Part 6

Determined to advance learning in his kingdom of Wessex, he invited out of Mercia four very learned men of that nation. They were Werefrith, Bishop of Worcester, who translated the dialogues of Gregory and Peter into Saxon; Plegmund, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, the founder of the Saxon Chronicle; and the priests Ethelstan and Werewulf. Night and day, whenever there was leisure, one of these four read to him; so that he possessed a knowledge of every book, though as yet he could not himself read his books.

Further, he sent to Gaul for teachers, and two especially are named. These were Grimbald, the provost of St. Omer, a good singer, prominent in ecclesiastical discipline and good morals, very learned in Holy Scripture, and John of Corbey, learned in all kinds of literature and skilled in many arts. Asser, who was of the greatest service to him, he persuaded to come to him out of South Wales; Asser’s own account of the bargaining is very quaint. Asser’s principal function was, as we have seen in the case of the four Mercians, to read to him night and day whenever there was time. Alfred carried his determination to have learned men in important places so far that he would rather keep a bishopric vacant than fill it with an unlearned man. That he had the income of vacant bishoprics has been made a charge against him. An examination of the dates of death of bishops in Alfred’s dominions and the dates of consecration of their successors fails to provide any serious ground for a charge of this kind.

The story of Alfred’s invention of candles to measure the time is well known. It is not so well known that his desire to measure time correctly came from a religious motive. His determination was to give to God half his time, day and night. So far as the day was concerned, if the sun was visible the division could be made; but clouds by day baffled him, and at night there was darkness. Hence the invention of the candles, which were measured to burn four hours each. Each candle was divided into twelve equal parts by lines on the surface. The invention of a lantern followed, for a reason which sets before us the discomforts of life in those times. The candles did not burn steadily and evenly, for the flame was blown about by the violence of the wind, which blew day and night without intermission through the doors and windows of the churches, the fissures of the divisions, the plankings, the walls, or the sides of the tents. Alfred made boxes for the lights, with doors of white ox-horn planed so thin that they were like glass. There are small niches in some of our churches now, with signs of doors, probably for protecting the lights at night from the draught.

And as he gave half of his time to God, so he gave half of his income. Ethelwulf, his father, had released from tribute to the king one-tenth part of the royal estates,[13] for the glory of God and his own eternal salvation. Alfred divided his income into two equal parts, for secular and for ecclesiastical expenditure. The secular half was divided into three equal parts. The first was for his soldiers and the nobles who attended at his court and performed divers functions; these latter were in three sets, each of which performed one month’s service in each quarter and spent two months at home. The next third went to the operatives whom he had collected from every nation, of great skill in every kind of construction; workers in gold are specially mentioned in another part of Asser’s description. The remaining third went to foreigners who visited him, whether they asked for money or not. So much for the secular half of his income.

The second half of each year’s income was all given to God. It was divided into four parts. The first part was for the poor of all nations.[14] It was to be discreetly bestowed; for the king said that, as far as could be, Pope Gregory’s saying should be fulfilled, give not much to whom you should give little, nor little to whom much, nor something to whom nothing, nor nothing to whom something. The second was for the two monasteries which Alfred had specially founded, at Athelney and Shaftesbury. The third went to his school, which he had studiously collected together, of many of the nobility of his own kingdom. The fourth was for all the neighbouring monasteries in all Saxony and Mercia, and in some years for monasteries in Wales, Cornwall, Gaul, Brittany, Northumbria, and sometimes Ireland. It is a remarkable fact that in this large expenditure for religious purposes, the purposes are at most only indirectly connected with the definitely spiritual work of ministering the Word of God and the Sacraments to the people at large.

Asser is not very clear in the sequence of his ideas. But we gather that the king’s desire to found monasteries was due to his own fixed purpose of holy meditation, to which he desired to invite others. But he could not find any one of his own nation, free by birth, who was willing to adopt the monastic life, except some who were mere children, too young to choose between good and evil. The love of the monastic life, once so strong in England, had died out. Asser theorises as to the reasons for this, and he produces two which seem to be mutually destructive: it was either because of the constant invasions by sea and land, or because people abounded in riches of every kind and so despised the monastic life. He had to get an old Saxon to act as Abbot of his new foundation of Athelney; and then some priests and deacons from across the seas; and then, as he had not nearly plenty of inmates, he got as many Gauls as he possibly could, including children, to be reared to the monastic life. Asser had himself seen a lad of pagan birth who was educated there, and who was by no means the hindmost of them all.

The formation of King Alfred’s Manual, which is not known to exist, may best be told something as Asser tells it. He says that it was in 887 or 888 that the king first formed the desire to interpret passages of Scripture to those who did not know Latin.

“We were talking together one day, and I read to him an extract from a certain book. He heard it with both his ears. He brought out his book with the daily courses and psalms and the prayers he had read in his youth, and commanded me to write there the quotation. I turned it over, and found it very nearly full. After some delay I said, had I not better find another sheet on which this might be entered apart; for perhaps some other quotation might occur, and if so we should be glad to have them kept together? ‘Your plan is good,’ he said. So I made haste and got a sheet and wrote the quotation. That same day no less than three other passages pleased him; and from that time we talked daily and wrote such things as pleased him till at last it was full, for he went on unceasingly collecting many flowers of Divine Scriptures. When the first quotation was copied onto the sheet, he at once became anxious to read and interpret it in Saxon, and to teach others. The book grew till it became almost as large as a Psalter. He called it his Manual, because he kept it carefully at hand day and night, and found, as he told me, no small consolation therein.”

It was not to Rome only that Alfred sent messengers and gifts. Asser speaks, with Celtic breadth, of daily embassies sent to foreign nations, from the Tyrrhenian sea to the farthest end of Ireland.[15] The English Chronicle goes further. Alfred vowed, it is said, when they were set against the enemy in London, to send embassies to St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew. The Chronicle, under the year 883, tells us that he sent gifts to India. William of Malmesbury informs us that Sigelm, Bishop of Sherborne, was sent as ambassador with the gifts to St. Thomas, and that he prosperously penetrated into India. Thus, Dean Hook remarks, the first intercourse between England and Hindustan consisted of this interchange of Christian feeling. It is, however, a little curious that Asser never mentions India, nor did Alfred interpolate any mention of his embassy when translating Orosius for his English people. Asser definitely mentions Judea, telling us that he had seen letters to Alfred which came with presents from Abel the Patriarch of Jerusalem. It may be worth mention that other MSS. of the English Chronicle read Iudia and Iudea instead of India. Still, the fact of the journey of Alfred’s messengers to some distant part which then bore the name of India, seems to be accepted on all hands. There is no very violent improbability about it. Christian missionaries from Persia had reached India and China more than three centuries before this, two of them bringing the silk-worm to the Greek empire in Justinian’s reign, about 550. The Egyptian merchant-monk Cosmas wrote his _Christian Topography_ at that date. He found Nestorian Christians in Ceylon and Malabar, but the king and people of Ceylon were still heathens.

Alfred’s Ecclesiastical Laws have a long preface, apparently prepared by himself. It is an interesting piece of argument. First he gives the Ten Commandments in Saxon. Writers inform us that he omits the Second Commandment, in accordance with the evil practice which had already made considerable progress then; but probably these writers did not read to the end, for Alfred’s Tenth Commandment is, “Thou shalt not make to thyself golden gods nor silvern.” Then he points out that our Saviour, Christ, said He came not to break nor forbid these Commandments, but with all good to increase them, and mercy and humility He taught. Then he quotes the decisions of the church at Jerusalem as to the tenderness of the application of the law to the Gentile converts. When the English race became Christian, he proceeds, they held synods of holy bishops and great and wise men. They then ordained, out of that mercy which Christ had taught, that secular lords, by the synod’s leave, might without sin take for almost every misdeed, for the first offence, the money fine ordained by the synod. They then in many synods ordained a fine for many human misdeeds, and in many synod-books they wrote, at one place one doom, at another another.

The one offence to which they dared not assign any mercy, that is, any bot, or money fine, was treason to a lord; because God Almighty adjudged no mercy to those who despised Him, nor did Christ, the Son of God, adjudge any to him who sold Him to death, and He commanded that a lord should be loved as Himself.

This is a very interesting explanation of the Saxon system of money payments for offences of almost every description. It is not altogether unlike in principle to the modern magistrate-law that a dog has his first bite free. That application of the principle found no favour with King Alfred, in whose days dogs were great and dangerous beasts. If a dog tear or bite a man, for the first misdeed, 6s.; for the second, 12s.; for the third, 30s. If the dog do more misdeeds, the owner is to go on paying, or must repudiate the dog.

“These many dooms I, Alfred the king, gathered together; and commanded many to be written of those our forefathers held which to me seemed good; and many of those which seemed to me not good, I rejected them by the counsel of my wise men. I durst not venture to set down much of my own, for it was unknown to me what of it would please those who should come after us.”

Three characteristic dooms may be quoted. “He who steals on Sunday, or at Christmas or Easter, or on Holy Thursday,[16] or on Rogation days,[17] or during Lent, shall pay a twofold bot.” “If a man go to the church, and reveal an offence not revealed, and confess himself in God’s name, be it half forgiven.” For holidays,—“To all freemen, 12 days at Yule, and the day on which Christ overcame the devil, and the commemoration day of St. Gregory, and 7 days before Easter and 7 after, and one day at St. Peter’s tide, and one day at St. Paul’s tide, and in harvest the whole week before St. Mary-mass, and one day at the celebration of All Hallows, and the 4 Wednesdays in Ember weeks,”—forty-two days in all, making, with the addition of Sundays, just a quarter of the whole year.

III

HIS TRANSLATIONS AND HIS WILL

His translations—Bede’s _Ecclesiastical History of the English Race_—_The Pastoral Care_—State of learning in Wessex, Mercia, and Northumbria—Ideal of a bishop’s life—Orosius—Boethius—Alfred’s religious opinions—John the Scot—Alfred’s will—Hyde Abbey—State of Rome—Religious references—Religious bequests—Slaves.

The general drift of Alfred’s opinion as to the sort of learning most needed by his people is to be gathered from his choice of books to be put before them in their native language. These were four. For general history, and for history and geography relating to their own race on the continent of Europe, he chose Orosius: for mental study, the _Consolation_ of Boethius: for realisation of the true principles of the life and work of religion, the _Pastoral Care_: for the Church history of the English people, of course the great and priceless book of the Venerable Bede. Of this last we need say nothing. Nor need we dwell upon the fact that Alfred may be said to have created the continuity of early English history by his establishment of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle under Plegmund.

The preface to Alfred’s translation into English from the Latin of Pope Gregory’s _Pastoral Care_, a treatise on the life and work of a bishop, gives us so clear an insight into the king’s mind, and such valuable information as to the state of learning in his time, that it deserves to be printed in full. Three of the copies of which the king speaks are in existence, one addressed to Archbishop Plegmund of Canterbury, one to Bishop Wulfsige of Sherborne, and the third to Bishop Werefrith of Worcester.

THIS BOOK IS FOR WORCESTER

King Alfred greets Bishop Wærferth with loving words and with friendship. I let it be known to thee that it has very often come into my mind, what wise men there formerly were throughout England, both of sacred and secular orders; and how happy times there were then throughout England; and how the kings who had power over the nation in those days obeyed God and his ministers; and they preserved peace, morality, and order at home, and at the same time enlarged their territory abroad; and how they prospered both with war and with wisdom; and also the sacred orders how zealous they were both in teaching and learning, and in all the services they owed to God; and how foreigners came to this land in search of wisdom and instruction, and how we should now have to get teachers from abroad if we were to have them. So general was the decay in England that there were very few on this side of the Humber who could understand their rituals in English, or translate a letter from Latin into English; and I believe that there were not many beyond the Humber. There were so few of them that I cannot remember a single one south of the Thames when I came to the throne. Thanks be to God Almighty that we have any teachers among us now. And therefore I command thee to do as I believe thou art willing, to disengage thyself from worldly matters as often as may be, that thou mayest apply the wisdom which God has given thee wherever thou canst.[18] Consider what punishments would come upon us on account of this world, if we neither loved wisdom ourselves nor suffered other men to obtain it: we should love the name only of Christian, and very few of the virtues. When I considered all this I remembered also how I saw in my own early days, before all had been ravaged and burnt, how the churches throughout the whole of England stood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a great multitude of God’s servants. But they had very little knowledge of the books, for they could not understand anything of them because they were not written in their own language. As if they had said: “Our forefathers, who formerly held these places, loved wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and bequeathed it to us. In this we can still see their tracks, but we cannot follow them, and therefore we have lost both the wealth and the wisdom, because we would not incline our hearts after their example.” When I remembered all this, I wondered extremely that the good and wise men who were formerly all over England, and had perfectly learnt all the books, did not wish to translate them into their own language. But again I soon answered myself and said: They did not think that men would ever be so careless, and that learning would thus decay; so they abstained from translating, and they hoped that wisdom in this land would increase, and our knowledge of languages. Then I remembered how the law was first known in Hebrew, and again, when the Greeks had learnt it, they translated the whole of it into their own language, and all other books besides. And again, the Romans, when they had learnt it, they translated the whole of it through learned interpreters into their own language. And also all other Christian nations translated parts of it into their own languages. Therefore it seems better to me, if ye think so, for us also to translate some books which are most needful for all men to know into the language which we can all understand. And I would have you do as we very easily can if we have tranquillity enough, that is, set all the youth now in England of free men, who are rich enough to be able to devote themselves to it, to learn, as long as they are not old enough for other occupations, until they are well able to read English writing. And let those be afterwards taught more in the Latin language who are to continue learning and be promoted to a higher rank. When I remembered how the knowledge of Latin had formerly decayed throughout England, and yet many could read English writing, I began, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, to translate into English the book which is called in Latin _Pastoralis_, and in English _Shepherd’s Book_, sometimes word for word and sometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from Plegmund my archbishop, and Asser my bishop, and Grimbold my mass-priest, and John my mass-priest.[19] And when I had learnt it as I could best understand it and as I could most clearly interpret it, I translated it into English; and I will send a copy to every bishopric in my kingdom; and on each there is a [clasp and chain][20] worth fifty mancuses. And I command in God’s name that no man take the [clasp] from the book or the book from the minster. It is uncertain how long there may be such learned bishops as, thanks be to God, there now are nearly everywhere; therefore I wish these books always to remain in their place, unless the bishop wish to take them with him, or they be lent out anywhere, or any one make a copy from them.

Then the book itself is made to speak, as the Cross speaks in the early Anglian Dream of the Holy Rood:—

This message Augustine over the salt sea brought from the south to the islanders, as the Lord’s champion had formerly indited it, the Pope of Rome. The wise Gregorius was versed in many true doctrines through the wisdom of his mind, his hoard of studious thoughts. For he gained over most of mankind to the Guardian of heaven, best of Romans, wisest of men, most gloriously famous. Afterwards King Alfred brought every word of me into English, and sent me to his scribes south and north; ordered more such to be brought to him, that he might send them to his bishops, for some of them needed it, who knew but little Latin.

It is not our business here to consider the contents of Pope Gregory’s treatise on the shepherding of the people. But the headings of two or three of the sixty-five chapters will show what the attraction for Alfred’s mind was. The first chapter argues “that unlearned men are not to presume to undertake teaching.” To prevent this was a purpose with Alfred; he faced obloquy, it is said, rather than fill bishoprics with unlearned men. The second chapter forbids even learned men to undertake to teach if they are not ready to live in accordance with their own precepts. The third and fourth chapters no doubt appealed to himself as a secular governor, though they related to spiritual government, “how he who governs must despise all hardships, and how afraid he must be of every luxury,” and “how often the occupations of power and government distract the mind of the ruler.” The sixty-fifth chapter brings the whole to a conclusion with an argument thoroughly after Alfred’s own heart: “When any one has performed all the duties of his pastoral charge, let him then consider and understand his own self, lest either his exemplary life or his successful teaching puff him up.”

In his translation of the history and geography of Orosius he does not interpolate information where we might not unnaturally have expected him to do so. Of his large and valuable interpolations of a geographical character, and in regard to the history of the Teutonic races, mention is no doubt made in another chapter. In the sixth book, to mention two cases where Orosius writes of the times of Constantius and Constantine, and makes references to Britain, he does not speak of Christianity here, and Alfred does not add anything. Orosius speaks of many martyrs under Diocletian, not localising any. Again, Alfred does not add anything. Two quaint phrases the king employs:—“In those days Arius the mass-priest was in error with regard to the right faith”;—“Constantine was the first emperor who ordered churches to be built, and locked up the devil’s houses.”

It is not to be wondered at that Alfred determined to translate into English the _Consolation_ of Boethius, and his interpolations show how dear the book was to his heart and to his reason. King and people alike had gone through much trial and suffering, and such happiness and prosperity as they had was at best very precarious. The book of _Consolation_ which Boethius wrote in the sad days when all his great prosperity had passed from him, and he waited in chains for the last fatal word of the tyrant, was well suited for men and women situated as the English then were. Boethius himself, who was executed in 524, was both a very learned Christian and a deeply-read student of classical philosophy. His Consolations are taken entirely from philosophy, but they have the Christian spirit. They thus supplement the help which the Christian religion gives to those in anxiety, and put into the troubled mind fresh and useful trains of thought. This is probably one main reason for the attraction which the book had in the Middle Ages, and we cannot doubt that Alfred had this in view in giving it to his people. Why he did not at the same time have the New Testament translated into English is not clear, for he himself pointed out, in his Preface to the _Pastoral Care_, that the law was first given in Hebrew, and then necessarily translated into Greek, and Latin, and the languages of the various nations which embraced Christianity. William of Malmesbury tells us that the king did as a matter of fact set about translating the Psalter, but died before the first part was done.