Saint Dunstan

“ In the same year Edwig died and Edgar became sole king, Dunstan shared his triumph, and was appointed archbishop of Canterbury. On Edgar’s death in 975 the archbishop’s influence secured the crown for his elder son Edward. But with the accession of Æthelred in 979 Dunstan’s public career came to an end. He retired to Canterbury, and died on the 19th of May 988.
Dunstan is of more importance as a lay than as an ecclesiastical statesman. ”

“ He was a great encourager of learning and learned men. St. Dunstan obliged him to retain the see of Worcester with that of York. Whatever intermission his function allowed him he spent it at St. Mary's, a church and monastery of Benedictins, which he had built at Worcester, where he joined with the monks in their monastic exercises. This church from that time became the cathedral. The saint, to nourish in his heart the sentiments of humility and charity, had everywhere twelve poor persons at his table, whom he served, and also washed and kissed their feet. ”

“ He was in no way fitted to be a warrior. He loved art and song, and preferred a book to a sword. For such youths there was no place amongst the fighting laymen, and Dunstan early found the peace which he sought as a monk at Glastonbury. Eadmund made him abbot, but Dunstan had almost to create his monastery before he could rule it. Monasteries had nearly vanished from England in the time of the Danish plunderings, and the few monks who remained had very little that was monastic about them. ”

“ In the midlands years of disturbance caused much of the organisation of the Church to disappear, bishoprics to cease, monasteries to be destroyed. After the Danish wars the work of reconstruction was an urgent need, and a great prelate came to lead it.
[Sidenote: Dunstan, 924-88.]
Dunstan (924-88) was a West Saxon who was taught at Glastonbury by Irish priests, and who rose, through his friendship with leaders in Church and State, by the holiness of his life, and by the experience that he won when in exile in Flanders, to be head of the English Church. As archbishop he was "a true shepherd." ”

“ In Butler's Remains, vol. ii. p. 235, we read: "these spirits they use to catch by the noses with fumigations, as St Dunstan did the devil, by a pair of tongs." St Dunstan lived in the tenth century, and became successively abbot of Glastonbury, bishop of London and Worcester, and archbishop of Canterbury. He was a man of great learning, a student of the occult sciences, and proficient in the polite arts, particularly painting and sculpture. The legend runs, that as he was very attentively engraving a gold cup in his cell, the Devil tempted him in the shape of a beautiful woman. ”

“ Then the people said, ‘How humble and penitent Dunstan is! He has the back-ache all day, and the legs-ache all night, and he suffers all for the cause of purity and truth.’
“Then Dunstan told the people that the devil came to tempt him, which, with his aches for the good cause, made his situation very trying. ”

“ This wonderful story ended to Dunstan’s liking, for the artful do flourish briefly sometimes.
The boy king Edred was in ill-health, and suffered from a lingering illness for years. He felt the need of the counsel of a good man. He said to himself,—
“There is Dunstan, a man who has given up all selfish feelings and aspirations, a man whom even the Devil cannot corrupt. ”

“ As he holds a very prominent place in the history of this and the following reign, it will not be irrelevant to give the following particulars of him.
Dunstan was the son of Herstan, and nephew of Athelm, Archbishop of Canterbury, and was born at Glastonbury in 925. He spent his youth with his uncle, the archbishop, who took care to have him instructed in all the sciences, as far as that age of ignorance would permit. He is said to have excelled particularly in music and painting, in which he took great delight all his life. ”

“ It will be convenient to begin with the Lives of St Dunstan.
1. In the Life written by the Saxon priest B, about the year 1000, Oda is mentioned twice. First we have the well-known story that on Edwy's coronation day the boy-king left the royal banquet for the company of two women of high birth, a mother and a daughter, who were designing to entrap him into a marriage with one or other of them. The archbishop, observing the displeasure of the nobles, sent Abbot Dunstan and Bishop Kynesige, Dunstan's kinsman, to bring him back to the royal feast. ”

“ Dunstan, indeed, had foretold his worthlessness, having discovered it by a very filthy token: for when quite an infant, the bishops standing round, as he was immersed in the baptismal font, he defiled the sacrament by a natural evacuation: at which Dunstan, being extremely angered, exclaimed, "By God, and his mother, this will be a sorry fellow." ”

“ Marriage of priests was constant. Livings began to be handed on from father to son. There was some chance of the establishment of an hereditary priestly caste. In Ghent, Dunstan had become acquainted with the Benedictine rule lately established there. He saw its efficiency for securing discipline among the clergy. Like other strong rulers, he regarded anarchy with aversion, [15] and was therefore anxious to introduce the rule into England. He intrusted the work to his friend Æthelwold, whom he made Bishop of Winchester, and to Oswald, whom he raised to the See of Worcester. ”

“ Poor Dunstan in his little cell at Glastonbury, whenever at his devotional practice as harpist, or using his forge and anvil as blacksmith, was certain to receive a visit, and his sweet song drowned by the black visitor’s unholy jeers. At last the day of reckoning came, Dunstan seized a golden [64] opportunity when his tyrannical tormenter put in appearance at the very time his forge was at work and his pincers hot. Little was said, no doubt, but the doings were great—the greatest ever recorded of man’s work—for
St. ”

“ Dunstan had grown up from childhood under the shadow of that famous monastery at Glastonbury, where he had been the pupil of the well-learned and deeply religious men who had come over there from Ireland, and when at last, after many years of varied fortunes, he found himself all-powerful, he made it his first object to introduce the strict Benedictine rule wherever it was possible in religious houses. ”

“ Eadgar's reign forms the climax of the West Saxon power. It was, in fact, the only period when England can be said to have enjoyed any national unity under the Anglo-Saxon dynasties. The strong hand of a priest gave peace for some years to the ill-organised mass. Dunstan was probably the first Englishman who seriously deserves the name of statesman. He was born in the half-Celtic region of Somerset, beside the great abbey of Glastonbury, which held the bones of Arthur, and a good deal of the imaginative Celtic temper ran probably with the blood in his veins. ”

“ The corruption of the secular clergy had become so general that the total decay of religion must soon have been the inevitable result, had not sacred letters and ecclesiastical discipline been revived by the monks. Happily, St. Dunstan was not alone; he found a band of great souls, able and willing to second him in his efforts, and among these were the three saints, Odo, Oswald, and Ethelwold. Odo was the son of Danish and heathen parents, who, disgusted at their son’s interest in everything connected with the Christian worship, turned him adrift, while still a child, to shift for himself. ”

“ His comparatively small participation in the work that was being carried out so vigorously by his friends was doubtless due to his conciliatory temper, as well as to the fact that during Eadgar's reign his energies must have been fully employed in affairs of state. Although the secular clergy who were expelled from the cathedral churches and other monasteries were as a class married men, it is wholly untrue that Dunstan, or indeed any one else, persecuted the married clergy as such. ”

“ Such is the story of this Jupiter Pluvius of our Saxon ancestors, and of our Protestant calendar.
We cannot be allowed altogether to pass by St Dunstan. Mr Turner, in his Anglo-Saxon history, represents him as having introduced the Benedictine order into England: the fact being that there had been no other order from the time of St Augustine of Canterbury. St Dunstan is chiefly known in popular belief for his treatment of Elgiva. The story of Edwin and Elgiva, is of too romantic a cast to be willingly abandoned. ”

“ Benedict that they followed, which as yet was unknown in England—apparently they took the three vows and lived a sliding kind of discipline, of which the more exalted were practically hermits; and the more lax, monks living in the world. But Dunstan's great idea was to establish a school of learning which should become famous, and in this he succeeded.
In after years when his friend and King, Edmund, was slain, it was Dunstan who carried his body to Glastonbury, and buried it there. King Edred, who succeeded his brother, made Dunstan Keeper of his Treasure, which was kept at Glastonbury ”

“ When a thegn had on his estate of inheritance a church with a burying-ground, it was ordered that he should give one-third to the priest; if his church had no burying-ground, he might give the priest what he pleased. The payment of Peter’s pence is also commanded. It is evident from the canons that Dunstan endeavoured to make the clergy the educators of the people; priests were to teach each his own scholars, and not take away the scholars of others; they were to learn handicrafts and instruct their people in them, and to preach a sermon every Sunday. ”

“ Dunstan said in reply: [3] "When I see the excommunicated person penitent for his faults I shall willingly obey his Holiness' commands, but till that happens God forbid that I should do anything to cause the nobleman to continue in his sin and insult the discipline of the priesthood." The nobleman ultimately repented, and Dunstan gave him absolution. Up to the time of William, [4] "England had always observed an independence of Rome," says Mr. Hore, "for which the Pope owed it no love or or gratitude." ”

“ About two A. M. the last volley of nature's artillery boomed majestically overhead, the last heavy patter of rain-drops was heard, and the tempest, passing on, left the village serene and peaceful, except for the sound of the distant guns.
"Ah, mes amis, I breathe freely again," cried Dunstan. He laughed. "To tell the truth, I had dreadful visions of taking Number Three along that water-soaked road. It shows the folly of borrowing trouble. Be a philosopher. Being a philosopher prevents wrinkles from creasing the brow. It holds the gray hair at bay. ”

“ When they had finished their discourse, Andrew gave him a sharp blow with the rod he carried in his hand, saying, ‘Take this as thy reward for having tried to refuse part in our apostleship.’ When Dunstan told this vision to the king, Eadred declared that it meant that he should hereafter be archbishop of Canterbury (B.; Adelard; Osbern) ; he filled the see in accordance with Dunstan's wishes. Indeed, the ecclesiastical appointments of the reign were probably decided by the wishes of the queen-mother and the minister. ”

“ It is probable that no one ever set out in the world with a firmer determination of acting honestly and uprightly than Dunstan; it is also clear, that in intellectual attainments he ranked amongst the highest which that age produced ”

“ Then he began to walk to his tent. Dunstan had lighted a fresh torch and was waiting for him. But the great barons, who had gone up to the King and Queen before him, pressed round him and shook his hand, one after another, and bade him to their feasting on the morrow; nor was there jealousy of him, as there had been when he had saved the Queen's life at Nicaea, for now that they saw him they felt that he was no courtier, and desired only the safety of the army, with his own honour. ”

“ THE VAULTS OF ST. DUNSTAN'S. A ponderous stone was raised in the flooring of St. Dunstan's church. The beadle, the churchwarden, and the workmen shrunk back—back—back, until they could get no further.
"Ain't it a norrid smell," said the beadle.
Then the plain-looking man who had been at Sweeney Todd's advanced. He was no other than Sir Richard Blunt, and whispering to the churchwarden, he said—
"If what I expect be found here, we cannot have too few witnesses to it. Let the workmen be dismissed."
"As you please, Sir Richard. Faugh! what an awful—fuff!—stench there is. ”

“ But a hypocrite who starves and scourges himself—who digs a damp hole in the earth, and lives in it—seems to us a mere creature of the imagination. Such men, at all events, either begin or end with fanaticism. The second and 514 more usual interpretation is, that Dunstan was a veritable enthusiast, and a genuine churchman after the order of Hildebrand, capable, perhaps, of practising deceit or cruelty for his great purpose, but entirely devoted to that purpose—one of those men who sincerely believe that the salvation of the world and the predominance of their order are inseparably combined. ”

“ It was not the monks and the secular clergy that this long contention alone affected; almost every town and village was divided against itself, for the quarrel extended to the domestic hearth. Dunstan could not drive a married priest from the church without making enemies of the whole family: there was the insulted wife as well as the husband to appease; then came a wide circle of relations and friends, while, on the part of the monks, no such extensive ramifications were arrayed. Thousands were therefore found ready to overthrow a government which was headed by the primate. ”