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THE SAXON SAINTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
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* * * * *
BY THE LATE SIR AUBREY DE VERE, BART.
=Mary Tudor:= an Historical Drama.
=Julian the Apostate and the Duke of Mercia.=
=A Song of Faith=, Devout Exercises and Sonnets.
B. M. PICKERING.
LEGENDS
OF THE
SAXON SAINTS
BY
AUBREY DE VERE
Hic sunt in fossa Bedae Venerabilis ossa
(_Old Inscription_)
LONDON
C. KEGAN PAUL & CO., 1 PATERNOSTER SQUARE
1879
(_The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved_)
_TO THE VENERABLE BEDE_
'Mid quiet vale or city lulled by night
Well-pleased the wanderer, wakeful on his bed,
Hears from far Alps on fitful breeze the sound
Of torrents murmuring down their rocky glens,
Strange voice from distant regions, alien climes:--
Should these far echoes from thy legend-roll
Delight of loftier years, these echoes faint,
Thus waken, thus make calm, one restless heart
In our distempered day, to thee the praise,
Voice of past times, O Venerable Bede!
PREFACE.
Many years ago a friend remarked to me on the strangeness of the
circumstance that the greatest event in the history of a nation, its
conversion to Christianity, largely as it is often recorded in national
legends, has never been selected as a theme for poetry. That event may
indeed not supply the materials necessary for an Epic or a Drama, yet it
can hardly fail to abound in details significant and pathetic, which
especially invite poetic illustration. With the primary interest of that
great crisis, many others, philosophical, social, and political,
generally connect themselves. Antecedent to a nation's conversion, the
events of centuries have commonly either conduced to it, or thrown
obstacles in its way; while the history as well as the character of that
nation in the subsequent ages is certain to have been in a principal
measure modified by that event. Looking back consequently on that period
in which the moral influences of ages, early and late, are imaged, a
people recognises its own features as in a mirror, but sees them such as
they were when their expression was still undetermined; and it may well
be struck by the resemblance at once to what now exists, and also by the
dissimilitude. Many countries have unhappily lost almost all authentic
records connected with their conversion. Such would have been the fate
of England also, had it not been for a single book, 'Bede's
Ecclesiastical History.' In the following poems I have endeavoured to
walk in the footsteps of that great master. Their scope will best be
indicated by some remarks upon the character of that wonderful age which
he records.
St. Augustine landed in the Isle of Thanet A.D. 597, and Bede died A.D.
735. The intervening period, that of his chronicle, is the golden age of
Anglo-Saxon sanctity. Notwithstanding some twenty or thirty years of
pagan reaction, it was a time of rapid though not uninterrupted
progress, and one of an interest the more touching when contrasted with
the calamities which followed so soon. Between the death of Bede and the
first Danish invasion, were eighty years, largely years of decline,
moral and religious. Then followed eighty years of retribution, those of
the earlier Danish wars, till, with the triumph of Alfred, England's
greatest king, came the Christian restoration. Once more periods of
relaxed morals and sacrilegious princes alternated with intervals of
reform; again and again the Northmen over-swept the land. The 460 years
of Anglo-Saxon Christianity constituted a period of memorable
achievements and sad vicissitudes; but that period included more than a
hundred years of high sanctity, belonging for the most part to the
seventh century, a century to England as glorious as was the thirteenth
to Mediaeval Europe.
Within that century the kingdoms of the Heptarchy successively became
Christian, and those among them which had relapsed returned to the
Faith. Sovereigns, many of whom had boasted a descent from Odin himself,
stood as interpreters beside the missionaries when they preached, and
rivalled each other in the zeal with which they built churches, some of
which were founded on the sites of ancient temples, though, in other
cases, with a charitable prudence, the existing fanes were spared,
purified, and adapted to Christian worship. At Canterbury and York,
cathedrals rose, and on many a site besides; and when the earlier had
been destroyed by fire, or had fallen through decay, fabrics on a vaster
scale rose above their ruins, and maintained a succession which lasts to
this day. Monasteries unnumbered lifted their towers above the forests
of a land in which the streams still ran unstained and the air of which
had not yet been dimmed by smoke, imparting a dignity to fen and flat
morass. Round them ere long cities gathered, as at St. Albans,
Malmesbury, Sherborne, and Wimborne; the most memorable of those
monasteries being that at Canterbury, and that at Westminister,
dedicated to St. Peter, as the cathedral church near it had been
dedicated to St. Paul. In the North they were at least as numerous. The
University of Oxford is also associated with that early age. It was
beside the Isis that St. Frideswida raised her convent, occupied at a
later date by canons regular, and ultimately transformed into Christ
Church by Cardinal Wolsey--becoming thus the chief, as it had been the
earliest, among the schools in that great seat of learning which within
our own days has exercised a religious influence over England not less
remarkable than that which belonged to its most palmy preceding period.
During that century England produced most of those saintly kings and
queens whose names still enrich the calendar of the Anglo-Saxon Church,
sovereigns who ruled their kingdoms with justice, lived in
mortification, went on pilgrimages, died in cloisters. The great
missionary work had also begun. Within a century from the death of St.
Augustine, apostles from England had converted multitudes in Germany,
and St. Wilfrid had preached to the inhabitants of Friesland. Something,
moreover, had been done to retrieve the past. The Saxon kings made
amends for the wrongs inflicted by their ancestors upon the British
Celts, endowing with English lands the churches and convents founded by
them in Brittany. King Kenwalk of Wessex showed thus also a royal
munificence to the Celtic monastery of Glastonbury, only stipulating in
return that the British monks there, condoning past injuries, should
offer a prayer for him when they knelt at the tomb of King Arthur.
The England of the seventh century had been very gradually prepared for
that drama of many ages which had then its first rehearsal. In it three
races had a part. They were those of the native Britons, the Saxons who
had over-run the land, and the Irish missionaries. Rome, the last and
greatest of the old-world empires, had exercised more of an enfeebling
and less of an elevating influence among the British than among her
other subject races; but her great military roads still remained the
witnesses of her military genius; and many a city, some in ruin, were
records of her wealth and her arts. The Teutonic race in England, which
for centuries had maintained its independence against Rome, could not
forgive the Britons for having submitted to their hated foe, and
trampled on them the more ruthlessly because they despised them. Yet
they at least might well have learned to respect that race. It has been
well remarked that if the Britons submitted easily to Rome, yet of all
her subject races they made far the most memorable fight against that
barbaric irruption which swept over the ruins of her empire. For two
centuries that race had fought on. It still retained the whole of
Western Britain, Cornwall, Wales, and Strathclyde; while in other parts
of England it possessed large settlements. On the other hand, in matters
of spiritual concern the British race contrasted unfavourably with the
other races subjected by the barbarians. In France, Spain, and Italy,
the conquered had avenged a military defeat by a spiritual victory,
bringing over their conquerors to Christianity; and, as a consequence,
they had often risen to equality with them. In those parts of England,
on the contrary, where the British had submitted to the Pagan
conquerors, they by degrees abandoned their Christian faith;[1] and
where they retained their independence, they hated the Saxon conquerors
too much to share their Christianity with them. Far from desiring their
conversion, they resisted all the overtures made to them by the Roman
missionaries who ardently desired their aid; and as a consequence of
that refusal, they eventually lost their country. The chief cause of
that refusal was hatred of the invader. The Irish as well as the British
had a passionate devotion to their own local traditions in a few matters
not connected with doctrine; but they notwithstanding worked cordially
with the Benedictines from St. Gregory's convent for the spread of the
Christian Faith. Had the Britons converted the Anglo-Saxon race they
would probably have blended with them, as at a later time that race
blended with their Norman conquerors. Three successive waves of the
Teuton-Scandinavian race swept over their ancient land, the Anglo-Saxon,
the Danish, and the Norman: against them all the British Celts fought
on. They fell back toward their country's western coasts, like the Irish
of a later day; and within their Cambrian mountains they maintained
their independence for eight centuries.
Yet the Anglo-Saxons' victory was not an unmixed one. Everywhere
throughout England they maintained during the seventh century two
different battles, a material and a spiritual one, and with opposite
results. Year by year that race pushed further its military dominion;
but yearly the Christian Faith effected new triumphs over that of Odin.
For this there were traceable causes. The character of the Teutonic
invader included two very different elements, and the nobler of these
had its affinities with Christianity. If, on the one hand, that
character was fierce, reckless, and remorseless, and so far in natural
sympathy with a religion which mocked at suffering and till the ninth
century offered up human sacrifices, it was marked no less by
robustness, simplicity, honesty, sincerity, an unexcitable energy and an
invincible endurance. It possessed also that characteristic which
essentially contradistinguishes the _ordo equestris_ from the _ordo
pedestris_ in human character, viz., the spirit of reverence. It had
aspirations; and, as a background to all its musings and all its hopes
there remained ever the idea of the Infinite. As a consequence, it
retained a large measure of self-respect, purity, and that veneration
for household ties attributed to it by the Roman historian[2] at a time
when that virtue was no longer a Roman one. Such a character could not
but have its leanings toward Christianity; and, when brought under its
influences, it put forth at once new qualities, like a wild flower
which, on cultivation, acquires for the first time a perfume. Its spirit
of reverence developed into humility, and its natural fortitude into a
saintly patience; while its fierceness changed into a loyal fervour; and
the crimes to which its passions still occasionally hurried it were
voluntarily expiated by penances as terrible. Even King Penda, the hater
of Christianity, hated an insincere faith more. 'Of all men,' he said,
'he that I have ever most despised is the man who professes belief in
some God and yet does not obey his laws.' Such was that character
destined to produce under the influences of faith such noble specimens
of Christian honour and spiritual heroism. From the beginning its
greatness was one
True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home;
and in later ages it became yet more eminently domestic, combining
household ties with the pursuit of letters and science in colleges which
still preserved a family life. Its monks had no vocation to the life of
the desert; in this unlike the Irish saints, who, like those of Eastern
lands, delighted in the forest hermitage and the sea-beat rock.
The Anglo-Saxon race was but a branch of that great Teuton-Scandinavian
race, generically one whether it remained in the German forests or
wandered on to the remoter coasts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was
the race which the Romans called 'the Barbarians,' but which they could
never conquer. A stern history had trained it for a wonderful destiny.
Christianity in mastering the Greek had possessed itself of the
intellect of the world, and in mastering Rome had found access to all
those vast regions conquered by Roman arms, opened out by Roman roads,
governed by Roman law, and by it helped to the conception of a higher
law. But the Greek and the Roman civilisations had, each of them,
corrupted its way, and yielded to the seductions of pride, sense, and
material prosperity; and, as a consequence, both had become incapable
of rendering full justice to much that is highest in Christianity. That
which they lacked the 'Barbaric' race alone was capable of supplying. In
its wanderings under darkened skies and amid pitiless climates it had
preserved an innocence and simplicity elsewhere lost. Enriched by the
union of the new element, thus introduced, with what it had previously
derived from Greek thought and Roman law, that authentic Religion which
had been prospectively sown within the narrow precinct of Judea extended
its branches over the world. Had the Barbaric race shared in the Greek
sciences and arts, and clothed itself in the Roman civilisation, it must
have learned their corruptions. The larger destiny of man could thus,
humanly speaking, never have been accomplished, and neither the mediaeval
world, the modern world, nor that yet higher order of human society
which doubtless lies beyond both, could have existed. It was necessary
that in some region, exacting, yet beneficent, civilisation should be
retarded, that a remedy might be found for the abuses of civilisation;
and races whose present backward condition we are accustomed to deplore
may likewise be intended for a similar purpose. Plants are thus kept in
the dark in order to reserve their fruitage for a fitter season.
But what had been the earlier history of a race before which such
destinies lay? What training had prepared it for its work--the last that
might have been expected from it? On this subject there remains a
tradition, the profoundly significant character of which ought to have
made it more widely known. Mallet, in his 'Northern Antiquities,'
translated by Bishop Percy, to whom our ballad literature is so deeply
indebted, records it thus:--'A celebrated tradition, confirmed by the
poems of all the northern nations, by their chronicles, by institutions
and customs, some of which subsist to this day, informs us that an
extraordinary person named Odin formerly reigned in the north.... All
their testimonies are comprised in that of Snorri, the ancient historian
of Norway, and in the commentaries and explications which Torphaeus added
to his narrative. The Roman Commonwealth was arrived at the highest
pitch of power, and saw all the then known world subject to its laws,
when an unforeseen event raised up enemies against it from the very
bosom of the forests of Scythia and on the banks of the Tanais.
Mithridates by flying had drawn Pompey after him into those deserts. The
King of Pontus sought there for refuge and new means of vengeance. He
hoped to arm against the ambition of Rome all the barbarous nations his
neighbours, whose liberty she threatened. He succeeded in this at first,
but all those peoples, ill united as allies, ill armed as soldiers, and
still worse disciplined, were forced to yield to the superior genius of
Pompey. Odin is said to have been of their number.... Odin commanded the
AEsir, whose country must have been situated between the Pontus Euxinus
and the Caspian Sea. Their principal city was Asgard. The worship there
paid to their supreme God was famous throughout the circumjacent
countries. Odin, having united under his banners the youth of the
neighbouring nations, marched towards the north and west of Europe,
subduing, as we are told, all the people he found in his passage, and
giving them to one or other of his sons for subjects. Many sovereign
families of the North are said to be descended from these princes. Thus
Horsa and Hengist, the chiefs of those Saxons who conquered Britain in
the fifth century, counted Odin or Wodin in the number of their
ancestors; it was the same with the other Anglo-Saxon princes as well as
the greatest part of those of lower Germany and the North.'[3]
Gibbon refers to this ancient tradition, though not as accepting it for
a part of ascertained history, yet in a spirit less sceptical than was
usual to him. He writes thus: 'It is supposed that Odin was chief of a
tribe of barbarians which dwelt on the banks of the lake Moeotis, till
the fall of Mithridates and the arms of Pompey menaced the north with
servitude. That Odin, yielding with indignant fury to a power which he
was unable to resist, conducted his tribe from the frontiers of the
Asiatic Sarmatia into Sweden, with the great design of forming, in that
inaccessible retreat of freedom, a religion and a people which, in some
remote age, might be subservient to his immortal revenge; when his
invincible Goths, armed with martial fanaticism, should issue in
numerous swarms from the neighbourhood of the Polar circle to chastise
the oppressors of mankind.... Notwithstanding the mysterious obscurity
of the Edda, we can easily distinguish two persons confounded under the
name of Odin; the god of war, and the great legislator of Scandinavia.
The latter, the Mahomet of the north, instituted a religion adapted to
the climate and to the people. Numerous tribes on either side of the
Baltic were subdued by the invincible valour of Odin, by his persuasive
eloquence, and by the fame which he acquired of a most skilful magician.
The faith that he had propagated during a long and prosperous life he
confirmed by a voluntary death. Apprehensive of the ignominious approach
of disease and infirmity, he resolved to expire as became a warrior. In
a solemn assembly of the Swedes and Goths he wounded himself in nine
mortal places, hastening away (as he asserted with his dying voice) to
prepare the feast of heroes in the palace of the great god of war.'[4]
In a note Gibbon adds, referring to the Roman and Oriental part of the
legend: 'This wonderful expedition of Odin, which, by deducing the
enmity of the Goths and Romans from so memorable a cause, might supply
the noble groundwork of an epic poem, cannot safely be received as
authentic history. According to the obvious sense of the Edda, and the
interpretation of the most skilful critics, Asgard, instead of denoting
a real city of the Asiatic Sarmatia, is the fictitious appellation of
the mystic abode of the gods, the Olympus of Scandinavia.' Whether the
emigration of the Barbaric race from the East be or be not historical,
certainly the grounds upon which Gibbon bases his distrust of it are
slender. He forgot that there might well have been both an earthly
Asgard and also, according to the religion of the north, an Asgard in
heaven, the destined abode of warriors faithful to Odin. Those who after
his death changed their king into a god would, by necessity, have
provided him with a celestial mansion; nor could they have assigned to
it a name more acceptable to a race which blended so closely their
religion with their patriotic love than that of their ancient capital,
from which their great deliverer and prophet had led them forth in
pilgrimage. Let us hope that Gibbon's remark as to the fitness of this
grand legend for the purposes of epic poetry may yet prove prophecy. It
has had one chance already: for we learn from the first book of _The
Prelude_ that the theme was one of those on which the imagination of
Wordsworth rested in youth, when he was seeking a fit subject for epic
song.
It is difficult to imagine a historical legend invested with a greater
moral weight or dignity than belongs to this one. The mighty Republic
was soon to pass into an Empire mightier and more ruthless still, the
heir of all those ancient empires which from the earliest had
represented a dominion founded on the pride of this world, and had
trampled upon human right. A race is selected to work the retribution.
It is qualified for its work by centuries of adversity, only to be
paralleled by the prosperity of its rival. Yet when at last that
retribution comes, it descends more in mercy than in judgment! Great
changes had prepared the world for a new order of things. The centre of
empire had moved eastward from Rome to Constantinople: the spiritual
centre had moved westward from Jerusalem to Rome. The empire had herself
become Christian, and was allowed after that event nearly a century more
of gradual decline. The judgment was not thus averted; but it was
ennobled. Her children were enabled to become the spiritual instructors
of those wild races by which the '_State_ Universal' had been
overwhelmed. That empire indeed, was not so much destroyed as
transformed and extended, a grace rendered possible by her having
submitted to the yoke of Christ; the new kingdoms which constituted the
Christian '_Orbis Terrarum_' being, for the most part, fragments of it,
while its laws made way into regions wider far, and exercised over them
a vast though modified authority not yet extinct. Here, if anywhere, we
catch glimpses of a hand flashing forth between the clouds, pointing
their way to the nations, and conducting Humanity forward along its
arduous and ascending road. There is a Providence or there could be no
Progress.
For the fulfilment of that part assigned to the 'Barbarians' in this
marvellous drama of the ages, it was necessary that many things should
combine; an exemption from the temptations which had materialised the
races of the south; the severe life that perfects strength; a race
endowed with the physical strength needed to render such sufferings
endurable; and lastly, an original spiritual elevation inherent in that
race, and capable of making them understand the lesson, and accept their
high destiny. The last and greatest of these qualifications had not been
wanting. Much as the religion of the Barbaric race had degenerated by
the time when it deified its great deliverer, it had inherited the
highest traditions of the early world. Mallet thus describes their
religion in its purity: 'It taught the being of a "Supreme God, master
of the universe, to whom all things are submissive and obedient." Such,
according to Tacitus, was the supreme God of the Germans. The ancient
Icelandic mythology calls him "the Author of everything that existeth;
the eternal, the ancient, the living and awful Being, the searcher into
concealed things, the Being that never changeth." This religion
attributed to the Supreme Deity "an infinite power, a boundless
knowledge, an incorruptible justice," and forbade its followers to
represent Him under any corporeal form. They were not even to think of
confining Him within the enclosure of walls, but were taught that it
was within woods and consecrated forests that they could serve Him
properly. There He seemed to reign in silence, and to make Himself felt
by the respect which He inspired.[5] ... From this Supreme God were
sprung (as it were emanations from His divinity) an infinite number of
subaltern deities and genii, of which every part of the visible world
was the seat and the temple.... To serve this divinity with sacrifices
and prayers, to do no wrong to others, and to be brave and intrepid in
themselves, were all the moral consequences they derived from these
doctrines. Lastly, the belief of a future state cemented and completed
the whole building.[6] ... Perhaps no religion ever attributed so much
to a Divine Providence as that of the northern nations.'[7]
It was not among the Scandinavians only that the religion of the North
retained long these vestiges of its original purity, and elevation. 'All
the Teutonic nations held the same opinions, and it was upon these that
they founded the obligation of serving the gods, and of being valiant
in battle.... One ought to regard in this respect the Icelandic
mythology as a precious monument, without which we can know but very
imperfectly this important part of the religion of _our fathers_.'[8]
The earlier and purer doctrine seems to have long survived the
incrustations of later times in the case of a select few. Harold
Harfraga, the first king of all Norway, thus addressed an assembly of
his people: 'I swear and protest in the most sacred manner that I will
never offer sacrifice to any of the gods adored by the people, but to
Him only who hath formed this world, and everything we behold in it.' A
belief in the divine Love, as well as the divine power, knowledge and
justice, though probably not held by the many at a later day, is yet
distinctly expressed, as well as the kindred belief in an endless reign
of peace, by the earliest and most sacred document of the Northern
religion, viz. the 'Voeluspa Prophecy.' That prophecy, after foretelling
the destruction of all things, including the Odin gods themselves, by
the Supreme God and His ministers, proceeds: 'There will arise out of
the sea, another earth most lovely and verdant with pleasant fields
where the grain shall grow unsown. Vidar and Vali, shall survive;
neither the flood nor Surtur's fire shall harm them. They shall dwell on
the plain of Ida _where Asgard formerly stood_.... Baldur and Hoedur
shall also repair thither from the abode of death. There they shall sit
and converse together, and call to mind their former knowledge and the
perils they underwent.'[9]
The similarity between the higher doctrines of the northern faith and
the religion of ancient Persia is at once accounted for by the tradition
of the Odin migration from the East. A writer the reverse of credulous
expresses himself thus on that subject: 'We know that the Scandinavians
came from some country of Asia.... This doctrine was in many respects
the same with that of the Magi. Zoroaster had taught that the conflict
between Ormuzd and Ahriman (_i.e._ light and darkness, the Good and Evil
Principle) should continue to the last day; and that then the Good
Principle should be reunited to the Supreme God, from whom it had first
issued; the Evil should be overcome and subdued; darkness should be
destroyed; and the world, purified by a universal conflagration, should
become a luminous and shining abode, into which evil should never be
permitted to enter.'[10] The same writer continues thus: 'Odin and the
AEsir may be compared to Ormuzd and the Amshaspands; Loki and his evil
progeny, the Wolf Fenrir and the Midgard Serpent, together with the
giants and monsters of Joetunheim and Hvergelmir, to Ahriman and the
Devs.[11] ... We will not deny that some of these doctrines may have
been handed down by oral tradition to the pontiff-chieftains of the
Scandinavian tribes, and that the Skalds who composed the mythic poems
of the elder Edda may have had an obscure and imperfect knowledge of
them. Be this as it may, we must not forget that the higher doctrines of
the Scandinavian system were confined to the few, whereas those of the
Zendavesta were the religious belief of the whole nation.[12] ... The
Persian system was calculated to form an energetic, intellectual and
highly moral people; the Scandinavian a semi-barbarous troop of crafty
and remorseless warriors.... Yet, such as they were, these
Scandinavians seemed to have been destined by the inscrutable designs of
Providence to invigorate at least one of the nations of which they were
for centuries the scourge, in order, as we previously had occasion to
observe, that the genial blending of cognate tribes might form a people
the most capable of carrying on the great work of civilisation, which in
some far distant age may finally render this world that abode of peace
and intellectual enjoyment dimly shadowed forth in ancient myths as only
to be found in a renovated and fresh emerging universe.'[13]
The inferiority of the later Scandinavian to the earlier Persian
religion may be sufficiently accounted for by the common process of
gradual degeneration. That degeneration was not confined to the great
emigrant race. Centuries before Odin had left the East, the Persian
religion had degenerated upon its native soil. Its Magi retained a pure
doctrine, which led them later to the Bethlehem crib; but its vulgar had
in part yielded to the seduction of Greek poets, and worshipped in
temples like theirs. It is remarkable that that 'one of the nations'
with which the hopes of the future are so singularly connected is that
one upon which the discipline of adversity had fallen with double force.
When the ancient enemy of the 'Barbaric races,' Rome, had passed away, a
new enemy, and one to it more formidable, rose up against England in her
own kinsfolk, the Scandinavian branch of the same stock. The Danish
invaders expected to set kingdom against kingdom throughout the
Heptarchy, and subject them all to the sceptre of Odin. On the contrary,
it united them in one; and that union was facilitated by the bond of a
common Christianity.[14]
That the belief of the Anglo-Saxons, though less developed by poetry and
romance, was substantially the same as that recorded in the Scandinavian
Edda, appears to be certain. It is thus that Mr. Kemble speaks:
'On the Continent as well as in England, it is only by the collection of
minute and isolated facts--often preserved to us in popular
superstitions, legends, and even nursery tales--that we can render
probable the prevalence of a religious belief identical in its most
characteristic features with that which we know to have been entertained
in Scandinavia. Yet whatsoever we can thus recover proves that, in all
main points, the faith of the Island Saxons was that of their
Continental brethren.' 'The early period at which Christianity triumphed
in England, adds to the difficulties which naturally beset the subject.
Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, had entered into public relations with the
rest of Europe long before the downfall of their ancient creed; here the
fall of heathendom, and the commencement of history were
contemporaneous. We too had no Iceland to offer a refuge to those who
fled from the violent course of a conversion.'[15]
Among the proofs of identity between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Scandinavian religion, Mr. Kemble refers to the fact that 'genealogies
of the Anglo-Saxon kings contain a multitude of the ancient gods,
reduced indeed into the family relations, but still capable of
identification with the deities of the North, and of Germany. In this
relation we find Odin, Boeldoeg, Geat, Wig, and Frea. The days of
the week, also dedicated to gods, supply us further with the names of
Tiw, Dunor, Friege, and Soetere; and the names of places in all parts
of England attest the wide dispersion of the worship.[16]
Mr. Kemble shows also that among the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians
there existed a common belief respecting monsters, especially the wolf
Fenrir, the Midgard snake, evil spirits and giants; respecting Loki, the
accursed spirit, and Hela, the queen of Hades. To the same effect Mr.
Sharon Turner speaks: 'The Voluspa and the Edda are the two great
repositories of the oldest and most venerated traditions of pagan
Scandinavia. The Voluspa opens abruptly, and most probably represents
many of the ancient _Saxon_ traditions or imaginations.'[17] The
authority of these eminent writers accounts for and justifies the
frequent references to the Scandinavian mythology in the following
'Saxon Legends.'
We have thus seen that in the religion of the 'Barbaric' race there were
blended two different elements: a higher one derived from its eastern
origin, and a lower one the result of gradual degeneration. We had
previously seen that a remarkable duality was to be found in the
character of that race; and without understanding this duality and its
root in their religion, no just conception can be formed of the
relations of that race with Christianity. Had the 'Barbarians' possessed
nothing deeper than is indicated by their fiercer traits, the history of
the seventh century in England must have been very different. It was
characterised by rapid conversions to Christianity on a large scale, and
often, after the lapse of a few years, by sanguinary revolts against the
Faith. The chief reason of such fluctuation seems to have been this,
viz. because all that was profound, and of venerable antiquity in the
Northern religion, was in sympathy with Christianity, as the religion of
sanctity and self-sacrifice; while all that was savage in it opposed
itself to a religion of humility and of charity. The Northern religion
was an endless warfare, and so was that early Persian religion from
which its higher element was derived; but by degrees that warfare had,
for the many, ceased to be the warfare between light and darkness,
between Good and Evil. To the speculative it had become a conflict
between all the wild and illimitable forces of Nature and some unknown
higher Law; but to the common herd it meant only an endless feud between
race and race. Thus understood it could have no affinities with
Christianity, either in her militant character, or as the religion of
peace.
In explanation of the frequent outbreaks against Christianity on the
part of the Anglo-Saxons, after their conversion, Montalembert assigns
another cause, viz. that the Roman missionaries had sometimes relied too
much upon the converted kings, and their authority over their subjects.
The work had in such cases to be done again; and it was largely done by
Irish missionaries, who had left Iona only to seek as lonely a retreat
in Lindisfarne. They shunned cities, drew the people to them, and worked
upwards through that people to the great.
The Irish mission in England during the seventh century was one among
the great things of history, and has met with an inadequate
appreciation. The ancient name of the Irish, 'Scoti,' commemorative of
their supposed Scythian origin, the name by which Bede always
designates them, had been frequently translated 'Scottish' by modern
historians; and those who did not know that an Irish immigrant body had
entered Scotland, then called Alba, about the close of the second
century, had conquered its earlier inhabitants, the Picts, after a war
of centuries, and had eventually given to that heroic land, never since
subdued, its own name and its royal house, naturally remained ignorant
that those 'Scottish' missionaries were Irish. A glance at Bede,[18] or
such well known recent works as Sir W. Scott's 'History of
Scotland,'[19] makes this matter plain; yet the amount of work done in
England by those Irish missionaries is still known to few.
They came from a country the fortunes, the character, and the
institutions of which were singularly unlike those of England; one in
which ancient Rome had had no part; which, in the form of clan-life,
retained as its social type the patriarchal customs of its native East,
all authority being an expansion of domestic authority, and the idea of
a family, rather than that of a state, ruling over the hearts of men.
About two centuries previously, Ireland had become Christian; and an
image of its immemorial clan-system was reproduced in the vast convents
which ere long covered the land, and sent forth their missionaries over
a large part of Europe. It might well have been thought doubtful
whether these were likely to work successfully among a race so
dissimilar as the Anglo-Saxon; but the event proved that in this
instance dissimilar qualities meant qualities complemental to each
other, and that sympathy was attracted by unlikeness.
The Irish mission in England began at a critical time, just when the
reaction against the earlier successes of the Roman mission had set in.
At York, under Paulinus, Christianity had triumphed; but eight years
after that event Edwin, the Christian king of Deira, perished in battle,
and northern England was forced back by king Penda into paganism.
Southern England, with the exception of Canterbury and a considerable
part of Kent, had also lost the Gospel, after possessing it for thirty
years. Nearly at the same time East Anglia and Essex, at the command of
pagan-kings, had discarded it likewise. It was then that Oswald, on
recovering his kingdom of Northumbria, besought the Irish monks of Iona
to reconvert it, or rather to complete a conversion which had been but
begun. Their work prospered; by degrees the largest kingdom of the
Heptarchy became solidly and permanently Christian, its See being fixed
in the Island of Lindisfarne, whence the huge diocese of the north was
ruled successively by three of St. Columba's order, Aidan, Finan, and
Colman. But the labours of St. Columba's sons were not confined to the
north. In East Anglia an Irish monk, St. Fursey, founded on the coast of
Suffolk the monastery of Burghcastle, in which King Sigebert became a
monk. An Irish priest, Maidulphus, built that of Malmesbury in Wessex.
Glastonbury was an older Celtic monastery inhabited partly by Irish
monks, and partly by British. Peada, king of Mercia, son of the terrible
Penda, was baptized by St. Finan close to the Roman Wall, as was also
Sigebert, king of the East Saxons. Diama, an Irish monk, was first
bishop of all Mercia, its second, Ceolach, being Irish also, and also
its fourth.
Montalembert, in his _Moines d'Occident_, has given us the most
delightful history that exists of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England,
a work combining the depth of a Christian philosopher with the sagacity
of a statesman, and a dramatist's appreciation of character, while in it
we miss nothing of that picturesque vividness and engaging simplicity
which belong to our early chroniclers; thus conferring upon England a
boon if possible greater than that bestowed upon Ireland in his lives of
St. Columba, St. Columbanus and other saints. It is thus that he
apportions the share which the Irish missionaries and the Roman had in
that great enterprise.
'En resumant l'histoire des efforts tentes pendant les soixante ans
ecoules depuis le debarquement d'Augustin jusqu'a la mort de Penda, pour
introduire le Christianisme en Angleterre, on constate les resultats que
voici. Des huit royaumes de la confederation Anglo-Saxonne, celui de
Kent fut seul exclusivement conquis et conserve par les moines romains,
dont les premieres tentatives, chez les Est-Saxons et les Northumbriens,
se terminerent par un echec. En Wessex et en Est-Anglie les Saxons a
l'ouest et les Angles a l'est furent convertis par l'action combinee de
missionnaires continentaux et de moines celtiques. Quant aux deux
royaumes Northumbriens' (Deira and Bernicia), 'a l'Essex et a la Mercie,
comprenant a eux seuls plus de deux tiers du territoire occupe par les
conquerants germains, ces quatre pays durent leur conversion definitive
exclusivement a l'invasion pacifique des moines celtiques, qui
n'avaient pas seulement rivalise de zele avec les moines romains, mais
qui, une fois les premiers obstacles surmontes, avaient montre bien plus
de perseverance et obtenu bien plus de succes.'[20] The only effort made
at that early period to introduce Christianity into the kingdom of the
South-Saxons was that of an Irish monk, Dicul, who founded a small
monastery at Bosham. It did not however prove successful.
There is something profoundly touching in the religious ties which
subsisted between England and Ireland during the seventh century, when
compared with the troubled relations of those two countries during many
a later age. If the memory of benefits received produces a kindly
feeling on the part of the recipient, that of benefits conferred should
exert the same influence on the heart of the bestower. To remember the
past, however disastrous or convulsed, is a nation's instinct, and its
duty no less, since a tribute justly due is thus paid to great actions
and to great sufferings in times gone by; nor among the wise and the
generous can the discharge of that patriotic duty ever engender an
enmity against the living: but there is a special satisfaction in
turning to those recollections with which no human infirmity can connect
any feeling save that of good will; and it is scarcely possible to
recall them in this instance without a hope that the sacred bonds which
united those two countries at that remote period may be a pledge for
reciprocated benefits in the ages yet before us. For both countries that
early time was a time of wonderful spiritual greatness. In noble rivalry
with Ireland England also sent her missionaries to far lands; and a
child of Wessex, St. Boniface, brought the Faith to Germany, by which it
was eventually diffused over Scandinavia, thus, by anticipation,
bestowing the highest of all gifts on that terrible race the Northmen,
in later centuries the scourge of his native land.
At home both islands were filled with saints whose names have ever since
resounded throughout Christendom. Both islands, as a great writer[21]
has told us, 'had been the refuge of Christianity, for a time almost
exterminated in Christendom, and the centres of its propagation in
countries still heathen. Secluded from the rest of Europe by the stormy
waters in which they lay, they were converted just in time to be put in
charge with the sacred treasures of Revelation, and with the learning of
the old world, in that dreary time which intervened between Gregory and
Charlemagne. They formed schools, collected libraries, and supplied the
Continent with preachers and teachers.' He remarks also that 'There was
a fitness in the course of things that the two peoples who had rejoiced
in one prosperity should drink together the same cup of suffering:
_Amabiles, et decori in vita sua, in morte non divisi_;' and he proceeds
to remind us that, immediately after their participation in that common
religious greatness, they partook also a tragic inheritance. In England
for two centuries and a half, in Ireland for a longer period, the
Northmen were repulsed but to reappear. Again and again the sons of Odin
blackened the river-mouths of each land with their fleets; wherever they
marched they left behind them the ashes of burned churches and
monasteries, till, in large parts of both, Christianity and learning had
well nigh perished, and barbarism had all but returned. In both
countries domestic dissensions had favoured the invader; eventually in
both the Danish power broke down; but in both and in each case claiming
a spiritual sanction--another branch of the same Scandinavian stock
succeeded to the Dane, viz. the only one then Christianised, the Norman.
In that seventh century how little could Saxon convert or Irish
missionary have foreseen that the destinies of their respective
countries should be at once so unlike yet so like, so antagonistic yet
so interwoven!
The aim of the 'Legends of Saxon Saints,' as the reader will perhaps
have inferred from the preceding remarks, is to illustrate England, her
different races and predominant characteristics, during the century of
her conversion to Christianity, and in doing this to indicate what
circumstances had proved favourable or unfavourable to the reception of
the Faith. It became desirable thus to revert to the early emigration of
that 'Barbaric' race of which the Anglo-Saxon was a scion, making the
shadow of Odin pass in succession over the background of the several
pictures presented (the Heroic being thus the unconscious precursor of
the Spiritual), and to show how the religion which bore his name was
fitted at once to predispose its nobler votaries to Christianity and to
infuriate against it those who but valued their faith for what it
contained of degenerate. It seemed also expedient to select for
treatment not only those records most abounding in the picturesque and
poetic, but likewise others useful as illustrating the chief
representatives of a many-sided society; the pagan king and the British
warrior, the bard of Odin and the prophetess of Odin, the Gaelic
missionary and the Roman missionary, the poet and the historian of
Anglo-Saxon Christianity. In a few instances, as in the tales of Oswald
and of Oswy, where the early chronicle was copious in detail, it has
been followed somewhat closely; but more often, where the original
record was brief, all except the fundamental facts had to be supplied.
On these occasions I found encouragement in the remark of a writer at
once deep and refined. 'Stories to be versified should not be already
nearly complete, having the beauty in themselves, and gaining from the
poet but a garb. They should be rough, and with but a latent beauty. The
poet should have to supply the features and limbs as well as the
dress.'[22]