734 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
year by their pastors. Gerson approached the catechetical method (see this volume, p. 216 sq.) and, after long years of activity made the statement that the reformation of the church must begin with children, a parvulis ecclesice reparatio et ejus cultura incipienda.^ In his Tripartite work he presents the Ten Commandments, confession and thoughts for the dying. The catechetical form of question and answer was not adopted till after the Lutheran Reformation was well onjts way._ The term, catechism, as a designation of such a manual was first used by Luther, 1525, and the first book to bear the title was Andreas Althammer's Catechism, which appeared in 1528. Luther's two catechisms were issued one year later. The first Catholic book to bear the title was prepared by George Wicelius, 1535.
In England, we have something similar to the German penitential books in the Prymers^ the first copy of which dates from 1410. They were circulated in Latin and English, and were intended for the instruction of the laity. They contained the calendar, the Hours of our Lady, the litany, the Lord's Prayer, Creed, Ten Commandments, 7 Penitential Psalms, the 7 deadly sins, prayers and other matters. The book is referred to by Piers Plowman, and frequently in the 15th century, as one well known. ^ The Horn-hook also deserves mention. This device for teaching the alphabet and
1 Gerson's op;)., Du Pin's ed., III. 280. Luther, in the same vein, said in 1516, Weimar ed., I. 450, 4!»4, that, if there was to be a revival in the Church, it must start with the instruction of tlie children. A single book, corresponding to the manuals above described, has come down to us, from an earlier period, the composition of a monk of Weissenberg of the -Oth century. See two Artt. on Catechisms in the Fresh. Banner, Dec. 31, 1908, Jan. 7, 1909 by D. S. Schaff.
2 Maskell : Monwnenta ritunlia, 2d ed., 1882, III., pp. ii-lxvii and a reprint of a Prymer, III. 3-18.3. Dr. Edward Barton edited three Primers, dating from 1.535, 1539, 1.545, Oxf., 1834. See also Proctor's Hist. oftheBk. of Com. Prayer., p. 14 sq. Proctor calls the Primer " the book authorized for 150 years before the Reformation by the Engl. Church, for the private devotion of the people." A. W. Tuer : Hist, of the Horn Book, 2 vols., Lond., 1896. Highly illust. and most beautiful vols.
3 Maskell, III., pp. xxxv-xlix, says the word, Prymer, can be traced to the beginning of the 14th century.
§ 78. POPULAR PIETY. 735
the Lord's Prayer consisted of a rectangular board with a handle, to be held like a modern hand-mirror. On one or both sides were cut or printed the letters of the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer. Horn-books were probably not in general use till the close of the 16th century, but they date back to the middle of the 15th. They probably got their name from a piece of animal horn with which the face of the written matter was covered as a protection against grubby fingers. ^
A nearer approach to the catechetical idea was made by Colet in his rudiments of religious knowledge appended to his elementary grammar, and intended for use^ in St. Paul's School. It contains the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, an exposition of the love due God and our fellowmen, 46 special "precepts of living," and two prayers, and is generally known as the Catecheyzon."^
Religious instruction was also given through the series of pictures known as the Dance of Death, and through the miracle playa.3 In the Dance of Death, a perpetual memento mori^ death was represented in the figure of a skeleton appearing to persons in every avocation of life and of every class. None were too holy or too powerful to evade his intrusion and none too humble to be beyond his notice. Death wears now a serious, now a comic aspect, now politely leads his victim, now walks arm in arm with him, now drags him or beats him. An hour-glass is usually found somewhere in the pictures, grimly reminding the onlooker that the time of life is certain to run out. These pictures were painted on bridges,
1 Horn-books, as Mr. Tuer says, were much used in England, Scotland and America, down to the close of the 18th century. So completely had they gone out of use, that even Mr. Gladstone declared he knew "nothing at all about them. Tuer, I., p. 8.
2 Text in Lupton : Life of CoUt, pp. 285-292.
3 G. Peignot : Eecherches sm' les Danses des morts, Paris, 1826. — C. Douce : The Dance of Death, London, 1833. — Massmann : Literatur der Todtentdnze, etc., Leipzig, 1841. — R. Fortoul : Les Danses des morts, Paris, 1844. — Smith: Holbein'' s Dance of Death, London, 1849. — G. Kastner, Les Danses des morts, Paris, 1852. — W. Baumker : Der Todtentanz, Frankfurt, 1881. — W. Combe : The Engl. Dance of Death, new ed., 2 vols., N.Y., 1903. — Valentin Dufour, Becherches sur la danse macabre, peinte en 1425, au cimetiere des innocents, Paris, 1873. — Wetzer-Welte: Todtentanz, XI., 1834-1841.