work as archbishop and reformer.]

He made rules, and encouraged schools for the training of priests. He
ordered priests to learn handicrafts that they might teach them to
others. He ordered that a sermon should be preached in each church
every Sunday. His zeal for moral reform was seen in many canons passed
against the abuses of the age, and he did not hesitate to enforce them
against the highest in the land. When the pope ordered him to absolve
a great lord whom he had excommunicated for an unlawful marriage, he
refused to obey.

Early in the tenth century an illustration of the position occupied by
the English Church in relation to Rome, and of the learning of its
clergy and their style of preaching, is afforded by the writings of
Aelfric, who described himself in his early years as "a monk and a
mass-priest," and was later on abbat of Eynsham. Of his work, besides
educational treatises, eighty sermons, chiefly translated from the
Latin, remain. In them he shows clearly that the claims of the papacy
with regard to S. Peter were not accepted by all in England, and he
taught the spiritual, not corporal, presence of the Lord's Body in the
Holy Communion. The English Church differed also from Rome in the fact
that many of the clergy were married, and though this was not regarded
as lawful, they were not separated from their wives. But in all
essential matters the English Church remained in union with the foreign
Churches and retained her ancient reputation for unbroken orthodoxy.
This reputation was increased by the fame of S. Dunstan, whose sojourn
abroad had served to link English churchmen again to their brothers
over sea.

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The last years of the great archbishop were given to prayer and study,
and to the arts of music and handicraft which he had practised in his
youth. He set himself to train the young, to succour the needy, and to
make peace among all men. He died on May 19th, 988, and with him the
new energy he had infused into the Church seemed to pass away.
[Sidenote: The Danish invasions.] New Danish invasions turned men's
thoughts other ways, but still monasteries made progress. The
Benedictine rule was accepted over Southern England, and in the north
the see of Durham rose replacing the older northern see, when it became
the resting-place of the bones of the great missionary, S. Cuthbert.
The Danish invasions were not so barbarous now as in earlier days.
Some of the Danes were Christians