The body of St. Boniface was carried to Mentz, and thence translated to Fulda, when the church of that monastery was consecrated by St. Lullus, the whole history of the event being related by the monk Candidus, in his metrical Life of Abbot Eigil. St. Lioba survived her friend for twenty-four years, during which time she founded a great number of convents, all of which she governed as superior. She received special marks of respect from Charlemagne and his queen Hildegardis, who often sent for her to Aix-la-Chapelle, and loved her as her own soul. She frequently visited Fulda, and on her death, which took place in 779, her body was carried thither for burial. The elder monks remembered the wish that had been expressed by St. Boniface, that their bones should be laid together, but, fearing to open the sepulchre of the holy martyr, they buried St. Lioba at the north side of the altar, which he had himself consecrated in honour of the twelve Apostles. There the two saints still repose, for though the church of Fulda has been rebuilt four times since the day of its first dedication, the ancient crypt has always been preserved, and there the English pilgrim may still revere the relics of his great countryman which are preserved in their antique shrine, together with two memorials of him, the ivory crosier which he was accustomed to use, and the dagger that shed his blood.
CHAPTER V.
CHARLEMAGNE AND ALCUIN.
A.D. 747 TO 804.
At the moment when the nascent civilisation of Saxon England was being doomed to extinction, and the Danish hordes were everywhere making havoc of those religious houses which for 160 years had been the chief nurseries of learning in the West, light was beginning once more to dawn over the schools of France, where under the barbarism of the Merovingian kings liberal studies had all but entirely decayed. At an earlier period indeed, as we have seen, the Church of Gaul, far from deserving the charge of barbarism, had produced a crowd of illustrious writers, by whom the Christian dogmas were clothed in a classic dress. Down to the end of the sixth century remains of the old Roman municipal schools continued to exist, wherein Christian students disdained not “to hold the harp with Orpheus, or the rule with Archimedes; to perceive with Pythagoras, to explain with Plato, to imply with Aristotle, to rage with Demosthenes, or to persuade with Tully”[71]—in other words, they followed the ordinary course of studies provided in the Roman schools. Even when these disappeared, the episcopal and monastic schools continued to preserve some knowledge of letters. The multiplication of monasteries, even before the arrival of the Benedictines in 543, had progressed with extraordinary rapidity. We read of one bishop establishing forty communities in his own diocese; and during the century that succeeded the first foundation made by St. Maurus, as many as 238 Benedictine monasteries are known to have arisen in different provinces of Gaul. It is probable that most of these monasteries, to whatever rule they belonged, possessed a school. The monastic rules which sprung up previous to the arrival of St. Maurus—such as those established by St. Martin, St. Eugendus, St. Yrieix, and St. Columbanus—all enjoined study and the transcription of books, as well as manual labour. Nor can it be doubted that secular as well as religious pupils were received in the monastic schools, and that the education given was not exclusively ecclesiastical. It even appears as though the Gallo-Roman nobility of this period were more solicitous to give their sons a liberal education than their chivalric descendants of six centuries’ later date. I will give but two examples. At the monastery of Condat it is expressly stated that noble secular youths were educated in all the learning of the times; and what this term implies is explained in the life of St. Eugendus, who received his entire training there, and never once left the monastery from his seventh to his sixtieth year. He was as familiar with the Greek as with the Latin orators, says his biographer, and was besides a great promoter of sacred studies. The other example is even more to the point, as showing up to what age secular youths were then expected to continue students. St. Aicard received his education in the monastic school of Soissons, about the middle of the seventh century, and remained there until his seventeenth year, when he was summoned home by his father to be introduced at court and to commence his military career—a career, be it remembered, into which the aspirant to chivalry in the twelfth century would have been initiated at seven. He afterwards embraced the religious state, and did much to improve the studies in his monastery of Jumièges. Then there were the episcopal schools, in which the learning given was far from being superficial. St. Gregory of Tours tells us that when King Guntram entered Orleans in 540 he was met by a band of scholars from the bishop’s school, who welcomed him in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac verses of their own composition. St. Gregory had himself received his education in the episcopal schools of Clermont and Vienne, and informs us that even ecclesiastical students, before entering on their sacred studies, went through a course of the seven liberal arts, together with one of poetry and the Cantus.[72] M. Guizot gives a list of the principal monastic and episcopal schools of which a distant notice is to be found in the histories of the seventh century. Twenty of them are in Neustria alone, and their multiplication forms the subject of repeated decrees of provincial councils.
We need not, however, dwell on their history more particularly, for whatever may have been their number or their excellence, it is certain that before the accession of Charlemagne, the Gallican schools had fallen into general decay. The decline was progressive, but it ended in something like total extinction. “At the end of the fourth century,” says M. Guizot, “profane and sacred literature flourished side by side: pagan letters were indeed dying, but they were not entirely dead. They soon, however, disappeared, and sacred literature alone was cultivated. But if we go on a little further, we find that the cultivation of Christian literature has itself vanished,”[73]—the decay had, in fact, become universal.
Tennemann, in his history of philosophy, does not hesitate to attribute this deplorable state of things to the tyranny of the Church, and the triumph of the principle of faith and authority over that of liberty and reason. But from the sixth to the eighth century, the ecclesiastical powers in Gaul had not the strength to exercise tyranny, even had they possessed the will. The slightest acquaintance with the history of those centuries and their horrible social disorders will suffice to show that submission to the principle of Church authority had not at that time assumed any very alarming proportions north of the Alps. The Church of Gaul was torn with petty schisms, and disgraced by scandals arising mainly from the absence of any authority at all strong enough to repress them, and the supremacy of the Holy See had to be firmly re-asserted by St. Boniface before any adequate remedy of these disorders could be applied. The intellectual sterility of this epoch may rather be traced to the want of that principle, than to its excess; it was in fact an unavoidable result of the anarchy and dissolution of all social ties which followed on the fall of the Roman Empire. Had ecclesiastical discipline been preserved, we might yet at least have found the theological studies flourishing; but what could be expected from bishops who had either simoniacally obtained their dignities, or had been appointed by barbarian rulers from the ranks of their own soldiers or courtiers? Destitute themselves of all knowledge of sacred letters, they were not likely to cherish them in others; and in many cases they held their sees as baronies might be held by lay proprietors. The incessant civil commotions that prevailed perpetuated the reign of darkness, for, as the writer just quoted remarks, when the state of society becomes rude and difficult, studies necessarily languish. “The taste for truth and the appreciation of the beautiful are delicate plants, needing a pure sky and a kindly atmosphere:—in the midst of storms they droop their heads and perish.” So far from the Church being held answerable for the decay of literature, it was she alone that provided it any asylum in those dismal times, and it was in her monastic houses that learning, “proscribed and beaten down by the tempest that raged around, took refuge under the shelter of the altar, till happier times should suffer it to reappear in the world.”[74]
The dawn of a better state of things began to show itself under the rule of Pepin. That monarch appears to have contemplated something of the same plan of reform afterwards carried out by the vaster genius of his son. His first step was to renew those close relations with the Holy See, the interruption of which had so largely contributed to disorganise the Church of France. In 747, being then mayor of the palace, he despatched an embassy to Pope Zachary, imploring his assistance and advice in the reformation of the episcopal order. It has been shown in the foregoing chapter, that a similar reformation had been set on foot in Austrasia by his brother Carloman, where, by the assistance of St. Boniface acting as apostolic vicar, the bishops and secular clergy had solemnly engaged to observe the ecclesiastical canons, and the abbots, to receive the rule of St. Benedict. The subsequent change of dynasty was affected by the will, it is true, of the Frankish people, but not until it had received the sanction of the Pope, who decided that he who held the power of king should likewise assume the royal title. This appeal of the Franks to the authority of the Holy See in the election of their sovereign is a fact of immense political importance, and from that hour the tide of barbarism began to ebb. The councils held under Pepin ceased not to labour at the correction of abuses; and the journey of Pope Stephen III. into France in 748, if it exhibits him on one hand as a fugitive from the Lombards, displays him to us no less as receiving from kings and people the homage due to him as Father of the Christian Church.