Charmed with his ready wit, she drew him to her, and kissing him kindly on the forehead made him sit on the footstool at her feet, requiring him to make her some more verses immediately. The child, confused with these unwonted caresses, looked first at one and then at the other of his teachers, and then stammered out,

The severe heart of the duchess was fairly conquered, and making the little poet stand up before her, she then and there taught him to sing the antiphon, Maria et flumina, which she had herself translated out of Latin into Greek, and frequently afterwards had him at her castle and taught him how to make Greek verses. Moreover, she treated him with a tenderness that went nigh to spoiling, and gave him a Horace, and some other books which one wishes Ekkehard junior had named, and which were long preserved in the library. I will not pursue the story of Ruodman, which has been chiefly introduced for the sake of this graceful ending. He had great difficulty in making his peace with the abbot and the duchess, though he tried the mollifying gift to the former of a very handsome horse, which threw its rider the very first time he mounted it, so that in spite of all the skill displayed by Notker Piperis-granum, poor Abbot Burkhard went for some time after on crutches.

The school anecdotes of these times attest the familiar and paternal relations which existed between the scholars and their masters. The sports and enjoyments of the boys were amply provided for, and we find mention of running, wrestling, swimming, country walks, and fishing parties. Sometimes, as at Eton or Harrow, a visit from royalty procured an extra play-day, and on certain high festival days it is recorded that they were regaled with wine and a choicer fare at dinner. Hartmann, one of the learned disciples of Marcellus, retained such a liking for the school that even when he became abbot he spent half his time among the boys. And Solomon, the schoolfellow of Ratpert and Tutilo, who from abbot became Bishop of Constance, in like manner never forgot his old pupils, for he, too, had in his day held the ferule, being assistant to Iso in the external school. On one occasion, paying a visit to the abbey during the Christmas festival, on the day after Holy Innocents, before going away he peeped into the school, and finding the master absent walked into the midst of the boys to bid them all good-bye. They were about him in a minute; and the knowing ones among them lost no time in demanding their rights. There was a custom of long standing in the school that when any stranger entered the schoolroom, he might be captured as a prisoner, and not released till he had ransomed himself by a gift or favour. Undismayed by the rank of their present visitor, they surrounded him with daring familiarity, and declared him their captive. Good-naturedly entering into their sport, he suffered them to do what they liked with him; whereupon they led him to the master’s chair, and made him understand that he should not come out thence till he had promised them something handsome. “Very well,” he said, “as you have put me in the master’s chair, I shall exercise the master’s authority; prepare all of you to be flogged.” This was turning the tables on them with a vengeance, but the boys were quick enough to find a way of escape. “Be it so,” they replied, “only we claim to be suffered to redeem ourselves as we do with our master.” “And pray, how is that?” said the bishop. “By making verses, to be sure,” they replied; and he agreeing to their terms, they proceeded to spout little metrical compositions of their own, improvised for the occasion, two of which are even yet preserved. Charmed with their readiness, the bishop rose and kissed them all, one after the other. “Yea, as I live,” he said, “I will surely ransom myself nobly.” And so he did; for, calling the masters, he commanded that from that day forward and for ever, the boys should every year have three whole play-days after the Feast of Holy Innocents, and that on each of these days they should have meat dishes for dinner from the abbot’s kitchen, which custom continued uninterruptedly till the troubles occasioned by the Hungarian invasions.

This Abbot Solomon was a learned as well as a kind-hearted man. He kept up a literary correspondence with two brother bishops, Dado, of Verdun, and Waldram, of Strasburg, and most of the letters that passed between them were in verse. He was, moreover, well skilled in the arts, and no one succeeded so well as he in designing the capitals for illuminated manuscripts; nay, even after he became bishop, he did not think this occupation unworthy his episcopal hand. He always kept up the same affectionate intercourse with St. Gall’s and its scholars, and loved to encourage their studies and amuse himself with their innocent freedoms. Nor was it only by ecclesiastics drawn from the ranks of the community that these marks of favour and interest were bestowed. All the great German sovereigns understood the value of St. Gall’s, and frequently visited it in person. Otho the Great was accustomed to say that he would willingly break his imperial crown into fragments to preserve regular observance in that abbey. His sagacious mind discerned the vast benefits which must flow to his empire from the preservation in the midst of it of such a centre of civilisation. So very solicitous was he for the well-being of the monastery, that reports having reached him in 968 of a rumoured decay of discipline, he used his imperial authority after the fashion of Charlemagne, and appointed a commission of abbots and bishops to investigate the case. They gave a good report of the state of the monastery; but the emperor, not yet satisfied, dispatched Kebon, abbot of Lauresheim, and some others, to enforce the observance of the Rule to the very letter. The only irregularity which the commissioners could discover was, that the Sunday chant was in too high a key, and that the Friday fast was too rigorous. Otho did not fail to do justice to the monks, and paid them a visit in person to console them for the trouble he had given them by his royal commissioners. It is said that assisting with them in choir, he let his stick fall as if by accident, and was edified to see that not one head was turned to observe the cause of the disturbance.

Ekkehard relates another royal visit from King Conrad I., which took place in 912. The king being at Constance on Christmas-day, the bishop happened after dinner to speak of the processions which were celebrated at that season at St. Gall’s. “Why should we not go there to-morrow?” said the king; and his courtiers eagerly assenting, the next day very early they set out in boats across the lake, and so reached the abbey, where they spent three days. They specially admired the procession of the children; and to test their discipline, the king threw an apple among them, which none of them so much as looked at, whereat he greatly wondered. He dined with them in the refectory, and took pleasure in hearing the boys read in succession. As they came down from the desk, he sent some gold to be put into their mouths, which one of them spitting out again, Conrad declared he would make an excellent monk. His visit ended pleasantly to the children, for after causing himself to be enrolled as a conscript brother, he granted the scholars three extra play-days, and discharged the expenses of a great feast, furnishing the pepper, as he said, to season their beans. When Conrad II. and his empress paid a similar visit in 1033, they contrived to coax Abbot Dietbald to give them the German Psalter and the book of Job, which had been written out by Notker Labeo, a treasure worth more to the community than many such instalments of royal pepper.

I have lingered so long on the history of St. Gall’s as to leave little space for noticing the other monastic schools of the period. Most of those in Germany were remarkable for their cultivation of the arts, in which they far outstripped their Italian contemporaries. Godeschard, the successor of St. Bernward of Hildesheim, thoroughly shared his tastes, and carried on his designs. He even founded a school of painting in his episcopal palace which propagated the art through all the German dioceses. The subjects chosen were mostly scenes from the Old and New Testaments, being professedly intended for the instruction of the unlearned. Rio fixes the latter part of the tenth century as the date of the invention of glass painting, and the first fabrication of carpets and hangings. These new branches of industry were at once taken up by the monks, and at St. Florent de Saumur, in 985, a manufactory was established for weaving tapestries adorned with flowers and figures of animals. Sometimes the love of nature, so inherent in the monkish soul, induced them to decorate their cloisters with woodland scenes, in which the figures of men, dogs, horses, and deer, appear taking part in the chase. This was, of course, a departure from the principles on which the art of religious painting rested; and in the twelfth century these artistic caprices drew down severe reproofs from St. Bernard, who particularly disliked the representation of monsters, such as centaurs, and quadrupeds with a fish’s tail. He thought that they savoured of heathenism, and were unsuitable to the gravity of a religious house. Hugo, of St. Victor, objected even to the natural designs of sheep and oxen; “It may be well,” he said, “that monasteries should have paintings for the edification of those who are not delighted with Scriptural subtleties, but for monks themselves a horse or an ox is more useful in the fields than in a picture.” These landscape subjects were, however, exceptional; far more frequently the monastic paintings were of a character described in their annals as “solemn pictures.” They were pathetic representations of the Sacred Passion, accompanied with pious verses, not without a reference to the part of the convent where they were fixed. Thus, in the lavatory, the monks were bid not to wash their hands only, but their hearts also; in the refectory, to remember the gall and vinegar which Our Lord received on the Cross; and in the cloister, to think how the fashion of this world flees past us with noiseless step. The great abbey of St. Denis, in France, was covered all over with carvings and paintings, its very doors being sculptured with the mysteries of the Passion and Resurrection; while within the cloister was a whole series of paintings, historical and mystical, some of the latter exceedingly quaint, such as that which represented St. Paul turning a mill, and all the prophets of the Old Testament bringing a sack of corn to be ground in it; figuring thereby his gift in the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures of the Old Law.

One thing cannot be overlooked whilst studying the annals of these early monastic schools; it is the peculiar charm attaching to the character of the masters. Everywhere we see the same features of cheerful labour, and a certain tranquil activity. Turn to the newly converted land of Normandy, and hear how Oderic Vitalis describes the abbots and masters of his own monastery of St. Evroult. In one page he paints the good abbot Theodoric, a very skilful scribe, who managed to collect a fine library, partly by the diligent exercise of his own pen and the labours of his youths, and partly by “gentle solicitations.” Then there was Osbern, eloquent in speech, with a lively genius for sculpture, architecture, and painting. How we seem to behold him with “his stately stature, and his head, profusely covered with black hair sprinkled with grey!” He was always urging the novices to make progress in reading, singing, and writing; and loved with his own hands to make the writing implements and waxen tablets for the use of the boys. Or shall he tell us of that most promising scholar, William, who was placed in the abbey when nine years old, and was so diligent at his books, that the monks called him Gregory the Second? Not only did he make an excellent reader and chanter, and an exceedingly skilful copyist, but he was so devoted a student of the Scriptures, that he committed to his tenacious memory the Epistles of St. Paul, the Proverbs of Solomon, and many other books of either Testament.

Of another youth, who began his education at five, and who afterwards became schoolmaster, the same historian remarks, that his special gift lay in his powers of conversation. He had a knack of making everything interesting, and told the commonest things in a way that was quite delightful; and the monks were never weary of hearing him recite the narratives of Scripture, or the histories of learned men. It is not merely as men of learning that the character of these monastic students claims our admiration. It is the union of strength with tenderness, of scholarship with humility, which renders them so dear and venerable in our eyes. How seldom in these records are we disgusted with any of those traits of pedantry and self-seeking, the offsprings of a pride which had been pruned away by the knife of religious discipline? The monks were not mere scholars, and the tendency to literary conceit was effectually corrected by the daily exercises of community life. In the best days of monasticism, labour was cultivated hand in hand with letters. The same man who at one hour was engaged in writing a commentary on the Scriptures, producing Christian imitations of Horace or Virgil, or elaborating some of the exquisite master-pieces of cloistral art, found himself at another, employed on the meanest and humblest offices for the service of his brethren. The finest glass-painter of one medieval convent had to leave his paintings to take their chance in the furnace, while he was sent on the quest; and the Pope’s messengers who brought a cardinal’s hat to another learned friar, found him busy in the kitchen. This was the invariable régime which existed wherever the monastic institute preserved its discipline uncorrupted. Thus Odericus says of Roger de Warrene, son of the famous earl of Surrey, that entering the abbey of St. Evroult at the age of forty-six, he never plumed himself on his noble birth or varied accomplishments, but chose rather base employments, “cleaning the shoes of the brethren, washing their stockings, and cheerfully doing other services which appear mean to stupid or conceited persons.” Yet he was a very skilful artist; and when he had finished with the shoes and stockings, he gave the rest of his time to the labours of the scriptorium, where he ornamented a book of the Gospels with gold, silver, and precious stones. And the historian knows not how to say enough of his pleasant and musical voice, his constant attendance in choir, and his courteous manner with the other monks, “always abstemious towards himself, always generous to others, always alive for vigils, and incredibly modest.”[138] What a fragrant sweetness hangs about such notices as these, coming as they do in the midst of records of bloodshed and violence! Truly, we may say of the monastic schools, that they were “as beds of flowers by the dens of lions encompassed!” Huns and Saracens raged around them, but these gentle scholars fled to the mountains and the wilderness, and building their nests amid the rocks, while the world was flooded by new forms of barbarism, they wrote, they studied, they taught, and they prayed, and perpetuated that beautiful character which even Michelet has owned to have been in all ages the appanage of monks; sweetness, goodness of heart, and innocence. It remained wholly unaffected by the stormy turbulence of the world around them. They had a world of their own apart from and above it. All Europe might be in arms, whilst at St. Gall’s Tutilo was constructing his wonderful table, which showed all the courses of the stars, or Notker was composing those hymns and sequences which for centuries afterwards were to be incorporated into the Office of the Church. Whilst the barbarians were laying all things in ruins, they, heedless alike of fame or profit, were patiently laying the foundations of European civilisation. They were forming the languages of Schiller, of Bacon, and of Bossuet; they were creating arts which modern skill in vain endeavours to imitate; they were preserving the codices of ancient learning, and embalming the world, “lying in wickedness,” with the sweet odour of their manifold virtues. Surely, it was of such as these that the Wise Man spoke when he described that wisdom which God has given to His chosen ones. For they had received “the true knowledge of the things that are: the revolutions of the year, and the dispositions of the stars; the natures of living creatures, the reasonings of men, the diversities of plants, and the virtues of roots,”—and in them was “the spirit of understanding, holy, one, manifold, eloquent, active, undefiled, sweet, loving that which is good, beneficent, gentle, and kind.”[139]

But before closing our sketch of the tenth century, we have yet to speak of its greatest scholastic glory: one whose attainments have elicited not only the admiration of his contemporaries, but the respectful notice even of those writers least disposed to believe that anything good can come out of the Dark Ages. The scholars of whom we have hitherto spoken, if regarded as great men by their contemporaries, are spoken of by later critics with very general contempt. They do not even allow them to have been useful in their own poor way, as transcribers of volumes that they scarce knew how to read, for Mr. Berington considers that even as copyists, the monks were sadly idle. Two names, however, escape the otherwise universal oblivion to which such writers would willingly consign the scholars of the Dark Ages, they are Erigena Scotus and Gerbert. There is, I hope, no malice in supposing that the intellectual superiority of these men does not form their only claim to exemption from the obloquy so plentifully heaped on their fellow-students. The independent views of Erigena were well fitted to win him favour with all disciples of the Rationalistic school; whilst the supposed circumstance of Gerbert having acquired his knowledge of science in an Arabic, and not in a Christian, academy, to say nothing of his having been at one time involved in a dispute with the Holy See, may have had some share in procuring him a larger meed of indulgence. To admit his merit did not entail the necessity of giving any credit to the Christian teachers, for if Gerbert ended his days on the chair of St. Peter, it is at least a comforting reflection to our historians, that he began life in the Moorish schools of Granada.

This consolation, alas! they enjoy no longer. Modern researches, which have upset so many time-honoured traditions, have proved beyond the possibility of dispute that Gerbert owed nothing either to Moors or Pagans, that his education was exclusively Christian, and that whatever be his value as a man of science, the Christian schools of the Iron century must bear the credit of it. It is hard to dissipate fables so romantic as those which represent the young scholar Gerbert enabled, through the favour of a fair Moorish damsel, to gain possession of her wizard father’s conjuring-book, the mystic Abacus—and return to Europe with the unholy treasure, which was to infuse a gleam of Saracenic light into the dull intellects of Christendom. But the recent discovery of an authentic memoir of this famous monk, whose name casts so broad a splendour over his age, written by his own disciple, Richer, of Rheims, has cleared away every obscurity which hitherto hung over his history.[140]

Few particulars of his early life are known, save that he was the son of poor parents, that he was a native of Aurillac in Auvergne, and entered the monastery of that town when still a youth, about the end of the ninth century. He had already commenced his studies in grammar, when Borrel, count of Barcelona, came to the monastery on pilgrimage. The abbot, hearing from him of the excellent schools which then flourished in Spain, begged him to take back with him some of their young monks, and Gerbert accordingly accompanied the count into Spain, and was placed under Hatto, then Bishop of Vich, in Catalonia, where he formed an intimate friendship with Warin, abbot of Cusan, one of the most learned men of his time. From this account, the authenticity of which is beyond question, it appears that the popular notion which represents Gerbert as acquiring his learning among the Arabs is incorrect, and all the romantic stories connected with his acquisition of the mysterious Abacus vanish into thin air. Doubtless, the Christian schools of Spain profited not a little from their proximity to the Arabic universities, and the sciences of mathematics and astronomy were naturally those which were most successfully cultivated. Gerbert made extraordinary progress in both; and when he accompanied Borrel and Hatto on their next pilgrimage to Rome, Pope John XIII. was not long in discovering his talents. The liberty of the subject seems not to have been much understood in the tenth century, for when it became known that the young monk was an adept both in music and mathematics, neither of which sciences were then taught in Italy, the Pope lost no time in communicating the fact to the emperor Otho I., who conjured him not to permit his return to Spain. Gerbert was accordingly most affectionately kidnapped and sent without delay to Otho’s court, where being interrogated as to the extent of his knowledge, he replied that he was tolerably acquainted with mathematics, but was ignorant of logic, which science he greatly desired to study. It happened that at that time Gerard, archdeacon of Rheims, an excellent logician, had been sent as ambassador to Otho from Lothaire, king of France, and Gerbert at last won the emperor’s consent to his returning home with him, that he might teach mathematics and study logic in the schools of that city. Adalberon was then archbishop of Rheims, and he forthwith committed the studies of his cathedral school to the direction of the young professor. Richer gives a very precise account of the method he followed. He began with the “Dialectics of Aristotle,” going through and thoroughly explaining the propositions of each book. He particularly explained the Introduction of Porphyry; and passed on to the “Categories” and the “Topics” of the same author, as translated out of Greek into Latin by Cicero, and commented on in six books by the Consul Manlius. In the same way he lectured on the four books of Topical differences, two of Categorical syllogisms, one book of Divisions, and one of Definitions. And here the reader will not fail to observe that these logical lectures must have been the fruit of studies pursued not in Spain, but in France, for previous to Gerbert’s coming to Rheims, we have his own acknowledgment that he knew nothing of that science. After he had taken his scholars through this course, says Richer, he proceeded to initiate them into the art of rhetoric; and he set out on the principle, that in this branch of study a knowledge of the classical poets was essential. He therefore read and explained Virgil, Statius, and Terence; then the satirists, Juvenal, Persius, and Horace, and last of all, Lucan. After this, his pupils were exercised in disputation, which he taught with such art, that the art was never apparent; a thing, observes his biographer, which is held to be the perfection of oratory. Then he popularised the science of music;[141] and as to arithmetic, mathematics, and astronomy, he made these difficult studies easy and delightful. Richer devotes several pages to the description of the various instruments which he constructed, and by which he contrived to render the science of astronomy, as it were, sensible to the eyes of his scholars. A round wooden ball, with its poles oblique to the horizon, figured the world, the various astronomical and geographical phenomena being represented by other circles. In fact, from the minute description of the writer, we are obliged to conclude that Gerbert exhibited at his lectures two very passable specimens of the terrestrial and celestial globes. But the great boon, which he is commonly represented as bestowing on the European schools, was the introduction of that wonderful table, “in which nine ciphers represented all the numbers, and produced in their infinite combinations all multiplications and divisions.” This was the mystic Abacus, the foundation, no doubt, of our present system of numeration. It consisted of a tablet, on which three columns were marked out, sometimes in fixed lines, sometimes in sand sprinkled over its surface; and in these columns figures were arranged in units, tens and hundreds. The method in use for working out calculations, even with the assistance of this decimal system, as explained by Gerbert in several treatises, was, however, extremely intricate, though it was probably a vast improvement on the clumsy contrivances which had been resorted to by former scholars. How far, however, the Abacus is to be regarded as a new invention, appears more than doubtful. Its history has been made the subject of interesting modern researches, and the result seems to be that the system of numeration used and explained by Gerbert, contained nothing in it which had been unknown to Boëthius.[142] Nevertheless, he certainly seems to have elucidated and popularised the science of arithmetic, which from this epoch began to be more seriously studied.

It is not easy to convey any notion of the enthusiasm excited by Gerbert’s lectures, or the tide of scholars that flocked to him not only from every part of France, but from Germany, Italy, and the British Islands. Brucker is careful to repeat the old calumny, which represents the dull heads of his contemporaries as attributing his superior science to the effect of magic. “The knowledge of nature which Gerbert possessed,” he says, “so far surpassed that of his contemporaries, that they thought him possessed of magical powers; and Benno, a cardinal who owed him a grudge for his opposition to the See of Rome, invented a tale of his holding converse with the devil.” Alas for the accurate historian! this round assertion must go to keep company with that other from the same pen touching the trial of Polydore Vergil before the Inquisition. It was, doubtless, a temptation to represent the person who charged a man of genius with being a magician as one of the dull orthodox, moved to the malicious act by his zeal on behalf of the See of Rome, but the facts are exactly the contrary. Benno, the zealous cardinal who owed Gerbert a grudge for his opposition to the Pope, happened himself to be a schismatic and a partisan of the anti-pope; and instead of being a contemporary of Gerbert’s, he lived a century later, in the time of St. Gregory VII., and introduced this precious story in a writing, the express purpose of which was to defame the character of the Roman pontiffs.[143] In justice to Gerbert it must be added, that not only was he innocent of sorcery, but that he was altogether above all petty jealousy and self-seeking, and desired nothing so ardently as to communicate his discoveries to as many as wished to receive them. Not content with instructing his own scholars, he corresponded with the scholastics of Tours, Sens, Fleury, and Aurillac, and spared no pains or expense in the collection of his library. In this work he was generously assisted by his friends, scattered over the length and breadth of Europe. It is in his “Epistles” that we catch a glimpse of that prodigious activity of mind which took cognisance of all subjects, and never rested till it had sounded all to the depth. In one letter, we find him begging the loan of a Cæsar from his archbishop, and offering in exchange eight volumes of Boëthius and some excellent geometrical figures. In another, he solicits the monks of Aurillac to furnish him with a Spanish treatise on the arts of multiplication and division, and directs them in the work of correcting a manuscript of Pliny. Then, again, we find him writing on the medical science, to which he and his disciples directed a good deal of attention, and in which they followed the Greek masters. In fact, it was the diversified character of his acquirements that made Gerbert the wonder of the world in the eyes of his contemporaries. He knew all things, they said, and all things equally well. If this were an exaggeration, it is certain that he possessed the rare power of being able to direct his attention to a very wide range of studies, though natural philosophy was certainly his special attraction.

Whilst still presiding over his school, Gerbert produced several treatises on astronomy, mathematics, and geometry; on the formation of the astrolabe, the quadrant, and the sphere, as well as on rhetoric and logic. The monk Ditmar tells us that when at Magdeburg with his old pupil, Otho III., he made a clock, regulating it according to the movement of the polar star, which he observed through a kind of tube. Another writer speaks of certain hydraulic organs which he constructed, in which the wind and necessary movements were introduced by means of boiling water: and these obscure notices seem to indicate that wheeled clocks, the telescope, and the power of steam, were known by Gerbert fully three centuries before what has been considered their earliest discovery by our own Roger Bacon. Gerbert did not teach at Rheims alone. Crossing the Alps, he passed through most of the towns of Northern Italy, then subject to his great patron, Otho I. In 970 he also visited Rome in company with the bishop Adalberon, and at Pavia met the emperor, together with the celebrated Saxon, Otheric, whom we have seen filling the office of scholasticus in the episcopal school of Magdeburg. Otheric had up to that time enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest scholar of his age, and perhaps regarded himself somewhat in the light of a literary dictator. In the course of the previous year he had felt no little uneasiness at the daily increasing renown of the French professor, and had despatched one of his own Saxon pupils to Rheims to bring him an exact account of Gerbert’s method of dividing the sciences. The Saxon made an unsatisfactory report. It was Gerbert’s custom to represent physics and mathematics as equal and independent sciences. But Otheric’s disciple, whose head was none of the clearest, made him teach that physics were subordinate to mathematics, as the species to the genus. On this, Otheric decided that he knew nothing of philosophy, and proceeding to the court of the emperor, Otho I., he spoke to that effect before an assembly of learned men. Otho, who was himself passionately fond of these studies, was not satisfied, and resolved to sift the matter to the bottom. He therefore seized the occasion of Gerbert’s presence at Pavia to inaugurate a grand scientific tournament, and invited all the savants of his empire to witness the dispute between the first scholar of France and the first scholar of Germany. He himself presided at the conference, and opened it with a brief allocution of his own, in which he very clearly explained the question in dispute. Then Otheric began his attack, first in words, and then in writing. The conference lasted the whole day, and Gerbert, who cited the authorities of Plato, Porphyry, and Boëthius, was still speaking in reply when the emperor gave the signal for the conclusion of the debate. Gerbert’s fame never appeared more illustrious, and he returned to France loaded with magnificent presents.

His after career was full of troubles; but in 990 the influence of his imperial pupil, Otho III., obtained his election to the see of Ravenna, and nine years later to the Apostolic chair. It was a great day in the annals of learning when the philosopher Gerbert became Pope Sylvester II., and one which brought no small satisfaction to the hearts of his pupils. Half the prelates and princes of Europe gloried in having called him master, and most of them did him credit. Among them were our own St. Ethelwold; Fulbert of Chartres, the oracle of his own time; and Robert, king of France, the son of Hugh Capet, and the most religious and learned sovereign of the age. King Robert was well skilled in all the humane sciences; but the love of music, which he had imbibed from his master, amounted to a passion. Even after his accession to the throne, he devoted no small part of his time to composing anthems, and motetts, to the indignation of his queen, Constance, who asked him once, if he must compose, to compose something upon her. Robert sat down and produced the hymn O Constantia martyrum! and the queen, who fortunately understood nothing of Latin, was quite satisfied, imagining that her own perfections formed the subject of the poem. He often assisted in the choir of St. Denis, dressed in his royal robes, singing with the monks and directing the chant. Robert is said by his biographer always to have had a book in his hand, and to have carried the Psalter in his bosom. He once visited Rome, and during the Pope’s mass laid on the altar, as his offering, a folded packet, which from its great size and weight the attendants concluded to be gold. On opening it, however, they found it to be only a fair copy of his antiphon, Cornelius Centurio. Admiring the writing and the musical notes, as well as the genius and piety of the author, the Pope desired that thenceforward this antiphon should always be sung on the festival of St. Peter, of whose Office it still continues to form a part.

Not less learned was Gerbert’s other royal pupil, Otho of Germany, surnamed “the Wonder of the World,” whose early death prevented his making as much use of his advantages of education as was confidently expected by all who knew the singular excellence to which he had attained. Besides these illustrious disciples, Gerbert had others of every rank and calling. The great St. Ethelwold is said by many writers to have studied under him for a time, and the rapid development in England and elsewhere of mathematical studies at this period must certainly be assigned to the impulse given them by the teaching of the master of Rheims. His genius was emphatically scientific, and this is the character which we find impressed on the learning of most of his followers. Thus Richer, the monk from whose history most of the above particulars have been taken, was more particularly skilled in the science of medicine. As an instance of the solicitude which monks of the tenth century displayed in the pursuit of knowledge, I may refer to the very curious account which he gives us of the perilous journey he once undertook, for the purpose of perusing a single book on his favourite science. “It was in the year 951,” says Richer, “when my mind, being much and deeply engaged in the study of literature, I had long entertained an ardent desire of having the opportunity of learning the logic of Hippocrates of Cos. One day I chanced to meet in the city of Rheims a horseman coming from Chartres. Asking him who he was, and wherefore he had come hither, he replied that he was a messenger from Heribrand, a clerk of Chartres, and that he wished to speak to one Richer, a monk of St. Rémi. As soon as I heard my friend’s name, and the subject of his message, I told the stranger that I was the person he was in quest of; whereupon, having embraced one another, he gave me a letter, which I found was an invitation to come to Chartres and peruse the ‘Aphorisms.’ I was much rejoiced at this; wherefore, taking a servant with me, I determined on accompanying the horseman back to Chartres. The only assistance I received from my abbot was a loan of one of the draft horses. Without money, or even a change of clothes, and destitute of every necessary for the journey, I set out and reached Orbais, where I was not only delighted with the conversation of the abbot, but greatly assisted by his noble gifts, so that next day I was able to get on as far as Meaux. On entering the woods, however, with my two companions, we were involved in several disasters; for, deceived by its wild and broken openings, on coming to a place where two ways met, we took the wrong turning, and were led six leagues out of our road.

“By the time we passed Château Thierry my cart-horse, which had at first seemed a sort of Bucephalus, began to lag on the road as lazily as if he had been a donkey. The sun had been sinking for some time, and the rain was falling fast. At this moment the horse, worn out with fatigue, sank under the lad who was riding him, and the poor beast expired, as though struck by lightning. This happened when we were about six miles from the city of Meaux. My agitation and anxiety at this disaster may be well conceived; the boy, quite inexperienced in such emergencies, lay helpless on the road, by the side of the dead horse. There lay the luggage also, with no one to carry it; the rain was pouring down from a dark and cloudy sky, and the sun was just on the horizon. By God’s goodness a prudent thought, however, suggested itself to my mind. I left the boy on the road with the baggage, telling him what he ought to say if questioned by travellers, urging him not to yield to any inclination to sleep. Then, accompanied by the horseman from Chartres, I set out for Meaux. There was scarcely light to see the bridge; and on examining it, a new misfortune presented itself. It was so broken, and had such enormous holes in it, that even by day it could hardly have been crossed in safety. The Chartres horseman, however, here showed himself a ready man. After vainly searching for a boat, he returned to the bridge, and, with the help of God, succeeded in getting the horses over it. In some places he covered the huge holes with his shield, so as to support the feet of the animals; in others he put the separated planks close together, and what with stooping, and what with holding himself erect, and now keeping the beasts together, and now separating from them, he contrived to get over in safety. It was a dreadful night, and all around was buried in darkness when I reached the church of St. Faro, where I was hospitably received by the monks, and refreshed with kind words and abundance of food. The horseman was at once sent back with other steeds, again passed the dangerous bridge, and proceeded to search for the poor boy, whom we had left on the road. It was the second watch of the night when he came up with him. He at once brought him to the city, but fearful of attempting a third time to cross the bridge they determined on passing the night in a poor cabin, and at break of day appeared at the gates of the monastery, half dead with hunger. Food was immediately given them, and corn and straw supplied to the horses.

“Leaving the dismounted boy with Abbot Augustin (of St. Faro), I hastened on to Chartres with the horseman, whence I sent back horses, who brought the lad back from Meaux. When he was come, and my mind was thus set at rest, I sat down at once to the earnest study of the ‘Aphorisms’ of Hippocrates, together with Master Heribrand, a man as much distinguished for his politeness as for his great learning. But as in these ‘Aphorisms’ I only learnt the premonitory symptoms of diseases, and as this knowledge did not satisfy me, I desired also to study another book showing the concordance between Hippocrates, Galen, and Suranus. This also I obtained from Heribrand, who was perfectly well skilled in the science to which he devoted his time. Indeed, there was nothing in medicine, pharmacy, botany, or surgery unknown to him.” Richer’s appreciation of his friend’s learning may possibly have been exaggerated; but who can fail to admire his perseverance in overcoming such difficulties as a journey then presented, with the simple view of increasing his stock of scientific knowledge by the perusal of one precious book?

Allusion has been made to the improvements introduced by Gerbert in the study of music. A little later a more important addition was made to the same science by Guy, a monk of Pomposa, commonly called Guy of Arezzo, from the city which gave him birth. He had been educated from the age of eight years in the monastery of Pomposa; and being well skilled in music, was employed in teaching the ecclesiastical chant to the children brought up in the house. But the immense difficulties of his task induced him to consider whether some method of facilitating the notation of music might not be devised. As yet, the sounds of the musical scale were only represented by the first seven letters of the alphabet, or by notes, as was the custom in the abbeys of Corby and St. Gall, which showed indeed the relative length and value of each tone, but did not render their succession sensible to the eye. After seeking for a long time for some easy and precise system, Guy one day recognised in the chant to which the hymn of St. John Baptist was ordinarily sung, an ascending diatonic scale, in which the first syllable of each line occupied one note: Ut queant laxis—Resonare fibris—Mira gestorum—Famuli tuorum,—Solve polluti—Labii reatum,—Sancte Ioannes. He applied himself to teach this chant to his pupils, and to render them familiar with the diatonic succession of the syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, and la. Next, he arranged the notes on lines and intervals, and thus produced the musical staff with its proper clefs. By means of these improvements he found himself able, in a few months, to teach a child as much as a man, under the ancient system, would have had difficulty in learning in the course of many years. However, such a storm of jealousy arose against him on the score of his discovery, that he found himself obliged to leave the monastery; and accordingly, in 1024, he travelled to Rome, where Pope John XIX. warmly received both him and his newly-invented gamut.

“The Pope,” he says, “having received me kindly, conversed with me for a long time, asking many questions, and turning over the leaves of my antiphonarium, seemed to think it a sort of prodigy. He conned its rules, and would not rise from his seat till he had tried to learn a verse which he had never yet heard sung, and to his great astonishment found himself able to do it.” Guy was not allowed to leave Rome till he had promised to return the next winter, and give a regular course of musical instructions to the Pope and his clergy. The sunshine of Papal favour soon dissipated the storm, but the humble religious was no way puffed up by his triumph. He only rejoiced at being able to spread the knowledge of a discovery which would be useful to others. “The designs of Providence,” he writes, “are obscure, and falsehood is sometimes suffered to oppress the truth; God so ordering it lest, puffed up with self-confidence, we should suffer loss. For then only is what we do good and useful when we refer all we do to Him who made us. God inspiring me with the knowledge, I have made it known to as many as I could, to the end that if I, and those who have gone before me, have learnt the Cantus with extreme difficulty, those who come after me, doing so with greater facility, may pray for me and my fellow-labourers, that we may obtain eternal life and the remission of our sins.”

At the very time when Gerbert was astonishing the world by the marvels of his genius, a simple nun of Gandersheim had attained a degree of literary excellence, which is the more remarkable as it was exclusively acquired within the enclosure of her own convent. The foundation of this convent had taken place at the same time with that of New Corby, and its object had been specially to provide for the education of the Saxon ladies. Peculiar attention was therefore directed to maintaining its school in a due state of efficiency, and learned traditions were always kept up among the nuns. Having fallen into decay in the ninth century, it was restored by Count Lindolph, whose daughter, Hathmuda, became abbess in 856. Her life has been left, written by her brother Agius, or Egbert. Hathmuda was a great lover of letters. “From a child,” says her brother, “she cared nothing at all for fine clothes, head-dresses, ribbons, combs, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, handkerchiefs, girdles, and scents, the possession and wearing of which stirs up the ambition of so many women.” She preferred to pray and to study, and “the lessons to which others had to be forced by stripes she willingly applied herself to, giving herself up to them with indefatigable ardour.” When she became abbess she was most desirous to keep up those sacred studies for which the monastery had ever been so famous. “She insisted on the study of the Scriptures, and those who applied themselves to reading she greatly loved, but did not admit to equal familiarity such as herein showed themselves to be slothful.” Her cares were amply rewarded, and the school of Gandersheim produced a succession of excellent teachers, among whom was Hroswitha, the fourth abbess, who died in 906, and was the authoress of a treatise on logic, much esteemed among the learned of her own time.[144]

It is of a namesake of this fair logician that we are now about to speak, Hroswitha, the nun of Gandersheim, as she is called. She was born in the year 940, and was brought up in the convent school, where she studied Greek and Latin, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the other liberal arts. We are often told that expressions like these, however magnificent they look on paper, would dwindle into insignificance could we test their value by the real amount of learning which they represent. With regard to Hroswitha, however, the true nature of her erudition is not left to conjecture. She has left behind her writings which have attracted the favourable notice even of modern critics, who agree in declaring that the Latin poems of this obscure nun of the tenth century are marvels of classical taste and poetic genius. Besides a panegyric on the three Othos, she wrote eight poems on various religious subjects, some of them being taken from the life of our Lord, and some from the legends of the saints; and seven prose dramas in the style of Terence, being tales of holy women, and having for their subject the praise of chastity. While praising the delicacy of the sentiments and the correctness of the style, her critics observe that these dramas afford incidental evidence of her perfect familiarity with the sciences of music, astronomy, and dialectics, as then taught in the schools. In one of them she introduces a sort of apology for her own learning, which has a certain feminine grace about it, more charming than all her logic. It occurs in the drama of “Paphnutius,” where, after a philosophic discussion on the art of music, one of the disciples of the saint is made to ask him:

“Whence do you derive all this knowledge?” and he replies, “It is but a little drop that I have gathered from the ever-flowing sources of science; and now I desire to share it with you.”

Dis. “Thanks to your goodness; nevertheless that admonition of the apostle terrifies me: ‘God hath chosen the foolish of this world to confound the wise.’”

Paph. “Foolish and wise will alike be confounded before God, if they do what is evil.”

Dis. “That cannot be denied.”

Paph. “How, I pray you, can the arts and sciences be better employed than in the praise of Him who has created all things that we can know, and who furnishes us at once both with the matter and the instruments of our knowledge?”

Dis. “Certainly, that is the best way to use science.”

Paph. “It is; for the more we know of the admirable laws by which God regulates the weight, number, and proportion of all things, the more our hearts will burn with love of Him.”

Where shall we find more admirable teaching than this on the vexed question of the danger of intellectual pursuits? Dangerous only, as Hroswitha justly argues, when we cease to refer them to Him, who, as she so beautifully expresses it, “furnishes us at once with the matter and the instruments of our knowledge;” but good, holy, and greatly to be desired, when, by supplying us with a more perfect knowledge of Him, they fill our hearts with His love. That this was her own case, we may gather from the modest preface which heads her first collection of poems.

“Here,” she says, “is a little book, simple in style, though it has cost the writer no small trouble and application. I offer it to the criticism of those kind judges who are disposed rather to put an author right than to find fault with him. For I willingly acknowledge that it contains many errors as well against the rules of composition as those of prosody; but methinks one who frankly confesses her defects, merits to meet with a ready pardon and a friendly correction. If it be thought amiss that I have taken some of my subjects from books, considered by some to be apocryphal, I must explain that this is not the result of presumption but of ignorance, for when I began my work I was not aware that they were held as of doubtful authority. As soon as I learned that this was the case, I ceased to use them. For the rest I claim indulgence, in proportion as I feel a want of confidence in myself. Deprived of most resources of study, and still young, I have been forced to work in my rustic solitude far from the help of the learned. It has been alone and unaided that I have produced my little work, by dint of repeated compositions and corrections. The main substance I have gathered from the Holy Scriptures, which were taught me in this convent of Gandersheim, first by the wise and blessed mistress, Richardis, and the religious who succeeded her in her office: and then by the excellent Gerberga, of royal birth, under whose government I am now living. Younger than me in years, but older in knowledge, she deigned to form my mind by the reading of good authors, in which she had also been instructed by learned mistresses. Although the art of making verses is difficult, specially for a woman, I have ventured, trusting in the Divine aid, to treat the subjects of this book in heroic verse. My only object in this labour has been to prevent the feeble talent committed to my keeping from growing rusty. And I desired by the hammer of devotion to compel it to give forth some sweet sounds to the praise of God. Wherefore, dear reader, if thou thinkest according to God, thou wilt know how to supply what is wanting in this book; and if thou findest anything good in it, refer it to God only, and attribute nothing to me but the faults; without, however, reproaching me for them too severely, but excusing them with that indulgence which a frank avowal deserves.”

Hroswitha’s humility had to stand the test of flattery from the literary world, and it stood it well. There are phrases scattered through her writings which evince how accurately she had gauged the shallowness of intellectual vanity, and how little hold it had upon her heart. “Often enough when curiosity is satisfied,” she writes, “we find nothing but sadness.” In the epistle prefixed to her prose dramas, she acknowledges the approbation which she has received from the learned with an unaffected simplicity. “I cannot sufficiently wonder,” she says, “that you who are so well versed in philosophy should judge the humble work of a simple woman worthy of your commendation. But when in your charity you congratulate me, it is the Dispenser of that grace which works in me that you praise, believing as you do that the little knowledge I possess is superior to the weakness of my sex. Hitherto, I have hardly ventured to show my rustic little productions to any one, but reassured by your opinion, I shall now feel more confidence in writing, if God give me the power. Yet I feel myself drawn by the two opposite sentiments of joy and fear. I rejoice from my heart to see God and His grace praised in me, but I fear lest men should think me greater than I am. I do not mean to deny that, aided by Divine grace, I have attained to a certain knowledge of the arts, for I am a creature capable of instruction as others are; but I confess that left to my own strength I should know nothing.”

These extracts require no comment. They prove something more than the solid nature of the studies pursued in the convent school of Gandersheim. How skilfully had the teachers of Hroswitha contrived, whilst directing her intellectual labours, to preserve her womanly modesty, her almost childish naïveté, and her deep religious humility! Better things were included in their scheme of education than a mere knowledge of the liberal arts; the wisdom “whose beginning is the desire of discipline,” and into which “no defiled thing cometh.” Under their training the genius of the young poetess was guarded by the cloak of humility from the cunning moth of pride; and whilst we are amazed at her learned attainments, her modesty and candour at the same time conquer our hearts.

And with this agreeable picture we will close our present chapter, trusting that the nun of Gandersheim may be allowed to have shed something of beauty and fragrance over the rugged annals of the Iron Age.[145]