CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS.

CHRISTIAN
SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS

OR

SKETCHES OF EDUCATION FROM
THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE
COUNCIL OF TRENT

BY

AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DRANE
AUTHOR OF “THE THREE CHANCELLORS,” “KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN,”
“THE HISTORY OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA,” ETC.

Anastatic Reprint of the Second Edition
Published in London 1881.

NEW YORK
G. E. STECHERT & Co.
1910.

PREFACE.

The following pages have been written with the view of presenting a general and connected sketch of the history of Christian Education down to the period of the Council of Trent, illustrated from the lives of those who have, in successive ages, taken part in that great work. A subject extending over so wide a field could of necessity be only partially treated, and it seems desirable, therefore, to explain certain omissions which might otherwise cause disappointment. It was believed that the object aimed at would, in most cases, be better accomplished by introducing the reader to the teachers themselves, than by undertaking to give a complete account and critical examination of their writings. Such an examination would properly enter into a history of Christian Literature, a grand desideratum indeed, but one which the present volumes makes no pretensions to supply. Again, for obvious reasons, the philosophical and theological controversies connected with the lives of the great men who form the subjects of the following studies, have[Pg vi] been designedly touched on with the greatest possible brevity: the history of such controversies seeming to belong to Ecclesiastical History, and to be unsuitable in a work like the present.

It has been the wish of the writer to treat the subject from a purely historical point of view, and to increase the value of the narrative by, as far as possible, preserving the colouring, and sometimes even the very language, of the original historians.

The notes appended to the text will give a general idea of the authorities whence the matter has been derived. The Ecclesiastical Histories of Fleury and Rohrbacher have furnished the groundwork of the general narrative. In the account of the Irish schools, the chronology and the main facts have been drawn from Lanigan’s Ecclesiastical History of Ireland. The sketch of the restoration of letters under Charlemagne has been chiefly taken from Crevier’s Histoire de l’Université de Paris, Launoy’s Treatise De Scholis Celebrioribus, and the various lives, both ancient and modern, of Charlemagne. In the chapters referring to the subsequent history of the Dark Ages, constant use has been made of the Acta Sanctorum Ord. S. Benedicti, by D’Achery and Mabillon, and of the collections of the Lives of the Saints by Surius and the Bollandists; also of the Vetera Analecta of Mabillon, the Spicilegium of D’Achery, the Amplissima Collectio of Martene, and the Histoire Litteraire de la France, by the Benedictines of St. Maur. Much[vii] valuable matter has also been derived from the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica of Pertz, and the collection of ancient German Chronicles by Meibomius; the account of the school and scholars of St. Gall’s being taken from Ekkehard’s History De Casibus S. Galli, printed in the first volume of Goldasti’s collection, and from the Benedictine Life of B. Notker. The notices of the foreign universities are chiefly drawn from Crevier, and from Tiraboschi’s Storia della Letteratura Italiana, which latter work has been almost exclusively used in the chapters on the Renaissance in Italy. The chapter on the Dominicans and the Universities is compiled from a considerable number of authorities; chiefly, Touron’s Vies des Hommes Illustres, the Scriptores Ordinis Prædicatorum by Echard and Quetil, the French translation of Dr. Sighart’s Life of Albert the Great, and the Constitutions of the Order.

The sketches of our English schools and universities are mostly derived from Wood’s Antiquities of Oxford, Ayliffe’s Ancient and Present State of the University of Oxford, and Dugdale’s Monasticon; whilst various notices of early English scholars have been gathered from Wright’s Biographia Britannica, Warton’s History of English Poetry, and the original lives of the English Saints, as given in the three collections already named. Hallam’s Literary History of Europe, and Ranke’s History of the Popes, have also been made considerable use of in treating of the period of[viii] the Renaissance, while the sketches of Colet and Pole have been drawn from their respective lives by Knight and Philipps. Pallavicini’s History of the Council of Trent, and Touron’s Life of St. Charles Borromeo, have furnished the chief materials for the concluding chapter of the work.

St. Dominic’s Convent, Stone,
May 1867.

[ix]

CONTENTS.

In the seventh year of the Emperor Nero, and the sixtieth of the Christian era, a little ship entered the harbour of Alexandria, and after rounding the great Pharos that stood at its northern extremity, cast anchor by that granite quay, round which was grouped, as in an amphitheatre, six miles in span, a city of palaces and temples. It bore on its decks one of whom that proud city as yet knew nothing, but who had come to erect his patriarchal throne in the midst of her sea girt walls, bringing with him his Gospel and the sovereignty of St. Peter’s keys. It was St. Mark, the interpreter and spiritual son of the Prince of the Apostles, sent in his name and by his authority to plant the Church in the southern capital of the Empire. Descending from the ship, and crossing the crowded quay overshadowed by its plane-trees, he made his way towards the great Moon-gate which opened into the street of the Seven Stadia. He was partially bald, and his hair and beard were sprinkled with grey hairs; but his beautiful eyes flashed beneath their high arched eyebrows, and there was a quickness in his step and a grace in his movements which bespoke him not yet past the middle age.[1] So at least he has been described by the historian Simeon Metaphrastes, who, though writing in the tenth century, has embodied in his narrative the account of far earlier authors, who have minutely recorded[2] the circumstances which attended the entry into Alexandria of her first patriarch.

We need not describe the world in which he found himself. It was the fairest city of the East; Greek in its aspect and population though planted on Egyptian soil, with a clearer sky than even that of Athens; a nobler harbour than Corinth could boast of; and that which was denied to Rome and Carthage, the command of a mighty river, which brought down to the port the corn and rose-coloured granite of Upper Egypt, the ivory of Ethiopia, the spices and gold-dust of Arabia, and the gems of Eastern lands. Like that other more ancient city on whose site she was reared, she “dwelt in the midst of the rivers; the sea was her riches, the waters were her walls.”[2] Then as now the highway to India lay through Egypt, and her seaport of Arsinoe on the Arabian Gulf communicated by a canal with the Nile, the western branch of which flowed out into the Mediterranean just north of the Alexandrian harbour. Thus the capital of the Ptolemies became the central point between East and West, and into her markets flowed the costly Oriental luxuries which were carried by her merchants into every European port. She was rich and she was populous; all nations met to traffic in her harbour, all tongues were spoken in her “many-peopled” streets. Yet her trading pre-eminence formed but a small part of her glory. It is not often that a great commercial emporium becomes the haunt of the Muses; but Alexandria united graces and attractions of the most opposite character, and her fame for learning eclipsed even that of her wealth. Three hundred years before the time of which we are speaking, one of Alexander’s royal successors, after erecting the temple of Serapis and the great Pharos, which last was numbered among the wonders of the world, bethought him of another way of rendering his name immortal, and gathered together a society of learned men whose duty was to consist in studying and teaching every known science. He built schools for them to lecture in, halls in which they ate in common, and marble porticoes, where, after the fashion of the Greek philosophers, they could walk and converse with their disciples. A noble library, which was enlarged by successive princes till it consisted of seven hundred thousand volumes, completed the Musæum or University of Ptolemy Soter, and the whole was joined to his own palace and delicious gardens by stately marble colonnades. Royal patronage was scarcely needed to foster[3] the intellectual life of a city which had been designed by its founder to be the capital of the world; but with such encouragement the schools of Alexandria grew apace, and in the Apostolic age ranked as the first within the wide dominions that owned the Roman sway.

Here then the Blessed Peter came in the person of his chosen disciple, to claim for Christ the southern capital of the Empire, as he had already in his own person taken possession of East and West—of Antioch and Rome. Solitary and unknown, the Evangelist came there bent on conquests vaster than those of Alexander, for he had but enslaved a base material world; but St. Mark, as he stood at the Mendion, or Moon-gate, that led from the harbour into the busy streets, was deliberating on the conquest of a million of souls. How was he to begin? Where should he first bear his message of good tidings? Should he bend his steps to the porticoes of the Musæum, or try to find a listener in the crowded exchange which met his eye through that open gate? Providence itself was to give the reply, and neither wealth nor science was to yield him his first convert. The thong of his sandal snapped in two, and to get it mended he entered the shop of a cobbler that stood close at hand. The cobbler, whose name was Anianus, gave him hospitality that night; and questioning him as to who he was, heard in reply that he was the servant of Jesus Christ, declared in the Scriptures to be the Son of God. “Of what Scriptures do you speak?” he inquired; “I have never heard of any writings but the Iliad and the Odyssey, and other such things as are taught to the sons of the Egyptians.” Then St. Mark sat down and unfolded to him the Gospel; through the long hours of the night, in the midst of that heaving world of idolatry and sin—the teacher spoke, and the disciple listened; and when morning dawned the first fruits of Alexandria had been laid up in the garner of Christ.[3]

It was meet that an Evangelist should deliver his first message to the poor; but it was not with the poor alone that he had to do. The Church of Alexandria was to receive into her embrace the philosopher of the Musæum as well as the despised Egyptian slave. She was to address herself to the wise and prudent of this world as well as to little ones. So St. Mark, as we are told, surrounded his see with learned men, and became the founder of a catechetical school. Although its chief celebrity dates only from the end of the second century, yet its first foundation is universally attributed to St. Mark.

[4]

It rose under the shadow of the temple of Serapis, near those marble porticoes where the Neo-Platonists, who despised such vulgar idolatry, were dreaming of some misty impersonal abstraction to which they gave the name of God; where Pyrrhonists took refuge in a system of universal doubt; where many were content to know nothing at all about the soul, and concerned themselves rather with mathematics and material prosperity; where Greek Epicureans talked of a world that had made itself by chance, and set up sense as the standard of certainty, and enjoyment as the end of life; while Roman freethinkers quoted the witty atheisms of Lucretius, and then went to burn incense before the statue of the Emperor. What new elements of knowledge could a Christian Evangelist contribute to such a world as this? There was no need for him to bring it the literature of Greece and Rome; and as to the sciences of figures and numbers, Egypt was their native soil. Even the Hebrew Scriptures had long ago been translated into Greek and laid up in the library of Ptolemy. But he brought the Gospel—his own Gospel in particular;[4] the one Book out of which for long ages the faithful of Alexandria were exclusively instructed, and which the teacher of the catechetical school was required to hold in his hand when he stood before his hearers. He brought the traditions of St. Paul and of St. Peter, for he had been the disciple of both. He brought the Creed, the Apostolic symbol, which in the brief compass of its twelve articles contains more truths than Plato or Cicero had ever known, and which discovered in the certainty of faith that Eureka which every system of human philosophy had sought in vain. He brought his Liturgy too; if not that which bears his name, at least some earlier form which served as its groundwork. And lastly, he brought that Liturgy’s musical voice—the eight ancient tones, which, like so many things that belong to the Church, when first we meet with them in history, are already clothed with venerable antiquity: those tones to which the Jewish Church had for centuries chanted the Psalms of David; which must so often have fallen on the ears of Jesus, and in whose melody, it may be, His Divine Voice had sometimes mingled; the sweet songs of Sion which Jewish captives had sung by the rivers of Babylon, and whose echoes now floated from Christian lips over the[5] dark waters of the Nile.[5] The Holy Gospels, the Creed, the Liturgy, and the Ecclesiastical Chant, these were the contributions which were offered by the Patriarch of Alexandria to her learned stores, and which formed the first class-books of the Christian schools. But St. Mark did something more than this. All early writers agree in declaring that he established among his clergy that canonical rule of life which was a copy of the community life of the first Christians; while at the same time, as St. Jerome and Cassian[6] inform us, some of his disciples retiring into the neighbourhood of the city, and there giving themselves up to prayer and the study of the Scriptures, laid the first foundations of the cœnobitical, or monastic life.

To St. Mark, therefore, and through him to the Prince of the Apostles, may be traced up every one of those institutions which were the nurseries of the Christian schools. For, as will hereafter be seen, the Christian seminaries took their origin in the episcopal and monastic schools, and these again grew out of that system of community life which, being first embraced by the faithful at Jerusalem, was afterwards elsewhere established by the Apostles, who lived with their immediate followers as they themselves had lived with their Divine Master. The Apostolic origin of the canonical rule of life has never been denied. When St. Augustine was accused by Petilianus the Donatist of introducing a novelty into the Church by establishing his community of regular clergy, he defended himself by appealing to the example of the first Christians, and showing that, if the name of monastery were new, the manner of life which he and his brethren followed was as old as Christianity itself. It is thus that the author of the ancient book called the “Recognitions”[6] describes St. Peter as living, with a chosen number of disciples, among whom were St. Mark, St. Clement, St. Evodius, and St. Linus; so St. Paul was accompanied by St. Luke and St. Timothy, and St. John the Evangelist by St. Polycarp and St. Papias. St. Irenæus, a disciple of the last-named saints, carried into Gaul the discipline of the school in which he had been nurtured, and, writing in after years to the heresiarch Florinus, reminds him how, when yet a child, he had been accustomed to meet him in the house of Polycarp. “Early recollections,” he says, “grow with the soul, and entwine themselves about it, so that I could tell of the very place where the blessed Polycarp sat when he spoke, of his employments and his external appearance.”[7]

Out of this manner of life, as we shall presently show, sprang up the episcopal seminaries, which were designed for the training of the younger clerics, whilst the catechetical schools were intended for the religious instruction of the neophytes. But though this last-named institution was, of course, sui generis, and exclusively belonged to those primitive ages when adult converts from Paganism had to be prepared for baptism by at least a two years’ course of instruction, yet their history, and specially that of the Alexandrian school, helps us in a convenient manner to watch the absorption into the Christian system of education of every branch of learning afterwards cultivated in the schools.

In the absence of more particular details of the kind of instruction which prevailed at Alexandria before the time of St. Pantænus, we may reasonably suppose that the same system was adopted in that city as we find established at Jerusalem under St. Cyril. There the Hearers or Catechumens assembled in the porch of the church; the men and women sat separate from one another, and the master stood to deliver his instruction. The catecheses of St. Cyril that are preserved are twenty-three in number, eighteen being a summary of the chief articles of the Faith, given in the form of an exposition of the Creed, and the five others intended for the competent, or those preparing to receive the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Eucharist. The last-named subject is treated in an explanation of the Liturgy of St. James. This, of course, was the sort of teaching for which the catechetical schools were primarily intended, and up to the year 179 the teachers of Alexandria do not appear to have aimed at anything of a higher character. But about that time[7] Pantænus, a former stoic, whose eloquence earned him the title of the Sicilian Bee, became master of the school, and introduced a wider range of studies. He made use of his old learning to illustrate and defend his new faith. Clement of Alexandria, his earliest disciple, speaks of his “transcendent powers,” and St. Alexander, Bishop of Jerusalem, gloried in calling him his lord and blessed father.

The renown of St. Pantænus passed into the Indies, carried thither by some of the swarthy Hindoos, who were no strangers in the busy streets of Alexandria, and who had managed to find their way to that school where Jew and Gentile, bond and free, met together without distinction. The Indians invited him to come among them, and St. Pantænus accordingly exchanged his mastership for an apostolic life, and went to preach the faith to the Brahmins. Clement, his former disciple and assistant, succeeded him. He had visited all lands and studied in all schools in search of truth, and had found it at last on the humble bench of the Catechumen. No one understood better than he the emptiness of human learning when pursued as an end, or its serviceableness when used as a means. His end was to win souls to Christ; and to reach it, he laid hands indifferently on all the intellectual weapons that fell within his reach; poetry and philosophy, science and even satire;—he neglected nothing that would serve his turn. He did not disdain to give a Christian interpretation to Pagan fables, and took occasion from the stories of Orpheus and Amphion, who, as the poets pretended, had moved the stones and tamed the wild beasts with the music of their lyres, to present to his hearers the Word made Flesh, conquering the stony and ferocious heart of fallen man, and restoring that universe which he beautifully calls “a lyre whose harmony has been destroyed by sin.” He could use with equal ease the phraseology of the Neo-Platonists whilst engaged in dispersing their transcendentalism into thinnest air, or the plainer language of the Gospel when he had to put heretics to silence. Nor was he too deep or profound for the comprehension of the simple-hearted faithful; he could write hymns for little children to sing in church, and when he spoke to exclusively Christian hearers set forth no other wisdom, no other model for their imitation, than “Jesus Christ and Him Crucified.”

The result of all this may be imagined. While the first neophytes of St. Mark and his immediate followers had been chiefly gained from[8] the ranks of the Jews, to whom Alexandria was a second home, Gentile converts now flowed into the Church in ever-increasing numbers. The philosophers found in the Christian teachers those who could beat them with their own weapons, and human learning became elevated and ennobled by its marriage with the faith. It may be taken as a proof how thoroughly it was now recognised that Christians were men who could think and reason like other men, had as fair a knowledge of books and as great a command of what the Roman world valued far more than mere book-knowledge—eloquence; in short, that they were men of whom a university city need not be ashamed, and who might even be capable one day or other of setting up a university of their own—that it was becoming possible for Christians to gain a livelihood by teaching grammar and profane letters. There was one who so began his career, and who, at the age of eighteen, succeeded Clement in the direction of the catechetical school. The child of a martyr, Origen had been the pupil of saints. He had been taught not only by Clement, but also by St. Hyppolitus the martyr, commonly called Bishop of Porto, the disciple of Irenæus, the disciple of Polycarp, the spiritual son of the Apostle St. John. Hyppolitus was a man of many sciences, a philosopher, a poet, and a mathematician. He was one of the earliest who comes before us as attaining eminence in that distinctively Christian science, which will often appear in these pages under the name of the Computum. The computum was in fact the art of calculating the time of Easter, and included so much astronomical and arithmetical knowledge as was necessary for that purpose.[8] Hence it was a science indispensable in the education of clerics; for in those days the Tabula Paschalis did not as now figure at the beginning of every Prayer-book; nor did the invention of almanacs bring home much science in a simple form to the fireside of the most unlettered layman. The calculation of Easter, therefore, had to be painfully gone through year after year, to the sore travail of many heads; and he was a benefactor to his species who first thought of lightening the labour. Hyppolitus, who is supposed to have been an Alexandrian by birth, and to whom, therefore, astronomy and arithmetic were second nature, composed two cycles which determined the Easter for a hundred and twelve years to come; and after his death a statue was erected representing the bishop, with the cycles engraved on his[9] chair, which is still preserved in the Christian Museum of the Lateran.[9]

Under Hyppolitus and the other masters provided for him by his father’s care, Origen had made progress in every human science; but on becoming chief catechist of Alexandria he had to make a sacrifice. He was forced to resign his grammar-school and to sell his books. Not, indeed, that he had no further need of these treasures, but they were his solitary riches; and as even he could not absolutely live on nothing, he parted from them and lived on the small pension of four oboli a day, which was paid him by the purchaser. And having thus wedded himself to poverty, alike the spouse of the scholar and the saint, he began to study Hebrew, and entered on those vast labours which had for their object the production of a correct version of the Sacred Text. And all the time the business of the school went on, and persecution raged with small intermission. Seven of his disciples suffered under Severus—a glorious crown for the master who envied them their palms. But we are only concerned with the history of Origen in so far as it exhibits the expansion of the Christian studies. So passing over twenty years of his life, we shall follow him to Cæsarea, where in 231 he retired from the storm that had driven him from Alexandria, and accepted the direction of another school entrusted him by the two bishops, Theoctistus of Cæsarea and Alexander of Jerusalem. It appears to have been a combination of the episcopal seminary and the catechetical school, for scholars of all classes resorted to it. Among them were Theodore, better known by his Christian name of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and his brother Athenodorus, who were then studying in the famous law-schools of Berytus. The conversation of Origen, however, soon put Roman jurisprudence out of their heads, and determined them to apply exclusively to philosophy under the guidance of their new friend. Both were at this time pagans, and Origen had to prepare their minds to receive the truth in a very gradual manner. He began by mercilessly rooting out the weeds and briars of bad habits and false maxims which he found choking up the soil, a process which at first, as his pupils acknowledged, cost[10] them not a little. Then he taught them in succession the different branches of philosophy: logic, in order to exercise their minds and enable them to discern true reasoning from sophistry; physics, that they might understand and admire the works of God; geometry, which by its clear and indisputable demonstrations serves as a basis to the science of thought; astronomy, to lift their hearts from earth to heaven; and finally, philosophy, which was not limited like that taught in the pagan schools to empty speculations, but was conveyed in such a way as to lead to practical results. All these were but steps to ascend to that higher science which teaches us the existence and nature of God. He permitted his pupils freely to read whatever the poets and philosophers had written on this subject, himself watching and directing their studies, and opening their eyes to distinguish those sparks of truth which are to be found scattered in the writings of the pagans, however overlaid by a mass of fable. And then at last he presented them with the Sacred Scriptures, in which alone the true knowledge of God is to be found. In one of his letters to St. Gregory he explains in what way he wishes him to regard the profane sciences. “They are to be used,” he says, “so that they may contribute to the understanding of the Scriptures; for just as philosophers are accustomed to say that geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric, and astronomy all dispose us to the study of philosophy, so we may say that philosophy, rightly studied, disposes us to the study of Christianity. We are permitted when we go out of Egypt to carry with us the riches of the Egyptians wherewith to adorn the tabernacle; only let us beware how we reverse the process, and leave Israel to go down into Egypt and seek for treasure: that is what Jeroboam did in old time, and what heretics do in our own.”

In addition, therefore, to the elements of education which have been named before, we see that, at the beginning of the third century, Christians were expected to teach and study the liberal arts, profane literature, philosophy, and the Biblical languages. Their teachers commented on the Scriptures, and devoted themselves to a critical study of its text; positive theology, as it is called, had established itself in the schools, together with a certain systematic science of Christian ethics, and, we may add, many branches of physical science also. It matters very little that these latter were but imperfectly known; the real point worth observing is, that every branch of human knowledge, in so far as it had been cultivated at[11] that time, was included in the studies of the Christian schools; and, considering that this had been the work of scarcely more than two centuries, and those centuries of bloody persecution, it must be acknowledged to have been a tolerably expansive growth.

We have now to consider the gradual development of the episcopal seminaries, which in their early stage formed but a part of the bishop’s household. I have already spoken of the sort of community life established among the bishops and their clergy in apostolic times. During the first four centuries of the Church this manner of life was the more easily carried out, as the clergy were to be found only in towns. The establishment of rural parishes and the appointment of parochial priests to country villages, is first spoken of in the Council of Vaison, held in 528. The community life of the city clergy had many obvious advantages, and afforded singular facilities for training younger aspirants to the ecclesiastical state under the eye of the chief pastor. Accordingly, we very early find notices of the schools for younger clerics, which sprang up in the episcopal households. Thus, the martyr St. Vincent is stated to have been educated in sacred letters, even from his childhood, by Valerius, Bishop of Saragossa. St. John Chrysostom studied for three years as lector in the household of Meletius, Bishop of Antioch, St. Cyril in that of his uncle Theophilus, and St. Athanasius with Alexander of Alexandria. Towards the close of the second century we read how Pope St. Eleutherius placed the future martyr St. Felicianus in the school which was then presided over by his archdeacon, St. Victor,[10] his successor in the Apostolic Chair; and all the early annals of the Roman Church represent her clergy as for the most part educated in this manner, under the eye of her Pontiffs. The author of the Philosophumena acquaints us with the fact that Pope Calixtus I. established a school of theology at Rome, which appears from his account to have been crowded with disciples. When, after the conversion of Constantine, the imperial palace of the Lateran became the residence of the popes, their ecclesiastical school was maintained within the Patriarchium, as the papal palace was called, and in it not a few of the greatest popes of the first nine centuries received their education. It possessed a noble library, and the names of its librarians are preserved in unbroken order from the fifth century. Here, ecclesiastical students were received at an early age, and admitted to the successive degrees of holy orders only at long[12] intervals and after careful preparation. The very first Decretal that exists of known authenticity, that of Pope St. Siricius, addressed, in 385, to Himerius, Bishop of Tarragona, lays down the rules to be observed in promoting clerics to holy orders, and indicates the existence of such episcopal seminaries as we have described. Those who have been devoted to the service of the Church from childhood are to be first placed in the rank of lectors. Then, if they have persevered to the age of thirty, they may be advanced through the inferior orders to the subdiaconate, and thence to the diaconate, in which they must pass five years before being admitted to the priesthood.[11] A few years later we find St. Zozimus ordaining that the young clerics should remain in the rank of lectors till their twentieth year, and that they should not be raised to the priesthood until after many years of trial. St. Leo I. writes to the African bishops, about the middle of the fifth century, appealing to the venerable ordinances of the holy fathers on the ordination of those who have lived from childhood subject to ecclesiastical discipline, by which expression we must certainly understand the young lectors of the episcopal seminaries. And, glancing on to the eighth and ninth centuries, we find exactly the same discipline kept up in the school of the Patriarchium as had existed in the seventh. Pope Gregory II. is spoken of as brought up from childhood in the Lateran palace, “under the eye and discipline of the Blessed Pontiff Sergius,”[12] as being promoted by him to the subdiaconate, and after having for some years discharged the offices of treasurer and librarian, being advanced to the rank of deacon and, subsequently, of priest. So, too, Pope Leo III. is described as “educated from infancy in all ecclesiastical and divine discipline in the vestiarium of the Lateran Palace.” In most cases the Lateran seminary was presided over by the Roman archdeacon, and, as we shall see, the superintendence of the cathedral schools continued, in after ages, to form one of the duties commonly attached to the archdiaconate.

In the fourth century, when the monastic institute spread from the East into the West, the community life of the bishops and their clergy assumed, in many places, a yet more regular form. St. Eusebius of Vercelli, who had himself been committed by his mother in early youth to the care of Pope Eusebius, and had been instructed[13] and baptized by him, was the first to erect an episcopal monastery in his own city, which became a nursery of illustrious prelates. This was in 354, and forty years later St. Augustine established a similar monastery at Hippo, which is regarded as the parent of all houses of canons regular. Yet, though these establishments are sometimes called monasteries, the rule of life observed in them is ordinarily designated the Apostolic rule,[13] and the monasteries or colleges of a similar kind established in Gaul and Britain are said to be “of the Apostolic Order.” From this time the community life of the clergy became subject to fixed rules or canons. In 398 the fourth Council of Carthage, whilst prescribing the laws for the administration of holy orders, regulates the manner of life to be observed by the bishops with their clergy in very precise terms. The bishop is to have his residence near the church; he is to commit the care of temporalities to his archdeacon, and to occupy himself exclusively with prayer, study and preaching. In the church he is to have a higher seat than his clergy, but in the house he must recognise them as in all respects his colleagues, and never to suffer them to remain standing while he is seated.[14] Similar canons were passed in the first Council of Toledo, held two years later.

In all this there is no distinct reference to the education of the younger clerics as forming one of the duties of the cathedral clergy. The Council of Vaison, held in 528, speaks, indeed, of the parish priests, who are required, according to the practice of the priests of Italy, to bring up young lectors in their houses, who may succeed them in their cure; and the establishment of similar schools was solemnly ordered, in 680, by the General Council of Constantinople; but the institution, of which we here see the germ, was not the episcopal, but the priest’s or parochial school. However, in 531, the second Council of Toledo passed several canons, which bear distinct reference to the bishop’s seminary, which by this time is evidently supposed to be attached to the cathedral church. Those children who are destined by their parents for the ecclesiastical state are to receive the tonsure, and to be placed in the rank of lectors in order to be instructed in the house of the church under the eyes of the bishop, by him who shall be appointed over them. At the age of eighteen their vocation is to be publicly examined, that no one may embrace the ecclesiastical state save with his own[14] free consent. If this be given, they may be ordained sub-deacons at twenty and deacons at twenty-five. And clerics so educated cannot pass to any other diocese, but owe canonical obedience to the bishop at whose charge they have been brought up.[15]

Here, then, is the cathedral seminary fairly established, and a few years later we find it expanding into a noble public school. It was St. Leander, of Seville, who first conceived the idea of establishing a staff of professors for teaching the liberal arts in connection with his cathedral. He directed their labours in person, and received among his first scholars his own brother Isidore, who afterwards succeeded him in his see. Isidore greatly extended the range of studies, which included the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, and all the liberal arts, besides law and medicine. His famous Origines drawn up for the use of this school present an encyclopedia of every known subject, and embody several fragments of ancient authors which would otherwise have been lost to us. The first five books treat of Grammar, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Dialectics, Music, Geometry, Mechanics, Astronomy, Jurisprudence, Chronology, and History. The sixth is on the Holy Scriptures, the seventh and eighth are on God and the Angels, the ninth on the various nations and languages of the earth, and the remaining books treat of Etymology. But his efforts for the promotion of Christian education did not stop here. In 633 he presided over the fourth Council of Toledo, at which all the bishops of Spain were required to establish seminaries in their cathedral cities on the model of that of Seville, the study of the three learned languages being specially enjoined. This decree was carried into effect, and hence it is commonly said that the system of cathedral schools took its origin in Spain.

Besides the catechetical and episcopal schools, instances occur, even in the age of martyrdom, of private schools kept by Christian teachers. Such was the school of Imola, presided over by the martyr Cassian; and the story of his martyrdom exhibits to us the light in which the brutal pagan school-boy regarded his master. Yet there were cases when the hearts even of Gentile scholars were softened by the influence of a sanctity which they comprehended not. The exquisite story of the Eight Martyrs of Carthage, as related in their authentic Acts, exhibits to us the pagan scholars of the deacon Flavian obtaining his reprieve from the judge by vehemently denying his ecclesiastical character; and when he at last[15] succeeds in proving a fact which brings with it the joyful death-warrant, his Christian disciples follow him to the place of execution to gather up the last words of instruction from their master’s lips.[16] We have a yet more particular account of the school established at Cæsarea by the martyr St. Pamphilius. He had been educated, as a Gentile, in the public schools of Berytus, where he attained to great proficiency in profane science. But, on his conversion, he became desirous of acquiring a knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures, and for this purpose placed himself under the tuition of Pierius, the successor of Origen in the catechetical school of Alexandria. On his return to Syria he was ordained priest, and devoted the rest of his life, and his wealth, to the creation of a Christian school and library. No Florentine scholar in the age of the Renaissance had a more passionate love of books than he. He caused them to be sent to him from every quarter, and his library numbered no fewer than thirty thousand volumes, many of which had been copied by his own hand. They included the best works of the ancients, besides those of Christian writers. Pamphilius spent the greater part of his life in transcribing books, and both bought and wrote out an amazing number of copies of the Holy Scriptures, which he distributed gratis to all who desired to have them. He applied himself with unwearied diligence to obtain a correct edition of the whole of the Sacred Text; and, in the midst of these labours, he directed a school of sacred learning, wherein was reared more than one martyr.

The public schools of the Empire were not generally resorted to by the faithful until after the conversion of Constantine, when Christians were permitted to aspire to the professor’s chair. But this privilege, great as it was, did not produce any material change in the character of the State academies; they continued to flourish under the Christian Cæsars as they had done under their pagan predecessors, but they never merited to be regarded as Christian institutions. Though both Constantine and Gratian did much to provide excellent rhetoricians and grammarians to instruct their subjects, and though Valentinian I. made some laudable efforts, to correct the worst abuses of the schools, they continued to bear the stamp of their origin; and it is a significant fact that, long after the establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of the Empire, the saint whose children were destined to hold in their hands the future education of Europe[16] is introduced to us in the first incident of his life, flying into the wilderness to escape the corruption of the semi-pagan schools of Rome.[17] St. Augustine has told us something of the condition of the schools of Carthage in his time, which may probably be taken as a fair specimen of the State gymnasia in other parts of the Empire. The masters exercised an excessive severity with their pupils, so that, as the saint confesses, he first began the use of prayer when yet a child, to beg of God that He would save him from a school flogging. His elders, and even his parents, were so used to the idea of these punishments, “whereby labour and sorrow are multiplied to the sons of Adam,” that they only made a jest of his sufferings. All the sweets of Greek poetry were, he says, sprinkled with gall to him, he being forced to learn them by “cruel terrors and stripes.” He lets us know moreover that the wholesome admonitions of Quinctilian were altogether neglected, and that the worst writings of the pagan authors were placed in the hands of the scholars. In academies where the professorial system reigned supreme, moral training was neither given nor expected; the professors were paid for teaching their pupils grammar and rhetoric, and, as St. Augustine remarks, would have treated it as a greater fault to pronounce homo without the aspirate than to hate a man. Many were pagans, like Libanius, the master of St. Chrysostom; others were content with the smallest possible seasoning of Christianity. They were, in short, the sophists by profession—a pragmatical race of beings whose mental horizon hardly extended beyond the logic of Aristotle and the rules of rhetoric. Honourable exceptions of course were to be found, such as Marius Victorinus, who in the Julian persecution resigned his school rather than renounce the Divine Word who maketh eloquent the tongues of children.[18] But as a general rule the professors troubled themselves very little about questions of Christian faith or ethics. Absolute dictators of a petty circle, they were devoured by a vanity which tainted their very eloquence, and expressed itself in such a turgid and affected style, that, as Cicero said of one of their class, if you wanted to be dumb for the rest of your life you had nothing to do but to study their lectures. This vanity showed itself moreover in perpetual squabbles and rivalries, in which the disciples took part with their masters. New-comers were laid violent hands on by the scholastic jackals, who would endeavour by all manner of insolence to press them into the school of their own particular sophist, initiating[17] them by burlesque and uproarious ceremonies. Thus it was that they prepared to seize St. Basil on his first coming to Athens, when St. Gregory of Nazianzen, who well knew how offensive such riotous scenes would prove to one of his grave and reserved character, interfered to protect him, and thus laid the foundation of a friendship which has inspired some of the most exquisite pages of Christian literature. I need not quote the well-known passage that describes their university life: it is often cited as a model for Christian students; yet St. Gregory does not forget to inform us that it was as difficult for a youth to preserve his innocence in the midst of such an atmosphere as it would be for an animal to live in the midst of fire, or for a river to preserve its sweetness when flowing through the briny ocean.

Nevertheless, the circumstances of the times compelled the faithful to resort to these academies. Many had done so even when the professorships were exclusively in the hands of the pagans. Tertullian, in his treatise on Idolatry, examines the lawfulness of the practice, and decides that though it would be impossible for Christians to teach in schools wherein the masters were obliged to recommend the worship of false gods, and to take part in pagan sacrifices and ceremonies, they might properly attend them as students, because they could not otherwise acquire that necessary knowledge of letters which he calls “the key of life,” and because they were perfectly free to reject the fables to which they listened. Such an argument of course implies the existence of very powerful safeguards on the side of faith; and he seems to take it for granted that Christian students will imbibe only the honey from the flowers of eloquence, and reject the poison. The general feeling certainly was that human learning was sufficiently necessary to justify some risks being incurred in its acquisition. After the triumph of the Church, the most religious parents, such as those of St. Basil, hesitated not to send their sons to the public schools; and when the crafty attempt was made by Julian the Apostate to close them to the Christians, and to prohibit even their private study of pagan literature, we know how strenuously the bishops protested against his edict, as a cruel and unheard-of tyranny. So long as it remained in force they exerted themselves to supply the want of the old class-books, the use of which was interdicted, by imitations of the poets from their own pens. No one was more active in this work than St. Gregory Nazianzen, who took up the cudgels against his imperial schoolfellow in good earnest. “For my part,” he exclaims,[18] in his fourth discourse, “I trust that every one who cares for learning will take part in my indignation. I leave to others fortune, birth, and every other fancied good which can flatter the imagination of man. I value only science and letters, and regret no labour that I have spent in their acquisition. I have preferred, and shall ever prefer, learning to all earthly riches, and hold nothing dearer on earth, next to the joys of heaven and the hopes of eternity.” The decree was revoked by Valentinian at the request of St. Ambrose, so unanimous were the Christian prelates in regarding human learning as a treasure the possession of which the faithful were jealously to vindicate. Even in those passages which occur in the writings of the Fathers wherein they appear to undervalue polite studies, it is evident that they only do so relatively, and the scholar is pretty sure to peep out before you have turned the page. “You ask me for my books,” writes St. Gregory to his friend Adamanthus; “have you then turned a boy again that you are going to study rhetoric? I have long ago laid aside such follies, for one cannot spend all one’s life in child’s play. We must cease to lisp when we aspire to the true science, and sacrifice to the Divine Word that frivolous eloquence which formerly so charmed our youth. However, take my books, my dear Adamanthus—all at least that are not devoured by the worms, or blackened with the smoke, on the shelves where they have lain so long. Take them, and use them well. Study the sophists thoroughly, and both acquire and teach to others all the learning you can, provided the fear of God reign paramount over these vanities.” But though the Fathers, both by word and example, authorised the study of the pagan literature, they required that it should be read with certain restrictions, and according to what may be termed the Christian method. This is explained by St. Basil, in a treatise he wrote on the subject for the guidance of some young relations. He advocates the right use of human learning, comparing the soul to a tree, which bears not only fruit but leaves also. The fruit is truth, to be found only in the Sacred Scriptures, but the leaves are the ornaments of literature which cover truth and adorn it. Moses and Daniel both became skilled in the Gentile learning before they devoted themselves to the study of sacred science. And it is not to be doubted that the poets and philosophers have many wise and virtuous precepts, which cannot be too deeply engraved on our minds. Christians are engaged in a mighty struggle, in which they should make use of everything that can help them—poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, or the arts. They[19] should contemplate the Sun of Truth as it is reflected in the waters of human literature, and then lift their eyes to gaze on it in its full effulgence in the heavens.

He then goes on to cite many passages from Homer, Hesiod, and Socrates, and other ancient writers, showing that they abound in excellent maxims, which a Christian may very well apply to his own benefit. A Christian student, he says, should follow the example of the bees, who draw out honey from flowers which seem only proper to charm the eye, or gratify the smell. But then they must also imitate them, in only selecting those flowers that yield honey; and when they extract the sweet juices, let them be careful to leave the poison behind. In like manner we should gather together from the heathen literature whatever may be useful, and leave what is pernicious to morals behind.[19] This was but saying what Plato and Cicero had said before him, and it cannot be charged to the account of a Christian prelate as narrow bigotry, that he should insist on at least as much reserve in the use of profane writers as had been required by the pagan moralists themselves.

It cannot be supposed that the Christian prelates were insensible to the dangers incurred by students in the State academies. St. Chrysostom, indeed, who knew what they were by experience, and who was certainly the last man to undervalue a knowledge of letters, was induced to weigh the arguments for and against a public school education, and decides that the risk is too great to be compensated for by any intellectual advantage. He declares that he knows of no school in his neighbourhood where the study of profane literature can be found united to the teaching of virtue; and this being the case, he considers that Christian parents will generously sacrifice the superior tuition given in the State gymnasia, and send their children to be brought up in a monastery. His words are the more remarkable from the extreme moderation of their tone, and the evident reluctance with which he advocates a course of conduct which must needs place the faithful at a disadvantage. They are also important as showing how very early the monasteries began to be regarded as places of education, for seculars as well as religious. “If you have masters among you,” he writes,[20] “who can answer for the virtue of your children, I should be very far from advocating your sending them to a monastery; on the contrary, I should strongly insist on[20] their remaining where they are. But if no one can give such a guarantee, we ought not to send children to schools where they will learn vice before they learn science, and where in acquiring learning of relatively small value, they will lose what is far more precious, their integrity of soul. Are we then to give up literature? you will exclaim. I do not say that; but I do say that we must not kill souls.... When the foundations of a building are sapped, we should seek rather for architects to reconstruct the whole edifice, than for artists to adorn the walls. In fact, the choice lies between two alternatives; a liberal education which you may get by sending your children to the public schools, or the salvation of their souls, which you secure by sending them to the monks. Which is to gain the day, science or the soul? If you can unite both advantages, do so by all means; but if not, choose the most precious.”[21]

It will be apparent from what has been said, that the State academies of the Empire are not to be numbered among the nurseries of the Christian schools. The only imperial foundation which had a distinctly Christian character about it, appears to have been that which grew up at Constantinople, under the patronage of the Greek emperors. It was established in the Basilica of the Octagon, built by Constantine the Great, where an immense library was collected, which in Zeno’s time amounted to 120,000 volumes. Seven librarians and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense, and the college was presided over by a president, called the Œcumenicus, because he was supposed to be a sort of university in himself. The church attached to this academy was served by sixteen monks, and prelates were often chosen from the ranks of the professors to fill the first sees of the Empire. This noble foundation perished in 730, by the hands of Leo the Isaurian, who, finding that the academicians would not enter into his Iconoclastic views, and fearing their learning and their influence, caused fire to be applied to the building by night, so that the Basilica, the vast library, and the professors themselves, were all pitilessly consumed together.

But the parentage of the Christian schools is to be traced to less splendid sources than the Greek universities or the palace of the Cæsars. What these were has been indicated at the beginning of the[21] chapter; the catechetical and the episcopal schools have been already spoken of, and we have now to examine how the work of education came to be embraced by the fathers of that monastic life which, like the canonical life of the clergy, found its first development among the followers of St. Mark. St. Chrysostom’s words, above quoted, show that in his time the monks of the East were already in the habit of receiving and training children. In the West, the work of education did not fall into the hands of the Church until the dissolution of the Roman Empire, when she saw herself obliged to open the doors of her episcopal and monastic schools to secular students. But one thing is evident, that from the first, the Western cœnobites had a certain organised system among them for the education of their own younger members and that the germ of the monastic school is to be found even in the deserts of Egypt. In the rule of St. Pachomius, special directions are given for the instruction of all those who shall come to the monastery. If ignorant of letters, they are to have the rule explained to them, and shall be sent to one who can teach them, and standing before him, shall diligently learn from him, with all thankfulness. After that they shall write for him letters, syllables, words, and names, and they shall be compelled to read, even if unwilling; there shall be no one in the monastery who shall not learn letters, and know something of the Scriptures, at least the New Testament and the Psalter.[22] Twice a week there were to be disputations; that is, spiritual conferences or catechisms. Here is evidently the origin of the interior or claustral school for the instruction of the younger or more ignorant of the monks; and the object of such very stringent regulations is better understood when we study the rest of the rule, and observe the great importance attached to the exercise of spiritual reading, which occupied almost as large a place in the horarium of St. Pachomius as prayer or manual labour.

Nor was this all. The rule of this great monastic legislator distinctly proves that children were received, and that at a very early age, to be educated among the monks. He felt great compassion, we are told, for the young, and was accustomed to say, that in the soil of their minds good seed might be sown more easily than in more advanced years. He considered them particularly capable of being trained to acquire the habit of the presence of God; by which they might afterwards advance to great perfection. Accordingly, his rule[22] is full of provisions for the proper care of these young disciples. The monks are warned not to scandalise them, even by an incautious word: they are to have the recreation and food proper to their age, but the monks are not to sport or laugh with them; and if any boy be too much given to play and idleness, he is to receive sharp correction. They are to eat in the refectory with the brethren, and join them at their work, but at other times a sort of separation is to be observed between them and the community.[23] The terms on which the Fathers lived with their little disciples exhibit that character of paternal tenderness which was one of the distinctive features of the early Christian schools, offering a striking contrast to the state of things existing in the pagan academies. There is, indeed, frequent mention of the rod, but strict discipline was never held incompatible with affectionate familiarity. The Fathers of the Desert had received their traditions on this head from the immediate followers of Him who took the young children in His arms, and willingly suffered them to approach Him; and so it seemed but natural that they who sought to imitate their Master, should surround themselves with little ones, and permit them a certain holy familiarity which constantly reappears in the intercourse between monks and children. Every one will remember the anecdote that is told of St. Pachomius, who, in his extreme humility, did not disdain to be set right by a little boy. As he sat at work with his brethren, making mats, one of the children said to him, “My father, you are not working in the right way; the abbot Theodore does it quite differently.” “Then sit down, my child,” replied the saint, “and show me how I ought to do it;” and having received his lesson, he untwisted his osiers, and began his work all over again. Another time, the saint having returned to the monastery after an absence of some weeks, one of the children ran out to meet him, saying, “I am glad you have come back, my father; since you have been away they have given us neither soup nor vegetables for dinner.” “Well, my child,” was the kind reply, “I will take care that you do not want them for the future;” and calling the cook, he administered to him a sharp rebuke.

Sometimes, even solitaries were induced to undertake the care of children not intended for the religious state. Thus St. Chrysostom relates the example of a Christian lady living at Antioch, who was very desirous to procure for her son the blessings of a holy education, and induced a certain solitary to leave his retreat among the mountains,[23] and undertake the care of the youth: and he adds, the boy made great progress in the sciences, but yet more in piety, and by his example won many of his playfellows to embrace a life of virtue. When, therefore, the great father of the monastic life in the Western world received his two disciples, Placidus and Maurus, with a view to their education, and so gave his followers an example which resulted in the foundation of the great Benedictine schools, he was not departing from the earlier monastic tradition, as Mabillon is careful to show.[24] Nor must the decrees of certain councils which prohibit monks from receiving any children, save those “offered” by their parents to the religious state, be understood as implying more than that such children could not be received into the interior or claustral school; for, as the same writer proves, seculars were always freely admitted into the exterior schools of monasteries.

St. Pachomius was not the only monastic legislator of ancient times who in his rule provided for the admission and education of children. St. Basil permitted them to be received into his monasteries at a very early age, especially if they had lost their parents, because monks should be the fathers of orphans. Their education, he says, should be strictly religious; they are to have a separate portion of the monastery assigned them, and are to be governed by one of the elder monks who shall be both mild and learned, and experienced in the care of children. He is very precise on the point which proves the crux in most systems of education, namely, the method to be observed in inflicting punishment; and though he does not prohibit the use of the rod, he recommends in preference the adoption of such penances as may correct the fault, as well as punish the offender. “Let every fault have its own remedy,” he says, “so that while the offence is punished the soul may be exercised to conquer its passions. For example, has a child been angry with his companion? Oblige him to beg pardon of the other and to do him some humble service, for it is only by accustoming them to humility that you will eradicate anger, which is always the offspring of pride. Has he eaten out of meals? Let him remain fasting for a good part of the day. Has he eaten to excess, and in an unbecoming manner? At the hour of repast, let him, without eating himself, watch others taking their food in a modest manner, and so he will be learning how to behave at the same time that he is being punished by his abstinence. And if he has offended by idle words,[24] by rudeness, or by telling lies, let him be corrected by diet and silence.”

After this he passes on to the studies of the children, and desires that instead of learning the fables of the poets they should be taught the wonderful events narrated in Scripture History. They are to learn by heart sentences chosen from the Book of Proverbs, and little prizes are to be given them in reward for their exercises of memory, “to the end that they may learn with the less reluctance, nay rather with pleasure, and as though engaging in agreeable recreation.” The masters are particularly enjoined to train them to recall their wandering thoughts and fix their attention on their work, by frequently interrogating them as to what they are thinking about. And whilst acquiring a knowledge of letters, they are likewise to be taught some useful art or trade.[25]

In most of the rules drawn up by the early Gallican prelates we see that stringent regulations were introduced for obliging all the brethren to acquire a certain knowledge of letters. “Literas omnes discant,” is the thirty-second brief and emphatic rule of St. Aurelian, Bishop of Arles in the sixth century. What is more remarkable, we find exactly the same provisions in rules drawn up for religious women, as in those of St. Donatus and St. Cæsarius of Arles.[26] The sixth chapter of the rule of St. Leander of Seville, is headed thus: Ut jugiter virgo oret et legat. “Let your time and occupation be so divided,” he says, “that after reading you pray, and after prayer you read; and let these two good works perpetually alternate, so that no part of your time be wholly without them. And when you do any manual work or refresh your body with needful food, then let another read, that when the hands and the eyes are intent on work the ear may be fed with the Divine Word. For if even when we read and pray we are hardly able to withdraw our minds from the temptations of the devil, how much more prone will not the soul be to vice, if it be not held back by the chain of prayer and assiduous reading.”[27] And in the chapter that follows he gives directions for the proper manner of studying the books of the Old Testament.

Before bringing these remarks to a close we cannot omit all notice of the education received in primitive times by the children of the[25] faithful, in the bosoms of their own families. Fleury points out to his readers as one proof of the care taken by Christian parents in the instruction of their children, that in all antiquity we do not find the least notice of any public catechism for children, or any public instruction for those who had been baptized before they came to the use of reason. It was not needed, he says, for in those days, to use the words of St. Chrysostom, “every house was a Church.”[28]

The office of religious instruction generally devolved on the mother. Even in Scripture there is evidence of this, for St. Paul, writing to St. Timothy, reminds him of what he owed to the “faith unfeigned” of his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice.[29] St. Basil, and his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, gloried in preserving the faith in which they had been trained by their grandmother St. Macrina the elder. Their other brother, St. Peter of Sebaste, was chiefly brought up by his sister of the same name. St. Gregory thus describes the extraordinary care bestowed by his mother on the education of her daughter. “My mother,” he says, “took extreme pains with her instruction, not after the manner customary with those of her age, who are ordinarily taught the fables of the poets.... Instead of these she made her learn such portions of Scripture as were easiest to understand. She began with the book of Wisdom, and thence went on to the Psalms.”[30] St. Fulgentius owed his education, not merely in sacred science, but also in polite literature, to the care of his mother Mariana, the religiosa mater as she is called in his life, who was so solicitous about the purity of his Greek accent that she made him learn by heart the poems of Homer and Menander before he studied his Latin rudiments.[31] The early education, both liberal and religious, of St. John Chrysostom was in like manner directed by his admirable mother Anthusa, whose conduct in this particular drew from the lips of the pagan sophist, Libanius, the exclamation, “Ye gods of Greece! how wonderful are the women of the Christians!” In fact it is remarkable how many Christian women of early times are spoken of as being learned. Not to mention St.[26] Catherine of Alexandria, whose case was possibly exceptional, we know that St. Thecla, the disciple of St. Paul, was versed in philosophy, poetry, and rhetoric; St. Olympia, the holy widow of Constantinople, not only corresponded with St. Chrysostom, seventeen of whose letters are addressed to her, but received the dedication of several of St. Gregory of Nazianzen’s poems. St. Jerome, again, dedicated his commentaries on Isaias and Ezechiel to his pupil St. Eustochium, who, he assures us, wrote, spoke, and recited Hebrew without the least trace of a Latin accent. And, not to multiply examples, we may just refer to that passage in his epistles where he speaks of St. Marcella, “the glory of the Roman ladies,” as showing that the learned accomplishments of these illustrious women were not acquired at any sacrifice of qualities more peculiarly becoming their sex. “What virtues did I not find in her?” he says, writing to her spiritual daughter, Principia; “what penetration, what purity, what holiness! She became so learned that after my departure from Rome, when difficulties were found in any obscure passage of Scripture, people applied to her as to a judge; yet she possessed in a sovereign degree that delicate discernment which always perceives what is becoming; and used always to communicate her ideas as if they had been suggested by somebody else, so that while instructing others, she appeared herself to be a pupil.”[32]

Never, surely, was there a greater error than that into which one of our most learned critics has fallen, when he asserts that “the idea and place of woman has been slowly and laboriously elevated by the Gospel.”[33] He could not have written thus had he been as familiar with the records of the Christian Church as with those of pagan antiquity. The most perfect exemplars of Christian womanhood appear in the history of the primitive ages. The grand ideal of the Roman virgin or matron, softened, purified, and elevated by the Gospel precepts and the Apostolic teaching, retaining all its former strength, but acquiring a new element of tenderness, produced those exquisite flowers of sanctity whom the Church appears in some sort to regard as her children of predilection. They were not the growth of one Church or province, but simultaneously, wherever the Christian faith was preached, they expanded their beautiful petals to the Sun of Justice; and we have in Rome an Agnes and a Cecilia; in Sicily a Lucy and an Agatha; in Carthage a Felicitas; in Alexandria a[27] Catherine; a Blandina in Gaul, and in barbarous Britain, an Ursula.

Whence arose this instantaneous regeneration of the womanly character? The Catholic hardly needs to ask himself the question, for the form on which it was modelled is so obvious that it requires not to be indicated. It grew out of no dead code of precepts, but out of the living memory of her, the Mother par excellence, the Virgin-Mother of God, and the model of all Christian virgins and mothers; she whose countenance St. Isidore describes as “gravely sweet and sweetly grave;” whose tranquil gait and gentle voice St. Ambrose has dwelt on, as well as her modesty and reverence, “rising up in the presence of her elders.” And it was she of whom he also says, gathering up the precious fragments of ancient tradition, that she was “diligent in reading,” legendi studiosior, a trait which reappears in the character of the holy women of early times, and which we are thus able to link on to the source whence they derived their ideal of womanly perfection.

It cannot be doubted that the influence of such women, and specially of such mothers, was a powerful means of preserving the Roman youth from the infection which hung over the public academies, even after the establishment of a nominal Christianity in the institutions of the State. But of these academies I need speak no further. They formed a part of the old Roman civilisation, and perished in its wreck, swallowed up in those waves of barbarism which, as they poured over Europe, ground to pieces every monument of the Empire, and swept their fragments into oblivion. In the midst of the deluge, however, the Ark of God floated over the waters, and accepted the mission of reconstructing a ruined world. The Church alone preserved so much as the memory of letters, though in the inconceivable troubles of the crisis her utmost efforts for a time only sufficed to keep up schools in which the clergy received the instruction necessary for their state; and secular learning for the most part fell into decay. But the want was felt and lamented by the clergy themselves, a proof that learning, at any rate, never lost its value in their eyes. Thus, in his letter to the Council of Constantinople in 680, Pope Agatho excuses the simplicity of his legates; “for how,” he says, “can we look for great erudition among men living in the midst of barbarous nations, forced with difficulty to earn their daily bread by the labour of their hands? Nevertheless,” he adds, “they will expound to you the faith of the Apostolic[28] Church, not with human eloquence, for they have none; but with the simplicity of the faith which we have held from our cradles.” The synodal letter of the Western bishops to the same council is couched in similar terms. “As to secular eloquence,” they say, “we think no one in our time will boast of possessing it. Our countries are continually agitated by the fury of different nations; there is nothing around us but war, invasion, and plunder. In the midst of the barbarians our life is full of disturbance, the patrimony of our churches has been seized, and we have to live by the labour of our hands. The faith is all that is left us, and our solitary glory is to preserve it during life, and to be ready to die in its defence.”

These two documents, often quoted, have perhaps given rise to somewhat exaggerated notions regarding the extent of the ignorance complained of. It is certain that there were periods of comparative tranquillity during which liberal studies were at least partially preserved. The schools of Gaul did not begin to decay till the end of the fifth century, and even then some were found who exerted themselves to keep alive the ancient learning; such as St. Sidonius Apollinaris, who received his education in the public schools of Lyons before his elevation to the Episcopate in 471, and Claudian Mamertus, a monk by profession and education, who was declared by his friend Sidonius to be equally incomparable in every science to which he applied. Besides being an amazing reader, he was an original thinker. His great work on “The Nature of the Soul” is said to display the precision and method of the latter scholastics, and contains proofs of the existence and immateriality of the soul drawn from its capacity of thought, which appear like anticipations of the famous Cartesian formula Cogito, ergo sum. In his arguments he appeals not only to the authority of Scripture and the Fathers, but also to that of Plato and other Greek philosophers, and shows himself not unacquainted with the systems of Zoroaster and the Brahmins. To him we owe the arrangement of a great part of the Breviary office, and the beautiful hymn for Passion Sunday, Pange lingua gloriosi prœlium certamina. For poetry, no less than philosophy, found votaries in the Gallican schools. The lyre, which had fallen from the hands of Prudentius, was still touched by St. Prosper of Aquitaine and St. Avitus of Vienne, the former of whom may be called the poet of Divine grace, whilst the latter, eleven centuries before the time of Milton, chose for the theme of his verses the Fall of Man.

[29]

Down to the beginning of the seventh century the schools of Gaul still taught Virgil and the Roman law, and in them the sons of the barbarous Visigoths received some tincture of polite letters. The Gallo-Roman nobility showed the utmost solicitude to obtain such education for their children as the times afforded; and we find notices of schools wherein grammar, rhetoric, and law were taught in separate courses after the Roman fashion. The Gallican orators, as in the time of St. Jerome, betrayed their Celtic origin by a certain verbose eloquence, which had to be pruned according to the severer rules of Roman rhetoric. The mother of Rufinus had sent him to the imperial capital, that the Roman gravity might temper the too great fecundity of the Gallic speech, and St. Desiderius of Cahors was made to go through a course of Roman jurisprudence with the same intention.

Nor, whilst noticing these evidences of a love of letters, surviving even in the period of decay, must I neglect to mention that notable academy of Toulouse, which at one time did its best to involve all Europe in a fog of learned perplexity. Its eccentricities would scarcely merit to be recorded, had they not left very distinct traces both in the Irish and Anglo-Saxon literature. The history of this academy has been written by one of its members, the false Virgil, as he is called, who has contrived to mystify both the date and whereabouts of its foundation. It is presumed, however, to have flourished at Toulouse sometime in the sixth century. Holding to the principle that pearls must not be cast before swine, certain enthusiasts of Aquitaine formed among themselves a secret scholastic society, the members of which spoke a language understood only by the initiated, and conferred on men and places the nomenclature of ancient Greece and Rome. The grand, I might almost say the exclusive, study of these illuminati was grammar. An assembly of thirty of their number had gravely determined that the subject most worthy of a wise man’s meditation was the conjugation of the Latin verb, and on this momentous theme they split into two sects, which rivalled Guelph and Ghibelline in the ardour of their mutual animosities. The heads of these two parties, whose academic names were Terence and Galbungus, spent fourteen days and nights discussing the question whether the pronoun Ego had a vocative case: at last the difficulty was referred to Eneas, who decided that it might be allowed to possess one when employed in the interrogative phrase. These grammatical debates took place when Virgil was but a youth,[30] but in his riper years he thoroughly maintained the reputation of his masters. It was the exact government of words which left him no repose, and he tells us how one night, having retired to rest, he was awaked by a knocking at his door, and found that the disturbance was caused by the arrival of a certain Spanish grammarian, named Mitterius, whom he honoured neither more nor less than if he had been a prophet of God. Mitterius begged for a night’s lodging, promising in return to answer any question which his entertainer might put to him. The opportunity was not to be lost; there was but one thing just then that Virgil desired to know, and, springing from his bed, he at once required, as the price of his hospitality, a direct rule by which he could determine when the word hic was an adverb and when it was a pronoun. These anecdotes, however, give us but a faint notion of the labours of the Toulouse grammarians. The difficulties of the Latin syntax were not sufficient to satisfy their thirst for obscurity, and they therefore expended their ingenuity on inventing new means of perplexing their own brains and those of their scholars. “Was it to be supposed,” they asked, “that this noble tongue was so poor and barren, that its words could be used in one sense only? On the contrary, the true grammarian knew very well that, besides the vulgar Latin known to the common herd, there existed eleven other kinds, each of which had a distinct grammar of its own.” According to this system of “the twelve Latinities,” everything had twelve names, any one of which might be used according to pleasure. New vocabularies had to be invented, either by the Latinising of Greek roots, or transposing the letters of the original words in such a way as to form a variety of new combinations. New conjugations and declensions adorned the grammar of the initiated, and to complete their system a new prosody was added, in which the dactyls and spondees appear to have been measured, not by quantity, but by accent.[34]

Even the triumphs of the barbarians did not in all cases result in the immediate extinction of letters. In Italy a second Augustan age bid fair at one time to arise under the rule of Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. His court was adorned by the genius of two great men—Boethius, the Christian philosopher, and the last of the classic writers; and Cassiodorus, in whom closed the long line of Roman[31] consuls. Both of them exerted a powerful influence over the studies of succeeding generations. The original Latin works of Boethius supplied the schools with a series of Christian classics which were naturally held in extraordinary esteem by teachers who, as time went on, felt with increasing force the difficulty of training Christian youth exclusively out of pagan class-books. And it was chiefly by his translations from the Greek that the mediæval scholars acquired their knowledge of the Greek philosophy, at a time when the study of that tongue had ceased to be generally pursued. A yet further addition to scholastic literature was contributed by Cassiodorus. He was not indeed the only statesman who had distinguished himself in this line. Towards the close of the fifth century Marcian Capella, an African pro-consul, had produced his celebrated work on the Espousals of Mercury and Philology, which he chooses to personify as a goddess; the seven liberal sciences, into which all known learning had been classified since the days of Philo, being represented as the handmaidens presented by the bridegroom to the bride. His Satiricon, written in nine books, continued to be one of the most popular text-books in use during the middle ages, and was at an early period translated into the vernacular.

But Cassiodorus was not merely a writer of schoolbooks; he was the founder of a monastic school, which, for the variety of sciences which it cultivated, has not unfrequently been given the title of a university. And indeed it was not undeserving of the name. Its noble founder, when still in the service of Theodoric, had attempted, in conjunction with Pope St. Agapetus, to found a catechetical school at Rome, on the model of those which formerly flourished at Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Nisibis, in which he proposed to maintain a staff of professors at his own expense. This magnificent design having failed, in consequence of the troubles of the time, Cassiodorus retired from a world in which he had nobly toiled for seventy years, and devoted his old age to the creation of a seminary of Christian learning on his own estate of Vivaria, at the very extremity of the Calabrian peninsula. He collected a rich library, which he increased by the labours of his monks, on whom he enjoined the transcription of books as their principal manual labour. It was to ensure their accuracy in this employment that, at the age of eighty-three, he undertook the composition of his treatise De Orthographia. He drew up a plan of studies for his scholars, and wrote for their use two treatises, one “On the Teaching of Sacred Letters,”[32] and the other “On the Seven Liberal Arts.” This latter was a kind of encyclopædia, including separate treatises on each subject, which formed some of the favourite elementary class-books in use during the middle ages. Hallam remarks of this encyclopædia and of others undertaken on a similar plan, that they themselves furnish significant indications of a decadence of letters. Such collections must necessarily include only the most meagre sketches of the sciences of which they profess to treat, and their multiplication at this period indicates that men were beginning to be content with a very superficial description of knowledge. So also the numerous translations from the Greek undertaken by Boethius and Cassiodorus are sufficient evidence that the knowledge of that language was becoming rare. Nor will the praises bestowed by Cassiodorus on his friend’s versions, which he declares superior to the originals, probably raise his character as a critic in the judgment of scholars. But the fact that his labours were undertaken at a period of literary decay, when the inconceivable disorders of the time seemed to present an insuperable obstacle to the pursuit of learning, increases our admiration of the energy and zeal displayed by the old Roman, which enabled him in spite of every discouragement to create a school of sacred and profane learning, where strangers were encouraged to seek that hospitality the exercise of which was regarded as one of the most sacred duties of the brethren. There, under porticoes and gardens adorned with every beauty that could charm the eye or soothe the heart, pilgrims, weary with those scenes of violence and devastation that were turning many a fair district of Gaul and Italy into a howling wilderness, found all that remained of Roman learning and civilisation linked with the higher attractions of Christian devotion; and were able, amid the monastic shades of Vivaria, to enjoy at one and the same time the calm of retirement and the solace of prayer.

The foundation of Cassiodorus took place in the year 540. Eighteen years previously—in 522—the two Roman senators, Equitius and Tertullus, had taken their sons Maurus and Placidus to the grotto of Subiaco, and committed them to the care of a solitary named Benedict. Maurus was twelve years old and Placidus seven, and they were soon joined by other children of the same age. They were humble beginnings indeed of a mighty edifice, the first fruits of the Benedictine schools.[35] In 543 St. Maurus carried the[33] rule of St. Benedict into Gaul, where monasteries soon multiplied, in which were cultivated letters both sacred and profane.[36] But they were not the earliest monastic schools which had sprung up on the Gallican soil. I need not here remind the reader of that famous abbey of Marmoutier, erected by St. Martin of Tours in the fourth century, and formed on the model of those episcopal monasteries founded by St. Eusebius of Vercelli and St. Ambrose of Milan. Yet more celebrated, and more closely associated with the history of letters in our own country, was the school of Lerins, a rocky isle off the coast of Gaul, where, about the year 400, St. Honoratus fixed his abode, peopling it with a race of monks who united the labours of the scholar to the penitential practices of the recluse. Its rule, though strictly monastic, aimed at making its disciples apostolic men, “thoroughly furnished to all good works.” Hence the brethren were not required to renounce the pursuit of letters. St. Honoratus himself did not disdain the flowers of eloquence, and the sweetness of his style drew from St. Eucher the graceful remark, that “he restored the honey to the wax.”[37] St. Hilary of Arles, another of the Lerins scholars, is represented by his biographer sitting among his clergy with a table before him, whereon lay his book and the materials of his manual work, and while his fingers were busy making nets, dictating to a cleric, who took down his notes in shorthand. It would take us too long to enumerate the distinguished prelates who were sent forth from the school of Lerins during the sixth century. The names of St. Cesarius of Arles and St. Vincent of Lerins; of Salvian, the master of bishops as he was called; of St. Eucher, the purity of whose Latin eloquence even Erasmus has praised; and of St. Lupus of Troyes, whom Sidonius Apollinaris hesitated not to call the first bishop in the Christian world—may suffice to show what sort of scholars were produced by this holy congregation.

Such then was the state of letters at the opening of the sixth century, an epoch when Europe was covered with the shattered remains of an expiring civilisation, and when whatever literary activity lingered about the old academies of Italy and Gaul must be regarded as the parting rays of a light, fast sinking below the horizon. Yet, as it sank, another luminary was sending forth its[34] rising beams, and the essentially Christian institution of the monastic schools was acquiring shape and solidity. Such an epoch stood in need of a master to harmonise its disordered elements, and such a master it found in St. Gregory. But before speaking of him and of his Anglo-Saxon converts we must glance at the state of letters among that earlier Celtic population which sent students from Britain to the schools of Rome in the days of St. Jerome and St. Damasus. Nor whilst doing so, can we forget that sister-isle which never felt the tread of the Roman legions, and which, sharing with Britain the glorious title of the “Isle of Saints,” merited by its extraordinary devotion to learning to be designated also the “Isle of Scholars.”

Although the monastic institute existed in Britain almost from the period of her first conversion to the faith, yet the seminaries which produced her most illustrious scholars were only founded at a comparatively later date. Whatever schools may have existed in connection with the British episcopal monasteries of earlier times, had fallen into decay by the beginning of the fifth century, when fresh foundations of learning began to spring up, the origin of which must be traced to three distinct sources. I say three distinct sources, because the apostolic labours of St. Ninian among the Picts, of St. Palladius in North Britain, and of St. Germanus and St. Lupus in the southern portion of the island, were undertaken among different races, and on different occasions; nevertheless, in reality these three streams flowed forth from one common fountain, which was no other than the Holy and Apostolic See of Rome.

The mission of St. Ninian was the first in order of time. The son of a petty prince of Cumberland, he travelled to Rome for the purpose of study, about the year 380, and being introduced to the notice of Pope Damasus, was placed by him under the care of teachers, and in all probability received into the school of the Patriarchium. There he was thoroughly instructed, regulariter edoctus, in all the mysteries of the faith, and after spending fifteen years in Rome he at last received consecration from the hands of Pope St. Siricius, by whom he was sent back to exercise the episcopal functions in his own country. The fifth century, which was then just opening, was precisely that in which the discipline of the Church received its fullest development. Ninian, who had so long studied the ecclesiastical system at its fountain-head, and who on his homeward journey had visited Tours, and conversed with St.[36] Martin, then drawing near his end, was fully prepared to introduce into his northern diocese the rule and manner of life which he had seen carried out in the churches of Italy and Gaul. At Whitherne in Galloway, where he fixed his see, he built a stone church, after the Roman fashion, and lived in a house adjoining it, together with his cathedral clergy, in strict observance of the ecclesiastical canons. In this episcopal college the younger clerics followed their ecclesiastical studies, whilst a school was likewise opened for the children of the neighbourhood, as appears from the anecdote related by St. Ælred of one little rebel who ran away to escape a flogging, and was nearly drowned when attempting to put to sea in a coracle, or wicker boat, which chanced to be without its usual covering of hides.[38] The great school, as St. Ninian’s seminary is often styled, was resorted to both by British and Irish scholars, and among the works left written by the founder was a Book of Sentences, or selections from the Fathers, which seems to have been intended for the use of his students.

The death of Ninian took place at the time when the churches of South Britain were suffering from the ravages of the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius, himself a Briton by birth, had nowhere found more ready recipients of his doctrines than among his own countrymen, and the infection spread with such alarming rapidity that at the solicitation of Palladius, deacon of the Church of Rome, Pope St. Celestine commissioned the two Gallican bishops, St. Germanus of Auxerre and St. Lupus of Troyes, to visit Britain in the quality of Papal legates, and take the necessary steps for putting a stop to the troubles caused by the heretics. Their first visit took place in 429, on which occasion they introduced many reforms of discipline. One of the chief measures which they adopted in order to check the progress of error was the foundation of schools of learning both for clergy and laity. At Caerleon, then the British capital, they themselves began the good work by lecturing on the Holy Scriptures and the liberal arts. Their scholars appear to have done them credit, for some, we read, became profound astronomers, able to observe the course of the stars and to foretell prodigies (that is, to calculate eclipses), whilst others wholly devoted themselves to the study of the Scriptures.

Under these disciples a vast number of monastic schools soon sprang up in various parts of Britain. Indeed so undoubted is the claim of Germanus to be considered as the founder of the ancient British[37] colleges, that some imaginative writers have assigned to him the origin of our two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His most celebrated followers were Dubricius and Iltutus, the first of whom established two great schools of sacred letters on the banks of the Wye, one of which, situated at Hentland, was attended by a thousand students. But this was surpassed by the monastery of Lantwit in Glamorganshire, where St. Iltutus presided over a community of two thousand four hundred members, including many scholars of note, such as the historian Gildas, the bard Taliesin, and the famous prelates, St. Sampson and St. Paul of Leon. Here, according to the Triads, the praises of God never ceased, but one hundred monks were employed each hour in chanting the divine office, which was kept up both by day and night. Iltutus was also the founder, or restorer, of the school of Bangor on the Dee, where had been a college of Christian philosophers in the days of King Lucius, and where, according to Bede, there were seven houses or colleges, each containing, at least, three hundred students; and this, says William of Malmesbury, “we may well believe by what we see; for so many half-ruined walls of churches, so many windings of porticoes, and so great a heap of ruins you may scarce see elsewhere.”

Another Bangor, the same that still retains the name which was indeed common to all these foundations, owed its origin to Daniel, the fellow disciple of St. Iltutus, who, we are assured, received under his care all the most hopeful youths of West Britain. Paulinus, one of his scholars, founded the college of the White House, in Caermarthenshire, afterwards known as Whitland Abbey, or Alba Landa; receiving among other pupils St. David, who began his studies at Bangor under Iltutus. This celebrated man, whose name in our days is often regarded as almost as legendary as that of his contemporary, King Arthur, completed the extirpation of the Pelagian heresy, and by his apostolic labours merited the title bestowed on him by British historians of “the father of his country.” He was the founder of no fewer than twelve monasteries, in all of which he contrived to combine the hard work of the scholar and the equally hard labour of the monk. Ploughing and grammar-learning succeeded each other by turns. “Knowing,” says Capgrave, “that secure rest is the nourisher of all vices, he subjected the shoulders of his monks to hard wearisomeness.... They detested riches, and they had no cattle to till their ground, but each one was instead of an ox to himself and his brethren. When they had done[38] their field-work, returning to the cloisters of their monastery, they spent the rest of the day till evening in reading and writing. And in the evening at the sound of the bell, presently laying aside their work, and leaving even a letter unfinished, they went to the church and remained there till the stars appeared, and then all went together to table to eat, but not to fulness. Their food was bread with roots or herbs, seasoned with salt, and they quenched their thirst with milk mingled with water. Supper being ended they persevered about three hours in watching, prayer, and genuflections. After this they went to rest, and at cock-crowing rose again, and abode in prayer till the dawn of day. Their only clothing was the skins of beasts.” Yet these austere cœnobites cultivated all the liberal arts, and the monastery of the Rosy Valley, near Menevia, founded in the year 519, was no less a school of polite learning than it was a nursery of saints.

To St. Dubricius, St. Daniel, and St. David, the three dioceses of Llandaff, Bangor, and Menevia owe their origin; the fourth of the ancient sees, that of St. Asaph, sprang out of a monastic foundation which must be traced to a different source. It has been already said that the mission of St. Germanus and St. Lupus had been conferred on them by St. Celestine at the solicitation of the deacon Palladius, who by some writers is said to have been himself a Briton by birth. However that may be, his interest in the affairs of our northern islands induced St. Celestine, in the year 430, to send him to Ireland, after having first consecrated him bishop “over the Scots believing in Christ.” The Christian faith had, in fact, already penetrated into Ireland, either from Gaul or Britain, but the faithful were as yet few in number, and possessed no regular hierarchy. Palladius at first met with such success, that St. Prosper, in his book against Cassian, written about this time, was able to say that St. Celestine, after preserving the Roman island Catholic, had made the barbarous island Christian. He baptized many persons, and erected three churches in which he deposited the sacred books, some relics of SS. Peter and Paul, and his own writing-tablets. But soon afterwards the hostility of the native princes obliged him to withdraw from the country, in order not to expose his followers to persecution. As his mission was to the Scottish people, and not to any particular province or kingdom, he crossed over to North Britain, where several colonies of the Scots had already settled, and there pursued his apostolic labours with more prosperous results. His subsequent[39] history is differently related by different authors. Some represent him as surviving for many years, and firmly establishing the ecclesiastical discipline of the North British Church. Others, with more appearance of probability, represent his death as taking place very shortly after his arrival in Scotland. It is certain, however, that regular discipline was established by him among his clergy, and that episcopal colleges were founded either by him or his immediate successors, in which young children were received and trained for the ecclesiastical state. Here the Scottish Christians of Hibernia would naturally repair, before the establishment of similar seminaries had begun in their own island, and among those who acquired the first seeds of learning in the Bishop’s school was Cœlius Sedulius, whose Irish name is said to have been Sheil. His history is obscure, but, according to Trithemius, he passed over from Ireland into Britain about the year 430, and afterwards perfected his studies in the best schools of Gaul and Italy. Having embraced the ecclesiastical state, he thenceforward devoted himself exclusively to sacred letters; but his “Carmen Paschale,” a Latin poem on the life of our Lord, betrays his familiarity with the poetry of Virgil. From another smaller poem on the same subject are taken two of the hymns used by the Church on the festivals of Christmas and the Epiphany.[39] St. Servanus, the first bishop of Orkney, is represented by some as a disciple of St. Palladius, but it is probable that he lived some years later. He was the founder of the monastery of Culross, where he brought up many youths from childhood, and educated them for the sacred ministry. Among these was one named Kentigern, so beautiful in person, and so innocent in manners, that his companions bestowed on him the title of Mungo, or the dearly beloved, by which name he is still best known in Scotland. When only twenty-five years of age the people demanded him for their bishop; he was accordingly consecrated by an Irish prelate, and chose for his residence a certain solitary place at the mouth of the river Clyde, the site of the present city of Glasgow. Here he erected a church and monastery, where he lived with his clergy according to the apostolic rule, his diocese extending from the Atlantic to the shores of the German Ocean; and over its vast extent he constantly journeyed on[40] foot, preaching and administering baptism. The throne of the Scottish prince Rydderch the Liberal having been seized by one of his rebellious nobles, St. Kentigern was forced by the usurper to quit the country, and took refuge in Wales, where, after visiting St. David at Menevia, he received from one of the Welsh princes a grant of the tract of land lying between the rivers Elwy and Clywd, where he erected the monastery and school of Llan-Elwy. Local tradition affirms that the name of Clywd was bestowed by him on the stream that bounded his domain, in memory of his old home on the banks of the Clyde. Here he was joined by a great number of followers, among whom he established regular monastic discipline. His rule, however, had some peculiarities in it. He divided his community into three companies, two of them, who were unlearned, were employed in agriculture and the domestic offices, the third, which was formed of the learned, devoted their time to study and apostolic labours; and this last class numbered upwards of three hundred. These again were divided into two choirs, one of whom entered the church as the others left, so that the praises of God at all hours resounded in their mouths. From this college a great number of apostolic missionaries went forth, not only into different parts of Britain, but also to Norway, Iceland, and the Orkney Islands St. Kentigern himself continued to journey about, preaching the faith, silencing the Pelagian heretics, and founding churches. On the restoration of Rydderch, in 544, St. Kentigern was recalled to his see, and left the government of his monastery and school at Llan-Elwy to St. Asaph, his favourite scholar, whose name was afterwards conferred upon the church and diocese.

One other British school must be named before passing on to the nurseries of sacred science established in the sister isle, it is that of Llancarvan, whose founder was indeed a British saint and prince, but one who had received his early education in the seminary of an Irish recluse. Few names in the ecclesiastical annals of Britain are more illustrious than that of St. Cadoc; the son of a prince of Brecknockshire, he was placed at the age of seven years under the care of Tathai, an Irish teacher, who had been induced to leave his mountain hermitage, and to take the government of the monastic college of Gwent in Monmouthshire. There Cadoc spent twelve years, studying the liberal arts and the Divine Scriptures. The times were simple, and the habits of the Irish doctor, as he is called, were somewhat austere. The young prince lighted his master’s fire and[41] cooked his frugal repast, whilst in the interval of such homely duties he conned his Latin grammar, and construed Virgil. This sort of school discipline, however, far from disgusting him with learning, inspired him with such a passion for letters, that when his father retired from the world to embrace an eremitical life, Cadoc would not accept of the dignity of chief thus left vacant, but chose to travel to various schools in Britain and Ireland, in order to perfect his studies. At last he fixed on a rural solitude in Glamorganshire, about three miles from the present town of Cowbridge, and there laid the foundation of a church and monastery, which became one of the most famous of all the British schools. It obtained the name of Llancarvan, or the Church of the Stags, because, according to the ancient legend, whilst it was in course of building, some stags from the neighbouring forest, forgetting their natural wildness, came and offered themselves to the service of the saint, suffering him to yoke them to the cart which two weary or discontented monks had refused to draw.

Gildas the Wise, the pupil of St. Iltutus, was invited by Cadoc to deliver lectures in his college, which he did for the space of one year, desiring no other stipend than the prayers of his scholars; and during this time, says John of Tinmouth, he with his own hand copied out a book of the Gospels long preserved in the monastery of Llancarvan. At last the troubles caused by the advancing arms of “the dragons of Germany,” as the Saxons were sometimes termed, obliged Cadoc and Gildas to quit Llancarvan, and take refuge in some small islands lying at the mouth of the Severn called the Holmes. Tradition still points to the Steep Holmes as the place of their retreat; and the wild peony and onion, which blossom there in profusion, but are not to be found on any part of the neighbouring coast, are commonly said to have sprung from those which grew in the garden of Gildas. He did not, however, long remain there, but in company with Cadoc joined some bands of British emigrant who had crossed over to Armorica. The two saints chose for their residence a cave in the little island of Ronech, where their fame attracted a crowd of disciples, who were accustomed twice a day to pass over from the mainland in little boats in order to enjoy their instruction. Cadoc was touched by their perseverance, and at last employed his mechanical genius in the contrivance of a bridge for their use, and did not refuse to deal out to them the bread of science. He made them learn Virgil by heart as well as the Scriptures; indeed his love for the old[42] Mantuan was so enthusiastic that he generally carried the Æneid under his arm, and was accustomed to express his regrets to Gildas that one who on earth had sung so sweetly should be for ever shut out from the joys of heaven. St. Cadoc is said by some to have returned to Britain and found a martyr’s crown at the hands of the pagan Saxons. According to the Glastonbury historians, St. Gildas also returned to his own country, and lies buried among the unnumbered saints of the isle of Avalon.

We have now to turn to the shores of that island which, if termed barbarous by St. Prosper from the circumstance of its never having formed any portion of the Roman Empire, was soon to become the means of enlightening many a land of more ancient civilisation. The history of the mission of St. Patrick has found too many narrators to need repetition in this place, and we shall only advert therefore to such points as have a particular interest in connection with the Irish schools. Whatever disputes have arisen as to the birthplace of St. Patrick, there has never been any difference of opinion as to the sources whence he derived his education. It seems certain that after his return from his second captivity in Ireland he studied for four years at Tours under St. Martin, whose nephew he is commonly said to have been; after which, in the thirtieth year of his age—that is to say, about the year 418—he placed himself under the direction of St. Germanus of Auxerre, with whom he continued his studies. Hence in the hymn attributed to Fiech it is said of him that “he read his canons under Germanus.” The chronology of the next twelve years of his life is exceedingly confused, but he is stated to have been sent by Germanus to study in an island in the Mediterranean Sea, in mari Tyrrheno, which was evidently Lerins. Nennius adds that he also visited Rome, and spent nearly eight years there, “reading and searching into the mysteries of God, and studying the books of Holy Scripture.” The length of time spent by him in Rome appears uncertain, but most writers agree on the point of his having visited the city, and of his being Romanis eruditus disciplinis. Having returned to Germanus, he is said to have accompanied him in his first visit to Britain, and was afterwards sent back to Rome by that holy prelate, who recommended him to Pope St. Celestine as a fit person to be employed in the Irish mission. The endless differences to be found in the various versions of his life do not affect the main facts here established, namely, that he acquired his ecclesiastical training in the first schools then existing in Christendom—those of Tours[43] Auxerre, Lerins, and Rome—and that his institution to the apostolic office was received from the hands of the Vicar of Christ.

On his journey through Gaul we are told by Jocelin that he turned out of his road in order to pay a farewell visit to “his nurse and teacher,” St. Germanus, who furnished him with a welcome supply of chalices, priestly vestments, and books. The same writer adds that he was accompanied into Ireland by twenty Roman clerics, but it appears probable that his companions were chiefly gathered in Gaul and Britain, and Lanigan mercilessly reduces their number from twenty to two. Passing over the circumstances of his first arrival on the Irish coast, and his ineffectual efforts to convert his old master Milcho, we next find the saint in the neighbourhood of Down Patrick, where he instructed, baptized, and tonsured a young disciple named Mochoe, to whom he also taught the Roman alphabet. This last-named incident is one of very frequent recurrence in the life of St. Patrick. Nennius indeed affirms that he wrote no less than 365 alphabets;[40] but, as Bishop Lloyd quaintly remarks, “the writers of those times, when they were upon the pin of multiplying, used generally to say that things were as many as the days of the year.” It is quite certain, however, that this teaching of the Roman alphabet, the first step necessary for acquiring a knowledge of Latin, formed a very common item in the instruction of the Irish converts. We are not to conclude from this with the Bollandists, that previous to the arrival of St. Patrick the Irish possessed no knowledge of written characters, but it is at least clear that the apostle of Ireland considered it a part of his office to diffuse among the people committed to his pastoral care a knowledge of the letters, as well as of the faith of Rome. He also received into his company a number of young disciples, who, after being instructed in the faith, were gradually admitted to holy orders, and given the care of the newly-formed congregation. Thus, on his road to the great festival of Tara, which fills so conspicuous a place in the history of the saint, he preached the faith to a certain man whose young son Benan, or Benignus, fell at his feet weeping, and desiring ever to be in his company; and the saint, with the consent of his parents, received him as his disciple, or, as he is elsewhere called, his alumnus. This event took place on Good Friday; on the following Easter Sunday, when St. Patrick was invited to Tara to hold a conference with the pagan priests in presence of the king, the young neophyte, robed in white, carried the[44] book of the gospels before his master, who advanced with his clergy in solemn procession, chanting an Irish hymn which he had composed for the occasion.

At another time a pious mother brought him her son Lananus, whom St. Patrick delivered to St. Cassan to be instructed in all good learning; and such was the ardour with which the boy applied himself to study, that in fifteen days he had learned the entire Psalter.[41] Again, Enda of Westmeath is represented entrusting his son Cormac to the care of the saint, to be educated by him; and he himself, in his confession, alludes to the sons of the kings who journeyed about with him (qui mecum ambulant). For this first seminary was not fixed in any college or monastery, but, as the above words imply, was formed of those who accompanied the apostle of Ireland in his ceaseless wanderings over the country. Popular accounts, indeed, generally represent him as founding at least a hundred monasteries, and even those who consider that the greater number of the Irish colleges were raised by his followers after his death, admit the fact of his having established an episcopal monastery and school at Armagh, where he and his clergy carried out the same rule of life that he had seen followed in the churches of Gaul. The government of this monastery was committed in the first instance to Benignus, who afterwards succeeded St. Patrick in the primacy.

The school, which formed a portion of the Cathedral establishment, soon rose in importance. Gildas taught here for some years before joining St. Cadoc at Llancarvan; and in process of time the number of students, both native and foreign, so increased that the university, as we may justly call it, was divided into three parts, one of which was devoted entirely to students of the Anglo-Saxon race. Grants for the support of the schools were made by the Irish kings in the eighth century; and all through the troublous times of the ninth and tenth centuries, when Ireland was overrun by the Danes, and so many of her sanctuaries were given to the flames, the succession of divinity professors at Armagh remained unbroken, and has been carefully traced by Usher. We need not stop to determine how many other establishments similar to those of Armagh were really founded in the lifetime of St. Patrick. In any case the rapid extension of the monastic institute in Ireland, and the extraordinary ardour with which the Irish cœnobites applied themselves[45] to the cultivation of letters remain undisputed facts. “Within a century after the death of St. Patrick,” says Bishop Nicholson, “the Irish seminaries had so increased that most parts of Europe sent their children to be educated here, and drew thence their bishops and teachers.” The whole country for miles round Leighlin was denominated the “land of saints and scholars.” By the ninth century Armagh could boast of 7000 students, and the schools of Cashel, Dindaleathglass, and Lismore vied with it in renown. This extraordinary multiplication of monastic seminaries and scholars may be explained partly by the constant immigration of British refugees who brought with them the learning and religious observances of their native cloisters, and partly by that sacred and irresistible impulse which animates a newly converted people to heroic acts of sacrifice. In Ireland the infant church was not, as elsewhere, watered with the blood of martyrs; it was, perhaps, the only European country in which Christianity was firmly established without the faithful having to pass through the crucible of persecution. And hence the burning devotion which elsewhere swelled the white-robed army of martyrs, but which here found no such vent, sent its thousands to people the deserts and the rocky islands of the west, and filled the newly raised cloisters of Ireland with a countless throng who gave themselves to the slower martyrdom of penance and love. The bards, who were to be found in great numbers among the early converts of St. Patrick, had also a considerable share in directing the energies of their countrymen to intellectual labour. They formed the learned class, and on their conversion to Christianity were readily disposed to devote themselves to the culture of sacred letters. At the Easter festival at Tara, already alluded to, the first convert gained by St. Patrick was Dubtach, the arch-priest and poet of the country. His conversion took place in 433, and after that time he devoted his talents to the service of the faith, and taught whatever science he possessed to a school of Christian disciples.

It would be impossible, within the limits of a single chapter, to notice even the names of all the Irish seats of learning, or of their most celebrated teachers, every one of whom has his own legend in which sacred and poetic beauties are to be found blended together. One of the earliest monastic schools was that erected by Enda, prince of Orgiel, in that western island called from the wild flowers which even still cover its rocky soil, Aran-of-the-Flowers, a name it afterwards[46] exchanged for that of Ara-na-naomh, or Aran-of-the Saints. There may yet be seen the rude stone church of the sixth century within which rest the bodies of the 127 saints of Aran, and at no great distance the remains of small beehive houses which served as the abode of the monks. According to Lanigan, who is seldom disposed to assign a very early date to the monastic establishments of Ireland, the foundation of Enda cannot be fixed later than the year 480. It became the nursery of some of the greatest Irish teachers, and was also the resort of students from beyond the sea. Hither came St. Carthag the elder, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. Here too St. Fursey spent many years in solitude before going forth to found his monasteries in England and France, and here he at last returned from his splendid cloisters of Lagne on the Marne to end his days and be laid to rest in the rude sanctuary of the “Four beautiful Saints.” Nor does the holy soil of Aran fail to cherish a remembrance of St. Columba the Great. He came here before undertaking his mission to North Britain, and his admiration for the Isle of Saints is commemorated in verses wherein he declares that to sleep on the dust of Aran and within the sound of her church-bells is as desirable as to be laid to rest on the threshold of the Apostles.

A little later St. Finian founded his great school of Clonard, whence, says Usher, issued forth a stream of saints and doctors, like the Greek warriors from the wooden horse. Finian was baptized and instructed by one of the immediate disciples of St. Patrick, and after studying under various Irish masters he passed over into Britain, and there formed an intimate friendship with St. David, St. Gildas, and St. Cadoc. He remained for several years in Britain, and on returning to his own country founded several religious houses, in one of which he lectured on the Holy Scriptures for seven years. At last, about the year 530, he fixed his residence in the desert of Clonard in Westmeath, which had up to that time been the resort of a huge wild boar. This desolate wilderness was soon peopled by his disciples, who are said to have numbered 3000, of whom the twelve most eminent are often termed the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. Finian himself is commonly spoken of as the Master of Saints, and is esteemed, next to St. Patrick, as the greatest doctor of the Irish Church. “He was,” says the writer of his life, “replenished with all science as a learned scribe to teach the law of God; and he was most compassionate and charitable, weeping with those that wept and mildly healing the bodies and souls of all who applied to him.[47] He slept on the bare ground with a stone under his head, and ate nothing but bread and herbs,” and his disciples followed the same severe manner of life. Among them none were more famous than St. Columba, St. Kieran, and St. Brendan. The first of these is known to every English reader as the founder of Iona; and Kieran, the carpenter’s son, as he is called, is scarcely less renowned among his own countrymen. Some anecdotes are told of the school life of these two great men, in which the youthful infirmities[42] so frankly recorded of both will certainly not prejudice our opinion of their future sanctity. A school in those days was not exactly arranged after the fashion of Eton or Rugby: the scholars worked for their own maintenance and that of the house; and under monastic masters this initiation into the holy law of labour was never spared even to those of princely blood. The prince and the peasant were accustomed to work and study side by side; and so it was in the school of Clonard. Columba was of royal extraction, while Kieran was of humble birth. The first task assigned the young prince was to sift the corn that was to serve for next day’s provision, and to the surprise of his more plebeian associates he accomplished it so neatly and with such rapidity that they all declared he must have been helped by an angel. Royal and noble scholars, however, are seldom popular in public schools, and Columba had not a little to endure from his companions on the score of his gentle blood. He exacted a deference from them which Kieran in particular would not submit to, and the result was a continual bickering. But at last, says the old legend, an angel appeared to Kieran, and laying before him a carpenter’s rule and other instruments of his trade, said to him, “Behold what thou hast renounced in giving up the world, but Columba has forsaken a royal sceptre.” The good heart of the carpenter’s son was touched with this reproach, and from that time he and Columba only contended in the generous rivalry of the saints.

Of St. Columba’s apostolic mission to North Britain we shall presently have occasion to speak; but first we must trace the fortunes of his schoolfellow, Kieran, who became the founder of another of the most renowned schools of Ireland. Kieran’s future sanctity had been detected by the quick eye of St. Finian before he left Clonard.[48] One day as he was studying St. Matthew’s Gospel, having come upon the sentence, “All things that ye would that men should do unto you, do ye to them also,” he closed the book, saying, “This is enough for me.” One of his comrades, jesting with him, observed, “Then we shall call you not Kieran, but Leth-Matha (half-Matthew), for you have stopped in the middle of the Gospel.” “No,” said Finian, who overheard the remark, “call him rather Leth-Nerion (half-Ireland), for one-half of this island shall be his,”—a prophecy which was fulfilled when half the Irish monasteries accepted his rule. After leaving Clonard, Kieran, having received his master’s blessing and license, repaired to an island in the lake of Erne, where he spent some time studying under St. Nennidius, another of the Clonard scholars. At last he found his way to Aran, where Enda, who was still living, received him joyfully, and employed him during the intervals of study in threshing out the corn for the use of the other monks. After remaining there seven years he founded two great monasteries, one of which was situated on the west bank of the Shannon, at a spot called Cluain-Mac-Nois,[43] or the Retreat of the Sons of the Noble. This foundation took place about the year 548, and thence the austere rule or law of Kieran spread into a vast number of other religious houses.

It is indeed worthy of note that all the great masters of the Irish schools were followers of the most severe monastic discipline. The nurseries of science were often enough the rude cave, or forest hut of some holy hermit, such as St. Fintan, the founder of Cluain-Ednech, or the Ivy Cave, near Mount Bladin in Queen’s County; whose disciples lived on herbs and roots, laboured in the fields, and, like the monks of Menevia, renounced the assistance of cattle. Yet Abbot Fintan was a polished scholar, and particularly noted for his skill as a logician; and learned men came in crowds to the Ivy Cave to perfect themselves in sacred science and the rules of a holy life. One of Fintan’s most celebrated scholars was St. Comgall, who in 559 became the founder of Benchor, near the bay of Carrickfergus. The fame of this great school of learning and religion has been celebrated by St. Bernard, who, in his “Life of St. Malachi,” speaks of the swarm of saints who came forth from Benchor, and spread themselves like an inundation into foreign lands. In the Latin hymn of its old Antiphonary it is extolled as the ship beaten with the waves, the house founded on the rock, the true vine transplanted out[49] of Egypt whose rule is at once holy and learned, simplex simul atque docta. The most famous of its scholars was St. Columbanus, the founder of Luxeuil in Burgundy and of Bobbio in Italy, whose rule spread over most European countries, and promised at one time to rival that of St. Benedict. The letters of Columbanus prove him to have been “a man of three tongues,” to use the ordinary term applied in old times to one who added to his Greek, Hebrew. His acquaintance with the Latin poets is evident in his letter to Hunaldus, and his familiarity with those of Greece in his poetical epistle to Fedolius. And as he was fifty years of age before he left his native land, it is certain that his learning must have been entirely gained in her native seminaries. Another of the Benchor scholars was Molua, or Luanus, as he is called by St. Bernard, who tells us that he founded at least a hundred monasteries. The story of his first introduction to St. Comgall has been often told, but is one of those that can scarcely be told too often. He was keeping his flocks on the mountain-side, when Comgall, attracted by his appearance, wrote out the alphabet for him on a slate, and seeing his eagerness to learn, took him to Benchor and placed him in the school. Luanus conceived such a thirst for the waters of science that he prayed night and day that he might become learned. The prudent abbot, while he admired the zeal of his new scholar, was not without some anxiety lest his craving after human learning might sully the purity of his soul. One day he beheld the boy seated at the feet of an angel, who was showing him his letters and encouraging him to study. Calling Luanus to him, he said, “My child, thou hast asked a perilous gift from God; many, out of undue love of knowledge, have made shipwreck of their souls.” “My father,” replied Luanus, with the utmost humility, “if I learn to know God I shall never offend Him, for those only offend Him who know him not.” “Go, my son,” said the abbot, charmed with his reply, “remain firm in the faith, and the true science shall conduct thee on the road to heaven.”

Luanus was the founder of the monastery of Clonfert, in Leinster, and the author of another religious rule highly prized by his countrymen. The no less celebrated school of Clonfert, in Connaught, owed its foundation to St. Brendan, the fellow-student of Kieran and Columba. Having passed some years under the direction of St. Jarlath at Tuam, and St. Finian at Clonard, and become as familiar with Greek as he was with Latin, he is declared by his historians to have set sail on a voyage in search of the Land of Promise,[50] which lasted seven years. In the course of these wanderings by sea he discovered a vast tract of land lying far to the west of Ireland, where he beheld wonderful birds, and trees of unknown foliage, which gave forth the perfumes of such excellent spices, that the fragrance thereof still clung to the garments of the travellers when they returned to their native shores.

But it is time to speak of the Irish monastic patriot, whose name is known in our own time, as it was probably revered in his own, beyond any of those that have hitherto been mentioned. It was in the year 563 that St. Columba,[44] after founding the monasteries of Doire-Calgaich and Dair-magh in his native land, and incurring the enmity of one of the Irish kings, determined on crossing over into Scotland in order to preach the faith to the Northern Picts. Accompanied by twelve companions, he passed the Channel in a rude wicker boat covered with skins, and landed at Port-na Currachan, on a spot now marked by a heap of huge conical stones. Conall, king of the Albanian Scots, granted him the island of I, Hi, or Ai, hitherto occupied by the Druids, and there he erected the monastery which, in time, became the mother of three hundred religious houses. If Johnson felt his piety grow warmer amid the ruins of Iona, we surely cannot be indifferent while contemplating the site of that missionary college which educated so many of our early apostles, and diffused the light of faith from Lindisfarne to the Hebrides. The life led by its inmates was at once apostolic and contemplative. If at one time the monks of Iona were to be met with travelling through the islands and highlands of Scotland, preaching the faith and administering baptism where no Christian missionaries had hitherto penetrated, at others they were to be seen tilling the soil, teaching in their schools, and transcribing manuscripts. In whatever labours they engaged, Columba himself was the first to lead the way. “He suffered no space of time,” says Adamnan, “no, not an hour, to pass in which he was not employed either in prayer, or in reading, or writing, or manual work. And so unwearied was his labour both by day and night, that it seemed as if the weight of every particular work of his seemed to exceed the power of man.” He penetrated into the Hebrides, and twice revisited his native[51] shores, but on his return from such expeditions he loved to take part in the agricultural or scholastic pursuits of his brethren. He would hear them read or himself read to them, and overlook their work in the Scriptorium, where he required the most scrupulous exactitude. He himself was a skilful penman, and the magnificent Codex of Kells, still preserved in the library of Trinity College, is known to have been written by his hand. Iona, or I-Colum-kil, as it was called by the Irish, came to be looked on as the chief seat of learning, not only in Britain, but in the whole Western world. “Thither, as from a nest,” says Odonellus, playing on the Latin name of the founder, “these sacred doves took their flight to every quarter.” They studied the classics, the mechanical arts, law, history, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and horticulture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with ploughshares and other utensils of labour, and taught them the use of the forge, in the mysteries of which every Irish monk was instructed from his boyhood. They transferred to their new homes all the learning of Armagh or Clonard. Of St. Munn, one of the pupils of Columba, it is said that he spent eighteen years in uninterrupted study, yet this devotion to intellectual pursuits was accompanied by a singular simplicity and love of poverty. Wherever the apostles of Iona appeared, they carried with them the reputation of frugality and self-devotion. Thus Bede remarks on the extreme simplicity of life observed by Bishop Colman and his disciples, how they were content with the simple fare, “because it was the study of their teachers to feed the soul rather than the body.” “And for that reason,” he continues, “the religious habit was then held in great veneration, and wherever any monk appeared, he was joyfully received as God’s servant; and if men chanced to meet him on the way they ran to him bowing, glad to be signed with his hand and blessed by his mouth. And when a priest came to any village the inhabitants immediately flocked to hear from him the Word of Life, for they went about on no other account than to preach, baptize, visit the sick, and take care of souls.”

In every college of Irish origin, by whomsoever they were founded or on whatever soil they flourished, we thus see study blended with the duties of the missionary and the cœnobite. They were religious houses, no doubt, in which the celebration of the Church office was often kept up without intermission by day and night; but they were also seminaries of learning, wherein sacred and profane studies were[52] cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but those of every European country were enriched with their manuscripts, and the researches of modern bibliopolists are continually disinterring from German or Italian libraries a Horace, or an Ovid, or a Sacred Codex whose Irish gloss betrays the hand which traced its delicate letters. The Hibernian scholars were remarkable for combining acuteness of the reasoning powers with the gifts of the musician and the poet. There were no more accurate mathematicians and no keener logicians than the sons of Erin, whose love of syllogism is spoken of in the ninth century by St. Benedict of Anian. They are admitted to have been the precursors of the mediæval schoolmen, and to have been the first to apply the subtleties of Greek philosophy to Christian dogma. Their love of Greek was, perhaps, excessive, for they evinced it by Hellenising their Latin, and occasionally writing even their Latin missals in the Greek character. In the disputes that arose on the subject of the Paschal computation, they astonished their adversaries with their arithmetical science and their linguistic erudition. St. Cummian, in the Paschal epistle wherein he so ably defends the Roman system, examines all the various cycles in use among the Jews, Greeks, Latins, and Egyptians; quotes passages from Greek and Latin fathers, and manifestly proves how well the libraries of Ireland were furnished, and how competent her scholars were to use them. Nor whilst cultivating the exact sciences did they abandon the muses. Both St. Columbia and St. Columbanus enjoyed a reputation as poets. St. Ængus, the martyrologist, began life as a professional bard, and did not lay aside his harp when he assumed the cowl of the cœnobite; while Ruman, the son of Colman, was called “the Virgil of Ireland,” and is described as an “adept in chronology, history, and poetry.” Rhyme, if not invented in Ireland, was at least adopted by her versifiers so generally, and at so early a period, as sometimes to be designated “the art of the Irish;” and, as Moore observes, the peculiar structure of their verse shows that it belonged to a people of strong musical feeling. Hence they soon became famous for their skill in psalmody, and were esteemed both at home and abroad as first-rate choir-masters; and the legends of the Irish saints are full of passages which describe the kind of ecstasy produced in the minds of this people, so susceptible to the beautiful in every form, by the melody of the ecclesiastical chant. We will give one of these stories, because it introduces us to the founder of the school of Lismore, the last of[53] the great Irish seminaries which we shall notice in this place. Though said to be of noble extraction, Mochuda was employed by a chief in the humble capacity of swineherd. One day as he tended his herd by the banks of the river Mang, he was rapt out of himself by a sight and a sound of beauty altogether new to him. It was the holy bishop St. Carthag the elder, accompanied by a procession of his clergy, who as they went along made the hills of Kerry re-echo to the Psalm-tones, ever ancient and ever new, of the Gregorian chant. St. Augustine has confessed to their power over his heart, and the poor Irish swineherd was not less enraptured by their beauty than the African rhetorician had been. Drawn along, as it were, by the charm of the melody, he left his herd in the fields and followed the singers to their monastery. All night he remained outside the gates, catching at intervals the distant sound of the night office, till when morning dawned he was found there by his master Moelthuili, who desired to know why he had not returned home in the evening as was usual. “Because I was charmed with the holy songs of the servants of God,” replied Mochuda, “and I desire nothing else on earth than that I also may learn to sing those songs.” Moelthuili, who loved the boy, made him large promises of favour if he would remain in his service, but finding his words unheeded, he at last took him to the bishop and begged him to receive the youth among his disciples. St. Carthag bestowed his own name upon him, and admitted him among his scholars, and in process of time the fame of the pupil surpassed even that of his master. In 630 St. Carthag the younger, as he is called, became the founder of Lismore, the fame of whose schools extended into Italy.

“One-half of this holy city,” says an ancient writer, “is a sanctuary into which no woman may enter; it is full of cells and monasteries, and religious men resort thither from all parts of Ireland and England.”[45] One of the most famous masters of Lismore was St. Cathal or Cataldus, the patron saint of Tarentum in Italy, and his numerous biographies in prose and verse never fail to commemorate the glories of his Alma Mater.

Whatever exaggeration may have been committed by the national annalists when they speak of the foreign students who resorted to the Irish schools, it is impossible to doubt that they were eagerly sought by nations of the most distant lands, who, in an age when the rest of Europe was sunk in illiterate barbarism, found in the[54] cloisters of Armagh, Lismore, Clonard, and Clonmacnois, masters of philosophy and sacred science whose learning had passed into a proverb. Camden remarks how common a thing it is to read in the lives of our English saints that they were sent to study in Ireland, and the same expression occurs quite as frequently in the Gallican histories. The prodigious Litany of the Saints, composed in the eighth century by St. Ængus, includes the names not only of Britons, Picts, and Saxons, but also of Gauls, Germans, Romans, and Egyptians, all buried in Ireland. The tomb of the “Seven Romans” may still be seen in the churchyard of St. Brecan in the Isle of Aran, and a church at Meath was commonly known as the Greek Church, so called from having been served by Greek ecclesiastics. Even in the eleventh century the fame of the Irish schools was undiminished, and Sulgenus, bishop of St. David’s, spent ten years studying under their best masters.

Great as was the learning of the Irish scholars, it had in it a certain character of its own. Their theology was deeply tinged with a metaphysical spirit, and in their grammar, no less than their poetry, they displayed a taste for the mystic and the obscure. This is partly to be attributed to the influence of the Toulouse academicians, with whom the Irish scholars eagerly fraternised. They seem to have found something unspeakably attractive in the bizarre language of the twelve Latinities and the novelties of the Toulouse prosody. The strange jargon in which some of their professors were accustomed to indulge occasionally steals into the Hibernian hymns and antiphons; and the Anglo-Saxons who flocked in such multitudes to the Irish seminaries, were not slow in catching the infection. They soon learnt to disfigure their pages with a jumble of Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon syllables, and to expend their patience and ingenuity over compositions in which the great achievement was to produce fifteen consecutive words beginning with a P.

If Ireland gave hospitality in these remote ages to men of all tongues and races, she in her turn sent forth her swarms of saints who have left their traces in countless churches founded by them in Gaul, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The children of St. Columbanus reformed the Austrasian clergy, and were the first apostles of the Rhetian wildernesses. At Fiesole, in Tuscany, we find the Irish St. Donatus, compelled by the people to accept the office of bishop, and restoring, at one and the same time, sacred studies and ecclesiastical discipline. The myrtle bowers of Ausonia, however, did[55] not make him forget his native land, for in some Latin verses which Moore has thought worthy of translation, he dwells like a true patriot on the praises of that remote western island, so rich in gems and precious metals, where the fields flow with milk and honey, and the lowing herds and golden harvests supply all the wants of man. At Lucca the English traveller is still startled to find the relics of his own Anglo-Saxon countrymen, St. Richard and St. Winibald, preserved and venerated in a church dedicated to the Irish bishop, St. Frigidian. And whilst the southern shores of Italy were welcoming the coming of St. Cataldus, Iceland and the distant Orcades were receiving missionaries of the same Celtic race.[46]

Hereafter we shall see the scholars of Ireland taking part in the Carlovingian revival of learning, and making it their boast that the two first universities of Europe, those of Paris and Pavia, owed their foundation in no small degree to Hibernian professors. But before that era dawned, they had found rivals, both in their literary and apostolic labours, in the Anglo-Saxon race. The “sea-dragons of Germany,” who had extinguished faith and civilisation in the British provinces which they had overrun and conquered, had received anew those precious gifts from the hands of a great pope, whose instinctive genius led him to transfer to this remote corner of the world the sciences which were fast dying out of the Italian and Gallican schools. The story has been often told, but the course of our history obliges us to tell it over again in the following chapter.

The Donatist heresy was still raging in Africa; the Arians were triumphant in Spain and Northern Italy; a miserable schism arising out of the affair of the Three Chapters was vexing the Istrian provinces; France was torn by intestine wars, and the imperial power which nominally held rule in Italy was fast crumbling to pieces; the almost civilised dominion of the Ostrogoths had been exchanged for the wild barbarism of the half pagan, half Arian Lombards; floods, plague, and famine were rapidly depopulating the southern peninsula, when, in the year 590, St. Gregory the Great was placed in the chair of St. Peter, and received into his hands the destinies of the Western world.

“There are,” says the German philosopher, Frederic Schlegel, “grand and pregnant epochs in the history of the world, in which all existing relations assume a new and unexpected form. At such junctures, God Himself seems, as it were, to interfere, and establish a theocracy.” Such was the epoch of which we speak. All the power of human government had come to nought, and while men’s hearts were failing them for fear, the reins were falling into the hands of a frail and feeble monk, worn out with sickness and austerity, and so little conscious of possessing in himself the capacity of ruling, that, when the unanimous voice of clergy and people raised him to the pontifical dignity, he fled in terror to the woods, and was brought back weeping, and giving vent to his anguish in accents almost of despair. It will suffice very briefly to remind the reader what kind of pontificate it was that was thus begun. During the fourteen years that St. Gregory governed the Church, he achieved greatness enough to furnish fame to a dozen autocrats. He defended Rome from the Lombards, and the Lombards themselves[57] from the treachery of the Eastern emperors; he won them from Arianism, extirpated Donatism from Africa, and put an end to the Istrian schism. Whilst providing for the necessities of the Italian provinces, desolated by the cruel calamities of the times, he firmly resisted the exactions of the Byzantine court, and maintained the independence of the Church against the Cæsars. From the effete civilisation of the corrupt East, he turned to the new and semi-barbarous races of the West,—taught the Frankish kings the duties of Christian sovereignty, and urged their bishops to wage war against ecclesiastical abuses. His prodigious correspondence carried his paternal care into the most distant provinces. He condemned slavery, defended the peasants, and protected even the Jews. And in the midst of these multifarious labours, he found time to preach and write for future ages also. Thirty-five books of “Morals,” thirteen volumes of Epistles, forty Homilies on the gospels, twenty-two on the prophet Ezechiel, an immortal treatise on the Pastoral care, four books of Dialogues, and the reformation of the Sacramentary or ritual of the Church, are the chief works left us by the Fourth Latin Doctor. Nevertheless, as most readers must be aware, there exists a certain tradition which represents this great pope as the enemy of learning, a tradition elaborated out of the rebuke administered by him to Didier, Bishop of Vienne, on occasion of that prelate having delivered lectures on the profane poets, and the supposed fact of his having burnt the Palatine Library, a fact which, however, remained without record until six centuries had elapsed.[47] We need not pause to examine charges which, however often refuted or explained, will always find credence among a certain class of writers and readers, who cling to a time-honoured mumpsimus. But it was necessary to recognise the existence of this view of his character before presenting the supposed destroyer of the Palatine Library as the undoubted[58] founder of a Palatine school. And first we will hear how his biographer, John the Deacon, describes his manner of life. After naming several of the ecclesiastics, whom he chose as his chief councillors, among whom occur the names of Paul the Deacon, and our English apostles, Augustine and Mellitus, he goes on to relate how, in company with these, St. Gregory contrived to carry out monastical perfection within the walls of his own palace. “Learned clerks and religious monks,” he says, “lived there in common with their pontiff, so that the same rule was exhibited in Rome in the time of St. Gregory as St. Luke describes as existing in Jerusalem under the Apostles, and Philo records as established by St. Mark at Alexandria.”

These clerks assisted St. Gregory in his learned labours. Some were notaries, who wrote out his Homilies under his direction; and Paul the Deacon is introduced as the interlocutor in his Dialogues. And the historian goes on to tell us, that out of the canonical life established in the pontifical palace, there sprang a school. “Then did wisdom visibly fabricate to herself a temple,” he continues, “supporting the porticoes of the apostolic see by the seven liberal arts as by columns formed of the most precious stones. In the family of the pontiff, no one from the least to the greatest, dared utter a barbarous word; the purest Latinity, such as had been spoken in the time of the best Roman writers, was alone permitted to find another Latium in his palace. There, the study of all the liberal arts once more flourished, and he who was conscious to himself that he was wanting either in holiness or learning, dared not show his face in presence of the pontiff.” He goes on to speak of the number of learned men constantly to be found in the company of the pope, who encouraged poor philosophy rather than rich idleness. But he confesses that one thing was wanting: the “Cecropian muse” was absent; in other words, there was no one skilful in the interpretation of Greek.

In addition to this Palatine academy, if I should not rather say in connection with it, St. Gregory founded a school destined to have a more world-wide influence and more lasting fame. The extraordinary diligence bestowed by the holy pontiff on the reformation of the ecclesiastical chant gave rise in after times to a graceful legend, which represented him as visited in his sleep by a tenth Muse, who appeared to him with her mantle covered with the mystic notes and neumas, and inspired him with that skill in science of sacred melody,[59] which he ever afterwards possessed. The legend, like most legends, only embalms and beautifies a fact. The Church was the real Muse who inspired her pontiff to give to her order of sacred chant the same perfection he had already bestowed upon her Liturgy. Other popes and prelates had laboured before him at the same work, and indeed the very name of Centon, which is given to his Antiphonary, shows that it was a compilation of those ancient melodies which passed from the Temple to the Church, and which may be traced through St. Mark at Alexandria, and through St. Ignatius at Antioch, up to St. Peter himself.[48] In process of time the Eastern churches introduced a more pompous and florid style, but in Africa, thanks to the exertions of St. Athanasius, the ancient severity was preserved, and made matter of reproach against the Catholics by the Donatist heretics, who attributed it to the natural heaviness and stupidity of the African character. Baronius observes that, according to the most ancient monuments, the Roman Church appears to have taken the middle course, between the extreme simplicity of the Africans and the florid ornamentation of the Orientals, and thus united gravity with sweetness.

St. Ambrose, who introduced the chant into Milan, permitted women to join in the chanting of the Psalms, a custom which degenerated in some churches into the establishment of female choirs; though this abuse was prohibited by many popes and councils. Everywhere the bishops encouraged the cultivation of the chant, and Fortunatus describes St. Germanus of Paris presiding in the apse of the Golden Church, and directing the singing of his two choirs. But, as St. Augustine remarks in one of his letters, no uniformity existed among the different churches, and both variations and corruptions were introduced according to the genius of different nations. Hence, the reformation of the Cantus, and the establishment of some uniform standard based on the ancient models, had engaged the attention of several popes before the time of St. Gregory, and particularly of St. Gelasius and St. Damasus. St. Gregory completed[60] their work: he collected in his Centon, or Antiphonary, all the ancient fragments still existing, corrected and arranged them with his own pen, and added some original compositions, bearing the same character of majestic simplicity with the venerable melodies on which they were formed. And finally, to secure the permanence of these reforms, and to extend the use of the ecclesiastical chant throughout the Church, he founded a school which, three centuries later, still survived and flourished. “After the manner of a wise Solomon,” says John the Deacon, “being touched by the sweetness of music, he carefully compiled his Centon or Antiphonary of chants, and established a school of those chants which had hitherto been sung in the Roman Church, and built for this purpose two houses, one attached to the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, and the other near the Lateran Patriarchium, where, up to this day, are preserved, with becoming veneration, the couch whereon he was accustomed to rest when singing, and the rod with which he was wont to threaten the boys, together with the authentic copy of his Antiphonary.”

The important place which the Roman school of chant occupied in the history of Christian education will be seen in the following pages. Its value in our own day can hardly be appreciated, for the training of Christendom has long since ceased to be liturgical. But an era was about to open on the world during which the human intellect was no longer to receive its shape and colouring from the forms, however beautiful, of pagan antiquity, but from that Christian Muse whom our English poet has invoked. St. Gregory lived at a time when the old empire, with its letters and civilisation, was fast passing away. The little stone had struck the statue, and the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, had been carried away by the wind, and become as the chaff on the summer’s threshing-floor. He beheld new races rising out of the dust of fallen empires. What now are Homer and Horace to the grim Goth or savage Lombard who has spent his life in beating to pieces with his battle-axe the fairest monuments of Greece and Rome? To him no inspiration will flow from Castaly or Parnassus.

and the name of Woden is far more venerable in his eyes than that of Apollo. But there is One Power that has caught him in its golden nets and holds his soul a willing captive. When the waters of baptism[61] flowed over his brow he was brought face to face with that mighty Mother from whose hands he was to receive the knowledge of letters, and a far vaster education than the knowledge of letters alone can ever give. Heart, will, imagination, and understanding, all found their teacher in the Church of the Living God. Her sacred offices appealed to his soul through a thousand avenues, by their inspired ceremonial, their matchless poetry, their solemn melody, and their pictured art. The following pages will sadly fail of their main object if they do not succeed in conveying to the reader a faint notion of that marvellous education which the Church supplied to countless populations who, it may be, never learnt to read. Her Liturgy became the class-book of the barbaric races: it was to them all, and far more than all, that Homer or Ossian had been to the children of a darker age. What wonder, then, that the study of its musical language should be erected by them into a liberal art, and that those who were receiving their civilisation from the Rome, not of the Cæsars, but of the Popes, should welcome among them the teachers of the Roman music with as great enthusiasm as ever Florence in the fifteenth century, welcomed her professors of Greek?

The importance of St. Gregory’s foundation regarded from this point of view will readily appear. It was in some sort the mother of those grand liturgical schools which were afterwards to cover the face of Europe, the erection of which in any country serves as an epoch to mark the introduction or restoration of Christian letters. Henceforth, for nine centuries at least, grammar and the Cantus, the Latin tongue and the Roman music, were to take their places side by side as the two indispensables of education. Up to this time even the Christian learning had been coloured by a civilisation of pagan growth; but a new era had now begun: the Holy Scriptures and the Liturgy of the Church were to become to Christian Europe what the profane poets had been to the ancient world—the fountains of inspiration and the intellectual moulds wherein a new generation was to be cast; and though scholars were far from abandoning Virgil, yet for long ages the Muse of Solyma was to hold the mastery in the schools.

This new era of letters may be said to commence with St. Gregory, for the schools of Christian origin which existed before his time were fast becoming extinct, and it was chiefly from the new foundation, planted by him on English soil, that the torch of science was relit. How truly was he termed the Great, this pontiff, prince, and tutor of[62] a barbarous world! Yet to conceive aright of his greatness we must remember that his work was painfully wrought out in the midst of continual bodily sufferings and mental troubles yet harder to bear. He who may be said to have founded the temporal sovereignty of the Roman Pontiffs had his throne in the midst of ruins. He delivered his discourses on Ezechiel while the barbarous Lombards were marching against his capital. He had to witness the Roman nobles dragged off into slavery with ropes about their necks, to be sold like dogs in the markets of Gaul. Then came the news that Monte Cassino was in flames and its monks cast out as houseless wanderers. “Woe is me!” he exclaims, “all Europe is in the hands of the barbarians. Cities are cast down, villages in ruins, whole provinces depopulated; the land has no longer men to cultivate it; and the idolaters pursue us even to death.” Yet in this awful crisis his mind was bent on effecting new conquests for the faith, and he was planning the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons with the Lombards at his gates. Many writers have not hesitated to ascribe the pertinacity with which he carried out this, his favourite enterprise, to the profound sagacity of an ecclesiastical politician, who foresaw that the loyal devotion of the new converts to the Holy See would repair the losses inflicted by the barbarians on the rest of Christendom. But it may safely be affirmed that no mere natural acuteness could possibly have predicted anything favourable from the dispositions which had hitherto been manifested by the Anglo-Saxons. Ancient writers are unanimous in classing them among the most savage of the northern tribes. They slaughtered their captives taken in war, and drove a lucrative trade by the sale of their countrymen, and even of their own children, to foreign merchants. The courage which formed their solitary virtue too often degenerated into a brutal ferocity, and their notions of a future state were exceedingly faint. In Gaul they were regarded with terror as barbarians of uncouth speech and aspect, and strange stories were told of their reckless deeds of bloodshed and cruelty. Gregory himself would probably have found it difficult to explain the hold they had gained on his heart ever since he first beheld the blue-eyed and golden-haired Angles in the market-place of Rome. But from that moment the thought of them never left him; and though frustrated in his purpose of himself becoming their apostle, he made it a labour of love to provide for their conversion by other hands.

His first plan had been a sort of anticipation of the system since[63] so successfully carried out by the Roman Propaganda. He conceived the idea of redeeming a certain number of the Anglo-Saxon youths annually brought into the slave-markets of Gaul, educating them in some monastery school, and then sending them back as missionaries to their own country. We are not told why this scheme was abandoned, but in 596 the English mission was at last opened, and a band of Roman monks, headed by St. Augustine, the former prior of St. Gregory’s monastery set out for the barbarous and unknown island. Never was any mission more amply cared for. St. Gregory had poured out his whole heart upon it; he multiplied letters to the bishops and Sovereigns of Gaul to secure his monks hospitality on the road; his letters cheered them on their way, and when the welcome tidings came that their work had begun under prosperous auspices, he sent them a reinforcement of labourers under the abbot Mellitus, bringing everything necessary for the celebration of the Divine offices—sacred vessels, vestments, church ornaments, holy relics, and “many books.”

A catalogue of the library which St. Augustine and his companions brought with them into England is preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge. It consisted of a Bible in two volumes, a Psalter and a book of the Gospels, a Martyrology, the Apocryphal Lives of the Apostles, and the Exposition of certain Epistles and Gospels. The brief catalogue closes with these words: “These are the foundation or beginning of the library of the whole English Church, A.D. 601.” These were the books sent to us by a Pope to be the beginning of our national library, and from them did St. Augustine and his companions begin to teach the English.

The manner of life to be adopted by the missionaries was plainly laid down by St. Gregory in his instructions to St. Augustine. “You, my brother,” he writes, “who have been brought up under monastic rules, are not to live apart from your clergy in the English Church; you are to follow that course of life which our forefathers did in the time of the primitive church, when none of them said that anything he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common.”[49] The ancient canonical life was to be the rule of the new clergy, and measures were at once taken for carrying this precept into effect. A monastery dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul was speedily founded at Canterbury. In after years it bore the title of St. Augustine’s, and obtained rare privileges as the first-born of our religious houses,[64] being designated “the Roman Chapel in England.” The abbot took his place in general councils next to the abbot of Monte Cassino, and the monastery was recognised as under the immediate jurisdiction of the Holy See. Here, then, at one and the same time, began the apostolic and scholastic labours of the missionaries. It was not, indeed, until some years later, that the school of Canterbury attained its full celebrity under the abbot Adrian, but thirty years before his time it had become the model of other seminaries founded in different parts of England. When Sigebert, King of the East Angles, who had been baptized and instructed in France, wished to set up a school for youth to be instructed in literature, “after the good fashions he had seen in that country,” he sent to Canterbury for his schoolmaster, and obtained one in the person of Felix the Burgundian, who became the apostle of the East of England. At this time the liberal sciences are said to have been cultivated at Canterbury, and some writers persuade themselves that the school of Bishop Felix was the germ of Cambridge University.

Northumbria was meanwhile receiving the light of faith from the monks of Iona, who, being invited into his kingdom by St. Oswald, in 635, despatched thither the holy bishop Aidan. He chose for the site of his cathedral monastery the island of Lindisfarne, which soon became the ecclesiastical capital of the north of England. This celebrated spot, which is an island only at high tide, and is connected with the mainland when the sea retires by a firm neck of sand, doubtless bears at the present day an aspect very different from that which it presented when the monks raised their first cathedral of oak-planks thatched with reed. The ruins of a far statelier pile may now be seen, built of dark-red sandstone, to which time has given a melancholy hue not out of character with the scene. But there are some features which time itself can never quite efface; the bold promontories of the coast visible to the north and south, the wide expanse of that tossing sea so often ploughed by the keels of the Vikings, and those ruddy golden sands, are unchanged since the days when the brethren of Lindisfarne raised their eyes, weary with the labours of the Scriptorium, to rest them on that beautiful line of wooded coast, or on the sparkling waves beyond it. Their manner of life differed in no degree from that of their brethren at Iona. “It was very different,” says Bede, “from the slothfulness of our times, for all who bore company with Aidan, whether monks or laymen, were employed either in studying the Scriptures or in singing Psalms.[65] This was his own daily employment wherever he went and if it happened that he was invited to eat with the king, he went with one or two clerks, and having taken a small repast, he made haste to be gone with them either to read or write.” All the money that came into his hands he employed in relieving the poor or ransoming slaves, and many of the latter he made his disciples, instructing them and advancing them to the ecclesiastical state.

Whilst the north was being thus evangelised by the disciples of St. Columba, the south also had received a foundation of Hibernian origin. In the wilds of Wiltshire a school had arisen round the cell of Maidulf, an Irish recluse, who had been tempted to settle there by the sylvan beauty of the spot, which was then surrounded by thick luxuriant woods. To procure the means of support he received scholars from the neighbourhood who supplied his scanty wants and as his pupils increased his school became famous; and the name of its teacher is preserved in that of the modern town of Malmsbury. But it is remarkable how very soon both the Scottish and Irish foundations became Romanised.[50] One of the first scholars of Lindisfarne was St. Wilfrid, who, not satisfied with the ecclesiastical discipline of the Scottish monks, found his way to Canterbury,[66] and there learnt the whole Psalter over again, according to the Roman version, which differed from that used in the Northern schools. He was joined by another North Country scholar, St. Bennet Biscop, and the two set out together on a pilgrimage to Rome.

The after history of these two saints was full of momentous results to the Anglo-Saxon schools. At Rome Wilfrid studied the Scriptures, the rules of ecclesiastical discipline, and the system of Paschal computation under the Archdeacon Boniface, secretary to Pope Martin I., and Scholasticus of the Lateran school. He returned to England to found the Abbey of Ripon, into which he introduced the Benedictine rule, and whither he invited Eddi, the chanter of Canterbury, to come and teach his monks the Roman chant. Then he set himself to reform the errors of the Northern churches, and thirty years after the foundation of Lindisfarne, the Scottish discipline was, by his vigorous exertions, exchanged for that of Rome. Biscop, meanwhile, was not less busy. After his first visit to the Holy City, he returned there a second time, and devoted himself not only to ecclesiastical studies, but also to the acquisition of many useful arts which he was resolved to plant in his native land. Next he went to Lerins, where he received the habit of a monk, and spent two years learning and practising the monastic rule; and then he returned a third time to Rome, at the very moment when the death of Deusdedit, sixth archbishop of Canterbury, had induced Pope Vitalian to nominate as his successor the Greek scholar, Theodore. He was a native of St. Paul’s city of Tarsus, and well skilled in all human and divine literature. So says St. Bede, and so the Western bishops seem to have thought, when they delayed drawing up their synodal letter to the Third Council of Constantinople until “the philosopher Theodore” should be able to take part in their deliberations. Vitalian had the prosperity of the English mission scarcely less at heart than St. Gregory, and discerned the full importance of providing the infant Church with men who should be capable of laying a solid foundation of sacred learning in her schools. With this view he sent together with Theodore, the abbot Adrian, whom William of Malmsbury calls “a fountain of letters, and a river of arts.” At the same time Benedict Biscop received orders to join the company of the new archbishop and to him was committed the direction of the monastery and school of Canterbury. But Benedict had one purpose fixed in his heart; it was to devote his life and[67] extraordinary energies to the foundation of a great seat of learning and religion in his own land, and to fit himself thoroughly for the work before he began it. The weald of Kent might have richer pastures, the sky of Italy a softer glow, but the brown moors of Northumbria were ever present to his mind’s eye, and it was there that he desired to spend and be spent for Christ. He was not long before he found out that Adrian’s acquirements were far beyond his own; so resigning the abbacy into his hands, from a master he became a scholar, and spent two years more studying under him, and acting as interpreter to him and to the archbishop. Theodore had brought with him a large addition to the English library, and among his books were a copy of Homer (which, in Archbishop Parker’s days, was still preserved at Canterbury), the works of Josephus, and the homilies of St. Chrysostom. Bede’s account of the new life infused into the English schools by these two illustrious foreigners is doubtless familiar to all readers. Yet it is too much to the purpose to be omitted here. “Assisted by Adrian,” he says, “the archbishop everywhere taught the right rule of life and the canonical custom of celebrating Easter. And forasmuch as both of them were well read in sacred and secular literature, they gathered a crowd of disciples, and there daily flowed from them rivers of knowledge to water the hearts of their hearers: and together with the books of Holy Writ, they also taught the arts of ecclesiastical poetry, astronomy, and arithmetic. So that there are still living to this day some of their scholars who are as well versed in the Greek and Latin tongues as in their own wherein they were born. Never were there happier times since the English came to Britain, for their kings being brave men and good Christians, were a terror to barbarous nations, and the minds of all men were bent upon the joys of the heavenly kingdom of which they had heard; and all who desired to be instructed in sacred literature had masters at hand to teach them.”

Adrian had many good pupils, among whom was Albinus, who succeeded him in the government of his abbey, and greatly assisted Bede in collecting the materials of his history, and who was besides an excellent Greek scholar; and St. John of Beverley, whom Oxford historians fondly believe to have been the first master of liberal arts in their university. For, according to some authorities, the Oxford schools grew out of those founded at Cricklade, which place is said[68] to have derived its original name of “Greeklade” from the good Greek which was there taught by Adrian’s disciples. Another student drawn to Canterbury by the fame of its classical learning was St. Aldhelm, one of Maidulf’s early pupils, who very soon resolved upon migrating from Malmsbury to the archiepiscopal seminary. Ill-health did not permit him to remain there long, but a letter from the young collegian is preserved, addressed to his own diocesan, Hedda, Bishop of Wessex, which gives very ample information as to the nature and extent of the studies on which he was engaged. Some suspicion of exaggeration may naturally attach to such general notices of the English learning as that given by Bede, but the more minute account of Aldhelm is open to no such objection. “I confess, most reverend father,” he says, “that I had resolved, if circumstances had permitted, to have spent the approaching Christmas in the company of my relations, and to have enjoyed for some time the pleasure of your society. But as I find it impossible to do so for various reasons, I hope you will excuse my not waiting on you as I had intended. The truth is that there is a necessity for spending a great deal of time in this seat of learning, specially if one be inflamed with the love of study, and desirous, as I am, of becoming acquainted with all the secrets of the Roman jurisprudence. And I am engaged also on another study still more tedious and perplexing.” Here he enters at some length on the subject of Latin versification, and describes the various classical metres, all of which were taught in Adrian’s school; and in the intricacies of which the Anglo-Saxon scholars singularly delighted to exercise their ingenuity. He then continues in a tone of less satisfaction; “but what shall I say of arithmetic, the long and intricate calculations of which are sufficient to overwhelm the mind, and cast it into despair? For my own part all the labours of my former studies are trifling in comparison with this. So that I may say with St. Jerome on a like occasion, ‘before I entered on that study I thought myself a master, but now I find I was but a learner.’ However, by the blessing of God, and assiduous reading, I have at length overcome the chief difficulties, and have found out the method of calculating suppositions, which are called the parts of a number. I believe it will be better to say nothing of astronomy, the Zodiac and its twelve signs revolving in the heavens, which require a long illustration, rather than to disgrace that noble art by too short and imperfect an account, especially as[69] there are some parts of it—as astrology and the perplexing calculation of horoscopes—which require a master’s hand to do them justice.”[51]

It must be borne in mind that at the time when Aldhelm wrote, every problem in arithmetic had to be worked by means of the seven Roman letters C. D. I. L. M. V. and X., and the decimal system was unknown. Very often the student was compelled to abandon their use and write the numbers he was employed on in words. And in default of more convenient numerals, recourse was had to what might be called a duodecimal system, by which every number was divided into twelve parts, the different combinations of which were named and computed according to the divisions of the Roman money. And lastly, there was the system of “indigitation,” wherein the ten fingers were made to serve the purpose of a modern arithmeticon.

St. Aldhelm elsewhere enumerates the studies pursued in the school of Canterbury as consisting of grammar, that is the Latin and Greek tongues, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy, and astrology: he himself is also said to have studied the Hebrew Scriptures in their original text, and his works both in prose and poetry bear witness to his familiarity with the chief Latin poets, such as Virgil, Juvenal, Lucan, and Persius, whom he frequently quotes. He was the first Englishman who appeared before the world in the character of an author; his chief poems being a Treatise on the Eight Virtues, and one in praise of Virginity. His Latin versification is of the most artificial structure; in one of his poetical prefaces the initial letters of each line read downwards, the terminal letters read upwards, and the last line read backwards, all repeat the words of the first line read straightforwards; and this he pleasantly denominates “a square poem.” I will give but one couplet as a sample of the kind of brain-puzzles which afforded such solace to the Anglo-Saxon students. The reader will observe that the lines may be read equally well backwards or forwards, still forming the same succession of letters:—

[70]

All the writings of Aldhelm exhibit instances of the same misplaced ingenuity, as well as that love of enigma which was general among his countrymen. In spite of these faults, however, and of a certain pompous and pedantic style which treats very ordinary subjects in very big words, and is an anticipation by eleven centuries of the Johnsonian dialect, it is impossible to deny that our first English author was a man of genius and erudition. In his poems, which are redundant with imagery, he gathers his similitudes now from the household arts of the smith and the weaver, now from the natural beauties of hill and field. You see that you are reading the thoughts of one who does not owe everything to books, but who has observed and reasoned for himself. Thus, desiring to show that perfection does not consist in chastity alone, but in a combination of all the virtues in their proper order, he compares it to “a web, not of one uniform colour and texture, but woven with purple threads and many colours into a variety of figures by the shuttles flying from side to side.” Describing a well-stored memory, he compares it to the work of the sagacious bees, “who, when the dewy dawn appears and the beams of the limpid sun arise, pour the thick armies of their dancing swarms over the open fields; and, now lying in the honied leaves of the marigold or the purple tops of the heather, suck the nectar drop by drop, and carry home their plunder on burdened thighs.” A copy of his treatise on Virginity is preserved in the Lambeth library, in which a highly finished illumination represents him seated in his chair surrounded by a group of nuns. The book was in fact written for the use of the Abbess Hildelitha and her religious daughters of Wimbourne; for the Anglo-Saxon nuns very early vied with the monks in their application to letters.

On leaving Canterbury Aldhelm returned to Malmsbury and soon raised the reputation of the school. Pupils flocked to him even from France and Scotland, for, says William of Malmsbury, “some admired the sanctity of the man, and others the depth of his learning. He was as simple in piety as he was multifarious in knowledge, having imbibed the seven liberal arts so perfectly that he was wonderful in each, and unrivalled in all.” One of his pupils was Ethilwald, afterwards Bishop of Lindisfarne, to whom, as to his “most beloved son and disciple,” he addressed a letter, preserved among his other works. After warning him against the vain pleasures of the world, “such as the custom of daily junketings, indulgence in immoderate feasting, and continued riding and racing,” he admonishes him to be[71] on his guard against the love of money and silly parade, and exhorts him rather to apply himself to the study of the Scriptures; and inasmuch as the meaning of almost every part of them depends on the rules of grammar, to perfect himself in that art, that so he may dive into the signification of the text. Ethilwald was a devoted admirer of the saint, and left some verses in praise of his illustrious master whom he is too good a scholar to call by his barbarous Saxon name, preferring to translate it into the more classic appellation of Cassis prisca, or old helmet. Another of Aldhelm’s pupils and correspondents was Eadfrid, who, after the fashion of the times, passed over into the sister isle to profit by the learning of the Irish schools. He remained there six years, and was heartily congratulated by Aldhelm on his return from what he calls the “land of fog.” “Nowadays,” says the scholar of Malmsbury, “the renown of the Irish is so great that one daily sees them going or returning; and crowds flock to their island to gather up the liberal arts and physical sciences. But if the sky of Ireland has its stars, has not that of England its sun in Theodore the philosopher, and its mild moon in Adrian, gifted with an inexpressible urbanity?”

In 675 Malmsbury became an abbey, and Aldhelm was chosen its first abbot. When the diocese of Wessex was divided into two parts he was named Bishop of Sherburne, whence the episcopal see was afterwards removed to Salisbury. A well-known anecdote represents him to us instructing the rude peasantry of Malmsbury who would not stay to listen to the Sunday sermon, by singing his verses to them, harp in hand, after the fashion of a wandering gleeman. We read also of the pains he took in forming a library in his abbey, and how, being on a visit to Bretwald, Archbishop of Canterbury (an old companion and former schoolfellow), he heard of the arrival at Dover of a foreign ship, and at once hastened down to the coast to see if there were any books among its cargo. As he was walking on the seashore intently examining the merchandise that was unlading, he espied a heap of books, and among them a volume containing the entire Bible. This was a treasure indeed, and a very rare one, for the books of Scripture were generally written out separately, and had to be procured and copied one by one. He determined at once to secure the Bible for his library, and turning over the pages with a knowing air, began to bargain with the owners and to beat them down somewhat in the price. The sailors grumbled at this, and said he might undervalue his own goods if he liked, but not those of[72] others. At last they turned him away with very abusive language, and, refusing all his offers, pulled off with the Bible to their ship. But a terrible tempest arose, which made them repent of their churlish conduct, and returning to the shore they entreated the good bishop to pardon their rudeness and accept the book as a gift, for it seems they considered that they had only been saved from shipwreck by his prayers. Aldhelm, however, laid down the half of their original demand, and returned with his prize to his convent, where the book was still preserved in the time of William of Malmsbury.

We must now return to St. Bennet Biscop, who, after completing his studies at Canterbury, was planning a fourth expedition to Rome, chiefly for the purpose of collecting books. His bibliographical tour was crowned with complete success. He travelled along purchasing, and also begging books in all directions, which when procured were deposited in the keeping of trusty friends, from whom he gathered them up again on his homeward journey. He returned to England laden with his treasures, and obtained a grant of land from Egfrid, king of Northumbria, for the erection of his long-contemplated monastery. It was dedicated to St. Peter, and situated at the mouth of the Wear—a spot, says William of Malmsbury, “which once glittered with a multitude of towns built by the Romans,” and which in our own days also is a busy scene of trade. Though the Roman towns had disappeared in Biscop’s time, his monastery was far from standing in the midst of a solitude. In fact, he sought, not shunned, the haunts of men, for his main object was their instruction. He had no intention of being merely “the man wise for himself;” his books and his learning had been acquired to profit other souls besides his own. So he did not choose a lonesome wilderness, or a marsh, or a desert island, but a spot conveniently situated within reach of what, even in the seventh century, was a tolerably busy port. “The broad and ample river running into the sea,” says the old historian already quoted, “received vessels borne by gentle gales on the calm bosom of its haven;” and the parish of Monk-Wearmouth in the now smoky town of Sunderland marks the ground occupied by St. Bennet’s first foundation.

It was commenced in the year 674, the monastery being at first only built of wood, but the church was planned on a more magnificent scale. Bennet, who thought nothing of a long journey in pursuit of his cherished designs, crossed over to France to seek out good masons, and brought them back with him to Wearmouth, where they[73] built him a very handsome church of hewn stone. The fame of this noble structure spread far and wide, and Naitan, king of the Picts, sent ambassadors imploring that the French masons might be sent to build an exactly similar church in his dominions. As soon as the walls of his church were up, Bennet sent over once more to France for glass-makers, who glazed all the windows both of the church and monastery. Bede tells us that these were the first artificers in glass who had been seen in England. “It is an art,” he says, “not to be despised, because of its use in furnishing lamps for the cloisters and other kinds of vessels.” The church being now finished and furnished, the books were stored up in the library, and four years were spent by the abbot in collecting the spiritual stones of his edifice. The result of his labours was so satisfactory that King Egfrid desired to see another monastery of similar character founded in his kingdom, and in 682 the saint obtained a second grant of land at Jarrow-on-the-Tyne, about five miles from Wearmouth. “The spot has no claim to beauty,” says a modern writer, “yet it is calculated to produce an impression of solemn quiet. The church and crumbling walls of the old monastery standing on a green hill sloping to the bay, the long silvery expanse of water, the gentle ripple of the advancing tide, the sea-birds perpetually hovering on the wing or dipping in the wave, and the distant view of Shields harbour with its clouds of smoke and forests of masts, form no ordinary combination.”[52] And we may add that no ordinary feelings stir in the heart of the visitor who sees in those grey crumbling walls, with their vestiges of Norman and Saxon ornament, the remains of that monastic seminary which nurtured the genius and the sanctity of the Venerable Bede. Here arose the monastery of St. Paul’s; and if you look in the eastern wall of the church you may still see the inscription, of unquestioned antiquity, which preserves the memory of its dedication. It is cut on a small tablet in good Roman letters, and tells you that the church was dedicated on the eighth of the kalends of May, in the fifteenth year of Egfrid the king, and during the abbacy of Ceolfrid.

This Ceolfrid deserves a few words to himself. He was originally a monk of Ripon, where he became master of the school and the novices. His pupils, who were mostly high-born youths, showed some disdain for those menial employments that formed part of a monk’s daily life, and which they associated with the idea of servitude; but Ceolfrid, himself an earl’s son, overcame their repugnance[74] by his own example. He undertook the care of the bakehouse, and might daily be seen cleaning the oven, bolting the meal, and baking the bread for the use of the brethren. From labours such as these he passed to the school, and there made his scholars understand that a man may make a very good baker without losing his taste for the liberal arts. Ceolfrid’s fame at last reached the ears of St. Bennet, who, it must be owned, was covetous of learned monks and good books. So he begged him of the abbot of Ripon, and, having obtained him, placed the new monastery of Jarrow under his government. The two houses, however, continued to be so closely united as to form but one community; they were like one monastery, says Bede, built in two places. Ceolfrid held the abbacy of St. Paul’s for seven years, during which time the dreadful pestilence of 686 broke out, which swept away all the choir monks, with the exception of the abbot himself and one little boy, with whose aid he still contrived to chant the canonical hours, though their voices were often enough choked with their tears. This little boy could be no other than St. Bede himself, who had accompanied the monks from Wearmouth to Jarrow, and was then seven years of age.

St. Bennet’s journeys were not yet over. As soon as the foundation of Jarrow was completed he set out on a fifth expedition to Rome accompanied by Ceolfrid, and this time brought back, not only books and relics, but also pictures. These last he placed in his two churches: at the west end of the Church of St. Peter he placed pictures of our Lady and the twelve Apostles; on the south wall were scenes from the Gospels, and on the north the visions of the Apocalypse. The pictures placed in St. Paul’s were intended to show the connection between the Old and New Testaments. There you saw representations of Isaac bearing the wood of the sacrifice, and of our Lord bearing His Cross: of the brazen serpent, and the Crucifixion. “Those, therefore, who knew not how to read,” says Bede, “entering these churches, found on all sides agreeable and instructive objects, representing Christ and His saints, and recalling to their memory the grace of His Incarnation and the terrors of the last judgment.” But Bennet had brought from Rome something even more precious than his pictures. It was not to be supposed that in his solicitude to provide his monks with the best instruction that books or teachers could afford he should overlook the necessity of providing them with masters of the ecclesiastical chant. The Roman chant had already been introduced into Northumbria by James the Deacon,[75] the fellow-labourer of St. Paulinus, who, says Bede, was extraordinarily skilful in singing, and taught the same to many, after the custom of the Romans. But he was now an old man, and does not seem to have formed any disciples qualified to succeed him in his office. Benedict therefore entreated Pope Agatho to allow him to take back into England no less a personage than John the Venerable, abbot of St. Martin’s, and arch-chanter of St. Peter’s, that he might teach in his monastery the method of singing throughout the year as it was practised in St. Peter’s Church. It argues much the importance which was attached at Rome to Benedict’s foundations, that his petition was granted. Abbot John received orders to set out for the barbarous north, and, taking up his residence at Wearmouth, he taught the chanters of that monastery the whole order and manner of singing and reading aloud, and committed to writing all that was requisite throughout the whole course of the year for the celebration of festivals; “all which rules,” adds St. Bede, “are still observed there, and have been copied by many other monasteries. And the said John not only taught the brethren of that monastery, but such as had skill in singing resorted from almost all the monasteries of the same province to hear him, and many invited him to teach in other places.”[53]

Such, then, was the provision made by St. Bennet for the instruction of his monks and the establishment among them of a school of sacred learning. And his enterprise was a grand success. His twin houses became centres of human and divine science, as well as of regular discipline. The life led within their walls has been made familiar to us by the pen of Bede, who, with that simplicity which forms the charm of his writing, describes it in all its homely features. The men who were engaged in rearing, on the barbarous shores of England, a seminary of learning which had not its equal north of the Alps, might every day be seen taking part in the duties of the farmyard and the kitchen. Abbot Easterwine, a former courtier of King Egfrid’s, who was chosen to fill the place of abbot during the absence of St. Bennet, delighted in winnowing the corn, giving milk to the young calves, working at the mill or forge, and helping in the bakehouse. It is thus that Bede describes him; but he dwells also on the spiritual beauty of the abbot’s “transparent countenance,” his musical voice and gentle temper, and tells us how, being seized with his last illness, “coming out into the open air, and sitting down, he called for his weeping brethren, and, after the manner of his tender[76] nature, gave them all the kiss of peace, and died at night as they were singing lauds.”

As St. Bennet was still absent, the monks chose in his room the deacon Sigfrid, who continued to share the government with Bennet after his return. Both of them were afflicted with grievous infirmity during the three last years of their lives, St. Bennet being almost entirely paralysed, while Sigfrid was wasted with a slow consumption. The last hours of the saint were in harmony with his life. His monks read the Scriptures aloud to him during his sleepless nights, and he often charged them to remember the two things that he most earnestly recommended to his children, the preservation of regular discipline, and the care of his books. When unable to leave his bed, and too weak to recite the Divine Office, he caused some of the brethren to recite it in his chamber, divided into two choirs, and joined with them as well as he could. The two venerable abbots, who were both hourly expecting death, had a great wish to meet once more in this life, and to satisfy their desire, the monks carried Sigfrid on a litter to St. Bennet’s cell, and laid them side by side, their heads resting on the same pillow, that they might give each other a farewell kiss; but so extreme was their weakness, that even this they were not able to do without assistance. After their departure Ceolfrid continued to govern both houses for twenty-eight years, during which time he did much to advance the studies of the brethren, and sent several of them to Rome to complete their education. He increased the library, and caused three copies of the entire Bible to be written out, one of which he sent as a present to the Pope, whilst the other two were placed in the two churches, “to the end that all who wished to read any passage in either Testament might at once find what they wanted.” Naitan, king of the Picts, applied to him for church ornaments, as he had applied to St. Bennet for masons. The abbot’s reply may be quoted as giving some notion of his scholarship. “A certain worldly ruler,” he wrote, “most truly said that the world would be happy if either philosophers were kings, or kings philosophers. Now if a worldly man could judge thus truly of the philosophy of this world, how much more were it to be desired that the more powerful men are in this world the more they would labour to be acquainted with the commandments of God.” In this passage the Anglo-Saxon monk is quoting from the Republic of Plato.

St. Bede, who has preserved these records of the Fathers of[77] Wearmouth and Jarrow, dwells with delight on the memory of the many happy years he himself passed within those walls, and on the thought that none of them had been spent in idleness. “All my life,” he says, “I have spent in this monastery, giving my whole attention to the study of the Holy Scriptures; and in the intervals between the hours of regular discipline, and the duties of church psalmody, I ever took delight in either learning, teaching, or writing.” It was his love of study that made him decline the office of abbot, “for that office demands thoughtfulness, and thoughtfulness brings distraction of mind, which is an impediment to learning.” Though invited to Rome by Pope Sergius, it appears certain that he never left his own country, and that all he knew was derived from native teachers, principally, as he tells us, from the abbots Bennet and Ceolfrid. The science of music, indeed, in which he excelled, and on which he wrote several treatises, he had studied under John of St. Martin’s; Trumhere, a monk of Lestingham, was his master in divinity, and his Greek scholarship was probably acquired from Archbishop Theodore himself. But the varied character of Bede’s erudition must be principally explained by his free use of Biscop’s noble libraries. It was at the command of his abbot, and of St. John of Beverley, who ordained him priest, that he began, at thirty years of age, to write for the instruction of his countrymen. For his greater convenience a little building was erected apart from the monastery, which Simeon of Durham speaks of as yet standing in the twelfth century, “where, free from all distraction, he could sit, meditate, read, write, or dictate.” The original building must have been swept away at the time of the destruction of the monastery by the Danes in 794, yet Leland describes what he calls St. Bede’s oratory, as remaining, even in his time.

His studies, however, were not suffered to interfere with his other duties, for he was most exact in the minute observance of his rule, and specially in the discharge of the choral office, though, as he owns in a letter to Bishop Acca, these necessary demands on his time, the monasticæ servitutis retinacula, as he calls them, proved no small hindrance to his work. Yet he never sought exemption of any kind, and least of all from attendance in choir. “If the angels did not find me there among my brethren,” he would say, “would they not say, Where is Bede? why comes he not to worship at the appointed time with the others?”[54] It was thus he found the secret of keeping[78] alive the spirit of fervour in the midst of continued labour of the head. Printed among his theological and philosophical works, is a little manual, drawn up, as it would seem, for his own private use, and consisting of a selection of favourite verses from the Psalms. His disciple, Cuthbert, says of him. “I can declare with truth, that never saw I with my eyes, or heard I with my ears, of any man so indefatigable in giving thanks to God.” Besides the requirements of his monastic rule, and his own private studies, Bede had other duties which engaged a large portion of his time. He was both mass priest and scholasticus. In the first capacity, he had to administer the sacraments, visit the sick, and preach on Sundays and festivals; in the second, to communicate to others the learning he had himself acquired. Even before his ordination, the direction of the monastic school was placed in his hands, and here he taught sacred and humane letters to the 600 monks of Jarrow, as well as to the pupils who flocked to him from all parts of England. The character of his teaching is beautifully noticed in the breviary lessons for his feast. “He was easily kindled and moved to compunction by study, and whether reading or teaching, often wept abundantly. And after study he always applied himself to prayer, well knowing that the knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures is to be gained rather by the grace of God than by our own efforts. He had many scholars, all of whom he inspired with extraordinary love of learning; and what is more, he infused into them the holy virtue of religion; he was most affable to the good, but terrible to the proud and negligent; sweet in countenance, with a musical voice, and an aspect at once cheerful and grave.”

The writings of Bede bear witness to the extent of his learning. He himself gives a list of forty-five works of which he was the author, including, besides his homilies and commentaries on Holy Scripture, treatises on grammar, astronomy, the logic of Aristotle, music, geography, arithmetic, orthography, versification, the computum, and natural philosophy. His Ecclesiastical History and Lives of the Fathers must always be admired as models of unaffected simplicity of style. He was well skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues.[55] His Greek erudition is proved by the fact of his having translated the life of St. Athanasius out of Greek into Latin, and also by the Retractations, which, with characteristic candour, he published in his old age, to correct some errors into which he had fallen in his[79] earlier commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, and which he became aware of after meeting with a Greek manuscript of that portion of the Scriptures which varied from the Latin text. His treatises on grammar and versification betray an acquaintance with Latin literature which shows us that St. Bennet’s libraries must have been well stored with classics.[56] In his scientific views, he of course followed the generally received theories of the time in which he lived; though in some points he corrected the errors of former writers by the result of his own observations. “Bede’s works,” observes Mr. Turner, “are evidence that the establishment of the Teutonic nations on the ruins of the Roman Empire did not barbarise knowledge. He collected and taught more natural truths than any Roman writer had yet accomplished; and his works display an advance, not a retrogression, in science.” Thus, he taught that the stars derived their light from the sun; that the true shape of the earth was globular,[57] to which he attributes the irregularity of our days and nights. He explains the ebb and flow of the tide, by the attractive power of the moon, and points out the error of supposing that all the waters of the ocean rise at the same moment, instancing observations which he has taken himself on different parts of the English coast in support of his statement. He shows that the sun is eclipsed by the intervention of the moon, and the moon by that of the earth. He also gives simple and intelligent explanations of various natural phenomena, such as the rainbow, and the formation of rain and hail. He had the good sense to condemn judicial astrology as equally false and pernicious, and applied his scientific knowledge to useful purposes, constructing tables to serve the place of a modern ephemeris.

By far the greater part of his writings, however, consist of commentaries on the Holy Scriptures, in which his design is less to indulge in original speculation, than to resume the teaching of the Fathers. After the fashion of the early writers, he reproduces their metaphysical arguments, and even their words and imagery, his love of science occasionally appearing in his selections. Thus, in speaking of the Holy Trinity, he embodies in his text the beautiful illustration repeated before him by St. John Chrysostom, and other early[80] Fathers, wherein the Three Divine Persons in one essence are compared to the form, the light, and the heat of the sun. The globular body of the sun, he says, never leaves the heavens, but its light (which he compares to the person of the Son), and its heat (to that of the Holy Ghost) descend to earth and diffuse themselves everywhere, animating the mind and kindling the heart. Yet though universally present, light never really quits the sun, for we behold it there; and heat, too, is never separated from it; and the whole is one sun, comprised within a circle, which has no end and no beginning. He shows the same analogies in other forms of nature, as in water, wherein we see the fountain, the flowing river, and the lake—all different in form, yet one in substance, and inseparable one from the other. In his treatise, De Natura Rerum, he not only exhibits vast erudition but often expresses himself with a certain unadorned eloquence. “Observe,” he says, “how all things are made to suit and to govern one another. See how heaven and earth are respectively adorned; heaven, by the sun, moon, and stars, and earth by its beautiful flowers, its herbs, trees, and fruits. From these men derive their food, their shining jewels, the various pictures so pleasantly woven in their hangings, their variegated colours, the sweet melody of strings and organs, the splendour of gold and silver, and the pleasant streams of water which bring us ships and set in motion our mills, together with the fragrant aroma of myrrh, and the sweet form of the human countenance.” Bede’s love of music reveals itself in a thousand passages. “Among all the sciences,” he says, “this one is most commendable, pleasing, mirthful, and lovely. It makes a man liberal, cheerful, courteous, and amiable. It rouses him to battle, enables him to bear fatigue, comforts him under labour, refreshes the disturbed mind, takes away headaches, and soothes the desponding heart.”

There is one subject which engaged his attention that deserves a more particular notice, I mean the labours he directed to the grammatical formation of his native language, a work of vast importance, which, in every country where the barbarous races had established themselves, had to be undertaken by the monastic scholars. Rohrbacher observes that St. Bede did much by his treatises on grammar and orthography, to impress a character of regularity on the modern languages which, in the eighth and ninth centuries, were beginning to be formed out of the Latin and Germanic dialects. Much more was his influence felt on the Anglo-Saxon dialect, in which he both[81] preached and wrote. A curious poetical fragment of the twelfth century, discovered some years since in Worcester Cathedral, names him among other saints “who taught our people in English,” and praises him in particular, for having “wisely translated” for the instruction of his flock. This is not mere tradition. Besides commenting on nearly the whole Bible, Bede is known to have translated into English both the Psalter and the four Gospels. But this involved a labour the character and amount of which is not easily appreciated, unless we bear in mind what the state of the vernacular tongue was at that time. Before their conversion to Christianity the Anglo-Saxons possessed no literature, that is to say, no written compositions of any kind, and their language had not therefore assumed a regular grammatical form. In this they resembled most of the other barbarous nations, of whom St. Irenæus observes,[58] that they held the faith by tradition, “without the help of pen and ink;” meaning, as he himself explains, that for want of letters they could have no use of the Scriptures. The Anglo-Saxons were indeed acquainted with the Runic letters; but there is every reason to believe that these were exclusively used for monumental inscriptions or magic spells. The Runic letters were indeed so closely associated in the mind of the people with magical practices that the Christian missionaries found it necessary to avoid their use,[59] and introduced the letters commonly called Anglo-Saxon, which are, however, nothing more than corruptions of the Roman alphabet. Although the Saxons had no written literature, they had, however, a body of native poetry consisting of songs and fragmentary narratives which, like the poems of Homer or Ossian, were preserved solely in the memory of the bards, who occasionally made additions or enlargements of the story, as their genius prompted. Together with the change of religion appeared a change in the character of the popular minstrelsy. Tales from the Scriptures took the place of legends of pagan heroes, and the Christian missionaries made use of these for the purpose of instilling into their rude hearers some knowledge of the mysteries of faith.

But the Saxon poetry, even in its Christianised form, does not appear to have been written down until the time of Alfred. Before any steps could be taken to form a literature, the language itself had[82] to be laboriously reduced to grammatical rules. The Anglo-Saxon language, as it exists in the literature of a later period, is of extremely complex construction, far richer in grammatical inflexion than our modern English. But in its barbarous state, as we read it in the early fragments of the bardic poems, it was a barren combination of verbs, nouns, and pronouns, and nouns freely used in an adjective and verbal sense, and entirely destitute of all the smaller particles. The change it underwent during the two centuries that preceded the time of Alfred was the transformation of a barbarous dialect into a finished grammatical language, and this change was mainly effected by the labours of the monks. Nor is it mere matter of conjecture that Bede had a considerable share in this great work. He was probably the first who applied himself to it, and has himself let us know the reasons which induced him to undertake the translation of certain familiar forms of prayer into the native dialect. In 734, Archbishop Egbert, who then presided over the school of York, having invited him thither, Bede accepted the invitation, as he says, “for the sake of reading,” the York library offering temptations not to be resisted. He stayed there some months, teaching in the archbishop’s school; and would have repeated his visit in the following year had not his declining health rendered this impossible. To excuse the failure of his promise, he addressed a long and interesting letter to Egbert, in which, among other things, he suggests the appointment of priests to the rural districts, who should be diligent in instructing the peasantry, and who should teach them the Creed and the Our Father in their own tongue, “which,” he adds, “I have myself translated into English for the benefit of those priests who are not familiar with the vernacular.”[60] But the translation of these prayers was a very small part of his labours; he had, as we have already said, made an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalter and the Gospels, and on this latter work he was engaged up to the day of his death.[83] This we learn from the beautiful letter written by his pupil Cuthbert to a fellow reader and schoolfellow Cuthwin, which, often as it has been quoted, we cannot here omit. After speaking of the way in which his beloved master had spent the whole of his life, cheerful and joyful, and giving thanks to God day and night; and how he daily read lessons to his disciples even to within a fortnight of his death, he relates how the saint admonished them to prepare for death, “and being learned in our poetry,” quoted some things in the English tongue; how, according to his custom, he often sung antiphons, specially that belonging to the season of the Ascension which then drew nigh, beginning “O Rex gloriæ.” “And when he came to those words ‘leave us not orphans,’ he burst into tears and wept much, and we also wept with him. By turns we read, and by turns we wept; nay, we wept continually while we read.” ... During this time he laboured to compose two works well worthy to be remembered, besides the lessons that we had of him, and the singing of the Psalms; namely, he translated the Gospel of St. John, as far as the words “But what are these among so many?” into our own tongue for the benefit of the Church, and some collections out of St. Isidore’s works; for he said, I will not have my scholars read falsehoods after my death, or labour in that book without profit.... When the Tuesday before the Ascension of our Lord came, he passed all that day dictating cheerfully, for, he said, I know not how long I shall last, or what time my Maker will take me. And yet to us he seemed to know very well the time of his departure. And so he spent the night; and when the morning appeared, that is, Wednesday, he ordered us to write with all speed what he had begun, and this done, we walked till the third hour with the relics of saints, according to the custom of that day. There was one of us with him who said to him, “Dear Master, there is still one chapter wanting, will it fatigue you to be asked any more questions?” He answered, “It is no trouble. Take your pen and mend it, and write quickly.” He then took farewell of them all, and so continued cheerfully to speak till about sunset, when the youth before mentioned said again, “Beloved master, there is still one sentence unwritten.” “Then write it quickly,” he replied. In a few moments the youth said, “Now it is finished.” “You have spoken true,” said the dying saint. “It is finished. Now, therefore, take my head into your hands, for it is a great delight to sit opposite to that holy place where I have been wont to pray, and there let me sit once more, and call upon my[84] Father.” So sitting thus on the floor of his cell, and repeating the ejaculation “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost,” he breathed his last, on May 26, 735.

The school of York was rising into celebrity just as Bede was withdrawn from the scene of his useful labours. Egbert, who may be considered as its founder, was himself a pupil of Bishop Eata’s, but had completed his studies in Rome. He was brother to the reigning King of Northumbria, and succeeded to the see of York at a time when the affairs of the diocese had fallen into some disorder. One of his great works was the collection of a body of canons, and the publication of his famous Penitential, which furnished the Anglo-Saxon Church with fixed laws of discipline, gathered from the early fathers and canonists. While thus engaged, however, the archbishop applied himself with no less fervour to the encouragement of learning. He committed the mastership of the school he founded to his relation Albert, but himself continued to overlook the studies, and charged himself with the explanation of the Scriptures of the New Testament, leaving to Albert the other departments of literature. Under their united care the fame of the York seminary soon extended beyond the shores of Britain, and it is said to have embraced a larger course of instruction than was to be found at the same period in any school either of Gaul or Spain. Alcuin, a pupil of the academy over which he afterwards presided, enumerates among the studies there pursued, the seven liberal arts, as well as chronology, natural history, jurisprudence, and mathematics. Attached to the school was a library, which, under the munificent care of Egbert, became rich in all the works both of Christian and heathen antiquity. Alcuin, who filled the office of librarian, has given a list of its contents; he enumerates the works of SS. Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Athanasius, Gregory the Great, Leo, Basil, Fulgentius and Chrysostom; of Orosius, Boethius, Pliny, Aristotle, and Cicero; of the poets Virgil and Lucan, of Prosper, Lactantius, and many others, together with the writings of Bede and Aldhelm, the two English writers who had already acquired a literary fame. These books were chiefly collected by Albert, whose custom it was to pass over to the Continent on book-hunting expeditions, in which he was generally accompanied by Alcuin.

The librarian of York afterwards composed a poem on the subject of the saints and archbishops of that city, in which he celebrates the virtues of the two illustrious prelates under whom he studied, and[85] the treasures of science stored up by their praiseworthy care. Egbert, as he tells us, presided personally over the studies of the younger clergy, for this was then reckoned one of the chief duties of a bishop. As soon as he was at leisure in the morning he sent for some of his young clerks, and, sitting on his couch, taught them in succession till about noon, when he said mass in his private chapel. After a frugal dinner he had them with him again, and entertained himself by hearing them discuss literary questions in his presence. Towards evening he recited Compline with them, and then, calling them to him one by one, gave his blessing to each as they knelt at his feet.

In the collection of canons already mentioned Egbert provided for the religious instruction of the poor as well as the rich. The teaching of the common people is one of the duties specially enjoined on the clergy, every priest being required to “instil with great exactness into the people committed to his charge the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, as well as the whole doctrine and practice of Christianity.” In the absence of books this was done orally, much use being made of instructions cast into a metrical form, and so committed to memory. Thus the multitude, if ignorant of letters, were certainly not uninstructed, as we see in the case of St. Cædmon whom Bede calls illiteratus, that is, unable to read; but who was nevertheless perfectly familiar with sacred history, which he had learnt by oral instruction, and was thus able to sing of the creation, the Deluge, the journeys of the Israelites, and the last judgment.

Albert, the master of the school, and the successor of Egbert in the see of York, is described by Alcuin in one of his poems as “a pattern of goodness, justice, and piety, teaching the Catholic faith in the spirit of love, stern to the stubborn, but pitiful and gentle to the good.” If he marked any youths among his pupils who showed peculiar signs of promise, like a good master, he made them his friends. “He observed the natural dispositions of each with wonderful skill, and, drawing them to him, taught and lovingly cherished them. Some he dexterously imbued with the grammatical art, whilst into the minds of others he instilled the sweetness of rhetoric. These he endeavoured to polish with the juridical grindstone, those he taught to cultivate the songs of the muses, and to tread the hill of Parnassus with lyric steps. To others, again, he made known the harmony of the heavens, the motions of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering stars; the laws of the heavenly bodies,[86] their rising and setting; the aerial movements of the sea, and the quaking of the earth; the nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts; the diversities of numbers and varieties of figures.” He taught also how to calculate the return of the Paschal solemnity, and above all expounded the mysteries of the Sacred Scriptures. He often travelled into Gaul and Italy in quest of books and new methods of instruction. The noblest families of Northumbria placed their sons under his care, not only those who were training for the ecclesiastical state, but those intended for the world. Indeed it is certain that the pupils of the episcopal and monastic schools were by no means exclusively ecclesiastics. Eddi tells us that St. Wilfrid received many youths to educate, who on reaching man’s estate, if they chose to embrace a secular life, were presented in armour to the king. Alfred, the son of king Egfrid of Northumbria, was himself a pupil of St. Wilfrid, and spent some years in Ireland that he might pursue his studies with greater advantage. He became a great patron of learning, and corresponded with St. Aldhelm on philosophical subjects and the difficulties of Latin prosody; and it was to his son Ceolwulf that St. Bede addressed the dedication of his Ecclesiastical History.

On the death of Egbert in 766 the unanimous voice of the people called Albert to the vacant see. He showed himself worthy of their choice, “feeding his flock with the food of the Divine Word, and guarding the lambs of Christ from the wolf.” He governed the Church of York for thirteen years, during which time he never abandoned his care of the school. The mastership, however, devolved on Alcuin, and such was the fame of his scholarship as to draw students not only from all parts of England and Ireland, but also from France and Germany. Among the latter was St. Luidger, a native of Friesland, afterwards known as the Apostle of Saxony, of whom we shall have more to say in the following chapter.

The extent and character of Alcuin’s learning will be more properly studied when we come to speak of his labours at the court of Charlemagne; it will be sufficient here to notice the fact that he was a scholar of exclusively English growth, and drew all the materials with which he worked in his after career from the library and the schools of York. In his writings he often alludes to the want he feels of “those invaluable books of scholastic erudition” which were there placed at his command, through the affectionate industry of his master, Albert, who continued, after his elevation to the episcopate,[87] to add to the treasures already collected. Two years before his death Albert resolved on resigning his pastoral charge that he might spend his last days as a simple monk, and devote himself exclusively to the affairs of his salvation. Calling to him, therefore, his two favourite pupils, Eanbald and Alcuin, he committed to the first the care of his diocese, and to the other that of his books, “the dearest of all his treasures.”[61] Alcuin was despatched to Rome to obtain the sanction of the Holy See for the appointment of Eanbald and it was at Parma on his homeward journey that the solicitations of Charlemagne won his promise to settle at the court of that monarch, and transfer to a foreign soil the learning he had acquired on the shores of Saxon England.

With the death of Albert the prosperity of the Early English schools may be said to have closed. Five years later the Danish keels appeared for the first time off the Northumbrian coast: it seemed only a passing alarm, but in 793 another armament effected a landing at Lindisfarne, and after slaughtering the monks, gave to the flames the most venerable of the English sanctuaries. This was but the beginning of sorrows. The following year the twin monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow shared a similar fate, and all the treasures of art and literature collected by St. Biscop were ruthlessly destroyed. For seventy years these scenes of carnage and plunder went on without interruption in every part of England, and the riches laid up in the churches everywhere pointed them out as the first objects of attack. The finishing-blow came in 867, when “a great heathen army,” as they are called by the Saxon chronicler, having wintered in East Anglia, and there supplied themselves with horses, marched northwards and made themselves masters of the city of York. Thence they overran the kingdom of Northumbria, carrying fire and sword wherever they appeared, till the whole country between the Ouse and the Tyne presented only the smoking ruins of what had once been cities and abbeys. Beverley, Ripon, Whitby, and Lastingham, all seats of learning and civilisation, were swept away, and in 875 the sea-king Halden crossed the Tyne and destroyed the last remains of the monastic institute in Northumbria. After burning Jarrow for the second time, he directed his course to Lindisfarne, where the episcopal see was still fixed, and where a new monastery had sprung up on the ruins of that formerly destroyed by the Danes. Eardulf was then bishop, and on learning the approach[88] of the pagans he determined to save the holy relics of St. Cuthbert by a timely flight. Calling his monks around him, therefore, he communicated to them his resolve, and having disinterred the body of the saint, together with those of St. Oswald and St. Aidan, they prepared to bid farewell to the holy island, whence the light of Christianity had shone forth over all the north of England for two hundred and forty years. This closing scene in the history of northern monasticism exhibits to us the monks of Lindisfarne in the hour of their sorest trial, surrounded by their school. There were in the monastery, says Simeon of Durham, a certain number of youths, brought up there from their infancy, who had been taught by the monks and trained in the singing of the Divine Office. These boys entreated Eardulf to suffer them to follow him. They set out, therefore, monks and children together, carrying the bier with the holy relics, their sacred vessels, the Holy Book of the Gospels, and their other books, and commenced that melancholy journey which, after seven years of wandering, was to bring them at last to the “grassy plain, on every side thickly wooded, but not easy to be made habitable,” where afterwards grew up, on the site of their wattled oratory, the princely city of Durham.

By these and similar calamities, extending not over one district, but over every part of the country, England was plunged back into the barbarism out of which she was but just emerging: her seats of learning were all swept away, and during the century that elapsed from the first landing of the Danes to the accession of Alfred, a night of gloomy darkness settled over the land.

The prominent importance attaching to the schools of Kent and Northumbria must not lead us to regard them as the only learned foundations existing in England during the early period of which we have hitherto been speaking. The spread of the monastic institute among the Anglo-Saxons was so rapid and so universal, that we are sometimes led to wonder how a country so thinly populated as England must have been in the seventh century, could have furnished those crowds of religious men and women who hastened to people her newly-erected cloisters. And wherever those cloisters were reared a knowledge of letters and the civilised arts was soon introduced, and pursued with as much ardour at Selsey as at Lindisfarne, among the nuns of St. Mildred or St. Hildelitha as among the brethren of Jarrow.

If the bold and mountainous scenery of Northumbria has become indelibly associated in our mind with the lives of those saintly scholars who have been made known to us by the pen of Bede, far away at the other extremity of England there is a province which still claims as its patron saint one whose learning was as great as theirs, and whose action on the Church was even yet more important. St Boniface, or Winfrid, as he was called before he entered on his apostolic labours, was born in the same year that witnessed the entrance of Bede into the monastery of Jarrow. They were therefore contemporaries, though widely different in character, as in the career which awaited them. The simple-hearted scholar whose holy happy life flowed calmly on from childhood to old age within his convent walls, like some quiet stream that never overpasses its verdant banks, is a contrast indeed to the great apostle who, after having evangelised half Europe, and ruled the churches of France[90] and Germany, as Vicar of the Vicar of Christ, with a spiritual sway larger than any ever exercised save by the successors of St. Peter, died, as was fitting, a martyr’s death, saluting with his parting words the joy and glory of that “long-expected day.”[62] Yet both in different ways exhibit to us the noblest features of the Anglo-Saxon race, whose simple piety and strong good sense are as apparent in Bede, as the ardour of its active charity is in Boniface.

He was a native then, not of the bleak and hardy north, but of the softer climate of that southern province,

It took its name from the deep hollows where the apple-blossoms clustered as thickly then as now, and the clematis wove its tangled wreaths in as wild profusion over bank and wood. Still covered with those grand primeval forests which made perpetual shadow in its pathless valleys, and, fearless of the billows that lost their fierceness as they broke upon that gentle shore, clothed even the purple rocks themselves with verdure, and bent their branches into the briny waves, it merited to receive from St. Aldhelm the title of dire Dumnonia. Perhaps he could not resist the tempting alliteration, or perhaps the wooded hollows of Devonshire oppressed with their leafy gloom the senses of the traveller who, as he tells us, had just passed over the barren hills of “Cornwall, void of flowery turf.” It formed the border-land of English Saxony, and touched on that unfriendly territory still inhabited by the Britons, who saw in the newly converted Saxons only a race of giants and savages, with whom they refused to hold any intercourse.

The Dumnonians, however, from the first era of their conversion, showed the same readiness to welcome the establishment among them of monks and schools as was elsewhere exhibited, and the city of Exeter is said to have received the name of Monkton from the number of religious which it contained. It was probably some of the Exeter monks who, in the course of a journey which they had undertaken for the purpose of preaching to the inhabitants of the wild Western districts, were hospitably received and entertained at Crediton by the father of Winfrid. The passing visit left an indelible impression on the boy’s heart, and he grew up with the fixed desire[91] of becoming a monk and a scholar. His father did what he could to turn him from his purpose, but finding himself forced at last to yield to his son’s entreaties, he committed him to the care of Wulphard, abbot of Exeter. Winfrid was at that time thirteen years of age. His education had not been neglected in his father’s house, and he now threw himself into his studies with an ardour which made it evident that he deserved some higher kind of teaching than the monks of Exeter could supply. The school of Nutscell, in Hampshire, a monastery afterwards destroyed by the Danes, possessed as high a reputation as any in Wessex, so thither Winfrid was transferred, and placed under the direction of the learned abbot Winbert. In this monastery Winfrid was able to satisfy his thirst for grammar, poetry, and the sacred sciences, and at last, being appointed to the care of the school, he drew students to hear him from all the southern provinces. In short, the scholasticus of Nutscell became a famous man; he taught not only the monks but even the nuns of that part of the world to study grammar and write hexameter verse; he attended royal councils and episcopal synods, and he even appeared in the character of an author, and composed a treatise on the Eight Parts of Speech. “Yet, though indued with such excellent knowledge,” says his biographer, “he was nothing puffed up in mind, nor did he despise any who were of meaner abilities, but the more his learning increased so much also did he increase in virtue, only showing himself the more humble, devout, pitiful and obedient.” Both King Ina, of Wessex, and Archbishop Bretwald, of Canterbury, knew his worth, and desired nothing better than to raise him to the highest dignities; but neither the charms of a studious life in his own cloister, nor the certain prospect of court preferment, sufficed to satisfy his ambition. He had within him in its fullest measure the apostolic fervour which animated so many of his countrymen, and led them to carry back to the old Germanic soil from whence they sprang the new faith which they had learnt in Britain. Year after year there came the news of English missionaries who had passed over into that huge province which then extended between the Elbe and the Rhine, the greater part of which was swallowed up in the inundation of 1287, and now forms the bed of the Zuyder Zee. It was called Friesland, and was the chief seat of the English missions. The first man who gave a certain sort of shape and system to these missions was an English priest named Egbert, who had been educated at Lindisfarne by Bishop Colman,[92] and afterwards passed over to Ireland to improve himself in her schools. The Anglo-Saxon scholars were accustomed at this time to resort in great numbers to the sister isle, going about from one master’s cell to another, to gather from each the science for which he was most renowned. The Irish received them hospitably, and furnished them with food, books, and teaching, gratis.

Egbert and his friend Edilhun were studying in the monastery of Rathmelsigi, in Connaught, when the great pestilence of 664 broke out, which caused such terrible ravages both in England and Ireland. It was on this occasion that St. Ultan, bishop of Ardbraccan, collected all the children who were left orphans, and had them brought up in a hospital or asylum at his own charge. The two English students were attacked by the plague, and Egbert, believing his last hour was at hand, went out in the morning, and sitting alone in a solitary place thought over his past life, and being full of compunction at the thought of his sins, watered his face with his tears, praying to God that he might yet have time granted him to do penance. He also made a vow that should it please God to spare his life, he would never return to his native land, but live abroad as a stranger; and that besides the Divine Office of the Church he would every day recite the entire Psalter, and every week pass one whole day and night fasting. Edilhun died the next night, gently reproaching his friend for having thus prevented their entering into everlasting life together; and Egbert kept his vow and remained in Ireland, doing good service as well to the Scots and Picts as to his countrymen, for it was through his influence that the former at last conformed to the Roman method of observing Easter, and his school was resorted to by every Anglo-Saxon student who crossed the sea in search of Divine wisdom. In his heart, however, Egbert nursed a great design, which he was never suffered to carry out in person. He desired to carry the Gospel among the races of Germany whence the English were originally descended, and Wicbert, one of his companions, being filled with the like desire, did actually proceed to Frisia, and there preached for two whole years among the heathen, but without much fruit. Egbert, understanding that it was not the will of God that he should himself embrace a missionary life, and being warned that his vocation lay rather among his own people, cherished the hope of at least inspiring some of his scholars with the apostolic spirit. Among these was Wilibrord, who, after receiving his early education among the monks of Ripon, had passed over[93] into Ireland in his twentieth year, attracted by the excellent science which then flourished in her schools, and the fame of his learned countryman. It appears probable that the two Ewalds, martyred in Friesland in 695, were likewise pupils or friends of Egbert’s, for Bede tells us that they were living strangers in Ireland for the sake of the eternal kingdom; that both were pious, but that Black Ewald was the more learned of the two. Wilibrord departed for Friesland in 696, accompanied by twelve fellow-missionaries; and the protection of Pepin, who then ruled the Franks as mayor of the palace to the Merovingian monarch, enabled him to pursue his apostolic career in spite of the opposition of Radbod, the Pagan duke of the country. It would be pleasant, did space permit it, to say something of his labours;—to relate how he found his way into Denmark and brought away thirty young Danes, whom he sent to be instructed in the schools which he had founded at Treves and Utrecht; how on his voyage back to Friesland he landed at Heligoland, the holy island of the Saxons, but which then bore the name of Fosetesland, from the hideous idol to whose worship it was dedicated. It was a wild, mysterious spot. No animals that had once grazed on its sacred herbage were suffered to be molested, and near the altar of the god a clear stream bubbled up of which the natives never drank save in awful silence, for the utterance of a single word would, as they believed, bring down on them the vengeance of the dreaded Fosete. Wilibrord caused some of the cattle to be killed for food, and baptized three converts in the fountain, over the waters of which he broke the mystic silence by pronouncing the invocation of the Holy Trinity. This daring act excited the direful wrath of Radbod, and on the death of Pepin, in 714, Wilibrord found himself forced to leave the country. He was, however, reinstated in his bishopric of Utrecht by Charles Martel, and in 717 we find him engaged in destroying another Frisian idol in the isle of Walcheren.

Tales like these fired the heart of Winfrid with the desire of sharing in such glorious enterprises. After a journey to Rome, whither he went to obtain the authority and blessing of Pope Gregory II., he joined Wilibrord at Utrecht, and for some time laboured under his direction. But finding that the bishop intended to have him appointed his successor, he fled away in alarm, and took refuge in the heart of Germany, where he continued until 723, preaching among the Saxons and Hessians. According to the old writer, Adam of Bremen, “Winfrid, the philosopher of Christ,” as he[94] calls him, is undoubtedly to be regarded as the first apostle of that part of the country. It was at this time that he gained a young disciple, whose story is sufficiently connected with the subject which we wish to illustrate to justify its insertion here. Adela, the daughter of King Dagobert II., had founded a monastery at Treves, where, on his journey from Friesland into Hesse, Winfrid was hospitably received and entertained. After he had said mass, he sat down to table with the abbess and her family; and her young grandson, Gregory, a boy of fifteen, who had just come from the court school, was summoned to read aloud the Latin Scriptures, according to custom, during the repast. Having knelt and received the holy missionary’s blessing, he took the book, and acquitted himself of his task with sufficient success. “You read very well, my son,” said Winfrid, “that is, if you understand what you are reading.” Gregory replied that he did, and was about to continue the lecture, when Winfrid interrupted him. “What I wish to know, my son, is whether you can explain what you are reading in your native tongue.” The youth confessed that he could not do this, but begged the missionary to do so himself. “Begin again then,” said Winfrid, “and read distinctly;” and this being done, he took occasion to deliver to the abbess and the rest of the community, a discourse so sublime and touching, that when they rose from table Gregory sought his grandmother, and announced his determination of following their guest, that he might learn the Scriptures from him, and become his disciple. “How foolish!” said the abbess; “he is a man of whom we know nothing: I cannot tell you whence he comes, or whither he goes.” “I care nothing for that,” replied Gregory; “and if you will not give me a horse, I will follow him on foot.” His importunity prevailed, and he was permitted to join the company of Winfrid, and journey with him into Thuringia.

The prodigious success that accompanied the labours of Winfrid, having reached the ears of Pope Gregory II. he was summoned to Rome, and there consecrated bishop of the German nation. At the same time he received his new name of Boniface, and solemnly signed an oath of fidelity to the Holy See, which he placed on the tomb of the Apostles. Then returning to Germany he pursued his apostolic career along the banks of the Rhine and the Danube; he penetrated into the wild fastnesses of Hesse, cut down in the ancient Hercynian forest the huge Donner Eiche, or thunder oak, sacred to Jupiter, and erected a wooden chapel out of its timbers, on the[95] spot where now stands the town of Geismar. Within the space of twenty years one hundred thousand converts had abjured their idols and received baptism, but the work as it grew on his hands required additional labourers. The eloquence which in old time had earned for the monk Winfrid a scholar’s fame, was now employed to rouse the apostolic spirit in the hearts of his countrymen, and a circular letter addressed to the bishops and abbots of England, painted the wants of the German mission in such moving terms that his appeal was quickly responded to, and he soon found himself surrounded by a noble band of missioners, among whom were Burchard, Lullus, Wilibald, and Winibald, the two last named being nephews of the saint.

We find from the lives of these great men, written by their immediate followers, that the same form of community life was adopted among them which we have seen had been already established in the English dioceses. The bishop and his clergy formed a kind of college;[63] and, in this episcopal monastery, as it may be called, the younger clerics were trained in letters and ecclesiastical discipline. The college thus founded by St. Wilibald at Ordorp, became so famous as to draw learned men from all parts of Europe to take part in his labours among the populations of Hesse and Thuringia. Yet more renowned was the episcopal seminary, founded at Utrecht by St. Gregory, the young disciple of St. Boniface already named, who, after completing his studies at Ordorp, and following the saint through the long course of his missions, was sent by him a little before his death to administer the see of Utrecht, then vacant by the death of Wilibrord. Gregory formed his clergy into a community, which he governed in person, and was joined by many illustrious Englishmen, among whom was St. Lebwin, the apostle of Overyssel, and the patron saint of Deventer. The seminary of Utrecht produced some famous alumni, of whom I will name but one whose history cannot be altogether passed over in a narrative of schools and schoolboys. Luidger was the son of a Friesian noble, who confided him to St. Gregory’s care at a very early age. In fact, Luidger’s somewhat premature commencement of his school life was the result of his own entreaties. He was a precocious child, who cared nothing at all for play, and so soon as he could walk and talk gave signs of a passion for books and reading. Whilst his companions were engaged in the sports of the age he would gather[96] together pieces of bark off the trees and busy himself in making little books out of these materials. Then he would imitate writing with whatever fluid he could find, and running to his nurse with these fine treasures, bid her take care of them, as though they had been the most precious codices. If any one asked him what he had been doing all day, he would reply that he had been making books; and if further questioned as to who had taught him to read and write, he would answer “God taught me.” It will not seem astonishing that a child of this temper should be possessed with a strong desire to learn how to read and write in good earnest. Yielding to his persevering request his parents accordingly sent him to Utrecht, where Gregory placed him in his school and gave him the tonsure. The Monk of Werden, who wrote his life, records his sweetness with his companions, and his devotion in church. He was always reading, singing, or praying; and always to be seen with a bright and smiling countenance, though seldom moved to laughter. And there was something about him so winning and amiable, that master and schoolfellows all loved him alike. In course of time he was sent to England to receive deacon’s orders, Gregory himself not having received episcopal consecration; and here, for the first time, he became acquainted with Alcuin, whose scholastic career was just then commencing. Luidger returned to Utrecht, but an unfortunate blunder which he made in the public reading of a lesson, and which drew down on him a severe reproof from his abbot, suggested to him the desirableness of a further course of study, under the great English master. Gregory reluctantly consented to his plan, and Luidger undertook a second voyage to England, and spent three years and a half in the school of York. Here he was as popular as he had formerly been at Utrecht, and his biographer seems half disposed to think that the extraordinary signs of affection lavished on him by his masters and fellow-students require some excuse, for he tells us they really could not help it, and that any one who had known him must have done the same. To none, however, was he so dear as to Alcuin, who always bestowed on him the title of “son.” During his residence in York, Luidger read through the whole of the Old and New Testaments besides a great many books of secular literature, and thoroughly studied the monastic rule as it was carried out in the English monasteries; and at the end of that time he returned to Utrecht, laden with books, and well fitted to instruct others. Alberic, the successor of Gregory, ordained him[97] priest, and sent him to preach in his own country, till the Saxons drove him out, and then he became the apostle of that people also. Charlemagne heard of his merit from Alcuin, who by that time was fixed at the imperial court, and by his orders, sorely against the will of the missioner, Luidger was consecrated first bishop of Mimigardford in Saxony. He immediately founded a great monastery of regular canons to serve his cathedral, from which circumstance the name of the place was changed to Minster, or Münster, which it still bears. But his favourite foundation was at Werden, a spot which he had chosen in the midst of the huge virgin forests which clothed the banks of the river Rura. The old legend makes us understand what sort of work was involved in these foundations, when it tells us that the bishop and his companions, having pitched their tents, prepared to cut down the trees and clear a space large enough to contain a few rude huts; but they were dismayed when they beheld the massive trunks of the growth of centuries, with their branches so thickly interlaced that they could catch no glimpse of the sky, while the summits of the mighty oaks seemed to touch the clouds. They determined to wait till morning to commence their task; and meanwhile Luidger knelt down beneath one of the largest oaks, and was soon absorbed in his devotions. It was then a clear and beautiful night, the moon and stars shining unclouded in the heavens. Gradually, however, the clouds gathered, the wind arose, and a furious tempest burst over the forest. The monks heard the crash of falling trunks and trembled with fear; they guessed not that the stormy elements were being forced to do them service. When morning dawned there was an open space around them, the trees lay prostrate on all sides, and a sufficient space was cleared for the foundation of the monastery. One tree alone remained untouched, it was that beneath which St. Luidger had prayed, and which was long reverentially preserved. When at last it was cut down, a stone was placed on the site in memory of the event.

In these episcopal monasteries Luidger established a course of sacred studies, over which he personally presided. Such was, in fact, the universal discipline observed by the German missionaries, and hence the institution of cathedral schools spread over every province from Denmark to the mountains of the Tyrol. There we find the same class of foundations established by St. Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, concerning whom it will be necessary to speak a little more particularly. He was a native of Ireland, and held to be one of the[98] most learned men of his time. It appears probable, though it is by no means certain, that he is the same Virgil who, when still a simple priest, was sent into Bavaria, together with Sidonius, and was there reported to have given expression to certain scientific theories of doubtful orthodoxy. It is not easy at the present day to determine precisely what the supposed errors were, as the only notice of them that remains occurs in a letter from St. Boniface to Pope Zachary, wherein Virgil is charged with teaching “that there is another world, and other men under the earth, another sun and another moon.” The reply of the Pope was to the effect that if on examination by a council Virgil should be convicted of teaching this “perverse doctrine,” he should be degraded; and the matter was finally settled by his being summoned to Rome, where inquiry was made into the facts of the case. It would seem that his explanation of his own doctrine must have proved satisfactory, if the priest Virgil here spoken of were the same who was shortly afterwards raised to the see of Saltzburg, and who in 1233 was solemnly canonised by Pope Gregory IX. These facts have, however, furnished the groundwork of a story which has been repeated by D’Alembert, and adopted with all its crowd of attendant blunders by a host of modern imitators. According to this version, Virgil, Bishop of Saltzburg, was excommunicated by St. Boniface for teaching the existence of the antipodes, and this sentence is represented to have been confirmed by Pope Zachary.[64] It will be seen, however, that the person of whose doctrines Boniface complained was not a bishop, but a priest; that the opinions attributed to him bore no reference to the antipodes; that he was not excommunicated; and that so far from either passing or confirming[99] such a sentence, the Holy See examined, and it is to be presumed approved his doctrine, since it raised him to a bishopric, and at a subsequent period canonised him. St. Boniface reported the supposed errors of Virgil as they were reported to him, and whatever may be understood by the expressions which he quotes, they cannot be held to signify a belief in the antipodes. They rather seem to point to some theory of the existence of another race of men, distinct in origin from the sons of Adam, who therefore shared neither in original sin nor the benefits of redemption, errors which, as Baronius shows, might reasonably be styled ‘perverse.’ It is indeed true that Bede, and other early writers on natural philosophy, did not believe in the antipodes; not, as Mr. Turner remarks, from “any superstitious scruple,” but because they followed the geographical system of Pliny, who imagined the climate of the southern hemisphere to be incapable of supporting human life. Yet this history of Virgil and his condemned propositions has been made the occasion of impeaching St. Bede, St. Boniface, and the whole race of monastic scholars, not only of considering a belief in the antipodes as heretical, but of denying the spherical form of the earth, a point which was certainly never involved in the controversy.[65]

Next to the foundation of churches and monasteries, St. Boniface trusted to the establishment of public schools for the consolidation of the faith in the newly converted countries. In every place where he planted a monastic colony a school was opened, not merely for the instruction of the younger monks, but in order that the rude population by whom they were surrounded might be trained in holy discipline, and that their uncivilised manners might be softened by the influence of humane learning. At Fritislar and at Utrecht, as afterwards at Fulda, public schools were therefore opened, and how nearly the maintenance and prosperity of these schools lay at the heart of their founder, may be gathered from the epistle which he[100] wrote shortly before his martyrdom to Fulrad, the councillor of King Pepin, in which he implores the protection of that monarch for such of his disciples as were engaged in the work of educating children. We also find incidental notices in his letters of certain monks appointed by him to the post of schoolmasters (magistri infantium).

St. Lullus, who has been named above among the companions of St. Boniface, and who was destined in after years to become his successor, had been educated at Malmsbury, whence he removed to Jarrow and finished his studies under Bede. Nine of his letters are preserved among those of St. Boniface, and in one of them, addressed to Cuthbert, abbot of Wearmouth, he entreats that copies of the works of his venerable master may be sent to him without delay. Cuthbert’s reply shows in what esteem Bede was already held as a writer, both at home and abroad, and how great was the demand for his works, which the copyists could not multiply fast enough. He begs for a little indulgence, seeing that the terrible cold of the past winter has disabled the hands of his best writers. “Since you have asked me for some works of the Blessed Bede,” he says, “I have prepared, with the help of my boys, what I now send you, namely, his books in prose and verse on the man of God, Cuthbert. I would have sent you more had I been able. But this winter the frost in our island has been so severe, with terrible winds, that the fingers of our transcribers have been unable to execute any more books.” Here is a glimpse into what one may call the real life of the scriptorium, which we are sometimes disposed to regard in a certain picturesque and sentimental light. Incessant labour and chapped hands formed part of the business, and the severities of climate made themselves felt in rooms entirely destitute of the appliances of modern comfort. Cuthbert goes on to entreat St. Lullus to send him if possible some foreign artificers skilled in the art of making glass vessels, and also a harper. “I have a harp,” he says, “but no one who knows how to play on it.” The whole correspondence of St. Boniface and St. Lullus bears witness to the deep interest felt by their countrymen in the work on which they were engaged. Their letters are addressed to bishops, abbots, monks, and nuns, and show how close an intercourse was kept up with England in spite of the difficulties of communication. Presents are exchanged between the absent missionaries and their friends at home. While the English kings and prelates send contributions of books and altar-plate, and the English nuns despatch a welcome supply of clothing, Boniface[101] sends back a chasuble, “not all of silk, but mingled with goats’ hair,” and some linen cloths, which, before the linen manufactory had been introduced into England, were highly prized luxuries. To another friend he presents some fine German falcons. Some of the letters preserved are of peculiar interest, as showing us what kind of learning was then pursued in the religious houses of England, and specially in those of the English nuns, whom Mabillon calls, “the peculiar glory of the Order.” Boniface in former years had directed the studies of several convents of religious women, and kept up an active correspondence with his old pupils, who entered heartily into all his interests, and forwarded them to the best of their power. Naturally enough, their talk is often of books. In one of his earliest letters, addressed to the Kentish abbess Eadburga, he begs her to send him the “Acts of the Martyrs;” and in her reply, which is written in Latin, she informs him that, together with the literary offering, she has sent him fifty pieces of gold and an altar carpet. Her liberality encourages him to beg for new favours; and whilst he thanks her for her present, he petitions that she will get written out for him, either by herself or her scholars, the Epistles of St. Paul in letters of gold, in order to inspire his neophytes with greater reverence for the Holy Scriptures. In his next epistle he rewards her diligence with the appropriate present of a silver pen.

Eadburga removed to Rome, whence many of her letters to Boniface were afterwards addressed. But the correspondence continued to be carried on by some of the pupils whom she had left behind her in England, and specially by a relation of the saint’s named Lioba, then a religious in the convent of Wimbourne.

Of this convent and its learned inmates I must say a few words, as they deserve a place in our catalogue of English scholars. The present collegiate church of Wimbourne, ancient as it is—and the architecture of its tower bears out its claim to have been founded by the Confessor—does but mark the site of that far more ancient minster which owed its erection to the two sisters of good King Ina, Cuthburga and Guenburga by name. This was one of the very earliest convents of women founded in England, and is noticed by St. Aldhelm in a letter written in 705, wherein he declares that he has purposed, in the hidden recesses of his soul, to grant the privilege of free election to certain monasteries in his diocese; among others, that which lieth by the river Wimburnia, presided over by Cuthburga, sister to the king. Perhaps he was moved to this act of favour by[102] the fact that Cuthburga and Guenburga were pupils of his old friend the abbess Hildelitha, the first of English virgins who had consecrated herself to Christ. Hildelitha received her education at Chelles, in France, and brought into the cloisters of Barking all the learning of that famous school. This she increased by her intercourse with St. Aldhelm; and her disciples, as we have seen, were rather profoundly versed in sacred letters. Neither did the Wimbourne scholars decline in learning under the good abbess Tetta, who was governing a community of five hundred nuns with admirable wisdom at the time when Lioba first introduced herself to the notice of St. Boniface in the following graceful letter:—

“To the most noble lord, decorated with the pontifical dignity, Boniface, most dear to me in Christ, and, what is more, united to me by the ties of blood, Leobgitha, the last of the handmaids of Christ, health and salvation.

“I beg your clemency to condescend to recollect the friendship which you had some time ago for my father. His name was Tinne; he lived in the western parts, and died about eight years ago. My mother also desires to be remembered by you; her name is Ebba, she is related to you, and suffers much from infirmity. I am their only daughter, and desire, though unworthy, to claim you as my brother, for there are none of my relations in whom I have so much confidence as in you. I send you a little present, not as being worthy of your greatness, but that you may preserve the memory of my littleness, and may not forget me on account of the distance which separates us. What I chiefly ask of you, dearest brother, is that you will defend me by the buckler of your prayers from the hidden snares of the enemy. I beg you to excuse the rustic style of this letter, and not to refuse me a few words from your affability which may serve me as a model, and which I shall be eager to receive. As to the little verses you will find written below, I have endeavoured to compose them according to the rules of poetry, not out of presumption, but as a first attempt of my weak little genius, desiring the help of your elegant mind. I learnt this art from Eadburga, who ceased not to meditate on the Divine law day and night. Farewell; live long and happy, and pray for me.”

Then follow four rhymed hexameters in Latin, wherein she not inelegantly commends him to the protection of Heaven. This was a common way of concluding a letter in the eighth century, and St. Boniface, in his epistles to his friends, frequently relieves the graver[103] subjects of which he treats by a Latin distich or acrostic; sometimes also by a scrap of Saxon verse. He responded very heartily to Lioba’s appeal, and a familiar correspondence was at once opened between them. It is supposed, with every show of probability, that the lady to whom St. Boniface afterwards dedicated his poem on the Virtues was no other than the Anglo-Saxon nun. In the dedication to this poem he says, “I send to my sister ten golden apples gathered on the tree of life, where they hung amid the flowers.” These golden apples are ten enigmas, each containing the definition of some virtue, the name of which, in true Saxon taste, is formed by the initial letters of the lines.

Another of the most constant correspondents and advisers of Boniface was his old diocesan, Daniel of Winchester, whom he frequently consulted in the difficulties with which he was beset. Ozanam observes that the former grammarian and scholasticus peeps out in one of the questions he sends for solution; namely, if the baptism were valid, administered by a certain priest who was in the habit of using the form, In nomine Patria et Filia, et Spiritui Sancta?[66] But we may, I think, acquit our great apostle of the charge of pedantry, founded on this passage. He was engaged in planting the Church on a new soil, and a scrupulous exactness, in preserving the sacramental forms of words from corruption, need not be taken as a sign of scholastic priggishness. There is no saying where the “Patria et Filia” might have ended, or what more extensive variations might not have been added by the il-literati of Thuringia. Bishop Daniel gave him a great deal of excellent advice, and was of considerable service to Boniface by supplying him with books. On one occasion we find the missionary writing to his good friend, begging him to send the book of the Prophets “which the abbot Wimbert, my master, left at his death. It is written in large and very distinct letters; I could not have a greater consolation in my old age, for there is no book like it in this country, and as my sight grows weak I cannot distinguish the small letters which run together in the volumes I now have.”

In 732, Boniface received the pallium from the hands of Pope Gregory III., together with the authority of Papal Legate and Vicar over the bishops of France and Germany. This office empowered him to take every step necessary for the firm establishment of the[104] faith in the newly converted countries, and at the same time he was charged with the far more difficult task of restoring Church discipline in the Gallican provinces, where, owing to the barbarism of the times, a frightful state of anarchy prevailed. We shall chiefly follow him in his apostolic career in Germany, where his first care was to provide for the necessities of the infant Church by the erection of several new sees. Burchard was consecrated Bishop of Wurtzburg, and Wilibald was appointed to the see of Eichstadt, a woody district overspread with oaks, which as yet contained but one small church. Other prelates were named to fill the sees of Erfurt, Ratisbon, and Friesingen. The care of the Archbishop was next directed to providing a succession of clergy for the new dioceses, and with this view he founded several monasteries, one of which became in after-times the greatest monastic school in Germany. In the year 730, when Boniface travelled into Bavaria, to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline in that country, many Bavarian nobles committed their sons to his care, and among these was Sturm, who was offered by his parents to the service of God. Boniface placed him in the monastery he had recently founded at Fritzlar, under the care of Wigbert, one of his English disciples, and took great care of his education. The innocence and humility of the youth made him dear to all his masters, and he quickly learnt the Psalter by heart, and studied the hidden sense of the sacred Scriptures. Being ordained priest, he preached among the neighbouring population for three years, but at the end of that time he was seized with the desire to seek out some solitude where he might found a religious house; and Boniface, approving his design, sent him into the forest of Buchonia to choose a fitting site. Taking two companions with him, they travelled on for two days, seeing nothing but the earth and the sky, and the huge trees through which they made their way. At the end of the third day they reached Hirsfield, where they built themselves some rude huts with the bark of the trees which they felled, and began the practices of a religious life. Boniface, however, was not satisfied with their choice of a situation, and at his desire, Sturm, after exploring the upper course of the river Fulda without success, set out alone, mounted on an ass, on a journey into the wilderness, through which he travelled for days, seeing nothing but the huge trees, the birds, and the wild beasts that roamed at large in the forest glades. At night he cut down wood enough with his axe to make a little enclosure, within which he fastened his beast to save it from the[105] wolves; but for himself he feared nothing, and after tranquilly making the sign of the cross on his forehead, he lay down and slept till morning. At last he reached a vast and woody solitude, which Prince Carloman, the owner, bestowed on him as a free gift, and here, in the year 744, nine years after their settlement at Hirsfield, Sturm, with seven companions, laid the foundation of the Abbey of Fulda. St. Boniface gave them the necessary instructions, and visited them every year; but being desirous to establish among them the rule of St. Benedict in its perfection, he sent Sturm into Italy to visit the monastery of Monte Cassino, and others most renowned for their strict observance, that he might be the better able to form his own community in regular discipline. After a year thus spent in studying the monastic rule, Sturm returned to Fulda, where, before he died, he had the consolation of seeing a zealous community of 400 monks serving God in what had before been a desolate wilderness, and the abbey, like all those founded by St. Boniface, became quickly renowned for the sanctity of its inmates, and the good scholars whom it nurtured within its walls.

To complete the conversion and civilisation of the country, Boniface conceived the plan of bringing over some religious women from England, and establishing them in various parts, that they might provide the means of education to their own sex. Othlonus, in his history, names Chunihilt and her daughter Berathgilt as the first Englishwomen who passed over into Germany at the invitation of Boniface, and calls them valde eruditæ in liberali scientia. But their renown has been eclipsed by that of St. Lioba, to whom the archbishop naturally turned as the likeliest of his English friends to aid him in his great designs. In fact, there were many at Wimbourne disposed to enter heart and soul into the interests of the German mission. Lioba and her cousin Thecla were nearly related to the archbishop, and Walburga was sister to his two companions, Winibald and Wilibald. He knew that their acquirements qualified them to teach others. They had all been carefully trained by the abbess Tetta, and were skilful, not merely in the womanly art of the needle, but likewise in sacred literature. Lioba’s accomplishments may be truly called surprising, when we remember that their owner was a nun, living in the middle of the eighth century in a remote abbey of a half-barbarous land. Instructed from her childhood in grammar, poetry, and the liberal arts, she had increased her treasure of learning by assiduous reading. She had attentively studied the[106] Old and New Testaments, and committed a great part of them to memory. She was familiar with the writings of the Fathers, and with the decrees and canons of the Church—grave sort of reading for so fair a student—(and I do not use the epithet in a conventional sense, for her biographer tells us she was named Lioba, or the beloved one, because of her exceeding beauty); but in those days lighter literature there was none. As we have seen, she could write in the Latin tongue with a graceful simplicity, both in prose and verse. When not engaged in study she worked with her hands, as was enjoined by the rule, but she greatly preferred reading, or hearing others read, to manual employments. Indeed, it was not easy to satisfy her in this respect. When abbess, she insisted on all those under her charge taking that midday repose allowed by the rule of St. Benedict, chiefly, as she said, because the want of sleep takes away the love of reading. But when she herself lay down at these times to rest, she had some of her pupils to read the Scriptures by the side of her couch, and they could not omit or mispronounce a word without her correcting it, though apparently she might be asleep. Yet all this learning was accompanied with a modesty and humility that made her seek in all things to be regarded as the least in the house. There was nothing of arrogance in her behaviour, nothing of bitterness in her words, says her biographer, Ralph of Fulda. “She was as admirable in her understanding as she was boundless in her charity. She liked to wash the feet of her spiritual children, and to serve them at table, and she did this when she herself was fasting. Her countenance was truly angelic, always sweet and joyful, though she never indulged in laughter. No one ever saw her angry, and her aspect agreed with her name, which in Saxon signifies the Beloved, and in Greek, Philomena.”[67]

It was in 748 that the letters from St. Boniface reached Wimbourne, requesting that Lioba, Thecla, and Walburga might be sent over to him, together with as many of their companions as might be willing to share in their enterprise. Thirty nuns at once offered themselves, and the little colony, after a stormy passage across the sea to Antwerp,[68] was met at Mentz by the archbishop, who proceeded to establish Lioba in a monastery he had built for her at Bischoffsheim, where she very soon collected a numerous congregation of[107] holy virgins. Walburga went on to Thuringia, where her brother, Winibald, was superior of seven houses of monks. He had long purposed retiring to some greater solitude, and, with the advice of his brother, he chose a wild valley in the diocese, clothed with majestic forests and watered by mountain streams. It bore the name of Heidensheim; and here, in 752, Winibald, having cleared the ground, erected a church and two monasteries, one for himself and his monks, the other for Walburga’s community. The savage natives beheld with jealous eyes this intrusion into their solitudes, and the destruction of their sacred oaks; but ere a few years had passed, the minster of Heidensheim stood in the centre of a Christian population, and the wild pagan forest had been converted into a smiling land of woods and pastures, where all the arts of civilised life were taught and practised in a society over which the abbot presided with something like paternal sway.

Walburga and her nuns seem to have cultivated letters as diligently in their forest home as by the banks of the Wimburnia. The travels of St. Wilibald, who had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and often related what he had seen to his sister and her nuns, were afterwards written by them, not certainly in very classical Latin, but with a lucidity and truthfulness of style which appears in all the Anglo-Saxon writers, and which contrasts very remarkably with the marvellous narrations of Sir John Mandeville. St. Walburga appears also to have been the author of the “Life of St. Winibald,” and it is quite clear that the singular taste for literature existing among German nuns in the tenth century formed part of the tradition which they had received from their Anglo-Saxon foundresses. Mabillon praises not merely their erudition, but the zeal they displayed in employing it for the good of their neighbours, and says that, moved by a laudable emulation, they devoted themselves to study and the transcription of books with no less energy than the monks. He particularly praises the nuns of Eiken, who employed their time in reading, meditating, transcribing, and painting; specially the two abbesses Harlinda and Renilda, who wrote out the Psalter, the four Gospels, and many other books of Holy Scripture, adorning them with liquid gold, gems, and pearls.

The after-career of St. Boniface exhibits him to us reforming the Frankish Church, long vexed with schism and other frightful disorders, which had grown out of a century of treasons and civil distractions unequalled in any history. The enemies of discipline[108] were naturally enough enemies also to the authority of the Holy See. They had taken advantage of the chaotic state to which society had returned to reject the law of clerical celibacy, and to establish the practice of simony on a gigantic scale. St. Boniface struck at the root of the evil by enforcing obedience to the Roman pontiff, and, happily for the future destinies of the French Church, his efforts were heartily supported by the brothers Carloman and Pepin, the two mayors of the palace, and the real sovereigns of Gaul. His canons of reform were promulgated in a grand national council, and in 748 Pope Zachary established the authority of the see of Mentz over all the German provinces from Utrecht to the Rhetian Alps. One would have thought that the government of such a province would have sufficed to employ the energies of one man; but Boniface kept a place in his thoughts for the necessities of his native land. Exile as he was, he never forgot that he was an Englishman, and though it does not appear that he ever revisited his own country, he took a very active part in some of her affairs. It is rather puzzling to make out how in those days of rude civilization the German missionaries contrived to carry on their voluminous correspondence with friends at home, for the transmission of letters was certainly not provided for by any international postage regulations. It appears, however, from many passages in the letters of St. Boniface that his mails were brought to him by the Anglo-Saxon pilgrims who were continually streaming from England to Rome. Some of these were students, going to make their studies in the Saxon school, lately established in the holy city by King Ina; others were devout monks; and others, unhappily, rather indevout and disedifying characters, who made their pilgrimage a pretext for gadding about the world, and casting off the restraints of respectability. The see of Canterbury was at that time filled by a great friend of St. Boniface, named Cuthbert, who applied to him for help and advice in the sore troubles which surrounded him. The evil example of Ethelbald, King of Mercia, was causing a grievous relaxation of discipline among the clergy, whereby many grave scandals were brought on the Church, and St. Boniface did not hesitate to address the king a letter of remonstrance, which seems to have produced its effect. In 747, the Council of Cloveshoe was summoned for the reform of abuses by command of Pope Zachary, Ethelbald also giving it the weight of his presence and authority.

[109]

The Fathers of this Council owed much to the advice of Boniface, and their decrees, which are exceedingly interesting, have a good deal to say on the subject of education. They ordain that priests should constantly teach and explain the Creed and the “Our Father” in the vulgar tongue; that bishops, abbots, and abbesses do by all means diligently provide that all their people incessantly apply their minds to reading; that boys be brought up in the ecclesiastical schools, so as to be useful to the Church of God, and that their masters do not employ them in bodily labour. Sunday is to be strictly observed, and no man is to dare to do any servile work on that day, save for the preparing of his meat; but if it be necessary for him to journey on that day he may ride, row, or travel by any conveyance he chooses, provided he first hear mass. It is only fitting that every man should honour that day, on which God created light, sent manna to the Israelites, rose from the dead, and sent down the Holy Ghost, and it is also fitting that Christian men should prepare for its celebration by coming to church on Saturday, bringing a light with them, and then hearing evensong, and after midnight, prime also; being careful whilst there to keep a peaceful mind, and not to dispute or quarrel. Our forefathers were not left in uncertainty as to what was comprised under the head of servile work, for on this point Archbishop Theodore had laid down rules of great exactness. He divided it into two heads, man’s work, and woman’s work; the first of which comprised husbandry, garden work, the felling of trees, the building of houses and walls, the quarrying of stone, and the digging of ditches; while to the gentler sex belonged weaving, washing, sewing, baking, brewing, wool-combing, the beating of flax and the shearing of sheep. The feeling with which the observance of the Sunday was regarded is best expressed by the beautiful Saxon word by which it was called, the freolsday, or day of freedom, on which even serfs did not do serfs’ work. The freolsung, or Sunday freedom, lasted from noontide on Saturday to the dawn of light on Monday morning—other similar seasons of freedom being established at the greater festivals. The council likewise enjoined the exercise of private prayer after the accustomed formula, wherein prayer to the saints and intercession for the dead are specially named. In church schools every one is to learn the psalter by heart, even if he cannot master the art of chanting it, and the chant itself, as well as the ritual for the administration of the Sacraments, the order of feasts, and everything else appertaining to divine worship,[110] is ordered to be exactly conformed to the custom of the Roman Church.[69]

It may be asked what are the schools to which reference is made in these decrees? Chiefly, no doubt, the Episcopal and monastic seminaries; but it would seem that the mass priest’s school is also intended, of which mention is often made in the Anglo-Saxon councils. Among our Saxon forefathers the education of the children of his parishioners was recognised as one of the chief duties of the parish priest. “Mass-priests shall always have in their houses a school of learners; and if any good man will trust his little ones to them for lore, they shall right gladly receive and kindly teach them. For ye shall remember that it is written: ‘They that be learned shall shine as heaven’s brightness; and they that instruct many to justice shall shine as stars for ever.’ They shall not however, for such lore, demand anything of the parents, besides that which the latter may give of their own will.”[70] This decree, the parentage of which is to be traced to the Council of Vaison, reappears in the acts of several councils of England, France, and Italy, the very language being preserved in the Carlovingian Council of Orleans, and in the Constitutions of Atto of Vercelli. And here we see the origin of our parochial schools, which are as emphatically the priest’s schools, as the seminaries are the schools of the bishop.

The career of Boniface was now drawing to its close, and he seized the occasion of Pepin’s coronation to obtain the sanction of the new monarch to a design he had long secretly cherished. It was that of resigning his dignities, and ending his life, as he had begun it, in humble missionary labours. He accordingly wrote, entreating the king’s protection for his churches, clergy, and scholars. “I beg his highness,” he says, “in the name of Christ, to let me know, while I live, in what way he will deal with my disciples after my death. For they are, almost all of them, foreigners; some are priests established in distant places, others monks employed in their different cloisters in the education of youth, some of them are old men, who have been for years the companions and sharers of my labours. Therefore I am most anxious that they should not be disturbed after my death, but should remain under the protection of the king.”[111] Pepin having fully granted all his wishes, and recognised Lullus, whom, by permission of Pope Zachary, Boniface had named as his successor, the archbishop published the charter granted by the Holy See to the abbots of Fulda, which exempted it from episcopal jurisdiction, and made over to Lullus the church of St. Martin at Utrecht, the ancient see of his predecessor and countryman, St. Wilibrord. When all these arrangements had been made, St. Boniface joyfully prepared for his fourth and last expedition to Frisia, where he seems to have already anticipated receiving the martyr’s crown. He wrote to Lullus early in 755 telling him that the end of his life was approaching, and bidding him finish the church of Fulda, in which he desired that his body might be laid. “Prepare all things for my journey,” he says, “and do not forget to enclose with my books a shroud, to contain my mortal remains.”

He would not depart without bidding farewell to St. Lioba, whom he recommended to his successor, giving orders that at her death she also might be buried in the church of Fulda, that together they might await the resurrection. Having nothing of greater value to bestow on her, he gave her, as his parting gift, his monk’s cowl, a precious token of his fatherly regard, and of the absolute poverty which he professed. He then set out, attended by Eoban, an Anglo-Saxon monk, whom he had consecrated Bishop of the Frisians, and fifty-one companions, of whom ten only were priests; and, sailing down the Rhine, made his way into Eastern Friesland. A great number of the pagans were induced by his preaching to embrace the faith; and June 5, being the vigil of Pentecost, was fixed for the administration of Holy Baptism. A tent was erected on a plain near the banks of a little river, not far from the modern town of Dokkum. But whilst the saint awaited his converts, the tidings reached him that a band of pagans were approaching, armed with shields and spears. The laymen in his company would have offered resistance, but Boniface forbade them to draw their swords. “Forbear, my sons,” he said, “for the Scripture teaches us to return not evil for evil, but rather good. To me the long-expected day has at last arrived: the time of my departure is at hand. Be comforted, and fear not them who can destroy the body, for they cannot touch the immortal soul. Trust in God and rejoice in Him, and fix the anchor of your hope in Him who will give you a place in His glorious mansion together with the angels.”

Whilst he was yet speaking, the barbarians rushed on him and[112] struck him to the ground. As he fell, with the instinct of self-preservation, he raised the hand which held the Book of the Gospels, in order to protect his head. A sword-stroke from one ruffian cut through the book, while at the same time the dagger of another pierced his heart; and the rest of the band turned on his companions who stood around, and slaughtered them every one. They then seized the baggage of the archbishop, which they hoped would prove a rich booty, but to their disappointment found nothing but books and holy relics, which they scattered about the surrounding fields, casting some of the books into a neighbouring marsh, whence they were afterwards rescued by the Frisian Christians. Three of them are still preserved at Fulda; they consist of the copy of the Gospel already mentioned, which had been written out by the saint’s own hand, and which, though cut through with the sword which took his life, has not so much as a letter destroyed; a Harmony of the Gospels or Canons of the New Testament, and a Book containing various Treatises and Letters, the pages of which are stained with his blood.

The body of St. Boniface was carried to Mentz, and thence translated to Fulda, when the church of that monastery was consecrated by St. Lullus, the whole history of the event being related by the monk Candidus, in his metrical Life of Abbot Eigil. St. Lioba survived her friend for twenty-four years, during which time she founded a great number of convents, all of which she governed as superior. She received special marks of respect from Charlemagne and his queen Hildegardis, who often sent for her to Aix-la-Chapelle, and loved her as her own soul. She frequently visited Fulda, and on her death, which took place in 779, her body was carried thither for burial. The elder monks remembered the wish that had been expressed by St. Boniface, that their bones should be laid together, but, fearing to open the sepulchre of the holy martyr, they buried St. Lioba at the north side of the altar, which he had himself consecrated in honour of the twelve Apostles. There the two saints still repose, for though the church of Fulda has been rebuilt four times since the day of its first dedication, the ancient crypt has always been preserved, and there the English pilgrim may still revere the relics of his great countryman which are preserved in their antique shrine, together with two memorials of him, the ivory crosier which he was accustomed to use, and the dagger that shed his blood.

At the moment when the nascent civilisation of Saxon England was being doomed to extinction, and the Danish hordes were everywhere making havoc of those religious houses which for 160 years had been the chief nurseries of learning in the West, light was beginning once more to dawn over the schools of France, where under the barbarism of the Merovingian kings liberal studies had all but entirely decayed. At an earlier period indeed, as we have seen, the Church of Gaul, far from deserving the charge of barbarism, had produced a crowd of illustrious writers, by whom the Christian dogmas were clothed in a classic dress. Down to the end of the sixth century remains of the old Roman municipal schools continued to exist, wherein Christian students disdained not “to hold the harp with Orpheus, or the rule with Archimedes; to perceive with Pythagoras, to explain with Plato, to imply with Aristotle, to rage with Demosthenes, or to persuade with Tully”[71]—in other words, they followed the ordinary course of studies provided in the Roman schools. Even when these disappeared, the episcopal and monastic schools continued to preserve some knowledge of letters. The multiplication of monasteries, even before the arrival of the Benedictines in 543, had progressed with extraordinary rapidity. We read of one bishop establishing forty communities in his own diocese; and during the century that succeeded the first foundation made by St. Maurus, as many as 238 Benedictine monasteries are known to have arisen in different provinces of Gaul. It is probable that most of these monasteries, to whatever rule they belonged, possessed a school. The monastic rules which sprung up previous to the arrival of St. Maurus—such as those established by St. Martin, St. Eugendus,[114] St. Yrieix, and St. Columbanus—all enjoined study and the transcription of books, as well as manual labour. Nor can it be doubted that secular as well as religious pupils were received in the monastic schools, and that the education given was not exclusively ecclesiastical. It even appears as though the Gallo-Roman nobility of this period were more solicitous to give their sons a liberal education than their chivalric descendants of six centuries’ later date. I will give but two examples. At the monastery of Condat it is expressly stated that noble secular youths were educated in all the learning of the times; and what this term implies is explained in the life of St. Eugendus, who received his entire training there, and never once left the monastery from his seventh to his sixtieth year. He was as familiar with the Greek as with the Latin orators, says his biographer, and was besides a great promoter of sacred studies. The other example is even more to the point, as showing up to what age secular youths were then expected to continue students. St. Aicard received his education in the monastic school of Soissons, about the middle of the seventh century, and remained there until his seventeenth year, when he was summoned home by his father to be introduced at court and to commence his military career—a career, be it remembered, into which the aspirant to chivalry in the twelfth century would have been initiated at seven. He afterwards embraced the religious state, and did much to improve the studies in his monastery of Jumièges. Then there were the episcopal schools, in which the learning given was far from being superficial. St. Gregory of Tours tells us that when King Guntram entered Orleans in 540 he was met by a band of scholars from the bishop’s school, who welcomed him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac verses of their own composition. St. Gregory had himself received his education in the episcopal schools of Clermont and Vienne, and informs us that even ecclesiastical students, before entering on their sacred studies, went through a course of the seven liberal arts, together with one of poetry and the Cantus.[72] M. Guizot gives a list of the principal monastic and episcopal schools of which a distant notice is to be found in the histories of the seventh century. Twenty of them are in Neustria alone, and their multiplication forms the subject of repeated decrees of provincial councils.

We need not, however, dwell on their history more particularly, for whatever may have been their number or their excellence, it is[115] certain that before the accession of Charlemagne, the Gallican schools had fallen into general decay. The decline was progressive, but it ended in something like total extinction. “At the end of the fourth century,” says M. Guizot, “profane and sacred literature flourished side by side: pagan letters were indeed dying, but they were not entirely dead. They soon, however, disappeared, and sacred literature alone was cultivated. But if we go on a little further, we find that the cultivation of Christian literature has itself vanished,”[73]—the decay had, in fact, become universal.

Tennemann, in his history of philosophy, does not hesitate to attribute this deplorable state of things to the tyranny of the Church, and the triumph of the principle of faith and authority over that of liberty and reason. But from the sixth to the eighth century, the ecclesiastical powers in Gaul had not the strength to exercise tyranny, even had they possessed the will. The slightest acquaintance with the history of those centuries and their horrible social disorders will suffice to show that submission to the principle of Church authority had not at that time assumed any very alarming proportions north of the Alps. The Church of Gaul was torn with petty schisms, and disgraced by scandals arising mainly from the absence of any authority at all strong enough to repress them, and the supremacy of the Holy See had to be firmly re-asserted by St. Boniface before any adequate remedy of these disorders could be applied. The intellectual sterility of this epoch may rather be traced to the want of that principle, than to its excess; it was in fact an unavoidable result of the anarchy and dissolution of all social ties which followed on the fall of the Roman Empire. Had ecclesiastical discipline been preserved, we might yet at least have found the theological studies flourishing; but what could be expected from bishops who had either simoniacally obtained their dignities, or had been appointed by barbarian rulers from the ranks of their own soldiers or courtiers? Destitute themselves of all knowledge of sacred letters, they were not likely to cherish them in others; and in many cases they held their sees as baronies might be held by lay proprietors. The incessant civil commotions that prevailed perpetuated the reign of darkness, for, as the writer just quoted remarks, when the state of society becomes rude and difficult, studies necessarily languish. “The taste for truth and the appreciation of the beautiful are delicate plants, needing a pure sky and a kindly[116] atmosphere:—in the midst of storms they droop their heads and perish.” So far from the Church being held answerable for the decay of literature, it was she alone that provided it any asylum in those dismal times, and it was in her monastic houses that learning, “proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier times should suffer it to reappear in the world.”[74]

The dawn of a better state of things began to show itself under the rule of Pepin. That monarch appears to have contemplated something of the same plan of reform afterwards carried out by the vaster genius of his son. His first step was to renew those close relations with the Holy See, the interruption of which had so largely contributed to disorganise the Church of France. In 747, being then mayor of the palace, he despatched an embassy to Pope Zachary, imploring his assistance and advice in the reformation of the episcopal order. It has been shown in the foregoing chapter, that a similar reformation had been set on foot in Austrasia by his brother Carloman, where, by the assistance of St. Boniface acting as apostolic vicar, the bishops and secular clergy had solemnly engaged to observe the ecclesiastical canons, and the abbots, to receive the rule of St. Benedict. The subsequent change of dynasty was affected by the will, it is true, of the Frankish people, but not until it had received the sanction of the Pope, who decided that he who held the power of king should likewise assume the royal title. This appeal of the Franks to the authority of the Holy See in the election of their sovereign is a fact of immense political importance, and from that hour the tide of barbarism began to ebb. The councils held under Pepin ceased not to labour at the correction of abuses; and the journey of Pope Stephen III. into France in 748, if it exhibits him on one hand as a fugitive from the Lombards, displays him to us no less as receiving from kings and people the homage due to him as Father of the Christian Church.

Together with the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline and the legitimate authority of the Holy See, appear the first indications of an approaching revival of learning. One of the ambassadors despatched by Pepin to conduct the Pope into France was Chrodegang, Bishop of Metz, a German by birth, and learned for the times in which he lived. In 762 he had done his best to restore discipline and letters in his own diocese, by establishing canonical life among[117] his cathedral clergy, and giving them a rule in which provision was made for the maintenance of the episcopal seminary. Previously to this he had founded several monasteries, with the view of promoting sacred studies, among others the great abbey of Gorze, the school of which became afterwards so famous. At the same time Pepin was directing his attention to the correction of the liturgical books. He obtained from Pope Stephen an Antiphonary and Responsory, together with copies of the works of St. Denys, the dialectics of Aristotle, some treatises on geometry and orthography, and a grammar. The movement was inaugurated by an attempted reform in the ecclesiastical chant. During the stay of Pope Stephen at the Frankish court, Pepin was struck by the majesty of the Roman tones, and entreated that some of the Papal singers might instruct the choristers of his own chapel. Simeon, the Pope’s chapel-master, therefore remained in France, and gave lessons there for some years; but the reform thus effected was only partial, and was not finally established in Charlemagne’s time without a struggle.

Pepin’s further plans were cut short by his death, which took place in 768, and was followed in 771 by that of his son Carloman, Charlemagne, the surviving son of Pepin, being thus left master of all the Frankish territories. We need not follow the course of his conquests, which gradually extended the boundaries of his empire, from the shores of the Baltic to the banks of the Ebro, and from the Danube to the Atlantic Ocean. During the forty-six years that he ruled the destinies of Europe, he was engaged in incessant wars, which seemed to leave little leisure for literary pursuits, and was organising a vast political system which, even in peaceable times, would have demanded the undivided attention of any ordinary sovereign. But if there ever was a man who by his mere natural endowments soared above other men, it was Charlemagne. His life, like his stature, was colossal. Time never seemed wanting to him for anything that he willed to accomplish, and during his ten years campaign against the Saxons and Lombards, he contrived to get leisure enough to study grammar, and render himself tolerably proficient as a Latin writer in prose and verse. He found his tutors in the cities that he conquered. When he became master of Pisa, he gained the services of Peter of Pisa, whom he set over the Palatine school, which had existed even under the Merovingian kings, though as yet it was far from enjoying the fame to which it was afterwards raised by the teaching of Alcuin. He possessed the art of turning[118] enemies into friends, and thus drew to his court the famous historian, Paul Warnefrid, deacon of the Church of Rome, who had previously acted as secretary to Didier, king of the Lombards. When Charlemagne set the crown of Lombardy on his own head, in 744, Paul resisted the new order of things, and made three attempts to restore his country’s independence. The Frankish judges condemned him to lose his eyes and his hands, but Charlemagne interfered. “We shall not easily find another hand that can write history,” he said, and Paul, conquered by his generosity, went back with him to France, and accepted the charge of teaching Greek to the young princess Richtrude, who had been affianced to the Greek emperor, Constantine. The Lombard scholar appeared nothing less than a prodigy in the eyes of the Frankish courtiers, and Peter of Pisa poured out his admiration in a poetical epistle, in which he calls him, “in Greek, a Homer; in Latin, a Virgil; in Hebrew, another Philo.” It speaks well for the real scholarship of Paul that he declined swallowing all the flattery conveyed in this pompous address, and plainly stated in his reply that though he could read Greek, he could not speak it, and that he knew no more of Hebrew than a few words he had picked up at school. As to his being a second Homer or Virgil, he seems to have considered the insinuation anything but a compliment, and declared rather bluntly that he wished to have nothing in common with two heathens. He was afterwards employed in establishing the schools of Metz, and finally became a monk at Monte Cassino, where he wrote his life of St. Gregory the Great, and the well-known hymn “Ut queant laxis.”[75]

Another Italian scholar, St. Paulinus, of Aquileja, was coaxed into the service of the Frankish sovereign after his conquest of Friuli; I will not say that he was bought, but he was certainly paid for by a large grant of confiscated territory made over by diploma to “the Venerable Paulinus, master of the art of grammar.” But none of[119] these learned personages were destined to take so large a part in that revival of learning which made the glory of Charlemagne’s reign, as our own countryman Alcuin. It was in 781, on occasion of the king’s second visit to Italy, that the meeting took place at Parma, the result of which was to fix the English scholar at the Frankish court. Having obtained the consent of his own bishop and sovereign to this arrangement, Alcuin came over to France in 782, bringing with him several of the best scholars of York, among whom were Wizo, Fredegis, and Sigulf. Charlemagne received him with joy, and assigned him three abbeys for the maintenance of himself and his disciples, those namely, of Ferrières, St. Lupus of Troyes, and St. Josse in Ponthieu. From this time Alcuin held the first place in the literary society that surrounded the Frankish sovereign, and filled an office the duties of which were as vast as they were various. Three great works at once claimed his attention, the correction of the liturgical books, the direction of the court academy, and the establishment of other public schools throughout the empire. Alcuin began with the task first on the list, for until the books at his command were themselves rendered readable, it was of small avail to talk of opening schools. In the hands of ignorant copyists the text of Scripture had become so corrupt as to be hardly intelligible. The Book of Gospels and Epistles for Sundays and festivals was first corrected, and such a system of punctuation and accentuation adopted as might enable even the unlearned to read them without making any gross error. The more arduous undertaking of correcting the whole Bible was not completed till the year 800, when on the occasion of Charlemagne’s coronation at Rome as Emperor of the West, Alcuin forwarded to him, as the best present he could offer, a copy of the sacred volume, carefully freed from error.[76]

But it was as head of the Palatine school that Alcuin’s influence was chiefly to be felt in the restoration of letters. Charlemagne presented himself as his first pupil, together with the three princes, Pepin, Charles, and Louis, his sister Gisla and his daughter[120] Richtrude, his councillors Adalard and Angilbert, and Eginhard his secretary. Such illustrious scholars soon found plenty to imitate their example, and Alcuin saw himself called on to lecture daily to a goodly crowd of bishops, nobles, and courtiers. The king wished to transform his court into a new Athens preferable to that of ancient Greece, in so far as the doctrine of Christ is to be preferred to that of Plato. All the liberal arts were to be taught there, but in such a way as that each should bear reference to religion, for this was regarded as the final end of all learning. Grammar was studied in order better to understand the Holy Scriptures and to transcribe them more correctly; music, to which much attention was given, was chiefly confined to the ecclesiastical chant; and it was principally to explain the Fathers and refute errors contrary to the faith that rhetoric and dialectics were studied. “In short,” says Crevier, “the thought both of the king and of the scholar who laboured with him was to refer all things to religion, nothing being considered as truly useful which did not bear some relation to that end.”[77]

At first Alcuin allowed the study of the classic poets, and in his boyhood, as we know, he had been a greater reader of Virgil than of the Scriptures. His writings evince a perfect familiarity with the ancient poets and philosophers, whom he continually quotes, and though in his old age he discouraged his monastic pupils from following this study, it is certain that he allowed and even advocated it while presiding over the Palatine school. This appears from one of his familiar epistles to Charlemagne, in which he gives a lively picture of the labours carried on there by the students and their masters. One he describes as teaching the lectors of the royal chapel to read without misplacing their accents; another is training the boys in sacred chant; Eginhard, who is pronounced “learned in prosody,” seems to have been idling his time, but Gisla had been contemplating the stars in the silent night. “But what crime,” he continues, “has harmonious Virgil committed? Is not the father of poets worthy of finding a master who shall teach the children of the palace to admire his verse?” And he concludes with the hope that two, whom he names Thyrsis and Menalcas, may long survive to keep the cooks in order, and supply the writer with large goblets of Greek wine, and smoking dishes.

In this little jeu-d’esprit we see, in the midst of its playful allusions to their familiar intercourse, what was the serious work of[121] the Palatine scholars, and when Alcuin thus wrote he was certainly far from entertaining those severe views regarding classical studies which are generally attributed to him. It is true that at a later period he endeavoured to dissuade his disciple, Sigulf, from studying what he called, “the impure eloquence of Virgil,” telling him that the Sacred Scriptures should be enough for him. He also rebuked Rigbod, Archbishop of Mentz, for carrying Virgil in his bosom, and wished he would carry in its place the Book of the Gospels; but it is probable that most ecclesiastics would think with him that an archbishop might spend his time more profitably over the Gospels than over the Æneid. Sigulf did not certainly feel himself obliged literally to carry out the advice of his master, for in the school of Ferrières, which he afterwards governed, the Latin poets were very generally studied. He established such a classical taste among his scholars, that in the next reign we find Lupus of Ferrières correcting the works of Pliny, and sending to Rome copies of Suetonius and Quintus Curtius. It is clear, therefore, that the classics were not absolutely excluded from Alcuin’s system of education, though in the main Crevier’s account must be allowed to be correct, and gives a fair statement of the views that prevailed during the whole of the monastic period. The authors whose study Charlemagne and Alcuin desired to promote, were not so much Virgil and Cicero, as St. Jerome and St. Augustine; and Charlemagne, in his excessive admiration of those Fathers, gave utterance to the wish that he had a dozen such men at his court. The City of God was read at the royal table, and the questions addressed by the court students to their master turned rather on the obscurities of Holy Writ than the difficulties of prosody. In one thing, however, they betrayed a classic taste, and that was in their selection of names. The Royal Academicians all rejoiced in some literary soubriquet; Alcuin was Flaccus; Angilbert, Homer; but Charlemagne himself adopted the more scriptural appellation of David.

The eagerness with which this extraordinary man applied himself to acquire learning for himself, and to extend it throughout his dominions, is truly admirable, when we remember the enormous labours in which he was constantly engaged. Hincmar, Bishop of Rheims, has left us an interesting account of the business of all kinds which he every day personally investigated. Yet, while the “King of Europe,” as he was fitly called, was regulating with his own hands the affairs of a mighty empire, he was patiently pursuing[122] a course of studies which might have befitted a university student. He spoke and wrote Latin with facility, and read Greek well, though he was not equally successful in speaking it. He had some knowledge of Syriac, and towards the end of his life corrected a Latin copy of the Gospels, after comparing it with the Greek and Syriac text. He studied all the liberal arts under Alcuin, and was a true German in his love of music. He completed the reform of the Church chant, which his father had attempted, an undertaking rendered somewhat difficult by the obstinacy of his own singers. It was during the Easter festival of 787, that Charlemagne, being then at Rome, was called on to decide a dispute which had broken out between the Gallican and Roman chanters. The Gallicans maintained that their tones were the most beautiful, whilst the Romans appealed to the teaching of St. Gregory, which had been jealously preserved in his school, but which, as they affirmed, the Gallicans had corrupted. The dispute grew warm, for whilst the fiery Franks, trusting in the king’s protection, loaded their opponents with abusive epithets, the more refined Romans took refuge in sarcasm, and affected to pity the rusticity of such ignorant barbarians. Charlemagne listened to what both parties had to say, and then addressed his own chanters. “Tell me,” he said, “where is the stream the purest, at its source or in its channel?” “In its source, of course,” was the reply. “Well, then,” said the king, “do you return to the source, for by your own showing, the corruption lies with you.” This was an argument ad hominem, and the crestfallen Franks were fain to own themselves vanquished. To set the question at rest for ever, Charlemagne requested Pope Adrian to give him two chanters from the Gregorian school, and an authentic copy of the Roman Antiphonary, which Adrian had himself noted according to the system then established at Rome. The two chanters, Theodore and Benedict, accordingly accompanied the king back to France, and were employed to teach the correct chant; and to purge the Gallican Antiphonaries of their corruptions, Charlemagne established two schools of music, one at Metz, for Austrasia, and the other at Soissons, for Neustria, which were each presided over by one of the Roman teachers; all choir masters were commanded to resort thither and study under their direction, and to send in their books for correction, which, up to that time, says the monk of Angoulême, every one had spoiled after his own fancy.[78]

[123]

John the Deacon, who wrote in the following century, and who evidently exceedingly relished the defeat of the Gallicans, introduces the whole story of the dispute into his life of St. Gregory. He observes that the Frankish organs were unable to express certain tremblings and delicacies of the Italian chant. “The barbarous harshness of their cracked throats,” he says, “when, by inflections and reverberations, they endeavoured to emit a gentle psalmody, out of a certain natural hoarseness sent forth grating sounds like that of carts on a high road; and thus, instead of delighting the souls of their hearers, their singing, on the contrary, rather troubled them, by provoking distractions.”[79] This is bad enough; but the Monk of Angoulême would have us know that it was not merely through their ears that the Frankish congregations had to suffer distractions. The sore distress which one inexperienced singer endured in his attempt to produce the required “tremblings” must certainly have severely tried the self-command of those who witnessed it. “It chanced,” says the historian, “that a certain clerk, ignorant of the accustomed rules, was called on to figure in the royal chapel, when, agitating his head in a circular manner, and opening an enormous mouth, he painfully endeavoured to imitate those around him.” The choir, of course, was in a suppressed titter, but Charlemagne, without betraying the slightest token of annoyance or ridicule, called the unfortunate performer to him after the office was over, and rewarded his good-will with a handsome present. This great king often assisted at matins, and indicated with his hand the clerk who was to sing the lessons, or responsory. It is also said that he used to mark the end of the motetts with a certain guttural sound (a grunt, his historian calls it), which became the diapason for the recommencement of the phrase. The use of organs began to be introduced during his reign, and Walafrid Strabo tells us of a woman who died of the ecstacy occasioned by first hearing one of these instruments.

It has been repeatedly asserted that Charlemagne, with all his learning, never knew how to write. The supposition rests on the words of his secretary, Eginhard, who says, “He tried to write, and constantly carried little tablets about him, that in his leisure moments he might accustom his hand to the drawing (effigiendis) of letters, but he succeeded badly, having applied himself to the art too late.” Even if this passage is to be understood of the use of pen and ink,[124] it only informs us that the emperor wrote a schoolboy’s scrawl, a circumstance not altogether without a parallel in the history of great men. But the expression of drawing or delineating letters seems rather to apply to the art of illumination and ornamental writing, which properly forms the art of caligraphy: and this explanation derives additional support from the fact that Charlemagne was a passionate admirer of painting, and caused innumerable manuscripts to be adorned with miniatures and ornaments, many of which are still preserved, the portrait of the emperor being often introduced. His very camp oratory was painted, and one of the offices of the envoys, whom he sent at stated periods through his dominions, was to inspect and report on the state of the paintings in the churches. His warlike hand very probably wielded the sword with more address than the pen, and, it may easily be believed, made sad results with the paint-brush, but that he knew how to write is sufficiently proved by the copy of the Gospels corrected by his hand, after he had compared it with the Greek and Syriac text, which is still preserved at Vienna, and by the direct testimony of Hincmar.[80]

This prelate, in his account of the Council of Nismes, remarks: “We have often heard the courtiers of King Charles say that this prince, who excelled all the other kings of France in knowledge of the Scriptures and of the civil and ecclesiastical law, always had at his bed’s head tablets and pens, to note down, whether by day or night, any thoughts that occurred to him that might be useful to Church or State.” He also presented to the Church of Strasburg a Psalter, in which his name was written with his own hand;[81] and it is to be presumed that he himself transcribed his numerous letters to Alcuin. Among the works of that scholar we find thirty letters addressed to the king, containing answers to his questions on theological and scientific subjects. These letters show that Alcuin had no easy task in satistying the intellectual requirements of a man who thought of everything, and busied himself equally with history, chronology, morals, astronomy, grammar, theology, and law. He took a very special delight in the study of astronomy, and on serene nights was fond of observing the stars from the roof of his palace. In the year 798 considerable anxiety was felt both by the king and his academicians, in consequence of the erratic movements of the[125] planet Mars, whose disappearance for a whole year it passed their powers to account for. Alcuin was written to, and entreated to explain the phenomenon, and his reply shows that he had tested the statements found in his books by careful astronomical observations. “What has now happened to Mars,” he says, “is frequently observed of all the other planets, viz., that they remain longer under the horizon than is stated in the books of the ancients. The rising and setting of the stars vary from the observations of those who live in the southern and eastern parts of the world, where the masters chiefly flourished who have set forth the laws of the universe.” From these words it may be gathered that Alcuin was acquainted with the globular form of the earth, and comprehended the phenomena depending on it. Charlemagne had some claims to the reputation of a poet, and nine pieces of Latin poetry from his pen are printed in his works, which are given in the collection of the Abbé Migne.[82] One of these was an epitaph on his friend Pope Adrian I., which he desired to have placed over the tomb of that pontiff, and caused it therefore to be engraved in letters of gold on a marble tablet, and sent to Rome. These verses, thirty-eight in number, have attained a singular kind of immortality. The tablet has been preserved in the portico of St. Peter’s Basilica, where it may still be seen by the pious visitor, together with another inscription containing the ancient grant from Pope Gregory II. of a wood of olives to supply the oil for the lamps burning round the Apostle’s tomb. All ancient writers are unanimous in declaring these verses to have been the genuine composition of the emperor, and not of Alcuin, as some pretend. They bear the title, Epitaphium Adriani I., Papæ, quo Carolus Magnus sepulchrum ipsius decoravit.

But one of the most interesting features in Charlemagne’s intellectual labours was the attempt he made to perfect his native language, and give it a grammatical form. He began the composition of a German grammar, which was afterwards continued by Raban Maur; the other Palatine scholars joined him in the task, and assigned to the months and days of the week the names which they still bear in German. In pursuance of the same design, the emperor made a collection of old Tudesque songs, some of which he took down from the lips of his soldiers; but after his death Louis the Debonnaire found the manuscript, and perceiving the names of Scandinavian deities, with little appreciation of the importance of the[126] work on which his great father had been engaged, tossed it into the fire. There was nothing which Charlemagne had more at heart than the completion of this undertaking, and he was accustomed to say that he hoped to see the day when the laws should be written in the Frankish tongue, comparing the shutting them up in a language of which the common people were ignorant to the conduct of Caligula, who caused his edicts to be written in illegible characters, and placed out of sight, that the people might unconsciously break them and so incur sentence of death. Alcuin no doubt assisted in this work, which was one that ever found favour with the English monks. Even before leaving his native country he is said to have made an Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, which was preserved and used so late as the twelfth century; and he would naturally be disposed to enter into the king’s designs, and specially to provide for the religious instruction of the people in their own language. Something in this direction had already been done in Germany by the followers of St. Boniface; and early in the eighth century we find formulas of confession, brief confessions of faith, and portions of psalms and hymns translated for popular use into the rude Tudesque dialect. Some of the early German hymns appear to have been written by the monks of St. Gall, and were used as valuable means of instructing the people in the elements of religion. Specimens of these are given by Noth in his history of the German language, and among them is a fragment of the 138th Psalm. It will of course be borne in mind that the language spoken by the people of Germany was essentially the same as that of the English missionaries, who thus possessed peculiar facilities in preaching and instructing their converts. Thus the form of abjuration and the confession of faith drawn up by St. Boniface and his followers, for the use of their German catechumens, is equally akin to the Anglo-Saxon and to the Tudesque idioms:—“Forsachister Diabolæ? Ec forsachs Diabolæ. Gelobistu in Got Almehtigan, Fadaer? Ec Gelobo in Got, Almehtigan Fadaer. Gelobistu in Crist, Godes suno? Gelobistu in Halsgan Gast?” And when we speak of Charlemagne as cultivating the Tudesque or old German dialect, it will also be remembered that the Franks were a German race, and that what we now call French is not formed from their language, but from the Romanesque, or corrupt Latin, which prevailed in the southern provinces of Gaul, as well as in Spain and the north of Italy. As in course of time the Gallo-Roman element prevailed in France, the Romance language became universally[127] used, while the Tudesque remained, as before, the language of the Germans. Hence Verstigan was not dealing in paradox when he asserted that in old times the English people all talked French, the Frankish and Saxon dialects being substantially the same language.

The graver studies of the Palatine scholars were enlivened, after the fashion of the Anglo Saxon schools, by dialogues, in which enigmas and a play of words are introduced in tiresome profusion. A curious fragment exists bearing the title of a disputation between Alcuin and Pepin, wherein the wits of the pupil are stimulated by the questions of the master. These exercises, ad acuendos pueros, as they were called, were much used by the English teachers, and specimens of a similar description are to be found which appear to have been used so late as the fourteenth century. “What is writing?” asks Alcuin. “The keeper of history.” “What is speaking?” “The interpreter of the soul.” “What is the liberty of man?” “Innocence.” “What is the day?” “The call to labour.” “What is the sun?” “The splendour of the universe.” “What is winter?” “The exile of spring.” “What is spring?” “The painter of the earth.” Alcuin says, “I saw the other day a man standing, a dead man walking, a man walking who had never breathed.” Pepin. “How can that have been? explain yourself.” Alcuin. “It was my image reflected in the water.” Pepin. “How could I fail to understand you? I have often seen the same thing.”

In his letters to the young princes Alcuin freely points out their faults, and gives them excellent advice. “Seek,” he writes, “to adorn your noble rank with noble deeds; let humility be in your heart, and truth on your lips; and let your life be a pattern of integrity, that so God may be pleased to prosper your days.” The court school, however, was not intended exclusively for princes and nobles; children of an inferior rank were also admitted, in order to receive such an education as might hereafter fit them to fill various offices in church and state. Charlemagne took this charge on himself, and afterwards promoted his scholars according to their merits and ability. We learn this from the following charming narrative related by the Monk of St. Gall.

“The glorious King Charles,” he says, “returning into Gaul after a prolonged absence, ordered that all the children whom he caused to be educated should be brought before him, that they might present him their compositions in prose and verse. Those of an inferior[128] and obscure rank had succeeded best, whereas the sons of the nobles brought nothing of any value. Then the wise prince, separating the good scholars from the negligent ones, and putting the first on his right hand, said to them, ‘My children, you may rely on my friendship and protection, since you have done your best to execute my orders, and have worked hard according to the best of your abilities. Try to do yet better, and depend upon it you will receive the most honourable offices I have to give, and that you will always be precious in my eyes.’ Then turning to those on his left hand; ‘As to you,’ he said, ‘born of noble blood, and children of the first houses in my kingdom, vainly confident in your birth and riches you have neglected to obey my orders, and have preferred play and idleness to study, which is the proper glory of your age. But I swear to you, your noble birth shall find no consideration from me; and if you do not make up for your indolence by earnest study, you will obtain no favour from Charles.’”

Some writers, and among them M. Ampère, have considered that after all that has been said and written about the Palatine school, there was in reality no school, but only a literary academy. The probability is that there was both a school and an academy, and that the two institutions, though not identical, were directed by the same masters. According to this view, the Palatine Academy was formed of the friends and courtiers of Charlemagne, while the School was for the education of youths, chiefly, if not exclusively, intended for the ecclesiastical state, and chosen from all ranks, noble and simple. The Monk of St. Gall is decisive on this last point, and mentions two scholars, the sons of millers, who, after leaving the emperor’s school, in which they do not seem greatly to have distinguished themselves, obtained admission into the monastery of Bobbio. The proofs of the actual existence of this school are in fact too overwhelming to admit of a doubt. M. Ampère appears to have been staggered at the notion of a crowd of schoolboys accompanying the emperor wherever he sojourned. However strange and inconvenient such a system appears to our notions, the historical evidence is very strong in proof that it really existed. In the life of St. Adalard, there are allusions to the turba clericorum palatii. Alcuin in his letters complains not a little of the fatigue occasioned by this constant journeying. And we know that Otho the Great, whose revival of a Palatine school was undertaken in avowed imitation of Charlemagne, always required his scholars to accompany him; and that his[129] brother Bruno, who superintended their studies, followed the court, and carried his books with him.

It was then, as we must believe, a real school over which Alcuin presided, and most French writers claim it as the germ of the university of Paris. The court of the Frankish monarch was indeed fixed, not at Paris, but at Aix-la-Chapelle, but it seems to have been removed to Paris in the reign of Charles the Bald, and there the Palatine school continued to flourish under a succession of famous masters, and possibly formed the nucleus of that great institution which fills so large a place in the history of education.

Meanwhile, his scholastic labours did not so occupy the time of Alcuin, as to hinder him from devoting himself to the correction of manuscripts, and the multiplication of books went on apace. A staff of skilful copyists was gradually formed, and so soon as any work had been revised by Alcuin and his fellow labourers, it was delivered over to the hands of the monastic scribes. Particular abbeys, as that of Fontanelles, acquired renown for the extraordinary accuracy of their transcribers, and the beauty of their writing. At Rheims and Corby, also, the monks greatly excelled, and laying aside the corrupt character which had till then been in use, they adopted the smaller Roman letters. Rules were made forbidding any man to be employed as a copyist who had not the knowledge of grammar requisite for enabling him to avoid errors; and treatises on orthography and punctuation were drawn up by Alcuin for the special use of his scribes. Libraries were gradually collected in all the principal monasteries, including the chief works of the Fathers and the Latin classics. In the library of St. Riquier, of which abbey Angilbert became superior, we find a few years later copies of Homer, Virgil, and Cicero; in that of Rheims, Cæsar, Livy, and Lucan; Dijon possessed a Horace, and at Montierendes there were the works of Cicero and Terence. The text of the last-named author was revised and corrected by Alcuin himself, a fact which confirms what has been before said of his toleration of the poets. From this time the transcription of books came to be regarded as one of the ordinary branches of monastic manual work, in a great degree taking the place of that agricultural labour on which, in earlier ages, the monks were so generally employed. The real hard work of head, eyes, and hand, which it involved, was pithily expressed in the well-known couplet:—

[130]

If the hope of gain stimulated those outside to follow it as a trade, more spiritual motives were laid before the children of the cloister. As a work of charity done for the love of God and man, it was promised an eternal reward, and the persevering toils of a long life were, it was thought, capable of being offered as an acceptable work of penance. Meanwhile, the spirit of improvement was diffusing itself from the court through the whole country. The Capitulars of Charlemagne—so called because arranged in heads, or chapters—included amongst various laws for the regulation of the civil government others which regarded the encouragement of learning. A circular letter addressed by Charlemagne on his return from Rome in 787 to all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom, after thanking them for their letters and pious prayers, proceeded to criticise the grammar in which these had been expressed. “They who endeavour to please God by a good life,” writes the king, “should not neglect to please Him by correct phraseology, and it is well that monasteries and episcopal seminaries should pay attention to literature as well as to the practices of religion. It is better indeed to lead a good life than to become learned; nevertheless knowledge precedes action. Each one, then, should understand what he is about, and the mind better comprehends its duty when the tongue in praising God is free from mistakes of language.” The writer then goes on to notice that the excellent sentiments of his clergy had been expressed in a rude and uncouth style; they had been inspired by true devotion, but the tongue had failed for want of culture. “But if errors in words are dangerous, much more so are errors in their signification. We exhort you therefore that you fail not to cultivate learning with the humble intention of pleasing God, so as more surely to penetrate the mysteries of the Holy Scriptures. We wish, in short, to see you what the soldiers of Christ ought to be—devout in heart, learned in intercourse with the world, chaste in life, and scholars in conversation—so that all who approach you may be as much enlightened by your wisdom as they are edified by your holy life.” This was not allowed to remain an empty recommendation; it was followed by ordinances for reviving the old monastic and cathedral schools, and for founding other public schools, the establishment of which forms the most important feature in Charlemagne’s revival of learning. In the Benedictine monasteries two kinds of schools had always existed, or been supposed to exist—the greater and the less. In the minor schools, according to Trithemius, were taught “the Catholic faith and prayers, grammar,[131] church music, the psalter, and the Computum, or method of calculating Easter,” while in the major schools the liberal sciences were also taught. In the Capitular of Aix-la-Chapelle, published in 789, Charlemagne required that minor schools should be attached to all monasteries and cathedral churches without exception, and that children of all ranks, both noble and servile, should be received into them. At the same time the larger and more important monasteries were to open major schools, in which mathematics, astronomy, arithmetic, geography, music, rhetoric, and dialectics were taught; and these again were of two descriptions.[83] Some were interior, or claustral, intended only for the junior monks, while others were exterior, or public, and intended for pupils as well secular as ecclesiastic. Some monk, qualified by his learning, was appointed scholasticus, and if none such were to be found in the community, it was not an uncommon practice to invite a monk from some other religious house to take charge of the school. A claustral and an exterior school often existed attached to the same monastery or cathedral, governed by separate masters, the scholars of the claustral school forming part of the community, while those of the exterior school, though subject to a certain claustral discipline, did not follow the same religious exercises. Lay students were received in these exterior schools, and that far more extensively than is commonly supposed, most popular writers having represented the monastic schools as exclusively intended for those in training for the religious life, thus confusing together the interior and exterior schools. Public schools of this kind were erected at Fulda, St. Gall’s, Tours, Hirsauge, Hirsfield, Gorze, Fleury, L’Isle Barbe, Fontanelles, and Ferrières, as well as at many other monasteries and cathedrals, a list of which is given by Mabillon.[84] Bulæus, indeed, endeavours to show that Charlemagne limited the studies of the ecclesiastical[132] schools to grammar and sacred learning, and only permitted the monasteries and episcopal churches to retain the minor schools, “from the clear view that a variety of sciences, sacred and profane, is inconsistent with the profession of ascetics.” He even ventures to put forth the notion that the higher schools were confined to certain central spots, such as Pavia, Bologna, and Paris. But Bulæus wrote with an object, which was to magnify his university at the expense of the monastic schools. We ask ourselves with surprise where he could have found evidence even for the existence of any schools at all at Paris and Bologna in the reign of Charlemagne?[85] And as to limiting the monastics to minor schools, it may be safely affirmed that the idea of limitation of any kind was the very last that ever suggested itself to the mind of the emperor. As Theodulph of Orleans says, he did nothing all his life but urge forward his monks and bishops in the pursuit of learning. During the whole Carlovingian period the schools of most repute were certainly not those of Bologna, Paris, and Pavia. They were the episcopal and monastic schools of Tours, Fulda, Rheims, St. Gall, and Hirsfield, the teachers of which were all either monks or canons. The ordinance of 789 must be clearly understood, not as forbidding ecclesiastics to study anything but theology, grammar, and church music, but as rendering it obligatory on them to study at least so much; whilst, to use the words of Trithemius, “where temporal means were more abundant, and by reason of the number of the monks, more likelihood existed[133] of finding one skilled in the teaching of sacred letters,” the other liberal arts were also required. The monks of those monasteries in which the higher studies were not taught travelled to other religious houses, and studied in their public schools; and we certainly find no trace, however faint, of the principle that the higher studies were considered unsuitable to ascetics, for, in point of fact, the ascetics were all but the only scholars of the age. If lay students were also to be met with—and even, as I think we shall see, more frequently than is ordinarily acknowledged by modern historians—yet they were still exceptional cases, and the vast majority of those who studied, as of those who taught, continued for centuries to be drawn from the monastic body.

The establishment or revival of the ecclesiastical schools scattered the seeds of learning broadcast over the Frankish empire. All the great men whom Charlemagne gathered around him took part in one way or other in this work. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, a Goth by nation, and an Italian by birth, specially distinguished himself by his zeal in the establishment of schools throughout his diocese. He published a Capitular on the duties of priests, in which he permitted them to send their nephews or other relations to certain schools in the diocese which were not then regarded as public. He also enjoined that priests should open schools in villages and rural districts, “and if any of the faithful should wish to confide their little ones to him in order to study letters, let him not refuse to receive and instruct them, but charitably teach them.” This was to be done gratis, no remuneration being accepted save what might be willingly offered by the parents. One would gladly know more of the kind of teaching given in these parochial schools, and specially how far the children of the peasantry were admitted into them. That village rustics really went to school and learnt something in the days of Charlemagne seems, however, past dispute; and among the Capitulars of the King of Europe we find one which requires the peasants, as they drive their cattle to pasture and home again, to sing the canticles of the Church, that all men may recognise them as Christians. This command obviously implied that the Latin canticles were well known to the peasantry, and probably the conning of church hymns and antiphons formed a very large portion of their school instruction. Theodulph was one of the missi dominici, or envoys sent by Charlemagne through the provinces of his empire to inquire into and reform abuses. On his return from one of these[134] expeditions he published a poem entitled, “An Exhortation to Judges,” in which he gives a very remarkable account of his progress through the Narbonnese provinces, and describes the difficulty he found in resisting the attempts that were made to bribe him. The proffered bribes were of all kinds—gold and precious stones, delicately chased vases—which, from the classic subjects they represented, were doubtless relics of ancient Grecian art—horses, mules, furs, woollen stuffs, and candles. He refused everything, however, except food for himself and hay for his horses, and advises all judges to do in like manner. This was the same Theodulph whose name is familiar to us as author of the Responsory, Gloria, laus et honor. Having incurred the displeasure of the Emperor Louis, he was imprisoned by order of that prince at Angers; but on Palm Sunday as the emperor passed in the solemn procession of the day by the bishop’s prison walls, Theodulph sang from the window the words which he had composed, and thereby so touched the heart of the Debonnaire monarch that he gave him his liberty, and caused the same anthem to be thenceforth introduced into the office of the day, of which it still forms a part.

The name of Theodulph is to be had in remembrance not only as a founder of schools, but also as a writer of school-books. He felt compassion for young and tender minds condemned to gather all their knowledge from the dry and unattractive treatises of Priscian, and Martian Capella, and hit on a plan of his own for rendering them a little more popular. He composed in easy Latin verse the description of a supposed tree of science, which he caused moreover to be drawn and painted, on the trunk and branches of which appeared the seven liberal arts. At the foot of the tree sat Grammar, the basis of all human knowledge holding in her hand a mighty rod; Philosophy was at the summit: Rhetoric stood on the right with outstretched hand, and on the left the grave and thoughtful form of Dialectics; and so of the rest. The whole was explained in the Carmina de septem artibus, wherein the good bishop endeavoured with all his might to scatter the thorny path of learning with the flowers of imagination. The attempt was at least commendable, and in so great a scholar it had the gracefulness of condescension, for Theodulph is reported to have pursued some rare branches of study, and to have had at least a tincture of Greek and Hebrew.

Other ministers of Charlemagne are also named as actively[135] sharing in the labours of the Renaissance. Smaragdus, abbot of St. Michael’s, in the diocese of Verdun, and one of the emperor’s prime councillors, not only established schools in every part of the diocese, and specially in his own abbey, but wrote a large Latin grammar for the use of his scholars. The copy which Mabillon saw preserved in the abbey of Corby bore on the title-page the words: In Christi nomine incipit Grammatici Smaragdi Abbatis mirificus Tractatus. Then follows a prologue in which the abbot declares that having, according to his capacity, taught grammar to his monks, they had been accustomed to transfer the pith of his lectures to their tablets, that what they took in with their ears they might retain by dint of frequent reading. And from this they took occasion to conjure him to write this treatise, which he has done, adorning his little book with sentences not from Maro or Cicero, but from the Divine Scriptures, that his readers may at one and the same time be refreshed with the pleasant drink of the grammatical art and also of the Word of God. And his reason for doing so has been that many defend their ignorance by saying that in grammar God is not named, but only pagan names and examples, and that therefore it is an art rightly and justly neglected. But he is rather of opinion that we should do as the Israelites did when they spoiled the Egyptians, and offer to God the treasures taken from the heathen. He appears to have devoted some attention to the vulgar dialects, and gives lists of Frank and Gothic patronymics with their Latin interpretations.[86]

St. Benedict of Anian, the cupbearer of Charlemagne, and afterwards the great reformer of the Benedictine order, was almost as zealous in restoring studies as in bringing back regular discipline. “Everywhere,” says his disciple St. Ardo, “he appointed cantors, taught readers, established grammar-masters, and those skilled in sacred letters; also he collected a great multitude of books.” Nor must we omit to notice the labours of Leidrade, the emperor’s librarian, and one of the “missi dominici,” who, being appointed Archbishop of Lyons, addressed a curious letter to his imperial master, in which he describes the result of his various labours. He has, by God’s grace, established regular psalmody in his church; he has schools of singers, and schools of readers, who cannot only read the Scriptures correctly, but who understand the spiritual sense of the gospels and the prophecies; some even have attained to the[136] mystical signification of the books of Solomon and of Job. He has also done what in him lay to promote the copying of books, and has built, repaired, and decorated an incredible number of churches and monasteries. Besides these there was Angilbert, the favourite minister both of Pepin and Charlemagne, who retiring from court became abbot of St. Riquier and founder of a noble library; and Adalhard, the emperor’s cousin, created by him count of the royal palace, who, out of a holy fear of offending God, and losing His grace in the seductions of a court atmosphere, took refuge in the abbey of Corby, where he was eventually chosen abbot. In this capacity he greatly raised the reputation of the Corby schools. Paschasius, who wrote his life, says that Adalhard was a most elegant scholar, having been carefully educated in the Palatine school, and that he was equally eloquent in the Tudesque and Romanesque dialects as in Latin, and instructed the common people in their own barbarous tongues. His literary friends gave him the double surname of Antony Augustine—Antony from his love of that saint, and Augustine, because like him he studied to imitate the virtues of all those around him.

Meanwhile Alcuin, who had been master to most of these illustrious men, ceased not to cherish the hope that he might be suffered to return to his native land. “The searcher of hearts knows,” he writes, “that I neither came thither, nor do I continue here for the love of gold, but only for the necessities of the Church.” Like a true Englishman his heart clung to his old home, to the memory of his quiet cell at York, where he had studied Horace and Homer, undisturbed by other sound than the waving of the branches as they were shaken by the genial morning breeze, a sound which, he says, did but stir his mind the more to meditation. The flowery meadows and murmuring streams of England, the smiling garden of his monastery full of its May apple blossoms or its July roses, and the abundance of birds singing in the Yorkshire woods, all these find a place in the sweet verses in which the English exile paints the beloved scenes in the midst of which he had passed his childish days;[87] and all the brilliancy of Charles’s court could not compensate to his mind for the loss of home. In 790 he was, therefore, permitted to revisit England, but two years later he was recalled by urgent messages from the emperor, who desired that he should attend the Council of Frankfort held to condemn the heresy of[137] Elipandus. Alcuin felt himself obliged to obey the summons, but he did not bid farewell to York without testifying the regret with which he tore himself from its peaceful retirement. “I am yours in life and in death,” he writes to his brethren, “and it may be that God will have pity on me, and suffer that you should bury in his old age, him whom in his infancy you brought up and nourished.” Charlemagne, however, having regained possession of his favourite scholar, was not to be induced a second time to give him up; the utmost that poor Alcuin could obtain was permission to retire from the court to some monastery within the Frankish dominions. Fulda was too far distant from the royal residence, and the death of Ithier, abbot of St. Martin’s of Tours, in 796, enabled the emperor to appoint Alcuin as his successor.

Tours at that time held the first rank among the religious houses of France, and what with the task of reforming its discipline and establishing a first-rate school within its walls, Alcuin enjoyed little of the leisure after which he yearned. He found himself in fact in possession of a great abbatial lordship, to which were attached vast revenues and 20,000 serfs. The revenues were expended by him in foundations of charity, such as hospitals, which earned for him the gratitude of the people of Tours. He applied himself to his new duties with unabated energy, enriched his library with the precious manuscripts he had brought from York, and by his own teaching raised the school of Tours to a renown which was shared by none of its contemporaries. In the hall of studies a distinct place was set apart for the copyists, who were exhorted by certain verses of their master, set up in a conspicuous place, to mind their stops, and not to leave out letters. Here were trained most of those scholars whom we shall have to notice in the following reigns, such as Rabanus Maurus, the celebrated abbot of Fulda. A letter addressed by Alcuin to the emperor soon after his establishment at Tours gives a somewhat bombastical account of his labours, but the reader will pardon the pedantry of one who had spent all his life as a schoolmaster. “The employments of your Flaccus in his retreat,” he says, “are suited to his humble sphere, but they are neither inglorious nor unprofitable. I spend my time in the halls of St. Martin, teaching the noble youths under my care: to some I serve out the honey of the Holy Scriptures; others I essay to intoxicate with the wine of ancient literature: one class I nourish with the apples of grammatical studies, and to the eyes of others I display[138] the order of the shining orbs that adorn the azure heavens. To others again I explain the mysteries contained in the Holy Scriptures, suiting my instructions to the capacity of my scholars, that I may train up many to be useful to the Church of God and to be an ornament to your kingdom. But I am constantly in want of those excellent books of erudition which I had collected around me in my own country, both by the devoted zeal of my master Albert and my own labour. I therefore entreat your majesty to permit me to send some of my people into Britain that they may bring thence flowers into France....” After some lengthy praises of the utility of learning, he proceeds: “Exhort then, my lord the king, the youth of your palace to learn with all diligence, that they may make such progress in the bloom of their youth as will bring honour on their old age. I also, according to my measure, will not cease to scatter in this soil the seed of wisdom among your servants, remembering the words, ‘In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thy hand.’ To do this has been the most delightful employment of my whole life. In my youth I sowed the seeds of learning in the flourishing seminaries of my native soil. Now in the evening of my life, though my blood is less warm within me, I do not cease to do the same in France, praying to God that they may spring up and flourish in both countries.” In consequence of this suggestion, a commission was despatched to England for the purpose of transcribing some of the treasures of the York library. The French scribes made copies of the English service books, and that so exactly, that they took no heed of the geographical distinctions of the two countries, but copied the pontifical of Archbishop Egbert, and its form for the anointing and coronation of kings, exactly word for word. Hence in a Rheims pontifical of the ninth century, still preserved in Cologne cathedral, the emperor of the Franks is addressed as King of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northumbrians—a circumstance which has induced some modern critics to speculate as to the exact time when the North of England was subject to the Frankish sceptre. The copies procured through the industry of these scribes were multiplied at Tours, and thence dispersed throughout the kingdom. Alcuin’s own works were also in great demand, specially his elementary treatises on the different sciences. His other works, which are very numerous, consist chiefly of theological treatises and commentaries on the Scriptures, some metaphysical and philosophical writings, and a collection of poems, among which[139] are the Eulogium on the Archbishops and the Church of York, and the Elegy on the Destruction of Lindisfarne, the latter of which is perhaps the happiest production of his pen, and evinces the real feeling of a poet. The news of the sad event which it commemorates excited consternation throughout Europe, but by none was it received with bitterer sorrow than by the abbot of Tours. “The man,” he says, “who can think of that calamity without terror, and who does not cry to God in behalf of his country, has a heart not of flesh but of stone.” He at once wrote letters of sympathy to Ethelred, King of Northumbria, and the monks who had escaped from the sword, which would be sufficient to evince how fondly his heart still clung to his native land even without the touching apostrophe which he introduces to his cell at York. What view was taken by Alcuin of the work of education, to which his whole life was devoted may be gathered from his treatise on the seven liberal arts, the introduction to which is cast in the form of dialogue between the master and his disciples. I will give an extract which may suffice to show the noble and elevated sentiments which these early scholars entertained on the subject of learning:—

Dis. “O, wise master, we have often heard you repeat that true philosophy was the science that taught all the virtues, and the only earthly riches that never left their possessor in want. Your words have excited in us a great desire to possess this treasure. We wish to know where the teaching of philosophy will lead us, and by what steps we may attain to it. But our age is weak and without your help we shall not be able to mount these steps.”

Master. “It will be easy to show you the way of wisdom, provided you seek it purely for God’s sake to preserve the purity of your own soul, and for the love of virtue; if you love it for its own sake, and do not seek in it any worldly honour and glory or, still less, riches or pleasure.”

Dis. “Master, raise us up from the earth where our ignorance now detains us, lead us to those heights of science where you passed your own early years. For if we may listen to the fables of the poets, they would seem to tell us that the sciences are the true banquets of the gods.”

Master. “We read of Wisdom, which is spoken of by the mouth of Solomon, that she built herself a house and hewed out seven pillars. Now, although these pillars represent the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost and the seven Sacraments of the Church, we may[140] also discern in them the seven liberal arts, grammar, rhetoric, dialects, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, which are like so many steps on which philosophers expend their labours, and have obtained the honours of eternal renown.”

As the school of St. Martin rose in celebrity, it became the resort of a crowd both of foreigners and natives. Alcuin’s own countrymen in particular flocked around him, and it would seem that the number of English scholars who constantly arrived, at last excited the jealousy of the clergy of Tours. One day as four Frankish priests were standing at the gate of the monastery, a newly arrived Englishman, Aigulf by name, passed in, and supposing him to be ignorant of their language, one of them exclaimed, “There goes another of them! When shall we be free from these swarms of Britons? They gather round the old fellow like so many bees!” Aigulf hung his head and blushed; but when Alcuin heard what had passed he sent for the Frenchmen, and courteously requested them to sit down, and drink the health of the young scholar in his best wine. “The old Saxon,” as they called him, ceased not in his retirement to watch over the interests of learning, even in the remotest provinces. There was hardly a bishop or abbot of any distinction who had not at one time or other been his pupil, and he continued to enjoy and exercise among them the privileged freedom of an old and honoured master. His letters bear evidence of the immense range over which his influence extended. In his ninety-fourth epistle he conjures a young missionary to be always reminding the parish priests to keep up their schools. Another time he addresses a bishop, and advises him to return to his own country that he may set in order good grammar lessons for the children of his diocese. His fifty-sixth letter is to the English Archbishop of York; and in it he enters into several useful details; and advises him to have his school divided into different classes—one for reading, one for writing, and one for chanting, so as to preserve good order. Then comes a letter to the Emperor, reminding him to have the Palatine scholars daily exercised in their learning; arithmetical subtleties accompany another letter, and some sage observations on the utility of punctuation, which commendable branch of grammar has, he regrets to say, been of late much lost sight of. In short, his active mind, thoroughly Anglo-Saxon in its temper, worked on to the end; labouring at a sublime end by homely practical details. One sees he is of the same race with Bede, who wrote and dictated to the last hour[141] of his life, and when his work was finished, calmly closed his book and died.

It was after the retirement of Alcuin from court, that we must date the arrival in France of the Irish scholars, Dungal and Clement, concerning whom the monk of St. Gall relates a story which is treated as apocryphal by Tiraboschi, though it has found a place in most earlier histories. He tells us, that having landed on the coast of France, they excited the curiosity of the people by crying aloud, “Wisdom to sell! who’ll buy?” The rumour of their arrival reaching Charlemagne’s ears, he caused them to be brought before him, and finding them well skilled in letters, retained them both in his service. Clement remained at Paris and received the direction of the Palatine school, whilst Dungal was sent to Pavia, where he opened an academy in the monastery of St. Augustine. Whatever may be thought of the incident connected with their first appearance in France, there is no doubt as to their historic identity. Tiraboschi quotes an edict of the Emperor Lothaire published in 823, for the re-establishment of public schools in nine of the chief cities of Italy, from which it appears that Dungal was at the time still presiding over the school of Pavia. He seems to be the same who, in 811, addressed a long letter to Charlemagne on the subject of two solar eclipses, which were expected to take place in the following year, and may be yet further identified with the Dungalus Scotorum præcipuus, who is noticed in the catalogue of the library of Bobbio, where he at last retired, bringing with him a great store of books, which he presented to the monastery. Among them were four books of Virgil, two of Ovid, one of Lucretius, and a considerable number of the Greek and Latin fathers.

As to Clement, there is no difficulty in tracing his career. He seems to have been deeply imbued with the learned mysticism of the school of Toulouse, and in a treatise on the eight parts of speech, which is still preserved, quotes the rules of the grammarian Virgil, and the writings of the noble doctors Glengus, Galbungus, Eneas, and the rest. Alcuin complained much of the disorder introduced into the Studies of the court school after his departures. “I left them Latins,” he exclaimed, “and now I find them Egyptians.” This was a double hit at the gibberish of the twelve Latinites, which Alcuin could not abide, and at the hankering which the Irish professors always displayed, both in science and theology, for the teaching of the school of Alexandria, many of them having embraced the peculiar[142] views of the Neo-Platonists. The Egyptians, however, found a welcome at the court of Charlemagne in spite of their eccentricities; for there no one was ever coldly received who could calculate eclipses, or charm the ears of the learned monarch with Latin hexameters. And it is perhaps to one of these Irish professors that we must attribute those verses preserved by Martene, and professing to be written by an “Irish exile,” which contain such agreeable flattery of the Frankish sovereign and of his people, and which were presented to the emperor as he held one of those solemn New-year courts, at which his subjects vied one with another in offering him jewels, tissues, horses, and bags of money. And perhaps, to his mind, the graceful lines that celebrated the Frankish people as “a race of kings come forth from the walls of Troy, into whose hands God had delivered the empire of the world,” were more acceptable than even the glittering heaps of the precious metals.

Charlemagne did his utmost to draw Alcuin once more to his side, and specially pressed him to accompany him on his visit to Rome, in the year 800, when he received the imperial crown. But Alcuin was not to be moved by his arguments and entreaties, though he did not refuse to quit his retirement at the call of real duty. In 799 he attended the council of Aix-la-Chapelle, to oppose in person the heretical teacher, Felix of Urgel, who, together with Elipandus, had revived the Nestorian heresy in a new shape. After a disputation of six days, Felix owned himself vanquished, and frankly renounced his errors. This was perhaps the most glorious moment in Alcuin’s life; but he only used the credit which he had thus obtained with his sovereign to solicit permission to resign all his preferments into the hands of his disciples, that he might spend the remainder of his life in retirement. Frèdegise, therefore, succeeded him in the abbacy of St. Martin’s, and Sigulf in that of Ferrières. “I have made all things over into the hands of my sons,” writes the old man, rejoicing in his late-earned freedom, “and laying down the burden of the pastoral care, I wait quietly at St. Martin’s until my change shall come.”

The short remainder of his life was spent in the humblest exercises of charity and devotion. He chose the place of his interment and often visited it with disciples, and his letters show him to have been incessantly occupied with the great thought of his approaching end. It came at last, and on the morning of Whitsunday, May 19, 804, the great scholar passed gently and happily to the eternity he[143] had so long contemplated. Charlemagne mourned his death as that of a friend and master, and before his final departure addressed him some Latin verses, which, if not distinguished for much poetical merit, at least do justice to the honest affection that dictated them. He survived Alcuin ten years, and was buried in the royal “chapel”[88] that he had erected as the place of his sepulture, not reclining in a coffin, but seated on his throne, with the crown on his brow, the sceptre in his hand, his good sword Joyeuse by his side, and the book of the Gospels resting on his knees. And a brief inscription marked the spot where rested all that was mortal of “the great and orthodox emperor.”

The death of Alcuin in no degree checked the intellectual movement to which he had communicated the first impulse. He had fairly done his work; and even after his death his influence survived in the disciples whom he had so carefully trained and who long supplied the public schools of the empire with a succession of excellent masters. St. Martin’s of Tours, indeed, declined under the government of Fredegise, and the Palatine scholars themselves did not pass into the best hands. After Alcuin’s withdrawal from court the school of the palace fell, as we have seen, first under the management of the Irishman Clement, who had a fancy for changing the whole method of instruction, and then under that of Claud, Bishop of Turin, a man of audacious opinions, the only one of the Western bishops who declared in favour of the Iconoclasts, and who likewise took up the heretical tenets of Felix of Urgel. The school continued to decline during the whole reign of Louis le Debonnaire; but it revived under his son and successor Charles the Bald, who followed the example of his illustrious grandfather, and gathered around him learned men from all countries, especially from England and Ireland. The crowds of scholars who flocked from the latter island is noticed by Henry of Auxerre, who says, that it seemed as if Ireland herself were about to pass over into Gaul, and it became a proverb during the reign of this monarch, that instead of speaking of the school of the palace, one should rather call the royal residence the palace of the schools. Charles was not merely an encourager of humane letters; he possessed a certain philosophical turn of mind which led him to indulge in abstruse speculations, and to encourage similar tastes in those around him. He addressed a capitular to the bishops of his kingdom, questioning them on their[145] opinions as to the immateriality of the soul; and he placed at the head of his royal school a scholar more famous for the subtlety of his intellect than the orthodoxy of his views. John Scotus Erigena, an Irishman by birth, had early applied himself to the study of the Greek language and philosophy, and had embraced the chief doctrines of the Neo-Platonic school. He astonished the Western world by his translation of the works of St. Denys the Areopagite, an achievement which the Roman scholars, who still regarded their Transalpine neighbours as essentially barbarians, could hardly be brought to credit, and which exhorted compliments from Anastasius, the papal librarian, and some complaints from Pope Nicholas I., who would have been better pleased had the work been first submitted to ecclesiastical approval. Erigena’s free opinions won him no disfavour with Charles the Bald; nevertheless certain controversies, of which we shall have to speak hereafter, and in which he took an active part, drew from him the expression of heterodox sentiments which excited no little scandal. This was increased by the publication of his philosophical treatise, “De Natura Rerum,” in which he plainly put forth the doctrines of the Greek Platonists, and represented the Creator and the creature as essentially one and the same. Besides this radical Pantheistic error, which runs through all his works, his views on the subject of the supremacy of reason over authority are liberal in the extreme.[89] “Authority,” he says, “emanates from reason, not reason from authority; true reason has no need to be supported by any authority. We must use reason first in our investigations and authority afterwards.” He also affirmed that the substance of man was his will. The only punishment of sin, he says, is sin; there is no eternal fire; even the lost enjoy a certain happiness, for they are not deprived of truth. These, and a thousand equally unsound passages, raised him a crowd of adversaries, all of whom he treated with that supercilious contempt which would seem necessarily to enter into the character of the scholastic heretic. “They are all deceived,” he writes, “owing to their ignorance of liberal studies; they have none of them studied Greek, and with a knowledge of the Latin language alone it is impossible for them to understand the distinctions of science.”

In 855 the Council of Valence, nothing dismayed at having to deal with a foe who was acquainted with Greek, examined his writings, declared certain propositions extracted from his treatise on[146] Predestination to be the invention of the devil, and everywhere interdicted them from being read. Nevertheless, Erigena was not removed from his post at court; nor was it until ten years later, in 865, that he found himself obliged to retire, in consequence of the remonstrances addressed to the king by Pope Nicholas I., who required his removal from the Palatine academy, “where he was giving poison instead of bread, and mingling his tares with the wheat.” All authorities agree in regarding him as intellectually superior to any man of his age, though it is possible that his heterodox principles have had some share in winning him the extraordinary favour which he has found at the hands of Hallam and Guizot, who are willing, naturally enough, to make the most of one who in the Dark Ages set at nought the claims of authority, and raised the standard of independent reason. In spite, however, of the prominent position which he holds among men of letters, and the noisy eulogiums which have been heaped on him at the expense of his more orthodox contemporaries, I shall say no more of him in this place than that he withdrew from Gaul,[90] and was succeeded in his office as Palatine scholasticus by the monk Mannon, who, after teaching with success for some years, returned to his monastery at Condat; after which we hear no more of the Palatine school till its revival, at the beginning of the tenth century, under the famous Remigius of Auxerre.

But the Palatine school by no means held the most important place in the educational institutions bequeathed by Charlemagne to the empire. The work begun by Alcuin was being far more successfully carried out in the monastic schools, especially those of Fulda, Rheims, and the two Corbys. The abbey of Fulda, mindful of its great origin, was one of the first to enter heartily into the revival of letters initiated by Charlemagne; and in order to fit the monks for the work to which they were called, it was resolved to send two of the younger brethren to study under Alcuin himself at Tours, that after being there imbued with all the liberal arts, they might return[147] to their own monastery as teachers. The two chosen for this purpose were Hatto and Rabanus, and they accordingly began their studies at St. Martin’s in 802. The name of Maurus was bestowed by Alcuin on his favourite disciple, and was afterwards retained by Rabanus in addition to his own. He studied both sacred and profane sciences, as appears from the letter he addressed many years later to his old schoolfellow, Haimo, Bishop of Halberstadt, in which he reminds him of the pleasant days they had spent together in studious exercises, reading, not only the Sacred books, and the expositions of the Fathers, but also investigating all the seven liberal arts. In 813, being then twenty-five years of age, Rabanus was recalled to Fulda, by the abbot Ratgar, and placed at the head of the school, with the strict injunction that he was to follow in all things the method of his master Alcuin. The latter was still alive, and addressed a letter to the young preceptor, which is printed among his other works, and is addressed to “the boy Maurus,” in which he wishes him good luck with his scholars. His success was so extraordinary that the abbots of other monasteries sent their monks to study under him, and were eager to obtain his pupils as professors in their own schools. The German nobles also gladly confided their sons to his care, and he taught them with wonderful gentleness and patience. He carried out the system which had been adopted by Alcuin of thoroughly exercising his scholars in grammar before entering on the study of the other liberal arts. “All the generations of Germany,” says Trithemius, “are bound to celebrate the praise of Rabanus, who first taught them to articulate the sound of Greek and Latin.” At his lectures every one was trained to write equally well in prose or verse on any subject placed before him, and was afterwards taken through a course of rhetoric, logic, and natural philosophy, according to the capacities of each. From this time the school of Fulda came to be regarded as one of the first monastic seminaries of Europe, and held a rank at least equal to that of St. Gall. It had inherited the fullest share of the Anglo-Saxon spirit, and exhibited the same spectacle of intellectual activity which we have already seen working in the foundations of St. Bennet Biscop. Every variety of useful occupation was embraced by the monks; while some were at work hewing down the old forest which a few years before had given shelter to the mysteries of Pagan worship, or tilling the soil on those numerous farms which to this day perpetuate the memory of the great abbey in the names of the towns and villages[148] which have sprung up on their site,[91] other kinds of industry were kept up within doors, where the visitor might have beheld a huge range of workshops in which cunning hands were kept constantly busy on every description of useful and ornamental work in wood, stone, and metal. It was a scene, not of artistic dilettanteism, but of earnest, honest labour, and the treasurer of the abbey was charged to take care that the sculptors, engravers, and carvers in wood, were always furnished with plenty to do. Passing on to the interior of the building the stranger would have been introduced to the scriptorium, over the door of which was an inscription warning the copyists to abstain from idle words, to be diligent in copying good books, and to take care not to alter the text by careless mistakes. Twelve monks always sat here employed in the labour of transcription, as was also the custom at Hirsauge, a colony sent out from Fulda in 830; and the huge library which was thus gradually formed, survived till the beginning of the seventeenth century, when it was destroyed in the troubles of the thirty years’ war. Not far from the scriptorium was the interior school, where the studies were carried on with an ardour and a largeness of views, which might have been little expected from an academy of the ninth century. Our visitor, were he from the more civilised south, might well have stood in mute surprise in the midst of these fancied barbarians, whom he would have found engaged in pursuits not unworthy of the schools of Rome. The monk Probus is perhaps lecturing on Virgil and Cicero, and that with such hearty enthusiasm that his brother professors accuse him, in good-natured jesting, of ranking them with the saints. Elsewhere disputations are being carried on over the Categories of Aristotle, and an attentive ear will discover that the controversy which made such a noise in the twelfth century, and divided the philosophers of Europe into the rival sects of the Nominalists and Realists, is perfectly well understood at Fulda, though it does not seem to have disturbed the peace of the school. To your delight, if you be not altogether wedded to the dead languages, you may find some engaged on the uncouth language of their father-land, and, looking over their shoulders, you may smile to see the barbarous words which they are cataloguing in their glossaries; words, nevertheless, destined to reappear centuries hence in the most philosophic literature of Europe.[149] The monks of Fulda derive their scholastic traditions from Alcuin and Bede, and cannot, therefore, neglect a study of the vernacular. Yet they are, I am sorry to say, beset with one weakness common to the scholars of the time, and are ashamed of their Frankish and Saxon names; and Hatto, Bruno, and Rechi, three of the best pupils of Rabanus, are known in his academy under the Latin soubriquets of Bonosus, Candidus, and Modestus. Brower, in his “Antiquities of Fulda,” has depicted the two last-named scholars from an illuminated manuscript of their monastery in which their portraits are introduced. Candidus, the assistant of Rabanus in the school, holds a book in one hand while with the other he points out to Modestus a passage on the page before him. From the open lips and extended hand of his pupil we surmise that he is reciting the words thus indicated. Both are clothed in the tunic without sleeves, scapular, and large capuce which then formed the Benedictine habit. It may be added that the school of Fulda would have been found ordered with admirable discipline. Twelve of the best professors were chosen and formed a council of seniors or doctors, presided over by one who bore the title of Principal, and who assigned to each one the lectures he was to deliver to the pupils.

In the midst of this world of intellectual life and labour, Rabanus continued for some years to train the first minds of Germany, and counted among his pupils the most celebrated men of the age, such as Lupus of Ferrières, Walafrid Strabo, and Ruthard of Hirsauge, the latter of whom was the first who read profane letters to the brethren of his convent “after the manner of Fulda.” Lupus was a monk of Ferrières, where he had been carefully educated by the abbot Aldric, who was a pupil of Sigulf, and had acted for some time as assistant to Alcuin in the school of Tours. Aldric afterwards became Archbishop of Sens, and sent Lupus to complete his education at Fulda, under Rabanus. Like all the scholars of Ferrières, Lupus had a decided taste for classical literature; the love of letters had been, to use his own expression, innate in him from a child, and he was considered the best Latinist of his time. His studies at Fulda were chiefly theological, and he applied to them with great ardour, without, however, forgetting “his dear humanities.” It would even seem that he taught them at Fulda, thus returning one benefit for another. The monastery was not far from that of Seligenstadt, where Eginhard, the secretary and biographer of Charlemagne, was their abbot. A friendship, based on similarity of tastes, sprang up between[150] him and Lupus, and was maintained by a correspondence, much of which is still preserved. Lupus always reckoned Eginhard as one of his masters; not that he directly received any lessons from him, but on account of the assistance which the abbot rendered him by the loan of valuable books. In one of his earliest letters to this good friend he begs for a copy of Cicero’s “Rhetoric,” his own being imperfect, as well as for the “Attic Nights” of Aulus Gellius, which were not then to be found in the Fulda library. In another letter, he consults him on the exact prosody of certain Latin words, and begs him to send the proper size of the Uncial letters used in manuscripts of that century.

Among the fellow-students of Lupus at this time was Walafrid Strabo, a man of very humble birth, whose precocious genius had early made him known in the world of letters. In spite of the unfortunate personal defect which earned him his surname of Strabo, (or the lame), Walafrid’s Latin verses had gained him respect among learned men at the age of fifteen, and they are favourably noticed even by critics of our own time. He had received his early training in the monastery of Reichnau, the situation of which was well fitted to nurture a poetic genius. His masters had been Tetto and Wettin, the latter of whom was author of that terrible “Vision of Purgatory” which left an indelible impress on the popular devotion of Christendom. From Reichnau he was sent by his superiors to study at Fulda, where he acquired a taste for historical pursuits, and is said to have assisted in the compilation of the annals of the monastery. It was out of the Fulda library that he collected the materials for his great work, the Gloss, or Commentary on the Text of Scripture, gathered from the writings of the Fathers. It received many additions and improvements from subsequent writers, and, for more than six hundred years, continued to be the most popular explanation of the Sacred text in use among theologians. Returning to Reichnau, Walafrid was appointed to the office of scholasticus, and filled it with such success as fairly to establish the reputation of that monastic school. Ermanric, one of his pupils, says of him, that to the end of his life he continued to exhibit the same delightful union of learning and simplicity which had endeared him to his masters and school-fellows. Even after he was appoined abbot, he found his chief pleasure in study, teaching, and writing verses, and would steal away from the weightier cares of his office to take a class in his old school and expound to them a passage of Virgil. Neither old age nor busy[151] practical duties dried up the fount of Abbot Walafrid’s inspiration, and we find him in his declining years writing his poems entitled “Hortulus,” wherein he describes with charming freshness of imagery, the little garden blooming beneath the window of his cell, and the beauty and virtue of the different flowers which he loved to cultivate with his own hands.

Another of the Fulda scholars contemporary with those named above, was Otfried, a monk of Weissemburg, who entered with singular ardour into the study of the Tudesque dialect. Rabanus himself devoted much attention to this subject, and composed a Latin and German glossary on the books of Scripture, together with some other etymological works, among which is a curious treatise on the origin of languages. Otfried took up his master’s favourite pursuits with great warmth, and the completion of Charlemagne’s German grammar is thought to be in reality his work, though generally assigned to Rabanus. On retiring to his own monastery, where he was charged with the direction of the school, he continued to make the improvement of his native language the chief object of his study. A noble zeal prompted him to produce something in the vernacular idiom which should take the place of those profane songs, often of heathen origin, which had hitherto been the only production of the German muse. Encouraged by a certain noble lady named Judith, to whom he confided his ideas, he conceived the plan of rendering into Tudesque verse the most remarkable passages from the Life of Our Lord, which he chose so happily, and wove together with so skilful a hand, that his work may be regarded as a Harmony of the Gospel narrative. It was accompanied with four dedicatory epistles, in one of which, addressed to Luitbert, Archbishop of Mentz, he complains of the neglect with which the Franks have hitherto treated their own language. Prudentius, Juvencus, and other Latin writers had written the Acts of the Lord in Latin verse, wherefore he now desired to attempt the same in his mother tongue. “I wish,” he says, “to write the Gospels, the history of our salvation, in the Frankish tongue. Now, therefore, let all men of good-will rejoice, and let those of the Frankish tongue also rejoice, and be glad, since we have lived to celebrate the praises of Christ in the language of our fathers.” The other epistles were addressed to the Emperor Louis, and to some of the monks of St. Gall, who were celebrated for the labour which they bestowed on the cultivation of the Tudesque dialect, and could therefore appreciate[152] Otfried’s work at its full value. It had the effect which he anticipated; his verses became familiar in the mouths of those who had hitherto been acquainted only with the rude songs of their pagan ancestors, and dispelled much of the prejudice which existed against the use of the barbarous dialects for the purpose of religious instruction. And in 847, three months after Rabanus was raised to the see of Mentz, a decree was published by the provincial council, requiring every bishop to provide himself with homilies for the instruction of the people, translated out of Latin into Tudesque or Romanesque (as the Rustic Latin was sometimes called), that they might be understood by rude and ignorant persons.

The character of Rabanus may be gathered from that of his pupils. He was in every respect a true example of the monastic scholar, and took St. Bede for the model on which his own life was formed. All the time not taken up with religious duties he devoted to reading, teaching, writing, or “feeding himself on the Divine Scriptures.” The best lesson he gave his scholars was the example of his own life, as Eginhard indicates in a letter written to his son, then studying as a novice at Fulda. “I would have you apply to literary exercises,” he says, “and try as far as you can to acquire the learning of your master, whose lessons are so clear and solid. But specially imitate his holy life.... For grammar and rhetoric and all human sciences are vain and even injurious to the servants of God, unless by Divine grace they know how to follow the law of God; for science puffeth up, but charity buildeth up. I would rather see you dead than inflated with vice.”

Nevertheless, the career of Rabanus was far from being one of unruffled repose, and the history of his troubles presents us with a singular episode in monastic annals. The abbot Ratgar was one of those men whose activity of mind and body was a cross to every one about him. He could neither rest himself nor suffer anybody else to be quiet. The ordinary routine of life at Fulda, with its prodigious amount of daily labour, both mental and physical, did not satisfy the requirements of his peculiar organisation. He had a fancy for rearranging the whole discipline of the monastery, and was specially desirous of providing himself with more splendid buildings than those which had been raised by the followers of the humble Sturm. Every one knows that the passion for building has in it a directly revolutionary element; it is synonymous with a passion for upsetting, destroying, and reducing everything to chaos. Hence, the monks of[153] Fulda had but an uncomfortable time of it, and what was worse, Ratgar was so eager to get his fine buildings completed, that he not only compelled his monks to work as masons, but shortened their prayers and masses, and obliged them to labour on festivals. Rabanus himself could claim no exemption; he had to exchange the pen for the trowel; and to take away all possibility of excuse, Ratgar deprived him of his books, and even of the private notes which he had made of Alcuin’s lectures. Rabanus was too good a monk to protest against his change of employment, and carried his bricks and mortar as cheerfully as ever he had applied himself to a copy of Cicero; but he did not conceive it contrary to religious obedience humbly to protest against the confiscation of his papers, and attempted to soften the hard heart of his abbot with a copy of verses. “O sweet father!” he exclaims, “most excellent shepherd of monks! I thy servant pray thee to be propitious, and to let thy tender pity hear me, who cry to thee though unworthy. O ever-compassionate Ruler! thy kindness in old time permitted me to study books, but the poverty of my understanding was a hindrance to me; and lest my wandering mind should lose all that my master taught me by word of mouth, I committed everything to writing. These writings in time formed little books, which I pray thee command to be returned to thy unworthy client. Whatever slaves possess is held by right of their masters, therefore all that I have written is thine by right. Nor do I petulantly claim these papers as my own, but defer all things to thy judgment; and whether thou grantest my petition or not, I pray God to grant thee all good things, and help thee to finish the good fight by an honourable course.”

Such a petition, so just, so modest, and so free from the least tinge of insubordination might have been thought capable of touching the hardest heart, but, says Rudolf his biographer, “he sang to a stone.” The building grievance at last grew to such a pitch, that the monks in despair appealed to Charlemagne, who summoned Ratgar to court to answer their charges, and appointed a commission of bishops and abbots to inquire into the whole matter. Their decision allayed the discord for a time, and so long as the emperor lived, Ratgar showed his monks some consideration. But no sooner was he dead than the persecution recommenced, and Rabanus, again deprived of his books and papers, seems to have consoled himself by making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He describes the unhappy state of Fulda at this time, in some very doleful verses addressed to one of the exiled monks;[154] for, not content with overwhelming his brethren with fresh labours, Ratgar had turned many out of the monastery, chiefly the aged ones, whose temperate remonstrances annoyed him. We have in these verses a touching account of the farewell visit paid by the exiles before their departure to the tomb of St. Boniface, whom they conjured to intercede in their favour. Some of them did not rest content with a course of passive submission, but repaired once more to court and implored the Emperor Louis to apply some remedy to the abuses, which threatened to end in the disruption of the first religious house in his dominions. A new commission was therefore appointed, and the result was that Ratgar was deposed from office and banished from the monastery, while in his place was elected the holy and gentle St. Eigil, a disciple of St. Sturm, whose government presented a singular contrast to that of the harsh and haughty Ratgar. He did nothing without consulting his brethren, and made it his aim to heal the wounds which a long course of ill-treatment had opened in the community. To set his children an example of humility and paternal concord, he often served them at table, and especially during the feast of Christmas. In his overflowing love and charity, he petitioned, as a personal favour, that they would consent to the recall of poor Ratgar, and on his return it appeared that his humiliation had not been without a beneficial effect. He showed no disposition to disturb the peace of the community again, but as the twofold desire of commanding and of building was not wholly eradicted from his soul, they let him satisfy it in moderation, by constructing a small monastery on an adjoining hill, to which he afterwards removed himself. He seems to have made a good end, asking pardon of all those whom he had offended, and Fulda very soon recovered its former flourishing condition. Rabanus was restored to his books and his school immediately on the election of St. Eigil, and in 822, on the death of the good abbot, whose life was written by the monk Candidus, Rabanus was chosen his successor. To him this was a very sorrowful business, for, with the government of a community of one hundred and fifty monks on his hands, he was necessarily obliged to give up his scholars. He resigned them to the care of Candidus, in all that concerned the humane letters, reserving to himself, however, the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Singularly enough, however, the man whose whole life had been passed in literary labour, evinced a talent for business not always found united to great scholarship. He kept up regular[155] discipline, and put all the offices of the abbey in a state of thorough efficiency, completing many of the half-finished buildings of Ratgar, and enriching his treasury with a vast quantity of holy relics. He also looked so well after the farms and dependencies of the abbey as greatly to increase its revenues. Still the school was not neglected, and the lectures he delivered there were destined to be the seeds of a work important in the history of ecclesiastical literature. His pupils had been accustomed from time to time to ask him questions on the chief duties of ecclesiastics and their signification, and the proper manner of administering the Rites of Holy Church. His answers they noted down on their tablets, without, however, observing much method, and as the matter constantly increased in bulk and value, they begged him at length to revise their notes and arrange them in better order. The result was his celebrated Treatise De Institutione Clericorum, an invaluable monument of the faith and practice of the Church in the ninth century. It treats in three books of the Sacraments, the Divine office, the feasts and fasts of the Church, and the learning necessary for ecclesiastics, concluding with instructions and rules for the guidance of preachers. On the last subject he observes that three things are necessary in order to become a good preacher; first, to be a good man yourself, that you may be able to teach others to be so; secondly, to be skilled in the Holy Scriptures and the interpretations of the Fathers; thirdly, and above all, to prepare for the work of preaching by that of prayer. As to the studies proper to ecclesiastics, he distinctly requires them to be learned not only in the Scriptures, but also in the seven liberal arts, provided only that these are treated as the handmaids of theology, and he explains his views on this subject much in the same way as Bede had done before him. For the rest, he was an enemy to anything like narrowness of intellectual training. His own works, in prose and verse, embraced a large variety of subjects, some of them belonging to mystic theology, such as his book on the Vision of God and his poem on the Holy Cross, which, in spite of its inaccurate prosody, still raises the admiration of the reader from the elevation of its sentiments. He is also commonly reputed the author of the “Veni Creator.”

In 847, Rabanus was raised to the archiepiscopal see of Mentz, in which office he was called on to examine the errors of Gotteschalk, a man who, beginning life as a monk of Fulda, had quitted that monastery in disgust, and subsequently led a wandering and not very[156] reputable life, though he appears to have considered himself attached to the monastery of Orbais. The opinions he broached on the subject of predestination being condemned by the council of Mentz, Rabanus sent him to his own metropolitan, Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims. The severity with which he was treated was disapproved even by many who condemned his doctrines, and a warm controversy arose, in the course of which Hincmar, who was far more a man of action than of the pen, bethought himself of employing on his side of the argument the genius of Scotus Erigena, then at the head of the Palatine school. Erigena was as yet only known to the learned world as a Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic scholar, and a man of surpassing wit and power of argument. His heterodox tendencies were not even suspected, and Hincmar congratulated himself on having engaged the services of one confessedly without a rival in the arena of letters. But his choice of an ally proved most unfortunate. Erigena opened fire on the opposite party with the assertion, characteristic enough of the self-sufficient sophist, that every question, on every imaginable subject, was capable of solution when submitted to the four philosophic rules of division, definition, demonstration, and analysis. To work he went, therefore, with his four rules, and while combating the ultra-predestination of Gottischalk, gave utterance to such free opinions on the subject of Divine Grace as raised against him all the theologians of France. Among these were St. Prudentius of Troyes, Amolan, Archbishop of Lyons, a Hebrew scholar whose wise and moderate manner of dealing with the subject aimed at refuting the errors of both the opposite partisans, and his successor, St. Remigius. The opinions put forth by Scotus had increased the difficulties of the question, and writers thickened on both sides. It is needless to say that neither Rabanus nor Hincmar were any way responsible for the errors broached by Scotus; nevertheless, the line of argument which they took did not satisfy the theologians of Valence and Lyons, and in the course of the controversy which troubled his declining years, Rabanus found himself opposed by his former pupil, Lupus of Ferrières. He died in 856, leaving his books to be equally divided between the abbeys of Fulda and St. Alban’s, of Mentz.

Meanwhile, Lupus of Ferrières had become abbot of his monastery, for Sigulf in his old age resigned his dignity, and chose to become the disciple of his former pupil. Lupus continued after his promotion to carry on his labours in the monastic school. The favour with[157] which he was regarded by Charles the Bald was the occasion of much trouble to the poor scholar, who was constantly summoned to act as royal ambassador, and sometimes even to join the army and take part in active war. His monastery happened to be one of those which owed the king military service, and in an action fought in Angoumois between Charles and his nephew Pepin, Lupus, who had no taste at all for the life of a soldier, lost all his baggage and found himself a prisoner. So soon as he recovered his liberty he addressed a moving letter to the king, imploring him to set him free henceforth from his military engagements at any price. “Most willingly,” he says, “will I resume the office of professor in my monastery, for I desire nothing better than all my life to teach what I have learnt.” Charles appears to have seen that by persisting in his feudal claims he would only be making a very bad soldier out of an admirable scholar, so he suffered him to return to Ferrières, where he set about collecting a noble library, as well sacred as profane. As he wrote himself to Einard, he never grew weary of books; he took extraordinary pains in seeking for his treasures even in distant countries, in causing them to be transcribed, and sometimes in lovingly transcribing them himself. His interesting correspondence contains frequent allusions to these Bibliographical researches. At one time he asks a friend to bring him the “Wars of Catiline and of Jugurtha” by Sallust, and the “Verrines of Cicero.” At another, he writes to Pope Benedict III., begging him to send by two of his monks, about to journey to Rome, certain books which he could not obtain in his own country, and which he promises to have speedily copied and faithfully returned. They are, the “Commentaries of St. Jerome on Jeremias,” “Cicero de Oratore,” the twelve books of Quinctilian’s Institutes, and the “Commentary of Donatus on Terence.” With all his taste for the classics, however, Lupus had too much good sense not to see the importance of cultivating the barbarous dialects, and sent his nephew with two other noble youths to Prom, to learn the Tudesque idiom.[92] In his school he made it his chief aim to train his pupils, not only in grammar and rhetoric, but also in the higher art of a holy life. The monastic seminaries were proverbially schools of good living as well as good learning, recte faciendi et bene dicendi, as Mabillon expresses it; and there was nothing that Lupus[158] had more at heart than the inculcation of this principle, that the cultivation of head and heart must go together. “We too often seek in study,” he writes in his epistle to the monk Ebradus, “nothing but ornament of style; few are found who desire to acquire by its means purity of manners, which is of far greater value. We are very much afraid of vices of language, and use every effort to correct them, but we regard with indifference the vices of the heart.” His favourite Cicero had before his time lifted a warning voice against the capital error of disjoining mental from moral culture, and in the Christian system of the earlier centuries they were never regarded apart.

Lupus was not too great a scholar to condescend to labour for beginners, and drew up, for the benefit of his pupils, an abridgment of Roman history, in which he proposes the characters of Traian and Theodosius for the study of Christian princes. He was wont to boast of his double descent from Alcuin, as being a pupil of Sigulf and Rabanus, both of them disciples of the great master. His own favourite scholar Heiric, or Henry of Auxerre, indulged in a similar morsel of scholastic pride. He had studied under both Lupus and Haimo of Halberstadt, the former school-fellow of Rabanus, at St. Martin of Tours. Haimo seems to have lectured for some time at Ferrières, and Heiric tells us in some not inelegant verses that it was the custom of the two pedagogues to give their pupils a very pleasant sort of recreation, relating to them whatever they had found in the course of their reading that was worthy of remembrance, whether in Christian or Pagan authors. Heiric, who was somewhat of an intellectual glutton, and had a craving for learning of all sorts and on all imaginable subjects, made for himself a little book, in which he diligently noted down every scrap that fell from the lips of his masters. This book he subsequently published, and dedicated to Hildebold, Bishop of Auxerre. Heiric himself afterwards became a man of letters; he was appointed scholasticus of St. Germain’s of Auxerre, and was intrusted with the education of Lothaire, son of Charles the Bald, as we learn from the epistle addressed to that monarch which he prefixed to his life of St. Germanus, in which he speaks of the young prince, recently dead, as in years a boy, but in mind a philosopher. Another of his pupils was the famous Remigius of Auxerre, who, towards the end of the ninth century, was summoned to Rheims by Archbishop Fulk, to re-establish sacred studies in that city, and worked[159] there in concert with his former schoolfellow, Hucbald of St. Amand, who attained a curious sort of reputation by his poem on bald men, each line of which began with the letter C, the whole being intended as a compliment to Charles the Bald. Fulk himself became their first pupil, and after thoroughly restoring the school of Rheims, Remigius passed on to Paris, where we shall have occasion to notice him among the teachers of the tenth century. From his time the schools of Paris continued to increase in reputation and importance, till they developed into the great university which may thus be distinctly traced through a pedigree of learned men up to the great Alcuin himself. This genealogy of pedagogues is of no small interest, as showing the efforts made in the worst of times to keep alive the spark of science and the persistence with which, in spite of civil wars and Norman invasions, the scholastic traditions of Alcuin were maintained.

We must not take leave of abbot Lupus without noticing one other pupil of his, more celebrated than any yet named, the great St. Ado of Vienne. He studied in the school of Ferrières under Sigulf, Aldric and Lupus, and from his school life his masters predicted his future sanctity. The jealousy of his companions obliging him to leave Ferrières, he removed to Prom, and placed himself under the discipline of the good abbot Marcward, and there taught the sacred sciences for some years, after which he found himself able to return to Ferrières. During the course of a journey into Italy he met with an ancient martyrology, which served as the basis on which he compiled his own, which was published in 858. Two years later he became Archbishop of Vienne, and in that office did much for the promotion of letters. The scholars of these dark ages were often bound together in ties of very close friendship, founded on mutual tastes, the recollection of early school days spent together under some wise and well-loved master, and the exchange of good offices in the shape of manuscripts lent and borrowed. If Ado’s intellectual superiority had made him enemies among a few of the more churlish spirits of Ferrières, his sweet and amiable disposition elsewhere earned him many friends. Among these was the Deacon Wandalbert, a monk of Prom, and the learned Florus of Lyons. When Ado left Prom, Wandalbert succeeded him as scholasticus, and a famous one he made. His peculiar line was natural philosophy, and in pursuing it he was not content with gathering up other men’s ideas, but observed and experimentalised for himself.[160] He greatly excelled in poetry, and produced a martyrology written in verse, in which, besides hymns in honour of the different saints whom he commemorates, he contrives to introduce short poems descriptive of the seasons, the different rustic labours proper to each month, the beauties of nature under her different aspects, seed-time and harvest, the vintage and the chase; together with other more learned subjects, such as the movements of the heavenly bodies by which we regulate our time. He gives rules for telling the time by the length of shadow cast by the sun, though he is careful to remind the reader that these rules will not be the same in all countries, inasmuch as in those that lie more to the south the shadows will necessarily be shorter, the earth being then more directly under the solar rays.

We must now turn to the great abbey of Old Corby, where, as we have already seen, Adalhard, a Palatine scholar, and a prince of the blood-royal, had retired from the perils of a courtier’s life, and become abbot. Unusual importance attached to its monastic school, from the circumstance of its having been chosen by Charlemagne as the academy to which the youth of Saxony were sent for education, in order that on their return to their own country they might assist in planting the Church on a solid foundation. The master chosen for the task of rearing these future missionaries was Paschasius Radpert, one of the most remarkable men of his time. Originally of very humble birth, he owed his education to the charity of the nuns of Soissons, who first received the desolate child into their own out-quarters, and then sent him to some monks in the same city, under whose tuition he acquired a fair amount of learning, and addicted himself to the study of Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Terence. He never forgot the kindness of his early benefactresses, and in after years dedicated his Treatise on the Virginity of the Blessed Virgin to the good nuns, styling himself therein their alumnus, or foster-son. The deep humility of this great scholar is spoken of by all his biographers as his characteristic virtue, and is apparent in a passage which occurs in his exposition of the 44th Psalm, which he dedicates to these same nuns. In it he refers to the fact of his having received the clerical tonsure in their Church, and, as it would seem, in their presence. After expressing the reverence he feels for those whose names are written in heaven, and whom he regards not only as the spouses of Christ, but as the choicest flowers in the garden of the Church, he goes on to say: “When I behold you I sigh bitterly to[161] think that this sacred crown, which as a boy I received before the holy altar of the Mother of God, in the midst of your prayers and offices of praise, I lost long ago, exiled in the world’s wilderness, and stained by many worldly actions.... I pray you, therefore, when you lift up your hearts on high, be mindful of me also, and implore for me the divine grace, that the most clement Judge may restore to me my lost crown.” In fact, after receiving the tonsure in early youth, Paschasius, whose tastes for Terence and Cicero rather predominated at that time over his relish for more sacred studies, abandoned his first inclination for the cloister, and lived for some years a secular life. Touched at last by divine grace, he entered the abbey of Old Corby, and there made his profession under the abbot Adalhard. All the ardour he had previously shown in the pursuit of profane literature he now applied to the study of the Divine Scriptures. Yet he only devoted to study of any kind those “furtive hours,” as he calls them, which he was able to steal from the duties of regular discipline, and was never seen so happy as when engaged in the choral office or the meaner occupations of community life. Such, then, was the master chosen by Adalhard for the responsible office of scholasticus, and a very minute account is left us of his manner of discharging its duties. Every day he delivered lectures on the sacred sciences, besides preaching to the monks on Sundays and Festivals. His thorough familiarity with the best Latin authors appears from the frequent allusions to them which occur in his writings. Quotations from the classic poets drop from his pen, as it were, half unconsciously, and we are told that he continued to keep up his acquaintance with them, so far as was necessary for teaching others. But his own study was now chiefly confined to the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers;[93] and among the latter, his favourites were St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom, St. Bede, and St. Gregory the Great. “He did not approve,” says his biographer, “of the diligence displayed by some men of the time in explaining and meditating on profane authors.” In a passage which occurs in the preface to his exposition of St. Matthew’s Gospel, he blames those lovers of secular learning, “who seek various and divers expounders, that so they may attain to the understanding of beautiful lies concerning shameful things, and who will not pass over—I do not say a single page, but a single line or[162] syllable, without thoroughly investigating it, with the utmost labour and vigilance, while at the same time they utterly neglect the Sacred Scriptures. I wonder,” he continues, “that the Divine words can be so distasteful to them, and that they can refuse to scrutinise the mysteries of God with the same diligence they so unweariedly bestow on the follies of profane tragedies and the foolish fables of the poets. Who can doubt that such labour is altogether thrown away, being bestowed on a thing undeserving of reward?” This was not the utterance of a narrow-minded bigot, who condemned pursuits and tastes to which he was himself a stranger. Few were more keenly alive than he to the charms of polite literature, neither did he at all condemn its use within proper limits, even among cloistered students. It would, indeed, have been a difficult matter to have eradicated the love of the beautiful from the heart of Paschasius. He possessed it in every shape, and was not merely a poet, but a musician also. In one of his writings he lets fall an observation which might be taken for a prose rendering of a verse of Shelley’s, although the Christian scholar goes beyond the infidel poet, and does not merely describe the sentiment which all have felt, but traces it to its proper source. Shelley complains that—

Paschasius explains the mystery: “There is no song to be found,” he says, “without a tone of sadness in it; even as here below there are no joys without a mixture of sorrow; for songs of pure joy belong only to the heavenly Sion, but lamentation is the property of our earthly pilgrimage.” His musical tastes were perfectly shared and understood by his master St. Adalhard, whose sensibility to the influence of melodious sounds is spoken of by his biographer Gerard. Even during his residence at the court of Charlemagne, it is said of him that “he was always so full of a sweet intention towards God, that if while assisting at the royal council he heard the sound of some chance melody, he had it not in his power to refrain from tears, for all sweet music seemed to remind him of his heavenly country.” The importance attached to the study of music by the Christian scholastics of these times is not a little remarkable. They inherited the traditions of the ancients, and with them regarded music as a science intimately associated with the knowledge of[163] divine things. They were the true descendants of those holy fathers of old, who, as the son of Sirach tells us, “sought out musical tunes and published canticles, and were rich in virtue, studying beautifulness, and living at peace in their houses.” The narratives of our early English schools will sufficiently have illustrated the fact that music held a very prominent place in the system of education which held sway in the early centuries; and the theory on which this high esteem was based will nowhere be found better explained than in the writings of Rabanus. “Musical discipline,” he says, “is so noble and useful a thing, that without it no one can properly discharge the ecclesiastical office. For whatsoever in reading is correctly pronounced, and whatsoever in chanting is sweetly modulated, is regulated by a knowledge of this discipline; and by it we not only learn how to read and sing in the church, but also rightly perform every rite in the divine service. Moreover, the discipline of music is diffused through all the acts of our life. For when we keep the commandments of God, and observe His law, it is certain that our words and acts are associated by musical rhythm with the virtues of harmony. If we observe a good conversation, we prove ourselves associated with this discipline; but when we act sinfully, we have in us no music.”[94]

Paschasius, then, was a poet and a musician, but he was also a scientific theologian, and one who was in some degree in advance of his age in the philosophic method he adopted when analysing the dogmas of faith. In the year 831 he wrote his famous treatise on the “Sacrament of the Altar,” which was specially intended for the instruction of his Saxon pupils, who required a plain and comprehensive exposition of that mystery. He composed it, therefore, in a very simple style, comparing it to “milk for babes;” and it is evident that in a treatise drawn up under such circumstances, for the instruction of young converts, the author would necessarily seek, not the setting forth of theological subtleties or private views, but the simple, straightforward statement of the Church’s doctrine as universally taught and believed by all the faithful. He declares in very express and distinct terms that “the substance of bread is not to be found in the Sacrament, and that there is present only the Real Body of Jesus Christ, the same that was born of the B. Virgin, and was crucified, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven.”[95] The[164] treatise was dedicated to Warin, abbot of New Corby, and excited no controversy until fifteen years later, when a second edition, dedicated to Charles the Bald, fell into the hands of Scotus Erigena, whose captious mind found matter of offence in the expressions used by Paschasius. He, accordingly, wrote in reply his treatise on the “Holy Eucharist,” of which no copy now exists; for, after being condemned by several Councils, all the copies that could be found were ordered to be burnt in 1059, in consequence of the use made of them by the Berengarian heretics. Paschasius defended his words by a simple appeal to the universal sense of Christendom, which, since the days of the Apostles, had never ceased to believe and confess this salutary doctrine.

At the time when this vexatious controversy broke out he was abbot of his monastery, and soon after retired from office, and joyfully returned to his cell and his studies, spending his last days in the completion of his greatest work, the “Commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel.” Whether in public or private life, his lowliness of spirit was equally remarkable, while the self-sufficient presumption of his opponent Erigena exhibits an ugly example of that knowledge which puffeth up. In Paschasius we see the opposite virtue, which faileth not “when tongues shall cease and knowledge shall be destroyed.” He styled himself by no more honourable title than the “Monachorum Peripsema,” and in his last sickness imposed so strict an injunction on his brethren never to write his life, that they dared not disobey him, and thus many interesting particulars concerning him have necessarily been lost.

He left many disciples, among whom was Anscharius, who succeeded him in the government of his school, and of whom we must now say something. He had begun his school life very early, being sent to the monastery after his mother’s death, when a child of only five; and, says his biographer, Rembert, after the manner of young children, he showed at first a much greater liking for childish sports than for learning of any kind. At five this may perhaps be thought excusable, but there are those whom wisdom preventeth, and when they go forth they find her “sitting at their door.” And to Anscharius the love of wisdom was brought by Her who is herself “the Mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope; in whom is all grace of the way and of the truth, all hope of life and of virtue.” One night he seemed to find himself in a dark and gloomy place, out of which, when he sought to[165] find some way of escape, he perceived a delightful path wherein Our Lady appeared to him surrounded by a crowd of saints clothed in white garments, among whom he recognised his mother. He ran towards her, stretching out his childish hands; whereupon the Blessed Virgin addressed him, saying: “My son, do you wish to come to your mother? Know that if you would share in her happiness you must fly from vanity, lay aside childish follies, and abide in holiness of life. For we detest all vice and idleness; neither can they who delight in such things be joined to our company.”

From this time Anscharius changed his conduct: he applied himself to his tasks, and spent his whole time in reading and meditation, and acquiring useful arts; so that his companions wondered at a change the cause of which was unknown to them. As he grew in years he was favoured with other heavenly visions, which I notice here, because it is often said, and doubtless with much truth, that the occupations of study and teaching have in them a direct tendency to dry up the sources of devotion. When, therefore, in studying the history of these ancient Christian schools we find among their teachers a succession of saints, and even of contemplatives, who enjoyed the most intimate communications with God, and were distinguished by the highest supernatural gifts, one cannot but ask wherein the difference lay; what divine secret they possessed enabling them to keep the sweet fountain of holy tears from drying up, so that they seem to have been wholly unconscious of the existence of any danger to the spiritual life in the occupations of study or teaching, and regarded such duties as in themselves spiritual. Possibly their safeguard lay in those happy retinacula of religious life of which St. Bede speaks, and which, as we have seen, were regarded as their first object even by scholars like Rabanus and Paschasius, who devoted to study only the “furtive hours” not claimed by prayer and obedience. And hence they created a tradition which was kept up in the Christian schools down to a far later period, the grand principle of which was to interweave spiritual with intellectual employment, and by timely interruptions, prevent the whole nature from being poured out over its mental work. In what manner this was effected in the collegiate foundations of the Middle Ages we shall have occasion to show hereafter; it is sufficient here to remind the reader that such a system was naturally supplied by the discipline of religious life in those cloistered schools which were the nurseries of Christian education. And the result was that[166] the monastic teachers were something very unlike the modern notion of schoolmasters; they were not mere men of the rod and the grammar; and it cannot but strike us as remarkable how almost universally they are spoken of as enjoying, in a very special degree, the gift of prayer. This was preeminently the case with St. Anscharius, and some of his visions are related by his biographer, Rembert, who had heard them in confidence from his own lips. He mentions one remarkable revelation received by the saint in the early part of his religious life, whence he understood that he was to be called to preach the faith to heathen nations. Some of these supernatural incidents are related as mixed up with ordinary details of his life in the schools. While he was scholasticus of Old Corby it was his invariable custom, says Rembert, when going to and returning from the school, to turn aside into a little oratory dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and there pray awhile in secret. On one such occasion when he rose from his knees he saw standing at the entrance One clothed after the Jewish fashion, beautiful in countenance, from whose eyes went forth a Divine light. Recognising it to be our Lord Anscharius prostrated at His feet, but in a sweet voice He bid him rise, saying, “Confess thy sins, Anscharius, that thou mayst receive pardon.” “What need is there, O Lord,” said Anscharius, “that I should tell them to Thee, seeing that Thou knowest them all?” But he replied, “I know them, indeed, nevertheless I would have thee confess them that thou mayst be justified.” Anscharius accordingly declared all the sins he had ever committed since his childhood, and was consoled by the assurance that he had received their full remission. About the same time, continues Rembert, it happened that one of his little scholars, named Fulbert, received a blow with a slate from another lad, of so serious a nature that within a few days he died. When the accident was made known to Anscharius, the good master was overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of such a mischance having befallen a child committed to his care. During the time that Fulbert continued to linger, Anscharius never left his bedside, till at last, wearied out with sorrow and long watching, they persuaded him to take some repose. He fell into a heavy slumber, in which he was consoled by a gracious vision. He seemed to see the dear child carried up to heaven by the hands of the angels, and placed in the company of the martyrs; and, wondering at the sight, it was explained to him that because Fulbert had borne his wound with great patience, and[167] had heartily loved and forgiven him from whom he had received the injury, and had prayed much for him, accepting his own premature death with loving submission to the Divine will, his sweetness and resignation had deserved from the Divine compassion so great a reward as to be placed among the holy martyrs. Anscharius was still absorbed in the joy of this revelation when he was roused by Witmar, a younger monk associated with him in the government of the school, who came to tell him that even at that very moment Fulbert had expired. He found that Anscharius already knew it, and doubtless, adds Rembert, this comfort had been given him by God that he might not grieve overmuch for the death of the child, but might rather rejoice at the happy state of his soul.

Anscharius was one of those chosen to colonise the monastery of New Corby, the mention of which requires a few words of explanation. The foundation of this daughter-house was the great work of St. Adalhard, who so soon as his young Saxons were sufficiently trained in learning and monastic discipline, consulted them on the possibility of their obtaining a suitable site for a foundation in their native land. After many difficulties had been raised and overcome, ground was procured, and the building of the abbey was begun. Adalhard repaired thither to superintend operations in company with Paschasius and his own brother Wala, who, brought up like himself as a soldier and a courtier, had in former years held military command in Saxony and won the affections of the people by his wise and gentle rule. When the Saxons saw their old governor among them again in the monastic habit, nothing could exceed their wonder and delight: they ran after him in crowds, looking at him, and feeling him with their hands to satisfy themselves that it was really he, paying no attention whatever to the presence of the abbot or any other of his companions. The first stone of the new abbey was laid on September 26, 822; Old Corby made over to the new colony all the lands held by the community in Saxony; the Emperor Louis gave them a charter, and some precious relics from his private chapel, and in a few years that great seminary was completed which was destined to carry the light of faith and science to the pagan natives of the farther North. It would be hard to say which of the two Corbies held the highest place in monastic history; a noble emulation existed between them, each trying to outstrip the other in the perfection of monastic discipline. New Corby, in her turn became the mother-house of a vast number of German colonies, over all of[168] which she continued to maintain a certain superiority. A law was made obliging every abbot of these branch-houses to keep a chronicle of his monastery and send a copy of it to the Corby library; and by another law, every novice on the day of his profession was bound to present to the library some useful book. The library of new Corby grew to be one of great value and importance, and its catalogue, still preserved, exhibits the names of not a few Arabic and Hebrew works. It was here also that in the days of Leo X. was disinterred the famous manuscript of Tacitus, which may still be seen at Florence.

A monastery that cared so much for the formation of its library was not likely to be indifferent to its school. It was the boast of both Corbies in turns to possess Anscharius as their scholasticus, “that great preceptor,” as Mabillon calls him, for his reputation as a master was spread over all Germany. He was at the same time appointed to preach to the people, an office particularly agreeable to that apostolic spirit which he had never ceased to nurture in his heart. The time was approaching when the prophetic vision of former years, and the secret instincts of his own soul, were to be accomplished. In 826 Harold, king of Denmark, having embraced the faith, and been baptized with great pomp at Mentz, petitioned the Emperor Louis to give him some holy missionaries, who might accompany him home to Denmark, and plant the Church in that country. Wala, then abbot of New Corby, fixed on Anscharius, and he, mindful of the revelation which had long before assured to him the glory of an apostolic career, joyfully accepted the mission, heedless alike of the criticism of friends and enemies, who all found something to say against it. Anscharius turned a deaf ear to their reasonings and remonstrances, and withdrew to a certain vineyard in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he prepared for his new duties by a kind of spiritual retreat. Here he was sought out and discovered by a monk of Old Corby, named Aubert, and thinking that his visitor had only come to pester him with more advice, Anscharius bade him spare himself the trouble of arguing the question, as he had irrevocably made up his mind. “You have nothing to fear from me,” said Aubert, “my only reason for coming to you, is to beg you to accept me as your companion, if the abbot Wala can be brought to give his consent.” Anscharius joyfully welcomed him as a fellow labourer, and they soon after set out in company with the king. His majesty, however, was more than half a barbarian,[169] and the equipment he provided for his missioners was not luxurious. The royal and ecclesiastical retinue embarked on board a very dirty boat, the only accommodation on board consisting of two miserable cabins in which king and missioners were packed together with very little ceremony. However, they arrived at last at their journey’s end, and began their labours by opening a little school in Friesland, where they received twelve children, among whom were the two sons of king Harold himself. A little later we find them passing on to Sweden, attacked on the way by pirates, and robbed of all their baggage, containing their library of forty books. Such were the humble beginnings of a great apostolate, which at its close found Anscharius Archbishop of Hamburgh, and papal legate, not only over the Scandinavian kingdoms, but also over Iceland and the distant shores of Greenland, which are expressly named in the Bull of Pope Gregory IV. One of the most successful means adopted by the saint for the propagation of the faith, was the purchase of young Danes who were offered for sale as slaves, and whom he then sent to Corby, whence, after receiving a Christian education, they returned to their own country as zealous missionaries.

It would take us too long, and probably prove but wearisome to the reader, were we to examine in detail the foundation and history of all the monastic schools of this period. Glance where we will, we shall find indications of the same intellectual activity struggling to make head against the darkness of a semi-barbarous age. The schools of Hirschau, Hirsfield, Fleury, and Prom, might all be made to furnish illustrations of the ardour with which scientific and literary pursuits were carried on by their scholars. But while passing over these and others, which have almost equal claims on our interest, it is impossible to leave without notice two houses whose prëeminent importance in the history of monastic studies has made their names especially venerable: I mean the abbeys of Reichnau, and St. Gall. The first foundation of St. Gall’s belongs indeed to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus, who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan population. Under the famous abbot St. Othmar, who flourished in the time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that in the ninth century it was regarded as the first religious house north of the[170] Alps. It is with a sigh of that irrepressible regret called forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone for ever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness, an oasis of piety and civilisation. Looking down from the craggy mountains, the passes of which open upon the southern extremity of the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters, the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and the mill, or rather mills, for there were ten of them, all in such active operation, that they every year required ten new millstones; and then the house occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and workmen attached to the monastery gardens too, and vineyards creeping up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and sheep speckling the green meadows, and far away boats busily plying on the lake and carrying goods and passengers—what a world it was of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It was, in fact, not a town, but a house,—a family presided over by a father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or the social side of such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention. Descend into the valley, and visit all these nurseries of useful toil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite modulations of those chants and sequences peculiar to the abbey which boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch to his wonderful copper images, and his fine altar frontals of gold and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred monks who form the community at their midnight office and you will forget everything, save the saintly aspect of those servants of God who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odour of Christ, and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway. You may quit the circuit of the abbey and plunge once more into the mountain region which[171] rises beyond, but you will have to wander far before you find yourself beyond the reach of its softening, humanising influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they sing so sweetly,[96] going up and down among the hills into the thick forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks carrying their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you may have been listening to lectures in the learned, and even in the Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains, you will hear these fine classical scholars preaching plain truths, in barbarous idioms, to a rude race, who before the monks came among them sacrificed to the Evil One, and worshipped stocks and stones.

Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of St. Gall’s was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens—at least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found here not monks alone and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state; it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate in the exterior school. Not only were the Sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained; Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but the very little boys presumed to speak in any tongue but Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly taken from Scripture and Church history, and having written their exercises they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets, others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world. They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex, now[172] of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the Sacred Books and sometimes of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. They were Greek students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of the “Cecropian Muse” were denominated the “fratres Ellenici.” The beauty of their early manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the names of their best transcribers find honourable mention in their annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with the original text, this duty being generally discharged during the interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood cramped with ivory or iron, the Sacred Volumes being covered with plates of gold and adorned with jewels.

In such a school it was no wonder that the pupils of St. Gall, like those of Eton, became famous for their good writing. Ekhehard I. had a method in this as in everything else; if he found a boy dull over his grammar he set him to copy; arguing that nature was an economist in her gifts, and did not dispense all to all; and that often where the head was somewhat slow in learning, the deficiency was made up by an extra dexterity with the fingers. But boys were never employed on the Gospels, or Church service books, these being reserved for men of perfect age, who would bring greater care to their responsible task. We have even the copy ordinarily set for beginners in the monastic scriptorium, a doggerel line, introducing every letter of the alphabet:

That the labour of transcription was often exceedingly irksome, is evident from sundry notes scattered over these manuscripts. “As the sick man desireth health,” writes one, “even so doth the transcriber desire the end of his volume.” Another contents himself with the laconic observation, “written with great trouble;” but a[173] third, who may be supposed to have been employed over a very tough copy, breaks out into verse, and exclaims at his last page:

The monks of St. Gall were no less famous for their music than for their painting. Their musical tastes were inherited probably from their Irish founders, and were further improved by the teaching of those Roman cantors, whom we have seen in a former page sent into France, at Charlemagne’s request, to civilise the barbarous singing of his Frankish cantors. On their way back into Italy, one of them, to whom the St. Gall historians give the name of Romanus, was attacked by fever, and stopping at the Swiss monastery, was there charitably entertained and nursed by the brethren, who had excellent doctors among them. In return, he taught them the Roman chant, and bestowed on them the identical antiphonarium he had brought from Rome, making a certain case or instrument to contain it. “And to this day,” writes Ekhehard, “if there is any dispute about the singing, the error may be detected by consulting this book.” Moreover, this Romanus was the first who thought of assigning the letters of the alphabet to the musical notes, a system which Notker Balbulus afterwards explained, and which, being further elucidated by a certain friend of his named Lambert, was adopted throughout Germany.[97]

Leaving a more particular notice of the studies and students of this great abbey for a future chapter, I must here add a few words on another religious house, the history of which is closely associated with that of St. Gall, and where the sciences flourished in equal perfection under the shelter of those lofty mountains which shut out the tumult of the world and the incursions of the barbarians. At the western extremity of the lake of Constance, just where it narrows towards the outlet of the Rhine, lies a green island sparkling like an emerald gem on the unruffled surface of the waters. There, half hidden amid the luxuriant foliage, you may still see the grey minster of that famous abbey called Augia by its Latin historians, but better known by its German name of Reichnau. Walafrid Strabo, the pupil of Rabanus and the chief chronicler of his time, was abbot of Reichnau in the ninth century, and in one of his poems has painted its situation in very exact terms. He gives the succession[174] of abbots from St. Pirminius, who first established himself in the island in the reign of Pepin, and shows that the school was one of the very earliest which had at that time attained celebrity. I have already spoken of Walafrid’s fame as a master, but I cannot here omit mentioning his pupil and biographer, Ermenric, who has made himself known to us by a letter which he wrote after paying what seems to have been a very pleasant visit at St. Gall’s. Walafrid had sent him there for a holiday, and on his return he expressed the enjoyment it had given him, in an epistle addressed to abbot Grimoald. As soon as he crossed the lake, he says, he found himself welcomed by a group of illustrious men. “There,” he continues, “I found each one humbler and more patient than his fellow. I saw neither envy nor jealousy, but all were bound together with the triple chord of charity, simplicity, and concord. How shall I speak of the generosity of Engilbert, or the kindness of that most clever brother Hartmod? It would be impossible for me to do justice to the excellence which these servants of God had attained in so many of the arts, but you may judge of the birds by looking at the nests which they inhabit. Examine their cloister and you will agree with what I say. What else can I call Winhart but a second Dædalus? or Isenric but another Beseleel? for indeed the graving tool is never out of his hand, save when he stands at the altar to exercise his sacred ministry. And yet there is such humility among them that no one disdains the humblest employment, remembering those words of Scripture, ‘the prayer of the humble shall pierce the clouds.’”

Reichnau, however, had its own line of great masters, among whom Ermenric, who could do such generous justice to the excellence of others, was himself worthy to be reckoned. The most illustrious was, perhaps, the cripple Hermann Contractus, originally a pupil of St. Gall’s, who is said to have prayed that he might not regain the use of his limbs, but that he might receive instead a knowledge of the Scriptures. He was master of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic; he wrote treatises on history, poetry, ethics, astronomy, and mathematics; he calculated eclipses, and explained Aristotle, and, in spite of an impediment in his speech, his lectures were so learned that he had pupils from the most distant provinces of Italy. He set his own poems to music, made clocks and organs, and was as much revered for his sanctity as his universal genius. Many hymns and antiphons used by the Church are attributed to his pen, among others the Alma Redemptoris. But if Hermann was the most[175] famous scholar of Reichnau, a yet greater celebrity, though of a different kind, attaches to the name of Meinrad. The story of his vocation to the eremitical life affords an apt illustration of the contemplative character already noticed as so frequently belonging to the early pedagogues: and as it presents us with an agreeable picture of a “whole play-day” in the Dark Ages, we will give it as it stands in the pages of the monk Berno. Meinrad was the son of a Swabian nobleman of the house of Hollenzollern, and had studied in the monastic school under abbot Hatto and his own uncle Erlebald. When the latter became abbot he appointed Meinrad to the care of the school which was attached to a smaller house dependent on Reichnau, and situated at a spot called Bollingen, on the lake of Zurich. He accordingly removed thither, and had singular success with his scholars, whom he inspired with great affection by reason of his gentle discipline. He used to take them out for walking parties and fishing parties, into what Berno, his biographer, calls “the wilderness,” a wilderness, however, which was adorned with a majestic beauty to which Meinrad was not insensible. One day he and his boys crossed the lake in a small boat, and landing on the opposite shore sought for some quiet spot where they might cast their fishing lines. Finding a little stream which flowed into the lake and gave good promise of trout, Meinrad left them to pursue their sport and strolled about, meditating on the joys of that solitary life after which he secretly pined. After a while, returning to his scholars, he found that their fishing had been unusually successful, and taking up their baskets, they retraced their steps to the village of Altendorf, where they entered the house of a certain matron to rest and refresh themselves with food. Whilst the boys ate and drank, and enjoyed themselves in their own way, Meinrad and their hostess engaged in conversation, and Meinrad, who was full of the thoughts to which his mountain walk had given rise, opened his whole heart to her. “Beyond all riches,” he said, “I desire to dwell alone in this solitude that so I might wholly give myself to prayer, could I but find some one who would minister to me in temporal things.” The good lady immediately offered to provide him with whatever he wanted, in order to carry out his design; and the result of that day’s fishing-party was the establishment of the former scholasticus of Bollingen in a little hermitage which he constructed for himself out of the wattled boughs of trees. But he found himself in one way disappointed; he had sought the desert to fly from the[176] world, and the world followed him thither in greater throngs than he had ever encountered at Reichnau. The saints possess a strange power of attraction, and neither mountains nor forests are able to hide them. In his own day men compared St. Meinrad to the Baptist, because the multitudes went out into the wilderness to hear him preach penance and remission of sins. For seven years he continued to dispense the Word of Life to the pilgrims who gathered about him from all parts of Europe. But one day unable to resist his longing for retreat, he took his image of Our Lady, a missal, a copy of St. Benedict’s rule, and the works of Cassian, and laden with these, his only treasures, he plunged into the forest, and choosing a remote and secluded spot erected a rude chapel which he dedicated to Our Lady, and a yet ruder dwelling for himself. There he lived for thirty years, and at the end of that time he was assassinated in his hermitage by some ruffians who hoped to find some hidden treasure in his cell. His body was carried back to Reichnau, and in after years the great sanctuary of Einsidlen rose over the site of his hermitage, where is still venerated the image of Our Lady which he had formerly carried thither with his own hands.

We are now in a position to form some idea of the real character of these early monastic schools, and of the teaching which they conveyed. From the eighth to the twelfth century, the scholastic system underwent so little change, that we may select our illustrations indifferently from any part of that period, without risk of inaccuracy.

First, then, as to the schoolroom itself. In most cases the interior or claustral schools of monasteries and cathedrals were held in the cloisters. A strange contrast, indeed, to the luxurious requirements of modern times; but boarded floors, patent stoves, and easy-backed forms were luxuries undreamt of by the hardy Frankish or Gothic students who studied under Walafrid or Rabanus. It is not until the fifteenth century that we meet with a document hinting at the novelty of providing schoolrooms with boarded floors.[98] The cloisters of York and Worcester, now so desolate and deserted, were once peopled with a busy race of scholars, who probably suffered often enough, like the pupils of Bede, from stiffened fingers and bleeding cracks. Even so late as the twelfth century, the schools of Paris were held in the cloisters of Nôtre Dame, and only removed thence when the repose of the canons was disturbed by the unruly crowds[177] who rushed to listen to the lectures of Abelard. The number of scholars received into a monastery varied according to its size. At St. Riquier, where there were 300 monks, abbot Angilbert wished never to have less than a hundred children, the sons of dukes, counts, and kings.[99] They were seldom or never left alone, and in the cloister or schoolroom the master’s seat was so arranged, that all were under his eye. It does not seem, however, that the surveillance in school-hours was carried out with any excessive rigidity, for we find frequent notice of the pranks and surreptitious consumption of good things perpetrated by the school boys in the temporary absence of their masters. In the dormitories, however, the discipline was more strict; there the lamp was kept constantly burning, and though there are no traces of an odious espionage, there is evidence of a constant, ever present vigilance. Awaked in the morning by the wooden signal board of the master, the children were conducted to the lavatory by the “pedagogues” or junior assistants of the school. These pedagogues were very numerous, and their duties were various. Among other things it belonged to them to see to the cleanliness and neatness of dress and person, a thing not at all despised in the Dark Ages. At Cluny, where in the twelfth century all the older monastic traditions of school discipline were resumed and perfected, it was not permitted for the children to sit together on benches, but each one had his own little box, in which he kept his writing materials, and which also served him for a seat. A midday siesta was allowed at Cluny, but no one was permitted to read or write on his bed.[100] In all these regulations may plainly be seen a solicitude for order and good morals, together with a certain tone of refinement, which is more than we should expect, and which satisfies us how profoundly the whole subject of education had been studied by the medieval masters. Their ideas on the subject of punishment were in more simple accordance with those of Solomon than our fastidious age would approve. The rod, in fact, was so very generally used, that under the form of the ferule it afterwards became the badge of the bachelor in arts, and was solemnly delivered to him when he took his degree. Medieval schoolboys were not more fond of a flogging than those of later growth, and to escape it the scholars of St. Gall once adopted the extraordinary expedient of setting fire to the monastery. Yet with all this austerity of discipline, nothing is more[178] certain than that the monastic masters possessed the secret of making themselves beloved, and that the love which they inspired was not the less familiar because mingled with respect. I may add, that at Cluny, though flogging was permitted, boxing on the ears was strictly prohibited, apparently with the view of allowing no indulgence to the irritated feelings of the master. Punishment, like everything else at Cluny, was administered in an orderly and methodical manner; in fact, the peculiar excellence of the Cluniacs lay in their manner of systematising everything, whether homely or sublime.

The masters in most large schools were very numerous, but none were allowed to hold any office until of mature age. At Fulda there were twelve professors and a principal (Principalis), besides assistants.[101] In the cathedral schools, in like manner, there was the Archischolus and his assistants, and the Proscholus, or prefect of discipline.[102] The reader will perhaps smile when he hears that one of the duties of the Proscholus was to teach the children how to walk, bow, and behave in presence of superiors. This, however, was a speciality of the Canons Regular. Learning was not the only qualification required in a master. He was to be of tried virtue. The office of teacher was a cure of souls, and so great was the honour in which it was held, that bishops even, who had formerly filled the post of scholasticus, not unfrequently affixed their old to their new title, when signing their names.

The education of the scholars began at a very early age, sometimes at five or six. The first task consisted in learning by heart certain portions of Holy Scripture, and specially of the Psalter. Even those who very early abandoned their books for the more congenial exercises of the tilt-yard, seldom did so till they had run through their Psalter: “decurso psalterio,” is a common expression used in speaking of a youth who had left school with the least possible smattering of an education. As for those who stayed a more reasonable time at school, they acquired, besides their profane learning, a familiarity with the Church office and with the words of Holy Writ, not certainly possessed by all scholars of the present day. This is abundantly illustrated by the histories of the times. Thus Einold of Toul, sitting at the window of his cell, hears a voice chanting the words, “I will give you the heritage of your father Jacob,” and at once concludes that it must be a schoolboy conning his morning’s task. How[179] beautiful is that story which we find in the chronicle of Monte Cassino, of the monk Levitius, who, returning from Jerusalem, came to Mount Albaneta, where he proposed to build a monastery. As he was inspecting the site of his new foundation, he saw approaching him a little school boy, carrying his bag of books on his shoulders, and the thought came into his head that he would ask him if he could sing. The boy replying that he could, Levitius told him to sing the first thing he could remember, secretly resolving that he would place the church under the dedication of any saint the boy might happen to name. The little scholar thought a moment, and then intoned the Antiphon, Veni electa mea, which he sang with much sweetness. Levitius listened with delight, and the monastery which afterwards rose on the spot was dedicated to the Ever Blessed Virgin. Scholars of all ages were very largely exercised in what one old monk calls “the holy memory.” Learning by rote was used more generally than among ourselves, partly because books were rare, and all could not enjoy the luxury of a Psalter or Breviary for private use; and partly, because the teachers of old time sought to sanctify this power of the soul, by thoroughly informing it with holy words. Besides the Psalter, the novices of a religious house were expected to know the New Testament at least by heart, half-an-hour a day being assigned for the purpose.

The liberal arts were, as is well known, classed under two heads, the trivium, which included grammar, logic, and rhetoric; and the quadrivium, which embraced arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. This division is expressed in the well-known distich:—

The trivium, with the Ecclesiastical chant, and so much of arithmetic as was required for the computation of the calendar, was taught in all schools; the quadrivium only in those which embraced the higher studies. Music was divided into two kinds, the cantus, which formed part of the routine of studies even in the lower schools, and musica, properly so called, which included the theory of music, a knowledge of the laws of sound, and the connection of harmony with numbers. And this explains how it was that a knowledge of music was in those days considered a proof that its possessor was a well-educated man: it evidenced that he had not only gone through the elementary studies of the trivium, but that he had completed his education in[180] one of those higher schools in which the quadrivium also was taught. And these higher schools were frequented not only by ecclesiastics but by laics, whose inferiority to the clergy in point of mental culture has been greatly overstated, and where it existed, was the effect of accident rather than of system. Men who by force of necessity were called into the field at a very early age, and engaged in active military service during the greater part of their lives, had seldom much time to devote to study; but there was no sort of prejudice against their becoming as learned as they chose. Abbot Philip, of Good Hope, who lived in the time of St. Bernard, when the institution of Chivalry had certainly not tended to render the lay-nobles more studious, protests against the notion that learning is the exclusive apanage of the clergy. “Many laymen,” he says, “are well instructed in letters. When a prince can withdraw from the tumult of arms and business he should study himself in books just as he contemplates his face in a mirror.” And he proceeds to speak in commendation of the noble Count Charles who was “as prompt in meditating the Psalms as in drawing the sword to avenge outraged justice,” and Count Adolph “who ceased not to bless his parents for the good education they had given him.” Of Henry, Count of Champagne, it is said that between his warlike expeditions, when not engaged in the judicial duties of his rank, he delighted in withdrawing to some retired part of his castle and entertaining himself with a classic author or a volume of the Fathers. And in the Imperial library is still to be seen a fine copy of Valerius Maximus, written out for him by the monks of Provins. Every one is familiar with the name of Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, against whose learning Hallam has directed so uncourteous a sneer. The story, threadbare as it is, affords too good an illustration of the subject to be omitted. He was accustomed to sing in choir with the canons of St. Martin’s of Tours, and when ridiculed by king Louis IV. of France, for the habit, sent to that monarch a pithy epistle to the following effect: “Know, sir, that an illiterate king is a crowned ass.” “It seems, then,” observes Hallam, “that with the monkish historians a knowledge of music passed for literature. The same writer calls Geoffrey Plantagenet optime literatus, which perhaps imports little more learning than was possessed by his ancestor, Fulk.”[103] The monkish biographer here alluded to meant nothing of the kind, but he knew, as both Fulk and Louis also knew, that[181] at that time a knowledge of music might be taken as a tolerably satisfactory token that the musician had studied at one of the higher schools, and completed the full course of the quadrivium. And such, indeed, was the case with Fulk, who, as the same biographer tells us a few pages further on, was well read in Cicero and Aristotle.

A methodical idea of the system of education which prevailed in the higher monastic schools, is given in a little manual called the “Doctrinale Puerorum,” the authority of which is beyond dispute. Though the production of the twelfth century, so little change took place in the system of studies from the time of Charlemagne to that of Lanfranc that it may be taken as equally descriptive of the method followed in the ninth and tenth. According to the writer of this manual a child as soon as he had learnt to read and write, set to work on the Latin Grammar of Donatus or Priscian, if he were so fortunate as to be able to provide himself with a book. The larger number of pupils probably had to depend on the oral instructions dictated by their master, and their own notes of his lessons. We know for certain that not only grammar, but rhetoric and the explanation of classic authors were taught orally, rules and examples being thus dictated and learnt by frequent repetition. From their ninth to their twelfth year the boys studied elementary Latin books, specially the Fables of Esop, and the poems of Christian authors, such as Theodulus, who, in the tenth century, wrote in verse the miracles of the Old and New Testaments, with the view of providing young children with suitable class-books. The Distichia Moralia, commonly attributed to Cato, a very old class-book, was probably the authorship of some Christian writer of the seventh century; and has found a home even in the Eastern languages. As the boys advanced in years, select portions from the works of Seneca, Ovid, Virgil, Persius, and Horace, but specially of Lucan and Statius were placed in their hands, explained and committed to memory, and these were followed by Cicero, Quinctilian, and the Latin version of Aristotle.[104]

Some readers will, doubtless, be tempted to regard such an account of the ancient course of classical studies as a work of the imagination. They will call to mind the scruples of Alcuin and the condemnation[182] passed by Paschasius on those who spent their time in the explanation of the profane poets. But it may be observed, that the very examples so often quoted to prove that the monks disapproved of the study of the classics, show us that at any rate they knew a good deal about them. Alcuin had studied Virgil himself before he forbade Sigulf to do so, and so had St. Odo, who prohibited the reading of the Mantuan bard, after he had seen in a vision a vessel full of serpents, which he understood to represent his works. And the strictures of Paschasius on those who neglected the Scriptures, while they weighed every line and syllable of Pagan authors, shows at least how extensively those authors were read. But it must strike every impartial reader that these prohibitions do, in fact, prove nothing at all as to the state of school studies. They apply entirely to the use of the classics, not among students, but among the monks themselves. Because it was thought undesirable that young ecclesiastics should spend their time in the study of the profane poets, and because their attention was rather directed by their superiors to the cultivation of sacred science, we must not, certainly, conclude in the face of evidence that the classics were excluded from the schools. Teachers in the ninth century were no less solicitous than those of the nineteenth to form the mind and the style of their scholars; their compositions are perhaps not quite so full of the membra disjecta of Tully as a scholar of the Renaissance might have desired, yet he was certainly read, and though the imitations of Virgil and Ovid attempted by these obscure writers may be very indifferent, they could only have been produced by men who were perfectly familiar with the original writings of the Latin poets. Mabillon has not failed to draw the distinction between the studies pursued by monks and bishops, and those of masters and scholars.[105] He quotes two passages very much to the point, in one of which Lanfranc declines entering into certain questions appertaining to secular literature, submitted to him by the monk Domnoald, because he says, “though in my youth I delighted in such things, I determined wholly to renounce them when I accepted the pastoral charge.” In the other passage St. Anselm writes to his old pupil, Maurice, and advises him to read Virgil, and the other good Latin authors, as much as he can, excepting always such passages as offend good morals.

This last condition is often insisted on; nor was it until the period of the classic Renaissance that the indiscriminate use of the[183] classics by the young was tolerated. Rabanus in his book De Institutione Clericorum, while permitting the study of profane literature, even to clerics, stipulates that it be read for edification, and that whatever has a contrary tendency be put aside. The monastic scholars even recognised that reflection of primeval tradition which gleams through the pagan authors, and which, as Ozanam says, opened to Virgil the schools of the Middle Ages. What they did not allow was that the exclusive study of these models should be suffered to paganise the Christian mind, and they contrived, therefore, in explaining the works of Cicero or Plato to weave a Christian tone into the lessons by connecting them or comparing them with passages from the Holy Scriptures.

Latin was the only language universally cultivated, though the other learned tongues were not entirely neglected. Bede and Alcuin certainly possessed a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and, no doubt, communicated their learning to some of their pupils. Greek, as we have seen, was studied at St. Gaul’s, and Charlemagne, who himself had some knowledge of that tongue, founded a Greek college at Osnaburgh, chiefly with a view to providing ecclesiastics whose familiarity with the language of the Eastern empire might be of service to him in his constant intercourse with Constantinople. Some writers whose aim it is to represent the learning of these centuries as altogether unworthy of notice, affect to doubt whether the Greek college, if proposed, were ever really founded; but the evidence of contemporary historians is positive on the point. “Do not wonder,” writes the chronicler of Ottberg, “that the abbot of Hermann should always have carried with him a Greek Testament, that learned man was well skilled in the Greek tongue, which he had learnt in the Caroline college at Osnaburgh, for in that foundation all the clergy were skilled in Greek as well as in Latin.” Louis the Debonnaire and Charles the Bald were both Greek scholars, and the latter monarch had a Greek and Latin glossary compiled for the use of the Church of Laon, which he would hardly have had done had there been none capable of using it. Florus, the learned deacon of the Church of Lyons, was well versed not only in Greek but Hebrew, as we learn from the following circumstance. A certain abbot, Hyldrade, sent him a Latin Psalter, begging him to correct it carefully, that it might serve as a copy for his monks to transcribe from. Among the many curious and valuable monuments of antiquity discovered by the late Cardinal Mai, is the reply of Florus[184] to this request. From it we find that he had compared the Latin version of St. Jerome with the Septuagint, and suspecting that the text of St. Jerome had itself become corrupted by careless copying, had likewise collated it with the original Hebrew. He quotes what he calls “the well-known” letter of St. Jerome to two learned Celts, pointing out the errors in the vulgar copies; but Rohrbacher remarks that this letter was well-known only in the ninth century, for in ours it no longer exists. The whole letter of Floras is exceedingly valuable as evidence of the extraordinary learning and diligence bestowed on the correction of the Sacred Text.[106]

Nevertheless, an examination of the catalogues of early monastic libraries, makes it clear that the study of Greek, if not wholly neglected, was exceptional, and certainly did not include any extensive acquaintance with ancient Greek literature. Among the books named as the favourites of St. Paschasius, we find the works of St. John Chrysostom; but in general the book collections are only rich in the Latin Fathers. Scotus Erigena evidently introduced a novelty when he translated the works of St. Denys the Areopagite, and the eagerness displayed by Louis the Debonnaire to possess a Latin version of the works of this author arose, perhaps, less from an interest in Greek letters, than from the opinion, then finding favour with Gallican scholars, which identified him with the Apostle of France.[107] The mention, however, of any Greek poets or philosophers is exceedingly rare. Homer, as has been said, had been brought into England by Archbishop Theodore, and the St. Gall library contained the works of Sophocles, but these are certainly exceptions, and we may conclude that a knowledge of the Greek language was a rare accomplishment, from the extreme complacency with which the possession of a very superficial smattering of it was often regarded. Hincmar, of Rheims, warns his nephew to avoid the foolish affectation of some, who pick a handful of Greek words out of their glossaries to adorn their pages and give them a learned look; a folly too common also with our native scholars.

The sciences of arithmetic and geometry were probably taught in rather a meagre form, until the genius of Gerbert, in the tenth century, gave fresh impulse to these branches of learning. We have seen[185] what difficulties attended their study in the days of St. Aldhelm; nevertheless the path of the young student was somewhat smoothed by pleasant devices, and the Anglo-Saxon masters quickened the brains of their pupils by problems and questions, some of which, such is the power of tradition, have kept their places in our own school-books. Arithmetical problems, such as the following, were propounded to the schoolboys of Alcuin and Rabanus: “The swallow once invited the snail to dinner; he lived just a league from the spot, and the snail travelled at the rate of one inch a day: how long was he before he dined?” Or, again: “An old man met a child; ‘Good day, my son,’ he said, ‘may you live as long as you have lived and as much more, and thrice as much as all that put together, and then if God give you one year more, you will be just a century old;’ how old was the boy?”

Besides the sciences above enumerated, some schools, and particularly those of England, taught a certain amount of natural philosophy, very imperfect, if compared with our own larger and more accurate knowledge of these subjects, yet valuable in its way, as directing the mind to a branch of learning where improvement could only be hoped for by patient and persevering observation. Geography, again, though in its infancy, was a favourite study with the Anglo-Saxons, and from none did it receive greater extension than from king Alfred, who added whole chapters to the science as it existed before his time. This, in common with a great many other branches of knowledge, was sometimes taught to tardy scholars by the help of verses. Several versified summaries of grammatical rules and geographical definitions are in existence in very early English, but for the credit of the geographers, I will not say in what quarter of the globe they place the land of Egypt.

We have yet to speak, however, of a far more important subject connected with the early monastic schools, the religious training of their pupils, and the sacred studies which they pursued. In nothing, probably, did the ancient system of education differ more widely from our own, than in the amount of vocal prayer in which children were expected to take a part. Of course we must bear in mind when reading of children assisting at all the Canonical Hours of the monastery in which they were educated, that in most cases the children spoken of were those “offered” by their parents and intended for the monastic state. They were the pupils of the interior or claustral schools; and it is probable that those belonging to the[186] exterior school were subject to a less rigorous discipline. Still, in either case, they were children, with the propensities common to all children, whether of the ninth or nineteenth centuries; yet we find nothing to indicate that the choral attendance described by the Anglo-Saxon schoolboy in the dialogues of Ælfric, was found by experience to be excessive. “To-day,” says the boy, “I have done many things; this night, when I heard the knell, I arose from my bed and went to the church and sang Night-song with the brethren; after that we sang the service of All Saints and the morning Lauds; then followed Prime and the Seven Psalms, and the Litanies, and the first Mass; then Tierce, and the Mass of the day; then Sext; and then we ate and drank and went to sleep, and rose again and sang None; and now we are here before thee ready to hear what thou hast to say to us.” “Who awakens you for Night-song?” asks the interlocutor. “Sometimes,” answers the scholar, “I hear the knell, and rise of myself; but ofttimes the master arouseth me with his rod.”

If this attendance in choir surprise us as being daily required from young children, we must remember that the habits of the grown-up laity in early ages would be equally at variance with our own. The Divine Office of the Church was not then exclusively recited by priests and religious; the faithful assisted even at the Night-hours, and were constantly urged to do so. In the days of Charlemagne, as in those of St. John Chrysostom, rich and poor, men and women, took part in that sublime worship, and so eager were they in their desire to join in the chant, that it became necessary for abbots to issue injunctions, forbidding their monks to cut up their Psalters in order to distribute the leaves to seculars who solicited the precious fragments, certain devout women being foremost among the beggars. Without some knowledge of the habits of the time, we can form no tolerably fair judgment on the education which was of course fitted and adapted to those habits. The spirit of these early ages was pre-eminently Liturgical. The world was as yet too little civilised to furnish her children with those countless elegant methods of killing time which later ages have so marvellously multiplied; theatres had no existence, and even the superabundant games and pastimes so popular in the Middle Ages, were as yet unthought of. The people sought not merely their instruction, but their recreation also in the Church, and their education thoroughly fitted them to join in her ceremonies and ritual, which it is to be feared, by more cultivated[187] intellects of a later generation, are too often but very imperfectly understood. The education of children partook, of course, of the character of the age; it was more or less ecclesiastical, even for those not intended for the religious or clerical state; and this has given rise to the very hasty conclusion that in the centuries of which we speak, education was given to none save those who aspired to the priesthood. But in point of fact the whole atmosphere of society was then so permeated with the Christian, and what we have ventured to denominate the Liturgical spirit, that children of seculars then received a training which, to modern eyes, appears exclusively suited to ecclesiastics.

The one branch of learning, therefore, which, in the judgment of the monastic teachers, exceeded in importance all the rest, was undoubtedly the study of the Scriptures. “In the study of the Scriptures,” says Mabillon, “consisted the whole science of the monks.” Scholastic theology was as yet unknown, and the Holy Scriptures and the commentaries of the Fathers formed the exclusive study of theologians. That alliance between faith and reason, wherein reason, exercising itself on revealed truth under the control and guidance of faith, built up the dogmas of the Church into a compact and well-ordered system, was the work of later centuries; the monastic scholars of the age of Charlemagne knew nothing about it. They had the Scriptures, interpreted by the Fathers, and the decrees of the Church, for their guides in dogma; and for discipline, the sacred Canons. With these they were abundantly satisfied. Placed in green pastures and by the side of running waters, they enjoyed the inheritance that had fallen to them, and sought for nothing more. Their divines, therefore, hardly aimed at the merit of original composition, and were content to study, to copy, and to compile the teaching, and often the very phraseology of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, or St. Gregory. Hence the complaint not unjustly brought against them, is that, though tolerably acquainted with books, they were for the most part deficient in original argument. In fact, they sought to hand on the traditions of the Church pure and uncorrupted, rather than to earn for themselves a fame as original thinkers; and one of the marks of the age is an absence of the disputatious spirit which, if it diminishes their rank in the world of letters, forms the charm of their characters as men. There was nothing of the sophist or logician in those sweet and venerable countenances, the unruffled beauty of which is so often dwelt on by[188] their biographers. True, indeed, controversies did arise, as we have seen in the beginning of this chapter, but they were out of harmony with the time. The character of Scotus Erigena, like his learning, was that of a man born out of due time; he belonged to the twelfth rather than to the ninth century, and his wrangling must have sounded strangely discordant in the ears of his contemporaries. The real spirit of the age was one of reverence for Tradition; and the large and active intellects of a Bede, a Boniface and a Paschasius, found all they sought and all they desired in the Positive Theology of the Church.

So much has been done in our time to dispel the vulgar illusion that the Scriptures were unknown and uncared for in the Dark Ages, that I need not here enter into any proof of what is now, or at least ought to be, an uncontroverted fact. Mr. Maitland’s “Essays” have convincingly proved that if the monks read nothing else they at least read the Bible. But what he has not shown with equal power, is the love, the enthusiasm with which, to use the expression of the biographer of Rabanus, they “fed themselves on the Divine Scriptures.” Like the Jews of old, they meditated on them, “sitting in the house or walking on a journey;” they were written “on the entry and on the doorposts.”[108] At the tables of bishops and abbots, of nobles and of kings, the Scriptures were daily read aloud: the little child learnt from them his first lesson, and the old man died with their accent on his lips. What need had they of the fables of the poets, when the beauties of the inspired writers were graven on their memories, familiar as household words? How could they care to listen to what Ovid had to tell them of the Golden Age, they to whom the glowing imagery of the Prophet had painted the kingdom of the Son of Jesse, where the wolf was to dwell with the lamb, and the kid with the leopard, and a little child should lead them? And what great wonder was it if the degrading tales of heathen deities, even when sung by the Muse of Virgil, should fall somewhat flat and profitless on their ears, accustomed as they were to the sublime marvels of God’s dealings with His ancient people, and the history of the Incarnate Word?

It was not merely as the inspired Word of God that the Holy Scriptures were thus valued; but in the schools of which we are speaking they held the place of the great Christian classic. They were not a mere dry repertory of texts illustrative of doctrine, but[189] they formed at once the favourite book of prayer, of meditation, of spiritual reading, and of recreative delight. Pondered on day and night, with all their hidden meaning laid open by the comments of the Fathers, what a treasury of wisdom, what a fountain of poesy was there! The very language of Scripture wonderfully harmonised with the daily monastic life, so patriarchal in its simplicity, its noble toils, and its humble duties of the shepherd, the husbandman, and the vinedresser. It harmonised with the scenes in the midst of which they lived, the mountains, and the wooded valleys, the fields standing thick with corn, the wilderness in its untrampled beauty, where rose up “the verdure of the reed and the bulrush,” and where the myrtle and the olive-tree grew by the running waters. It harmonised with their deep sympathy with the Beautiful, their intimate acquaintance with Nature in all her aspects, by day or by night, so familiar to the eyes of those who sanctified all hours by prayer, and to whom “the outgoings of the morning and of the evening were made joyful,” by the Matins and Vesper psalmody. But chiefly and above all, it harmonised with that thirst that devoured their souls for the true and living God; a thirst which made them weary of all things in which He was not to be found, which made all things sweet in which He had His part; which led them by a strange inspired ingenuity to turn all things to Him, to Christianise every study, to divinise every act; which taught them to create new arts to deck His sanctuary, new sciences to minister to His praise—a thirst which, unslaked by the choicest fountains of Gentile antiquity, drank deep and refreshing draughts at those streams of sacred poetry, out of which they framed the language of their daily Office, and which moulded the very fashion of their daily speech.

The Scriptures, then, were the Christian classics of the monks and their pupils. Their study was not confined to ecclesiastical students, but formed one of the chief branches of every Christian man’s education.[109] And by their study we must understand, of course, not a mere familiarity with the dead letter, but an intimate knowledge of their spiritual sense. We may gather some idea of what was implied in the monastic study of the Scriptures, from a letter written by a certain monk of Citeaux to one of his friends, in which he draws[190] out a compendious method for his guidance. Together with the different divisions of his subject, he advises him to read appropriate commentaries. Thus Josephus and Hegesippus are to be read with the Pentateuch and the Historical Books, and if any words occur of doubtful signification, the student is to consult the “Etymologies” of St. Isidore, and St. Jerome on the “Explanation of Hebrew Names;” and that other book on “Derivations,” “which is to be found in most large libraries,” and finally the “Gloss.” Certain passages of more importance, and summaries of the principal facts, are to be written out and committed to memory; and the writer proceeds to give directions on this point, adding, that on all the subjects he names it will be useful to consult St. Augustine “De Quæstionibus.” When the Historical Books have been carefully studied, the Prophetical Books may be begun. We are to note which prophecies are fulfilled, and which unfulfilled, and the exact time and circumstances under which each was written. After these the Books of instruction, and then the Gospels. In reading the Gospels, it will be necessary to have St. Jerome’s description of the “Holy Places of Palestine,” and the “Harmony of the Gospels.” And we must carefully observe where, when, and before whom our Lord’s Sermons were delivered, and His miracles worked. The rest of the New Testament is afterwards to be read. The student is then directed to read certain works on the Sacraments, on the reason for assigning different portions of Scripture to different seasons, and some of the works of St. Augustine. And when the literal sense of the Holy Books has been thus carefully studied, and not before, he may pass on to their allegorical and mystic interpretation, and read both Testaments through in the same order a second time, special authors being recommended to assist his comprehension of their spiritual sense.[110]

This double method of study, in which the literal meaning of the Scriptures was made the basis of interpreting their spiritual signification, was begun very early, and even young children were considered capable of being introduced by degrees to the spiritual comprehension of the Sacred Books. So far from these being a treasure sealed up to all save the clergy, they formed the foundation stone of all education. Thus Thegan writes of the Emperor Louis le Debonnaire, that he had been perfectly instructed in the allegorical and mystical interpretation of the Scriptures, and we learn from[191] St. Aldhelm’s treatise, “De Laudibus Virginitatis,” that the nuns for whom he intended it were not only accustomed to read the Old and New Testaments, together with the Commentaries of the Fathers, but that they also studied the historical, allegorical, and analogical senses of different passages. Nor is this by any means an exceptional case, for in the religious houses of women sacred studies were pursued with hardly less eagerness than in those of men.

And here the temptation presents itself to say something of the schools provided in the Dark Ages for the education of women, such as the royal house of Chelles, where the wise Bertilla presided over scores of English scholars sent by their parents to France, as we must needs suppose, for fashion’s sake, for there were certainly plenty of good schools to be found in England. Fashion, however, has much to do with the selection of a school, and Chelles was naturally popular with the English, having been founded in the seventh century by a princess of Anglo-Saxon blood.

Queen Bathildis, indeed, was not of royal birth; she was a poor maiden who had been sold as a slave into France, and attracting the attention of Clovis II., was raised by him to share his throne. Her first thought in her new position was to procure the abolition of slavery, or at least the amelioration of the condition of slaves. “She was,” says her biographer, “of a beautiful and cheerful countenance, to her husband an obedient wife, to the princes a mother, to boys and youths the best of counsellors; to all an amiable and gracious friend,” and he adds that among her other good deeds, “she was always exhorting and encouraging the youth around her to religious studies.” So soon as her son Clothaire was old enough to govern, Bathildis, who during his minority had acted as regent, retired to Chelles and spent the remainder of her days in the humble office of infirmarian. But her foundation had meanwhile acquired a great reputation for learning, which was yet further increased when Gisella, the sister of Charlemagne, and the pupil of Alcuin, assumed its government in the ninth century.

Nor must it be supposed that these examples of learning in the cloisters of nuns were confined to those communities which had caught their tone from the little knot of literary women educated by St. Boniface. It was the natural and universal development of religious life. We have but to glance back a century or two, and we shall find foundations of purely French origin, those of St. Cesarius of Arles, in which the nuns were to be seen reading even[192] over their work, and busy at the transcription of the Sacred Books. And we might quote the account of St. Cesaria’s death, written by one of her devout children, which M. Guizot hesitates not to rank among the gems of literature. Or we might turn to the Latin poems of St. Radegundes, the Queen of Clothaire I., and the friend of Venantius Fortunatus, who composed his celebrated hymn “Vexilla regis” on occasion of the translation to her monastery at Poitiers of a relic of the true Cross. This royal nun of the sixth century was accustomed to read the Greek and Latin Fathers, and as her biographer tells us, was not only vultu elegans, but litteris erudita. She liked her disciples to be as learned as herself, insisted that all should be able to read, and should learn the Psalter by heart, and gathered together more than two hundred daughters of noble families, in whose company and instruction she took such passing great delight, that, says Baudoniva, one of them whom she had educated from a child and who afterwards wrote her life, she would address them in the tenderest terms, calling them her light, her life, and her chosen little plants.[111]

The picture of St. Cesaria in the sixth century, and of St. Lioba in the eighth, is reproduced in that of St. Adelaide of Gueldres, abbess of Cologne in the tenth. She had enjoyed a learned education, and took great delight in collecting around her young virgins to whom she communicated her lessons with a truly maternal care. Every day she showed herself in the school, and propounded grammatical subtleties to her disciples; rewarding the diligent with caresses, and punishing the slothful with a severity for which her tender heart was wont afterwards often to reproach her. In fact, were I to repeat all that her biographer relates of her zeal in the matter of correction, I might convey the impression that the pupils of the abbess Adelaide lived under a rather terrible taskmistress. She sometimes visited the offenders with rods, and sometimes with a good box on the ear. The latter chastisement was even inflicted in choir when her pupils sang out of tune; but her biographer adds, it was never found necessary to administer it a second time, for the touch of her saintly hand had such power in it, as to cure all defects of voice and ear for the future.[112] But yet she was a tender and[193] a loving mother, and when she had punished any one, would conjure some of her sisters to go and console the poor victim whom she immediately began to compassionate. Nay, her love went so far, that besides the incessant thought she bestowed on providing her children with good food and raiment, she would steal into their dormitory in the winter nights, to find out if any were suffering from cold feet, and would warm them by rubbing them with her hands.

These examples are all of religious women; but we have direct evidence that even those who embraced a secular life were expected to receive a certain amount of education. Amalarius, of Metz, whose great work on the “Ecclesiastical Offices” appeared in the year 820, requires that young girls should learn the Psalter, the Books of Job and Proverbs, the Four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles. Perhaps there is no more interesting and decisive testimony as to the amount of learning to be found among the laity in the Dark Ages, than the curious will of Count Eberhard, of Terouanne, who died in 860, and left behind him a precious library, equalling in extent many of those possessed by religious houses. He directed that this library should, after his death, be divided among his children in the manner prescribed by his will. The four sons and four daughters each received their share, though the boys, naturally enough, obtained the lion’s share. Among the books named in the catalogue are treatises on law, military affairs, history, and natural philosophy, besides religious works.[113] One of the books bequeathed to Gisla, is the “Enchiridion” of St. Augustine. We have besides incidental notices occurring in the biographies of the time, which represent mothers writing to their sons and conveying to them sound practical advice, and noble ladies keeping up a correspondence with learned ecclesiastics, who seem to have directed their studies. There was certainly no difficulty in the way of ladies obtaining an education if they chose, for the convents of Chelles, Farmoutier, Brie, and Andelys, all had excellent schools, and often enough English mistresses, whose teaching was held in special esteem. And Theodulph, of Orleans, does not seem to have been giving the princess Gisella a piece of advice at all out of harmony with the manners and ideas of the age, when he counselled her to divide her time equally between reading and the homely cares of the household, concluding his admonitions with the two following lines:

[194]

An attentive study of the history of the following centuries will convince us that if the dames and spinsters of the Middle Ages were not exactly blue-stockings, they perfectly understood the value of Theodulph’s counsels, and that they were often not only learned themselves, but the cause of learning in others. For not a few of the learned foundations in England owe their existence to the munificence of noble ladies, who, in this country at least, have ever shown themselves the nursing mothers of polite letters. But of this there will be more to say in its proper place.

The history of King Alfred, and his noble efforts in the cause of learning, are so familiar to all readers that it may seem unnecessary to say much of the restoration of letters which took place in England during his reign. From our childhood, the stories of his life have been as familiar to us as those of Scripture, and it is probable that the illuminated manuscript which first tempted him to learn his alphabet has encouraged not a few of us in our childish love of picture-books. Every one knows that at the time of his accession England was plunged in her darkest night of ignorance; and every one who has studied Hume, Hallam, and other standard writers, knows that the illiteracy of the English clergy at that precise period is commonly cited as a sample of the state of things which prevailed throughout Europe during the Dark Ages. Hallam, indeed, in a note appended to his remarks on the subject, admits that before the Danish Invasion, the churches were well furnished with books, but adds that “the priests got little good from them, being written in a foreign language they could not understand.”[114] The fact that the state of things complained of was not normal, but accidental, is uniformly ignored by these writers; they beheld the waters of an inundation, and would have their readers believe them to be the ocean in its natural bed. However, far from wishing to deny the ignorance which existed in England at the time of Alfred’s accession, I will add to the colouring of the picture by quoting Dr. Lingard’s brief but emphatic summary of the grievances under which the kingdom then groaned. “At the close of this calamitous period,” he says, after a graphic sketch of the devastations perpetrated by the[196] Danes, “the Anglo-Saxon church presented a melancholy spectacle; the laity had resumed the ferocious manners of their pagan forefathers; the clergy had grown indolent, dissolute, and illiterate; the monastic order was apparently annihilated, and it devolved on Alfred, now victorious over his enemies, to apply remedies to all these evils.”

The Whitsuntide of the year 873 had been signalised by the great battle of Ethandun, gained by Alfred over the Danes; and this was followed by a short but brilliant campaign, at the close of which the “heathen men” retired into East Anglia and made their submission to the crown of Wessex. This final success was succeeded by fifteen years of comparative tranquillity, which were employed by Alfred in those multifarious acts of wise legislation which restored order to his distracted kingdom, and gained for himself the well-merited title of “the Great.” No work, however, lay closer to his heart than the restoration of learning, for though at this time quite as illiterate as the rest of his people, Alfred’s desire to become learned had very early evinced itself. He had learned to read and write at twelve years old, in spite of many obstacles, no good masters being then to be obtained in all Wessex. His reading, however, was not extensive; it seems to have been confined to a little book in which were collected the day hours of the church, and a few psalms and collects, and which he always carried about him. The manuscript which by its brilliant illuminations had first excited his curiosity was a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and there is no reason for supposing that Alfred was at this time possessed of any other books.

But an intellect like his finds other food than that which can merely be extracted from books. In company with his father, Ethelwulf, Alfred had made the pilgrimage to Rome, where Ethelwulf rebuilt the Saxon school which had been founded by King Ina.[115] On their homeward journey he had visited the court of Charles the Bald, and seen and talked with learned men; he had assisted at his father’s second marriage with the Princess Judith, which was celebrated by Hincmar of Rheims; and at St. Omer’s he had made acquaintance with the Provost Grimbald, whose conversation left a lasting impression on his mind. All this had been a kind of education to him, and by showing him the superior enlightenment of other countries, made him more bitterly regret the rudeness of his own. The first step he took in order to begin a reform was to search out[197] the few learned men still to be found among the Anglo-Saxon clergy. How few they were he lets us know in that oft-quoted passage from the Preface to his translation of St. Gregory, and which, after speaking of the “blessed times” formerly existing in England, when there were holy kings and a zealous clergy, and people came hither from foreign countries in quest of instruction, he laments over the change that has fallen on the land, and declares that knowledge has now so escaped from the English people, that few priests south of the Humber can be found who understand the divine service, or can explain a Latin epistle in English. “They are so few,” he adds, “that I cannot remember one, south of the Thames, when I began to reign.”

And yet, says Hallam, the district south of the Thames was “the best part of England.” This, however, is clearly a mistake, for every one of the surviving Saxon scholars whom Alfred succeeded in hunting out and drawing to his court were Mercians. They were Werefrith, Bishop of Worcester; Plegmund, who when the Danes were ravaging the country had fled into Cheshire and there became a hermit; and two other Mercian priests, named Ethelstan and Werwulf. Plegmund was drawn out of the solitude called from him Plegmundesham, and in 890 was chosen by God and the people to be Archbishop of Canterbury, says the Saxon Chronicle, of great part of which he is supposed to have been the compiler. Werefrith, whom Asser calls most erudite in the divine Scriptures, was sufficiently a Latin scholar to undertake the translation of St. Gregory’s dialogues. Ethelstan and Werwulf were appointed royal chaplains, and had no light office, for they were required by the king to read to him at every leisure moment, “both by day and by night,” that so he might become acquainted with books which he could not read for himself. In Wessex Alfred found no one fitted to take part in the proposed reform, with the exception of a poor swineherd named Denewulf, whom he fell in with whilst hunting in the forest of Selwood; and, charmed with the native genius he betrayed in his conversation, had him educated, and eventually raised him to the see of Winchester. These, however, were not sufficient for the work which the king contemplated, and his thoughts turned to the foreign monks whose acquaintance he had formed on his journey from Rome. He specially desired to obtain possession of Grimbald, who was renowned for his knowledge of the Scriptures and his proficiency in the musical science, and for this purpose despatched an embassy to Fulk, Archbishop of Rheims, begging that the learned provost might[198] be sent to him without delay. Mr. Turner, in his interesting account of the literary labours of Alfred, informs us that Fulk addressed the king a very singular letter in reply, wherein he calls both Grimbald and the English prelates who formed the embassy by the name of dogs. “You have sent me some noble generous dogs to drive away the irreligious wolves, and they came desiring other dogs, not dumb dogs like those spoken of by the prophet, but good noisy dogs that can bark and make themselves heard.” Reference to the original letter of Fulk however, which is printed at the end of Asser’s Life of Alfred,[116] will show that this is a very free translation of a passage capable of simple explanation. The neighbourhood of Rheims was, it seems, infested with wolves, no uncommon thing even in the suburbs of great cities in those wild times; and Alfred, among the costly presents which he sent to the archbishop, had included a pack of English wolf-hounds. Fulk in his letter thanks him for the welcome gift. “You have sent us,” he says, “noble and generous, although mortal and corporal dogs, to drive away the visible wolves with which, among other scourges of God’s justice, our country abounds; and you have asked of us, other dogs, not corporal, but spiritual ones; not such as those of whom the Psalmist speaks, saying, ‘Dumb dogs not able to bark,’ but such as may guard their master’s house by their barking, and wisely keep his flock from the wolves of the unclean spirit, which are the devourers of souls, of which number one is Grimbald the priest and monk,” whose learning and sanctity he then proceeds to extol. Grimbald arrived in England in 884, and, after being honourably received by Alfred and Archbishop Ethelred, is said to have made an excellent oration to the clergy and nobility in a Synod held at London, calling on them, one and all, to embrace a devout life, and to lend their aid in remedying the disorders which had followed on the Danish invasions. According to most writers, he began to teach sacred letters in the schools opened by Alfred at Oxford, and afterwards became abbot of the monastery which the king had founded at Winchester. Another of Alfred’s foreign scholars was John of Old Saxony, a monk of Corby, who has been erroneously confused with John Scotus Erigena. He appears to have brought with him a small community of French monks who were placed by Alfred in the monastery newly erected in the Isle of Athelney.

[199]

But none of these rendered Alfred such effectual help in his literary labours as the British scholar Asser, a monk of St. David’s monastery, whose fame having reached the King’s ears, he was invited to the royal “vill” of Dene, in Sussex, and travelled thither “through many wide intervening ways,” under the conduct of some Saxon guides, in the same year that witnessed the arrival of Grimbald. Asser, who has told us much concerning his royal patron, and has traced his genealogy through Woden up to Bedwig, the grandson of Noe, has been provokingly concise in his account of himself, and the history of his first introduction to the Saxon court. We only know that Alfred vainly endeavoured to induce him to give up his own country, and devote himself entirely to his service; and that Asser steadily refused to do so, thinking, as he says, that it was not right to forsake the holy place where he had been nurtured and consecrated for the prospect of earthly gain and honour. A compromise was, therefore, agreed to, by which Alfred secured his services for six months in every year; and the direction of the court school was delivered into his hands. The plan of this school was the same as that of Charlemagne’s Palatine academy; and in it not only the princes and sons of the nobility, but many also of humbler rank, received their education. They read both Saxon and Latin books, and wrote in both languages, so that before they were strong enough to take part in the chase and other manly sports, they were fully instructed in what Asser calls the liberal arts. Ethelward, Alfred’s youngest son, is specially commended for his diligence and love of learning; and his elder brother, Edward, and their sister, Ethelswitha, continued their studies even after they were grown up. We have not the same accurate information with regard to the nature of their acquirements as we have of those of Alcuin’s scholars; but Asser says they pursued all the liberal sciences, learnt the Psalter, and read Saxon books very frequently, especially Saxon poems. Another school was opened at Athelney, which seems to have been exclusively intended to educate future monks and clergy, and among its scholars the greater number were foreigners. Asser speaks of having seen one of the pagan youths studying there, by which expression he probably means a Dane. He himself had no reason to complain of not being well paid for his services, for Alfred had the merit, so highly prized among his nation, of possessing an open hand. He conferred on his favourite scholar the monasteries of Congresbury and Banwell in one day; and another time gave him Exeter and all[200] the parishes annexed to it in Wessex and Cornwall, as well as a silk pallium and a man’s load of incense, with promises of more at a future time. These liberal grants of land and possessions were possibly made with the covert design of eventually fixing Asser altogether on the Saxon side of the Severn, and not without success, if, as seems probable, he afterwards became Bishop of Sherborne.

It was Alfred’s own desire to extend the blessing of education to all his free-born subjects; and he even made it a law that every freeman possessed of two hides of land should keep his sons at school till they were fifteen, “because a man born free, who is unlettered, is to be regarded no otherwise than as a beast, having, like them, no understanding.” If they had no sons of their own, he encouraged them to choose among the sons of their vassals those of most promise, who might at their expense be trained in good learning, and fitted to fill offices in church and state. He was literally dismayed at the amount of ignorance which he found among his judges, and by his reproofs shamed some of them into seeking in their old age for the instruction they had neglected in their youth. “I marvel,” he would say, “that you who have been intrusted with the office of the Wise (Witan) should have neglected the studies of the wise. Therefore, either at once resign your offices, or apply yourselves to gain wisdom.” Many, urged by words like these, placed themselves under the court teachers, and those who considered the labour of learning to read too gigantic to be undertaken at their age, had their sons and freed men educated, and employed them to read to them, lamenting their own ignorance, and extolling the superior advantages enjoyed by the youth of the present times.

But though the good work was begun, Alfred knew well enough that the only way to perpetuate it was the foundation of monastic schools; and here lay his great difficulty, for not only were all the old monasteries destroyed by the Danes, but the religious spirit that had formerly peopled the cloisters of Malmsbury, and Jarrow, and Croyland, and Lindisfarne with communities numbering their hundreds, were now entirely extinct. Asser informs us that the monastic institute was held in such contempt at that time, that no freeman was to be found in all Wessex willing to embrace it, and those from other provinces who had embraced it neglected all its rules. A gross sensuality had taken possession of the English people, and resulted in a wide-spread neglect on the part of the secular clergy of the sacred canons which bound them to a single[201] life. Their example was ruinous to the morals of the laity, and the practice of divorce was becoming common among all ranks; and to complete the moral degradation of the English, drunkenness was frightfully on the increase among them, that vice the progress of which St. Boniface had so often lamented in his letters to the English prelates, saying that he blushed to find England alone disfigured by a brutal habit to which the very pagans were strangers. In such a state of society we are not surprised to find that the monastic profession was generally regarded with dislike. Athelney had to be peopled with foreign monks, and the murderous attempts they made on the life of their abbot seems to show that the community was made up of worthless members. The only other religious house of any importance which owed its foundation to Alfred was that at Winchester, and in consequence of the support it received from the king it seems to have enjoyed a larger share of prosperity. Still, it must be admitted that Alfred’s efforts to restore monasticism in England were a failure; and in this respect his restoration of learning differed from that of Charlemagne. The Frankish monarch found himself surrounded by institutions which only needed encouragement to become the fit instruments for his work. The monastic spirit was vigorous in France in the eighth century, and he had but to speak the word to see schools and libraries starting up in connection with the cathedrals and monasteries. But in England the case was far different, and hence the real good achieved by Alfred was effected less by the schools that he founded than by the books that he wrote.

It is truly astonishing to think that we should number among our authors a king who, when he came to the throne, could barely read and write, and who during the whole of his reign was overwhelmed with business of all kinds, and worn down by constant bodily sickness. If Charlemagne’s greatness had a more brilliant character, that of Alfred is perhaps more admirable when we remember how very few he had to assist him in his toils. He had to regenerate every branch of government, and to see to each department with his own eye. If Asser’s statement is to be received as literally correct, the king found himself called on to teach his officers even their most homely duties. In the midst of Danish incursions and daily infirmities, he had not only to guide the rudder of the State, but to instruct his goldsmiths and other artificers, his huntsmen, falconers, fowlers, and dog-keepers. Many useful arts he himself taught his[202] people; they were so barbarised and discouraged by their long continued sufferings that agriculture was becoming neglected in many parts, and the king was forced to offer premiums to those who would apply themselves to it, and to distribute seed from the royal storehouses. He was likewise a great builder, and introduced the fashion of building brick and stone houses instead of wooden hovels, himself furnishing the necessary directions and designs. I need not speak of what he did as a lawgiver, or of the numberless social and political institutions which he created. He was at once head, eye, and hand to the kingdom, and found so few among his nobles capable of seconding him in his efforts for the good of his people, that we are told he had to hang forty-five of his judges for gross crimes in the execution of their duty. How in the midst of all these multifarious cares he contrived to find time for the liberal arts, is only to be explained when we remember that he was pre-eminently a good manager and an economist of time; not an economist in that sense of the word in which we understand one who sacrifices everything to business, for according to this practical view Alfred might certainly have made more of his time than he did; and his method of disposing of the eight hours a day which he devoted to prayer and study, would probably by some be regarded as anything but economical. A man who was in the habit of hearing mass and reciting the divine office daily, and of satisfying his devotion by frequent and stealthy visits to the church, at such times as he judged himself least likely to be observed by his attendants, seemed to be expending his few and precious leisure moments on duties not of obligation. But this holy prodigality of the time given to God is a speciality in our early Christian scholars on which it is profitable to dwell. It formed a part of their system, and was as remarkable in Alfred as it was in Bede. And however familiar the reader may be with the anecdotes of his life, some, perhaps, will not be equally familiar with them as they stand in their original garb, from which the religious element has been carefully pared away by each successive story-teller. I shall, therefore, make no apology for introducing so threadbare a subject as King Alfred and his horn lanthorns, persuaded that comparatively few of those who have heard of him as their inventor, have ever dreamt that they had any sort of connection with the spiritual side of our great king’s character. Here, then, is the story as it appears in the pages of Asser. After telling us of the many undertakings happily brought to completion by the king,[203] and his incessant activity in the government of the realm, he continues: “Having set all these things in order, mindful of that saying of Holy Writ, ‘Let him who would give an alms begin with himself,’ he reflected on what he could offer to God of the service of his own mind and body, wishing to consecrate these to God as well as his exterior riches. So he promised, as far as infirmity, possibility, and means would permit, willingly and with all his might to give to God one-half of the service of his mind and body, both by day and night. However, as he could not any way reckon the night hours, by reason of the darkness, nor equally divide those of the day, because of the frequent rain and clouds, he began to think how he might, with God’s help, observe the tenor of his vow even until death. At last he hit on a useful and clever device. He ordered his chaplains to provide a sufficient quantity of wax, which when brought he caused to be weighed out in pennyweights. When seventy-two pennyweights of it had been measured out, he ordered his chaplains to make thereof six candles, all of equal dimensions, each candle being marked out into twelve inches of length. This being done the six candles were burnt day and night without intermission through the twenty-four hours before the holy relics of many saints, which he took with him wherever he went. But as sometimes the candle would not burn through a whole night and day up to the same hour at which they had been lighted the preceding evening (doubtless because of the violence of the winds, which often blew through the doors and windows of the church, or through the many chinks in the walls and roofs, and their hangings), and as thus they burnt out more quickly than they should have done, Alfred began to consider how he might prevent this effect of the wind, and caused a lanthorn to be beautifully constructed of wood and cow’s horn (for white cows’ horns carefully scraped are no less transparent than glass), and the candle, being placed in this lanthorn, shone as brightly without as it did within, unimpeded by the blasts of wind.”[117]

So, then, it was in fulfilment of a religious vow that King Alfred cast about to discover how he might accurately measure out his time, and his horn lanthorns were but the means he hit on to help him how to give the half of his service of mind and body, day and night, to God. Truly a vow worthy of a Christian hero, and right faithfully and heroically kept. Of course, in the time thus consecrated to God, he included those hours he devoted to study, for this[204] with him was a religious exercise. How, indeed, he contrived to secure his eight hours a day of prayer and reading, is a mystery of the same nature with those marvellous facts which we meet with in the lives of the saints, whose days and nights seem to have had forty-eight hours in them, if we measure them by the amount of prayer and work they accomplished during their course. Alfred, whilst thus disposing of his time by vow, had, as it might seem, no time to himself. However, he made the most of what with most men are idle moments, and when not actually engaged in business was always reading or hearing others read. In his chamber he always had a book open before him, and never travelled without carrying his books with him. The attainment of wisdom, both human and Divine, was his absorbing desire; and Asser, after speaking of his incomparable affability and cheerfulness with others, and the great love and honour he showed to all those whom he drew around him, as well foreigners as natives, and his exceeding tenderness for his own children, and for the other youths whom he caused to be bred up in his palace, as though they were all members of his own family, goes on to say that he had no real consolation in any of these things, but that day and night he was devoured with one thought, and with what he calls an anxious sadness, which he poured out to his familiar friends; and this was his ceaseless desire that Almighty God would make him skilled in divine wisdom and in the liberal arts; so that he sought for wisdom even as did King Solomon, esteeming it to be preferable to glory and riches, and, like him, found them also together with her; according as it is written, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all other things shall be added to you.” This coupling together of divine wisdom and the liberal arts, as equal objects of solicitude, is easily understood when we remember the plan according to which human knowledge was then pursued, always in subordination to that which is divine, and mainly in connection with it. Intellectual pursuits not having yet been set free from their holy servitude to the faith, were not recognised as possessing any peculiar dangers; nay, rather, they seem invariably to have been regarded as something meritorious; and knowledge, far from being preached against as perilous to the soul, was ranked among those better gifts which a good man might earnestly covet.

Asser has related to us the circumstances which led to the king’s first applying himself to earnest study. Hitherto, as we have seen,[205] he had been content with making his chaplains read to him, and when Asser first took up his residence at the Court of Leonaford, he also was employed to read to his royal master all the books he desired to become acquainted with, or that could be at that time procured. “One day, as we were sitting together,” he says, “conversing as was our wont, I chanced to recite to him a passage out of a certain book. He listened with great delight, and showing me the little book containing his prayers, which he always carried about with him, asked me to transcribe in it the passage I had quoted.” But every corner was found to be filled up, and Asser suggested writing out the quotation on a separate leaf. “We cannot tell,” he said, “whether we may not meet with other passages which you may like, and if so we should be glad to collect them.” Some fresh sheets were accordingly procured, and the same day three more quotations were entered, and so it went on till at last the new book was filled as completely as the old one; and this very day, being the feast of St. Martin, 885, Alfred, then thirty-six years of age, resolved without delay to commence the study of Latin, that he might himself be able to read and translate books into English for the benefit of his people.

His first work, of which unhappily nothing has been preserved but a few fragments, was the very collection alluded to above, and which Asser and William of Malmsbury speak of as his “Enchiridion” or manual. But there yet remain his more important translations from St. Gregory, Orosius, Boethius, and Bede, the first of which contains that admirable preface which explains so modestly and simply the intention of the writer, and the way in which he executed his work. In the mere verbal translation he was assisted by the learning of others, for he tells us with regard to his version of the “Regula Pastoris” of St. Gregory, that it was done by him into English, sometimes word for word, and sometimes sense for sense, “as I learnt it from Plegmund, my archbishop, and Asser, my bishop, and John and Grimbald, my mass-priests.” But both in this and his other works, he was far more than a translator, and continually expands the ideas of his authors, introducing new matter of his own; sometimes even he substitutes whole chapters for those which he omits, so as to make his translation almost an original work. In the passages which are from his own pen, we admire at once the philosophic lucidity of his thoughts and the noble simplicity with which he expresses them. A brief sentence of Boethius is thus[206] expanded. “Then, said Reason, Dost thou like fair lands? and Mind answered to Reason, and said, Why should I not like fair lands? How? Is not that the fairest part of God’s creation? Full oft we rejoice at the mild sea, and admire also the beauty of sun, moon, and stars. Then answered Wisdom and Reason to the Mind, and said, How belongeth Heaven’s fairness to thee? Desirest thou to glory as though its beauty were thine? It is not, it is not. Knowest thou not that thou madest none of these things? If thou wilt glory, glory in God.... Wherefore now dost thou rejoice in the fair blossoms of Easter, as if thou hadst made them; canst thou make any of such things? Not so, not so. Or is it now in thy power that the harvest is so rich in fruits? I know that this also is not in thy power.” Boethius says, “Survey the space, the firmness, and the rapidity of the heavens, and cease to admire vile things.” This is enlarged by Alfred as follows: “Behold now the spaciousness, the firmness, and the swiftness of the heavens. Yet all this is not to be compared to its Creator and Governor. Why do ye not let yourselves be weary of admiring and praising, that which is unprofitable? That is, worldly riches. For as heaven is better, and fairer, and more precious than all within it, excepting only man, so is man’s body better and more precious than all his possessions. But much more bethink thee that his soul is better and more precious than his body. Every being is to be honoured in fit proportion, and always the highest, most. And therefore the Divine Power is to be honoured, adored, and worshipped above all other things.” The following remarkable passage on free-will is entirely his own. “I said, I am sometimes very much disturbed. Quoth he, at what? I answered, It is at this, that thou sayest, that God gives to every one freedom to do evil as well as good, whichsoever he will. Now I wonder much at this. Then, quoth he, I may very easily answer thee this remark. How now would it look to thee if there were any very powerful king, and he had no freemen in all his kingdom, but only slaves? Then, said I, it would not be thought by me right or reasonable if servile men only were to wait on him. Then said he, It would be more unnatural if God, in all His kingdom, had no free creatures under His power; therefore he made two kinds of rational creatures free, angels and men, and he gave them thus this great gift of freedom.” Mr. Turner, in quoting this passage, remarks that Alfred’s solution of the difficulty shows him to have been a true king of the English people. He felt from his own great heart that the[207] Divine Sovereign must prefer to govern freemen rather than slaves, because this was his own sentiment as a king. If it were derogatory to the dignity of an earthly ruler to have none but slaves for his subjects, far more so would it be for the King of Heaven to have no creatures endowed with free-will.

But perhaps the most interesting of all these interpolated passages is that which occurs in his paraphrase of Boethius, where, treating of the duties of a king, he speaks thus in his own person: “I never well liked or strongly desired this earthly kingdom; yet when I was in possession of it I desired materials for the work I was commanded to do, that I might fitly steer the vessel, and rule the realm committed to my keeping. There are tools for every craft, without which a man cannot work at his craft; and a king also must have his materials and his tools. And what are these? First, he must have his land well peopled, and he must have prayer-men, and army-men, and work-men. Without these tools no king can show his skill. His materials are provision for these three brotherhoods; land to dwell in, gifts, and weapons, and meat, and ale, and clothes, and whatever else they need. Without these he cannot keep his tools, and without his tools he cannot work. Therefore I desired materials that my craft and power might not be given up and lost. But all craft and power will soon be worn out and put to silence if they be without wisdom. Therefore I desired wisdom. This is now what I can truly say. I have desired while I lived to live worthily, and after my death to leave to men that should be after me a remembrance in good deeds.”

In his version of the Chronicle of the World, by Orosius, he followed the same plan, and took occasion to insert a great many corrections and additions, specially in those parts relating to geography, a study for which, like most Anglo-Saxon scholars, Alfred evinced a special liking. His most important additions are a description of Germany, and an account of the voyages of Wulfstan and Othere, the latter of whom was a Norwegian whale-fisher, who sailed round the North Cape into the White Sea, and also entered the mouth of the river Dwina. The narrative was taken down from the lips of the adventurers by the king himself, and is given with the brief biblical simplicity which marks all the compositions of the writer. A considerable portion of the coasts of Prussia and the Baltic are here described for the first time; neither Wulfstan nor Othere removed the impression then prevalent that the Scandinavian peninsula was an island, nevertheless, their discoveries added considerably[208] to the existing geographical knowledge, and the industry shown by the king in collecting and publishing these important facts is well deserving of praise.

The treatise of St. Gregory on the pastoral office was translated by Alfred with peculiar care, and his object in selecting such a work is sufficiently obvious. It contained the instructions of that great Pope whose name was venerated in England as that of her first apostle, on the duties of the pastoral office, and the good king doubtless trusted that its study would revive a better spirit among his clergy. It had in fact a very special degree of authority, and in all the Synods held under Charlemagne was commonly referred to as the standard of ecclesiastical discipline, and would naturally have a special claim on the interest of English readers, as being one of the books bestowed on St. Augustine by the author, and laid up in the Canterbury Library. So highly did Alfred value the translation of the “Hirde-boc,” as he calls it, that he caused a copy to be sent to every cathedral church in his dominions, with strict injunctions that they should never be removed thence except for the purpose of transcription, or for the bishop’s own reading. Three of these copies are still preserved, with the names of the bishops inserted in the prefatory letters; they are those belonging to Wulfsige of Sherborne, Werferth of Worcester, and Plegmund of Canterbury.

Many other writings and translations are attributed to Alfred by Malmsbury and other historians, and we are assured by the former that he was engaged on an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalter when attacked with his last sickness. An Anglo-Saxon translation of the New Testament also exists bearing his name, and was printed at London in 1571. Indeed the literary reputation of their “darling,” as the Anglo-Saxons popularly termed him, induced them to ascribe to his pen any English writing of uncertain authorship. The real part to be assigned to him in the history of learning is, in fact, that of the founder of Anglo-Saxon literature. Up to this time few books had appeared in the native idiom, with the exception of the national ballads. But it was his wish to substitute that noble tongue, which none knew better how to write than himself, in place of the incorrect Latin which had been used by earlier scholars; his own translations and paraphrases were the first attempts at anything like extensive prose works in the vernacular, but from that time the number of Anglo-Saxon writers rapidly increased.

I have said that the good achieved by Alfred was accomplished[209] rather by his writings than his schools. Mr. Craik, in his history of English literature, speaks of it indeed as “probable” that Alfred restored many of the old episcopal and monastic schools, though he admits there is no satisfactory evidence of his having done so. We may safely affirm, from the absence of all historic evidence, that no such restorations took place, and the reason is obvious; to effect them he must first have restored the monastic institute, and however ardently he desired to do so, it is quite clear that his efforts were crowned with very imperfect success. But his claim to be regarded as the founder of Oxford University rests on more respectable tradition, which, to use the words of Hallam, “if it cannot be maintained as a certain truth, at least bears no intrinsic marks of error.” It is assumed by most historians that the schools to the support of which Alfred devoted one-fourth part of the moiety of his revenues, were those which he founded or restored at Oxford, by the advice, as it is said, of St. Neot, and where it is further stated that Grimbald taught theology on first coming to England. Hardyng, the historian, tells us that these schools were founded in virtue of a brief from Pope Martin II.

The passage, indeed, which occurs in one manuscript of Asser’s history, giving an account of certain dissensions between Grimbald and the old scholastics whom he found already established at Oxford, is now very generally held to be an interpolation of later writers, who were anxious by this means to stretch back the antiquity of their university to a date of indefinite remoteness.

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[210] 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[211] 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.

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[213] 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[214] 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[215] 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[216] 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,[217] 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[218] 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.[219] “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[220] 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.

[221]

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[222] 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[223] 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[224] 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.

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[226] 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[227] 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[228] 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[229] 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[230] 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[231] 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[232] 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,[233] 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;[234] 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[235] 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[236] 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[237] 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[238] 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[239] 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[240] 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[241] 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:—

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.

[242]

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[243] 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[244] 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[245] 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[246] 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[247] 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[248] 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[249] 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[250] 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[251] 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[252] 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[253] 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.

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[255] 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[256] 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[257] 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[258] 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[259] 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[260] 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[261] 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.

At Einsidlen, as at Treves, he devoted himself to the office of teaching, and with the same success. It was as hopeless for him to attempt to conceal his talent, as to hide a light under a bushel. The world soon resounded with the fame of his school, and bishops travelled to Einsidlen to bargain for his possession. This time the friendly persecution was revived by St. Udalric of Augsburgh, who[262] was himself sufficiently learned to understand the merits of the poor monk, who asked nothing of the world but a quiet hiding-place, and was never suffered to enjoy it for any length of time. Udalric was a scholar of St. Gall’s, and had given marks of sanctity even during his school days. A minute account of his manner of life when archbishop is given in the beautiful life written by his friend Gerard. Let it suffice to say, that besides singing the Divine Office in the cathedral with his canons, and daily celebrating two or three masses (a privilege then permitted to priests, as we learn from Walafrid Strabo), he every day recited the entire Psalter, the Office of Our Lady, together with that of the Holy Cross, and of All Saints; that he entertained a number of poor persons at his table, exercised hospitality on a right royal scale, administered strict justice to his people, and courageously defended them against the oppression of their feudal lords; finally, that he took particular care of the education of his clergy, and directed the studies of his cathedral school in person, none being better fitted to do so than himself. When he made the visitation of his diocese, he travelled in a wagon drawn by oxen, which he preferred to riding on horseback as it enabled him to recite the Psalms with his chaplains with less interruption. In this arrangement he certainly displayed a sound discretion, for in the ancient chronicles of these times, more than one story is preserved of the disasters which befell travelling monks and bishops, owing to their habit of reading on horseback.[133] His cathedral city of Augsburgh was repeatedly attacked by the Huns; and during one of their sieges, the holy bishop, sending the able-bodied men to the walls collected a number of infants in arms, and laying them on the floor of the cathedral, before the altar, prostrated himself in prayer, hoping that their tender cries might ascend as prayer before the Throne of God. His prayers were heard, and Augsburgh was delivered. Such was the prelate who at last succeeded in drawing Wolfgang out of his retirement, and compelling him to receive priestly ordination. And in 972 the emperor Otho II., at the united entreaties of his bishops, appointed him Bishop of Ratisbon, which see he governed for twenty-two years, never, however,[263] laying aside his monastic habit. Henry, duke of Bavaria, thoroughly understood his merits, and knowing his love of the office of teaching, entreated him to take charge of his four children, St. Henry, afterwards emperor of Germany, St. Bruno, who succeeded Udalric in the diocese of Augsburgh, and the two princesses, Gisela and Brigit, who both died in the odour of sanctity. The singular blessing which attended his labours with these and other noble children committed to his care, gave rise to a proverb which deserves remembrance: “Find saints for masters, and we shall have saints for emperors.”

The emperors of the tenth century were certainly fortunate in this respect, and as I have just named Otho II., it will not be amiss to say a few words about him, and about the tutor to whom was committed the education of his son and successor. Otho II. had been brought up among the canons of Hildesheim, and had acquired from them a taste for letters, which was still further increased by his marriage with the Greek princess Theophania. At this time the court of Constantinople was the centre of all that survived of the old imperial civilisation and literature. Theophania was a woman of beauty and talent, and remarkable for her wit and eloquence, she soon infused into the Germans a rage for Greek literature, and gave such a brilliant character to the literary coteries of the imperial court, that Gerbert, who was then residing there, speaks in one of his letters of the “Socratic conversation” which he found among the learned men who thronged the company of the empress, which, he says, sufficed to console him amid all his troubles. In more peaceful times it is probable that a sovereign of Otho’s character would have effected a great restoration of letters, but the ten years of his reign were occupied with continual wars, which affixed to his name the appellation of “the Sanguinary,” and gave no scope for the exercise of his really great abilities. Before his death, which took place in 983, he obtained the election of his infant son, Otho III. as emperor, and left him to the guardianship of Theophania, who, during the minority of her son, governed the empire as regent.

The empress showed herself fully qualified for both offices. She had it greatly at heart to provide the young emperor with a learned education, and not unmindful of the proverb we have quoted above, was equally solicitous to secure for his tutor one who should merit the title of a saint. The priest whom she chose was a noble Saxon named Bernward; he was nephew to Folcmar, Bishop of Utrecht,[264] who sent him when a child of seven years old to be educated in the episcopal school of Hildesheim, by the grave and holy master Tangmar. This good old man, who afterwards wrote his life, received him kindly, and to test his capacities, set him to learn by heart some of the select passages from Holy Scripture which were usually given to beginners. Little Bernward set himself to learn and meditate on them with wonderful ardour, and associating himself to the most studious of his companions, tried with their help thoroughly to master, not only the words, but the hidden sense of his lessons. As he was not yet judged old enough to join any of the classes, he sat apart by himself, but listened attentively to the lectures of the master, and the explanations which he gave, and was afterwards found reproducing the same in a grave and sententious manner for the edification of his younger schoolfellows. Surprised and delighted at these marks of precocious genius, Tangmar spared no pains in the cultivation of so promising a scholar, and had him constantly by his side. “Whenever I went abroad on the business of the monastery,” he says, “I used to take him with me, and I was always more and more struck by his excellent qualities. We often studied the whole day as we rode along on horseback, only more briefly than we were used to do in school; at one time exercising ourselves in poetry, and amusing ourselves by making verses, at another, arguing on philosophic questions. He excelled no less in the mechanical than in the liberal arts. He wrote a beautiful hand, was a good painter, and an equally good sculptor and worker in metals, and had a peculiar aptitude for all things appertaining to household and domestic affairs.” Under the care of so devoted a master, the boy Bernward, as the old man always called him, grew up to be a wise and learned man. He had that singular ardour for acquiring knowledge which seems one of the gifts poured out over ages in which its pursuit is hedged about with difficulties that must necessarily discourage a more ordinary amount of zeal. Bernward always read during meal times, and when unable to read himself, he got some one to read to him. His reputation determined Theophania to choose him as tutor to her son, who made great progress under his care, and was then sent to finish his education in the school of the famous Gerbert. Bernward meanwhile was appointed Bishop of Hildesheim, and in the midst of his episcopal functions, continued to cultivate literature and the fine arts. He made time by employing the day in business and the night in prayer. He founded scriptoria[265] in many monasteries, and collected a valuable library of sacred and profane authors. He tried to bring to greater perfection the arts of painting, mosaic work, and metal work, and made a valuable collection of all those curiosities of fine art which were brought to Otho’s court as presents from foreign princes. This collection Bernward used as a studio, for the benefit of a number of youths whom he brought up and instructed in these pursuits. It is not to be said what he did for his own cathedral, supplying it with jewelled missals, thuribles, and chalices, a huge golden corona which hung from the centre of the roof, and other like ornaments. The walls he painted with his own hands. The visitor to Hildesheim may still admire the rich bronze gates, sixteen feet in height, placed in the cathedral by its artist-bishop, the crucifix adorned with filagree-work and jewels, made by his own hands, and the old rose-tree growing on the cloister, which tradition affirms him to have planted.

His manner of life is minutely described by his old tutor Tangmar. After high mass every morning he gave audience to any who desired to speak to him, heard causes, and administered justice with great readiness and promptitude. Then his almoner waited on him, and accompanied him to the distribution of his daily alms, for every day a hundred poor persons were fed and relieved at his palace. After this he went the round of his workshops, overlooking each one’s work and directing its progress. At the hour of nine he dined with his clerks. There was no worldly pomp observable at his table, but a religious silence, all being required to listen to the reading, which was made aloud. The barbarians gave him plenty of trouble, for they had seized possession of both shores of the Elbe, and were therefore able to enter Saxony whenever they liked, and often appeared at the gates of Hildesheim. But Bernward raised troops for the defence of his diocese, and repeatedly forced them to retire; and at last built and garrisoned two strong fortresses which kept the pirates in check.

Bernward had many illustrious disciples, and among them was one destined to be known in history as the Apostle of the Sclaves. The title may puzzle those readers who have met with other and earlier narratives of the conversion of these people, but the fact is that the Sclaves absorbed almost as much Apostolic labour as China has done in later times. Twice converted they had twice apostatised, and were finally brought within the fold of the Church by the labours of Bennon, Bishop of Misnia. This remarkable man belonged to the[266] family of the counts of Saxony, and was placed under the care of St. Bernward at the age of five years. The restored monastery of Hildesheim, dedicated to St. Michael, of course possessed its school, which was presided over by Wigger, a very skilful master, under whose careful tuition Bennon thrived apace. “Now as the age was learned,” writes the good canon, Jerome Enser—who little thought in what light that same age would come to be regarded—“as the age was learned, and cultivated humane letters, as may be seen by the lives and writings of so many eminent men, Wigger would not allow the child committed to his care to neglect polite letters;” so he set him to work at once to learn to write, being careful to transcribe his copies himself. And how well Bennon profited from these early lessons might yet be seen by any who chose to examine the fine specimens which were preserved in the Church of Misnia when Jerome Enser wrote his biography. After this Wigger exercised his pupil in the art of reading and that of composing verses, taking care to remove from his way everything offensive to piety or modesty. Bennon had a natural gift of versification, and soon learnt to write little hymns and poems by way of amusement. His progress and his boyish verses endeared him to his masters, and indeed, adds Jerome, “he was beloved by God and man.” None showed him more affection than St. Bernward, who was now overwhelmed with the infirmities of old age, though his mind was as bright and active as ever. During the last five years of his life he was entirely confined to his bed, and all this time little Bennon proved his chief solace. Sometimes he read aloud to his beloved father. Sometimes he made verses, or held disputations to entertain him; never would he leave his side, discharging for him all the offices of which his youth was capable. When at last death drew near, Bernward called the child to him together with his master Wigger, and addressed to him a touching exhortation. “If by reason of thy tender age,” he said, “thou canst not thyself be wise, promise me never to depart from the side of thy preceptor that he may be wise for thee, and that so thou mayest be preserved from the corruptions of the world whilst thy heart is yet soft and tender. Yea, if thou lovest me, love and obey him in all things, as holding the place of thy father.” Then he kissed the child’s little hand, and placed it in that of Wigger, and soon after departed this life, rich in good works, and secure of a heavenly reward.

The sorrow of Bennon was too great for words. He wept without[267] ceasing, and pined away in his grief, till at last Wigger had to mingle his consolations with timely reprehension. His words in some degree restored his pupil to peace, but so deep an impression had been made on his heart of the nothingness of a world which sooner or later deprives us of all we most love, that he resolved to have nothing more to do with it, and to devote his life to God in the monastery. He never forgot his good father Bernward, and the first composition which he wrote after the death of the bishop was a poetical epitaph which his biographer inserts, and which is not a favourable specimen of his genius. Jerome probably felt that it was open to criticism, which he judiciously forestalls. “The verses,” he says, “show that if not ignorant of the metrical art, he did not affect a flowery style, but was content with plain and simple language. But if some, having delicate ears, should be disposed to turn up their noses at the line,”

“I would remind them of the singular devotion which the Blessed Bernward bore to St. Michael whence it will appear that this line did not escape our Bennon unwarily. They who are moved by the Spirit of God care not much for the outside shell of words, and prefer a good life to a good style of writing.” He adds, “the scholastic discipline of Hildesheim was at this time extremely severe. It was reckoned a great fault not merely to be absent from choir or refectory, but even to come late. The scholars each day had to bring their Scripture to the dean, and rehearse their Psalms. And the rod was freely used.” Bennon being kept under this strict discipline, passed safely through the slippery time of youth, and in his after-life proved himself not unworthy the extraordinary care bestowed on his education.

Many other great prelates of this period might be enumerated, distinguished either as the founders or the masters of schools. Of Notger of Liege we have already spoken. The school of Verdun was founded by one of his disciples, and boasted of possessing that wonder of the eleventh century, Master Herminfrid, who spoke and wrote with equal facility Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian. Then there was St. Meinwerc, who like Bennon was a pupil of Hildesheim, where he studied along with his cousin St. Henry of Bavaria, and the prince, even after he became Emperor, remembered their schoolboy days together, and was fond of putting him in mind of them by sundry tricks that savoured of the grown-up schoolboy.[268] Meinwerc was not much of a scholar himself, but when he became Bishop of Paderborn, he showed a laudable zeal in promoting good scholarship among his clergy. In fact, he was the founder of those famous schools of Paderborn which are described as flourishing in divine and human science, and which were perfected by his nephew and successor, Imadeus. The boys were all under strict cloistral discipline; there were professors of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and music; both the trivium and quadrivium were there taught, together with mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Horace, Virgil, and Statius were read by the students, whose ordinary recreation it was to make verses, while great attention was paid to the arts of writing and painting. Brucker treats this account as apocryphal, on the ground that Meinwerc was an ignoramus himself, and sometimes made blunders in reading Latin. The story of Bishop Meinwerc and his mules, the only one, be it remembered, on which this charge of ignorance is founded, together with the explanation of the same so amusingly given by Mr. Maitland in his “Dark Ages,” need not here be repeated. When emperors take to playing tricks, even the wisest of bishops may be snared into a blunder. But granting the fact that Meinwerc himself possessed no more scholarship than our own Wykeham, there seems no reason for supposing it therefore impossible that he should desire to rear a race of students more learned than himself. We know that he was a strict disciplinarian in all that regarded the right discharge of the sacred offices, and that he was wont to examine and burn all incorrect copies of books used at the altar, administering very sharp correction, in the shape of stripes, to careless and negligent priests.

However, the object of the present chapter being chiefly to show something of the interior of schools in the Dark Ages, we will pass over a great many names of founders and learned bishops, and take our way to Magdeburg, where Otho I. had erected a cathedral, and Archbishop Adalbert had founded a school. Here, in 973, the yet more famous St. Adalbert of Prague was sent by his parents for education. They were of the Bohemian nation, and had vowed to offer their son to God should he recover of a dangerous sickness. Before he left his father’s house he had learnt the Psalter, and under Otheric, the famous master then presiding over the school of Magdeburg, he made as much progress in sanctity as in learning. He had a habit of stealing away from the schoolroom in the midst of his studies to refresh his soul with a brief prayer in the church, after[269] which he hastened back and was safe in his place again before the coming of the master. To conceal his acts of charity from the eyes of others, he chose the night hours for visiting the poor and dispensing his abundant alms. It often happened that when Otheric was out of the school, the boys would divert themselves with games more or less mischievous to relieve the weary hours of study. Adalbert seldom took part in these pastimes, neither would he share in those stealthy little feasts which they sometimes held in obscure corners, where they contrived to hide from Otheric’s quick eye the sweets and other dainties furnished them, as we must suppose, by some medieval tart-woman.[134] However, if Adalbert was proof against this last-named temptation, it appears he was not altogether superior to the love of play, and that when his master’s back was turned, he did occasionally throw aside his books and indulge in a game of ball. When such delinquencies came to the ears of Otheric, he did not spare the rod, and on these occasions, observes his biographer with cruel pleasantry, Adalbert was often known to speak in three languages. For it was a strict rule that the boys were always to talk Latin in the schoolroom, and never allow the ears of their master to catch the sound of a more barbarous dialect. When the rod was produced, therefore, Adalbert would begin by entreating indulgence in classic phraseology, but so soon as it was applied, he would call out for mercy in German, and finally in Sclavonic. After nine years’ study at Magdeburg, Adalbert returned to Bohemia, with the reputation of being specially well read in philosophy, and taking with him a useful library of books, which he had collected during his college career. After his consecration as Bishop of Prague, at the early age of twenty-seven, he is said never again to have been seen to smile. Twice the hard-heartedness of his people compelled him to abandon his diocese, and after his departure the second time, he travelled as missioner into the then heathen and barbarous provinces of Prussia, where he met with his martyrdom in the year 997. A Sclavonic hymn to the Blessed Virgin, formerly wont to be sung by the Poles when going to battle, is attributed to this saint.

Hitherto we have spoken only of the episcopal seminaries of Germany; those attached to the monasteries were, if possible, more celebrated. The great school of St. Gall’s attained its highest degree of splendour in this century. Something has already been said of[270] the general character of the studies pursued there, but its succession of great masters deserves a more particular notice. Originally founded by Irish monks, the monastery owed no little of its renown to the teaching of Irish professors. In the year 840, Marx, an Irish bishop, travelling home from Rome in company with his nephew Moengall, stopped at St. Gall’s, and after a few days’ visit, both of them entreated the abbot to admit them into his community. Permission being granted, they dismissed their servants and horses, threw their money out of the window, and, keeping only their books and sacred vessels, vowed to spend the rest of their lives in the seclusion of the cloister. Moengall, to whom the monks gave the less barbarous name of Marcellus, was soon after appointed master of the interior or cloistral school, the exterior one being governed by the famous master, Iso. This last-named personage, whom Ekkehard styles a doctor magnificus, enjoyed such a reputation that all the monasteries of Gaul and Burgundy were eager to obtain his disciples, and it was commonly said that he possessed ways of his own for sharpening the dullest wits. At the precise time of which we speak, he had among his pupils Solomon, afterwards Bishop of Constance, and the three friends, Notker Balbulus, or the stammerer, Ratpert, and Tutilo, all of whom afterwards chose the monastic state, and passed, therefore, to the interior school, presided over by Marcellus.

The Irish scholar greatly improved the system of studies; he extended, if he did not first introduce, the study of Greek, and it is evident that his influence, and that of many of his countrymen, who filled subordinate professorships, may be traced in the character which distinguished the education of St. Gall’s from that of most of its contemporaries. It was larger and freer, and made more of the arts and sciences; indeed, so far as regards its studies, it had a better claim to the title of a university than any single institution which can be named as existing before the time of Philip Augustus. Marcellus was fortunate in his pupils, but the character of the three who were most prominent among them must be given in the words of Ekkehard. Though united in one heart, he says, they were of very different dispositions. Notker was weak, not in mind but in body; in speech, but not in spirit, a stammerer. Firm in spiritual things, patient in adversity, mild to all, yet a strict disciplinarian, and timorous at any sudden alarm, except of demons, whom he combated valiantly. He was very assiduous in reading, writing and[271] composing, and was, in short, a vessel of the Holy Ghost. Very different was Tutilo; he was a good and useful man; as to his arms and all his limbs, such as Fabius teaches us to choose for a wrestler. He was eloquent, with a fine voice, skilful in carving, and an excellent painter. He was a musician, too, like his companions, and excelled everybody in all kinds of stringed and wind instruments, and taught their use to the sons of the nobility educated in the exterior school. He was, moreover, a very wise builder, powerful in reading and singing, cheerful whether in jest or earnest, and what is more, ever diligent in choir; in secret, given to devout tears, and skilful in the composition of songs and melodies. Ratpert was something between the two: from his youth he had been schoolmaster of the external school, where he succeeded Master Iso, and a kind, straightforward teacher he was, very strict in discipline, and so seldom given to go abroad that, he made one pair of shoes last a twelvemonth. He was very famous as a poet, and so fond of the ancients that he was known, even in chapter, to quote a verse from Virgil. He died some years before either of his friends; and forty of his former pupils, all of them priests or canons, stood around his deathbed, and promised each one to say thirty masses for the repose of his soul, a thing which gave him infinite joy and satisfaction.

Tutilo was a good classical scholar, and could preach both in Greek and Latin; but he was chiefly esteemed as an artist and a musician. He sang his own melodies to the harp, an instrument which the Irish monks had rendered very popular at St. Gall’s. His magnificent statuary in bronze and stone continued to decorate the abbey church till the time of its pillage by the soi-disant reformers, and all the French and German prelates were eager to obtain his works. With the permission of his abbot, therefore, he travelled far and wide, executing devout carvings and paintings, much to the dissatisfaction of Ratpert, who was wont to say that this gadding about the world was the destruction of a monk. It did not, however, prove so with Tutilo, who, to all his brilliant genius and gigantic muscular strength, united in a singular degree the grace of humility. Whenever he found that his artistic skill drew on him any notable amount of admiration, he generally found some excuse for departing from the place where he was at work, and his long journeys never lessened his devotion, or deprived him of his gift of holy tears. It was his custom to adorn his sculptures and pictures with pious verses, in order to draw the thoughts of those who beheld them from the[272] work of the artist to the divine mystery which it represented. One of his most celebrated pieces of sculpture was an image of the Blessed Virgin, which he carved for the cathedral at Metz. Whilst engaged on this masterpiece, two pilgrims came up and begged an alms of him, and having received it, asked of a clerk who was standing by, who that beautiful lady was whom they saw at his side, holding his compasses, and directing him in his work. The clerk looked, and saw the same wondrous vision, and believed it to be Our Lady herself who had come in person to assist her client. But when the rumour of the thing spread abroad, Tutilo fled away, nor could he ever be persuaded to return to the city. His verses were highly esteemed, and some of his elegies are still preserved. Besides all this, he was great in mathematics and astronomy, and constructed an astrolabe which showed the course of the stars. For it must be remembered that scientific studies were highly prized at St. Gall’s, and that even geographers were to be found among the monks, such as Abbot Hartmot, who constructed a large map of the world, in those days a very rare and valuable curiosity.

Among these three famous scholars, we may select Notker as the most perfect specimen of the monastic type. Like his two friends, he was a poet and musician, and his brethren considered him a second Horace for the beauty of his songs and sequences. It was the reputation of learning enjoyed by St. Gall’s which had first attracted him thither, for indeed, says Ekkehard, “he was devoured with a love of grammar.” Like a true poet, he was keenly susceptible to the sights and sounds of nature, and loved to “study her beautifulness” in that enchanted region of lakes and mountains. The gentle melancholy inseparable from exalted genius, which in him was increased by his exceeding delicacy of organisation, found its expression in the wild and mystic melodies which he composed. The monotonous sound of a mill-wheel near the abbey suggested to him the music of the “Media Vita,” the words being written whilst looking into a deep gulf over which some labourers were constructing a bridge. This antiphon became very popular in Germany, and was every year sung at St. Gall’s during the Rogation Processions. But it was not as a poet or man of science that the Blessed Notker was best known to posterity; profoundly learned in human literature, he yet, says Ekkehard, applied more to the Psalter than to any other book. Even in his own lifetime he was revered as a saint. He was master of the interior and claustral school at the same time as[273] Ratpert governed the exterior school, and kept up the same strict discipline, “stripes only excepted.” The gentleness of his disposition peeps out in the fact that one of the faults he was hardest on in his pupils was the habit of bird’s-nesting. He was always accessible; no hour of day or night was ever deemed unseasonable for a visit from any who brought a book in their hands. For the sake of maintaining regular observance, he once forbade his disciples to whisper to him in time of silence, but the abbot enjoined him under obedience to let them speak to him whenever they would. Ratpert relates a story of him, which shows the opinion of learning and sanctity in which he was held. The emperor Charles, having on one occasion come to the monastery on a visit, he brought in his suite a certain chaplain, whose pride appears to have taken offence at the consideration with which his master treated the Blessed Notker. When they were about to depart, therefore, seeing the man of God sitting, as was his custom, with his Psalter in his hand, and recognising him to be the same man who, on the previous day, had solved many hard questions proposed to him by Charles, he said to his companions, “There is he who is said to be the most learned man in the whole empire; but if you like, I will make this most excellent wiseacre a laughing-stock for you, for I will ask him a question which, with all his learning, he will not be able to answer.” Curious to see what he would do, and how Notker would deal with him, they agreed to his proposal, and all went together to salute the master, who courteously rose, and asked them what they desired. Then said the unhappy man of whom we spoke, “O most learned master, we are very well aware that there is nothing you do not know. We therefore desire you to tell us, if you can, what God is now doing in heaven?” “Yes,” replied Notker, “I can answer that question very well. He is doing what He always has done, and what He is shortly about to do to thee, He is exalting the humble, and humbling the proud.” The scoffer moved away, while the laugh was turned against him. Nevertheless, he made light of Notker’s words and the prediction of evil which they seemed to contain regarding himself. Presently the bell rang for the king’s departure, and the chaplain, mounting his horse, rode off with a great air in front of his master. But before he came to the gate of the city the steed fell, and the rider being thrown on his face, broke his leg. Abbot Hartmot hearing of this accident, desired Notker to visit the sick man, and pardon him, giving him his blessing. But[274] the foolish chaplain protested that the misfortune had nothing to do with Notker’s prediction, and continued to speak of him with the greatest contempt. His leg, however, remained in a miserable state, until one night his friends besought Notker to come to him and aid him with his prayers. He complied willingly enough, and touching the leg, it was immediately restored; and by this lesson the chaplain learned to be more humble for the future.

Notker was the author of various works, amongst others of a German translation of the Psalter, which Vadianus speaks of in his treatise on the “Ancient Colleges of Germany,” and which he says is scarcely intelligible by reason of the excessive harshness of the old Tudesque dialect. He gives a translation of the “Creed,” and the “Our Father,” from Notker’s version, in which it is not difficult to trace the German idiom.[135] Notker’s German studies were yet more extensively carried on by his namesake, Notker Labeo, or the Thick-Lipped, who wrote many learned works in the vernacular, and was also a great classical scholar. He translated into German the works of Aristotle, Boëthius, and Marcian Capella, and some musical treatises, all which are still preserved. His translation of St. Gregory’s “Morals” is lost. He is commemorated in the chronicles of his House as “the kind and learned master,” and whilst he presided over the claustral school, he educated a great many profound scholars, among whom was Ekkehard junior, the author of the chronicle “De Casibus S. Galli,” and of the celebrated “Liber Benedictionum.” This Ekkehard, at the request of the empress, transcribed Notker’s “Paraphrase of the Psalms” for her use with his own hand, and corrected a certain poem which his predecessor Ekkehard I. had written when a schoolboy, and which was full of Tudesque barbarisms, such as the delicate ear of Ekkehard junior might not abide. He held that the barbarous idioms could not be translated into Latin without a great deal of painstaking. “Think in German,” he would say to his scholars, “and then be careful to render your thought into correct Latin.” There was yet a third Ekkehard whose memory is preserved in the annals of St. Gall under the surname of Palatinus. He was nephew to Ekkehard I., and presided over both the exterior and interior schools, and that with[275] great success. He made no distinction between noble and plebeian scholars, but employed those who had less talent for learning in writing, painting, and other like arts. He was able to take down in shorthand the substance of anything he heard, and two discourses are still preserved thus noted by his hand. He was afterwards most unwillingly summoned to the Court of Otho I., who appointed him his chaplain and secretary, and tutor to his son Otho II. So venerated was this great man throughout Germany, that when he attended the council of Mentz in 976, six bishops rose up to salute their old master, all of them having been educated in the school of St. Gall. To this list of masters I must add the name of another Notker, who, from his strict observance of discipline, received the surname of “Piperis-granum,” or the Peppercorn, though his pungency of temper did not prevent his brethren from commemorating him in their obituary as the “Doctor benignissimus.” He was renowned as a physician, a painter, and a poet, and was also well skilled in music. Most of these great men find a place in a narrative which I will give here for the sake of its connection with the classical studies of St. Gall, and which is related by Ekkehard junior in his chronicle of the abbey.

Hedwiga, daughter to Duke Henry of Bavaria, was at that time the reigning Duchess of Swabia, having been left a widow by the death of her husband Duke Burkhard. She was a woman of wonderful beauty, but of so severe and imperious a temper as to be held in terror through all the surrounding provinces. In her youth she had been promised in marriage to the Greek prince, Constantine, who sent a cunning artist to take the portrait of his future bride, and at the same time to instruct her in Greek literature. But Hedwiga, not admiring the Greek alliance, made such terrible contortions of her fair nose and eyebrows whenever the painter applied himself to his task, that his efforts at a likeness proved fruitless, and the marriage was broken off in consequence. From the Greek painter, however, Hedwiga had acquired a very fair proportion of Greek scholarship, and on her marriage with Burkhard, she likewise applied herself to the study of Latin. She was a frequent visitor to the abbey of St. Gall, where her nephew, Burkhard, was then abbot, and in return for her splendid gifts, insisted on nothing less than that the abbot should make over to her, as tutor, the hapless Ekkehard Palatinus, who then filled the office of porter, and was known to be an excellent scholar in both languages. The abbot very unwillingly consented[276] to her demand, and poor Ekkehard had to pay frequent visits to the castle of Dwellia, where, in spite of the beauty and talents of his fair disciple, her sharp temper and exasperating ways often made his office a hard one. Once, when out of humility he had begged that a certain canopy erected over his bed might be taken down, the wrathful duchess ordered the servant who had executed the order to be flogged, and would have cut off his head had it not been for the entreaties of the master. However, she had an open hand, though a somewhat heavy one, and bestowed liberal gifts on the monks of St. Gall, in the shape of embroidered copes and chasubles. But even in her bounty she showed the same wilful disposition, for having once given them a very rich dalmatic, cunningly worked in fine gold, and representing the espousals of Mercury and Philology, she took it away again in dudgeon at the refusal of Abbot Immo to let her have the antiphonary on which she had set her heart.

The favours which St. Gall’s received at her hands, however, and the frequent visits exchanged between the abbey and Dwellia roused the jealousy of Ruodman, abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Reichnau. He was a prying, gossiping sort of a personage, and set afloat so many mischievous and ill-natured tales as greatly to distress the monks. But this was not the worst. Not content with whispering his calumnies, Ruodman conceived the plan of stealing into the convent in the absence of Abbot Burkhard, to see if he could not spy out some matter which he might turn to the disadvantage of the inmates. On a certain day, therefore, mounting his horse he set out for St. Gall, and arriving at the monastery about nightfall, stole into the cloister and cautiously crept about spying this way and that to see what he could discover. Having satisfied his curiosity by an inspection of the cloister, he proceeded on tiptoe upstairs to the dormitory, but not so softly but that the watchful ear of Dean Ekkehard, the senior, caught the sound. Quietly providing himself with the abbot’s lantern, he followed the footsteps, and presently discovered the intruder. Ere long the whole community was down upon him, and I leave the reader to guess what were their sentiments when the abbot’s lantern displayed the features of the trembling Ruodman. The younger part of the monks were earnest in their entreaties that he might be chastised as his impertinence merited, and some of them ran forwith to provide themselves with rods. The unhappy Ruodman, in great anguish of soul, implored their mercy: “Spare me,[277] good youths!” he exclaimed; “I am in your hands, deal with me gently, or at least wait to hear the judgment of your dean:” for at that moment Ekkehard senior was consulting with the elder fathers what was to be done in so strange an emergency. Meanwhile Notker, the Peppercorn, appeared on the scene, and his voice was for summary measures. “O wicked man!” he exclaimed, “dost thou go about as a lion, seeking whom thou mayest devour, and like another Satan, desiring to accuse thy brethren?” But he, cunningly taking advantage of the known mildness of the good dean, threw himself entirely on his mercy. “Most prudent father,” he exclaimed, “I have indeed done very wickedly; but lo! I repent, I ask pardon of everybody, and from henceforward I will utterly abstain from molesting any of you.” The kind-hearted monks were touched by his speedy repentance; some indeed regretted that he should be let off without receiving a severe lesson, but the voices of the seniors prevailed, and Ruodman was conducted by Ekkehard himself to the spot where his horse awaited him, and dismissed in peace and forgiveness.

My readers will probably be of opinion that he got off very easily. So was Abbot Burkhard when he heard of the affair, though he was far from being of a pugnacious temper; and so too was the mighty duchess. The next time that Ekkehard Palatinus appeared to give his lesson, she vented her wrath in very strong language; to be candid, she swore, “by the life of Hedwiga,” to have her revenge. But her anger for that day, at least, was dissipated by a pleasant incident which sets her character in a more amiable light. Ekkehard had brought with him one of his junior scholars, whose infantine beauty attracted the admiration of the duchess. “Wherefore have you brought this child?” she inquired of her tutor; who replied with his customary courtesy, “For the sake of the Greek, gracious lady, which I hope he will gather from your lips.” Then the boy, who was well trained in the versifying habits of the St. Gall’s scholars, spoke for himself in an extempore line of Latin:—

Charmed with his ready wit, she drew him to her, and kissing him kindly on the forehead made him sit on the footstool at her feet, requiring him to make her some more verses immediately. The child, confused with these unwonted caresses, looked first at one and then at the other of his teachers, and then stammered out,

[278]

The severe heart of the duchess was fairly conquered, and making the little poet stand up before her, she then and there taught him to sing the antiphon, Maria et flumina, which she had herself translated out of Latin into Greek, and frequently afterwards had him at her castle and taught him how to make Greek verses. Moreover, she treated him with a tenderness that went nigh to spoiling, and gave him a Horace, and some other books which one wishes Ekkehard junior had named, and which were long preserved in the library. I will not pursue the story of Ruodman, which has been chiefly introduced for the sake of this graceful ending. He had great difficulty in making his peace with the abbot and the duchess, though he tried the mollifying gift to the former of a very handsome horse, which threw its rider the very first time he mounted it, so that in spite of all the skill displayed by Notker Piperis-granum, poor Abbot Burkhard went for some time after on crutches.

The school anecdotes of these times attest the familiar and paternal relations which existed between the scholars and their masters. The sports and enjoyments of the boys were amply provided for, and we find mention of running, wrestling, swimming, country walks, and fishing parties. Sometimes, as at Eton or Harrow, a visit from royalty procured an extra play-day, and on certain high festival days it is recorded that they were regaled with wine and a choicer fare at dinner. Hartmann, one of the learned disciples of Marcellus, retained such a liking for the school that even when he became abbot he spent half his time among the boys. And Solomon, the schoolfellow of Ratpert and Tutilo, who from abbot became Bishop of Constance, in like manner never forgot his old pupils, for he, too, had in his day held the ferule, being assistant to Iso in the external school. On one occasion, paying a visit to the abbey during the Christmas festival, on the day after Holy Innocents, before going away he peeped into the school, and finding the master absent walked into the midst of the boys to bid them all good-bye. They were about him in a minute; and the knowing ones among them lost no time in demanding their rights. There was a custom of long standing in the school that when any stranger[279] entered the schoolroom, he might be captured as a prisoner, and not released till he had ransomed himself by a gift or favour. Undismayed by the rank of their present visitor, they surrounded him with daring familiarity, and declared him their captive. Good-naturedly entering into their sport, he suffered them to do what they liked with him; whereupon they led him to the master’s chair, and made him understand that he should not come out thence till he had promised them something handsome. “Very well,” he said, “as you have put me in the master’s chair, I shall exercise the master’s authority; prepare all of you to be flogged.” This was turning the tables on them with a vengeance, but the boys were quick enough to find a way of escape. “Be it so,” they replied, “only we claim to be suffered to redeem ourselves as we do with our master.” “And pray, how is that?” said the bishop. “By making verses, to be sure,” they replied; and he agreeing to their terms, they proceeded to spout little metrical compositions of their own, improvised for the occasion, two of which are even yet preserved. Charmed with their readiness, the bishop rose and kissed them all, one after the other. “Yea, as I live,” he said, “I will surely ransom myself nobly.” And so he did; for, calling the masters, he commanded that from that day forward and for ever, the boys should every year have three whole play-days after the Feast of Holy Innocents, and that on each of these days they should have meat dishes for dinner from the abbot’s kitchen, which custom continued uninterruptedly till the troubles occasioned by the Hungarian invasions.

This Abbot Solomon was a learned as well as a kind-hearted man. He kept up a literary correspondence with two brother bishops, Dado, of Verdun, and Waldram, of Strasburg, and most of the letters that passed between them were in verse. He was, moreover, well skilled in the arts, and no one succeeded so well as he in designing the capitals for illuminated manuscripts; nay, even after he became bishop, he did not think this occupation unworthy his episcopal hand. He always kept up the same affectionate intercourse with St. Gall’s and its scholars, and loved to encourage their studies and amuse himself with their innocent freedoms. Nor was it only by ecclesiastics drawn from the ranks of the community that these marks of favour and interest were bestowed. All the great German sovereigns understood the value of St. Gall’s, and frequently visited it in person. Otho the Great was accustomed to say that he would willingly break his imperial crown into fragments to preserve regular[280] observance in that abbey. His sagacious mind discerned the vast benefits which must flow to his empire from the preservation in the midst of it of such a centre of civilisation. So very solicitous was he for the well-being of the monastery, that reports having reached him in 968 of a rumoured decay of discipline, he used his imperial authority after the fashion of Charlemagne, and appointed a commission of abbots and bishops to investigate the case. They gave a good report of the state of the monastery; but the emperor, not yet satisfied, dispatched Kebon, abbot of Lauresheim, and some others, to enforce the observance of the Rule to the very letter. The only irregularity which the commissioners could discover was, that the Sunday chant was in too high a key, and that the Friday fast was too rigorous. Otho did not fail to do justice to the monks, and paid them a visit in person to console them for the trouble he had given them by his royal commissioners. It is said that assisting with them in choir, he let his stick fall as if by accident, and was edified to see that not one head was turned to observe the cause of the disturbance.

Ekkehard relates another royal visit from King Conrad I., which took place in 912. The king being at Constance on Christmas-day, the bishop happened after dinner to speak of the processions which were celebrated at that season at St. Gall’s. “Why should we not go there to-morrow?” said the king; and his courtiers eagerly assenting, the next day very early they set out in boats across the lake, and so reached the abbey, where they spent three days. They specially admired the procession of the children; and to test their discipline, the king threw an apple among them, which none of them so much as looked at, whereat he greatly wondered. He dined with them in the refectory, and took pleasure in hearing the boys read in succession. As they came down from the desk, he sent some gold to be put into their mouths, which one of them spitting out again, Conrad declared he would make an excellent monk. His visit ended pleasantly to the children, for after causing himself to be enrolled as a conscript brother, he granted the scholars three extra play-days, and discharged the expenses of a great feast, furnishing the pepper, as he said, to season their beans. When Conrad II. and his empress paid a similar visit in 1033, they contrived to coax Abbot Dietbald to give them the German Psalter and the book of Job, which had been written out by Notker Labeo, a treasure worth more to the community than many such instalments of royal pepper.

[281]

I have lingered so long on the history of St. Gall’s as to leave little space for noticing the other monastic schools of the period. Most of those in Germany were remarkable for their cultivation of the arts, in which they far outstripped their Italian contemporaries. Godeschard, the successor of St. Bernward of Hildesheim, thoroughly shared his tastes, and carried on his designs. He even founded a school of painting in his episcopal palace which propagated the art through all the German dioceses. The subjects chosen were mostly scenes from the Old and New Testaments, being professedly intended for the instruction of the unlearned. Rio fixes the latter part of the tenth century as the date of the invention of glass painting, and the first fabrication of carpets and hangings. These new branches of industry were at once taken up by the monks, and at St. Florent de Saumur, in 985, a manufactory was established for weaving tapestries adorned with flowers and figures of animals. Sometimes the love of nature, so inherent in the monkish soul, induced them to decorate their cloisters with woodland scenes, in which the figures of men, dogs, horses, and deer, appear taking part in the chase. This was, of course, a departure from the principles on which the art of religious painting rested; and in the twelfth century these artistic caprices drew down severe reproofs from St. Bernard, who particularly disliked the representation of monsters, such as centaurs, and quadrupeds with a fish’s tail. He thought that they savoured of heathenism, and were unsuitable to the gravity of a religious house. Hugo, of St. Victor, objected even to the natural designs of sheep and oxen; “It may be well,” he said, “that monasteries should have paintings for the edification of those who are not delighted with Scriptural subtleties, but for monks themselves a horse or an ox is more useful in the fields than in a picture.” These landscape subjects were, however, exceptional; far more frequently the monastic paintings were of a character described in their annals as “solemn pictures.” They were pathetic representations of the Sacred Passion, accompanied with pious verses, not without a reference to the part of the convent where they were fixed. Thus, in the lavatory, the monks were bid not to wash their hands only, but their hearts also; in the refectory, to remember the gall and vinegar which Our Lord received on the Cross; and in the cloister, to think how the fashion of this world flees past us with noiseless step. The great abbey of St. Denis, in France, was covered all over with carvings and paintings, its very doors being sculptured with the mysteries of the Passion and Resurrection; while within the[282] cloister was a whole series of paintings, historical and mystical, some of the latter exceedingly quaint, such as that which represented St. Paul turning a mill, and all the prophets of the Old Testament bringing a sack of corn to be ground in it; figuring thereby his gift in the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Law.

One thing cannot be overlooked whilst studying the annals of these early monastic schools; it is the peculiar charm attaching to the character of the masters. Everywhere we see the same features of cheerful labour, and a certain tranquil activity. Turn to the newly converted land of Normandy, and hear how Oderic Vitalis describes the abbots and masters of his own monastery of St. Evroult. In one page he paints the good abbot Theodoric, a very skilful scribe, who managed to collect a fine library, partly by the diligent exercise of his own pen and the labours of his youths, and partly by “gentle solicitations.” Then there was Osbern, eloquent in speech, with a lively genius for sculpture, architecture, and painting. How we seem to behold him with “his stately stature, and his head, profusely covered with black hair sprinkled with grey!” He was always urging the novices to make progress in reading, singing, and writing; and loved with his own hands to make the writing implements and waxen tablets for the use of the boys. Or shall he tell us of that most promising scholar, William, who was placed in the abbey when nine years old, and was so diligent at his books, that the monks called him Gregory the Second? Not only did he make an excellent reader and chanter, and an exceedingly skilful copyist, but he was so devoted a student of the Scriptures, that he committed to his tenacious memory the Epistles of St. Paul, the Proverbs of Solomon, and many other books of either Testament.

Of another youth, who began his education at five, and who afterwards became schoolmaster, the same historian remarks, that his special gift lay in his powers of conversation. He had a knack of making everything interesting, and told the commonest things in a way that was quite delightful; and the monks were never weary of hearing him recite the narratives of Scripture, or the histories of learned men. It is not merely as men of learning that the character of these monastic students claims our admiration. It is the union of strength with tenderness, of scholarship with humility, which renders them so dear and venerable in our eyes. How seldom in these records are we disgusted with any of those traits of pedantry and self-seeking, the offsprings of a pride which had been pruned[283] away by the knife of religious discipline? The monks were not mere scholars, and the tendency to literary conceit was effectually corrected by the daily exercises of community life. In the best days of monasticism, labour was cultivated hand in hand with letters. The same man who at one hour was engaged in writing a commentary on the Scriptures, producing Christian imitations of Horace or Virgil, or elaborating some of the exquisite master-pieces of cloistral art, found himself at another, employed on the meanest and humblest offices for the service of his brethren. The finest glass-painter of one medieval convent had to leave his paintings to take their chance in the furnace, while he was sent on the quest; and the Pope’s messengers who brought a cardinal’s hat to another learned friar, found him busy in the kitchen. This was the invariable régime which existed wherever the monastic institute preserved its discipline uncorrupted. Thus Odericus says of Roger de Warrene, son of the famous earl of Surrey, that entering the abbey of St. Evroult at the age of forty-six, he never plumed himself on his noble birth or varied accomplishments, but chose rather base employments, “cleaning the shoes of the brethren, washing their stockings, and cheerfully doing other services which appear mean to stupid or conceited persons.” Yet he was a very skilful artist; and when he had finished with the shoes and stockings, he gave the rest of his time to the labours of the scriptorium, where he ornamented a book of the Gospels with gold, silver, and precious stones. And the historian knows not how to say enough of his pleasant and musical voice, his constant attendance in choir, and his courteous manner with the other monks, “always abstemious towards himself, always generous to others, always alive for vigils, and incredibly modest.”[138] What a fragrant sweetness hangs about such notices as these, coming as they do in the midst of records of bloodshed and violence! Truly, we may say of the monastic schools, that they were “as beds of flowers by the dens of lions encompassed!” Huns and Saracens raged around them, but these gentle scholars fled to the mountains and the wilderness, and building their nests amid the rocks, while the world was flooded by new forms of barbarism, they wrote, they studied, they taught, and they prayed, and perpetuated that beautiful character which even Michelet has owned to have been in all ages the appanage of monks; sweetness, goodness of heart, and innocence. It remained wholly unaffected by the stormy turbulence of the world around them. They[284] had a world of their own apart from and above it. All Europe might be in arms, whilst at St. Gall’s Tutilo was constructing his wonderful table, which showed all the courses of the stars, or Notker was composing those hymns and sequences which for centuries afterwards were to be incorporated into the Office of the Church. Whilst the barbarians were laying all things in ruins, they, heedless alike of fame or profit, were patiently laying the foundations of European civilisation. They were forming the languages of Schiller, of Bacon, and of Bossuet; they were creating arts which modern skill in vain endeavours to imitate; they were preserving the codices of ancient learning, and embalming the world, “lying in wickedness,” with the sweet odour of their manifold virtues. Surely, it was of such as these that the Wise Man spoke when he described that wisdom which God has given to His chosen ones. For they had received “the true knowledge of the things that are: the revolutions of the year, and the dispositions of the stars; the natures of living creatures, the reasonings of men, the diversities of plants, and the virtues of roots,”—and in them was “the spirit of understanding, holy, one, manifold, eloquent, active, undefiled, sweet, loving that which is good, beneficent, gentle, and kind.”[139]

But before closing our sketch of the tenth century, we have yet to speak of its greatest scholastic glory: one whose attainments have elicited not only the admiration of his contemporaries, but the respectful notice even of those writers least disposed to believe that anything good can come out of the Dark Ages. The scholars of whom we have hitherto spoken, if regarded as great men by their contemporaries, are spoken of by later critics with very general contempt. They do not even allow them to have been useful in their own poor way, as transcribers of volumes that they scarce knew how to read, for Mr. Berington considers that even as copyists, the monks were sadly idle. Two names, however, escape the otherwise universal oblivion to which such writers would willingly consign the scholars of the Dark Ages, they are Erigena Scotus and Gerbert. There is, I hope, no malice in supposing that the intellectual superiority of these men does not form their only claim to exemption from the obloquy so plentifully heaped on their fellow-students. The independent views of Erigena were well fitted to win him favour with all disciples of the Rationalistic school; whilst the supposed circumstance of Gerbert having acquired his knowledge of science[285] in an Arabic, and not in a Christian, academy, to say nothing of his having been at one time involved in a dispute with the Holy See, may have had some share in procuring him a larger meed of indulgence. To admit his merit did not entail the necessity of giving any credit to the Christian teachers, for if Gerbert ended his days on the chair of St. Peter, it is at least a comforting reflection to our historians, that he began life in the Moorish schools of Granada.

This consolation, alas! they enjoy no longer. Modern researches, which have upset so many time-honoured traditions, have proved beyond the possibility of dispute that Gerbert owed nothing either to Moors or Pagans, that his education was exclusively Christian, and that whatever be his value as a man of science, the Christian schools of the Iron century must bear the credit of it. It is hard to dissipate fables so romantic as those which represent the young scholar Gerbert enabled, through the favour of a fair Moorish damsel, to gain possession of her wizard father’s conjuring-book, the mystic Abacus—and return to Europe with the unholy treasure, which was to infuse a gleam of Saracenic light into the dull intellects of Christendom. But the recent discovery of an authentic memoir of this famous monk, whose name casts so broad a splendour over his age, written by his own disciple, Richer, of Rheims, has cleared away every obscurity which hitherto hung over his history.[140]

Few particulars of his early life are known, save that he was the son of poor parents, that he was a native of Aurillac in Auvergne, and entered the monastery of that town when still a youth, about the end of the ninth century. He had already commenced his studies in grammar, when Borrel, count of Barcelona, came to the monastery on pilgrimage. The abbot, hearing from him of the excellent schools which then flourished in Spain, begged him to take back with him some of their young monks, and Gerbert accordingly accompanied the count into Spain, and was placed under Hatto, then Bishop of Vich, in Catalonia, where he formed an intimate friendship with Warin, abbot of Cusan, one of the most learned men of his time. From this account, the authenticity of which is beyond question, it appears that the popular notion which represents Gerbert as acquiring his learning among the Arabs is incorrect, and all the romantic stories connected with his acquisition of the mysterious Abacus vanish into thin air. Doubtless, the Christian schools of Spain profited not a little from[286] their proximity to the Arabic universities, and the sciences of mathematics and astronomy were naturally those which were most successfully cultivated. Gerbert made extraordinary progress in both; and when he accompanied Borrel and Hatto on their next pilgrimage to Rome, Pope John XIII. was not long in discovering his talents. The liberty of the subject seems not to have been much understood in the tenth century, for when it became known that the young monk was an adept both in music and mathematics, neither of which sciences were then taught in Italy, the Pope lost no time in communicating the fact to the emperor Otho I., who conjured him not to permit his return to Spain. Gerbert was accordingly most affectionately kidnapped and sent without delay to Otho’s court, where being interrogated as to the extent of his knowledge, he replied that he was tolerably acquainted with mathematics, but was ignorant of logic, which science he greatly desired to study. It happened that at that time Gerard, archdeacon of Rheims, an excellent logician, had been sent as ambassador to Otho from Lothaire, king of France, and Gerbert at last won the emperor’s consent to his returning home with him, that he might teach mathematics and study logic in the schools of that city. Adalberon was then archbishop of Rheims, and he forthwith committed the studies of his cathedral school to the direction of the young professor. Richer gives a very precise account of the method he followed. He began with the “Dialectics of Aristotle,” going through and thoroughly explaining the propositions of each book. He particularly explained the Introduction of Porphyry; and passed on to the “Categories” and the “Topics” of the same author, as translated out of Greek into Latin by Cicero, and commented on in six books by the Consul Manlius. In the same way he lectured on the four books of Topical differences, two of Categorical syllogisms, one book of Divisions, and one of Definitions. And here the reader will not fail to observe that these logical lectures must have been the fruit of studies pursued not in Spain, but in France, for previous to Gerbert’s coming to Rheims, we have his own acknowledgment that he knew nothing of that science. After he had taken his scholars through this course, says Richer, he proceeded to initiate them into the art of rhetoric; and he set out on the principle, that in this branch of study a knowledge of the classical poets was essential. He therefore read and explained Virgil, Statius, and Terence; then the satirists, Juvenal, Persius, and Horace, and last of all, Lucan. After this, his pupils were exercised in disputation, which he taught with[287] such art, that the art was never apparent; a thing, observes his biographer, which is held to be the perfection of oratory. Then he popularised the science of music;[141] and as to arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, he made these difficult studies easy and delightful. Richer devotes several pages to the description of the various instruments which he constructed, and by which he contrived to render the science of astronomy, as it were, sensible to the eyes of his scholars. A round wooden ball, with its poles oblique to the horizon, figured the world, the various astronomical and geographical phenomena being represented by other circles. In fact, from the minute description of the writer, we are obliged to conclude that Gerbert exhibited at his lectures two very passable specimens of the terrestrial and celestial globes. But the great boon, which he is commonly represented as bestowing on the European schools, was the introduction of that wonderful table, “in which nine ciphers represented all the numbers, and produced in their infinite combinations all multiplications and divisions.” This was the mystic Abacus, the foundation, no doubt, of our present system of numeration. It consisted of a tablet, on which three columns were marked out, sometimes in fixed lines, sometimes in sand sprinkled over its surface; and in these columns figures were arranged in units, tens and hundreds. The method in use for working out calculations, even with the assistance of this decimal system, as explained by Gerbert in several treatises, was, however, extremely intricate, though it was probably a vast improvement on the clumsy contrivances which had been resorted to by former scholars. How far, however, the Abacus is to be regarded as a new invention, appears more than doubtful. Its history has been made the subject of interesting modern researches, and the result seems to be that the system of numeration used and explained by Gerbert, contained nothing in it which had been unknown to Boëthius.[142] Nevertheless, he certainly seems to have elucidated and[288] popularised the science of arithmetic, which from this epoch began to be more seriously studied.

It is not easy to convey any notion of the enthusiasm excited by Gerbert’s lectures, or the tide of scholars that flocked to him not only from every part of France, but from Germany, Italy, and the British Islands. Brucker is careful to repeat the old calumny, which represents the dull heads of his contemporaries as attributing his superior science to the effect of magic. “The knowledge of nature which Gerbert possessed,” he says, “so far surpassed that of his contemporaries, that they thought him possessed of magical powers; and Benno, a cardinal who owed him a grudge for his opposition to the See of Rome, invented a tale of his holding converse with the devil.” Alas for the accurate historian! this round assertion must go to keep company with that other from the same pen touching the trial of Polydore Vergil before the Inquisition. It was, doubtless, a temptation to represent the person who charged a man of genius with being a magician as one of the dull orthodox, moved to the malicious act by his zeal on behalf of the See of Rome, but the facts are exactly the contrary. Benno, the zealous cardinal who owed Gerbert a grudge for his opposition to the Pope, happened himself to be a schismatic and a partisan of the anti-pope; and instead of being a contemporary of Gerbert’s, he lived a century later, in the time of St. Gregory VII., and introduced this precious story in a writing, the express purpose of which was to defame the character of the Roman pontiffs.[143] In justice to Gerbert it must be added, that not only was he innocent of sorcery, but that he was altogether above all petty jealousy and self-seeking, and desired nothing so ardently as to communicate his discoveries to as many as wished to receive them. Not content with instructing his own scholars, he corresponded with the scholastics of Tours, Sens, Fleury, and Aurillac, and spared no pains or expense in the collection of his library. In this work he was generously assisted by his friends,[289] scattered over the length and breadth of Europe. It is in his “Epistles” that we catch a glimpse of that prodigious activity of mind which took cognisance of all subjects, and never rested till it had sounded all to the depth. In one letter, we find him begging the loan of a Cæsar from his archbishop, and offering in exchange eight volumes of Boëthius and some excellent geometrical figures. In another, he solicits the monks of Aurillac to furnish him with a Spanish treatise on the arts of multiplication and division, and directs them in the work of correcting a manuscript of Pliny. Then, again, we find him writing on the medical science, to which he and his disciples directed a good deal of attention, and in which they followed the Greek masters. In fact, it was the diversified character of his acquirements that made Gerbert the wonder of the world in the eyes of his contemporaries. He knew all things, they said, and all things equally well. If this were an exaggeration, it is certain that he possessed the rare power of being able to direct his attention to a very wide range of studies, though natural philosophy was certainly his special attraction.

Whilst still presiding over his school, Gerbert produced several treatises on astronomy, mathematics, and geometry; on the formation of the astrolabe, the quadrant, and the sphere, as well as on rhetoric and logic. The monk Ditmar tells us that when at Magdeburg with his old pupil, Otho III., he made a clock, regulating it according to the movement of the polar star, which he observed through a kind of tube. Another writer speaks of certain hydraulic organs which he constructed, in which the wind and necessary movements were introduced by means of boiling water: and these obscure notices seem to indicate that wheeled clocks, the telescope, and the power of steam, were known by Gerbert fully three centuries before what has been considered their earliest discovery by our own Roger Bacon. Gerbert did not teach at Rheims alone. Crossing the Alps, he passed through most of the towns of Northern Italy, then subject to his great patron, Otho I. In 970 he also visited Rome in company with the bishop Adalberon, and at Pavia met the emperor, together with the celebrated Saxon, Otheric, whom we have seen filling the office of scholasticus in the episcopal school of Magdeburg. Otheric had up to that time enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest scholar of his age, and perhaps regarded himself somewhat in the light of a literary dictator. In the course of the previous year he had felt no little uneasiness at the daily increasing renown of the[290] French professor, and had despatched one of his own Saxon pupils to Rheims to bring him an exact account of Gerbert’s method of dividing the sciences. The Saxon made an unsatisfactory report. It was Gerbert’s custom to represent physics and mathematics as equal and independent sciences. But Otheric’s disciple, whose head was none of the clearest, made him teach that physics were subordinate to mathematics, as the species to the genus. On this, Otheric decided that he knew nothing of philosophy, and proceeding to the court of the emperor, Otho I., he spoke to that effect before an assembly of learned men. Otho, who was himself passionately fond of these studies, was not satisfied, and resolved to sift the matter to the bottom. He therefore seized the occasion of Gerbert’s presence at Pavia to inaugurate a grand scientific tournament, and invited all the savants of his empire to witness the dispute between the first scholar of France and the first scholar of Germany. He himself presided at the conference, and opened it with a brief allocution of his own, in which he very clearly explained the question in dispute. Then Otheric began his attack, first in words, and then in writing. The conference lasted the whole day, and Gerbert, who cited the authorities of Plato, Porphyry, and Boëthius, was still speaking in reply when the emperor gave the signal for the conclusion of the debate. Gerbert’s fame never appeared more illustrious, and he returned to France loaded with magnificent presents.

His after career was full of troubles; but in 990 the influence of his imperial pupil, Otho III., obtained his election to the see of Ravenna, and nine years later to the Apostolic chair. It was a great day in the annals of learning when the philosopher Gerbert became Pope Sylvester II., and one which brought no small satisfaction to the hearts of his pupils. Half the prelates and princes of Europe gloried in having called him master, and most of them did him credit. Among them were our own St. Ethelwold; Fulbert of Chartres, the oracle of his own time; and Robert, king of France, the son of Hugh Capet, and the most religious and learned sovereign of the age. King Robert was well skilled in all the humane sciences; but the love of music, which he had imbibed from his master, amounted to a passion. Even after his accession to the throne, he devoted no small part of his time to composing anthems, and motetts, to the indignation of his queen, Constance, who asked him once, if he must compose, to compose something upon her. Robert sat down and produced the hymn O Constantia martyrum! and the[291] queen, who fortunately understood nothing of Latin, was quite satisfied, imagining that her own perfections formed the subject of the poem. He often assisted in the choir of St. Denis, dressed in his royal robes, singing with the monks and directing the chant. Robert is said by his biographer always to have had a book in his hand, and to have carried the Psalter in his bosom. He once visited Rome, and during the Pope’s mass laid on the altar, as his offering, a folded packet, which from its great size and weight the attendants concluded to be gold. On opening it, however, they found it to be only a fair copy of his antiphon, Cornelius Centurio. Admiring the writing and the musical notes, as well as the genius and piety of the author, the Pope desired that thenceforward this antiphon should always be sung on the festival of St. Peter, of whose Office it still continues to form a part.

Not less learned was Gerbert’s other royal pupil, Otho of Germany, surnamed “the Wonder of the World,” whose early death prevented his making as much use of his advantages of education as was confidently expected by all who knew the singular excellence to which he had attained. Besides these illustrious disciples, Gerbert had others of every rank and calling. The great St. Ethelwold is said by many writers to have studied under him for a time, and the rapid development in England and elsewhere of mathematical studies at this period must certainly be assigned to the impulse given them by the teaching of the master of Rheims. His genius was emphatically scientific, and this is the character which we find impressed on the learning of most of his followers. Thus Richer, the monk from whose history most of the above particulars have been taken, was more particularly skilled in the science of medicine. As an instance of the solicitude which monks of the tenth century displayed in the pursuit of knowledge, I may refer to the very curious account which he gives us of the perilous journey he once undertook, for the purpose of perusing a single book on his favourite science. “It was in the year 951,” says Richer, “when my mind, being much and deeply engaged in the study of literature, I had long entertained an ardent desire of having the opportunity of learning the logic of Hippocrates of Cos. One day I chanced to meet in the city of Rheims a horseman coming from Chartres. Asking him who he was, and wherefore he had come hither, he replied that he was a messenger from Heribrand, a clerk of Chartres, and that he wished to speak to one Richer, a monk of St. Rémi. As soon as I heard[292] my friend’s name, and the subject of his message, I told the stranger that I was the person he was in quest of; whereupon, having embraced one another, he gave me a letter, which I found was an invitation to come to Chartres and peruse the ‘Aphorisms.’ I was much rejoiced at this; wherefore, taking a servant with me, I determined on accompanying the horseman back to Chartres. The only assistance I received from my abbot was a loan of one of the draft horses. Without money, or even a change of clothes, and destitute of every necessary for the journey, I set out and reached Orbais, where I was not only delighted with the conversation of the abbot, but greatly assisted by his noble gifts, so that next day I was able to get on as far as Meaux. On entering the woods, however, with my two companions, we were involved in several disasters; for, deceived by its wild and broken openings, on coming to a place where two ways met, we took the wrong turning, and were led six leagues out of our road.

“By the time we passed Château Thierry my cart-horse, which had at first seemed a sort of Bucephalus, began to lag on the road as lazily as if he had been a donkey. The sun had been sinking for some time, and the rain was falling fast. At this moment the horse, worn out with fatigue, sank under the lad who was riding him, and the poor beast expired, as though struck by lightning. This happened when we were about six miles from the city of Meaux. My agitation and anxiety at this disaster may be well conceived; the boy, quite inexperienced in such emergencies, lay helpless on the road, by the side of the dead horse. There lay the luggage also, with no one to carry it; the rain was pouring down from a dark and cloudy sky, and the sun was just on the horizon. By God’s goodness a prudent thought, however, suggested itself to my mind. I left the boy on the road with the baggage, telling him what he ought to say if questioned by travellers, urging him not to yield to any inclination to sleep. Then, accompanied by the horseman from Chartres, I set out for Meaux. There was scarcely light to see the bridge; and on examining it, a new misfortune presented itself. It was so broken, and had such enormous holes in it, that even by day it could hardly have been crossed in safety. The Chartres horseman, however, here showed himself a ready man. After vainly searching for a boat, he returned to the bridge, and, with the help of God, succeeded in getting the horses over it. In some places he covered the huge holes with his shield, so as to support the feet of[293] the animals; in others he put the separated planks close together, and what with stooping, and what with holding himself erect, and now keeping the beasts together, and now separating from them, he contrived to get over in safety. It was a dreadful night, and all around was buried in darkness when I reached the church of St. Faro, where I was hospitably received by the monks, and refreshed with kind words and abundance of food. The horseman was at once sent back with other steeds, again passed the dangerous bridge, and proceeded to search for the poor boy, whom we had left on the road. It was the second watch of the night when he came up with him. He at once brought him to the city, but fearful of attempting a third time to cross the bridge they determined on passing the night in a poor cabin, and at break of day appeared at the gates of the monastery, half dead with hunger. Food was immediately given them, and corn and straw supplied to the horses.

“Leaving the dismounted boy with Abbot Augustin (of St. Faro), I hastened on to Chartres with the horseman, whence I sent back horses, who brought the lad back from Meaux. When he was come, and my mind was thus set at rest, I sat down at once to the earnest study of the ‘Aphorisms’ of Hippocrates, together with Master Heribrand, a man as much distinguished for his politeness as for his great learning. But as in these ‘Aphorisms’ I only learnt the premonitory symptoms of diseases, and as this knowledge did not satisfy me, I desired also to study another book showing the concordance between Hippocrates, Galen, and Suranus. This also I obtained from Heribrand, who was perfectly well skilled in the science to which he devoted his time. Indeed, there was nothing in medicine, pharmacy, botany, or surgery unknown to him.” Richer’s appreciation of his friend’s learning may possibly have been exaggerated; but who can fail to admire his perseverance in overcoming such difficulties as a journey then presented, with the simple view of increasing his stock of scientific knowledge by the perusal of one precious book?

Allusion has been made to the improvements introduced by Gerbert in the study of music. A little later a more important addition was made to the same science by Guy, a monk of Pomposa, commonly called Guy of Arezzo, from the city which gave him birth. He had been educated from the age of eight years in the monastery of Pomposa; and being well skilled in music, was[294] employed in teaching the ecclesiastical chant to the children brought up in the house. But the immense difficulties of his task induced him to consider whether some method of facilitating the notation of music might not be devised. As yet, the sounds of the musical scale were only represented by the first seven letters of the alphabet, or by notes, as was the custom in the abbeys of Corby and St. Gall, which showed indeed the relative length and value of each tone, but did not render their succession sensible to the eye. After seeking for a long time for some easy and precise system, Guy one day recognised in the chant to which the hymn of St. John Baptist was ordinarily sung, an ascending diatonic scale, in which the first syllable of each line occupied one note: Ut queant laxis—Resonare fibris—Mira gestorum—Famuli tuorum,—Solve polluti—Labii reatum,—Sancte Ioannes. He applied himself to teach this chant to his pupils, and to render them familiar with the diatonic succession of the syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. Next, he arranged the notes on lines and intervals, and thus produced the musical staff with its proper clefs. By means of these improvements he found himself able, in a few months, to teach a child as much as a man, under the ancient system, would have had difficulty in learning in the course of many years. However, such a storm of jealousy arose against him on the score of his discovery, that he found himself obliged to leave the monastery; and accordingly, in 1024, he travelled to Rome, where Pope John XIX. warmly received both him and his newly-invented gamut.

“The Pope,” he says, “having received me kindly, conversed with me for a long time, asking many questions, and turning over the leaves of my antiphonarium, seemed to think it a sort of prodigy. He conned its rules, and would not rise from his seat till he had tried to learn a verse which he had never yet heard sung, and to his great astonishment found himself able to do it.” Guy was not allowed to leave Rome till he had promised to return the next winter, and give a regular course of musical instructions to the Pope and his clergy. The sunshine of Papal favour soon dissipated the storm, but the humble religious was no way puffed up by his triumph. He only rejoiced at being able to spread the knowledge of a discovery which would be useful to others. “The designs of Providence,” he writes, “are obscure, and falsehood is sometimes suffered to oppress the truth; God so ordering it lest, puffed up with self-confidence, we should suffer loss. For then only is what we do[295] good and useful when we refer all we do to Him who made us. God inspiring me with the knowledge, I have made it known to as many as I could, to the end that if I, and those who have gone before me, have learnt the Cantus with extreme difficulty, those who come after me, doing so with greater facility, may pray for me and my fellow-labourers, that we may obtain eternal life and the remission of our sins.”

At the very time when Gerbert was astonishing the world by the marvels of his genius, a simple nun of Gandersheim had attained a degree of literary excellence, which is the more remarkable as it was exclusively acquired within the enclosure of her own convent. The foundation of this convent had taken place at the same time with that of New Corby, and its object had been specially to provide for the education of the Saxon ladies. Peculiar attention was therefore directed to maintaining its school in a due state of efficiency, and learned traditions were always kept up among the nuns. Having fallen into decay in the ninth century, it was restored by Count Lindolph, whose daughter, Hathmuda, became abbess in 856. Her life has been left, written by her brother Agius, or Egbert. Hathmuda was a great lover of letters. “From a child,” says her brother, “she cared nothing at all for fine clothes, head-dresses, ribbons, combs, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, handkerchiefs, girdles, and scents, the possession and wearing of which stirs up the ambition of so many women.” She preferred to pray and to study, and “the lessons to which others had to be forced by stripes she willingly applied herself to, giving herself up to them with indefatigable ardour.” When she became abbess she was most desirous to keep up those sacred studies for which the monastery had ever been so famous. “She insisted on the study of the Scriptures, and those who applied themselves to reading she greatly loved, but did not admit to equal familiarity such as herein showed themselves to be slothful.” Her cares were amply rewarded, and the school of Gandersheim produced a succession of excellent teachers, among whom was Hroswitha, the fourth abbess, who died in 906, and was the authoress of a treatise on logic, much esteemed among the learned of her own time.[144]

It is of a namesake of this fair logician that we are now about to speak, Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, as she is called. She was born in the year 940, and was brought up in the convent school,[296] where she studied Greek and Latin, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the other liberal arts. We are often told that expressions like these, however magnificent they look on paper, would dwindle into insignificance could we test their value by the real amount of learning which they represent. With regard to Hroswitha, however, the true nature of her erudition is not left to conjecture. She has left behind her writings which have attracted the favourable notice even of modern critics, who agree in declaring that the Latin poems of this obscure nun of the tenth century are marvels of classical taste and poetic genius. Besides a panegyric on the three Othos, she wrote eight poems on various religious subjects, some of them being taken from the life of our Lord, and some from the legends of the saints; and seven prose dramas in the style of Terence, being tales of holy women, and having for their subject the praise of chastity. While praising the delicacy of the sentiments and the correctness of the style, her critics observe that these dramas afford incidental evidence of her perfect familiarity with the sciences of music, astronomy, and dialectics, as then taught in the schools. In one of them she introduces a sort of apology for her own learning, which has a certain feminine grace about it, more charming than all her logic. It occurs in the drama of “Paphnutius,” where, after a philosophic discussion on the art of music, one of the disciples of the saint is made to ask him:

“Whence do you derive all this knowledge?” and he replies, “It is but a little drop that I have gathered from the ever-flowing sources of science; and now I desire to share it with you.”

Dis. “Thanks to your goodness; nevertheless that admonition of the apostle terrifies me: ‘God hath chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wise.’”

Paph. “Foolish and wise will alike be confounded before God, if they do what is evil.”

Dis. “That cannot be denied.”

Paph. “How, I pray you, can the arts and sciences be better employed than in the praise of Him who has created all things that we can know, and who furnishes us at once both with the matter and the instruments of our knowledge?”

Dis. “Certainly, that is the best way to use science.”

Paph. “It is; for the more we know of the admirable laws by which God regulates the weight, number, and proportion of all things, the more our hearts will burn with love of Him.”

[297]

Where shall we find more admirable teaching than this on the vexed question of the danger of intellectual pursuits? Dangerous only, as Hroswitha justly argues, when we cease to refer them to Him, who, as she so beautifully expresses it, “furnishes us at once with the matter and the instruments of our knowledge;” but good, holy, and greatly to be desired, when, by supplying us with a more perfect knowledge of Him, they fill our hearts with His love. That this was her own case, we may gather from the modest preface which heads her first collection of poems.

“Here,” she says, “is a little book, simple in style, though it has cost the writer no small trouble and application. I offer it to the criticism of those kind judges who are disposed rather to put an author right than to find fault with him. For I willingly acknowledge that it contains many errors as well against the rules of composition as those of prosody; but methinks one who frankly confesses her defects, merits to meet with a ready pardon and a friendly correction. If it be thought amiss that I have taken some of my subjects from books, considered by some to be apocryphal, I must explain that this is not the result of presumption but of ignorance, for when I began my work I was not aware that they were held as of doubtful authority. As soon as I learned that this was the case, I ceased to use them. For the rest I claim indulgence, in proportion as I feel a want of confidence in myself. Deprived of most resources of study, and still young, I have been forced to work in my rustic solitude far from the help of the learned. It has been alone and unaided that I have produced my little work, by dint of repeated compositions and corrections. The main substance I have gathered from the Holy Scriptures, which were taught me in this convent of Gandersheim, first by the wise and blessed mistress, Richardis, and the religious who succeeded her in her office: and then by the excellent Gerberga, of royal birth, under whose government I am now living. Younger than me in years, but older in knowledge, she deigned to form my mind by the reading of good authors, in which she had also been instructed by learned mistresses. Although the art of making verses is difficult, specially for a woman, I have ventured, trusting in the Divine aid, to treat the subjects of this book in heroic verse. My only object in this labour has been to prevent the feeble talent committed to my keeping from growing rusty. And I desired by the hammer of devotion to compel it to give forth some sweet sounds to the praise of God. Wherefore,[298] dear reader, if thou thinkest according to God, thou wilt know how to supply what is wanting in this book; and if thou findest anything good in it, refer it to God only, and attribute nothing to me but the faults; without, however, reproaching me for them too severely, but excusing them with that indulgence which a frank avowal deserves.”

Hroswitha’s humility had to stand the test of flattery from the literary world, and it stood it well. There are phrases scattered through her writings which evince how accurately she had gauged the shallowness of intellectual vanity, and how little hold it had upon her heart. “Often enough when curiosity is satisfied,” she writes, “we find nothing but sadness.” In the epistle prefixed to her prose dramas, she acknowledges the approbation which she has received from the learned with an unaffected simplicity. “I cannot sufficiently wonder,” she says, “that you who are so well versed in philosophy should judge the humble work of a simple woman worthy of your commendation. But when in your charity you congratulate me, it is the Dispenser of that grace which works in me that you praise, believing as you do that the little knowledge I possess is superior to the weakness of my sex. Hitherto, I have hardly ventured to show my rustic little productions to any one, but reassured by your opinion, I shall now feel more confidence in writing, if God give me the power. Yet I feel myself drawn by the two opposite sentiments of joy and fear. I rejoice from my heart to see God and His grace praised in me, but I fear lest men should think me greater than I am. I do not mean to deny that, aided by Divine grace, I have attained to a certain knowledge of the arts, for I am a creature capable of instruction as others are; but I confess that left to my own strength I should know nothing.”

These extracts require no comment. They prove something more than the solid nature of the studies pursued in the convent school of Gandersheim. How skilfully had the teachers of Hroswitha contrived, whilst directing her intellectual labours, to preserve her womanly modesty, her almost childish naïveté, and her deep religious humility! Better things were included in their scheme of education than a mere knowledge of the liberal arts; the wisdom “whose beginning is the desire of discipline,” and into which “no defiled thing cometh.” Under their training the genius of the young poetess was guarded by the cloak of humility from the cunning moth of pride; and whilst we are amazed at her learned attainments, her modesty and candour at the same time conquer our hearts.

[299]

And with this agreeable picture we will close our present chapter, trusting that the nun of Gandersheim may be allowed to have shed something of beauty and fragrance over the rugged annals of the Iron Age.[145]

With the close of the tenth century we may be said to have taken our last farewell of the Dark Ages. Already on the horizon we have seen the dawn of a period of greater intellectual light, which ere long is to usher in the blaze of a splendid era. And yet it must be owned, it is with something of regret that we take our leave of those remote centuries, and with the wish of the poet in our hearts that “their good darkness were our light.” The approaching sunrise puts out the quiet stars; and in the bustle of intellectual life into which we are about to enter, our heart misgives us lest something of the charm which has hitherto hung round the history of the Christian Schools may perchance be lost. Already a new element has appeared in our studies, more easily felt than described. The career of Gerbert, however brilliant, does not leave on the mind the same impression as that of Bede; we feel a predominance of the scholastic, over the religious character; and we think of him less as a monk than as a mathematician. This element will now be far more frequently met with, and what is worse, it will in many cases be found accompanied by the ugly shapes of pride, love of novelty, and self-interest, too often finding their final result in heresy and open unbelief. The design of these pages is not to paint a series of fancy pictures, but to study past ages so as to establish in our mind a true standard of Christian Scholarship; to distinguish the precious from the vile, the false lights of the intellect from those kindled at the altar fire; and it will therefore be necessary to put forth some of these unhappy examples in a broad and honest daylight, that we may better see what those principles are, the forgetfulness of which renders intellectual culture dangerous to faith.

Hitherto we have heard but little of the perils of the intellect.[301] Learning, in the eyes of the old monastics, was the twin sister of prayer. They would almost as soon have thought of apprehending danger in their Psalter as in their grammar, and indeed the end for which they used them both was substantially the same. Among the characters named in the foregoing pages, how few appear disfigured with the stains of vanity or self-interest! Scotus Erigena indeed, is a notable example of the self-sufficient rationalist, and Otheric of Magdeburg is said to have died of disappointment at not obtaining a bishopric; but such instances are rare exceptions; and though others doubtless existed, they do not appear on the surface of history, and give no character to the scholastic profession. As a class, the pedagogues of the Dark Ages were the most disinterested of men. Poverty was recognised, not as the accident of a student’s life, but as one of its most honourable features, and it was reckoned as something monstrous and disgraceful for a man to sell his learning for gold. This, of course, arose from the religious light in which learned pursuits were regarded; they were spiritual wares, the sale of which was held almost as simoniacal as the sale of a benefice. If instances occasionally occur of any such sordid practices, they are named by historians with a kind of horror; and Launoy quotes the reproof addressed by the abbot Baldric to a certain scholar of Angers, who had gone over to England to teach grammar for the sake of “cursed gold,” and whose sudden death was believed by his acquaintances to have been sent in just punishment of his sin. This tradition survived, in theory at least, for many centuries, and in 1362 the Professors of Paris University are found pleading their inability to pay the expenses of a lawsuit then pending, “it being their profession as scholars to have no wealth.” In Spain there was a proverb which described a scholar as rich in letters, and ragged in everything else, and Chaucer only produced the current type of a student when he represented his Clerk of Oxenford as “full hollow and threadbare.”

Now, however, a change passes over the picture; scholasticism is about to appear less as a vocation than as a profession, and a profession sought with the view of earning for him who embraces it, honour at least, and perhaps also the more solid advantages of worldly fortune and rich preferment. Some writers have supposed that the promotion of Gerbert to the Papal dignity was one cause of this change, leading others to hope that a brilliant scholastic career might chance to prove the high road to wealth and dignities.[302] Rohrbacher recognises in the rising spirit of the age distinct traces of an infernal agency. “Hitherto,” he says, “heresy had made no great progress in the West. But in the eleventh century the Spirit of Darkness, seeing its empire confirmed in the East by the great apostacy of Mahomet and the formal schism of the Greeks, seems to have transferred the war from the East to the West. From that epoch down to our own time, the great revolt against God and His Church has never ceased to appear in one form or another. Its two principal sources have been Pride and Luxury, the corruption of the intellect, and the corruption of the heart. Hence, in princes, the attempt to usurp authority over the Church: hence, among men of learning, the mania for innovation, together with that superficial vanity which urged Berengarius to his fall; which Luther and Calvin erected into a principle under the name of Reform, and to which Voltaire and Rousseau put the key-stone under the title of Philosophy.”[146] Fleury also supports this view, and speaking of the swarm of heresies that sprang up suddenly in the eleventh century, sees in the fact a fulfilment of the prophecy in the Apocalypse that Satan should be loosed after being bound for a thousand years. The whole of Christendom was possessed at the time with a vague foreboding that an era had opened big with melancholy change, and this presentiment of evil naturally enough took the shape among the vulgar, of the belief that the world was about to come to an end.

It is at this precise epoch that we first begin to meet with teachers who were neither monks nor clerics. Free from the restraints of cloisteral discipline, these new scholastics were professors of grammar and rhetoric, and they were nothing more. The saintly rule of a Benedict or a Columbanus had not moulded them to habits of humility and obedience; they taught, and they made profit by their teaching; and he who taught the most attractive novelty drew most pupils, and made his teaching answer the best. It was a question in which worldly lucre, rather than the interests of souls, was at stake, and to be successful it became necessary for the teacher to adapt himself to the tastes and humours of his audience. Hence arose a race of pedants who had nothing in common with the elder scholastics, and who bore a peculiar stamp of self-sufficiency and arrogance, which impresses them all with a sort of family likeness, and carries back one’s thoughts to the sophists of the pagan schools.

[303]

The first notice which we find of a scholastic who was neither monk nor canon, occurs about the year 1024, when Rodolphus Glaber, a monk of Cluny, mentions in his chronicle a certain Witgard, a grammarian by profession, who was so bewitched by the study of the Latin poets, that he fancied he beheld in a vision Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal, who thanked him for the affection he bore them, and promised him immortality. The poor man’s head was so turned with this idea, that he immediately began to teach that whatever was contained in the poets, was to be believed de fide, and strange to say, not a few were found to listen to him. He was cited before the archbishop of Ravenna, and put to silence, after creating a good deal of disturbance. I merely name him here as an indication of the new class of men into whose hands the work of teaching was beginning to fall; a far more important illustration of the subject is to be found in the history of Berengarius. Before speaking of him, however, something must be said of his master, Fulbert, the pupil of Gerbert, and the restorer of the cathedral school of Chartres. Though reckoned among French worthies, he seems to have been a Roman by birth, and received his early education in a very humble school. However, he afterwards studied under Gerbert, and under his direction the school of Chartres rose to such an eminence, that it rivalled that of Rheims, and Fulbert may be said to have become preceptor to almost every man of letters who distinguished himself in France during the eleventh century.

We gather from the catalogue of the Chartres library, that Fulbert had inherited no inconsiderable portion of his master Gerbert’s scientific tastes. We find in it treatises on the properties of the sphere and the globe, on the astrolabe, on the measurement of superficies, and on land measurement, together with a Greek and Arabic alphabet. Fulbert himself had the rare accomplishment of Hebrew learning, as may be seen by his “Treatise against the Jews.” His disciples went forth from his school to restore sacred studies all over France, and the honour of being a pupil of him whom they lovingly termed “Father Fulbert,” was claimed by a long list of excellent masters, every one of whom might be described in the terms with which Adelman has sketched the character of Rainald of Tours; as “ready with the tongue, fluent with the pen, and mighty in grammar.” “As to thee, Father Fulbert,” he exclaims, “when I attempt to speak of thee, my words fail, my[304] heart melts, my eyes break forth into weeping.”[147] Fulbert was, in fact, worthy of any praise that could be bestowed on him, and so thoroughly convinced of the sacredness of the office of teaching, that even after he became Bishop of Chartres in 1016, he continued to direct the studies of his episcopal school. He was regarded as the prelate of his time most thoroughly versed in ecclesiastical discipline, which he caused to be exactly practised. As a writer, he is best known by his letters, which display a wonderful delicacy of thought. He was knit in bonds of close friendship with St. Odilon of Cluny, to whom he confided his fears, lest he might not have been truly called to fill an office, the solemn responsibilities of which almost overwhelmed him. “Yet,” he adds, “remembering my own nothingness, and that without birth or fortune I have been raised to this chair like a beggar from the dunghill, I am forced to believe it is the will of God.”

A teacher of this temper was sure to have it at heart to impress on the souls of his disciples a love of humility. It was the favourite virtue of this truly great man, who was perfectly aware that the elevation of Gerbert to the pontifical dignity had given rise to a sentiment of ambition among men of letters, from which he boded evil. He was therefore earnest in warning his pupils to avoid novelties and to walk in the old footpaths; and his keen sagacious eye rested with uneasiness on one young face among the scholars who were accustomed to gather round him in his little garden and listen to his affectionate exhortations, as children hang on the words of a venerated parent. Berengarius, for it was he, had begun his studies in the school of St. Martin of Tours, whence he passed to Chartres, in company with his friend Adelman. He had a brilliant rather than a solid genius, a ready tongue which made the most of what he knew, but withal a certain affectation in speech and manner which betrayed a fund of secret vanity. Fulbert knew him well, and often spoke to him even with tears, conjuring him never to forsake the beaten track, but to hold fast to the traditions of the fathers. In 1028 the good bishop, then lying on his death-bed, called all his disciples around him to bid them farewell, but seeing Berengarius among the rest, he motioned for him to withdraw, for, he said, “I see a dragon by his side.”

His prognostics were too soon fulfilled. Berengarius returned to Tours, where his reputation for scholarship induced the canons to[305] commit their school to his management; and even after he was appointed archdeacon of Angers, he continued to lecture at Tours, earning the reputation of immense learning, eloquence, and skill in grammar and philosophy. All, however, were not equally pleased with the character of his teaching, and some hesitated not bluntly to avow their belief that the brilliant archdeacon was somewhat shallow, and that his philosophy verged on sophistry. He had a way of mystifying the simplest subjects by a display of learned words; affected new and startling definitions, and had some tricks for practising on the minds of his audience, which gave offence to many. He chose that his chair should be raised higher than the others, had a pompous way of walking, spoke in a slow and particularly plaintive tone of voice, and would sit with his head wrapped up in his mantle, like an ancient philosopher, absorbed, as it seemed, in some very profound meditation. In short, he was one of those who aim at what Bacon calls “being wise by signs;” did trifles in a solemn way, and so imposed on the simpler sort who thought him a prodigy; a sentiment in which, it is needless to say, he himself fully concurred.

Let us leave this pompous personage for a while to enjoy the admiration of his numerous disciples, whilst we cast our eyes on the schools of law which were just then springing up at Bologna, where a young student of Pavia, Lanfranc by name, was distinguishing himself by his skill as a writer and an advocate. On leaving Bologna, he is thought to have taught jurisprudence for some time in his native city, and then crossing the Alps, he came into France, bringing with him no other riches than his learned reputation. Arriving at Tours, his name reached the ears of Berengarius, who at once sought him out and challenged him to a public disputation. The end aimed at was evidently the glorification of the archdeacon, who counted on an easy victory over the young stranger, which might help to swell his reputation. Never were expectations more completely disappointed. Berengarius was worsted in his arguments, and obliged to retire with ruffled feathers; far from increasing his renown, he had suffered a severe defeat, and in the eyes of wounded vanity, defeat is the bitterest of mortifications. His followers were astonished to find their master was not infallible, and began to transfer their admiration to his successful rival. Lanfranc, meanwhile, proceeded to Avranches, where he opened a school which was soon thronged by deserters from that of Berengarius. It was a crisis in his life, for his character was one which was as likely as not to have yielded to the perils that[306] surrounded him. If free from the vanity which devoured his rival, his proud and impetuous temper was at that time quite as little under the restraint of religious principle; his devotion to science was perhaps more thoroughly the genuine enthusiasm of a scholar who loved learning for its own sake, rather than for the meed of human applause, but it was as yet wholly unsanctified by a higher and diviner intention. Nevertheless, there was a candour and uprightness of soul about him which the other did not possess, and when the call of grace sounded in his ear, he responded to it with noble generosity.

One day as he was journeying from Avranches to Rouen, he had to pass through a forest, where he was attacked by robbers, who having stripped him of all he possessed, tied him to a tree, wrapped his hood about his head so as to muffle his cries for help, and then abandoned him. Left thus during the entire night exposed to danger of death from the wolves, or the more lingering tortures of starvation, Lanfranc in his extremity bethought him of his prayers, but the learned advocate and philosopher found himself unable to call to his remembrance the simplest form of devotion. That one fact spoke volumes to his conscience; during the long hours of that terrible night he had time bitterly to mourn over the years lost in pursuits, the vanity of which he had never known till now; and ere morning dawned he solemnly vowed, if God should deliver him from his danger, to dedicate the remainder of his life to the task of reparation.

At break of day some passing travellers discovered and unbound him, and Lanfranc’s first request was to be led to the nearest monastery. There was by this time no want of religious houses in the duchy of Normandy. The century that had elapsed since the conversion of Duke Rollo, had witnessed a very general restoration of the monastic institute in that province, and many of the great abbeys, such as Jumièges, St. Wandrille, Fécamp, and Bernai, had risen from their ashes, with even greater splendour than they had exhibited before their destruction. But it was to none of these that the good Providence of God guided the steps of Lanfranc. In the year 1039 the little house of Bec had been founded by a pious Norman knight named Herluin, who himself became the first abbot. Nothing could be ruder or simpler than the commencements of this famous abbey. Herluin was poor and unlettered, he and his monks had to live hardly by the labour of their hands, their ordinary food was bread made with bran, and vegetables, with muddy water[307] brought from a well two miles off. At the very moment when Lanfranc presented himself, the abbot was superintending the construction of an oven, and was kneading the bread with somewhat dirty hands, for he had come fresh from the labour of the field. At another time the sight would have disgusted the refined and fastidious Lombard, but at that moment his heart felt an appetite for abasement, and he promptly offered himself, and was received as one of the little community.

He was subjected to a severe noviciate. For three years, it is said, he kept a rigorous silence, and was tested by every kind of humiliation. Once, when reading aloud in the refectory, the prior corrected his Latin accent, and desired him to pronounce the e in docere short. This was probably a hard trial to the humility of the Bolognese professor, who must have regarded his Norman companions as little better than barbarians; but Lanfranc complied without hesitation, judging, says his biographer, that an act of disobedience was a greater evil than a false quantity in Latin. After he had passed through his probation, the abbot, who had learnt to value both his learning and his sincere humility, finding him unfit for manual labour, desired him to begin to teach, and thus were founded the famous schools of Bec. Their renown soon eclipsed that of every other existing academy. “Before that time,” says Odericus, “in the reigns of six dukes of Normandy, scarce any Norman applied himself to regular studies, nor had any doctor arisen among them till, by the Providence of God, Lanfranc appeared in their province.” But now a new era was inaugurated. Priests and monks came to Bec in multitudes, in order to place themselves under a master who was pronounced the best Latinist, the best theologian, and the best dialectician of his time; there were never fewer than a hundred pupils; the Norman nobles, and even the Dukes themselves, sent their sons thither for education, and made enormous grants of land to the favoured abbey.

It is not to be supposed that the fame of this new academy was long in reaching the ears of Berengarius, whose chagrin at finding his own renown eclipsed by his former rival was hard to endure. Up to that time he had addicted himself exclusively to dialectics, and had given very little study to the Scriptures, a circumstance sufficiently illustrative of the wide chasm which separated the rising school of teachers from that which immediately preceded them. But now, to support his failing credit, Berengarius began to lecture[308] on a subject he had never studied, and to explain the Scriptures, not according to the traditions of the Fathers, but after the whims of his own imagination. His first errors were on questions connected with marriage and infant baptism, but it was not long before he broached his grand heresy, and attacked the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence in the Most Holy Eucharist, reviving all the arguments and sophistries of Scotus Erigena. The scandal spread from Tours through France and Germany. His old friend Adelman, at that time scholasticus of Liège, heard the news and wrote to him in moving terms, conjuring him to retract his fatal errors. “I have been wont to call you my foster brother,” he says, “calling to mind the happy days we passed together at the school of Chartres (though you were younger than I), under that venerable Socrates, Fulbert. Remember the conversation he used to hold with us in his garden near the chapel, how tenderly he used to speak to us, his voice sometimes choked with tears, conjuring us not to depart from the old paths, but to keep firm to the traditions of the Fathers. And now they tell me that you have separated from the unity of the Church, teaching that what we daily offer on the altar is not the true body and blood of Jesus Christ, but only a figure! God help you, my brother! let me implore you by the mercy of God, and the memory of the Blessed Fulbert, not thus to trouble the peace of our Holy Mother the Church, for whose faith so many millions of doctors and martyrs have constantly contended.”

Adelman’s entreaties produced no effect on him to whom they were addressed, and a controversy began in which Lanfranc took a distinguished part, assisting at the councils of Rheims, Rome and Vercelli. In all these Berengarius was successively condemned, and required to abjure his errors. But he obeyed with the lips only. As he continued to propagate his heresies in spite of repeated abjurations, Pope Victor II., in 1054, summoned two other Councils, at Florence and Tours, at the last of which Berengarius signed a solemn retractation with his own hand. But so soon as he left the presence of the assembled fathers, he set himself secretly to disseminate his former doctrines. At a second Council held at Tours, attended by 113 bishops, he again appeared, signed a profession of Catholic doctrine, and threw all his own writings into the fire, and the same farce was repeated at three other Councils, followed by the same result. It was not until 1079 that Lanfranc, then Archbishop of Canterbury, published his famous treatise “On the Body[309] of Our Lord,” and about the same time his scholar Guitmond, afterwards Bishop of Aversa, wrote an equally celebrated treatise, bearing the same title, in which he traces the errors of Berengarius to the fatal root of vanity. “Even when a youth at school,” he says, “according to the account of those who then knew him, he made little account of the teaching of his master, held as nothing the opinions of his companions, and despised the books on liberal arts. He could not himself attain to the profounder parts of philosophy, for he was not of a very penetrating mind, and therefore tried to gain a learned reputation by new and unheard-of verbal definitions.” There is something mournfully significant in this account, and the grievous termination of a career, the very dawn of which was marked by such prognostics, makes the character and history of Berengarius one which scholars of all ages would do well to set before them as a warning beacon. The writings of Lanfranc and Guitmond seem at last to have opened his eyes to the truth; at any rate from that time he kept silence, and is said to have spent the remaining eight years of his life in retirement and sincere penitence. William of Malmsbury says that his dying words betrayed his consciousness of the irreparable evils he had inflicted on the Church, and the terror with which he was filled at the thought of the souls whom he might have ruined. “This day will my Lord Jesus Christ appear to call me, either to glory, by His mercy, on my repentance, or, as I fear, on account of the loss of other souls, to my punishment.” Yet his followers were neither numerous nor of any weight or character. We find in the letter written by Gozechinus of Liège to a brother scholastic, that every one of the great masters of the time, such as those who presided over the schools of Rheims, Paris, Spires, and Bamberg joined heart and soul with Lanfranc in condemning his doctrines.[148] Malmsbury says he had in all but three hundred disciples, while on the other hand the united voice of Christendom, and especially of the monastic order, was raised against him, and never was any heresy more universally condemned.

Meanwhile the schools of Bec grew and prospered, and the convent was soon found too small to contain its scholars. There were gathered together students of all ranks and conditions, “profound sophists,” as Oderic Vitalis calls them, and a long list of ecclesiastics destined to become the shining lights of the Church. Among these were Ivo of Chartres, Fulk of Beauvais, Gundulph, afterwards bishop[310] of Rochester, Anselm de Bagio, afterwards Pope Alexander II., and a great number of the Anglo-Norman abbots. Alexander II., in after years, gave a memorable sign of the respect with which he regarded his old preceptor. When Lanfranc visited Rome as Archbishop of Canterbury, and was introduced into the presence of the Pontiff, the latter, contrary to the usual custom, rose, and advanced to meet him. “I show this mark of respect,” he said, turning to the surrounding prelates, “not to the archbishop, but to the man at whose feet I sat as a disciple in the schools of Bec.” Besides these there was Guitmond, already named, the courageous monk, who, entreated by the Conqueror to accept high ecclesiastical promotion in England, not only refused the offer, but accompanied his refusal with a letter of reproof which probably spoke plainer truths to William of Normandy than he had ever before had an opportunity of hearing. Oderic calls him devout and deeply learned, and in his book on the Sacrament of the Altar, the good monk recalls with affection the teaching he had received at Bec, which he styles “that great and famous school of literature.” But by far the greatest disciple of this school was a countryman of Lanfranc’s, destined to surpass him in renown both as a saint and a doctor. Anselm, a native of Aosta, in Lombardy, abandoning his native land, had after three years of study in Burgundy, established himself at Avranches, where he seems to have taught for some time in the school formerly directed by Lanfranc. But in 1059, being then but twenty-five years of age, he found his way to Bec, and soon distinguished himself as the first of all the noble crowd of scholars. For a while he continued there, studying and teaching by turns, but erelong the desire of religious perfection mastered that of intellectual progress. He resolved to take the monastic habit, but was unable to determine whether it should be at Cluny or at Bec. At Cluny indeed his vast acquirements would be of small profit; at Bec the superiority of Lanfranc would, he believed, almost equally eclipse him. But what of that? it was eclipse and nothingness that he was in search of, rather than fame and distinction. He opened his heart to his master, who, reluctant to decide a point in which his own feelings would naturally colour his advice, referred him to Maurillus, Archbishop of Rouen, and the result was that Anselm remained at Bec. His profession took place in 1060, and three years later Lanfranc, being appointed by Duke William abbot of his newly-founded monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, Anselm succeeded him in the[311] office of prior. Some of the monks murmured at this appointment, but he overcame their ill-will by the sweetness of his charity. One young monk, named Osbern, who had shown the greatest opposition to the new prior, became at last his favourite disciple, won over by the patient long-suffering of a master who showed him a mother’s tenderness, mingled with a father’s care. At first he gained his good-will by encouraging his talents, overlooking his childish sallies of temper, and granting him many favours; but when his confidence was secured he accustomed him to severer discipline, and showed his satisfaction at his pupil’s progress by requiring him to accept very humiliating penances. He trusted to have found in this youth one destined to achieve great things for God, but Osbern was carried off by a sudden sickness, and left none to replace him in the affections of the prior.

Anselm’s life at Bec was one of continual labour. Whilst directing the studies of his pupils he did not neglect his own. His deeply philosophic mind was one of those which is incapable of desisting from a course of reasoning on any subject which it has once grasped, till the final solution is reached. His genius possessed a certain metaphysical subtlety, which engaged him in speculative questions, to resolve which he gave up, not merely whole days, but whole nights also. His studies were accompanied with rigorous austerities, which were, however, very far from diminishing that sweetness of disposition which rendered him dear to God and man. To his other labours were added those entailed on him as librarian to the monastery. Lanfranc had commenced the formation of the library, and his work was carried on by his successor with unwearied zeal. The Bec library was afterwards enlarged by the donations of Philip of Harcourt, Bishop of Bayeux, and besides a rich collection of the Fathers and the Latin classics, contained the Institutes of Quinctilian and the Hortensius of Cicero, of which latter work no copy is now known to exist. The great destruction of books which had taken place during the barbaric invasions rendered them now both rare and costly. Superiors of the different religious houses were therefore glad to establish friendly relations one with another, and to make agreements by which each supplied what they possessed, and what was wanting to the others. “We are ready to give you a pledge of our affection,” writes Durandus, abbot of La Chaise Dieu, to St. Anselm, “and in return we will ask one of you. Choose what you will that we possess; as to us, our choice is the Epistles of St. Paul.”[312] Anselm was not content with collecting books; he spared no pains to correct them, and spent a good part of his nights in this employment. The multifarious duties which fell on him devoured so large a portion of his day that he could only supply the requisite time for his literary labours by defrauding himself of sleep; and he would have resigned his office in order more exclusively to give himself up to meditation and study had he not been withheld by the prohibition of Maurillus.

The subject which most frequently engaged his thoughts was the Being and Attributes of God. The first work which he wrote was his Monologion, in which he endeavoured to state the metaphysical arguments by which the existence of God might be proved even according to mere natural reason. The work was written at the request of some of the monks, but before publishing it he sent it to Lanfranc, desiring him to correct, and even to suppress, whatever he judged proper. After producing some other philosophical treatises, the thought occurred to him to try and discover whether it were possible, by following any single course of reasoning, to prove that which in his Monologion he had supported by a variety of arguments. The idea took possession of his mind: sometimes he thought he had found what he was seeking for, and then again it escaped him. So utterly was he absorbed by the subject that he lost sleep and appetite, and even his attention at the Divine Office became distracted. Dreading lest it should be some dark temptation, he tried to banish the whole matter from his mind, but it was in vain; the more he fled from his own thoughts the more constantly did they pursue him. At last one night every link in the chain being complete, he seized some waxen tablets and wrote the argument as it stood clear and distinct in his mind. A copy was made on parchment by his monks, and this new work formed his Proslogion, which, at the desire of the legate Hugh, Archbishop of Lyons, was published with his name attached. The argument of this celebrated book is thus analysed by M. Rémusat, in his life of the saint. “He who believes in God believes that there is Something so great that a greater cannot be conceived. Does such a nature really exist? The infidel who denies it nevertheless understands what is meant by the idea, and this idea exists in his understanding, if it exist nowhere else. The mere idea of an object does not necessarily imply the belief in its existence. A painter has an idea of a picture which he knows does not as yet exist. But this Something which is better and greater[313] than anything of which we can conceive cannot exist merely in our minds; for if it did exist only in our minds, we should be able to imagine it as existing in reality, that is to say, we should be able to conceive of it as being yet greater, a thing which according to our original supposition was not to be allowed as possible. Therefore, that which is so great that nothing can be greater must exist, not only in the mind, but in fact. Were the Being which is supposed to be above all that can be imagined, to be regarded as having no real existence, He would no longer be greater than we could conceive. To make Him so, He must have existence. The contradiction is evident. There is then really and truly a Being above Whom nothing can be conceived, and Who therefore cannot be thought of as though it were possible that He should not exist. And this Being, it is Thou, O my God! Et hoc es tu, Domine Deus noster!”[149] Many were found both in his own and later times who took alarm at reasoning so bold and original, but Anselm defended his arguments in an Apology, which established his fame as the greatest metaphysician who had appeared in the Latin Church since the days of St. Augustine.[150]

As we are here engaged rather with the history of schools than with that of literature, this passing glance at St. Anselm’s studies will suffice to indicate the new direction which the awakening intellect of Europe was about to follow. Hitherto ecclesiastical writers had for the most part been content to gather up and reproduce the traditionary wisdom of the Fathers; but now, when those traditions had become firmly established, a scientific superstructure was to be raised on that broad foundation, and the theology of the Church was to be built up into a compact and well-ordered system. This was the work of the scholastic theologians, of whom St. Anselm may be considered as the first.

It is pleasant to trace in the system of education followed by so profound a thinker, the same paternal sweetness which characterised the older monastic teachers. Intellectual depth is often enough deficient in tenderness, and it would scarcely have been matter of surprise had we found the metaphysical mind of Anselm incapable of adapting itself to the simplicity and waywardness of childhood. But the problems, which intellect alone is powerless to resolve, are[314] quickly unlocked by the key of charity. Anselm would have been no saint had not his heart been far larger than his intellect; and his heart it was that communicated to him those three graces which one of our own poets has so beautifully described as bearing up the little world of education—Love, Hope, and Patience.[151] One day he was visited by the abbot of a neighbouring monastery, who came to consult him on the proper manner of bringing up the children committed to his care. Those whom he had hitherto trained were, he said, most perverse and incorrigible. “We do our best to correct them,” he added; “we beat them from morning till night, but I own I can see no improvement.” “And how do they grow up?” inquired Anselm. “Just as dull and stupid as so many beasts,” was the reply. “A famous system of education truly,” observed the abbot of Bec, “which changes men into beasts. Now tell me, what would be the result, if, after having planted a tree in your garden you were to compress it so tightly that it should have no room to extend its branches? These poor children were given to you that you might help them to grow, and be fruitful in good thoughts; but if you allow them no liberty their minds will grow crooked. Finding no kindness on your part, they will give you no confidence, and never having been brought up to know the meaning of love and charity, they will see everything around them in a distorted aspect. You beat them, you tell me? But is a beautiful statue of gold or silver formed only by blows? The weak must be treated with gentleness, and won with love; you must invite a soul to virtue with cheerfulness, and charitably bear with its defects.” He then explained his own method of education, till at last the other cast himself at his feet, owning his imprudence, and promising in future to abandon his excessive severity.

The names of Lanfranc and St. Anselm have, of course, a special interest to English readers, although it is rather as abbots of Bec than as Archbishops of Canterbury that they find a place in these pages. The Norman Conquest, which placed Lanfranc on the[315] episcopal throne of St. Augustine, must, however, be regarded as an important era in the scholastic history of England, from the total revolution which it effected in the ecclesiastical administration of that country. Whatever may be thought of the manner in which the change was carried out, there can be little doubt that the substitution of an Anglo-Norman for an Anglo-Saxon hierarchy was on the whole beneficial to the cause both of religion and learning. Most of the ecclesiastics promoted by William were men of high character, and this was indeed one of the few consolatory thoughts which presented themselves to his mind when he lay upon his bed of death. His choice of Lanfranc for the primacy filled that prelate with dismay, nor was it until Cardinal Hubert laid on him the commands of the Apostolic See, that he could be induced to accept a charge so begirt with difficulty. His letter to his old pupil Pope Alexander II., shortly after his arrival in England, expresses the distress of his mind, at the hard heartedness, cupidity, and corruption which everywhere met his eye, and which, together with the barbarism, as he deemed it, of the inhabitants, and his total ignorance of their language, moved him to implore that he might resign the onerous dignity. As, however, this could not be permitted, he applied himself to the reform of the church of Canterbury, and the restoration in it of the monastic rule, which, since the martyrdom of St. Elphege, had fallen into utter decay. In spite of the pressing difficulties of the times, he contrived also to do something for the encouragement of letters, though far less than he would have effected under more favourable circumstances.

The schools of Peterborough and Evesham are likewise noticed as famous during the reign of the Confessor, who was himself a lover of learning, and, among his other laws, decreed that the person of a schoolmaster should be regarded as equally inviolable with that of a clerk. Winchcombe, always devoted to letters, whose scholars had been famous since the days of St. Kenelm, was still known as a place of study, and kept up its reputation so late as the fifteenth century. Old Ramsey, too, retained its celebrity, and scholars still wandered under the trees planted by St. Ethelwold, and kept up the arts which he had introduced into its scriptorium. In 1047 a certain monk of St. Edmundsbury became abbot there, whose skill in all gold and silver work was a sort of marvel. One of his monks, named Oswald, refused a bishopric on the simple ground that he could not tear himself from his books. “He chose rather,” says the chronicler, “to cherish the placid cultivation of letters in the[316] bosom of his mother, the church of Ramsey. We have still in our archives a certain versified book of his, bearing evidence of his multifarious knowledge and perspicacious wit.” Nor must we forget the holy Wulstan, the last of our Anglo-Saxon saints. He had been educated in the minster school of Peterborough by the monk Ervene, who coaxed him to learn his letters by choosing for his lesson-book a fine Psalter, illuminated by his own hands. After he became prior and scholasticus of Worcester, Wulstan devoted himself to study with such ardour as often to spend two or three days in reading without so much as breaking his fast. His long night-watches seriously injured his health, and in the morning he was often found in the church fast asleep, with his worn-out head resting on the book he had been studying.

It will be seen, therefore, that the love of letters was not quite extinct in the cloisters of Saxon England; and the coming of Lanfranc blew the embers into a flame. He set himself to restore a great number of cathedral and monastic schools that had fallen into decay, and during his leisure hours liked to hear some poor scholars hold disputations in his presence on learned subjects, rewarding them with liberal gifts.

But besides his encouragement of learned men, Lanfranc did good service to the cause of letters in other ways. He often interposed his kind offices to save the ancient English foundations from the vengeance of the Conqueror. Thus, having succeeded in averting the threatened destruction of St. Alban’s Abbey, which William had doomed in consequence of the brave resistance he had met with from its abbot, Frithric, Lanfranc conferred it on a relative and pupil of his own named Paulinus, who has fallen under the lash of Matthew Paris, but who nevertheless proved an excellent abbot. He introduced the “Constitutions,” published by Lanfranc for the government of the English Benedictines, reformed a host of irregularities, and, with the help of subsidies liberally granted by the archbishop, built several useful offices, and established the first scriptorium attached to the abbey.

I know not what my readers will say when they hear that the mill, the bakehouse, and the scriptorium erected by Paulinus were all built out of the tiles and stones of the ancient Verulam, collected by his Saxon predecessors Ealdred and Eadmer, who had made some very curious excavations among the ruins of the Roman city, and had laid open a palace with its baths and its atrium. Moreover,[317] they had dug up a number of books in good preservation, one of which was in a tongue unknown to all, and proved at last to be a British history of the “Acts of St. Alban.” The other books were in Latin, and, relating to heathen worship, were committed to the flames. This sounds barbarous to antiquarian ears, but there is worse to tell. Eadmer ordered that all the altars, urns, coins, and glass vessels discovered by the workmen should be destroyed. The day had not yet come when relics of paganism were deemed safe or fit objects for good Christians to collect in their museums, and the Vatican collection itself would probably have fared but badly in the hands of Alcuin or St. Boniface. However, the monks of St. Alban’s, though destroyers of the Verulam antiquities, were very active in setting up their scriptorium. Paulinus furnished it with twenty-eight “notable volumes,” and many others were presented by Lanfranc. There is, moreover, a distinct notice of the existence of the abbey school. Abbot Richard, who succeeded Paulinus (after the Red King had contrived to keep the abbacy vacant for five years), showed a great interest in the success of this school, and invited over from Maine a certain master named Geoffrey de Gorham, to take on him its direction. Gorham however, was rather dilatory, and by the time he arrived in England the office had been given to another. So he removed to Dunstable, and there read lectures for some time, and whilst so occupied, invented a miracle-play, said to be the first that is noticed in history, the subject being the martyrdom of St. Katherine. These sacred dramas were used as means of popular instruction, and often contained a fine vein of poetry. As time went on, and they fell out of the hands of the ecclesiastics into those of a class of writers and actors whose object it was to please, rather than to instruct the multitude, they became debased by the introduction of coarse jests and buffoonery, which abound in the specimens best known to English readers, but of which there is not the slightest trace in the earlier religious dramas. The dress and getting up of the pieces, in which there was a wonderful amount of ingenuity displayed, and even of stage trickery,[152] of course enhanced their success; and Gorham borrowed from the sacristan of St. Alban’s the choral copes of the abbey, to be used in the first representation of his play. Unfortunately, the very next night his house caught fire, and the borrowed copes, together with his own[318] books, were all destroyed. It was a great disaster; and in atonement for his carelessness he assumed the monastic habit at St. Alban’s; and this was the reason, says Matthew Paris, that when he became abbot he was so careful to provide the choir with new rich copes.

In the midst of his many cares and anxieties, Lanfranc found time to devote to literary toils. They were useful ones, well worthy of a monk and a bishop. He corrected the text of the entire Bible, and of several of the Fathers. He never forgot Bec, and sent several youths, and among others his own nephew and namesake, there for education; and much of his correspondence with St. Anselm turns on the progress of these young men in their studies. Anselm, on his part, frankly confesses that he gets very weary of continually teaching the younger boys their declensions; and lets us know that he required his pupils to compose often in Latin, and rather in prose than in verse; that he recommended them to read Virgil and the other classics, and to be diligent in copying manuscripts. At other times his letters, treating of literary subjects, and accompanying presents of precious books to the Canterbury scriptorium, introduce allusions to the health of his scholars, evincing that paternal tenderness which was so remarkable a feature in his character.

Anselm, who had been elected abbot of Bec on the death of Herluin, during his visits to England became personally known to the Conqueror, whose furious passions were restrained in presence of the gentle saint, who won both his love and his reverence. It was whilst at Canterbury, on a visit to his friend Lanfranc, that the abbot of Bec made his first acquaintance with his future biographer, the young Saxon Eadmer. This was the time when he so sweetly defended the memory of the Anglo-Saxon saints from the contempt with which Lanfranc was disposed to regard them; and possibly this circumstance may have had some share in securing him the confidence and affection of Eadmer, who then held the office of precentor in the cathedral of Canterbury.

Lanfranc died in 1089, having survived the great Conqueror nearly two years. The events which, four years later, placed St. Anselm on the archiepiscopal throne of Canterbury, and his heroic struggles against the usurpations of the temporal power in the reigns of William Rufus and Henry I., scarcely fall within our present subject, though they form not the least important chapter in our national Church history. But the succession to the primacy of[319] another great scholar was an event which made itself felt in the world of letters, and kindled extraordinary ardour for learned pursuits among the English clergy. This spirit was certainly encouraged by the Norman kings, who, ferocious tyrants as they were, all more or less exhibited a taste for letters. The Conqueror took special care of the education of his children. Henry Beauclerk was educated at Abingdon Abbey, under the care of Faricius, an Italian monk of Malmsbury. The proficiency of the young prince as displayed by his version of Æsop’s fables, is commonly said to have earned him his learned sobriquet; but Mr. Wright, in his “Biographia Britannica,” calls his authorship in question. Both his sisters, and his two queens, Matilda of Scotland and Adeliza of Louvaine, were patrons of letters. Some epistles from Matilda to St. Anselm are preserved, which display no mean degree of scholarship, if they were really the production of her own pen. The encouragement of these two princesses quickened the imagination of a host of versifiers, who began to neglect the composition of hexameters in limping Latin, and to substitute in their room songs and romances in Norman-French. The Anglo-Saxon tongue was, of course, never heard at court; and some writers, like William of Malmsbury, went so far as to omit the Saxon names of men and places, through an over-delicate fear of distressing refined organs by such barbarous sounds. A new literature meanwhile sprang up, bearing the impress of an age of knight-errantry. Alexander, Arthur, and Charlemagne found themselves transformed from historic personages into heroes of quaint and extravagant fictions, full of hippogrifs, dragons, and enchanted castles, where distressed damsels were held captive by wicked magicians, in order to be delivered by the prowess of doughty knights—a style of composition to which we give a name borrowed from the language used by the narrators, that, namely, of the Romance dialect of France. Among the accumulation of rubbish written in this dialect, which was about this time poured forth into the world, one book of a higher character appears, the production of Prior Guichard of Beaulieu. It is a sermon in verse on the vices of the age, and appears to have been written to be actually recited, for he begins by telling his hearers that he is going to talk to them, not in Latin, but in the vernacular, that every one may understand what he says. De la Rue, who notices this curious poem, observes that the mention of a sermon in verse need not cause surprise, as at that epoch it was a common thing for the Anglo-Norman[320] clergy to read to the people on Sundays and holy-days the lives of the saints in French verse. Nine such versified lives are still preserved, the production of Boson, nephew to Pope Alexander II. The mediæval preachers had sometimes recourse to strange expedients in order to rouse the slumbering attention of their hearers. Vincent of Beauvais tells us that in his time it was a common thing to lighten a dull subject by introducing one of Æsop’s fables, a practice which he does not absolutely condemn, but recommends to be used sparingly.

Besides the disciples reared in our native schools, a large number of English scholars were to be found, who mingled with the graver pursuits of learning something of that spirit of knight-errantry and wild adventure which characterised the times. Arabic Spain was just then regarded as the fountain-head of science. The Moorish sovereigns of Cordova had collected an immense library in their capital, and are reported to have had seventy others in different parts of their dominions. Thither, then, wandered many an English student, attracted rather than repelled by the tales of glamour associated with a Moslem land. One of these scholar adventurers was Athelhard of Bath, the greatest man of science who appeared in England before the time of Roger Bacon. In the reign of the Red King he had left his own country to study at Tours and Laon, in which latter place he opened a school. Thence he proceeded to Salerno, Greece, Asia Minor, and Spain, increasing his stock of learning, and returned at last, after a long absence, in the reign of Henry I. After this he opened a school in Normandy, where he taught the Arabic sciences, in spite of the prejudices which many felt against learning acquired from so suspicious a source. Among those who so objected was Athelhard’s own nephew; and in defence of his favourite studies the English master wrote a book, in which he reminds his nephew of an agreement formerly made between them, that one should gather all the learning taught by the Arabs, while the other should, in like manner, study the wisdom of the Franks. This book is written in the form of a colloquy, in which the nephew is made to appear as the champion of the old system of education, and the uncle of the new.

I do not know whether we should conclude that Athelhard gained very much from his Arabic masters; for if he studied at Cordova the causes of earthquakes, eclipses, and tides, we find from his Quæstiones that he had also devoted a considerable portion of his[321] time to investigating the reason why plants cannot be produced in fire, why the nose is made to hang over the mouth, why the human forehead is not furnished with horns, whether the stars are animals, whether on that hypothesis they have any appetite, with other equally singular and puerile questions. In spite of these eccentricities, however, Athelhard was a really learned man. He translated Euclid and other mathematical works out of the Arabic, and is styled by Vincent of Beauvais, “the Philosopher of England.” A few years later we find another Englishman, named Robert de Retines, studying at Evora in company with a certain Hermann of Dalmatia, who is called a most acute and erudite scholar. Robert had travelled in search of learning through France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, and Asia Minor, and finally made his way into Spain, where Peter of Cluny found the two friends studying astrology at Evora. Peter’s journey into Spain was undertaken with the view of obtaining more exact information as to the Mohammedan doctrines and writings, and he induced the two scholars to give up their unprofitable pursuits, and employ their knowledge of Arabic in translating the Koran. This they did in 1143. Robert afterwards became archdeacon of Pampeluna; he did not, however, entirely forsake his own country, but returning thither, wrote a translation of the Saxon Chronicle, which is preserved in the Bodleian library, and which is dedicated to Peter of Cluny. His friend Hermann, who is styled “a most acute and profound scholastic,” produced a translation of Ptolemy’s “Planisphere,” which he addressed to his old Spanish preceptor Theodoricus, and from the preface to this book we find that the school at which they studied was not Arabic, but Christian, a fact of some importance, as it is very generally stated that the Spanish academies resorted to at this time by European students were those of the Arabic masters, who are represented as alone possessing any knowledge of the mathematical sciences. It is clear however that now, as in the time of Gerbert, there existed Christian schools in Spain, no less efficient than those of the Moors, and that it was to these that many of the French and English scholars resorted for the purposes of study.

To the names of these learned Englishmen I must add that of Odericus Vitalis, the course of whose education is best given in his own words in that short summary of his life with which he concludes his history. “I was baptized,” he says, “at Attingham, a village in England, which stands on the bank of the great river Severn.[322] There, by the ministry of Odericus the priest, Thou didst regenerate me with water and the Holy Ghost. When I was five years old I was sent to school at Shrewsbury, and offered Thee my services in the lowest order of the clergy in the Church of SS. Peter and Paul. While there, Siward, a priest of great eminence, instructed me for five years in the letters of Carmenta Nicostrata,[153] and taught me psalms and hymns, with other necessary learning. I was ten years old when I crossed the British sea, and arrived in Normandy, an exile, unknown to all, and knowing no one. But supported by Thy goodness, I found the utmost kindness and attention from these foreigners. I was professed a monk in the monastery of St. Evroult, by the venerable abbot Mainier, in the eleventh year of my age, and he gave me the name of Vitalis, in place of that which I received in England, and which seemed barbarous to the ears of the Normans. In this monastery, through Thy goodness, I have lived fifty-six years, loved and honoured by my brethren far more than I have deserved. Bearing the heat and burden of the day in a strange land, I have laboured among Thy servants, and as Thou art faithful, I fear not but I shall receive the penny which Thou hast promised.”

He elsewhere tells us that his master in this abbey was John of Rheims, a disciple of the famous school of that city, who was an author of no mean fame, and composed a great number of works both in prose and verse. It does not appear that he ever studied in any other academy, but whatever learning he afterwards attained must have been acquired within the walls of his own monastery, and he could scarcely have found his way to a better school. In the eleventh century there was no branch of learning which was not cultivated among the monks of St. Evroult; music, medicine, poetry, painting, and the mechanical arts, all found there able professors. The history of Odericus leaves us in no doubt as to the extent of his literary attainments. He quotes most of the ancient classical writers, and many of the Fathers of the Church, and the intelligence of his mind is displayed by the way in which he collected the materials of his work. Nothing escaped his notice, and from the[323] lips of some wandering Crusader or passing pilgrim he gathered up the tales and episodes with which he enlivened his pages, giving them in many parts the lively colouring of a romance. One day a monk of Winchester who stopped at the abbey for a few hours chanced to show him a life of St. William, copies of which were then rare in Normandy. Odericus, in raptures at the sight of the treasure, longed to copy it, but the traveller was in haste, and the fingers of Odericus were benumbed with cold, for it was the depth of winter. However, the opportunity was not to be lost, and seizing his tablets he with great difficulty took such notes from the manuscript as enabled him afterwards, at his leisure, to compose a life of the founder of St. Gellone. His “Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy,” which occupied twenty years in its compilation, is the only work he has left to posterity.

Thus much may suffice as to the state of letters in England and Normandy in the time of Lanfranc and Anselm; the scholars who arose after them were not unworthy to be the disciples of a school founded by these two illustrious archbishops; and it will be seen that the University of Paris, which was soon to efface by the splendour of its fame that of every other lesser academy, owed its renown in no small degree to the learning of its English professors.

We are sometimes disposed to think and speak of the Middle Ages, as though by that term was to be understood a period including several centuries, during the whole of which society was governed by the same laws, and made but little progress. In point of fact, however, men seldom lived faster, if such an expression be admissible, than during the five centuries to which the term mediæval is most strictly applied. There was then, as now, a continual expansion and development going on, and then, as now, the development was partly good, and partly evil. During the hundred years that elapsed from the accession of Hugh Capet in 996, to the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, Christendom assumed an entirely new aspect. The institutions of feudalism and chivalry were becoming firmly established; the barbaric invasions had ceased, and the Crusades directed the arms of the Christians against a common enemy, and so put an end to the civil wars which had raged under the Carlovingian dynasty. If these changes cannot be said to have ushered in a period of absolute peace, they at least tended to consolidate civil government; and the comparative state of security and order which ensued, naturally encouraged greater intellectual activity. On the other hand, the Saxon emperors of Germany had been replaced by the house of Franconia, and that grievous contest had begun between the temporal and spiritual powers which, for centuries, formed the great political question of Europe; while the convulsions of the last century had let loose on the Church a flood of corruption which probably makes this period one of the saddest in her history.

The chronicles of a semi-barbarous age, however, possess one charm which does not attach in an equal degree to those of more[325] civilised periods. Full as they are of crimes and scandals, they depict a state of society more keenly susceptible than our own to the influence of master-minds. Hence they are often enough the records of heroes, whereas our tamer annals deal less in the acts and words of great men, than in changes of ministry. The eleventh century groaned under the threefold scourge of simony, sensuality, and temporal usurpation. It had the peculiar infelicity of being an age of transition, when the children of the Church were growing weary of submitting to the canonical discipline of ancient times, whilst nothing had yet been established as its substitute. It was, therefore, a time of wild license and feeble restraint. Three men, however, arose to rule and reform their age. The first was of royal blood, a descendant of Charlemagne and Witikind, whom we first find studying at Toul about the year 1018, along with other princely and ducal cousins, for Toul was always celebrated for its noble students. Bruno of Dachsburg was the handsomest man of his time, the idol of his family, graceful, eloquent, and learned, and a skilled musician. The world was already predicting his success at the court of his imperial cousin Conrad, when a trifling accident changed his whole career. One day, the young student, after a hard morning’s work, threw himself on the grass at his father’s castle in Alsace, and fell asleep. An insect stung his face, and the result was a malignant fever which brought him to the gates of death. He rose from his sick bed to renounce all that the world had to offer, and to embrace the monastic state. In 1026 he became Bishop of Toul, and for two-and-twenty years devoted his energies to the reformation of manners and the revival of discipline. At the end of that time he was elected Pope, and, as St. Leo IX., struggled for five years more against simony, the Berengarian heresy, and the Greek schism. But, in the midst of his other labours, he did not neglect letters and the arts. He caused good studies to flourish at Rome, reformed her school of chant, and employed as his legates learned men, such as his old schoolfellow, Cardinal Humbert, who had acquired at Toul that Greek erudition which he used so ably against the Photians.

On the day when Pope Leo entered Rome barefoot to take possession of the Apostolic throne, he was accompanied by a Cluniac monk, whom he had met on his journey into Italy, and well-nigh compelled to join his train. Rome was no new scene to the monk Hildebrand; it was there, in St. Mary’s Abbey on the Aventine[326] Mount,[154] that the poor carpenter’s son had received his education. But he returned thither now to fill a very different station, for Leo created him cardinal, and abbot of St. Paul’s; and from that time up to the day of his death, thirty-six years later, the life of Hildebrand forms the history of his times. The name of him whom the Church reveres as St. Gregory VII. must suffice in this place, there remains to be noticed a third Christian hero, a friend of both those illustrious pontiffs, who struggled with them in the same cause, and against the same enemies. Born at Ravenna towards the close of the tenth century, the youngest of a large family, who only saw in him another to divide their slender inheritance, Peter Damian was all but abandoned in his infancy, and on the death of his parents was maintained by a brother, who treated him as a slave, and employed him to keep swine. The poor farm-drudge grew up without friends and without education; but the soul that was within him had instincts and aspirations which no ill-usage could stifle. One day he chanced to find a piece of money lying on the ground; it was the first time his hands had ever touched silver, and for a moment the thoughts which might occur to other boys flashed through his brain. He would purchase food, or clothes, or give himself an hour’s brief enjoyment. But then came another thought: “When the food is eaten, and the enjoyment past, what will remain to me of my money? Better give it to the parish priest and have a mass said for my father’s soul.” The second thought was followed; and soon afterwards his elder brother Damian, the arch-priest of Ravenna, took pity on the boy, and sent him to school, first at Faenza, and then at Parma, which at that time possessed excellent masters. Peter, who in gratitude assumed his brother’s name in addition to his own, became not only a good scholar, but in time a professor, and his singular capacity in this office obtained him both scholars and wealth, for, as we have seen in the last chapter, the profession of scholasticus was beginning to be one of profit. But he had never forgotten his early experience, and the money that flowed in went to feed the poor, whilst he himself persevered in the practice of rigid poverty. One day he made the acquaintance of two poor hermits belonging to a community that had established itself at a spot called Fonte-Avellano, at the foot of the Umbrian Apennines. His biographer calls it a desert, but it was a desert only in the Italian sense of he word, a solitary valley, that is, shut in between mountains clothed with evergreen oaks, and chest[327] nuts, and the silvery olive, its thickets bright with the blossoms of the Judas-tree and the oleander, and its grass, with the starry cyclamen. To this desert, then, Peter’s new friends conducted him, on a visit to their hermitage, which had been founded a few years previously by the Blessed Ludolf. He found there a community who took the same view of human life as himself. They regarded man as a being made up of two noble and immortal parts, that were to be served and cherished—the soul and the intellect; and of one base and perishable part, that was good only to be mortified—the body. Simple men as they were, they had conceived the idea of doing penance for the huge evil world that lay outside their wilderness. So they lived four days a week on bread and water, allowing themselves on the other three the indulgence of herbs, afflicted their flesh in many ways, and divided their time between psalmody and study. Peter embraced this life with hearty earnestness, and outstripped his companions alike in his austerities and in his application to sacred learning. But his light could not be hid; abbots entreated that he might be sent to instruct their religious; his own brethren elected him their superior; seven successive popes employed him in the service of the Church; and, in 1057, Stephen IX. created him cardinal bishop of Ostia. His life was spent in struggles to stem the corruption of his age and to reform the clergy. Fleury observes that we must not look in his writings for acuteness of reasoning; but he had to do with men sunk in rude gross vices, which were hardly to be remedied by metaphysics. The medicine which St. Peter Damian prescribed for the sick world was penance; and he preached it in a plain homely sort of way, which might possibly offend fastidious tastes, but which had this merit about it, that it was practical, and had results. He entered the profaned sanctuary, scourge in hand, to drive out the unclean animals, and to overthrow the tables of the money-changers. In the intervals between his incessant legations to reform churches and rebuke princes, he retired to his cell at Fonte-Avellano, and might be found there living on pulse and water, employed in making wooden spoons, or other coarse manual labour, and submitting, even to his eightieth year, to the same rule of life as the youngest novice. Yet this was the most elegant scholar of his time; nay, more, he was a poet. And we do not use the term as classing him among the crowd of versifiers who wrote their chronicles, and even their theological treatises in lines which, often enough as Hallam remarks, can only be rendered into hexameters “by careful[328] nursing.” He imitated neither Virgil nor Horace, but wrote in those rhymed trochaics which many classical purists would brand as barbarisms. Yet where shall we see richness of imagery wedded to greater harmony of numbers than in those wonderful stanzas, De Paradisi Gloriâ, wherein Paradise is depicted under the form of all that is fairest and brightest to the poet’s eye? The sparkling of precious gems, the blossoming of early flowers, the glory of the autumn cornfields, and the long shining of a summer’s day, lit by a sun that knows no setting, are painted in words that sound like the echoes of a harpsichord. And from these sensible images of earthly beauty he rises to that which is above sense, and sets before us the ineffable joys of those who see the Divine Beauty face to face, and are filled from the fountains of Eternal charity. The joys of heaven formed, in fact, the constant subject of his meditation, and in one of his prose treatises, speaking on this exhaustless theme, he gives utterance to the sentiment felt by every poet, of the insufficiency of words to express the emotions of the heart. “There is always more in the thing itself than the mind conceives, and more in what the mind conceives than the tongue can utter.”

The reform of manners so vigorously set on foot by these saints and their many disciples was friendly to the growth of letters. Parma attained such celebrity as to be called Chrysopolis, or the golden city, in the days of the great Countess Matilda, who was herself, says Donizzo, her chaplain, more learned than many bishops, and was never without an abundance of books. At her instance Irnerius, the Lucerna Juris, as he was called, began to lecture at Bologna on Roman law about the year 1128. The cathedral schools were everywhere revived by St. Gregory VII., who required the bishops to found seminaries where such did not already exist, where boys should be educated for the priesthood free of cost, certain prebends being set apart for the support of the masters. This injunction was very generally obeyed, and many ancient schools were revived which had fallen into decay. Landulph tells us that at Milan, where things had been in a very bad state, but where the mingled zeal and gentleness of St. Peter Damian, and of St. Ariald, had effected a reform,[155] the schools of philosophy were held in the porch of the cathedral, where the clerics attended, the archbishop presiding in person. In fact, the Italians who, in the tenth century, are represented as having none to teach them the first rudimentary elements, had somehow[329] contrived in the eleventh to possess themselves of academies which they considered the first in the whole world.

A document given by Mabillon illustrates in an amusing manner the jealousy existing at this time between the schools of Italy and France. A certain prior of Chiusi, named Benedict, coming to the abbey of St. Martial at Limoges, was imprudent enough to call in question the commonly-received opinion that St. Martial was an immediate disciple of our Lord. Of course a storm arose, its fury bursting over the head of the luckless and too enlightened critic. The quarrel was taken up by all the monasteries of southern Gaul; and Ademar, a monk of Angoulême, thought it his duty to address a circular to the French monasteries, warning them not to listen to the horrible scandals promulgated by Benedict, whose conceit, he says, was at the bottom of the whole affair. He attempts to pillory his antagonist, by putting in his mouth a ridiculous speech. “I am the nephew,” he is made to say, “of the abbot of Chiusi. He has taken me to many cities of France and Lombardy to study grammar, and my various masters have cost him the round sum of 2000 soldi. I studied grammar nine years, and am studying it still. I am a most learned man. I have two great boxes full of books, and I have not yet read one-half of them. In fact there is not a book in all the world that I have not got. When I leave the schools there will not be such a doctor as myself under heaven.... I am prior of Chiusi, and know how to write sermons.... I am so wise I could arrange and manage an entire council. In Aquitaine there is no learning of any kind, every one there is a dunce; if a man knows a sprinkling of grammar, he is thought at once to be a second Virgil. In France (that is, the province, not the kingdom of France), there is a little more erudition, but not much. The real seat of wisdom is in Lombardy, where I have carried on my studies.” In spite of the sarcastic exaggeration running through this passage, we may gather from it that Benedict had probably assumed a tone of superiority over his Gallican neighbours, and that studies must have greatly revived in Lombardy since the days of the Othos, to furnish the text for a jeu d’esprit of this description.

An age of such increased intellectual activity could hardly fail to be attended with many changes, bad as well as good. We have seen in the last chapter that the new class of teachers who were now springing up taught for gain or reputation, rather than with an eye to the higher ends of education, and that thus learning in their hands[330] lost much of its Christian dress. The intellectual curiosity of students induced many to seek for knowledge in distant lands, with the same perseverance and spirit of enterprise which young knights displayed in quest of military adventure. We can hardly in our day appreciate the difficulties which had to be overcome by men like Athelhard and Robert of Retines, whose student life was the very romance of scholarship. If the stock of knowledge thus collected, surpassed in breadth and variety that which could have been gained in any single monastic school, it is evident, on the other hand, that the education of these itinerant scholars must have been sadly deficient both in mental and moral discipline, failings which were abundantly evident in the character of the new scholastics. They had picked up, it may be, a knowledge of medicine at Salerno, and of mathematics at Cordova, but the claustral rule, the strict subjection to authority, the holy atmosphere or devotion and obedience, had not entered into their intellectual life. They had gained their learning from the lips of professors, in order to become professors in their turn; but a wandering life through half the cities of Europe was but a poor exchange for the claustral discipline; and not a few were found to embrace this kind of life for the very sake of its greater license and freedom from restraint.

But though this new element was making itself perceptibly felt in the learned world, it must not be supposed that in the eleventh century the old system of education was at all superseded for the cathedral and monastic schools still continued the chief seats of learning. They even witnessed a sort of classical renaissance, which sprung up under the encouragement of a crowd of masters who directed the labours of their scholars to the imitation of ancient models, without, however, in any way abandoning the line of Christian studies traced out by Alcuin and his disciples. At Mans, the office of scholasticus was held by the Blessed Hildebert a pupil of Berengarius, and a poet and philosopher, who afterwards became bishop of the same see, and had the distinguished honour of being imprisoned by the Red King, for refusing, at his bidding, to pull down the towers of his cathedral. At Autun, the cathedral schools were directed for twenty years by Honorius, who in his treatise De Exilio Animæ, reprinted in the Thesaurus Anecdotorum of Pez, has described the course of studies followed by his pupils. To the ordinary branches of the trivium and quadrivium, he added instructions in physical science, and gave a distinct course of Holy Scripture.[331] His lectures on rhetoric included the explanation of the best Latin classics, and the same was done in most monastic schools of the period. The notices become more frequent of scholars learned in Greek and Hebrew, and the fact of their being named as engaged in the correction of manuscripts in those languages, compels us to believe that their learning was something more real and solid than that which has been before noticed as rather foolishly displayed on the pages of certain writers of the preceding centuries. Thus, Sigebert of Gemblours, and Marbœuf of Angers, are both spoken of as Greek and Hebrew scholars. Sigebert is said by his biographer to have been learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, which he used in his controversies with the Jews. He was also a good Latin classic, and much addicted to the composition of verses in imitation of his favourite author Horace. He gave lectures on poetry and logic in Paris, but his vanity was not proof against temptation, and led him to take part with Henry IV. against the Holy See. He is the author of a chronicle and other historical works, which he made the vehicle for conveying grave calumnies against the Roman pontiffs. Dante to whom his character as a Ghibelline partisan was itself a recommendation, has placed him in Paradise and notices him as lecturing on logic in the streets of Paris, to students seated, after the custom of the time, on bundles of straw.[156]

It is difficult to determine how much the scholars of this period were really in advance of their predecessors. Hallam, who is generally so sparing of his praise when speaking of any period earlier than that of the Cinque Cento, admits that at the close of the eleventh century a good, and even elegant school of Latin writers was springing up; and notices the Latin vocabulary of Papias as evincing an amount of profane learning far superior to anything that had hitherto been known. Du Cange, however, shows that Papias drew his materials from a dictionary which had been compiled in the Dark Ages, namely, that published in the tenth century, by Solomon, abbot of St. Gall’s. Still, it may be concluded that classical studies were more universally followed than they had hitherto been, and at the same time extraordinary activity was displayed in the multiplication of books and the collection of libraries. Useful results sometimes flow from human infirmities, and there is said [332]to have mingled with the honest love of learning which encouraged this activity, a certain spirit of rivalry and emulation among the different monasteries and religious orders. The Black Monks did not like to be cut out by the new Cistercians; and Bec, as a matter of course, was not going to yield to Cluny. Mabillon says that it was the peculiar pride of the Benedictine abbots of this time, to collect large libraries, and to have their manuscripts handsomely written and adorned. Never, therefore, was there a busier time in the scriptorium; a finer character of writing, and a more convenient system of abbreviation was introduced, and many abbots are mentioned as remarkable for their skill as miniaturists. It is said, however, I know not with what truth, that the copyists, if they got through a greater amount of work, were often less accurate than their brethren of the eighth and ninth centuries, and that in this, as in other things, the proverb held good of “more haste and worse speed.” Hallam, whilst complaining of the multiplication of blunders, does full justice to the prodigious industry exhibited by the monastic copyists of this particular period. As an illustration of the subject, we may quote the account which Othlonus, the scholasticus of St. Emmeran’s, gives of his labours. He seems to have been a Bavarian by birth, and his first school was that of Tegernsee, in Bavaria, a monastery which had been founded in 994, and was famous for its teachers in utrâque linguâ, and even for its Hebrew scholars. Here, in the twelfth century, lived the good monk Metellus, whose eclogues, written in imitation of those of Virgil, describe the monastic pastures and cattle, and the labours of the monks in the fields. The library of Tegernsee was rich in classic works, and possessed a fair illuminated copy of Pliny’s “Natural History,” adorned with pictures of the different animals, from the cunning hand of brother Ellinger. Medicine was likewise studied here, to facilitate which, the monks had a good botanical garden. In such a school Othlonus had every opportunity of cultivating his natural taste for study, which grew by degrees to be a perfect passion. As a child he had intended to embrace the monastic state, but the persuasions of his father, and his own desire to give himself up exclusively to learned pursuits, induced him to abandon this design, and after leaving school he devoted himself for several years to classical studies, with an ardour which his biographer finds no words strong enough to express.

His only earthly desire at this time, as he himself tells us in one[333] of his later spiritual treatises, was to have time to study, and abundance of books. It would seem, however, that this excessive devotion to human learning had its usual results in the decay of devotion. It is thus he describes himself at this period of his life, in his versified treatise De doctrina Spirituali. “Desiring to search into certain subtle matters, in the knowledge of which I saw that many delighted, to the end that I might be held in greater esteem by the world, I made all my profit to consist in keeping company with the Gentiles. In those days what were not to me Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and Tully the rhetorician?... that threefold work of Maro, and Lucan, whom then I loved best of all, and on whom I was so intent, that I hardly did anything else but read him.... Yet what profit did they give me, when I could not even sign my forehead with the cross?”

However, two severe illnesses wrought a great change in his way of looking at life, and in 1032, remembering his early dedication of himself to God, he resolved to forsake the world and take the habit of religion in the monastery of St. Emmeran’s, at Ratisbon, where he gave up all thoughts of secular ambition, in order to devote himself heart and soul to the duties of his state. St. Emmeran’s was, like Tegernsee, possessed of an excellent school and library. In the former many good scholars were reared, such as abbot William of Hirschau, who became as learned in the liberal arts as in the study of the Scriptures, and who afterwards made his own school at Hirschau one of the most celebrated in Germany. Othlonus tells us that in this monastery he found “several men in different classes, some reading pagan authors, others the Holy Scriptures,” and that he began to imitate the latter, and soon learnt to relish the Sacred Books, which he had hitherto neglected, far above the writings of Aristotle, Plato, or even Boëthius.[157]

It will be seen from this little sketch that Othlonus was not a mere transcriber, and indeed he afterwards produced several treatises on mystic theology, besides his “Life of St. Wolfgang,” and was regarded by his brother monks as “a pious and austere man, possessed of an immense love of books.” This love he showed not only by reading them, but by multiplying them; and his achievements in this kind are related by himself with a certain prolix eloquence which, in mercy to the reader, I will somewhat abridge.

“I think it right,” he says, “to add some account of the great[334] capacity of writing which was given me by the Lord from my childhood. When as yet a little child I was sent to school, and quickly learnt my letters; and began long before the usual time of learning, and without any order from the master, to learn the art of writing; but in a furtive and unusual way, and without any teacher, so that I got a bad habit of holding my pen in a wrong manner, nor were any of my teachers afterwards able to correct me in that point. Many who saw this, decided that I should never write well, but by the grace of God it turned out otherwise. For, even in my childhood, when, together with the other boys, the tablet was put into my hands, it appeared that I had some notion of writing. Then, after a time, I began to write so well and was so fond of it, that in the monastery of Tegernsee, where I learned, I wrote many books, and being sent into Franconia, I worked so hard as nearly to lose my sight.... Then, after I became a monk of St. Emmeran’s, I was induced again to occupy myself so much in writing, that I seldom got an interval of rest except on festivals. Meantime there came more work on me, for as they saw I was generally reading, writing, or composing, they made me schoolmaster; by all which things I was, through God’s grace, so fully occupied that I frequently could not allow my body the necessary rest. When I had a mind to compose anything, I could not find time for it, except on holidays or at night, being tied down to the business of teaching the boys, and transcribing what I had undertaken. Besides the books which I composed myself I wrote nineteen missals, three books of the Gospels, and two lectionaries; besides which I wrote four service books for matins. Afterwards, old age and infirmity hindered me, and the grief caused by the destruction of our monastery; but to Him who is author of all good, and who has vouchsafed to give many things to me unworthy, be praise eternal!” He then adds an account of a vast number of other books written out by him and sent as presents to the monasteries of Fulda, Hirschfeld, Lorsch, Tegernsee, and others, amounting in all to thirty volumes. His labours, so cheerfully undertaken for the improvement of his convent, were perhaps surpassed by those of the monk Jerome, who wrote out so great a number of volumes, that it is said a wagon with six horses would not have sufficed to draw them. But neither one nor the other are to be compared to Diemudis, a devout nun of the monastery of Wessobrun, who, besides writing out in clear and beautiful characters five missals, with graduals and sequences[335] attached, and four other office books, for the use of the church, adorned the library of her convent with two entire Bibles, eight volumes of St. Gregory, seven of St. Augustine, the ecclesiastical histories of Eusebius and Cassiodorus, and a vast number of sermons, homilies, and other treatises, a list of which she left, as having all been written by her own hand, to the praise of God and of the holy apostles SS. Peter and Paul. This Diemudis was a contemporary of Othlonus, and found time in the midst of her gigantic labours to carry on a correspondence with Herluca, a nun of Eppach, to whom she is said to have indited “many very sweet letters,” which were long preserved.

I have mentioned as one of the scholars of St. Emmeran’s the holy William of Hirschau, who was chosen abbot of his monastery in 1070, and applied himself to make his monks as learned and as indefatigable in all useful labours as he was himself. He had about 250 monks at Hirschau, and founded no fewer than fifteen other religious houses, for the government of which he drew up a body of excellent statutes. These new foundations he carefully supplied with books, which necessitated constant work in the scriptorium. And a most stately and noble place was the scriptorium of Hirschau, wherein each one was employed according to his talent, binding, painting, gilding, writing, or correcting. The twelve best writers were reserved for transcribing the Scriptures and the Holy Fathers, and one of the twelve, most learned in the sciences, presided over the tasks of the others, chose the books to be copied, and corrected the faults of the younger scribes. The art of painting was studied in a separate school, and here, among others, was trained the good monk Thiemon, who, after decorating half the monasteries of Germany with the productions of his pencil, became archbishop of Saltzburg, and died in odour of sanctity. The statutes with which abbot William provided his monasteries, were chiefly drawn up from those in use at St. Emmeran’s, but he was desirous of yet further improving them, and in particular of assimilating them to those of Cluny, which was then at the height of its renown. It was at his request that St. Ulric of Cluny wrote out his “Customary,” in which, among other things, he gives a description of the manner in which the Holy Scriptures were read through in the refectory in the course of the year. This “Customary” is one of the most valuable monuments of monastic times which remains to us; it shows us the interior of the monastery, painted by the hand of one of its inmates,[336] taking us through each office, the library, the infirmary, the sacristy, the bakehouse, the kitchen, and the school. How beautiful is the order which it displays, as observed in choir, where, on solemn days, all the singers stood vested in copes, the very seats being covered with embroidered tapestry! Three days in the week the right side of the choir communicated, and the other three the left; during Holy Week they washed the feet of as many poor as there were brethren in the house, and the abbot added others also to represent absent friends. When the Passion was sung, they had a custom of tearing a piece of stuff at the words “they parted my garments;” and the new fire of Holy Saturday was struck, not from a flint, but a precious beryl. There were numberless beautiful rites of benediction observed, as that of the ripe grapes, which were blessed on the altar during mass, on the 6th of August, and afterwards distributed in the refectory, of new beans, and of the freshly-pressed juice of the grape. The ceremonies observed in making the altar breads were also most worthy of note. The grains of wheat were chosen one by one, were carefully washed and put aside in a sack, which was carried by one known to be pure in life and conversation to the mill. There they were ground and sifted, he who performed this duty being clothed in alb and amice. Two priests and two deacons clothed in like manner prepared the breads, and a lay brother, having gloves on his hands, held the irons in which they were baked. The very wood of the fire was chosen of the best and driest. And whilst these processes were being gone through, the brethren engaged ceased not to sing psalms, or sometimes recited Our Lady’s office. A separate chapter in the “Customary” is devoted to the children and their master, and the discipline under which they were trained is minutely described. We seem to see them seated in their cloister with the vigilant eye of the master presiding over their work. An open space is left between the two rows of scholars, but there is no one in the monastery who dare pass through their ranks. They go to confession twice a week, and always to the abbot or the prior. And such is the scrupulous care bestowed on their education, and the vigilance to which they are subjected, both by day and night, that, says Ulric, “I think it would be difficult for a king’s son to be brought up in a palace with greater care than the humblest boy enjoys at Cluny.”

This “Customary” was drawn up during the government of St. Hugh of Cluny, whose letter to William the Conqueror displays[337] something of the independence of mind with which abbots of those days treated the great ones of the earth. William had written to him requesting him to send some of his monks to England, and offering him a hundred pounds for every monk he would send. This method of buying up his monks at so much a head offended the good abbot, who wrote back to the king declining to part with any of his community at such a price, and adding that he would himself give an equal sum for every good monk whom he could draw to Cluny. During the sixty-two years that he governed his abbey, he is said to have professed more than 10,000 subjects. Enough has been said to show that the monastic institute was still strong and vigorous in the eleventh century. Cluny, indeed, represented monasticism rather in its magnificence than in the more evangelic aspect of poverty and abasement, yet in the midst of all her lordly splendour, she continued fruitful in saints. Even the austere St. Peter Damian, whilst he disapproved of the wealth of the monks, was edified at their sanctity, and left them, marvelling how men so rich could live so holily. Their revenues were not spent on luxury; they went to feed 17,000 poor people, and to collect a library of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew authors, such as had not its equal in Europe. It contained among other treasures a certain Bible, called in the chronicle, “great, wonderful, and precious for its writing, correctness, and rich binding, adorned with beryl stones,” which had been written by the single hand of the monk Albert. The following inscription inserted in the volume attests the piety as well as the industry of the writer. “This book was written by a certain monk of Cluny, named Albert, formerly of Treves. It was done by the order and at the expense of the venerable abbot Pontius, Peter being at that time the librarian, and providing all things necessary with joy and diligence. And the aforesaid monk, in company with a certain brother named Opizo, diligently read through the whole book, that he might be able to improve it according to the authority of other books; and he twice corrected it. Therefore Brother Albert a sinner, prostrating himself at the feet of the brethren of Cluny, humbly begs of them to pray to God for himself and for his father, that they may obtain the forgiveness of their sins.”[158]

Elsewhere also the monastic schools continued to produce a number of excellent masters who thoroughly entered into the revival[338] of classical studies, which we have noticed as having at this time sprung up. At Fleury the monk Raoul taught the art of versification to a crowded audience, and in his own poems advocated the study of the ancient models, especially of Horace. Quotations from the same poet, as well as from Virgil and Statius, not unfrequently appear in the lives of the saints, and even the sermons of this period, a fact not adduced as an instance of the good taste, but simply of the erudition, of the authors. In the school of Stavelot, even Greek poetry was studied. Here was trained the celebrated Wibald, successively abbot of Stavelot, Monte Cassino, and Corby.

The letters and other remains of this remarkable man have been inserted by Martene in his collection, and throw much light on the history of the times. He filled several important offices under the Emperor Conrad, who confided to him the education of his son and successor Henry; but whilst constantly immersed in public business he failed not to labour for the good cause which lay at the heart of every true monk, the multiplication of books, and the encouragement of learning. Thus among his letters we find one addressed in 1149 to the scholasticus of Corby, in which he enumerates among the writers to be studied in the school, Pythagoras, Plato, Sophocles, and Simonides, a sufficient proof that Greek literature was then cultivated in certain seminaries, and that the knowledge of that language was not confined, as Hallam suggests, to the occasional singing of a Greek Kyrie or Sanctus. There are other letters addressed to the superiors of monasteries whom he engaged to assist him in the collection of books. Among these was the abbot of Hildesheim, from whom he hoped to obtain a complete copy of the Offices of Cicero. His petition for these is in a certain sense apologetic, for, from the days of St. Jerome, religious men were wont to be a little sensitive, lest too great a love of the Latin orator should expose them to the charge of being a Ciceronian rather than a Christian student. Something of this sort had been playfully hinted at by the abbot of Hildesheim, and Wibald replies: “We do not serve the dishes of Cicero at the first or principal table; but when replenished with better food we partake of them as of sweetmeats that are served for dessert.” Sometimes his letters are addressed to friends who have visited his library, and who shared in his literary tastes. “I wish,” he writes to the Archbishop of Bremen, “that you would come again and remain longer with us, and, as you promised, turn over the volumes on our shelves. I wish we might have this[339] pleasure together in peace and quiet; there is surely no greater happiness to be enjoyed in life.”

It is, perhaps, superfluous to multiply illustrations of this kind, but I cannot resist adding to the names already cited that of Marianus Scotus, whom some call an Irishman, and some a Scot, while others affirm him to have been an honest Northumbrian, and a member of the family of Bede.[159] He died towards the end of the eleventh century, having been successively monk in the abbeys of Cologne, Fulda, and Mayence, and professor of theology some years in that of Ratisbon. He was a poet, and the author of a Chronicle frequently quoted as one of the best mediæval histories, and continued by later writers. His biographers say of him that his countenance was so beautiful, and his manners so simple, that no one doubted he was inspired in all he said and did by the Holy Ghost. A most indefatigable writer, he transcribed the whole Bible with sundry commentaries, and that not once but repeatedly. Moreover he drew out of the deep sea of the holy Fathers, certain sweet waters for the profit of his soul, which he collected in prolix volumes. With all this he found spare moments which he devoted to charitable labours on behalf of poor widows, clerks, and scholars, for whose benefit he multiplied psalters, manuals, and other pious little books, which he distributed to them free of cost for the remedy of his soul. Who will refuse to believe that such loving toils as these were found worthy to receive the miraculous token of favour related in the old legend? “One night,” says the annalist, “the brother whose duty it was, having forgotten to give him candles, Marianus nevertheless continued his work without them; and when the brother, recollecting his omission, came late at night to his cell, he beheld a brilliant light streaming through the chinks of the door, and going in softly, found that it proceeded from the fingers of the monk’s left hand, and he saw and believed.”

In some writers of this time there are indications of increased attention being paid to natural phenomena, and the geographical[340] notices introduced into the chronicle of Otto of Frisingia are praised by the authors of the Histoire Littéraire for their exactness and intelligence. A very singular and interesting fact is recorded in the chronicle of Marianus (or rather in its later continuation), which, though of a supernatural character, may perhaps be admitted among the scientific notices of the time. I allude to the vision seen and described by the Blessed Alpais of Cudot, who saw in rapture the earth hanging suspended in space shaped like a globe, or rather a spheroid, for she calls it not perfectly round, but egg-shaped. It was surrounded by water, and the sun appeared of a vastly greater size. Equally remarkable in another branch of science are the speculations of Ithier, a monk of Limoges, on the faculties of the mind corresponding to different parts of the brain, in which we catch a first glimpse of the modern theory of phrenology. Nor must it be supposed that the classical and scientific studies, which excited so much interest, caused the cultivation of the vulgar dialects to be forgotten. Abbots and bishops often preached in Romance, like St. Vital of Savigny and Hildebert of Mans, though the latter is said to have succeeded better in Latin. St. Bernard delivered his exhortations to his brethren not in Latin but Romance, for the benefit of the lay-brothers who were ignorant of the learned tongues, as Mabillon labours to prove. A vast number of translations were likewise made into the popular dialects, and about the end of the eleventh century the monk Grimoald published a version in Romance of the entire Bible; this translation being made nearly a century before that of the Waldenses, though the latter is very generally represented to be the earliest known version of the Scriptures in any vulgar tongue.[160]

It is evident, then, that all the learning of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was not swallowed up by the new race of scholastics, nor was every scholastic a Berengarius. Yet there is a certain change perceptible in many of those who at this time attained to literary eminence, and a greater predominance of the philosophic element, consequent in some degree from the nature of the studies rendered popular in the school of Bec. We begin more frequently to meet with tales of scholars who, in the midst of their learned pursuits, were overtaken with a dread of the perils which beset their course, and sought[341] to escape them by flying into the desert. The cloisters were peopled with such refugees from the schools, who, like Lanfranc, often reappeared after a while to resume the weapons of human science, which they had thought to fling aside for ever, and use them in the service of their Master.

Of these converts were St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, and Odo of Tournai. Bruno is said to have studied at Tours under Berengarius, though this appears doubtful. In 1056 the scholasticus of Rheims having resigned his charge, that he might devote himself exclusively to the affairs of his own salvation, Gervase, Archbishop of Rheims, promoted Bruno to the office, which by this time had become associated to that of Chancellor of the diocese, and gave its holder a certain superiority over the other diocesan schools. Bruno continued to fill this responsible post for twenty years, during which time he numbered among his pupils Odo, afterwards Pope Urban II., and many of the greatest prelates of the time. He was reckoned the first philosopher, theologian, and poet of France, and by writers of his own day is extolled as “the doctor of doctors, the glory of the Church, the model of good men, and the mirror of the whole world.” The romantic story which ascribes his conversion to religion to the horror caused by the voice which came from the dead body of a certain eminent doctor, proclaiming his damnation, is now universally rejected as the production of a later age. In fact, St. Bruno has himself related the manner in which his resolution was first formed in a letter addressed to Raoul, provost of Rheims, wherein he reminds him of a certain day when they were walking with another canon named Fulcius, in the garden adjoining his house, conversing together of the vanities of the world. “Then it was,” he says, “that the Holy Spirit moved us to renounce all perishable things, and embrace the monastic life that we might merit life eternal.” It would also appear that a grievous case of simony, which had scandalised the diocese, powerfully wrought on Bruno’s mind, and moved him to fly from a world so hedged about with temptations. He was followed into his retreat by a number of his former scholars; but it was not until 1084 that they at last determined on the way of life they should choose, and, receiving the monastic habit from the hands of St. Hugh of Grenoble, laid the foundation of the Carthusian Order, which took its name from the desert they had chosen for their abode. In after years the order continued to be largely recruited from the same class whence their first founder had been drawn. Many a fine scholar came to the[342] wild rocks of the Chartreuse to seek in obscurity for a peace which he found by experience the world of intellect could never give; and Bulæus informs us that no order of monks received among their ranks so many members of Paris University as did these austere and penitential recluses.

Odo, or Oudart, the other convert to whom allusion has been made, first attracted notice as a teacher at Toul, a city which had always been rich in schools and schoolmasters, and which had felt a special pride in keeping up its learned reputation, since 1048, when it had sent its bishop to fill the chair of St. Peter in the person of St. Leo IX. Odo’s fame reached the ears of the canons of Tournai, who entreated him to take charge of their cathedral school, which he accordingly governed for five years. A skilful teacher, and a devourer of books, Odo possessed extraordinary powers of labour, and when any literary work was in hand, he rested neither day nor night till it was accomplished. He was also a great friend of method and good moral discipline, but as yet he had been too exclusively taken up with the cares and pleasures of his profession to give much thought to spiritual things. Or perhaps we might rather say that he hardly knew of their existence. Like other busy, hard-working men, he was swept along in the tide of daily life, and thought it much to preserve a character of stainless honour and respectability. His success as a teacher was so great, that disciples came to him from all parts of France, as well as from Flanders, Italy, and Saxony. The city of Tournai became literally filled with students, who might be seen disputing together in the public streets: and as you drew near the school you would see them walking with the master, or seated around him; or, in the evening, standing with him at the church door, while he taught them the various constellations, and explained to them the course of the stars.

Odo was as remarkable for his virtue as his learning. He took all his disciples to the church with him daily. They never numbered fewer than two hundred; but he made them walk two-and-two through the streets, he himself bringing up the rear, and enforcing a discipline as strict as would have been observed in the most regular monastery. No one ventured to speak to his companion, or to look right or left, and in choir they might have been taken for monks of Cluny. He did not allow them to frequent the company of women, or to wear any kind of finery; and if they transgressed his orders in these respects, he turned them out of his school. At the hours when he gave his[343] lectures no layman was allowed to enter the cloisters, which were at other times the resort of the public. So strict was he in this, that he did not hesitate to exclude Everard, the Castellan of Tournai, a nobleman of power and influence; for it was Odo’s principle that a man must not deviate a hair’s-breadth from his duty from the motive of human respect. By these means he won the love and esteem of every one: canons and people alike spoke well of him, though some were found to say that his regularity of life sprang rather from philosophy than religion.

He had directed his school for about five years, when one day, a certain clerk having brought him St. Augustine’s “Treatise on Free-will,” he purchased it, merely with the view of increasing his library, and threw it into a coffer among some other books without looking at it, for his taste inclined him rather to the study of Plato than of the Fathers. About two months afterwards, however, as he was explaining Boëthius to his disciples, he came to the fourth book of the “Consolations of Philosophy,” in which the author treats of Free-will. Remembering the book he had lately purchased on the same subject, he sent for it, and having read two or three pages, was struck with the beauty of the style; and calling his pupils, said to them, “I own that until now I was ignorant how agreeable and eloquent are the writings of St. Augustine;” and that day and the following he read to them from this work, explaining its difficulties as he proceeded.

In this way he came to that passage in the third book, wherein St. Augustine compares the soul of the sinner to a slave condemned to some vile and disgusting labour. Odo sighed as he read the powerful words of the writer, exclaiming, “How striking is this comparison! it seems as if written expressly for us men of science. We adorn the corrupt world with the little stock of learning which we possess, and after death, perhaps, are not found worthy of eternal happiness, because we have done God no service; but have used our intellects for vanity and worldly glory!” With these words he rose from his chair, and going into the church, remained there in floods of tears, his scholars meanwhile remaining astonished and perplexed. From that day he gradually discontinued his lectures, and began to frequent the church more diligently, and to distribute in alms all the money he received from his pupils. He also fasted so rigorously that his appearance soon completely changed, and he became so thin and attenuated as scarcely to be recognised.

[344]

The rumour soon ran through the town that Odo, the famous doctor, was about to abandon the world. Four of his disciples resolved never to quit him, and made him promise to do nothing except in concert with them. Monks and abbots from every religious house in the neighbourhood of Tournai, wanted Odo to join their communities, but his disciples preferred the rule of the canons as being easier than that of the monks. Rabod, the Bishop of Tournai, accordingly made over to them an old church, part of an abbey which had been destroyed by the Normans, and they took possession of it in 1092. Two years later they resolved on embracing the monastic rule, and the bishop giving his consent, Odo was elected first abbot of the restored abbey of Tournai. Though he had fled to the cloister to escape from the pride of the schools, he did not neglect the cause of learning. Like most of the religious superiors of his day, he gave much time and trouble to the formation of a good library and scriptorium, and used to make an innocent boast of the many good writers whom the Lord had given him. Had you gone into his scriptorium, says his successor, you would have seen twelve youths, sitting in silence, most diligently engaged in copying manuscripts, at tables made for the purpose. And he enumerates among the books so transcribed the works of St. Jerome and St. Gregory, and all that he could collect of Bede, Isidore, Ambrose, Austin, and the Lord Anselm of Bec.

About this time the rival philosophical sects known as the Realists and Nominalists began to attract attention. The questions in dispute between them regarded the validity and existence of universal ideas. The expression requires explanation. An idea is the representation in the mind of some impression made on the senses by an external object. These ideas may be either particular or universal. They are particular when they correspond to some individual object, as John Smith, or that tree. They are universal when we separate them from any individual object, and conceive them as corresponding to something which is to be found in many individuals, whereby these may be classified together, as when we speak of men or trees. According to the scholastics, there are five kinds of such universal ideas, namely, species, genus, difference, property and accident. The species includes many individuals, as sheep, oak. The genus includes many species, as animal, tree. Difference is something which distinguishes one species from another belonging to the same genus. Property, or essential attribute, is what necessarily belongs to the[345] essence of a thing; as when we say of a globe that it is round. Accident is some attribute to be found in a thing which is not necessary to its existence, as if we were to say of the same globe that it is green. We are able to hold these ideas in our mind, abstracted from any object, and so we come to have the abstract ideas of men, animals, trees, roundness, or whiteness, without connecting them with any particular individual. But the Nominalists denied the existence of such ideas, and declared the above distinctions to be mere sounds of the voice, corresponding to no external reality. They knew what was meant by a wise man, or a white horse, but professed themselves unable to comprehend what was meant by wisdom or whiteness. The Realists, on the other hand, appealing to the authority of Boëthius, contended that these ideas were real and existent.

Both parties numbered great names in their ranks. Odo of Tournai was a partisan of the Realists, as was also the Blessed Robert of Arbrisselles. At the head of the Nominalists appeared his fellow-student and professor in the Paris schools, Roscelin, a canon of Compeigne, and a man whose character too closely resembled that of Berengarius. He seems to have adopted novel and startling opinions as a means of drawing the eyes of men on himself, and the manner in which he applied his philosophical method of reasoning to revealed doctrines, specially that of the Holy Trinity, resulted in actual heresy, and brought on him in 1092 the condemnation of the Council of Soissons. Taking refuge in England, he there met with a vigorous opponent in the person of St. Anselm, who, whilst freely admitting, and even advocating the exercise of the intellectual powers on the mysteries of faith, marked out the limits between faith and reason, and severely condemned the presumption of those who would attempt to make reason the test of faith. He declares that we must seek the intelligence of those things that we already believe; that reason is not the means by which we attain to faith, but rather that by which we enjoy the evidence and contemplation of the mysteries which we already believe: and that right order demands that we should first receive the profound truths of faith before we dare to exercise our reason upon them.[161] As time went on, and both sects pushed their philosophical[346] views to extremes, grave errors were charged against both, and the foundations were laid of many forms of modern Rationalism.

Paris was now rapidly becoming the centre of scholastic activity. The fame of her masters spread over Europe, and among them were Lambert, a disciple of Fulbert of Chartres; Manegold, whose very daughters were learned, and opened a school for the education of their own sex, Anselm of Laon and Bernard of Chartres. John of Salisbury, whose favourite master, William de Conches, had himself been a pupil of Bernard’s, has left us an interesting account of the method of this last-named teacher. He explained all the best authors, not confining himself to grammar strictly so called, but making his pupils observe all the refinements of rhetoric. He pointed out the propriety of certain terms and metaphors, and the best order and arrangement of a subject; and showed the variety of styles to be used according to the different matters treated of by a writer. If any passage occurred in their reading referring to other sciences, he took pains to explain it, according to the capacity of his hearers. He was careful to cultivate their memory, making them learn and recite choice passages from the classic historians, poets, and philosophers; requiring them one day to give an exact account of what they had heard or read the day previous. He was always exhorting them to read much in private, but not indiscriminately, directing them to avoid what was only fit to feed curiosity, and to content themselves with the works of standard authors. For, he used to say, quoting Quinctilian, “it is a great weakness to read all that every miserable writer has to say on every subject, and only loads the memory with superfluous and worthless things.”

As he knew that it is to very little purpose to hear or study examples unless we accustom ourselves to reproduce the treasures thus stored up in the memory, he was anxious that his pupils should every day compose something both in prose and verse, and he established conferences among them wherein they mutually questioned and answered one another, the utility of which exercise John of Salisbury speaks of very highly; “provided,” as he observes, “that charity govern the emulation displayed in such encounters, so that while we make progress in letters we still preserve humility. For a man should not serve two masters so opposed one to the other as learning and vice.”

This was also the rule observed by Bernard, who maintained that[347] the first and principal key to knowledge was Humility, to which he assigned Poverty as a companion. The subjects on which he exercised his scholars were always fitted to cherish both faith and good morals. And the work of each day was finished with the recitation of the “Our Father,” and a brief prayer for the dead.

Anselm of Laon was a teacher of much the same character, and, if possible, of greater renown. He and his brother Radulph were called by Guibert de Nogent the two eyes of the Latin Church, and by their knowledge of the Scriptures converted many heretics. Some of their pupils were as famous as themselves, such as Hugh Metellus, a great lover of the classics, whose flow of language was so great that he dictated to two secretaries at once, and could improvise a thousand verses, standing on one leg, and who was induced by the teaching of his pious masters to exchange a life of worldly vanity, the love of dress and delicate diet, for the austere regimen of a canon regular of Toul. Another of Anselm’s scholars was William de Champeaux, under whom the Paris schools first attained that pre-eminence which they maintained in the world of letters down to the period of the Revolution. After studying successively under Manegold and Anselm, he was appointed archdeacon of the Church of Paris, and master of the Cathedral school, where he taught logic, rhetoric, and theology, with great success. And about the year 1100 his reputation attracted one disciple whose name is indelibly associated with the literary history of the period,—the celebrated Peter Abelard.

Abelard’s choice of a scholar’s life is said to have been influenced in the first instance by his dislike of the profession of arms. Nature, while it had given him an insatiable desire for fame and worldly glory, had denied him the gift of personal courage, and he himself made no secret of the feeling which, as he said, had moved him to enrol himself under the banners of Minerva, rather than those of Mars. His subtle mind was very early devoted to the study of logic, but not satisfied with the teaching to be found in his own diocese of Nantes, he led a wandering life for some time, passing from school to school; and at last found his way to Paris, where William de Champeaux was then at the height of his reputation as a teacher of dialectics. The brilliant qualities of his new pupil at first won the heart of his master, but erelong Abelard began to show signs of that presumption and contempt of every one’s attainments except his own, which kept him at war with all his contemporaries.[348] He came to the lecture rooms less with the view of learning than with the secret hope of outshining his fellow-students and perplexing his master. He was perpetually proposing vexatious questions, for the purpose of entrapping the latter in some logical subtlety; and affecting to consider that William had shown himself unable to answer these difficulties, he disdained any longer to be the scholar of one whom he considered his inferior, and determined on setting up a school for himself.

Unable to do this in Paris, where the influence of William de Champeaux was at that time all-powerful, he established himself first at Mélun, and then at Corbeil, which was nearer to the capital. He was but twenty-two when he first appeared before the world as an independent professor, and soon made himself talked of for his brilliancy, his fluency, and the vehemence with which he attempted to make the art of logic supersede all the other liberal arts, which he was accustomed to treat with contempt. His passion for glory soon brought him back to Paris, where William de Champeaux was now archdeacon, and head of the cathedral school. Abelard renewed his attacks on his old master, and that with such success, that the cloisteral schools became deserted, and the fickle audience flocked to the lectures of the new professor. The circumstance seems to have touched the heart of William with a contempt for intellectual renown which was so easily won and lost, and resigning his school, he retired among the canons regular of St. Victor, a religious house destined to play a great part in the history of the future university. This was in 1109, and, by the advice of Hildebert, Bishop of Mans, who wrote to the new canon, congratulating him on “the step by which he had at last become a true philosopher,” William opened a school within his monastery, which afterwards produced several illustrious theologians, who are all distinguished by the surname of St. Victor.

It is unnecessary to pursue the rivalries of the two professors through all their windings; in 1113 William was raised to the see of Châlons, a circumstance which seems to have first induced Abelard to study theology, with the hope of attaining similar honours. Accordingly, we next find him at Laon, attending the school of Anselm, now dean of that church, whom, however, he very soon declared to be altogether unworthy of his great renown. “His learning was,” he said, “nothing but foliage without fruit; long custom, rather than any real merit, had acquired him a name. If[349] you consulted him on any difficulty, you came away just as wise as you went. There was nothing but abundance of fine words, without a grain of sense or reason.” So, in despair of finding a master wise enough to teach one of his genius, he resolved to do without one, and, with the help of a commentary, began to give lectures on the prophet Ezechiel. His wit, his fluency, and his singular charms of voice and manner, veiled the real shallowness of his theological attainments, and, on returning to Paris, he succeeded in gaining what had been for so many years the great object of his ambition, the direction of the cathedral school. Then began the period of his extraordinary popularity; disciples flocked to him from all parts of France and Germany, as well as from Rome and England. His vanity easily persuaded him that he was not merely the greatest, but the only philosopher of his time; all the world hung on his eloquence, but amid the long catologue of his admirers, none was to be found so bewitched with his merits as he was himself.

Abelard’s teaching bore the character of his own restless and impatient genius. Disdainful of anything which did not promise quick results, he aimed at presenting his disciples with a philosophy which professed to lead them to the possession of wisdom by a royal road. The trivium and quadrivium were to be consigned to oblivion; the classics and the Fathers might alike grow dusty on the shelves, logic was to be all in all, and the philosopher and the theologian might abandon every other study, provided they perfected themselves in the art which St. Bernard characterised with caustic wit, as “that of ever studying, and never reaching the truth.” Abelard’s condemnation of the classics is worth noticing, as showing the similarity of mind which existed between him and Berengarius, whom Guitmond describes as “making no account of the opinions of his masters, and despising the liberal arts.” In neither of them did this condemnation arise from a preponderance of the Christian sense; but from their repugnance to objective realities.[162] Their philosophy was in short that of which the apostle speaks, when he condemns the “vain babblings” of those who “desire to be teachers of the law,” which differed little from the “foolish questionings” of the sophists. The effect of these new doctrines was to inaugurate a scholastic revolution. One by one the fair branches of the tree of[350] science were severed from the trunk, till at last nothing remained but the exercise of subtle and captious argumentation, wherein logic came to be used not as a means but an end, and the scholar was no longer led to seek for truth as his object, but to rest content with the search after it.

Thus passed several years, during which Abelard had earned a fame, brilliant indeed beyond that of any of his contemporaries, but unhappily one which left his moral reputation far from stainless. In 1117 we find him in the abbey of St. Denis, where he had taken refuge from the disgrace entailed on him by his connection with Heloïsa. Even here his insupportable vanity was not long before it betrayed itself in the criticisms he passed on his abbot and his brother monks, among whom he seems to have aspired to act as the reformer. The abbot longed to get rid of so troublesome a subject, and the opportunity of doing so soon presented itself. Crowds of students began to clamour at the gates of St. Denis for their old master, and to implore him to reopen his school. He therefore resumed his lectures, but unable to rest contented with teaching only what had been taught before him, he began to introduce logical subtleties into his theological views, and put forth certain explanations on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which raised a storm of opposition. His chief opponents were Alberic and Lotulf, two former disciples of Anselm of Laon, and William of Champeaux. They not only attacked his opinions as heterodox, but complained that he had no right to teach at all. His position as a professor was, they said, altogether irregular, for, contrary to the established usages of the Paris schools, he taught sine magistro.

This term requires a little explanation; and shows us the germ of what soon afterwards developed into the system of university graduation. According to established custom, no scholar could be licensed to teach publicly who had not previously gone through a regular course of study under some approved doctor. But Abelard had had no master in theology, except himself; for, as we have seen, he gave up his attendance in Anselm’s school through contempt for his inferiority, and had at once begun to teach a science which in reality he had never studied. At a Council assembled at Soissons, his Treatise on the Holy Trinity was condemned, and he himself required to cast it into the fire, and to make public profession of the faith by reciting the creed of St. Athanasius, which he did with many tears and sighs, after which he was sent back to the[351] monastery of St. Denys. He had not been there long, however, when a controversy which he thought fit to raise on the question of the identity of St. Denys, the Areopagite, with the patron of the abbey, got him into fresh trouble, and he fled from the monastery to the territory of the Count of Champagne, where he fixed his residence in a beautiful solitude near Nogent, which was soon found out by his disciples. “They came crowding to me,” he writes, “from all parts, and leaving the towns and cities, were content to dwell in the wilderness. Instead of spacious houses, they set up for themselves little tents, and put up gladly with wild herbs instead of delicate viands. People said one to another, ‘Behold the world is gone after him.’ At last, as my little oratory would not hold them, they enlarged it, building it of wood and stone.” To this new building he gave the name of the Paraclete, and it might truly have been his consolation could he have learnt wisdom from the past, and bowed his erratic genius under the yoke of faith. But the school of the Paraclete soon resounded with new errors; to the former opinions put forth regarding the Holy Trinity, were now added equally heterodox views on the subject of grace and original sin, which were at once discerned and denounced by two saints who then illuminated the church with their doctrine and their virtue—St. Norbert, and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Abelard, whose natural cowardice shrank from the prospect of new dangers, endeavoured to escape the consequences of his own imprudence by abandoning the Paraclete, and accepting the government of St. Gildas’ abbey; but the uncouth manners and language of the monks filled him with repugnance, or perhaps it would be truer to say, the monastic routine proved insufferable to one who had nothing of the real monk about him. In 1126, therefore, we find him once more teaching in the schools of St. Geneviève. He was never really at home save in the Professor’s chair, but unhappily he never filled it without betraying himself into some of the audacities of unorthodox philosophy. Soon his old errors were reproduced, and called forth the zeal of St. Bernard, who protested with all the force of his nervous eloquence against the strange assemblage of heresies to be found united in the teaching of a single man. “When he speaks of the Holy Trinity,” he says, “it is in the style of Arius; he is a Pelagian when he treats of grace, and a second Nestorius when he speaks of the Person of Jesus Christ. His vanity,” continues the saint, “is such that he brags as if there were nothing in heaven and earth he did not know;[352] and in truth he knows a little of everything except himself.” In his 190th Epistle, addressed to Pope Innocent II., St. Bernard sums up all the errors of Abelard, who had ventured to deny, and even to ridicule, the doctrine of Redemption, which he presumptuously declared illogical, declaring that our Lord came only to instruct us by His Word and Example. His final condemnation took place at the Council of Sens, which imposed silence on him for ever, a sentence confirmed by the authority of Pope Innocent II. This condemnation might possibly have had no better result than that of Soissons, had it not been for the charity of the Venerable Peter of Cluny, at whose monastery Abelard stopped on his way to Rome, where he purposed to appeal against his sentence. The holy abbot succeeded in drawing from him a recantation of his errors; he induced him to renounce the scholastic career, which had been the source of so many temptations, and frankly to submit to the judgment of the Council and the Pope. More than this, he exerted himself to effect a personal reconciliation between Abelard and St. Bernard, and lastly, he offered to the wounded spirit of the unhappy scholar a secure and sheltered retreat in his own community, where, under the habit of religion, the Professor of St. Geneviève spent the last years of his life in the exercise of piety and penance.

There then, let us leave him, in his poor cell with its wooden candlestick and its crucifix, with the Holy Scriptures and a few treatises of the Fathers for his only library; defeated, as some might say, put to silence, and extinguished—but with his heart, at last, at peace. Well might he have exclaimed with the Psalmist, “It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me!” A change was wrought in him so great, that, as we read the words in which his good abbot describes it, we can scarcely recognise the old Abelard of former years. “Never did I see a man more humble,” writes Peter the Venerable, “whether in gesture, habit, or countenance. He read continually, prayed often, and kept silence at all times, unless when forced to speak; and after his reconciliation with the Holy See, offered the Holy Sacrifice almost daily, and occupied himself only with meditating or teaching me truths of religion or philosophy.” A marvellous change indeed; and happy were it if all who incurred the same censures could follow in the same course.

We have seen that the rationalistic errors of Abelard found their ablest opponent in St. Bernard, who had conceived a distrust of the new philosophy when studying as a mere boy in the canon’s school[353] at Chatillon, where the fashionable scholasticism was just then beginning to be introduced. He seems to have felt an instinctive dread of its ultimate tendencies, and to have preserved during his whole life the sentiments resulting from his early experience of what his biographer Geoffery of Igny designates as the “wisdom of the world.” Closely united to him in their theological views, were the great scholars of St. Victor’s, Hugh, Richard, and Adam. Hugh of St. Victor, the third prior in succession from William de Champeaux, was styled the second Augustine, from his devoted admiration of that Father. Brought up in a house of canons regular in Saxony, he bore testimony in after life to the care they bestowed on his education. “I do not fear to certify,” he says, “that they neglected no means of perfecting me in the sciences, and even instructed me in many things which might be thought trifling and extraordinary.” These words occur in his Didascalion, or Treatise on Studies, which he drew up with the view of remedying the disorderly and unmethodical manner in which most scholars then pursued their academic labours. In it he gives an interesting account of his own early life as a scholar. “I never despised anything that belonged to erudition,” he says; “when I was a scholar I studied the names of everything I saw. I committed to memory all the sentences, questions, replies, and solutions I had heard and learnt during the day; and I used to describe the figures of geometry on the floor with charcoal. I do not say this to boast of my knowledge, which is nothing, but to show that he proceeds best who proceeds with order. You will find many things in histories and other books, which taken in themselves seem of little profit, but which nevertheless are useful and necessary when taken in connection with other things.” Hugh, like all the disciples of this school, advocated the old system, according to which all the parts of knowledge stood in mutual relation to one another, and theology dominated over the whole. In his Treatise De Vanitate Mundi, he describes an imaginary school, in which is no doubt depicted that of his own monastery. The students are described divided into groups, according to the different subjects on which they are engaged. All the liberal arts are cultivated in turn, and while the fingers of some are employed in designing or colouring an illuminated page, others are studying the nature of herbs, or the constitution of the human frame. As a spiritual writer, Hugh of St. Victor is considered to be surpassed by his disciple Richard of St. Victor, a Scotchman by birth, and one of the greatest mystic[354] theologians of the Church. The special doctrines insisted on by this school were those which put forth faith, and not reason, as the ground of certainty, and maintained that reason was to be exercised only to demonstrate the truths that were held by faith. Abelard, in his extravagant exaltation of the claims of reason, had gone so far in his “Introduction to Theology,” as to define faith as an opinion, and to depreciate a too ready belief, praising that cautious philosophy which does not yield its faith till it has subjected all things to the test of reason. To believe without doubting, according to this view of things, was the religion of women and children; to doubt all things before we believe them was alone worthy of the dignity of man. The scholars of St. Victor not only vindicated the true claims of faith, but they sought to prove that faith itself must rest on the foundation stone of charity. They loved to remind their disciples of those words of Our Lord, “If any man will do the will of God he shall know of the doctrine.” Charity, they said, is then the foundation, and Humility the key, to all true science, and we can understand the Truth of God only in proportion as we obey it. They did not seek to set aside the just use of the reason, but to assign it limits, and to prohibit the search after things confessedly above the grasp of human intellect. “What is it to be wise,” asks Hugo of St. Victor, “but to love God? for love is wisdom.” He complains of the cavilling spirit of the dialecticians who would fain turn the simplest precepts of the Gospel into matter of dispute. If they read that we are to love our neighbour as ourselves, they begin to argue, saying, “If I love one man as myself, then I must love three or four men more than myself;” and this they style seeking truth. Again, he blames the conceit of those who, ignorant of the very first elements, will condescend to study nothing but the sublimest matters, forgetting that the beginning of all discipline is humility. Neither would he endure that presumptuous spirit which gloried in the subtlety of its own powers, but, like a true disciple of St. Augustine, desired that reliance on Divine Grace should be the foundation of the whole spiritual and intellectual edifice.

Perfectly in accordance with this teaching was that of John of Salisbury, who exposed the vain pretensions of those who ought to make philosophy consist in a barren exercise of the reasoning powers. “Philosophy,” he says, “is nothing else but the love of God, and if that love be extinguished philosophy vanishes away. All studies worthy of that end must tend to the increase of charity, and he who[355] acquires or increases charity has gained the highest object of philosophy. This, therefore, is the true rule of philosophy, that all learning and all reading should be made conducive to truth and charity, and then the choir of virtues will enter into the soul as into a temple of God. They most impudently err who think that philosophy consists in mere words, who multiply phrases and propose a thousand ridiculous little questions, endeavouring to perplex their hearers that they may seem more learned than Dædalus. But though eloquence is a useful and noble study, this loquacity of vain disputation is a most hateful thing.” Truth, as all agreed, was the only object of science; but whilst Abelard and his followers sought this truth in the subjective reasonings of their own minds, the mystics of St. Victor’s school declared that it was not to be sought by the understanding alone, but by the heart and will. For what is Truth, they asked, but God Himself? Who is to be sought by love rather than by science. He therefore who seeks God, seeks the highest truth, and embraces it when it finds Him. It knows all things in proportion as it knows more of God, Whom not to know is darkness. And it knows all things in Him, for, in the words of St. Gregory, “what does not he see, who sees Him Who sees all things?”

Such was the sublime teaching which St. Bernard and the contemplatives of his time opposed to the growing spirit of philosophic rationalism. The Cistercian cloisters and the disciples of the school of St. Victor everywhere propagated the same spiritual maxims, and thus provided a wholesome antidote to the baneful spirit of the age. But the very existence of the antidote bears witness how wide-spread was the poison which it sought to nullify, how greatly the mind of Christendom had broken away from the old landmarks of thought, and how rapidly it was sweeping onward to what threatened to cause the wreck of faith and philosophy together.

The actual state of the schools at the middle of the twelfth century may best be gathered from the description given by our own country man, John of Salisbury, of his own course of studies. He appears to have come to Paris for the first time in 1136, being then a youth of sixteen, and, like thousands of the same age, was launched into the world of the great capital, to complete his education under the many wise professors who were contending for popular favour. Here we catch a glimpse of the new system which was gradually establishing itself. Education was no longer given exclusively in cloistered schools, but in great cities, where the young aspirant after science,[356] instead of being sheltered under law and discipline, was cast abroad to shift for himself, and only required to attend the lectures of some licensed master. No doubt it was an excellent way of teaching him a knowledge of the world, but this had not hitherto been included in the branches of a noble youth’s early education. However, at sixteen John had to take care of himself in the great world of Paris, which exercised over him the fascination of which all were conscious who passed from the semi-barbarous isle of Britain to the brilliant capital, and beheld the gay vivacity of its citizens, the gravity of its religious ceremonials, the splendour and majesty of its many churches, and the busy life of its schools.[163] “Happy banishment,” wrote the young scholar, “that is permitted here to find a home!” His first care was to choose what Professor he would attend. It was just the time when Abelard’s fame was at its greatest height, and the English youth was naturally enough led to join the crowds that thronged the school of St. Geneviève. His first impression was one of delight, but soon his English good sense revolted at the shallowness which he detected under the showy outside, while the contemptuous neglect with which Abelard was wont to treat the ancient learning, was unendurable in the eyes of one who, young as he was, already had a thoroughly-formed taste for the classics. So bidding adieu to St. Geneviève, he placed himself under the two English masters, Robert de Mélun and William de Conches; by the first of whom he was initiated into the art of logic. He praises the disinterestedness shown by Robert, who, in his conduct as Professor, despised worldly gain and sought only the benefit of his scholars. Robert afterwards became Bishop of Hereford, and in that capacity acquired a very unenviable notoriety as one of the chief opponents of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Under William de Conches, John next passed three years with very great profit, studying grammar, which was then understood to include the explanation of good authors. He never regretted the time he devoted to this study. William was a disciple of the old school, a stout champion of the liberal arts, and warmly opposed to the new system introduced by Abelard. He liked to exercise his pupils in prose and verse, and required not only good prosody, but also good sense from his scholars. It was doubtless a fine thing to hear the warm-hearted, testy Englishman speak of the schools in which he had been brought up half a century ago, when boys were taught to behave like boys, and to listen to their masters in silence. Things were much altered now; and it was[357] no longer the custom to follow the wholesome rule which Pythagoras taught his disciples, namely, to listen in silence for seven years, and only begin to ask questions in the eighth. On the contrary, these new scholars would come into your school with a supercilious air, and propose you their doubts and quibbles before they were well seated. They seemed to fancy that they knew everything when they had followed the schools for a year, and as if their business was to instruct their masters by their amazingly clever questions. On all these abuses Master William was wont to expend his honest indignation, but he certainly could not complain that John of Salisbury exhibited any of these marks of reprobation. Far from seeming to think he knew everything after a year’s study, John, after spending twelve years in the schools, regarded himself as still a learner. After his three years of grammar, he spent seven years more in successive courses of rhetoric, mathematics, and theology. Among the masters whose lectures he attended were Robert Pullus, or Pulleyne, and Gilbert de la Poiree. The latter afterwards became Bishop of Poitiers, in which dignity he was accused of teaching certain heterodox opinions on the Holy Trinity, which were condemned at the Council of Rheims, in 1148. His errors, like those of Abelard, appear to have arisen out of an abuse of that scholastic method of argumentation so popular among the professors of the time, and which too often proved dangerous weapons in the hands of men whose theological studies by no means kept pace with the cultivation of dialectics. Robert Pullus, the English master of theology, and restorer of sacred studies at Oxford, was a man of far more solid learning. “He knew,” says his great disciple, “how to be wise with sobriety.” The soundness of his doctrine was evinced by his “Sum of Theology,” and his disinterestedness, by his refusal of a bishopric offered him by Henry I. Robert declined abandoning a life of study for the precarious honours of a dignity which exposed its owner to the almost certain contingency of a struggle with the crown. He desired nothing more honourable than the life of a master; nevertheless, he was unable to avoid the dignities thrust on him by Celestine II., who created him cardinal and chancellor of the Roman Church.

During the whole time of his residence at Paris, John of Salisbury enjoyed a scholar’s honourable state of poverty, and supported himself by giving lessons to younger students, much after the fashion of a modern college tutor. His tutorship was, however, by no means a very profitable post, and supplied him with little beyond the bare[358] necessaries of life. Happily, however, the threadbare gown of the poor scholar was still regarded with respect, and his humble circumstances did not prevent him from forming many valuable friendships. Among his friends he numbered the two great masters Adam du Petit Pont, and Richard l’Évêque, the former of whom he describes as a man of undoubted learning, but so vain that he wrapped up his knowledge in a cloud of obscurity, and made himself unintelligible for the sake of appearing profound, saying to those who reproached him with this weakness, that were he only to teach in the common way, he should get no one to attend his lectures. Richard was a man of a very different temper; his pride lay rather in concealing what he knew, than in displaying it; he cared nothing at all for worldly applause, and was deemed as holy in life as he was erudite. At first he followed the excellent method of Bernard of Chartres, but by degrees he yielded to the fashion of the times, and giving up the teaching of grammar and rhetoric, confined himself entirely to lecturing on dialectics.

To these friends of John of Salisbury we must add the name of a third, an Englishman like himself, and one of Anglo-Saxon blood. He was a young law-student, who, if inferior to many of his companions in scholastic acquirements, made up for the deficiency by the brilliancy of his native gifts, and those personal graces which add so largely to the power of wit or eloquence. The large grey eyes, thin aquiline nose, and beautiful countenance, so calm, yet with a glance so full of fire, are all known to us; for if the features of St. Thomas à Becket have not been preserved chiselled in marble, they have yet been made familiar to us by the description of those who laid up in their hearts the memory of that beloved countenance. It bore the unmistakable impress of genius, and of that sensitive organisation with which genius is so frequently accompanied. But his great natural gifts had received very imperfect culture in the schools of Merton and those of the English metropolis. At Paris his studies were almost exclusively confined to law, and he afterwards regretted that he had not devoted more time during his academic career to sacred learning. The intimacy which sprang up between him and John of Salisbury was not, therefore, based on any similarity in their literary tastes. The letters of both evince a striking difference in their intellectual training; those of St. Thomas, powerful in matter, are yet abrupt, harsh, and technical in style—those of his friend, on the other hand, are conveyed in classic phraseology, and[359] betray the careful polish, not always free from affectation, of one who has laboriously formed himself on ancient models. In fact, John of Salisbury was, beyond dispute, the first scholar of his day, and naturally enough bewailed the revolution which he witnessed taking place in the schools. The science of reasoning was now affirmed by its advocates to contain the pith of all philosophy. Rhetoric was regarded by them as altogether unnecessary, because eloquence being a gift of nature, could not be acquired by art. Those who possessed the gift needed no study of ancient authors to infuse it into them; and those who did not possess it, would study them to no purpose. The art of logic to such men was all in all, and such was the eagerness with which they indulged their taste for disputation, that some spent their whole days in argument, and carried on their tiresome wrangling in the very streets. And what arguments they were! They examined seriously and at alarming length the weighty question, whether a pig who is driven by a man to be sold at the market, is held by the man, or by the cord fastened round his leg; and whether one who buys a cloak can be held to have purchased also the hood fastened to the cloak. As two negatives are equal to one affirmative, professors were accustomed to introduce into their arguments such a number of negatives, that in order to reckon them up, and see in what sense their propositions were to be understood, the hearers had recourse to the device of dropping a bean at each negative, and reckoning up the sum total at the end of the lecture. John, in his writings, complains of all these extravagancies, and of the tiresome way in which these choppers of logic would dispute over a tuft of wool, and instantly contradict any man who opened his lips in their presence. Nor did he cease lamenting over the neglect of good literature, which was resulting from the predominance given in the schools to logical disputation. He specially attacks one of the leading scholastics whom he does not name, but speaks of him under the sobriquet of “Cornificius;”[164] and those who showed themselves hostile to the claims of grammar and rhetoric are denominated by him “Cornificians.” In spite of all his wit and eloquence, the Cornificians won the day. The study of polite literature fell into neglect, and the intellectual power of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was turned into another channel—a channel which no doubt gave rise to a good deal of barbarous Latinity, but whence was to issue, in process of time, something more precious[360] than mere literary elegance, the scholastic philosophy of the Church.

The caustic strictures of John of Salisbury were not directed against that system of philosophy, which as yet had no existence,[165] but against the error which put forth the exercise of sophistical argumentation as itself the sum of all philosophy, and the danger which he saw too well must arise from the deification of human reason. For the scholastic method, to which the theology of the Church stands so deeply indebted, is not to be confounded with the scholasticism which was rampant in the days of Abelard. The errors and sophistries of the professors of his day, arising as they did out of an extravagant adherence to the uncorrected teaching of Aristotle, were from the first discerned and condemned by the ecclesiastical authorities; and by none were they more firmly opposed than by St. Bernard, who saw to what fatal results the unrestrained culture of human reason, under the guidance of a pagan master, must necessarily lead. We shall see further on how jealously the Church continued to regard the study of Aristotle, and in what way she sought to check the evils flowing from it to the schools, up to the time when his philosophy was finally adapted to the service of the faith by the labours of St. Thomas.

In the midst of his studies, his tutorships, and his passages of arms with the Cornificians, twelve years slipped away, at the end of which time John of Salisbury found himself possessed of a vast fund of erudition[166] and an empty purse. The latter circumstance was not one which greatly disquieted him, for his theory was that the keys which opened the door of philosophy were not of gold, but consisted of poverty, humility, silence, and a quiet life, together with that detachment from family and worldly ties which is best found in a foreign land.[167] So little had he of the spirit of worldly ambition, that when in 1148 Peter des Celles, abbot of Moutier des Celles, offered him a chaplaincy in his monastery, he gladly accepted a post, which, however humble, gave him at least the leisure and the means to study. He remained in this retreat for the space of three years. Peter des Celles was one of the most remarkable men of his time,[361] and has made himself best known by his epistles; for, like most of the literary personages of the twelfth century, he was a great letter writer. He had received his education in the monastic school of St. Martin des Champs, and does not seem to have been one whit behind the more fashionable students of Paris. “I had,” he writes, “an insatiable appetite for learning; my eyes were never tired of beholding books, or my ears of listening to them; yet with all my ardour, God was always the beginning, centre, and end of all my studies. They had but Him for their object, though indeed I studied everything, even law, without prejudice, however, to the duties of my state, attendance on the Divine Office, and my accustomed prayers.” This worthy inheritor of the genuine monastic spirit acted the part of a true father to our English scholar, who at last, through the favour of St. Bernard, obtained the post of secretary to Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose household he renewed his acquaintance with two of his former fellow-students, Peter de Blois, and Thomas à Becket. Peter de Blois had been one of his pupils; a man of versatile talent, who had studied first at Tours, then at Paris, and lastly at Bologna, and had seen something of half the courts of Europe. He was equally skilled in law, medicine, and theology, but it is by his epistles that he is chiefly known, and his ready and somewhat gossiping pen has left us graphic sketches of the manners and customs of his time. He was, in fact, the Horace Walpole of the twelfth century, curious, fluent, and volatile. Henry II. made him archdeacon, first of Bath, and then of London, and often employed him as secretary, so that he had excellent opportunities for studying the court of our first Plantagenet sovereign, which he describes in a sufficiently amusing manner. He assures us that Henry’s court, from the conversation of learned men and the discussion of questions, was a daily school. The king, he says, is deeply versed in literature, and has more gifts of mind and body than he can so much as enumerate; nevertheless, he lets out the ugly fact that it is best not to go too near him when he is out of humour, as he is then more of a lion than a lamb, and is quite as likely as not to tear out your eyes. How any man of letters can ever attach himself to a court life is more than he can understand; and how any man, lettered or unlettered, could be brought to endure the daily miseries he describes, such as the eating of “mouldy bread and stale fish, wine that can only be drunk with the eyes shut, lodgings for which pigs would be ashamed to quarrel,” and days spent “without[362] order, plan, or moderation of any kind,” must seem equally incomprehensible to his readers. But he has something more cheering to say of the household of Archbishop Theobald. It is crowded with learned men, who spend their time between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and examining causes. All the knotty questions of the kingdom are referred to them, and discussed in the common hall; and there is no sort of jealousy or contention, but the youngest present is listened to with courtesy and attention. In these letters Peter de Blois has a good deal to say On the subject of education. He tells us that in his youth he was trained, not in idle fables, but solid literature, and names Livy, Quintius Curtius, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Josephus among the books then most commonly used in schools. He regards the new scholasticism with undisguised contempt: it is good, he says, neither at home nor abroad, neither in the church, the cloister, the camp, the court, or the bar. In fact, in his literary tastes he showed himself a worthy disciple of John of Salisbury.

Meanwhile the latter attached himself to the rising fortunes of St. Thomas, and dedicated to him, when chancellor, his two great works, the Polycraticon and the Metalogicon, the last of which is a formal apology for humane letters, and is considered to display an amount of learning and literary elegance far exceeding anything which had been produced since the days of Boëthius. When St. Thomas became primate, his friend continued to retain the office he had held under his predecessor, and never spared the archbishop the benefit of his frank and fearless advice. Among other things, he took on him to give him some directions with regard to his studies which are worth quoting, as showing the view taken at that time by spiritual men, of the danger resulting from an excessive application to law and logic. “My counsel is,” he says, “that you put off some of your other occupations, in order to give your whole mind to prayer. Laws and canons are all very well, but believe me, they nourish curiosity more than devotion.... Who ever rose from the study of law with a sentiment of compunction in his heart? Nay, I will say more, the exercises of the schools often increase knowledge till a man is puffed up with it, but they rarely inflame devotion. I would far rather that you meditated on the Psalms or read the ‘Morals of St. Gregory,’ than that you were learned in philosophy, after the fashion of the scholastics.” St. Thomas was not slow in taking his friend’s advice, and both at Canterbury and Pontigny often spent whole nights in the study of the Scriptures,[363] and was wont always to carry a few pages in the loose sleeve of his tunic, that he might have them at hand whenever he found a leisure moment for reading.

We need not pursue further the history of John of Salisbury. The fidelity with which he adhered to the cause of St. Thomas exposed him to no small loss and personal danger, and after the martyrdom of the saint he had to fly from England, and taking refuge in France, became Bishop of Chartres in 1176, his election being entirely due to his personal merits, and the honour with which the French clergy regarded one who had been the companion of the Blessed Martyr. But before concluding our notice of the Parisian masters, it remains for us to name the three Peters, as they are called, who all illustrated the schools about the same period. The first was Peter Comestor, or the Eater—so called from his habit of devouring books—a very famous personage in his day, who became chancellor of Paris in 1164, but resigned all his dignities to put on the habit of the canons of St. Victor’s. His Historia Scholastica, or Epitome of Sacred History, was so much esteemed in the twelfth century, that portions of it were read in the churches. A namesake of his, called Peter the Chanter, was almost of equal fame. He too, after filling the eye of the public for several years, withdrew from their applause, and became a simple religious in the Abbey of Long-Pont, where he died in 1197.

Both were men of tried virtue, and showed themselves hostile to the sophists of the day, whose wranglings they declared to be opposed to the simplicity of the Gospel. But more renowned than either was the Italian scholar, Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, as he was called, and the real Father and founder of scholastic theology. He commenced his study of civil law at Bologna, and thence passed on to Paris, where he was admitted among the canons of St. Victor’s, and afterwards taught for some years in the cathedral school. In 1159 he became bishop of Paris, through the influence of his royal pupil, prince Philip, brother to the reigning king, Louis the Young. The king offered the bishopric to his brother, who was educated for the ecclesiastical state, but he nobly refused it in favour of his master. Peter Lombard’s great work was the celebrated Book of Sentences, consisting of a number of passages selected from the works of the fathers, and commented on in such a manner as to present the student with a body of theological doctrines systematically arranged. The convenience of[364] finding every point of theology treated of in a precise and methodical order, and within the compass of a single volume, was speedily recognised, and the Book of the Sentences soon became the favourite text-book used in the schools, both for the lectures of the masters and the private study of their disciples. Hence the title of Sententiarus, which came to be applied to those who taught or studied the Sentences. Notwithstanding the immense popularity obtained by this work, it is said to contain several important omissions, and even some theological errors, one of which was formerly condemned by Pope Alexander III. Its importance is derived from the circumstance of its being the first attempt to reduce theology to a compact and orderly scientific system; and from this period we date the real rise of the science of scholastic theology.

It will have been observed that in what has been said up to this time of the schools of Paris, they have not been designated by the title of a university. For, in fact, as yet these schools had no claim to be regarded as a corporate body; they were accidents rather than an institution, and it was only gradually that they acquired a corporate character, and became possessed of a government, a head, and a body of laws and privileges. This change was effected by no sudden act of royal or ecclesiastical legislation; it developed itself insensibly but of the very necessity of the case. The immense number of masters and pupils who flocked to the capital, gave rise to disorders, which obliged the superiors of the different schools to unite together and agree to certain rules of common discipline.

Thus in 1195 we find a certain John, abbot of St. Albans, associated to the “body of elect masters.” Some years before, in the very thick of the quarrel between Henry II. and St. Thomas, occurs the first notice of that division of the scholars into nations or provinces, which formed one of the peculiarities of the university. Henry offered to choose as arbiters either the peers of France, the French clergy, or the heads of the different provinces in the school of Paris. We find also certain laws, or at least established customs having the force of laws, respecting the method to be observed in granting licenses for the opening of a school. It was the rule in all dioceses that no one could open a school without permission from the cathedral scholasticus, or chancellor of the diocese, who was bound to grant such licenses to all who were capable. Pope Alexander III., who showed a lively interest in everything that concerned the encouragement of education, ordered that such licenses[365] should be granted gratuitously, but he afterwards permitted the Chancellor of Paris, who was at that time Peter Comestor, to exact a certain fine. It appears, also, that in Paris the chancellor or scholasticus of St. Geneviève shared this right with the chancellor of Notre Dame. There were also other laws, such as those which prohibited religious from teaching or studying in the schools of law or medicine. The two faculties, as they were called, of arts and theology, which formed the basis of the university, appear to have been already distinguished. Certain privileges, too, were already enjoyed by the students. They were beginning to claim the right of being tried only by the ecclesiastical tribunals, and this right was granted to them in 1194 by a decree of Celestine III. Alexander III. permitted clerics to retain their benefices whilst teaching or studying at Paris. Finally, in the year 1200, we find the existence of the university as a corporate body, governed by a head, acknowledged in the diploma of Philip Augustus, wherein, having confirmed the exemption of the scholars from the secular courts, he decreed that the head of the studies should, in particular, be incapable of arrest or punishment from the secular judge, and obliged every provost of the city on his entrance into office to swear to the observance of this decree.

From this time, therefore, we may properly date the formal recognition of the university of Paris, and passing over the obscurities in which its earlier commencements are involved, shall proceed to present our readers with a sketch of that institution as it existed in the palmy days of the thirteenth century.

The modern visitor to Paris who finds his way to that portion of the city lying on the southern bank of the river, which still bears the name of the Quartier de l’Université, sees himself surrounded by buildings, many of which bear unmistakably the character of their original destination. He stands, in fact, amid the débris of the old university of Paris, the schools and colleges of which were clustered for the most part about the Mont St. Geneviève, and occupied an entire suburb, which was first enclosed within the city walls by Philip Augustus. That monarch, passionately desirous to increase the splendour of his capital, and at the same time to afford larger space for the accommodation of the crowds of students, whose numbers are said to have exceeded those of the citizens themselves, added a large district, which in the year 1200 presented a fair expanse of fields and vineyards, interspersed with churches, houses, and farms, but in which you would vainly have sought for any of those magnificent and semi-monastic structures which we are accustomed to associate with the idea of a university. Colleges, in fact, had as yet no existence at Paris, and the university consisted of an assemblage, not of stately buildings, but of masters and scholars gathered out of every European land.

It is no easy matter to convey an idea of the enthusiasm with which the Paris schools were regarded at the beginning of the thirteenth century. No one, whatever might be his country, could pretend to any consideration who had not studied there in his youth; if you met a priest or doctor, whose skill in letters you desired to praise, it was enough to say, “one would think he had passed his whole life in Paris.” It was, to use the expression of[367] Gregory IX., the Cariath-sepher, or city of letters,[168] which drew to itself the intellectual wealth of Christendom. “Whatever a nation has that is most precious,” writes William of Brittany, the chaplain of Philip Augustus, in his poem of the Philipide, “whatever a people has most famous, all the treasures of science and all the riches of the earth; lessons of wisdom, the glory of letters, nobility of thought, refinement of manners, all this is to be found in Paris.” Others declared, in yet more pompous language, that neither Egypt nor Athens could be compared to the modern capital, which was, they said, the very fountain-head of wisdom, the tree of life in the midst of the terrestrial paradise, the torch of the house of the Lord. The exile who had once tasted of its delights no longer regretted his banishment from his own land; and, in truth, the beauty of the city, its light elastic atmosphere, the grace and gaiety of its inhabitants, and the society of all that was most choice in wit and learning, rendered it no less fascinating a residence in the thirteenth century as the capital of learning than it has since become as the metropolis of fashion.

To these attractions were added the advantages which the Parisian students enjoyed in virtue of their privileges. I have already spoken of the diploma granted by Philip Augustus, and its provisions were greatly enlarged by subsequent monarchs. Philip le Bel ordered that the goods of students should never be seized for debt, and they were also exempt from taxes. If a French scholar travelled, all farmers were obliged to supply him with horses at a reasonable rate of hire. Artisans were not allowed to annoy him with unpleasant odours or noises, and on complaint being made of such nuisances, they had to remove themselves out of his neighbourhood. The rights of citizenship were likewise enjoyed by the members of all the French universities, and in those days this involved many important exemptions. Scholarship was, in short, regarded as an honourable profession, something which almost conferred on its possessor a patent of nobility; the new master of arts had lighted flambeaux carried before him in the public streets, and the conferring of a doctor’s degree was an event which caused as much stir as the dubbing of a knight. Nay, in those days, so permeated with the romantic spirit of chivalry, scholars were not unfrequently spoken of as “the knights of science,” and the disputation at which some youthful aspirant contended for the doctor’s cap was regarded as the intellectual tournament.

[368]

Yet, there was another side to this brilliant picture, and one plainly discerned by those whose calmer judgment would not suffer itself to be deceived as to the perils which awaited so many young and ardent minds, exposed without restraint or guidance to the manifold temptations, both moral and intellectual, that awaited them in that busy throng. “O Paris!” exclaims Peter of the Cells, in a letter to one of his monks who had been sent thither to study, “resort of every vice, source of every disorder, thou dart of hell; how dost thou pierce the heart of the unwary!” John, the young monk whom he addresses, had, it would seem, deplored the new scenes amid which he found himself as painfully out of harmony with his monastic training. “Who but yourself,” replies the abbot, “would not reckon this Paris to be a very Eden, a land of first-fruits and flowers? Yet you have spoken truly, though in jest, for the place which is richest in bodily pleasures miserably enslaves the soul. So, at least, thinks my John, and rightly therefore does he call it a place of exile. May you always so esteem it, and hasten home to your true country, where in the book of life you will find, not figures and elements, but Divinity and Truth itself. O happy school of Christ! where He teaches our heart with the word of power, where the book is not purchased nor the Master paid. There life avails more than learning, and simplicity than science. There none are refuted save those who are for ever rejected; and one word of final judgment, Ite or Venite, decides all questions and all cavils for ever. Would that men would apply themselves to these studies rather than to so many vain discourses; they would find more abundant fruit and more availing honour.”

In these words we see the distrust with which the representatives of the old learning regarded the rising university system, contrasting as it did so strangely with the claustral discipline in which they had themselves been reared. Nor can it be denied that the fair outside of the great city concealed a monstrous mass of deformity. James de Vitry, who had himself been a student, gives a frightful picture of the vices which were fostered in a society drawn from every rank and every country, and associated together without moral discipline of any kind, at an age when the passions were least subject to restraint. The very sense of moral rectitude, he says, seems to have been lost. A profuse extravagance was encouraged by the example of the more wealthy students, and those who lived frugally, or practised piety, were ridiculed as misers and hypocrites. There was[369] at that time no provision for the accommodation of the students in halls or hospices; they lodged in the houses of the citizens wherever they could secure the cheapest entertainment. Not unfrequently the very schools of the masters were held in the upper story of some house, the groundfloor of which was the resort of the most abandoned characters.[169] There was no common table; but the students dined at taverns where they often associated with the worst companions, and indulged in the lowest excesses, and the jealousy between “town and gown” continually broke out in disgraceful quarrels, terminating not unfrequently in bloodshed. As most of those engaged in these affrays were clerics, and as the striking of a cleric brought on the guilty party the sentence of excommunication, the results of these disorders were exceedingly grave. It became necessary to grant extraordinary powers to the university officers, and to prohibit the scholars from bearing arms, a prohibition grounded on the atrocious crimes with which they stood charged; and which at one time threatened to bring about the total extinction of the university. For the magistrates having proceeded to revenge a certain riot which had arisen out of a tavern quarrel, by ill-judged acts of severity, both masters and scholars resolved to abandon the city; nor did they return till the wise and timely interference of Pope Gregory IX. brought about a reconciliation between the civil and academic authorities.

The university, in fact, presented the spectacle, at that time new in Christendom, of a system of education which aimed at informing the intellect without disciplining the soul. Its work was done in the lecture room, where alone the master exercised any authority, and the only tie existing between him and his disciples was the salary paid by one party and received by the other. In addition to the dangers incident to this state of uncontrolled liberty, were the more subtle temptations to pride and presumption which beset a man in the schools. Mere youths were sometimes seen promoted to the professor’s chair, and seeking to win a passing popularity by the promulgation of some new extravagance, an abuse which led to the passing of an ordinance forbidding any one to teach Theology before he had attained the age of twenty-five. But the teaching of the professors was influenced by other peculiarities in their position. “The university doctors,” says Fleury, “were doctors, and they were nothing more. Exclusively engaged with theoretic views, they had[370] leisure to write at great length on the most frivolous questions; and plentiful occasions were thus ministered of quarrel and dispute.” And he proceeds to notice the contrast between such a system and that of earlier ages, when the teachers of the Church were for the most part bishops, engaged in the duties of their pastoral charge, and able to support their doctrines with the weight of practical experience. The character of the new professors is drawn severely enough in the curious poem of Architrenius,[170] which was written towards the close of the twelfth century by John de Hauteville, an English monk of St. Albans. Architrenius, the hero, is supposed to travel through the world, trying various states and conditions, and finding vanity and emptiness in all of them; at last he comes to Paris, and devotes a whole book to describing the vanity of the masters, and the miseries of their disciples. He depicts the negligent and squalid appearance of the poor scholars, their ragged dress, uncombed hair, bad lodging and hard beds. After spending half the night in study, he says, they are roused at daybreak and forced to hurry to the school, where the master treats them rudely, and where they have to endure the mortification of seeing others of less merit rewarded, and themselves passed over with neglect. He goes on to describe the hill of presumption which he peoples with doctors and scholastics, gifted with far less learning than conceit, and concludes, that the schools are as full of vanity and disappointment as the rest of the world.

The sufferings of the poor scholars, which Architrenius so graphically describes, were destined, however, to bring about a most beneficial change in the university system, by being the chief occasion of the foundation of hospices and colleges, the multiplication of which, and their organisation under regular discipline, in time applied a remedy to the worst of the existing evils. From a very early date, the relief and support of poor scholars had been recognised as a meritorious work of charity; it formed one of the favourite devotions of the two kings, Robert the Pious and Lewis the Young, the former of whom attempted something in the shape of a hospital to receive them. How miserable their condition was, we may gather from the benefaction of the good knight Jocius de Londonne, who, returning from the Holy Land in 1171, found some poor scholars miserably lodged in the Hôtel-Dieu, and gave money to provide[371] them with beds, and a small monthly alms, on condition of their carrying the Cross and Holy-water at the funeral of those who died in the hospital, and repeating the Penitential Psalms for the repose of their souls. The earliest establishment actually made for their reception appears to have been the Hospice of St. Thomas of Canterbury, founded in the twelfth century by Robert Dreux. It embraced a number of other charitable works, and was administered by canons who were under religious vows, the scholars being governed by a provost of their own. Other colleges gradually arose, some for scholars of particular nations, as those of the Danes and Swedes; others for separate dioceses. One of the earliest foundations was the College of Constantinople, founded by Baldwin of Flanders, shortly after the taking of Constantinople by the Latins, for the education of young Greeks in the orthodox faith. Chapels were opened in connection with these colleges so early as 1248, in which year we find Pope Innocent IV. granting permission for such a chapel to be attached to the college des Bons Enfants. But the collegiate system became more thoroughly established by the influence of the Religious Orders, who very soon found themselves obliged to open religious houses in connection with the university, for the education of their own students. These houses of studies afforded the young religious the regular discipline of the old monastic schools, combined with the advantages of university education; and their example made it a necessity to provide similar protection for the secular students.

The Trinitarian Order, founded by one of the most illustrious of the Parisian doctors, and largely recruited from the ranks of his co-professors, was naturally the first to associate itself to the university, out of whose bosom it had sprung; and so early as the year 1209, we find the friars in possession of the Church of St. Maturin, which was ordinarily used by the university as their place of assembly. Next to them came the Dominicans and Franciscans, the former of whom owed their establishment in Paris to the good will of the university authorities, who made over to them certain claims they possessed on the Hospital of St. James, which had been granted to the new comers by the good doctor, John of St. Quentin. A little later, the College of the Bernardines was founded by Stephen of Lexington, an Englishman who had been a pupil of St. Edmund, and who in 1242 became abbot of Clairvaux. Strictly contemplative as was the rule of the Cistercians, it did not exclude the cultivation of[372] sacred studies. It aimed rather at restoring monastic life to the ancient Benedictine type, in which, as we have seen, the homely labours of husbandry were mingled with those of the scriptorium. The Cistercians, whilst they laboured to bring back religious poverty and simplicity into the cloister, always showed themselves hearty encouragers of learning. St. Stephen Harding had himself set on foot that great copy of the Bible, long preserved at Citeaux, which was corrected with the utmost precision after being collated with a vast number of manuscripts, several learned Jews being consulted by the abbot on the Hebrew text. To procure a correct version of the Gregorian Antiphonary, he sent all the way to Metz, trusting to obtain a sight of the copy laid up there by Charlemagne. The library at Citeaux was rich in the works of the Fathers, though the outside of the books exhibited nothing of that costly ornament on which the skill of monastic binders and jewellers was elsewhere expended. The early Cistercians were connected very closely with some of the best Paris scholars, such as William of Champeaux, the friend of St. Stephen, and after his elevation to the episcopate, the diocesan of St Bernard. In England their ranks had been largely recruited from the University of Oxford, and their monastery of Rievaux was famous at home and abroad for its school of learning. Stephen of Lexington was not, therefore, departing from the traditions of his order in considering that the maintenance of sacred studies was a necessity of the times. Two years after his election he obtained permission from Pope Innocent IV. to begin the erection of a college at Paris for the young monks of his order; but the proposal was very unfavourably received by the other Benedictine houses who saw in it the break-up of the old monastic system of studies. The conservative spirit which was roused among them is discernible in the complaints of Matthew Paris, who laments over the contempt with which a proud world is beginning to regard the old Benedictine monks. “This new institution of colleges,” he says, “is not, that we can see, derived from the rule of St. Benedict; on the contrary, we read that he quitted the schools to retire into the desert.”

Stephen, however, persevered in his design; he was aware that the contempt with which the monks were so frequently treated, both by the secular doctors and the new orders of friars, was grounded on the charge of their illiteracy, and he therefore believed it essential to provide his monks with better means of education than, under the altered state of things, they were now able to command in their[373] claustral schools. His design was crowned with perfect success. Not only did the College of the Bernardines become illustrious for its good scholarship, but the conduct of its religious shed a good odour of edification over the whole university, and ten years after its foundation, Matthew Paris himself bore honourable witness to the holy example of the monks, which, he said, “gave pleasure to God and man.” For Stephen there was reserved the reward of disgrace and humiliation. The Chapter-General of Citeaux deposed him from his office in 1255, instigated, says Matthew Paris, by envy for the superior merits of an Englishman. Whatever were the cause of his disgrace, it gave him an opportunity of proving that his adoption of what had seemed an innovation on established customs, sprang out of no defect in the religious spirit. He refused to accept of the protection offered him by the Pope, in favour of which he might have been reinstated in his dignity, and preferred spending the rest of his days as a private religious, entirely occupied with his own sanctification.

The example of the Bernardines was quickly followed by other religious orders. The Carmelites took up their station at the foot of Mt. St. Geneviève, the Augustinians in the Quartier Montmartre. The old Benedictines, or Black Monks, had their college near the abbey of St. Germain, and the Carthusians received from St. Louis a grant of the royal Chateau de Vauverd. The monks of the latter order were indeed prohibited by their rule from attending in the schools, but the object of their establishment so near the capital is expressly stated to have been, that they might profit by the salutary streams of doctrine which flowed forth from the city of letters. To these must be added the monks of Cluny and Marmoutier, the former of whom provided their students with lecturers within their own cloisters; and a new Institute originally founded by four doctors of theology, who in 1201 gave up their academic honours and pursuits, and, smitten with that desire of poverty and obscurity which not unfrequently overtakes men in the very zenith of their popularity and success, retired to a wild valley in the diocese of Langres, and assumed the religious habit of the Canons Regular of St. Victor. Here they were soon joined by other professors and scholars, till their numbers rendered it impossible for them to find subsistence in the desolate wildness they had chosen, exposed to the fury of the mountain torrents, and the falling of precipitous rocks. They, therefore, removed in 1224 to a more fertile valley, which[374] obtained the name of the Val d’Ecoliers, a title afterwards bestowed on the new order itself. Five years later they opened a house of studies in Paris, and the Church of St. Catherine was built for them at the charge of a certain knight, in fulfilment of a vow he had taken at the battle of Bouvines, the young St. Louis laying the first stone with his own hand.

The bishops were not slow to follow the example set them by the monastics; and indeed they, more than others, felt the necessity of providing in some way or other for the training of their clerks. It was vain to think of competing with the university in the cathedral schools; and, on the other hand, what was to be hoped from a secular clergy, formed in no higher school of discipline than that which James of Vitry has described? Colleges, therefore, where the young clerics might be reared in ecclesiastical habits, were, strictly speaking, essential; and, accordingly, we find them established for the clergy of different dioceses, as those of Laon, Narbonne, and Bayeux. In these the scholars lived in common, celebrated the Divine Office, had appointed hours of study and recreation, and were governed and watched over by regents. In fact, says Fleury, “they were so many little seminaries;” differing in many respects, and doubtless, far inferior to those old ecclesiastical schools which had been established in the bishop’s house, wherein the young clerks grew up under the eye, and were trained by the lips of their chief pastor; yet still schools of discipline, the good results of which were so apparent that, erelong, every country which followed the Latin rite adopted the system which had begun in France and Italy. The most famous of all the secular colleges was that of the Sorbonne, the founder of which, Robert of Sorbonne, was chaplain to St. Louis. Crevier calls it the greatest ornament of the university, and from very humble beginnings it came at last to be regarded as the first theological school in the Christian world. In it were afterwards founded no fewer than seven Chairs of Theology; namely, those of the Reader, of Contemplative, and Positive Theology, of the Holy Scriptures, of Casuistry, of Controversial Divinity, and of the Interpretation of the Hebrew Text.

Gradually, but surely, the university freed itself from the chaotic disorder of its first beginnings, and assumed the form of a great institution, governed by regular laws and invested with vast powers and privileges. At the period of its complete development, it was composed of seven companies; namely, the Faculties of Theology,[375] Law, and Medicine, and the four nations of France, Picardy, Normandy, and England. These four nations together formed the Faculty of Arts, but each had a separate vote in the affairs of the university. The Rector was chosen by the nations out of the Faculty of Arts, the other faculties being governed by their deans.

An immense benefit was conferred on the University by Innocent III., who had himself studied at Paris at a time when the want of discipline was most severely felt. He was the first to supply his Alma Mater with a body of academic statutes; which were promulgated in 1215 by his legate, Robert de Courçon, an Englishman by birth, and a man of piety and learning. They embraced the whole discipline of the schools, regulating the conditions on which everyone was to be admitted to teach, the books that were to be read and those that were prohibited. No one was to profess arts before the age of twenty-one, or without having previously studied for six years under some approved master. He must bear a good reputation, and before commencing his lectures, was to undergo an examination according to certain rules. The books he was to read were to be the “Dialectics” and “Topics” of Aristotle, Priscian, and certain others, the authors of which are not named, but which seem to have been well-known popular treatises on philosophy, rhetoric, grammar, and mathematics. The physics and metaphysics of Aristotle were forbidden, together with the writings of certain heretics, such as Amauri de Bene, who had drawn their errors from the teaching of the Greek Philosopher.[171]

To teach Theology, the statutes required that a man should be at least thirty-five years of age, and that he should have studied under some approved master. We see here the germ of the system of graduation, which was perfected before the close of the century. The rule, as then established, was for a bachelor to begin by explaining the Sentences in the school of some doctor for the space of a year. At the end of that time he was presented to the Chancellor of the Cathedral of Paris, and if, on examination, he was judged worthy, he received a license and became licentiate, until he was received as doctor, when he opened a school of his own, in which he explained the Sentences for another year. At the end of that time he was allowed to receive some bachelor under him. The whole doctor’s course lasted three years; nor could any one take a degree unless he had taught according to these regulations. It was[376] supposed that before beginning his theological studies the doctor must have passed through his course of arts, the various stages in which were distinguished by the names of grammar, poetry, philosophy, &c., in each of which, according to the theory of the ancient schools, a student had to study successively for an appointed time. The plan was excellent, says Fleury, had its execution been possible; but life was too short to allow of a man’s perfecting himself in every known branch of learning before entering on his theological studies. It implied that his whole life was to be spent in the schools; and, indeed, no inconsiderable portion of it was so spent, as we have seen in the case of John of Salisbury, whose academical career spread itself over the space of twelve years. But, in estimating the exact value of these statements, we must bear in mind that the university course at this time began at a very early age, and included those more elementary studies which occupy a schoolboy of our day for several years before his matriculation.

The statutes of Paris University, first promulgated by Innocent III., and enlarged under subsequent pontiffs, not only regulated all matters of study and discipline, but provided for the preservation of that religious element which must always find a place in any system of education sanctioned by the Church. The Christian schools, as we have seen, found their cradle in the monastic and episcopal seminaries, in which, as a matter of course, religious exercises were intermingled with intellectual ones, to a very large degree. The Catholic universities, in their complete form, adapted this system to their own needs, and required of their students daily attendance, not only in the lecture rooms, but also in the church or the collegiate chapel. The weekly “chapels” exacted from our Oxford and Cambridge students are fragments of the old rules, which, at Paris as in the English universities, required daily attendance at Mass and Vespers, and, at certain times also, at the Office of the Dead; and appointed public processions at different seasons of the year, and days when the public studies were suspended in order to give more time for the due celebration of feasts, and preparation for the reception of the Sacraments. If any reader be disposed to think that these demands on the time of the students must have proved an interruption to their studies, the fact is at once, and readily, admitted. But it may be suggested whether, in this interruption, there does not manifest itself a grand principle on which the Church acts wherever there is question of the exercise of the human intelligence. The problem[377] she had to resolve was, not how to convey the greatest possible amount of knowledge with the greatest possible saving of time; but rather, how to provide that a certain amount of intellectual labour should be gone through in such a way as not to interfere injuriously with the spiritual well-being of the soul. In cases where the intellect is brought into exercise and stimulated to extraordinary activity, there is danger lest what is in itself a wholesome and necessary exercise may become vitiated by a certain natural impetuosity, which disposes a man to pour himself out into the occupation in which he is engaged; an impetuosity which opens the door to the human spirit, and which brings in along with it a host of bad company, such as pride, envy, ambition, contention, and the like. If this be allowed, study, instead of being an instrument of our sanctification, degenerates into its enemy; and hence the object aimed at in the Catholic system has ever been to supply checks and safeguards to nature, and to sanctify intellectual labour by a large admixture of prayer. Among the monastic students the regular duties of religious life supplied these necessary checks, the “retinacula,” as they were called by Bede, who fully understood their value and importance; and the Catholic universities, to a certain degree, imitated the monastic system, by requiring fixed religious duties to be complied with by their students, as a part of their academic course. Nor need we suppose that these interruptions, so salutary in a spiritual sense, were at all injurious in an intellectual point of view. The discipline of the Church, by a beautiful harmony, provides for the well-being of our nature, at the very time that she mortifies it. Her rules of fasting and abstinence, when observed, often prove the best preservatives of health; and, in the same way, her checks on study were not always hindrances. The truest economy of time does not, obviously, consist in cramming the twelve hours of the day with excessive work, but in laying them out to the best advantage. It is possible to tax the mental powers beyond their strength, in which case nature revenges herself on those who violate her laws, and the mind itself weakens under the pressure of excessive labour. Could we compare the horarium of an Oxford or Paris student of the thirteenth century, with that of a modern Rugby schoolboy, and obtain an accurate statistical table, showing the proportion of exhausted brains to be found among an equal number of either class, it might appear that the Church legislated even for the mental well-being of her children when she interposed so often between them and their studies, by[378] requiring of them the fulfilment of solemn offices at stated times.

Of course, besides the principle above alluded to, there was the more manifest object of religious training, touching which I will merely quote the words of a former Rector of the Paris University, who wrote in anything but a religious age. “Religion,” says M. Rollin, in his treatise on “Education,” “should be the object of all our instructions; though not perpetually in our mouths, it should always be in our minds. Whoever examines the ancient statutes of the university which relate to masters and scholars, and takes notice of the prayers, solemnities, public processions, festivals, and days set apart for preparing for the Sacraments, may easily discover that the intention of their pious Mother is to consecrate and sanctify the studies of youth by religion, and that she would not carry them so long in her bosom were it not with the view of regenerating them to Jesus Christ. It is with this design that she requires that in every class, besides their other exercises of piety, the scholars should daily repeat certain sentences from Holy Scripture, and especially from the Gospels, that their other studies may be, as it were, seasoned with salt.” And he quotes passages from the ancient statutes, requiring that “the Divine Word be mingled with the eloquence of the pagans, as is fitting in Christian schools where Christ, the One Teacher of man, should not only be present, but preside.”

The very slight mention made in the statutes of Robert de Courçon of Rhetoric, as included in the course of arts, is the last which we shall meet with for a considerable space of time. The Bull of Gregory IX., published in 1231, and the statutes of the Regents of Arts, which appeared in 1254, make no reference to this study. The arts are there represented by philosophy alone, and there is no allusion to the cultivation of rhetoric, or the reading of the classical authors, which from this date became very generally neglected. As a natural consequence, grammar also lamentably decayed. It was, of course, not absolutely banished, inasmuch as a certain amount of it was essential for the pursuit of any studies at all; but it became altogether barbarised and debased. Those rules of syntax and prosody, over which the old monastic masters had so lovingly lingered, were totally neglected, and although Latin poems were still produced, their Latinity was full of false quantities and grammatical solecisms. The tenth century, with all its darkness, knew far more of humane letters than the thirteenth; nor was the[379] superiority of the earlier schools confined to a knowledge of the classics. The exaggerated prominence given to philosophy, or rather to dialectics, had caused a neglect of the Fathers, who were now chiefly studied in Sums and Sentences, which professed to present the student with the pith of theology in a single volume, forming the text-books on which the doctors delivered lectures and commentaries, coloured, naturally enough, with their own ideas. The original works of the Fathers, which had been the familiar study of the monastic students, appear at this time to have been little in request; and when St. Louis, on his return from Palestine, formed a plan for collecting a library of all the most useful and authentic ecclesiastical writings, he had to get copies made of St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and other Catholic doctors, from the codices stored up in remote monastic libraries; for in the schools of Paris they were not to be found. The extreme scholastics, indeed, were accustomed to speak of the Fathers as rhetoricians; writers, that is, who expressed themselves according to the rules of natural eloquence, a terrible delinquency in the eyes of the new illuminati, who considered that a man should display his science by loading his pages with the terms of logic—assertion, proof, major, minor, and corollary. The good king, however, whose taste was superior to that of most of his contemporaries, persevered in his noble enterprise, and at great pains and cost collected a library of the best Christian authors, in which he himself studied profoundly; liberally granting its use to others also. “He read the works of the Fathers, whose authority is established,” says his biographer, “more willingly than those of the new doctors;” and he gave as a reason for making new copies, in preference to buying up the old ones, that by this means he multiplied writings which he desired should be more widely known. He ordered that after his death this library should be divided among the three monasteries he had founded; those, namely, of the Franciscans, the Dominicans, and the Cistercians; and it was from this source that the Dominican, Vincent of Beauvais, who filled the office of tutor to the royal children, drew the materials of his famous work, The Great Mirror, of which we shall hereafter have occasion to speak.

If positive theology and the humanities began to be neglected, however, civil and canon law were better treated. The appearance in 1157 of the “Decretals” of Gratian, had been followed by the erection of a Chair of Jurisprudence at Bologna, and another at[380] Paris. The new branch of study had one advantage which commended it to popular favour: it led to substantial profits, and scholars were found not unwilling to let Horace and Cicero drop into disuse in favour of a science which paid so well for the time spent on its acquisition. The prodigious popularity of these new pursuits at length caused grave apprehensions lest the schools of arts and theology should in time be altogether deserted, and in 1220 Honorius III. found it necessary to forbid the further study of civil law at Paris. Crevier complains of this prohibition as injurious to the university, and it was, in fact, very generally eluded; although the formal permission to include civil law in the Faculty of Right was not granted till 1679. But in point of fact, the alarm which was felt was not without foundation. At Oxford such a revolution had been brought about by the introduction of the law lectures, that it was feared both arts and theology would be utterly neglected. What was worse, the law students aspired after and obtained benefices; and this abuse was encouraged by sovereigns, who found law prelates much more easy to deal with, and to accommodate to their own political views, than theologians. Innocent III. had, at last, to prohibit the admission to benefices of those who had only graduated in law, and insisted that all who aspired to ecclesiastical benefices should also pursue a regular course of theology. The tendency of the age, however, was manifest; the universities were falling more and more away from that idea of education which the old system had, in theory at any rate, professed to carry out; namely, the presenting of knowledge as a whole, its various parts arranged under the heads of the seven liberal arts, presided over by theology. Philosophy, according to this idea, included a knowledge of truth in all its various departments, and all the arts were but branches springing from one trunk, one of which could not be struck off without injuring the proportion and harmony of the whole.

The neglect of arts, and the excessive preponderance given to law studies and dialectics, made up a grave and momentous change in the whole theory of education, which was daily losing something more of that breadth and largeness which formed one of the chief features of education as proposed by the ancients, whose traditions had been accepted by the Christian schools. This seems a fair statement of the mischievous side of the change; but there is al