EXCHANGE THE PSALMS IN HUMAN LIFE FIRST EDITION Reprinted . SECOND EDITION NEW EDITION 5-f. net EDITION Reprinted Reprinted . Reprinted Reprinted Reprinted . December 1903 January 1904 January 1904 March 1904 September 1 904 October 1 904 December 1904 December 1904 February 1905 December 1905 THE PSALMS IN HUMAN LIFE BY ROWLAND E. PROTHERO, M.V.O. FORMERLY FELLOW OF ALL SOULS' COLLEGE, OXFORD AUTHOR OF THE "LIFE OF DEAN STANLEY," ETC. NEW YORK E. P. BUTTON AND COMPANY 1905 Printed in Great Britain. PREFACE SOME of the notes, on which the following pages are founded, were discussed with Dean Stanley in 1878. A list of historical instances of the use of the Psalms, made by the Dean himself, was sent to me in 1895 by the Right Rev. H. H. Montgomery, then Bishop of Tasmania. To it I am indebted for the reference (page 358), to the reopening of the Cathedral at Moscow, after the French invasion of 1812. Since my collection of notes was begun, the ground has been partly occupied by the Rev. John Ker, D.D. (1886), and the Rev. Charles L. Marson (1895). But Dr Ker's book was unfinished, and both he and Mr Marson followed a method of treat- ment different from that which is adopted in the following pages. In Appendix A will be found a general list of the principal authorities. Appendix B arranges the historical instances, which in the text are grouped, more or less, in order of time, under the particular Psalms that are quoted. The Index contains, in addition to the ordinary matter, references to the books from which the historical instances are derived. a i vi PREFACE For assistance in the preparation of Appendix A, and for the Index, I am indebted to Mr G. H. Holden, Assistant Librarian of All Souls' College, Oxford, and to Mr C. Nolan Ferrall. To Mr Holden I owe Appendix B. ROWLAND E. PROTHERO. Gth September 1903. CONTENTS CHAPTEK I GENERAL PAGIfl The Psalms as the mirror of the human soul ; their association with national and individual life ; their universality ; not limited to any age, nation, or variety of Christian creed ; their transla- tion into verse ; their influence in literature ; the first of religious autobiographies ; power over human lives in all ages of history 1-10 CHAPTEE II EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY The Psalms in services, ceremonies, and the catacombs ; use in persecution Crispin and Crispinian, Theodore the Martyr, the Saracen convert, the Emperor Maurice ; in public worship ; in ordinary life Origen, the family of Gregory Nazianzen, Monica ; on deathbeds Basil the Great, Ambrose, Paulinus of Nola, Cyril of Alexandria ; influence of the Psalms in Monas- ticism the Egyptian Anchorites, Basil and monastic com- munities of the East, Athanasius and the West, Jerome and Paula, Martin of Tours ; the Psalms in action struggle between Church and State Athanasius and Constantius, Basil and Valens, Ambrose and Theodosius ; the Psalms in human thought Confessions of Augustine .... 11-39 CHAPTEK III THE FORMATION OF NATIONS The invasions of the barbarians ; supremacy of moral power over brute force, Totila and Benedict; the Rule of Benedict; monastic missionaries ; translation of the Psalms into Scla- vonic; the Psalms in the lives of Columban, Gall, Patrick, Columba, Cuthbert; Irish and British Christianity Battle of Mold, Kentigern, Bangor ; Roman Christianity the island of Death and Silence ; Gregory the Great ; coming of Augus- tine ; introduction of Benedictine Rule ; its foundation on the Psalms ; its establishment in England Benedict Biscop, Wil- frid, Neot, Dunstan ; universality of the Rule . . . 40-67 Vlll CONTENTS CHAPTEK IV THE MIDDLE AGES The battle of Vougle* ; the Psalms in ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesi- astical history (1) The Papacy and the Empire Charlemagne, Gregory VII. and Henry IV., Anselm and William Rufus, Henry II. and Thomas a Becket, Alexander III. and Frederick Barbarossa; (2) pilgrimages; (3) the crusades, Abp. Baldwin, Richard I., Henry V., Abbot Adelme at the Tagus, Cardinal Ximenes, Demetrius of the Don ; (4) the religious revival, Bernard, Stephen Harding and the Cistercian reform, Citeaux and Fountains Abbey, Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans ; the Psalms in secular history William tlje Conqueror, Vladimir Monomachus, David I. of Scotland, Abelard and Heloise, Louis IX. of France, William Wallace ; in mediaeval science ; in mediaeval literature De Imitation?, Christi, Divina Commedia, Piers Plowman, The Golden Legend .... 68-112 CHAPTEK V THE REFORMATION ERA The influence of the Psalms among pioneers of the Reformation Wyclif, John Hus, Jerome of Prague; among mediaeval reformers Savonarola ; among Protestant leaders Luther and Melancthon; among champions of the Papacy the Emperor Charles V. ; among discoverers of New Worlds- Christopher Columbus ; among men of the New Learning Erasmus, Pico della Mirandola, Sir Thomas More; John Fisher ; John Houghton ; among leaders of the Roman Catholic Reaction Xavier and Teresa ; among Protestant and Roman Catholic Martyrs Hooper. Ridley, and Southwell 113-143 CHAPTER Vi THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN PROTESTANT ENGLAND CATHOLIC SPAIN AND ROMAN The Psalms in the vulgar tongue, the English Prayer-book version ; metrical translations, Germany, France, England, Scotland; growth of the influence of the Psalms in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; Lady Jane Grey ; the Duke of Suffolk ; Counts Egmont and Horn ; accession of Queen Elizabeth ; the murder of Darnley ; execution of Mary, Queen of Scots ; the Spanish Armada ; the Turkey merchantmen ; the wreck of the Tobie; the Earl of Essex; Burghley; Bacon; Shakes- peare; Richard Hooker; Bishop Jewel; George Herbert; Hooker on the Psalms J44-179 CONTENTS ix CHAPTEE VII THE HUGUENOTS, 1524-98 PAGES Marot's Psalms at Court ; the distinctive heritage of the Huguenots ; the power of the Psalms in the public and private lives of the Huguenots Palissy the potter, Calvin, Theodore de Beza, Robert Estienne, Casaubon, Jean Rousseau ; traces in modern France of the struggle between Roman Catholics and Hugue- nots ; beginning of the persecution of Protestants Jean Leclerc (1524), Wolfgang Schuch (1525); indecision of Francis I. ; the Huguenot martyrs of Meaux, Jean Rabec, massacre of Vassy; commencement of the Wars of Religion (1562); Coligny at Noyers and Moncontour ; Massacre of St Bartho- lomew (1572) ; Henry of Navarre, flight from Paris to Alenson, battles of Courtras and Chateau d'Arques ; Edict of Nantes (1598) 180-201 CHAPTER VIII THE HUGUENOTS, 1600-1762 (continued) The Roman Cathclic Reaction Vincent de Paul, Francois de Sales : changed conditions of the Huguenot cause ; their effect on the charactf r of the Wars of Religion, 1621-29 Henri de Rohan, sieges of Montauban and La Rochelle ; the Roman Catholic triumph and maintenance of the strictest ortho- doxy Port Royal, Pascal, Madame Guy on ; edicts against the Huguenots and the use of the Psalter: the Vaudois and Henri Arnaud ; revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685); persecution of the French Huguenots; the rising in the Cevennes murder of Francois du Chayla, Cavalier and the Camisards, Bellot, Martignargues (1704), Salindres (1709); the Pastors of the Desert Rang, Roger, Benezet, Rochette; effect of the Psalms on the virtues and defects of the Huguenots 202-228 CHAPTER IX THE PUKITANS, 1600-1660 The Pilgrim Fathers and Benjamin Franklin ; the Psalms among the royalists Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Sanderson, Strafford, and Laud : the Civil War Marston Moor, John Hampden, Charles I. at Newark ; Puritanism as a poetical, religious, and political force in Milton, Bunyan, and Cromwell. . . 229-260 CONTENTS CHAPTER X THE SCOTTISH COVENANTERS AND THE REVOLUTION OP 1688 PAGES Progress of the Reformation in Scotland George Wishart, John Knox, James Melville; the Solemn League and Covenant (1638); the restoration of Episcopacy (1661-4); popular dis- content the Pentland rising, Hugh M'Kail, Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, Richard Cameron, Donald Cargill, Baillie of Jerviswood, Alexander Peden, James Renwick, the Wigtown Martyrs ; the Revolution of 1688 ; siege of Derry (1689) . . 261-296 CHAPTEE XI 1688-1900 Changed character of the romance of religion : the Psalms in the lives of religious leaders Baxter, Law, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, William Wilberforce, Keble, Manning, Newman, Thomas Arnold, Julius Hare, Neander, Charles Kingsley, Stanley, Chalmers, Irving; the Psalms in the lives of men of science Locke, Humboldt, Maine de Biran, Sir W. Hamilton, Sir James Simpson, Romanes ; the Psalms in literature Addison, Cowper, Boswell, Scott, Byron, Hogg, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Fitzgerald, Ruskin, Carlyle . 297-329 CHAPTEK XII 1688-1900 (continued) The Psalms in philanthropic movements Prison Reform and John Howard ; in missionary enterprises John Eliot, David Brainerd, William Carey, Henry Martyn, Alexander Duff, Allen Gardiner, David Livingstone, Bishop Hannington ; in ordinary life Colonel Gardiner, Thomas Carlyle, Jane Welsh Carlyle ; in secular history Brittany and La Vendee, the execution of Madame de Noailles, the evacuation of Moscow in 1812, the Revolution of 1848, Bourget in the Franco-German War of 1870-1, Captain Conolly at Bokhara and Havelock at Jellalabad, Duff, Edwards, and " Quaker " Wallace in the Indian Mutiny, the Boer War . 330-368 CONTENTS xl APPENDICES APPBWUI* PAGKfl A. PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES ..... 871-889 B. INDEX TO THE USE or PABTICULAH PSALMS . . . 390-395 INDEX . . . .397 THE PSALMS IN HUMAN LIFE CHAPTER I GENERAL The Psalms as the mirror of the human soul : their association with national and individual life : their universality ; not limited to any age, nation, or variety of Christian creed ; their translation into verse ; their influence in literature ; the first of religious autobiographies ; power over human lives in all ages of history. ABOVE the couch of David, according to Rabbinical tradition, there hung a harp. The midnight breeze, as it rippled over the strings, made such music that the poet-king was constrained to rise from his bed, and, till the dawn flushed the eastern skies, he wedded words to the strains. The poetry of that tradition is condensed in the saying that the Book of Psalms con- tains the whole music of the heart of man, swept by the hand of his Maker. In it are gathered the lyrical burst of his tenderness, the moan of his penitence, the pathos of his sorrow, the triumph of his victory, the despair of his defeat, the firmness of his confidence, the rapture of his assured hope. In it is presented the anatomy of all parts of the human soul ; in it, as Heine says, are collected " sunrise and sunset, birth and death, promise and fulfilment the whole drama of humanity." In the Psalms is painted, for all time, in fresh un- A 2 GENERAL fading colours, the picture of the moral warfare of man, often baffled yet never wholly defeated, strug- gling upwards to all that is best and highest in his nature, always aware how short of the aim falls the attempt, how great is the gulf that severs the wish . from its fulfilment. In them we do not find the innocent converse of man with God in the Garden of Eden ; if we did, the book would for our fallen natures Jose its value. On the contrary, it is the revelation of a soul deeply conscious of sin, seeking, in broken accents of shame and penitence and hope, to renew personal communion with God, heart to heart, thought to thought, and face to face. It is this which gives to the Psalms their eternal truth. It is this which makes them at once the breviary and the viaticum of humanity. Here are gathered not only pregnant statements of the principles of religion, and condensed maxims of spiritual life, but a promptuary of effort, a summary of devotion, a manual of prayer and praise, and all this is clothed in language, which is as rich in poetic beauty as it is universal and enduring in poetic truth. The Psalms, then, are a mirror in which each man sees the motions of his own soul. They express in exquisite words the kinship which every thoughtful human heart craves to find with a supreme, unchang- ing, loving God, who will be to him a protector, guardian, and friend. They utter the ordinary expe- riences, the familiar thoughts of men ; but they give to these a width of range, an intensity, a depth, and an elevation, which transcend the capacity of the most gifted. They translate into speech the spiritual passion of the loftiest genius ; they also utter, with the beauty born of truth and simplicity, and with THE PSALMS IN NATIONAL LIFE 3 exact agreement between the feeling and the expres- sion, the inarticulate and humble longings of the un- lettered peasant. So it is that, in every country, the language of the Psalms has become part of the daily life of nations, passing into their proverbs, mingling with their conversation, and used at every critical stage of existence. With our national, as well as with our private lives, the Psalms are inextricably mingled. On the Psalms, both in spirit (Ps. xx. 9), and language (Ps. Ixviii. 1), is based our National Anthem. From the lion and the unicorn of Ps. xxii. 21, are taken the supporters of the royal arms. In all the Corona- tion Offices from Egbert to Edward VII., not only the services, but the symbolic ceremonies are based upon the Psalms the oil of gladness above his fellows, the sword girded on the thigh of the most Mighty one, the crown of pure gold, the sceptre of righteousness, the throne of judgment. In Christian Art, as the conventional representation of the Wise Men of the East as three kings is founded on the Kings of Tharsis, Saba, and Arabia of Ps. Ixxii. 10-11, so the use of the Pelican as a symbol of Christ is guided by the comparison to the pelican in the wilderness of Ps. cii. 6. A Psalm (li., verse 1) supplied the "neck verse " of mediaeval justice, which afforded the test of benefit of clergy. In the Psalms ancient families have sought their mottoes, such as the "Fortuna mea in bello campo" (Ps. xvi. 7) of the Beauchamps, the "Nisi Dominus frustra" (Ps. cxxvii. 1) of the Comp- tons, or the " Non dormit qui custodit " (Ps. cxxi. 3) of the Coghills. Ancient trade guilds have found in the Psalms the legend of their charter of incorporation, like the " Omnia subjecisti sub pedibus, oves et boves " 4 GENERAL (Ps. viii. 6-7) of the Butchers' Company. From the Psalms Edinburgh takes its motto of " Nisi Dominus frustra" (Ps. cxxvii., verse 1). From the same source the University of Oxford took its "Dominus illumi- natio mea" (Ps. xxvii. 1), and the University of Durham its "Fundamenta ejus" (Ps. Ixxxvii. 1). Under the sanction, as it were, of a text from the Psalms ("The earth is the Lord's, and all that therein is ; the compass of the world, and they that dwell therein," Ps. xxiv., verse 1), was held the Great Exhibition of 1851. " Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it" (Ps. cxxvii., verse 1), is the verse chosen by Smeaton for the Eddystone Lighthouse. To innumerable almshouses, hospitals, public buildings and private houses, the Psalms have supplied inscriptions. To coins they have furnished legends, like the coins of the Black Prince in Guienne, " Dominus adjutor meus et pro- tector meus," etc. (Ps. xxviii. 8) ; the florin of Edward III. in 1344, "Domine, ne in furore arguas me" (Ps. vi. 1) ; or the shilling of Edward VI. in 1549, " Inimicos ejus induam confusione " (Ps. cxxxii. 19). On sword- blades, trenchers, and rings, verses from the Psalms are inscribed. By texts from the Psalms, sun-dials all over the world enforce the solemn lesson of the passage of time. Here are the "Dies mei sicut umbra declinaverunt " (Ps. cii. 11) of San Michele at Venice, or Langen Schwalbach ; the English version, "My days are gone like a shadow," at Arbroath, and St Hilda's, Whitby ; and the same idea, " L'homme est semblable a la vanite ; ses jours sont comme une ombre qui passe " (Ps. cxliv. 4), at St Brelade's, in Jersey. With a psalm we are baptised, and married, and THE PSALMS IN PRIVATE LIFE 5 buried ; with a psalm we begin, and realise to the full, and end, our earthly existence. With what strange power do the familiar words of the Book come home to us as we grow older ! Here are verses, over which have stumbled, forty years ago, the childish lips of brothers, severed from us by years of change and absence, yet now, by force of association with the Psalms, seated once again by our side in the broken circle of home. Here again is a passage, which, with trembling voice and beating heart, we read aloud by the deathbed of one, with whose passing the light faded and our own lives grew grey, and void, and lampless. Yet still it is to the Psalms, even when they wound us most, that we turn for help and com- fort. As life's evening closes round us, and as the winged thoughts, that we have made our own, sweep in from the horizon of our memories, no words come home to us with swifter, surer flight than those of the Psalms. To weary travellers of every condition and at every period of history, the Psalms have been rivers of refreshment and wells of consolation. They alone have known no limitations to a particular age, country, or form of faith. In them the spirit of controversy^ and the war of creeds are forgotten : love of the Psalter has united the Anglican and Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Nonconformist. Over the parched fields of theological strife the breath of the Psalms sweeps, fresh and balmy. For centuries the supplica- tions of Christians, clothed in the language of the Psalter, have risen like incense to the altar-throne of God ; in them have been expressed, from age to age, the devotion and the theology of religious communions that, in all else, were at deadly feud. Surviving al) 6 GENERAL the changes in Church and State, in modes of thought, in habits of life, in forms of expression, the Psalms, as devotional exercises, have sunk into our hearts ; as sublime poetry, have fired our imaginations ; as illus- trations of human life, have arrested our minds and stored our memories. In the Psalms the vast hosts of suffering humanity have found, from the time of Jonah to the present day, the deepest expression of their hopes and fears. As our Lord Himself died with the words of a psalm upon His lips, so the first martyr, Stephen, had used the words thus hallowed. So also, in prison at Philippi, Paul and Silas encouraged themselves by singing psalms throughout the night. It was by the Psalms that the anguish, wrung from tortured lips on the cross, at the stake, on the scaffold, and in the dungeon, has been healed and solaced. Strong in the strength that they impart, young boys and timid girls have risen from their knees in the breathless amphitheatre, thronged with its quivering multitudes, and boldly faced the lions. Neither the rudeness of mosaic art, nor the lapse of sixteen centuries, has obliterated the radiant smile of triumph, with which St Agnes and her companions, on the walls of S. Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna, press forward to greet Him, for whose sake they gave their young and tender bodies to be tortured. With the Psalms upon their tongues, myriads have died now in quiet sick-rooms, surrounded by all who have loved them best in life now alone, and far from home and kindred now hemmed in by fierce enemies howling for their blood. Thus in the Psalms there are pages which are stained with the life-blood of martyrs, and wet with the tears of saints ; others, which are illuminated by the victories of weak human- THE PSALMS IN ENGLISH VERSE 7 ity over suffering and fear and temptation; others, which glow with the brightness of heroic constancy and almost superhuman courage. Over the familiar words are written, as it were in a palimpsest, the heart-stirring romances of spiritual chivalry, the most moving tragedies of human life and action. How much, or how little, of our religion is a matter of habit, or a personal acquisition, this is no place to inquire. But assuredly the Psalms gain in interest and power from their associations with human - history, and from their use by our fellow-men in every form of trial which can confront humanity. They have inspired some of the noblest hymns in our language. Their rendering into verse has occupied many of the most gifted men in the history of our nation knights of chivalry, like Sir Philip Sidney, aided by his sister, Margaret, Countess of Pembroke ; men of science, like Lord Bacon, in whose version the philosopher over- masters the poet; classical scholars, like George Sandys, one of the most successful of early versifiers ; courtiers, like Sir Thomas Wyatt ; ambassadors, like Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Henry Wotton, or Hookham Frere ; dis- tinguished prelates, such as Archbishop Parker, or Bishop Ken, or Bishop Hall, or Bishop King ; queens and kings, like Elizabeth, or James I. ; sturdy Puritans, such as Francis Kous ; Cromwellian captains, like Thomas, Lord Fairfax, or George Wither, whose sweet vein of early poetry was soured by the vinegar of politics and polemics; poets, like Crashaw, Phinehas Fletcher, Henry Vaughan, Burns, Cowper, or Milton, whose versions, with one exception, fall below the standard which we should have expected his lyric genius and devotional fervour to attain ; parish priests, like George Herbert and John Keble ; heroes of the 8 GENERAL Dunciad, like Sir Bichard Blackmore and Luke Mil- bourne ; masters of prose, like Addison ; Methodists, like Charles Wesley ; Nonconformists, such as Isaac Watts, whose version of Ps. xc., " O God, our help in ages past," is perhaps the finest hymn in the English language. Poets and men of letters, like Dante and Camoens, Shakespeare and Cervantes, Wordsworth, Walter Scott, Carlyle and Buskin, Heine and Herder, Pascal and Lamartine, have acknowledged the unrivalled charm of the Psalter. From the Psalms hymn- writers have drawn their most striking inspirations; to turn them into verse has been the occupation of men of all nationalities, professions, and pursuits at every period of history ; their language, imagery, and ideas have fascinated men of the highest poetic genius. But besides the indirect influence which they have thus exercised on literature, the Psalms may be said to have created a literature of their own. Of all that mass of writings in which is recorded the inner life of Christians, they are the precursors and the pattern. They are the parents of those religious autobiogra- phies which, even in literary and psychological in- terest, rival, if they do not surpass, the Confessions of Bousseau, or the Truth and Fiction of Goethe. From the Psalms are descended books like the Con- fessions of St Augustine, the Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis, the Grace Abounding of John Bunyan, the Devotions of Bishop Andrewes, the Thoughts of Blaise Pascal In the pages of such works the tone and spirit of the Psalms are faithfully represented ; whether in devotional exercises, in guides to the spiritual life, in meditations and counsels on holy living and holy IN RELIGIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHIES 9 dying, or in the unconscious records of the personal history of religious minds, their influence is everywhere present. They are the inspiration of that soliloquy at the throne of God, in which Augustine revealed his soul before a world which is yet listening, as for fifteen centuries it has listened, to the absolute truthfulness of his Confessions. They are the wings which lifted Thomas a Kempis out of his white-washed cell, bore him above the flat meadows of St Agnes, and floated heavenwards those mystic musings of the Imitation which thrilled with mingled awe and hope the heart of Maggie Tulliver. They lent their height and depth to the religion of Bishop Andre wes, whose private prayers, in their elevation above doctrinal contro- versies, in their manliness and reality, and in the com- prehensiveness of their horizon, seem to translate, for individual use in the closet, the public worship of the Anglican Church. They were the live coal which touched the lips of John Bunyan, and transformed the unlettered tinker into a genius and a poet, as, with a pen of iron and in letters of fire, he wrote the record of his passage from death to life. They sharpened the keen sight with which Pascal pierced to the heart of truth, and nerved the courage with which he confronted the mysteries of the vision that his lucid intellect conjured up before his eyes. Thus the Psalms, apart from their own transcendent beauty and universal truth, have enriched the world by the creation of a literature which, century after century, has not only commanded the admiration of sceptics, but elevated the characters of innumerable believers, encouraged their weariness, consoled their sorrows, lifted their doubts, and guided their wavering foot- steps. 10 GENERAL So far I have spoken mainly of the influence of the Psalms on human thought. But their workings in the sphere of human action have been equally striking and equally universal. No fragment of the glorious temples at Jerusalem has survived the lapse of time ; but the imperishable hymns of the Jewish worship rule the hearts of men with more than their pristine power, and still continue to inspire and elevate the conduct and devotions of successive generations of mankind. Fathers of the early Church, like Origen, Athanasius and Jerome, Basil, Ambrose and Augus- tine apostles of British Christianity, such as Columba, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, Dunstan, and Bede mediaeval saints, like Bernard, Francis of Assisi, or Thomas of Villanova statesmen, like Ximenes, Burghley, and Gladstone have testified to the universal truth and beauty of the Psalms. With a psalm upon their lips died Wyclif, Hus, and Jerome of Prague, Luther and Melancthon. Philosophers, such as Bacon and Locke and Hamilton ; men of science, like Humboldt and Eomanes ; among missionaries, Xavier, Martyn, Duff, Livingstone, Mackay and Hannington; explorers, like Columbus ; scholars, like Casaubon and Sal- masius ; earthly potentates, like Charlemagne, Vladi- mir Monomachus, Hildebrand, Louis IX., Henry V., Catherine de Medicis, Charles V., Henry of Navarre, and Mary, Queen of Scots have found in the Psalms their inspiration in life, their strength in peril, or their support in death. To collect together some of the countless instances in which the Psalms have thus guided, controlled and sustained the lives of men and women in all ages of human history, and at all crises of their fate, is the purpose of this book. CHAPTER II EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY The Psalms in services, ceremonies, and the catacombs ; use in persecution Crispin and Crispinian, Theodore the Martyr, the Saracen convert, the Emperor Maurice; in public worship ; in ordinary life Origen, the family of Gregory Nazianzen, Monica ; on deathbeds Basil the Great, Ambrose, Paulinus of Nola, .Cyril of Alexandria; influence of the Psalms in Monasticism the Egyptian Anchorites, Basil and monastic communities of the East, Athanasius and the West, Jerome and Paula, Martin of Tours ; the Psalms in action struggle between Church and State Athanasius and Constantius, Basil and Valens, Ambrose and Theodosius ; the Psalms in human thought Confessions of Augustine. THOUGH the influence of the Psalms has been con- fined to no age, no nation, no class, and no creed, there have been special periods when they have spoken with peculiar force. This has been particu- larly the case in times of persecution, when circum- stances gave to the words an immediate personal application. Such a period was the infancy of Christianity. Secretly, under cover of night, or at early dawn, children cast out by their parents, slaves oppressed by their masters, citizens suspected by their neighbours, subjects proscribed by their rulers, gathered for prayer and praise in the catacombs of great cities, in workshops, or in the upper rooms of retired houses on the outskirts of towns. Of their 12 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY religious services the Psalms formed a conspicuous part, and special Psalms were soon appropriated to particular occasions, such as the 73rd for the morn- ing and the 141st for the evening worship. These little companies of wool-workers, cobblers, fullers, craftsmen, and slaves "the most vulgar and illiter- ate of mankind " with whom assembled a handful of persons of higher rank, centurions, government officials, and ladies of noble birth, met together in danger of their lives. The ceremony which admitted them into this proscribed and perilous company found its symbol in a psalm. The hart (Ps. xlii., verse 1) was the emblem of those thirsting souls who, in the cooling streams of the baptismal font, drank freely of the fountain of eternal life. Once admitted, they were as " sheep appointed to be slain " ; but the Lord was their Shepherd, and their trust in Him, conquer- ing their fears, still speaks in the rude pictures on the walls of subterranean Home. The language of the Psalms was ever on the lips of those who, in the early history of Christianity, suffered violent deaths for or in the faith. A Psalm (xxiii.) was fitly chosen by Augustine as the hymn of martyrs. It was in the words of Ps. cxv., verses 4 and 5, "Their idols are silver and gold," etc., that Christians defied the imperial order to sacrifice to Caesar, and it was with a psalm that they met the torturer or the executioner. At Soissons, for instance, in the Diocletian persecution of 288, two brothers, Crispin and Crispinian, afterwards the patrons of shoemakers, suffered torture and death. For love of Christianity, they had renounced the honours of their birth, and made shoes for the poor. In their prolonged torments they were sustained by the words THE AGE OF PERSECUTION 13 of Ps. Ixxix., verses 9-10, "Help us, O God of our salvation, for the glory of Thy Name. . . . Wherefore do the heathen say, Where is now their God ? " Their bodies, thrown into the river, were carried to the sea. The waves, so runs the legend, for love of the Blessed Feet which once had walked upon them, wafted the mangled bodies of His martyrs to the shores of Romney Marsh, where the inhabitants received them in joy, and built in their honour the church of Lydd. ^Theodore the Martyr, the young soldier who rashly burned to the ground the temple of the Mother of the Gods at Amasea in 306, found strength to endure the torture by chanting Ps. xxxiv., verse 1, "I will alway give thanks unto the Lord ; His praise shall ever be in my mouth." Another illustration is the story told by Gregory of Decapolis. A noble Saracen, converted by a vision of the Lamb of God, sought a Christian teacher, learnt the Psalter by heart, and returned to his native land to preach the faith of Christ. But his countrymen refused his message, and stoned him to death. In his agony he repeated Ps. xiii., verse 3, " Lighten my eyes, that I sleep not in death." It was, again, a psalm that encouraged the Emperor Maurice to bow to the will of God. During the twenty years in which he had ruled the Roman Empire, he had shown many of the virtues which, in 582, marked him out to succeed Tiberius II. But the army turned against him, and in 602 he fled, with his wife and children, to Chalcedon, to escape the fury of the deformed and disfigured Phocas. He did not long remain in safety. By order of Phocas, he and his five sons were seized and executed. He was the last to die. As, one by one, the boys were murdered before his eyes, the 14 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY father cried aloud, with each stroke of the sword, "Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and true is Thy judgement " (Ps. cxix., verse 137). Firm in his ad- herence to truth, he rejected the kindly fraud of the nurse, who gave her own child to save one of the royal princes, and thus supplied to Corneille the plot of Heraclius. As Christianity spread and became a power, the Psalms occupy a larger, and still larger, space. Their use in public worship varied in different Churches. Custom prescribed the portions that should be read, or sung, or expounded ; but they formed the substance of most of the daily services. " When other passages of Scripture," writes Ambrose, "are used in church, the words are drowned in the noise of talking. But when the Psalter is read, all are dumb." Still more striking was their use in daily life, as an expression of the feeling that God was everywhere present. Clement of Alexandria, in hisStromata (vii., sect. 7), says, "We praise God as we till our lands ; we sing to Him hymns as we are sailing." Sidonius Apollinaris describes how the boatmen, toiling with bent backs to urge their laden barges against the stream, sang psalms till the river -banks echoed their hallelujahs. "Any one possessed of his five wits," writes Ambrose, "should blush with shame if he did not begin the day with a psalm, since even the tiniest birds open and close the day with sweet songs of holy devotion." "Of other Scriptures," says Theodore of Mopsuestia, "most men know nothing. But the Psalms are repeated in private houses, in streets, and market-places, by those who have learned them by heart, and feel the soothing power of their divine melodies." When Paula and Eustochium wrote from Bethlehem their famous letter IN CHRISTIAN HOMES 15 to Marcella, they exhort her to flee from the tumults and distractions of Rome to the solitude of Christ's village. Here, they say, is the quiet of country life, unbroken save by the chanting of the Psalms. The ploughman, leaning on his plough -handle, sings in them his praises to God ; the sweating reaper lightens his labours with the chanting of the Psalms ; the vine-dresser, as he prunes his vines, raises one of the songs of David. "The Psalms are our poetry, our love-songs, our pastorals, our implements of husbandry."* If any records were preserved, it would probably be found that the Psalms profoundly influenced Chris- tian homes in the early ages of the Church. But glimpses of the inner life of families are as rare as they would be precious. In the boyhood of Origen, one significant fact is recorded which proves that the Psalms had their part in the education of children. Jerome says that the boy learnt Hebrew so well that he vied with his mother, who was possibly of Jewish origin, in the singing of psalms. Better known, per- haps, than that of any other Christian household, is the domestic life of Gregory Nazianzen, the poet of Eastern Christendom, and one of the greatest of its orators and theologians. Gregory's mother, Nonna, a woman of ardent piety, born of a Christian family, and carefully trained in the faith, was " a housewife after Solomon's own heart" so her son describes her "submissive to her husband, yet not ashamed to be his guide and teacher." It was Nonna's constant prayer that her husband, Gregory, should become a * Haec sunt in hac provincia carmina, ha, ut vulgo dicitur, amatoriae cantationes, hie pastorum sibilus, haec arma cultures. "Letter to Marcella," Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society [12], 16 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY convert, for, though a man of high character and exem- plary life, he was a pagan. A dream inspired by a psalm, helped her to gain her heart's desire. Pagan though he was, her husband seems to have known the Psalms, for he dreamed that he was singing the words, " I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the House of the Lord" (Ps. cxxii.). The impression was too deep to pass away when he awoke. After a short preparation, he was baptised, and eventually became, and for forty-five years remained, Bishop of Nazianzus (329-74). Gorgonia, the daughter of Gregory and Nonna, though not baptised till a short time before her death, had lived a Christian life. She had long felt, says her brother, a desire to "depart and be with Jesus." So great was the longing, that it produced a presentiment of the approach of her death, and an anticipation of the time when it would take place. The looked-for day found her aged parents, her husband, and her daughter, gathered round her bedside. When she had taken her leave of each in turn, the bystanders thought she was already dead. But once more her lips were seen to move, and the watchers, stooping over the bed, heard the words, familiar by their use as an evening psalm, and fitted to the close of her earthly day, " I will lay me down in peace, and take my rest" (Ps. iv. 9). So died Gorgonia. The verse, it may be added, was loved by Luther. Writing from Coburg to Ludwig Seuffel, he asked him to compose for him a requiem. From his youth, he said, he had always loved the concluding verses of the 4th Psalm. But, as he learned to under- stand its full meaning, and as he hourly prepared for death, the last verse became more and more dear to him, and he would gladly sing, and hear sung, THE DEATH OF MONICA 17 those soothing words, "Ich lieg und schlafe ganz mit Frieden." Yet another instance is afforded by the death of Monica, the mother of St Augustine, whose patient perseverance in prayer, and reward in the life of her son, have comforted thousands of mothers in all ages of the world's history. On Easter Sunday, 387, Augus- tine had been baptised by Ambrose at Milan. In the summer he set out to return to Africa with Monica. At Ostia they paused to recruit from the fatigues of their long journey, and prepare for the coming voyage. Mother and son were leaning on the ledge of a window, which looked upon the garden where they lodged. Alone together, away from the crowd, God in his secret ways having so ordered it, they talked of the eternal life of the saints, and of what sort it should be, "panting with the lips of our souls for those heavenly streams of Thy fountain, the fountain of life which is with Thee." It is the moment chosen by Ary Scheffer for his famous picture : ''The dear consenting hands are knit, And either face, as there they sit, Is lifted as to something seen Beyond the blue serene." To the mother it seemed that the purpose of her life was achieved, now that she had seen her one longing gratified and her son baptised a Christian. Five or six days later, while they were still waiting to embark, Monica was struck down by fever, and died in the fifty-sixth year of her age. It was in the Psalms that Augustine found comfort in his sorrow. When the first gush of weeping was over, his friend, Euodius took up the Psalter, and began to sing, the whole house- B 18 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY hold joining with him, Psalm ci. " My song shall be of mercy and judgement : unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing,' 5 etc. Forty-three years later, in his own city of Hippo, closely besieged by the Vandals, Augustine himself died. "It was," says his biographer, Possidius, "a plain and barely furnished room in which he lay. The seven Penitential Psalms were, by his orders, written out, and placed where he could see them from his bed. These he looked at and read in his days of sickness, weeping often and sore." So, with his eyes fixed on the Psalms, Augustine passed to his rest, August 28th, 430. It was with the words of a Psalm upon his lips, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6), that Basil the Great breathed his last at Cesarea, January 1st, 379, his deathbed surrounded by citizens who were ready to shorten their own lives, if so they might lengthen the days of their Bishop. In 397, Ambrose lay dying at Milan. He had, as is well known, introduced into the Western Church the antiphonal method of chanting the Psalms which was practised in the East. Almost his last labour was a Commentary on Ps. xliv. : " It is painful to wait so long for the day when mortality shall be swallowed up of Life ; but, happily the torch of the Word of God does not quit mine eyes." He died as he reached verse 23 : " Up, Lord, why sleepest thou : awake and be not absent from us for ever." Paulinus, Bishop of Nola (353-431), as the hour for Vespers approached, and the lamps were being lighted in the church which he had built, stretched forth his hands and passed away, repeating the words, " I have ordained a lantern for mine Anointed " (Ps. cxxxii. 18). With the same words on his lips, in June 444, died Cyril, Archbishop ORIGEN 19 of Alexandria, whose life-long struggle for the purity of the Christian faith has been overshadowed by his alleged complicity in the hideous crime of the murder of Hypatia. But if we pass from domestic or deathbed scenes to episodes of a more public character, the recorded instances of the influence of the Psalms are multi- plied. No figure in the early history of the Church is more attractive than that of Origen (185-253). The son of a martyr, the master of disciples who braved martyrdom, himself a confessor who endured imprison- ment and the torture of the chain, the collar and the rack, he dominated the century as much by his char- acter as by his genius. In his childhood, as is told above, he vied with his mother in singing the Psalms, and his commentary upon them, his notes, and his homilies bore witness to their abiding influence on his mind. During the persecution of Severus, his father, Leonides, was beheaded, encouraged by Origen, then a, lad of seventeen, to die without thought of those he left behind. The lad himself was only prevented from sharing his father's fate by being imprisoned in his own aome. In after years, the persecutions which he en- lured from the State as a Christian scarcely exceeded ^hose which, as a heretic, he suffered from the Church. "et friends were as enthusiastic as enemies were )itter. Even those who compared him to Satan paid lomage to his gifts by admitting that, if he had fallen rom Heaven, his fall was like the lightning flash. Driven from Alexandria, he travelled from place to >lace, fascinating some by the splendour of his teach- ng, terrifying others by the boldness of his specula- ions. So journeying, as the story is told, he came to Ferusalem. Somewhere in his wanderings, even his 20 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY intrepid spirit had recoiled from dread of torture. He had consented to sacrifice to Caesar ; incense had been thrust into his hand, which was forced over the altar. Remorse overwhelmed him, when, at Jerusalem, he was entreated to preach. Taking the Psalter in his hand, he prayed, and, opening the book, read the words of Ps. 1., verse 16, "But unto the ungodly said God : Why dost thou preach My laws, and takest My covenant in thy mouth ? " He shut the book, sat down speechless, and burst into tears. " The prophet David himself shut the door of my lips," was his bitter lament, as he applied to his apostasy the verse (Ps. Ixxx. 13), "The wild boar out of the wood doth root it up; and the wild beasts of the field devour it." As the fourth century dawns, the long struggle between Paganism and Christianity entered its final stage. On the death-agony of the ancient faith, still enshrined among us by lingering superstitions and a thousand graceful fictions in art and literature, history is comparatively silent. But its downfall was marked by a period of moral relaxation and social corruption, which fostered the belief that it was the highest duty of a Christian to shun a polluted world. The longing to flee away and be at rest from the fury of persecu- tion, and from the contamination of the heathen, encouraged the growing feeling. Solitude tempted some men as a refuge from spiritual danger ; to others it appealed as a bolder challenge to the powers of evil ; to yet another class it seemed to offer at once a shelter from the world, and the supreme test of self- denial. Of the ascetic principle, the most famous example was Antony (251-356), born in the lifetime of Origen, known throughout civilisation by the ANTONY 21 pictures of Caracci, Guido, and Salvator, and by the quaint legends that have gathered round his name. The influence which he and his followers exercised upon Christendom, and the impulse which they gave to the monastic life, are almost incalculable. A psalm was at once the weapon, the paean, and the rule, of two of the earliest leaders in the new movement. Kich, young, and an orphan, Antony gave all his possessions to the poor, and devoted himself to the ascetic life. Unlike the anchorites who had preceded him, he retired to a distance from his fellow-men. To combine in himself the special virtues, to which other ascetics had respectively attained, was his constant effort. To be as prayerful as one, as courteous as another, as patient of vigil and fast as a third this was the rivalry on which his ambitions were centred. There were times, for he was still young, when his enthusiasm failed, his courage flagged, and the temp- tations of the world and the flesh swept over him with all their storms. Yet still his faith triumphed over every assault. The Psalms were the weapons with which he met the evil tendencies that, to his overwrought vision, presented themselves in material and often grotesque forms. It was, for example, with the words, "Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses : but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God" (Ps. xx., verse 7), that he put Satan to flight. It was with a psalm that he sang his paean of victory. So sorely beset was he within the ruined tower where he lived, so vehement were the sounds of the strife, that the multitude, which had gathered to see and hear him, believed that the saint was attacked by the people of the country. Suddenly 22 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY the clamour ceased. High and clear rose the voice of Antony alone, as he chanted Ps. Ixviii. in triumph at his victory over his spiritual foes. Is Browning's use of the same words an echo of St Antony? As Giuseppe Caponsacchi watches by the side of Pompilia, hears her moaning in her restless fevered dreams, and sees her wave away some evil spirit that threatens her, he cries : "Oh, if the God, that only can, would help ! Am I his priest with power to cast out fiends ? ' Let God arise and all his enemies Be scattered ! ' By morn, there was peace, no sigh Out of the deep sleep." * Among Antony's most distinguished disciples was Pambo. Eminent for his austerities, he had taken for his special rule of life the words of Ps. xxxix., verse 1, " I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue," and, in his constant effort to keep the door of his lips, he is said to have excelled even Antony himself. Half in banter, half in earnest, Browning describes Pambo, t "arms crossed, brow bent, thought-immersed," from youth to age pondering over the verse, and finding in the seeming simplicity of the command enough to absorb every faculty of mind and body, so long as life endured. The influence of Antony and other hermits spread from Africa to Asia. Monastic communities multi- plied rapidly, and in their religious services the Psalms held the chief place. Of such communities in Eastern Christendom, Basil (329-79) was the chief organiser. The secluded place, in which he himself fixed his own temporary retreat, lay on the banks of the river Iris, * The Ring and the Book, Giuseppe Caponsacchi, 1300-1304. t Jocoseria. Pambo, WESTERN MONASTICISM 23 near Neo-Cesarea in Pontus a spot as beautiful in his eyes as " Calypso's Island." He describes the devotional exercises which his communities of monks practised. While it was yet night, the brethren rose, as in the days of persecution Christians had risen for concealment, entered the house of prayer, and, after confession to God, turned to the singing of psalms. Now, divided two by two, they answered each other ; now, one led the chant, the rest following. Thus passed the night till the day began to dawn. As morning broke, they all in common, with one mouth and from one heart, lifted to the Lord the Psalm of Confession (Ps. cxviii.). As the day began, so it ended. Nor was the fame of the Egyptian anchorites con- fined to the East. It crossed the sea to Europe. In Koman society, as the fourth century advanced, two opposite tendencies were equally marked. A startling contrast was presented between the unbridled luxury of the Imperial City and its inclination to the solitude and severity of monastic life. From 340 to 343 Athanasius, an exile and a fugitive, had found a refuge at Rome. The spell of his master-mind, his enthusiasm for the monks of the desert, the life of Antony, and the presence of two Egyptian anchorites, seized the imagination of Koman patricians. Slumber- ing fire leaped into flame, as Athanasius revealed the grandeur of human self-abnegation, and he thus became, through Antony, the spiritual ancestor of Western monasticism. A few years later, Marcella, a young and wealthy Roman widow, who had, as a child, heard from the lips of Athanasius descriptions of the Thebaid and of Antony, bade adieu to the world, and made of her 24 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY palace on the Aventine Mount her cell, and of its garden her desert. Bound her gathered a little knot of women, like-minded with herself, who devoted their lives to the study of the Scriptures, psalmody, prayer and good works. That they might sing the Psalms in the native tongue, they learned Hebrew ; that they might study the Gospels, they learned Greek. Among the most illustrious of these women was the high-born Paula, whose ancestors were the Scipios and the Gracchi, and in whose veins ran the blood of the half-fabulous rulers of Sparta and Mycene. She and her daughters, Blesilla, Paulina, and Eustochium, and her grand-daughter Paula, breathe and speak and move in the glowing pages of Jerome. To Paula's daughter, Eustochium, is addressed the first code of Christian virginity; to her step-daughter, Loeta, is penned the first treatise on the Christian education of women. Of the family of Paula, Jerome was at once the spiritual guide and historian. Born in 346, at Stridon in Dalmatia, on the southern slopes of the Illyrian Alps, Jerome had studied at Rome. After his baptism he had settled at Aquileia, the Venice of the fourth century, the great seaport of the Adriatic, a city situated, as the Bordeaux Itinerary shows, on the highway by which pilgrims travelled from the West to the Holy Land. There his enthusiasm for study and his inclination towards asceticism grew stronger and stronger. His two favourite texts were, "But his delight is in the law of the Lord ; and in His law will he exercise himself day and night " (Ps. i., verse 2); and, " O that I had wings like a dove ! for then would I flee away, and be at rest " (Ps. lv., verse 6). Where, except in solitude, could he gratify his longing or JEROME 25 follow the law of the Lord night and day ? At last, as the Egyptian anchorites had fled from the lusts and anarchy of the world to find rest in the silence and discipline of the desert, so Jerome fled to the depths of the desert of Chalcis. In 382 he came to Rome, emaciated and weakened by the austerities of his life, but with his fiery impetuous spirit yet untamed. At Rome, he revised from the Septuagint the Latin version of the Psalms. There, too, he became the teacher of the devout ladies who assembled on the Aventine Mount at the house of Marcella. In 385 he left Rome, where he had made many friends and not a few enemies. Convinced, as he says, that he had tried in vain to "sing the Lord's song in a strange land" (Ps. cxxxvii., verse 4), he embarked for Palestine. After him sailed Paula, heartbroken at the death of Blesilla, and with Paula went her surviving unmarried daughter, Eustochium. They met Jerome at Antioch, wandered through Palestine, visited the Solitaries in the Nitrian desert, and finally settled at Bethlehem. There were built a monastery, of which Jerome became the head; a convent, presided over by Paula; a church, and a hospice for pilgrims. At Bethlehem in his grotto his paradise, as he calls it close to the traditional site of the Nativity, Jerome laboured with persistent stren- uous energy till his death in 420. At Bethlehem, in this realised " City of the Saints," Paula and Eustochium lived and died. Their efforts to induce Marcella to leave Rome and join them in the Holy Land, had failed. In vain Jerome had supported their appeal with a letter, which closes with the words of Psalm Ixxiii., verse 24, "For our- selves, who are here," he says, " we think it good to 26 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY trust to God for all, to rest every hope on Him ; that when we exchange the poverty of this world for ' the riches of Heaven/ we may be able to cry with David, ' Whom have I in Heaven but Thee ? and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee/ " But though Marcella still remained on the Aventine Mount, there gathered at Bethlehem a community of women, who sang the Psalter through in their daily services, and were pledged, among other rules, to learn it by heart. Gradually the strength of Paula failed. In 403 she lay on her deathbed. Her daughter, Eustochium, watched over her with the tenderest care, praying, while Paula slept, that she might depart from life before her mother. As her last moments approached, the watchers heard Paula murmur the words of those Psalms which were seldom far from her lips : " Oh how amiable are thy dwell- ings, Thou Lord of Hosts!" (Ps. Ixxxiv. 1); "Lord I have loved the habitation of Thy house and the place where Thine honour dwelleth" (Ps. xxvi. 8); " I had rather be a doorkeeper in the House of my God, than to dwell in the tents of ungodliness" (Ps. Ixxxiv., verse 11). When the last of the verses was ended, she began again with the first. To the end, with closed eyes, and faintly moving lips, she continued to repeat them, and so passed away on the 26th of January 404. Bound the body gathered Christian Palestine. Monks and nuns from monas- teries or convents, hermits from their solitary cells, bishops from the surrounding dioceses, the poor, the widowed, and the orphans, flocked to pay to the dead their last tribute of affection. Night and day, continu- ously for three days, the Psalms were chanted round the bier in Greek and Hebrew, Latin and Syriac, MARTIN OF TOURS 27 On the fourth day, Paula was buried in a rock-hewn grave, close to the birthplace of Our Lord and the grotto where Jerome laboured. Sixteen years later (420), died Jerome himself. In the interval Eustochium had died, but her place was taken by her niece, Paula, the grand-daughter of the elder Paula. Legend has fastened on the strange spiritual romance, which linked with Jerome three generations of a noble Roman family as the guardians of his life. In the fancy of mediaeval art, the place of the three women is taken by the lion, whose wounded paw was cured by Jerome in the deserts of Chalcis, and who in gratitude became the healer's protector and faithful servant. Years before the death of Jerome, Martin of Tours (316-96), whose influence on French history has been accepted by the most secular historians, whose fame not only spread to the most distant lands, but is commemorated in scores of quaint legends in provincial France, had founded a monastery in Gaul. The young soldier, who, at Amiens had divided his cloak with a naked shivering beggar, saw in a dream, Christ Himself clad in the halved garment. Accept- ing the dream as a call to religion, he was baptised, left the army, and enlisted under St Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, as a soldier of the Cross of Christ. During his friend's exile, he himself settled near Milan; but on Hilary's return to Gaul, Martin followed. In order to be near the bishop, and also in order to preach on the great Roman road from Poitiers to Saintes, he built the wooden hut at Liguge, on the river Clain, five miles from Hilary's see, which is regarded as the earliest of French monastic institutions. By a strange coincidence, 28 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY Rabelais, twelve centuries later, found refuge close to the Abbey Church of Liguge, the cradle of that system which, in its decadence, he keenly satirised. From Liguge the fame of Martin spread to Tours, whose inhabitants were eager to have him for their bishop. Enticed from his monastery by a trick, Martin visited the city. Crowds had collected for the election. The vast majority favoured Martin ; a few led by a bishop, named Defensor, objected to the meanness of his personal appearance, his unkempt hair, his squalid garments. It was by a verse from the Psalms that the election was decided. A by- stander, opening the Psalter at hazard, read the verse, "Out of the mouth of very babes and suck- lings hast Thou ordained strength, because of Thine enemies ; That Thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger" (Ps. viii., verse 2). In the version then in use, the words are, "Ut destruas inimicum et defensorem." The words were hailed as an omen. Defensor and his supporters were confounded, and Martin was consecrated Bishop of Tours (372). Two miles from the city he founded his majus monas- terium, now Marmoutier, which eclipsed the fame of Liguge, and became the most celebrated of French monasteries. Thus in Africa, Asia, and Europe a great move- ment had begun which, every year, assumed larger proportions. In the fourth century, multitudes of men and women, in solitary cells or monastic communities, sought a retreat from a world of conflict, change and persecution. That this should have been the case is not surprising. The time was one when the Te Deum of victory alternated with the Miserere of defeat, when the secular power first accepted religion as its ally, ATHANASIUS 29 then endeavoured to employ it as a servant, and finally acknowledged it as a master. Among the great ecclesiastics of the century no names stand higher than those of Athanasius, the impersonation of purity of faith; or of Basil, the upholder of order and discipline in the Church ; or of Ambrose, the champion of ecclesiastical authority. With striking scenes in the lives of each, the Psalms are inseparably connected. In October 346, Athanasius returned to Alex- andria from his second exile. The people streamed forth to meet him "like another Nile." Every point of vantage was crowded with eager spectators. The air, fragrant with the smoke of incense, and bright with the blaze of bonfires, rang with cheers and the clapping of hands. Nearly nine years of peace followed in the troubled life of Athanasius. But the interlude was only the lull which preceded the storm. The Emperor Constantius was in the hands of his Arian courtiers ; a great majority of the Council of Milan (355) had condemned Athanasius ; and it became evi- dent that some violence would be attempted against the archbishop in his own city of Alexandria. The Psalms had been his constant study. His Exposition of the Psalms, his Titles of the Psalms, as well as his frequent allusions to them in his writings, prove how deep was their hold upon his mind. His favourite Psalm was the 72nd. "Against all assaults upon thy body," he says, "thine estate, thy soul, thy repu- tation, against all temptations, tribulations, plots and slanderous reports, say this Psalm." So now, in the hour of his own and his people's danger, he turned to a psalm for help. At midnight, on Thursday, February 8th, 356, Athanasius was holding a vigil in the Church of 30 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY St Theonas. The building was thronged with wor- shippers preparing for the service of the morrow. Suddenly the church was beset by soldiers, and the clash of arms resounded in the precincts. " I thought it not right," says Athanasius, "at a time of such dis- order, to leave my people. Eather I preferred to be the first to meet the danger." At the extreme east end of the church was the archbishop's throne. Sit- ting down upon it, Athanasius ordered the deacon to read Psalm cxxxvi., and all the people to respond with " For His mercy endurethfor ever" and then to with- draw to their homes. The act of faith was hardly finished, when the doors were forced, and the soldiers rushed in, discharging their arrows, brandishing their swords and spears in the dim light of the building, as they crowded up the nave. "The clergy and the people," continues Athanasius, " prayed me to escape. I refused to move till all were in safety. So I stood up, called for prayer, and bade the people leave. Many had gone ; others were trying to follow, when some of the monks and of the clergy came to my throne and carried me away. So then I passed through the crowd of soldiers unseen, and escaped, giving thanks to God that I had not betrayed my people, but had secured their safety before I thought of my own." But Athanasius only describes that part of the scene which had passed before his eyes. In the buildings that surrounded the church, there were fighting and slaughter. The dawn of day revealed lifeless bodies, and blood-stained steps and passages ; and Alexandria mourned not only the disappearance of the beloved archbishop, but the murder of many of her citizens. Imperial tyranny failed to subdue the spirit of Athanasius, who confronted the world in order to BASIL 31 assert the principle of the eternal Sonship of his Redeemer. Equally powerless was it against Basil, whose character inspired the genius of Hooker, and extorted the admiration of Gibbon. How great a share the singing of psalms held in the life of his monastic communities, has been already shown ; and it was in part the awe that the sound of chanting in- spired which saved him from the violence of Valens. On the feast of the Epiphany, 372, the emperor, sur- rounded by his guards, entered the chief church of Cesarea. At the eastern end of the nave, behind the altar, stood Basil, supported by his clergy. Tall, erect, his clear-cut features sharpened by his austeri- ties, his bright eyes gleaming under his arched eye- brows, he faced the intruders with silent dignity. The emperor's presence was ignored. The service pro- ceeded with the order and reverence which Basil had introduced. As the crowd of worshippers, who filled the building " with a sea of people," continued to chant the Psalms with an imposing volume of sound, the weak, excitable Valens almost fainted before the impression which the scene and sound created. The mind of the Arian despot was overawed, his eyes were dimmed, his nerves shaken, by the manifestation of a Divine Kingdom which was entirely regardless of his power. He abandoned the thought of violence, returned in peace, and, for a time, Basil reasserted over him the influence of his character. Before the intrepidity of an Athanasius and a Basil, Constantius and Valens had recoiled. But though emperors had failed to subdue the spirit which great ecclesiastics represented, they had not acknow- ledged the supremacy of religion in the domain of conscience. That acknowledgment was made by 32 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY Theodosius in the Cathedral of Milan, and in the words of a psalm his confession was clothed. In 390, a well-known and popular charioteer had been imprisoned by the Gothic governor of Thessa- lonica. The populace, careless whether the sentence was just or unjust, clamoured for the release of their favourite. Their demand was refused, and a tumult arose, in which the governor and several of the magis- trates were killed. Theodosius was determined that the punishment of the Thessalonians should be signal. The secret was well kept. The officials of the city summoned the inhabitants to the circus, as though they were to witness an ordinary spectacle ; but, as soon as they were assembled in the arena, armed soldiers surrounded the place, and put to the sword every living being, man, woman, or child, who fell into their hands. In the massacre, seven thousand persons are said to have perished. Horrified at the news, Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, wrote to the Emperor Theodosius, urging him to throw himself as a penitent on the mercy of God. " Sin," he pleaded, " is effaced neither by tears nor by penitence : neither angel nor archangel can remove its stain ; God, and God only, can take away sin. You have imitated David in your crime ; imitate him also in your repent- ance." For eight months Theodosius refused, and for eight months he was interdicted from the consolations of religion. At last he yielded. Conscience conquered pride, and he submitted to receive his sentence and his pardon from the Church. Prostrate on the floor of the Cathedral of Milan, with tears and lamentations, the emperor prayed in the words of the psalm (Ps. cxix., verse 25), u My soul cleaveth to the dust ; O quicken Thou me, according to Thy word." The spiritual AMBROSE 33 victory was complete, and its effect on the popular mind was deep and lasting. The new relations be- tween the Church and the Empire were summed up by Ambrose in the trenchant phrase, " The Church is not in the Empire, but the Emperor is in the Church." The words were used of the religious sphere ; but they might have been the text, on which the political and spiritual despots of the Middle Ages were the bold commentators, and to which the actions of a Gregory VII. or an Innocent III. form only the exaggerated conclusions. In the sphere of human action, the power of the Psalms was great ; but in the domain of thought, it would be probably found, if evidence could be traced, fchat their sway was equally universal. Take, for example, such a religious autobiography as the Confes- sions of St Aitgustine, and through the first nine books, which end with the death of Monica, follow the influence Df the Psalms. From the beginning of the Confessions, Dpening, as they do, with the quotations, "Great is :he Lord, and marvellous ; worthy to be praised." u Great is our Lord, and great is His power; yea, md His wisdom is infinite " (Ps. cxlv., verse 3, and 3xlvii., verse 5), down to the "Prayer for his dead nother," with which the ninth book closes, there s scarcely a page without a reference to the same source. "With my mother's milk," so says Augustine of limself, "I sucked in the name of Jesus Christ." Through all the wild excesses of his youth, the imbitions and intellectual wanderings of after life, ;he religious impressions of infancy remain distinct. His soul "longed after God"; it was "athirst" for Him. He never lost that passionate desire to know c 34 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY the living God, which bursts from his lips in the opening passage of the Confessions : " Thou madest man for Thyself, and the heart knows no repose till it rests in Thee." Ever craving for something ideal and enduring, haunted by the solitude of his own mind, he obeyed the wild impulses of youth, pursued delights that appealed to his artistic or sensuous nature, sought distractions in objects pleasing to the eye, in games, theatres, or music, or in the indulgence of animal passion. Yet, tortured by reproaches of conscience, he reaped no harvest of repose ; he only gleaned self- loathing. Ambitious of worldly fame, he pursued with eagerness his studies of literature, of rhetoric, of the sciences. Still restless, he turned to higher and better things. The Hortensius of Cicero inflamed him with a passion for wisdom, "for Wisdom alone, as she might reveal herself." Yet, even under the mastery of this longing, he " turned to flee back from the things of earth to God." In his eager quest for wisdom and truth, he sought them among the Manichees, who claimed the possession of rational knowledge, and derided the Christians for their blind belief. For nine years Augustine wandered in the mazes of their specula- tions, his intellect subdued by their subtleties, his imagination charmed by their symbolical interpreta- tions of nature. Here, too, he found no abiding happiness; his faith in their system was gradually undermined. When, in 384 A.D., he came to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric, he came embittered by a sense of deception, inclined to general scepticism, yet still asking of his soul the reason of its sadness and disquietude. AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS 35 At Milan, Augustine fell under the influence of Ambrose. He loved the man, was charmed by his eloquence, and through his preaching learned to study the Old Testament. He was standing at the gate of the sanctuary ; but a hard struggle was to be faced before he crossed the threshold. His mother Monica was now at his side. She had crossed the sea from Carthage to be with her beloved son, and her prayer- ful confidence in his ultimate triumph over doubt could not fail to influence his mind. Slowly the con- viction came to him that the peace of God was not to be won by the mind alone. The lofty idealism of Plato turned his thoughts upward and inward ; but it brought him no moral strength to raise himself from the earth. Then he gave himself to the study of the Bible, and especially to the study of St Paul's Epistles. Here he learned the source of that power which enables men to embody high ideals in daily practice. In the pages of the Platonic writers he finds, as he says, no trace of the "humble and contrite heart," no "sacrifice of the broken spirit" (Ps. li. 17). No one sings there, "Truly my soul waiteth upon God ; from Him cometh my salvation : He only is my rock and my salvation ; He is my strong tower ; I shall not be greatly moved " (Ps. Ixii., verses 1, 2). "It is one thing," he continues, "to see afar off, from some tree-clad height, the fatherland of peace, yet to find no path thither, and, struggling vainly towards it, to wander this way and that among wilds beset by the ambushments of lurking runagates, with their prince, the lion and the dragon (Ps. xci., verse 13). It is another thing to tread securely on a highroad that leads directly thither, built by the hand of the Heavenly Emperor, whereon no deserters from the 36 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY celestial host lie in wait to rob the traveller, for they shun it as a torment." His struggle grew in intensity till it became an agony. The flesh lusted against the spirit ; the law in his members warred against the law of his mind, and held him captive. But the supreme crisis was not far distant. It came in September 386, in the thirty-third year of his age. He had thrown himself down in a retired corner of his garden at Milan, and there, under the shade of a fig-tree, poured out a flood of tears. " How long, O Lord, how long ? " he cried. "How long wilt Thou be angry? Oh re- member not our old sins ! " (Ps. Ixxix., verses 5, 8). As he prayed, he seemed to hear the voice of some boy or girl, which he knew not, repeating in a kind of chant, the words, Tolle, lege ! Tolle, lege ! " Take and read! take and read!" "I checked," he says, " the torrent of my tears, and raised myself to my feet, for I received the words as nothing less than a Divine command to open the Bible, and read the first passage on which my eyes lighted." Was not Antony, of whose life he had recently heard, converted by a similar oracle of God ? Running to the spot where he had left his Bible, he snatched it up, opened its pages, and read the words : " Not in rioting and drunken- ness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." The shadows of doubt were dispersed ; the light of peace irradiated his heart; as he finished the sentence, he had neither desire nor need to read further. The passage, as he read it in the ascetic spirit of the age, told him not only to renounce his wild life, AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS 37 but to forego his marriage, abandon the pursuits and honours of the world, and dedicate himself wholly to the service of Christ. The vintage holidays were at hand. As soon as they began, he resigned his office as a teacher of rhetoric, and withdrew to the hills above Milan to prepare for baptism. There he read and re-read the Psalms, spending half the night in their study, and finding in their words the expression of his own deepest feelings the sad lament of penitence rising into the triumphant song of praise for the infinite mercy of God. "How, O God," he says, "did I cry unto Thee, as I read the Psalms of David, those hymns of faith and songs of devotion, which fill the heart against all swellings of pride. I was still but a novice in Thy true love, a beginner, keeping holiday in a country place with Alypius, like myself a catechumen, and with my mother in garb indeed a woman, but in faith a man, in the tranquillity of age, full of a mother's love and Christian devotion ! How did I cry unto Thee in these Psalms ! How did they kindle my heart towards Thee ! How did I burn to rehearse them all over the world, if so I might abate the pride of man ! " It was especially the 4th Psalm that worked upon his mind : " When I called upon Thee, Thou didst hear me, O God of my righteousness : Thou hast set me at liberty when I was in trouble ; have mercy upon me, and hearken unto my prayer " (verse 1 ). As he read it, he mourned over the Manichees, pitying their blind rejection of the antidote which might have cured their madness ; " Would they could have heard, with- out my knowing that they heard, lest they should have thought it was on their account I spoke, what I cried as I read these words ! In truth I could not so have cried, had I felt that they were watching. Nor, indeed, 38 EARLY AGES OF CHRISTIANITY if I had used the very same words, could they have meant to them what they have meant to me, as they poured from my heart in that soliloquy which fell on Thine ears alone. For I trembled with fear, and I glowed with hope and great joy in Thy mercy, O my Father. Yea, joy and hope and fear shone in my eyes and thrilled in my voice, while Tiiy good Spirit turned to us, and said, ' O ye sons of men, how long will ye blaspheme Mine honour ; and have such plea- sure in vanity, and seek after leasing?'" (Ps. iv., verse 2). On Easter Sunday, April 24th, 387, Augustine was baptised by Ambrose at Milan, and at his baptism the 43rd Psalm was sung. Throughout his subsequent career his lifelong study of the Psalms may be traced. It is proved by his two commentaries on the book ; by his vision of Ps. cxix., rising like a Tree of Life in Paradise ; by the inscription of Ps. xxxii. above his bed, that his eyes might rest upon the words at the moment of waking ; by the closing scene of his life in the bare room within the walls of beleaguered Hippo. As Gregory Nazianzen began his Apologia against the Emperor Julian with a quotation from Ps. xlix.; as Ambrose was moved to write his treatise on the Duties of the Clergy, by the patience, simplicity, and contempt for riches which marked Ps. xxxix. ; so Augustine chose for the motto of his work on " The City of God," the words, " Very excellent things are spoken of Thee, thou City of God" (Ps. Ixxxvii., verse 2). That noble treatise (413-26), written, as it were, in the glare of burning Kome, expresses with glowing eloquence, his sense of the eternal destinies of the City of God. The same intense con- viction of everlasting endurance amid decay, speaks ETERNITY OF THE CITY OF GOD 39 in the inscription " Thy Kingdom is an everlasting Kingdom " (Ps. cxlv., verse 13) which is written in Greek characters, unobliterated by time or enemies, above the portal of the church at Damascus, once a Christian cathedral, but now, for twelve centuries, a Mahomedan mosque. It is again the same conviction, that God's City, in the midst of an ephemeral world, stands firm for ever, which dictates the inscription in the Cathedral of Saint Sophia at Kieff, the oldest church in Russia, built by Yaroslaf in 1037. On the mosaics behind the altar is a colossal figure of the Virgin, bearing the inscription, " God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed " (Ps. xlvi., verse 5) CHAPTEK III THE FORMATION OF NATIONS The invasions of the barbarians ; supremacy oi moral power over brute force ; Totila and Benedict : the Rule of Benedict ; monastic missionaries . translation of the Psalms into Sclavonic ; the Psalms in the lives of Columban, Gall, Patrick, Columba, Cuthbert; Irish and British Christianity Battle of Mold, Kentigern, Bangor ; Roman Christianity The island of Death and Silence ; Gregory the Great; coming of Augustine intro- duction of Benedictine Rule ; its foundation on the Psalms ; its establishment in England Benedict Biscop, Wilfrid, Neot, Dunstan ; universality of the Rule. MEN needed all their faith in the eternity of "the City of God " during the successive invasions which, in the fifth and sixth centuries, swept over Europe. The siege and capture of Rome (410) by Alaric and his Arian Visigoths, thrilled the civilised world with consternation. The news, as has been noted, stirred Augustine to write his De Civitate Dei, with a psalm for his motto. Jerome, in his cave at Bethlehem, wrestling with the difficulties of the Prophet Ezekiel, found in a psalm the best expression for a horror which, as he said, made him forget his own name : " O God, the heathen are come into Thy inheritance ; Thy holy temple have they defiled, and made Jerusalem an heap of stones" (Ps. Ixxix.). In rude contrast to the solemnity of this universal lamentation was the 40 ALARIC AND ATTILA 41 sensation of relief which, according to the popular story, the event produced upon the Emperor Honorius. "Rome has perished !" cried the panic-stricken mes- senger, as he hurried into the emperor's presence. " Rome perished ! " replied the imperial poultry- fancier, who had a favourite hen called "Rome"; " impossible ! an hour ago she was feeding from my hand." It was explained that it was the City of Rome which had been destroyed. " But I thought," said the relieved emperor, "you meant that it was my bird, Rome, which I had lost." Alaric and his Arian followers spared Christian churches and those who had found refuge within their walls. But what shelter was there from the savage glance of Attila's small bead-like eyes, as his squalid Pannonian hordes swept over Europe (441-51), leaving in their track a blackened and desolated waste ? A panic-stricken world saw that the weapons of the Christian faith alone availed against the hosts of evil. Priests were not indeed always spared. Nicasius, eleventh Bishop of Rheims, was cut down by a Vandal in 407, as he stood on the threshold of the church, chanting the words, " Quicken Thou me according to Thy word " (Ps. cxix., verse 25). Paris may have owed security to insignificance rather than to the prayers of St Genevieve. But there is better evidence to prove that Orleans was saved by St Aignan, Troyes by St Loup, and Rome by St Leo. Divine interpositions on behalf of the Church and her saints were magnified by the legends which clustered round the name of Attila, the Flagellum Dei of theologians, the " Etzel " of the Niebelungen Lied. The inroads of the Huns stimulated the spread of Christianity, for the bar- barian was awed by the priest alone, and the instru- 42 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS ments of God's wrath trembled only before the agents of His mercy. It was then that Paganism lost its hold on the Imperial City, when Pope Leo refuted the plea that Eome owed her downfall to desertion of her ancient gods. It was then also, that the foundations of the Papal Empire were firmly laid, when the suc- cessor of Peter triumphed where the successor of Caesar had ignominiously failed. But among the barbarians and the native races, the sense of awe in the presence of the supernatural was thus deepened by the events of the invasion. Living examples of Christian charity, like Deo Gratias, Bishop of Carthage, or Cesarius, Bishop of Aries, who spent their substance in the redemption of captives, passed the comprehension, yet commanded the respect, of the invaders. Trusted mediators, like Epiphanius, Bishop of Pavia, won their confidence. An Odoacer bowed before the spiritual insight of Severinus of Noricum, the mysterious prophet and apostle of Austria. A Totila as the story is told in Spinello's frescoes in San Miniato at Florence paid homage to the saintly character of Benedict of Nursia ; and the spell which the Patriarch of Western Monasticism cast over the all-conquering king testifies, with silent eloquence, to the supremacy of moral power over brute force, and strikes the prelude to the illustrious life of the Benedictine Order Driven from the wild gorges of Subiaco by the evil devices of his enemies, Benedict found a retreat at Monte Cassino. There he established among a pagan people the capital of the monastic order. The temple of Apollo was overthrown ; the sacred wood was felled, and the faith of Christ preached to a people who, two centuries after Constantine, and in the heart BENEDICT 43 of Christendom, still worshipped the gods of ancient Rome. Dante has told the story ("Paradiso," canto xxii.): "In old days, That mountain, at whose side Cassino rests, Was, on its height, frequented by a race Deceived and ill-disposed ; and I it was Who thither carried first the name of Him Who brought the soul-subliming truth to man, And such a speeding grace shone over me, That from their impious worship I reclaimed The dwellers round about, who with the world Were in delusion lost." "From the heart of the Benedict, as from a fountain- head of Paradise," flowed the monastic life of the West. Monte Cassino was, as it were, its Sinai. From it issued the famous Rule of St Benedict (528), the code under which lived the vast majority of those who embraced the monastic discipline of labour and obedience. Shortly before his death, the great monastic law- giver saw in a vision, as Pope Gregory relates, the whole world gathered together under one beam of the sun. Five centuries later, it would be true to say that the vision was realised in the obedience of the mon- astic world to the Rule of Benedict. But for the moment, no uniformity existed. Here, as in Southern Italy, prevailed the Eastern Rule of Basil ; here, as at Lerins, the Egyptian Rule of Antony or of Macarius ; here, as in Spain, the Rule of Isidore. Gradually the continent was covered with monastic missionaries, who carried Christianity among the pagan provincials or heathen barbarians, bridged the gap between the old civilisation and the new, and, in countries devas- tated by wars and rapine, practised the arts of peace 44 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS under the sanction of religion. In sfcch missionary enterprises the Celtic saints were nobly distinguished. Now, in the spirit of Antony and the anchorites of the Egyptian deserts, the storm-beaten islands of the Atlantic Ocean were tenanted by eager solitaries, who, by day and night, from year's end to year's end, amid the roar of the waves and the wild screams of seabirds, sang the Psalms to God. Now, in another aspect of the same religious fervour, men left their wattled chapels, their stone oratories, and wooden shrines in Ireland and Scotland, to carry the Gospel message to the heathen. Columban at Luxeuil and Bobbio, Gall in Switzerland, Cataldus at Tarentum, Virgilius at Salzburg, Donatus at Fiesole, were among the Celtic saints who made their influence felt in Western Europe from Iceland to Southern Italy. It was by a text from the Psalms that the first translation of the Scriptures into a language " under- standed of the people " was sanctioned by orthodox Christianity. Methodius and Cyril desired to con- struct an alphabet, and to translate portions of the Bible into the Sclavonic tongue. Their request was referred to Pope John VIII. in 879, and it was justified in his eyes by the words, "Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord " (Ps. cl., verse 6). In the Sclavonic language, and in the rude alphabet, which still witnesses to the Byzantine origin of the Eussian religion and literature, the whole of the New Testament was translated. From the Old Testament the Book of Psalms alone was selected. No one can doubt the meaning of the choice, or that it was wisely made. For missions, especially to pagan peoples, no book is better adapted. In the first place, Nature is treated in its unity rather than in its detail ; it is USE BY MISSIONARIES 45 contemplated in great masses : it is painted not as self -subsisting or glorious in its own beauty, but as the living expression of the one God, the embodi- ment of one overruling spiritual power. No book, again, appeals so strongly to the simple elemental feelings, the universal eternal emotions of mankind ; no book relies less upon the special forms of human opinion to which different ages and varying circum- stances have given their transitory mould. No book, again, is so calculated to encourage that sense of awe before the Divine invisible omnipresence which gives its sanction to the voice of conscience. In the poetry of Homer, the Deities of Olympus in three paces traverse the uttermost bounds of the earth ; and to this material omnipresence Plato added moral grandeur by his conception of the ubiquitous super- vision of Divine Providence. But the splendour of the thought, as imagined by the Greek poet or phil- osopher, is only a pale reflection of the sublimity of bhe idea as it is represented by the Hebrew Psalmist. In Psalm cxxxix. the beautiful blossom bursts into :he full glory of the flower. On its language is modelled one of the earliest fragments of missionary teaching : " O Lord, my thoughts," it runs, " cannot 3lude Thy thoughts ; Thou knowest all the ways by which I would escape. If I climb up into heaven, Thou dwellest there ; if I go down to hell, there also [ find Thy presence. If I bury myself in the dark- aess, Thou findest me there. I know that Thy night 3an be made clear as my day. In the morning I ,ake flight ; I flee to the ends of the sea ; but there is 10 place in which Thy hand reaches me not," etc. The sentiment is that which prompted Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist, to inscribe over the door of his 46 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS lecture-room, " Innocui vivite : Nnmen adest." It is the same also which, in an utilitarian, prosaic age, is coldly paraphrased in Thomson's " Hymn " : " Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song, . . . 'tis nought to me ; Since God is ever present, ever felt, In the void waste as in the city full." To learn the Psalter by heart was, in monastic life, the first duty of a novice. Among the secular clergy, knowledge of the Psalter was the threshold to preferment. A council of the Church and the capitu- laries of an emperor, provided that no one should be raised to any ecclesiastical dignity who could not recite the whole book. By the Psalms were sustained the lives and deaths of the men whose spiritual daring converted Europe to Christianity. Above the mists of legend, through the pictured veil of romance, one fact shines out with penetrating, steadfast light. It is the strength that, in solitude or danger, missionary and monk, secular priest and anchorite, derived from the Psalms of David. The words lived in his mind ; they were ever on his lip ; in them, his thoughts were unconsciously clothed ; in them, his cry for help was naturally expressed. Take, for example, the stories, legend or truth, of two great continental missionaries, the Celtic saints Columban and Gall. Like Francis of Assisi, Columban wielded a magnetic power over wild creatures. At his call squirrels leaped from the trees to nestle in his bosom, or chase each other in the folds of his white scapular ; birds, as he knelt in prayer, fluttered round him and perched on his uplifted hands, or on his Bible as it hung by a strap from his shoulder; to him a bear COLUMBAN AND GALL 47 gave up its cave for a retreat ; a raven confessed its crime, and restored his stolen gloves. With a psalm, he and his colleague, Gall, the apostle of Switzerland, exorcised the demons of Bregenz. There the two Irish missionaries had established (circa 610) a little colony of Christians, living by the labours of their hands. The Lake of Constance swarmed with fish, and Columban made the nets, which Gall cast into the waters for a draught. One night, as Gall watched silently in his boat among his nets, he heard the demon of the mountains calling aloud to the demon of the waters : "Arise!" he cried, "help to chase away the strangers who have driven me from my temples. It will need our united strength to thrust them forth." "What can we do?" asked the demon of the waters. "Here is one upon the water-side, whose nets I have tried to break ; yet have I never succeeded. He prays always, and never sleeps. Our labour will be but lost. We shall avail nothing against him." Then Gall made the sign of the Cross, and, hurry- ing to land, roused Columban, who straightway tolled the bell for midnight prayers. Before the first psalm was sung through, the yells of the baffled demons echoed in fury from the surrounding hills, grew faint in the distance, and died away among the mountains like the confused sounds of a routed host. Another incident in the life of Gall serves to con- nect with the Psalms the choice of the site of one of the most famous monasteries. Columban had left Bregenz (612), and Gall determined to seek another home from which to preach the Gospel. As he wandered through a forest, he came to a spot where the little river Steinach, falling from the mountain, 48 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS hollows itself a bed in the rock. Here Gall, stum- bling over a bramble, fell. His comrades strove to raise him ; but he bade them leave him, for " This," he cried, " shall be my rest : here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein" (Ps. cxxxii., verse 15). So was founded the great monastery of St Gall, renowned for its library, its learning, and its cultivation of the arts. Coming nearer home, we find in the legendary history of St Patrick a noble use of the verse, " Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses ; but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God " (Ps. xx., verse 7). Every third year, at the spring equinox, which closed the Celtic year, the festival of Tara was held on the great plain of Breg. Here were gathered the five kings of Ireland, the twenty-five tutelary kings, their attendants, their warriors, and their chariots. In nine triple circles, as night fell, they took their places round the huge flower-strewn pyre, which rose on the terrace of the palace of Tara. Throughout all Ireland, every hearth was cold. The people waited to rekindle their fires from the sacred flame which descended from heaven upon the pyre. Suddenly, as the vast throng was hushed in anxious expectation, a bright light shone out on the extreme verge of the plain. "Who," cried King Laeghaire, in his rage, "has dared to commit this sacrilege?" And all the counsellors, the bards, the judges, and the nobles answered, " We know not." But the chief of the Druids cried aloud to Laeghaire, " O King, if that distant flame be not now extinguished, it will never be put out. Before it our sacred flame will pale, and the man who has lighted it will destroy thy king- ST PATRICK 49 dom. Over thee and over us he will bear rule, and he and his successors will reign for ever in Ireland/' Then the king ordered the Druids to seize the sacri- legious wretch, and bring him to Tara. So the Druids, with their chariots, their horses, and their spearmen, set forth on their mission. They found that the light was shining upon a little altar set up in a rude hut, and before the shrine knelt white-robed men in prayer. They were St Patrick, his twelve priests, and the boy, Benignus, who were celebrating their midnight service to welcome the dawn of Easter morning. The Druids dared not enter. Standing without, they bade the men come forth. Patrick obeyed the summons, and followed the Druids to the palace of Tara, chanting as he went, " Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses ; but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God." Before the assembled hosts he spoke of the Kingdom founded by the King of kings, and of Him who reigns from the Cross. With words of such power did he speak, that nature was hushed in stillness ; the ebbing tide ceased to sink ; the branches stirred not in the woods ; the eagle checked his flight ; the white stag of Mulla, bending over the stream, forbore to drink. The power of the Druids was broken. As day dawned, the magic circles were dispersed, the sacred pyre was cold, and the only flame that shone through the twilight was the altar-fire which the Christians had kindled to hail the resurrection of their Lord. In the career, both legendary and historical, of Columba, to whom, and to whose spiritual posterity, Northern Britain owed its Christianity, may be traced the power of the Psalms. Born in 521, at Gartan, in Donegal, Columba died in 597. His life thus spans D 50 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS the century which preceded the landing of Augustine in England. On the stone of Lacknacor, in Donegal, Columba was born. As the great missionary gave up his native land for the love of God and of human souls, so those who sleep a night upon this stone are cured from that home-sickness which is the anguish of emigrants. When Columba knew only how to read the alphabet, he was able, as an old life of the saint records, to say the Psalms by heart. The priest, Cruithnechan, who had baptised him, was called upon at an ecclesiastical festival to recite the Psalm (ci.), " My song shall be of mercy and judgment." Memory and voice failed him ; but, in the place of his guardian, the child repeated the Psalm, and thus "the names of God and of Columba were magnified by the miracle." On the shores of Strangford Lough, Columba became a pupil of St Finnian. There, so legend tells us, he copied his host's Psalter by stealth, shutting himself up by night in the church where the book was treasured, and writing by the light which streamed from his own hand. Finnian claimed the copy; Columba resisted the claim. The dispute was referred to the king at Tara, who, in homely phrase, gave his decision against Columba : "to every cow her calf" : to the book its copy. In defence of his treasure, Columba armed the clans, and Diarmid was defeated at the bloody "Battle of the Psalter." Under the name of Cathac, or " The Battler," the O'Donnells, for centuries, carried to their battles the silver case containing Columba's reputed copy of the Psalter as a pledge of victory. In 563, Columba left his beloved oak groves of Derry, and with twelve companions, drove his hide- COLUMBA 51 bound coracle on the shores of lona, at the spot still known as "the bay of the osier bark." From lona the "island soldier" pushed his missionary enter- prises, for more than thirty years, among the Picts and Scots, and ruled the numerous churches which were founded in Ireland, Scotland, and Northumbria. In June 597, Columba had reached his 77th year. Worn with age and labour, he knew that his end was at hand. He had gone to bless a distant barn belong- ing to the monastery of lona. As he rested on his road home by a wayside cross, on a little hill, there came to him a white pack-horse, which carried the milking vessels from the cow-sheds to the monastery. Laying its head upon his shoulder with many plaintive moans, it gazed into his face with eyes filled with tears. The attendant would have driven away the faithful mourner, but Columba forbade him, saying, " Let be ; it so loveth me, that it poureth its bitter grief into my bosom. Thou, being a man, and having a rational soul, canst know nothing of my departure hence, save that which I myself have told thee. But to this brute beast, being devoid of human reason, the Creator hath revealed that I, its master, am about to leave it." So saying, he blessed the pack-horse, which went sorrowfully away. Returning to his cell, he sat there transcribing the Psalter. When he came to the 10th verse of Ps. xxxiv., "The lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they who seek the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good," he laid down his pen. " Here," he said, " I make an end ; what follows, Baithen will write." As Adamnanus comments, the last verse was fit for Columba, who should lack none of the treasures of eternity ; and for Baithen, who succeeded him both as a teacher and as a writer, it was fitting that he 52 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS should write the words that followed, "Come, ye children, and hearken unto me : I will teach you the fear of the Lord " (Ps. xxxiv., verse 11). After vespers, as was his wont, with the bare flag for his couch and for his pillow a stone, Columba passed the early hours of the night. As the bell tolled for the nocturnal office of the morning of Sunday, June 9th, he rose, and entered the church before the brethren. Diarmid, his faithful attendant, drawing near to the door, saw that the building was flooded with a heavenly light, which disappeared as his foot touched the threshold. Greatly wondering, he asked, " Where art thou, my father ? " Then, groping his way through the darkness, he found Columba lying before the altar. He raised the saint's head, and sitting beside him, laid it on his bosom. Thus they were found by the brethren, and then, as Diarmid raised his master's right hand, Columba moved it in sign of blessing, and so passed away. lona became for the Celtic races the cradle of sacred knowledge, the nursery of bishops, the religious capital of Northern Britain, the burying-place of its kings. " Where is Duncan ? " asks Ross of Macduff, and Macduff replies : " Carried to Colme-kill : The sacred storehouse of his predecessors And guardian of their bones." * On certain evenings, every year, St Columba is seen counting the surrounding islands, lest any should have been sunk by the power of witchcraft : " As lona's saint, a giant form, Throned on his towers, conversing with the storm, Counts every wave-worn isle and mountain hoar From Kilda to the green leme's shore." * Macbeth, Act II., scene iv. CUTHBERT 53 Among the spiritual descendants of Columba, none is more famous than Cuthbert. As a shepherd lad, tending his flock by night on the hills of Lammer- moor, he saw the vision which determined his vocation. Suddenly the dark sky shone with a broad tract of light, down which descended a host of angels, who presently mounted heavenwards, bearing with them the soul they had sought on earth. Aidan, Bishop of Lindisfarne, had died that night (651). Thirteen years later, Cuthbert was drawn from Melrose, and appointed prior of the monastery of Lindisfarne, that he might reform the abuses of the house. After twelve years, he withdrew to the barren island of Fame, where he built an anchorite's cell. Legend lingers lovingly round his name. The sea- fowl, whom he made his companions, are called the Birds of St Cuthbert. The little shells that are found on the coast are known as the Beads of St Cuthbert ; and by night he may still be seen, so tradition tells us, fashioning them, with a stone for his hammer, and a rock for his anvil : " But fain St Hilda's nuns would learn If on a rock, by Lindisfarne, St Cuthbert sits and toils to frame The seaborn beads that bear his name." From his dear solitude he was taken, against his will, to be made Bishop of Lindisfarne (685). Two years afterwards, he returned to his cell a dying man. He died March 20th, 687, having received the Sacra- ment at the hands of Herefrith, Abbot of Lindisfarne, who tells the story of his death. Near the landing- place of the island was a rude shelter, in which some of the brethren had passed the night in prayer and 54 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS chanting. When Herefrith brought the news of Cuth- bert's death, the monks were singing the 60th Psalm. By an agreed signal, the light of two torches, held aloft, proclaimed to the watcher on the mainland that the soul of Cuthbert had departed to the Lord. Hurrying from the tower to bear the news to those who worshipped in the church, the watchman found the assembled brethren singing the same Psalm. The influence of Columba and his followers over- ran Scotland ; it crossed the borders into England ; it extended to the Midland Counties. Along the West, its Irish type came into contact with British Christianity. Kentigern, of whom the story runs that he began the day by reciting the Psalter stand- ing breast-high in a running stream, was at once the beloved St Mungo of Glasgow, and the founder of the monastery of Elwy, in North Wales. Unlike the continental invasions which over- whelmed and submerged the native populations, the invaders of Britain fought their way, step by step, in face of stubborn resistance. Gradually the British were forced back into their mountain fastnesses, carry- ing with them the national forms of their Christian worship, which they jealously guarded as symbols of their independence. With fire and sword, heathen invaders swept away priests and people, and the wooden reed-thatched churches in which they wor- shipped. So ruthless was the destruction, that in it Bede, like Jerome, or like the historian of the Vandals in Africa, saw the words of the Psalm verified : " O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance," etc. (Ps. Ixxix., verses 1-4). It is a period of dark- ness, with few and uncertain glimmerings of light. But among the legendary or historical records of the THE BATTLE OF MOLD 55 persecuted Church, the Psalms are associated with one signal triumph of the native Christians over their heathen invaders. In 429, Germanus, Bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, Bishop of Troyes, were im- plored by the Britons to aid them against the Picts and Saxons. At Eastertide, so runs the story, the little army of newly-made Christians, " with the dew of baptism fresh upon them," was posted by Germanus in a defile, near Mold, in Flintshire, close to a spot still known as Maes-Garmon, "the field of Germanus." As the heathen host approached, the Britons, at a signal from the bishop, shouted three times the Paschal Alleluia. 1 * Caught up and re-echoed among the hills, the sound struck terror into the Picts and Saxons. Throwing down their arms, they fled ; and faith, unarmed, won a bloodless victory. Among the national institutions of British Christianity were their colleges, partly religious, partly educational, in which the members were numbered by their thousands. The exact Rule which governed these establishments is uncertain. But, as in Columba's institutions, the object of study was the Scripture, and especially the Psalms, so the names of the Welsh colleges Cor (choir) and Bangor (high choir) may show that choral services were an essential part of their arrangements. At Bangor Iltyd, 100 of the members were engaged every hour in chanting, so that without intermission, psalms were rendered night and day. At Elwy, in North Wales, 365 of the brethren were devoted, day and night, to the singing of psalms and the divine offices, so that the praise of God from year's end to year's end never ceased. Another famous monastic institution in Wales was Llancarvan, * The Hallel of Ps. cxiii.-cxviii., or of cxxxiv.-cxxxvii. 56 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS of which Cadoc the Wise was the first abbot or prin- cipal. It was with a psalm that Gwynlliu the Warrior, father of Cadoc, turned from a life of violence to the austerities of an anchorite. Won to religion by the example of his son, the robber chieftain did penance for his sins, chanted Psalm xx., "The Lord hear thee in the day of trouble," retired from the world, and lived in such sanctity that he is commemorated as St Woolos, the patron saint of Newport in Monmouthshire. In the year of Columba's death (597), Augustine and his companions landed in Kent, to attempt the conversion of Saxon England. That event brought Roman Christianity into collision and conflict with the Irish and British types : it introduced the Bene- dictine Rule as a rival to the existing discipline of Celtic monasteries ; it carried England once again into the circle of European life. How complete was the darkness which, in the fifth and sixth centuries, hung over England, may be gathered from the account given by Procopius (500-65) of the island of Brittia.* The island, he says, is the Island of Silence and the Dead. On the opposite coast of the mainland live subjects of the Prankish kings, fishermen and husbandmen, who hold their land free, except for one service. That service is to transport the souls of the dead from the mainland to the island coast. At midnight, an unseen hand knocks at their doors, and the voice of an un- seen being summons them to their labour. How or why they are constrained to obey, they know not; they only know that they are so constrained. Rising from their beds, and hurrying to the shore, they there find boats that are not their own, loaded to a finger's * De Bello Gotihico, iv. 20, GREGORY THE GREAT 57 breadth between the gunwale and the water ; yet no forms are seen, no freight is visible. They push off; they bend to their oars ; and, in one short hour, they drive the strange barks upon the shore of the island, which, in their own boats, with oars and sail, they can scarcely reach in a night and a day. None are seen to land, or to leave the boat. But a voice calls each shadow by name, proclaiming its earthly dignities and parentage. When the voice is silent, the boat is now so lightly laden that only the keel is covered. Thus the rowers perform their service, and return to the shore of the living. To restore the Island of Death and Silence to Christian life, had been the cherished dream of Pope Gregory the Great, when he was still a humble monk in the Benedictine monastery of St Andrew, which he had founded in his father's palace on the Ccelian Hill. In the familiar story of his conception of the dream, the Psalms have their place. The countrymen of the three angel-faced Angles, in their remote York- shire home, were to be plucked from the ire of God, and taught to sing their Alleluias in the realm of King ^Ella. Gregory's love of the Psalms is illustrated by the picture of his mother Silvia, visible for centuries after his death, which he caused to be painted on the walls of what is now the Church of St Gregory at Home. In her left hand she held the Psalter, open at the words, "O let my soul live, and it shall praise Thee ; and Thy judgments shall help me " (Ps. cxix., verse 175). It was with the words of a psalm that Gregory expressed his love of the monastic seclusion from which he was torn, to be made Pope (590). He lamented a change, which seemed to thrust him far from the face of God, and back into the world. " I panted," 58 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS he writes, "for the face of God, not in words only, but from the inmost marrow of my heart, crying, ' My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye my face : Thy face, Lord, will I seek ' " (Ps. xxvii., verse 9). But when the choice fell upon him, he seized the opportunity to carry out the dream which, in his own person, he was not permitted to fulfil. As the Roman Senate, with Hannibal at the gates, sent forth its legions to Spain and to Africa, so Gregory, when Italy was ravaged by invaders, despatched his missionaries to Britain. It was over a country blackened by Lombard fires, that Augustine passed as he started on his mission. In 597 he landed in the Isle of Thanet, preceded by the Cross and painted banner, and followed by his com- panions, chanting Psalms and Litanies. With the landing of Augustine, the Benedictine Rule was introduced into England, and the religious history of Saxon England is to a great extent bound up in the progress of the Order. " Hearken, my son ! " are the words with which begins the Rule of "Holy Benet," and " Ausculta, O fili ! " are the words which in Christian iconography are inscribed on the book placed in the hands of St Benedict. The 34th Psalm (verses 12-15) strikes the keynote of the Eule. "The Lord," says Benedict, " who seeketh His servant in the midst of the people, still saith to him, ' What man is he that lusteth to live, and would fain see good days ? ' If at that word thou answerest, * It is I,' then will the Lord say to thee, 'If thou wouldst have life, keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips that they speak no guile. Eschew evil, and do good ; seek peace, and ensue it.' And that being done, 'Then shall My eyes be upon you, and My ears shall be open to your cry. And, even THE BENEDICTINE RULE 59 before them callest Me, I shall say to thee, Here am I.'" On the Psalms are based many of the chapters of the Benedictine Eule, and in them the book is pro- fusely quoted. With a psalm, novices were admitted into the Order. The child, whose hands had been wrapped in the white folds of the altar-cloth, grew up in the monastic school. To him at length came the desire to give himself to God : " Here will I dwell for ever"(Ps. xxiii., verse 6). He became a novice ; and, the year of his noviciate ended, he took the vows to remain attached to the monastery ; to labour, while strength lasted ; to perfect himself in the state to which he was called ; and, lastly, to obey the abbot. Then, with outstretched arms, he sang three times the verse which was the " Open Sesame " of the monastic life (Ps. cxix., verse 116), "O stablish me according to Thy word, that I may live ; and let me not be disap- pointed of my hope." Three times the community re- peated the words, and added the Gloria Patri. Then, dressed in monastic habit, the new brother knelt at the feet of each of the brethren, asked for their prayers, received the fraternal kiss, and so became a monk, bound by the threefold cord of Obedience, Labour, and Humility. With the same verse from the Psalms, girls were received into the religious communities, which, like the company of Benedict's sister, Scholastica, followed the Benedictine Eule. Once admitted to the Order, the lives of monks and nuns were to a great extent regulated by the spirit, if not by the letter, of the Psalms. On the words, " I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue " (Ps. xxxix., verse 1), was based the rule of silence. One of the first labours of the brethren 60 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS was to learn the Psalter by heart. In such duties of monastic life, whether homely or sacred, as making bread for the altar, setting out the relics, attending the death-agony of a brother, taking places at the re- fectory, the weekly washing of feet, the beginning and end of readings during meals psalms were sung or recited. In adorning copies of the Psalter with all the quaint and beautiful fancies of devotional imagi- nation, monks spent prayerful years of solitude and silence. As shrines for the Psalter, their abbeys and churches were built, and to the chanting of a psalm (Ixxxiv.) their chosen sites were sprinkled with holy water. A Psalm, " Praise the Lord with harp ; sing praises unto Him with the lute, and instrument of ten strings," sanctioned the use of the organ in divine service. By verses of the Psalms ("In the evening and morning, and at noonday, will I pray, and that instantly," Ps. lv., verse 18 ; " Seven times a day do I praise Thee, because of Thy righteous judgments," Ps. cxix., verse 164 ; and "At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee," Ps. cxix., verse 62) the canonical hours were regulated, and on the Psalms the services themselves were mainly based, so that the Psalter was sung through every week. To the singing of a psalm (cl.) their bells were cast, as the brethren waited at the furnace for the metal to be poured into the mould. With the chanting of the Psalms, monks traversed wild forests and mountain solitudes ; or, like Stephen Harding, second founder of the Cistercians, as he journeyed to Rome, met the perils of the way by a daily recitation of the Psalter. In the words of a psalm, the monastic vocation came to men like Thomas Aquinas (Ps. Ixxxiv., verse 11, "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to THE PSALMS IN MONASTIC LIFE 61 Iwell in the tents of ungodliness"), and he obeyed :he call to become a Dominican. With a psalm 'Ps. cxiv., "When Israel came out of Egypt"), men ike Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia (1510-72), turned ,heir backs on wealth and worldly honours to enter religious societies. With a psalm, like Gall, or Vincentius of Lerins (Ps. xlvi., verse 10), monks 3hose the sites of monasteries, and, as they reared :he walls, exorcised the demons of mountain, lake or wood. In the spirit of the Psalms, monastic builders lavished their genius and devotion on arch and capital, iltar-shrine and tower, portal and window, that they night beautify the habitation of God, and prepare a Iwelling-place meet for His honour. Thus it was with Hugh of Cluni, who, according to his biographer, said within himself, with the Psalmist, " I have loved :he habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine ionour dwelleth " (Ps. xxvi., verse 8) ; and whatsoever :he devotion of the faithful gave, he entirely conse- 3rated to the decoration of his church or to the good }f the poor. To the mediaeval monk, the choir was the garden }f the Lord, in which he laboured day and night ; it svas his paradise, where, in the cool shadow cast by lis E/edeemer, he might rest from the burning heat of ,he world. One of the contemporaries of Thomas a Kempis describes him, when he took part in the )ffices of the Church : " Whilst he was singing, he was :o be observed with his face always raised towards leaven, as if inspired with a sacred enthusiasm, carried ind borne beyond himself by the wonderful sweetness )f the Psalms." This was the spirit of mediaeval 3salmody. As its tide rolled forth, night and day, rom the convent or monastery, and swelled over hill 62 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS and fen, midnight wayfarers, travelling in fear of their lives, felt that they were in the hands of God ; and labourers, rising to their work at dawn, or resting at noon, or returning with night, knew, though they understood not the words, that their toil was con- secrated in the sight of their heavenly Father. As the Psalms presided over every part of a monk's life, so they were present with him in his death. When a brother lay dying, the haircloth was spread, the ashes were scattered, and in them a cross was traced. Here the sick man was laid. By blows on a board the brethren were summoned, and, wherever they were, or whatever their occupations, they ran to his side, and remained with him in his anguish, chanting the Penitential Psalms and Litanies. Thus, in the presence of the fraternity, in sackcloth and ashes, supported by the supplications of their brethren, with the words of the Psalms beating on their ears, as they had sounded throughout their lives, died thousands of " Knights of God " members of the most powerful, and, with all their shortcomings, the most useful, of mediaeval institutions. With words of the Psalms in their ears, or on their lips, died three of the men who were most conspicuous in the establishment of the Benedictine Eule in England Benedict Biscop (623-90), Wilfrid (634-709), and Dunstan (924-88). To Benedict, England owes a vast debt. On his work rested much of the learning and culture of the eighth century. Studying the Benedictine Rule at Canterbury, at Lerins, and other continental monas- teries, he established it in his monasteries of Jarrow and Wearmouth. Six times he visited Eome now seeking architects, masons, and materials to beautify WILFRID 63 lis churches; now bringing with him musicians or nstructors in ritual ; now gathering relics, pictures, mages and vestments ; now collecting the manuscripts ivhich made his libraries famous. Worn out by labours, ind paralysed in his limbs, he listened, through sleep- ess nights, to the repetition of psalms, in which he ivas himself too weak to join. He died January 12th, 590, when those who watched by him were repeating Ps. Ixxxiii., " Hold not Thy tongue, O God ; keep not still silence." Within the walls of Jarrow the Vener- ible Bede, the father of English history, the flower of ;he monastic schools, the true type of a Benedictine, ivas already harvesting the stores of learning which Benedict had collected, giving his whole energies, as le says of himself, to meditation on the Scriptures ; lelighting, amid the observance of the monastic rule ind the daily ministry of singing in the church, either ;o learn, or to teach, or to write. Widely different from the methods of Benedict Biscop were the means by which Wilfrid sustained lie cause, of which both were zealous champions. Yet n their love of art they were at one, and the magnifi- cence of Kipon rivalled that of Wearmouth or Jarrow. [n the monastery of Lindisfarne, Wilfrid studied the Scottish usages, acquired fame for learning, and com- nitted the Psalter to memory in the version of Jerome. 3ut Kome exercised over him an irresistible fascina- ion. His mind was set towards the Papal city, even luring his stay at Canterbury, where once more he earnt the Psalter by heart this time in the old Italic ^ersion, which was adopted there and at Kome. The r ears 652-8 were spent at Lyons and at Rome in study - ng the usages, ritual, and discipline, which he laboured ill his stormy life to establish in Northern England, 64 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS In his long conflict against Celtic Christianity, he suffered deposition, exile, imprisonment. But his pur- pose never wavered. Thrown into prison at Dunbar (circa 681), the bishop was deserted by his spiritual chief, separated from friends and adherents, deprived of all that he possessed except his clothing, robbed even of his precious reliquary, which was the com- panion of his many journeys. Yet his guards heard the fallen prelate chanting the Psalms as cheerfully as if he were in his own monastery of Kipon or Hexham. His banishments were fruitful in labour. During one, he became the apostle of the Frisians ; in another, the missionary of Sussex and the Isle of Wight. The last effort of his old age was the visitation of the monas- teries which he had founded. Setting out from Hex- ham, now the centre of his See, and visiting Ripon on his way, he rode to the Mercian houses in turn. In October 709, he came to Oundle, in Northampton- shire. There he was seized with a fatal illness. Bound the dying man gathered the whole community, chanting the Psalms which he had loved so well. As they reached the 30th verse of Ps. civ., "When thou lettest Thy breath go forth, they shall be made," his breathing ceased, and his stormy life was ended. Up and down the country, in England as on the Continent, were scattered monastic institutions links in the national unity, sanctuaries of religious life, centres of education and civilisation, nurseries of arts and industries, agricultural colonies which drained fens or reclaimed forests, treasuries in which were preserved the riches of ancient learning. Gradually the stern severity of the Celtic discipline yielded before the more human spirit of its Italian rival, which hallowed not only manual but intellectual NEOT AND KING ALFRED 65 labour. With the Danish invasions there came a check and a recoil. In the North, East, and centre of England, the invaders fell with special fury on the religious communities. They devoured the land like locusts. Fire and sword swept away, in a few hours, the fruits of the patient toil of a century. In the South and West, the defenders, though hard-pressed, held their own. With one signal triumph over the Danes, Saxon legend inseparably associated the Psalms in the person of St Neot, who every morning said the Psalter through, and every midnight chanted i hundred psalms. The saint died, full of years and lonour, among his countrymen. No man of equal sanctity had risen to take his place, when, in 878, King Alfred lay in his tent at Iley, on the eve of the Dattle of Ethendun. To the king appeared St Neot, * like an angel of God ; his hair white as snow, his aiment white, glistering, and fragrant with the scents )f heaven." He promised Alfred victory. "The Lord," he said, "shall be with you; even the Lord itrong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle, who jiveth victory unto kings" (Ps. xxiv., verse 8). As norning broke, the little band of Saxons fell on Tuthrun and the sleeping Danes. So sudden was heir onset, that at first they carried all before them. 3ut gradually the tide of battle began to sway. It 7as turned again in favour of King Alfred, when a aajestic figure, whom the Saxons recognised as St ^eot himself, seizing the royal banner, marshalled his ountrymen to renewed effort, victory, and pursuit. >o, for a time, peace came to the land, and Guthrun nd his followers became Christians. During this life-and-death struggle, it was not trange that morals relaxed, monastic fervour cooled, 66 THE FORMATION OF NATIONS and heathen practices revived. With Dunstan, the statesman who laboured to unite England under King Edgar, the ecclesiastic who, as Archbishop of Canter- bury, strove to revive monastic life a new spirit was breathed into Church and State. As Abbot of Glaston- bury, Dunstan had reformed the community which he governed. But the Benedictine Rule was then imper- fectly known to him, and it was only after his exile in Flanders and his sojourn in the monastery of St Peter at Ghent (956-57) that he realised its strength. A man of learning, he was attracted by its opportunities for education. To his kindly character it com- mended itself by its humanity. Himself skilled in music, painting, iron work and embroidery, it appealed to his artistic temperament. Keenly sensitive to the immorality of the times, he valued its example of the separation from all sexual relations. In its uniform adoption, he saw a powerful instrument for the moral reform of Church and State, for the unification and intellectual progress of the nation. Before his death, the Rule was practically universal in England. Almost his last public act was the coronation of Ethelred, in 978, at Kingston. Retiring from affairs of state, he passed his remaining years at Canterbury, occupied in business, in teaching, or the practice of handicrafts, constant in prayer by night and day, delighting in the services of the Church and in psalmody. In May 988, his strength failed him. He had received the " Viati- cum," and died as he was giving thanks in the words, " The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His marvellous works, that they ought to be had in remembrance. He hath given meat unto them that fear Him" (Ps. cxi., verses 4, 5). At the close of the tenth century, the Benedictine TRIUMPH OF THE BENEDICTINE RULE 67 Rule had conquered France ; it had won Germany and Spain; it was established in England. The vision of Benedict was realised, and the monastic world gathered together under one beam of the sun. CHAPTER TV THE MIDDLE AGES The battle of Vougle ; the Psalms in ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesi- astical history (1) the Papacy and the Empire Charlemagne, Gregory VII. and Henry I V., Anselm and William Rufus, Henry II. and Thomas a Becket, Alexander III. and Frederick Bar- barossa ; (2) pilgrimages ; (3) crusades, Abp. Baldwin, Richard I., Henry V. Abbot Adelme at the Tagus, Cardinal Ximenes, Demetrius of the Don ; (4) the religious revival ; St Bernard ; Stephen Harding and the Cistercian reform Citeaux and Fountains Abbey ; St Francis of Assisi and the Franciscans ; the Psalrns in secular history William the Conqueror, Vladimir Monomachus, David I. of Scotland, Abelard and Heloi'se, St Louis of France, William Wallace; in mediaeval science; in mediaeval literature De Imitatione Christi, Divina Commedia, Piers Plowman, The Golden Legend. As the centuries advance, the Psalms touch human life at points which grow more and more numerous, till the whole circle of thought and action seems to be embraced. Mediaeval literature and science, as well as secular and ecclesiastical history, are permeated by their influence. The strongest of the monarchies which rose on the ruins of the Western Empire was the Frankish King- dom. Hitherto the youthful nations, whose vigour had scourged the effeminacy of the older world, if Christians at all, had been Arians. But the baptism of Clovis had for the first time arrayed force on the BATTLE OF VOUGLE 69 side of orthodox Christianity ; alike against heretics, heathen, and Saracens, the Franks were its zealous champions. It was this fact that gave significance to the victory which Clovis won at Vougle (507) over Alaric II. and his Arian Visigoths. Blessed by Remy at Rheims, Clovis had marched towards the Loire. Encamping close to Tours, he sent to the church, in which rested the bones of St Martin, to enquire whether any presage of victory would be vouchsafed to him. As his messengers entered the church, the choir were chanting the words, " Thou has girded me with strength unto the battle ; Thou shalt throw down mine enemies under me. Thou hast made mine enemies also to turn their backs upon me ; and I shall destroy them that hate me " (Ps. xviii., verses 39, 40). Encouraged by the omen, Clovis pressed on. A ford over the Vienne was revealed by a deer, and, as he advanced towards Poitiers, a bright gleam, shining from the church of St Hilary as from a lighthouse, guided the movements of his troops. In the battle of Vougle, Alaric was killed by the hand of Clovis ; the Visigoths fled, and southern Gaul, from the Loire to the Garonne, fell into the hands of the Franks. From the time of Clovis onwards, the growing power of the Frankish Kingdom had attracted the eyes of successive Popes, who saw in its rulers the destined heirs of the Roman Emperors of the West. The idea of an universal church, whose centre was Rome, rapidly approached its realisation. With it grew up the conception of its necessary counterpart, a concep- tion which was bred partly of memory, partly of hope. The establishment of an universal monarchy in close alliance with the world-wide dominion of the Church, 70 THE MIDDLE AGES was the vision which fascinated the imagination of the noblest minds. At the head of this Christian common- wealth of nations, in its temporal character, was to stand the emperor ; at its head, in its spiritual character, was to stand the Pope. For the realisation of such a vision the ground was already prepared. The spell of the old Empire lay upon the barbarians themselves. Not only were they awe -struck by the stately ceremonial of the Christian religion ; they were also impressed with a sense of the sanctity of the emperor, eager to preserve imperial institutions, anxious to perpetuate imperial methods of administration. Decrepit though the Eastern Empire might be, the West was familiarised with the idea of universal monarchy by the shadowy claims, waning powers, and insecure ascendency of the Byzantine Emperors. In the eighth century the policy of the Papacy rapidly assumed a definite shape, and the first steps were taken to break the link which still bound the Popes to Byzantium. Already the aid of Pepin had been invoked against invaders; already the Papacy had lent a special sanctity to the coronation of the King of the Franks ; already it had received its reward in the gift of the Papal States. Once more, at Pepin's death, the Lombards invaded the possessions of the Church. At the call of Pope Hadrian, Charlemagne swept away the invaders, and added Northern Italy to the dominions of the Franks. With the penultimate stage of a vast change, a psalm is inseparably connected. Leaving his army at Pavia, Charlemagne journeyed to Eome. Outside the city he was welcomed by the Cross, which hitherto had only been carried beyond the walls to greet the CHARLEMAGNE 71 approach of the Exarch or the Patrician. At the sight of the sacred symbol, Charlemagne dismounted from his horse, and, entering Rome on foot, reached the portal of St Peter (April 2nd, 774). There Pope Hadrian received him and took him in his arms. Together they entered the basilica, which Constantino had erected on the spot traditionally hallowed as the scene of St Peter's martyrdom. Hand in hand, they advanced towards the semicircular apse, passed under the arch of victory, ascended the long flight of steps, and prostrated themselves before the high altar, while the multitude, who thronged the building, chanted, " Blessed be he that cometh in the Name of the Lord " (Ps. cxviii., verse 26). On the next day, Charlemagne, hailed by the Pope as his champion and by the people as their deliverer, was confirmed in the title of Patrician and Consul of the Romans, promised to protect the City and defend the Church, and in the tunic and sandals of the Patrician, took his seat at the tribunal of justice. For six and twenty years the final stage was postponed, while the Byzantine Emperor remained the titular sovereign of Rome. On Christmas day, 800, the long revolt was consummated. Western Europe disavowed the rule of the Eastern Empire, when, in the basilica of St Peter, Pope Leo III. placed on the head of Charlemagne "the diadem of the Caesars," while the people prayed for long life and victory to " Charles, the most pious Augustus, crowned by God, the peace-giving Emperor." Fourteen years later (January 28th, 814), Charle- magne, whose favourite psalm was Psalm Ixviii. ("Let God arise"), died at Aix-la-Chapelle, repeat- ing with his last breath the words, " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi., verse 6). He had 72 THE MIDDLE AGES loved to be called among his friends by the name of David. Church music and psalmody were the delight of a man, who, in his terrible vengeance on his enemies, his political and ecclesiastical work, and the moral aberrations of his passionate nature, pre- sents curious points of resemblance to the founder of the Jewish monarchy. As time went on, the relations between the Papacy and the Empire took a different shape, and became a contest for supremacy between the temporal and spiritual powers. At Salerno, in the Cathedral of St Matthew the Apostle, surrounded by the narrow, irregular streets, which still bear witness, through their varied architecture, to the Lombard occupation, the Saracen conquests, the Norman rule of Guiscard, and the ascendency of the Hohenstaufen, is the tomb of Hildebrand, the son of a carpenter at Soana, and, as Gregory VII. , the vehement champion of the papal supremacy. It was Hildebrand who freed the Church from vassalage to the temporal power, and stemmed the flowing tide of priestly corruption. If, on one side of his career, he seemed the incarnation of spiritual pride, it should not be forgotten that, as a moral reformer, he roused the conscience of Europe. From the austere heights of his own self-discipline, he rebuked the vices of emperors and kings, and to his example men appealed, in after ages, when sin was once more rampant in high places : " We need another Hildebrand to shake And purify us." * For a quarter of a century, during five successive pontificates, Hildebrand had guided the policy of the * Longfellow, The Golden Legend, iv, GREGORY VH. 73 Papacy with strong hand and watchful eye. Tier by tier, he had raised the fabric of Theocracy, which, in its moral grandeur, was the inspiration of his life. If kings refused to recognise the eternal laws of divine justice, their rule was tyranny ; if the people yielded no obedience to civil rulers, the result was anarchy. It was Hildebrand's aim to make the Church, purified, and independent, the arbitrator between the two, and the spiritual ruler of both. Elected Pope in 1073 under the title of Gregory VII., he entered on the struggle which lay before him with the serene conviction that, as the Vicar of Christ, he was the Divine instrument. His ambition was for the Papacy rather than for him- self. His pride was not a peasant's vanity in his exalted station, but an assertion of his dignity as the earthly representative of God. The history of his Papacy is full of dramatic epi- sodes. It had its triumph when the Emperor Henry IV., in penitential garb, ascended the rocky path, and for three days, in hunger, cold and shame, waited at the gate of the Castle of Canossa (1077). It met its fatal reverse (1084) when the Pope, a prisoner in St Angelo, was rescued by E-obert Guiscard. Such a downfall broke the heart of Gregory. In the Castle of Salerno, under the protection of the Normans, he died on 25th May 1085. His last words, taken from Psalm xlv., verse 8, breathe the tragic fulness of his bitter disappointment, "I have loved righteous- ness, and hated iniquity; and therefore I die in exile." The great struggle between the Popes and the temporal rulers of Europe extended to England, though, during the reign of William the Conqueror, it was averted by the personal concert between him- 74 THE MIDDLE AGES self and Archbishop Lanfranc. But when to William's wise, yet severe tyranny succeeded the savage license of William Rufus, that struggle between Church and State at once began which lasted to the Reformation. In Archbishop Anselm were worthily embodied the spiritual claims of the Church. Tender-hearted and affectionate, he loved both man and beast. The well- known story of the hunted hare illustrates his feeling for dumb animals, and his habit of reading moral lessons into the ordinary events of life. As the arch- bishop rode from Windsor to Hayes, a hare was started and pursued by his retainers and their dogs. It took refuge under his horse, and Anselm bade the men call off their dogs, and let the trembling creature go. The hunters laughed. "Do ye laugh?" he said; "this poor beast is far from laughter. She is like a Christian soul ceaselessly pursued by demons, that would drag it down to eternal death. Poor soul in torture, look- ing round in sore distress, seeking with longing un- speakable for a hand to save ! " Every instinct of his nature impelled him towards the ideal rather than the practical aspects of life, or inclined him to study its spiritual rather than its temporal needs. Thought, not action, was the true sphere of the man whom Dante places among the doctors of the Church in the Heaven of the Sun. Transferred from the retirement of the Abbey of Bee to the publicity of the See of Canterbury (1093-1109), he likens himself to an owl, who, " when he is in his hole with his young ones, is happy ; but when he goes out among crows and other birds, they hunt him and strike him with their beaks, and he is ill at ease." His office compelled him to be not only a great ecclesiastic, but a great feudal noble. It forced him, also, to choose between the Pope and ANSELM 75 the king. To his pure soul the solution of the diffi- culty would probably have been the surrender of worldly greatness, in order to increase his moral influence. But to a guardian of the gifts bestowed upon the Church of God, such a way of escape was impossible. When therefore the conflict began, his choice was inevitable ; he made it with quiet courage, and adhered to it with invincible resolution. As the struggle dragged its slow length along, he stood alone in England, siding more and more with the Pope, who was to him the embodiment of law and right in a world of tyranny and wrong. In 1098 Anselm was at Eome, waiting the results of his appeal to Pope Urban II. against William Eufus. But the air of Eome was unwholesome to one, who, though Piedmontese by birth, was accus- tomed to a northern climate. He therefore visited Abbot John of St Sal vat or, a former monk of Bee, now the ruler of a monastery at Telesia, between Benevento and Capua. On the higher slopes of the neighbouring mountains was a village called Schlavia, to which the monks resorted in the summer months. To this beautiful spot Anselm was taken. On the hill-top, in the crisp mountain air, respited from his cares, surrounded by the simplicities of life and the charms of nature, the old man's heart leaped within him. "This," he broke forth, like Gall, in the words of a psalm (cxxxii., verse 15), " shall be my rest for ever ; here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein." It was at Schlavia that he thought out and composed his famous treatise, Cur Deus Homo? in which he discussed the rational ground of the Atonement, and expounded his profound and original view of the Incarnation. 76 THE MIDDLE AGES In the protracted struggle between Henry II. and Thomas a Becket, the same issue was involved. But the sacrilege of Becket's murder at Canterbury (Tuesday, December 29th, 1170) gave the temporary victory to the Church over the State. At five o'clock on a winter's evening, the monks were singing vespers in the dimly-lighted cathedral. Suddenly came the news that soldiers were forcing their way into the cloisters on the north side of the building. Becket had mounted the fourth step of the staircase, which led from the Chapel of St Benedict to the choir of the church, when the four knights, in full armour, their mail hiding their faces, burst into the building. At the summons of Fitzurse, he descended into the transept, and in his white rochet, a cloak and hood thrown over his shoulders, faced the murderers. A blow on the head from Tracy drew blood. As the arch- bishop wiped the stain from his face, he said the familiar words, "Into Thy hands I commend my spirit" (Ps. xxxi, verse 6). The deed was soon accomplished. But misfortunes crowded on the king. At Avranches, in May 1172, Henry had done penance for the crime of his adherents. Yet troubles seemed only to increase, and at Canterbury he made a further and final expiation. On July 12th, 1174, he entered the streets of the city, walking barefoot, naked, except for a shirt and cloak. In the cathedral, he kissed the stone where Becket had fallen, recited the penitential psalm against wrath (Ps. vi.), prostrated himself before the tomb of the archbishop, and then, placing his head and shoulders upon it, was scourged by the bishops, abbots, and each of the eighty monks who were present. His POPE ALEXANDER III. 77 humiliation was so profound, that the chroniclers appeal to the language of the Psalms to describe the impression it produced " The mountains trembled at the presence of the Lord," "the mountain of Canter- bury smoked before Him who touches the hills and they smoke." Yet another scene in the struggle between Church and State is illustrated by the Psalms. In July 1177, the long conflict between Pope Alexander III. and the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa drew to its close. The hand of God, so it seemed to pious minds, struck down the German Emperor in his hour of triumph. Master of Rome, he had forced his creature into the chair of St Peter. But pestilence destroyed his army. Disguised, and almost alone, Barbarossa made his way by an unfrequented pass to Germany. The Lombard League supported Alexander III. against his rival and the emperor; the battle of Legnano (May 29th, 1176) broke Barbarossa's power, and compelled him to make terms with the Pope. At Venice, in the summer of 1177, Pope and emperor were reconciled. Himself a Sienese, it was at Siena that Alexander commemorated his triumph in the frescoes with which Spinello has adorned the Sala di Balia. But in the porch of St Mark's at Venice is another record of the scene. Three marble slabs mark the spot where Barbarossa humbled himself before his enemy. Legend is at least true to the spirit of the conflict, when it represents the Pope as placing his foot on the neck of the kneeling emperor, and quoting the words of Ps. xci., verse 13, "Thou shalt go upon the lion and adder ; the young lion and the dragon shalt thou tread under thy feet." In this case the Sienese frescoes may have bred the 78 THE MIDDLE AGES legend, which Rogers uses in his Italy (" St Mark's Place"): " In that temple porch (The brass is gone, the porphyry remains), Did Barbarossa fling his mantle off, And, kneeling, on his neck receive the foot Of the proud Pontiff thus at length consoled For flight, disguise, and many an aguish shake On his stone pillow." It is to the same legend that Wordsworth refers in his Ecclesiastical Sonnets (No. xxxviii.) : " Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head, To Caesar's Successor the Pontiff spake ; ' Ere I absolve thee, stoop ! that on thy neck Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread/ Then he, who to the altar had been led, He, whose strong arm the Orient could not check, He who had held the Soldan at his beck, Stooped, of all glory disinherited, And even the common dignity of man ! " Among mediaeval agencies which, like the unity of the Church, fostered the intercourse of nations, bridged the distances between class and class, and promoted the growth of the idea of an universal empire, pilgrimages and the crusades were powerful instruments. In both, European Christendom, rich and poor, united for common objects. In both, the Psalms were at work. Pilgrimages to Palestine practically began with the journey of the Empress Helena, mother of Constan- tine the Great, and her " invention " of the true Cross at Jerusalem (326). A few years later, the Bordeaux Pilgrim wrote the first Christian guide-book to the Holy Land ; and during the lifetime of Jerome, pil- grims, fired by his example, or attracted by his fame, PILGRIMAGES 79 greatly increased in number. Between 385 and 388, Silvia of Aquitaine visited the Holy Land, and even passed beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire. As they journeyed towards their goal, pilgrims sang together three psalms at the canonical hours, and, on reaching Jerusalem, their first act was to ascend the tower of David, and recite the whole Psalter. Saturated, as they were, with the language of the Psalms, the early pilgrims brought back strange reports of the miracles which were worked in Palestine, even as the Psalmist had foretold. After the sun was up, a cloud rose from the Hill of Hermon, and stood over the church at Jerusalem, as David had sung of the dew of Hermon which fell upon the Hill of Sion. So says Antoninus of Placentia, surnamed the Martyr, who visited Palestine in the days of Justinian. He also relates how, during the Epiphany festival, at the baptism of catechumens on the banks of the Jordan, when the waters were blessed, the river returned upon itself with a roar ; the upper part stood still until the ceremony was completed, the lower part running away to the sea. Thus, as David had said, "Jordan was driven back." His contemporary Theodosius, in his work De Situ Terrce Sanctce, tells how "a vine which the Lord had planted," close to the field where He had Himself ploughed a furrow, regularly provided the wine for the Pentecostal communion ; how the "little hills" had walked exulting before the Lord, when He descended to Baptism, even as David had said, "The mountains skipped like rams, and the little hills like young sheep " ; and how, to the pious eye of the traveller, " even to this day they seemed in the act of jumping." With the lapse of years, religious fervour cooled. Mixed motives influenced the motley 80 THE MIDDLE AGES crowds, who, with knobbed iron-shod staves in their hands, a scrip for provisions slung at their sides, their hats and clothes studded with leaden medals and pewter brooches, journeyed to Walsingham or Canter- bury, to E/ocamadour or Compostella, and even to Rome or Jerusalem. Some travelled barefoot, or naked but for their shirts, to expiate their sins; others toiled wearily in the hope of miraculous healing; others fulfilled a vow made in sickness; some protested against the government by visiting the shrine of a canonised rebel ; others became pil- grims by profession, from laziness, for the pleasures of the journey, from love of adventure. But however great may have been the abuses which were satirised by Langland and Wyclif, by the author of Reynard the Fox and Erasmus, there never failed to be numbers of simple devout pilgrims, who, as they travelled singly or in companies, chanted the Psalms on the way in the spirit of an earlier faith, and returned strengthened and consoled by beholding the mysterious object of their pious veneration. The Crusades, like the struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers, and like mediaeval pilgrimages, were necessarily permeated by religious influences. If they do not exclusively belong to the domain of Church History, they move in that broad belt of twilight, where things secular and things ecclesiastical are as closely associated as the begin- nings of night or day. There were but few of the battlefields against the Saracens which had not resounded with the Venite (Ps. xcv.), the battle-cry of the Templars, as, in after ages, the Psalms supplied the war-shout of John Sobieski, the motto of the Great Armada, the watch- THE CRUSADES 81 words of Gustavus Adolphus and of Cromwell, the Marseillaise of the Huguenots and the Cevenols. From the Psalms the Crusade was preached by St Bernard, who made special use of Ps. cxliv. ("Blessed be the Lord my strength," etc.), and Ps. cxvi., verse 13 ("Right dear in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.") When, on October 3rd, 1187, Jerusalem was again taken by Saladin, it was once more from the Psalms that Pope Clement III. urged the bishops to preach another Holy War (Ps. cxxvii., " Except the Lord build the house," etc.) Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, responded to the appeal, donned the White Cross of England, raised the banner of St Thomas, and preached the Crusade in Wales, chanting the Psalms as the war- song of his recruits. At the head of his troop, he left England, March 6th, 1190, eager to win back "the sepulchre of Christ," and To chase these Pagans, in those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage on the bitter cross.* From the first he was doomed to disappointment. In the language of the Psalms, his chaplain sums up the archbishop's horror at the licentiousness of the Crusaders' host. " God," he says, " is not in the camp. There is none that doeth good, no not one " (Ps. xiv., verse 2). In his despair, the archbishop prayed for death, in words that plainly allude to another Psalm (cxviii., verse 18), " O Lord, my God ! such need is there for chastening and correcting with Thy holy grace, that, if it please Thy mercy, I pray to be removed from the turmoil of this life. I have tarried long enough with this army." Fifteen days later (19th * Henry IV., Part I., Act 1, scene i. 82 THE MIDDLE AGES November 1190), he died at Acre. In the words of a psalm, Richard I. poured out his indignation, when he found himself deserted by his followers, and knew that the crusade had failed, " My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (Ps. xxii., verse 1). After the battle of Agincourt (1415) the English army, fresh from victory, sang on bended knees the first verse of Psalm cxv. ("Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise "), which Henry IV. had given to his son as a motto when he called him to a share in the government of his kingdom. It was a psalm that reminded the victor of his life-long ambi- tion. As Psalm li. was read to Henry V. on his death- bed, verse 18, "O be favourable and gracious unto Sion ; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem," reminded the dying king of his cherished hope of rescuing the Holy City from the hands of the Mussulman. More strongly political than the Holy War in Palestine, were the struggles by which Spain was wrested from the Moors, or Eussia from its Mongol oppressors, and from each may be quoted instances of the use of the Psalms. Adelme, Abbot of the Benedictine House of Chaise-Dieu, accompanied the army of Alphonso the Valiant, first King of Castile, who in 1085 had driven the Moors from Toledo. At the passage of the Tagus, the Christian soldiers recoiled from entering the swollen flood. But Adelme, mounted on his ass, rode into the stream, singing the 7th verse of Ps. xx., " Some put their trust in chariots, and some in horses ; but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God." His courage shamed the hesitating soldiers; they plunged into the stream, and the whole Christian army crossed the river. The final stage of the DEMETRIUS OF THE DON 83 struggle was reached in 1510, when Cardinal Ximenes in full pontificals led the Spanish troops against the Moors at Oran. The town was captured, and the victorious cardinal rode through the streets, chanting Ps. cxv., " Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy Name give the praise." In the latter half of the fourteenth century, the young Demetrius, as a child of twelve, became Grand Prince of Russia, with Moscow for his capital (1363). Two centuries were yet to elapse before Ivan the Terrible was crowned and anointed first Czar of Mus- covy. But it was under the youthful Demetrius, known from his victory by the title of " the Don," that Russia made her first great step towards national independ- ence and national unity. In 1380, the Tartar hordes, leaving blackened solitudes in their rear, were advanc- ing upon Moscow. For Russia, enervated by Mongol domination, torn by civil discord, hard pressed on her western borders, and menaced by invasion from the east, the crisis was supreme. The issue seemed in- evitable. But it was as a Holy War that resistance was preached. Blessed by Sergius, the hermit of the Holy Trinity, Demetrius, advanced to meet Mamai and the Mongol invaders on the banks of the Don (Sep- tember 8th, 1380). If his heart quailed at the numbers of the enemy, it was with a psalm that he renewed his courage. After reading aloud Ps. xlvi., " God is our refuge and strength," he plunged into the fight, which ended in the total defeat of the Tartars at Koulikoff. The memory of the victory lives in contemporary literature, in pictures and sculptures, in the Donskoi and SimonofF monasteries, and in the legends with which national gratitude has surrounded the names of Sergius and of Demetrius of the Don. 84 THE MIDDLE AGES In their devotional aspect the Crusades, like pil- grimages, had developed a reverential love for the scenes of our Lord's life on earth. In theory at least, the Pope represented the moral grandeur of mankind, and, in the struggle between the Papacy and the empire, was asserted the claim of the spirit to supremacy over the flesh. Meanwhile the millennium had come and gone, and, with its passing, hopes of the future of humanity were revived. On these and other sides, men's minds were disposed to religious revivals and religious reforms, like those associated with the Cistercian or Franciscan Orders. With the need came the men. St Bernard, by his character and genius, exemplified in practice the principles which he maintained, and embodied them in a personality at once winning and commanding. Free, in its sim- plicity and purity, from religious or secular politics, the Cistercian reform was, in its early stages, the spiritual movement which the Christian world was demanding. In the establishment of the Cistercians in England may be traced, broadly and strongly, the influence of the Psalms. The Founder of the Order was Stephen Harding (1066-1134), a monk of the Benedictine house of Sherborne. It is significant that, as he made his pilgrim's journey to Rome through city, forest, or mountain pass, he daily recited the whole Psalter. On his return, as he passed through the diocese of Langres in Burgundy, he came on a cluster of huts, surrounding a wooden oratory on the slope of a hill above the river Leignes. It was the newly founded (1075) Benedictine monastery of Molesme. Fasci- nated by the solitude of the spot, attracted by the poverty and strictness of the brethren, he entered the THE CISTERCIAN ORDER 85 community. Time passed. The monastery grew wealthy, and relaxed its discipline. In vain Abbot Kobert, Prior Alberic, and Stephen Harding struggled to revive the ancient spirit. At last they determined to leave Molesme, and with twenty-one brethren, the three leaders settled (1098) at Citeaux, in the marshy glade of a wild forest. Here, on the death of Alberic (1109), Stephen was chosen the third Abbot of Citeaux, and here he framed the Eule of the Cistercian Order. Poverty, solitude, and simplicity were the essence of the reform which the Order initiated. The brethren were thus members of a militant community, in war- fare with worldliness, luxury, and insincerity, both in Church and State. Unlike the Benedictines, they were compactly organised. They were not isolated monastic homes, which might relapse unnoticed from their high ideals. Careful provision was made for the periodical visitation and inspection of all the depen- dencies of Citeaux, as well as of Citeaux itself. The dress was of the simplest ; but, as the black scapular fell over the white tunic, it seemed to the brethren that they bore in daily life the Cross of Christ. Their life was to be passed in sequestered villages, in hard manual toil among vineyards or cornfields, or in that meditation which " gathers itself from earthly things to contemplate God." Their scanty food a daily portion of bread and two messes of vegetables was earned by the sweat of the brow. They possessed no property which had ever belonged to the parochial clergy. Their churches were severely simple, but filled with the austere perfection of form and outline. Their music was the Gregorian chant, sung in unison by grave masculine voices. Instead of crucifixes of gold or silver, a crucifix of painted wood was alone 86 THE MIDDLE AGES allowed. Sculptures, pictures, gorgeous vestments were banished. As in the church, so in the scrip- torium. Illuminated figures, elaborate capitals, mar- ginal arabesques, were alike forbidden. In the bareness, severity, and simplicity of their religious life, the Cistercians made no appeal to imagi- nation. For fifteen years no novices were attracted to the marshy solitude of Citeaux. It seemed as though the new community would perish with the deaths of its first founders. But Stephen Harding persevered in his resolution. If any novices came, they would be men of the right stamp. At last his confidence was rewarded. In 1113, thirty men, headed by Bernard, and belonging to the noblest families of Burgundy, entered Citeaux as novices. The " barren woman" was made "to keep house, and to be a joy- ful mother of children." In 1115 had been established the daughter houses of La Ferte, Pontigny, Morimond, and Clairvaux, with Bernard as its first abbot. From each there sprang a whole line of monasteries. In the Cistercian cloisters was thus planted a vine, which spread its branches far and wide, and bore fruit in many lands. A new life was breathed into the monasteries of Europe. In 1128, the first Cistercians settled in England, at Waverley, in Surrey. A little later, another body of monks, sent by Bernard himself, found a home on the banks of the Rye in Yorkshire, where now stand the ruins of the Abbey of Bievaux. A third was established at Fountains ; and the story of the foundation, as told by the Monk Serlo and Hugh of Kirkstall, is almost clothed in the language of the Psalms. The fame of the Cistercians spread abroad through the cloisters of Northern England. It penetrated FOUNTAINS ABBEY 87 within the precincts of the Benedictine Abbey of St Mary at York, where lived many men who walked honestly in the traditions of their predecessors, but fell short of the Cistercian discipline. The piety of the new-comers woke the Benedictines from their lethargy ; it stirred their dormant energies. They chafed at their sojourning "in the tents of Kedar," sickened of the flesh-pots of Egypt, wearied of the fret and fever of men and cities, sighed for " the wings of the dove," that they "might flee away, and be at rest." They longed to wander " far off, and remain in the wilderness." (Ps. lv., verses 6, 7). Chief of the men who were thus moved by the example of the Cistercians was Richard, the sacrist of the house. He and six of his brethren, like-minded with himself, entered into a bond that they would seek a stricter life, and atone for past remissness by a severer discipline. But they dared not reveal their purpose to the prior, lest he should bring their design to nothing. Their fears were without cause. Prior Kichard had felt the same stirring, and formed the same purpose. He gladly associated himself with the others, whose numbers presently rose to thirteen men of but "one heart and one soul." They longed to depart from the convent, and to be grafted on the fruitful vine of the Cistercian Order. But their design became known to other members of the house, and reached the ears of the aged Abbot Godfrey. He charged them to give up an undertaking that cast a slur upon their Order. He even threatened punishment, if they persisted. Within the convent they were treated as traitors and as rebels, and it was only by taking refuge within the church and by appealing to Turstin, Archbishop of York, that 88 THE MIDDLE AGES they escaped violence. In 1132, the thirteen associates passed through the gates of the abbey in the train of Turstin, who begged the Archbishop of Canterbury to protect them, as Legate of the Apostolic See. Their only desire, he urged, was to follow, in their fullest meaning, the vows of their profession. The spirit of God, he says, speaks by the mouth of the Psalmist. " Promise unto the Lord your God, and keep it ; pay thy vows unto the most Highest ; I will pay thee my vows which I promised with my lips." The luxury of their surroundings had choked their spiritual aspira- tions. They longed to flee from the fate of the Israelites in the desert, who " did eat and were filled, for He gave them their own desire ; they were not disappointed of their lust." If these men felt that they could not live uprightly so long as they stayed where they were, it was wrong to compel them to remain. "God," he continues, "who is our hope and strength, a very present help in trouble," was making them a way to escape. Was not their longing to withdraw from the world like that of David, when he yearned to escape from the clash of arms and the tumult of the people : " Lo, then would I get me away far off, and remain in the wilderness " (Ps. lv., verse 7) ? Whether the legate intervened, or not, is uncer- tain. But, in December 1132, Turstin himself took the brethren with him to celebrate the Nativity on his great manorial domains at Ripon. The next day, he led them along the valley of the Skell to a narrow glen, in a tangled thicket of thorns and brushwood, overhung by the hill of Herles-how. Here he left them, after giving them his blessing, and confirming their election of Prior Richard as their first abbot. The new abbot had monks, but no monastery. FOUNTAINS ABBEY 89 He had "nowhere to lay his head," no hiding-place in which to escape the " stormy wind and tempest " (Ps. lv., verse 8). Beneath an elm, which at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries was still standing, the brethren thatched a shelter to serve as church and home, and betook themselves to their labours, plaiting mats, gathering sticks, cutting stakes, and enclosing a garden. So the winter passed. The new community had had time to consider their future mode of life and form of discipline. They determined to send to Bernard himself, narrating their simple history, and telling him that they had adopted the Cistercian Rule, had chosen him as their spiritual father and Clairvaux as their nursing mother. When Bernard heard the story of the two brethren, who were sent to him, he excktifiied, "It is the finger of God. Would that I myself could come over, and behold this exalted spec- tacle, which makes * glad ' the whole ' City of God ' ' (Ps. xlvi., verse 4). His letter was carried to the monks of Fountains by a monk of Clairvaux, who was charged to instruct them in the Cistercian Rule. Thus was founded the great house of Fountains. Years passed, and as the Benedictine fervour had cooled from its early glow, so the Cistercian discipline lost its pristine simplicity. Even at their highest, the ideal of both had been the withdrawal from the world. Cloisters were the realisation of the beata solitude and the sola beatitudo. To timid anxious souls, the inviol- able sanctuaries of monastic life seemed the only refuge from the pillage and pestilence which wasted the fields, the only barrier against the stagnant mass of squalor, famine, and disease that festered in the towns. The times were evil. In the tearful passion of the Stabat Mater, as in the austere grandeur of 90 THE MIDDLE AGES the Dies Irce, were expressed the fears and forebod- ings of the age. But hope was mingled with terror. Europe seemed to be thrilled by a common movement, and Gioacchino di Fiore, the Calabrian seer, expressed the popular instinct, that the dawn was whitening with the glory of a day which should usher in the " age of the spirit," the "age of love," the "age of lilies." Such were the thoughts with which the air of Italy was charged, when St Francis of Assisi grew to man- hood (1182-1226). Artless, almost infantine, in the simplicity of his nature, he was the gentlest and most blameless of mankind the saint and the poet of a poetic people. From the moment that he took Poverty for his bride, and consecrated his life to Christ, no temptation ever allured him from his inviolate fidelity. Active love, not contemplative piety, was the soul of his religion ; practical life, not the seclusion of the cloister, was the sphere of its exercise. The father of the poor, the nurse of the leper, he had the faith to see the Divine image, and the charity to love it, even in its most neglected and repulsive tenements. Though his Brothers Minor developed into an Order, it was as a protest against the monastic spirit that they were originally founded, and it was only so long as the Lady Poverty walked among the sunburned hills of Umbria with a free step by the side of Chastity, and carolled hymns with Obedience, that the institution exemplified the idea of its founder. The call of Francis came to him in the words of the Gospel. But if, as is recorded of him in Brother Leo's Legend of the Saint, Francis refused to allow a novice the use of a Psalter, the same biographer again and again illustrates his love of the Psalms. Thus he ever walked upon stones " with great trembling and CANTICLE OF THE SUN 91 reverence " for the love of Him that is called " the Kock," repeating the words " Thou didst set my feet upon the rock " (Ps. xl., verse 2). On Psalm cxlviii. is modelled his Canticle of the Sun, in which he sums up his love towards all created things, and especially towards those in which he saw a figure of anything pertaining to God or religion. " Most high, almighty, and excellent Lord, to Thee be praise and glory and honour, and all blessing ! To Thee alone, Most High, do they belong, and no man is worthy to name Thy name. " Praised be Thou, my Lord, with all Thy creatures, and, above all, our Brother the Sun, who brings to us the light and the day. Beautiful is he, and radiant in his glorious splendour; and to us, Most High, he beareth witness of Thee. "Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Sister the Moon, and for all the Stars. In the heavens Thou hast set them, bright and precious and beautiful. " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Brother the Wind, for the air, the cloud, the calm, and all weather, whereby Thou sustainest life in all Thy creatures. "Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Sister the Water, for manifold are her services, and she is humble, precious, and pure. " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Brother the Fire. By him Thou dost lighten our darkness. Beautiful is he, joyful, very mighty, and strong. " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Sister, mother Earth, who doth sustain and nourish us, and bringeth forth in abundance divers fruits, flowers of many colours, and grass. "Praised be Thou, my Lord, for those who for love of Thee, forgive their enemies, and endure weak- 92 THE MIDDLE AGES ness and tribulation. Yea, blessed are those who shall continue in peace, for by Thee, Most High, shall they be crowned. " Praised be Thou, my Lord, for our Sister, the Death of the body, from whom no living man can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin ! Blessed are they who are conformed to Thy most holy will, for the second death shall have no power to hurt them. " Praise and bless my Lord ! give thanks to Him and serve Him with all humbleness of heart." * This was the song that the brethren chanted to the dying man, while, above the house where he lay, multitudes of crested larks, circling round the thatch, " by their sweet singing did seem to be praising the Lord along with him." As he had lived, so he died in the arms of his Lady Poverty, stripped of his clothing, and laid on the bare ground. Psalms were sung to him, and from time to time he added his voice to the voices of his brethren, returning with special fondness to Psalm cxlii. : " I cried unto the Lord with my voice ; yea, even unto the Lord did I make my supplication," etc. At nightfall, on October 3rd, 1226, he passed away. Hitherto the influence of the Psalms has been illustrated from religious or semi-ecclesiastical history ; but examples are not wanting in the more purely secular history of the Middle Ages. They moulded public opinion, and created a standard of civil govern- * The text will be found in Sabatier's Life of St Francis of Assisi (tr. L. S. Houghton, 1896, adopting M. Arnold's version), pp. 304-5 : " Altissimu, omnipotente, bon signore, tue so le laude la gloria e 1'onore," etc. An English verse translation is given in A Vision of Saints, by Lewis Morris, " Saint Francis of Assisi.' WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 93 ment. With them are associated scenes in the lives or deaths of William the Conqueror, Vladimir Mono- machus, David I. of Scotland, Abelard and Heloise, St Louis of France, and William Wallace. William the Conqueror died in September 1087, in circumstances which moved the historian, Orderi- cus Vitalis, to moralise in the language of the Psalms. The aggressions of Philip of France, and, as the story runs, the jest which he had aimed at the unwieldy size of the English king, aroused the latter's wrath. Claiming as his own the borderland of France and Normandy, William swore by the resurrection and splendour of God, that he would light a hundred thousand candles at the expense of Philip. He kept his word. Cornfields, vineyards, and orchards blazed up to the gates of Mantes, and the border fortress itself lay a heap of burning ashes. In his hour of triumph, William received his death-wound. His horse, stumbling among the embers, threw the king upon the iron pommel of his saddle with such force that he received a fatal injury. Carried to Rouen to die, he caused himself to be conveyed from the noise of the city to the Abbey of St Gervais. In the early morning of September 9th, the great bell of the cathedral went for prime. The king asked what it meant. When he received the answer, he stretched forth his arms, raised his eyes to heaven, commended himself to his Lady Mary, the Holy Mother of God, that, by her intercession, she would reconcile him to her dear Son, Jesus Christ, and so breathed his last. His attendants hastily mounted their horses, and rode at speed to secure their houses and lands. His servants, after stripping the body of the dead king, made off, "like kites with their prey." "In a house 94 THE MIDDLE AGES not his own, foully stripped by his servants, there lay on the bare floor, from the first to the third hour of the day, the body of the mighty king, whom, but now, a hundred thousand warriors had eagerly served, and before whom many nations had trembled in fear." "Put not your trust in princes," moralises the chronicler, Ordericus Vitalis, whose pages teem with passages from the Psalms, " which are nought, O ye sons of men ; but in God, the Living and the True, who is the Maker of all. If riches increase, set not your heart upon them. For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of it as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof fadeth away ; but the word of the Lord endure th for ever." With the baptism of St Vladimir at Cherson, and that of his whole people, in the waters of the Dnieper at Kieff, in 988, had begun the history of Eussia. A century later, in Vladimir Monomachus, who is said to have married, as his first wife, Gytha, the daughter of Harold of England, Russia came into contact with the remotest power of Western Europe. When, in 1113, Vladimir became the Great Prince at Kieff, he was instructed by the Patriarch Nicephorus in his duties as a ruler. The lesson was a comment on Ps. ci., with an exhortation to get it by heart, to recite it often, to meditate upon it, and by it to fashion his government. "My song," so begins the letter, "shall be of the duties of my station ; of mercy and judgment ; first, of mercy, that is, of tender fatherly care for the welfare, spiritual, moral, and temporal, of all my subjects; and then, also, of judgment, that is, of doing true justice between man and man, of the restraint of wickedness and vice, and of the punish- ment of wrongdoers, both for their own chastisement VLADIMIR MONOMACHUS 95 and for the good of their fellows. Unto Thee, O Lord, will I sing. Unto Thee will I lift up my heart in meditation. I will not follow any other guide in my rule. I will not look to the tempter, though he offer me all the kingdoms of the world ; nor to the idols of ambition, glory, praise of men, love of country, civilisa- tion, knowledge, progress; nor yet to any selfish motives of pleasure, passion, ease. But, with fear and love, will I offer my thoughts, my motives, my designs, my deeds, my meditations, my prayers unto Thee, O Lord ; for Thou art my King and my God, and I am Thy servant. For Thy sake only, and because it is Thy will, I will strive, with Thy help, to rule my fellow-men, my brethren, whom otherwise I would choose to serve. So shall I have understanding in the way of godliness." In the spirit of the psalm Vladimir ruled his subjects. With all his faults, there burned within him a spark of manly goodness, which lights up his dying injunctions to his son, and draws its heat from the Psalter. After describing the wonders of creation and the goodness of the Creator, in the words of David, Vladimir thus proceeds : " Praise God and love men. Neither fasting, nor solitude, nor monastic life will bring you life eternal ; but doing good alone. Forget not the poor ; feed them. Remember that all riches come from God, and are given you but for a while. ... Be fathers to the fatherless ; judge the cause of widows ; suffer not the strong to oppress the weak. . . . My brethren said to me, ' Help us to drive out the sons of Rostislaf, or else give up our alliance/ But, I said, 'I cannot forget that I have kissed the Cross/ Then I opened the Book of Psalms, and read there with deep stirring of the heart, 'Why art thou so 96 THE MIDDLE AGES vexed, O my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me ? Put thy trust in God. I will confess my faults, and He is gracious.' ' Peter Abelard, in 1114, was the most famous teacher in Paris, then the most renowned school in Europe. The idol of the city, he had reached the pinnacle of worldly success. Then began his fatal passion for Heloise. The lovers were separated ; on Abelard a barbarous vengeance was taken, and Heloise was immured in a convent. It is doubtful whether they ever met again. On the banks of the Ardusson, in a quiet side- valley, twelve miles from Troyes, Abelard built the oratory of the Paraclete. There he passed several years, till, in 1125, he was invited to be abbot of the ancient Abbey of St Gildas de Ehuys, near Vannes. He accepted the offer, moved, perhaps, by memories of his boyish studies at the dependent monastery of Locmenach. Meanwhile Heloise and her nuns had been driven from Argenteuil. When Abelard heard that she was a wanderer once more, he made over to her and her nuns his deserted hermitage of Paraclete. There, by " Paraclete's white walls and silver springs," the love of Heloise for Abelard once more broke silence. Pope was right in thinking that her life could never have been "The blameless vestal's lot, The world forgetting, by the world forgot"; that Abelard's image may have often stolen between her and her God ; that she may have heard his voice in every psalm, or dropped with every bead too " soft a tear." But be this as it may, Abelard's mournful autobiography, the Historia Calamitatum, fell into her ABELARD AND HELOISE 97 hands. The grave of her past was reopened by the story of his sufferings, and Heloise wrote to " her lord, yea, her father; to her husband, yea, her brother; from his handmaid, yea, daughter ; from his wife, yea, his sister ; to Abelard from Heloise." Abelard answers her tender words, if the letters are genuine, in the language of a man to whom all earthly things had grown cold and colourless. To her second letter he replies by sending, at her request, rules for her convent. At the close of his answer, he exhorts her to patience and resignation, concluding with a prayer, in which he betrays the depth of his own feeling, and definitely quotes from the Psalter : "Forgive, O most Merciful! forgive, O Mercy itself ! our sins, great as they are ; and may the multitude of our offences know the height and breadth of Thy unspeakable clemency. Chastise the guilty here, that Thou mayest spare them hereafter. Punish them for a time, that Thou mayest spare them for 3ternity. Use against Thy servants the rod of cor- rection, not the sword of wrath. Afflict the body, :hat Thou mayest save the soul. Cleanse, avenge not ; be gentle rather than just ; a merciful Father, rather :han an austere Lord. ' Examine us, Lord, and prove us/ as the prophet asked for himself (Ps. xxvi. 2). It is as if he said, ' Examine the strength there is, ind suit the burden of temptation to it/ ... Thou aast joined us, O Lord, and hast set us apart, when it oleased Thee, and as it pleased Thee. Now, O Lord, :hat which Thou hast begun in mercy, do Thou in nercy perfect, and those whom Thou hast severed in lie world, join for ever unto Thyself in Heaven. O Lord, our hope, our portion, our expectation, our consolation, who art blessed for ever. Amen. G 98 THE MIDDLE AGES "Farewell in Christ, thou Spouse of Light, in Christ farewell, in Christ live ! Amen." Contemporary with Vladimir Monomachus and with Abelard, was David I., the just and merciful ruler of Scotland, who died May 24th, 1153. As Ailred of Kievaulx tells the story of his death, the king received the viaticum, venerated the famous black cross, and spent his last hours of conscious existence in repeating verses from the Psalms : " I deal with the thing that is lawful and right : O give me not over unto mine oppressors " (Ps. cxix., verse 121), and " In the time of my trouble I will call upon Thee, for Thou hearest me " (Ps. Ixxxvi., verse 7). By a psalm St Louis of France regulated his life. Before taking the seat of judgment, he was wont to repeat the words : " Blessed are they that alway keep judgment, and do righteousness " (Ps. cvi., verse 3). The Mass for the first Sunday in Advent began with the words, " Unto Thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul. My God, I have put my trust in Thee" (Ps. xxv., verse 1). On that day Louis was crowned (1226). Joinville, who notes the fact, observes that even in his death the king had perfect trust in God. It was with a psalm on his lips that Louis died. In July 1270, he had taken the Cross, and embarked at Aigues Mortes for Africa. Before the walls of Tunis, the climate and the plague did their deadly work. At last Louis IX. himself was struck down by sickness. Three weeks he lingered. On August 25th, 1270, laid on a bed of ashes, he died, murmuring the words of Ps. v., verse 7, "But as for me, I will come into Thine house, even upon the multitude of Thy mercy ; and in Thy fear will I worship toward Thy holy temple." WILLIAM WALLACE 99 At the execution of William Wallace, the dying patriot found comfort in the Psalter, which had been the companion of his adventurous wanderings. Betrayed to the English by the "fause Menteith," tried for treason in Westminster Hall, he was executed at West Smithfield (August 23rd, 1305) with all the barbarities of the age. As he stood on the scaffold, in the midst of the instruments for his torture, he begged Lord Clifford to restore to him the Psalter, which had been taken from him at his capture. The prayer was granted. Unable to hold the book in his chained hands, he asked a priest to keep it open for him, and, as he hung from the gallows, he continued to look on it with love and devotion. After he was taken down and, still alive and sensible, disembowelled, his eyes remained fixed upon the Psalter, until they closed in death. Nor was it only in mediaeval action that the influ- ence of the Psalms may be traced. Mediaeval thought also fell under their spell. The science and the literature as well as the history of the Middle Ages felt their sway. By the Psalms the science of the Middle Ages was to a great extent governed. The earth, argued mediaeval cosmogonists, cannot be in motion, or suspended in mid-air; rather, it is firmly fixed, for " He hath made the round world so fast that it can- not be moved " (Ps. xciii., verse 2), and " He laid the foundations of the earth that it never should move at any time " (Ps. civ., verse 5). And its centre is Jerusalem. The column in the Holy City, at midday, casts no shadow, and " God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed " (Ps. xlvi., verse 5). On the text, " Praise him, all ye heavens ; and ye 100 THE MIDDLE AGES waters that are above the heavens " (Ps. cxlviii., verse 4), were built strange theories. Heaven was divided into two by the firmament, which lay between our atmosphere and the Paradise of God. Below the firmament lived the angels ; above it were the waters. Jerome held that the waters were frozen ; Ambrose believed that the outside firmament was a hard shell, on the outer edge of which were stored the waters ; some thought that the terrestrial universe was sur- rounded by huge walls, on which were supported the firmament and the waters they contained. The pur- pose for which the waters were collected, was disputed. It was believed that they were gathered for another deluge, or to moderate the fervent heat of the heavenly bodies, or to lubricate the axis on which the heavens moved round the earth. In the air exhaled from the earth were lightning and hail, snow and vapours, wind and storm (Ps. cxlviii., verse 8). Earthquakes were explained from Psalm cxxxv., verse 7, by the winds being drawn from God's secret treasuries, or by the motions of Leviathan (Ps. civ., verse 26), who, when his tail is scorched by the sun, seeks to seize it, and labours so powerfully that the earth is shaken by his efforts. The rise and fall of tides was explained by his drinking in and spewing out vast volumes of water. With a strange mixture of Pagan with Christian thought, it was supposed that the powers of the air could produce thunder, lightning, and rain, and against their baneful influences the favourite exorcism was Psalm civ. Of the monastic spirit in literature, the De Imita- tione Christi is the finest product. The writer, accord- ing to some of the best authorities, was Thomas Haemmerlein, called, as was the custom of the day, THOMAS A KEMPlS a Kempis, from the small town of Kempen, near Dusseldorf. A little, fresh-coloured man, simple in worldly affairs, shy and retiring in his habits, too absent-minded to be long entrusted with any practical part of the government of the convent of Mount St Agnes, Thomas a Kempis was given, as a biographer says of him, "to the interior life and devotion." In solitude, silence, and humility, he bowed himself before his Saviour, that so he might catch the faint- est whisper of His voice, and conform himself, with- out hindrance of earthly barriers, to its slightest command. The fruit of that close personal com- munion is the wonderful book, in which throbs the spiritual heart of mediaeval Christianity. From the nature of its subject, the Imitation might be expected to rely mainly on the New Testament. But in thought, feeling, and language, it is largely based on the Psalter. " I will hearken what the Lord God will say concern- ing me ; for He shall speak peace unto His people, and to His saints, that they turn not again " (Psalm Ixxxv., verse 8) supplies the keynote to the third book, which treats of internal consolation ; and throughout the whole work, the Psalms are more largely cited than the Gospels, and the illustrations from the Psalter outnumber all the passages which are quoted from the four records of our Lord's life upon earth. The religious calm, which, together with the most ardent love, characterises the Imitation, was not lightly won. In his Soliloquy of the Soul, Thomas a Kempis gives the history of his inner life, and chronicles the perplexities through which his soul gained its absolute peace. The book is in great part an impassioned ex- pansion of texts drawn from the Psalms, such as : " Blessed be the name of His Majesty for ever " (Ps 102 THE MIDDLE AGES Ixxii., verse 19) : "All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto Thee ? " (Ps. xxxv., verse 10) : " Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation " (Ps. xxxv., verse 3) : " My soul hangeth upon Thee " (Ps. Ixiii., verse 9) : " Praised be God, who hath not . . . turned His mercy from me " (Ps. Ixvi., verse 18). Yet another illustration of the influence of the Psalms upon devotional literature may be taken from Thomas's "Little Alphabet of the Monks in the School of Christ," a series of short precepts, drawn up for those who wished to adopt the Eule of the brotherhood of the Canons Regular. In form it is modelled on the 119th Psalm, the initial letters of the precepts running consecutively through the alphabet : "Aspire to be unknown, and to be accounted nothing; for this is more healthful and profitable for thee than the praise of men.