The covetousness and irreverence of the churchmen in former times are well exemplified in another tale given in the same old jest-book, No. lxxi, which, with spelling modernised, goes thus:  “Sometime there dwelled a priest in Stratford-on-Avon, of small learning, which undevoutly sang mass and oftentimes twice on one day.  So it happened on a time, after his second mass was done in short space, not a mile from Stratford there met him divers merchantmen, which would have heard mass, and desired him to sing mass and he should have a groat, which answered them and said:  ’Sirs, I will say mass no more this day; but I will say you two gospels for one groat, and that is dog-cheap for a mass in any place in England.’” The story-teller does not inform us whether the pious merchants accepted of the business-like compromise offered by “Mass John.”

Hagiolatry was quite as much in vogue among the priesthood in medieval times as mariolatry has since been the special characteristic of the Romish Church, to the subordination (one might almost say, the suppression) of the only true object of worship; in proof of which, here is a droll anecdote from another early English collection, Mery Tales, Wittie Questions, and Quicke Answeres, very pleasant to be readde (No. cxix):  “A friar, preaching to the people, extolled Saint Francis above [all] confessors, doctors, virgins, martyrs, prophets—­yea, and above one more than prophets, John the Baptist, and finally above the seraphical order of angels; and still he said, ‘Yet let us go higher.’  So when he could go no farther, except he should put Christ out of his place, which the good man was half afraid to do, he said aloud, ’And yet we have found no fit place for him.’  And, staying a little while, he cried out at last, saying, ‘Where shall we place the holy father?’ A froward fellow standing among the audience,[151] said, ’If thou canst find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,’ and so he went his way.”—­This “froward fellow’s” unexpected reply will doubtless remind the reader of the old man’s remark in the mosque, about the “calling of Noah,” ante, pp. 66, 67.[152]

  [151] There were no pews in the churches in those “good old
        times.”

  [152] Apropos of saint-worship, quaint old Thomas Fuller
        relates a droll story in his Church History, ed. 1655,
        p. 278:  A countryman who had lived many years in the
        Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a
        populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God
        they did worship.  They answered him, that they
        worshipped Jesus Christ.  Whereupon the wild wood-man
        asked the names of the several churches in the city,
        which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they
        were consecrated.  “It is strange,” said he, “that you
        should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in
        all the city dedicated to him.”