389. Libellus de nativitate Sancti Cuthberti de Historiis Hybernensium excerptus et translatus—a MS. of the fourteenth century, in the Diocesan Library at York, printed by the Surtees Club.
390. Et miro modo in lapidea devectus navicula, apud Galweiam in regione illa, quae Rennii vocatur, in portu qui Rintsnoc dicitur, applicuit.—C. xix.
391. Post hæc, curroc lapidea in Galweia derelicta, navim aliam subiit, et alio portu, qui Letherpen dicitur, in Erregaithle, quæ est terra Scottorum, applicuit. Portus ille inter Erregaithle et Incegal situs est, lacus vero, qui ibi proximus adjacet, Loicafan vocatus est. Non tamen amplius quam tres viri cum matre et filio extiterant qui applicuerant.—Ib.
392. Ib., c. xx.
393. Scotia is here distinguished from Erregaithle, or Argathelia, which indicates a certain antiquity.
394. Ib., c. xxi.
395. Ib., cc. xxii. xxiii.
396. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. iv. c. 27. Reverentissimus ecclesiæ Lindisfarnensis in Britannia ex anachorita antistes Cuthberctus, totam ab infantia usque ad senilem vitam miraculorum signis inclitam duxit.—Bede, Chronicon Adam., 701.
397. See Preface to the volume containing the Life, p. ix.
398. It is on the authority of this life alone that a Columba is sometimes called the first bishop of Dunkeld; but it is impossible to accept this as historical.
399. This is true of the Columban monasteries generally.
400. This account is abridged from the Irish Life, cc. xxvi. and xxvii. See Surtees’ edition, pp. 82, 83.
401. In the Statistical Account we are told that there is a spring of water about the middle of the Rock of Weem, of which St. David is said to be the patron, who had a chapel on a shelf of the rock called Craig-an-chapel. The fair is called Feill Dhaidh, and there is a burying-ground called Cill Dhaidh. St. David seems to have superseded St. Cuthbert here. The fair was held in March. St. Cuthbert’s day is 20th March.
402. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 19.
403. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., c. ix.
404. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., cc. x. xi. See also for locality of Niduari Picts vol. i. p. 133, note.
405. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., c. xvi.
406. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. iii. c. 27.
407. Eddii, Vita S. Wilfridi, cap. 22
408. Bede, Vit. S. Cudbercti, c. 17; Raine’s North Durham, p. 145.
409. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., c. xvii.
410. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. iv. c. 12.
411. Ib., B. iv. c. 28. Sim. Dun. Opera (Surtees Club), p. 140.
412. Sarcophagum terræ cespite abditum.
413. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., cc. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix.
414. Bede, Vit. S. Cud., c. xl.
415. Ib., c. xlii.
416. The expression by Bede for the stone coffin is arca, and for the shrine, theca in the Ecc. Hist.; and in the Vita S. Cudbercti, Sarcophagus and theca are used.
417. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 15. The expression is, ‘Nonnulla etiam de Brettonibus in Britannia,’ and Bede uses a similar expression when he says that a part of the Britons recovered their freedom in 655.
418. Sedulius, Episcopus Britanniæ de genere Scottorum, huic constituto a nobis promulgato subscripsi.—Haddan and Stubbs’ Councils, vol. ii. p. 7.
419. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. iv. c. 29; B. v. c. 19; Eddi, c. 43.
420. Vit. S. Cud., cap. 40.
421. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 19; Eddi, c. 44.
422. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 19; Eddi, Vit. S. Wilf., c. 54.
423. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. c. 20.
424. In the Liber de Sanctis Ecclesiæ Hagustaldensis et eorum miraculis there is this statement—‘Ipsa insuper ecclesia pretiosis decorata ornamentis et Sancti Andreæ aliorumque sanctorum ditata reliquiis tam advenientium quam inhabitantium devotionem adauxit.’—Mabillon, A.SS., sec. iii. part i. p. 204.
425. Bede, Hist. Ec., B. v. cap. 23.
426. Eodem anno (DCCLVI.) Balthere anachorita viam sanctorum patrum est secutus, migrando ad Eum Qui se reformavit ad imaginem Filii Sui.—Sim. Dun., Hist. Regum, ad an. 756.
427. Scotichron., B. iii. c. 29. Alcuin, in his poem De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, has the following lines, obviously referring to the Bass, under the head of ‘Nota. Baltheri Anachoretæ res gestæ’:—
428. Et illa terra ultra Tweoda ab illo loco ubi oritur fluvius Edre ab aquilone, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in Tweoda, et tota terra quæ jacet inter istum fluvium Edre et alterum fluvium, qui vocatur Leder, versus occidentem; et tota terra quæ jacet ab orientali parte istius aquæ, quæ vocatur Leder, usque ad illum locum ubi cadit in fluvium Tweoda versus austrum; et tota terra quæ pertinet ad monasterium Sancti Balthere, quod vocatur Tinningaham a Lombormore usque ad Escemathe.—Sim. Dun., Opera (Surtees ed.), p. 140.
429. Omnes quoque ecclesia ab aqua quæ vocatur Tweoda usque Tinam australem et ultra desertum ad occidentem pertinebant illo tempore ad præfatam ecclesiam; et hæ mansiones, Carnham et Culterham et duæ Geddewrd ad australem plagam Tevietæ, quas Ecgfridus episcopus condidit; et Mailros, et Tigbrethingham, et Eoriercorn ad occidentalem partem, Edwinesburch et Petterham, et Aldham, et Tinningaham, et Coldingaham, et Tollmathe, et Northam.—Sim. Dun., His. Rec., p. 68.
430. Eum (Pehtelmum) subsecuti sunt Frithewald, Pectwine, Ethelbriht, Beadulf, nec præterea plures alicubi reperio, quod cito defecerit episcopatus, quia extrema, ut dixi, Anglorum ora est et Scottorum vel Pictorum depopulationi opportuna.—W. Malm., Gest. Pontific. Ang., Lib. iii. § 118.
It is not till after the expulsion of the Columban monks from the kingdom of the Picts, in the beginning of the eighth century, that the name of Culdee appears. To Adamnan, to Eddi and to Bede it was totally unknown. They knew of no body of clergy who bore this name, and in the whole range of ecclesiastical history there is nothing more entirely destitute of authority than the application of this name to the Columban monks of the sixth and seventh centuries,[431] or more utterly baseless than the fabric which has been raised upon that assumption. Like many of our popular notions, it originated with Hector Boece, and, at a time when the influence of his fabulous history was still paramount in Scotland, it became associated with an ecclesiastical controversy which powerfully engaged the sympathies of the Scottish people; and this gave it a force and vitality which renders it difficult for the popular mind to regard the history of the early Scottish Church through any other medium. At this most critical period of its history we unfortunately lose the invaluable light afforded by the trustworthy narratives of Adamnan and Bede, but their very silence shows that it was a name not identified with the Monastic Church, which then not only prevailed in Ireland, but embraced likewise the churches of the Scots and the Picts, of the Cumbrians and the Northumbrians, but rather associated with those influences which affected the monastic system in both countries.
The Monastic Church was broken in upon by two opposite influences, which, though very different in their characters, yet possessed one feature in common, and were eventually to unite. One of these influences was external to the Monastic Church. The other developed itself within it.
The first arose when the Irish Church came in contact with that of Rome, and is associated with the controversy regarding Easter, and other Roman usages which arose out of it. Although the monastic system was an important and recognised institution in the Roman Church at the time, it was subordinated to a hierarchy of secular clergy; and a church which not only possessed monasticism as a feature, but was so entirely monastic in its character that its whole clergy were embraced within its rule, not only was alien to the Roman system, but necessarily produced peculiarities of jurisdiction and clerical life which were repugnant to it. Hence, where the Roman Church exercised a direct influence upon this Monastic Church, its tendency necessarily was to produce a return to the older system of a hierarchy of secular clergy, with monachism as a separate institution existing within the church, but not pervading the whole. It was this influence, which had been brought to bear upon the church of the Picts, originating with Wilfrid of York and affecting them through their connection with the Angles of Northumbria, that eventually severed their connection with the Columban church, and brought to an end the primacy of Iona over the churches of Pictland. We have hitherto regarded this church as identified with that founded by Columba in Iona, and, as such, intimately connected with the Church of Ireland. We have also found the interpretation of the peculiarities of the former in the institutions of the latter, and the leading facts of its history in the Irish Annals. We must now, however, treat the history of the church in the eastern districts, which formed the territory of the Picts, separately from that of Iona; and as, with this connection with the Irish Church, we likewise lose the invaluable guidance of Bede, we must find our main source of information in an analysis of those ecclesiastical traditions applicable to this period, which have come down to us. We have already seen, from the narrative of Bede, how Naiton, as he calls him, or Nectan, king of the Picts who inhabit the northern parts of Britain, taught by frequent study of the ecclesiastical writings, renounced the error by which he and his nation had till then been held in relation to the observance of Easter, and submitted, together with his people, to celebrate the Catholic time of our Lord’s resurrection; how he sought assistance from the nation of the Angles, and sent messengers to Ceolfrid, abbot of the monastery of Jarrow, desiring him to write him a letter containing arguments by the help of which he might the more powerfully confute those that persevered in keeping Easter out of the due time, and also concerning the form and manner of the tonsure for distinguishing the clergy; how he prayed to have architects sent him to build a church in his nation after the Roman manner, which he promised to dedicate to St. Peter; how, when he received the letter he requested, he had it read in his presence and that of the most learned men, and interpreted into his own language, and issued a decree that, together with his nation, he would observe this time of Easter, and that the coronal tonsure should be received by all the clergy in his nation; how this decree, by public command, was sent throughout all the provinces of the Picts to be transcribed, learned and observed; and how all the ministers of the altar and monks adopted the coronal tonsure, and the nation was placed under the patronage and protection of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles. We have also learned from the Irish Annals that this powerful confutation, like many other efforts to enforce uniformity, resulted in the resistance of the Columban monks and their expulsion from his territories.
The legend which mainly deals with this revolution is that of Bonifacius, preserved in the Aberdeen Breviary; and his leading statements harmonise so well with Bede’s narrative, and are so much supported by the dedications of the churches mentioned in connection with it, that we may safely import them into the history of this period.[432] It is thus told:—Bonifacius was an Israelite by birth, descended from the sister of St. Peter and St. Andrew, and born in Bethsaida. In his thirty-sixth year he was ordained priest by John, Bishop and Patriarch of Jerusalem. When he attained his forty-sixth year he went to Rome, where he was made a bishop and cardinal, and then, by the election of all the cardinals, he was elevated to the papacy. He then called some of his brethren into the oratory, and informed them that he proposed to set forth on a mission to the ends of the earth, for the love of God and those people who dwelt in the northern regions beyond the bounds of Europe. They said, ‘Send religious men, as your predecessors Celestinus and Gregorius sent Palladius, Patricius and Augustinus.’ But Bonifacius replied that it had been revealed to him by St. Peter, in an angelic vision, that he should undertake this mission himself. Accordingly, after due preparation, he shortly afterwards set out from Rome. The mission consisted of Bonifacius, and of Benedictus, Servandus, Pensandus, Benevolus, Madianus, and Principuus, bishops and most devout men, who devotedly followed him, and two distinguished virgins, abbesses, Crescentia and Triduana; seven presbyters, seven deacons, seven sub-deacons, seven acolytes, seven exorcists, seven lectors, seven doorkeepers, and a great multitude of God-fearing men and women. They had a prosperous journey and voyage, and arrived in Pictavia, sailed up the Scottish Sea or Firth of Forth, and proceeded as far as Restinoth. Here they were met by Nectan, king of the Picts, at the head of his army, who, seeing such a multitude of strangers, was struck with astonishment, but finally, with all his nobles and officers, received the sacrament of baptism at the hands of Bonifacius and his bishops. The king then dedicated the place of his baptism to the Holy Trinity, and gave it to Bonifacius, who then performed the usual miracles, ‘wrote one hundred and fifty books, and founded as many churches, with an equal number of bishops and a thousand presbyters, and converted and baptized thirty-six thousand men and women; and finally, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, on the 17th day before the kalends of April, or 16th March, departed to Christ.’ Another form of the legend states that his name was Albanus Kiritinus, surnamed Bonifacius; that he founded a church at the mouth of the river Gobriat, or Gowry, in Pictavia, after baptizing Nectanus the king; that he preached sixty years to the Picts and Scots, and, at the age of eighty, died at Rosmarkyn, and was buried in the church of St. Peter.
These legends are borne out by the dedications, as we find that the churches of Restennot, near Forfar, and Invergowry, at the mouth of the water of Gowry, are dedicated to St. Peter; and Rosemarky, on the north shore of the Moray Firth, an old Columban monastery founded by Lugadius, or Moluog, of Lismore, was dedicated to St. Peter and Bonifacius; while the church of Scone, the chief seat of the kingdom, was dedicated to the Holy Trinity. The legends are obviously connected with the revolution by which King Nectan and the entire nation of the Picts conformed to Rome. The earlier part of the narrative is of course fictitious, and Bonifacius is here erroneously identified with one of the Bonifaces who occupied the papal throne in the seventh century. The object of this was no doubt to make more prominent and direct his character as a missionary in the interest of the Roman party. He was in reality a bishop from that party in the Irish Church which had conformed to Rome. When Adamnan went to Ireland and held the synod in which his law was promulgated in the year 697, its canons were signed, among others, by Cuiritan epscop, or Bishop Cuiritan, and also by Bruide mac Derili Ri Cruithintuath, or king of Pictavia, the brother and immediate predecessor of Nectan; and in the old Irish Calendars he appears on the 16th March as Curitan epscoip ocus abb Ruis mic bairend, that is, Curitan, bishop and abbot of Rosmarkyn.[433] This is also the day in which Bonifacius appears in the Scotch Calendars, and their identity seems beyond doubt. It is equally clear that the legend also shows the introduction of a body of secular clergy into the kingdom of the Picts, and, as we found that at the council on the banks of the Nidd, at which it was resolved to appoint Cuthbert bishop, and to place him at Lindisfarne, while Eata was transferred to Hexham, a body of seven bishops were present and confirmed the arrangement, so here the mission is composed of seven bishops, with an equal number of presbyters, deacons, sub-deacons, acolytes, exorcists, lectors and doorkeepers—that is, the entire hierarchy of the secular clergy of Rome with its minor orders. Wynton, in his notice of Boniface, well expresses this—
Another legend which appears to belong to this period, and which is likewise confirmed by the dedications, is that of Fergus, or Fergusianus. His story is this: He was for many years a bishop in Ireland, and then came to the western parts of Scotland, to the confines of Strogeth, where he founded three churches. Thence he went to Cathania, or Caithness, where for some time he occupied himself in converting the barbarous people. After that he visited Buchan, resting in a place called Lungley, where he built a basilica, which still exists, dedicated to himself. Then he came to Glammis, where he consecrated a tabernacle to the God of Jacob, and where he died full of years. His bones were afterwards enshrined in a shrine of marble, and his head taken with all due honour to the monastery of Scone, where many miracles were performed.[435] Now, we find that among the bishops who were present at the council held at Rome in the year 721, and signed the canons, is ‘Fergus the Pict, a bishop of Ireland,’[436] who is no doubt our Fergus before he passed over to Pictland in Britain, which appears to have been his native country; and his appearance at the council of Rome shows that he belonged to the party who had conformed to the Roman Church. At Strageath, in the district of Stratherne, and in the immediate neighbourhood, are three churches dedicated to St. Patrick—those of Strageath, Blackford and Dolpatrick—which shows that their founder had come from Ireland. In Caithness, the churches of Wick and Halkirk are dedicated to St. Fergus. In Buchan the village called in the legend Lungley is now named St. Fergus, and the neighbouring parish of Inverugie, now called Peterhead, is dedicated to St. Peter. At Glammis we have St. Fergus’ cave and St. Fergus’ well, and the statement that his head was preserved at Scone is confirmed by an entry in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, of a payment by James IV. for a silver case for it.
The distribution of the churches among the Picts which were dedicated to St. Peter will show the extent to which the country at this time adopted him as their patron. Among the southern Picts we have Invergowry, Tealing, Restennot, and Meigle. Among the northern Picts we have in Aberdeen and Banff, Cultyr, Fivy and Inverugie; and in Moray and Ross, Drumdelgy, Ruthven, Glenbucket, Belty, Inverawen, Duffus and Rosemarky. King Nectan himself is said by the Irish annalist Tighernac to have become a cleric in the year 724,[437] and probably retired to the church which he had built after the Roman manner by the architects sent him from Northumbria, and which, as he had promised to dedicate that church to St. Peter, must have been one of these we have named, either Restennot or Rosemarky.
These legends having thus so far indicated the external influence which led to the introduction of the secular clergy into the church among the Picts, we must now advert to another and more powerful influence of an opposite kind, which arose within the Monastic Church itself, and equally tended to break in upon the monastic character of that church. This influence was that increasing asceticism which led the monks to forsake the cœnobitical life for the solitary cell of the anchorite, and induced those who wished to pass from a secular to a religious life to prefer this more ascetic form of it. This form of the religious life had long existed in the Christian Church, and, from a very early period, there prevailed a feeling that the solitary life in the desert, or in the anchorite’s cell, was a higher form of the religious life than that afforded by the cœnobitical life of the monastery. Thus St. Jerome, writing in the fourth century, tells us that ‘there were in Egypt three kinds of monks. First, the Cœnobites, whom they call in the Gentile tongue Sausses but whom we may term those living in common. Secondly, the Anchorites, who live alone in desert places, and are so called as living apart from men; and, thirdly, that kind which are called Remoboth, the worst and most neglected;’[438] and John Cassian, a native of Scythia, who founded two monasteries at Marseilles, one for men and the other for virgins, and died about the year 440, writing what he terms ‘Conferences with the Monks,’ speaks, in his eighteenth, of the different sorts of monks in his day. He likewise distinguishes them into three sorts. First the Cœnobites, who live in common, under an abbot, imitating the life of the apostles. Second, Anchorites, who, after they have been instructed and educated in monasteries, withdraw into the deserts. The authors of this order were St. Paul the hermit and St. Anthony. And third, the Sarabaites, who pretended to retire from the world, and joined themselves together by two or three in a company, to live after their own humour, not being subject to any man. He looks upon these but as a corruption of the monastic state rather than a distinct order. He adds to these a fourth sort of monks, made of those who, not being able to endure the monastic life in a convent, retreated alone into certain cells to live more at liberty, but praises the second as the most perfect. In his nineteenth conference, an abbot called John, who had been an anchorite and had entered a monastery, is asked which of the two orders was to be preferred, and replies that he thought the life of the cœnobites best for those who were not absolutely perfect, and shows that none but those who have attained to a degree of eminent perfection are capable of living the life of a hermit.[439] Another of these ancient fathers, Nilus, who had betaken himself to a solitary life in the desert of Sinai, and died about the year 451, writes a treatise upon the question whether the life of the Anchorites, or Hermits, whom he also calls Hesycasts, or Quietists, who dwell in solitude, is to be preferred before the life of those religious who dwell in cities, and states that this is a question about which the judgment of spiritual men is much divided. Those who prefer the religious who live in communities in cities before the anchorites, say that they have more worth because they meet with more opposition; whereas those who live in solitude being quiet and not subject to temptations, have not so much virtue; to which Nilus replies that there are as many temptations in solitude as in cities, and that the reason why some persons argue so is because they regard outward sins only, not considering that there are infinite temptations and spiritual sins which encounter us as well in privacy as in cities; and he therefore supports the opinion that the solitary life is the higher form of the religious life.[440] Isidore of Seville, too, in the seventh century, distinguishes between the different kinds of monks, and says that the Cœnobites are they that live in common, like those in the days of the apostles, who sold their goods and had all things in common; the Hermits, they that withdraw into desert places and vast solitudes in imitation of Elias and John the Baptist, delighting, with a wonderful contempt of the world, in total solitude; and the Anchorites, they who, having perfected themselves in cœnobitical life, shut themselves up in cells apart from the aspect of men, inaccessible to all, and living in the sole contemplation of God.[441] But Bede, who was a Benedictine monk, seems also to regard the life of an anchorite as a higher form of religious life, when in his History he says of Cudberct on his retiring to the island of Farne, that, ‘advancing in the merits of his devout intention, he proceeded even to the adoption of a hermit life of solitary contemplation and secret silence;’ and, in his Life, that ‘he was now permitted to ascend to the leisure of divine speculation, and rejoiced that he had now reached the lot of those of whom we sing in the Psalm, The saints shall go from virtue to virtue; the God of Gods shall be seen in Sion.’[442]
The preference for this mode of life, as the highest form of a religious life that could be attained, seems to have arisen from an overstrained interpretation of some passages of Scripture. Thus Bede, in the beginning of his Life of Cudberct, tells us that he ‘would hallow its commencement by quoting the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who, in lauding the state of the perfection of the anchorite, says, “It is good for a man who hath borne the yoke from his youth; he shall sit alone and keep silent, because he shall raise himself above himself.”’[443] But the preference of the solitary life as the highest form of asceticism seems to have been mainly founded upon two passages in the New Testament. One is that passage in the Epistle of St. James in which he winds up his exhortation by saying, ‘Pure religion and undefiled, before God and the Father, is to visit the widows and fatherless in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world;’world;’ or, as a literal rendering of the old Latin version would be, ‘Pure and immaculate religious service towards God and the Father is this, to visit the infants and widows in their tribulation, and to keep oneself immaculate from this world.’[444] By an overstrained interpretation of this passage it was assumed that a person could only keep himself immaculate from the world by withdrawing himself from it altogether, and from all association with his fellow-creatures, except in works of benevolence to those in distress; and that this was a form of religion peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father. The other passage is that in the First Epistle of St. Peter, where it is said, ‘But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light; which in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God; which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.’[445] And this was interpreted to mean that those who passed their lives in mortifying the body and praising God by singing the psalter, in living in this world as strangers from all society and as pilgrims to a better world, were a peculiar people and entitled to call themselves the people of God.
They thus came to the conclusion that a solitary life passed in devotion and self-mortification, accompanied by acts of benevolence to the sick and bereaved, was a ‘cultus’ or ‘religio’ peculiarly acceptable to God and the Father; and hence they were called, if they did not call themselves so, Deicolæ, or God-worshippers, in contrast to Christicolæ, the name applied in a general sense to all Christians, and, in a narrower application, to monks leading a cœnobitical life. Thus in the Life of St. Anthony, written by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, who introduced monachism into the Western Church, and translated into Latin by Evagrius, a priest of Antioch, in the year 358, we find it stated that ‘the neighbours and the monks whom he often visited, seeing St. Anthony, called him a Deicola, and, indulging in the expression of natural affection, they loved him, some as a son, others as a brother.’[446] Again, Martinus, a bishop, who terms himself Scotus, or a native of Ireland, writing to Miro, king of Gallicia, in the sixth century, probably about the year 560, regarding ‘the rules of an honest life,’ says that he will not urge him to follow ‘those more arduous and perfect rules which are practised by a few very excellent Deicolæ.’[447] Columbanus, too, in his second instruction or sermon to his monks, says, ‘Whosoever, therefore, willeth to be made a habitation for God, let him strive to become lowly and quiet, that not by glibness of words, nor by suppleness of body, but by the reality of his humility he may be recognised as a Deicola; for goodness of heart requireth not the feigned religion of words;’[448] and a disciple of Columbanus, who followed out this life after his master had been driven out of Luxeuil with his monks, retired to a solitary spot called Luthra in the midst of a forest, now Lure in the district of Besançon, ‘But his virtues having attracted religious men to him from all quarters, he formed a community of monks and erected two oratories; and, after governing his monastery for several years, he appointed one of his disciples abbot in his stead, and again withdrew to a solitary cell, where he devoted himself to divine contemplation till his death about 625. This man bears no other name in the calendars than Deicola, and his memory is still held in high estimation by the people of that country, who call him Saint Die.’[449]
We find, too, these solitaries also called the people of God. In the ancient Life of St. Patrick written by Probus, he tells us that, after Patrick had passed four years with St. Martin of Tours, where he was trained in monastic life, an angel appeared to him and said, ‘Go to the people of God, that is, to the hermits and solitaries, with naked feet, and live with them, that you may be tried for some time; and he went into a solitude, and remained with the hermits eight years.’[450]
The conception of this ‘cultus’ of God is well expressed in a passage of Simeon of Durham, who, in his History of the Kings, under the year 781, says, some 250 years after, of a certain Dregmo, in the territory of the church at Hexham, that ‘he greatly feared God and diligently devoted himself, as far as his means allowed, to the exercise of works of charity, leading a life in all respects apart from the customs of his countrymen—a man of remarkable simplicity and innocence, and of profound devotion and reverence towards the saints of God; on which account his neighbours held him in great honour, and called him a true God-worshipper.’[451]
In the seventh century attempts were made by several councils to bring the solitaries more under the monastic rule. By the fifth canon of the Council of Toledo, held in 646, it was provided that ‘well-instructed monks alone should be allowed to live separate from a cloister as recluses, and become the trainers of others in the higher forms of ascetic life. Those recluses and wanderers who are unworthy must be brought within a cloister, and in future no one must be devoted to this highest form of the ascetic life, as a recluse, who had not first been trained in a monastery to the knowledge and practice of the monastic life.’[452] By the Council of Trullo, held in 692, it was provided, by canon 41, that those who would live separate in their own cells must have first passed three years in a monastery, and that any one who has once withdrawn himself to a solitary cell must not again leave it; and by canon 42 that, as there are hermits who come to the towns in black clothing and long hair, and associate with secular persons, it is ordered that such persons shall be tonsured and enter a monastery, wearing the monastic dress. If they will not do this, they must be expelled from the town.[453]
Such attempts, however, seem to have had little effect, and the next century was to see the Anchorites and Recluses, who lived apart from the monastic rule, and practised what they considered the highest form of asceticism, and the secular clergy, who had never come under the monastic rule, but were subject only to the general canon-law of the church, brought more together, a tendency to which indeed had probably already manifested itself in the end of the previous century, which the forty-second canon of the Council of Trullo was designed to check. For though nothing could be more opposed in spirit, than the secular life of the ordinary clergy on the one hand and the ascetic life of the anchorites on the other, forming, as it were, the opposite poles of the ecclesiastical system, yet they had one feature in common—that both lived separately, in opposition to the cœnobitical life of the monks. The new institution which thus brought them together was that of the secular canons, founded by Chrodegang, bishop of Metz, in the year 747. His rule was at first intended for his clergy of Metz alone, with a view of leading them to adopt a more regular life in the ecclesiastical sense of the term. This rule consists of thirty-four chapters. By the third he directs that the canon clerics shall live together in a cloister, and shall all sleep in one dormitory, with the exception of those to whom the bishop shall give permission to sleep separately in their own dwellings within the cloister; that no woman or layman is to enter the cloister without an order from the bishop, the archdeacon, or the ‘primicerius’; that they shall eat in the same refectory, that laics shall only be allowed to remain in the cloister as long as they have work, and that those living separately within the cloister must live alone and have no other cleric with them. By the ninth chapter he enjoins them to perform the bodily labours in common as well as in private. By the thirty-first he enjoins his clerics to give to the church what real property they have, retaining the income only, but gives them leave to reserve to themselves their moveable property, for almsgiving, and to dispose of it as they please by their wills.[454]