PART II. nounces tion of the practices of the Mendicants, whose 'Cain's Castles' CHAP. III. find in him an ingenious and elaborate apologist. As for the claims of the uncultured Lollards to interpret for themselves and dethe meaning of the Scriptures, he declared that such an Lollardism, attempt, for an intellect untrained by Aristotle, was a work of the greatest peril. There is no book,' he says, 'written in the world by which a man shall rather take occasion to err.' While therefore his agreement with the followers of Wyclif was sufficient to alienate him from the Romish party, his divergences from them were such as totally to preclude the possibility of his gaining their moral support; and on the single point where they and the Mendicants were at one, he again was at issue with both. Bromyard. Prædican Evangelism, or the popular exposition of Scripture, was a cardinal point with both the Lollards and the friars; with the latter it had been the weapon which had given them the victory over their earlier antagonists and contributed so materially to their widespread success; and a noticeable illustration of the estimation in which the preacher's art was held by their party, is afforded us shortly before the time of Pecock, about the commencement of the century, in connexion with the university of Cambridge. Among those who taught at the university at that period was John Bromyard, the John author or compiler of the Summa Prædicantium. He was a His Summa Dominican, was both Doctor Utriusque Juris and master of tium. theology, and a strenuous opposer of Wyclif's teaching; his estimate of the importance of the preacher's function however is clearly attested by the massive volume which he put forth as a professed aid to those who were called upon to expound the Scriptures to the people. The work represents a series of skeleton sermons, arranged not under texts, but under single words expressive of abstract qualities, such as Abstinentia, Adulatio, Avaritia, Conscientia, Fides, Patientia, Paupertas, Trinitas, Vocatio, etc., each being followed by a brief exposition, illustrated by frequent quotations from the Fathers, and occasionally by an apposite anecdote'. The 1 Summa Prædicantium Omnibus Dominici Gregis Pastoribus, Divini Verbi Præconibus, Animarum Fide- PART II. Bromyard contrasted. perhaps a approves of much preaching. CHAP. III. exegesis is cold, formal, and systematic, not without that amount of the logical element which finds expression in conclusions derived from a series of observations each commanding the moral assent, but rarely deducing any novel aspect of truth, and taking its stand, for the most part, entirely super antiquas vias. In the contrast presented by this laborious, careful, and learned production to the speculative tendencies. Pecock and that belong to the doctrinal expositions of Pecock, we may perhaps discern the earliest instance of that antithesis which, The contrast with occasional exceptions, has generally characterised the Typical one. theological activity of the two universities; that however with which we are here more directly concerned is, the widely different implied estimate of the value of preaching when compared with Pecock's views on the same subject. Neither Wyclif's 'simple priest,' nor the eloquence of the Dominican appears to have found much favour in the bishop of ChichesPecock dis ter's sight. He seems to have been of opinion that there was a great deal too. much preaching already; and in an age when the great majority of men were compelled to learn by oral instruction or not at all, and at a time when the indifference manifested by the superior clergy to the instruction of the lower orders, and the numbers of non-residents and pluralists were exciting widespread indignation, this eccentric ecclesiastic thought it a favourable juncture for compiling an elaborate defence, half-defiant, half apologetic, of the conduct of his episcopal brethren. It can hardly be said that in the pages of the 'Repressor' the author shews much confidence in the resources of his logic to produce conHis eccentric viction; rhetoric plays a much more conspicuous part. At one time he seeks to shroud the episcopal functions in a veil of mystery, the bishop has duties to perform which the vulgar wot not of; at another, he makes appeals ad misericordiam, bishops, after all, 'ben men and not pure aungels;' again, only those who enter upon the office are aware with how many difficulties it is beset; no man, to use his own somewhat too familiar simile, knows how hard it is to climb a tree defence of his order. Cultoribus longe utilissima ac perne- times printed; the edition I have used is that printed at Antwerp, in 1614. PART II. thing more Ultra both parties. or to descend a tree, save the man that himself essayeth it'. CHAP. IIL To the Lollards, who held that it was the first duty of a bishop to provide for and participate in the spiritual instruction of his diocese, such arguments could only have appeared an audacious piece of special pleading in defence of some of the worst abuses of the Church, and its author, much as he appears to dean Hook, an Ultramontanist of the deepest dye. It is easy to see that Reginald Pecock was both something Pecock somemore and something less than this; but his self-confidence led than a mere him to sever himself from both parties, at a time when such montanist. isolation was unsafe if not impossible. He alienated a power- He offends ful section at home, who still adhered to the theory of the great councils, by his assertion of the absolute authority of the pope. The universities, if conciliated by his support of the theory represented by the Barnwell Process and his opposition to the statute of Provisors, were scandalised by his attacks on two of the fathers, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, whose teaching was enshrined in their universal text-book, the Sentences. While the bishops, far from being won by his fantastic defence of their order, descried heresy in the manner in which he had called in question such doctrines as the Third Person in the Trinity, and the descent of Christ into Hades. At Cambridge he encountered powerful enemies. Among them were William Millington, the first provost of King's, a man of honorable spirit, and considerable attainments, but of violent and unscrupulous temper; Hugh Damlet, master of Pembroke, who offered to prove from Pecock's writings that he was guilty of the worst heresy, and who formed one of the commission before which he was arraigned'; 1 See The Repressor of Over Much Blaming of the Clergy, edited for the Rolls Series, by Prof. Churchill Babington, B.D. I 102–110. 2 Perhaps it would not be greatly wrong to assert that Pecock stands half way between the Church of Rome and the Church of England, as they now exist, the type of his mind however being rather Anglican than Roman. Of Puritanism, in all its phases, he is the decided opponent. There were many others more or less like him.' Ibid. p. xxvi. Capgrave says of him, 'in scholasticis inquisicionibus, et profunda litteratura, ac maturis moribus, multos antecessores suos precellit.' Lives of the Henries, quoted in Communications to the Camb. Antiq. Soc. 1 287, by Mr. Williams in his Communication, Notices of William Millington, First Provost of King's College. 4 Communications of the Camb.Antiq. Soc. II 18. PART II. CHAP. III. Gilbert Worthington, and Peter Hirforde, who had espoused and subsequently renounced the doctrines of Wyclif'. The Mendicants whom, in spite of his advocacy on their behalf, he had made his bitter enemies, were equally zealous in their persecution. His arraignment before archbishop Bourchier, his humiliating recantation, and subsequent consignment to that obscurity in which his days were ended, are details that belong to other pages than ours. Possibly a political sufferer. It has been conjectured that political feeling had its share in the hostility which he encountered. The Lancastrian party was distinguished by its leaning towards Ultramontanism, and it was within two years of the first battle of St. Albans, when the Yorkists were everywhere in the ascendant, that Pecock was brought to trial. It is certain that in both universities his doctrine attained to considerable notoriety and commanded a certain following. In the year 1457 they are to be found prominently engaging the attention His doctrines of the authorities of Oxford. In the early statutes of King's College is one binding every scholar, on the completion of his year of probation, 'never throughout his life to favour any condemned tenets, the errors or heresies of John Wyclif, Reginald Pecock, or any other heretic';' and this prohibition is repeated forbidden at the universities. 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 153. Hare 2 See dean Hook, Lives of the Arch- who was enduring hardship in the 4 Item statuimus......quod quilibet scholaris......juret quod non favebit opinionibus, damnatis erroribus, aut hæresibus Johannis Wycklyfe, Reginaldi Pecocke, neque alicujus alterius hæretici, quamdiu vixerit in hoc mundo, sub pœna perjurii et expulsionis ipso facto.' Stat. Coll. Regal. Cantabr. c. ult. in fine. See also Prof. Babington's Introd. to the Repressor, p. xxxiv. The date assigned to the above statutes in the Documents is 1443; but at that time Pecock's doctrines were not fully even so late as the year 1475, in the Statuta Antiqua of CHAP. III. Queens' College1. PART II. universities time. nearly de The literary activity of the fifteenth century furnishes but little illustration of much value with respect to university studies after the time of Reginald Pecock. The quickening of thought which had followed upon the introduction of the New Aristotle had died away. Scholasticism had done its Torpor of the work and was falling into its dotage. Even before the out- after his break of the civil wars, Oxford, in a memorable plaint preserved to us by Wood, declared that her halls and hostels were deserted, and that she was almost abandoned of her Oxford own children. The intercourse with the continent was now serted. rare and fitful. Paris attracted but few Englishmen to her schools; the foreigner was seldom to be seen in the streets of Cambridge or Oxford. Occasionally indeed curiosity or necessity brought some continental scholar to our shores, but the gross ignorance and uncultured tone that everywhere prevailed effectually discouraged a lengthened sojourn. Among Testimony of those who were thus impelled, in the early part of the cen- 10. tury, was the distinguished Italian scholar, Poggio Bracciolini. He came fresh from the discovery of many a long lost masterpiece of Latin literature, and from intercourse with that rising school of Italian literati, represented by men like Aretino, known, and certainly had not been condemned. This is therefore another instance of a by no means uncommon occurrence, viz. the incorporation of a later statute in the Statuta Antiqua of our colleges, without any intimation that it is of a later date than that when the statutes were first drawn up. 1 In the oath administered to the fellows it is required by the fifth clause, Jurabit quod non fovebit aut defendet hæreses vel errores Johannis Wicklyf, Reginaldi Pecocke, aut cujuscunque alterius hæretici per ecclesiam damnati.' MS. Statutes of 1475 in possession of the authorities of Queens' College. Jam siquidem gloriosa mater olim tam beata prole fœcunda, pene in extirminium ac desolationem versa est: sola sedet plangens ac dolens, quod non modo extranei, sed nec sui ventris filii cognoverunt eam. Sic sic reve- Poggio Bracciolini. d. 1459. |