LITMIR.BIZ

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to obey them as those who held the keys of Heaven.

      For the next three hundred years the Church was almost wholly free from the direct control of legatine visits. Appeals to the judgment of the Roman see had for the first time been made by Wilfrith, and the Church, as we have seen, cordially upheld the resistance offered by kings and nobles to the Pope’s attempts to set aside the decision of national councils. The compromise that was at last effected was not a papal triumph. Nevertheless the authority of the Pope was generally acknowledged, and the most powerful kings thought it needful to obtain the sanction of Rome for ecclesiastical changes, such as the erection and suppression of the Mercian archbishopric. Moreover, Englishmen venerated Rome as the Apostolic See and the mother of Catholic Christendom, and made frequent pilgrimages thither. First, ecclesiastics journeyed to Rome either for purposes of business or devotion. Then, towards the end of the seventh century, Ceadwalla, a West Saxon king, went thither to receive baptism, praying that he might die as soon as he was cleansed from his sins, and his prayer was granted. His example was followed by other kings, and among them by his successor, Ini. Crowds of persons of both sexes and every condition now went on pilgrimage. In Offa’s time there were special buildings at Rome called the “Saxon School” for the accommodation of English pilgrims, and the Mercian king obtained a promise from Charles the Great that they should be free of toll in passing through his dominions.

      The Church and Western Christendom.

      The missionary labours of Willibrord, of Winfrith or Boniface, and other Englishmen brought our Church into close relationship with other Churches of Western Europe, for a constant correspondence was kept up between the missionaries and their brethren at home. The connexion between the English and Frankish Churches was strengthened by the residence of Alcuin at the court of Charles the Great, and by the desire of Offa to establish friendly relations with the Frankish monarch. Alcuin obtained a letter from the kings and bishops of England, agreeing with the condemnation which Charles pronounced against the decree of the Second Council of Nice, re-establishing the worship of images in the Eastern Church, and English bishops attended the council Charles held at Frankfort, where the action of the Greeks and the opinions of certain Adoptionist heretics were condemned. At the close of the eighth century our Church was highly esteemed throughout Western Christendom, and this was due both to the noble work accomplished by English missionaries and to the literary greatness of Northumbria, the home of Alcuin.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      RUIN AND REVIVAL.

      RUIN OF NORTHUMBRIA—ÆTHELWULF’S PILGRIMAGE—DANISH INVASIONS OF SOUTHERN ENGLAND; THE PEACE OF WEDMORE—ALFRED’S WORK—CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH IN THE TENTH CENTURY—REORGANIZATION—REVIVAL—ODA—DUNSTAN—SECULARS AND REGULARS—DUNSTAN’S ECCLESIASTICAL ADMINISTRATION—CORONATIONS—DUNSTAN’S LAST DAYS—ÆLFRIC THE GRAMMARIAN.

      Ruin of Northumbria.

      Before the end of the eighth century the Northmen laid waste Lindisfarne, Jarrow, and Wearmouth. Civil disorder, however, was well nigh as fatal to the Church in the north as the ravages of the heathen. In 808 Archbishop Eanbald joined the Mercian king, Cenwulf, in dethroning Eardulf of Northumbria. Eardulf sought help from the Emperor, Charles the Great, and laid his case before Leo III. A papal legate and an imperial messenger were sent to England to summon Eanbald to appear either before the Pope or the Emperor. He defended himself by letter; his defence was pronounced unsatisfactory, and the Emperor procured the restoration of the king. For the next sixty years anarchy and violence prevailed in the north. Then the Scandinavian pirates invaded the country and overthrew York. Nine years later Halfdene desolated Bernicia, so that not a church was left standing between the Tweed and the Tyne. The bishop of Lindisfarne and his monks fled from their home, carrying with them the bones of St. Cuthberht. They found shelter at Chester-le-Street, which for about a century became the see of the Bernician bishopric. Northumbria became a Danish province, and when it was again brought under the dominion of an English king it had fallen far behind the rest of the country in ecclesiastical and intellectual matters. The Danish conquest had a marked effect upon the position of the northern metropolitan. Cut off from communication with the rest of England, the Northumbrians became almost a distinct nation. The extinction of the native kingship and a long series of revolutions threw political power into the hands of the archbishops, and when the Church of York again emerges from obscurity we find them holding a kind of national headship. Their position was magnified by isolation. While the sees of Hexham and Withern had been overthrown, and the Church of Lindisfarne was in exile, the see of York remained to attract the sympathies and, in more than one instance, direct the action, of the northern people.

      During the attacks of the pirates on the south of England the alliance between the Church and the West Saxon throne was strengthened by the common danger, and the bishops appear as patriots and statesmen. Æthelwulf was supported in his struggles with the Danes by Swithun, bishop of Winchester, and Ealhstan, bishop of Sherborne. Ealhstan was rich, and used his wealth for the defence of the kingdom; he equipped armies, joined in leading them in battle, and in 845, in conjunction with the ealdormen of Somerset and Dorset, headed the forces of his bishopric, and inflicted a severe defeat upon the invaders at the mouth of the Parret. The resistance the Danes met with from the West Saxons, which was largely due to the exertions of these bishops, delivered Wessex from invasion for twenty years. Meanwhile Lindsey and East Anglia were ravaged, Canterbury was twice sacked, and London was taken by storm. Everywhere the heathens showed special hatred to the monks and clergy; monasteries and churches were sacked and burnt, and priests were slain with the sword. Æthelwulf’s pilgrimage, 855.These calamities were regarded as Divine judgments, and when Æthelwulf had checked the invaders he made a pilgrimage to Rome. Before he left, and after his return, he made a series of donations, which have been described as conveying a tenth part of his own estates to ecclesiastical bodies, and to various thegns, as freeing a tenth part of the folcland from all burdens except the three that fell on all lands alike, and as charging every ten hides of his land with the support of a poor man. Though these grants have nothing to do with the institution of tithes, they illustrate the sacredness that was attached to the tenth portion of property. Æthelwulf carried rich gifts to Benedict III., and while he was at Rome rebuilt the “Saxon School.” This institution was supported by a yearly contribution from England, which appears to have been the origin of Peter’s pence. The king probably found his youngest son Alfred at Rome, for he had sent him to Leo IV. two years before. Leo confirmed the child, and anointed him as king. The Pope did not, of course, pretend to dispose of the English crown, and probably only meant to consecrate Alfred to any kingship to which his father as head-king might appoint him.

      By 870 the whole of the north and east of England had been conquered by the Danes. In that year Eadmund, the East Anglian king, went out to battle against them, and was defeated and taken prisoner. His captors offered to spare his life and restore his kingdom to him, if he would deny Christ and reign under their orders. When he refused their offers, they tied him to a tree, shot at him with arrows, and finally cut off his head. In later days the Abbey of St. Edmund’s Bury was named after the martyred king. Wessex well nigh shared the fate of the rest of the country; it was saved by the skill and wisdom of Alfred. Through all the bitter struggle the Church vigorously upheld the national cause; a bishop of Elmham fell fighting against the heathen host in East Anglia, and a bishop of Sherborne in Wessex. Treaty of Wedmore, 878.At last Alfred inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Danish king, Guthorm, at Edington, and as the price of peace Guthorm promised to quit Wessex and accepted Christianity. He was baptized at Wedmore, in Somerset, and a treaty was made by which England was divided into two parts. Wessex was freed from the danger of conquest, and Alfred’s immediate dominions were increased, while the north and east remained under the Danes. Guthorm owned the supremacy of the West Saxon king in East Anglia; his people became Christians, and in the other Danish districts the invaders for the most part also accepted Christianity when they became settled in the land.

      Alfred’s work.

      The Danish wars had a disastrous effect on religion, morality, and learning. The monastic congregations were scattered, and men did not care

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