_Arnulph the Great_
Some six years before the death of Baldwin Calvus, his suzerain, Charles
the Mild, had endeavoured to buy off Rolf the Ganger, a pirate chief who
about this time had carved out for himself 'a sphere of influence' along
Seine, with an offer of Baldwin's fief. But Baldwin meanwhile had got
wind of the plot, had set his house in order, had strengthened his
border towns. Rolf refused to exchange the land which his sword had won
for a less advantageous holding, which perhaps he might never obtain,
and the famous treaty of Claire-sur-Epte was the outcome of his common
sense.
By it he became the French King's vassal for the province we now call
Normandy, received the hand of his daughter in marriage, and embraced
the Christian faith. And though to the cynical Norman chief his oath of
fealty may have been little more than an empty form, and his change of
religion but a move in the game, the signing of the treaty of
Claire-sur-Epte was, for Neustria, the first streak of dawn. Then it was
that the storm which had been so long whirling its fury on the land at
last began to lull, and when, in 918, Baldwin Calvus was gathered to his
fathers, and Arnulph his son reigned in his stead, the times were
sufficiently tranquil to enable him to gather up the slackened reins of
government, and to set about a work much needed after the long years of
bloodshed and anarchy--a work of healing, and restoration, and reform.
It was chiefly in the reorganization of the Church in Flanders, and, in
the first place, of the great religious houses, that Arnulph sought to
accomplish the object he had in view. Matter of no little moment in days
when the lay aristocracy knew no trade but war, and the peasant was
still his lord's chattel, when the monastery was not only the last
shelter of learning and the arts, but the only agricultural college and
the only technical school, when the monk was the one physician, and the
one intelligent artisan, and the clerk, alike legislator, notary,
scribe, was almost the only man who knew how to sign his name.
Though the Church had suffered much at the hands of the Danes,
monasticism was not, at this time, at such a low ebb in Flanders as it
was in England in the days of Alfred. In England it was practically
extinct, in Flanders it had only languished. Nevertheless, and strange
as it may seem, it was chiefly owing to the efforts of Count Baldwin's
English wife, Alfrida,[3] the daughter of our own King Alfred, that
monasticism became once more in Flanders a burning and a shining light.
She it was who first tended the dying flame. The good work was completed
by her son Arnulph, who, in this matter, played much the same part in
his own dominions as that played in England by King Edred, his first
cousin. He was the builder or restorer of eighteen great monasteries.
The famous Chapter of St. Donatian at Bruges was founded and
munificently endowed by him. The Collegiate Church of St. Mary at
Ardenburg, and the Collegiate Church of St. Peter at Thorhout, were each
of them his handiwork, and a host of minor foundations bear witness to
his untiring energy and zeal.
He himself acted as abbot, or chief officer, of the great Abbey of St.
Bertin at St. Omer. He was the friend and patron of St. Gerard, the
thaumaturgus of Brogne, and through him he reformed more than one
religious house. He had received St. Dunstan with hospitality when he
fled before the fury of Æthelgifu, and in after years, when the storm
had passed and Dunstan had returned to his own land, we find the
Margrave of Flanders among his correspondents. A letter still
extant--_Epistola Arnulfi ad Dunstanum Archiepiscopum_ (MS. Cotton,
Tiberius A. 15, fo. 159b)--bears witness to their mutual esteem and
affection.
Dunstan's own munificence to the monasteries of Flanders, which, after
those of his own country, as Dr. Stubbs[4] points out, were, in a
special manner, the object of his solicitude, was doubtless prompted by
gratitude for the kindness which he had received from the Flemish monks
and their great Count Abbot Arnulph, and it was probably owing to
Dunstan's laudatory stories concerning the Flemish Count, that 'the fame
of his charity and good works was spread abroad throughout all the land
of Albion.' This last fact we learn from a curious letter addressed to
Arnulph himself by an English ecclesiastic of high position, whose
identity, as Dr. Stubbs observes, it is almost impossible to establish.
He was certainly the head of a monastery, perhaps a bishop. Dr. Stubbs
conjectures Ethelwold of Winchester, or may be Elfege, Ethelwold's
predecessor in the same See, and Dunstan's near relative. Whoever its
author may have been, the letter is an interesting one, and sufficiently
characteristic of the age in which it was written.
After expressing his best wishes, and enlarging on Arnulph's fame and
good works, the writer of the epistle in question goes on to say that he
was sending a messenger who would explain to Arnulph by word of mouth
that he had in his possession a book of the Gospels which had been
purloined from his--the writer's--Church by 'two clerks waxen old in
wickedness, and who, a fact much to be marvelled at in such men, had
afterwards confessed what they had done, and acknowledged that,
journeying to Flanders to recover a little girl who had been carried off
by his--Count Arnulph's--Danes, they had visited the Count in one of his
country houses, perhaps Winendaele or Maele, and there sold to him the
volume in question for the sum of three marks.' The writer concludes by
begging Arnulph to restore the book, 'for the love of God and all His
Saints.'[5] It would seem, then, from the above letter, that a certain
number of Danes were at this time settled in Flanders, and that they had
not yet entirely relinquished their predatory habits.
'Ego Arnulphus dictus Magnus'--I, Arnulph, whom men call the Great. Thus
did the Count of Flanders style himself in the year 961. In a grant of
fresh privileges to the great Benedictine house at Blandinium, indited
perhaps when the hand of death was upon him, Count Arnulph writes in
lowlier strain, 'Ego cognosco,' he says, 'Ego cognosco me reum et
peccatorem.'
He knew himself better perhaps than did his people, and yet the surname
which they gave him was one which he justly deserved. If any man merited
to be called great,, that man was Arnulph of Flanders. Consider what he
did.
In spite of almost insurmountable difficulties, in spite of a body eaten
up by disease, and often racked and torn by pain, whilst with one hand
he kept his garden gate, no child's play, with the other he went on
patiently sowing and dressing, and watering the tender seeds of that
plant which we call civilization, and this continued for forty years.
There is another side to the picture. The age of Arnulph was an age of
blood, and some said his hands too were stained with it. Perhaps they
were, but if this were so, at least he never sinned for mean or sordid
or selfish ends. If the guilt of murder encumbered his soul, it was
burthened for the sake of his people.
Of the greatest crime with which his enemies charged him, he denied all
knowledge, and even that black crime found its sanction in the approval
of the nation.
Flanders had so long been a prey to cruel and treacherous foes, that she
had at length come to believe that perjury, treason, cool-blooded murder
were legitimate means of defence, and the death of Wilhelm the Norman,
lured to destruction with fair speech and false promises, covered
Baldwin Baldzo[6] with glory, for if Arnulph had inspired the deed, it
was Baldwin who struck the blow. It gained for him more credit in
Flanders than if he had taken ten cities, and when he returned to his
native land, still reeking with his victim's blood, he was everywhere
received with frenzied ovations, and proclaimed the saviour of his
country.
Perhaps he merited the title. Wilhelm was the mightiest man of his day,
and he had always shown himself an implacable enemy to Flanders.