There are probably few prospects which unite so many forms of beauty and interest as the distant view of a great city; and none in which the reality is more thoroughly idealised in the eye of the spectator. As he gazes at some fair assemblage of ancient towers gleaming aloft through a framework of green boughs, and hears their far-off chimes mingling with the nearer music of the thrush’s note, he forgets “the loud stunning tide of human crime” which surges at their base, and is ready to cheat himself into the pleasant fancy that he beholds a sacred city full of venerable shrines. But if this character of solemn beauty attaches even to our busiest capitals when seen from a distance, much more does it belong to Oxford, the ancient “Bellositum,” which finds no rival to compete with her in the marvellous aspect of her
Gardens, churches, and palaces shining through a vista of stately forest trees, surrounded by green meadows and reflected in the waters of a noble river, make up a picture which may well arrest the eye of the artist or the poet, and suggest a dream which, if it find no substantial reality, is yet a form of beauty evoked from the ancient worship, carrying our thoughts to days when the sanctuaries of Oxford were first raised for cloistered students, and when St. Edmund and St. Richard were teaching in her schools.
Yet, if we were suddenly transported back to the beginning of the thirteenth century, very little of this architectural beauty would meet our eye. There was the castle indeed, and the spire of St Frideswide’s priory, but they were surrounded, not as now with graceful colleges, but with the humble straw-thatched houses of the citizens, and with those equally humble inns and halls of which we have already spoken. A great oak forest separated the city from the village of Abingdon, and was inhabited by wolves and wild boars; and tradition preserves the story of a certain student who was met in his walk by a ferocious boar, which he overcame by thrusting Aristotle down the beast’s throat. The boar, having no taste for such logic, was choked by it; and his head, borne home in triumph, was no doubt honourably served up at table with a sprig of rosemary in its mouth. The stately abbey of Osney, second to none in the kingdom, would have been seen in those islet meadows, where at present not a stone remains to mark its former site; and its two grand towers rose among the trees, musical with the bells which now ring out their tuneful chimes from the cathedral spire. There were to be seen the stately quadrangle and the abbot’s house, so often the resort of kings and papal legates; and pleasant walks under the elm trees wound along the waterside overlooking the stream which separated the abbey lands from those other islets where the two orders of mendicant friars had just established themselves.
The scholars were fond of such shady walks, and had laid out a certain plot of ground which bore the name of Campus Martius, and was divided into several portions, according to the scholastic degrees. One of the walks was non ultra walk, and led to a little hill called Rome, wherein was a cave and a meander, or winding path, and at the top thereof a cross of stone. Two clear springs were seen at either end of this scholastic garden, appropriately bearing the names of Plato and Aristotle. There were many other such wells in the city, one of which was called Holy Well, over which was raised a stately cross. Its waters were pure and intensely cold, and were esteemed for the many cures which were wrought by them on pious pilgrims. For Oxford drew pilgrims as well as scholars to her holy shrines. Not only was the tomb of St. Frideswide visited by thousands, but also her image in that little country church of Binsey, which she is said to have founded, and which in early days was surrounded by hawthorn woods, and was a place of recreation for the nuns of her convent. There you may still see, not the image, but the empty niche where it formerly stood, and the stone pavement worn away with many feet and many knees, a relic in itself, which we may stoop and reverently kiss; for here St. Edmund was wont to pray; and here on certain festivals the scholars came out with cross and banners, and wound their way among the flowering hawthorn woods to pay their homage to the patron saint of Oxford.
There was another well in St. Clement’s parish, near the old hospital of St. Bartholomew, which claimed to have been founded by Henry the Scholar, which was also held in much esteem. It was one of those spots which our ancestors were wont to designate “Gospel places,” where, on the Rogation Days, it was the custom to read portions of the Gospel, by way of invoking a blessing on the corn-fields, and the streams, and the fountains of water, that they might not be infected by the power of wicked spirits. The well was in a grove hard by St. Bartholomew’s chapel; and here came out the students, young and old, carrying poles adorned with flowers, and singing the canticle Benedicite, wherein they called on the fountains and all the green things of the earth to bless the Lord. The poor folk of the hospital made ready for them by strewing the ground with flowers, and adorning the well itself with green boughs and garlands. Then the Gospel was read, and the well was blessed, and in later times an anthem, in three or more parts, was sung by the scholars.
The meadows that lie around the city, through which, to use the words of brave old Stowe, “the river passeth on to London with a marvellous quiet course,” were then, as now, highly prized by the scholars as places of recreation, and are as frequently alluded to in the university histories, as the famous “Pré aux Clercs” at Paris. But let us enter within the walls, and take a glance at the streets with their quaint designations. “School Street” and “Logic Lane” speak for themselves, but what can have been the origin of the “Street of the seven deadly Sins”? Here is a very important turning which leads to the Schedeyerde, or Vicus schediasticorum. You shudder perhaps, at the sound of such barbarous Latin; yet had you been an Oxford scholar of good King Henry’s days, you would very often have bent your steps hitherward: for here abode the sellers of parchment, the schedes or sheets of which gave their name to the locality, and here the transcribers and book merchants carried on their traffic; and here scholars with long purses obtained their literary wares, and those with empty ones were fain to look and long. You can tell the schools by their pithy inscriptions, Ama scientiam, imposturas fuge, litteras disce, and the like, but you will look in vain for public schools, or congregation house, or library, or observatory, or collegiate piles. Churches, indeed, there are in plenty, and if the tower of St. Martin’s strikes your eye by its strength and height, you may be surprised to learn that the citizens use it as a fortalice, and on occasion of quarrels with the students retire there to shoot at them with stones, and bows, on which account it was afterwards cut down to its present dumpy proportions by Edward III. In truth, it must be confessed, the state of things in old Oxford was anything but orderly. Not only did the northern and southern men embrace different sides both in philosophy and politics, and fight out their differences in the public streets, but the townsmen and the gownsmen stood on much the same terms as those which existed of old time between Athens and Sparta; there might be a truce between them, but there was never a peace. The students lived, as yet subject to no statutes and very little law, and committed many villanies; and, on the other hand, the burghers preyed on them, provoked them, and sometimes burnt their books.
We have now to watch the gradual growth into form and order of these chaotic elements, and will pass over to the other side of the great oak forest, and make our way to the village of Abingdon, where the abbey which we saw founded by good St. Ethelwold had been rebuilt by his Norman successors, and in the early days of the reign of Henry III. was flourishing in great splendour. In the village that had gathered round its walls there lived, at that time, a widow, named Mabel Rich, the mother of four children, whom she brought up in all holy living. Her husband, before his death, had put on the monk’s cowl in the neighbouring abbey of Eynsham, whither his eldest son had followed him; another son retired to the priory of Boxley in Kent, whilst Mabel, in heart also a religious, remained in the world to educate her remaining children. Growing up under the shadow of the old cloister, by the side of a mother who trained him in the austere practices of ancient piety, Edmund Rich was steeped from childhood in the spirit of Catholic devotion. He assisted with Mabel at the midnight office in the abbey, he learnt the Psalter from her lips; and his soul gradually received that beautiful mould which we have again and again admired in the scholars of old time, and which perhaps found in him its most perfect realisation. At twelve years old he went to Oxford, and it is his own brother, Robert Rich, who tells us how, at that time, going out into the meadows in order to withdraw himself from the boisterous play of his companions, the Child Jesus appeared to him, and saluted him with the words “Hail, beloved one!” And he, wondering at the beauty of the Child, replied, “Who are you, for to me you are certainly unknown?” Then said the Child, “How comes it that I am unknown to thee, seeing that I sit by thy side at school, and wherever thou art, there also do I accompany thee? Look in My face and see what is there written.” Edmund looked and saw the words, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” “This is My name,” said the Child, “write it on thy forehead every night, and it shall protect thee from sudden death.” Then He disappeared, on Whom the Angels desire to look, leaving the other with a sweetness in his heart passing that of honey.
From Oxford Edmund proceeded to Paris, where we have already seen something of his manner of life. He seems to have studied more than once at both universities, and also at Merton abbey, then a great seat of learning. As soon as he had taken his master’s degree, he opened a school of his own on the spot now occupied by St. Edmund’s Hall. The favourite maxim he was accustomed to give to his pupils, was this: “Study as if you were to live for ever, live as if you were to die to-morrow.” For himself, he heard Mass daily, attended matins in the nearest parish church, and recited the canonical hours before beginning his lectures. And to satisfy his devotion with the greater convenience, he spent part of his slender patrimony in the erection of a Lady chapel attached to St. Peter’s church, where he and his pupils regularly recited the Divine office. It must be remembered, that at this period Oxford possessed none of those colleges and collegiate chapels, in which the Church office was afterwards celebrated with so much splendour; but the custom, introduced for the first time by St. Edmund, was soon followed by other students. Those who love the memory of the holy scholar may still visit his chapel, which looks desolate enough, with its once delicate lancet windows walled up; yet it is something to know the spots where saints have prayed.
Did we know St. Edmund only by the records left us of his tender piety, his singular devotion to our Blessed Lady, and his manifold austerities, we might picture him as some contemplative saint, whose thoughts were wholly withdrawn from the world, and fixed on unseen things. Yet he was a scholar and a teacher; a close logician, and a great lover of mathematics. Wood says that he was the first who publicly read some of Aristotle’s Treatises at Oxford, and for six years after the opening of his school he continued to lecture on arts. The circumstance which led to his exchanging these studies for that of theology is thus told by his biographer: “After he had taught the liberal arts for six years, and was reading geometry with his pupils, his mother one night appeared to him as he slept, saying: ‘What is it, my son, that you read and teach, and what are those figures over which you are poring so intently?’ He replied, that they were the figures of geometry, on which she took his hand in hers, and drew thereon three circles, at the same time naming the three Divine Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Then she added, ‘These are the figures which you must henceforth study.’” From that time he applied himself exclusively to the sacred sciences, and that with greater ardour than he had hitherto bestowed on secular learning. He hardly gave himself time for sleep and refreshment, but studied night and day. An ivory crucifix, with the mysteries of our redemption carved round it, was always on his table when he read, and to it from time to time he directed his eyes, feeding his heart the while with pious ejaculations. He never went to bed, but took his scanty rest on the floor, or in his chair, and was at his books again as soon as the morning dawned. Does this intense application seem excessive? and does any reader conceive a distrust of such absorbing studies? Let them learn that at this very time St. Edmund sold all his books, to supply the wants of some poor scholars whom he had no other means of relieving, and seems to have been indebted to a charitable friend for the gift of a Bible, which afterwards formed his principal study.
After some years, having taken his doctor’s degree, he once more began to teach; and strange and beautiful were the scenes in that saintly lecture-room, where the master was often rapt in ecstacy, and the scholars were fain to shut up their note-books, being too much blinded with their tears to use them. Wood mentions the tradition, common at Oxford, that an angel, in the form of a beautiful youth, was often seen standing by his side while he spoke, a legend which at least shows in what sort of esteem he was held by his scholars. Among them were St. Sewall, afterwards Archbishop of York, St. Richard of Chichester, Stephen Lexington, and Robert Grosteste, all of whom took part in the great intellectual movement shortly afterwards set on foot at Oxford by the mendicant friars. He did not make much profit out of his school, for the money he received from his pupils was either spent in charity, or suffered to lie loose on his window sill, where he would strew it over with ashes, saying, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Any one might take it who chose, and his friends did so sometimes, to see what he would say; but he asked no account of it, and no persuasion would ever induce him to keep it under lock and key. He was not the mere professor, whose care of his pupils ceased when they left his lecture-room. He nursed them when they were sick, and relieved them when they were in want; and they in their turn loved to gather up each trait of their beloved master, and handed down to those who came after them the portraiture of the saint, with his beautiful countenance, the pallor of which became of a fair shining red when he spoke of God or holy things, in his grey scholar’s gown, which was poor without meanness, for he was wont to say that a clerk should remember that his state was an honourable one, and that his appearance, if simple, should never be abject.
St. Edmund had a real love for the work of teaching, and several times when he had been persuaded to accept of benefices, he resigned them in order to return to Oxford. At last, however, we find him treasurer of Salisbury; and with his habits, a very strange treasurer he must have made. And in 1234 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. We need not follow the history of his troublous primacy; he fared the usual fate of English primates who resisted the tyranny of Plantagenet kings; and six years later was an exile at Pontigny, living among the Cistercian monks as one of themselves, writing his “Mirror of the Church,” and preparing for his end. He did not die at Pontigny, however, but at Soissy, whither they brought him in hopes that the cooler air might revive his exhausted strength. His last days were spent in giving alms to the poor pilgrims who passed that way, and when he was too feeble to rise from his chair and go to the gate, he made one of his chaplains take his place, and give to all who came. His last words are preserved, the words he pronounced with outstretched hands, when about to receive the Holy Viaticum:—“Lord, thou art He in whom I have believed, whom I have preached, whom I have truly taught: and Thou art my witness that while I have been on earth, I have sought nothing else besides Thee. And as Thou knowest that I will only what Thou willest, so now I say, Thy will be done.” “All the rest of that day,” says his biographer, “he was joyful and even gay; you would not have thought he was suffering from sickness; and many wondered to see him thus. The tears of devotion were indeed in his eyes, but his beautiful countenance manifested the serenity that filled his heart. There was no sign of approaching death; and at the last moment, neither sigh nor death-rattle was heard; he did not even sink back on his bed, as dying persons are wont to do, but remained sitting, and so gently expired, leaning his head upon his hand.” Pontigny keeps his dust as her most precious treasure, and even in our own day, such a strange attractive power is possessed by the sacred relics of the saints, that a newly-founded religious congregation has selected its desolate church for the site of their mother house, with the view of obtaining for their apostolic work the blessing of Saint Edmé.
Meanwhile, if England had cast out her holy primate, Oxford had not forgotten her doctor. The work he had begun in his schools was carried on by the band of scholars whom he had trained and left behind him. Five years before he left the university, the two orders of mendicant friars had been established in the town. The first colony of the Franciscans was sent thither in 1220, by Brother Agnellus, who soon after came himself, and caused a decent school to be built, in which he induced Master Robert Grosteste to deliver his lectures. Grosteste was at that time the most illustrious doctor of the university, and soon brought the Franciscan schools into high repute. Agnellus, though himself unlearned, was most desirous that the studies of his brethren should be amply provided for, and often visited the schools to watch their progress. One day, to his great surprise, he found them disputing on the thesis, “Whether there be a God.” Whereon he cried out in great distress, “Alas, alas! simple friars penetrate the heavens, while the learned are disputing if there be a God.” With these words he left the school “in a chafe,” says Wood, “to think he had built it for such debates,” but, becoming a little calmer, sent the sum of ten marks to Rome to buy a correct copy of the Decretals, charging his friars to apply themselves wholly to the study thereof, and to lay aside questions of sophistry and foolish babbling.
It must not be supposed from this story that the learning encouraged at the university by Grosteste was entirely of that disputatious and empty kind which had become fashionable in the schools since the time of Abelard. Grosteste, if he exercised the friars in such scholastic disputations, was himself a decided advocate of the older learning, and may be regarded as, in the main, a disciple of the school of St. Victor. When chancellor of the university, he used his influence to promote the study of positive theology, and of that Biblical learning in which he was himself a proficient. One of his modern biographers has candidly admitted that “his wonderful knowledge of Scripture might probably be worthy of remark in our day, though in his own not more than was possessed by all theological students.” But Grosteste had largeness of mind enough to appreciate the value of the scholastic method at the same time that he laboured to prevent the study of the Scriptures and the liberal arts from falling into decay; and he probably found means of satisfying Brother Agnellus on this point, for whatever use was made of the copy of the Decretals, it is quite certain that the friars did not “apply themselves wholly” to them, or lay aside their scholastic exercises. On the contrary, Fuller tells us that they soon beat all their competitors in school divinity, “out of all distance;” and Wood adds to his narrative as given above, that Grosteste was not superficial in his performances, and that under him the friars made extraordinary advances both in disputation and preaching.
The great esteem in which Grosteste held the Franciscans led him, not only to teach in their schools, but to persuade other first-rate regents to do the same; besides which, he induced several of his own personal friends to enter the order, among whom was Adam Marsh, the parish priest of Wearmouth, better known by his Italian name of Adam de Marisco, who is reckoned as the first regular professor of the order at Oxford, and was known as “the Illustrious Doctor,” and Roger Bacon, the wonder of his age, and the greatest natural philosopher who appeared in England before the time of Newton. Besides these, the Franciscans were joined by a crowd of other illustrious novices, such as John Wallis, surnamed the “Tree of Life,” Alexander of Hales, Haymo of Feversham, and more than one Benedictine and Augustinian abbot, which latter circumstance has greatly excited the spleen of Matthew Paris.
Grosteste, after for some time filling the office of chancellor, became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, in which capacity he was still ex officio head of the university, and continued to keep up an active interest in its affairs. Among his letters is one addressed to the regents of Oxford, in which he gives them much useful advice as to the regulation of their studies. “Let the foundation-stones be well laid,” he says, “on them the whole building rests. The morning is the best time for study, and the good old Paris custom should be observed of reserving those early hours for the lectures on Scripture, giving the later part of the day to other subjects.” Even when treating of questions altogether unconnected with natural science, his love of it peeps out in spite of himself, as in the passage where he gracefully compares the difference between direct and delegated authority to the different powers of the sun’s rays when falling direct, or reflected from a mirror. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of his time, a universal genius, and revered by his countrymen as a saint. After his death, the university united with the king in petitioning for his canonisation, and sent a document to Rome, in which it is declared “that the said Robert never left undone any good action pertaining to his state and office for fear of any man, but was rather prepared for martyrdom should the sword of the assassin have fallen upon him. Likewise, the university certifieth of his splendid learning, and that he most admirably governed Oxford, in his degree of doctor of holy theology, and was illustrious for many miracles after his death, wherefore he is named by the mouth of all men, ‘Holy Robert.’” He may, in fact, be regarded as, in his own time, the representative of the university, and hence it is of particular importance to ascertain what the studies were which he followed and promoted. As a theologian, he belonged rather to the mystic than the speculative school, and as a scholar he was a warm upholder of the liberal arts, doing his utmost to encourage the study, not only of the Latin classics, but also of Greek and Hebrew. He translated the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and, to facilitate the study of Greek, is also said to have translated the Lexicon of Suidas. He promoted two ecclesiastics who are likewise known to have been Greek scholars: John Basing, archdeacon of St. Alban’s, who in 1240 returned from Athens laden with Greek manuscripts, and Nicholas, chaplain to the abbot of St. Alban’s, surnamed Græcus, who assisted the bishop in some of his translations. He is also said to have been acquainted with Hebrew. But his skill in the learned tongues formed but a small part of Grosteste’s acquirements. He was a mathematician, a poet, a musician, and a philosopher. Among the two hundred treatises of various kinds which he left behind him are to be found, besides his theological writings, works on the sphere, on physical science, husbandry, political economy, medicine, and music; commentaries on Aristotle and Boëthius, and Norman-French poems. Of these last, one is entitled the “Château d’Amour,” a name he bestows on the Blessed Virgin, and consists of a religious romance on the fall and redemption of man. This, together with his “Manuel des Péchés,” was translated in the following reign into English verse, by Robert Manning, who, in the prologue to his poem, alludes to the bishop’s well-known love of music, and tells us that—.
Most readers are aware that Grosteste is commonly represented as an enemy to papal supremacy, and is rather favourably treated, in consequence, by some historians who find great consolation in the thought that he died excommunicate. That he opposed the nomination of foreigners to English benefices, and that in very bold language, is quite certain, but the rest of the story belongs to our mediæval myths. It is supposed to have been conjured out of the anathemas attached to the Bull of provisors, the execution of which he resisted. It is scarcely necessary to observe that petitions would hardly have been presented to the Holy See in the next reign for the canonisation of one who had died under the censures of the Church, and in these petitions there is not to be found the smallest allusion to his having even incurred any sort of disgrace. More than this, Wood tells us that just before the death of Innocent IV., that Pontiff granted to the university four new Bulls containing great privileges, which had been procured through the interest of Grosteste. In point of fact, however bold and uncompromising he may have been in resisting what he deemed a practical abuse, there was no English Divine who ever expressed himself with more hearty loyalty towards the chair of St. Peter than “Holy Robert.” He plainly declared that to refuse obedience to the Supreme Pastor was “as the sin of witchcraft and idolatry,” and even Mr. Berington is forced to allow that his language regarding the authority of the Holy See is so “adulatory,” that the attempt to rank him among its enemies must be deemed a total failure.
It would carry us too far to attempt anything like a particular account of the Franciscan scholars, who flourished at Oxford during the time of Grosteste. One among them, it need hardly be said, towers above all the rest, his celebrity having survived undiminished to our own day. Roger Bacon, a west countryman by birth, and a pupil of St. Edmund’s, had passed from Oxford to Paris, where he received his doctor’s degree, and then returning to the English university, spent forty years of his life in studying and lecturing upon the sciences. He had acquired the Greek, Hebrew, and Oriental languages in Paris, and wrote grammars of the two first-named tongues which are said to be preserved in MS. at St. Peter’s College, Cambridge. But it was as a natural philosopher that he chiefly distinguished himself above his contemporaries, and anticipated the discoveries of later science. At this time the physical sciences were chiefly cultivated by the Arabians, who presented them in a mystic and fanciful shape, which did not render them less acceptable to mediæval students. The study of physics was understood to include mathematics, alchemy, astrology, medicine, and mechanics, each of which received its own colouring of romance. Thus a certain Arabian physician put forth the theory that medicines could only be properly mixed according to the principles of music, and no one ventured to doubt the connection of astronomy with the medical science. Bacon was certainly not less credulous than his contemporaries, but he was more experimental, and hence, though he does not seem to have done much towards establishing truer scientific principles, he obtained many brilliant results. The long list of his writings includes treatises on Optics (then called Perspective), Mathematics, Chemistry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, the Tides, and the Reformation of the Calendar; and, as is well known, he was familiar with the properties of mirrors, and appears to have been acquainted with the principle both of the microscope and the telescope, and with the powers of steam and of gunpowder. It is not to be doubted that he was greatly in advance of his age in scientific knowledge, and it was probably his skill in the use of optical and mechanical instruments, which earned for him the vulgar reputation of dealing in magic. Charges of this sort are commonly enough explained as arising out of the ignorance of the multitudes, who thought every man who could read Greek to be possessed of unlawful knowledge. But besides the awe with which a semibarbarous age naturally regarded one possessed of secrets not revealed to the vulgar herd, it must be remembered that Bacon’s science sometimes clothed itself in very suspicious language. He declared that his wonderful tube possessed the power of beholding, not distant objects only, but future events; and his enthusiastic language in praise of his favourite science may read to us as simple nonsense, but was understood in his own day to imply something very like a magic art. He was not a whit less disposed than his contemporaries to credit the wildest theories of the alchemists, but believed in the possibility of contriving lamps that should burn for ever, magic crystals, the elixir of life, and the philosopher’s stone, and wrote treatises on the two last-named subjects. It is plain, indeed, that he only expected to realise these schemes by an application of the secret powers of nature, and not by any forbidden arts. Yet it sounded startling to simple ears to hear of schemes whereby one man might draw a thousand to himself, might raise himself into the air and fly, or manage a ship with his single arm; not to speak of his boastful offer to teach any man Hebrew in three days, Greek in another three, and the whole course of arithmetic and geometry in a week.[250] Unfavourable rumours having reached the ears of Jerome of Ascoli, then general of his order, he was prohibited from teaching, and for a time imprisoned; but in 1264, Cardinal Fulcodi, formerly legate in England, becoming Pope under the title of Clement IV., Bacon despatched to Rome his favourite disciple, John of London, who placed in the Pontiff’s hands all his master’s books and instruments, an examination of which appears to have justified him in the opinion of his judges. Clement bestowed great marks of favour both on the master and scholar, and it was at his suggestion that Bacon made that collection of his chief philosophical views which is known as the Opus Majus. When Jerome of Ascoli himself became Pope Nicholas IV., Bacon was again imprisoned, but as Wood shows, the assertion that he died in confinement during the pontificate of Nicholas is clearly an error, for his death did not take place till 1292, he having survived the Pope four years, and having before his death recovered his liberty, and published several theological works.
The only other Oxford Franciscan who must be mentioned in this place, is Nicholas de Lyra, whose claim to be regarded as a native of this country is not, indeed, undisputed, though it rests on the respectable authority of Trithemius, Sixtus of Sienna, and a majority of writers. The Flemings assert that he was born at Lyre in Brabant, the French as peremptorily declare him a native of Lyra in Normandy, and the English author of the Collectanea Anglo-Minoritica, will have it that his real name was Harper, Latinised after the fashion of the day into Lyra. Equal uncertainty rests on the point whether he were by birth a Christian or a Jew, the common belief inclining to the view that he was the son of Jewish parents, though this fact is hard to reconcile with the assertion of his biographers, that he only began the study of Hebrew at an advanced age. But whatever doubt hangs over his origin, none exists as to the position he held among the scholars of the day. Biblical learning and the study of the Scriptural tongues had not quite fallen into decay, when the age could produce the author of the “Scholastic Postils,” a commentary upon every part of the Sacred Volume, which was the first commentary on the Scripture ever printed. Nicholas de Lyra had studied at the Universities of Paris and Oxford, and if it be true, as is asserted, that he did not apply himself to Greek and Hebrew learning until after his entrance into the Franciscan Order, we must allow his erudition to have been gained in the university schools. Whether himself a Jewish convert or not, his labours are said to have been undertaken in the first instance with a view to the conversion of that unhappy people, a work which, in the thirteenth century, engaged the attention of the most illustrious divines. By his writings, disputations, and sermons, Nicholas is said to have converted six thousand Jews to the faith. But his great work was far from being exclusively intended for their instruction; it became the Text Book of Biblical students, an indispensable part of every cathedral and monastic library, and laid down rules for the safe interpretation of Scripture based upon the right intelligence of the literal sense. It must be added, to the honour of English scholarship, that this important work, which fills five folio volumes, was first published at the expense of a private London citizen, and that the money paid for copying it amounted to 670 florins. Its composition occupied the author thirty-seven years, for, as he himself declares, it was begun in 1293, and not completed until 1330.
Let us now turn to an Oxford scholar of a different stamp, whose name, inseparably united to that of St. Edmund, almost closes the catalogue of our English Saints. Born of respectable parents, who owned the lands of Burford, near the little town of Wyche, in Worcestershire, Richard had very early given evidence of a scholar’s tastes, and the first fact which his biographer, Ralph Bocking,[251] records regarding him, is his determined refusal to be drawn away from his books to join in any of the village dances and revelries. But a hard fortune left him little hopes of being able to devote his life to books and learning. The death of his father, and the mismanagement of the guardians to whose care he and his brothers were consigned, reduced the family to extreme poverty. And Richard, with generous self-devotion, gave up all his own cherished plans, and entered his elder brother’s service in order, by a life of vigorous labour, to put the affairs of the family on a better footing. “He served him,” says Bocking, “in poverty and abjection, and that for many years; working, now with the plough and now with the cart, and enduring many other kinds of hard and humble toil, patiently and modestly.” Richard’s memory was long preserved and revered in his native place, and even down to the time of the great Rebellion, the Droitwich peasantry put on their best clothes on St. Richard’s day, and went to decorate with boughs and flowers a certain well dedicated to the Worcestershire saint. Aubrey, who notices this circumstance,[252] informs us that St. Richard was a person of good estate, and “a brisk young fellow that would ride over hedge and ditch;” a description which, quaint as it is, expresses well enough one feature in his thoroughly English character. He was not a dreamer or a bookworm; he did nothing by halves, and his strong, manly nature loved the practical side of everything. As a Worcestershire farmer he was just as ready to ride over hedge and ditch when that was needed, as he was, when bishop, to do his pastoral work in the guise of a poor beggar. The future chancellor of Oxford began life, in short, as a simple yeoman. His energy and perseverance had their reward, and in a few years his brother’s lands, well tilled and managed, began to yield an ample revenue. But when a prosperous fortune seemed opening before him, he refused every offer made him by his kinsfolk, and as soon as his self-imposed task was over, he bade farewell to his Worcestershire home, and betook himself to Oxford, whence, after a time, he passed on to Paris. In both universities he led the hard and mortified life of a poor scholar. For it must be remembered that this was before the time of colleges; it was the golden age when Oxford numbered her thirty thousand scholars, most of whom had scanty means of subsistence. Some were supported by the alms of private individuals, others by the great abbeys of Eynsham and Osney, which on certain festival days, bound themselves to regale the poor scholars with “honest refection.” Others went about begging and singing the “Salve Regina” at the doors of the citizens, well content to receive by way of payment a dish of broken meat from the rich man’s table. Every one will remember the picture drawn, many years later, by Chaucer, who describes the clerke of Oxenforde in his threadbare doublet, who would rather have
The account that Bocking gives of St. Richard’s student life is hardly less graphic. Like the poor Cambridge scholar before spoken of, who had to run about to keep his feet warm, Richard never saw a fire. But, unlike him, he was seldom able to afford himself the luxury of beef or even mutton, then reckoned as ordinary “scholar’s fare.” “So entirely,” says Bocking, “was he carried away with the love of learning, that he gave but little thought to the necessities of the body. For, as he used afterwards to relate, having two companions with him in his poor chamber, the three had but one tunic each, and one hooded gown between them. One of them at a time, therefore, put on the gown and went to hear the lectures, leaving the other two in their lodgings, after which they in their turn put on the gown and so went to lecture. Their food was bread, with a very little wine, and salad, or other such poor sort of viands. For then poverty did not allow them to eat flesh or fish except on Sundays and high days, or when any friends were their guests. Nevertheless, the saint was wont to affirm that no period of his life had ever been more joyful and delightful.” His love of Oxford induced him to return thither a second time, instead of taking his master’s degree at Paris; and for some years after graduating at the English university he taught in his own school, “liberally dispensing to others what he had himself acquired.” After a while he repaired to Bologna, and there spent seven years in the study of the canon law. And in 1235 we find him once more at Oxford, where he was unanimously chosen Chancellor of the University. He does not seem to have filled this office for any great length of time, for Robert Grosteste and St. Edmund of Canterbury were both anxious to draw him to their respective dioceses, St. Edmund succeeded, and appointed him his chancellor, and a close friendship sprang up between the two saints, which is thus eloquently described by Bocking:—“In all things,” he says, “Richard had an eye to the peace and quiet of his lord and archbishop, who, as he knew, had chosen Mary’s better part. And the archbishop exceedingly rejoiced that by the discreet affection and loving discretion of his chancellor he was saved from the tumult of outward business; while the chancellor was in like manner glad to learn from the holy and heavenly conversation of his prelate. Each leaned on each, the saint on the saint, the master on the disciple, the disciple on the master, the father on the son, and the son on the father. To one who looked on them religiously, they seemed like the two cherubim stretching their wings over the ark of the Lord—the church of Canterbury; each with holy eye gazing on the other, and touching each other with the wings of holy love; their faces, that is, their wills, ever turned towards the Mercy-seat.”
Richard followed his friend into exile, and was with him both at Pontigny and at Soissy, where he died. Up to that time St. Richard had not given much time to the study of theology, and had only received minor orders on his appointment to the Chancellorship of Canterbury. He had made himself known rather as a man of practical sense than of profound intellect, and the tie that bound him to St. Edmund drew something of its strength from the very contrast of their natural characters. But the snapping of that bond was the heart wound destined to draw St. Richard to yet more excellent things. The tree must be pierced to give out its most precious balm, the leaf must be bruised to yield its fragrant odours. The strong, manly heart of the Worcestershire yeoman was bowed in anguish over Edmund’s grave; but the anguish softened, refined, and elevated his nature; it drew heaven nearer to him, and him nearer to heaven; so that, conceiving a distaste for all secular studies, he retired to Orleans, and set himself to study theology in the convent of Dominican Friars.
This was not his first acquaintance with the Friar Preachers, who had established themselves in the Jews’ quarter of Oxford before St. Richard’s residence there as Chancellor. The excellence of their theological schools was therefore well known to him; and after studying with them for two or three years, and receiving ordination as a priest from the hands of the Bishop of Orleans, he returned to England, and for some time exercised the office of parish priest of Deal. Boniface of Savoy, the successor of St. Edmund in the primacy, soon found him out, and compelled him to resume the office of chancellor; but, before doing so, Richard, whose desire was to lead a poor and apostolic life, took a vow to join the Dominican Order, trusting that such an obligation would stand in the way of his retaining any public dignity. He was never able actually to fulfil this vow; yet, as Bocking remarks, the after circumstances of his life may be regarded as a sort of virtual accomplishment of it, “inasmuch as for many years he led the life of a true Friar Preacher, preaching Jesus Christ in poverty, and labouring for the salvation of souls, stripped of all worldly possessions.”
In 1244 the unwelcome news reached him that he was elected Bishop of Chichester; but king Henry III., enraged that the canons had rejected his own unworthy minister and nominee, Robert Passelew, revenged himself by seizing the temporalities of the see; and when an appeal to Rome resulted in the confirmation of St. Richard’s election, the new bishop, compelled by obedience to accept the weighty charge, and consecrated at Rome by the Pope’s own hand, returned to England to find his manors confiscated and an edict published forbidding any man to assist him even with a loan. This may be taken as a fair specimen of the system steadily pursued by the English kings against the Church, from the Conquest to the Reformation; and if such examples may be adduced from the policy of him who was avowedly the most pious and least ferocious of the Plantagenets, we may judge what sort of measure was dealt to English prelates by sovereigns of more tyrannic temper. In his younger days St. Richard might probably have repelled the royal injustice with the bold courage of St. Thomas; he preferred now to meet it in the spirit of patient endurance, and taking up his residence with a poor priest of his diocese, gave England an example no less sublime than that of her martyred primate. Utterly penniless, and as dependent on the alms of the faithful as the poorest beggar, St. Richard did not on that account neglect his flock. Like a true apostle he journeyed on foot over the downs of Sussex, visiting in turns every remote village, and exercising the Pastoral office with a vigorous hand that stood in no need of courtly splendour to enforce its authority. A poor priest of Ferring, named Simon, gave him hospitality, and there, in the intervals of his toilsome journeys the bishop recreated himself with gardening, and displayed the skill in budding and grafting which he had acquired during his yeoman’s life in Worcestershire. Simon regarded the plants which the bishop tended as sacred relics, and was greatly distressed when one of the grafts was destroyed by a beast which broke through the garden fence. The next time that Richard visited Ferring he good-naturedly consoled his host by putting in another graft, which that same year bore flowers and fruit. It was during this time of outlawry and humiliation that he published his Constitutions for the reform of his diocese, in which he made special provision for the instruction of the poor. At last, about 1247, king Henry was forced by the threat of excommunication, to restore the temporalities, and Richard was joyfully welcomed to his Cathedral city. But his private habits underwent no change. He adhered to his old Oxford fare of bread and a little wine; he seldom touched flesh, and if delicacies, such as lambs or young chickens were placed on his table, would exclaim, “Poor innocents; what have ye done to deserve death! Could ye but speak, ye would surely blame our gluttony!” He rose with the lark, to say his office in the silent early hours; and if it so fell out that the birds had begun their matin-song before him, it mortified him: “Shame on me!” he would say, “that I have allowed these irrational creatures to be beforehand with me in singing God’s praises!” His hand was ever open to poor scholars, and he would take the silver goblets off his table to supply their needs. His whole life presents us with a succession of beautiful, homely, and pathetic scenes, which display to us a character wherein pastoral firmness, scholarlike acuteness, and rustic simplicity are blended together, all bound and beautified by the spirit of patience, humility, and prayer. At one time we find him baptizing a Jew whom he has converted by his learning; at another, preaching the Crusade on the Sussex sea-coast to the rough sailors who flock to hear his simple, energetic eloquence. It was whilst engaged in this last work that he was called to his reward. He died in 1252 at St. Mary’s Hospital at Dover, where he had just consecrated a church in honour of St. Edmund. In his last moments his thoughts wandered back to the Convent of Orleans, and with his parting breath he repeated the invocation, which he had so often heard repeated by the white-robed Friars: