Straits of ardour chapter 9 quest9/22/2023 ![]() ![]() Columba died in the very year of the landing of Augustine, and his Celtic followers had already done earnest work from Iona. But an Englishman may be pardoned for rejoicing that the finest gifts come not from across the Edition: current Page: channel, but from the Northern portions of the island itself. Benedict Biscop, with his ardour for books and buildings, follows Theodore and Hadrian Wilfrid the Romanized prelate appears, full like Augustine of passion for administration. Presently the English themselves-docile pupils always-can continue the tradition. Time passes on: we behold the arrival of the Greek Archbishop, Theodore, with Hadrian, his African deacon they bring with them the best learning of the day, Greek letters, a love of art, music, and ordered peace. We watch “the simplicity of their innocent life” and hark to the “sweetness of their heavenly doctrine.” We see their wise development of orderly system, their care for just administration down to the most trivial detail, the dignity and gentle force of their dealing with the noble native princes. A sketch, first, of physical conditions and of earliest history on that island then come the Italian monks, headed by Augustine, and the story proper begins. We contemplate the cosmopolitan power of the Church Catholic, pouring her riches with generous largesse into the little island of the North. It presents the whole dramatic situation, not only in England, but in the civilized world. The Ecclesiastical History would be a treasure-house did it contain nothing but the charming tales of Alban and Augustine, of Edwin, Paulinus, Coifi, Cædmon, Cuthbert, Cedd and Aidan. One turns to modern histories for a more easily intelligible and consecutive account of the great story but Bede has the freshness of the source. To dwell on that process as here presented is to embrace an unique opportunity. Bede tells the story of the conversion of England, and his books and his personality are among the best products of the process he describes. How balanced and disciplined is his spirit! With what serene pains does he cite authorities, sift testimony! What eagerness for knowledge of every order do his books display! So steady an intellectual light illumines them that we are tempted to hail the love of truth as the best gift of Christianity to the English nation. But these works are written in the scrupulous manner of the finished scholar, living secure laborious Edition: current Page: days. Social conditions in many parts of England were still violent and unsettled when Bede wrote: we need indeed go no further than his own works to find pictures of Pagan manners and morals that recall the days of Saga. Though it turns for theme to the Scriptures, it paraphrases the Old Testament rather than the New, gloats over scenes of battle and tempest, and opens its ears more readily to the screams of the raven than to the singing of heavenly choirs. A turbulent exaltation pervades it, still echoing with the vague imaginative terrors that were slowly to vanish before the invasion of letters. It was a temper which, even when reconciled to Christianity, continued mournful and brooding. ![]() In the verse of the so-called Cædmonian School, of the origin of which Bede tells the lovely legend, we see clearly the temper of seventh and eighth century England. The father of Bede may, for all we know, have been in his youth a heathen fighter and sea-rover such as we encounter in that poem. While Bede was composing his History in the new monastery at Jarrow, built by Benedict Biscop, some brother-scribe in a Northumbrian monastery-quite conceivably in Jarrow itself-may have been at work, redacting the text of Beowulf, our precious Old English epic of the slayer of monsters and dragons. Their spirit is sweetly reasonable as that of Westcott, tranquil as that of Keble or Stanley. For here are the first fruits of the Christian scholarship of England, and they read as if behind them lay a long tradition of gentle learning. The sensitive reader handles these pages with reverence not untouched by amaze. THE LIVES OF THE HOLY ABBOTS OF WEREMOUTH AND JARROW BENEDICT, CEOLFRID, EASTERWINE, SIGFRID, AND HUETBERHT.THE LIFE AND MIRACLES OF SAINT CUTHBERT, BISHOP OF LINDISFARNE.THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH NATION.The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (and Lives of Saints and Bishops) Table of Contents ![]()
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