[1] Fuit autem forma Beatissimi Marci hujusmodi: longo naso, subducto supercilio, pulcher oculis, recalvaster, prolixa barba, velox, habitudinis optimæ, canis aspersus, affectione continens, gratia Dei plenus.—Metaphrastes, Vita S. Marci, ap. Surium.
[2] Nahum iii. 8.
[3] Vita S. Marci.
[4] A faded copy of St. Mark’s Gospel, preserved in St. Mark’s Treasury at Venice, claims to have been written by his own hand. Montfauçon, who has described it in his Iter Italicum, considers that this claim cannot be supported, though he attests the great antiquity of the manuscript.
[5] The ecclesiastical chant took its first great development at Alexandria, and appears to have been brought thither from Rome by St. Mark. Philo the Jew, a native of Alexandria, who lived in the time of the Evangelist, describes the Christians passing their days in psalmody and prayer, and singing in alternate choirs (Euseb. lib. ii. c. 17). On the martyrdom of the Evangelist we read how certain just men buried him “singing prayers and psalms.” (Vita S. Marci, Sim. Met.) The nature of the chant established at Alexandria in the time of St. Athanasius, is very precisely indicated by St. Augustine, in that passage of his Confessions (lib. x. c. 33) where, speaking of the voluptates aurium, he says that he sometimes desires even to banish from his ears the sweet tones to which the Psalms of David were generally sung in church; “and then that method seems to me more safe which I remember often to have heard of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who caused the lector to intone the Psalms with so slight an inflection of the voice, that it was more like reading than singing.” Hippolytus, in his Book on Antichrist, declares that one effect of His coming at the end of the world will be the abolition of the Psalmody of the Church.
[6] Cassian, Inst. ii. c. 5; Coll. 18. 6.
[7] Euseb. Hist. l. v. c. 20.
[8] Durandus, Rational. lib. viii. c. 1. It is also frequently used to signify an elementary knowledge of arithmetic.
[9] In spite of the labours of recent critics, the history of St. Hyppolitus still remains obscure. It appears uncertain whether there were one or many saints of the name; whether the Hyppolitus celebrated by Prudentius was ever really Bishop of Porto, and lastly, whether he was, or was not, the author of the Philosophumena. The former opinion is maintained by Bunsen, Döllinger, and the majority of German and English critics; the latter is generally supported by the Catholic writers of France.
[10] Acta S. Feliciani, ed. Boll.
[11] Fleury, l. xviii. 35.
[12] Breviary Lessons: Feb. 13, proper for Rome. Vignoli, Liber Pontificalis, tom. ii. c. 89.
[13] Cœpit vivere secundum regulam sub sanctis apostolis constitutam. (Office of St. Augustine.)
[14] Fleury, l. xx. 32.
[15] Fleury, l. xxxii. 22.
[16] Ruinart, Atti Sinceri, vol. ii. 367-381. Ed. Rom. 1777.
[17] S. Greg. Vita S. Benedicti.
[18] S. Aug. Conf. l. viii. c. 5.
[19] S. Basil. De Legendis Gentilium Libris, tom. ii. p. 245. Ed. Gaume.
[20] S. Joan. Chrys. tom. i. pp. 115-122. Ed. Gaume.
[21] The words of the Christian orator are almost identical with those of Quinctilian on the same subject. “Si studiis quidem scholas prodesse, moribus autem nocere constaret, potior mihi ratio vivendi honeste, quam vel optime dicendi videretur.”—Lib. i. c. 3.
[22] Regula S. Pachomii, cap. i. cxl.
[23] Boll., Vit. S. Pach. c. 3, 4.
[24] Mabillon, Acta SS. Ord. Ben. Præf. in sec. iii.
[25] Reg. S. Basil. fus. tract. 15. Tom. 2, p. 498. Ed. Gaume.
[26] Omnes literas discant: omni tempore duabus horis, hoc est, a mane usque ad horam secundam, lectioni vacent.—S. Cæsarii Reg. ad Virg. cap. xvii.
[27] S. Leand. De Instit. Virg. cap. vi. et vii.
[28] There are, however, indications that at Alexandria at least young children took part in some of the exercises of the catechetical school. St. Clement’s hymn to the Saviour appears to have been written for his younger disciples. “O Shepherd of the lambs!” he says, “assemble Thine innocent children, and let their stainless lips sing hymns to Christ, the guide of youth.” And again: “Fed by the Divine milk of wisdom, that mother of grace has taught our infant lips, and made them taste the dew of the Spirit. Let us then sing to Christ our King.... Let us celebrate the praises of the Almighty Child.”
[29] 2 Tim. i. 5.
[30] Vit. S. Mac., cap. 2.
[31] Vita S. Fulgen., cap. i. ap. Surium.
[32] St. Hier., Ep. 96 (aliter 127, ed. Migne), ad Principiam.
[33] Gladstone, Studies on Homer.
[34] The works of Virgil the grammarian have been edited by Cardinal Mai (Auctores classici, tom. v.), who considers that the Toulouse Academy cannot be assigned a later date than the end of the sixth century.
[35] Mabillon, Acta SS. Ben. Præf. Secul. iii. 39.
[36] These are the words of Trithemius, who says that from the very beginning of the order the sons of nobles were educated in the Benedictine monasteries, “non solum in Scripturis Divinis, sed etiam in secularibus litteris.”
[37] In allusion to the waxen tablets then used for writing.
[38] S. Ælred, Vit. S. Nin.
[39] A solis ortus cardine and Hostis Herodes, the latter of which stands in the Roman Breviary under a somewhat altered form. This Sedulius is to be distinguished from Sedulius the younger, who was also of Irish extraction, and was Bishop of Oreta in Spain, in the eighth century.
[40] Scripsit Abegetoria, ccclxv. Nenn. Camb. MS. c. 57.
[41] Acta SS. Boll. Mart.
[42] Columba had previously studied in the school of St. Finian of Maghbile and received deacon’s orders, so that he could not have been a mere boy when he came to Clonard. But Adamnan tells us that he was still a youth, adhuc juvenis.
[43] Now Clonmacnois in King’s County.
[44] I should not have thought it necessary to remind the reader that St. Columba, the founder of Iona in 563, is to be distinguished from St. Columbanus the founder of Luxeuil in 585, had not so considerable a writer as Thierry, in his history of the Norman Conquest, spoken of them as the same persons.
[45] Act. SS. Boll.
[46] Ara Multiscilus, Schedæ de Islandia, cap. 2, quoted by Haverty, who sums up the number of Irish saints known to have settled in different parts of Europe as follows: 150 in Germany, of whom 36 were martyrs; 45 in Gaul, 6 martyrs; 30 in Belgium; 44 in England; 13 in Italy; and 8 martyrs in Norway and Iceland. They founded 13 monasteries in Scotland, 12 in England, 40 in Gaul, 9 in Belgium, 16 in Bavaria, 15 in Switzerland, 6 in Italy, and others in different parts of Germany.
[47] It is first spoken of by John of Salisbury, a writer of the twelfth century, who quotes no authority for the statement. With regard to the reproof administered to Bishop Didier, it is not denied, for the passage is extant in one of St. Gregory’s letters. But the real and authentic justification is given in the Gloss on the Canon Law, which explains that Didier’s fault did not lie in his studying humane literature, but in his giving public lectures in his church on the profane poets, and substituting the same in the place of the Gospel lesson. “Recitabat in ecclesia fabulas Jovis, et eas moraliter exponebat in prædicatione sua.” (Decret. pars i. dis. 86.) And again, “Beatus Gregorius quemdam episcopum non reprehendit quia litteras seculares didicerat; sed quia, contra episcopale officium, pro lectione Evangelica, grammaticam populo exponebat.” (Decret. pars i. dis. 37, c. 8. ed. Antwerp., 1573, quoted by Landriot, Recherches Historiques, p. 212.)
[48] St. Ignatius is generally spoken of as a disciple of the Apostle St. John. But many writers call him a disciple of St. Peter also, and some even represent that Apostle as placing him in the see of Antioch (S. Chrys. Hom. in S. Ignat. t. ii. p. 712). Tillemont (t. ii. p. 87, ed. 1732) quotes St. Athanasius, Origen and Theodoret, to the same effect. The historian Socrates speaks of St. Ignatius as introducing into the ancient Church of Antioch the alternate chant of two choirs (Socrates, lib. vi. c. 8.). Theodoret says that it was used there, in the time of the Arians, as a powerful instrument to oppose their blasphemous heresies.
[49] Bede, lib. i. ch. 27.
[50] This expression requires some explanation, being an apparent contradiction of what has been said before as to the Roman origin of the Irish schools. It must be borne in mind that the error in the Irish manner of observing Easter was not that of the Eastern Quarto Decimans, as they are called, who kept it on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, on whatever day of the week that might fall. This error was corrected at the Council of Nice, when it was commanded that the feast should always be celebrated on the Sunday after the fourteenth day of the moon; and the decree of the council was obeyed in Britain and Ireland as in Rome. But difficulties afterwards arose in the method of calculating Easter; the Cycles, or periods of years used for that purpose, were after a time found to be incorrect, and the philosophers of Alexandria were applied to, to calculate the day and notify it each year to the Pope, who should publish it to the rest of the Church. Even this plan failed to secure uniformity, and in the fifth century Rome and Alexandria were to be found computing the time of Easter after different cycles, Rome using one of eighty-four years, and Alexandria one of nineteen, which caused the feast to be celebrated on different days. The old Roman cycle was that which had been introduced into Ireland, and the Irish clergy continued to use it after it had been reformed in the time of Pope Hilarion, by whose command the Alexandrian cycle was established as more correct, and the calendar was corrected by Victorinus of Aquitaine. Such was the disturbed date of the world at this time, however, that the British and Irish churches heard nothing of this change, and stuck to their old Roman cycle even after the arrival of St. Gregory’s missionaries. The notion of the Irish having adopted the Eastern computation of the Quarto Decimans is very clearly disproved by reference to Bede, lib. iii. ch. 4. They at last adopted the Roman calendar at the Synod of Lene, held in 630, wherein it was agreed that “they should receive what was brought to them from the fountain of their baptism and of their wisdom, even the successors of the Apostles of Christ.”
[51] By astrology and the calculation of horoscopes must not be here understood the practice of judicial astrology, which was regarded by all the Anglo-Saxon prelates as a forbidden art; but, as Lingard supposes, studies connected with the Zodiac, and the art of dialling, here called horoscopii computatio; an art much in vogue among early scholars, and which formed one of the scientific recreations of Boethius.
[52] Surtees, History of Durham.
[53] Bede, lib. iv. c, 18.
[54] Alc. Opera i. p. 282.
[55] Nec linguam Hebraicam ignoravit. (Breviary Lessons.)
[56] Among the authors quoted by Bede are Virgil, Horace, Terence, Ovid, Lucan, Lucretius, Prudentius, Juvencus, Macer, Varro, Cornelius, Severus, Fortunatus, Sedulius, and Pacuvius, besides the Latin Fathers. He also makes frequent references to Homer, which was not at that time translated into Latin, and which he can, therefore, only have known in its original Greek.
[57] See De Nat. Rerum, Op. tom. ii. p. 37.
[58] Iren. de Hær. l. iii. 4.
[59] Three, however, were preserved which expressed sounds not conveyed by the Roman alphabet, corresponding to w, th, and dh.
[60] The instruction of the people was not, however, to be limited to a knowledge of these prayers. “Let them be taught,” he says, “by what works they may please God, and from what things they must abstain; with what sincerity they must believe in Him, and with what devotion they must pray; how diligently and frequently they must fortify themselves with the holy sign of the Cross; and how salutary for every class of Christian is the daily reception of the Lord’s Body and Blood, which is, you know, the constant practice of the Church of Christ throughout Italy, Gaul, Africa, Greece, and the whole of the East.” This is a most important testimony as to the existing practice of the Church in the eighth century, and Bede goes on to say that to his knowledge there are innumerable young persons, of both sexes, who might, beyond all question, be suffered to communicate, at least, on all Sundays and festivals.
[61] “Caras super omnia gazas.” (De Pont. Ebor. Eccl.)
[62] Jamdiu optata adest dies. (Vita S. Bon. Acta SS. Ben.)
[63] “O felix collegium beatissimi Bonifacii!” exclaims the biographer of S. Sola.
[64] Dr. Campbell in his “Strictures on the Ecclesiastical History of Ireland,” observes that “this great man was degraded by Pope Zachary on conviction of being a mathematician.” But perhaps the most remarkable reproduction of this oft-told tale occurs in Dr. Enfield’s translation of Brucker’s “History of Philosophy,” which I give verbatim, as only to be paralleled in the “Art of Pluck.” “Boniface,” he says, “the patron of ignorance and barbarism, summoned Polydore Virgil, bishop of Salisbury, to the Court of Inquisition for maintaining the existence of the antipodes.” (Vol. i, p. 363.) Would it be believed that a writer who is engaged in bewailing the ignorance of monkish philosophers should commit himself to a statement which confuses St. Feargil, or Virgil, bishop of Saltzburg, in the eighth century, with Polydore Vergil, archdeacon of Bath (for he was never bishop of Salisbury at all), in the fifteenth? And then the Inquisition! To make it complete he should have identified Virgil with the Latin poet, and convicted him of the Albigensian heresy. Yet these are the writers who find no terms contemptuous enough in which to speak of mediæval ignorance. “Among the scholastics,” writes Dr. Enfield, in the very next sentence, “we find surprising proofs of weakness and ignorance.” The scholastics, could they speak, might find something to retort on their accusers.
[65] The doctrines attributed to Virgil, and their condemnation by Pope Zachary, have been examined by Decker, a professor of Louvain, who shows very clearly that the error lay, not in their maintaining the existence of the antipodes, but in the notion of a race distinct from that of Adam. Feller, in the account he gives of the matter in his Historical Dictionary, refers to the teaching of Bede, who, he declares, denied the spherical figure of the earth. But the work from which he quotes is not to be found among the writings of our English saint, whose real opinion on the subject may be seen from the following explicit passage: “We call the earth a globe, not that it is absolutely the perfect form of a globe, by reason of the unevenness of hills and plains, but because its whole compass, if comprehended within the circumference of lines, would make the figure of a globe.”—De Nat. Rer. c. xlvi. 118.
[66] This question was resolved by Pope Zachary in favour of the validity of the baptism so administered.
[67] Vita S. Liob. ap. Surium.
[68] Tradition says that they stopped at Antwerp some days, and a grotto is still shown in the ancient church dedicated to St. Walburga, where she is said to have prayed.
[69] For the ingenious arguments by which certain writers have endeavoured to show that the Council of Cloveshoe rejected the authority of the Roman Pontiff (by whose command it was summoned), and for their able refutation, the reader is referred to “Lingard’s Anglo-Saxon Antiquities,” vol. i. Appendix, note G.
[70] Thorpe II. 414.
[71] Sid. Apol. Ep. iv. 3.
[72] Hist. Litt. t. iii. p. 22.
[73] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.
[74] Guizot, Hist. de Civil. vol. ii. lect. 22.
[75] According to Durandus, the circumstances under which Paul the Deacon wrote this hymn were as follows. Having to sing the blessing of the Paschal candle on Holy Saturday, he unfortunately lost his voice from hoarseness, and to recover it, invoked the aid of St. John Baptist, in whose honour he composed this hymn, in which he solicits him to restore him the use of his voice, and reminds him how at his nativity he had procured a like grace for his father Zachary. This anecdote explains the allusion in the opening lines. To avoid the tiresome confusion arising from the similarity of names, I will remind the reader that there were two persons designated as Paul the Deacon; one the contemporary of St. Gregory, and the other his historian; and moreover that he had another historian in the person of John the Deacon, who lived in the ninth century.
[76] The identical copy is still preserved in the Library of Sta. Maria in Vallicella at Rome, and bears on its fly-leaf the following inscription, which many suppose to be the autograph of Alcuin:—
A folio Bible now in the British Museum, and formerly the property of M. de Speyer Passavant, has also its claims to be considered the original copy of Alcuin, though commonly held to have been written in the reign of Charles the Bald.
[77] Crevier, Hist. de L’Univ. de Paris, vol. i.
[78] Vita Caroli Mon. Engol. an. 787.
[79] Vita S. Greg. Joan. Diac. lib. ii. 7.
[80] Quatuor Evangelia Christi in ultimo ante obitus sui diem, cum Græcis et Syris optime correxerat. (Thegani, Vita Ludovici Pii, printed in Pertz, Mon. Germ. t ii.)
[81] Vita Karoli, Eginhard, cap. 22.
[82] See Patrologie Latine, vols. xcvii. and xcviii.
[83] The interior schools were known as claustral, and the exterior for secular students as canonical. Ekhehard, in his life of B. Notker, is the first who accurately distinguishes the two sorts of schools. “Traduntur post breve tempus Marcello scholæ claustri cum beato Notkero Balbulo et cæteris monachici habitus pueris: exteriores vero, id est canonicæ, Isoni cum Salomone et ejus comparibus.” It is probable however that the law directing a total separation of the scholars under different masters, could not in all cases be carried out as rigidly as at the great abbey of St. Gall’s, where the studium was, in Notker’s time, the first in Europe; and in many monasteries both schools continued to be directed by the same scholasticus.
[84] Præfatio in IV. Sæculum, 184. Trithemius gives the names of sixteen monasteries containing these major schools; Mabillon adds eleven more, and the list might undoubtedly be yet further enlarged.
[85] He probably rested his statement on the petition presented by the Council of Paris in 829 to Louis le Débonnaire, in which they requested him, by his royal authority, to establish public schools in three chief cities of his empire, to the end that the troubles of the times might not quite destroy the good work set on foot by his father. But this was a suggestion and nothing more; the three cities were never named, and are merely spoken of as in tribus congruentissimis imperii vestri locis; and the deposition of Louis, and the civil wars that raged between his sons, effectually prevented the suggestion from being carried out. The academy founded by Charlemagne at Pavia, which was directed by the Irish Dungal, was itself attached to a monastery. This is possibly the school alluded to by Bulæus, but there is certainly nothing in its history which claims for it the least pre-eminence over the monastic schools of France and Germany. The university historians have, in general, greatly misrepresented or misunderstood the character of the monastic schools. Du Boulay talks of the public schools of Charlemagne as if they were Etons or Harrows, and in one place likens them to universities. But, in fact, the term public school meant simply that they were not confined to the use of the monks of that monastery, but were open to all comers. We find in them rather the germ of the collegiate system, which was in some sense the counterpoise of the university idea. But Bulæus and Du Boulay always write with Paris University in their mind as the normal principle of education. They seem unable to conceive of any institution for teaching which was not either its copy or its anticipation.
[86] Mab. Vet. Analecta, i. 357.
[87] See his verses on the destruction of Lindisfarne (Acta SS. Ben.)
[88] At Aix-la-Chapelle his bones have been quite recently discovered and identified.—See Die Eröffnung des Karlsschreines, being No. 61 of the Aachener Zeitung, March 2, 1861.
[89] See Ampère, Hist. Lit. avant le xii. Siècle, t. ii.
[90] Matthew of Westminster represents him as taking refuge in England, where, according to the same authority, he was warmly received by King Alfred, and becoming scholasticus at Malmsbury abbey, was there stabbed to death by his scholars. This story was received as authentic, until Mabillon showed it to have been an incorrect version of the history of John of Saxony, who, when abbot of Ethelingay, was killed in a commotion with some of his monks. In spite of the pains taken by this writer to clear up the mistake, the narrative still finds its place in most works which treat of our old English schools, and will probably be as hard to dislodge as other traditions of the same genus. It appears certain, however, that Scotus Erigena returned to France and died there in peace, some time after the death of Charles the Bald.
[91] Many of these towns derive their names from the monks under whom the cells dependent on the abbey were first founded; thus we have Abrazell, Aichezell, Kerzell, and Edelcell, from Abraham, Haicho, Kero, and Edeling, all monks of Fulda.
[92] Nepotem meum et cum eo duo alios nobiles puerulos, quando, si Deus vult, nostro monasterio profuturos, propter Germanicæ linguæ nanciscendam scientiam, Vestræ Sanctitati mittere cupio. (Ep. xci.)
[93] He appears to have had some knowledge of Hebrew, and introduces a quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures in his Treatise De Partu Virginis.
[94] Rabanus, De Instit. Clericorum, lib. iii. c. 24.
[95] Tract. de Corpore Christi, printed in Martène, Vet. Script. t. 9.
[97] Vita B. Notkeri. ch. ix. Acta SS. Ben.
[98] Archives of the Chapter of Rouen, ann. 1449.
[99] Spicilegium, t. ii. 311.
[100] Consuet. Clun. Spicileg. t. i. 687.
[101] Vita Ratgari. Acta S.S. Boll. t. i.
[102] D’Achery Spicileg. t. ii. p. 139.
[103] Hallam’s Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 330, and note.
[104] Guibert de Nogent refers to his school studies of Ovid and Virgil’s Eclogues; and Peter de Blois names Suetonius and Q. Curtius, “besides the other books which are commonly used in schools.” For a full and careful enumeration of the class-books used in the monastic schools, see Bahr: Geschichte der Römischen Literatur; and also Prof. Pauly’s Real Encyclopädie der Classischen Alterthumswissenschaft.
[105] Acta SS. Ben. Præf. in Secul. iii.
[106] It is reprinted by Mai, Scrip. Vet. t. iii. p. 251.
[107] Hilduin, abbot of St. Denis in 814, was the chief supporter of this opinion. The letter addressed to him by the Emperor Louis, and his reply, are prefixed to the Areopagitica in Surius. t. v.
[108] Deut. vi. 7.
[109] In the preface to the metrical version of the Bible, executed by command of Louis le Debonnaire, we find the following passage: “Præcepit namque uni de gente Saxonum qui apud suos non ignobilis vates habebatur ut Vetus ac Novum Testamentum in Germanicam Linguam poetice transferre studeret, quatenus non solum litteratis verum etiam illiteratis sacra divinorum præceptorum lectio panderetur.”
[110] Martene: Thesaurus Anec. i. 489.
[111] Vos lumina; vos mea vita ... vos novella plantatio. (Vita Sanctæ Cæsariæ.)
[112] Si qua enim soror, reliquis in templo cantantibus, sonoræ vocis modulatione non congrueret, a pia illa matre objurgata, vel etiam in facie manibus cæsa, toto reliquæ vitæ spatio clara fuit et delectabili voce. (Vita S. Adehildæ: ap. Surium.)
[113] The whole document is to be found in D’Achery’s “Spicilegium,” vol. ii.
[114] Hallam, Middle Ages, iii. p. 332.
[115] This Saxon school became, afterwards, a great object of interest to Alfred; and Asser tells us, that at his request Pope Martin II. freed it from all taxes and tribute.
[116] Wise’s Edition, Oxon. 1722.
[117] Asser (Wise’s Ed.), p. 67.
[118] Among these homilies is that for the festival of Easter, commonly quoted in support of the audacious theory that the Anglo-Saxon divines knew nothing of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. The whole question is satisfactorily examined by Dr. Lingard, in his “History of the Anglo-Saxon Church,” to which the reader is referred. But it may be observed, that whatever obscurity is to be found in Ælfric’s language, that of other writers of his nation is singularly emphatic. The very term, Transubstantiation, is all but anticipated by Alcuin, who, in a letter to Paulinus, bids him remember his friend “at that time when thou shalt consecrate the bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ.” And of two saints contemporary with Ælfric, viz. St. Odo and St. Oswald, their biographers record the fact, that while celebrating mass, the appearance of a bleeding Host in their hands removed the doubts of certain beholders. Yet, what doubts had to be removed if the doctrine were not then held?