To these monasteries, too, came the men of the very highest intellect, of whatsoever class. I say, of the very highest intellect. Tolerably talented men might find it worth while to stay in the world, and use their wits in struggling upward there. The most talented of all would be the very men to see a better ‘carrière ouverte aux talens’ than the world could give; to long for deeper and loftier meditation than could be found in the court; for a more divine life, a more blessed death, than could be found in the camp and the battle-field.
And so it befals, that in the early middle age the cleverest men were generally inside the convent, trying, by moral influence and superior intellect, to keep those outside from tearing each other to pieces.
But these intellects could not remain locked up in the monasteries. The daily routine of devotion, even of silent study and contemplation, was not sufficient for them, as it was for the average monk. There was still a reserve of force in them, which must be up and doing; and which, in a man inspired by that Spirit which is the Spirit of love to man as well as to God, must needs expand outwards in all directions, to Christianize, to civilize, to colonize.
To colonize. When people talk loosely of founding an abbey for superstitious uses, they cannot surely be aware of the state of the countries in which those abbeys were founded; either primæval forest, hardly-tilled common, or to be described by that terrible epithet of Domesday-book, ‘wasta’—wasted by war. A knowledge of that fact would lead them to guess that there were almost certainly uses for the abbey which had nothing to do with superstition; which were as thoroughly practical as those of a company for draining the bog of Allen, or running a railroad through an American forest. Such, at least, was the case, at least for the first seven centuries after the fall of Rome; and to these missionary colonizers Europe owes, I verily believe, among a hundred benefits, this which all Englishmen will appreciate; that Roman agriculture not only revived in the countries which were once the Empire, but spread from thence eastward and northward, into the principal wilderness of the Teuton and Sclavonic races.
I cannot, I think, shew you better what manner of men these monk-colonizers were, and what sort of work they did, than by giving you the biography of one of them; and out of many I have chosen that of St. Sturmi, founder whilome of the great abbey of Fulda, which lies on the central watershed of Germany, about equidistant, to speak roughly, from Frankfort, Cassel, Gotha, and Coburg.
His life is matter of history, written by one Eigils (sainted like himself), who was his disciple and his friend. Naturally told it is, and lovingly; but if I recollect right, without a single miracle or myth; the living contemporaneous picture of such a man, living in such a state of society, as we shall never (and happily need never) see again, but which is for that very reason worthy to be preserved, for a token that wisdom is justified of all her children.
It stands at length in Pertz’s admirable ‘Monumenta Historica,’ among many another like biography, and if I tell it here somewhat at length, readers must forgive me.
Every one has heard of little king Pepin, and many may have heard also how he was a mighty man of valour, and cut off a lion’s head at one blow; and how he was a crafty statesman, and first consolidated the temporal power of the Popes, and helped them in that detestable crime of overthrowing the noble Lombard kingdom, which cost Italy centuries of slavery and shame, and which has to be expiated even yet, it would seem, by some fearful punishment.
But every one may not know that Pepin had great excuses—if not for helping to destroy the Lombards—yet still for supporting the power of the Popes. It seemed to him—and perhaps it was—the only practical method of uniting the German tribes into one common people, and stopping the internecine wars by which they were tearing themselves to pieces. It seemed to him—and perhaps it was—the only practical method for civilizing and Christianizing the still wild tribes, Frisians, Saxons, and Sclaves, who pressed upon the German marches, from the mouth of the Elbe to the very Alps. Be that as it may, he began the work; and his son Charlemagne finished it; somewhat well, and again somewhat ill—as most work, alas! is done on earth. Now in the days of little king Pepin there was a nobleman of Bavaria, and his wife, who had a son called Sturmi; and they brought him to St. Boniface, that he might make him a priest. And the child loved St. Boniface’s noble English face, and went with him willingly, and was to him as a son. And who was St. Boniface? That is a long story. Suffice it that he was a man of Devon, brought up in a cloister at Exeter; and that he had crossed over into Frankenland, upon the lower Rhine, and become a missionary of the widest and loftiest aims; not merely a preacher and winner of souls, though that, it is said, in perfection; but a civilizer, a colonizer, a statesman. He, and many another noble Englishman and Scot (whether Irish or Caledonian) were working under the Frank kings to convert the heathens of the marches, and carry the Cross into the far East. They led lives of poverty and danger; they were martyred, half of them, as St. Boniface was at last. But they did their work; and doubtless they have their reward. They did their best, according to their light. God grant that we, to whom so much more light has been given, may do our best likewise. Under this great genius was young Sturmi trained. Trained (as was perhaps needed for those who had to do such work in such a time) to have neither wife, nor child, nor home, nor penny in his purse; but to do all that he was bid, learn all that he could, and work for his living with his own hands; a life of bitter self-sacrifice. Such a life is not needed now. Possibly, nevertheless, it was needed then.
So St. Boniface took Sturmi about with him in his travels, and at last handed him over to Wigbert, the priest, to prepare him for the ministry. ‘Under whom,’ says his old chronicler, ‘the boy began to know the Psalms thoroughly by heart; to understand the Holy Scriptures of Christ with spiritual sense; took care to learn most studiously the mysteries of the four Gospels, and to bury in his heart, by assiduous reading, the treasures of the Old and New Testament. For his meditation was in the Law of the Lord day and night; profound in understanding, shrewd of thought, prudent of speech, fair of face, sober of carriage, honourable in morals, spotless in life, by sweetness, humility, and alacrity, he drew to him the love of all.’