We have now to watch the gradual growth into form and order of these chaotic elements, and will pass over to the other side of the great oak forest, and make our way to the village of Abingdon, where the abbey which we saw founded by good St. Ethelwold had been rebuilt by his Norman successors, and in the early days of the reign of Henry III. was flourishing in great splendour. In the village that had gathered round its walls there lived, at that time, a widow, named Mabel Rich, the mother of four children, whom she brought up in all holy living. Her husband, before his death, had put on the monk’s cowl in the neighbouring abbey of Eynsham, whither his eldest son had followed him; another son retired to the priory of Boxley in Kent, whilst Mabel, in heart also a religious, remained in the world to educate her remaining children. Growing up under the shadow of the old cloister, by the side of a mother who trained him in the austere practices of ancient piety, Edmund Rich was steeped from childhood in the spirit of Catholic devotion. He assisted with Mabel at the midnight office in the abbey, he learnt the Psalter from her lips; and his soul gradually received that beautiful mould which we have again and again admired in the scholars of old time, and which perhaps found in him its most perfect realisation. At twelve years old he went to Oxford, and it is his own brother, Robert Rich, who tells us how, at that time, going out into the meadows in order to withdraw himself from the boisterous play of his companions, the Child Jesus appeared to him, and saluted him with the words “Hail, beloved one!” And he, wondering at the beauty of the Child, replied, “Who are you, for to me you are certainly unknown?” Then said the Child, “How comes it that I am unknown to thee, seeing that I sit by thy side at school, and wherever thou art, there also do I accompany thee? Look in My face and see what is there written.” Edmund looked and saw the words, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” “This is My name,” said the Child, “write it on thy forehead every night, and it shall protect thee from sudden death.” Then He disappeared, on Whom the Angels desire to look, leaving the other with a sweetness in his heart passing that of honey.
From Oxford Edmund proceeded to Paris, where we have already seen something of his manner of life. He seems to have studied more than once at both universities, and also at Merton abbey, then a great seat of learning. As soon as he had taken his master’s degree, he opened a school of his own on the spot now occupied by St. Edmund’s Hall. The favourite maxim he was accustomed to give to his pupils, was this: “Study as if you were to live for ever, live as if you were to die to-morrow.” For himself, he heard Mass daily, attended matins in the nearest parish church, and recited the canonical hours before beginning his lectures. And to satisfy his devotion with the greater convenience, he spent part of his slender patrimony in the erection of a Lady chapel attached to St. Peter’s church, where he and his pupils regularly recited the Divine office. It must be remembered, that at this period Oxford possessed none of those colleges and collegiate chapels, in which the Church office was afterwards celebrated with so much splendour; but the custom, introduced for the first time by St. Edmund, was soon followed by other students. Those who love the memory of the holy scholar may still visit his chapel, which looks desolate enough, with its once delicate lancet windows walled up; yet it is something to know the spots where saints have prayed.
Did we know St. Edmund only by the records left us of his tender piety, his singular devotion to our Blessed Lady, and his manifold austerities, we might picture him as some contemplative saint, whose thoughts were wholly withdrawn from the world, and fixed on unseen things. Yet he was a scholar and a teacher; a close logician, and a great lover of mathematics. Wood says that he was the first who publicly read some of Aristotle’s Treatises at Oxford, and for six years after the opening of his school he continued to lecture on arts. The circumstance which led to his exchanging these studies for that of theology is thus told by his biographer: “After he had taught the liberal arts for six years, and was reading geometry with his pupils, his mother one night appeared to him as he slept, saying: ‘What is it, my son, that you read and teach, and what are those figures over which you are poring so intently?’ He replied, that they were the figures of geometry, on which she took his hand in hers, and drew thereon three circles, at the same time naming the three Divine Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Then she added, ‘These are the figures which you must henceforth study.’” From that time he applied himself exclusively to the sacred sciences, and that with greater ardour than he had hitherto bestowed on secular learning. He hardly gave himself time for sleep and refreshment, but studied night and day. An ivory crucifix, with the mysteries of our redemption carved round it, was always on his table when he read, and to it from time to time he directed his eyes, feeding his heart the while with pious ejaculations. He never went to bed, but took his scanty rest on the floor, or in his chair, and was at his books again as soon as the morning dawned. Does this intense application seem excessive? and does any reader conceive a distrust of such absorbing studies? Let them learn that at this very time St. Edmund sold all his books, to supply the wants of some poor scholars whom he had no other means of relieving, and seems to have been indebted to a charitable friend for the gift of a Bible, which afterwards formed his principal study.
After some years, having taken his doctor’s degree, he once more began to teach; and strange and beautiful were the scenes in that saintly lecture-room, where the master was often rapt in ecstacy, and the scholars were fain to shut up their note-books, being too much blinded with their tears to use them. Wood mentions the tradition, common at Oxford, that an angel, in the form of a beautiful youth, was often seen standing by his side while he spoke, a legend which at least shows in what sort of esteem he was held by his scholars. Among them were St. Sewall, afterwards Archbishop of York, St. Richard of Chichester, Stephen Lexington, and Robert Grosteste, all of whom took part in the great intellectual movement shortly afterwards set on foot at Oxford by the mendicant friars. He did not make much profit out of his school, for the money he received from his pupils was either spent in charity, or suffered to lie loose on his window sill, where he would strew it over with ashes, saying, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Any one might take it who chose, and his friends did so sometimes, to see what he would say; but he asked no account of it, and no persuasion would ever induce him to keep it under lock and key. He was not the mere professor, whose care of his pupils ceased when they left his lecture-room. He nursed them when they were sick, and relieved them when they were in want; and they in their turn loved to gather up each trait of their beloved master, and handed down to those who came after them the portraiture of the saint, with his beautiful countenance, the pallor of which became of a fair shining red when he spoke of God or holy things, in his grey scholar’s gown, which was poor without meanness, for he was wont to say that a clerk should remember that his state was an honourable one, and that his appearance, if simple, should never be abject.
St. Edmund had a real love for the work of teaching, and several times when he had been persuaded to accept of benefices, he resigned them in order to return to Oxford. At last, however, we find him treasurer of Salisbury; and with his habits, a very strange treasurer he must have made. And in 1234 he became Archbishop of Canterbury. We need not follow the history of his troublous primacy; he fared the usual fate of English primates who resisted the tyranny of Plantagenet kings; and six years later was an exile at Pontigny, living among the Cistercian monks as one of themselves, writing his “Mirror of the Church,” and preparing for his end. He did not die at Pontigny, however, but at Soissy, whither they brought him in hopes that the cooler air might revive his exhausted strength. His last days were spent in giving alms to the poor pilgrims who passed that way, and when he was too feeble to rise from his chair and go to the gate, he made one of his chaplains take his place, and give to all who came. His last words are preserved, the words he pronounced with outstretched hands, when about to receive the Holy Viaticum:—“Lord, thou art He in whom I have believed, whom I have preached, whom I have truly taught: and Thou art my witness that while I have been on earth, I have sought nothing else besides Thee. And as Thou knowest that I will only what Thou willest, so now I say, Thy will be done.” “All the rest of that day,” says his biographer, “he was joyful and even gay; you would not have thought he was suffering from sickness; and many wondered to see him thus. The tears of devotion were indeed in his eyes, but his beautiful countenance manifested the serenity that filled his heart. There was no sign of approaching death; and at the last moment, neither sigh nor death-rattle was heard; he did not even sink back on his bed, as dying persons are wont to do, but remained sitting, and so gently expired, leaning his head upon his hand.” Pontigny keeps his dust as her most precious treasure, and even in our own day, such a strange attractive power is possessed by the sacred relics of the saints, that a newly-founded religious congregation has selected its desolate church for the site of their mother house, with the view of obtaining for their apostolic work the blessing of Saint Edmé.
Meanwhile, if England had cast out her holy primate, Oxford had not forgotten her doctor. The work he had begun in his schools was carried on by the band of scholars whom he had trained and left behind him. Five years before he left the university, the two orders of mendicant friars had been established in the town. The first colony of the Franciscans was sent thither in 1220, by Brother Agnellus, who soon after came himself, and caused a decent school to be built, in which he induced Master Robert Grosteste to deliver his lectures. Grosteste was at that time the most illustrious doctor of the university, and soon brought the Franciscan schools into high repute. Agnellus, though himself unlearned, was most desirous that the studies of his brethren should be amply provided for, and often visited the schools to watch their progress. One day, to his great surprise, he found them disputing on the thesis, “Whether there be a God.” Whereon he cried out in great distress, “Alas, alas! simple friars penetrate the heavens, while the learned are disputing if there be a God.” With these words he left the school “in a chafe,” says Wood, “to think he had built it for such debates,” but, becoming a little calmer, sent the sum of ten marks to Rome to buy a correct copy of the Decretals, charging his friars to apply themselves wholly to the study thereof, and to lay aside questions of sophistry and foolish babbling.
It must not be supposed from this story that the learning encouraged at the university by Grosteste was entirely of that disputatious and empty kind which had become fashionable in the schools since the time of Abelard. Grosteste, if he exercised the friars in such scholastic disputations, was himself a decided advocate of the older learning, and may be regarded as, in the main, a disciple of the school of St. Victor. When chancellor of the university, he used his influence to promote the study of positive theology, and of that Biblical learning in which he was himself a proficient. One of his modern biographers has candidly admitted that “his wonderful knowledge of Scripture might probably be worthy of remark in our day, though in his own not more than was possessed by all theological students.” But Grosteste had largeness of mind enough to appreciate the value of the scholastic method at the same time that he laboured to prevent the study of the Scriptures and the liberal arts from falling into decay; and he probably found means of satisfying Brother Agnellus on this point, for whatever use was made of the copy of the Decretals, it is quite certain that the friars did not “apply themselves wholly” to them, or lay aside their scholastic exercises. On the contrary, Fuller tells us that they soon beat all their competitors in school divinity, “out of all distance;” and Wood adds to his narrative as given above, that Grosteste was not superficial in his performances, and that under him the friars made extraordinary advances both in disputation and preaching.
The great esteem in which Grosteste held the Franciscans led him, not only to teach in their schools, but to persuade other first-rate regents to do the same; besides which, he induced several of his own personal friends to enter the order, among whom was Adam Marsh, the parish priest of Wearmouth, better known by his Italian name of Adam de Marisco, who is reckoned as the first regular professor of the order at Oxford, and was known as “the Illustrious Doctor,” and Roger Bacon, the wonder of his age, and the greatest natural philosopher who appeared in England before the time of Newton. Besides these, the Franciscans were joined by a crowd of other illustrious novices, such as John Wallis, surnamed the “Tree of Life,” Alexander of Hales, Haymo of Feversham, and more than one Benedictine and Augustinian abbot, which latter circumstance has greatly excited the spleen of Matthew Paris.
Grosteste, after for some time filling the office of chancellor, became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235, in which capacity he was still ex officio head of the university, and continued to keep up an active interest in its affairs. Among his letters is one addressed to the regents of Oxford, in which he gives them much useful advice as to the regulation of their studies. “Let the foundation-stones be well laid,” he says, “on them the whole building rests. The morning is the best time for study, and the good old Paris custom should be observed of reserving those early hours for the lectures on Scripture, giving the later part of the day to other subjects.” Even when treating of questions altogether unconnected with natural science, his love of it peeps out in spite of himself, as in the passage where he gracefully compares the difference between direct and delegated authority to the different powers of the sun’s rays when falling direct, or reflected from a mirror. He was undoubtedly one of the greatest men of his time, a universal genius, and revered by his countrymen as a saint. After his death, the university united with the king in petitioning for his canonisation, and sent a document to Rome, in which it is declared “that the said Robert never left undone any good action pertaining to his state and office for fear of any man, but was rather prepared for martyrdom should the sword of the assassin have fallen upon him. Likewise, the university certifieth of his splendid learning, and that he most admirably governed Oxford, in his degree of doctor of holy theology, and was illustrious for many miracles after his death, wherefore he is named by the mouth of all men, ‘Holy Robert.’” He may, in fact, be regarded as, in his own time, the representative of the university, and hence it is of particular importance to ascertain what the studies were which he followed and promoted. As a theologian, he belonged rather to the mystic than the speculative school, and as a scholar he was a warm upholder of the liberal arts, doing his utmost to encourage the study, not only of the Latin classics, but also of Greek and Hebrew. He translated the works of St. Dionysius the Areopagite, and, to facilitate the study of Greek, is also said to have translated the Lexicon of Suidas. He promoted two ecclesiastics who are likewise known to have been Greek scholars: John Basing, archdeacon of St. Alban’s, who in 1240 returned from Athens laden with Greek manuscripts, and Nicholas, chaplain to the abbot of St. Alban’s, surnamed Græcus, who assisted the bishop in some of his translations. He is also said to have been acquainted with Hebrew. But his skill in the learned tongues formed but a small part of Grosteste’s acquirements. He was a mathematician, a poet, a musician, and a philosopher. Among the two hundred treatises of various kinds which he left behind him are to be found, besides his theological writings, works on the sphere, on physical science, husbandry, political economy, medicine, and music; commentaries on Aristotle and Boëthius, and Norman-French poems. Of these last, one is entitled the “Château d’Amour,” a name he bestows on the Blessed Virgin, and consists of a religious romance on the fall and redemption of man. This, together with his “Manuel des Péchés,” was translated in the following reign into English verse, by Robert Manning, who, in the prologue to his poem, alludes to the bishop’s well-known love of music, and tells us that—.
He loved moche to here the harpe,