Chapter XXIV (34)

Both these distinguished men were frequent visitors to Stepney, and in the pleasant conferences which Colet held with the familiar coterie, one project of his must often have furnished them with a topic of conversation: it was his wish to found a school. Schools, indeed, there already were in rich abundance; during the last thirty years a very harvest of them had been springing up all over England, but none yet founded were quite to Colet’s mind. He desired to see an academy in which there should be laid a solid foundation of learning, both sacred and profane. Classical, or what he termed “clene Latin,” the fashionable study of Greek, and Scriptural divinity, would never, he argued, establish themselves in the universities until they were first taught in preparatory schools; and he pleased himself with the thought of attaching such a grammar-school to his own church of St Paul’s, and bestowing his wealth and his study in bringing it to perfection. He hoped to raise a generation of scholars who should be trained to understand the true sense and spirit of the classical authors, so as to read, write, and speak the learned tongues with ease and elegance; and who, at the same time, should have gone through a careful course of religious instruction; a large-hearted design, which met the warm approval of his literary friends, and of none more than of Erasmus.

The school was accordingly commenced in 1509, at the east end of St. Paul’s churchyard. The front next the church was finished in the year following, and bore this inscription:--_Schola catechizationis puerorum in Christi Opt. Max. fide et bonis literis, Anno Christi, MDX_. The endowments provided for the free education of one hundred and fifty-three scholars,[344] and for the maintenance of a master, usher, and chaplain. The school, when complete, was divided into four parts. First the porch, where those whom Colet called his catechumens were instructed in religion, no one being admitted who could not at least say the catechism and know how to read and write. Then came a room for the lower class taught by the usher, and a third for the higher class taught by the master. The captain of each form had a little desk to mark his pre-eminence, and the apartments were only divided by curtains. Lastly, there was a small chapel opening into the schoolroom, where Mass was said daily. The children, however, were not intended to _hear_ Mass daily, for, according to Colet’s views, this would have been a waste of time. Unlike Bede and Alfred, he was ignorant of what has been called the grand secret of education, “the way how to lose time wisely.” Week-day Masses were in his eyes simple superfluities, and he judged the moments so consumed much better spent in study. In accordance with this principle, he himself only said Mass on Sundays and festivals, and argued that he spent the time thus saved more profitably in arranging the matter for his sermons! His scholars, indeed, had their Mass said _for_ them every morning in the chapel; but the statutes enjoined that when the Sacring bell was heard, they should only prostrate until after the Elevation, and then rise and go on with their studies. What a revelation of character appears in traits like these, and how wide a distance separates such a tone of spirituality from that of the monastic scholars! How little of the spirit of faith was likely to be imbibed during this daily lesson of irreverence, and what could have been the theory which this much-vaunted director possessed of the spiritual life, when he practically taught his pupils by word and example to value work above prayer, and to save time for study by cutting short their Mass! Yet Colet designed this as a _Catechetical_ school, and intended it to be a nursery of Christian piety. The image of the child Jesus stood on the master’s seat in the attitude of teaching, with the apposite inscription, “Hear ye Him.” The children were instructed to regard Him as the Master of the school, and as they went and came, to bow to His image and salute Him with a brief hymn. Thrice a day, moreover, they were to prostrate, and recite appointed prayers; in short, there were not wanting provisions of a religious character, only much of the true spirit of Catholic devotion had been pared away.

The statutes regarding recreation were drawn up with Puritanic rigorism. Old traditions on this head met with small indulgence at the hands of the reforming founder, and hardening his heart to all the infirmities of the schoolboy nature, he strictly forbade Shrovetide cock-fighting and the disputations of St. Bartholomew’s day, which he denounced as “idle babbling.” The abolition of cock-fighting was beyond all praise, but I grieve to add that there were absolutely no play days. Nay, so rigid was this rule, that the master was to forfeit forty shillings every time he broke it, unless at the request of an archbishop, bishop, or king. But, strange to say, there was a special provision for the due celebration of Childermas day, when they were all to repair to St. Paul’s church, hear the child-bishop’s sermon, assist at the High Mass, and offer his lordship a penny. The studies were to consist of good Greek and Latin authors, _especially Christian ones_, “for my intent is,” writes the founder, “by this scole specially to increase the knowledge and worshipping of God and our Lord Jesus Christ, and good Christian life and manners in the children.” But whilst giving this preference to Christian over Pagan authors he requires “the verrye Romayne eloquence” to be taught, and warming at the bare notion of Scholastic barbarism ever invading his seminary, “will utterly have banished and excluded all such abusion as the later blind world hath brought in, which is rather to be called _bloterature_ than _literature_.”

Colet had no difficulty in finding a master fully qualified to undertake the direction of this academy. William Lily, the god-son and pupil of Grocyn, and the fellow-student of More, the very ideal of a humble, devout, and unworldly scholar, who had never yet thought of making his learning a way to fortune, but was still plodding on as a poor London pedagogue, was at once promoted to the mastership of St. Paul’s, with John Rightwyse for his usher. The next step was to draw up a little book for the use of his scholars containing the rudiments of grammar, and an abridgment of Christian doctrine; and this little book, commonly called Paul’s Accidence, was dedicated by Colet to Lily. Herein we find the creed in Latin and English, the seven sacraments, brief explanations of the love of God, and our duty to ourselves and our neighbours, including precepts for the observance of appointed fasts and holy days, and some rules of holy living, with a beautiful Latin prayer to “the Child Jesus, Master of this school,” and two others for daily use, one for parents, and another for the virtue of docility.

In his preface to his “Rudiments,” Colet apologises for writing on a subject whereon so many had written before him, but explains his purpose to have been the putting things in a clear order for the use of young wits, out of compassion to the tenderness and small capacity of little minds. “I pray God,” he continues, “that all may be to His honour and the erudition of children. Wherefore I pray you all, lytel babes, learn gladly this lytel treatise, and commende it dyligently unto your memorye, trusting that ye shall proceed and growe to perfyte literature, and come to be grete clerkes. And lyfte up your lytel whyte hands for me also, which prayeth for you to God.”

Wolsey reprinted this little manual for the use of his Ipswich scholars, recommending it to the masters in an epistle from his own pen. In 1513 the indefatigable founder resolved on providing his boys with something more complete. Grammars, indeed, there were in plenty; there was the old Donatus, and the more modern “Lac puerorum” of good Master Holte,[345] and a host of others whose quaint names and flimsy contents have been whimsically criticised by Erasmus. But they did not satisfy the requirements of Colet, and he accordingly composed his treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech, which, with some alterations and considerable additions, forms the syntax of the grammar which afterwards bore the name of Lily’s grammar. After Lily had revised and corrected the manuscript, Colet put it into the hands of Erasmus, who made so many alterations, that neither of them could in justice call the work his own, and in 1515 it was published, with an epistle from Erasmus. After its publication Lily drew up the rules, known as the _Propria quæ maribus_, and _As in præsenti_, his usher Rightwyse adding some finishing touches. About the same time Linacre was engaged on a somewhat similar work, but his “Compendium of Grammar,” originally drawn up for the use of the Princess Mary, was judged by Colet rather too abstruse for the comprehension of beginners, and he did not, therefore, admit it into his school. This seems to have been resented by the sensitive grammarian, and Erasmus had to interpose to restore a good understanding between him and the dean.

Lily proved an excellent master, and among his first pupils were the famous antiquary Leland and Thomas Lupset, son to Colet’s amanuensis, who was afterwards admitted to close intimacy by More and Reginald Pole. One fault, however, appeared in the management of the school, too common at that time, namely, the excessive severity of the discipline. This is perhaps to be charged partly to the account of Colet, whose views were as austere in what regarded the education of children, as they were in the direction of souls; and partly to the influence of Rightwyse, who was a scholar of Eton, and brought with him thence maxims of school government, which were exceedingly harsh, not to say cruel. In fact, since education had passed from the hands of the monastics into those of professional pedagogues, the paternal spirit which formerly presided over the Catholic schoolroom had been gradually fading away. It seemed agreed by all that the Greek grammar, and the “verrye Romayne eloquence,” could not be attained without an unsparing use of the rod; for we find the same complaint of cruelty made of the French professors of the time. In England this unmerciful system kept its ground throughout the whole of the Tudor period, and we find Sir John Elyot advising his “governor” to provoke a child to study with a pleasant face, and deprecating “cruel and yrous masters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof we need no better witness than daily experience.” The Eton fashion was to flog a boy directly he appeared in the school, as a sort of entrance fee, of which old Tusser dolefully complains;[346] and something of this sort of discipline existed at St. Paul’s, and was supported by the approval of Colet.

To the credit of Erasmus, it must be said that he strongly condemned such severity; he knew from his own experience that brutal tutors ruin many a hopeful lad, and advocated the milder system of teaching, which he himself followed with so much success. He was wont to quote the example of Spensippus, who would have pictures of joy and gladness to be set round his school: and in his tract on education, quotes with pleasure the story of an English gentleman, who seeing that his little son was very fond of archery, bought him a bow and arrows, and painted them with the letters of the Greek alphabet. The capitals were marked on the butt, and whenever the child had hit a letter and could tell the name of it, he was rewarded with a cherry.

This was not at all in Colet’s way, and Erasmus tells a frightful story of the cruelty which he himself witnessed--practised under his direction. “I once knew a certain theologian,” he says, “who must needs have masters who were zealous floggers. He esteemed this an excellent means for subduing all asperity of character, and mastering the wantonness of youth. Never did he sit down to a repast with his disciples, but at the end of the meal some one or other of them was brought out to be flogged; and his cruelty was sometimes exercised on the innocent, merely to accustom them to stripes. I was once standing by when he thus called out from dinner a boy of, I should think, ten years old, who had recently come to the school from his mother. He began by saying that his mother was a most pious woman, and had specially recommended the boy to his care, and then that he might have an opportunity of flogging him, he charged him with I know not what atrocity, and made a sign to the prefect of the school to give him a flogging. The latter at once knocked the boy down, and beat him as if he had committed a sacrilege. The doctor called out several times, ‘Enough, enough,’ but the savage went on with his barbarity, till the boy almost swooned. Then turning to us, the doctor quietly observed that he had not merited any punishment, but that it was done to humble his spirit. Who would treat his bondslave in such a way? nay, I may say, who would thus treat his ass?”[347] Though Colet is not named in this passage, yet he is generally believed to have been the “theologian” in question, the prefect of discipline being no other than his usher, Rightwyse.

We gather from Colet’s letters to his friend, that on one point of opinion they greatly differed, namely, in the view they took of religious life. Erasmus, when he speaks of monks, forgets his usual politeness, and descends to a style of which Luther might have been proud. They are designated as “foul and noxious insects, which it is a sort of pollution to touch; creatures so detested and so detestable, that it is regarded as an ill omen to meet one in the street; dolts and idiots, who think it a mark of consummate piety not to be able to read; wretched beings, who are distinguished by a certain obstinate malignity of disposition, and who think that they are charming the ears of the saints when, with asinine voices, they bray out their psalms in choir.” One is ashamed to transcribe such language, and to remember that the greatest scholar of his time considered it to be wit.

But Colet was of another mind. He condemned the relaxed life led in many religious houses; but there was a theory of monasticism which he loved and admired. It was hardly the Catholic theory of religious life, for Colet’s dream seems to have been to have found some retreat where he could have spent the close of life with a few chosen friends of kindred tastes, living and conversing with them after the manner of the ancient philosophers. He even set on foot inquiries, to discover if any house suitable for his purpose existed in Italy or Germany; but finding none to his mind, he built himself a residence adjoining the Carthusian monastery at Shene, whither he often retired, and purposed withdrawing there altogether, and giving up all his public engagements that he might prepare in quiet for his end. In his last letter to Erasmus, we see that his old interests were fast losing their hold upon him as he felt the sands of life running out. His friend had sent him some of Reuchlin’s Cabalistic works. “O Erasmus,” he replies, “of books and knowledge there is no end. There is no better thing in this world than a holy life, and no other way to attain it than by the earnest love and imitation of Jesus. Wherefore, leaving all wandering paths, this, to the best of my ability, is what I long for.” He made all his last dispositions, therefore, bestowing extraordinary care in drawing up his will, in which there occurs no word suggestive of suffrages for his soul; a fact which shows, that if he did not condemn the practice of praying for the dead, he at any rate attached no value to it. Death overtook him sooner than he anticipated, and in the year 1519 he expired at his favourite retreat, almost at the moment when Luther was making his mock submission to the Sovereign Pontiff.

What shall we say of the character of this celebrated man? a strong and earnest one it was, no doubt; one that loved justice and hated iniquity, and had a zeal for the interests of God. Erasmus somewhere speaks of his “passionate admiration for the wonderful majesty of Christ.” Nor in judging him must we forget that he lived in an age when worldliness had infected the high places in the Church; and that, if his denunciation of abuses was often arrogant, there were plenty of abuses to denounce. Yet granting all this, our readers will long ago have agreed on their verdict. From such a type of Catholicism, they will say, in which we see piety without unction, austerity without sweetness, and an absence--if not of faith--at least of all its tenderest instincts; from such a form of godliness, over which the coming spectre of Lutheranism had already projected somewhat of its baneful shadow, may the schools and scholars of England be long preserved! Such characters, if we cannot impeach them of formal heresy, yet indicate a woful wane of faith, and fully explain the significance of those rules[348] left by St. Ignatius to his disciples, wherein he taught them how to conform their sentiments to the sentiments of the Catholic Church. He was not content with bidding them hold fast to her creeds, but would have them esteem and speak highly of all her minor practices of devotion. For these, in the judgment of one of the most sagacious among the saints, are the pulses by which we count the heart-beatings of the true believer; and in Colet these were silent. Though he died a Catholic, therefore, Protestants unanimously claim him as one of their precursors; and his panegyric, from which we gather all that is known of his life, was drawn up by Erasmus for the edification of his Lutheran friend, the notorious Dr. Jonas Jodocus.

The mention of Shene may fitly introduce a younger and more illustrious scholar, who had received his early education in that monastery, and who, at the time of Colet’s death, was studying at Oxford, and was received as a frequent and welcome visitor in the family circle of Sir Thomas More. Reginald Pole was then a youth of nineteen, exhibiting both the comely dignity of his Plantagenet blood, and a promise of intellectual excellence that was not belied by his after career. From Shene he had passed on to Oxford, and at Corpus Christi College, under the tuition of Linacre and Latymer, had thrown himself heart and soul into classical studies. Though he afterwards in great part laid them aside, in order more exclusively to devote himself to sacred letters, yet he always retained the style of a polished Latinist, as all his writings testify. Young as he was, he had secured the friendship of More, and was often admitted into the family circle and the happy schoolroom of Chelsea. In a letter to his daughter Margaret, More speaks of the admiration he had expressed on reading one of his Latin epistles, and calls him “not so noble by birth as he is by learning and virtue;” while Pole, on his side, was wont in after years to boast of the friendship of More and Fisher as something he valued more highly than the familiarity of all the princes of Christendom.

The society at this time gathered round the English Court was extraordinarily brilliant. Besides a throng of native scholars, it included several illustrious foreigners, such as Ludovicus Vives, the Spanish Quinctilian, as he was called, who condescended to direct the education of the Princess Mary. Three queens graced the royal circle, one of them the consort of Henry, and the other two his widowed sisters of France and Scotland. The poets and pageant-makers of the time racked their fancies to find new ways of introducing the Tudor roses white and red and the rich pomegranates of Arragon (the devices of the royal dames), and to make the most of a Court illuminated by three crowned beauties. Erasmus is never weary of praising the king, the queen, the cardinal, and the bishops; they are all patrons of letters, the Court is the seat of the Muses, and might vie with Athens in the days of Pericles. The queen is as virtuous as she is learned; she daily reads the English Scriptures, spends six hours at her prayers and kneels all the time without a cushion. The king is a scholar and a musician; he is devout, moreover, writes very elaborate Masses in eight parts, and has gone on pilgrimage to Our Lady of Walsingham, walking barefoot from the town of Barsham; and Erasmus has gone there too, and has hung up a copy of verses as his offering at her altar. How artistically he paints the broad green way across the fields by which the pilgrims approach, and the little chapel built within the splendid church, in imitation of the Holy House of Loretto, wherein there is no light save from the tapers that burn with so delicious an odour, and the walls of which are blazing with gold and jewels!

Or we are introduced to the “solemn Christmas” kept by the Court at Richmond or Greenwich, with “revels, disguisings, and banquets royal, all with great nobleness;” and we observe how the quaint mummings which found favour at the beginning of the reign are gradually giving place to “masks, after the manner of Italy, a thing not seen before in England, with which some were content, but which others that knew the fashion of it,”[349] appear to have disapproved. Such scenes were well calculated to dazzle and fascinate a young courtier; but Pole was proof against them; he showed no hurry either to plunge into the amusements of his age, or to enter on the brilliant political career which fortune seemed to open before him, and had hardly appeared at Court before he solicited from the king a fresh leave of absence.

The six years he had spent at Oxford did not by any means satisfy his ardour for study, and, with the consent of the king, who had charged himself with the education of his young kinsman, he proceeded to Padua, which Erasmus styled the Athens of Europe, and where students from all countries were eager to resort. Here “the nobleman of England,” as he was called by the Italians, soon won golden opinions--from some, for his singular modesty and virtue, from others, for the graceful acquirements that so well became his royal birth; and here he first became introduced to Bembo and Sadolet, with the latter of whom his acquaintance ripened into friendship. After the fashion of the times, he received a certain number of humbler scholars into his household, and among these were Longolius, who records his dislike for frivolous conversation, and Lupset, afterwards Greek Professor at Oxford. Erasmus, too, was often a welcome guest when the wanderings of that restless scholar led him to Padua, and his voluminous correspondence includes many letters to Pole, who, though totally opposed to his views on religious matters, was yet unable, like the rest of the world, to shut him out of his affections.

Meanwhile the breach between the reformers and the Church had terribly widened, and open war was being waged between the two parties. Henry VIII. had written his “Defence of the Seven Sacraments,” and Luther had published his “Reply;” the scurrility of which had called both More and Fisher into the field as controversialists. But Erasmus still kept silence. He was on excellent terms with Luther and Melanchthon, the worthy Dr. Jonas, and the other Coryphæi of the Reform. He corresponded with them all, and did them every service in his power at the head of those German Humanists whose literary labours were directed against the old-fashioned theologians, while their political intrigues aimed at winning over the young emperor to their side, or at least at procuring his neutrality. It is true he regretted that Luther should openly have broken from the Church, and the excesses of the heretics offered fair mark for his satire; nevertheless with most of their views of reform he heartily sympathised. On the other hand, as he was not ashamed of avowing, he had no intention of dying a martyr for his principles, neither did he at all contemplate offending the Catholic sovereigns by whom he was petted and pensioned. He counted on his own address for enabling him to steer a middle course, to save both his head and his Court remittances, and earn a good name for moderation. But on this fair horizon clouds were now about to rise. He received an official hint from Cuthbert Tonstall that King Henry was surprised and offended at his silence, and that rumours were even afloat that he had assisted Luther in the composition of his “Reply.” In vain did Erasmus protest his innocence; only one course would satisfy the king. Let him write against Luther, if he wished his sincerity to be believed; the whole Catholic world expected it of him, and was scandalised at his delay. But if this did not suit him, he could not be surprised if his pension from the Court of England were withdrawn. Thus sorely pressed, Erasmus prepared to obey. But meanwhile, a whisper of what was going on had reached Luther’s ears, and he wrote at once, advising his quondam ally to be wise and preserve silence. Luther, at least, had the merit of being a plain speaker; “If you take up the cudgels against me,” he says, “you will be beset on both sides, and must infallibly be worsted. Everybody knows that what you style moderation, is really duplicity. All I ask is, that you will stand quietly by and see the play, and not take part in it, and then I will leave you alone; but if not, you know very well what you have to expect.” This letter by some means became public, and Erasmus felt that his last chance was gone. If _now_ he held his tongue, he should be accused of collusion; so, in pure desperation, he plunged into the combat, and wrote his treatise on Free Will, copies of which he was careful to send to all the crowned heads of Europe. Wonderful credit he took to himself for this achievement, declaring that he had exposed himself to be stoned to death by the heretics, but that he gloried in suffering for so good a cause. At the same time his letters to Melanchthon are couched in the most pitiful and apologetic strain. He could not help himself; he was a lost man if he had held his peace; the _figuli Romanenses_ had made the Catholic sovereigns believe he was a Lutheran; he would have been ruined if he had refused to write. To Vives he was more explicit. “I have written a treatise on Free Will,” he says, “but to confess the truth I lost my own. There my heart dictated one thing, and my pen wrote another.”[350] However, whether his attack were sham or earnest mattered little to Luther; it was a declaration of war, and as such he treated it, replying to it with his usual promptitude, and with more than his usual grossness. The other leaders of the Reform likewise gave tongue on the occasion, and denounced the unwilling controversialist as a Balaam who had been hired to curse Israel. Poor Erasmus had reaped the just reward of his shuffling policy, and felt himself in a sad quandary. He knew not whether to advance or retreat, and either way he had to wade through the mire. He pours out his vexation in a letter to Pole; in which, however, he is careful to keep up the tone of a sufferer for the faith. “Luther has written a huge volume against me,” he says, “in a style one would not use in addressing the Turk; and so, from the partisan of peace and quiet which I would fain remain, I am forced to turn gladiator, and, what is worse, to fight with wild beasts in the arena.”

On his return to England, Pole found a sad and ominous cloud hanging over the Court which he had left so prosperous and splendid. The question of the divorce had already been mooted, and the bad success of the negotiations with Rome had brought about the fall of Wolsey. Henry was anxious to secure the support of Pole, whose influence at Rome he foresaw would one day be powerful, and employed his new favourite, Cromwell, to sound and tempt him. That worthy minister commenced operations by putting a copy of Machiavel’s works into the hands of Reginald, who returned it to him with disgust, and contrived to get leave to retire to Shene, where he took up his residence in Colet’s old house. Here he remained for two years, carefully abstaining from taking any part in public affairs, and at the end of that time asked and obtained leave to proceed for another term of study to the University of Paris. He was not long suffered to remain there in peace. The notable scheme of consulting the European universities and divines, which had been originally proposed by Wolsey, was warmly taken up by his successors, and royal agents were now busy in every foreign country, seeking, by bribes and cajolery, to obtain opinions favourable to the king’s divorce. To the credit of the English universities it must be said they opposed a stubborn resistance, and the affirmative declaration sent to the king never received the votes of the majority.[351] But foreign academies were found more pliant; it is true the charge for a professor’s conscience was somewhat exorbitant, but still they had their price, and did not refuse to be bargained for. In Germany, indeed, Luther’s influence was powerful enough to prevent his old adversary from receiving any assistance, but greater success was met with in France and Italy, and a commission was now sent to Pole, requiring him to gather up the suffrages of the Paris professors. He contrived to evade the odious office thus wilily thrust upon him, and was sickened to the heart by observing the eagerness with which the Humanists came forward in this disgraceful business. No one was a more active agent than Croke, the Greek orator, who wrote complacently to the king, detailing the success which attended his “honourable presents” to the Italian professors. Richard Pace, too, the successor of Colet, and the holder of several diplomatic offices, writes to say he has found a man ready to put the case _either for or against_ the divorce, according to his Majesty’s pleasure, so as all the divines of England shall not be able to reply. The facile casuist here alluded to was no other than Wakefield, the Hebrew professor at Oxford; and, in short, turn where we will, we find the pedagogues busily engaged in doing very dirty work at high wages.

Pole was next recalled to England to be tempted with caresses. The Archbishopric of York, it was hinted, was at his command, if he were willing to bend to the king’s wishes. His own family were employed to move his determination, and at last, beset on all sides, he wavered, and consented to see the king. Henry received him graciously in the gallery at Whitehall; but when he tried to speak, conscience gained the day, and, with a faltering voice, instead of protesting his readiness to serve his Grace in his “secret matter,” he plainly declared his conviction that the proposed divorce was utterly unlawful. Though Henry cut him short with a volley of reproaches, he treated him with more magnanimity than might have been expected. He did not order him to the Tower, and silenced the officious courtiers who expressed their disgust at Reginald’s ingratitude, by the unexpected declaration that he loved him in spite of his obstinacy.[352] His pension was not withdrawn, and he was suffered once more to retire abroad; and in 1531 Pole withdrew to Italy, never again to set foot on the English shores till he landed there a Papal legate, to reconcile his country, for too brief a space, to the communion of the Catholic Church.

It is unnecessary to pursue the events of the great tragedy, save in so far as they affected the career of Pole. In his retreat at Padua, his heart was torn by the news of each successive step by which the infatuated king was plunging his country into schism; the rupture with Rome, the repudiation of Catherine, the marriage with Anne, and the formal establishment of the royal supremacy. The English Lords and Commons submitted to all this with wonderful docility, but to Henry’s vexation he found that his proceedings were daily losing him the countenance of friends abroad. The Emperor of course, was his sworn enemy; Francis I. had refused to listen to the explanations of his ambassadors; Cochlæus, and other grave writers, had drawn the pen against him; and even Calvin made game of his new-fangled supremacy, and ridiculed the man who had delivered his country from the primacy of Peter to saddle it with the primacy of Henry. Erasmus, too, had withdrawn from a country where it was no longer safe for a man to have an opinion. He was just then directing his irony against the Protestants, who had disgusted him with their grossness, and whom he pronounces a sad set of hypocrites. “People talk of Lutheranism as a tragic business, but for my part I think it is a regular comedy, and, like other comedies, the piece always ends with a marriage.” Elsewhere he says, “We have been stunned long enough with the cry of _Gospel, Gospel, Gospel_. What we want is Gospel manners. These Evangelicals love money and pleasure, and despise everything else.” Henry’s Acts of Parliament, too, seasoned as they were with axe and fagot, did not suit his notions of moderation; and, besides, just then Pope Paul III. was making him tempting offers, so that Erasmus was not at all disposed to take up the gauntlet on behalf of a prince, against whose conduct all the respectable part of Europe was protesting. Henry had, therefore, no one to look to out of his own kingdom save the small German princes and Protestant divines; and it was a sore humiliation to sue for support to the religionists whom it was his boast to have defeated in controversy. In this extremity, his thoughts turned to Pole, who owed him everything, and who, he could not believe, would ever openly take part against him. Cuthbert Tonstall, Reginald’s dearest friend, had swallowed the new oath, and accepted the bishopric of Durham; why should Reginald’s conscience be more tender? A messenger was, therefore, posted to Padua, with letters to Pole inviting him to accept the king’s offers of favour, and write in defence of those royal claims which had been accepted as law by the English Parliament and Hierarchy.[353] Pole saw that the time was come to take his part openly and decidedly. He sat down and counted the cost, and then he took pen in hand and wrote, not an apology for the supremacy, but his celebrated treatise _De Unitate Ecclesiastica_ in which he sums up all the acts by which England has been severed from Catholic communion, fearlessly condemns the sacrileges of the king, and calls on him to enter on the path of penance. Whilst thus engaged, terrible tidings reached him: the axe had fallen at last, and More and Fisher were numbered with the martyrs; and, with the tears blotting his paper, he gave vent to his sorrow in that magnificent apostrophe to the memory of his friends, which he introduces in his Third Book. The treatise was finished in four months, and despatched to England by a faithful messenger, who was charged to deliver it into the king’s own hands; and then, fully aware of the consequences of his determination, Reginald set out for Rome, whither he had been invited by Paul III. almost immediately on his accession. His friends entreated him not openly to break with the king by accepting any preferment from the Pope. The two Houses of Parliament even sent him a common letter to the same effect; but before it reached him, Pole was at Rome, and had received from the new Pontiff the dignity of Cardinal.

Two months later he found himself charged with a dangerous and difficult mission. The fate of Anne Boleyn had, it was hoped, removed from the king his worst councillor, and the insurrection of the northern counties of England bore witness that the people themselves were still true to the faith. Hopes were, therefore, entertained that negotiations for a reconciliation might now be opened, and Pole was accordingly appointed legate north of the Alps, with instructions to proceed to Flanders, to bring about a peace between France and the Empire, to announce the Pope’s resolve to call a General Council, and to seize any occasion that might present itself for confirming the English Catholics in their faith, and negotiating with the king’s government. The legation, however, was an utter failure. Henry had proclaimed the Cardinal a traitor, and set a price on his head; he had offered to buy him of the Emperor in exchange for a force of four thousand men; he had so managed matters that the legate was warned to leave France as quickly as possible, and refused admission into the imperial territory; the English agents were everywhere busy endeavouring to procure either his open seizure or his secret assassination; and in the midst of these multiplied perils Pole had no support save his own great heart and dauntless courage. His chaplains and followers were perplexed and terrified. A legate in those days travelled in state, with his cross borne openly at the head of his train; but the attendant, whose duty it was to carry the cross, turned faint-hearted, and suggested the prudence of concealing these marks of dignity in a hostile country. The last of the Plantagenets, however, was not the man to quail in the presence of danger; he calmly took the cross from the hands of the bearer, and fixing its point firmly in his own stirrup, rode along, thinking perhaps of St. Thomas, and certainly as ready as he to face the assassins, and shed his life-blood in the cause of the Church.

A second legation in 1538 proved equally fruitless, and its only result was the slaughter of every one of Pole’s family on whom Henry could lay his hands. The Cardinal meanwhile was recalled to Rome, and appointed to the government of Viterbo, where he heard, in 1541, of the murder of his aged mother, and gave thanks that she, too, had been deemed worthy to suffer for the faith. His political engagements had not weaned him from the love of letters, and, amid his many trials, he found his chief solace, after his exercises of piety, in the company of his learned friends. Pole entertained very strong views as to the necessity of restoring a more Christian system of studies, and laboured hard to bring those around him to the same mind. Sadolet had just published his “Treatise on Education,” and Pole addressed him a letter which Erasmus calls worthy of Cicero, touchingly remonstrating with him for not giving a more prominent place to Christian theology. Sadolet defends himself by saying that theology is a part of philosophy, and the perfection of it; but Pole was not satisfied. It might do well enough, he says, if your pupil lived in the time of Plato or Aristotle, but a Christian scholar requires something more than philosophy. Their difference of opinion, however, was expressed on both sides with equal courtesy and moderation, and the correspondence between them offers a pleasing contrast to those acrimonious disputes, in which the scholars of the last generation had so frequently disgraced themselves.

This was not the only occasion when Pole exerted himself to give a more decidedly Christian direction to his friend’s studies. Sadolet had two works on hand; one a treatise in praise of philosophy, the other a Commentary on St. Paul. He was doubting which to finish first, and Bembo of course advised the preference to be given to philosophy. Pole was as great a lover of classical antiquity as either of them, but at that grievous juncture, when a swarm of heretics were in the field, it seemed to him a kind of infidelity for the children of the Church to waste their time and genius on elegant trifling. His arguments decided Sadolet in favour of St. Paul, and he afterwards received his friend’s hearty thanks for having thus determined his choice. “There were not wanting plenty,” writes Sadolet, “who were ready to give me very different advice, but you counselled me to embrace studies, the emoluments of which extend to the other life, and your words have decided me henceforth to devote myself to sacred literature.”

There was, however, nothing of the narrowness of a zealot in Pole’s character; he and Contarini were advocates for a mild policy even with heretics; and his gentle persuasion had a happy success in recalling many who had been seduced by the new opinions, among others, the Latin poet Mark Anthony Flaminius. This celebrated man had been one of his early friends, but had suffered himself to be won over by the specious arguments of Valdes. Pole invited him to Viterbo, and, by dint of patience and kindness, restored him to a better mind, and it was in his house that he afterwards expired, as Beccadelli expresses it, “like a good Christian.”[354] In the same spirit he received into his family Lazarus Bonamico, professor of humanity at Padua, saying that he was worth something better than the occupation of explaining Virgil, and that the study of theology which he wished him to embrace, required the whole man. He assisted Bembo also in his last moments, and his house was the refuge of all those English Catholics, who, like himself, preferred exile to apostasy.

Among these, one is glad to reckon George, the son of our old friend William Lily, whom he took under his protection, and who, alter writing some learned works, and contributing to the history of Paulus Jovius, returned with Pole to England in Queen Mary’s days, and died a prebendary of Canterbury. And so we will leave our great countryman for a time doing the work of an apostle among the scholars of his day, to find him again at the head of that momentous council, which owed to his influence not a few of its most important measures of reform. Before following him there, we have to take our farewell of the English schools, whose destinies from this time form a page in the history of sacrilege. The first royal visitation of the universities, held in virtue of King Henry’s newly-claimed supremacy, took place in 1535, when the further study of scholastic philosophy and canon law were prohibited. For a brief space the attempt was made to fill up the hiatus with an extra quantity of Greek and profane studies, and then it was that Sir John Cheke achieved that celebrity at Cambridge which Milton has commemorated in a sonnet. All the Humanists indeed were not men of equally solid learning, for Saunders tells us the universities were filled with a multitude of young orators and poets, who, after celebrating the mock obsequies of Scotus and St. Thomas, tried, by means of unbecoming comedies, songs, and verses, to decoy the unwary into the errors of the sects, and immorality of life. On the whole, the attempt was a failure; English scholars were nor yet sufficiently familiarised with the new learning to give it a very warm reception, and the exotic Greek studies, like plants that had been overforced, soon drooped and perished.[355] Canon law and theology, and, above all, the despised scholastic logic, were precisely the studies in which Catholic Oxford had most excelled; and their abolition was tantamount to the formal closing of her schools. And during the reign of Edward VI. the divinity school was actually closed, and in spite of every effort on the part of the Humanists, the decay became so universal that all the other schools, except two, were shut up, or let out to laundresses and glovers. “There, where Minerva formerly sat as regent,” says Wood, “was nothing during all the reign of King Edward but wretched solitariness; nothing but a dead silence prevailed.” The dissolution of the monasteries, moreover, had ruined upwards of a hundred flourishing academies, which served as feeders to the universities, the place of which was very imperfectly filled by King Edward’s grammar-schools. Thus, a large proportion of those who had formerly followed the pursuit of learning, now betook themselves to mechanical trades, and the schools literally died out for want of scholars. In 1550 we find Roger Ascham, a strenuous adherent of the new worship, lamenting over the decay of the old grammar-schools, and predicting in consequence the speedy extinction of the universities: whilst Latimer about the same time is found declaring that there were at least ten thousand fewer students in the kingdom than might have been found twenty years previously.

The ruin of learning at the universities was completed by the bigotry of those foreign Protestant divines, who, in King Edward’s time, were brought over from Germany and Switzerland to fill up the professorships which no English scholar could be found to accept under the new ecclesiastical régime. Among these the celebrated Peter Vermigli, better known by the name of Peter Martyr, was indeed a good scholar, but the greater number of his colleagues were not only without learning, but, following in the footsteps of Luther, they proclaimed war against it as “a human thing.” They voted the academical degrees “Antichristian,” and showed their horror of all the vain things fondly invented by Popery, not only by the breaking of images, but by the burning of libraries. Duke Humphrey’s precious collection of classical authors was condemned to the flames; the exquisite illuminations of his costly volumes possibly suggesting the notion that they must be of the nature of Roman service books. When Sir Thomas Bodley took up his residence at Oxford, towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign, he informs us that he found the libraries “in every part wasted and ruined,” and it is well known that the splendid foundation which we owe to his munificence, was but a collection of such poor fragments as had accidentally escaped destruction.

Of the material sacrileges committed by King Edward’s visitors it is unnecessary here to speak, and without necessity one would not willingly enter on the sorrowful tale. The shell of the universities was left, to be gradually informed with a new spirit, a new learning, a new life; which, as years rolled on, became no longer new, and so gradually grew to be regarded by Englishmen as venerable. Oxford, with her thousand Catholic memories, became in process of time the stronghold of Anglican Church Toryism; a pigmy destiny, indeed, for her who had been founded by the hands of saints, yet one with which, on the whole, she has showed herself amply satisfied. The Royal Supremacy, which had first cut down her fair proportions, clung to her like the poisoned garment of Nessus, but though it sometimes galled her, she made the most (as was fitting) of her solitary dogma, and, in a memorable moment of her history, proclaimed fidelity to it in its extremest form to be “the badge of the Church of England.”

Here, then, we will bid farewell to Oxford; to those venerable walls round which there still hang shadows of the past, out of which alas! too many build up an unsubstantial cloudland, with the gorgeous beauty of which they rest content. The Catholic, while he feels the power which even such phantoms of the old faith exercise over the heart, knows well enough that he does but gaze on

The loveliness of death
That parts not quite with parting breath.

He reads her ancient motto, and can but pray that a beam of the True Light may one day again illuminate her, and that she, over whose beautiful places the fire has passed, may once more sing, according to the days of her youth, “_Dominus Illuminatio mea_.”

_CHAPTER XXIV._

THE COUNCIL OF TRENT.

When the conclave of October 13, 1534, announced the election of Cardinal Alexander Farnese as successor to Clement VII., few men probably anticipated what would be the character of the new pontificate. The antecedents of Paul III. appeared to link him with what may be called the Conservative party of the day. He had been a pupil of Pomponius Lætus, had been raised to the purple by Alexander VI., had grown up in the luxurious atmosphere of Leo’s Court, and in his early youth, before he embraced the ecclesiastical state, had not escaped the worldly infection which clung to the literary circles among which he mixed. Men of letters indeed might naturally look for encouragement from the friend of Sadolet, the correspondent of Erasmus, and the elegant commentator on Cicero, but few expected to find in him the uncompromising champion of ecclesiastical reform. Yet such he soon proved himself. One fault alone was charged to his administration, the promotion of relatives whose subsequent misconduct brought scandal on the Church, and anguish to his own heart. But in other respects his favour was bestowed on precisely those who were best qualified to forward the interests of religion. He filled the sacred college with men worthy of the purple; Pole, Fisher, Caraffa, Contarini, Sadolet, Aleander, and Cortese, were all cardinals of his nomination. In his love of art and poetry he was hardly inferior to Leo X., but the thoughts that occupied his soul as Supreme Head of the Church had a higher and nobler aim than even the encouragement of letters. To restore peace between France and the Empire, to keep back the onward progress of the Turks, and to call a General Council for the purpose of healing the wounds of the Church, these were the objects he set before him as the work of his pontificate, and he never rested till he had accomplished them. Until Charles and Francis had laid down their arms, however, the Council so loudly demanded by men of all opinions was a simple impossibility, and ten weary years had to pass before these Christian princes could be brought to terms. If for a moment they suspended hostilities, it was only to renew them with greater animosity than before, and to give the French king an opportunity of covering himself with infamy by calling to his help the Turkish hordes, and inviting them to overrun Italy. Whilst Europe was involved in these broils, it was plain there could be no Council; but at least there could be the initiatives of reform, and in 1537 Paul III. proved his earnest desire to begin the work by naming a Commission of cardinals and other ecclesiastics, whom he charged with the delicate task of drawing up a statement of those abuses which, in their judgment, most loudly called for redress.

This Commission was composed of nine men, whose names were equally illustrious for integrity and learning. They were the cardinals Contarini, Caraffa, Sadolet, and Pole, together with five other prelates afterwards raised to the same dignity; namely, Fregoso, Archbishop of Salerno; Aleander, Archbishop of Brindisi; Ghiberti, Bishop of Verona; Gregory Cortese, Abbot of Lerins; and Father Thomas Badia, Master of the Sacred Palace.

Some of these have already been spoken of. Contarini and Aleander had distinguished themselves by their missions in Germany and their fruitless efforts to conciliate and win back the misguided Lutherans. Ghiberti had been associated with Pole in his legations, and was bound to him by close ties of friendship. He was regarded by St. Charles Borromeo as the ideal of a Christian bishop, and his portrait always hung in the saint’s chamber, to urge him, as he said, to imitate his pastoral career. He was also profoundly learned, and had set up a printing-press in his episcopal palace, whence issued forth magnificent editions of the Greek Fathers. Cortese, a Benedictine abbot, had revived the fame of the old monastery of Lerins, and restored regular observance in a great number of other houses of his order. Tiraboschi calls him one of the most elegant writers of his age, and says that his theological works are free from the least tincture of scholastic barbarism. Frederic Fregoso was a Hebrew scholar, and Aleander a learned Orientalist. Not one, in short, of all the nine could be taunted as a disciple of the retrograde school, and all had in one way or other taken part in the revival of polite letters.