Energy Politics and Rural Development

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Ghana 1st Edition Naaborle Sackeyfio
(Auth.)
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 NAABORLE SACKEYFIO

ENERGY POLITICS &

RURAL DEVELOPMENT
IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
T he Case of Ghana
Energy Politics and Rural Development
in Sub-Saharan Africa
 Naaborle Sackeyfio

Energy Politics and

Rural Development in
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Case of Ghana
Naaborle Sackeyfio
Miami University
Oxford, Ohio, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-60121-2    ISBN 978-3-319-60122-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60122-9

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To my mother, Rose Alice Sackeyfio
 Acknowledgments

This book began with a quest to situate the puzzle of energy provision and
is a culmination of efforts to reconcile an electricity quagmire with a
remarkable rate of access in one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most promising
states. The notion of electricity delivery belies the ambiguity inherent in
the notion of electricity access, which may be construed in multiple ways
depending on locale, connectivity, proximity to a grid or substation, as
well as the politics of interpretation. It is hoped that the book in some
measure captures the social, economic (rural) and political dynamics of
electricity delivery and access for what is a mere afterthought in the west-
ern hemisphere, but a battleground of electoral politics in the developing
world. This book is made possible by the tremendous and unyielding sup-
port of many individuals, to whom I owe a lifetime of gratitude.
As one of my strongest advocates and reservoir of immeasurable sup-
port, “Lenny” (Irving Leonard) Markovitz was an advisor and mentor
unlike any. The book is as much a culmination of his critiques of the dis-
sertation as it is a careful reformulation of its most compelling ideas.
Lenny’s feedback produced a springboard of ideas and grueling edits of a
book proposal that ultimately shaped this study, and I am deeply grateful.
I would also like to thank Sherrie Baver, who has supported my research
and offered encouragement when I needed it. I am deeply grateful to my
dear friend, and confidante, Kwame Akonor, whose staunch support over
the course of a decade and work as a scholar is extraordinary. My wonder-
ful and brilliant friend, Adekeye Adebajo’s knack for ingenuity is unrivaled
and as a prolific scholar his work is a reminder of the challenges and neces-
sity of a Pax Africana. I also want to thank my editor, Anca Pusca, who

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

­ iligently worked on the manuscript, as well as Anne Schult for her edito-
d
rial assistance.
I am grateful for the support of Ike Okonta, Lilit Petrosyan, Sophia
Johnson-Tran, Laurel Harris, Sunny Jiten Singh, Grace Yali Zhang,
Lauren Paremoer, John Jones, Ben Waruta, Brigitte Omane, Adenike Oke
Adeyemi, Lonjezo Hamisi, Fredline McCormack, Jacky Kaba, Benjamin
Goldfrank, Anne-Marie Murphy, Caroline Erb, Josephine Dawuni,
Kimberly Corson, Patrick Cosby and Josephine Dawuni, Nii Nai Isaac
Sackeyfio and Emmanuel Sackeyfio, Michael Orlando Sharpe, and Miho
Hidaka-Sharpe.
Without the assistance of Asante Danquah, who is both a friend and a
former reporter for TV One in Ghana, the interviews and connections
made with pivotal players in Ghana’s energy sector and research for this
book would have been impossible. I am forever indebted to him for his
thorough work and enthusiasm for a book of this kind to be written. In
addition, I am grateful to the energy officials from the Energy Commission,
Ministry of Energy and members of parliament who provided meaningful
insights that framed the context for approaching Ghana’s energy land-
scape. In addition, I wish to thank Bright Botwe and Gertrude Akuffo for
their assistance with archival and newspaper articles, which were critical to
the research conducted for this book.
I am forever indebted to my Mom, whose unparalleled strength,
unwavering love and support matter in more ways than I can count.
Single-parenthood and persistence ultimately produced a triumphant indi-
vidual who remains an indelible source of inspiration. My sister, Naaborko
Sackeyfio-Lenoch’s perpetual support, love, generosity, positive spirit and
kindness are a testament to her profound mark as one of the finest human
beings I have encountered. I want to thank my husband, Tomoyuki Yabe,
for his love, encouragement and optimism that I’d see this book through.
His patience and ability to distract and entertain our daughter, Chiyo, on
long days when I was not available greatly facilitated my writing and are
thus greatly appreciated.
There are countless other friends and individuals—too many to name
here—to whom, nonetheless, I offer utmost thanks for myriad ways in
which they helped to bring this work to fruition. To anyone I may have
inadvertently left out, your generosity, kindness, patience and support are
greatly appreciated and go unforgotten.
June, 2017
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Decentralization and Public Service Delivery

in Ghana’s Fourth Republic 25

3 The Historical-Institutional Context for Electrification

and Power Sector Reform in Ghana: 1992–2008 59

4 The Unfolding Nature of the Rural Poor, Rural

Development and Public Service Delivery
of Electricity in Ghana’s Fourth Republic  87

5 The Numbers Game: Quantifying Access

and Regional Differentiation in Electricity
Provision in the Fourth Republic  119

ix
x Contents

6 The Politics of Energy in Comparative Perspective:

Nigeria and South Africa  147

7 Conclusion 171

Index 185
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Afrobarometer survey of 36 African countries 61

Fig. 3.2 Afrobarometer table of grid quality and connectivity 62
Fig. 5.1 Electrification rates for Ghana’s regions (mapped) 127
Fig. 5.2 Lorenz curve 128
Fig. 5.3 Difference between observed and expected electrification rates 131
Fig. 5.4 Scatterplot matrix 132
Fig. 6.1 Afrobarometer survey of access to the electric grid, 36 countries 151

xi
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Rural electrification questionnaire results 49

Table 4.1 Table of newspaper articles 106
Table 5.1 Electricity rates for Ghana’s ten regions, 2008 125
Table 5.2 National accessibility rates of electricity in Ghana, 2016 126
Table 5.3 Regression variables 129
Table 5.4 Regression results 133
Table 5.5 Moran’s I 133

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The power of an electric bolt, circuit, and streetlight is undeniable and the
myriad ways that electric currents have produced milestones in communi-
cation and connectivity are rife. The invention of the light bulb revolu-
tionized societies and provided an impetus for economy in ways that far
outpaced any expectations for modern life. The provision of electricity as
a powerful fulcrum for industrialization in what are now advanced
­economies—the United States, Great Britain, and many more—is all the
more remarkable because its impact is often overlooked. Electricity has
promoted economic growth through invisible linkages that bind: without
electricity power lines, lighting at home and in offices, transportation sys-
tems and even literacy as well as educational outcomes would be under-
mined. This functionality is also underscored by the impact of technological
progress and innovation that is largely subsumed as one of thousands of
nearly invisible inputs that make modern living seamless, accessible and
complete. Electricity, for all its purposes, remains one of the most visible
yet simultaneously invisible instruments of the twenty-first century. Across
much of the developing world or the global south, however, the flick of a
light switch is rarely performed with certainty. Access to an amenity largely
taken for granted as one of thousands of micro-processes that construe
modernity is ultimately a political one. Paradoxically, the race to combat
energy poverty is faced by one of the most democratic and promising
states in sub-Saharan and West Africa: Ghana—considered a model state

© The Author(s) 2018 1

N. Sackeyfio, Energy Politics and Rural Development in Sub-­Saharan
Africa, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60122-9_1
2 1 INTRODUCTION

for much of the continent. As a country rich in hydropower, with its

Akosombo dam and Volta River project, which ambitiously sought to pro-
duce aluminum, the promise of industrialization accompanied a competi-
tive vision for a state whose economic growth once rivaled, but has been
surpassed by, that of Malaysia. What accounts, then, for the simultaneous
success of electrification initiatives in ten administrative regions (akin to
states) and disparities between significant sections of the country’s popu-
lace since this period?
Energy demand until the twenty-first century appears to have mattered
little for much of Africa’s 54 states. For comparison, electricity use for the
United States is about 3340 megawatts (MW) per million inhabitants, and
about 1680 MW in the European Union, while sub-Saharan Africa’s gen-
eration capacity is only about 100 MW per million inhabitants as of 2009.1
Roughly 85% of 585 million people in sub-Saharan Africa without access
to electricity live in rural areas; this figure is expected to rise to some 652
million by 2030.2 Electricity access across the continent, and in developing
countries elsewhere, suffers from incongruent conceptualization of what
constitutes access, because classifying a village as electrified or not is rarely
straightforward. Combined with the reality of considerable variation in
the intensity, concentration and levels of electricity use,3 the choice and
timing to electrify towns, communities and regions is political because
governments remain the primary providers of electricity in the developing
world.4 How does political choice shape rural electrification and, ulti-
mately, public service delivery challenges that include potable water, well-­
constructed roads and open sewage systems? Why are hydro-rich countries
energy-poor? Uneven economic and political development after indepen-
dence muted engagement between state and society. Rich in projected
hydropower because of numerous dams, the continent pummeled through
the latter half of the twentieth century unhindered by the need for the
diversification of energy inputs required for a growing economy. The
1980s and 1990s were a test for the continent’s growth amid economic
malaise and political uncertainty. The story of the 1990s for many an
African state was how to navigate, if not circumvent, market-oriented
reforms required by external donors and international financial institu-
tions in order to reverse the economic pitfalls and the subsequent debt the
continent accrued at an unprecedented pace. It is perhaps and singularly
unnoteworthy that attempts to swallow a bitter pill of austerity, which
paradoxically entailed a reduced role for the state and, consequently, public
expenditure, produced a gap in service delivery that required a more
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

interventionist role. Using the lens of political economy, this book explains
why energy provision has become a matter for public service delivery and,
simultaneously, an important fulcrum for rural development—largely
through electricity, which remains promising yet primarily uneven.
Why have African states—despite seemingly ample, if not abundant,
hydropower—faltered in providing efficient, steady and affordable access
to rural populations who are likely to supply important sources of future
capital and growth? What are the pre-requisites for timely, effective provi-
sion, given steady population growth and heightened energy demand by
domestic populations? As a model state for political and economic gover-
nance, this book recounts Ghana’s experiments with energy provision
through dam power. The choice to focus on the rural constituents, includ-
ing the poor, stems from the simple observation that the rural poor make
up a large part of Africa’s populace and are thus difficult to ignore.5
It explains why the country, notwithstanding uneven provision and gen-
eration capacity, offers a cautionary tale and yet one of the continent’s best
hopes for solving energy poverty. The book also explains why the political
leadership in Ghana and, to a lesser extent, in Nigeria, South Africa and
Zimbabwe, has circumvented market-oriented and, by extension, power
(energy) sector reforms, with differing consequences for electric energy
provision in each state. Utilizing the period beginning from the 1990s, a
critical period owing to political transitions, fragile, if not nascent, demo-
cratic rule, pivotal shifts of power and turbulent politics, the book exam-
ines the dynamics of energy provision through the lens of hydropower,
and attendant institutions through the primary focus of Ghana, while
lesser treatment is given to a small number of sub-Saharan states. The
larger question the book answers is how various African states have either
navigated market-oriented reforms of “power” or energy sectors to pro-
vide domestic supply to key sections of society—the rural populace, where
the bulk of Africa’s population resides.
Firstly, this book argues that political survival, state–societal rela-
tions, and the uneven agency of civil society actors have conditioned
responses to energy provision, supply and demand in Ghana and other
states treated in succeeding chapters. Secondly, this book argues that
governments have little choice but to circumvent market-oriented poli-
cies that, for decades, dictated how African governments manage and
structure their economies, if they are to end energy poverty and supply
electricity to all domestic consumers. In tandem, the laudable success of a
current 80.51% electrification access rate has yielded differential benefits
4 1 INTRODUCTION

for the rural poor who comprise close to 60 percent of a population of

24 million.6 Conversely, this work demonstrates how current electricity
outcomes reflect responsive government and attentiveness to the rural poor,
despite unevenness in provision. The contested nature of electricity deliv-
ery requires a shift in the Washington consensus regime that dictates ques-
tionable prescriptions, most notably privatization and a reduction of social
expenditures that hardly treat the underlying malady still persistent despite
promising economic outcomes from countries like Ghana. Consequently,
the book contends that international financial actors and external donors
should, ideally, incentivize energy provision for developing countries by
treating electricity delivery as a public rather than private good and market
transaction and thus diminish the politicization of electricity as a “have vs.
have not” amenity. Developing a compliance framework within pre-exist-
ing poverty reduction strategies that tackle the who gets what, where, when
and how—in other words, questions of power and political survival—can
potentially enhance electric energy outcomes and stem the tide of energy
poverty on a continent where almost 600 million out of a ­population of 1.1
billion lack energy access.7 As the case of Ghana demonstrates, Ghana’s
jagged success compared with other African states emanates from its delib-
erately partial compliance with neo-liberal or market-driven outcomes in its
energy sector. The significant political costs associated with market-driven
policies that aimed to end the country’s subsidy, or at least limit it, along
with pro-poor tariffs designed to cushion vulnerable groups like the rural
poor, were decidedly critical for electoral politics.

Case Selection and Study Design

The cases explored in this book focus primarily on Ghana, with a separate
chapter/treatment that discusses in a broad overview the energy quandary
facing Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In many ways, the selection
of Ghana as the focus of the book is fitting. Out of 54 states, Ghana
became the first to gain its independence and the first to articulate devel-
opment plans for fueling industrialization, which included the creation of
the world’s largest man-made lake in 1966. After the country’s first presi-
dent, Kwame Nkrumah, articulated ambitious, if not striking, plans for a
united continent—in what amounted to a bold pan-African vision of self-­
sufficiency and economic independence, Ghana was propelled into the
limelight. To be sure, plans to produce an aluminum smelting plant were
conceived as a bid for modernity and infrastructural development.
 CASE SELECTION AND STUDY DESIGN 5

However, as the case of Ghana demonstrates, many of these hopes were

dashed as foreign industry benefitted from electricity generation while
domestic consumers and ordinary Ghanaians enjoyed little to no access for
several decades. Thus, the transformation of electricity access from 15% at
the beginning of the 1990s to an overall access rate of 80.51% is signifi-
cant. When weighed against dismal rates elsewhere on the continent, this
development stands as a notable development. However, the expansion of
access has not managed to reach the rural poor as we might expect. By
highlighting the consequences of shifting hierarchies of power implicit in
the simultaneous pursuit of political decentralization, democratization and
neo-liberal institutional preferences, this work highlights the triumphs and
limits of the Ghanaian state in terms of the ubiquitous paradigm and dic-
tum that espouses “minimal government.”8 Optimal provision of electric-
ity to all groups in society was one of several important objectives articulated
since the early post-independent period and an explicit goal of succeeding
governments in the post-1992 period, but the transformation of access
and decentralized electricity initiatives has not resulted in more widespread
access, especially for the rural poor. However, this work assumes the com-
mitment of succeeding governments in the post-­independent period to
providing equitable access to electricity and fulfilling the electorate’s
demands for goods and services. A particularly salient issue studied in the
chapter establishes how attempts to capture the rural poor paradoxically
produced more responsive government, as electoral outcomes increasingly
coalesced around service delivery of electricity and public goods provision.
The analysis that follows deconstructs and recounts the key arguments
addressed in this work. The causal relationship between domestic and
international institutions can hardly be overlooked. In fact, it provides
exogenous and endogenous explanations for the political phenomena
observed in this work.
Chapter 2 discusses the theoretical arguments that underpin this work.
It reveals that, despite the adoption of a decentralized institutional frame-
work or devolved power when local “agency” material resources are insuf-
ficient, the inadequate financial capacity of the country’s local government
or district assembly system has enlarged the scope of central government
authority. Subsequently, “fits and starts” of electricity initiatives aimed at
reducing disparate outcomes for the marginalized rural poor are com-
monplace. New alignments between public, government and external
actors or “trustees” of development, as the chapter establishes, have facili-
tated measures of co-optation through service delivery of electricity under
6 1 INTRODUCTION

political decentralization and democratization. Using decentralization as

a subnational tool of analysis allows this work to frame public service
delivery of electrification as a yardstick for successful devolution of insti-
tutional authority to district assemblies or authorities tasked with local
economic and political development in Ghana. In other words, the treat-
ment of service delivery is conceived as decentralization in motion or
practice of political outcomes associated with the transfer of authority
from the center (central government) to district assemblies. Ultimately,
this work ­demonstrates how a weak district assembly system facilitated
and became essential to the political capture of the rural poor by the “cen-
ter”. The book establishes how these developments emerged as a conse-
quence of legitimacy and accountability challenges as a response to
democratizing processes. As a member of parliament noted, “[p]eople are
now demanding accountability in development: water, sanitation, elec-
tricity. They want their communities developed.”
Chapter 3 deploys a historical–political lens to understand the diver-
gence between a promising energy agenda that emerged after indepen-
dence in 1957 and uneven outcomes in electricity provision for several
decades, including the post-1992 period. The dichotomy in access,
between projected and expected outcomes, informs the evolution of
divergent energy values to their reconceptualization in the post-1992 era
of political transition and regime change. The chapter examines the impe-
tus for the pursuit of partial power sector reforms, and the subsequent
lifeline tariff policy targeted at the “rural” poor in the early 1990s was a
political calculus that aimed to avoid regime change. In an era of eco-
nomic austerity and neo-liberal policies that dictated a smaller role for
states in economies, the pursuit of partial, not full, reforms of energy sec-
tors bucked conventional wisdom and practice that swept through both
industrialized and developing states during the 1990s. The decision to
pursue this was part of a larger phenomenon of the country’s partial com-
pliance with external conditionality agreements for economic relief,9 but
in a bid to limit the political fallout of structural adjustment policies of the
1980s, which strained state societal relations and proffered a wave of social
movements that led to regime change in a number of developing states,
Ghana opted for the former. These efforts paradoxically account for a suc-
cess rate of 80.51% in the post-1992 period.10 This contradiction is
remarkable, given that comprehensive power sector reforms ostensibly
aimed to provide wider market choices and even lower prices for domestic
consumers. Instead, timing and sequenced reforms informed the political
 CASE SELECTION AND STUDY DESIGN 7

incentives of succeeding governments, which sought to capture the rural

vote, including that of the poor. This development, as the chapter
­articulates, is a powerful explanatory variable for co-optation of a key elec-
torate in the midst of political and economic upheaval precipitated, in
part, by increasing debt burdens amid market-oriented reforms of the
public sector. Hence, the pursuit of a lifeline electricity tariffs policy for
the poor, and partial power sector reforms, are logical choices for a num-
ber of succeeding administrations bent on regime survival. The chapter
also demonstrates the inherent difficulty in adopting full-scale market-
oriented power sector reforms that involve deregulation, privatization,
subsidy, and tariff removal for states engaged in decentralization and
democratization processes.
Chapter 4 examines the relationship between the politics of rural devel-
opment, central and local government capacity, and electricity provision
under the umbrella of poverty reduction efforts. The chapter identifies a
critical irony that documents the simultaneous pursuit of decentralization
in the country’s administrative regions akin to states, amidst recentraliza-
tion and the subsequent usurping of domestic institutional autonomy by
external actors as the actual trustees of governance. By establishing these
developments, which oil the wheels of the country’s political economy,
the chapter demonstrates how a reduced scope of government authority,
in lieu of market-oriented reforms and austerity policies advocated by the
World Bank and donor partners, influenced the impetus for discretionary
electricity provision—as attempts to capture the rural/peasant class. Along
with a lack of ownership, the diminishing returns of domestic political
autonomy combined to reinforce a project-by-project approach that
yielded timed and sequenced efforts to connect rural communities to elec-
tricity grids and, in turn, access. The chapter locates these developments
in the growing calls for “agency” by an increasingly discontented public
that includes the rural poor, thus calling into question the nature of the
state’s future bargains with a key section of the electorate.
Chapter 5 details electricity provision across the country’s ten adminis-
trative regions. It addresses patterns of differentiation that demonstrate
the emergence of electricity provision as a politicized good in contrast to
the private amenity that domestic consumers typically enjoy elsewhere in
the industrialized world. The cumulative result of statistical analysis sug-
gests that there are issues beyond demographic and economic characteris-
tics of the regions that determine variations in electrification. Most
significantly, the regions with the highest rates of electricity access between
8 1 INTRODUCTION

the 2000 and 2008 national elections also have had the highest numbers
of swing voters, that is, voters with no particular affiliation to either of the
country’s two dominant political parties, the National Democratic
Congress and National Patriotic Party. Although in subsequent elections
remarkable progress has been shown in terms of access, with many regions
exhibiting official rates well over the current rate of 80.51%. These per-
centages, as the chapter highlights, contribute to ongoing ambiguities
associated with electricity provision. Electricity access has often meant the
ability to be connected to a central grid in a local community and not
actual delivery to one’s home. With at least five regions slated for future
assistance in the form of electricity projects to boost “access”, this current
state of affairs reflects the country’s tenuous trajectory of public vs. private
goods and service delivery debates, over which a number of administra-
tions straddle uneasily.
Chapter 5 also contextualizes the scope of successful and yet uneven
provision with the significant discovery that a “politics of interpretation”
accounts for the dichotomy in perceptions of successful outcomes by the
Ministry of Energy—a key institution of Ghana’s central government. After
mapping electoral outcomes since the first effective and successful transi-
tion to a democratically elected government, quantitative results unmistak-
ably chronicle a striking pattern. That is, previously marginalized regions
had become “swing regions” in exhibiting the highest levels of electricity
access, with the Volta and Upper Western regions acting as the largest ben-
eficiaries. Another surprising outcome is that the variables of class and eth-
nicity are considerably small, which the chapter attributes to the cross-cutting
nature of this politicized good and attendant cleavages—evident in the
cyclical, sequenced nature and, in short, the political business cycle that
also reveals uneven access despite remarkable success overall.
Chapter 6 offers a comparative lens of electricity provision in Zimbabwe
and South Africa. The chapter broadly examines ongoing challenges of
power sector delivery, reform, and energy poverty in what should be
hydro-rich states. In spite of power generating capacity and potentially
lucrative regional power sector arrangements on the continent, market-­
oriented policies to expand electricity access continue to reflect mixed
outcomes in the countries examined. Concurrently, efforts to provide
regular access to electricity remain difficult to implement, owing to infra-
structural as well as political challenges associated with transmission and
generation capacity. Since energy continues to define modern economies
and the capacity for growth, the consequences of lingering challenges
associated in each of the countries are juxtaposed with the pursuit of power
 THE QUANDARY OF INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: WHICH INSTITUTIONS… 9

sector reforms in Ghana, a model state, for international financial institu-

tions.11 Additionally, the implicit tension between state-led and market-
oriented policies accounts for the quagmire associated with hydropower
and electricity access, particularly for rural populations.
Based on the partial implementation of power sector reforms, Chap. 7
deals with the nature of optimal service delivery outcomes defined as
equitable, consistent and affordable electricity provision. The political
costs to governments undergoing democratization are likely to be fraught
with peril and thus likely to be offset by cost–benefit calculations timed
to the political business cycle associated with elections. The conditions
for optimal service delivery of electricity inform the chapter’s inquiry and
conclusion that favorable outcomes, conceptualized as equitable, consis-
tent, efficient and affordable access, are notably difficult to achieve under
a market-oriented, neo-liberal framework. Indeed, the pursuit of these poli-
cies in a world where energy poverty is both a symptom and the root of
economic malaise in urban but primarily rural areas is inappropriate for
states where the assumption of self-regulating and perfectly efficient
markets is the exception rather than a norm. As a consequence, the con-
tinued propagation of a market-oriented paradigm that inevitably con-
strains the scope of agency of state actors in nascent democracies that
lack strong property rights institutions, widespread indigenous entrepre-
neurs, capital, or functioning tax regimes combined with a large number
of rural poor and essentially captive electorate is inapt. The political
costs, then, for regimes that utilize the provision of targeted service
delivery of public/political goods to offset the privatization of (hydro)
power agreements are exponential.

The Quandary of Institutional Reform:

Which Institutions Matter?
Institutions matter and the question of who gets what, where, when and
how is implicit in this work. Asking why hydro-rich countries end up
energy-poor is inevitably wound up with questions about the role of insti-
tutional design, and who stands to benefit, and at what cost.
When rules and norms become established patterns of behavior, they
structure actor choices, future institutional outcomes and produce path
dependence, as historical institutionalists observe. Douglas North, in
Institutions, Institutional Change And Economic Performance, observed
that path dependence is a way to conceptually narrow choices and link
decision-making through time. J. Mokyr, in The Gift of Athena: Historical
10 1 INTRODUCTION

Origins of the Knowledge Economy, finds that institutional structures

­produce different outcomes and certain distinct factors define the trajec-
tories of national and local institutions. Indeed, this reasoning offers a
plausible explanation for the puzzle of uneven development of Ghana’s
power sector institutions, and distribution of and access to electricity from
the early post-independent period through the 1990s, given inadequate
and suboptimal planning that began with the completion of the Akosombo
Dam in 1966. With unstable political rule and numerous coup d’états that
began in the 1960s, with the last occurring in 1981, it is little wonder that,
by 1990, only 15% of the population had access to electricity. Consequently,
the logic underlying this work is rooted in an inadvertent “lock in” of
choices that informs shifting priorities under a political framework of
decentralization, producing a dynamic of rural preference and group
“capture” beyond a populist rhetoric.
The book also reveals how the institutional capture of district assem-
blies by central government and pressures for political legitimacy under a
democratic transition proffered new preferences and a shifting dialectic
about the nature of political access, incorporation and public goods. An
ever-changing political landscape shaped by external financial actors and
institutions required a renegotiation of state–society relations that could
only be effectively managed through careful placation. In the wake of
these developments, strategic timing in provision and inception of elec-
tricity projects became key to the success, despite “mixed” outcomes for
the rural poor. In virtually every election period for the years 1992, 1996,
2000, 2004 and 2008, newspaper articles and stories featuring electrifica-
tion projects demonstrate patterns consistent with a political business
cycle and the discretionary nature of provision (see Appendix 1).
The persistence of divergent institutions is a logical calculus for a con-
tinent of varied political culture, norms and preferences. For a continent
of remarkable diversity, a monolithic lens is the predominant frame
through which Africa is seen. Replete with malaise, dysfunction and poor
administration, an ongoing narrative of economic and political catastro-
phe, perhaps only narrowly averted, inform much of contemporary
­institutional analysis. From compelling perspectives that view the prob-
lems of African political systems as a function of “quasi states and prob-
lematic exercise of sovereignty,” as Robert Jackson establishes in Quasi
States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, to others
that focus on the forces of the market, states and private action,12 the con-
tributions in this regard are noteworthy.
 THE QUANDARY OF INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: WHICH INSTITUTIONS... 11

This book departs from perspectives that suggest a perpetual conun-

drum for a continent often discussed in large and sweeping terms despite
tangible and deeply path-dependent problems. No other continent has
experienced energy poverty as much as Africa. Yet the fits and starts of
electricity provision in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are
as much a reflection of the requisites of modern governance checkered
by inadequate recognition of multifaceted linkages that inform purpose-
ful design and the constituents they serve. By portraying the institutional
malaise in a model state of democracy and energy provision, this work
demonstrates the double-edged sword of liberalization and market-­
oriented reforms.
While attaining a happy medium remains in flux for many an illiberal
state among promising democracies, Ghana’s political achievements under
decentralization are not to be understated. The participatory locus that
has afforded many Ghanaians a voice and measure of “agency” in articu-
lating economic interests and preferences is unmistakable. Its elections
have been viewed widely as free and fair since 1992. But the view of past
and current administrations, who depict district assemblies as key stake-
holders in producing favorable economic outcomes—but ill equipped to
tackle service delivery and rural development taken in tandem—are telling
admissions as the country hurtles forward in its plans to improve its lower
middle income developed country status. The significance of this work
consequently lies in the revelation of electricity access as a largely micro-
scopic element of development that informs governmental capacity and
the success of responsive government in an era when service delivery of
public goods is increasingly paramount.
Despite a mixed record of implementation and effectiveness in devel-
oping countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, Ghana’s adoption of
political decentralization amid the important and difficult process of
democratization offers important and overlooked insights, most
­important of which focus on how fragile societies undergoing a political
transition may unwittingly undermine democratic institutional norms in
the process of striking bargains with sections of society. Significantly, it
reveals how democratic governance became coterminous with service
delivery in the wake of measures to capture the rural vote among the
poor. This work sheds light on the nature of “limited ownership” in rural
development in the context of anti-poverty measures and public service
delivery of electricity, which make a neo-liberal critique of market-ori-
ented reforms of power sectors essential. Energy research has typically
12 1 INTRODUCTION

focused on the resource curse, an unfortunate consequence in countries

where rich mineral resources like oil, diamonds, gas, copper, and gold
produce economic stagnation and negative political outcomes such as
authoritarian or non-­democratic regimes. But the more pressing impact,
particularly in developing countries, of the relationship between decen-
tralization—thought to produce better outcomes in rural economy—and
the problem of unregulated rural development under this institutional
process has not been fully addressed in political economy perspectives.
One of the most serious problems the new government hoped to
address in 1992 was the nation’s aging electric energy system, gaps in
provision and the startlingly low rate of access of 15% of rural areas in
1990. With Ghana initially geared to attain middle-income developed
country status by 2020, the country’s leaders acknowledged that invest-
ment in energy was required for economic growth and expansion.13
During the 1990s, vast gaps in electric energy provision, blackouts and
frequent power outages led to the emergence of a national electrification
scheme to restructure the country’s energy policy. With substantial gaps
in electricity access, protracted plans for a multisectoral strategy for rural
development, and a higher ratio of rural poverty levels impelled a response
by succeeding administrations. Indeed, the World Bank’s figures placed
poverty for rural populations at 39% and at 11% for urban populations,
respectively. Since more than 60% of the population lives in rural areas
(World Bank Report, “Proposed Fifth Poverty Reduction Support
Credit”, 2007), these figures support the notion of electricity as a key
driver of economic growth and development, and the ability to power the
country’s industrial and commercial development (Guide to Electric
­
Power, 2001).
Electric energy sector losses, mounting technical and operational prob-
lems and external donor pressure prompted Ghana to pursue neo-liberal
power sector reforms. Yet Ghana’s adoption of partial power sector
reforms, to reduce sector losses and widen the field of independent power
production to increase access, offers a stark irony. As this study demon-
strates, it is ahead of many of its neighbors and the states examined at the
end of the book because of the partial nature of reform, not necessarily
because of the reforms themselves. By utilizing a lifeline tariff policy
designed to provide access to the poor, the progress of the country’s elec-
trification schemes has more to do with rural co-optation and a political
business cycle where electricity provision has become synonymous with
public goods.14
 THE QUANDARY OF INSTITUTIONAL REFORM: WHICH INSTITUTIONS... 13

It is only in the past decade that scholars have begun to examine specific
policies, management of electricity sectors in developing African nations
and the costs for the rural poor in particular.15 For example, Stephen
Karekezi, in Renewables in Africa—meeting the energy needs of the poor,
addressed the mixed impact of power sector reforms for the poor, and
questioned the pragmatism of the wholesale acceptance of power sector
reform by African governments. In citing the oft-ignored issues of trans-
mission and distribution, he argued that urgent attention be paid to both.
Njeri Wamukonya, in Power sector reform in developing countries: mis-
matched agendas, argued that the reform model essentially reflected a con-
tested process that led many governments to question the wisdom of
undertaking reform.
Indeed, the tremendous loss of autonomy and virtual political suicide
in pricing reform and removal of subsidies would likely produce discon-
tent and a political backlash. As Wamukonya found, many policies left
countries worse off socially and economically than before reform.
A.B. Sebitosi and B. Pillay, in Energy Services in sub-Saharan Africa: how
conducive is the Environment?, contend that a multifaceted confluence of
factors contributed to substantial gaps in access to electricity for the poor
and attribute the “subdued role of the-would be recipients” as part of the
problem. Though most of the authors mentioned consider the impact of
market-oriented power sector reforms on the rural poor, none contextual-
izes these changes under the realm of decentralization or democratization,
which makes this work all the more critical, because it calls into the ques-
tion the benefits of local representation within district assemblies, political
empowerment, and access to public–private goods, that are assumed to be
more readily available for marginalized groups under decentralization and
a minimally interventionist state than democratization accords. This omis-
sion is notable, given that access to any resource, public or private, is
unequivocally political. Sebitosi and Pillay also observed that, at commu-
nity levels, infrastructure and amenities like electrification are often erro-
neously treated as commodities. In this regard, electrification becomes an
end rather than a means. In African politics, it doubles as the proverbial
carrots and sticks in political parties that reward like-minded or politically
aligned communities and conversely offer denials to those perceived as
indifferent or, worse yet, hostile to the party’s patronage.16 Furthermore,
a United States Agency and International Development report found, in
2010, in a comparative assessment of decentralized institutions, that elec-
tricity offers a politically attractive strategy for central governments that
14 1 INTRODUCTION

struggle with poor service provision, lack resources and are keen to hold
on to the levers of power in terms of allocations or distributional systems
of monetary transfers.

Democratization, Decentralization,
and Public Goods

This work emerges out of the nexus between the critical processes of
democratization, decentralization and neo-liberal power sector policies
posed in juxtaposition to public service delivery, the energy industry and
minimal state involvement that intersected to produce important conse-
quences as the country embarked on ambitious plans to achieve middle-­
income developed status in the twenty-first century. Democratization
involves political empowerment at the local level, limited government, and
competitive elections. In short, it refers to the institutionalization of polit-
ical power exercised directly or indirectly through participation, competi-
tion and liberty as critical components required to establish the foothold
of democracy.17 Because Ghana moved to end repressive dictatorship and
usher in representative government at the end of the 1980s and into the
1990s, I discuss how a changing political and economic landscape created
formidable challenges for J.J. Rawlings who suspended civilian rule in the
1980s. Indeed, these critical and multifaceted processes required striking
bargains with sections of society that included rural people.
As a result of new political alignments between public and private
actors, democratization will almost inevitably be hindered by an inability
of the state to deliver public goods18 and by ambiguous institutional spaces
informed by the increasing internationalization of external financial insti-
tutions and actors.19 How do nascent democracies navigate the inherent
tension between central government hegemony and decentralization,
while ensuring political legitimacy and survival? I explore this question by
chronicling the tenuous politics of transition, the impact of structural
adjustment policies that conditioned the political transition to democracy
during the early 1990s, and efforts to recentralize important elements of
decentralization and public service delivery under a mantle of “limited
government.”
Many studies claim that democracies do a better job than non-­
democracies in improving the welfare of the poor.20 But few perspectives
of democratization or approaches to decentralization address the tenuous
process in countries that embark on both. Nor do any theories offer
 DEMOCRATIZATION, DECENTRALIZATION, AND PUBLIC GOODS 15

c­ onvincing ideas about how fragile states navigate public service delivery
under conditions of neo-liberal engagement, a reduced scope for the
government in the economy, dependency on donor aid and political
­decentralization. In fact, few offer meaningful analysis about the ways in
which the pursuit of democratic practices and the clamor for public goods
amid austerity measures coalesced to produce, paradoxically, more
responsive government despite uneven outcomes of electricity provision
for the poor.
The model of democratic governance that emerged in Ghana empha-
sized a decentralized institutional framework intended to do just that: to
improve public service delivery, raise standards of living and reduce the
numbers of those living in squalor and poverty, especially in rural areas
using district assemblies as agents of individual community needs and
transformation. And it is not accidental that policies of rural acquiescence
emerged in tandem with the political framework of decentralization in the
post-1992 period.21 Some argue that rural co-optation was simply the
result of the electoral business cycle, with political parties and incumbent
governments using discretionary spending to secure votes.22 But in the
context of market-oriented philosophy about the role of government
authority in the economy, others contend that the decentralization pro-
gram ran concurrently—and, in some respects, in harmony—with ongo-
ing liberalization measures linked to reducing the role of the state.23
Another view suggests that systematic differences between younger and
older democracies are driven by the inability of political competitors to
make credible pre-electoral promises to voters.24 Speeches by Rawlings
and public news addresses at the end of the 1980s, nonetheless, embodied
an interest in inculcating decentralized authority as a vehicle for service
delivery. This political aim included plans to reduce regional disparities
and poverty by according local institutions with administrative and, pre-
sumably, fiscal authority as vehicles for economic transformation.
If conventional wisdom is right, it is no surprise that younger democra-
cies are likely to experience negative outcomes in this regard. It is feasible,
then, that popular perceptions of patronage and political returns to the
few persist in new regimes, simultaneously leading to expectations of
“more of the same”, despite heightened hopes for political and, in many
cases, economic change.
With a range of functions that include promotion of economic devel-
opment, productive infrastructure, municipal works and services, budgeting,
finance and administration, an increasing number of districts should
16 1 INTRODUCTION

r­ epresent decentralization in practice. However, in societies that are insti-

tutionally weak and offer few incentives for civic participation besides the
potential gains from clientelist networks, such benefits may become
ambiguous. Political accommodation of economic classes or groups in
society is certainly a regular and unsurprising feature of many, if not most,
political systems. Size matters, and because the number of electoral areas
depends on the size of district assemblies as established by the National
Commission for Democracy, central or national government capture of
local government/district assemblies’ functions has been greatly facili-
tated. In essence, a weak district assembly system has provided a rationale
for recentralization and reformulation of public delivery of services like
electricity as the exclusive terrain of national government and hence facili-
tated the targeted public goods provision of electricity during electoral
cycles. One could argue that such developments reflected neo-patrimoni-
alism, or the award by public officials of personal favors, and typical exam-
ples include licenses, contracts and projects.25
On another note, this variable may account for the implicit quandary
of diffuse political power as an avenue for institutionalizing mechanisms
of co-optation in focus areas (e.g., education, feeder roads, transporta-
tion, healthcare facilities, etc.) that district assemblies would normally
deliver. As Bratton and Van de Walle note, would-be leaders of neo-
patrimonial regimes typically want to use a transition as an opportunity
to include themselves in the new rules of the political game. One method
is the use of populist ideology and rhetoric, as illustrated in the pre-
transition military oligarchy of Rawlings, which faced popular protest
and a crisis of legitimacy and subsequently had to quicken the pace of a
“managed” transition.26
A second complementary strategy involves the inculcation of weak
institutions that, on the one hand, offer accountability and a measure of
transparency, while masking the unavoidable conclusion that these institu-
tions are unlikely to constrain effectively past institutional practices.27 In
fact, the powerful incentives of such political actors within a regime—in
this case, members of the Rawlings’ government—were strongly directed
by societal pressures and economic expectations in the quest to maintain
political power. Therefore, weaknesses in the newly created district assem-
blies offered a legitimate and political conduit for discretionary outcomes
in the post-1990 period. As an International Monetary Fund report noted,
the collection of internally generated revenue in the district assemblies
remains at a dismal 14%. The report also observed that only two out of ten
 DEMOCRATIZATION, DECENTRALIZATION, AND PUBLIC GOODS 17

regions generate a fifth of their total revenue accruals. More worrying are
additional observations in the report that noted the “persistently weak
capacities of district assemblies to generate adequate levels of internal rev-
enue needs to be addressed through training programs on modalities for
enhancing the level of internally generated revenues, effective monitoring
of performance and the institution of an appropriate incentive schemes
including the enforcement of appropriate penalties”.28
Efforts to inculcate decentralized institutions signify more than per-
functory attempts to mitigate potential ethnic conflict or reshape institu-
tional authority. They represent an effort to reduce the scope of state
responsibility, while providing a legitimate institutional locus for central
governments to accord political, administrative and, to an extent, fiscal
authority for local development outcomes. Indeed, under a decentralized
planning and administrative system, economic development was thought
to begin with communities and their representatives, as well as the
Assembly members who identified their communities needs.29 By making
these structures salient at the grassroots level through the involvement of
local people in decision-making processes,30 Rawlings hoped to accord
greater financial responsibility and local development to communities
themselves—especially in rural areas. These efforts, however, also served
as an important means for political machinery of mobilization politics
apparent in public service delivery of amenities like electricity for disadvan-
taged rural poor.
Additionally, at the beginning of the 1990s, former President Jerry
Rawlings’ government marked a political impetus geared towards regime
survival by paradoxically reinforcing central government authority under
democratization and decentralization. As Joseph Ayee, in The Measurement
of Decentralization: The Ghanaian Experience, 1988–92, observed, conse-
quent efforts at maintaining power required rigorous efforts to recentral-
ize the state, despite an elaborate system of councils, subcommittees,
district planning co-ordination units and a local government service act,
which delineated expectations and functions of district assemblies. While
recentralization has strengthened government performance and pro-
duced more effective responses to local issues in many countries, Ghana’s
experience reflects opposite outcomes. Consequently, it comes as little
surprise that an official from the District Assembly Common Fund (where
monies are allocated by the central government for use at the district
levels) noted that administration of the fund has been very successful and
stated that “honestly, if it had not been for the fund, a lot of the districts
18 1 INTRODUCTION

would be in darkness, especially senior secondary schools.” Some agree

that decentralization helped to redress inequities in resource allocation
through the District Assembly Common Fund, which each district may
use as it sees fit for development at the local level.
Social contract theories from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Olson
and others espouse the view that citizens give up some rights in exchange
for protection and in return for provision of collective goods and other
services from the state. An important observation of this study is that
poorly functioning markets induce amenities like electricity to take on a
public goods aspect, which require intervention by government.31 For this
reason, the provision of public or collective goods often operates in far
more complex terms than we might expect. In the next section, I briefly
discuss the consequences of structural adjustment policies, which set the
stage for co-optation in service delivery of electricity as an effort to placate
the negative outcomes associated with this economic framework.32

The Impact of Ghana’s Economic Institutions

and Landscape

As Ghana was a more or less compliant pupil of structural-adjustment

­policies—an institutional framework that called for limited state interven-
tion in the market, privatization and more—the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund entreated its leaders to correct severe inter-
nal and external imbalances. As a corrective to rampant inflation, overval-
ued exchange rates and import tariffs, Ghana’s leaders were implored to
liberalize trade and cut social programs during the 1980s, and the political
repercussions were profuse. Though poverty reduction strategies (PRS),
devised in tandem with structural adjustment policies, aim to include
national governments as much as possible, autonomy of local actors and
institutions has frequently been compromised. As Simon et al. note, “these
PRSs are supposed to be formulated by governments through a process of
wide-ranging consultation with civil society over the broad strategy and
individual sector papers, to enhance local ‘ownership’ and acceptability.
However, the key economic and political conditionalities remain intact…”33
In tandem with structural adjustment, the pursuit of political decen-
tralization offered a legitimate means for meeting donor requirements of
transparency, institutional accountability, and the presumable diffusion
of power and authority in reformed subnational government or district
Another random document with
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monks in our own monastery, four for the brethren at Fulda, and five
for those in other places), three books of the Gospels, and two with
the Epistles and Gospels, which are called Lectionaries; besides
which, I wrote four service-books for matins. I wrote in addition a
good many books for the brethren at Fulda, for the monks at
Hirschfeld and at Amerbach, for the Abbot of Lorsch, for certain
friends at Passau, and for other friends in Bohemia, for the
monastery of Tegernsee, for the monastery of Pryel, for the
monastery of Obermünster and for that of Niedermünster, and for my
sister’s son. Moreover, to many others I gave or sent, at different
times, sermons, proverbs, and edifying writings.... Afterwards, old
age’s infirmity of various kinds hindered me.”[120]
If there were many hundred scribes of the diligence of Othlonus,
the mass of literature produced in the scriptorium may very easily
have rivalled the later output of the printing-presses. The labours of
Othlonus were, if the records are to be trusted, eclipsed by those of
the nun Diemude or Diemudis of the monastery of Wessobrunn. An
anonymous monk of this monastery, writing in the year 1513, says:
“Diemudis was formerly a most devout nun of this our monastery
of Wessobrunn. [Pez states that Diemudis lived in the time of
Gregory VII., who became Pope in 1073. She was, therefore, though
probably somewhat younger, a contemporary of the monk Othlonus
of Ratisbon.] For our monastery was formerly double or divided into
two parts; that is to say, of monks and nuns. The place of the monks
was where it now is; but that of the nuns, where the parish church
now stands. This virgin was most skilful in the art of writing: for
though she is not known to have composed any work, yet she wrote
with her own hand many volumes in a most beautiful and legible
character, both for divine service and for the public library of the
monastery. Of these books she has left a list in a certain
plenarius.[121] The titles are as follows:
A Missal, with the Gradual and Sequences. Another Missal, with
the Gradual and Sequences, given to the Bishop of Trèves. Another
Missal, with the Epistles, Gospels, Graduals, and Sequences.
Another Missal, with the Epistles and Gospels for the year, the
Gradual and Sequences, and the entire service for baptism. A
Missal, with Epistles and Gospels. A Book of Offices. Another Book
of Offices, with the baptismal service (given to the Bishop of
Augsburg). A Book, with the Gospels and Lessons. A Book, with the
Gospels. A Book, with the Epistles. A Bible, in two volumes, given for
the estate in Pisinberch. A Bible, in three volumes. S. Gregory ad
regaredum. S. Gregory on Ezekiel. Sermons and Homilies of certain
ancient Doctors, three volumes. Origen on the Old Testament.
Origen on the Canticles. Augustine on the Psalms, three volumes.
Augustine on the Gospels and on the First Epistle of S. John, two
volumes. Augustine, Epistles, to the number of lxxv. Augustine,
Treatises. S. Jerome’s Epistles, to the number of clxiv. The Tripartite
History of Cassiodorus. The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. S.
Augustine, Fifty Sermons. The Life of S. Silvester. Jerome against
Vigilantius. Jerome, De Consolatione Mortuorum. The Life of S.
Blasius. The Life of John the Almoner, Patriarch of Alexandria early
in the seventh century. Paschasius on the Body and Blood of Christ.
The Conflict of Lanfranc with Berengarius. The Martyrdom of S.
Dionysius. The Life of S. Adrian. S. Jerome, De Hebraicis
Quæstionibus. S. Augustine, Confessions. Canons. Glossa per A. B.
C. Composita (i. e., a Gloss alphabetically arranged).
These are the volumes written with her own hand by the aforesaid
handmaid of God, Diemudis, to the praise of God and of the holy
Apostles Peter and Paul, the patrons of the monastery.”[122]
The same writer says that Diemudis (whom he calls exaratrix
diligentissima) carried on a correspondence by very sweet letters
(epistolæ suaves valde) with Herluca, who was for thirty-six years a
nun at Eppach, and that the letters were in his time (1513), that is
four and a half centuries later, extant in the monastery of Bernried.

The Influence of the Scriptorium.—Hildebrand, who,

under the name Gregory VII., became Pope in 1073, appears to
have made large use of the literary facilities of the monasteries to
bring effectively before the public the doctrinal teachings which
seemed to him essential for the wholesome development of the
strength of the Church in its great contest with the imperial power
and for the proper rule of the world. The histories of the time speak
of monks travelling throughout the Empire circulating writings in
favour of the Church, by means of which writings schism could be
withstood and the zeal of good Catholics aroused.[123]
Certain of the monasteries, in connection with their literary activity
in behalf of the Pope, came into special disfavour with the Emperor.
Among them was Hirschau, the importance of whose literary work
has been previously referred to. This monastery fell under the
displeasure of the Emperor Frederick IV., but the monks, says their
own annalist, sustained by their prayers, braved the sword of the
tyrant and despised the menaces of offended princes.[124] Abbot
William of Hirschau had for twenty-two years been the soul of
monastic regeneration in Germany. He was one of the great scholars
of his time and had done not a little to further the literary pre-
eminence of his monastery, and he became one of the most valiant
defenders of the popes during this contest. Among other
ecclesiastical writers whose pens were active in the defence of the
papal decrees and in assailing the utterances of the schismatics, and
whose work, by means of the distributing machinery which had
already been organised between the monasteries, secured for the
time a large circulation, were Bernard, at one time master of the
schools of Constance, but later a monk at Hirschau; Bernold, a monk
of St. Blaise; Adelbert, a monk of Constance; and Gebhard, another
monk of Hirschau.[125]
Gregory was possibly the first pope who made effective and
extended use of the writings of devout authors for the purpose of
influencing public opinion. If we may judge by the results of his long
series of contests with the imperial power in Germany, the selection
of these literary weapons was one proof of his sagacity. In this
contest, the scriptoria of the monasteries proved more powerful than
the armies of the emperors; as, five hundred years later, the printing-
presses of the Protestants proved more effective than the Bulls of
the Papacy.
 The most important, in connection with its influence and
consequences, of the discoveries made by scholars concerning the
fraudulent character of historic documents, occurred as late as the
beginning of the fifteenth century. It was about 1440 when Laurentius
Valla, at that time acting as secretary for King Alphonso of Naples,
wrote his report upon the famous Donation of Constantine, the
document upon which the Roman Church had for nearly a thousand
years based its claims to be the direct representative in Western
Europe of the old imperial authority. Valla brought down upon his
head much ecclesiastical denunciation. The evidences produced by
him of the fact that the document had been fabricated a century or
more after the death of Constantine could not be gotten rid of, and,
although for a number of years the Church continued to maintain the
sacred character of the Donation, and has, in fact, never formally
admitted that it was fraudulent, it was impossible, after the beginning
of the sixteenth century, even for the ecclesiastics themselves to
base any further claims for the authority of the Church upon this
discredited parchment.
Of almost equal importance was the discovery of the fabrication of
the pseudo Isidoric Decretals. The Decretals had been concocted
early in the ninth century by certain priests in the West Frankish
Church, and had been eagerly accepted by Pope Nicholas I., who
retained in the archives of the Vatican the so-called originals. The
conclusion that the Decretals had been fraudulently imposed upon
the Church was not finally accepted until the beginning of the
fourteenth century. It was with the humanistic movement of the
Renaissance that historical criticism had its birth, and a very
important portion of the work of such criticism consisted in the
analysis of the lack of foundation of a large number of fabulous
legends upon which many of the claims of the Church had been
based.
There were evidently waves of literary interest and activity in the
different monasteries, between which waves the art of writing fell
more or less into disuse and the libraries were neglected. In the
monastery at Murbach, for instance, in which, in the beginning of the
century, important work had been done, it is recorded that in 1291 no
monks were found who were able to write, and the same was said in
1297 of the more famous monastery of St. Gall.[126] On the other
hand, the newly organised Orders of travelling or mendicant monks
took an active interest in preparing and in distributing manuscript
copies of works of doctrine at about the time when, in the older and
richer Orders, literary earnestness was succumbing to laziness and
luxury. With these mendicant monks, began also to come into
circulation a larger proportion of original writings, transcribed and
corrected, and probably to some extent sold by the authors
themselves. Richard de Bury makes bitter references in his
Philobiblon (chapters v. and vi.) to the general antagonism of the
Church towards literature, but speaks with appreciation of the
educational services rendered by the mendicant monks. Writing was
done also by the monks of the Minorite Order, but their rules and
their methods of life called for such close economy that the
manuscripts left by them are distinguished by the meagreness and
inadequacy of the material and the closely crowded script, which, in
order further to save space, contains many abbreviations.
Roger Bacon is said to have come into perplexity because, when
he wished to send his treatises to Pope Clement IV., he could find no
one among the Brothers of his Order who was able to assist him in
transcribing the same, while scribes outside of the Order to whom he
attempted to entrust the work gave him untrustworthy and slovenly
copies.[127]
With the beginning of the fourteenth century, it is possible to note a
scholarly influence exercised upon certain of the monasteries by the
universities. The most enterprising of the monks made opportunities
for themselves to pass some years of their novitiate in one or more
of the universities, or later secured leave of absence from the
monasteries for the purpose of visiting the universities. It also
happened that from the monasteries where literary work had already
been successfully carried on, monks were occasionally called to the
universities in order to further the literary undertakings of the
theological faculties. Finally, the abbots, and other high officials of
the monasteries, were, after the beginning of the fourteenth century,
more frequently appointed from among the ecclesiastics who had
had a university training.
The library in Heidelberg, the university of which dates from 1386,
received from the monastery at Salem a large number of beautiful
manuscripts, and finally, an illuminated breviary was completed in
1494 by the Cistercian Amandus, who, after the destruction of his
monastery in Strasburg, had found refuge in Salem, where in 1529
he became abbot. There is evidence that, at this time, both in Salem
and in other monasteries in which the business of manifolding and of
selling or exchanging manuscripts became important, a large
proportion of the work of illustrating or illuminating was done by paid
artists.
After the reform movement which began with the Council of Basel,
there came into existence, in connection with the renewal of
theological discussions, a fresh literary activity in many of the
monasteries. In the monastery at Camp, in 1440, the library was
renewed and very much extended, and here were written by
Guillaume de Reno, scriptor egregius nulli illo tempore in arte sua
secundus, the Catholicon, books of the Mass, and other devotional
works. Abbot Heinrich von Calcar provided Guillaume for eighteen
years with a yearly supply of parchment, valued at seventeen florins,
and of other writing material.
In Michelsberg, Abbot Ulrich III. (1475-1483) and his successor
Andreas restored the long-time deserted library, and by work by the
scribes of the monastery and through the exchange of works for the
productions of other monasteries, secured an important collection of
manuscripts. In 1492, Andreas, abbot of the monastery of Bergen,
near Magdeburg, renewed the scriptorium, which, later, became
active in the production of copies of works connected with this earlier
reformation.
Adolph von Hoeck, who died in 1516, Prior of Scheda in
Westphalia, was a skilled scribe as well as a zealous reformer. In
Monsee, a certain Brother, Jacob of Breslau, who died in 1480, was
said to have written so many volumes that six horses could with
difficulty bear the burden of them.[128] In the monastery at
Tegernsee, already referred to, there was, under Abbot Conrad V.
(1461-1492), an active business in the manifolding and distribution of
writings. The same was the case in Blaubeuern, where, as early as
1475, a printing-press was put into operation, but the preparation of
manuscripts continued until the end of the century. Among the works
issued from Blaubeuern in manuscript form after the beginning of
printing, were the Chronicles of Monte Cassino, by Andreas Ysingrin,
completed in 1477, and the Life of the Holy Wilhelm of Hirschau, by
Brother Silvester, completed in 1492.[129]
This year of 1492 appears to have been one of exceptional
intellectual as well as physical activity. It records not merely the
completion of a number of important works marking the close of the
manuscript period of literary production, but the publication, as will
be noted in a later chapter, of a long series of the more important of
the earlier printed books in Mayence, Basel, Venice, Milan, and
Paris.
In Belgium, through the first half of the fifteenth century, while
many of the monasteries had fallen into a condition of luxurious
inactivity, work was still carried on in the Laurentium monastery of
Liége by Johann of Stavelot, and by other zealous scribes, and in
several other of the Benedictine monasteries of the Low Countries
the scriptoria were kept busied. Towards the end of the fifteenth
century, and for some years after the beginning of the work of the
German printers, the production of manuscripts in Germany
continued actively in the monastery of S. Peter at Erfurt, and in the
monasteries of S. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg, the work of which has
been recorded with full precision and detail in the famous catalogue
of Wilhelm Wittwer.
In 1472, in this latter monastery, Abbot Melchior founded the first
printing-office at Augsburg in order to give to the monks continued
employment, and in order also to be able to enlarge the library by
producing copies of books for exchange. It was a long time,
however, before the work of the printing-press came to be sufficiently
understood to bring to a stop the labours of the scribes in
manifolding manuscripts for sale and for exchange. The writings of
the nun Helena of Hroswitha, the Chronicle of Urspergense, and
other works continued to be prepared in manuscript form after
printed editions were in the market. The same was the case with the
great choir books, which continued during nearly half the century to
be very largely prepared by hand in the scriptoria. This persistence
of the old methods was partly due to habit and to the difficulty of
communication with the centres in which the printing-presses were
already at work, but was very largely, of course, the result of the fact
that in the monasteries was always available a large amount of
labour, and that the use of this labour for the preparation of sacred
books had come to form part of the religious routine of the institution.
With the development of the system of common schools, the
educational work which had previously been carried on in the
convents was very largely given up, thus throwing upon the hands of
the monks a still greater proportion of leisure time. In 1492, Johann
of Trittenheim, Abbot of Sponheim, wrote to the Abbot Gerlach of
Deutz a letter, De Laude Scriptorum, in which he earnestly invokes
the scribes (he was addressing the scribes of the monasteries) by no
means to permit themselves to be deterred from their holy
occupation by the invasion of the printing-presses. Such admonitions
might continue the work of the monks in certain of the scriptoria, but
were, of course, futile in the attempt to preserve for any length of
time the business of circulating manuscript copies in competition with
the comparatively inexpensive, and often beautiful, productions of
the printers.
An important part in the work of the preparation and distribution of
manuscripts was taken by the so-called “Brothers of common life”
(clerici de vita communi), who later, also occupied themselves with
the new invention of printing. They cannot properly be classed with
the scribes of the monasteries, for they made their work a trade and
a means of revenue. This practice obtained, to be sure, also with
certain of the monasteries, but it must be considered as exceptional
with them. The Brothers differed also from the writers in the
university towns and elsewhere, who prepared manuscripts for
renting out to students and readers, partly because of the special
conditions of their Brotherhood, under which the earnings of
individual Brothers all went into a common treasury, but chiefly
because they made their work as scribes a means of religious and
moral instruction. The earnings secured from the sale of manuscripts
were also largely devoted to the missionary work of the Brotherhood.
The chief authority for the history of the Brotherhood is the work of
Delprat, published in Amsterdam in 1856.
The Brotherhood house in Deventer, Holland, founded by Gerhard
Groote in 1383, became an important workshop for the production
and distribution of manuscripts. Delprat states that the receipts from
these sales were for a time the main support of the Brotherhood
house. In 1389, a copy of the Bible which had been written out by
Brother Jan von Enkhuizen was sold for five hundred gulden in
gold.[130] In Liége, the Brothers were known as Broeders van de
Penne, because they carried quill pens in their caps. Groote seems
himself to have taken a general supervision of this business of the
production of books, selecting the books to be manifolded, verifying
the transcripts, and arranging for the sale of the copies which were
passed as approved. Florentius Radewijus had the general charge of
the manuscripts (filling the rôle which to-day would be known as that
of stock clerk) and of preparing the parchment for the scribes and
writing in the inscriptions of the finished manuscripts. Later, with the
development of the Order and the extension of its book business,
each Brotherhood house had its librarius, or manager of the
manufacturing and publishing department; its rubricator, who added
the initial letters or illuminated letters in the more expensive
manuscripts; its ligator, who had charge of the binding, etc.
It was a distinctive feature of the works prepared by the Brothers
that they were very largely written in the language of the land instead
of in Latin, which elsewhere was, as we have seen, the exclusive
language for literature. It was, in fact, one of the charges made by
the ecclesiastics against the Order that they put into common
language doctrinal instruction which ordinary readers, without direct
guidance of the Church, were not competent to understand, and
which tended, therefore, to work mischief. In 1398, the Brothers took
counsel on the point whether it were permissible to distribute among
the people religious writings in Low German, and they appear to
have secured the authorisation required. They laid great stress upon
the precision of their script, and they were, as a rule, opposed to
needless expenditure for ornamentation of text or of covers. Under
the influence of Groote, the work of preparing manuscripts of good
books was taken up by the monks and the nuns of Windesheim, but,
according to Busch, the books produced in Windesheim were but
rarely sold. In some cases these seem to have been distributed
gratis, while in others they were given in exchange for other books
required for the library of the monastery or convent.[131]
Wattenbach says that the Brothers in the Home at Hildesheim
were called upon for an exceptional amount of labour in preparing
books of the Mass and other devotional works in connection with the
reform movement in the monasteries of lower Saxony, which was
active in the middle of the fifteenth century. In the year 1450 (the
year in which Gutenberg perfected his printing-press) it is recorded
that the Hildesheim Brothers earned from the sale of their
manuscripts no less than a thousand gulden.[132] In connection with
their interest in the production and distribution of cheap literature, the
Brothers did not fail to make very prompt and intelligent utilisation of
the new invention of printing, and among the earlier printing-offices
established in Germany and in the Low Countries were those
organised by the Brothers at Deventer, Zwoll, Gouda, Bois-le-duc,
Brussels, Louvain, Marienthal, Rostock, etc.
 The Literary Monks of England.—In accepting the
influence of literary ideals, the Anglo-Saxon monks were much
slower and less imaginative than the quicker and more idealistic
Celts. The quickening of the intellectual development of the
monasteries in England was finally brought about through the
influence of Celtic missionaries coming directly from Ireland or from
the Irish monasteries of the Scottish region, such as Iona and its
associates.
Before the literary work of the English monasteries began, there
was already in existence a considerable body of literature, which
was the expression of the pre-christian conceptions and ideals of the
Anglo-Saxons and their Scandinavian kinsmen. Certain of the most
famous of the literary creations of the Anglo-Saxons were probably
produced subsequent to the time of the acceptance by the people of
Christianity, but these productions continued to represent the
imagination and the methods of thought of the pagan ancestry, and
to utilise as their themes the old-time legends. These Saxon
compositions were almost exclusively in the form of poems, epics,
and ballads devoted to accounts of the achievements of heroes
(more or less legendary) in their wars with each other, and in their
adventures with the gods and with the powers of magic and evil. In
these early epics, devoted chiefly to strife, women bear but a small
part, and the element of love enters hardly at all.
While it is doubtless the case that the Saxon epics, like the Greek
poems of the Homeric period and the compositions of the Celtic
bards, were preserved for a number of generations in the memories
of the reciters, there are references indicating that the writing of the
texts on the parchment began at a comparatively early date after the
occupation of England. This would imply the existence of some
trained scribes before work was begun in the scriptoria of the Saxon
monasteries. Such lay scribes must, however, have been very few
indeed, and the task of handing down for posterity the old legendary
ballads must have depended chiefly upon the scops, which was the
name given to the poets or bards attached to the court of a prince or
chieftain. It is, however, not until the acceptance of Christianity by
the Saxons that there comes to be any abiding interest in letters. As
Jusserand puts it: “These same Anglo-Saxons, whose literature at
the time of their invasion consisted of the songs mentioned by
Tacitus, carmina antiqua, which they trusted to memory alone, who
compiled no books, and who for written monuments had Runic
inscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now
have in their turn monks who compose chronicles and kings who
know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are
attached to them; manuscripts are thus copied and illuminated in
beautiful caligraphy and in splendid colours. The volutes and knots
with which the worshippers of Woden ornamented their fibulæ, their
arms, the prows of their ships, are reproduced in purple and azure,
the initials of the Gospels. The use made of them is different, the
taste remains the same.”
It is undoubtedly the case that the preservation of such fragments
of Anglo-Saxon literature as have come down to us, and probably of
most of the Scandinavian compositions which were transmitted
through the Saxons, was due to the monastery scribes whose copies
were in part transcribed from the earlier parchments and in part were
taken down from the recitals made in the monasteries by the bards
or minstrels. The service was in fact similar to that previously
rendered by the Irish monks to Celtic literature, and by the scribes of
Gaul and Italy to the writings of classic times.
The identity or kinship of much of the heroic poetry of the Anglo-
Saxons with that of the Scandinavians is pointed out by Grein in his
Anglo-Saxon Library, and by Vigfusson and York-Powell in their
Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The greatest of the old English epics,
Beowulf, sometimes called “the Iliad of the Saxons,” was put into
written form some time in the eighth century and, like all similar
epics, was doubtless the result of the weaving together of a series of
ballads of varied dates and origins. The text of the poem has been
preserved almost complete in a manuscript, now placed in the
Cottonian collection in the British Museum, which dates from the
latter part of the tenth century.
It will be understood that, as a matter of convenience in a brief
reference of this kind, I am using the term Saxon and Anglo-Saxon in
no strict ethnological sense, but simply to designate the Teutonic
element of the people of England, an element whose influence is
usually considered to have begun with the landing of Hengist and
Horsa in 451.
The first of the Anglo-Saxon monks to be ranked as a poet
appears to have been the cowherd Cædmon, a vassal of the Abbess
Hilda and a monk of Whitby. Caædmon’s songs were sung about
670. He is reported to have put into verse the whole of Genesis and
Exodus, and, later, the life of Christ and the Acts of the Apostles, but
his work was not limited to the paraphrasing of the Scriptures. A
thousand years before the time of Paradise Lost, the Northumbrian
monk sang before the Abbess Hilda the Revolt of Satan. Fragments
of this poem, discovered by Archbishop Usher, and printed for the
first time in 1655, have been preserved, and have since that date
been frequently published.[133] Cædmon died in 680, and Milton in
1674. The Abbess Hilda, who was herself a princess of royal family,
appears to have had a large interest in furthering the study of
literature, not only in the nunnery founded by her, but in a
neighbouring monastery which came largely under her influence. In
both nunnery and monastery, schools for the children of the district
were instituted, which schools were probably the earliest of their
class in that portion of Britain.
The Northumbrian poet Cynewulf, whose work was done between
the years 760 and 800, may be referred to as a connecting link
between the group of national or popular bards and the literary
workers of the Church. His earlier years were passed as a
wandering minstrel, but later in life he passed through some religious
experience and entered a monastery, devoting himself thereafter to
religious poetry. His conversion was doubtless the means of
preserving (through the scriptorium of his monastery) such of his
compositions as have remained, and thus of making a place for his
name among the authors of England.
Among the earlier Saxon monks whose educational work was
important are to be included S. Wilfred (634-709) and S. Cuthbert
(637-687). Wilfred introduced into England the Rule of the
Benedictines, and exercised a most important influence in instituting
Benedictine monasteries and in bringing these monasteries into
relations with the Church of Rome. His life was a stormy one, but
notwithstanding the various contentions with the several monarchs
who at that time divided between them the territory of England, and
in spite of several periods of banishment, he found time to carry on a
great work in furthering the intellectual life of his Benedictine monks.
It was largely due to him that the Benedictine monasteries accepted
almost from the first the responsibility of conducting the schools of
the land. These schools achieved so great repute that Anglo-Saxons
of high rank were eager to confide their children to Wilfred to be
brought up in one of his monastic establishments. At the close of
their school training they were to choose between the service of God
and that of the King. Wilfred is also to be credited with the
establishing within the English monasteries of a course of musical
instruction, the teachers of which had largely been trained in the
great school of Gregorian music at Canterbury.
Another of the Saxon abbots whose name remains associated
with the intellectual life of the monasteries was Benedict Biscop.
Montalembert speaks of Biscop as representing science and art in
the Church, as Wilfred had stood for the organising of the English
Church as a public body, and Cuthbert for the renewal and
development of its life. The monasteries of Wearmouth and of
Yarrow, founded by Biscop, were endowed with great libraries and
became the centres of an active literary life. Biscop made no less
than six journeys to Rome in the interest of his monastery work, and,
in the seventh century, a journey to Rome from Britain was not an
easy experience. His fourth expedition, begun in the year 671, was
undertaken partly in the interests of literature and for the purpose of
securing books for the education of his monks. He obtained in the
Papal capital a rich cargo of books, some of which he had purchased
while others were given to him. In Vienne, the ancient capital of
Gaul, he secured a further collection. The monastery of Wearmouth,
founded in 673, had the benefit of a large portion of the books
brought from Italy by the abbot. It was his desire that each
monastery for which he was responsible should possess a library,
which seemed to him indispensable for the instruction, discipline,
and the good organisation of the community. Biscop’s fifth journey
was made partly for the purpose of securing pictures, coloured
images, and artistic decorations for the chapel of the monastery, but
the sixth pilgrimage, made in 685, was again devoted almost entirely
to the collection of books.
For the details of the work of Biscop in the organisation of his
monasteries and in the supervision of the work in their scriptoria, and
concerning his various architectural and artistic undertakings, we are
largely indebted to the historian Beda, or Bede. Bede was a pupil of
Biscop in the monastery of Yarrow, and it was in this monastery that
were written the famous Chronicles. It was the time of comparative
peace in the island which preceded the first Danish invasion. The
fame of the scholar who produced these chronicles was destined to
eclipse that of nearly all the Saxon saints and kings, who were in fact
known to posterity principally through the pen of the Venerable Bede.
It is to Biscop, however, that should be credited the literary
surroundings under which Bede was educated, and it is probable
that without the stimulating influence of the books secured by the
abbot in his wearisome journeys to Southern Europe, the monk
would hardly have had the capacity or the incentive to complete his
work.
Coelfried, who later became Abbot of Yarrow, and who, after the
death of Biscop, was in charge also of the monastery of Wearmouth,
continued the interest of his predecessor in the libraries and in the
work done by the scribes in the scriptoria. Among the books brought
from Rome by Biscop was a curious work on cosmography, which
King Alfred was very anxious to possess. Abbot Coelfried finally
consented to let the King have the book in exchange for land
sufficient to support eight families. Coelfried had had made in the
scriptorium of Wearmouth two complete copies of the Bible
according to the version of S. Jerome, the text of which had been
brought from Rome. These copies were placed, one in the church of
Wearmouth and one in that of Yarrow, and were open for the use not
only of the monks, but of any others who might desire to consult
them and who might be able to read the script. Montalembert refers
to this instance as a refutation of “the stupid calumny” which
represents the Church as having in former times interdicted to her
children the knowledge of the sacred Scriptures.[134]
 When Aldhelm, who became Bishop of Sherborn in the year 705,
went to Canterbury to be consecrated by his old friend and
companion Berthwold (pariter literis studuerant, pariterque viam
religionis triverant—together they had studied literature and together
they had followed the path of religion), the Archbishop kept him there
many days, taking counsel with him about the affairs of his diocese.
Hearing of the arrival during this time of ships at Dover, he went
there to inspect their unloading and to see if they had brought
anything in his way (si quid forte commodum ecclesiastico usui
attulissent nautæ qui e Gallico sinu in Angliam provecti librorum
copiam apportassent—to see whether the ships which had arrived
from the French coast had brought, with the books which formed a
part of their cargoes, any volumes of value for the work of the
Church). Among many other books he saw one containing the whole
of the Old and New Testaments, which book he bought, and which,
according to William of Malmesbury, who in the twelfth century wrote
the life of Aldhelm, was at that time still preserved at Sherborn.[135]
The great Bible given by King Offa, in 780, to the church at
Worcester is described in the chronicle of Malmesbury as Magnam
Bibliam.[136] As before indicated, however, the common name of this
time for a collection of the Scriptures was not Biblia but Bibliotheca.
In a return of their property which the monks of St. Riquier at Centule
made in the year 831, by order of Louis the Débonnaire, we find,
among a considerable quantity of books: Bibliotheca integra ubi
continentur libri lxxii., in uno volumine (a complete Bible, in which
seventy-two books are comprised in one volume), and also
Bibliotheca dispersa in voluminibus xiv.[137] (a Bible divided into
fourteen volumes).
Fleury says of Olbert, Abbot of Gembloux: Étant abbé, il amassa à
Gembloux plus de cent volumes d’auteurs ecclésiastiques, et
cinquante d’auteurs profanes, ce qui passoit pour une grande
Bibliothèque.[138] Warton, using Fleury for his authority, speaks of
the “incredible labour and immense expense” which Olbert had given
to the formation of this library. There is, however, no authority in the
quotation from Fleury for such a description of the exceptional nature
of the labour and of the outlay. On the contrary, Fleury goes on to
say that Olbert, who had been sent to reform and restore the
monastery, which was in a state of great poverty and disorder, had
put the monks to work at writing, in order to keep them from being
idle. He himself set an example of industry as a scribe by writing out,
with his own hand, the whole of the Old and the New Testament, a
work which was completed in the year 1040.[139] Maitland calculates
that a scribe must be both expert and industrious to perform in less
than ten months the task of transcribing all the books of the Old and
the New Testament. He estimates, further, that at the rate at which
the law stationers of London paid their writers in his time (1845),
such a transcript would cost, for the writing only, between sixty and
seventy pounds.[140]
The sterling service rendered by King Alfred to the literary
interests of England was important in more ways than one, and while
his work does not strictly belong to the record of the English
monasteries, it may properly enough be associated with the literary
history of the English Church; for the King had been adopted as a
spiritual son by Pope Leo IV., and in organising and supervising the
work of the Church, he took upon himself a large measure of the
responsibilities which later were discharged by the Primate. Alfred
ruled over the West Saxons from 871 to 901. His reign was a stormy
one, and during a number of years it seemed doubtful whether the
existence of the little Saxon Kingdom could be maintained against
the assaults of the Danes. There came finally, however, a period of
peace when Alfred, with Winchester as his capital, was able to give
attention to the organisation of education in his kingdom.
During the long years of invasion and of civil war, the literary
interests and culture that had come to the Saxons through the
Romans had been in great part swept away. The collections of books
had been burned and could not be replaced because the clerics had
forgotten their Latin. Alfred complained that at the time of his
accession in Winchester he could not find south of the Thames a
single Englishman able to translate a letter from Latin into English.
“When I considered all this, I remembered also how I saw, before it
had all been ravaged and burned, how the churches throughout the
whole of England stood filled with treasures and books, and there
was also a great multitude of God’s servants, but they had very little
knowledge of the books; they could not understand any of them
because they were not written in their own language.” Alfred can find
but one explanation for the omission of the “good and wise men who
were formerly all over England” to leave translations of these books.
“They did not think that men could ever be so careless and that
learning could so soon decay.” The King recalls, however, that there
are still left many who “can read English writing.” “I began therefore
among the many and manifold troubles of this Kingdom, to translate
into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis and in
English Shepherd’s Book (Hirdeboc), sometimes word for word and
sometimes according to the sense, as I had learned it from
Plegmund, my Archbishop, and Asser, my Bishop, and Grimbold my
Mass-priest, and John my Mass-priest.”[141] It will be noted in these
references of King Alfred, that the collections of books, the loss of
which he laments, had been contained in the churches. It was also to
the ecclesiastics that he was turning for help in the work of rendering
into English the instruction for his people to be found in the few Latin
volumes that had been preserved.
Jusserand says that Asser was to Alfred what Alcuin had been to
Charlemagne, and that he helped the King, by means of the
production of translations and by founding schools, to preserve and
to spread learning. King Alfred was, however, not content with using
his royal authority and influence for the instituting of schools, but
himself gave to work as a translator personal time and labour which
must have been spared with difficulty from his duties as a ruler and
as a military commander. He chooses for his translations books likely
to fill up the greatest gaps in the minds of his countrymen, “some
books that are most needful for all men to know”: the Book of
Orosius, which is to serve as a hand-book of universal history; the
Chronicles of Bede, that will instruct them concerning the history of
their own ancestors; the Pastoral Rule of S. Gregory, which will
make clear to churchmen their ecclesiastical duties; and the
Consolation of Philosophy of Boëthius, recommended as a guide for
the lives of both ecclesiastics and laymen. These royal translations
are at once placed in the scriptoria of the monasteries and in the
writing-rooms of the monastery schools for manifolding, and secure
through these channels an immediate and important educational
influence.
It is also under the instructions of Alfred that the old national
chronicles, written in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, are copied, corrected,
and continued. Of these chronicles, seven, more or less complete
and differing from each other to some extent, have been preserved.
The history of the world presents possibly no other instance of a
monarch who devoted himself so steadfastly, with his own personal
labour, to the educational and spiritual development of his people.
In the latter portion of the tenth century, S. Dunstan, Archbishop of
Canterbury under King Edgar, takes up the task of instructing the
clergy and people. Under his influence, new monasteries are
endowed, a further series of monastery schools is instituted, and
special attention is given in the scriptoria and in the writing-rooms of
the schools to the production of copies of translations of pious works.
The special literary feature of the work done in Dunstan’s school was
the attention given to the production of collections of sermons in the
vulgar tongue. A number of these collections has been preserved, an
example of which, known as the Blickling Homilies (from Blickling
Hall, Norfolk, where the MS. was found) was compiled before 971.
The series also included homilies by Ælfric, who was Abbot of
Eynsham in 1005, and sermons of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of York
in 1002.
The canons of Ælfric were written between the years 950 and
1000. The authorities do not appear to be clear whether these
canons were the work of the Archbishop or of a grammarian of the
same name, while, according to one theory, the Archbishop and the
grammarian were the same person. The canons were addressed to
Wulfin, Bishop of Sherborn, and they were written in such a form that
the Bishop might communicate them to his clergy as a kind of
episcopal charge. The twenty-first canon orders: “Every priest also,
before he is ordained, must have the arms belonging to his spiritual
work; that is, the holy books, namely, the Psalter, the Book of
Epistles, the Book of Gospels, the Missal, the Book of Hymns, the
Manual, the Calendar (Computus), the Passional, the Penitential, the
Lectionary. These books a priest requires and cannot do without, if
he would properly fulfil his office and desires to teach the law to the
people belonging to him. And let him carefully see that they are well
written.”[142]
The library of the English monastery or priory was under the care
of the chantor, who could neither sell, pawn, nor lend books without
an equivalent pledge; he might, however, with respect to
neighbouring churches or to persons of consideration, relax
somewhat the strictness of this rule. In the case of a new foundation,
the King sometimes sent letters-patent to the different abbeys
requesting them to give copies of theological and religious books in
their own collections. In certain instances, the King himself provided
such transcripts for the new foundation. In the catalogue of the
abbatial libraries of England, prepared by Leland, record is found of
only the following classics: Cicero and Aristotle (these two appear in
nearly all the catalogues), Terence, Euclid, Quintus Curtius, Sidonius
Apollinaris, Julius Frontinus, Apuleius, and Seneca.[143] It is difficult
from such a list to arrive at the basis or standard of selection.
Thomas Duffus Hardy gives some interesting information
concerning the later literary and historical work done in the
monasteries of Britain,[144] and for a portion of the following notes
concerning this work I am chiefly indebted to him. The Abbey of St.
Albans was founded towards the close of the eighth century, but it
was not until the latter part of the eleventh century, or nearly three
hundred years later, that the scriptorium was instituted. The
organisation of the scriptorium was due to Paul, the fourteenth
abbot, who presided over the monastery from 1077 to 1093, and
who had the assistance in this work of the Bishop Lanfranc. Paul
was by birth a Norman, and was esteemed a man of learning as well
as of piety. After the scriptorium had been opened, the abbot placed
in it eight Psalters, a Book of Collects, a Book of Epistles, a book
containing the Gospels for the year, two Gospels bound in gold and
silver and ornamented with gems, and twenty-eight other notable
volumes. In addition to these, there was a number of ordinals,
costumals, missals, troparies, collectories, and other books for the