England*, and which became only too fatally apparent under the intriguing guidance of Dunstan', was very different from the inanition of similar bodies in France under the later Carlovingians 2. And Italy, we are assured, retained some share at least of its early intellectual supremacy.

See Ingulph's description of Croyland Abbey, quoted by Maitland, Dark Ages, p. 304.

1 The Historia Ingulphi (Gale, Rer. Angl. Scr. i. 38—50) describes at some length the means taken (in 974) to strengthen and then improve Croyland by the Abbot Turketul, who had been Chancellor to Athelstan, Edmund the Elder, and Edred: "Confirmato itaque Monasterio suo et contra omnes adversarios tam pontificali quam regali auctoritate sufficienter suffulto et fortissimo effecto, venerabilis pater Abbas noster Turketulus jam senior ætate plenusque dierum deinceps in seculum non exibat; sed inter seniores Monasterii quotidie conversatus de statu et observantiis antiqui Monasterii inquirere et audire summopere affectabat." Some of these elders, "quatenus suis posteris tam memoranda de monumentis veteris monasterii quam de regularibus observantiis ejus studiose contraderent, instantissima vigilantia deprecatus est. Ediderunt tunc illi seniores historiam illam," &c. "Quo etiam tempore venerabilis pater noster Abbas Turketulus, antiquis observantiis veteris monasterii Croylandensis plenius auditis examinatis et integre intellectis, statuit et decrevit subsequentia in suo Croylandensi monasterio perpetuis temporibus inviolabiliter ab omnibus observanda." Then follows an account of his reforms. "Hæc sanctissima statuta sua...Turketulus, in suo capitulo publice promulgata et ab omnibus acclamata et obedientissime acceptata, fecit scribi et in fine regulæ sancti Benedicti jussit apponi, ut omnes cum vellent valerent legem suam legere et ne contingeret aliquem per ignorantiam contraire.”

2 The subsequent corruption of monasticism in England is thus attested by the Anglo-Saxon Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical (c. xiv. ap. Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 431): “It is truly an evil, as may be supposed, that some [monks] are too arrogant,

To these causes must be referred the fact that the reforms of the Second Benedict, however great they might appear to his contemporaries among his own countrymen, have never raised him to any distinction approaching to that which posterity has conferred on the former of his order. And yet it cannot be denied that to his activity and earnestness must be attributed that impetus received by the religious principle in France which subsequently developed itself in accordance with the opinions of the age in the formation of the great houses of Clugni and Citeaux. His efforts were not confined merely to the organization of individual establishments, for he lent his advice and name to the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, held under Louis le Débonnaire in the year 817, the decrees

and altogether too proud, and too widely erratic, and too useless, and altogether too idle in every good deed, and with regard to an evil deed in secret profligacy, inwardly heartless and outwardly indignant. And some are apostates, who ought, if they would, to be God's soldiers within their minsters; such are those who have cast off their flocks, and who continue in worldly affairs with sins. It alas goeth ill altogether too widely. So greatly doth it widely become worse among men, that those men in orders, who through fear of God were whilom the most useful and most laborious in divine ministry and in bookcraft, are now almost everywhere the most useless, and never labour strenuously on anything needful before God or before the world; but do all for lust and for ease, and love gluttony and vain pleasure, stroll and wander, and all day trifle and talk and jest, and do nothing useful. That is a hateful life that they so lead; it is also the worse, that the superiors do not amend it, nor some conduct themselves so well as they should; but it is our duty to amend it, as we most diligently may, and to be unanimous for the common need, before God and before the world.”

of which, published among the French Capitularies *, may be considered as the official rule of the reformed Benedictines. But the difference between the two sets of regulations is enough to prove to us how completely the idea of the monastic life had degenerated, and had settled down into an unalterable, cold, dull formalism, than which no other spirit could have dictated, in an assembly of divines and statesmen, an edict which proposed to accomplish the great object of succouring perilled religion by defining the size and material of monkish hoods, the weight of monkish loaves, and the propriety or impropriety of violating ascetic vows by the occasional consumption of a forbidden fowl. However, it must be confessed that even this extreme of narrowmindedness, fatal as its effects afterwards proved, did, in as far as it consolidated the monastic system, materially conduce to the benefits derived by succeeding ages from that system, even in its most degraded form. For every one who rejoices in the transmission to our own days of the remains of classical or theological learning must look upon it as a peculiarly providential circumstance that the severity of asceticism to which we owe their preservation should have been restored, and the inmates of the cloister more than ever separated from the world without, before the unheard-of disasters of the tenth century began. For during that troubled period many a landmark which had withstood the fury of an Attila and an Alaric was

* Baluz. t. i. coll. 579–590. Cap. Aquisgran. de Vita et Conversatione Monachorum.

swept away by the less merciful marauders, whom Scandinavia, Italy, Africa, and Spain sent forth to carry fire and sword to every extremity of Christendom1. The Gothic hordes had turned away with superstitious awe from the Christian fanes, and soon ceased to devastate lands of which they looked upon themselves as the rightful owners; but the Norman and Saracen bands attacked with peculiar ferocity the asylums of that faith which to them was associated with all that they had suffered from the religious zeal of Charlemagne; and they yearly carried back to their northern homes the spoils of the devoted south. Amid such perils as these, before the towns of Central Europe were fortified, and before the strongholds of feudalism had arisen throughout the country, the monastic buildings alone seemed capable of offering any resistance to the fury of the invaders. Although the walls reared by the piety of former generations often succumbed to the rage of the idolaters, and we read of the utter desolation of such renowned establishments as St Germain's * and Croyland2, yet in general

The islands of the Italian coast seem to have been occupied by monks as in the days of S. Augustine: for under the year 807 we read, in Einhard's Annales (Pertz. i. 194), of the destruction of the Moorish pirates by Count Burchard, which they themselves confessed had been inflicted upon them "eo quod anno superiore contra omnem justitiam de Patelaria insula sexaginta monachos asportatos in Hispania vendiderunt, quorum aliqui per liberalitatem imperatoris iterum ad sua loca reversi sunt."

*

Sismondi, Hist. des Fr. t. iii. p. 139.

2 For a description of the Danish sack of Croyland see the Hist. Ingulph. ap. Gale, Rer. Ang. Scr. i. 21—24.

the monks, protected either by the accumulated treasures, which they so freely disbursed as ransoms, or by the unyielding masonry of their cloisters, enjoyed an immunity from desolation to which the other ranks of society were strangers; and at this period, more strictly than during the first inroad of the Germanic nations, did monasticism accomplish its great work of preserving in the minds of a few men, and transmitting to succeeding generations, the genius and religion of days whose spirit had been so long extinct.

In discussing the zeal for learning which clerical influence had powerfully tended to promote in the mind of Charlemagne, we alluded to the great monastic schools which throughout every portion of his vast empire rose and flourished at his command. The successes of his armies were not more closely followed by the proclamation of the Gospel than by the foundation of great educational establishments. The monasteries of Fulda and Osnabrück transmitted to after times monuments and supporters of theological erudition, the most satisfactory proof of the conquest of central Germany by the Imperial arms, and the renowned schools established at Reichenau, Hirschau, and St Gallen might well look back upon the sovereign of the Franks as the originator of monastic learning to the east of the Rhine.

The intellectual results of Charlemagne's reign appear to us to be, in one respect at least, deserving of even greater attention than those which accrued to Europe from his political administration, inasmuch as they