Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

154 * END OF THE
chastity. On one occasion, the King, as he came
into London, wras met by a procession of two hundred
priests, barefooted, in their albs arid stoles. They
fell at his feet to implore his mercy. He turned away
from them with scant courtesy, and continued his
practices of obtaining money by levying so much on
every parish church, since many of the clergy, being
faithful to the canons, did not fall under his tax.
"
It is easier to deal with one man, even when that
man is a feudal sovereign, than with a whole body
of men. St. Anselm's wrill had prevailed in the
question of Investiture and Homage, and it prevailed
as to the personal 4 life of priests, because he be-
queathed the struggle to his successors. In his own
day, what he saw was immorality and the progeny
of immorality, seated in the sanctuary. The extent
of the evil may be gathered from
*
Pope Paschal's
statement to St. Anselm. It was so common in
England, the Pope wrote, that the majority of priests,
and of good priests, came under this category.
Conquest itself falling upon a land, already oppressed
and decimated, had added its quota of
miseries. As to morality, there was not, perhaps,
much to choose between Saxon thanes and Norman
barons. Anselm found the temporalities of his see
in the utmost confusion. King's "men" were in
1 " De presbyterorum filiis quid in Romana ecclesia coiistitutum
sit, iraternitatem tuain nescire non credimus," etc.--Mansi, xx.
1063,