CHAPTER VII. EMINENT TEACHERS OF THE EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH: ALDHELM, BISHOP OF SHERBORNE; ACCA, BISHOP OF Such persons, who served God by holy living, industrious preaching, and religious dying, ought to have their names preserved in honour, and their holy doctrines and lives published and imitated. BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR. DRIAN, abbot of Canterbury, the fellowlabourer of Theodore, survived his friend for many years, dying A.D. 710, forty-one years after his first arrival in England. All this time he was employed in teaching the young Saxons, who were to fill high offices in the Church. Among his pupils were Bertwald, abbot of Reculver, who afterwards succeeded Theodore as archbishop of Canterbury, where he presided nearly forty years; Tobias, bishop of Rochester, a man of great learning and piety; and Alcuin, afterwards abbot of Canterbury, who aided Bede in his History of the Church. Another was Aldhelm, one of the royal family of Wessex, afterwards abbot of Malmsbury and bishop of Sherborne, a man who conferred great benefits upon his countrymen the West Saxons, and whose memory was honoured in a life of him written by the great king Alfred. ALDHELM was indeed a man who deserved this honour; and it is a great pity we have not his life Alcuin of Canterbury is often confounded, by Warton and others, with Alcuin of York, who flourished about fifty years later. See Chapter IX. by Alfred now remaining to us, instead of such accounts as the monks of later ages have mixed up with too many legendary tales. He was the founder of the abbey of Malmsbury, and of the town adjoining; for many of our old English towns arose, like this, from the neighbourhood of the monastery. His own wealth and interest enabled him to endow it with a good estate, so large that it is said it would take a man a good part of the day, if he set out early in the morning, to go round the borders. Here he built two churches, one within the monastery, one without its walls, for the villagers or townspeople; and at different periods of his life he built other churches in Wessex, particularly at Dorchester, Dorset. At this period the organ is said to have been first used in churches by Vitalian, the pope whom we have seen engaging himself in the mission of Theodore. And the first organ used in England seems to have been built under the directions of Aldhelm, who has left in his writings a description of it in verse, as a mighty instrument with innumerable tones, blown with bellows, and enclosed in a gilded case." St. Dunstan afterwards built one like it at Glastonbury; and earl Ethelwin, who founded Ramsey Abbey, A.D. 974, gave the sum of thirty pounds to provide copper pipes for the organ that was set up in that abbey-church. The instrument, however, which was most in use among the Saxons was the harp, as it was also the instrument of the ancient Britons and Irish, and of the Danes and other tribes of the North. The kings thought it a part of their state to entertain harpers at their court; and before the introduction of Christianity and letters, those who sung to the harp, called scalds or minstrels, were the only historians of the past, singing songs of the warlike deeds of their forefathers. It was still, after the gospel was known, considered 66 almost a necessary accomplishment of the educated in the middle ranks of society to be ready to sing a song at an entertainment, when the harp was passed round. This custom and practice Aldhelm endeavoured to reform, or to adapt to the service of religion. When he resided as abbot at Malmsbury, finding that the half-barbarous country-people, who came to hear divine service, were in a great hurry to return home without paying much attention to the sermon, he used to go and take his seat, with harp in hand, on the bridge over the Avon, and offer to teach the art of singing. Here a crowd soon gathered round him; and after he had indulged the common taste by singing some trifling song, by degrees he drew them on to more serious matter, and succeeded at last in making them sing David's psalms to David's strings. It is well known how much the Reformation was advanced in this country and elsewhere by the use of singing psalms; it is remarkable that, in the first century of Christianity among our forefathers, it was the same use which promoted the knowledge of religion with them, the psalm itself being from this time frequently called a harp-song. The good service of Aldhelm in this particular is now placed beyond a doubt by the late discovery of a Saxon version of the Psalms, which seems to have been preserved in an old French monastery, founded by John duke of Berri, at Bourges, A.D. 1405. This prince, who was brother to Charles V. king of France, gave the book with many others to his monastery, where it remained without being of much use to the French monks, who thought the old English letters were Hebrew. But somehow or other, it has escaped all the French revolutions since, and is now in the French king's library at Paris; from which a copy has lately been taken and printed by the University of Oxford, A.D. 1835. The writer who made this copy of the Saxon Psalter was an Englishman, who seems to have lived about A.D. 1000. The first fifty of the Psalms are in prose, and the rest in verse. It is likely that the version is altogether Aldhelm's; at least there is no reason to doubt that the metrical part is his. In one or two places he seems to speak as if he aimed to suit the meaning of the psalm to the way of worship and customs observed in the monasteries. Thus, in the eighty-fourth psalm his version in modern English is nearly this: Lord, to me thy minsters are There the sparrow speeds her home, Again, in the sixty-eighth: God the word of wisdom gave; Mighty King, with beauty crown'd! In his house the world's proud spoil, If among his clerks you rest, Brighter than her back of gold. Ver. 1-5. Ver. 11-13. When Aldhelm wrote, there were no copies of the Hebrew Psalter in England, and in the last of N these verses he seems to have mistaken a word in the Greek or Latin version of the Psalms; but in many places, where the meaning is more plain, his verse is both true and full of good poetry, and it is every where marked by a spirit of devotion, breaking forth into words of thankful wonder and praise; and the mistakes, which here and there occur in the sense, are not such as to have taught any false doctrine. The version of the Psalms, therefore, into their own language, and adapted to their own national melody to accompany the harp, was a most valuable gift to the Saxons. The words in the last verse seem here to invite the hearer to take up his abode among God's clerks in a monastery; and, in the second to speak of the alms, or doles of food and clothing, which the charity of Christians in those days gave away at the gates of religious houses. The words were prompted by the state of religious society at that time. Again, in some of the Psalms he speaks of the peace-stool, or stone seat, which was placed near the altar in some old English churches, as a place of refuge, to which, by king Alfred's laws, if an accused person fled, he was not to be disturbed for seven days.2 The intention of the law was to give a culprit opportunity to confess his crime to the bishop or clergyman, in which case the fine, commonly paid for all offences in Saxon times, was mitigated. God," says this version, Ps. ix. 9, " is the place of peace to the poor." "The Lord God is become my peace-stool; my help is fast fixed and established in the Lord," Ps. xciv. 22. It can easily be imagined how this way of speaking was suited to the understanding and affections of the people, among whom such a custom prevailed. 66 2 An ancient peace-stool is still preserved in the minster of Beverley. |