The English Church in the Middle Ages - William Morris Hunt

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rule, and who were generally married. The collapse of monasticism entailed the decay of learning, for the monastic schools were generally closed. Nor were the parish priests capable of supplying the place of the monks as teachers of the people. The drain of men entailed by the war made it necessary to confer the priesthood on many who were ignorant and otherwise unfit for full orders. And it is probable that the losses which the Church sustained during the war were not confined to monastic bodies, and that the clergy suffered considerably. A general decline in their character and efficiency naturally followed; and Alfred records how England had changed in this respect even within his own memory. He remembered the time when the “sacred orders were zealous in teaching and learning, and in all the services they owed to God, and how foreigners hied to this land for wisdom and lore;” but now, he says, “we should have to get them from abroad.” For “there were very few on this side Humber who could understand their rituals in English, or translate a letter from Latin into English, and not many beyond Humber.”

      There was little difference between the priest and his people; the clergy shared largely in the national habit of excessive drinking, and many priests were married. Among the laity morality was at a low ebb; the marriage tie was lightly regarded, and there was a general return to the laxity and vices of paganism. Heathen customs gathered fresh strength, and women dealt in enchantments and called up ghostly forms. Alfred determined to save his people from barbarism; he set himself to be their teacher, and sought for others to help in his work. From the English part of Mercia, where learning was more advanced than in Wessex, he brought Plegmund, who was afterwards chosen archbishop, and other clerks; Bishop Asser came to him from Wales; from beyond sea, Grimbold, a monk of St. Bertin’s, and John from the old Saxon land. He desired that every youth whose parents could afford it should be sent to school till he could read English well, and those who hoped for promotion till they could read Latin. Accordingly, he set up a school for young nobles in his palace, and made education the prominent feature in a monastery he founded at Athelney. He translated into English such books as he thought most needful for his people to read, and probably began the national record called the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” in the form we now have it. The care with which he fostered vernacular literature led to the use of English in religious teaching, and to the composition of books of homilies in that language. His code of laws, which consists of a selection from earlier laws and the decrees of synods, contains many ecclesiastical provisions; it treats religion as the foundation of civil law, and begins with the Ten Commandments and an account of the precepts of Moses. As the over-lord of Guthorm, he joined him in publishing a special code for the people of East Anglia, by which apostasy was declared a crime, negligent priests were to be fined, the payment of Peter’s pence was commanded, and the practice of heathen rites was forbidden. Alfred brought his kingdom into renewed relations with Rome, for year after year he sent thither alms from himself and his people, probably re-establishing the payment of Peter’s pence, which had been interrupted during the period of invasion.

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