' And, staying a little while, he
cried out at last, saying, 'Where shall we place the holy father?' A
froward fellow standing among the audience,[151] said, 'If thou canst
find none other, then set him here in my place, for I am weary,' and so
he went his way."--This "froward fellow's" unexpected reply will
doubtless remind the reader of the old man's remark in the mosque, about
the "calling of Noah," _ante_, pp. 66, 67.[152]
[151] There were no pews in the churches in those "good old
times."
[152] _Apropos_ of saint-worship, quaint old Thomas Fuller
relates a droll story in his _Church History_, ed. 1655,
p. 278: A countryman who had lived many years in the
Hercinian woods, in Germany, at last came into a
populous city, demanding of the people therein, what God
they did worship. They answered him, that they
worshipped Jesus Christ. Whereupon the wild wood-man
asked the names of the several churches in the city,
which were all called by sundry saints, to whom they
were consecrated. "It is strange," said he, "that you
should worship Jesus Christ, and he not have a temple in
all the city dedicated to him."
Probably not less than one third of the jests current in Europe in the
16th century turned on the ignorance of the Romish clergy--such, for
instance, as that of the illiterate priest who, finding _salta per tria_
(skip over three leaves) written at the foot of a page in his mass-book,
deliberately jumped down three of the steps before the altar, to the
great astonishment of the congregation; or that of another who, finding
the title of the day's service indicated only by the abbreviation _Re.
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