Illustrated Notes on English Church History, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Illustrated Notes on English Church History, Vol. 1

Up to the Norman conquest the history of the Church and the history of the people are so closely interwoven that it is impossible to separate them. That is because our knowledge of what occurred in early times has been derived almost exclusively from the writings of ecclesiastics, the religious houses being for ages the sole depositories of literature and science. Until the days of King Alfred it was an exceptional occurrence to find the nobility or princes devoting them selves to peaceful arts or intellectual acquirements; those who felt so inclined invariably left the world behind them and joined some monastic community, although they may have stopped short of the higher ministerial orders. Books written under such auspices were more dependent on traditional stories and more associated with superstitious improbabilities than we should expect to find in impartial histories; yet we may easily eliminate the superstitious or unauthentic parts, retaining the portions which commend themselves to common sense, and so glean a tolerably concise, continuous, and reliable record.

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