CORNELt UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES ITHACA, N. Y. 14583 JOHN M OLIN LIBRARY OLIN LIBRARY -CIRCULATION DATE DUE JflfllW" WWri ■'^ifc' ■ « tA* . i — ■ ™gl ^*«»*s OAVLOMD phintcoin U.S.A. LA96 .D/c'Tmi""'"'"'' """"^ ']tewiiaa!.,.f:if' scholars : oiin 3 ^924 030 560 Oo" The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924030560001 CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS AND SCHOLARS OR SKETCHES OF EDUCATION FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA' TO THE COUNCIL OF TRENT. AUGUSTA THEODOSIA DRANE, AUTHOR OF "THE THREE CHANCELLORS," "KNIGHTS OF ST. JOHN,' "THE HISTORY OF ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA," ETC. ^zcanti ', and Historj'. 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 ' Fleurv, 1. xxxii. 22. Rise of the Christian Schools. 1 5 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.^ We have a yet more particular account of the school established at Csesarea 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 distri- buted 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 Caesars 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 rhetori- cians and grammarians to instruct their subjects, and though Valen- tinian 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 1 Ruinart, Atti Sinceri, vol. ii. 367-381. Ed. Rom. 17.77. 1 6 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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.i 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. JMany 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.^ 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 initiat- 1 S. Greg. Vita S. Benedict!. 2 S. Aug. Conf. 1. viii. c. c. Rise of the Christian Schools. 17 ing 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 atmos- phere 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 d'one 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 cere- monies, 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 pro- tested 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 ingood earnest. " For my part," he exclaims, B 1 8 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 learn- ing 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 Adaman- thus — 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 eno-aged in a mighty struggle, in which they should make use of everythino- that can help them— poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, or the arts. They Rise of the Christian Schools. 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 ex- ample 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.^ 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 remark- able 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,^ " 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 1 S. Basil. De Legendis Gentilium Libris, torn. ii. p. 245. Ed. Gaume. - S. Joan. Chrys. torn, i, pp. 1 15-122. Ed. Gaume. 20 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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." ^ It will be apparent from what has been said, that the State aca- demies 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 lib- rarians and twelve professors were maintained at the public expense, and the college was presided over by a president, called the CEcu- menicus, because he was supposed to be a sort of university in him- self. The church attached to this academy was served by sixteen monks, and prelates were often chosen from the ranks of the pro- fessors 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 librar)', and the professors themselves, were all pitilessly consumed tc2) rule of St. Benedict into Gaul, where monasteries soon multiplied, in which were cultivated letters both sacred and profane.^ 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 ibbey 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." ^ St. Hilary of Aries, 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 Aries and St. Vincent of Lerins ; of Salvian, the master of bishops as he was called ; of St. Eucher, the purity 0/ whose Latin eloquence even Erasmus has praised ; and of St. Lupus of Troyes, whom Sidonius ApolUnaris 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 1 These are the words of Trithemius, who says that from the very beginning of the )rderthe sons of nobles were educated in the Benedictine monasteries, "non solum n Scripturis Divinis, sed etiam in secularibus litteris." -^ In allusion to the waxen tablets then used for writing C 34 Christian Schools and Scholars. rising beams, and the essentially Christian institution of the monas- tic schools was acquiring shape and solidity. Such an epoch stood in need of a master to harmonise its disordered element^, 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 frora 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 extra- ordinary devotion to learning to be designated also the "Isle of Scholars." ( 35 ) CHAPTER II. SCHOOLS OF BRITAIN AND IRELAND. A.D. 380 TO 590. 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 com- paratively later date. Whatever schools may have existed in connec- tion 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 probabihty received into the school of the Patriarchium. There he was thoroughly instructed, regulariter edoctiis, 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 epis- copal 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 likew^ise opened for the children of the neighbourhood, as appears from the anecdote related by St. ^Ired'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.i 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 selec- tions 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 heriesy. 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 Aiixerre 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 hberal 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. Underthese disciples a vast number of monastic schools soonsprang up in various parts of Britain. Indeed so undoubted is the claim of Germanus to be considered as the founder of the ancient British ' S. .5;ired, Vit. S. Nin. Schools of Britain and Ireland. 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 thou- sand 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 to- gether 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 coenobites 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 pre- serving 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 Schools of Britain and Ireland. '39 history is differently related by different authors. Some represent him as surviving for many years, and firmly establishing the eccle- •siastical 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 Ccelius Sedulius, -whose Irish name is said to have been Shell. 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 eccle- siastical 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.^ St. Servanus, the first bishop of Orkney, is represented by some as z. 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 i)estowed 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 iiccordingly consecrated by an Irish prelate, and chose for his resi- dence 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 1 A soils orius cardine and HosHs Herodes, the latter of which stands in the Roman Breviary under a somewhat altered form. This Sedulius is to be distinguished from :Sedulius the younger, who was also of Irish extraction, and was Bishop of Oreta in -Spain, in the eighth century. 40 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 tlie 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. Schools of Britain and Ireland. 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 tlie Wise, the pupil of St. Iltutus, was invited by Cadoc to deliver lectures in his college, which he did for thp space of one year, desiring no other stipend than the prayers of his scholars ; and dur- ing this time, says John of Tinmouth, he with his own hand copied out a book of the Gospels long preserved in the monastery of Llan- carvan. 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. Tradi- tion 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 emigrants 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 dis- ciples, who were accustomed twice a day to pass over from the main- land 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. Mantuan was so enthusiastic that he generally carried the ^neid 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 un- numbered 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 there- fore 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 tread 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 Mediter- ranean Sea, in niari 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 ernditiis 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 Schools of Britain and Ireland. 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 j ^ but, as Bishop Lloyd quaintly remarks, " the writers of those times, when they were upon the pin of multiplying, used gene- rally 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 -ariaval of St. Patrick the Irish possessed no knowledge of written characters, but it is at least clear that the apostle of Ireland con- sidered 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 pre- sence of the king, the young neophyte, robed in white, carried the 1 Scripsit Abegetoria, ccolxv. Nenn. Camb. MS. c. 57. 44 Christian Schools and Scholars. book of the gospels before his, master, who advanced with his clergy in solemn procession, chanting an Irish hymn which he had com- posed 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.i 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 {qid inecum 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 establish- ment, 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 unkroken, and has been carefully traced by Usher. \\& need not stop to deter- mine 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 extra- ordinary ardour with which the Irish coenobites applied themselves 1 Acta SS, Boll. Mart. 17. Schools of Britain and Ireland. 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 cen- tury 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 tnay be explained partly by the constant immigration of British lefugees who brought with them the learning and religious ob- servances 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 else^ ■where, watered with the blood of martyrs ; it was, perhaps, the only European country in which Christianity was firmly established with- out 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 after- 46 Christian Schools and Scholars. wards 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 dis- posed 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 irionasteries 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-beUs 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. Cadoa 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 dis- ciples, 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 hini. Schools of Britain and Ireland, 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 lona ; 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 ^ 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. Ha 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 ta 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 pre- sently 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. 1 Columba had previously studied in the school of St. Finian of Maghbile and received deacon's orders, so that he could not have been a mere boy when he came ta Clonard. But Adamnan tells us that he was still a youth, adhuc juvenis. 48 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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-Maiha (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,^ 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 SS9 became the founder of Benchor, near the bay of Carrickfergus. The fame of this great school of learning and reUgion 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 1 Now Clonmacnois in King's County, Schools of Britain and Ireland. 49 of Egypt whose rule is at once holy and learned, simplex siniul 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 acquaint- ance 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 country- men. 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 Pro- 50 Christian Schools and Scholars. mise, 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,i 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 lona, 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 lona 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 what- ever 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 1 I should not have thought it necessary to remind the reader that St. Columba, the founder of lona in 563, is to be distinguished from St. Columbanus the founder of Luxeuil in 585, had not so considerable a writer as Thierry, in his history of the Norman Conquest, spoken of them as the same persons. Schools of Britain and Ireland. 5 1 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. lona, 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, his- tory, and physic. They improved the arts of husbandry and horti- culture, supplied the rude people whom they had undertaken to civilise with ploughshares and other utensil^ of labour, and taught them the use of the forge, in ihe 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. AVherever the apostles of lona appeared, they carried with them the repu- tation 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 coenobite. 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 5 2 Christian Schools and Scholars. cultivated with equal success. Not only their own monasteries but those of every European couptry were enriched with their manu- scripts, 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 mathema- ticians 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 mediaeval 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 computa- tion, 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 j 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. Columba and St. Columbanus enjoyed a reputation as poets. St ^ngus, the martyro- logist, began life as a professional bard, and did not lay aside his harp when he assumed the cowl of the coenobite ; 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 struc- ture 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 Schools of Britain and Ireland. 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 lioly 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."! 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 1 Act. SS. Boll. 54 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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. ^gnus, 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 anti- phons ; 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 Colum- banus 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 ofl5ce of bishop, and restoring, at one and the same time, sacred studies and eccle- siastical discipline. The myrtle bowers of Ausonia, however, did Schools of Britain and Ireland, 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, pre- served and venerated ia 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.^ 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 instinc- tive 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. 1 Ara Miiltiscilus, Scheda de Islandia, cap. 2, quoted by Haverty, who sums up the number of Irish saints known to have settled in different parts of Europe as follows : 150 in Germany, of whom 36 were martyrs ; 45 in Gaul, 6 martyrs ; 30 in Belgium ; 44 in England ; 13 in Italy ; and 8 martyrs in Norivay and Iceland. They founded 13 monasteries in Scotland, 12 in England, 40 in Gaul, 9 in Belgium, 16 in Bavaria, 15 in Switzerland, 6 in Italy, and others in different parts of Germany. ( 56 ) CHAPTER III. THE ANGLO-SAXON SCHOOLS. A.D. 590 TO 875. The Donatist heresy was still raging in Africa; the Arians were triumphant in Spain and Northern Italy ; a miserable schism arising out of the afifair 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 penin- sula, 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 de- fended Rome from the Lombards, and the Lombards' themselves Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 Caesars. 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 de- livered 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. ^ 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 1 It is first spoken of by John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, who quotes no authority for the statement. With regard to the reproof administered to Bishop Didier, it is not denied, for the passage is extant in one of St. Gregory's letters. But the real and authentic justification is given in the Gloss on the Canon Law, which explains that Didier's fault did not lie in his studying humane literature, but in his giving public lectures in his church on the profane poets, and substituting the same in .the place of the Gospsl lesson. " Recitabat in ecclesia fabulas Jovis, et eas raoraliter cxponebat in praedicatione sua." (Decret. pars i. dis. 86.) And again, " Beatus Gregorius quemdam episcopum noa reprehendit quia litteras seculares didicerat ; sed quia, contra episcopale officium,^™ lectione Evangelica, grammaticam populo expone- bat." (Decret. pars i. dis. 37, i;. 8. ed. Antwerp, 1573, quoted by Landriot, Recherches Jlistoriques, p. 212.) 58 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 Horaili«s 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 him- self 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 idle- ness. 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 extra- ordinary 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 Jiis 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, Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 1 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 dege- nerated 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 cor- ruptions 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 par- ticularly of St. Gelasius and St. Damasus. St. Gregory completed 1 St. Ignatius is generally spoken of as a disciple of the Apostle St. John. But many writers call him a disciple of St. Peter also, and some even represent that Apostle as placing him in the see of Antioch (S. Chrys. Horn, in S. Ignat. t. ii. p. 712). Tille- mont (t. ii. p. 87, ed. 1732) quotes St. Athanasius, Origen and Theodoret, to the same effect. The historian Socrates speaks of St. Ignatius as introducing into the ancient Church of Antioch the alternate chant of two choirs (Socrates, lib. vi. c. 8.). Theodoret says that it was used there, in the time of the Arians, as a powerful instrument to oppose their blasphemous heresies. 6o Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 liturgic^L 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 cla)', the brass, the silver, and the gold, had been carried away by the wind, and become as the chaff on the summer's threshing-floor. He beheld new races rising out of the dust of fallen empires. What now are Homer and Horace to the grim Goth or savage Lombard who has spent his life in beating to pieces with his battle-axe the fairest monuments of Greece and Rome ? To him no inspiration will flow from Castaly or Parnassus. The mossy fountains and the sylvan shades, Tlie dreams of Pindus and the Aonian maids Delight no more, and the name of ^^'oden 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 6i flowed over his brow he was brought face to face witli 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 Caesars, 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 de- livered 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 pro- vinces 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 pro- found 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 pos- sibly 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 o 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 blood- shed 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 lefthhn; and though frustrated in his purpose of himself becoming their apostle, he made it a labour of love to provide for their con- version by other hands. His first plan had been a sort of anticipation of the system since Anglo-Saxon Schools. 63 so successfully carried out by the Roman Propaganda. He con- ceived the idea of redeeming a certain number of the Anglo-Saxon youths annually brought into the slave-niarkets 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, aild a band of Roman monks, headed by St. Augustine, the former prior of St. Gregory's monastery, set out for the barbarous and un- known 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. Angustine 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 com- panions begin to teach the English. The n?anner 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 Ufe 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." ^ 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, ^ Bede, lib. i. ch. 27. 64 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 jurisdic- tion 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 lona, 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 cele- brated 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 lona. " 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. Anglo-Saxon Schools. 65 This was his own daily employment wherever he went, and if it hap- pened that he was invited- to eat with the king, he went with one of two cjerks, 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 plaves, 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?- One of the first scholars of Lindisfarne was St. Wilfrid, who, not satisfied with the ecclesias- tical discipline of the Scottish monks, found his way to Canterbury, 1 This expression requires some explanation, being an apparent contradiction of what, has been said before as to the Roman origin of the Irish schools. It must be borne in mind that the error in the Irish manner of observing Easter was not that of the Eastern Quarto Decimans, as they are called, who kept it on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, on whatever day of the week that might fall. This error was corrected at the Council of Nice, when it was commanded that the feast should always be cele- brated on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the moon ; and the decree of the council was obeyed in Britain and Ireland as in Rome. But difficulties afterwards arose in the method of calculating Easter ; the Cycles, or periods of years used for that purpose, were after a time found to be incorrect, and the philosophers of Alexandria were apphed to, to calculate the day and notify it each year to the Pope, who should publish it to the rest of the Church. Even this plan failed to secure uniformity, and in the, fifth century Rome and Alexandria were to be found computing the time of Easter after different cycles, Rome using one of eighty-four years, and Alexandria one of nineteen, which caused the feast to be celebrated on different days. The old Roman cycle was that which had been introduced into Ireland, and the Irish clergy continued to use it after it had been reformed in the time of Pope Hilarion, by whose command the Alexandrian cycle was established as more correct, and the calendar was corrected by Victorinus of Aquitaine. Such was the disturbed state of the world at this time, however, that the British and Irish churches heard nothing of this change, and stuck to their old Roman cycle even after the arrival of St. Gregory's missionaries. The notion of the Irish having adopted the Eastern computation of the Quarto Decimans is very clearly disproved by reference to Bede, lib. iii. ch. 4. They at last adopted the Roman calendar at the Synod of Lene, held in 630, wherein it was agreed that "they should receive what was brought to them from thefountain of their baptism and of their ■wisdom, even the successors of the Apostles of Christ." E 66 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 Scrip- tures, 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 Can- terbury, 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 delibera- tions. 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 Maidulfs 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 con- fess, most reverend father," he says, " that I had resolved, if circum- stances 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 perplex- ing." Here he enters at some length on the subject of Latin versi- fication, 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 suffi- cient to overwhelm the mind, and cast it into despair ? For my owrii part all the labours of my former studies are trifling in comparisoa 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. Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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." ^ 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 fingures were made to serve the purpose of a modern arithmeticon. St. Aldhelm elsewhere enumerates the studies pursued in the school of Canterbury as consisting of grammar, that is the Latin and Greek tongues, geometry, arithmetic, music, mechanics, astronomy, and astrology ■ he himself is also said to have studied the Hebrew Scriptures in their original text, and his works both in prose and poetry bear witness to his familiarity with the chief Latin poets, such as Virgil, Juvenal, Lucan, and Persius, whom he frequently quotes. He was the first Englishman who appeared before the world in the character of an author ; his chief poems being a Treatise on the Eight Virtues, and one in praise of Virginity. His Latin versification is of the most artificial structure ; in one of his poetical prefaces the initial letters of each line read downwards, the terminal letters read upwards, and the last line read backwards, all repeat the words of the first line read straightforwards ; and this he pleasantly denominates " a square poem." I will give but one couplet as a sample of the kind of brain-puzzles which afforded such solace to the Anglo-Saxon students. The reader will observe that the lines may be read equally well backwards or forwards, still forming the same succession of letters : — Roma tibl subito motibus ibit amor Sole medere pede, ede, perede melos. 1 By astrology and the calculation of horoscopes must not be here understood the practice of judicial astrology, which was regarded by alt the Anglo-Saxon prelates as a forbidden art ; but, as Lingard supposes, studies connected with the Zodiac, and the art of dialling, here called Iioroscopii computatio ; an art much in vogue among early scholars, and which formed one of the scientific recreations of Boethius, 70 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 pom- pous 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 Wimbourn ; 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 learn- ing. He was as simple in piety as he was multifarious in knowledge, having imbibed the seven liberal arts so perfectly that he was wonder- ful 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. yi 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 cor- respondents 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 com- panion 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 Ubrary, 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 7 2 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 stand- ing 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. Bennefs 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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." ^ And we may add that no ordinary feelings stir in the heart of the visitor who sees in those grey crumbling v.'alls, 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 servi- tude ; but Ceolfrid, himself an earl's son, overcame their repugnance ' 1 Surtees, History of Durham. 74 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 govern- ment. 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 founda- tion 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 Cruci- fixion. " 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 judg- ment." 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 provid- ing them with masters of the ecclesiastical chant. The Roman chant had already been introduced into Northumbria by James the Deacon, Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 celebra- tion of festivals ; " all which rules," acj^s 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 pro- vince to hear him, and many invited him to teach in other pla,ces." 1 Such, then, was the provision made by St. Bennet for the instruc- tion 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 i Bede, lib. iv. c. i8. 76 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 de- parture 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 philo- sophers 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 com- mandments 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 writ- ing." It was his love of study that made him decline the office of abbot, " for that office demands thoughtfulness, and thoughtfulnessi 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 monastics 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 frorn 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 ? " ^ It was thus he found the secret of keep- 1 Ale. Opera i. p. 283. 78 Christian Schools and Scholars. ing 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 require- ments of his moriastic 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 learn- ing ; 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, geo- graphy, 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.! 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 ' Nee linguam Hebraicam ignoravit. . (Breviary Lessons.) Anglo-Saxon Schools. 79 earlier commentaries on the Acts of the Apostles, and which he be- came 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 litera- ture which shows us that St. Bennet's libraries must have been well •stored with classics.^ 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,^ 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 state- ment. 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 com- mentaries on the Holy Scriptures, in which his design is less to in- dulge 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 speak- ing of the Holy Trinity, he embodies in his text the beautiful illus- tration repeated before him by St. John Chrysostom, and other early 1 Among the authors quoted by Bede are Virgil, Horace, Terence, Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius, Pradentius, Juvencus, Macer, Varro, Cornelius, Severus, Fortunatus, Sedulius, andPacuvius, besides the Latin Fathers. He also makes frequent references to Homer, which was not at that time translated into Latin, and which he can, therefore, only have known in its original Greek. 2 See De Nat. Rerum, Op. torn. ii. p. 37. 8o Christian Schools and Scholars. Fathers, wherein the Three Divine Persons in one essence are com- pared 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 every- where, animating the mind and kindling the heart. Yet though uni- versally 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 begin- ning. 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, Jie 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 de- rive 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 batde, 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 gram- matical 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. Rohr- bacher 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 8i 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 in- struction of his flock. This is not mere tradition. Besides com- menting on nearly the whole Bible, Bede is known to have translated into English both the Psalter and the four Gospels. But this in- volved 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 writteti com- positions 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. Irenaeus observes,^ that they held the faith by tradition, " without the help of pen and ink; " mean- ing, 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,^ 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 con- sisting 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 in- stilling 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 ' Iren. de Hser. 1. iii. 4. 3 Three, however, were preserved which expressed sounds not conveyed by the Roman alphabet, corresponding to w, th, and dh. F 82 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 Yorlc library offering temptations not to be resisted. He stayed there some months, teaching in the arch- bishop'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." ^ But the translation of these prayers was a very small part of his labours ; he had, as we have abready 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. 1 The instruction of the people was not, however, to be limited to a knowledge of these prayers. "Let them be taught," he says, "by what works they may please God, and from what things they must abstain ; with what sincerity they must believe in Him, and with what devotion they must pray ; how diligently and frequently they must fortify themselves with the holy sign of the Cross ; and how salutary for every class of Christian is the daily reception of the Lord's Body and Blood, which is, you know, the constant practice of the Church of Christ throughout Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and the whole of the liast." This is a most important testimony as to the existing practice of the Church in the eighth century, and Bede goes on to say that to his knowledge there are innumerable young persons, of both sexes, who might, beyond all question, be suffered to communicate, at least, on all Sundays and festivals. Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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 custoin, he often sung antiphons, specially that belonging to the season of the Ascension which then drew nigh, beginning " O Rex glorise." " 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 false- hoods 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 sliall 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, accord- ing 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 trye,'' 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 tlie 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 antiquit)'. 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 Chrysos- tom ; of Orosius, Boethius, Pliiiy, 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 Anglo-Saxon Schools. 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, arid, 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 clergj', 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. Caedmon whom Bede calls illiteratus, that is, unable to read ; but who was nevertheless perfectly familiar with sacred history, whicn 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 wonder- ful 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, agairi, 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 him- self 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 philo- sophical 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 Iambs 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 Charle- magne ; 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 episco- Anglo-Saxon Schools. 87 pate, 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." ^ 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 monas- teries 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 Lin- disfarne, 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 1 " Caras super omnia gazas.'' (De Pont. Ebor. Eccl.) 88 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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. ( 89 ) CHAPTER IV. ST. BONIFACE AND HIS COMPANIONS. A.D. 686 TO 755. The prominent importance attaching to the schools of Kent and Northumbria must not lead us to regard them as the only learned foundations existing in England during the early period of which we have hitherto been speaking. The spread of the monastic institute among the Anglo-Saxons was so rapid and so universal, that we are sometimes led to wonder how a country so thinly populated as England must have been in the seventh century, could have fur- nished 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 Lin- disfarne, among the nuns of St. Mildred or St. Hildelitha as among the brethren of Jarre w. 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 there- fore 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 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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.''^ Yet both in different ways exhibit to us the noblest features of the Anglo-Saxon race, whose simple piety and strong good sense are as apparent in Bede, as the ardour of its active charity is in Boniface. He was a native then, not of the bleak and hardy north, but of the softer climate of that southern province, Where the salt sea innocuously breaks, And the sea-breeze as innocently plays On Devon's leafy shores. It took its name from the deep hollows where the apple-blossoms clustered as thickly then as now, and the clematis wove its tangled wreaths in as wild profusion over bank and wood. Still covered with those grand primeval forests which made perpetual shadow in its pathless valleys, and, fearless of the billows that lost their fierce- ness 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 Dumno7iia. 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 flo\yery 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 ' Jatndiu optata adest dies. (Vita S. Bon. Acta SS. Ben.) St Boniface and his Companions. 9 1 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, pos- sessed 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, sufiSced 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 mission- aries 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 fonns 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, 9 2 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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, col- lected 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 com- punction 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 j 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 com- panions, 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 AVilibrord, who, after receiving his early education among the monks of Ripon, had passed over SL Boniface and his Companions. 93 into Ireland in his twentieth year, attracted by the excellent science which then iiourished 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 WiUbrord 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 ^4 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 follow- ing their guest, that he might learn the Scriptures from him, and be- come 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 S^. Boniface and his Companions. 95 spot where now sfands 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 sur- rounded by a rioble band of missioners, among whom were Burchard, Lullus, WiUbald, 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 estab- lished in the English dioceses. The bishop and his clergy formed a kind of college ; ^ 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 semi- nary of Utrecht produced some famous alum?ii, of whom I will name but one whose history cannot be altogether passed over in a narra- tive 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 ^ " felix collegium beatissimi Bonifacii ! " exclaims the biographer of S, Sola. 96 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 unfor- tunate 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 ■5"/. Boniface and his Companions. 9 7 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 Mimigard- ford 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 Miinster, 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, pre- pared 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 Saltz- burg, 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 9 8 Christian Schools and Scholars. 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 doc- trine," 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 Saltz- burg, 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. Accord- ing 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.^ It will be seen, however, that the person of whose doctrines Boniface complained was not a bishop, but a priest ; that the opinions attri- buted to him bore no reference to the antipodes ; that he was not excommunicated ; and that so far from either passing or confirming 1 Dr. Campbell in his " Strictures on the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland," observes that ' ' this great man was degraded by Pope Zachary on conviction of being a mathe- matician." But perhaps the most remarkable reproduction of this oft-told tale occuis in Dr. Enfield's translation of Brucker's "History of Philosophy," which I give verbatim, as only to be paralleled in the " Art of Pluck." " Boniface," he says, " the patron of ignorance and barbarism, summoned Polydore Virgil, bishop of Salisbury, to the Court of Inquisition for maintaining the existence of the antipodes." (V9I. i. p. 363.) Would it be believed that a writer who is engaged in bewailing the ignorance of monkish philosophers should commit himself to a stateinent which confuses St. Feargil, or Virgil, bishop of Saltzburg, in the eighth century, with Polydore Vergil, archdeacon of Bath (for he was never bishop of Salisbury at all), in the fifteenth? And then the Inquisi- tion ! To make it complete he should have identified Virgil with the Latin poet, and convicted him of the Albigensian heresy. Yet these are the writers who find no terms contemptuous enough in which to speak of medieval ignorance. " Among the scho- lastics," writes Dr. Enfield, in the very next sentence, "we find surprising proofs of weakness and ignorance." The scholastics, could they speak, might find something to retort on their accusers. Si. Moniface and his Companions. 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 sup- posed 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 supersti- tious 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 impeach- ing 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. ^ 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 1 The doctrines attributed to Virgil, and their condemnation by Pope Zachary, have lean examined by Decker, a professor of Louvain, who shows very clearly that the error 'ay, not in their maintaining the existence of the antipodes, but in the notion of a race