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Page 5
A hundred years later than St. Augustine, comes the rule of St.
Benedict--the Monastic rule, virtually, of European Christianity, ever
since--and theologically the Law of Works, as distinguished from the
Law of Faith. St. Augustine and all the disciples of St. Augustine
tell Christians what they should feel and think: St. Benedict and all
the disciples of St. Benedict tell Christians what they should say and
do.
In the briefest, but also the perfectest distinction, the disciples
of St. Augustine are those who open the door to Christ--"If any man
hear my voice"; but the Benedictines those to whom Christ opens the
door--"To him that knocketh it shall be opened."
Now, note broadly the course and action of this rule, as it combines
with the older one. St. Augustine's, accepted heartily by Clovis,
and, with various degrees of understanding, by the kings and queens
of the Merovingian dynasty, makes seemingly little difference in
their conduct, so that their profession of it remains a scandal to
Christianity to this day; and yet it lives, in the true hearts among
them, down from St. Clotilde to her great grand-daughter Bertha, who
in becoming Queen of Kent, builds under its chalk downs her own little
chapel to St. Martin, and is the first effectively and permanently
useful missionary to the Saxons, the beginner of English
Erudition,--the first laid corner stone of beautiful English
character.
I think henceforward you will find the memorandum of dates which I
have here set down for my own guidance more simply useful than those
confused by record of unimportant persons and inconsequent events,
which form the indices of common history.
From the year of the Saxon invasion 449, there are exactly 400 years
to the birth of Alfred, 849. You have no difficulty in remembering
those cardinal years. Then, you have Four great men and great events
to remember, at the close of the fifth century. Clovis, and the
founding of Frank Kingdom; Theodoric and the founding of the Gothic
Kingdom; Justinian and the founding of Civil law; St. Benedict and the
founding of Religious law.
Of, Justinian, and his work, I am not able myself to form any
opinion--and it is, I think, unnecessary for students of history to
form any, until they are able to estimate clearly the benefits, and
mischief, of the civil law of Europe in its present state. But to
Clovis, Theodoric, and St. Benedict, without any question, we owe more
than any English historian has yet ascribed,--and they are easily held
in mind together, for Clovis ascended the Frank throne in the year of
St. Benedict's birth, 481. Theodoric fought the battle of Verona, and
founded the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy twelve years later, in 493,
and thereupon married the sister of Clovis. That marriage is always
passed in a casual sentence, as if a merely political one, and while
page after page is spent in following the alternations of furious
crime and fatal chance, in the contests between Fredegonde and
Brunehaut, no historian ever considers whether the great Ostrogoth who
wore in the battle of Verona the dress which his mother had woven for
him, was likely to have chosen a wife without love!--or how far the
perfectness, justice, and temperate wisdom of every ordinance of his
reign was owing to the sympathy and counsel of his Frankish queen.
You have to recollect, then, thus far, only three cardinal dates:--
449. Saxon invasion.
481. Clovis reigns and St. Benedict is born.
493. Theodoric conquers at Verona.
Then, roughly, a hundred years later, in 590, Ethelbert, the fifth
from Hengist, and Bertha, the third from Clotilde, are king and queen
of Kent. I cannot find the date of their marriage, but the date, 590,
which you must recollect for cardinal, is that of Gregory's accession
to the pontificate, and I believe Bertha was then in middle life,
having persevered in her religion firmly, but inoffensively, and
made herself beloved by her husband and people. She, in England,
Theodolinda in Lombardy, and St. Gregory in Rome:--in their hands,
virtually lay the destiny of Europe.
Then the period from Bertha to Osburga, 590 to 849--say 250 years--is
passed by the Saxon people in the daily more reverent learning of the
Christian faith, and daily more peaceful and skilful practice of the
humane arts and duties which it invented and inculcated.
The statement given by Sir Edward Creasy of the result of these 250
years of lesson is, with one correction, the most simple and just that
I can find.
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