they are said to be succeeded the next by double the number. The churches and the monasteries were the chief objects of Danish enmity and spoliation, no doubt, as in France, from their wealth and defencelessness; they were the only places which offered rich and easy booty. Even the religious enthusiasm of the people was cowed, and almost extinct under these incessant persecutions. Its most popular and prevailing impulse, that which, in other countries, had seemed only to grow stronger in times of public calamity, the eagerness for a monastic life, had died away. When Alfred wished to found two monasteries, one for men at Athelney, one for females at Shaftesbury, he found not a single free or noble person disposed to be a monk or nun. He was obliged to assemble them from all orders and all parts -some from beyond the sea, especially from Francethere was one Pagan, Asser significantly says, "not the last." Alfred felt no security until he had compelled his enemies to Christianity; this was the one end and assurance of victory. The first fruits of his great triumph at Eddington was the baptism of Guthrun, with thirty of his chieftains. This was the only guarantee for their faith-a precarious guarantee. This alone changed them from fierce and roving marauders to settled inhabitants of the land. d A.D. 879. Alfred is no less memorable as preserving the close connexion between Christianity and civilisation. It is difficult to understand how, after the long and total devastation of the kingdom by the Danes, Alfred could Asser, p. 61. "Nimirum, quia per multa retroacta annorum curricula monasticæ vitæ desiderium ab illâ totâ gente, necnon et a multis aliis gentibus funditus interierat." Asser, erect the buildings, pile up the castles, build the fleets, endow the churches and monasteries, if not schools, and send out the embassies, which might seem to demand more flourishing finances. He divided, it is said, his whole revenue into two parts; one devoted to secular, the other to religious purposes. The latter was subdivided into four; one assigned to the poor, one to his monasteries of Athelney and Shaftesbury, one to the school which he had founded for his nobles, one for the monasteries of the rest of the kingdom, with occasional gifts to foreign religious houses. Up to twelve years of age, Alfred, the favourite of his parents, and the best hunter in the Court, was ignorant of letters. His mother offered a richly-embellished volume of Saxon poetry to that one of her children who would learn to read it. Alfred, by divine inspiration (writes his biographer), and attracted by the beauty of the capital letters, immediately set about the task and won the prize. The love of letters was thus stamped upon his heart: he constantly carried in his bosom a book of psalms and prayers, which he read himself-a rare accomplishment, almost unrivalled in the whole kingdom of the West Saxons. His youthful prize may have suggested, or urged on him more strongly, the great work of Alfred, his powerful encouragement of the native Saxon literature, the identification of Christianity with the manners, language, poetry, not of a half Roman, but purely Teutonic race. Alfred delighted in • Asser relates that when the king we suppose that the Danes having gave him the two monasteries of Amesbury and Banwell, he presented him with a silken pallium of great value, and as much incense as a strong man could carry! This must have been a most costly gift!-P. 50. Can plundered all the religious houses, there was great store of this, to them, useless commodity among the booty which Alfred recovered and could not restore to its lawful owners? all the old Saxon poems; he collected and caused to be recited Saxon books; and so, instead of being the religion of a learned priesthood, the Anglo-Saxon Christianity was familiarised and endeared to the people: it was a popular national faith. The knowledge of Latin, Alfred thought, would rather be promoted than discouraged by the translation of books into the vulgar tongue. It was a work of love in which he laboured himself, not only from delight, but from want of assistants. In the whole land south of the Trent, there were few priests who could translate Latin into English ;↑ south of the Thames, at his accession, not one. What is more extraordinary, it was a religion which went back to the pure and primal sources of the faith-the sacred Scriptures. The poetry, the tradition of which Alfred continued from the monk Cadmon, was not a poetry exclusively of legend, of the lives and wonders of the Saints, but of the Sacred History thrown into the language and metre of Saxon poetry. It had its popular saints with their metrical lives; but its greatest poets had still reverted to the higher source of inspiration. Alfred, indeed, had not the high poetic gift of the older Cadmon. His works are those of the laborious man of learning, communicating the traditionary treasures of knowledge, which remained from the older civilisation, to his Saxon subjects. King Alfred gave to Saxon England the Ecclesiastical History of Bede; the epitome of Augustine's great work by Orosius. He gave them the Consolation of Boëthius, and the Pastoral of St. Gregory. He summoned from all quarters men of g f Præfatio ad Greg. Past., in Wise's volume from the Exeter Code, has a Alfred, p. 87. long poetical life of St. Guthlak, another of St. Juliana. See, on the poetry of Cadmon, above. Mr. Thorpe, in his curious learning. Asser came from St. David's, John of Saxony from the Abbey of Corbey; Archbishop Hincmar of Rheims sent Grimbald, Provost of St. Omer. The University of Oxford boasts, but on very doubtful authority, to owe her foundation to Alfred the Great." Compare Lingard, i. p. 179. CHAPTER XI. The Hungarians. Degradation of the Papacy. In the tenth century the few reflecting minds might not without reason apprehend the approaching Tenth cendissolution of the world. A vast anarchy tury. seemed to spread over Western Christendom. It is perhaps the darkest period in the history of every country in Europe. The Pagan Magyars, more terrible even than the Islamite Saracens, and the Pagan The HunNorthmen, now burst upon Europe. The garians. Arabs, who had swarmed from their deserts, wild marauders, had long become disciplined armies : Islam had become a mighty empire. The Caliphate maintained the show at least of ascendancy over the Sultaries of Africa and of Spain. Arabic was the language of whole regions, almost of continents. The Northmen, fierce pirates as they were, were of origin kindred to the Teutonic conquerors of France. Both Saracens and Northmen acknowledged some rude laws of war. But the Magyars, or Hungarians, seemed as hordes of savages or of wild beasts let loose upon mankind. They burst unexpectedly upon Christendom in swarms of which the source seemed unknown and inexhaustible. Indiscriminate massacre seemed their only war law; they were bound by no treaties, respected no boundaries. Civilisation, Christianity, withered before * Gibbon, ch. lv. vol. x. pp. 193-209. |