Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [390]
“Of course.”
“And do you remember what Our Lord said to him?” He paused only for effect. “I will translate: he said – ‘Put up thy sword!’”
Martin nodded.
“You note the words: thy sword. From this it is clear,” Portehors recited the explanation as if by rote, “that the Apostles had personal possessions of their own. Our Lord did not, you notice, rebuke Peter for possession of a sword, but only for the use of it at that time and place.” He smiled. “So you see, the scriptures do not condemn personal property, even in the hands of St Peter himself.”
It was exactly the kind of preposterous logic through which the lesser scholastics delighted to exercise their ingenuity. Martin was familiar with the method and said nothing.
Seeing that he had not impressed him, Portehors asked crossly: “What else?”
“I’m against the endowment of chantries and the singing of obits by which your priests are paid to pray for a man’s soul, because he thinks that by feeding your mouths he can get time off his punishment in hell. I’m even more against the sale of indulgences where you give him time off without even troubling to pray for him. I’m similarly against the foolish practice of burning lights.”
“There’s nothing wrong with lights,” Stephen burst out. He himself had long belonged to a small confraternity of friendly merchants who had burned lights to a chosen patron saint. “It’s an act of respect.”
“And you pay the church when you do it,” Martin remarked. “The Bible enjoins a simple life, poverty, good works, and prayer. It says nothing about Caesarian prelates like our lord bishop at Sarum.”
This last phrase was a favourite of Wyclif’s: it perfectly described the worldly servants whom the king made bishops as a reward for their services. Though the system saved the king, and hence his subjects, a great deal of money, since clever and powerful men could take their rewards from the huge Church revenues instead of fleecing the treasury, it was anathema to the followers of Wyclif. Both the previous bishop, Wyville, and the present Bishop Erghum were men of this stamp.
Portehors was silent after this appalling impertinence.
“Anything else?” he asked dangerously.
“I’m against foreigners being given appointments in the cathedral by the pope when they never turn up.”
“They are not. The bishop has stopped it.”
For once Martin had slipped up. For two years before, partly in response to the growing agitation caused by Wyclifs sympathisers, this practice at Salisbury had been stopped.
“Perhaps, like Wyclif, you would like to depose the pope,” Portehors suggested sarcastically.
But here his self-confidence made him careless.
“The pope. Which one?” Martin asked pleasantly.
And at this Portehors could only scowl.
“Do you deny that the body and blood of Christ are present in the mass?” he asked suddenly. This was the dreadful notion of these heretics who denied the power of the priest to make God.
Martin looked at him coolly. He decided not to give the young priest such an easy heresy to accuse him of. “I’d like my priests to be men of God,” he replied contemptuously.
Appalled as he was by his son’s folly, Stephen could not help admiring his sturdy spirit; and when soon afterwards Portehors left, he went quietly to the store where he and Wilson kept their cloth and spent several hours there alone, scarcely able to decide whether he privately agreed with his son or not.
Two days later, he received a definite, but quiet warning to keep Martin under control; that was all.
For although young Portehors would gladly have seen the arrogant young merchant put to the rack, the Church authorities – perhaps because they were easy-going and frequently corrupt – took a generous view of the reformers. There was no Inquisition in England; and Archbishop Sudbury of Canterbury himself had only moved slowly and reluctantly against Wyclif even