3 anxious to stem this torrent of violence. The Penitential provides penance even for justifiable homicide,' and for false oaths ignorantly taken; but the murder of a priest or monk is more severely visited than that of another man. Such a protection for the clerical order was not perhaps unfair, when its members were the only persons of superior condition likely to be found unarmed. Upon the whole, this system of clerical police is but imperfectly calculated for benefitting public morals, because opportunities are afforded for mitigating the rigour of fasting by psalm-singing and alms-giving. This latter substitute was naturally very acceptable to wealthy sinners, and such, accordingly, seem even to have given alms in advance as it were of some projected iniquity.5 4 1 "If a man slay another in a public fight, or from necessity, where he is defending his lord's property, let him fast forty nights.' JOHNSON'S Collection, b. i. can. 24. WILKINS, i. 120.-Author's MS. Transl. 2" He who is led on to an oath, and knows nothing therein but right, and he so swears with the other men, and afterwards knows that it was false, let him fast three lawful fasts.”—Ib. can. 34. WILK. i. 122. 3" Whatever man slays a priest or a monk, that is the bishop's decision, whether he give up weapons and go into a monastery, or he fast seven winters.—Ib. can. 23. WILK. i. 120. 4"A man should do penance for capital sins a year or two on bread and water; and for less sins a week or a month. But this is with some men a very difficult thing and painful; wherefore we will teach with what things he may redeem it who cannot keep this fast: that is, he shall with psalm-singing and with alms-deeds, make satisfaction a very long space."-Ib. can. 2. WILK. i. 115. 5" Let not alms be given according to the new-invented conceit of men's own will, grown into a custom, dangerous to many, Of religious peculiarities incidentally discovered in Egbert's Penitential, no one is more striking than Anglo-Saxon reception of that compromise with Jewish prejudices which apostolical authority established early in the Christian era. Our forefathers were enjoined a rigorous abstinence from blood, and from things strangled: nor did they disregard Levitical distinctions between the clean and unclean among animals. They seem to have been taught, 2 for the making an abatement or commutation of the satisfactory fastings and other expiatory works enjoined to a man by a priest of God. Monsieur Petit observes, that this canon does not condemn the practice of giving alms by way of penance, with a purpose of leaving sin, but giving them in hopes to purchase license to sin." -JOHNSON, ut supra. 1 Acts, xv. 29. This text is cited in the thirty-eighth canon as a reason for the remarkable prohibitions occurring in that canon, and in some of those connected with it. In these, fish is allowed to be eaten, though met with dead, as being different from land animals. Honey might not be eaten if the bees killed in it remained a whole night. Fowls, and other animals suffocated in nets, were not to be eaten, even although a hawk should have bitten them. Domestic poultry that had drunk up human blood were not to be eaten until after an interval of three months. A man knowingly eating blood in his food was to fast seven days; any one doing this ignorantly was to fast three days, or sing the Psalter. Such provisions naturally made scrupulous persons uneasy whenever they swallowed blood accidentally. Hence an assurance is given that swallowing one's own blood in spittle incurs no danger. -Can. 40. WILK. i. 124. 2 Especially the weasel and the mouse were considered unclean. A layman giving to another even water in which one of these animals had been drowned was to fast three nights; a minster-man was to sing three hundred psalms. A large quantity of water in which one of these animals had been drowned was not to be used until sprinkled with holy water. Hare, however, it is expressly said, might be eaten (can. 38); and so, plainly, might swine's flesh however, nothing decisive, in Egbert's time, upon the value to departed souls of services intended for their benefit by survivors; it is expressly said, that fasting for such purposes is of uncertain efficacy:1 a declaration rendering it probable, that masses and almsgiving for the dead also occasioned hesitating speculation. It is plain, likewise, that modern Romish purgatorial doctrines were then only in their infancy at furthest. Men are enjoined to confession and penance, lest they should be consigned hereafter to eternal torments. A divine would hardly have used such language who believed in the sufficiency of confession alone upon earth, and the safety of deferring satisfaction for purgatory. 2 (can. 40); yet, it might seem from can. 39, the pig was thought to labour under some sort of uncleanness.-WILK. 123, 124. xi. 29. Levit. 1 He who fasteth for a dead man, it is a consolation to himself, if it helpeth not the dead. God alone wot if his dead are benefitted.-JOHNSON's Collection, can. 41. WILK. i. 124. 2 It is better to all men that they amend (bere) their sins here than that they should continue in eternal torments.--B. ii can. 5. WILK. i. 126. 119 CHAPTER III. FROM ALCUIN TO DUNSTAN. 804- 928. DARKNESS OF THE AGE SUCCEEDING ALCUIN SECULAR MONASTERIES COUNCIL OF CELYINCIDENTAL EVIDENCE AGAINST TRANSUBSTANTIA NOTICE OF THE ANCIENT BERALITY TO ROME-- IGNORANCE OF LETTERS HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE HIS CONCEALMENT IN THE ISLE OF ATHELNEY- HIS VICTORY OVER THE DANES HIS LITERARY WORKS HIS PHYSICAL INFIRMITIES - HIS ECONOMY OF TIME AND OF MONEY-HIS ECCLESIASTICAL LAWS-HIS TRUNCATED DECALOGUE-HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF-ERIGENA-ALLEGED PAPAL EXCOMMUNICATION UNDER EDWARD THE ELDER-ATHELSTAN-COUNCIL OF GRATELEY-DOCTRINES. THE era between Theodore and Alcuin was that of Anglo-Saxon intellectual eminence. Modern times, drawing invidious comparisons, may charge it with ignorance and barbarism: it justly held a very different estimation among contemporaries. The successive appearances of Aldhelm, Bede, Egbert, and Alcuin, bore ample testimony to admiring Europe, that the able monk of Tarsus, and Adrian, his no less gifted friend, had requited nobly their adopted country. The literary fame of ancient England reached its height when Charlemain listened eagerly to Alcuin; and some of the church's brightest lumi naries proudly owned him for a master.1 He proved, however, the immediate precursor to a dark and stormy night of ignorance. In political institutions his native land soon attained, indeed, a maturity that he had never witnessed. No longer did unceasing struggles for ascendancy, among several petty princes, find only an occasional respite in the general acknowledgment of a bretwalda. The eighth and last bearer of that title, Egbert, king of Wessex, contrived to render its prerogatives hereditary in his family, thus laying the foundations of a national monarchy. But England had already smarted under a ruinous counterpoise to any domestic advantage. AngloSaxon cruelty and injustice to the British race were frightfully retaliated by hordes of pirates, issuing from their own ancestral home. A succession of Danish marauders, fired with hope of abundant booty, condemned several generations to a constant sense of insecurity, and the frequent endurance of bitterest suffering. In a country so harassed, every peaceful art necessarily languished, especially literature; both fanaticism and cupidity directing the ferocious Northmen to monasteries, where alone books were stored, and scholars found a home.3 1 See Bampton Lectures, 375, 377. 2 Sax. Chr. 88. Egbert's pre-eminence is there assigned to the year 827, when, by the conquest of Mercia, he became sovereign, or chief of all England, south of the Humber. 3The cruelties exercised by Charlemain against the Pagan Saxons in Nordalbingia had aroused the resentment of their neighbours, and fellow-worshippers of Odin, in Jutland, and the isles of the Danish archipelago. Their wild spirit of adventure, and lust of plunder, were now wrought up to a pitch of frenzy by religious |