men among them; but in general their zeal in attending services in their minster churches left much to be desired, and it was difficult to get them even to reside continuously in the neighbourhood of their duties, as they found hunting and travelling about far more to their taste than the solemn chanting of the "canonical hours" for the public weal some six to nine times a day.
Before Edmund's reign few protests had been raised in England over the practical disappearance of strict monasticism. St Oswald's Abbey at Gloucester, founded by Duke Aethelred and the Lady Aethelfleda in 909, the New Minster at Winchester, founded by Edward the Elder as Alfred's memorial, and Milton Abbey in Dorset, founded by Aethelstan, had all been organised as a matter of course as colleges of clerks; while Edmund himself in 944 made a home at Bath for fugitive clerks from Flanders who had been expelled from St Bertin's Abbey at St Omer for refusing to accept reforms. Within the English Church the first men to realise that reform was desirable seem to have been the Danish Archbishop Oda and Aelfheah, who occupied the see of Winchester from 934 to 951. Both these churchmen had relations with the Continent and through them became imbued with the stricter ideas as to clerical and monastic life, which in Aethelstan's time had taken hold of Western Frankland. These ideas in the first instance had emanated either from the famous abbey of Cluny in Burgundy, whence they had spread to Fleury (St Benoît-sur-Loire), regarded in the tenth century as the leading monastery in Neustria, or from Brogne near Namur, whence came St Gerard, who between 939 and 944 reformed the monasteries of Flanders. Several incidents in Oda's career shew that he favoured the new ideas, and wished to spread them in England[1]. In 942 for instance, when appointed archbishop, he decided that he ought himself to become a monk, and sent to Fleury to obtain the monastic habit. Nor was it long before he issued new constitutions for his province, and among them was one insisting that all ordained persons, whether men or women, should observe the rule of chastity. Again a few years later, when his nephew Oswald decided to become a monk, Oda advised him to go and study at Fleury, as the best house in which to prepare himself for his vocation. Bishop Aelfheah's preference for strict monasticism can be traced back still earlier, for we find him already in Aethelstan's reign persuading Dunstan, who was his kinsman, to abandon the idea of marriage and devote himself to a life of asceticism and study. The result was that Dunstan, on his appointment to be abbot of Glastonbury by Edmund, had at once set zealously to work to convert the clerks, over whom he was called to rule, into a more disciplined society by making them share a common dormitory and refectory and
- ↑ The parts played by the chief leaders of the monastic reform in England have been much debated. The views here presented adopt in the main the conclusions reached by Dr J. Armitage Robinson in his two valuable papers, entitled The Saxon Bishops of Wells and St Oswald and the Church of Worcester.
