Born at Glastonbury in 925 A.D. He was a man of extraordinary abilities, and gained renown by his ascetic piety. Of gentle birth and dauntless courage, he acquired the favor of Edred, who began to reign in 946 A.D., and he took a prominent part in the government during the reign. He was banished by Edwy in 955, but obtained the chief power under Edgar, who became king in 959 and appointed Dunstan Archbishop of Canterbury. Dunstan enriched and exalted the monks, in learning, religion, and morals, and deprived the married clergy of their class privileges. On the accession of Ethelred in 978 his political power was lost, but he kept the archbishopric. Died in Canterbury, May 19, 988.

  A strenuous bishop, zealous without dread of person, and for aught appears, the best of many ages, if he busied not himself too much in secular affairs.

  Relatively to the times then, when the smallest ascent above the common level of gross ignorance, excited wonder, we may readily allow, that the archbishop was an accomplished man; and the marvellous tales, with which the histories of his life abound, are not necessary to convince us that, in other respects, he was great and good; however much certain parts of his public conduct, when he came into power, may by some have been deemed deserving of censure.

  The spirit lives on in spite of self-destructive falsehood, and of metamorphoses supplanting one another, and the mind and works of Dunstan have outlived the Anglo-Saxon language and dynasty, and even catholicism itself in England; nor can their influence at the present day be denied by the Anglican church, nor by dissenters, even quakers, who, like Dunstan, are earnestly desirous for what to them appears the truest and the best.

  The whole tenour of Dunstan’s life shows that his mind was distinguished more by its extraordinary activity, than by a tendency to solitude and contemplation; his leisure employments were chiefly works of the hand, the mechanical sciences and the fine arts. Yet he appears to have been a man of considerable learning, and not devoid of literary taste. Although he regarded the Scriptures, and the writings of the theologians, as the grand object of study to Christians, yet he taught that the writings of the poets and other ancient authors were not to be neglected, because they tended to polish the minds, and improve the style of those who read them. His favourite studies were arithmetic, with geometry, astronomy, and music, the quadrivium of the schools, the highest and most difficult class of scholastic accomplishments. He is said to have imbibed his taste from the Irish monks, who cultivated science with more zeal than literature. He also employed much time in his youth in writing and illuminating books, and in making ornaments of different kinds, for he excelled in drawing and sculpture. He appears to have possessed little taste for literary compositions, for we hear nothing of his skill in poetry, he attained no reputation for eloquence, and the writings which have been attributed to him, of little importance in their character, are such as would have originated in the necessity of the moment. But his influence on the literature of his country was great; the innumerable monasteries which grew up under his auspices became so many schools of learning, and the few writings of that period which now remain must be but a small portion of the numerous books which perished with the monasteries in which they were written, during the new series of Danish invasions which prevented their being recopied and multiplied.

  Since the Reformation, it has been a favourite occupation with many writers to tear from his grave the laurels planted upon it by the gratitude of his contemporaries. There is, however, something very suspicious in that sagacity which, at the distance of several hundred years, pretends to see more deeply and more clearly into the character of a man than was seen by those who lived at the same time, and who profited by his services; and that sagacity becomes still more suspicious, when the only proof which we have of its existence, is a determination to attribute to selfish or odious motives, actions of themselves the most harmless, often the most praiseworthy.

  We may fully admit Dunstan’s sincerity. Riches he utterly despised—when in his cell, he bestowed the whole of his ample patrimony, as well as the other great property which he acquired by bequests, upon the monastery. He had mortified his flesh, subdued his appetites and passions; and, from a deep sense of duty, however mistaken, he had abandoned that which was dearest to him in the world. But this painful process had left terrible effects behind; his heart was now seared against all those affections and feelings of humanity, which connect us with our fellow creatures, and afford the best means of testifying our love toward our common father. His mind was narrowed to the compass of his order; and the single object of his existence was, the establishment of the Benedictine rule and the extension of the Papal power.

  But in the year 988, when his life-work was finished, and the worn-out, weary servant was awaiting his summons, he was at Canterbury, a fine noble-looking old man, to be seen haunting the cathedral aisles, muttering his prayers as he passed, or musing dreamily of by-gone times at the tomb of his friend and predecessor, Odo the Good. His career had been a glorious one; he had been the companion and even the maker of kings; his life had been spent in the whirl of courts; in his hands he had held the reins of government; he had purged the Church of what he honestly thought a scandalous vice; he had quelled internal dissensions, had kept foreign depredators at bay, and now he had crept back to his church like a weary pilgrim, to lay down his bones at the altar of his Master, whom he had so long served, the fires of ambition all burnt out of him, and the soul longing to be free. The unseen messenger came. On the day of Ascension he preached his last sermon, and gave the people his last public blessing; his subject was the Incarnation; he told his auditors they would never hear him again; and as he was returning through the church, indicated the spot where he should be buried…. The greatest man of his age, greatest churchman, and greatest statesman. He stands out boldly on the page of history even now, though nearly a thousand years have crowded that page with a multitude of names and figures; still towering above the mass he is prominent as the earliest of a long list of great ecclesiastical statesmen, numbering such spirits as Hildebrand, Mazarin, Wolsey, and Richelieu, men who have impressed their characters upon their age, who with one hand upheld the Church, and with the other guided the State.

  St. Dunstan, patron saint of goldsmiths and jewellers. He was a smith, and worked up all sorts of metals in his cell near Glastonbury Church. It was in this cell that, according to legend, Satan had a gossip with the saint, and Dunstan caught his sable majesty by the nose with a pair of red-hot forceps.

  There are not many men who can boast on laying down their work that so much of it has been good.