Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 8.djvu/89

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE ORIGIN OF CY PRiiS. 73 the former class largely predominated ; but it is equally true that the latter were recognized as to some extent efficacious.^ One needs to go but little way into the documentary history of the period from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries of our era, to find abundant examples of the way in which men bought their peace with Heaven by the surrender of temporal goods in life; or, by devoting these after death in pios usus, sought to escape the pains of Purgatory or the clutches of the devils that literally darkened the air about the deathbed of the departing sinner. That it was a deliberate purchase, and that they had not the slightest hesitation in clearly describing it as such, amply appears from the terms employed. Thus the charter of King Offa to the cathedral church at Wor- cester, A. D. 774,^ begins : — " In nomine Sanctae Trinitatis. Ait enim Apostolus ; * Nichil intul- imus in hunc mundum, nee auferre quid possumus ; ' et beatus Job ; ♦ Nudus egressus sum ex utero matris et nudus revertar in terram.' Quapropter ego, Offa, rex anglorum, brevitatem vitae ejus considerans, et quod cum his caducis mercanda esse eterna polorura regna, donabo," etc. It seems indeed odd that th'e king should decry his own title and disparage the quality of his goods when offering them as considera- tion for his purchase — mercatio — of the joys of the heavenly kingdom ; and we must rather impute these terms to the monkish grantee's mode of persuading the monarch to part with his prop- erty by belittling it; for without any doubt the charter was penned by the priest and not by the king, who was probably scarcely, if at all, able to write. So in Ethelbald of Mercia's grant to Evesham Abbey, A. D. 716,^ it is said: "Caducis opibus celestis vitae proemia mercari queamus; " in Offa's charter to Duddon, A. D. TJ^'. * "APR Regnanti in perpetuum domino nostro. Jhesu Christo, Universa quippe quae hie in praesentia visibus hu- manis corporaliter contemplantur nihil esse nisi vana et caduca transitoriaque ex sacrorum voluminum testimoniis verum patet, Et 1 " The public utility of bridges caused them to be included in the somewhat elastic term of 'pious uses.' Thus in 1310, at Toulouse, Mathieu Aylchard is released from wearing crosses and performing certain pilgrimages on condition of contributing 40 livres tournois to a new bridge then under construction." Lea, Hist. Inq. i. 474. Jusserand, Eng. Wayfaring Life, ch. i, gives many instances. See Besant's London, ante. « I Birch Sax. Cart. 303. » lb. 198. * lb. 320.