DUNSTAN, SAINT, was b. at or near Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, 925 A.D. He was of noble birth, and is said to have been remotely related to the royal family, as well as connected with the church through influential relatives. His early studies, which he pursued with extraordinary assiduity, were superintended by Irish teachers; but besides his professional learning, b. possessed a variety of accomplishments. He was an excel lent composer in music; he played skillfully upon various instruments; be was a painter, a worker in design, and a caligrapher; a jeweler, and a blacksmith. While quite a youth he was presented at the court of king Athelstan, who seems to have been delighted with his music; but the courtiers envying the favor of the sovereign, denounced him as a dealer in sorcery, and procured his expulsion from court. D. now began to figure in a new character. Contiguous to the church of Glastonbury, he erected a cell, 5 ft. in length by 2 in breadth, the floor of which was sunk beneath the surface, while the roof, on the outside, was only breast-high, so that he could stand upright in it, though unable to lie at full length. This was at once his bed-chamber, his oratory, and his workshop. It was here that (according to the monkish legends) he had his most celebrated con test with the devil. One evening, while the saint was employed at his forge, the devil thrust his head in at the window, and began to tempt him with some immoral propositions. D. patiently endured the annoyance until his tongs were red hot in the fire, when, snatching them suddenly up, he seized the foul fiend by the nose, and held him till the whole neighborhood resounded with the clamor of his agony. Gradually, D. acquired a great reputation for sanctity; and on the accession of Edmund to the throne in 940, he was recalled to court; but in spite of the exploits and penances which had made his banishment illustrious, he was still opposed by the courtiers, who saw his ambition, and dreaded his talents. A second time D. was dismissed, but the king made him abbot of Glastonbury, and increased the privileges of that monastery. Edred, nicknamed debilis pedibus (weak in the feet), who succeeded Edmund in 946, showed D. great favor. The saint now began to distinguish himself as a statesman, and the vigorous policy of Edred's reign is affirmed .to have proceeded from the inspiration of Dunstan. If such was the case, then to D. was owing the complete subjugation of the Northumbrian Danes. Edred was succeeded by Edwy in 955, who detested D., and not without reason, for the saint, on the day of Edwy's coronation, had grossly insulted his wife and her mother. Besides, Edwy lied long suspected D. of peculation in his charge, and this outrage made his wrath overflow. D. was deprived of his cler ical office, his places at court were taken from him, his so-called reform—viz., of com pelling the elergy.tid become celibates—wag frustrated, the monks.Were driven out of their monasteries, their functions banded over to the secular clergy, and D. himself was banished. He fled to Flanders, narrowly escaping having his eyes put out by the mes sengers whom the infuriated king had sent after him. After D.'s flight, a rising took place among the Northumbrian lanes, instigated by Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, himself a Dane, and a friend of the expatriated saint. Edgar, the brother of Edwy, was chosen king of the whole of the island n. of the Thames, and D. returned in triumph from his brief exile. Meanwhile, Edwy's beautiful wife, Elgiva, had been seized and murdered, under circumstances of horrid cruelty, by the Mercians, who were armed in the cause of D. and Odo, or, as others say, by the immediate retainers of these church men themselves. Edwy himself died of a broken heart, or (according to an old MS. in the Cottonian library) was assassinated, in 958, and was succeeded by his brother Edgar. The latter, as a boy of 15, could exercise little authority: he was long a passive instrument in the hands of D. and his party, who used their power in establishing their cause over the whole island, in enforcing the celibacy of the clergy, and in driving out by main force from all abbeys, cathedrals, and churches, all such married clergymen as would not separate from their wives. - At the same time, it cannot be denied that D.
and the monks ruled the kingdom with vigor and success, and consolidated the detached states into compacter integrity and union than had ever been known before. The Dan ish districts of Anglia and Northumbria were divided into earldoms or governments; the fleet of the king was increased to 360 sail, which acted as a most efficient coast guard, preventing the Norse rovers from making their usual destructive descents on the country. In 960, D. was made archbishop of Canterbury on the death of his friend Odo, when, according to custom, he went to Rome to receive the pall at the hands of the pope. He also induced Edgar to visit in person every part of his dominions annu ally, when courts of justice were held in the various districts, audiences and feasts given, and appeals heard. The many other beneficial measures of Edgar's reign, such as the reform of the coinage, and the endeavor to extirpate wild animals in the mountain ous districts, are generally, and with good reason, attributed to Dunstan. The king, who was zealous for the celibacy of the clergy, was himself one of the most viciously profligate of the Saxon kings; yet D. could wink at hiS crimes, so long as he himself was allowed to carry out his " religious" schemes. On the death of Edgar, a fierce struggle took place between the partisans of Edward the martyr and his half-brother Ethelred. The cause of the former was espoused by D., who succeeded in placing his favorite on the throne; but the mother of Ethelred, named Elfrida, a beautiful but placing cious woman, caused Edward to be murdered in 979, and D. was compelled to place the crown on the head of Ethelred. The credit and influence of the great monk now declined; his threatenings of divine vengeance were treated with contempt; and soured and exasperated at the triumph of his enemies, he retired to his archiepiscopal city, where lie died of grief and vexation, May 19, 988. D. was a man of extraordinary abilities. His vigor, his persistency of purpose, and his stern and unscrupulous dispo sition, would have elevated him to power in any age; but he possessed, in addition to these qualities, a deep knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, and a clear and penetrating understanding, which enabled him to see what it was necessary and pru dent for a ruler to do. Hence, though despotic to the last degree, he was not blindly so, like a commonplace despot. His ambition was ever under the control of his wisdom and his fixed ideas. But the grand designs of his life—viz., the complete subjection and conformity of the Anglo-Saxon church to that of Rome, and the extension and mul tiplication of ecclesiastical interests—are not such as excite the admiration of modern times, and all discerning people will regret the success that attended the unpatribtic labors of the saint. That he was successful, there can be no manner of doubt, Though personally out of favor at court in the latter years of his life, his efforts to spread his official influence were unceasing. At an early period in his career, he had introduced a new order of monks into the land, the Benedictines, whose strict discipline had changed the character and condition of ecclesiastical affairs, and in spite of the confusion and even opposition thus caused, he persevered to the end. Monasteries continued to be founded or endowed in every part of the kingdom; and such were the multitudes who devoted themselves to the cloister, that the foreboding of the wise Bede was at length accomplished—above a third of the property of the land was in possession of the church, and exempted from taxes and military service. D.'s Concord of Monastic Rules will he found in Reyner's Apostolatus Benedktinorunz in Anglia, fol., Duac. 1626, page 77 of the appendix. Other writings have been attributed to him. See Wright, Biog. Brit. Lit., Ang.-Sax. Period. See also William of Malmesbury, Lingard's History of England, Kemble's Saxons in England, book ii. and Memorials of St. Dunstan, edited by W. Stubbs, m.A. (1875), a collection of six biographies of the saint.