Throughout Western Christendom the law of celibacy was openly and shamefully trampled upon, and every reformer seemed to think that the very first step toward any improvement in clerical morals was to be taken by enforcing this rule.

When Dunstan commenced his reforms, the clergy were guilty of graver sins than that of living in marriage relations.  Adultery, bigamy, swearing, fighting and drinking were the order of the day.  The monasteries were occupied by secular priests with wives or concubines.  All the chroniclers of this period agree in charging the monks and clergy with a variety of dissipations and disorders.

It is quite clear, therefore, that in Dunstan’s view he was doing the only right thing in trying to correct the existing abuses by compelling the priests to adopt that celibate life without which it was popularly believed the highest holiness and the largest usefulness could not be attained.  In the light of this purpose and this common opinion of his time, Dunstan and his mission should be judged.

Dunstan was aided in his work by King Edgar the Pacific, who, by the way, was himself compelled to go without his crown seven years for violating the chastity of a nun.  Oswald, the Bishop of Worcester, and Ethelwold, the Bishop of Winchester, were also zealously engaged in the task of reform.

A law was enacted providing that priests, deacons and sub-deacons should live chastely or resign.  As a result of this law, many priests were ejected from the monasteries and from their official positions.  Strict monks were put in their places.  A strong opposition party was created, and the ejected clergy aroused such discontent that a civil war was barely averted.  This state of things continued until the Norman invasion, when the monks and secular clergy joined forces in the common defence of their property and ecclesiastical rights.

It would seem that many writers, misled by legends for which Dunstan must not be held responsible, and blinded by religious prejudice, have unjustly charged him with hypocrisy and even crime.  All his methods may not be defensible when estimated in the light of modern knowledge, and even his ideal may be rejected when judged by modern standards of Christian character, but he must be considered with the moral and intellectual life of his times in full view.  He was a champion of the oppressed, a friend of the poor, an unflinching foe of sinful men in the pulpit or on the throne.  His will was inflexible, his independence noble and his energy untiring.  In trying to bring the Anglo-Saxon church into conformity to Rome he was actuated by a higher motive than the merely selfish desire for ecclesiastical authority.  He regarded this harmony as the only remedy for the prevailing disorders.  He believed, like many other churchmen of unquestioned purity and honesty, that it was necessary to compel temporal authorities to recognize the power of the church in order to overcome that defiance of moral law which was the chief characteristic of the kings and princes in that turbulent period.