THE HIATUS

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 124, 26 May 1923, Page 20

THE HIATUS

A FRAGMENT OF HISTORY

WALLED INTO A LIVING GRAVE

AN OLD-TIME MONASTIC STORY.

Tha monastic ruins of England, it has •been observed, are the quiet witnesses of a past which we are too easily inclined to relegate to the dusty region of ecclesiology, forgetting, if we ever had the wit to understand, what manner of men those old monks were in ultimate defence of whom half the countryside of England once rose in armed lebellion, writes '"E.J.W.". in the - "Manchester Guardian." By pure good fortune I chanced) the other day upon an old, forgotten fragment of history, so whimsical _ and human that one despairs of exercising a faculty light.and graceful and roguish enough to lend it a truthful colouring.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, it appears, before the Dissolution was thought of, there lived and prayed and fasted in St. Leonard's Priory, at York, a fat monk called Brother Jucundus'. He had not been long in the House. He had joined the Order, it was .believed, in a fit of remorse "after heavy potations on the occasion of the installation of a new ' Lord Mayor." That is all one can learn definitely about the man prior to his entry of St. Leonard's. But reading intelligently between the lines;, one is unable to resist the opinion that he was of that large type of mind, "broad as ten thousand beeves, at pasture," which, with an ap-. parehtly universal tolerance for Nature m all her vagaries, contrives easily and naturally to reconcile a thousand conflicting principles that haunt our lives. In the absence of a miracle it is rarely that such men are appreciated by their contemporaries. But how in the case of this monk the miracle actually occurred his story reveals in a sufficiently interesting manner.

It was inevitable, sooner or later, that in the cloistral seclusion of St. Leonard's Brother Jucundus should perceive the opportunity of a riper experience than could readily be gained from the ruder life without. It was in our monasteries that our Parliaments met, that our annals were compiled, that our classics were copied and preserved; above all, perhaps, that the very humanity we inherit found an adequate expression for its noblest aspirations. The Mayoral banquet, it is only just and reasonable to assume, was merely the occasion, and in no sense the cause, of Jucundus's astonishing and sudden conversion.

In remembering', however, that he had an immortal soul the man forgot the mountain of flesh that God had given him for a body. It was his misfortune to have been born too soon. "Mens sana in corpore sano" was a doctrine the sweet wisdom of which was not to be discovered, ecclesiastically at least, until a later age. Gargantuan laughter, Brother Jucundus quickly perceived, was Hie only sane and suitable reply to a fate which imprisoned a living spirit in flesh and bone. Yet the irrevocable vows were upon him. For life he was bound "to eat only vegetables and bread, drink very small beer, and sleep only six hours in the night." Convivial songs, it is gravely reported, "floated through his mind when he ought to have been chanting the Psalms of David, and the flavour of sack rose upon his palate when he looked dolefully at dinner time into his mug of 'swipes.' " A year passed by and Jucundus decided that he must have one solitary "fling" or he would die. "As the monksrose at midnight the Priory was silent,, save for their snores, from 1 o'clock until2. At 2 o'clock on the day of the great York fair the little community awoke to a condition of things that was unprecedeuS^L The porter, it appears, .'missed 1 his kijnj; tils Prior missed a crown from his iuat.**P-box; and, upon the monks being, stu&ftaned to the Chapter House, all missed UJCther Jucundus.

That WSrthy in the meantime had enjoyed himself as only boys, barbarians, and otlier geniuses know how. There is authentic evidence to prove that he had seen the bearded woman and the spotted boy, that he had gone roundl in a whirligig on the back of a wooden horse, that he had visited the show of dancing dogs and the drinking booths, and that he had won his pockets full of nuts which he "cracked every now and then and washed down with a. draught of really good ale. 1' He was just going up on a great see-saw, a,foaming tankard in his hand, roaring at the top of his voice, to the immeilse delight of the- bystanders, "In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up, up we go-o-o," when he espied two monks from the Priory who had been sent out in search of him. Brother Jucundus, in a great panic, made a desperate attempt to scramble out, but in doing so he tumbled' down, and either the fall, it is magnanimously suggested, or disinclination to return just then to the Priory weakened his. legs so much that he had to be put into a wheelbarrow and rolled home. The Chapter was still sitting, and he was wheeled straight into the midst of the brethren for immediate trial. In reply to the Prior's demand for. his defence he looked round the assembly with the "kindest; most winsome smile" lighting up his face, a,nd murmured confidently, with; a hiccough, "In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up, up iiego-o-o;". As he made no attempt to justify himself in any more helpful way. he- was immediately and unanimously sentenced to be walled up ahve in the Priory cellar. A confused glimmering of his situation must then have penetrated his mind, for all the way down, the cellar steps he was heard nattering to himself in the quietest but most deliberate tones: "Down, down down, w 6 go-o-o." In a convenient niche—a cruse of water and a loaf of bread placed, with cruel refinement, by his side-Brother .lucundns. it is briefly related, was soon walled into a living grave. ...

wW* tl hr?thlm overlooked a fact which the curious may verify for themselves to this day; that the walls of the monastery adjoined those of the neighbouring Abbey of St. Mary's and so they did not dream that after'they had abandoned the monk to' his fate he kicked and struggled and pushed to such vigorous effect that the wall behind him gave way with a crash, and he found himself forsooth in the cellar of the adjacent monastery Now the Abbey of St. Mary's belonged to. the severe Cistercian Order. Strict silence was. one of the rules of the so.ciety, ■ and accordingly, when . Brother Jucundus appeared in the cloisters, no one turned to look at him or ;ask him "How . the-Saints he had come there." He took his place at table and occupied a pallet in the common dormitory, and ifcwas assumed, if anyone thought about him at all, that he was an ordinary monk who had joined the little community in the ordinary way. If it had been dull, however, in St. Leonard's it wa3 duller in St. Mary's, and when the anniversary of the great York fair came round Brother Jncundus decided that if, it was impossible to celebrate the occasion in the city he would do so in the wine cellar. He was discovered unfortunately the following day, fast asleep by tlio best cask of Malmsey, and sentenced to a form of punishment with which he was not now altogether unfamilaiv The Cistercian brethren, however/little knew that the niche in which .they. :pfi9]jred.Jhs'degraded 510% aud

which they discovered conveniently at hand behind a heap of crumbling stones, was the very niche from which he had escaped from St. Leonard's twelve months before, to appear so mysteriously in their midst. ... It chanced that the cellarer of St. Leonard's had just descended the Priory steps and was filling his pitcher with small beer when he heard strange, mvf 7 fled sounds proceeding from the wall behind his ear. He was immediately all attention and experienced little difficulty in making out these words: "In dulce jubilo-o-o, up, up we go-o-o-." It was the voice of Brother Jucundus whom he had helped to immure in that very spot twelve months before. "Down went the pitcher," the chronicle proceeds, "and away fled the monk, amazement on his countenance, 'A miracle, a miracle, on his lips, to his brethren just issuing from, the Church after the recitation of sect and the office, for the dead around the body of their Prior,. lately deceased, and that day to be buried." There was a rush to the cellar; eager hands, we are told, tore down the wall—and from the niche, which still contained a fresh loaf and a cruse of water full to. the brim, stepped Brother Jucundus. There could be no doubt that this was a divine interposition to establish; his innocence. With one voice' all the monks shouted "Saint Jucundus our ' Prior," and on their shoulders they carried him upstairs and installed him, immediately in the seat-of authority in the Chapter House. . . , , , Of what had happened since he had ■ seen the brethren last, Brother Jucundus never spoke a word. Under him, our chronicle concludes, St. Leonard's jogged along pleasantly enough, and he did much in his long rule of the monastery for its discipline and good order, "to excuse, if not to justify, the dissolution which fell upon it immediately after his death." . .