Dunstan

Dunstan, St, Archbishop of Canterbury (960-988), was the son of a West Saxon noble, and was born near Glastonbury in 924. There at the abbey he was educated by some resident Irish scholars, and while still a boy he lived some time at the court of Athelstan, but seems to have been unpopular with his young companions, who ill-used him and procured his banishment on the charge of practising unlawful arts. After a stay at Winchester with his kinsman Bishop Ælfeah, to whom he made his profession as a monk, he retired to Glastonbury, where he gave himself entirely to study and to music. It was at this time of his life that he built himself a cell 5 feet long by 2½ feet broad, where he retired to pray, and where heavenly visions were vouchsafed to him. Here also he worked in metals, and it was while labouring at his forge that his famous temptation by the devil took place, which he ended by promptly seizing the fiend by the nose with his red-hot tongs. The accession of Athelstan's brother, Edmund, recalled him to court, from which he was soon driven—most likely to East Anglia—only to be soon restored to the king's favour, and appointed Abbot of Glastonbury (945). Here he began a great work of reformation, and soon his abbey grew to be a great school and a centre of religious influence. At the same time he became the treasurer, and in harmony with the queen-mother Eadgifu, the chief adviser of the young king, whose death at Frome in 955 led to the accession of Edwy and the fall of Dunstan's power before the influence of the young queen Ælfgifu, her mother Æthelgifu, and the leaders of the West Saxon party. He took refuge in Flanders, where Arnulf I., by his mother grandson of Alfred, received him kindly. At Ghent he first saw the Benedictine discipline which he was yet to introduce into England. Two years later he was recalled by Edgar, who had become, through a rebellion of the Mercians and Northumbrians, king of the country north of the Thames, and created Bishop of Worcester, to which was added a little later the see of London. In 959 Edwy's death made Edgar king of the whole country. One of his first acts was to annul Æthelhelm's appointment to the see of Canterbury, and, by advice of the witan, to appoint Dunstan in his room. The wise measures that made Edgar's reign so peaceful and prosperous was in great part due to the counsels of Dunstan. It was his policy to weld the Danes and the English into one nation, and his wise and liberal measures to this end were rewarded by the gratitude of the Danes. It is significant that Canute in 1017 ordered the universal observance of St Dunstan's mass-day. With Oswald, Archbishop of York, he solemnly crowned Edgar at Bath, on Whitsunday 973—a formal declaration of the unity of the kingdom. He was active in building churches, and sympathised heartily with the establishment of monastic life on the rigorous Benedictine rule. The secular clerks were turned out of the monasteries, but clerical celibacy was not made compulsory, in any more direct manner than that a married priest lost the privilege of his order. Dunstan laboured to elevate the lives of the clergy, and make them the real teachers of the people in secular learning and skill in handicrafts, as well as in morals and religion. Himself a man of the severest purity of life, he was absolutely fearless in insisting upon the penances which he laid upon the great, but showed his wisdom in turning these into practical channels. He raised the social status of the clergy, and made obligatory the payment of tithes by landowners, while he did not entirely surrender the liberties of the church to Rome. Edgar's death in 975 opened up anew the struggle between the seculars and the monks, but Dunstan declared for Edward, elder son of the late king, and crowned him at Winchester. His triumph was complete, and the fall of the floor of the council-room at Calne (977), in which only his enemies were killed or injured, seemed to some like a divine judgment in his favour. On Edward's murder in 978, the two archbishops crowned Ethelred king, whose hostility put an end to the great churchman's political career. Dunstan spent his later years at Canterbury, busily employed in the affairs of the church, in study, in private prayer, and the services of the church, varied with the handicraft of his earlier days. The memory of his gentleness and patience long survived him. He died in 988, and was buried near the altar of his church. His day is 19th May. See Bishop Stubbs' Memorials of St Dunstan (1875) in the Rolls Series, a collection of six early biographies of the saint.