In every college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded

or on whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with

the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were religious

houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the Church office was

often kept up without intermission by day and night; but they were

also seminaries of learning, wherein sacred and profane studies were

cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but

those of every European country were enriched with their manuscripts,

and the researches of modern bibliopolists are continually

disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an Ovid,

or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand which traced

its delicate letters. The Hibernian scholars were remarkable for

combining acuteness of the reasoning powers with the gifts of the

musician and the poet. There were no more accurate mathematicians and

no keener logicians than the sons of Erin, whose love of syllogism

is spoken of in the ninth century by St. Benedict of Anian. They are

admitted to have been the precursors of the mediæval schoolmen, and

to have been the first to apply the subtleties of Greek philosophy

to Christian dogma. Their love of Greek was, perhaps, excessive,

for they evinced it by Hellenising their Latin, and occasionally

writing even their Latin missals in the Greek character. In the

disputes that arose on the subject of the Paschal computation, they

astonished their adversaries with their arithmetical science and

their linguistic erudition. St. Cummian, in the Paschal epistle

wherein he so ably defends the Roman system, examines all the various

cycles in use among the Jews, Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians; quotes

passages from Greek and Latin fathers, and manifestly proves how

well the libraries of Ireland were furnished, and how competent her

scholars were to use them. Nor whilst cultivating the exact sciences

did they abandon the muses. Both St. Columbia and St. Columbanus

enjoyed a reputation as poets. St. Ængus, the martyrologist, began

life as a professional bard, and did not lay aside his harp when he

assumed the cowl of the cœnobite; while Ruman, the son of Colman,

was called “the Virgil of Ireland,” and is described as an “adept in

chronology, history, and poetry.” Rhyme, if not invented in Ireland,

was at least adopted by her versifiers so generally, and at so early

a period, as sometimes to be designated “the art of the Irish;” and,

as Moore observes, the peculiar structure of their verse shows that

it belonged to a people of strong musical feeling. Hence they soon

became famous for their skill in psalmody, and were esteemed both at

home and abroad as first-rate choir-masters; and the legends of the

Irish saints are full of passages which describe the kind of ecstasy

produced in the minds of this people, so susceptible to the beautiful

in every form, by the melody of the ecclesiastical chant. We will

give one of these stories, because it introduces us to the founder of

the school of Lismore, the last of the great Irish seminaries which

we shall notice in this place. Though said to be of noble extraction,

Mochuda was employed by a chief in the humble capacity of swineherd.

One day as he tended his herd by the banks of the river Mang, he was

rapt out of himself by a sight and a sound of beauty altogether new

to him. It was the holy bishop St. Carthag the elder, accompanied by

a procession of his clergy, who as they went along made the hills

of Kerry re-echo to the Psalm-tones, ever ancient and ever new, of

the Gregorian chant. St. Augustine has confessed to their power over

his heart, and the poor Irish swineherd was not less enraptured by

their beauty than the African rhetorician had been. Drawn along, as

it were, by the charm of the melody, he left his herd in the fields

and followed the singers to their monastery. All night he remained

outside the gates, catching at intervals the distant sound of the

night office, till when morning dawned he was found there by his

master Moelthuili, who desired to know why he had not returned home

in the evening as was usual. “Because I was charmed with the holy

songs of the servants of God,” replied Mochuda, “and I desire nothing

else on earth than that I also may learn to sing those songs.”

Moelthuili, who loved the boy, made him large promises of favour if

he would remain in his service, but finding his words unheeded, he

at last took him to the bishop and begged him to receive the youth

among his disciples. St. Carthag bestowed his own name upon him, and

admitted him among his scholars, and in process of time the fame of

the pupil surpassed even that of his master. In 630 St. Carthag the

younger, as he is called, became the founder of Lismore, the fame of

whose schools extended into Italy.

“One-half of this holy city,” says an ancient writer, “is a sanctuary

into which no woman may enter; it is full of cells and monasteries,

and religious men resort thither from all parts of Ireland and

England.”[45] One of the most famous masters of Lismore was St.

Cathal or Cataldus, the patron saint of Tarentum in Italy, and his

numerous biographies in prose and verse never fail to commemorate the

glories of his Alma Mater.

Whatever exaggeration may have been committed by the national

annalists when they speak of the foreign students who resorted to

the Irish schools, it is impossible to doubt that they were eagerly

sought by nations of the most distant lands, who, in an age when

the rest of Europe was sunk in illiterate barbarism, found in the

cloisters of Armagh, Lismore, Clonard, and Clonmacnois, masters

of philosophy and sacred science whose learning had passed into a

proverb. Camden remarks how common a thing it is to read in the

lives of our English saints that they were sent to study in Ireland,

and the same expression occurs quite as frequently in the Gallican

histories. The prodigious Litany of the Saints, composed in the

eighth century by St. Ængus, includes the names not only of Britons,

Picts, and Saxons, but also of Gauls, Germans, Romans, and Egyptians,

all buried in Ireland. The tomb of the “Seven Romans” may still be

seen in the churchyard of St. Brecan in the Isle of Aran, and a

church at Meath was commonly known as the Greek Church, so called

from having been served by Greek ecclesiastics. Even in the eleventh

century the fame of the Irish schools was undiminished, and Sulgenus,

bishop of St. David’s, spent ten years studying under their best

masters.

Great as was the learning of the Irish scholars, it had in it a

certain character of its own. Their theology was deeply tinged with

a metaphysical spirit, and in their grammar, no less than their

poetry, they displayed a taste for the mystic and the obscure.

This is partly to be attributed to the influence of the Toulouse

academicians, with whom the Irish scholars eagerly fraternised. They

seem to have found something unspeakably attractive in the bizarre

language of the twelve Latinities and the novelties of the Toulouse

prosody. The strange jargon in which some of their professors were

accustomed to indulge occasionally steals into the Hibernian hymns

and antiphons; and the Anglo-Saxons who flocked in such multitudes to

the Irish seminaries, were not slow in catching the infection. They

soon learnt to disfigure their pages with a jumble of Greek, Latin,

and Anglo-Saxon syllables, and to expend their patience and ingenuity

over compositions in which the great achievement was to produce

fifteen consecutive words beginning with a P.

If Ireland gave hospitality in these remote ages to men of all

tongues and races, she in her turn sent forth her swarms of saints

who have left their traces in countless churches founded by them in

Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The children of St. Columbanus

reformed the Austrasian clergy, and were the first apostles of

the Rhetian wildernesses. At Fiesole, in Tuscany, we find the

Irish St. Donatus, compelled by the people to accept the office of

bishop, and restoring, at one and the same time, sacred studies and

ecclesiastical discipline. The myrtle bowers of Ausonia, however,

did not make him forget his native land, for in some Latin verses

which Moore has thought worthy of translation, he dwells like a true

patriot on the praises of that remote western island, so rich in gems

and precious metals, where the fields flow with milk and honey, and

the lowing herds and golden harvests supply all the wants of man.

At Lucca the English traveller is still startled to find the relics

of his own Anglo-Saxon countrymen, St. Richard and St. Winibald,

preserved and venerated in a church dedicated to the Irish bishop,

St. Frigidian. And whilst the southern shores of Italy were welcoming

the coming of St. Cataldus, Iceland and the distant Orcades were

receiving missionaries of the same Celtic race.[46]

Hereafter we shall see the scholars of Ireland taking part in the

Carlovingian revival of learning, and making it their boast that

the two first universities of Europe, those of Paris and Pavia,

owed their foundation in no small degree to Hibernian professors.

But before that era dawned, they had found rivals, both in their

literary and apostolic labours, in the Anglo-Saxon race. The

“sea-dragons of Germany,” who had extinguished faith and civilisation

in the British provinces which they had overrun and conquered, had

received anew those precious gifts from the hands of a great pope,

whose instinctive genius led him to transfer to this remote corner

of the world the sciences which were fast dying out of the Italian

and Gallican schools. The story has been often told, but the course

of our history obliges us to tell it over again in the following

chapter.

_CHAPTER III._

THE ANGLO-SAXON SCHOOLS.

A.D. 590 TO 875.

The Donatist heresy was still raging in Africa; the Arians were

triumphant in Spain and Northern Italy; a miserable schism arising

out of the affair of the Three Chapters was vexing the Istrian

provinces; France was torn by intestine wars, and the imperial power

which nominally held rule in Italy was fast crumbling to pieces; the

almost civilised dominion of the Ostrogoths had been exchanged for

the wild barbarism of the half pagan, half Arian Lombards; floods,

plague, and famine were rapidly depopulating the southern peninsula,

when, in the year 590, St. Gregory the Great was placed in the chair

of St. Peter, and received into his hands the destinies of the

Western world.

“There are,” says the German philosopher, Frederic Schlegel,

“grand and pregnant epochs in the history of the world, in which

all existing relations assume a new and unexpected form. At such

junctures, God Himself seems, as it were, to interfere, and establish

a theocracy.” Such was the epoch of which we speak. All the power

of human government had come to nought, and while men’s hearts were

failing them for fear, the reins were falling into the hands of a

frail and feeble monk, worn out with sickness and austerity, and so

little conscious of possessing in himself the capacity of ruling,

that, when the unanimous voice of clergy and people raised him to the

pontifical dignity, he fled in terror to the woods, and was brought

back weeping, and giving vent to his anguish in accents almost of

despair. It will suffice very briefly to remind the reader what

kind of pontificate it was that was thus begun. During the fourteen

years that St. Gregory governed the Church, he achieved greatness

enough to furnish fame to a dozen autocrats. He defended Rome from

the Lombards, and the Lombards themselves from the treachery of the

Eastern emperors; he won them from Arianism, extirpated Donatism

from Africa, and put an end to the Istrian schism. Whilst providing

for the necessities of the Italian provinces, desolated by the

cruel calamities of the times, he firmly resisted the exactions of

the Byzantine court, and maintained the independence of the Church

against the Cæsars. From the effete civilisation of the corrupt East,

he turned to the new and semi-barbarous races of the West,--taught

the Frankish kings the duties of Christian sovereignty, and urged

their bishops to wage war against ecclesiastical abuses. His

prodigious correspondence carried his paternal care into the most

distant provinces. He condemned slavery, defended the peasants, and

protected even the Jews. And in the midst of these multifarious

labours, he found time to preach and write for future ages also.

Thirty-five books of “Morals,” thirteen volumes of Epistles, forty

Homilies on the gospels, twenty-two on the prophet Ezechiel, an

immortal treatise on the Pastoral care, four books of Dialogues, and

the reformation of the Sacramentary or ritual of the Church, are the

chief works left us by the Fourth Latin Doctor. Nevertheless, as

most readers must be aware, there exists a certain tradition which

represents this great pope as the enemy of learning, a tradition

elaborated out of the rebuke administered by him to Didier, Bishop

of Vienne, on occasion of that prelate having delivered lectures on

the profane poets, and the supposed fact of his having burnt the

Palatine Library, a fact which, however, remained without record

until six centuries had elapsed.[47] We need not pause to examine

charges which, however often refuted or explained, will always find

credence among a certain class of writers and readers, who cling

to a time-honoured _mumpsimus_. But it was necessary to recognise

the existence of this view of his character before presenting the

supposed destroyer of the Palatine Library as the undoubted founder

of a Palatine school. And first we will hear how his biographer,

John the Deacon, describes his manner of life. After naming several

of the ecclesiastics, whom he chose as his chief councillors, among

whom occur the names of Paul the Deacon, and our English apostles,

Augustine and Mellitus, he goes on to relate how, in company with

these, St. Gregory contrived to carry out monastical perfection

within the walls of his own palace. “Learned clerks and religious

monks,” he says, “lived there in common with their pontiff, so that

the same rule was exhibited in Rome in the time of St. Gregory as St.

Luke describes as existing in Jerusalem under the Apostles, and Philo

records as established by St. Mark at Alexandria.”

These clerks assisted St. Gregory in his learned labours. Some were

notaries, who wrote out his Homilies under his direction; and Paul

the Deacon is introduced as the interlocutor in his Dialogues. And

the historian goes on to tell us, that out of the canonical life

established in the pontifical palace, there sprang a school. “Then

did wisdom visibly fabricate to herself a temple,” he continues,

“supporting the porticoes of the apostolic see by the seven liberal

arts as by columns formed of the most precious stones. In the family

of the pontiff, no one from the least to the greatest, dared utter

a barbarous word; the purest Latinity, such as had been spoken in

the time of the best Roman writers, was alone permitted to find

another Latium in his palace. There, the study of all the liberal

arts once more flourished, and he who was conscious to himself

that he was wanting either in holiness or learning, dared not show

his face in presence of the pontiff.” He goes on to speak of the

number of learned men constantly to be found in the company of the

pope, who encouraged poor philosophy rather than rich idleness.

But he confesses that one thing was wanting: the “Cecropian muse”

was absent; in other words, there was no one skilful in the

interpretation of Greek.

In addition to this Palatine academy, if I should not rather say in

connection with it, St. Gregory founded a school destined to have a

more world-wide influence and more lasting fame. The extraordinary

diligence bestowed by the holy pontiff on the reformation of the

ecclesiastical chant gave rise in after times to a graceful legend,

which represented him as visited in his sleep by a tenth Muse,

who appeared to him with her mantle covered with the mystic notes

and neumas, and inspired him with that skill in science of sacred

melody, which he ever afterwards possessed. The legend, like most

legends, only embalms and beautifies a fact. The Church was the real

Muse who inspired her pontiff to give to her order of sacred chant

the same perfection he had already bestowed upon her Liturgy. Other

popes and prelates had laboured before him at the same work, and

indeed the very name of _Centon_, which is given to his Antiphonary,

shows that it was a compilation of those ancient melodies which

passed from the Temple to the Church, and which may be traced through

St. Mark at Alexandria, and through St. Ignatius at Antioch, up

to St. Peter himself.[48] In process of time the Eastern churches

introduced a more pompous and florid style, but in Africa, thanks to

the exertions of St. Athanasius, the ancient severity was preserved,

and made matter of reproach against the Catholics by the Donatist

heretics, who attributed it to the natural heaviness and stupidity

of the African character. Baronius observes that, according to the

most ancient monuments, the Roman Church appears to have taken the

middle course, between the extreme simplicity of the Africans and the

florid ornamentation of the Orientals, and thus united gravity with

sweetness.

St. Ambrose, who introduced the chant into Milan, permitted women

to join in the chanting of the Psalms, a custom which degenerated

in some churches into the establishment of female choirs; though

this abuse was prohibited by many popes and councils. Everywhere

the bishops encouraged the cultivation of the chant, and Fortunatus

describes St. Germanus of Paris presiding in the apse of the Golden

Church, and directing the singing of his two choirs. But, as St.

Augustine remarks in one of his letters, no uniformity existed among

the different churches, and both variations and corruptions were

introduced according to the genius of different nations. Hence, the

reformation of the Cantus, and the establishment of some uniform

standard based on the ancient models, had engaged the attention of

several popes before the time of St. Gregory, and particularly of

St. Gelasius and St. Damasus. St. Gregory completed their work: he

collected in his Centon, or Antiphonary, all the ancient fragments

still existing, corrected and arranged them with his own pen, and

added some original compositions, bearing the same character of

majestic simplicity with the venerable melodies on which they were

formed. And finally, to secure the permanence of these reforms, and

to extend the use of the ecclesiastical chant throughout the Church,

he founded a school which, three centuries later, still survived

and flourished. “After the manner of a wise Solomon,” says John

the Deacon, “being touched by the sweetness of music, he carefully

compiled his _Centon_ or Antiphonary of chants, and established a

school of those chants which had hitherto been sung in the Roman

Church, and built for this purpose two houses, one attached to the

Church of St. Peter the Apostle, and the other near the Lateran

Patriarchium, where, up to this day, are preserved, with becoming

veneration, the couch whereon he was accustomed to rest when singing,

and the rod with which he was wont to threaten the boys, together

with the authentic copy of his Antiphonary.”

The important place which the Roman school of chant occupied in the

history of Christian education will be seen in the following pages.

Its value in our own day can hardly be appreciated, for the training

of Christendom has long since ceased to be liturgical. But an era

was about to open on the world during which the human intellect was

no longer to receive its shape and colouring from the forms, however

beautiful, of pagan antiquity, but from that Christian Muse whom our

English poet has invoked. St. Gregory lived at a time when the old

empire, with its letters and civilisation, was fast passing away.

The little stone had struck the statue, and the iron, the clay, the

brass, the silver, and the gold, had been carried away by the wind,

and become as the chaff on the summer’s threshing-floor. He beheld

new races rising out of the dust of fallen empires. What now are

Homer and Horace to the grim Goth or savage Lombard who has spent his

life in beating to pieces with his battle-axe the fairest monuments

of Greece and Rome? To him no inspiration will flow from Castaly or

Parnassus.

The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades,

The dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids

Delight no more,

and the name of Woden is far more venerable in his eyes than that

of Apollo. But there is _One_ Power that has caught him in its

golden nets and holds his soul a willing captive. When the waters of

baptism flowed over his brow he was brought face to face with that

mighty Mother from whose hands he was to receive the knowledge of

letters, and a far vaster education than the knowledge of letters

alone can ever give. Heart, will, imagination, and understanding,

all found their teacher in the Church of the Living God. Her sacred

offices appealed to his soul through a thousand avenues, by their

inspired ceremonial, their matchless poetry, their solemn melody,

and their pictured art. The following pages will sadly fail of their

main object if they do not succeed in conveying to the reader a

faint notion of that marvellous education which the Church supplied

to countless populations who, it may be, never learnt to read. Her

Liturgy became the class-book of the barbaric races: it was to them

all, and far more than all, that Homer or Ossian had been to the

children of a darker age. What wonder, then, that the study of its

musical language should be erected by them into a liberal art, and

that those who were receiving their civilisation from the Rome,

not of the Cæsars, but of the Popes, should welcome among them the

teachers of the Roman music with as great enthusiasm as ever Florence

in the fifteenth century, welcomed her professors of Greek?

The importance of St. Gregory’s foundation regarded from this point

of view will readily appear. It was in some sort the mother of

those grand liturgical schools which were afterwards to cover the

face of Europe, the erection of which in any country serves as an

epoch to mark the introduction or restoration of Christian letters.

Henceforth, for nine centuries at least, grammar and the Cantus, the

Latin tongue and the Roman music, were to take their places side

by side as the two indispensables of education. Up to this time

even the Christian learning had been coloured by a civilisation of

pagan growth; but a new era had now begun: the Holy Scriptures and

the Liturgy of the Church were to become to Christian Europe what

the profane poets had been to the ancient world--the fountains of

inspiration and the intellectual moulds wherein a new generation was

to be cast; and though scholars were far from abandoning Virgil,

yet for long ages the Muse of Solyma was to hold the mastery in the

schools.

This new era of letters may be said to commence with St. Gregory, for

the schools of Christian origin which existed before his time were

fast becoming extinct, and it was chiefly from the new foundation,

planted by him on English soil, that the torch of science was relit.

How truly was he termed the Great, this pontiff, prince, and tutor

of a barbarous world! Yet to conceive aright of his greatness we

must remember that his work was painfully wrought out in the midst of

continual bodily sufferings and mental troubles yet harder to bear.

He who may be said to have founded the temporal sovereignty of the

Roman Pontiffs had his throne in the midst of ruins. He delivered his

discourses on Ezechiel while the barbarous Lombards were marching

against his capital. He had to witness the Roman nobles dragged off

into slavery with ropes about their necks, to be sold like dogs in

the markets of Gaul. Then came the news that Monte Cassino was in

flames and its monks cast out as houseless wanderers. “Woe is me!” he

exclaims, “all Europe is in the hands of the barbarians. Cities are

cast down, villages in ruins, whole provinces depopulated; the land

has no longer men to cultivate it; and the idolaters pursue us even

to death.” Yet in this awful crisis his mind was bent on effecting

new conquests for the faith, and he was planning the conversion

of the Anglo-Saxons with the Lombards at his gates. Many writers

have not hesitated to ascribe the pertinacity with which he carried

out this, his favourite enterprise, to the profound sagacity of an

ecclesiastical politician, who foresaw that the loyal devotion of the

new converts to the Holy See would repair the losses inflicted by the

barbarians on the rest of Christendom. But it may safely be affirmed

that no mere natural acuteness could possibly have predicted anything

favourable from the dispositions which had hitherto been manifested

by the Anglo-Saxons. Ancient writers are unanimous in classing them

among the most savage of the northern tribes. They slaughtered their

captives taken in war, and drove a lucrative trade by the sale

of their countrymen, and even of their own children, to foreign

merchants. The courage which formed their solitary virtue too often

degenerated into a brutal ferocity, and their notions of a future

state were exceedingly faint. In Gaul they were regarded with terror

as barbarians of uncouth speech and aspect, and strange stories

were told of their reckless deeds of bloodshed and cruelty. Gregory

himself would probably have found it difficult to explain the hold

they had gained on his heart ever since he first beheld the blue-eyed

and golden-haired Angles in the market-place of Rome. But from that

moment the thought of them never left him; and though frustrated in

his purpose of himself becoming their apostle, he made it a labour of

love to provide for their conversion by other hands.

His first plan had been a sort of anticipation of the system since

so successfully carried out by the Roman Propaganda. He conceived

the idea of redeeming a certain number of the Anglo-Saxon youths

annually brought into the slave-markets of Gaul, educating them in

some monastery school, and then sending them back as missionaries to

their own country. We are not told why this scheme was abandoned, but

in 596 the English mission was at last opened, and a band of Roman

monks, headed by St. Augustine, the former prior of St. Gregory’s

monastery set out for the barbarous and unknown island. Never was any

mission more amply cared for. St. Gregory had poured out his whole

heart upon it; he multiplied letters to the bishops and Sovereigns of

Gaul to secure his monks hospitality on the road; his letters cheered

them on their way, and when the welcome tidings came that their work

had begun under prosperous auspices, he sent them a reinforcement of

labourers under the abbot Mellitus, bringing everything necessary for

the celebration of the Divine offices--sacred vessels, vestments,

church ornaments, holy relics, and “many books.”

A catalogue of the library which St. Augustine and his companions

brought with them into England is preserved at Trinity College,

Cambridge. It consisted of a Bible in two volumes, a Psalter and

a book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, the Apocryphal Lives of the

Apostles, and the Exposition of certain Epistles and Gospels. The

brief catalogue closes with these words: “These are the foundation

or beginning of the library of the whole English Church, A.D. 601.”

These were the books sent to us by a Pope to be the beginning of our

national library, and from them did St. Augustine and his companions

begin to teach the English.

The manner of life to be adopted by the missionaries was plainly laid

down by St. Gregory in his instructions to St. Augustine. “You, my

brother,” he writes, “who have been brought up under monastic rules,

are not to live apart from your clergy in the English Church; you

are to follow that course of life which our forefathers did in the

time of the primitive church, when none of them said that anything

he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.”[49]

The ancient canonical life was to be the rule of the new clergy, and

measures were at once taken for carrying this precept into effect.

A monastery dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul was speedily founded at

Canterbury. In after years it bore the title of St. Augustine’s, and

obtained rare privileges as the first-born of our religious houses,

being designated “the Roman Chapel in England.” The abbot took his

place in general councils next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, and the

monastery was recognised as under the immediate jurisdiction of the

Holy See. Here, then, at one and the same time, began the apostolic

and scholastic labours of the missionaries. It was not, indeed, until

some years later, that the school of Canterbury attained its full

celebrity under the abbot Adrian, but thirty years before his time

it had become the model of other seminaries founded in different

parts of England. When Sigebert, King of the East Angles, who had

been baptized and instructed in France, wished to set up a school for

youth to be instructed in literature, “after the good fashions he had

seen in that country,” he sent to Canterbury for his schoolmaster,

and obtained one in the person of Felix the Burgundian, who became

the apostle of the East of England. At this time the liberal sciences

are said to have been cultivated at Canterbury, and some writers

persuade themselves that the school of Bishop Felix was the germ of

Cambridge University.

Northumbria was meanwhile receiving the light of faith from the monks

of Iona, who, being invited into his kingdom by St. Oswald, in 635,

despatched thither the holy bishop Aidan. He chose for the site of

his cathedral monastery the island of Lindisfarne, which soon became

the ecclesiastical capital of the north of England. This celebrated

spot, which is an island only at high tide, and is connected with

the mainland when the sea retires by a firm neck of sand, doubtless

bears at the present day an aspect very different from that which it

presented when the monks raised their first cathedral of oak-planks

thatched with reed. The ruins of a far statelier pile may now

be seen, built of dark-red sandstone, to which time has given a

melancholy hue not out of character with the scene. But there are

some features which time itself can never quite efface; the bold

promontories of the coast visible to the north and south, the wide

expanse of that tossing sea so often ploughed by the keels of the

Vikings, and those ruddy golden sands, are unchanged since the days

when the brethren of Lindisfarne raised their eyes, weary with the

labours of the Scriptorium, to rest them on that beautiful line of

wooded coast, or on the sparkling waves beyond it. Their manner of

life differed in no degree from that of their brethren at Iona. “It

was very different,” says Bede, “from the slothfulness of our times,

for all who bore company with Aidan, whether monks or laymen, were

employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing Psalms.

This was his own daily employment wherever he went and if it happened

that he was invited to eat with the king, he went with one or two

clerks, and having taken a small repast, he made haste to be gone

with them either to read or write.” All the money that came into his

hands he employed in relieving the poor or ransoming slaves, and many

of the latter he made his disciples, instructing them and advancing

them to the ecclesiastical state.

Whilst the north was being thus evangelised by the disciples of

St. Columba, the south also had received a foundation of Hibernian

origin. In the wilds of Wiltshire a school had arisen round the

cell of Maidulf, an Irish recluse, who had been tempted to settle

there by the sylvan beauty of the spot, which was then surrounded by

thick luxuriant woods. To procure the means of support he received

scholars from the neighbourhood who supplied his scanty wants and as

his pupils increased his school became famous; and the name of its

teacher is preserved in that of the modern town of Malmsbury. But it

is remarkable how very soon both the Scottish and Irish foundations

became _Romanised_.[50] One of the first scholars of Lindisfarne was

St. Wilfrid, who, not satisfied with the ecclesiastical discipline of

the Scottish monks, found his way to Canterbury, and there learnt

the whole Psalter over again, according to the Roman version, which

differed from that used in the Northern schools. He was joined by

another North Country scholar, St. Bennet Biscop, and the two set out

together on a pilgrimage to Rome.

The after history of these two saints was full of momentous results

to the Anglo-Saxon schools. At Rome Wilfrid studied the Scriptures,

the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, and the system of Paschal

computation under the Archdeacon Boniface, secretary to Pope Martin

I., and Scholasticus of the Lateran school. He returned to England to

found the Abbey of Ripon, into which he introduced the Benedictine

rule, and whither he invited Eddi, the chanter of Canterbury, to

come and teach his monks the Roman chant. Then he set himself to

reform the errors of the Northern churches, and thirty years after

the foundation of Lindisfarne, the Scottish discipline was, by his

vigorous exertions, exchanged for that of Rome. Biscop, meanwhile,

was not less busy. After his first visit to the Holy City, he

returned there a second time, and devoted himself not only to

ecclesiastical studies, but also to the acquisition of many useful

arts which he was resolved to plant in his native land. Next he went

to Lerins, where he received the habit of a monk, and spent two years

learning and practising the monastic rule; and then he returned a

third time to Rome, at the very moment when the death of Deusdedit,

sixth archbishop of Canterbury, had induced Pope Vitalian to nominate

as his successor the Greek scholar, Theodore. He was a native of

St. Paul’s city of Tarsus, and well skilled in all human and divine

literature. So says St. Bede, and so the Western bishops seem to

have thought, when they delayed drawing up their synodal letter to

the Third Council of Constantinople until “the philosopher Theodore”

should be able to take part in their deliberations. Vitalian had the

prosperity of the English mission scarcely less at heart than St.

Gregory, and discerned the full importance of providing the infant

Church with men who should be capable of laying a solid foundation

of sacred learning in her schools. With this view he sent together

with Theodore, the abbot Adrian, whom William of Malmsbury calls “a

fountain of letters, and a river of arts.” At the same time Benedict

Biscop received orders to join the company of the new archbishop and

to him was committed the direction of the monastery and school of

Canterbury. But Benedict had one purpose fixed in his heart; it was

to devote his life and extraordinary energies to the foundation of

a great seat of learning and religion in his own land, and to fit

himself thoroughly for the work before he began it. The weald of Kent

might have richer pastures, the sky of Italy a softer glow, but the

brown moors of Northumbria were ever present to his mind’s eye, and

it was there that he desired to spend and be spent for Christ. He

was not long before he found out that Adrian’s acquirements were far

beyond his own; so resigning the abbacy into his hands, from a master

he became a scholar, and spent two years more studying under him,

and acting as interpreter to him and to the archbishop. Theodore had

brought with him a large addition to the English library, and among

his books were a copy of Homer (which, in Archbishop Parker’s days,

was still preserved at Canterbury), the works of Josephus, and the

homilies of St. Chrysostom. Bede’s account of the new life infused

into the English schools by these two illustrious foreigners is

doubtless familiar to all readers. Yet it is too much to the purpose

to be omitted here. “Assisted by Adrian,” he says, “the archbishop

everywhere taught the right rule of life and the canonical custom of

celebrating Easter. And forasmuch as both of them were well read in

sacred and secular literature, they gathered a crowd of disciples,

and there daily flowed from them rivers of knowledge to water the

hearts of their hearers: and together with the books of Holy Writ,

they also taught the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and

arithmetic. So that there are still living to this day some of their

scholars who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as

in their own wherein they were born. Never were there happier times

since the English came to Britain, for their kings being brave men

and good Christians, were a terror to barbarous nations, and the

minds of all men were bent upon the joys of the heavenly kingdom of

which they had heard; and all who desired to be instructed in sacred

literature had masters at hand to teach them.”

Adrian had many good pupils, among whom was Albinus, who succeeded

him in the government of his abbey, and greatly assisted Bede in

collecting the materials of his history, and who was besides an

excellent Greek scholar; and St. John of Beverley, whom Oxford

historians fondly believe to have been the first master of liberal

arts in their university. For, according to some authorities, the

Oxford schools grew out of those founded at Cricklade, which place is

said to have derived its original name of “Greeklade” from the good

Greek which was there taught by Adrian’s disciples. Another student

drawn to Canterbury by the fame of its classical learning was St.

Aldhelm, one of Maidulf’s early pupils, who very soon resolved upon

migrating from Malmsbury to the archiepiscopal seminary. Ill-health

did not permit him to remain there long, but a letter from the young

collegian is preserved, addressed to his own diocesan, Hedda, Bishop

of Wessex, which gives very ample information as to the nature and

extent of the studies on which he was engaged. Some suspicion of

exaggeration may naturally attach to such general notices of the

English learning as that given by Bede, but the more minute account

of Aldhelm is open to no such objection. “I confess, most reverend

father,” he says, “that I had resolved, if circumstances had

permitted, to have spent the approaching Christmas in the company of

my relations, and to have enjoyed for some time the pleasure of your

society. But as I find it impossible to do so for various reasons,

I hope you will excuse my not waiting on you as I had intended. The

truth is that there is a necessity for spending a great deal of time

in this seat of learning, specially if one be inflamed with the

love of study, and desirous, as I am, of becoming acquainted with

all the secrets of the Roman jurisprudence. And I am engaged also

on another study still more tedious and perplexing.” Here he enters

at some length on the subject of Latin versification, and describes

the various classical metres, all of which were taught in Adrian’s

school; and in the intricacies of which the Anglo-Saxon scholars

singularly delighted to exercise their ingenuity. He then continues

in a tone of less satisfaction; “but what shall I say of arithmetic,

the long and intricate calculations of which are sufficient to

overwhelm the mind, and cast it into despair? For my own part all

the labours of my former studies are trifling in comparison with

this. So that I may say with St. Jerome on a like occasion, ‘before

I entered on that study I thought myself a master, but now I find I

was but a learner.’ However, by the blessing of God, and assiduous

reading, I have at length overcome the chief difficulties, and have

found out the method of calculating suppositions, which are called

the parts of a number. I believe it will be better to say nothing of

astronomy, the Zodiac and its twelve signs revolving in the heavens,

which require a long illustration, rather than to disgrace that noble

art by too short and imperfect an account, especially as there are

some parts of it--as astrology and the perplexing calculation of

horoscopes--which require a master’s hand to do them justice.”[51]

It must be borne in mind that at the time when Aldhelm wrote, every

problem in arithmetic had to be worked by means of the seven Roman

letters C. D. I. L. M. V. and X., and the decimal system was unknown.

Very often the student was compelled to abandon their use and

_write_ the numbers he was employed on in words. And in default of

more convenient numerals, recourse was had to what might be called

a duodecimal system, by which every number was divided into twelve

parts, the different combinations of which were named and computed

according to the divisions of the Roman money. And lastly, there was

the system of “indigitation,” wherein the ten fingers were made to

serve the purpose of a modern arithmeticon.

St. Aldhelm elsewhere enumerates the studies pursued in the school

of Canterbury as consisting of grammar, that is the Latin and

Greek tongues, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy,

and astrology: he himself is also said to have studied the Hebrew

Scriptures in their original text, and his works both in prose and

poetry bear witness to his familiarity with the chief Latin poets,

such as Virgil, Juvenal, Lucan, and Persius, whom he frequently

quotes. He was the first Englishman who appeared before the world

in the character of an author; his chief poems being a Treatise

on the Eight Virtues, and one in praise of Virginity. His Latin

versification is of the most artificial structure; in one of his

poetical prefaces the initial letters of each line read downwards,

the terminal letters read upwards, and the last line read backwards,

all repeat the words of the first line read straightforwards; and

this he pleasantly denominates “a square poem.” I will give but one

couplet as a sample of the kind of brain-puzzles which afforded such

solace to the Anglo-Saxon students. The reader will observe that the

lines may be read equally well backwards or forwards, still forming

the same succession of letters:--

Roma tibi subito motibus ibit amor

Sole medere pede, ede, perede melos.

All the writings of Aldhelm exhibit instances of the same misplaced

ingenuity, as well as that love of enigma which was general among

his countrymen. In spite of these faults, however, and of a certain

pompous and pedantic style which treats very ordinary subjects in

very big words, and is an anticipation by eleven centuries of the

Johnsonian dialect, it is impossible to deny that our first English

author was a man of genius and erudition. In his poems, which are

redundant with imagery, he gathers his similitudes now from the

household arts of the smith and the weaver, now from the natural

beauties of hill and field. You see that you are reading the thoughts

of one who does not owe everything to books, but who has observed and

reasoned for himself. Thus, desiring to show that perfection does not

consist in chastity alone, but in a combination of all the virtues

in their proper order, he compares it to “a web, not of one uniform

colour and texture, but woven with purple threads and many colours

into a variety of figures by the shuttles flying from side to side.”

Describing a well-stored memory, he compares it to the work of the

sagacious bees, “who, when the dewy dawn appears and the beams of the

limpid sun arise, pour the thick armies of their dancing swarms over

the open fields; and, now lying in the honied leaves of the marigold

or the purple tops of the heather, suck the nectar drop by drop, and

carry home their plunder on burdened thighs.” A copy of his treatise

on Virginity is preserved in the Lambeth library, in which a highly

finished illumination represents him seated in his chair surrounded

by a group of nuns. The book was in fact written for the use of the

Abbess Hildelitha and her religious daughters of Wimbourne; for the

Anglo-Saxon nuns very early vied with the monks in their application

to letters.

On leaving Canterbury Aldhelm returned to Malmsbury and soon raised

the reputation of the school. Pupils flocked to him even from France

and Scotland, for, says William of Malmsbury, “some admired the

sanctity of the man, and others the depth of his learning. He was as

simple in piety as he was multifarious in knowledge, having imbibed

the seven liberal arts so perfectly that he was wonderful in each,

and unrivalled in all.” One of his pupils was Ethilwald, afterwards

Bishop of Lindisfarne, to whom, as to his “most beloved son and

disciple,” he addressed a letter, preserved among his other works.

After warning him against the vain pleasures of the world, “such as

the custom of daily junketings, indulgence in immoderate feasting,

and continued riding and racing,” he admonishes him to be on his

guard against the love of money and silly parade, and exhorts him

rather to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures; and inasmuch

as the meaning of almost every part of them depends on the rules of

grammar, to perfect himself in that art, that so he may dive into

the signification of the text. Ethilwald was a devoted admirer of

the saint, and left some verses in praise of his illustrious master

whom he is too good a scholar to call by his barbarous Saxon name,

preferring to translate it into the more classic appellation of

_Cassis prisca_, or _old helmet_. Another of Aldhelm’s pupils and

correspondents was Eadfrid, who, after the fashion of the times,

passed over into the sister isle to profit by the learning of

the Irish schools. He remained there six years, and was heartily

congratulated by Aldhelm on his return from what he calls the “land

of fog.” “Nowadays,” says the scholar of Malmsbury, “the renown of

the Irish is so great that one daily sees them going or returning;

and crowds flock to their island to gather up the liberal arts and

physical sciences. But if the sky of Ireland has its stars, has not

that of England its sun in Theodore the philosopher, and its mild

moon in Adrian, gifted with an inexpressible urbanity?”

In 675 Malmsbury became an abbey, and Aldhelm was chosen its first

abbot. When the diocese of Wessex was divided into two parts he was

named Bishop of Sherburne, whence the episcopal see was afterwards

removed to Salisbury. A well-known anecdote represents him to us

instructing the rude peasantry of Malmsbury who would not stay to

listen to the Sunday sermon, by singing his verses to them, harp in

hand, after the fashion of a wandering gleeman. We read also of the

pains he took in forming a library in his abbey, and how, being on

a visit to Bretwald, Archbishop of Canterbury (an old companion and

former schoolfellow), he heard of the arrival at Dover of a foreign

ship, and at once hastened down to the coast to see if there were any

_books_ among its cargo. As he was walking on the seashore intently

examining the merchandise that was unlading, he espied a heap of

books, and among them a volume containing the entire Bible. This was

a treasure indeed, and a very rare one, for the books of Scripture

were generally written out separately, and had to be procured and

copied one by one. He determined at once to secure the Bible for his

library, and turning over the pages with a knowing air, began to

bargain with the owners and to beat them down somewhat in the price.

The sailors grumbled at this, and said he might undervalue his own

goods if he liked, but not those of others. At last they turned him

away with very abusive language, and, refusing all his offers, pulled

off with the Bible to their ship. But a terrible tempest arose, which

made them repent of their churlish conduct, and returning to the

shore they entreated the good bishop to pardon their rudeness and

accept the book as a gift, for it seems they considered that they had

only been saved from shipwreck by his prayers. Aldhelm, however, laid

down the half of their original demand, and returned with his prize

to his convent, where the book was still preserved in the time of

William of Malmsbury.

We must now return to St. Bennet Biscop, who, after completing his

studies at Canterbury, was planning a fourth expedition to Rome,

chiefly for the purpose of collecting books. His bibliographical tour

was crowned with complete success. He travelled along purchasing,

and also begging books in all directions, which when procured were

deposited in the keeping of trusty friends, from whom he gathered

them up again on his homeward journey. He returned to England laden

with his treasures, and obtained a grant of land from Egfrid, king

of Northumbria, for the erection of his long-contemplated monastery.

It was dedicated to St. Peter, and situated at the mouth of the

Wear--a spot, says William of Malmsbury, “which once glittered with

a multitude of towns built by the Romans,” and which in our own days

also is a busy scene of trade. Though the Roman towns had disappeared

in Biscop’s time, his monastery was far from standing in the midst

of a solitude. In fact, he sought, not shunned, the haunts of men,

for his main object was their instruction. He had no intention of

being merely “the man wise for himself;” his books and his learning

had been acquired to profit other souls besides his own. So he did

not choose a lonesome wilderness, or a marsh, or a desert island,

but a spot conveniently situated within reach of what, even in the

seventh century, was a tolerably busy port. “The broad and ample

river running into the sea,” says the old historian already quoted,

“received vessels borne by gentle gales on the calm bosom of its

haven;” and the parish of Monk-Wearmouth in the now smoky town of

Sunderland marks the ground occupied by St. Bennet’s first foundation.

It was commenced in the year 674, the monastery being at first only

built of wood, but the church was planned on a more magnificent

scale. Bennet, who thought nothing of a long journey in pursuit

of his cherished designs, crossed over to France to seek out good

masons, and brought them back with him to Wearmouth, where they

built him a very handsome church of hewn stone. The fame of this

noble structure spread far and wide, and Naitan, king of the Picts,

sent ambassadors imploring that the French masons might be sent to

build an exactly similar church in his dominions. As soon as the

walls of his church were up, Bennet sent over once more to France

for glass-makers, who glazed all the windows both of the church

and monastery. Bede tells us that these were the first artificers

in glass who had been seen in England. “It is an art,” he says,

“not to be despised, because of its use in furnishing lamps for the

cloisters and other kinds of vessels.” The church being now finished

and furnished, the books were stored up in the library, and four

years were spent by the abbot in collecting the spiritual stones of

his edifice. The result of his labours was so satisfactory that King

Egfrid desired to see another monastery of similar character founded

in his kingdom, and in 682 the saint obtained a second grant of land

at Jarrow-on-the-Tyne, about five miles from Wearmouth. “The spot has

no claim to beauty,” says a modern writer, “yet it is calculated to

produce an impression of solemn quiet. The church and crumbling walls

of the old monastery standing on a green hill sloping to the bay, the

long silvery expanse of water, the gentle ripple of the advancing

tide, the sea-birds perpetually hovering on the wing or dipping in

the wave, and the distant view of Shields harbour with its clouds of

smoke and forests of masts, form no ordinary combination.”[52] And we

may add that no ordinary feelings stir in the heart of the visitor

who sees in those grey crumbling walls, with their vestiges of Norman

and Saxon ornament, the remains of that monastic seminary which

nurtured the genius and the sanctity of the Venerable Bede. Here

arose the monastery of St. Paul’s; and if you look in the eastern

wall of the church you may still see the inscription, of unquestioned

antiquity, which preserves the memory of its dedication. It is cut on

a small tablet in good Roman letters, and tells you that the church

was dedicated on the eighth of the kalends of May, in the fifteenth

year of Egfrid the king, and during the abbacy of Ceolfrid.

This Ceolfrid deserves a few words to himself. He was originally a

monk of Ripon, where he became master of the school and the novices.

His pupils, who were mostly high-born youths, showed some disdain for

those menial employments that formed part of a monk’s daily life,

and which they associated with the idea of servitude; but Ceolfrid,

himself an earl’s son, overcame their repugnance by his own example.

He undertook the care of the bakehouse, and might daily be seen

cleaning the oven, bolting the meal, and baking the bread for the use

of the brethren. From labours such as these he passed to the school,

and there made his scholars understand that a man may make a very

good baker without losing his taste for the liberal arts. Ceolfrid’s

fame at last reached the ears of St. Bennet, who, it must be owned,

was covetous of learned monks and good books. So he begged him of the

abbot of Ripon, and, having obtained him, placed the new monastery

of Jarrow under his government. The two houses, however, continued

to be so closely united as to form but one community; they were like

one monastery, says Bede, built in two places. Ceolfrid held the

abbacy of St. Paul’s for seven years, during which time the dreadful

pestilence of 686 broke out, which swept away all the choir monks,

with the exception of the abbot himself and one little boy, with

whose aid he still contrived to chant the canonical hours, though

their voices were often enough choked with their tears. This little

boy could be no other than St. Bede himself, who had accompanied the

monks from Wearmouth to Jarrow, and was then seven years of age.

St. Bennet’s journeys were not yet over. As soon as the foundation

of Jarrow was completed he set out on a fifth expedition to Rome

accompanied by Ceolfrid, and this time brought back, not only

books and relics, but also pictures. These last he placed in his

two churches: at the west end of the Church of St. Peter he placed

pictures of our Lady and the twelve Apostles; on the south wall

were scenes from the Gospels, and on the north the visions of the

Apocalypse. The pictures placed in St. Paul’s were intended to

show the connection between the Old and New Testaments. There you

saw representations of Isaac bearing the wood of the sacrifice,

and of our Lord bearing His Cross: of the brazen serpent, and

the Crucifixion. “Those, therefore, who knew not how to read,”

says Bede, “entering these churches, found on all sides agreeable

and instructive objects, representing Christ and His saints, and

recalling to their memory the grace of His Incarnation and the

terrors of the last judgment.” But Bennet had brought from Rome

something even more precious than his pictures. It was not to be

supposed that in his solicitude to provide his monks with the best

instruction that books or teachers could afford he should overlook

the necessity of providing them with masters of the ecclesiastical

chant. The Roman chant had already been introduced into Northumbria

by James the Deacon, the fellow-labourer of St. Paulinus, who, says

Bede, was extraordinarily skilful in singing, and taught the same

to many, after the custom of the Romans. But he was now an old man,

and does not seem to have formed any disciples qualified to succeed

him in his office. Benedict therefore entreated Pope Agatho to allow

him to take back into England no less a personage than John the

Venerable, abbot of St. Martin’s, and arch-chanter of St. Peter’s,

that he might teach in his monastery the method of singing throughout

the year as it was practised in St. Peter’s Church. It argues much

the importance which was attached at Rome to Benedict’s foundations,

that his petition was granted. Abbot John received orders to set out

for the barbarous north, and, taking up his residence at Wearmouth,

he taught the chanters of that monastery the whole order and manner

of singing and reading aloud, and committed to writing all that was

requisite throughout the whole course of the year for the celebration

of festivals; “all which rules,” adds St. Bede, “are still observed

there, and have been copied by many other monasteries. And the said

John not only taught the brethren of that monastery, but such as had

skill in singing resorted from almost all the monasteries of the

same province to hear him, and many invited him to teach in other

places.”[53]

Such, then, was the provision made by St. Bennet for the instruction

of his monks and the establishment among them of a school of sacred

learning. And his enterprise was a grand success. His twin houses

became centres of human and divine science, as well as of regular

discipline. The life led within their walls has been made familiar

to us by the pen of Bede, who, with that simplicity which forms

the charm of his writing, describes it in all its homely features.

The men who were engaged in rearing, on the barbarous shores of

England, a seminary of learning which had not its equal north of

the Alps, might every day be seen taking part in the duties of the

farmyard and the kitchen. Abbot Easterwine, a former courtier of

King Egfrid’s, who was chosen to fill the place of abbot during the

absence of St. Bennet, delighted in winnowing the corn, giving milk

to the young calves, working at the mill or forge, and helping in the

bakehouse. It is thus that Bede describes him; but he dwells also on

the spiritual beauty of the abbot’s “transparent countenance,” his

musical voice and gentle temper, and tells us how, being seized with

his last illness, “coming out into the open air, and sitting down, he

called for his weeping brethren, and, after the manner of his tender

nature, gave them all the kiss of peace, and died at night as they

were singing lauds.”

As St. Bennet was still absent, the monks chose in his room the

deacon Sigfrid, who continued to share the government with Bennet

after his return. Both of them were afflicted with grievous infirmity

during the three last years of their lives, St. Bennet being almost

entirely paralysed, while Sigfrid was wasted with a slow consumption.

The last hours of the saint were in harmony with his life. His monks

read the Scriptures aloud to him during his sleepless nights, and he

often charged them to remember the two things that he most earnestly

recommended to his children, the preservation of regular discipline,

and the care of his books. When unable to leave his bed, and too weak

to recite the Divine Office, he caused some of the brethren to recite

it in his chamber, divided into two choirs, and joined with them as

well as he could. The two venerable abbots, who were both hourly

expecting death, had a great wish to meet once more in this life, and

to satisfy their desire, the monks carried Sigfrid on a litter to

St. Bennet’s cell, and laid them side by side, their heads resting

on the same pillow, that they might give each other a farewell kiss;

but so extreme was their weakness, that even this they were not able

to do without assistance. After their departure Ceolfrid continued

to govern both houses for twenty-eight years, during which time he

did much to advance the studies of the brethren, and sent several of

them to Rome to complete their education. He increased the library,

and caused three copies of the entire Bible to be written out, one

of which he sent as a present to the Pope, whilst the other two were

placed in the two churches, “to the end that all who wished to read

any passage in either Testament might at once find what they wanted.”

Naitan, king of the Picts, applied to him for church ornaments, as he

had applied to St. Bennet for masons. The abbot’s reply may be quoted

as giving some notion of his scholarship. “A certain worldly ruler,”

he wrote, “most truly said that the world would be happy if either

philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. Now if a worldly man

could judge thus truly of the philosophy of this world, how much more

were it to be desired that the more powerful men are in this world

the more they would labour to be acquainted with the commandments

of God.” In this passage the Anglo-Saxon monk is quoting from the

Republic of Plato.

St. Bede, who has preserved these records of the Fathers of

Wearmouth and Jarrow, dwells with delight on the memory of the many

happy years he himself passed within those walls, and on the thought

that none of them had been spent in idleness. “All my life,” he

says, “I have spent in this monastery, giving my whole attention

to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and in the intervals between

the hours of regular discipline, and the duties of church psalmody,

I ever took delight in either learning, teaching, or writing.” It

was his love of study that made him decline the office of abbot,

“for that office demands thoughtfulness, and thoughtfulness brings

distraction of mind, which is an impediment to learning.” Though

invited to Rome by Pope Sergius, it appears certain that he never

left his own country, and that all he knew was derived from native

teachers, principally, as he tells us, from the abbots Bennet and

Ceolfrid. The science of music, indeed, in which he excelled, and on

which he wrote several treatises, he had studied under John of St.

Martin’s; Trumhere, a monk of Lestingham, was his master in divinity,

and his Greek scholarship was probably acquired from Archbishop

Theodore himself. But the varied character of Bede’s erudition must

be principally explained by his free use of Biscop’s noble libraries.

It was at the command of his abbot, and of St. John of Beverley, who

ordained him priest, that he began, at thirty years of age, to write

for the instruction of his countrymen. For his greater convenience a

little building was erected apart from the monastery, which Simeon

of Durham speaks of as yet standing in the twelfth century, “where,

free from all distraction, he could sit, meditate, read, write, or

dictate.” The original building must have been swept away at the time

of the destruction of the monastery by the Danes in 794, yet Leland

describes what he calls St. Bede’s oratory, as remaining, even in his

time.

His studies, however, were not suffered to interfere with his other

duties, for he was most exact in the minute observance of his rule,

and specially in the discharge of the choral office, though, as he

owns in a letter to Bishop Acca, these necessary demands on his time,

the _monasticæ servitutis retinacula_, as he calls them, proved no

small hindrance to his work. Yet he never sought exemption of any

kind, and least of all from attendance in choir. “If the angels did

not find me there among my brethren,” he would say, “would they not

say, Where is Bede? why comes he not to worship at the appointed time

with the others?”[54] It was thus he found the secret of keeping

alive the spirit of fervour in the midst of continued labour of the

head. Printed among his theological and philosophical works, is a

little manual, drawn up, as it would seem, for his own private use,

and consisting of a selection of favourite verses from the Psalms.

His disciple, Cuthbert, says of him. “I can declare with truth,

that never saw I with my eyes, or heard I with my ears, of any man

so indefatigable in giving thanks to God.” Besides the requirements

of his monastic rule, and his own private studies, Bede had other

duties which engaged a large portion of his time. He was both mass

priest and scholasticus. In the first capacity, he had to administer

the sacraments, visit the sick, and preach on Sundays and festivals;

in the second, to communicate to others the learning he had himself

acquired. Even before his ordination, the direction of the monastic

school was placed in his hands, and here he taught sacred and humane

letters to the 600 monks of Jarrow, as well as to the pupils who

flocked to him from all parts of England. The character of his

teaching is beautifully noticed in the breviary lessons for his

feast. “He was easily kindled and moved to compunction by study,

and whether reading or teaching, often wept abundantly. And after

study he always applied himself to prayer, well knowing that the

knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures is to be gained rather by the

grace of God than by our own efforts. He had many scholars, all of

whom he inspired with extraordinary love of learning; and what is

more, he infused into them the holy virtue of religion; he was most

affable to the good, but terrible to the proud and negligent; sweet

in countenance, with a musical voice, and an aspect at once cheerful

and grave.”

The writings of Bede bear witness to the extent of his learning. He

himself gives a list of forty-five works of which he was the author,

including, besides his homilies and commentaries on Holy Scripture,

treatises on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music,

geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum,

and natural philosophy. His Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the

Fathers must always be admired as models of unaffected simplicity

of style. He was well skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew

tongues.[55] His Greek erudition is proved by the fact of his having

translated the life of St. Athanasius out of Greek into Latin, and

also by the Retractations, which, with characteristic candour, he

published in his old age, to correct some errors into which he had

fallen in his earlier commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, and

which he became aware of after meeting with a Greek manuscript of

that portion of the Scriptures which varied from the Latin text. His

treatises on grammar and versification betray an acquaintance with

Latin literature which shows us that St. Bennet’s libraries must

have been well stored with classics.[56] In his scientific views,

he of course followed the generally received theories of the time

in which he lived; though in some points he corrected the errors

of former writers by the result of his own observations. “Bede’s

works,” observes Mr. Turner, “are evidence that the establishment

of the Teutonic nations on the ruins of the Roman Empire did not

_barbarise_ knowledge. He collected and taught more natural truths

than any Roman writer had yet accomplished; and his works display an

advance, not a retrogression, in science.” Thus, he taught that the

stars derived their light from the sun; that the true shape of the

earth was globular,[57] to which he attributes the irregularity of

our days and nights. He explains the ebb and flow of the tide, by the

attractive power of the moon, and points out the error of supposing

that all the waters of the ocean rise at the same moment, instancing

observations which he has taken himself on different parts of the

English coast in support of his statement. He shows that the sun is

eclipsed by the intervention of the moon, and the moon by that of the

earth. He also gives simple and intelligent explanations of various

natural phenomena, such as the rainbow, and the formation of rain

and hail. He had the good sense to condemn judicial astrology as

equally false and pernicious, and applied his scientific knowledge to

useful purposes, constructing tables to serve the place of a modern

ephemeris.

By far the greater part of his writings, however, consist of

commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, in which his design is less

to indulge in original speculation, than to resume the teaching of

the Fathers. After the fashion of the early writers, he reproduces

their metaphysical arguments, and even their words and imagery, his

love of science occasionally appearing in his selections. Thus, in

speaking of the Holy Trinity, he embodies in his text the beautiful

illustration repeated before him by St. John Chrysostom, and other

early Fathers, wherein the Three Divine Persons in one essence

are compared to the form, the light, and the heat of the sun. The

globular body of the sun, he says, never leaves the heavens, but its

light (which he compares to the person of the Son), and its heat

(to that of the Holy Ghost) descend to earth and diffuse themselves

everywhere, animating the mind and kindling the heart. Yet though

universally present, light never really quits the sun, for we behold

it there; and heat, too, is never separated from it; and the whole

is one sun, comprised within a circle, which has no end and no

beginning. He shows the same analogies in other forms of nature, as

in water, wherein we see the fountain, the flowing river, and the

lake--all different in form, yet one in substance, and inseparable

one from the other. In his treatise, _De Natura Rerum_, he not only

exhibits vast erudition but often expresses himself with a certain

unadorned eloquence. “Observe,” he says, “how all things are made

to suit and to govern one another. See how heaven and earth are

respectively adorned; heaven, by the sun, moon, and stars, and earth

by its beautiful flowers, its herbs, trees, and fruits. From these

men derive their food, their shining jewels, the various pictures so

pleasantly woven in their hangings, their variegated colours, the

sweet melody of strings and organs, the splendour of gold and silver,

and the pleasant streams of water which bring us ships and set in

motion our mills, together with the fragrant aroma of myrrh, and the

sweet form of the human countenance.” Bede’s love of music reveals

itself in a thousand passages. “Among all the sciences,” he says,

“this one is most commendable, pleasing, mirthful, and lovely. It

makes a man liberal, cheerful, courteous, and amiable. It rouses him

to battle, enables him to bear fatigue, comforts him under labour,

refreshes the disturbed mind, takes away headaches, and soothes the

desponding heart.”

There is one subject which engaged his attention that deserves a more

particular notice, I mean the labours he directed to the grammatical

formation of his native language, a work of vast importance,

which, in every country where the barbarous races had established

themselves, had to be undertaken by the monastic scholars. Rohrbacher

observes that St. Bede did much by his treatises on grammar and

orthography, to impress a character of regularity on the modern

languages which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, were beginning to

be formed out of the Latin and Germanic dialects. Much more was his

influence felt on the Anglo-Saxon dialect, in which he both preached

and wrote. A curious poetical fragment of the twelfth century,

discovered some years since in Worcester Cathedral, names him among

other saints “who taught our people in English,” and praises him in

particular, for having “wisely translated” for the instruction of

his flock. This is not mere tradition. Besides commenting on nearly

the whole Bible, Bede is known to have translated into English both

the Psalter and the four Gospels. But this involved a labour the

character and amount of which is not easily appreciated, unless we

bear in mind what the state of the vernacular tongue was at that

time. Before their conversion to Christianity the Anglo-Saxons

possessed no literature, that is to say, no _written_ compositions

of any kind, and their language had not therefore assumed a regular

grammatical form. In this they resembled most of the other barbarous

nations, of whom St. Irenæus observes,[58] that they held the faith

by tradition, “without the help of pen and ink;” meaning, as he

himself explains, that for want of letters they could have no use

of the Scriptures. The Anglo-Saxons were indeed acquainted with

the Runic letters; but there is every reason to believe that these

were exclusively used for monumental inscriptions or magic spells.

The Runic letters were indeed so closely associated in the mind of

the people with magical practices that the Christian missionaries

found it necessary to avoid their use,[59] and introduced the

letters commonly called Anglo-Saxon, which are, however, nothing

more than corruptions of the Roman alphabet. Although the Saxons had

no written literature, they had, however, a body of native poetry

consisting of songs and fragmentary narratives which, like the

poems of Homer or Ossian, were preserved solely in the memory of

the bards, who occasionally made additions or enlargements of the

story, as their genius prompted. Together with the change of religion

appeared a change in the character of the popular minstrelsy. Tales

from the Scriptures took the place of legends of pagan heroes, and

the Christian missionaries made use of these for the purpose of

instilling into their rude hearers some knowledge of the mysteries of

faith.

But the Saxon poetry, even in its Christianised form, does not

appear to have been _written down_ until the time of Alfred. Before

any steps could be taken to form a literature, the language itself

had to be laboriously reduced to grammatical rules. The Anglo-Saxon

language, as it exists in the literature of a later period, is of

extremely complex construction, far richer in grammatical inflexion

than our modern English. But in its barbarous state, as we read it in

the early fragments of the bardic poems, it was a barren combination

of verbs, nouns, and pronouns, and nouns freely used in an adjective

and verbal sense, and entirely destitute of all the smaller

particles. The change it underwent during the two centuries that

preceded the time of Alfred was the transformation of a barbarous

dialect into a finished grammatical language, and this change was

mainly effected by the labours of the monks. Nor is it mere matter of

conjecture that Bede had a considerable share in this great work. He

was probably the first who applied himself to it, and has himself let

us know the reasons which induced him to undertake the translation

of certain familiar forms of prayer into the native dialect. In 734,

Archbishop Egbert, who then presided over the school of York, having

invited him thither, Bede accepted the invitation, as he says, “for

the sake of reading,” the York library offering temptations not to be

resisted. He stayed there some months, teaching in the archbishop’s

school; and would have repeated his visit in the following year had

not his declining health rendered this impossible. To excuse the

failure of his promise, he addressed a long and interesting letter to

Egbert, in which, among other things, he suggests the appointment of

priests to the rural districts, who should be diligent in instructing

the peasantry, and who should teach them the Creed and the Our Father

in their own tongue, “which,” he adds, “I have myself translated into

English for the benefit of those priests who are not familiar with

the vernacular.”[60] But the translation of these prayers was a very

small part of his labours; he had, as we have already said, made

an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalter and the Gospels, and on this

latter work he was engaged up to the day of his death. This we learn

from the beautiful letter written by his pupil Cuthbert to a fellow

reader and schoolfellow Cuthwin, which, often as it has been quoted,

we cannot here omit. After speaking of the way in which his beloved

master had spent the whole of his life, cheerful and joyful, and

giving thanks to God day and night; and how he daily read lessons to

his disciples even to within a fortnight of his death, he relates how

the saint admonished them to prepare for death, “and being learned in

our poetry,” quoted some things in the English tongue; how, according

to his custom, he often sung antiphons, specially that belonging to

the season of the Ascension which then drew nigh, beginning “O Rex

gloriæ.” “And when he came to those words ‘leave us not orphans,’ he

burst into tears and wept much, and we also wept with him. By turns

we read, and by turns we wept; nay, we wept continually while we

read.” ... During this time he laboured to compose two works well

worthy to be remembered, besides the lessons that we had of him, and

the singing of the Psalms; namely, he translated the Gospel of St.

John, as far as the words “But what are these among so many?” into

our own tongue for the benefit of the Church, and some collections

out of St. Isidore’s works; for he said, I will not have my scholars

read falsehoods after my death, or labour in that book without

profit.... When the Tuesday before the Ascension of our Lord came, he

passed all that day dictating cheerfully, for, he said, I know not

how long I shall last, or what time my Maker will take me. And yet to

us he seemed to know very well the time of his departure. And so he

spent the night; and when the morning appeared, that is, Wednesday,

he ordered us to write with all speed what he had begun, and this

done, we walked till the third hour with the relics of saints,

according to the custom of that day. There was one of us with him

who said to him, “Dear Master, there is still one chapter wanting,

will it fatigue you to be asked any more questions?” He answered,

“It is no trouble. Take your pen and mend it, and write quickly.”

He then took farewell of them all, and so continued cheerfully to

speak till about sunset, when the youth before mentioned said again,

“Beloved master, there is still one sentence unwritten.” “Then write

it quickly,” he replied. In a few moments the youth said, “Now it

is finished.” “You have spoken true,” said the dying saint. “It is

finished. Now, therefore, take my head into your hands, for it is a

great delight to sit opposite to that holy place where I have been

wont to pray, and there let me sit once more, and call upon my

Father.” So sitting thus on the floor of his cell, and repeating the

ejaculation “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy

Ghost,” he breathed his last, on May 26, 735.

The school of York was rising into celebrity just as Bede was

withdrawn from the scene of his useful labours. Egbert, who may be

considered as its founder, was himself a pupil of Bishop Eata’s, but

had completed his studies in Rome. He was brother to the reigning

King of Northumbria, and succeeded to the see of York at a time

when the affairs of the diocese had fallen into some disorder. One

of his great works was the collection of a body of canons, and

the publication of his famous Penitential, which furnished the

Anglo-Saxon Church with fixed laws of discipline, gathered from

the early fathers and canonists. While thus engaged, however, the

archbishop applied himself with no less fervour to the encouragement

of learning. He committed the mastership of the school he founded

to his relation Albert, but himself continued to overlook the

studies, and charged himself with the explanation of the Scriptures

of the New Testament, leaving to Albert the other departments of

literature. Under their united care the fame of the York seminary

soon extended beyond the shores of Britain, and it is said to have

embraced a larger course of instruction than was to be found at the

same period in any school either of Gaul or Spain. Alcuin, a pupil of

the academy over which he afterwards presided, enumerates among the

studies there pursued, the seven liberal arts, as well as chronology,

natural history, jurisprudence, and mathematics. Attached to the

school was a library, which, under the munificent care of Egbert,

became rich in all the works both of Christian and heathen antiquity.

Alcuin, who filled the office of librarian, has given a list of its

contents; he enumerates the works of SS. Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose,

Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory the Great, Leo, Basil, Fulgentius and

Chrysostom; of Orosius, Boethius, Pliny, Aristotle, and Cicero; of

the poets Virgil and Lucan, of Prosper, Lactantius, and many others,

together with the writings of Bede and Aldhelm, the two English

writers who had already acquired a literary fame. These books were

chiefly collected by Albert, whose custom it was to pass over to the

Continent on book-hunting expeditions, in which he was generally

accompanied by Alcuin.

The librarian of York afterwards composed a poem on the subject of

the saints and archbishops of that city, in which he celebrates

the virtues of the two illustrious prelates under whom he studied,

and the treasures of science stored up by their praiseworthy care.

Egbert, as he tells us, presided personally over the studies of the

younger clergy, for this was then reckoned one of the chief duties

of a bishop. As soon as he was at leisure in the morning he sent for

some of his young clerks, and, sitting on his couch, taught them in

succession till about noon, when he said mass in his private chapel.

After a frugal dinner he had them with him again, and entertained

himself by hearing them discuss literary questions in his presence.

Towards evening he recited Compline with them, and then, calling them

to him one by one, gave his blessing to each as they knelt at his

feet.

In the collection of canons already mentioned Egbert provided for the

religious instruction of the poor as well as the rich. The teaching

of the common people is one of the duties specially enjoined on the

clergy, every priest being required to “instil with great exactness

into the people committed to his charge the Creed and the Lord’s

Prayer, as well as the whole doctrine and practice of Christianity.”

In the absence of books this was done orally, much use being made of

instructions cast into a metrical form, and so committed to memory.

Thus the multitude, if ignorant of letters, were certainly not

uninstructed, as we see in the case of St. Cædmon whom Bede calls

_illiteratus_, that is, unable to read; but who was nevertheless

perfectly familiar with sacred history, which he had learnt by oral

instruction, and was thus able to sing of the creation, the Deluge,

the journeys of the Israelites, and the last judgment.

Albert, the master of the school, and the successor of Egbert in the

see of York, is described by Alcuin in one of his poems as “a pattern

of goodness, justice, and piety, teaching the Catholic faith in the

spirit of love, stern to the stubborn, but pitiful and gentle to the

good.” If he marked any youths among his pupils who showed peculiar

signs of promise, like a good master, he made them his friends. “He

observed the natural dispositions of each with wonderful skill, and,

drawing them to him, taught and lovingly cherished them. Some he

dexterously imbued with the grammatical art, whilst into the minds of

others he instilled the sweetness of rhetoric. These he endeavoured

to polish with the juridical grindstone, those he taught to cultivate

the songs of the muses, and to tread the hill of Parnassus with lyric

steps. To others, again, he made known the harmony of the heavens,

the motions of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering

stars; the laws of the heavenly bodies, their rising and setting;

the aerial movements of the sea, and the quaking of the earth; the

nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts; the diversities of

numbers and varieties of figures.” He taught also how to calculate

the return of the Paschal solemnity, and above all expounded the

mysteries of the Sacred Scriptures. He often travelled into Gaul

and Italy in quest of books and new methods of instruction. The

noblest families of Northumbria placed their sons under his care,

not only those who were training for the ecclesiastical state, but

those intended for the world. Indeed it is certain that the pupils

of the episcopal and monastic schools were by no means exclusively

ecclesiastics. Eddi tells us that St. Wilfrid received many youths

to educate, who on reaching man’s estate, if they chose to embrace

a secular life, were presented _in armour_ to the king. Alfred,

the son of king Egfrid of Northumbria, was himself a pupil of St.

Wilfrid, and spent some years in Ireland that he might pursue his

studies with greater advantage. He became a great patron of learning,

and corresponded with St. Aldhelm on philosophical subjects and the

difficulties of Latin prosody; and it was to his son Ceolwulf that

St. Bede addressed the dedication of his Ecclesiastical History.

On the death of Egbert in 766 the unanimous voice of the people

called Albert to the vacant see. He showed himself worthy of their

choice, “feeding his flock with the food of the Divine Word, and

guarding the lambs of Christ from the wolf.” He governed the Church

of York for thirteen years, during which time he never abandoned his

care of the school. The mastership, however, devolved on Alcuin,

and such was the fame of his scholarship as to draw students not

only from all parts of England and Ireland, but also from France and

Germany. Among the latter was St. Luidger, a native of Friesland,

afterwards known as the Apostle of Saxony, of whom we shall have more

to say in the following chapter.

The extent and character of Alcuin’s learning will be more properly

studied when we come to speak of his labours at the court of

Charlemagne; it will be sufficient here to notice the fact that

he was a scholar of exclusively English growth, and drew all the

materials with which he worked in his after career from the library

and the schools of York. In his writings he often alludes to the

want he feels of “those invaluable books of scholastic erudition”

which were there placed at his command, through the affectionate

industry of his master, Albert, who continued, after his elevation

to the episcopate, to add to the treasures already collected. Two

years before his death Albert resolved on resigning his pastoral

charge that he might spend his last days as a simple monk, and devote

himself exclusively to the affairs of his salvation. Calling to him,

therefore, his two favourite pupils, Eanbald and Alcuin, he committed

to the first the care of his diocese, and to the other that of his

books, “the dearest of all his treasures.”[61] Alcuin was despatched

to Rome to obtain the sanction of the Holy See for the appointment

of Eanbald and it was at Parma on his homeward journey that the

solicitations of Charlemagne won his promise to settle at the court

of that monarch, and transfer to a foreign soil the learning he had

acquired on the shores of Saxon England.

With the death of Albert the prosperity of the Early English

schools may be said to have closed. Five years later the Danish

keels appeared for the first time off the Northumbrian coast: it

seemed only a passing alarm, but in 793 another armament effected

a landing at Lindisfarne, and after slaughtering the monks, gave

to the flames the most venerable of the English sanctuaries. This

was but the beginning of sorrows. The following year the twin

monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow shared a similar fate, and all

the treasures of art and literature collected by St. Biscop were

ruthlessly destroyed. For seventy years these scenes of carnage and

plunder went on without interruption in every part of England, and

the riches laid up in the churches everywhere pointed them out as

the first objects of attack. The finishing-blow came in 867, when

“a great heathen army,” as they are called by the Saxon chronicler,

having wintered in East Anglia, and there supplied themselves with

horses, marched northwards and made themselves masters of the city

of York. Thence they overran the kingdom of Northumbria, carrying

fire and sword wherever they appeared, till the whole country

between the Ouse and the Tyne presented only the smoking ruins of

what had once been cities and abbeys. Beverley, Ripon, Whitby, and

Lastingham, all seats of learning and civilisation, were swept away,

and in 875 the sea-king Halden crossed the Tyne and destroyed the

last remains of the monastic institute in Northumbria. After burning

Jarrow for the second time, he directed his course to Lindisfarne,

where the episcopal see was still fixed, and where a new monastery

had sprung up on the ruins of that formerly destroyed by the Danes.

Eardulf was then bishop, and on learning the approach of the pagans

he determined to save the holy relics of St. Cuthbert by a timely

flight. Calling his monks around him, therefore, he communicated

to them his resolve, and having disinterred the body of the saint,

together with those of St. Oswald and St. Aidan, they prepared to bid

farewell to the holy island, whence the light of Christianity had

shone forth over all the north of England for two hundred and forty

years. This closing scene in the history of northern monasticism

exhibits to us the monks of Lindisfarne in the hour of their sorest

trial, surrounded by their school. There were in the monastery,

says Simeon of Durham, a certain number of youths, brought up there

from their infancy, who had been taught by the monks and trained

in the singing of the Divine Office. These boys entreated Eardulf

to suffer them to follow him. They set out, therefore, monks and

children together, carrying the bier with the holy relics, their

sacred vessels, the Holy Book of the Gospels, and their other

books, and commenced that melancholy journey which, after seven

years of wandering, was to bring them at last to the “grassy plain,

on every side thickly wooded, but not easy to be made habitable,”

where afterwards grew up, on the site of their wattled oratory, the

princely city of Durham.

By these and similar calamities, extending not over one district,

but over every part of the country, England was plunged back into

the barbarism out of which she was but just emerging: her seats of

learning were all swept away, and during the century that elapsed

from the first landing of the Danes to the accession of Alfred, a

night of gloomy darkness settled over the land.

_CHAPTER IV._

ST. BONIFACE AND HIS COMPANIONS.

A.D. 686 TO 755.

The prominent importance attaching to the schools of Kent and

Northumbria must not lead us to regard them as the only learned

foundations existing in England during the early period of which we

have hitherto been speaking. The spread of the monastic institute

among the Anglo-Saxons was so rapid and so universal, that we

are sometimes led to wonder how a country so thinly populated as

England must have been in the seventh century, could have furnished

those crowds of religious men and women who hastened to people her

newly-erected cloisters. And wherever those cloisters were reared a

knowledge of letters and the civilised arts was soon introduced, and

pursued with as much ardour at Selsey as at Lindisfarne, among the

nuns of St. Mildred or St. Hildelitha as among the brethren of Jarrow.

If the bold and mountainous scenery of Northumbria has become

indelibly associated in our mind with the lives of those saintly

scholars who have been made known to us by the pen of Bede, far

away at the other extremity of England there is a province which

still claims as its patron saint one whose learning was as great as

theirs, and whose action on the Church was even yet more important.

St Boniface, or Winfrid, as he was called before he entered on his

apostolic labours, was born in the same year that witnessed the

entrance of Bede into the monastery of Jarrow. They were therefore

contemporaries, though widely different in character, as in the

career which awaited them. The simple-hearted scholar whose holy

happy life flowed calmly on from childhood to old age within his

convent walls, like some quiet stream that never overpasses its

verdant banks, is a contrast indeed to the great apostle who, after

having evangelised half Europe, and ruled the churches of France

and Germany, as Vicar of the Vicar of Christ, with a spiritual sway

larger than any ever exercised save by the successors of St. Peter,

died, as was fitting, a martyr’s death, saluting with his parting

words the joy and glory of that “long-expected day.”[62] Yet both in

different ways exhibit to us the noblest features of the Anglo-Saxon

race, whose simple piety and strong good sense are as apparent in

Bede, as the ardour of its active charity is in Boniface.

He was a native then, not of the bleak and hardy north, but of the

softer climate of that southern province,

Where the salt sea innocuously breaks,

And the sea-breeze as innocently plays

On Devon’s leafy shores.

It took its name from the deep hollows where the apple-blossoms

clustered as thickly then as now, and the clematis wove its tangled

wreaths in as wild profusion over bank and wood. Still covered

with those grand primeval forests which made perpetual shadow in

its pathless valleys, and, fearless of the billows that lost their

fierceness as they broke upon that gentle shore, clothed even the

purple rocks themselves with verdure, and bent their branches

into the briny waves, it merited to receive from St. Aldhelm the

title of _dire Dumnonia_. Perhaps he could not resist the tempting

alliteration, or perhaps the wooded hollows of Devonshire oppressed

with their leafy gloom the senses of the traveller who, as he tells

us, had just passed over the barren hills of “Cornwall, void of

flowery turf.” It formed the border-land of English Saxony, and

touched on that unfriendly territory still inhabited by the Britons,

who saw in the newly converted Saxons only a race of giants and

savages, with whom they refused to hold any intercourse.

The Dumnonians, however, from the first era of their conversion,

showed the same readiness to welcome the establishment among them

of monks and schools as was elsewhere exhibited, and the city of

Exeter is said to have received the name of Monkton from the number

of religious which it contained. It was probably some of the Exeter

monks who, in the course of a journey which they had undertaken for

the purpose of preaching to the inhabitants of the wild Western

districts, were hospitably received and entertained at Crediton by

the father of Winfrid. The passing visit left an indelible impression

on the boy’s heart, and he grew up with the fixed desire of becoming

a monk and a scholar. His father did what he could to turn him from

his purpose, but finding himself forced at last to yield to his

son’s entreaties, he committed him to the care of Wulphard, abbot of

Exeter. Winfrid was at that time thirteen years of age. His education

had not been neglected in his father’s house, and he now threw

himself into his studies with an ardour which made it evident that

he deserved some higher kind of teaching than the monks of Exeter

could supply. The school of Nutscell, in Hampshire, a monastery

afterwards destroyed by the Danes, possessed as high a reputation as

any in Wessex, so thither Winfrid was transferred, and placed under

the direction of the learned abbot Winbert. In this monastery Winfrid

was able to satisfy his thirst for grammar, poetry, and the sacred

sciences, and at last, being appointed to the care of the school, he

drew students to hear him from all the southern provinces. In short,

the scholasticus of Nutscell became a famous man; he taught not

only the monks but even the nuns of that part of the world to study

grammar and write hexameter verse; he attended royal councils and

episcopal synods, and he even appeared in the character of an author,

and composed a treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech. “Yet, though

indued with such excellent knowledge,” says his biographer, “he was

nothing puffed up in mind, nor did he despise any who were of meaner

abilities, but the more his learning increased so much also did he

increase in virtue, only showing himself the more humble, devout,

pitiful and obedient.” Both King Ina, of Wessex, and Archbishop

Bretwald, of Canterbury, knew his worth, and desired nothing better

than to raise him to the highest dignities; but neither the charms

of a studious life in his own cloister, nor the certain prospect of

court preferment, sufficed to satisfy his ambition. He had within him

in its fullest measure the apostolic fervour which animated so many

of his countrymen, and led them to carry back to the old Germanic

soil from whence they sprang the new faith which they had learnt in

Britain. Year after year there came the news of English missionaries

who had passed over into that huge province which then extended

between the Elbe and the Rhine, the greater part of which was

swallowed up in the inundation of 1287, and now forms the bed of the

Zuyder Zee. It was called Friesland, and was the chief seat of the

English missions. The first man who gave a certain sort of shape and

system to these missions was an English priest named Egbert, who had

been educated at Lindisfarne by Bishop Colman, and afterwards passed

over to Ireland to improve himself in her schools. The Anglo-Saxon

scholars were accustomed at this time to resort in great numbers to

the sister isle, going about from one master’s cell to another, to

gather from each the science for which he was most renowned. The

Irish received them hospitably, and furnished them with food, books,

and teaching, gratis.

Egbert and his friend Edilhun were studying in the monastery of

Rathmelsigi, in Connaught, when the great pestilence of 664 broke

out, which caused such terrible ravages both in England and Ireland.

It was on this occasion that St. Ultan, bishop of Ardbraccan,

collected all the children who were left orphans, and had them

brought up in a hospital or asylum at his own charge. The two English

students were attacked by the plague, and Egbert, believing his

last hour was at hand, went out in the morning, and sitting alone

in a solitary place thought over his past life, and being full of

compunction at the thought of his sins, watered his face with his

tears, praying to God that he might yet have time granted him to

do penance. He also made a vow that should it please God to spare

his life, he would never return to his native land, but live abroad

as a stranger; and that besides the Divine Office of the Church he

would every day recite the entire Psalter, and every week pass one

whole day and night fasting. Edilhun died the next night, gently

reproaching his friend for having thus prevented their entering into

everlasting life together; and Egbert kept his vow and remained in

Ireland, doing good service as well to the Scots and Picts as to

his countrymen, for it was through his influence that the former

at last conformed to the Roman method of observing Easter, and his

school was resorted to by every Anglo-Saxon student who crossed

the sea in search of Divine wisdom. In his heart, however, Egbert

nursed a great design, which he was never suffered to carry out in

person. He desired to carry the Gospel among the races of Germany

whence the English were originally descended, and Wicbert, one of

his companions, being filled with the like desire, did actually

proceed to Frisia, and there preached for two whole years among the

heathen, but without much fruit. Egbert, understanding that it was

not the will of God that he should himself embrace a missionary life,

and being warned that his vocation lay rather among his own people,

cherished the hope of at least inspiring some of his scholars with

the apostolic spirit. Among these was Wilibrord, who, after receiving

his early education among the monks of Ripon, had passed over into

Ireland in his twentieth year, attracted by the excellent science

which then flourished in her schools, and the fame of his learned

countryman. It appears probable that the two Ewalds, martyred in

Friesland in 695, were likewise pupils or friends of Egbert’s, for

Bede tells us that they were living strangers in Ireland for the sake

of the eternal kingdom; that both were pious, but that Black Ewald

was the more learned of the two. Wilibrord departed for Friesland in

696, accompanied by twelve fellow-missionaries; and the protection

of Pepin, who then ruled the Franks as mayor of the palace to the

Merovingian monarch, enabled him to pursue his apostolic career in

spite of the opposition of Radbod, the Pagan duke of the country.

It would be pleasant, did space permit it, to say something of his

labours;--to relate how he found his way into Denmark and brought

away thirty young Danes, whom he sent to be instructed in the schools

which he had founded at Treves and Utrecht; how on his voyage back

to Friesland he landed at Heligoland, the holy island of the Saxons,

but which then bore the name of Fosetesland, from the hideous idol

to whose worship it was dedicated. It was a wild, mysterious spot.

No animals that had once grazed on its sacred herbage were suffered

to be molested, and near the altar of the god a clear stream bubbled

up of which the natives never drank save in awful silence, for the

utterance of a single word would, as they believed, bring down on

them the vengeance of the dreaded Fosete. Wilibrord caused some of

the cattle to be killed for food, and baptized three converts in

the fountain, over the waters of which he broke the mystic silence

by pronouncing the invocation of the Holy Trinity. This daring act

excited the direful wrath of Radbod, and on the death of Pepin, in

714, Wilibrord found himself forced to leave the country. He was,

however, reinstated in his bishopric of Utrecht by Charles Martel,

and in 717 we find him engaged in destroying another Frisian idol in

the isle of Walcheren.

Tales like these fired the heart of Winfrid with the desire of

sharing in such glorious enterprises. After a journey to Rome,

whither he went to obtain the authority and blessing of Pope Gregory

II., he joined Wilibrord at Utrecht, and for some time laboured

under his direction. But finding that the bishop intended to have

him appointed his successor, he fled away in alarm, and took refuge

in the heart of Germany, where he continued until 723, preaching

among the Saxons and Hessians. According to the old writer, Adam of

Bremen, “Winfrid, the philosopher of Christ,” as he calls him, is

undoubtedly to be regarded as the first apostle of that part of the

country. It was at this time that he gained a young disciple, whose

story is sufficiently connected with the subject which we wish to

illustrate to justify its insertion here. Adela, the daughter of

King Dagobert II., had founded a monastery at Treves, where, on his

journey from Friesland into Hesse, Winfrid was hospitably received

and entertained. After he had said mass, he sat down to table with

the abbess and her family; and her young grandson, Gregory, a boy

of fifteen, who had just come from the court school, was summoned

to read aloud the Latin Scriptures, according to custom, during the

repast. Having knelt and received the holy missionary’s blessing,

he took the book, and acquitted himself of his task with sufficient

success. “You read very well, my son,” said Winfrid, “that is, if

you understand what you are reading.” Gregory replied that he did,

and was about to continue the lecture, when Winfrid interrupted him.

“What I wish to know, my son, is whether you can explain what you are

reading in your native tongue.” The youth confessed that he could not

do this, but begged the missionary to do so himself. “Begin again

then,” said Winfrid, “and read distinctly;” and this being done, he

took occasion to deliver to the abbess and the rest of the community,

a discourse so sublime and touching, that when they rose from table

Gregory sought his grandmother, and announced his determination of

following their guest, that he might learn the Scriptures from him,

and become his disciple. “How foolish!” said the abbess; “he is a

man of whom we know nothing: I cannot tell you whence he comes, or

whither he goes.” “I care nothing for that,” replied Gregory; “and

if you will not give me a horse, I will follow him on foot.” His

importunity prevailed, and he was permitted to join the company of

Winfrid, and journey with him into Thuringia.

The prodigious success that accompanied the labours of Winfrid,

having reached the ears of Pope Gregory II. he was summoned to Rome,

and there consecrated bishop of the German nation. At the same time

he received his new name of Boniface, and solemnly signed an oath

of fidelity to the Holy See, which he placed on the tomb of the

Apostles. Then returning to Germany he pursued his apostolic career

along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube; he penetrated into

the wild fastnesses of Hesse, cut down in the ancient Hercynian

forest the huge _Donner Eiche_, or thunder oak, sacred to Jupiter,

and erected a wooden chapel out of its timbers, on the spot where

now stands the town of Geismar. Within the space of twenty years

one hundred thousand converts had abjured their idols and received

baptism, but the work as it grew on his hands required additional

labourers. The eloquence which in old time had earned for the monk

Winfrid a scholar’s fame, was now employed to rouse the apostolic

spirit in the hearts of his countrymen, and a circular letter

addressed to the bishops and abbots of England, painted the wants of

the German mission in such moving terms that his appeal was quickly

responded to, and he soon found himself surrounded by a noble band of

missioners, among whom were Burchard, Lullus, Wilibald, and Winibald,

the two last named being nephews of the saint.

We find from the lives of these great men, written by their immediate

followers, that the same form of community life was adopted among

them which we have seen had been already established in the English

dioceses. The bishop and his clergy formed a kind of college;[63]

and, in this episcopal monastery, as it may be called, the younger

clerics were trained in letters and ecclesiastical discipline. The

college thus founded by St. Wilibald at Ordorp, became so famous

as to draw learned men from all parts of Europe to take part in

his labours among the populations of Hesse and Thuringia. Yet more

renowned was the episcopal seminary, founded at Utrecht by St.

Gregory, the young disciple of St. Boniface already named, who,

after completing his studies at Ordorp, and following the saint

through the long course of his missions, was sent by him a little

before his death to administer the see of Utrecht, then vacant by

the death of Wilibrord. Gregory formed his clergy into a community,

which he governed in person, and was joined by many illustrious

Englishmen, among whom was St. Lebwin, the apostle of Overyssel, and

the patron saint of Deventer. The seminary of Utrecht produced some

famous _alumni_, of whom I will name but one whose history cannot

be altogether passed over in a narrative of schools and schoolboys.

Luidger was the son of a Friesian noble, who confided him to St.

Gregory’s care at a very early age. In fact, Luidger’s somewhat

premature commencement of his school life was the result of his own

entreaties. He was a precocious child, who cared nothing at all for

play, and so soon as he could walk and talk gave signs of a passion

for books and reading. Whilst his companions were engaged in the

sports of the age he would gather together pieces of bark off the

trees and busy himself in making little books out of these materials.

Then he would imitate writing with whatever fluid he could find, and

running to his nurse with these fine treasures, bid her take care of

them, as though they had been the most precious codices. If any one

asked him what he had been doing all day, he would reply that he had

been making books; and if further questioned as to who had taught

him to read and write, he would answer “God taught me.” It will not

seem astonishing that a child of this temper should be possessed

with a strong desire to learn how to read and write in good earnest.

Yielding to his persevering request his parents accordingly sent

him to Utrecht, where Gregory placed him in his school and gave him

the tonsure. The Monk of Werden, who wrote his life, records his

sweetness with his companions, and his devotion in church. He was

always reading, singing, or praying; and always to be seen with a

bright and smiling countenance, though seldom moved to laughter. And

there was something about him so winning and amiable, that master

and schoolfellows all loved him alike. In course of time he was sent

to England to receive deacon’s orders, Gregory himself not having

received episcopal consecration; and here, for the first time, he

became acquainted with Alcuin, whose scholastic career was just then

commencing. Luidger returned to Utrecht, but an unfortunate blunder

which he made in the public reading of a lesson, and which drew

down on him a severe reproof from his abbot, suggested to him the

desirableness of a further course of study, under the great English

master. Gregory reluctantly consented to his plan, and Luidger

undertook a second voyage to England, and spent three years and a

half in the school of York. Here he was as popular as he had formerly

been at Utrecht, and his biographer seems half disposed to think that

the extraordinary signs of affection lavished on him by his masters

and fellow-students require some excuse, for he tells us they really

could not help it, and that any one who had known him must have done

the same. To none, however, was he so dear as to Alcuin, who always

bestowed on him the title of “son.” During his residence in York,

Luidger read through the whole of the Old and New Testaments besides

a great many books of secular literature, and thoroughly studied

the monastic rule as it was carried out in the English monasteries;

and at the end of that time he returned to Utrecht, laden with

books, and well fitted to instruct others. Alberic, the successor

of Gregory, ordained him priest, and sent him to preach in his

own country, till the Saxons drove him out, and then he became the

apostle of that people also. Charlemagne heard of his merit from

Alcuin, who by that time was fixed at the imperial court, and by

his orders, sorely against the will of the missioner, Luidger was

consecrated first bishop of Mimigardford in Saxony. He immediately

founded a great monastery of regular canons to serve his cathedral,

from which circumstance the name of the place was changed to Minster,

or Münster, which it still bears. But his favourite foundation was

at Werden, a spot which he had chosen in the midst of the huge

virgin forests which clothed the banks of the river Rura. The old

legend makes us understand what sort of work was involved in these

foundations, when it tells us that the bishop and his companions,

having pitched their tents, prepared to cut down the trees and

clear a space large enough to contain a few rude huts; but they

were dismayed when they beheld the massive trunks of the growth of

centuries, with their branches so thickly interlaced that they could

catch no glimpse of the sky, while the summits of the mighty oaks

seemed to touch the clouds. They determined to wait till morning to

commence their task; and meanwhile Luidger knelt down beneath one of

the largest oaks, and was soon absorbed in his devotions. It was then

a clear and beautiful night, the moon and stars shining unclouded

in the heavens. Gradually, however, the clouds gathered, the wind

arose, and a furious tempest burst over the forest. The monks heard

the crash of falling trunks and trembled with fear; they guessed not

that the stormy elements were being forced to do them service. When

morning dawned there was an open space around them, the trees lay

prostrate on all sides, and a sufficient space was cleared for the

foundation of the monastery. One tree alone remained untouched, it

was that beneath which St. Luidger had prayed, and which was long

reverentially preserved. When at last it was cut down, a stone was

placed on the site in memory of the event.

In these episcopal monasteries Luidger established a course of

sacred studies, over which he personally presided. Such was, in

fact, the universal discipline observed by the German missionaries,

and hence the institution of cathedral schools spread over every

province from Denmark to the mountains of the Tyrol. There we find

the same class of foundations established by St. Virgil, Bishop of

Saltzburg, concerning whom it will be necessary to speak a little

more particularly. He was a native of Ireland, and held to be one of

the most learned men of his time. It appears probable, though it

is by no means certain, that he is the same Virgil who, when still

a simple priest, was sent into Bavaria, together with Sidonius, and

was there reported to have given expression to certain scientific

theories of doubtful orthodoxy. It is not easy at the present day

to determine precisely what the supposed errors were, as the only

notice of them that remains occurs in a letter from St. Boniface to

Pope Zachary, wherein Virgil is charged with teaching “that there

is another world, and other men under the earth, another sun and

another moon.” The reply of the Pope was to the effect that if on

examination by a council Virgil should be convicted of teaching

this “perverse doctrine,” he should be degraded; and the matter was

finally settled by his being summoned to Rome, where inquiry was made

into the facts of the case. It would seem that his explanation of

his own doctrine must have proved satisfactory, if the priest Virgil

here spoken of were the same who was shortly afterwards raised to

the see of Saltzburg, and who in 1233 was solemnly canonised by Pope

Gregory IX. These facts have, however, furnished the groundwork of a

story which has been repeated by D’Alembert, and adopted with all its

crowd of attendant blunders by a host of modern imitators. According

to this version, Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, was excommunicated by

St. Boniface for teaching the existence of the antipodes, and this

sentence is represented to have been confirmed by Pope Zachary.[64]

It will be seen, however, that the person of whose doctrines Boniface

complained was not a bishop, but a priest; that the opinions

attributed to him bore no reference to the antipodes; that he was not

excommunicated; and that so far from either passing or confirming

such a sentence, the Holy See examined, and it is to be presumed

approved his doctrine, since it raised him to a bishopric, and at a

subsequent period canonised him. St. Boniface reported the supposed

errors of Virgil as they were reported to him, and whatever may be

understood by the expressions which he quotes, they cannot be held to

signify a belief in the antipodes. They rather seem to point to some

theory of the existence of another race of men, distinct in origin

from the sons of Adam, who therefore shared neither in original sin

nor the benefits of redemption, errors which, as Baronius shows,

might reasonably be styled ‘perverse.’ It is indeed true that Bede,

and other early writers on natural philosophy, did not believe in

the antipodes; not, as Mr. Turner remarks, from “any superstitious

scruple,” but because they followed the geographical system of

Pliny, who imagined the climate of the southern hemisphere to be

incapable of supporting human life. Yet this history of Virgil and

his condemned propositions has been made the occasion of impeaching

St. Bede, St. Boniface, and the whole race of monastic scholars, not

only of considering a belief in the antipodes as heretical, but of

denying the spherical form of the earth, a point which was certainly

never involved in the controversy.[65]

Next to the foundation of churches and monasteries, St. Boniface

trusted to the establishment of public schools for the consolidation

of the faith in the newly converted countries. In every place where

he planted a monastic colony a school was opened, not merely for

the instruction of the younger monks, but in order that the rude

population by whom they were surrounded might be trained in holy

discipline, and that their uncivilised manners might be softened by

the influence of humane learning. At Fritislar and at Utrecht, as

afterwards at Fulda, public schools were therefore opened, and how

nearly the maintenance and prosperity of these schools lay at the

heart of their founder, may be gathered from the epistle which he

wrote shortly before his martyrdom to Fulrad, the councillor of King

Pepin, in which he implores the protection of that monarch for such

of his disciples as were engaged in the work of educating children.

We also find incidental notices in his letters of certain monks

appointed by him to the post of schoolmasters (_magistri infantium_).

St. Lullus, who has been named above among the companions of

St. Boniface, and who was destined in after years to become his

successor, had been educated at Malmsbury, whence he removed to

Jarrow and finished his studies under Bede. Nine of his letters are

preserved among those of St. Boniface, and in one of them, addressed

to Cuthbert, abbot of Wearmouth, he entreats that copies of the works

of his venerable master may be sent to him without delay. Cuthbert’s

reply shows in what esteem Bede was already held as a writer, both

at home and abroad, and how great was the demand for his works,

which the copyists could not multiply fast enough. He begs for a

little indulgence, seeing that the terrible cold of the past winter

has disabled the hands of his best writers. “Since you have asked

me for some works of the Blessed Bede,” he says, “I have prepared,

with the help of my boys, what I now send you, namely, his books

in prose and verse on the man of God, Cuthbert. I would have sent

you more had I been able. But this winter the frost in our island

has been so severe, with terrible winds, that the fingers of our

transcribers have been unable to execute any more books.” Here is

a glimpse into what one may call the real life of the scriptorium,

which we are sometimes disposed to regard in a certain picturesque

and sentimental light. Incessant labour and chapped hands formed part

of the business, and the severities of climate made themselves felt

in rooms entirely destitute of the appliances of modern comfort.

Cuthbert goes on to entreat St. Lullus to send him if possible some

foreign artificers skilled in the art of making glass vessels,

and also a _harper_. “I have a harp,” he says, “but no one who

knows how to play on it.” The whole correspondence of St. Boniface

and St. Lullus bears witness to the deep interest felt by their

countrymen in the work on which they were engaged. Their letters are

addressed to bishops, abbots, monks, and nuns, and show how close an

intercourse was kept up with England in spite of the difficulties of

communication. Presents are exchanged between the absent missionaries

and their friends at home. While the English kings and prelates send

contributions of books and altar-plate, and the English nuns despatch

a welcome supply of clothing, Boniface sends back a chasuble, “not

all of silk, but mingled with goats’ hair,” and some linen cloths,

which, before the linen manufactory had been introduced into England,

were highly prized luxuries. To another friend he presents some

fine German falcons. Some of the letters preserved are of peculiar

interest, as showing us what kind of learning was then pursued in

the religious houses of England, and specially in those of the

English nuns, whom Mabillon calls, “the peculiar glory of the Order.”

Boniface in former years had directed the studies of several convents

of religious women, and kept up an active correspondence with his old

pupils, who entered heartily into all his interests, and forwarded

them to the best of their power. Naturally enough, their talk is

often of books. In one of his earliest letters, addressed to the

Kentish abbess Eadburga, he begs her to send him the “Acts of the

Martyrs;” and in her reply, which is written in Latin, she informs

him that, together with the literary offering, she has sent him fifty

pieces of gold and an altar carpet. Her liberality encourages him to

beg for new favours; and whilst he thanks her for her present, he

petitions that she will get written out for him, either by herself

or her scholars, the Epistles of St. Paul in _letters of gold_, in

order to inspire his neophytes with greater reverence for the Holy

Scriptures. In his next epistle he rewards her diligence with the

appropriate present of a silver pen.

Eadburga removed to Rome, whence many of her letters to Boniface were

afterwards addressed. But the correspondence continued to be carried

on by some of the pupils whom she had left behind her in England, and

specially by a relation of the saint’s named Lioba, then a religious

in the convent of Wimbourne.

Of this convent and its learned inmates I must say a few words,

as they deserve a place in our catalogue of English scholars. The

present collegiate church of Wimbourne, ancient as it is--and the

architecture of its tower bears out its claim to have been founded

by the Confessor--does but mark the site of that far more ancient

minster which owed its erection to the two sisters of good King Ina,

Cuthburga and Guenburga by name. This was one of the very earliest

convents of women founded in England, and is noticed by St. Aldhelm

in a letter written in 705, wherein he declares that he has purposed,

in the hidden recesses of his soul, to grant the privilege of free

election to certain monasteries in his diocese; among others, that

which lieth by the river Wimburnia, presided over by Cuthburga,

sister to the king. Perhaps he was moved to this act of favour

by the fact that Cuthburga and Guenburga were pupils of his old

friend the abbess Hildelitha, the first of English virgins who had

consecrated herself to Christ. Hildelitha received her education at

Chelles, in France, and brought into the cloisters of Barking all the

learning of that famous school. This she increased by her intercourse

with St. Aldhelm; and her disciples, as we have seen, were rather

profoundly versed in sacred letters. Neither did the Wimbourne

scholars decline in learning under the good abbess Tetta, who was

governing a community of five hundred nuns with admirable wisdom at

the time when Lioba first introduced herself to the notice of St.

Boniface in the following graceful letter:--

“To the most noble lord, decorated with the pontifical dignity,

Boniface, most dear to me in Christ, and, what is more, united to me

by the ties of blood, Leobgitha, the last of the handmaids of Christ,

health and salvation.

“I beg your clemency to condescend to recollect the friendship which

you had some time ago for my father. His name was Tinne; he lived in

the western parts, and died about eight years ago. My mother also

desires to be remembered by you; her name is Ebba, she is related to

you, and suffers much from infirmity. I am their only daughter, and

desire, though unworthy, to claim you as my brother, for there are

none of my relations in whom I have so much confidence as in you. I

send you a little present, not as being worthy of your greatness, but

that you may preserve the memory of my littleness, and may not forget

me on account of the distance which separates us. What I chiefly ask

of you, dearest brother, is that you will defend me by the buckler of

your prayers from the hidden snares of the enemy. I beg you to excuse

the rustic style of this letter, and not to refuse me a few words

from your affability which may serve me as a model, and which I shall

be eager to receive. As to the little verses you will find written

below, I have endeavoured to compose them according to the rules of

poetry, not out of presumption, but as a first attempt of my weak

little genius, desiring the help of your elegant mind. I learnt this

art from Eadburga, who ceased not to meditate on the Divine law day

and night. Farewell; live long and happy, and pray for me.”

Then follow four rhymed hexameters in Latin, wherein she not

inelegantly commends him to the protection of Heaven. This was a

common way of concluding a letter in the eighth century, and St.

Boniface, in his epistles to his friends, frequently relieves the

graver subjects of which he treats by a Latin distich or acrostic;

sometimes also by a scrap of Saxon verse. He responded very heartily

to Lioba’s appeal, and a familiar correspondence was at once opened

between them. It is supposed, with every show of probability, that

the _lady_ to whom St. Boniface afterwards dedicated his poem on the

Virtues was no other than the Anglo-Saxon nun. In the dedication to

this poem he says, “I send to my sister ten golden apples gathered

on the tree of life, where they hung amid the flowers.” These golden

apples are ten enigmas, each containing the definition of some

virtue, the name of which, in true Saxon taste, is formed by the

initial letters of the lines.

Another of the most constant correspondents and advisers of Boniface

was his old diocesan, Daniel of Winchester, whom he frequently

consulted in the difficulties with which he was beset. Ozanam

observes that the former grammarian and scholasticus peeps out in one

of the questions he sends for solution; namely, if the baptism were

valid, administered by a certain priest who was in the habit of using

the form, _In nomine Patria et Filia, et Spiritui Sancta_?[66] But

we may, I think, acquit our great apostle of the charge of pedantry,

founded on this passage. He was engaged in planting the Church on a

new soil, and a scrupulous exactness, in preserving the sacramental

forms of words from corruption, need not be taken as a sign of

scholastic priggishness. There is no saying where the “Patria et

Filia” might have ended, or what more extensive variations might not

have been added by the _il_-literati of Thuringia. Bishop Daniel gave

him a great deal of excellent advice, and was of considerable service

to Boniface by supplying him with books. On one occasion we find the

missionary writing to his good friend, begging him to send the book

of the Prophets “which the abbot Wimbert, my master, left at his

death. It is written in large and very distinct letters; I could not

have a greater consolation in my old age, for there is no book like

it in this country, and as my sight grows weak I cannot distinguish

the small letters which run together in the volumes I now have.”

In 732, Boniface received the pallium from the hands of Pope Gregory

III., together with the authority of Papal Legate and Vicar over the

bishops of France and Germany. This office empowered him to take

every step necessary for the firm establishment of the faith in

the newly converted countries, and at the same time he was charged

with the far more difficult task of restoring Church discipline in

the Gallican provinces, where, owing to the barbarism of the times,

a frightful state of anarchy prevailed. We shall chiefly follow him

in his apostolic career in Germany, where his first care was to

provide for the necessities of the infant Church by the erection of

several new sees. Burchard was consecrated Bishop of Wurtzburg, and

Wilibald was appointed to the see of Eichstadt, a woody district

overspread with oaks, which as yet contained but one small church.

Other prelates were named to fill the sees of Erfurt, Ratisbon, and

Friesingen. The care of the Archbishop was next directed to providing

a succession of clergy for the new dioceses, and with this view he

founded several monasteries, one of which became in after-times the

greatest monastic school in Germany. In the year 730, when Boniface

travelled into Bavaria, to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline

in that country, many Bavarian nobles committed their sons to his

care, and among these was Sturm, who was offered by his parents to

the service of God. Boniface placed him in the monastery he had

recently founded at Fritzlar, under the care of Wigbert, one of

his English disciples, and took great care of his education. The

innocence and humility of the youth made him dear to all his masters,

and he quickly learnt the Psalter by heart, and studied the hidden

sense of the sacred Scriptures. Being ordained priest, he preached

among the neighbouring population for three years, but at the end of

that time he was seized with the desire to seek out some solitude

where he might found a religious house; and Boniface, approving his

design, sent him into the forest of Buchonia to choose a fitting

site. Taking two companions with him, they travelled on for two

days, seeing nothing but the earth and the sky, and the huge trees

through which they made their way. At the end of the third day they

reached Hirsfield, where they built themselves some rude huts with

the bark of the trees which they felled, and began the practices of

a religious life. Boniface, however, was not satisfied with their

choice of a situation, and at his desire, Sturm, after exploring

the upper course of the river Fulda without success, set out alone,

mounted on an ass, on a journey into the wilderness, through which he

travelled for days, seeing nothing but the huge trees, the birds, and

the wild beasts that roamed at large in the forest glades. At night

he cut down wood enough with his axe to make a little enclosure,

within which he fastened his beast to save it from the wolves; but

for himself he feared nothing, and after tranquilly making the sign

of the cross on his forehead, he lay down and slept till morning. At

last he reached a vast and woody solitude, which Prince Carloman, the

owner, bestowed on him as a free gift, and here, in the year 744,

nine years after their settlement at Hirsfield, Sturm, with seven

companions, laid the foundation of the Abbey of Fulda. St. Boniface

gave them the necessary instructions, and visited them every year;

but being desirous to establish among them the rule of St. Benedict

in its perfection, he sent Sturm into Italy to visit the monastery of

Monte Cassino, and others most renowned for their strict observance,

that he might be the better able to form his own community in

regular discipline. After a year thus spent in studying the monastic

rule, Sturm returned to Fulda, where, before he died, he had the

consolation of seeing a zealous community of 400 monks serving God

in what had before been a desolate wilderness, and the abbey, like

all those founded by St. Boniface, became quickly renowned for the

sanctity of its inmates, and the good scholars whom it nurtured

within its walls.