Legends of the Saxon Saints Part 12

[3] Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, pp. 79, 80. (Bell and Daldy, 1873.) Burke records this tradition with an entire credence. See note in p.

288.

[4] _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chap. x.

[5] Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, pp. 88, 89.

[6] P. 89.

[7] P. 100.

[8] Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, p. 103.

[9] _The Prose Edda._

[10] _Northern Antiquities_: the Editor, T. A. Blackwell.

[11] P. 474.

[12] P. 475.

[13] T. A. Blackwell. See Mallet's _Northern Antiquities_, p. 476.

[14] 'This (Christianity), as it introduced great mildness into the tempers of the people, made them less warlike, and consequently prepared the way to their forming one body.'--Burke, _An Abridgment of English History_, book ii. chap. iii.

[15] _Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 330.

[16] _Saxons in England_, vol. i. p. 335.

[17] _History of the Anglo-Saxons_, vol. i. p. 241.

[18] 'In process of time, Britain, besides the Britons and Picts, received a third nation, the Scots, who migrating from Ireland, under their leader Reuda, either by fair means or by force of arms secured to themselves those settlements among the Picts which they still possess.'--Bede's _Ecclesiastical Hist._, book i. cap. i.

[19] 'In the fifth century there appear in North Britain two powerful and distinct tribes, who are not before named in history. These are the Picts and the Scots.... The Scots, on the other hand, were of Irish origin; for, to the great confusion of ancient history, the inhabitants of Ireland, those at least of the conquering and predominating caste, were called Scots. A colony of these Irish Scots, distinguished by the name of Dalriads, or Dalreudini, natives of Ulster, had early attempted a settlement on the coast of Argyleshire; they finally established themselves there under Fergus, the son of Eric, about the year 503, and, recruited by colonies from Ulster, continued to multiply and increase until they formed a nation which occupied the western side of Scotland.'--Sir Walter Scott's _History of Scotland_, vol. i. p. 7.

Scott proceeds to record the eventual triumph of the Irish or Scotic race over the Pictish in the ninth century. 'So complete must have been the revolution that the very language of the Picts is lost.... The country united under his sway (that of Kenneth Mac Alpine) was then called for the first time Scotland.' The same statement is made by Burke: 'The princ.i.p.al of these were the Scots, a people of ancient settlement in Ireland, and who had thence been transplanted into the northern part of Britain, which afterwards derived its name from that colony.'--Burke, _Abridgment of English History_, book i. cap. iv.

[20] _Moines d'Occident_, vol. iv. pp. 127-8. Par le Comte de Montalembert.

[21] Cardinal Newman's _Historical Sketches_, vol. i. p. 266: _The Northmen and Normans in England and Ireland_.

[22] Sara Coleridge.

[23] As the ill.u.s.tration of an Age, Bede's _History_ has been well compared by Cardinal Manning with the _Fioretti di S. Francesco_, that exquisite ill.u.s.tration of the thirteenth century.

[24] The motto of the University of Oxford.

[25] Tacitus.

[26] St. John of Beverley.

NOTES.

Page x.x.xvi. _The Irish Mission in England during the seventh century was one of the great things of history._

The following expressions of Dr. von Dollinger respecting the Irish Church are more ardent than any I have ventured to use:--

'During the sixth and seventh centuries the Church of Ireland stood in the full beauty of its bloom. The spirit of the Gospel operated amongst the people with a vigorous and vivifying power: troops of holy men, from the highest to the lowest ranks of society, obeyed the counsel of Christ, and forsook all things that they might follow Him. There was not a country in the world, during this period, which could boast of pious foundations or of religious communities equal to those that adorned this far distant island. Among the Irish the doctrines of the Christian religion were preserved pure and entire; the names of heresy or of schism were not known to them; and in the Bishop of Rome they acknowledged and venerated the Supreme Head of the Church on earth, and continued with him, and through him with the whole Church, in a never interrupted communion. The schools in the Irish cloisters were at this time the most celebrated in all the West.... The strangers who visited the island, not only from the neighbouring sh.o.r.es of Britain, but also from the most remote nations of the Continent, received from the Irish people the most hospitable reception, a gratuitous entertainment, free instruction, and even the books that were necessary for the studies....

On the other hand, many holy and learned Irishmen left their own country to proclaim the Faith, to establish or to reform monasteries in distant lands, and thus to become the benefactors of almost every country in Europe.... The foundation of many of the English Sees is due to Irishmen.... These holy men served G.o.d, and not the world; they possessed neither gold nor silver, and all that they received from the rich pa.s.sed through their hands into the hands of the poor. Kings and n.o.bles visited them from time to time only to pray in their churches, or to listen to their sermons; and as long as they remained in the cloisters they were content with the humble food of the brethren.

Wherever one of these ecclesiastics or monks came, he was received by all with joy; and whenever he was seen journeying across the country, the people streamed around him to implore his benediction, and to hearken to his words. The priests entered the villages only to preach or to administer the Sacraments; and so free were they from avarice, that it was only when compelled by the rich and n.o.ble that they would accept lands for the erection of monasteries.'

Page xliii. _For both countries that early time was a period of wonderful spiritual greatness._

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of quoting the following pa.s.sage ill.u.s.trating the religious greatness both of the Irish and the English at the period referred to:--

'The seventh and eighth centuries are the glory of the Anglo-Saxon Church, as the sixth and seventh are of the Irish. As the Irish missionaries travelled down through England, France, and Switzerland, to Lower Italy, and attempted Germany at the peril of their lives, converting the barbarian, restoring the lapsed, encouraging the desolate, collecting the scattered, and founding churches, schools, and monasteries as they went along; so amid the deep pagan woods of Germany, and round about, the English Benedictine plied his axe, and drove his plough, planted his rude dwelling, and raised his rustic altar upon the ruins of idolatry; and then, settling down as a colonist upon the soil, began to sing his chants and to copy his old volumes, and thus to lay the slow but sure foundations of the new civilisation. Distinct, nay antagonistic, in character and talents, the one nation and the other, Irish and English--the one more resembling the Greek, the other the Roman--open from the first perhaps to jealousies as well as rivalries, they consecrated their respective gifts to the Almighty Giver, and, labouring together for the same great end, they obliterated whatever there was of human infirmity in their mutual intercourse by the merit of their common achievements. Each by turn could claim pre-eminence in the contest of sanct.i.ty and learning. In the schools of science England has no name to rival Erigena in originality, or St. Virgil in freedom of thought; nor (among its canonised women) any saintly virgin to compare with St. Bridget; nor, although it has 150 saints in its calendar, can it pretend to equal that Irish mult.i.tude which the Book of Life alone is large enough to contain. Nor can Ireland, on the other hand, boast of a doctor such as St. Bede, or of an apostle equal to St. Boniface, or of a martyr like St. Thomas; or of so long a catalogue of royal devotees as that of the thirty male or female Saxons who, in the course of two centuries, resigned their crowns; or as the roll of twenty-three kings, and sixty queens and princes, who, between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, gained a place among the saints.'--Cardinal Newman, _Historic Sketches_, 'The Isles of the North,' pp. 128-9.

Page 16.

_Instant each navy at the other dashed Like wild beast, instinct-taught._

This image will be found in the description of a Scandinavian sea-fight in a remarkable book less known than it deserves to be, _The Invasion_, by Gerald Griffin, author of _The Collegians_.

The Saxons were, however, in early times as much pirates as the Danes were at a later.

Page 18. The achievement of Hastings had been rehea.r.s.ed at a much earlier period by Harald.

Page 39. _At Ely, Elmham, and beside the Cam._

In the reign of Sigebert, Felix, Bishop of East Anglia, founded schools respecting which Montalembert remarks: 'Plusieurs ont fait remonter a ces ecoles monastiques l'origine de la celebre universite de Cambridge.'

Page 44. _How beautiful, O Sion, are thy courts!_

The following hymns are from the Office for the Consecration of a Church.

St. Fursey. Page 67.

_How one with brow Lordlier than man's, and visionary eyes._

'Whilst Sigebert still governed the kingdom there came out of Ireland a holy man named Fursey, renowned both for his words and actions, and remarkable for singular virtues, being desirous to live a stranger for Our Lord, wherever an opportunity should offer.... He built himself the monastery (Burghcastle in Suffolk) wherein he might with more freedom indulge his heavenly studies. There falling sick, as the book about his life informs us, he fell into a trance, and, quitting his body from the evening till the c.o.c.kcrow, he was found worthy to behold the choirs of angels, and hear the praises which are sung in heaven.... He not only saw the greater joys of the Blessed, but also extraordinary combats of Evil Spirits.'--Bede, _Hist._ book iii. cap. xix. 'C'etait un moine irlandais nomme Fursey, de tres-n.o.ble naissance et celebre depuis sa jeunesse dans son pays par sa science et ses visions.... Dans la princ.i.p.ale de ses visions Ampere et Ozanam se sont accordes a reconnaitre une des sources poetiques de la _Divine Comedie_.'--Montalembert, _Les Moines d'Occident_, tome iv. pp. 93-4.