The sorrow of Bennon was too great for words. He wept without ceasing, and pined away in his grief, till at last Wigger had to mingle his consolations with timely reprehension. His words in some degree restored his pupil to peace, but so deep an impression had been made on his heart of the nothingness of a world which sooner or later deprives us of all we most love, that he resolved to have nothing more to do with it, and to devote his life to God in the monastery. He never forgot his good father Bernward, and the first composition which he wrote after the death of the bishop was a poetical epitaph which his biographer inserts, and which is not a favourable specimen of his genius. Jerome probably felt that it was open to criticism, which he judiciously forestalls. “The verses,” he says, “show that if not ignorant of the metrical art, he did not affect a flowery style, but was content with plain and simple language. But if some, having delicate ears, should be disposed to turn up their noses at the line,”
“Quem Deus Emmanuel diligat, et Michael.”
“I would remind them of the singular devotion which the Blessed Bernward bore to St. Michael whence it will appear that this line did not escape our Bennon unwarily. They who are moved by the Spirit of God care not much for the outside shell of words, and prefer a good life to a good style of writing.” He adds, “the scholastic discipline of Hildesheim was at this time extremely severe. It was reckoned a great fault not merely to be absent from choir or refectory, but even to come late. The scholars each day had to bring their Scripture to the dean, and rehearse their Psalms. And the rod was freely used.” Bennon being kept under this strict discipline, passed safely through the slippery time of youth, and in his after-life proved himself not unworthy the extraordinary care bestowed on his education.
Many other great prelates of this period might be enumerated, distinguished either as the founders or the masters of schools. Of Notger of Liege we have already spoken. The school of Verdun was founded by one of his disciples, and boasted of possessing that wonder of the eleventh century, Master Herminfrid, who spoke and wrote with equal facility Latin, Greek, French, German, and Italian. Then there was St. Meinwerc, who like Bennon was a pupil of Hildesheim, where he studied along with his cousin St. Henry of Bavaria, and the prince, even after he became Emperor, remembered their schoolboy days together, and was fond of putting him in mind of them by sundry tricks that savoured of the grown-up schoolboy. Meinwerc was not much of a scholar himself, but when he became Bishop of Paderborn, he showed a laudable zeal in promoting good scholarship among his clergy. In fact, he was the founder of those famous schools of Paderborn which are described as flourishing in divine and human science, and which were perfected by his nephew and successor, Imadeus. The boys were all under strict cloistral discipline; there were professors of grammar, logic, rhetoric, and music; both the trivium and quadrivium were there taught, together with mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Horace, Virgil, and Statius were read by the students, whose ordinary recreation it was to make verses, while great attention was paid to the arts of writing and painting. Brucker treats this account as apocryphal, on the ground that Meinwerc was an ignoramus himself, and sometimes made blunders in reading Latin. The story of Bishop Meinwerc and his mules, the only one, be it remembered, on which this charge of ignorance is founded, together with the explanation of the same so amusingly given by Mr. Maitland in his “Dark Ages,” need not here be repeated. When emperors take to playing tricks, even the wisest of bishops may be snared into a blunder. But granting the fact that Meinwerc himself possessed no more scholarship than our own Wykeham, there seems no reason for supposing it therefore impossible that he should desire to rear a race of students more learned than himself. We know that he was a strict disciplinarian in all that regarded the right discharge of the sacred offices, and that he was wont to examine and burn all incorrect copies of books used at the altar, administering very sharp correction, in the shape of stripes, to careless and negligent priests.
However, the object of the present chapter being chiefly to show something of the interior of schools in the Dark Ages, we will pass over a great many names of founders and learned bishops, and take our way to Magdeburg, where Otho I. had erected a cathedral, and Archbishop Adalbert had founded a school. Here, in 973, the yet more famous St. Adalbert of Prague was sent by his parents for education. They were of the Bohemian nation, and had vowed to offer their son to God should he recover of a dangerous sickness. Before he left his father’s house he had learnt the Psalter, and under Otheric, the famous master then presiding over the school of Magdeburg, he made as much progress in sanctity as in learning. He had a habit of stealing away from the schoolroom in the midst of his studies to refresh his soul with a brief prayer in the church, after which he hastened back and was safe in his place again before the coming of the master. To conceal his acts of charity from the eyes of others, he chose the night hours for visiting the poor and dispensing his abundant alms. It often happened that when Otheric was out of the school, the boys would divert themselves with games more or less mischievous to relieve the weary hours of study. Adalbert seldom took part in these pastimes, neither would he share in those stealthy little feasts which they sometimes held in obscure corners, where they contrived to hide from Otheric’s quick eye the sweets and other dainties furnished them, as we must suppose, by some medieval tart-woman.[134] However, if Adalbert was proof against this last-named temptation, it appears he was not altogether superior to the love of play, and that when his master’s back was turned, he did occasionally throw aside his books and indulge in a game of ball. When such delinquencies came to the ears of Otheric, he did not spare the rod, and on these occasions, observes his biographer with cruel pleasantry, Adalbert was often known to speak in three languages. For it was a strict rule that the boys were always to talk Latin in the schoolroom, and never allow the ears of their master to catch the sound of a more barbarous dialect. When the rod was produced, therefore, Adalbert would begin by entreating indulgence in classic phraseology, but so soon as it was applied, he would call out for mercy in German, and finally in Sclavonic. After nine years’ study at Magdeburg, Adalbert returned to Bohemia, with the reputation of being specially well read in philosophy, and taking with him a useful library of books, which he had collected during his college career. After his consecration as Bishop of Prague, at the early age of twenty-seven, he is said never again to have been seen to smile. Twice the hard-heartedness of his people compelled him to abandon his diocese, and after his departure the second time, he travelled as missioner into the then heathen and barbarous provinces of Prussia, where he met with his martyrdom in the year 997. A Sclavonic hymn to the Blessed Virgin, formerly wont to be sung by the Poles when going to battle, is attributed to this saint.
Hitherto we have spoken only of the episcopal seminaries of Germany; those attached to the monasteries were, if possible, more celebrated. The great school of St. Gall’s attained its highest degree of splendour in this century. Something has already been said of the general character of the studies pursued there, but its succession of great masters deserves a more particular notice. Originally founded by Irish monks, the monastery owed no little of its renown to the teaching of Irish professors. In the year 840, Marx, an Irish bishop, travelling home from Rome in company with his nephew Moengall, stopped at St. Gall’s, and after a few days’ visit, both of them entreated the abbot to admit them into his community. Permission being granted, they dismissed their servants and horses, threw their money out of the window, and, keeping only their books and sacred vessels, vowed to spend the rest of their lives in the seclusion of the cloister. Moengall, to whom the monks gave the less barbarous name of Marcellus, was soon after appointed master of the interior or cloistral school, the exterior one being governed by the famous master, Iso. This last-named personage, whom Ekkehard styles a doctor magnificus, enjoyed such a reputation that all the monasteries of Gaul and Burgundy were eager to obtain his disciples, and it was commonly said that he possessed ways of his own for sharpening the dullest wits. At the precise time of which we speak, he had among his pupils Solomon, afterwards Bishop of Constance, and the three friends, Notker Balbulus, or the stammerer, Ratpert, and Tutilo, all of whom afterwards chose the monastic state, and passed, therefore, to the interior school, presided over by Marcellus.
The Irish scholar greatly improved the system of studies; he extended, if he did not first introduce, the study of Greek, and it is evident that his influence, and that of many of his countrymen, who filled subordinate professorships, may be traced in the character which distinguished the education of St. Gall’s from that of most of its contemporaries. It was larger and freer, and made more of the arts and sciences; indeed, so far as regards its studies, it had a better claim to the title of a university than any single institution which can be named as existing before the time of Philip Augustus. Marcellus was fortunate in his pupils, but the character of the three who were most prominent among them must be given in the words of Ekkehard. Though united in one heart, he says, they were of very different dispositions. Notker was weak, not in mind but in body; in speech, but not in spirit, a stammerer. Firm in spiritual things, patient in adversity, mild to all, yet a strict disciplinarian, and timorous at any sudden alarm, except of demons, whom he combated valiantly. He was very assiduous in reading, writing and composing, and was, in short, a vessel of the Holy Ghost. Very different was Tutilo; he was a good and useful man; as to his arms and all his limbs, such as Fabius teaches us to choose for a wrestler. He was eloquent, with a fine voice, skilful in carving, and an excellent painter. He was a musician, too, like his companions, and excelled everybody in all kinds of stringed and wind instruments, and taught their use to the sons of the nobility educated in the exterior school. He was, moreover, a very wise builder, powerful in reading and singing, cheerful whether in jest or earnest, and what is more, ever diligent in choir; in secret, given to devout tears, and skilful in the composition of songs and melodies. Ratpert was something between the two: from his youth he had been schoolmaster of the external school, where he succeeded Master Iso, and a kind, straightforward teacher he was, very strict in discipline, and so seldom given to go abroad that, he made one pair of shoes last a twelvemonth. He was very famous as a poet, and so fond of the ancients that he was known, even in chapter, to quote a verse from Virgil. He died some years before either of his friends; and forty of his former pupils, all of them priests or canons, stood around his deathbed, and promised each one to say thirty masses for the repose of his soul, a thing which gave him infinite joy and satisfaction.
Tutilo was a good classical scholar, and could preach both in Greek and Latin; but he was chiefly esteemed as an artist and a musician. He sang his own melodies to the harp, an instrument which the Irish monks had rendered very popular at St. Gall’s. His magnificent statuary in bronze and stone continued to decorate the abbey church till the time of its pillage by the soi-disant reformers, and all the French and German prelates were eager to obtain his works. With the permission of his abbot, therefore, he travelled far and wide, executing devout carvings and paintings, much to the dissatisfaction of Ratpert, who was wont to say that this gadding about the world was the destruction of a monk. It did not, however, prove so with Tutilo, who, to all his brilliant genius and gigantic muscular strength, united in a singular degree the grace of humility. Whenever he found that his artistic skill drew on him any notable amount of admiration, he generally found some excuse for departing from the place where he was at work, and his long journeys never lessened his devotion, or deprived him of his gift of holy tears. It was his custom to adorn his sculptures and pictures with pious verses, in order to draw the thoughts of those who beheld them from the work of the artist to the divine mystery which it represented. One of his most celebrated pieces of sculpture was an image of the Blessed Virgin, which he carved for the cathedral at Metz. Whilst engaged on this masterpiece, two pilgrims came up and begged an alms of him, and having received it, asked of a clerk who was standing by, who that beautiful lady was whom they saw at his side, holding his compasses, and directing him in his work. The clerk looked, and saw the same wondrous vision, and believed it to be Our Lady herself who had come in person to assist her client. But when the rumour of the thing spread abroad, Tutilo fled away, nor could he ever be persuaded to return to the city. His verses were highly esteemed, and some of his elegies are still preserved. Besides all this, he was great in mathematics and astronomy, and constructed an astrolabe which showed the course of the stars. For it must be remembered that scientific studies were highly prized at St. Gall’s, and that even geographers were to be found among the monks, such as Abbot Hartmot, who constructed a large map of the world, in those days a very rare and valuable curiosity.
Among these three famous scholars, we may select Notker as the most perfect specimen of the monastic type. Like his two friends, he was a poet and musician, and his brethren considered him a second Horace for the beauty of his songs and sequences. It was the reputation of learning enjoyed by St. Gall’s which had first attracted him thither, for indeed, says Ekkehard, “he was devoured with a love of grammar.” Like a true poet, he was keenly susceptible to the sights and sounds of nature, and loved to “study her beautifulness” in that enchanted region of lakes and mountains. The gentle melancholy inseparable from exalted genius, which in him was increased by his exceeding delicacy of organisation, found its expression in the wild and mystic melodies which he composed. The monotonous sound of a mill-wheel near the abbey suggested to him the music of the “Media Vita,” the words being written whilst looking into a deep gulf over which some labourers were constructing a bridge. This antiphon became very popular in Germany, and was every year sung at St. Gall’s during the Rogation Processions. But it was not as a poet or man of science that the Blessed Notker was best known to posterity; profoundly learned in human literature, he yet, says Ekkehard, applied more to the Psalter than to any other book. Even in his own lifetime he was revered as a saint. He was master of the interior and claustral school at the same time as Ratpert governed the exterior school, and kept up the same strict discipline, “stripes only excepted.” The gentleness of his disposition peeps out in the fact that one of the faults he was hardest on in his pupils was the habit of bird’s-nesting. He was always accessible; no hour of day or night was ever deemed unseasonable for a visit from any who brought a book in their hands. For the sake of maintaining regular observance, he once forbade his disciples to whisper to him in time of silence, but the abbot enjoined him under obedience to let them speak to him whenever they would. Ratpert relates a story of him, which shows the opinion of learning and sanctity in which he was held. The emperor Charles, having on one occasion come to the monastery on a visit, he brought in his suite a certain chaplain, whose pride appears to have taken offence at the consideration with which his master treated the Blessed Notker. When they were about to depart, therefore, seeing the man of God sitting, as was his custom, with his Psalter in his hand, and recognising him to be the same man who, on the previous day, had solved many hard questions proposed to him by Charles, he said to his companions, “There is he who is said to be the most learned man in the whole empire; but if you like, I will make this most excellent wiseacre a laughing-stock for you, for I will ask him a question which, with all his learning, he will not be able to answer.” Curious to see what he would do, and how Notker would deal with him, they agreed to his proposal, and all went together to salute the master, who courteously rose, and asked them what they desired. Then said the unhappy man of whom we spoke, “O most learned master, we are very well aware that there is nothing you do not know. We therefore desire you to tell us, if you can, what God is now doing in heaven?” “Yes,” replied Notker, “I can answer that question very well. He is doing what He always has done, and what He is shortly about to do to thee, He is exalting the humble, and humbling the proud.” The scoffer moved away, while the laugh was turned against him. Nevertheless, he made light of Notker’s words and the prediction of evil which they seemed to contain regarding himself. Presently the bell rang for the king’s departure, and the chaplain, mounting his horse, rode off with a great air in front of his master. But before he came to the gate of the city the steed fell, and the rider being thrown on his face, broke his leg. Abbot Hartmot hearing of this accident, desired Notker to visit the sick man, and pardon him, giving him his blessing. But the foolish chaplain protested that the misfortune had nothing to do with Notker’s prediction, and continued to speak of him with the greatest contempt. His leg, however, remained in a miserable state, until one night his friends besought Notker to come to him and aid him with his prayers. He complied willingly enough, and touching the leg, it was immediately restored; and by this lesson the chaplain learned to be more humble for the future.
Notker was the author of various works, amongst others of a German translation of the Psalter, which Vadianus speaks of in his treatise on the “Ancient Colleges of Germany,” and which he says is scarcely intelligible by reason of the excessive harshness of the old Tudesque dialect. He gives a translation of the “Creed,” and the “Our Father,” from Notker’s version, in which it is not difficult to trace the German idiom.[135] Notker’s German studies were yet more extensively carried on by his namesake, Notker Labeo, or the Thick-Lipped, who wrote many learned works in the vernacular, and was also a great classical scholar. He translated into German the works of Aristotle, Boëthius, and Marcian Capella, and some musical treatises, all which are still preserved. His translation of St. Gregory’s “Morals” is lost. He is commemorated in the chronicles of his House as “the kind and learned master,” and whilst he presided over the claustral school, he educated a great many profound scholars, among whom was Ekkehard junior, the author of the chronicle “De Casibus S. Galli,” and of the celebrated “Liber Benedictionum.” This Ekkehard, at the request of the empress, transcribed Notker’s “Paraphrase of the Psalms” for her use with his own hand, and corrected a certain poem which his predecessor Ekkehard I. had written when a schoolboy, and which was full of Tudesque barbarisms, such as the delicate ear of Ekkehard junior might not abide. He held that the barbarous idioms could not be translated into Latin without a great deal of painstaking. “Think in German,” he would say to his scholars, “and then be careful to render your thought into correct Latin.” There was yet a third Ekkehard whose memory is preserved in the annals of St. Gall under the surname of Palatinus. He was nephew to Ekkehard I., and presided over both the exterior and interior schools, and that with great success. He made no distinction between noble and plebeian scholars, but employed those who had less talent for learning in writing, painting, and other like arts. He was able to take down in shorthand the substance of anything he heard, and two discourses are still preserved thus noted by his hand. He was afterwards most unwillingly summoned to the Court of Otho I., who appointed him his chaplain and secretary, and tutor to his son Otho II. So venerated was this great man throughout Germany, that when he attended the council of Mentz in 976, six bishops rose up to salute their old master, all of them having been educated in the school of St. Gall. To this list of masters I must add the name of another Notker, who, from his strict observance of discipline, received the surname of “Piperis-granum,” or the Peppercorn, though his pungency of temper did not prevent his brethren from commemorating him in their obituary as the “Doctor benignissimus.” He was renowned as a physician, a painter, and a poet, and was also well skilled in music. Most of these great men find a place in a narrative which I will give here for the sake of its connection with the classical studies of St. Gall, and which is related by Ekkehard junior in his chronicle of the abbey.