LECTURE V
CIVIL ADMINISTRATION (continued) EDUCATION; LITERARY WORKS
Finance.
§ 84. That Alfred would be a careful and exact steward of all the resources of his kingdom, we may assume without any proof. But, for my own part, I wholly and entirely distrust the account which Asser gives[596] of the minute and mathematical divisions and subdivisions of revenue instituted by Alfred. I regard it as an indication that at this point of his work Asser was attacked by an acute fit of imagination[597]. Dr. Stubbs has said that there is no point on which we are more in the dark than on the financial system of the Anglo-Saxons[598]. We must also remember that since so much of the revenue of an Anglo-Saxon king was payable in kind, there was much less room for finance, in the strict sense of the word, than in more modern states.
Of Alfred’s interest and skill in mechanical and artistic inventions enough has perhaps been said already[599]. Under this head would come the well-known story of the candles and the lantern shades[600]. I cannot myself go into raptures over this, as some writers profess to do. But the mention of tents[601] in connexion with this invention, may perhaps indicate that it was specially during campaigns that the need of some such contrivance would be felt. It is one of the many curious parallels between things English and Frankish, that Pope Paul I sent to Pippin, the father of Charles the Great, an instrument for showing the time at night[602].
Intercourse with other nations. Ireland. Irish love of pilgrimage.
§ 85. Of Alfred’s intercourse with foreign nations Asser[603] gives a ‘heightened and telling’ picture, speaking of ‘daily embassies of nations who dwell from the Tyrrhene Sea to the furthest bound of Ireland.’ Of relations of Alfred with the Irish princes[604] I have found no evidence. But an interesting and pathetic instance of accidental intercourse with Ireland is given in the Chronicle under 891: ‘In this year three “Scots” (i.e. Irishmen) came to Alfred king, on a boat without oars or rudder. They had stolen away from Ireland, because they would be for God’s love on pilgrimage, they recked not where. The boat on which they fared was wrought of two and a half hides, and they took with them meat for a sevennight. And at the end of a sevennight they came to land in Cornwall, and straightway fared to Alfred king. Thus were they named, Dubslane, and Macbeth, and Maelinmain.’ The story is most genuine, and redolent through and through of the spirit of Irish History and Saga. The love of pilgrimage became a passion in the Irish Church[605]; the Irish Sagas and the lives of the Irish Saints furnish many illustrations of this desire for exile, this self-abandonment (as they deemed it) to the will of God involved in committing themselves to the deep in a frail skin-covered coracle without oarage or steerage, the slender provision of food for the voyage. In the Book of Leinster is a story how three young Irish clerics set out on a pilgrimage; ‘they took as provision on the sea only three loaves. “In the name of Christ” (said they), “let us throw our oars into the sea, and let us commend ourselves to our Lord.”’ So in the voyage of Maelduin, the Irish Saga so well known to English readers through Tennyson’s poem, Maelduin and his companions exclaim: ‘leave the boat alone, and cease rowing; whither God wills it to be borne, He will bear it[606].’ According to Ethelwerd[607], these ‘Scots’ after leaving Alfred went on to Rome and Jerusalem; and if so, it may well be that this was one of the channels whereby Alfred communicated with the East; for we have seen[608] that Alfred’s intercourse with Elias III, patriarch of Jerusalem, rests on very good evidence.
A ninth century pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
§ 86. It so happens that we have an account[609] of a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, made just twenty-five years earlier, by a Frankish monk named Bernard, who, with two companions, a Spanish and an Italian monk, set out from Rome about the year 865 with the blessing of Pope Nicholas (c. 1). From Rome they went to Bari, then ‘a city of the Saracens,’ from the ‘sultan’ of which they obtained letters to the rulers of Alexandria and Egyptian Babylon, i.e. Old Cairo (c. 3). From Bari they walked to Taranto, where they found six ships proceeding to Alexandria with a cargo of 9,000 Christian captives from Beneventum (c. 4). The admiral refused, however, to let them land, until they had paid a ransom of six ‘aurei’ (c. 5). And when they presented the letters of the sultan of Bari to the governour of Alexandria they helped them not a whit; and only on paying thirteen ‘denarii’[610] apiece were they sent on by water with letters to the governour of Cairo (c. 6). Here the same fate awaited them. In spite of all their letters they were thrown into prison, but on payment of another thirteen ‘denarii’ per head they were released, and furnished with letters which did really prove effective, though they had to get them sealed, or, as we should say, they had to have their passports visaed in every town which they passed through, and this meant ever fresh exactions (c. 7). From Cairo they turned north by the Damietta branch of the Nile and proceeded by Tanis (c. 8) to Farama[611], the traditional abode of the Holy Family, where they procured camels on which they crossed the desert (c. 9) to El Arisch, and so by Gaza, Ramleh, and Emmaus to Jerusalem, where the patriarch was Theodosius, the immediate predecessor of Alfred’s correspondent, Elias III. Here they lodged in the hospice founded for pilgrims by ‘the glorious Emperor Charles,’ near which was the church of St. Mary with a noble library of books, also given by Charles (c. 10). After visiting the holy places (cc. 11-18), they returned all the way by sea, having an unfavourable passage of sixty days to Mont’ Auro (c. 19), whence they returned to Rome, ‘where innumerable bodies of the saints repose’ (c. 20). In some ways, apparently, a pilgrimage to Rome was more dangerous than one to Jerusalem. There is good peace, says the writer, between Christians and pagans both in Egypt and Jerusalem, though they are very strict on all travellers who have no passports (c. 22). In Romagna, on the other hand, things were very bad, and brigands so numerous, that pilgrims had to go in bands and fully armed (c. 23).
I have thought it worth while to give an outline of this most interesting little tract, because it shows us the route taken, and the difficulties encountered, by a pilgrim to Jerusalem in the reign of Alfred’s immediate predecessor[612].