Chapter XXIV (12)

The prospect before us looks but dreary; and in candour it must be confessed that a nearer acquaintance with this unhappy period will not set it in a more advantageous light. It was indeed a time as dark and terrible as the imagination can well depict, though whether the human mind were altogether in a state of ruin, and whether the darkness were exclusively the work of the monks, and whether monasteries grew and prospered as ignorance increased, or whether some other possible causes may not be assigned for the state of things so universally deplored, are questions which cannot be resolved without a glance at the current history of the times.

Enough has been said in a former chapter of the restoration of letters which took place under Charlemagne. If any work ever had fair promise of success, it was surely this, and yet in a certain sense it was a failure. The century that followed his decease was precisely the iron century which all historians have agreed to vilify, and it is undoubtedly true that in some respects the state of Europe under the Carlovingian monarchs was even worse than under their Merovingian predecessors. The dream of a restoration of the Roman Empire, which had been realised only so long as the European sceptre was grasped in the mighty hand of Charlemagne, fell to pieces after his death like a child’s house of cards. The fatal step taken by Louis the Debonnaire, of dividing his dominions among his sons during his lifetime, plunged the whole empire into a civil war, which resulted in his own deposition, and which did not cease on his death. The various subdivisions into which the empire then split were indeed reunited under Charles the Fat, but his cowardice and incapacity having rendered him contemptible to those great feudal vassals who were gradually assuming all the real power in the realm, he also was deposed, and the imperial dignity ceased to find a representative till it was revived under Otho the Great. For a century after the death of Charles, France was nominally governed by princes of the Carlovingian race, appointed or removed at the will of the dukes of France. On the death of Duke Hugh the Great, his son, Hugh Capet, contented himself for a time with the system adopted by his predecessors, but in 987 he assumed the royal title, the powers of which he had long exercised, and became the founder of the Capetian dynasty. During the progress of these events, the firmly-knit and centralised government of Charlemagne totally disappeared; the territories of his empire were divided first into three, then into seven kingdoms; and were finally dismembered into more than fifty feudal sovereignties. Florus, the deacon of Lyons, mentioned in a former chapter, in a poem entitled _Querela de divisione Imperii_, describes the disorders consequent on these changes with an eloquent pen. “A beautiful empire,” he says, “once flourished under a glorious crown. Then there was one prince and one people, and every town had judges and laws. The word of salvation was preached to nobles and peasants, and youth everywhere studied the Sacred Scriptures and the liberal arts.... Now, instead of a king, we see everywhere a kinglet, instead of an empire, its fragments. The bishops can no longer hold their synods, there are no assemblies, no laws; and if an embassy arrive, there is no court to receive it.”[123]

By the end of the tenth century feudalism had fairly established itself on the ruins of the empire. The new system brought in its train many evils and some social benefits, but whilst in process of development its immediate effect was to throw the whole governing power into the hands of a number of petty lords, who were responsible to no superior for their exercise of it. In spite, however, of the turbulence of the times, we shall find, on comparing them with the Merovingian period, that there was a decided advance in point of civilisation, which shows that the labours of Charlemagne and his bishops had not been entirely thrown away. The century which preceded the coronation of Hugh Capet, with all its intrigues and bloody contests, does not present us with a single political murder; whereas the Merovingian annals consist of little else than a catalogue of such crimes. Nay, after the great battle of Fontenay, fought in 841, in which it is said that a hundred thousand of the noblest warriors of France were slain, and which for ever established the preponderance in that country of the Romanesque over the Tudesque race and dialect,[124] the victorious combatants submitted to the severe penance imposed on them by the bishops of the realm; and the same singular spectacle was exhibited in 923, when, after the battle of Soissons, the bishops assembled in council imposed very severe penances on all concerned, thus protesting in the name of humanity and religion against these miserable civil broils.

In the midst of such contests, however, the scholastic system established by Charlemagne was entirely deprived of that support which it had received from him and his immediate successors. The monastic and cathedral schools were left to flourish or decay according as the ruling abbot or bishop chanced to foster or neglect them. The withdrawal of imperial patronage was not probably in every respect a misfortune, but in cases where schools had only been kept up by state support they would naturally not long survive the break up of the government. This, however, though one, was not the main cause of the decline of letters in the tenth century. Schools disappeared for the simple reason that the churches and monasteries to which they were attached had disappeared also. It is inconceivable how any author who has read the most meagre abridgments of European history can be found to advance the monstrous assertion that monasticism flourished after the death of Charlemagne in proportion as ignorance increased. The tenth century, this very century of lead and iron ignorance, witnessed the all but total extinction of the monastic institute in France; and in Germany, where it survived and flourished, schools and letters continued to flourish likewise. If any spots are discoverable west of the Rhine where sparks of learning were still kept alive, we shall find them in those remote retreats where the monks took shelter from the storm which was elsewhere laying waste all the fairest sanctuaries of the land. In short, the iron age was an age of darkness because it witnessed a return of those barbaric incursions which had already swept away the Roman civilisation, and which were now attacking the Christian civilisation which had sprung up in its place. The calamities that were already hanging over Europe before the death of Charlemagne had not been unforeseen by his eagle glance. So early as 810 the Norman keels had appeared off the shores of Friesland, and the powerful marine force which then guarded the coasts of the empire proved but a vain protection. He himself beheld them in the offing from the windows of his palace in one of the Narbonnese cities, and sorrowfully predicted the evils they would bring on his people after his death. And his words were only too soon fulfilled. In the reign of Louis the Debonnaire the Normans sailed up the Loire and laid siege to Tours, reducing the whole country as far as the Cher to a desert. In the following reign they showed themselves yet bolder. Entering the Seine they proceeded up that river to Paris, which they sacked, after massacring all the inhabitants who had not saved themselves by flight. Treves, Cologne, Rouen, Nantes, Orleans, and Amiens, shared a similar fate. At Aix-la-Chapelle they turned the chapel of Charlemagne into a stable: Angers was twice given to the flames; and in 885 took place that terrible siege of Paris, by an army of thirty thousand Normans, which has been rendered famous by the historic poem on the subject written by the monk Abbo, and which lasted for thirteen months. In the course of this siege the Normans filled up the ditch which separated them from the walls by the bodies of their slaughtered prisoners.

The mode of warfare adopted by the invaders was entirely novel. Their fleets entered the estuaries of rivers and ascended them almost to their source, predatory bands landing on either bank to ravage the surrounding country. From the great rivers they proceeded up the lesser streams, which led them into the heart of fertile districts. They would seize on some island suited for their purpose, where they fortified themselves and spent the winter. In this way whole provinces, even those most remote from the sea-coast, were devastated, and that so entirely that, says one writer, “not a dog was left to bark in them.” The inhabitants deserted their villages and fields at the first alarm, and fled to the woods; towns were sacked and given to the flames, and the churches and monasteries which were supposed to contain the greatest treasures were the first objects of attack. “What else is now to be seen,” says the author of the “Romaunt of the Rose,” “but churches burnt and people slain? The Normans do as they please, and from Blois to Senlis there is not an acre of wheat left standing.” Another monkish historian thus describes what was passing under his own eyes: “Not a city, not a town, not a village but has in its turn felt the barbarity of the heathen men. They overrun the whole country, and their cabins form great villages where they keep their miserable captives in chains.” The desolate tracts of country thus laid waste became the resort of packs of wolves, which prowled about unmolested; it seemed, says one historian, as if France were abandoned to the wild animals.

The Carlovingian princes offered but a feeble resistance to these terrible invasions. The Normans themselves were surprised at the supineness of their victims. “The country is good,” said Ragnar Lodbrog to the Danish monarch, after returning from the sack of Paris, “but the people are tremblers. The dead there have more courage than the living, for the only resistance I met with was from an old man named Germanus, who had been dead many years, and whose house I entered.” He spoke of the Church of St. Germain d’Auxerre, where his sacrilegious marauders had been miraculously put to flight. In the reign of Charles the Bald the only opposition to the invaders was offered by Robert the Strong, who in reward of his exertions received the dukedom of France, by which name was then designated the country lying between the Seine and the Loire. As to the king himself he was content to buy off the sea-king Hasting by the payment of forty thousand livres of silver, promising either to give up as prisoners, or to ransom at a fixed sum, every Frenchman who had escaped from the Normans’ hands, and to pay a composition for every Norman who should be slain; a stipulation which probably exceeds in infamy any other ever agreed upon by a Christian prince. A few years later the cowardice exhibited by Charles the Fat, at the second siege of Paris, moved his indignant subjects to deprive him of the crown; an heroic defence was indeed offered by Eudes, son of Robert the Strong, but his chief supporters were three priests, Gauzlin, Bishop of Paris, his nephew Ebbo, and Anchesius, abbot of St. Germain-des-Pres. In 912, the devastations committed by Rollo and his followers obliged Charles the Simple to make peace with them, on terms which made over to the Norman chieftain the feudal sovereignty of Neustria. The wild sea-king received baptism, and became the first duke of Normandy but though a stop was thus put to the attacks on Paris and the northern coast, the Northmen continued their ravages in the provinces south of the Loire.

Terrible as they were, however, these barbarians were only one out of the many savage swarms let loose on Europe at this unhappy time. In 836, the Saracens, who were the masters of the Mediterranean, attacked the coasts of Provence. Marseilles, the only city of Septimania where Roman letters still partially lingered, was surprised and pillaged, and the monks and clergy carried into slavery. The Saracens established themselves at Frassinet, a port between Toulon and Frejus, and held possession of it for more than a century. From these head-quarters they were able at their pleasure to ascend the Rhone as far as Arles, and to overrun all the south of France. About the same time they sailed up the Tiber, and advancing as far as Rome, burnt a great part of that city. “How many and great are the things we are suffering from the Saracens!” wrote Pope John VIII. to Charles the Bald; “why should I attempt to describe them with the tongue, when all the leaves of the forest, were they turned into pens, would not suffice. Behold cities, walled towns, and villages bereft of inhabitants! Wild beasts usurp the sanctuaries once filled with the chair of doctrine. Instead of breaking the bread of life to their flocks there, bishops have to buy their own. Rome herself is left desolate. Last year we sowed, but could not reap our harvests by reason of the Saracens; this year we can hope for none, for in seed-time we could not till the ground.” Every part of the Italian peninsula was wasted by these barbarians, who established themselves at Benevento, and were not driven thence till the end of the century. They even had the audacity to seize and hold possession of fortified posts in Provence, Dauphiny, Savoy, and Piedmont, which gave them the command of the Alpine passes, so that they could stop and levy tribute on all the pilgrims travelling from the north to Rome.

But this was not all. The last and worst of the plagues poured out on Christendom yet remains to be noticed. Towards the close of the ninth century, the Magyars or Huns, driven westward by the advance of other Asiatic tribes, crossed the Carpathian mountains, and descended into the plains of Dacia. Thence they spread like a torrent over Germany, which they ravaged as far as the Black Forest. Crossing the Alps, they laid waste the plain of Lombardy, and thence poured into Aquitaine, which they overran as far as the Pyrenees. Some bands proceeded as far as the southern extremity of Italy, others found their way into Greece, and advanced to the walls of Constantinople. In 926, they appeared on the frontiers of Lorraine, and laid the German princes under tribute. Their wild habits and ferocious appearance inspired such universal terror, that it was commonly believed that the sun turned blood red at their approach. “They live not as men, but as savage beasts,” says one chronicler, “eating raw flesh and drinking blood. It is even reported that they devour the hearts of their prisoners, and they are never known to be moved to pity.” Filled with the bitterest hatred of the Christian name, their track was marked by the smoking ruins of churches and monasteries, and the panic which they spread has survived even to our own time in the popular tales of the savage Ogres, a corruption of the name _Ungren_, by which they were known in the Tudesque dialect. The incursions of the Hungarians lasted, at intervals, for the space of eighty years, nor did they entirely cease until the death of their great chief Tatsong, in 972.

Events such as these will, probably, be thought sufficient to account for any amount of social disorder and literary decay. As to the supposed prosperity enjoyed by the monasteries in this darkest of all the dark ages, it might be illustrated by a catalogue of their sacked and smoking ruins. Fontanelles, with its noble library, St. Ouen and Jumièges, were all burnt by the Norman sea-king Hasting in 851. Marmoutier was pillaged two years later, one hundred and sixteen of the monks being slain. St. Martin’s of Tours was burnt in 854, and most of the seats of learning founded in the former century--such as the abbeys of Corby, Liege, Stavelo, Prom, and Malmedy--were destroyed about the same time. By the beginning of the tenth century hardly one of the great French abbeys was left standing; and the monks being slaughtered or dispersed, their houses and lands were in many cases seized by laymen, who lived there with their wives, children, and hunting-dogs, a scandal complained of in 909 by the fathers of the council of Troli. Italy presented much the same spectacle. The abbey of Nomantula was plundered no less than seven times over--“first by Christians in the civil wars; next by the Vandals; a third time by the Saracens in 831; a fourth time by the Normans, which was _desolatio desolationum_; the sixth, and seventh time by the Huns,” who in 899 slaughtered all the monks, together with their abbot Gregory. A page might be filled with the names of French bishops massacred with their clergy. It could hardly be expected that schools and letters would greatly flourish at a time when the whole country was lit up by the flames which were destroying the only sanctuaries of learning; and when the libraries which had cost years of persevering toil in their collection were destroyed in one hour of ruthless barbarism. Mezeray, in his history of France, particularly notices the destruction of books among the calamities of the period. “Books,” he says, “were becoming scarce at this time, the wars had almost destroyed them all by burning, tearing, and other such like barbarities; and as there were none but monks who transcribed the copies, _and as monasteries were now for the most part deserted_, the number of learned men was but small.” Odericus Vitalis in like manner speaks of the irreparable loss occasioned by the destruction of those manuscripts, which furnished the only materials for compiling the history of the times, all of which had perished with the monastic libraries in which they were preserved. Hallam, however, while noticing the destruction of the monasteries and the incursions of the barbarians, sees nothing in these facts to explain that prevailing ignorance of which he elsewhere so loudly complains. In one passage only does he so much as connect the two ideas together, and then it is only in order to direct a sneer against the monks. “As the Normans were unchecked by religious awe,” he says, “the rich monasteries were overwhelmed in the storm. _Perhaps_ they may have sustained some irrecoverable losses of ancient learning; but their complaints are of monuments disfigured, bones of saints and kings dispersed, and treasures carried away.”[125]

There is no doubt that the monks did attach a very great value to the holy relics preserved in their churches, and that they rarely notice the destruction of any sanctuary without saying something of their loss, or the efforts made to preserve them. But it is puzzling to think how Mr. Hallam could have become aware of this fact without also informing himself of their kindred lamentations over the loss of their books. The monastic chroniclers generally couple the two subjects so closely together, that we know not what term to bestow on that singular organisation which enables a reader to acquaint himself with one without knowing anything at all about the other. A very few instances given at random may suffice to show what we are to think of the innuendo conveyed in the sentence above quoted. When the Normans burnt Hamburgh, they destroyed not only the city, but the church and monastery which St. Anscharius had built with such extreme care, together with the library containing a collection of books presented to him by Louis the Debonnaire, all beautifully transcribed. None were saved, excepting so many as each monk was able to carry with him. They went out of the city, therefore, bearing _their books and their relics_, not knowing whither to bend their steps; but Anscharius, who saw the labours of a lifetime destroyed in a moment, uttered no complaint, repeating only the words of Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!”[126] Pingonio again gives the following narrative from the ancient chronicles of the monastery of Novalesa. In 906 the monks of that house flying on the approach of the Saracens, took with them _their treasure and their library_, which last numbered upwards of 6000 volumes. They found their way safely to Turin, where, not being able to procure a house in which to stow away so many books, Riculf, Bishop of Turin, took 500 volumes off their hands, in part discharge of the cost of their maintenance. Erelong, however, the Saracens entered Turin also, plundered their treasure, and _burnt their library_; and the books which Riculf had taken were unhappily lost after his death, so that the poor monks were never able to recover them. Again, in 842, when the Normans sacked the town of Nantes, and slaughtered the bishops and clergy in the cathedral, the historian of Armorica tells us that, having loaded their vessels with plunder and captives, the heathen men proceeded to a certain island to divide the spoil. A quarrel ensued over the division, and some of the captives profited by the confusion to make their escape. One man, bolder than the rest, thought he might as well secure some of the valuables. And on what does the reader suppose he pitched? Neither on jewelled reliquary, nor church-plate, but on the great Bible which had been used in the cathedral, and which he took on his back and ran off with to the mines, where he remained concealed with some of his companions, until the Normans took their departure. “The fugitives then issued from their hiding place, and returned to Nantes,” says the chronicler, having lost much in _books_, silver and gold, and having saved nothing but their Bible.

Sometimes, again, we read of the strange expedients used by the owners of books to conceal them from plunderers. In the abbey of Pfeffers, the books and the church-plate were always hidden together, and on more than one occasion unexpected discoveries were made in aftertimes, of the deposits thus contrived. In the twelfth century one of these secret stores was accidentally brought to light, and contained, besides church plate and vestments, a rich library. Its catalogue included, besides missals and choral books, the works of most of the Latin fathers, and those of Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Sallust, Cicero, and many others. When the great abbey of St. Gall’s was threatened by the Huns, the first thought of the abbot was to send the books across the lake to Reichnau. In some of the Italian convents it was always the custom to bury the books on the approach of the Saracens; and several manuscripts may still be seen in the Library of Florence, bearing traces on their covers of having been so dealt with. Not unfrequently the relics are spoken of as being kept in the library, of which an instance occurs in an anecdote preserved by Martene, concerning the monks of St. Florent. When their monastery was threatened by the Normans, they fled to Tournus, taking with them the body of their patron saint. The danger being past, they prepared to return, but their ungenerous hosts, the monks of Tournus, refused to let them take the body with them. Very disconsolately they bent their steps back to St. Florent without their treasure: but one of their number, named Absalon, devised a scheme for its recovery. “He was,” says the historian, “a very skilful youth, very fond of law-studies, and much given to letters.” His law-studies had possibly sharpened his wits, but the reader must forgive his wiliness, remembering that it was put forth in a just cause. He feigned illness, and remained behind at Tournus, where the monks entrusted him with the offices of scholasticus, librarian, and cantor, and one night, having the keys of the library he effected a quiet entrance, and taking the body of St. Florent from the place where it was deposited, lost no time in finding his way with it back to his own monastery.

One other story may suffice on this subject, which I purposely select as having more to do with relics than books, because it shows that even the narratives more specially devoted to chronicling the loss of saints’ bones often indicate the loss of books also; and because, moreover, it gives us to understand that monks could sometimes act as village schoolmasters. It is from the pages of Odericus Vitalis, and will assist us in forming some notion of the sort of violence to which monasteries were exposed, not only from Huns and Saracens, but even from their Christian neighbours.

For many years after the conversion of the Normans, and their peaceable establishment in the north of France, they continued to be objects of jealous fear to the French sovereigns, and particularly to Louis l’Outremer, who, in 943, treacherously got possession of the young Duke Richard, and detained him prisoner. He then proceeded to lay plans for recovering possession of the duchy. He offered Hugh the Great, duke of France, the grant of an enormous territory on condition of his reducing the strong places of the Normans, and Hugh, nothing loth, overran the duchy with a powerful army, and sent some of his men under command of his chancellor, Herluin, to Ouche, where they were hospitably entertained at the monastery of St. Evroult. The simple monks, who thought they had nothing to fear from Christians and Frenchmen, showed them all over the house, and exhibited their oratories and the secret recesses where the bones of the saints were deposited. For this act of confidence they soon paid dearly.

Bernard the Dane, uncle to the young duke, finding himself unable to resist the superior force of the French, had recourse to stratagem, and persuaded the king that the Normans would at once own his sovereignty, if the army of Duke Hugh were withdrawn. Louis accordingly sent orders to Hugh to retire; but the fiery duke, enraged at this breach of faith on the part of a monarch whose crown depended on his good will, commanded his soldiers to withdraw indeed from Normandy, but not till they had wasted the country, burnt the towns, and driven off the cattle. The savage soldiery executed his orders with delight, and the band that had been quartered at St. Evroult, remembering the treasures which had been displayed to them, hastened thither without delay, and bursting into the church, laid hands on the body of St. Evroult, with other holy relics, and after ransacking the house of “everything serviceable to human existence,” together with books, vestments, and even furniture, they took their departure, and marched back to their own country laden with their spoils. The poor monks were left very disconsolate; stripped of their all, they knew not what to do, but after a while they came to the resolution of abandoning their ruined monastery, and following the body of their holy founder into exile. They considered themselves the guardians of this treasure, and would not desert their trust: perhaps, too, they hoped to soften the hearts of their enemies, and move them at least to restore the relics. All therefore prepared to depart, with the exception of Ascelin, the prior, who refused to quit the monastery. “Go in God’s name,” he said, “but as for me, I will never forsake the place where I have received so many blessings: I shall remain as the guardian of these solitudes, till through the mercy of the King of kings, a better day shall dawn upon us.” Finding he was not to be moved, the others took leave of him, and set out on their melancholy journey. They reached the duke’s camp, and told their tale, and Hugh, touched by the recital, promised to protect them and provide for their maintenance, if they would follow him to his own city of Orleans. There they had the mortification, however, of seeing the chiefs dividing their spoils. Herluin took for his share the head of St. Evroult, a portable altar plated with silver, and one of the books. Ralph de Tracy, who had commanded the plundering party, obtained the remainder of the saint’s body, which he very devoutly presented to another abbey, but the poor monks of Ouche recovered nothing. However, they were treated with tolerable kindness by the men of Orleans, who provided them with a habitation, and plenty of fish, bread, and wine, and so ended their days in France in comparative prosperity.

Meanwhile Ascelin, whom we left in the deserted abbey, did not waste his time in barren regrets. He set himself to consider what he could do to provide for the continuance of God’s service in that place, and at last resolved on a step which must be acknowledged as not a little creditable in a monk of the Age of Iron: he opened a school. He sought out and assembled together the youths of the neighbourhood, and among them his own nephew, and taught them to read. There is something both picturesque and touching in the idea thus presented to us, of the old man keeping school among his ruins, and acting as the faithful guardian of the holy spot, doing what good he could whilst time and strength remained to him, and with too much quiet confidence in God to lose heart and courage because all else was lost. At last, however, he died, persevering to the last in the observance of his monastic rule, and then his scholars were scattered, the forest thickets grew up round the ruins, and gradually the ancient solitude recovered its former wildness, and became the resort of wild animals. In the next generation, the names of Ouche and St. Evroult had passed utterly out of mind, till one day a peasant in search of a strayed bullock, followed him into the deserted valley, and making his way through bushes and brambles, found his beast couched on a little plot of soft green grass, before what seemed a ruined altar, surrounded by grey walls held together by ivy roots. And then grey-headed men were found who had heard their fathers talk of the time when St. Evroult, who despised the world, had made himself a dwelling in these wilds, and how his brethren had been driven away by the soldiers of Hugh the Great. The good knight Gaston de Montfort rebuilt the church, and the abbey was afterwards restored and colonised from Jumièges; and at last, in 1130, two hundred years after the forcible translation of the relics from Ouche to Orleans, they were brought back to their rightful home, in consequence of the eloquent entreaties of St. Bernard.[127]

We have said enough of the disorders of the ninth and tenth centuries to show that, whatever were the intellectual sterility of the Iron Age, there was cause enough to account for it. Let us now reverse the picture, and inquire whether the clergy resigned themselves contentedly to this lamentable state of things, or what means they took for amending it. Our wonder is, not that the age was one of literary decay, but that learning was not wholly extinguished; and the exertions made by a few to preserve a knowledge of letters in the midst of such unparalleled discouragements, strike us as more justly meriting admiration than all the magnificent institutions founded in more prosperous times. And such efforts were certainly made. In the ninth century the attention paid to the establishment of schools and the cultivation of learning under Charles the Bald and his successors, led Henry of Rheims to declare that it seemed as if the Grecian muses had migrated to France. This is, perhaps, a rhetorical flourish; yet most of the episcopal schools, the names of which are given by Mabillon, were founded during forty years of incessant civil distraction. Even when the ravages of the barbarians swept away the fruits of so many labours, how wonderful is the patient, hopeful perseverance displayed by the bishops in reconstructing their shattered work! Give them but a few years’ respite, a short interval of comparative tranquillity in any province, and you will invariably find the schools restored and the old discipline beginning over again. Thus Egidius, in his “History of the Bishops of Liege,” tells us of the extraordinary efforts made by Bishop Heraclius to re-establish studies in his diocese. It had borne the brunt of the Norman invasions in the ninth century; all the existing schools had been destroyed, and the ecclesiastics had grown so indifferent to the subject that, when Heraclius began his administration, he found no one to support him in his attempts to organise a fresh staff of teachers. And yet in a few years he succeeded in restoring monastic schools throughout the whole province, and reviving a love of learning among all classes. He accomplished this not so much by his exhortations as his example; for, says his biographer, “he did not think it beneath him to frequent these schools by turns, taking on himself the office of teacher, giving lectures to the elder students, and patiently explaining and repeating his lessons to those who did not understand him. When he travelled to any distance he always corresponded with his scholars, sporting with them in pleasant verse. Even from Italy and Calabria he remembered to send them agreeable letters to provoke them to the love of study, and he generally took some of them with him on his journeys, that he might beguile the tediousness of the way by conferring with them on the Holy Scriptures.” His successor, Notger, carried on the good work with even greater ardour. Like Heraclius, he always taught in his own cathedral school, and a great many of his pupils afterwards became bishops. They were so many, and so remarkable for their good scholarship, that their names and their various excellences were thought worthy by a certain scholasticus named Adelman, of being made the subject of some verses, which are still preserved.[128] Notger had originally been a monk of St. Gall’s, and had been called thence to direct the school of Stavelot. He naturally, therefore, had a taste for teaching, and, like Heraclius, he never travelled without a troop of scholars, abundance of books, and what his biographer calls _arma scholaria_. Nor were all of his scholars clerks, for we are expressly told that he had numerous young laics entrusted to him that he might train them in a manner suitable to their state of life. He did so much for his cathedral city, that he has been called its second founder, and not a few of the churches and pious institutions existing there at the present day owe their erection to his munificent zeal.[129]

At Rheims, which from its geographical position enjoyed a longer immunity from pillage than cities situated on the great rivers, schools and teachers found a safe retreat and ample encouragement from Archbishop Hincmar. However, the Normans at last made their way thither; and when Fulk succeeded to the archiepiscopal dignity, he found both the cathedral school, and that established for the rural clergy, ruined and deserted. He restored them both, and invited the two monks, Remigius of Auxerre and Hucbald of St. Amand, to come and take charge of them. Their scholastic pedigree has been given in a former chapter, and they are commonly regarded as the chief restorers of learning in France. Fulk, who knew their value, encouraged his clergy to profit from their instructions by himself taking his seat as a scholar among the youngest of his clerks. The Rheims pupils included many men of note, such as Flodoard the historian, whom Fleury calls the ornament of his age. The old epitaph on his tomb praises him as “a good monk, a good clerk, and a better abbot,” and concludes with two lines somewhat hyperbolical in their expression:--

Per sen histoire maintes nouvelles sauras
Et en ille toutes antiquité auras.

Hucbald was famous as a poet, musician, and philosopher; but his colleague, Remigius, was great in grammar, and wrote comments on Priscian, Donatus, and Marcian Capella. He taught humane letters and theology, and was extraordinarily learned in Scripture and the Fathers. After the death of Fulk he proceeded to Paris, and opened the first public school which we know with any certainty to have been established in that city. This, according to the Paris historians, was the real germ of the university; at any rate it was the first of those celebrated schools out of which the university subsequently developed. Nevertheless, half a century earlier, in the midst of the great siege of Paris, there had been both schools and scholars, for Abbo of St. Germain apologises for the incomplete state of his poem before mentioned, “on account of the multitude of his pupils.” Whence we gather that even famine and massacre had never entirely extinguished the Parisian thirst for letters.

Remigius continued to teach at Paris for several years, pupils coming to him from all parts of France. Among them was one whose story deserves to be told a little more at length, inasmuch as it exhibits, in a striking manner, the utter ruin which had fallen on the monastic institute in the French provinces, and at the same time shows us that in the tenth century laymen were to be found who were possessed of a respectable education, and were capable of collecting libraries. There lived at that time, in the province of Maine, a certain noble named Abbo, who had been fortunate enough in his youth to find some school where he not only learnt how to sign his name, but acquired a great taste for reading. His reading, too, was of a solid kind, for his favourite studies were the histories of the ancients, and the “Novellæ” of Justinian, the latter of which he knew by heart, using his legal erudition when called on to dispense justice to his feudal subjects, and to act as umpire in the disputes which arose among his neighbours. The Gospels were always read aloud at his table, and on the Vigils of solemn feasts he and his family spent the night in prayer and watching. Nor are we to draw the hasty conclusion that Abbo’s household, and his way of life, was at all an extraordinary exception from the common rule. He had friends as learned and as holy as himself, such as Duke William of Aquitaine, whose religious habits earned him the surname of “the Pious,” while his love of letters gained him that of “the Grammarian.” This good prince had a number of books in his castle, and during the long winter evenings he amused himself by reading them, never leaving his studies till fairly overcome by sleep. Abbo had one son named Odo, born in 879, and whilst yet an infant, his father going to see him in his cradle, by a devout impulse took him in his arms and offered him to St. Martin. As he grew up he was given in charge to a priest to be taught his letters, but it does not appear that there was any idea of bringing him up to the ecclesiastical state: on the contrary, his father placed him in the household of Duke William, that he might acquire the martial exercises becoming a knight. Odo, however, had no taste for these pursuits, and the chase and the tilt-yard were insupportably wearisome to him. Praying to Our Lady that he might be guided in the choice of a state of life, he was for three years attacked by inveterate headaches, which obliged him to return home, and which obstinately resisted every remedy. His father at last became persuaded that it was not the will of God that his son should pursue a secular calling. Remembering his former promise to St. Martin, and finding that Odo’s own wishes pointed in the same direction, he took him to Tours, and placed him, in his nineteenth year, among the canons of that city. There was a very solemn reception of the noble postulant, and among those who assisted at the ceremony was the brave Count Fulk of Anjou, the same who has before been mentioned as himself holding a canon’s stall, and scandalising king Louis by his proficiency in music.

No sooner did Odo find himself in quiet possession of his new retreat than he applied himself to his books with an ardour that quite astounded his brother canons. They perpetually asked him what he meant by all this reading, and where could possibly be the good of it. Odo let them talk as they would, and made no change in his habits. He often spent the whole day in study, and the whole night in prayer. He finished his course of grammar, and was about to commence Virgil, when he was deterred by a vision, in which he seemed to see a beautiful vessel filled with serpents, which he understood to indicate the poison to be found in the charms of profane literature. Putting it aside, therefore, he devoted himself exclusively to the study of the Scriptures, and to obtain the more freedom from interruption, he shut himself up in a little cell which Count Fulk had given him, and distributing all his money to the poor, lived on the moderate daily allowance of half a pound of bread and a handful of beans. However, he soon became desirous of better teaching than he had as yet been able to procure, so he set out for Paris, and entered at the school of Remigius of Auxerre. That master made him go through a course of the liberal arts, and gave him to study the treatises of Marcian Capella, and the “Dialectics” of St. Augustine.[130]

On his return to Tours he applied himself to the study of St. Gregory’s “Morals,” in which he took such delight that he wrote an abridgment of it, which is still preserved. His love of letters may be gathered from the fact that he gradually procured himself a library of a hundred volumes--a very large collection in those days for any private individual. Among them were some “Lives of the Holy Fathers,” and the “Rule” of St. Benedict, the constant study of which filled Odo with an intense desire to embrace the monastic state. In this he was encouraged by the intimate friendship he formed about this time with a knight named Adegrim, one of the household of the good Count Fulk. At last Adegrim threw up his military employments and came to live with the young canon at Tours. The talk of the two friends was ever of monks and of monasteries, and they made many journeys into different parts of France to seek out the sites of those once famous abbeys of which they had read, and to discover if perchance one yet survived in its ancient state of discipline. But these expeditions invariably ended in disappointment. For more than sixty years the monastic institute in France had been utterly ruined. Most of the houses so renowned in the last century were now nothing but heaps of blackened ruins. The monks had either been slain or driven out as wanderers. Sometimes they were to be met with in the guise of poor vagrants; sometimes in places far from public resort you might come upon a miserable hut, where the remnants of what had once been a flourishing community were gathered together in the wilderness, striving to keep their Rule as best they might. This is not a fancy picture. It was about this very time that William Longsword, duke of Normandy, was induced to restore the abbey of Jumièges, having when hunting in the forest come upon two poor monks who were trying to construct a cell for themselves out of the ruins of the abbey. All the refreshments they could offer him were some barley bread and some water; and the spectacle of their poverty, together with the remembrance that the desolation he witnessed had been the work of his own Norman forefathers, induced the duke to undertake the work of restoration. Abbo and Adegrim, however, were not to be discouraged in their plan. Finding no house in France where they could embrace the life to which they longed to devote themselves, they resolved to carry on their search in Italy, and Adegrim accordingly set out, intending to make the pilgrimage to Rome. But as he passed through Burgundy he accidentally found his way to La Baume, a small monastery which had been recently founded by the abbot Berno, and in which the Rule of St. Benedict was strictly observed, together with the reformed Constitutions of St. Benedict d’Anian. Adegrim at once wrote to his friend, bidding him come without delay, and bring all his books with him; and Odo lost no time in obeying the summons. In the year 909 he began his noviciate, being then exactly thirty years of age. Adegrim, after three years of penitential exercises, begged leave to retire to a little cave about two miles distant from the monastery, where he spent the rest of his life as a hermit. But a very different course awaited his friend Odo. His books pointed him out to be the right sort of man for a schoolmaster, and he was therefore charged with the education of the children brought up in the monastery, and the younger monks. He had much to suffer from the jealousy of some of his brethren; but Berno, rightly appreciating both his talents and his humility, sent him to Turpion, Bishop of Limoges, to be ordained priest.

The reformed monastery of La Baume soon became the mother-house of other foundations. Those who deplored the decay of learning and religion were eager to provide for the restoration of both, by erecting houses in which the Rule and spirit of St. Benedict might be revived in their ancient vigour. Abbo’s old friend, Duke William of Aquitaine, was of the number of those who desired to take part in the good work, and he invited Berno to choose a site for a new foundation in any part of his dominions. Berno selected a beautiful solitude, about four miles from Macon, on the confines of Burgundy, where the river Grosne, after passing the village of Bonnay, winds down to the Seine from the mountains of Beaujolais, through a valley girt in by high hills covered with forests. It was exactly suited for the purposes of a religious retreat, but the duke hesitated when Berno named it, for it was his favourite hunting ground, and was at that time occupied by his kennel of dogs. “Well, sir,” said Berno, when the duke had explained his difficulty, “it is only to turn out the dogs, and to turn in the monks.” This recommendation was accordingly followed, and in course of time there arose among those wooded hills the stately abbey of Cluny, the church of which was inferior in size to none save St. Peter’s of Rome.

On the death of Berno in 927, the bishops of the province obliged St. Odo to accept the government of Cluny and two of the other five houses which had sprung under the reformed Rule. Not content with this, they likewise forced upon him the most odious and difficult of all imaginable enterprises; that, namely, of restoring monastic discipline in a vast number of other houses both in France and Italy, which had fallen into the hands of a dissolute set of men, who sometimes opposed the entrance of the abbot, sword in hand. Odo entered on this work in obedience, and accomplished it in the spirit of meekness. There is no courage like that of gentle souls, and the history of this great reformer exhibits him to us forsaken by his terrified attendants, and riding up on his ass to the gates of Fleury, where a band of armed men were awaiting his coming, having sworn to kill him if he dared set foot among them. But Odo’s meekness gained the day, and among the seventeen abbeys which accepted the Cluniac reform, that of Fleury became one of the most flourishing.

In fact, the character of St. Odo had nothing of that stern austerity which we commonly associate with the notion of a reformer. Its force was its amiability. He used to tell his monks that cripples and beggars were the door-keepers of heaven, and would not endure that they should be spoken to with harshness. If he heard the porter giving a gruff answer to the crowds of poor who thronged his gate, he would go out to them and say, “My friends, when that brother comes to the gates of Paradise, answer him as he has just answered you, and see whether he will like it.” On his journeys, if he met any children, he always stopped, and desired them to sing or repeat something to him, and he did this, says his biographer, that he might have an excuse for giving them something. And if he met an old woman or a cripple, nothing would prevent his getting off his beast and mounting them in his place, when he would desire his servants to hold them securely in the saddle, while he himself led them on their way. This excess of goodness made him so dear to his monks, that they would often steal behind him and indulge their affection and respect by secretly pressing to their lips the hem of his garment.