University of Virginia Library

5. § V

Sunlight and shadow follow one another rapidly across England's early history. The migration of York's renowned scholar took place six years before the Viking irruptions began, and about twelve years before a heavy blow was struck at Northumbrian learning by the ravaging and destruction of the monasteries of Lindisfarne, and Wearmouth and Jarrow. After this there was but little peace for England. Kent was often attacked. In 838 the marauders fell upon East Anglia. Between 837 and 845 they made various fierce attacks upon Wessex. In 851 the pillage of Canterbury and London was a severe blow to the English. About fifteen years later, at the hands of the Danes, Melrose, Tynemouth, Whitby, and Lastingham shared Wearmouth's fate. Of York and its library we hear no more. Peterborough and its large collection of sacred books perished at the hands of the same raiders as those who burnt Crowland (870). So bad grew affairs that Alfred the Great, writing to Bishop Werfrith, bewailed the small number of people south of the Humber who understood the English of their service, or could translate from Latin into English. Even beyond the Humber there were not many; not one could he remember south of the Thames when he began to reign. And he bethought himself of the wise men, both church and lay folk, formerly living in England, and how zealous they were in teaching and learning, and how men came from abroad in search of wisdom and instruction. Apparently some decline from this standard had been noticeable before ruin completely overtook the monasteries. He remembered how, before the land had been ravaged and burnt, "its churches stood filled with treasures and books,

and with a multitude of His servants, but they had very little knowledge of the books, and could not understand them, for they were not written in their own language.... When I remembered all this, I much marvelled that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly learnt all these books, did not wish to translate them into their own tongues." By way of remedying this omission, he translated Cura Pastoralis into English. "I will send a copy to every bishopric in my kingdom; and on each there is a clasp worth 50 mancus. And I command in God's name that no man take the clasp from the book or the book from the minster; it is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops as now are, thanks be to God, nearly everywhere."[2.22]

This letter, written in 890, marks the revival of interest in letters under Alfred. In adding to his own knowledge, and in promoting education among his people, he was assiduous and determined. During the leisure of one period of eight months, Asser seems to have read to him all the congenial books at hand, Alfred's custom being to read aloud or to listen to others reading. Asser was a Welsh bishop, brought to Wessex to help the king in his work. For the same purpose Archbishop Plegmund[2.23] and Bishop Werfrith were brought from Mercia. Other scholars came from abroad. One named Grimbald, a monk from St. Bertin, came to take charge of the abbey of Hyde, Winchester, which Alfred had planned. John, of Old-Saxony, a learned monk of the flourishing Westphalian Abbey of

Corvey—where a library existed in this century, [2.24]—was made by Alfred abbot of Athelney monastery and school. Perhaps John, called the Scot or Erigena, also came, but we do not know certainly. Alfred also introduced teachers, both English and foreign, into his monasteries, his aim being to provide the means of educating every freeborn and well-to-do youth. During the whole of the latter part of his reign the copying of manuscripts went on, though with only moderate activity.

That Alfred, amid the cares of a troublesome kingship, could find time to devote to this work, and realised the importance of vernacular literature, is one of the chief signs of his greatness. What he did had a lasting influence upon our literature. He tapped the wellspring of English prose. Mainly owing to his initiative, from his day till the Conquest all the literature of importance was in the vernacular, and the impulse so given to the language as a literary vehicle was strong enough to preserve it from extinction during the Norman domination, when it was superseded as the court and official language. But, so far as the making and circulation of books is concerned, the "revival" under Alfred did not prosper. The necessary machinery was almost entirely wanting. The monastic schools, the great—the only—means of disseminating the learning of the time, were few in number and not very influential. For Athelney, a small monastery, Alfred had difficulty in finding monks at all: he had to get them from abroad; while the rule in this house does not seem to have been wholly satisfactory. At the time of his death (c. 901) monachism was in a bad way. Fifty years later its plight would seem to have been worse. Only two houses, Abingdon and Glastonbury, could be really called monastic. "In the middle of the tenth century the Rule of St.

Benedict, the standard of monasticism in Western Christendom, was, according to virtually contemporary authority, completely unknown in England. This will not appear strange if we consider that it was never very generally or strictly carried out here, that the Danish invasions had broken the continuity of monastic life, and that not many years earlier the very existence of the Rule had been forgotten in not a few continental monasteries."[2.25] Although England always responded to the slightest effort to affect her culture, as the long deer grass waves an answer to every breath of the wind, yet the surprising eminence of some of the churchmen in the latter half of the century and the excellence of their work cannot be accounted for if the influence of Alfred's reign had utterly died out. But it had not. Only the machinery was defective. The driving power remained, latent but ready for action. One indication of a surviving interest in these matters at this time is the gift of some nine books to St. Augustine's Abbey by King Athelstan—an interesting little collection including Isidore de Natura Rerum, Persius, Donatus, Alcuin, Sedulius, and possibly a work by Bede. The machinery, however, was soon to be improved. Dunstan, Oswald, Edgar, and Ethelwold set matters right by reforming and extending the monastic system, and by making it the means of encouraging education and learning.

The leaders were Dunstan and Ethelwold. In youth the former was renowned for his eagerness in studying, and for the wealth and knowledge he acquired. He was a "lover of ballads and music," "a hard student, an indefatigable worker, busy at books"; spending his leisure in reading sacred authors, and in correcting manuscripts, sometimes at daybreak. He was also very skilful at working in metal

and at drawing and illuminating. Maybe the picture of him kneeling before the Saviour which is preserved in the Bodleian Library is by his own hand; this, however, is not certain. [2.26] But some relics of his literary work were preserved at Glastonbury until the Reformation—passages transcribed from Frank and Roman law books, a pamphlet on grammar, a mass of Biblical quotations, a collection of canons drawn from Dunstan's Irish teachers, a book on the Apocalypse, and other works. [2.27] He entirely reformed Glastonbury and made it a flourishing school, where the Scriptures, ecclesiastical writings, and grammar were taught. Ethelwold was a Glastonbury scholar and assistant to Dunstan. Glastonbury, and Abingdon, where he became Abbot, and Winchester, to which see he was consecrated, were the centres whence, during the sixty years succeeding Edgar's accession, some forty monasteries were founded or restored. Winchester became pre-eminent. Ethelwold himself was a teacher of grammar. It was his delight to teach boys and young men, and to help them in their translations; hence it came to pass that many of his pupils became abbots and bishops. [2.28] A curious story is told in illustration of his studious disposition. One night, when reading after prolonged watching, sleep overcame him, and as he slept the candle fell on the page and remained burning there until a brother came along and snatched it up, when the book by a miracle was found to be uninjured. [2.29] A vignette of pure and true medievalism: the long and solitary watching, the saintly pursuit of divine wisdom, the wide-open book, with the bold and beautiful text, and the quaint decoration, wrought by loving hands, and the inevitable miracle,—the suggestion of a Divine Providence watching over and protecting all that is sacred.

Some beautiful examples of work of this period have been preserved. "Winchester" work is a familiar and expressive term in illumination, and nobody will ask why this is so if they have seen a manuscript executed there towards the end of the tenth century. The Benedictional and Missal of Archbishop Robert, which is certainly English, and most likely an example of New Minster work, is illuminated with miniatures, foliated and architectural borders, and capitals and letters of gold, in virile workmanship. A still finer example—the finest example of Old Minster craft—is the Benedictional of Ethelwold, now in the Duke of Devonshire's library. The versified dedication, inscribed in letters of gold, tells us, in substance—"The Great Æthelwold . . . illustrious, venerable and mild . . . commanded a certain monk subject to him to write the present book: he ordered also to be made in it many arches elegantly decorated and filled up with various ornamented pictures expressed in divers beautiful colours, and gold."[2.30] Godeman, abbot of Thorney, was the scribe, but the illuminator is unknown. Each full page has nineteen lines of writing, with letters nearly a quarter of an inch long. Alternate lines in gold, red, and black occur once or twice in the same page. There are thirty miniatures and thirteen fully illuminated pages, some of these having framed borders, foliated, others columns and arches. The figures are remarkably well drawn, the drapery being especially good. The whole is in a fine state of preservation, especially the gold ornaments; the gold used was leaf upon size, afterwards well burnished. Of the rival craftsmanship at New Minster we have a splendid example in the Golden Book of Edgar, so called

[Description: WRITTING IN THE BENEDICTIONAL OF ETHLWOLD]

on account of its raised gold text.[2.31] Work of this grand character is the best testimony to the noble spirit of monachism in the days of Ethelwold.

One of Ethelwold's pupils was Ælfric, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 995. He was responsible for the canon requiring every priest, before ordination, to have the Psalter, the Epistles, the Gospels, a Missal, the Book of Hymns, the Manual, the Calendar, the Passional, the Penitential, and the Lectionary. On his death he bequeathed all his books to St. Albans.[2.32]

Another pupil of the same name is still more famous. This scholar's grammar, with its translated passages, his glossary—the oldest Latin-English dictionary—and his conversation-manual of questions and answers, with interlinear translations, suggest that he must have done much to make the study of Latin easier and more congenial; while his homilies display his art in making knowledge popular, and prove him to be the greatest master of English prose before the Conquest.

Several other interesting and suggestive facts belonging to this period have been preserved for us. Abbot Ælfward, for example, gave to his abbey of Evesham many sacred books and books on grammar (c. 1035): here, at any rate, progress was real. [2.33] At a manor of the abbey of Bury St. Edmunds were thirty volumes, exclusive of church books (1044-65). [2.34] Bishop Leofric also obtained over sixty books for Exeter Cathedral about sixteen years before the Conquest, a collection to which we must refer later.