Christian Schools and Scholars / or, Sketches of Education from the Christian Era to the Council of Trent

by Augusta Theodosia Drane

KING ALFRED.

A.D. 873 TO 900.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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