"DUMB DOGS" 335
effective as half-a-dozen straightforward sermons from a wise
village priest would have been.
Here we begin to come to grips with the root weakness of the
medieval Church. Wherever we are able to examine the relation
between clergy and parishioners we are forced to the conclusion
that most of the ordinary parish clergy were inefficient, ill-
educated, undistinguished men. It is unwise to indict a whole
class, but it seems clear that much that was weakest in the
medieval religious system was primarily due to the ill-trained,
ill-educated parish clergy. This, certainly, was the view of some
of the greatest prelates from the thirteenth to the sixteenth cen-
tury. The unworthy clergy of Archbishop Stephen Langton's
day were still sufficiently prevalent in Wolsey's time for him to
be forced to take action against their ignorance and slack be-
haviour. Indeed it is evident from the reiterated exhortations of
Archbishops and Bishops that they were painfully aware that all
was not well with the clergy. Throughout the four centuries
preceding the Reformation there was a growing feeling that the
condition of the Church would never be improved until the
quality of her clergy was improved. From the thirteenth century
onward we have a series of pronouncements from Church
synods and convocations. Archbishop Peckham's well-known
constitution of 1281 runs: "The ignorance of the priests casteth
tha.people into the ditch of error; and the folly or unlearning of
the clergy, who are bidden to instruct the faithful in the Catholic
faith, sometimes tendeth rather to error than to sound doctrine."
This had been preceded by Langton's description of some of
the clergy as " dumb dogs", whose ability to read the Canon of the
Mass he casts in doubt; and so the plaint goes on down the ages
to the time of Wolsey, who in 1518 tells the synod of York that
he republishes the time-worn constitutions because they had
been ignored in the past, and for emphasis repeats Peckham's
words. This matter is so important to a proper understanding of
village life that a brief account of the parish priest and his educa-
tion must be given here.
The crux of the whole matter was put into one of F. W.
Maitland's revealing statements, when he spoke of the clergy as
belonging to the manorial aristocracy—perhaps at the head of that
aristocracy—but essentially of it. We have evidence in plenty of