St. Dunstan himself, although regularly bred to the church, with the most brilliant prospects both from his distinguished abilities and his powerful kindred, betrothed himself in marriage after receiving the lower orders. His uncle, St. Elphege, Bishop of Winchester—apparently a churchman of the stricter school—vehemently opposed the union, but Dunstan was immovable in his determination. Elphege, finding his worldly wisdom set at nought, appealed to the assistance of heaven. His prayer was answered, and Dunstan was attacked with a mysterious and loathsome malady, under which his iron resolution gave way. He sought Elphege, took the monastic vow (the only inseparable bar to matrimony), and was ordained a priest.[401] This stern experience might have taught him charity for the weakness of natures less unbending than his own, but his temperament was not one to pause half-way. If, too, religious conviction urged him to the task of restoring the forgotten discipline of the church, worldly ambition might reasonably claim its share in his motives. He could not but feel that his authority would be vastly enhanced by rendering the great ecclesiastical body dependent entirely upon him as the representative of Rome, and by sundering the ties which divided the allegiance due wholly to the church.
The opportunity to effect a reformation presented itself when the young king, Edgar the Pacific, in 963 violated all the dictates of honor and religion in his adventure with the nun at Wilton. Her resistance attested her innocence, and the birth of a daughter did not prevent her subsequent canonization as St. Wilfreda; but Edgar’s crime and remorse were only the more heightened. When the terror-stricken king sought pardon and absolution, Dunstan was prepared with his conditions. Seven years of penitence, during which he was to abstain from wearing the crown, was the personal infliction imposed on him, but the most important portion of the sentence was that by which the vices of the king were to be redeemed by the enforced virtues of his subjects. He promised the founding of monasteries and the reformation of the clergy; and his implicit obedience to the demands of his ghostly judge is shown, perhaps, less in the fact that his coronation did not take place until 973, than in the active measures immediately set on foot with respect to the morals of the ecclesiastics.[402]
That their morals, indeed, needed reformation is the unanimous testimony of all the chroniclers of the period. Among all the monasteries of England, formerly so noted for their zeal and prosperity, only those of Glastonbury and Abingdon were inhabited by monks.[403] The rest had fallen into ruin, or were occupied by the secular clergy, with their wives, or worse, and were notorious as places of the most scandalous dissipation and disorder.[404] So low was the standard of morality that priests even scrupled not to put away the wives of whom they grew tired, and to form new connections, of open and public adultery;[405] and so common had this become that a code of ecclesiastical law, probably drawn up about this time, reproves this systematic bigamy, and appears to tacitly authorize marriage as legitimate and honorable.[406] One author declares that none but paupers could be found willing to bind themselves by monastic vows;[407] and another asserts, with every show of reason, that the clergy were not only not superior to the laity in any respect, but were even far worse in the scandals of their daily life.[408]
When King Edgar made his peace with the church by consenting to the vicarious penitence of the priesthood, three rigid and austere monks were the ardent ministers of the royal determination. Of St. Dunstan, the primate of England, I have already spoken. St. Ethelwold, his pupil, Abbot of Abingdon, was elevated to the see of Winchester, and commenced the movement by expelling the occupants of the monastery there. A few who consented to take monastic vows were allowed to remain, and the remainder were replaced by monks; but even St. Ethelwold’s rigor had to bend to the depravity of the age, and he was forced to relax the rigidity of discipline in non-essentials in order to obtain recruits of a better class.[409] The difficulties he encountered are indicated by the legend which relates that he was poisoned in his wine and carried from table to his couch in excruciating torment, where he lay hopeless till, reproaching himself with want of faith, he repeated the text—“Et si mortiferum quid biberint, non eis nocebitur,” and was cured on the instant.[410] That his canons were quite capable of such an attempt may be assumed from the description given of them in the bull procured by Dunstan from John XIII., authorizing their ejection by the king. The pope does not hesitate to stigmatize them as vessels of the devil, hateful to all good Christians on account of their inveterate and ineradicable wickedness.[411]
The third member of the reforming triumvirate was St. Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, who undertook a similar transformation of the clergy occupying the monastery of St. Mary in his cathedral city. Many promises they made to conform to his wishes, and many times they eluded the performance, till, losing patience with the prolonged procrastination, he one day entered the chapel with a quantity of monkish habits as they were vigorously chanting “Servite Domino in timore,” when he made practical application of the text by forcing them to put on the garments and take the vows on the spot, under the alternative of instant expulsion.[412]
These proceedings met the unqualified approbation of Edgar, who in 964, by his “Charter of Oswalde’s Law,” confirmed the ejection of the recusants who refused to part with their wives, and transferred all their rights and possessions to the newcomers. In the same document he boasted that he had instituted forty-seven abbeys of monks and nuns, and that he hoped to increase the number to fifty.[413] The same year a similar summary process was carried out in the convents of Chertsey and Winchester;[414] and in 966 Edgar was able to boast of the numerous religious houses throughout England which he had purified by replacing lascivious clerks with pious monks.[415]
These efforts, however, tended only to restore the monastic foundations to their original position, and left the secular clergy untouched, except in so far as a few of them were deprived of the comfortable quarters which they had usurped in the abbeys. This immunity it was no part of Dunstan’s plan to permit, and accordingly Edgar issued a series of laws restoring the obsolete ecclesiastical discipline throughout his kingdom. By this code a lapse from virtue on the part of a priest or monk was visited with the same penalty as homicide, with a fast of ten years; for a deacon the period of penitence was seven years; for the lower grades, six years. The monk, priest, or deacon who maintained relations with his wife was subjected to the same punishment; but there is no mention of degradation or deprivation of benefice.[416]
The struggle was long, and at one time the three reformers seem to have grown wearied with the stubborn resistance which they met, while the zeal of King Edgar grew more fiery as, with the true spirit of the huntsman, he followed up the prey, his ardor increasing as the chase grew more difficult. In 969 he eloquently addressed Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Oswald, blaming their lukewarmness in the good cause, and promising them every support and assistance in removing this opprobrium from the church.[417] Stimulated by these reproaches, Dunstan summoned a council which adopted a canon depriving unchaste priests of their benefices.[418] Still the conflict continued, and a charter dated in 974, the last year of Edgar’s reign, shows that he persevered to the end with unabated zeal.[419]
The contumacious clerks may have been silenced; they were not subdued, and they but waited their opportunity. It came in 975, with the early death of Edgar and with the dissensions caused by his widow, Elfritha, who endeavored to deprive of the succession his eldest son, the youthful Edward, fruit of a former marriage. During the confusion, the ejected priests banded together and bribed Elfhere, the powerful Ealdorman of Mercia, together with some other magnates, to espouse their cause. In many abbeys the regulars were expelled and the priests with their wives were reinstated. In East Anglia, however, the nobles took sides with the monks, and, rising in arms, valiantly defended the monasteries. At length, on the accession of Edward, a council was assembled to make final disposition of the question. The married priests were present, and promised amendment; their noble protectors pleaded earnestly for them; the boy-king was moved, and was about to pronounce in their favor, when a miracle preserved the purity of the church. The council was sitting in the refectory of the monastery of Hyde, the headquarters of the ascetic party; Edward and Dunstan were enthroned separately from the rest, with their backs to a wall on which, between them, hung a small crucifix. At the critical moment, just as the king was yielding, the crucifix spoke, in a low tone inaudible to all save Edward and the primate, “Let not this thing be done”—the mandate was imperative, and the married clergy lost their cause.[420]