the patriotic sentiments common to Englishmen, they were not, in consequence, of the nation, in which they held rank as territorial lords. Amenable only to the su