Page:The Saxon Cathedral at Canterbury and The Saxon Saints Buried Therein.djvu/120

 CHAPTER XI

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HE original life of St. Alphage was written by Osbern, monk of Christ Church Priory, in 1070, but was finished by Edmer. To this foundation many writers have added as more knowledge came to hand.

St. Alphage was born of noble and virtuous parents who gave him a good education. As a youth he renounced the world, the flesh and the Devil, going rather against the wish of his mother to the monastery of Deerhurst in Gloucestershire, where he began "to live to God," though in his desire for greater perfection he felt that his foot was not even yet on the lowermost rung of the ladder. Here he became servus servorum Dei, but feeling that life in a community was not strict enough he built himself a hut at Bath, and lived there the life of either an anchorite or a hermit. He was visited and consulted by all classes of people, to whom he gave such perfect instruction with such profound humility that many joined his way of life, becoming monks and members of his congregation. The Chronicler Florence of Worcester says that he became Abbot of Bath, and it is likely, as that abbey was refounded for a community of monks in 970, whose seal we have already referred to (see page 11).

Here after a time Alphage lamented the irregularities of the brethren. He would say that "it was much better for a man to have stayed in the world than to be an imperfect monk," and "to wear the habit of a saint, without having the spirit, was a perpetual lie; an hypocrisy which insults, but could never impose, on Almighty God," maxims which, in the 82