BISHOP CREIGHTON'S HISTORICAL ESSAYS.* THESE papers have, as might be
expected, a wide range of subject. Dante, viewed, we should say, almost exclusively in his personal character, is the subject of the first essay; the last is a highly picturesque description of the Coronation of the present Czar at Moscow, a ceremony at which Bishop Creighton represented, by a happy selection, the Anglican Church. (What a pity that the Bishop did not live to recon- sider the remark that no other Royal procession "could bring together on so large a scale such varied elements drawn alike from East and West" ; our own ceremony, but for the un- happy incident that delayed it, would have shown a far greater variety.) Of the fifteen papers, three—u" John Wiclif," " 2Eneas Sylvins Piccolomini, Pope Pins and The • Hisiorical Essays and Reviews. By Mandell •Crelightoia, D.D. Wald 10 Louise Creighton. London : Longman' and 00. DILI
Italian Bishops of Worcester "—seem to call for special notice. Wiclif was born in 1324; the last of the Italian prelates who
occupied in so strange a fashion an English See died in 1541. in this period we have the seed-time and the harvest of a great
religious change. Wiclif was in the first instance the cham- pion of practical reforms. He "set on foot," as Bishop Creighton puts it, "a great spiritual revival in the Church."
To bring this about he began by reforming the preaching of the day :— " Too often, he complains, not God's word, but other matters, are the subjects of preaching; barren speculations, legends, tales and fables, take the place of Scripture teaching; even when God's word is preached, it is not preached rightly,—not in sim- plicity and purity, but with self-assertion on the preacher's part, with elaborate ornament and turgid rhetoric. But the "trewe preestis ' ( fidstes or simplices sacerdotes) who go forth under Wielif's influence go forth to preach God's word, and that only,— to preach it 'where, when, and to whom they could."
In this age of many books it is difficult to understand the
vast importance of preaching in days when the whole of religious teaching had to be addressed to the ears. Even yet the sermon is a great power, though in common speech it has almost passed into a synonym for the unprofitable and stale. There is an inarticulate multitude to which it is a power. In the fourteenth century it had the function of the Press besides its own. Of course, the preacher could not be kept within any theological limits. He had to give expression to political and social emotions, to set forth class and national grievances and aspirations. The inevitable result was collision with an established system and conservative authorities. In another direction the new move- ment led to a revolt against order; and here we see a curious anticipation of what befel John Wesley and his followers four centuries later. The poor priests who were Wiclif's mission- aries, sent forth from the centre of his spiritual activity, his rectory at Lutterworth, were at first duly ordained. Then their ranks were supplemented by laymen, and Wiclif ap- proved, as Wesley approved, not, it may be, without reluctance. Dr. Creighton traces in a most interesting and instructive way the process by which Wiclif advanced from one position to another. One point he brings out very clearly. It was not till late in life that he insisted on doctrinal reform. In 1380 he broke with the sacramental teaching of the time. What- ever the service he thus did to theology, the change was a distinct drawback to his success as a reformer. He ceased to carry the people with him. The matter is obscured by the Wet Tyler rebellion, its failure and its repression, but we can see that Wiclif's position was weakened by the intellectual change at which his philosophical as well as his theological reasoning arrived.
lEneas Sylvius stands out in striking contrast with the moral and religious enthusiasm of Wiclif. There have been worse men in high places of the Church, and even in the Papal chair itself. He had many good qualities ; absolutely without moral scruple in his youth and early manhood, he reformed himself, after a fashion, when he took Orders at the age of forty, and did not disgrace the Papacy when he reached it some thirteen years afterwards. He was not an Alexander VI., or a Julius II., or even a Leo X. His life and character are admirably summed up by Dr. Creighton :—
"The man of culture, he held, must perform with ability and decorum the duties of any office to which he is called ; must use as skilfully as he can the advantages, and even disadvantages, of his position. In this there was no hypocrisy, no consciousness of meanness, no particle of dissimulation. His opinions in his youth Were floating, because the world lay before him and he wished to keep an open mind, so as to be able to turn his talents to the best account : as life advanced, the vague possibilities which youth had held before his eyes fell away one by one and were abandoned, the future became year by year more limited and more defined; and so, side by side with the actual facts of life, his convictions formed themselves, and his opinions and life fitted themselves into one another with wondrous suppleness. From looseness of life Anew passed to moral respectability, when the force of temptation ceased ; from indifference to religions forms he passed to priesthood of unimpeachable orthodoxy, when he saw that orthodoxy was going to prevail; from adherence to the liberal and reforming opinions of Basle he passed to a rigid ecclesiastical Conservatism, and as Pope anathematised the opinions which in his youth he had skilfully advocated. He did so because his rdsition had changed; the same opinions did not befit the young "nturer and the man of secure fame ; the conditions that
surrounded him were different, how could his opinions or desires remain the same P" Nee nothing uncommon in all this. For many prelates
of our own Reformed Church not so much good could be said. The difficulty of the position for the Roman con- troversialist is the enormous claims made for this man in his official position. He was the Vicar of Christ ; he was the infallible teacher of morals and religion ; and he had not a vestige of either one or the other. If Rome could only.bury her own history in oblivion, how difficult to assail would be her position, how overpowering her influence !
Another side of the absolute indifference with which spiritual realities had come to be regarded in the time that preceded the Reformation may be seen in the curious story of the Italian Bishops of Worcester. Our first impulse is to regard the presence of these prelates, three in number, who occupied an English See for forty years and never went near it, as an instance of Papal usurpation. Dr. Creighton points out that it was nothing of the kind. The King of England wanted an agent at the Roman Court, and he paid him by the revenues of a bishopric. In former days the Bishop of Worcester had been often wanted on the spot. He had to see after the security of the Welsh border. Now this was assured in another way, and the bishopric could be used for a different purpose. And as long as the episcopal functions were performed by duly qualified persons nobody seems to have been indignant. There was doubtless annoyance at the thought that so much good English money was going out of the country,—in one year Bishop Ghinucci cleared more than 210,000 (of our money), having spent in the diocese some- thing less than 1,000. There were qualified suffragans to confirm and ordain, but the function of the "Father in God," the man of counsel and comfort, was absolutely ignored. The Bishop's work was reduced to something purely mechanical.
It is pleasant to turn to such papers as describe the nobler side of the Renaissance time, to the account of "A School. master of the Renaissance" (Vittorino da Feltre), or of "A Learned Lady" (Olympia Fulvia Morata). Dr. Creighton found a special enjoyment in working at such subjects ; he had the literary instinct strongly, and thoroughly appreciated the occasional privilege of turning aside to such studies. We need hardly say that every paper in the volume is well worth reading; in every one we may find some significant obiter dicta. Dr. Creighton sometimes spoke out his mind with much plainness. The historians who would revive the cult of Henry VIII. must take into account his uncompro- mising description of what he calls Henry's "abominable heartlessness." The disputed question of the condition of the monasteries is fairly summed up by the remark that "the monks, as a body, were above the ordinary standard of morality, but they were not so far above it as to be a moral force in the community." Everywhere he shows the learning, the candour, the judicial temper that characterised him.
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