MEDIEVAL ART AND PARISH LIFE

Sin—Mr Brooks, pointing out a definite flaw in Mr Crouch's book, fell foul of me for heving recommended that volume. He gave a show of reason to his attack by omitting: (1) the rest of the sentence, which recommended it on/y to those who wished to see both. sides and (2) another sentence in which I warned readers that Mr Crouch is "net a ntedievalist," and has sometimes made mistakes.
The fact that he makes no apology for those misrepresentations, essential to his argument, may dispense me from reasoning further with him.
Mr Waters, again, still obstinately justifies that distortion upon which he based his argument, his change of the words deal only with to the quite different words, apply to. He cannot see that a tea-taster's verdict, while it deals only with the spoonful he has in his mouth, applies to the whole chest from which it has been taken at random.
His five questions deal only with my chapter entitled " The Shepherd," which he represents as tipping the scales of evidence against the parish priests. If that chapter stood alone there might be sonic justice in his charge. But a few pages later, comes my complementary chapter headed " The Silver Lining," and specially intended to correct exaggerated impressions.
I must apologise for asking you to reproduce a whole page and more: but only by so doing can I show your readers the random injustice of a critic who sees in my whole book only the dieadvantageous things which it suits him to see.
" Though the brighter touches are not always so explicit and emphatic as the darker, yet, amid that multitude of clergy, there were doubtless many in every time and country who were the salt of the earth. We must think here not only of the saints whom Rome has canonised, though but a small proportion of those were indeed parish priests, as a still smaller proportion were peasants or artisans. Behind those striking, and often theatrical. figures, we must think also of the hundred and forty-four thousand who, If all could be seen, would be worthy of the same crown and palm. Chaucer's poor parson was the forerunner of men who have lived serener lives in less troubled times, such as George Herbert's Country Parson, or convinced and unquestioning clerics of of the Clapham School and of the Oxford Movement. Side by side with those others whom our documents brand as a dishonour to their profession, we must not forget those who lived and laboured unknown, though they daily faced their duty in the spirit which Kebie holds out as a modern model : Think not of rest: though dreams be sweet, Start up, and ply your heavenward feet,
Is not God's Gied's oath upon your head, Ne'er to sink back on slothful bed,
Never again your loins untie, Nor let torches waste and die, Till, when the shadows thickest
f
Nor let torches waste and die, Till, when the shadows thickest
f
Ye hear your Master's midnight call?
" The life as parish priest of St. Gilbert of Sempringham (d. 1189) is told us in detail 300 years later by Capgrave, the Austin Friar of Lynn. He was of noble birth; his mother was English, his father a Norman knight who had come over with William the Conqueror. When he was promoted to the order of priesthood he was a model to his parish. He taught wisely in his preaching and his good example. In his parish there were no insolent drinkings, no wrestlings, bear-baitings Or other unthrifty occupations to interfere with divine service. His parishioners prayed devoutly in the church, paid truly their tithes, visited the poor and spent their wealth in the ways pleasing to God; in church they might be distinguished from others since he had taught them to bow their knees to God and so devoutly to ' bid their beads.' In process of time he founded the only purely English monastic order, for monks and for nuns. Even this man, with his social advantages, seems to have begun as a parish clerk; he certainly acted also as parish schoolmaster. Again, in those earlier generations when, apparently a larger proportion of priests were ordained on their own title. and certainly there was less appropriation of the wealthier livings by monastic and other bodies comparatively disinterested in the parish, then we not infrequently find a handsome chancel, or a whole church, built by the rector himself. At Great Shelford. near Cambridge, the monumental brass of such a priest still exists, within the altar rails. Gascoigne, again tells us : I knew a Rectory who had but one living, yet from the profits of that single church he sent twenty youths [one after the other] to school
university and made priests of them,'"