WHEN one of the great Danish armies landed CHAP. in England, the following penitentiary injunctions were issued:

III.

Proclam

ation of an

Anglo

"We all need that we should diligently strive to obtain God's mercy and mild-heartedness, and that we, by his help, may Saxon pubwithstand our enemies.

"Now it is our will that all folk should do general penance for three days, on bread, herbs, and water; that is, on (Donanday, Tiperday, Wodnesday,) Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Michaelmas; and let every man come barefoot to church, without gold and ornaments, and go to confession (shift), and all go out with the holy relics, and call inwardly in their heart diligently on Christ; and let every man set apart a hide-penny, or a penny's worth, and bring it to church, and afterwards divide it into three before the confessor and the town-gerefa, and, if he will not perform this, let him pay, according to law; a bunda, or villager, thirty pence; a throl, or slave, by his hide; a thegn, thirty shillings. For the three days let them be freed from work, and in every minster let all the company sing their Psalter the three days, and let every mass-priest say mass for our lord, and for all his people; and there, besides, let men say masses every day, in every minster one mass separately for the necessities that surround us, till things become better: and at every tide-song let all the assembly, with bended knees, before God's altar, sing the third Psalm; and every year henceforth do this, till the Almighty pity us, and grant us to overcome our enemy. GOD HELP US. AMEN." 26

lic fast.

peniten

THE Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastics visited most Their other crimes with appropriate penance, and especially tiary syshomicides, both voluntary and involuntary, and tems. even the intention to commit them. What they called their deeplike, or severe penance, is thus described:

"He must lay aside his weapons, and travel barefoot a long way; nor be sheltered of a night. He must fast and watch and pray both day and night, and willingly weary himself, and be so careless of his dress that the iron should not come to his hair or nails.

26 MS. C. C. Cantab. ap. Wanley, p. 138.

BOOK

X.

a

Liberty to buy off penance.

“ He must not enter a warm bath, nor a soft bed; nor eat flesh, nor any thing by which he can be intoxicated; nor may he

go inside of a church, but seek some holy place, and confess his guilt, and pray for intercession. He must kiss no man, but be always grieving for his sins.” 27

It was an invention of deep policy, though of suspicious piety, that they allowed the wealthy to purchase a removal of the penances imposed. This gave the church an interest that crimes should be committed, as well as that the penances should be too severe to be personally performed; yet this dangerous privilege was used for the best purposes. The following is one of their regulations on this subject :

“ Many men may redeem their penances by alms:

“ He that hath ability may raise a church to the praise of God; and, if he has wherewithal, let him give land to it, and allow ten young men, so that they may serve in it, and minister the daily service. He may repair churches where he can, and make folk-ways, with bridges over deep waters, and over miry places; and let him assist poor men's widows, and step-children, and foreigners. He may free his own slaves, and redeem the liberty of those of other masters, and especially the poor captives of war; and let him feed the needy, and house them, clothe and warm them, and give them bathing and beds.” 28

It is impossible to praise too highly the benevolence of these substitutions.

The permission to buy off penance by money could not but become a source of the greatest abuses; nor was it less objectionable to commute them, if at all useful, for certain quantities of repetitions, by rote, of some devotional forms ; which, thus reiterated, could have little more meaning or efficacy than the same amount of unintelligible nonsense, or of a parrot's exclamations.

The law thus provided for it :

CHAP.

III.

“ A man may redeem one day's fasting by a penny, or by repeating two hundred Psalms. He may redeem a twelvemonth's fasting by thirty shillings, or may set a man free who is of that worth. And for one day's fast he may sing six times the Beati Immaculati, and six Pater-nosters; or for a day's fast he may kneel and bend sixty times to the earth, with a Pater-noster ; or he may bend all his limbs to God, and fifteen times sing • Miserere mei Dominus,' and fifteen Pater-nosters." 29

That the Anglo-Saxons continued the error of their the ancient world, in referring the phenomena of nature almost always to supernatural agency, though with the substitution of saints, angels, and demons, for the gods and goddesses, heroes, genii, and dæmons of antiquity, is a true assertion as to the nation at large, and as to their religious instructors, with few exceptions. Their ignorance of natural science led them to this mistake, as its abundance with us has urged our philosophy into the opposite extreme. Our ancestors were inclined to ascribe nothing to natural causes; and we tend to attribute to these every phenomenon. They saw nothing but the Divinity acting around them; and some of us exclude Him wholly from His creation. Both extremes are erroneous. The probability is, that the Supreme does every thing by the natural causes which He has organised to act for the general good, so far as their agency will from time to time produce it; but where their operation becomes at any time insufficient to achieve His purposes, they are assisted by His immediate interference, or by the introduction of new effective agents that are more suited to the new circumstances that arise, and the new improvements that He intends to establish. He, as our

X.

BOOK Great Alfred suggested, binds Himself in no chains

as to the future guidance of nature, but keeps Himself free, at all times, to do whatever His wisdom finds to be successively most expedient for the benefit of His whole creation, and therefore for every part of it; for the whole cannot be benefited unless the portions partake of the advantage.

But the Anglo-Saxons pursued the custom of the day in venerating those who, after death, were invested by the ecclesiastical authorities with the dig. nity of saints; they had several of these of native origin, who were held in great estiination, and whose lives were written with zealous enthusiasm. 30 They ascribed to their saints great powers over nature and disease, and human life, as the classical nations had done to their fabulous divinities; and thus impeded their own progress in natural philosophy, by substituting imaginary agents for natural

Our ancestors also respected hermits, who lived in woods or cells, retired from the world. 31

The evil personage called Anti-christ, who, it is supposed, will accompany the last ages of the world, was a frequent subject of contemplation among the

causes.

Their views of Antichrist.

30 As St. Guthlac, St. Edwin, St. Oswald, St. Boniface, St. Swithn, St. Neot, St. Edmund, St. Chad, St. Winifreda, St. Dunstan, St. Ethelwald, St. Edward, and many others.

31 That the lives of the Saxon hermits, or anchorites, were not un. usefully employed, we have a very splendid proof in the Saxon MS. of the Gospels in the British Museum, Nero D. 4. Wanley justly calls this an incomparable specimen of Anglo-Saxon calligraphy,"

It is beautifully illuminated and decorated : Billfrith, the anchorite, was the person who so adorned it. He is mentioned by his Saxon coadjutor, Aldred, to have ornamented it with gold and gems, and with silver gilt over. Turgot, the Anglo-Saxon, also declares him to have been “ in aurificii arte precipuus." Wan. ib. It seems to have been written about the time of Alfred.

p. 253.

Anglo-Saxons. They thought that he was about to come in the tenth and eleventh centuries. 32 One of their discourses upon him begins with “Beloved men! there is great need that we should be aware of the fearful time that is now approaching. Now, very soon will be the times of Anti-christ; therefore we ought to expect him, and carefully think

A long detail then follows on this subject 33; but the most curious account of him is that of Albinus, which he addresses to Charles

upon him.”

magne. 34

:2 Elfric thought, from the calamities of Ethelred's reign, that the end of the world was near : By this we may understand that this world is passing away, and very nigh its end." MSS. Vesp. D. 14.

33 The Sermon is printed, with a Latin translation, in the Appendix to the Saxon Dictionary. 34 A few particulars of Alcuin's fancy may amuse.

“ He is to be born of a most flagitious robber and harlot, with the aid of the Devil, at Babylon. He will pervade Palestine; convert kings, princes, and people; and send his missionaries all over the world. He will work many miracles ; bring fire from heaven; make trees vegetate in a moment; calm and agitate the sea at his will ; transform various objects ; change the course of rivers ; command the winds; and apparently raise the dead. He will bitterly persecute Christianity. He will discover hidden treasures, and lavish them among his followers : a dreadful period of tribulation will follow. He will not come till the Roman empire has entirely ceased, and that cannot be while the kings of the French continue. One of the French kings is, at last, to obtain the whole Roman empire, and will be the greatest and the last of all kings. He is to go to Jerusalem, and lay down his crown and sceptre on Mount Olivet. Then Anti-christ is to appear, and Gog and Magog to emerge. Against them this French king of the Romans is to march; to conquer all nations, destroy all idols, and restore Christianity. The Jews are to be restored,” &c. &c. Alc. Op. 1211-1215. Our Elfric, in the tenth century, thought his reign was then approaching, for he wrote: “Dear men! there is great need that we should be aware of the fearful time which is to come. Now will be very soon the times of Anti-christ.” Wanl. Cat. p. 28. 33.