formed by the clergy afforded the first pat- The imposition of celibacy on the westtern of elective and representative assem-ern clergy, which was scarcely completed blies, which were adopted by the indepen- before the ninth century, requires some atdent genius of the Germanic race, and tention on account of its influence in Engwhich, being preserved for many ages by land, and affords general instruction, as an England, promise in the nineteenth century example of the extent to which the effect to spread over a large portion of mankind. of regulations disappoints human expectaThe ecclesiastics only had any acquaintance tions. The writings of the earliest Chriswith business; they only could conduct the tians contain general panegyrics on celibasimplest affairs with regularity and quiet; cy, which cannot be reconciled to reason, they were the sole interpreters and minis- though they may be excused in an age ters of whatever laws were suffered to act, when the moral relations of the sexes, of or felt to exist. To these powerful means which the principle is at this day little unof influence must be added the inexhausti- derstood by many of those who most feel ble credulity of the superstitious barbari- the obligation, were so unsettled as continans, disposed to yield a far more blind defer- ually to vibrate between the most extreme ence than the inquiring Romans had ever points of extravagant austerity and gross paid to their priesthood. A gorgeous wor- licentiousness. The apostles naturally and ship dazzled nations who scarcely rose seasonably advised their brother missionaabove the senses. The pretensions to mirac-ries, and even their defenceless followers, ulous power lent the clergy extensive aid, to forbear from giving such hostages as for which they were one day to pay a high wives and children to their merciless perprice in the general unbelief to which these secutors. In more secure situations it was pretensions gave rise in less docile and ac- not without apparent reason hoped, that an quiescent times. All the other institutions unmarried clergy would have more means of the empire were worn out. Christiani- of succoring their brethren, more leisure ty, however altered in its doctrines, was still for their studies and their duties, a heart a youthful and vigorous establishment; and less diverted from religious feeling by the power which it speedily exercised in worldly cares, and by holding out a signal blending the two races, by gradually soften- example of a constant victory over their ing the ferocious courage of the Germans passions, might add force and weight to all so as to render it capable of union with the their exhortations. The peculiar repugreviving spirit of the Roman provincials, nancy of the Christian morals to sensuality afforded an early instance of its efficacy in promoted the observance of celibacy, and promoting and securing civilization. It gave rise to dangerous exaggerations. must be added, that the Christian clergy-Some were so misguided as to interpret men of that age surpassed their contempo- language intended only to lift the soul from raries in morality, which never fails in the wallowing amidst the senses as a discourend to resume some part of its natural agement of those unions which are "a disauthority over the most barbarous and even cipline of humanity." Celibacy was first the most depraved. By these and the like celebrated as a virtue, it was afterwards causes the clergy were raised to an extra- enjoined on priests as a moral duty. Beordinary influence, and had the utmost fore the end of the fourth century, some means in their hands to serve and to injure churches enforced it as a rule of ecclesiassociety. In the beginning, the benefits of tical discipline. Some councils had forbidtheir power outweighed its evils. It was den the ordination of men who were marlong mixed and doubtful: had it not been ried; and marriage after orders seems to curbed, it would have been at length fatal have been generally blamed from the midto the exercise of reason and to the author- dle of the fifth century. The general pracity of civil government. tice of the West then resembled the present

The contests of the state with the see of practice of the Greeks, among whom bishRome belong to a later period. It is at ops were interdicted from wedlock, and present only necessary to observe, that to priests were allowed only to keep the wives their communion with the patriarchal whom they had espoused before ordination. church, which from the earliest period had A virtue prized so highly by the fathers of been venerated as the mother of the west- the church, a duty of which the observance ern churches, the European clergy were seemed to add to the dignity and authority indebted for the uniformity of opinion, the of religious instruction, came to be esteemoccasional infusion of some scanty know- ed one of the most sacred and venerable ledge, and the unity of means as well as of ecclesiastical usages long before it was the identity of purpose, which converted raised to the character of an universal law them into a well-disciplined army, whose of the Latin church. most distant movements corresponded with and supported each other.

It soon, however, afforded an example of the vanity and peril of stretching the rules

of duty beyond the boundaries of nature. from the promotion of religion and the wellSeveral sects in the first and second centu- being of society. The struggle at that time ries of Christianity had passed through vis- often was, and perhaps generally seemed ions of perfection to licentious manners. to them to be, between those who appealed The compulsory celibacy of the clergy only to brute force, and those who professdrove them into the same road, though it ed to derive their power from law, moralidid not push them so far. The prohibitions ty, and religion. The clergy condemned of councils everywhere attest the preva- in others those crimes of ambition which lence of concubinage; which, in many they scrupled not themselves to perpetrate, countries, was considered as a sort of infe- always with scandalous inconsistency, but rior marriage, and which the clergy had by no means always insincerely. many means of concealing, or of speciously They became regardless of their duties, disguising. In the West it was altogether and by the scandal of their lives gradually impossible that many of a body of men, lost much of their ascendency over the peonewly forbidden to form connexions, which ple. The eyes of the most ignorant began, all around them cherished, and which had in time, to be opened to their vices. An been among themselves once regarded as event then occurred which has since been lawful and sacredly binding, not trained to repeated several times among the nations subdue their passions by a rigorous educa- of Christendom.

tion, remote from the inspection and cen- The religious principle, when deprived sure of all those whose disapprobation they of its nourishment by lukewarmness and dreaded, should 'not abuse their boundless indolence, still more when offended by open power over the ignorant, uninquisitive, sub-profligacy, calls up more zealous and active missive people, among whom they were laborers to supply the place of a vicious or dispersed, by the indulgence of a profliga- even of a cold and formal clergy. Such cy still more undistinguishing than concu-substitutes in the times of which we speak binage. The manners and morals of the were found in the monastic orders. These European clergy may be in some measure singular bodies of men originated, as is estimated from the state of Rome in the well known, in that passion for the undisninth and tenth centuries, under a succes- turbed and solitary contemplation of susion of popes, either pageants or monsters, preme excellence, which in the early ages who commonly owed their rise and down- of Christianity peopled the desert of Egypt fall to crimes. The unnatural restraint, with pious hermits, and which had indeed which thus ended in a general dissolution before that era led some of the more devout of manners, had also the effect of strength- and contemplative Hebrews into the same ening the ecclesiastical power, and of seclusion. But the Christian recluses tempting the clerical leaders to abuse their sought a solitude more impenetrable than strength. They soon perceived that by ex- the Essenians, and adopted a system of selfcluding the clergy from marriage, their con- infliction, of which the continuance was nexion with society was loosened, and the less dependent on themselves than the ausaffections which might balance their attach- terity taught by Philo to his Alexandrian ment to the interests of their order were followers. The very place of their retireweakened. Domestic relations no longer ment involved rigorous privation, and exrestrained the ambition of a body, whose cluded the ordinary opportunities of vice; members throughout Christendom were but they added new means of extinguishalready linked together by stronger ties ing every appetite which could disturb their than those which united them to their coun-exclusive devotion to the contemplation and trymen, and who were more firmly attach- worship of God. Such practices, it was ed to the papal throne than to that of their even then owned, might be unfit for adopown sovereigns. Thus it appears that an tion by mankind in general; but a chosen institution formed by pure feelings was few, initiated in mysteries and inured to seized by ambition as one of its most effec- pious exercise, might serve others as well tual instruments; that the pursuit of unat- as preserve themselves by the pursuit of tainable austerity terminated in more than virtues too sublime for the multitude. About common licentiousness; and that those who the middle of the fourth century, Pacomius were appointed to preach peace and chari- and Antony collected them together in ty became turbulent and insatiable usurpers. monasteries; bound them to perseverance It is not to be forgotten that during the by vows; prescribed laws for their good whole of this corrupting process it was government, and established superiors who mightily aided by those arts of self-delusion were to be elected by the monastic commuwhich brought the clergy themselves to re-nity, but were armed with power to protect gard the power of their body as the only the religious from their own infirmities. restraint on lawless violence, and to believe From that time their life was considered as that their own grandeur was inseparable more holy than that of a worldly clergy;

934

the monasteries of the desert, probably then \tle of her father descended. She is called as now, guarded them from wandering rob- "the lady of Mercia" by the ancient chronbers; and the longing for inaction which iclers, having ruled that extensive province, easily steals on us in the languor of a sultry with an equal character for valor and wisclimate contributed to increase their num- dom, during the greater part of her brother's ber. The most eloquent of the Christian reign. Athelstan, the son of Edward, 925. fathers who visited these solitudes spread probably by a concubine, found in that everywhere the praises of so sacred a life circumstance no serious obstacle to his sucand of a repose so serene. Monasteries cession, at a time when the distinction of gradually arose in inhabited countries, at natural from legitimate children was faint. first in sequestered spots, where the indus- A confederacy was formed against try of the monks reclaimed the land from this warlike prince by the Britons, or its unproductive state, and set the first ex- who occupied the western coast, by 938. ample of well-conducted husbandry after the Scots from the mountains of the the Teutonic conquest. The first celebrated north, and by the Danes, the inhabitants of monastery of the West was that of Monte the eastern coast from Tweed to Thames, Cassino, in the Neapolitan territory, found-aided by adventurers of the same race from ed about the year five hundred and thirty, Ireland, and by crowded squadrons of freeby Benedict, a native of Mursia, in the booters from Scandinavia. He completely Apennines, who gave laws to his new order. routed these confederates, at a place called They spread rapidly in the West, and Brunnanburgh, of which the situation is unventured, at length, to settle in towns, known. His victory was celebrated in an where the religious might by their severe Anglo-Saxon poem, still extant, the earliest rule be guarded from the contagion of the of the few metrical materials of English world, while their instruction and their ex- history: the renown of the battle has preample might be beneficial to less perfect served the remembrance of it in the leChristians. In the beginning the monks gends of the defeated Scandinavians.† It were mere laymen, and holy orders were was literally adopted by the Saxon annalrarely, if at all, conferred on them. Near ists, and Latin versions of it were inserted a century and a half after the first collec- in the writings of the Anglo-Norman histion of the Egyptian hermits into monaste-torians. A translation, made by a schoolries, Gregory the Great, himself a monk, boy in the eighteenth century, of this Saxwho wrote the life of St. Benedict and the on poem of the tenth century, into the Engrelation of his miracles, though he allows lish of the fourteenth century, is a double that sometimes priests may become monks, imitation, unmatched, perhaps, in literary and monks may receive holy orders, yet he history, in which the writert gave an earnconsiders both as rare exceptions, and de-est of that faculty of catching the peculiar clares the spirit of the church to be, that genius and preserving the characteristic clerks being destined to the public service manner of his original, which, though the should not retire from it into monasteries; specimens of it be too few, places him alone and that monks should not come among the among English translators. The battle of clergy, because they are bound to live in a Brunnanburgh was followed by the subjecprofound retirement, which is not compati- tion of the Danes in the north and east, and ble with the active and public duties of ec- by such submissions from the British and clesiastics. But in spite of the jealousy of Scottish chiefs as might justify Athelstan the secular clergy and of the frequent de- in substituting the title of king of Britain crees which forbad preaching or adminis- for that of king of England, which appears tering the sacraments by monks, the sanc- to have been occasionally employed by tity of their lives, the power of their better Alfred. His reputation extended through discipline, and somewhat of a superior edu- Christendom. His sister, the queen of cation, gained a general estimation, which France, found an asylum for twenty years called them to the pulpit and the altar. at his court, with her son, till he was reHence the first ecclesiastical dissensions stored to a nominal royalty, which soon among the converted Saxons. They did after passed away from the descendants of not break out in the reigns which immedi- Charlemagne.j ately followed Alfred. For more than fifty years our scanty information is confined to wars with the Celtic tribes, and with the Danish colonists or invaders. Under Edward the Elder, the son of Alfred, 901. the most remarkable person was Eth- Script. xi. 419. elfleda, the king's sister, on whom the man-Specim. of English Poetry, i. 52.

A. D.

*Born, probably, about 540; died pope, 604.

Haco king of Norway, and Alan king of the Armorican Britons, were sheltered at

† Angli hoc prælium unum censuerunt inter maxima et acerrima quod unquam cum Normannis aut Danis commiserunt.-Langebeck, Rerum Danici

Right Honorable John Hookham Frere.-Ellis,

§ He was called from his residence in England Louis d'Outremer.

A. D. 941.

his court, and restored by his aid or in-been a conformity of the English clergy to fluence. With Athelstan the vigor of the law and usage of Christendom. Unless the West Saxon government expired. the clergy conformed to the first two reguThe reigns of Edmund the Elder and of lations, their conduct seemed to be altogethEdred, the legitimate grandsons of Alfred, er set free from rule. It must have appearwere passed in resistance, with various suc-ed to Dunstan that he was engaged in a cess, to the revolts and invasions of the contest against licentiousness struggling to men of the north. throw off laws conducive at once to purity Though religious men had been collect- and order. On the other hand, it is to be ed in monasteries in Britain from the land-remarked, that the unnatural interdiction ing of Augustin, there is no satisfactory of marriage is universally owned to have evidence of any monastic rule, either there fallen into inobservance since the Danish or in any part of the West, more ancient wars, which had reigned for more than a than that of Benedict. It was not till the century. As many parts of England were accession of Edwin, eldest son of Ed- converted not long before that time, it is un955. mund the Elder, that the monks be- likely that the ancient liberty could have gan to signalize themselves as a zealous, been so soon extirpated: the prohibitions powerful, and ambitious body. Dunstan, and censures lavished on clerical marriages their leader, one of the most conspicuous in the earlier times of the Saxons, if they personages of Saxon history, after being prove the illegality of such unions, at least long an object of unmingled panegyric equally attest their prevalence. A natural among the monastic writers, who alone had liberty, thus sanctioned by a general usage leisure and learning for the composition of of more than a century, and by many exhistory, has since that time been treated amples in the former times, must have been with unwarrantable severity by Protestant considered, by a clergy not prone to historhistorians. Of noble birth, and said to be ical or legal inquiry, as an established and connected with the royal family of Wessex, inviolable right. The monks, who had enhe embraced the rule of St. Benedict with joyed uncontrolled liberty, shrunk from a the same ardor which he had before shown foreign and unknown rule, and it seemed in the business and pleasures of common unjust to deprive the seculars of their revlife. His temperament was that of most enues from cathedrals, to which the habits earnest and zealous reformers, who have of their life were adapted. But the reformbeen exasperated by resistance and perse- er was too impetuous, or too ambitious of cution: his personal disinterestedness and the honor of completing his own reformaaustere manners disposed the multitude to tion, to submit to a gradual execution of applaud the harsh discipline which he en- his projects: although, if suddenly effected, forced, and the cruel chastisements which they must have cruelly affected the greater he either advised or countenanced. There number of churchmen, and reduced multiis no reason to suspect his sincerity; but the tudes of women and children to shame and extension of his own power, and that of his beggary. He made some progress in 948. order, doubtless mingled itself with zeal the reign of Edred; but in that of for the service of God and man; and the Edwy, or Edwin, the great-grandson of Alsecret enjoyments of pride and ambition fred, he met a formidable resistance, and soothed the irritation which the renuncia- was involved in transactions which render tion of pleasures more openly immoral is his character to this day a subject of 955. apt to beget in passionate natures. To be doubtful disputation. That prince had very scrupulous in the choice of means is either formed an illicit connexion or cona very rare virtue in such enterprises, in tracted a marriage forbidden for consansuch times, and in such men. It is unjust guinity,* with Elgiva, a lady with whom he to make him answerable for the miracles was so enamored, that, on the festival of which the credulity of his admirers has as- his coronation, while he was entertaining cribed to him. the most distinguished chiefs of his people,

946.

Having fallen into disgrace in the he suddenly burst from his royal seat, and reign of Athelstan, he regained his went to the chamber of Elgiva, leaving his influence in that of Edmund, and at a very assembled nobles to their own carousals.† early age became the chief counsellor of Dunstan rushed after him, broke into his Edred, the last grandson of Alfred. To privacy, and brought him back in triumph enforce clerical celibacy, to reduce all the to the festival, with an unseemliness more monasteries to the rule of St. Benedict,

Durham, an ancient and creditable chronicler,

and to expel at least all the married clergy *The Saxon Chronicle, 958, grounds the divorce from canonries and prebends in cathedrals, by archbishop Odo on consanguinity. Simeon of that they might be succeeded by Benedict-adopts the cautious alternative suggested in the ines, were the three main objects of his ec- text.-Decem. Script. post. Bed. 157. clesiastical policy. The result would have| Linquens læta convivia.

displeasing to the feelings of refined men | God," the floor fell instantly down where than to the angry and heated spirits of the his opponents were placed, while the part Saxon nobles. Elgiva, whether wife or which he, perhaps also his partisans, occumistress, naturally incensed, procured the pied was uninjured. If Dunstan interpretbanishment of Dunstan. In his absence, ed an accident as a Divine judgment, he Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, sent armed was guilty of a daring presumption, which men, who tore her from her husband's resi- has been too frequently copied by all Chrisdence, and carried her a prisoner to Ireland, tian parties. But a belief, however arrogant where her face was branded with red-hot and uncharitable, that Providence interirons in order to destroy her fatal attractions. poses for the destruction of our enemies, When her wounds were healed, she return- implies no assumption of miraculous power. ed in all her beauty; and being found at Glou-The supposition that means of working an cester by bands of the opposite party, who apparent miracle were prepared, seems to hamstrung her, she was soon released from be incredible. Too many men for secrecy her sufferings by death. There appears no must have been employed in it; too exact proof that the archbishop, far less Dunstan, a coincidence in time with the words of who was in Flanders, gave any orders for Dunstan was necessary to give it a miracuthese atrocities, which, however, were per-lous character; and it made his own safety petrated by their adherents and praised by and that of his friends too dependent on a their encomiasts. nicety in execution scarcely practicable in

Edgar, the second son of Edmund much more favorable circumstances. The A. D. the Elder, supported by the North- scene was too conspicuous, the facilities of 959. umbrians and Mercians, made war detection too obvious, and the persons deagainst his unpopular brother; and the con- stroyed or injured too numerous and powertest ended in a sort of partition, which left ful. At Winchester, a voice from a crucionly the territory southward of the Thames fix is said to have declared for him. Though to Edwin: whether with any nominal ac- contrivance on this occasion be more pracknowledgment of the superiority of Wes- ticable, yet we must not charge him with sex is not known; for though Edgar was such an imposture on the authority of injustyled king of Mercia, it was common in dicious or unprincipled admirers. The octhat age to apply the term king to subordi- casional coincidence of an extraordinary nate as well as to supreme chiefs. The accident with the denunciation of a zealot; death of Edwin, however, occurring soon the sudden deaths which occur in some disafter, opened the peaceable possession of tempers; the unaccountable recoveries in the whole Anglo-Saxon territory to Edgar, others which astonish the skilful; the illuwho embraced the cause of the monks, sions of sight; the shades by which dreams 960. recalled Dunstan from exile, placed sometimes fade into waking visions; the his chief confidence in that celebrated disturbance of the frame from long abstileader, and raised him to the see of Can- nence, and from the stimulants incautiously terbury; a station in which he carried on taken to relieve it, together with a permahis designs with redoubled vigor. nent state of mental excitement, sanction

The successful wars and insolent tri-ed by the firm faith which then prevailed umphs of Edgar rendered his government in the frequent and ascertainable interposipopular; and the world is not even yet so tions of Divine power; are sufficient to rewise as to consider such success as dishon-lieve us from the necessity of loading the orable to a prime minister, even though he teachers of our forefathers with a large should be an archbishop. The manners of share of fraudulent contrivance and unminthe king, in spite of his zeal for the church, gled fiction. The progress of a tale of wonwere openly licentious. On one occasion, der, especially when aided by time or diswhen he had carried away a nun from her tance, from the smallest beginning to a stuconvent to be his concubine, Dunstan inter- pendous prodigy, is too generally known to fered with a courage which absolves him from the charge of reserving his reproof of vice for his inferiors or his enemies; although the severity of the penance may awaken a suspicion that he was not displeased at so fair an opportunity of humbling temporal greatness. Two national synods were held at Calne and at Winchester:-at the former of which, 978. when Dunstan, in a debate with the seculars and regulars, declared "that he should commit the cause of the church to

977.

be more particularly called in aid of an attempt to enforce the reasonableness of dealing charitably, not to say justly, with the memory of those who diffused Christianity among ferocious barbarians.*

The second marriage of Edgar, if we

*The apology of Hooker when he was charged with excessive charity to his Calvinistic accuser Travers, for asserting" that God was merciful to save thousands of our fathers living in popish superstition," is one of the most eloquent passages of that great writer.-Hooker's Answer to Travers, and Discourse of Justification.