The Eve of the Reformation

At the outset, it should be remembered that the questions at issue in the sixteenth century were not, in the first place at least, connected with the influence of religious teaching on the lives of the people at large. No one contended that the reformed doctrines would be found to make people better, or would help them to lead lives more in conformity with Gospel teaching. The question of what may be called practical religion never entered into the disputes of the time. Mr. Brewer warns the student of the history of this period that he will miss the meaning of many things altogether, and quite misunderstand their drift, if he starts his inquiry by regarding the Reformation as the creation of light to illuminate a previous period of darkness, or the evolution of practical morality out of a state of antecedent chaotic corruption. “In fact,” he says, “the sixteenth century was not a mass of moral corruption out of which life emerged by some process unknown to art or nature; it was not an addled egg cradling a living bird; quite the reverse.” For, as the historian of the German people, Janssen, points out, the truth is that the entire social order of the Middle Ages “was established on the doctrine of good works being necessary for the salvation of the Christian soul.” Whilst, as Mr. Brewer again notes, Luther’s most earnest remonstrances were directed not against bad works, but against the undue stress laid by the advocates of the old religion upon good works. Moreover, an age which could busy itself about discussions of questions as to “righteousness,” whether of “faith or works,” “is not a demoralised or degenerate age. These are not the thoughts of men buried in sensuality.”

Two questions are contained in the inquiry as to pre-Reformation religious teaching, namely, as to its extent and as to its character. There can hardly be much doubt that the duty of giving instruction to the people committed to their charge was fully recognised by the clergy in mediæval times. In view of the positive legislation of various synods on the subject of regular and systematic teaching, as well as of the constant repetition of the obligation in the books of English canon law, it is obvious that the priests were not ignorant of what was their plain duty. From the time of the constitution of Archbishop Peckham at the Synod of Oxford in 1281, to the time of the religious changes, there is every reason to suppose that the ordinance contained in the following words was observed in every parish church in the country: “We order,” says the Constitution, “that every priest having the charge of a flock do, four times in each year (that is, once each quarter) on one or more solemn feast days, either himself or by some one else, instruct the people in the vulgar language simply and without any fantastical admixture of subtle distinctions, in the articles of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the Evangelical Precepts, the seven works of mercy, the seven deadly sins with their offshoots, the seven principal virtues, and the seven Sacraments.”

This means that the whole range of Christian teaching, dogmatic and moral, was to be explained to the people four times in every year; and in order that there should be no doubt about the matter, the Synod proceeds to set out in considerable detail each of the points upon which the priest was to instruct his people. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the great number of manuals intended to help the clergy in the execution of this law attest the fact that it was fully recognised and very generally complied with. When at the close of the latter century, the invention of printing made the multiplication of such manuals easy, the existence both of printed copies of this Constitution of Archbishop Peckham, and of printed tracts drawn up to give every assistance to the parochial clergy in the preparation of these homely teachings, proves that the law was understood and acted upon. In the face of such evidence it is impossible to doubt that, whatever may have been the case as to set sermons and formal discourses, simple, straightforward teaching was not neglected in pre-Reformation England, and every care was taken that the clergy might be furnished with material suitable for the fundamental religious teaching contemplated by the law. As late as 1466, a synod of the York Province, held by Archbishop Nevill, not only reiterated this general decree about regular quarterly instructions of a simple and practical kind, but set out at great length the points of these lessons in the Christian faith and life upon which the parish priests were to insist.

Even set discourses of a more formal kind, though probably by no means so frequent as in these times, when they have to a great extent superseded the simple instructions of old Catholic days, were by no means neglected. Volumes of such sermons in manuscript and in print, as well as all that is known of the great discourses constantly being delivered at St. Paul’s Cross, may be taken as sufficient evidence of this. For the conveyance of moral and religious instruction, however, the regular and homely talks of a parish priest to his people were vastly more important than the set orations, and it is with these familiar instructions that the student of this period of our history has chiefly to concern himself. All the available evidence goes to show that the giving of these was not only regarded as an obligation on the pastor; but attendance at them was looked upon as a usual and necessary portion of the Christian duty. For example, in the examinations of conscience intended to assist lay people in their preparation for the Sacrament of penance, there are indications that any neglect to attend at these parochial instructions was considered sufficiently serious to become a matter of confession. It is, of course, hardly conceivable that this should be so, if the giving of these popular lessons in the duties of the Christian life was neglected by the priests, or if they were not commonly frequented by the laity. To take a few instances. “Also,” runs one such examination, “I have been slow in God’s service, and negligent to pray and to go to church in due time … loth to hear the Word of God, and the preacher of the Word of God. Neither have I imprinted it in my heart and borne it away and wrought thereafter.”284 Again: “I have been setting nought by preaching and teaching of God’s Word, by thinking it an idle thing.”285 And, to take an example of the view taken in such documents as to the priest’s duty: “If you are a priest be a true lantern to the people both in speaking and in living, and faithfully and truly do all things which pertain to a priest. Seek wisely the ground of truth and the true office of the priesthood, and be not ruled blindly by the lewd customs of the world. Read God’s law and the Expositions of the Holy Doctors, and study and learn and keep it, and when thou knowest it, preach and teach it to those that are unlearned.”286

Richard Whitford, the Monk of Sion, in his Work for Householders, published first in 1530, lays great stress upon the obligation of parents and masters to see that those under their charge attended the instructions given in the parish church. Some may perhaps regard his greater anxiety for their presence at sermons rather than at Mass, when it was not possible for them to be at both, as doubtful advice. In this, however, he agrees with the author of what was the most popular book of instructions at this period, and the advice itself is proof that the obligation of attending instructions was regarded as sufficiently serious to be contrasted with that of hearing Mass. Speaking of the Sunday duties, Whitford says: “At church on Sundays see after those who are under your care. And charge them also to keep their sight in the church close upon their book and beads. And whilst they are young accustom them always to kneel, stand, and sit, and never walk in the church. And let them hear the Mass quietly and devoutly, much part kneeling. But at the Gospel, the Preface, and at the Paternoster teach them to stand and to make curtesy at the word Jesus, as the priest does… If there be a sermon any time of the day let them be present, all that are not occupied in needful and lawful business; all other (occupations) laid aside let them ever keep the preachings, rather than the Mass, if, perchance, they may not hear both.”

Nothing could possibly be more definite or explicit upon the necessity of popular instructions and upon the duty incumbent upon the clergy of giving proper vernacular teaching to their flocks than the author of Dives et Pauper, the most popular of the fifteenth-century books of religious instruction. In fact, on this point his language is as strong and uncompromising as that which writers have too long been accustomed to associate with the name of Wycliffe. No more unwarranted assumption has ever been made in the name of history than that which classed under the head of Lollard productions almost every fifteenth-century tract in English, especially such as dealt openly with abuses needing correction, and pleaded for simple vernacular teaching of religion. This is what the author of Dives et Pauper says about preaching: “Since God’s word is life and salvation of man’s soul, all those who hinder them that have authority of God, and by Orders taken, to preach and teach, from preaching and teaching God’s word and God’s law, are manslayers ghostly. They are guilty of as many souls that perish by the hindering of God’s word, and namely those proud, covetous priests and curates who can neither teach, nor will teach, nor suffer others that both can and will and have authority to teach and preach of God and of the bishop who gave them Orders, but prevent them for fear lest they should get less from their subjects, or else the less be thought of, or else that their sins should be known by the preaching of God’s word. Therefore, they prefer to leave their own sins openly reproved generally, among other men’s sins. As St. Anselm saith, God’s word ought to be worshipped as much as Christ’s body, and he sins as much who hindereth God’s word and despiseth God’s word, or taketh it recklessly as he that despiseth God’s body, or through his negligence letteth it fall to the ground. On this place the gloss showeth that it is more profitable to hear God’s word in preaching than to hear a Mass, and that a man should rather forbear his Mass than his sermon. For, by preaching, folks are stirred to contrition, and to forsake sin and the fiend, and to love God and goodness, and (by it) they be illumined to know their God, and virtue from vice, truth from falsehood, and to forsake errors and heresies. By the Mass they are not so, but if they come to Mass in sin they go away in sin, and shrews they come and shrews they wend away… Nevertheless, the Mass profiteth them that are in grace to get grace and forgiveness of sin… Both are good, but the preaching of God’s word ought to be more discharged and more desired than the hearing of Mass.”287

In the same way the author of a little book named The Interpretatyon and Sygnyfycacyon of the Masse, printed by Robert Wyer in 1532, insists on the obligation of attending the Sunday instruction. “On each Sunday,” he says, “he shall also hear a sermon, if it be possible, for if a man did lose or omit it through contempt or custom, he would sin greatly.”288 And in The Myrrour of the Church, the author tells those who desire “to see the Will of God in Holy Scripture,” but being of “simple learning” and “no cunning” cannot read, that they may do so “in open sermon, or in secret collation” with those who can. And in speaking of the Sunday duties he tells his readers not to lie in bed, “but rising promptly you shall go to the church, and with devotion say your matins without jangling. Also sweetly hear your Mass and all the hours of the day. And then if there is any preacher in the church who proposes to make a sermon, you shall sweetly hear the Word of God and keep it in remembrance.”289 And lastly, to take one more example, in Wynkyn de Worde’s Exornatorium Curatorum, printed to enable those having the cure of souls to perform the duties of instruction laid down by Archbishop Peckham’s Provincial Constitution, whilst setting forth a form of examination of conscience under the head of the deadly sins, the author bids the curate teach his people to ask themselves: “Whether you have been slothful in God’s service, and specially upon the Sunday and the holy day whether you have been slothful to come to church, slothful to pray when you have been there, and slothful to hear the Word of God preached. Furthermore, whether you have been negligent to learn your Pater Noster, your Ave Maria, or your Creed, or whether you have been negligent to teach the same to your own children or to your god-children. Examine yourself also whether you have taught your children good manners, and guarded them from danger and bad company.” The same book insists on the need of such examination of conscience daily, or at least weekly.290

The following in this connection is of interest as being a daily rule of life recommended to laymen in the English Prymer printed at Rouen in 1538: “First rise up at six o’clock in the morning at all seasons, and in rising do as follows: Thank our Lord who has brought you to the beginning of the day. Commend yourself to God, to Our Lady Saint Mary, and to the saint whose feast is kept that day, and to all the saints in heaven. When you have arrayed yourself say in your chamber or lodging, Matins, Prime, and Hours, if you may. Then go to the church before you do any worldly works if you have no needful business, and abide in the church the space of a low mass time, where you shall think on God and thank Him for His benefits. Think awhile on the goodness of God, on His divine might and virtue… If you cannot be so long in the church on account of necessary business, take some time in the day in your house in which to think of these things.”… Take your meal “reasonably without excess or overmuch forbearing of your meat, for there is as much danger in too little as in too much. If you fast once in a week it is enough, besides Vigils and Ember days out of Lent.” After dinner rest “an hour or half-an-hour, praying God that in that rest He will accept your health to the end, that after it you may serve Him the more devoutly.”

“… As touching your service, say up to Tierce before dinner, and make an end of all before supper. And when you are able say the Dirge and Commendations for all Christian souls, at least on holy days, and if you have leisure say them on other days, at least with three lessons. Shrive yourself every week to your curate, except you have some great hindrance. And beware that you do not pass a fortnight unless you have a very great hindrance. If you have the means refuse not your alms to the first poor body that asketh it of you that day. Take care to hear and keep the Word of God. Confess you every day to God without fail of such sins you know you have done that day.” Think often of our Lord’s Passion, and at night when you wake turn your thoughts to what our Lord was doing at that hour in His Passion. In your life look for a faithful friend to whom you may open “your secrets,” and when found follow his advice. No doubt this “manner to live well” will perhaps hardly represent what people at this time ordinarily did. But the mere fact that it could be printed as a Christian’s daily rule of life as late as 1538, is evidence at any rate that people took at the least as serious a view of their obligations in religious matters as we should.291 In the same way The art of good lyvyng, quoted above, suggests as the proper way to sanctify the Sunday: Meditations on death, the pains of hell, and the joys of Paradise. Time should be given to reading the lives of the saints, to saying Matins, and studying the Paternoster and the Creed. Others should be exhorted to enter into God’s service, and fathers of families are bound to see that “their children, servants, and families go to church and hear the preachings.”292

By far the most interesting and important part of any inquiry on the subject of pre-Reformation instructions, regards of course their nature and effect. We are asked to believe that the people were allowed to grow up in ignorance of the true nature of religion, and with superstitions in their hearts which the clergy could easily have corrected; but which they, on the contrary, rather fostered as likely to prove of pecuniary value to themselves. To keep the people ignorant (it is said) was their great object, as it was through the ignorance of the lay folk that the clergy hoped to maintain their influence and ascendency, and, it is suggested, to draw money out of the pockets of the faithful. The reverence which was paid at this time to images of the saints, and in an especial manner to the crucifix, is often adduced as proof that the people were evidently badly instructed in the nature of religious worship; and the destruction of statues, paintings, and pictured glass by the advanced reformers is thought to be explained, if not excused, by the absolute need of putting a stop once for all to a crying abuse. The explanation given to the people by their religious teachers on the eve of the religious changes on this matter of devotion to the saints, and of the nature of the reverence to be paid to their representations, may be taken as a good sample of the practical nature of the general instructions imparted in those times. The question divested of all ambiguity is really this: Were the people taught to understand the nature of an image or representation, or were they allowed to regard them as objects of reverence in themselves – that is, as idols? The material for a reply to this inquiry is fortunately abundant. The Dyalogue of Sir Thomas More was written in 1528, in order to maintain the Catholic teaching about images, relics, and the praying to saints. To this, then, an inquirer naturally turns in the first place for an exposition of the common belief in these matters; for Sir Thomas claims that in his tract he is defending only “the common faith and belief of Christ’s Church.” “What this is,” he says, “I am very sure; and perceive it well not only by experience of my own time and the places where I have myself been to, with the common report of other honest men from all other places of Christendom.” After having explained that the commandment of God had reference to idols or images worshipped as gods, and not to mere representations of Christ, our Lady, or the Saints,293 he continues: “but neither Scripture nor natural reason forbids a man to reverence an image, not fixing his final intent on the image, but referring the honour to the person the image represents. In such reverence shown to an image there is no honour withdrawn from God; but the saint is honoured in his image, and God in His saint. When a man of mean birth and an ambassador to a great king has high honour done to him, to whom does that honour redound, to the ambassador or to the king? When a man on the recital of his prince’s letter puts off his cap and kisses it, does he reverence the paper or his prince?.. All names spoken and all words written are no material signs or images, but are made only by consent and agreement of men to betoken and signify such things, whereas images painted, graven, or carved, may be so well wrought and so near to the life and the truth, that they will naturally and much more effectually represent the thing than the name either spoken or written… These two words, Christus crucifixus, do not represent to us, either to laymen or to the learned, so lively a remembrance of His bitter Passion as does a blessed image of the crucifix, and this these heretics perceive well enough. Nor do they speak against images in order to further devotion, but plainly with a malicious mind to diminish and quench men’s devotions. For they see clearly that no one who loves another does not delight in his image or in anything of his. And these heretics who are so sore against the images of God and His holy saints, would be right angry with him that would dishonestly handle an image made in remembrance of one of themselves, whilst the wretches forbear not to handle villainously, and in despite cast dirt upon the holy crucifix, an image made in remembrance of our Saviour Himself, and not only of His most blessed Person, but also of His most bitter Passion.”294

Later on, in the same tract, rejecting the notion that people did not fully understand that the image was intended merely to recall the memory of the person whose image it was, and was not itself in any sense the thing or person, More says: “The flock of Christ is not so foolish as those heretics would make them to be. For whereas there is no dog so mad that he does not know a real coney (i. e. rabbit) from a coney carved and painted, (yet they would have it supposed that) Christian people that have reason in their heads, and therefore the light of faith in their souls, would think that the image of our Lady were our Lady herself. Nay, they be not so mad, I trust, but that they do reverence to the image for the honour of the person whom it represents, as every man delights in the image and remembrance of his friend. And although every good Christian man has a remembrance of Christ’s passion in his mind, and conceives by devout meditation a form and fashion thereof in his heart, yet there is no man I ween so good nor so learned, nor so well accustomed to meditation, but that he finds himself more moved to pity and compassion by beholding the holy crucifix than when he lacks it.”295

In his work against Tyndale, More again takes up this subject in reference to the way in which the former in his new translation of the Bible had substituted the word idol for image, as if they were practically identical in meaning. “Good folk who worship images of Christ and His saints, thereby worship Christ and His saints, whom these images represent.” Just as pagan worshippers of idols did evil in worshipping them, “because in them they worshipped devils (whom they called gods and whom those idols represented), so Christian men do well in worshipping images, because in them they worship Christ and His holy saints.”296

Roger Edgworth, the preacher, describes at Bristol in Queen Mary’s reign how the Reforming party endeavoured to confuse the minds of the common people as to the meaning of the word idol. “I would,” he says, “that you should not ignorantly confound and abuse those terms ‘idol’ and ‘image,’ taking an image for an idol and an idol for an image, as I have heard many do in this city, as well fathers and mothers (who should be wise) as their babies and children who have learned foolishness from their parents. Now, at the dissolution of the monasteries and friars’ houses many images have been carried abroad and given to children to play with, and when the children have them in their hands, dancing them in their childish manner, the father or mother comes and says, ‘What nase, what have you there?’ The child answers (as she is taught), ‘I have here my idol.’ Then the father laughs and makes a gay game at it. So says the mother to another, ‘Jugge or Tommy, where did you get that pretty idol?’ ‘John, our parish clerk gave it to me,’ says the child, and for that the clerk must have thanks and shall not lack good cheer. But if the folly were only in the insolent youth, and in the fond unlearned fathers and mothers, it might soon be redressed.” The fact is, he proceeds to explain, that the new preachers have been doing all in their power to obscure the hitherto well-recognised difference in meaning between an image and an idol. He begs his hearers to try and keep the difference in meaning between an image and an idol clearly before their minds. “An image is a similitude of a natural thing that has been, is, or may be,” he tells them. “An idol is a similitude of what never was or may be. Therefore the image of the crucifix is no idol, for it represents and signifies Christ crucified as He was in very deed, and the image of St. Paul with a sword in his hand as the sign of his martyrdom is no idol, for the thing signified by it was a thing indeed, for he was beheaded with a sword.”297

In another part of the Dialogue Sir Thomas More pointed out that what the reforming party said against devotion to images and pilgrimages could be summed up under one of three heads. They charge the people with giving “to the saints, and also to their images, honour like in kind to what they give to God Himself”; or (2) that “they take the images for the things themselves,” which is plain idolatry; or (3) that the worship is conducted in a “superstitious fashion with a desire of unlawful things.” Now, as to these three accusations, More replies: “The first point is at once soon and shortly answered, for it is not true. For though men kneel to saints and images, and incense them also, yet it is not true that they for this reason worship them in every point like unto God… They lack the chief point (of such supreme worship). That is, they worship God in the mind that He is God, which intention in worship is the only thing that maketh it latria, and not any certain gesture or bodily observance.” It would not be supreme or divine worship even if “we would wallow upon the ground unto Christ, having in this a mind that He were the best man we could think of, but not thinking Him to be God. For if the lowly manner of bodily observance makes latria, then we were in grave peril of idolatry in our courtesy used to princes, prelates, and popes, to whom we kneel as low as to God Almighty, and kiss some their hands and some our own, ere ever we presume to touch them; and in the case of the Pope, his foot; and as for incensing, the poor priests in every choir are as well incensed as the Sacrament. Hence if latria, which is the special honour due to God, was contained in these things, then we were great idolaters, not only in our worship of the saints and of their images, but also of men, one to another among ourselves.” Though indeed to God Almighty ought to be shown as “humble and lowly a bodily reverence as possible, still this bodily worship is not latria, unless we so do it in our mind considering and acknowledging Him as God, and with that mind and intention do our worship; and this, as I think,” he says, “no Christian man does to any image or to any saint either.”