VALLE CRUCIS: STUDIES IN MONASTIC HISTORY AND (CHAPTERS FOR THE INTENDED SIXTH PART OF I CANDIDA CASA 1. In the most finished of the poems which Wordsworth dedicated to the affections,-Lucy Gray,'-the most descriptive also of the local English character of which his works are the monument at once, and epitaph,-I would pray any of my elder readers cognizant of the grace of literature, to consider a little the power of the line in the introductory stanzas,-"The Minster-clock has just struck two,"partly to enhance, partly to localize, the aspect of mountain solitude which the rest of the poem is intended to describe; and to associate with it in the reader's thought, another manner of solitude, no less pathetic, belonging to more ancient time. 2. For, suppose that the verse had allowed, and the poet used, the word "Cathedral" instead of Minster? "Cathedral" is the more musical word of the two, and defines no less clearly the relation of the wild moor to the inhabited plain with its market-city. But the reader of cultivated taste would feel in a moment, not only that the line itself had lost its total value by the substitution, but. 1 [For other references to the poem, see Vol. XXXII. p. 136 n.] that the purity and force of the entire poem were seriously impaired. It would be difficult to exaggerate the force of evidence given, in this slight trial, of the affection and respect with which all remaining traces and memories of the monastic life of our country are regarded by the scholarly and healthy English mind: by all educated men, that is to say, whose habits of life and tones of temper have not been perverted by avarice, ambition, or sensuality. 3. On the other hand, that most deadly form of all ambition, the religious one, which is the root of schism, manifests itself most furiously, as most ignorantly, in those states of temper which are chiefly antagonistic to the monastic life: while the avarice, which is at once the demon and torture of the modern laic mind, beginning, as of old, with the pillage of whatever the piety, wisdom, and sorrow of its ancestors had bequeathed to houses of charity, concludes in a fierceness of steady enmity to the monkish character and principle-past or present-the like of which has not, so far as I am acquainted with history, been ever till now recorded in all the darkest annals of human malice. 4. I have devoted these chapters to showing some part of the ground on which English respect for the former monks of England, ineradicable by our anger, and ineffaceable by our folly, was originally and for ever founded: but I must first divide the space of English history which this section of my book' includes, into the periods which my younger readers will find the most clearly limited for successive examination. In doing this, I must introduce reference not to times only, but to countries, and to distinctions of race, which require to be held in mind together with the general chronology; and which force us to break up that chronology into pieces that sometimes overlap one another, and sometimes leave interstices between one another. Thus, it [Valle Crucis, the sixth part of Our Fathers have Told Us, of which only this chapter and the next were completed.] 66 is quite easy to constitute a broad first period of "British" or "British Isle" Christianity, from the death of Boadicea, A.D. 61, to the arrival of the Saxons, in 449. But this British Christianity is itself separated into the three minor dynasties ;-" English "—that is to say, of the English lowlands; British, of the mountain districts of Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland; and Iernic,' extending from the north of Ireland across into Scotland and down into Northumberland. These are three entirely separate wellheads of the Christian Faith, represented both essentially and historically in the persons of St. Alban, King Arthur, and St. Columba; and the Saxon invasion terminates the flow of none, though it presents a new condition of embankment, and new fields for irrigation, to all. To outward appearance, however, the Lowland religion vanishes under the Saxon sword: and that of the British mountain border passes into the spiritual energy of tradition only: while that of Ireland and Scotland rises into the most splendidly practical missionary power; and, so far from being checked by Saxon barbarism, is at its own culminating height in the seventh century! 5. Understanding, by this first example, the impossibility of bringing our subject within merely chronological limits, the reader will find it nevertheless convenient to arrange the studies belonging to the religion of his own country under these following successive heads, and spaces of time : (1.) The British period: that of the progress of religious feeling in England, from the death of Boadicea to the landing of Hengist. A.D. 61—449. (2.) The Iernic period: that of the missionary force of Ireland and Scotland, from the birth of St. Patrick to the death of St. Cuthbert. 372-687. (3.) The Heptarchy, and gathering of England. 449-829. *I am forced to use the word Iernic rather than "Irish," because this latter word would now imply separation from Scotland, whereas the methods [lerne was Strabo's name for Ireland, which he conceived to be to the north of Britain (Book i. ch i., etc.).] 2 [Compare Pleasures of England, § 28 (below, p. 435).] (4.) The youth of England and her education by Alfred, Canute, and the Confessor. 849-1066. (5.) The training of England, under her French kings, from the battle of Hastings to the deposition of the son of the Black Prince. 1066-1399. (6.) The Fates of the House of Lancaster. 1399-1461. Of these dates the young student should commit to memory only the cardinals, 61, 449, 1066, 1461, which bound the three great periods of British, Saxon, and Norman Christianity; and he may mass these three periods still more broadly in his mind as extending from the first to the fifth century inclusive, from the fifth to the tenth inclusive, and from the tenth to the fifteenth inclusive; the fifteenth century closing in England, as elsewhere, the history of Christendom,-that is to say, of the dominion of Christ in all matters temporal and spiritual over the nation's acts and heart. 6. And we shall find this division still more vital and serviceable, as we examine the history of those arts which are the exponents of religion. For during the first of them, the progressive art of England is merely the adoption of that of Rome, with what refracted influence could through her be received from Greece: but between the fifth and tenth centuries, the school of Saxon art develops itself with a freedom of manner and a fulness of meaning which might have led-no one can say how far, unless it had been repressed by the Normans.1 Their invasion congeals the Saxon fluency, condenses their spiritualism, and the transitions of style in our religious architecture are thenceforward either in sympathy with the French schools, or, so far as independent, become so only by narrowness of aim, as in the development of effect by mere depth of mouldings and grace of archivolt-curve, in Early English Gothic. of decoration which I call Iernic, (because their spring is in Ireland,) are developed by St. Columba in Scotland, and carried by St. Columbanus into Burgundy, whence crossing the Alps, they receive their final and loveliest forms at Monte Cassino, in the thirteenth century. [Compare Pleasures of England, § 69 (below, p. 464).] Massing therefore in our minds, so far as we are concerned with the progress of technical design, the entire space of time through which, here in our own island, manual skill developed itself under Christian impulses,— into five centuries of British, five centuries of Saxon, and five centuries of Norman, art-periods not at all gradated into each other, nor even much mingling with or mortised into each other, but each of them outlined with heraldic precision,—we note within them, in the order above given, the vital conditions of advance. 1 7. (1) THE BRITISH PERIOD: the beginning, that is to say, of the influence of Christianity in the island of Britain. In which there are of course two stages-first, the fall of Druid faith before the classic gods of the Romans-the "Gods" of Lear and Cymbeline; and secondly, the diffusion amidst Roman law and civil luxury, of the fresh and recent faith in Christ. These two states of the national mind have been, strange to say, of all that England has passed through, most fruitful and enduring among us at this day. The relation of literature and art to the religion of the Saxon has passed altogether from our own,-the red cross of Norman devotion is on the English knight's breast only an order of merit, and has been effaced utterly from the national coin, while the proud legend of the Protestant monarchy, "FID. DEF."-shortened already to its initials,2 is likely soon also to disappear. But the natural virtue of Cordelia and Imogen remains still the standard of honour to British maid and wife, and the Christianity of Arthur is still the inspiration of our noblest British song." 1 [The rest of this chapter is devoted to this period; the Saxon (2) and the Norman (3) periods were to have been dealt with in subsequent portions of Our Fathers have Told Us.] [Compare Ruskin's remarks on the coins of Elizabeth in the catalogue of the Sheffield Museum (Vol. XXX. p. 277). See also, below, p. 367. It may be noted that on the coinage of Edward VII. "Fid. Def." has been further shortened to "F.D."] [See, again, below, p. 441; and on the ideals of Cordelia and Imogen, Proserpina, Vol. XXV. pp. 416, 418.] 4 [For another reference to the "Morte d'Arthur," see below, p. 271; and for mentions of the legends of Arthur, pp. 441, 462.] |