Christopher Saint-German, who is chiefly known as the writer of a _Dyalogue in English between a Student of Law and a Doctor of Divinity_, belonged to the Inner Temple, and was, it has already been said, a lawyer of considerable repute. About the year 1532, a tract from his pen called _A treatise concerning the division between the spiritualtie and temporaltie_ appeared anonymously. To this Sir Thomas More, who had just resigned the office of Chancellor, replied in his celebrated _Apology_, published in 1533. Saint-German rejoined in the same year with _A Dyalogue between two Englishmen, whereof one is called Salem and the other Bizance_, More immediately retorting with the _Debellacyon of Salem and Bizance_. In these four treatises the whole matter of the supposed feud between the clergy and laity is thrashed out, and the points at issue are clearly stated and discussed.
Christopher Saint-German’s position is at first somewhat difficult to understand. By some of his contemporaries he was considered to have been tainted by “the new teaching” in doctrinal matters, which at the time he wrote was making some headway in England. He himself, however, professes to write as a loyal believer in the teaching of the Church, but takes exception to certain ecclesiastical laws and customs which in his opinion are no necessary part of the system at all. In these he thinks he detects the cause of the “division that had risen between the spiritualtie and the temporaltie.” Sir Thomas More, it may be remarked, is always careful to treat the writer as if he believed him to be a sincere Catholic, though mistaken in both the extent of the existing disaffection to the Church and altogether impracticable in the remedies he suggested. In some things it must, however, be confessed, granting Saint-German’s facts, that he shows weighty grounds for some grievance against the clergy on the part of the laity.
_The treatise concerning the division_ begins by expressing regret at the unfortunate state of things which the author pre-supposes as existing in England when he wrote in 1532, contrasting it with what he remembered before. “Who may remember the state of this realm now in these days,” he writes, “without great heaviness and sorrow of heart? For whereas, in times past, there has reigned charity, meekness, concord, and peace, there now reigns envy, pride, division, and strife, and that not only between laymen and churchmen, but also between religious and religious, and between priests and religious, and what is more to be lamented also between priests and priests. This division has been so universal that it has been a great (cause of) disquiet and a great breach of charity through all the realm.”[121]