Not the least benefit conferred by the monks on their countrymen by the foundation of these abbeys was the improvement of the lands which they drained and cultivated. This, indeed, does not properly enter into our present subject; but the graphic pictures which monkish historians have left of the spots which they thus tamed and beautified, must be referred to as showing that their minds and tastes were no less richly cultivated. It is thus that William of Malmsbury speaks of Thorney abbey after its restoration by St. Ethelwold, who took great pains in planting it with forest and fruit trees: “Thorney,” says the historian, “is indeed a picture of paradise, and for pleasantness may be compared to heaven itself, bearing trees even in the very fens, which tower with their lofty tops to the clouds; while below, the smooth surface of the water attracts the eye and reflects the verdant scene. Not the smallest spot is here unimproved—all is covered with fruit trees or vines, which creep along the ground, and in some places are supported on poles.”
But it remains for us to speak of the death of those great men, whose successful labours had effected so much for the real civilisation of their country. Ethelwold was the first to depart; and four years later, in 988, St. Dunstan terminated his grand career, rapt, as it would seem, in an ecstasy of love; for, after receiving the Holy Viaticum, he poured out a sublime prayer, and expired with its accents on his lips. St. Oswald survived his two friends until the February of 992; and among all the beautiful narrations of the deaths of the saints, “precious in the sight of the Lord,” few can be found more touching than that which describes his end. On the day previously, coming out of his oratory into the open air, he stood for a while gazing up into the sky, as though fixedly contemplating some glorious sight. Being asked what he saw, he only smiled, and said he was looking at the place whither he was going. He then returned to his oratory and desired them to give him the Holy Unction and the last Viaticum, although, indeed, he had no appearance of illness. That evening he assisted at the night office in his cathedral, and when morning came, according to his custom, he washed the feet of twelve poor men, reciting as he did so the Gradual Psalms. At their close, still kneeling, he pronounced the Gloria Patri, and then, bending gently forward, expired at the feet of the poor. When his holy body was carried to the grave, a milk-white dove, with wings extended, hovered over the bier all the way. He had been granted the satisfaction of witnessing the completion of his favourite abbey of Ramsey, which he consecrated just three months before his death.[120]
The English restoration of letters, inaugurated by St. Dunstan and his companions, took place at a critical period, when fresh tides of barbarism were overwhelming the continental territories, and reducing the monastic institute in France to its very lowest ebb. This tenth century was, in fact, the famous “Age of Iron,” which, in spite of its celebrity as the very midnight of the Dark Ages, fills, strange to say, a very important place in the history of monastic literature. It will, therefore, be necessary to consider its various bearings at some length; and we will begin with the ungracious task of painting it in its blackest aspect.
CHAPTER IX.
THE IRON AGE.
A.D. 900 TO 1000.
Baronius, when about to enter on the history of the tenth century, thinks it necessary to prepare his readers for what is coming by a sentence which, in spite of the wildness of its metaphors, has obtained an odd kind of immortality. “We are now entering on a period,” he says, “which for its sterility of every excellence may be denominated iron; for its luxuriant growth of vice, leaden; and for its dearth of writers, dark.” Why iron should be chosen as most fit to typify the sterility of virtue, and lead to figure forth the luxuriance of vice, is not perhaps at first sight obvious; but these words, which are certainly not remarkable for the appropriateness of their imagery, have formed the text for many commentators; from one of whom, as being a professedly Catholic writer, I select a passage which claims to explain at least one of the phenomena of this period—the darkness, namely, that succeeded the establishment of the Carlovingian schools.
“The want of success in the excellent establishments of Charlemagne,” observes Mr. Berington, in his “Literary History of the Middle Ages,” “may be traced to various causes:—to the inaptitude of the teachers, who, though endowed with the natural powers of intellect, knew not how to excite attention or interest curiosity; to the subjects called sciences, or the seven liberal arts, which were so taught as to disgust by their barbarous elements, and of which the emaciated and haggard skeleton was alike unfit for ornament or use; to the absence of the first rudiments of education, as of reading and writing, in the higher orders of society, and their habitual devotion to martial exercises; to the oblivion in which the classical productions of former ages were held; to a want of capacity in the bishops and clergy and monks, upon whom the weighty charge of education had devolved; to a selfish reflection in the same order of men that, in proportion to the decline of learning and the spread of ignorance, their churches and monasteries had prospered, whilst the revival of letters was likely to direct the copious streams of benevolence into a channel less favourable to the interests of the clergy and monks; to a marked aversion in the Bishop of Rome to any scheme by which the minds of churchmen or others might be turned to the study of antiquity, and of those documents which would disclose on what futile reasons and sandy foundations the exclusive prerogatives of his see were established; and to the genius of the Christian system itself, which, when it expelled the Pagan Deities from their seats, too successfully fixed a reproach on many things connected with them, and thus contributed to banish from the schools, and consign to oblivion those works on the study and prevalence of which will ever depend the progress of the arts, of the sciences, and of literary taste.”[121]