3. It was not, however, only the history of the Biblical and classical ages which Alfred desired to render accessible to his people. He knew that the deeds of their own forefathers since they had entered the land of Britain, were worthy of their remembrance, and he rightly judged that the great struggle with the Danes, in which he was himself engaged, would soon be History, as memorable as anything that was recorded in the pages of Orosius. With this view, as Geoffrey Gaimar, a historian of the twelfth century, says, “He caused to be written an English book of adventures and of laws of the land and of the kings who made war”. In other words, Alfred’s orders brought into being the Saxon Chronicle. As its latest editor[140] says: “The popular answer is in this case the right one. The Chronicle is the work of Alfred the Great. The idea of a national chronicle, as opposed to merely local annals, was his, and that this idea was realised under his direction and supervision, I most firmly believe. And we may, I think, safely place in the forefront of the Chronicle the inscription which encircles Alfred’s jewel [found at Athelney in 1693 and now in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford], AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN, ‘Alfred ordered me to be made’.”
4. In further pursuance of the same plan a translation of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History from Latin into Anglo-Saxon was made, as we have reason to believe, either by Alfred’s own hand or under his immediate supervision. As this book had become a kind of classic among churchmen, Alfred allowed himself here less liberty than in some of his other translations. Some letters, epitaphs and similar documents are omitted, and there is an almost complete erasure of the chapters relating to the wearisome Paschal controversy. In other respects the king’s translation seems to be a fairly accurate reproduction of the original work.
5. Last, and in some ways most interesting of all the literary labours of Alfred, comes his translation of the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. This is a book which, after enjoying during the early Middle Ages a popularity perhaps somewhat greater than its merits, has fallen since the revival of learning into much less deserved oblivion. In it Boethius, a Roman nobleman who was cast into prison and eventually executed by order of the Gothic king Theodoric, sets forth the comfort which came to him in his wearisome imprisonment by meditations on Divine Philosophy. The problem which perplexed him and which Philosophy, the spiritual companion of his solitude, sought to solve, was the world-old one, “Why do the wicked flourish and why are the righteous afflicted?” Strange to say, though Boethius was a Christian, and was even in a certain sense a martyr for the Catholic faith, the Christian solution of the problem is kept almost entirely out of sight, and the answers suggested are such as might have been given by Socrates or Epictetus. Boethius believes in a Divine Ruler of the universe, and the general tendency of the book is towards the strengthening of belief, but it is belief rather of a theistic than of a definitely Christian type. However with all its defects and all its strange silences, the book was one which had a great attraction for many of the noblest minds of a bewildered Europe, and not least for the great West Saxon king, who, struggling against the depressing influences of disease, and ever dreading a fresh outburst of the Danish volcano, felt that he, too, like the author, had much need of “the Consolation of Philosophy”. In his other translations he had been working for his people; in this, which was probably executed towards the close of his reign, he was, perhaps, working rather for himself, for the solace and fortification of his own troubled spirit.
We have seen that Alfred did not take a slavish view of the duties of a translator; and in his Boethius he is more lordly than ever, omitting, adding, altering with a sublime contempt for mere verbal accuracy. It is, however, these very changes which make the book so precious to a student of Alfred’s own character. We see therein what were the thoughts which were most akin to his nature; we learn something of the secret springs of his actions; we can almost listen to the conversations which he held with his bishops and thegns in the great wooden palace at Winchester.
In the first place, he gives to the whole inquiry a more religious turn than he found in the original. For “Nature” he substitutes “God”; he sometimes introduces the name of Christ; he speaks of the Judgment-day, and his language has throughout that distinctly religious tone which is so strangely absent from the meditations of Boethius. He takes us into his royal council and tells us the principles upon which he has sought to administer the state, using for his instruments three sorts of ministers, men of prayer, men of war, and men of work, for all of whom suitable maintenance must be found out of the land. He expands a slight sentence of Boethius in praise of friendship into a noble passage, in which he declares that true friendship is not an earthly but a heavenly blessing; that all other objects of desire in this world are sought after in obedience to some selfish motive, but a true friend we love for love’s own sake and because of our trust in his truth, hoping for no other return. “Nature joins friends together and unites them with an inseparable love, whereas by our worldly goods and the wealth of this life we more often make foes than friends.”[141]
Boethius puts into the mouth of Philosophy some words deprecatory of too great regard for noble birth; but Alfred says boldly on his own account that “true high birth is that of the mind not of the flesh,” a memorable utterance in the mouth of the man whose lineage “went unto Cerdic” and who according to the songs of Saxon bards was descended from Woden. There are also in this most interesting translation many passages which show Alfred’s keen perception of the beauties of Nature, his unfailing interest in geography, and his knowledge of Saxon folk-lore (as illustrated by his allusion to the bones of Weland the Smith), besides some which reveal his naïve ignorance of well-known facts of ancient history, as when he describes the sella curulis as a kind of carriage, or when he tells us that Cassius was another name for Brutus. One sees with pleasure that the wise king had a certain gift of humour, and that he could at times be even sarcastic. He alone, not his author, is responsible for the following remark attributed to Philosophy: “Two things honour and power can do, if they fall into the hands of a fool: they can cause him to be respected and even revered by other fools”. Whosoever would get at the heart of this great man, the true founder of the English kingdom, and discover his inmost thoughts, should carefully study Alfred’s translation of Boethius, and observe where he neglects and where he reinforces from his own experience the maxims and arguments of the Roman statesman.
To the interval of comparative peace with which we are now dealing we may probably assign the reorganisation of the royal household. Apparently service in the palace was conducted on parallel lines with service in the army, being performed in both cases by men who had houses of their own to govern and lands of their own to cultivate. The king, therefore, ordained that the household should be divided into three portions, each of which should take palace-duty (“night and day,” says the biographer) for one month, and then, being relieved by another detachment, return home for two months’ furlough. The same principle of threefold division prevailed partially in the simple budget of Alfred’s exchequer. He divided, says Asser, all the revenue which was yearly collected by his officers into two parts, one of which was devoted to secular and the other to religious uses. Of the secular portion one-third was paid to the household, according to their respective dignities and special services; one-third to the workmen of various nationalities whom he had gathered about him for his great works of building and restoration; and one-third to the foreigners—probably for the most part scholars or professors of some liberal art—who flocked in great numbers to his court. Of the religious half of his revenue, one-quarter went to the poor, one-quarter to the two new monasteries founded by him at Winchester and Athelney, one-quarter to the court school, and the remainder promiscuously to the various monasteries in Wessex and Mercia, and the needy churches in Britain and even in Gaul and Ireland.
One of the most extraordinary of the king’s benefactions, one which we might well have doubted had it not been vouched for by the contemporary evidence of the Chronicle, is thus described therein: “And that same year [883 for 882] Sighelm and Athelstan carried to Rome the alms which he had vowed to send thither when he was fighting the [Danish] army at London: and also to India to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew”. Of the campaign before London in the course of which this vow was made we have no more definite information. The sending of alms to Rome is easily understood, but the mission of West Saxon almoners to “St. Thomas’s Christians” in India is indeed a marvellous fact if true. Unfortunately the tendency of modern criticism is somewhat unfavourable to the genuineness of the entry.[142]
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Though we know not the exact year when Alfred’s Dooms were compiled, this will be the best place for a brief statement of the legislative work of the great king.