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The Dawn of European Literature.
* * * * *
ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE.
BY JOHN EARLE, M.A.
RECTOR OF SWANSWICK,
RAWLINSON PROFESSOR OF ANGLO-SAXON IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD.
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF
THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION
APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING
CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.
LONDON:
SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE,
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS, W.C.;
43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.;
26, ST. GEORGE'S PLACE, HYDE PARK CORNER S.W.
BRIGHTON: 133, NORTH STREET.
NEW YORK: E. & J.B. YOUNG & CO.
1884.
PREFACE.
The bulk of this little book has been a year or more in type; and, in
the mean time, some important publications have appeared which it was
too late for me to profit by. Among such I count the "Corpus Poeticum
Boreale" by Dr. Gudbrand Vigfusson and Mr. York Powell; the "Epinal
Gloss" and Alfred's "Orosius" by Mr. Sweet, for the Early English Text
Society; an American edition of the "Beowulf" by Professors Harrison and
Sharp; Ælfric's translation of "Alcuin upon Genesis," by Mr. MacLean. To
these I must add an article in the "Anglia" on the first and last of the
Riddles in the Exeter Book, by Dr. Moritz Trautmann. Another recent book
is the translation of Mr. Bernhard Ten Brink's work on "Early English
Literature," which comprises a description of the Anglo-Saxon period.
This book is not new to me, except for the English dress that Mr.
Kennedy has given to it. The German original has been often in my hand,
and although I am not aware of any particular debt, such as it would
have been a duty and a pleasure to acknowledge on the spot, yet I have a
sentiment that Mr. Ten Brink's sympathising and judicious treatment of
our earliest literature has been not only agreeable to read, but also
profitable for my work.
15, NORHAM ROAD, OXFORD,
_March 15th, 1884._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I.--A PRELIMINARY VIEW 1
II.--THE MATERIALS 28
III.--THE HEATHEN PERIOD 59
IV.--THE SCHOOLS OF KENT 79
V.--THE ANGLIAN PERIOD 98
VI.--THE PRIMARY POETRY 119
VII.--THE WEST SAXON LAWS 150
VIII.--THE CHRONICLES 169
IX.--ALFRED'S TRANSLATIONS 186
X.--ÆLFRIC 207
XI.--THE SECONDARY POETRY 225
XII.--THE NORMAN CONQUEST, AND AFTER THAT 243
INDEX 259
ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE.
CHAPTER I.
A PRELIMINARY VIEW.
Anglo-Saxon literature is the oldest of the vernacular literatures of
modern Europe; and it is a consequence of this that its relations with
Latin literature have been the closest. All the vernacular literatures
have been influenced by the Latin, but of Anglo-Saxon literature alone
can it be said that it has been subjected to no other influence. This
literature was nursed by, and gradually rose out of, Latin culture; and
this is true not only of those portions which were translated or
otherwise borrowed from the Latin, but also in some degree even of the
native elements of poetry and laws. These were not, indeed, derived from
Latin sources, but it was through Latin culture that those habits and
facilities were acquired which made their literary production possible.
In the Anglo-Saxon period there was no other influential literature in
the West except the Latin. Greek literature had long ago retired to the
East. The traces of Greek upon Anglo-Saxon literature are rare and
superficial. Practically the one external influence with which we shall
have to reckon is that of Latin literature, and as the points of contact
with this literature are numerous, it will be convenient to say
something of the Latin literature in a preliminary sketch.
The Latin literature with which we are best acquainted was the result of
study and imitation of Greek literature. But the old vernacular Latin
was a homely and simple speech, much more like any modern language in
its ways and movements than would be supposed by those who only know
classical Latin. The old Latin poetry was rhythmical, and fond of
alliteration. Such was the native song of the Italian Camenæ, unlike the
æsthetic poetry of the classical age, with its metres borrowed from the
Greek Muses. The old Latin poetry was like the Saxon, in so far as it
was rhythmical and not metrical; but unlike it in this, that the Latin
alliteration was only a vague pleasure of recurrent sound, and it had
not become a structural agency like the alliteration of Saxon poetry.
The book through which juvenile students usually get some taste of old
Latin is Terence, in whose plays, though they are from Greek originals,
something is heard of that rippling movement which has lived through the
ages and still survives in Italian conversation. Reaching backwards from
Terence we come to Plautus and Ennius, and then to Nævius (B.C.
274-202), who composed an epic on the first Punic war. He lamented even
in his time the Grecising of his mother-tongue. He wrote an epitaph upon
himself, to say that if immortals could weep for mortals, the Camenæ
might well weep for Nævius, the last representative of the Latin
language.
The splendour of classical Latin was short-lived. The time of its
highest elevation is called the Golden Age, of which the early period is
marked by the names of Cicero and Cæsar; the latter (the Augustan
period) by the names of Virgil and Horace. There is a fine forward
movement in Cicero, who studied the best Greek models; but gradually
there came in a taste for curious felicity suggested by the secondary
Greek literature. This adorned the poetry of Virgil; but when it began
to spread to the prose, though the æsthetic effect might be beautiful in
a masterpiece, it was apt to be embarrassing in weaker hands. Æsthetic
prose appears in its most intense and most perfect form in Tacitus, the
great historian of the Silver Age. As new tastes and fashions grew, the
oldest and purest models were neglected, and, however strange it may
sound, Cicero and Cæsar were antiquated long before the end of the first
century.
The extreme limit of the classical period of Latin literature is the
middle of the second century. The life was gone out of it before that
time, but it had still a zealous representative in Fronto, the worthy
and honoured preceptor of Marcus Aurelius. After this last of the Good
Emperors had passed away, the reign of barbarism began to manifest
itself in art and literature. The accession of Commodus was a tremendous
lapse.
The point here to be observed is that the classical Latin literature
was not a natural growth, but rather the product of an artificial
culture. It presents the most signal example of the great results that
may spring from the enthusiastic cultivation of a foreign and superior
literature. And it is of the greatest value to us as an example, because
it will enable us better to understand the growth and development of
Anglo-Saxon literature. For just as Latin classical literature was
stimulated by the Greek, so also was Anglo-Saxon literature assisted by
the influence of the Latin. And as the classical student seeks to
distinguish that which is native from that which is foreign in Latin
authors, so also is the same distinction of essential importance in the
study of Anglo-Saxon literature.
The influence of Greek upon Latin literature was so far like that of
Latin upon Anglo-Saxon, that it was single and unmixed. But then the
influence of Greek upon Latin was altogether an external and invading
influence, like the influence of Latin on modern English; whereas in the
case of Anglo Saxon the literary faculty was first acquired through
Latin culture; the Saxons were exercised in Latin literature before they
discovered the value of their own; they obtained the habits and
instruments of literature through the education that Latin gave them.
Up to the end of the classical period the Latin had not yet attained, in
literature, the position of a universal language. It was rather the
scholastic language of the Roman aristocracy. There was but one field in
which it occupied the whole area of the Roman world, and that was the
field of law. To this we should add the Latin poetry, which was also
absolute in its own domain. In every other subject Latin was a second
and a subject literary language, the supreme language of literature
being Greek. Greek was the chief literary language even of the Roman
Empire. Of the two languages, Greek was by far the more convenient for
general use. Human thought is naturally serial, and the language that is
to be an acceptable medium of general literature must, above all things,
possess the art of moving forward. In this art the Greek was far in
advance of the Latin, and the curious culture which produced the Latin
classics had, indeed, been productive of much artistic beauty, but had
withal entangled the movement. It is not in Latin but in Greek books
that the knowledge of the ancient world has been preserved. The greatest
works in botany, medicine, geography, astronomy were written not in
Latin but in Greek, even in the most flourishing times of the Roman
power. It is sufficient to mention such names as Dioscorides, Galen,
Strabo, Ptolemy. The greatest works in history, biography, travel,
antiquities, ethics, philosophy were also written in Greek. Such names
as Polybius, Plutarch, Josephus, Pausanias, Dionysius, Epictetus, Lucian
will give the reader means of proof. Fronto could not prevail with a
Roman emperor, his old pupil, to prefer Latin to Greek. Marcus Aurelius
wrote his "Meditations" in Greek. The language of the infant Church,
even in Italy and the West, was not Latin, but Greek. The names of the
first bishops of Rome are Greek names, the Christian Scriptures are in
Greek, and so is the oldest extant Liturgy--the Clementine--which seems
to represent the practice of the West no less than of the East. Not only
the Canonical Scriptures of the New Testament are in Greek, but also
those which were partially or for a time received, as the Epistle of
Clement, the Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas. And a further set of
writings beyond these and inferior to these, but ultimately of great
popularity, were in Greek: I mean the legendary and romantic apocryphal
writings, such as the Acts of Peter and Paul, the Acts of Pilate, and
many others.[1] This latter set was already growing in the second
century, and reached their mature form in the time of Gregory the Great.
It is not clear how early Latin began to be used as the official
language of the Church, but everything points to an important change
soon after the middle of the second century. Before that time, Justin,
living at Rome, and writing (A.D. 138), for the Roman people to
read, a defence of Christianity, which was addressed to the emperor
Antoninus Pius, wrote it in Greek; but before long another apologetic
writer, Minucius Felix, wrote in Latin. This coincides with other
indications to mark a great transition in the latter half of the second
century. Up to this time two languages were in literary currency, a
foreign scholastic language and an æsthetic vernacular. It was chiefly
the wealthy class that sustained these literary languages in Rome. When
in A.D. 166 the Oriental plague was brought to Italy with the
army returning from Parthia, cultivated society was wrecked, and the
literary movement was greatly interrupted in both languages. This was a
blow to the artificial culture of Greek in Italy, just as the plague of
1349 and following years was a blow to the artificial culture of French
in England. After A.D. 166 a check was given to progress, which
lasted, in the secular domain, until the sixteenth century.
Let us spend a moment upon the sequel of the old literature, before we
come to the new, which is our proper subject here.
Under the altered times that now ensued, the continuity of classicism is
seen in two forms of literature--namely, philological criticism and
poetry. The acknowledged model of Latin poetry was Virgil, and his
greatest imitator was Claudian, who had made himself a Latin scholar by
study, much as the moderns do. Claudian is commonly called the last of
the heathen poets. He has also been called the transitional link between
ancient and modern, between heathen and Christian poetry.[2] One
characteristic may be mentioned, namely, his personification of moral or
personal qualities, a sort of allegory destined to flourish for many
centuries, of which the first mature example appears in the "Soul's
Fight" of Prudentius, the Christian poet, who was a contemporary of
Claudian. The school study of the classics produced grammars, and two
authors became chiefly celebrated in this branch, namely, Donatus and
Priscian. Their books were standards through the Dark and Middle
Ages.[3]
There was one department of prose literature in which Latin was
undisturbed and unsophisticated. This was the department of law and
administration. The legal diction escaped, in a great measure, from the
influence of classicism; it kept on its even way through the whole
period, and as it was an ordinary school subject under the empire, the
language of the law books exercised great influence in the formation of
the prose style that continued through the Middle Ages.
We now come to the new Latin literature with which we are intimately
concerned.
By the side of this diminished stream of the elder literature there
rose, after the middle of the second century, a new series of writings,
new in subject, and new also in manner, diction, and spirit. The
phraseology is less literary, and more taken from the colloquial speech
and the usage of everyday life. It seems also to be, in some measure,
the return-language of a colony: some of the earliest and most important
contributions come from Africa, where Latin was now the mother-tongue of
a large population, and that country appears to have escaped the ravages
of the plague.
The first of these books is one that still bears considerable traces of
classicism. It is entitled "Octavius," and is an apology for
Christianity by Minucius Felix. But immediately after him we come upon a
chief representative of this new literature, which aimed less at form
than at the conveying of the author's meaning in the readiest and most
familiar words. This is strikingly the case with the direct and
unstudied Latinity of the first of the Latin fathers, the African
Tertullian, in whom the contrast with classicism is most pronounced. In
him the old conventional dignity gives place to the free display of
personal characteristics, and no writer (it has been said) affords a
better illustration of the saying of Buffon--"the style is the man."
Another African writer was Lactantius, to whom has been attributed that
poem of the Phœnix, which most likely served as pattern to the
Anglo-Saxon poet.[4] It consists of 170 lines, hexameters and
pentameters; terse, poetical, classical. This old Oriental fable, as
told by Ovid, was short and simple: "There is a bird that restores and
reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it Phœnix. It feeds on no common
food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of
secular length, it builds in a high tree with cassia, spikenard,
cinnamon, and myrrh, and on this nest it expires in sweetest odours. A
young Phœnix rises and grows, and when strong enough it takes up the
nest with its deposit and bears it to the City of the Sun, and lays it
down there in front of the sacred portals." Such is the story in Ovid;
and there we know we have a heathen fable. But in the poem of
Lactantius, it is so curiously, and, as it were, significantly
elaborated, that we hardly know whether we are reading a Christian
allegory or no. Allegory has always been a favourite form with Christian
writers, and more than one cause may be assigned for it. Already there
was, in the taste of the age when the Christian literature arose, a
tendency to symbolism, which is seen outside the pale of Christianity.
Moreover, the long time in which the profession of Christianity was
dangerous, favoured the growth of symbolism as a covert means of mutual
intelligence. Then Christian thought had in its own nature something
which invited allegory, partly by its own hidden sympathies with Nature,
and partly by its very immensity, for which all direct speech was felt
to be inadequate. But what doubtless supplied this taste with continual
nutriment was that all-pervading and unspeakable sweetness of Christ's
teaching by parables. The Phœnix was used upon Roman coins to express
the aspiration for renewed vitality in the empire; it was used by early
Christian writers[5] as an emblem of the Resurrection; and in the
Anglo-Saxon poem the allegory is avowed.
To Lactantius also has been ascribed another book in which we are
interested. This is a collection of a hundred Latin riddles under the
obscure name of Symposius, which name has by some editors been set
aside in favour of Lactantius for no better reason than because of some
supposed Africanisms. Aldhelm speaks of these riddles under the name of
Symposius.
A new literature thus rose up by the side of that which was decaying, or
had already decayed. This new literature was the fruit of Christianity;
it was more a literature of the masses than any that had been hitherto
known; it was marked by a strong tinge of the vernacular, and it was
separated in form as well as in matter from the old classical standards.
The spirit of this new literature was characterised by a larger and more
comprehensive humanity. It was animated by those principles of
fellow-feeling, compassion, and hopefulness, which were to prepare the
way for the structure of human society upon new foundations. This,
rather than the classical, is the Latin literature which we have to
follow; this is the preparation for modern literature, and its course
will be found to land us in the Saxon period.
After the triumph of Christianity, this new literature was much
enlarged, and it appropriated to itself something of the grace and
elegance of the earlier classics; and whether we speak of its contents,
or of its artistic character, we may say it culminated at the end of the
fourth and the beginning of the fifth century in the writings of
Augustine. In his time we find that the contrast between profane and
sacred literature is already long established: the old literature is
called by the pagans liberal, but by the Christians secular.
The removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople had ultimately the
effect of substituting Greek for Latin as the language of
administration in the East. On the other hand, the growth of the papal
power in the West favoured the establishment of Latin as the sole
language of the West, to the neglect of Greek. Thus East and West were
then divided in language, and Latin became universal in the West. In
Anglo-Saxon, the people of the Eastern Empire are characterised simply
as the Greeks (Crecas).
The heart of the new Latin literature was in the Scripture translations.
Many exercised themselves in translating, especially the New Testament.
Augustine says the translations were beyond number. But the central and
best known of these many versions is thought to have been made in
Africa. In A.D. 382, Damasus, the bishop of Rome, induced
Jerome to undertake that work of revision which produced the Latin
Bible, which is the only one now generally known, and which is called
the Vulgata, that is to say, the received version. Older italic
versions, so far as they are extant, are now to us among the most
interesting of Christian antiquities. In the early centuries, and
throughout the whole Middle Age, the Scriptures took rank above all
literature, and their influence is everywhere felt.
The sack of Rome (A.D. 410) drew forth from the pagans a fresh
outcry against Christianity. They sought to trace the misery of the
times to the vengeance of the neglected gods. This accusation evoked
from St. Augustine the greatest of all the apologetic treatises, namely,
his "City of God" (De Civitate Dei). This great work exhibits the
writer's mature and final opinions, and it may be said to represent the
maturity and culmination of that Latin literature which began after
A.D. 166, and continued to progress until it was half quenched
in barbarian darkness. The "City of God" has been called the first
attempt at a philosophy of history; and, again, it has been called the
Cyclopædia of the fifth century. It lays out before us a platform of
instruction on things divine and human, which reigned as a standard for
centuries, even until the theology and philosophy of the school-men had
been summed up by Thomas Aquinas.
To this great work a companion book was written by Orosius, who had been
Augustine's disciple. This was a compendium of Universal History, and it
was designed to exhibit the troubles that had afflicted mankind in the
ages of heathenism. It became the established manual of history, and
continued to be so throughout our period; and Orosius was for ages the
only authority for the general course of history. This explains how it
came to be one of the small list of Latin books translated by Alfred.
We have no sooner reached the culmination of that Christian literature
which began after the depression of A.D. 166, than we find
ourselves in the presence of another great fall. The sack of Rome in 410
shook the minds of men as if it were the end of all things. The fifth
century was a time of ruin, but also it was a time of new beginnings.
Three great events are to be noted in this fifth century: 1. The Western
Empire came to an end; 2. The Franks passed over the Rhine into Gaul,
and became Christian; 3. The Saxons passed over the sea to Britain, and
remained heathen until the close of the sixth century. These three
events group together by a natural connection; it was the expiring
empire that made room for the Frankish and Saxon conquests, and these
two conquests have been, and are, fertile in comparisons and contrasts,
and reciprocal action, not only through our period, but till now and
onward.
About A.D. 500, Avitus, bishop of Vienne, wrote a Latin poem on
the mighty acts of Sacred History--(De Spiritalis Historiæ Gestis); and
this book has been regarded as the original source of some passages in
Cædmon and Milton.[6] The poem is in five books, of which the first
three--1. On the Creation; 2. The Disobedience; 3. The Sentence of
God--form a whole in themselves; while the remaining two books, which
are nominally on the Flood and the Red Sea, are really on Baptism and
the Spiritual Restoration of Man. So that the whole work comprises a
Paradise Lost and a Paradise Regained.
We now come to a book which, though not by a Christian author, is so
manifestly influenced by Christianity, and has been so fully recognised
by the Christian public, that it must be included in our list--viz.,
"The Comfort of Philosophy," by Boethius. Gibbon even called it a golden
volume, and one which, if we consider the barbarism of the times and the
situation of the author, must be reckoned of almost incomparable merit.
It was composed in the prison to which Theodoric had consigned the
wisest of the old Roman patriciate; and it is commonly regarded as
closing the canon of Roman literature. It was translated into all the
vernaculars, Alfred's translation into English being the first, and
Notker's into High German being the second.[7] Other works of Boethius
lived through the Dark and Middle Ages, especially his translations of
Aristotle, which were standards for the student in philosophy.
From this time we see a world fallen back into a wild and savage
infancy, and we shall witness the gradual operation of a spiritual power
reclaiming, educating, transforming it. The subject of Anglo-Saxon
literature derives, perhaps, its greatest interest from the fact that it
represents one great stage of this process.
As we approach the Saxon period we must take particular notice of a new
agency that now comes on the scene. The institution of monachism was one
of considerable standing before the date at which we are now arrived,
but it had never yet found any function of systematic usefulness.
Benedict of Nursia is called the father of monks, not because he first
instituted them, but because he organised and regulated the monastic
life and converted it to a powerful agency for religion and
civilisation. Benedict was born in 480, and he died at Monte Cassino in
543. The Benedictine institution is the great historical fact which
demands our attention in the early part of the sixth century.
An eminent Benedictine was the Roman Pontiff Gregory, surnamed the
Great. He was born in 540, and died in 604. He designed the conversion
of the Saxons. He was a great author, though he was ignorant of Greek.
We will here notice three of his works--the "Commentary on Job," the
"Pastoral Care," and the "Dialogues."
The first of these is remarkable as a specimen of that mystical
interpretation of Scripture which characterised the exegesis of the
Middle Ages, and of which manifold examples occur in the Homilies of
Ælfric, who names Gregory as one of his sources.
The "Pastoral Care" is worthy of its name as a book of direction and
advice from the chief pastor to his subordinates. It is full of grave
practical wisdom, animated by the Christian spirit and the love of
souls. For prudence it is worthy of the pontiff who solved Augustine's
questions, as we read in Beda's history. In this book we discover the
true and legitimate source of the power of the clergy, and we verify the
words of Joseph Butler, who said that if conscience had power as it has
authority, it would govern the world. The power of the clergy is
sometimes explained as a stratagem; he who reads this book will see a
deeper root to that power; he will see that if trickery made that power
to fall, it was something else that caused it to rise.
A greater contrast than that between the "Pastoral Care" and the
"Dialogues" it is hardly possible to conceive. We cannot wonder that the
identity of authorship has been questioned, and that the "Dialogues"
have been attributed to another Gregory. The difficulty is, however,
lessened if we consider the widely different conditions of the readers
addressed. At a time when an old civilisation and a crude barbarism
were intermingled and living side by side, the one was written for the
highest, the other for the lowest in the intellectual scale. The
"Pastoral Care" was addressed to the Roman clergy, with whom, if
anywhere, something of the old culture still lingered. The "Dialogues"
were intended for the barbarians. The book is addressed to Theodolinda,
the Lombard queen. It is a book full of wonderful, not to say puerile,
stories, in which a religious lesson or moral is always conveyed, but
not always one that carries conviction to the mind of the modern
Christian. It reflects the policy of converting the barbarians by
condescending to their tastes, and belongs to the same system as that
increase of pomp and ceremony which was due to the same motive. This
book far outran the former in popularity. It was among the earliest of
Latin books to be translated into vernacular languages. Gregory's
writings were very influential on popular religious literature
throughout the Dark Ages, and nowhere more so than in England, where he
was honoured as a national apostle. There exists an Anglo-Saxon
translation of the "Dialogues," but it has not yet been edited.
The time of Gregory the Great was the time in which, to use Dean
Milman's words, "the human mind was finally Christianised." This
triumph, as usually happens, was overdriven. We see a too jealous
exclusion of secular literature, and a too credulous and favourable
disposition towards Christian legends. This was the time when the
secondary apocryphal literature reached its maturity, and was grouped in
collections. An active labourer in this pious work was Gregory of
Tours. He contributed the "Miracles of St. Andrew," and possibly other
pieces. This period, from the middle of the sixth into the early part of
the seventh century, is the period of the greatest literary activity of
the monasteries of Gaul, and the apocryphal collections seem to have
been made in some of these[8] If the Christianised Latin literature
reached its highest excellence in the time of Augustine, it discovered
its extremest tendency in the time of the two Gregories.
There is yet one form of literature that claims our attention. The Greek
romances of love and marvellous adventure were probably discountenanced
in Christian families, and we may regard the secondary Apocrypha as a
kind of pious substitute for such entertaining works of fiction. But
there was one of these old heathen novels that held its ground, that can
be traced in more than one early monastic library, and that was
translated into every vernacular--Anglo-Saxon first. This was the
Romance of Apollonius of Tyre, from which comes the story of that
Shakespearean play, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre."
The books which we have noticed between the second and the seventh
centuries may be allowed to represent that Christianised Latin
literature which is the historical bridge between the ancient classical
and the modern vernacular literatures. The latter had as yet no
existence. In Mœsia, on the shores of the Danube, a Gothic dialect had
been immortalised by Scripture translations from the Greek as early as
the fourth century; but nothing of the kind had as yet appeared under
the Latin influence in the West. The Merovingian Franks left no
vernacular literature; on the contrary, they rapidly lost their native
speech, and adopted that of the conquered nation.
The Franks and the Saxons had been neighbours in their native homes,
speaking almost the same mother-tongue; but their migrations led them
into new regions in which they again proved neighbours under altered
conditions. Each was to take a leading part in the formation of modern
Europe, but they were to be divided in that office, their lots being
severally cast with the two great constituent factors of modern
civilisation. The one was to lead the Romanesque, the other the Gothic
division. The Franks became assimilated to the Romanised Gauls, and
formed, with them, one Latin-speaking Church; they raised the standard
of orthodoxy against the Arianism of the other barbarian powers, and the
Frankish king was decorated with the title of Most Christian; the
history of that Church was written in Latin by Gregory of Tours. This
work, upon which he was engaged from A.D. 576 to 592, bears
strong marks of literary degeneracy. Gregory complained of the low state
of education in the cities of Gaul. He became a historian only from a
sense of necessity, and for fear lest the memory of important events
should perish. He has been called the Herodotus of the Franks, and the
Herodotus of barbarism. The history of the Church in Gaul after the
absorption of the Franks is not one of quickened progress but of crime
and torpidity. Gregory the Great justified his mission to the Saxons on
the express ground that the Church of Gaul, whose natural duty it was,
had neglected it. The history of the Merovingian Franks stands in
disadvantageous contrast with the early vigour of the Saxon Churches.
The first great elevation of European culture was to spring, not from
among the Franks, but in the remoter colonies of the Saxons.
The English conversion began A.D. 597; and two religious
foundations were quickly established:--1. The Minster of St. Saviour,
afterwards called Christ Church, and now Canterbury Cathedral; 2. The
Abbey of SS. Peter and Paul, outside the walls of Canterbury on the
east, which was afterwards called St. Augustine's. Of the foundation of
schools nothing is heard at this time; but a generation later,
A.D. 631, we find the Kentish schools taken as a model for
schools to be founded in East Anglia by Felix.[9] It is an interesting
question whether these were the missionary schools, or whether they were
schools which kept up the traditions of Roman education in a degenerate
form like the schools in Gaul. On the ground that our oldest document is
a Code of the first converted king, it has been too easily inferred,
that before this time the Saxons were wholly destitute of literary
appliances. Were the fact more certain, than it is, the conclusion would
be weak. There are in the Chronicles certain archaic annals which have
been thought to be a possible product of the heathen period.
The second home of culture was in Northumbria. A wonderful combination
of influences met on this favoured soil. In the extreme province of the
empire, there had been a concentration of military force, to keep the
Picts in check; the centre of Roman government on the island had been at
York, and here, if anywhere, something of the civilisation of Rome would
naturally remain.
Another important influence was the Irish, or, as it was then called,
the Scotian. It is true that the first evangelist in order of time was
Paulinus, who came from Kent, and represented the Roman mission. But the
savour of the Gospel was first received through the teaching of the
Irish missionaries, of whom the foremost name is Aidan. Never did any
people embrace Christianity with such entire heart as the Irish; and
much of their lofty devotion was communicated to the Angles whom they
converted.
Upon this, when they were prepared to profit by it, supervened the
mission of Theodore and Hadrian, who implanted the seed of learning,
with great ability, at an opportune moment, and with the most abundant
results. Under the warmth of a first love, all these advantages were
moulded together, and resulted in making Northumbria for three or four
generations the centre of European culture. The seat of this culture was
York, the old Roman capital, and its culmination was under Archbishop
Egbert (734-766), and his successor Albert. The great writings of this
period are in Latin, and the chief names are Aldhelm, Eddi, Winfrid
(Bonifacius), Danihel, Beda, Alcuin. Of vernacular prose the chief
remnant is a series of Northern Annals, between A.D. 737 and
806, which have been embodied in some of the Southern Chronicles. But
what specially characterised this period was a rich development of
sacred poetry, some remnants of which are perhaps extant in our
"Cædmon." But our fullest knowledge of this old poetic strain comes back
to us from Old Saxony, where it was propagated by the Anglian
missionaries, and it survives under a thin disguise in the poem called
the "Heliand."
In Aldhelm we see that this new learning was not solely ecclesiastical,
but that there was something in it which aimed at recovery of classical
learning. He was distinguished for his elaborate study of Latin metres,
and his commendation of the pursuit. He wrote poems in Latin hexameters,
and among these a Collection of Enigmas, which bore fruit in the later
Anglo-Saxon literature.
The latter part of the Anglian period produced Alcuin, the distinguished
scholar who was engaged by Charles the Great to organise his new
schools. So we see the lamp of culture pass from Anglia into Frankland,
shortly before the time when Anglia was overrun by the Danes and almost
all the monuments which were destructible perished.
We may dismiss the Anglian period with the remark, that its achievements
are all the more distinguished from the fact that they belong to a time
when the whole Continent was in the thickest darkness, that is to say,
the seventh and eighth centuries.
Under Charlemagne a new start was made for the restitution of
literature. He drew learned men to his court, Alcuin from England,
Paulus Diaconus from Italy. Thus he made a new centre for European
learning, and France continued to sustain that character down to the
latter end of the Middle Ages. His chief agent in this great work of
enlightenment was Alcuin, who was educated at York under Egbert, who had
been a disciple of Beda. And so we see the torch of learning handed on
from Northumbria to the Frankish dominions in time to save the tradition
of culture from perishing in the desolation that was near. Among the
names that adorn the annals of revived learning under Charles himself,
we must mention Smaragdus, because Ælfric acknowledges him as one of his
sources. The book referred to would hardly be the "Diadem of Monks," a
selection of pieces from the Fathers with Scripture texts, worked up as
it were into a Whole Duty of Man, although Ælfric would be likely to
know this book; but for the composition of his Homilies it is more
likely that Ælfric would have drawn from another book by Smaragdus,
namely, his commentary on the Epistles and Gospels for Sundays.
Men who have left their names in history now followed in the work of
sustaining the revival of learning. We must mention Rabanus Maurus,
whose Scripture commentaries were used by the poet of the "Heliand"; and
Walahfrid Strabo, who wrote on plants and had a taste for Greek
etymologies.
The revival of secular learning brought in its train a strong
development of speculative theology. The ninth century is marked by
controversy on the Eucharist, and on Predestination. The former of
these controversies had an effect upon Anglo-Saxon literature, which
requires us to record one or two main facts in this place. Paschasius
Radbert, a monk of Corbey, who was for a short while Abbot of that
famous monastery, wrote a treatise (the first of its kind) on the
Eucharist, maintaining the change in the elements. The opposite side was
taken by Ratramnus (otherwise called Bertram), a monk of the same house.
His views were adopted by Ælfric in the tenth century, and were embodied
in a Homily, which was welcomed by the English reformers of the
sixteenth century as an antidote to the doctrine of transubstantiation.
Haymo, bishop of Halberstadt, who had studied at Fulda, maintained the
doctrine of the material change in its most extreme form. He was also a
commentator upon the Scriptures, and Ælfric used his commentaries, but
only "sometimes."
The Danish scourge beggared the land, as in all other respects, so in
learning and in all the liberal arts. We who had formerly sent
instructors to other nations, were now suitors for help in our
destitution. The same national deliverer who rid us of the destroyer,
was also the restorer of education. If he cannot be said to have
effectually restored learning, at least he laboured with so much
earnestness at the task that he may be said to have bespoken an ultimate
though delayed success. Alfred is not more famous for his great battles
than for his great literary efforts.
The literary restoration of his time is supported by the Carlovingian
schools, and in this we may see a repayment in the ninth century of that
help which Charles had received from England through Alcuin in the
eighth.
Different in its origin is the remarkable spring of religious and
intellectual life in the tenth century. Ever since the synod of
Aix-la-Chapelle in 813, the religious spirit in Gaul had manifested
itself in the stricter discipline of the Benedictine monasteries, and
this movement reached us in the middle of the tenth century. The
Benedictines had a famous school on the Loire at a place then called
Floriacum, now Fleury or St. Benoît-sur-Loire, and some leading men in
England were in active relations with this house.[10] In the eclipse
which the nominal seat of Christianity was under in the tenth century,
the light of the Church shone in France and England. The reforms of
Æðelwold and Dunstan and Odo are the transmission of this movement to
our island.
This great movement has only time to take shape enough to declare itself
when it is again interrupted by troublous times, invasions, and wars,
and changes of dynasty, and before any length of peace is again allowed,
by the decisive and final blow of the Norman Conquest, which brought
with it more than a change of dynasty. It changed the whole body of the
governing and influential classes, not from one stratum to another
within the Saxon nation, but by the introduction of a ruling class from
another nation, speaking another language, and one of a different
family.
The new language thus brought in was no barbarous dialect, but the most
cultivated of the Continental vernaculars. It was the other great factor
of European literature. It had begun to be cultivated later than the
Saxon, but then it had ages of culture at its back. The strength of this
language was in its poetry--just the element which had stagnated in
England. The French taught not only the English but all Europe in
poetry. All modern European poetry is after the French model.
After the Conquest Saxon literature had a stronghold in the great
religious houses, and here it continued to be cultivated until far into
the twelfth century. This was due not only to the patriotic sentiment,
but also to the interests of their several foundations. The chief
Anglo-Saxon works that we have from the times after the Conquest are
concerned directly or indirectly with the property or privilege of the
religious house from which the books emanate. This is the time that
produced the Worcester chartulary, the Rochester chartulary, the
Peterborough chronicle which embodies the privileges of the house, and
the Winton chartulary. This diplomatic interest was strong and permanent
enough to cause Anglo-Saxon studies to be pursued until late in the
Middle Age, perhaps even down to the time of the Dissolution by Henry
VIII.
But passing from this, which is an artificial continuation of the old
literature, we may observe that it had a continuation which was
perfectly natural and spontaneous. Examples of this are the late
semi-Saxon Homilies, in which we see the gradual decay of the old
flectional grammar: but the most signal examples are the two great
poetical works of Layamon and Orm. These are full of French influence,
though not in the same manner. Layamon's "Brut" is translated (though
not without original episodes) from the French of Robert Wace: and the
"Ormulum," though drawn as to its matter from Latin comments on the
Gospels, yet is in form deeply imbued with the character of French
poetry. Indeed, the English language became more and more a vehicle for
the reproduction of French literature. This continued to the middle of
the fourteenth century, when the plague, which altered so many things,
altered also this. The supremacy of the French language was broken, the
native language was again heard in legal pleadings, and the poetry of
Chaucer laid the permanent foundation of modern English literature.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A translation of these writings is given in Clark's "Ante-Nicene
Library," vol. xvi. Among the "Acts of Pilate" are contained the so
called "Gospel of Nicodemus," which is the fountain of that favourite
mediæval subject, "The Harrowing of Hell."
[2] North Pinder, "Less Known Latin Poets," p. 486.
[3] Donatus was Jerome's teacher. His name grew into a proverb, insomuch
that an elementary treatise of any sort might in the fourteenth century
be called a "donat." Priscian was a contemporary of Boethius. His
grammar was epitomised by Rabanus Maurus in the ninth century.
[4] Other Latin poets who touched this subject are--Ovid, "Metam.," xv.,
402; Martial, "Epigrams," v., 7; Claudian's First Idyll, a poem of 110
hexameters, is entirely devoted to it.
[5] Clemens Romanus; Tertullian, "De Resurrectione Carnis," c. 13. See
Adolf Ebert, "Christlich-Laternische Literatur," vol. i., p. 95.
[6] Siever's "Der Heliand," p. 18, and references: Guizot, "Histoire de
la Civilisation en France," 18^e Leçon.
[7] For the Latin text, and the bibliography, there is an admirable
little edition by Peiper, Lipsiæ, 1871.
[8] R.A. Lipsius, "Die Apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und
Apostellegenden," Braunschweig, 1883, p. 170.
[9] Bede's "Ecclesiastical History," iii., 18.
[10] It was destroyed by the Calvinists in 1562.