The English Moral Plays 295 
preaching churchmen was altogether inadequate to meet the rapidly 
growing demands. The bishops and monks, moreover, were rendered 
worldly by the management of their secular affairs, while the parish 
priests remained too ignorant or too indifferent to guide the people. 
Consequently, oral instruction from the pulpit, especially in rural 
districts, was infrequent and poor. Nevertheless, even in the darkest 
period there were hopeful indications. Charlemagne and the ec- 
clesiastics of his time urged that every priest be empowered, and 
even forced, to preach.t_ As another means of increasing the common 
usefulness of the sermon, in the ninth century exhortation in the 
open air was encouraged.? And that even the ignorant clergymen 
upon whom these new responsibilities were thrust might have sound 
teaching to offer, collections of homilies were prepared. All this 
indicates that religious instruction from the pulpit was not forgotten 
or contemned. Its high traditions would have been kept alive, if 
in no other way, by the Pastoral Care which Gregory prepared 
for the instruction of the clergy. That much admired treatise insists 
with special emphasis that the priest should not be a dumb servant 
of God. He should understand, to be sure, that discretion often- 
times recommends silence; but he should also be alert to seize 
those occasions that demand fearless speech. With the aim, there- 
fore, of teaching the clergy to speak effectively, yet with moderation, 
“to exhort by sound doctrine and to convince the gainsayers,” the 
treatise gives explicit directions for the preparation of sermons. 
Such instruction came with telling effect from Gregory, who him- 
self set so high an example of faithful and intelligent effort in 
preaching. The Pastoral Care was read all over Europe, even 
being translated into Old English by King Alfred, and given, as 
far as possible, to every English} priest; and it must have been, 
to all but the most faithless, a constant reminder of the duties and 
responsibilities of priesthood. 
The latent energy of the medieval church, of which these facts 
give but a faint indication, reawakened to a new period of activity 
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The higher clergy, frighten- 
ed by the persuasive oratory of heretical teachers, entered with 
new zeal upon their labors among men. At the same time, the 
truer learning and richer spirituality that ripened in the monasteries, 
impatient of narrow seclusion, filled the monks with a desire to 
guide and control. The story of Bernard of Clairvaux shows how 
fruitful monasticism could be. Finally, in the early thirteenth cen- 

1 Hering, 55-58, 2 Lecoy de la Marche, 226—29. 
