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46 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS
On certain evenings, every year, St Columba is seen counting the surrounding islands, lest any should have been sunk by the power of witchcraft:
" As lona's saint, a giant form, Throned on his towers, conversing with the storm, Counts every wave-worn isle and mountain hoar From Kilda to the green lerne's shore."
Among the spiritual descendants of Columba, none is more famous than Cuthbert. As a shepherd lad, tending his flock by night on the hills of Lammermoor, he saw the vision which determined his vocation. Suddenly the dark sky shone with a broad tract of light, down which descended a host of angels, who presently mounted heavenwards, bearing with them the soul they had sought on earth. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, had died that night (651). Thirteen years later, Cuthbert was drawn from Melrose, and appointed prior of the monastery of Lindisfarne, that he might reform the abuses of the house.. After twelve years, he withdrew to the barren island of Fame, where he built an anchorite's cell.
Legend lingers lovingly round his name. The sea-fowl, whom he made his companions, are called the Birds of St Cuthbert. The little shells that are found on the coast are known as the Beads of St Cuthbert; and by night he may still be seen, so tradition tells us, fashioning them, with a stone for his hammer, and a rock for his anvil:
" But fain St Hilda's nuns would learn If on a rock, by Lindisfarne, St Cuthbert sits and toils to frame The seaborn beads that bear his name."
From his dear solitude he was taken, against his will, to be made Bishop of Lindisfarne (685). Two years afterwards, he returned to his ,cell a dying man. He died March aoth, 687, having received the Sacrament at the hands of Herefrith, Abbot of Lindisfarne, who tells the story of his death. Near the landing-place of the island was a rude shelter, in which some of the brethren had passed the night in prayer and chanting. When Herefrith brought the news of Cuthbert's death, the monks were singing the 6oth Psalm. By an agreed signal, the light of two torches, held aloft, proclaimed to the watcher on the mainland that the soul of Cuthbert had de- parted to the Lord. Hurrying from the tower to bear the news to those who worshipped in the church, the watchman found the assembled brethren singing the same Psalm.
The influence of Columba and his followers overran Scot- land ; it crossed the borders into England; it extended to the Midland Counties. Along the West, its Irish type came into contact with British Christianity. Kentigern, of whom the
THE BATTLE OF MOLD 47
story runs that he began the day by reciting the Psalter stand- ing breast-high in a running stream, was at once the beloved St'Mungo of Glasgow, and the founder of the monastery of Elwy, in North Wales.
Unlike the continental invasions which overwhelmed and submerged the native populations, the invaders of Britain fought their way, step by step, in face of stubborn resistance. Gradually the British were forced back into their mountain fastnesses, carrying with them the national forms of their Christian worship, which they jealously guarded as symbols of their independence. With fire and sword, heathen invaders swept away priests and people, and the wooden reed-thatched churches in which they worshipped. So ruthless was the destruction, that in it Bede, like Jerome, or like the historian of the Vandals in Africa, saw the words of the Psalm verified:
" 0 God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance," etc. (Ps. Ixxix., verses 1-4). It is a period of darkness, with few and uncertain glimmerings of light. But among the legendary or historical records of the persecuted Church, the Psalms are associated with one signal triumph of the native Christians over their heathen invaders. In 429, Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, were implored by the Britons to aid them against the Picts and Saxons. At Easter- tide, so runs the story, the little army of newly-made Chris- tians, "with the dew of baptism fresh upon them," was posted by Germanus in a defile, near Mold, in Flintshire, close to a spot still known asMaes-Garmon, "the field of Germanus." As the heathen host approached, the Britons, at a signal from the bishop, shouted three times the Paschal Alleluia.1 Caught up and re-echoed among the hills, the sound struck terror into the Picts and Saxons. Throwing down their arms, they fled;
and faith, unarmed, won a bloodless victory.
Among the national institutions of British Christianity were their colleges, partly religious, partly educational, in which the members were numbered by their thousands. The exact Rule which governed these establishments is uncertain. But, as in Columba's institutions, the object of study was the Scripture, and especially the Psalms, so the names of the Welsh colleges Cor (choir) and Bangor (high choir) may show that choral services were an essential part of their arrangements. At Bangor Iltyd, 100 of the members were engaged every hour in chanting, so that without intermission, psalms were rendered night and day. At Elwy, in North Wales, 365 of the brethren were devoted, day and night, to the singing of psalms and the divine offices, so that the praise of God from year's end to year's end never ceased. Another famous monastic institution in Wales was Llancarvan, of which
1 The Hallel of Pss. cxiii-cxviii, or of cxxxiv-cxxxvii.
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Cadoc the Wise was the first abbot or principal. It was with a psalm that Gwynlliu the Warrior, father of Cadoc, turned from a life of violence to the austerities of an anchorite. Won to religion by the example of his son, the robber chieftain did penance for his sins, chanted Psalm xx., " The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble," retired from the world, and lived in such sanctity that he is commemorated as St Woolos, the patron saint of Newport in Monmouthshire.
In the year of Columba's death (597), Augustine and his companions landed in Kent, to attempt the conversion of Saxon England. That event brought Roman Christianity into collision and conflict with the Irish and British types:
it introduced the Benedictine Rule as a rival to the existing discipline of Celtic monasteries; it carried England once again into the circle of European life. How complete was the darkness which, in the fifth and sixth centuries, hung over England, may be gathered from the account given by Pro- copius (500-65) of the island of Brittia.1 The island, he says, is the Island of Silence and the Dead. On the opposite coast of the mainland live subjects of the Frankish kings, fishermen and husbandmen, who hold their land free, except for one service. That service is to transport the souls of the dead from the mainland to the island coast. At midnight, an un- seen hand knocks at their doors, and the voice of an unseen being summons them to their labour. How or why they are constrained to obey, they know not; they only know that they are so constrained. Rising from their beds, and hurrying to the shore, they there find boats that are not their own, loaded to a finger's breadth between the gunwale and the water; yet no forms are seen, no freight is visible. They push off; they bend to their oars; and, in one short hour, they drive the strange barks upon the shore of the island, which, in their own boats, with oars and sail, they can scarcely reach in a night and a day. None are seen to land, or to leave the boat. But a voice,^ calls each shadow by name, proclaiming its earthly dignities and parentage. When the voice is silent, the boat is now so lightly laden that only the keel is covered. Thus the rowers perform their service, and return to the shore of the living.
To restore the Island of Death and Silence to Christian life, had been the cherished dream of Pope Gregory the Great, when he was still a humble monk in the Benedictine monas- tery of St Andrew, which he had founded in his father's palace on the Ccelian Hill. In the familiar story of his conception of the dream, the Psalms have their place. The countrymen of the three angel-faced Angles, in their remote Yorkshire home, were to be plucked from the ire of God, and taught to sing
1 De Bello Gotthico, iv. 20.
GREGORY THE GREAT 49
their Alleluias in the realm of King JElla. Gregory's love of the Psalms is illustrated by the picture of his mother Silvia, visible for centuries after his death, which he caused to be painted on the walls of what is now the Church of St Gregory at Rome. In her left hand she held the Psalter, open at the words, " 0 let my soul live, and it shall praise Thee; and Thy judgments shall help me " (Ps. cxix., verse 175). It was with the words of a psalm that Gregory expressed his love of the monastic seclusion from which he was torn, to be made Pope (590). He lamented a change, which seemed to thrust him far from the face of God, and back into the world. "I panted," he writes, " for the face of God, not in words only, but from the inmost marrow of my heart, crying, 'My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye my face: Thy face. Lord, will I seek'" (Ps. xxvii., verse 9). But when the choice fell upon him, he seized the opportunity to carry out the dream which, in his own person, he was not permitted to fulfil. As the Roman Senate, with Hannibal at the gates, sent forth its legions to Spain and to Africa, so Gregory, when Italy was ravaged by invaders, despatched his missionaries to Britain. It was over a country blackened by Lombard fires, that Augustine passed as he started on his mission. In 597 he landed in the Isle of Thanet, preceded by the Cross and painted banner, and followed by his companions, chanting Psalms and Litanies.
With the landing of Augustine, the Benedictine Rule was introduced into England, and the religious history of Saxon England is to a great extent bound up in the progress of the Order.
" Hearken, my son!" are the words with which begins the Rule of " Holy Benet," and " Ausculta, 0 fili!" are the words which in Christian iconography are inscribed on the book placed in the hands of St Benedict. The 34th Psalm (verses 12-15) strikes the keynote of the Rule. "The Lord," says Benedict, "who seeketh His servant in the midst of the people, still saith to him, 'What man is he that lusteth to live, and would fain see good days ?' If at that word thou answerest, ' It is I,' then will the Lord say to thee, ' If thou wouldst have life, keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile. Eschew evil, and do good; seek peace, and ensue it.' And that being done, ' Then shall My eyes be upon you, and My ears shall be open to your cry. And, even before thou callest Me, I shall say to thee. Here am I.'"
On the Psalms are based many of the chapters of the Bene- dictine Rule, and in them the book is profusely quoted. With a psalm, novices were admitted into the Order. The child, whose hands had been wrapped in the white folds of the altar- cloth, grew up in the monastic school. To him at length came the desire to give himself to God: " Here will I dwell for
50 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS
ever" (Ps. xxiii., verse 6). He became a novice; and, the year of his noviciate ended, he took the vows to remain attached to the monastery; to labour, while strength lasted;
to perfect himself in the state to which he was called; and, lastly, to obey the abbot. Then, with outstretched arms, he sang three times the verse which was the " Open Sesame " of the monastic life (Ps. cxix., verse 116), " 0 stablish me accord- ing to Thy word, that I may live; and let me not be disap- pointed of my hope." Three times the community repeated the words, and added the Gloria Patri. Then, dressed in monastic habit, the new brother knelt at the feet of each of the brethren, asked for their prayers, received the fraternal kiss, and so became a monk, bound by the threefold cord of Obedience, Labour, and Humility. With the same verse from the Psalms, girls were received into the religious communities, which, like the company of Benedict's sister, Scholastica, fol- lowed the Benedictine Rule.
Once admitted to the Order, the lives of monks and nuns were to a great extent regulated by the spirit, if not by the letter, of the Psalms. On the words, " I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue " (Ps. xxxix., verse i), was based the rule of silence. One of the first labours of the brethren was to learn the Psalter by heart. In such duties of monastic life, whether homely or sacred, as making bread for the altar, setting out the relics, attending the death- agony of a brother, taking places at the refectory, the weekly washing of feet, the beginning and end of readings during meals-psalms were sung or recited. In adorning copies of the Psalter with all the quaint and beautiful fancies of devo- tional imagination, monks spent prayerful years of solitude and silence. As shrines for the Psalter, their abbeys and churches were built, and to the chanting of a psalm (Ixxxiv.) their chosen sites were sprinkled with holy water. A Psalm, " Praise the Lord with harp; sing praises unto Him with the lute, and instrument of ten strings," sanctioned the use of the organ in divine service. By verses of the Psalms ("In the evening and morning, and at noonday, will I pray, and that instantly," Ps. lv., verse 18; " Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments," Ps. cxix., verse 164; and " At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee," Ps. cxix., verse 62) the canonical hours were regulated, and on the Psalms the services themselves were mainly based, so that the Psalter was sung through every week. To the singing of a psalm (cl.) their bells were cast, as the brethren waited at the furnace for the metal to be poured into the mould. With the chanting of the Psalms, monks traversed wild forests and mountain solitudes; or, like Stephen Harding, second founder of the Cistercians, as he journeyed to Rome, met the perils of the way by a daily recitation of the Psalter. In the words of
THE PSALMS IN MONASTIC LIFE 51
a psalm, the monastic vocation came to men like Thomas Aquinas (Ps. Ixxxiv., verse n, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of ungodli- ness "), and he obeyed the call to become a Dominican. With a psalm (Ps. cxiv., " When Israel came out of Egypt"), men like Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia (1510-72), turned their backs on wealth and worldly honours to enter religious societies. With a psalm, like Gall, or Vincentius of Lerins (Ps. xlvi., verse 10), monks chose the sites of monasteries, and, as they reared the walls, exorcised the demons of mountain, lake or wood. In the spirit of the Psalms, monastic builders lavished their genius and devotion on arch and capital, altar- shrine and tower, portal and window, that they might beautify the habitation of God, and prepare a dwelling-place meet for His honour. Thus it was with Hugh of Cluni, who, according to his biographer, said within himself, with the Psalmist, (> I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honour dwelleth " (Ps. xxvi., verse 8); and whatsoever the devotion of the faithful gave, he entirely consecrated to the decoration of his church or to the good of the poor.
To the mediaeval monk, the choir was the garden of the Lord, in which he laboured day and night; it was his paradise, where, in the cool shadow cast by his Redeemer, he might rest from the burning heat of the world. One of the contemporaries of Thomas a Kempis describes him, when he took part in the offices of the Church: " Whilst he was singing, he was to be observed with his face always raised towards heaven, as if inspired with a sacred enthusiasm, carried and borne beyond himself by the wonderful sweetness of the Psalms.'' This was the spirit of mediasval psalmody. As its tide rolled forth, night and day, from the convent or monastery, and swelled over hill and fen, midnight wayfarers, travelling in fear of their lives, felt that they were in the hands of God; and labourers, rising to their work at dawn, or resting at noon, or returning with night, knew, though they understood not the words, that their toil was consecrated in the sight of their heavenly Father.
As the Psalms presided over every part of a monk's life, so they were present with him in his death. When a brother lay dying, the haircloth was spread, the ashes were scattered, and in them a cross was traced. Here the sick man was laid. By blows on a board the brethren were summoned, and, wherever they were, or whatever their occupations, they ran to his side, and remained with him in his anguish, chanting the Penitential Psalms and Litanies. Thus, in the presence of the fraternity, in sackcloth and ashes, supported by the supplications of their brethren, with the words of the Psalms beating on their ears, as they had sounded throughout their lives, died thousands of "Knights of God "- members of the
52 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS
most powerful, and, with all their shortcomings, the most useful, of mediaeval institutions.
With words of the Psalms in their ears, or on their lips, died three of the men who were most conspicuous in the establishment of the Benedictine Rule in England-Benedict Biscop (623-90), Wilfrid (634-709), and Dunstan (924-88).
To Benedict, England owes a vast debt. On his work rested much of the learning and culture of the eighth century. Studying the Benedictine Rule at Canterbury, at Lerins, and other continental monasteries, he established it in his mon- asteries of Jarrow and Wearmouth. Six times he visited Rome-now seeking architects, masons, and materials to beautify his churches; now bringing with him musicians or instructors in ritual; now gathering relics, pictures, images and vestments ; now collecting the manuscripts which made his libraries famous. Worn out by labours, and paralysed in his limbs, he listened, through sleepless nights, to the repeti- tion of psalms, in which he was himself too weak to join. He died January isth, 690, when those who watched by him were repeating Ps. IxxxiiL, " Hold not Thy tongue, 0 God;
keep not still silence." Within the walls of Jarrow the Venerable Bede, the father of English history, the flower of the monastic schools, the true type of a Benedictine, was already harvesting the stores of learning which Benedict had collected, giving his whole energies, as he says of himself, to meditation on the Scriptures ; delighting, amid the observance of the monastic rule and the daily ministry of singing in the church, either to learn, or to teach, or to write.
Widely different from the methods of Benedict Biscop were the means by which Wilfrid sustained the cause, of which both were zealous champions. Yet in their love of art they were at one, and the magnificence of Ripon rivalled that of Wearmouth or Jarrow. In the monastery of Lindisfarne, Wilfrid studied the Scottish usages, acquired fame for learn- ing, and committed the Psalter to memory in the version of Jerome. But Rome exercised over him an irresistible fascina- tion. His mind was set tawards the Papal city, even during his stay at Canterbury, where once more he learnt the Psalter by heart-this time in the old Italic version, which was adopted there and at Rome. The years 652-8 were spent at Lyons and at Rome in studying the usages, ritual, and discipline, which he laboured all his stormy life to establish in Northern England. In his long conflict against Celtic Christianity, he suffered deposition, exile, imprisonment. But his purpose never wavered. Thrown into prison at Dunbar (circa 681), the bishop was deserted by his spiritual chief, separated from friends and adherents, deprived of all that he possessed except his clothing, robbed even of his precious reliquary, which was the companion of his many journeys.
NEOT AND KING ALFRED 53
Yet his guards heard the fallen prelate chanting the Psalms as cheerfully as if he were in his own monastery of Ripon or Hexham. His banishments were fruitful in labour. During one, he became the apostle of the Frisians; in another, the missionary of Sussex and the Isle of Wight. The last effort of his old age was the visitation of the monasteries which he had founded. Setting out from Hexham, now the centre of his See, and visiting Ripon on his way, he rode to the Mercian houses in turn. In October 709, he came to Oundle, in Northamptonshire. There he was seized with a fatal illness. Round the dying man gathered the whole community, chanting the Psalms which he had loved so well. As they reached the 3oth verse of Ps. civ., "When thou lettest Thy breath go forth, they shall be made," his breathing ceased, and his stormy life was ended.
Up and down the country, in England as on the Continent, were scattered monastic institutions-links in the national unity, sanctuaries of religious life, centres of education and civilisation, nurseries of arts and industries, agricultural colonies which drained fens or reclaimed forests, treasuries in which were preserved the riches of ancient learning. Gradually the stern severity of the Celtic discipline yielded before the more human spirit of its Italian rival, which hallowed not only manual but intellectual labour. With the Danish invasions there came a check and a recoil. In the North, East, and centre of England, the invaders fell with special fury on the religious communities. They devoured the land like locusts. Fire and sword swept away, in a few hours, the fruits of the patient toil of a century. In the South and West, the defenders, though hard-pressed, held their own. With one signal triumph over the Danes, Saxon legend inseparably associated the Psalms in the person of St Neot, who every morning said the Psalter through, and every mid- night chanted a hundred psalms. The saint died, full of years and honour, among his countrymen. No man of equal sanctity had risen to take his place, when, in 878, King Alfred lay in his tent at Iley, on the eve of the battle of Ethendun. To the king appeared St Neot, " like an angel of God ; his hair white as snow, his raiment white, glistering, and fragrant with the scents of heaven." He promised Alfred victory. "The Lord," he said, "shall be with you; even the Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, who giveth victory unto kings" (Ps. xxiv., verse 8). As morning broke, the little band of Saxons fell on Guthrun and the sleeping Danes. So sudden was their onset, that at first they carried all before them. But gradually the tide of battle began to sway. It was turned again in favour of King Alfred, when a majestic figure, whom the Saxons recognised as St Neot himself, seizing the royal banner, marsL-illed his countrymen to re-
54 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS
newed effort, victory, and pursuit. So, for a time, peace came to the land, and Guthrun and his followers became Christians.
During this Ufe-and-death struggle, it was not strange that morals relaxed, monastic fervour cooled, and heathen prac- tices revived. With Dunstan, the statesman who laboured to unite England under King Edgar, the ecclesiastic who, as Archbishop of Canterbury, strove to revive monastic life- a new spirit was breathed into Church and State. As Abbot of Glastonbury, Dunstan had reformed the community which he governed. But the Benedictine Rule was then imperfectly known to him, and it was only after his exile in Flanders and his sojourn in the monastery of St Peter at Ghent (956-57) that he realised its strength. A man of learning, he was attracted by its opportunities for education. To his kindly character it commended itself by its humanity. Him- self skilled in music, painting, iron work and embroidery, it appealed to his artistic temperament. Keenly sensitive to the immorality of the times, he valued its example of the separa- tion from all sexual relations. In its uniform adoption, he saw a powerful instrument for the moral reform of Church and State, for the unification and intellectual progress of the nation. Before his death, the Rule was practically universal in England. Almost his last public act was the coronation of Ethelred, in 978, at Kingston. Retiring from affairs of state, he passed his remaining years at Canterbury, occupied in business, in teaching, or the practice of handicrafts, constant in prayer by night and day, delighting in the services of the Church and in psalmody. In May 988, his strength failed him. He had received the " Viaticum," and died as he was giving thanks in the words, " The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance. He hath given meat unto them that fear Him " (Ps. cxi., verses 4, 5).
At the close of the tenth century, the Benedictine Rule had conquered France; it had won Germany and Spain; it was established in England. The vision of Benedict was realised, and the monastic world gathered together under one beam of the sun.
CHAPTER IV
THE MIDDLE AGES
The battle of Vougle; the Psalms in ecclesiastical or semi- ecclesiastical history (i) the Papacy and the Empire- Charlemagne, Gregory VII. and Henry IV. Anselm and William Ruf us. Henry II. and Thomas a Becket, Alexander III. and Frederick Barbarossa; (2) pilgrimages; (3) crusades, Abp. Baldwin, Richard I., Henry V.-Abbot Adeline at the Tagus, Cardinal Ximenes, Demetrius of the Don; (4) the religious revival; St Bernard; Stephen Harding and the Cistercian reform-Citeaux and Fountains Abbey; St Francis of Assist and the Franciscans; the Psalms in secular history -William the Conqueror, Vladimir Monomachus, David I. of Scotland, Abelard and Heloise, St Louis of France, William Wallace; in mediaeval science; in mediaeval literature--De Imitatione Christi, Divina Commedia, Piers Piowman, The Golden Legend.
As the centuries advance, the Psalms touch human life at points which grow more and more numerous, till the whole circle of thought and action seems to be embraced. Mediaeval literature and science, as well as secular and ecclesiastical history, are permeated by their influence.
The strongest of the monarchies which rose on the ruins of the Western Empire was the Frankish Kingdom. Hitherto the youthful nations, whose vigour had scourged the effemi- nacy of the older world, if Christians at all, had been Arians. But the baptism of Clovis had for the first time arrayed force on the side of orthodox Christianity; alike against heretics, heathen, and Saracens, the Franks were its zealous champions. It was this fact that gave significance to the victory which Clovis won at Vougle (507) over Alaric II. and his Arian Visigoths.
Blessed by Remy at Rheims, Clovis had marched towards the Loire. Encamping close to Tours, he sent to the church, in which rested the bones of St Martin, to enquire whether any presage of victory would be vouchsafed to him. As his messengers entered the church, the choir were chanting the words, " Thou hast girded me with strength unto the battle;
Thou shalt throw down mine enemies un^er me. Thou hast made mine enemies also
to turn their backs upon me; and I shall destroy them that hate me Ps.
xviii., verses 39, 40).