Читать книгу Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising - Annie Nathan Meyer - Страница 3

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The great Minster of the Fens never looked lovelier than at the close of a November day, 1379. The coloring of Fenland is not attuned to the brightness of Spring or Summer, but there is in the late Autumn a subtle quality that brings out its true charm. The dull browns and yellows of the marshes, the warm red-browns of the rushes, the pale greens of the swamp grasses with the glint of the sun low down at their feet,—all on this day found just the right complement in the great, heavy, gray clouds that broke here and there only to show irregular bars of saffron sky. Just before night fell there was one supreme moment when a patch of gold lingered in the north just over the wonderful octagon, the glorious crown of St. Audrey, and the great west front with its noble tower and its wealth of windows flung the orange gleam of the setting sun over the landscape as a gauntlet proudly thrown in the face of Night. The lordly outlines of the vast edifice looked lordlier than ever as the slowly gathering darkness descended and drew it up into itself.

The east wind blowing from over the sea, pungent with the odor of marsh plants, was keen, and caused a man who was surveying the scene to gather his thin gown more closely about him. Until he stirred, this man might almost have been taken for a part of the landscape, so admirably did his garb of coarse russet sacking harmonize with his surroundings. Although he shivered slightly, he did not move from his position, but remained with arms tightly folded on his breast, and his deep-set eyes fixed earnestly upon the solemn pile before him. A solitary figure he stood in the vast stretch of sky and land, and he felt himself peculiarly alone. Yet as he faced the Cathedral there was no sign of faltering or dread in his face, but rather a distinct note of defiance.

Not long before, the stately procession of priests had departed from the Vesper service. A choir boy of angelic countenance, but impish spirit, had for an instant trailed his violet robe in the dust and flung the stone he picked up straight at the russet form. Not a priest in line but envied the boy. Outwardly, the russet priest showed no sign. He thought of St. Francis who had been stoned by the very ones who later placed those stones under his direction. Also he thought of the stoning of One greater than St. Francis.

One year before, at Oxford, Robert Annys had bidden farewell to his beloved master, John Wyclif, and had become one of his noble band of poor priests,—or russet priests, as they were familiarly dubbed,—who went about the country, preaching the Gospel and teaching the people how to read, that they might bring Holy Writ more closely into their lives. As a student, he had passed many happy years by the side of his great master at Balliol, translating the Bible into the language of the people so that they might come to know God and love God by themselves without the shadow of the priestly office ever between. Nevertheless, although he had been well content to pass all his life in that beautiful manner, when the time came that his master ordered him out into the world, he went without a murmur and bravely, empty handed, with no more thought of the morrow than had the twelve whom Christ had bidden:—

"Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor wallet, nor bread, nor money; neither have two coats."

Since then he had lived close to the people, he had been of the people. He had come to them, not with the crumbs from the Communion table but with the strong bread of life. He had preached the Gospel in the fields while the heat rose in palpitating waves, and on the downs while the hail beat on his bare head; he had prayed over them while the shears dripped white from the sheep of their overlord; he had hungered with them and thirsted with them and shared such coarse food as they had; he had watched with them as some worn soul departed from its worn body. His way had led to no sumptuous oratories of towered castles, to no cushioned prie-dieux in scented chambers. He had shrived, not grand seigneurs and haughty dames whose momentary comfort had been disturbed by the pricking of a superficial regret, but strong, simple souls who trembled from the sway of tremendous feeling—men who thirsted for the blood of their child's betrayer, victims who raged at infamous injustice and brooded over desperate means to escape their thraldom. No lightly felt peccadilloes were confessed to him, but the agony and shame of those whose tortured souls hung betwixt heaven and hell.

And he had grown to love this life. He had thought to have a peculiar aptitude for letters, and his master had never altered translation wrought by him. Yet he knew now that his gift lay rather in swaying men, and one short year had done much to make his name known from Sussex to Lincolnshire. No wonder, then, that he had joy in his work, for it is not given to man to know greater happiness than this: to watch the face of a fellow-man kindle with a new and great hope, which he knows he has planted within the other's breast. Yet deep down within there had been slowly growing in his heart a secret questioning. He had been warned by his master to hold himself strictly to the work of spreading the knowledge of the Gospel, and he had been clearly enjoined against undoing the peace of the realm and setting serfs against their masters, as a certain mad priest named John Ball was even at that moment doing, both by the reckless violence of his language and the revolutionary quality of his theories. It was easy for Wyclif in the shelter of the University to warn against over-haste and to protest that education must come before a lasting reform could be accomplished, and that one must build on solid foundations for the future. It was not so easy for the wandering poor priest, with the sufferings of the people ever before him, to refrain from pressing the Gospel into immediate action. Annys began very soon to suspect that it was impossible to feed the people with the knowledge of Holy Writ and expect no indigestion to come from the strange diet. If Life truly began to be tested by Holy Writ, some idols must fall—if the Church Hierarchical, alas for it! If Christian society were to be modelled on the plain teachings of its Founder, some strange sights would be seen.

Annys had not needed to be stoned to feel rise up within him a fierce hatred toward that stately church that reared its head so haughtily to heaven. Ah, truly he held with St. Boniface of old that "in the catacombs the candlesticks were of wood, but the priests were golden. Now the candlesticks are of gold."

That morning, when he preached to the men in the fields and told them in homely language of the life of their Lord and His death to save them, a summons had come from the Bishop of Ely bidding Robert Annys appear before him. And, wondering what the Bishop could want of him (unless to order him peremptorily from his diocese, in which case it was scarcely necessary to do so in person), he had had himself rowed over the wide-spreading meres that separated the isle of Ely from the mainland. As he slowly approached the glorious pile, there came over him with a curious stir the memory of that King Canute who had also been thus rowed across and who had bade the oarsmen pause midway that he might listen to the beautiful chanting of the monks.

Truth to tell, for all his passionate disdain for what lay outside of the true heart of Christianity, he was more profoundly moved by the beauty of Ely Minster than he would have dreamed it possible. For he was an ardent student of history, and here before him was wrought as true and noble an epic as ever was writ on parchment. Into these noble arches and soaring towers, these delicate pinnacles, these exquisite traceries, surely the adoring heart of Mediævalism had lavishly poured itself. This russet priest was an artist and worshipped beauty, hence he could not look on Ely unmoved. He was an Englishman to the fingertips, hence he could not stand on ground so alive with heroic traditions and not thrill to the memory of them. As he stood there in the gathering darkness before the church, he saw a long struggle before him. He saw the Bishop of Ely and the whole powerful Church of Rome leagued against him. And why? Because he followed Christ's clear mandates. Yet he was certain that nothing that the Hierarchy could do would conquer him. He would stand to the end, alone if need be, but fearlessly true to his convictions, true to the master who had sent him out into the world to do His work. Something of the grim determination of those Saxons of old entered into him, those hardy warriors who had fought so many hundred years before on that very spot and made their last dogged stand against the conquering Normans; something, too, of the undaunted will of that old monk-architect, who, even amid the roar of the falling walls of the old tower of Ely, had conceived the great new tower, the wonderful octagon which was unique in all England.

No! no threat of imprisonment or other punishment on the morrow could make him swerve from the course he had chosen. He would continue to go among his people with only a book and a bag. His people who awaited him among the hayricks, who let plough rest idle in the furrow or tossed aside the spade that they might hearken to him. His people! His eyes dimmed with tears as he thought of the pathetic figure of Piers Ploughman standing in the fields, the light of a great wonder in his face,—Piers in the condition of a man who has had his eyes bandaged for a long time, and now for the first time has had the bandage removed. In the strange light that now bursts upon him the most familiar objects take on a new and strange appearance. In the transformation that is going on about him, all that his honest heart has held stable, omnipotent, eternal, now sways unsteadily before him: Feudal Lords, Sheriffs, King's men and Kings; Fees in Tithe, Manorial Holdings, Rights of Labor, Acts of Parliament, and even Holy Church herself. No, no, come what may, he could never desert Piers now:—

"One side is ...

Popes, cardinals, and prelates,

Priours, abbots of great estates.

The other side ben poor and pale;

And seeme caitives sore a-cale."

The night closed slowly down upon the Cathedral. At last its great mass was felt rather than seen.

"Thy strength against mine," the poor priest murmured, as he lingered yet an instant.

"Thy strength against mine."