He was now in a position effectually to carry out those great measures of reform for which he had so long been preparing the instruments. He found himself surrounded by a band of faithful and carefully-trained ecclesiastics, animated with his own devoted spirit; and his first step was to procure the election of Oswald, the nephew of Odo, to the see of Worcester. Ten years later, St. Oswald became Archbishop of York, being allowed, by extraordinary dispensation, to hold both sees together; Dunstan being unwilling that the good discipline he had established at Worcester should suffer by his removal. Ethelwold was placed over the see of Winchester, and, with the help of these two holy coadjutors, the archbishop entered on the task of enforcing the observance of the sacred canons. The royal sanction to his plan was formally granted at a great council, for Edgar entered heart and soul into all the plans of his primate. “I hold the sword of Constantine,” he said, “and you that of St. Peter; together we will purify the sanctuary.” The choice was everywhere offered to the secular clergy of promising obedience to the laws of the Church, or resigning their benefices. In some places the secular canons accepted the reform, but where they refused to do so they were summarily ejected. St. Oswald was fortunate enough to succeed in winning his Worcester canons, not merely to promise a regular life, but to embrace the monastic rule; and, under his wise and gentle government, they in time became excellent religious. St. Ethelwold was less happy; and finding it impossible to convert his canons from their life of lawless indulgence, he replaced them with a body of Benedictine monks.
At the same time that many cathedrals and collegiate churches were receiving these monastic colonies, new foundations were everywhere springing up. Ely, Peterborough, Malmsbury and Thorney abbeys rose once more out of their ruins; and such was the eagerness of the king and his nobles to promote the ecclesiastical reform, that more than forty abbeys were founded or restored during the primacy of St. Dunstan. With these events, however, so important in the Church history of England, we are only concerned in so far as they affected the restoration of learning; and, in fact, the revival of the monastic institute was one and the same thing with the revival of the English schools. From this time, in spite of many corruptions and abuses, which resisted even the efforts of Dunstan to remove them, the Dark Age, par excellence, of English history began to disappear. A new race of scholars sprang up in the restored cloisters, some of whom were not unworthy to be ranked with the disciples of Alcuin and Bede. St. Dunstan himself, during the remainder of his primacy, was occupied with measures rather of practical, than of educational reform; nevertheless, we find from his canons that his solicitude was directed in a very special way to providing for the religious instruction of the common people. He revived the old parochial schools, and obliged his parish priests to preach every Sunday to their flocks, requiring them also in their schools to teach the children of their parishioners grammar, the church-chant, and some useful handicraft trade.
It was St. Ethelwold, however, who exhibited the greatest zeal for the restoration of sacred studies. He loved the work of teaching for its own sake, and had no sooner got possession of his own cathedral, and banished the canons who had so long disgraced it, than he applied all his care to collect and educate a staff of young clergy, who, he trusted, would prove worthy to fill the vacant benefices. “It was ever sweet to him,” says his charming biographer Wolstan, “to teach youths and little ones, to explain their Latin books to them in English, to instruct them in the rules of grammar and prosody, and allure them by cheerful words to study and improvement. And so it came to pass that many of his disciples became priests and abbots, some also bishops and archbishops, in the realm of England.” Among these was St. Elphege, who afterwards became Archbishop of Canterbury, and was martyred by the Danes, and Cynewulf, abbot of Peterborough, an apt and gentle teacher, whose monastic school was so celebrated that, as Hugo Candidus says, scholars flocked to it from all countries as to the court of a second Solomon. He wrote some Anglo-Saxon poems, still preserved; their authorship being detected by the curious insertion here and there of a Runic letter, which, when put together, spell the writer’s name.
It will be observed that the new race of scholars did not exclusively cultivate Latin literature. The labours of Alfred had given a powerful stimulus to the study of English, and this was yet further encouraged both by St. Dunstan and St. Ethelwold, who desired nothing more than to facilitate the instruction of the common people in their own tongue. Ethelwold translated the rule of St. Benedict into Anglo-Saxon for the use of his monks, and a copy of this work may still be seen in the Cottonian Library, the Latin text being accompanied with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. Elfric, one of Ethelwold’s scholars, devoted himself with particular energy to the cultivation of English literature. Besides translating a considerable number of the books of Scripture, at the request of his friend, the ealderman Ethelward, he composed a Latin and English grammar, and other school books, such as a Latin and English glossary, and his well-known “Colloquies,” written in both languages, for the use of beginners. The grammar has a Latin and English preface, in which he tells us that he undertook the work for the promotion of sacred studies, specially among the young, for, he observes, “it is the duty of ecclesiastics to guard against such a want of learning in our day as was to be found in England but a very few years ago, when not a priest could be found to translate a Latin epistle, till Archbishop Dunstan and Bishop Ethelwold encouraged learning in their monasteries.”
His most celebrated work was his collection of Homilies[118] for the use of parish priests. None are original compositions; they are selections and translations from the early Latin Fathers, as well as from Bede and a few other French and German homilists. The Anglo-Saxon into which they are rendered is considered the fairest specimen that can be cited of our ancient national tongue, and raises a regret that so noble a language should ever have been allowed to corrupt into our modern hybrid English. The compiler subscribes his name to the work as, “Ælfric, the scholar of Ethelwold,” a title he evidently regarded as no small honour. I may add, that many of his writings are addressed to his friend Ethelward and another English thane, Sigwerd of East Heolen, and seems to intimate that the laity as well as the clergy were now beginning to cultivate letters.
Ethelwold’s zeal for the restoration of the monastic institute moved him to petition King Edgar for a grant of all the minsters that had been laid waste in old time by the “heathen men.” It would be too long to notice all the restoration effected by “the father of monks” as he was called, or the many works of active benevolence which earned for him, from his grateful people, his other beautiful title of “the well-willing bishop.” He exercised his engineering talents in supplying his cathedral city with water, and in time of dearth broke up his altar plate to feed the multitudes. He rebuilt his cathedral church with great splendour, as we learn from the poem in which Wolstan has dwelt with loving minuteness on every detail from the crypt to the tower, which last was surmounted by a gilded weathercock, which says the poet, “stands proudly superior to the whole population of Winton, and brazen as he is, rules all the other cocks of the city.” There was likewise an organ of marvellous construction, and a certain wheel full of bells, called “the golden wheel,” only brought out on solemn occasions, both of these being the workmanship of the bishop.
Meanwhile, St. Oswald was pursuing much the same course in his northern dioceses. He restored the abbeys of Pershore, Winchecombe, and St. Alban’s, and founded several others, particularly that of Ramsey, which long maintained the reputation of being the most learned of the English monasteries. The history of its foundation is given at length by the monk of Ramsey. A certain ealderman, named Aylwin, having offered to devote his wealth to some work of piety, St. Oswald asked him if he had any lands suited for the building of a monastery. He replied that he had some land, surrounded with marshes, and free from resort of men, and there was a forest near it full of various kinds of trees, and having several spots of good turf and fine grass for pasturage. They went together to view the spot, which was so solitary and yet possessed of so many conveniences for subsistence and secluded devotion, that the bishop decided on accepting it. Artificers of all kinds were at once collected, and the neighbours willingly offered their services. Twelve monks from another cloister came to form the new foundation; their cells and a temporary chapel were first raised, and by the next winter they had provided iron and timber enough for a handsome church. In the spring a firm foundation was made in the fenny soil, the workmen labouring as much from devotion as for profit. Some brought the stones, others made the cement, and others worked the wheel-machinery that raised the stones to their places, and so in a short time the sacred edifice, with two fair towers, appeared in what had before been a desolate wilderness.
The monks mentioned in this account as having been brought from “another cloister,” were a colony from Fleury, and among them was the celebrated Abbo of Fleury, of whom there will be occasion to speak in another chapter. He remained two years at Ramsey, and thoroughly established its school. His most distinguished pupil was Bridferth, originally a monk of Thorney, who migrated to Ramsey soon after its foundation, and was probably one of the first scientific scholars of his time. He had received his early education from St. Dunstan, and imbibed all his tastes. In his Commentary on Bede he incidentally notices a scientific observation which he had made when a student at Thionville in France, whence it appears that he had enlarged his stock of knowledge by visits to foreign academies. His Commentaries on the treatises De Rerum Natura and De Tempore, consist of notes of lectures delivered in the Ramsey schools. Whilst explaining his author he frequently introduces original illustrations, sometimes supporting Bede’s statements by numerical calculations of his own, sometimes amplifying the text and clearing up doubtful expressions. He quotes St. Clement, St. Augustine, Eusebius, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Isidore, also Pliny, Macrobius, Priscian, and Martian Capella, and continually refers to the Latin poets as familiar to his hearers. He was also the author of a treatise “De Principiis Mathematicis,” and a life of his old master. St. Dunstan, the last of which he dedicated to Ælfric, and extols him in his preface for the “enormity of his well-known learning.”
The later annals of Ramsey abbey are full of interest, and how that the school thus brilliantly founded was not suffered to fall into decay. Some of these will reappear in a later portion of our narrative; but, before bidding adieu to the old Saxon abbey, I must notice one little narrative which shows that all the scholars there educated were not destined for the ecclesiastical state. Four little boys named Oswald, Etheric, Ædnoth, and Athelstan had been placed in the school by St. Oswald, all being sons of powerful Saxon thanes. They were received before they were seven years old, and were of innocent manners and beautiful countenances. At certain times they were suffered by their master to go and play outside the cloister walls. One day, being thus sent out by themselves, they ran to the great west tower, and laying hold of the bell rope, rang with all their might, but so unskilfully that one of the bells was cracked by the unequal motion. The mischief becoming known, the culprits were threatened with a sound flogging; a threat which occasioned abundance of tears. At last remembering the sentence they had so often heard read from the rule of St. Benedict, “If any one shall lose or break anything, let him hasten without delay to accuse himself of it,” they ran to the abbot and, weeping bitterly, told him all that had happened. The good abbot pitied their distress, and calling the brethren together who were disposed to treat the matter rather severely, he said to them, “These innocents have committed a fault, but with no evil intention; they ought, therefore, to be spared, and when they grow up to be men it will be easy for them to make good the damage they have done.” Then, dismissing the monks, he secretly admonished the boys, how to disarm their anger, and they, following his directions, entered the church with bare feet, and there made their vow; and when they grew up to manhood and were raised to wealth and honour they remembered what they had promised, and bestowed great benefits on the church.[119]