Whatever of virtue or purity may have distinguished the church of Britain under Roman domination was speedily extinguished in the confusion of the Saxon occupation. Gildas, who flourished in the first half of the sixth century, describes the clergy of his time as utterly corrupt.369 He apparently would have been satisfied if the bishops had followed the Apostolic precept and contented themselves with being husbands of one wife; and he complains that instead of bringing up their children in chastity, the latter were corrupted by the evil example of their parents.370 Under Saxon rule, Christianity was probably well-nigh trampled out, except in the remoter mountain districts, to be subsequently restored in its sacerdotal form under the direct auspices of Rome.

Meanwhile, the British Isles were the theatre of another and independent religious movement. While the Saxons were subverting Christianity in Britain, St. Patrick was successfully engaged in laying the foundations of the Irish church.371 We have seen (p. 76) that celibacy was not one of the rules enforced in the infant Irish church; but this was of comparatively little moment, for that church was almost exclusively monastic in its character, and preserved the strictest views as to the observance of the vows by those who had once taken them.372 That the principles thus established were long preserved is evident from a curious collection of Hibernian canons, made in the eighth century, of which selections have been published by d’Achery and MartÈne. Some of these are credited by the compilers to Gildas, and thus show the discipline of the early British as well as of the Irish church.373 Their tendency is towards the purest asceticism. A penance of forty days was even enjoined on the ecclesiastic who, without thought of evil, indulged in the pleasure of converse with a woman.374 So in Ireland, a council held in 672 decrees that a priest guilty of unchastity, although removable according to the strict rule of discipline, may be allowed, if truly contrite, to retain his position on undergoing ten years of penitence375—an alternative, one might think, rather of severity than of mercy. One canon attributed to Gildas shows that in the British monastic system unchastity was considered the most heinous of offences, and also that it was sufficiently common;376 while another alludes to the same vice among prelates as justifying immediate excommunication.377

The missionary career by which the Irish church repaid the debt that it owed to Christianity is well known, and the form of faith which it spread was almost exclusively monastic. Luanus, one of the monks of Benchor, is said to have founded no less than a hundred monasteries;378 and when Columba established the Christian religion in Scotland, he carried with him this tendency to asceticism and inculcated it among his Pictish neophytes. His Rule enjoins the most absolute purity of mind as well as body;379 and that his teachings were long obeyed is evident when we find that, a hundred and fifty years later, his disciples are praised for the chastity and zeal of their self-denying lives by the Venerable Bede, who was fully alive to the importance of the rule, and who would have wasted no such admiration on them had they lived in open disregard of it.380 Equally convincing is the fact that Scotland and the Islands were claimed to be under the supremacy of the see of York, and that during the long controversy requisite to break down their schismatic notions respecting the date of Easter and the shape of the tonsure, not a word was said that can lead to the supposition that they held any unorthodox views on the far more important subject of sacerdotal purity.381

When, a hundred and fifty years after the Anglo-Saxon invasion, Gregory the Great undertook the conversion of the islanders, the missionaries whom he despatched under Augustin of course carried with them the views and ideas which then held undisputed sway in Rome. Apparently, however, asceticism found little favor at first with the new converts, rendering it difficult for Augustin to obtain sufficient co-laborers among his disciples, for he applied to Gregory to learn whether he might allow those who could not restrain their passions to marry and yet remain in the ministry. To this Gregory replied evasively, stating, what Augustin already knew, that the lower grades might marry, but making no reference whatever to the higher orders.382 He apparently did not wish to assume the responsibility of relaxing the rule, while willing perhaps to connive at its suspension in order to encourage the infant Anglican church. If so, the indulgence was but temporary.

The attempt has been made to prove that marriage was permitted in the early Saxon church, and support for this supposition has been sought from a clause in the Dooms of King Ina, of which the date is about the year 700, fixing the wer-gild of the son of a bishop. But the rubric of the law shows that it refers rather to a godson;383 and even if it were not so, we have already seen how often in France, at the same period, the episcopal office was bestowed on eminent or influential laymen, who were obliged on its acceptance to part with their wives. The Magdeburg Centuriators, indeed, describe a council held in London in 712 or 714, by which image-worship was introduced and separation between priests and their wives was decreed,384 but there is no authority cited, nor is such an assembly elsewhere alluded to, even Cave pronouncing it evidently supposititious.385

These speculations are manifestly groundless. The celebrated Theodore, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690, in his Liber Poenitentialis, forbids the marriage of the clergy under pain of deposition, and all intercourse with such wives was punished by lifelong penance as laymen; not only were digami ineligible to ordination, but also even those who had kept concubines; and the zeal for purity is carried so far that even baptism performed by priests guilty of fornication was pronounced invalid and had to be repeated—an expression of reprobation which it would be hard to parallel elsewhere in the history of the church.386 When such were the views of the primate, and such were the laws which he prescribed, we cannot imagine that under his vigorous rule these canons were permitted to be inoperative in a church sufficiently enlightened to produce the learning and piety of men like Bede and St. Aldhelm; where the admiration of virginity was as great as that which finds utterance in the writings of these fathers,387 and the principles of asceticism were so influential as to lead a powerful monarch like Ina to retire with his queen, Ethelberga, from the throne which he had gloriously filled, to the holy restrictions of a monastic life.

Ecgberht, who was Archbishop of York from 732 to 766, is almost equally decisive in his condemnation of priestly irregularities, though he returned to the received doctrine of the church that baptism could not be repeated.388 It is also probable that even the Britons, who derived their Christianity from the older and purer sources of the primitive church, preserved the rule with equal reverence. At the request of a national council, St. Aldhelm addressed an epistle to the Welsh king, Geruntius, to induce him to reform his church so as to bring it within the pale of Catholic unity. To accomplish this, he argues at length upon the points of difference, discussing the various errors of faith and discipline, such as the shape of the tonsure, the date of Easter, &c., but he is silent with regard to marriage or concubinage.389 Had the Welsh church been schismatic in this respect, so ardent a celibatarian as Aldhelm would certainly not have omitted all reference to a subject of so much interest to him. The inference is therefore justifiable that no difference of this nature existed.

We may fairly conclude that the discipline of the church in these matters was reasonably well maintained by the Saxon clergy, with the exception of the monasteries, the morals of which institutions appear to have been deplorably and incurably loose. About the middle of the seventh century John IV. reproves the laxity of the Saxon monasticism under which the holy virgins did not hesitate to marry.390 In 734 we find Bede, in an epistle to Ecgberht of York, advising him to create suffragan bishoprics and to endow them from the monastic foundations, of which there were a countless number totally neglectful of all monastic discipline, whose reformation could apparently be accomplished in no other way.391 St. Boniface, whose zeal on the subject has already been sufficiently made manifest, about the year 746 paused in his reformation of the French priesthood to urge upon Cuthbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, the necessity of repressing the vices of the Saxon ecclesiastics. He dwells at considerable length upon their various crimes and misdemeanors—drunkenness, unclerical garments, neglect of their sacred functions, &c.—but he does not accuse them of unchastity, which he could not well have avoided doing had there been colorable grounds for such a charge. In fact, the only allusion connected with the question in his epistle is a request that some restrictions should be laid upon the permissions granted to women and nuns for pilgrimage to Rome, on account of the attendant dangers to their virtue; in illustration of which he states the lamentable fact that scarcely a city in Lombardy, France, or the Rhinelands but had Saxon courtesans derived from this source, to the shame and scandal of the whole church.392

Pope Zachary seconded these representations, and in 747 Cuthbert, yielding to the impulsion, held the celebrated council of Clovesho, which adopted thirty canons on discipline, to remedy the disorders enumerated by Boniface. Among these, the only ones directed against unchastity relate solely to the nunneries, which were represented as being in a condition of gross immorality.393 The council does not spare the vices of the secular clergy, and its silence with respect to their purity fairly permits the inference that there was not much to correct with regard to it, for had licentiousness been so prevalent that Cuthbert had feared to denounce it, or had sacerdotal marriage been passed over as lawful, the zeal of St. Boniface would have led to an explosion, and Zachary would not have sanctioned the proceedings by his approval.

The same argument is applicable to the council of Chelsea, held in 787 by the legates of Adrian I., under the presidency of Gregory, Bishop of Ostia. The vices and shortcomings of the Anglican church were there sharply reproved, but no allusion was made to any unchastity prevailing among the priesthood, with the exception, as before, of nuns, on whom we may infer that previous reformatory efforts had been wasted;394 and in an epistle from Alcuin to Ethelred King of Northumbria near the close of the century there is the same reference to nuns, without special condemnation of the other classes of the clergy.395 That this reticence did not arise from any license granted for marriage is conclusively shown by the interpolation of the word laicus in the text I. Cor. VII. 2, which is quoted among the canons adopted.396 To the same effect are the canons of the council of Chelsea, in 816, in which the only allusion to such matters is a provision to prevent the election of unfit persons to abbacies, and to punish monks and nuns who secularize themselves.397

On the other hand, it is true that about this time St. Swithun, after obtaining orders, was openly married; but his biographer states that he had a special dispensation from Leo III., and that he consented to it because, on the death of his parents, he was the sole representative of his family.398 As Swithun was tutor to Ethelwulf, son of King Ecgberht, the papal condescension is by no means impossible.

Such was the condition of the Anglo-Saxon church at this period. During the century which follows, the materials for tracing the vicissitudes of the question before us are of the scantiest description. The occasional councils which were held have left but meagre records of their deliberations, with few or no references to the subject of celibacy. It is probable, however, that a rapid deterioration in the strictness of discipline occurred, for even the power of the great Bretwalda Ecgberht was unequal to the task of repressing effectually the first invasions of the Northmen, and under his feebler successors they grew more and more destructive, until they culminated in the anarchy which gave occasion to the romantic adventures of Alfred.

It is to this period of darkness that we must attribute the introduction of sacerdotal marriage, which became so firmly established and was finally so much a matter of course that it attracted no special attention, until the efforts made for its abrogation late in the succeeding century. When Alfred undertook to restore order in his recovered kingdom, the body of the laws which he compiled contains no allusion to celibacy, except as regards the chastity of nuns. The same may be said of the constitutions of Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, to which the date of 943 is attributed, although they contain instructions as to the conduct of bishops, priests, and clerks399—whence we may infer that the marriage even of consecrated virgins was not uncommon, and that it was the only infraction of the rule which aroused the opposition of the hierarchy. Simple immorality called forth an occasional enactment, as in the laws of Edward and Guthrun about the year 906, and in those of Edmund I. in 944,400 yet even to this but little attention seems to have been attracted, until St. Dunstan undertook a reformation which was sorely needed.

St. Dunstan himself, although regularly bred to the church, with the most brilliant prospects both from his distinguished abilities and his powerful kindred, betrothed himself in marriage after receiving the lower orders. His uncle, St. Elphege, Bishop of Winchester—apparently a churchman of the stricter school—vehemently opposed the union, but Dunstan was immovable in his determination. Elphege, finding his worldly wisdom set at nought, appealed to the assistance of heaven. His prayer was answered, and Dunstan was attacked with a mysterious and loathsome malady, under which his iron resolution gave way. He sought Elphege, took the monastic vow (the only inseparable bar to matrimony), and was ordained a priest.401 This stern experience might have taught him charity for the weakness of natures less unbending than his own, but his temperament was not one to pause half-way. If, too, religious conviction urged him to the task of restoring the forgotten discipline of the church, worldly ambition might reasonably claim its share in his motives. He could not but feel that his authority would be vastly enhanced by rendering the great ecclesiastical body dependent entirely upon him as the representative of Rome, and by sundering the ties which divided the allegiance due wholly to the church.

The opportunity to effect a reformation presented itself when the young king, Edgar the Pacific, in 963 violated all the dictates of honor and religion in his adventure with the nun at Wilton. Her resistance attested her innocence, and the birth of a daughter did not prevent her subsequent canonization as St. Wilfreda; but Edgar’s crime and remorse were only the more heightened. When the terror-stricken king sought pardon and absolution, Dunstan was prepared with his conditions. Seven years of penitence, during which he was to abstain from wearing the crown, was the personal infliction imposed on him, but the most important portion of the sentence was that by which the vices of the king were to be redeemed by the enforced virtues of his subjects. He promised the founding of monasteries and the reformation of the clergy; and his implicit obedience to the demands of his ghostly judge is shown, perhaps, less in the fact that his coronation did not take place until 973, than in the active measures immediately set on foot with respect to the morals of the ecclesiastics.402

That their morals, indeed, needed reformation is the unanimous testimony of all the chroniclers of the period. Among all the monasteries of England, formerly so noted for their zeal and prosperity, only those of Glastonbury and Abingdon were inhabited by monks.403 The rest had fallen into ruin, or were occupied by the secular clergy, with their wives, or worse, and were notorious as places of the most scandalous dissipation and disorder.404 So low was the standard of morality that priests even scrupled not to put away the wives of whom they grew tired, and to form new connections, of open and public adultery;405 and so common had this become that a code of ecclesiastical law, probably drawn up about this time, reproves this systematic bigamy, and appears to tacitly authorize marriage as legitimate and honorable.406 One author declares that none but paupers could be found willing to bind themselves by monastic vows;407 and another asserts, with every show of reason, that the clergy were not only not superior to the laity in any respect, but were even far worse in the scandals of their daily life.408

When King Edgar made his peace with the church by consenting to the vicarious penitence of the priesthood, three rigid and austere monks were the ardent ministers of the royal determination. Of St. Dunstan, the primate of England, I have already spoken. St. Ethelwold, his pupil, Abbot of Abingdon, was elevated to the see of Winchester, and commenced the movement by expelling the occupants of the monastery there. A few who consented to take monastic vows were allowed to remain, and the remainder were replaced by monks; but even St. Ethelwold’s rigor had to bend to the depravity of the age, and he was forced to relax the rigidity of discipline in non-essentials in order to obtain recruits of a better class.409 The difficulties he encountered are indicated by the legend which relates that he was poisoned in his wine and carried from table to his couch in excruciating torment, where he lay hopeless till, reproaching himself with want of faith, he repeated the text—“Et si mortiferum quid biberint, non eis nocebitur,” and was cured on the instant.410 That his canons were quite capable of such an attempt may be assumed from the description given of them in the bull procured by Dunstan from John XIII., authorizing their ejection by the king. The pope does not hesitate to stigmatize them as vessels of the devil, hateful to all good Christians on account of their inveterate and ineradicable wickedness.411

The third member of the reforming triumvirate was St. Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, who undertook a similar transformation of the clergy occupying the monastery of St. Mary in his cathedral city. Many promises they made to conform to his wishes, and many times they eluded the performance, till, losing patience with the prolonged procrastination, he one day entered the chapel with a quantity of monkish habits as they were vigorously chanting “Servite Domino in timore,” when he made practical application of the text by forcing them to put on the garments and take the vows on the spot, under the alternative of instant expulsion.412

These proceedings met the unqualified approbation of Edgar, who in 964, by his “Charter of Oswalde’s Law,” confirmed the ejection of the recusants who refused to part with their wives, and transferred all their rights and possessions to the newcomers. In the same document he boasted that he had instituted forty-seven abbeys of monks and nuns, and that he hoped to increase the number to fifty.413 The same year a similar summary process was carried out in the convents of Chertsey and Winchester;414 and in 966 Edgar was able to boast of the numerous religious houses throughout England which he had purified by replacing lascivious clerks with pious monks.415

These efforts, however, tended only to restore the monastic foundations to their original position, and left the secular clergy untouched, except in so far as a few of them were deprived of the comfortable quarters which they had usurped in the abbeys. This immunity it was no part of Dunstan’s plan to permit, and accordingly Edgar issued a series of laws restoring the obsolete ecclesiastical discipline throughout his kingdom. By this code a lapse from virtue on the part of a priest or monk was visited with the same penalty as homicide, with a fast of ten years; for a deacon the period of penitence was seven years; for the lower grades, six years. The monk, priest, or deacon who maintained relations with his wife was subjected to the same punishment; but there is no mention of degradation or deprivation of benefice.416

The struggle was long, and at one time the three reformers seem to have grown wearied with the stubborn resistance which they met, while the zeal of King Edgar grew more fiery as, with the true spirit of the huntsman, he followed up the prey, his ardor increasing as the chase grew more difficult. In 969 he eloquently addressed Dunstan, Ethelwold, and Oswald, blaming their lukewarmness in the good cause, and promising them every support and assistance in removing this opprobrium from the church.417 Stimulated by these reproaches, Dunstan summoned a council which adopted a canon depriving unchaste priests of their benefices.418 Still the conflict continued, and a charter dated in 974, the last year of Edgar’s reign, shows that he persevered to the end with unabated zeal.419

The contumacious clerks may have been silenced; they were not subdued, and they but waited their opportunity. It came in 975, with the early death of Edgar and with the dissensions caused by his widow, Elfritha, who endeavored to deprive of the succession his eldest son, the youthful Edward, fruit of a former marriage. During the confusion, the ejected priests banded together and bribed Elfhere, the powerful Ealdorman of Mercia, together with some other magnates, to espouse their cause. In many abbeys the regulars were expelled and the priests with their wives were reinstated. In East Anglia, however, the nobles took sides with the monks, and, rising in arms, valiantly defended the monasteries. At length, on the accession of Edward, a council was assembled to make final disposition of the question. The married priests were present, and promised amendment; their noble protectors pleaded earnestly for them; the boy-king was moved, and was about to pronounce in their favor, when a miracle preserved the purity of the church. The council was sitting in the refectory of the monastery of Hyde, the headquarters of the ascetic party; Edward and Dunstan were enthroned separately from the rest, with their backs to a wall on which, between them, hung a small crucifix. At the critical moment, just as the king was yielding, the crucifix spoke, in a low tone inaudible to all save Edward and the primate, “Let not this thing be done”—the mandate was imperative, and the married clergy lost their cause.420

Still the stubborn priests and their patrons held out, and another miracle was necessary—this time a more impressive one. A second council was called to discuss the matter, and was held at Calne in 978. During the heat of the argument the floor gave way, carrying with it the whole assembly, except St. Dunstan, who remained triumphantly and miraculously perched upon a joist, while his adversaries lay groaning below, in every variety of mutilation.421 His triumph, however, was but short. The same year the pious child Edward perished through the intrigues of Elfritha, whose son, Ethelred the Unready, succeeded to the throne. The mixed political and religious character of these events is shown by the canonization of Edward, who, though yet a child, was regarded as a martyr by the ascetics, whose cause he had espoused.

As Elfritha had evidently sought the alliance of the secular clergy to strengthen her party, her success proved disastrous to the cause of reform. The respite of peace, too, which had blessed the island during the vigorous reigns of Athelstan the Magnificent and Edgar the Pacific, gave place to the ravages invited by the feeble and vacillating policy of Ethelred the Unready; the incursions of the pagan Danes became more and more frequent and terrible; and what little respect had been inculcated for the strictness of discipline was speedily forgotten in the anarchy which ensued.

The efforts of the reformers appear to have extended even to the British churches of Wales, which had followed Saxon example in abandoning celibacy. The Brut y Tywysogion relates that about the year 861 the priests were forbidden to marry without dispensation from the pope; but they did not submit, and the disturbances thus provoked rendered necessary the abandonment of the effort, so that sacerdotal marriage continued unchecked.422 We shall see hereafter that in the Principality the custom remained in full vigor until the thirteenth century was well advanced.

How thoroughly the work of Dunstan and Edgar was undone in England is sufficiently indicated by the efforts made not long after, with the consent of Ethelred, to introduce some feeble restraints upon the prevailing immorality. About the year 1006 we find the chief monastery of England, Christ Church at Canterbury, in full possession of the secular clergy, whose irregularities were so flagrant that even Ethelred was forced to expel them, and to fill their places with monks.423 What was the condition of discipline among the secular priests may be guessed from the reformatory efforts of St. Ælfric, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1006. In his series of canons the first eight are devoted to inculcating the necessity of continence; after quoting the Nicene canon, he feels it to be so much at variance with the habits and customs of the age, that he actually deprecates the surprise of his clergy at hearing a rule so novel and so oppugnant to the received practice, “as though there was no danger in priests living as married men;” he anticipates the arguments which they will bring against him, and refutes them with more gravity than success.424 There is also extant, under the name of St. Ælfric, a pastoral epistle, which is regarded as supposititious by some critics; but its passages on this subject are too similar in spirit to the canons of Ælfric to be reasonably rejected. They show how hopeless was the effort to maintain the purity desired by the ecclesiastical authorities, and that entreaties and exhortations were uttered merely from a sense of duty, and with hardly an expectation of commanding attention. “This, to you, priests, will seem grievous, because ye have your misdeeds in custom, so that it seems to yourselves that ye have no sin in so living in female intercourse as laymen; and say that Peter the Apostle had a wife and children.... Beloved, we cannot now forcibly compel you to chastity, but we admonish you, nevertheless, that ye observe chastity, so as Christ’s ministers ought, in good reputation, to the pleasure of God.”425

That these well-meant homilies effected little in reforming the hearts of so obdurate a generation becomes manifest by the proceedings of the council of Enham, held by King Ethelred in 1009. The priests are there entreated, by the obedience which they owe to God, to observe the chastity which they know to be due. Yet so great was the laxity prevailing that some are stated to have two or more wives, and many to be in the habit of changing their spouses at pleasure, in violation of all Christian law. The council was apparently, however, powerless to repress these scandals by an adequate punishment, and contented itself with promising to those who lived chastely the privileges and legal status of nobles, while the vicious were vaguely threatened with the loss of the grace of God and man.426

The injunctions of the council as regards the regular clergy, though not particularly specific in their nature, show that even the monks had not responded to the benefits conferred upon them by Edgar the Pacific, nor fulfilled the expectations of the pious Dunstan. An expression employed, indeed, leads the learned Spelman to suggest that there possibly were two orders of monks, the one married and the other unmarried; but this is probably without foundation.427

Such was the condition of the church when the increasing assaults of the Northman finally culminated in overthrowing the house of Cerdic, and placing the hated Dane upon the throne of England. Cnut’s long and prosperous reign, and his earnest veneration for the church, as shown by his pilgrimage to Rome, may perhaps have succeeded in removing some of the grosser immoralities of the clergy, but that marriage was still openly and unrestrainedly practised by those in orders is evident. The ecclesiastical laws of Cnut exhort priests to chastity in precisely the same words, and with the same promises as the canons of the council of Enham, but do not allude to the habit of keeping a plurality of wives; while, in the same chapter, a warning to the whole people against unlawful concubinage would seem to indicate that clergy and laity were bound by rules identical in strictness.428

That the rule of celibacy was recognized as only binding on the regulars, or monks, and that the secular priesthood were at full liberty to marry is evident from the system of purgation enjoined on them by the same code. The priest who was also a monk (sacerdos regulariter vivens—sacerd Þe regollice libbe), could clear himself from an accusation in a simple suit by merely saying mass, and taking the communion, while the secular priest (plebeius sacerdos—mÆssepreorst Þe regol-lif nÆbbe) is only equal to the deacon-monk (diaconus regularis—diacon Þe regollice libbe), requiring two of his peers as compurgators.429 The significance of the distinction thus drawn is rendered clear by the version of the passage in a curious Latin text of the code published by Kolderup-Rosenvinge. The chapter is divided into two, the first one with the rubric “De Sacerdotibus,” and commencing “Si contigerit presbyterum regulariter et caste viventem,” &c., while the second is headed “De vulgare sacerdote non casto,” the meaning of which is defined in the expression “Si vulgaris presbyter qui non regulariter vivit.”430 It is thus evident that purity was expected from those only who had entered into the obligations of monastic life, and also that the reforms of Dunstan had caused the ministers of the altar to be frequently selected from among the monks.

To this period are also, in all probability, to be attributed the “Institutes of Polity, civil and ecclesiastical,” to which reference has been made in the preceding section as blaming priests for decorating their wives with the ornaments belonging to their churches. Unable to denounce efficient penalties for the prevention of such evil practices, the author is obliged to content himself with invoking future punishment from heaven, in vague and meaningless threats—“A priest’s wife is nothing but a snare of the devil, and he who is ensnared thereby on to his end, he will be seized fast by the devil.”431

From all this it is evident that the memory of the ancient canons was not forgotten, and that their observance was still urged by some ardent churchmen, but that the customs of the period had rendered them virtually obsolete, and that no sufficient means existed of enforcing obedience. If open scandals and shameless bigamy and concubinage could be restrained, the ecclesiastical authorities were evidently content. Celibacy could not be enjoined as a law, but was rendered attractive by surrounding it with privileges and immunities denied to him who yielded to the temptations of the flesh, and who thus in some degree assimilated his sacred character to that of the laity.

The Saxon church thus was practically regardless of the rule of celibacy when Edward the Confessor ascended the throne. The ascetic piety of that prince and his Norman education alike led him to abhor the sensual indulgences in which he found his subjects plunged, and he attached himself almost exclusively to the horde of Norman monks who flocked to his court from across the Channel. Their influence was all-powerful, and though reasons of the highest state necessity forced him to ally himself in marriage with Edith, daughter of the puissant Duke Godwin, whom Edward hated with all the energy of his feeble nature, it was not difficult for his artful ghostly counsellors to persuade him that a vow of virginity, taken and kept amid the seductions of a throne, would insure his glory in this world and his salvation in the next. A minstrel historian describes at length the engagement of perpetual chastity entered into between Edward and Edith at their marriage, and though he mentions the popular derision to which this exposed the royal monk at the hands of a gross and brutal generation, he is firmly persuaded that the crown of martyrdom was worthily won and worn—

How little the royal pair expected this example to be followed and how relaxed were all the rules of monastic discipline is shown by an anecdote of the period. The austere Gervinus, Abbot of St. Riquier in Ponthieu was always welcomed by them when he visited England, and on one occasion Queen Edith offered to kiss him. The Abbot’s rigidity overcame his courtliness and he refused the royal salutation, to the great indignation of the Queen, who ordered certain gifts which she had set apart for him to be withdrawn. Edward, however, approved of the action of the monk, and after Edith had been made to understand his motives she not only joined in applauding him but demanded that a similar rule should be made imperative on all the monks of England.433

It cannot be doubted that Edward made efforts to effect a reform among his sensual and self-indulgent subjects, but his want of success is developed in the description of the Saxon clergy at the time of the Conquest. The Norman chroniclers speak of them as abandoned to sloth, ignorance, and the lusts of the flesh; even monastic institutions were matters rather of tradition than of actual existence, and the monks themselves were hardly distinguishable by their mode of life from the laity.434 There doubtless may be some contemptuous exaggeration in this, and yet one author of the period, who is wholly Saxon in his feelings, does not hesitate to attribute the ruin of the Saxon monarchy and the devastation of the kingdom to the just wrath of God, provoked by the vices of the clergy.435

The rule of the Normans removed England from her isolation. Brought into the commonwealth of Christendom and under the active supremacy of the Holy See, her history henceforth becomes more closely connected with the general ecclesiastical movement which received its irresistible impulsion about this period. That movement it is now our business to examine.