678 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
but only the devil has a caudal appendage. As for dancing, especially the round dances, the devil was the head concertmaster at such entertainments and the higher the dancers jumped, the deeper their fall into hell and, the more firmly they held on to each other with their hands, the more closely did the devil tighten his hold upon them. Dancing was represented by the preachers as an occasion of much profligacy.
In ridiculing the preaching of his day, Erasmus held forth the preachers' ignorance, their incongruous introductions, their use of stories from all departments without any discrimination, their old women's tales and the frivolous topics they chose — aniles fahulce et questiones frivolce. A famous passage in which the great scholar disparages the preaching of the monks and friars begins with the words: —
All their preaching is mere stage-playing, and their deliveiy the very transports of ridicule and drollery. Good Lord! how mimical are these gestures! What heights and falls in their voice ! What toning, what bawHng, what singing, what squeaking, what grimaces, making of months, apes' faces, and distorting of their countenance ; and this art of oratory as a choice mystery, they convey down by tradition to one another. i
Erasmus.deserves credit for discerning the need of the times, and recommending the revival of the practice of preaching and the mission of preachers to tlie heathen nations. His views were set forth in the Ecclesiastes or Preacher, a work written during the Freiburg period and filling 275 pages,^ each double the size of the pages of this volume. The chief purpose of prpnphing liP flpfitipfl fn hp. ingfTiipiir^ji . Every preachcF is a herald of Christ, who was himself the great preacher. The office of preaching is superior in dignity to the office of kings. " Among the charisms of the Spirit, none is more noble and efficacious than preaching. To be a dispenser of the celestial philosophy and a messenger of the divine will is excelled by no office in the Church." It is quite in accord with Erasmus' high regard for the teaching function, that he magnifies the instructional element of the sermon. Writing to Sapidus, 1516, he said, " to be a schoolmaster is next to being a king." ^
1 Praise of Folly, 141 sqq. 2 Basel, ed. 1540, pp._643-917.
* Nichols: Eras7ntts' Letters, II. 235.
§ 74. PREACHING. 679
Of the English pul^tj thereJsJittle_to_say. We hear of preaching at St. Paul's Cross and at other places, but there is no evidence that preaching was usual. No volumes of English sermons issued from the printing-press. Colet is the only English preacher of the 15th century of historical importan(Te. Tlie cliurchly counsel given to priests to impart instruction to the people, issued by the Lambeth synod of 1281, stands almost solitary. In 1466, Archbishop Nevill of York did no more than to repeat this legislation.
In Scotland the history of the pulpit begins with Knox. DlrTBlaikie remarks that,^ for the three centuries before the Reformation, scarcely a trace of Christian preaching can be found in Scotland worthy the name. The country had no Wyclif, as it had no Anselm.i Hamilton and Wishart, Knox's immediate forerunners, were laymen.
The Abb6 Dr. Gasquet in a chapter on A Forgotten English Preacher in his Old Eng. Bible and other Essays gives extracts from the MS. sermon of Tliomas Brunton, Bishop of Rochester, 1372-1389. After saying that we know verylittle about mediaeval preaching in England, Dr. Gasquet, p. 54, remarks that it is perhaps just as well, as the sermons were probably dull and that "the modern sermon" has to be endured as a necessary evil. In his chapter on Teaching and Preaching, pp. 244-284, m\\\?, Eve of the Reformation, the same author returns to the subject, but the chapter itself gives the strongest evidence of the literary barrenness of the English Church in the closing years of the Middle Ages and the dearth of preaching and public instruction. By far the larger part of the chapter, pp. 254-280, is taken up with quotations from Sir Thomas More, the tract Dives and Pa^iper and other tracts, to show that the doctrine of the worship of images and saints was not taught in its crass form and with a statement of the usefulness of miracle-plays as a means of popular religious instruction. Dr. Gasquet lays stress upon the " simple instruction " given by the English priesthood in the Middle Ages as opposed to formal sermons which he confesses ' ' were probably by no means so frequent as in these times. He makes the astounding assertion, p. 245, that religious instruction as a means of social and moral improvement was not one of the primary aims of the Reformation. The very opposite is proved by the efforts of Luther, Calvin and Knox to secure the establishment of schools in every hamlet and the catechisms which the two former prepared and the numerous catechisms prepared by their fellow Reformers. And what of their habit of constant preaching ? Luther preached day after day. One of the first signs of the Reformation in Geneva was that St. Pierre and St. Gervaise were opened for preaching daily. Calvin incorporated into his ecclesiastical polity as one of the orders the ministry, the teaching body.
1 W. G. Blaikie : The Preachers of Scotland, p. 36.