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Current of Irish Civilization in England
ism. Within a few years of Adrian's death hardly a
soul in England knew Greek. In other departments of
knowledge we find the same tale. Benet Biscop had
brought glassmakers into England to build and adorn
churches at Jarrow and Monkwearmouth. But fifty
years later we find a pupil of Bede writing to a French
bishop imploring him to send somebody capable of mak-
ing glass, as the English did not possess the art.
During the intervals in which the guiding hands of the
Irish directors were taken from England, the political
incapacity and general degradation of the English were
nearly always asserted. The barbarism of the people was
apparently too recent to permit it to be self-sustaining
in the face of the sore trials of that epoch. The general
slackness is indicated in the fact that for two centuries
after the death of Alfred, no writer or thinker of note
appeared among his course graver
countrymen. But there were of
evils. "A tendency to swinish self-indulgence,
and the sins of the flesh in some of their most
degraded forms, had marred the national character." 1
Thus much of the work of reformation and education
which devoted Irishmen with so much patience had
accomplished was largely undone. 2
INCORRIGIBLE BRUTALITY OF ENGLISH ABORIGINES
4.
To transform a conglomeration of savage tribes into
a civilized people was a herculean task and it is little
1 Hodgkin, Political History of England, p. 491.
2 The English imitated the Irish habit of making pilgrimages to Rome,
with dire results, particularly in the case of the female pilgrims, to their
less vigorous morality. Thus Boniface in his letter to Cuthbert, archbishop
of Canterbury, observes: "It would be some mitigation of the disgrace which
is reflected upon your church if you in a synod and your princes cooperating
with you, would make some regulation with respect to female pilgrimages
to Rome. Among your women, even your nuns, who go in crowds to Rome,
scarcely any return home unpolluted, almost all are ruined. There is scarcely
a city in Lombardy, France or Gaul, in which some English prostitute or
adventuress may not be found. This is a scandal, a disgrace to your whole
church." (Epp., Boniface, 105.)
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