The Coming of the Friars

The Coming of the Friars

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Title: The Coming of the Friars
Author: Augustus Jessopp
Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6625] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 5, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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THE COMING OF THE FRIARS AND OTHER HISTORIC ESSAYS
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 Nineteenth Century," and are now printed with some alterations, corrections, and additions.]

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

I.
THE COMING OF THE FRIARS.
Sweet St. Francis of Assisi, would that he were here again!--_Lord Tennyson._
When King Richard of England, whom men call the Lion-hearted, was wasting his time at Messina, after his boisterous fashion, in the winter of 1190, he heard of the fame of Abbot Joachim, and sent for that renowned personage, that he might hear from his own lips the words of 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 of Hermeneutics which has in our time received the name of "the year-day theory," 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, and interpreted. A divine illumination opened out to him the dark things that were written in the sacred pages. The unenlightened could make nothing 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 an insoluble enigma long since given up as hopeless, whose answer would come only at the Day of Judgment. Abbot Joachim declared that the key to the mystery had been to him revealed. What could "a time, times, and half a time" mean, but three years and a half? What could a year mean in the divine economy but the lunar year of 360 days? for was not the moon the symbol of the Church of God? What were those 1,260 days but the sum of the days of three years and a half? Moreover, as it had been with the prophet Ezekiel, to whom it was said, "I have appointed thee a day for a year," so it must needs be with other seers who saw the visions of God. To them the "day" was not as our brief prosaic day--to them too had been "appointed a day for a year." The "time, times, and half a time" were the 1,260 days, and these were 1,260 years, and the stupendous catastrophe, the battle of Armageddon, the reign of Antichrist, the new heavens and the new earth, the slaughter and the resurrection of the two heavenly witnesses, were at hand. Eleven hundred and ninety years had passed away of those 1,260. "Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth," said Joachim; "Antichrist is already born, yea born in the city of Rome!"
Though King Richard, in the strange interview of which contemporary historians have left us a curious narrative, exhibited much more of the spirit of the scoffer than of the convert, and evidently had no