The particular forms assumed by these corruptions depended
on the conditions of mediaeval life and the position in it
occupied by monks.
It has already been said that the standard of conduct for
the secular clergy was the same in prindple as that for
monks, though with allowance made for the stress of a life of
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488 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m
service in the cure of souls.^ But always the cloister and the
hermitage were looked upon as the abiding-places where one
stood the best chance to save one's soul : the life of the lay-
man — merchant, usurer, knight— was fraught with instant
peril ; that of the secular clergy was also perilous, especially
when they held high office. Dread of ecclesiastical pre-
ferment might be well founded; the reluctance to be a
bishop was often real. This sentiment, like all feelings in
the Middle Ages, took the form of a story, with the usual
vision to certify the moral of the tale :
"It is told of a certain prior of Clairvaux, Geoffrey by name,
that when he had been elected Bishop of Toumai, and Pope
Eugene as well as the blessed Bernard, his own abbot, was urging
him to take the office, he cast himself down at the feet of the
blessed Bernard and his clergy, and lay prone in the form of a
cross, and said: *An expelled monk I may be, if you drive me
out; but I will never be a bishop.' At a later time, as this same
prior lay breathing his last, a monk who loved him well adjined
him in the name of God to bring him news of his state beyond the
grave, if God would permit it. Some time after, as the monk was
praying prostrate before the altar, his friend appeared and said
that it was he. When the monk asked him how he was faring,
'Well,' he replied, 'by the grace of God. Yet verily it has been
revealed to me by the blessed Trinity, that had I been in the
number of bishops I should have been in the number of the repro-
bate and danmed.' " *
Through the Middle Ages, Church dignities ever3rwhere
were secularized through the vast possessions and corre-
sponding responsibilities attaching to them. The clerical
situation varied in different lands, yet with a like result.
The Italian clergy were secularized through participation in
civic and papal business, the German through their estates
and principalities. In France clerical secularization was
most typically mediaeval, because there the functions and
fortunes of the higher clergy were most inextricably involved
> It is quite true that in the earliest Christian times the marriage of priests was
recognized, and continued to be at least connived at until, say, the time of Hildebrand.
Yet the best thoughtfulness and piety from the Patristic period onward had disap-
proved of priestly marriages, which consequently tended to sink to the level of con-
cubinage, until they were^absolutely condemned by the Church.
* Anecdotes, etc., d'Elienne de Bourbon, ed. by Lecoy de la Marche, p. 249
(Soc. de I'Histoire de France, t. 185, Paris, 1877). This story refers to the yean
1166-1171.
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CHAP. XXI THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY 489
in feudalism. Monasteries and bishoprics were as feudal
fiefs: abbots as well as bishops commonly held lands from
an over-lord, and were themselves lords of their sub-vassals
who held lands from them. To the former they owed rent,
or aid, or service; to the latter they owed protection. In
either case they might have to go or send their men to war.
They also managed and guarded their own lands, like feudal
nobles, vi et armis. When the estates of a monastery, for
example, lay in different places, the abbot might exercise
authority over them through a local potentate, and might
also have such a protector {vtdame, avoui, advocatus) for
the home abbey. There was also a general feeling, often
embodied in law or custom, that a Church dignitary should
fight by another's sword and spear. But this did not
prevent bishop and abbot in countless instances in France,
England, Germany, and Spain, from riding mail-clad under
their seignorial banner at the head of their forces.^
Episcopal lands and offices were not inherited : * yet with
rare exceptions the bishops came from the noble, fighting,
hunting class. They were noblemen first and ecclesiastics
afterwards. The same was true of the abbots. Nobly bom,
they became dignitaries of the world through investiture with
the broad lands of the monastery, and then administrators
by reason of the temporal functions involved. As with the
episcopal or monastic heads, so with canons and monks.
They, too, for the most part were well-bom. They also were
good, bad, or indifferent, warlike or clerkly, devoted to study,
abandoned to pleasure, or following the one and the other
sparingly. Many a holy meditative monk there was;
and many a saintly parish priest, the stay of piety and
justice in his village. The rude times, the ceaseless murder
and hanying, uncertainty and danger everywhere, seemed to
beget such holy lives.
> Many bishops and abbots held definite secular rank ; the Archbishop of Rheims
was a duke, and so was the Bishop of Langres and Laon ; while the bishops of Beauvais
and Noyon were counts. In Germany, the archiepiacopal dukes of Cologne and Mains
were among the chief princes of the land.
* There were, however, some (naturally shocking) instances of inheritance,
as where the Bishop of Nantes in 1049 admitted that he had been invested with the
bishopric during the lifetime of his father, the preceding bishop. See Luchaire, in
vol. ii. (3), pp. X07-117 of Lavisse's Eist, de France^ for this and other examples of
episcopal feudalism.
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490 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m
Invectives, satires, histories, and records, bear witness to
the state of the clergy. All diatribes are to be taken with
allowance. Whoever, for example, reads Peter Damiani's
Liber Gamorrhianus against the foulness of the clergy, must
bear in mind the writer's fiercely ascetic temper, the warfare
which the stricter element in the Church was then waging
against simony and priestly concubinage, and the monkish
phraseology so common to ecclesiastical indictment of
frivolity and vice.
One cannot quote comfortably from the Gomorrkianus,
St. Bernard furnishes more decorous denunciation :
"Woe unto this generation, for its leaven of the Pharisees
which is h)^crisy! — if that should be called h)^crisy which
cannot be hidden because of its abundance, and through im-
pudence does not seek to hide! To-day, foul rottenness crawls
through the whole body of the Church. If a heretic foe should
arise openly, he would be cast out and withered ; or if the enemy
raged madly, the Church might hide herself from him. But
now whom shall she cast out, or from whom hide herself? All
are friends and all are foes; all necessary and all adverse; aU
of her own household and none pacific; all are her neighbours
and all seek their own interest. Ministers of Christ, they serve
Antichrist. They go clothed in the good things of the Lord and
render Him no honour. Hence that ickU of the courtesan which
you daily see, that theatric garb, that regal state. Hence the
gold-trapped reins and saddles and spurs — for the spurs shine
brighter than the altars. Hence the splendid tables laden with
food and goblets ; hence the feastings and drunkenness, the
guitars, the lyres and the flutes; hence the swollen wine-presses
and the storehouses heaped and nmning over from this one into
that, and the jars of periiunes, and the stuffed piurses. Tis for
such matters that they wish to be and are the over-seers of
churches, deacons, archdeacons, bishops, and archbishops. For
neither do these offices come by merit, but through that sort of
business which walketh in darkness !" ^
Such rhetoric gives glimpses of the times, but also springs
from that temper which is always crying kora ncvissima^
1 Sermo in CanUca, 33* Pta. 25 (Migne 183, col. 95S-959). With this passage
from St. Bernard, one may compare the far more detailed picture of the luxury and
dissolute ways of the secular clergy in France given in the ^4 polcgia of Guide of Bawoches
(latter part of the twelfth century). W. Wattenbach, "Die Apologie des Guido von
Bazoches/' SiiMungsberickte Preussicktn Akad,, 1893 (x), pp. 395-490.
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CHAP. XH THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY 491
tempera pessima. Invectives of this nature have their deepest
sources in the religious sense of the ineradicable opposition
between this world and the kingdom of heaven. Yet luxury
did in fact pervade the Church of Bernard's time, and simony
was as wide as western Europe. This crime was the off-
spring of the entire social state ; it was part and parcel of
the feudal system and the whole matter of lay investitures.
One sees that simony was no extraneous stain to be washed
off from the body ecclesiastic, but rather an element of its
actual constitution. The eradication had to come through
social and ecclesiastical evolution, rather than spasmodic
reformation.
One may turn from the invectives of the great saint to
forms of satire more frankly literary. The Latin poems
"commonly attributed to Walter Mapes"* satirize with
biting ridicule, through the mouth of "Bishop Golias," the
avarice and venality, the gluttony and lubricity of the
Church, secular and monastic. In a quite different kind of
poem the satire directs itself against the rapacity of Rome.
She, head of the Church and Caput Mundi, is shown to be
like Scylla and Charybdis and the Sirens.* These powerful
verses anticipate the denunciation of the Roman papacy
by the good Germans, Walther von der Vogelweide and
Freidank,' and, a century later, in the Vision of Piers
Ploughman.
In this outcry against papal rapacity France was not
silent. Most extreme is the "Bible" of Guiot de Provens:
it satirizes the entire age, "sifecle puant et orrible." As it
turns toward the papacy it cries :
''Ha! Rome, Rome,
Encor odras tu maint home I"
The cardinals are stufffed with avarice and simony and evil
living; without faith or religion, they sell God and His
Mother, and betray us and their fathers. Rome sucks and
devours us; Rome kills and destroys all. Guiot's voice is
raised against the entire Church ; neither the monks nor the
seculars escape — ^bishops, priests, canons, the black monks
> Ed. by T. Wright (Camden Society, London, 1841).
* The poem called De rmna Romae, It begins, "Propter Syon non tacebo."
' Post, Chapter ^bCVn.
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492 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m
and the white, Templars and Hoq>itallers, nuns and abbesses,
aU bad.'
One might extend indefinitely the list of these invectives,
which, like the corruptions denounced by them, were common
to all mediaeval centuries. From the testimony of more
definite accounts one perceives the rudeness and cruelty of
mediaeval life, in which the Church likewise was involved.
In order to rise, it had to lift the social fabric. To this end
many of its children struggled nobly, devoting themselves
and sometimes yielding up their lives for the betterment of
the society in which their lots were cast.
One of these capable children of the Church who did his
duty in the high ecclesiastical station to which he was called
was Eude Rigaud, or Odo Rigaldus, Archbishop of Rouen
from 1248 to 1275, the year of his death. He was a scion
of a noble house whose fiefs lay in the neighbourhood of
Brie-Comte-Robert (Seine-et-Mame). In 1236 he joined
the Franciscans, and then studied at Paris under Alexander
of Hales, one of the Order's great theologians. His first
fame came from his preaching. As archbishop, he was a
reformer, and abetted the endeavours of Pope Gregory DC.
He was also a counsellor of Saint Louis, and followed him
upon that last crusade from which the king did not return
alive.*
The good archbishop was a man of method, and kept a
record of his official acts. This moniunental document
exists, the Register of Rigaud's visitations among the monks
and secular clergy within his wide jurisdiction, between the
years 1248 and 1269.' Consisting of entries made at the
time, it is a mirror of actual conditions, presiunably similar
to those existing in other parts of France. Rigaud visited
many monasteries and parishes where he found nothing to
reform, and merely made a memorandiun of having been
iThe "Bible'' of Guiot is published in BariMan's Pabliamx, t. ii. (Puis,
x8o8). It is conveniently given with other satirical or moralizing compositiotts in
Ch.-V. Langlois, La Vie em Prance au mayen dge d'apris qmeiqties maraUsies dm tem^
(Paris. 1908).
* Salimbene gives an amiwing picture of our worthy Rigaud hurriring to catch
sight of the king at a Franciscan Chapter. Post, Chapter XXn.
* Regestrum visUaii^num arckiepiscepi Rolkamagensit, ed. Bonnin (Rouen, XS52).
It is analysed by L. V. DeHsle, in an article entitled "Le Clerg6 normand" {BU. de
Viade des Chartes, and ser. vol. iii.).
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CHAP. XXI THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY 493
there ; wherever abuses were found, the entry elands to a
statement of them and the measures taken for their remedy.
Consequently one may not infer that the blameworthy or
abominable conditions recorded in the particular instance
obtained xmiversally in Normandy. Occasionally Rigaud
records in more detail the good condition of some monastery.
A few instructive extracts may be given.
"Calends of October (1248). We were again at Ouville
(Ovilla). We found that the prior wanders about when he ought
to stay in the cloister ; he is not in the cloister one day in five.
Item, he is a drunkard, and of such vile drunkenness that he
sometimes lies out in the fields because of it. Item, he frequents
feasts and drinking-bouts with laymen. Item, he is incontinent,
and is accused in respect to a certain woman of Grainville, and
also with the wife of Robertot, and also with a woman of Rouen
named Agnes. Item, brother Geoffrey was publicly accused with
respect to the wife of Walter of Esquaquelon who recently had
a child from him. Item, they do not keep proper accounts of their
revenues. We ordered that they should keep better accounts." ^
Such an entry needs no comment. But it is illuminat-
ing to observe the strictness or leniency with which Rigaud
treats offences. Doubtless he was guided by what he thought
he could enforce.
Apparently near the Ouville priory, the archbishop was
scandalized by the priest of St. Vedasti de Depedale, who
was convicted of taking part in the rough ball-play, common
in Normandy, in which game, as might easily happen, he
had injured some one. '^He took oath before us that if
again convicted he would hold himself to have resigned from
his Church." * Rigaud did not approve of these somewhat
too merry games for his parish priests, who were not angels.
The archbishop finds of the priest of Lortiey "that he but
rarely wears his capa, that he does not confess to the peni-
kntiarius, that he is gravely accused concerning two women,
by whom he has had many children, and he is drunken." '
Rigaud enters the cases of other parish priests as follows :
"We found that the priest of Nigella was accused as to a
woman, and of being engaged in trade and of treating his father
despitefully, who is patron of the church which he holds, and that
> Rtg. vis.p,9. « R.V. p. 10. » R.V, p. x8.
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494 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m
with drawn sword he fought with a certain knight, with a riotous
following of relatives and friends. Item, the priest of Basinval is
accused as to a woman whom he takes about with him to the
market-places and taverns. Likewise the priest of Vieux-Rouen is
accused of incontinency, and goes about wearing a sword in
shameless garb. Likewise the priest of Coti^es is a dicer and
plays at quoits and frequents taverns, and is incontinent, and
although corrected as to Uiese matters, perseveres." ^
Sometimes accusations were brought to the archbishop
by the suffering parishioners :
"Calends of August (1255). Passing through the village of
Brai, the pari3hioners of the church there accused the rector of
the church in our presence. They said that he went about in the
night through the village with arms, that he was quarrelsome and
scurrilous and abusive to his parishioners, and was incontinent."
Summoning this priest before his ecclesiastical tribiinal,
the archbishop says, "We admonished him to abstain from
such ill-conduct; or that otherwise we should proceed
against him." '
Either this priest or another of "Brayo subtus Baude-
mont," named Walter, was subsequently deprived of his
priesthood on his own confession as follows :
"He confessed that the accusation against him concerning a
woman of his parish, which he had denied under oath, was sup-
ported by truth ; item, he confessed in regard to a waxen image
made to be used in divining; he confessed [various other incon-
tinendes and his fatherhood of various children] ; item, he con-
fessed his ill-repute for usury and base gain; he admitted that
he had led the dances at the nuptials of a certain prostitute whom
he had married." •
Rigaud continually records accusations against parish
priests, commonly for incontinency and drunk^mess and
generally unbecoming conduct, and sometimes for homicide.^
But his own examinations kept out many a turbulent and
ignorant clerk, presented by the lay patron for the benefice ;
and so he prevented improper inductions as he mi^t. The
Register gives a number of instances of crass illiteracy in
these candidates, a matter to cause no surprise, for the
> R.V. pp. 19-ao. • R-V. p. aaa.
'X.K.p.579. «£.K.p.iS4.
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CHAP. XH THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY 495
feudal patrons of the living naturally presented their
relatives. Some of these candidates appealed to Rome
from the archbishop's refusal, probably without success.^
A monk might be as bad as any parish priest :
''Brother Thomas . . . wore gold rings. He went about in
armour, by night, and without any monastic habit, and kept bad
company. He wounded many clergy and laity at night, and was
himself wounded, losing a thumb. We commanded the abbot to
expel him ; or that otherwise we should seize the place and expel
the monks." ^
Life in a niumery was the feminine counterpart of life
in a monastery. There were good and bad nunneries, and
nims good and bad, serious and frivolous. Many had the
foibles, and were addicted to the diversions, comforts, or
fancies of their sex; they were always wanting to keep
dogs and birds, and have locks to their chests !
"Nones of May (1250). We visited the Benedictine convent
of nuns of St. Sauveur at Evreux. There were sixty-one nuns
there. Sometimes they drank, not in the refectory or infirmary,
but in their chambers. They kept little dogs, squirrels, and birds.
We ordered that all such things be removed. They do not observe
the regula. They eat flesh needlessly. They have locked chests.
We directed the abbess to inspect their chests often and imex-
pectedly, or to take off the locks. We directed the abbess to take
away their girdles ornamented with ironwork and their fancy
pouches, and the silk cushions they were working." '
Again, the picture is more terrible :
"Nones of July (1249). We visited the priory of Villa Arcelli.
Thirty-three nuns are there and three lay sisters. They confess
and communicate six times a year. Only four of the nuns have
taken the vows according to the regula. Many of them had cloaks
of rabbit-fur, or made from the fur of hares and foxes. In the
infirmary they eat flesh needlessly. Silence is not observed ; nor
do they keep within the cloister. Johanna of Aululari once went
out and lived with some one, by whom she had a child; and
sometimes she goes out to see that child: she is also suq)ected
with a certain man named Gaillard. Isabella la Treiche (?) is
a fault-finder, murmuring against the prioress and others. The
stewardess is suspected with a man named Philip de Vilarceau.
» Sec e.g. R.V. pp. 159, i6a, 395-396. « i?.F. p. 109. » RJ^. p. 73.
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496 THE MEDIAEVAL MIND book m
The prioress is too remiss; she does not rq>rove. Johanna de
Alto Villari kept going out alone with a man named Gayllard, and
within a year had a child by him. The subprioress is su^)ected
with Thomas the carter ; Idonia, her sister, with Crispinatus ; and
the Prior of Gisorcium is always coming to the house for Idonia.
Philippa of Rouen is suspected with a priest of Suentre, of the
diocese of Chartres ; Marguarita, the treasuress, with Ridiard de
Genville, a clerk. Agnes de Fontenei, with a priest of Guerrevile,
diocese of Chartres. The Tooliere ( ?) with Sir Andrew de Mondac,
a knight. All wear their hair improperly and perfume their veils.
Jacqueline came back pregnant from visiting a certain chaplain,
who was expelled from his house on account of this. Agnes de
Monsec was suspected with the same. Emengarde and Johanna
of Alto Villari beat each other. The prioress is drunk almost
any night ; she does not rise for matins, nor eat in the refectory
or correct excesses."
The archbishop thereupon issues an order, regulating
this extraordinary convent, and prescribing a better way of
living. He threatens to lay a heavier hand on them if they
do not obey.* This was what a loosely regulated nunnery
might come to. We dose with the sketch of a good
monastery which had an evil abbot :
"Nones of August (1258). Through God's grace we visited
the monastery of Jumi^ges. Forty-three monks were there, and
twenty-one outside. All of these who dwelt there, except eleven,
were priests {sacerdotes). We found, by God's grace, the convent
well-ordered in its services and observances, yet greatly troubled
by what was said of the abbot within and widiout its walls. For
opinion was sinister regarding him, and there, in full cluster,
brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of the monastery, lei^ping up,
made shameful charges against him. And he read the following
schedule: I, brother Peter of Neubourg, a monk of Jumi^ges,
in my name and in the name of the monastery and for the benefit
of the monastery, bring before you, Reverend Father, Archbishop
of Rouen, for an accusation against Richard, Abbot of Jtuni^ges,
that he is a forger (Jalsarius) because he wrote or caused to be
written certain letters in the name of our convent, falsely allying
our approval of them although we were absent and ignorant ; and
secretly by night he sealed them with the convent's seal. . . ."
The letters related to an important controversy in which
the monastery was involved. Monk Peter offers to prove
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CHAP. XXI THE SPOTTED ACTUALITY 497
his case. A day is set for the hearing. But, instead, the
very next day, in order to avoid scandal, the archbishop
called the abbot before him and his counsellors ; and
"We admonished him especially regarding the following matters:
To wit : that he should not keep dogs and birds of chase ; that
he should send strolling players away from his premises ; that he
should abstain from extravagant expenses; that he should not eat
in his own chamber; thut he should keep from consorting with
women altogether; that he should order his household decently;
that he should lease out the farms as well'as might be; that he
should not burden the monks unduly; that he should be more
in the convent with them, and bear himself more soberly. He
made promises ia the presence of all and took oath upon holy
relics that if he failed to obey our admonition he should be held
to do whatever we should decree in the premises." ^
Rigaud seems to have been lenient here, but may have known
the wisest course to take.
A peaceful death terminated Rigaud's long career. We
may leave his diocese of Rouen, and travel north-easterly
to the German archiepiscopal dukedom of Cologne for a
very different example of a brave prelate who brought death
upon himself.
The man who was chosen Archbishop of Cologne in
1 216 was of the highest birth. It was Engelbert, son of
Count Engelbert of Berg. A young nobleman, related by
blood to the local powers, lay and ecclesiastic, and destined
for Church dignities, would be quickly given benefices.
Engelbert received such, and also was appointed Provost of
the Cathedral. Strong of body, rich, he led a boisterous
martial life, and took a truculent part in the political
dissensions which were undoing the German realm. With
his cousin, the Archbishop Adolph, he went over to the
side of PhiUp of Suavia. For this the archbishop and
his provost were deposed and excommimicated by Pope
Innocent III. There ensued years of turbulence and