a far greater perfection in the age now before us1. Notker, a monk of St Gallen, and a distinguished theological writer under Louis le Débonnaire*, is said to have made himself remarkable among his contemporaries by his proficiency in sacred music, and to have composed a scientific treatise on the subject 2. And we may believe that he was not

1

In England we hear of James the deacon at York (Bede, H. E. ii. 20), Eddi Stephen at York (iv. 2; see also Eddi Stephani Vit. Wilfridi, c. 14, where he is associated with Æona), Putta at Rochester (ibid.), John, abbot of St Martin's, at Bishopwearmouth (iv. 18), and Acca and Maban at Hexham (v. 20), as actively engaged in diffusing a knowledge of Roman church music through the country round them. Of John it is said (Bede, l. c.): "Non solum autem Johannes ipsius monasterii fratres docebat, verum de omnibus pene ejusdem provinciæ monasteriis ad audiendum eum qui cantandi erant periti confluebant. Sed et ipsum per loca in quibus doceret multi invitare curabant." See also Bede, Vita Abb. Wiremuth. 6. Wilfrid bishop of York, when rebutting the charges of his enemies by the recital of his own services, mentions (Eddi Vit. Wilf. 45) "quomodo juxta ritum primitivæ Ecclesiæ consono vocis modulamine binis adstantibus choris persultare [Ultra-Umbrensem gentem] responsoriis antiphonisque reciprocis instruerem." Heriveus bishop of Rheims in the tenth century is praised for his skill in church music as well as his excellent administration of his see (Frodoard, Hist. Ec. Rem. lib. iv. c. 11. ap. Guizot, Coll. des Mém. v. 531; Couvenier, p. 645).

*

See the Hist. Litt. de Fr. t. vi. p. 134.

2 Notker, Ratpert, and Turtilo are mentioned together by Ekkehard (Casus S. Galli. 3. ap. Pertz. ii. 94—101) as pupils of Marcellus, an Irish monk settled at St Gallen, "qui in divinis æque potens et humanis septem liberales eos duxit ad artes, maxime autem ad musicam." Turtilo "erat eloquens, voce clarus, celaturæ elegans et picturæ artifex, musicus sicut et socii ejus sed in omni genere fidium et fistularum præ omnibus. Nam et filios nobilium in loco ab abbatede stinato in fidibus edocuit.

alone in devoting himself to an art which, while in its simpler stage it adapts itself to the most uneducated society, assumed under clerical influence so important a place in the training which the Church bestowed upon

her ministers 1.

So it is that, as we examine one after another of the innumerable means by which the civilization of the human race may be advanced, and nations raised from a savage state to the full exercise of those talents which it is one of the noblest objects of life to develop, we discover that they were without a single exception in the hands of the priestly order. And though, in the gentler arts as in the severer studies, we must ever regret that for so many centuries the knowledge and cultivation which was turned freely to the profit of the Church should have been denied to the laity, yet we ought not on that account to refuse due praise to those men who by exerting the faculties of research and application, of which the cloister is so successful a nurse, handed down through an unbroken

Sed inter hæc omnia, quod præ aliis est, in choro strenuus, in latebris erat lacrimosus; versus et melodias facere præpotens." “Quæ autem Turtilo dictaverat, singularis et agnoscibilis melodie sunt, quia per psalterium seu per rothtam, qua potentior ipse erat, neumata inventa dulciora sunt, ut apparet in Hodie cantandus et Omnium virtutum gemmis, quos quidem tropos ad offerendam quam ipse rex fecerat Karolus obtulit canendos."

1 On the efforts of Charlemagne to reform Church music in France, by means of instruction from Rome, see the 'Monach. Sangallensis,' Gest. Kar. i. 10. (Also Ekkehard, Casus S. Galli, 3. ap. Pertz. ii. 102.) Among his favourites was an "incomparabilis clericus," who excelled every one in his knowledge "cantilene

intellectual series those acquirements whose final enjoyment was reserved for the laity of a more fortunate era1.

ecclesiasticæ vel jocularis, novaque carminum compositione vel modulatione, insuper et vocis dulcissima plenitudine inestimabilique delectatione" (ibid. i. 33). Overhearing the ambassadors from the Greek emperor chanting, he ordered his clerks to taste nothing till they had presented to him the same antiphones "in Latinum conversas. Inde est, quod omnes ejusdem sunt toni, et quod in una ipsarum pro 'contrivit'' conteruit' positum invenitur. Adduxerunt etiam idem missi omne genus organorum, set et variarum rerum secum. Quæ cuncta, ab opificibus sagacissimi Karoli quasi dissimulanter aspecta, accurratissime sunt in opus conversa, et præcipue illud musicorum organum præstantissimum, quod, doliis ex ære conflatis follibusque taurinis per fistulas æreas mire perflantibus, rugitum quidem tonitrui boatu, garrulitatem vero lyræ vel cymbali dulcedine coæquabat” (ibid. ii. 7).

1 "Of the Anglo-Saxon husbandry we may remark that Domesday Survey gives us some indications that the cultivation of the Church lands was much superior to that of any order of society. They have much less wood upon them, and less common of pasture; and what they had appears often in smaller and more irregular pieces: while their meadow was more abundant, and in more numerous distributions" (Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. ii. p. 528, ed. 1823. App. iv. c. 1). "Some of the clergy, as we advance to the age preceding the Norman Conquest, appear to us as labouring to excel in the mechanical arts. Dunstan, besides being competent to draw and paint the patterns for a lady's robe, was also a smith, and worked on all the metals. Among other labors of his industry, he made two great bells for the church at Abingdon, &c. He also displayed much art in the fabrication of a large silver table of curious workmanship. Stigand, the bishop of Winchester, made two images and a crucifix, and gilt and placed them in the cathedral of his diocese. One of our kings made a monk, who was a skilful goldsmith, an abbot” (vol. iii. pp. 109, 110, book vii. c. 11). Then follow references to the various enactments enjoining handicrafts on the clergy.

We must now turn to the last and, it must be added, the least grateful branch of our subject; which brings before our notice such political benefits as accrued to the world from the action of the clergy during the ninth and tenth centuries. We speak of it as the least grateful portion of our subject, inasmuch as during no equal period since the first propagation of the Gospel does the Church appear to have lost so much of its pristine integrity from contact with an unrighteous world. Yet it was not the first age of wide and deep moral pollution which had afflicted our race since the ministers of the faith had been elevated to temporal influences but they had passed comparatively unhurt through all the evils of the decaying society at Rome, because they had not then learned that intimate combination with the state which they subsequently acquired from the intrigues and the ambition of barbarian courts. But, little as we can find to look upon with satisfaction in the clerical power as exerted during the miseries of the tenth century, we may turn with less regret to the milder influence which, guided by the master hand of Charlemagne, they exercised over his vast dominions. So sagacious a ruler as the Frank emperor could not fail to perceive that, although nations long strangers to each other had been united in apparent unanimity under a common sceptre, and though the ample frame of his territories might under the impulse of a master mind put forth its colossal strength, yet it contained within itself no merely political principle of adhesion sufficiently powerful to counterbalance the

constant tendency to a rapid dismemberment. But he beheld the daily progress of another power, working with a mystery which only increased its sphere of action, and containing in its very essence those ideas of union elsewhere so completely wanting. He saw that, while the secular constitutions throughout his dominions differed as widely as the climates under which they had been framed, the clergy alone were actuated in every land by fixed motives and lived under the same time-honored code, acknowledging the absolute supremacy of a single chief. Accordingly, while in his intercourse with the sacerdotal order he laid before himself as his principal object the moral amelioration of his people, we may find in the acts of his reign abundant evidence that he considered them also as destined to effect a political change. Acting as they ever did in willing compliance with the decrees of one who knew so well how to humble himself in order to rise to more unfettered authority, they carried out, as far as in them lay, this mighty scheme by which the whole Teutonic conquests were to be permanently united under a single temporal and a single spiritual head.

But to investigate minutely the various points of clerical action on the civil government would be in a great measure to repeat what we have already stated as to the development of the old Roman customs into permanent enactments throughout Western Europe. The authority, for example, of the "Missi Dominici” under the Frank emperor, one of whom was invariably a prelate, presents to our view merely the old spiritual prerogative