PART II. CHAP. V. Clemangis, a leading spirit in the university of Paris in his day, had maintained that the chief end of theological studies was the training of able preachers'. But with the close of the fifteenth century both theology and the art of preaching seemed in danger of general neglect. At the English universities, and consequently throughout the whole country, the sermon was falling into almost complete disuse; and however truly it might, in a later century, be affirmed of the laity, Preaching discountenanced on account of Lollardism. The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,' the description was never truer than in the days of bishop Fisher. By some indeed the usefulness of preaching was the fear of openly denied; or rather it was maintained, that its liability to abuse outweighed its probable advantages; and, completely as Reginald Pecock's doctrines had been disavowed by the Church, his views on this point were, at least in practice, very widely adopted. Times had greatly changed since the day when Grosseteste declared that if a priest could not preach, there was one remedy, let him resign his benefice'. The activity of the Lollards had brought all popular harangues and discourses under suspicion, and a secular found preaching without a licence was liable to summary punishConsequent ment. Thus the sermon had ceased to form part of an ordinary religious service. The provincial clergy were directed to preach once a quarter to their congregations, but no penalty appears to have attached to the neglect even of this rare duty; and Latimer tells us that, in his own recollection, sermons might be omitted for twenty Sundays in succession without fear of complaint. Even the devout More, in that ingenious romance which he designed as a covert satire on many of the abuses of his age, while giving an admirably conceived description of a religious service, has left the ser rarity of sermons. 1 Neander, Church History, (Clark's Series), Ix 78-81. 2 Also Lincoln sayeth in a sermon that begynneth, Scriptum est de Levitis: "Yf any prieste saye he cannot preache, one remedye is resigne he uppe his benefyce." See A com pendious olde treatyse shewynge howe that we ought to haue the scripture in Englysshe, Arber's ed. of Rede me and be not wrothe, p. 176. 3 Blunt, Hist. of the Reformation, c. 4; Latimer, Sermons, 1 182. PART II. extravagant character ing the preaching in vogue. mon altogether unrecognised'. In the universities, for one CHAP. V. master of arts or doctor of divinity who could make a text of Scripture the basis of an earnest, simple and effective homily, Artificial and there were fifty who could discuss its moral, anagogical, and figurative meaning, who could twist it into all kinds of unimagined significance, and give it a distorted, unnatural application. Rare as was the sermon, the theologian, in the form of a modest, reverent expounder of scripture, was yet rarer. Bewildered audiences were called upon to admire the performances of intellectual acrobats. Skelton, who well knew Skelton's dethe Cambridge of these days, not inaptly described its young theologians scholars as men who when they had once superciliously caught' 'A lytell ragge of rhetoricke, A lesse lumpe of logicke, A pece or patche of philosophy, They tumble so in theology, That they juge them selfe able to be Doctours of the chayre in the vintre To magnifye their names".' scription of of his day. towards a reform. We find in the year Fund be queathed by lage at Ox bridge. The efforts made towards remedying this state of things Efforts had hitherto been rare and ineffectual. 1446, one Thomas Collage bequeathing forty pounds for the Thomas Colpayment of 6s. 8d. to preachers in each of the universities, so ford and Camlong as the money lasted, 'to the end that encouragement might be bestowed upon divinity, now at a low ebb3; while in 1503, pope Alexander VI, in response to a special application, Bull of Alexissued a bull, empowering the chancellor of the university 1503. 1 Utopia, ed. Arber, pp. 153-7. 2 A Replycacion agaynst certayne yong Scholers abjured of late, etc. Skelton-Dyce, I 206. These lines, it is true, were really aimed, some twenty years after the foundation of the lady Margaret preachership, at the young Cambridge Reformers: but they describe with perfect accuracy the ordinary theological training of the time. Petrarch's corresponding criticism on the theolo gians of Italy in his day, is worthy 3 Cooper, Annals, 1 198; Wood- ander VI, PART II. of the lady Margaret Preachership. CHAP. V. yearly to appoint under the university seal, twelve doctors or masters, and graduates, being priests, most capable of preaching, to preach the word of God in all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, both to the clergy and the people, notwithstanding any ordinance or constitution to the contrary'. But the evangelizing spirit had been too long and too sternly repressed for merely permissive enactments to restore it again to life. Men began to surmise that, in seeking to extirpate the 'tares,' the rulers of the Church had also torn up much of the good wheat; and to some it seemed that the certainty of an uninstructed and irreligious laity was a worse evil than the possibility of heretical preaching. Among these were the lady Margaret and her adviser. Like One of Foundation old, they were moved with compassion as they saw the flocks wandering and fainting for want of the shepherd's care. The lady Margaret preachership was the outcome of no pedantic effort to uphold a system of effete theology; it was an eminently practical design for the people's good; and it reflects no little credit on the discernment of bishop Fisher, Double aim that this endeavour was a direct anticipation of like efforts on the part of the most enlightened reformers of his own and the succeeding generation,-from moderate Anglicans, like Parker, to unflinching denouncers of abuses, like Latimer. Nor was his aim confined to the simple revival of preaching; he was also anxious, as we learn long afterwards from Testimony of Erasmus, whom he incited to the composition of his treatise De Ratione Concionandi, to change the whole character of the pulpit oratory then in vogue, 'to abolish the customary cavillings about words and parade of sophistry, and to have those who were designed for preachers exercised in sound learning and sober disputations, that they might preach the word of God gravely and with an evangelical spirit, and recommend it to the minds of the learned by an efficacious eloquence'.' of Fisher: to revive the practice, and to reform the preaching. Erasmus. Regulations of the By the regulations now given in connexion with the new preachership. foundation, the preacher was required to deliver six sermons 1 Cooper, Annals, 1 260. 2 Erasmi Opera, 1 1253. Lewis, Life of Fisher, 1 10, 277. PART II. annually, that is to say, one in the course of every two years CHAP. V. at each of the following twelve places:-on some Sunday at St. Paul's Cross, if able to obtain permission, otherwise at St. Margaret's, Westminster, or if unable to preach there, then in one of the more notable churches of the city of London; and once, on some feast day, in each of the churches of Ware and Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, Bassingbourne, Orwell, and Babraham in Cambridgeshire; Maney, St. James Deeping, St. John Deeping, Bourn, Boston, and Swineshead in Lincolnshire. The preacher was to be a doctor of divinity if a competent doctor could be found to undertake the duty, otherwise a bachelor in that faculty and perpetual fellow of some college; by a clause subsequently added the preference was to be given, ceteris paribus, to members of Christ's College. The preacher was to be resident in the university and to hold no benefice. The election to the office was vested in the vicechancellor and heads of colleges, the vicechancellor having the right of giving a casting vote. The appointment was to be made triennially, the salary being The appointfixed at ten pounds per annum, payable by the abbat and made trienconvent of Westminster'. ment to be nially. claims to be regarded as a reformer. On the whole, looking at the scope of these several Fisher's designs of the countess and her adviser,—the provision for gratuitous theological instruction in the university,-the direct application of the learning thus acquired, in sermons to the laity, and the introduction of a more simple and evangelical method of scriptural exposition, we can scarcely deny Fisher's claim to rank with the theological reformers of his own and the preceding age, with Gerson, Hegius, Rudolf von Lange, and Rudolphus Agricola, and those other eminent men whose services have entitled them to the honorable designation of 'reformers before the reformation.' chancellor of Both at the university and at court Fisher continued to He is elected grow in favour. In the same year that the foregoing preach- the univerership was founded, he was elected chancellor of the univer- nominated 1 Cooper, Annals 1 273-4. The preacher,' says Wood, was probably the only person that preached in English to the university.' Wood- sity, and PART II. bishop of Rochester, 1504. Circumstances un succeeded to the bishopric. CHAP. V. sity, and at nearly the same time was promoted to the bishopric of Rochester. The circumstances under which he succeeded to the latter dignity were of an exceptional and more than ordinarily gratifying kind. In those days the royal court, or as Wolsey began to grow in influence, Hampton Court, was thronged by eager and often far from scrupulous candidates for office and promotion; unobtrusive merit and the faithful discharge of duty rarely won for the parish priest the recognition of the dispensers of ecclesiastical rewards; and it would seem that no one was more taken by surprise der which he than Fisher himself, when, without solicitation or expectation on his own part, as yet unbeneficed, and still somewhat under the age when long service might be held to mark him out for such signal favour, he was called upon to succeed Richard Fitzjames (who was translated to the see of Chichester), as bishop of Rochester. Conjecture would naturally incline us to refer his promotion to the influence of his patroness, but the account given by Lewis, authenticated by the express statement of Fisher himself', proves that the initiative was taken by king Henry-desirous, it would seem, as he approached the close of life, of redeeming many an ill-considered act of preferment by promotion that shewed a more careful consideration of the personal merits of the individual. Fisher's influence with the countess. The influence of Fisher on behalf of his university now began to make itself still more distinctly perceptible. In the scheme of the foundation of the professorship, Oxford, as we have seen, was an equal sharer in his patroness's bounty; and in that of the preachership, Anthony Wood has endeavoured to prove that it was her intention to have equally befriended the sister university. That his assumption is entirely unwarranted by the facts is clearly shewn by Baker, and Cooper's industrious research has discovered nothing that gives it countenance. It seems accordingly not unreasonable to conclude that the university was chiefly in 1 'Quippe qui paucos annos habuerim, qui nunquam in curia obsequium præstiterim, qui nullis ante dotatus beneficiis. Et quam ob rem ego ad episcopatum assumerer? Nihil profecto aliud nisi ut studiosis om nibus liquido constaret illorum causa id factum esse. . Te nullius aut viri aut feminæ precibus adductum ut id faceres asserebas.' Lewis, Life of Fisher, 11 270. 2 Wood, Annals, 11 827. |