know that Milton is continually rebuked in | Dunstan is, indeed, as familiar a name as these days for having likened Anglo-Saxon Becket, or Cranmer, or Laud; and Odo may history to the wars of kites or crows, perhaps be remembered, although more flocking and fighting in the air;' yet we faintly, on account of his connexion with imagine that, after all, the feeling of readers Dunstan. Aelfric is sometimes mentioned, in general is rather with Milton than with not for anything that he is known to have those who take it on themselves to correct done, but because he may perhaps have been him. To say that the history of England the same Aelfric from whose homilies some during those ages ought to be interesting-passages have been extracted as evidence of that if it is not found so the fault is in the the Anglo-Saxon belief on the Eucharistie reader-is to introduce considerations which doctrine.* The name of Alphege is pre are really beside the question. Nor is it served by some churches which are dedi of any use to tell us that, if we would but cated to it, and by the circumstances of his go deep enough into the study of the sub-murder by the Danes. And Stigand is reject, we should find it interesting; for or- membered as the last of Anglo-Saxons who nithologists might probably say the same was deposed in order that the Italian head of those airy feuds from which Milton draws of a Norman abbey might take his place. his contemptuous simile. The question of But these are about all that can be said to interest is really to be decided, not by per- retain any hold whatever on the minds of sons who have made Anglo-Saxon history ordinary readers; and we question whether the subject of conscientious antiquarian even Dean Hook himself could now pass a study, or by those (for we suspect that there very brilliant examination in the lives of are such) who have got up a smattering of the Brihtwalds and the Nothelms, the Pleg. it for the sake of display, but by ordinary munds and the Eadsiges, whose history be readers, who judge by a comparison of that has investigated, written, and in all proba period with later times of English history, bility forgotten. The Dean has, however, or with the history of other countries. A known how to enliven the duller portion of few points there are which are remembered his story by the introduction of amusing by every reader of our commonest schoolbooks; but the great mass of the story, extending as it does over more than six hundred years, is utterly forgotten. In the long line of the archbishops, how few have any place in the memory even of persons whose acquaintance with such matters is above the average! Augustine is, no doubt, remembered, and something of his storythe scene between Pope Gregory and the English boys in the slave-market, the conversion of Ethelbert, and the quarrel between the Italian missionaries and the bishops of the older British church.* Theodore may possibly be known as the monk of Tarsus under whom the whole English Church was consolidated, and the knowledge of his native Greek is said to have become as common in this country as that of Latin. * We venture to question the correctness of a note relating to Augustine, whom Gregory the Great, in writing to the missionaries bound for Britain, had styled 'præpositus vester.' In the first edition,' says Dean Hook, 'I used the word provost, but there appears to be something of an anachronism in this. Provost had not as yet a technical meaning, and it has now no other' (i. 51). In the second edition, therefore, the words are translated your leader.' Provost (præpositus), however, had, in Gregory's time, a technical meaning,' inasmuch as it was the name given in the Benedictine rule (c. 65) to the second person (or prior) in a monastery; and Augustine seems to have held this office in the monas tery on the Coelian Hill, from which the English mission was sent forth. See the Benedictine Lite of Gregory, in Migne, 'Patrologia Latina,' lxxv. 366. matter here and there. Thus in the Life of Tatwine (A.D. 731-735) we find a curious account of the manner of education and of the state of knowledge in that archbishop's time (i. 196-206), and other such digressions oc cur throughout. On a point as to which the reader of Church history finds himself obliged to form *See i. 436-8. Dean Hook tells us elsewhere that John Scotus Erigena 'wrote with freedom and learning upon the doctrine of predestination, but the work which made the greatest impression upon the public mind was his treatise "De Eucharistia,"' in and, assuming the identity of Scotus with that John opposition to the opinions of Paschasius Radbert; who was one of the great Alfred's literary assistants, he is 'inclined to think that to his influence the of thodoxy of the English divines on this subject may be, in some measure, traced' (i. 322-3). To us it seems clear that Alfred's John was a different per son from Scotus; and it is now generally supposed that Scotus did not write a special treatise on the Eucharist, but that his views on it were set forth in his Commentary on St. John (of which the extant portion stops short of the critical part of the sixth chapter), and, perhaps, also in a short letter to Charles the Bald, which no longer exists. And, while his views, in so far as they can be gathered from his remaining writings, were certainly opposed to those of Paschasius, they seem also to have dif fered considerably from the doctrine of Aelfric and from that of the English reformation. (See Floss, in Migne's Patrologia, cxxii., Praef., p. xxi.; Christ lieb, Johann Scotus Erigena,' Gotha, 1860, pp. 70, 78-9.) Berengar and his opponents, in the eleventh century, wrongly attributed the treatise of Ratram, De Corpore et Sanguine Domini,' to Scotus; and hence has arisen much confusion in later times. some opinion, the continual recurrence of | Church was unabated. He found that his miracles, Dean Hook has some very sen- connexion with Rome gave him advantages sible remarks (i. 35-7), of which we shall in dealing with the princes and the people quote a part:— of France and Germany which were not to 'It is only in modern times that we have learn. be had by any other means; the more he ed to distinguish between credulity and faith, and saw of the disorderly Irish missionaries who to understand that, as the object to be reached in rivalled and thwarted him in his exertions, all our investigations is truth, one enquirer may the more did he naturally feel himself infall into as great error by believing too much as clined to draw close the bands by which he another by believing too little. But before this himself was connected with Rome; and, if A principle was recognised, and when the only fear we may take the success of his mission as a men had was lest they should not believe enough, test, his policy appears to be amply justified they encouraged themselves in credulity; and whereas we should think it sinful to give credit as the best which could have been adopted to the report of a miracle without carefully ex- in the circumstances with which he had to amining the evidence, our conviction being that credulity weakens the cause of Christianity, the ancients were, on the contrary, too much inclined to regard an investigation of evidence, not as a legitimate exercise of the reason with which our Creator has endowed us, but as an indication K. deal. On the whole, it seems to us that the relations of the Anglo-Saxon Church with that of Rome are less correctly stated by Dean Hook than by another late writer, Professor of an infidel temper or a want of faith.'—(i. 38.) volume on 'The Early and Middle Ages of Pearson, of King's College, London, whose Early in the work we have intimations England' is full of information and written of a theory which somewhat tinges the with much ability, although somewhat diswhole-as to the independence of the Eng-figured by that tone of dashing dogmatism lish Church in Anglo-Saxon times. On this which seems to be now regarded as necesaccount Dean Hook is disposed to dwell sary for a Professor of Modern History:*. rather strongly on the shortcomings of the Italian missionaries, whose proceedings after their first establishment in this island he regards as wanting in boldness and enterprise (i. 113-120); and, from remarking on these defects, he goes on to show how the mission of Birinus to Wessex, which was sanctioned by Rome but unconnected with Canterbury, paved the way for the union of the whole English Church. This is a matter to which it is well that attention should be drawn, as it has too commonly been overlooked. 'If,' writes Mr. Pearson, in little matters of detail Gregory's plan was not carried out, there can yet be little doubt that the Anglo-Saxon Church looked up to Rome as its original and as its ultimate court of appeal. In troublesome times communication might be suspended; the whole connection was perhaps regarded as settled than as a matter of abstract right. In fact it by custom, which no one cared to dispute, rather would be easier to prove the devotion of the Saxons to Rome than their dependence upon it, though the latter no doubt was real. There is one instance on record where the primate adhered to the fortunes of a fallen pope, and did not attempt to conciliate his more fortunate rival. But the pilgrimage of Anglo Saxon kings and a name We cannot but think that, in his wish to disconnect the Anglo-Saxon Church from Rome, Dean Hook has done some injustice to the great missionary Boniface, whom he represents as 'miserably deficient in judg ment, though excelling in zeal' (i. 237). Surely there was nothing inconsistent (as the Dean appears to suppose) in Boniface's falling back on the English Church for assistance in his labours, although he had received his commission from the Bishop of Rome. For he saw that Englishmen were the men best fitted for missionary work was a native of Beauvais, and de Tocliffe archbishop among the kindred people of Germany; of Poitiers. Similarly, the primacy was offered to and, on the other hand, he did not see that the Lombard Vacarius.' On this it may be remarked antagonism which Dr. Hook imagines be- that (1.) Richard Tocliffe (who seems to be indebted tween the English and the Roman Churches to Professor Pearson for the prefix de) was the same of that day. To Boniface Rome was vener- eigner, but a native of the diocese of Bath-prowith Richard of Ilchester; (2.) he was not a forable, among other reasons, because from it bably of the town from which his local name was the second conversion of England had pro- taken; (3.) he was not archbishop, but archdeacon, of ceeded; and, although after having entered Poitiers; (4.) nor was Poitiers ever an archiepiscopal on his missionary career he never revisited see; (5.) Longchamps was not appointed by Heury, his native land, his communication with it to Vacarius, but to Roger, abbot of Bec, whom Selden but by Richard I.; (6.) the primacy was not offered was constant, his interest in the English and others have confounded with him. *Nor is Mr. Pearson always to be relied on for correctness of statement. At p. 368, for example, he displays a power of crowding blunders into a narrow compass, which might be envied by Mr. Thornbury himself. Henry II., it is said, after his master of the English Church, and he gave away its reconciliation with the Pope, 'was now unopposed bishoprics to B cket's sworn enemies, Ridel, John of Oxford, and Richard of Ilchester, or to foreigners, such as William Longchamps and Richard de Tocliffe. Mr. Pearson adds in a note, 'Longchamps less number of the people to Rome, the dues selfimposed to support a hospice there, the fierce zeal of Boniface for the papal claims, are all proofs of a filial sentiment to the august mother of their faith."* We believe, indeed, that in this period Rome exercised over the English clergy the influence of advanced religious fashion. That many hung behind, and refused to follow its developments' in doctrine and in practice, is to be explained by the fact that the great mass of the clergy is generally distrustful of novelties, rather than by supposing that they acted on any settled and consciously entertained principle of national or primitive Christianity. Those who had intercourse with the Continent were regarded as the party of progress and of superior enlightenment; and the decay of the English Church under the calamities inflicted by the Danish invasions gave greater and greater advantages to this party. If England was less Roman than France, the reason seems to have been simply that it was less civilised and more remote. ', 'Power was required to restrain the king, and this power was sought by the Church. The Scriptures of the Old Testament were studied with a zest equal to that of the Paritans of the subsequent period, and the idea of a theocracy was prevalent and popular. The people groaned beneath the tyranny of the barons; they too often missed a protector in the sovereign; they found a friend in the priest, who very frequently rose from their own ranks to the high position b foremost among the demagogues of the day; and occupied in society. Priests and bishops were in the contentions which we shall have to recount between the primates and the kings of England we shall find the people invariably on the side of the Church. Every Church movement was a popular movement. The Church formed the rev olutionary party; and among the people degrad ed, and to a great extent enslaved, the prevalent than the existing state of things. The king be feeling was that any revolution would be better came more exacting, from the necessity under which he was placed of supporting mercenaries to defend himself against the assaults of barons, Church, and people. The Church defied his mer cenaries, because the anathema of the ecclesiastic, when directed against the ruling powers, was sure to meet with a deep response in the beart cased in armour, became formidable from their of the people, who, even to barons and monarchs numbers.'-(pp. 5-6.) But it is time that we should pass on to Dean Hook's second volume, which in the interest of its subject far exceeds the first. Although the second volume is consideraThe action of the Church as the protector bly the larger, the period embraced in it is of the weak, with the accompanying evil to much shorter than in the other-being little which it was exposed in the temptation to more than a century and a half, instead of go beyond its proper function, are forcibly nearly five centuries. Hence there is room stated, and there is a very clear and impar for greater fulness of narrative, while the tial estimate of the advantages and the dis facts are better known and more interest advantages of monasticism, as to which the ing; and among the archbishops of this Dean agrees rather with the opinions which time, begining with Lanfranc, the contem- we ourselves have lately expressed than porary of Gregory VII., and ending with with the more romantic views of M. de Stephen Langton, the contemporary of In Montalembert. Among other subjects nocent III., are some of the most famous which are discussed are the Crusade names that are to be found in the whole of to which the author is careful to point out the long series from Augustine to his succes- the good which resulted from them, notsor in our own day. withstanding all that was mistaken in the The introductory chapter of this volume design, faulty in the execution, or unsuccess deserves to be mentioned, as giving a clear ful in the result as to their immediate object and sensible view of some of the chief (PP. 48, seqq.); and the influence of the points which require notice in the circum- institution of chivalry, and the rise of uni stances of the time. One great cause of versities. In connexion with the last of the collisions between the Crown and the these subjects, the author is led into a deChurch was that, in Dean Hook's signifi- fence of liberal education, as distinguished cant phrase, the Norman kings were none from the special training for a profession; of them gentlemen. They were not gentle- and we extract a passage which may be read men, because from their earliest years the with interest even by those who are already vindictive and other passions were encour acquainted with the brilliant Lectures in aged and indulged' (p. 8). And the part which Dr. Newman (although not without which the Church played in opposition to some display of his Roman peculiarities) these princes-the strength which it found has lately advocated the same causein its contest with them-are well explained in the following words : 'A liberal education is to the present time the characteristic of what is called a university eda cation. By a liberal education is meant a non*The Early and Middle Ages of England,' Lon-professional education. By a non-professional don, 1861, p. 86. education is meant an education conducted with out reference to the future profession or calling, or special pursuit for which the person under educaStation is designed. It is an education which is regarded not merely as a means, but as something which is in itself an end. The end proposed is not the formation of the divine, or the physician, or the lawyer, or the statesman, or the soldier, or the man of business, or the botanist, or the chemist, or the man of science, or even the scholar; thebut simply of the thinker. the ha It is admitted that the highest eminence can bed only be attained by the concentration of the till mind, with a piercing intensity and singleness of view, upou one field of action. In order to excel, each mind must have its specific end. A man may know many things well, but there is only one thing upon which he will be pre-eminently by learned, and become an authority. The professional man may be compared to one whose eye is fixed upon a microscope. The rest of the ab world is abstracted from his field of vision, and the eye, though narrowed to a scarcely perceptible hole, is able to see what is indiscernible by others. When he observes accurately he becomes, in his department, a learned man, and when he reveals his observations he is a benefactor of his kind. All that the university system does is to delay the professional education as long as possible; it would apply to the training of the mind a discipline analogous to that which common sense suggests in what relates to bodily exercise. A father, ambitious for his son that he might win the prize at the Olympian games, or in the Pythian fields, devoted his first attention not to the technicalities of the game, but to the general condition and morals of the youth. The success of the athlete depended upon his first becoming a healthy man. So the university system trains the man and defers the professional education as long as circumstances will permit. It makes provision, before the eye is narrowed to the microscope, that the eye itself shall be in a healthy condition; it expands the mind before contracting it, it would educate mind as such before bending it down to the professional point; it does not regard the mind as an auimal to b fattened for the market, by cramming it with food before it has acquired the power of diges tion; but treats it rather as an instrument to be tuned, as a metal to be refined, as a weapon to be sharpened. This is the system which the old universities of Europe have inherited. 'Philology, logic, and mathematics, are still the instruments employed for the discipline of the mind, which is the end and object of a liberal education.'-(ii. 63-5.) Dean Hook remarks that all the old authorities for the history of the Anglo-Norman time, with the exception of the letters of Becket's antagonist, Gilbert Foliot, are on the side opposed to the Crown. This statement is, indeed, somewhat too broad; for such chroniclers as Ralph de Diceto and William of Newburgh are certainly not to be reckoned as violently hierarchical and adverse to the royal side, even as to the question between Henry II. and Becket; while Robert of Thorigny is in general a strong partisan of Henry, although as to that particular question he observes a remarkable silence until he reaches the point at which all men professed to agree in reprobation of the Archbishop's murder, and in reverence for him as a martyr. But, be this as it may, the Dean is determined to be impartial, and in as far as possible to make up from his own resources for such defects as have been left in the evidence by the prejudices of former ages, by the ravages of time, or by the timidity of some chroniclers who were unwilling to go against the stream of opinion current in their own class. As the authorities are all on one side, and are strongly tinged by the 'odium theologicum, which is of all passions the most unscrupulous in the discoloration of facts and the aspersion of character,' he is— inclined in the personal disputes between the kings and the archbishops to take the most favourable view that circumstances will permit of the sayings and doings of the former. The kings were generally right in principle, though placing themselves in the wrong by the ungovernable temper which was their curse, if not an hereditary mania.'—(ii. 68.) And in truth he sometimes advocates the royal side to a degree which is rather surprising. Dean Hook considers that Archbishop Lanfranc was the author of the Norman Conqueror's ecclesiastical policy, 'which the successors of the Conqueror endeavoured to enforce, and which some of the most distinguished of the successors of Lanfranc, such as Anselm and Becket, endeavoured to put aside (ii. 143); but we must hesitate to follow our author to the full extent of his opinions in this matter. No doubt William and Lanfranc understood each other, and worked cordially together; and while William was the one sovereign of the time to whom Gregory VII. did not venture to dic tate, there was no great sympathy between Lanfrane and Gregory. The Archbishop did not enter into the scheme of papal dominion he was not very zealous for Gregory, as opposed to the antipope Clement; while on the other hand, in the eucharistic controversy, where Lanfranc was the chief advocate of transubstantiation, Gregory took little interest, and was willing to tolerate the opinions of Lanfranc's opponent Berengar.* But that Lanfranc supposed *As to this controversy, Dean Hook seems to overrate the amount of previous acquaintance botween Lanfranc and Berengar (ii. 90). The old biographer of Lanfranc, in saying that Berengar wrote to him, quasi familiari suo' (Migne, Patrol., cl. 36). means, apparently, that they were not on the King of England-whose kingdom | William Rufus and on the able but unhad been gained under a banner conse- scrupulous Henry Beauclerc. But Dean crated by Pope Alexander II. to have Hook's view of Anselm is far less favourany right in ecclesiastical matters which able. While allowing him credit for ability, had not belonged to him as Duke of Nor learning, and sanctity, he thinks that the mandy, or in which other sovereigns did Archbishop was a man at once unpractical not share,* we must hesitate to believe. As and impracticable-a prey to a subtle form a specimen of the liberties of the national of pride, which, unsuspected by himself or Church, Dean Hook tells us thatby his friends, swayed him in all his actions and led him into grievous and calamitous 'When there were two or more popes in exist ence, as was frequently the case in the miserable schisms of the age, the right of choosing his pope was vested in the king; so that the clergy were not permitted to acknowledge any one as pope until the royal consent had been obtained.(i. 144.) England had, no doubt, the right to choose its Pope in cases where the cardinals had made a disputed election; for the decision in such cases was settled by the general adhesion of Western Christendom to one or the other of the rival Popes. But that the part which England was to espouse should be determined by the King alone, appears to us both an unlikely and a very inexpedient arrangement. Elsewhere, sovereigns claimed no such exclusive power of decision. Henry IV. of Germany was supported by councils of German and Italian prelates in his opposition to Gregory VII., and Frederick Barbarossa in his opposition to Alexander III.; and that the mere will of a king who, in addition to being 'not a gentleman,' might be notoriously a man of no religious feeling, should impose a pope on the English clergy, in opposition to their own judgment and to the majority of Latin Christendom, would surely have been a very questionable advantage for them a piece of national liberty in church matters which they might possibly have regarded as very like slavery. The contest between Church and State began under Lanfranc's successor, Anselm, such terms as would have warranted the familiar address. *This claim was asserted by William Rufus, as appears from a speech of the Bishop of Durham to Anselm. Quod enim dominus tuus et noster in omni dominatione sua præcipuum habebat, et in quo cum cunctis regibus præstare certum est, hoc ei quantum in te est inique tollis.' Eadmer, Hist. Novorum,' 1. i. (Migne, clix., 384.) errors: For three-and-thirty happy years Anselm lived [at Bec] an object of adulation, whose sarings were recorded as the dictates of wisdom, whose word was law. The men revered him, the women loved him, the religious world honoured him as a saint, the profane world regarded him as endowed with virtues more than humar. Notwithstanding his many and great virtues, Anselm, nevertheless, was only a man, and was not exempt from the faults and frailties ever inci dent to humanity. We are not surprised to find the sin of spiritual pride, notwithstanding the semblance of humility, developing itself in his knowledged by his admirers. Through spiritual character, imperceptibly to himself, and not ac pride, with its concomitant self-complacency, be never imagined it possible that he could be mis taken in his judgment; and while he expected an immediate acquiescence in his opinions on the part of others, he treated all who differed from him, not with anger, for he did not often lose his temper, but with pity, which, implying superior been previously irritated or contemned. It is to ity, was especially provoking to those who had this fault of character, together with his ignorance of human nature, that we may trace much of the trouble to which he was subjected in his later years, and no small portion of the evils of which he was the unconscious cause.' — (pp. 182-183.) 1 such a character as that which is here so We can quite believe in the possibility of forcibly sketched; but we do not think that Anselm's character was of this kind. The description seems to us inconsistent, not only with Eadmer's account of him, but That William Rufus was a bad man, Dr. with the tone and spirit of his own works. Hook very fully allows; but he believes that a more prudent tactician than Anselm would have known how to manage him, and the whole course of the contest between the two is represented as a string of displays of 186-189). There is, indeed, something like 'want of tact' on the Archbishop's part (ii. a vein of caricature throughout the account of Anselm, and, as we have already seen that Dr. Hook on principle makes the best that he can of the Kings, so it seems as if in this instance he were resolved to make the worst that he could of the Archbishop. Thus, we are told that, after having de clined two invitations from Hugh, Earl of |