Paschasius, then, was a poet and a musician, but he was also a scientific theologian, and one who was in some degree in advance of his age in the philosophic method he adopted when analysing the dogmas of faith. In the year 831 he wrote his famous treatise on the “Sacrament of the Altar,” which was specially intended for the instruction of his Saxon pupils, who required a plain and comprehensive exposition of that mystery. He composed it, therefore, in a very simple style, comparing it to “milk for babes;” and it is evident that in a treatise drawn up under such circumstances, for the instruction of young converts, the author would necessarily seek, not the setting forth of theological subtleties or private views, but the simple, straightforward statement of the Church’s doctrine as universally taught and believed by all the faithful. He declares in very express and distinct terms that “the substance of bread is not to be found in the Sacrament, and that there is present only the Real Body of Jesus Christ, the same that was born of the B. Virgin, and was crucified, and rose again, and ascended into Heaven.”[95] The treatise was dedicated to Warin, abbot of New Corby, and excited no controversy until fifteen years later, when a second edition, dedicated to Charles the Bald, fell into the hands of Scotus Erigena, whose captious mind found matter of offence in the expressions used by Paschasius. He, accordingly, wrote in reply his treatise on the “Holy Eucharist,” of which no copy now exists; for, after being condemned by several Councils, all the copies that could be found were ordered to be burnt in 1059, in consequence of the use made of them by the Berengarian heretics. Paschasius defended his words by a simple appeal to the universal sense of Christendom, which, since the days of the Apostles, had never ceased to believe and confess this salutary doctrine.
At the time when this vexatious controversy broke out he was abbot of his monastery, and soon after retired from office, and joyfully returned to his cell and his studies, spending his last days in the completion of his greatest work, the “Commentary on St. Matthew’s Gospel.” Whether in public or private life, his lowliness of spirit was equally remarkable, while the self-sufficient presumption of his opponent Erigena exhibits an ugly example of that knowledge which puffeth up. In Paschasius we see the opposite virtue, which faileth not “when tongues shall cease and knowledge shall be destroyed.” He styled himself by no more honourable title than the “Monachorum Peripsema,” and in his last sickness imposed so strict an injunction on his brethren never to write his life, that they dared not disobey him, and thus many interesting particulars concerning him have necessarily been lost.
He left many disciples, among whom was Anscharius, who succeeded him in the government of his school, and of whom we must now say something. He had begun his school life very early, being sent to the monastery after his mother’s death, when a child of only five; and, says his biographer, Rembert, after the manner of young children, he showed at first a much greater liking for childish sports than for learning of any kind. At five this may perhaps be thought excusable, but there are those whom wisdom preventeth, and when they go forth they find her “sitting at their door.” And to Anscharius the love of wisdom was brought by Her who is herself “the Mother of fair love, and of fear, and of knowledge, and of holy hope; in whom is all grace of the way and of the truth, all hope of life and of virtue.” One night he seemed to find himself in a dark and gloomy place, out of which, when he sought to find some way of escape, he perceived a delightful path wherein Our Lady appeared to him surrounded by a crowd of saints clothed in white garments, among whom he recognised his mother. He ran towards her, stretching out his childish hands; whereupon the Blessed Virgin addressed him, saying: “My son, do you wish to come to your mother? Know that if you would share in her happiness you must fly from vanity, lay aside childish follies, and abide in holiness of life. For we detest all vice and idleness; neither can they who delight in such things be joined to our company.”
From this time Anscharius changed his conduct: he applied himself to his tasks, and spent his whole time in reading and meditation, and acquiring useful arts; so that his companions wondered at a change the cause of which was unknown to them. As he grew in years he was favoured with other heavenly visions, which I notice here, because it is often said, and doubtless with much truth, that the occupations of study and teaching have in them a direct tendency to dry up the sources of devotion. When, therefore, in studying the history of these ancient Christian schools we find among their teachers a succession of saints, and even of contemplatives, who enjoyed the most intimate communications with God, and were distinguished by the highest supernatural gifts, one cannot but ask wherein the difference lay; what divine secret they possessed enabling them to keep the sweet fountain of holy tears from drying up, so that they seem to have been wholly unconscious of the existence of any danger to the spiritual life in the occupations of study or teaching, and regarded such duties as in themselves spiritual. Possibly their safeguard lay in those happy retinacula of religious life of which St. Bede speaks, and which, as we have seen, were regarded as their first object even by scholars like Rabanus and Paschasius, who devoted to study only the “furtive hours” not claimed by prayer and obedience. And hence they created a tradition which was kept up in the Christian schools down to a far later period, the grand principle of which was to interweave spiritual with intellectual employment, and by timely interruptions, prevent the whole nature from being poured out over its mental work. In what manner this was effected in the collegiate foundations of the Middle Ages we shall have occasion to show hereafter; it is sufficient here to remind the reader that such a system was naturally supplied by the discipline of religious life in those cloistered schools which were the nurseries of Christian education. And the result was that the monastic teachers were something very unlike the modern notion of schoolmasters; they were not mere men of the rod and the grammar; and it cannot but strike us as remarkable how almost universally they are spoken of as enjoying, in a very special degree, the gift of prayer. This was preeminently the case with St. Anscharius, and some of his visions are related by his biographer, Rembert, who had heard them in confidence from his own lips. He mentions one remarkable revelation received by the saint in the early part of his religious life, whence he understood that he was to be called to preach the faith to heathen nations. Some of these supernatural incidents are related as mixed up with ordinary details of his life in the schools. While he was scholasticus of Old Corby it was his invariable custom, says Rembert, when going to and returning from the school, to turn aside into a little oratory dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and there pray awhile in secret. On one such occasion when he rose from his knees he saw standing at the entrance One clothed after the Jewish fashion, beautiful in countenance, from whose eyes went forth a Divine light. Recognising it to be our Lord Anscharius prostrated at His feet, but in a sweet voice He bid him rise, saying, “Confess thy sins, Anscharius, that thou mayst receive pardon.” “What need is there, O Lord,” said Anscharius, “that I should tell them to Thee, seeing that Thou knowest them all?” But he replied, “I know them, indeed, nevertheless I would have thee confess them that thou mayst be justified.” Anscharius accordingly declared all the sins he had ever committed since his childhood, and was consoled by the assurance that he had received their full remission. About the same time, continues Rembert, it happened that one of his little scholars, named Fulbert, received a blow with a slate from another lad, of so serious a nature that within a few days he died. When the accident was made known to Anscharius, the good master was overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of such a mischance having befallen a child committed to his care. During the time that Fulbert continued to linger, Anscharius never left his bedside, till at last, wearied out with sorrow and long watching, they persuaded him to take some repose. He fell into a heavy slumber, in which he was consoled by a gracious vision. He seemed to see the dear child carried up to heaven by the hands of the angels, and placed in the company of the martyrs; and, wondering at the sight, it was explained to him that because Fulbert had borne his wound with great patience, and had heartily loved and forgiven him from whom he had received the injury, and had prayed much for him, accepting his own premature death with loving submission to the Divine will, his sweetness and resignation had deserved from the Divine compassion so great a reward as to be placed among the holy martyrs. Anscharius was still absorbed in the joy of this revelation when he was roused by Witmar, a younger monk associated with him in the government of the school, who came to tell him that even at that very moment Fulbert had expired. He found that Anscharius already knew it, and doubtless, adds Rembert, this comfort had been given him by God that he might not grieve overmuch for the death of the child, but might rather rejoice at the happy state of his soul.
Anscharius was one of those chosen to colonise the monastery of New Corby, the mention of which requires a few words of explanation. The foundation of this daughter-house was the great work of St. Adalhard, who so soon as his young Saxons were sufficiently trained in learning and monastic discipline, consulted them on the possibility of their obtaining a suitable site for a foundation in their native land. After many difficulties had been raised and overcome, ground was procured, and the building of the abbey was begun. Adalhard repaired thither to superintend operations in company with Paschasius and his own brother Wala, who, brought up like himself as a soldier and a courtier, had in former years held military command in Saxony and won the affections of the people by his wise and gentle rule. When the Saxons saw their old governor among them again in the monastic habit, nothing could exceed their wonder and delight: they ran after him in crowds, looking at him, and feeling him with their hands to satisfy themselves that it was really he, paying no attention whatever to the presence of the abbot or any other of his companions. The first stone of the new abbey was laid on September 26, 822; Old Corby made over to the new colony all the lands held by the community in Saxony; the Emperor Louis gave them a charter, and some precious relics from his private chapel, and in a few years that great seminary was completed which was destined to carry the light of faith and science to the pagan natives of the farther North. It would be hard to say which of the two Corbies held the highest place in monastic history; a noble emulation existed between them, each trying to outstrip the other in the perfection of monastic discipline. New Corby, in her turn became the mother-house of a vast number of German colonies, over all of which she continued to maintain a certain superiority. A law was made obliging every abbot of these branch-houses to keep a chronicle of his monastery and send a copy of it to the Corby library; and by another law, every novice on the day of his profession was bound to present to the library some useful book. The library of new Corby grew to be one of great value and importance, and its catalogue, still preserved, exhibits the names of not a few Arabic and Hebrew works. It was here also that in the days of Leo X. was disinterred the famous manuscript of Tacitus, which may still be seen at Florence.
A monastery that cared so much for the formation of its library was not likely to be indifferent to its school. It was the boast of both Corbies in turns to possess Anscharius as their scholasticus, “that great preceptor,” as Mabillon calls him, for his reputation as a master was spread over all Germany. He was at the same time appointed to preach to the people, an office particularly agreeable to that apostolic spirit which he had never ceased to nurture in his heart. The time was approaching when the prophetic vision of former years, and the secret instincts of his own soul, were to be accomplished. In 826 Harold, king of Denmark, having embraced the faith, and been baptized with great pomp at Mentz, petitioned the Emperor Louis to give him some holy missionaries, who might accompany him home to Denmark, and plant the Church in that country. Wala, then abbot of New Corby, fixed on Anscharius, and he, mindful of the revelation which had long before assured to him the glory of an apostolic career, joyfully accepted the mission, heedless alike of the criticism of friends and enemies, who all found something to say against it. Anscharius turned a deaf ear to their reasonings and remonstrances, and withdrew to a certain vineyard in the neighbourhood of Aix-la-Chapelle, where he prepared for his new duties by a kind of spiritual retreat. Here he was sought out and discovered by a monk of Old Corby, named Aubert, and thinking that his visitor had only come to pester him with more advice, Anscharius bade him spare himself the trouble of arguing the question, as he had irrevocably made up his mind. “You have nothing to fear from me,” said Aubert, “my only reason for coming to you, is to beg you to accept me as your companion, if the abbot Wala can be brought to give his consent.” Anscharius joyfully welcomed him as a fellow labourer, and they soon after set out in company with the king. His majesty, however, was more than half a barbarian, and the equipment he provided for his missioners was not luxurious. The royal and ecclesiastical retinue embarked on board a very dirty boat, the only accommodation on board consisting of two miserable cabins in which king and missioners were packed together with very little ceremony. However, they arrived at last at their journey’s end, and began their labours by opening a little school in Friesland, where they received twelve children, among whom were the two sons of king Harold himself. A little later we find them passing on to Sweden, attacked on the way by pirates, and robbed of all their baggage, containing their library of forty books. Such were the humble beginnings of a great apostolate, which at its close found Anscharius Archbishop of Hamburgh, and papal legate, not only over the Scandinavian kingdoms, but also over Iceland and the distant shores of Greenland, which are expressly named in the Bull of Pope Gregory IV. One of the most successful means adopted by the saint for the propagation of the faith, was the purchase of young Danes who were offered for sale as slaves, and whom he then sent to Corby, whence, after receiving a Christian education, they returned to their own country as zealous missionaries.
It would take us too long, and probably prove but wearisome to the reader, were we to examine in detail the foundation and history of all the monastic schools of this period. Glance where we will, we shall find indications of the same intellectual activity struggling to make head against the darkness of a semi-barbarous age. The schools of Hirschau, Hirsfield, Fleury, and Prom, might all be made to furnish illustrations of the ardour with which scientific and literary pursuits were carried on by their scholars. But while passing over these and others, which have almost equal claims on our interest, it is impossible to leave without notice two houses whose prëeminent importance in the history of monastic studies has made their names especially venerable: I mean the abbeys of Reichnau, and St. Gall. The first foundation of St. Gall’s belongs indeed to a date far earlier than that of which we are now treating: it owed its origin to St. Gall, the Irish disciple of St. Columbanus, who, in the seventh century, penetrated into the recesses of the Helvetian mountains and there fixed his abode in the midst of a pagan population. Under the famous abbot St. Othmar, who flourished in the time of Pepin, the monks received the Benedictine rule, and from that time the monastery rapidly grew in fame and prosperity, so that in the ninth century it was regarded as the first religious house north of the Alps. It is with a sigh of that irrepressible regret called forth by the remembrance of a form of beauty that is dead and gone for ever, that the monastic historian hangs over the early chronicles of St. Gall. It lay in the midst of the savage Helvetian wilderness, an oasis of piety and civilisation. Looking down from the craggy mountains, the passes of which open upon the southern extremity of the lake of Constance, the traveller would have stood amazed at the sudden apparition of that vast range of stately buildings which almost filled up the valley at his feet. Churches and cloisters, the offices of a great abbey, buildings set apart for students and guests, workshops of every description, the forge, the bakehouse, and the mill, or rather mills, for there were ten of them, all in such active operation, that they every year required ten new millstones; and then the house occupied by the vast numbers of artisans and workmen attached to the monastery gardens too, and vineyards creeping up the mountain slopes, and beyond them fields of waving corn, and sheep speckling the green meadows, and far away boats busily plying on the lake and carrying goods and passengers—what a world it was of life and activity; yet how unlike the activity of a town! It was, in fact, not a town, but a house,—a family presided over by a father, whose members were all knit together in the bonds of common fraternity. I know not whether the spiritual or the social side of such a religious colony were most fitted to rivet the attention. Descend into the valley, and visit all these nurseries of useful toil, see the crowds of rude peasants transformed into intelligent artisans, and you will carry away the impression that the monks of St. Gall had found out the secret of creating a world of happy Christian factories. Enter their church and listen to the exquisite modulations of those chants and sequences peculiar to the abbey which boasted of possessing the most scientific school of music in all Europe; visit their scriptorium, their library, and their school, or the workshop where the monk Tutilo is putting the finishing touch to his wonderful copper images, and his fine altar frontals of gold and jewels, and you will think yourself in some intellectual and artistic academy. But look into the choir, and behold the hundred monks who form the community at their midnight office and you will forget everything, save the saintly aspect of those servants of God who shed abroad over the desert around them the good odour of Christ, and are the apostles of the provinces which own their gentle sway. You may quit the circuit of the abbey and plunge once more into the mountain region which rises beyond, but you will have to wander far before you find yourself beyond the reach of its softening, humanising influence. Here are distant cells and hermitages with their chapels, where the shepherds come for early mass; or it may be that there meets you, winding over the mountain paths of which they sing so sweetly,[96] going up and down among the hills into the thick forests and the rocky hollows, a procession of the monks carrying their relics, and followed by a peasant crowd. In the schools you may have been listening to lectures in the learned, and even in the Eastern tongues; but in the churches, and here among the mountains, you will hear these fine classical scholars preaching plain truths, in barbarous idioms, to a rude race, who before the monks came among them sacrificed to the Evil One, and worshipped stocks and stones.
Yet, hidden away as it was among its crags and deserts, the abbey of St. Gall’s was almost as much a place of resort as Rome or Athens—at least to the learned world of the ninth century. Her schools were a kind of university, frequented by men of all nations, who came hither to fit themselves for all professions. You would have found here not monks alone and future scholastics, but courtiers, soldiers, and the sons of kings. The education given was very far from being exclusively intended for those aspiring to the ecclesiastical state; it had a large admixture of the secular element, at any rate in the exterior school. Not only were the Sacred sciences taught with the utmost care, but the classic authors were likewise explained; Cicero, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and Terence were read by the scholars, and none but the very little boys presumed to speak in any tongue but Latin. The subjects for their original compositions were mostly taken from Scripture and Church history, and having written their exercises they were expected to recite them, the proper tones being indicated by musical notes. Many of the monks excelled as poets, others cultivated painting and sculpture, and other exquisite cloistral arts; all diligently applied to the grammatical formation of the Tudesque dialect and rendered it capable of producing a literature of its own. Their library in the eighth century was only in its infancy, but gradually became one of the richest in the world. They were in correspondence with all the learned monastic houses of France and Italy, from whom they received the precious codex, now of a Virgil or a Livy, now of the Sacred Books and sometimes of some rare treatise on medicine or astronomy. They were Greek students, moreover, and those most addicted to the cultivation of the “Cecropian Muse” were denominated the “fratres Ellenici.” The beauty of their early manuscripts is praised by all authors, and the names of their best transcribers find honourable mention in their annals. They manufactured their own parchment out of the hides of the wild beasts that roamed through the mountains and forests around them, and prepared it with such skill that it acquired a peculiar delicacy. Many hands were employed on a single manuscript. Some made the parchment, others drew the fair red lines, others wrote on the pages thus prepared; more skilful hands put in the gold and the initial letters, and more learned heads compared the copy with the original text, this duty being generally discharged during the interval between matins and lauds, the daylight hours being reserved for actual transcription. Erasure, when necessary, was rarely made with the knife, but an erroneous word was delicately drawn through by the pen, so as not to spoil the beauty of the codex. Lastly came the binders, who enclosed the whole in boards of wood cramped with ivory or iron, the Sacred Volumes being covered with plates of gold and adorned with jewels.
In such a school it was no wonder that the pupils of St. Gall, like those of Eton, became famous for their good writing. Ekhehard I. had a method in this as in everything else; if he found a boy dull over his grammar he set him to copy; arguing that nature was an economist in her gifts, and did not dispense all to all; and that often where the head was somewhat slow in learning, the deficiency was made up by an extra dexterity with the fingers. But boys were never employed on the Gospels, or Church service books, these being reserved for men of perfect age, who would bring greater care to their responsible task. We have even the copy ordinarily set for beginners in the monastic scriptorium, a doggerel line, introducing every letter of the alphabet:
“Adnexique globum Zephyrique Kanna secabant.”