BY THE REV. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.
Hon. Canon in Norwich Cathedral, Hon. Fellow of Worcester College,
Oxford, and Hon. Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge
FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION
TO MY FRIEND AND SOMETIME TUTOR,
FRANCIS WHALLEY HARPER,
CANON OF YORK,
I OFFER THIS VOLUME AS A TOKEN OF MY GRATITUDE
[These Essays have appeared at various times in "The NineteenthCentury," and are now printed with some alterations, corrections, andadditions.]
CONTENTS.
I. THE COMING OF THE FRIARS
II. VILLAGE LIFE IN NORFOLK SIX HUNDRED YEARS AGO
III. DAILY LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL MONASTERY
IV. THE BLACK DEATH IN EAST ANGLIA
V. THE BLACK DEATH IN EAST ANGLIA (_continued_)
VI. THE BUILDING UP OF A UNIVERSITY
VII. THE PROPHET OF WALNUT-TREE YARD
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!--_LordTennyson._
When King Richard of England, whom men call the Lion-hearted, waswasting his time at Messina, after his boisterous fashion, in thewinter of 1190, he heard of the fame of Abbot Joachim, and sent forthat renowned personage, that he might hear from his own lips the wordsof prophecy and their interpretation.
Around the personality of Joachim there has gathered no small amount of_mythus._ He was, it appears, the inventor of that mystical method ofHermeneutics which has in our time received the name of "the year-daytheory," and which, though now abandoned for the most part by sane men,has still some devout and superstitious advocates in the school of Dr.Cumming and kindred visionaries.
Abbot Joachim proclaimed that a stupendous catastrophe was at hand.Opening the Book of the Revelation of St. John he read, pondered, andinterpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark thingsthat were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could makenothing of "a time, times, and half a time" [Footnote: Dan. xii. 7.];to them the terrors of the 1,260 days [Footnote: Rev. xi 3.] were aninsoluble enigma long since given up as hopeless, whose answer wouldcome only at the Day of Judgment. Abbot Joachim declared that the keyto the mystery had been to him revealed. What could "a time, times, andhalf a time" mean, but three years and a half? What could a year meanin the divine economy but the _lunar_ year of 360 days? for was not themoon the symbol of the Church of God? What were those 1,260 days butthe sum of the days of three years and a half? Moreover, as it had beenwith the prophet Ezekiel, to whom it was said, "I have appointed thee aday for a year," so it must needs be with other seers who saw thevisions of God. To them the "day" was not as our brief prosaic day--tothem too had been "appointed a day for a year." The "time, times, andhalf a time" were the 1,260 days, and these were 1,260 years, and thestupendous catastrophe, the battle of Armageddon, the reign ofAntichrist, the new heavens and the new earth, the slaughter and theresurrection of the two heavenly witnesses, were at hand. Elevenhundred and ninety years had passed away of those 1,260. "Hear, Oheavens, and give ear, O earth," said Joachim; "Antichrist is alreadyb