To find secular lyrics we must turn to the very beginning or the very end of the century, and Chaucer himself does not recover the fresh gaiety of the earlier time.
The specimen of his style most often reprinted is The Second Shepherd's Play, which has an original and purely secularcomic plot.
In Chaucer we have for the first time a layman, writing in English for secular purposes, who from the range and quality of his work may fairly claim to be ranked among men of letters.
Its author belonged to the loosely organized secular clergy who, by reason of their middle position, served as a kind of cement in a ramshackle society.
Yet even a patron so well disposed to secular poems did little to perpetuate the manuscripts of English verse.
But imaginative literature, growing always stronger and more confident, wins full secular liberty.
Though there are moments in the fourteenth century when the preponderance of the clerical over the secular element in literature seems as great as ever, by the end of the Middle Ages the trend of the conflict is plain.
And in 1382 the secularparty in Oxford were compelled, after a struggle, to condemn and expel their favourite preacher and his followers.
Most of its numbers are unique, and the loss of this one volume would have swept away the best part of our knowledge of the early Middle English secular lyrics.
The Wiclifite translation of the Bible threatened its hitherto unchallenged position as the language of the Church; and the Renaissance had not yet come to give it a new life among secular scholars.
And the clergy had every reason to welcome the disciplining bysecular authority of a wayward offspring that had grown beyond their own control.
Xavier, while at Goa, had even invoked the secular arm to set up the Inquisition in India, and doubtless he and his followers would have put up this infernal enginery in Japan if they could have done so.
The refusal of the Carmelites (throughout the xiii century) to pursue the academic course is valuable evidence of the conflict between secular and religious studies at the rise of the university.
Cambridge presents us with an excellent example of the relations which secular and religious learning bore to one another in the foundation of universities.
What is peculiar to Cambridge is that there a monk made the earliest attempt to endow learning for the secular clergy--a monk who was also a bishop, the ever-memorable Hugh Balsham.
John's Hospital that Balsham introduced secular scholars in the same century, who should become unum corpus et unum collegium with the canons.
John's hospital a group of secular students known as "Ely scholars," who were the object of his anxious care until his death in 1286.
After the founder's death two rectors were to exercise complete jurisdiction, one of these was to be a seculargraduate but the other is to be a Franciscan.
It was a foundation for six secular canons serving her church of S.
Peterhouse had itself been one of the earliest known instances of the conversion of religious property to secular purposes;[399] but in the xv and early xvi century the instances crowd upon us.
They refused to graduate, and showed no desire to display the insignia of a secular doctorate over the peculiarly sacred habit of their Order.
But after my having moved into the monastery, matters appeared so contrary to my expectation, that I thought, that my surest way would be to write to the next bishop and to continue to labor as secular Priest.
He thought, that the secular monarchy of the Pope was injurious to his Empire, and he required that the Pope, Pious VII, successor of Pius VI who died in France, should give up his secular monarchy.
To wear a shoe in place of a sandal, to take money in a purse for a journey, above all to lay aside the gray gown and cowl for any sort of secular garment, seemed to him wicked.
Unless Israel had this rare ill-luck (which Israel denies) of course Israel must have had a secular tradition, however dim, of a Supreme Being.
We then find an historical tradition of secular contact between Israel and Egypt, from which Israel emerges with Jehovah for God, and a system of sacrifices.
He would do what, in the secular sphere, was done by the Mikado of Japan.
It is lamentable to see how studiously conscience and fair dealing are excluded from the secular business of the world.
If the Establishment, he argued, was to have a future, it must recognise the tide that was surely breaking down the ecclesiastical barriers which stood in the way of the secular advance.
Besides the human, he approached them on the secular ground.
The slightest sign of independent vitality, intellectual or religious, was sourly repressed by a party in which the secular intolerance of the democracy was curiously combined with the spiritual pretensions of the hierarchy.
In 1233 he summoned him to an assembly of notables in Bergen (Rigsmoede), at which the archbishop, the bishops, and a great number of secular dignitaries were present.
The clerical andsecular magnates were, at the death of a king, to select among his heirs the one who was to succeed him, the presumption being always in favor of the eldest son born in wedlock, unless he was declared unworthy.
The Christians of the 5th century adhered in their church architecture to the style of building adopted by the Romans for their basilicas; in fact, in many cases the secular basilica was adapted to the purpose of Christian worship.
Paul, and put it under the charge of some monks who were succeeded later on by secular canons, and eventually in the 12th century, by regular canons of S.
The last remark is no longer applicable, as the church is now quite disencumbered from secular excrescences.
It has not the feeling of the Renaissance sculpture, and although Religion forms a principal part of the composition, it is purely and simply a secular design.
The picture in the vault over the altar is a jumble by Ziegler of sacred andsecular personages, from the Magdalen and her Master down to Napoleon the arrogant.
Unperturbed, it torments itself no longer, for its gaze takes in the whole course of the stream, absorbing into itself the secular energies of that stream and the tranquil destiny which leads the flow onward towards the infinite.
Sir Robert; the title of Sir was usually given to one of the secular clergy; cf.
The Secular were so called, because they canonized in saeculo, abroad in the world.
Whilst thanking God for his devotional works, it was not out of place for him to 'recall' his more secular ones; for this expression seems to mean no more than that he could not claim that they were written in God's service.
Chaucer, in his description of the parson, contrasts the piety and industry of the secular clergy with the wickedness and laziness of the religious orders or monks.
The Madonnas and Saints of Ghirlandajo and Civitali and Della Querica who inhabited that magnificent old church seemed somehow to be creatures of ceremony, hardened by secular pomp.
I thought that a monk, having once entered an Order, could not re-assume the ordinary garments of secular life," she remarked.
It is no fanatical criticism, but the true philosophy of history, which places Carey over against Clive, the spiritual and secular founders, and Duff beside Hastings, the spiritual and secular consolidators of our Indian Empire.
So on 26th June he began his secular duties by completing for the season of indigo manufacture the buildings at Mudnabati, and making the acquaintance of the ninety natives under his charge.
When the news came that the missionaries had become indigo planters, some of the weaker brethren, estimating Carey by themselves, sent out a mild warning against secular temptations, to which he returned a half-amused and kindly reply.
He still thinks it necessary to apologise for his action by quoting his hero, Brainerd, who was constrained to assist his Indian converts with his counsels in sowing their maize and arranging their secular concerns.
Were you in any secular employment you must go out quite as much as we expect you to do in the Mission.
Men of every Christian school, and men interested only in the literary and secular side of their enterprise, had their active sympathy called out.
Eustacius, the eighth Prior, 1264, appointed Theobald Fitz-James as his deputy in the Aldermanship, he deeming it inconsistent with his spiritual vocation to perform secular duties.
The cathedral was devoted more to secular than to religious uses.
The fact of Him, the thought of Him, has expelled from our lives the secular air and the light and flippant spirit.
He espoused the cause of the Reformation more because it favored religious and secular progress than from sympathy with its principles.
The Sunday-school in its theoretic constitution is the parallel of the secular school.
As the secular school is within and subordinate to the community, and alongside of the home as its aid and supplement, so the Sunday-school is within and subordinate to the church, and beside the Christian home as its supplement.
Others of the secular press had taken up the discussion, and Mrs. Wilson declared that the devil was contributing editorials to the papers in his keen fear that Father Frontford would be elected.
The talk drifted away into more secular channels, and Ashe in time forgot for the moment that he was already almost a priest.
It seemed to Maurice that her keen eyes took in the whole story from his secular dress.
The first Norman prelate was Giso, who built some dwellings for the secular canons which were destroyed by his successor, John de Villula, a native of Tours, who erected a palace in their stead.
There is a curious boss of sculpture representing a secular priest shaking the regular monk by his hair, which figuratively depicts the supremacy of the former in the church of Southwell.
He expelled the secular clergy, and introduced the Benedictine rule.
He seems to have established a community of secular canons.
Churches served bysecular canons sometimes have a cloister, but this was added more as an ornament, and was not a necessity.
If this church belonged to a monastery it was served by the monks, but many of our cathedrals were in the hands of secular canons, who were not monks, and should not be confused with the "regular" clergy.
Lincoln was not a monastic church, being served by secular canons, and therefore had no necessity for a cloister court.
The woodwork is ancient, and here we see the famous sanctuary knocker, which criminals used when they wished to gain an entrance and secure the rights of sanctuary from mob violence or secular law.
He describes the flourishing state of religious andsecular education, the vitality of art, the comfort of the peasantry, and the prosperity of the towns.
There is also a quantity of unpublished sacred and secular music of high value.
But he got safely through, and composed a large quantity of splendid Church music, besides some quite unimportant secular music.
There are not two styles: there is one style--the secular style, Purcell's style.
There is no difference between the sacred motets and the secular madrigals of the early polyphonists.
All things were ripe for a secular composer; the mood that found utterance in the old devotional music was a dead thing, and in England Humphries had pointed the new way.
The reaction against the tendency to condemn secular life is certainly stronger in Islam, but is also apparent in Christianity.
Before God man is but a slave: even the mighty Caliphs themselves, even those who were stigmatised by posterity as secular monarchs, included in their official titles the designation, "slave of God.
That ascetic spirit was paramount, which had enchained the Christian world, that renunciation of secular affairs which explains the peculiar methods by which mediaeval views of life found expression.
But the play of forces resulting from this secular cooling has never, until very recently, been adequately or truly stated.
And this would have earlier been seen, had geologists generally framed for themselves any correct notions of the mechanism of elevation itself, and seen its real relation with the secular cooling of our planet.
Although he did not enter the service of the Church but engaged in secular pursuits, he was a deeply spiritual man and his hymns bear testimony of an earnest, confiding faith in Christ.
Here he remained for forty years, writing novels, secular poetry and hymns.
After all, the great strength of the Catholic Church in England will always be the secular clergy.
That idea fell through, and now my notion is to turn it into a decent school run by secular clergy.
I told the Reverend Father that I hoped to be ordained as a secular priest and that I did not imagine I had any vocation for the contemplative life.
It became a recognized custom for him to travel up to London whenever the Missioner was preaching, and in London he was once more struck by the variety of Father Rowley's worldly knowledge and secular friends.
There isn't a single decent school run by the secular clergy.
Never mind, I expect you see my point about the necessity for the school to be run by secular clergy.
