Contrast of Saint Lewis.
Case of Henry the Second. simple irreverence nor intellectual unbelief, but direct reviling and defiance of a power which, by the very terms of the defiance, is believed in, is a vice of which Englishmen of our own day have hardly any notion. But, as it has many parallels in heathen creeds, as it has not yet died out in all parts of Christendom, so it was by no means unknown in the days with which we are dealing. Its frequency at a somewhat later time is shown when the biographer of Saint Lewis sets it down as one of his special virtues, that he never, under any circumstance, allowed any reviling of God or the saints.[1] On the other hand, we find Henry the Second, whom there is no reason whatever to look on as a speculative unbeliever, indulging, as in lesser forms of irreverence, so also in direct reviling of God.[2] But the vice, to us so revolting and unintelligible, seems to have reached its highest point in the King of whom men said in proverbs that he every morning got up a worse man than he lay down, and every evening lay down a worse man than he got up.[3]
Thus far we are inclined to see in our second William a character of unmixed blackness, alike as a man and as a King. There seems no room left for even pagan virtues in the oppressor, the blasphemer, the man given
- ↑ Joinville, p. 217 ed. Michel; "Le roy ama tant Dieu et sa douce mère que touz ceulz que il pooit atteindre qui disoient de Dieu ne de sa mère chose déshoneste ne vilein serement, que il les fesoit punir griefment." He goes on to tell how, like Saint Wulfstan (see N. C. vol. iv. p. 386) but unlike Saint Eadward (ib. ii. p. 26), he never swore nor mentioned the devil.
- ↑ Giraldus (de Inst. Prin. c. iii. 11) gives a specimen of his blasphemies, and adds, "quibus ne memoriæ refricatio facinus atque blasphemiam posteris ad mentem revocet, supersedere potius quam paginam nostram commaculare dignum duximus."
- ↑ Eadmer, Hist. Nov. 54. "In tantum ex successibus suis profecit ut, sicut hi qui factis ejus die noctuque præsentes exstiterunt attestantur, numquam vel de lecto surgeret vel in lecto se collocaret, quin seipsum aut collocante aut surgente semper deterior esset."
