INTRODUCTION

poor, laid aside their armour because they and their children became religious men.¹ And he was sensible, as his letter to Egbert shows, how the monastic ideal itself was spoilt by the intrusion of such numbers of those who had no true vocation.

Irish monasticism still bore traces of its Eastern origin in its extreme asceticism and its devotion to the eremetical life. Its discipline in the community, to judge from Colman’s experience at Inisboffin, was defective.² The rule of St. Benedict,³ which came to prevail in Saxon England, as in Europe generally, was strict, but did not impose austerities: it established corporate life and provided a rule of solitude, labour, silence and prayer incumbent upon all members of the community for life. Monks as such were not necessarily clergy. Alia monachorum est causa : alia clericorum The cause of monks is one thing; that of the clergy is another, says St. Jerome. The clergy were often chosen from among the monks, and in Bede’s day the leading ecclesiastics were monks. But in the convents there were not necessarily more ordained priests than were required for the needs of the community. Such priests being under the rule (regula) were called “regular.” The clergy who were not under a monastic rule and lived in the world (saeculum the world/age) were distinguished as “secular.” In Bede’s time more clergy were needed and the parochial system was in its infancy, though a beginning had been made by Cedd and Wilfrid and Theodore.⁴ In the Prologue of Chaucer, who lived centuries after Bede, we find the familiar figures of the developed medieval Church, the Clerk of Oxenford and the “povre Persoun of a toun” poor parson of a town,

¹ V. 23.
² IV. 4.
³ c. 480—544.
⁴ Bright, p. 485.