XIIIS. ELFLEDA

S. ELFLEDA.

XIIIS. ELFLEDA

When the terrible Penda had advanced into Northumbria, against Oswy, destroying homesteads and harvests with fire, and butchering all who fell into his hands, then the Northumbrian king sent presents to him, and asked for peace. The fierce Mercian refused the presents offered: nothing would satisfy him but the absolute subjection of the Northern Kingdom. Then, in despair, Oswy vowed to God that, as the old Pagan had rejected his gifts, he would dedicate his little one-year-old daughter to Him, together with twelve farms, if He would bless his arms in battle.

The odds were against Oswy. The host opposed to him was thrice as numerous ashis own. Ethelhere, King of the East Angles, had come to the aid of Penda; and Odilwald, son of S. Oswald, who had been given an underlordship of part of Deira, and who thought he ought to have succeeded his father in kingship, went over to Penda.

The battle was fought on the Winwaed, near Leeds; the Mercians and their allies in their confidence had incautiously put the river at their back. Heavy rains filled it to overflow; it became a deep and boiling torrent, cutting off retreat. The Mercians were defeated. A panic fell on them, and as they fled they were swept away by the swollen river. Of the thirty eorldormen who marched with Penda, hardly one survived. The King of the East Angles and the savage old Mercian were among those who were slain. Odilwald did not enter the battle. He was well aware that when Bernicia had been eaten, Penda’s next mouthful would be Deira. He bore a bitter grudge against Oswy, but for all that did not care to put the knife into the hand of the Mercian king wherewith to have his own throat cut.

A battle song was composed on the occasion, of which a snatch has been preserved:—

“In the river Winwaed is avenged the slaughter of Anna,The slaughter of Sigbert and Ecgric as well,The slaughter of Oswald and Edwin who fell.”

“In the river Winwaed is avenged the slaughter of Anna,

The slaughter of Sigbert and Ecgric as well,

The slaughter of Oswald and Edwin who fell.”

The battle was fought in 655, consequently S. Elfleda was born in 654.

Oswy faithfully kept his vow. He set apart twelve estates to be thenceforth monastic property—six in the north and six in the south of his double kingdom. He then surrendered the little Elfleda to be brought up to the service of God.

Her mother was Eanfleda, daughter of Edwin, the first Christian King of Northumbria. It was, in fact, her birth, on Easter Day, 626, which was the occasion of the subsequent conversion of her father, and of his subjects; and Eanfleda was the firstfruits of her nation to receive baptism on the Whit Sunday following.

Oswy, the father of Elfleda, was a dissolute and murderous ruffian, who in cold blood hadmurdered the gallant Oswin, King of Deira, the kinsman of his own wife.

Oswy gave his daughter to S. Hilda, at Hartlepool.

In the furious and fratricidal wars which were waged in England by the conquerors of the British, each kingdom was animated by a blind instinct that the unity of the race should be effected somehow; but each understood this only as by bringing the rest under subjection.

Elfleda is described by Bede as a very pious princess. She had a sister, older than herself, Alcfleda, who had been married to Peada, son of the ravager Penda. But Alcfleda bore no love to her husband, and had him assassinated whilst he was celebrating Easter.

Two years after Elfleda had been placed at Hartlepool, S. Hilda obtained a grant of land where now stands Whitby, but which was then called Streaneshalch. She moved thither, and there constituted her famous monastery. This was in 658.

With Hilda remained Elfleda till the death of the great abbess in 680. On the death ofOswy in 670, ten years before, her mother Eanfleda came there; but when Hilda died, the young Elfleda, and not her mother, was elected to be the second abbess. As she was scarcely twenty-five, she was guided and assisted by Trumwin, who had been Bishop of Witherne, but had been obliged to leave his diocese by the unruly Picts, and he had withdrawn to the monastery of Hilda to remain under her rule.

Like all the Anglo-Saxon princesses of the period who retired into the cloister, Elfleda did not cease to take a passionate interest in the affairs of her race and her country, and to exercise a very remarkable influence over the princes and the people. When in 670 Oswy died he was succeeded by his son Egfrid, as unprincipled a man as his father. In 674, at Easter, S. Cuthbert was drawn from his island and cell and was ordained Bishop, with his seat at Lindisfarne, to rule the Northumbrian Church, in the presence of the king, at York. It was then that Cuthbert, knowing what was in the heart of the turbulent king, urged him to refrain from attacking the Picts and Scots, who were not molesting the Northumbrians.He would not, however, hearken. He had already despatched an army under Beorf to wantonly ravage Ireland. This had, as Bede said, “miserably wasted that harmless nation, which had always been friendly to the English; insomuch that in their hostile rage they spared neither churches nor monasteries.” The expedition against the Picts was determined on against the advice of all his friends, and of the Bishop of York, and of Cuthbert.

Elfleda was in great anxiety about her headstrong brother, and she went to see Cuthbert concerning him. He and the abbess met, having gone by sea to the place appointed for the interview. She threw herself at his feet and entreated him to tell her what the issue would be—would Egfrid have a long reign?

“I am surprised,” answered Cuthbert, “that a woman well versed, like you, in the Scriptures, should speak to me of length of human life, which lasts no longer than a spider’s web. How short, then, must life be for a man who has but a year to live, and has death at his door!”

At these words Elfleda’s tears began to flow.She felt that the wise old hermit saw that the mad as well as wicked expedition of her brother must end fatally.

Presently, drying her tears, she continued with feminine boldness to inquire who would be the king’s successor, since he had neither sons nor brothers.

“Say not so,” replied Cuthbert. “He shall have a successor whom you will love, as you as a sister love Egfrid.”

“Tell me,” pursued Elfleda, “where can this successor be?”

Then he turned his eyes to the islands dotting this coast, and said: “How many islands there be in this mighty ocean! Surely thence can God bring a man to reign over the English.”

Elfleda then perceived that he spoke of a young man, Alcfrid, supposed to be the son of her father Oswy by an Irish mother, and who had been a friend of Wilfrid, and was now in Iona, probably hiding from his brother, whom he could not trust.

The venerable Cuthbert was not out in his conjecture. On May 20th, 684, Egfrid wasdrawn into a pass at Drumnechtan, in Forfar, was surrounded by the Scots and Picts, slain, and the great bulk of his men cut to pieces.

“From that time,” says Bede, “the hopes of the English crown began to waver and retrograde; for the Picts recovered their own lands, which had been held by the English.”

Alcfrid at once left Iona, and was chosen king. He was a good and just prince, much under the influence of Wilfrid and inclined to adopt Roman fashions.

It becomes necessary now to speak of a controversy that rent the unity of the Church in England.

All Northumbria, Mercia and Essex had received the faith from Iona, the monastic capital of the Scots, whereas Kent and Wessex had received it from Rome.

Iona had been founded in 563 by S. Columba, an Irishman; and it was from Iona that S. Aidan, the Apostle of Northumbria, had been sent. Lindisfarne, the seat of the Bishops of Northumbria, was a daughter of Iona.

Now, there were certain differences between this Celtic Church and that of Rome and Gaul.

In the first place, the Britons and Irish had been cut off from communication with the rest of Europe by the troubles that afflicted the Empire as it fell into ruin under the blows of the Barbarians. Consequently they were unaware that a change had been agreed on in the observance of Easter. It was discovered in 387 that the system of calculating Easter was erroneous, and Pope Hilary employed one Victorinus to frame a new cycle, which was thenceforth followed in the Latin Church. But of this change the British and Irish Church knew nothing; and when Augustine and his followers arrived in Kent they found that the ancient Church of the Britons observed Easter on a different day from themselves.

That was not all. The Celtic monks had a different tonsure or mode of cutting of the hair from the Latin monks. Instead of shaving the top of the head, and leaving the hair as a crown, they shaved the front of the head from ear to ear. Now, the reason of the use of the tonsure among the Celts was this. The cutting of the hair signified adoption, and there is some reason to believethat every tribe or clan clipped its hair in its own peculiar fashion. The Ecclesiastical tribe adopted the shaving of the front of the head; and every one so shaven belonged in the ecclesiastical clan.

When S. David settled in the valley where is now the Cathedral that bears his name, there was an Irish Pict invader living in a camp hard by. He had seized on that bit of Pembrokeshire. His name was Boia, and he was a pagan. His wife was highly incensed at Christian monks settling on their land and near at hand, and she tried to goad her husband to murder them. But he was a good-natured man, and he absolutely refused to do her will. Then she resolved to get her heathen gods to strike them dead, and in order to gain the favour of the gods she must offer them a sacrifice of one of her children. But she had none of her own; so she called to her a little girl, a daughter of her husband by a former wife, and told her she would cut her hair. She took the girl down into a sunny place in a hazel grove on the slope of the hill, and there, with her shears, cuther hair. Now, as cutting the hair was esteemed to be adoption, by this act she had made the child her own; so she instantly with the shears cut the girl’s throat as an offering to the gods. Now the British clergy, by their form of cutting the hair, regarded themselves as adopted into the family of God, or the Ecclesiastical tribe.

Augustine and the Latin clergy could not understand this. Instead of arguing with the native Christians they denounced them. They called them Judaisers because they observed Easter at the wrong time, which was false; and they called the tonsure of the Celts that of Simon Magus, which was nonsense.

There were other peculiarities. The British Church used unleavened bread at the Eucharist, and the Latin Church at that time only such bread as was leavened. Also, another high misdemeanour was that, instead of employing a single collect before the Epistle and Gospel, there were more than one said. In these two last particulars the Latin Church has altered now her practice; in the matter of theunleavened bread, the change took place in the tenth century.

Now, the matter of Easter was very vexing, for whilst those who followed the Roman rule were singing Allelujah and were rejoicing, the Celtic and Northumbrian and Mercian Christians were still keeping Lent. Precisely the same thing occurs in Russia, where in English and Roman chaplaincies Easter is kept whilst the Russians are still fasting.

This became a burning question when the Northumbrian kings married princesses from the South. These had their own chaplains and kept Easter at their time, whilst their husbands and the court and the people were in the midst of Passion solemnities.

As to the matter of the tonsure, on which the Roman clergy made a great noise, it was like asking a clan to change its tartan,—say the McDonalds to be forced to adopt that of the Campbells.

Oswy had found the condition of affairs intolerable, as his own queen followed the Roman rule, whilst he observed that of the Celtic Church.

Oswy had associated his son Alcfrid with him in the government of Northumbria, and Alcfrid was much swayed by Wilfrid, a companion of his age then living at the Court of Oswy, who had been to Rome, seen its wonders and the splendours of the pontifical services in the old basilica of S. Peter. He came back with his head full of what he had seen, and utterly scorning everything British, even the Christianity of his Northumbrian brethren. In his idea nothing would avail but the conforming of the Church in Northumbria to Roman obedience and Roman customs.

Oswy was induced to summon a council at Whitby to decide matters of controversy. On the Scottish side were S. Colman, the Northumbrian bishop, with his clergy; S. Hilda, followed of course by Elfleda; S. Cedd, bishop of the East Saxons. On the Roman side was Agilbert, bishop of the West Saxons, the Queen’s chaplain, Wilfrid, then only a priest, one other priest, and a deacon. The King favoured the Celtic use, Alcfrid the Latin.

Wilfrid was the chief speaker on the latter side, and he dexterously appealed to Oswy’sfears. The Roman Church must be right, he said, because S. Peter, its founder, held the keys of heaven. At once Oswy quaked; he recollected his dastardly murder of Oswin. It would never do for him not to make a friend of the doorkeeper of heaven. So he gave way, and the Celtic bishops, deprived of his support, but unyielding and unconvinced, withdrew.

It was now hoped that the Church would have peace, and the points of difference would gradually disappear. S. Hilda, at Whitby, accepted the Roman computation. But it was not so easy to satisfy a clergy and people brought up in another school.

To make matters worse, Wilfrid was appointed Bishop of York, a man of a violent, headstrong character, who, to begin with, refused to accept consecration from bishops in the North with Celtic orders; but went deliberately to Gaul to be ordained there, so as to cast a slur on the Church of the people to rule over whom he had been called.

Wilfrid had no idea of persuasion, had not a spark of Christian love in his composition;he could insult, browbeat, but not persuade. In his diocese he roused revolt and provoked brawls, and was expelled from it, not once only, but whenever he returned.

Now the new King Alcfrid had brought with him from Iona attachment to the order of the Church of SS. Columba and Aidan. Elfleda inherited the same reverence and love for these usages. But on the other side there were strong political reasons which led men to think it would be well to come to an arrangement with Canterbury and Rome. It was awkward to have these differences, this cleavage, even in the royal palace. It was unadvisable that the Angles of the North and of the Midlands should have to apply to the Scots and Britons, their hereditary enemies, for their bishops. If the Angles and Saxons could but agree in ecclesiastical matters, they would be a more compact body to oppose Britons and Scots; and, further still, it would be an element conducive to the much desired unity of the English people. This ecclesiastical unity would be the first step to the cessation of that internecine war between Northumbria, Mercia, andWessex, which tore the island in pieces and soaked its fertile soil with blood.

Hoping that Wilfrid, now an aged man, would be softened by adversity, he was suffered to return. To the new king, as well as to his sister, S. Elfleda, Abbess of Whitby, Archbishop Theodore of Canterbury wrote, to exhort them to receive Wilfrid with unreserved kindness. They consented, and in 687 he reappeared at York; but it was to excite new storms in his diocese, and he was again exiled in 691.

Alcfrid died in 705, and the Northumbrian crown passed to a prince named Eadwulf. Wilfrid had taken advantage of the death of Alcfrid to return, but was ordered to leave the country in six days. But Eadwulf was dethroned, and Osred, a son of Alcfrid, aged eight, became King of Bernicia. By some unexplained means Wilfrid was now, all at once, master of the situation. Archbishop Berthwald of Canterbury had convoked a synod that was to settle the disputes, and it met on the banks of the Nidd. It was attended by the northern Bishops of York, Lindisfarne, and Witherne, by Elfleda also, the Abbess ofWhitby, and by Berchtfrid, the regent of the kingdom during the minority of Osred. Archbishop Berthwald read the letters of the pope on the points in dispute. But the bishops were very unwilling to make way for so turbulent a person as Wilfrid. Then it was that Elfleda stood forward, and in a voice which was listened to as an utterance from heaven, she described the last illness of her half-brother Alcfrid, and his death, and assured all that he had then resolved to accept the papal decrees, which hitherto, when his mind was clear, he had so vigorously rejected. “This,” said she, “was the last will of Alcfrid the King. I attest the truth of it before Christ.”

Nevertheless the three bishops would not yield; they retired from the assembly to confer among themselves, and with the Archbishop, and, above all, with the sagacious Elfleda. It was due to her that a compromise was effected. The monasteries of Ripon and Hexham were restored to Wilfrid and with that he was to be content.

Shortly before his death, S. Cuthbert went to see Elfleda in the neighbourhood of thegreat monastery of Whitby, to consecrate a church she had built there. They dined together; and during the meal, seeing the knife drop from the trembling hand of the old bishop, in the abstraction of his far-away thoughts, she asked him what he thought about, and he told her that he had had a glimpse of the future. She urged him to eat more.

“I cannot be eating all day long,” he replied. “You must allow me a little rest.”

On the death of Oswy, as already related, Elfleda’s mother had come to Whitby and placed herself under the rule of her own daughter, and Elfleda closed her eyes. She herself died in 716, at the age of sixty-four. No account of her last illness has been transmitted to us.

Elfleda certainly played an important conciliatory part when minds were heated with controversy. She was right undoubtedly. It was a mistake for the Church in North England to hold to a usage that was founded on a blunder. It was a mistake to persist in keeping Wilfrid, canonically bishop of York,for many years out of his see. It was a political necessity that all Englishmen should be united, at all events, in their religious observances. That paved the way to future political unity.

Pedigree of S. Hilda and S. Elfleda.

S. WERBURGA.

XIVS. WERBURGA

The words of Montalembert deserve to be transcribed and re-read, so true are they as well as graceful.

“Nothing had more astonished the Romans than the austere chastity of the German women; the religious respect of the men for the partners of their labours and dangers, in peace as well as in war; and the almost divine honours with which they surrounded the priestesses or prophetesses, who sometimes presided at their religious rites, and sometimes led them to combat against the violators of the national soil. When the Roman world, undermined by corruption and imperial despotism, fell to pieces like the arch of acloaca, there is no better indication of the difference betweenthe debased subjects of the empire and their conquerors, than that sanctity of conjugal and domestic ties, that energetic family feeling, that worship of pure blood, which are founded upon the dignity of woman, and respect for her modesty, no less than upon the proud independence of man and the consciousness of personal dignity. It is by this special quality that the barbarians showed themselves worthy of instilling a new life into the West, and becoming the forerunners of the new Christian nations to which we all owe our birth.

“Who does not recall those Cimbri whom Marius had so much trouble in conquering, and whose women rivalled the men in boldness and heroism? Those women, who had followed their husbands to the war, gave the Romans a lesson in modesty and greatness of soul of which the future tools of the tyrants and the Cæsars were not worthy. They would surrender only on the promise of the consul that their honour should be protected, and that they should be given as slaves to the Vestals, thus putting themselves under the protection ofthose whom they regarded as virgins and priestesses. The great beginner of democratic dictatorship refused: upon which they killed themselves and their children, generously preferring death to shame.

“The Anglo-Saxons came from the same districts, bathed by the waters of the Northern Sea, which had been inhabited by the Cimbri, and showed themselves worthy of descent from them, as much by the irresistible onslaught of the warriors as by the indisputable power of their armies. No trace of the old Roman spirit which put a wifein manu, in the hand of her husband—that is to say, under his feet—is to be found among them. Woman is a person, and not a thing. She lives, she speaks, she acts for herself, guaranteed against the least outrage by severe penalties, and protected by universal respect. She inherits, she disposes of her possessions—sometimes even she deliberates, she fights, she governs, like the most proud and powerful of men. The influence of women has been nowhere more effectual, more fully recognised, or more enduring than among the Anglo-Saxons, andnowhere was it more legitimate or more happy.”[6]

Britain had been invaded, and subdued. From the wall of Antonine that connected the Firth of Forth with the Clyde, to what was now to be called the English Channel, all the east coast and centre of the island was occupied by the conquerors from Germany. The Britons had been rolled back into the kingdoms of Strathclyde, Rheged, Wales, and Cornwall and Devon.

The conquerors had coalesced into three great kingdoms—Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex.

From the island of Iona, missionaries of the Irish Church had effected the conversion of the Northumbrians. Augustine with his handful from Rome had introduced Christianity into the little subject Kingdom of Kent. From Northumbria the disciples of Iona penetrated Essex and made converts also there. But in Mercia Mid-England paganism was supreme, and the terrible Penda made himself paramount from the Thames and Wash to the Severn. The West Saxons were cowed.

But S. Oswald, the Northumbrian king, restored the older domination of Northumbria, only to fall again. For thirty years Penda flung himself with fury against the Northern kingdom, and devastated it with fire and sword. Towards the end of his long reign he entrusted the government of the Mid-Angles to his son Peada, who married Alcfleda, daughter of the Northumbrian king, and at the same time received baptism from the hands of the Celtic bishop Finan.

Thus Christianity began to infiltrate into Mid-England also from the North and from the Celtic Church; and missionaries from Lindisfarne followed him into his principality.

The savage old pagan Penda acquiesced—perhaps he thought it inevitable that England should become Christian. The Britons to a man believed. All Northumbria had submitted to the Cross; the conversion of the East Saxons and of Wessex was in full progress. Penda raised no opposition, but poured forth the vials of his scorn upon such as had been baptised, and who did not live up to their baptismal promises. “Those who despise,”said he, “the laws of the God in whom they believe, are despicable wretches.”

But, notwithstanding the union by marriage between the families, the rivalry between Mercia and Northumbria could not be allayed; it must be decided on the battlefield. It was only when driven to desperation by the encroachments and insults of Penda, that Oswy resolved to engage in a final conflict with the man who had defeated and slain his two predecessors, Edwin and Oswald. During the thirteen years that had elapsed since the overthrow of Oswald, Penda had periodically subjected Northumbria to frightful devastations. Oswy, knowing his weakness, when the eighty-year-old pagan had got as far north as Bamborough, entreated for peace, and sent him a present of all the jewels and treasures of which he could dispose. Penda set them aside roughly, resolved, so it was believed, to root out and destroy the whole Northumbrian people. Then, in his despair, Oswy vowed—should God strengthen his hand and lead him to victory—that he would give his infant daughter to God and endow twelve monasteries. “Since the pagan will not takeour gifts,” he said, “let us offer them to One who will.”

The battle of Winwaed resulted in the complete rout of the Mercians and their wholesale destruction, and Penda himself fell.

For the moment the ruin of Mercia seemed complete, and Oswy extended his supremacy over the whole of it. For three years the Mercians endured this foreign rule; but in 659 they surged up in revolt, drove the Northumbrian thanes from the land, and raised Wulfhere, a younger son of Penda, to the throne.

Under the able arm of this new king Mercia rose once more into a power even greater than that under Penda. Oswy died in 670, and thenceforth no Northumbrian king made any attempt to obtain the dominion over the Mid or Southern English.

During the three years after the death of Penda, Oswy had poured missionaries into Mercia. Peada had already brought the Irish monk Diuma with him, and he became bishop in Mercia. He was followed by another Irishman, Ceolach, a disciple of S. Columba. The third bishop was Trumhere, a Northumbrianabbot, consecrated at Lindisfarne. His successors, Jaruman and Ceadda, had also been ordained by the Scots.

In 658 Wulfhere had married Ermenilda, daughter of Ercombert, King of Kent, and of his wife S. Sexburga. This was just before the revolt which raised him to the throne. He does not seem to have been a Christian like his brother Peada, but to have felt much like old Penda, his father.

By her he had four children—Werburga, Ceonred, Rufinus, and Wulfhad.

Under a pious mother, Werburga grew up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord; and from an early age her great desire was to embrace the religious life, and spend her days in the peace of the cloister. It was a lawless and godless time. Men were coarse and cruel, the palace was a scene of drunkenness and riot, from which her gentle spirit shrank. She is described as being very lovely and sweet in manner. She daily assisted with her mother at Divine Service, and spent much of her time in reading and in prayer.

When she came of age to be married, herhand was sought by one Werebod, a thane about the court, but she refused him.

Now we come to a story about which some difficulties exist. In the twelfth century one Robert of Swaffham wrote an account of the death of Rufinus and Wulfhad, sons of Wulfhere and brothers of S. Werburga. The authority is late, too late to be trusted, as we do not know whence the writer drew his narrative.

According to this story, when Rufinus and Wulfhad heard of Werebod’s proposal, they scouted it, and told him to his face that he was not worthy to have her. Werebod dissembled his mortification, and waited an opportunity for revenge. The princes were then at Stone, in Staffordshire, where Wulfhere had a palace.

One day Wulfhad was out hunting, when the stag he was pursuing brought him to the cell of S. Ceadda or Chad, who exhorted him to receive the faith of Christ and be baptised. Wulfhad answered that he would do so if the stag he had been pursuing would come of its own accord, with a rope round its neck, and present itself before him. S. Chad prayed,and the stag bounded through the bushes to the spot, with the rope as Wulfhad desired. S. Chad baptised the prince, and next morning communicated him. Rufinus was led by his brother to receive holy baptism, and when Werebod learned this, he told the king of it, and Wulfhere, in a fit of fury, pursued his sons to the cell of S. Chad, and killed them with his own hands.

The story as it stands is impossible. There is no early notice of it, so that it reposes on a late tradition. Nevertheless, that there is a basis of truth is most probable, if not certain. The Church of Kinver is dedicated to SS. Rufinus and Wulfhad, and it stands under the Kefnvaur, the great red sandstone ridge on which are earthworks where Wulfhere had one of his strongholds. This is probably the site of the murder. That the two princes in their youthful pride scouted the suit of Werebod and insulted him is likely enough. That they had received lively impressions of reverence for Christianity from their mother is also very probable. That they had placed themselves under instruction by S. Chad, and had been baptised by him, isalso very likely. But that their father should have killed them on that account is inadmissible. Werebod may have poisoned his mind against his sons, and represented them as plotting against him with the Northumbrian king and using Chad as an intermediary, and he may have goaded Wulfhere into ordering their death on that account; or there may have been a violent scene between them which ended in the king killing them; or, more likely still, Werebod may himself have waylaid and assassinated them whilst out hunting. It took very little among the Anglo-Saxons to transform any one who died a violent death into a martyr; and when two royal princes had been killed, some excuse for regarding them as witnesses to the faith was sought and invented.

The bodies of the princes were conveyed to Stone, so called because of a memorial set up over them by Wulfhere, an inscribed pillar-stone; but, moved by compunction, he founded there a religious house for women. Wulfhere himself was baptised, and gave his consent to his daughter retiring from the world. He also founded the great monastery of Medehamstead,afterwards Peterborough, as some expiation for his crime.

Before this, Wulfhere had been constantly engaged in extending the power of Mercia. He detached from Northumbria all the district south of the Mersey, and with it got hold of Chester, of which place in later times his daughter was to be regarded as patroness. He gained a hold on the whole of the Severn valley and the Wye, our Herefordshire, over which he set his brother Merewald as under-king. Then he fought the West Saxons under Cenwalch in 661, and defeated them in a signal battle, and extended his ravages into the heart of Wessex as far as Ashdown. Then he turned his arms east along the Thames valley, and brought the East Saxons and London under his sway. Still unsatisfied, he crossed the river into Surrey, subdued it, and invaded Sussex and forced the King Ethelwalch to submit, and to receive baptism. Werburga resolved to retire to Ely where her great-aunt Etheldreda was abbess. Wulfhere and his court conducted her thither, in great state.

We cannot now see Ely in anything like its ancient condition. Then the entire district from Cambridge to the Wash was one broken sheet of water dotted with islets. In places there were shallows where reeds grew dense, the islands were fringed with rushes and willows. The vast mere was a haunt of innumerable wild birds, and the water teemed with fishes. The vast plain of the fens—which is now in summer one sea of golden corn, in winter a black dreary fallow cut up like a chess-board into squares by dykes—was then a tangle of meres, rank growth of waterweeds and copses of alders and grey poplars. The rivers Cam and Nen lost themselves in the waste of waters. Trees torn up, fallen into the water, floated about, formed natural rafts, lodged, and diverted what little current there was in the streams.

Here and there poles had been driven into the stiff clay that formed the bottom of the swamp, cross-pieces had been tied to them, then platforms erected six, ten feet above the surface of the water, and on these platforms huts had been constructed of poles andrushes, in which lived families, their only means of communication with each other and with the firm land being by boat. On the water and by the water they lived, tilling little bits of land left dry in summer but submerged in winter.

The islets were outcrops of fertile land, natural parks, covered by the richest grass and stateliest trees, swarming with deer and roe, goat and boar, as the water around swarmed with otter and beaver, and with fowl of every feather and fish of every scale.

Of all these islets none could compare with Ely, not, as has been supposed, named from the eels that were found about it, but from the elves who were supposed to have chosen it for their own and to dance in the moonlight on its greensward.

Better, purer beings than elves, had taken possession of this enchanted isle—S. Etheldreda and her nuns; and it was through them that the wild fen-dwellers, those who lived on platforms above the water, received the rudiments of the faith, and were ministered to in their agues and rheumatic paralysis.

Etheldreda did not found her monasteryhere till 673. As Wulfhere died in 675, he can have accompanied his daughter there only very shortly after Etheldreda’s settlement in the place. There is no stone anywhere near, every block that has been employed on the glorious cathedral has been brought from a distance, mostly from Barwell, in Northamptonshire.

Etheldreda constructed her monastery and church entirely of wood. Great trunks had been split and these split logs formed the sides of her church, and it was thatched with reeds from the marshes. The king came by boat; the oars flashed in the sun, and the water rippled as the vessels were driven through it to the landing stage. Werburga, eager, stood looking forward to the lovely island that seemed to float on the water; if, as is probable, she was born some time before Wulfhere became king, she would then be between twenty-eight and thirty. At the landing-stage was her great-aunt with her nuns, in black habits with white veils; and no sooner had Werburga descended from the boat than they struck up theTe Deum, and advanced, leading the way, singing, to their wooden church.

Now followed the usual trials: Werburga was first stripped of her costly apparel, her coronet was exchanged for a linen veil, purple and silks were replaced by a coarse woollen habit, and she resigned herself into the hands of her superior, her great-aunt, S. Etheldreda.

We know the form of the ceremonial, and the prayers used on such an occasion, but we do not know who the bishop was who consecrated Werburga.[7]She was led to the foot of the altar, after the reading of the Gospel, and was then asked for two public engagements which were indispensable to the validity of the act: in the first place, the consent of her parents, and in the next her own promise of obedience to himself and his successors. When this had been done he laid his hands upon her to bless her and consecrate her to God. After prayers he placed the veil on her head, saying, “Maiden, receive this veil, and mayest thou bear it stainless to the tribunal of Christ before whom bends every knee in heaven and on earth.”

By the rules of the Anglo-Saxon Churchthe taking of the irrevocable vows was not suffered till the postulant had reached her twenty-sixth year, but we cannot be sure that this rule prevailed so early. The Celtic Church allowed it at the age of twelve.

When Wulfhere died, then Werburga’s mother came also to Ely, and on the death of S. Etheldreda, in 679, her grandmother Sexburga, widow of Ercombert, king of Kent, became abbess, and ruled till 699, when she died, whereupon Werburga’s mother succeeded. At one time three generations of princesses of the blood of Hengest and Odin were seen together in the peaceful isle of Ely, wearing the same monastic habit, and bowing in prayer in the same wooden church. Werburga lived long and happily as a simple nun under her grandmother’s and mother’s kindly rule and direction, till, on her mother’s death, she was summoned to take the place of abbess.

It is very important for us to understand what was the moving principle at this period which led to the foundation of so many religious settlements. The Saxons and Angles had been a people living in war, loving war,and regarding the cutting of throats and the destruction by fire of every house and city as the highest vocation of a man. But when they had occupied the greatest portion of Britain, and further, when they had embraced Christianity, a change took place in their opinions. They came to see that there was some charm in peace, and dignity in the cultivation of the soil. But it was only after a struggle that they could stoop to take hold of the plough and lay aside the spear. They could be brought to this only by example, and it was this which the monks and nuns issuing from their own princely, royal families showed them.

“In the monastic movement of this time,” says Mr. Green, “two strangely contrasted impulses worked together to change the very aspect of the new England and the new English society. The one was the passion for solitude, the first outcome of the religious impulse given by the conversion; a passion for communing apart with themselves and with God which drove men into waste and woodland and desolate fen. The other was the equally newpassion for social life on the part of the nation at large, the outcome of its settlement and well-doing on the conquered soil, and yet more of the influence of the new religion, coming as it did from the social civilisation of the older world, and insensibly drawing men together by the very form of its worship and its belief. The sanctity of the monastic settlements served in these early days of the new religion to ensure for them peace and safety in the midst of whatever war or social trouble might be disturbing the country about them; and the longing for a life of quiet industry, which we see telling from this moment upon the older English longing for war, drew men in crowds to these so-called monasteries.”[8]

Wulfhere was succeeded in 675 by his brother Ethelred, a quiet, unambitious king, who devoted his energies to the foundation of monasteries, dotting them about Mercia with the object of softening and civilising a people that had the instincts of the beasts of prey. He entrusted his niece Werburga with a sortof general supremacy over all the nunneries in his kingdom. She visited them, regulated them, and brought them into order, before her mother’s death and her own appointment to the abbacy of Ely. Thus she resided for a while at the head of the communities of Weedon, Trentham, and Hanbury.

One incident of her story may be quoted.

It happened that a shepherd at Weedon was being brutally maltreated by the steward. The daughter of a king flew to the spot, threw herself between the overseer and the poor wretch he was beating and kicking, and arrested his arm and thrust him back, and held him from his victim, till his passion subsided, and he retired shamefaced.

Werburga died at a ripe age at Trentham, on February 3rd, 699.

Two centuries later, in order to save her remains from the Danes, they were conveyed to Chester, where there was a collegiate church that had been founded by her father at her request. Her body was, however, laid in what is now the Cathedral.

XVA PROPHETESS

Among the most remarkable people of the twelfth century, one who stood forth on the stage of history and exercised there a part of no little importance, Hildegarde, is not to be passed over. Yet, when one comes to study her, she is a person who strikes the student with perplexity. She was, indeed, a woman possible at all times, but only possible as one of significance in the century in which she lived.

She was one of those marvellous women who, indeed, occupied a somewhat analogous place among the ancient pagan Germans—a seeress, a prophetess, even a priestess, like Velleda or Ganna. She took up the same position in the Christian Middle Ages, directed, ruled, foretold, threatened, and was listened toin all seriousness. Popes, prelates, kings consulted her, and all quailed at her threats and denunciations. She saw visions and dreamed dreams; she endeavoured to throw rays of light to illumine the past as well as the future. She thought with her inspired eye to unveil the mysteries of creation. Uneducated, she dictated in Latin; uninstructed, she wrote on natural history; unordained, she preached sermons even to popes.

All kinds of people wrote to her on all kinds of subjects, and she solved their difficulties, advised them in their perplexities, illumined their ignorance.

She has had imitators in all after ages—Antoinette Bourgignon, Joanna Southcott, Krüdner, and Madame Blavatski—but none achieved such success, exercised so wide an influence, was treated with so much submission.

The Emperor, the princes, the nobility, the clergy, the people all believed in her prophetic power, and accepted her commands without a murmur. Her warnings and promises were received as divine revelations, although she spared no one in her denunciations.

The cause for this unbounded respect has been a matter of dispute, but is still inexplicable. That she was a coarse deceiver, who imposed herself on the people as inspired, by a long-continued course of deception, cannot for a moment be allowed by such as without prejudice examine her writings and her conduct. She was made a tool of, and a willing tool, by S. Bernard, to further the crusade he had at heart. But when, in spite of prophecy and promise, that crusade ended in hideous disaster and in dishonour as well, her influence with the people was not in the least shaken.

At the court of Count Meginhard of Spanheim lived the knight Hildebert of Böckelheim, his kinsman. Hildebert’s wife Mathilda bore him in 1098 a daughter, who was named Hildegarde, on their estate a little above Kreuznach on the Rhine. She was the tenth child, and her parents were no little concerned how to provide for such a fry. The simple expedient in those days was to send some of the family into monasteries and convents. From an early date Hildegarde was destined to be a nun. She, together with her kinswoman Chiltrude,the daughter of the count, were sent to be reared by Jutta, the abbess of S. Disibod, a sister of Count Meginhard. Jutta was an uneducated woman; learning was of no account in her convent, and Hildegarde was brought up in ignorance of nearly everything that a young woman of good family ought to have acquired even in the twelfth century.

That Hildegarde was hysterical cannot be doubted, but hysteria is precisely the most mysterious of all ailments. The phenomena connected with it are the perplexity of physicians even at this day. Many and ponderous works have been written upon it in England, France especially, and Germany, but it remains still an unsolved puzzle.

From a very early age she saw visions, and when she spoke of them to her playfellows, and they stared at her and did not appear to comprehend what she said, she shrank into herself and refrained from communicating to others the things that she saw and heard, or fancied she saw and heard. Even at the age of five, this singular gift was noticed by her parents, who could not understand it. Juttamade the girl learn the Psalms in Latin, and she obtained some glimmer of an idea what the words meant, but she did not even acquire a knowledge of the alphabet, nor that of reading music.

Hildegarde was constantly unwell, but her aches and pains were apparently due to hysteria and nothing else, and the suppressed desire to be doing something, making her personality felt, which was impossible as she was situated. When, finally, she was bidden write down her visions, at once all her maladies left her.

“When, on one occasion, I was very much exhausted by my sickness,” says she in her own biography of herself, “I asked the nurse who attended me whether she saw things in any other way than with her eyes; she made me no answer. Then I was frightened, and I dared say no more about it to any one. But sometimes, inadvertently, when I was talking, I let slip prophetic sentences. And when I was, so to say, full of this inner vision, then I spoke much which was quite unintelligible to those about me. And when the force of the ecstasy grew, and I spoke somethingabout it, more after the manner of a child than of a girl of my years, then I blushed and cried, and wished heartily that I had held my tongue. But out of dread of what would be said, I never dared to speak out openly as to what I saw. However (Jutta) the noble lady with whom I was had cognisance of this and consulted a monk of her acquaintance.”

To one in this condition, plenty of exercise, wholesome food, and hard work, and her head under the pump if she gave way to her fancies, would have been proper treatment. But in the twelfth century no one had any conception that hysteria was a physical disorder.

Jutta died in 1136, and by unanimous vote of the sisters Hildegarde was elected to be superior of the convent, when aged eight-and-thirty. She had now full opportunity to give way to her desire to take that prominent place to which she felt she was called. Two years, however, elapsed before she had made up her mind to write her visions and prophecies. There were difficulties in her way: she could not write, she knew nothing of grammar, andshe was perhaps dubious how the world would accept revelations which were in shockingly bad grammar and spelling, and displayed profound ignorance of the real meaning of Scripture. However, she consulted one of the monks of the monastery of S. Disibod, and he put the matter before the rest.

Now, as she was evidently sincere, and there could be no suspicion that Hildegarde was deceiving them, they had to decide whether these visions were from heaven or from hell. That there was a third alternative never for an instant occurred to them: it could not, in the nature of things, in the then condition of medical science, or rather ignorance. Manifestly there was nothing bad in these revelations, consequently the poor amiable monks were compelled to decide that they came from God.

The difficulty now arose how they were to be published. It was obviously impossible to issue to the world the farrago of grammatic blunders, and the confused nonsense of much that poured from her lips, and so she was given secretaries to write down in decent Latin whatthey supposed she meant to say. The Archbishop Henry of Mayence was called in before the decisive step was taken. He was an amiable, peace-loving, but feeble man, who was made archbishop in 1142. He gave his verdict in favour of the revelations.

Hildegarde says of herself: “In 1141, when I was forty-two years old and seven months, there came on me a dazzling light from heaven, and flashed through my brains and heart and bosom. It was like a flame that does not burn, but warms, just like a sunbeam. From thenceforth I had the gift of the interpretation of the Scriptures, the Psalms, the Gospels, and the books of the Old and New Testament. I had, however, no understanding of the several words of the text, as to their syllables and cases and tenses. When I have my visions—and I have had them from childhood—I am not asleep, nor feverish, nor am I necessarily in retirement, nor do I see with my bodily eyes, but with those of my soul.” Later she wrote: “I am always in a fear and tremble, as I have no certainty within me. But I lift up my hands to heaven, and allow myself tobe blown about just like a feather in the wind.”

Her first book was called by herScivias; which was her contraction forDisce vias Domini, “know the ways of the Lord.” Probably only the first part of it was sent to the Archbishop of Mayence, who gravely called his clergy into consultation over it. Then, when Pope Eugenius III. came to Treves on his way to the Council of Rheims, he was shown it by the archbishop; he gave it to the Bishop of Verdun and other theologians to be examined. Afterwards, on their report, at the Council in 1148, he read it himself to the bishops there assembled, and it was received with applause.

S. Bernard was present, and he at once saw how much assistance he could get in promoting his darling object, a new crusade, if he could enlist Hildegarde in the cause; and he urged the pope to sanction and bless the prophetess. This Eugenius did in a letter, in which he accorded her his full permission to publish whatever was revealed to her. He could hardly do other. These writings were wellintended, purported to do good, and that these visions and prophecies were the mere hallucinations of a diseased mind never could have been supposed at the time.

Hildegarde now shifted her quarters. Troops of women had come to place themselves under her direction, drawn by her fame. She settled on S. Ruprechtsberg, near Bingen, where a suitable convent was erected for her.

But the good monks of S. Disibod asked a favour of her which she could not refuse. They knew next to nothing about their founder, except that he was one of the many Irish who had left their native isle in the fifth century and had spread over Germany and Gaul. Would she through her prophetic power, which looked backwards as well as forwards, write them “by revelation” a life of their founder?

This she accordingly did, and the life she wrote was, she insists, given her “by revelation.” It is a long and tedious work, a gush of weak and watery verbiage. When reduced to its elementary constituents, it is found to consist of absolutely nothing more than what was already known—that Disibod came from Ireland, settledon the mount that bore his name afterwards, and died there. But this was distended into a tract of 6,250 words.

Hildegarde’s “Natural History” is a very funny book. She did not pretend to derive her knowledge of the property of things from inspiration, but there can be little doubt that, at the time when it was issued, those who regarded her prophecies as infallible, looked also on her enunciation of the properties of natural objects as inspired.

She begins the book by likening the world to a human body: the earth is the flesh, the rocks are the bones, the moisture of the stones is the marrow, the slate rocks are the toe and finger nails, the plants are the hair, and the dew is the perspiration. All plants are either hot or cold; so also are all animals. This is the radical division between them. The recipes given are profoundly silly. For a boil, house-flies are to be taken, their heads cut off, and they are to be arranged like herrings in a barrel round the swelling. A poultice is to cover all—but it is the flies that bring the gathering to a head. Here is one of the shortest ofher botanical accounts—that of the meadow convolvulus. “The herb is cold, it has not great powers nor is it of much use. But if a man’s nails get scaly and crack, then let him grind up the convolvulus, mix with it a little quicksilver and lay it on his nails, tie a bit of rag round, and his nails will be lovely.”

Hildegarde wrote a commentary on the Rule of S. Benedict, another on the Athanasian Creed. She propounded difficult questions in Scripture, and solved them by her inner light, only making the difficulties greater, and always missing the simple meaning of a passage.

S. Hildegarde had her troubles. She did not get on very well with the Archbishops of Mayence. At the instigation of S. Bernard she inflamed the minds of the people with a fever of zeal against the Saracens, and exhorted to a crusade. This resulted in a frightful massacre of Jews at Mayence, instigated by a monk named Badulf. The Archbishop Henry, a mild, amiable man, did what he could to protect the unfortunate Israelites, and opened to them his palace. But a papal legate appeared on thescene, and the Chapter induced him to depose the archbishop. He appealed to Rome, but the cardinals were bribed to declare against him. He had chosen his confidential friend, Arnold of Selnhofen, to take what money he could scrape together to Rome and plead his cause. Arnold made the most solemn assurances of fidelity, and betrayed his trust. He used the money entrusted to him to purchase the deposition of his friend and his own advancement.

The people of Mayence were greatly incensed against Arnold, who was thrust on them by the pope himself, without election by the Chapter, and was invested by the pope the same day on which the friend was degraded whom he had betrayed. On reaching Mayence Arnold did nothing to appease the popular resentment; his court was magnificent, his servants were splendidly liveried, and his table was noted for its luxury. Knowing what a power Hildegarde was in the diocese, he wrote a hypocritical, canting letter to her, beseeching her prayers. She replied with a sharp admonition: “The living Light saith unto thee, Thou hasta form of zeal only, which I hate. Cleanse restlessness from thy soul, and cease from doing injustice to thy people. Rise up and turn to the Lord, for the time cometh speedily.”

Seeing the ferment of men’s minds increase, Arnold resolved on leaving Bingen, where he then was, to go into his cathedral city and put down all resistance with a high hand. He purposed lodging the first night in the monastery of S. James, outside the walls. Hildegarde warned him of his danger, but he would not listen. A friend, the abbot of Erbach, also cautioned him. “Bah!” scoffed the archbishop, “these Mainzers are dogs; they bark, but do not bite.” When Hildegarde heard this, she said, “The dogs have had their chains broken, and they will tear you to pieces.”

He scorned these warnings, and in June 1160 went to the monastery in which he had purposed to lodge. But he had rushed, unwittingly, into the jaws of the lion, for the abbot of S. James was his most deadly enemy. The abbot at once sent tidings to the city that the archbishop was there. A mob poured out of the city gates. The archbishop, hearing theroar of their voices and the tramp of their feet, was paralysed with fear; the rioters entered the abbey, rushed upon him, and a butcher split his head with an axe. The dead body was dragged forth and cast into a ditch, where the peasant women, coming to market, pelted it with rotten eggs and bad cheese.

In 1150 Christian was archbishop, but he was in Italy. He was a man of arms, who loved fighting, and had no relish for the duties of his position. During his absence Hildegarde got into difficulties with the administrator of the see. A certain young man had been buried in the cemetery attached to her monastery who had incurred excommunication. An order was sent her to dig the body up and throw it out of consecrated ground. This she refused to do. She insisted that the young fellow had been absolved and had received the last sacraments, and she furnished a vision in which she had been forbidden to exhume the body. But the administrator did not repose such confidence in her visions as to submit. An interdict was laid on her convent, so that the sisters were forbiddento recite their offices and to have the sacraments administered there.

No priest in the diocese dared disobey, and the whole convent was struck with paralysis. Hildegarde wrote, but could obtain no concession. Then she appealed to the military bishop, who was in Italy. The administrator sent his account of the affair, and the interdict was renewed. So time passed. Hildegarde still obstinately, and rightly, refused to have the body dug up and cast to the dogs. She wrote again to the archbishop, and finally obtained a removal of the interdict. As she complained, there had been no investigation into the facts—it had been a party move of spite against herself.

Although in 1170 Hildegarde was aged seventy-two, her literary energy did not fail. She still composed treatises, and continued to write letters in answer to those she received, or to thunder against those persons whose conduct deserved reprobation. Her correspondence extended from Bremen and the Netherlands, to Rome, and even to Jerusalem. Her denunciations of abuses, corruptions in the Church, wereoutspoken, and she even prophesied the fall of the empire and a reformation in religion; but the condition of affairs both in the state and in Christendom were so bad, that it required but little foresight to tell that such could not possibly last without a convulsion.

Her style is not without a certain amount of rude eloquence, but is involved. Those who took down her words were clearly not always able to make out the drift of what she said; but, indeed, she herself probably could not wholly explain them. The words poured forth in a stream, rolling her ideas about in confusion, and she was impatient of her secretaries meddling over-much with her revelations and prophecies, lest they should make sense indeed, but at the expense of their genuine character.

She had one of those eager, restless minds, which at the present day would have made of her a platform oratress, a vehement writer in magazines, and a reformer on school and hospital boards: always vehement with purpose. Her activity, as already said, took several directions—that of exhortation to repentanceand good works, that of deep theological research, and of Scriptural interpretation, that also of the study of Natural History. But she did more than that: she wrote hymns and composed melodies. She had never been taught musical science as then understood. That was no loss to her. Her airs are as rambling and incoherent as her prophecies.

She also pretended to speak in an unknown tongue, and to be able to interpret this language. The study of this pretended new language is suggestive and amusing. It has been taken in hand by Grimm, Pitra and Roth. It presents an amusing jumble of words German, Latin, and misunderstood Hebrew.

Hildegarde died at the age of eighty-two, in 1179. She has not been formally canonised; she is, however, inserted as a saint in the Roman kalendar on September 17th, the day of her death.

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