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 Robert Annys: Poor Priest

 [Illustration]




   Robert Annys: Poor Priest

  A Tale of the Great Uprising

               By

       ANNIE NATHAN MEYER




            New York
     THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

 LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
              1901

      _All rights reserved_




      Copyright, 1901,
  By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.




          Norwood Press
 J. B. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
      Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




TO THE READER


Admirers of William Morris--among whom I count all his readers--will
recognize the personal description of John Ball as taken from his "A
Dream of John Ball." They will also note that some parts of his sermon
as well are from the same book. It seemed to me that certain bits of
Morris's imaginative work were too fine and true to be spared in any
attempt to set the blunt old poor priest before the modern reader. I
have no fear of bearing off undeserved palms; for just as a few of the
sayings of John Ball bear the marks of authenticity too clearly upon
them to be mistaken for mine, so such as are taken from Morris are as
clearly distinguished by the marks of supreme beauty and genius.

In the course of many years of close reading, it is inevitable that
there should have been woven into this book some of the ideas and
prepossessions of certain Church historians. Although many other
writers have been exceedingly helpful and suggestive, I want especially
to acknowledge my indebtedness to Renan, Kingsley, Fisher, Baldwin
Brown, Gosselin, Braun, Montalembert, Vincent, and Sheppard.




I


The great Minster of the Fens never looked lovelier than at the close
of a November day, 1379. The coloring of Fenland is not attuned to
the brightness of Spring or Summer, but there is in the late Autumn
a subtle quality that brings out its true charm. The dull browns
and yellows of the marshes, the warm red-browns of the rushes, the
pale greens of the swamp grasses with the glint of the sun low down
at their feet,--all on this day found just the right complement in
the great, heavy, gray clouds that broke here and there only to show
irregular bars of saffron sky. Just before night fell there was one
supreme moment when a patch of gold lingered in the north just over the
wonderful octagon, the glorious crown of St. Audrey, and the great west
front with its noble tower and its wealth of windows flung the orange
gleam of the setting sun over the landscape as a gauntlet proudly
thrown in the face of Night. The lordly outlines of the vast edifice
looked lordlier than ever as the slowly gathering darkness descended
and drew it up into itself.

The east wind blowing from over the sea, pungent with the odor of marsh
plants, was keen, and caused a man who was surveying the scene to
gather his thin gown more closely about him. Until he stirred, this man
might almost have been taken for a part of the landscape, so admirably
did his garb of coarse russet sacking harmonize with his surroundings.
Although he shivered slightly, he did not move from his position, but
remained with arms tightly folded on his breast, and his deep-set eyes
fixed earnestly upon the solemn pile before him. A solitary figure
he stood in the vast stretch of sky and land, and he felt himself
peculiarly alone. Yet as he faced the Cathedral there was no sign of
faltering or dread in his face, but rather a distinct note of defiance.

Not long before, the stately procession of priests had departed from
the Vesper service. A choir boy of angelic countenance, but impish
spirit, had for an instant trailed his violet robe in the dust and
flung the stone he picked up straight at the russet form. Not a priest
in line but envied the boy. Outwardly, the russet priest showed no
sign. He thought of St. Francis who had been stoned by the very ones
who later placed those stones under his direction. Also he thought of
the stoning of One greater than St. Francis.

One year before, at Oxford, Robert Annys had bidden farewell to his
beloved master, John Wyclif, and had become one of his noble band of
poor priests,--or russet priests, as they were familiarly dubbed,--who
went about the country, preaching the Gospel and teaching the people
how to read, that they might bring Holy Writ more closely into their
lives. As a student, he had passed many happy years by the side of
his great master at Balliol, translating the Bible into the language
of the people so that they might come to know God and love God by
themselves without the shadow of the priestly office ever between.
Nevertheless, although he had been well content to pass all his life in
that beautiful manner, when the time came that his master ordered him
out into the world, he went without a murmur and bravely, empty handed,
with no more thought of the morrow than had the twelve whom Christ had
bidden:--

 "Take nothing for your journey, neither staff, nor wallet, nor bread,
 nor money; neither have two coats."

Since then he had lived close to the people, he had been of the people.
He had come to them, not with the crumbs from the Communion table but
with the strong bread of life. He had preached the Gospel in the fields
while the heat rose in palpitating waves, and on the downs while the
hail beat on his bare head; he had prayed over them while the shears
dripped white from the sheep of their overlord; he had hungered with
them and thirsted with them and shared such coarse food as they had; he
had watched with them as some worn soul departed from its worn body.
His way had led to no sumptuous oratories of towered castles, to no
cushioned _prie-dieux_ in scented chambers. He had shrived, not grand
seigneurs and haughty dames whose momentary comfort had been disturbed
by the pricking of a superficial regret, but strong, simple souls who
trembled from the sway of tremendous feeling--men who thirsted for
the blood of their child's betrayer, victims who raged at infamous
injustice and brooded over desperate means to escape their thraldom.
No lightly felt peccadilloes were confessed to him, but the agony and
shame of those whose tortured souls hung betwixt heaven and hell.

And he had grown to love this life. He had thought to have a peculiar
aptitude for letters, and his master had never altered translation
wrought by him. Yet he knew now that his gift lay rather in swaying
men, and one short year had done much to make his name known from
Sussex to Lincolnshire. No wonder, then, that he had joy in his work,
for it is not given to man to know greater happiness than this: to
watch the face of a fellow-man kindle with a new and great hope, which
he knows he has planted within the other's breast. Yet deep down within
there had been slowly growing in his heart a secret questioning. He
had been warned by his master to hold himself strictly to the work
of spreading the knowledge of the Gospel, and he had been clearly
enjoined against undoing the peace of the realm and setting serfs
against their masters, as a certain mad priest named John Ball was even
at that moment doing, both by the reckless violence of his language
and the revolutionary quality of his theories. It was easy for Wyclif
in the shelter of the University to warn against over-haste and to
protest that education must come before a lasting reform could be
accomplished, and that one must build on solid foundations for the
future. It was not so easy for the wandering poor priest, with the
sufferings of the people ever before him, to refrain from pressing the
Gospel into immediate action. Annys began very soon to suspect that
it was impossible to feed the people with the knowledge of Holy Writ
and expect no indigestion to come from the strange diet. If Life truly
began to be tested by Holy Writ, some idols must fall--if the Church
Hierarchical, alas for it! If Christian society were to be modelled on
the plain teachings of its Founder, some strange sights would be seen.

Annys had not needed to be stoned to feel rise up within him a fierce
hatred toward that stately church that reared its head so haughtily
to heaven. Ah, truly he held with St. Boniface of old that "in the
catacombs the candlesticks were of wood, but the priests were golden.
_Now the candlesticks are of gold._"

That morning, when he preached to the men in the fields and told them
in homely language of the life of their Lord and His death to save
them, a summons had come from the Bishop of Ely bidding Robert Annys
appear before him. And, wondering what the Bishop could want of him
(unless to order him peremptorily from his diocese, in which case it
was scarcely necessary to do so in person), he had had himself rowed
over the wide-spreading meres that separated the isle of Ely from the
mainland. As he slowly approached the glorious pile, there came over
him with a curious stir the memory of that King Canute who had also
been thus rowed across and who had bade the oarsmen pause midway that
he might listen to the beautiful chanting of the monks.

Truth to tell, for all his passionate disdain for what lay outside of
the true heart of Christianity, he was more profoundly moved by the
beauty of Ely Minster than he would have dreamed it possible. For he
was an ardent student of history, and here before him was wrought as
true and noble an epic as ever was writ on parchment. Into these noble
arches and soaring towers, these delicate pinnacles, these exquisite
traceries, surely the adoring heart of Mediaevalism had lavishly poured
itself. This russet priest was an artist and worshipped beauty,
hence he could not look on Ely unmoved. He was an Englishman to the
fingertips, hence he could not stand on ground so alive with heroic
traditions and not thrill to the memory of them. As he stood there
in the gathering darkness before the church, he saw a long struggle
before him. He saw the Bishop of Ely and the whole powerful Church of
Rome leagued against him. And why? Because he followed Christ's clear
mandates. Yet he was certain that nothing that the Hierarchy could do
would conquer him. He would stand to the end, alone if need be, but
fearlessly true to his convictions, true to the master who had sent him
out into the world to do His work. Something of the grim determination
of those Saxons of old entered into him, those hardy warriors who had
fought so many hundred years before on that very spot and made their
last dogged stand against the conquering Normans; something, too, of
the undaunted will of that old monk-architect, who, even amid the roar
of the falling walls of the old tower of Ely, had conceived the great
new tower, the wonderful octagon which was unique in all England.

No! no threat of imprisonment or other punishment on the morrow could
make him swerve from the course he had chosen. He would continue to go
among his people with only a book and a bag. His people who awaited
him among the hayricks, who let plough rest idle in the furrow or
tossed aside the spade that they might hearken to him. _His people!_
His eyes dimmed with tears as he thought of the pathetic figure of
Piers Ploughman standing in the fields, the light of a great wonder
in his face,--Piers in the condition of a man who has had his eyes
bandaged for a long time, and now for the first time has had the
bandage removed. In the strange light that now bursts upon him the
most familiar objects take on a new and strange appearance. In the
transformation that is going on about him, all that his honest heart
has held stable, omnipotent, eternal, now sways unsteadily before him:
Feudal Lords, Sheriffs, King's men and Kings; Fees in Tithe, Manorial
Holdings, Rights of Labor, Acts of Parliament, and even Holy Church
herself. No, no, come what may, he could never desert Piers now:--

        "One side is...
    Popes, cardinals, and prelates,
    Priours, abbots of great estates.
    The other side ben poor and pale;
    And seeme caitives sore a-cale."

The night closed slowly down upon the Cathedral. At last its great mass
was felt rather than seen.

"Thy strength against mine," the poor priest murmured, as he lingered
yet an instant.

"Thy strength against mine."




II


The following morning Thomas Goldynge, Bishop of Ely, lay in bed
awaiting those to whom he had promised audience. It was with
considerable curiosity that he awaited the young poor priest whom he
had summoned. He sighed with relief as he realized that the hard fight
which he had waged against Rome was ended. It was a contest over the
best method of suppressing the poor priests, and it had taken many
secret embassies to Rome, and many letters in cipher sent to trusted
friends at the Papal Court. Indeed, it had looked at one time as if
the Bishop himself, aged as he was, would have to undertake the long
and tedious journey to the Holy City, for the Bishop looked upon
this matter as one of vital importance to the Church. He agreed with
the Papal Legate that the incendiary preaching of the poor priests
must be stamped out, but he had some theories of his own as to this
stamping-out process, and persecution bore no part in them. He, more
than any other Churchman, realized that the English people needed
careful handling. How was the Italian Legate to understand anything
of the rage and indignation that were growing up in the hearts of the
English against foreign subjection, against a Church that gave the best
sees in the land to Italians who scarce deigned to make acquaintance
with the very outsides of their churches? The substance of the people
was being wrung from them to help the cause of their bitter enemies.
The King of England had little or nothing left for his needs because
the Church refused to give up one tittle of its moneys for the good of
the realm. Goldynge was an Englishman, and he had struggled all his
life to place Englishmen in English churches. He was against the new
spirit of Nationalism, however, when it asserted itself against the
most sacred prerogatives of the Church, for he could look far ahead and
see that this spirit might become powerful enough to wreck the Church
Universal and give birth in England to a Church that would forswear all
allegiance to Rome. He was for doing all in his power to redress the
wrongs of the people and keep the breach from widening, for Holy Church
had about all the schisms it could well take care of for some time to
come.

When Robert Annys was ushered in with head flung well back and every
line in the lithe young body eloquent of a proud defiance, the Bishop
raised himself on the pillow and looked long and eagerly into his face.
Therein he read all that he had counted to find. In the deep-set eyes,
the high, narrow brow, the sensitive mouth, the delicately chiselled
chin, there were revealed to the shrewd old prelate the enthusiastic
temperament of a reformer, the idealism of a poet, the puissant desire
to work, to change, to remake. And also, and therein lay his secret
satisfaction, he read the fine acumen of a critic. A dangerous quality
that, which was certain to make war upon the other qualities that
struggled in his breast. Here was before him no blunt fanatic like John
Ball, flying as unswervingly to his goal as the arrow shot from the
bow, but one with the discerning mind that weighs, discriminates, and
looks far enough ahead to see its own heart-break at the end.

"You sent for me?" although the tone was defiant, it was less so than
Annys had intended it. Somehow he found it hard to be arrogant to this
gentle old man whose flowing locks looked whiter than ever against the
deep red of the bed-curtains. Only a beautiful old man upon his couch,
looking at him with dim kindly eyes and a mouth that smiled. Far
rather would he have faced a haughty prelate in rustling robes--that
would have roused him and strengthened him in his hatred of all for
which a Bishop stood.

"Yes," replied the old man, very gently, "I have sent for thee, for I
have heard much of this russet priest who sways great bodies of men as
they hearken to him, even as row upon row of corn is swayed by the wind
that blows across the fields. I wished to see him and hold converse
with him."

"Why should I come here before you that you may look upon me? I owe
no allegiance to the Bishop of Ely. I serve him not, I serve only my
master, John Wyclif."

"And our Master, Jesus Christ?" mildly interposed the Bishop.

"Yea, I serve _my_ Master, Jesus Christ," asserted the poor priest,
"but"--he was annoyed to find that the words in his heart did not rise
so easily to his tongue as he would have them do. He felt the old man's
eyes gravely fixed upon him.

"But?" he suggested with sedate politeness--"but?"

The young man reddened with discomfiture, but remained silent.

"I beg of you to go on," said the Bishop, suavely; "we are quite
alone. I have sent for you to understand what is in your heart, and I
would that you open it to me without fear."

The word stung the poor priest as the older man knew it would.

"Fear? I have no fear. What should I fear? I would say that one cannot
serve two masters at one time, the one Christ, the other Antichrist.
I do not see that one can bear at one and the same time the pectoral
cross and the cross of Christ Jesus."

It was now the Bishop's turn to redden, but he only bit his lip for an
instant and then smiled frankly. "I understand," he said, "I have heard
somewhat of this kind of thing before. You poor priests claim that
Christ founded no cathedrals, and that He worked with fishermen instead
of Bishops. I know ye would like to see the palaces of Bishops razed to
the ground that bread might be placed between the lips of the hungry,
the gold of the altars melted that it might run into the purse of the
poor. As your poet hath it,

  "'Let Bishops' horses become beggars' chambers.

Is that not it?"

His listener folded his arms tightly over his breast and nodded for
answer.

"Ah, yes; ah, yes," continued the Bishop, musingly, "do I not know?
Was I not even as thou in my youthful days? But I am an old man now,
and many things lie bathed in the clear white light of knowledge that
then lay darkly shrouded in mystery. My dear son, you are only one of
many who fix their eyes on what should have been, instead of on what
really was. Ye bury your faces within the pages of the Bible, and if ye
look up once to see what is going on about you, it is only to contrast
with impatience the teaching and example of the Church Visible with
the teaching and example of Christ and His disciples. Ye are willing
to look on the Church as it now is, and God knows there are faults and
crimes enough to excuse some of your impatience, but ye refuse to look
at the history of the Church, and at the magnificent service it has
rendered in the cause of humanity. Ye refuse to consider gravely and
seriously the work that it has accomplished, and to ask yourselves if
any other human agency could have done a tenth as well. You critics
are as men who have been saved by a bridge from a wild and devastating
stream, and now once safely crossed, ye kneel down--not to thank God
Almighty for having saved you, but to detect the flaws in the bridge."

Annys could not but be moved by the eloquence of the old man. He began
to understand something of the great power which had been wielded from
the throne of Ely. Yet he waited not with his answer, "Christianity
is no longer the Church of Christ, it is the Church of Rome. Why keep
up the pretence longer? I am but seeking to bring the people back to
Christ as St. Francis did before me."

"Ay! as St. Francis did before you. He was so sure that all the world
needed was the Word and his Rule of Poverty. Well, how many years after
his death was it that the people complained to the authorities of the
great wealth of the Franciscan monasteries?"

Annys remained silent.

"The Church is a more intricate matter than any one Book or any one
Rule," went on the Bishop. "Why think you it was that the wolves of
the north, as St. Jerome well called them, those wild tribes of Franks
and Burgundians, of Vandals and Goths and Visigoths, savage as their
onslaught was, yet paused in the face of Rome? Was it not because the
Churchmen at the critical time were no idle dreamers, but the greatest
statesmen the world ever saw? Ah, my son, if temporal power meant a
fall from the early apostolic Church, do not forget that it was a fall
brought about by the very greatness of its own servants. It was to the
early Bishops that the world was forced to look for its rulers when the
reins of government were slipping from the weak hands of all others.
It was Cyprian at Carthage, Jerome and Leo at Rome, Ambrose at Milan,
Augustine in Africa, Boniface at the court of Pepin, Martin at Tours,
Hilary at Poitiers, and Marcel at Paris who were doing the work of the
world. It is easy to speak of the Pope's need for Charles the Great
when he placed the diadem of the Caesars on the Frankish Emperor's brow;
yet if Leo needed Charles, Charles needed Leo, as well, and we do not
quite so often hear that. My son, the mitre has resisted many a blow
that would have shattered the sword."

"Ah, but how much finer had the Church of Christ been built up even as
Solomon would have had it, if it could have truly been said of the Head
of the Church:--

 "'He shall not put his trust in horse or rider, and bow, nor shall he
 multiply unto himself gold and silver for war, for he shall smite the
 earth with the word of his mouth.'"

"A beautiful dream, no more, my son. Take the Crusades; how easy is it
for critics to aver that an intriguing Pope started them to increase
his own glory and gratify his sense of power. Yet hast ever thought
whether the peoples of Europe would not have fallen upon and destroyed
one another but for the wise craft of a leader who united them by
finding a common enemy? Now do not misunderstand me; no one more than
I realizes the awful sins of the Schismatic Popes, the terrible greed
of some of the powerful Churchmen, their criminal neglect of their
charges; no one realizes more that the people have wrongs that should
be righted. But I am sure it is for the good of the people that these
wrongs be righted from within the Church. The people have no better
friend than the Church. It has been the one Institution which has
sought out the individual, and asked of him only what service he could
render it. In its bosom it has held the divine spark of the equality
of man, and kept it there and protected it while the world was not yet
ready for it. It has nourished it until it will be a flame great enough
to light the torch of Freedom.

"We agree, save that you think the world is ripe for that spark, and I
know that it is not; loosed now, it will but scorch and sear; it is not
ready to illumine."

Annys had listened with profound earnestness to the impetuous words of
the great prelate; before he could respond, the speaker continued,
with a great light of enthusiasm in his face:--

"Think on the refrain which you know well. Con it when you are tempted
to think that the Church has done naught for the people:--

    "'Had they (the priests) been out of religion,
        They must have hanged at the plowe.
      Threshing and diking fro towne to towne,
        With sorrie meat, and not halfe ynowe.'

"What can that mean, save that the Church hath taken up into its bosom
the men who otherwise had no career save the plough? True, the time
has come when the Church once again needs to be drawn nearer to the
people--the people who all yearn for it and need it. Do not lead the
people away from it, lest in the end you destroy their faith and undo
them. The Church needs just such workers as thou; come to us and work
with us. Stand no longer without!"

At this appeal, the young poor priest suddenly roused himself.

"What? stand no longer without! work with you! with a Church whose head
hath launched bull after bull against my master and his teachings? Come
within a Church that sets the ruling of a man above the words of Holy
Writ? The chief article of my creed is that the Gospel suffices for
the salvation of Christians without the keeping of ceremonials and
statutes that have been made by sinful and unknowing men. What work has
Holy Church for me? Surely there are others who can mouth more glibly
than I the words of the Mass, and who are more deeply versed in the
labyrinths of canonical lore."

"What canst thou?" replied the Bishop, warmly, "everything! Once
within the Church, thou canst raise the authority of the Scriptures,
beat down the vicious barriers that exist between the people and the
prelates. Remember, one blow from within counts for ten from without.
Come within, and help me in my fight against foreigners who care naught
for the people who are their charge, foreigners who never deign to
approach these shores, save perchance to count the moneys that are
yielded from their sees." Then with a swift change his voice softened,
and there was a pathetic appeal in it. "I have fought hard for more
than thirty years," he pleaded. "I am worn in body and spirit; if I die
to-morrow without providing for a successor, doubtless all that I have
accomplished will be as naught. The old conditions in this diocese will
arise again. There are many priests and abbots--ay! and some higher
than they--who will click their heels gleefully over my grave. Come to
Ely and be its Archdeacon. I--nay!--the Church of Christ has need of
thee. Come!"

The poor priest was astounded. How could this be that the archdeaconate
of Ely should be offered to a poor priest, one of Wyclif's band, so
distrusted and hated by Rome?

"You, the Bishop of Ely, you offer me this? It is no jest?"

The Bishop smiled. "Well, I do not mind confessing that it was no
easy matter to bring about. Yet why should we go on permitting you
to take people away from the Church? I am persuaded that the people
need the Church as much as the Church needs the people. They have your
confidence; I want you to bring them back to the altar."

"But, Father, the instant I doff this russet gown and don the albe and
stole, that instant the people's confidence in me is gone."

"I cannot believe it has gone so far as that."

"Yea, I say it. It is too late to try to drag the people back. They
have grown weary of having fat and lazy priests prate to them, with
white hand on full belly, of patience and humility and duty to their
overlords. Why do the people believe in me? Why do they follow me?
Because they wot well that my meals are as uncertain as their own,
that my face is roughened by the same wind that roughens theirs.
Because I can look into their faces and say, 'I too have a-hungered, I
too have a-thirsted, I too have sweated in the fields.'"

The Bishop looked very old and tired. A sob rose suddenly in the poor
priest's throat. To his own surprise, suddenly he flung himself upon
his knees before the couch.

"Little thought I, Father, when I came here with defiance and distrust
in my heart, that I would fling myself on my knees before you; yet it
is true that I feel it as a great personal sorrow that I cannot both
stay with you and also answer the call of my master. But I cannot
desert my people. Where they turn up the soil, where they guide the
plough, where their tired backs bend, where the wind and the hail beat
down upon them in the fields, there is my place, and there I must go."

The Bishop's sensitive face quivered with emotion. He remained silent
an instant and then looked up into the young man's face. "Wilt promise
me one thing?"

"If I can, Father."

"Wilt preach the sermon in the Cathedral next Sunday?"

Annys hesitated an instant before he replied. "Only to give the
sermon," he stipulated.

"I shall celebrate the Mass myself. I would like you to give the sermon
just as you are. There will be a goodly number of people, and it is my
whim that you should be heard once from the pulpit. It will come with a
new authority. Besides," he added, with a twinkle in his eye, "I should
like to have some of our priests hear it. It might not be a bad thing
for the Nuncio himself."

And thus, before he departed, Robert Annys had given his promise to
deliver the sermon on the following Sunday at Ely.

The Bishop did not yet acknowledge himself defeated. Well he knew the
magnetism of the wonderful old church. Well he knew that men did not
preach before three thousand souls in Ely Minster and then lightly step
forth on their way again.




III


The following Sunday a great concourse of people flocked to the
Cathedral. There was much curiosity concerning the sermon of the
poor priest. Many who for years had been accustomed on the plea of
ill-health or old age to ask for a stave for support during the long
service, now passed by the doorkeeper oblivious of everything save
their desire to secure a good place in which to stand.

To begin with, sermons were growing infrequent. In some churches they
had fallen into complete disuse, and it had been necessary for the
"Father Bishops" to enjoin "upon all those that had under them the cure
of souls openly in English upon Sundays to preach and teach them that
they know God Almighty."

And even when there was a sermon, it frequently turned out to be upon
some light and immoral bit from Ovid or Boccaccio taken as a text,
while the people hungered for the words of the Gospel. Or perhaps some
formal schoolman would preach upon the seven works of mercy, or the
seven spiritual sins: "Pride--that lyking of office and high state,
Envy--that sorrowe at the syte of welefare and ioy, Anger--that wykkyde
stirrynge of herte, Gluttony--that lufe in taste of mete and drynke,
Covetousness, Sloth, and Lechery,"--to which last were always tacked on
for good measure,--"Fornication, Adultery, and Incest."

Holy Father! of what use was it to hear a description of these sins.
They were familiar enough to all. What they wanted was some hope and
comfort in their daily life, some counsel in their daily struggles,
some love to help them bear their daily burdens. And it was pretty
certain that the poor priest would give them that. When at last a
priest approached the altar and lit the tall wax candles, full three
thousand persons were glad that their patient wait was at an end.

The ringing of the great bells of the Cathedral and the breaking forth
of the organ into sound announced the arrival of the Bishop. The
stately procession appeared, blazing a sinuous path of light and color
through the dim spaces of the chancel. First came an acolyte bearing
the censer, followed by the cross-bearer carrying the great cross and
escorted on either side by boys with tall lighted tapers in their
hands. After them followed the entire body of clergy, the Bishop,
resplendent in his robes, leaning slightly upon the two assistant
deacons who accompanied him. In his left hand he held