The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages

  CHAPTER LXXXII

  The Cloister

  BROTHER CLEMENT had taught and preached in Basle more than atwelvemonth, when one day Jerome stood before him, dusty, with atriumphant glance in his eye.

  "Give the glory to God, brother Clement; thou canst now wend to Englandwith me."

  "I am ready, brother Jerome: and, expecting thee these many months, havein the intervals of teaching and devotion studied the English tonguesomewhat closely."

  "'Twas well thought of," said Jerome. He then told him he had butdelayed till he could obtain extraordinary powers from the Pope tocollect money for the Church's use in England, and to hear confession inall the secular monasteries. "So now gird up thy loins and let us goforth and deal a good blow for the Church, and against the Franciscans."

  The two friars went preaching down the Rhine, for England. In the largerplaces they both preached. At the smaller they often divided, and tookdifferent sides of the river, and met again at some appointed spot. Bothwere able orators, but in different styles.

  Jerome's was noble and impressive, but a little contracted in religioustopics, and a trifle monotonous in delivery compared with Clement's,though in truth not so compared with most preachers.

  Clement's was full of variety, and often remarkably colloquial. In itsgeneral flow tender and gently winning, it curled round the reason andthe heart. But it always rose with the rising thought; and so at timesClement soared as far above Jerome as his level speaking was below him.Indeed, in these noble heats he was all that we have read of inspiredprophet or heathen orator: Vehemens ut procella, excitatus ut torrens,incensus ut fulmen, tonabat, fulgurabat, et rapidis eloquentiae fluctibuscuncta proruebat et porturbabat.

  I would give liberal specimens, but for five objections: it isdifficult; time is short; I have done it elsewhere; an able imitatorhas since done it better; and similarity, a virtue in peas, is a vice inbooks.

  But (not to evade the matter entirely) Clement used secretly to try andlearn the recent events and the besetting sin of each town he was topreach in.

  But Jerome the unbending scorned to go out of his way for any people'svices. At one great town some leagues from the Rhine, they mounted thesame pulpit in turn. Jerome preached against vanity in dress, afavourite theme of his. He was eloquent and satirical, and the peoplelistened with complacency. It was a vice that they were little given to.

  Clement preached against drunkenness. It was a besetting sin, and sacredfrom preaching in these parts: for the clergy themselves were infectedwith it, and popular prejudice protected it. Clement dealt it mercilessblows out of Holy Writ and worldly experience. A crime itself, it wasthe nursing-mother of most crimes, especially theft and murder. Hereminded them of a parricide that had lately been committed in theirtown by an honest man in liquor, and also how a band of drunkards hadroasted one of their own comrades alive at a neighbouring village. "Yourlast prince," said he, "is reported to have died of apoplexy, but wellyou know he died of drink: and of your aldermen one perished miserablylast month dead drunk, suffocated in a puddle. Your children's backs gobare that you may fill your bellies with that which makes you the worstof beasts, silly as calves, yet fierce as boars; and drive your familiesto need, and your souls to hell. I tell ye your town, ay, and your verynation would sink to the bottom of mankind did your women drink as youdo. And how long will they be temperate, and, contrary to nature, resistthe example of their husbands and fathers? Vice ne'er yet stood still.Ye must amend yourselves or see them come down to your mark. Already inBohemia they drink along with the men. How shows a drunken woman? Wouldyou love to see your wives drunken, your mothers drunken?" At this therewas a shout of horror, for mediaeval audiences had not learned to sitmumchance at a moving sermon. "Ah, that comes home to you," cried thefriar. "What? madmen! think you it doth not more shock the all pure Godto see a man, his noblest work, turned to a drunken beast, than it canshock you creatures of sin and unreason to see a woman turned into athing no better nor worse than yourselves?"

  He ended with two pictures; a drunkard's house and family, and a soberman's; both so true and dramatic in all their details that the wivesfell to "ohing" and "ahing," and "Eh, but that is a true word."

  This discourse caused quite an uproar. The hearers formed knots: the menwere indignant; so the women flattered them, and took their part openlyagainst the preacher. A married man had a right to a drop: he needed it,working for all the family. And for their part they did not care tochange their men for milksops.

  The double faces! That very evening a band of men caught near a hundredof them round brother Clement, filling his wallet with the best, andoffering him the very roses off their heads, and kissing his frock, andblessing him "for taking in hand to mend their sots."

  Jerome thought this sermon too earthly.

  "Drunkenness is not heresy, Clement, that a whole sermon should bepreached against it."

  As they went on he found to his surprise that Clement's sermons sankinto his hearers deeper than his own; made them listen, think, cry, andsometimes even amend their ways. "He hath the art of sinking to theirpeg," thought Jerome. "Yet he can soar high enough at times."

  Upon the whole, it puzzled Jerome, who had a secret sense of superiorityto his tenderer brother. And, after about two hundred miles of it, itgot to displease him as well as puzzle him. But he tried to check thissentiment as petty and unworthy. "Souls differ like locks," said he,"and preachers must differ like keys, or the fewer should the Churchopen for God to pass in. And, certes, this novice hath the key to thesenorthern souls, being himself a northern man."

  And so they came slowly down the Rhine, sometimes drifting a few mileson the stream: but in general walking by the banks preaching, andteaching, and confessing sinners in the towns and villages; and theyreached the town of Dusseldorf.

  There was the little quay where Gerard and Denys had taken boat up theRhine. The friars landed on it. There were the streets, there was "TheSilver Lion." Nothing had changed but he, who walked through itbarefoot, with his heart calm and cold, his hands across his breast, andhis eyes bent meekly on the ground, a true son of Dominic and holyChurch.