passed away with that race; it does not appear to have been known to the Germans east of the Rhine, or to the great body of the Teutons, who were converted to Christianity some centuries later, from the seventh to the eleventh. The Germans who crossed the Rhine or the Alps came within the magic circle of the Latin; they submitted to a Latin Priesthood; they yielded up their primitive Teuton, content with forcing many of their own words, which were of absolute necessity, perhaps some of their inflexions, into the language which they ungraciously adopted. The descendants of the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Burgundians, the Lombards, by degrees spoke languages of which the Latin was the groundwork; they became in every sense Latin Christians,

Anglo

Saxon.

Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were the first Teutonic race which remained Teuton. It is a curious problem how the Roman Missionaries from the South, and the Celtic Missionaries from the North, wrought the conversion of Anglo-Saxondom. Probably the early conversions in most parts of the island were hardly more than ceremonial; the substitution of one rite for another; the deposing one God and accepting another, of which they knew not much more than the name; and the subjection to one Priesthood, who seemed to have more powerful influence in heaven, instead of another who had ceased to command success in war, or other blessings which they expected at his hands. This appears from the ease and carelessness with which the religion was for some period accepted and thrown off again. As in the island, or in each separate kingdom,

The Queen

Augustine addressed Ethelbert through an interpreter. and her retinue were French, and used to intercourse with a Latin priesthood.

the Christian or the Heathen King, the Christian or the Heathen party was the stronger, so Christianity rose and fell. It was not till the rise of a Priesthood of Anglo-Saxon birth under Wilfrid, or during his time, that England received true Christian instruction; it was not till it had, if not an Anglo-Saxon ritual, AngloSaxon hymns, legends, poetry, sermons, that it can be properly called Christian; and all those in their religious vocabulary are Teutonic, not Latin. It was in truth notorious that, even among the Priesthood, Latin had nearly died out, at least if not the traditional skill of repeating its words, the knowledge of its meaning.

Our Anglo-Saxon Fathers were the first successful missionaries in Trans-Rhenane Germany. The Celt Columban and St. Gall were hermits and cœnobites, not missionaries; and in their Celtic may have communicated, if they encountered them, with the aboriginal Gauls, but they must chiefly have made their way through Latin. They settled within the pale of Roman Gaul, built their monasteries on the sites of old Roman cities; their proselytes (for they made monks at least, if not numerous converts to the faith) were Gallo-Romans.P But no doubt the Anglo-Saxon of Winfrid (Boniface) and his brother apostles of Germany was the means of

P Columban has left a few lines of Papæ prædicto, præcelso, præsenti Latin poetry. While his Celticism (præstanti?) pastorum pastori . . appears from his obstinate adherence humillimus celsissimo, agrestis urto the ancient British usage about bano," and the bold and definite lanEaster, it is strange that he should guage of the letter itself: "Tamdiu be mixed up with the controversy enim potestas apud vos erit, quamdiu about the "three Chapters." M. recta ratio permanserit. Dolere se de Ampère has pointed out the singular infamiâ quæ cathedræ S. Petri inuricontrast between the adulation of Co- tur."-Annal. Benedict. i. 274. Comlumban's letter to Pope Boniface on pare Ampère, Hist. Lit. de la France, this subject, pulcherrimo omnium iii. p. 9. The Celt is a Latin in lantotius Europæ ecclesiarum capiti . . . guage rather than in thought. Q

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intercourse; the kindred language enabled them to communicate freely and successfully with the un-Romanised races: Teutons were the apostles of Teutons. It was through the persuasive accents of a tongue, in its sounds as in its words closely resembling their own, not in the commanding tones of foreign Latin, that the religion found its way to their hearts and minds. Charlemagne's conversions in the further north were at first through an instrument in barbarous ages universally understood, the sword. Charlemagne was a Teuton warring on Teutons: he would need no interpreter for the brief message of his evangelic creed to the Saxons-" Baptism or death." Their conversion was but the sign of submission, shaken off constantly during the long wars, and renewed on every successful inroad of the conqueror. But no doubt in the bishoprics and the monasteries, the religious colonies with which Charlemagne really achieved the Christianisation of a large part of Germany, though the services might be in Latin, the schools might instruct in Latin, and the cloister language be Latin, German youths educated as Clergy or as Monks could not forget or entirely abandon their mother tongue." Latin and German became insensibly mingled, and interpenetrated

q"Dem Kloster S. Gallen wird im 10ten Jahrhundert nachgerühmt, dass nur die Kleinsten Knaben seiner Schule sich der Deutschen Sprache bedienten; alle übrigen aber mussten ihre Conversation Lateinisch führen. In den meisten Fällen aber lief natürlich der Gebrauch der Deutschen Muttersprache neben dem der Lateinischen her. Daher enstand jene Mischung Lateinischer mit Deutsche Worte, die wir in so vielen Glossen

ndschriften der Althochdeutschen

Zeit finden. Man erklärte bei der Auslegung Lateinischer Texte die schwierigeren Wörter entweder durch gelaüfigere Lateinische oder auch durch entsprechende Deutsche. Dadurch musste eine fortdauernde Wechselwirkung zwischen dem Lateinischen und Deutschenin den Klöstern entstehen."— Raumer, p. 201. Otfried, the German sacred poet, owed his education to the scholar and theologian, H. Rhabanus Maurus.

each other. As to the general language of the country, there was an absolute necessity that the strangers should yield to the dominant Teutonism, rather than, like Rome of old in her conquered provinces, impose their language on the subject people. The Empire of Charlemagne till his death maintained its unity. The great division began to prevail during the reign of Louis the Pious, between the German and the Frank portions of the Empire. By that time the Franks (though German was still spoken in the north-east, between the Rhine and the Meuse) had become blended and assimilated with those who at least had begun to speak the Langue d'Oil and the Langue d'Oc. But before the oath at Strasburg had as it were pronounced the divorce between the two realms, Teutonic preachers had addressed German homilies to the people, parts of the Scripture had found their way into Germany, German vernacular poets had begun to familiarise the Gospel history to the German ear, the Monks aspired to be vernacular poets. As in Anglo-Saxon England, so in the dominions of Louis the Pious, and of Lothaire, the Heliand, and the Harmony of the Gospels by Otfried, had opened the Bible, at least the New Testament, to the popular ear. The Heliand was written in the dialect of Lower Saxony. Otfried, a Monk of Weissenberg in Alsace, wrote in High German. The Heliand is alliterative verse, Otfried in rhyme. Otfried wrote his holy poem to wean the minds of men from their worldly songs; the history of the Redeemer was to supplant the songs of the old German heroes. How far Otfried succeeded in his pious

r See above, from the canons of the Matthew, and the version of the Councils of Tours, Rheims, and Mentz. Gospel Harmony of Ammianus, NotSee on the Vienna fragments of ker's Psalms, the Lord's Prayer and the old German translation of St. Creed.-Raumer, pp. 35 et seqq.

design is not known, but even in the ninth century, other Christian poetry, a poem on St. Peter, a legend of St. Gall, a poem on the miracles of the Holy Land, introduced Christian thoughts and Christian imagery into the hearts of the people.t

Thus Christianity began to speak to mankind in Greek; it had spoken for centuries in the commanding Latin; henceforth it was to address a large part of the world in Teutonic. France and Spain were Romanised as well as Christianised. Germany was Christianised, but never Romanised. England, Germanised by the Anglo-Saxon conquest, was partially Romanised again by the Normans, who, in their province of France, had entirely yielded to the Gallo-Roman element. Westward of the Rhine and south of the Danube, the German conquerors were but a few, an armed aristocracy; in Germany they were the mass of the people. However, therefore, Roman religion, to a certain extent Roman law, ruled eastward of the Rhine, each was a domiciled

On the Heliand and on Otfried see the powerful criticism of Gervinus, Geschichte der Poetischen National Literatur der Deutschen, i. p. 84, et seqq. Neither are translators; they are rather paraphrasts of the Gospel. The Saxon has more of the popular poet, Otfried more of the religious teacher; in Otfried the poet appears, in the Saxon he is lost in his poetry. Where the Saxon leaves the text of the Gospel, it is in places where the popular poetry offers him matter and expression for epic amplification or adornment, as in the Murder of the Innocents; and where in the description of the Last Judgment he reminds us of the Scandinavian imagery of the destruction of the world in this not altogether

unlike the fragment of the Muspeli edited by Schmeller. Instead of this, Otfried cites passages of the Prophets Joel and Zephaniah. On the whole, the Saxon has an epic, Otfried a lyric and didactic character. Gervinus thinks but meanly of Otfried as a poet. The whole passage is striking and instructive. The Heliand has been edited by Schmeller; and Otfried best by Graff, Königsberg, 1831. Compare Lachman's article in Ersch und Grüber's Encyclopädie. The Poem on St. Gall exists only in a fragment of a Latin translation in Pertz, ii. p. 33. The first is in Hoffman, Geschichte des Deutschen Kirchenliedes; the last in Vit. Altman, in Pez. Script. Rer. Austriac. i. p. 117.