ry had also a share in
his pious labors, and he exhausted on the poor the revenue of his
monastery, and whatever other temporal goods came to his hands, with a
profusion which many condemned as excessive, but which heaven, on urgent
occasions, sometimes approved by sensible miracles. The good old man
would receive advice from the meanest of his monks, with an astonishing
humility; when entreated by any to moderate his austerities, he
frequently answered, "I will take care of your servant, that he may
serve you the longer;" meaning himself. Several hospitals were erected
by him. During his banishment, another Adalard, who governed the
monastery by his appointment, began, upon our saint's project, to {079}
prepare the foundation of the monastery of New Corbie, vulgarly called
Corwey, in the diocese of Paderborn, nine leagues from that city, upon
the Weser, that it might be a nursery of evangelical laborers, to the
conversion and instruction of the northern nations. St. Adalard, after
his return to Corbie, completed this great undertaking in 822, for which
he went twice thither, and made a long stay, to settle the discipline of
his colony. Corwey is an imperial abbey; its territory reaches from the
bishopric of Paderborn to the duchy of Brunswick, and the abbot is one
of the eleven abbots, who sit with twenty-one bishops, in the imperial
diet at Ratisbon: but the chief glory of this house is derived from the
learning and zeal of St. Anscharius, and many others, who erected
illustrious trophies of religion in many barbarous countries. To
perpetuate the regularity which he established in his two monasteries,
he compiled a book of statutes for their use, of which considerable
fragments are extant:[3] for the direction of courtiers in their whole
conduct, he wrote an excellent book, On the Order of the Court; of which
work we have only the large extracts, which Hincmar has inserted in his
Instructions of king Carloman, the master-piece of that prelate's
writings, for which he is indebted to our saint. A treatise on the
Paschal Moon, and other works of St. Adalard, are lost. By those which
we have, also by his disciples, St. Paschasius Radbertus, St.
Anscharius, and others, and by the testimony of the former in his life,
it is clear that our saint was an elegant and zealous promoter of
literature in his monasteries: the same author assures us, that he was
well skilled, and instructed the people not only in the Latin, but also
in