THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Gretchen Ellis 
 

ST. ALDHELM: 
 
 ---"'^ 
 HIS LIFE AND TIMES 
 
 Butuue bdxvcub in t^t 
 
 tai^cbvai tht4 of (mt9t, 
 
 Btnt, 1902. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Right Rev. G. F. BROWNE, D.D., D.C.L., F.S.A., 
 
 BISHOP OF BRISTOL, 
 
 FORMERLY DISNEV PROFESSOR OF ART AND ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, 
 
 northumberland avenue, w.c ; 4.^, queen victoria street, e.c 
 
 Brighton: 129, North Street. 
 
 1903 
 
OXFORD 
 
 HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 GIFT 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Connection of the See of Bristol with St. Aldhelm. 
 Composite character of the See. Consequent powers 
 of the Bishop. Erection of Bristol into a City. 
 Period covered by the lectures. Ecclesiastical con- 
 dition of England in Aldhelm's early time. Sources 
 of information : William of Malmesbury, Faritius, 
 the Hand hoc. William's account of the Vale of 
 Gloucester, and of Bristol. The Anglo-Saxon 
 Chronicle 7 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Malmesbury : its position and early history. Le- 
 land's account. The West-Saxon conquest. Sug- 
 gested antecedents of Maildubh. Augustine's visit 
 to the neighbourhood. Aldhelm's contemporaries. 
 Connection with Ireland. English Art, Literature, 
 and Architecture in Aldhelm's time. Suggested 
 origin of Anglian Art 38 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 William of Malmesbury's scheme for his work. 
 Aldhelm's race ; spelling and meaning of his name ; 
 parentage ; education. Origin of the name Malmes- 
 bury. The Beneaictine Rule. Aldhelm's study at 
 Canterbury ; learning ; skill in versification. Recog- 
 nized as a master of style ; the Irish Artwil and 
 Cellanus. His personal influence with friends and 
 pupils. Letter to the clergy of Wilfrith, and to 
 Ethelwald a student 67 
 
 369 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The desire to visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. 
 Paul. The Schola Saxonum in Rome, and the English 
 College there. The origin of the ecclesiastical regard 
 for Rome. Aldhelm's style. His knowledge. The 
 monasteries which he built. Great gifts to Ald- 
 helm's monastery. The churches which he built . 95 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Aldhelm's manner of life. His visit to Rome. 
 Delay at Wareham. Miracles at the church which 
 he built. The site of the church. Miracles at Rome : 
 the chasuble, the speaking infant. The marble altar. 
 Treasures of Christian Art lost by Wessex . .118 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Aldhelm's election and consecration as bishop. 
 His miracle of the book. His concessions to his 
 monasteries. His hard work in his diocese. His 
 death and burial. The crosses erected at the places 
 where his body rested. Some account of Saxon 
 sculptured stones still remaining in those parts . 138 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Abbey of Malmesbury two hundred and fifty 
 years after Aldhelm. Relics of the Saint. The 
 silver-gilt shrine. The miracles shown on the 
 panels of the shrine. Other gold and silver work in 
 Wessex. Organs, bells, and other gifts from Bun- 
 stan. ^The Danes and the shrine. Later history of 
 the shrine. The Abbats to William's time. Some 
 lesser miracles . 181 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Athelstan and Malmesbury. Rearrangement of 
 the dioceses of Wessex from Aldhelm's time to the 
 present, The Abbey Church as it now exists . . 215 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Three of Aldhelm's Sacred Hymns : On the Basilica 
 built by Bugge, the daughter of a King of England ; 
 On the Altars dedicated to the Blessed Mary and the 
 Twelve Apostles ; On entering the Church of St. Peter 
 and St. Paul 235 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Letter from an Irishman and to Eahfrid. John the 
 Scot. Aldfrith. Concourse of English students to 
 Ireland. Connection between England and Ire- 
 land. Origin of the English Coronation Sei*vice . 259 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Letter to Acircius. The Enigmas. In Praise 
 
 of Virgins. Letter to Osgith 301 
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 The Letter to the Britons 327 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. Extracts from the Charter of the Bishopric of 
 
 Bristol as granted by Henry VIII . . .347 
 The Pope's Ratification of the Bishopric . . 353 
 
 B. Notes on Wine-growing in England . . . 356 
 
 C. King Athelstan's Gift 360 
 
 King Athelstan's Feast Day 361 
 
 INDEX 363 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 3- 
 
 4. 
 5, 
 7. 
 8. 
 
 9- 
 10. 
 II. 
 12. 
 
 13- 
 14. 
 
 15- 
 16. 
 
 17. 
 18. 
 19. 
 20. 
 21. 
 22. 
 
 Abbey Church, Malmesbury, in 1903 . i 
 Saxon Church at Bradford-011-Avon . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 'frontispiece 
 . 112 
 
 Saxon Wall at Corfe Castle . 
 
 . 128 
 
 Sculptured stone at Ramsbury 
 ,, Rowberrow . 
 
 . 157 
 . 158 
 
 6. , 
 
 ,, West Camel . 
 
 . 158 
 
 } 
 
 ,, Doulton . 
 
 . 160 
 
 > 
 
 ,, Gloucester 
 
 . 160 
 
 J 
 
 ,, Bradford 
 
 . 170 
 
 J 
 > 
 
 ,, Bath . 
 Colerne . 
 
 . 172 
 
 . 172 
 
 J 
 
 ,, Littleton Drew 
 
 . 173 
 
 7 
 
 Bradford 
 
 . 178 
 
 > 
 
 , Frome . . . . 
 
 . 180 
 
 Altar of Wolvinius .... 
 
 . 184 
 
 Stole of Frithestan .... 
 
 . 186 
 
 }j V .... 
 Cross of Drahmal 
 
 . 188 
 . 196 
 
 Abbey Church, Malmesbury, in 1900 . 
 
 . 230 
 
 
 ,, interior . 
 
 . 232 
 234 
 
 Aldhelm, Hildelith, and the nuns of Barking . 324 
 
ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Connection of the See of Bristol with St. Aldhelm. 
 Composite character of the See. Consequent powers of 
 the Bishop. Erection of Bristol into a City. Period 
 covered by the lectures. Ecclesiastical condition of 
 England in Aldhelm's early time. Sources of informa- 
 tion : William of Malmesbury, Faritius, the Handboc. 
 William's account of the Vale of Gloucester, and of 
 Bristol. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 
 
 During the Ryg years of my residence at 
 St. Paul's, we had in each year two courses 
 of lectures on English Church History, one 
 course on some mediaeval period, and one on 
 the earliest periods of the Church in these 
 islands. The lectures on mediaeval periods 
 were delivered by Dr. Creighton, Dr. Arthur 
 Mason, and others ; the five courses on our 
 earliest Church History fell to my lot. They 
 covered (i) the history of the Christian Church 
 in these islands before the coming of St. 
 Augustine, that is, the history of the British 
 and Scotic Churches, Scotic meaning Irish, 
 
ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 whether in Ireland, Scotland, or Britain ; (2) 
 the history of St. Augustine and his own 
 companions ; (3) the conversion of the Hep- 
 tarchy; (4) some general lessons from our 
 early Church History ; and (5) the lives of 
 Theodore of Canterbury and Wilfrith of York. 
 These five courses have since been published 
 in small volumes by the Society for Promo- 
 ting Christian Knowledge, two of them ^ with 
 illustrations of some of the monuments of 
 those ancient times which have come down 
 to us. 
 
 In all of those lectures the lecturer spoke 
 as a Northumbrian. He took Northumbria 
 to be at once the most important and the 
 most interesting of all the kingdoms of the 
 Heptarchy ; its history the most fascinating 
 and the most instructive ; its rulers the most 
 national and the most independent ; its first 
 ecclesiastical traveller and its first eccle- 
 siastical historian, Benedict Biscop and Bede, 
 beyond compare with any corresponding per- 
 sonages of any of the other kingdoms. 
 
 If these courses of lectures had not been 
 interrupted, the lecturer had proposed to turn 
 his attention to the quarter opposite to the 
 north-east of England, that is, the south- 
 
 ^ The Conversion of the Heptarchy, and Theodore and Wilfrith. 
 
west. Here two names stood out. The one 
 was that of the native Englishman who is 
 said to have been the first Englishman to 
 teach Latin in England, and who says of 
 himself that he was the first Englishman to 
 study the metres of Latin poetry^ I mean of 
 course Aldhelm, Abbat of Malmesbury and 
 Bishop of Sherborne. The other was that of 
 the great Englishman who went from Credi- 
 ton while it was still a British place, and 
 Christianized practically all Germany, meet- 
 ing at last the fate to which no missionarj^ 
 to the Angles or Saxons or Jutes of this island 
 ever was subjected so far as we know ; I mean 
 the martyr Archbishop of Mentz, the Devon- 
 shire Winfrid, the martyr Boniface. A course 
 of lectures could well be woven round the 
 story of each of these two marked men. Then 
 a return to the history of North umbria would 
 have produced a course of lectures on the 
 history of a man in some ways more marked 
 than any of the others, the learned Alcuin, 
 who was as a boy a pupil at my school, the 
 Cathedral School of York, under the brother 
 of the reigning king who was then its head 
 master, an office to which Alcuin himself suc- 
 ceeded after it had been held for a time by 
 another relative of the king. Beyond that 
 
lO ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 period, say from 750 to 800, I should not 
 have cared to go. A period of terrible gloom 
 had set in. As in our earliest times the 
 Church in England was bright and prosperous 
 beyond the experience of any other nation; 
 so in the times which followed, disasters scarce 
 paralleled elsewhere came upon us. It is 
 a question whether even the Saracens in lands 
 further south wrought proportionally a deeper 
 agony than the Danes wrought here. 
 
 It is to me an instructive coincidence, that 
 while Aldhelm was to have been my next 
 subject at St. Paul's, I find myself now in 
 charge of those parts of Wiltshire in which 
 by far the largest part of his life was spent. 
 The Bishop of Bristol has charge of the actual 
 place in which Aldhelm studied as a boy, 
 taught as a man, ruled as an abbat, and lived 
 through the whole of his long life except for 
 four or five years ; where now the great 
 Norman Abbey Church of Malmesbury still 
 stands, a charge as delightful in itself, and 
 in its associations, as it is auxious by reason 
 of the state of the fabric. It is a further 
 coincidence that until the year 1836 the See 
 of Bristol, though up to that date it did not 
 include Malmesbury, yet did include, and had 
 for 300 years included, the whole County of 
 
WESSEX AND MERCIA. II 
 
 Dorset, with Aldhelm's own Abbey of Sher- 
 borne, eventually his bishop's seat and title, 
 his home for the last four years of his life. 
 
 While Aldhelm thus spent the whole of his 
 life in the kingdom of Wessex, excepting a 
 sojourn at Canterbury and a visit to Rome, 
 and Wessex therefore is the geographical area 
 of our subject, we cannot altogether neglect 
 Mercia. The boundaries of the two kingdoms 
 were not very certain at any early time, and 
 they appear to have varied not inconsider- 
 ably. The usual boundary line passed very 
 near Malmesbury ; at the present day Glou- 
 cestershire comes within three miles of that 
 Wiltshire town, on the Shipton Moyne road. 
 We shall see at a later stage how the danger 
 of this proximity to another kingdom, often 
 actively hostile, was guarded against by an 
 agreement between the two nations on the 
 wise suggestion of Aldhelm. It may be added 
 that although Malmesbury was always, so far 
 as we know, in Wessex, after its late conquest 
 from the Britons by the West Saxons, yet 
 the earliest recorded grants to Aldhelm's 
 monastery are grants not from kings of 
 Wessex but from princes and kings of Mercia. 
 As telling in the opposite direction, it may 
 be farther added that the Castle of Bever- 
 
12 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 stone in Gloucestershire, near Malmesbury, 
 appears to have been a residence of Godwin 
 as Earl of Wessex. We shall see, later on, 
 how directly Godwin and Harold intervened 
 in the affairs of the Abbey of Malmesbury in 
 their time. 
 
 The variation of boundary line between , 
 Wessex and Mercia has been renewed in the 
 present generation by the County Councils. 
 They have taken out of Wessex and placed in 
 Mercia the four parishes of Kemble, Poole 
 Keynes, Somerford Keynes, and Sharncote, and 
 have thus increased the already abnormal dis- 
 proportion in number of benefices between the 
 Sees of Gloucester and Bristol. 
 
 The mention of Mercia may be supple- 
 mented by the fact that the See of Bristol 
 includes parts of Mercia as well as parts of 
 Wessex, and that one of the Gloucestershire 
 parishes of the See, the prettily named Pul- 
 chra Ecclesia, Pucklechurch, where was a 
 palace of the Anglo-Saxon kings in the great 
 hall of which King Eadmund was murdered 
 in 946, has to this day St. Aldhelm^s well at 
 the royal Barton. 
 
 The composite character of the See of 
 Bristol is carried even further than this. It 
 includes ninety thousand persons on theSomer- 
 
vi 
 
 BEISTOL A COMPOSITE SEE. 13 
 
 setshire side of the Avon. Moreover, Bristol 
 is itself a county. Thus the See is made up 
 of the County of the City of Bristol, and 
 portions of the Counties of Gloucester, Somer- 
 set, and Wilts. It will readily be understood 
 that a bishop of a newly -revived see, who 
 hus no Lord Lieutenant in conjunction with 
 whom he can call a county meeting, and ,has 
 portions of three counties and of two king- 
 doms under his charge, some of these por- 
 tions still actively conscious of recent changes, 
 has some difficulty in fostering a diocesan 
 feeling. 
 
 The composite character of the See of 
 Bristol has one important result of far-reach- 
 ing character. When Henry VIII was creating 
 the see a creation specially continued in 
 Queen Mary's time by the Pope in an ex post 
 facto document, Mary and the consecrators 
 of Holywell not having waited for any papal 
 ratification the king gave by charter to the 
 Bishops of Bristol all the powers possessed 
 by the bishops of the dioceses from which the 
 several portions were taken. There is an 
 idea in some quarters that the bishops of 
 new foundations have less power in their 
 cathedral churches than bishops of old foun- 
 dations have ; and there appears to be an 
 
14 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 idea that bishops of Henry VIH's founda- 
 tions have less power than any. The opposite 
 of this is the actual fact, so far as Bristol is 
 concerned. By the charter of 154:^, the 
 cathedral church consists of the Bishop, 
 Dean, and six [now four] Prebendaries. It 
 is declared to be the cathedral church and 
 episcopal seat of the Bishop. The Bishop 
 has all jurisdiction, power, and authority, 
 ordinarial and episcopal, within the cathe- 
 dral church and the diocese, as amply as the 
 Bishops of Sarum, Bath and Wells, Worcester, 
 Gloucester, the four sees from which portions 
 were taken, and as any English bishop can 
 have. The Dean and Prebendaries are the 
 Chapter. They are the Chapter of the 
 Bishopric, annexed, incorporated, and united 
 to the Bishop in the same form and manner 
 as the Dean and Chapter of Sarum to the 
 Bishop [in mediaeval times]. Their powers 
 are except and save in all ways the said 
 episcopal jurisdiction and authority over the 
 cathedral church and the Dean and Chapter. 
 The extracts from the Latin charter will be 
 found in Appendix A. 
 
 The relation of the Statutes of the Cathedral 
 Church to the Charter has been misunderstood, 
 from the prevailing ignorance of the position 
 
THE BISHOPS POWERS. 1 5 
 
 of a Visitor. The Founder of a Corporation 
 is the Visitor of the Corporation. The right 
 descends to his heir for the time being. If 
 such heir cannot be found, the Crown is the 
 Visitor, acting through the Lord Chancellor, 
 at least in the case of Colleges in the Uni- 
 versities, which are " private eleemosynary- 
 lay foundations." The Founder can assign 
 his Visitatorial rights, and Henry VIII did so 
 in the case of Bristol Cathedral. He gave, as 
 Founder, its Statutes, two years after the 
 Charter, and at the end of the Statutes he 
 declared the Bishop to be always the Visitor 
 to see that they were carried out. This is in 
 addition to the wide powers over the Cathedral 
 Church which the Charter gives. It has been 
 ignorantly supposed that the Statutes define 
 the powers of the Bishop in his own church. 
 It is the Charter and the ancient custom of 
 the land that does that. 
 
 The difficulty of creating a diocesan feeling 
 is rendered greater by the long isolation of 
 Bristol itself from the neighbouring counties. 
 In the reign of Edward I the Town of Bristol 
 complained to the king that it was pressed 
 for levies both by the Sheriff of the County 
 of Gloucester and by the Sheriff of the County 
 of Somerset, in which two counties it lay : it 
 
l6 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 petitioned to be made a County^ independent 
 of these two. The petition was granted ; it 
 became the County of the Town of Bristol ; 
 and the Crown appointed its Sheriffs as in 
 the case of other counties. In the time of 
 Edward III the Town found this method of 
 appointment of Sheriff from among the towns- 
 folk cumbersome, and it obtained from the 
 Crown the power to elect its own Sheriff. 
 A clause in the charter for the Bishopric 
 raised the Town into a City, and the County 
 of the Town into the " County of the City 
 of Bristol." It is only by the Bishop's 
 Charter that Bristol became and is a City. 
 It is curious to note in these modern times 
 the demarcation of feeling which has come 
 from this geographical and organic isolation ; 
 and to go centuries further back than the 
 time of Edward I, and note the marks which 
 still remain of the old division between the 
 kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex, and be- 
 tween the races of the Angles and the West 
 Saxons. Homogeneity is the very last charac- 
 teristic to be attributed to the revived See of 
 Bristol. Generations of patient work and 
 earnest workers will be needed before such 
 attribution can be more than a dream of 
 happy times to come, 
 
17 
 
 As to the period which these lectures will 
 cover, it is sufficient here to say that Aid- 
 helm died in the year 709, and as he is de- 
 scribed by William of Malmesbury as at least 
 a septuagenarian, we may safely place his 
 birth as early as 639. Inasmuch as the King 
 of Wessex, to whom Aldhelm was related, had 
 been a pagan until his baptism in 634, when 
 Christianity was for the first time preached 
 to the West Saxons, it is certain that Aid- 
 helm's parents were pagans at least down to 
 a very few years before his birth. As regards 
 the other of the two kingdoms with which 
 we are to be concerned, Aldhelm was at least 
 twelve years old when the teaching of Chris- 
 tianity was first admitted into the kingdom 
 of Mercia, and at least sixteen when the first 
 Christian king began to reign there. In the 
 first twelve or sixteen years of Aldhelm's 
 life, Malmesbury was still in the hands of the 
 old inhabitants, being the northern fortress of 
 the great kingdom of the Damnonian Britons. 
 The forest of S el wood, which ran up to Crick- 
 lade, and formed for so long a time an impene- 
 trable barrier to the advance westward of the 
 West Saxons, was not pierced by them till they 
 won the battles of Bradford and Pen ^111652 
 * ^t Peonnum. The scene of Eadmund's battle in 
 B 
 
 Vl^ 
 
l8 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 and 658. It was only then that Malmesbur^^, 
 a stronghold alike of British Christianity and 
 British Sovereignty, fell into the hands of the 
 West Saxons, who fortunately had by that 
 time become Christians and did not break the 
 continuity of Christian worship there. 
 
 We shall not break off abruptly with the 
 year of Aldhelm's death. Malmesbury is a 
 sacred charge to the diocese, and we must see 
 something more of its history than such a 
 limit would allow. 
 
 It is necessary for us to sketch concisely 
 the ecclesiastical condition of England at the 
 time when Aldhelm came to maturity. 
 
 When Archbishop Theodore reached England 
 at the end of May in the year 669, at which 
 time Aldhelm was probably nearly thirty 
 years old, he found that the Italian Mission 
 of seventy years before had left but small 
 results and almost no machinery. He had 
 almost a tabula rasa to work upon, and 
 that, no doubt, was a main element in his 
 success. Before his arrival, that is^ between 
 597 and 669, twenty-eight bishops and arch- 
 bishops had been consecrated to sees in the 
 
 1016 is iEfc Peonnan wid Gillingaham. Probably the 
 remarkably strong position of Penselwood is intended in 
 both cases* 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL CONDITION OF ENGLAND. I9 
 
 territories occupied by the several sections 
 of the English race. Of these twenty-eight, 
 only twelve had been consecrated by bishops 
 connected with the Eoman Mission, namely, 
 three to Canterbury, of whom one ^ was con- 
 secrated to that see before it was vacant, and 
 therefore was of very doubtful position, and 
 another ^ was consecrated by a bishop without 
 a pall ; four to Rochester ; one to London, 
 which was East Saxon, not Mercian, at the 
 time ; three to Dunwich ; and one to York. 
 Not one of these, you will see, was conse- 
 crated to any part of the territory included 
 in the diocese of Bristol ; no Mercian bishop 
 and no West Saxon bishop derived consecra- 
 tion from Augustine. Nine of the remaining 
 sixteen consecrations of the twenty-eight 
 before Theodore's arrival were these : two to 
 Canterbury, namely, Augustine by a Galilean 
 prelate, Vergilius of Aries, and Theodore by 
 Pope Vitalian ; two to York, by French and 
 British bishops ; four to Lindisfarne, three 
 by Finan and one by Irish bishops ; one to 
 London by Finan. Lastly, we have seven 
 
 Laurentius, consecrated to the Archbishopric by 
 Augustine himself. 
 
 ^ Honorius, consecrated by Paulinus, who had no pall 
 at the time. Honorius in turn consecrated without a pall. 
 B 2, 
 
20 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 consecrations in which we are territorially 
 interested : two to Dorchester, the Dorchester 
 near Oxford, the original seat of the Wessex 
 bishopric, one of the two by Asterius of Milan 
 and the other by French bishops ; one to 
 Winchester, which had then become the seat 
 of the Wessex bishopric, by French bishops ; 
 and four to Mercia, three by Finan and one 
 by Irish bishops. Not one of these had any 
 connection with the Italian Mission. 
 
 That is a sufficiently striking criticism of 
 the success of the Italian Mission of Augus- 
 tine. But it is more remarkable still that in 
 669, seventy-two years after the arrival of 
 Augustine, Theodore found in all the English 
 territories only three bishops with sees. East 
 Saxon, East Anglian, and Northumbrian. Of 
 these, the only one who had the Canterbury 
 consecration was dying, Boniface of East 
 Anglia. The East Saxon bishop was of French 
 consecration, the Northumbrian of French and 
 British. There was no bishop of Mercia, no 
 bishop of Wessex. "Almost dead" is the 
 verdict which the facts write across the page 
 on which the history and results of the Italian 
 Mission are recorded. Aldhelm was an im- 
 portant factor in the new and larger life of 
 this Church. 
 
EARLIEST CHRISTIANITY OF WESSEX. 21 
 
 A summary of a different character will 
 help us to set Aldhelm with some accuracy 
 among his historical surroundings, and will 
 enable us better to appreciate the earliness of 
 the period in which our thoughts are to dwell. 
 The first Christian King of Wessex, Cynegils, 
 was taught, catechized and baptized, by 
 Birinus, about 634, some five years before 
 Aldhelm's birth. Birinus' s see was placed at 
 Dorchester, near the modern Oxford, and his 
 church was dedicated to St. Peter and St. 
 Paul. On the death of Cynegils, about 64:^-3, 
 his son Cenwalch restored paganism when 
 Aldhelm was a little child of four. The 
 pagan Penda of Mercia expelled him. He 
 was converted by the King of East AngHa, 
 and restored. He built a church at Win- 
 chester about 648, dedicated to St. Peter and 
 St. Paul. Birinus died in 650, when Aldhelm 
 was eleven years of age. A prelate from 
 L-eland succeeded, Agilbert. He left in 
 663-4, and for eight years or so, while 
 Aldhelm grew from twenty-four to thirty- 
 two years of age, there was no bishop in 
 Wessex. Then Agilbert' s nephew^ Leutherius, 
 was sent over and became bishop. His seat 
 was still at Dorchester, and he ruled there 
 from 671 to 676. It was he who raised 
 
22 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Malmesbury to the dignity of an Abbey, and 
 made Aldhelm the first Abbat. 
 
 It is necessary to say something here on 
 the sources of our information about Aldhelm 
 himself and his immediate concerns. 
 
 From a description of St. Aldhelm's shrine 
 as completed by King Ethelwulf, the father 
 of Alfred, William of Malmesbury argued in 
 1 1 25 that there must have been at Malmes- 
 bury in Ethelwulf 's time a record of the chief 
 events of Aldhelm's life, which had perished 
 in the ravages by the Danes. Of materials 
 for his life existing in William's own time, 
 William remarks that the account of him 
 given by Bede about 730 is very meagre, 
 while the life written by Faritius is not trust- 
 worthy. One of these criticisms, that on Bede, 
 who was about forty years younger than Ald- 
 helm, is just ; as regards Faritius, William 
 was not an unbiassed critic. We shall see 
 shortly what it is that Bede tells us. Faritius 
 wrote only a few years before William of 
 Malmesbury, and we have his life of Aldhelm. 
 Faritius was originally a physician of Lom- 
 bard extraction, at Aretino in Tuscany. He 
 came to England about the year 1 100, became 
 a monk at Malmesbury, and thence went to 
 Abingdon as Abbat, where he greatly im- 
 
SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 23 
 
 proved the position of that important monas- 
 tery. William of Malmesbury, who is always 
 human and always tries to be fair, thinks it 
 may be as well that, though he criticizes 
 Faritius, he should record in his pages some 
 Latin verses in praise of the work which 
 he accomplished at Abingdon, written by 
 William's fellow-monk Peter. If anyone will 
 honour them by reading them, he remarks in 
 curiously modern phi'ase, he will see, William 
 thinks, the fine skill of an excellent versifier. 
 For the most part the verses scarcely deserve 
 that praise, though they are better than many 
 of Aldhelm's own composition ; but in one 
 place, where Peter breaks out into dactylic 
 rhyming lines, there is a striking ring about 
 his verse 
 
 Addita praedia, pallia regia, munera, vestes, 
 Vascula ditia, picta tapetia, sunt mihi testes. 
 Fulgurat aurea per laquearia pompa decoris, 
 Crusta metallica, gemmea fabrica, plena stuporis. 
 
 This Faritius, because he had been a monk at 
 Malmesbury, wrote a life of Aldhelm. William, 
 as has been said, is critical about this life. 
 Faritius, he remarks, was a foreigner, and 
 therefore at a disadvantage for such work ; 
 he relied on himself for his facts an awk- 
 ward characteristic in a writer of history; 
 
24 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 he advanced no evidences for his statements. 
 William determined to take a very different 
 course in writing his own life of Aldhelm ; he 
 would give his evidence for each statement. 
 But, curiously enough, he does not carry out 
 his resolve by descending to particulars in his 
 suggestions that Faritius wrote on insufficient 
 evidence. Indeed his only correction of 
 Faritius is in connection with the derivation 
 of Aldhelm's name, which Faritius took to 
 mean Aid almfius, kindly old man, whereas 
 Aldhelm himself, in a letter to a pupil, said 
 that it was Aid helm^ the old helmet. And 
 after all that does not come to much, and 
 there was something to be said for it. The 
 life by Faritius covers thirty-three octavo 
 pages, that by William, a hundred and ten. 
 A short life published by Capgrave is a mere 
 summary of the more interesting events of the 
 life, compressed into four octavo pages. The 
 author in this short space contrives to contra- 
 dict a theory of mine with regard to the white 
 marble altar which, as we shall see, Aldhelm 
 brought from Italy, by inserting a statement 
 that he brought it from Rome ; as, I believe, 
 he brought it from Lombardy. 
 
 Faritius on his part was not conscious of 
 any want of proper equipment for his task. 
 
SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 25 
 
 He tells us that he had examiifed carefully 
 all the documents available, some in Latin, 
 some in the barbarous tongue. Such are the 
 terms in which he is pleased to describe the 
 early form of our language. Of the latter 
 documents some were exceedingly ancient, 
 and he had them read to him by an inter- 
 preter. He collected the facts handed down 
 by oral tradition from the time when a parch- 
 ment roll was in existence which recorded the 
 details of Aldhelm's life, a roll destroyed, he 
 believed, by the Danes. Moreover, shortly 
 after Aldhelm's death, the shrine containing 
 his bones had been adorned with silver plates 
 showing some of his principal deeds, and the 
 tradition of this record was clear ; the shrine 
 had been greatly neglected and had almost 
 perished, but a certain Praesul had caused it 
 to be restored, and the renewed record was 
 there still to be seen. He relied for confirma- 
 tion of the traditions upon the fact that St. 
 Dunstan and other bishops, who lived nearer 
 Aldhelm's time, and had full means of know- 
 ing, accepted them and handed them on. 
 
 Notwithstanding all this, it is better to use 
 the life by Faritius as a very interesting 
 record, but not so carefully written as 
 William's account is. The general verdict 
 
26 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 appears to be that we can pass Faritius by, 
 and derive all that is really to be known 
 of Aldhelm from William of Malmesbury. 
 Among other records William had access to 
 King Alfred's Manual, or Handboc, for he 
 calls it by both names, the precious collection 
 of passages and prayers and facts which the 
 great king made for his own use ; now lost, 
 but surely some time or other to be found in 
 
 ' some unsuspected place. To this manuscript 
 William owed, as we shall see, the most 
 picturesque fact in Aldhelm's life, and some 
 of the highest praise of his genius. 
 
 This man William was the first systematic 
 writer of English history, secular or eccle- 
 siastical, after Bede. He was the father of 
 Modern English History. To his two great 
 books, the Gesta Regum and the Gesta Ponti- 
 
 Jicum, and his supplementary book which he 
 named Modern History, we owe at least very 
 much of our knowledge of the deeds of Kings 
 and Prelates, and of many interesting persons 
 who were neither. He was probably born 
 about the year 1090. He finished his Modern 
 History with the year 1 14:2, but he lived long 
 enough to make a large number of detailed 
 alterations. Probably the years 11 20-1 145 
 cover the fruitful period of his life as a writer. 
 
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. 27 
 
 He was a monk in the monastery of Malmes- 
 bury ; became precentor and librarian ; and 
 is said to have refused the great office of 
 Abbat. He tells us that he had always been 
 devoted to study ; he had visited many of 
 the most celebrated monasteries, and seen 
 their libraries ; he had collected many books. 
 He was a voracious reader, and he digested 
 all that he devoured. Every kind of subject 
 that Jie could read about he studied. His 
 writings are full of references to classical and 
 post-classical authors, references made in the 
 most simple and natural manner. He was 
 complete master of his own knowledge, and 
 never let himself be run away with by it. 
 This is very unusual praise for a mediaeval 
 writer, however early. He endeavoured to 
 be scrupulously fair in writing of his own 
 very difficult times. We have nothing to do 
 with those times in this course of lectures, 
 but it will tend to give us confidence in his 
 guidance through the times of Aldhelm if we 
 take note of what he said of his own times 
 and his own purpose. " England," he says, 
 in speaking of the gloomy prophetic utterance 
 of Edward the Confessor on his death-bed, 
 " England is become the residence of foreigners 
 and the property of strangers : at the present 
 
28 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 time there is no English man who is either 
 earl, bishop, or abbat ; strangers all, they prey 
 upon the riches and vitals of England : nor 
 is there any hope of a termination to this 
 misery." Then, a page or two later, he pro- 
 ceeds to deal with William I. "Normans," 
 he says, " have praised him to excess : English 
 have loaded him with undeserved reproach. 
 The blood of both peoples runs in my veins, 
 therefore I shall steer a middle course. Where 
 I am certified of his good deeds, I shall openly 
 proclaim them. His bad conduct I shall touch 
 upon, but lightly and sparingly, yet not so 
 as to conceal it." He then proceeds to pass 
 a carefully balanced judgment on the two 
 sons of the Conqueror who reigned and died 
 in his time. He is clearly a man whom we 
 can trust to be fair according to his lights. 
 His own monastery did not honour his 
 memory as he deserved. When Leland visited 
 Malmesbury some four hundred years after 
 his death, the monks could not show him 
 William's tomb, and only two of them re- 
 membered having heard his name. 
 
 Most fortunately we have his own manu- 
 script of the History of the Prelates, of which 
 the life of Aldhelm forms one complete book, 
 much the longest of the ^yq books except the 
 
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. 29 
 
 first. The manuscript is in the library of 
 Magdalen College, Oxford. It is full of the 
 author's erasures, corrections, insertions. This 
 alone would convince us that it is in his own 
 handwriting; but the fact is made certain 
 by a MS. of Anselm's Disputations in the 
 Lambeth Palace Library, certainly in the 
 same handwriting, in which the writer says, 
 Scribit Willelmus monachus Malmeshurieoisis, 
 " written by William a monk of Malmesbury." 
 One curious fact about this Magdalen College 
 manuscript may be mentioned. In the deeds 
 of the Prelates, in speaking of Anselm's at- 
 tempts to stop simony and gross immorality, 
 he erases fifteen lines, and over the space thus 
 made vacant he writes : " I confess my imbe- 
 cility, I will not fight with hope." But his 
 manuscript had been copied before the erasure, 
 and two of the copies then made are in 
 existence with the erased words, which are 
 indeed words of despair^. 
 
 It is this William of Malmesbury who 
 gives so very flattering an account of the Vale 
 of Gloucester. Gloucester, he tells us, is 
 supposed to take its name from Claudius 
 
 ^ The words erased are printed in a note on page 12 1 
 of the edition of William^s Gesta Pontificum in the Rolls 
 Series, 
 
30 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Caesar, the original form having been Cair- 
 clau ^, the castle of Clau. In evidence of the 
 very high regard in which the Britons in the 
 Eoman times held the late Emperor Claudius, 
 he quotes Seneca as saying that the barbarous 
 people in Britain worshipped him as God, 
 and in his honour built a city. What Seneca 
 actually said was ^, that in his time Claudius 
 had a temple in Britain, where the barbarous 
 people worshipped him and addressed prayer 
 to him as God. From the city, whose name 
 passed from the British Cair Clau to the later 
 Glou Castra or Gloucester, the whole region, 
 William tells us, takes its name of the Vale 
 of Gloucester. The soil is rich in corn and 
 fertile in fruit, thanks to nature alone in some 
 partSj to skill of culture in others. If any 
 one is disposed to be lazy, mere avarice will 
 tempt him to the joys of labour, where labour 
 is rewarded by a return of a hundredfold. 
 You may see the public roads draped with 
 apple-bearing trees, not laboriously grafted, 
 but owing their profusion to the nature of 
 the soil. The land of its own accord bursts 
 into fruit, most of it superior to others in 
 kind and flavour. Many of the apples keep 
 
 ^ other MSS. spell this Kairclau and Caircloui. 
 ^ Ludus de morte Claudii Caesaris. 
 
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. 3 1 
 
 good for a year, to serve their owners till the 
 next year's crop is ready. The district is 
 better for vines than other provinces of Eng- 
 land. The vines are more abundant; they 
 yield a larger crop ; the flavour of the grape 
 is more exhilarating. The wines made from 
 them do not distress the palate by harsh 
 acidity ; indeed they hardly yield to French 
 wines in pleasantness. The river Severn 
 adds to the glory of the district. No river 
 in the whole land is wider in its channel, 
 more vehement in its current, more responsive 
 to the art of the fisherman. 
 
 I may interrupt the course of William'ii 
 remarks by reminding you that grapes were 
 largely grown in England for the purpose 
 of making wine, from the Norman Conquest 
 onwards in diminishing extent through the 
 Middle Ages. We continually find vineyards 
 mentioned in mediaeval charters, and in dis- 
 tricts which appear in these days hopelessly 
 unsuitable for ripening grapes. A study of 
 the mentions of vineyards in the Domesday 
 Survey has led to the interesting discovery 
 that the vineyards gathered round the prin- 
 cipal demesnes of the chief of the Norman 
 nobles; that some had been planted almost 
 immediately after the allotment of the Saxon 
 
32 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 estates to the Norman conquerors, and were 
 already in full bearing; while others had 
 been planted later, and had not yet come 
 into profit. 
 
 The remark about Norman noblemen intro- 
 ducing the cultivation of the grape must not 
 be taken to mean that the vine was not 
 cultivated in England before the Conquest. 
 We have clear evidence to the contrary, and 
 that at Malmesbury itself. William tells us 
 that in the Anglo-Saxon times a Greek monk 
 settled at Malmesbury and created the vine- 
 yard on the hill to the north of the Abbey, 
 which continued there for many years. They 
 did not know whence this monk Constantino 
 came: but when he found himself dying he 
 drew out of a receptacle a pallium, and put it 
 on as best he could in his dying state, and 
 died in it ; whence they supposed that he had 
 been an archbishop. When his grave had to 
 be disturbed many years after, to make room 
 for other bodies, his bones were found to be 
 abnormally white and to have a pleasant 
 odour. This confirmed their conviction that 
 Constantino was of no plebeian sanctity. 
 
 It is a matter of notoriety that in our own 
 generation the cultivation of the grape for the 
 purpose of making wine has been renewed, 
 
WILLIAM OP MALMESBURY. 33 
 
 at no great distance from the region which 
 William praised so much in this respect, and 
 with a success at least as great as that which 
 he recorded ^. 
 
 Our author goes on to describe the bore in 
 the Severn. There is every day a raging 
 of the waters, whether to call it a vorago or 
 a vertigo of the waves he does not know. It 
 tears up the sands from the very bottom of the 
 channel, it collects itself into a great heap, 
 it comes on with a rush, but it does not go 
 beyond the bridge. Sometimes it even climbs 
 the banks, and having made a wide circuit 
 of the land returns to its course. Unhappy 
 the vessel that it strikes on the side. Sailors 
 who are on the alert, when they see this 
 Higra, as the English call it, coming, turn 
 their vessel to meet it, and cutting it straight 
 through escape its violence. 
 
 In Yorkshire, I may add, where a tidal 
 wave rushes up the Ouse from the Humber 
 as far as Naburn ferry, it is still called the 
 egre or agre, as in William's time the bore 
 of the Severn was. You may hear a weird 
 cry passed along the banks of the Yorkshire 
 river for miles, as the great crest of water 
 
 * For further information on this subject, see Appen- 
 dix B, p. 356. 
 
 
 
34 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 comes mantling on, " Ware agre ! Ware 
 agref 
 
 Bristol itself is described by William in 
 one pregnant sentence, which shows us how 
 competent our author was to go to the root 
 of the matter in describing a place. In the 
 same valley, he says, is a very celebrated 
 town (or a town greatly resorted to), Bristow 
 by name. He uses the correct term toivn^ 
 for Bristol was not erected into a city till 
 four centuries later, and then only because it 
 became possessed of a bishop. Here, he says, 
 is a harbour, a receptacle for ships coming 
 from Ireland and Norway and other lands 
 across the seas. Thus a district so fortunate 
 in its natural wealth enjoys also its share 
 of foreign riches. We might almost take 
 that as the motto for our great work to be 
 commenced in three weeks' time ^. 
 
 We shall be glad to have as our guide 
 a man who formed so just an idea of our 
 advantages and value. He had a special 
 interest in Gloucestershire, for Robert, Earl of 
 Gloucester, was his patron, the natural son 
 of Henry I, a man of great talents and learn- 
 ing, called the Maecenas of his age. To him 
 William dedicated his Deeds of the Kings 
 
 ^ The new Avonmouth Docks, 
 
THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 35 
 
 and his Modern History. As regards the 
 commerce of Bristol in those times, to which 
 he makes complimentary reference, we must 
 charitably suppose that our author was not 
 acquainted with its character ^ 
 
 Among sources of information I have not 
 mentioned the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.* That 
 most valuable record of the early times of 
 the English in England was not commenced 
 till long after Aldhelm's time : we probably 
 or certainly owe its inception to King Alfred. 
 It is very meagre in the earlier years, but 
 every word of it is of importance. There can 
 be no doubt that the compiler in Alfred's 
 time had access to records of some brief 
 character which have long been lost. For our 
 present purpose, which is chiefly ecclesi- 
 astical, the Chronicle draws upon Bede's 
 Ecclesiastical History of the English race, 
 compiled by Bede in the years immediately 
 following the death of Aldhelm, from the 
 most trustworthy records he could obtain 
 from the several kingdoms of the Heptarchy. 
 
 I shall perhaps best give an idea of the 
 small extent of the information which we 
 find in the Chronicle, and at the same time 
 of its fundamental value, if I quote the whole 
 
 ^ Bristol was a mart for slaves, 
 Qt 
 
36 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 of its remarks in connection with Aldhelm. 
 They fall under the year 709, and they form 
 close upon half of the whole information 
 given under that year. It will be useful to 
 add that the entry for this year 709, short as 
 it is, is, with four exceptions, the longest entry 
 in thei, principal manuscript of the Chronicle 
 for the first 715 years of the Christian era. 
 The four exceptions are almost wholly ecclesi- 
 astical. One is the famous entry under the 
 year ^6^, the year of the accession of Ethel- 
 bert of Kent, in which the Chronicle tells of 
 the conversion of the Kentish people of his 
 time, and, curiously enough, of the work of 
 Columba and Ninian, to whom it gives four 
 times as much space as to Ethelbert's con- 
 version. The second is under the year 616, 
 the year of Ethelbert's death. An entry of 
 the same length as the one in question, under 
 the year 6:27, tells of the conversion of Edwin 
 of Northumbria. The next, for the year 634, 
 tells of the first preaching of Christianity to 
 the West Saxons by Birinus. The entry for 
 709 is as follows : 
 
 "In this year Bishop Aldhelm died. He 
 was bishop west of Selwood ; and in the early 
 days of Daniel, the land of the West Saxons 
 was divided into two bishop-shires, and pre- 
 
THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 37 
 
 viously it was one : one Daniel held, the 
 other Aldhelm. After Aldhelm, Forthere suc- 
 ceeded to it." 
 
 That is all that the Chronicle tells us of 
 Aldhelm. The rest of the entry for 709 is 
 thus : 
 
 *' And King Ceobed succeeded to the king- 
 dom of the Mercians; and Cenred went to 
 Kome and OfFa with him " [this was OfFa 
 of the East Saxons, not of Mercia]. "And 
 Cenred was there till his life's end. And in 
 the same year Bishop Wilfrith died at Oundle, 
 and his body was conveyed to Ripon ; he was 
 bishop forty-five winters ; whom King Ecgfrith 
 had formerly driven to Rome." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Malmesbury, its position and early history. Leland's 
 account. The West Saxon Conquest. Suggested ante- 
 cedents of Maildubh. Augustine's visit to the neighbour- 
 hood. Aldhelm's contemporaries. Connection with 
 Ireland. English Art, Literature, and Architecture, in 
 Aldhelm's time. Suggested origin of Anglian Art. 
 
 If it was necessary to give some information 
 about William of Malmesbuiy, as being the 
 author from whom we learn most of what we 
 know of Aldhelm, it is equally necessary to 
 give some account of Malmesbury itself, the 
 common home of Aldhelm and William. 
 
 Few, if any, of the archaeological and eccle- 
 siastical interests of England are greater than 
 those which gather in the earliest times around 
 Malmesbury. The consideration of those 
 interests will take us into that dim period of 
 the past when the Christian Briton was still 
 holding out in some prominent fastnesses 
 against the pagan Saxon and Angle ; when 
 the infant foreign Church and the old native 
 Church were agreeing to differ, while the 
 pagan Saxons remained rooted in their 
 idolatry. 
 
MALMESBURY. 39 
 
 The site of Malmesbury is remarkable by- 
 its position and by its history. You seldom 
 see in any non-mountainous part a place so 
 well marked out by nature as Malmesbury 
 is for a place of strength. The streets and 
 houses to a considerable extent obscure the 
 fact ; but it is still quite easy to see what 
 Malmesbury must have been in the time of 
 bows and arrows and javelins. And if this 
 is so now, when the encircling streams have 
 dwindled down to modest proportions, and 
 are fairly confined within their rich grassy 
 banks, it must have been much more markedly 
 true when those two rivers were great 
 spreading swamps and morasses, choked with 
 the debris of impenetrable forests, leaving 
 the promontory of Malmesbury to stand 
 out with its own natural abruptness from 
 an impassable marsh, with approach only at 
 one narrow neck flanked by precipitous 
 sides. The British fortress on the heights of 
 Malmesbury was one of their strongest places 
 of defence ; and history seems to show that 
 no other place held out in full force against 
 the surrounding Saxons as this did. No other 
 British place remained undisturbed, with its 
 complete British life and work, right out 
 among the Saxons geographically, right on 
 
40 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 into Saxon history, as Malmesbury did. The 
 tradition is that this strong place was a resi- 
 dence of the Kings of Damnonia before the 
 advent of the Saxons. It was well fitted to 
 be the northern fortress of that powerful 
 kingdom, guarding the great forest which 
 must have been so useful as the protection 
 of their frontier. 
 
 John Leland, whom Henry VIII appointed 
 in 1533 ^^^ Library Keeper and Antiquary, 
 with a commission to visit and peruse the 
 libraries of all cathedrals, abbeys, colleges, 
 and other places where records and the secrets 
 of antiquit}'' were deposited, came of course 
 to Malmesbury, as one among the famous 
 libraries and places of records. He saw a 
 manuscript collection on the Antiquities of 
 Malmesbury, part of which he transcribed. 
 It gives Bladow, or Bladon, as the British 
 name of the castle, Ingelborne as the Saxon 
 name ; its builder was a British king named 
 Dunwallo Malmutius^ At the time when 
 Aldhelm's early connection with it began, 
 
 * The name Malmesbury has been derived from the 
 name of this personage. The British pronunciation of 
 Malmut would approximate to Malmeet, and Malmeets- 
 bury would soon soften into Malmisbury ; so it was 
 argued, we must suppose. 
 
MALMESBURY. 4I 
 
 the dwellings other than the castle had been 
 completely destroyed, and the people, both 
 pagans and Christians, lived at a royal abode 
 near, called Kairdurberg, and by the Saxons 
 Brohamberg, in later times Brokenberg. This 
 tradition is in accordance "with the earliest 
 documents. 
 
 In the British times, while the British town 
 on and about the hill was still flourishing, 
 certain nuns, under the obedience of the 
 Abbat Dinooth [Dunawd] who ruled over 
 many in the monastic life in many parts, had 
 a settlement near Ingelborne, in a little town 
 or village called Ilanberg, by the Saxons 
 Burchton. Dinooth is the name given by 
 Bede to the British hermit whom the Christian 
 Britons consulted as to their course of action, 
 before their second interview with Augustine ; 
 and one of the same name was Abbat of 
 Bangor. Whether we are to see any identity 
 of person as well as of name, would be a very 
 interesting subject for consideration. 
 
 We need not on this occasion enter upon 
 a discussion of what are called Welsh tra- 
 ditions. It is a confusing phrase, for it tends 
 to make us suppose that the traditions are 
 Welsh and not British. Our thoughts to-day 
 are turned to a time when the Welsh, as wo 
 
42 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 now call them, occupied the whole of the 
 south-west of England as well as the central 
 west, now called Wales, and occupied also the 
 north-west. The West Saxons had not pene- 
 trated the barrier which the great forest, 
 Selwood, presented to their further progress 
 westward. Malmesbury was near the northern 
 point of that great forest, which ran up to 
 the head- waters of the Thames at Cricklade* 
 Roughly- speaking, the Britons w'ere still in 
 possession of the land from some miles east 
 of Malmesbury right through to St. David's, 
 and from Cricklade to the Land's End. It 
 was the impenetrable wedge of forest territory 
 which forced the Saxons in their progress up 
 the Thames to make a detour, leaving the 
 Britons at Malmesbury undisturbed. They 
 turned south-west again when they got round 
 the point of the forest, and won the battle of 
 Deorham (Dyrham) in 577. That battle gave 
 them Cirencester and Bath and Gloucester, 
 and thus made more marked than ever the 
 wedge of forest territory in which Malmes- 
 bury stood, still a British hold. 
 
 Thirteen or fourteen years after that battle 
 a very important alliance was made between 
 the Britons and one branch of the West 
 Saxons, those, namely, who had occupied 
 
MALMESBURY. 43 
 
 Gloucestershire. They made an alliance 
 against the chief king of the West Saxons ; 
 marched upon him together down the 
 Ermine Street, a few miles east of Malmes- 
 bury, just outside the eastern boundary of 
 the Britons ; found him in North Wilts at 
 Wanborough ; and finally defeated him there. 
 The battle of Wanborough made the Saxons 
 of Gloucestershire independent of the West 
 Saxon kingdom ; and it cemented a friendship 
 between the Gloucestershire Saxons, called 
 as we well know the Hwiccas, and the Britons 
 of the Malmesbury regions. So far are or- 
 dinary historians from realizing the true 
 state of things, that they bring the Britons 
 all the way from the parts we now call Wales 
 to fight the battle of the Hwiccas in North 
 Wilts, their connection with which was very 
 remote. To our Malmesbury Britons the 
 fight was a local fight of vital importance. 
 
 The alliance appears to have led to an un- 
 disturbed possession by the Britons here. 
 This is very clearly shown by one historical 
 fact. About 637, that is, nearly fifty 
 years after the battle of Wanborough, and 
 only a year or two before Aldhelm's birth, 
 long before any Saxon in the neighbourhood 
 was a Christian, an Irish Christian teacher, 
 
44 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Maildubh, wearied with the dissensions of his 
 countrymen and desiring a perfectly peaceable 
 place for the hermit life, found at Malmesbury 
 a suitable asylum. There was a sufficient 
 population for his teaching purposes. They 
 were Britons, and Christians. The pagan 
 Saxons were not there. He was free from 
 the quarrels of the Christian Scots. From 
 ravages of marauders, which had driven him 
 out of one abode and another, the nature of 
 the place was a safeguard. Here, then, he 
 settled ; gathered companions of like mind ; 
 and built a small basilica which still existed 
 in the time of William of Malmesbury, 1140, 
 and was called St. Michael's^. Maildubh's 
 dwelling-place is understood to have been 
 in Burnvale, nestling under the precipitous 
 side of the narrow neck by which the fortress 
 was approached. If you are approaching the 
 abbey church from the west, and look down 
 to the right of the road at the narrowest part, 
 when you are getting near the church, you 
 will see where Maildubh lived. His basilica 
 
 * Leland read in an old chronicle at Malmesbury, de 
 prima origine Maeldulpheshyriensis monasterii, that * Mail- 
 dulph was so beset in his parts of Scotia [Ireland] by- 
 thieves and robbers that he fled into England and came 
 to the castle of Bladon.' 
 
CONNECTION WITH IKELAND. 45 
 
 was built, no doubt, more Scottorum, as 
 Bede expresses it, that is, in the Irish fashion, 
 of timber. The Britons of Somerset built of 
 wattle and clay ; a large amount of very 
 careful and abiding work of this interesting 
 character was uncovered a few years ago ^ 
 near Glastonbury, where, as we know, a 
 chapel constructed of these materials remained 
 till the Norman Conquest. British basket- 
 work was much valued in imperial Rome. 
 
 It is only natural to make some ejQTort to 
 connect Maildubh, and his flight from Ireland 
 and to Malmesbury, with places and events 
 in Ireland, and with some link, traditional 
 or otherwise, which inclined him towards the 
 British district whose chief northern strong- 
 hold became his resting-place. The attempt 
 at first seems hopeless ; but perseverance 
 meets with some unexpected crumbs of en- 
 couragement. 
 
 The younger St. Carthach, who was a 
 Munster man, being on a visit to a saint near 
 Tullamore, in the ancient Meath, was advised 
 by the saint to found a monastery near him. 
 This was probably not earlier than the year 
 588, when Carthach was quite young. The 
 great schools of learning at Duri'ow, Clon- 
 * See The Church in these islands be/ore Augustine, pp. 46-8. 
 
46 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 macnois, Clonfert, and Clonard, were all 
 in the neighbourhood, and Durrow especially 
 was near. Carthach was not deterred by this 
 fact, though or perhaps because he was 
 a stranger, from another Irish land. He 
 created, and for nearly forty years he ruled, 
 the great monastic school of Rahan. Under 
 his management it grew to such success that 
 a very early life of the saint records the 
 presence in his time of more than eight 
 hundred monks, besides the boys and servants ; 
 while the church of the monastery, which he 
 built, was so important a fabric that its ruins 
 are still to be seen. 
 
 About the years 6^2-6^4, the jealousy of 
 the native clerics came to a head, and they 
 determined to expel Carthach and his monks. 
 They stirred up the secular ruler of the 
 territory, Blathmac, to drive the strangers 
 away. Carthach was now an old man, prob- 
 ably over seventy, and he refused to go, 
 unless force was used. Blathmac himself 
 took him by the hand and led him out of 
 his well-loved home. It was a marked event, 
 appearing as such not in the Ulster Annals 
 only, but also in the Chronicle of the Scots. 
 Rahan being near the southern border of 
 Meath, Carthach very soon found himself 
 
CONNECTION WITH IRELAND. 47 
 
 clear of that inhospitable land, and once more 
 in his native Munster. He and his monks 
 moved southwards, by stages which can 
 be clearly traced, till at length they reached 
 the dominion of the Desii of Waterford, whose 
 prince gave to Carthach a territory in which 
 to found another school. They began to 
 build, and modestly called their new home 
 Lios-beg, ' a small habitation ' ; but a prophetic 
 virgin bade them call it Lios-mor, 'a great 
 habitation,' and Lismore it became, one of 
 the most famous and most frequented of the 
 many schools of learning and of saints which 
 gave and deservedly gave to Ireland the 
 name of Insula sanctorum et doctorum. 
 
 Now all the phrases employed to describe 
 the causes of Maildubh's departure from 
 Ireland suit the suggestion which I venture 
 to make, that Maildubh was one of Carthach's 
 learned monks, and was so much upset by 
 the jealousy of the Irish of one territory 
 against the Irish of another territory, that he 
 determined to make an end of such expe- 
 riences and seek a place of quiet. Carthach's 
 first vice-abbat at Kahan had been Constantine, 
 a British king, and thus there was certainly 
 knowledge of British places among the older 
 members of the expelled body of monks. 
 
48 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Constantine may well have been a king of 
 the south-western Britons, in which case 
 Malmesbury was his northern fortress ^. Mail- 
 dubh had only to drop down the Blackwater 
 from Lismore to Youghall, and thence, or 
 from Waterford, his course to Bristol was 
 clear. From Avonmouth the Roman road 
 led to Bath, and thence to Malmesbury by 
 the Fosseway through the safe recesses of 
 Selwood. The whole thing seems to fit 
 together quite as well as many stories of 
 history do. The fact that the first bishop of 
 the West Saxons was succeeded in 650 by 
 a prelate who had studied in Ireland, may 
 have some connection with these events. 
 
 The principal stronghold of the Britons 
 continued undisturbed for some years more, 
 and Maildubh's teaching progressed. It was 
 not the Hwiccas who disturbed them when 
 at last their time came. The Hwiccas had 
 before that time become Mercian. It was the 
 West Saxons proper, the people of East 
 Wiltshire and Hampshire, who broke through 
 the forest wedge. They did not attack 
 
 1 Or he may have been a lesser king, such as those of 
 the Romano-British districts, and the battle of Dyrham 
 may have expelled him from his British home. It is 
 a familiar fact that Constantine was a royal name among 
 the Britons at that period. 
 
MALMESBURY. 49 
 
 Malmesbury itself, but cut the forest lower 
 down, and so isolated it. The battle of 
 Bradford on Avon in 6^2, cut off this northern 
 part of Selwood; and the battle of Pen six 
 years later, in 658, opened the way through 
 to the occupation of Somerset. There was 
 clearly no ravaging of these Malmesbury 
 parts, such as marked the Saxon progress, 
 for instance, at Glastonbury. The Irish 
 teacher went steadily on, and the conquering 
 king, he and his all now Christian, sent his 
 own relative, Aldhelm, to learn of him. 
 Aldhelm, as you know, succeeded Maildubh 
 in unbroken order. He greatly enlarged the 
 school, and built, in addition to the basilica, 
 a great church, so excellent that even the 
 Norman builders spared it after the Norman 
 Conquest, and it only gave way to the present 
 church in the middle of the twelfth century. 
 Of how much importance Malmesbury was 
 held to be in the later Saxon times you may 
 form some idea from another historical fact, 
 of which more will be said later on. When 
 Hermann, the Bishop of Sherborne and also 
 of Ramsbury, desired to unite the Wilts and 
 Dorset sees in one, he selected Malmesbury 
 as the site for the joint bishop-stool. Edward 
 the Confessor approved; but Godwine and 
 D 
 
50 ST. ALDHELM 
 
 his sons opposed the scheme, and Hermann 
 took Old Sarum as the second-best place. 
 We are rather proud of that in North Wilts. 
 
 These considerations justify in my opinion 
 the contention that nowhere in England have 
 we so unbroken a connection between the 
 British and the Saxon Church and life and 
 teaching as at Malmesbury ; while the presence 
 and the influence of the Irish teacher, con- 
 tinuing to hold his office under the new Saxon 
 regime, adds an element of exceeding interest, 
 probably unique in Saxon history, though a 
 parallel may be found among the Angles. 
 
 Malmesbury played an important part, as 
 I believe, in a very striking episode of the 
 early Christian history of the English. 
 
 When Augustine, at Canterbury, turned his 
 thoughts westward, about the year 600, it was 
 only some two or three and twenty years after 
 the battle of Deorham, and eight or nine after 
 the battle of Wanborough ; it was more than 
 fifty years before the breaking up of the 
 Selwood Britons. He was in search of a 
 place at which he could meet a representa- 
 tive body of members of the British Church. 
 Where would his glance rest geographically ? 
 Would he desire to meet the most distant 
 Britons, at the most distant spot in the 
 
THE BRITONS AND AUGUSTINE. 5 1 
 
 possession of the Saxons which the Britons 
 could visit in safety ; or would he look for 
 the nearest Britons and the nearest place? 
 Even in these days of express trains we 
 should not hesitate about the reply. When 
 we consider the labours and dangers of 
 journeys then, and the large amount of time 
 which they cost, it is quite inconceivable that 
 he would pass by the nearest Britons, those 
 in immediate contact with the Saxons in 
 Wiltshire along a very extended frontier, and 
 push on a long way further to a very remote 
 branch of the British race. Bede settles the 
 matter for us. By the help of the King of 
 Kent, who had a sort of over-lordship of the 
 West Saxons, Augustine set out for an inter- 
 view with the people of " the nearest province 
 of the Britons." This was certainly not the 
 inhabitants of modern Wales. It was certainly 
 the people of the nearest parts of Damnonia, 
 that is, of the British province which originally 
 had extended from Malmesbury to Cornwall ; 
 in Aldhelm's time it meant Devon and Corn- 
 wall. As a matter of geography it cannot be 
 disputed that the British inhabitants of that 
 part of Selwood which lay north of Frome, 
 up as far as Cricklade, were to Augustine 
 *' the nearest province of the Britons." There 
 P 1 
 
52 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 are two local traditions which point clearly 
 enough in the same direction. The one places 
 Augustine's interview with the Britons on 
 a hill near Box; the other takes him, not 
 for this purpose but no doubt on the occasion 
 of this visit, to Cerne in Dorsetshire. 
 
 The Britons were of course bitterly hostile 
 to the pagan West Saxons, and a place must 
 be found for the interview to which both 
 Britons and Augustine's Saxon party could 
 safely go. Ethelbert's over-lordship made it 
 safe for Augustine to go to any West Saxon 
 territory, and the Britons' recent and successful 
 alliance with the Hwiccas made it safe for the 
 Britons to visit any suitable place in Hwiccian 
 territory. There you have all the conditions 
 of the problem stated. You only have to turn 
 upon it the further question, what about the 
 roads? The answer settles the whole thing. 
 The Ermine Street stared Augustine in the 
 face. He went along it till he crossed from 
 West Saxon territory to Hwiccian territory 
 at the bridge or ford of Cricklade. There, on 
 ground safe to him and his escort as being 
 Saxon soil, and safe to the Britons as being 
 in the land of the friendly Hwiccas, he met 
 his fellow Christians. They no doubt had 
 collected at Malmesbury, and emerged from 
 
THE BEITONS AND AUGUSTINE. 53 
 
 their forest by ways known to themselves on 
 to the open ground held by their Hwiccian 
 allies. This is really the only spot in the world 
 which fulfils all the conditions of the problem, 
 without any forced interpretation or any de- 
 parture from common-sense considerations. 
 
 We have got into the way of supposing 
 that "Britons," in the time of which we are 
 speaking, must of course mean what we now 
 call Welsh, that is, the Britons in Wales. It 
 is a very unhistorical supposition. When 
 Aldhelm, a hundred years after Augustine's 
 interview, addressed the Britons, he addressed 
 the Britons of the south-west of our modern 
 England, the very Britons who still occupied 
 considerable parts of that "nearest province 
 of the Britons," whose ecclesiastics Augustine 
 invited to a conference. It was probably not 
 till the first of Augustine's two conferences 
 had taken place that the Britons of the further 
 or west- central province were called into 
 council by the Britons of the south-west. 
 The Welsh Britons are not referi'ed to in con- 
 nection with the first of the two conferences, 
 and the reference to them in connection with 
 the second conference seems to me to suggest 
 that they were only then called in. The 
 Britons at the first conference pleaded that 
 
54 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 they must not come to terms with Augustine 
 without the special licence and consent of 
 their people, and they begged for a second 
 conference at which more might be present. 
 Accordingly, there came seven British bishops 
 and a large number of most learned men, 
 chiefly from that very noble monastery called 
 by the English Bancornaburgh, Bangor in 
 Flintshire. My impression is clearly that 
 these had not been present on the former 
 occasion, and that the great point of the 
 second conference was that the Britons of 
 the south-west called in the help and counsel 
 of the Britons of the west, whom we call the 
 Welsh, This is emphasized by the fact that 
 this new body did not know what manner of 
 man Augustine was, and the advice given to 
 them was that they should watch him, to see 
 if he was haughty to them ; whereas it is 
 certain that those who were present at the 
 first interview had taken his measure and 
 formed an estimate of his character. 
 
 I am not at all anxious to tie down the 
 place of the conference to any precise spot. 
 It took place at "Augustine's Oak," Bede 
 tells us, a clear indication that it was an open- 
 air conference, and not at what we should 
 call a town or village : it was a place without 
 
THE BRITONS AND AUGUSTINE. 55 
 
 a previous name, just as we should have 
 expected under the conditions. 
 
 At Down Ampney, two miles from Cricklade, 
 just on the Hwiccian side of the boundary, 
 there is a farm called the Oak Farm. It is 
 marked on the Ordnance Map as The Oak, 
 Lord St. Germans informs me that it bears 
 that name in his papers as far as they go 
 back, but that is not very far ; it was Hunger- 
 ford property in earlier times. A great oak, 
 from which it is supposed to have taken its 
 name, was cut down by the steward in the 
 time of the grandfather of the present owner, 
 whom the destruction of the ancient tree 
 greatly annoyed. Mr. Martin Gibbs, who 
 gave me the first information I received about 
 the Oak Farm, has found the roots of the old 
 tree in the stack-yard. It is worthy of men- 
 tion that oaks refuse to flourish in that im- 
 mediate neighbourhood, so that the oak gave 
 its name to .the farm because it was a very 
 unusual tree, not only because it was a very 
 large one. The same may have been true of 
 " Augustine's Oak " ; indeed when one comes 
 to think it out, it seems the more likely reason 
 for the\ name. A fine oak in a country void 
 of oaks is a much more marked thing thai; 
 one oak among very many. 
 
56 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that only two fields 
 off the old oak of the Oak Farm there was 
 a spring of water famous for its property of 
 healing diseases of the eyes ; there may well 
 be some connection between this traditional 
 efficacy and the story related by Bede that 
 Augustine gave sight to a blind man at the 
 first conference, in proof of his mission and 
 power. The spring itself is said to have long 
 been dry, owing to drainage operations fifty 
 years ago, but the old people can still point 
 it out ; they call it the " lertle well," and the 
 field the " lertle well nook " ; and they still 
 send for water from the neighbouring brooklet 
 if their eyes are bad. My early familiarity 
 with Yorkshire dialect suggests that " lertle '* 
 means "little." But the derivation of the 
 word "little" comes through that pronuncia- 
 tion " lertle/' as the Yorkshire language shows, 
 and as our philologists know. The proper 
 force of the word is mean, base, deceitful. It 
 is a very curious thing if a connection can be 
 even suggested between the name "the lertle 
 well " and the meaning *' the well of deceit." 
 It was a Saxon on whom Augustine performed 
 the miracle : years ago I suggested that the 
 modern Welshman would demand that the 
 experiment be tried upon a Welshman. With 
 
SKETCH OF ALDHELMS LIFE. 57 
 
 a casual Saxon, claiming to be blind ; a well, 
 claiming perhaps quite truly to cure affec- 
 tions of the eyes ; wondering Britons, without 
 the sense to pick their blind man for them- 
 selves; we have all the elements which would 
 in the opinion of the pagan Hwiccian or West 
 Saxon inhabitants of the district, who knew 
 all about it, create the title "the well of 
 deceit." This does not at all suggest Augus- 
 tine's consciousness of the trick played upon 
 the Britons. 
 
 We may now sketch in briefest outline the 
 life of Aldhelm. 
 
 Aldhelm was born, as we have seen, not 
 later than 639. His father was Kenten, of 
 the royal family of Wessex. Kenten is said 
 in one account to have been brother of King 
 Ina ; but the dates make that impossible, for 
 Ina reigned from 685 to 726, and the true 
 account is that Aldhelm was a cousin of the 
 king, not nearer than second cousin or first 
 cousin once removed. Even so, it adds an 
 interest to his interesting history that he was 
 so nearly related to the royal ancestors of our 
 own sovereign, who descends from Ina's brother 
 Ingild, Ecgbert's great-great-grandfather. 
 
 When Aldhelm was twelve and sixteen 
 years of age, two great victories of the West 
 
58 ST. ALDHELM, 
 
 Saxons over the Britons of Somerset, one in 
 6^2, at Bradford on Avon, and the other in 
 658 at Pen on the Barrett, opened a way 
 through the Selwood, or Great Forest, and 
 isolated its northern parts. In this way 
 Malmesbury became accessible to the West 
 Saxons. Aldhelm was a very studious boy, 
 and Malmesbury, as we have seen, was a place 
 of study under an Irish teacher, Maildubh, 
 who a good many years before had retired 
 from his own country because of its dissen- 
 sions, and had found a quiet place for study 
 and devotion at the great northern fortress of 
 the British kingdom of the south-west. The 
 boy Aldhelm was sent to study under him, 
 and there he remained till he was nearly 
 thirty years of age. 
 
 The African Abbat Hadrian, who preceded 
 his companion the Greek Archbishop Theodore 
 to England, was put in charge of the school 
 or university which they established at 
 Canterbury, where Theodore, as well as 
 Hadrian, delivered courses of lectures. The 
 Northumbrian Benedict Biscop had taught 
 the school for two years, till Theodore and 
 Hadrian were ready to undertake the work. 
 To this school or university using that word 
 in the sense of a place where all of such know- 
 
SKETCH OF ALDHELM's LIFE. 59 
 
 ledge as was then available could be acquired, 
 not in its proper sense, as in the case of Cam- 
 bridge and Oxford, of a corporate community 
 for teaching knowledge [Aldhelm repaired 
 for the completion of his studies. Ill health 
 compelled him to leave Canterbury and return 
 to Malmesbury, probably about the year 672, 
 when he was about thirty-two years of age. 
 Here he succeeded his Irish teacher Maildubh 
 as master of the school of students and 
 religious. The school became of so much 
 importance that the Bishop of Wessex, Leu- 
 therius, erected it into an abbey, and made 
 Aldhelm the first abbat. 
 
 In the Abbey of Malmesbury Aldhelm ruled 
 and taught as abbat and master from 675 to 
 705. In that latter year he was made Bishop 
 of the new see of Sherborne. With the 
 bishopric he continued, against his will, to 
 hold the abbacy of Malmesbury, and also the 
 abbacies of the monasteries which he had 
 created at Frome and Bradford on Avon. In 
 the year 709, four years after he became 
 bishop, he died at Doulting in Somerset, being 
 not less than seventy years of age, possibly 
 a little more than seventy. He was carried 
 to Malmesbury with much pomp and buried 
 there. 
 
6o ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 That is the baldest possible outline of his 
 life. Each one of the points mentioned can 
 be made the nucleus of a collection of informa- 
 tion, which, besides its great local interest to 
 ourselves, is not only very interesting in itself 
 to all who love the records of the early times 
 of the English race, but is also useful, and in 
 some of its parts necessary, for all who wish 
 to know something of the development of the 
 successive stages of the history of the English 
 Church. 
 
 We saw something in the previous chapter 
 of the ecclesiastical condition of England at 
 the time when Aldhelm grew to be a man. 
 It may be well to say a little more in that 
 direction, in order that we may not isolate 
 Aldhelm and regard him apart from his con- 
 text, but may be conscious of the setting in 
 which he did his work. 
 
 His abbacy and bishopric covered the years 
 from 6^^ to 709. Theodore, the Greek Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, of Tarsus in Cilicia, 
 ruled from 668 to 690, and Brihtwald from 
 693 to long after Aldhelm 's death. St. Erken- 
 wald was Bishop of London from 6j^ to 693. 
 The restless Wilfrith was Bishop of North- 
 umbria 664 to 678 ; became Bishop of Hex- 
 ham in 705, in which year Aldhelm became 
 
aldhelm's contemporaries. 6i 
 
 Bishop of Sherborne; and died in the same 
 year as Aldhelm, 709. St. Cuthbert was 
 Bishop of Lindisfarne 685 to 687. 
 
 In Aldhelm's kingdom of Wessex, the con- 
 temporary kings were remarkable men, Cyne- 
 gils 611 to 643, Cenwalh 643 to 672, Cen twine 
 676 to 685, Ceadwal 685 to 688, and Ina 688 to 
 726. The same maybe said of Mercia; Wulf- 
 here 659 to 6"]^, Ethelred 675 to 704, Coenred 
 704 to 709 ; and of Northumbrian Oswy 642 
 to 671, Ecgfrith 670 to 685, Aldfrith 685 to 
 
 705- 
 Inasmuch as the connection between England 
 
 and Ireland, and the frequent resort of English 
 
 students to teachers resident in Ireland, is a 
 
 marked feature in Aldhelm's writings, it may 
 
 be added here that Ecgbert of Northumbria, 
 
 whose long residence in Ireland as a student 
 
 and as a teacher formed a very strong link in 
 
 this remarkable connection, was born in the 
 
 same year with Aldhelm, and went to Ireland 
 
 in his youth, several years before Aldhelm 
 
 went to Canterbury and met Irish stndents 
 
 there. To Ecgbert was due the missionary 
 
 spirit which so markedly characterized the 
 
 early Church of the Enghsh. The Yorkshire 
 
 Willebrord went to study with him in 678, 
 
 and caught from him the fire which burned 
 
62 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 in him as the Apostle of the Frisians and 
 Missionary Archbishop of Utrecht. Adamnan, 
 who in another line so closely connected 
 England with Ireland, was fifteen years older 
 than Aldhelm, became ninth Abbat of lona in 
 679, and died in 704. 
 
 In the regions of Art and Literature, Ald- 
 helm*s adult life covered a period of remark- 
 able creation and development. The earliest 
 piece of English literature in existence, in its 
 original form, dates from five years before his 
 appointment as abbat. It is the inscription 
 in Anglian runes on the shaft of the great 
 cross at Bewcastle ^ in Cumberland, which 
 sets forth the purpose of the erection of the 
 " slender token of victory " " in memory of 
 Alcfrith, son of Oswy," erected " in the first 
 year of Ecgfrith, king of this realm," i. e. 670. 
 This wonderful memorial not only gives us 
 our earliest piece of English literature ; it 
 gives us also the first example of Anglian art, 
 and an astonishing example it is, with classical 
 foliage, Anglian interlacements in perfection, 
 and figures in bold relief on a sunk field of 
 the king and his hawk, the Baptist, and our 
 Lord, the last being a figure of such dignity 
 
 * See my Conversion of the Heptarcliyj frontispiece and 
 pp. 189-213. 
 
ART IN ALDHELm's TIME. 6^ 
 
 as cannot now be surpassed. This great cross, 
 originally 17 feet high, is 250 years earlier 
 than the first dated " high cross " in Ireland. 
 A second astonishing example of the develop- 
 ment of English art and literature in Ald- 
 helm's time is afforded by the great cross at 
 Ruthwell ^ in Dumfriesshire, 1 7 feet 6 inches 
 high, "with beautifully flowing foliage set free 
 by Anglian skill from the classic stiffness of 
 the foliage panels at Bewcastle ; with many 
 panels of figures in bold relief on a sunk field, 
 showing scenes from the New Testament and 
 from early Church History, the subjects being 
 set forth in Latin letters which form a very 
 museum of palaeography, cut large and deep 
 on the horizontal and vertical frames of the 
 panels; and with several stanzas of the old 
 Anglian poem of the Dream of the Holy Rood, 
 cut in Anglian runes equally deep and large 
 on the frames of the long panels with vines 
 and birds. This, on dynastic and racial con- 
 siderations, must be dated about 680. All of 
 Caedmon's sacred songs were sung while 
 Aldhelm was Abbat of Malmesbury. 
 
 The use of the runic alphabet was practi- 
 cally confined to Northumbria. One word in 
 
 ^ For details, see my Tlieodore and Wilfrith, pp. 235-254, 
 and figures 13, 14, 15. 
 
64 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 runes has been found at Dover and one at 
 Sandwich. The pre-Norman shafts of crosses 
 found in Wessex (see pages 149-180) are with 
 one exception without inscription, and in that 
 one case the letters are Koman capitals. 
 Dr. Giles prints among the works of Aldhelm 
 a letter from an anonymous person to an 
 anonymous sister. At the end of this letter, 
 dpropos of nothing, the writer gives the names 
 of the characters of the Runic Futhorc, a name 
 formed from the names of the letters as we 
 speak of an Alphabet or Abecedarium. But the 
 letter in question bears internal proof of being 
 the work of Aldhelm' s correspondent Ethel- 
 wald, and we have no reason to assert that 
 Aldhelm was acquainted with the Runic 
 characters. 
 
 In metal we have St. Cuthbert's pectoral 
 cross ^ and portable altar ^. Of actual writing 
 and drawing and painting we have the book 
 which yields to none in perfection and taste 
 and skill, the Lindisfarne Gospels ^, dating, as 
 is now allowed, before the Book of Kells, and 
 quite free from the strangenesses and inappro- 
 priatenesses which mar that highest example 
 
 * Theodore and Wilfrith, p. i6i. 
 
 ' Theodore and Wilfrith^ frontispiece. 
 
 ^ In the British Museum. 
 
ART IN ALDHELM's TIME. 65 
 
 of Irish art. We have also still in existence, 
 resting in an iron safe in the Laurenziana at 
 Florence, the immense manuscript codex, so 
 large that two men carry it on a stretcher 
 when it is brought out for the study of some 
 highly privileged person, which is merely one 
 of a number of like codices in the Library of 
 Wearmouth in Aldhelm's time. They were 
 brought there by Aldhelm's contemporary 
 Benedict Biscop, and we shall see how 
 narrowly we in these southern parts missed 
 the possession of these and many other 
 treasures. This particular manuscript, the 
 Codex Amiatinus, owes its existence to the 
 fact that Aldhelm's contemporary Ceolfrid 
 carried it away with him as a present to the 
 Pope when he resigned the abbacy of Wear- 
 mouth and set off for a visit to Kome, which 
 he did not live to accomplish ^. 
 
 In Church architecture, very great strides 
 were made in Aldhelm's time. It is sufficient 
 to say that masons were introduced by Bene- 
 dict Biscop and Wilfrith from Gaul, and not 
 only the monasteries of Wearmouth and 
 Jarrow were built, with their four churches, 
 
 * For details of this codex, and of its story after 
 Ceolfrid's death, see Lessons from Early English Church 
 History^ pp. 72-5. 
 
 
 
66 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 but the great basilicas of Ripon and Hexham 
 were raised, excelling in size and splendour 
 all churches north of the Alps. These basilicas 
 were finished two or three years after Aldhelm 
 was made abbat, and we cannot doubt that 
 he took pattern from them in the work which 
 we shall have to describe. The '' Gaul " from 
 which the masons were brought was, in my 
 judgement, Cisalpine Gaul, and the masons 
 were in that case Lombards. Some of the 
 great difficulties which beset the question of 
 the origin of our beautiful Anglian art of the 
 seventh and eighth centuries are reduced to 
 less formidable dimensions, and some dis- 
 appear, if we suppose that Benedict and 
 Wilfrith found masons who had been trained 
 in Greek art, not in the ruder art of Italy. 
 One or two of the most perfect specimens 
 of surface decoration in the Museum at 
 Brescia are worthy of being set side by side 
 with our own most beautiful examples of 
 those very early times. Higher praise than 
 that cannot be given. To say that we got 
 it from Ireland is to disregard the facts. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 William of Malmesbury's scheme for his work. 
 Aldhelm's race ; spelling and meaning of his name ; 
 parentage ; education. Origin of the name Malmesbury. 
 The Benedictine Eule. Aldhelm's study at Canter- 
 bury ; learning ; his skill in versification. Recognized 
 as a master of style ; the Irish Artwil and Cellanus. 
 His personal influence with friends and pupils. Wilfrith 
 in Wessex. Letter to the clergy of Wilfrith, and to 
 Ethelwald a student. 
 
 William of Malmesbury sets out the scheme 
 of * his work in a clear and business-like 
 manner. In following him through his story 
 of Aldhelm's life, we shall keep as near as we 
 can to his quaint phraseology, giving a trans- 
 lation rather than a version of his account. 
 That course enables us more fully to fall into 
 the spirit of the old times with which we 
 deal. It enables us to realize the history 
 of the past as composed of persons rather 
 than of things. 
 
 This is his scheme. First, the origin and 
 attainments of the most holy Aldhelm; 
 secondly, the religious houses which he estab- 
 lished and endowed; thirdly, a few mira- 
 cles which in his lifetime he wrought; 
 
 E % 
 
68 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 fourthly, the history of the Abbey of Malmes- 
 bury from Aldhelm's time to William's ; a 
 history, he tells us, which showed many ship- 
 wrecks of the liberty of their churchy but 
 showed also how, by the protection of the 
 Saint, their church had come safe out of the 
 most threatening storms. His own inadequacy 
 for the work William felt ; but he trusted that 
 by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who had 
 already filled his sails, he would safely tra- 
 verse the vast sea that lay before him. He 
 proposes to give direct evidence of every 
 statement which he makes. That is a very 
 business-like way of writing history. 
 
 First, then, as to the origin and attain- 
 ments of Aldhelm. He was a Saxon by race, 
 of a family beyond doubt most noble. Fari- 
 tius had said that his name was really 
 Aldelmus, not Aldhelmus, and that it meant 
 ^' the kindly (almus) old man." But William 
 disputed that, and showed that the Saint 
 himself, in the Prologue to his Enigmas, had 
 regarded the h as essential, the name meaning 
 " the old helm," or helmet. It may be noted 
 that in the Anglo-Saxon list of bishops in 
 MS. 140, C. C. C. C, we find Aldelmus with 
 the h interlined above, and in the early tenth 
 century list in MS. 183 we find Adelm. 
 
THE NAME ALDHELM. 69 
 
 The Prologue to the Enigmas thus referred 
 to consists of thirty-six hexameter lines, and 
 is a double acrostic, the first and last letter of 
 each line being one of the thirty-six letters 
 of the line 
 
 Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas, 
 
 *'Aldhelm sang odes in a thousand verses." 
 Considering the nature of the Latin language, 
 Aldhelm would probably have been glad to 
 be rid of the letter h from the acrostic on his 
 name, for a Latin word ending in h is far 
 to seek. He got over the difiiculty rather 
 skilfully, thus : 
 
 H orrida nam mulctans torsi sti membra Behemot H 
 
 " Thou (the Almighty) hast racked the horrid 
 limbs of Behemoth." The h of versihus would 
 naturally present a similar difficulty ; he gets 
 out of it by making two long syllables of the 
 name Job : 
 
 B elligero quondam qui vires tradidit lo B. 
 
 As to family, the tradition was that Aid- 
 helm was the nephew of Ina, King of the 
 West Saxons, his father, Kenten, being Ina's 
 brother. But William rejected that on the 
 ground, among others, that Aldhelm was a 
 great deal older than Ina. The argument is 
 
70 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 clenched by the fact that in King Alfred's 
 Handbook, to which William had access, it 
 was shown that he was not a near but a dis- 
 tant relation of Ina. That he was of Saxon 
 race, William proves from Aldhelm's own 
 words in a letter to a Scotic correspondent, 
 Cellanus, which we shall see at a later stage. 
 
 In his next statement, about Aldhelm's 
 earliest years, William is mistaken. He says 
 that Kenten would not send his son to any 
 ordinary master; he sent him to be taught 
 the first elements by Adrian, the Abbat of 
 Saint Augustine's, Canterbury, whom he 
 knew to be at the very summit of knowledge. 
 There, while still a boy, he became so learned 
 in Greek and Latin as to outshine his teachers 
 themselves. When he was a little older, he 
 returned from Kent to Wessex, and became 
 a monk in the monastery of Meldun, at a 
 place whose ancient name, as William learned 
 from King Alfred's writings, was Mailduberi, 
 or Mealduberi ^, its name in William's time 
 being Malmesberi ; a corrupt age, he says, 
 
 ' If William had written this Maelduheri, he would 
 have given the correct alternative form. The only- 
 mention of a person of this name (the dark tonsured 
 servant) in the Annals of the Four Masters is in the 
 form Maeldubh. He was one of the nobles killed in 622 
 at a great battle in the south of Limerick. 
 
71 
 
 had changed the name. This monastery was 
 founded by Meldum^, also called Meildulf, a 
 Scot (that is, an Irishman) by nation, a philo- 
 sopher by learning, a monk by profession. 
 The Scot had voluntarily left his native land, 
 and in his journeyings had reached this place. 
 Taken with the amenity of the woods, which 
 were very extensive there, he lived as a hermit. 
 Supplies failing, he took scholars to teach, 
 that their gifts might help to support him. 
 When their education was completed, they 
 became monks, and a convent of no incon- 
 siderable size was the result. Their com- 
 panionship and example led Aldhelm, who 
 was one of the pupils, to further study, and 
 he added the liberal arts to his store of 
 knowledge. In order to drink from the 
 fountain-head, he went again to Canterbury 
 and studied at the feet of Adrian, who was 
 a fount of letters, a stream of arts ; but his 
 health broke down and he had to return to 
 Malmesbury. Let the proofs follow the tenor 
 of what has been said, that the confidence 
 of those who hear may be firm. That Adrian 
 taught him in his infancy he himself tells as 
 follows in his letter to that master : " To 
 Adrian, the most reverend father and vener- 
 ' Oi- Meldun. 
 
72 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 ated teacher of my rude infancy, Aldhelm, 
 greeting, &c." That he was nourished and 
 taught in the monastery of Meldun, Bishop 
 Leutherius shows in the ordinance by which be 
 gave the abbacy to Aldhelm : " I, Leutherius, 
 by the grace of God bishop, ruling the Saxon 
 pontificate, have been requested by the abbats 
 who under the jurisdiction of our diocese are 
 known to preside over the cenobial band of 
 monks, to bestow the territory named Mal- 
 dulfesbirg upon the presbyter Aldhelm, that 
 he may there lead the regular life. For in 
 that place he has lived from the first flower of 
 his infancy, and studied letters from the very 
 beginning, and been nourished in the bosom 
 of holy Mother Church." That Meldum built 
 the monastery. Pope Sergius declares in the 
 privilege which he gave to Aldhelm : " Thy 
 religion begging of us that in the place of 
 our founder, chief of the apostles, we should 
 strengthen with apostolic privileges the 
 monastery of the blessed apostles Peter and 
 Paul, which Meldum of religious memory 
 built, now named Meldumesburg, situated in 
 the province of Saxony, we have favourably 
 received thy pious petition." 
 
 This will be a convenient place for some 
 remarks on the origin of the name Malmesbury. 
 
THE NAME MALMESBURY. 73 
 
 In its earliest forms the name is clearly- 
 derived from the name of the Irish teacher 
 Maildubh, either in that form or in the form 
 Meldun or Meldum. We have Maildubiensis 
 ecclesia, Maldubiensis, Maldubesburg, Mal- 
 dulfesburg, Maldumesburg, Meldulfesburg, 
 Meldubesburg, Meldumesburg. Other forms 
 of the name are clearly connected with Ald- 
 helm Ealdelmesbyrig, Mealdelmesbyrig, Mal- 
 delmesburuh. 
 
 In the index to Thorpe's edition of the 
 Anglo - Saxon Chronicle the initial m of 
 Mealdelmesbyrig is explained as a survival 
 of the Latin prefix in, as Inrhypum, Ripon, 
 and Ingetlingum, Gilling ; but if Mr. Thorpe 
 had been living in these days of more scien- 
 tific views, he would no doubt have felt that 
 to be an impossible explanation. Mr. Plummer, 
 in his invaluable edition of Bede's historical 
 works, writing at length on the forms of the 
 name in* connection with Bede's mention of it 
 as Maildufi urbs, remarks that " the greater 
 fame of Aldhehn eclipsed that of the ori- 
 ginal founder, and we find the place called 
 Ealdelmesburg, Aldhelm's borough." "By a 
 contamination of this with the older forms 
 we get Mealdelmesburg, which became the 
 prevailing form, and through various grada- 
 
74 ST. ALBHELM. 
 
 tions . . . became the modern Malmesbury." 
 Among these gradations Mr. Plummer quotes 
 William's remark, " quod nunc corruptior 
 aetas Malmesbiriam nuncupat ;" but William 
 appends that remark not to one of the forms 
 derived from Aldhelm, but to the form which, 
 as he says, shows that Maildulf built, or 
 rather commenced the monastery, Meldun- 
 ense. 
 
 If there were no other explanation possible, 
 the contamination theory might serve. The 
 earliest MS. of the Chronicle which mentions 
 Malmesbury was apparently written in 1016, 
 and it has the form Ealdelmesburg, as has also 
 a copy written about 1046. The two copies 
 of the Chronicle 'which have Mealdelmes- 
 burg are of the next century. These are 
 the only appearances of the name in the 
 Chronicle, and it is possible that they repre- 
 sent a sort of fungus growth of the initial 
 letter m. But we may take it as almost or 
 quite certain that when Maildubh addressed 
 his favourite pupil and eventual successor, he 
 did not call him Aldhelm, or pronounce the 
 dh in his name, but called him Mallem, " my 
 dear Aldhelm." The Gaelic of to-day makes 
 the same elision of the vowel in mo (my) and 
 do (thy), O m' anam, my soul! That it 
 
THE NAME MALMESBURY. 75 
 
 was the practice among the early Irish is 
 a very familiar fact. Ninian's work in con- 
 nection with Irish students two centuries 
 before Aldhelm's time is noted by the sur- 
 vival of his name in the form Monenn, my 
 dear Ninian. St. Mogue is Mo-aedh-og, 
 where we have the disappearance of the dh 
 according to the Irish rule. Gregory of Tours 
 calls (in many copies of his Hist. Fr. ii. 28) 
 Chlotilda's sister Chrona or Corona, Mu- 
 curuna, clearly meaning *' dear Chrona." 
 If there is anything in the suggestion made 
 at page 47, that Maildubh was one of the 
 band of scholar-monks who accompanied 
 St. Carthach from Rah an to Lismore, he was 
 very familiar with the fact that his own 
 master, Carthach, had as a child been named 
 by his master, the elder Carthach, whose 
 favourite pupil he was, Mochuda, dear Cuda ; 
 and it would be most natural that he should 
 himself call his own favourite pupil by a 
 similarly formed name of endearment, Mallem. 
 The practice was kept up at Lismore through 
 Maildubh*s time, for the Abbat Colman, who 
 died in 702, was named in his early days 
 Mocholmoc, mo-Colum-og, dear little Colman. 
 This fact Maildubh would no doubt know 
 well, whether he was specially connected 
 
7^ ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 with Lismore or not. There is thus plenty 
 of evidence, certainly contemporary and prob- 
 ably local, in favour of Mallem as Maildubh's 
 pet name for his favourite and princely pupil. 
 But indeed it is quite unnecessary to labour 
 the point of this initial m, or to spend any 
 words on the disappearance of the dh. The 
 Saxon Mallemesbury would thus be simply 
 " The borough of Mallem," and was no doubt 
 exactly the local pronunciation before it was 
 softened into the modern Marmsbury. The 
 local survival of Aldhelm's pet name, among 
 people so devoted to the use of pet names 
 as the Saxons were, accounts for all the phe- 
 nomena, and gives to the name Malmesbury 
 a wonderful interest. I should add that of 
 the two learned friends whom as students of 
 the Irish language I have consulted, one, an 
 Englishman, will not accept my suggestion; 
 the other, Irish of the Irish, has no doubt 
 about its correctness. In my own enquiries 
 among Gaelic-speaking persons in the west of 
 Scotland, Mallem is universally given as their 
 equivalent of *' dear Aldhelm." The Irish use 
 is preserved in Macdonnell as the equivalent 
 of Macdonald. 
 
 We have seen that Malmesbury was made 
 an abbey, and Aldhelm was made abbat, by 
 
THE BENEDICTINE RULE. 77 
 
 the bishop of the diocese, at the request of 
 
 certain abbats, the abbats of the diocese, 
 
 it appears. But Aldhelm in his turn, as we 
 
 shall see^, gave the appointment of abbat 
 
 of the Abbeys of Malmesbury, Frome, and 
 
 Bradford, to the monks. This marks a great 
 
 change of policy. St. Benedict had forbidden 
 
 the appointment of abbats by bishops, and 
 
 by degrees the monks got the appointment 
 
 into their hands. Aldhelm had introduced 
 
 the Benedictine Kule in his abbeys, and it 
 
 was natural that he should carry out this 
 
 important feature. In the Praise of Virgins, 
 
 he says of Benedict that he gave the Rule of 
 
 Life which he and those whom he addressed 
 
 observed : 
 
 Primo qui statuit nostrae certamina vitae 
 Qualiter optatam teneant coenobia famam. 
 
 To resume William's argument. 
 
 That he went a second time to Canterbury 
 to study, but was driven away by ill health, 
 is shown by his letter to Adrian mentioned 
 above : 
 
 " I confess, my very dear one, whom I em- 
 brace in pure and thankful love, that since 
 I was cut off from residence in your friendly 
 society on my departure from Kent about 
 ^ See p. 144. 
 
78 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 three years ago, I have burned with the ardent 
 desire to be with you again ; and that I have 
 long intended, so far as the wish is concerned, 
 to carry out this desire, if chance and circum- 
 stance allowed, and various obstacles did not 
 come in the way ; especially if I were not 
 prevented by bodily weakness, through an 
 affliction which parches to the marrow my 
 wasting limbs ; this it was that when, after 
 my first course, I was with you again, drove 
 me home." 
 
 We have to understand that Aldhelm in 
 his humility wrote of Adrian as his teacher in 
 rudiments in his earliest years, in his rude 
 infancy, when in fact he only meant that he 
 owed to him all the knowledge which he 
 valued most. He was probably quite thirty 
 years old when he first went to Canterbury 
 to sit at Adrian's feet ; for Adrian only began 
 to teach there about the year 670. William 
 took him too literally, not having much sense 
 of humour or appreciation of metaphor. To 
 understand Aldhelm with that last defect is 
 impossible. 
 
 These facts, William continues, with their 
 evidence that he enjoyed the privilege of 
 residence in so learned a society, are sufficient 
 proof that he was a competent scholar in the 
 
aldhelm's accomplishments. 79 
 
 liberal arts. Indeed, his own testimony to 
 that effect is not wanting, for he tells us that 
 he was the first of all the men of his race to 
 turn his intellect to the study of Latin verses 
 and metres. These are his words, at the end 
 of the book which he wrote on the construc- 
 tion of verses ^ : " Here you have the notes of 
 my poor intelligence on the kinds and forms 
 of metres, collected very laboriously, I know 
 not if fruitfully; I do know that I could 
 make the Virgilian boast 2, ' If life last, and 
 I return to my fatherland, I shall be the first 
 to bring with me the Muses from the summit 
 of Helicon.' " 
 
 Fully instructed, then, in letters, he did 
 not neglect versification in his native tongue ; 
 indeed. King Alfred states in the work already 
 quoted, that in no age has any one been found 
 equal to him, for he could write a poem in 
 English, compose a tune for it, and either 
 sing it to the tune or recite it. King Alfred 
 adds that Aldhelm composed the English 
 street-song which is still that is, in 1130 
 in common use, and gives the reason why 
 
 * William had, apparently, a shorter recension of the 
 ''Letter to Aldfrith," which in its present form fills 
 thirty-two pages 8vo, not reckoning the enigmas. 
 
 ^ Oeorgic iii. 10, 1 1. 
 
8o 
 
 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 a man of such mark gave attention to things 
 which seem frivolous. The people in his time 
 were half-barbarous, did not care for divine 
 discourses ; they had the habit of running off 
 to their homes as soon as mass was sung. 
 So the holy. man set himself on the bridge 
 which connects the town of Malmesbury with 
 the country there are now four such bridges 
 at Malmesbury, at four quarters of the town, 
 the ground falling steeply to each bridge 
 and met them as they were leaving church, 
 in the guise of a teacher of the art of singing. 
 This he did more than once, and the people 
 liked it and gathered about him in crowds. 
 Under cover of this disguise, he slipped in by 
 degrees stories of Scripture in his secular 
 verse, and thus brought the people back to 
 a better mind. Here William moralises, know- 
 ing the country. If Aldhelm had thought to pro- 
 duce the desired result by severity and excom- 
 munication, he would never have succeeded. 
 
 We moderns in this twentieth century may 
 well lament that this famous Handbook of 
 King Alfred, the composition of which Asser 
 describes in so very interesting a manner ^, 
 is now lost. Some time or other it is to be 
 hoped that a copy may be found. 
 
 * See my paper on Alfred as a religions man. 
 
8i 
 
 To proceed with William's account. 
 
 The letters addressed to Aldhelm show in 
 how great repute his learning was held. We 
 need not speak of letters from his own coun- 
 trymen, who vied with one another in sending 
 to him their writings for his criticism ; nor of 
 the Scots [Irish], at that time in the first 
 rank of learning, who acted in like manner, 
 some of whom we could name as of no mean 
 position in the world, especially Artwil ^, a son 
 of a Scottish [Irish] king. Everything in the 
 way of literature which Artwil elaborated, 
 and it was of no mean quality, he submitted 
 to Aldhelm's judgement, that his perfected 
 
 * No one, so far as I know, has any suggestion to make 
 as to the identity of this literary Irish prince. There 
 are two persons named in Irish history either of whom 
 so far as name (however disguised) and date are con- 
 cerned might be Aldhelm's correspondent. Only one 
 it is true was the son of a king of Ireland ; but the 
 other was at least a chieftain ; his name is identically 
 the same ; and he was in Britain. This was Aurthuile 
 Ua (O') Crunnmaeil, chief of Cinel Eoghain, who in 698 
 was driven from his chieftaincy into Britain. The 
 other was Artghal, son of Loingseach, king of Ireland ; 
 he was killed in a battle in Sligo in 701, in the eighth 
 year of his father's reign. These dates are late in 
 Aldhelm's life, but we must suppose that it took many 
 years to build up his wide reputation for refined scholar- 
 ship. Dr. Stubbs read the name as Arcuil, and thought 
 it probably a corruption of Acircius ; Acircius, however, 
 that is, Aldfrith, was not the son of a Scottish king. 
 
82 - ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 genius might file ofF the Scottish [Irish] 
 roughnesses. Even from among the Franks 
 they came to him for his learning, as the 
 following letter shows : 
 
 "To my lord Aldhelm the archimandrite, 
 enriched in the study of letters, adorned by 
 honey-bearing work by night, who in a mar- 
 vellous manner has acquired in the land of 
 the Saxons that which some in foreign parts 
 hardly obtain by dint of toilsome labour, 
 Cellanus, born in the island of Hibernia, 
 dwelling obscurely in an extreme corner of 
 the limits of the Franks, exile from a re- 
 nowned settlement, the lowest and meanest 
 slave of Christ, greeting in the Trinity whole 
 and sure." Then, after some further words, 
 "Though we are not worthy to hear thee, 
 present among us, we read thy finely con- 
 structed writings, painted with the delights 
 of divers flowers. But if you would refresh 
 the sad heart of a pilgrim in a foreign land, 
 send me a few of the discourses of those most 
 fair lips of thine, the rills derived from whose 
 most pure fountain may refresh the minds of 
 many, in the place where the lord Fursey rests 
 in holy and whole body." 
 
 This request for some of Aldhelm's sermons, 
 which Cellanus might use for his congrega- 
 
IRISH CORRESPONDENTS. 83 
 
 tion, his own fountain having apparently run 
 rather dry, came no doubt from Peronne ; for 
 there the remains of the Irish saint Fursey 
 are known to have rested at that time. Fursey, 
 it is not necessary to remark, was one of the 
 many close links between Ireland and early 
 England, and between Ireland and the con- 
 tinent of Europe, of which we have detailed 
 record. As between England and Ireland he 
 was one of the earliest links, reaching East 
 Anglia in the time of King Sigebert the 
 patron of learning (reigned 631 to 634), who 
 was the first to establish schools in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Cambridge. When the ravages 
 of the pagan Penda devastated East Anglia, 
 he left the cell which he had constructed 
 within the great Roman walls which we call 
 Burgh Castle, and settled at Lagny, some 
 twenty miles from Paris, under the protection 
 of the chief minister of the Frankish king- 
 dom, whose residence was at Peronne. 
 
 The liberal response ^ which Aldhelm made 
 to the request of Cellanus, of whom we know 
 nothing more than is here stated^, was prefaced 
 
 ^ William assumes that the response was liberal from 
 the fragment of Aldhelm's reply which follows. 
 
 ^ Coelan, a monk of Iniscaltra in Lough Derg, who 
 lived probably about this time or a little later, wrote the 
 F % 
 
84 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 by a deprecatory sentence : '' I wonder that 
 from the renowned and flower-bearing fields of 
 the Franks, the activity of your charming fra- 
 ternity accosts me, a humble man of no repute^, 
 born of the Saxon race, and cherished in the 
 tender cradle of infancy under a northern 
 sky." _ 
 
 William remarks that it would be difficult 
 to describe the great influence which Aldhelm 
 had with his friends and his pupils. The 
 former he exhorted to be unflinchingly faith- 
 ful to friendship ; the latter, to guide their 
 early years in exact accordance with divine 
 precept. William proceeds to set forth two 
 of the letters which Aldhelm wrote, the one 
 on the duty of friends, the other to a pupil ; 
 believing that he would thus indicate clearly 
 how true Aldhelm was to his friends, how 
 careful for his disciples. 
 
 In order that we may understand the point 
 and force of the former of these two letters, 
 we must make a digression. The episode to 
 which the letter introduces us is of the high- 
 sixth life of St. Brigid of Kildare, which was taken to 
 the Continent and was found at Monte Cassino. Cellan 
 is also another form of Cellach, a name common enough. 
 ^ TanfMlum homunculum, ''Such a poor little creature 
 as I am," 
 
85 
 
 est importance in the history of the Church 
 of England, and the parts which Aldhehn 
 and Wessex respectively played in it are of 
 national as well as local interest. 
 
 That able, restless, charming person Wil- 
 frith, who was so ready to cry, " I'll tell the 
 pope" when the kings and the archbishop 
 dealt with him in the independent way which 
 is of the nature of Englishmen, flashed across 
 Wessex by way of Mercia in Aldhelm's time. 
 He had been imprisoned by King Ecgfrith of 
 Northumbria, in accordance with the decree 
 of the council of that kingdom, the Arch- 
 bishop Theodore being present, for appealing 
 to Eome, or for some offence connected with 
 that appeal^. His first place of imprison- 
 ment was a dark dungeon in the royal city 
 of Bromnis, a place not identified, and his cus- 
 todian was the royal prefect Osfrith. Osfrith's 
 wife was taken ill, and seemed to be dying, 
 whereupon the prefect begged to be relieved 
 of his prisoner. Wilfrith was then sent to 
 Dunbar, to the charge of a more ferocious 
 prefect, by name Tydlin. William of Malmes- 
 bury calls him Tinber, but that must be 
 
 ' I have no doubt myself that the punishment was for 
 the offence of appealing to a foreign jurisdiction. See 
 my Theodore and Wil/rith, Lectures IV and V. 
 
86 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 merely another spelling of the correct form of 
 the name of the place Dunbar, Dynbaer. 
 Ecgfrith's queen, who was a bitter enemy of 
 Wilfrith, was residing at the nunnery of 
 Coldingham, with Abbess Ebbe, the king's 
 aunt. In the night the queen was visited 
 by a demon and terribly flogged. Ebbe found 
 her in the morning gathered up into a knot 
 and evidently dying. They begged the king 
 to release Wilfrith. He did so, and the queen 
 recovered. Wilfrith retired to the court of 
 the Mercian sub-king, the nephew of King 
 Ethelred of Mercia. But Ethelred's queen ^ 
 was a sister of Ecgfrith, and Wilfrith was 
 expelled from Mercia. He then went to Cent- 
 wine, King of Wessex. But Centwine's queen 
 was a sister of lurmenburg, Ecgfrith's queen, 
 and Wilfrith was expelled from Wessex. As 
 is now well known, these expulsions had the 
 happy effect of driving him into the one king- 
 dom where Ecgfrith's influence did not prose- 
 cute him further, the still pagan Sussex, and 
 thus it came about that he converted the 
 South Saxons to Christianity. 
 
 ^ This was Osthryfch, daughter of King Oswy. She 
 translated the relics of her uncle, King Oswald, to the 
 Abbey of Bardney. For some unexplained reason, the 
 chief men of Mercia put her to death in 697, seven years 
 
wilfrith's visit. 87 
 
 From the letter addressed by Aldhelm to 
 the clergy of Wilfrith, it seems clear that he 
 took Wilfrith's side ; and it is quite possible 
 that this encouraged the extruded and ban- 
 ished bishop to come to Wessex, where a 
 nobleman named Berhtwald ^ received him 
 hospitably. Indeed, considering the circum- 
 stances, we might surmise that he actually 
 came to Malmesbury, especially as Berhtwald 
 was a land-owner there, and gave Somerford 
 to Aldhelm in 685. That gift was six or seven 
 years after Wilfrith's flying visit ; so on the 
 whole it may be supposed that Somerford 
 was the place of Wilfrith's retreat until the 
 order came to move him on. This probably 
 means Somerford Keynes, of which this dio- 
 cese has been robbed by its transfer from 
 Wilts to Gloucestershire. 
 
 Eddi, Wilfrith's chaplain and biographer, 
 tells us that when Wilfrith with his com- 
 panions sought a place of exile in the southern 
 
 ^ This was the sub-king above referred to, the nephew 
 of King Etheh-ed. He was the son of Wulfhere, Ethel- 
 red's elder brother and predecessor. His own elder 
 brother Coenred succeeded Ethelred in 704, resigned (as 
 Ethelred had done in 704, to become a monk at Bardeney) 
 in 709, the year of the death of Aldhelm and Wilfrith, 
 was tonsured at Rome, became a monk, and died there, 
 Bede does not tell us in what year. 
 
88 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 kingdoms, a man of noble birth, Berhtwald 
 by name, brother's son of Ethelred King of 
 the Mercians, met him, and was favourably 
 disposed towards him. When Berhtwald saw 
 him accompanied by men of such mark, and 
 heard from the holy doctor the causes of his 
 exile and journey, he adjured him in the name 
 of God to remain with him. He promised 
 with the greatest readiness to give a portion 
 of his territory for the residence of the 
 servants of God. The holy prelate gave 
 thanks to God, who had afforded the solace 
 of repose, and at once proceeded to found, in 
 the territory given for God, a little monastery, 
 which his monks possess up to this day [that 
 is, when Eddi wrote the Life, after Wilfrith's 
 death in 709]. Thereupon, the old enemy of 
 mankind being ever watchful, Ethelred the 
 king, and his queen the sister of King 
 Ecgfrith, hearing that the man of God was 
 abiding there and at rest for a time, to curry 
 favour with King Ecgfrith forbade Berhtwald, 
 for his safety's sake, to harbour him for the 
 space of one single day. Our pontiff, then, 
 was expelled with hatred, his monks, however, 
 remaining. He went to the King of the West 
 Saxons, Centwine by name, and for a short 
 space, till persecution followed him up, he 
 
wilfrith's visit. 89 
 
 remained there. The queen there was a sister 
 of lurmenburg, Ecgfrith's queen, and hated him 
 exceedingly ; and Wilfrith was driven away, 
 that the friendly relations among the three 
 kings named might not be disturbed. Driven 
 out of all Christian kingdoms, he went in 
 despair to the South Saxons, still pagan, and 
 told his story to Ethel walch, their king. Ethel- 
 walch promised his friendship, and vowed that 
 neither threats of invasion should frighten 
 him, nor promises of gifts and wealth should 
 seduce him, into breaking his plighted friend- 
 ship. He kept his word, dare we say, like 
 a Christian. It happened that Cead walla, who 
 had been expelled by faction from his king- 
 dom of Wessex, saw a great deal of Wilfrith 
 in his exile, often coming to him for counsel, 
 which Wilfrith freely gave; William adds 
 that he gave him also money, and provided 
 him with horses. When Ceadwalla came to 
 his own again, there was nothing he would 
 not do for Wilfrith; and without Wilfrith's 
 approval he would do nothing. We cannot 
 doubt that to this close intercourse with Wil- 
 frith was due the desire, which Ceadwalla 
 eventually carried into execution, to go to 
 Rome, to the tombs of the Apostles Peter and 
 Paul, and there to die. It is clear, also, that 
 
90 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the simile of a secular prince in exile, which 
 Aldhelm introduces into his letter, had refer- 
 ence to the exile of Ceadwalla. 
 We can now turn to the 
 
 Letter of Aldhelm to the Clergy of 
 Wilfrith. 
 
 "Kecently, as you know by experience, 
 a furious storm has shaken the foundations 
 of the Church, as a great earthquake : its 
 noise, like the sound of thunder, has gone 
 crashing through divers regions of the earth. 
 On my knees I earnestly pray you, be not 
 made to stumble by this disturbance. Let 
 not the faith of any one of you grow dull, 
 even though necessity drive you forth with 
 your bishop from fatherland, and send you to 
 realms beyond the sea. What, I ask, could 
 separate you from that prelate who has 
 nourished you, taught you, chastened you, 
 and brought you from earliest infancy to 
 pious manhood ? " 
 
 Then, as so often, Aldhelm could not resist 
 the temptation to work in his favourite meta- 
 phor of a hive of bees, the special point in 
 this case being their following one leader 
 wheresoever that one leader goes. He con- 
 tinues: 
 
LETTER OF ALDHELM TO CLERGY. 9I 
 
 " Tell me, I ask you, are not they to bo 
 branded with abominable infamy, who, having 
 received the sevenfold grace of the Spirit, 
 break the reins of devoted submission as 
 though driven by frenzy. Listen to me 
 while I add an argument to strengthen your 
 minds. If secular persons, ignorant of the 
 divine knowledge, have loved a secular master 
 in his prosperity, but when prosperity has 
 ceased, and adversity comes, desert him, and 
 prefer the safe repose of their own sweet land 
 to sharing the affliction of their exiled lord, 
 does not every one pour upon them ridicule, 
 scorn, execration? What then shall be said 
 of you, if you allow the pontiff who has 
 nursed you, and has raised you, to go into 
 exile alone?" 
 
 So far as Wilfrith's clergy were concerned, 
 who accompanied him to Wessex, it is clear 
 that very strong and plain language was 
 required, in Aldhelm's judgement, to keep 
 them true ; and it appears that in the end, 
 whatever effect his appeal may have had 
 upon theii* purpose, they did as a fact remain 
 behind, at least for some time, while Wilfrith 
 went on to Sussex without them. 
 
 That letter, William says, having shown 
 Aldhelm's unbroken firmness of fidelity to a 
 
92 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 friend, another letter shall prove how ad- 
 mirable was the adviee'he gave to a pupil : 
 
 "To Ethel wald, my dearest son, and pupil 
 too, Aldhelm, the lowest of the servants of 
 God, greeting. 
 
 "I used often to caution you by word of 
 mouth about many things ; and now that you 
 are absent, I continue to advise you by letter, 
 relying on the authority which is after God ; 
 for I do it as Paul did, ' because the love of 
 Christ constrainethus.' So then, my dearest son, 
 though you are growing to man's estate, do not 
 unduly submit yourself to the empty pleasures 
 of this world, whether in daily drinkings 
 and feastings, which are superfluous, and dis- 
 honourable when too frequent and prolonged, 
 or in culpable ridings about on horseback^, or 
 in pleasures of bodily delight which are to 
 be execrated. Remember always that it is 
 written, 'Youth and pleasure are vain.' I ad- 
 
 ' This appears to have been an Anglo-Saxon view of 
 riding about for pleasure. Among the beautifully drawn 
 Anglo-Saxon illustrations of Prudentius on the Virtues 
 and Vices, in the Cotton MS. Cleopatra, C. viii, ff. 1-34, 
 Pride is shown in four drawings careering about on 
 horseback (ff. lob-iab). On f. 12b and f. 13 are two 
 drawings of Pride, (i) having an overwhelming fall, (2) 
 lying prostrate before Humility, while the horse gallops 
 away. Does the proverb " Pride shall have a fall" come 
 from this, or is the illustration derived from the proverb ? 
 
LETTER OF ALDHELM TO A PUPIL. 93 
 
 monish you, therefore, be not a slave to much 
 money or to the boastfulness, always hateful to 
 God, of secular glory, remembering this, ' What 
 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole 
 world and lose his own soul ? For the Son of 
 Man will come in His own glory and of the 
 holy angels, and will recompense to every 
 man according to his works.' Rather, my 
 dearest one, much rather, watch always in 
 divine readings or sacred prayers. And if 
 you labour to know something besides of 
 secular letters, do it only for this, that as in 
 the divine law all or almost all the text is 
 constructed on grammatical rules, you may 
 the more easily understand, as you read, the 
 most profound and sacred senses of the divine 
 word, as you have the more fully learned the 
 very diverse rules which govern its con- 
 struction. Omit not to place this letter at 
 once among the books which you read ; that 
 by very frequent perusal it may warn you in 
 my stead. Farewell." 
 
 Would that this advice were taken by the 
 monks who call themselves followers of Aid- 
 helm, for their advantage and profit, William 
 ejaculates, so that, contemning the enticements 
 of pleasures, they should strive to follow in 
 the footsteps of his sanctity and learning. 
 
94 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Surely his foundations would never have been 
 torn up if we had not transgressed his in- 
 junctions. We have been guilty towards him, 
 and we are rightly afflicted. He, meanwhile, 
 is silent, as though he knoweth not, takes no 
 notice, as though he seeth not, while we pass 
 our time in peril, his privileges derided by 
 rebellious men, trampled under foot by tyrants. 
 Let us turn again to him, however late, that 
 he may cast the eye of his piety on his house- 
 hold", tossed amid many perils, and may gather 
 us once more into the bosom of his mercy. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The desire to visit the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 The Schola Saxonum in Rome, and the English College 
 tliere. The origin of the ecclesiastical regard for Rome. 
 Aldhelm's style. His knowledge. The monasteries 
 which he built. Great gifts to Aldhelm's monastery. 
 The churches which he built. 
 
 Mention was made in the previous chapter 
 of Ceadwalla's visit to the tombs of the 
 Apostles at Eome. The desire to visit the 
 tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul at Kome was 
 so marked a feature of the time with which 
 we are dealing, that it is impossible to pass it 
 by without special notice here. There is in 
 connection with Ceadwalla's visit the unusually 
 interesting fact that it left an abiding mark in 
 Rome. 
 
 The retirement from great secular positions, 
 towards the end of life, to spend the closing 
 years in the peace of a monastery, was of 
 frequent occurrence in the earliest days of 
 English Christianity. Kings and queens, 
 great lords and great ladies, wearied with the 
 burdens of their position, in some cases having 
 lost the power or the zest for the things of the 
 
g6 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 flesh, withdrew to the cloister. Or, as Bede 
 
 shows in his letter to Archbishop Ecgbert of 
 
 York, great persons founded monasteries, and 
 
 ruled there in much luxury, even in riot and 
 
 wantonness. But the desire to visit the tombs 
 
 of the Princes of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, 
 
 with the purpose, in many cases, of dying 
 
 there, came from a very different impulse, and 
 
 appears to have been more free from mixed 
 
 motives. We cannot do better than preface 
 
 our remarks with the quotation of one stanza 
 
 from Aubrey de Vere's translation^ of St. 
 
 Columba's Song of Lament when he visited, 
 
 on the eve of his expatriation, the Isle of 
 
 Aran, in his judgement the fairest of Ireland's 
 
 sights : 
 
 O Aran, Sun of all the V^est ! 
 My heart is thine ! As sweet to close 
 Our dying eyes in thee, as rest 
 Where Peter and where Paul repose. 
 
 Of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, Kent, 
 East Anglia, and Northumbria do not give 
 us examples of kings resigning the throne 
 and going to die at Rome ^. The kingdom of 
 the East Saxons affords one example, that of 
 
 ^ St. Columba, p. 32 : Hitt, Edinburgh, 1897. 
 
 ^ Ecgred of Northumbria, the brother of Archbishop 
 Ecgbert of York, and of Eadbert afterwards King of 
 Korthumbria, died at Rome about 733. 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE APOSTLES. 97 
 
 Offa, son of Sighere and St. Osyth ; he went 
 to Kome with Coenred, King of Mercia, in 
 709, the year of Aldhelm's death, having 
 reigned about five years. Bede gives a charm- 
 ing account of this Offa, " a young man of 
 most lovable age and beauty, intensely de- 
 sired by his whole nation as one who could 
 hold and retain the sceptre of the kingdom ; 
 he left wife, lands, relatives, and country, for 
 the sake of Christ and for the sake of the 
 Gospel, that in this life he might receive a 
 hundredfold, and in the world to come eter- 
 nal life." He was tonsured at Kome, lived 
 there as a monk, and at length, before Bede 
 finished his history, that is, before 'T>>'^y passed 
 to the long-desired vision of the blessed 
 apostles in heaven. 
 
 Turning to the kingdom of the West 
 Saxons, with which we are mainly concerned, 
 and to the kingdom of Mercia, with which 
 Aldhelm had much to do, the names of Cead- 
 walla and Ina of Wessex, and of Coenred of 
 Mercia, stand out prominently. Cead walla's 
 purpose in going to Kome is clearly stated by 
 Bede {R. ^. v. 7) ; it was, that he might obtain 
 the singular glory of being cleansed in the 
 font of baptism at the threshold of the blessed 
 apostles. Dr. Giles translated this ''in the 
 G 
 
98 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 church of the blessed apostles," leaving the 
 English readfteito wonder what church that was. 
 The elegiac verses set over his tomb in Kome 
 omitted all mention of St, Paul, and declared 
 that he came to behold " Peter and Peter's 
 seat"; an Irishman would suggest that the 
 seventh-century author was imitating the 
 Roman controversialists of the nineteenth. 
 Ina, Bede tells in the same chapter, succeeded 
 Ceadwalla on the throne, and having reigned 
 thirty-seven years over the West Saxons, gave 
 up the kingdom like his predecessor, and 
 went away to Rome, to the threshold of the 
 blessed apostles, desiring to spend the rest of 
 his life in the neighbourhood of the holy 
 places, that he might the more readily be 
 received in heaven by the saints; which 
 thing, Bede adds, many persons of the Eng- 
 lish race have in these times done in their 
 zeal, noble and ignoble, laics and clerics, 
 men and women. We do not know what the 
 eighth-century poet in Rome said of Ina's pur- 
 pose ; but we do know that the nineteenth- 
 century Roman bishops in England one and 
 all joined in a statement that Bede in this 
 chapter states the purpose of Ina and the 
 practice of the English of his time to be that 
 they might visit the place of the holy apostle, 
 
THE TOMBS OF THE APOSTLES. 99 
 
 St. Peter, boldly altering Bede's words from 
 the plural, for St. Peter and St. Paul, to the 
 singular. The assertion was made in the 
 course of their argument that England was 
 dedicated to St. Peter; it was only one of 
 several assertions similarly contrary to his- 
 torical fact. The third of the kings named, 
 Coenred of Mercia, had the same purpose. 
 In the year in which Aldhelm and Wilfrith 
 died, Coenred resigned the throne of Mercia, 
 went to Kome, and became a monk at the 
 threshold of the apostles. There cannot be 
 the slightest question that the attraction to 
 Rome was the presence of the tombs, and of 
 the actual remains, of the two twin-chiefs of 
 the apostles, Peter and Paul. If any one is 
 inclined to think that this is a controvertible 
 statement, made ex 'parte by one who main- 
 tains the Anglican position against the Petrine 
 claims of Rome, he has only to turn to the 
 writings of fair-minded Romans. Thus on 
 one page (481) of Bishop John Healy's In- 
 sula Sanctorum we read : " It is stated in the 
 ancient Life of Finbarr that, like many other 
 of the Irish saints of his time, he went on 
 a pilgrimage to Rome to the threshold of 
 the apostles." '' It was," Giraldus says, " the 
 custom in those times for the Irish to go on 
 G ^ 
 
lOO ST. ALDHELM, 
 
 pilgrimage to Kome in order to venerate the 
 shrines of the apostles." 
 
 Wilfrith, in his argument at Whitby, when 
 Colman had rested his case upon St. John 
 the Evangelist, quoted against Colman and 
 his narrow sphere of Ireland and Lindisfarne 
 the practice of all the rest of the world 
 known to him. Among other evidence of 
 practice he refers to Eome, and he states the 
 claim of Rome upon the attention of the con- 
 ference in these words ^, '*E,ome, where the 
 blessed apostles Peter and Paul lived, taught, 
 suffered, and were buried." The Irish martyr- 
 ology of Gorman notes June 29 as follows ^ 
 Fetar Pol ar primchind, "Peter, Paul, our 
 leading chiefs." Pope Paul I, fifty years after 
 Wilfrith's appeal to Rome, wrote thus to a 
 Northumbrian king : " Abbat Forthred has 
 come to the threshold of your protectors, the 
 blessed princes [or chiefs] of the apostles." 
 Bede, as we shall see, spoke of Peter and 
 Paul as the blessed chiefs of the apostles. 
 Aldhelm, as we shall also see, visited Rome that 
 he might see the long-wished-for thresholds 
 of the chiefs of the apostles, Frincipum Apo^ 
 stolorum ; and we must remember that this 
 
 ' Conversion of the Heptarchy, p. 184. 
 ' Ibid., p. 177. 
 
PARITY OF PETER AND PAUL. lOI 
 
 phrase comes to us from William of Malmes- 
 bury, wi'iting as late as 1130. 
 
 But, indeed, the parity in supremacy among 
 the apostles in ecclesiastical authority is be- 
 yond dispute. Every Pope practically de- 
 clares it. The Pope cursed Magna Charta 
 by virtue of the power of the two apostles. 
 To this day the papal bulls run in the name 
 of Peter and Paul ^. 
 
 We have remarked incidentally that Cead- 
 walla's visit to Rome made an abiding mark 
 there. He died during the week between 
 baptism and chrism-loosing, and was buried 
 in the atrium or " paradise " of the Basilica 
 of St. Peter. Two inscriptions were set over 
 him, one a poem of twelve distichs, the other 
 a short prose sentence, setting forth the main 
 facts. Both are given by Bede (H. E. v. 7) ; 
 the latter ran thus : '' Here is deposited Cead- 
 walla, called also Peter, a King of the Saxons, 
 who lived about thirty years, on the twelfth 
 day of the Kalends of May, the second in- 
 diction, the most pious Augustus the lord 
 Justinian being emperor, in the fourth year 
 of his consulship, and in the second year 
 of the pontificate of the apostolic lord Pope 
 Sergius." 
 
 ^ See more on pp. 250-258. 
 
I02 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Lanciani, in his New Tales of Ancient 
 Rome^i informs us that an Italian writer, 
 Giovanni de Deis, described in 1589 the dis- 
 covery of the sarcophagus with the remains 
 of the king and with the inscriptions, in the 
 course of digging the foundations of the new 
 Basilica of St. Peter under Sixtus V. Lan- 
 ciani adds that they were presumably broken 
 up and thrown as material into the trenches. 
 
 William of Malmesbury tells us that two 
 other English kings were buried in this 
 "paradise" or cloister -garth 2, Offa of the 
 East Saxons and Coenred of Mercia, both of 
 whom had become monks in one of the 
 cloisters near the Vatican. We are not told 
 whether Ina also, and his queen iEthelburga, 
 were buried in this atrium or in the national 
 church of S. Maria de Burgo Saxonum, 
 founded or enlarged by Ina himself. 
 
 The " School of the Saxons," which gathered 
 round this church, was the earliest and fore- 
 most of the foreign colonies which clustered 
 round St. Peter's. It dates from 727; while 
 the School of the Lombards was only founded 
 by Queen Ansa in 770, and those of the 
 
 ^ Chapter vii, English Memorials in Rome. 
 "^ " Paradise " is, of course, here taken in its primary- 
 meaning of a garden or park. 
 
THE SCHOLA SAXONUM. IO3 
 
 Franks and the Frisians by Charlemagne 
 towards the end of the century. The Saxon 
 Schola consisted of a hospice for pilgrims 
 and a chapel dedicated to St. Mary. This 
 chapel is still in existence^ much altered and 
 modernized, but retaining a reminiscence of 
 its ancient name in its present designation 
 of Santo Spirito in Sassia. The whole quarter 
 of the Borgo takes its name from the title 
 de Burgo Saxonum of our English colony, 
 which gradually spread over the principal 
 part of that quarter. 
 
 In my paper on King Alfred as a religious 
 man I pointed out the coincidence of the 
 fortification of this Burgus with the visit to 
 Eome of Ethelwulf and his young son Alfred. 
 St. Peter's was up to that time fuori le mura, 
 like the other greatest Basilica, St. Paul's. 
 St. Peter's and the Burgus were enclosed 
 with walls by Pope Leo, and the quarter was 
 thence called the Leonine City. It was 
 natural that the English should contribute to 
 this work, which protected their pilgrims and 
 dwellers in Rome from such devastations as 
 that by the Saracens in 846. To the same 
 close personal interest we must attribute the 
 establishment of the Romescot, or Romfeah, 
 Peter's Pence. 
 
104 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 All this had nothing to do with the " Eng- 
 lish College'* in Kome. The Schola Sax- 
 onum was ruined in various wars, and was 
 abandoned soon after 1200. Innocent III 
 thereupon transferred the site and revenues 
 to the newly-founded Hospital of S. Spirito. 
 The jubilee of 1300 renewed the concourse of 
 English people to Rome. Appeals to Rome 
 multiplied. The English missed the old recep- 
 tacle. A London merchant, John Shepherd, 
 purchased houses in the Via di Monserrato, 
 made them a receptacle for pilgrims and 
 travellers, under the invocation of the Holy 
 Trinity and St. Thomas, and with his wife be- 
 came its first superintendent. The original 
 deed is in the English College, and shows that 
 the foundation was made about the year 1362. 
 The present church of St. Thomas h Becket 
 was only commenced in 1870. 
 
 The existing Pilgrims' Books of the Eng- 
 lish College, which have been published, only 
 begin at the end of the year 1580, just after 
 the great discovery of the triumphal arch of 
 Claudius, erected a.d. 52 in honour of the 
 capture of Caractacus and the subjugation of 
 eleven kings of Britain. That arch was the 
 first beginning in Rome of the visible marks of 
 this island. 
 
BEDES ACCOUNT OF ALDHELM. IO5 
 
 Although the Schola Saxonum has disap- 
 peared, the BurguSj as we have said, which took 
 its name from the fact of its being the resi- 
 dence of the English colony, survives on the 
 old site in the name of the Borgo de S. Spi- 
 rito ; and the Saxon residents themselves are 
 perpetuated in the name of the church of the 
 Hospital, S. Spirito in Sassia. 
 
 We must now return to our history. 
 
 In discussing Aldhelm's style, William 
 quotes Bede's remarks on that subject, and 
 asks justly could any higher praise be given. 
 We may as well take this opportunity of 
 noting what it is in all that Bede says^ of 
 Aldhelm, writing twenty years after his 
 death : 
 
 *' On the death of Haeddi, the bishop of the 
 West Saxons, the bishopric of that province 
 was divided into two. One was given to 
 Daniel, and he still rules over it ; the other 
 was given to Aldhelm, who for four years 
 presided over it with the utmost vigour : both 
 of them being sufficiently instructed in eccle- 
 siastical matters and in knowledge of the 
 Scriptures. When Aldhelm was still a pres- 
 byter, and abbat of the monastery which 
 
 1 H, E. V. 18. 
 
I06 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 they call Mailduf s town, he wrote, at the 
 request of a synod of his nation, an excellent 
 book against the error of the Brettons, which 
 consists in their keeping Easter not at its 
 right time, and doing very many other things 
 contrary to ecclesiastical purity and peace. 
 The study of this book brought over many 
 of the Brettons who were subject to the West 
 Saxons to the catholic observance of Easter. 
 He wrote also an excellent book on Virginity, 
 which after the example of Sedulius he 
 duplicated, writing it both in hexameter 
 verse and in prose. He wrote, besides, some 
 other things, being a man most learned in all 
 directions. His style was neat and clear, 
 and his erudition both in liberal and in 
 ecclesiastical writings was wonderful. On 
 his death, Forthere the present bishop suc- 
 ceeded ; and he, too, is deeply learned in the 
 holy Scriptures." 
 
 We may well say Laudari a laudato vivo. 
 
 That is all that Bede has to say, and it 
 will be seen that he tells us nothing of 
 Aldhelm's life, beyond the fact that he was 
 abbat of Malmesbury and bishop of one of 
 the two parts of the West Saxon diocese. In 
 another passage he names him incidentally, 
 telling us that Pecthelm, the first bishop of 
 
107 
 
 the church of Candida Casa, or Whithero, 
 had long been Aldhelm's deacon and monk. 
 This was not the only link between Aldhelm 
 and the north of England, as we shall see. 
 
 In this notice by Bede, we see how very 
 coldly he speaks of the attainments of Daniel 
 and Aldhelm when he names them together : 
 they were sufficiently instructed in eccle- 
 siastical matters and in knowledge of the 
 Scriptures. That coldness is clearly due 
 to the fact that Daniel as well as Aldhelm 
 is spoken of ; for when Bede comes to speak 
 of Aldhelm alone he uses superlative ex- 
 pressions. Indeed, he says of him what no 
 one who has wrestled with his most pompous 
 involvements of affected and unintelligible 
 words could possibly say, that he was clear 
 in style. And as of DanieFs learning Bede 
 had such strictly limited recognition to give, 
 so of his manner of ruling his diocese he has 
 not one word of recognition, and this is 
 emphasized by contrast : of Daniel, " he 
 rules it to this day" ; of Aldhelm, "he pre- 
 sided over it with the utmost vigour.'* This 
 is the more surprising because in the preface 
 to his great work Bede states that Daniel, 
 the very reverend bishop of the West Saxons, 
 had sent him information about the eccle- 
 
I08 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 siastical history of that province, as also of 
 the South Saxons and the Isle of Wight. 
 It may be that Bede was determined to act 
 on the proverb " Praise not a man till he is 
 dead." But Mr. Plummer, in his most ad- 
 mirable edition of Bede's historical works, 
 quotes a passage from the Monumenta Mo- 
 guntina'^ which may explain Bede's coldness. 
 Among the occupants of the lower regions 
 seen in a vision, mention is made of a 
 great multitude of infants, who, chiefly 
 under Bishop Daniel, died without baptism. 
 Mr. Plummer is not aware of any ground for 
 this charge, but Bede's marked silence is sug- 
 gestive. We may remember too, that in the 
 West Saxon laws of king Ina, Aldhelm's cousin 
 and early patron, there is a fine of thirty 
 shillings, corresponding to more than as many 
 pounds now, if the baptism of an infant does 
 not take place within thirty days of birth ; 
 and if it die without baptism, the whole of 
 the man's property is to be taken away. 
 
 William then proceeds to state his own 
 opinion on Aldhelm's style, and he does it in 
 an epigrammatic manner. The inconsequent 
 raciness which Maildubh's national charac- 
 
 l. Jaff^, no. 112, p. 276. 
 
ALDHELM*S STYLE. IO9 
 
 teristics no doubt had imparted to his pupils, 
 would suggest that it is a pity Aldhelm did 
 not think of imitating William. His dis- 
 courses, William says, have less of hilarity 
 about them than readers like who think more 
 of the manner than the matter ; unfit critics, 
 who are not aware that a nation's mode of 
 speech accords with the nation's turn of 
 mind. The Greek habit of speech is involved ; 
 the Roman magnificent ; the English pom- 
 patic. You can note in all the ancient 
 documents [of the English] how they delighted 
 in abstruse words, and words taken from the 
 Greek. Aldhelm is more moderate than others 
 of his race ; he very seldom uses exotic 
 words, and only when really necessary ^. 
 His eloquent style is full of meaning, and 
 the glamour of rhetoric sets off his very 
 strongest statements. If you read him aright, 
 you will guess him from his acuteness to 
 have been a Greek ; from the splendour of 
 his language you will swear he was a Roman ; 
 from the pomp of his diction you will know 
 that he was English. 
 
 If we turn to his own statements, in various 
 
 * It is surprising that any one who has read a single 
 page of Aldhelm, taken from any part of his works, could 
 possibly write such a sentence as this. 
 
no ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 parts of his writings, it is clear that Aldhelm 
 himself felt oppressed by the multitude and 
 complexity of his studies, especially in the 
 scansion and construction of Latin verse. 
 This comes out very strongly in a letter 
 which he wrote to Bishop Haeddi, to the 
 larger half of whose immense diocese he 
 eventually succeeded. Haeddi had invited 
 him to attend a function and afterwards to 
 spend some time with him. Aldhelm hopes 
 to come, but has so very much to do in the 
 way of absorbing study. To Aldfrith the 
 king of Northumbria, to whom his lengthy 
 treatise on metres and constructions was 
 addressed, he appeals to defend his treatise 
 against cavillers, on the ground of the cer- 
 tainty that no one of their stock, sprung 
 from the cradle of the German race, had 
 ever laboured as his mediocrity has at this 
 subject ; and also because he has been set 
 in the midst of so many and great disturb- 
 ances of a secular nature, and the severity 
 of the demands of ecclesiastical life and 
 pastoral care have been so great, that his 
 mind has had nothing like free play. 
 
 Similarly, at the end of eighty close 
 octavo pages on the Praise of Virginity, 
 addressed to the Abbess and Nuns of Barking, 
 
Ill 
 
 he says : " I confess to your charity that 
 by reason of the burden of pastoral care and 
 the weight of worldly business I have been 
 unable to write as clearly as I ought. Scru- 
 pulous attention to ecclesiastical rule has 
 forbidden space for sure quiet and fastidious 
 intervals for writing. Such opportunities are 
 destroyed by the garrulous loquacity of 
 chatterers and the hostile demands of secular 
 business. . . . Hence my answer has been long 
 delayed. My mind has been worried and 
 oppressed by the burden and distractions of 
 all kinds of business." 
 
 That brings us to an end of the first part 
 of William's account of Aldhelm. 
 
 The second part of William's work deals 
 with the monasteries which Aldhelm founded, 
 the privileges he obtained for them, and the 
 possessions with which he endowed them. 
 
 Meildulf's monastery had been so poor that 
 the monks had scarce enough food to keep 
 them alive ; Aldhelm changed all that. There 
 was a very small basilica there, which existed 
 till or nearly till William's time, which, 
 tradition said, Meildulf built; Aldhelm was 
 understood to have added a more august 
 church, in honour of the Saviour and the 
 chief apostles, Peter and Paul. The docu- 
 
112 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 ments showed that in this church was the 
 head and chief seat of the place, and the 
 congregation of the monks. The custom at 
 that time was that at the dedication of new 
 churches some honorific epigram should be 
 made to the honour of the celestial Spouse 
 and of Mother Church ; in accordance with 
 this custom the holy man sang the epitha- 
 lamium in honour of the apostles, of which 
 we shall see something later on. 
 
 He founded also a monastery near the 
 river called From. The church which he 
 built there in honour of Saint John Baptist 
 was still standing in William's time, having 
 overcome the ' attacks of centuries of time. 
 A general opinion credited him with having 
 founded a third monastery at Bradeford ; the 
 inclusion of this town in the list of places 
 in the privilege of Pope Sergius confirmed 
 that opinion, and the little church then stand- 
 ing there, dedicated to St. Laurence, was said 
 to have been built by him^. Towards the 
 end of his life he built a wonderful church at 
 Sherborne, which William had himself seen. 
 In William's time, so far as the existence 
 of monasteries was concerned, Frome and 
 
 * This ecclesiola is almost certainly still standing at 
 Bradford on Avon. See pages i68, 177, and figure i. 
 
aldhelm's monasteries. 113 
 
 Bradford (on Avon) were mere empty names. 
 Whether the disappearance of such important 
 buildings was due to the insane violence of 
 the Danes or to the rapacious guzzlings of the 
 English^ he could not ascertain. Malmesbury 
 alone remained, still flourishing, full of in- 
 mates, with beautiful buildings. That it had 
 escaped such great dangers, and retained 
 some shadow of its liberties long ago lost, 
 was due, he believed, to the holiness of 
 Aldhelm. Much of his endowment was lost, 
 some of it so completely that even the recol- 
 lection of it was gone. The charter of Leu- 
 therius, already referred to^ had been very 
 stringent against alienation. He had granted 
 the land called Maldumsburg to Aldhelm and 
 his successors, and had specifically declared 
 that no succeeding bishop or king should 
 venture to tamper with this grant, on the not 
 unJikely ground that the property appeared 
 to have been abstracted and sequestered from 
 the rights of the episcopal power. Bishop 
 Leutherius desired the fact to be known, and 
 to be quoted against gainsay ers, that he had 
 much more added to the advantage and 
 increase of the pontifical church than taken 
 away from it violently. And, to make doubly 
 safe, he required the abbats, who had peti^ 
 H 
 
114 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 tioned him to make the grant, to subscribe 
 the document with their own hands. The 
 grant was made in public, near the river 
 Bladon, on August 36, 6y^. 
 
 Aldhelm was now an abbat, Malmesbury 
 an abbey. The evident favour of the bishop, 
 and the energy of Aldhelm, caused rapid 
 growth in the endowments. Men flocked to 
 Aldhelm, some for his learning, some for his 
 piety. On his learned side he was complex, 
 manifold; but on the religious side of his 
 character and work he was affable and simple. 
 The kings and earls, princes and nobles, of 
 the Mercians and West Saxons, made many 
 gifts to the abbey^ to benefit the stipends of 
 the monks and the health of their own souls. 
 
 The farms thus added to the possessions 
 of the abbey by the blessed father were 
 charmingly situated, delightfully spacious, 
 and conveniently placed. A man leaving the 
 monastery at dawn could easily walk round 
 the whole and get back in full daylight. 
 After his death gifts of land still came in, 
 but all had been stolen before William's time, 
 as well as parts of those added by Aldhelm. 
 The saint raised the estates from scarce sixty 
 cassati to more than four hundred. The ori- 
 ginal sixty, it would appear, were the lands 
 
GIFTS OF LAND. II5 
 
 comprised in the charter of Leutherius ; they 
 ]ay in the township appended to the place on 
 which the monastery stood, commonly called 
 by the rustics in William's time Brockeneberg. 
 
 To any one who knows the locality, the 
 names of places mentioned in the charters 
 are for the most part clear enough. We still 
 have Corston, Rodborne, Brokenborough, 
 Braden forest, the Avon, the Wiley, Kemble, 
 Crudwell, Charlton, Purton, Burford, Somer- 
 ford, the Thames, Newnton, Wootton. The 
 statement that a man could walk round the 
 whole easily in one day excludes, among other 
 portions, the Wiley of to-day ; but there are 
 good reasons for thinking that the gift of the 
 land and fishery, "where the Avon and the 
 Wiley meet," did not take effect, or that an 
 exchange was made very soon after the gift. 
 The cassati were cottagers, each with a piece 
 of land sufficient to maintain one family. 
 The manentes named in the charters were 
 persons who remained on the land ; that is, 
 could not leave without the permission of the 
 owner of the land. 
 
 The chief seat of the onastery, as he has 
 said before, William remarks, was in the 
 church of St. Peter. This is a valuable ex- 
 ample of the manner in which the usual joint 
 li2 
 
Il6 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 dedication to St. Peter and St. Paul came by 
 colloquial use to be regarded as a dedication 
 to St. Peter alone. It was probably a curt 
 use of this title on one occasion by Bede, in 
 connection with the Abbey Church of Canter- 
 bury, which laid the trap so fatal to all of the 
 Eoman Catholic bishops in England when 
 they put forth their strange and historic 
 though unhistorical document about the dedi- 
 cation of England to St. Peter. William's 
 previous statement, to which he refers, was 
 that Aldhelm built a more august church in 
 honour of the Saviour and the first apostles, 
 Peter and Paul, and that in this church was 
 the head or chief place of the monastery. 
 Aldhelm did not rest from buildino^ churches. 
 Within the precincts of the monastery he set 
 to work to build another church, in honour 
 of Mary the mother of God. This he built ; 
 and contiguous to it yet another, in honour 
 of St. Michael, the remains of which William 
 saw, for the whole fabric of the larger church 
 remained unimpaired in his time, excelling in 
 beauty and magnitude every church of the 
 early period then still existing in England. 
 Mr. Freeman, we may here note, declared that 
 Aldhelm's two churches of Malmesbury and 
 Sherborne were the only Anglo-Saxon churches 
 
THE MALMESBURY CHURCHES. II7 
 
 of importance which were spared for some 
 time by the Norman architects, a statement 
 which may to some extent be called in ques- 
 tion as too sweeping. We ought also to note 
 that, so far as we can judge, the determination 
 of the monks to build the great Norman abbey 
 church at Malmesbury, of which we have the 
 nave now as the parish church, must have 
 been taken some time before William's death, 
 and it is difficult to believe that the present 
 church had not already been begun. But he 
 does not make the faintest reference to the 
 subject. It is not impossible that he disap- 
 proved of the removal of Aldhelm's fine church, 
 and was unwilling to record the breach of the 
 continuity on which he evidently set store. 
 
 The new church, of which the nave still 
 remains to us, six of its bays forming the 
 present parish church, the other three being 
 ruined, must have displaced some of the 
 smaller churches, its size being very con- 
 siderable. Before it was built, there was 
 a group of churches on the hill of Malmes- 
 bury almost equalling the seven churches of 
 Irish groups. They were six St. Andrew, 
 St. Laurence, St. Mary, St. Michael, St. Peter 
 and St. Paul, and the old Basilica. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Aldhelm's manner of life. His visit to Rome. Delay 
 at Wareham. Miracles at the church which he built. 
 The site of the church. Miracles in Rome : the chasuble, 
 the speaking infant. The marble altar. Treasures of 
 Christian Art lost by Wessex. 
 
 Aldhelm's manner of life as a monk had 
 been banded down to William's time as a life 
 of mucb reading, of perpetual prayer. In one 
 of bis letters be said of bimself tbat as be 
 lead be beard God speaking, as be prayed be 
 spoke to God. He ate as little as possible, 
 and never went beyond tbe bounds of tbe 
 monastery unless obliged to do so. He was 
 not at all desirous of money ; if any one gave 
 it, be at once spent it on some good purpose. 
 We do not find tbat be made discrimination 
 between the gifts of worthy persons and un- 
 worthy. Tbe Apostolic Constitutions bad ad- 
 vised that if a bad man gave you money you 
 should buy fuel with it, for then you burned it. 
 To keep down the bodily passions, he would 
 stand up to the shoulder in the fountain near 
 
ALDHELMS MANNER OP LIFE. II9 
 
 the monastery, caring neither for the icy cold 
 of winter nor . for the exhalations from the 
 marshes in summer, passing the night without 
 offence. Thus he stood till he had sung through 
 the whole Psalter. That fountain retained 
 the saint's name ; in William's time the water 
 bubbled up gently, was fair to look upon, 
 pleasant to the taste. However fair and 
 pleasant the water to the eye and to the 
 palate, we need not greatly wonder that 
 Aldhelm wrote to Hadrian of his wasting 
 limbs being parched to the marrow. In 
 another part of the town Daniel's fountain 
 was shown, in which Daniel, who received 
 the mitre at the same time with Aldhelm, and 
 himself, too, had been a monk of Malmesbury, 
 to which place he retired to end his days, 
 used to pass the watches of the night. Tradi- 
 tion said that Aldhelm was so sure of his 
 conquest of the flesh that he did not avoid 
 nay, rather markedly the contrary tempta- 
 tions from which others ran away as the 
 only safe course ; and added that it was 
 great grief to the evil spirit to see himself 
 thus openly derided. William considers that 
 the truth of this tradition is proved by 4^1d- 
 helm^s treatise on Virginity, for it was im- 
 possible that such a man did otherwise than 
 
120 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 as he taught, lived otherwise than as he said. 
 To others he gave advice contrary to his own 
 dangerous practice, as for instance to Wiht- 
 frith, whom in a letter he warned against 
 reading suggestive poems, consorting with 
 doubtful women, wearing effeminate dress. 
 Wihtfrith had gone to Ireland to study, and 
 he warns him on two or three special points. 
 First, he would have him read the holy 
 Scriptures and not the inventions of the 
 philosophers ; it was a folly to pass by the 
 limpid springs of crystal fountains, and drink 
 thirstily from marshes where the black toads 
 swarmed and frogs croaked. Other points 
 were that he should leave severely alone the 
 unchaste stories of the heathen poets and 
 the temptations of loose company; should 
 avoid the rich dwellings of patricians and 
 praetors ; should avoid, as a protection against 
 the colds of the north, the garments dyed in 
 purple ; rather should he prefer the humble 
 cottage, and the graceful cassock with common 
 far. The fountains named can still be seen. 
 
 Having completed the buildings and largely 
 increased the endowments of Malmesbury, 
 Aldhelm, William tells us. determined to go 
 to Kome, chiefly that he might protect his 
 monastery from ill-treatment by successors 
 
ALDHELM's VISIT TO ROME. 121 
 
 of Leutherius, the Bishop of Wessex. The 
 whole story has a legendary sound ; but we 
 have evidence of the fact of his visit from 
 the letter quoted on page 260. He communi- 
 cated his intention to his friends and patrons, 
 Ina, King of the West Saxons, and Ethelred, 
 King of the Mercians, and they raised no 
 objections. Here we see another evidence of 
 the border character of Malmesbury, and its 
 relations with both of the kingdoms and 
 kings. . On his way he visited his estate in 
 Dorset, near Werham (Wareham), where Corfe 
 Castle stands out over the sea. Here he built 
 a church, two miles from the sea, while his 
 companions were making their preparations 
 and he was waiting for a favouring gale ; in 
 this church he prayed for a safe journey 
 out and a safe return. The walls stood, in 
 William's time, without a roof, except that 
 the altar was protected by something which 
 projected over it. However heavy a rain was 
 falling all round, not one drop ever fell within 
 the walls. The shepherds regarded this not 
 as a miracle, but as a common occurrence ; 
 they always fled to the place in heavy rains 
 and stood within the walls in the dry, with 
 no roof. Not to believe that, William says, 
 in his time, was great want of modesty, for 
 
122 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the evidence was overwhelming. The great 
 men of the province had often tried to roof it 
 in, out of respect for the saint, but they did 
 not succeed ; thus they understood that the 
 saint preferred to keep the miracle alive, for 
 it led to the presence of great crowds on the 
 days of his feast, greater even than those 
 which came to Malmesbury, where his bones 
 were. 
 
 In one place of his general narrative, 
 William speaks his mind very freely on dis- 
 belief in mediaeval miracles. He is writing 
 of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, who laboured 
 against the slave trade in Bristol, and of the 
 miracles performed at his tomb. " Our modern 
 unbelief," he says, " which dresses itself up as 
 caution, will not give credence to miracles, 
 even though the eye see them and the finger 
 can be laid upon them. I have feared to be 
 guilty of silence by neglecting to report 
 events known to upright authors." 
 
 We must see at greater length the remarks 
 with which he prefaces his recital of some 
 of Aldhelm's miracles. He warns his readers 
 that whereas he has in the other parts of his 
 Life of Aldhelm brought contemporary docu- 
 ments to prove the accuracy of what he has 
 written, he cannot do so here. But he states 
 
ALDHELMS CHURCH AT CORPE. 1 23 
 
 that he will describe no miracles but such as 
 are universally believed, on the strength of 
 unbroken oral tradition, kept alive, he be- 
 lieves, by the Holy Spirit. And if he is 
 called in question because he reports occur- 
 rences heard of and not seen by him, he begs 
 his accusers to lay the same charge against 
 Luke in the Gospel, against Gregory in the 
 Dialogue. Why should he be condemned for 
 doing in a small matter what they did in 
 a great? Besides, was there not the evidence 
 of the saint's shi-ine, on which these very 
 miracles were in ancient times depicted ? It 
 remained to his day, and it was evidence that 
 these stories were current and were accepted 
 as fact by Aldhelm's own times. I need 
 scarcely say that the confident belief in the 
 continuance of a miraculous power is one 
 of the most difficult phenomena of the early 
 Middle Ages. We shall see a little further on 
 a striking example of it. 
 
 The mention of a church built by Aldhelm 
 near Wareham raises some interesting local 
 questions, a few words on which will not 
 be out of place here. The exact words of 
 William are as follows : " Locus est in Dor- 
 satensi pago, ii milibus a mari disparatus, 
 juxta Werham, ubi et Corf castellum pelago 
 
124 ^T. ALDHELM. 
 
 prominet : " " The place is in Dorset^ two miles 
 off the sea, near Wareham, where also Corfe 
 Castle stands up over the sea." With this 
 must be compared William's statement about 
 the place of burial of the murdered King 
 Edward, " Apud Werham fuit, quod non longe 
 a loco in quo occisus fuit, qui Corf vocatur, 
 imminet mari : " ''It was at Wareham, which 
 stands upon the sea, not far from the place of 
 the murder, called Corfe." It should be noted 
 that the words " where Corfe Castle stands 
 up over the sea " are added in the margin of 
 the first draft of the History, but added in 
 William's own hand. This appears to show 
 that William had made further enquiry, pos- 
 sibly in person, in order to determine the 
 exact place at which the walls still stood. 
 The difference of the verbs used for the rela- 
 tion of the two places to the sea is an indica- 
 tion of clear local knowledge. If this surmise 
 is correct, it will take a great deal of local 
 topography to defeat the argument that the 
 church was actually at Corfe Castle. The 
 statement that it was two miles distant from 
 the sea cannot be very closely pressed, for 
 the levels have altered not inconsiderably 
 since that time, and it is difficult to say how 
 much of the low ground at the head of Poole 
 
ALDHELM*S CHURCH AT CORFE. 1 25 
 
 harbour was covered by the sea twelve hun- 
 dred years ago. On this point, the other 
 passage quoted about Wareham gives useful 
 help. Swanage Bay, too, may have been pre- 
 ferred as the nearest point of the sea, on the 
 ground that a marshy estuary or head of 
 a sea loch almost completely shut in by sand- 
 banks scarcely deserved the name of sea. 
 Thus even if we disregard the change of level, 
 which we certainly cannot safely do, there is 
 not anything really definite in the " two miles 
 distant from the sea," even when the further 
 limitation "near Wareham" is taken into 
 account. 
 
 The important headland west of Swanage 
 known as St. Alban's Head has lost its proper 
 designation of St. Aldhelm's Head because 
 St. Alban was so much better known than 
 St. Aldhelm, and if the vowel of the initial 
 syllable is pronounced in the same way the 
 two words are quite sufficiently alike for the 
 mistake to have arisen. 
 
 On St. Aldhelm's Head, then, to give it its 
 proper name, a very interesting little chapel 
 stands, called St. Aldhelm's Chapel. It can- 
 not be the church in question, for it is not 
 many yards from the sea ; besides, its founda- 
 tion was a good deal later than Aldhelm's 
 
126 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 time. This chapel is well worth a careful 
 description, but as we have to rule it out of 
 court, a description would not be in place. 
 
 About two miles from the sea at this point 
 is the church of Worth Matravers. It is no 
 doubt a Saxon building, and very interesting. 
 It is built of the flat stones which lie on the 
 surface in all that part of the country, a land 
 of small stone quarries worked by a guild of 
 hereditary masons. Its dedication is to All 
 Saints, in itself confirmatory evidence that it 
 comes from Saxon times. But it does not 
 fulfil the condition "where Corfe Castle stands 
 up over the sea," except in a sense which 
 would render William's addition of those 
 words unmeaning. 
 
 In Wareham itself there is a church dedi- 
 cated to St. Martin. It stands on the top of 
 the high scarped face which looks like an 
 earthwork, and without doubt served that 
 purpose at a time when the other sides of 
 Wareham had as their defence raised earth- 
 works. As all who have visited Wareham 
 know, the modern town is entirely confined 
 within the old lines of defence. This church 
 of St. Martin very closely resembles Aldhelm's 
 " little church " at Bradford on Avon ; indeed 
 so closely, that accidental coincidence is out 
 
ALDHELMS CHURCH AT CORFE. 1 27 
 
 of the question. The dimensions, ground-plan, 
 and dei-ails are strikingly similar. The church 
 haft 'been a good deal knocked about, and the 
 north side has been completely altered ; but 
 the south side and the south transept remain 
 much as they were. An illustration of the 
 " little church " at Bradford on Avon will be 
 found opposite page 1 1 2. It is, however, out of 
 the question to identify St. Martin's, Wareham, 
 with a church described as near Wareham, 
 and as at the place where Corfe Castle stands 
 up over the sea. And there is the fatal diffi- 
 culty that the roof of St. Martin's Church 
 was certainly on in William's time, and always 
 has been on. 
 
 There remains, so far as we can see, only 
 Corfe Castle itself. And here we have a great 
 wall of Saxon herring-bone work of unrivalled 
 dimensions and excellence, with early roman- 
 esque windows at regular intervals. The illus- 
 tration opposite page 128 shows a portion of 
 this wall other than that in which the curious 
 romanesque window-openings still remain 
 intact. It has been incorporated in the de- 
 fences of that most remarkable of fortresses by 
 having a strong face of stone wall added on its 
 outer side, more than doubling its thickness. 
 It must have been preserved for some very 
 
 i 
 
128 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 special reason, for a more perfect w^rk would 
 have been produced if it had been pulled 
 down and a solid wall of the required thick- 
 ness built in its place. It has no roof, and no 
 sign of any, and its incorporation in the main 
 wall of defence appears to show that it had 
 no roof when that work was done. The oppo- 
 site wall, and the ends, have disappeared so 
 completely that we cannot safely suppose that 
 the original building was used as the chapel 
 of the castle, even in the earliest times. It 
 probably stood clear at the top of the remark- 
 able hill, which was no doubt only fortified 
 originally at its lower parts, and its reputa- 
 tion was so great that the wall was preserved 
 through Norman and Early English times. 
 The kindness of the Rector of Corfe, Mr. de 
 Kilpeck, an old pupil of mine, enables me to 
 give a representation of this wall. Here it 
 was, so far as we can now judge, that Aid- 
 helm's church was built while he was waiting 
 for a favouring gale. 
 
 It should bo added that not a trace could 
 be found last year of a tradition in any of 
 the localities mentioned, of difficulty about 
 roofing a church or chapel in ancient times. 
 
 Aldhelm arrived at Rome, and abode with 
 the Pope, Sergius I, in the Lateran. He 
 
2. SAXON WALL, CORFE CASTLE 
 
 To face p. 128 
 
ALDHELM IN ROME. 1 29 
 
 celebrated Mass every day, thus relieving the 
 teHium of life in foreign parts and commend- 
 ing himself and his companions to God. 
 
 One day he had sung the Mass, in accor- 
 dance with his daily custom ; and in taking 
 off his vestment (William of Malmesbury 
 says, somewhat to my surprise, " the gar- 
 ment which they call a chasuble ; " it would 
 have seemed natural at that date to say 
 " in taking off his chasuble"), thinking that 
 the attendant was ready, he threw it off 
 behind his back. The minister, however, was 
 attending to something at another part of the 
 altar, and was not there to receive the chasuble 
 as it went back over Aldhelm's head. There 
 was no one and nothing to catch it. But lo ! 
 a ray of the sun, shining clear through the 
 transparent glass of a window, caught the 
 chasuble and held it miraculously suspended 
 in the empty air. '* Now this vestment," 
 William adds, " whether he had taken it with 
 him from England or had only procured it 
 for the occasion we do not know, is with us 
 still." He finished this work, the Gesta Pon- 
 tificum Anglorum, in 1125. *' It is of most 
 delicate material," he continues, "dyed scarlet ; 
 and has black scrolls containing the repre- 
 sentations of peacocks." Its length showed 
 I 
 
130 ST. ALDHELM, 
 
 that the saint was a tall man, and would 
 naturally increase the difficulty of throwing 
 it over his head. Here we have the birds in 
 scrolls of which we see so much on Anglian 
 sculptured stones of the early ages of Chris- 
 tianity in this island. 
 
 We now come to a curious story which in 
 more ways than one illustrates the rudeness 
 and the beliefs of the time. While Aldhelm 
 was staying in Rome, a child was born in the 
 house of the pope's chamberlain. The repoxi) 
 spread that the mother was a nun ; and public 
 clamour declared that the father was the 
 pope, for they were said to have been much 
 together. Sergius, who was pope from 687 
 to 701, had only been confirmed in the papacy 
 by the lay exarch of Ravenna after a great 
 struggle, in which he defeated the claims of 
 two rivals, after payment of a large sum of 
 money for the decision in his favour. There 
 was, therefore, a party against him, and the 
 fact that he was of a Syrian family settled in 
 Sicily would render him unpopular with some 
 at least of the Romans. It is rather curious 
 that he should have been charged with this 
 particular kind of offence, for he was the pope 
 who scornfully rejected the canon of the 
 Quinisext Council which asserted the per- 
 
ALDHELM IN ROME. 13I 
 
 mission of Scripture in favour of married 
 clergy. It was in consequence of this rejection 
 that the emperor gave orders for his appre- 
 hension and transportation to Constantinople, 
 an order which he successfully resisted by 
 force. 
 
 Aldhelm took to heart the insult of this 
 charge agaiust the pope. He set to work to 
 argue the matter with the Romans, urging 
 upon them three points, which do not appear 
 to the modern mind very strong. First, it 
 was a wretchedly base thing to suspect their 
 own pontiff of crimes. Next, what influence 
 could the Roman pontiff have with the Britons 
 and other nations across the seas, if he was 
 attacked by his own citizens ? Lastly, it did 
 not seem likely, it could not be true, that 
 one who remembered that he was set over 
 the whole world would entangle himself in 
 such a sin as this. It seems, we may remark, 
 impossible that William could have known 
 the history of the popes during the tenth and 
 eleventh centuries, and yet recorded any one 
 of these arguments. Aldhelm found that he 
 was speaking to the winds ; the popular tumult 
 had gone too far to be easily appeased. He 
 therefore took a more decided step. " Bring 
 hither the infant, that out of his own mouth 
 1% 
 
132 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 he may repel this charge against the pontiff." 
 This was received with laughter, in which we 
 modern sceptics join. The child, however, 
 now only nine days old, was brought to 
 Aldhelm, was baptized by him, and was asked, 
 was public opinion right about its father ? 
 The infant settled the matter in a clear voice. 
 Sergius, the infant voice informed our Wilt- 
 shire saint, was holy and undefiled, and 
 always had been. Rome burst into triumph 
 over Aldhelm's merits ; the cheers and shouts 
 of joy shook the very stars. 
 
 That is William's preface to a Bull of Pope 
 Sergius, in which he granted to Aldhelm all 
 his requests on behalf of his monasteries. 
 They were exempted from episcopal inter- 
 vention ; no one was to set up an episcopal 
 see there, nor was any bishop to say Mass 
 there except on invitation ; if they needed 
 a priest or a deacon, the neighbouring bishop 
 was to ordain him without any but the essen- 
 tial conditions. If an abbat died, the monks 
 were to elect his successor and the neighbour- 
 ing bishop was to recognize him. This charter 
 of privileges was brought back to England 
 by Aldhelm, and here was signed by the hand 
 of Ethelred the Mercian king, and Ina the 
 West Saxon king ; and they agreed that if 
 
CHRISTIAN ART IN WESSEX. 1 33 
 
 war fell out between the two nations, the 
 abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul at Malnies- 
 bury should always be left in peace. This 
 was evidently a great privilege, for the 
 boundary of the two realms was not at all 
 clear, and certainly came perilously near to 
 the abbey. A border place, with a consider- 
 able reputation for wealth, was liable to 
 pillage from either side. 
 
 Another example may here be given of the 
 link which Aldhelm formed between the art 
 of Italy and the infant art of the Church of 
 the West Saxons. 
 
 When Aldhelm returned from Italy, he 
 brought with him a white marble altar, a fair 
 piece of stone, 4 ft. long, 2-J- ft. broad, i^ ft. 
 thick, with a projecting rim, beautifully 
 wrought all round with crosses. The animal 
 which was carrying it up the Alps which 
 must have been a camel, William thinks, for 
 no beast of our regions could carry such 
 a weight the animal fell, and broke the 
 marble slab in two. Aldhelm, it is unneces- 
 sary to say, infused vigour into the animal, so 
 that it picked itself up again, and he mira- 
 culously mended the altar, leaving only an 
 irregular mark or cicatrice where the fracture 
 had been. Aldhelm eventually got the altar 
 
134 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 safe back to England, and gave it to Ina, 
 King of the West Saxons, who bestowed it 
 upon the church of St. Mary at Bruton in 
 Somerset, where it was still to be seen in 
 William's days, a lively proof, as he says, of 
 the holiness of Aldhelm. I suppose there was 
 an irregular seam in the marble, as to the 
 origin of which this story was told. 
 
 As to the weight which the camel would 
 have to carry, you will see that the dimen- 
 sions I have given, 4 ft. by 2 J ft. by i| ft., 
 mean 13I cubic feet. I asked a practical 
 friend how many cubic feet of marble go to 
 a ton, and he replied, "of statuary marble, 
 J^l feet." So the altar weighed just a ton. 
 
 In connection with the question of early 
 Christian art in Wessex, we may remark that 
 we only by accident missed the chance of 
 being the most prominent of the races of the 
 Heptarchy in that respect. It was to Benedict 
 Biscop that Northumbria owed its early pre- 
 eminence, more than to any one else or than 
 to all others put together. He it was who 
 built the churches of St. Peter, St. Mary, 
 St. Paul, at Wearmouth and Jarrow. He it 
 was who brought the noble manuscripts from 
 Italy which formed the unrivalled library of 
 Wearmouth ; one of them is now one of the 
 
BENEDICT BISCOP IN WESSEX. I35 
 
 greatest pandects or codices of the Scriptures 
 of the Old and New Testament still in exis- 
 tence, the famous Codex Amiatinus in the 
 Laurenziana at Florence, with the inscription 
 of Abbat Ceolfrid, of Aldhelm's time, present- 
 ing it to the pope. He it was who brought 
 over large collections of pictures for the adorn- 
 ment of his three churches, pictures of the 
 Virgin Mary, the twelve Apostles, the types 
 of the Old Testament and the antitypes of the 
 New, the scenes of the Gospel and the scenes 
 of the Last Judgement. Those were for two 
 of his churches. Then we have other pictures 
 not described, in number sufficient to go com- 
 pletely round the remaining one of the three 
 churches. 
 
 This Benedict, a Northumbrian by birth, 
 and an officer of the Northumbrian king 
 Oswy, had made more than one journey to 
 Eome when the pope selected him as the 
 fittest companion for the new Ai'chbishop 
 Theodore in 668. In 669 he took charge of 
 the monastery at Canterbury, and taught as 
 head of its school for two years, till the Abbat 
 Hadrian came and took charge ; under whom 
 Aldhelm, as we have seen, studied. Benedict 
 was thus set free, and he went again to Rome 
 specially to collect ecclesiastical treasures. 
 
13^ ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 He had friends also in the south of Gaul who 
 purchased things for him, and he came home 
 by way of Vienne on the Ehone to pick up 
 what they collected. Loaded with his trea- 
 sures he came to Wessex, intending to settle 
 at the court of Kenwalch, the West Saxon 
 king, who had more than once shown his 
 friendship and done him services. No doubt 
 Wessex, and not Northumbria, would have 
 been the recipient of his treasures, and Malmes- 
 bury was the place of education most promi- 
 nent in the king's mind. Malmesbury, not 
 Wearmouth, would have been the pioneer of 
 ecclesiastical art, the place of abode of the 
 great library. Unfortunately, when Benedict 
 reached Wessex, King Kenwalch had just 
 died, in the year 672. His widow, Sexburga, 
 ruled for a year or more after his death, 
 a unique example of woman's rule in the land 
 up to that time. Benedict's disappointment 
 at the death of his royal friend drove him 
 away from Wessex, and he passed up with 
 his treasures to his native Northumbria. 
 There, too, his patron Oswy was dead, and 
 Ecgfrith his son was reigning. Ecgfrith ex- 
 amined his volumes and codices and relics 
 and other treasures, and was so much de^ 
 lighted with them that he gave him seventy 
 
BENEDICT BISCOP IN WESSEX. I37 
 
 hides of land of his own estates, and bade him 
 build a monastery, and then another. This 
 was a year or two before Malmesbury was 
 made an abbey and Aldhelm was made abbat. 
 Knowing what we do know of the great 
 interest taken by Alfred and his family in all 
 artistic work, we can imagine to what heights 
 art would have been carried by them if this 
 mighty nucleus of art treasures had been 
 deposited in the West Saxon realm. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 Aldhelm's election and consecration as bishop. His 
 miracle of the book. His concessions to his monasteries. 
 His hard work in his diocese. His death and burial. 
 The crosses erected at the places where his body rested. 
 Some account of Saxon sculptured stones still remain- 
 ing in those parts. 
 
 At the beginning of the eighth century, 
 Aldhelm had reached the years bordering on 
 old age, so William tells us, again pointing 
 conclusively to the earlier of the dates which 
 have been given for his birth. When a year 
 or two more had passed, Hedda, the pontiff of 
 all West Saxony, with his see at Winton, died. 
 The death was most acceptable to the heavenly 
 beings, because it added a saint to their 
 number ; but it was a great loss to mortals, 
 because it was next to impossible to find any 
 one who could govern that great diocese. 
 The territory, which had four bishops in 
 W^illiam's time, had only one to curb it then ; 
 only one man to coerce the rebel, to comfort 
 the suppliant. That was William's view of 
 the necessary work of a diocesan bishop, and 
 
ALDHELM ELECTED BISHOP. I39 
 
 of the two attitudes of his flock. By a synodal 
 council the unwieldy diocese was divided into 
 two sees, the one of Sherborne, the other of 
 Winton. The division was unequal, for the 
 one see had only two pagif the other had the 
 whole of the rest of the vast West Saxon 
 realm. The prelates selected were natives of 
 their respective districts. The see of Sher- 
 borne, which comprised Berkshire, Wilts, 
 Dorset, and part or even the whole of Somer- 
 set, if not still more of the south-west, fell to 
 Aldhelm ; the two pagi of Hants and Surrey 
 alone went to the other bishop, Daniel. 
 
 Aldhelm resisted his appointment as long 
 as he could. He pressed every point which 
 could tend towards passing him over, every 
 point which might tend towards dividing the 
 supporters of his election. But he laboured 
 in vain, being refuted by his own argument. 
 His great point was his age, probably about 
 sixty-five, quite young in these days. He 
 was, he declared, at an age for retirement 
 from work to learned leisure, not for entering 
 Upon business of great anxieties. The reply 
 was prompt: the more mature he was, the 
 freer from vices, the readier in counsel. And 
 though his hair was white, his eyes were 
 sparkling still. He gave way at last. The 
 
140 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 bishops received him as their colleague, the 
 clerics as their father, the laics as their pro- 
 tector. By universal acclaim, with no dis- 
 sentient, he was taken to Berhtwald, the 
 archbishop of the chief see, to be consecrated. 
 The archbishop was greatly pleased by the 
 election of one so closely bound to him by 
 the ties of study and of the religious life. He 
 detained him for a long visit, and lightened 
 the burdens of the details of the archiepisco- 
 pate by discussing principles with him. 
 
 While he was at Canterbury, he went down 
 to the coast at Dover (twelve miles off, 
 William says), hearing that ships had come 
 there. The harbour there was much disturbed 
 by storms. The passage from France was the 
 shortest of all, being only a few miles long. 
 It resulted from this narrowness of the 
 channel that the currents of the sea clashed 
 with one another, and the waves became 
 angry on the slightest provocation. Thus, 
 just where people expected the safest crossing, 
 they ran the greatest risk. This preface, 
 William explains, leads naturally to the story- 
 he has to relate. The saint was walking on 
 the sea-shore. He examined closely the wares 
 of the merchant sailors, to see if they had 
 anything which would serve ecclesiastical 
 
THE MIRACLE OF THE BOOK. I4I 
 
 purposes, for they had brought a quantity of 
 books. Seeing a book containing the whole 
 of the Old and the New Testament, he desired 
 to buy it, and did not look at the other 
 things. He turned over the leaves in a know- 
 ing way, and beat down the price. The 
 barbarians, with the insolence of sailors, 
 attacked him with abuse. '' Why should he 
 depreciate other people's property, and lower 
 the value of things not his ? Let him, if he 
 liked, blow upon his own property, and leave 
 the property of others at its true value." 
 The saint only laughed at their impudence. 
 When they found he would not give their 
 price, they rowed off from the shore. But 
 divine vengeance quickly punished their in- 
 sult to the saint. A storm springs up. Dense 
 clouds turn day into night. The fury of 
 the winds, the creaking of the oars, increase 
 the terror. The mast cannot withstand the 
 violence of the tempest. The ship trembles 
 under the blows of the waves. The art of the 
 rowers, the skill of the sailors, all are of no 
 use. They are going to destruction; all the 
 elements appear to have conspired for the 
 death of the wretches. But at length it 
 dawns upon even their dull minds that this 
 is the penalty for their treatment of the 
 
142 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 saint. They send forth a wail of distress, 
 stretch out their clasped hands to the shore. 
 They pray for help ; they vow amendment. 
 It was an easy thing for the blessed pontiff to 
 forgive the offence, which had not caused him 
 any grief. He made the sign of the cross, 
 and the storm at once began to abate its 
 violence. The tempest grew calm. The wind 
 changed, and helped the ship to the shore ; 
 the waves which had threatened death became 
 subservient. The sailors got safe on to the 
 sands, and pressed the book upon the saint. 
 Wouldn't he take it for nothing? Wouldn't 
 he deign to accept the gift of his servants, 
 whom he had rescued from the very jaws of 
 death ? He gave them a price halfway 
 between his and theirs, that he might not 
 inflict a heavy loss upon them, and yet 
 might not reject their prayers. The volume, 
 William says, is still to be seen at Malmes- 
 bury (Meldun), a venerable specimen of anti- 
 quity. 
 
 The new bishop had his episcopal seat at 
 Sherborne, and there he built, in a wonderful 
 manner, a church which William had himself 
 visited, showing that it, as well as St. Mary's 
 at Malmesbury (afterwards called St. Aid- 
 helm's), was spared by the Norman archi- 
 
THE ELECTION OF ABBATS. I43 
 
 tects ^ He then proposed to appoint abbats 
 to his three abbeys, in succession to himself. 
 The monks, however, interposed objections: 
 they were so enamoured of his gentle rule, 
 that so long as he lived they would have none 
 other to rule over them. We may, perhaps, 
 read between the lines the determination of 
 the monks to prevent so awkward a precedent 
 as that of the first bishop of the new see 
 appointing abbats to the abbeys in the dio- 
 cese. For that would be the appearance which 
 the transaction would have constitutionally, 
 although it might be quite true that, in fact, 
 it was in each case only the Abbat Aldhelm 
 designating his successor on the occasion of his 
 resignation. He set forth the whole affair in 
 a document promulgated at the monastery 
 founded by Cuthburg, sister of King Ina, 
 near the river called Winburna, a place which 
 we know as Wimborne. King Ina and Aid- 
 helm's brother-bishop, Daniel, subscribed the 
 document, which Aldhelm had previously con- 
 firmed with the sign of the sacred cross. It 
 was afterwards ratified at a sacrosanct council 
 held near the river Noodr, that is, at Adder- 
 bourne on the Nadder, in Wilts. In this 
 
 * One of the Saxon doorw'ays of this church is still to be 
 seen in the north aisle. It is of Bradford stone. 
 
144 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 document Aldhelm recites the prayer with 
 which the monks concluded their affectionate 
 resolution to have him as their abbat so long 
 as he should live. "This with suppliant 
 prayer and common request we pray, that 
 thou wilt make firm, under witness of the 
 holy Scriptures and the clear consent of men 
 of authority, that after thy death neither royal 
 boldness, nor episcopal authority, nor any man 
 of ecclesiastical or secular dignity, shall claim 
 headship over us contrary to our own free 
 will." To this Aldhelm agreed, and this it 
 was that he confirmed by document. In 
 addition to Ina and Daniel, Ethelfrith the 
 patrician subscribed the charter. The date 
 was 705 ; the monasteries were recited as 
 Maldubesburg, Froom, and Bradanford. It is 
 clear that the derivation of the first of these 
 names was still from Maildubh. 
 
 We see in this recitation of the prayer of 
 the monks that general attention had already 
 been called to the dangers attendant upon 
 the succession to abbacies. Nearly twenty 
 years before this we have the very strong 
 remarks of Easter wine, joint-abbat of Wear- 
 mouth, on this subject. He was the nephew 
 of Benedict Biscop, the founder, and was of 
 noble kin. When he was dying, in 686, he 
 
THE ELECTION OF ABBATS. I45 
 
 gave solemn charge to his monks about the 
 choice of a successor. They were not to give 
 heed to high birth, but were to be guided in 
 their choice of a ruler by the probity of life 
 and of doctrine of the man whom they should 
 choose. In particular he warned them against 
 disregarding such grounds of choice in order 
 to keep the abbacy in his family, a danger 
 which it is evident that he felt to be not 
 remote. " I tell you of a truth, that if it were 
 a choice between two evils, it would be much 
 more tolerable to me that the whole of this 
 place, in which I have made a monastery, 
 should if God so willed it become for ever 
 a desert, than that my own brother after the 
 flesh, whom we know not to walk in the way 
 of truth, should succeed me in its government 
 as abbat. Take ye therefore, my brethren, great 
 care that you never choose for yourselves a 
 father on account of his birth, nor yet from out- 
 side your own body ; but according to the rule 
 of the great Abbat Benedict, and according 
 to the privilege of our own monastery, elect 
 from your body him who in virtue of life and 
 wisdom of doctrine is judged most worthy, 
 and invite the bishop to confirm the appoint- 
 ment with the customary benediction." 
 
 Twenty years after Aldhelm's death, Bede 
 K 
 
146 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 gave a terrible account of the evils of the 
 monastic system, in his letter to Ecgbert, the 
 Archbishop of York. '' It is a disgraceful 
 thing to have to say, that persons who know 
 nothing at all of the monastic life have re- 
 ceived under the name of monasteries so many 
 estates that there is no land left for gi-ants to 
 the sons of nobles or of soldiers who have 
 served their time ; and thus they have nothing 
 to do, and being not married though of mar- 
 riageable age they live dissolute lives, and 
 either leave their country, for which they 
 ought to fight, and go beyond the seas, or live 
 at home the slaves of wantonness and lust, 
 not abstaining even from the virgins conse- 
 crated to God. A gi'aver scandal still is com- 
 mitted. Laymen give money to the kings, 
 and under pretext of founding monasteries 
 procure territories on which they may be free 
 to indulge their lusts ; and by royal edict 
 they acquire for these possessions hereditary 
 tenure, and get the documents ratified by the 
 subscription of bishops, abbats, and secular 
 authorities. They fill theii' so-called monas- 
 teries with monks driven out of true monas- 
 teries for disobedience, or any whom they can 
 find wandering about, or such of their own 
 followers as they can persuade to be ton- 
 
147 
 
 sui'ed. Here they devote themselves to the care 
 of their wives and the procreation of children. 
 They go further, and obtain lands for their 
 wives to erect monasteries and though lay 
 women to rule over handmaids of Christ. The 
 proverb in use among the common people is 
 true of them, ' wasps can make combs, but 
 they store up not honey but poison.' So it has 
 come about that for about thirty years, that 
 is, since King Aldfrith was removed from 
 human affairs, our province has gone mad 
 with this insane error, and there has scarcely 
 been one prefect who has not during his time 
 of office furnished himself with a monastery 
 of this kind, and dragged his wife also into 
 the unholy business, and the king's own 
 ministers and attendants have done the 
 same." 
 
 Of Aldhelm's work in his diocese, William 
 has not much to say. He deals in general 
 statements, and contents himself with the 
 following summary description of the saint's 
 diocesan labours. 
 
 " The pontiff pressed on with the business 
 of the diocese with unwearied zeal, knowing 
 that the end was near. The flesh, worn out 
 with years, would have refused to carry out 
 the labours he called upon it for, but his 
 
148 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 mind was firm and was already at the gates 
 of heaven. He forced the feeble body to do 
 what he would. He preached night and day. 
 He went round the districts with much 
 activity. He observed fasts, and other duties 
 of that kind, as completely as in the time of 
 vigour. Thus he led a life pleasing to men 
 and to God, and finally passed up to the 
 realms above." 
 
 After four years of most strenuous adminis- 
 tration of his diocese so, as we have seen, 
 Bede describes his work as bishop Aldhelm 
 died, in the year 709, while visiting the 
 village of Doulting in Somerset. Feeling 
 that his death was near, he had himself 
 carried into the wooden church, that there he 
 might breathe his last, as the unbroken tradi- 
 tion of the village told in William's days. 
 Ecguin, Bishop of Worcester (693-7 1 7), learned 
 by a vision the death of his friend, and under 
 the influence of grief and afiection hastened 
 to Doulting. Prayer having been offered for 
 the repose of the soul, Ecguin ordered the 
 body to be carried to Malmesbury, in accord- 
 ance with the wish and instructions of the 
 saint, and himself worked hard at the neces- 
 sary preparations. The blessed remains were 
 accompanied by crowds which went before 
 
149 
 
 and followed after, each striving to be as near 
 as possible to the bier, at least to see it if they 
 could not touch it. All were greatly soothed 
 in their sorrow by the beauty of the lifeless 
 corpse, its grace and shapeliness. 
 
 William tells us that stone crosses were set 
 up along the route by which the body was 
 taken from Doulting to Malmesbury, one each 
 seven miles. He further quotes the words of 
 Bishop Ecguin to the following effect : 
 
 " Learning by revelation that the religious 
 bishop Aldhelm had migrated to the Lord, 
 I called together the brethren and attendants, 
 and opened to them the departure of the ever 
 to be venerated father. With all haste 
 I reached the spot where the sacred body lay, 
 about 50 miles beyond the monastery of 
 Meldun. Thence I took it to the place of 
 sepulture and buried it with all honour, 
 ordering ^ the erection of the sign of the holy 
 
 ^ This is one of many evidences, some of which 
 have already been noted, of the close inter-communion 
 between Mercia and Wessex. It might have been 
 supposed that the other of the West Saxon bishops would 
 have performed these functions, especially as Daniel was 
 himself a Malmesbury man. Bishop Ecguin of Worcester 
 was of course Mercian. Ecclesiastical comity was already 
 disregarding political divisions. We have here in embryo 
 the unification of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy under 
 the example of the Church of England. 
 
150 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 cross at each place where the body rested on 
 the journey." 
 
 All the crosses, William adds^ remained to 
 his day, and not one of them showed signs 
 of decay. They were called Biscopstane, 
 Bishopstones. One was plainly to be seen in 
 the monks' cloister at Malmesbury. We can 
 only add, cloister and cross alike are gone. 
 
 Putting together the two facts that William 
 says for himself that the crosses were placed 
 each seven miles, and that he quotes Ecguin 
 as saying that Doulting was about 50 miles 
 from Malmesbury and that a cross was set 
 up at each resting-place on the way, we must 
 suppose that there were seven stages of the 
 journey, each of about seven miles. The dis- 
 tance from Doulting to Malmesbury by the 
 shortest way, as ways now are, is not nearly 
 50 miles, and we have to create for ourselves 
 a circuitous route to account for that length 
 of road. On the face of it we should say 
 that they were sure to take the body to 
 Frome and to Bradford on Avon, two of 
 Aldhelm's own foundations as places of learn- 
 ing. Using this as a hint of the probable 
 route, we find some interesting facts. 
 
 From Doulting to Frome is about seven 
 miles. If they went thence to Bradford, the 
 
THE FUNERAL I'ROCESSION. I5I 
 
 second day's journey was a good deal more 
 than seven miles. It happens that Bishops- 
 trow, so called from the bishop's tree, with a 
 church dedicated to St. Aldhelm, is about seven 
 miles east of Frome, beyond Warminster. At 
 that village, more probably than at Stoke 
 Orchard, the legendary event must be placed 
 of Aldhelm's leaning on his ashen staff 
 through so long a sermon that the staff took 
 root and burgeoned with ash leaves in his 
 hand. It seems not at all unlikely that 
 they would go there to rest on the second 
 night. But if they did, they would not get 
 to Bradford on the third day, and some place 
 which we cannot identify was their third 
 resting-place ; this would necessitate our 
 cutting out one of the places still to be men- 
 tioned. At Bradford, which on this supposition 
 was their fourth resting-place, we have still 
 pai-ts of a stone cross, certainly of the Anglo- 
 Saxon period, and probably early in the 
 period. At Bath, about the required distance 
 from Bradford, we still have a part of an 
 Anglo-Saxon cross of the same type as that 
 at Bradford. At Colerne, which lies between 
 Bath and Malmesbury, to the east of the 
 Fosseway, we have two remarkable fragments 
 of Anglo-Saxon crosses, more complicated ia 
 
152 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 style than those already mentioned, with very 
 fine lacertine ornamentation. At Littleton 
 Drew, on the west of the Fosseway , and about 
 seven or eight miles from Malmesbury, we 
 have two fine sculptured stones, the one of 
 which fits on to the top of the other, together 
 forming the shaft of a cross, about six feet 
 high, so that the whole cross was nearly or 
 quite nine feet high. These portions of the shaft 
 are mainly covered with vegetable ornament, 
 but there is a skilful application of the inter- 
 lacing ornament on one large panel ; this 
 again differs fundamentally from all the other 
 crosses named. The stones at Littleton Drew 
 are remarkable among early sculptured stones 
 of the south-west in having the remains of 
 an inscription. There is one very complete 
 and fine A, of the same size and type as the 
 Latin letters on the Kuthwell Cross in Dum- 
 friesshire, which was probably erected nearly 
 twenty-five years before Aldhelm's death. If 
 the funeral procession went from Bath along 
 the Fosseway and turned off* to Colerne, and 
 there rested; and next day joined the Fosse- 
 way again by the same road and moved up 
 towards Malmesbury, turning off" to Littleton 
 Drew for the night; and next day moved 
 from Littleton Drew to Malmesbury ; we 
 
EXISTING FRAGMENTS OF SAXON CROSSES. 1 53 
 
 should have three stages of the required 
 length from Bath to Malmesbury, with crosses 
 or parts of crosses still remaining at all of the 
 three supposed resting-places. But this makes 
 one stage too many. 
 
 The only difficulty lies between Frome and 
 Bradford. It is tempting to take them round 
 by Bishopstrow and to find some place of 
 rest between Bishopstrow and Bradford. If 
 we do that, we must cut out Bath and take 
 them from Bradford across to Colerne. It 
 seems much more simple to take them from 
 Frome to Westbury, where the dedication of 
 the Church to All Saints speaks of Anglo- 
 Saxon timeSj while the moated site known as 
 the Palace Garden, and certain remains of 
 Roman occupation, found from time to time, 
 point to a residence of Anglo-Saxon kings 
 and a selection of the place for residence in 
 earlier times still. If we adopt this sugges- 
 tion, the body rested on its way from Doulting 
 to Malmesbury, and the stone crosses were 
 set up, at Frome, Westbury, Bradford, Bath, 
 Colerne, Littleton, and Malmesbury, thus 
 making the journey in seven stages. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to mention as a 
 parallel case that of the Eleanor crosses which 
 on the same principle King Edward set up 
 
154 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 at each place where the Queen's body rested 
 on its way to Westminster. There are other 
 indications of the survival of the feeling so 
 strikingly illustrated by the case of Aldhelm. 
 One such can be named in our own diocese. 
 A public-house in the parish of St. George, in 
 Bristol East, was named " Don John's Cross," 
 from the cross set up it is supposed on 
 the spot where the body of a Spanish grandee 
 rested on its way from the place where he 
 died to the ship which was to take the body 
 from the Avon to his native land for burial. 
 
 It has been remarked above that we have 
 remains of Saxon crosses at several of the 
 sites mentioned as likely resting-places for 
 Aldhelm's body on its long journey. The 
 most numerous and the most beautiful of the 
 remains of pre-Norman sculptured stones are 
 found in the territories occupied by the 
 Angles, notably the Northumbrian Angles ; 
 but there are considerable remains in the 
 territories of the Middle Angles and Mercians. 
 The West Saxons are supposed to have been 
 much less given to the production of these 
 finely wrought sepulchral monuments, or much 
 less able to produce them. The south generally 
 has been understood to lack the evidences of 
 artistic culture in this material and style. 
 
EXISTING FRAGMENTS OP SAXON CROSSES. 1 55 
 
 But of late years evidence has appeared which 
 has to some considerable extent modified that 
 view so far as Wessex is concerned. 
 
 In 1 891 a large collection of Saxon sculp- 
 tured stones was found at Eamsbury in Wilts. 
 Ramsbury became one of the seats of the 
 Wiltshire bishopric in the year 909, when, in 
 the language of the Anglo-Saxon lists written 
 within a hundred years of the event, still in 
 excellent preservation in the library of Corpus 
 Christi College, Cambridge, the see of Sher- 
 borne, Aldhelm's own see, was divided into 
 three parrochiae, Sherborne (for Dorset), Wells 
 (for Somerset), and Crediton (for Devon and 
 parts of Cornwall), while the see of Winton 
 was divided into two 2Jarroc7^^a6, Winton 
 itself, which Frithestan held, and another 
 which ^thelstan held. This latter was called 
 variously, according to the place at which the 
 bishop set his seat, the see of Ramsbury, of 
 Wilton, and of Sunning. The fii'st and the 
 last of those names point to the union of Berks 
 with Wilts to form this see. 
 
 Ramsbury, we must understand, was an 
 important ecclesiastical place in itself, or it 
 would not have been selected as the seat of 
 the bishop of the newly formed diocese. 
 During recent restorations at Ramsbury, they 
 
156 ST. ALBHELM. 
 
 discovered the foundations of a pre-Norman 
 church running parallel to the chancel wall 
 of the present (thirteenth-century) church, 
 and about three feet outside it. In immediate 
 contiguity with these foundations two fine 
 sculptured stones were dug up, and three were 
 found near the same spot, in the external 
 south-east angle of the present church. The 
 several stones have fine patterns of interlace- 
 ments, well executed. They are beautifully 
 fresh and clear and white, as white as the 
 whitest Bath stone of to-day. They are in fact 
 of Bradford stone, which weathers white. Two 
 of them are body-stones, and the others are 
 shafts of the accompanying crosses. The dia- 
 gram of the pattern on one side of one of the 
 shafts, given in figure 3, shows that in the 
 case of this monument the ornamentation was 
 lacertine, or dragonesque, unlike the other of 
 the two monuments. The voids in the dragon's 
 convolutions are not due to decay, of which 
 there is no sign ; they are due to the fact that 
 the stone had been at some time broken into 
 several pieces, and at the fractures the raised 
 work has been destroyed. Enough is left to 
 show that the convolutions of one serpent 
 formed the whole pattern, and for one con- 
 versant with this kind of work it would be 
 
EXISTING FKAGMENTS OF SAXON CROSSES. I57 
 
 easy to complete the pattern and show the 
 creature's tail coming to its appointed end. 
 We know that at Glastonbury Abbat Tica 
 was buried at the right of the high altar, 
 with a tomb^ " not ignoble in the art of its 
 sculpture ; " and Odo at Canterbury was buried 
 
 Fig. 3. Ramsbury. 
 
 on the south side of the altar with a "pyramid'* 
 over his tomb ; Odo, it may be remarked, 
 had been bishop of Ramsbury. The Rams- 
 bury monuments, each consisting of a body 
 stone with a shaft or pyramid with a cross- 
 
158 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 head, probably stood at the north and south 
 sides of the pre-Norman altar, and were turned 
 out in a broken condition after some great 
 devastation. 
 
 The dragonesque ornament of the shafts 
 of crosses had in early times a certain vogue 
 among the West Saxons in Wilts and the men 
 of the British parts of Somerset and Devon. 
 It is worthy of notice that the dragon was 
 the emblem both of Wessex and of the Britons 
 to the West of Wilts ; we all of us remember 
 the dragon standard on the Bayeux tapestry, 
 in the scene where Harold's death is shown. 
 The legends of great encounters with dragons 
 not improbably point to fights with one or 
 other of these peoples ; and a legend in Somer- 
 set of a savage struggle between two dragons 
 may very probably refer to the tug of war 
 when dragon of Bret met West Saxon dragon. 
 
 There is at Rowberrow in Somerset, near 
 Axbridge, one panel of the shaft of a cross, 
 the whole of the pattern on which is formed, 
 as at Ramsbury, of one creature of the serpent 
 kind. It is shown in figure 4, The inter- 
 lacements follow the invariable rule of " alter- 
 nately under and over," but they are not 
 specially skilful. In the north we should call 
 them poor. The tail of the creature ought 
 
4- ROWBERROW 
 
 To face p. 158 
 
^ 
 
EXISTING FRAGMENTS OF SAXON CROSSES. 1 59 
 
 by rights to end in its mouth, so that the 
 circuit would be complete ; it ends, as will 
 be seen, about the middle of the left side of 
 the figure. In two cases the photograph mis- 
 leads the eye into seeing a flaw which does 
 not exist. 
 
 The two sides of the shaft of a cross at 
 West Camel in Somerset, to the north of 
 Sherborne in Dorset, shown in figures 5 and 6, 
 have their patterns formed of two dragons. 
 The side shown in figure 6 is a fine example 
 of lacertine work. On the other face the 
 heads and mouths and eyes of the two dragons 
 are seen. Above these the face of the cross is 
 divided into two panels by a horizontal bar, 
 and above the bar, in the upper panel, is 
 a pattern of interlacing bands springing as 
 ofi*shoots from a central stem. This com- 
 bination of the ideas of foliage ornament and 
 interlacing bands is very far from common : 
 my discovery of the Saxon patterns at Little- 
 ton Drew, to be described later on, affords 
 the most striking example known to me. 
 
 At Dolton, in North Devon, a gi-eat shaft 
 of a cross covered with strikingly good work 
 has been cut into two lengths, and the 
 upper half has been turned upside-down and 
 hollowed out for a font The tapering of the 
 
l6o ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 shaft shows that a portion has been lost in 
 the process, and the patterns show that if the 
 two pieces are portions of the same shaft 
 the lost portion included the horizontal bands 
 which divided the faces into panels. Of the 
 four faces of the upper part of the shaft, three 
 are occupied by lacertine ornament, one of 
 which is shown in figure 7. The dragons are 
 eared creatures, with straight snout and puffed 
 cheeks, not unlike the creature at Rowberrow, 
 but more like the mask of a fox. Inasmuch 
 as the interlacing bands in which they are 
 involved do not pass into their mouths as 
 tails, we may understand that the pattern is 
 all formed of one band, swelling out towards 
 its ends into the bodies and heads of these 
 dragons, as the bands which form the pattern 
 in the lower face swell out into necks and 
 heads ; though in that case, as will be seen, 
 each creature has the end of a tail in its jaws, 
 probably the tail of the other creature. There 
 are many reasons for thinking that these two 
 fragments are parts of different cross-shafts. 
 If they belong to the same shaft, it was 
 between five and six feet long. In any case 
 we have both the bottom of a shaft and the 
 top of a shaft, for the patterns in each case 
 finish off completely at one end or the other. 
 
7. DOLTON 
 
 To face p. i6o 
 
8. GLOUCESTER 
 
 To face p. 160 
 
EXISTING FRAGMENTS OF SAXON CROSSES. l6l 
 
 The head of the cross would be socketed on 
 to the upper piece above the heads of the 
 dragons. 
 
 To pass to another kingdom and another 
 people, though, as we have seen and shall see, 
 closely connected with Malmesbury, figure 8 
 shows one side of the remarkable fragment of 
 the shaft of a cross taken out of the wall 
 of an alley in Gloucester in 1888. In the 
 lower panel are two lacertine creatures fully 
 displayed. They form a symmetrical pattern, 
 for the triangular leaf in which the involving 
 band ends at the upper left-hand corner, near 
 the creature's left leg, will be found reproduced 
 in a like position at the right-hand corner at 
 the bottom. This shows also that we have 
 very nearly the whole of this panel. The 
 upper panel shows a great bird of prey, broken 
 off at the neck, the lower part of its body 
 involved in interlacing bands. The other 
 faces have animals on them, similarly involved, 
 with one exception where the pattern is, as 
 at West Camel, a combination of the ideas of 
 vegetable growth and interlacing bands. 
 
 The probable explanation of this lacertine 
 
 decoration of the shafts of Christian crosses 
 
 is that it is meant to represent the old serpent, 
 
 defeated by the power of the Cross, and tied 
 
 L 
 
1 62 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 and bound by means of its own self. Where 
 two such creatures are employed, the certain 
 overthrow of Satan divided against himself 
 may be symbolized. But, however true that 
 may be, it is difficult to keep out of considera- 
 tion the emblems of the West Saxons and the 
 Britons, and to refuse to see any reference 
 to them. It may indeed be possible to go 
 further, and to question whether the dragons 
 on the earliest sculptured stones were the 
 cause or the effect of the dragon emblems and 
 the dragon legends. 
 
 We are able to carry back the practice of 
 erecting shafts for sepulchral monuments to 
 a period so early as to leave no doubt that it 
 was a recognized practice in Aldhelm's own 
 time, and at a place in which he took special 
 interest, namely, at Glastonbury. We are 
 told by William that it was Aldhelm who per- 
 suaded his relative Ina, the King of the West 
 Saxons, to build a large church there, and to 
 restore the importance of the ecclesiastical 
 establishment by rebuilding the monastery. 
 This was at the beginning of Ina's reign, about 
 the year 688. 
 
 We have an exceedingly interesting account 
 of the ancient cemetery of Glastonbury from 
 the pen of William of Malmesbury, and also 
 
THE CEMETEEY OF GLASTONBURY. 163 
 
 an account of the tomb of Abbat Tica to 
 which reference has already been made. This 
 Abbat Tica had fled from Northumbria from 
 the face of the Danes in 754, and he was said 
 to have brought with him to Glastonbury the 
 relics of many of the Northumbrian saints, 
 Bishop Aidan, Hilda, five abbats of Wear- 
 mouth, and so on. When he died, as Abbat 
 of Glastonbury, he was buried as we have seen 
 on one side of the high altar, under the tomb 
 described by William^ who saw it there, as 
 arte caelaturae non ignobilis, with an epitaph, 
 which he read^ setting forth that Tica's tomb 
 was constructed with marvellous beauty. 
 These phrases can only mean that there was 
 very beautiful sculptured ornamentation on 
 Tica's monument inside the church, and that 
 would naturally lead us to suppose that Tica's 
 companions lavished upon his tomb the skill 
 in design and execution of arabesques and 
 interlacements to which they had been trained 
 in Northumbria. He and his knew well the 
 beauties of St. Cuthbert's delicate cross ; and 
 Acca's two great crosses, the duo cruces lapideae 
 nohiliter msculptae, one of which is still one 
 of our noblest relics of the past ; and the cross 
 of Alchfrith at Bewcastle; and probably 
 though that was further afield the cross at 
 La 
 
164 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Euthwell; and his surviving friends may have 
 used some of the beautiful details of those 
 works of art in decorating the tomb of their 
 friend and master, and might thus have intro- 
 duced into Wessex the art of ornamental 
 sculpture in stone. But if that was so, it is 
 too late by fifty years for our period. For- 
 tunately, William does not leave us to the 
 dilemma of that very natural argument. He 
 goes on to say that in the cemetery outside 
 King Arthur and his wife were buried between 
 two "pyramids," and that King Ken twine was 
 buried under one " pyramid," nobly sculptured, 
 nohiliter exculpta, a phrase strikingly recall- 
 ing Simeon of Durham's phrase of Acca's 
 crosses, nohiliter insculptae, while Athelstan's 
 boundary crosses at the limits of the sanctuary 
 of Beverley, two hundred and fifty years later, 
 were mirabiliter insculptae. Now Kentwine 
 began his reign in the year which saw Aldhelm 
 made Abbat of Malmesbury, and he died in 
 685. Here, then, we have the clearest evidence 
 that beautiful surface ornament was sculptured 
 on the pyramids, or obelisks, or shafts, placed 
 at the head or, as in the case of Acca and of 
 the " long man " at Penrith, at the head and 
 feet of an important person's grave, in Aid- 
 helm's own diocese, twenty years before he 
 
THE CEMETERY OF GLASTONBURY. 165 
 
 became its bishop. There is therefore every 
 reason to suppose that his stone crosses, set 
 up at his seven resting-places, would have on 
 them some ornamentation characteristic of the 
 time and of the country. William's account 
 gives us evidence of the continuance of the 
 practice of erecting such monuments at 
 Glastonbury. There were in his time two 
 pyramids standing a few feet from the ancient 
 church. Their meaning he declared himself 
 anxious but unable to make out. The one 
 which was loftier and nearer to the church 
 was twenty -six feet high, and it had ^yo 
 storeys, iabulatus ^. It was very ancient, but 
 there were on it things which could be clearly 
 read though not clearly understood. On the 
 upper tablet, or panel, or storey, it had a figure 
 in pontifical dress ; on the next a figure in the 
 robes of a king, and certain letters which he 
 gives ; in the third and fourth, various names ; 
 in the lowest, another figure and six or seven 
 names. For our present purpose we must not 
 go into the question of these names : but it is 
 necessary to warn those who consult Gale's 
 edition of William's tract on the Antiquities 
 of Glastonbury, that the editor could not 
 
 * Caesar in his Gallic War speaks of a tower of four 
 storeys, iabidatorum guatuoVf in the second declension. 
 
1 66 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 read correctly those of the Saxon characters 
 which differed from the ordinar}^ capitals or 
 minuscules, being borrowed from the runic 
 alphabet, namely w and th. One of his names 
 is Pulfred, where the P is of course the Saxon 
 wen, the name being Wulfred ; another is 
 Pinepegn, where he read both wen and 
 thorn as p, the inscription being Wine 
 thegn. He gives the name of one of the 
 abbats as Estrepine. This is, of course, 
 that most charming person Estrewine. It 
 may be noted here as specially interesting 
 that precisely this mistake completely led 
 astray the learned Dane who first deciphered 
 the runes on the Ruthwell cross. The words 
 " Krist was on (the cross)," he read as " Krist- 
 pason," and interpreted to mean a Christ-bason, 
 or font ; and the word, applied to our Lord, 
 giwundad, wounded, the rune for g being X, 
 he read XI punda, which he took to mean 
 that ornaments weighing eleven pounds were 
 given with the font ^. 
 
 It is the second pyramid or sepulchral obelisk 
 
 ^ The three characters are P p* b. It has always 
 been evident to modern readers that Gale had made 
 these mistakes. I have to thank my old friend Dr. 
 Sinker, the Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, for 
 verifying the fact from the early thirteenth century MS., 
 ^- 5' 33) which Gale published. 
 
THE CEMETERY OF GLASTONBURY. 167 
 
 that affords proof of the continuance of the 
 practice of erecting such monuments before 
 the time of Aldhelm's death. It was in four 
 storeys, or had four panels in its height, and 
 was eighteen feet high, thus coming strikingly- 
 near in height and character to the Ruth well 
 and Bewcastle crosses, and it had inscriptions 
 on it, " Hedde Episcopus, Bregored, Beorward." 
 This Hedde was Aldhelm*s contemporary, and 
 it was at his death in 705 that the see was 
 divided and Aldhelm became Bishop of Sher- 
 borne. " Bregored " may be an evidence of a 
 much earlier use of this kind of monument, 
 for Bregored was the name of the Abbat of 
 Glastonbury who comes next but one in the 
 list to the abbat of the year 601. 
 
 Leland saw these obelisks, or pyramids, or 
 tapering shafts, in the time of Henry VIII. 
 They were greatly perished, so that even with 
 the aid of a magnify ing-glass he could scarcely 
 make out enough to follow the description of 
 William of Malmesbury. I have traced the 
 mention of a portion of one of them down to 
 the end of the eighteenth century, when it 
 was a gate-post at one of the entries to the 
 abbey enclosure ; I sought in vain for it on 
 the spot in the nineteenth century. 
 
 We are now in a position to look into the 
 
1 68 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 character of the fragments of Saxon crosses 
 now to be seen at five of the sites which I 
 have taken as resting-places for Aldhelm's 
 body Frome, Bradford, Bath, Colerne, and 
 Littleton. At Doulting they still have Ald- 
 helm's well in the vicarage-garden. 
 
 At Frome, built into the interior wall of 
 the tower, there is a fragment of the shaft of 
 an early Saxon cross. A diagram is given 
 on p. 1 80. At the bottom of the panel is 
 a quadruped, with its legs curiously hampered 
 by interlacing bands ; the details are so much 
 destroyed that I have omitted this part. The 
 animal catches in its jaws a narrow band 
 which is the tail-part of a serpent or dragon, 
 expanding, as will be seen, into a thick body, 
 broken off near the neck. At the top of the 
 fragment the neck and head of another dragon 
 are seen, its body having been on the upper 
 part of the panel, now lost. Excepting for 
 one band which ends abruptly, it is a good 
 design, well executed. 
 
 At Bradford on Avon there are two frag- 
 ments of sculptured stones. One is certainly 
 a portion of the arm of a cross, its end being 
 rounded in the well-known fashion of such 
 heads of Saxon and Anglian crosses as we 
 have remaining. The other is as certainly a 
 
FRAGMENTS AT BRADFORD. 1 69 
 
 piece of the stem of the head of a cross, for it 
 is bored (with great precision) some three or 
 four inches deep, to fit on to a pin which stood 
 up out of the top of the lower main shaft. 
 Figure 9 shows the outlines of the pat- 
 terns on its two fractured sides, the stone 
 having been split vertically through the socket 
 into two halves of which only one is known 
 to exist. It is clear that the ornamentation 
 on both sides consisted, of the body of a lacer- 
 tine or dragonesque creature tapering off into 
 a band whose interlacements controlled the 
 contortions of the serpent. The same figure 
 shows the pattern on one of the sides of the arm 
 of the cross. It will be seen that in one corner 
 of the arm the pattern of interlacing bands 
 is finished off with the neck and head of a 
 nondescript. The work is throughout local 
 and poor; not elaborately thought out or 
 executed ; just what might suffice for a local 
 memorial of a passing corpse, but not of so 
 careful a character as a sepulchral cross would 
 require. Its motive is in complete accordance 
 with the characteristic features of Wessexwork. 
 Figure 10 shows the similar arm of a Saxon 
 cross which is to be seen in the museum at 
 Bath. It is a more careful piece of work 
 than that at Bradford, but the method is the 
 
170 
 
 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 0\ 
 
 6 
 
FRAGMENTS AT BATH AND COLERNE. I7I 
 
 same as on the arm of that cross, a serpent 
 being introduced in the same casual manner, 
 in no proper relation to the interlacing bands ; 
 it will be seen: forming nearly the whole of a 
 separate circle, one end finishing with its head, 
 and then stopping abruptly before the circle 
 is completed. We may certainly argue from 
 this arm that the ornamentation of the shaft 
 of the Bath cross was dragonesque. This 
 monument has therefore the local motive. 
 
 Figure ii shows the ornamentation on the 
 two fragments of a shaft at Colerne. There 
 is nothing better anywhere^ of the dragonesque 
 kind. The two heads shown on one of the 
 fragments are very fine and complete. We 
 evidently have here the fragments of a monu- 
 ment of more than ordinary perfection of 
 design and execution, the working of the 
 scales and markings on the bodies of the 
 dragons being specially careful. It has been 
 a monument of important magnitude also. 
 At the top of the upper fragment the shaft 
 is fourteen inches across, and with a decided 
 increase of breadth downwards it would soon 
 reach very considerable dimensions. The two 
 heads of dragons show the top of the shaft ; 
 above them no doubt was the dowel hole for 
 the reception of the massive head of the cross. 
 
172 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 The other piece, whose ornament consists of 
 the involvements of four great dragons, must 
 have been quite sixteen inches across. There 
 can be very little doubt, if any, that this 
 monument fulfils all conditions of period, local 
 style, and importance, which naturally attach 
 to the last resting-place but one before the 
 saint reached his last home in this world. 
 Of the connection of Colerne with Malmesbury 
 we need not now speak. It may be noted 
 here that eight miles from Colerne, over the 
 Mercian border, at the ancient church of Abson, 
 now held with its close neighbour Puckle- 
 church where the king's palace and Aldhelm's 
 well were, is a fragment of a Saxon sculp- 
 tured stone, with a portion of a dragon upon 
 it of the same type as those at Colerne and 
 Bradford. 
 
 Last of all we come to the remarkable 
 stones at Littleton Drew, shown in figure 1 2. 
 There are two of them, standing on either 
 side of the path of the churchyard. The 
 stone on the west side of the path would fit 
 on to the top of the other, and together they 
 would be about six feet high. They have 
 formed the shaft of a cross of very consider- 
 able importance, and of the same dimensions 
 as that at Colerne, the width of the face of 
 

 lO. BATH 
 
 II. COLERNE 
 
 To face p. 172 
 
174 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the shaft at its highest point being a little 
 over fourteen inches ; the width of the side 
 of the shaft at that point is about twelve and 
 a half inches. 
 
 The sculpture on the south side of each 
 stone has been dressed off when the stones 
 were used for building the Norman or post- 
 Norman church of the parish. Considering 
 the almost universal destruction of the crosses 
 which must have been a very noble ornament 
 of Anglo-Saxon churchyards, it may fairly be 
 argued that the Normans took their orna- 
 mentation to mean that they were offered to 
 evil spirits, and therefore smashed them up 
 and used them for building. There are other 
 indications of the ^Norman idea that the 
 English were infected with an ingrained 
 leaning towards paganism. However that 
 may have been, the builders who used these 
 two most massive stones dressed one face 
 smooth. The sculpture on the east side 
 of the stone on the east of the path is also 
 destroyed ; and the west side of the stone on 
 the west is so much broken that it is not 
 worth reproducing. It is unfortunately on 
 this broken face that the inscription is found 
 which marks out this Littleton cross from all 
 other Anglo-Saxon stones in the districts 
 
SHAFT AT LITTLETON DREW. 1 75 
 
 under survey. The figure shows quite all 
 that remains of the inscription, perhaps 
 a little more than is really there. They are 
 very noble letters, much larger than those on 
 the Ruthwell cross. The only letter of that 
 early period resembling these in size is the 
 great A on the side of Acca's cross which 
 bore the long inscription, a small part still 
 remaining. The Acca A and the Littleton A 
 are each of them a little over three inches 
 long. Acca was a correspondent of Bede, and 
 was a grown man at the time of Aldhelm's 
 death. 
 
 What may have been the ornamentation on 
 the south side of each portion of the shaft we 
 cannot say. It is clear that of the other three 
 sides two were occupied by foliaginous designs 
 of a very unusual character, as will be seen 
 from the figures to the right of the page and 
 to the left, the latter showing only one half of 
 the face. To an experienced mind, it is always 
 perilous to say that a piece of Anglo-Saxon 
 ornament is unique ; but in the present case 
 it is safe to ask where else a monument with 
 this ornament has been found. The remaining 
 face was occupied by a curious combination 
 of the ideas of vegetable growth and inter- 
 lacement of bands. This has to a large extent 
 
176 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 perished on one of the portions of the shaft, 
 but on the other it can with patience be made 
 out with tolerable clearness, as shown in the 
 middle figure. Keference has already been 
 made to this combination, in connection with 
 one face of the West Camel stone. The work 
 on the Littleton shaft is much more regular 
 and systematic than the work at West Camel ; 
 but there can be no question of the sameness 
 of motive. Whether the dressed face at 
 Littleton carried dragonesque ornament can 
 only be a question of conjecture ; but inasmuch 
 as at West Camel the dragonesque detail and 
 the unusual combination referred to are found 
 in adjacent panels on the same face of the 
 shaft, there can be no decisive argument 
 against their having existed on different faces 
 of the Littleton shaft. Thus, however unlike 
 one another the shafts at Littleton and 
 Colerne are, so far as the patterns now 
 existing are concerned, they may have been 
 practically identical. 
 
 There are at Minety, a possession of 
 Malmesbury to the north-east of Colerne and 
 Littleton, fragments of a very handsome shaft 
 with foliaginous ornament of exceedingly 
 archaic character ; but the work there is of 
 the nature of a flowing stem and spiral 
 
SAXON ART IN WESSEX. 1 77 
 
 tendrils, with actual leaves and flowers, not 
 unlike one of the faces of the grand shaft 
 at Abercom^, which dates from the time we 
 are considering, but has a beautiful freedom 
 in place of the very stiflT archaism of the 
 Minety fragments. 
 
 In considering the probabilities of the very 
 early existence of surface ornament of stone 
 in Wessex, we cannot overlook the very 
 remarkable and massive stone still remaining 
 in Aldhelm's ecclesiola at Bradford on Avon, 
 shown in figure 13. It is a combination of 
 Irish work and Lombardic work. Its dimen- 
 sions and its thickness show that it served 
 as a jamb to one of the narrow doorways 
 characteristic of the period and of the little 
 church. The divergent spirals are most un- 
 mistakably Irish, and the border is Anglian 
 or Lombardic ; the remaining pattern is found 
 in one of the Durham manuscripts of date as 
 early as Aldhelm's time. The famous font at 
 Deerhurst^ in Gloucestershire has the same 
 remarkable combination of unmistakably Irish 
 work with work of a diametrically opposite 
 character, an elegant classical arabesque. For 
 the Irish influence, Maildubh's presence may 
 
 ^ Theodore and Wil/rith, figs. 9, 10. ' P)., fig. 20, 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 afford a sufficient explanation ; for the other 
 parts of the artistic work I am disposed not 
 
 
 Fig. 13. Bradford on Avon. 
 
 to look to Anglian or any other home 
 inflaence, but to look boldly to the foreign 
 
SAXON ART IN WESSEX. 1 79 
 
 source, as I believe, of the beautiful work of 
 the Northumbrian Angles, and to look to that 
 source at a date which gives to our Wessex 
 art a great antiquity. 
 
 We all know that the West Saxons were 
 not converted by or through the Augustinian 
 mission, but by a separate mission, by the 
 ministry of Birinus. This Birinus was con- 
 secrated Bishop at Genoa, by the Pope's 
 advice, in 634 ; not, as is usually said, by 
 the Bishop of Genoa, but by the Archbishop 
 of Milan, who at that time was living in the 
 city of his southernmost suffragan, at Genoa. 
 Birinus, then, with this Lombardic connec- 
 tion, baptized the King of Wessex at the 
 Oxford Dorchester in 6^^, our Northumbrian 
 Oswald being by chance at the Court at the 
 time, having come for his bride, the King's 
 daughter. 
 
 I do not see why we should have any 
 hesitation in supposing that a man like 
 Birinus, treated with special favour at the 
 King's Court, would naturally establish at 
 once a certain amount of religious pomp and 
 apparatus ; and that it would be like in style 
 to that to which he had been accustomed in 
 his home in North Italy, presumably with 
 some blending of the kind of ornament which 
 
 M2 
 
i8o 
 
 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 he found in popular acceptance among his 
 new flock. I think we may fairly say that 
 the remarkable combi- 
 nation of (i) classical 
 ornament, (2) interlac- 
 ing bands as at Brescia, 
 (3) dragonesque orna- 
 mentation, exactly suits 
 the facts of his Lombar- 
 dic origin and his West 
 Saxon position. 
 
 In connection with 
 the funeral procession 
 of Aldhelm, it is interest- 
 ing to associate in their 
 death-days three of the 
 most prominent early 
 figures of the Ecclesia 
 
 Anglicana, Aldhelm 
 Fig. 14. Frome, p. 168. ,. , ,.. ^ . 
 
 died on May 25, Augus- 
 tine and Bede on May 26. Their respective 
 days in the Calendar are May 25, May 26, 
 and May 27. This is not the place to discuss 
 the controversy as to the day and year of 
 Bede's death. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 The Abbey of Malmesbury two hundred and fifty years 
 after Aldhelm. Relics of the Saint. The silver-gilt 
 shrine. The miracles shown on the panels of the shrine. 
 Other gold and silver work in Wessex. Organs, bells, 
 and other gifts from Dunstan. The Danes and the 
 shrine. Later history of the shrine. The abbats to 
 William's time. Some lesser miracles. 
 
 We must carry our notes on Aldhelm, and 
 his connection with Malmesbury, some way 
 beyond his death. In so doing we have the 
 advantage of possessing descriptions by Fari- 
 tius and William of what in their days was 
 still to be seen at the Abbey. As we have 
 already said, William is rather severe upon 
 Faritius, a monk at Malmesbury one genera- 
 tion before himself, because he did not suffi- 
 ciently verify his statements, a charge in 
 support of which he does not give and we 
 do not find satisfactory evidence. In one 
 case, at least, the account given by Faritius 
 is more full than that of William, and in this 
 case he is simply describing what he had seen 
 with his own eyes. It so happens, too, that 
 
1 82 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 in this case the detail which he gives and 
 William does not give is quite as interesting 
 as any part of the account in which it finds 
 a place; and besides that, it has a special 
 value of its own, and is so far as I know 
 unique in its information. 
 
 Under the guidance of Faritius and William, 
 we make a jump of two hundred and fifty 
 years, and look at Malmesbury as it was two 
 generations before Faritius, as that writer 
 sets it before us. 
 
 In the time of King Edwy, about 955, 
 monastic institutions had very grievously 
 deteriorated. Even Malmesbury had suffered. 
 But it very soon rose again, and did not hide 
 its candle long under a bushel. The monks 
 recovered their tone, and determined to do 
 special honour to their great founder. They 
 raised the bones of Aldhelm from the sarco- 
 phagus in which they had been laid, and 
 placed them in a silver shrine. This shrine 
 they adorned with plates of silver gilt, on 
 which were shown some of the marvels with 
 which their saint was in his lifetime con- 
 cerned, the Book, namely, and the Beam, and 
 the Boy, and the Chasuble. These panels of 
 silver gilt still remained in the time of Fari- 
 tius, whose account this is. William merely 
 
THE SHRINE. 1 83 
 
 remarks that they represented in raised metal 
 the miracles which he has in his history 
 described. It is to Faritius that we owe the 
 list of the miracles. It may be noted that 
 Faritius speaks of the gilded plates as having 
 the representations incised ; but William tells 
 us that the scenes were shown in raised metal 
 on the back of the shrine, the front being 
 occupied by figures in solid silver. He states 
 that the shrine had been made for the bones 
 of the saint a hundred years before the restora- 
 tion in 955, and made by King Ethelwulf, 
 son of Egbert and father of Alfred. The 
 scenes, he says, shown on the four panels were 
 described in letters, taken it was supposed 
 from a life of the saint which was lost in the 
 time of the Danes. King Ethelwulf affixed 
 a pediment of crystal to the shrine, on which 
 the saint's name could be read in letters of 
 gold. We cannot avoid seeing here a reference 
 to the style of workmanship of which we have 
 an admirable example in King Alfred's jewel, 
 where a plate of rock crystal is laid over 
 cloisonne enamel, and the legend is wrought 
 in letters of gold. We may take it as certain 
 that the work in Edwy's time was only a 
 restoration, and that the silver-gilt plates 
 were at least as early as Ethelwulf s reign. 
 
184 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 That king was a great owner of gold work, as 
 we know from the list of his presents to the 
 Pope. We have a list of them in Anastasius^. 
 Ethelwulf gave to Benedict III a crown of 
 pure gold weighing four pounds, two cups 
 and two images of gold, four Saxon dishes of 
 silver gilt, and other things, in all of which 
 gold is mentioned, a sword with gold, a silk 
 rochet with clasp of gold, several albs of 
 white silk with gold lace and clasps, and two 
 large curtains of silk embroidered with gold. 
 These last were nothing new in Wessex, for 
 Aldhelm specially names (see Chapter IX) 
 golden hangings shining yellow with inwoven 
 threads. Georgi^ states or guesses the allo- 
 cation of these gifts, the crown and images 
 at the altar of St. Peter, the dishes to receive 
 the offerings at the Mass, the curtains or 
 hangings to adorn the basilica on great 
 festivals. 
 
 In connection with Aldhelm's shrine and 
 its panels of precious metal embossed with 
 the representations of scenes from his life, 
 it is of extreme interest to know that we 
 have still in existence a contemporary piece 
 of work, much more splendid because on a 
 
 ^ De viiis pontificum, v. i. 403. 
 
 ^ De liturgia Romani Pontijicis, vol. i, at various pages. 
 
THE ALTAR OF WOLVINIUS. 185 
 
 greatly larger scale, but of exactly the same 
 character. It is the noble palla of the altar 
 of Wolvinius in S. Ambrogio at Milan, the 
 west face being shown in figure 15. This 
 wonderful work has on one side, towards the 
 east, twelve panels of subjects from the life 
 of St. Ambrose, each lettered with a descrip- 
 tion of the scene as the panels of Aldhelm's 
 shrine evidently were, e. g. Ubi examen apuni 
 2)ueri os convplevlt Anihrosii, * Where a swarm 
 of bees filled the mouth of Ambrose when 
 a child.' In the centre are four panels, the 
 two upper ones containing St. Michael and 
 St. Gabriel, the two lower containing St. Am- 
 brose, in the one case with a figure below 
 him labelled Domnus AngilbertuSy in the other 
 with a kneeling workman labelled Wolvinius 
 Magister Fhaher. Angilbertus was Arch- 
 bishop of Milan in 834, six years after 
 Ecgbert was king. It is practically beyond 
 doubt that King Ethelwulf, Ecgbert's son, 
 saw this great work of art, and it was 
 probably he who had a shrine made for 
 St. Aldhelm of the same character ; in that 
 case probably the same master-smith made it. 
 We cannot be solidly gainsaid if we please to 
 claim Wulfwine the master-smith as himself 
 an artisan from Wessex. 
 
l86 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 The beautiful piece of gold and enamel 
 work, known as King Alfred's jewel, carries 
 on the reputation of Wessex for artistic taste 
 and workmanship in gold into the next 
 generation. In the generation which followed 
 we have a still more striking piece of gold 
 work still remaining to us, in the stole of 
 Bishop Frithestan. 
 
 The stole of Bishop Frithestan may now 
 be seen in the Library of the Dean and 
 Chapter of Durham. It was taken from the 
 tomb of St. Cuthbert on the occasion so excel- 
 lently and fully described by the late James 
 Raine in his Sahit Gvihhert : Durham, 1828. 
 It was given to the body of St. Cuthbert 
 at Chester-le- Street by Athelstan, Alfred's 
 favourite grandson. It was worked at Win- 
 chester between the years 905 and 916, by 
 order of iElflaed, the Queen of Alfred's son 
 and successor Edward. Alfred's jewel has the 
 inscription yElfred mec heht geivyrcan, "Alfred 
 me caused make." The stole has the Latin 
 form of the inscription, jEljiced fieri precepit^ 
 *' iElflsed caused to be made," the Latin passive 
 taking the place of the Saxon active. It is 
 a wonderful piece of work, woven in flat gold 
 wire, with self-edged openings for the in- 
 sertion of tapestry-work figures of prophets 
 
*1. 
 
 
 f 
 
THE STOLE OF FRITHESTAN. 187 
 
 and the letters of inscriptions. It was made, 
 as itself declares, pio episcopo Frithedano, 
 for the pious Bishop Frithestan. ^Iflsed died 
 in 916, and Frithestan became Bishop in 905, 
 so we have the date sure. Figures 16 and 
 17 show this wonderful work. The use of 
 a magnifying glass reveals the texture of 
 the woven gold. It is quite possible that 
 Aldhelm's phrase in his poem on Bugge's 
 Basilica describes work of exactly this char- 
 acter two hundred and fifty years before 
 Athelstan, see page iJ4;z. 
 
 Now, not only does iElflsed's stole carry on 
 her father-in-law's inscription, only spoiled by 
 its ecclesiastical purpose which turned it into 
 Latin, but I suggest a more important con- 
 nection still. Professor Earle finds the type 
 of the face of the figure on the jewel in Irish 
 art. But it is in outline long and rather 
 emaciated, and the faces in the Book of Kells 
 are plump and well liking. I find just the 
 right length and thinness of face in the 
 prophets on iElflsed's stole, and I venture to 
 suggest that Alfred's artists and iElflsed's went 
 to the same Byzantine source for the faces of 
 their figures. Inasmuch as the Irish art was 
 not improbably Byzantine in origin. Professor 
 Earle's remarks about the eyes of the figure 
 
1 88 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 on the jewel may well be in point, for the 
 treatment of eyes on sculpture and in parch- 
 ment in the earliest times in these islands 
 followed, rather closely, accepted types, while 
 other parts varied. The specially close re- 
 lationship between Alfred's jewel and the 
 Winchester stole of the next generation of his 
 family will be found not only in the shape of 
 the face, but also, and very pointedly, in the 
 outline of the hair. 
 
 We have in William of Mallnesbury an 
 account which carries us'on to Athelstan's own 
 generation, for the stole, though given by 
 him to St. Cuthbert, was made in his boyhood 
 in his father's time. King Athelstan, the great 
 benefactor of the town of Malmesbury, whose 
 bones lie somewhere within the Abbey pre- 
 cincts ^, his supposed tomb being in the 
 existing church, had a shrine made for the 
 relics of St. Paternus. On this shrine he 
 placed the inscription, so fittingly recalled in 
 this year of the coronation of the first King- 
 emperor of these realms since the Saxon 
 times, Hoc opus rex Mhelstamis totius Bri- 
 
 ^ The remains of a very fine person, of considerable 
 stature and powerful development of head, were found 
 in this present year, 1903, close to the spot where the 
 high altar was, near to which Athelstan's body rested. 
 
17- frithestan's stole 
 
 To face p. i88 
 
. GOLD WORK IN "WESSEX. 189 
 
 tanniae multarumque gentium in circuitu 
 podtarum imperator in honorem sancti Fa- 
 terni fieri iusdt, " This work King Athelstan, 
 of all Britain and of many surrounding nations 
 emperor, to the honour of Saint Paternus 
 caused to be made." 
 
 Both at the beginning and at the end of 
 Athelstan's life we find evidence of the family 
 love for splendour and for work in gold. 
 His grandfather Alfred had a great affection 
 for him, as a boy of astonishing beauty and 
 gi-aceful manners, and gave him a scarlet 
 cloak, a belt studded with diamonds, and 
 a sword with a golden scabbard. William 
 of Malmesbury saw his remains when his 
 shrine in the Abbey Church was opened : the 
 hair was flaxen, and beautifully wreathed 
 with golden threads. 
 
 William of Malmesbury enables us to carry 
 the hereditary love for gold and silver work 
 far back in the family of Ethelwulf and Alfred. 
 Ethel wulfs great-great-great-uncle was Ina, 
 King of Wessex, from whose brother Ingild 
 Ecgbert descended in the fourth generation. 
 William tells us^ that Ina made a *' chapel" 
 of gold and silver and placed it beneath the 
 
 ^ De Antiq. Olaston. Ecdesiacy in Gale's -T Scriptores, 
 
IQO ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 larger^ (church or chapel). It would appear 
 that this indicates a confessio, and that he 
 uses the word capella in a special sense, as 
 the complete equipment for the celebration of 
 the Holy Eucharist, a sense something like 
 that in which the word is used in the Middle 
 Ages for the portable " chapel " of a king in 
 camp with his host. He gave 2,640 lbs. of 
 silver for the construction of the chapel, and 
 there was an altar of 264 lbs. of gold. For 
 the chalice and paten there were 10 lbs. of 
 gold, for the censer 8 lbs. and 20 mancuses, 
 for candelabra 12 J lbs. of silver, for the covers 
 of the gospels 20 lbs. and 60 mancuses of 
 gold, for the water-cruets and other altar- 
 vessels 1 7 lbs. of gold, for the basons 8 lbs. 
 of gold, for the holy- water- vessel 20 lbs. of 
 silver, for images of our Lord the Blessed 
 Virgin and the Twelve Apostles 38 lbs. of 
 gold and 175 lbs. of silver. These weights 
 come to within a few pennyweights of 102 lbs. 
 of gold, besides the 264 lbs. of gold in the 
 altar. The pall of the altar and the sacer- 
 
 ^ Infra majorem coUocavit. About fifty years after 
 William's time, Prior Richard of Hexham, describing the 
 church which Wilfrith built there a little before Ina'g 
 reign, remarks on the most secret and beautiful oratories 
 found underground, in which were altars with their 
 apparatus most honorifically prepared. 
 
SAXON CROSS AT BRUSSELS. IQT 
 
 dotal vestments were subtilly woven of gold 
 and adorned with precious stones. These 
 hangings and vestments woven of gold in 
 Ina s time suggest that the weaving with gold 
 ribband, described above as characterizing 
 rithestan's stole, was no new art in the 
 royal family of Wessex in Edward the Elder's 
 time. 
 
 At the risk of making this digression seem 
 too long, I must carry the evidence of Wessex 
 work in the precious metals, and of the per^ 
 manence of Wessex forms of inscription, a 
 generation later than Athelstan's time, though, 
 as will be seen, the evidence is not so abso- 
 lutely conclusive as in his case. The story 
 is a romance of archaeology. 
 
 Many of us have seen in the treasury of the 
 church of Ste. Gudule, in Brussels, the great 
 reliquary in the form of a cross, which is said 
 to contain the two largest portions of the true 
 Cross in existence. Erasmus, who knew the 
 Low Countries only too well, declared in his 
 notes on the whited sepulchres of St. Matthew, 
 that there were there enough portions of the 
 true Cross, if they were collected, to freight 
 a large ship. There is also, in this Ste. Gudule 
 reliquary, one of the nails of the Cross, which 
 the visitor can see through a piece of glass. 
 
192 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 The cross has at its centre a crown of thorns, 
 and on the arms and head and stem a number 
 of the emblems of the Passion. There is no 
 inscription, and there is nothing ancient about 
 the reliquary. 
 
 In 1891, Dr. Logeman, the Professor of 
 English Philology at Ghent, became possessed 
 of a manuscript which described an inscription 
 of a curious character on this cross, in a lan- 
 guage which the writer of the manuscript had 
 not understood. It was sufficiently like Flemish 
 to tempt him into some very quaint interpre- 
 tations ; but it was not Flemish. No such 
 inscription, nor, as I have said, any inscription 
 at all, could be seen upon the cross as it stood 
 in the treasury, examine it as you would. At 
 this point it would be well to relate what is 
 known of the history and provenance of the 
 cross from which not only this remarkable 
 inscription but all indications of antiquity had 
 so completely disappeared. It will eventually 
 give us the clue we need. 
 
 The reliquary was given to the church of 
 Ste. Gudule by the Archdukes Albert and 
 Isabella, by their will ; it had been one of the 
 ornaments of their chapel in Brussels since 
 1605. The Archduke died in 1621, and the 
 Archduchess, who was a daughter of Philip II 
 
THE CROSS OF DRAHMAL. 1 93 
 
 of Spain, and had the Netherlands for her 
 dowry, ruled alone after the death of her 
 husband till her own death in 1633, when 
 their will took effect, and the reliquary came 
 to Ste. Gudule. It had come to the Arch- 
 dukes I wish we still retained that royal 
 use in England, and spoke of the Princes of 
 Wales and the Dukes of Cornwall, principes 
 and duces, not principem and principissaw,, 
 ducem and ducissam it had come to them 
 from Cologne, to which place it had been 
 carried by the Bishop of Haarlem, when he 
 fled from the reformers in 1573. It had 
 reached the Low Countries long before, when 
 Egbert, Archbishop of Treves, gave it to the 
 Abbey of Egmond. This Egbei-t, whose name 
 is suspiciously English, indeed there is scarcely 
 any not-English Egbert before iioo, is said to 
 have been a son of Theodoric II, Count of 
 Holland. This reigning Count, Dietrich or 
 Thierry, ruled Holland from 963 to 988. He 
 was allied to English families, and his son 
 Egbert is said to have exploited this insular 
 connection. He invited his English friends 
 and relatives to visit him at Treves, and when 
 he got them there he spoiled them of their 
 goods, and made them send over as ransoms 
 a number of other precious things for the 
 N 
 
194 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 adornment of his chapel. We must remember 
 that date, 963 to 988, to which we seem to 
 have traced the cross. 
 
 At the time of the French Revolution the 
 cross was plundered of its jewels, and broken 
 in two pieces. In the same year, 1793, i^ ^^^ 
 restored, covered on the front with copper, 
 and attested and sealed by the Papal Nuncio. 
 This copper covering, with the emblems of 
 the Passion, is the front of the cross as we 
 have seen it. Dr. Logeman interested the 
 Dean of Brussels in the investigation which 
 the manuscript had set going, and as the 
 Dean of Brussels is usually a person of im- 
 portance at Rome he was enabled to break the 
 Nuncio's seals and remove the copper covering. 
 There stood revealed a singularly graceful 
 and beautiful Anglo-Saxon cross, with plates 
 of embossed silver, the Agnus Dei with its in- 
 scription in front, Agnus Di, the symbols of 
 the Evangelists, an inscription across the arms 
 of the cross, and a long inscription running 
 completely round the silver plates on the edge 
 of the cross, from the bottom at one side, 
 round the arms and head, and down to the 
 bottom on the other side, all in Anglo-Saxon. 
 Across the arms, in beautifully dainty letter- 
 ing, is the inscription in raised capitals, Drah- 
 
THE CROSS OF DRAHMAL. I95 
 
 mal me worhte ("Drahmal wrought me"): 
 who Drahroal was we do not know ; the name 
 does not occur elsewhere. The inscriptions 
 on the edges are to turn them into modern 
 English "Rood is my name. Once I bare 
 the Rich King, trembling, blood-bedabbled. 
 This rood iEthelmser caused work, and Adel- 
 wold his brother, to the glory of Christ, for 
 the soul of iElfric their brother." The cross 
 itself is shown in figure i8, and by its side 
 one edge with its inscription, Eod is Tnin 
 name geo ic ricne cyninc baer byfigynde . . . 
 (h) lode bestemed. 
 
 Now here we have two or rather three 
 examples of the persistence of a form. The 
 work of art itself speaks. It was so in the 
 earliest sacred song of the Enghsh race which 
 has come down to us, two hundred years 
 before Alfred, three hundred years before the 
 end of the reign of the father of Archbishop 
 Egbert of Treves, the great sacred song of 
 which there are stanzas in runes on the cross 
 at Ruth well, in Dumfriesshire, erected about 
 680 ; it was so with Alfred's jewel ; it was so 
 with iElflaed's golden stole ; it is so with 
 Drahmal's cross. That is the first point. 
 Next, the cross of Drahmal has exactly the 
 words on it which are found on the Ruthwell 
 
 N 2, 
 
196 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 cross, " I bare the rich. King," the cross thus 
 telling of the Crucifixion, and "with blood 
 bedabbled." That same great sacred song is 
 found in the Vercelli manuscript of Anglo- 
 Saxon poems, a manuscript of the tenth 
 century, at much greater length than on the 
 Ruthwell cross. In this manuscript the poem 
 is in the dialect of Wessex, not of North- 
 umbria. Drahmal got his inscription from 
 the Wessex manuscript, not from the Euth- 
 well cross, for while the words "I bare the 
 rich King " and " with blood bedabbled " are 
 common to the Euthwell cross, the Vercelli 
 manuscript, and Drahmal's cross, the assertion 
 of Drahmal's that it trembled under its burden 
 is not given in that form on the Ruth well 
 cross ^, but the Vercelli manuscript makes the 
 cross say "that I trembling saw." That is 
 the second point. It is the third point that 
 links us on to the Alfred jewel. " Drahmal 
 me worked," " Rood is my name." " This 
 rood uEthelmser caused work." Here we have 
 the "me," and the "caused work," and the 
 order, of the jewel, " iElfred me caused 
 work." 
 
 ^ See Theodore and Wilfrith, p. 252, ^ic that al bih[eald] ' : 
 the runes are the ten lowest letters in figure 15 on page 
 246 of that little book. 
 

 
 1 
 
 Ln 
 
 iy|LjJ 
 
 r u.^^!^" 
 
 jM 
 
 > 
 
 9 
 
 r^ \ 
 
 1 
 
 
 j 
 
 U .'1 
 
 i 
 
 l8, CROSS OF DRAHMAL 
 
 Tdjacep. 196 
 
THE CROSS OF DRAHMAL. I97 
 
 If any one feels inclined to follow my 
 example and go to Vercelli to see this most 
 interesting volume of Anglo-Saxon prose and 
 poetry, he must be prepared to practise 
 patience and persistence. The whole air 
 of the cathedral functionaries is domani. 
 But when he does get hold of the book, 
 he will greatly enjoy the beautiful preserva- 
 tion in which he will find it, and the 
 excellence of the ink and of the writing. 
 
 The dates we were to remember, as those 
 to which we could trace back this reliquary, 
 were 963 to 988. The only instance in 
 English history in which the names found on 
 Drahmal's Cross, JEthelmser, Adelwold, and 
 iElfric, are brought near together, occurs in 
 the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the years 98CJ, 
 983, 984. That is a surprising coincidence, 
 of which, however, it is possible to make 
 too much. They are not described in the 
 Chronicle as brothers, but no student of the 
 Chronicle will be disturbed by that omission. 
 In the Chronicle, iElfric survived iEthelmser 
 and iEthelwold, while Drahmal's Cross was 
 made by order of -^thelmser and Adelwold 
 for iElfric's soul. But in the Isle of Man 
 about that time people were setting up 
 crosses for their own soul and the soul of 
 
198 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 a relative, and it is not at all necessary to 
 take it that JElfric was dead. Indeed it is 
 very easy to imagine circumstances under 
 which two brothers might cause a costly 
 work to be produced for the safety of the 
 soul of a brother for whom they were 
 anxious. This would be specially likely to 
 be so, if one of them was a Churchman of 
 much piety and the other a layman of great 
 position who knew the dangers of the times, 
 while the brother for whose soul the costly 
 work was wrought was perhaps a good deal 
 younger than they, and was a man likely 
 soon to be set in the midst of many and 
 great dangers. This exactly describes the 
 three men whose names occur in the Chronicle. 
 In 981^ Dorsetshire was ravaged by Vikings, 
 London was burned, and jEthelmcer, Alderman 
 of Hampshire, died, and was buried in the 
 new monastery at Winchester. In 983 ^If- 
 here, Alderman of Mercia, died, and ^Ifric 
 succeeded to the same aldermanship. In 984 
 died JEthelwoldi the benevolent Bishop of 
 Winchester, father of monks. In 985 jElfric 
 was driven from the country. The abstract 
 guess that ^Kric might be a young brother, 
 for whom the two older men were anxious, 
 has received since I wrote it a curious con- 
 
THE CROSS OF DRAHMAL. I99 
 
 firmation. I find that he was called in 
 Saxon "iElfric child/' and in Latin cogno- 
 viento puer. 
 
 Thus I think that in working out our 
 parallel with the inscription on the jewel, 
 we have done something to claim for Wessex 
 that beautiful Drahmal Cross, and Drahmal 
 the artist himself. I think that Bishop 
 iEthelwold and Alderman iEthelmser, both 
 living in Winchester, arranged the design, 
 and had it wqrked out by the head of the 
 Winchester school of artists in gold and 
 silver, a man after King Alfred's own heart, 
 Drahmal. Bound up with the validity of 
 that claim, is the inter-communion between 
 Mercia and Wessex, a puzzling political and 
 topographical question. 
 
 I may add that Dr. Logeman sent over 
 to me in 1891 his original photographs of the 
 whole of the Drahmal Cross, and most kindly 
 allowed me to ' cause work ' lantern slides 
 from them. 
 
 Reference has been made to the quaint trans- 
 lations by the author of the manuscript, on 
 which the whole discovery turned. The word 
 " bedabbled "is in Anglian and Saxon alike 
 " bestemed." This the ingenious person took 
 to be two Flemish words, bede med, and he 
 
200 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 translated it optima virgo. " Blode " he felt 
 sure meant blood, as in fact it does. " Wyri- 
 can" is spelled of course with the Saxon wen, 
 and looks like "Pyrican." He knew the 
 connection between I and r, and between 
 a Pelican and blood, and he translated it 
 Pelicanus. 
 
 We must now return to Malmesbury. 
 
 Aldhelm's miracles of the Boy (at Rome), 
 and the Book (at Dover), and the Chasuble 
 (at Rome) have been already described. The 
 miracle of the Beam occurred at 'Malmesbury 
 itself, when Aldhelm was building his great 
 Church of St. Mary, which remained to 
 William's days, and excelled, as he tells, in 
 beauty and magnitude every building of the 
 old times which had come down to his age. 
 The stone walls having been completed, they 
 came to the roof, which was massively 
 formed of wood. The beams were in them- 
 selves very costly, and the distance from 
 which they had to be conveyed added much 
 to the cost. They had all been cut to the 
 same length, except one whose shortness had 
 escaped the notice of the artificers, either 
 through their want of care, or, as William 
 preferred to think, by the Divine will, in 
 order that the sanctity of the illustrious man 
 
THE MIEACLE OF THE BEAM. 201 
 
 might shine out clearly. When the work- 
 men discovered at the end of their work 
 that the last beam was too short, they made 
 great lamentation among themselves, and then 
 told the saint about it. He treated their 
 fault with moderation, but was no little 
 moved on account of the difficulty of setting 
 the matter right. There was only exactly 
 the necessary number of beams, no spare ones 
 having been provided ; and to bring another 
 beam all that long way appeared an immense 
 labour. Despairing of human help, he placed 
 his hope in God, and meditated a ready means 
 of remedy. He was minded to show forth 
 miracle, having already performed many, but 
 not openly, lest the wind of popular favour 
 should make the most holy flowers of con- 
 science fall. Moving his lips in silent prayer, 
 and making a slight effort with his arms, he 
 brought the shortened beam to the same 
 length as the rest. He then, to conceal the 
 fact of the miracle, scolded the workmen for 
 having played a trick upon him, the beam 
 being no shorter than the others. They 
 applied the measure, found that the defect 
 was remedied, took in good part the rebuke, 
 and Set to work with joy. They attached 
 the ropes, and with their machine raised the 
 
202 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 beam to its place. It exactly fitted, and the 
 framework of the roof was complete. The 
 truth of the tradition was shown by the 
 history of the beam. It passed unhurt through 
 the two fires which in the times of King 
 Alfred and King Edward burned the whole 
 monastery, and it only succumbed at last to 
 age and decay. We may note as interesting 
 features the precision of the order for beams 
 sent to some distant place, the exact number 
 and the exact size being named ; the mention 
 of pulleys ; and the fact that in William's 
 judgement the beams of a roof constructed 
 in the most expensive manner perished in 
 natural course in four centuries or less. 
 
 There have been several miracles in con- 
 nection with beams. The beam on which 
 Aidan leaned in the death agony withstood 
 the violence of more than one conflagration. 
 Dunstan, by the virtue of the sign of the 
 cross, brought to a horizontal level the frame- 
 work of a roof which was bulging down- 
 wards. 
 
 Archbishop Dunstan, 960 to 988, preferred 
 Malmesbury over all monasteries except his 
 own, by which we must understand that 
 Glastonbury was meant. He gave bells to 
 Malmesbury, remarkable for their size and 
 
DUNSTAN AND MALMESBUKY. 203 
 
 tone ; for which, Faritius tells us, Dunstan 
 paid four hundred pounds. He gave also an 
 organ, no doubt in some part at least made 
 by himself; on it was inscribed, on bronze 
 plates, a dactylic distich which Faritius in 
 his time saw, 
 
 Organa do Sancto Praesul Dunstanus Adelmo. 
 Perdat hie aeternum qui vult hinc tollere regnum. 
 I the Prelate Dunstan give organs^ to Aldhelm. 
 May he who wills to take them hence lose the eternal 
 realm. 
 
 Aldhelm himself, it may be remarked in 
 passing, had described an organ two hundred 
 and fifty years before Dunstan' s time, and had 
 contrasted it with other instruments and with 
 the human voice in its connection with sacred 
 music. Writing of divine worship, he ad- 
 dresses the worshipper thus : 
 
 Let him modulate hymns to Christ with 
 the strings of the lyre. 
 
 But if any will not have the odes of chords, 
 desiring mightier sounds than the comb brings 
 from the strings, with which the pious Psalmist 
 harped as he flung himself in ecstatic measure, 
 and declines to be content with graceful 
 song ; let him listen to the great organs with 
 
 ^ " A pair of organs " was the early name of an organ. 
 
204 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 their thousand blasts, and soothe his hearing 
 with gusty bellows, while the other parts of the 
 instrument flash from their gilded case. 
 
 Faritius and William both of them say that 
 on the vessel which supplied the ministrants 
 at the altar with water was this inscription 
 
 Hydriolam hanc fundi Dunstan mandaverat Archi- 
 Praesul ut in templo sancto servaret Adelmo ^. 
 
 This water-pot Dunstan caused cast, the Arch- 
 Prelate, to serve the holy Aldhelm in the temple. 
 
 William, who is sometimes a little too 
 simple in his remarks, adds that the first 
 I in Aldhelm, which in each case he retains, 
 has to be omitted by poetic licence to make 
 the verses scan. Faritius simply writes the 
 name as Adelm, and saj^s nothing about it. 
 
 Faritius, who has told us the cost of the 
 great bells, a valuable and most rare piece 
 of information which William does not give 
 and Faritius cannot have invented, mentions 
 another very interesting fact of which William 
 says nothing. There hung over the high table 
 in the refectory a small bell, gilt. Faritius 
 
 ^ In his book on the Antiquities of Glastonbury, 
 William tells us that the water-vessel there bore the 
 inscription from which a word has been dropped 
 
 " Idriolam hanc fundi Dunstan mandaverat Archi- 
 Praesul, cunctipotens quem servet in aevum." 
 
BELLS AT MALMESBUKY. 2O5 
 
 reports that he read in letters of pure gold 
 stamped on or into it a Latin distich, with 
 a play no doubt on the word " hall," 
 
 Elysiam caeli nunquam contendat ad aulam 
 Qui ferat hanc nolam Aldelmi de sede beati. 
 
 May he never reach the Elysian hall of heaven 
 "Who takes this bell from the seat of Aldhelm the 
 blessed. 
 
 Here the I in Aldhelm is needed by the scan- 
 sion, and Faritius quietly inserts it. 
 
 It is only just to Faritius to point out that 
 this additional fact and inscription, which we 
 owe entirely to him, introduces in an interest- 
 ing manner two of the several names for bells. 
 He and William alike call them Signa, signs, 
 notices, in reference to their use as announcinoj 
 the hours of service, and so on. This word is 
 used for any instrument which served this 
 purpose, as, for instance, a resonant board 
 struck with a padded stick. In the third 
 Latin distich, which Faritius alone gives, 
 Dunstan used the name Nola, bells having 
 been, it is said, first used at Nola, in Cam- 
 pania. From Campania, it is said, bells were 
 called Campana ^, a word we know so well in 
 
 * In the book referred to in the previous note, William 
 gives the first line of a Glastonbury inscription : 
 <'Hanc sibi campanam Dunstan perfundere iussit, &c," 
 
206 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the distinctive name of a bell-tower, campa- 
 nile, Faritius uses the diminutive form of 
 the word for this small refectory bell_, calling 
 it Campanula^ a word which again we know 
 so well in connection with bell- shaped flowers. 
 It may perhaps be new to some, and if it is it 
 will certainly be interesting, that the squills 
 which are now just peeping up in our borders 
 take their name from the Latin name squilla 
 of the small bell rung in monastic dormitories. 
 Dante uses the word in Italian for a small 
 bell: 
 
 E che lo nuovo peregrin d'amore 
 Punge, so ode squilla di lontano, 
 Che paia il giorno pianger che si more. 
 
 Purg. viii. 4-6. 
 
 The word used at lona in Columba's time 
 was clocca, Cloccam pulsa was the order 
 given by Columba when he wished the 
 brethren to be called to the church. There is, 
 after all, some use in Faritius. And he adds 
 that Dunstan gave many more things which 
 they had still at Malmesbury, but he abstains 
 from describing them, lest by speaking of 
 their wealth he should move others to envy. 
 If only he had known how intensely we 
 should have enjoyed the kind of detail he 
 evidently would have given about these 
 things he does not name ! 
 
THE EELICS OF ALDHELM. 207 
 
 Dunstan was a statesman, and he foresaw 
 the evils that were to come from the later 
 Danish invasions. Fearing that the gold and 
 silver of the saint's shrine would excite the 
 cupidity of the Northmen, and the remains of 
 the saint would suffer indignity and perhaps 
 be thrown out, he removed the bones 
 Faritius says "the body," but William's details 
 are evidently correct, he had, as we shall see, 
 later information than Faritius had to a 
 tomb of stone set high up in the church, 
 wrapping the bones first in a glistening and 
 delicate white napkin, and then in a very 
 precious scarlet robe. He added a portion of 
 the ashes taken from the ancient sarcophagus, 
 where all the flesh had passed into dust. With 
 these relics he placed a glass phial full of the 
 purest balsam. Round the sepulchre he in- 
 scribed verses, in which he begged the saint 
 to pardon his loving one for his offences, and 
 not to impute it to him as a fault that he had 
 raised him to a higher place. 
 
 It would appear from what follows that 
 the meaning of this is that the shrine with 
 its silver and silver-gilt sides, and its in- 
 crustation of precious stones, and even with 
 some of the dust of the saint within, was left 
 in its original position, and that Dunstan's 
 
2o8 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 purpose was not to save the valuable shrine, 
 but to save the bones of the saint from in- 
 dignity when if so it should happen the 
 silver shrine itself was pillaged, there being 
 nothing about the new stone receptacle to 
 attract any special attention, or promise any 
 treasure. For when the Danes came they 
 found the church, as they thought, bare of 
 everything except the shrine, the monks 
 having removed all else that would be of 
 value in the eyes of the invaders. The stone 
 sepulchre did not come under that category, 
 and no doubt remained. The Danes made at 
 once for the shrine in the sanctuary, Faritius 
 tells us, a graphic touch, and one of them 
 drew his knife and tried to cut out some of 
 the precious stones. He was at once struck 
 down, senseless ; blind, Faritius says. In 
 fear and haste the pillagers fled, and did not 
 stay till they had put many miles between 
 themselves and Malmesbury. Further, the 
 news spread through their army ; and while 
 all the monasteries round were plundered, 
 every one gave a wide berth to St. Aldhelm 
 and Malmesbury. 
 
 Foes almost worse than the Danes and 
 Northmen did much harm, in the persons of 
 unworthy abbats. One Abbat Brihtwold, who 
 
MALMESBURY IN LATER TIMES. 209 
 
 alienated the lands of the abbey with so 
 much excuse as this, to be quite fair, William 
 kindly adds, that the Danegelt must be paid 
 died suddenly while engaged in a drinking 
 bout in the town. They buried him among 
 his predecessors in the Church of St. Andrew, 
 which was attached to the main church ; but 
 the watchers there saw fantastic shades, and 
 the body must be moved. They sank him in 
 a deep marsh a long way from the monastery ; 
 but even to William's days there came from 
 the place from time to time an exceeding bad 
 smell. It is not impossible that the people 
 in the neighbourhood of Malmesbury have 
 experiences which might suggest an identifica- 
 tion of the place. 
 
 Later in time, a Norman abbat, Warin of 
 Lire, plundered the property of the abbey to 
 increase his influence with great men. Worse 
 than that, he could not bear the odour of the 
 bodies of departed saints. They still had the 
 bones of Maildubh, of happy Irish memory ; 
 they had the bones of many prelates who had 
 risen from the rank of monks of Malmesbury, 
 and had left orders that when they died they 
 should be laid to rest in the dear old place ; 
 they had the bones of the great John the 
 Scot, whom the monks reverenced almost as 
 
 
2IO ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 profoundly as their chief Saint Aldhelm. 
 These were arranged in two stone chests, 
 wooden partitions being inserted between the 
 several sets of bones. All of these he ordered 
 to be carelessly hidden away in a far corner 
 of the basilica of St. Michael, a church which 
 he had widened and heightened. An unseemly 
 jest increased the gravity of the misdeed. " If 
 they don't like it, let the best man amongst 
 them," he said, "protect the rest." ''But," 
 William breaks in, always human, "I will 
 restrain my pen ! I will bridle my spirit ! " 
 for Warin was converted to St. Aldhelm by 
 a miracle. A fisherman of the Isle of Wight, 
 the island, Faritius says, called in English 
 Wickland, was struck blind while fishing. 
 He waited in vain for a cure for three years 
 at Christ Church, the oratory, Faritius says, 
 called in English Christi Ecclesia what a 
 pity he gave it in Latin. At last the man 
 came to Malmesbury and was cured, a quantity 
 of blood flowing from his eyes. Warin there- 
 upon determined that St. Aldhelm must be 
 restored to his shrine. He and Abbat Serlo of 
 Gloucester, after fasting for three days before 
 Pentecost, examined the stone chest, to see if 
 the tradition of the monks was correct, and 
 found it even so ; there were the bones, as 
 
ALDHELM CANONISED. 211 
 
 the monks had always said. Then they sent 
 for Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury, orthodox 
 bishop Faritius curiously calls him, and with 
 all due solemnity the saint's bones were placed 
 once more in the silver shrine, with the scenes 
 of four of the principal miracles embossed on 
 silver plates gilt. Faritius says that the 
 shrine itself was gilt, and with that his life 
 of St. Aldhelm ends. 
 
 William does not carry his account much 
 further, but he gives us some historical details 
 of the years which followed. The most impor- 
 tant of them is this, that when Archbishop 
 Lanfranc heard of the marvels wrought by 
 Aldhelm, he promulgated a law throughout 
 the whole of England that without delay 
 Aldhelm was to be held, and honoured, as a 
 saint. An annual fair also was instituted at 
 the time of his feast, for the quaint reason 
 that the desii^e to make money might attract 
 some whom the holiness of the saint had not 
 moved. 
 
 Then came Abbat Godefrey, a monk of 
 Jumieges, who greatly adorned the church, 
 and laid the foundations of the famous library, 
 a work in which William himself helped him. 
 Godefrey was evidently a most useful and ac- 
 ceptable abbat ; of unswerving celibacy, after 
 
 02, 
 
212 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 William pointedly says after he became 
 abbat. One, and only one fault, William 
 cannot restrain himself from recording, but it 
 was a terrible one. When William Eufus im- 
 posed ^n unbearably heavy tribute, to enable 
 him to buy Normandy of his brother Robert, 
 Godefrey, to make his payment easier, took 
 the advice of the very worst men, and sold 
 the treasures of the church which the piety 
 of their predecessors had heaped together. 
 William could name the men who gave the 
 evil advice, if that could lessen the guilt of 
 the abbat. On one day he sold twelve texts 
 of the gospels, and eight crosses ; eight shrines 
 were stripped of their gold and silver. But 
 he was rightly punished, for the proceeds were 
 not nearly suflficient for his purpose, coming to 
 only seventy-two marks, or, as we should say, 
 but the change in the practical value makes 
 the use of modern terms very misleading, 
 foi-ty-eight pounds. Dunstan had given eight 
 or nine times as much for the bells. Not only 
 did Godefrey's sacrilege miss its purpose, but 
 he was himself smitten with the king's evil to 
 a terrible extent, and so he died. 
 
 Among many smaller miracles or examples 
 of faith cures which William records of his 
 own knowledge, one or two have a local 
 
MIEACLES. 213 
 
 interest. A girl from Pucklechurch ^ with a 
 spinal disease, a dumb man from Calne, and 
 a blind woman from- the same place, were 
 cured at St. Aldhelm's shrine. But after all, 
 William tells us, speaking of his own times, 
 the wonderful works performed on the saint's 
 feast day at his church at Wareham in Dorset 
 were more remarkable than those at Malmes- 
 bury, and the offerings there were greater. 
 William had wondered why. The conclusion 
 he had arrived at was this. " The Almighty, 
 I believe, indicated by these facts that to have 
 the glory of possessing his body was enough 
 and more than enough for the people of 
 Malmesbury, and they must not envy others, 
 who in this respect were less fortunate, the 
 greater display of his miraculous powers." 
 This is quite conclusive evidence that at least 
 as late as 11 25, long after the Normans had 
 held the fortifications of Corfe Castle, the 
 Saxon walls of Aldhelm's Church, " near Ware- 
 ham, where Corfe Castle stands out over the 
 
 ^ There is still a St. Aldhelm's oak and well at Puckle- 
 church in the Gloucestershire part of the diocese of 
 Bristol, about sixteen miles from Malmesbury. Puckle- 
 church (Pulchra Ecclesia) was a residence of the Saxon 
 kings. It was in the hall of the royal abode that Leolf 
 stabbed King Edmund the Elder, Alfred's grandson, 
 in 946. 
 
214 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 sea," were still standing, were still without a 
 roof, were still credited with showing forth 
 a standing miracle. It is difficult to see 
 how the tradition can have so entirely dis- 
 appeared from the neighbourhood as it un- 
 doubtedly has. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 Athelstan and Malmesbury. Rearrangements of the 
 dioceses of Wessex from Aldhelm's time to the present. 
 The Abbey Church as it now exists. 
 
 The natural strength of the hill of Malmes- 
 bury has been noticed in the second chapter. 
 Its position is singularly like that of the 
 Castle Hill of Bristol ; itself, without a doubt, 
 a British stronghold. In each case the river 
 Avon protects a considerable portion of the 
 prominence, and in each case a supplementary 
 water, the Newnton brook at Malmesbury 
 and the Frome at Bristol, completes the pro- 
 tection of the site, leaving a narrow neck or 
 ridge between the encircling waters, and giving 
 to the site the shape of a bulbous pear. The 
 strength of the position is well seen when the 
 train from Somerford to Malmesbury emerges 
 from the tunnel and draws up at the station. 
 The water which guards the site on this side 
 is the Newnton brook. The narrowness of 
 the neck or ridge may be seen as we walk up 
 from the railway station, and come in sight of 
 the west front of the Abbey Church. Looking 
 
2l6 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 down to the left, we have the ground falling 
 steeply to the Newnton brook, on which side 
 Aldhelm's well lies; while on the right, on 
 which side is Daniel's well, it falls still more 
 steeply to the level of the Avon. If we turn 
 to the right before reaching the Abbey, and 
 skirt the edge of the town, we notice the 
 striking steepness at the King's Walk ; descend 
 sharply to the Avon at St. John's Hospital ; 
 turn to the left and reach the bridge over the 
 Newnton brook, with its interesting circular 
 tower ; admire the strength of the natural 
 defences, under which the priests' walk winds ; 
 and, keeping still to the left^ pass up by the 
 very striking entrance called the Hollow Way, 
 and so complete our circuit by coming again 
 to the Abbey precincts. 
 
 It will be noticed that the houses of Malmes- 
 bury are strictly included within the natural 
 boundaries of the place, anything which lies 
 outside being modern. This is one of the 
 most interesting facts of the ancient borough. 
 It is due to the conditions of King Athelstan's 
 famous gift of a large area of common land to 
 Malmesbury. The men of the place had given 
 signal help to the king at a crisis of one of his 
 battles, when he called on Saint Aldhelm for 
 aid. In return, he gave them a considerable 
 
MODERN MALMESBURY. 21 7 
 
 estate towards Norton and Foxley, and a 
 charter still in force. The conditions are, that 
 the commoners shall live within the walls of 
 the town, and that a man can only become 
 a commoner in right of being the son of 
 a commoner, or in right of marriage with 
 a commoner's daughter. Hence the town has 
 not spread out into the country. Athelstan's 
 conditions have had another effect : they have 
 naturally preserved the physical type of 
 the commoners singularly unchanged for a 
 thousand years. The present writer, on one 
 occasion, was speaking at the old council 
 chamber on this subject, and informed his 
 audience that Malmesbury came second only 
 to Devizes in the retention of the round skull 
 of the British builders of Stonehenge. The 
 senior warden of the old corporation drily 
 remarked that they didn't know about the 
 shape of their heads, but they reckoned to 
 have as much inside 'em as most folk. 
 
 King Athelstan is still a very living person- 
 age at Malmesbury. The commoners still 
 " dine with King Athelstan " once in each 
 year. An old commoner, who was bedridden, 
 was advised by the Vicar that he would be 
 much better cared for in "the house." The 
 receipt of poor's money terminates the common- 
 
21 8 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 right. The old man painfully raised himself 
 in bed, and said solemnly : " King Arthelstan 
 hath kept I all my life ; King Arthelstan 
 shall keep I till I die." See also page 358. 
 
 Athelstan's regard for Aldhelm, from whom 
 he was separated by two centuries, was very 
 great. He loved him both as his kinsman 
 and as a holy man. He felt so bound to his 
 service that he devoted to him his soul and 
 his body. At the great fight with Anlaf at 
 Brunanburh in 937, when Anlaf attacked in 
 the night, and in the confusion of arming 
 hurriedly Athelstan's sword dropped from its 
 sheath and was lost, he called on God and the 
 holy Aldhelm and a sword was put into his 
 hand by miracle, which was long kept in 
 the treasury of the kings. His first cousins, 
 the princes -^Ifwine and iEthelwine, to whom 
 he was warmly attached, were killed in this 
 battle. He ordered their bodies to be carried 
 all the way to Malmesbury, probably from the 
 banks of the Humber or its higher reaches 
 where it is called the Ouse, and to be buried 
 there on the right and the left of the altar in 
 the church of St. Mary, Aldhelm' s great church. 
 It was probably in this battle that the men 
 of Malmesbury rendered him assistance at 
 a critical pointy although those who have 
 
BRUNANBURH. 219 
 
 written on the subject desire to find some 
 site for the battle much nearer Malmesbury. 
 The reason for accepting Brunanburh as the 
 battle is a simple one. In the Gesta Regumn 
 William tells us that when Anlaf made his 
 night attack, he came first on the tents of 
 a certain bishop, who had joined the army 
 only the night before, and not knowing the 
 nearness of the enemy had selected for his 
 encampment a pleasant green spot. He with 
 the whole of his followers was put to death as 
 the Dane swept by to the English king's tents. 
 In the Oesta Fontificum William tells us that 
 this bishop was said to have been Werstan, 
 Bishop of Sherborne. Thus Athelstan had 
 with him at Brunanburh men of Dorset and 
 Wilts, those pagii along with Berks, forming 
 the see of Sherborne, as William very dis- 
 tinctly states, after the great changes of the 
 year 909, and before the formation of the see 
 of Kamsbury, which followed almost imme- 
 diately^. All that is needed is to suppose 
 that the Malmesbury men disentangled them- 
 selves under cover of the darkness, fell back 
 upon the king's position, and gave him news 
 
 * It is needless to say here that William's accounts of 
 the rearrangement of sees are more or less confused and 
 confusing. 
 
220 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 of the Danish assault just in time to save his 
 life and his army. 
 
 Besides sending his favourite cousins to be 
 buried in their kinsman Aldhelm's church, 
 Athelstan gave to the abbey and its church 
 many farms, many hangings, a cross of gold, 
 filacteries of gold, and the piece of the true 
 cross which Hugh, King of the Franks, had 
 sent to him. When he died at Gloucester in 
 940, his body was brought to Malmesbury 
 and buried there, under the altar of St. Mary, 
 in the tower. An effigy, of later date, still 
 remains in the Abbey Church, called by the 
 name of Athelstan. The head has undoubtedly 
 a royal crown of early date. 
 
 There are traditions of a great fight with 
 the Danes only four or five miles from Malmes- 
 bury, at Sherston, and it is tempting to suggest 
 that it may have been here that the men of 
 Malmesbury succoured Athelstan. The pre- 
 vailing idea that Sherston was the scene of 
 Edmund Ironside's battle of 1017 does not 
 accord with the statement that the combatants 
 retired the night after the battle to Winchester 
 and Old Sarum respectively. The hero of 
 the Sherston fight was one Rattlebone, who 
 killed a whole steading-full of Danes. When 
 he received a terrible wound in the abdomen, 
 
SHERSTON. 221 
 
 he picked up a tile and kept it pressed upon 
 the wound to keep the bowels from gushing 
 out while he went on killing. At one part of 
 the day he paused, thinking that he had done 
 enough, but the people urged him by offers of 
 great gifts, and the dialogue is still remembered 
 in various graphic forms. The least graphic is 
 that given by Aubrey, a.d. 1659-70: 
 
 The People. Fight well, Rattlebone, 
 
 Thou shalt have Sherstone. 
 Rattlebone. What shall I with Sherstone doe, 
 
 Without I've all belongs thereto? 
 The People. Thou shalt have Wyck and Willesly, 
 
 Easton towne and Pinkeney. 
 
 The very early stone figure of a priest 
 holding a large book to his breast, preserved 
 at Sherston Church, is understood by the 
 people to represent Rattlebone pressing the 
 tile on his wound. 
 
 It will be well to say something here about 
 the further subdivisions and re-unions which 
 brought the West Saxon dioceses into their 
 present form. There will not be space for 
 more than an outline sketch. 
 
 As we have seen, the diocese of Sherborne, 
 as given to Aldhelm, contained by far the 
 largest part of the whole of the West Saxon 
 land. If we may judge by the arraugements 
 
222 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 considered necessary when the next sub- 
 division came, two hundred years later, 
 the territories gradually acquired from the 
 Damnonian Britons were understood to come 
 under the bishops of Sherborne. Thus at the 
 time when King Alfred died, his bishop 
 Denewulf had the diocese of Winchester, 
 say Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, and 
 his bishop Asser of Sherborne ruled Wilts, 
 Dorset, Somerset, and Devon. Cornwall still 
 had its own line of bishops, but they had 
 before Alfred's reign come into communion 
 with the church of the English, for we have 
 the profession of obedience which Kenstec, the 
 Bishop of Cornwall, made to Ceolnoth, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury 833-870, according to 
 the custom of bishops at that time. Mr. 
 Warren, in his learned work on the Liturgy 
 and Ritual of the Celtic Church, remarks ^ 
 that this profession of Kenstec was the only 
 exception to the independence of the Cornish 
 bishops down to the time of Athelstan. On 
 the conquest of Cornwall by the Saxons, 
 the British bishop Conan submitted to Arch- 
 bishop Wulfhelm, and Athelstan recognized 
 him and nominated him to the Cornish see 
 of Bodmin in 936. We have the names of 
 
PROFESSION OF KENSTEC. 223 
 
 six bishops of Cornwall, and the signatures 
 of five of them, from 931 to 1046. 
 
 It will no doubt be interesting to some 
 readers to see a translation of this profession 
 of obedience by Kenstec, as a type of those 
 curious documents. It runs thus : 
 
 " In the name of God most high, and of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. I Kenstec, elected though 
 humble and unworthy to the Episcopal seat 
 in the Cornish nation in the monastery which 
 is called in the language of the Brettons 
 Dinnurrin, in the first place confess to thee, 
 most holy father Ceolnod Archbishop, that 
 without any doubting I believe in God the 
 Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, 
 and in Jesus Christ His Son, who was born 
 of the chaste and pure Virgin and mother 
 inviolate Mary, and suffered for the redemp- 
 tion and salvation of the human race. And 
 in the Holy Ghost, proceeding from the 
 Father and the Son, to be together worshipped 
 and glorified. That Holy Trinity and true 
 Unity with mouth and heart and all, I worship 
 and glorify and praise all the days of my 
 life. And I profess to thee with all humbleness 
 and sincere devotion, most pious and learned 
 prelate, that in all things, without any scruple 
 of false and frivolous imagining, I am ready 
 
224 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 to become, for all the term of my transitory- 
 life, the obedient poor servant and suppliant 
 humble client of the holy see of the Doro- 
 vernian Church and of thee and thy suc- 
 cessors. I Kenstec subscribe this with the 
 confirmation under my own hand of the sign 
 of the Cross of Christ." 
 
 How Devon fell ecclesiastically into the 
 see of Sherborne is not clear. We have not^ 
 so far as I know, a list of British bishops of 
 that district, which probably reached as far 
 north as the Parret. Those who can in these 
 days of ours distinguish and classify sounds 
 not articulate to the ordinary visitor, tell 
 us that the dialect on the north of that river, 
 near its entrance into the Bristol Channel, is 
 less intelligible than the dialect on the south. 
 The earliest Saxon grant of land in Devon- 
 shire, as we now bound that county, appears 
 to be one by Ethelwulf in 854. As regards 
 Somerset, the Britons claim a succession of 
 bishops at Congresbury, which they say was 
 founded by Fagan and Duman and continued 
 down to "]%!, when it was moved to a village 
 called Tydenton, now Wells. 
 
 In 909, Asser Bishop of Sherborne died, 
 and Alfred's son Edward carried out the 
 further subdivision of the Wessex diocese 
 
THE WESSEX DIOCESES. 225 
 
 by appointing four bishops in place of the 
 one bishop of Sherborne, thus making five 
 bishop's sees in the extended Wessex, in 
 place of two ^. The see of Winchester also 
 was vacant at the time, so that the five 
 Wessex bishops were all consecrated on one 
 day by Archbishop Plegmund, along with 
 bishops for two adjacent sees, Selsey and the 
 northern Dorchester, afterwards Lincoln. The 
 four sees into which the huge see of Sherborne 
 was divided were, Sherborne for Dorset, 
 Ramsbury for Wilts, Wells for Somerset, and 
 Crediton, with three parishes in CornwalP, 
 for Devon. The Anglo-Saxon lists which 
 still survive call the see of Wells, Wellensis 
 and Fontanensis. Ramsbury took its name 
 from a raven, not from a ram, and it was 
 called Corvinensis, It was poorly endowed 
 and equipped, and the bishops' residence was 
 sometimes at Sunning, whence the see was 
 called also Sunningensis, sometimes at Wilton, 
 whence its name Wiltunensis. 
 
 For our present purpose we can leave the 
 
 ^ William of Malmesbury says this was done by order 
 of Pope Formosus. But the document quoted in support 
 of this bears on its face the evidence of spuriousness. 
 
 ' Leofric's missal gives the names of these parishes as 
 PoUtun, Coelling, and Landuuithan. These are identified 
 with Pawton in St. Breoc, Callington, and Lawhitton. 
 P 
 
226 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 see of Wells to its own chequered history, 
 and the see of Crediton to unite with it that 
 of Cornwall in the person of Living, who 
 was bishop of the joint sees from 1027 to 
 1046, and then to be moved as one see to 
 Exeter in the person of Leofric who died 
 in 1072. We have only to pursue the course 
 of the Dorsetshire see of Sherborne, and the 
 Wiltshire see of Ramsbury. 
 
 The latter, as has been said, was a poverty- 
 stricken see. It was certainly rich in one 
 respect. Few more beautifully ornamented 
 fragments of Anglo-Saxon shafts and crosses 
 and grave covers have been found than 
 those which were brought out of an old wall 
 of Ramsbury church ten or eleven years ago 
 at the time of the restoration of that fine 
 building. Some notes on these sculptured 
 stones have been given in Chapter VI. 
 
 William of Malmesbury tells us the story 
 of the union of the two sees of Sherborne and 
 Eamsbury, and of the part which the abbey 
 of Malmesbury played in it ; and he tells 
 the story in two different ways. Hermann, 
 a native of Flanders^ was made Bishop of 
 Ramsbury in 1045, and he became Bishop 
 of Sherborne in addition to Ramsbury in 
 1058. As Bishop of Ramsbury he endeavoured 
 
THE SEE OF WILTS. 227 
 
 to move the see to Malmesbury, with the 
 abbacy of Malmesbury as the bishop's portion. 
 That is one of William's accounts. The other 
 is that as bishop of both sees he endeavoured 
 to move the two sees to Malmesbury, with the 
 abbacy as before. I feel little doubt that he 
 made the attempt both when he was first 
 made Bishop of Kamsbury and also when he 
 became Bishop of Sherborne as well. In the 
 former case he had actually obtained the 
 consent of Edward the Confessor, who in his 
 simplicity, as William says, was always more 
 ready to say yes than prudence would allow. 
 His plea to the king, whose chaplain he was, 
 was this. Ramsbury was very poor. There 
 was no convent of clergy. There was no 
 means of support. The previous bishops had 
 been natives, they had relations, they had 
 means. He was a foreigner, with no relations 
 here to entertain him, no patrimony for his 
 support. That plea moved the king to con- 
 sent. But the monks of Malmesbury got 
 wind of what was going on at court, and 
 before Hermann could get actual possession 
 of the abbacy, they went with full speed to 
 Godwin, Earl of Wessex, and his son Harold. 
 The earls were much annoyed by the un- 
 seemly novelty of the proceeding : they 
 P 2 
 
228 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 went to the king and induced him to change 
 his mind. This, Malmesbury says, was an 
 easy matter for them, for they were very 
 great men, endued with the amplest authority ; 
 their cause was just ; the king was facile. 
 Hermann indignantly left England. But he 
 was badly fed on the continent, and he heard 
 that the Bishop of Sherborne was dead. 
 Queen Eadgyth had long ago promised that 
 he should have Sherborne as well as Rams- 
 bury. He heard also that Godwin was 
 dead, of whom he was very much afraid 
 here we have a touch of Godwin's dislike 
 of the foreigners whom Edward introduced. 
 He came back to England, and the Queen's 
 promise was fulfilled. The other of William's 
 stories is that the attempt upon Malmesbury 
 was made when he thus became Bishop of 
 Sherborne, seven or eight years before the 
 Conquest, and that [Godwin and] Harold 
 prevented it. In any case, it is clear that 
 Malmesbury was the place at which it was 
 desired to place the joint see. Hermann, 
 being a foreigner, was not disturbed by the 
 Conqueror. When the decree of 1078 came 
 out, ordering that sees were to be moved from 
 villages to towns, Hermann transferred the 
 joint sees to Sarum,and became the first of 
 
SEES CONNECTED WITH BKISTOL. 229 
 
 the Bishops of Salisbury, with Wilts and 
 Dorset as his see. In 1 542 Henry VIIT took 
 away Dorset, by Charter under Act of 
 Parliament, and gave it to Bristol. In 1836 
 an Act of Parliament restored Dorset to 
 Salisbury, and gave to the see of Gloucester 
 and Bristol eighty parishes of North Wilts 
 in place of Dorset. A few years ago another 
 Act of Parliament gave these parishes, which 
 include Malmesbury, to the re-separated see 
 of Bristol. 
 
 The successive changes in the arrangement 
 of dioceses, from the time of Birinus of Wessex 
 and Diuma of Mercia to the time of Queen 
 Victoria, are to be illustrated in a very 
 interesting manner at the Church Congress 
 to be held at Bristol October 13-16, 1903. 
 The single see of the West Saxons of Aid- 
 helm's time, at Dorchester in the first instance 
 and shortly after at Winchester, is now repre- 
 sented by the Bishops of Winchester, Bath and 
 WelLs, Salisbury, Exeter, Oxford, and part of 
 Bristol. The South-west Britons of Aldhelm's 
 time are represented by Exeter, Truro, LlandafF, 
 St. David's. The Mercian see of Aldhelm's 
 time is represented at its centre and in the 
 parts toward Bristol by Lichfield, Worcester, 
 Hereford, Gloucester, and Bristol. The occu- ' 
 
230 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 pants of all of the twelve sees named, other 
 than Bristol, have promised to attend the 
 Church Congi-ess at Bristol, in recognition of 
 the historical claim upon their support which 
 the composite character of the see gives to 
 its bishop. 
 
 A few words on the present condition of the 
 Abbey Church of Malmesbury, built from 11 50 
 to 1200 on the site of Aldhelm's great Saxon 
 church, wiU not be out of place here. 
 
 The nave, which alone now remains, con- 
 sisted of nine bays, with a singularly splendid 
 south porch. The west front presented the 
 appearance of a noble centre and highly 
 ornamented west door, flanked by two square 
 towers enriched with surface arcading. They 
 were in fact not square towers : seen from the 
 south or the north they were rectangular, 
 the west face considerably wider than the 
 south. Only one of these now remains, with 
 leather less than half of the central part of the 
 west front, including the southern portion of 
 the great west door. The Norman arches from 
 the nave, transepts, and chancel were magnifi- 
 cent examples of lofty round arches of very 
 interesting design ; two of them still remain. 
 Ruin has befallen all the rest of the great 
 church, except a part of the west face of the 
 
THE ABBEY CHURCH NOW. 23 1 
 
 south transept. There is some surface decora- 
 tion, both medallions and diamonds. Figures 
 19 and 20 show the fabric as it was in 1900. 
 
 At the Eeformation^ Cranmer issued a docu- 
 ment authorising the use of the nave of the 
 Abbey Church as the Parish Church of Malmes- 
 bury, in place of the Church of St. Paul, then 
 in ruins except the tower which still stands. 
 The central tower and spire of the Abbey 
 Church, higher than Salisbury, had fallen 
 before that time, as had also a western tower, 
 an ill-built addition of the fifteenth century. 
 A further catastrophe destroyed the northern 
 half of the west front, and completed the ruins 
 of the three western bays, in the time of 
 Charles II. From that time till the end of 
 the nineteenth century, the state of the fabric 
 has caused growing anxiety, especially be- 
 cause if another catastrophe came the south 
 porch must be ruined, an irreparable loss. 
 
 The last three years have seen the fabric 
 made sound. The frontispiece shows the 
 result on the south. The roofs of the 
 aisles have been stripped and relaid; the 
 flying buttresses taken down one by one, and 
 built again with the old stones, a process 
 revealing the mere thread by which some of 
 them were held together; the compensating 
 
232 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 pinnacles have been completely repaired ; the 
 gutters put in order; and the drainage for 
 the first time made effective. The treatment 
 of the ruined bays at the west of the nave 
 presented difiicult problems. It was necessary 
 to introduce heavy buttresses, to prevent the 
 collapse of the south-west corner of the present 
 church ; but any buttresses of an ordinary 
 character would have been ugly and expensive, 
 and must have been removed again if at any 
 time the county rebuilt the ruined bays. It 
 was determined that all the money spent upon 
 the west end should be to the good, if the bays 
 were ever rebuilt. On that principle it was 
 determined to efiect the buttressing in the most 
 complete manner, by building the perished 
 piers and half-arches of the south aisle and 
 arcade, and thus supporting the thrust of the 
 unsupported and overhanging masses of ruin 
 at the south-west corner of the present church 
 and at the east side of the south-west tower. 
 Extreme care has been taken to leave the new 
 work without mouldings ; to alter the cuspings 
 of the parapets ; and in all ways to render it 
 impossible that the new work shall ever be 
 thought to be part of the original work. The 
 southern tower at the west end, the upper part 
 of which was in a very ruinous state, has been 
 
REPAIES OF THE CHURCH. 233 
 
 finished off square at the top, a few feet of new 
 work being added to give headway for access 
 to the roof by the spiral staircase still re- 
 maining in that tower; the view from the 
 top is very interesting. The whole has been 
 managed with great skill by the architect, 
 Mr. Brakspear, and at the moderate cost of 
 jf 5,000, of which about ^ipoo has still to be 
 raised. The frontispiece shows the interior. 
 
 One feature of rather remarkable interest 
 has characterised the execution of the modern 
 work. The great blocks of Bath stone which 
 have been brought to Malmesbury and sawn 
 up to build the singularly massive Norman 
 pier and half arches, with the corresponding 
 portions of the clerestory and triforium^ form- 
 ing in fact the system of buttressing, have all 
 come to Malmesbury marked '' St. Aldhelm." 
 That is the registered trade-mark of the Bath 
 Stone firms ; and it is derived from a tradition 
 mentioned by Aubrey (a. D. 1659-70)*. In 
 describing Haselbury, in the parish of Box, 
 where is one of the most famous quarries of 
 Bath stone, Aubrey says : 
 
 " Haselbury Quarre is not to be forgott ; it 
 is the eminentest free-stone quarrey in the 
 
 * Canon Jackson's edition of Aubrey's WiltSj a.d. 1862, 
 p. 58. 
 
234 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 west of England, Malmesbury and all round 
 the country of it ^. The old men's story, that 
 St. Adelme, riding over there, threw down his 
 glove, and bade them digge and they should 
 find great treasure, meaning the Quarry." 
 
 Mr. E. A. Ponting informs me that the stone 
 first worked was the Bradford stone, a less fine 
 oolite than the Bath stone, with larger shells. 
 It is of this, he tells me, that the little church 
 at Bradford, the Saxon arch still remaining 
 in the Norman church of Sherborne, and the 
 sculptured stones at Kamsbury, are composed. 
 The tradition recorded by Aubrey supports 
 Mr. Ponting's view that the Bradford quarry 
 was worked first. Aldhelm was very par- 
 ticular about his orders for material, as we 
 see from his miracle of the Beam, and he no 
 doubt studied the character of the ground 
 from which he got his stone. Haselbury lay 
 between Malmesbury and Bradford, and we 
 may suppose that on one of his journeys 
 he noticed some surface indications which 
 suggested the existence of a rich quarry of 
 fine stone. The Bath Stone firms include his 
 glove in their trade-mark, but it is a military 
 gauntlet of iron, not the decorative leather 
 glove of an abbat or a bishop. 
 
 ^ Apparently a corrupt passage, capable of emendation. 
 
21. INTERIOR OF THE ABBEY CHURCH, MALMESBURY 
 LOOKING EAST 
 
 To face p. 234 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Three of Aldhelm's Sacred Hymns : On the Basilica 
 built by Bugge, the daughter of a King of England ; On 
 the Altars dedicated to the Blessed Mary and the Twelve 
 Apostles; On entering the Church of St. Peter and 
 St. Paul. 
 
 We may now turn to those of Aldhelm's 
 writings which have come down to us, he- 
 ginning with three of his sacred hymns. 
 
 The first is a dedicatory Ode on the Conse- 
 cration of a Basilica built by a daughter of 
 King Centwine in the time of King Ina. As 
 it is comparatively short, eighty-five hexa- 
 meter ]ines, we may as well have a rough 
 rendering of the whole poem. 
 
 " This temple with its fair structure the 
 noble daughter of King Centwine reared. 
 He ruled the empire of the Saxons, until, 
 thinking little of the heights of an earthly 
 reign, he left the riches of this world and the 
 reins of power, raising on many a field new 
 basilicas where now the servants of Christ 
 keep the monastic rule. Then he passed on 
 to seek the sanctified life, leaving his own 
 kingdom for the name of Christ. In his 
 
236 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 earlier days he had fought three campaigns, 
 and brought them to an end in three victories. 
 Thus he reigned prosperously for many years 
 till he passed to the kindly cell. Thence, 
 bright with merits, he sought the realms 
 above, led by angelic hosts to the heights 
 of heaven, where now in union with them 
 that dwell there he rejoices in his lot." 
 
 King Centwine's reign is involved in some 
 mystery. Bede apparently had some in- 
 formation which did not tally with the 
 statements of the Chronicle. Aldhelm's re- 
 marks support the Chronicle^, and show 
 Centwine as King in the full sense, not 
 merely an irregular ruler in a time of anarchy. 
 We do not know anything of the three 
 campaigns and three decisive victories to 
 which Aldhelm refers ; but the Chronicle is 
 quite definite in regard to one of' them, its 
 whole entry under the year 682 (or 683) 
 being " In this year Centwine drove the 
 Bret Welsh (Bret Wealas) as far as the sea.'* 
 This, no doubt, was the great defeat of the 
 Damnonian Britons, the people of Devon and 
 the southern parts of Somerset, to which 
 William of Malmesbury refers in his account 
 
 ^ A.D. 676. Centwine succeeded to the kingdom of the 
 West Saxons. See also page 327. 
 
ON THE CONSECRATION OF A BASILICA. 237 
 
 of Aldhelm's letter to the British ^ Mr. 
 Plummer, in his notes on Bede, H.E. iv. 12, 
 suggests that Centwine may have been forced 
 into a monastery by his victorious successor, 
 Ceadwalla. The Chronicle is completely 
 silent as to the time or manner of his ceasing 
 to reign. Aldhelm skilfully keeps to the 
 policy of non-committal, though he certainly 
 knew all about it, being Abbat of Malmes- 
 bury throughout Centwine's reign of nine or 
 ten years (6'j6-6^^), In his letter to the 
 clergy of Wilfrith, given in Chapter III, he 
 avows himself a supporter of Ceadwalla. 
 Possibly the word h<jeres, heir, which he 
 applies to Ceadwalla in the poem, is meant 
 to indicate that he was a legitimist. We 
 may now proceed. 
 
 "After him King Ceadwalla succeeded, 
 famous in war and in arms, the mighty 
 holder and heir^ of the kingdom. But he 
 soon left the empire of the world and the 
 sceptre, to plough with curved ships the 
 turgid waves and pass through the sequorial 
 plains of the sea. The white sails crackled 
 
 See Chapter XII. 
 
 ' If primogeniture had been the rule of succession in 
 those times, Ceadwalla stood much above Centwine in 
 order of claim. 
 
238 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 under the gusts of wind, until the bark beat 
 the shore with rude beak. Then he climbed 
 the cloud-capped Alps, hedged about with 
 masses of snow and the summits of the 
 mountains. Kindly Kome rejoiced at his 
 coming, and the clergy of the Church were 
 glad, when he, happy, merited mersion in the 
 waters of baptism. While still clad in his 
 white robes he was seized with disease and 
 breathed out his mortal life, seeking the 
 lofty realms of the poles above, mounting 
 to the clear height of starry Olympus." 
 
 Of this visit to Kome, and the mark which 
 it left there, further notice will be found in 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 "The third ruler to receive the noble 
 sceptre was he whom the nations call by 
 the well-known cognomen of Ina, who now 
 guides by right ^ the empire of the Saxons. 
 In his reign, Bugge, the suppliant servant of 
 
 ^ In the second generation from Cerdic there were 
 four brothers of the royal house. The oldest of them, 
 Ceawlin, reigned from 560 to 592, when his line was 
 deprived of the sovereignty, and six descendants of the 
 third brother, Cutha, reigned. Ceadwalla's claini harked 
 back to Ceawlin's line, as also did Ina's. After five 
 sovereigns whose claim cannot be clearly traced, Ecgbert 
 emerged as king, and his family retained the kingship. 
 He was the heir, in the fourth generation, of Ina's 
 brother Ingild. 
 
ON THE CONSECKATION OF A BASILICA. 239 
 
 Christ, constructed a new shrine, a lofty fabric, 
 where sacred altars shine under twice six 
 names and above (or in addition) the altar 
 of the virgin consecrates the apse. There- 
 fore let us all with triumph celebrate this 
 day, and sing to Christ the God alternate 
 hymns. The monthly seasons roll on with 
 successive feasts, and lustres of years shall 
 whirl in appointed course. Let antiphons 
 with sweet accents strike the ear, and 
 the ode of psalms clang with the double 
 trumpet. Let the voice of the hymnist ring 
 out frequent and articulate, and shake the 
 lofty roof with vigorous song. Let us, brothers, 
 praise the Almighty with accordant voice, and 
 the band of sisters join with us in frequent 
 song. Let us give forth under the vault of 
 the temple hymns and psalms and festal re- 
 sponsories, making melody with the modu- 
 lations of the psaltery, and strike as the 
 psalmist bids the ten-stringed lyre. Let each 
 one adorn the new shrine with voice, and the 
 brother or sister who reads, the lector, or 
 lectrix^j untie the sacred volumes. For this 
 
 ^ This, as the ''band of sisters" above, evidently 
 points to a double monastery, of monks and nuns, 
 governed by Bugge ; it was an arrangement which found 
 favour among the Hwiccas. 
 
240 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 great day, on which the Church's festival 
 shines forth, the Virgin Mary has hallowed 
 by her nativity ; which the times of August 
 renew each year, when the burning sextile 
 month is divided in mid orb ; bringing re- 
 newed gladness to our mind, when in its turn 
 the solemn feast of Mary returns, and the 
 sacred altars blaze with pious gifts." 
 
 This mention of the Nativity of the Blessed 
 Virgin, as occurring in the middle of August, 
 is for more than one reason at first sight 
 puzzling. August 15 is the Festival of the 
 Assumption. The Festival of the Nativity 
 is on September 8. There has been no varia- 
 tion from these dates, nor any confusion 
 between the two festivals. Moreover, both 
 festivals were of comparatively late intro- 
 duction, so late that the mention of either 
 of them by Aldhelm as a fully recognized 
 festival would be worthy of special note. 
 Both festivals come from tainted sources, 
 especially that of the Assumption, which was 
 an invention of gnostic heretics and was 
 brought into the Church on the evidence of 
 a series of forgeries. Gregory of Tours 
 accepted the story of the Assumption, writing 
 in or about the year 590. So late as the 
 time of Charles the Great, that Sovereign 
 
FESTIVALS OF THE VIRGIN. 241 
 
 appears to have received the Festival only- 
 after deliberation, and ifc was only fully 
 recognized by his son Louis (800-840). The 
 Festival of the Nativity rests on a different 
 basis, for while there never was an Assump- 
 tion of the Virgin in the sense of the heretics 
 and the forgeries, the Nativity was a natural 
 fact, and the only invention was that of the 
 actual day. Pope Sergius I. is said to have 
 instituted the Festival in the year 695, later, 
 almost certainly, than Aldhelm's poem, on 
 the representation of a " religious " who told 
 the Pope he had for years heard the angels 
 singing on the eighth of September, and it 
 had been revealed to him that they sang 
 because on that day the Virgin Mary was 
 born. This festival did not appear in the 
 Calendars of Charles the Great or of his son 
 Louis. 
 
 We can now see how interesting Aldhelm's 
 remark is. He had heard that August 15 
 had become or was becoming marked as 
 a festival in honour of the Virgin, but he 
 had not heard of the Festival of the Assump- 
 tion in connection with it. He had heard of 
 the Nativity of the Virgin, but he had not 
 heard of September 8 in connection with it. 
 He combined the natural fact of the Nativity 
 Q 
 
242 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 with the day marked as the Festival of the 
 Virgin, August 15. 
 
 Bede has a poem of sixty-eight lines, On 
 the Natal day of the Holy Mother of God, but 
 it does not contain any reference to the 
 Nativity, nor any hint of the date of the 
 day. It is, however, very interesting to note 
 that in Bede's treatise on the Natal days of 
 Saints he enters on August 15 >S. Mariae dor- 
 mitio, " the falling asleep of the Holy Mary." 
 The development had been rapid. 
 
 Aldhelm's poem proceeds to its close as 
 follows. 
 
 " This house is resplendent with serene light, 
 the sun shining through its windows of glass, 
 and diffusing limpid light through the four- 
 square temple. Very many are the ornaments 
 of the new basilica. The golden pallia glow 
 yellow with their woven threads^, the fair 
 clothing of the sacred altar. The golden 
 chalice flashes with gems, as the heavens 
 glow with blazing stars. There stands the 
 broad paten, formed of silver, bearing the 
 divine remedies of our life, for by the Body 
 
 ^ It is not improbable that this refers to hangings 
 woven throughout of gold thread, as in the case of 
 Ina's pall at Glastonbury and Frithestan's stole at Win- 
 chester ; see Chapter VII. 
 
ON THE CONSECRATION OF A BASILICA. 243 
 
 of Christ and his Sacred Blood are we fed. 
 Here is the splendour of the Cross with its 
 plates of gold and silver adorned with gems. 
 Here too the thurible, girt all round with 
 capitals, hangs from on high, opening its 
 perforations, through which the Sabaean in- 
 cense shall breathe forth ambrosia when the 
 priests are instructed to offer mass. Now let 
 illustrious glory be assigned to the unbegotten 
 Father, and glory not less be offered to the 
 begotten Son, and let the Holy Spirit enjoy 
 constant praise." 
 
 We naturally try to determine where this 
 basilica was built, and to know something 
 more of the lady who built it. 
 
 There were two ladies of this not very 
 euphonious name ^ in the early Anglo-Saxon 
 
 ^ The Old-English word Bugge came to mean a thing 
 of terror. Coverdale's Bible renders Ps. xc(i). 5, affrayed 
 for eny bugges by night. Speed, in his History of Great 
 Britain^ says of the opponents of the married clergy, that 
 ^* women in those days were great bugs in their eyes." 
 A humbug, or hum bug, is a sham bogie. The use of the 
 word as a personal name for ladies makes it clear that it 
 had originally a complimentary sense ; probably it meant 
 a fairy, a sprite, and thence a ghost, this last being the 
 meaning of the Welsh bwg. It is well known that Bug 
 has been an English surname down to our own times, 
 and is in fact the surname of some families of ancient 
 descent which now bear territorial names ; thus Richard 
 Bugge bought property (43 Henry III) in Willoughby, 
 
 Q 'i 
 
244 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 times. The late Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Stubbs, 
 gave an account of them in the Dictionary 
 of Christian Biograi^hy, and identifies the 
 builder of this basilica with the later of the 
 two, the third abbess of Minster in Thanet, 
 who died after 751. To this identification 
 that author, most learned and ever to be 
 regretted, was no doubt led by the fact that 
 the poem of Aldhelm was in error included 
 among the poems of Alcuin, who was born in 
 735 at the earliest. Inasmuch as Ina was 
 king at the time when the poem was written, 
 and Ina died in "JQ^S, it is quite clear that 
 Alcuin could not have written it ; however 
 precocious and however unmakable he may- 
 be, after all a poet has to be born. When 
 once the poem is recognized as not Alcuin's, 
 its place among Aldhelm' s poems is un- 
 challenged. 
 
 Identifying this lady with the abbess of 
 Minster, Dr. Stubbs, who knew the period 
 better than any one else, found no difficulty 
 in reconciling the two statements, (1) that 
 Bugge was the daughter of King Centwine, 
 (3) that she was the daughter of the Abbess 
 
 and his son, who bought Wollaton, became Richard de 
 Wyllebi. We get a hint of an old pronunciation of 
 Bugge in the armorial bearing of three budgets. 
 
ABBESS BUGGE. 245 
 
 EaDgytb. It must be frankly confessed that 
 a study of the morals of the time does not 
 show that to be an unsurmoun table difficulty, 
 the dignity of abbess following sometimes 
 upon an early life less well spent than the 
 years of the religious life. 
 
 Curiously enough, both of the two ladies 
 named Bugge were daughters of abbesses, and 
 this fact has rendered the above remarks 
 necessary. Rejecting the identification of 
 the basilica-builder with the daughter of the 
 Abbess Eangyth, on the ground of her late 
 date, and of the absence of connecting links 
 between Aldhelm and Minster, we must turn 
 to Bugge, the daughter of the Abbess Dunne. 
 The dates of the facts which are certain in 
 her story exactly suit her time as indicated 
 in Aldhelm's poem. The story is worth re- 
 lating in itself, as showing the mischiefs 
 attaching to the over-development of the 
 monastic system and the hereditary descent 
 of abbacies, to which Bede called such marked 
 attention towards the close of his life. If we 
 accept this earlier dedication, we know where 
 the basilica was, and we bring it within 
 twenty miles of Malmesbury instead of en* 
 deavouring to find it in far-off Thanet. 
 We also re-establish the reputation of a 
 
246 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 lady whose character has been unnecessarily 
 vilified. 
 
 King Ethelred of Mercia, the third of the 
 sons of the old pagan King Penda who ruled 
 over the whole or part of Mercia, gave, in 
 concert with Oshere, his sub-king in Glou- 
 cestershire^ and at Oshere's request, certain 
 lands on which a monastery was to be built. 
 Ethelred's reign extended over the years 6j^ 
 to 704, and Oshere is known to have been 
 sub-king of the Hwiccas in 680 and 693. 
 That is as near to the date as we can get. It 
 will be seen at a glance how well these dates 
 suit for a close connection with Aldhelm, and 
 for the relationship between King Centwine, 
 who died in 685, and the ladies to whom the 
 grant was made. They were two nuns, Dunne 
 and her daughter Bucge. The Latin .charter 
 of forty years later, in which the story is 
 found, following the Latin construction, puts 
 their names in the genitive and dative case of 
 the Anglo-Saxon names, Dunnan and Bucgan, 
 whence some contrariety in the spelling of 
 their names in modern times ^. The land was 
 on the river Tillath, now the Colne, at the 
 spot where now the village of Withington is, 
 
 ^ Archbishop Boniface treated the name of his corre- 
 spondent, the other Bugga, in the same way. 
 
ABBESS BUGGE. 247 
 
 about twenty miles north of Malmesbury, 
 through Cirencester. There is no reason why 
 Aldhelm may not have visited the place as 
 a neighbouring abbat, and hymned the beauty 
 of the basilica built there by Dunne and 
 Bucge. The whole hangs together unusually 
 well date, place, and circumstance. 
 
 When Dunne was dying, she willed the 
 monastery, over which she then ruled alone, 
 as though Bucge was dead, with its lands and 
 the charter of donation, to the daughter of 
 her daughter. But because her grand-daughter 
 was a child, she enjoined upon the married 
 mother of the child the duty of keeping the 
 charter and the management of the .monastery 
 for her daughter till she should come of age. 
 It has been carelessly assumed that this 
 mother, must of course have been Bucge. 
 When in the course of time the grand- 
 daughter came of age, and asked for the 
 charter, the mother declared that it had been 
 stolen, and would not give up the monastery. 
 The matter was felt to be so serious that it 
 was brought, in the year 736 or 737 \ before 
 the episcopal synod of the province of Canter- 
 
 1 It will be seen that these dates will suit the coming 
 of age of a grand-daughter of King Centwine, or of the 
 niece of his daughter. 
 
248 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 bury. There were present Nothelm, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury ; Daniel, Bishop of Win- 
 chester ; Wor, Bishop of Lichfield ; Ingwald, 
 Bishop of London ; Wilfrith, Bishop of Wor- 
 cester ; Cuthbert, Bishop of Hereford ; For- 
 there, the outgoing Bishop of Sherborne, and 
 Herewald the new Bishop, and two others, 
 ten bishops in all. The whole of the venerable 
 Council, with the most reverend Archbishop 
 Nothelm, decreed that the charter of donation, 
 whether of the king and sub-king or of Dunne 
 the handmaid of God, must be restored to the 
 Abbess Hrotwari (the grand-daughter), and 
 that her possession of the monastery was 
 assured. Condemnation, and the anathema of 
 the most sacred synod, was decreed against 
 the person who had presumed fraudulently to 
 take away the charter, whether by theft or by 
 any other means. Finally, the sacred S3aiod 
 decreed that at the death of Hrotwari, as her 
 fore-bears had determined, the book and the 
 land should fall to the episcopal see of Wor- 
 cester; this last decree took effect in 774-^. 
 
 It seems to me clear from the above record 
 that Bucge had died in Dunne's lifetime, 
 
 ^ This date of Hrotwari's death well fits in with the 
 rest of the story and the connection with Centwine, who 
 was in early middle age in 685. 
 
ABBESS BUGGE. 249 
 
 leaving her mother in sole possession and rule 
 of the monastery, and that it was because of 
 Bucge's death that Dunne left the possessions 
 to a grand-daughter, the daughter of another 
 of Dunne's daughters, a married woman. The 
 contrast between the description of Bucge as 
 tanctimonialis, and of Hrotwari's mother as 
 r)iaritata, is much too wide and clear to 
 justify the statement of the very learned 
 writer ah-eady referred to, that it was Bucge 
 who ''was only dislodged by the decree of 
 a Council in 736 or 7^y.'' 
 
 As the story points to the special value of 
 the possession of the land-book, or schedule 
 of lands, as the visible title to the estate, 
 I may add here that these land-books were 
 sometimes called telligraphs, a word w^hich 
 sounds curiously modern ; as in fact does the 
 other and much better known name of later 
 mediaeval times, terrier. Both names evi- 
 dently mean written lists of the lands com- 
 prised in an estate. The Council held at 
 Cealchyth (Chelsea) in 816 passed among 
 other decrees one of which the title sounds 
 rather startling at a date 1100 years ago, 
 "that monasteries be not deprived of their 
 telligraphs." 
 
 The poem to which we turn next is called 
 
250 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 a Poem on the Altars dedicated to the Blessed 
 Mary and the Twelve Apostles. This may 
 refer to the same church, for it had the same 
 number of altars with the same inscriptions ; 
 or it may refer to the great church of St. Mary 
 at Malmesbury itself, though we do not 
 actually know that Aldhelm, in building that 
 church, made the same arrangement of the 
 altars which he evidently admired in Buggo's 
 basilica. 
 
 The order in which the persons to whom 
 the altars were dedicated are mentioned is as 
 follows, the numbers after the names showing 
 the number of verses assigned to each: the 
 Virgin Mary (31), St. Peter (c^6\ St. Paul (36), 
 St. Andrew (16), St. James (14), St. John (19), 
 St. Thomas Didymus (25), St. James the 
 Lord's cousin (^6), St. Philip (18), St. Bar- 
 tholomew (14), St. Matthew (:^o), St. Simon 
 Zelotes (10), St. Thaddeus (27), St. Matthias 
 (13). It will be seen that St. Matthias is 
 numbered among the twelve Apostles, and 
 that St. Paul is added to the twelve. St. Paul 
 is placed second, and is honoured in as many 
 verses as St. Peter and St. James, no one 
 else, not even the Virgin Mary having so 
 many. This equalizing of the reverence paid 
 to St. Peter and St. Paul is a marked feature 
 
DEDICATIONS OF ALTARS. 25 1 
 
 of the early Anglo-Saxon Church. Not- 
 withstanding this insertion of St. Paul, at 
 the conclusion of the poem Aldhelm says, 
 " I have now gone through the twelve names 
 of the Fathers " ; he has gone through thirteen. 
 It is difficult to see any distinction of 
 treatment as among the thirteen names. 
 The verses describe their trials and their 
 works. In another poem, next to be referred 
 to, we have more opportunity for determining 
 the relative places of the two chief Apostles, 
 or Princes of the Apostles, St. Peter and 
 St. Paul. In the present poem, the Virgin 
 Mary is urged to hear mercifully the prayers of 
 the people, who moisten the ground with their 
 tears and beat the earth with bended knee, 
 earning pardon by the fount of tears and 
 blotting out the sins of life by frequent 
 prayers. No such address is made to any 
 one of the thirteen who are honoured next ; 
 but at the end Aldhelm prays them all to 
 lighten the burden of his sins and loose his 
 offences by pardon, that relying on divine 
 grace ^ he may ultimately reach heaven. 
 
 * His hexameter line ends with Divina gratia fretus ! 
 Aldhelm would often have been whipped for taking 
 liberties with long and short syllables, in the wholesome 
 times of English schools. 
 
252 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Bede appears to have known this poem. 
 He uses one of Aldhelm's lines on Judas 
 Iscariot 
 
 Culmen Apostolici celsum perdebat honoris ; 
 
 and half a line from the verses on Thomas 
 Didymus, where our Lord is spoken of as 
 
 Coeli qui sceptra gubernat. 
 
 The third of Aldhelm's sacred hymns is 
 described in his collected works as a poem 
 written by him on entering the Church of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul at Rome. Which of 
 the churches of Rome that was, is not ex- 
 plained. In England it was a frequent 
 dedication in those early times, when a dedi- 
 cation to St. Peter alone was, to say the least, 
 very rare^. The earliest dedications of 
 churches by the Italians of Augustine's band 
 to single saints were to St. Andrew (Rochester) 
 and St. Paul (London); the earliest dedication 
 in which St. Peter was named was the dedica- 
 tion of the Abbey Church of St. Peter and 
 St. Paul, afterwards St. Augustine's, Canter- 
 bury. The first known dedication in which 
 
 ^ On the unhistorical assertions of the Roman bishops 
 in these islands a few years ago, with respect to dedi- 
 cations to St. Peter alone, see Conversion 0/ the Heptarchy, 
 pp. 51-54. 
 
THE CHIEF APOSTLES. 253 
 
 St. Peter alone is named is that of the Cathe- 
 dral Church of York, a generation later. 
 
 William of Malmesbury incorporates this 
 poem in his Life of Aldhelm, and states 
 positively that it was composed on the 
 occasion of the dedication of the new and 
 larorer church which Aldhelm had built at 
 Malmesbury in honour of the Saviour and 
 the chief Apostles^ Peter and Paul. 
 
 " Here, in this fair place^ Peter and Paul, the 
 lights of a dark world, the chief Fathers who 
 guide the reins of the people, are venerated 
 with frequent song. 
 
 "Key-bearer of heaven, who openest the 
 portal of the upper air, and unclosest the 
 white realms of the Thunderer of the skies, 
 mercifully hear the vows of the people 
 who pray, moistening the dry ground with 
 showers of tears 2. Accept the sobs of those 
 who groan for their offences, who burn up 
 with frequent prayer the sins of their life. 
 Lo! thou greatest Doctor, Paul, called from 
 
 * Primorum apostolorum Petri et Pauli ; a noteworthy- 
 statement of equality. Anastasius, in his Life of Leo III 
 (Muratori, iii. 200), says that the pope made three golden 
 images, of the Saviour and Peter and Paul, beaforum 
 principum. 
 
 * Three verses here are common to this poem and the 
 one preceding. See also p. 332. 
 
254 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the heavens Saul (now with changed name 
 Paul) when thou didst aim at setting the 
 old law above Christ, and after darkness 
 didst begin to see the clear light ; open now 
 benignant ears to the voice of them that 
 pray, and as their guardian stretch forth 
 with Peter thy right band to the trembling 
 ones, who flock to the sacred thresholds of 
 the church ; that here may be granted con- 
 tinuous indulgence of offences, flowing from 
 abundant piety and the fount on high which 
 never through the ages grows sluggish for 
 men of worth." 
 
 William of Malmesbury has preserved for 
 us yet another poem on the relative merits of 
 St. Peter and St. Paul. In his monograph on 
 the Antiquities of the Church of Glastonbury, 
 he tells us that King Ina of Wessex, on the 
 advice of Aldhelm as we learn elsewhere, 
 built a church at Glastonbury and dedicated 
 it to the Saviour and the Apostles Peter and 
 Paul. Enough has been said already on that 
 thoroughly English dedication. Further, Ina 
 set up an inscription in Latin elegiacs which 
 William records, evidently as in existence in 
 his time : this gives yet another great Saxon 
 Church spared by the Norman architects for 
 many years. The inscription is for the most 
 
THE CHIEF APOSTLES. 255 
 
 part a comparison between the two Apostles. 
 It is difficult to see who other than Aldhelm, 
 in that age and in that land, could have 
 written the verses ; but the genius of Ald- 
 helm was on the whole too pompatic to be 
 pleased with the lilt of pentameters ; and it 
 must be confessed that if Aldhelm was the 
 author, he produced a copy of verses much 
 more smooth and elegant than was his wont. 
 The substance of ten of the lines of the poem 
 is as follows : 
 
 Two gates of the heavens, two lights of the wide world, 
 Paul thunders with voice, Peter lightens from the sky. 
 
 The one loftier in degree, the other more learned in 
 teaching. 
 The hearts of men are opened by the one, the stars by 
 the other ; 
 Whom the one teaches with the pen the other receives 
 in the pole. 
 The one opens the way to heaven with teaching, the 
 other with keys ; 
 To whom Paul is the way to him Peter is the trusty 
 gate. 
 The one remains the firm stone, the other is the architect. 
 
 Against the hostile torch two bulwarks rise 
 The city the head of the world has these its towers of 
 faith. 
 
 It is worth while, in this connection, to 
 turn to Bede's poems, and see what he has 
 
256 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 to say on this subject of the relative claims 
 of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 
 In the preface to his long poem on the 
 Miracles of St. Cuthbert, he speaks of the 
 several parts of the earth made illustrious by 
 the presence of Apostles and other great 
 teachers. He begins with Rome, and all that 
 he says of Rome is this : 
 
 Rome, delighting in the twin splendour of Peter and 
 
 Paul, 
 Will ever live rejoicing in the trophies of the Apostles. 
 
 That, beyond all doubt, is the true state- 
 ment of the religious claims of Rome upon 
 the affection of religious minds in the ages 
 of which we are speaking; as the Imperial 
 position of Rome as the centre of the Empire 
 of Rome was the secret of its secular pre- 
 eminence. 
 
 In a special poem of more than ninety lines 
 " On the Apostles Peter and Paul," com- 
 mencing impartially thus 
 
 Apostolorum gloriam 
 Hymnis canamus debitis, 
 The glory of the Apostles 
 Let us sing in due verse, 
 
 he carefully and ingeniously balances the 
 claims and merits of the two, and gives the 
 
THE CHIEF APOSTLES. 257 
 
 palm to both equally. Both, he says, drew 
 by their teaching the various errors of the 
 nations to the grace of truth. The sacred 
 Prince of the Church saw Jesus in the mount 
 and heard the voice of the Father from the 
 fiery sky ; Paul ascended to the third heaven 
 of the bright pole and heard hidden things 
 which it is not lawful to utter to any other. 
 The steps of Cephas on the waves are aided 
 by the right hand of Christ, who raises his 
 own that they be not drowned in the sea of 
 the world ; Paul showed that the dangers of 
 the world can be overcome by the faith of 
 them that believe, when he saved from the 
 waves his shipwrecked companions. After 
 two more parallels of this character, in- 
 troducing the good fishes and the tent-making, 
 the miracles of the lame man and of the 
 handkerchiefs, Bede continues thus : " Peter 
 desires to follow the footsteps of Christ, 
 to reach whom he dreads not by the cruel 
 ladder of the cross ; Paul enters the palace 
 of the heavenly realm by the sword, for who 
 fears God gladly gives his head to the steel. 
 Thus the Princes of the Church, thus the 
 true lights of the world, by noble triumph 
 over death received the palm of glory ; whose 
 illustrious trophies happy Kome now contains. 
 R 
 
258 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 whose crowns the circuit of the whole earth 
 celebrates." 
 
 The complete absence of even the faintest 
 allusion to the Petrine claims as developed in 
 the dark ages is a noteworthy fact. 
 
 It may be of interest to give a translation 
 of the Collect, Secreta, and Postcommunio, for 
 the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul, found in 
 the so-called Gregorian Missal of St. Augus- 
 tine's, Canterbury, nowpreserved in the Library 
 of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, No. 370, 
 edited by Mr. Martin Rule. The Collect is as 
 follows : " O God, whose right hand raised 
 the blessed Peter, walking on the waves, so 
 that he should not sink, and saved from the 
 depth of the sea his co-Apostle Paul when 
 shipwrecked for the third time, mercifully 
 hear us, and grant that by the merits of both 
 we may attain to the glory of eternity : who, 
 with God the Father, &c." The Secreta is as 
 follows : '* We offer unto Thee, Lord, prayers 
 and gifts ; and that they may be worthy of 
 Thy sight, we beseech the help of the prayers 
 of Thine Apostles Peter and Paul: through, 
 &c." And the Postcommunio: ."Protect, 
 O Lord, Thy people ; and preserve them with 
 perpetual defence who trust in the patronage 
 of Thine Apostles Peter and Paul: through, &c." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Aldhelm's letter to an Irishman. John the Scot. Aid- 
 frith. Concourse of English students to Ireland. Con- 
 nection between England and Ireland. Origin of our 
 Coronation Service. 
 
 Inasmuch as Aldhelm was himself taught 
 in youth by an Irishman, it was only natural 
 that he should keep up some connection with 
 Ireland. That he was highly regarded by Irish 
 scholars we have seen already from the letter 
 addressed to him by Cellanus, an Irishman 
 living at,Peronne. We can now turn to a 
 similar letter, written to him by an Irishman 
 who desired to study under him. 
 
 " The letter of a certain anonymous Scot to 
 Aldhelm, abbat of Malmesbury. 
 
 "To the lord Aldhelm, holy, most wise, to 
 Christ most dear, a Scot of name unknown 
 sends greeting in the Eternal God. 
 
 Knowing how you excel in intellect, in 
 Koman eloquence, and in the varied flowers of 
 letters after the manner of the Greeks, I would 
 rather learn from thy mouth, the purest fount 
 of knowledge, than drink from any other 
 R 2 
 
26o ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 spring, the turbid Master ^ especially. Know 
 this to begin with, that I confidently beseech 
 thee to take me and teach me, because the 
 brightness, it is said, of wisdom shines in thee 
 beyond many lecturers; and thou under- 
 standest the minds of foreigners who desire to 
 acquire knowledge : for thou hast been to Rome, 
 and besides thou wast thyself taught by a 
 certain holy man of our race. Let this serve 
 as a summary of reasons ; if thou wilt charit- 
 ably listen, thou wilt see as much from a few 
 words as from a large amount of sermonizing. 
 This also in sincerity I submit to thee. Thou 
 hast a certain book, which is not more than 
 an occupation ^ for two weeks ; I wish to read 
 it. This, however, I bespeak for a short time ; 
 not because I do not need it longer, but for 
 fear lest my request should create an unfavour- 
 able impression in thy mind. A servant, also, 
 and horses, I suppose I shall get. This next 
 
 ^ Turbulento Magistro. We have many examples of 
 honorific titles assigned to teachers doctor seraphic, doctor 
 irrefragable, and so on ; the text may perhaps suggest that 
 certain teachers were marked by labels of an opposite 
 character, at least by Irish students. 
 
 ^ The Latin word, acce;ptorio, puzzles Du Cange. The 
 probable meaning is that one desiring to read it need not 
 borrow it, or receive it, for more than a fortnight, or that it 
 does not contain matter for more than a fortnight's study. 
 
LETTER FROM A SCOT. 261 
 
 harvest I shall hope to receive from thee a 
 favourable reply. May Divine Grace deign to 
 keep thee, so long as thou pray est for me." 
 
 It is a curiously characteristic letter from 
 one of the Irish race. The writer must have 
 had great confidence in the skill of the Post 
 Office of his time. He expected that a book 
 which he did not name, beyond sayiog that it 
 was a fortnight's business, would reach him 
 safely with the sole address, To an anonymous 
 Scot. The inconsequent and happy-go-lucky 
 finish, " I suppose I shall get a servant and 
 horses," is another characteristic touch ; as 
 also is the bargain at the end for Aldhelm's 
 prayers on an equitable basis of mutual help. 
 
 The letter concludes with twenty-one hexa- 
 meter lines addressed to Christ. They are at 
 least as good as Aldhelm's own verses. 
 
 There is a letter of some length from Aldhelm 
 to a Saxon, Eahfrid by name, who had lately 
 returned from a six-years' course of study in 
 Ireland. This letter ought to have been of 
 more interest than it is, but it gives us a 
 general idea of the frequency of visits of 
 Englishmen to Irish seats of learning, and it 
 gives us a quite remarkable account of the 
 behaviour of Irish students in England. It 
 is tryingly, totally, terribly, turgid. Allitera- 
 
262 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 tive and abusive angriness is apt to one 
 speaking of it, as its initial sentence may serve 
 to show: "Primitus pantorum procerum 
 praetorumque pio potissimum paternoque 
 praesertim privilegio panegyricum poemata- 
 que passim prosatori sub polo promulgantes." 
 Some extracts may be given from this letter. 
 
 "We have heard from newsmongers that 
 you have arrived safe at the ambrosial shores 
 of British territory, having left the wintry 
 climes and storms of the island of Hibernia ; 
 where for a triple two-years' period you have 
 drawn nourishment from the udder of wisdom. 
 
 " Our ears have been shaken by assertions, 
 beyond the bounds of mere rumour, of those 
 who dwell on Scotic soil, with whom you 
 yourself have abode, assertions like peals of 
 thunder issuing from crashing clouds ; and 
 through many and wide stadia of the land, the 
 opinion spreads over districts and provinces 
 and grows in force. The coming and going 
 of those who pass by the ships-track, the 
 whirlpools of the sea, thence and hence, thither 
 and hither, is so frequent, that it resembles 
 some brotherhood of bees, busily storing the 
 nectar in the comb. 
 
 "I, miserable little man, revolved these 
 things as I wrote them down; and I was 
 
LETTER TO EAHFRID. 263 
 
 tortured by an anxious question. Why, say I, 
 should Ireland, whither students, ship-borne, 
 flock together in summer, why should Ireland 
 be exalted by some ineffable privilege? As 
 though here, on the fertile turf of Britain, 
 teachers Greek and. Koman could not be found, 
 who, solving the severe problems of the celestial 
 library, are able to unlock them to enquiring 
 smatterers. The fields of Ireland are rich in 
 learners, and green with the pastural numer- 
 osity of students, as the pivots of the pole 
 quiver with the vibrations of the glittering 
 constellations. And yet Britain, placed, if you 
 like to say so^ at almost the extreme margin of 
 the western clime of the orb, possesses as it were 
 the flame-bearing sun and the lucid moon ; that 
 is to say, Theodore the archbishop, grown old 
 from the earliest childhood of rudiments in 
 the flower of philosophic art, and Adrian, his 
 companion in the brotherhood of learning, 
 ineffably endowed with pure urbanity." 
 
 Aldhelm then proceeds to give an account 
 of Theodore's lectures, which shows that Irish 
 students came over in numbers to hear him, 
 and behaved themselves in a non-docile manner. 
 He was " densely surrounded by a crowd of 
 Irish disciples, who grievously badgered him 
 as the truculent boar is hemmed in by a 
 
264 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 snarling pack of Molossian hounds. He tore 
 them with the tusk of grammar, and pierced 
 them with the deep and sharp syllogisms of 
 chronography, till they cast away their weapons 
 and hurriedly fled to the recesses of their dens." 
 Such was the fate of those who badgered the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury in Aldhelm's time. 
 History is said to repeat itself^. 
 
 Aldhelm's own monastery was to see in its 
 lecture rooms, two hundred years later, a scene 
 of at least equal violence, when the parts and 
 the result were reversed. John the Scot came 
 to Malmesbury to lecture to the students there 
 in King Alfred's time, when learning was being 
 revived. How it was that he aggravated the 
 students we do not know; but he did aggravate 
 them, and to such a pitch that they did him 
 to death with the iron styles which they used 
 for making notes on their wax tablets, as we 
 use pen or pencil on paper. He was a very 
 small man, as we shall see shortly from one 
 of the stories which William tells us of him ; so 
 the students had him at a disadvantage. The 
 lectures appear to have been given in the 
 Church of St. Laurence, at least the murder 
 took place in that church. He was eventually 
 buried in the great church, on the left of the 
 
 ^ This was written during the primacy of Dr. Temple. 
 
JOHN THE SCOT. 265 
 
 altar, with an inscription which mentioned but 
 did not describe his martyrdom. 
 
 William assumes the identity of this John 
 with the famous John the Scot, Johannes 
 Erigena, John the Erin-born. This identity 
 has now been disputed; though until com- 
 paratively recent times the identity of the two 
 Johns has been accepted. One of the principal 
 grounds for traversing the belief in their iden- 
 tity is that of date. But it is possible that 
 Johannes Erigena lived long enough to have 
 been at Malmesbury in Alfred's time as a very 
 old man ; and he was certainly well known at 
 the court of Charles le Chauve, the father of 
 Judith, Alfred's young step-mother. He was 
 also a man of rather upsetting views on some 
 theological questions, and we can well imagine 
 a class of students, very strong in their theo- 
 logical views, and not quite under control, 
 becoming seriously irritated by the exposition 
 of views to which they were hostile, especially 
 if, as was probable in John's case, the logic 
 was too much for them. The conduct of 
 university students in more than one of the 
 less civilized parts of the Europe of to-day 
 may serve to show us that there was danger 
 in such an encounter of mutually hostile theo- 
 logical opinions ; and I am not quite sure that 
 
266 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 we need go so far as Russia for an example, 
 or confine our survey to university lecturers 
 and university students. 
 
 William tells us two stories of the real John 
 the Scot, which, apart from any question of 
 the identity of the two Johns, certainly belong 
 to John Erigena. He was sitting at table 
 opposite the Frank king, Charles le Chauve, 
 at dinner. The king noticed something in 
 John's conduct which oifended his Gallican 
 idea of good manners. As a gentle rebuke, 
 with a play upon John's origin, William says, 
 a remark which suggests a good deal of frank 
 pungency of speech in William's own expe- 
 rience, the king asked him, ^' What is there be- 
 tween a Scot and a sot ? " John replied, " Only 
 the table, Sire." The king had such great 
 regard for the Master, as he was wont to call 
 him, that he did not resent the saying. On 
 another occasion John was sitting at the royal 
 table between two clerics of gigantic size, him- 
 self being an exceedingly small man. The 
 king sent him a dish with three fishes on it, 
 two being large fishes and the third very small, 
 and bade him divide them among the three of 
 them. John, who always did what he could 
 in a proper way to promote hilarity among his 
 fellow guests, took the two large fishes him- 
 
JOHN THE SCOT. 267 
 
 self, and gave the one little fish to his two big 
 neighbours. The injustice of this partition 
 was pointed out by the king. "Nay/* John 
 replied, " it is quite fair. For here," pointing 
 to the fishes on his plate, ''are two big ones, and 
 here," pointing to himself, " is one little one ; 
 while there," pointing to his neighbour clerics, 
 " are two big ones, and there," pointing to the 
 halves of the little fish, " is one little one." I 
 feel clear, after a good deal of pleasant expe- 
 rience of the race, that undergraduates never 
 did to death a man with such a gift of ready 
 humour. There is, however, no doubt that 
 there was at Malmesbury in William's time 
 the epitaph of a '*holy sophist John," who 
 "passed to the kingdom of Christ by mar- 
 tyrdom " : 
 
 Closed in this tomb the holy Sophist John, 
 Endowed in life with dogma marvellous. 
 By martyrdom he reached the realm of Christ, 
 Where all the Saints through all the ages reign. 
 
 John the Erin-bom, it may be added, was 
 esteemed a martyi', and was placed in the 
 Roman Calendar ^ 
 
 Asser, who almost certainly knew the facts 
 from personal knowledge, tells us that Alfred 
 brought over John of Corbey, a very difierent 
 
 ^ E, H. Browne, The Thirty-nine Articles^ Art. xxviii. 
 
268 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 person, and settled him as Abbat at Athelney. 
 He describes a murderous attack upon this 
 Abbat John, made by his monks. It seems 
 improbable that two murderous attacks should 
 be made upon two Johns under Alfred's special 
 patronage, or that Asser, while describing one, 
 should keep silence about the other, especially 
 if the John concerned in the second case was a 
 man famous in the theological world of Europe 
 at the time. It may be added that if John 
 was still alive at the time, which is not impos- 
 sible, he must have been very old as men 
 then counted age for such a venture as a 
 migration to Wessex to undertake the work 
 of delivering lectures to young students. 
 
 A kindly reviewer, noticing some remarks 
 of mine on this subject in an article dealing 
 with Alfred as a religious man and educationist, 
 observed that I appeared to accept the identity 
 of the two Johns, and that this ought to have 
 been impossible after the modern edition of 
 William of Malmesbury. I need scarcely 
 say that I was familiar with that edition, 
 having used no other. As myself an old 
 reviewer, I ventured to suppose that my critic 
 had not turned over the page on which he was 
 commenting ; for while it ended with the 
 words " We may fairly say that William 
 
JOHN THE SCOT. 269 
 
 believed their John to be the Erigena," at the 
 top of the next page were the words " and we 
 may almost certainly say that in that belief 
 he was wrong." 
 
 Very little is known of the actual life of 
 Johannes Scotus Erigena. He was at the 
 court of Charles the Bald about the year 852 ; 
 Ethel wulf and his young son Alfred were there 
 in 854. The ordinary books of dates give his 
 death as *'at Malmesbury in 886." If, as is 
 supposed, he was in 852 a fully developed 
 theologian, whose views on predestination and 
 his treatise against the then newly invented 
 dogma of transubstantiation were moving to 
 its depths the theological world of Europe, he 
 must have been quite an old man in 886. A 
 dictionary of general biography, published 
 under good auspices in 1867, remarks that 
 before sending John to Malmesbury, Alfred 
 had " placed him at the head of his newly 
 founded college at Oxford," and kept him there 
 for three years ! 
 
 Aldhelm's connection with Irish students and 
 Irish interests was no doubt emphasized, as it 
 is evidenced, by his accurate knowledge of 
 the life and experiences of Aldfrith, king of 
 Northumbria, who more than any other Eng-- 
 lishman, not excepting even the Northumbrian 
 
270 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Ecgbert ^, formed a link between the students 
 of England and of Ireland. It was to this 
 king, under the name Acircius, that Aldhelm 
 addressed his very lengthy treatise on metres, 
 of which mention is made in Chapter XI. 
 
 Aldhelm' s relations with Aldfrith had been 
 very close. Aldhelm calls him ^'my most 
 reverend son," "most excellent and best-loved 
 son;" "mindful," he says, "of our former 
 brotherhood, the more closely tied because 
 bound by the sacred and septiform number 
 of the mysteries." He reminds the king that, 
 more than twenty years before, they had bound 
 themselves together by pledges which could 
 not be broken, and were united by ties which 
 could not be loosed, at the time of Aldfrith's 
 confirmation by the bishop, when he received 
 the septiform abundance of spiritual charis- 
 mata under the hand of the venerable pontiff. 
 Aldhelm had then adopted the name of father, 
 and Aldfrith a name which Aldhelm explains 
 in a very long paragraph of very long words, 
 the meaning of which appears to be that the 
 name indicated the bursting forth of fruitful 
 vine-buds on a bush, with prophetic shadowings 
 forth which it takes fifteen close octavo lines 
 -to describe. This is, no doubt, the word Acir- 
 
 1 See page 277. 
 
KING ALD FRITH. 27 1 
 
 cius, by which, and not by his name Aldfrith, 
 Aldhelm addresses the king. Unfortunately 
 Aldhelm does not say who the bishop was ^, 
 but he notes that it was " at the time of our 
 puberty." We are able to ascertain what he 
 meant by that, for in another place he remarks 
 on Origen's great learning, "when he was 
 entering upon the third lustrum of his age, 
 at the commencement of puberty." This would 
 put the confirmation about the years 6^0-6^^ ; 
 but if that is so, Aldhelm's "twenty years ago " 
 is wrong by at least ten years, for Aldfrith 
 was king when the letter was written, and he 
 became king in 685. We need not be surprised 
 to find this link between Aldhelm and Aldfrith, 
 for Aldfrith is said to have married Cuthburga, 
 sister of Ina, king of Wessex ; she left him to 
 become a nun at Barking, to which sisterhood 
 Aldhelm addressed his Praise of Virgins, and 
 eventually became foundress and abbess of 
 Wimborne. Thus Aldfrith had close relations 
 with the court of Wessex, and he was related 
 to Aldhelm by marriage. 
 
 It brings Ireland and England curiously 
 
 ^ If the confirmation was in Wessex, Agilbert is the only 
 bishop who suits the date 650-655 ; if in the north, Aidan 
 or Finan. There was no bishop in Mercia so early as that. 
 Honorius was Archbishop. 
 
272 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 near^ to learn that Aldfrith was first cousin, 
 three times removed, of Columba. Oswy 
 married, or did not marry, an Irish princess, 
 Fina, daughter of Cennfaeladh, son of Ailill, 
 Columba's first cousin ; or, as another account 
 has it, grand-daughter of king Baedan, Ailill's 
 brother. In either case, Fina was great- 
 grand-daughter of king Muircertach , Columba's 
 uncle. 
 
 Bede gives as the reason for Aldfrith's 
 going to Ireland, that he suffered voluntary 
 exile by reason of his love for learning, that 
 he might devote himself to the study of 
 literature ^. The Irish writers give two reasons, 
 the first, that his mother was an Irishwoman, 
 an excellent reason in itself ; the second, that 
 a slug or snail had got into his ear and caused 
 a dangerous swelling, and he went not only to 
 be perfected in learning, but also that by the 
 prayers of the saints of Ireland he might be 
 freed from the annoyance and from the disease 
 it had brought on. The Irish Annals are 
 persistent in claiming Aldfrith as an Irishman 
 on his mother's side. Tighernach records in 
 704 the death of " Alfrith mac Ossu, Fland 
 
 ^ lAfe of St.Gutlibert, ch. xxiv. William of Malmesbury 
 says of Aldfrith that in Ireland he was safe from the 
 persecution of his brother; Deeds of the Kings, i. 3. 
 
KING ALD FRITH. 273 
 
 Fina the Irish call him ; " the Annals of 
 Innisfallen, " Flann Fine, son of Ossa, king of 
 the Saxons." A fragment of Irish Annals, 
 printed by Mr. Skene in his Chronicles of the 
 Fids and Scots (p. 402), gives under the year 
 704 " death of Flann Fiona, son of Ossa, king 
 of Saxons, the famous wise man, pupil of 
 Adamnan," and gives under the same year the 
 death of Adamnan his teacher. 
 
 An old Irish poem ascribed to Aldfrith states 
 that he went from school to school throughout 
 Ireland, and gives very flattering accounts of 
 what he saw. Armagh is mentioned among 
 other places, and at that great school no doubt 
 he studied. At Lismore, too, we may be sure 
 that he spent some time, though the definite 
 assertions that he did so which we find in books 
 are not warranted by the record. The poem 
 is highly elusive, as is the wont of early Irish 
 poems and writings, and would seem purposely 
 to avoid definiteness and everything which 
 might be called historical. Among the more 
 definite statements we read that in Armagh 
 the writer found splendid meekness, prudence, 
 and wisdom blended. In Munster he found 
 kings and queens and poets ; in Connaught, 
 riches, hospitality, vigour, and fame ; in Ulster, 
 from glen to glen, hardy warriors, resolute men, 
 s 
 
274 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 The poem is written in twenty-four ranns, the 
 twenty-third rann being literally as follows : 
 
 It is natural in fair Innis-fail 
 
 In Erin, without contention, 
 
 Many women, no silly boast, 
 
 Many laics, many clerics, 
 riann Fina, son of Osa, j , 
 
 Arch-doctor in Erin's learning, 
 
 On the banks of the river Een composed. 
 
 Received his due, as was natural. 
 
 Bishop John Healy, in his very interesting 
 Insula sanctorum et dodorum, prints two 
 stanzas from a translation by Clarence Mangan, 
 of which the Bishop remarks that it admirably 
 preserves the spirit of the original : 
 
 I found in Innisfail the fair, 
 In Ireland, while in exile there. 
 Women of worth, both grave and gay men, 
 Many clerics and many laymen. 
 
 I travelled its fruitful provinces round, 
 And in every one of the five I found, 
 Alike in Church and in palace hall, 
 Abundant apparel and food for all. 
 
 This is not an occasion for saying anything 
 about Aldfrith beyond his connection with 
 Ireland as a student ; otherwise, there is much 
 to be said of him that is very creditable and 
 very interesting. 
 
 During the middle age of Aldhelm, England 
 and Ireland were frequently devastated by 
 
THE PLAGUE. 275 
 
 a terrible plague. The Iiish and Welsh Annals 
 have repeated notices of it, and Bede gives a 
 striking account of its desolating effects. Bede 
 had not any distinctive name for it, but in the 
 Irish Annals it is called the yellow plague 
 {aalar huidhe), and so in the Cambrian Annals 
 {vad valen). Giraldus, with his Cambrian 
 knowledge, speaks of it as jiava j^estis, '^ the 
 yellow plague, which physicians call the icter- 
 ician disease." The diagnosis in the life of 
 an early Irish saint is quaint, " it first turns 
 men yellow, and then kills them." The most 
 severe of the visitations was in 664. Bede says 
 of it that it went northwards from south 
 Britain, seized upon the province of the North- 
 umbrians, and there spread its cruel ravages 
 far and wide, destroying a great multitude of 
 men. He adds that it was equally fatal in 
 Ireland. Adamnan speaks of two visitations 
 which devastated the greater part of the world 
 then known, Italy, Cisalpine Gaul, Spain, and 
 Britain with only two exceptions the Pictish 
 half of the north of Scotland and the Scottish 
 (Irish) half, in both of which the efiicacy of 
 St. Columba's influence with heaven protected 
 the land. He regards the two worst attacks as 
 those of 685 and 687, when Northumbria was 
 specially afflicted ; and adds that not lona and 
 s 2, 
 
276 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 its dependent islands only were protected from 
 those attacks, but he himself and his com- 
 panions from lona, who were on each occasion 
 visiting their friend King Aldfrith. They went 
 about freely in the plague-stricken regions, 
 and not one of them had even a passing 
 ailment. The visitation of 68 7 and the previous 
 year has a special interest for us of the English 
 race, for we learn from Bede's history of the 
 Abbats of Wearmouth ^ that Easterwine and 
 nearly all the monks died of that plague, and 
 it is probable that Bede himself was the one 
 boy who was among the survivors. It was the 
 visitation of 664 which opened up such great 
 developments in the Church of England by 
 carrying off in Kent on one day, July 14, both 
 Archbishop Deusdedit and King Earconbert. 
 The story goes that the Irish students took the 
 plague to Ireland with them when they went 
 home for the long vacation. 
 
 The most continuous link between English 
 and Irish scholars in Aldhelm's time is intro- 
 duced to us by this pestilence of 664, in the 
 person of Ecgbert, a Northumbrian of noble 
 family. Bede tells us that when the plague 
 spread to Ireland and aflflicted that country 
 with its ravages, there were there many 
 
 1 Chapter 8. 
 
ECGBERT. 277 
 
 English of the noble and the middle classes. 
 They were accustomed to leave their native 
 island, in the days of Finan and Colman, and 
 reside in Ireland for the sake of study and to 
 live a life of greater self-control. Some of 
 them settled down in monasteries ; others 
 went about from one master's cell to another 
 for special study. The Scots, that is the 
 Irish, received them all in the most liberal 
 manner, giving them their daily rations of 
 food without charge, and providing for them 
 gratuitously both books and instruction. 
 
 Ecgbert had recently gone over to Ireland 
 as a student, with Ethelhun, the brother of 
 another Anglo-Irish student, Ethelwin, who 
 was afterwards (a. d. 680) bishop of the 
 province of Lindsey. They were in the mon- 
 astery of Rathmelsigij which has been said 
 to be Mellifont, near Drogheda, but unfortun- 
 ately Mellifont was founded in the twelfth 
 century. The Irish writers say that the 
 monastery at which Ecgbert studied was in 
 Connaught, and a reference has been found 
 to a monastery in that kingdom called Rath- 
 maoilsidhe, probably at the place called Rath- 
 maoil, on the banks of the Moy. Bishop 
 Healy believes that the crowds of Northum- 
 brian students sailed to the estuary of the 
 
278 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Moy and thence went south by land. It does 
 not seem clear why they should go round the 
 north of Ireland and land on its western part. 
 It is true that Colman took that route when 
 he left Northumbria after the conference at 
 Whitby and founded '' Mayo of the English," 
 after failing to establish a monastery on the 
 island called Inis Bofin, off the western coast ; 
 but he started from lona on his journey. 
 
 The whole of the inmates of the monastery 
 had died of the plague, except Ecgbert and 
 Ethelhun, and those two were stricken with 
 the fatal disease. The story was told to Bede 
 by a priest, venerable and of great veracity, 
 who heard it from the lips of Ecgbert himself. 
 Ecgbert vowed that if he recovered he would 
 never go back to Britain, he would recite the 
 whole Psalter every day besides all the wonted 
 services and psalms, and he would every week 
 fast one whole day and night. Ethelhun died 
 the next day. Ecgbert recovered, and lived, 
 it is said by Bede, to be ninety, dying in 729. 
 He added to his vow that during each Lent 
 he would have only one meal a day, and that 
 of bread and skim -milk limited in quantity. 
 Large numbers of English youths put them- 
 selves under his instruction. It was from 
 him that Willibrord and others caught the 
 
IRISH SCHOOLS. 279 
 
 missionary ardour which consumed the master; 
 visions and storms taught Ecgbert that he 
 was not himself to go to the mission field. 
 During Bede's mature age, Ecgbert lived for 
 twelve years in lona, dying there. Ceadda 
 (St. Chad) was one of Ecgbert's early com- 
 panions in Ireland. 
 
 Armagh was so famous as a school for 
 English students, that one of the three divi- 
 sions of the city was called Trian Saxon. The 
 other great school of the north was Bangor. 
 Clonmacnois was the school at which the 
 famous Northumbrian Alcuin studied. We 
 have a letter of his to his teacher there, Colgu 
 or Colgan, written so late in his life that he 
 sent with it a present of money from Charle- 
 magne ; he adds as much on his own account, 
 and sends a quantity of oil, which it was very 
 difficult to obtain in Ireland, to be distributed 
 among the Bishops for sacramental purposes ; 
 a curious incidental evidence of the large 
 number of persons at that time in episcopal 
 orders in Ireland. The other great school of 
 Connaught was Clonfert. 
 
 Next in importance to Clonmacnois, Lismore 
 in Munster was a great place of study for 
 Englishmen. Mention has already been made * 
 
 1 Page 47. 
 
28o ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 of this famous school. Clonard was the 
 great school of Meath, and Glendalough of 
 Leinster. Other schools equally or almost 
 equally famous can be named. 
 
 It was not always for study that youths 
 were sent to Ireland. Thus Dagobert, the 
 son of Sigebert, king of the Austrasian 
 Franks, was sent there by the Mayor of the 
 Palace, Grimoald, on his father's death, in 
 order that the Mayor might exercise sovereign 
 power. He was tonsured, and brought up as 
 a monk, it is said at Slane, where the kings 
 dwelt. In Aldhelm's time, about 674, the 
 Frankish prince was restored to his kingdom 
 on the death of Child eric II. 
 
 We have seen that a converse stream of 
 Irish students crossed the seas to study under 
 Theodore and Hadrian at Canterbury, and 
 before that time there had been a great inflow 
 of the Scotic people into Northumbria. 
 Agilbert passed from his studies in Ireland 
 to act as bishop in Wessex, and curiously 
 enough was the means of overthrowing the 
 Scotic practices in Northumbria by appoint- 
 ing Wilfrith as his spokesman at Whitby. This 
 points to his having been a student in the 
 south of Ireland. Even so late as Du,nstan's 
 time, Glastonbury was served by Irish clergy, 
 
IRISH SCHOOLS. 28 1 
 
 the monk Osbern says, and it was from them 
 that he learned all he knew, including the art 
 of working in metal. Osbern says that with 
 other races, love of travel has grown into 
 a custom ; with the Irish, the custom of pere- 
 grination has grown into nature. 
 
 We have an interesting evidence of the 
 restlessness of the Irish of those early times, 
 in the cause which frustrated the attempt of 
 Colman to establish his monastery on Inis 
 Bofin, referred to above ^. Bede tells us that 
 Colman settled on the Isle of the White 
 Heifer and placed there the monk which he 
 had brought of both nations, English and 
 Irish. But the monks did not agree among 
 themselves. In the summer season, when the 
 fruits of the earth had to be gathered, the 
 Irish monks left their monastery and wan- 
 dered about to places which they knew. 
 When winter came on they returned to the 
 monastery and expected to be fed on the 
 supplies which the English monks had stored. 
 The only remedy Colman could discover was 
 to carry off his English monks to a place which 
 he bought on the mainland, now Mayo, from 
 the chief to whom it belonged. There he built 
 for them a monastery, with the help of the 
 
 * Page 278. 
 
282 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 chief and all the neighbours. The Irish 
 monks he left to their own devices on the 
 island of the White Heifer. Those of us who 
 are septuagenarians can well remember the 
 crowds of Irish labourers who used in the days 
 of our boyhood to come over with sickles and 
 reap the cornfields of the English farmers. 
 
 In Columba's time a converse visit to 
 Britain was not regarded as a very pleasur- 
 able diversion. The Saint learned in a vision 
 that with one Lugaid a man was coming to 
 the louan island (miscalled for now many 
 centuries lona) who had committed the vilest 
 of sins. Some months after, the Saint spoke 
 to Diormit, " Rise quickly, Lugaid is coming ; 
 go bid him put that wretch out on the Malean 
 island (Mull), that he tread not the soil of 
 this island." Diormit returned, and reported 
 the agonized words of the unhappy man. 
 Columba went down to the port and inflicted 
 on him the severest penalty, " Go, and for 
 twelve years do penance with weeping and 
 tears among the Britons." The Saint told his 
 companions privately that the man was a son 
 of perdition, and would not stay his twelve 
 years ; he would soon return to Scotia 
 (Ireland) and would perish. And so it came 
 to pass. 
 
THE IRISH AND BRITISH. , 283 
 
 The Irish had indeed reason to mislike the 
 idea of residing among the Britons if they 
 were acquainted with the story of St. Indract. 
 He with seven companions came to Glaston- 
 bury on their return from Rome to Ireland in 
 the time of the Britons. Their long walking- 
 sticks, with a crook at the top, the origin of 
 the pastoral staff, were shod with brass to pro- 
 tect them from wearing away with constant 
 use. The people near Glastonbury thought 
 the sticks were shod with gold, and they 
 killed the unfortunate owners to secure this 
 booty. 
 
 It is interesting and not uninstructive to 
 examine the Irish Annals of the Four Masters 
 for references to Britain and its inhabitants. 
 They all fall in the Anglo-Saxon times ^ ; and 
 it is worthy of note, in connection with our 
 study of Anglo-Iiish relations in Aldhelm's 
 time, that of all the direct references which we 
 find, only fifteen in number, more than half 
 fall in the years 6"]^ to 714. 
 
 With the exception given in the note below, 
 if it can be called an exception, the earliest 
 
 ^ The name of Britain is mentioned under the year 432, 
 when Saint Patrick's pedigree is traced thi-ough fifteen 
 generations to its head in " Britain, otter of the sea, from 
 whom the vigorous Britons come." 
 
284 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 event mentioned by the Four Masters is found 
 under the year 620. It is not of a peaceful 
 character "Mongan, son of Fiachna Lurgan 
 (a king of Uladh), was killed with a stone by 
 Arthur son of Bicor one of the Britons." 
 This killing of Mongan with a stone evidently 
 made an impression, for we have it also in the 
 Annals of Clonmacnois, where we find a 
 delightful sketch of the Irishman of all ages, 
 and at the same time a hint of the Briton's 
 provocation "Mongan, a very well-spoken 
 man, and much given to the wooing of women, 
 was killed by (Arthur son of) Bicor a Welsh- 
 man, with a stone." 
 
 In 610, St. Feargna Brit, Feargna cogno- 
 mento Britannicus, Abat of la ^ and a Bishop, 
 died. 
 
 In 675 Beccan Ruiminni died in Britain on 
 the T7th of March. The Annals of Clonmac- 
 nois call him Beagan Rumyn, and make him 
 die in the island of Wales, the Clonmacnois 
 name for Britain. 
 
 In 680 there was a battle at Rathmore, in 
 Antrim, with the Britons. In 695 there was 
 the devastation of Magh Muirtheimhne by the 
 Britons and Ulidians. In 700 Irgalach Ua 
 
 ^ That is, of course, the island which we call lona, by 
 a misreading of its Latin name Iov.a Insula. 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 285 
 
 Conaing was killed by the Britons. In 707 
 Britons who had joined the army of Ceallach 
 were slain at the battle of Selgge in Wicklow. 
 In 7 1 2 Fogartach Ua Cearnaigh was banished 
 into Britain by Fearghal king of Ireland ; and 
 in 714 he returned from his exile. 
 
 There is no mistaking the nature of the 
 political relations of the two islands and 
 peoples, whatever we may think of the inter- 
 communion of the students. 
 
 The early and close connection between the 
 Northumbrian English and the Irish of lona, 
 has made an abiding mark upon the Coronation 
 services of the English from the earliest times 
 to the present. Inasmuch as the debt which 
 early Christian England owed to L-eland is 
 very imperfectly appreciated, it seems worth 
 while to call attention to the Irish origin of 
 parts of the English Coronation services, even 
 at some length. 
 
 On the occasion of a great famine in Ireland, 
 a scourge to which that island appears to be 
 peculiarly liable, about the year 500 A.D., the 
 inhabitants of one part of the land, who were 
 called Dal Riada, divided themselves into two 
 bodies. The one remained in Ireland, the other 
 took possession of Argyll and the western parts 
 of Scotland. The Dalriada of Scotland con- 
 
286 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 tinued to be, in some degree, subordinate to 
 the parent stock till the year ^y^^, when 
 Aedhan, at that time lord or king of the 
 Scottish Dalriads, raised the question of the 
 relations of himself and his kinsman Aedh, 
 the Irish king. It was referred for settlement 
 to St. Columba of lona, who was of the royal 
 blood on both sides, and was related to both 
 kings. The decision came to this, that 
 Aedhan was released from tribute to Aedh, 
 and became an independent sovereign. He 
 and those of his blood reigned over the West 
 of Scotland down to the time of their descen- 
 dant Kenneth MacAlpine, in whose person 
 the kings of the western Scots became kings 
 also of the Picts in the eastern parts of Scot- 
 land. Kenneth's descendants reigned as kings 
 of all Scotland. They 'are still reigning in that 
 capacity in the person of King Edward VII. 
 
 This preface will serve to show the far- 
 reaching influence of the episode we are about 
 to consider. We find it set forth by Adamnan, 
 a successor of St. Columba, in the sixth chapter 
 of the third book of his life of the saint, written 
 about the year 695. He quotes an account 
 written by a previous abbat fifty years before, 
 and we cannot doubt that his information came 
 in an unbroken line from Columba himself. 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 287 
 
 When a saint of those early times and of 
 that imaginative race proposed to do some- 
 thing very unusual, he easily worked himself 
 up to the belief that he had supernatural com- 
 pulsion in taking the proposed course, and his 
 statements to that effect bore down opposition. 
 We must read this idea into the story. 
 
 Columba was staying in the island of Hinba 
 in the year 574, twenty- three years before 
 Augustine landed in the isle of Thanet. The 
 lordship of the Scottish Dalriads, soon to 
 become a kingship in the full sense, was 
 vacant. In his retirement in Hinba, Columba 
 no doubt reviewed the political situation, and 
 resolved upon a course of action. The 
 relations between his Scottish and his Irish 
 relatives had been strained. There were the 
 elements of permanent discord. Some step 
 must at this juncture be taken other than the 
 obvious step. Whether the new departure had 
 reference to the person who should succeed, or 
 to the sanctions by which he should be placed 
 at the head of the people, we cannot say. One 
 night the saint saw in a mental ecstasy an 
 angel of the Lord. The angel held in his hand 
 a crystal codex, a book of the ordination of 
 kings. This book the saint received from the 
 hand of the angel, and in obedience to the 
 
288 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 angel's command he began to read it. When 
 he found that the book instructed him to 
 ordain Aedhan to be king, he refused, for he 
 loved Aedhan's brother logenan better than 
 Aedhan. It would appear that he regarded 
 himself as the proper person to select from 
 the nearest candidates the one whom he 
 should recommend to the people. The angel 
 replied : " Know of a surety that I am sent to 
 thee by God with this crystal book, that 
 according to the words which you have read 
 in it you ordain Aedhan to the kingdom." 
 For three consecutive nights the angel ap- 
 peared, bearing the same book, delivering the 
 same command. The saint at length deter- 
 mined to obey, having found his nocturnal 
 visitor unpleasantly vindictive. He crossed 
 the water to lona, found that by a noteworthy 
 coincidence Aedhan had arrived there before 
 him, and ordained him to be king. In the 
 following year he was declared to be an 
 independent sovereign, free from tribute to 
 his Irish cousins. How far this declaration 
 turned upon the religious ceremony of ordin- 
 ation to a kingship we do not know. 
 
 Adamnan appears to have understood that 
 the crystal book contained a set form for the 
 ordination of kings, and that only in the 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 289 
 
 course of reading the form did Columba come 
 upon the name of Aedhan. On the whole, it 
 would seem that such a form was a new thing, 
 and that Columba was the originator of a set 
 form for the ordination of kings. If the story 
 only means that he used for a tributary king 
 the form in use for an independent sovereign, 
 we do not know how much further back the 
 origin of our English service is to be found. 
 
 In the course of the form of ordination, 
 Adamnan tells us, Columba gave an address. 
 He prophesied, spoke in prophetic spirit to 
 the king of the future, of his sons, grandsons, 
 and great-grandsons ; then, laying his hand 
 on his head, he ordained him and blessed him. 
 Cumine the White, Adamnan proceeds, in the 
 book which he wrote some forty or fifty years 
 before of the virtue of Columba, says that 
 this was the manner in which the saint began 
 to prophesy of Aedhan and his posterity and 
 his kingdom: "Believe without doubt, O 
 Aedhan, that none of thine adversaries shall 
 be able to resist thee, so long as thou hast not 
 dealt unfairly with me or my successors. 
 Whereupon do thou commend it to thy sons 
 that they commend it to their sons and grand- 
 sons and posterity, that they lose not from 
 their hands by their evil counsels the sceptre 
 
290 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 of this kingdom." It is difficult to imagine 
 that Aedhan was not at the moment of this 
 utterance seated before Columba with an 
 actual sceptre in his hand. Tradition says 
 that he sat upon the Stone of Fate, carried 
 afterwards to Dunstaffnage, and thence to 
 Scone, and so to Westminster. The stone at 
 Westminster is understood by geologists to be 
 a piece of Scone sandstone. 
 
 Thus we have in the year 574 (1) a set form 
 for ordaining kings, (2) a sermon, apparently 
 added by Columba, (3) the imposition of hands, 
 (4) an address of exhortation, that the sceptre 
 may not pass out of the hands of the king and 
 his descendants, and presumably, (5) the king 
 seated, almost certainly on some special stone, 
 holding in his hand a sceptre, (6) the solemn 
 blessing of the king when ordained. 
 
 We may dismiss (3) with the remark that 
 the imposition of hands certainly passed from 
 Columba's ceremonial into that of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Church. The evidence for this is found 
 in our late Anglo-Saxon Coronation Order, 
 probably not a century before the Norman 
 Conquest. In that Order there is a quaint sur- 
 vival of the imposition of hands in the form 
 for crowning the queen, the king's consoi-t. 
 She is described in prayer as "this thy 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 29I 
 
 servant, who, by the imposition of our hands, 
 is this day constituted queen." We shall see 
 later that this is not the only case in which 
 words appropriate only to a king are copied 
 into the service for the queen. Of the imposi- 
 tion of hands as a ceremony in use in the case 
 of the king, we have no direct evidence in 
 Anglo-Saxon or in later times. 
 
 The point of chief interest to us, for our 
 present purpose, of the six above named, is 
 number 4, the exhortation that the sceptre 
 may not depart from the hands of the king 
 and his descendants. Though we have not 
 that form now, and though it does not appear 
 in either of our Anglo-Saxon forms, there is 
 abundant evidence, of a singularly interesting 
 character, that it did pass from Columba's 
 ceremonial into that of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 We have in France several manuscript forms 
 for the coronation of the French kings, 
 which are, in fact, Anglo-Saxon forms for 
 the consecration of Anglo-Saxon sovereigns, 
 evidently bon'owed from Anglo-Saxon Eng- 
 land for use in France. Of this borrowing 
 of English forms for use in France we have 
 positive evidence in Alcuin's time. These 
 various French forms describe the land over 
 which the king is to reign as that of England. 
 T 2, 
 
292 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Thus we have in reality several Anglo-Saxon 
 Coronation Orders, and not two only. In all 
 the various Anglo-Saxon Orders which we find 
 in France, the prayer that the sceptre may 
 not depart is found. That is abundant evi- 
 dence that our Anglo-Saxon ancestors took 
 part of their form from Columba. We shall 
 see later that they took another part also from 
 him, and that we have it still. 
 
 It is very quaint to read in these Coronation 
 Orders of the French kings the prayers in 
 which we find our evidence that they are 
 Anglo-Saxon forms. Thus in a MS. of an abbat 
 of Corbey we read in the "Coronation of 
 French Kings " ; " This thy servant whom with 
 suppliant devotion we elect equally to the 
 kingdom of the whole of Albion, that is to 
 say, of the Franks. . . . That he may nourish 
 and teach the Church of the whole of Albion, 
 with the peoples committed to his charge. . . . 
 That the sceptre desert not the royal throne, 
 that is to say, of the Franks. . . . That 
 supported by the due subjection of both of 
 these peoples." No doubt the Anglo-Saxon 
 form contained the names of two peoples, 
 such as the Angles and Saxons, or Saxons and 
 Mercians. This is the explanation of "we 
 elect equally" and "both of these peoples." 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 293 
 
 In the final blessing, which is in exactly the 
 words of the later of our own two Anglo- 
 Saxon Coronation Orders, we have a clear 
 piece of additional evidence of the English 
 origin of the form, the only saint mentioned, 
 besides the Virgin and St. Peter, being " Holy 
 Gregory, Apostolic of the Angles." In the 
 preparation of the Sens Order, to be mentioned 
 later, this flaw had been discovered, and 
 St. Denys and St. Remy are put in the place 
 of St. Gregory. The mention of the Virgin 
 and St. Peter is in itself an evidence of a rather 
 late date. St. Peter and St. Paul were in our 
 earlier times regarded as the joint chiefs of 
 the Apostles and the joint protectors of 
 England. 
 
 In a manuscript in the Royal Library, now 
 the National Library, at Paris we have 
 a second Order for the Coronation of a King 
 of the Franks, which is indubitably an Anglo- 
 Saxon Order. The following phrases occur : 
 *' This thy servant whom with suppliant de- 
 votion we elect king equally. . . . That the 
 sceptre desert not the royal throne, that is to 
 say, of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northum- 
 brians (Nordanchimbrorum). . . . That sup- 
 ported by the due subjection of both of these 
 peoples." Here again the " elect king equally " 
 
294 ^T. ALDHELM. 
 
 and " both of these peoples " seem to show that 
 two peoples were originally named, and before 
 the Order reached France the Northumbrians 
 had been added. If this argument is sound, 
 we may date this Anglo-Saxon form after 
 Athelstan's time, and assign it to the corona- 
 tion of King Edmund. This Coronation Order 
 is remarkable as having in the form for the 
 coronation of a queen consort the prayer that 
 a blessing may descend " upon this thy ser- 
 vant whom with suppliant devotion we elect 
 queen," the words being blindly copied from 
 the coronation of the king, who presumably 
 was the person responsible for the choice of 
 the queen. 
 
 In a third Order for the Coronation of 
 French Kings, from the Pontifical of the 
 illustrious Church of Sens, we have a careful 
 order of precedence of the bishops of the 
 Archbishopric of Eeims, the peer-bishops first 
 according to their rank, Laon, Beauvais, 
 Langres, Chalons, Noyon, and then follows 
 the Anglo-Saxon form of prayer : " That the 
 sceptre desert not the royal throne, that is to 
 say, of the Saxons, Mercians, and Northum- 
 brians (Nordan Cymbrorum)," and "that the 
 king, supported by the due subjection of both 
 of these peoples." The queen also is prayed 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 295 
 
 for as one " who by the imposition of our hand 
 is this day constituted queen." Indeed, the 
 whole is practically our later Anglo-Saxon 
 form, with two exceptions. Our later form 
 has gone back to the mention of two peoples 
 only, the Angles and Saxons, probably because 
 the Mercians and the Northumbrians and the 
 East Angles were classed together as Angles 
 and the rest of the folk as Saxons. The other 
 exception is that while the royal throne of the 
 Angles and Saxons is mentioned, the prayer 
 that the sceptre may not desert the throne is 
 omitted, probably as having ceased to have 
 any special meaning. It was, in the fii'st 
 instance, in Columba's time, a part of the 
 threat of disaster to follow disobedience with- 
 out which few, if any, of the Irish saints felt 
 that they had done their duty. 
 
 The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, 
 now at Rouen, has the form " Angles and 
 Saxons." So late as 1364, Charles V of France 
 was crowned with a form which named the 
 throne as that of the Saxons, Mercians, and 
 Northchimbrians, while the peers of Guienne 
 swore to protect him. against the king of 
 England, his people, and allies. 
 
 Having thus shown the connection between 
 Columba's form for the ordination of Kins: 
 
296 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Aedhan and the Anglo-Saxon forms, in a 
 detail which has dropped out, we can turn to 
 a connection which still continues, and con- 
 tinues, indeed, in double force. 
 
 Adamnan tells us in the first chapter of his 
 Life of St, ColuTTiha, that his predecessor 
 Failbe told him an interesting fact, which he 
 had heard from the mouth of King Oswald 
 himself, when the king was relating the 
 circumstances to Seghine the abbat of his 
 time. The day before his great fight with the 
 Britons, who had overrun Northumbria after 
 the defeat and death of Edwin, Oswald was 
 lying in his tent, wearied with the work of 
 marking out his camp. He slept. Columba 
 appeared to him in a vision. He announced 
 himself to Oswald by name, and addressed 
 him as the Lord addi-essed Joshua the son of 
 Nun before he crossed Jordan, " Be strong and 
 play the man ; I am with thee, as I was with 
 Moses." Josh. i. 6, 9. He added: "On this 
 following night go forth from camp to fight^ 
 for this time the Lord hath granted to me that 
 thy foes be put to flight, and thine enemy 
 Cation be delivered into thy hands, and that 
 thou shalt return from the war a victor, and 
 reign happily." The king went out and told 
 his council the vision. Strengthened thereby, 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 297 
 
 the whole of the people vowed that on their 
 return they would believe and be baptised, 
 " for up to that time the whole of that province 
 of Saxony was in the darkness of Gentile 
 ignorance, with the exception of Oswald him- 
 self and twelve companions, who had been 
 baptised with him during his exile among the 
 Scots." At night the king sallied forth, and 
 the Lord gave to him a complete and easy 
 victory. Cation was slain, and Oswald " was 
 afterwards ordained by God over-king of the 
 whole of Britain. This account our Abbat 
 Failbe, my immediate predecessor, gave to me, 
 Adamnan ; he positively asserted that he 
 himself heard Oswald tell the vision to Abbat 
 Seghine." It may be remarked, in connection 
 with the much misunderstood word Protestant 
 in our Coronation Service, that Abbat Failbe 
 was the first Protestant in these islands, for 
 Adamnan says that he '^protested," that is, 
 made a positive assertion, that he heard Oswald 
 relate the above vision. Archbishop Ecgbert, 
 the compiler of our earliest Anglo-Saxon form 
 in 737, uses ''protest" for the positive testi- 
 mony on oath of a bishop. A Protestant is 
 one who asserts his own belief in a definite 
 and positive form. 
 
 The words quoted by Columba in this vision 
 
298 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 in the year 634, thii-ty-seven years after his 
 death, come from the Vulgate version of the 
 first chapter of Joshua, "be strong and robust," 
 " be strong and play the man." This anthem 
 is not found in our own Anglo-Saxon forms ; 
 but here again the forms for the French kings 
 come to our aid. In the Pontifical of Sens, 
 where we have the prayer .for the Saxons, 
 Mercians, and Northumbrians, when the sword 
 is given, we find the entry, '' Here let the 
 antiphon be sung, *Be strong and play the 
 man.' " Two of the other French Anglo-Saxon 
 Orders do not give any antiphons. All through 
 the Norman and later mediaeval times this 
 anthem, known as the Confortare, was sung 
 at the coronation of English kings. We have 
 put St. Columba's words into the most pro- 
 minent place of all, as the climax of the actual 
 crowning. At the coronation of Charles I we 
 find the rubic, " The Archbishop reads the 
 Confortare^ but formerly the Quire sung it/' 
 and the words then read by the Archbishop 
 were a literal translation of the Anglo-Saxon 
 form in the Sens Pontifical. For the coronation 
 of William and Mary the words " Be strong 
 and play the man " were felt to be not quite 
 suitable, and "Kings shall be thy nursing 
 fathers, and queens thy nursing mothers," was 
 
THE ENGLISH CORONATION SERVICE. 299 
 
 rather cleverly introduced in their stead. At 
 the coronation of King Edward VII, not only 
 did the Archbishop read the old words "Be 
 strong and of a good courage " as the climax 
 of the actual crowning, but the choir replied 
 with the anthem "Be strong and play the man." 
 Thus we have these two clear evidences 
 of the connection of Our English Coronation 
 Orders with the primary ordination of a king- 
 by Columba and with the words of Columba 
 in the vision to Oswald. When we come to 
 think of it, it would be remarkable if there 
 were not such evidence, for Oswald's " ordina- 
 tion " as king can only have been in accordance 
 with Columba's form, inasmuch as his sole 
 bishop came from lona, and must there have 
 been intimate with colleagues who were living 
 at the time of Aedhan's ordination as king. 
 One of the things he would certainly take 
 with him to England was a form by which to 
 "ordain" Oswald. The great probability is 
 that Oswald heard the Gonfortare in his vision 
 because he had heard in lona itself what 
 Columba's form was, and because that form 
 included the Gonfortare. Indeed, he may 
 himself have been present in lona when a king 
 was ordained there by the Columban rite ; as 
 may also Aidan, who came from lona to be 
 
300 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 his bishop, and made a much larger mark 
 upon the conversion of England than Augus- 
 tine and his companions did. The trend of 
 the evidence appears to be that we derive 
 our Coronation Service through the North- 
 umbrians of Oswald's time from the " form 
 for the ordination of kings" contained in 
 Columba's crystal codex of the year 574, and 
 that King Edward VII was crowned by a 
 form used for his grandfather with more than 
 forty " greats " before it. 
 
 It has seemed important to emphasise our 
 direct connection with Ireland, in confirma- 
 tion of the evidence which Aldhelm's life and 
 works afford. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Aldhelm's Letter to Acircius. His Enigmas. His Treatise 
 in Praise of Virginity. Letter to Osgith. 
 
 The Letter to Acircius is one of the largest 
 of Aldhelm's works. Its full title is A Book 
 on the Nwmber Seven, on Metres, on Enigmas, 
 and on the Rules of Poetic Feet. Acircius 
 was, as we have seen^, King Aldfrith of North- 
 umbria. This treatise and the Praise of Vir- 
 ginity, or of Virgins, show really wide reading 
 of Latin authors, perhaps only in special 
 extracts ; there can be no sort of doubt as to 
 the great extent of Aldhelm's learning. 
 
 A careful study of the sources of Aldhelm's 
 knowledge has been made by a Viennese philo- 
 loger, Manitius. His pamphlet of a hundred 
 pages large 8vo, zu Aldhelm und Baeda, was 
 published in Vienna in 1886. 
 
 Aldhelm's treatise on metres and grammar 
 was naturally indebted very largely to Priscian. 
 It is from Aldhelm that we learn the tradition 
 that the emperor Theodosius the younger, who 
 died A. D. 450, copied out Priscian's gram- 
 
 * Page 270. 
 
302 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 matical work with lii>s own hand ; this tradition 
 assigns an earlier date to the grammarian than 
 does the other tradition, that he was a con- 
 temporary of Cassiodorus, who began his very 
 long life in 468. Aldhelm also used the work 
 of Phocas, or Foca, an earlier grammarian 
 quoted by Priscian and Cassiodorus ; and the 
 much earlier grammatical work of Suetonius, 
 who was a young man in the reign of the emperor 
 Domitian. He appears to have been largely 
 indebted to the grammarian Audax : and he 
 quotes from Donatus, the preceptor of Jerome ; 
 Sergius, who commented on Donatus ; Pom- 
 peius, whom Cassiodorus quotes ; and others. 
 Aldhelm's quotations from poets are ex- 
 ceedingly numerous ; but that is a character- 
 istic of Priscian's works also, and we cannot 
 doubt that very many of Aldhelm*s quotations 
 were copied from Priscian. Manitius fills 
 twelve octavo pages with Aldhelm 's quota- 
 tions from Virgil. Twenty-six quotations come 
 from Ovid, and one which Aldhelm says is 
 from Ovid but is in fact from a later poem 
 wrongly assigned to him. Inasmuch as the 
 verse quoted speaks of '' giving soft kisses to 
 one sweetly quiescent," Aldhelm did not make 
 any very obvious mistake in naming Ovid 
 as the author. Only four quotations from 
 
ALDHELM S QUOTATIONS. 3O3 
 
 Horace have been found, and one of these 
 scarcely counts. Aldhelm quotes, in several 
 cases naming the author, from Terence, Seneca, 
 Persius, Juvenal, Lucan (often), Juvencus (two 
 pages and a half of quotations), Paulinus, 
 Ausonius, Prudentius, Claudian, Prosper, 
 Sidonius ApoUinaris, Sedulius (four pages of 
 quotations), Arator (a page), Corippus (a page), 
 Venantius Fortunatus (a page). Bede does 
 not quote from nearly so many poets. 
 
 So far as his quotations from the Scriptures 
 are concerned, Aldhelm certainly had both the 
 Vulgate and the Itala, for in one case he 
 quotes the one and then adds " or as the other 
 text has it " and gives the other quotation ; and 
 in some cases he quotes the one and in other 
 cases the other. But in a large number of cases 
 his quotations are, as it were, between the two. 
 Manitius is of opinion' that it is scarcely be- 
 lievable that Aldhelm mixed his quotations ; 
 he must, Manitius thinks, have had the 
 manuscript of a text which stood between the 
 two, and agreed sometimes with one, some- 
 times with the other. A student who is not 
 wedded to the belief that all early writers 
 actually copied from their manuscripts of the 
 Scriptures every word of the passages they 
 quoted, is prepared to think, in the absence 
 
304 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 of any known manuscript containing their 
 version of a text, that they quoted a good deal 
 from memory, and to find in that thought the 
 solution of a good many difficulties. We may 
 take as an example two words to which 
 Manitius calls our attention, in the third verse 
 of the first chapter of Jeremiah ; the Itala has 
 priusquam exireSy the Vulgate antequam 
 exires, Aldhelm anteqnarti procederes. It 
 seems difficult to found on this an argument 
 as to the version used, although the passage is 
 one of great importance, in Aldhelm's opinion, 
 in favour of the Virgin-birth of the Messiah. 
 Of his supposed evidences for a middle text 
 Manitius names about a hundred and twenty 
 passages in Aldhelm's writings. 
 
 In the Letter to Acircius, after sixteen oc- 
 tavo pages of very heavy words, fifteen pages 
 follow of question and answer on the intricacies 
 of poetic metres, where D. (the disciple) asks 
 the questions, and if. (the master) gives the 
 information sought. As an example we may 
 take the following : 
 
 D. " What is an acephalon ? " 
 
 M. "A verse without a head, where the 
 first syllable is short, contrary to the nature 
 of the verse." 
 
 D. " Give me an authoritative example." 
 
THE BOOK ON METKES. 305 
 
 if. "In the second verse of the Aeneid 
 Virgil has placed an acephalon, 
 
 Italiam fato profugus, 
 
 admitting by a barbarism a tribrach for 
 a dactyl.'^ 
 
 The modern books give the first syllable 
 of Italia as long, while deriving it from vUu- 
 lus, and from the Greek Ualos. The fact is 
 that both in Greek and in Virgil the i was 
 made long in dactylic verse. Aldhelm might 
 have read further on in the First Book of 
 the Aeneid, and found a verse beginning 
 
 (1- 23)> 
 
 Bellum ingens geret Italia, 
 
 a " barbarism " which he would call a lagaron ; 
 
 and in line 657 of the Eleventh Book he would 
 
 find another acephalon, a line beginning with 
 
 Italides. 
 ' Aldhelm is not over particular as to the 
 
 sources from which he draws his proofs. 
 
 Thus: 
 
 D. " What is an heroic catalectic verse ? " 
 M. " Virgil gives an example And 
 
 in the Book of Judges, 
 
 Septuaginta prius truncarat corpora regum." 
 
 Or again, after an explanation that a versus 
 
 distridus has no word which by itself forma 
 
 u 
 
306 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 a complete foot, and that a versus divisus is 
 one which has a separate word for each foot : 
 
 D. " What is a mixed verse ? " 
 
 M " That which in one part is distriduSj 
 and in the other part divisus." 
 
 D. " I follow the answer more easily if you 
 prove it by an example." 
 
 if. " Virgil in the Fourth Book And 
 
 elsewhere a poet says : 
 
 Petrus Apostolicae qui culmina praesidet arcis. 
 
 It is scanned thus : Petrus Ap . ostoli . cae qui 
 (there you have the distridus part) . culmina . 
 praesidet . arcis (there the divisus part)." The 
 poet in this case is Aldhelm himself. The 
 verse occurs in his Praise of Virgins, line 529 
 (Giles, p. 150). It is in a very interesting 
 part of that poem, where he has named Paul 
 the Apostle as a virgin, and clearly could not 
 name Peter in the same category. He is, 
 however, determined to bring Peter in, so he 
 names Clement of Rome as a virgin, and 
 attributes his baptism to Peter whom he 
 describes in the line quoted. 
 
 One page of the Sandford and Merton sort 
 of colloquy, at a later part of the book, is in- 
 teresting. Magister has explained that sounds 
 are either articulate or confused ; the sounds 
 made by man are alone articulate, that is, can 
 
LETTER TO ACIRCIUS. 307 
 
 be written down ; all other sounds made by 
 things living or inanimate are confused. Lis- 
 cipulus says : " Give me some examples of 
 confused voice, taken from various natures of 
 things." Magister replies, in a manner which 
 reminds us of Dame Juliana Berners' care to 
 record the proper words to use for describing 
 herds of animals or groups of birds, as a bevy 
 of quail, a gaggle of women : " Bees hortibizant, 
 hawks pipant or pipilant, rams hlaterant, 
 asses oncant, crows croccant, horses hinnmnt, 
 hens cacillant (hard c), sparrows titiant, par- 
 tridges cacabant, pigs grundiunt, cranes grud- 
 dant or gruunt or grugulant, frogs coaxant " ; 
 and in the middle of all, his Irish training 
 inducing him to make a joke which is not in 
 point, like the cats and the rats which spoil 
 some of the marvellous Irish illustrations of 
 the Book of Kells, "Jupiter tonat as fables 
 feign." The laborious Germans have had 
 much to say as to the sources of all this. 
 
 The last question of the part specially de- 
 voted to metres is : 
 
 D. " Now that you have made the intrica- 
 cies of the art of metre clearer than the light, 
 is it not time that you should give me in 
 verse the problems of enigmas which you 
 have promised?" 
 
 U 2 
 
3o8 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 M. " I should have done so some time ago, 
 but your close questions have fully occupied 
 the time." 
 
 Then comes a Prologue of thirty-six hexa- 
 meters, the initial letters of which, when read 
 downwards, and the final letters also read 
 downwards, spell the hexameter : 
 
 Aldhelmus cecinit millenis versibus odas 
 Aldhelra has sung odes in a thousand verses ; 
 
 and sure enough he proceeds to pour forth 
 riddles in hexameter lines which nearly reach 
 a thousand in number. Of the prologue we 
 have abeady spoken on page 69. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Wright, in the Introduction to 
 his literary biographies of the Anglo-Saxon 
 period, remarks that among the Anglo-Saxons 
 no class of popular literature was so general a 
 favourite as enigmas and riddles. Collections 
 such as the Enigmas of Aldhelm were formed 
 at an early period in this country, and large 
 numbers were written in the vernacular ; 
 there are in the well-known Exeter book 
 many riddles in Anglo-Saxon verse. They 
 were imitations of a Latin tract, popular 
 among the Anglo-Saxons, the title of which 
 was Sympodi Aenigmata. Aldhelm confesses 
 himself to be but an imitator of Symposius, 
 thereby incidentally deciding the controversy, 
 
THE ENIGMAS. 309 
 
 SO far as his own belief went, between those 
 who have maintained that Symposius was 
 the author or collector of the Enigmas, and 
 those who have held that the Enigmas were 
 for the amusement of a symposium, or drinking- 
 party. 
 
 The confusion between a proper name and 
 a common noun or an adjective, as in this 
 dispute between Symposium as the name of 
 a drinking-party and part of the name of a 
 book, and Symposius as the supposed author, 
 has not been very uncommon. There are 
 one or two interesting examples of it in King 
 Alfred's version of the Consolation of Philo- 
 sophy, the work of Boethius. Thus, in chapter 
 xvi. he makes Boethius speak of the marvellous 
 constancy of the Roman prince Liberius; 
 whereas Boethius really wrote of the constancy 
 of a certain freeman, liberum quendani. And 
 again, in chapter xviii. King Alfred tells that 
 what he relates may be read in the book that 
 is called Astrologiurti ; whereas Boethius refers 
 the reader to astrological demonstrations. 
 
 The Latin riddles of the SymposiuTn, or of 
 Symposius, were a hundred in number, and 
 of three lines each, making three hundred 
 lines in all. Cynewulf wrote, or was credited 
 with, ninety-six Anglo-Saxon riddles. Aid- 
 
3IO ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 helm wrote unfortunately in Latin a Pro- 
 logue and ninety-nine enigmas, thus forming, 
 as he would have said, a " century," a phrase 
 familiar to us now in connection with another 
 field of activity. He spent his energies upon 
 seven hundred and sixty-four hexameter lines 
 in this composition. We should thankfully 
 sacrifice them all for the odd sixty-four lines 
 in his own native Saxon, not a word of which 
 we possess. The racy keenness and bluntness 
 of the West-Saxon jests would have been 
 a profitable exchange for his roundabout 
 Latin hexameters. Nineteen of his enigmas 
 are of four lines each, fifteen of five lines, and 
 so on in regular order up to four of eleven 
 each. Then come one of thirteen lines, one 
 of fifteen, one of sixteen, and one of eighty- 
 five. Clearly Aldhelm was determined to 
 outdo his prototype, whose riddles had only 
 three lines each. Aldhelm gave to each divi- 
 sion of his series a Greek designation, accord- 
 ing to the number of lines, tetrastichon^ 
 pentastichon, up to heccaidecastichon and 
 polystichon. 
 
 Boniface, a generation and a half later, 
 wrote nine enigmas in Latin hexameters, and 
 sent them with a preface in like metre to his 
 sister. They were, he tells her, " ten golden 
 
THE ENIGMAS. 3II 
 
 apples which grew from fair flowers on the 
 tree of life." The subjects are Catholic Faith, 
 Hope, Justice, Truth, Pity, Patience, Christian 
 Peace, Christian Humility, Virginity. They 
 compare very favourably with Aldhelm's 
 subjects. Three typical examples of these 
 laboured compositions of Aldhelm will prob- 
 ably suffice. 
 
 An example of Aldhelm^s Aenigmata Tetra- 
 sticha : 
 
 Once was I water, full of scaly fish. 
 
 My nature changed, by changed decree of fate. 
 
 I suflFered torments torrid by the flames. 
 
 My face now shines like whitest ash or snow. 
 
 The answer is scdt, as produced by boiling 
 sea-water. 
 
 One of his Aenigmata Enneasticha : 
 
 A faithful guard I watchful keep the house, 
 In gloomy night I walk the dusky shades, 
 Scarce lose the sight of eyes in darkest caves. 
 For hated foes, who waste the heaps of corn, 
 I silent plan the crafty means of death. 
 On hunting bound I search the wild things' dens. 
 Not I with dogs will hunt the flying crowds, 
 For barking dogs wage cruel war on me. 
 To hated race it is I owe my name ^ 
 
 The answer is a cat. 
 
 * The answer as given in Latin is catta, or muriceps, or 
 pilax] possibly ''mouser" is the name meant, the late 
 Latin muriceps. 
 
3 12 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 One of his Aenigmata Decasticha : 
 
 Lo, many a draught of Bacchus to make men drunk I save, 
 Squeezed by the vine- dresser's hands from the yellowing 
 
 bunch 
 Which hung from the leafy green of the shoots of the vine, 
 Filling with nectar of grape the innkeepers' booths. 
 I swell to the fullest extent with the juice of the vine, 
 And yet never feel in myself any evil effect ; 
 No, not though the nectar that fills me be drawn from a 
 
 hundred casks. 
 The child of the soil am I, grown up in the loftiest groves, 
 My substance is cloven and riven with wedges by rustical 
 
 hands, 
 When oaks and when pines in the glades by the axe are o'er- 
 
 thrown. 
 
 The answer is a wooden wine-cup. 
 
 In Pkaise of ViRaiNiTY, or of Virgins. . 
 
 The long treatise in Latin prose on the 
 Praise of Virginity is very hard reading. 
 Aldhelm revels in difficult words. Fortu- 
 nately the demands of metre protect us 
 from many of his longest and worst words 
 when we come to his treatise on the same 
 subject in Latin verse ; but he contrives to 
 bring in a good many of them, and if he 
 means to drag a word in he does not scruple 
 to make long syllables short and short long. 
 
 This metrical version of his prose treatise 
 he prefaces by thirty-eight hexameter lines 
 addressed To the most great Abbess. Like the 
 
THE PRAISE OF VIRGINITY. 313 
 
 corresponding preface to his Eiiigmas, these 
 thirty-eight lines form a double acrostic, the 
 letters of the acrostic being those of the first 
 line ; but in the present case, unlike that of 
 the Enigmas^ the letters at the end of the lines 
 come in inverted order, the last first, and so 
 on. Not any of the letters give special diffi- 
 culty, as h and h do in the other case, the 
 tetters being those of the line 
 
 " M etrica Tirones nunc promant carmina casto S." 
 
 Aldhelm^s patience appears to have deserted 
 him when he came to the thirty-eighth line, 
 for he merely takes the first line and writes it 
 backwards, not observing the division into 
 words, 
 
 " S otsac animract namorp cnunsenorita cirte M." 
 
 The line thus constructed is one which it 
 would be difficult to scan, with any regard 
 to caesura. The whole thing seems rather 
 childish, not quite consistent with the dig- 
 nity of a great scholar, a great abbat, and a 
 'maxima abbat issa . 
 
 The treatise is addressed to the nuns of 
 Barking, one of the two foundations of Earcon- 
 wald, Bishop of London 675-693, presided 
 over by his sister Ethelburga, and after her 
 death by Hildelith. Like several of the monas- 
 
314 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 tic foundations in Northumbria and Mercia, 
 this East-Saxon monastery contained both 
 monks and nuns, under the rule of the Abbess. 
 We know something of some of the nuns who 
 are addressed by name. 
 
 Cuthburga was a sister of Ina King of 
 Wessex, and therefore a cousin more or less 
 remote of Aldhelm. She had mari-ied, as 
 we have seen, Aldfrith, King of Northumbria, 
 but had separated from him, as Editheldreda 
 had from his predecessor Egfrith. Cuthburga 
 and her sister Cuenburga were buried at 
 Wimborne, where Cuthburga had founded 
 a monastery after leaving Barking. 
 
 Eulalia was evidently a name taken by 
 a Saxon or Anglian lady on entering religion, 
 from regard for the memory of the saint and 
 martyr of that name in the early persecution 
 in Spain. Justina was a name similarly 
 assumed ; Aldhelm dwells on the story of the 
 original Justina in both of his treatises on 
 Virginity, and this enables us to identify her 
 with the Greek martyr of Antioch. Thecla, in 
 like manner, was a name taken from one of the 
 principal heroines of ecclesiastical romance, the 
 Thecla of Iconium of St. Paul's time, whose 
 story is found in the Acts of Paul and Thecla. 
 Scholastica, from whom another nun had 
 
THE PRAISE OF VIRGINITY. 315 
 
 taken her name, was no doubt the sister of 
 St. Benedict, of whom our knowledge is de- 
 rived from our own Gregory the Great ^. 
 
 Hildelith, the Abbess, had succeeded in 
 that office Ethelburga, the sister of Earcon- 
 wald, the founder of the Abbey of Barking. 
 She had under her rule both monks and nuns, 
 as was the case at Coldingham, Gloucester, 
 Bath, and other early monastic institutions. 
 She is mentioned in a letter of Boniface to 
 Eadburga the Abbess of Minster, about the 
 year 718, in terms which suggest that she was 
 then dead. She certainly died before Bede, 
 for he writes of her as abbess in the year 676, 
 and speaks of her as having presided over 
 the monastery many years, till she was of 
 extreme old age. He describes her as an 
 excellent disciplinarian, and an excellent nurse 
 of the property and resources of the abbey. 
 The cemetery of the monks and nuns was 
 too small, and she had their bones taken 
 up and buried in one place in the Church of 
 St. Mary 2. 
 
 ^ These four saints appear in Aldhelm's treatise. 
 
 ^ Hilddigyth and Hildithryth were two of the Hartlepool 
 nuns whose pillow-stones were found in their grave when the 
 North-Eastern Railway cut through that earliest of Christian 
 Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Their names are incised in bold 
 runes on the stones, which are ornamented with fine crosses 
 
3l6 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 Of Aldgyth, Burngyth, Hydburga, we do not 
 know anything. Osburga was a near rela- 
 tive of Aldhelm, but evidently not his sister. 
 
 The Prologue to Aldhelm's prose treatise on 
 Virginity is as follows : 
 
 " To the Virgins of Christ, most reverend^ and 
 with all the devotion of kinship to be vener- 
 ated ; not only to bo honoured for bodily 
 chastity, which is the part of very many 
 persons, but to be glorified for that spiritual 
 purity which is the part of few ; to Hildelith, 
 mistress of the regular discipline and the 
 monastic life, and to Justina and Cuthburga ; 
 to Osburga, also, bound to me by close family 
 ties ; to Aldgyth and Scholastica, Hydburga 
 and Burngyth, Eulalia and Thecla ; with one 
 consent adorning the Church with repute of 
 sanctity ; Aldhelm, the unworthy follower of 
 the cross of Christ and suppliant servant 
 
 of the type found in the Lindisfarne Gospels. The rune- 
 cutter left out the g in Hildigyth's name, perhaps because it 
 was pronounced as y, and had to cut it in above the line. It has 
 been surmised that Hild,Hildilith, Hildithryth and Hildigyth 
 were all of one family. Eild was a Saxon war-goddess. 
 The abbess Hild was born a pagan in 614, and died Novem- 
 ber 17, 680. The reduplication of the d in Hildigyth on the 
 pillow-stone points to a strong pronunciation of medial con- 
 sonants by our Anglian forefathers. In a similar way the 
 words Christus and Jesus are spelled in runes on the 
 Bewcastle Cross as KrisUus and Gessns. 
 
THE PRAISE OF VIRGINITY. 317 
 
 of the Church, health and perpetual pros- 
 perity. 
 
 "When I was setting out to attend the 
 synod of bishops, accompanied by fraternal 
 bands of my colleagues, I received with much 
 gladness the letter of your gentleness, sent to 
 my mediocrity. Lifting my hands to heaven, 
 I gave great thanks to Christ for your safety, 
 and that your pen not only showed your 
 fidelity to promises and vows but also set 
 forth the honey drawn from study of the 
 scriptures. As I read each passage of your 
 letter, with quick glance of the eye, and 
 examined it with the curiosity about things 
 hidden which is said to be implanted in ine, 
 I greatly admired your most fertile flow of 
 words and the virginal eloquence of your 
 urbanity." 
 
 Aldhelm wishes to be cautious, lest in his 
 warm praise of virginity he should appear to 
 reflect upon the moral character of those women 
 who had married. He guards himself thus : 
 
 " But while giving to the glory of virginity 
 praise without measure, we do not hold law- 
 ful wedlock to be contemned. That be far 
 from the Catholic faith of the Churches. 
 Indeed the glory of virginity has grown out of 
 the law of wedlock, just as gold comes 
 
3l8 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 from the earth, the rose from the thorn, the 
 pearl from the shell. . . . There is a difference 
 between a wife and a virgin, St. Paul says. 
 Great indeed is the interval, and wide the 
 difference, between the richness of divine 
 affection and the warmth of the lowest love. 
 The wife craves to have her neck hung with 
 crescents, her arms adorned with bracelets, her 
 fingers with gemmed rings : the virgin desires 
 to shine with the fairest adornment of trans- 
 parent chastity, to flash with golden necklaces 
 of virtues, to be adorned with white pearls of 
 merits. The wife busies herself in delicate 
 arrangements, the hair twisted into curls with 
 the iron, the cheeks and jaws coloured with 
 red antimony, like those of swine. The virgin, 
 with hair unkempt and careless, will carry 
 the palm of chastity and wear on her head 
 the crown of glory. The one blossoms out 
 into the vulgar pomps of ornament, like that 
 woman in the Apocalypse, sitting decked out 
 upon the beast, giving to drink of the deadly 
 draught of the pleasures of the flesh from 
 a golden chalice a spectacle fair but perni- 
 cious to all who look on. The other ceases 
 not to show forth, to all who desire to follow 
 it, the sign of a chaste conversation, the ex- 
 ample of the citizens of heaven." 
 
THE PRAISE OF VIRGINITY. 319 
 
 That is a tolerably strong sermon (and I 
 have toned down some of its frankness) con- 
 sidering that the text was, " We do not hold 
 lawful wedlock to be contemned. That be 
 far from the Catholic faith of the Churches." 
 The same inability to preserve an equable 
 character of remark is seen in Aldhelm's 
 address to the Britons, where he begins like 
 a lamb and ends like a lion ^. 
 
 The list of Virgins whom Aldhelm com- 
 memorates by name and story (thirty- seven 
 to sixty -four lines each) does not include some 
 whom we should have expected to find. The 
 omission of St. Catharine is not remark- 
 able, for her translation only occurred in the 
 eighth century, and her cult was for some 
 time confined to the East. In the order in 
 which he celebrates them they are as fol^ 
 lows : 
 
 1. Mary ^. 5. Justina. 
 
 2. Caecilia ^. 6. Eugenia. 
 
 3. Agatha 2. 7. Agnes 2. 
 
 4. Lucy 2. 8. Thecla 
 
 * Page 332. 
 
 2 These five names appear in the present English Calendar. 
 The following names which are found in our Calendar are 
 not in Aldhelm 's list Anne, Catharine, Etheldreda, Mar- 
 garet, Mary Magdalene, Perpetua, Prisca : the reasons for 
 the absence of some of these are evident. 
 
320 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 9. Eulalia. 16. Chionia^ and 
 
 10. Scholastica. 17. Irene and 
 
 11. Constantina. 18. Agape. 
 
 12. Attica and 19. Rufina and 
 
 13. Artemia. 20. Secunda^ 
 
 14. Eustochia^ 21. Anatolia and 
 
 15. Demetrias. 22. Victoria. 
 
 In a certain volume, Aldhelm tells us, there 
 are recorded the sayings of an Angel on this 
 subject. The Angel divided the states of life 
 not into two, virginity and wedlock, but into 
 three, virginity, chastity in marriage, and the 
 married life. He distinguished the three states 
 thus : They are relatively as gold, silver^ brass ; 
 they are as riches, moderate means, poverty ; 
 they are as peace, ransom, captivity ; as the 
 sun, the moon, the darkness ; as the day, the 
 dawn, the night ; as a queen, a lady, a hand- 
 maid j as fatherland, harbour, open sea ; as 
 
 ^ This lady's name presented difficulties in verse, and 
 Aldhelm calls her Eustochium ; in Bis prose she is Eustochia. 
 
 ^ This lady's name appears to have been too much for 
 Aldhelm in verse. He evades the difficulty by saying of her 
 and her sisters Irene and Agape, '' Quarum per prosam 
 descripsi nomina dudum." 
 
 ' This lady's name is sought in vain in Aldhelm's verse in 
 Dr. Giles's edition. It is there, however, by a play upon the 
 word. Bufina is named as the older sister, the other was 
 aetate secunda. Pr. Giles might have printed it aetata 
 Secitnda, 
 
THE PRAISE OP VIRGINITY. 321 
 
 liviDg man, man half dead, a corpse ; as purple 
 robe, old garment re-dyed, common homespun. 
 Aldhelm adds a relative statement of his own : 
 The three states are the three harvest-returns 
 of the parable of the sower, the hundredfold , 
 the sixtyfold, the thirtyfold. 
 
 Aldhelm sets forth the various studies which 
 were, he did not doubt, encouraged at Barking: 
 "Now the earliesi) prophecies of the Saviour who 
 should come ; now the ancient Law as set forth 
 by Moses ; now the fourfold relation of the 
 Gospels as expounded by the mystical com- 
 mentaries of Catholic Fathers, and digested 
 according to the fourfold rule of history, 
 allegory, tropology, anagoge ; now the ancient 
 stories of historiographers and the succession 
 of chronographers, who by tenacious memory 
 rightly rummaging have handed down the 
 fortuitous permutations of preterite periods ; 
 now the discipline of grammaticians and ortho- 
 graphers, balancing in tones and periods, 
 compacting in poetic feet by colons and 
 commas." In some verses appended in one 
 MS. to his Enigmas he speaks of a virgin 
 dedicated to Christ as with pallid hand and 
 slender needle working embroidery with gold 
 thread. 
 
 Aldhelm was severe, as we have seen, in 
 
 X 
 
322 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 his remarks upon married ladies who decked 
 themselves out in gay apparel, and he con- 
 trasted very favourably with this practice 
 the grave and modest dress of the celibate 
 ladies in a nunnery. But notwithstanding 
 his strong language about the meretricious 
 decorations of wives as contrasted with the 
 chaste plainness of the dress of nuns, we have 
 evidence in his own writings that in this 
 respect there were nuns and nuns. 
 
 The nuns who were of high position in the 
 world before their profession would not appear 
 to have laid aside the splendid dress of their 
 secular rank when they entered religion. 
 Aldhelm describes the dress of one such lady. 
 Her under vest (suhucula) was of fine linen, 
 of a violet colour ; over this she wore a scarlet 
 tunic (tunica coccinea) with wide sleeves and 
 a hood of striped silk [nianicae et caputiurti 
 sericis clavatae) ; her shoes were of red leather ; 
 the locks on her forehead and temples were 
 curled with irons ; a veil (maputium) was 
 tied on her head with ribands, crossed on her 
 breast, and allowed to fall at the back till it 
 touched the ground. Her nails were pared to 
 a point, like the talons of a falcon. 
 
 There is an interesting story about the rich 
 dress of an abbess in Wessex three hundred 
 
THE PRAISE OP VIRGINITY. 323 
 
 years after Aldhelm's time, which William tells 
 in one way, often quoted, and the writer of 
 her Life tells in a way less familiar. The lady 
 was Edith of Wilton, a daughter of King 
 Edgar, but not born in wedlock. She was 
 remarkable, even in a highly decorative age, 
 for the splendour of her dress, " being always 
 habited," William had heard by tradition, *' in 
 richer garb than the sanctity of her profession 
 seemed to require." Bishop Ethelwold of 
 Winchester, in whose time such beautiful and 
 costly work was done in the illumination of 
 manuscripts, while he would seem to have 
 affected a certain squalor in his personal 
 appearance, met her at court in her beautiful 
 robes, and, as William says, openly rebuked 
 her. " Pride," she replied, " as Augustine says, 
 may exist even under the garb of wretchedness. 
 I think that a mind may be as pure beneath 
 these golden vestments as ,under your tattered 
 furs." The bishop William adds in the Deeds 
 of the Kings, though he does not say it in the 
 Deeds of the Prelates the bishop blushed with 
 pleasure that he had been silenced with this 
 brilliant retort. I like much better the story 
 as ioldiinihQ Benedictine Annals^. "Daughter," 
 the bishop said, " the Spouse whom you have 
 
 * Vol. V, p. 637. 
 
 X 2, 
 
324 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 chosen delights not in external pomp. It is 
 the heart which He demands." " True, father, 
 and my heart I have given Him. While He 
 possesses it, He will not be offended with 
 external pomp." Modern ladies who invent 
 and adopt the various costumes of " sisters " 
 do not usually devise a specially unbecoming 
 dress. 
 
 We have a pictorial representation of the 
 Abbess and eight of the nuns named on 
 page 3 1 5, in an early manuscript of Aldhelm's 
 treatise In i^^'ciise of Virginity addressed to 
 them. An engraving of this representation 
 is given in figure 22 opposite. The manu- 
 script is in the Library at Lambeth Palace. 
 It was assigned to the eighth century by 
 Dr. Todd a hundred years ago ; the present 
 Librarian agrees in assigning it to that period, 
 perhaps late in the century. The capital R 
 is characteristic of that date, but with some 
 rather late features. The illustration is from 
 a photograph of a seventeenth-century drawing 
 of the scene, the actual drawing in the manu- 
 script not being in a state convenient for 
 photography. The Abbess is represented as 
 reverently receiving the written treatise from 
 the hand of St. Aldhelm, who is seated on 
 an ornamental throne- stool, with the cushion 
 
EENTlSSiniS 
 
 XPI VIRES NIBVS OMNIQVE 
 
 ^^^Mic^p'o. JmriA 5lo)v|tcaiiAfrcjuoiipaiico)niinc}tr.Hil<Mir^ 
 
 / C0HT)*iliuUtnr\^^eccf?aiJinniM r7^jttipcct7^Hciit<arce^- 
 / riniwre fo^wf coiiccr Jtw^- oec&dm or<wia/f-^Uf,elmi,p 
 
 22. ALDHELM, HILDELITH, AND THE NUNS OF BARKING 
 
 Tofacep.i2\ 
 
LETTER TO OSGITH. 325 
 
 in the shape of a bolster usual in Anglo- 
 Saxon designs. The artist probably intended 
 to represent the whole community of Barking, 
 as named by Aldhelm. The Lambeth Libra- 
 rian, the Reverend S. W. Kershaw, informs 
 me that the manuscript is believed by Dr. 
 Montagu James to have come from Waltham 
 Abbey. Most of the Lambeth MSS., the 
 Librarian notes, came from Lanthony; but 
 this MS., numbered 300, is one of the series 
 called "Lambeth MSS.," numbers 1-576, 
 given by various Archbishops, and there is 
 nothing to show by which of the Archbishops 
 it was given. 
 
 One personal letter to a nun we may read. 
 There is no evident reason for understanding 
 that the lady was Aldhelm's sister after the 
 flesh, but it may have been so. 
 
 Letter to his Sister Osgith. 
 
 " To my dearest and best-loved sister, to me 
 sincerely and affectionately reverend, Aldhelm 
 suppliant, unworthily bearing the name of 
 Abbat, greeting in the Lord. 
 
 " Your kindliness knows about the baptism 
 of the sister, that I asked the Bishop, who gave 
 licence for the baptism of that nun, but only 
 in private and secretly. 
 
326 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 '*I salute thee lovingly, Osgith, from the 
 inmost bed of my heart, earnestly beseeching 
 thee that thou cease not to occupy thy mind 
 with assiduous study of the Scriptures, so as 
 to fulfil the advice of the Psalmist, ' On His law 
 shalt thou meditate day and night.' And the 
 same Psalmist again gives the same testimony, 
 * How sweet are Thy words.' Pra}^ with sup- 
 plication that all the sisters be mindful of my 
 prayers, through Christ, who says by the Apostle, 
 'The prayer of a righteous man availeth much.' 
 Fare thee well, ten times beloved, nay, a hun- 
 dred times, a thousand times. May God give 
 thee health." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 The Letter to the Britons. 
 
 The last of the writings of Aldhelm which 
 we have to pass in review is his Letter to the 
 Britons. Of this letter Bede says ^ that 
 Aldhelm wrote, at the request of a Synod of 
 the West Saxons, an excellent book against 
 the error of the Britons, who celebrate Easter 
 not at the right time, and do many other 
 things contrary to ecclesiastical purity and to 
 peace. The study of this book, he adds, has 
 brought many of the Britons who are subject 
 to the West Saxons to the Catholic celebration 
 of the Dominical Pasch. 
 
 In the time of William of Malmesbury this 
 letter had^disappeared, and it was believed 
 that the Britons had destroyed it. It has 
 since been found, among letters attributed to 
 Boniface. We thus have the unusually good 
 fortune of being able to judge the remarks 
 which William makes on it in the light pro- 
 vided by the letter itself. It will be seen how 
 H.E. V. 18. 
 
328 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 completely William misunderstood the position 
 occupied by the Britons some four hundred 
 and thirty years before he wrote ; that he did 
 so misunderstand their position was only 
 natural. This is the account which he gives : 
 " The Britons, who had once possessed the 
 whole land which we now call England, were 
 in servitude to the English. They had been 
 thrust out of their ancient seats, and driven 
 into the woods, where they lived an ignoble 
 and half-savage life. Those of them called 
 the North- Welsh \ that is, he says, the North- 
 Britons, were under the West-Saxon king ; 
 they were faithful in the performance of the 
 accustomed duties of their servitude, and for 
 a long time showed no signs of resenting their 
 position. Kentwine found, however, that they 
 were meditating rebellion, and he inflicted 
 upon them so terrible a slaughter that they 
 had no further hopes ^. In place of their 
 former condition, which had a shade of liberty, 
 
 ^ William would appear to mean the people north of the 
 Parret, or possibly as far south as Taunton. His words are 
 qui NorJit Walaes, id est Aquilonales JSritones, diceban- 
 iur : Bk. v. 215. 
 
 ^ Kenwalch was king 652-658, the years of the two great 
 defeats of the Selwood Britons ; Kentwine was king 676-685. 
 The defeat of tlie Britons which is here attributed to liim by 
 William is no doubt one of the three victories of which 
 Aldhelm speaks in the poem described above, j^age 236. 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS. 329 
 
 they now groaned under the open yoke of 
 subjection. As if that was not enough, they 
 had religious superstitions, and put themselves 
 outside the world by preferring their own 
 traditions to those of Rome. Many things 
 Catholic they rejected, but especially the true 
 time of keeping Easter. Neither the custom 
 of the Universal Church nor the arguments of 
 the most blessed Augustine ^ moved them ; 
 they kept up a pertinacious opposition. On 
 this subject frequent meetings of the West- 
 Saxons were held, to consider what must be 
 done to convert their branch of the Britons 
 anew, and set them on the right way of eccle- 
 siastical observance. The discussion of it 
 went rolling along for many days ; heaps of 
 words were spent upon it. The conclusion come 
 to was this : that the schismatics must be led 
 by reasoning, not compelled by force. Any- 
 thing that would tend to disperse their errors, 
 anything that might meet their obstinacy, 
 should be thrown into the form of a letter, 
 
 ^ This shows that William understood Augustine's visit 
 to have been to these Northern Britons, not to the Britons 
 in the land which now we call Wales. In his account of Cerne 
 in Dorset he describes an ill reception which Augustine met 
 with there. This again shows that William understood 
 Augustine's journey to be to the Selwood Britons, not to 
 the Britons of the west side of the Severn. See page 51. 
 
33<5 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 that its reasonings might bring their minds 
 into the right way. This was easy enough, 
 if only Abbat Aldhelm would undertake it. 
 His manner of life made it probable that he 
 would his learning made it certain that he 
 could cure the disease of their superstition, 
 however inveterate. He undertook the work, 
 and the efficacy of its performance was as 
 complete as the readiness of his assent. He 
 confuted the false Pasch, he taught clearly 
 the true. The thunder of his invincible 
 reasoning was accompanied by the pleasant 
 showers of paternal declarations. He ad- 
 dressed his completed work to the Britons, 
 his prayers to God for its success. For that 
 is the double work of the ecclesiastical 
 dispensator, that in order to bring back 
 wanderers he ceases not from words of cor- 
 rection, nor ever sleeps from prayer in his 
 heart. The labour of the most holy man 
 could not, did not, fail of its effect. He 
 brought the wanderers round to the true way. 
 To this day [that is, well on in the twelfth 
 century] the Britons owe their correctness 
 of practice to Aldhelm, although, from their 
 ingrained wickedness, they refuse to recog- 
 nize their benefactor, and they destroyed his 
 letter." 
 
THE LeTTEH to the BRITONS. 33 1 
 
 The actual letter shows how incorrect a 
 view William took of the position of the 
 Britons whom Aldhelm addressed. They were 
 evidently not a pack of broken-down slaves, 
 skulking in the woods. Indeed they were not 
 the subject Britons, it would appear, but the 
 Britons of the still independent kingdom of 
 Devon and Cornwall. The letter is addressed 
 " To the most glorious Lord, wielding the 
 sceptre of the Western Kingdom, whom I, as 
 the discerner of the heart is my witness, em- 
 brace in fraternal charity, to King Geruntius, 
 and also to all the Priests of God dwelling 
 throughout the Domnonian realm, Aldhelm, 
 unworthily exercising the office of Abbat, 
 a greeting in the Lord." The letter of a cor- 
 responding character which Ceolfrid of Wear- 
 mouth sent to the Pictish king was addressed 
 "To the most excellent and most glorious 
 King Naitan, Ceolfrid the Abbat sends greet- 
 ing in the Lord." 
 
 Aldhelm's letter divides itself into six parts: 
 (i) a statement of the origin of the letter; 
 {2) a statement of reports that the British 
 Christians were at variance among them- 
 selves, and an argument for peace ; (3) a state- 
 ment of reports that the British rejected the 
 circular tonsure, and an argument that it was 
 
332 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 the tonsure of St. Peter and theirs was the 
 tonsure of Simon Magus ; (4) a still more 
 pernicious offence, that they kept Easter on 
 a wrong calculation, and carried to an extreme 
 pitch their scorn for all who differed from 
 them ; (5) a strong appeal in the name of 
 catholicity and of the door-keeper of heaven ; 
 (6) a declaration that to hold the Catholic 
 faith is not sufficient to entitle a man to be 
 included in the Catholic Church, if he does 
 not observe Catholic practice. It is written 
 in less difficult Latin than others of his writ- 
 ings, and is a fairly direct statement of the 
 case, supported by many quotations from 
 the Scriptures, and of course by some asser- 
 tions which cannot be called historical. 
 The final appeal opens in a dignified and 
 persuasive manner, but it very soon passes on 
 to strong language, and then degenerates into 
 the ad captandurti argument used at Whitby, 
 which the wise King Oswy received with a 
 smile. "In the name of our common share 
 in the heavenly kingdom and the company 
 of angels, with submissive prayers and bent 
 knees we suppliantly adjure and entreat 
 you" here he lapses into violence of lan- 
 guage '' no longer to abominate the doctrine 
 and decrees of the blessed Peter with super- 
 
THE LETTEB TO THE BRITONS. 333 
 
 cilious contumacy of heart and shameless 
 breast, and arrogantly to scorn the tradition 
 of the Roman Church for the sake of some 
 obsolete rules of your predecessors, relying 
 in vain upon tyrannical pertinacity. For 
 Peter, when he had with blessed voice con- 
 fessed the Son of God, was deservedly thus 
 addressed : ' Thou art Peter, and on this rock 
 I will build my Church, and the gates of hell 
 shall not prevail against it. And I will give 
 thee the keys of heaven, and whatsoever 
 thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in 
 heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on 
 earth shall be loosed in heaven/ If then the 
 keys of the kingdom of heaven were conferred 
 by Christ upon Peter, of whom the poet says, 
 
 ' Key-bearer of heaven, who opens the way to the skies/ 
 
 who that spurns his chief decrees, and con- 
 temns the mandates of his doctrine, shall 
 enter with joy by the gate of the paradise of 
 heaven ? '' 
 
 Aldhelm was very proud of the line which 
 here he quotes from a poet 
 
 Claviger aetherius qui portam pandit in aethra. 
 
 The poet was himself i. The line occurs in his 
 poem on the altars dedicated to the Virgin 
 
 ^ For a similar ease of quotation from himself as " a poet" 
 see p. 306. 
 
334 ^T. ALDHELM. 
 
 and the Twelve Apostles. It occurs again in 
 his poem in honour of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 Yet again he quotes it in his letter to Acircius 
 as the saying of a poet ; and yet once more 
 he gives to the nuns of Barking the advantage 
 of reading it as the verse of a poet. 
 
 Aldhelm's remarks under the fourth of the 
 six heads of his letter show that the cleavage 
 between the Britons and the English Church 
 was very deep. If the English had been as 
 the Britons knew verj^ well they had quite 
 lately been rank pagans, the British could 
 not have treated them with greater scorn. It 
 seems clear that to their resentment of the 
 idea of owning allegiance to a spiritual poten- 
 tate in a far-off land, there was added the 
 traditional scorn no long tradition either, 
 only from a generation or a generation and 
 a half ago felt by a studious and learned 
 and proud and exceedingly self-satisfied Chris- 
 tian Church for the unlettered pagans who 
 had ravaged their lands and enslaved their 
 people, and now forsooth professed to teach 
 them that their Christian practice was all 
 wrong. This is what Aldhelm says: ''The 
 Demetian^ priests on the other side of the 
 Severn Strait, proud of the purity of their 
 
 ' Of South-East Wales. 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS. 335 
 
 own life, haughtily abominate our company, 
 to such a degree that they will not join us in 
 prayer in church, nor in a brotherly way 
 partake of the same dishes at table ; nay, they 
 even throw the remains of our meals to dogs 
 and swine. Vessels and glasses that we have 
 used, they direct to be scoured and cleansed 
 with sand and ashes. They give us no friendly 
 greeting, no brotherly kiss ; they offer us no 
 washing for our hands, no water and towel, 
 no bath for our feet. And if it happen that 
 any one of our race has for any reason to go 
 and live among them, they do not admit him 
 to their company until he has been compelled 
 to perform penance for forty days." That 
 last touch of forty days' penitential cleansing 
 of an Englishman before a Briton would have 
 anything to do with him, is very quaint ; shall 
 we say characteristic ? 
 
 It may be taken as certain that if we had 
 King Gerunt's reply, supposing that he sent 
 one, we should have some very racy retorts ; 
 and we should probably learn a good deal of 
 the other side of the question which it would 
 be well for us to know. This we do know, 
 that when King Cadfan^ nearly a hundred 
 
 ^ This is the king whose memorial inscription is in the 
 chancel of the church of Llangadwaladr, built by his son 
 
33^ ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 years before, heard of Augustine's claims 
 upon their allegiance, and was assured that 
 the creed of the Romans was the same as the 
 creed of the Welsh, he replied thai .that was as 
 strong an argument for the Romans owing 
 allegiance to him as for his owing it to them. 
 
 This mention of the special hostility of the 
 priests on the western side of the Severn con- 
 flicts with the statements of early tradition 
 that the Bishops of LlandafF, disputing the 
 primacy with St. David's, demeaned them- 
 selves by receiving consecration from Canter- 
 bury. The Roman historian Lingard accepts 
 the statement that Oudoceus of Llandaff, 
 with the approbation of Mouric, King of 
 Glamorgan, was consecrated by Augustine 
 himself, which seems complicatedly incredible. 
 The earliest known consecration of a Welsh 
 bishop by Canterbury is that of Civeliauc of 
 LlandafF (d. 927) by Ethelred, who was arch- 
 bishop from 870 to 890. 
 
 It was not the Demetian priests only who 
 
 Ca,dwaMa,dr, Catamannus Rex sopienfissimus ef opinatissimus 
 omnium regiim, the wisest and most thought-of of all kings. 
 It is very interesting to note that Aldhelm speaks of David 
 as opinatissimus regum. The word opinatns is not classical, 
 it belongs to the Lexicon Mediae et Infimae Latinitatis 
 " middling and infamous Latinity," as Henry Bradshaw 
 used to render it. 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS, 337 
 
 maintained the acutely hostile attitude re- 
 ferred to by Aldhelm, nor the English only 
 whom they treated with such contempt. 
 Archbishop Laurentius of Cantei'bury and 
 Mellitus of London had to complain that one 
 Dagan, a Scotic bishop, coming to Canterbury, 
 absolutely refused to sit at the same table 
 with the members of the Italian party, would 
 not even eat in the same house with them. I 
 have noted elsewhere^ the very interesting and 
 pleasant fact that Laurentius and Mellitus and 
 their companion Justus, all successively Arch- 
 bishops of Canterbury, were after all enrolled 
 by the Scotic priests in the list of those for 
 whom intercessory prayer was made ; the list 
 is preserved for us in the earliest missal of 
 the Irish Church, known to us as the Stowe 
 missal, written in the eighth century, still 
 resting in the silver case given three centuries 
 later by a son of Brian Boroihme. And it is 
 even more interesting still to note that Dagan, 
 who treated them with such scornful hatred, 
 stands next but one to them in this merciful 
 and kindly list. 
 
 Aldhelm' s letter does not bear comparison 
 with the letter on the same subject sent about 
 
 * The Christian Church in these Islands before the Coming 
 of Augustine, p. 129. 
 
 Y 
 
338 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 five years later from the monastery of Wear- 
 mouth and Jarrow to Naitan, king of that 
 most interesting and mysterious people, the 
 Picts. There can be practically no real doubt 
 that Bede wrote it, though he was yet young 
 and it went in the name of the Abbat Ceolfrith. 
 It is lucid, and it goes straight to the point; 
 the Latin is very simple and easy. We cannot 
 help wishing that Aldhelm, who was specially 
 instructed to resort to reasoning in his letter, 
 had followed the method which his northern 
 contemporaries adopted. It is true that the 
 circumstances were very different. Aldhelm 
 was writing, uninvited, to an actively hostile 
 people ; Bede was answering a very friendly 
 request for information addressed to his mon- 
 astery. But Bede was master of his subject, 
 and of the language in which he wrote ; the 
 subject and the language were the master of 
 Aldhelm. Both writers were completely wrong 
 in their principal assertions. They declared 
 that the great Council of Nicsea decided the 
 true date of Easter exactly as the English 
 Church calculated it ; and that this true rule of 
 calculation was the rule given by St. Peter. In 
 fact, the Council of Nicsea only decreed that 
 Easter must always be kept on a Sunday, and 
 that care must be taken to find the riorht 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS. 339 
 
 Sunday, which must not be the actual day of 
 the Jewish Passover ; and the assertion about 
 St. Peter is the merest fiction. Further, though 
 neither of them suspected anything of the 
 kind, the Church of Eome had more than once 
 changed its method of calculating Easter, and 
 the method which eventually prevailed was 
 not Eoman but Alexandrian. The Celtic 
 Churches had not changed their method from 
 early times, and that really is the explanation 
 of the difference between them. In the years 
 of darkness and isolation which followed, the 
 inroads of barbarian pagans, the Celtic 
 Churches of these islands had been cut off from 
 knowledge of the changes gradually made in 
 the Christian Church with which they had 
 once been in accord, and they had not followed 
 changes of which they had not heard. To 
 represent the Koman Church as an unchang- 
 ing and unchanged Church is completely 
 unhistorical, and markedly so in regard to 
 the time of Easter. If any Church was un- 
 changing in that respect, it was the Church of 
 the Britons. 
 
 As to the actual points at issue, they were 
 
 these. The Church Catholic had come, after 
 
 a long experimental period, to the conclusion 
 
 that the earliest day on which Easter Sunday 
 
 y 2, 
 
34<> ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 could fall was Ma^rch 22 ; the Celtic Church 
 held to the old Latin rule that March 25 was 
 the earliest day. The Church Catholic had 
 come to hold that April 25 was the latest 
 possible day ; the Celtic Church held to the 
 old Latin rule that April 21 was the latest 
 possible day. As this was decided by the 
 date of the full moon, it follows that if by the 
 changed Latin practice the Church Catholic 
 kept Easl^er on' March 23, the Celtic Church, 
 which according to the earlier Latin rule said 
 that was too early, had to wait twenty-eight 
 days for the next full moon, and kept Easter on 
 April 20. This made a difference of a month in 
 Easter Day. That was one point of difference. 
 The other was this : the Church Catholic had 
 come in course of time to say that if the 
 moon which fixed the date of Easter, called the 
 Paschal moon, was full on a Sunday, not that 
 Sunday but the next must be taken as Easter 
 Day ; the Celtic Church continued to say that 
 if the Paschal moon was full on a Sunday, 
 that Sunday was Easter Day. This makes 
 a difference of a week in Easter Day. In a 
 very large proportion of cases, the two rules 
 the old rule of the Celts and the new rule of 
 the others fixed the same day as Easter Day, 
 and there was no difference noticeable. 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS. 34I 
 
 There was a third point of difference, de- 
 pending upon the question of the length of in- 
 terval after which the sun and the moon are in 
 the same relative position to one another. It is 
 approximately the case after nineteen years ; 
 more nearly after five periods of nineteen 
 years, that is, after ninety-five years. An 
 early calculation, with which Wilfrith cre- 
 dited the Celts, took eighty -four years. The 
 most elaborate of the calculations named by 
 Bede and Aldhelm put it at iive hundred and 
 thirty-two years a period which is arrived at 
 by taking twenty-eight periods of nineteen 
 years, that is, multiplying the solar cycle of 
 nineteen by the lunar cycle of twenty-eight. 
 I only make this statement to explain in a 
 surface manner what is meant when books 
 speak of the cycles in dispute. I do not 
 profess to have any deeper knowledge on the 
 subject. But I should like to add on the 
 general question that the late Professor Adams, 
 the famous astronomer, who was for many 
 years a very kind friend to me, used to tell me 
 that with all the care of all the Christian ages 
 the method finally adopted gives frequently a 
 wrong result; and that he could name one 
 fixed unmovable Sunday in the spring for 
 Easter Day which would more often be the 
 
342 ST. ALDHELM. 
 
 true day than is our present movable Sunday, 
 with its manifold inconveniences. 
 
 We can carry to a much later date than 
 Aldhelm's time the hatred of the Britons in 
 Wales for the English. Matthew of West- 
 minster, writing in the fourteenth century, 
 tells us this : " Those who fled to Wales have 
 never to this day ceased their hatred of the 
 English. They sally forth froijfi their moun- 
 tains like mice from caverns, and will take no 
 ransom from an English captive save his 
 head ^" That, however, was a racial hatred ; 
 there is no suggestion of ecclesiastical ani- 
 mosity as the cause. 
 
 Do not let us go away with the idea that 
 ecclesiastical hatred such as that of which 
 Aldhelm wrote and Laurentius and Mellitus 
 complained I intentionally call it ecclesias- 
 tical hatred, and not odium theologicum, for 
 I think the difference of phrase makes a just 
 and necessary discrimination do not let us 
 suppose that this was confined to the attitude 
 of the Britons to the English. We have seen 
 how Wilfrith was driven from one Christian 
 place of refuge to another, till at last he found 
 rest in the one pagan country left. But we 
 
 * This is much like the American maxim, " No good Injun 
 but dead Injun." 
 
THE LETTER TO THE BRITONS. 343 
 
 learn from his chaplain and biographer ^ that 
 he was treated in a manner curiously similar to 
 that in which the Demetians across the Severn 
 treated their English fellow- Christians. He 
 is speaking of an expulsion later than that 
 which sent Wilfrith through Wessex, and not 
 of Wilfrith alone, but of those who were on 
 his side. The anti-Wilfrith school of English 
 Christians treated the Wilfrith school as the 
 Britons treated the English. Wilfrith's op- 
 ponents so entirely execrated his fellowship 
 that if any abbat or priest of his party, bidden 
 by a faithful layman, made the sign of the cross 
 over the meat, it was cast out as a thing 
 offered to idols ; and all vessels which, any of 
 Wilfrith's party had used were washed before 
 those of the other side would touch them. 
 
 Such were the amenities of ecclesiastical 
 strife in the days which we call in not un- 
 natural impatience with the controversies of 
 our own times " the good old days." 
 
 ^ Eddi, ch. 49. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 A. Extracts from the Charter of the 
 
 Bishopric of Bristol as granted 
 BY Henry VIII. 
 
 The Pope's Ratification of the 
 Bishopric. 
 
 B. Notes on Wine-growing in England. 
 
 C. King Athelstan's Gift. 
 King Athelstan's Feast Day. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 Extracts from the Charter of the 
 Bishopric of Bristol. Bymer's Foedera, 
 xiv. 748, &c. 
 
 I. The site, place and church of the late 
 Monastery of St. Augustine is erected into an 
 episcopal see and a cathedral church. The 
 cathedral church is to consist of a bishop^ a 
 presbyter dean and six presbyter prebendaries. 
 It is nowhere suggested that the cathedral 
 church is a cathedral church of dean and 
 canons, or that the cathedral church has any 
 head but the bishop. 
 
 Ipsum scitum dicti nuper Monasterii Sancfi 
 Augustini ac locum et ecclesiam ipsius, in 
 sedem episcopalem ac in ecclesiam Cathedralem 
 creari, erigi, fundari, et stabiliri decrevimus, 
 prout per praesentes decernimus ad eandem 
 ecclesiam cathedralem de uno episcopo, et de 
 uno decano presbitero, et sex praebendariis 
 presbiteris, tenore praesentium, realiter et ad 
 plenum creamus, erigimus, fundamus, ordina- 
 musj facimus, constituimus, et stabilimus per- 
 petuis futuris temporibus duraturam, et sic 
 
348 APPENDIX A. 
 
 stabiliri ac imperpetuum inviolabiliter obser- 
 vari volumus et jubemus per praesentes. 
 
 II. The cathedral church is the cathedral 
 church and episcopal seat of the Bishops of 
 Bristol, decorated with the honours, dignities 
 and insignia of an episcopal seat, the said 
 episcopal seat to be held and enjoyed by the 
 Bishops of Bristol for ever. 
 
 Et ulterius volumus et ordinamus quod 
 ecclesia Cathedralis praedicta fit et deinceps 
 imperpetuum erit Ecclesia cathedralis et sedes 
 episcopalis dicti Pauli nunc episcopi Bris- 
 tolliae et successor um suorum episcoporum 
 BristoUiae, ipsamque ecclesiam Cathedralem 
 honoribus dignitatibus et insigniis sedis epi- 
 scopalis per praesentes decoramus, eandemque 
 sedem episcopalem praefato Paulo nunc Epi- 
 scopo et successoribus suis episcopis BristoUiae 
 damns et concedimus per praesentes, habendam 
 et gaudendam eidem Paulo Episcopo Bris- 
 toUiae et successoribus suis episcopis Bristol- 
 liae imperpetuum. 
 
 Ill The Bishops of Bristol have all the 
 jurisdiction, power and authority, ordinary 
 and episcopal, within the cathedral church and 
 within the diocese, which any of the Bishops 
 of Salisbury, Bath and Wells, Worcester, or 
 Gloucester, have had within the diocese of 
 
CHARTER OF THE BISHOPRIC. 349 
 
 Bristol [previous to its erection into a separate 
 diocese], or which any other bishop in the 
 realm of England can have. 
 
 Ac etiam volumus et ordinamus per prae- 
 sentes quod praefatus Paulus nunc Episcopus et 
 successores sui episcopi Bristolliae praedictae, 
 omnimodas jurisdictionem, potestatem, et au- 
 ctoritatem ordinariam i et episcopalem infra 
 praedictam ecclesiam Cathedralem et prae- 
 dictam Dioecesim exercere, facere et uti possit 
 et debeat, possint aut debeant, cum omnibus 
 et omnimodis emolumentis commoditatibus et 
 proficuis quibuscumque, ratione jurisdictionis 
 seu dignitatis praedictarum, infra Dioecesim 
 praedictam contingentibus, provenientibus 
 seu pro venire debentibus, et tam amplis modo 
 et forma prout dicti episcopi Sarum, Wellen. 
 sive Bath on. Wigorn. et Gloucestr. aut eorum 
 aliquis, aut aliquis vel aliqui praedecessorum 
 suorum infra dictam Dioecesim Bristolliae 
 habuerunt, tenuerunt vel gavisi fuerunt, 
 habuit, tenuit, vel gavisus fuit, seu habere, 
 tenere, vel gaudere debuerunt aut debuit, ac 
 prout aliquis alius episcopus in hoc regno no- 
 stro Angliae infra Dioecesim suam secundum 
 leges nostras exercere facere et uti solet possit 
 aut debet. 
 
 IV. The Dean and Prebendaries shall be 
 called the Dean and Chapter of the Cathe- 
 dral Church, and shall be the Chapter of the 
 Bishopric of Bristol, annexed, incorporated and 
 
350 APPENDIX A. 
 
 united to the Bishops of Bristol in the same 
 manner and form as the Dean and Chapter of 
 Sarum to their Bishop. 
 
 Et quod praefati Decanus et Praebendarii et 
 successores sui, Decanus et capitulum ecclesiae 
 Cathedralis sanctae et individuae Trinitatis 
 Bristolliae imperpetuum vocabuntur et appel- 
 labuntur, et quod praefati Decanus et Praeben- 
 darii ecclesiae Cathedralis praedictae et suc- 
 cessores sui sint et imperpetuum erunt Capitu- 
 lum Episcopatus Bristolliae praedictae, sitque 
 idem Capitulum praefato Paulo nunc Episcopo 
 et successoribus suis Episcopis Bristolliae, per- 
 petuis futuris temporibus annexum, incorpora- 
 tum, et unitum, eisdem modo et forma quibus 
 Decanus et Capitulum ecclesiae Cathedralis 
 Sarum annexum incorporatum et unitum 
 existit ... 
 
 V. There is a final safeguarding of the juris- 
 diction and authority of the Bishop (see III) 
 over the Cathedral Church, and over the Dean 
 and Chapter, and over their successors. 
 
 ac exceptis etiam et omnimodo salvis dicta 
 jurisdictione et auctoritate episcopali in dictam 
 ecclesiam cathedralem sanctae et individuae 
 Trinitatis Bristolliae, et dicti ejusdem loci 
 Decanum et Capitulum ac in eorum succes- 
 sores modo et forma praemissis. 
 
 VI. The Abbat's House, with its grounds 
 
CHARTER OF THE BISHOPRIC. 35I 
 
 and belongings, is assigned as the mansion, 
 habitation, or palace, of the Bishop. 
 
 Et insuper, volentes commoditati dicti nunc 
 episcopi et successor um suorum uberius pro- 
 videri, sciatis quod nos, de gratia nostra 
 speciali, ac ex certa scientia et mero motu 
 nostris, dedimus et concessimus, ac per prae- 
 sentes damns et concedimus, dicto Paulo 
 Busshe Episcopo Bristolliae et successoribus 
 suis Episcopis Bristolliae imperpetuum, totum 
 illud magnum messuagium, domum et habita- 
 tionem situatam sive existentem infra scitum 
 ambitum seu circuitum dicti monasterii sane ti 
 Augustini Bristolliae, vulgariter vocatam Le 
 Abbotts Lodging, ac etiam totum ambitum, 
 septum, circuitum, et praecinctum ejusdem ma- 
 gni messuagii domus et habitationis, usualiter 
 vocatae le Abbotts Lodging, necnon omnia et 
 singula domos, aedificia, structuras, cameras, 
 voultas, sellaria, solaria, oi-tos, pomaria, gardina, 
 stagna, terras, et territoria quaecumque scituata 
 jacentia sive existentia aut constructa seu 
 aedificata infra dictum septum, circuitum, 
 ambitum, seu praecinctum dicti magni mes- 
 suagii domus et habitationis vocatae le Abbotts 
 Lodglvg, aut ut membra pars vel parcellae 
 ejusdem magni messuagii domus seu habita- 
 tionis vocatae le Abbotts Lodging antehac 
 habita, cognita, accepta, seu reputata existentia, 
 ita quod dictum magnum messuagium domus 
 et habitationis vulgariter nuncupatae le Abbotts 
 Lodging et caetera singula praemissa infra 
 
352 APPENDIX A. 
 
 ambitum, septum, circuituin sen praecinctum 
 ejusdem magni messuagii domus et habita- 
 tionis existentia de caetero abliinc sint et esse 
 censeantur et appellentur mansio habitaculum 
 seu palatium dicti nunc Episcopi Bristolliae 
 et successorum suorum imperpetuum. 
 
 VII. The ordinary name is the Palace. 
 
 Exceptis tamen ac omnimodo salvis dicto 
 nunc Episcopp et successoribus suis Episcopis 
 Bristolliae imperpetuum omnibus illis locis, 
 domibus, structuris, aedificiis, terris, territoriis, 
 et caeteris praemissis palatio Episcopali assig- 
 natis et superius specificatis cum suis perti- 
 nentiis. 
 
 VIII. The Town of Bristol is raised to the 
 rank of a City, and the County of the Town 
 of Bristol, made a County by Edward I, into 
 the County of the City of Bristol. 
 
 Ac quod tota villa nostra Bristolliae exnunc 
 et deinceps imperpetuum fit Civitas, ipsam- 
 que Civitatem Bristolliae vocari appellari et 
 nominari volumus et decernimus, ac quod totus 
 ille comitatus noster villae nostrae Bristolliae 
 de caetero imperpetuum erit comitatus civitatis 
 nostrae Bristolliae, ac ipsum comitatum villae 
 Bristolliae posthac imperpetuum comitatum 
 civitatis nostrae Bristolliae nuncupari et nomi- 
 nari volumus et decrevimus per praesentes. . . 
 
PAPAL RATIFICATION. 353 
 
 The Pope's Katification of the Bishopric. 
 
 The Komans found themselves in a curious 
 difficulty when they had got rid of Bushe, 
 He was got rid of under a commission ^ dated 
 March 13, 1554, to Gardiner, Tunstall, Bonner, 
 and others to deprive the Archbishop of York 
 and the Bishops of St. David's, Chichester and 
 Bristol, " bishops, or at least bearing them- 
 selves as such," for having de facto married, 
 which thing de jure they ought not to have 
 done, Bushe' s wife had been five months 
 dead ; he resigned before deprivation, and 
 on March 19 a conge d^elire was issued for 
 Bristol. John Holyman, a staunch upholder 
 of the validity of Catharine's marriage, was 
 consecrated Nov. 18, 1554, by Edmund Bonner 
 and two of the new Roman bishops. York, 
 St. David's, and Chichester, caused no diffi- 
 culty. Those sees had for many centuries 
 been acknowledged to be in the fullest sense 
 bishoprics. But the consecration to Bristol 
 took it for, granted that Bristol was a bishop- 
 ric although created by Henry VHI on his 
 own authority after his breach with the Pope, 
 and that it was vacant. These were two very 
 
 ^ Earner, Foedera, xv. 370. 
 Z 
 
354 APPENDIX A. 
 
 awkward points for the Romans. How could 
 it be a bishopric? And how could it be 
 vacant if not a bishopric 1 
 
 Pope Paul IV dealt with these difficulties 
 by quaintly complicated methods of phrase, in 
 a Bull ^ addressed June 21, 1555, to the Bishop 
 of Bristol (John), in itself a very awkward 
 address. The see had been founded during 
 the most pernicious schism, which now, by the 
 mercy of God and the piety of King Philip and 
 Queen Mary, had been extinguished. It had 
 afterwards been propped up by Cardinal Pole, 
 on sufficient authority, as he asserted, from 
 Pope Julius 2 ; and now by him, Paul IV ^, 
 The origin of the vacancy was not defined, 
 whether it dated from the original erection or 
 was due to any other cause. Pope Julius had 
 authorized Cardinal Pole to provide bishops 
 for English sees, vacant in any way, and he 
 had de facto provided Holyman as bishop 
 before the approbation of the erection of the 
 see. Holyman had de facto received the 
 possession and rule; had de facto received 
 consecration, which otherwise had been duly 
 
 ^ The Bull will be found in Nicholls and Taylor's Bristol 
 Collections, ii. 66. 
 
 ' Julius III had died that year, 1555, as also his successor 
 Marcellus. 
 
 ' This allows the erection by Henry VIII. 
 
PAPAL RATIFICATION. 355 
 
 and rightly conferred ^ ; had ruled well and 
 prosperously. The Pope absolves him from 
 excommunication, suspension, and interdict; 
 provides him as Bishop of Bristol, however the 
 see may be vacant; gives to him cure and 
 administration in spirituals and temporals ; 
 but first he must take an oath to Pope Paul 
 and the Roman Church. The Pope begs the 
 King and Queen to support him in his rule by 
 their power. 
 
 On May i there arrived from Philip and 
 Mary three copes, one of red satin with stripes 
 of gold ; one of yellow velvet ; one of blue 
 velvet; in each case for priest, deacon, and 
 sub- deacon. Also aulter fronts of yellow 
 velvet, of red satin with stripes of gold, of blue 
 velvet and yellow satin, of violet velvet and 
 green satin. 
 
 ' This might raise a curious question as to " intention. 
 
 Z 2 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 WlNE-QROWINa IN ENGLAND. 
 
 See p. 3^. 
 
 The late Marquis of Bute planted a vine- 
 yard in the open, at Castle Coch in Glamor- 
 ganshire, in the year 1875. The Royal Mus- 
 cadine on the walls of Cardiff Castle had pro- 
 duced large crops of perfectly ripened grapes, 
 and at Castle Coch the soil, and the slope of 
 the ground towards the south, facing the 
 Bristol Channel about four miles off, were 
 exactly what makes the success of the best 
 vineyards of Europe. Two kinds of grape 
 were chosen from among those grown in the 
 colder of the wine-producing parts of France, 
 the Gamay Noir and Millie Blanche ; but only 
 a small supply of vines could be procured, 
 enough to plant an eighth part of the three 
 acres allotted for the purpose. TKe skilful 
 gardener, Mr. Pettigrew, soon propagated 
 sufficient vines to cover the ground, planting 
 them three feet apart. Another vineyard was 
 planted later, about seven miles from Cardiff 
 and close to the Bristol Channel. In 1893, 
 
WINE-GROWING IN ENGLAND. 357 
 
 when five acres in all were under cultivation, 
 there were enormous crops, and the i,ooo 
 dozens of wine made was worth, at 60s., the 
 price it always fetched as sold from the vine- 
 yard, 3,000 ; but it has to spend three years 
 in cask, and four years in bottle, before it 
 becomes fit for consumption. The wine made 
 in 1 88 1 was sold by auction in Birmingham 
 in 1894 at 115s. the dozen. There have been 
 great fluctuations in the supply; thus in 1879, 
 a year which promised well till the end of May, 
 every grape dropped off and not one bunch 
 was gathered ; but the produce of the great 
 crop of 1 893 was sufiicient to pay all the ex- 
 penses since the vineyards were started in 
 1875. There are now fourteen acres under 
 cultivation, and the yield is great. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that William of 
 Malmesbury knew what he was writing about 
 when he praised in such high terms the wine- 
 growing qualities of the valley of the Severn ^. 
 
 This passage from Malmesbury settled a 
 question which was raised early last century, 
 whether the vineyards mentioned in early 
 times in England did not mean merely 
 
 ^ The above facts are taken from an article in the Journal 
 of the Boyal Horticultural Society iov A\n\\ 1895, kindly lent 
 by the author, Mr. A. Pettigrew, Lord Bute's gardener. 
 
35^ APPENDIX B. 
 
 orchards. There is no mistake about William's 
 testimony here. Only one other place in 
 England is mentioned by him as specially 
 successful in wine-growing, namely Thorney, 
 in Cambridgeshire. There the vines were 
 grown in two ways, either trailing on the 
 ground or supported on high poles. In one of 
 the thirty-eight mentions of vineyards which 
 occur in the Domesday Survey, at Rageney in 
 Essex, the amount of wine produced is given 
 6 arpents of vineyard yield 20 modii of wine 
 in a good year. If the modius in wet measure 
 meant, as is said, 64 of our gallons, or 42, the 
 yield was i,:i8o gallons, or 840. It is not 
 certain what the size of an arpent was ; if, as 
 has been maintained, it was roughly the same 
 as an acre, differing only in the fact that 
 except in Wilts it was used only for vineyards, 
 the yield was 106 dozen or 70 dozen per acre. 
 The abnormal year 1893 produced on Lord 
 Bute's vineyards 200 dozen per acre. 
 
 It may be mentioned in this connection 
 that the word " wine " appears to have been 
 used in early times in England to mean 
 merely the fresh juice of the grape. Thus we 
 are told of Anselm ^ that he was so dear to a 
 certain sick man that the man would have 
 
 ^ Dean Church's Anselm, p. 81. 
 
WINE-GROWING IN ENGLAND. 359 
 
 Anselm press his wine for him. When An- 
 selm came to see him, he squeezed the grapes 
 with one hand and caught the juice in the 
 other, from which the sick man drank it. He 
 was at last restored to health. A less com- 
 plimentary name for the juice of the English 
 grape was used four hundred years after An- 
 selm*s time. King's College in Camhridge had 
 a considerable growth of vines, and in 1483 
 they paid one Thomas Figge threepence for 
 pressing on the 7th of September seven 
 gallons of verjuice from the college grapes ^. 
 Fifteen years before, they had used crab apples 
 for the purpose, and had paid a half-penny 
 a gallon for le Stampyng de le Crabhez. 
 
 Wine was regularly made from grapes, 
 within the memory of man, at a place in this 
 diocese only about ten miles from William 
 of Malmesbury's old home. The miller at 
 Slaughterford grew the grapes and made the 
 wine. 
 
 * Willis and Clark, iii. 582 : " pro pressyng vii lagenarum 
 de verjus de Grapys coUegii iiic?." 
 
APPENDIX a 
 KiNa Athelstan's Gift. 
 
 See p. i^i8. 
 
 The ceremony of admitting a commoner 
 of Malmesbury to his common-right has been 
 handed down from the earliest times. 
 
 The steward cuts a turf of grass in the acre 
 which is to be transferred, and a twig from the 
 nearest hedge. The person to be admitted 
 puts two shillings into the hole from which 
 the turf has been cut. The steward fixes 
 the twigj in the turf and delivers it to the 
 new commoner with these words 
 
 This turf and twig I give to thee 
 As free as Athelstan gave to me ; 
 And a loving brother mayest thou be. 
 
 The steward takes the money out of the 
 hole, and the new commoner replaces the turf. 
 The money goes towards the expenses of the 
 annual dinner. The following account of the 
 proceedings in the local newspaper will serve 
 to illustrate the text. 
 
36i 
 
 King Athelstan's Feast Day. 
 
 On. Tuesday (Trinity Tuesday) was com- 
 memorated King Athelstan s gift of the 
 King's Heath (or Malmesbury Common) to 
 the freemen of the borough. At one o'clock 
 the members of the Old Corporation met at 
 the Court House of St. John for the purpose 
 of receiTing the young commoners who in- 
 tended taking up their rights as commoners 
 and paying the usual fines. There was 
 a large company present. The chair was 
 taken, in the absence of the High Steward 
 of the borough, Colonel^. N. Miles (in South 
 Africa), by Mr. M. H. Chubb, deputy High 
 Steward, who was supported by the warden, 
 Mr. John Wall, and the burgesses and as- 
 sistant burgesses of the Old Corporation. 
 The Court being formally opened by the 
 Sergeant-at-Mace, the roll of officers was 
 called, and the following young commoners 
 were admitted, viz.: Messrs. Walter Hanks, 
 John Gray, Maurice Paginton, Frank Clarke, 
 Walter Harris, and Richard Boulton, in their 
 own right as freemen, and Messrs. Ernest 
 Albert Beard, William Brown, and William 
 Keynes, in their wives' right as freemen's 
 daughters. Messrs. Frank Price, Luke Jef- 
 feries, and William Pouting were admitted 
 as assistant burgesses by paying the usual 
 fine of los. each. The court then adjourned. 
 At two o'clock the members of the old Cor- 
 
362 APPENDIX C. 
 
 poration and friends, numbering about forty, 
 dined at the George Hotel. At eight o'clock 
 the trustees of the King's Heath met at the 
 George Hotel, the newly-elected young com- 
 moners going through the process of balloting 
 for the order in which they should receive 
 their allotments. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbats, election of, 143-5. 
 
 Abson, 172. 
 
 Acircius, letter to, 304. 
 
 Adrian (Hadrian), 58, 70 ; 
 Aldhelm's letter to, 77. 
 
 JEmsed, 187. 
 
 Alcuin, 9, 244. 
 
 Aldfrith, 269-74. 
 
 Aldhelm, his period, 17, 
 21, 59-62 ; name and 
 race, 68, &c. ; education, 
 70 ; poet and musician, 
 79, 80 ; style, 106-9 ; 
 labours, no, in, 147, 
 148; monasteries, 111-3; 
 churches, 116, 117 ; con- 
 cessions to monks, 144 ; 
 miracles, 122, 123, 129, 
 132, 140-2, 200-2, 213; 
 quotations, 301-4 ; elect- 
 ed bishop, 139 ; death, 
 148 ; funeral, 149 ; me- 
 morial crosses, 149-80 ; 
 shrine, 25, 182, &c. ; 
 canonized, 211 ; letters 
 from to Adrian, 77 ; to 
 the clergy of Wilfrith, 
 90 ; to Ethelwald, 92 ; 
 to Eahfrid, 261 ; to Acir- 
 cius, 301-12 ; to Osgith, 
 325 ; to the Britons, 327- 
 43 ; letters to from Cel- 
 lanus, 82 ; from a Scot, 
 259; his sacred hymns, 
 235-58 ; his Praise of 
 Virginity, 313-23. 
 
 Alfred, King, 79, 80, 186. 
 Altar of white marble, 134. 
 Ambrose, 185. 
 Amiatinus, Codex, 65. 
 Angilbertus, altar of, 185. 
 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 35, 
 
 37- 
 Apostles, St. Peter and St. 
 
 Paul, tombs of, 95-101 ; 
 
 error of Koman Catholic 
 
 bishops, 98, 99 ; equality 
 
 of, 250-8. 
 Armagh, 279. 
 Art, 62-6, 134-7. 
 Artvvil, 81. 
 Athelstan, 188, 189, 216-21 ; 
 
 Appendix C. 
 Augustine, at Cricklade, 
 
 50-7- 
 
 Barking, 313. 
 Bath, 151, 169. 
 Bath stone, 233. 
 Beam, miracle of, 200-2. 
 Bede, 106-8, 255-8, 338. 
 Benedict Biscop, 134-7. 
 Berhtwald, 87. 
 Birinus, 179. 
 Bishopstrow, 151. 
 Boniface, 9. 
 
 Book, miracle of, 140-2. 
 Bore of the Severn, 33. 
 Borgo, in Rome, 103. 
 Boy, miracle of, 132. 
 Bradford, 112, 153, 168, 177, 
 234 ; battle of, 17, 49. 
 
364 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Brakspear, Mr. H., 233. 
 
 Brihtwold, 208. 
 
 Bristol, William's accounts 
 
 of, 34 ; see of, 10-16, 
 
 224-30 ; Appendix A. 
 Britons, 38-56, letter to, 
 
 327, &c. 
 Brunanburh, 219. 
 Brussels, Anglo-Saxon cross 
 
 at, 191-200. 
 Bruton, 134. 
 Bugge, 243-9. 
 Byzantine Art, 187. 
 
 Cadfan, King, 335. 
 Calne, 213. 
 
 Campana, Campanula, 205. 
 Canonization by Lanfranc, 
 
 211. 
 Carthach, St., 45. 
 
 Cathedral Charter. 
 
 \S, 
 
 Appendix A ; Statutes, 
 
 14, 15- 
 Ceadwalla, 89, 97. 
 Cellanus, letter to Aldhelm, 
 
 82. 
 Chapel of gold and silver, 
 
 189. 
 Charter of Bishopric, 13, 
 
 Appendix A. 
 Chasuble, miracle of, 129. 
 Chief Apostles, the, 95-101, 
 
 253-8. 
 Churches at Malmesbury, 
 
 117. 
 Clocca, 206. 
 Clonfert, 279. 
 Clonmacnois, 279. 
 Colerne, 152, 171. 
 Columba, his Lament, 96 ; 
 
 coronation by, 285, &c. 
 Confortare, 296-9. 
 Consecration of Bishops, 
 
 18-20. 
 
 Corfe, 123-8. 
 
 Coronation Service, 285- 
 
 300- 
 Crosses, 62-4, 149-80, 191- 
 
 Dagobert,"28o. 
 Danegelt, 209. 
 Daniel, Bishop, 107. 
 Dante, 206. 
 Deerhurst, 177. 
 Demetians, 334. 
 Deorham, battle of, 42. 
 Dioceses, divisions of, 105, 
 
 139, 221, &c. 
 Doulting, 148, &c., 168. 
 Dolton, 159. 
 Dragons, 158, &c. 
 Drahmal, a Saxon artist, 
 
 195-9- 
 Dress of women, 318,322-5. 
 Dunstan, 202-8. 
 
 Eahfrid, letter to, 261-4. 
 Easter controversy, 327, &c. 
 Ecgbert, 61, 276, &c. 
 Ecguin, Bishop, 149. 
 English College in Kome, 
 
 104. 
 Enigmas, 68, 308-12. 
 Ethel wulf and art, 183. 
 
 Faritius, 22-5, 203-11. 
 Frithestan, 186. 
 Frome, 150, 168. 
 Fursey, 82. 
 
 Gaul, Cisalpine, 66. 
 Geruntius, King, 331. 
 Glastonbury, 162-7, 204, 
 
 283. 
 Gloucester, 161^ 
 Gloucester, Vale of, 29-34. 
 Godefrey, 211. 
 
 ) VHkJ^diRr'^ ""''' 
 
INDEX. 
 
 365 
 
 Godwin, Earl, 49, 50, 227, 
 
 228. 
 Gold work, 183, &c. 
 
 Hadrian (Adrian), 58, 70 ; 
 
 letter to, 77. 
 Harold, Earl, 50, 227, 228. 
 Hermann, Bishop, 49, 227, 
 
 228. 
 
 Ina, 98, 189, &c. 
 Indract, 283. 
 Inis Bofin, 278, 281. 
 lona, 278, 282, 284. 
 Ireland, connection with, 
 
 45-8, 61, 81-3, 259, &c., 
 
 283, &c. 
 Irish Art, 177. 
 Irishman, letter from an, 
 
 259-61. 
 Irish students unruly, 263, 
 
 264. 
 
 John the Scot, 209, 264-9. 
 
 Kenstec, 223. 
 Kenten, 57, 69, 70. 
 
 Lanfranc, canonizes Aid- 
 helm, 211, 
 Leland, 40, 44. 
 Lindisfarne Gospels, 64. 
 Lismore, 47, 279. 
 Littleton Drew, 152, 172-6. 
 Logeman, Dr., 192-200. 
 Lombard Art, 66, 179. 
 
 Maildubh (Maeldubh), 44- 
 8, 209. 
 
 Malmesbury, ^7, 38-57 ; 
 origin of name, 73-6 ; 
 sixchurchesat, 117 ; later 
 history, 181, &c.; modern 
 condition,2i5,&c. ; Abbey 
 Church, 230-4. 
 
 Metres, 304-6. 
 Milan, 185. 
 Minety, 176. 
 
 Monasteries, decay of, 146, 
 147. 
 
 Nola, 206. 
 
 Organs, 203. 
 Osmund, Bishop, 211. 
 
 Pen, battle of, 17, 49. 
 
 Peronne, 83. 
 
 Petrine claims, 95-ioi> 
 
 250-8. 
 Plague, the yellow, 275. 
 Pouting, Mr. E. A., 234. 
 Pope, the, ratifies the see of 
 
 Bristol, 13, Appendix A. 
 Profession of obedience,223. 
 Protestant, 297. 
 Pucklechurch, 12, 172,213. 
 Pyramids, 164, 165. 
 
 Ramsbury, 155-7 ; see of, 
 
 225-8. 
 Ratification of bishopric of 
 
 Bristol, 353. 
 Rattlebone, 221. 
 Roman Catholic bishops, 
 
 error of, 98, 99, 252. 
 Rome, reason for visiting, 
 
 95-101 ; the School of 
 
 the Saxons at, 102-5 ; 
 
 Aldhelm's visit to, ia8- 
 
 32 
 Rowberrow, 158. 
 Runes, 63, 64. 
 Ruthwell, Saxon poem at, 
 
 195. 
 
 Schola Saxonum at Rome, 
 
 102-5. 
 Selwood, 17. 
 
366 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Sergius I, 130, 132. 
 
 Virginity, praise of, 312- 
 
 Sherborne, 142, 234; see of, 
 
 22. 
 
 221, &c. 
 
 
 Sherston, 22X. 
 
 Wanborough, battle of, 43. 
 
 Squilla, 206. 
 
 Wareham, 123-8. 
 
 St. Michael, church of, 210. 
 
 Warin, 209. 
 
 St. Peter and St. Paul, 
 
 Wen, 166. 
 
 dedications to, 116, 252; 
 
 Westbury, 153. 
 
 compared, 250-8. 
 
 West Camel, 159. 
 
 Ste. Gudule, 191-200. 
 
 Wilfrith, in Wessex, 85-90 ; 
 
 Sunning, 155. 
 
 Aldhelm's letter to his 
 
 
 clergy, 90. 
 
 Telligraphs, 249. 
 
 William of Malmesbury, 
 
 Theodore, 18, 60, 263. 
 
 26-9 ; scheme of his his- 
 
 Thorn, 166. 
 
 tory of Aldhelm, 67, &c. 
 
 
 Wilton, 155 ; abbess of, 
 
 Vercelli, 197. 
 
 323. 
 
 Vineyards, 31-3, Appendix 
 
 Wimborne, 143. 
 
 B. 
 
 Wine-growing in England, 
 
 Virgin Mary, festivals of, 
 
 31-3, Appendix B. 
 
 240-2 ; prayers to, 251. 
 
 Wolvinius, 185. 
 
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