GROSTETE'S LETTERS.*
IT would be curious to compare the grounds on which Grostete's repu- tation rests, with the better estimate of his life and character which Mr. Brewer's " Monumenta Franciscans," and Mr. Luard's present volume, have allowed us to form. Probably nine out of ten English- men think of him as a precursor of the Reformation, and an opponent of the Pope. He was so regarded in the sixteenth century. There is a story that Pope Innocent IV. intended to disinter his bones after' death, and was stopped by .a visit from the deceased prelate's ghost, who rebuked him in an impressive speech, beginning, " Senibalde, papa miserrime," which Fox, with characteristic accuracy, translates,
0 thou scourfie, lazie, old, bald, lousie, wretched, doting pope." The tale, absurd as it is, was derived from the real facts that Grostete steadily set himself against all grants of English preferment to Italian absentees, and addressed a vigorous remonstrance against the abuses of Romish misrule to the Pope and Cardinals in person. His feelings as an English bishop were not, however, inconsistent with a profound reve- rence for the canon-law, and a belief in the powers of the clergy, which Hildebrand or Becket could not have exceeded. His practical views as a reformer took the form of especially encouraging the mendicant orders, and his memory labours under the reproach of having induced Roger Bacon to forsake his more appropriate studies, and assume the cowl of a Franciscan. Nevertheless, Grostete was something more than an ecclesiastic. As a politician he belonged to the constitu- tional party, and was the friend of Simon de Montfort. His learn- ing almost inspired awe among his contemporaries : Bacon speaks of luni as one of the few men who possessed a real knowledge of the dead languages; and the list of his works is rich in mathematical treatises. But he walked in every province of thought as a conqueror ; his skill in medicine helped to bring him into notice ; his French poems have survived most of his more serious works ; and an early tradition recorded his love of music. We know little comparatively of the man. The son of humble parents, and called upon to do the rough work of the Church, lie perhaps is open to the charge, which Dean Milman has hinted, of sonic coarseness and indelicacy. His own proverb that "sleep, food, and mirth" were the three things es- sential to health, and his prescription of wine as a penance for an over- wrought ascetic, indicate a certain geniality of temperament. But the man who was chosen to bring up the children of Simon de Mont- fort, and whose household was ordered with an almost punctilious ceremonial, must have taken some polish in his way through the world. Probably the Irish priest of the last century, brought up in a hedge-school, finished at Paris, and finally invested with "power and thrown into politics, would be the aptest parallel to Grostete that modem times can furnish.
In the present collection of letters, a hundred and sixteen out of a hundred and thirty-one fall between the years 1235 and 1246, the i
latest, in 1253, being the famous document in which Grostete compared the Pope's nepotism to the sin of Lucifer and Anti-Christ. The period, one of the dullest in mediaeval history, is none the less of high im- portance, as it marks the culmination of Church power in England and the silent growth of constitutional principles. How such contrasts could co-exist is at first sight the strangest fact of all. But it must be borne in mind that, from Stephen Langton downwards, the clergy throughout England were associated with nobles and citizens against the power of the Crown. The unholy compact between John and Innocent to divide the spoils of an oppressed nation had borne bitter fruit in its day, and was tacitly renewed between Henry III. and suc- ceeding papal legates. When we find Grostete calculating the pre- ferment enjoyed by Italian absentees at an income of 70,000 marks, or three times the royal revenue, and read of a Savoyard boy being made primate, and of a royal chaplain holding seven hundred benefices, we begin to understand the deep hatred. of Rome which tinges the writings of this period with an ultra-Protestant colouring. Simon de Montfort was the most religious atateJman of his times, but he subscribed the famous letter in which the Barons of England warned the Pope that unless his Holiness corrected the gross wrongs of his administration, " a remediless evil impended over the Roman Church and over our lord the King." The Pope's collector was warned, in the name of the Barons of England, that he and his men would be cut to pieces if they did not leave the country within three days. A provision of Innocent's that if a papal nominee were murdered no one should be appointed to the living who could not prove that lie had no share in the crime, is sufficient in itself to show how the popular conscience had been depraved, till an intruding beneficiary was as unsafe as an evicting landlord in Ireland. Grostete was dis- tinguished among Englishmen for his reverence towards the Pope. He had insisted on collecting a papal tax for the Crusades against the express orders of the King. He held, to quote his own words, that "power of all kinds has been granted by the most holy Lord Jesus Christ to the most holy Apostolical See." But he qualified it with the reserve that the power must be exercised in an apostolical spirit, and that he was entitled to appeal from the Church actual to the Church as it ought to be. Being above everything a working English bishop he could not endure to see his right of patronage set aside, and absentees, or unworthy, or young men appointed to parishes. Here lie e took his stand, backed by the irresistible public opinion of his times. Precisely because in this matter he was fighting the battle of • Roberti Grosseteste Episoopi quondam Liscolniema Epistolic. Edited by H. R. Laud, M.A. Published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. Longman, and Co, lay patrons, keeping money in the country, and asserting the principle of nationality, was it possible for him and men like himself to pre- vail in their support of Anglican privileges. They were beaten, indeed, in the attempt to substitute the canon for the common law on the matter of marriages, and Grostete's letters show that he felt the failure keenly. Their separate jurisdiction in civil causes, for which Becket had fought, and which his successors had probably been slack to assert, was still repeatedly violated by royal rescripts. But in what seems to us the much graver usurpation of a separate jurisdiction in criminal matters they were at last carrying the day, favoured, probably by Pandulph's and Gualo's diplomatic victories, so that the benefit of clergy is commonly held to date from this reign. The proportion of monasteries founded during the reign was smaller than had been known for more than a century. The fact no doubt shows that the first influence of the Crusades had passed, and that the reaction against Rome was setting in, but for the reign itself it is more than neutralized by the vast strength which the new mendicant orders were winning everywhere. Lastly, the thought of the times was more than ever ecclesiastical. Bacon seeing the possibilities of physicial science, and turning aside to mystical theology is the representative man of an age when scholas- ticism in such a teacher as Scotus could count its students by thousands.
Incidentally, the letters of Grostete throw much light on the con- dition of the times. The deacon who comes to be ordained in scarlet clothes, and with rings on his hand, bearing himself like a soldier, and knowing little of letters, was one, we may be sure, of a class who did not often find a bishop like Grostete bold enough to reject them incontinently. Several notices of books, especially copies of the Bible, testify. against the current depreciation of mediaeval learning; and it is curious to find that a candidate for orders was considered an insufficient Latinist, because lie had not yet got beyond Ovid's epistles. The notices of ecclesiastical discipline are very instructive. We agree with Mr. Luard in thinking that, in spite of one exception to the contrary, where the offenders were foreign monks, the parish priests were generally the most disorderly part of the clergy. It must be remembered, in their excuse, that the tradition of their right to marry was held so firmly, that within men's memory an attempt had been made to settle the endowment of a church on the priest and his heirs. "That priests be not married men" is the heading of one of Grostete's constitutions. Several mentions of the " feast of fools," show that it was usual at least in the large diocese of Lincoln; and the bishop, in language that savours of modern Puritanism, couples the frequenting of theatres, and all playing with dice, in a common anathema, as "sacrificing to the devil." Neither did muscular Christianity find any favour, and all games for which a prize was given are forbidden. A prohibition against mixture of the sexes in bedrooms is, unfortunately, as much needed now in our rural districts as it could be then. Evangelicals will be glad to hear that Grostete speaks of the altar as made of wood ; but their satisfaction will be mixed when they learn that there was a super- altare, or slab of stone, let in above. We believe some High-Church- men took the trouble, after Sir Jenner Fust's decision, to procure a legal opinion that this form of compromise was admissible. Mr. Luard is rather a dry, but he is a sound editor. His sketch of Grostete and his times wants colour and warmth, but it has the high merit of never going beyond its authorities. It is a very small point, but we cannot understand why lie has changed the time-honoured orthography of " Abbot " into " Abbat." We hope his work is un- finished, as the English title of his book in the Record Office adver- tisements promised us letters and treatises of Bishop Grostete. One of the first cares of an editor would be to ascertain what these are. A life of St. Mary of Egypt was printed as Grostete's by the Caxton Society, which, from internal evidence, we should be very sorry to believe his. Treatises, which Leland does not mention, or mentions by other titles, are given in the list of Dr. Dee's manuscript. We should be inclined to accept Mr. Luard's verdict on points of this sort with great confidence.
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