quences of that radical difference between the social position of the English and the Continental clergy to which we have already referred. It would have been vain to expect any great results from the intellectual action on the laity of France or Germany of a priesthood who looked upon the tongue of their ancestors as a barbarian idiom, incapable of expressing those great moral or theological truths which they laboured to disseminate among their clerical brethren alone. In England there was no such difficulty to be overcome, and the laity could there find no difficulty in understanding the Anglo-Saxon poetry of Aldhelm, or the numerous translations which they owed to the literary zeal of their greatest sovereign ; indeed, if the clergy had kept the key of knowledge in their own hand, we can hardly imagine why so distin

est; sed idiotas, hoc est, eos qui propriæ tantum linguæ notitiam habent, hæc ipsa sua lingua dicere ac sedulo decantare facito. Quod non solum de laicis, id est, in populari adhuc vita constitutis, verum etiam de clericis sive monachis, qui Latinæ sunt linguæ expertes, fieri oportet. Sic enim fit ut cœtus omnis fidelium quomodo fidelis esse, qua se firmitate credendi contra immundorum spirituum certamina munire atque armare debeat discat; sic ut chorus omnis Deo supplicantium quid maxime a divina clementia quæri oporteat agnoscat. Propter quod et ipse multis sæpe sacerdotibus idiotis hæc utraque, et symbolum videlicet et Dominicam orationem, in linguam Anglorum translatam obtuli." Bede, Ep. ad Ecgbert. 6. Later it would appear that priests sometimes knew only the language of the laity: "It behoves us bishops that we disclose to you priests in the English tongue the divine doctrine which our canon prescribes to us, and which also the book of Christ teaches us; because ye cannot all understand the Latin" (Ælfric, Past. Ep. i. ap. Thorpe. Anc. Laws, p. 452).

guished a scholar as King Alfred should have considered it not beneath him to turn the works of Boethius, Orosius, Bede, and Gregory into a language not a whit more accessible to his clerical subjects than the original Latin. On the whole, we find that the remark we have already made as to the more healthy influence exerted over the Anglo-Saxon nation by their spiritual teachers in matters political holds equally good in matters intellectual; as in the former they amalgamated freely with the other members of the state, and tacitly ruled without domineering, so in the latter they diffused, as far as with such imperfect means of communication they could, the blessings of the knowledge they possessed through every order of society, from King Alfred, who rejoiced no less than Charlemagne in the company of his learned bishops, to the literary ladies whom Aldhelm* did not think it beneath his dignity to instruct by his treatise "De Laude Virginitatis."

But before we conclude our investigation of their moral and intellectual action, we must say a few words concerning that æsthetic influence of the clergy which must be attributed to them as patrons and restorers of art even during those years of destroying Vandalism. We have spoken of the blessings conferred on the barbarian nations by the monkish restorers of agriculture and all that is most practically useful in society; less important, but not less unquestionable, is the revival within the sheltering walls of so many religious houses

• See Wright, Anglo-Saxon Lit. Biog. pp. 32, 33.

of all that is most ornamental in life. It is far from our intention to dilate on the course of events during earlier ages to which we owe the preservation of some of the noblest edifices of classical genius, especially within the walls of the Eternal City, or to explain the steps by which it came to pass that the monuments long admired by men of a more elevated taste, by being incorporated within the possessions of the Church, were handed down to superstitious imitation in an age when all power of original invention in art, as in every other province of the mind, had disappeared. But the time to which our attention has lately been directed was that in which church architecture, in our sense of the word, took its rise; and if to the efforts of one class of men more than another is to be referred so noble a result, we must assign the palm to the clergy, and more particularly to the monastic orders.

We cannot read of the vast extent of the cœnobitic establishments of the Benedictine order without perceiving that architecture must have found in them a far more extensive field than it could have done in the most splendid abodes of secular pomp. A remarkable instance both of the lavish expenditure bestowed on the monastic edifices and of the almost superstitious reverence, with which in those days, as in our own, the relics of Roman art were cherished, occurs in the history of Benedict Biscop, the founder of the Wearmouth monastery1. We

1 "Nec plus quam unius anni spatio post fundatum monasterium interjecto Benedictus oceano transmisso Gallias petens

read of his visiting Rome soon after the completion of his building, and returning "enriched with countless articles of ecclesiastical furniture, with numerous copies, to wit, of the sacred books1, as well as pictures exhibiting the concordance of the Old and New Testaments."*2

cæmentarios, qui lapideam sibi ecclesiam juxta Romanorum quem semper amabat morem facerent, postulavit, accepit, attulit. Proximante autem ad perfectum opere, misit legatarios Galliam, qui vitri factores (artifices videlicet) Britanniis eatenus incognitos ad cancellandas ecclesiæ porticuumque et cœnaculorum ejus fenestras adducerent. Factumque est; venerunt: nec solum opus postulatum compleverunt, sed et Anglorum ex eo gentem hujusmodi artificium nosse ac discere fecerunt; artificium nimirum vel lampadis ecclesiæ claustris vel vasorum multifariis usibus non ignobiliter aptum. Sed et cuncta quæ ad altaris et ecclesiæ ministerium competebant vasa sancta vel vestimenta, quia domi invenire non potuit, de transmarinis regionibus advectare religiosus emtor curabat." Bede, Hist. Abb. Wiremuth. 5.

1 See p. 154.

* Mabillon, Acta Sanctorum Ord. S. Ben. t. i. p. 545. [From Bede, ibid. 9. See next note.]

2 On his fifth voyage to Rome, he brought back (Bede, ibid. 6) "picturas imaginum sanctarum quas ad ornandum ecclesiam beati Petri Apostoli quam construxerat detulit; imaginem videlicet beatæ Dei Genetricis semperque virginis Mariæ, simul et duodecim Apostolorum, quibus mediam ejusdem ecclesiæ testudinem ducto a pariete ad parietem tabulato præcingeret; imagines evangelicæ historiæ, quibus australem ecclesiæ parietem decoraret; imagines visionum Apocalypsis beati Johannis, quibus septentrionalem æque parietem ornaret, quatenus intrantes ecclesiam omnes etiam literarum ignari, quaquaversum intenderent, vel semper amabilem Christi sanctorumque ejus quamvis in imagine contemplarentur aspectum, vel Dominicæ incarnationis gratiam vigilantiore mente recolerent, vel extremi discrimen examinis quasi coram oculis habentes districtius se ipsi examinare meminissent." Bede

Another yet more striking example of the union of activity in the cause of religion with zeal for the erection and embellishment of the houses of God is presented to us in the life of Wilfred, Bishop of York at the close of the seventh century, and one of the most renowned patrons of ecclesiastical art among the AngloSaxons*. His cathedral he is said to have repaired, and to have filled the windows with glass, a substance previously unknown to his countrymen1. Moreover, the descriptions of the churches at Ripon 2 and (ibid. 9) thus describes the pictures brought back for both monasteries on Benedict's sixth visit: "Nam et tunc dominicæ historiæ picturas, quibus totam beatæ Dei Genetricis quam in monasterio majore fecerat ecclesiam in gyro coronaret, adtulit: imagines quoque ad ornandum monasterium ecclesiamque beati Pauli Apostoli de concordia veteris et novi Testamenti summa ratione compositas exhibuit; verbi gratia, Isaac ligna quibus immolaretur portantem et Dominum crucem in qua pateretur æque portantem proxima super invicem regione pictura conjunxit. Item serpenti in eremo a Moyse exaltato Filium Hominis in cruce exaltatum comparavit." From the description of Benedict Biscop's church, and especially of its pictorial decoration, we have every reason to conclude that the style he employed was Byzantine. Compare Ruskin, Stones of Venice, vol. ii. pp. 92, 102.

*

Wright, Anglo-Saxon Lit. Biog. p. 175.

1 "Primum culmina corrupta tecti renovans, artificiose plumbo puro tegens, per fenestras introitum avium et imbrium vitio prohibuit, per quod tamen intro lumen radiebat. Parietes quoque lavans secundum Prophetam super nivem dealbavit, eam enim non solum domum Dei et altare in varia supellectili vasorum intus ornavit, verum etiam deforis multa territoria pro Deo adeptus terrenis opibus paupertatem auferens copiose ditavit." Eddi Stephani Vita Wilfridi, c. 16. ap. Gale, XV Scriptores, i. 59.

"Beatissimus Wilfridus Episcopus thalamum veri sponsi et