HKB
cold, ashy grey, which, having lost all sympathy with the living and breathing world, lies as if dead and in a grave, while the heartless body still lives and acts.
Sorry we are that Edgar so implicated himself with the views of the ambitious primate, that whatever Dunstan planned, the king executed, and in every way favoured the new order of monks. The following may be taken as a sample of Edgar's eloquence in favour of the Benedictine order; it was delivered at a public synod, over which the king presided. After condemning the secular clergy for the smallness of their tonsure, in which the least possible patch of baldness was displayed, and finding fault with them for mixing with the laity, and living with concubines, for that was the new name by which Dunstan now designated the wives of the clergy, he addressed the primate as follows: "It is you, Dunstan, by whose advice I founded monasteries, built churches, and expended my treasure in the support of religion and religious houses. You were my councillor and assistant in all my schemes; you were the director of my conscience; to you I was obedient in all things. When did you call for supplies which I refused you? Was my assistance ever wanting to the poor? Did I deny support and establishments to the clergy or the convents? Did I not hearken to your instructions, who told me that these charities were of all others the most grateful to my Maker, and fixed a perpetual fund for the support of religion? And are all our pious endeavours now frustrated by the dissolute lives of the priests? Not that I throw any blame on you; you have reasoned, besought, inculcated, inveighed: but it now behoves you to use sharper and more vigorous remedies, and, conjoining your spiritual authority with the civil power, to purge effectually the temple of God from thieves and intruders."
Although Edgar was such an unflinching advocate of celibacy, and is said to have made married priests so scarce, that it was a rarity to see the face of one about his court, he appears to have fixed no limits to his own vicious propensities. While his first queen was yet surviving, he carried off a beautiful young lady, of noble birth, named Wulfreda, from the nunnery of Wilton, where she was receiving her education, under the sanctity of the veil. This, however, was no protection for her person; but Dunstan had the courage to step in, and inflict a penance upon the royal ravisher; which was, to fast occasionally; to lay aside his crown for seven years; to pay a fine to the nunnery; and, as if to make all in keeping with the action, for which he was thus mulct, he was to expel all the married clergy, and fill up their places with monks. Such was the penalty imposed upon him by Dunstan, who, himself disappointed in love in his earlier years, was now the sworn enemy of all married priests. Whether such edicts as he promulgated, and rigidly enforced, were calculated to check or increase such infamous acts as the above, there can scarcely remain matter of doubt; but how many Wulfredas the enforcing of his unnatural laws of celibacy were the means of violating can never now be known.