In his character will be found, I
hope, some implicit apology for the failings of such truly great men
as Dunstan, Becket, and Dominic, and of many more whom, if we hate,
we shall never understand, while we shall be but too likely, in our
own way, to copy them.
Walter of Varila, a more fictitious character, represents the
'healthy animalism' of the Teutonic mind, with its mixture of deep
earnestness and hearty merriment. His dislike of priestly
sentimentalities is no anachronism. Even in his day, a noble lay-
religion, founded on faith in the divine and universal symbolism of
humanity and nature, was gradually arising, and venting itself, from
time to time, as I conceive, through many most unsuspected channels,
through chivalry, through the minne-singers, through the lay
inventors, or rather importers, of pointed architecture, through the
German school of painting, through the politics of the free towns,
till it attained complete freedom in Luther and his associate
reformers.
For my fantastic quotations of Scripture, if they shall be deemed
irreverent, I can only say, that they were the fashion of the time,
from prince to peasant--that there is scarcely one of them with
which I have not actually met in the writings of the period--that
those writings abound with misuse of Scripture, far more coarse,
arbitrary, and ridiculous, than any which I have dared to insert--
that I had no right to omit so radical a characteristic of the
Middle Age.
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