BOOK intellect declined under its tuition; and England VI. added another proof of its incompetency alone to reLITERARY generate or to fertilize the understanding. HISTORYOF 8 The Normans, fond of pomp, and craving personal distinction, roused the English mind from this intellectual trance, and excited that literary spirit, and commenced that system of education, which, assisted by new sources of instruction, produced a love and cultivation of knowlege that have never since departed from the British isles. The Norman love of fame spread from their warriors to their clergy; the Anglo-Saxon sensuality was corrected, and general emulation produced universal improvement. But how came the Normans, whose ancestors but 150 years before had been fierce pirates, to be the revivers of literature in England and France? Ignorant themselves, whence came their knowlege and literary taste? From the presence and activity of one individual, himself of barbarous descent-from the celebrated Lanfranc. But Lanfranc was a Lombardand it is a curious illustration of the fact which we have urged on the attention of our readers, that the barbaric conquests of the declining Roman empire were beneficial to the progression of mankind; that 7 Malmsb. 256. Normanni famæ in futurum studiosissimi. p. 238. The degeneracy of the Anglo-Saxon manners is thus described by Malmesbury: Clothed in fine garments and heedless of their days of abstinence, the monks laughed at their rule. The nobles devoted to gluttony and voluptuousness, never visited the church; but the matins and the mass were run over to them by a hurrying priest, in their bedchambers, before they rose, themselves not listening. The common people were a prey to the more powerful; their property seized; their bodies dragged away to distant countries; their maid servants were either thrown into the brothel, or sold as slaves. Drinking day and night was the general pursuit; vices, the companions of inebriety, followed, effeminating the manly mind.' 1. 3. p. 101, 102. He says, that while they wasted their substance at their tables, their houses were poor and mean; unlike the Franks and Normans, who were economical in their family expenses, but loved spacious and magnificent edifices. Ib. OF LATIN altho the Lombards were the most barbarous of all CHAP. the Gothic invaders, yet among them the literary II. studies of Italy first revived, its most celebrated REVIVAL schools were established, and its most cultivated LITERAstates and most enterprising citizens were formed; TURE and from them and from their cities, Pavia and Pisa, NORMAN learning was planted under Charlemagne in France, CONQUEST. and re-planted, both there and in England, under Lanfranc, and his friends and pupils. AFTER THE franc. Letters were declining in France, notwithstanding Revived the taste and exertions of the Carlovingian family to nationalize the Latin literature within it," when Lanfranc, a Lombard, unknown to fame, and unconscious of his future importance to mankind, was attracted by the military reputation of the Normans to quit his native country, Pavia, and to open a school at an obscure village in their duchy." His humble hopes were shewn in the lowly choice of his residence. The abbey of Bec was the poorest and most insignificant of all the Norman monasteries;" its abbot was one of the rudest and most ignorant of their clergy;" and the fraternity were in the greatest state of 12 9 Guitmund, the pupil of Lanfranc, says, that at this time 'liberales artes intra Gallias pene obsoleverant.' De Euch. Bib. Mag. Pat. t. 6. p. 215. We must remark to the credit of the ancient Abbey of Fleury, that this benedictine retreat had made great efforts to uphold and diffuse literature in France. About 1013, it had 5000 students under its superintendence, and required every scholar to make an annual contribution of two MSS. to its library. The Republica of Cicero, which afterwards became lost to the world till the abbé May restored it from a palimpset roll, was in its library. Raym. Troub. v. 2. p. 129. Introd. 10 Ord. Vit. 519. Lanfranc reached it in 1042. Chron. Bec. p. 2. He was wounded by robbers near the place he settled at. "Quo nullum usquam pauperius æstimabatur vel abjectius cœnobiu W. Gemmet. Hist. 1. 6. p. 262. He found the abbot building an oven himself. Lanfranc lived here three years omnibus ignotus. W. Gemmet. Hist. 12 His name was Herluin. He did not learn to read till the age of forty. Gisleb. vita Herl. p. 34. HISTORYOF ENGLAND. BOOK wretchedness and penury.13 But Providence often VI. works its ends by those humble agencies, which most LITERARY palpably display the operation to be its own. Lanfranc, the poor emigrant schoolmaster, became the acknowleged cause of the revival of the Latin literature, and the liberal arts, in France. He could not have anticipated a destiny so distinguished; but no individual can forsee the quantity of good which his exertions may produce. We cannot now describe Lanfranc's attractive powers, but the fact is recorded, that, after being there three years unknown, his tuition and assiduity excited, even in this miserable place, so great a love of study, and diffused it so widely around, that scholars flocked to him from all parts and of all ranks. We can only explain the phenomenon, by assuming, that it was the divine plan to make this the æra of a new birth of mind; that Lanfranc, from his preceptorial talents, was the instrument best adapted to begin the happy process; that Normandy, from the love of glory of its people, was the fittest spot; and that contingencies were made to occur, which gave effect to his agency. The scholars of Bec became so respected, that we find a pope indebted to Lanfranc for his instruction there, and having the magnanimity, in the hour of his greatness, publicly to avow it. The celebrity of Lanfranc 13 Aliquanto tempore in maxima egestate et penuria extitit. Chronicon Beccense, p. 1. It is printed at the end of Lanfranc's Works, from an old MS. in the monastery. 1 Guitmund, ubi sup. Malm. 205. The ancient biographer of Lanfranc says, 'quem latinitas, in antiquum scientiæ statum ab eo restituta, tota agnoscit magistrum.' p. 1. and see Ord. Vit. 519. 15 W. Gemm. 262. Ord. Vit. says, 'Under this master the Normans first explored the literary arts. Before him, under the six preceding dukes, scarcely any one of the Normans pursued the liberal studies; nor was there a teacher found, till God, the provider for all, sent Lanfranc to the Norman ground.' p. 519. 16 When Lanfranc went to Rome to receive the pall, he was surprised II. LITERA TURE NORMAN spread at last to the Ducal court; and the conqueror CHAP. able from his own vigorous mind to appreciate talents in others, was so interested by Lanfranc's fame, REVIVAL as to invite him to court, and to make him a confi- OF LATIN dential counsellor." Soon after the invasion of England, William appointed Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury. But dignity and wealth did not dis- CONQUEST. possess his mind of its literary taste: he exerted himself with unabated zeal, and with proportionate success, to establish in England a knowlege of the Latin language, and the study of its authors; he encouraged the formation of schools, and the progress of the scholars; and he even assisted those of slender means.18 To have planted in a rude age and country a love of literature, is a benefaction, which entitles the individual who has accomplished it to gratitude and celebrity. But when, from Lanfranc's deserved reputation for this success, we turn to his works, we see in them no striking correspondence between his attainments and his utility. His compositions exhibit no uncommon intellect, and great poverty of knowlege, though united with good intention and sincere piety.19 They have however the great merit of being to see the pope rising respectfully to him as he entered, on his public audience, with this remark, I do not rise to the archbishop of Canterbury, but to my old master at Bec, in whose school I was instructed.' Vita Lanfr. p. 11. This pope, whose gratitude and sensibility so honorably suspended the claims of his rank, was Alexander. 17 Guil. Pictav. 194. There is reason to believe that the famous Gregory VII. studied under Lanfranc. Murat. Ant. Ital. 897. 18 Malmsb. 214. 19 They consist of, his treatise in Defence of Transubstantiation, against Berengarius; a neat arrangement of common arguments for a mysterious Opinion; and Commentaries on the Epistles of St. Paul, which are plain in their style, and not important in their matter. His Rule of St. Benedict, compiled for his monasteries, is clear and precise. His letters are those of a man of business and decision. Lanfranci Opera, Paris, 1648. BOOK entirely free from the ancient rhetoric. They are so VI. plain and unadorned as to be dull and uninteresting LITERARY to a modern reader; but this barren simplicity con HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Anselm succeeds him. stituted their peculiar utility; their mental affluence is not great, but it is thought unpainted and therefore unspoiled; it is humble reasoning without artificial declamation, and therefore, as far as it operated, it tended to produce a sound mind and sedate judgment; and by these, to preserve the Anglo-Norman mind from the tinsel and frippery with which so many of the works of both the Greeks and Latin fathers are encumbered and made often injurious and commonly mischievous.20 But he spread, by his exhortations and example, a desire to attain what was then attainable in letters; and to raise the ignorant Norman and English mind to the level of the Roman, was to begin its intellectual evolution, and to prepare it for the more powerful and efficient, agencies that were advancing to effect it."1 21 Lanfranc was succeeded in his school at Bec, and afterwards in his archiepiscopal see, by Anselm, a man following his own natural track, but far superior 20 I cannot read Massillon, without feeling the mischief of the study of the ancient rhetorical fathers, nor without lamenting that they should have so much spoiled a mind of great powers. The Spanish and Italian preachers create the same impression, and make us doubly value a Xenophon, a Fenelon, and a Paley. The mind of rhetoric, the mind of mere logic, and the mind of rich good sense, are quite distinct acquisitions. 21 His contemporary Veran, in the abbey of Fleury, from 1080 to 1095, increased the library of that monastery; and from the following order soon afterwards of Machaire, one of his successors, we see that the MSS. of libraries then needed as much care and reparations as houses and buildings, and also a cause why so many have disappeared. Seeing that the MSS. of our library are perishing from the effects of age, and by the attacks of worms and moths; desiring to remedy this evil, and wishing to have new MSS. or new parchments for re-copying them bought, I have, with the consent and at the request of all the monastery, ordered that myself and all succeeding priors, should pay a yearly contribution on St. Benedict's day in every winter, for this necessary, useful and laudable purpose.' Joan. a Busco, Flor. Vet. Bibl. p. 302. Raym. 130. |