For the Cambridge professors having, in Queen Elizabeth’s time,

unblushingly claimed for their founder, Eneas, the son of Brute,

those of Oxford cast about for some way of lengthening their own

pedigree to “pre-historic” times, and not content with the reputation

of having Alfred for their founder, boldly asserted that Oxford

had been a place of study for at least a thousand years before the

Christian era; and appealed to the “old scholastics” whom Grimbald is

said to have found in possession, in support of their statement. But

though the disputed passage is not to be found in the more authentic

manuscripts of Asser, yet in them he makes mention of certain schools

founded by Alfred, the locality of which he does not name, and there

seems no solid ground for rejecting the tradition that fixes them

at Oxford, and represents Grimbald as exercising there the office

of teacher. The same tradition assigns St. Peter’s Church as the

scene of his labours, and the Saxon crypt of that church, which is

beyond all doubt one of the highest antiquity, is commonly called

St. Grimbald’s crypt, and is said to have been built by him and

intended as his own place of sepulture. But even granting thus much

to the Oxford antiquarians it is evident that the circumstantial

account which represents the university as founded by Alfred in the

same regular form which it assumed in the thirteenth century is

altogether fabulous. And it must be allowed that national pride has

considerably overstated the work achieved by Alfred as a reviver of

learning, and a reformer of discipline. How small an improvement had

taken place in the general tone of the Anglo-Saxon clergy may be

gathered from the severe reproof addressed to them in the following

reign by Pope Formosus, in which it is declared that the impieties of

paganism had been suffered to revive in England, while the bishops

“remained silent like dogs unable to bark.” Such a deplorable state

of things can in no way be attributed to any negligence on the part

of Alfred, but as he himself has told us, “without tools no man can

do his work,” and in his day the right tools were wanting. Hence,

though several of his successors inherited his learned tastes, they

were able to accomplish but little for the promotion of letters.

Edward the Elder is said to have founded or restored some schools

at Cambridge, and Athelstan is not only styled a _doctarum artium

amator_, but is even to be numbered in our list of royal authors,

some of his books being discovered by Leland in the library of Bath

abbey. But the renewed incursions of the Danes, and the continued

wars in which these princes were engaged, prevented their devoting

much attention to the encouragement of literature, and, as Wood

expresses it, the drum of Mars forced Minerva into a corner. The

dearth at this time of monastic houses, and consequently of schools,

is proved by the fact that the very few Englishmen who were attracted

to a religious life either chose the eremitical state, or emigrated

to the foreign cloisters of Fleury or Montfaucon. But in England

the old sanctuaries of learning and piety were suffered to lie

desolate. The collegiate clergy formerly attached to the cathedrals

were exchanged for secular canons, and in the reign of Edgar the

Peaceable, that monarch was able to affirm, as a fact known to all

men, that, under the rule of his predecessors, monastic institutes

had entirely decayed.

The only surviving establishment that still kept up something like

a monastic school was the little colony of Irish clergy who served

the church of Glastonbury, and it was here that the rudiments of

education were received by that extraordinary man who was destined

to restore the monastic institute in England, and thus to become the

author of a revival of learning more real and lasting than that which

Alfred had attempted. This was a work demanding something more than

royal power and human greatness for its accomplishment; it implied a

struggle with the corrupt sensualism of the world, and a conquest of

those powers of evil which are not to be cast forth save by prayer

and fasting. A spirit had to be breathed into the dry bones, and the

dead, in a certain sense, to be raised to life; and all this called

for nothing less than the ministry of a _saint_. And in the hour of

the darkest need, a saint was granted to the English Church, which

had for more than a century borne the curse of sterility. Or rather

not one, but a cluster of glorious stars suddenly illuminated her

clouded heavens, whose labours, if they were primarily directed

to the reform of ecclesiastical discipline, embraced at the same

time, and as a necessary means for accomplishing that end, the

establishment of monasteries and schools.

_CHAPTER VIII._

ST. DUNSTAN AND HIS COMPANIONS.

A.D. 924 TO 992.

If there be any spot in England consecrated alike by sacred and

poetic traditions, it is surely the “thrice famous isle” of

Glastonbury, where, according to common belief, the faith was first

planted in Britain by St. Joseph of Arimathea, and which was regarded

by the inhabitants of this island with a veneration which induced a

vast number of the British saints who flourished before the Saxon

conquest to retire before their death to the Glassy Isle, that their

dust might mingle with its sacred soil. Still surrounded by the

marshy waters which once formed a glassy lake around it; still made

beautiful in spring by the apple blossoms to which it owes its poetic

name of Avallon; still preserving that mysterious hawthorn-tree

which, like the roses of Pœstum, “boasts its double bloom,” and marks

the spot where our first apostle struck his staff into the ground;

and still covered with the ruins of that noble abbey which kings vied

with one another in beautifying and enriching as “the fountain and

origin of all religion in the realm of Britain,”--Glastonbury might

well claim, even in its present desolation, to draw pilgrims to its

ruined shrines. The poet wanders there to weave new Idylls over the

grave of Arthur, whilst the devout client of our native saints kneels

to kiss the soil which was the cradle of St. Dunstan. And some may

even recall the thought of days long since fled away into the haze

of the past, when those two names, so rich in legendary lore, were

first cast like golden grains into the storehouse of their memory, as

they stood rapt in childish wonder amid those venerable walls, and

there taking root, gave birth in their souls to a new idea, so that

they passed out of the ruins of Glastonbury, believers, for the first

happy moment of their lives, in the possibility of an heroic life.

Glastonbury was at once the birthplace of St. Dunstan and the

nursery of his greatness in riper years. There as an infant he was

offered by his parents at the altar of Our Lady, and so soon as he

could prattle, was given over by them to the care of some Irish

monks who had settled in the deserted abbey, and earned a scanty

subsistence by educating the children of the neighbourhood. His

extraordinary genius soon displayed itself, not merely by a rapid

acquisition of grammar, but by the excellence he attained in music,

poetry, and the arts. Having been introduced to the notice of the

king by his uncle Athelm, Archbishop of Canterbury, his superior

talents excited the jealousy of the courtiers, who accused him of

magic, a charge which they chiefly grounded on his musical skill, by

which they declared that he bewitched the king, and his familiarity

with the old bardic poetry of the Anglo-Saxons. Obliged to withdraw

from court, he returned to Glastonbury, and for some time led an

eremitical life in a small cell adjoining the church. We need neither

the testimony of the old legend, nor the suggestions of romance, to

understand how it was that a mind like Dunstan’s had to pass through

much tribulation ere it could utterly resign itself to the guidance

of grace. The noblest natures have the hardest combats to undergo,

and are not crowned till they have striven and overcome. So it was in

the midst of many trials that Dunstan spent his solitary noviciate,

chasing away the tempter now with prayer, and now with manual labour.

He did not lay aside his artistic tastes, but toiled away at his

smith’s forge, producing those exquisite works in gold and other

metals long preserved with reverence in many English churches, or

carving in wood, or painting, engraving, and moulding in wax and

clay. He used his musical skill, too, to soothe his weary spirit,

by reminding himself of the heavenly harmonies, and once, having

hung his harp against the wall, the wind, it is said, swept over

the strings, and brought out from them a plaintive strain in which

he recognised one of the antiphons sung in the Common of Martyrs,

_Gaudent in cælis animæ sanctorum qui Christi vestigia secuti sunt_.

At last King Edmund, the brother and successor of Athelstan, recalled

him to court, made him his chief councillor, and bestowed on him

the territory of Glastonbury, that he might restore the abbey to

its former splendour. Dunstan therefore collected a community, to

whom he gave the rule of St. Benedict, and according to many writers

he is to be regarded as the first real founder of the Benedictine

order in this country. Even if this be an historical error, and the

early Anglo-Saxon monks may likewise be claimed as Benedictines (a

warmly controverted point on which it is needless here to enter), St.

Dunstan’s work as the restorer of the order is of no less importance

than if we consider him the first English founder, for the firm

establishment of the monastic rule in England at this particular

juncture was the means by which, under God, the Church itself was

preserved in this land.

The corruption of the secular clergy had become so general that the

total decay of religion must soon have been the inevitable result,

had not sacred letters and ecclesiastical discipline been revived

by the monks. Happily, St. Dunstan was not alone; he found a band

of great souls, able and willing to second him in his efforts, and

among these were the three saints, Odo, Oswald, and Ethelwold. Odo

was the son of Danish and heathen parents, who, disgusted at their

son’s interest in everything connected with the Christian worship,

turned him adrift, while still a child, to shift for himself. Athelm,

one of King Alfred’s thanes, took compassion on him, and sent him

to be educated at the court school, where, we are told, he acquired

so thorough a knowledge both of Greek and Latin as to be able to

write in both languages with great facility. Being promoted to the

priesthood, Athelm chose him for his confessor, and, according to

the custom of the more pious laity of early times, recited the

divine Office with him daily. After that he became chaplain to the

good king Athelstan, in which capacity he was present at the great

battle of Brunanburgh. Athelstan procured his election to the see of

Sherburne, whence, in 942, he was translated to the archbishopric

of Canterbury. He hesitated to accept the primacy, however, on the

ground that he was not a monk, as all those had been who had preceded

him in that see. But the king overruled the objection by sending to

the abbot of Fleury, who himself brought over the monastic cowl with

which he invested the archbishop elect. Odo at once addressed himself

to the Augean task of reform, and appointed his nephew, Oswald, to

the deanery of Winchester, hoping thereby to introduce more regular

discipline among the canons of that cathedral. But Oswald found his

efforts so utterly fruitless that he withdrew to Fleury, whence,

however, he was compelled to return at the command of his uncle, who

could ill spare labourers from the English vineyard. The archbishop’s

canons, together with the pastoral letter which accompanied them,

bear evidence alike of his zeal and his learning. But something more

than a paper reform was required to heal the terrible wounds of the

English Church. The only real hope of remedy lay in the formation

of an entirely new body of clergy, who should from their youth have

been trained in sacred letters, holy living, and ecclesiastical

discipline. Church seminaries were needed; and where could these be

established save in the newly-founded abbeys now springing up under

the government of St. Dunstan?

The destruction of the monastic schools had been one chief cause

of the existing evils, and in their restoration Odo saw the only

hope of remedy. And, marvellous to say, they were being restored.

At Glastonbury St. Dunstan had already founded the first regular

monastic school which had been seen in England since the destruction

of her old seminaries; and here some of the most famous ecclesiastics

who flourished during the tenth century received their education.

Dunstan allowed the reading of the Latin poets, because, as he said,

it polished the mind and improved the style; he also encouraged

the study of Anglo-Saxon poetry, as it would seem with a view of

rendering his clergy eloquent in the vernacular tongue, and more

powerful preachers. Neither was science forgotten; and the study of

arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were carefully cultivated

by his pupils, many of whom likewise excelled in those artistic

pursuits in which their master was an adept. Nor was Glastonbury

the only scene of this revived intellectual activity. The combined

influence of great genius and great sanctity was effecting that

reaction in favour of monasticism which Alfred had vainly attempted

to bring about, and to which he also had looked as the only means of

establishing a real reform. In his time monks had sunk so low in the

estimation of the Anglo-Saxon people, that none but churls could be

found willing to wear the cowl. But St. Dunstan’s example had turned

the tide, and Glastonbury was soon able to send out colonies and

found other houses, whose abbots were supplied from the ranks of the

saint’s chosen disciples.

Among these, by far the most distinguished was St. Ethelwold, who,

after for some years filling the office of dean in the monastery of

Glastonbury, formed the design of passing over to Fleury in order to

perfect himself more thoroughly in religious discipline and sacred

science. King Edred, who was then reigning during the minority of

his two nephews, heard of his purpose and forbade him to leave the

kingdom, but, to sweeten his disappointment, offered him the old

ruined abbey of Abingdon, that he might restore the monastic rule

within its walls. He was right in thinking that such an offer

was likely to reconcile Ethelwold to his detention on the English

soil, and the saint at once applied himself to his labour of love.

He began by sending over to Corby for some monks well-skilled in

monastic discipline, whom he desired to have as foundation stones

of his community; and, not content with this, he despatched one of

his brethren from Glastonbury to study all the ways and fashions of

that celebrated seminary of learning. Ethelwold had nothing more at

heart than the restoration of sacred studies, and was resolved that

his monastic school should be the best of its kind. Wolstan, his

biographer, tells us that he had been the companion of St. Dunstan in

his studies, and not only distinguished himself by his proficiency

in grammar, poetry, and the mechanical arts, but had also spent

several years in the work of teaching others. “He taught the art of

grammar with great skill,” says his disciple, “and that of poetical

metre with most mellifluous sweetness; and like the prudent bee

which is used to seek for pleasant scents flying about among the

trees and flowers, and agreeably loading itself with the odoriferous

juices, even so did he pluck the blossoms of the sacred volumes,

and studiously apply himself to the study of the Catholic Fathers.”

He was, moreover, like his master Dunstan, an enthusiastic lover of

science, and a great adept in architecture and bell-founding; and

thus the restoration of the old abbey was one of those undertakings

in which his piety and his taste were able to work in concert.

The new abbey church was adorned with four large bells, two cast

by the hand of its abbot, and two yet larger ones, the handiwork

of St. Dunstan. Nor was Ethelwold less renowned as a musician and

mathematician, and one of his mathematical treatises, addressed to

the celebrated Gerbert, is still preserved in the Bodleian Library.

He had, moreover, that yet more excellent gift, the power of engaging

the affections of those whom he taught. The young were irresistibly

attracted to him, and this was one cause of the influx of youths who

soon filled the schools of Abingdon. The account has been preserved

of the death of one of his scholars, an innocent boy named Ædmer, who

was greatly loved both by the abbot and his schoolfellows, on account

of his holy simplicity and angelic virtue. Whilst still in the happy

state of baptismal grace he was attacked by mortal sickness. As

his death drew on he was rapt in ecstasy, and beheld the Blessed

Virgin seated on a glorious throne surrounded by many saints. With a

kind and loving countenance, she asked him whether he would prefer

remaining amid that heavenly company, or continuing in his mortal

life. And he, seeing no sadness among those on whom he gazed, said he

would far rather abide there with them; whereupon Our Lady promised

that he should have his wish. And so, returning to himself, he made

known to the abbot what he had seen and heard; and presently his

happy soul departed to its rest.

In the reign of the dissolute Edwy, a storm arose which for a time

threatened to overthrow the new foundations, and put a stop to the

good work so happily begun. The courageous reproof administered to

that prince by the abbot of Glastonbury having exposed him to the

royal displeasure, he was obliged to withdraw to Flanders, and the

two abbeys of Glastonbury and Abingdon were dissolved by the king’s

command, and the monks dispersed through the country. The vices of

Edwy, however, brought their own punishment with them: the provinces

north of the Thames threw off his authority, and chose for their king

his brother Edgar, who at once recalled St. Dunstan, and promoted him

to the same post of confidence he had filled under Edmund and Edred.

The see of Worcester falling vacant, Edgar, who by the death of Edwy

was now king of all England, insisted on his accepting the episcopal

charge, and he was accordingly consecrated by St. Odo, in 957. Two

years later, on the death of the primate, Dunstan was chosen his

successor, and going to Rome to receive the Pall, was sent back to

England invested with the authority of Apostolic Legate.

He was now in a position effectually to carry out those great

measures of reform for which he had so long been preparing the

instruments. He found himself surrounded by a band of faithful and

carefully-trained ecclesiastics, animated with his own devoted

spirit; and his first step was to procure the election of Oswald,

the nephew of Odo, to the see of Worcester. Ten years later, St.

Oswald became Archbishop of York, being allowed, by extraordinary

dispensation, to hold both sees together; Dunstan being unwilling

that the good discipline he had established at Worcester should

suffer by his removal. Ethelwold was placed over the see of

Winchester, and, with the help of these two holy coadjutors, the

archbishop entered on the task of enforcing the observance of the

sacred canons. The royal sanction to his plan was formally granted at

a great council, for Edgar entered heart and soul into all the plans

of his primate. “I hold the sword of Constantine,” he said, “and you

that of St. Peter; together we will purify the sanctuary.” The choice

was everywhere offered to the secular clergy of promising obedience

to the laws of the Church, or resigning their benefices. In some

places the secular canons accepted the reform, but where they refused

to do so they were summarily ejected. St. Oswald was fortunate enough

to succeed in winning his Worcester canons, not merely to promise a

regular life, but to embrace the monastic rule; and, under his wise

and gentle government, they in time became excellent religious. St.

Ethelwold was less happy; and finding it impossible to convert his

canons from their life of lawless indulgence, he replaced them with a

body of Benedictine monks.

At the same time that many cathedrals and collegiate churches were

receiving these monastic colonies, new foundations were everywhere

springing up. Ely, Peterborough, Malmsbury and Thorney abbeys

rose once more out of their ruins; and such was the eagerness of

the king and his nobles to promote the ecclesiastical reform,

that more than forty abbeys were founded or restored during the

primacy of St. Dunstan. With these events, however, so important

in the Church history of England, we are only concerned in so far

as they affected the restoration of learning; and, in fact, the

revival of the monastic institute was one and the same thing with

the revival of the English schools. From this time, in spite of

many corruptions and abuses, which resisted even the efforts of

Dunstan to remove them, the Dark Age, _par excellence_, of English

history began to disappear. A new race of scholars sprang up in the

restored cloisters, some of whom were not unworthy to be ranked

with the disciples of Alcuin and Bede. St. Dunstan himself, during

the remainder of his primacy, was occupied with measures rather of

practical, than of educational reform; nevertheless, we find from

his canons that his solicitude was directed in a very special way

to providing for the religious instruction of the common people. He

revived the old parochial schools, and obliged his parish priests to

preach every Sunday to their flocks, requiring them also in their

schools to teach the children of their parishioners grammar, the

church-chant, and some useful handicraft trade.

It was St. Ethelwold, however, who exhibited the greatest zeal for

the restoration of sacred studies. He loved the work of teaching for

its own sake, and had no sooner got possession of his own cathedral,

and banished the canons who had so long disgraced it, than he applied

all his care to collect and educate a staff of young clergy, who,

he trusted, would prove worthy to fill the vacant benefices. “It

was ever sweet to him,” says his charming biographer Wolstan, “to

teach youths and little ones, to explain their Latin books to them

in English, to instruct them in the rules of grammar and prosody,

and allure them by cheerful words to study and improvement. And

so it came to pass that many of his disciples became priests and

abbots, some also bishops and archbishops, in the realm of England.”

Among these was St. Elphege, who afterwards became Archbishop of

Canterbury, and was martyred by the Danes, and Cynewulf, abbot of

Peterborough, an apt and gentle teacher, whose monastic school was

so celebrated that, as Hugo Candidus says, scholars flocked to it

from all countries as to the court of a second Solomon. He wrote some

Anglo-Saxon poems, still preserved; their authorship being detected

by the curious insertion here and there of a Runic letter, which,

when put together, spell the writer’s name.

It will be observed that the new race of scholars did not exclusively

cultivate Latin literature. The labours of Alfred had given a

powerful stimulus to the study of English, and this was yet further

encouraged both by St. Dunstan and St. Ethelwold, who desired nothing

more than to facilitate the instruction of the common people in

their own tongue. Ethelwold translated the rule of St. Benedict

into Anglo-Saxon for the use of his monks, and a copy of this work

may still be seen in the Cottonian Library, the Latin text being

accompanied with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. Elfric, one of

Ethelwold’s scholars, devoted himself with particular energy to the

cultivation of English literature. Besides translating a considerable

number of the books of Scripture, at the request of his friend, the

ealderman Ethelward, he composed a Latin and English grammar, and

other school books, such as a Latin and English glossary, and his

well-known “Colloquies,” written in both languages, for the use of

beginners. The grammar has a Latin and English preface, in which

he tells us that he undertook the work for the promotion of sacred

studies, specially among the young, for, he observes, “it is the

duty of ecclesiastics to guard against such a want of learning in

our day as was to be found in England but a very few years ago,

when not a priest could be found to translate a Latin epistle, till

Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Ethelwold encouraged learning in their

monasteries.”

His most celebrated work was his collection of Homilies[118] for

the use of parish priests. None are original compositions; they

are selections and translations from the early Latin Fathers, as

well as from Bede and a few other French and German homilists. The

Anglo-Saxon into which they are rendered is considered the fairest

specimen that can be cited of our ancient national tongue, and raises

a regret that so noble a language should ever have been allowed to

corrupt into our modern hybrid English. The compiler subscribes his

name to the work as, “Ælfric, the scholar of Ethelwold,” a title he

evidently regarded as no small honour. I may add, that many of his

writings are addressed to his friend Ethelward and another English

thane, Sigwerd of East Heolen, and seems to intimate that the laity

as well as the clergy were now beginning to cultivate letters.

Ethelwold’s zeal for the restoration of the monastic institute moved

him to petition King Edgar for a grant of all the minsters that

had been laid waste in old time by the “heathen men.” It would be

too long to notice all the restoration effected by “the father of

monks” as he was called, or the many works of active benevolence

which earned for him, from his grateful people, his other beautiful

title of “the well-willing bishop.” He exercised his engineering

talents in supplying his cathedral city with water, and in time of

dearth broke up his altar plate to feed the multitudes. He rebuilt

his cathedral church with great splendour, as we learn from the poem

in which Wolstan has dwelt with loving minuteness on every detail

from the crypt to the tower, which last was surmounted by a gilded

weathercock, which says the poet, “stands proudly superior to the

whole population of Winton, and brazen as he is, rules all the

other cocks of the city.” There was likewise an organ of marvellous

construction, and a certain wheel full of bells, called “the golden

wheel,” only brought out on solemn occasions, both of these being the

workmanship of the bishop.

Meanwhile, St. Oswald was pursuing much the same course in his

northern dioceses. He restored the abbeys of Pershore, Winchecombe,

and St. Alban’s, and founded several others, particularly that of

Ramsey, which long maintained the reputation of being the most

learned of the English monasteries. The history of its foundation is

given at length by the monk of Ramsey. A certain ealderman, named

Aylwin, having offered to devote his wealth to some work of piety,

St. Oswald asked him if he had any lands suited for the building

of a monastery. He replied that he had some land, surrounded with

marshes, and free from resort of men, and there was a forest near

it full of various kinds of trees, and having several spots of good

turf and fine grass for pasturage. They went together to view the

spot, which was so solitary and yet possessed of so many conveniences

for subsistence and secluded devotion, that the bishop decided on

accepting it. Artificers of all kinds were at once collected, and

the neighbours willingly offered their services. Twelve monks from

another cloister came to form the new foundation; their cells and a

temporary chapel were first raised, and by the next winter they had

provided iron and timber enough for a handsome church. In the spring

a firm foundation was made in the fenny soil, the workmen labouring

as much from devotion as for profit. Some brought the stones, others

made the cement, and others worked the wheel-machinery that raised

the stones to their places, and so in a short time the sacred

edifice, with two fair towers, appeared in what had before been a

desolate wilderness.

The monks mentioned in this account as having been brought from

“another cloister,” were a colony from Fleury, and among them was the

celebrated Abbo of Fleury, of whom there will be occasion to speak

in another chapter. He remained two years at Ramsey, and thoroughly

established its school. His most distinguished pupil was Bridferth,

originally a monk of Thorney, who migrated to Ramsey soon after its

foundation, and was probably one of the first scientific scholars of

his time. He had received his early education from St. Dunstan, and

imbibed all his tastes. In his Commentary on Bede he incidentally

notices a scientific observation which he had made when a student

at Thionville in France, whence it appears that he had enlarged his

stock of knowledge by visits to foreign academies. His Commentaries

on the treatises De Rerum Natura and De Tempore, consist of notes

of lectures delivered in the Ramsey schools. Whilst explaining his

author he frequently introduces original illustrations, sometimes

supporting Bede’s statements by numerical calculations of his own,

sometimes amplifying the text and clearing up doubtful expressions.

He quotes St. Clement, St. Augustine, Eusebius, St. Ambrose, St.

Jerome, and St. Isidore, also Pliny, Macrobius, Priscian, and Martian

Capella, and continually refers to the Latin poets as familiar to

his hearers. He was also the author of a treatise “De Principiis

Mathematicis,” and a life of his old master. St. Dunstan, the last of

which he dedicated to Ælfric, and extols him in his preface for the

“enormity of his well-known learning.”

The later annals of Ramsey abbey are full of interest, and how

that the school thus brilliantly founded was not suffered to fall

into decay. Some of these will reappear in a later portion of our

narrative; but, before bidding adieu to the old Saxon abbey, I must

notice one little narrative which shows that all the scholars there

educated were not destined for the ecclesiastical state. Four little

boys named Oswald, Etheric, Ædnoth, and Athelstan had been placed in

the school by St. Oswald, all being sons of powerful Saxon thanes.

They were received before they were seven years old, and were of

innocent manners and beautiful countenances. At certain times they

were suffered by their master to go and play outside the cloister

walls. One day, being thus sent out by themselves, they ran to the

great west tower, and laying hold of the bell rope, rang with all

their might, but so unskilfully that one of the bells was cracked by

the unequal motion. The mischief becoming known, the culprits were

threatened with a sound flogging; a threat which occasioned abundance

of tears. At last remembering the sentence they had so often heard

read from the rule of St. Benedict, “If any one shall lose or break

anything, let him hasten without delay to accuse himself of it,”

they ran to the abbot and, weeping bitterly, told him all that had

happened. The good abbot pitied their distress, and calling the

brethren together who were disposed to treat the matter rather

severely, he said to them, “These innocents have committed a fault,

but with no evil intention; they ought, therefore, to be spared, and

when they grow up to be men it will be easy for them to make good

the damage they have done.” Then, dismissing the monks, he secretly

admonished the boys, how to disarm their anger, and they, following

his directions, entered the church with bare feet, and there made

their vow; and when they grew up to manhood and were raised to wealth

and honour they remembered what they had promised, and bestowed

great benefits on the church.[119]

Not the least benefit conferred by the monks on their countrymen

by the foundation of these abbeys was the improvement of the lands

which they drained and cultivated. This, indeed, does not properly

enter into our present subject; but the graphic pictures which

monkish historians have left of the spots which they thus tamed

and beautified, must be referred to as showing that their minds

and tastes were no less richly cultivated. It is thus that William

of Malmsbury speaks of Thorney abbey after its restoration by St.

Ethelwold, who took great pains in planting it with forest and

fruit trees: “Thorney,” says the historian, “is indeed a picture of

paradise, and for pleasantness may be compared to heaven itself,

bearing trees even in the very fens, which tower with their lofty

tops to the clouds; while below, the smooth surface of the water

attracts the eye and reflects the verdant scene. Not the smallest

spot is here unimproved--all is covered with fruit trees or vines,

which creep along the ground, and in some places are supported on

poles.”

But it remains for us to speak of the death of those great men, whose

successful labours had effected so much for the real civilisation

of their country. Ethelwold was the first to depart; and four years

later, in 988, St. Dunstan terminated his grand career, rapt, as

it would seem, in an ecstasy of love; for, after receiving the

Holy Viaticum, he poured out a sublime prayer, and expired with

its accents on his lips. St. Oswald survived his two friends until

the February of 992; and among all the beautiful narrations of the

deaths of the saints, “precious in the sight of the Lord,” few can

be found more touching than that which describes his end. On the day

previously, coming out of his oratory into the open air, he stood for

a while gazing up into the sky, as though fixedly contemplating some

glorious sight. Being asked what he saw, he only smiled, and said he

was looking at the place whither he was going. He then returned to

his oratory and desired them to give him the Holy Unction and the

last Viaticum, although, indeed, he had no appearance of illness.

That evening he assisted at the night office in his cathedral, and

when morning came, according to his custom, he washed the feet of

twelve poor men, reciting as he did so the Gradual Psalms. At their

close, still kneeling, he pronounced the _Gloria Patri_, and then,

bending gently forward, expired at the feet of the poor. When his

holy body was carried to the grave, a milk-white dove, with wings

extended, hovered over the bier all the way. He had been granted the

satisfaction of witnessing the completion of his favourite abbey of

Ramsey, which he consecrated just three months before his death.[120]

The English restoration of letters, inaugurated by St. Dunstan and

his companions, took place at a critical period, when fresh tides of

barbarism were overwhelming the continental territories, and reducing

the monastic institute in France to its very lowest ebb. This tenth

century was, in fact, the famous “Age of Iron,” which, in spite of

its celebrity as the very midnight of the Dark Ages, fills, strange

to say, a very important place in the history of monastic literature.

It will, therefore, be necessary to consider its various bearings at

some length; and we will begin with the ungracious task of painting

it in its blackest aspect.

_CHAPTER IX._

THE IRON AGE.

A.D. 900 TO 1000.

Baronius, when about to enter on the history of the tenth century,

thinks it necessary to prepare his readers for what is coming by

a sentence which, in spite of the wildness of its metaphors, has

obtained an odd kind of immortality. “We are now entering on a

period,” he says, “which for its sterility of every excellence may be

denominated _iron_; for its luxuriant growth of vice, _leaden_; and

for its dearth of writers, _dark_.” Why iron should be chosen as most

fit to typify the sterility of virtue, and lead to figure forth the

luxuriance of vice, is not perhaps at first sight obvious; but these

words, which are certainly not remarkable for the appropriateness

of their imagery, have formed the text for many commentators; from

one of whom, as being a professedly Catholic writer, I select a

passage which claims to explain at least one of the phenomena of this

period--the darkness, namely, that succeeded the establishment of the

Carlovingian schools.

“The want of success in the excellent establishments of Charlemagne,”

observes Mr. Berington, in his “Literary History of the Middle Ages,”

“may be traced to various causes:--to the inaptitude of the teachers,

who, though endowed with the natural powers of intellect, knew not

how to excite attention or interest curiosity; to the subjects called

sciences, or the seven liberal arts, which were so taught as to

disgust by their barbarous elements, and of which the emaciated and

haggard skeleton was alike unfit for ornament or use; to the absence

of the first rudiments of education, as of reading and writing, in

the higher orders of society, and their habitual devotion to martial

exercises; to the oblivion in which the classical productions of

former ages were held; to a want of capacity in the bishops and

clergy and monks, upon whom the weighty charge of education had

devolved; to a selfish reflection in the same order of men that, _in

proportion to the decline of learning and the spread of ignorance,

their churches and monasteries had prospered_, whilst the revival of

letters was likely to direct the copious streams of benevolence into

a channel less favourable to the interests of the clergy and monks;

to a marked aversion in the Bishop of Rome to any scheme by which

the minds of churchmen or others might be turned to the study of

antiquity, and of those documents which would disclose on what futile

reasons and sandy foundations the exclusive prerogatives of his see

were established; and _to the genius of the Christian system_ itself,

which, when it expelled the Pagan Deities from their seats, too

successfully fixed a reproach on many things connected with them, and

thus contributed to banish from the schools, and consign to oblivion

those works on the study and prevalence of which will ever depend the

progress of the arts, of the sciences, and of literary taste.”[121]

The above passage has been somewhat of the longest, and I shall

therefore do no more than allude to the terms in which another

historian of the Middle Ages, of yet greater repute, speaks of “the

inconceivable ignorance which overspread the face of the Church,

broken only by a few glimmering lights which owe almost all their

distinction to the surrounding darkness;” to his unqualified and

unsupported declaration, that “the cathedral and monastic schools

were exclusively designed for religious purposes, and afforded no

opportunities to the laity;” that “for centuries it was rare for a

layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name;” that “with

the monks a knowledge of church-music passed for literature;” and

that as to the religion which prevailed during the same period, “it

is _an extremely complex question whether it were not more injurious

to public morals and the welfare of society than the entire absence

of all religious notions_.”[122]

“One of the later Greek schools,” says Bacon, “is at a standstill

to think what should be in it that men should so love lies;” yet

he presently adds, “the mixture thereof doth ever give pleasure.”

Charity, then, obliges us to believe that the fictitious element

which appears in these passages has only been added to stimulate

the pleasure of the reader. In perusing them, and scores of others

which might easily be accumulated from writers both great and petty,

we are, of course, left with the impression on our minds, that not

only was the ignorance most dense, gross, and universal, but that

it found its cause in the low cunning of the clergy, and especially

of the monks, who had just wit enough to keep the rest of the world

in darkness. And as the first writer has expressly told us that

their object in doing this was to maintain that flourishing state

of monastic prosperity which, we are assured, existed in proportion

to the spread of ignorance, we are logically bound to suppose that

the countries and the times wherein darkness thus prevailed were

the Elysium and the golden age of monkhood. No one certainly would

be led to suppose that the iron, leaden, and pitch-dark state

of society in the tenth century, could be accounted for by any

particular circumstances in the history of the times, which, far

from favouring the monastic institute, all but destroyed it, and

did totally eradicate it in the districts most subject to their

influence. No,--our historians do not so much as allude to such

insignificant episodes in history as the irruptions of three new

races of barbarians, but complacently refer us to the superstition

and selfishness of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy, which they

regard, as a certain astronomer regarded the spots in the sun, as

being “large enough to account for anything.”

The prospect before us looks but dreary; and in candour it must

be confessed that a nearer acquaintance with this unhappy period

will not set it in a more advantageous light. It was indeed a time

as dark and terrible as the imagination can well depict, though

whether the human mind were altogether in a state of ruin, and

whether the darkness were exclusively the work of the monks, and

whether monasteries grew and prospered as ignorance increased, or

whether some other possible causes may not be assigned for the state

of things so universally deplored, are questions which cannot be

resolved without a glance at the current history of the times.

Enough has been said in a former chapter of the restoration of

letters which took place under Charlemagne. If any work ever had fair

promise of success, it was surely this, and yet in a certain sense it

was a failure. The century that followed his decease was precisely

the iron century which all historians have agreed to vilify, and it

is undoubtedly true that in some respects the state of Europe under

the Carlovingian monarchs was even worse than under their Merovingian

predecessors. The dream of a restoration of the Roman Empire, which

had been realised only so long as the European sceptre was grasped

in the mighty hand of Charlemagne, fell to pieces after his death

like a child’s house of cards. The fatal step taken by Louis the

Debonnaire, of dividing his dominions among his sons during his

lifetime, plunged the whole empire into a civil war, which resulted

in his own deposition, and which did not cease on his death. The

various subdivisions into which the empire then split were indeed

reunited under Charles the Fat, but his cowardice and incapacity

having rendered him contemptible to those great feudal vassals who

were gradually assuming all the real power in the realm, he also was

deposed, and the imperial dignity ceased to find a representative

till it was revived under Otho the Great. For a century after the

death of Charles, France was nominally governed by princes of the

Carlovingian race, appointed or removed at the will of the dukes

of France. On the death of Duke Hugh the Great, his son, Hugh

Capet, contented himself for a time with the system adopted by his

predecessors, but in 987 he assumed the royal title, the powers of

which he had long exercised, and became the founder of the Capetian

dynasty. During the progress of these events, the firmly-knit and

centralised government of Charlemagne totally disappeared; the

territories of his empire were divided first into three, then into

seven kingdoms; and were finally dismembered into more than fifty

feudal sovereignties. Florus, the deacon of Lyons, mentioned in a

former chapter, in a poem entitled _Querela de divisione Imperii_,

describes the disorders consequent on these changes with an eloquent

pen. “A beautiful empire,” he says, “once flourished under a glorious

crown. Then there was one prince and one people, and every town had

judges and laws. The word of salvation was preached to nobles and

peasants, and youth everywhere studied the Sacred Scriptures and the

liberal arts.... Now, instead of a king, we see everywhere a kinglet,

instead of an empire, its fragments. The bishops can no longer hold

their synods, there are no assemblies, no laws; and if an embassy

arrive, there is no court to receive it.”[123]

By the end of the tenth century feudalism had fairly established

itself on the ruins of the empire. The new system brought in its

train many evils and some social benefits, but whilst in process of

development its immediate effect was to throw the whole governing

power into the hands of a number of petty lords, who were responsible

to no superior for their exercise of it. In spite, however, of the

turbulence of the times, we shall find, on comparing them with the

Merovingian period, that there was a decided advance in point of

civilisation, which shows that the labours of Charlemagne and his

bishops had not been entirely thrown away. The century which preceded

the coronation of Hugh Capet, with all its intrigues and bloody

contests, does not present us with a single political murder; whereas

the Merovingian annals consist of little else than a catalogue of

such crimes. Nay, after the great battle of Fontenay, fought in

841, in which it is said that a hundred thousand of the noblest

warriors of France were slain, and which for ever established the

preponderance in that country of the Romanesque over the Tudesque

race and dialect,[124] the victorious combatants submitted to the

severe penance imposed on them by the bishops of the realm; and the

same singular spectacle was exhibited in 923, when, after the battle

of Soissons, the bishops assembled in council imposed very severe

penances on all concerned, thus protesting in the name of humanity

and religion against these miserable civil broils.

In the midst of such contests, however, the scholastic system

established by Charlemagne was entirely deprived of that support

which it had received from him and his immediate successors. The

monastic and cathedral schools were left to flourish or decay

according as the ruling abbot or bishop chanced to foster or neglect

them. The withdrawal of imperial patronage was not probably in every

respect a misfortune, but in cases where schools had only been

kept up by state support they would naturally not long survive the

break up of the government. This, however, though one, was not the

main cause of the decline of letters in the tenth century. Schools

disappeared for the simple reason that the churches and monasteries

to which they were attached had disappeared also. It is inconceivable

how any author who has read the most meagre abridgments of European

history can be found to advance the monstrous assertion that

monasticism flourished after the death of Charlemagne in proportion

as ignorance increased. The tenth century, this very century of lead

and iron ignorance, witnessed the all but total extinction of the

monastic institute in France; and in Germany, where it survived and

flourished, schools and letters continued to flourish likewise. If

any spots are discoverable west of the Rhine where sparks of learning

were still kept alive, we shall find them in those remote retreats

where the monks took shelter from the storm which was elsewhere

laying waste all the fairest sanctuaries of the land. In short, the

iron age was an age of darkness because it witnessed a return of

those barbaric incursions which had already swept away the Roman

civilisation, and which were now attacking the Christian civilisation

which had sprung up in its place. The calamities that were already

hanging over Europe before the death of Charlemagne had not been

unforeseen by his eagle glance. So early as 810 the Norman keels

had appeared off the shores of Friesland, and the powerful marine

force which then guarded the coasts of the empire proved but a vain

protection. He himself beheld them in the offing from the windows

of his palace in one of the Narbonnese cities, and sorrowfully

predicted the evils they would bring on his people after his death.

And his words were only too soon fulfilled. In the reign of Louis

the Debonnaire the Normans sailed up the Loire and laid siege to

Tours, reducing the whole country as far as the Cher to a desert.

In the following reign they showed themselves yet bolder. Entering

the Seine they proceeded up that river to Paris, which they sacked,

after massacring all the inhabitants who had not saved themselves

by flight. Treves, Cologne, Rouen, Nantes, Orleans, and Amiens,

shared a similar fate. At Aix-la-Chapelle they turned the chapel of

Charlemagne into a stable: Angers was twice given to the flames; and

in 885 took place that terrible siege of Paris, by an army of thirty

thousand Normans, which has been rendered famous by the historic

poem on the subject written by the monk Abbo, and which lasted for

thirteen months. In the course of this siege the Normans filled up

the ditch which separated them from the walls by the bodies of their

slaughtered prisoners.

The mode of warfare adopted by the invaders was entirely novel.

Their fleets entered the estuaries of rivers and ascended them

almost to their source, predatory bands landing on either bank to

ravage the surrounding country. From the great rivers they proceeded

up the lesser streams, which led them into the heart of fertile

districts. They would seize on some island suited for their purpose,

where they fortified themselves and spent the winter. In this way

whole provinces, even those most remote from the sea-coast, were

devastated, and that so entirely that, says one writer, “not a dog

was left to bark in them.” The inhabitants deserted their villages

and fields at the first alarm, and fled to the woods; towns were

sacked and given to the flames, and the churches and monasteries

which were supposed to contain the greatest treasures were the first

objects of attack. “What else is now to be seen,” says the author

of the “Romaunt of the Rose,” “but churches burnt and people slain?

The Normans do as they please, and from Blois to Senlis there is

not an acre of wheat left standing.” Another monkish historian thus

describes what was passing under his own eyes: “Not a city, not a

town, not a village but has in its turn felt the barbarity of the

heathen men. They overrun the whole country, and their cabins form

great villages where they keep their miserable captives in chains.”

The desolate tracts of country thus laid waste became the resort of

packs of wolves, which prowled about unmolested; it seemed, says one

historian, as if France were abandoned to the wild animals.

The Carlovingian princes offered but a feeble resistance to these

terrible invasions. The Normans themselves were surprised at the

supineness of their victims. “The country is good,” said Ragnar

Lodbrog to the Danish monarch, after returning from the sack of

Paris, “but the people are tremblers. The dead there have more

courage than the living, for the only resistance I met with was

from an old man named Germanus, who had been dead many years, and

whose house I entered.” He spoke of the Church of St. Germain

d’Auxerre, where his sacrilegious marauders had been miraculously

put to flight. In the reign of Charles the Bald the only opposition

to the invaders was offered by Robert the Strong, who in reward of

his exertions received the dukedom of France, by which name was then

designated the country lying between the Seine and the Loire. As to

the king himself he was content to buy off the sea-king Hasting by

the payment of forty thousand livres of silver, promising either to

give up as prisoners, or to ransom at a fixed sum, every Frenchman

who had escaped from the Normans’ hands, and to pay a composition

for every Norman who should be slain; a stipulation which probably

exceeds in infamy any other ever agreed upon by a Christian prince.

A few years later the cowardice exhibited by Charles the Fat, at the

second siege of Paris, moved his indignant subjects to deprive him

of the crown; an heroic defence was indeed offered by Eudes, son

of Robert the Strong, but his chief supporters were three priests,

Gauzlin, Bishop of Paris, his nephew Ebbo, and Anchesius, abbot of

St. Germain-des-Pres. In 912, the devastations committed by Rollo and

his followers obliged Charles the Simple to make peace with them, on

terms which made over to the Norman chieftain the feudal sovereignty

of Neustria. The wild sea-king received baptism, and became the first

duke of Normandy but though a stop was thus put to the attacks on

Paris and the northern coast, the Northmen continued their ravages in

the provinces south of the Loire.

Terrible as they were, however, these barbarians were only one out

of the many savage swarms let loose on Europe at this unhappy time.

In 836, the Saracens, who were the masters of the Mediterranean,

attacked the coasts of Provence. Marseilles, the only city of

Septimania where Roman letters still partially lingered, was

surprised and pillaged, and the monks and clergy carried into

slavery. The Saracens established themselves at Frassinet, a port

between Toulon and Frejus, and held possession of it for more than a

century. From these head-quarters they were able at their pleasure

to ascend the Rhone as far as Arles, and to overrun all the south of

France. About the same time they sailed up the Tiber, and advancing

as far as Rome, burnt a great part of that city. “How many and great

are the things we are suffering from the Saracens!” wrote Pope John

VIII. to Charles the Bald; “why should I attempt to describe them

with the tongue, when all the leaves of the forest, were they turned

into pens, would not suffice. Behold cities, walled towns, and

villages bereft of inhabitants! Wild beasts usurp the sanctuaries

once filled with the chair of doctrine. Instead of breaking the bread

of life to their flocks there, bishops have to buy their own. Rome

herself is left desolate. Last year we sowed, but could not reap our

harvests by reason of the Saracens; this year we can hope for none,

for in seed-time we could not till the ground.” Every part of the

Italian peninsula was wasted by these barbarians, who established

themselves at Benevento, and were not driven thence till the end of

the century. They even had the audacity to seize and hold possession

of fortified posts in Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, and Piedmont, which

gave them the command of the Alpine passes, so that they could stop

and levy tribute on all the pilgrims travelling from the north to

Rome.

But this was not all. The last and worst of the plagues poured out

on Christendom yet remains to be noticed. Towards the close of the

ninth century, the Magyars or Huns, driven westward by the advance of

other Asiatic tribes, crossed the Carpathian mountains, and descended

into the plains of Dacia. Thence they spread like a torrent over

Germany, which they ravaged as far as the Black Forest. Crossing the

Alps, they laid waste the plain of Lombardy, and thence poured into

Aquitaine, which they overran as far as the Pyrenees. Some bands

proceeded as far as the southern extremity of Italy, others found

their way into Greece, and advanced to the walls of Constantinople.

In 926, they appeared on the frontiers of Lorraine, and laid the

German princes under tribute. Their wild habits and ferocious

appearance inspired such universal terror, that it was commonly

believed that the sun turned blood red at their approach. “They live

not as men, but as savage beasts,” says one chronicler, “eating raw

flesh and drinking blood. It is even reported that they devour the

hearts of their prisoners, and they are never known to be moved to

pity.” Filled with the bitterest hatred of the Christian name, their

track was marked by the smoking ruins of churches and monasteries,

and the panic which they spread has survived even to our own time

in the popular tales of the savage Ogres, a corruption of the name

_Ungren_, by which they were known in the Tudesque dialect. The

incursions of the Hungarians lasted, at intervals, for the space of

eighty years, nor did they entirely cease until the death of their

great chief Tatsong, in 972.

Events such as these will, probably, be thought sufficient to account

for any amount of social disorder and literary decay. As to the

supposed prosperity enjoyed by the monasteries in this darkest of

all the dark ages, it might be illustrated by a catalogue of their

sacked and smoking ruins. Fontanelles, with its noble library, St.

Ouen and Jumièges, were all burnt by the Norman sea-king Hasting

in 851. Marmoutier was pillaged two years later, one hundred and

sixteen of the monks being slain. St. Martin’s of Tours was burnt

in 854, and most of the seats of learning founded in the former

century--such as the abbeys of Corby, Liege, Stavelo, Prom, and

Malmedy--were destroyed about the same time. By the beginning of

the tenth century hardly one of the great French abbeys was left

standing; and the monks being slaughtered or dispersed, their houses

and lands were in many cases seized by laymen, who lived there with

their wives, children, and hunting-dogs, a scandal complained of in

909 by the fathers of the council of Troli. Italy presented much the

same spectacle. The abbey of Nomantula was plundered no less than

seven times over--“first by Christians in the civil wars; next by the

Vandals; a third time by the Saracens in 831; a fourth time by the

Normans, which was _desolatio desolationum_; the sixth, and seventh

time by the Huns,” who in 899 slaughtered all the monks, together

with their abbot Gregory. A page might be filled with the names

of French bishops massacred with their clergy. It could hardly be

expected that schools and letters would greatly flourish at a time

when the whole country was lit up by the flames which were destroying

the only sanctuaries of learning; and when the libraries which had

cost years of persevering toil in their collection were destroyed in

one hour of ruthless barbarism. Mezeray, in his history of France,

particularly notices the destruction of books among the calamities

of the period. “Books,” he says, “were becoming scarce at this time,

the wars had almost destroyed them all by burning, tearing, and

other such like barbarities; and as there were none but monks who

transcribed the copies, _and as monasteries were now for the most

part deserted_, the number of learned men was but small.” Odericus

Vitalis in like manner speaks of the irreparable loss occasioned

by the destruction of those manuscripts, which furnished the only

materials for compiling the history of the times, all of which had

perished with the monastic libraries in which they were preserved.

Hallam, however, while noticing the destruction of the monasteries

and the incursions of the barbarians, sees nothing in these facts to

explain that prevailing ignorance of which he elsewhere so loudly

complains. In one passage only does he so much as connect the two

ideas together, and then it is only in order to direct a sneer

against the monks. “As the Normans were unchecked by religious

awe,” he says, “the rich monasteries were overwhelmed in the storm.

_Perhaps_ they may have sustained some irrecoverable losses of

ancient learning; but their complaints are of monuments disfigured,

bones of saints and kings dispersed, and treasures carried away.”[125]

There is no doubt that the monks did attach a very great value to

the holy relics preserved in their churches, and that they rarely

notice the destruction of any sanctuary without saying something of

their loss, or the efforts made to preserve them. But it is puzzling

to think how Mr. Hallam could have become aware of this fact without

also informing himself of their kindred lamentations over the loss

of their books. The monastic chroniclers generally couple the two

subjects so closely together, that we know not what term to bestow

on that singular organisation which enables a reader to acquaint

himself with one without knowing anything at all about the other.

A very few instances given at random may suffice to show what we

are to think of the innuendo conveyed in the sentence above quoted.

When the Normans burnt Hamburgh, they destroyed not only the city,

but the church and monastery which St. Anscharius had built with

such extreme care, together with the library containing a collection

of books presented to him by Louis the Debonnaire, all beautifully

transcribed. None were saved, excepting so many as each monk was able

to carry with him. They went out of the city, therefore, bearing

_their books and their relics_, not knowing whither to bend their

steps; but Anscharius, who saw the labours of a lifetime destroyed

in a moment, uttered no complaint, repeating only the words of Job:

“The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of

the Lord!”[126] Pingonio again gives the following narrative from the

ancient chronicles of the monastery of Novalesa. In 906 the monks of

that house flying on the approach of the Saracens, took with them

_their treasure and their library_, which last numbered upwards

of 6000 volumes. They found their way safely to Turin, where, not

being able to procure a house in which to stow away so many books,

Riculf, Bishop of Turin, took 500 volumes off their hands, in part

discharge of the cost of their maintenance. Erelong, however, the

Saracens entered Turin also, plundered their treasure, and _burnt

their library_; and the books which Riculf had taken were unhappily

lost after his death, so that the poor monks were never able to

recover them. Again, in 842, when the Normans sacked the town of

Nantes, and slaughtered the bishops and clergy in the cathedral, the

historian of Armorica tells us that, having loaded their vessels with

plunder and captives, the heathen men proceeded to a certain island

to divide the spoil. A quarrel ensued over the division, and some of

the captives profited by the confusion to make their escape. One man,

bolder than the rest, thought he might as well secure some of the

valuables. And on what does the reader suppose he pitched? Neither

on jewelled reliquary, nor church-plate, but on the great Bible which

had been used in the cathedral, and which he took on his back and ran

off with to the mines, where he remained concealed with some of his

companions, until the Normans took their departure. “The fugitives

then issued from their hiding place, and returned to Nantes,” says

the chronicler, having lost much in _books_, silver and gold, and

having saved nothing but their Bible.

Sometimes, again, we read of the strange expedients used by the

owners of books to conceal them from plunderers. In the abbey of

Pfeffers, the books and the church-plate were always hidden together,

and on more than one occasion unexpected discoveries were made in

aftertimes, of the deposits thus contrived. In the twelfth century

one of these secret stores was accidentally brought to light, and

contained, besides church plate and vestments, a rich library. Its

catalogue included, besides missals and choral books, the works of

most of the Latin fathers, and those of Virgil, Lucan, Statius,

Sallust, Cicero, and many others. When the great abbey of St. Gall’s

was threatened by the Huns, the first thought of the abbot was to

send the books across the lake to Reichnau. In some of the Italian

convents it was always the custom to bury the books on the approach

of the Saracens; and several manuscripts may still be seen in the

Library of Florence, bearing traces on their covers of having been so

dealt with. Not unfrequently the relics are spoken of as being kept

in the library, of which an instance occurs in an anecdote preserved

by Martene, concerning the monks of St. Florent. When their monastery

was threatened by the Normans, they fled to Tournus, taking with them

the body of their patron saint. The danger being past, they prepared

to return, but their ungenerous hosts, the monks of Tournus, refused

to let them take the body with them. Very disconsolately they bent

their steps back to St. Florent without their treasure: but one of

their number, named Absalon, devised a scheme for its recovery.

“He was,” says the historian, “a very skilful youth, very fond of

law-studies, and much given to letters.” His law-studies had possibly

sharpened his wits, but the reader must forgive his wiliness,

remembering that it was put forth in a just cause. He feigned

illness, and remained behind at Tournus, where the monks entrusted

him with the offices of scholasticus, librarian, and cantor, and one

night, having the keys of the library he effected a quiet entrance,

and taking the body of St. Florent from the place where it was

deposited, lost no time in finding his way with it back to his own

monastery.

One other story may suffice on this subject, which I purposely select

as having more to do with relics than books, because it shows that

even the narratives more specially devoted to chronicling the loss

of saints’ bones often indicate the loss of books also; and because,

moreover, it gives us to understand that monks could sometimes act

as village schoolmasters. It is from the pages of Odericus Vitalis,

and will assist us in forming some notion of the sort of violence to

which monasteries were exposed, not only from Huns and Saracens, but

even from their Christian neighbours.

For many years after the conversion of the Normans, and their

peaceable establishment in the north of France, they continued to be

objects of jealous fear to the French sovereigns, and particularly

to Louis l’Outremer, who, in 943, treacherously got possession of

the young Duke Richard, and detained him prisoner. He then proceeded

to lay plans for recovering possession of the duchy. He offered Hugh

the Great, duke of France, the grant of an enormous territory on

condition of his reducing the strong places of the Normans, and Hugh,

nothing loth, overran the duchy with a powerful army, and sent some

of his men under command of his chancellor, Herluin, to Ouche, where

they were hospitably entertained at the monastery of St. Evroult. The

simple monks, who thought they had nothing to fear from Christians

and Frenchmen, showed them all over the house, and exhibited their

oratories and the secret recesses where the bones of the saints were

deposited. For this act of confidence they soon paid dearly.

Bernard the Dane, uncle to the young duke, finding himself unable

to resist the superior force of the French, had recourse to

stratagem, and persuaded the king that the Normans would at once

own his sovereignty, if the army of Duke Hugh were withdrawn. Louis

accordingly sent orders to Hugh to retire; but the fiery duke,

enraged at this breach of faith on the part of a monarch whose crown

depended on his good will, commanded his soldiers to withdraw indeed

from Normandy, but not till they had wasted the country, burnt the

towns, and driven off the cattle. The savage soldiery executed his

orders with delight, and the band that had been quartered at St.

Evroult, remembering the treasures which had been displayed to them,

hastened thither without delay, and bursting into the church, laid

hands on the body of St. Evroult, with other holy relics, and after

ransacking the house of “everything serviceable to human existence,”

together with books, vestments, and even furniture, they took their

departure, and marched back to their own country laden with their

spoils. The poor monks were left very disconsolate; stripped of their

all, they knew not what to do, but after a while they came to the

resolution of abandoning their ruined monastery, and following the

body of their holy founder into exile. They considered themselves

the guardians of this treasure, and would not desert their trust:

perhaps, too, they hoped to soften the hearts of their enemies, and

move them at least to restore the relics. All therefore prepared to

depart, with the exception of Ascelin, the prior, who refused to quit

the monastery. “Go in God’s name,” he said, “but as for me, I will

never forsake the place where I have received so many blessings:

I shall remain as the guardian of these solitudes, till through

the mercy of the King of kings, a better day shall dawn upon us.”

Finding he was not to be moved, the others took leave of him, and

set out on their melancholy journey. They reached the duke’s camp,

and told their tale, and Hugh, touched by the recital, promised to

protect them and provide for their maintenance, if they would follow

him to his own city of Orleans. There they had the mortification,

however, of seeing the chiefs dividing their spoils. Herluin took

for his share the head of St. Evroult, a portable altar plated with

silver, and one of the books. Ralph de Tracy, who had commanded the

plundering party, obtained the remainder of the saint’s body, which

he very devoutly presented to another abbey, but the poor monks of

Ouche recovered nothing. However, they were treated with tolerable

kindness by the men of Orleans, who provided them with a habitation,

and plenty of fish, bread, and wine, and so ended their days in

France in comparative prosperity.

Meanwhile Ascelin, whom we left in the deserted abbey, did not

waste his time in barren regrets. He set himself to consider what

he could do to provide for the continuance of God’s service in that

place, and at last resolved on a step which must be acknowledged

as not a little creditable in a monk of the Age of Iron: he opened

a school. He sought out and assembled together the youths of the

neighbourhood, and among them his own nephew, and taught them to

read. There is something both picturesque and touching in the idea

thus presented to us, of the old man keeping school among his ruins,

and acting as the faithful guardian of the holy spot, doing what

good he could whilst time and strength remained to him, and with

too much quiet confidence in God to lose heart and courage because

all else was lost. At last, however, he died, persevering to the

last in the observance of his monastic rule, and then his scholars

were scattered, the forest thickets grew up round the ruins, and

gradually the ancient solitude recovered its former wildness, and

became the resort of wild animals. In the next generation, the names

of Ouche and St. Evroult had passed utterly out of mind, till one

day a peasant in search of a strayed bullock, followed him into the

deserted valley, and making his way through bushes and brambles,

found his beast couched on a little plot of soft green grass, before

what seemed a ruined altar, surrounded by grey walls held together by

ivy roots. And then grey-headed men were found who had heard their

fathers talk of the time when St. Evroult, who despised the world,

had made himself a dwelling in these wilds, and how his brethren had

been driven away by the soldiers of Hugh the Great. The good knight

Gaston de Montfort rebuilt the church, and the abbey was afterwards

restored and colonised from Jumièges; and at last, in 1130, two

hundred years after the forcible translation of the relics from

Ouche to Orleans, they were brought back to their rightful home, in

consequence of the eloquent entreaties of St. Bernard.[127]

We have said enough of the disorders of the ninth and tenth centuries

to show that, whatever were the intellectual sterility of the Iron

Age, there was cause enough to account for it. Let us now reverse

the picture, and inquire whether the clergy resigned themselves

contentedly to this lamentable state of things, or what means they

took for amending it. Our wonder is, not that the age was one of

literary decay, but that learning was not wholly extinguished; and

the exertions made by a few to preserve a knowledge of letters in the

midst of such unparalleled discouragements, strike us as more justly

meriting admiration than all the magnificent institutions founded

in more prosperous times. And such efforts were certainly made. In

the ninth century the attention paid to the establishment of schools

and the cultivation of learning under Charles the Bald and his

successors, led Henry of Rheims to declare that it seemed as if the

Grecian muses had migrated to France. This is, perhaps, a rhetorical

flourish; yet most of the episcopal schools, the names of which are

given by Mabillon, were founded during forty years of incessant

civil distraction. Even when the ravages of the barbarians swept

away the fruits of so many labours, how wonderful is the patient,

hopeful perseverance displayed by the bishops in reconstructing

their shattered work! Give them but a few years’ respite, a short

interval of comparative tranquillity in any province, and you will

invariably find the schools restored and the old discipline beginning

over again. Thus Egidius, in his “History of the Bishops of Liege,”

tells us of the extraordinary efforts made by Bishop Heraclius to

re-establish studies in his diocese. It had borne the brunt of the

Norman invasions in the ninth century; all the existing schools

had been destroyed, and the ecclesiastics had grown so indifferent

to the subject that, when Heraclius began his administration, he

found no one to support him in his attempts to organise a fresh

staff of teachers. And yet in a few years he succeeded in restoring

monastic schools throughout the whole province, and reviving a love

of learning among all classes. He accomplished this not so much by

his exhortations as his example; for, says his biographer, “he did

not think it beneath him to frequent these schools by turns, taking

on himself the office of teacher, giving lectures to the elder

students, and patiently explaining and repeating his lessons to

those who did not understand him. When he travelled to any distance

he always corresponded with his scholars, sporting with them in

pleasant verse. Even from Italy and Calabria he remembered to send

them agreeable letters to provoke them to the love of study, and he

generally took some of them with him on his journeys, that he might

beguile the tediousness of the way by conferring with them on the

Holy Scriptures.” His successor, Notger, carried on the good work

with even greater ardour. Like Heraclius, he always taught in his

own cathedral school, and a great many of his pupils afterwards

became bishops. They were so many, and so remarkable for their good

scholarship, that their names and their various excellences were

thought worthy by a certain scholasticus named Adelman, of being made

the subject of some verses, which are still preserved.[128] Notger

had originally been a monk of St. Gall’s, and had been called thence

to direct the school of Stavelot. He naturally, therefore, had a

taste for teaching, and, like Heraclius, he never travelled without

a troop of scholars, abundance of books, and what his biographer

calls _arma scholaria_. Nor were all of his scholars clerks, for we

are expressly told that he had numerous young laics entrusted to

him that he might train them in a manner suitable to their state

of life. He did so much for his cathedral city, that he has been

called its second founder, and not a few of the churches and pious

institutions existing there at the present day owe their erection to

his munificent zeal.[129]

At Rheims, which from its geographical position enjoyed a longer

immunity from pillage than cities situated on the great rivers,

schools and teachers found a safe retreat and ample encouragement

from Archbishop Hincmar. However, the Normans at last made their way

thither; and when Fulk succeeded to the archiepiscopal dignity, he

found both the cathedral school, and that established for the rural

clergy, ruined and deserted. He restored them both, and invited the

two monks, Remigius of Auxerre and Hucbald of St. Amand, to come and

take charge of them. Their scholastic pedigree has been given in a

former chapter, and they are commonly regarded as the chief restorers

of learning in France. Fulk, who knew their value, encouraged his

clergy to profit from their instructions by himself taking his seat

as a scholar among the youngest of his clerks. The Rheims pupils

included many men of note, such as Flodoard the historian, whom

Fleury calls the ornament of his age. The old epitaph on his tomb

praises him as “a good monk, a good clerk, and a better abbot,” and

concludes with two lines somewhat hyperbolical in their expression:--

Per sen histoire maintes nouvelles sauras

Et en ille toutes antiquité auras.

Hucbald was famous as a poet, musician, and philosopher; but his

colleague, Remigius, was great in grammar, and wrote comments on

Priscian, Donatus, and Marcian Capella. He taught humane letters

and theology, and was extraordinarily learned in Scripture and the

Fathers. After the death of Fulk he proceeded to Paris, and opened

the first public school which we know with any certainty to have been

established in that city. This, according to the Paris historians,

was the real germ of the university; at any rate it was the first of

those celebrated schools out of which the university subsequently

developed. Nevertheless, half a century earlier, in the midst of

the great siege of Paris, there had been both schools and scholars,

for Abbo of St. Germain apologises for the incomplete state of his

poem before mentioned, “on account of the multitude of his pupils.”

Whence we gather that even famine and massacre had never entirely

extinguished the Parisian thirst for letters.

Remigius continued to teach at Paris for several years, pupils

coming to him from all parts of France. Among them was one whose

story deserves to be told a little more at length, inasmuch as it

exhibits, in a striking manner, the utter ruin which had fallen on

the monastic institute in the French provinces, and at the same time

shows us that in the tenth century laymen were to be found who were

possessed of a respectable education, and were capable of collecting

libraries. There lived at that time, in the province of Maine, a

certain noble named Abbo, who had been fortunate enough in his youth

to find some school where he not only learnt how to sign his name,

but acquired a great taste for reading. His reading, too, was of

a solid kind, for his favourite studies were the histories of the

ancients, and the “Novellæ” of Justinian, the latter of which he

knew by heart, using his legal erudition when called on to dispense

justice to his feudal subjects, and to act as umpire in the disputes

which arose among his neighbours. The Gospels were always read aloud

at his table, and on the Vigils of solemn feasts he and his family

spent the night in prayer and watching. Nor are we to draw the hasty

conclusion that Abbo’s household, and his way of life, was at all

an extraordinary exception from the common rule. He had friends as

learned and as holy as himself, such as Duke William of Aquitaine,

whose religious habits earned him the surname of “the Pious,” while

his love of letters gained him that of “the Grammarian.” This good

prince had a number of books in his castle, and during the long

winter evenings he amused himself by reading them, never leaving his

studies till fairly overcome by sleep. Abbo had one son named Odo,

born in 879, and whilst yet an infant, his father going to see him

in his cradle, by a devout impulse took him in his arms and offered

him to St. Martin. As he grew up he was given in charge to a priest

to be taught his letters, but it does not appear that there was any

idea of bringing him up to the ecclesiastical state: on the contrary,

his father placed him in the household of Duke William, that he

might acquire the martial exercises becoming a knight. Odo, however,

had no taste for these pursuits, and the chase and the tilt-yard

were insupportably wearisome to him. Praying to Our Lady that he

might be guided in the choice of a state of life, he was for three

years attacked by inveterate headaches, which obliged him to return

home, and which obstinately resisted every remedy. His father at

last became persuaded that it was not the will of God that his son

should pursue a secular calling. Remembering his former promise to

St. Martin, and finding that Odo’s own wishes pointed in the same

direction, he took him to Tours, and placed him, in his nineteenth

year, among the canons of that city. There was a very solemn

reception of the noble postulant, and among those who assisted at the

ceremony was the brave Count Fulk of Anjou, the same who has before

been mentioned as himself holding a canon’s stall, and scandalising

king Louis by his proficiency in music.

No sooner did Odo find himself in quiet possession of his new

retreat than he applied himself to his books with an ardour that

quite astounded his brother canons. They perpetually asked him what

he meant by all this reading, and where could possibly be the good

of it. Odo let them talk as they would, and made no change in his

habits. He often spent the whole day in study, and the whole night in

prayer. He finished his course of grammar, and was about to commence

Virgil, when he was deterred by a vision, in which he seemed to see

a beautiful vessel filled with serpents, which he understood to

indicate the poison to be found in the charms of profane literature.

Putting it aside, therefore, he devoted himself exclusively to

the study of the Scriptures, and to obtain the more freedom from

interruption, he shut himself up in a little cell which Count Fulk

had given him, and distributing all his money to the poor, lived on

the moderate daily allowance of half a pound of bread and a handful

of beans. However, he soon became desirous of better teaching than he

had as yet been able to procure, so he set out for Paris, and entered

at the school of Remigius of Auxerre. That master made him go through

a course of the liberal arts, and gave him to study the treatises of

Marcian Capella, and the “Dialectics” of St. Augustine.[130]

On his return to Tours he applied himself to the study of St.

Gregory’s “Morals,” in which he took such delight that he wrote an

abridgment of it, which is still preserved. His love of letters

may be gathered from the fact that he gradually procured himself a

library of a hundred volumes--a very large collection in those days

for any private individual. Among them were some “Lives of the Holy

Fathers,” and the “Rule” of St. Benedict, the constant study of which

filled Odo with an intense desire to embrace the monastic state. In

this he was encouraged by the intimate friendship he formed about

this time with a knight named Adegrim, one of the household of the

good Count Fulk. At last Adegrim threw up his military employments

and came to live with the young canon at Tours. The talk of the two

friends was ever of monks and of monasteries, and they made many

journeys into different parts of France to seek out the sites of

those once famous abbeys of which they had read, and to discover

if perchance one yet survived in its ancient state of discipline.

But these expeditions invariably ended in disappointment. For more

than sixty years the monastic institute in France had been utterly

ruined. Most of the houses so renowned in the last century were now

nothing but heaps of blackened ruins. The monks had either been

slain or driven out as wanderers. Sometimes they were to be met with

in the guise of poor vagrants; sometimes in places far from public

resort you might come upon a miserable hut, where the remnants of

what had once been a flourishing community were gathered together

in the wilderness, striving to keep their Rule as best they might.

This is not a fancy picture. It was about this very time that William

Longsword, duke of Normandy, was induced to restore the abbey of

Jumièges, having when hunting in the forest come upon two poor monks

who were trying to construct a cell for themselves out of the ruins

of the abbey. All the refreshments they could offer him were some

barley bread and some water; and the spectacle of their poverty,

together with the remembrance that the desolation he witnessed had

been the work of his own Norman forefathers, induced the duke to

undertake the work of restoration. Abbo and Adegrim, however, were

not to be discouraged in their plan. Finding no house in France

where they could embrace the life to which they longed to devote

themselves, they resolved to carry on their search in Italy, and

Adegrim accordingly set out, intending to make the pilgrimage to

Rome. But as he passed through Burgundy he accidentally found his way

to La Baume, a small monastery which had been recently founded by

the abbot Berno, and in which the Rule of St. Benedict was strictly

observed, together with the reformed Constitutions of St. Benedict

d’Anian. Adegrim at once wrote to his friend, bidding him come

without delay, and bring all his books with him; and Odo lost no

time in obeying the summons. In the year 909 he began his noviciate,

being then exactly thirty years of age. Adegrim, after three years of

penitential exercises, begged leave to retire to a little cave about

two miles distant from the monastery, where he spent the rest of

his life as a hermit. But a very different course awaited his friend

Odo. His books pointed him out to be the right sort of man for a

schoolmaster, and he was therefore charged with the education of the

children brought up in the monastery, and the younger monks. He had

much to suffer from the jealousy of some of his brethren; but Berno,

rightly appreciating both his talents and his humility, sent him to

Turpion, Bishop of Limoges, to be ordained priest.

The reformed monastery of La Baume soon became the mother-house of

other foundations. Those who deplored the decay of learning and

religion were eager to provide for the restoration of both, by

erecting houses in which the Rule and spirit of St. Benedict might be

revived in their ancient vigour. Abbo’s old friend, Duke William of

Aquitaine, was of the number of those who desired to take part in the

good work, and he invited Berno to choose a site for a new foundation

in any part of his dominions. Berno selected a beautiful solitude,

about four miles from Macon, on the confines of Burgundy, where the

river Grosne, after passing the village of Bonnay, winds down to the

Seine from the mountains of Beaujolais, through a valley girt in

by high hills covered with forests. It was exactly suited for the

purposes of a religious retreat, but the duke hesitated when Berno

named it, for it was his favourite hunting ground, and was at that

time occupied by his kennel of dogs. “Well, sir,” said Berno, when

the duke had explained his difficulty, “it is only to turn out the

dogs, and to turn in the monks.” This recommendation was accordingly

followed, and in course of time there arose among those wooded hills

the stately abbey of Cluny, the church of which was inferior in size

to none save St. Peter’s of Rome.

On the death of Berno in 927, the bishops of the province obliged

St. Odo to accept the government of Cluny and two of the other five

houses which had sprung under the reformed Rule. Not content with

this, they likewise forced upon him the most odious and difficult

of all imaginable enterprises; that, namely, of restoring monastic

discipline in a vast number of other houses both in France and

Italy, which had fallen into the hands of a dissolute set of men,

who sometimes opposed the entrance of the abbot, sword in hand. Odo

entered on this work in obedience, and accomplished it in the spirit

of meekness. There is no courage like that of gentle souls, and the

history of this great reformer exhibits him to us forsaken by his

terrified attendants, and riding up on his ass to the gates of

Fleury, where a band of armed men were awaiting his coming, having

sworn to kill him if he dared set foot among them. But Odo’s meekness

gained the day, and among the seventeen abbeys which accepted the

Cluniac reform, that of Fleury became one of the most flourishing.

In fact, the character of St. Odo had nothing of that stern austerity

which we commonly associate with the notion of a reformer. Its force

was its amiability. He used to tell his monks that cripples and

beggars were the door-keepers of heaven, and would not endure that

they should be spoken to with harshness. If he heard the porter

giving a gruff answer to the crowds of poor who thronged his gate,

he would go out to them and say, “My friends, when that brother

comes to the gates of Paradise, answer him as he has just answered

you, and see whether he will like it.” On his journeys, if he met

any children, he always stopped, and desired them to sing or repeat

something to him, and he did this, says his biographer, that he might

have an excuse for giving them something. And if he met an old woman

or a cripple, nothing would prevent his getting off his beast and

mounting them in his place, when he would desire his servants to hold

them securely in the saddle, while he himself led them on their way.

This excess of goodness made him so dear to his monks, that they

would often steal behind him and indulge their affection and respect

by secretly pressing to their lips the hem of his garment.

St. Odo died in 942, and in 965 Maieul or Majolus, a former canon of

Macon, was elected abbot. His life, like that of his predecessor,

affords an illustration of the two features in the century which

I am most solicitous to bring before the reader’s notice; the

disordered state of society, consequent on the barbaric invasions,

and the fact that in spite of such disorders, men were not wholly

indifferent to letters, though they were often sadly at a loss to

find the means of acquiring them. Maieul made his studies at Lyons,

which his biographer, Odilo, declares was then regarded as the nurse

and mother of philosophy, under a rather celebrated teacher named

Anthony de l’Isle Barbe. He learnt both kinds of literature, says

the monk Syrus, who also wrote his life, the divine and human, and

attained to whatever was most sublime in the one, and most difficult

in the other. The approach of the Saracens obliged him to leave

Avignon, his native city, and retire to Macon, where he was chosen

first canon and then archdeacon. But as he found that the clergy

and people had it in their mind to procure his further promotion

to the bishopric of Besançon, he fled to Cluny, where he was

received with great affection, and in process of time was appointed

schoolmaster, librarian, and syndic of the house. In this combination

of the intellectual and the temporal government he managed to make

himself greatly beloved, and in 948, with the consent of the whole

community, Aimard, the successor of Odo, whom Syrus styles a son of

innocence and simplicity, surrendered the government of the abbey

and all its dependencies into his hands. Both as scholasticus and

coadjutor to the abbot, Maieul superintended the studies of his

monks, and it is remarkable that he had to use the bridle rather

than the spur. He was obliged to exert his authority to discourage

their excessive study of the profane poets, especially Virgil; not

that he disapproved of a moderate use of humane literature; on the

contrary, he advocated the principle that we should get all the

good out of it that we can; but he would have preferred to see his

monks learned in the Scriptures, the reading of which formed his

own delight. Whether he walked or rode, the Sacred volume was never

out of his hands, and when he travelled into distant countries

he always took with him a portable library. These journeys were

very frequent, for Maieul extended the Cluniac reform into a great

number of abbeys, and made many pilgrimages to Rome. Returning from

that city in 973, he was attacked, whilst crossing the Alps, by

the Saracens of Frassinet, and carried off, together with all his

retinue. His captors chained him hand and foot, and confined him in

a cave among the mountains, plundering him of all his baggage, and

among other things of his books. The saint recommended himself to

God in the spirit of martyrdom, and then lay down on the floor of

the cavern to take what rest he might. On awakening he was surprised

to find lying on his breast one of his lost books, which appeared

to have been overlooked by the plunderers. He opened it, and found

it was a treatise on the Assumption of Our Lady, and counting the

days, he found that there remained exactly twenty-four to the Feast

of the Assumption; so he began to pray that through the intercession

of the Queen of Heaven, he might perhaps be permitted to keep that

Feast among Christians. After a while the Saracens began to treat

him more kindly. They allowed him to write a letter to his brethren

directing them to send the money for his ransom, and seeing that

he did not eat the meat which they set before him, one man took a

shield, and baring his arms, he proceeded to knead some meal in

this strange dish, and produced a cake which the prisoner gratefully

accepted. Another time a Saracen, wishing to clean his lance, set his

foot on the great Bible which formed part of the abbot’s library.

Pained at the irreverence, the saint gently remonstrated with him,

but without effect, and a few days afterwards the man quarrelling

with his companions, they cut off the very foot that had been set

on the Sacred Volume. At last the ransom arrived, and the prisoners

were liberated, and Maieul spent the Feast of the Assumption among

Christians, as he had prayed. Not long afterwards the Saracens were

driven from Frassinet by Duke William of Arles, and the books of St.

Maieul being found among their baggage, were sent back to him at

Cluny to his very great joy.

The information conveyed in stories of this kind will be taken for

what it is worth. It does not certainly represent the monks of the

Iron Age as prodigies of erudition, but it shows that they did a

little more than learn their Psalter. In some cases they certainly

set themselves to overcome the difficulties which then beset the path

of learning with a perseverance and success that merit all praise;

and one example of this sort occurs among the monks of that very

abbey of Fleury, the reformation of which was effected by St. Odo

in the teeth of an armed rabble. Abbo of Fleury, as he is commonly

called, a contemporary of St. Maieul, did not enter the monastery

until some years after it had begun to flourish under the Cluniac

rule, and the good discipline of Abbot Wulfhad. He was a native of

Orleans, and a boy of such a sweet disposition and such a happy

memory, that he forgot nothing of his master’s lessons, and studied

much in private, not merely for the sake of knowledge, says his

biographer, but also because he counted application to study to be

a means of subjecting the flesh to the spirit. The Fleury teachers

at this time were not first-rate; however, far from being disgusted

with “the haggard and emaciated skeleton of barbarous elements,” the

more Abbo learnt the more he desired to learn. He was appointed in

time _scholasticus_ to his convent, but he felt by no means satisfied

as yet with his own attainments. He was tolerably well versed in

grammar, logic, and arithmetic, but he had found no one at Fleury

who could teach him the other liberal arts. With the permission of

his abbot, therefore, he resigned his office, and went first to

Paris, and then to Rheims. In these schools he acquired a knowledge

of philosophy and astronomy, but not so much of the last science as

he desired. So he next proceeded to Orleans, and there not only

perfected himself in other branches of learning, but, by dint of

expending a good sum of money, managed to get some excellent lessons

in music. This, however, could only be done secretly, by reason of

the opposition of envious minds. He had now studied five out of

the seven liberal arts, and he could not rest till he had acquired

the other two. But not being able to find any good master either

in rhetoric or geometry, he endeavoured to supply the first by a

careful study of Victorinus, the master of St. Jerome, and also by

his own exertions gained some knowledge of mathematics. We have seen

in the last chapter how he was summoned to England by St. Oswald of

York, and established sacred and scientific studies in the monastery

of Ramsay. So greatly was he esteemed by both St. Oswald and St.

Dunstan, that an amicable quarrel arose between the two prelates as

to which should keep possession of so great a treasure. The question

was settled by the abbot of Fleury recalling Abbo to his own convent

after a two years’ absence.

His English friends took leave of him with no small regret, and

loaded him with parting presents. St. Dunstan gave him a number of

exquisitely-wrought silver ornaments of his own workmanship, which he

requested him to present as his offerings to St. Benedict, a portion

of whose body was preserved at Fleury. St. Oswald ordained him

priest, and gave him a chalice, some vestments, and everything else

requisite for saying mass. In 988 he became abbot, in which office

he continually recommended his monks to cultivate study as the most

useful exercise next to fasting and prayer. For himself he ceased

not all his life to read, write, or dictate. His favourite studies,

next to the Holy Scriptures, were dialectics and astronomy, and among

his works were some treatises on both those subjects. Renowned for

his learning throughout Europe, he was killed at last in 1004 in an

affray between his servants and some Gascon monks of the monastery of

Reole, whither he had been sent to effect a reform.

In fact, if the age exhibited much decay and many scandals, it found

men ready to spend their lives in the weary work of restoration and

reformation. And it is remarkable that the greatest prelates of the

time invariably regarded the revival of monachism as the only means

of restoring good discipline and learning. Such were the views of St.

Dunstan and his fellow-labourers, and such was also the conviction

of the excellent Adalberon, who in 933 became Bishop of Metz. He

was brother to the reigning duke of Lorraine, and his talents and

zeal equalled the nobility of his birth. In order to provide his

diocese with a seminary of devoted and learned men, he resolved

on restoring the great monastery of Gorze, which had been founded

by St. Chrodegang of Metz, but which had been ruined under the

combined attacks of the Normans and the Hungarians. He completed the

rebuilding of the abbey, but was still uncertain whence he should

procure his colony of monks, when he was informed that a little

society of ecclesiastics, which had been formed in the neighbouring

diocese of Toul, was about to pass into Italy, seeking some spot

where they might unmolested lead a more perfect life. The way in

which this society had been organised was altogether remarkable. At

their head was John of Vandières, the native of a village in the

diocese of Nancy, who, having been born when his father was advanced

in years, had suffered from some of the disadvantages of being a

spoiled child. The fond parent, however, was at last persuaded to

send the boy to school, first at Metz, and then at the monastery

of St. Michael’s, where Master Hildebold, a pupil of Remigius,

gave lessons in grammar. John, however, profited very little by

his teaching, and on his father’s death, his mother, marrying a

second time, recalled him home, and gave him the charge of all the

temporal affairs of the house. John showed considerable ability in

the management of lands and revenues, and absorbed in these cares,

soon forgot the little he had learnt at school. However, as time went

on, he became disgusted with his secular way of life, and embracing

the ecclesiastical state, received two benefices in the diocese of

Toul. There he became acquainted with the learned deacon Berners,

who, by no means approving of illiterate clerks, persuaded John to

begin his studies over again. Divine grace quickening his powers,

he did his best to make up for lost time. But he was never much of

a grammarian. He contented himself with what his biographer calls

a _sprinkling_ of Donatus, just so much as enabled him to read and

understand the Scriptures, to the study of which he then exclusively

devoted himself, and in which he obtained very extraordinary light.

The church which he served was dependent on a convent of nuns at

Metz, where his duties called him from time to time to say mass. He

became acquainted with the community, and the example of their holy

and mortified life inspired him with new ardour. He began a course

of reading with these good religious, which speaks in favour of his

diligence and their patience, and in which, says his biographer, he

persevered “with all his might.”

First, then, having read through with them the whole of the Old and

New Testaments, he committed both to memory, “and that so accurately

that no man could do it better,” also “all the lessons appointed to

be read in church,” which are contained in the book called _Comes_;

then the rules for the computing of Easter and the canonical laws,

that is, the decrees of councils, the judgments of penitents, the

mode of ecclesiastical proceedings, and the secular laws, all of

which he treasured up word for word. Of homilies, sermons, and

treatises on the Epistles and Gospels, I will only say that he was

able to repeat an alarming catalogue of them in the vernacular,

“straightforward from beginning to end, as if he were reading from

the book.” At the same time he laboured hard to acquire a knowledge

of church music, not caring for the derision of some who considered

it an unsuitable enterprise for one of his age to engage in. However,

his perseverance was rewarded with very fair success, and it was thus

that he employed his intervals of leisure time, together with the

handmaids of God.

It must be confessed that John’s choice of reading, considering the

gentler sex of his fellow-students, was somewhat of the driest. Nor

do I at all cite him as a model of erudition, though, considering

the deficiencies of his early education, his achievements in that

line might have saved him from the contempt of Brucker, who notices

him only to string him up among other barbarous dunces. His studies

probably took their direction from the very few books which he had at

his command, and it is at least clear that he made a tolerable use of

those he possessed.

His intercourse with the nuns inspired him with a great desire to

embrace a religious life, but, like St. Odo, he sought in vain for

any religious house in his own part of the country where religious

discipline still flourished. So first he joined the company of a

recluse of Verdun, named Humbert, and then he passed some time

with a hermit in the forest of Argonne, and at last, in company

with Bernacer of Metz, who was a tolerable scholar, he set out on

pilgrimage to Rome. However, even in Italy he found nothing that

exactly suited him, and returning to Verdun, resumed his former

exercises of prayer and study, under the direction of Humbert.

About the same time Einold, Archdeacon of Toul, had been touched

with similar desires after a perfect life; and distributing all his

goods to the poor, he shut himself up in a little cell adjoining

the cloisters of his cathedral, together with his books and his

priestly vestments, living only on what the Bishop Gauzelin sent

him as an alms. The times were, indeed, dreary enough, when, one

after another, these good men were to be found seeking, and seeking

in vain, for some spot untouched by the spoiler’s hand. As Einold

prayed for guidance, what seemed a little schoolboy’s voice in the

street outside chanted the words, “I will give you the heritage of

your father Jacob;” and half disposed to take the words as a sign

of divine encouragement, he was still pondering over their meaning,

when Humbert of Verdun came to ask his counsel. To be brief, the four

friends, Einold, Humbert, John, and Bernacer, determined on migrating

to Italy, and establishing themselves either among the solitaries

of Mount Vesuvius, or in the neighbourhood of Monte Cassino. And it

was this little knot of holy men, who had been drawn together by

the ties of Christian sympathy, whom Adalberon proposed to detain

in France for the purpose of entrusting them with the restoration

of monastic life in the abbey of Gorze. They accepted his offer; a

very few of the old monks who yet survived were brought back, and

willingly accepted the strict reform which Adalberon desired to

establish; Einold was chosen abbot, and the house soon became a model

of good discipline. Sacred studies were at once instituted in the

school, and after his religious profession, John of Gorze, as he was

henceforth called, entered on rather a wider range of reading than he

had hitherto been able to follow. We find him applying himself to St.

Augustine, and working with characteristic energy at certain logical

studies, which were, however, cut short by the prohibition of Einold,

who desired him to leave logic for secular students, and to confine

himself to more spiritual subjects, an injunction which he humbly and

promptly obeyed. He became abbot of Gorze about the year 960.

Adalberon’s zeal was not satisfied with the restoration of Gorze; he

invited a learned body of monks over from Ireland, under a superior

named Cradoc, and established them in another deserted monastery,

that of St. Clement’s at Metz. When Gerard, Bishop of Toul, the

successor of Gauzelin, heard of the arrival of the Irishmen, he never

rested till he had procured some of them for his own diocese. He had

already procured a community of exiled Greek monks, among whom, in

the following century, Cardinal Humbert acquired his Greek learning.

A sort of holy emulation sprang up between the two prelates, which

should outstrip the other in their labours at reform and revival; and

Gerard was not content with setting others to work; he worked himself

as hard as the humblest scholasticus. He took into his own hands the

instruction of his clergy in all that appertained to ecclesiastical

discipline and the ministry of preaching; and acting on the principle

that he who instructs others should never cease to be a learner, he

never considered that his time of study was ended; and his historian

declares that even when he was in bed he appointed some of his clerks

to read to him until he fell asleep.

From all that has been said, it may be seen that there was no want

of solicitude on the part of the pastors of the Church to amend

the disorders of the time. In fact, we might appeal to the acts of

those very councils which show what the abuses of the times were, as

affording proof of the strenuous exertions made to correct them.

In Spain we are told the incursions of the Saracens had left

everything in ruins. The school of Palencia, established in the

sixth century for the education of the clergy, had fallen into

decay; the monastic institute had all but disappeared; and the sites

of many monasteries, like the famous one founded near Vierzo by

St. Fructuosus, had become wildernesses, overgrown with thorns and

brushwood. But here, as in France and Germany, bishops were to be

found stemming the strong tide of barbarism. Gennadius of Astorga

restored a great number of abbeys destroyed by the Saracens, and

placed them under the Benedictine Rule. And as the libraries that

formerly enriched them could not be at once replaced, he introduced

a custom by which the books belonging to one house were lent to a

number of others in regular succession, always returning to their

original owners. Among the books so lent appear the works of St.

Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.

Even the education of the poor was not wholly uncared for in the Iron

Age. Witness the constitutions of Ado of Vercelli, Dado of Verden,

and Heraclius of Liege, in which the establishment of “little,”

or parochial, schools, is ordained, wherein poor children of both

sexes, about the age of seven, are to be received and taught gratis,

the girls and boys being always separated from one another. The

regulations, simple as they are, have a very modern sound; and so

also have those other constitutions of Riculf of Soissons, who, for

the improvement of his parish priests, hit on a scheme of _clerical

conferences_, in order to afford them means of mutual edification, on

a plan precisely similar to that adopted in later times.

But we have dwelt long enough on the aspect which the tenth century

presented in France. Something remains to be said of the state of

schools and monasteries during the same period on the other side of

the Rhine, where the achievements of the German prelates were crowned

with a much larger share of success, and well deserve a chapter to

themselves.

_CHAPTER X._

THE AGE OF THE OTHOS.

A.D. 911 TO 1024.

Louis the Fourth, surnamed the Child, the last of the race of

Charlemagne who bore rule in Germany, died in 911, leaving the empire

torn to pieces with feudal wars and the devastations of Hungarians,

Sclaves and Normans. As the right of choosing his successor belonged

to the nobles, they offered the crown to Otho, duke of Saxony, who

with singular disinterestedness refused it, and recommended as

most worthy of the royal dignity, his own feudal rival, Conrad of

Franconia, who accordingly received the crown. Not to be outdone

in generosity, Conrad, at his death, named the son of Otho as

his successor, and thus Henry the Fowler became the first German

sovereign of the house of Saxony. His victory over the Hungarians at

Marsberg, in 933, gave them their first decisive check, and in 936,

his son Otho the Great completed the discomfiture of the barbarians

at the great battle of Leck, after which they never again showed

their face in Germany. In 952, Otho was crowned king of Italy, having

been called into that country to oppose the usurper Beranger. Eight

years later he was invited to Rome by Pope John XII. and crowned

emperor, no prince having borne that title in the West for the space

of forty years. Though on some occasions he failed not to evince that

tendency to despotism in Church matters which was the hereditary

vice of the German emperors, yet his reign was truly glorious, and

is spoken of by ancient writers as a kind of golden age. His mother

Matilda, and his two wives, Editha and Adelaide, the first of whom

was an English princess, together with his brother Bruno, Archbishop

of Cologne, were all canonised saints. He showed himself the friend

of religion and learning, and caused his son, Otho II., to receive

a learned education. His grandson, Otho III., who succeeded to the

crown in 983, was also a scholar, and a pupil of Gerbert’s, and

surnamed the Wonder of the World. At his death the crown passed to

his cousin, St. Henry of Bavaria, whose brother-in-law, St. Stephen

of Hungary, converted his people to Christianity, and changed those

wild barbarians, so long the scourge of Europe, into a civilised and

Christian nation.

Thus, for the space of a century, Germany was blessed with a

succession of great Christian rulers, who, if they had some defects,

were yet on the whole protectors of religion, and encouragers of

learned men. Italy, indeed, is represented by most historians as

presenting during the same period a scene of lamentable decay; and

Tiraboschi gives the names of only two bishops as possessing any

pretensions to learning, namely, Atto of Vercelli, and Ratherius

of Verona. But allowance must be made for the exaggerations of

party-writers, and there are facts which cannot be altogether

reconciled with their sweeping statements. Studies were certainly

carried on in the monasteries that escaped the rage of the Saracens,

and Muratori cites a long catalogue of books, all either copied

or collected at Bobbio during the tenth century. Baronius, whose

strictures on the state of Italy are exceedingly severe, quotes the

acts of a council held at Rheims in 992, wherein it is declared that

there was scarcely one person to be found at that time in Rome who

knew the first elements of learning. Considering the unhappy and

scandalous factions which then held sway in the Roman capital, no

picture of social disorder would seem too black for us to credit; yet

bad as things were, one is staggered at the notion that no one in

the city of the Popes and the Cæsars should know even how to read.

A few years previously to the date assigned, Rome, as we shall see,

not only possessed good masters herself, but supplied them to the

German seminaries; nor is there any reason for supposing that her

political disasters necessarily closed her schools. If, from the

acts of a remote council, we turn to the writings of one thoroughly

conversant with the state of Italy, the man of his age best qualified

to judge of any matter connected with learning--I mean the famous

Ratherius of Verona--we shall find a very different description of

the state of things which he had witnessed with his own eyes. His

testimony is the more remarkable from the fact that he was the great

censor of his age, sparing neither clergy nor bishops in his caustic

attacks. Yet he assures us that in his time, and he died in 974,

there was no place where a man could get better instructed in sacred

letters than in Rome. “What is taught elsewhere on ecclesiastical

dogma,” he says, “that is unknown there? It is there that we find

the sovereign doctors of the whole world; it is there that the most

illustrious princes of the Church have flourished. There the decrees

of the pontiffs are to be found; there the canons are examined; there

some are approved and others rejected; what is condemned there is

nowhere else approved, nor do men elsewhere approve of what is there

condemned. Where, then, could I be more sure to find wisdom than at

Rome, which is its fountain-head?”[131] About the same time Gerbert,

the literary wonder of his age, arrived in Rome, where his scientific

acquirements were so thoroughly appreciated by Pope John XIII. as

to induce that pontiff to prevent his return into Spain; and he

accordingly wrote to the emperor, advising him to secure the services

of a man who was thoroughly well-versed in mathematics, and able to

teach them to others. But how preposterous it seems to suppose that

the mathematics of Gerbert should be thus highly valued in a city

where hardly a man was to be found acquainted with the first elements

of letters! Again, we find from Gerbert’s own correspondence that it

was from Italy that he chiefly obtained his books. There is no city

in that country, he says, where good writers and copyists are not to

be found; a fact which conclusively proves that somebody was also

to be found to buy what was written, for the book trade could not

have been kept up without a fair supply of readers. And in the year

1000 only eight years after the above-named council had furnished

Baronius with its dismal authority for proving Italy to be sunk in

the grossest ignorance, we find a German noble named Wippo exhorting

the emperor Henry II. to send the sons of the German nobles to be

educated “after the manner of the Italians.” Not that it at all

concerns us to whitewash the history of Italy in the tenth century,

confessedly the very _nadir_ of her ecclesiastical annals; but there

is no reason for unfairly blackening even a damaged reputation, and

the united testimonies given above may at least be taken as evidence

that the words of the council must not be too literally understood.

In the present chapter, however, I propose to speak only of the

state of letters in Germany, where the tenth century was certainly

very far from deserving to be stigmatised as an age of iron or lead.

All the monastic chroniclers bear witness to the rapid extension

of letters, which was encouraged by the Saxon emperors, to the

extraordinary multiplication of schools, and the harvest of great

men whom they produced, so that even Meiners is forced to acknowledge

that at no period did Germany possess so many virtuous and learned

ecclesiastics. Much of this happy state of things is to be attributed

to the labours and example of St. Bruno, the younger brother of

Otho the Great, and, like him, a pupil of Heraclius of Liege. His

education began at Utrecht, where he was sent at the mature age of

four, to commence his studies under the good abbot Baldric. Utrecht

had never entirely lost its scholastic reputation since the days of

St. Gregory. Only a few years before the birth of Bruno the see had

been filled by St. Radbod, a great-grandson of that other Radbod,

duke of Friesland, who had so fiercely opposed the preaching of St.

Boniface. Radbod the bishop, however, was a very different man from

his savage ancestor; he was not only a pious ecclesiastic, but an

elegant scholar, for he had been educated in the Palatine school of

Charles the Bald, under the learned Mannon, whose heart he won by his

facility in writing verses; and the cares of the episcopate never

induced him altogether to neglect the Muses. Besides a great number

of poems which he wrote during his residence at Utrecht, we have a

Latin epigram, which he improvised at the moment of receiving the

Holy Viaticum, and which is perhaps as worthy of being preserved as

the dying epigram of the Emperor Hadrian.[132]

In consequence of the encouragement given to learning by so many of

its bishops, Utrecht became the fashionable place of education, and

it had grown a sort of custom with the German sovereigns to send

their sons thither at an early age. Little Bruno made rapid progress

both in Greek and Latin literature; he particularly relished the

works of Prudentius, which he learnt by heart; never let himself be

disturbed by his noisy companions, and took great care of his books.

Indeed, the only thing that ever moved him to anger was the sight of

any one negligently handling a book. His reading included something

of all sorts; historians, orators, poets and philosophers--nothing

came amiss. He had native Greeks to instruct him in their language,

and became so proficient in it as afterwards to act as interpreter

for his brother to the Greek ambassadors who frequented the German

court. With all this he did not neglect the sacred sciences, and a

certain Isaac, a Scotch, or rather Irish professor, who taught at

Utrecht, spoke of him as not merely a scholar, but a saint. The monk

Ditmar, one of his schoolfellows, himself afterwards celebrated in

the literary world by his chronicle of the royal house of Saxony,

bears witness to the habits of piety which adorned the very childhood

of the young prince. “Every morning,” he says, “before he left his

room to go to the school, he would be at his prayers, while the

rest of us were at play.” A certain tone of exaggeration is not

unfrequently indulged in by early writers when extolling the subjects

of their biographies as prodigies of every literary excellence, but

the descriptions left us of Bruno’s intellectual achievements do not

admit of being understood as mere figures of speech. His love of

reading was almost a passion. He read everything, “even comedies,”

says his biographer, who seems a little scandalised at the fact,

but explains that he attended only to the style, and neglected the

matter. To complete the picture of Bruno’s school-days, it must be

added that he was an excellent manager of his time, and always made

the most of his morning hours, a good habit he retained through life.

I will say nothing of his early career as the reformer of Lauresheim

Abbey; he was still young when his brother Otho succeeded to the

throne, and at once summoned Bruno to court, charging him with the

task of erecting there a Palatine academy, after the model of that

of Charlemagne. Nothing was better suited to Bruno’s wishes and

capacity, and he began at once to teach the entire curriculum of the

liberal arts to a crowd of noble pupils. Whatever was most beautiful

in the historians and poets of Greece or Rome, he made known to his

disciples, and not content with the labour entailed on him by his own

lectures, he did not allow the professors whom he chose to assist him

to commence theirs till he had previously conferred with them on the

subjects they were about to explain.

One of Bruno’s chief assistants was that same Ratherius who has

been already named. Originally a monk of Lobes, he had accompanied

his patron Hilduin of Liege into Italy, and there became bishop of

Verona. He was a man of great learning, and zeal too little tempered

with discretion, and his life was a series of episcopal ejectments.

Thrice was he turned out of the see of Verona, and once out of that

of Liege, to which Bruno had procured his nomination after the death

of Hilduin. His writings are of considerable value as monuments of

the doctrine and discipline of the times, but I mention him here

rather in the character of a benefactor to youth. For after being the

second time obliged to fly from Verona, he retired, says Folcuin,

in his history of the abbots of Lobes, “to that part of Burgundy

which is called Provençe, where he taught the son of a certain

rich man named Rostang; and for his benefit composed a little book

on the grammatical art, which he called by the pleasant name of

_Spara-dorsum_, or _Spare-the-back_, to the end that young children

making use of the same in schools might be preserved from scourges.”

In 953, Bruno, in spite of his youth, was demanded by the clergy

and people of Cologne for their archbishop, and being consecrated,

he at once entered on a career of gigantic labours, everywhere

re-establishing ecclesiastical discipline and social order throughout

a province long wasted by war and barbaric invasions. His political

position, moreover, imposed on him yet more extensive cares; for

Otho, who called him his second soul, when summoned into Italy,

created his brother duke of Lorraine and imperial lieutenant

in Germany. The dukedom of Lorraine at that time included all

the country from the Alps to the Moselle, which now, therefore,

acknowledged Bruno as its actual sovereign. But these multiplied

dignities, and the accumulation of business which they entailed, did

not quench Bruno’s love of study. Whenever he travelled, whether in

the visitation of his diocese, or when accompanying his brother’s

court, he always carried his library with him, “as if it had been

the ark of the Lord,” says the monk Rotger, who, moreover, remarks

that this library was stored both with sacred and profane authors,

for, like a good householder, he knew how to bring out of his

treasury things new and old. Nothing ever prevented his finding

time for reading, and he excited every one about him to cultivate

similar tastes, specially his nephew Otho, who was for some time

his pupil. Indeed, Rotger goes so far as to say that the archbishop

felt a certain want of confidence in those who had no attraction to

study; meaning probably to those unlettered clerks who cared not to

acquire the learning proper to their sacred calling. Of these there

was no lack in Lorraine; but Bruno effected a great change in the

condition of that afflicted province, by appointing good bishops,

healing feuds, reforming monasteries, and making men love one another

in spite of themselves. In all these good works he was assisted

by the learning and martial valour of Ansfrid, count of Lorraine,

who was well read both in law and Scripture, and who used his sword

exclusively to repress pillage and defend the helpless. This feudal

noble of the Iron Age spent all his leisure hours in study, and when

at last he embraced the ecclesiastical state, and at the entreaties

of the emperor accepted a bishopric, he was able to lay his sword

on the altar and render witness that it had never been drawn in an

unjust cause.

Bruno’s example made a great stir in Germany, and moved many

bishops to exert themselves in the work of reform. Poppo, Bishop

of Wurtzburg, sent to Rome for a celebrated master named Stephen,

and with his help the episcopal seminary was restored, and soon

boasted of a “crowd of students, and a great store of books.”

Among other pupils educated under Master Stephen were two friends,

named Wolfgang and Henry. Wolfgang was a student of Bruno’s type,

possessing an avidity for all sorts of learning; and though he began

his school-life at seven, he is said in a few years not only to have

acquired an extensive acquaintance with the letter of the Scriptures,

but to have penetrated into the pith and marrow of their mystical

sense. His father had thought it sufficient to place him under a

certain priest, to receive a very scanty elementary education, but

Wolfgang entreated that he might be sent to Reichnau, which then

enjoyed a high reputation; and here he first met with his friend

Henry. Henry was the younger brother of Bishop Poppo, and easily

persuaded Wolfgang to migrate with him to Wurtzburg, for the sake of

studying under the famous Master Stephen. It soon appeared, however,

that the disciple was more learned than the master, and when the

Wurtzburg students found Master Stephen’s lectures very dull, or

very obscure, they were in the habit of applying to Wolfgang, who

possessed that peculiar gift of perspicacity which marked him from

his boyhood as called to the functions of teaching. Moreover, he was

so kind and so willing to impart his knowledge, that his companions

declared he made daylight out of the darkest matters; when Stephen’s

prosy abstruseness had fairly mystified them, five words from

Wolfgang seemed like the “Fiat lux,” and these observations reaching

the ears of Stephen, had the proverbial fate of all comparisons.

At last, one day when Wolfgang was surrounded by a knot of his

schoolfellows, who entreated him to expound a passage in Marcian

Capella, Master Stephen, moved to jealous anger, forbade Wolfgang any

longer to attend the lectures. This ungenerous command obliged him

to continue his studies alone, but he seems to have lost little by

being deprived of the benefit of an instructor whom he had already

far outstripped in learning.

Henry and Poppo were both of them relatives of Otho, who in 956

caused the former to be raised to the archbishopric of Treves. Henry

insisted on carrying his friend with him into his new diocese, and

wished to load him with benefices and honours, all of which, however,

Wolfgang refused. He would accept of no other employment than that

of teaching youth, for which he knew his aptitude, and which he

heartily loved; and, in the true spirit of a Christian teacher,

he chose to discharge this office gratuitously, not as a means of

private gain, but as a work for souls, even supporting many of his

scholars out of his own purse. He cared as much for their spiritual

as their intellectual progress, and set them the example of a holy

and mortified life. The archbishop, in despair at not being able

to promote him as he desired, at last got him to accept the office

of dean to a certain college of canons. Wolfgang did not allow the

dignity to be a nominal one, but obliged his canons to embrace

community life, and to commence a course of sacred studies, assuring

them that the sustenance of the inner man is as necessary as that

of the body. Archbishop Henry dying in 964, Wolfgang, who had only

remained at Treves out of affection to him, prepared to return into

Swabia, which was his native country. But Bruno had his eye on him,

and inviting him to Cologne, offered him every dignity, even the

episcopate itself, if he would only remain in his duchy. Wolfgang,

though he persisted in refusing to accept any promotion, felt himself

obliged to pass some time at the prince-bishop’s court, and testified

afterwards to the fact of his great sanctity. Finding that he could

not move the resolution of his friend, Bruno at last reluctantly

allowed him to return to Swabia, where he remained only just long

enough formally to renounce his hereditary possessions, after which

he withdrew to Einsidlen, and took the monastic habit under the

English abbot Gregory.