CHAPTER XXI.

CUSTOMS.

It remains to mention a great variety of observances and customs, some of them superstitious, some innocent enough, many of them picturesque and poetical and giving colour and variety to the popular religious life. It would need another volume as large as this to do justice to the subject which we find ourselves compelled to deal with in a single chapter.

The right of Sanctuary, the immunity from violence even of the criminal who had put himself under the protection of present Deity, which was provided for in the Levitical cities of refuge, which attached to the temples of the gods of Greece and Rome, was, when the empire became Christian, readily accorded to churches and their precincts. We have had occasion to mention its existence in Saxon times;[322] it seems desirable to say that it continued to be an important feature in the life of the times of which we are now speaking. There were special sanctuaries--cities of refuge--with special privileges, as at Durham, Ripon, Hexham, Beverley, Battle, Beaulieu, Westminster, St. Martin’s le Grand, the Savoy, Whitefriars, and the Mint in London, and other places. Every church and every churchyard shared in the privilege, and it was no very unusual incident to find it made use of.

As an illustration of its efficacy, we may point to the story that after the battle of Tewkesbury, King Edward IV., with some of his knights, was about to enter the church, sword in hand, in pursuit of some of the defeated Lancastrians who had taken refuge there, when the priest met them at the door bearing the consecrated host, and refused them entrance till the king had promised pardon to several of the refugees. We frequently meet with examples of people in danger to life or liberty taking refuge in the nearest church.

The church was also a sanctuary for property. It was very usual to deposit money and valuables there for safe custody. We give some examples of it in a footnote.[323] Jews were not allowed to deposit their money and valuables in churches.

The churchyard also gave a certain protection.[324] Ordericus Vitalis relates that the villagers in time of war sometimes removed themselves and their goods thither, and built themselves huts within the precincts, and were left unmolested. From a canon of the Synod of Westminster, 1142, we learn that ploughs and other agricultural implements placed in the churchyard had certain immunities, probably freedom from seizure for debt. The canon decreed that the ploughs in the fields, with the husbandmen, should have the same immunity.[325]

A similar privilege attached to the persons of bishops; Bishop St. Hugh of Lincoln meeting the sheriff and his men taking a man to execution, claimed the criminal, and carried him off. The Abbot of Battle on one occasion claimed and exercised the same episcopal privilege.

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Pilgrimage was a popular act of devotion from Saxon times downwards, and afforded a relief to the stay-at-home habits of the people. The pilgrimage to the Holy Land was the most highly esteemed, after that, to the thresholds of the apostles at Rome, and to Compostella, and great numbers went thither. The most famous native pilgrimages were to St. Thomas of Canterbury and Our Lady of Walsingham, but every cathedral had its shrine, and many monasteries and many churches their relics. It would occupy pages even to give a list of the known places of pilgrimage in every county. Let it suffice to mention the shrines of St. Cuthbert at Durham, St. William at York, and little St. William at Norwich, St. Hugh at Lincoln, St. Edward Confessor at Westminster, St. Erkenwald at London, St. Wulstan at Worcester, St. Swithun at Winchester, St. Edmund at Bury, SS. Etheldreda and Withburga at Ely, St. Thomas at Hereford, St. Frideswide at Oxford, St. Werburgh at Chester, St. Wulfstan at Worcester, St. Wilfrid at Ripon, St. Richard at Chichester, St. Osmund at Salisbury, St. Paulinus at Rochester. There were famous roods, as that near the north door of St. Paul’s, London, and the roods of Chester and Bromholme; and statues, as that of Our Lady of Wilsden, and of Bexley, and of other places. There were scores of sacred wells; that of St. Winifred at Holywell, near Chester, with its exquisite architectural enclosure and canopy, is still almost perfect, and still resorted to for its supposed healing virtues.

Before a man went on any of the greater pilgrimages, he obtained a licence from his parish priest, and first went to church and received the Church’s blessing on his pious enterprise, and her prayers for his good success and safe return, and was formally invested with his staff, scrip, and bottle (water-bottle). The office for blessing pilgrims may be found in the old service books. While he was away he was mentioned every Sunday, as we have seen, in the Bidding Prayer, in his parish church. On the road, and at the end of his journey, he found hospitals founded by pious people on purpose to entertain pilgrims, and on the exhibition of his formal licence he received kindly hospitality. At every great place of pilgrimage “signs” were sold to the pilgrims, the palm at Jerusalem, scallop shells at St. James of Compostella, and the like. In many places water, in which had been dipped one of the relics, was sold, to be used in case of sickness, enclosed in a leaden ampul, and was worn suspended by a cord from the neck. Fragments of the pilgrim roads may still be traced in narrow deep overgrown lanes on the hillsides between Guildford and Reigate, between Westerham and Seven Oaks, leading towards Canterbury, and in green lanes through Norfolk leading towards Walsingham. On his return the pilgrim went to church to return thanks, and hung up his signs over his bed as treasured mementoes of his adventurous journey. Sometimes the palmer’s staff, or the scallop shells, were, on his death, hung on the church wall, as the knight’s gauntlets, sword, and helmet were.[326]

The whole body of the people had an opportunity of a short pilgrimage on the occasion of the annual procession of the parishes to the cathedral church, or if that were too far, to some other central church with special attractions, with banners waving and most likely music playing, there to meet the processions from other parishes, as has been already described at p. 121.

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Very frequently at the great Festivals there was some picturesque addition to the services in church; as the grotto and cradle at Christmas, the sprinkling of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the veiling of the rood during Lent, the procession bearing palms round the churchyard on Palm Sunday, the creeping to the cross on Good Friday, the Easter sepulchre, on Whitsunday the white dresses of the baptizands, the blessing of the fields on Rogation days, the festival of the Dedication of the parish church which was held on its saint’s day, and was a great day of social feasting. Every Sunday the procession (Litany) round the church, sometimes preceded by a miserable figure in white, bearing a taper, doing penance. At funerals there was a great display of mournful pageantry; and month’s-minds, and obits, frequently occurring, added a feature to the service in which everybody took a personal interest; for the good people then, when the banns of a marriage were published, kindly responded with a “God speed them well”; and when the names of the departed were proclaimed, prayed “God rest their souls.”

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In the Middle Ages, all the services of the church, attended by the people, were celebrated by daylight, except, perhaps, the first evensong on the eves of saint days, and very early celebrations, and then the attendants probably brought a taper or a coil of wax-light for themselves, so that there was no need of provision for the lighting up of the whole interior of churches, such as is customary in these days; but lights in churches were a conspicuous part of their furniture, and the provision of them was a source of general interest to the people.

First there were the altar lights. A law of Edmund directs that the priest shall not celebrate without a light; not for use, but as a symbol. At low mass one candle on the gospel side of the altar was sufficient, _e.g._ one was habitually used in Lincoln Cathedral at low mass. In poor churches, sometimes only one was used. Myrc, in his “Instructions to Parish Priests,” says--

Look that thy candle of wax it be, And set it so that thou it see, On the left half of thine altere, And look always that it burn clere.

In pictures of the celebration of the Eucharist in illuminated MSS., we sometimes find only one candle on the altar, _e.g._ in Nero E. II. (fourteenth cent.) _passim_. More usually in later times two wax candles were placed on the altar, which were understood to symbolize the presence in the sacrament of Christ the Light of the World, and their number to allude to the two natures in our Lord.

It was required that an oil-lamp should hang before the high altar, always alight, in honour of the reserved sacrament in its Pyx. It was an ancient custom to have a great ornamented wax-light at Easter, called the Paschal Candle, in honour of the Resurrection of our Lord. Lights were placed on the rood-loft, and tapers were burned in front of the images of the saints, here and there in the church and its chapels. “The lighting of candles is not to dispel darkness, but to show that the saints are lightened by the light of heaven from God, as when they were alive, and the light of Faith, Grace, and Doctrine shone in them in this life.” “The Church Light before the rood, the relics, or images of saints burneth to the honour of God.”[327]

The number of these lights before saints was sometimes considerable. For example, the churchwardens’ accounts of All Saints’, Derby, for 1466-67, give entries with respect to the lights in that church, which tell us the number of images of saints, the number of tapers before each image, and the way in which they were provided:--

St. Catherine’s lights contained 20 serges, maintained by the collection of the Candle lighter.

St. Nicholas’ light contained 12 serges, maintained by the gathering of the Parish Clerk on St. Nicholas’ night.

Four other serges were burnt before St. Nicholas, which were provided by the Schoolmaster’s gathering from his scholars, St. Nicholas being the patron saint of School boys.

St. Eloy’s (Elgius) light had 6 serges, maintained by the Gild of the Farriers.

St. Clement’s light had 5 serges, maintained by the Gild of Bakers.

Our Lady’s light contained 5 serges, maintained by the Shoemakers.

Before the Rood 5 serges were maintained by 5 several benefactors.

Before the Mary of Pity 5 serges were maintained by the wife of Ralph Mayre.

In the Lady Chapel before our Lady 3 serges, maintained by 3 several benefactors.

In the same chapel before the Image of St. John Baptist several serges maintained by one benefactor.

Before St. Christopher 5 serges by 5 individuals.

3 serges which Anc{r} Geyr found, one before our Lady, another before St. Catherine, and the third before the Trinity Altar.

Before St. Edmund 2 serges by the gathering of the Clerk on St. Edmund’s night, gathering as they do on St. Nicholas’ night.[328]

Dr. Cox says that these lights were probably all lighted at high mass; but those of saints only on their saint days, and that only the altar-lamp was left alight all night.

At the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a temporary wooden chandelier, called a trindle, bearing many lights, was set up in church, and the attendants at the service brought tapers with them; the general illumination gave to the festival the name of Candle-Mass.

The popularity of these lights is shown in many ways--gilds maintained them, the public generally subscribed to them, and testators frequently left money to them.

A taper seems sometimes to have been symbolical of a person, as when the people who followed a procession carried them and presented them at the altar; when a nun to be professed and an anchoress to be enclosed, thus carried and offered them; when a penitent carried them; and, when in excommunication, “by bell, book, and candle,” the candle was extinguished. Perhaps, in giving to the lights before the rood and the images of saints, there was some notion in the donors’ minds that they were keeping themselves in the recollection of Christ and the saints.

Besides these ritual lights, it was customary at a funeral to set up a wooden herse in church around the coffin, and to place two or more large wax candles, often called torches, about the herse. People often made provision in their wills for such lights, not only on the day of the funeral, but on the week-day, month’s-mind, and yearly obit, and sometimes at a perpetual obit. Perhaps what was intended to be symbolized was that, though their bodies were buried in darkness, their souls were in the land of light.

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The dramatic representation of Scripture subjects--the Three Kings at Christmas, the Passion of our Lord in Lent, and others at other times--was common in the cathedrals, monasteries, large towns, and perhaps villages. Bishop Poor, in his “Ancren Riewle,” suggests that female recluses, who sometimes lived in a cell beside the church, may have to mention among other subjects of confession, “I went to the play in the churchyard; I looked on at the wrestling, or other foolish sports.” The Passion play at Ober Ammergau has proved that such performances may be made dignified and devotional.

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The custom of using the churchyard for purposes of business and pleasure was very common and very persistent. As early as the fourth century St. Basil protested against the holding of markets in the precincts of churches, under pretext of making better provision for the festivals; but the custom held its own, and we have a catena of synodical declarations against holding secular pleas, markets and fairs, and indulging in sports, in church and churchyard, and a series of complaints by the synodsmen in their annual presentation to their bishops of the breach of the canons.

Cardinal Ottobon, at the Synod of London, 1268, made a constitution prohibiting this kind of use of the sacred building and its enclosure; and strictly enjoining all bishops and other prelates to cause it to be inviolably observed on pain of ecclesiastical censure; and here are a few examples of the way in which it was disregarded down to so late a period as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries:

The parishioners of St. Michael le Belfry, York, in 1416, complain that a common market is held in their churchyard on Sundays and holidays.[329] In the explanation of the Second Commandment, c. xvi., in “Dives and Pauper,” in allusion to the abuse, which adds a little to our information, “no markette sholde be holden by vytaylers or other chapmen on Sondaye in the churche or in the churchyarde or at the church gate ne in sentuary (churchyard) ne out.” In another place (Sixth Commandment, c. i.) we learn that the chapmen and their families sometimes slept in the church or churchyard.

One of the canons of the Synod of Exeter, 1287, strictly enjoins on parish priests that they publicly proclaim in their churches that no one presume to carry on combats, dances, or other improper sports in the churchyards, especially on the even and feasts of saints, or stage plays or farces (_ludos theatrales et ludebriorum spectacula_).[330] Yet in 1472, at Sallay, in Yorkshire, it is found necessary to make an order that no one use improper and prohibited sports within the churchyard, as, for example, _pilopedali vel manuale_, tutts and handball, or wrestling.

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A custom which is still more opposed to our sense of propriety was that of holding church ales in the sacred building. A church ale was the old form of parish tea. It was connected with works of piety or charity, or of Christian fellowship, and in the eyes of the people of those times perhaps partook of the nature of the primitive love-feasts. They made a collection for the poor of the parish at a Whitsun Ale, started a young couple with a little sum by a Bride Ale, or got a man out of difficulties by a Bid Ale (from _biddan_, to pray or beg). So persistent was the custom, that in our latest English canons of 1603 it is thought necessary to prohibit any holding of feasts, banquets, suppers, or church ale drinkings in church.[331]