VOTARIES: Members of religious orders who live under formal vows, including chastity.
Exposing the Abominable Unchaste Practices, Filthy Whoredoms, and Wicked Examples of Monks, Nuns, and Hypocritical Religious Throughout All Ages.
The perversions and blasphemies committed by modern Catholic priests and its religious orders are nothing new.
Published in 1546 and translated into modern English.
Written by Protestant Reformer and ex-Carmelite, John Bale.
Marriage Instituted of God
In Paradise, our eternal and merciful Father instituted marriage immediately after man’s first creation. He gave it to him as an honorable, comely, wholesome, holy, and necessary remedy against all the beastly abuses of the flesh that would later arise, and He granted it His own eternal blessing.
“Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth,” He said (Genesis 1). And He repeated this command three times afterward (Genesis 8 and 9), so that it would be firmly fixed in men’s minds and clearly known as His most solemn ordinance.
This was the very first order of religion ever established — and the one of greatest holiness — if we rightly consider the One who created it, along with all the surrounding circumstances, and prefer God’s wisdom above man’s wisdom. And so that no one would think He had done it rashly, He looked upon it again among all His other works and saw no imperfection in it. Instead, He declared it to be exceedingly good.
Yet since that time, a certain sort of people has arisen who, in opposition to God’s heavenly wisdom, have set up their own fleshly foolishness. These are none other than the very seed and offspring of the Serpent.
Though they have known that there is a God, they have not glorified Him with faith and humility. Instead, they have become utterly vain in their imaginations. Where God has declared marriage to be exceedingly good, they have condemned it as something execrable and wicked. And where He Himself declared by His own mouth that “it is not good for man to be alone,” they have rejected that doctrine and taught the exact opposite — claiming that celibacy is more perfect and godlier.
Marriage Condemned by Satan
Thus, Satan set himself up against God in that wicked generation which began first with Cain and has continued ever since in his descendants.
Because of this presumptuous arrogance, God gave them over completely and left them to themselves — along with all their so-called good intentions and vows. From that time onward, they have committed unspeakable filthiness.
Their “chaste” women — vestal virgins, monastics, nuns, and Beguines — have changed the natural use and worked unnaturally. Likewise, the men in their prelacies, priesthoods, and countless kinds of monkery [monasticism] burning with lust for lack of women, have committed abominations without number. In this way they have received in themselves the just reward of their error.
Of these most hellish and diabolical fruits, the holy Apostle Paul warned the Romans in the first chapter of his epistle to them. He knew beforehand that out of their corrupted Christianity such a filthy flock would arise, and that they would spread their corruption everywhere.
But neither the warnings of Paul nor Peter have restrained them. Instead, these brutish boars have pressed forward freely without check — until now, in these latter days, when God has granted us clearer sight to behold their filthy wallowings.
Marriage of Priests in Both Testaments
To clearly show them what kind of wives the Lord appointed through his servant Moses for the Levitical priests among the sacred descendants of Aaron (see Leviticus 21 and Ezekiel 44) — it would be pointless labor to describe it here. It would be equally in vain to remind them that Christ Himself was born in marriage — though His mother remained a virgin — and that He left marriage as a liberty to His Apostles forever.
For God has already shown them all these things clearly through His true Prophets in this latter age, declaring the final destruction of that wretched kingdom. He has done so through Martin Luther, John Pomeranus, Francis Lambert, Oswald Myconius, Philip Melanchthon, and others like them (as mentioned before). Yet they have dismissed it all as fables.
That same Lord sent them a messenger right to their own doors, who delivered his message powerfully — even Robert Barnes by name. They have not yet answered the least of his well-grounded arguments. Besides him, they have also received writings from the good William Turner and George Joye.
And all of this they have disdainfully laughed to scorn.
Therefore, considering that no gentle speech will reform them, nor sharp threatenings bring them to repentance, the Lord will now cast their own vile dung in their faces, so that it shall cling fast to them (Malachi 2). Through this book and others like it, He will throw into their teeth the stinking examples of their hypocritical lives — along with all their patching, daubing, and cloaking to prop up that devilish lie: their vowed chastity without wives or husbands.
Married and Unmarried Priests
Now, concerning the priests of the Hebrews or Israelites throughout all those ages (who were God’s own peculiar people), all the righteous ones among them had wives, according to the religion that God first appointed for them.
Not one of the following was unmarried: Melchizedek, Abraham, Moses, Aaron, Phinehas, Samuel, Nathan, Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Ezra, Mattathias, and many others like them. They were all married men who had children.
The Scriptures testify these men were beloved by God, and that in holiness none were ever found like them. Yet this was not because of any vows of celibacy or their so-called good intentions (see Ecclesiasticus 44 and the six chapters following). If there were any who had taken vows of chastity in that time, they were men like the two lustful priests who desired Susanna (Daniel 13). So also, were the wanton sons of Eli and the sons of Samuel (1 Samuel 2 and 1 Samuel 8), along with others like them. These were utter reprobates before God because they despised His ordained order, both in this matter and in many others.
Even at the very time when Christ was born, there were such “chaste” religious priests and Levites — men highly esteemed among the people — who considered marriage unholy and therefore abstained from women. Yet they did not refrain from committing execrable filthiness among themselves, polluting one another.
[N. B. Other than John the Baptist, all religious were encouraged to marry.]
Zechariah, a married priest and father of holy John the Baptist, was found righteous before God precisely because of his marriage. He rebuked the wickedness among them and was cruelly slain for it, as Epiphanius testifies (Book 1, Volume 2, On Heresies). Philip Melanchthon also writes that he was put to death for rebuking the vices of his fellow priests (commentary on Daniel chapter 11).
Christ Approved Marriage in His Gospel
Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, never despised the first ordinance of His everlasting Father. On the contrary, He held it in such high reverence that He would not even be born except under its holy cover. He did not find His worthy mother Mary as a professed nun — as the doting papists have foolishly dreamed, in order to cover their sodomy with a most precious excuse. Rather, she was an honest man’s wife, married according to the custom of that time (Matthew 1 and Luke 1).
It was in this married state, without any vow or promise of virginity, that by the most wonderful working of the Holy Ghost He was incarnated and became man — to redeem us from the captivity of sin and restore us to the full favor of His Father. He honored marriage by performing His very first public miracle in His humanity at a wedding. He called to His apostleship not wifeless vow-takers, but married men (John 1, Mark 1).
He went very gently to Peter’s house and healed his wife’s mother, who lay sick of a fever. He ate there, stayed with them all night, and performed many great cures in that household. And when He departed in the morning, He did not command Peter to break up his household, nor to forsake his wife and make her a nun (Mark 1, Luke 4, Matthew 8).
Nowhere in His entire Gospel did He ever command or demand a vow of virginity. Instead, He left all men at liberty to marry if they so desired. He firmly forbade anyone from making any law of coercion or forced separation where God has granted freedom in marriage (Matthew 19, Mark 10). He never allowed the forsaking of wife and children, except in those cases where His immovable and constant word requires it — namely, for those whom He has appointed to suffer death under the world’s tyranny for the sake of His truth.
The Apostles and First Preachers Were Married
Peter’s wife traveled with him during his time of preaching (1 Corinthians 9). She was later put to death at Antioch for confessing Jesus Christ, as is witnessed by Clement of Alexandria (Book 7 of the Stromata) and Eusebius of Caesarea (Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 30).
Paul left his wife at Philippi, a city in Macedonia, by mutual consent between them both (Philippians 4 and 1 Corinthians 7). Both Clement and Eusebius record that he did this for the sole purpose of being able to preach the Gospel more freely and with less hindrance.
Isidore of Seville, in his book On the Origin and Death of the Holy Fathers, and Freculf of Lisieux, in the second book and fortieth chapter of his Chronicles, both report that the Apostle Philip preached in France all the way to the very edge of the Ocean Sea. He was afterward put to death in Hierapolis, a city of the Phrygians, and was honorably buried there together with his daughters.
It was through his influence that this realm — then called Britain — was converted to the Christian faith. For in the year 63 after Christ’s incarnation, Joseph of Arimathea and other disciples were sent over by the said Philip to preach Christ. They entered the land with both their wives and children, while Arviragus was king of the country. This is testified by John Capgrave in his Catalogue of the Saints of England, Thomas Scrope in De antiquis Carmelitis (Chapter 7), John Harding in his 47th chapter, and Polydore Vergil in Book 2 of his English History.
[N. B. Bale cites John Capgrave extensively due to the uncensored and scandalous nature of Capgrave’s Catalogue. Capgrave was no anti-Catholic Protestant. Rather, he was an English Augustinian provincial (d. 1464) who was a historian, theologian and hagiographer. Today his narratives of miracles and legends are not considered reliable when compared to today’s stricter standards, due to its lack of critical scrutiny. However, in its day his narratives were widely disseminated and believed without question.]
The Rise of Monkery in Britain
As this new Christianity imported from Rome had seized both the temples and possessions of the pagans here, and had comfortably settled itself (with their bishops and priests perhaps being the very same ministers who had previously served the idols in those temples), soon afterward there arose out of it a certain kind of monkery.*
*[N. B. A pejorative term for the institution of monasticism — the system, practices, and lifestyle of monks and nuns.]
This was not distinguished by their apparel at first, but by an outward appearance of a more sober and strict life. Before long, these monks seemed better learned than the others and sank more deeply into the people’s esteem.
Out of this grew great strife and unrest among them, and from that strife came most detestable heresies. For one of them, called Pelagius — who belonged to the great monastery of Bangor (in Chestershire, though some call it Bangor) — began to dispute with them concerning the strength of man’s free will. He claimed that man could be saved by it without the grace of God, thereby utterly perverting the effect of Christ’s blood — just as his followers are not ashamed to do even to this very day.
Heresy in Britain Arises from Monkery
Yet during all this time, there was still no vow of chastity among them, nor was virginity regarded as any holier than marriage. For one Severus — who was both a monk, a priest, and a bishop — had a son named Leporius, who was also a monk and a priest. This Leporius vexed the land with the same false teaching he had learned from his father, in the year of our Lord 432, as both Prosper of Aquitaine and the Flores Historiarum testify.
This Leporius boldly boasted that he was able to live purely by his own strength and by the power of his own free will, without any assistance from God. This is reported by Gennadius of Marseilles, Honorius of Autun, Johannes Trithemius in his Catalogues of Illustrious Men, and most recently by Conrad Gesner in his Universal Library.
Of the same sort was another man called Agricola, also a priest’s son, who in the year of our Lord 446 troubled the Britons with the same doctrine, as the Flores Historiarum records.
The errors of both these men were at that time soundly confuted by Germanus and Lupus, along with other French doctors, who came there specifically for that purpose — men specially grounded in the teaching of Saint Augustine in Africa.
Writing against this heretic Pelagius was Saint Augustine, Saint Jerome, Cyril, Orosius, Innocent, Gennadius, and finally Thomas Bradwardine (a doctor here in England), along with many others.
Saint Patrick Was a Priest’s Son
Saint Patrick, the great Apostle of Ireland, was born here in Britain around the year of our Lord 361. His father was a priest named Calphurnius, who himself was the son of a deacon named Fodunus. His mother’s name was Conches, and she was the sister of the holy Saint Martin. This is testified by Ranulph Higden (Ranulphus Cestrensis) in his Polychronicon (Book 4, Chapter 29) and by John Capgrave in his Catalogue of the Saints of England.
If priestly marriage had been considered foul play in those days, Saint Martin would never have tolerated it so patiently. For we read that he was very tender and kind toward the young Patrick after his arrival, and taught him many godly things. What rule Patrick himself kept in this matter, I have not read. Yet in his own life story it is written that he had a young lad waiting on him named Benignus, who always openly declared Patrick to be his own natural father — and never denied it. I also read that a certain Irish woman named Modwenna was very familiar with him. Whether this familiarity was by way of marriage or otherwise, I cannot say for certain.
Saints Were Begotten in Whoredom
To sink themselves deeper into the people’s opinion, a show of chastity was soon pretended in that monkery — though not yet solemnly vowed. Monasteries for both men and women were built in many parts of the realm. But mark what immediately followed. In those days, Christ suddenly gained many “brethren.” For many virgins had children by our fathers — however, the fathers were never known.
Saint Dubricius, who later became the great Archbishop of Caerleon and Metropolitan of all the land, had a maiden for his mother named Eurdila. Yet she would never confess who his father was. Saint Kentigern (Bishop of Glasgow, whom you now call Saint Asaph) was in like case: he had a fair maiden as his mother, but she would name no father for him, no matter what compulsion was used. Merlin [the Wild, the forerunner of the legendary Magician?] also, the great soothsayer of Wales, was the son of a holy nun in Saint Peter’s of Carmarthen — with no father known to him except a spirit of the air.
The first two examples are shown by John Capgrave in his Catalogue of the Saints of England. The latter wonder is mentioned by all the famous writers. I could rehearse a great multitude of such stories, but these are enough for now.
Whoredom Esteemed as the Greatest Holiness
Mark how that abominable whorishness, in all these whorish fruits, is advanced and promoted by that whorish Roman Church — to the great dishonor and blemishing of godly marriage.
These spiritual Sodomites and knaves have not been ashamed to write in the lives and lying legends of all these so-called saints — that is, of Dubricius, David, Kynedus, Kentigern, Cuthbert, Brigid, and others like them — and to solemnly read and sing it as God’s service in their temples: that they were sanctified in their mothers’ wombs. See what great honors and advancements they give for stinking whoredom, while showing so little devotion to chaste marriage, which was instituted by God Himself.
Never were the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — or of Moses, Eleazar, and Phinehas — so painted up with miracles and wonders, nor so decked out with tabernacles, lights, incense, and masses, as these whores’ birds [bastards of whores] have been.
Thus, they judge whoredom to be holiness, and wholesome marriage to be sin.
Come out of Sodom, you whoremongers and hypocrites — you popish bishops and priests! For you have not yet reformed this abomination but still uphold it as your Romish form of God’s service. Come out, you thieves and knaves — come out!
Women: Grievous and Lascivious
What trouble these so-called ‘holy saints’ of theirs and their vow-makers had with women — and what women had with them — once they began taking their vows! It would be an endless task to write it all: how they tried to keep women out of their monasteries, and how they made barren women bear children.
[N. B. Such truths were documented by Maria Monk and Charles Chiniquy as recent as the 19th century.].
Saint David’s monks were seduced and carried away by naked women at a brookside in Rosidal. Saint Thelia’s hermits suffered the same in another place not far from there. Saint Dubricius’s brethren had many hot stirrings in their flesh and were often forced to stand naked in the cold river to cool their lusts. Saint Kentigern’s disciples took great pains to make barren women fruitful.
When Saint Brigid [a patroness saint of Ireland] was on the very point of marriage, she secretly stole away with her three maidens and waited long upon Bishop Machyll, performing many great cures in his service with holy water. [N. B. He gave her the white veil and accepted her vow of celibacy.]
Saint Modwenna, in similar fashion, waited upon Bishop Hiber and his brethren along with her maidens. In the same period, a woman accused Bishop Broon of getting her with child. Brigid, like a good soul, made everything safe again with a charm or two. And when one of her maidens was going to her lover (a priest’s bed), Brigid thanked her greatly for returning in good time.
All these “holy” histories you shall find in John Capgrave.
A Spiritual Example of a Votary
Saint Iltute, [N. B. 5th-century Celtic abbot, scholar, and the founding father of Welsh monasticism], who had always been a most valiant captain among the Britons, at the suggestion of Saint Cadoc the hermit he put away his most virtuous and chaste wife. He left her with nothing to live on but barley bread and water — a poor and homely diet for a woman who had been a lady, tenderly brought up. And when she once came to him, desiring only to hear the sweet word of the Lord, her coming so displeased him that, with a charm, he put out both her eyes. I am certain this did not come by any godly power, since she was led by such a godly spirit.
If this is Saint Paul’s teaching — that a man should so miserably forsake his wife and treat her so ungodly for simply coming to ask for good counsel — then I appeal to you. Yet he must still be counted a saint in the Pope’s holy Church, simply because he was a tyrant against marriage. He had no other holiness.
Thus, in my judgment, these so-called “saints” are far more fit for hell than for heaven. This story is also found in John Capgrave’s Catalogue of the Saints of England.
More English Boys Sold at Rome
Another similar example is told by the same John Capgrave in his Catalogue. He records that a certain Macutus, an English Briton and Bishop of Aleth in Ireland, was at Rome around the year of our Lord 500. There he saw certain English boys being sold openly in the market. He paid the price for them and sent them home again. By this he clearly smelled the spiritual traffic going on there, and he pitied the most damnable destruction of those poor innocents whom Christ had so dearly redeemed with His own blood.
A similar act of Christian pity was performed by King Ethelwulf (according to several writers). In the year of our Lord 847, he petitioned Pope Leo IV to be fully dispensed from the order of subdeacon, which he had received in his youth (a most wholesome commodity, I warrant you) from Helmestan, then Bishop of Winchester.
For by that time, they had fully crept into the seat of the Serpent (Revelation 13) and had obtained complete authority to dispense with all contracts, professions, promises, vows, oaths, obligations, and bindings made to the Beast’s holy service.
Mark the times carefully.
This story is recorded by William of Malmesbury (De Gestis Regum, Book 2), Ranulph Higden, John Harding, Fabyan, Polydore Vergil, and others. Where one lacks, the other abundantly supplies.
Possession of that seat of the Beast was taken under Emperor Phocas in the year of our Lord 607, when the papacy first began.
Augustine Enters with His Monks
In the year of our Lord 596, upon the occasion mentioned before, Gregory sent into England a Romish monk called Augustine [of Canterbury] — not one of the orders of Christ, as Peter was, but of the superstitious sect of Benedict. His mission was to spread abroad the Romish faith and religion. (For Christ’s true faith had already been in Britain long before.) With him came Mellitus, Justus, Laurence, John, Peter, Rufinianus, Paulinus, and a great company more, to the number of about forty — all monks and all Italians.
They were well armed with Aristotle’s artillery — with logic, philosophy, and other crafty sciences — but of the sacred Scriptures they knew little or nothing. Yet Augustine was the best learned among them. These men brought with them a large number of French interpreters because they were completely ignorant of the languages of the land.
Here was a noble kind of Christianity in the making, when the preachers knew neither the Scriptures nor the speech of the people!
Nevertheless, they performed miracles. Yes — just as Christ said they would, when He warned us in every way to beware of them (Matthew 24).
Their Preparations for Antichrist
The first concern of these fathers, once they had settled themselves, was entirely about mass offerings, ceremonies, bishops’ seats, consecrations, church hallowings, ordinations, tithes, benefices, the purification of women, and things of that sort. Thereupon a synod was called, and commandments were issued that all things in England should be observed according to the customs of Rome.
Before their arrival, there was already Christianity in England — but it was without Masses, and largely without any strict choice of days or meats. The Britons in those days had no other form of God’s service except the plain Gospel. They seldom admitted any Jewish differences of times or any Gentile idol-sacrifices but followed the plain rules of Scripture. If any superstitions existed among their monks, they had nothing to do with them and remained at liberty.
For at that time, princes had not yet become the images of the Beast, speaking by its spirit or making laws according to its lusts.
The labor of Augustine and his monks, from the aforementioned year of our Lord 600, was to prepare a seat here in England for Antichrist, against the time when he would come to full maturity in the year 666. For although he was first conceived in the wicked church of Cain, he could not show himself in his own likeness — that is, as the open adversary of Christ — until Christ came in the flesh. Then he appeared at the same time in the malignant church of the Jews, or rather in the spiritual tyranny of Herod, which then first began to persecute Christ and seek His death.
The Chastity of His Mass-Mongers
[N. B. Mass-monger = seller or peddler of Masses.]
Now concerning the continence of this newly hatched brood — this newly fashioned clergy.
Since they were monks who came from Rome, they had professed a false chastity in order to appear more holy than the ordinary priests. Their goal was that, in time, they might rob them of their benefices and appointed livings.
Though Gregory made constitutions in his day that no one should be admitted as a priest who had married two wives, and that those who kept concubines while in the priesthood should not be accepted (as Sabellicus testifies), yet he dared not utterly condemn priests’ marriage. This was because of a most terrible example: innumerable children’s heads that were seen drowned in a pond.
[N. B. There are numerous Protestant narratives through the centuries concerning pits of lye which were discovered near convents dug for the purpose of eliminating their babies born out of wedlock, fathered by priests and other religious.]
But mark the spiritual business of these hot fathers! They were grievously vexed with nocturnal pollutions. Whereupon Augustine wrote to Gregory to ask whether they might lawfully say Mass after having such emissions the night before. After many words, Gregory gave him this answer in effect: Just as these pollutions happen to men in four ways — by natural superfluity, by gluttonous eating and drinking, by infirmity of the flesh, and by filthy thoughts of the mind — so there should be four considerations. For the first three, he said, a priest ought not to abstain from saying Mass. The fourth he described by suggestion, delight, and consent — but left it without any firm conclusion.
[N. B. Yet today the Church of Rome declares the pedophile priest has the power to create his Creator, despite having just raped the altar boy.]
If this is not fine wholesome divinity from your holy Romish saints, then tell me! This account is found in John Capgrave’s Catalogue of the Saints of England.
Contempt of Marriage, Along with Tales of Tails
I think a man might find as honest stuff as this in the stews [brothels] of my Lord of Winchester’s rents on the Bankside in London, if he had need of it.
[N. B. The Bishop of Winchester owned the buildings which housed the brothels in this notorious red-light district of London, collecting rents from them.]
By this you may see the virtuous study of these holy “chaste” fathers, and the scholarly management of their fleshly stirrings. It would have been a great pity if this had not found a place in their holy Saints’ legends for the spiritual instruction of others — otherwise we might never have known their bawdy hypocrisy so clearly.
If their “unvirginal vows” had never existed, the world would have had little need for this lecherous learning.
[N.B. Bale refers to vows of virginity or chastity (the promises made by monks, nuns, and priests to remain sexually abstinent) that are not genuinely virginal — i.e., they are false, hypocritical, or broken.]
Honest marriage knows nothing of such things, and yet it is a pleasing service unto God.
Is it not, do you think, a strange kind of chastity that is polluted like this every week? Yet according to this teaching, they may say Mass every day, and their vow is never hindered. But in marriage they may not — under pain of death!
[N. B. Bale points out the absurdity and hypocrisy: a priest can commit sexual sin weekly and still perform holy rites, but if he marries, he is disqualified.]
Truly, this is wholesome merchandise — and it must have come straight from the devil’s own black bag!
[N. B. Bale uses sarcasm when he calls this official Catholic doctrine “wholesome merchandise.” He really believes such doctrine is so perverted, twisted and immoral that only the Devil could have devised it.]
This is the reverence these polluted wretches have toward matrimony, which is God’s clearly stated institution: they prefer their fleshly unscrupulous behavior to it.
It is for this reason alone that they have labeled men “lay” and women “lewd,” and have appointed tails to their children here in England in scorn and derision. It was not for nothing that Saint Paul called their teaching “hypocrisy” and “the detestable doctrine of devils” (1 Timothy 4).
John Capgrave and Alexander of Esseby say that because the Dorsetshire men cast fish tails at this Augustine [of Canterbury], the men of Dorset have had tails ever since. But Polydore Vergil applies the story to the Kentish men at Strood near Rochester, because they cut off Thomas Becket’s horse’s tail.
Thus, England has, among all other nations, a perpetual infamy of having tails — thanks to their written legends of lies. Yet even they cannot agree where these tails truly belong.
[N. B. Catholic legend tells of the tails grown on the perpetrators, as well as their descendants, as divine punishment for insulting a revered Catholic saint, according to both versions of this legend. Bale insinuates the real tails belong to the hypocritical monks and priests, who are more like devils and beasts.]
The Full Age of the Beast
Theodorus, a Greek, was appointed by Pope Vitalian as the sixth Archbishop of Canterbury (counting from Augustine, or from the beginning of the Papacy). His mission was to make everything secure in England for the benefit of Antichrist. This happened in the sixty-sixth year of the Beast’s age, and in the year of our Lord six hundred sixty-six — which, in Saint John’s Apocalypse, is the full age of the Beast and the complete number of man.
Mark this well, good reader.
For now, the Beast becomes a king — yes, as Daniel calls him, “the shameless king of fierce countenance” (Daniel 8). He presumes to sit above God in every man’s conscience (2 Thessalonians 2). This number is called “the number of man” and “the number of the Beast,” because it was the time when man’s learning most strongly opposed the learning of God, in order to set up that hateful adversary — the very man of sin and son of perdition — with all kinds of blasphemies following after.
It is clear from all the English chronicles that this Theodorus came here bearing the seal of that execrable Beast, to mark everyone over to that most blasphemous kingdom. Never before had the spirit of Antichrist worked the mystery of iniquity so powerfully as at that time. For he brought with him all kinds of vain and crafty sciences: counting, calculating, measuring, singing, rhyming, reasoning, arguing, defining, shaving, oiling, exorcising, incantating, and conjuring.
See John Capgrave in the Lives of Adrian and Theodore. Besides this, Bede writes in Book 4, Chapter 2, and Ranulph Higden in Book 5, Chapter 18.
Chastity, Monks, Monasteries, and Penance
Wernerus Cartusiensis writes in his Fasciculus Temporum that the vowing of chastity was still free and without compulsion in the time of Saint Gregory and for some time afterward.
Bede reports (De Gestis Anglorum, Book 3, Chapter 6) and John Major also records (Gesta Scotorum, Book 2, Chapter 11) that after monks had once vowed chastity, their cowl was held in such reverence that people would scarcely undertake a journey unless they first received the monks’ blessing. The people were then brought into a most wonderful madness by the hypocritical witchcraft of these men. Even the very elect were scarcely free from this damnable error (Matthew 24, Mark 13).
For because of men’s unthankfulness — by regarding God’s truth of little value — God permits hypocrites to reign over them with all the power of deceitful wonders (Job 34, 2 Thessalonians 2). They quickly set up monasteries without number throughout the whole realm. John Harding says in his Chronicle that King Oswy built twelve monasteries in Northumberland in the space of just one year.
In the year of our Lord 684, Theodore held yet another council in the northern parts at Twyford. There he published a certain book of his own making called A Penitential Summa, commanding his clergy to put it into practice everywhere. In it were contained all manner of sins and excesses, with aggravations, reservations, penalties, sorrows, penances, and punishments. This was done to terrify, captivate, and ensnare the wretched consciences of men — even to the point of utter desperation.
[N. B. The Taxae Sacrae Poenitentiariae Apostolicae (The Taxes of the Apostolic Penitentiary) was an official handbook published by the Roman Curia that listed the standard fees charged by the Apostolic Penitentiary – the Vatican office responsible for granting absolutions, dispensations, and indulgences – for various sins and irregularities. It included fees for: Absolution for murder (including killing parents, priests, etc.); Incest, adultery, and other sexual sins; Simony (buying/selling church offices); Perjury, forgery, and many other crimes; Dispensations, e.g., to marry a close relative, hold multiple benefices, etc.]
Where could a more devilish practice possibly have been devised? This is confirmed by Sigebert, Sabellicus, Trithemius, and almost all other writers.
The Foundation of Their Purgatory
At the very same time, there was a man in Northumberland named Dryhthelm. In the year of our Lord 671, he left both his wife and children and made himself a monk at Melrose, where Saint Cuthbert was then abbot. This same Dryhthelm (there was knavery upon knavery) once pretended to be dead. Upon his “return,” he reported that by an angel’s demonstration he had seen both Purgatory and Paradise, Hell and Heaven. After he had subtly declared this vision to King Aldfrith and other great men of the country, and at the request of the monks, great numbers of people came to him from all quarters of England seeking counsel for their souls.
So ready are the fools of this world to hear lies and illusions — those who never had any love for the truth.
This knave continually commended to them confession and penance, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving — but especially, and above all else, the saying of Masses and the building of monasteries.
Was this not, do you think, a most virtuous beginning of Christianity by these “chaste” fathers? Would it not have been a pity if they had not been canonized as saints, and their feast days solemnly observed twice a year with ringing of bells, singing, censings, and Massings — just as Cuthbert’s are, and still are to this day?
[N. B. This is yet another prominent example of Bale’s biting sarcasm. Bale is essentially saying, “It’s an absolute disgrace and a tragedy that these lying, hypocritical monks were made saints and are still being venerated with all this religious pomp. The whole system is corrupt.” Bale also ridicules the preposterous miracles attributed to the deceased Cuthbert and his relics, which were still much in practice.]
The Whore’s Flesh Eaten by the Ten Horns
The ten horns of the first Beast (which were kingdoms that once maintained that whore) are now joined together into one. At this present moment, they mortally hate her and are making her desolate and naked in England. In the end, they shall eat her flesh and utterly consume her with the fire that is appointed for her.
England was once divided into seven kingdoms, as all writers agree. Wales was divided into two (Cambria and Demetia, or North Wales and South Wales), and Ireland made up the tenth. Or, if you count Wales as only one, then let Scotland supply that place, which owes perpetual homage to England.
Just as all these are now united under one most worthy and victorious King, so God will put into their hearts one consent to fulfill His will: either to give her kingdom to the Beast, or to send it back again to the Devil from where it first came (Revelation 17).
Consider among yourselves the recent overthrow of the monasteries, convents, colleges, and chantries — those dwelling places of unclean spirits and holds of the most hateful birds — by the plain word of God.
[N. B. Bale refers to the edict by King Henry VIII, The Dissolution of Monasteries, carried out from 1536-1541.]
And do not doubt that the filthy habitations of the great master of the devils will soon follow (Revelation 18).
[N. B. Bale speaks of Rome.]
Let the google-eyed Gardiner of Winchester gnash his teeth and gird at it until his ribs ache, and let a hundred digging devils stand on his side. Yet not one jot of the Lord’s promise shall remain unfulfilled at the time appointed for the overthrow of that blasphemous whore, his most holy mother.
[N. B. Stephen Gardiner was Bishop of wealthy Winchester diocese and a stern promoter of Catholic doctrine and practices. He imprisoned Bale several times and was a virulent opponent of Protestantism. His nickname of “google-eye” was due to his bulging, prominent eyes.]
In the meantime, pray, good Christian readers — pray, pray, pray — that His heavenly will may be done on earth and not man’s will. Fashion your lives according to the pattern of His most dear Son, Jesus Christ’s doctrine. Amen.
Images admitted, with chaste examples
About the same time, Saint Egwin (d. 717), Benedictine Abbot of Evesham and Bishop of Worcester (the city then called Wyckes), hearing that efforts were being made to persuade the Pope to fill Christian churches with images, hurried quickly to Rome to help advance that cause. There he declared to the Holy Father the secret revelations and commandments he had received from Our Lady, instructing him to set up an image of her to be worshipped at Worcester. He presented the Pope with a book he had written about these same apparitions, along with the life of Aldhelm.
[N. B. Both Egwin and Aldhelm, a renowned scholar and Abbot in his day, are venerated as saints in the Catholic Church.]
The Pope at that time, Constantine I, hearing this new wonder, sent him home again with papal bulls granting authority. He commanded Brithwald, then Archbishop of Canterbury, to immediately call a general synod of all the clergy to confirm the matter and required that the kings should not be absent that day. This was done in the year of our Lord 709. This Brithwald, who was also a Benedictine monk, was the first Englishman to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Mark that well.
Saint Guthlac, a hermit of Repton, told a certain abbot around the same time that, on his way home, he would find two of his holy monks in a widow’s house who had slept with her the night before to “ease their chastity.”
[N. B. Guthlac was reputed to perform miracles and heal the sick and is considered a major Catholic saint whose feast day is April 11.]
Saint Bertelin, hermit [and patron saint] of Stafford, stole the king’s daughter out of Ireland. Later, while she was in labor in a forest and he had gone to fetch the midwife, a wolf came and devoured both her and her child.
These stories are recounted in full by John Capgrave in his Catalogue of the Saints of England, as well as by William of Malmesbury and Ranulphus.
English Monks Become Antichrist’s Apostles
In those days the monks of England had become so powerful in superstitious learning that they were able to pervert all other Christian regions — and indeed they did so. Some of them went into Germany, some into France, some into Italy and Spain, and became the Pope’s instruments of all falsehood. They fashioned for him there a new kingdom of all devilishness, to withstand the manifest glory of God, and to subdue all princely powers under it.
You who are well-read in chronicles and saints’ lives, take note of what is written about that age concerning: Columbanus, Colomannus, Totimannus, Wenefridus, Willibrord, Willibald, Winebald, Burchard, Kilian, Wigbert, Egbert, the two Hewalds (the White and the Black), Etto, Bertuinus, Eloquius, Lull, Lebuin, Livinus, Johannes, Embertus, Gallus, Gaudus, Gabaldus, Gregory, Megingaud, Sturm, and a great many more along with their women. You shall see in them wonderful [strange/remarkable] practices.
I will give you one here briefly as an example, for it would be too much to write of them all.
Winfrid [d. 754] was admitted by Pope Gregory II as Archbishop of Mainz and great Apostle of all Germany. Because of his bold countenance, he was named Boniface by the Pope. He was first born in London and professed as a black monk [Benedictine] at Cissancestre (now called Chichester) under Abbot Wolfharde.
After the great Synod held at London by the aforementioned Brithwald, about the year of our Lord 710, where priests’ marriage was judged to be fornication, and the honoring of images was accepted as Christian religion — Daniel, then Bishop of Winchester, sent this Winfrid to Rome with letters of commendation for the fortitude he had shown there.
Sources: John Capgrave and Georgius Wicelius in the Hagiologium on the saints of the church.
The Great Apostle of all Germany
The Pope, after certain communications, perceiving him to be in all respects fit for his purpose, immediately sent him into Germany with his full authority (as previously specified). There he was to carry out his false deeds and bring that stiff-necked people under his wicked obedience — which they call the holy Christian faith.
I think that since Christ’s incarnation, there has never been anyone who more vividly displayed the properties of the other Beast in Saint John’s Apocalypse, which rises out of the earth having two horns like a lamb (if you mark it well — Revelation chapter 13). For he was next in authority to the Pope, by the Pope’s own testimony, at the time when he came with the high legateship from the Pope’s own right side into all the quarters and provinces of the said Germany.
The Doctrine of Boniface, together with the sale of Whores
Most damnable was the doctrine of this Boniface concerning the Pope. In a certain epistle of his we find this most execrable sentence: “That in case the said Pope were of the most filthy living, and so forgetful of himself and of the whole of Christendom that he led innumerable souls with him to hell, yet ought no man to rebuke his evil doings. For he (says Boniface) has power to judge all men, and ought to be judged by no man again.”
This the canonists have registered in the Pope’s decrees for a perpetual law, and for a necessary article of Christian belief. (Dist. 40, Ca. Si Papa.)
Yet at another time he wrote to Pope Zachary, urging that the manifest abuses of Rome should be reformed — especially their masquerades in the night after the manner of the pagans, and their open selling of whores in the marketplace there. For they were (he said) great hindrances to his preaching. Those who had seen those revelries there mistrusted the faith greatly.
He also wrote to King Æthelbald and other great men in England, requiring them to abandon the adulterous use of nuns, lest such a plague fall upon them as happened to King Coelred and King Osred for similar doings.
And though this Boniface did not allow Christian marriage for priests but hated it, yet after Geraldus, a married bishop, was slain in Thuringia during the wars there, he permitted his son Geilepus to succeed him in that office.
Sources: Helinandus the monk, Vincentius, Antoninus, Capgrave, etc.
Miracles and Wonders Wrought
When Odo, Bishop of Salisbury, was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in the year of our Lord 946, he would in no case be consecrated until he had been professed a monk by the Abbot of Fleury. This was partly because all his predecessors in that See, to the number of twenty-one, had been monks, and partly because, at the monks’ suggestion, the priests in those days were hated by the people because they were married.
And after he had received his pallium [a band of white wool containing 6 black crosses awarded to Archbishops] with Antichrist’s authority from Rome, he became so frantic against the king’s concubines that some of them he branded shamefully in the face with hot burning irons, and some he banished into Ireland forever. But toward his own interests, he was gentle enough. For he held the most heinous heresy that Christian marriage of priests was unlawful, and made synodal constitutions against it, in order to enrich the monks through that crafty pretext with their great possessions.
He sent his nephew Oswald to school at Fleury, the wellspring of necromancy, to learn all crafty sciences there.
In his time there arose a strife among the clergy at Canterbury concerning Christ’s flesh and blood in the Sacrament. The priests most earnestly affirmed that it remained still bread and only a figure of Christ’s body, while the monks claimed it to be Christ’s essential body — yes, Christ himself. But when Scripture once failed on the monks’ side, they were driven to false miracles or plain experiments of sorcery. For Odo, by a trick of legerdemain [sleight of hand], showed the people a broken host that was bleeding — just as a popish priest called Sir Nicholas Gervase did two years ago in Surrey by pricking his finger with a pin.
Monkery Augmented by Dunstan
Saint Dunstan here in England, having been taught by Irish monks at Glastonbury, was found to be very cunning in wanton music, in sorcery, and in the making of images out of all manner of metals, stone, and wood.
[N. B. St. Dunstan (c. 909–988) is considered one of the greatest figures of the 10th-century English Church and a key leader of the Benedictine Reform. He rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury. A famous legend alleges he caught the Devil by the nose with a pair of red-hot blacksmith’s tongs while working at his forge. Another legend claims he nailed a horseshoe to the Devil’s hoof.]
By these and similar occupations, he found the means to augment and enrich the monasteries of monks and nuns everywhere within England. Notwithstanding, he had oftentimes much to do with devils and with women. Yet in the end he obtained these privileges above all other spiritual workers. He won by his music and fair speech the good favor of various women — even of some who had been the king’s concubines, such as Ælfgifu, Wilfrith, and others — though he had previously caused them to be punished. By his sorceries, he always made the kings fit for his ghostly [spiritual] purpose, as will appear hereafter — especially King Edmund, who was Æthelstan’s brother. By his necromancy, he brought him to the point of being invisibly torn in pieces.
[N. B. A.I. checked all the sources Bale cites and found no evidence that Edmund’s death was considered the result of sorcery. The King was stabbed and killed by a thief who, in turn, was killed by his servants. Bale assumed the King’s death was the result of a curse placed on him by Dunstan.]
What he gained by his image-making, the Scripture plainly shows, which curses both the hand and the instrument of the image maker (Wisdom 14 and Deuteronomy 27).
This story is declared more at large by Osbert the monk in his Life of Dunstan, as well as by Vincentius (Book 24, Ch. 74), Antoninus (Part 2, Book 16, Ch. 6), Marianus Scotus, William of Malmesbury, Ranulph of Chester (Book 6, Ch. 10), Volateranus, Bergomas, Nauclerus, John Capgrave, John Harding, William Caxton, John Lydgate, and Robert Fabyan.
The Chastity of Holy Church There
Theodora, a most execrable whore and adulterous mother to the aforesaid Marozia and Theodora the Younger (both shameless whores also), burned so fiercely in lust for the beauty of one John of Ravenna — a priest who had been sent on a mission to the Pope by Peter, Archbishop of Ravenna — that she not only moved him, but also compelled him to lie with her and become her dear paramour.
This whore, for his lecherous service to her, first made him Bishop of Bologna, then Archbishop of his own native city of Ravenna, and finally, Vicar of Saint Peter in Rome, called John X, Pope of that name. This was so that she might at all times have his company nearer home. This was done in the year of our Lord 915, and he governed the papacy there for thirteen years and more.
[N. B. Marozia later had him deposed, imprisoned and murdered.]
Source: Liutprand of Cremona, Book 2, Chapter 13, in Deeds Done Throughout Europe.
It is easy to see by this open example that she and her two daughters had great influence in the holy College of Cardinals. He who does not judge that Church to be whorish — which was so deeply under the rule of whores that they could appoint whatever head rulers they wished — has, I think, very little good judgment in him.
A Pope’s Bastard Is Made Pope
Guido, the Marquis of Tuscany, at length married Pope Sergius’s whore, Marozia. She, desiring to advance to the seat of Saint Peter the bastard son, John, whom she had by the said Pope, and caused him to imprison her mother’s dear paramour, John X, and to smother him with a pillow. Immediately afterwards, in the year of our Lord 929 [sic: 931] said John was made Pope and called John XI. But in that same year he was deposed again. Whereupon she completely abandoned all spiritual business, and in displeasure toward the prelates, after her husband’s [Guy of Tuscany] death she married her lover Hugh, King of Italy (who was her other husband’s brother on the mother’s side). She made him monarch of Rome in order to recover this lost dignity for her bastard.
This holy successor of Peter and Vicar of Christ (as they call the Popes) was accused by his cardinals and bishops before Emperor Otto in the general synod at Rome. They charged that:
He would say no service (perform no divine offices).
He massed without consecration.
He gave holy orders in his stable.
He made boys bishops for money.
He would never cross himself.
He cared nothing about being forsworn (perjuring himself).
He turned the holy palace of the Lateran into a common brothel.
For he kept there Raynera, the wife of a knight (whom he used as his own), and gave her great possessions, benefices, golden chalices, and crosses. He also held Stephana and her sister (who had been his father’s concubine) and had by her a bastard not long before. He used at his pleasure Anna, a fresh widow, her daughter also, and her daughter’s daughter. He spared neither high nor low, old nor young, poor nor rich, fair nor foul (they said), so that no women dared come to Rome on pilgrimage in his time.
Neither did he reverence any place but would do it everywhere — even upon their very altars. He would hawk, hunt, dance, leap, dice, swear, fight, riot, roam, and stray abroad in the night, breaking up doors and windows, and burning many men’s houses. One of his cardinals he gelded; he put out another’s eyes (who had been his godfather). From some he took a hand, from some a tongue, a finger, a nose, or an ear. In his dicing, he would call upon evil spirits and drink to the devil for love.
Thus, was he in the end deposed, until his dear diamonds (his favorite women) set their hands to it (for they ruled all) and caused the Romans to restore him again.
[N. B. Bale describes the historical period of the Papacy known as the Pornocracy era. He errs in attributing the sins of Pope John 12 to Pope John 11.]
Dunstan Executes His Devilish Commission
This crafty merchant Dunstan, after he had returned again into England, by the authority of this most execrable monster and wicked Antichrist [Pope John XII], gave a strict commandment that priests should immediately put away their lawful wives (whom that burnt-conscience hypocrite called “vessels of fornication”). Otherwise, he said, according to his commission, he would deprive them of both their benefices and livings.
And where he perceived the benefices to be most wealthy, there he was most greedy upon them and showed the most violence and tyranny. For when the high deans of cathedral churches, masters of colleges, prebendaries, parsons, and vicars would not, at so beastly a commandment, abandon their wives and children and leave them desolate contrary to all natural order, he obtained the great power of King Edgar to assist that cruel commission of his — which had been procured for money from the former Antichrist of Rome. By force of this, in many places he most tyrannously expelled them.
Source: John Capgrave in the Catalogue of the Saints of England.
Read over all the Bible and chronicles — of Nimrod, Pharaoh, Antiochus, Nero, Decius, Trajan, and others like them — and I think you shall not find a more tyrannous example. No, not even in cruel Herod himself. For though Herod slew the innocent babes, yet he did not take away the livelihood of the fathers and mothers. But this tyrant took everything with him.
If he had sought a godly reformation where marriage was abused, it would have been somewhat commendable. But his hunting was to destroy it altogether as a horrible vice in priests, and in its place to set up Sodom and Gomorrah by a kind of hypocritical monks, thus changing all godly order.
Kings Become the Beast’s Images
When King Edgar had once completed his seven years of penance for his adultery with fair Wilfrith (whom Dunstan had perhaps prepared for his own use), he became altogether the dumb Image of the Beast, and from then on could utter nothing except what they gave him spirit to say. (Revelation 13.) Then they [King Edgar and Dunstan] called a general council (at London, some say) in the year of our Lord 969, by the ungodly authority of Pope John [XIII]. And there it was fully enacted and established as a law to endure forever, that all canons of cathedral churches, collegians, parsons, curates, vicars, priests, deacons, and subdeacons should either live chastely — that is to say, become Sodomites (for that has been their “chastity” ever since) — or else be suspended from all spiritual jurisdiction.
This more-than-Pharaonic constitution the king was sworn to aid, maintain, and defend with the material sword, by the Pope’s authority. Then two principal visitors [chief inspectors] were chosen: Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester (that nest is ever ungracious), and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, both monks, to see this law executed throughout the whole realm.
Sources: Vincentius, Book 24, Ch. 83; Antoninus, Part 2, Book 16, Ch. 6; William of Malmesbury; Ranulphus; Guido de Columna; John Capgrave; and the New Work on Both Powers, folio 57.
Dunstan Makes an Idol Speak
This caused Dunstan, in the year of our Lord 975, to call another solemn council. But this was held where they thought themselves strongest and might best perform their feats — at Winchester.
[N. B. The council sought to mediate the conflict between the married priests who had lost their livelihood and the celibate monks who inherited their livelihood.]
There, after great words had passed between the Duke of Mercia and the Earl of Essex (who were then appointed as arbitrators), Dunstan, perceiving that everything was going in favor of the priests, brought forth his former commission, thinking thereby to stop their mouths.
And when that would not suffice, he resorted to a practice of the old idolatrous priests, who were accustomed to make their idols speak by the art of necromancy — wherein the monks in those days were expert.
There was a rood [crucifix] upon the frater wall in the monastery where the council was held. And (as Vincent and Antoninus testify) Dunstan ordered them all to pray before the crucifix — which was fully ready for the fraudulent miracle they had arranged. In the midst of their prayer, the rood spoke these words (or else some knave monk behind it in a trunk through the wall, as Boniface later did for the papacy of Celestine):
“God forbid,” said he, “that you should change this order that has been taken. You should not do well now to alter it. Take Dunstan’s ways unto you, for they are the best.”
At this work of the devil, all those who did not know the crafty conveyance were astonished. If this was not obviously legerdemain [sleight of hand / trickery], tell me.
Oh, that there had been a John Boanerges at that time to test the spirits of that workmanship (1 John 4). If there had been but one Thomas Cromwell, they had not so clearly escaped with that knavery.
[N. B. John Boanerges is the Apostle John, known as one of the Sons of Thunder, Mark 3:17.]
Polydore Vergil, who does not criticize them in many other lewd points, nevertheless smelled out their trickery in this matter, and reports that others did the same in his day.
Dunstan’s Provision in England for Satan
Thus, has this most cruel and wicked generation continually built their sinful Zion in blood (Micah 3), and they are not ashamed of their manifest knaveries. For these belly-founders [self-serving gluttons], thieves, and murderers, they still advance as their principal saints.
And when their feast days come, they are yet in the papistical churches of England, with no small solemnity, Mass is said for these saints, celebrated, candled, lighted, processions march, censings smoked, perfumed, and worshipped. The people are brought to believe the Latin reading of their [saints’] wretched acts in their legends is God’s divine service — [when, in reality,] it is, without fail, the most damnable service of the devil.
Just as holy John the Baptist, by preaching repentance, prepared a plain pathway to Christ and his kingdom (Luke 3), so did this unholy Dunstan, by sowing all superstitions, make ready the way for Satan and his filthy kingdom against his coming forth from the bottomless pit, after the full thousand years from Christ’s incarnation (Revelation 20). This is the spirit of Antichrist.
[N. B. Bale was not an amillennialist. He believed a literal 1000 years was to be counted from Christ’s incarnation before the loosing of Satan was to take place.]
He [Satan] raised up in England the pestilent order of monks. He built them monasteries. He procured for them innumerable substance [wealth]. Finally, he brought into their hands the cathedral churches, with the free election of bishops, so that nothing should be done within that realm except according to their lust and pleasure.
Then was Christ’s kingdom clearly set aside, and his immaculate spouse, or Church (depending only upon his word), compelled to flee into the desert (Revelation 12). Men and women who rightly believed dared not then confess their faith but kept it all close within them. For then was Satan abroad, with these monks everywhere assisting him in the furnishing out of that proud painted Church of Antichrist.
Superstition, hypocrisy, and vain glory were, before that time, such vices as men were glad to hide. But now, in their gaudy ceremonies, they were taken for God’s divine service.
Signs and Plagues Following These Abominations
But now see what followed from these aforementioned evils.
In the year of our Lord 988 (which was the twelfth year before the full thousand), this Dunstan departed this life, with a swarm of devils frequenting his tomb — as I shall show more plainly in the next book.
Within the same year there appeared a bloody cloud in the sky, which covered all England, as John Harding and various other chroniclers witness. And it rained blood all over the land. After that, the Danes entered so fast (says Ranulph) at every port that nowhere was the English nation able to withstand them. And the monks, to help the matter well forward, by the counsel of their Archbishop Siricius, initially gave them ten thousand pounds, so that they might live in rest and not be hindered. For they cared little of what became of the rest, so long as their own precious bodies were safe. After this, by various compulsions, they increased that sum — from ten to sixteen, to twenty, to twenty-four, to thirty thousand pounds, and so forth — until they came to the sharp payment of forty thousand pounds, and until they had no more money left to give. For the more the Danes had, the more covetous and cruel they became.
Thus, they did the land innumerable harm by seeking their own private advantage, and so brought their own native people into most miserable thraldom [slavery]. For by that means the Danes were made strong, and the English nation became feeble and weak — yes, so wretched at last that they were forced to call every vile slave among the said Danes “their good lord.”
But now mark the end concerning these monks. In the year of our Lord 1012 (which was the twenty-fourth year from Dunstan’s departure, and the twelfth from the Devil’s going forth), the Danes, after many great victories within the realm, fired the city of Canterbury and imprisoned the Archbishop, then Elphege.
And when he and his monks were able to give no more money, the Danes tithed them in this manner: They always slew nine and reserved the tenth for perpetual sorrow and servitude, until they had murdered more than nine hundred of them there and in other places abroad. And the most part of them they hanged up by the members — which was a plain signification of the plague to come upon them for their sodomy and most violent contempt of Christian marriage.
Sources: Ranulph of Chester, Book 6, Chapters 13 and 15; Fabyan, Part 1, Chapter 199.)
END
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