The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12)

Christianity into his dominions. The same influence contributed to extend it in the other

] and favored with more frequent revelations of the Divine will; women were therefore heard with an uncommon attention in all deliberations, and particula

a declared profanation of what they had so long held sacred, and that, everywhere beholding the same places to which they had formerly resorted for religious comfort, they might be gradually reconciled to the new doctrines and ceremonies which, were there introduced; and as the sacrifices used in the Pagan worship were always attended with feasting, and consequently were highly grateful to the multitude, the Pope ordered that oxen, should as usual be slaughtered near the church, and the people indulged in their ancient festivity.[39] Whatever popular customs of heathen

nt the prime objects of their ambition. Wulfhere, king of the West Saxons, bestowed the Isle of Wight on the king of Sussex, to persuade him to embrace Christianity.[41] This zeal operated in the same manner in favor of their instructors. The greatest kings and conquerors frequently resigned their c

pair frequently united forty and fifty in a body, and, joining their hands, precipitated themselves from the cliffs, and were either drowned or dashed to pieces on the rocks. Though a maritime people, they knew not how to fish; and this ignorance probably arose from a remnant of Druidical superstition, which had forbidden the use of that sort

ed to others; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to the construction of churches, bridges, and other works of general utility.[44] They extracted the fruits of virtue even from crimes; and whenever a great man expiated his private offences, he provided in the same act for the public happiness. The monasteries were then the only bodies corporate in the kingdom; and if any persons were desirous to perpetuate their charity by a fund for the relief of the sick or indigent, there was no other way than to confide this trust to some monastery. The monks were the sole channel through which the bounty of the rich could pass in any continued stream to the poor; and the people turned their eyes towards them in all their distresses. We must observe, that the monks of that time, especially those from Ireland,[45] who had a considerable share in the conversion of all the northern parts, did not show that rapacious desire of riches which long disgraced and finally ruined their successors. Not only did they not seek, but seemed even to shun such donations. This prevented that alarm which might

r fortunes, they were reinstated in their former dignities, thought they could never make a sufficient return for the safety they had enjoyed under the sacred hospitality of these roofs. Not content to enrich them with ample possessions, that others also might partake of the protection they had experienced, they formally erected into an asylum those monast

r protection against the great and powerful; for who would violate the tomb of his ancestors or his own? It was not an unnatural weakness to think that some advantage might be derived from lying in holy places and amongst holy persons: and this superstition was fomen

evival of learning. The sacred writings had not been translated into any vernacular language, and even the ordinary service of the Church was still continued in the Latin tongue; all, therefore, who formed themselves for the ministry, and hoped to make any figure in it, were in a manner driven to the study of the writers of polite antiquity, in order to qualify themselves for their most ordinary functions. By this means a practice liable in itself to great objections had a considerable share in preserving the wrecks of literature, and was one means of conveying down to our times those inestimable monuments which otherwise, in the tumult of barbarous confusion on one hand, and untaught piety on the other, must inevitably have perished. The second circumstance, the pilgrimages of that age, if considered in itself, was as liable to objection as the former; but it proved of equal advantage to the cause of literature. A principal object of these pious journeys was Rome, which contained all the little that was left in the Western world of ancient learning and taste. The other grea

times carried on by a sort of migratory instinct, sometimes by the spirit of conquest; at one time avarice drives men from their homes, at another they are actuated by a thirst of knowledge; where none of these causes can ope

ed at all: for it was altogether necessary to draw certain men from the general rude and fierce society, and wholly to set a bar between them and the barbarous life of the rest of the world, in order to fit them for study and the

d most valuable of these accessions was made in the time and by the care of Theodorus, the seventh Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a Greek by birth, a man of a high ambitious spirit, and of a mind more liberal and talents better cultivated than generally fell to the lot of the Western prelates. He first introduced the study of his native language into this island. He brought with him a number of valuable books

those days it was high in reputation as the site of a monastery which had acquired great renown for the rigor of its studies and the severity of its ascetic discipline. Its authority was extended over all the northern parts of Britain and Ireland; and the monks of Hii even exercised episcopal jurisdiction over all those regions. They had a considerable share both in the religious and literate institution of the Northumbrians. Another island, of still less importance, in the mouth of the Tees [Tweed?], and called Lindi

tivals of the Church. Both the comments and sermons are generally allegorical in the construction of the text, and simply moral in the application. In these discourses several things seem strained and fanciful; but herein he followed entirely the manner of the earlier fathers, from whom the greatest part of his divinity is not so much imitated as extracted. The systematic and logical method, which seems to have been first introduced into theology by John of Damascus, and which af

f an impious theology and a loose morality. The fine visions of Plato fell into some discredit by the abuse which heretics had made of them; and the writings of Aristotle seem to have been then the only ones much regarded, even in natural philosophy, in which branch of science alone they are unworthy of him. Beda entirely follows his system. The appearances of Nature are explained by matter and form, and by the four vulgar elements, acted upon by the four supposed qualities of hot, dry, moist, and cold. His astronomy is on the common system of the ancients, sufficient for the few purposes to which they applied it, but otherwise imperfect and grossly erroneous. He makes the moon larger than the earth; though a reflection on the nature of eclipses, which he understood, might h

eathen antiquity. He made a separate book of shining commonplaces and remarkable passages extracted from the works of Cicero, of whom he was a great admirer, though he seems to have been not an happy or diligent imitator in his style. From a view of these pieces we may form an idea of what stock in the science the English at that time possessed, and what advances they had made. That work of Beda which is the best known and most esteemed is the Ecclesiastical History of the English nation. Disgraced by a want of choice and frequently by a confused ill disposition of his matter, and blemished with a degree of credulity next to infantine, it is still a valuable, and for the time a surprising performance. The book opens with a description of this island which would not

furnished even with an alphabet should in so short a time have established so flourishing a seminary of learning, a

ry new technical idea introduced either by theology or science. They were fond of poetry; they sung at all their feasts; and it was counted extremely disgraceful not to be able to take a part in these performances, even when they challenged each other to a sudden exertion of the poetic spirit. C?dmon, afterwards one o

TNO

um putant; nec aut consilia carum aspernantur a

st. Eccl. Li

Id. c

's History o

st. Eccl. Li

st. Eccl. Li

m. Concil

per aquas profundas et super c?nosas vias; ... manumittat servos suos proprios

em sacerdotes erant illius temporis ab avaritia immunes, ut nec territoria nisi co

lmkill,