He was a shield to his country;
His course was a wheel in battle.
Better to me would be his life than his mead.
And again—
This hearth; no shout of heroes now adheres to it:
More usual on its floor
Was the mead; and the inebriated warriors.
And here we naturally pause to inquire whether it is fair to gauge the habits of the day from extracts such as these. May they not have been the heated effusions of the moment? May not these bards have cast the shadows of their own excited brains on all around? Alas! the pages of contemporary history, and the censures of the Church, too surely confirm the impressions of the poet. Thus, Gildas, the British monk, writing in the latter half of the sixth century (Epist. De Excid. Britann.), laments (§ 21) that ‘not only the laity, but our Lord’s own flock, and its shepherds, who ought to have been an example to the people, slumbered away their time in drunkenness, as if they had been dipped in wine.’ Again (§ 83), ‘Little do ye put in execution that which the holy prophet Joel hath spoken in admonishment of slothful priests, saying, Awake ye who are drunk from your wine, and weep and bewail ye all, who have drunk wine even to drunkenness, because joy and delight are taken away from your mouths.’ And once more (§ 109), ‘These are the words, that with apparent effect should be made good and approved—deacons in like manner, that they should be not overgiven to much wine.... And now, trembling truly to make any longer stay on these matters, I can, for a conclusion, affirm one thing certainly, which is, that all these are changed into contrary actions, insomuch that clerks are shameless and deceitful in their speeches, given to drinking.’
Do we wonder that this state of things was condemned? The British Church could no longer keep silent. Decrees respecting intemperance were issued in the Synod held by St. David (a.d. 569), interesting as the only legislative relic of the British Church upon this subject; unless, as Mr. Bridgett remarks in his useful little book, The Discipline of Drink, we admit the monastic penance of St. Gildas the Wise (a.d. 570): ‘If any monk through drinking too freely gets thick of speech so that he cannot join in the psalmody, he is to be deprived of his supper.’
The following are among the canons of St. David:—
(1) Priests about to minister in the temple of God and drinking wine or strong drink through negligence, and not ignorance, must do penance three days. If they have been warned, and despise, then forty days.
(2) Those who get drunk through ignorance must do penance fifteen days; if through negligence, forty days; if through contempt, three quarantains.
(3) He who forces another to get drunk out of hospitality must do penance as if he had got drunk himself.
(4) But he who out of hatred or wickedness, in order to disgrace or mock at others, forces them to get drunk, if he has not already sufficiently done penance, must do penance as a murderer of souls.