A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance. J. J. Jusserand
the subject of this last poem has been shown by Earle to be probably the town of Bath.
[69] T. Arnold's "Beowulf," p. 118, l. 1820.
CHAPTER IV.
THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
I.
Augustine, prior of St. Martin of Rome, sent by Gregory the Great, arrived in 597. To the Germanic pirates established in the isle of Britain, he brought a strange teaching. The ideas he tried to spread have become so familiar to us, we can hardly realise the amazement they must have caused. To these fearless warriors who won kingdoms at the point of their spears, and by means of their spears too won their way into Walhalla, who counted on dying one day, not in their beds, but in battle, so that the Valkyrias, "choosers of the slain," might carry them to heaven on their white steeds, to these men came a foreign monk, and said: Be kind; worship the God of the weak, who, unlike Woden, will reward thee not for thy valour, but for thy mercy.
Such was the seed that Rome, ever life-giving, now endeavoured to sow among triumphant sea-rovers. The notion of the State and the notion of the Church both rose out of the ruins of the Eternal City; ideas equally powerful, but almost contradictory, which were only to be reconciled after centuries of confusion, and alternate periods of violence and depression. The princes able to foresee the necessary fusion of these two ideas, and who made attempts, however rude, to bring it about were rare, and have remained for ever famous: Charlemagne in France and Alfred the Great in England.
The miracle of conversion was accomplished in the isle, as it had been on the Continent. Augustine baptized King Æthelberht, and celebrated mass in the old Roman church of St. Martin of Canterbury. The religion founded by the Child of Bethlehem conquered the savage Saxons, as it had conquered the debauched Romans; the difficulty and the success were equal in both cases. In the Germanic as in the Latin country, the new religion had to stem the stream; the Romans of the decadence and the men of the North differed in their passions, but resembled each other in the impetuosity with which they followed the lead of their instincts. To both, the apostle came and whispered: Curb thy passions, be hard upon thyself and merciful to others; blessed are the simple, blessed are the poor; as thou forgivest so shalt thou be forgiven; thou shalt not despise the weak, thou shalt love him! And this unexpected murmur was heard each day, like a counsel and a threat, in the words of the morning prayer, in the sound of the bells, in the music of pious chants.
The conversion was at first superficial, and limited to outward practices; the warrior bent the knee, but his heart remained the same. The spirit of the new religion could not as yet penetrate his soul; he remained doubtful between old manners and new beliefs, and after fits of repentance and relapses into savagery, the converted chieftain finally left this world better prepared for Walhalla than for Paradise. Those who witnessed his death realised it themselves. When Theodoric the Great died in his palace at Ravenna, piously and surrounded by priests, Woden was seen, actually seen, bearing away the prince's soul to Walhalla.
The new converts of Great Britain understood the religion of Christ much as they had understood that of Thor. Only a short distance divided man from godhood in heathen times; the god had his passions and his adventures, he was intrepid, and fought even better than his people. For a long time, as will happen with neophytes, the new Christians continued to seek around them the human god who had disappeared in immensity, they addressed themselves to him as they had formerly done to the deified heroes, who, having shared their troubles, must needs sympathise with their sorrows. For a long time, contradictory faiths were held side by side. Christ was believed in, but Woden was still feared, and secretly appeased by sacrifices. Kings are obliged to publish edicts, forbidding their subjects to believe in the ancient divinities, whom they now term "demons"; but that does not prevent the monks who compile the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from tracing back the descent of their princes to Woden: if it is not deifying, it is at least ennobling them.[70]
Be your obedience qualified by reason, St. Paul had said. That of the Anglo-Saxons was not so qualified. On the contrary, they believed out of obedience, militarily. Following the prince's lead, all his subjects are converted; the prince goes back to heathendom; all his people become heathens again. From year to year, however, the new religion progresses, while the old is waning; this phenomenon is brought about, in the south, by the influence of Augustine and the monks from Rome; and in the north, owing mainly to Celtic monks from the monastery of Iona, founded in the sixth century by St. Columba, on the model of the convents of Ireland. About the middle of the seventh century the work is nearly accomplished; the old churches abandoned by the Romans have been restored; many others are built; one of them still exists at Bradford-on-Avon in a perfect state of preservation[71]; monasteries are founded, centres of culture and learning. Some of the rude princes who reign in the country set great examples of devotion to Christ and submission to the Roman pontiff. They date their charters from the "reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, reigning for ever."[72] The Princess Hilda founds, in the seventh century, the monastery of Streoneshalch, and becomes its abbess; Ceadwalla dies at Rome in 689, and is buried in St. Peter's, under the Porticus Pontificum, opposite the tomb of St. Gregory the Great.[73] Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons, goes also on a pilgrimage to Rome "in great state, and remains twelve months, after which he returns home; and then Charles, king of the Franks, gave him his daughter in marriage."[74] He sends his son Alfred to the Eternal City; and the Pope takes a liking to the young prince, who was to be Alfred the Great.
The notion of moderation and measure is unknown to these enthusiasts, who easily fall into despair. In the following period, after the Norman Conquest, when manners and customs were beginning to change, the chronicler, William of Malmesbury, trying to draw a correct picture of the ancient owners of the land, is struck by the exaggerations of the Saxons' temperament. Great numbers of them are drunkards, they lead dissolute lives, and reign as ferocious tyrants; great numbers of them, too, are pious, devout, faithful even unto martyrdom: "What shall I say of so many bishops, hermits, and abbots? The island is rendered famous by the relics of native saints, so numerous that it is impossible to visit a borough of any importance without hearing the name of a new saint. Yet the memory of many has vanished, for lack of writers to preserve it!"[75]
The taste for proselytism, of which the race has since given so many proofs, is early manifested. Once converted, the Anglo-Saxons produce missionaries, who in their turn carry the glad tidings to their pagan brothers on the Continent, and become saints of the Roman Church. St. Wilfrith leaves Northumberland about 680, and goes to preach the Gospel to the Frisians; St. Willibrord starts from England about 690, and settles among the Frisians and Danes[76]; Winfrith, otherwise called St. Boniface (an approximate translation of his name), sojourns in Thuringia and Bavaria, "sowing," as he says, "the evangelical seed among the rude and ignorant tribes of Germany."[77] He reorganises the Church of the Franks, and dies martyrised by the Frisians in 755. Scarcely is the hive formed when it begins to swarm. The same thing happened with all the sects created later in the English land.
II.
With religion had come Latin letters. Those same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at the time of their invasion consisted in the songs mentioned by Tacitus, "carmina antiqua," which they trusted to memory alone, who compiled no books and who for written monuments had Runic inscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now have, in their turn, monks who compose chronicles, and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are attached to them; manuscripts are there copied and illuminated in beautiful caligraphy and splendid colours.