[219] Migne 90, col. 258; ibid. col. 422. I have not observed this statement in Isidore.
[220] All of these are in t. 90 of Migne.
[221] His writings fill about five volumes (90-95) in Migne’s Patrol. Latina. A list may be found in the article “Bede” in the Dictionary of National Biography. Beda der Ehrwürdige, by Karl Werner (Vienna, 1881), is a good monograph.
[222] Ante, Chapter IV.
[223] The Works of King Alfred the Great are translated from Anglo-Saxon in the Jubilee edition of Giles (2 vols., London, 1858). The Pastoral Care and the Orosius are translated by Henry Sweet in the publications of the Early English Text Society. W. J. Sedgefield’s translation of Alfred’s version of the Consolations of Boëthius is very convenient from the italicizing of the portions added by Alfred to Boëthius’s original. The extracts given in the following pages have been taken from these editions.
[224] Boëthius’s words, which Alfred here paraphrases and supplements are as follows: “Tum ego, scis, inquam, ipsa minimum nobis ambitionem mortalium rerum fuisse dominatam; sed materiam gerendis rebus optavimus, quo ne virtus tacita consenesceret” (De consol. phil. ii. prosa 7).
[225] The substance of this bracketed clause is in Boëthius—the last words quoted in the preceding note.
[226] Toward the close of his life Alfred gathered some thoughts from Augustine’s Soliloquies and from other writings, with which he mingled reflections of his own. He called the book Blossoms. He says in his preface: “I gathered me then staves and props, and bars, and helves for each of my tools, and boughs; and for each of the works that I could work, I took the fairest trees, so far as I might carry them away. Nor did I ever bring any burden home without longing to bring home the whole wood, if that might be; for in every tree I saw something of which I had need at home. Wherefore I exhort every one who is strong, and has many wains, that he direct his steps to the same wood where I cut the props. Let him there get him others, and load his wains with fair twigs, that he may weave thereof many a goodly wain, and set up many a noble house, and build many a pleasant town, and dwell therein in mirth and ease, both winter and summer, as I could never do hitherto. But He who taught me to love that wood, He may cause me to dwell more easily, both in this transitory dwelling ... and also in the eternal home which He has promised us” (Translation borrowed from The Life and Time of Alfred the Great, by C. Plummer, Clarendon Press, 1902). These metaphors represent Alfred’s way of putting what Isidore or Bede or Alcuin meant when they spoke in their prefaces of searching through the pantries of the Fathers or culling the sweetest flowers from the patristic meadows. See e.g. ante, Chapter V. and post, Chapter X.
[227] Far into the Frankish period there were many heathen in northern Gaul and along the Rhine: Hauck, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, I. Kap. i. (second edition, Leipzig, 1898). Cf. Vacandard, “L’Idolatrie en Gaule au VIe et au VIIe siècles,” Rev. des questions historiques, 65 (1899), 424-454.
[228] Mon. Germ. hist. Auctores antiquissimi, tom. i. Cf. Ebert, Ges. des Lit. des Mittelalters, i. 452 sqq.