§ 6.
The Danish invasions brought extinction to
the monastic life in the greater part of England. It
was not until about a hundred years later that it was
revived. Odo, archbishop of Canterbury 942-59,
prepared the way for the movement. Its success was
achieved under his successor, St Dunstan, with the
co-operation of Edgar the peaceful. Ethelwold,
bishop of Winchester, and Oswald, archbishop of
York, were its most active promoters. Both were
disciples of the reformed Benedictine rule which,
early in the tenth century, had begun to spread from
the abbey of Cluny. The abbey of Fleury or Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire,
which, after the sack of Monte
Cassino by the Lombards in 660, had become the
resting-place of the body of St Benedict, was reformed
under Cluniac influence. Oswald studied
the Benedictine rule at Fleury. Made bishop of
Worcester in 961, he was active in replacing the
secular clergy of the churches of his diocese by
monks. At Evesham, Pershore, Winchcombe, Worcester
and elsewhere, Benedictine monks were introduced.
In 971 Oswald aided Aelfwine, an East
Anglian nobleman, to found the monastery of Ramsey
in Huntingdonshire, and a few years later he and
Ethelwold persuaded Abbo of Fleury to visit England
and help them in extending the religious life. Ethelwold
was equally active at Winchester, and, under
a charter from king Edgar, restored destroyed
monasteries throughout the country, including Ely
and Peterborough. Dunstan, the reformer of Glastonbury,
gave active sympathy to the movement, but
was more cautious in his attitude to the secular
clergy; and it is noteworthy that the reform did not
at once extend to his cathedral church at Canterbury.
