porary voucher, and must appear at the best highly improbable. This secret, so widely diffused through almost every nation of Christendom, and constantly employed during more than six centuries, could not have been concealed from the knowledge of the public: and if it were known, how can we believe that legislators would have still persisted to enforce the trial by ordeal, for the conviction of guilt, and the acquittal of innocence. In the laws of the Anglo-Saxon princes, it is repeatedly approved: and we are indebted for its abolition, at a later period, not to the wisdom of the legislature, but to the remonstrances of the clergy. By the Roman pontiffs it was often condemned as superstitious : these condemnations were inserted in the collection of the canon law and Henry III. to satisfy the scruples of his bishops, consented to suspend the use of the ordeals, in the third year of his reign (82). Though his proclamation did not amount to an absolute prohibition, they do not appear to have been afterwards revived (83).

(82) See the rescript of Henry III. in Selden's spicilegium ad Eadm. p. 204.

(83) We must except the ordeal by cold water, which was employed for the conviction of witches, till a very late period,

CHAPTER X.

Literature of the Anglo-Saxons-learning of Theodore and Adrian -libraries-theology-claffics-logic-arithmetic-natural phi

lofophy-learned men-St Aldhelm-Bede-Alcuin.

THE Conquests of the northern nations arrested the progress of human knowledge, and replunged the greatest part of Europe into the barbarity and ignorance, from which it had slowly emerged during the lapse of several centuries. If the fall of the empire did not totally extinguish the light of science, it is to religion that we owe the invaluable benefit. The expiring flame was kept alive by the solicitude of the churchmen: and their industry collected and multiplied the relics of ancient literature.

The functions of the priesthood require a considerable portion of learning: and the daily study of the sacred writings, and of the ecclesiastical canons, has always been recommended to the attention of the clergy. By the monks, knowledge was originally held in inferior estimation. They were laymen, and preferred the more humble employments of agriculture and the mechanical arts, as better adapted to the life of penitence, to which they had bound themselves. The disciples of the saints Anthony and Pachomius spent a great part of their time in the manufacture of mats and baskets: and their example was so approved by the patriarch of the western monks, that he enjoined his followers to devote

at least seven hours of the day to manual labour (1). The veneration, which religious orders usually retain for the memory of their founders, enforced a temporary observance of this regulation: but when monasteries were endowed with extensive estates, and the monks could command the labour of numerous families of slaves, it was insensibly neglected; and the study of the sciences appeared a more useful and more honourable employment. The propriety of this innovation was sanctioned by the necessities of religion. The sword of the barbarians had diminished the numbers of the clergy; and the monks were invited to supply the deficiency, as ministers of the public worship, and the apostles of infidel nations. To understand the latin service, it became necessary to acquire a competent knowledge of that language and the duty of instruction induced them to peruse the writings of the ancient fathers. Under the influence of these motives, schools were opened in the monastic as well as in clerical communities; and the rewards of reputation and honour were lavishly bestowed on the faintest glimmerings of science. When a thirst for knowledge is once excited, it is seldom satisfied with its original object. From the more necessary branches of religious learning, the students wandered with pleasure to the works of the poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome: and their curiosity eagerly, but often injudiciously, devoured, whatever had escaped the ravages of their ancestors. In these literary pursuits, the Saxon clergy and monks acquired distinguished applause. Their superiority was, for more than a century, felt and acknowledged by the other nations of Europe :

(1) Reg. St Bened. c. 48.

and when the repeated invasions of the Danes had unhappily cut off every source of instruction in England, the disciples of the Saxon missionaries in Germany, maintained the reputation of their teachers, and from their monastery at Fulda, diffused the light of knowledge over that populous and extensive country (2).

For this advantage our ancestors were principally indebted to the talents and industry of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury; and of Adrian, abbot of St Peter's, in the same city. The latter was a native of Africa, the former of Tarsus, in Cilicia: both were eminently versed in the languages of Greece and Rome, and perfect masters of every science which was known at that period. Compassionating the ignorance of the converts, they dedicated their leisure hours to the instruction of youth; their lessons were eagerly frequented by pupils from every Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and masters formed under their inspection, were dispersed among the principal monasteries. Their exhortations and example excited an ardour for improvement, which was not confined to the cloister, but extended its influence to the castles of the nobility, and the courts of the kings. The children of the thanes educated in the neighbouring monasteries, imbibed an early respect, if not a passion, for literature; and several of the princes condescended to study those sciences, on which their barbarous, but victorious fathers, had trampled with contempt; others by rewards and donations, endeavoured to distinguish themselves as the patrons of the learned (3). Even the women caught the

(2) See Mabillon, Act. SS. Bened. Sæc. iv. tom. i. p. 188. Tom. H. p. 23. Macquer, Histoire ecclesiastique, vol. i. p. 551.

(3) Bed. hist. 1. iv. 2. l. v. c. 12. Abbat. Wirem. p. 300.

general enthusiasm: seminaries of learning were esta. blished in their convents: they conversed with their absent friends in the language of ancient Rome; and frequently exchanged the labours of the distaff and the needle, for the more pleasing and more elegant beauties of the latin poets (4).

In modern times the art of printing, by facilitating the diffusion, has accelerated the progress of knowledge: but, at the period of which we are speaking, the scarcity of books was an evil deeply felt and lamented by these ardent votaries of science. Literature declined and fell with the power of Rome: and the writings of the ancients were but slowly multiplied by the tedious labour of transcribers. To discover and obtain these remains of ancient knowledge, were among the principal objects, which prompted so many Anglo-Saxons to visit distant

(4) St Aldhelm wrote his treatise de laudibus virginitatis, for the use of the abbess Hildelith and her nuns. The stile, in which it is composed, shews that, if he wished them to understand it, he must have considered them as no mean proficients in the latin language. From this treatise we learn, that nuns were accustomed to read the pentateuch, the books of the prophets, and the new testament, with the commentaries of the ancient fathers; and to study the historical, tropological, allegorical, and anagogical senses of the different passages; profane history, chronology, grammar, orthography, and poetry, also employed their attention. St Aldhel. de laud. virg. p. 294. See also Annal. Bened. vol. ii. p. 143. Of their proficiency, several specimens are still extant. The lives of St Willibald and St Wunebald, were both written in Latin by an Anglo-Saxon nun. Several letters in the same language, by English ladies, are preserved among the epistles of St Boniface. In some of them are allusions to the Roman poets; and in one, a few verses composed by Leobgytha, who was then learning the rules of metre from her mistress Eadburga. Ep. Bonif. 36, p. 46.