the clergy, was always considered irregular and inconsistent. William of Jumiège, speaks of a certain Raoul, surnamed the Clerk, on account of his study of letters, and also called "male-couronne," because, applying also to chivalrous exercises, he did not well maintain the clerical gravity*. The Irish synod, in the eighth century, decreed that if any priest should be slain in war or in a popular tumult, no oblations or prayers were to be offered up for him, though his body might be buriedt. Indeed, all the ancient councils were most strict in forbidding the clergy to join in any military expedition, or be accessory to the shedding of either pagan or christian blood. Charlemagne, attending to the remonstrances of the Holy See, and to the prayers of the bishops, published this decree: "At the entreaty of the apostolic seat, and with the advice of all our faithful, and especially of the bishops and other priests, we correcting ourselves, and giving an example to our posterity, express our will that no priest shall ever go against the enemy, unless two or three bishops chosen by the others, for the purpose of giving benediction, and of preaching, and of reconciling the people, and with them chosen priests, who may receive them to the sacrament of penance, and celebrate mass, and take care of the sick, and administer to them the unction of holy oil with divine prayers, and above all provide that no one may depart from the world without viaticum ‡. 66 The bishop of Beauvais, on being taken prisoner by Richard I., wrote to the pope, imploring him to intercede for his deliverance, with the king of England. The pope's answer was as follows, Celestin, bishop, servant of the servant of God, to his dear brother, Philip, bishop of Beauvais, benediction: you inform me that a calamity has befallen you; I am not astonished at it. You chose to leave the pacific government of the flock for the field of battle, the mitre for the helmet, the pastoral staff for the lance, the chasuble for the cuirass, the ring for the sword; you have sought-well, and you have found; you have struck-you are, in your turn, stricken. Never Hist. Lib. VII. c. 10. + Lib. XXXIX. cap. 14; apud Dacher. Spicileg. tom. IX. An. 800. Con. Gall. tom. II. 235. cap. Lib. VII. c. 91. 103. theless, I shall write to Richard to ask for your deliverance." The well-known answer of the king must have been therefore suggested by what had been previously pronounced by the ecclesiastical authority, of which modern historians take care that their readers shall know nothing. It should be observed, that in general, under these warlike and political bishops, some of whom were not even priests, the churches were not allowed to suffer, being governed in their absence by coadjutors, who took personal care of the flock *; and after all, it is curious to observe, that even these abuses worked to the good of the church, as when they gave rise to the foundation of one of her most illustrious orders, for it was the horror which was inspired by Manasses, the proud and impious potentate, who said "it would be well to be archbishop of Rheims, if it were not necessary to sing mass," that induced Bruno, in order to avoid the spectacle of his vanity, in company with some other noble clerks, to withdraw from that city, and become the founder of the Carthusian family t. Nevertheless, even in Italy, in the tenth century, when evils seemed almost to have attained the climax, sanctity was not confined to the apostolic chair, for there were then several most holy prelates, such as Theodoric and Grimoald, archbishops of Pisa, Adalbert Bergomatensis, a man of great sanctity, wisdom, and courage, who defended his city against the barbarians, and restored it from ruins, Notharius bishop of Verona Gebehard, archbishop of Ravenna, Oegidius, bishop of Tusculum, Peter and Gauzlin, bishops of Padua, and many others, who were true examples of the apostolic life in evil days. No doubt some things were formerly tolerated, which would now be deemed insufferable; but even in those cases we must be slow to judge. "I am not ignorant" says Thomassinus, "with what horror and grief, pious men, and lovers of ecclesiastical discipline, now regard such customs; and their grief is to be applauded but neither should we condemn the number of holy men who practised or tolerated it. One and the same wisdom and charity order us now to rejoice in their abolition, and forbid us to condemn these men. It will be no sinall fruit if we derive from the whole re : * Anquetil, Hist. de Reims, Lib. I. c. 9. IV. 237. view of these ages that moderation of mind, that amplitude of genius, that equability, which piously and religiously embraces and reveres the ancient discipline of the church, not always similar to itself, but always fashioned by the same wisdom and charity *. To examine the sacerdotal character in the remaining members of the clergy, during the ages of faith, will be a task of no difficulty. The testimony of an historian who has studied in the original sources the history of the middle ages, must correspond with that delivered by Montiel, when he says, attesting the results of his own observations, "I have lived with that good, that excellent race of men, the French rectors; I have known them perfectly, both externally and internally, and I believe in my conscience that if it had existed in the time of Noah, the human race would have been saved, had there been necessary for its absolution, not merely ten, but ten thousand just +." "I have known many of the old French clergy," says another distinguished writer, "and it is the remembrance of my life which is the most flattering to myself, and the most agreeable ‡." Addison's idea of the ministers of the Anglican discipline in its classic age, is that of "one of the three great professions greatly overburdened with practitioners, and filled with multitudes of ingenious gentlemen that starve one another §;" in which judgment he was not singular, for Burton complains, that in consequence of the avarice of the lay patrons, "poor university men like himself, having at last obtained a small benefice, are soon made weary of it, if not of their lives, so that many became maltsters, graziers, chapmen, and daily converse with a company of idiots and clowns |;" a cruel alternative certainly for ingenious men of refined breeding. Of their genius and erudition there have been left indeed abundant monuments; still this testimony of friends and disciples is not such as would be rendered to men who followed the standard proposed to the Catholic clergy in the chapter which the church reads at the vespers of a confessor, "Beatus vir, qui inventus est sine macula, et qui post aurum non De Vet. et Nova Disciplina, pars III. Lib. I. cap. 45. Rubichon, du Mécanisme de la Société, 322. § Spec. 21. I. 3. وو abiit, nec speravit in pecunia et thesauris." The church immediately demands, "Quis est hic, et laudabimus eum? Fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua.' Yet she knew well that the voice of the people in most towns and villages during the ages of faith, would have answered without hesitation that it was their own pastor who placed his hope not in uncertain riches, but in the prayers of the poor, of whom they might have said, in the words of St. Bernard, "non evangelizat, ut comedat; sed comedit, ut evangelizet." Reader, it is guides belonging to the Catholic camp, who, while mortal, began to exhibit the glory of that second stole, and not the ingenious gentlemen described by Addison, that you are about to behold, therefore -"Down, down; bend low Thy knees; behold God's angel; fold thy hands: God was angry with the shepherds of Israel, who fed themselves, and who fed not the flock. "What was weak ye did not strengthen, and what was sick ye did not heal; what was broken ye did not bind up, what was fallen ye did not raise, and what was lost ye did not seek: but with austerity ye did govern them, and with power: and my sheep are dispersed because there was no pastor, and they are made the prey of all the beasts of the field, and they are scattered. My flocks wandered over all mountains, and upon every high hill, and over the whole face of the earth they are dispersed, and there was no one to seek after them t." That the Catholic clergy realized the description of the good shepherd, as commemorated in the Gospel, is a fact of history borne out by the continued observation of mankind, which the supporters of the modern discipline were constrained repeatedly to admit, as when the Anglican Dean of Winchester, in his sermon before a convocation, in the year 1742, said, “So that if we were to consider them, not with regard to what they believe, but to the diligence with which they look after their flocks, we should think that they were the reformed at present, and that our reformation was still to come." What were the ideas respecting the sacerdotal character which prevailed in the middle ages? St. Ambrose had said, “the duty of a priest is to injure no one, and to wish to render good service to all men ;" and St. Bona+ Ezek. xxxiv. * Dante Purg. II. ventura sums up the function in these words, "It is of the sacerdotal office that all who are deprived of human assistance in this world may be able, by its tuition, to find a remedy." Now that this was a supernatural character, even the philosophy of the Gentiles might lead us to conclude. Socrates assuredly would teach us to regard the Catholic clergy as divine men; for he says, "it does not seem to me to be human to disregard all the affairs of one's self, and to neglect for so many years one's domestic interests, and to be always occupied about the interests of other men, ἰδίᾳ ἑκάστῳ προσιόντα ὡς περ πατέρα ἢ ἀδελ φὸν πρεσβύτερον, πείθοντα ἐπιμελεῖσθαι ἀρετῆς *. Might not one suppose that he was speaking of the men commemorated by the church, who despised the life of the world, and came to the celestial kingdoms? The fact is, that in a priest of the holy Catholic and Roman church every thing was divine-his commission, his authority, the origin of his ordination, the duties which it imposed, the fidelity with which he fulfilled them; with him was associated no idea of a beginning from below, of a political origin, which rendered it advisable to invoke Angerona, the goddess of silence, as in the old days of Rome, when the true name of that city was never disclosed to the people there was no break and interruption in the titles of his authority, in consequence of the adoption at one period of a rite, which being opposed to the institution of Christ, and the apostolic traditions, and besides embracing manifest heresies, was necessarily invalid. St. Ambrose says, that "Pythagoras in forbidding his disciples to live in a popular manner, had derived the idea from the Holy Scriptures, which speak of taking off the shoes, of shaking off the dust of a common way, of leaving the people and ascending the mountains. You see then," he adds, "the separation-nothing plebeian should be found in priests, nothing vulgar, nothing common with the study, custom, and manner of the undisciplined multitude. The sacerdotal dignity requires for itself sober gravity, serious life, and singular weight, separate from the crowd t." Hugo of St. Victor shows that this is symbolically implied in the ecclesiasti Plato Apolog. 31. † Joan. Devoti Inst. Can. Lib. II. tit. 2. Epist. Lib. I. 6. |