Читать книгу Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising - Annie Nathan Meyer - Страница 4

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The following morning Thomas Goldynge, Bishop of Ely, lay in bed awaiting those to whom he had promised audience. It was with considerable curiosity that he awaited the young poor priest whom he had summoned. He sighed with relief as he realized that the hard fight which he had waged against Rome was ended. It was a contest over the best method of suppressing the poor priests, and it had taken many secret embassies to Rome, and many letters in cipher sent to trusted friends at the Papal Court. Indeed, it had looked at one time as if the Bishop himself, aged as he was, would have to undertake the long and tedious journey to the Holy City, for the Bishop looked upon this matter as one of vital importance to the Church. He agreed with the Papal Legate that the incendiary preaching of the poor priests must be stamped out, but he had some theories of his own as to this stamping-out process, and persecution bore no part in them. He, more than any other Churchman, realized that the English people needed careful handling. How was the Italian Legate to understand anything of the rage and indignation that were growing up in the hearts of the English against foreign subjection, against a Church that gave the best sees in the land to Italians who scarce deigned to make acquaintance with the very outsides of their churches? The substance of the people was being wrung from them to help the cause of their bitter enemies. The King of England had little or nothing left for his needs because the Church refused to give up one tittle of its moneys for the good of the realm. Goldynge was an Englishman, and he had struggled all his life to place Englishmen in English churches. He was against the new spirit of Nationalism, however, when it asserted itself against the most sacred prerogatives of the Church, for he could look far ahead and see that this spirit might become powerful enough to wreck the Church Universal and give birth in England to a Church that would forswear all allegiance to Rome. He was for doing all in his power to redress the wrongs of the people and keep the breach from widening, for Holy Church had about all the schisms it could well take care of for some time to come.

When Robert Annys was ushered in with head flung well back and every line in the lithe young body eloquent of a proud defiance, the Bishop raised himself on the pillow and looked long and eagerly into his face. Therein he read all that he had counted to find. In the deep-set eyes, the high, narrow brow, the sensitive mouth, the delicately chiselled chin, there were revealed to the shrewd old prelate the enthusiastic temperament of a reformer, the idealism of a poet, the puissant desire to work, to change, to remake. And also, and therein lay his secret satisfaction, he read the fine acumen of a critic. A dangerous quality that, which was certain to make war upon the other qualities that struggled in his breast. Here was before him no blunt fanatic like John Ball, flying as unswervingly to his goal as the arrow shot from the bow, but one with the discerning mind that weighs, discriminates, and looks far enough ahead to see its own heart-break at the end.

"You sent for me?" although the tone was defiant, it was less so than Annys had intended it. Somehow he found it hard to be arrogant to this gentle old man whose flowing locks looked whiter than ever against the deep red of the bed-curtains. Only a beautiful old man upon his couch, looking at him with dim kindly eyes and a mouth that smiled. Far rather would he have faced a haughty prelate in rustling robes—that would have roused him and strengthened him in his hatred of all for which a Bishop stood.

"Yes," replied the old man, very gently, "I have sent for thee, for I have heard much of this russet priest who sways great bodies of men as they hearken to him, even as row upon row of corn is swayed by the wind that blows across the fields. I wished to see him and hold converse with him."

"Why should I come here before you that you may look upon me? I owe no allegiance to the Bishop of Ely. I serve him not, I serve only my master, John Wyclif."

"And our Master, Jesus Christ?" mildly interposed the Bishop.

"Yea, I serve my Master, Jesus Christ," asserted the poor priest, "but"—he was annoyed to find that the words in his heart did not rise so easily to his tongue as he would have them do. He felt the old man's eyes gravely fixed upon him.

"But?" he suggested with sedate politeness—"but?"

The young man reddened with discomfiture, but remained silent.

"I beg of you to go on," said the Bishop, suavely; "we are quite alone. I have sent for you to understand what is in your heart, and I would that you open it to me without fear."

The word stung the poor priest as the older man knew it would.

"Fear? I have no fear. What should I fear? I would say that one cannot serve two masters at one time, the one Christ, the other Antichrist. I do not see that one can bear at one and the same time the pectoral cross and the cross of Christ Jesus."

It was now the Bishop's turn to redden, but he only bit his lip for an instant and then smiled frankly. "I understand," he said, "I have heard somewhat of this kind of thing before. You poor priests claim that Christ founded no cathedrals, and that He worked with fishermen instead of Bishops. I know ye would like to see the palaces of Bishops razed to the ground that bread might be placed between the lips of the hungry, the gold of the altars melted that it might run into the purse of the poor. As your poet hath it,

"'Let Bishops' horses become beggars' chambers.

Is that not it?"

His listener folded his arms tightly over his breast and nodded for answer.

"Ah, yes; ah, yes," continued the Bishop, musingly, "do I not know? Was I not even as thou in my youthful days? But I am an old man now, and many things lie bathed in the clear white light of knowledge that then lay darkly shrouded in mystery. My dear son, you are only one of many who fix their eyes on what should have been, instead of on what really was. Ye bury your faces within the pages of the Bible, and if ye look up once to see what is going on about you, it is only to contrast with impatience the teaching and example of the Church Visible with the teaching and example of Christ and His disciples. Ye are willing to look on the Church as it now is, and God knows there are faults and crimes enough to excuse some of your impatience, but ye refuse to look at the history of the Church, and at the magnificent service it has rendered in the cause of humanity. Ye refuse to consider gravely and seriously the work that it has accomplished, and to ask yourselves if any other human agency could have done a tenth as well. You critics are as men who have been saved by a bridge from a wild and devastating stream, and now once safely crossed, ye kneel down—not to thank God Almighty for having saved you, but to detect the flaws in the bridge."

Annys could not but be moved by the eloquence of the old man. He began to understand something of the great power which had been wielded from the throne of Ely. Yet he waited not with his answer, "Christianity is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to Christ as St. Francis did before me."

"Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?"

Annys remained silent.

"The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one Rule," went on the Bishop. "Why think you it was that the wolves of the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others. It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan, Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours, Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great when he placed the diadem of the Cæsars on the Frankish Emperor's brow; yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow that would have shattered the sword."

"Ah, but how much finer had the Church of Christ been built up even as Solomon would have had it, if it could have truly been said of the Head of the Church:—

"'He shall not put his trust in horse or rider, and bow, nor shall he multiply unto himself gold and silver for war, for he shall smite the earth with the word of his mouth.'"

"A beautiful dream, no more, my son. Take the Crusades; how easy is it for critics to aver that an intriguing Pope started them to increase his own glory and gratify his sense of power. Yet hast ever thought whether the peoples of Europe would not have fallen upon and destroyed one another but for the wise craft of a leader who united them by finding a common enemy? Now do not misunderstand me; no one more than I realizes the awful sins of the Schismatic Popes, the terrible greed of some of the powerful Churchmen, their criminal neglect of their charges; no one realizes more that the people have wrongs that should be righted. But I am sure it is for the good of the people that these wrongs be righted from within the Church. The people have no better friend than the Church. It has been the one Institution which has sought out the individual, and asked of him only what service he could render it. In its bosom it has held the divine spark of the equality of man, and kept it there and protected it while the world was not yet ready for it. It has nourished it until it will be a flame great enough to light the torch of Freedom.

"We agree, save that you think the world is ripe for that spark, and I know that it is not; loosed now, it will but scorch and sear; it is not ready to illumine."

Annys had listened with profound earnestness to the impetuous words of the great prelate; before he could respond, the speaker continued, with a great light of enthusiasm in his face:—

"Think on the refrain which you know well. Con it when you are tempted to think that the Church has done naught for the people:—

"'Had they (the priests) been out of religion,

They must have hanged at the plowe.

Threshing and diking fro towne to towne,

With sorrie meat, and not halfe ynowe.'

"What can that mean, save that the Church hath taken up into its bosom the men who otherwise had no career save the plough? True, the time has come when the Church once again needs to be drawn nearer to the people—the people who all yearn for it and need it. Do not lead the people away from it, lest in the end you destroy their faith and undo them. The Church needs just such workers as thou; come to us and work with us. Stand no longer without!"

At this appeal, the young poor priest suddenly roused himself.

"What? stand no longer without! work with you! with a Church whose head hath launched bull after bull against my master and his teachings? Come within a Church that sets the ruling of a man above the words of Holy Writ? The chief article of my creed is that the Gospel suffices for the salvation of Christians without the keeping of ceremonials and statutes that have been made by sinful and unknowing men. What work has Holy Church for me? Surely there are others who can mouth more glibly than I the words of the Mass, and who are more deeply versed in the labyrinths of canonical lore."

"What canst thou?" replied the Bishop, warmly, "everything! Once within the Church, thou canst raise the authority of the Scriptures, beat down the vicious barriers that exist between the people and the prelates. Remember, one blow from within counts for ten from without. Come within, and help me in my fight against foreigners who care naught for the people who are their charge, foreigners who never deign to approach these shores, save perchance to count the moneys that are yielded from their sees." Then with a swift change his voice softened, and there was a pathetic appeal in it. "I have fought hard for more than thirty years," he pleaded. "I am worn in body and spirit; if I die to-morrow without providing for a successor, doubtless all that I have accomplished will be as naught. The old conditions in this diocese will arise again. There are many priests and abbots—ay! and some higher than they—who will click their heels gleefully over my grave. Come to Ely and be its Archdeacon. I—nay!—the Church of Christ has need of thee. Come!"

The poor priest was astounded. How could this be that the archdeaconate of Ely should be offered to a poor priest, one of Wyclif's band, so distrusted and hated by Rome?

"You, the Bishop of Ely, you offer me this? It is no jest?"

The Bishop smiled. "Well, I do not mind confessing that it was no easy matter to bring about. Yet why should we go on permitting you to take people away from the Church? I am persuaded that the people need the Church as much as the Church needs the people. They have your confidence; I want you to bring them back to the altar."

"But, Father, the instant I doff this russet gown and don the albe and stole, that instant the people's confidence in me is gone."

"I cannot believe it has gone so far as that."

"Yea, I say it. It is too late to try to drag the people back. They have grown weary of having fat and lazy priests prate to them, with white hand on full belly, of patience and humility and duty to their overlords. Why do the people believe in me? Why do they follow me? Because they wot well that my meals are as uncertain as their own, that my face is roughened by the same wind that roughens theirs. Because I can look into their faces and say, 'I too have a-hungered, I too have a-thirsted, I too have sweated in the fields.'"

The Bishop looked very old and tired. A sob rose suddenly in the poor priest's throat. To his own surprise, suddenly he flung himself upon his knees before the couch.

"Little thought I, Father, when I came here with defiance and distrust in my heart, that I would fling myself on my knees before you; yet it is true that I feel it as a great personal sorrow that I cannot both stay with you and also answer the call of my master. But I cannot desert my people. Where they turn up the soil, where they guide the plough, where their tired backs bend, where the wind and the hail beat down upon them in the fields, there is my place, and there I must go."

The Bishop's sensitive face quivered with emotion. He remained silent an instant and then looked up into the young man's face. "Wilt promise me one thing?"

"If I can, Father."

"Wilt preach the sermon in the Cathedral next Sunday?"

Annys hesitated an instant before he replied. "Only to give the sermon," he stipulated.

"I shall celebrate the Mass myself. I would like you to give the sermon just as you are. There will be a goodly number of people, and it is my whim that you should be heard once from the pulpit. It will come with a new authority. Besides," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "I should like to have some of our priests hear it. It might not be a bad thing for the Nuncio himself."

And thus, before he departed, Robert Annys had given his promise to deliver the sermon on the following Sunday at Ely.

The Bishop did not yet acknowledge himself defeated. Well he knew the magnetism of the wonderful old church. Well he knew that men did not preach before three thousand souls in Ely Minster and then lightly step forth on their way again.