sition to the Scottish usages, on his introduction of the Latin chant, and of the Benedictine rule; and again he repaired to Rome, while his partisans in England were put under a sort of excommunication. The Pope, John VI., was naturally inclined to favour one whose troubles had arisen from a refusal to obey the decrees of Theodore except in so far as they were consistent with those of the Apostolic see. And when, at Easter 704, the acts of Pope Agatho's synod against the Monothelites were publicly read, the occurrence of Wilfrid's name among the signatures, with the coincidence of his being then again at Rome, as a suitor for aid against oppression, raised a general enthusiasm in his favour. He would have wished to end his days at Rome, but by the desire of John VII., whose election he had witnessed, he returned to England, carrying with him a papal recommendation addressed to Ethelred of Mercia and Aldfrid of Northumbria. The primate, Berctwald, received him kindly; but Aldfrid set at nought the pope's letter, until on his deathbed he relented, and the testimony of his sister as to his last wishes procured for Wilfrid a restoration to the see of Hexham, although it does not appear that he ever recovered the rest of his original diocese. In 709 Wilfrid closed his active and troubled life at the monastery of Oundle.' The Roman customs as to Easter and the tonsure gradually made their way throughout the British Isles. In 710 they were adopted by the southern Picts, in consequence of a letter addressed to King Naitan (or Nectan) by Ceolfrid, abbot of Jarrow. It was in vain that Adamnan, abbot of Iona, who had been converted to the Roman usages in Northumbria, attempted, in the last years of the seventh century, to introduce them into his monastery; but he was more successful among his own countrymen, the northern Irish, who at his instance abandoned their ancient practice about 697; and at length, in 716, Egbert, an English monk who had received his education in Ireland, induced the monks of St. Columba to celebrate the Catholic Easter. The ancient British Church adhered to its paschal calculation until the end of the eighth century, but appears to have then conformed to the Roman k m e Patrol. lxxxix. 59. f Eddi, 54-61; Beda, iv. 20; Pagi, h Ib. v. 15; Reeves's Adamnan, xlviii. m Ib. v. 22. He died on Easter-day, 729. Ib. usage; and, if disputes afterwards arose on the subject, they excited little attention, and speedily died away." Christianity had had a powerful effect on the civilisation of the Anglo-Saxons, and through the exertions of Theodore, Wilfrid, and others, arts and learning were now actively cultivated in England. Benedict Biscop, the founder of the abbey of Wearmouth, who was the companion of Wilfrid in his first visit to Rome, brought back with him the arch-chanter John, by whom the northern clergy were instructed in the Gregorian chant, the course of the festivals, and other ritual matters. From six expeditions to Rome Benedict returned laden with books, relics, vestments, vessels for the altar, and religious pictures. Instead of the thatched wooden churches with which the Scottish missionaries had been content, Benedict and Wilfrid, with the help of masons from France, erected buildings of squared and polished stone, with glazed windows and leaded roofs. Wilfrid built a large structure of this kind over the little wooden church at York, in which Paulinus had baptised the Northumbrian king Edwin, but which had since fallen into disrepair and squalid neglect. At Ripon he raised another church, which was consecrated with great pomp and ceremony; two kings were present, and the festivities lasted three days and nights." Still more remarkable than these was his cathedral at Hexham, which is described as the most splendid ecclesiastical building north of the Alps.* Benedict Biscop's churches were adorned with pictures brought from Italy. Among them are mentioned one of the Blessed Virgin, a set of scenes from the Apocalypse, representing the last judgment, and a series in which subjects from the Old Testament were paralleled with their antitypes from the New; thus, Isaac carrying the wood for his sacrifice corresponded to our Lord bearing the Cross, and the Brazen Serpent to the Crucifixion." Monasteries had now been founded and endowed in great numbers. In some of them recluses of both sexes lived, although in separate parts of the buildings. Many ladies of royal birth became abbesses or nuns; and at length it was not unusual for English kings to abdicate their thrones, to go in pilgrimage to Rome, and there to end their days in the monastic habit. But among the Anglo-Saxons, as elsewhere, the popularity of monachism was accompanied by decay. Bede, in his Epistle to Egbert, archbishop of York (a.d. 734), draws a picture of corruptions in discipline and morals, both among monks and clergy, which contrasts sadly with his beautiful sketch of the primitive Scottish missionaries. Among other things he mentions a remarkable abuse arising out of the immunities attached to monastic property. Land among the Anglo-Saxons was distinguished as folkland or bocland. The folkland was national property, held of the king on condition of performing certain services, granted only for a certain term, and liable to resumption; the bocland was held by book or charter, for one or more lives, or in perpetuity, and was exempted from most (and in some cases from all) of the duties with which the folkland was burdened. The estates of monasteries were bocland, and, so long as the monastic society existed, the land belonged to it. In order, therefore, to secure the advantages of this tenure, some nobles professed a desire to endow monasteries with the lands which they held as folkland. By presents or other means they induced the king and the witan (or national council) to sanction its conversion into bocland; they erected monastic buildings on it, and in these they lived with their wives and families, styling themselves abbots, but having nothing of the monastic character except the name and the tonsure. Among the men of letters whom the English church produced in this age the most celebrated is Bede. The fame which he had attained in his own time is attested by the fact that he was invited to Rome by Sergius I., although the pope's death prevented the acceptance of the invitation; and from the following century he has been commonly distinguished by the epithet of Venerable. Born about the year 673,' in the neighbourhood of Jarrow, an offshoot from Benedict Biscop's abbey of Wearmouth, he became an inmate of the monastery at the age of seven, and there spent the remainder of his life. He tells us of himself, that, besides the regular exercises of devotion, he a Beda, iv. 19; v. 7; Baron. 709. 5. b See Bede's account of Coldingham, iv. 25; Inett, i. 126-7; Lingard, A. S. C. i. 230. Beda, Ep. ad Egbert. c. 7; Lingard, A. S. C. i. 226-7, 407-413; Kemble, i. 292-304; ii. 225-8; Lappenberg, i. 57880; Hallam, Supplem. Notes, 264, and his quotation from Allen. d Will. Malmesb. 57-8. This has been made it his pleasure every day questioned, as by Lingard (A. S. C. ii. 190-2, and note K); but see Mr. Hardy's note on Malmesbury, and Mr. Stevenson's Preface to transl. of Bede, xiv.xvi., where the writer retracts an opinion which he had before expressed against the story. Comp. Mabillon, Patrol. xc. 16. e Stevenson, Preface, xxii. "either to learn or to teach or to write something.' "g He laboured assiduously in collecting and transmitting the knowledge of former ages, not only as to ecclesiastical subjects but in general learning. His history of the English Church comes down to the year 731, -within three years of his own death, which took place on the eve of Ascension-day, 734, his last moments having been spent in dictating the conclusion of a version of St. John's Gospel." Aldhelm, bishop of Sherborne, who died in 709, was distinguished as a divine and as a poet.' And Caedmon, originally a servant of St. Hilda's abbey, at Streaneshalch, displayed in his native tongue poetical gifts which his contemporaries referred to miraculous inspiration. The Anglo-Saxons were the first nation which possessed a vernacular religious poetry; and it is remarked to the honour of the Anglo-Saxon poets, that their themes were not derived from the legends of saints, but from the narratives of Holy Scripture.TM VI. During this period much was done for the conversion of the Germanic tribes, partly by missionaries from the Frankish kingdom, but in a greater degree by zealous men who went forth from Britain or from Ireland. Of these, Columban and his disciple Gall, with their labours in Gaul and in Switzerland, have been already mentioned." (1) The conversion of the Bavarians has been commonly referred to the sixth century, so as to accord with the statement that Theodelinda queen of the Lombards, the correspondent of Gregory the Great, was a Bavarian princess, and had received an orthodox Christian training in her own land. But even if this statement be mistaken," it is certain that the Bavarians had the advantage of settling in a country which had previously been Christian (for such it was even before the time of Severin); P and the remains of its earlier Christianity were not without effect on them. In 613 a Frankish council, in consequence of reports which had reached it, sent Eustasius, the successor of Columban at Luxeuil, with a monk named Agil, into Bavaria, where they found that 154-5; Southey, Vindic. 197, seqq. For translated specimens of Caedmon see Conybeare's Anglo-Saxon Poetry, and Turner, Hist. Anglos. iii. 314-324. m His n Lingard, A. S. C. ii. 184-9. works are in the Patrologia, lxxxix. Beda, iv. 24; Lingard, A. S. C. ii. Milman, ii. 40-1; Giesel. I. ii. 501. See p. 13, note P. many of the inhabitants were infected with heretical opinions which are (perhaps somewhat incorrectly) described as Photinian." About the middle of the seventh century, Emmeran, a bishop of Aquitaine, was stirred by reports which reached him as to the heathenism of the Avars in Pannonia, to resign his see, with the intention of preaching the Gospel in that country. Accompanied by an interpreter skilled in the Teutonic dialects, he made his way as far as Radaspona (Ratisbon), where he was kindly received by Theodo, duke of Bavaria. Theodo, who was already a Christian, represented to the bishop that the disturbed state of Pannonia rendered his undertaking hopeless; he entreated him to remain in Bavaria, where he assured him that his zeal would find abundant exercise; and, when argument proved ineffectual, he forcibly detained him. Emmeran regarded this as a providential intimation of his duty; and for three years he preached with great diligence to the Bavarians. At the end of that time he set out for Rome, but it is said that he was pursued, overtaken, and murdered by the duke's son, in revenge for the dishonour of a sister, which the bishop, although innocent, had allowed the princess and her paramour to charge on him. A.D. 649652. A.D. 696. In the end of the century, Rudbert, bishop of Worms, at the invitation of another duke named Theodo, undertook a mission into the same country. He baptised Theodo, and founded the episcopal city of Salzburg on the site of the old Roman Juvavium. To the labours of Rudbert is chiefly due the establishment of Christianity in Bavaria. It would seem, however, that he eventually returned to his original diocese of Worms." (2) The Christianity of the Thuringians has, like that of the Bavarians, been referred to the sixth century. The country and its rulers were, however, still heathen, when, in the latter part of Jonas, Vita Eustas. 3, seqq. (Patrol. lxxxvii.); Neander, v. 51-3; Rettb. ii. 187-9. r M. Amédée Thierry thinks that Theodo wished, for political reasons, to prevent the conversion of the Avars. Hist. d'Attila, ii. 134-6. Vita Emmerammi, rewritten by Meginfred, in the 11th century (Patrol. cxli.). The story is full of improbabilities (see Schröckh, xix. 158; Rettb. ii. 191). t Vita, ap. Mabill. iii. 339, seqq.; Bouquet, iii. 632; Conversio Bagoariorum, c. i. ap. Pertz, xi.; Pagi, xii. 271; Rettb. ii. 201. "So Rettberg (ii. 210-1) infers from the words of the Conversio Bagoariorum -"ad propriam remeavit sedem." But the editor in Pertz's collection, Dr. Wattenbach, supposes that Salzburg is meant. There has been much disputing whether Rudbert flourished in the sixth or in the seventh century; but it would seem that the earlier date is chiefly maintained from motives of local partiality. See Pagi, xii. 155-8; Giesel. I. ii. 506; Rettberg, ii. 193-9. See Schröckh, xvi. 264-5; Rettb. ii. 297-8. |