One Vast Heap of Booty, by Orderic Vitalis

Flames rising from a brazier.

By Erin Silversmith, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.

Guimond likened taking a job in William’s forcibly Norman-culture English Church to a man grasping handfuls of charcoal from a red-hot brazier. Although the English and French churches were both Latin-rite churches governed by Rome, their histories were markedly different. The English had maintained closer contacts with Greece and Russia; they lovingly kept the memory of English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish saints; they preached in English, and esteemed English writers; their chant was peculiarly English; and the lower English clergy, like their Eastern counterparts, were accustomed to marry. Norman abbots and Bishops swept this away, sometimes at sword-point, always with arrogance and contempt. Guitmond believed that to take hold of this raging bonfire of English things could only burn a good man’s hands.

One Vast Heap of Booty

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“Every ecclesiastical election onght to be purely made in the first instance by the society of the faithful who are to be governed, and then confirmed by assent of the fathers of the church and their friends, if it be canonical; if not, it should be rectified in a spirit of charity. How can that which you have wrung from the people by war and bloodshed be innocently conferred on myself and others who despise the world and have voluntarily stripped ourselves of our own substance for Christ sake?

“It is the general rule of all who take religious vows to have no part in robbery, and, for the maintenance of justice, to reject offerings which are the fruits of pillage. For the scripture saith: ‘The sacrifice of injustice is a polluted offering’; and a little afterwards: ‘Whoso offereth a sacrifice of the substance of the poor is like one that slayeth a son in his father’s sight.’* Reflecting on these and other precepts of the divine law, I cannot but tremble. I look upon England as altogether one vast heap of booty, and I am afraid to touch it and its treasures as if it were a burning fire.”

by Orderic Vitalis 1075-?1142

From ‘The Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy’ (1853-4) Vol. 2, by Orderic Vitalis (1075-?1143), translated by Thomas Forester.

* See Ecclesiasticus 34:18-20: He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten, his offering is ridiculous; and the gifts of unjust men are not accepted. ... Whoso bringeth an offering of the goods of the poor doeth as one that killeth the son before his father’s eyes.

Précis

The appointment of a clergyman, continued Guitmond, was traditionally handled by the community he was to govern, not by others; and in any case, those who had renounced worldly glory could not serve those who lived for it. Scripture assures us that the spoils of war are an offering repugnant to God, and perilous to the hand that touches it.

Questions for Critics

1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?

2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?

3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?

Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.

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