Chapter XXIV (13)

St. Odo died in 942, and in 965 Maieul or Majolus, a former canon of Macon, was elected abbot. His life, like that of his predecessor, affords an illustration of the two features in the century which I am most solicitous to bring before the reader’s notice; the disordered state of society, consequent on the barbaric invasions, and the fact that in spite of such disorders, men were not wholly indifferent to letters, though they were often sadly at a loss to find the means of acquiring them. Maieul made his studies at Lyons, which his biographer, Odilo, declares was then regarded as the nurse and mother of philosophy, under a rather celebrated teacher named Anthony de l’Isle Barbe. He learnt both kinds of literature, says the monk Syrus, who also wrote his life, the divine and human, and attained to whatever was most sublime in the one, and most difficult in the other. The approach of the Saracens obliged him to leave Avignon, his native city, and retire to Macon, where he was chosen first canon and then archdeacon. But as he found that the clergy and people had it in their mind to procure his further promotion to the bishopric of Besançon, he fled to Cluny, where he was received with great affection, and in process of time was appointed schoolmaster, librarian, and syndic of the house. In this combination of the intellectual and the temporal government he managed to make himself greatly beloved, and in 948, with the consent of the whole community, Aimard, the successor of Odo, whom Syrus styles a son of innocence and simplicity, surrendered the government of the abbey and all its dependencies into his hands. Both as scholasticus and coadjutor to the abbot, Maieul superintended the studies of his monks, and it is remarkable that he had to use the bridle rather than the spur. He was obliged to exert his authority to discourage their excessive study of the profane poets, especially Virgil; not that he disapproved of a moderate use of humane literature; on the contrary, he advocated the principle that we should get all the good out of it that we can; but he would have preferred to see his monks learned in the Scriptures, the reading of which formed his own delight. Whether he walked or rode, the Sacred volume was never out of his hands, and when he travelled into distant countries he always took with him a portable library. These journeys were very frequent, for Maieul extended the Cluniac reform into a great number of abbeys, and made many pilgrimages to Rome. Returning from that city in 973, he was attacked, whilst crossing the Alps, by the Saracens of Frassinet, and carried off, together with all his retinue. His captors chained him hand and foot, and confined him in a cave among the mountains, plundering him of all his baggage, and among other things of his books. The saint recommended himself to God in the spirit of martyrdom, and then lay down on the floor of the cavern to take what rest he might. On awakening he was surprised to find lying on his breast one of his lost books, which appeared to have been overlooked by the plunderers. He opened it, and found it was a treatise on the Assumption of Our Lady, and counting the days, he found that there remained exactly twenty-four to the Feast of the Assumption; so he began to pray that through the intercession of the Queen of Heaven, he might perhaps be permitted to keep that Feast among Christians. After a while the Saracens began to treat him more kindly. They allowed him to write a letter to his brethren directing them to send the money for his ransom, and seeing that he did not eat the meat which they set before him, one man took a shield, and baring his arms, he proceeded to knead some meal in this strange dish, and produced a cake which the prisoner gratefully accepted. Another time a Saracen, wishing to clean his lance, set his foot on the great Bible which formed part of the abbot’s library. Pained at the irreverence, the saint gently remonstrated with him, but without effect, and a few days afterwards the man quarrelling with his companions, they cut off the very foot that had been set on the Sacred Volume. At last the ransom arrived, and the prisoners were liberated, and Maieul spent the Feast of the Assumption among Christians, as he had prayed. Not long afterwards the Saracens were driven from Frassinet by Duke William of Arles, and the books of St. Maieul being found among their baggage, were sent back to him at Cluny to his very great joy.

The information conveyed in stories of this kind will be taken for what it is worth. It does not certainly represent the monks of the Iron Age as prodigies of erudition, but it shows that they did a little more than learn their Psalter. In some cases they certainly set themselves to overcome the difficulties which then beset the path of learning with a perseverance and success that merit all praise; and one example of this sort occurs among the monks of that very abbey of Fleury, the reformation of which was effected by St. Odo in the teeth of an armed rabble. Abbo of Fleury, as he is commonly called, a contemporary of St. Maieul, did not enter the monastery until some years after it had begun to flourish under the Cluniac rule, and the good discipline of Abbot Wulfhad. He was a native of Orleans, and a boy of such a sweet disposition and such a happy memory, that he forgot nothing of his master’s lessons, and studied much in private, not merely for the sake of knowledge, says his biographer, but also because he counted application to study to be a means of subjecting the flesh to the spirit. The Fleury teachers at this time were not first-rate; however, far from being disgusted with “the haggard and emaciated skeleton of barbarous elements,” the more Abbo learnt the more he desired to learn. He was appointed in time _scholasticus_ to his convent, but he felt by no means satisfied as yet with his own attainments. He was tolerably well versed in grammar, logic, and arithmetic, but he had found no one at Fleury who could teach him the other liberal arts. With the permission of his abbot, therefore, he resigned his office, and went first to Paris, and then to Rheims. In these schools he acquired a knowledge of philosophy and astronomy, but not so much of the last science as he desired. So he next proceeded to Orleans, and there not only perfected himself in other branches of learning, but, by dint of expending a good sum of money, managed to get some excellent lessons in music. This, however, could only be done secretly, by reason of the opposition of envious minds. He had now studied five out of the seven liberal arts, and he could not rest till he had acquired the other two. But not being able to find any good master either in rhetoric or geometry, he endeavoured to supply the first by a careful study of Victorinus, the master of St. Jerome, and also by his own exertions gained some knowledge of mathematics. We have seen in the last chapter how he was summoned to England by St. Oswald of York, and established sacred and scientific studies in the monastery of Ramsay. So greatly was he esteemed by both St. Oswald and St. Dunstan, that an amicable quarrel arose between the two prelates as to which should keep possession of so great a treasure. The question was settled by the abbot of Fleury recalling Abbo to his own convent after a two years’ absence.

His English friends took leave of him with no small regret, and loaded him with parting presents. St. Dunstan gave him a number of exquisitely-wrought silver ornaments of his own workmanship, which he requested him to present as his offerings to St. Benedict, a portion of whose body was preserved at Fleury. St. Oswald ordained him priest, and gave him a chalice, some vestments, and everything else requisite for saying mass. In 988 he became abbot, in which office he continually recommended his monks to cultivate study as the most useful exercise next to fasting and prayer. For himself he ceased not all his life to read, write, or dictate. His favourite studies, next to the Holy Scriptures, were dialectics and astronomy, and among his works were some treatises on both those subjects. Renowned for his learning throughout Europe, he was killed at last in 1004 in an affray between his servants and some Gascon monks of the monastery of Reole, whither he had been sent to effect a reform.

In fact, if the age exhibited much decay and many scandals, it found men ready to spend their lives in the weary work of restoration and reformation. And it is remarkable that the greatest prelates of the time invariably regarded the revival of monachism as the only means of restoring good discipline and learning. Such were the views of St. Dunstan and his fellow-labourers, and such was also the conviction of the excellent Adalberon, who in 933 became Bishop of Metz. He was brother to the reigning duke of Lorraine, and his talents and zeal equalled the nobility of his birth. In order to provide his diocese with a seminary of devoted and learned men, he resolved on restoring the great monastery of Gorze, which had been founded by St. Chrodegang of Metz, but which had been ruined under the combined attacks of the Normans and the Hungarians. He completed the rebuilding of the abbey, but was still uncertain whence he should procure his colony of monks, when he was informed that a little society of ecclesiastics, which had been formed in the neighbouring diocese of Toul, was about to pass into Italy, seeking some spot where they might unmolested lead a more perfect life. The way in which this society had been organised was altogether remarkable. At their head was John of Vandières, the native of a village in the diocese of Nancy, who, having been born when his father was advanced in years, had suffered from some of the disadvantages of being a spoiled child. The fond parent, however, was at last persuaded to send the boy to school, first at Metz, and then at the monastery of St. Michael’s, where Master Hildebold, a pupil of Remigius, gave lessons in grammar. John, however, profited very little by his teaching, and on his father’s death, his mother, marrying a second time, recalled him home, and gave him the charge of all the temporal affairs of the house. John showed considerable ability in the management of lands and revenues, and absorbed in these cares, soon forgot the little he had learnt at school. However, as time went on, he became disgusted with his secular way of life, and embracing the ecclesiastical state, received two benefices in the diocese of Toul. There he became acquainted with the learned deacon Berners, who, by no means approving of illiterate clerks, persuaded John to begin his studies over again. Divine grace quickening his powers, he did his best to make up for lost time. But he was never much of a grammarian. He contented himself with what his biographer calls a _sprinkling_ of Donatus, just so much as enabled him to read and understand the Scriptures, to the study of which he then exclusively devoted himself, and in which he obtained very extraordinary light. The church which he served was dependent on a convent of nuns at Metz, where his duties called him from time to time to say mass. He became acquainted with the community, and the example of their holy and mortified life inspired him with new ardour. He began a course of reading with these good religious, which speaks in favour of his diligence and their patience, and in which, says his biographer, he persevered “with all his might.”

First, then, having read through with them the whole of the Old and New Testaments, he committed both to memory, “and that so accurately that no man could do it better,” also “all the lessons appointed to be read in church,” which are contained in the book called _Comes_; then the rules for the computing of Easter and the canonical laws, that is, the decrees of councils, the judgments of penitents, the mode of ecclesiastical proceedings, and the secular laws, all of which he treasured up word for word. Of homilies, sermons, and treatises on the Epistles and Gospels, I will only say that he was able to repeat an alarming catalogue of them in the vernacular, “straightforward from beginning to end, as if he were reading from the book.” At the same time he laboured hard to acquire a knowledge of church music, not caring for the derision of some who considered it an unsuitable enterprise for one of his age to engage in. However, his perseverance was rewarded with very fair success, and it was thus that he employed his intervals of leisure time, together with the handmaids of God.

It must be confessed that John’s choice of reading, considering the gentler sex of his fellow-students, was somewhat of the driest. Nor do I at all cite him as a model of erudition, though, considering the deficiencies of his early education, his achievements in that line might have saved him from the contempt of Brucker, who notices him only to string him up among other barbarous dunces. His studies probably took their direction from the very few books which he had at his command, and it is at least clear that he made a tolerable use of those he possessed.

His intercourse with the nuns inspired him with a great desire to embrace a religious life, but, like St. Odo, he sought in vain for any religious house in his own part of the country where religious discipline still flourished. So first he joined the company of a recluse of Verdun, named Humbert, and then he passed some time with a hermit in the forest of Argonne, and at last, in company with Bernacer of Metz, who was a tolerable scholar, he set out on pilgrimage to Rome. However, even in Italy he found nothing that exactly suited him, and returning to Verdun, resumed his former exercises of prayer and study, under the direction of Humbert.

About the same time Einold, Archdeacon of Toul, had been touched with similar desires after a perfect life; and distributing all his goods to the poor, he shut himself up in a little cell adjoining the cloisters of his cathedral, together with his books and his priestly vestments, living only on what the Bishop Gauzelin sent him as an alms. The times were, indeed, dreary enough, when, one after another, these good men were to be found seeking, and seeking in vain, for some spot untouched by the spoiler’s hand. As Einold prayed for guidance, what seemed a little schoolboy’s voice in the street outside chanted the words, “I will give you the heritage of your father Jacob;” and half disposed to take the words as a sign of divine encouragement, he was still pondering over their meaning, when Humbert of Verdun came to ask his counsel. To be brief, the four friends, Einold, Humbert, John, and Bernacer, determined on migrating to Italy, and establishing themselves either among the solitaries of Mount Vesuvius, or in the neighbourhood of Monte Cassino. And it was this little knot of holy men, who had been drawn together by the ties of Christian sympathy, whom Adalberon proposed to detain in France for the purpose of entrusting them with the restoration of monastic life in the abbey of Gorze. They accepted his offer; a very few of the old monks who yet survived were brought back, and willingly accepted the strict reform which Adalberon desired to establish; Einold was chosen abbot, and the house soon became a model of good discipline. Sacred studies were at once instituted in the school, and after his religious profession, John of Gorze, as he was henceforth called, entered on rather a wider range of reading than he had hitherto been able to follow. We find him applying himself to St. Augustine, and working with characteristic energy at certain logical studies, which were, however, cut short by the prohibition of Einold, who desired him to leave logic for secular students, and to confine himself to more spiritual subjects, an injunction which he humbly and promptly obeyed. He became abbot of Gorze about the year 960.

Adalberon’s zeal was not satisfied with the restoration of Gorze; he invited a learned body of monks over from Ireland, under a superior named Cradoc, and established them in another deserted monastery, that of St. Clement’s at Metz. When Gerard, Bishop of Toul, the successor of Gauzelin, heard of the arrival of the Irishmen, he never rested till he had procured some of them for his own diocese. He had already procured a community of exiled Greek monks, among whom, in the following century, Cardinal Humbert acquired his Greek learning. A sort of holy emulation sprang up between the two prelates, which should outstrip the other in their labours at reform and revival; and Gerard was not content with setting others to work; he worked himself as hard as the humblest scholasticus. He took into his own hands the instruction of his clergy in all that appertained to ecclesiastical discipline and the ministry of preaching; and acting on the principle that he who instructs others should never cease to be a learner, he never considered that his time of study was ended; and his historian declares that even when he was in bed he appointed some of his clerks to read to him until he fell asleep.

From all that has been said, it may be seen that there was no want of solicitude on the part of the pastors of the Church to amend the disorders of the time. In fact, we might appeal to the acts of those very councils which show what the abuses of the times were, as affording proof of the strenuous exertions made to correct them.

In Spain we are told the incursions of the Saracens had left everything in ruins. The school of Palencia, established in the sixth century for the education of the clergy, had fallen into decay; the monastic institute had all but disappeared; and the sites of many monasteries, like the famous one founded near Vierzo by St. Fructuosus, had become wildernesses, overgrown with thorns and brushwood. But here, as in France and Germany, bishops were to be found stemming the strong tide of barbarism. Gennadius of Astorga restored a great number of abbeys destroyed by the Saracens, and placed them under the Benedictine Rule. And as the libraries that formerly enriched them could not be at once replaced, he introduced a custom by which the books belonging to one house were lent to a number of others in regular succession, always returning to their original owners. Among the books so lent appear the works of St. Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, and St. Augustine.

Even the education of the poor was not wholly uncared for in the Iron Age. Witness the constitutions of Ado of Vercelli, Dado of Verden, and Heraclius of Liege, in which the establishment of “little,” or parochial, schools, is ordained, wherein poor children of both sexes, about the age of seven, are to be received and taught gratis, the girls and boys being always separated from one another. The regulations, simple as they are, have a very modern sound; and so also have those other constitutions of Riculf of Soissons, who, for the improvement of his parish priests, hit on a scheme of _clerical conferences_, in order to afford them means of mutual edification, on a plan precisely similar to that adopted in later times.

But we have dwelt long enough on the aspect which the tenth century presented in France. Something remains to be said of the state of schools and monasteries during the same period on the other side of the Rhine, where the achievements of the German prelates were crowned with a much larger share of success, and well deserve a chapter to themselves.

_CHAPTER X._

THE AGE OF THE OTHOS.

A.D. 911 TO 1024.

Louis the Fourth, surnamed the Child, the last of the race of Charlemagne who bore rule in Germany, died in 911, leaving the empire torn to pieces with feudal wars and the devastations of Hungarians, Sclaves and Normans. As the right of choosing his successor belonged to the nobles, they offered the crown to Otho, duke of Saxony, who with singular disinterestedness refused it, and recommended as most worthy of the royal dignity, his own feudal rival, Conrad of Franconia, who accordingly received the crown. Not to be outdone in generosity, Conrad, at his death, named the son of Otho as his successor, and thus Henry the Fowler became the first German sovereign of the house of Saxony. His victory over the Hungarians at Marsberg, in 933, gave them their first decisive check, and in 936, his son Otho the Great completed the discomfiture of the barbarians at the great battle of Leck, after which they never again showed their face in Germany. In 952, Otho was crowned king of Italy, having been called into that country to oppose the usurper Beranger. Eight years later he was invited to Rome by Pope John XII. and crowned emperor, no prince having borne that title in the West for the space of forty years. Though on some occasions he failed not to evince that tendency to despotism in Church matters which was the hereditary vice of the German emperors, yet his reign was truly glorious, and is spoken of by ancient writers as a kind of golden age. His mother Matilda, and his two wives, Editha and Adelaide, the first of whom was an English princess, together with his brother Bruno, Archbishop of Cologne, were all canonised saints. He showed himself the friend of religion and learning, and caused his son, Otho II., to receive a learned education. His grandson, Otho III., who succeeded to the crown in 983, was also a scholar, and a pupil of Gerbert’s, and surnamed the Wonder of the World. At his death the crown passed to his cousin, St. Henry of Bavaria, whose brother-in-law, St. Stephen of Hungary, converted his people to Christianity, and changed those wild barbarians, so long the scourge of Europe, into a civilised and Christian nation.

Thus, for the space of a century, Germany was blessed with a succession of great Christian rulers, who, if they had some defects, were yet on the whole protectors of religion, and encouragers of learned men. Italy, indeed, is represented by most historians as presenting during the same period a scene of lamentable decay; and Tiraboschi gives the names of only two bishops as possessing any pretensions to learning, namely, Atto of Vercelli, and Ratherius of Verona. But allowance must be made for the exaggerations of party-writers, and there are facts which cannot be altogether reconciled with their sweeping statements. Studies were certainly carried on in the monasteries that escaped the rage of the Saracens, and Muratori cites a long catalogue of books, all either copied or collected at Bobbio during the tenth century. Baronius, whose strictures on the state of Italy are exceedingly severe, quotes the acts of a council held at Rheims in 992, wherein it is declared that there was scarcely one person to be found at that time in Rome who knew the first elements of learning. Considering the unhappy and scandalous factions which then held sway in the Roman capital, no picture of social disorder would seem too black for us to credit; yet bad as things were, one is staggered at the notion that no one in the city of the Popes and the Cæsars should know even how to read. A few years previously to the date assigned, Rome, as we shall see, not only possessed good masters herself, but supplied them to the German seminaries; nor is there any reason for supposing that her political disasters necessarily closed her schools. If, from the acts of a remote council, we turn to the writings of one thoroughly conversant with the state of Italy, the man of his age best qualified to judge of any matter connected with learning--I mean the famous Ratherius of Verona--we shall find a very different description of the state of things which he had witnessed with his own eyes. His testimony is the more remarkable from the fact that he was the great censor of his age, sparing neither clergy nor bishops in his caustic attacks. Yet he assures us that in his time, and he died in 974, there was no place where a man could get better instructed in sacred letters than in Rome. “What is taught elsewhere on ecclesiastical dogma,” he says, “that is unknown there? It is there that we find the sovereign doctors of the whole world; it is there that the most illustrious princes of the Church have flourished. There the decrees of the pontiffs are to be found; there the canons are examined; there some are approved and others rejected; what is condemned there is nowhere else approved, nor do men elsewhere approve of what is there condemned. Where, then, could I be more sure to find wisdom than at Rome, which is its fountain-head?”[131] About the same time Gerbert, the literary wonder of his age, arrived in Rome, where his scientific acquirements were so thoroughly appreciated by Pope John XIII. as to induce that pontiff to prevent his return into Spain; and he accordingly wrote to the emperor, advising him to secure the services of a man who was thoroughly well-versed in mathematics, and able to teach them to others. But how preposterous it seems to suppose that the mathematics of Gerbert should be thus highly valued in a city where hardly a man was to be found acquainted with the first elements of letters! Again, we find from Gerbert’s own correspondence that it was from Italy that he chiefly obtained his books. There is no city in that country, he says, where good writers and copyists are not to be found; a fact which conclusively proves that somebody was also to be found to buy what was written, for the book trade could not have been kept up without a fair supply of readers. And in the year 1000 only eight years after the above-named council had furnished Baronius with its dismal authority for proving Italy to be sunk in the grossest ignorance, we find a German noble named Wippo exhorting the emperor Henry II. to send the sons of the German nobles to be educated “after the manner of the Italians.” Not that it at all concerns us to whitewash the history of Italy in the tenth century, confessedly the very _nadir_ of her ecclesiastical annals; but there is no reason for unfairly blackening even a damaged reputation, and the united testimonies given above may at least be taken as evidence that the words of the council must not be too literally understood.

In the present chapter, however, I propose to speak only of the state of letters in Germany, where the tenth century was certainly very far from deserving to be stigmatised as an age of iron or lead. All the monastic chroniclers bear witness to the rapid extension of letters, which was encouraged by the Saxon emperors, to the extraordinary multiplication of schools, and the harvest of great men whom they produced, so that even Meiners is forced to acknowledge that at no period did Germany possess so many virtuous and learned ecclesiastics. Much of this happy state of things is to be attributed to the labours and example of St. Bruno, the younger brother of Otho the Great, and, like him, a pupil of Heraclius of Liege. His education began at Utrecht, where he was sent at the mature age of four, to commence his studies under the good abbot Baldric. Utrecht had never entirely lost its scholastic reputation since the days of St. Gregory. Only a few years before the birth of Bruno the see had been filled by St. Radbod, a great-grandson of that other Radbod, duke of Friesland, who had so fiercely opposed the preaching of St. Boniface. Radbod the bishop, however, was a very different man from his savage ancestor; he was not only a pious ecclesiastic, but an elegant scholar, for he had been educated in the Palatine school of Charles the Bald, under the learned Mannon, whose heart he won by his facility in writing verses; and the cares of the episcopate never induced him altogether to neglect the Muses. Besides a great number of poems which he wrote during his residence at Utrecht, we have a Latin epigram, which he improvised at the moment of receiving the Holy Viaticum, and which is perhaps as worthy of being preserved as the dying epigram of the Emperor Hadrian.[132]

In consequence of the encouragement given to learning by so many of its bishops, Utrecht became the fashionable place of education, and it had grown a sort of custom with the German sovereigns to send their sons thither at an early age. Little Bruno made rapid progress both in Greek and Latin literature; he particularly relished the works of Prudentius, which he learnt by heart; never let himself be disturbed by his noisy companions, and took great care of his books. Indeed, the only thing that ever moved him to anger was the sight of any one negligently handling a book. His reading included something of all sorts; historians, orators, poets and philosophers--nothing came amiss. He had native Greeks to instruct him in their language, and became so proficient in it as afterwards to act as interpreter for his brother to the Greek ambassadors who frequented the German court. With all this he did not neglect the sacred sciences, and a certain Isaac, a Scotch, or rather Irish professor, who taught at Utrecht, spoke of him as not merely a scholar, but a saint. The monk Ditmar, one of his schoolfellows, himself afterwards celebrated in the literary world by his chronicle of the royal house of Saxony, bears witness to the habits of piety which adorned the very childhood of the young prince. “Every morning,” he says, “before he left his room to go to the school, he would be at his prayers, while the rest of us were at play.” A certain tone of exaggeration is not unfrequently indulged in by early writers when extolling the subjects of their biographies as prodigies of every literary excellence, but the descriptions left us of Bruno’s intellectual achievements do not admit of being understood as mere figures of speech. His love of reading was almost a passion. He read everything, “even comedies,” says his biographer, who seems a little scandalised at the fact, but explains that he attended only to the style, and neglected the matter. To complete the picture of Bruno’s school-days, it must be added that he was an excellent manager of his time, and always made the most of his morning hours, a good habit he retained through life. I will say nothing of his early career as the reformer of Lauresheim Abbey; he was still young when his brother Otho succeeded to the throne, and at once summoned Bruno to court, charging him with the task of erecting there a Palatine academy, after the model of that of Charlemagne. Nothing was better suited to Bruno’s wishes and capacity, and he began at once to teach the entire curriculum of the liberal arts to a crowd of noble pupils. Whatever was most beautiful in the historians and poets of Greece or Rome, he made known to his disciples, and not content with the labour entailed on him by his own lectures, he did not allow the professors whom he chose to assist him to commence theirs till he had previously conferred with them on the subjects they were about to explain.

One of Bruno’s chief assistants was that same Ratherius who has been already named. Originally a monk of Lobes, he had accompanied his patron Hilduin of Liege into Italy, and there became bishop of Verona. He was a man of great learning, and zeal too little tempered with discretion, and his life was a series of episcopal ejectments. Thrice was he turned out of the see of Verona, and once out of that of Liege, to which Bruno had procured his nomination after the death of Hilduin. His writings are of considerable value as monuments of the doctrine and discipline of the times, but I mention him here rather in the character of a benefactor to youth. For after being the second time obliged to fly from Verona, he retired, says Folcuin, in his history of the abbots of Lobes, “to that part of Burgundy which is called Provençe, where he taught the son of a certain rich man named Rostang; and for his benefit composed a little book on the grammatical art, which he called by the pleasant name of _Spara-dorsum_, or _Spare-the-back_, to the end that young children making use of the same in schools might be preserved from scourges.”

In 953, Bruno, in spite of his youth, was demanded by the clergy and people of Cologne for their archbishop, and being consecrated, he at once entered on a career of gigantic labours, everywhere re-establishing ecclesiastical discipline and social order throughout a province long wasted by war and barbaric invasions. His political position, moreover, imposed on him yet more extensive cares; for Otho, who called him his second soul, when summoned into Italy, created his brother duke of Lorraine and imperial lieutenant in Germany. The dukedom of Lorraine at that time included all the country from the Alps to the Moselle, which now, therefore, acknowledged Bruno as its actual sovereign. But these multiplied dignities, and the accumulation of business which they entailed, did not quench Bruno’s love of study. Whenever he travelled, whether in the visitation of his diocese, or when accompanying his brother’s court, he always carried his library with him, “as if it had been the ark of the Lord,” says the monk Rotger, who, moreover, remarks that this library was stored both with sacred and profane authors, for, like a good householder, he knew how to bring out of his treasury things new and old. Nothing ever prevented his finding time for reading, and he excited every one about him to cultivate similar tastes, specially his nephew Otho, who was for some time his pupil. Indeed, Rotger goes so far as to say that the archbishop felt a certain want of confidence in those who had no attraction to study; meaning probably to those unlettered clerks who cared not to acquire the learning proper to their sacred calling. Of these there was no lack in Lorraine; but Bruno effected a great change in the condition of that afflicted province, by appointing good bishops, healing feuds, reforming monasteries, and making men love one another in spite of themselves. In all these good works he was assisted by the learning and martial valour of Ansfrid, count of Lorraine, who was well read both in law and Scripture, and who used his sword exclusively to repress pillage and defend the helpless. This feudal noble of the Iron Age spent all his leisure hours in study, and when at last he embraced the ecclesiastical state, and at the entreaties of the emperor accepted a bishopric, he was able to lay his sword on the altar and render witness that it had never been drawn in an unjust cause.

Bruno’s example made a great stir in Germany, and moved many bishops to exert themselves in the work of reform. Poppo, Bishop of Wurtzburg, sent to Rome for a celebrated master named Stephen, and with his help the episcopal seminary was restored, and soon boasted of a “crowd of students, and a great store of books.” Among other pupils educated under Master Stephen were two friends, named Wolfgang and Henry. Wolfgang was a student of Bruno’s type, possessing an avidity for all sorts of learning; and though he began his school-life at seven, he is said in a few years not only to have acquired an extensive acquaintance with the letter of the Scriptures, but to have penetrated into the pith and marrow of their mystical sense. His father had thought it sufficient to place him under a certain priest, to receive a very scanty elementary education, but Wolfgang entreated that he might be sent to Reichnau, which then enjoyed a high reputation; and here he first met with his friend Henry. Henry was the younger brother of Bishop Poppo, and easily persuaded Wolfgang to migrate with him to Wurtzburg, for the sake of studying under the famous Master Stephen. It soon appeared, however, that the disciple was more learned than the master, and when the Wurtzburg students found Master Stephen’s lectures very dull, or very obscure, they were in the habit of applying to Wolfgang, who possessed that peculiar gift of perspicacity which marked him from his boyhood as called to the functions of teaching. Moreover, he was so kind and so willing to impart his knowledge, that his companions declared he made daylight out of the darkest matters; when Stephen’s prosy abstruseness had fairly mystified them, five words from Wolfgang seemed like the “Fiat lux,” and these observations reaching the ears of Stephen, had the proverbial fate of all comparisons. At last, one day when Wolfgang was surrounded by a knot of his schoolfellows, who entreated him to expound a passage in Marcian Capella, Master Stephen, moved to jealous anger, forbade Wolfgang any longer to attend the lectures. This ungenerous command obliged him to continue his studies alone, but he seems to have lost little by being deprived of the benefit of an instructor whom he had already far outstripped in learning.

Henry and Poppo were both of them relatives of Otho, who in 956 caused the former to be raised to the archbishopric of Treves. Henry insisted on carrying his friend with him into his new diocese, and wished to load him with benefices and honours, all of which, however, Wolfgang refused. He would accept of no other employment than that of teaching youth, for which he knew his aptitude, and which he heartily loved; and, in the true spirit of a Christian teacher, he chose to discharge this office gratuitously, not as a means of private gain, but as a work for souls, even supporting many of his scholars out of his own purse. He cared as much for their spiritual as their intellectual progress, and set them the example of a holy and mortified life. The archbishop, in despair at not being able to promote him as he desired, at last got him to accept the office of dean to a certain college of canons. Wolfgang did not allow the dignity to be a nominal one, but obliged his canons to embrace community life, and to commence a course of sacred studies, assuring them that the sustenance of the inner man is as necessary as that of the body. Archbishop Henry dying in 964, Wolfgang, who had only remained at Treves out of affection to him, prepared to return into Swabia, which was his native country. But Bruno had his eye on him, and inviting him to Cologne, offered him every dignity, even the episcopate itself, if he would only remain in his duchy. Wolfgang, though he persisted in refusing to accept any promotion, felt himself obliged to pass some time at the prince-bishop’s court, and testified afterwards to the fact of his great sanctity. Finding that he could not move the resolution of his friend, Bruno at last reluctantly allowed him to return to Swabia, where he remained only just long enough formally to renounce his hereditary possessions, after which he withdrew to Einsidlen, and took the monastic habit under the English abbot Gregory.

At Einsidlen, as at Treves, he devoted himself to the office of teaching, and with the same success. It was as hopeless for him to attempt to conceal his talent, as to hide a light under a bushel. The world soon resounded with the fame of his school, and bishops travelled to Einsidlen to bargain for his possession. This time the friendly persecution was revived by St. Udalric of Augsburgh, who was himself sufficiently learned to understand the merits of the poor monk, who asked nothing of the world but a quiet hiding-place, and was never suffered to enjoy it for any length of time. Udalric was a scholar of St. Gall’s, and had given marks of sanctity even during his school days. A minute account of his manner of life when archbishop is given in the beautiful life written by his friend Gerard. Let it suffice to say, that besides singing the Divine Office in the cathedral with his canons, and daily celebrating two or three masses (a privilege then permitted to priests, as we learn from Walafrid Strabo), he every day recited the entire Psalter, the Office of Our Lady, together with that of the Holy Cross, and of All Saints; that he entertained a number of poor persons at his table, exercised hospitality on a right royal scale, administered strict justice to his people, and courageously defended them against the oppression of their feudal lords; finally, that he took particular care of the education of his clergy, and directed the studies of his cathedral school in person, none being better fitted to do so than himself. When he made the visitation of his diocese, he travelled in a wagon drawn by oxen, which he preferred to riding on horseback as it enabled him to recite the Psalms with his chaplains with less interruption. In this arrangement he certainly displayed a sound discretion, for in the ancient chronicles of these times, more than one story is preserved of the disasters which befell travelling monks and bishops, owing to their habit of reading on horseback.[133] His cathedral city of Augsburgh was repeatedly attacked by the Huns; and during one of their sieges, the holy bishop, sending the able-bodied men to the walls collected a number of infants in arms, and laying them on the floor of the cathedral, before the altar, prostrated himself in prayer, hoping that their tender cries might ascend as prayer before the Throne of God. His prayers were heard, and Augsburgh was delivered. Such was the prelate who at last succeeded in drawing Wolfgang out of his retirement, and compelling him to receive priestly ordination. And in 972 the emperor Otho II., at the united entreaties of his bishops, appointed him Bishop of Ratisbon, which see he governed for twenty-two years, never, however, laying aside his monastic habit. Henry, duke of Bavaria, thoroughly understood his merits, and knowing his love of the office of teaching, entreated him to take charge of his four children, St. Henry, afterwards emperor of Germany, St. Bruno, who succeeded Udalric in the diocese of Augsburgh, and the two princesses, Gisela and Brigit, who both died in the odour of sanctity. The singular blessing which attended his labours with these and other noble children committed to his care, gave rise to a proverb which deserves remembrance: “Find saints for masters, and we shall have saints for emperors.”

The emperors of the tenth century were certainly fortunate in this respect, and as I have just named Otho II., it will not be amiss to say a few words about him, and about the tutor to whom was committed the education of his son and successor. Otho II. had been brought up among the canons of Hildesheim, and had acquired from them a taste for letters, which was still further increased by his marriage with the Greek princess Theophania. At this time the court of Constantinople was the centre of all that survived of the old imperial civilisation and literature. Theophania was a woman of beauty and talent, and remarkable for her wit and eloquence, she soon infused into the Germans a rage for Greek literature, and gave such a brilliant character to the literary coteries of the imperial court, that Gerbert, who was then residing there, speaks in one of his letters of the “Socratic conversation” which he found among the learned men who thronged the company of the empress, which, he says, sufficed to console him amid all his troubles. In more peaceful times it is probable that a sovereign of Otho’s character would have effected a great restoration of letters, but the ten years of his reign were occupied with continual wars, which affixed to his name the appellation of “the Sanguinary,” and gave no scope for the exercise of his really great abilities. Before his death, which took place in 983, he obtained the election of his infant son, Otho III. as emperor, and left him to the guardianship of Theophania, who, during the minority of her son, governed the empire as regent.

The empress showed herself fully qualified for both offices. She had it greatly at heart to provide the young emperor with a learned education, and not unmindful of the proverb we have quoted above, was equally solicitous to secure for his tutor one who should merit the title of a saint. The priest whom she chose was a noble Saxon named Bernward; he was nephew to Folcmar, Bishop of Utrecht, who sent him when a child of seven years old to be educated in the episcopal school of Hildesheim, by the grave and holy master Tangmar. This good old man, who afterwards wrote his life, received him kindly, and to test his capacities, set him to learn by heart some of the select passages from Holy Scripture which were usually given to beginners. Little Bernward set himself to learn and meditate on them with wonderful ardour, and associating himself to the most studious of his companions, tried with their help thoroughly to master, not only the words, but the hidden sense of his lessons. As he was not yet judged old enough to join any of the classes, he sat apart by himself, but listened attentively to the lectures of the master, and the explanations which he gave, and was afterwards found reproducing the same in a grave and sententious manner for the edification of his younger schoolfellows. Surprised and delighted at these marks of precocious genius, Tangmar spared no pains in the cultivation of so promising a scholar, and had him constantly by his side. “Whenever I went abroad on the business of the monastery,” he says, “I used to take him with me, and I was always more and more struck by his excellent qualities. We often studied the whole day as we rode along on horseback, only more briefly than we were used to do in school; at one time exercising ourselves in poetry, and amusing ourselves by making verses, at another, arguing on philosophic questions. He excelled no less in the mechanical than in the liberal arts. He wrote a beautiful hand, was a good painter, and an equally good sculptor and worker in metals, and had a peculiar aptitude for all things appertaining to household and domestic affairs.” Under the care of so devoted a master, the boy Bernward, as the old man always called him, grew up to be a wise and learned man. He had that singular ardour for acquiring knowledge which seems one of the gifts poured out over ages in which its pursuit is hedged about with difficulties that must necessarily discourage a more ordinary amount of zeal. Bernward always read during meal times, and when unable to read himself, he got some one to read to him. His reputation determined Theophania to choose him as tutor to her son, who made great progress under his care, and was then sent to finish his education in the school of the famous Gerbert. Bernward meanwhile was appointed Bishop of Hildesheim, and in the midst of his episcopal functions, continued to cultivate literature and the fine arts. He made time by employing the day in business and the night in prayer. He founded _scriptoria_ in many monasteries, and collected a valuable library of sacred and profane authors. He tried to bring to greater perfection the arts of painting, mosaic work, and metal work, and made a valuable collection of all those curiosities of fine art which were brought to Otho’s court as presents from foreign princes. This collection Bernward used as a studio, for the benefit of a number of youths whom he brought up and instructed in these pursuits. It is not to be said what he did for his own cathedral, supplying it with jewelled missals, thuribles, and chalices, a huge golden corona which hung from the centre of the roof, and other like ornaments. The walls he painted with his own hands. The visitor to Hildesheim may still admire the rich bronze gates, sixteen feet in height, placed in the cathedral by its artist-bishop, the crucifix adorned with filagree-work and jewels, made by his own hands, and the old rose-tree growing on the cloister, which tradition affirms him to have planted.

His manner of life is minutely described by his old tutor Tangmar. After high mass every morning he gave audience to any who desired to speak to him, heard causes, and administered justice with great readiness and promptitude. Then his almoner waited on him, and accompanied him to the distribution of his daily alms, for every day a hundred poor persons were fed and relieved at his palace. After this he went the round of his workshops, overlooking each one’s work and directing its progress. At the hour of nine he dined with his clerks. There was no worldly pomp observable at his table, but a religious silence, all being required to listen to the reading, which was made aloud. The barbarians gave him plenty of trouble, for they had seized possession of both shores of the Elbe, and were therefore able to enter Saxony whenever they liked, and often appeared at the gates of Hildesheim. But Bernward raised troops for the defence of his diocese, and repeatedly forced them to retire; and at last built and garrisoned two strong fortresses which kept the pirates in check.