THE END.
THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH
Footnotes:
[1]We cannot put down all these supernatural tales as fables or impostures; similar tales abound in the lives of the religious people of the Middle Ages, and they are not unknown in modern days:e.g., Luther’s conflict with Satan in the Wartzburg, and Colonel Gardiner’s vision of the Saviour. Which of them (if any) are to be considered true supernatural visions, which may be put down as the natural results of spiritual excitement on the imagination, which are mere baseless legends, he would be a very self-confident critic who professed in all cases to decide.
[2]Besides consulting the standard authorities on the archæology of the subject, the student will do well to read Mr. Kingsley’s charming book, “The Hermits of the Desert.”
[3]Strutt’s “Dress and Habits of the People of England.”
[4]This is the computation of Tanner in his “Notitia Monastica;” but the editors of the last edition of Dugdale’s “Monasticon,” adding the smaller houses or cells, swell the number of Benedictine establishments in England to a total of two hundred and fifty-seven.
[5]If a child was to be received his hand was wrapped in the hanging of the altar, “and then,” says the rule of St. Benedict, “let them offer him.” The words are “Si quas forte de nobilibus offert filium suum Deo in monasterio, si ipse puer minore ætate est, parentes ejus faciant petitionem et manum pueri involvant in pallu altaris, et sic eum offerunt” (c. 59). The Abbot Herman tells us that in the year 1055 his mother took him and his brothers to the monastery of which he was afterwards abbot. “She went to St. Martin’s (at Tournay), and delivered over her sons to God, placing the little one in his cradle upon the altar, amidst the tears of many bystanders” (Maitland’s “Dark Ages,” p. 78). The precedents for such a dedication of an infant to an ascetic life are, of course, the case of Samuel dedicated by his mother from infancy, and of Samson and John Baptist, who were directed by God to be consecrated as Nazarites from birth. A law was made prohibiting the dedication of children at an earlier age than fourteen. At f. 209 of the MS. Nero D. vii., is a picture of St. Benedict, to whom a boy in monk’s habit is holding a book, and he is reading or preaching to a group of monks.
[6]Engraved in Boutell’s “Monumental Brasses.”
[7]Probably this means that he had “clocks”—little bell-shaped ornaments—sewn to the lower margin of his tippet or hood.
[8]Mrs. Jameson, “Legends of the Monastic Orders,” p. 137.
[9]Viollet le Duc’s “Dictionary of Architecture,” vol. vi. p. 104.
[10]Ibid. vi. 107.
[11]Ibid. vi. 112.
[12]Ibid. vi. 112.
[13]All its houses were called Temples, as all the Carthusian houses were called Chartereux (corrupted in England into Charterhouse).
[14]Of the four round churches in England, popularly supposed to have been built by the Templars, the Temple Church in London was built by them; that of Maplestead, in Essex, by the Hospitallers; that of Northampton by Simon de St. Liz, first Norman Earl of Northampton, twice a pilgrim to the Holy Land; and that of Cambridge by some unknown individual.
[15]The order was divided into nations—the English knights, the French knights, &c.—each nation having a separate house, situated at different points of the island, for its defence. These houses, large and fine buildings, still remain, and many unedited records of the order are said to be still preserved on the island.
[16]An order, called our Lady of Mercy, was founded in Spain in 1258, by Peter Nolasco, for a similar object, including in its scope not only Christian captives to the infidel, but also all slaves, captives, and prisoners for debt.
[17]Afternoons and mornings.
[18]As an indication of their zeal in the pursuit of science it is only necessary to mention the names of Friar Roger Bacon, the Franciscan, and Friar Albert-le-Grand (Albertus Magnus), the Dominican. The Arts were cultivated with equal zeal—some of the finest paintings in the world were executed for the friars, and their own orders produced artists of the highest excellence. Fra Giacopo da Turrita, a celebrated artist in mosaic of the thirteenth century, was a Franciscan, as was Fra Antonio da Negroponti, the painter; Fra Fillippo Lippi, the painter, was a Carmelite; Fra Bartolomeo, and Fra Angelico da Fiesole—than whom no man ever conceived more heavenly visions of spiritual loveliness and purity—were Dominicans.
[19]
“By his (i.e.Satan’s) queyntise they comen in,The curates to helpen,But that harmed hem hardAnd help them ful littel.”—Piers Ploughman’s Creed.
[20]The extract from Chaucer on p. 46, lines 4, 5, 6, seem to indicate that an individual friar sometimes “farmed” the alms of a district, paying the convent a stipulated sum, and taking the surplus for himself.
[21]In France, Jacobins.
[22]Wives of burgesses.
[23]Stuffed.
[24]Musical instrument so called.
[25]Piers Ploughman (creed 3, line 434), describing a burly Dominican friar, describes his cloak or cope in the same terms, and describes the under gown, or kirtle, also:—
“His cope that beclypped himWel clean was it folden,Of double worsted y-dyghtDown to the heel.His kirtle of clean white,Cleanly y-served,It was good enough groundGrain for to beren.”
[26]A limitour, as has been explained above, was a friar whose functions were limited to a certain district of country; a lister might exercise his office wherever he listed.
[27]Thirty masses for the repose of a deceased person.
[28]Viz., in convents of friars, not in monasteries of monks and by the secular clergy.
[29]He was forbidden to say more.
[30]A convent of friars used to undertake masses for the dead, and each friar saying one the whole number of masses was speedily completed, whereas a single priest saying his one mass a day would be very long completing the number, and meantime the souls were supposed to be in torment.
[31]The usual way of concluding a sermon, in those days as in these, was with an ascription of praise, “Who with the Father,” &c.
[32]Cake.
[33]Choose.
[34]Slip or piece.
[35]Hired man.
[36]Trifles.
[37]Requite.
[38]Staff.
[39]Closely.
[40]Part.
[41]Forbidden.
[42]Would not.
[43]The good man also said he had not seen the friar “this fourteen nights:”—Did a limitour go round once a fortnight?
[44]The dormitory of the convent.
[45]Infirmarer.
[46]Aged monks and friars lived in the Infirmary, and had certain privileges.
[47]Wert thou not.
[48]Implying, whether truly or not, that he had been enrolled in the fraternity of the house, and was prayed for, with other benefactors, in chapter.
[49]Health and strength.
[50]Doctor.
[51]Little.
[52]Preaching; he was probably a preaching friar—i.e., a Dominican.
[53]Waxed nearly mad.
[54]Lived.
[55]“On the foundation,” as we say now of colleges and endowed schools.
[56]
“Maysters of diviniteHer matynes to leve,And cherliche [richly] as a cheveteynHis chaumbre to holden,With chymene and chaple,And chosen whom him list,And served as a sovereyn,And as a lord sytten.”Piers Ploughman, l. 1,157.
[57]Just as heads of colleges now have their Master’s, or Provost’s, or Principal’s Lodge. The constitution of our existing colleges will assist those who are acquainted with them in understanding many points of monastic economy.
[58]Ellis’s “Early English Romances.”
[59]Long and well proportioned.
[60]She was of tall stature.
[61]“And as touching the almesse that they (the monks) delt, and the hospitality that they kept, every man knoweth that many thousands were well received of them, and might have been better, if they had not so many great men’s horse to fede, and had not bin overcharged with such idle gentlemen as were never out of the abaies (abbeys).”—A complaint made to Parliament not long after the dissolution, quoted in Coke’s Institutes.
[62]A person doing penance.
[63]Hunting.
[64]Without state.
[65]A plan of the Chartreuse of Clermont is given by Viollet le Duc (Dict. of Architec., vol. i. pp. 308, 309), and the arrangements of a Carthusian monastery were nearly the same in all parts of Europe. It consists of a cloister-court surrounded by about twenty square enclosures. Each enclosure, technically called a “cell,” is in fact a little house and garden, the little house is in a corner of the enclosure, and consists of three apartments. In the middle of the west side of the cloister-court is the oratory, whose five-sided apsidal sanctuary projects into the court. In a small outer court on the west is the prior’s lodgings, which is a “cell” like the others, and a building for the entertainment of guests. See also a paper on the Carthusian priory of Mount Grace, near Thirsk, read by Archdeacon Churton before the Yorkshire Architectural Society, in the year 1850.
[66]A bird’s-eye view of Citeaux, given in Viollet le Duc’s “Dictionary of Architecture,” vol. i. p. 271, will give a very good notion of a thirteenth-century monastery. Of the English monasteries Fountains was perhaps one of the finest, and its existing remains are the most extensive of any which are left in England. A plan of it will be found in Mr. Walbran’s “Guide to Ripon.” See also plan of Furness,Journal of the Archæological Association, vi. 309; of Newstead (an Augustinian house), ibid. ix. p. 30; and of Durham (Benedictine), ibid. xxii. 201.
[67]A double choir of the fifteenth century is in King René’s Book of Hours (Egerton, 1,070), at folio 54. Another semi-choir of Religious of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century date, very well drawn, may be found in Egerton, 2,125, f. 117, v.
[68]Lydgate’s Life of St. Edmund, a MS. executed in 1473A.D., preserved in the British Museum (Harl. 2,278), gives several very good representations of the shrine of that saint at St. Edmund’s Bury, with the attendant monks, pilgrims worshipping, &c.
[69]
“Tombes upon tabernacles, tiled aloft,******Made of marble in many manner wise,Knights in their conisantes clad for the nonce,All it seemed saints y-sacred upon earth,And lovely ladies y-wrought lyen by their sidesIn many gay garments that were gold-beaten.”Piers Ploughman’s Creed.
[70]Henry VII. agreed with the Abbot and Convent of Westminster that there should be four tapers burning continually at his tomb—two at the sides, and two at the ends, each eleven feet long, and twelve pounds in weight; thirty tapers, &c., in the hearse; and four torches to be held about it at his weekly obit; and one hundred tapers nine feet long, and twenty-four torches of twice the weight, to be lighted at his anniversary.
[71]
“For though a man in their mynster a masse wolde heren,His sight shal so be set on sundrye werkes,The penons and the pornels and poyntes of sheldesWithdrawen his devotion and dusken his heart.”Piers Ploughman’s Vision.
[72]The chapter-houses attached to the cathedrals of York, Salisbury, and Wells, are octagonal; those of Hereford and Lincoln, decagonal; Lichfield, polygonal; Worcester is circular. All these were built by secular canons.
[73]There are only two exceptions hitherto observed: that of the Benedictine Abbey of Westminster, which is polygonal, and that of Thornton Abbey, of regular canons, which is octagonal.
[74]And at Norwich it appears to have had an eastern apse. See ground-plan in Mr. Mackenzie E. C. Walcott’s “Church and Conventual Arrangement,” p. 85.
[75]Piers Ploughman describes the chapter-house of a Benedictine convent:—
“There was the chapter-house, wrought as a great church,Carved and covered and quaintly entayled [sculptured];With seemly selure [ceiling] y-set aloft,As a parliament house y-painted about.”
[76]In the “Vision of Piers Ploughman” one of the characters complains that if he commits any fault—
“They do me fast fridays to bread and water,And am challenged in the chapitel-house as I a child were;”
and he is punished in a childish way, which is too plainly spoken to bear quotation.
[77]See note onp. 76.
[78]The woodcut on a preceding page (23) is from another initial letter of the same book.
[79]A room adjoining the hall, to which the fellows retire after dinner to take their wine and converse.
[80]The ordinary fashion of the time was to sleep without any clothing whatever.
[81]In the plan of the ninth-century Benedictine monastery of St. Gall, published in theArchæological Journalfor June, 1848, the dormitory is on the east, with the calefactory under it; the refectory on the south, with the clothes-store above; the cellar on the west, with the larders above. In the plan of Canterbury Cathedral, a Benedictine house, as it existed in the latter half of the twelfth century, the church was on the south, the chapter-house and dormitory on the east, the refectory, parallel with the church, on the north, and the cellar on the west. At the Benedictine monastery at Durham, the church was on the north, the chapter-house and locutory on the east, the refectory on the south, and the dormitory on the west. At the Augustinian Regular Priory of Bridlington, the church was on the north, the fratry (refectory) on the south, the chapter-house on the east, the dortor also on the east, up a stair twenty steps high, and the west side was occupied by the prior’s lodgings.
At the Premonstratensian Abbey of Easby, the church is on the north, the transept, passage, chapter-house, and small apartments on the east, the refectory on the south, and on the west two large apartments, with a passage between them. The Rev. J. F. Turner, Chaplain of Bishop Cozin’s Hall, Durham, describes these as the common house and kitchen, and places the dormitory in a building west of them, at a very inconvenient distance from the church.
[82]Maitland’s “Dark Ages.”
[83]At Winchester School, until a comparatively recent period, the scholars in the summer time studied in the cloisters.
[84]For much curious information about scriptoria and monastic libraries, see Maitland’s “Dark Ages,” quoted above.
[85]The hall of the Royal Palace of Winchester, erected at the same period, was 111 feet by 55 feet 9 inches.
[86]Its total length would perhaps be about twenty-four paces.
[87]The above woodcut, from the Harleian MS. 1,527, represents, probably, the cellarer of a Dominican convent receiving a donation of a fish. It curiously suggests the scene depicted in Sir Edwin Landseer’s “Bolton Abbey in the Olden Time.”
[88]See an account of this hall, with pen-and-ink sketches by Mr. Street, in the volume of the Worcester Architectural Society for 1854.
[89]Quoted by Archdeacon Churton in a paper read before the Yorkshire Architectural Society in 1853.
[90]Ground-plans of the Dominican Friary at Norwich, the Carmelite Friary at Hulne and the Franciscan Friary at Kilconnel, may be found in Walcott’s “Church and Conventual Arrangement.”
[91]In the National Gallery is a painting by Fra Angelico, in which is a hermit clad in a dress woven of rushes or flags.
[92]“The Wonderful and Godly History of the Holy Fathers Hermits,” is among Caxton’s earliest-printed books. Piers Ploughman (“Vision”) speaks of—
“Anthony and Egidius and other holy fathersWoneden in wilderness amonge wilde bestesIn spekes and in spelonkes, seldom spoke together.Ac nobler Antony ne Egedy ne hermit of that timeOf lions ne of leopards no livelihood ne took,But of fowles that fly, thus find men in books.”
And again—
“In prayers and in penance putten them many,All for love of our Lord liveden full strait,In hope for to have heavenly blisseAs ancres and heremites that holden them in their cellsAnd coveten not in country to kairen [walk] aboutFor no likerous lifelihood, their liking to please.”
And yet again—
“Ac ancres and heremites that eaten not but at nonesAnd no more ere morrow, mine almesse shall they have,And of my cattle to keep them with, that have cloisters and churches,Ac Robert Run-about shall nought have of mine.”Piers Ploughman’s Vision.
[93]Piers Ploughman (“Vision”) describes himself at the beginning of the poem as assuming the habit of a hermit—
“In a summer season when soft was the sunIn habit as a hermit unholy of works,Went wild in this world, wonders to hear,All on a May morning on Malvern Hills,” &c.
And at the beginning of the eighth part he says—
“Thus robed inrussetI roamed aboutAll a summer season.”
[94]For the custom of admitting to the fraternity of a religious house, seep. 66.
[95]“Officium induendi et benedicendi heremitam.”
[96]We are indebted to Mr. M. H. Bloxam for a copy of it.
[97]“Famulus tuus N.” It is noticable that the masculine gender is used all through, without any such note as we find in the Service for Inclosing (which we shall have to notice hereafter), that this service shall serve for both sexes.
[98]The hermit who interposed between Sir Lionel and Sir Bors, and who was killed by Sir Lionel for his interference (Malory’s “Prince Arthur,”III, lxxix.), is called a “hermit-priest.” Also, in the Episcopal Registry of Lichfield, we find the bishop, date 10th February, 1409, giving to Brother Richard Goldeston, late Canon of Wombrugge, now recluse at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffenall, license to hear confessions.
[99]
“Great loobies and long, that loath were to swink [work],Clothed them in copes to be known from others,And shaped them hermits their ease to have.”
[100]Wanderers.
[101]Breakers out of their cells.
[102]Kindred.
[103]In “Piers Ploughman” we read that—
“Hermits with hoked stavesWenden to Walsingham;”
These hooked staves may, however, have been pilgrim staves, not hermit staves. The pastoral staff on the official seal of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, was of the same shape as the staff above represented. A staff of similar shape occurs on an early grave-stone at Welbeck Priory, engraved in the Rev. E. L. Cutts’s “Manual of Sepulchral Slabs and Crosses,” plate xxxv.
[104]Blomfield, in his “History of Norfolk,” 1532, says, “It is to be observed that hermitages were erected, for the most part, near great bridges (seeMag. Brit., On Warwickshire, p. 597, Dugdale, &c., and Badwell’s ‘Description of Tottenham’) and high roads, as appears from this, and those at Brandon, Downham, Stow Bardolph, in Norfolk, and Erith, in the Isle of Ely, &c.”
[105]In the settlement of the vicarage of Kelvedon, Essex, when the rectory was impropriated to the abbot and convent of Westminster, in the fourteenth century, it was expressly ordered that the convent, besides providing the vicar a suitable house, should also provide a hall for receiving guests. See subsequent chapter on the Secular Clergy.
[106]From the “Officium et Legenda de Vita Ricardi Rolle.”
[107]When is not stated; he died in 1349.
[108]Afterwards it is described as a cell at a distance from the family, where he was accustomed to sit solitary and to pass his time in contemplation. In doing this Sir John Dalton and his wife were, according to the sentiment of the time, following the example of the Shunammite and her husband, who made for Elisha a little chamber on the wall, and set for him there a bed, and a table, and a stool, and a candlestick (2 Kings iv. 10). The Knight of La Tour Landry illustrates this when in one of his tales (ch. xcv.) he describes the Shunammite’s act in the language of mediæval custom: “This good woman had gret devocion unto this holy man, and required and praied hym for to come to her burghe and loged in her hous, and her husbonde and she made a chambre solitaire for this holy man, where as he might use his devocions and serve God.”
[109]Either the little window through which she communicated with the outer world, or perhaps (as suggested further on) a window between her cell and a guest-chamber in which she received visitors.
[110]A hermitage, partly of stone, partly of timber, may be seen in the beautiful MS. Egerton 1,147, f. 218 v.
[111]A very good representation of a cave hermitage may be found in the late MS. Egerton, 2,125, f. 206 v. Also in the Harl. MS. 1,527, at f. 14 v., is a hermit in a cave; and in Royal 10 E IV. f. 130, here a man is bringing the hermit food and drink.
[112]Eugene Aram’s famous murder was perpetrated within it. See Sir E. L. Bulwer’s description of the scene in his “Eugene Aram.”
[113]See view in Stukeley’s “Itin. Curios.,” pl. 14.
[114]Suggesting the room so often found over a church porch.
[115]In the year 1490, a dispute having arisen between the abbot and convent of Easby and the Grey Friars of Richmond, on the one part, and the burgesses of Richmond, on the other part, respecting the disposition of the goods of Margaret Richmond, late anchoress of the same town, it was at length settled that the goods should remain with the warden and brethren of the friars, after that her debts and the repair of the anchorage were defrayed, “because the said anchoress took her habit of the said friars,” and that the abbot and convent should have the disposition of the then anchoress, Alison Comeston, after her decease; and so to continue for evermore between the said abbot and warden, as it happens that the anchoress took her habit of religion. And that the burgesses shall have the nomination and free election of the said anchoress for evermore from time to time when it happens to be void, as they have had without time of mind. (Test. Ebor. ii. 115.)
[116]In June 5, 1356, Edward III. granted to brother Regnier, hermit of the Chapel of St. Mary Magdalen, without Salop, a certain plot of waste called Shelcrosse, contiguous to the chapel, containing one acre, to hold the same to him and his successors, hermits there, for their habitation, and to find a chaplain to pray in the chapel for the king’s soul, &c. (Owen and Blakeway’s “History of Shrewsbury,” vol. ii. p. 165). “Perhaps,” say our authors, “this was the eremitical habitation in the wood of Suttona (Sutton being a village just without Salop), which is recorded elsewhere to have been given by Richard, the Dapifer of Chester, to the monks of Salop.”
[117]“Vita S. Godrici,” published by the Surtees Society.
[118]Simple.
[119]Meddle.
[120]Since the above was written, the writer has had an opportunity of visiting a hermitage very like those at Warkworth, Wetheral, Bewdley, and Lenton, still in use and habitation. It is in the parish of Limay, near Mantes, a pretty little town on the railway between Rouen and Paris. Nearly at the top of a vine-clad hill, on the north of the valley of the Seine, in which Mantes is situated, a low face of rock crops out. In this rock have been excavated a chapel, a sacristy, and a living-room for the hermit; and the present hermit has had a long refectory added to his establishment, in which to give his annual dinner to the people who come here, one day in the year, in considerable numbers, on pilgrimage. The chapel differs from those which we have described in the text in being larger and ruder; it is so wide that its rocky roof is supported by two rows of rude pillars, left standing for that purpose by the excavators. There is an altar at the east end. At the west end is a representation of the Entombment; the figure of our Lord, lying as if it had become rigid in the midst of the writhing of his agony, is not without a rude force of expression. One of the group of figures standing about the tomb has a late thirteenth-century head of a saint placed upon the body of a Roman soldier of the Renaissance period. There is a grave-stone with an incised cross and inscription beside the tomb; and in the niche on the north side is a recumbent monumental effigy of stone, with the head and hands in white glazed pottery. But whether these things were originally placed in the hermitage, or whether they are waifs and strays from neighbouring churches, brought here as to an ecclesiastical peep-show, it is hard to determine; the profusion of other incongruous odds and ends of ecclesiastical relics and fineries, with which the whole place is furnished, inclines one to the latter conjecture. There is a bell-turret built on the rock over the chapel, and a chimney peeps through the hill-side, over the sacristy fireplace. The platform in front of the hermitage is walled in, and there is a little garden on the hill above. The curé of Limay performs service here on certain days in the year. The hermit will disappoint those who desire to see a modern example of
“An aged sire, in long black weedes yclad,His feet all bare, his beard all hoarie gray.”
He is an aged sire, seventy-four years old; but for the rest, he is simply a little, withered, old French peasant, in a blue blouse and wooden sabots. He passes his days here in solitude, unless when a rare party of visitors ring at his little bell, and, after due inspection through hisgrille, are admitted to peep about his chapel and his grotto, and to share his fine view of the valley shut in by vine-clad hills, and the Seine winding through the flat meadows, and the clean, pretty town of Mantesle joliein the middle, with its long bridge and its cathedral-like church. Whether he spends his time
“Bidding his beades all day for his trespas,”
we did not inquire; but he finds the hours lonely. The good curé of Limay wishes him to sleep in his hermitage, but, like the hermit-priest of Warkworth, he prefers sleeping in the village at the foot of the hill.
[121]One of the little hermitages represented in the Campo Santo series of paintings of the old Egyptian hermit-saints (engraved in Mrs. Jameson’s “Legends of the Monastic Orders”) has a little grated window, through which the hermit within (probably this John) is talking with another outside.
[122]That recluses did, however, sometimes quit their cells on a great emergency, we learn from the Legenda of Richard of Hampole already quoted, where we are told that at his death Dame Margaret Kyrkley, the recluse of Anderby, on hearing of the saint’s death, hastened to Hampole to be present at his funeral.
[123]Wilkins’s “Concilia,” i. 693.
[124]Several MSS. of this rule are known under different names. Fosbroke quotes one as the rule of Simon de Gandavo (or Simon of Ghent), in Cott. MS. Nero A xiv.; another in Bennet College, Cambridge; and another under the name of Alfred Reevesley. See Fosbroke’s “British Monachism,” pp. 374-5. The various copies, indeed, seem to differ considerably, but to be all derived from the work ascribed to Bishop Poore. All these books are addressed to female recluses, which is a confirmation of the opinion which we have before expressed, that the majority of the recluses were women.
[125]Thus the player-queen inHamlet, iii. 2:—
“Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light!Sport and repose lock from me, day, and night!To desperation turn my trust and hope!An anchor’s cheer in prison be my scope!Each opposite, that blanks the face of joy,Meet what I would have well, and it destroy,” &c.
[126]A cell in the north-west angle of Edington Abbey Church, Wilts, seems to be of this kind.
[127]The wearing a cuirass, or hauberk of chain mail, next the skin became a noted form of self-torture; those who undertook it were calledLoricati.
[128]The cell of a Carthusian monk, as we have stated, consisted of a little house of three apartments and a little garden within an inclosure wall.
[129]This very same picture is given also in another MS. of about the same date, marked Add. 10,294, at folio 14.
[130]As was probably the case at Warkworth, the hermit living in the hermitage, while the chantry priest lived in the house at the foot of the hill.
[131]
“Eremites that inhabitenBy the highways,And in boroughs among brewers.”Piers Ploughman’s Vision.
[132]Probably “anchoret” means male, and “recluse” female recluse.
[133]Test. Vetust., ii. 25.
[134]Ibid. ii. 47.
[135]Ibid. ii. 56.
[136]Ibid. ii. 271.
[137]Note p. 87 to “Instructions for Parish Priests,” Early English Text Society.
[138]Test. Vetust., ii. 131.
[139]Ibid. 178.
[140]Ibid. ii. 98.
[141]Ibid. 356.
[142]Other bequests to recluses occur in the will of Henry II., to the recluses (incluses) of Jerusalem, England, and Normandy.
[143]Sussex Archæol. Coll., i. p. 174.
[144]Blomfield’s “Norfolk,” ii. pp. 347-8. See also the bequests to the Norwich recluses,infra.
[145]Stow’s Chronicle, p. 559.
[146]In the “Ancren Riewle,” p. 129, we read, “Who can with more facility commit sin than the false recluse?”
[147]Owen and Blakeway’s “History of Shrewsbury.”
[148]“Rogerus, &c., delecto in Christo filio Roberto de Worthin, cap. salutem, &c. Precipue devotionis affectum, quem ad serviendum Deo in reclusorio juxta capellam Sancti Joh. Babtiste in civitate Coventriensi constructo, et spretis mundi deliciis et ipsius vagis discurribus contemptis, habere te asseres, propensius intuentes, ac volentes te, consideratione nobilis domine, domine Isabelle Regine Anglie nobis pro te supplicante in hujus laudabili proposito confovere, ut in prefato reclusorio morari possis, et recludi et vitam tuam in eodam ducere in tui laudibus Redemptoris, licentiam tibi quantum in nobis est concedi per presentes, quibus sigillum nostrum duximus apponendum. Dat apud Heywood, 5 Kal. Dec.M.D. A.D. MCCCLXII, et consecrationis nostræ tricessimo sexto.”—Dugdale’sWarwickshire, 2nd Edit., p. 193.
[149]Fosbroke’s “British Monachism,” p. 372.
[150]Engraved in theArchæological Journal, iv. p. 320.
[151]Reports of the Lincoln Diocesan Archæological Society for 1853, pp. 359-60.
[152]Peter, Abbot of Clugny, tells us of a monk and priest of that abbey who had for a cell an oratory in a very high and remote steeple-tower, consecrated to the honour of St. Michael the archangel. “Here, devoting himself to divine meditation night and day, he mounted high above mortal things, and seemed with the angels to be present at the nearer vision of his Maker.”
[153]In the Lichfield Registers we find that, on February 10, 1409, the bishop granted to Brother Richard Goldestone, late canon of Wombrugge, now recluse at Prior’s Lee, near Shiffenale, license to hear confessions. (History of Whalley, p. 55.)
[154]Paper by J. J. Rogers,Archæological Journal, xi. 33.
[155]Twysden’s “Henry de Knighton,” vol. ii. p. 2665.
[156]The translator of this book for the Camden Society’s edition of it, says “therein,” but the word in the original Saxon English is “ther thurgh.” It refers to the window looking into the church, through which the recluse looked down daily upon the celebration of the mass.
[157]“Caput suum decidit ad fenestram ad quam se reclinabit sanctus Dei Ricardus.”
[158]In one of the stories of Reginald of Durham we learn that a school, according to a custom then “common enough,” was kept in the church of Norham on Tweed, the parish priest being the teacher. (Wright’s “Domestic Manners of the Middle Ages,” p. 117.)
[159]These two expressions seem to imply that recluses sometimes went out of their cell, not only into the church, but also into the churchyard. We have already noticed that the technical word “cell” seems to have included everything within the enclosure wall of the whole establishment. Is it possible that in the case of anchorages adjoining churches, the churchyard wall represented this enclosure, and the “cell” included both church and churchyard?
[160]A commission given by William of Wykham, Bishop of Winchester, for enclosing Lucy de Newchurch as an anchoritess in the hermitage of St. Brendun, at Bristol, is given in Burnett’s “History and Antiquities of Bristol,” p. 61.
[161]“In monasterio inclusorio suo vicino;” it seems as if the writer of the rubric were specially thinking of the inclusoria within monasteries.
[162]The Ordo Romanus. The Pontifical of Egbert. The Pontifical of Bishop Lacey.
[163]Guardiannewspaper, Feb. 7, 1870.
[164]Surrey Society’s Transactions, vol. iii. p. 218.
[165]The same collect, with a few variations, was used also in the consecration of nuns. Virgin chastity was held to bring forth fruit a hundred fold; widowed chastity, sixty fold; married chastity, thirty fold.
[166]Hair-cloth garment worn next the skin for mortification.
[167]King Henry IV., Pt. I., Act i. Sc. 1.
[168]There have come down to us a series of narratives of pilgrimages to the Holy Land. One of a Christian of Bordeaux as early as 333A.D.; that of S. Paula and her daughter, about 386A.D., given by St. Jerome; of Bishop Arculf, 700A.D.; of Willebald, 725A.D.; of Sæwulf, 1102A.D.; of Sigurd the Crusader, 1107A.D.; of Sir John de Mandeville, 1322-1356.—Early Travels in Palestine(Bohn’s Antiq. Lib.).
[169]At the present day, the Hospital of the Pellegrini at Rome is capable of entertaining seven thousand guests, women as well as men; to be entitled to the hospitality of the institution, they must have walked at least sixty miles, and be provided with a certificate from a bishop or priest to the effect that they arebonâ-fidepilgrims. (Wild’s “Last Winter in Rome.” Longmans: 1865.)
[170]In the latter part of the Saxon period of our history there was a great rage for foreign pilgrimage; thousands of persons were continually coming and going between England and the principal shrines of Europe, especially the threshold of the Apostles at Rome. They were the subject of a letter from Charlemagne to King Offa:—“Concerning the strangers who, for the love of God and the salvation of their souls, wish to repair to the thresholds of the blessed Apostles, let them travel in peace without any trouble.” Again, in the year 1031A.D., King Canute made a pilgrimage to Rome (as other Saxon kings had done before him) and met the Emperor Conrad and other princes, from whom he obtained for all his subjects, whether merchants or pilgrims, exemptions from the heavy tolls usually exacted on the journey to Rome.
[171]At the marriage of our Edward I., in 1254, with Leonora, sister of Alonzo of Castile, a protection to English pilgrims was stipulated for; but they came in such numbers as to alarm the French, and difficulties were thrown in the way. In the fifteenth century, Rymer mentions 916 licences to make the pilgrimage to Santiago granted in 1428, and 2,460 in 1434.
[172]King Horn, having taken the disguise of a palmer—“Horn took bourden and scrip”—went to the palace of Athulf and into the hall, and took his place among the beggars “in beggar’s row,” and sat on the ground.—Thirteenth Century Romance of King Horn(Early English Text Society). That beggars and such persons did usually sit on the ground in the hall and wait for a share of the food, we learn also from the “Vision of Piers Ploughman,” xii. 198—
“Right as sum man gave me meat, and set me amid the floor,I have meat more than enough, and not so much worshipAs they that sit at side table, or with the sovereigns of the hall,But sit as a beggar boardless by myself on the ground.”
[173]In the romance of King Horn, the hero meets a palmer and asks his news—
“A palmere he there metAnd fair him grette [greeted]:Palmer, thou shalt me tellAll of thine spell.”
[174]Wallet.
[175]Pillow covering.
[176]Called or took.
[177]i.e.Latten (a kind of bronze) set with (mock) precious stones.
[178]Pretending them to be relics of some saint.
[179]See “Archæological Journal,” vol. iii. p. 149.
[180]Mr. Taylor, in his edition of “Blomfield’s Norfolk,” enumerates no less than seventy places of pilgrimage in Norfolk alone.
[181]A man might not go without his wife’s consent, nor a wife without her husband’s:—
“To preche them also thou might not wonde [fear, hesitate],Both to wyf and eke husbande,That nowther of hem no penance take,Ny non a vow to chastity make,Ny no pylgrimage take to doBut if bothe assente thereto.*****Save the vow to Jherusalem,That is lawful to ether of them.”Instructions for Parish Priests.(Early English Text Society.)
[182]Marked 3,395 d. 4to. The footnote on a previous page (p. 158) leads us to conjecture that in ancient as in modern times the pilgrim may have received a certificate of his having been blessed as a pilgrim, as now we give certificates of baptism, marriage, and holy orders.
[183]See woodcut onp. 90.
[184]“History of Music.”
[185]
“Conscience then with Patience passed, Pilgrims as it were,Then had Patience, as pilgrims have, in his poke vittailes.”Piers Ploughman’s Vision, xiii. 215.
[186]Grose’s “Gloucestershire,” pl. lvii.
[187]Girdle.
[188]One of the two pilgrims in our first cut, p. 158, carries a palm branch in his hand; they represent the two disciples at Emmaus, who were returning from Jerusalem.
[189]The existence of several accounts of the stations of Rome in English prose and poetry as early as the thirteenth century (published by the Early English Text Society), indicates the popularity of this pilgrimage.
[190]Innocente III., Epist. 536, lib. i., t. c., p. 305, ed. Baluzio. (Dr. Rock’s “Church of our Fathers.”)
[191]“Church of our Fathers,” vol. iii. p. 438, note.
[192]It is seen on the scrip of Lydgate’s Pilgrim in the woodcut on p. 163. See a paper on the Pilgrim’s Shell, by Mr. J. E. Tennant, in theSt. James’s Magazine, No. 10, for Jan., 1862.
[193]“Anales de Galicia,” vol. i. p. 95. Southey’s “Pilgrim to Compostella.”
[194]“Anales de Galicia,” vol. i. p. 96, quoted by Southey, “Pilgrim to Compostella.”
[195]Dr. Rock’s “Church of our Fathers,” iii. 424.
[196]“Vita S. Thomæ apud Willebald,” folio Stephani, ed. Giles, i. 312.
[197]The lily of the valley was another Canterbury flower. It is still plentiful in the gardens in the precincts of the cathedral.
[198]The veneration of the times was concentrated upon the blessed head which suffered the stroke of martyrdom; it was exhibited at the shrine and kissed by the pilgrims; there was an abbey in Derbyshire dedicated to the Beauchef (beautiful head), and still called Beauchief Abbey.
[199]The late T. Caldecot, Esq., of Dartford, possessed one of these.
[200]A very beautiful little pilgrim sign of lead found at Winchester is engraved in the “Journal of the British Archæological Association,” No. 32, p. 363.
[201]Dr. Rock’s “Church of our Fathers,” vol. iii. p. 430.
[202]Fosbroke has fallen into the error of calling this a burden bound to the pilgrim’s back with a list: it is the bourdon, the pilgrim’s staff, round which a list, a long narrow strip of cloth, was wound cross-wise. We do not elsewhere meet with this list round the staff, and it does not appear what was its use or meaning. We may call to mind the list wound cross-wise round a barber’s pole, and imagine that this list was attached to the pilgrim’s staff for use, or we may remember that a vexillum, or banner, is attached to a bishop’s staff, and that a long, narrow riband is often affixed to the cross-headed staff which is placed in our Saviour’s hand in mediæval representations of the Resurrection. The staff in our cut, p. 163, looks as if it might have such a list wound round it.
[203]Fosbrooke, and Wright, and Dr. Rock, all understand this to be a bowl. Was it a bottle to carry drink, shaped something like a gourd, such as we not unfrequently find hung on the hook of a shepherd’s staff in pictures of the annunciation to the shepherds, and such as the pilgrim from Erasmus’s “Praise of Folly,” bears on his back?
[204]Sinai.
[205]Galice—Compostella in Galicia.
[206]Cross.
[207]Asked: people ask him first of all from whence he is come.
[208]Armenia.
[209]Holy body, object of pilgrimage.
[210]Tell us.
[211]The Knight of La Tour Landry, in one of his stories, tells us: “There was a young lady that had her herte moche on the worlde. And there was a squier that loved her and she hym. And for because that she might have better leiser to speke with hym, she made her husbande to understande that she had vowed in diverse pilgrimages; and her husband, as he that thought none evelle and wolde not displese her, suffered and held hym content that she should go wherin her lust.... Alle thei that gone on pilgrimage to a place for foul plesaunce more than devocion of the place that thei go to, and covereth thaire goinge with service of God, fowlethe and scornethe God and our Ladie, and the place that thei goo to.”—Book of La Tour Landry, chap. xxxiv.