THE ENGLISH MONKS AND THEIR BOOKS
“There are delightful libraries, more aromatic than stores of
spicery; there are luxuriant parks of all manner of volumes; there
are Academic meads shaken by the tramp of scholars; there are
lounges of Athens; walks of the Peripatetics; peaks of Parnassus;
and porches of the Stoics. There is seen the surveyor of all arts
and sciences Aristotle, to whom belongs all that is most excellent
in doctrine, so far as relates to this passing sublunary world;
there Ptolemy measures epicycles and eccentric apogees and the
nodes of the planets by figures and numbers....”
Richard De Bury, _Philobiblon_, Thomas’ ed. 200
§ I
The Benedictine order established monastic study on a regular plan.
Benedict’s forty-eighth rule is clear in its directions. “Idleness is
hurtful to the soul. At certain times, therefore, the brethren must work
with their hands, and at others give themselves up to holy reading.”
From Easter to the first of October the monks were required to work at
manual labour from prime until the fourth hour. From the fourth hour
until nearly the sixth hour they were to read. After their meal at the
sixth hour they were to lie on their beds, and those who cared to do so
might read, but not aloud. After nones work must be resumed until
evening. From October the first until the beginning of Lent they were to
read until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour they were to take their
meal and then read spiritual works or the Psalms. Throughout Lent they
were required to read until the third hour, then work until the tenth.
Every monk was to have a book from the library, and to read it through
during Lent. On Sundays reading was their duty throughout the day,
except in the case of those having special tasks. During reading hours
two senior brethren were expected to go the rounds to see that the monks
were actually reading, and not lounging nor gossiping. But the brethren
were not allowed to have a book or tablets or a pen of their own.
Benedict’s inclusion of these directions was of capital importance in
the advance of monkish learning. Being milder and more flexible,
communal instead of eremitical, and so altogether more humane and
attractive, his Rule gradually took the place of existing orders. And as
the change came about, ill-regulated theological study gave way to
superior methods of learning, solely due to the better organisation and
greater liberality of the Benedictine order.
Benedictinism came to England with Augustine (597). The Rule, however,
does not seem to have been strictly or consistently observed for a long
time. But the studious labours of the monks remained just as important a
part of their lives as they would have been had the monasteries closely
followed Benedict’s directions. Especially would this be the case in the
seventh century, and afterwards, during the time continental monachism
was in rivalry with the Celtic missionaries.
§ II
From the first we hear of books in connexion with Canterbury. Gregory
the Great gave to Augustine, either just before his English mission, or
sent to him soon afterward, nine volumes, which were put in St.
Augustine’s monastery--the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, beyond the
walls. Being for church purposes, the books were very beautiful and
valuable. There was the Gregorian Bible in two volumes, with some of its
leaves coloured rose and purple, which gave a wonderful reflection when
held to the light; the Psalter of Augustine; a copy of the Gospels
called the Text of St. Mildred, upon which a countryman in Thanet swore
falsely and, it is said, lost his sight; as well as another copy of the
Gospels; a Psalter, with plain silver images of Christ and the four
Evangelists on the cover; two martyrologies, one adorned with a silver
figure of Christ, the other enriched with silver-gilt and precious
stones; and an Exposition of the Gospels and Epistles, also enriched
with gems.[56] Some of these books were kept above the altar. Bede also
records the gift by Gregory to Augustine of “many manuscripts,” and his
authority is unimpeachable, as he derived his knowledge of Canterbury
affairs from written records and information supplied by Albinus, first
English abbot of Augustine’s house.[57] This monastery “was thus the
mother-school, the mother-university of England, ... at a time when
Cambridge was a desolate fen, and Oxford a tangled forest in a wide
waste of waters. They remind us that English power and English religion
have, as from the very first, so ever since, gone along with knowledge,
with learning, and especially with that learning and that knowledge
which those old manuscripts give--the knowledge and learning of the
Gospel.”[58] Few books would be treasured more carefully and treated
with greater reverence by English churchmen and book lovers than these
“first books of the English church,” if any of them could be found. They
are referred to as existing when William Thorne wrote his chronicle
(_c._ 1397),[59] and Leland tells us he saw and admired them; but after
his time nearly all trace of them is lost.[60]
No further hint of books occurs until Theodore became Archbishop more
than seventy years later. Theodore, who had been educated both at Tarsus
and Athens, where he became a good Greek and Latin scholar, well versed
in secular and divine literature, began a school at Canterbury for the
study of Greek, and provided it with some Greek books. None of these
books has been traced with certainty. Some may have existed in
Archbishop Parker’s time. “The Rev. Father Matthew,” says Lambarde, in
his _Perambulation of Kent_, ... “showed me, not long since, the Psalter
of David, and sundry homilies in Greek, Homer also, and some other Greek
authors, beautifully written on thick paper with the name of this
Theodore prefixed in the front, to whose library he reasonably thought
(being led thereto by show of great antiquity) that they sometime
belonged.” The manuscript of Homer, now in Corpus Christi Library,
Cambridge, did not belong to Theodore, but to Prior Selling, of whom we
shall hear later. But possibly the famous Graeco-Latin copy of the Acts,
now in the Bodleian Library, belonged either to Theodore or to his
companion, Hadrian.[61]
[Illustration: FROM THE GRÆCO-LATIN COPY OF THE ACTS, PROBABLY USED BY
BEDE]
Theodore, with Hadrian’s help, not only started the Canterbury School,
but encouraged similar foundations in other English monasteries. In
southern England, however, Canterbury remained the centre of learning,
and many ecclesiastics were attracted to it in consequence. Bede amply
proves its efficiency as a school. And forasmuch as both Theodore and
Hadrian were “fully instructed both in sacred and in secular letters,
they gathered a crowd of disciples, and rivers of wholesome knowledge
daily flowed from them to water the hearts of their hearers; and,
together with the books of Holy Scripture, they also taught them the
metrical art, astronomy, and ecclesiastical arithmetic. A testimony
whereof is, that there are still living at this day some of their
scholars, who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in
their own, in which they were born.”[62] Elsewhere he mentions some of
these scholars by name. Albinus, already referred to as the first
English abbot of St. Augustine’s, “was so well instructed in literary
studies, that he had no small knowledge of the Greek tongue, and knew
the Latin as well as the English, which was his native language.”[63] “A
most learned man” was another disciple, Tobias, bishop of Rochester,
who, besides having a great knowledge of letters, both ecclesiastical
and general, learned the Greek and Latin tongues “to such perfection,
that they were as well known and familiar to him as his native
language.”[64]
Canterbury’s most notable scholar was Aldhelm, the first bishop of
Sherborne. In him were united the learning of the Canterbury and the
Irish monks, for he studied first under Maildulf, the Irish monk and
scholar who founded and gave his name to Malmesbury, and then under
Hadrian. When he went to be consecrated an incident befell him which at
once shows his zeal for learning, and casts a welcome ray of light on
the importation of books. While at Canterbury he heard of the arrival of
ships at Dover, and thither he journeyed to see whether they had brought
anything in his way. He found on board plenty of books, among them one
containing the complete Testaments. He offered to buy it, but his price
was too low; although, afterwards, when it was believed his prayers had
delivered the owner from a storm, he secured it on his own terms.[65]
Aldhelm at length became abbot of Malmesbury (_c._ 675), and under him
it grew to much greater eminence, and attracted a large number of
students. Here, in the solitude of the forest tract, he passed his time
in singing merry ballads to win the ear of the people for his more
serious words, playing the harp, in teaching, and in reading the
considerable library he had at hand. Bede describes him as a man “of
marvellous learning both in liberal and ecclesiastical studies.” Judging
by his writings he was in these respects in the forefront of his
contemporaries, although his learning was heavy and pretentious. From
them also it is perfectly evident he could make use not only of the
Bible, but of lives of the saints, of Isidore, of the _Recognitions of
Clement_, of the _Acts of Sylvester_, of writings by Sulpicius Severus,
Athanasius, Gregory, Eusebius, and Jerome, as well as of Terence,
Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Persius, and Prosper, and some other
authors.[66]
§ III
Meanwhile Northumbria had become one of the leading centres of learning
in Europe, almost entirely through the labours and influence of Irish
missionaries. St. Aidan, an ascetic of Iona who journeyed to Northumbria
at King Oswald’s request, founded Lindisfarne, which became the monastic
and episcopal capital of that kingdom. Aidan required all his pupils,
whether religious or laymen, to read the Scriptures, or to learn the
Psalms. The education of boys was a part of his system. Wherever a
monastery was founded it became a school wherein taught the monks who
had followed him from Scotland. Cedd, the founder and abbot of
Lastingham, was Aidan’s pupil, so was his brother, the great bishop
Ceadda (Chad), who succeeded him in his abbacy. At Lindisfarne was
wrought by Eadfrith (_d._ 721) the beautiful manuscript of the Gospels
now preserved in the British Museum, and a little later the fine cover
for it. Lastingham, founded on the desolate moorland of North Yorkshire,
“among steep and distant mountains, which looked more like
lurking-places for robbers and dens of wild beasts, than dwellings of
men,” upheld the traditions of the Columban houses for piety,
asceticism, and studious occupations. Thither repaired one Owini, not to
live idle, but to labour, and as he was less capable of studying, he
applied himself earnestly to manual work, the while better-instructed
monks were indoors reading.
In many directions do we observe traces of Aidan’s good work. Hild, the
foundress of Whitby Abbey, was for a short time his pupil. Her monastery
was famous for having educated five bishops, among them John of
Beverley, and for giving birth, in Caedmon, to the father of English
poetry. “Religious poetry, sung to the harp as it passed from hand to
hand, must have flourished in the monastery of the abbess Hild, and the
kernel of Bede’s story concerning the birth of our earliest poet must be
that the brethren and sisters on that bleak northern shore spoke ‘to
each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.’”[67] Of Melrose, an
offshoot of Aidan’s foundation, the sainted Cuthbert was an inmate. At
Lindisfarne, where “he speedily learned the Psalms and some other
books,” the great Wilfrid was a novice. Of his studies, indeed, we know
little: he seems to have sought prelatical power rather than learning.
But he and his followers were responsible for the conversion of the
Northumbrian church from Columban to Roman usages, and the introduction
of Benedictinism into the monasteries; and consequently for bringing the
studies of the monks into line with the rules of Benedict’s order.
Such progress would have been impossible had not the rulers of
Northumbria from Oswald to Aldfrith been friendly to Christianity.
Aldfrith had been educated at Iona, and was a man of studious
disposition. His predecessor had advanced Northumbria’s reputation
enormously by giving Benedict Biscop (629-90) sites for his monasteries
of Wearmouth and Jarrow.[68] We know enough of this Benedict to wish we
knew very much more. He suggests to us enthusiasm for his cause, and
energy and foresight in labouring for it. Naturally, Aldhelm’s writings
have gained him far more attention in literary histories than the
Northumbrian has received. But the influence of Benedict, a man of much
learning, wide-travelled, was at least as great and as far-reaching.
Lérins, the great centre of monachism in Gaul, and Canterbury under
Theodore, had been his schools. On six occasions he flitted back and
forth to Rome, and to go to Rome, in those days, was a liberal
education, both in worldly and spiritual affairs. Not a little of his
influence was the direct outcome of his book-collecting. From all his
journeys to Rome he is said to have returned laden with books. He
certainly came back from his fourth journey with a great number of books
of all kinds.[69] He also obtained books at Vienne. His sixth and last
journey to Rome was wholly devoted to collecting books, classical as
well as theological. When he died he left instructions for the
preservation of the most noble and rich library he had gathered
together.[70] “If we consider how difficult, fatiguing, ... even
dangerous a journey between the British Islands and Italy must have been
in those days of anarchy and barbarism, we can appreciate the intensity
of Benedict’s passion for beautiful and costly volumes.”[71] The library
he formed was worthy of the labour, we cannot doubt: possibly was the
best then in Britain. It served as the model for the still more famous
collection at York. The scholarship of Bede, who used it in writing his
works, proclaims its value for literary purposes.[72] Bede tells us he
always applied himself to Scriptural study, and in the intervals of
observing monastic discipline and singing daily in the church, he took
pleasure in learning, or teaching, or writing.[73] The picture of Bede
in his solitary monastery, leading a placid life among Benedict’s
books, poring over the beautifully-wrought pages with the scholar’s
tense calm to find the material in the Fathers and the historians, and
to seek the apt quotation from the classics, must always flash to the
mind at the mere mention of his name.[74] Every fact in connexion with
his work testifies to the excellent equipment of his monastery for
writing ecclesiastical history, and to the cordial way in which the
religious co-operated for the advancement of learning and research.
§ IV
Canterbury, Malmesbury, Lindisfarne, Wearmouth and Jarrow, and York were
like mountain-peaks tipped with gold by the first rays of the rising
sun, while all below remains dark. Yet while not indicative of
widespread means of instruction, the existence of these centres, and the
character of the work done in them, suggests that at other places the
same sort of work, on a smaller and less influential scale, soon began.
At Lichfield, on the moorland at Ripon, in “the dwelling-place in the
meadows” at Peterborough, in the desolate fenland at Crowland and at
Ely, on the banks of the Thames at Abingdon, and of the Avon at Evesham,
in the nunneries of Barking and Wimborne, at Chertsey, Glastonbury,
Gloucester, in the far north at Melrose, and even perhaps at Coldingham,
Christianity was speeding its message, and learning--such as it was,
primitive and pretentious--caught pale reflections from more famous
places. Now and again definite facts are met with hinting at a spreading
enlightenment. Acca, abbot and bishop of Hexham, for example “gave all
diligence, as he does to this day,” wrote Bede, “to procure relics of
the blessed Apostles and martyrs of Christ.... Besides which, he
industriously gathered the histories of their martyrdom, together with
other ecclesiastical writings, and erected there a large and noble
library.” Of this library, unfortunately, there is not a wrack left
behind. A tiny school was carried on at a monastery near Exeter, where
Boniface was first instructed. At the monastery of Nursling he was
taught grammar, history, poetry, rhetoric, and the Scriptures; there
also manuscripts were copied. Books were produced under Abbess Eadburh
of Minster, a learned woman who corresponded with Boniface and taught
the metric art. Boniface’s letters throw interesting light on our
subject. Eadburh sent him books, money, and other gifts. He also wrote
home asking his old friend Bishop Daniel of Winchester for a fine
manuscript of the six major prophets, which had been written in a large
and clear hand by Winbert: no such book, he explains, can be had abroad,
and his eyes are no longer strong enough to read with ease the small
character of ordinary manuscripts. In another letter written to Ecgberht
of York is recorded an exchange of books, and a request for a copy of
the commentaries of Bede.
A decree of the Council held at Cloveshoe in 747, pointing out the want
of instruction among the religious, and ordering all bishops, abbots,
and abbesses to promote and encourage learning, whether it means that
monkish education was on the wane or that it was not making such quick
progress as was desired, at any rate does not mean that England was in a
bad way in this respect, or that she lagged behind the Continent. On the
contrary, England and Ireland were renowned homes of learning in Western
Europe. Perhaps a few centres on the mainland could show libraries as
good as those here; but certainly no country had such scholars.
England’s pre-eminence was recognized by Charles the Great when he
invited Alcuin to his court (781).
Alcuin was brought up at York from childhood. In company with Albert,
who taught the arts and grammar at this northern school, Alcuin visited
Gaul and Rome to scrape together a few more books. On returning later he
was entrusted with the care of the library: a task for which he was well
fitted, if enthusiasm, breaking into rime, be a qualification:--
“Small is the space which contains the gifts of heavenly Wisdom
Which you, reader, rejoice piously here to receive;
Better than richest gifts of the Kings, this treasure of Wisdom,
Light, for the seeker of this, shines on the road to the Day.”[75]
York could not retain Alcuin long. Fortunately, just when dissensions
among the English kings, and the Danish raids began to harass England,
and to threaten the coming decline of her learning, he was invited to
take charge of a school established by Charles the Great. Charles had
undertaken the task of reviving literary study, well-nigh extinguished
through the neglect of his ancestors; and he bade all his subjects to
cultivate the arts. As far as he could he accomplished the task,
principally owing to the aid of the English scholar and of willing
helpers from Ireland.
Alcuin was soon at the head of St. Martin’s of Tours where he was
responsible for the great activity of the scribes in his day. He
persuaded Charles to send a number of copyists to York. “I, your
Flavius,” he writes, “according to your exhortation and wise desire,
have been busy under the roof of St. Martin, in dispensing to some the
honey of the Holy Scriptures. Others I strive to inebriate with the old
wine of ancient studies; these I nourish with the fruit of grammatical
knowledge; in the eyes of these again I seek to make bright the courses
of the stars.... But I have need of the most excellent books of
scholastic learning, which I had procured in my own country, either by
the devoted care of my master, or by my own labours. I therefore beseech
your majesty ... to permit me to send certain of our household to bring
over into France the flowers of Britain, that the garden of Paradise may
not be confined to York, but may send some of its scions to Tours.” What
the “flowers of Britain” were at this time Alcuin has told us in Latin
verse. At York, “where he sowed the seeds of knowledge in the morning of
his life,” thou shall find, he rimes:--
“The volumes that contain
All the ancient fathers who remain;
There all the Latin writers make their home
With those that glorious Greece transferred to Rome,--
The Hebrews draw from their celestial stream,
And Africa is bright with learning’s beam.”
Then, after including in his metrical catalogue the names of forty
writers, he proceeds:--
“There shalt thou find, O reader, many more
Famed for their style, the masters of old lore,
Whose many volumes singly to rehearse
Were far too tedious for our present verse.”[76]
A goodly store indeed in such an age.
§ V
Sunlight and shadow follow one another rapidly across England’s early
history. The migration of York’s renowned scholar took place six years
before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a
heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and
destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow.
After this there was but little peace for England. Kent was often
attacked. In 838 the marauders fell upon East Anglia. Between 837 and
845 they made various fierce attacks upon Wessex. In 851 the pillage of
Canterbury and London was a severe blow to the English. About fifteen
years later, at the hands of the Danes, Melrose, Tynemouth, Whitby, and
Lastingham shared Wearmouth’s fate. Of York and its library we hear no
more. Peterborough and its large collection of sacred books perished at
the hands of the same raiders as those who burnt Crowland (870). So bad
grew affairs that Alfred the Great, writing to Bishop Werfrith, bewailed
the small number of people south of the Humber who understood the
English of their service, or could translate from Latin into English.
Even beyond the Humber there were not many; not one could he remember
south of the Thames when he began to reign. And he bethought himself of
the wise men, both church and lay folk, formerly living in England, and
how zealous they were in teaching and learning, and how men came from
abroad in search of wisdom and instruction. Apparently some decline from
this standard had been noticeable before ruin completely overtook the
monasteries. He remembered how, before the land had been ravaged and
burnt, “its churches stood filled with treasures and books, and with a
multitude of His servants, but they had very little knowledge of the
books, and could not understand them, for they were not written in their
own language.... When I remembered all this, I much marvelled that the
good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly
learnt all these books, did not wish to translate them into their own
tongues.” By way of remedying this omission, he translated _Cura
Pastoralis_ into English. “I will send a copy to every bishopric in my
kingdom; and on each there is a clasp worth 50 mancus. And I command in
God’s name that no man take the clasp from the book or the book from the
minster; it is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops as
now are, thanks be to God, nearly everywhere.”[77]
This letter, written in 890, marks the revival of interest in letters
under Alfred. In adding to his own knowledge, and in promoting education
among his people, he was assiduous and determined. During the leisure of
one period of eight months, Asser seems to have read to him all the
congenial books at hand, Alfred’s custom being to read aloud or to
listen to others reading. Asser was a Welsh bishop, brought to Wessex to
help the king in his work. For the same purpose Archbishop Plegmund[78]
and Bishop Werfrith were brought from Mercia. Other scholars came from
abroad. One named Grimbald, a monk from St. Bertin, came to take charge
of the abbey of Hyde, Winchester, which Alfred had planned. John, of
Old-Saxony, a learned monk of the flourishing Westphalian Abbey of
Corvey--where a library existed in this century,[79]--was made by Alfred
abbot of Athelney monastery and school. Perhaps John, called the Scot or
Erigena, also came, but we do not know certainly. Alfred also introduced
teachers, both English and foreign, into his monasteries, his aim being
to provide the means of educating every freeborn and well-to-do youth.
During the whole of the latter part of his reign the copying of
manuscripts went on, though with only moderate activity.
That Alfred, amid the cares of a troublesome kingship, could find time
to devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular
literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had
a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of
English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the
Conquest all the literature of importance was in the vernacular, and the
impulse so given to the language as a literary vehicle was strong enough
to preserve it from extinction during the Norman domination, when it was
superseded as the court and official language. But, so far as the making
and circulation of books is concerned, the “revival” under Alfred did
not prosper. The necessary machinery was almost entirely wanting. The
monastic schools, the great--the only--means of disseminating the
learning of the time, were few in number and not very influential. For
Athelney, a small monastery, Alfred had difficulty in finding monks at
all: he had to get them from abroad; while the rule in this house does
not seem to have been wholly satisfactory. At the time of his death
(_c._ 901) monachism was in a bad way. Fifty years later its plight
would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and
Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. “In the middle of the
tenth century the Rule of St. Benedict, the standard of monasticism in
Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority,
completely unknown in England. This will not appear strange if we
consider that it was never very generally or strictly carried out here,
that the Danish invasions had broken the continuity of monastic life,
and that not many years earlier the very existence of the Rule had been
forgotten in not a few continental monasteries.”[80] Although England
always responded to the slightest effort to affect her culture, as the
long deer grass waves an answer to every breath of the wind, yet the
surprising eminence of some of the churchmen in the latter half of the
century and the excellence of their work cannot be accounted for if the
influence of Alfred’s reign had utterly died out. But it had not. Only
the machinery was defective. The driving power remained, latent but
ready for action. One indication of a surviving interest in these
matters at this time is the gift of some nine books to St. Augustine’s
Abbey by King Athelstan--an interesting little collection including
Isidore _de Natura Rerum_, Persius, Donatus, Alcuin, Sedulius, and
possibly a work by Bede. The machinery, however, was soon to be
improved. Dunstan, Oswald, Edgar, and Ethelwold set matters right by
reforming and extending the monastic system, and by making it the means
of encouraging education and learning.
The leaders were Dunstan and Ethelwold. In youth the former was renowned
for his eagerness in studying, and for the wealth and knowledge he
acquired. He was a “lover of ballads and music,” “a hard student, an
indefatigable worker, busy at books”; spending his leisure in reading
sacred authors, and in correcting manuscripts, sometimes at daybreak. He
was also very skilful at working in metal and at drawing and
illuminating. Maybe the picture of him kneeling before the Saviour which
is preserved in the Bodleian Library is by his own hand; this, however,
is not certain.[81] But some relics of his literary work were preserved
at Glastonbury until the Reformation--passages transcribed from Frank
and Roman law books, a pamphlet on grammar, a mass of Biblical
quotations, a collection of canons drawn from Dunstan’s Irish teachers,
a book on the Apocalypse, and other works.[82] He entirely reformed
Glastonbury and made it a flourishing school, where the Scriptures,
ecclesiastical writings, and grammar were taught.
Ethelwold was a Glastonbury scholar and assistant to Dunstan.
Glastonbury, and Abingdon, where he became Abbot, and Winchester, to
which see he was consecrated, were the centres whence, during the sixty
years succeeding Edgar’s accession, some forty monasteries were founded
or restored. Winchester became pre-eminent. Ethelwold himself was a
teacher of grammar. It was his delight to teach boys and young men, and
to help them in their translations; hence it came to pass that many of
his pupils became abbots and bishops.[83] A curious story is told in
illustration of his studious disposition. One night, when reading after
prolonged watching, sleep overcame him, and as he slept the candle fell
on the page and remained burning there until a brother came along and
snatched it up, when the book by a miracle was found to be
uninjured.[84] A vignette of pure and true medievalism: the long and
solitary watching, the saintly pursuit of divine wisdom, the wide-open
book, with the bold and beautiful text, and the quaint decoration,
wrought by loving hands, and the inevitable miracle,--the suggestion of
a Divine Providence watching over and protecting all that is sacred.
Some beautiful examples of work of this period have been preserved.
“Winchester” work is a familiar and expressive term in illumination, and
nobody will ask why this is so if they have seen a manuscript executed
there towards the end of the tenth century. The Benedictional and Missal
of Archbishop Robert, which is certainly English, and most likely an
example of New Minster work, is illuminated with miniatures, foliated
and architectural borders, and capitals and letters of gold, in virile
workmanship. A still finer example--the finest example of Old Minster
craft--is the Benedictional of Ethelwold, now in the Duke of
Devonshire’s library. The versified dedication, inscribed in letters of
gold, tells us, in substance--“The Great Æthelwold ... illustrious,
venerable and mild ... commanded a certain monk subject to him to write
the present book: he ordered also to be made in it many arches elegantly
decorated and filled up with various ornamented pictures expressed in
divers beautiful colours, and gold.”[85] Godeman, abbot of Thorney, was
the scribe, but the illuminator is unknown. Each full page has nineteen
lines of writing, with letters nearly a quarter of an inch long.
Alternate lines in gold, red, and black occur once or twice in the same
page. There are thirty miniatures and thirteen fully illuminated pages,
some of these having framed borders, foliated, others columns and
arches. The figures are remarkably well drawn, the drapery being
especially good. The whole is in a fine state of preservation,
especially the gold ornaments; the gold used was leaf upon size,
afterwards well burnished. Of the rival craftsmanship at New Minster we
have a splendid example in the Golden Book of Edgar, so called
[Illustration: _PLATE V_
NATIVITY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]
[Illustration: WRITING IN THE BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]
on account of its raised gold text.[86] Work of this grand character is
the best testimony to the noble spirit of monachism in the days of
Ethelwold.
One of Ethelwold’s pupils was Ælfric, who became Archbishop of
Canterbury in 995. He was responsible for the canon requiring every
priest, before ordination, to have the Psalter, the Epistles, the
Gospels, a Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar, the
Passional, the Penitential, and the Lectionary. On his death he
bequeathed all his books to St. Albans.[87]
Another pupil of the same name is still more famous. This scholar’s
grammar, with its translated passages, his glossary--the oldest
Latin-English dictionary--and his conversation-manual of questions and
answers, with interlinear translations, suggest that he must have done
much to make the study of Latin easier and more congenial; while his
homilies display his art in making knowledge popular, and prove him to
be the greatest master of English prose before the Conquest.
Several other interesting and suggestive facts belonging to this period
have been preserved for us. Abbot Ælfward, for example, gave to his
abbey of Evesham many sacred books and books on grammar (_c._ 1035):
here, at any rate, progress was real.[88] At a manor of the abbey of
Bury St. Edmunds were thirty volumes, exclusive of church books
(1044-65).[89] Bishop Leofric also obtained over sixty books for Exeter
Cathedral about sixteen years before the Conquest, a collection to which
we must refer later.
[Illustration: _PLATE VI_
MINIATURE OF THE ASCENSION IN THE BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHELWOLD]