In the change of religion, care was taken to render the transit from
falsehood to truth as little violent as possible. Though the
first proselytes were kings, it does not appear that there was any
persecution. It was a precept of Pope Gregory, under whose auspices this
mission was conducted, that the heathen temples should not be destroyed,
especially where they were well built; but that, first removing the
idols, they should be consecrated anew by holier rites, and to better
purposes (Bed. Hist. Eccl. l. i. c. 30.), in order that the prejudices
of the people might not be too rudely shocked by a declared profanation
of what they had so long held sacred; and that everywhere beholding the
same places, to which they had formerly resorted for religious comfort,
they might be gradually reconciled to the new doctrines and ceremonies
which were there introduced; and as the sacrifices used in the Pagan
worship were always attended with feasting, and consequently were highly
grateful to the multitude, the pope ordered, that oxen should as usual
be slaughtered near the church, and the people indulged in their ancient
festivity. (Id. c. eod.) Whatever popular customs of heathenism were
found to be absolutely not incompatible with Christianity were retained;
and some of them were continued to a very late period. Deer were at a
certain season brought into St. Paul's Church in London, and laid on
the altar (Dugdale's History of St. Paul's.); and this custom subsisted
until the Reformation. The names of some of the church festivals were,
with a similar design, taken from those of the heathen, which had been
celebrated at the same time of the year. Nothing could have been more
prudent than these regulations; they were indeed formed from a perfect
understanding of human nature.
Whilst the inferior people were thus insensibly led into a better order,
the example and countenance of the great completed the work. For the
Saxon kings and ruling men embraced religion with so signal, and
in their rank so unusual, a zeal, that in many instances they even
sacrificed to its advancement the prime objects of their ambition.
Wulfere, king of the West Saxons, bestowed the Isle of Wight on the king
of Sussex, to persuade him to embrace Christianity. (Bed. Hist. Eccl.
l. iv. c. 13.) This zeal operated in the same manner in favour of their
instructors. The greatest kings and conquerors frequently resigned their
crowns, and shut themselves up in monasteries. When kings became monks,
a high lustre was reflected upon the monastic state, and great credit
accrued to the power of their doctrine, which was able to produce such
extraordinary effects upon persons, over whom religion has commonly the
slightest influence.
The zeal of the missionaries was also much assisted by their superiority
in the arts of civil life. At their first preaching in Sussex, that
country was reduced to the greatest distress from a drought, which had
continued for three years. The barbarous inhabitants, destitute of
any means to alleviate the famine, in an epidemic transport of despair
frequently united forty and fifty in a body, and joining their hands,
precipitated themselves from the cliffs, and were either drowned or
dashed to pieces on the rocks. Though a maritime people, they knew
not how to fish; and this ignorance probably arose from a remnant of
Druidical superstition, which had forbidden the use of that sort of
diet. In this calamity, Bishop Wilfred, their first preacher, collecting
nets, at the head of his attendants, plunged into the sea; and having
opened this great resource of food, he reconciled the desperate people
to life, and their minds to the spiritual care of those who had shown
themselves so attentive to their temporal preservation. (Bed. Hist.
Eccl. l. iv. c. 13.) The same regard to the welfare of the people
appeared in all their actions. The Christian kings sometimes made
donations to the church of lands conquered from their heathen enemies.
The clergy immediately baptized and manumitted their new vassals. Thus
they endeared to all sorts of men doctrines and teachers, which could
mitigate the rigorous law of conquest; and they rejoiced to see religion
and liberty advancing with an equal progress. Nor were the monks in
this time in anything more worthy of their praise than in their zeal
for personal freedom. In the canon, wherein they provided against the
alienation of their lands, among other charitable exceptions to this
restraint, they particularize the purchase of liberty. (Spelm. Concil.
Page 329.) In their transactions with the great the same point was
always strenuously laboured. When they imposed penance, they were
remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank. But they always made them
purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts of beneficence.
They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisement of their own
slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged to others; they
directed them to the repair of highways, and to the construction of
churches, bridges, and other works of general utility. (Instauret
etiam Dei ecclesiam; et instauret vias publicas, pontibus super aquas
profundas et super caenosas vias; et manumittat servos suos proprios, et
redimat ab aliis hominibus servos suos ad libertatem.--L. Eccl. Edgari
14.) They extracted the fruits of virtue even from crimes, and whenever
a great man expiated his private offences, he provided in the same act
for the public happiness. The monasteries were then the only bodies
corporate in the kingdom; and if any persons were desirous to perpetuate
their charity by a fund for the relief of the sick or indigent, there
was no other way than to confide this trust to some monastery. The monks
were the sole channel, through which the bounty of the rich could pass
in any continued stream to the poor; and the people turned their eyes
towards them in all their distresses.
We must observe, that the monks of that time, especially those from
Ireland (Aidanus Finam et Colmanus mirae sanctitatis fuerunt et
parsimoniae. Adeo enim sacerdotes erant illius temporis ab avaritia
immunes, ut nec territoria nisi coacti acciperent.--Hen. Hunting. apud
Decem. l. iii. page 333. Bed. Hist. Eccl. l. iii. c. 26.), who had a
considerable share in the conversion of all the northern parts, did not
show that rapacious desire of riches, which long disgraced, and finally
ruined, their successors. Not only did they not seek, but seemed even to
shun, such donations. This prevented that alarm, which might have arisen
from an early and declared avarice. At this time the most fervent and
holy anchorites retired to places the furthest that could be found from
human concourse and help, to the most desolate and barren situations,
which even from their horror seemed particularly adapted to men who had
renounced the world. Many persons followed them in order to partake
of their instructions and prayers, or to form themselves upon their
example. An opinion of their miracles after their death drew still
greater numbers. Establishments were gradually made. The monastic life
was frugal, and the government moderate. These causes drew a constant
concourse. Sanctified deserts assumed a new face; the marshes were
drained, and the lands cultivated. And as this revolution seemed rather
the effect of the holiness of the place than of any natural causes,
it increased their credit; and every improvement drew with it a new
donation. In this manner the great abbeys of Croyland and Glastonbury,
and many others, from the most obscure beginnings, were advanced to a
degree of wealth and splendour little less than royal. In these rude
ages, government was not yet fixed upon solid principles, and everything
was full of tumult and distraction. As the monasteries were better
secured from violence by their character, than any other places by laws,
several great men, and even sovereign princes, were obliged to take
refuge in convents, who, when by a more happy revolution in their
fortunes they were reinstated in their former dignities, thought they
could never make a sufficient return for the safety they had enjoyed
under the sacred hospitality of these roofs. Not content to enrich them
with ample possessions, that others also might partake of the protection
they had experienced, they formally erected into an asylum those
monasteries, and their adjacent territory. So that all thronged to that
refuge, who were rendered unquiet by their crimes, their misfortunes, or
the severity of their lords; and content to live under a government,
to which their minds were subject, they raised the importance of their
masters by their numbers, their labour, and above all, by an inviolable
attachment.
The monastery was always the place of sepulture for the greatest
lords and kings. This added to the other causes of reverence a sort of
sanctity, which, in universal opinion, always attends the repositories
of the dead; and they acquired also thereby a more particular protection
against the great and powerful; for who would violate the tomb of his
ancestors, or his own? It was not an unnatural weakness to think, that
some advantage might be derived from lying in holy places, and amongst
holy persons: and this superstition was fomented with the greatest
industry and art. The monks of Glastonbury spread a notion, that it was
almost impossible any person should be damned, whose body lay in their
cemetery. This must be considered as coming in aid of the amplest of
their resources, prayer for the dead.
But there was no part of their policy, of whatever nature, that procured
to them a greater or juster credit, than their cultivation of learning
and useful arts. For if the monks contributed to the fall of science in
the Roman empire, it is certain, that the introduction of learning and
civility into this northern world is entirely owing to their labours.
It is true, that they cultivated letters only in a secondary way, and as
subsidiary to religion. But the scheme of Christianity is such, that
it almost necessitates an attention to many kinds of learning. For
the Scripture is by no means an irrelative system of moral and divine
truths; but it stands connected with so many histories, and with the
laws, opinions, and manners of so many various sorts of people, and in
such different times, that it is altogether impossible to arrive to
any tolerable knowledge of it, without having recourse to much exterior
inquiry. For which reason the progress of this religion has always been
marked by that of letters. There were two other circumstances at this
time, that contributed no less to the revival of learning. The sacred
writings had not been translated into any vernacular language, and even
the ordinary service of the church was still continued in the Latin
tongue; all, therefore, who formed themselves for the ministry, and
hoped to make any figure in it, were in a manner driven to the study
of the writers of polite antiquity, in order to qualify themselves
for their most ordinary functions. By this means a practice, liable in
itself to great objections, had a considerable share in preserving the
wrecks of literature; and was one means of conveying down to our times
those inestimable monuments, which otherwise, in the tumult of barbarous
confusion on one hand, and untaught piety on the other, must inevitably
have perished. The second circumstance, the pilgrimages of that age, if
considered in itself, was as liable to objection as the former; but it
proved of equal advantage to the cause of literature. A principal object
of these pious journeys was Rome, which contained all the little that
was left in the western world, of ancient learning and taste. The other
great object of those pilgrimages was Jerusalem; this led them into the
Grecian empire, which still subsisted in the East with great majesty
and power. Here the Greeks had not only not discontinued the ancient
studies, but they added to the stock of arts many inventions of
curiosity and convenience that were unknown to antiquity. When,
afterwards, the Saracens prevailed in that part of the world, the
pilgrims had also, by the same means, an opportunity of profiting
from the improvements of that laborious people; and however little the
majority of these pious travellers might have had such objects in
their view, something useful must unavoidably have stuck to them; a
few certainly saw with more discernment, and rendered their travels
serviceable to their country by importing other things besides miracles
and legends. Thus a communication was opened between this remote island
and countries, of which it otherwise could then scarcely have heard
mention made; and pilgrimages thus preserved that intercourse amongst
mankind, which is now formed by politics, commerce, and learned
curiosity. It is not wholly unworthy of observation, that Providence,
which strongly appears to have intended the continual intermixture of
mankind, never leaves the human mind destitute of a principle to
effect it. This purpose is sometimes carried on by a sort of migratory
instinct, sometimes by the spirit of conquest; at one time avarice
drives men from their homes, at another they are actuated by a thirst
of knowledge; where none of these causes can operate, the sanctity of
particular places attracts men from the most distant quarters. It was
this motive which sent thousands in those ages to Jerusalem and Rome;
and now, in a full tide, impels half the world annually to Mecca.
By those voyages, the seeds of various kinds of knowledge and
improvement were at different times imported into England. They were
cultivated in the leisure and retirement of monasteries; otherwise they
could not have been cultivated at all: for it was altogether necessary
to draw certain men from the general rude and fierce society, and wholly
to set a bar between them and the barbarous life of the rest of the
world, in order to fit them for study, and the cultivation of arts and
science. Accordingly, we find everywhere, in the first institutions
for the propagation of knowledge amongst any people, that those, who
followed it, were set apart and secluded from the mass of the community.
The great ecclesiastical chair of this kingdom, for near a century, was
filled by foreigners; they were nominated by the popes, who were in that
age just or politic enough to appoint persons of a merit in some degree
adequate to that important charge. Through this series of foreign and
learned prelates, continual accessions were made to the originally
slender stock of English literature. The greatest and most valuable of
these accessions was made in the time and by the care of Theodorus, the
seventh archbishop of Canterbury. He was a Greek by birth; a man of a
high ambitious spirit, and of a mind more liberal, and talents better
cultivated, than generally fell to the lot of the western prelates. He
first introduced the study of his native language into this island.
He brought with him a number of valuable books in many faculties; and
amongst them a magnificent copy of the works of Homer; the most ancient
and best of poets, and the best chosen to inspire a people, just
initiated into letters, with an ardent love, and with a true taste for
the sciences. Under his influence a school was formed at Canterbury; and
thus the other great fountain of knowledge, the Greek tongue, was opened
in England in the year of our Lord 669.