Pilgrimages and the honour shown to relics are frequently pointed out as, with Indulgences, among the most objectionable features of the pre-Reformation ecclesiastical system. It is assumed that on the eve of the religious changes the abuses in these matters were so patent, that no voice was, or indeed could have been, raised in their defence, and it is asserted that they were swept away without regret or protest as one of the most obvious and necessary items in the general purification of the mediÆval church initiated in the reign of Henry VIII. That they had indeed been tolerated at all even up to the time of their final overthrow was in part, if not entirely, due to the clergy, and in particular to the monks who, as they derived much pecuniary benefit from encouraging such practices, did not scruple to inculcate by every means in their power the spiritual advantages to be derived from them. That the objectionable features of these so-called works of piety had long been recognised, is taken for granted, and the examinations of people suspected of entertaining Wycliffite opinions are pointed to as proof that earnest men were alive to these abuses for more than a century before religion was purified from them. As conclusive evidence of this, the names, too, of Chaucer for early times, and of Erasmus for the Reform period, are given as those whose condemnation and even scornful rejection of such practices cannot be doubted. It becomes important, then, for a right understanding of the mental attitude of the people generally to the existing ecclesiastical system at the time of its overthrow, to see how far the outcry against pilgrimages and the devotion to relics was really popular, and what were the precise objections taken to them by the innovators.

It is difficult to exaggerate the importance attached to pilgrimages by our pre-Reformation forefathers. From very early times the practice was followed with eagerness, not to say with devotion, and included not merely visits to the shrines situated within the country itself, but long and often perilous journeys into foreign lands—to Compostella, Rome, and to the Holy Land itself. These foreign pilgrimages of course could be undertaken only by the rich, or by those for whom the requisite money was found by some one unable to undertake the journey in person. Not infrequently the early English wills contain injunctions upon the executors to defray the cost of some poor pilgrim to Spain, to Rome, or to some of the noted shrines on the Continent. The English love for these works of piety in nowise showed any sign of decadence even right up to the period of change. Books furnishing intending pilgrims with necessary information, and vocabularies, even in Greek, were prepared to assist them in their voyages. The itineraries of William Wey, printed by the Roxburghe Club, give a very good idea of what these great religious pilgrimages must have been like at the close of the fifteenth century. In 1462 Wey was in the Holy Land, and describes how joyfully the pilgrims on landing at Jaffa sang the “Urbs beata Jerusalem in faburthyn.” In 1456 he took part in a large English pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, leaving Plymouth with a shipload of English fellow-pilgrims on May 17. William Wey’s ship was named the Mary White, and in company with them six other English ships brought pilgrims from Portsmouth, Bristol, Weymouth, Lymington, and a second from Plymouth. They reached Corunna on May 21st, and Compostella for the great celebration of Trinity Day. Wey was evidently much honoured by being pointed out to the church officials as the chief Englishman of note present, and he was given the post of first bearer of the canopy in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament. Four out of the six poles were carried by his countrymen, whom he names as Austill, Gale, and Fulford.

On their return the pilgrims spent three days at Corunna. They were not allowed to be idle, but religious festivities must have occupied most of their time. On Wednesday, the eve of Corpus Christi day, there was a procession of English pilgrims throughout the city and a mass in honour of the Blessed Virgin. On Corpus Christi itself their procession was in the Franciscan church, and a sermon was preached in English by an English Bachelor in Theology on the theme, Ecce ego; vocasti me. “No other nation,” says William Wey, somewhat proudly, “had these special services but the English.” In the first port there were ships belonging to English, Welsh, Irish, Norman, French, and Breton, and the English alone had two and thirty.

Such journeys were not, of course, in those days devoid of danger, especially from sickness brought on, or developed in the course of the travels. Erasmus, in his Colloquy on Rash Vows, speaks of losing three in a company. “One dying on the way commissioned us to salute Peter (in Rome) and James (at Compostella) in his name. Another we lost at Rome, and he desired that we should greet his wife and children for him. The third we left behind at Florence, his recovery entirely despaired of, and I imagine he is now in heaven.” That this account of the mortality among pilgrims is not exaggerated is shown in the diary of Sir Richard Torkington, Rector of Mulbarton, in Norfolk. In 1517 he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and records on “the 25th of August, that was Saynt Bertolmew’s day, deceased Robert Crosse of London, and was buried in the churchyard of Salyus (in the island of Cyprus); and the 27th day of August deceased Sir Thomas Tappe, a priest of the West country, and was cast over the board; as were many more whose souls God assoyl; and then there remained in the ship four English priests more.”[391]

If Englishmen went abroad to the celebrated shrines, foreigners in turn found their way to the no less renowned places of pilgrimage in England. Pilgrims’ inns and places of rest were scattered over the great roads leading to Glastonbury, Walsingham, and Canterbury, and other “holy spots” in this island, and at times these places were thronged with those who came to pay their devotion. At one time we are told that more than a hundred thousand pilgrims were together in the city of Canterbury to celebrate one of the Jubilee celebrations of the martyr St. Thomas; whilst the road to Walsingham was so much frequented, that in the common mind the very “milk way” had been set by Providence in the heaven to point the path to Our Lady’s shrine.

With the very question of pilgrimages, Sir Thomas More actually deals in the first portion of his Dyalogue, and it would be difficult to find any authority who should carry greater weight. He first deals with the outcry raised by the followers of Luther against the riches which had been lavished upon the churches, and in particular upon the shrines containing the relics of saints.

Those who so loudly condemn this devotion shown by the church to the saints should know, he says “that the church worships not the saints as God, but as God’s servants, and therefore the honour that is done to them redoundeth principally to the honour of their Master; just as by common custom of people we sometimes, for their master’s sake, reverence and make great cheer for people to whom perhaps except for this we would not have said ‘good morrow.’

“And sure if any benefit or alms, done to one of Christ’s poor folk for his sake, be reputed and accepted by His high goodness, as done unto Himself: and if whosoever receiveth one of His apostles or disciples receives Himself, every wise man may well think that in like manner he who honours His holy saints for His sake, honours Himself, except these heretics think that God were as envious as they are themselves, and that He would be wroth to have any honour done to any other, though it thereby redoundeth unto Himself. In this matter our Saviour Christ clearly declares the contrary, for He shows Himself so well content that His holy saints shall be partakers of His honour that He promises His apostles that at the dreadful doom (when He shall come in His high majesty) they shall have their honourable seats and sit with Himself upon the judgment of the world. Christ also promised that Saint Mary Magdalene should be worshipped through the world and have here an honourable remembrance because she bestowed that precious ointment upon His holy head. When I consider this thing it makes me marvel at the madness of these heretics that bark against the old ancient customs of Christ’s church, mocking at the setting up of candles, and with foolish facetiousness (fallacies) and blasphemous mockery demand whether God and His saints lack light, or whether it be night with them that they cannot see without a candle. They might as well ask what good did that ointment do to Christ’s head? But the heretics grudge the cost now as their brother Judas did then, and say it were better spent on alms upon a poor folk, and thus say many of them who can neither find in their heart to spend on the one nor the other. And some spend sometimes on the one for no other intent, but the more boldly to rebuke against and rail against the other.”

After pointing out how riches were lavished on the temple by God’s special ordinance, Sir Thomas More continues: “If men will say that the money were better spent among poor folk by whom He (i.e. God) setteth more store as the living temples of the Holy Ghost made by His own hand than by the temples of stone made by the hand of men, this would perhaps be true if there were so little to do it with that we should be driven by necessity to leave the one undone. But God gives enough for both, and gives divers men divers kinds of devotion, and all to His pleasure. Luther, in a sermon of his, wished that he had in his hand all the pieces of the holy cross, and said if he had he would throw them where the sun should never shine on them. And for what worshipful reason would the wretch do such villainy to the cross of Christ? Because, as he says, there is so much gold now bestowed on the garnishing of the pieces of the cross that there is none left for poor folks. Is not this a high reason? As though all the gold that is now bestowed about the pieces of the holy cross would not have failed to be given to poor men if they had not been bestowed on the garnishing of the cross; and as though there was nothing lost except what is bestowed about Christ’s cross. Take all the gold that is spent about all the pieces of Christ’s cross through Christendom (albeit many a good Christian prince and other godly people have honourably garnished many pieces of it), yet if all the gold were gathered together it would appear a poor portion in comparison with the gold that is bestowed upon cups—what do we speak of cups for? in which the gold, though it is not given to poor men, is saved, and may be given in alms when men will, which they never will; how small a portion, ween we, were the gold about all the pieces of Christ’s cross, if it were compared with the gold that is quite cast away about the gilding of knives, swords, &c.”

Our author then goes on to put in the mouth of the “objector” the chief reasons those who were then the advocates of the religious changes were urging against pilgrimages to the shrines of saints and to special places of devotion to our Blessed Lady. Protesting that he had, of course, no desire to see the images of the saints treated in any way disrespectfully, the objector declares that “yet to go in pilgrimages to them, or to pray to them, not only seemed vain, considering that (if they can do anything) they can do no more for us among them all than Christ can Himself alone who can do all things, nor are they so ready to hear (if they hear us at all) as Christ that is everywhere.”… Moreover, to go a pilgrimage to one place rather than to another “seems to smell of idolatry,” as implying that God was not so powerful in one place as He is in another, and, as it were, making God and His saints “bound to a post, and that post cut out and carved into images. For when we reckon we are better heard by our Lord in Kent than at Cambridge, at the north door of Paul’s than at the south door, at one image of our Lady than at another,” is it not made plain that we “put our trust and confidence in the image itself, and not in God and our Lady,” and think of the image and not of what the image represents.

Further, “men reckon that the clergy gladly favour these ways, and nourish this superstition under the name and colour of devotion, to the peril of people’s souls for the lucre and temporal advantage that they themselves receive from the offerings” (p. 120).

Lest it may be thought that these objections to places of pilgrimage were merely such as Sir Thomas More invented to put into the mouth of the “objector” in order to refute them, the reader may like to have the words of a known advocate of the new ideas. Lancelot Ridley, in his expositions of some of the Epistles, states his views very clearly. “Ignorant people,” he writes, “have preferred the saints before God, and put more trust, more confidence, (look for) more help and succour, in a saint than in God. Yea, I fear me that many have put their help and succour in an image made of stone or of wood by men’s hand, and have done great honour and reverence to the image, believing that great virtue and great holiness was in that image above other images. Therefore that image must have a velvet coat hanged all over with brooches of silver, and much silver hanged about it and on it, with much light burning before it, and with candles always burning before it. I would no man (should put out the light) in contempt of the saint whose image there is, but I would have this evil opinion out of the simple hearts that they should esteem images after the value they are, and put no more holiness in one image than in another, no more virtue in one than in another. It holds the simple people in great blindness, and makes them put great trust and (esteem) great holiness in images, because one image is called our Lady of Grace, another our Lady of Pity, another our Lady of Succour or Comfort; the Holy Rood of such a place, &c.” And this he maintained, though he did not condemn images generally in churches. These he thought useful to remind people of God’s saints and their virtues, and “to stir up our dull hearts and slothful minds to God and to goodness.” What he objected to chiefly was the special places of pilgrimage and special images to which more than ordinary devotion was shown.[392]

In another of his Expositions, printed in 1540, Ridley again states his objections to the places of pilgrimage. “Some think,” he writes, “that they have some things of God, and other part of saints, of images, and so divide God’s glory, part to God and part to an image, of wood or of stone made by man’s hand. This some ignorant persons have done in times past, and thanked God for their health and the blessed Lady of Walsingham, of Ipswich, St. Edmund of Bury, Etheldred of Ely, the Lady of Redbourne, the Holy Blood of Hayles, the Holy Rood of Boxley, of Chester, &c., and so other images in this realm to the which have been much pilgrimage and much idolatry, supposing the dead images could have healed them or could have done something for them to God. For this the ignorant have crouched, kneeled, kissed, bobbed and licked the images, giving them coats of cloth, of gold, silver, and of tissue, velvet, damask, and satin, and suffered the living members of Christ to be without a russet coat or a sackcloth to keep them from the cold.”[393]

Again in another place he says that his great objection to images is not that they may not be good in themselves and as a reminder of the holiness of the saints, but that they are used as a means of making money. “Who can tell,” he writes, “half the ways they have found to get, yea to extort money from men by images, by pardons, by pilgrimages, by indulgences, &c. … all invented for money.” The above passages may be taken as fair samples of the outcry against shrines and pilgrimages raised by the English followers of Luther and the advocates of the religious changes generally. It will be noticed that the ground of the objections was in reality only the same as that which induced them to declare against any honour shown to images, whether of Christ or His saints. There is no suggestion of any special abuses connected with particular shrines and places of pilgrimage, such as is often hinted at by those who refer to Chaucer and Erasmus. In addition to the general ground of objection, the only point raised in regard to pilgrimages by the advocates for their suppression was that money was spent upon them which might have been bestowed more profitably on the poor, and that the clergy were enriched by the offerings made at the shrines visited. Sir Thomas More’s reply to the latter suggestion has been already given, and elsewhere his views as to the general question of the danger of people mistaking the nature of the honour shown to images of the saints have been stated at length. With regard to his approval of the principle of pilgrimages there is no room for doubt.

“If the thing were so far from all frame of right religion,” he says, “and so perilous to men’s souls, I cannot perceive why the clergy, for the gain they get thereby, would suffer such abuses to continue. For, first, if it were true that no pilgrimage ought to be used, no image offered to, nor worship done nor prayer offered to any saint, then—if all these things were all undone (if that were the right way, as I wot well it were wrong), then to me there is little question but that Christian people who are in the true faith and in the right way Godward would not thereby in any way slack their good minds towards the ministers of His church, but their devotion towards them would more and more increase. So that if by this way they now get a penny they would not then fail to receive a groat; and so should no lucre be the cause to favour this way if it be wrong, whilst they could not fail to win more by the right.”

“Moreover, look through Christendom and you will find the fruit of those offerings a right small part of the living of the clergy, and such as, though some few places would be glad to retain, yet the whole body might easily forbear without any notable loss. Let us consider our own country, and we shall find that these pilgrimages are for the most part in the hands of such religious persons or of such poor parishes as have no great authority in the convocations. Besides this you will not find, I suppose, that any Bishop in England has the profit of even one groat from any such offering in his diocese. Now, the continuance or breaking of this manner and custom stands them specially in the power of those who take no profit by it. If they believed it to be (as you call it) superstitious and wicked they would never suffer it to continue to the perishing of men’s souls (something whereby they themselves would destroy their own souls and get no commodity either in body or goods). And beyond this, we see that the bishops and prelates themselves visit these holy places and pilgrimages, and make as large offerings and (incur) as great cost in coming and going as other people do, so that they not only take no temporal advantage, but also bestow their own money therein. And surely I believe this devotion so planted by God’s own hand in the hearts of the whole Church, that is to say, not the clergy only, but the whole congregation of all Christian people, that if the spirituality were of the mind to give it up, yet the temporality would not suffer it.”

It would be impossible, without making extensive quotations, to do justice to Sir Thomas More’s argument in favour of the old Catholic practice of pilgrimages. He points out that the whole matter turns upon the question whether or no Almighty God does manifest His power and presence more in one place of His world than in another. That He does so, he thinks cannot be questioned; why He should do so, it is not for us to guess, but the single example of the Angel and the pool of Bethsaida related in St. John’s Gospel is sufficient proof of the fact—at least to Sir Thomas More’s intelligence. Moreover, he thinks also that in many cases the special holiness of a place of pilgrimage has been shown by the graces and favours, and even miracles, which have been granted by God at that particular spot, and on the “objector” waiving this argument aside on the plea that he does not believe in modern miracles, More declares that what is even more than miracles in his estimation is the “common belief in Christ’s Church” in the practice.

As to believing in miracles; they, like every other fact, depend on evidence and proof. It is unreasonable in the highest degree to disbelieve everything which we have not seen or which we do not understand. Miracles, like everything else, must be believed on the evidence of credible witnesses. What in their day, he says, is believed in by all would have been deemed impossible a century or two before; for example, that the earth is round and “sails in mid-air,” and that “men walk on it foot to foot” and ships sail on its seas “bottom to bottom.” Again, “It is not fifty years ago,” he says, “since the first man, as far as men have heard, came to London who ever parted the silver gilt from the silver, consuming shortly the silver into dust with a very fair water.” At first the gold and silver smiths laughed at the suggestion as absurd and impossible. Quite recently also More had been told that it was possible to melt iron and make it “to run as silver or lead doeth, and make it take a print.” More had never, he says, seen this, but he had seen the new invention of drawing out silver into thread-like wires. The “objector” was incredulous, and when More went on to tell him that if a piece of silver had been gilded, it could be drawn out with the gilding into gilt wires, he expressed his disbelief in the possibility of such a thing, and was hardly more satisfied that he was not being deceived when the process was shown to him the next day.

These and such like things, argues More, show us that our knowledge is, after all, very limited, and that while some supposed miracles may be doubted, it is most unreasonable to doubt or deny the possibility of miracles generally. If nature and reason tell us there is a God, the same two prove that miracles are not impossible, and that God can act when He wills against the course of nature. Whether He does in this or that case is plainly a matter of evidence. The importance of Sir Thomas More’s opinion on the matter of Pilgrimage does not, of course, rest upon the nature of his views, which were those naturally of all good Catholic sons of Holy Church, but upon the fact that, in face of the objections which were then made and which were of the kind to which subsequent generations have been accustomed, so learned and liberal a man as he was, did not hesitate to treat them as groundless, and to defend the practice as it was then known in England. That there may have been “abuses” he would have no doubt fully admitted, but that the “abuses” were either so great or so serious as to be any reasonable ground against the “use” he would equally have indignantly denied.

No less clear and definite are his opinions as to “relics” and the honour shown them. The “adversary” in the Dyalogue takes up the usual objections urged against the reverence shown to the remains of the saints, and in particular to the wealth which was lavished upon their shrines. “May the taking up of a man’s bones,” he says, “and setting his carcase in a gay shrine, and then kissing his bare scalp, make a man a saint? And yet are there some unshrined, for no man knoweth where they lie. And men doubt whether some ever had any body at all or not, but to recompense that again some there are who have two bodies, to lend one to some good fellow that lacketh his. For … some one body lies whole in two places asunder, or else the monks of the one be beguiled. For both places plainly affirm that it lieth there, and at either place they show the shrine, and in the shrine they show a body which they say is the body, and boldly allege old writings and miracles also for the proof of it. Now must he confess that either the miracles at the one place be false and done by the devil, or else that the same saint had indeed two bodies. It is therefore likely that a bone worshipped for a relic of some holy saint in some place was peradventure ‘a bone (as Chaucer says) of some holy Jew’s sheep.’” More’s “adversary” then goes on to say that our Lord in reproving the Pharisees for “making fresh the sepulchres of the prophets” condemns the “gay golden shrines made for saints’ bodies, especially when we have no certainty that they are saints at all.”[394]

What all this really amounts to, replies More, is not that your reasons would condemn honour and worship to true relics of the saints, but that “we may be deceived in some that we take for saints—except you would say that if we might by any possibility mistake some, therefore we should worship none.” Few people would say this, and “I see,” says More, “no great peril to us from the danger of a mistake. If there came, for example, a great many of the king’s friends into your country, and for his sake you make them all great cheer; if among them there come unawares to you some spies that were his mortal enemies, wearing his badge and seeming to you and so reported as his familiar friends, would he blame you for the good cheer you made his enemies or thank you for the good cheer you gave his friends?” He then goes on at great length to suggest that, as in the case of the head of St. John the Baptist in which portions only existing in each place are each called “the head,” so, very frequently, only a portion of the body of a saint is called “the body.” He mentions having himself been present at the abbey of Barking thirty years before (i.e. in 1498), when a number of relics were discovered hidden in an old image, which must have been put there four or five hundred years since “when the abbey was burned by the infidels.” He thinks that in this way the names of relics are frequently either lost or changed. But he adds, “the name is not so very requisite but that we may mistake it without peril, so that we nevertheless have the relics of holy men in reverence.”

In replying to Tyndale also, More declares that he had never in all his life held views against relics of the saints or the honour due to their holy images. Tyndale had charged him with being compromised by the words used by Erasmus in the Enconium MoriÆ, which was known to have been composed in More’s house, and was commonly regarded as almost the joint work of the two scholars. If there were anything like this in the MoriÆ—any words that could mean or seem to mean anything against the true Catholic devotion to relics and images—then More rejects them from his heart. But they are not my words, he adds, “the book being made by another man, though he were my darling never so dear” (p. 422). But the real truth is that in the MoriÆ Erasmus never said more or meant more than to “jest upon the abuses of such things.”

In this regard it is of interest to understand what was the real opinion of Erasmus in regard to devotions to particular saints and their images and relics. This is all the more important, as most people regard the account of his two pilgrimages to Walsingham and to Canterbury as full and conclusive evidence of his sentiments. In his tract Enchiridion Militis Christiani, published at Louvain in 1518, his views are stated with absolute clearness. “There are some,” he says, “who honour certain saints with some special ceremonies.… One salutes St. Christopher each day, and only in presence of his image. Why does he wish to see it? Simply because he will then feel safe that day from any evil death. Another honours Saint Roch—but why? Because he thinks that he will drive away infection from his body. Others murmur prayers to St. Barbara or St. George, so as not to fall into the hands of any enemy. One man fasts for St. Apollonia, not to have toothache. Some dedicate a certain portion of their gains to the poor so that their merchandise is not destroyed in shipwreck,” &c.[395]

Our author’s point is that in these and such-like things people pray for riches, &c., and do not think much about the right use of them; they pray for health and go on living evil lives. In so far such prayers to the saints are mere superstitions, and do not much differ from the pagan superstitions; the cock to Æsculapius, the tithe to Hercules, the bull to Neptune. “But,” he says, “I praise those who ask from St. Roch a life protected from disease if they would consecrate that life to Christ. I would praise them more if they would pray only for increased detestation of vice and love virtue. I will tolerate infirmity, but with Paul I show the better way.” He would think it, consequently, a more perfect thing to pray only for grace to avoid sin and to please God, and to leave life and death, sickness, health and riches to Him and His will.

“You,” he says farther on, “venerate the saints, you rejoice to possess their relics, but you despise the best thing they have left behind them, namely, the example of a pure life. No devotion is so pleasing to Mary as when you imitate her humility; no religion is so acceptable to the saints and so proper in itself as striving to copy their virtue. Do you wish to merit the patronage of Peter and Paul? Imitate the faith of the one and the charity of the other and you will do more than if you had made ten journeys to Rome. Do you wish to do something to show high honour to St. Francis? You are proud, you are a lover of riches, you are quarrelsome; give these to the saint, rule your soul and be more humble by the example of Francis; despise filthy lucre, and covet rather the good of the soul. Leave contentions aside and overcome evil by good. The saint will receive more honour in this way than if you were to burn a hundred candles to him. You think it a great thing if clothed in the habit of St. Francis you are borne to the grave. This dress will not profit you when you are dead if, when alive, your morals were unlike his.”

“People,” he continues, “honour the relics of St. Paul, and do not trouble to listen to his voice still speaking. They make much of a large portion of one of his bones looked at through a glass, and think little of honouring him really by understanding what he teaches and trying to follow that.” It is the same so often with the honour shown to the crucifix. “You honour,” he says, “the representation of Christ’s face fashioned of stone or of wood or painted in colours, the image of His mind ought to be more religiously honoured, which, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is set forth in the gospels. No Apelles ever sketched the form and figure of a human body in such a perfect way as to compare with the mental image formed in prayer.”

Erasmus then passes on to speak at length of what should lie at the foundation of all true devotion to the saints. The spirit which actuates is that which matters. To put up candles to images of the saints and not to observe God’s laws; to fast and to abstain and not to set a guard on the tongue, to give way to detraction and evil speaking of all kinds; to wear the religious habit and to live the life of a worldling under it; to build churches and not to build up the soul; to keep Sunday observances externally but not to mind what the spirit gives way to—these are the things that really matter. “By your lips you bless and in your heart you curse. Your body is shut up in a narrow cell, and in thought you wander over the whole world. You listen to God’s word with the ears of your body; it would be more to the purpose if you listened inwardly. What doth it profit not to do the evil which you desire to accomplish? What doth it profit to do good outwardly and to do the opposite inwardly? Is it much to go to Jerusalem in the body when in the spirit it is to thee but Sodom and Egypt and Babylon?”[396]

In his tract De amabili EcclesiÆ concordia, printed in 1533, Erasmus lays down the same principle. It is, he writes, a pious and good thing to believe that the saints who have worked miracles in the time of their lives on earth, can help us now that they are in heaven. As long as there is no danger of real superstition, it is absurd to try to prevent people invoking the saints. Though superstition in the cultus of the saints is, of course, to be prevented, “the pious and simple affection is sometimes to be allowed even if it be mixed with some error.” As for the representations of the saints in churches, those who disapprove of them should not for that reason “blame those who, without superstition, venerate these images for the love of those they represent, just as a newly-married woman kisses a ring or present left or sent by her absent spouse out of affection for him.” Such affection cannot be displeasing to God, since it comes not from superstition, but from an abundance of affectionate feeling, and exactly the same view should be taken of the true devotion shown to the relics of the saints, provided that it be ever borne in mind that the highest honour that can be paid to them consists in imitation of their lives.

Considering the importance of “indulgences” or “pardons,” as they were frequently called, in the Reformation controversies, it is curious that very little is made of them in the literature of the period preceding the religious changes. If we except the works of professed followers of Luther, there is hardly any trace of serious objection being raised to the fundamental idea of “indulgences” in their true sense. Here and there may be found indications of some objection to certain abuses which had been allowed to creep into the system, but these proceeded from loyal sons of the Church rather than from those ill affected to the existing ecclesiastical authority, or those who desired to see the abolition of all such grants of spiritual favours. The lawyer Saint-German, for instance, may be taken as an example of the acute layman, who, although professing to be a Catholic and an obedient son of the Church, was credited by his contemporaries with holding advanced if not somewhat heterodox views on certain matters of current controversy. What he has to say about “pardons” and “indulgences” is neither very startling nor indeed very different from what all serious-minded churchmen of that day held. He considered that the people generally were shocked at finding “the Pope and other spiritual rulers” granting “pardons” for the payment of money. This, he considered, had been brought prominently into notice at the time he was writing, by the indulgences granted to those who should contribute to the building of St. Peter’s when “it has appeared after, evidently that it has not been disposed to that use. And that has caused many to think that the said pardons were granted rather of covetousness than of charity, or for the health of the souls of the people. And thereupon some have fallen in a manner into despising ‘pardons’ as though pardons granted upon such covetousness would not avail … and verily it were a great pity that any misliking of pardons should grow in the hearts of the people for any misdemeanour in the grantor or otherwise, for they are right necessary. And I suppose that if certain pardons were granted freely without money, for the saying of certain appointed prayers, then all misliking of pardons would shortly cease and vanish away.”[397]

Christopher Saint-German speaks much in the same way as to the evil of connecting payment of money with the granting of indulgences, in the work in connection with which his name is chiefly known, A Dyaloge in English between a Student and a Doctor of Divinity. “If it were so ordered by the Pope,” he writes, “that there might be certain general pardons of full remission in diverse parts of the realm, which the people might have for saying certain orisons and prayers without paying any money for it, it is not unlikely that in a short time there would be very few that would find any fault with ‘pardons.’ For verily it is a great comfort to all Christian people to remember that our Lord loved His people so much that to their relief and comfort leave behind Him so great a treasure as is the power to grant pardons, which, as I suppose, next unto the treasure of His precious body in the Sacrament of the altar, may be accounted among the greatest, and therefore he would labour greatly to his own hurt and to the great heaviness of all others also who would endeavour to prove that there was no such power left by God.”[398]

In the literature of the period, it must be remembered, there is nothing to show that the true nature of a “pardon” or indulgence was not fully and commonly understood. There is no evidence that it was in any way interpreted as a remission of sin, still less that any one was foolish enough to regard it as permission to commit this or that offence against God. Tyndale, indeed, had suggested that by purchasing an indulgence “thou mayest quench almost the terrible fire of hell for three halfpence.” But Sir Thomas More meets the point directly. “Nay, surely,” he says, “that fire is not so lightly quenched that folk upon the boldness of pardons should stand out of the fear of purgatory. For though the sacrament of penance is able to put away the eternal (nature) of the pain, yet the party for all that has cause to fear both purgatory and hell too, lest some default on his own part prevented God working such grace in him in the Sacrament as should serve for this. So, though the pardon be able to discharge a man of purgatory, yet there may be such default in the party to whom the pardon is granted that although instead of three halfpence he gives three hundred pounds, still he may receive no pardon at all, and therefore he cannot be out of fear of purgatory, but ever has cause to fear it. For no man without a revelation can be sure whether he be partaker of the pardon or not, though he may have and ought to have both in that and every good thing good hope.”[399]

Bishop Gardiner in 1546, in writing against George Joye, incidentally makes use of some strong expressions about the granting of pardons for the payment of money, and blames the friars as being instrumental in spreading them. He has been asserting that by every means in his power the devil, now in one way and now in another, attempts to prevent men from practising the good works necessary for salvation. “For that purpose,” he says, “he procured out pardons from Rome, wherein heaven was sold for a little money, and to retail that merchandise the devil used friars for his ministers. Now they be all gone with all their trumpery; but the devil is not yet gone, for now the cry is that ‘heaven needs no works at all, but only belief, only, only, and nothing else.’”[400]

This, after all, was very little more than the abuse which previously was pointed out by the cardinal who, conjointly with Cardinal Caraffa, afterwards Pope Paul IV., had been directed to draw up suggestions for improvement of ecclesiastical discipline. The document drawn up by Caraffa himself was submitted to the Pope by his command, and amongst the points which were declared to need correction were the granting of indulgences for money payments and permission given to travelling collectors, such as the Questors of the Holy Spirit, &c., to bestow “pardons” in return for subscriptions. This, in the judgment of the four cardinals, is likely to lead to misunderstandings as to the real nature of the indulgences granted, to deceive rustic minds, and to give rise to all manner of superstitions.[401]

Cardinal Sadolet, one of the four cardinals who formed the Papal Commission just referred to, in an appeal to the German princes makes the same adverse criticism about the money payments received for the granting of indulgences. “The whole of Germany,” he says, “has been convulsed by the indulgences granted by Pope Leo. X. to those who would contribute to the building of St. Peter’s. These indulgences,” he says, “and consequently the agents in distributing them, I do not now defend. And I remember that, as far as my position and honour would then allow, I spoke against them when those decrees were published, and when my opinion had no effect I was greatly grieved.” He did not, he continued, doubt the power of the Pope in granting the indulgences, but held that “in giving them, the manner now insisted on with every care by the supreme Pontiff, Paul III., ought to be maintained, namely, that they should be granted freely, and that there should be no mention of money in regard to them. The loving-kindness and mercy of God should not be sold for money, and if anything be asked for at the time, it should be requested as a work of piety.”[402]

The above will show that earnest-minded men were fully alive to the abuses which might be connected with the granting of indulgences, and no condemnation could have been stronger than that formulated by the Council of Trent. At the same time, it is clear that the abuses of the system were, so far as England at least is concerned, neither widespread nor obvious. The silence of Sir Thomas More on the matter, and the very mild representations of his adversary, Christopher Saint-German, show that this is the case. Saint-German’s objection was not against the system, but against the same kind of abuses against which subsequently the Fathers of Trent legislated. The reformers attacked not the abuses only but the whole system, and their language has quite unjustly been frequently interpreted by subsequent writers as evidence of the existence everywhere of widespread abuses. In this regard it is well to bear in mind that the translation of the works of the German reformers into English cannot be taken as contemporary evidence for England itself.

The cry of the advanced party which would sweep away every vestige of the old religious observances was certainly not popular. One example of a testimony to the general feeling in London is given in a little work printed by one of the reforming party in 1542, when it was found that Henry VIII. did not advance along the path of reformation marked out by the foreign followers of Luther as quickly as his rejection of papal supremacy and the overthrow of the religious houses had caused some people to hope. The tract in question is called The lamentation of a Christian against the Citie of London, made by Roderigo Mors,[403] and some quotations from it will show what view an ardent reformer took of the spirit of Londoners towards the new doctrines. “The greater part of these inordinate rich, stiff-necked citizens,” he writes, “will not have in their houses that lively word of our souls[404] nor suffer their servants to have it, neither yet (will they) gladly read it or hear it read, but abhors and disdains all those who would live according to the Gospel, and instead thereof they set up and maintain idolatry and other innumerable wickedness of man’s invention daily committed in the city of London.

“The greatest part of the seniors and aldermen, with the multitude of the inordinate rich … with the greatest multitude of thee, O city of London, take the part and be fully bent with the false prophets, the bishops and other strong, stout, and sturdy priests of Baal, to persecute unto death all and every godly person who either preaches the word or setteth it forth in writing … O Lord! how blind are these citizens who take so good care to provide for the dead which is not commanded of them nor availeth the dead.[405]… When they feel themselves worthily plagued, which comes of Thee only, then they will run a-gadding after their false prophets through the streets once or twice a week, crying and calling to creatures of the Creator, or with ora pro nobis, and that in a tongue which the greatest part of them understand not, unto Peter, Paul, James and John, Mary and Martha: and I think within a few years they will (without Thy great mercy) call upon Thomas Wolsey, late Cardinal, and upon the unholy (or as they would say holy) maid of Kent. Why not, as well as upon Thomas Becket? What he was, I need not write. It is well known.[406]

“And think ye not that if the Blessed Virgin Mary were now upon earth and saw her Son and only Redeemer robbed of His glory, which glory, you blind citizens give to her, would she not rend her clothes like as did the Apostles, for offering oblations with their forefathers’ kings’ heads unto the Queen of Heaven? How many queens of Heaven have ye in the Litany? O! dear brethren, be no longer deceived with these false prophets your bishops and their members.”[407]

“The great substance which you bestow upon chantries, obits, and such like dregs of … Rome, which most commonly ye give for three causes, as ye say, first, that you will have the service of God maintained in the church to God’s honour, and yet by the same service is God dishonoured, for the Supper of the Lord is perverted and not used after Christ’s institution … and the holy memory turned into a vain superstitious ceremonial Mass, as they call it, which Mass is an abominable idol, and of all idols the greatest; and never shall idolatry be quenched where that idol is used after antichrist’s institution … which no doubt shall be reformed when the time is come that God hath appointed, even as it is already in divers cities of Germany, as Zurich, Basle, and Strasburg and such other.”

“The second cause is for redeeming your souls and your friends, which is also abominable.… The idolator nowadays, if he set a candle before an image and idol, he says he does not worship the image, but God it represents. For say they, who is so foolish as to worship an image? The third cause of your good intent is that the profit of your goods may come to the priests; as though they were the peculiar people of God and only beloved; as indeed to those who preach the Gospel the people are bound to give sufficient living … but not that their prayers can help the dead no more than a man’s breath blowing a sail can cause a great ship to sail. So is this also become an abomination, for those be not Christ’s ministers, but the ministers of a rabble of dirty traditions and popish ceremonies, and you find a sort of lusty lubbers who are well able to labour for their living and strong to get it with the sweat of their face.”[408]

“… O ye citizens, if ye would turn but even the profits of your chantries and obits to the finding of the poor, what a politic and goodly provision! whereas now London being one of the flowers of the world as touching worldly riches hath so many, yea innumerable poor people, forced to go from door to door and to sit openly in the streets begging, and many not able to do otherwise but lie in their houses in most grievous pains and die for lack of the aid of the rich, to the great shame of thee, oh London!”[409]

After exclaiming against the amount of money spent by the authorities of the city of London on civic entertainments, and railing against the support given to “the Mass of Scala coeli, of the Five wounds, and other such like trumpery,” our author continues: “Have you not slain the servants of the Lord, only for speaking against the authority of the false bishop of Rome, that monstrous beast, whom now you yourselves do, or should, abhor? I mean all his laws being contrary to Christ and not His body, and yet you see that a few years past you burnt for heretics abominable those who preached or wrote against his usurped power, and now it is treason to uphold or maintain any part of his usurped power, and he shall die as a traitor who does so, and well worthy.”[410]

After declaiming against the Mass and confession, and declaring that the bishops and cathedral churches should be despoiled of their wealth as their “companions and brethren in antichrist, the abbots” had been, the author of the tract goes on: “God gave the king a heart to take the wicked mammon from you, as he may rightfully do with the consent of the Commons by Act of Parliament, so that it may be disposed of according to God’s glory and the commonwealth, and to take himself as portion, as (say) eight or ten of every hundred, for an acknowledgment of obedience and for the maintenance of his estate. The rest politically to be put into a commonwealth, first distributed among all the towns in England in sums according to the quantity and number of the occupiers and where most need is, and all the towns to be bound to the king so that he may have the money at his extreme need to serve him, he rendering it again. And also a politic way (should be) taken for provision of the poor in every town, with some part to the marriage of young persons that lack friends.”[411]

The bishops the writer considers to be the greatest obstacles to the reformation of religion in England on the model of what had already taken place in Germany. “You wicked mammon,” he continues, “your inordinate riches was not of your heavenly Father’s planting; therefore it must be plucked up by the roots with the riches of your other brethren of the Romish church or church malignant, which of late were rightfully plucked up. I would to God that the distribution of the same lands and goods had been as godly distributed as the act of the rooting up was; which distribution of the same I dare say all Christian hearts lament. For the fat swine only were greased, but the poor sheep to whom that thing belonged had least or nothing at all. The fault will be laid to those of the Parliament House, especially to those who bear the greatest swing. Well, I touch this matter here, to exhort all that love God’s word unfeignedly to be diligent in prayer only to God to endue the Lords, Knights, and Burgesses of the next Parliament with His spirit, that the lands and goods of these bishops may be put to a better use, as to God’s glory, the wealth of the commonalty and provision for the poor.”[412]

The above lengthy extracts will show what the advanced spirits among the English followers of Luther hoped for from the religious revolution which had already, when the tract was written, been begun. It will also serve to show that even in London, which may be supposed to have been in the forefront of the movement, the religious changes were by no means popular; but the civic authorities and people clung to the old faith and traditions, which the author well and tersely describes as “the Romish religion.”

The readers of the foregoing pages will see that no attempt has been made to draw a definite conclusion from the facts set down, or expound the causes of the ultimate triumph of the Reformation principles in England. It has already been pointed out that the time for a satisfactory synthesis is not yet come; but it may not be unnecessary to deprecate impatience to reach an ultimate judgment.

The necessary assumption which underlies the inherited Protestant history of the Reformation in the sixteenth century is the general corruption of manners and morals no less than of doctrine, and the ignorance of religious truths no less than the neglect of religious precepts on the part of both clergy and people. On such a basis nothing can be easier and simpler than to account for the issue of the English religious changes. The revival of historical studies and the alienation of the minds of many historians from traditional Christianity, whether in its Catholic or Protestant form, has, however, thrown doubt on this great fundamental assumption—a doubt that will be strengthened the more the actual conditions of the case are impartially and thoroughly investigated. Many of the genuine sources of history have only within this generation become really accessible; what was previously known has been more carefully examined and sifted, whilst men have begun to see that if the truth is to be ascertained inquiries must be pursued in detail within local limits, and that it does not suffice to speak in general terms of “the corrupt state of the Church.”

If we are to know the real factors of the problem to be solved, separate investigations have to be pursued which lead to very varying conclusions as to the state of the Church, the ecclesiastical life and the religious practices of the people in different countries. It is already evident that the corruptions or the virtues prevailing in one quarter must not straightway be credited to the account of another; that the reason why one country has become Protestant, or another remained Catholic, has to be sought for in each case, and that it may be safely asserted that the maintenance of Catholicity or the adoption of Protestantism in different regions, had comparatively little to do with prevalence or absence of abuses, or as little depended on the question whether these were more or less grievous.

Unquestionably those who desire to have a ready explanation of great historical movements or revolutions, find themselves increasingly baulked in the particular case of the Reformation by the new turn which modern historical research has given to the consideration of the question. Recent attempts to piece up the new results with the old views afford a warning against precipitation, and have but shown that the explanation of the successful issue of the Reformation in England is a problem less simple or obvious than many popular writers have hitherto assumed. The factors are clearly seen now to be many—sometimes accidental, sometimes strongly personal—whilst aspirations after worldly commodities, though destined not to be realised for the many, were often and in the most influential quarters a stronger determinant to acquiescence or active co-operation in the movement than thirst after pure doctrine, love of the open Bible, or desire for a vernacular liturgy. The first condition for the understanding of the problem at all is the most careful and detailed examination possible of the state of popular religion during the whole of the century which witnessed the change, quite apart from the particular political methods employed to effect the transition from the public teaching of the old faith, as it was professed in the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII., and the new as it was officially practised a dozen years after Elizabeth had held the reins of power.

The interest of the questions discussed in the present volume is by no means exclusively, perhaps to some persons is even by no means predominantly, a religious one. It has been insisted upon in the preceding pages that religion on the eve of the Reformation was intimately bound up with the whole social life of the people, animating it and penetrating it at every point. No one who is acquainted with the history of later centuries in England can doubt for a moment that the religion then professed presented in this respect a contrast to the older faith; or as some writers may put it, religion became restricted to what belongs to the technically “religious” sphere. But this was not confined to England, or even to Protestant countries. Everywhere, it may be said, in the centuries subsequent to the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, religion became less directly social in its action; and if the action and interference of what is now called the State in every department of social life is continually extending, this may not inaptly be said to be due to the fact that it has largely taken up the direct social work and direction from which the Church found herself perhaps compelled to recede, in order to concentrate her efforts more intensely on the promotion of more purely and strictly religious influences. It is impossible to study the available sources of information about the period immediately preceding the change without recognising that, so far from the Church being a merely effete or corrupt agency in the commonwealth, it was an active power for popular good in a very wide sense. At any rate, whatever view we may take of the results of the Reformation, to understand rightly the conditions of religious thought and life on the eve of the religious revolution, is a condition of being able really to read aright our own time and to gauge the extent to which present tendencies find their root or their justification in the past.