laity. An inconceivable cloud of ignorance overspread
the whole face of the Church, hardly broken by a few
glimmering lights, who owe almost the whole of their
distinction to the surrounding darkness.... Of
this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant
testimony. Contracts were made verbally, for want
of notaries capable of drawing up charters; and these,
when written, were frequently barbarous and ungrammatical
to an incredible degree. For some considerable
intervals, scarcely any monument of literature has
been preserved, except a few jejune chronicles, the
vilest legends of saints, or verses equally destitute
of spirit and metre. In almost every council the
ignorance of the clergy forms a subject for reproach.
It is asserted by one held in 992, that scarcely a
single person was to be found in Rome itself who knew
the first element of letters. Not one priest of
a thousand in Spain, about the age of Charlemagne,
could address a common letter of salutation to another.
In England, Alfred declares that he could not recollect
a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilised
part of England) at the time of his accession who understood
the ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into
his mother-tongue. Nor was this better in the
time of Dunstan, when it is said, none of the clergy
knew how to write or translate a Latin letter.
The homilies which they preached were compiled for
their use by some bishops, from former works of the
same kind, or the writings of the Christian fathers....
If we would listen to some literary historians, we
should believe that the darkest ages contained many
individuals, not only distinguished among their contemporaries,
but positively eminent for abilities and knowledge.
A proneness to extol every monk of whose productions
a few letters or a devotional treatise survives, every
bishop of whom it is related that he composed homilies,
runs through the laborious work of the Benedictines
of St. Maur, the ‘Literary History of France,’
and, in a less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi,
and in most books of this class. Bede, Alcuin,
Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior names, become
real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics.
But one might justly say, that ignorance is the smallest
defect of the writers of these dark ages. Several
of these were tolerably acquainted with books; but
that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original
argument or expression. Almost every one is a
compiler of scraps from the fathers, or from such
semi-classical authors as Boethius, Cassiodorus, or
Martinus Capella. Indeed, I am not aware that
there appeared more than two really considerable men
in the republic of letters from the sixth to the middle
of the eleventh century—John, surnamed
Scotus, or Erigena, a native of Ireland, and Gerbert,
who became pope by the name of Sylvester II.:
the first endowed with a bold and acute metaphysical
genius, the second excellent, for the time when he
lived, in mathematical science and useful mechanical
invention” ("Europe during the Middle Ages,”
Hallam, pp. 595-598).