Cathédrale de Chartres; Civilization, Medieval; Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)
So Mary filled heaven with a sort of persons little to the taste of
any respectable middle-class society, which has trouble enough in
making this world decent and pay its bills, without having to
continue the effort in another. Mary stood in a Church of her own,
so independent that the Trinity might have perished without much
affecting her position; but, on the other hand, the Trinity could
look on and see her dethroned with almost a breath of relief.
Aucassins and the devils of Gaultier de Coincy foresaw her danger.
Mary's treatment of respectable and law-abiding people who had no
favours to ask, and were reasonably confident of getting to heaven
by the regular judgment, without expense, rankled so deeply that
three hundred years later the Puritan reformers were not satisfied
with abolishing her, but sought to abolish the woman altogether as
the cause of all evil in heaven and on earth. The Puritans abandoned
the New Testament and the Virgin in order to go back to the
beginning, and renew the quarrel with Eve. This is the Church's
affair, not ours, and the women are competent to settle it with
Church or State, without help from outside; but honest tourists are
seriously interested in putting the feeling back into the dead
architecture where it belongs.
Mary was rarely harsh to any suppliant or servant, and she took no
special interest in humiliating the rich or the learned or the wise.
For them, law was made; by them, law was administered; and with
their doings Mary never arbitrarily interfered; but occasionally she
could not resist the temptation to intimate her opinion of the
manner in which the Trinity allowed their--the regular--Church to be
administered. She was a queen, and never for an instant forgot it,
but she took little thought about her divine rights, if she had
any,--and in fact Saint Bernard preferred her without them,--while
she was scandalized at the greed of officials in her Son's Court.
One day a rich usurer and a very poor old woman happened to be dying
in the same town. Gaultier de Coincy did not say, as an accurate
historian should, that he was present, nor did he mention names or
dates, although it was one of his longest and best stories. Mary
never loved bankers, and had no reason for taking interest in this
one, or for doing him injury; but it happened that the parish priest
was summoned to both death-beds at the same time, and neglected the
old pauper in the hope of securing a bequest for his church from the
banker. This was the sort of fault that most annoyed Mary in the
Church of the Trinity, which, in her opinion, was not cared for as
it should be, and she felt it her duty to intimate as much.
Although the priest refused to come at the old woman's summons, his
young clerk, who seems to have acted as vicar though not in orders,
took pity on her, and went alone with the sacrament to her hut,
which was the poorest of poor hovels even for that age:--
Close de piex et de serciaus
Comme une viez souz a porciaus.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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