IGNORANCE OF THE CLERGY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

  Orl. Whom ambles Time withal?

  Ros. With a priest that lacks Latin; for he sleeps easily,
  because he cannot study, lacking the burden of lean and wasteful
  learning.—­As You Like It.

During the 7th and 8th centuries the state of letters throughout Christian Europe was so low that very few of the bishops could compose their own discourses, and some of those Church dignitaries thought it no shame to publicly acknowledge their inability to write their own names.  Numerous instances occur in the Acts of the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon of an inscription in these words:  “I, ——­, have subscribed by the hand of ——­, because I cannot write”; and such a bishop having thus confessed that he could not write, there followed:  “I, ——­, whose name is underwritten, have therefore subscribed for him.”

Alfred the Great—­who was twelve years of age before a tutor could be found competent to teach him the alphabet—­complained, towards the close of the 9th century, that “from the Humber to the Thames there was not a priest who understood the liturgy in his mother-tongue, or could translate the easiest piece of Latin”; and a correspondent of Abelard, about the middle of the 12th century, complimenting him upon a resort to him of pupils from all countries, says that “even Britain, distant as she is, sends her savages to be instructed by you.”

Henri Etienne, in the Introduction to his Apology for Herodotus,[148] says that “the most brutish and blockish ignorance was to be found in friars’ cowls, especially mass-mongering priests, which we are the less to wonder at, considering that which Menot twits them in the teeth withal, that instead of books there was nothing to be found in their chambers but a sword, or a long-bow, or a cross-bow, or some such weapon.  But how could they send ad ordos such ignorant asses?  You must note, sir, that they which examined them were as wise as woodcocks themselves, and therefore judged of them as penmen of pikemen and blind men of colours.  Or were it that they had so much learning in their budgets as that they could make a shift to know their inefficiency, yet to pleasure those that recommended them they suffered them to pass.  One is famous among the rest, who being asked by the bishop sitting at the table:  ‘Es tu dignus?’ answered, ’No, my Lord, but I shall dine anon with your men.’  For he thought that dignus (that is, worthy) signified to dine.”

  [148] This is a work distinct from Henri Etienne’s Apologia
        pour Herodote.  An English translation of it was
        published at London in 1807, and at Edinburgh in 1808,
        under the title of “A World of Wonders; or, an
        Introduction to a Treatise touching the Conformitie of
        Ancient and Modern Wonders; or, a Preparative Treatise