Flowers from Mediæval History

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Minnie D. Kellogg. Flowers from Mediæval History

Flowers from Mediæval History

Table of Contents

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By Way of Introduction

Flowers of History. From the Romantic Thirteenth. Century

Mystics as Builders

The Golden Madonna. of Rheims

The Little Old. Abbé of Saint Denis and the. Imagiers

The Mystic Cathedral of. Chartres

Caen: An Eleventh Century. Tableau

The. Grandniece of the Grand. Inquisitor

Stray Leaves From Old, Old Books

The. Romantic Twentieth Century: A Deduction

A Word Regarding. Bibliography

Index

Отрывок из книги

Minnie D. Kellogg

Published by Good Press, 2021

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Within the consecrated walls of the church was that ever-blessed privilege of the temple—Christian, Pagan, or Jewish—sanctuary, the right of the hunted. Of course it was abused, mercy expects to be; therein it is more divine than human; but in a lawless day sanctuary was an unconscious protest against lynching. We do read of accidents arising from it; a Christian Church at Seez was burned down in an attempt to dislodge a band of thieves, but this embarrassing circumstance reflects on the management of those who burned it rather than upon the church.

A complaint comes down to us from the Thirteenth Century of the would-be popular clergy who allowed their parishioners to dance in their churches and even assisted at these dances and at shows peu convenable given by jugglers and clowns, they themselves playing at chess, all of which goes to show that we must regard these immense churches as meeting houses in the literal sense of the term and allow for the coarseness of the age in considering its amusements. Among other buffooneries, at Laon particularly, which seems to have been very “low church,” we read of the annual fête des innocents, in which the choir boys dressed up as priests and went through various antics in the church, which was given up to them for the night, the chapter giving them a supper after. At Laon again there is public complaint of a change having been made in the hour of mass and vespers on account of a miracle play that was given in the church. Lovers of the drama may look leniently upon this arrangement, whereas I suppose the stricter churchmen, when the ecclesiastical supremacy came to be questioned, even in the bishop’s own church, both at Rheims and Laon, said, “I told you so.” By such concessions the clergy induced the citizens to go in with them in building[1] such churches that succeeding generations have called them mad.

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