_S. HILDA_
Hilda was born in 614. She was the daughter of Hereric, nephew of Edwin,
king of Northumbria.
Her childhood was darkened by the civil wars that rent Northumbria, at
this time divided into two kingdoms, each engaged in fighting the other
for supremacy.
In 627, when aged thirteen, she received baptism, along with her uncle
Edwin, at the hands of S. Paulinus. She lived thirty-three years in her
family, “very nobly,” says Bede, and then resolved to dedicate the rest
of her life to God. Her intention was to go to Chelles, in France, for
her training; and, for this purpose, she went into East Anglia to its
queen, her sister.
She spent a year in preparation for her final exile; but her purpose was
frustrated by a summons from S. Aidan, the Apostle of Northumbria, to
return to her own country and settle there. She obeyed at once, and was
placed by Aidan as superior over a few sisters in a small monastic
settlement on the north bank of the Wear. But she was there for a year
only, when she was called to replace S. Heiu, the first Abbess of
Hartlepool. This was in 649.
At Hartlepool, the Saint’s care was to introduce order and discipline,
which had, apparently, been relaxed under Heiu. Hither came her mother,
who passed the rest of her days under the rule and care of her daughter,
and there she died and was buried.
In some excavations carried on at Hartlepool on the site of the old
abbey, between 1833 and 1843, among a number of Anglo-Saxon tombs that
were discovered, some bore the names of Berchtgitha, Hildigitha, and
other members of the sisterhood.[5]
So great was Hilda’s reputation for spiritual wisdom, that when King
Oswy, in fulfilment of his vow, consecrated his daughter, Elfleda, to
Almighty God, as a thank-offering for his victory over Penda, King of
the Mercians, it was to S. Hilda’s care that he committed her.
Whether now or later is uncertain, but she had a second convent at
Hackness, where some very remarkable relics of the ecclesiastical
foundations of Hilda still remain.
In 658, the peace and security of Northumbria had been secured by the
final victory gained by Oswy over the Mercians, at Winwaed. Hilda at
once took advantage of the king’s vow to give a certain number of farms
to God, to secure Streaneshalch, now Whitby, for the establishment of a
new and larger monastery.
M. de Montalembert, the historian of Western Monachism, says that: “Of
all sites chosen by monastic architects, after that of Monte Cassino, I
know none grander and more picturesque than that of Whitby. Nothing now
remains of the Saxon monastery, but more than half the Abbey-church,
restored by the Percies in the time of the Normans, still stands, and
enables the marvelling spectator to form for himself an idea of the
solemn grandeur of the great edifice.... The beautiful colour of the
stone, half-eaten away by the sea-winds, adds to the charm of these
ruins. A more picturesque effect could not be imagined than that of the
distant horizon of azure sea, viewed through the gaunt, hollow eyes of
the ruinous arches.”
Here, for thirty years, the great Hilda ruled. She must have been a
woman of commanding character, and of no mean mental power, for she
exercised a really marvellous influence over bishops, kings and nobles.
They came to consult her, and received her advice with respect. “All who
knew her,” says Bede, “called her Mother, on account of her singular
piety and grace. She was not merely an example of good life to those who
lived in her monastery, but she afforded occasion of amendment and
salvation to many who lived at a distance, to whom was carried the fame
of her industry and virtue.”
The story went that before her birth her mother had dreamt that she had
in her lap a jewel that sent forth streams of light; and it was proudly
thought that this meant that she would nurse Hilda, precious as a gem,
and diffusing the light of divine truth through dark Northumbria.
Under Hilda’s charge at Whitby was the little Elfleda, daughter of Oswy,
who was to succeed her in the abbacy.
The monastery was a curious institution. It was double. There was a
community of women and another of men. There was, however, but one
church in which they met for prayer. If we may judge by the Celtic
monasteries elsewhere, a wall separated the monks from the nuns, so that
they could hear but not see each other.
The monastery for men under Hilda became a nursery for bishops. Thence
issued Bosa, who became Bishop of York,—Hedda, Bishop of Dorchester, but
afterwards translated to Winchester; Oftfor, Bishop of Worcester, and
John of Hexham,—all saints; also Wilfrid II., afterwards of York.
How these double monasteries were managed one would have been glad to
learn, but very few details concerning them remain.
At Whitby, where she had to govern both men and women, her powers of
organisation and control were conspicuous. But she had others under her
beside monks and nuns: she ruled a large number of serfs with their
families, attached to the soil and tilling it.
Amongst these was an old cowherd, named Caedmon. He was, as a serf, very
ignorant and uneducated, but he had rare natural gifts, long
unsuspected. He attended the carouses so dear to the beer-drinking
Saxons and Angles, but he was unable to take his part, whenever the harp
was handed to him and it was his turn to sing a ballad. On such
occasions, mortified, he had been wont to rise from his place, and
retire to his own reed-thatched cottage, where he slept beside the cows
in their stall.
But one evening, when he had done this, as he was lying among the straw,
and the oxen were beside him chewing the cud, and the air was sweet with
their breath, he fancied, half-asleep and half-awake, that he heard a
voice say: “Sing me something.”
Then he replied: “How can I sing? I have left the feast because I am so
ignorant that I cannot.”
“Sing, nevertheless,” he thought the vision said.
“But—what can I sing about?”
“Sing the story of the World’s Birth.”
Then, somehow, an inspiration came on him, and in the night, among the
cows, out of the straw, he raised his voice, and began to throw into
rude verse the story of Creation. It was very rugged, but very fresh,
and it welled up from his heart; in the morning he thought over the
lines he had composed, and during the day talked of his newly-acquired
powers.
The Abbess Hilda heard of it, and she sent for him, and he recited his
poem before her.
Whether at the time he twanged the harp we do not know; probably he drew
his fingers across the strings as he finished each line, so as to give
time for him to form or remember the next.
Now, in this poetry there was no rhyme, as we understand it. The musical
effect was produced by alliteration—that is to say, by the repetition of
some ringing consonant or broad diphthong, usually at the _beginning_ of
a word. If we understood Anglo-Saxon music, we should understand the
charm to the ear of this alliteration.
Hilda at once recognised the genius of the old cow-herd; she took him
into her household, and bade him devote himself to the cultivation of
his talent. Thus it is due to her that Anglo-Saxon poetry took its
rise—or, at all events, was recognised as literature deserving of being
preserved. Caedmon’s poems are the earliest specimens we have.
But Hilda, with real genius, saw at once in the faculty of the old
peasant a great means of conveying to the rude people the story of
Scripture and the lessons of the Gospel. They were quite incapable of
reading. Priests were few, and widely scattered. The people loved
ballads; they would hearken for hours, sitting over the fire, to a
singer who twanged the strings and then sang a stave or a line. They
loved a long story. It could not be too long for them, having no books,
nothing wherewith to relieve the tedium of the long winter evenings.
Now, thought Hilda, if we can run the Bible stories into ballad form,
these will be sung in every cottage and farm wherever a gleeman can go
certain of welcome; they will be eagerly listened to. So she gave to
Caedmon clergy who translated the Scripture narrative from Latin into
homespun Saxon. He listened, took his harp, the fire came into his grey
eyes, and he sang it all in verse. Ninety-nine out of a hundred other
women would have said, “This is very interesting, but the man must be
snubbed; he is only a keeper of cows, and he must be taught not to
presume.” Hilda, however, was above such pettiness: seeing a divine gift
of song, though granted to quite a common poor man, she at once
endeavoured to ripen it, and to turn it to a practical, good end. How to
seize an occasion, an opportunity, and make use of it, is not given to
all.
Another instance of Hilda’s clear mind and sound sense was in the
settlement of the vexed question of Easter.
About that I shall have more to say when we come to the story of S.
Elfleda.
The British-Irish Church did not observe Easter on the same day as the
Roman Church; and as the Mercians and Northumbrians had received their
Christianity from Iona, the metropolis of the Scottish Church, they kept
the festival at one time, when the men of Kent and Wessex kept it at
another. This produced discord at the very season when minds should be
awed and calm; and it was a constant source of bickering and religious
quarrels. The situation was intolerable, and, probably at the
instigation of Hilda, a parliament was convoked at Whitby in 664 to
settle the difficulty. This was the _Witenagemot_, composed of the
principal nobles and ecclesiastics of the country, and presided over by
the king.
Hilda was now fifty years old, and one would have supposed at that age
would have adhered with the utmost tenacity to the rule in which she had
been brought up, and which had been observed by her Father-in-God, S.
Aidan, and by S. Cuthbert, whom she revered as a saint and a prophet
inspired by the Divine Spirit. But she was a woman too sensible and too
forbearing to force her own likings on the Church, against what her
judgment told her was right. Pope Honorius had written in 634 to the
Irish, exhorting them “not to think their small number, lodged at the
utmost fringe of the world, wiser than all the ancient and modern
Churches throughout the earth.” Even in Iona great searchings of heart
had begun. S. Cummian had written to the abbot there, explaining how the
error arose whereby the two Churches were separated, and he entreated
the Celtic clergy to give way. “What,” he asked, “can be worse thought
concerning the Church, our mother, than that we should say, Rome errs,
Jerusalem errs, Alexandria errs, Antioch errs, the whole world errs; the
Scots and Britons alone know what is right.”
Hilda’s leanings were entirely to the Scottish side, but Oswy strongly
adopted the other, and the nobles and freemen, not caring much one way
or the other, held up their hands to express their willingness to
observe Easter at such time as pleased the king.
Hilda seems at once to have submitted, and to have introduced the
observance of the Roman computation at Whitby, but the northern bishops
withdrew, unconvinced and discouraged. Hilda was almost certainly alive
when Caedmon died, but she was not long in following him. For the last
seven years of her life she suffered greatly; then, says Bede, “the
distemper turning inwards, she approached her last day, and about
cock-crow, having received the Holy Communion, to further her on her
journey, and having called together the servants of Christ that were in
the same monastery, she admonished them to preserve evangelical peace
among themselves and with all others; and as she was speaking she saw
Death approaching, and—passed from death to life.” She died in 680.
[Illustration: S. ELFLEDA.]