Theodore and Wilfrith, Bccfuree iefivcrcb in f. $auf'e in ecm6*r 1800 I.V I UK R.GHT REV. G. F. BROWNE, D.D, D.C.L., CANON or ST. PAUL'S, BISHOP OF STEPNEY, AND FORMERLY D.SNEY PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES. PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE TRACT COMMITTEE. LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. ; 4* QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C. BRIGHTON : 129. NORTH STREET. NEW YORK. E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 1897. HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY PREFACE THIS little book represents the last of the series of five courses of lectures on the Earliest History of the Church of England, which I have delivered at St. Paul's in accordance with an arrangement made five years ago with the late Archbishop of Canterbury. The subject would have been a thorny one at any time of our history since the commencement of the fight for restored freedom which cul- minated in the Reformation. The modern aggression of the Roman schism makes it a very thorny subject indeed just now. My aim has been to shew that not all the gratitude of the English to the great see which had sent them Augustine and found for them Theodore, and not all their respect for the city which held the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul, led them to recognise the arrogant claims made in the period which our subject covers. Whatever is the opposite of subservience, that we find to be the characteristic of the English attitude. A long list of claims made is of no effect at all in argument against such proofs of sturdy independence as here we find. There is plenty of high-sounding language on the part of Rome. The English will be seen going on their way in rather contemptuous disregard of claims and threats completely futile, not pressed when they were seen to be useless. 498253 CONTENTS. LECTURE V. PAGE The hearing of Wilfrith's appeal at Borne. Agatho's full Papal claims. His title of universal bishop. His decision in Wilfrith's case. Reception accorded to his decision in Northumbria. Wilfrith's imprisonment, release, and banishment. Further disregard of the Roman decision, and independent action of Theodore. Net result of Theodore's subdivision of dioceses. The Council of Hat- field ; double Procession of the Holy Ghost. Theodore's reconciliation with Wilfrith. Partial restoration of Wil- frith, but still in violation of Agatho's decree . . .138 LECTURE VI. Theodore's death. His organisation of dioceses. His Penitential. His schools. Aldfrith and Wilfrith at vari- ance. Archbishop Brihtwald and the Synod of Quest rae- feld. Wilfrith threatens to appeal to Rome ; is again expelled. The hearing of Wilfrith's second appeal. Decision of the Pope in his favour ... . 175 LECTURE VII. Letter of Pope John VI to the kings of Northumbria and Mercia. Its recognition of the autonomy of the English Church in Wilfrith's case. King Aldfrith refuses to act on the Pope's letter or make any change in regard to Wilfrith's expulsion. His successor Eadulf takes the same line. Council of Nidd ; declaration of Aldfrith's deathbed instructions. Lay decision that the papal de- crees of Agatho should, in accordance with Aldfrith's testament, be carried out. Refusal of bishops ; discussion of details. The decrees never carried out ; Wilfrith made bishop of Hexham only. His death ; summary of his episcopal life in Northumbria. Pope Paul I and his letter to king Eadbert of Northumbria in a like case of deprivation. Decision of the Church of England that it is autonomous, having no appeal beyond the Archbishop . 207 LECTURE VIII. Ancient crosses and other sculptured stones. Ruthwell. Abercorn. Acca's cross. Art in Wessex. Aldhelm. Bradford - on - Avon. Deerhurst. Glastonbury. Dol- ton. Cuthbert's altar. His pectoral cross. Hackness. Ripon. Stapleford. Eadulf. Monkwearmouth. Brit- ford. Ethelwold's cross 235 THEODORE AND WILFRITII. LECTURE I. An-hl.ishop I), The early life of Wilfrith. AN-hfrith and his patronage of Wilfrith. The Whitby Conference. Wilfrith's relation to the Petrine rlaims of Rome. The silence of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle on the Whitby Conference ; a possible ex- planation of it. LAST year we carried down the general history of the christianising of six of the seven kingdoms of England to the death of Honorius of Canterbury on September 30, 653, fifty- seven years after the first coming of Augus- tine. For the christianising of the seventh kingdom, Sussex, we had to break far into the succeeding period. We can now return to the year 653. At the time when the last of the Italian mission, Archbishop Honorius, died, there were only four bishops in England. Two of these, .'8 THtfOTXmE A$D WILFRITH. Rochester and Dunwich, had the Canterbury consecration ; the other two had not, Agilbert of Dorchester had been consecrated by French bishops, and the Celtic Finan of Lindisfarne by Irish bishops 1 . During the vacancy after Honorius's death, Cedd of London was conse- crated by the Celtic Finan and two bishops called in by him Scotic bishops, no doubt. I may explain again that by " Scotic" I mean " of the Irish Church/' whether in Ireland, whose people were called Scoti, or at lona, or on the mainland of Scotland. The next Arch- bishop of Canterbury, Deusdedit, was conse- crated by the Bishop of Rochester alone, and he himself consecrated only one bishop. The next nine of the bishops of England, from 655 to 668, were all consecrated either by French or by Scotic or by British bishops, not one of them from Canterbury. Perhaps nothing could more graphically indicate the low ebb to which the Roman mission had sunk, or more clearly emphasise the fact that the English Church, or the Church in England, or the Church of the English, was left to go on its own way, on its own resources, without the intervention of Rome. The independent position of the Church of England may have been very bad 1 Augustine and his Companions ^S.P.C.K.), p. 189. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. for it, in its very early years ; but of the fact of its independence there can be no manner of doubt. The only alternative view would be, that the Roman Church was supposed to keep its eye and hand upon the English Church, and grossly neglected its self-imposed duty. But that is quite unnecessaiy as an explana- tion. The actual fact of the independence of the English Church, of its self-managing position, is exactly in accordance with the very wise lines on which Pope Gregory drew its national constitution. As Pope Gregory called it in its earliest infancy " the Church of the English," Anglorum Ecclesia 1 , so Bede called it in its fully developed state " the holy Church of the English race," sancta eccle&ia gent is Anglorum 2 . Never did the word or the idea "Rome" come into the name of our national Church. From September 30, 653, to March 26, 655, there was no Archbishop of Canterbury. Then Frithona was consecrated Archbishop, a Wes- sex man, the first English-born Archbishop. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has been said to claim that honour for Brihtwald, in 690 ; but that is a misinterpretation of the Chronicle 3 , 1 Bede, i. 27. a Bede, iii. 29. 3 See p. 184. 10 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. and there can be no doubt of Frithona's right to it. He was named Deusdedit, " God-gave" ; a very singular coincidence, when we remem- ber that his immediate successor of whom we are to hear so much bore the same name in a Greek form, Theodore, " Gift of God.'' Deusdedit was consecrated at Canterbury by Ithamar, the English-born Bishop of Rochester, acting alone. It has been noted as a remark- able evidence of the real hold that Christianity had at last got of the English people, that the consecrations of four bishops are mentioned in the one short chapter of Bede's history which tells us of Deusdedit, and all the four bishops were English-born 1 . Of Deusdedit we know almost nothing. He is said by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to have consecrated the abbey of Medeshamsted, after- wards called Peterborough. But the passage is so full of anachronisms that we cannot place any reliance upon it. Bede, however, does mention incidentally that it was founded somewhere about this time ; and it is probable that on that incidental mention the imaginary facts of the Chronicle were based. The only certain event of Deusdedit's reign, beyond his consecration of Damian of Rochester, is the 1 Bede, H. E. iii. 20. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. II famous Synod or Conference of Whitby, with which, however, he had nothing to do. Deus- dedit died in July, 664, and therefore the Conference, which took place in that year, and in his time, must have taken place in the early part of the year. I have elsewhere 1 pointed out that 664 was a critical year in the Easter controversy, for the Paschal full moon fell on a Sunday in that year, and thus the question was definitely raised, was the Scotic Church riirht, which King Oswy followed, in saying that the Sunday on which the spring full moon fell was Easter Sunday, or were the Greek and Roman Churches right, whom the Queen Eanfleda and the sub-king Alch- i'rith followed, in saying that if the spring full moon fell on a Sunday, they must wait for Easter Day till the next Sunday? Our own rule for Easter Day is " the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the 2ist of March," and that of course excludes a Sunday on which the full moon falls. The queen and her party, following this rule, said that the Sunday of the full moon, which the others were keeping with great feastings as Easter Day, was in fact Palm Sunday. We can imagine what an upset that difference between the King's party 1 The Venerable Bede (S.P.C.K.), p. 53. 12 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. and the Queen's party would make at Court, where feasts were of such magnitude, and of so great importance as royal ceremonies, in the Anglo-Saxon times. It seems to me probable that as the question had taken that practical and drastic form, the royal family would desire to get it settled as soon as pos- sible, before the practical interest died out. It would take some time for the disputants to assemble, and we may with some probability suggest the end of April or the beginning of May as the date of the Conference. This famous Conference is well known from many books, and we had the main outline of it last year 1 . I do not propose to deal with it in detail on the present occasion. But it raises a question which must be settled at this point, namely, are we in this course of lectures to deal with Wilfrith and Theodore separately, or are we to look continuously and consecu- tively at the history of the times in which each played so highly important a part ? For many reasons I prefer the latter course ; and it thus becomes necessary now to say something of Wilfrith's early life, down to this year 664. We learn a good deal about him from Bede, but Bede is remarkably silent about some of 1 The Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), pp. 29, &c. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 13 the most critical parts of his chequered life, or at most gives us a very discreet and colourless statement. He knew his facts well, and he knew that in places the ice was very thin. Nothing of that kind can be said of Eddi, Wilfrith's choirmaster and chaplain and bio- grapher. From him we have only too much colour and too little discretion ; and his facts want a good deal of looking into. His life of Wilfrith was written, probably, not much more than a year after Wilfrith's death, say in 711, twenty years before Bede's History, and it thus has the special claim of earliness ; indeed, the anonymous life of Cuthbert has been said to be the only earlier piece of historical writing, relating to the English Church, that we possess. Bede's Metrical Life of Outkbert, however, was probably four or five years earlier ; and his History of the Abbats of Wearmouth was at most only as much later. So far as an account of Wilfrith's life and work is concerned, I could not possibly do better than read to you the article on Wilfrith in the Dictionaiy of Christian Biography, written by my much lamented friend Canon Kaine of York, whose death this year has removed from the world a storehouse of know- ledge, kept only far too much to himself and 14 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. dying with him. But as Canon Raine's pur- pose was to give a full biography of Wilfrith, and mine is rather to comment on salient points, we must take an independent course. Wilfrith was born in 634, the year of the apostasy of the princes of Northumbria. His father was a person of importance, well known to those about the king. When Wilfrith reached his fourteenth year, his stepmother's unkindness drove him away from his home. He was supplied with a proper outfit for a person of his standing and for his attendants, was blessed by his father, and made his way to Court. Queen Eanfleda befriended this handsome, clever boy, who was favourably introduced to her notice by the nobles who had seen him at his father's house. His wish was to serve the Lord, and the Queen sent him accordingly to the great Scotic monastery of Lindisfarne, to study there. Eddi says this was soon after he first came to Court, so we may put it in 648 or 649, two years, or three, before Aidan of Lindisfarne died leaning on a beam at Bamborough 1 . He was thus for at 1 In my last year's course of lectures, The Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), p. 28, I remarked on the cir- cumstances of Aidan's death, and observed that it was needless to say that the beam on which he leaned as he THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 15 least some time under Aldan's Scotic influence. He fell heartily into the spirit of the place ; learned the whole of the Psalms by heart ; and even read a book or two besides a remark- able thing, then, it would appear. After some few years, the desire entered his mind to visit the threshold of St. Peter the Apostle and chief of the Apostles. That is how Eddi puts it, magnifying as his wont is St. Peter's position, and cutting out St. Paul in a manner much more Roman than that even of many Popes. The ordinary statement of those times was, that men desired to visit the thresholds of the Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul. The Donation of Constantino itself, all forged as it was in the Papal interest, is so died wrought miracles and resisted the violence of fire. A very favourable review in one of the principal Church papers described this as a sneer at ecclesiastical miracles in Gibbon's best manner I It was, on the contrary, a simple recognition of a phenomenon in itself simple and natural. I quite believe that many of the early mediaeval " miracles" are true, though they would be better described as " faith -cures." And in the frequent burnings which marked a time of wooden houses, Aidan's beam may well have escaped and continued to escape in a manner that seemed to simple faith miraculous. I wish we could get back some of that simple faith. We could afford to part with a good many modern jeers in return for it. 16 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. far sound in tone that it makes Constantino declare that at his baptism in Rome he was cleansed by the merits of St. Peter and St. Paul, and makes him give his palaces, &c., &c., to " the holy Apostles my lords the most blessed Peter and Paul/' I am sorry to say that Eddi's open determination to centre everything in St. Peter, and the great advance in Pe trine claims made by two of the Popes with whom he deals, will render necessary a more controversial attitude than I should myself have wished to adopt. Our early English Church history is so exceedingly interesting in itself, and in its sturdy nation- ality, that it is a pity to be driven into controversy over it. However, we could not have a better field. The head of the monastery of Lindisfarne, who was now the Scotic Finan, had no narrow objection to Wilfritb/s going to the centre of the other school of thought and practices ; and with his full consent and that of Wilfrith's parents, the Queen sent him by way of Kent, where her brother reigned. There he had given him as his companion Benedict Biscop, or Biscop Baducing, of whose journeys to Rome we said a good deal four years ago 1 . 1 Lessons from Early English Church History (S.P.C.K.). THEODORE AND WILFKITH. 17 At Lyons the Archbishop of that city kept him with him for a considerable time ; pressed upon him important opportunities for a lay life ; and offered him his niece in marriage. Wilfrith declined these offers, and went to Rome the see, as Eddi again describes it, of Peter the Apostle and chief of the Apostles. His first visit, however, so far as we know, was not to St. Peter's or St. Paul's, but to St. Andrew's, now St, Gregory's, of which we said a good deal two years ago 1 . There he saw on the altar a book of the Gospels, no doubt one of the splendid examples of beauti- ful ornamentation and sumptuous binding which, as we shall see, made a lasting mark on his mind. Kneeling before the altar, he prayed the Apostle 2 that through his inter- cession the Lord would grant to him the skill to read and the eloquence to teach the Gospels among the Gentiles. Day by day for many months he visited and prayed at the places of the saints. He found a learned friend, thanks to God and the Apostle, no less a person than Boniface the Archdeacon, who taught him completely the four Gospels of Christ, which 1 Augustine and his Companions (S.P.C.K.), pp. 141, &c. * The text is confused here. The Apostle seems to be St. Andrew. B 1 8 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. he seems not to have known before, and the rule for Easter, which the schismatics of Britain (meaning the Britons who still re- mained in the mountainous parts to the west of England, namely, Cornwall, Wales, and Cumberland) and of Ireland did not know ; these last words are Eddi's, not mine. And many other rules of ecclesiastical discipline did Boniface diligently dictate to him. Finally, Boniface presented him to the Pope, probably Eugenius I, the successor of the martyred Martin, the predecessor of Vitalian of whom we shall have to hear a good deal. It is quite evident that to visit Rome and the holy places there was the fulfilment of Wilfrith's desire, and the personal visit to the Pope was a secondary thing. Rome was vastly greater than the Bishop of Rome. The Pope's position was great because Rome was so supremely great. But the Pope was not the dominant idea in a visit to Rome, otherwise we should have heard of Wilfrith's great regret that there was no Pope to be presented to, Martin being in confinement in the East. If, as seems certain, Eugenius was the Pope to whom Wil- frith was at last presented, he was a doubtful Pope, being consecrated before his predecessor was dead. But that amount of doubtfulness THEODORE AND WILFRITH. is a mere trifle in the very doubtful history of the Papacy. The Pope laid his hand upon Wilfrith's head, prayed over him, and blessed him. Wilfrith returned to Lyons. From the Archbishop of Lyons he received the tonsure, and the Archbishop meant to make him his heir. Eut that was a dangerous time for bishops. Bishops were interfering a great deal in political affairs, not always with a very clean record ; and cruel and licen- tious kings and queens, and unscrupulous mayors of the palace, hated courageous eccle- siastics, whether interfering or not. It was about the time of the political murder of St. Leger, and the Archbishop of Lyons met a like fate. Wilfrith was with him at his execution, and prepared to die with him ; but his appearance caught the attention of those in charge. "Who is that handsome young fellow getting ready to die?" the leading person asked. " He is an Englishman, from Britain across the seas." " Leave him alone then." And so he got safe home to Northum- berland again, probably in the year 658. Alchfrith, in whose memory the cross still standing at Bewcastle was erected twelve years after this 1 , was now ruling the southern 1 See Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), Lecture VII. B 2 20 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. part of the kingdom of Northumbria as sub- king, under Oswy bis fatber. Tbere are some difficulties in that statement which incline me to suspect that it may have been the western rather than the southern part that was subject to his rule, but the other is the universal view. Alchfrithj who had been a supporter of the Scotic Church, had by this time become de- voted to the other side, under the influence of Coinwalch, king of Wessex, as Eddi tells us. It is usually said that it was Wilfrith who brought about his change of view, but Eddi is quite precise in his statement. There is no- thing, so far as I know, in the history of Coinwalch, which we considered last year 1 , to suggest that he held the Petrine view, or, indeed, any Church view, in any determined manner. Alchfrith heard, Eddi tells us, that Wilfrith had come from the Apostolic See ; that he preached the true Easter; and that he had learned the manifold discipline of the Church of the holy Peter the Apostle, He sent for him ; and they became devoted friends. Alch- frith had settled a colony of Scotic monks at Ripon, under Eata, Abbat of Melrose. He now gave them their option of joining the side he 1 T)w Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), pp. 54-61. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 21 had since adopted, or clearing out of Ripon. They cleared out; and Wilfrith was made abbat 1 . Soon after, Agilbert of Wessex visited Northumbria, and at Alchfrith's request he ordained Wilfrith priest. Thus Wilfrith was brought up by the Scotic Church, tonsured by a Gallican archbishop, and ordained priest by a Galilean bishop who had studied in Ireland. Shortly after Wilfrith 's ordination as priest, the great synod or conference of Whitby took 1 Alchfrith had before this given to Wilfrith land at Stanford, -fiSt-Stanforda, presumably for the purposes of a monastery. It is natural to suppose that Stamford is meant ; but the fashion is to rule that out of court, because Stamford was not in Northumbria. But Alch- fiith's marriage with Cyniberga, sister of the king Wulfhere of Mercia, gave him sufficient opportunity i>r the donation of land in Mercia. We saw last year a case in point, where Cynegils of Wessex and his son- in-law Oswald of Northumbria jointly ("both kings") gave the City of Dorchester to Bishop Birinus. Oswald had no doubt acquired some dowry rights in Dorchester, through his wife, and it may very well have been so in the case of Alchfrith with Stamford, especially as Stamford was so near to the parts with which Alchfrith was specially connected. This view is strengthened by the facts that Wulfhere himself was an active patron of Wilfrith, and that by that and other like means Wilfrith became a large owner of lands in that part of Mercia which is now Northamptonshire. I cannot see any serious difficulty in taking JEt-Stanforda to mean Stam- ford. At page 53 I have made some remarks on the gifts of land to churches and churchmen, in another sense. 22 THEODOKE AND WILFRITH. place. It finally determined the line the English Church should take on the points of difference between the Scotic and British Churches on the one side, and the Church universal on the other. Even if the chief king, OsWy, had given his decision in favour of the Scotic view, it could only have put off the right determination for a short time. The English race had far too much of the future in them to rest satisfied with an isolated position. They were to be a world- wide force, and it was certain that they would throw themselves into the general swim of the Christian world, while maintaining their independence of thought and action. Wilfrith was the leading exponent of the broader view at the conference of Whitby, and his argument prevailed. Colman, the leading exponent of the insular view, was defeated. We may smile at the artifice by which the result was, to all outward seeming, obtained; but I suspect that the decision of the kings really went on broader lines than that. In view of modern controversy, forced upon us by the Romanist aggression of modern date in England, it is of considerable importance to mark the way in which Wilfrith notes the position of Rome, and the claim of Rome THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 23 upon the minds of men, in his statement of the case for the true Easter at the Synod of Whitby. His very first sentence goes straight to the point. -"The Easter vihich we keep, we saw kept by all at Rome, where the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul lived, taught, suffered, and were buried." That was the claim which Rome had. That is the true meaning of the phrase "the Apostolic See," the see of the apostles, Peter and Paul ; that is, the Church of the great city in which Paul taught and Peter and Paul died a martyr's death. The phrase " the Apostolic See " does not in itself at all of necessity imply that Paul, or Peter, or either, was bishop of the see. It means originally " the see of the city where the two great apostles met a martyr's death." There is not a word in Wilfrith's statement to suggest that the Bishop of Rome, whom he saw when there, counted for anything special and unique in himself, or that Peter was the one cause of the high position of Rome. And yet if there was a Romaniser then on the face of the earth, it was Wilfrith. Rome had his profound allegiance, and he claimed that allegiance of others too, because he had been taught that there Peter and Paul lived, taught, suffered, and were buried. There is not, at 24 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. this best period of his life, a scrap of suggestion of the Petrine claim. That was developed in him when he was bent upon getting hold of some external power that should avail to over-ride the decrees of the highest English authority, secular and ecclesiastical, in a matter vitally affecting his own property and position ; above all, his property. And it must be further noticed that Wilfrith did not rest his claim, that his was the correct Easter, on the practice of Rome. But this he ought to have done, if the present Pope's claim that his predecessors always in all ages- were regarded as the final arbiters, had any substance in it, so far as the year 664 is included in the " always." He proceeds in the same sentence to say that he found it practised in Italy and Gaul wherever he went, and that Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, the whole Christian world, observed it. The authority of Rome was to him in this case one among many, mentioned first because of the two Apostles, Peter and Paul, as he expressly Bays : jrrimw, no doubt, but inter pares ; first, among equals. It is true that when he proceeded to speak of the origin of the Roman (and, as he ex- plicitly said, universal) method of calculating THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 25 Easter, he declared that Peter taught it at Rome. This was secondary. That it was the teaching of Rome, the city of Peter and Paul, was enough for him to mention as his first, and probably most powerful argument. How it came to be the teaching of Rome, he explained as he had been taught in Rome. He described at considerable length what St. Peter thought about it, and why he taught and acted as he did. With regard to the assertion of Paschal teaching by St. Peter in Rome, the pithy statement of the Greek Church in the answer of Anthimus, Patriarch of Constantinople, and his twelve bishops, to the Papal Encyclical on union, is very much in point here : " the Church of Rome was chiefly founded, not by Peter, whose apostolic action at Rome is totally unknown to history, but by the heaven- taught apostle of the Gdntiles, Paul, through his disciples ; his apostolic ministry in Rome is well known to all 1 ." It is a singular thing, considering that the question is one not of faith but of historical fact, that the whole basis of the claims of Rome should be capable of, or exposed to, 1 See the original Greek and the authorised translation, published by the Archimandrite Metallinos of Manchester ^Fargie, 20 Cross Street, Manchester), pp. 40, 41. 26 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. such absolute denial. My own belief is that St. Peter was martyred at Eome, but was never bishop there ; not even, as has been suggested, over one of the two bodies of Roman Christians, the Jews and the Gentiles. He may, perhaps, have taught there as a prisoner, as Paul did, or may even have gone there to teach and been martyred without delay. If he had as a matter of fact really spent any considerable time in Rome, and had really given any considerable amount of teaching there, it is difficult to believe that the fact would be so questionable as it is. As to his Paschal teaching, the earliest claim in the controversy was that the true Easter was taught by St. Peter and St. Paul. But Polycrates of Ephesus, a man of great learn- ing, claimed that the other, the Asiatic Easter, was taught by St. John and St. Peter, who, he said, laboured in Asia. While Bede tells us that Wilfrith made this statement, that St. Peter taught the true Easter at Rome, it is a remarkable fact that Eddi, with all his Petrine bias, does not say a word of it in his account of the discussion. He is very short, giving sixty-eight words to Colman and sixty-six to Wilfrith. In Bede's account, Wilfrith is nearly six times THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 27 as long as Colman. Eddi does not make Wilfrith say anything at all about St. Peter. His argument, according to Eddi, rested entirely upon the decision of the Council of Nicaea, where the Easter question was not referred to in the Canons of the Council, but was settled in the Decrees. " The most holy and wise fathers, three hundred and eighteen collected together, examined this question carefully. They fixed a cycle of nineteen years, excluding the fourteenth day of the moon. This is the practice [or the reason of the practice] of the Apostolic See and of almost the whole world ; and the fathers anathematised any one who should violate their decrees." That is all that Eddi thought it right to say, after his very long and intimate acquaintance with Wilfrith in his maturer years. It is not unreasonable to suggest that Wilfrith had been told by Arch- deacon Boniface about St. Peter's teaching ; and that in later years he learned the real authority for the practice, the Council of JSicaea, which had examined carefully into all the known history of the controversy. The only reference to the Council in Bede's account is exactly opposite in principle to that which Eddi gives: "that this is the true Easter 28 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. was not newly decreed by the Council of Nicaea, but only confirmed afresh, as eccle- siastical history teaches." We cannot miss the significance of the fundamental change in the argument. I suggest that we may attri- bute it to Wilfrith's maturer judgement and wider and sounder knowledge. Though Bede gives a very full account of the synod of Whitby, covering six octavo pages, he does not mention it in the summary of events which he appended to his great work. For the year 664 his summary is longer than for any previous year of the English times. It runs thus : " An eclipse took place ; Earconbert, king of the Kentish- men, died, and Colman and the Scots [Irish] returned to their own people, and a pestilence came ; and Ceadda and Wilfrith are ordained bishops of the Northumbrians." And in the nineteenth chapter of his last book of the Ecclesiastical History, when his mention of Wilfrith's death in 709 leads him to give a sketch of his life from boyhood, covering seven octavo pages, he only parenthetically makes reference to this occasion, which to us seems to be of such primary importance in itself, and to hold such a large place among the acts of Wilfrith. Alchfrith, he says, in THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 29 concert with Oswy, sent Wilfrith to Gaul to be ordained bishop, "the sect of the Scots having been exposed and expelled, as we have shewn above"; "above" meaning in his third book, and this is at the end of the fifth and last. These facts are in themselves sufficiently curious to deserve mention in passing. But they rise into some significance when we find that the Anglo-Saxon version of Bede entirely omits the two consecutive chapters 1 9 one of which describes the Synod or conference of Whitby, while the other contains Bede's admirable panegyric on the work of the Scotic Church in England. A further emphasis is given by the complete silence of the Anglo- Saxon Chronicle. It has been well pointed out 2 that this is not strange so far as some of the manuscripts of the Chronicle are con- cerned, inasmuch as they follow closely the summary of Bede, and are evidently not de- rived from a study of his full text. But this is not altogether the case with the Bodleian manuscript (known as E), the compiler of which appears to have used, at least in some places, the full text, not the summary, and 1 iii. 25, 26. * See Mr. Plummer's note, Yen. Bedae Hist. vol. ii, p. 188. 30 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. yet makes no reference to the Synod at Whitby 1 . 1 It may be useful, as shewing the relation between the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Summary of Bede, to give the Chronicle for the year 664, in order that it may be compared with the translation of the Summary given above (see p. 28). It will be seen that the Chronicle gives twelve facts, and the Summary only six. I have placed in square brackets those parts of the Chronicle which are taken from the MS. known as E and are not in the Corpus Christi MS. A. This will serve to shew how freely the compiler of E made insertions from the text of Bede. The existing MS. A was written in one hand down to 891, and the hand then changes. The original hand of E goes down to 1122. "Year 664. This year the sun was eclipsed [on the 5th of the nones of May], And Arcenbryht king of the Kentishmen fared forth (died). [And Ecgbriht his son succeeded to the kingdom.] And Colman with his com- panions went to his country. The same year was great pestilence [in the island of Britain. And in the pes- tilence Tuda bishop fared forth and was buried at Wagele]. And Ceadda and Wilferth were ordained. And the same year Deusdedit [the Archbishop] fared forth." Thus it appears that the purest MS. of the Chronicle, the Corpus Christi MS. A, merely gives the Summary of Bede, and all else is added by E, being picked out of the text of Bede. The date given by E for the eclipse is taken straight from Bede, and is wrong ; the real date was May i. The insertion of the fact that Tuda died in this year, in close conjunction with the consecration of Chad and Wilfrith, is made use of on p. 25. The " Wsgele" of the Chronicle, which perhaps means Whalley, is Pegnaleth or Paegnaleach in Bede (iii. 27). I regard this difference as due to a mis-reading of (or for) THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 3! I have not seen an explanation of these somewhat remarkable phenomena. And yet it is unsatisfactory to find nothing to say on so interesting and seemingly important a point. I will hazard the remark that when these two chapters are omitted, there is very little left in Bede's History to call attention to the fact that the Scotic Church, which did so very large a part of the whole work of conversion, was, as a matter of fact, hostile to the Italian Church and mission, and did its the Anglo-Saxon wen, that is, the letters, which is shaped like a p, though usually with an angular head in place of the semi-circle. It is the rune for w. In the same way the rune for thorn, that is, the letter th, which is shaped like a p with the semi-circle or angle half-way down the upright line, is mistaken for p. William of Malmesbury was, as I think, taken in by both letters. He gives, so far as he could read them, the names inscribed on the two great sepulchral columns at Glastonbury, which were evidently the same kind of thing as the great cross-shafts at Bewcastle, Ruth well, and Sandbach. Among the names are Pidfred and Pinepegn. These no doubt were Wulfred and Wine thegn. One veracious life ofWilfrith informs us that one form of his name was Pulfred. The "learned Dane," who first professed to read the runes on the Ruthwell cross, came to great trouble by reason of the rune for w looking so like a p. He read Crist wees on rodi (Christ was on the cross) as " Cristpason," and said that meant a Christ -bason, or font. And he read (mith strelum} giwundad as " xi punda," the rune for g being x, and so made with missiles wounded into " with ornaments xi pounds in weight." 32 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. great work in entire independence of Rome and of Canterbury. When these chapters are omitted, a reader not greatly- on the alert might well think that the Roman and the Scotic missions were doing one and the same kind of work, under the initiation and con- tinued influence of the Italian mission ; and might naturally assign the credit to that initiation and influence ; regarding the Scotic Church as a useful handmaid, the real centre and spring of the whole work being Canter- bury. Bede knew vastly better than that. We can quite understand, too, that his very generous estimate of the work of the Scotic Church was, in the eyes of the partisans of his own time and of times not very much later, and indeed we may add is in the eyes of some in our own times too, rather a blot upon his History of the Church of the English race. The race differences, and the ecclesi- astical independence, of Britons and of Scots, had by no means died out of Anglo-Saxon memory, or Anglo-Saxon history, at the time when these chapters were excluded from the Anglo-Saxon translation of Bede's History of the Church of the English. So far was this expurgation carried, that in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 664, which is given THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 33 in full in note i on page 30, Bede's words " with the Scots " are in all the MSS. of the Chronicle altered to " with his companions." As far as my search has gone, this leaves the Chronicle completely without mention of the work of the Scotic Church among the English. Even under the year 575, where Bede's sum- mary states that " Coluinba, a presbyter from Scottia, came to teach the Picts," the MS. A has a blank in the original ; and E, which makes a very long insertion about Columba, alters "presbyter from Scottia" into "mass- priest." For ourselves, we may well be thankful that the Conference of Whitby put our Church, the Church of our fathers, the Church of the English in the earliest times, into line with the Church universal in all respects. But we may well be thankful too that Bede penned that noble panegyric of the insular and isolated Scotic Church, which, before it was driven back by Wilfrith's influ- ence to its own home, had won over to Christi- anity by far the largest part of the land of England. The land of England must never cease to be grateful to its memory. LECTURE II. Colman's retirement ; choice of his successor or suc- cessors. Tuda ; his death. Wilfrith's appointment as bishop ; of what see ? His consecration. Chad takes his place ; disappearance of Alchfrith. Wilfrith's itine- rary work in church building, &c. ; existing remains. Communications between English Kings and Pope Vitalian. Peter and Paul, not Peter alone, claimed by early Rome as the source of Rome's ecclesiastical im- portance. Origin of the Petrine claim. THE immediate result of the Conference of Whitby was that Colman retired from the Northumbrian bishopric, and the two kings, Oswy and Alchfrith, father and son, king and sub-king, and their men with wits, had to consider whom they should choose to succeed him. I cannot believe that we have got hold of the real story of what followed. If we examine closely the twenty-sixth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth chapters of Bede's Third Book, we shall see three statements, all, as I think, set out in clear chronological relation one to another, (i) Tuda, educated among the Scoti in THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 35 the south of Ireland, and having the ecclesias- tical tonsure and the true Easter which that part of Ireland had adopted, succeeded Colman as Bishop of the Northumbrians. He had already been consecrated bishop in the south of Ireland. A great plague came and carried off Tuda. It raged in Ireland also, and carried off a number of English students there. Bede relates the deaths of Tuda, Ethelhun, &c., and then proceeds as follows: (2) Meanwhile, while this was going on (interea not posted), Alchfrith sent Wilfrith the priest to the King of the Galliae, who should cause him to be consecrated bishop for him (Alchfrith) and his subjects ; this was done by the advice and with the consent of his father Oswy (v. 19). The Gallic king sent him to Agilbert, who had become, Bede says, Bishop of Paris. Then we have the third statement. (3) While he, Wilfrith, was still remaining in foreign parts on the business of (corrected by a late hand to after) his consecration, Oswy, imitating the zeal of his son, sent Chad to Kent to be consecrated Bishop of the Church of York. There is here no hint of any strife between Alchfrith and his father. I have already said 1 that I have a kind of suspicion that Alchfrith's 1 Lecture I, p. 20. C 2 36 THEODOEE AND WILFRITH. sub-kingdom was not Deira as a whole, but only the western part. First-hand evidence that he was sub-king of all Deira does not, I believe, exist. I think that Bede could not have put together, as he does, in close and immediate connection, the facts that Alch- frith sent Wilfrith to be consecrated bishop for him and his, and that Oswy imitated his zeal and sent Chad to be consecrated Bishop of York, if "for him and his " meant for the sub-king and people of all Deira, with the sub-king's seat and his bishop's see at York. Eddi, I know, says that Wilfrith was sent by the Gallican bishops to be bishop of the see of York, but I strongly suspect that Bede knew what the real plan of the two kings was, and that somehow or other Bede's account the,t- r "g r* It seems to me that the con- secration of Wilfrith was in effect the sub- division of the province and the creation of a new bishopric; otherwise the main king and not the sub-king would have sent him to be consecrated. I have in former courses of lectures called particular attention to the probably tragic end of Alchfrith, in the course of some family warfare or treachery on his part, and I suspect that this was the exact period of the event. That would account for THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 37 Wilfrith's making no claim to enter upon his bishopric when he returned from Gaul. His patron, if my surmise be correct, was dead, under circumstances which caused his friends and allies to hide their heads. The Bewcastle Cross bade special prayer for the high sin of his soul. Oswy would naturally refuse to recognise the subdivision to which he had under very different circumstances agreed. Wilfrith had delayed his return, and when he did come he came too late. With Tuda dead of the plague, and Wilfrith's bishopric come to an abortive birth, Chad was the one bishop of all the Northumbrians, ruling the great province from York ; insular Lindisfarae being now the seat of a monastery only. It was not till the year 670, when Oswy had been dead a few months, and Wilfrith had at last got into the bishopric, that they put up the great monument to Alchfrith which still stands in Bewcastle churchyard. If my view of the cross-slab at Lastingham is correct *, it is remarkable that we should have the sepul- chral monuments of the two relatives and sub-kings of Oswy, whom Bede mentions as having been successively at war with him, his son Alchfrith and his nephew Oidilwald. 1 Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), p. 151. 38 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. That Eddi knew that Alchfrith's disappear- ance came at this time may be gathered from his phrases. Up to the moment of Wilfrith's going to Gaul to be consecrated, Eddi speaks throughout of " the kings," that is, Oswy and /Alchfrith. While Wilfrith was in Gaul, Eddi I says that " King Oswy " agreed to have another bishop in his stead. When Wilfrith returned, Eddi mentions no king at all. At the be- ginning of the next chapter he speaks of Oswy as " King of the Deirans and Bernicians." Wilfrith's patron, Alchfrith, as king or sub- king, was a thing of the past. Eddi, on the other hand, omits to mention Tuda at all, an indication that he was not completely informed as to the facts of that early part of Wilfrith's history, or else one among the many evidences that he was a partisan and not a historian. On Col- man's withdrawal, he tells us, the kings and wise men, after a space of time, entered into council as to whom they should choose to the vacant see ; some one who would practise and teach the discipline of the apostolic see. We can well understand that to appoint a man of the other school might be to stultify the work of the conference. Very naturally and properly they chose Wilfrith, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 39 now just thirty years of age. He at once raised the question, by whom should he be consecrated ? there must be no doubt about the catholicity of his position as bishop. "There are here in Britain," Eddi tells us that he said to the kings (giving, or, at least, professing to give, the exact words used), " many bishops. I do not wish to say any- thing against them, though I know of a surety that they are Quartodecimans, as are the Britons and Scots ordained by them 1 ; whom, as also those who are in agreement with schismatics, the apostolic see does not receive to communion. I beg therefore that you will send me under your protection to Gaul, where are many catholic bishops, that I may be consecrated bishop in a manner with which the apostolic see can find no fault." Wilfrith's statement that there were in these islands many bishops of the British and Scotic Churches, while we know that there were only three in any way connected with the Canterbury school, is a sufficient evidence of the vigorous condition of the native Christian Churches. The kings approved Wilfrith's proposal, 1 The Latin text as it stands cannot be translated in accordance with ordinary rules. 40 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. without, we must suppose, looking closely into the facts. There were bishops, validly consecrated, then in the island. Deusdedit died about this time, but if he was now dead they did not know it, for Chad was sent by Oswy some time after this to be consecrated by him, and it was only then found that he was dead. Wini of Wessex did not come directly under the objection stated by Wil- frith ; he was consecrated, as Wilfrith himself was, by Gallican prelates. He had, however, studied in Ireland, and we learn from Chad's case that he was on terms of brotherly com- munion with at least two British bishops, so it is probable that Wilfrith's second objection, "consenting unto schismatics," was specially meant to cover him. Boniface of Uunwich had been consecrated by Honorius, and Damian of Eochester by Deusdedit. If Wilfrith had stated that there had been irregularity in their consecration by one bishop alone, we could have understood it ; and again we could have understood his passing that objection by in silence, lest he should seem to accuse the Canterbury school of irregularity. But his words as reported by Eddi are quite sweeping ; there were no Catholic bishops in the island, or at least THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 41 none that were not in communion with schismatics. The only explanation I can offer is, that Eddi's account is incorrect or incomplete. Bede gives no help here 1 . He assigns no reason for the foreign consecration. But, curiously enough, he too makes, in another part of the chapter (iii. 28) and with another purpose, a statement of a like nature at the time when Deusdedit's death became known, that there was not, except Wini, any canonically ordained bishop in the land. Wilfrith, in his sweeping statement, appears to except neither Wini nor Deusdedit from his condemnation. Wilfrith was guided, as I believe, to the desire for foreign consecra- tion, because such consecration was free from all idea of insular taint. Either the reasons given by Eddi were not given at all, or Wilfrith was merely throwing dust in the eyes of the kings, or the dates of the several events have got into a tangle and we are playing at cross purposes. The last, I suspect, is the true explanation. Political differences cannot be invoked to account for a determina- tion not to apply to Canterbury ; for they sent Chad there very soon after. It is true that the death of Earconbert and the accession 1 H. E. iii. 28. 42 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. of Ecgbert of Kent might have removed some political difficulties ; but as Earconbert died on the same day as Deusdedit, and by the hypothesis neither death had now taken place or at least was now known, that cannot be used as an explanation. Wilfrith went to Gaul, and at Compiegne he was consecrated by twelve bishops, of whom Agilbert, late bishop of Wessex, was one 1 . The best MS. of Eddi (twelfth century) says of the twelve bishops that they all consecrated him ; a MS. of the eleventh century, of which Canon Raine says in his preface that it "evidently does not represent so good and so early an original/' omits the word "all." Even without the word the statement is clear enough. The twelve bishops consecrated him. Agilbert was merely one of the twelve. We do not even know that he was the leading bishop. We must hope, for the sake of Wilfrith 's conscience, that Agilbert was not in com- munion with any of the wrong kind of Scots in Ireland, where he had resided for the purpose of study ; that would indeed have been a flaw in Wilfrith's episcopal 1 Whether he had by this time been made Bishop of Paris is a difficult question. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 43 pedigree. It is certain that Eddi did not at all suppose that Wilfrith was consecrated as the modern Roman would assert by some one bishop, the eleven others being merely assisting as witnesses. Wilfrith un- doubtedly traced his episcopal order through all of these twelve lines of succession. I need scarcely point out how important this may be in connection with Archbishop Parker's consecration by Barlow, Scory, Coverdale, and Hodgkyn. It is quite worth while to add here that in this consecration of Wilfrith by all the bishopSj we find an interesting link, both with our earliest English Pontifical 1 , and with Parker's consecration. At Parker's consecration, all the four bishops repeated the words of consecration, instead of one only, as now. In the Pontifical of Ecgbert (734-766), the first rubric orders that all the bishops present shall recite the words of three prayers, while three of the bishops keep their hands on the head of the bishop-elect. Wilfrith was consecrated in the body of the church. The bishops then carried him, " as 1 That is, the collection of all the forms of service, &c. which a bishop (pontijff) had to use. 44 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. their custom was/' in a golden chair into the oratory, no one else touching the chair, singing hymns and canticles in choir, as Eddi says. We do not know of this interest- ing custom from any other source. Eddi had before said that Colman was metropolitan bishop of the city of York, and he now says that the Gallican bishops sent Wilfrith forth to the episcopal see of the city of York. The statement about Colman is certainly an error. Colman was not a metro- politan bishop, any more than Wilfrith ever in fact was in Northumbria. Whether Eddi was wrong in saying that Colman was bishop of the city of York, I am not at all sure. My impression is that York was rapidly becoming the great centre of government of the north, and that even in Colman's time the sole bishop may have had an island sedes at Lindisfarne and a mainland sedes at York. This would account for Oswy's sending Chad to be consecrated as Bishop of York. It is just possible that Oswy discovered later that Alchfrith had got Wilfrith, too, consecrated to be Bishop of York, and that this led to the open war in which Alchfrith disappeared for ever. Bede twice 1 relates the consecration 1 iii. 28 j v. 19. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 45 of Chad, without any hint of its being in any way in opposition to Wilfrith. In his opinion the selection of Wilfrith by the two kings as Colman's successor made him Bishop of Lindisfarne, that is, of the Bernicians, and the second bishop, Chad, was chosen by Oswy for the southern part of his kingdom. We may perhaps surmise that the opposition was the other way round, and that Oswy found himself tricked or openly opposed in the assignment of York by the Gallican bishops as Wilfrith 's see. However that may have been, Eddi tells us distinctly, if he is to be trusted in such a matter, which I am inclined to doubt, that when Wilfrith did not return from Gaul, the Quartodeciman party moved Oswy to appoint another bishop in his place ; and it at least must be allowed that when Wilfrith did return, Oswy, who had become sole king, took no step to find episcopal work for him. Eddi describes Ceadda, the man chosen, as " a most religious servant of God, and an admirable teacher." He lays no blame on him. He only blames the king and his party, who, contrary to the canons, put him into the see of York. When Wilfrith returned, after the episode of shipwreck in Sussex of which 46 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. we spoke last year 1 , Bede, who also describes the excellent work done by Ceadda, uses here a curious phrase. He tells us that Wilfrith, too, brought to the churches of the English very many rules of Catholic practice, and that when Ceadda had ruled the Church excellently for three years, he retired to his monastery, and Wilfrith became bishop of the whole province of the Northumbrians. That is, Bede declines down to the very end to recognise any opposition or hostility to Wil- frith in the attitude of Chad or of those who appointed him. We should certainly not gather from him that Chad ousted Wilfrith. Eddi tells us what Wilfrith did in the strange interval between his return and the withdrawal of Chad. He tells us that when Wilfrith returned and found Ceadda placed in the see of York, he retired to his abbat's life at Kipon (apparently knowing nothing of any opening at Lindisfarne), and so lived humbly for three years, except that he was often asked by Wulfhere, the Mercian king, to perform episcopal offices in his kingdom. This is quite consistent with Bede's state- ments, and here, I think, we have solid fact. Inasmuch as Jaruman of Mercia only died 1 Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), pp. 164, 165. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 47 in 667, it may have been only towards the end of the three years that Wilfrith thus acted as bishop ; or Jaruman may have been incapacitated by illness. It was at this time that Wilfrith acquired so many lands in Mercia on which he founded monasteries. Ecgbert, also, the religious king of the Kentishmen, invited him to Kent on Deus- dedit's death, and there he ordained many priests and deacons. One of those whom he ordained priest was afterwards consecrated bishop, Putta of Rochester, the first bishop consecrated by Theodore. Wilfrith moved about with his church-singers Eddi and Eona, and masons, and men skilled in almost every kind of work ; he took with him the Benedic- tine rule, and put church-work on a better footing. It is interesting to find the Petrine Eddi summing up this part of Wilfrith's life with the comment that to him, as to Paul the Apostle, a great door of the faith was by God's help opened l . The description of the workmen who accompanied Wilfrith in his expeditions, during this curious period of his absence from the see to which he was consecrated, has, I think, something to do with the fact 1 Acts xiv. 27 ; i Cor. xvi. 9. 48 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. that just that part of Mercia in which Wilfrith had so much land, the district now called the county of Northampton, is un- usually rich in the remains of sculptured stone crosses, and has within its area the church which I regard as the most remarkable in the kingdom, Brixworth, as well as the great Saxon tower of Earl's Barton ; and we can scarcely avoid ascribing the tower of Barnack, in some ways more remarkable than Earl's Barton, to the same school of early influence. The Roman part of Brixworth was certainly in existence before Wilfrith's time ; the Saxon part, and the two towers spoken of, and the many beautiful sculptured stones 1 , have, I suppose, nothing to do with his date, but I think that we may safely credit them to his strong and abiding influence in those parts 2 . If All Saints' Church, North- 1 I do not give any representations of these, though I have many at hand. In my lectures last year (Conversion of the Heptarchy, Lecture VII), I gave illustrations of a great Cross put up in Wilfrith's time, and some account of another will be found in the present Lectures, at p. 237. 2 My friend Mr. Micklethwaite believes that the part of Brixworth Church which I have called Roman is very early Saxon work, as early as Wilfrith's time. My own feeling is, on the contrary, that the Saxon work at Brixworth began when they cut into the crown of the great western arch, constructed of very fine Roman THEODORE AND WILFRITH. ampton, were still standing, I suppose we should feel able to add that to the list, for " All Saints " is an early Saxon dedication. I cannot pass from this remarkable episode of Wilfrith's life, without calling attention to the striking fact that we have not from first to last the slightest hint that Wilfrith, or any one else, ever made any sort of objection to his place being taken by Chad. This is very mysterious, and I have never seen a reasonable suggestion in the way of explanation. My own guess, as I have said above, is that if we knew all about Alchfrith's offence and dis- appearance, we should know the reason of Wilfrith's most uncharacteristic submission. One element in the story is probably of more importance than it seems to be, that is, his being left in possession of his Ripon property and his abbeys in Mercia. The disturbances he made at intervals, all through his episcopal life, turned upon his being dispossessed of property. He did once declare that he would appeal to the Pope on a spiritual point, namely, the demand that he should cease from episcopal functions ; but when he got bricks, which are of course Yery much unlike what we mean by " bricks," and inserted the Saxon triplet with its characteristic baluster shafts. D 50 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. to Rome he said not a word about that, and only complained that he had not got his property back. The explanation of his early submission to the loss of his episcopal position may lie in this fact that he kept his estates. And now we come to the event which must be regarded as the most important in the development of the national Church of England. Deusdedit, as we have seen, died in July, 664, a date which, I think, makes it impossible to agree with those who hold that Chad was consecrated in opposition to Wilfrith, on the ground that Wilfrith long delayed his return ; for Chad went to Kent to be consecrated, thinking that Deusdedit was still alive, and there certainly had not been time between the synod of Whitby and Deusdedit's death for Wilfrith to have shewn any signs of delay. On the very day that Deusdedit died, Earconbert the king of Kent died also. He was succeeded by his son Ecgbert. The influence of the new king was felt at once. He asked Wilfrith to do such episcopal work as had to be done in Kent, and he took part in the first definite step towards the unity of the Church of England. After some consider- able interval, as I think, though some very THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 51 great authorities hold that what we are now to enter upon must be placed in the latter half of this same year 664, the kings of Northumbria and Kent consulted together as to what was best to be done about the state of the Church of the English. There can be no doubt whatever that "the Church of the English " here means the Church of England in the modern sense, the Church of the Anglo-Saxon people, not the Church of one of the seven English kingdoms. The reason of the consultation was that the archbishopric was vacant, and the time had clearly come for some decided step. England had formally abandoned its connection with the insular Churches, and the appointment to the arch- bishopric had to be made in view of that important and very recent fact. Wilfrith was clearly the man marked out for the office, so far as ecclesiastical considerations went. But he was very young, not half the age of the man who was in the end made archbishop ; he was not, as far as we can judge, on terms with Oswy, and his appoint- ment would have seemed a slight to him. Besides, Ecgbert was almost certain to be unwilling to have a Northumbrian put permanently into the highest position in his D 3 52 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. kingdom, however glad he might be of his temporary help. Oswy was over-lord of England, and that supremacy of Northumbria was probably quite as much as Ecgbert was inclined to stand, without having as his own archbishop a Northumbrian by birth and training and interest. We cannot doubt that the real question discussed by the over-lord of England and the king in whose kingdom Canterbury lay, was, in the main, should Wilfrith succeed ? Damian of Rochester was dead. Wini does not seem to have been taken in earnest by any one. Boniface of Dunwich was the only bishop left, except the rivals Ceadda and Wilfrith. The kings could scarcely consider the possibility of Ceadda's becoming archbishop. Their natural course was to choose some suitable English priest. I wonder if it is fanciful to suggest that an over-lord played a primary part in the establishment of bishoprics, and the assign- ment of land for the maintenance of the bishop and his clergy, and even in the appointment of bishops. The bishopric of the East- Saxons wae neither established, nor endowed, nor filled, by the King of the East-Saxons. It was the over-lord, Ethelbert of Kent, to whom the work is assigned by THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 53 history and by ancient tradition. In Wessex, it was Oswald of Northumbria, and Coin- walch, the King of Wessex, who jointly gave Dorchester as the seat of the first bishop. In former lectures I suggested 1 , as an explanation of this phenomenon, that Oswald might have acquired some dowry rights in Dorchester by his marriage with the king's daughter. I am now disposed to look deeper. Oswy dealt in a masterful way with his own bishopric, and gave consent to the appoint- ment of Wilfrith to (as I believe) a new bishopric, and dealt with the succession to Canterbury, and acted as the correspondent of the Pope in the matter. His successor Ecgfrith, like him over-lord, not only dealt in the most masterful way with his own bishoprics, but had Theodore up from the kingdom of Kent to carry out his desires; and Aldfrith, imitating him, claimed even to deal with Wilfrith's property in Mercia. Wulfhere of Mercia sold the bishopric of the East-Saxons (London) to Wini; and Iiie of Wessex prefaces his laws by a statement that they were made " with the consent of Hsedde, my bishop, and Eorconwold, my bishop," the 1 Conversion of the Heptarcfiy (S.P.C.K.), p. 49 ; and p. ai of the present volume. 54 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. latter being, as a fact, Bishop of London. The relation of the over-lord for the time being to the several contemporary kings of the English kingdoms is a matter we do not know very much about, and any suggestion towards something definite may be regarded as a gain. It is perhaps worth while to throw out a further suggestion, to the effect that this dealing with the most important parts of the question of the national religion may have come down from the pagan institutions of ancestors, and may thus have its rise far back in the fundamental characteristics of our independent race. Some such idea as that helps us to understand the determined attitude of the English kings, of the period we are now discussing, towards institutions which we are accustomed to regard as in all senses novelties to them. The result of the discussion between the King of Kent and the over-lord of England was that one of Deusdedit's priests, Wighard by name, was chosen, " by the election and consent of the holy Church of the race of the English V a very important fact and phrase. We cannot too carefully mark these repeated declarations that our Church was, from the 1 Bede, iii. 29. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 55 earliest times, " the Church of the English." We nowhere find any kind of suggestion that we were an appanage of the Church of Rome, that any one had anything to do with our ecclesiastical affairs, in the way of managing them, except our kings and bishops and their, councils of wise men and clerics. We chose our own archbishops and bishops quite freely. Who should consecrate Wighard ? By this time, as Bede expressly tells us in special connection with this event, Oswy had come clearly to see that the Roman Church was catholic and apostolic ; as we, too, believe the Roman Church, as one part of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, to be, though there have been some very serious breaches in her continuity, and her actions have often been, and are, very uncatholic. Oswy had had some awkward experiences. He would be likely to suggest that they should cut all local knots, of which he had known only too much in his own kingdom and in his own family, by sending Wighard to the continent to be consecrated. We may fairly regard Gaul as out of the question ; for after all the honorific circumstances of the consecration of Wilfrith by twelve Gallican 56 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. bishops, and their mission of him to rule the see of York, he had been kept out of all his episcopal rights in Northumbria from the very first day down to the time then present. The Gallican ecclesiastics must have been very forgiving if they would consecrate "VVighard without any awkward stipulations about Wilfrith. There was really only one way out of all the difficulties send him to Rome to be consecrated. That did not at all mean of necessity that the Pope would himself consecrate him. Between 1370 and 1425, in fifty-five years at the height of the papal assumptions in England, eleven of our bishops were consecrated at Rome, and in no case is it said that the Pope was the consecrator. In one case the consecrators' names are given, and they were the bishops of Bologna, Castello, and a see not identified. The reason for sending Wighard out of England to be consecrated was a very sensible one, in view of the great controversy settled a year or two before in England. There would then be no question about those whom he in turn should consecrate bishops being catholically conse- crated. Evidently the kings were determined to have no further worry about the extent to which a Scotic or British strain, or communion THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 57 with men not in communion with Rome, might make a consecration doubtful from the very strictest point of view. The question is not likely ever to be settled, what were the actual terms of the letter which Wighard took from the kings to the Pope ? We can only guess that kind of guess which is in fact the result of careful calculation. Bede says they sent him to be consecrated ; and we have the Pope's letter to them, in which he acknowledges the receipt of their letter. But the Pope's reply makes it certain that the letter of the kings had gone further than that, unless we are to credit him with a very transparent and poor trick. One conceivable solution, which I think has some- thing to be said for it, is that Ecgbert wrote as Bede indicates, while Oswy wrote a further- reaching letter ; and that the Pope preferred to write to Oswy, as being over-lord, and as having given him a freer hand. I think that the letter to which we have the Pope's reply was something of this kind : " We are sending Wighard to be consecrated to the archbishopric of Canterbury ; our choice of fit men is at present small ; we are anxious that there should be no delay, for our eccle- siastical affairs are at a crisis ; the dangers of 58 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. the way are considerable, and if any ill should befall our priest, we ask you to send us a suitable man." It is even possible that Wighard only unwillingly accepted the elec- tion, and the kings, or one of them, went so far as to inform the Pope that so long as they got a really good man, they were not greatly set on Wighard, nor he on the office. It seems clear that they must have written as to a friend who would do the best for them according to his judgement of the circum- stances. And Eede himself 1 describes Theo- dore as the bishop whom they had asked for from him. The suggestion that Vitalian invented the kings-' request, as a cover for some high-handedness in sending Theodore is as far-fetched as is the suggestion that the Pope was exercising supremacy. Neither is historical or history-like. One thing seems to me to stand out quite clearly, and it is both interesting and history- like. Augustine and his party had come and had gone. Gregory had sent Augustine with a completely free hand, and had studiously avoided the office which Augustine by his 1 iv. i. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 59 questions had sought to assign to him, that of guideand practically ruler of the Church of England. He had left the succession of English archbishops and bishops to work itself out without reference to Rome. In the interval that had elapsed since Gregory's time, about sixty years, the relations of Rome with other Churches had been an important question, and now if ever was Rome's oppor- tunity for asserting supremacy in regard to the affairs of the English Church, and the right of continuous supervision and inter- vention. And, if Pope Leo XIII is right in declaring l that " the consent of antiquity ever acknowledged, without the slightest doubt or hesitation, the Bishops of Rome, and revered them, as the legitimate successors of St. Peter," here was the Pope's opportunity to take note of the fact, and mention it as fundamental. The remark made on this point by the Patriarch of Constantinople and his twelve bishops, in their reply to the Papal Ency- clical on union, is worthy of quotation here, as shewing how necessary it was for the Pope to take some forward step at this crisis if he had any idea of the kind in his head. " There is no hint given in any canon, or by 1 Letter on Unity. 60 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. any of the Fathers, that the Bishop of Rome is at any time the sole chief of the universal Church and the infallible judge of the bishops of the other independent and self-governing Churches, or successor of the Apostle Peter and vicar of Jesus Christ on earth V And, if Pope Leo XIII is right in declaring that in " the decree of the Vatican Council as to the nature and authority of the primacy of the Roman pontiff, no newly conceived opinion is set forth, but the venerable and constant belief of every age," here again was the Pope's opportunity. For it is certain that these were points on which the young Church of England needed a great deal of information, if it was to take the view which the Pope declares to have been always and everywhere taken. A complete change in its attitude and practice was necessary. It was, in short, an ideal opportunity for Rome to make a fresh start in England, and to make the Church of England a subject, not an inde- pendent Church ; to change the position of the Pope with regard to it from that of giving help and advice on the very rare occasions on which advice and help had been sought, into that of issuing orders from a central bureau. 1 See pp. 42, 43, of the publication referred to on p. 25. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 6l I venture to say that even at that late stage in the history of Roman claims, late if as the Pope says they were always recognised, there is not a word to lead any Englishman to suppose that any change was contemplated, that any intervention in affairs which cer- tainly had up to this time been left to the independent management or mismanagement of the English waH now to be inaugurated. On the contrary, there is not a word which even suggests that the Pope had anything more to do with the matter than to find for the kings of the English a suitable man for the archbishopric of Canterbury, c< according to the tenor of their letters " to him. Skilful as Vitalian was, and well as he knew how to make the most and the best politically out of an opportunity given, he entirely abstained on this occasion from making or suggesting any claim. Oswy had given him an admir- able opportunity. He had sent presents, Vitalian says, " directed to the blessed chief of the Apostles," and all that Vitalian says in reply is that he has received them and returns thanks. Never was so fair an oppor- tunity so completely thrown away, if St. Peter was the patron al saint of England, as Car- dinal Vaughan and bis brother bishops have 62 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. declared. And it is not that the whole claim was so much a matter of course that no reference need be made to it, for the Pope proceeds to refer to St. Peter three times, and each time he names or refers to St. Peter not alone but with St. Paul. Wighard, he says, had died^ at Rome, and was buried " at the threshold of the Apostles." He was sending to Oswy " relics of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul " ; and to Oswy's queen " a cross with a golden key, made from the most sacred chains of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul." And before his reference to Oswy's gifts directed to the chief of the Apostles, he had charged him to c< follow always the pious rule of the chief (principis) of the Apostles, whether in celebrating Easter, or in all things which the holy Apostles Peter and Paul have handed down, whose teaching enlightens daily the hearts of men, as the two luminaries of the sky illumine the world/' I noted last year the interesting and important fact that Bede, on the part of the Anglo-Saxon Church, describes Peter and Paul as " the blessed chiefs of the Apostles," and that the Irish Church commemorated on June 29 " Peter, Paul, our leading chiefs V 1 See Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), p. 177 ; and, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 63 Aldhelm, the scholar and contemporary of Theodore, visited Rome that he might see the long- wished- for thresholds of the chiefs of the Apostles l . Benedict Biscop gave up his worldly position at the age of twenty-five, that he might visit the tombs of the Apostles 2 . Ina, king of Wessex, went to Rome that he might visit " the thresholds of the blessed Apostles," which, Bede tells us (v. 8), many of the English did then. I am sorry to have to say that in arguing for the early dedication of England to St. Peter, of which there is no trace, Cardinal Vaughan and his fourteen episcopal brethren in England have stated in a formal document 3 that this was said " of the blessed Apostle," not " of the blessed Apostles." Such is Roman history. As such marked prominence was given by Vitalian to the combination of Peter and Paul in the origin of the claim of the Roman Church to general esteem and affection, it will not, I think, be out of place to say a little more upon the subject. Indeed, for further examples, pp. 53 and 184 of the same little book. 1 " Principum Apostolorum " (Aldh. Op. p. 360). 2 Lessons from Early English Church History (S.P.C.K.), p. 31. 8 Tablet, June 3, 1893. 64 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. unless a little more is said, I do not think the force of Vitalian's letter will be appreciated. I frequently have the feeling, when I read the words of early Romanisers, that while they knew there was no chance of establishing any realty supreme claim except on St. Peter, they knew also that the New Testament is painfully silent about any connection of Peter with Rome. Thus it was that they were so ready to speak of Peter and Paul as the great co-Apostles, the blessed chiefs or princes of the Apostles. They combined by this means the force of our Lord's words to Peter in the Gospels, and the force of St. Paul's undoubted presence and labours in Rome. The com- bination of St. Paul with St. Peter gave just that flavour of New Testament evidence of work in Rome, which St. Peter's name alone would have sadly lacked. They might say as much as they liked about our Lord's words to St. Peter ; but unless they could really tie St. Peter down to Rome, it did them no good at all so far as their special claims went. Even though every word were sound and true that all the Roman writers put together have ever written about the meaning of our Lord's words to St. Peter, there would still be the tremendous hiatus of New Testament THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 65 silence between that and any special share in any succession to such powers on the part of Rome as compared with any other epis- copal Church. There is a very strong flavour of Rome in the New Testament account of the later part of St. Paul's life, to say nothing of his great Epistle ; there is no Roman flavour at all about St. Peter's name. The historical facts about the Petrine claim can be put very simply. Irenaeus,. in a treatise written about 180, speaks of the Church of Rome as founded by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul ; and says that they, having founded and builded the Church, committed the ministry of the episcopate to Linus. We may fairly, I think, take this as supplementing the New Testament account, and entitling the Romans to say that St. Peter was as a matter of fact at Rome and did some work there; though, as I personally believe, only for a very short time before his martyrdom. We may certainly take it as declaring that the Apostles jointly made Linus the first Bishop of Rome. There have been alternative explanations ; for instance, that Peter and Paul were both of them bishops of Rome, and that when they were about to die together, they joined in consecrating E 66 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Linus as sole bishop. Even if that was so, and it is mere imagination, St. Peter would be the bishop of the Jewish Church in Rome, St. Paul of the Gentile Church ; and the bishops of the Roman Church a Gentile Church would therefore be practically the successors of St. Paul rather than of St. Peter. The great historical writers of the early Church, Hegesippus, Eusebius, and Epi- phanius, make Linus the first Bishop of Rome. And, perhaps supreme among evidences, tho ancient canon of the Roman Mass, which expresses the earliest traditions of the Roman Church, recites as the first three bishops of Rome, Linus, Anacletus, and Clement. Whence then came any other view than that ? How is it possible for the Romans to oust St. Paul; to claim St. Peter as the founder of their Church ; to assert that St. Peter was their first bishop ? The answer is very simple, and it is ex- ceedingly serious for the Roman claim. There was a ridiculous forgery in the second century, written by an unknown person in the interests of certain Judaising heretics, the Ebionites. It was a most un-Petrine production. It made the ruler of all the Churches in the Apostles' times, that is, of the Church of THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 67 Jerusalem, the Hebrew Church, the Gentile Church, to be James the Lord's brother, not Peter. It called James the bishop of bishops, it even called him the archbishop. It describes James as sending for Peter, and, when he obeyed the summons, sending him to Caesarea. The whole thing was and is a bitter pill to the Romans. But there was au- tychs l on the altar at Constantinople, along with his heretical predecessor Honorius, \\h<> had earned his place there by his heresy as a Monothelite. The Emperor and his young son were as much pleased as the patriarch. They sent to Vitalian a book of the Gospels, adorned with gold and precious stones, similar, we may suppose, to that which had made such an impression upon Wilfrith in St. Amliv\v'> ( 1 lurch at Rome about four years before. The art of these beautiful books, which we in Eng- land and the Scots in Ireland carried to the greatest perfection ever achieved by man, came, as this particular manuscript came, from Byzantium. I think there is little or no doubt that Vitalian was not a Monothelite ; but he was a courtier to whom it mattered less what he did or said, than that he should keep good friends with the supreme power. And this 1 The tablets containing the names of those com- memorated in prayer in that particular church. 78 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. brings us to a darker side of his story. Con- stans II had committed all manner of wicked- nesses. He had murdered his own brother Theodosius, whom he had had forcibly or- dained deacon and then poisoned in the holy Eucharist. He had tortured to death Pope Martin, and many other orthodox Catholics, including especially the great and worthy champion of orthodoxy, Maximus, a noble Byzantine who had been Secretary of State under Heraclius. His crimes were so many that Constantinople could not endure him any longer; nor indeed he it. He left his capita] city, spitting out against it in wrath and disgust from the deck of his ship, and went loaded with crimes to Rome. If ever there was a man to whom the sanctuaries of Rome should have been closed, Constans II was the man. The date of his visit is vari- ously stated, so far as the year is concerned, though we know accurately the days of the week and of the month. At latest, it was in the year in which Vitalian chose Theodore for England, and that was but thirteen years after the cruel death practically the murder of Pope Martin himself. But the Emperor was received by Vitalian with the greatest honour, being met by him and his clergy six THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 79 miles from the city. On Sunday, July 9, he made his great entry into St. Peter's, pomp- fully received by all the clergy carrying wax lights. He attended Mass ; and his offering at the altar was a mantle of cloth of gold. On Saturday, the ijth, he bathed and dined at the Pope's palace. He attended Mass again at St. Peter's on the i6th, and said good-bye to the Pope. That was the reception accorded by Vitalian to an Emperor loaded with ini- ijiiity, stained with the blood of a Pope, of a great champion of orthodoxy. Constans characteristically repaid all this servility to his wickedness by employing his people to strip the brazen tiles off the Pantheon, at that time a church, and ship them to Con- stantinople with all the brass they could get holy Theodore and Hadrian, who had with them a notable Englishman, Benedict Biscop l . They went by sea to Marseilles, and thence proceeded to Aries. There they presented their letters commendatory to John, the Arch- bishop of Aries. He kept them at Aries for some considerable time, till an order came from the Mayor of the Palace, the permanent Prime Minister as we should say, authorising them to go where they would. This delay drove them into the beginning of winter, and Theodore only got as far as Paris, where our old friend Agilbert gave him a hospitable reception. Hadrian quartered himself for the winter first on the Bishop of Sens and then on the Bishop of Meaux. When the spring came, King Ecgbert sent his chief officer to conduct to Kent "the bishop whom they had asked of the Eoman prelate." He and Biscop obtained the per- 1 See Lessons of Early English Church History, p. 31. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 87 mission of the Mayor of the Palace to leave the kingdom, and went by way of Staples ; but there Theodore was taken ill, and had to wait some time. At last he reached Canter- l'ii i y, on Sunday, May 27, in the second year of his consecration, 669. He was then sixty- seven years old, and he held the archbishopric twenty-one years, three months, and twenty- si. \ days, as Bede tells us. Hadrian had not got on quite so well. Ebroin, the Mayor of the Palace already referred to, suspected that he was sent on a political errand. The Frankish kingdoms would seem to have looked with some mis- givings upon the action of the Emperor Con- stans against the Lombards and his prolonged residence in the West. Constans might be meditating a restoration on a large scale of tin Western Empire; and Hadrian had already more than once travelled in Gaul with an important party of attendants, a suspicious proceeding. The king, Olothaire III, and his minister may have had some ground for their suspicion that he was going to England on the Emperor's part, to make an alliance with the English kings for purposes hostile to the Frank monarchs. Their suspicions were after some time allayed, and Hadrian followed 88 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Theodore. The archbishop had meanwhile entrusted the school at the abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul to the care of Benedict Biscop, who had accompanied Theodore from Rome to England ; he now handed it over to Hadrian, for whom the Pope had bidden him provide in his new diocese. An unnecessary difficulty has been started at this point, the explanation of which is that Hadrian accom- panied Theodore in his first archiepiscopal pro- gress, and thus Benedict Biscop acted as head of the Canterbury school for about two years in all, part of it before Hadrian's arrival, and most part of it after. Theodore made it his first business to visit all parts of the island which were occupied by the English. He met with a very favour- able reception, and everywhere taught the right rule of life monastic life, we must understand and the right Easter. He was the first among the archbishops, Bede here remarks, to whom all Churches (or the whole Church) of the English yielded obedience. Both Theodore and Hadrian had great stores of learning, secular and sacred, and students flocked to their teaching in swarms. They taught them from the volumes of Holy Writ, blending this teaching with instruction in the THEODORE AND WILFBITH. 89 metrical art meaning poetry in astronomy, anl in ecclesiastical arithmetic. Aldhelm gives l a curious account of the conduct of the hi li students who attended Theodore's lec- tnivs, when they seem to have criticised their teacher's views ; and of the vigour with which the elderly philosopher routed them when they badgered him. He treated them as the truculent boar treats the Molossian hounds. He tore them with the tusk of grammar, and shot them with the deep and sharp syllogisms of chronography, till they cast away their weapons and hurriedly fled to the recesses of their dens. This description of Scotic students attending Theodore's lectures is unexpected. The general set of migratory study was quite the other way. Ecgbert had to leave Ripon and go to Ireland when he wished for more advanced instruction in the Scriptures in the early part of Wilfrith's career. In the same letter from which I have quoted, Aldhelm speaks in his turgid style of the crowds of students who passed from Britain to Ireland. He charges Eahfrid to let his own countrymen have the benefit of his ambrosial learning. And he 1 Letter to Eahfrid, a friend who had recently returned from studying in Ireland. 90 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. asks, why should Ireland, by some ineffable privilege, draw these swarms of students, as if there could not be found, on the fertile soil of Britain, teachers, Greek or Roman, qualified to open to students the heavenly library? The fields of Ireland were rich in learners, and green with the " pastural numerosity " of students, as the heavens glitter with the stars ; but Britain had had the great lights, the sun and the moon, Theodore namely, who from early boyhood had grown old in the flower of the philosophic art, and Adrian, ineffably endowed with urbanity. In Bede's time there were still living scholars of Theodore and Hadrian, to whom the Greek and Latin tongues were as familiar as their own. In the case of Aldhelm a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, for he piled his pages with the very longest Latin words he could find, and inter- larded his Latin with bits of Greek and half- Greek in a very affected and unpleasant manner. The visitation of Theodore led also to the universal introduction of a proper method of chanting in the churches. Up to this time Kent alone had known the right method, except so far as James the Deacon had made it known in the north. It was at this point THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 9! in our history that Wilfrith invited Eddi to leave Kent and teach chanting in Northumbria, a step which led to his becoming Wilfrith's chaplain, and friend, and biographer. The Angles and Saxons and Jutes, and indeed, as I think, the Britons, appear to have had a natural taste for church music, and we hear no complaints of their voices as we do in the case of the Germans and Gauls. John the Deacon 1 , in his life of Pope Gregory the Great, declares that when the Germans or Gauls tried to sing the Gregorian chant, with its "delicate modulations," their barbarous and bibulous throats produced a rattle like wagons crashing down steps, so that the feelings of the congregation were rasped and stunned instead of being soothed. His account reminds me forcibly of a funeral service I once attended in the great church at St. Quentin. Gregory himself had to admonish even his Italian singing-school with a whip. In Char- lemagne's time the Franks were great offenders in the roughness of their singing in church. They could not manage to enunciate the words when they came to the inflections and trills and runs ; they broke them up in their 1 ii. 7, quoted by Robertson, Hist, of the Chr. Ch. ii. 5 and by Gibbon. 92 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. throat rather than expressed them 1 . In England we took a good deal of trouble to sing the service properly, and hints were given in the early times which are not without value even at the end of the nineteenth century. Thus a Council 2 of the English Church, held in 747, ordered that priests should not gabble (chatter) the service in church after the fashion of secular poets, lest they destroy or confuse the rhythm and clearness of the sacred words; they must follow a simple and holy melody, after the manner of the Church ; and if any one is not able so to sing, he must read clearly what it is his business to say. There is a curious contrast drawn in another matter between the Anglo-Saxons and some of the continental peoples, at this same date 747. Six of the German prelates, two at least of them being Englishmen by birth, wrote to the King of Mercia to urge him to live a decent life and enter upon a lawful marriage 3 . ." If the race of the Anglo-Saxons follow the example set them in various parts of Europe, and enter upon unlawful unions, and live impure lives, the race will degenerate and the 1 Quoted by Robertson, ii. 147. 2 Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 366. 3 Ibid., iii. 354. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 93 faith will be lost, as has already happened and from that cause in Spain and Provence and parts of Burgundy, at the hands of the Saracens." Here again we have a hint for the end of the nineteenth century. We cannot, however, take very much comfort to ourselves as regards the superior purity of the Anglo-Saxon race in the early Christian times. This same Boniface, writing to Arch- bishop Cuthbert of Canterbury, begs that the Council of the Church of England will forbid the pilgrimages to Rome so often made by women and nuns,- " They are mostly ruined on the way, few remaining chaste. There are very few cities in Lombardy, or in France, or in Gaul, in which there is not some English woman leading a life of open sin." We must now enter upon the greatest work of Theodore's life here, the arrangement of dioceses. We have to bear in mind what the state of things was on his arrival in England. So far as Kent was concerned, Damian of Rochester had been dead for some considerable time, and his place was vacant. The East Saxons had a bishop, of London as we should say, but he was the sirnoniacal Bishop Wini, once of Wessex, who had paid Wulfhere of 94 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Mercia, the overlord of the East Saxons, to make him Bishop of London. Since Wini left Wessex the king there had got on without a bishop. In Mercia Jaruman was dead, and no successor had been appointed. In East Anglia Boniface was dying. In Northumbria Chad was sole bishop, while Wilfrith had occupied himself in helping elsewhere. In Sussex the South Saxons were pagans still. That is a sketch of the state of things, and it could scarcely have been worse. If, as the modem Romans claim, the whole thing was subject to the Church of Rome, the Church of Rome was guilty of very scandalous neglect. But in fact there is not the slightest substance in any such claim. To the vacant see of Rochester Theodore ordained Putta 1 9 a man noted for his know- ledge of church discipline and his simplicity of life, rather than for business power: he was specially skilled in the Roman style of intoning, which he had learned from disciples of Gregory. In Northumbria Theodore pointed out to 1 It seems clear that this is Bede's meaning. Some writers understand the passage (iv. 2) to mean that Wilfrith ordained Putta bishop before Theodore's arrival. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 95 Chad that he had not been rightly 1 con- secrated. Chad replied, in a most humble manner, " If you know that I was not duly consecrated bishop, I gladly withdraw ; I never thought myself tit for the office, and I only consented to it in a spirit of obedience." When Theodore heard the humility of his reply, he declared that he must not give up the office of bishop, and he himself consum- mated his ordination anew in the Catholic manner. That is Bede's account 2 , and it is to be observed that he puts into Theodore's mouth the word consecratus, a rare word with Bede. And the phrase conjBwrn/nuxted his <,,'li< in PiiM-h or tonsure, arc not in the unity of the Church and must be again confirmed by a Catholic Bishop by imposition of hands. 3 iv. a. 96 THEODORE AND WILFBITH. Bede then proceeds to tell us that Wulfhere, the Mercian king, asked Theodore to send him a bishop. Theodore was unwilling to consecrate a new bishop for them, and asked King Oswy that Chad, who was living quietly at Lastingham after his ritually correct consecration, should be given them as bishop, and accordingly he became bishop of the Mercians and the people of Lindsey. Now turn to Eddi. This is his story. Theodore the archbishop came out of Kent to the king of the Deirans and Bernicians we must note that one sole king is spoken of, so that Alchfrith had by this time dis- appeared. He brought with him the fixed judgements of the Apostolic see, whence he had been sent forth. As soon as he entered the kingdom he heard from true witnesses of a thing that had been ill done, against the canons, for a bishop had dared to take the see of another bishop, after the manner of a robber. Theodore would not endure that, and he ordered that Chad the bishop should be deposed from another man's see. Eddi's use of the word ordered l is not quite so strong as it sounds to us ; and his phrase seems to mean that he did not himself depose, , cap. xv. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 97 he advised that Chad must be deposed by the king and Witan. That true and most gentle servant of God, Eddi continues, now understanding what the sin was of being consecrated by quarto- decirnans to another man's see, accepted with humble penitence the judgement of the bishops note the introduction of Wilfrith into the judgement, for Theodore was the only bishop of whose presence anything is said, and only Wilfrith's joint action could justify the use of the plural and with his consent put the holy Bishop Wilfrith into his rightful see of the city of York. No doubt the reading is incorrect, and the word Theodore has been omitted, " Theodore put Wilfrith," or Eddi's meaning was, " Wilfrith was put into the see of York." As it stands, the passage is unintelligible. But now we come to the most remarkable part of Eddi's statement. Wilfrith, he says, returned good for evil. For his faithful friend Wulfhere, king of the Mercians, had given him a territory at Lichfield for a bishop's see, and he knew that it was at the service either of himself or of any one to whom he wished to give it. Accordingly a friendly arrangement was made with Chad, who in all things obeyed 98 THEODORE AND WJLFRITH. the bishops, and they ordained him fully to the said see through all the ecclesiastical degrees, and, the Mercian king receiving him in an honourable manner, they appointed him to the said place. I said something on -this point last year l . For the present, I will only say that Bede's narrative seems to me by far the more probable in itself, and decidedly more in accordance with ecclesi- astical discipline. . Wilfrith was now installed in the bishopric, of the Church of York, and of all the North- umbrians, and of the Picts too, as far as Oswy had succeeded in pushing his power. And Chad lived a delightful life as bishop of the Mercians and the Middle Angles and the men of Lindsey a life that reminded men of the fathers of old times. Short as his time there was, his unwearied labours and his deeply reverential piety made a lasting impression, which has by no means faded away. He died on the 2nd of March, 672, and was succeeded by his deacon Winfrith, whom Theodore consecrated but not long after had to deprive. From the gentle life and peaceful death of Chad, we have to pass to the stormy scenes of the life of Wilfrith. 1 Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), pp. 118-124. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 99 It will be no pleasant task to go through his perpetual quarrels ; but from a constitutional point of view, as shewing the determined independence of the English Church in face of the definite claims of Rome to supremacy, they are of the very highest importance, and deserve the closest attention. a 2 LECTURE IV. A time of peace and development. Church -building. The First Council of the English Church. Ecgfrith and Wilfrith at variance. Wilfrith expelled from his see and his monasteries. He appeals to Home. IN the year 670, Coinwalch of Wessex, who had got on without a bishop since Wini went to London, accepted Agilbert's nephew, Leu- therius, as we saw last year *, and sent him to Theodore to be consecrated. Thus Wessex, which had stood very much alone in its ecclesiastical affairs, gave in its adherence to the new archbishop. But there were losses as well as gains. Oswy, who had come so completely over to the Catholic side that for love of the " Roman and Apostolic institution " he desired to go to Rome and end his life at the holy places, died on the I5th of February in this same 1 Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), p. 60. THEODORE AND WILrr.TTlT. IGI year, and was succeeded by his son Ecgfrith. Ecgfrith's reign had grave troubles in store for the English Church, and in its end for the Northumbrian kingdom. Though Oswy is distinctly said by Bede to have died in February, 670, it is I think practically certain that we must understand by this February, 671. There are several difficulties in understanding Bede's dates, on account of the uncertainty as to the time at which he takes the year to begin and end. This comes to a head in the case of the Council of Hert- ford, which was held on the very day on which one of the methods of counting years (the Caesarean indiction) made the year end. In 673, again, Theodore's friend, the King of Kent, Ecgbert, died, and his death was the beginning of far-reaching mischief, arising out of the quarrels between his sons. But there was now and for some years to come an ecclesiastical peace which allowed solid work to be done. Theodore kept stead- fastly on the watch for opportunities of improving the organisation of the Church, and pressed on the careful teaching of the young. All were to be taught the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in the vulgar tongue. This became a marked feature of the 702 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. English Church. Bede, in his Epistle to Ecgbert, specially pressed it on that prelate. " Those who do not understand Latin must be made to learn the Catholic Faith which is contained in the Apostles' Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, in their own tongue, and to repeat them again and again. And that not for laymen out in the world only, but for clergy, too, and monks. I have myself often given to unlearned priests, to many of them, an English translation of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer." Wilfrith busily occupied himself in bring- ing his personal influence to bear in all parts of the north, and in setting an example of magnificence in church- building. " Magni- ficence " is of course a relative term, but we can scarcely read the account of two of the churches which he built without realising that they were in themselves striking build- ings, worthy of comparison even with some of the best of the continental churches. Indeed of Hexham it was said, by one who knew, that it was the finest church north of the Alps. Benedict Biscop, too, was building then. Monkwearmouth Church, of which we have the tower and porch of entrance still, with its considerable monastery which has THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 103 now entirely disappeared, dates from the year 672 l . Jarrow Church, which is so full of remains of its first erection, dates from 685 2 ; it also was built by Biscop. The existing chancel is in all reasonable probability in the main the original church. Wilfrith began with the cathedral church of York, commenced by Paulinus in 627 and continued by Oswald some ten years later. In 670 it was in a lamentable state of neglect and decay. The roof let in water, the birds flew in and out through the unfenced windows, the walls within were filthy. He covered the roof with lead ; put glass in the windows, which stopped the birds, but, as Eddi thinks it necessary to assure us, let the light pass through ; washed the walls and made them whiter than snow (purists may hope this did not mean white-wash, but I suspect it did) ; provided all necessary furniture for the church and the altar (clearly there was as yet only one altar, but that was soon 1 For details of Monkwearmouth and its sculptured remains, ee my pamphlet Notes on Monkwearmouth Church, Cambridge University Press, 1886. a See its dedication stone, " anno xv Ecgfridi regis," Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), plate 9, p. 209. This may mean the year 686. TO4 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. changed) ; and richly endowed the church with lands. In Alcuin's long poein on the bishops and archbishops of York, we learn that the church which Wilfrith thus restored was not to last very long. Archbishop Albert, a cousin of the king, and formerly head master of the famous school of York, the only school in the kingdom with a continuous life from that time to this, added two altars ; a very splendid one dedicated to St. Paul, " the teacher of the world, whom this teacher loved excessively," and another dedicated to the martyrs and the Cross l . York had been burned, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us, in 741, and Symeon of Durham tells us further that the Minster was consumed in the flames. Albert set to work to build a great basilica 2 , in its place, or as an additional church, the former, as I think, being on the whole the sounder view. It was very lofty, supported on strong columns with arches above, with many porches or side-chapels, and no less than thirty altars. It was 1 De Pontificibus et Sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis (Raine, Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops, Master of the Rolls Series, vol. i), lines 1486-1505. York has a church called by the quaint name of "St. Crux/' 2 Ib. lines 1506-1515. 1. ST. CUTHBERT'S PORTABLE ALTAR. [p. 105. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 105 dedicated to fostering wisdom (alniae sophiae). This dedication, and the Greek word in Latin letters, reminds us of the contemporary small altar-slab found 1 on Acca's breast when his grave was opened about A.D. 1000, with the inscription almae trinitati, hagiae sophiae, sanctae mariae. I give a representation (figure i) of the similar altar-slab found on the breast . of St. Cuthbert, an account of which will be found on pages 276-278. Albert entrusted the building work to two men of great distinction, Eanbald, who suc- ceeded him as archbishop, and Alcuin, who had been his pupil at the York School and succeeded him as head master, an office which he did not resign even when he went to take charge of the education of Charlemagne's kingdom. Lest it should seem strange that the master of the school should have charge of the building, it may be explained that down to the Norman times, when a dean was created and interposed, the master was the greatest official in the cathedral next to the archbishop. Money poured into Wilfrith's coffers, and he spent it with a free hand on all kinds 1 Symeon of Durham, an. 740. Surtees Society, vol. 51, p. 14. io6 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. of church work. 2. Monkwearmouth ; jamb of doorway. At his own favourite Ripon he built a basilica, of dressed stone from the foundations in the earth up to the roof. This church is described as supported by many col- umns and porches ; these were probably side - chapels (though only one altar is spoken of) with baluster-shafts at the entrances through the walls of the church. I found some years ago at Monkwearmouth, which was being built at this time of which we are speaking, that the ancient baluster - shafts, so safely kept in the vestry, would just fit the jamb-spaces left at the entrance from the church into the west porch, two shafts on each side, and that the fine pair of stone lions in the vestry would THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 107 exactly fit as capitals on the top of the pairs of baluster-shafts, carrying the spring of the arch in the west wall. I give a representa- tion of the appearance which each side of the doorway would present as you passed through the thickness of the wall. An explanation, and further remarks and illustration, will be found at pages 290, 291. If we imagine a rectangular church, with a square apse or porticus at the east end, and a square porticus of entrance at the west with a west opening into a small baptistery, and square side-chapels along the north and south sides, the entrances to all being by archways thus supported and ornamented, we shall see in imagination a very rich and varied effect, justifying Eddi's description of the church of Ripon as sup- ported by various columns and porticoes. At p. 1 1 2 I give the pattern on a stone which may well have been the capital of the porch of entrance to Wilfrith's church at Ripon. This church, Eddi tells us, Wilfrith con- secrated to the Lord, dedicating it to the honour of St. Peter, chief of the Apostles. The altar with its vases he dedicated to the Lord, and vested it in purple woven with gold ; and the people communicating at the time of the consecration fulfilled all in I08 THEODORE AND a canonical manner. He provided also for the church a miracle of beauty, unheard of before in those times. This was a book of the Gospels, written in letters of purest gold on purpled parchment ; the cover or case was made of purest gold, in which the skilled workmen embedded the most precious gems. A splendid manuscript, written in letters of gold on purple vellum, sent back to England in 1889 from Berlin, among other MSS. from the Hamilton Library which the German Emperor (who had purchased the collection) thought should remain here, was for some time believed to be this very codex of Wilfrith's. It was the book given by the Pope to Henry VIII ; and as Wolsey was Archbishop of York, and had command of the northern service books and manuscript treasures, it was thought that he had procured it for the Pope. By the kindness of Messrs. Sotheby and Co., I was allowed to examine it on several afternoons. The readings in test passages are not consistent with the theory; and the beautiful codex appears to be constructed of portions of three separate and distinct manuscripts, some parts being less skilful than others and showing dif- THEODORE AND WILFRITH. ferences of arrangement 1 . In some parts great haste is shown, the leaves having been laid together before they were dry. The Inventory a of jewels, &c. in York Minster, compiled soon after 1 500 and revised in 1510, shows that there were at that time five great evangeliaria, two of them known as St. Wilfrith's, in that magnificent collection, any one of which may have been the manu- script of which I am here speaking, while another may have been the actual manuscript prepared for Wilfrith. The Inventory says : " Texts of the Gospels. Three texts of the gospels adorned with silver gilt, with great sapphires and other stones embedded in the silver; two of which have representations [only the cover is being described] of the Crucified, of Mary, and of John, and the third has a representation of the Saviour or of his Majesty. Two texts of St. Wilfrid, one of which has a representation of the Crucified, of Mary, and of John, in the lower part, and a representation of the Holy Trinity and two angels in the upper part, in ivory ; the other has a representation of the Crucified in the 1 I have, so far, been quoting from my Lessons from Early English Church History (S.P.C.K.), p. na. a Surtees Society, vol. 35, p. 223. IIO THEODORE AND WILFRITH. lower part, and of the Saviour or of his Majesty, with Peter and Paul } in the upper part." The evidence on which it is stated that the manuscript is that given by the Pope to Henry VIII, when he conferred upon him the title of Defender of the Faith, is not very conclusive. It consists solely of the in- scription written in golden letters under the Arms of Henry VIII, Fato servatus tibi sum ter maxime Princeps, Te quoque servarunt aurea fata michi, Instaurata nitent per te sacra Dogmata, per te Aureus est author Christus ubique meus. The fates have spared me, mighty Prince, for thee ; The golden fates have spared thee, Prince, for me. The sacred doctrines shine, set firm by thee ; By thee the golden source is Christ throughout for me> This precious manuscript was sold by auction on May 23, 1889. It was put up at 500 and was bought by Mr. Quaritch at 1,500. If it could make out its claim to be the manuscript written for Wilfrith, 10,000 would be nearer its price. The ancient cover has of course disappeared since 1510. It is now bound very handsomely in red morocco, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Ill Wilfrith arranged and carried out a splendid ceremonial for the consecration of this church, the only existing remnant of which is the confessio, or crypt as it is now called. The new king, Ecgfrith, was present^ and his brother ^Elfwine, with abbats, and royal prae- fects, and governors. Wilfrith stood before the altar, with his face to the people, and read out a list of the lands which in the past and at the date of the consecration the kings had given for the sake of their souls ; the list was subscribed with the consent of the bishops we do not know who the bishops were, or of what sees and of all the princes who gave the lands. There was a further list, of the consecrated places which the British clergy had deserted when they fled before the sword of the invading Angles ; local tradition, no doubt, and the actual ruins, had enabled Wilfrith to identify and recover these sites, about ninety years after the date usually given for the final flight of the British bishop from York. Eddi gives the names of the principal districts bestowed upon the church of Ripon, but we must not stop to enter upon the question of their identification l . 1 Cap. xviii, 'near Rippel and in Gaedyne and in the region Dunitinga, and Caetlaev.' For ingenious 112 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. I have remarked that nothing remains of Wilfrith's church of Kipon except the con- fessio or place where his body was eventually laid. See, however, pages 283 and 284. But there is a stone built into a buttress high up on the outside, on the north, which I have little doubt was the capital of one of the porches of entrance. There is a capital still in situ in the very ancient little church of Kirkby, near Boroughbridge, of much the same char- 3. Capital at Ripon. acter, only with some foliage work. The stone in the buttress at Ripon shews three faces, all of them having skilful patterns in relief, of the earliest Anglian type. I give an illustration of one of these faces. The pattern is decidedly commoner, in the sense of being more usual in early manuscripts and on stones, than the two other patterns, both guesses and calculations as to the modern localities thus represented, see Canon Raine's notes to Historians of the Church of York (Master of the Rolls Series), i. 26. THEODORE AND WILFRIIH. 113 of which are rare and remarkable. I choose this one because it is exactly the pattern which is found on the great ambo with the peacock at S. Salvatore in Brescia ; the one piece of sculpture in the north of Italy which in its flowing pattern comes nearest to the skill of the Anglian work of the time. This ambo is figured in Cattaneo Architettura in Italia (Venice 1888). It is one of the many things which make a visit to Brescia so well worth wliilr. We now come to a highly important event in the history of our Church, the First Council of the Church of the English. It was held at Hertford, on September 24, 673. It is of so much importance for us clearly to understand its constitution that I will give Bede's words in full * : " Theodore assembled a Council oi Bishops, together with those who loved and knew the canonical statutes of the fathers, very many masters of the Church." We have the complete record of the Acts of the Council, as subscribed by the hands of those present. The form of subscription was written by the scribe Titillus, from the dictation of Theodore himself; but most unfortunately we have not the list of signatures. If only we had that, 1 Bede, iv. 5. H 114 THEODOKE AND WI^FRITH. we should know at least the names of the masters of the Church who loved and knew the canonical statutes of the fathers. The names of the bishops we do know : they are thus set forth by Theodore: "I, Theodore, though unworthy, destined from the Apostolic see as bishop of the Church of Canterbury, and our fellow-bishop l and very reverend brother Bisi bishop of the East Angles ; with whom our brother and fellow-bishop Wilfrith, bishop of the race of the Northumbrians, was present by his proper representatives 2 . There were present also our brothers and fellow- bishops Putta bishop of the castle of the Kentishmen, which is called Hrofescsestir, 1 Consacerdos, not co-episcopus. At some early periods of our English Church history, sacerdos usually meant bishop, not priest only. It is, indeed, impossible to say with certainty in some cases of inscriptions whether bishop or priest is meant. See further my remarks on the Yarm stone, at p. 162. 2 Wilfrith's absence seems to me characteristic, as though he did not get on well with others, especially a superior in rank. His being mentioned after Bisi is remarkable, as he was consecrated before him. He was put into his see for the first time by Theodore, and it is possible that Theodore names him second as though he had only begun to count precedence from that event ; but that is against Canon 8 of this very council. It is conceivable that Wilfrith's absence was due to some controversy on this point. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 1 15 Leutherius bishop of the West Saxons, Vyn- frid bishop of the province of the Mercians." It will be seen that nothing is said of our simoniacal bishop, Wini, who had not as yet vacated the place which St. Erkenwald filled with so much credit. There is a tradition that he retired from the exercise of his office three years before his death ; Erkenwald was consecrated by Theodore in 675. " And when we were all met together and had sat down each according to his order, * I ask of you/ said I, * my dearly beloved brethren, that all in common we treat of our faith, that what- ever things have been settled by holy and approved fathers may be kept uncorruptedly by all of us/ I went on to say many things pertaining to charity and to the preservation of the unity of the Church. And when I had finished my prefatory remarks, I asked each of them in order if they agreed to keep the things which had been canonically decreed of old by the fathers. To this all our fellow- bishops said in reply : ' It very greatly pleases us all, that whatsoever the canons of the holy fathers have defined, we also all of us should most readily and willingly keep.' Thereupon I produced the said book of canons, and put to them ten heads, which I had marked here H 2 THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. and there, as specially important to be laid before them and most diligently kept by all." The points which Theodore thought so fundamentally important, considering the state of the English Church, were these : 1. That East'er be kept on the Sunday after the day of full moon. 2. That a bishop do not invade another's diocese. 3. That monasteries be exempt from inter- ference by bishops. 4. That monks stay in one monastery, un- less their abbat gives them leave to migrate. 5. That no cleric wander beyond his own diocese, or be received elsewhere without com- mendatory letters from his bishop. If he be received, and refuses to return, he and his receiver shall be excommunicated. 6. That travelling bishops and clergy do not exercise any priestly office without the permission of the bishop through whose dio- cese they happen to be passing. 7. That a synod be held twice a year ; but as there are difficulties in the way, that they meet on August i in each year at Clofeshoch. 8. That no bishop put himself before another for ambition, but each recognise the time and order of their consecration. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 117 9. That the number of bishops be increased, to meet the increase in the number of the faithful. But for the present we have kept silence about this. 10. Of wedlock : that none but lawful mar- riage be allowed ; that no one commit incest ; that no one leave his own wife, except, as the holy Gospel teaches, for the reason of forni- cation. And if any one have driven from him his own wife, joined to him in lawful matri- mony, let him be coupled to no other, if he wishes to be truly a Christian ; but let him so remain, or else be reconciled to his own wife. We need not discuss the bearing of these rules. They speak for themselves, and for the times. Number 3 is, as I think, clearly against a view to which I referred last year, that the monastery churches were the begin- nings of the parochial churches. It seems to me to tell exactly the other way, for the bishops certainly had the responsibility for the people outside the monasteries. This curious determination to have the monasteries independent of the episcopal authority led to much trouble. Even as early as Bede's time it had become exceedingly advisable that these institutions should be kept in order by some external power. Il8 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Number 10 speaks to our own times too. Controversial ingenuity makes it not mean what it plainly does mean, that if a man puts away his wife for any cause, he must not marry another if he desires to be regarded as a Christian. That was the earliest canon of the English Church on the subject, and it for- bade the re-marriage of the " innocent party." But those who hold the view that the " inno- cent party " may marry again, say that that is allowed in the first paragraph, and that the second paragraph refers to some lawless expul- sion of a wife not guilty of fornication. It seems to me that in that case the canon would have said " he must take her back." On this explanation, a man might expel a wife without lawful cause, and all the Church said to him was, " don't marry again if you wish to be truly a Christian." A curious idea of " truly a Christian," to have expelled a wife for any- thing less than a lawful cause. Bede was quite clear what was the force of the Scrip- tures. He says of putting away (Exposition of Mark, ch. x): "There is one carnal cause, fornication ; there is one spiritual cause, to enter a religious body. But there is no cause, in all the law of God, for marrying another woman while the one put away still lives." THEODORE AND WILFRITH. IIQ The sources whence the several canons thus extracted by Theodore came, are known : they will be found set forth in Johnson's English Canons, and in Haddan and Stubbs, vol. iii. Our Roman friends would give the idea that the English Church relied upon Rome for guidance in all such things. Nothing could be more completely out of harmony with the facts. The first nine of the ten canons come from the following collections of canons, the number appended to each name shewing the number of times that source supplies the sub- stance of a canon: Africa (4), Antioch (4), Apostolic Canons (4), Chalcedon (4), Lao- dicea (i), Leonine (i), Nicaea (2), Sardica (3). The tenth canon comes from Neocesarea, Basil, and the Apostolic Canons. There is not much support for any Roman theory in that list. And indeed it is a very remarkable thing, if there is any substance at all in modern Roman claims, that throughout the action of this council no reference whatever is made to the opinion of Rome on any matter. Theodore describes himself, truly, as sent by the Apos- tolic See (the see, that is, founded by the Apostles Peter and Paul, who appointed Linus as its first bishop, according to the earliest and 120 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. best account we have, that of Irenaeus), and there the connection with Rome ends. Neither the word " Rome," nor the name of any Pope, is mentioned ; nor is there any hint of any regard to what Rome thought ; nor any hint of any dependence upon Rome or Rome's authority. It was national, self-governing action. Nothing is said of the presence of any lay element. In the British times, the lay people were the final judges in the contest between the orthodox and the Pelagians ; but that did not profess to be a synod or a council. The presence of clergy other than bishops is noted, but we do not find that Theodore gave them any opportunity of* expressing their opinion. It was clearly advantageous that learned clerics should be on the spot, to advise on matters of fact. Unless the work of a bishop was very different then from what it is now as no doubt it was the bishops had not the tame opportunities for study as those had who led a more retired life. In the present day, the knowledge possessed by the learned clergy of the Church of England is, fortunately, always at the disposal of the diocesan bishops ; and at the same time it is fortunately tiue, as I hope it always will be, that when the THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 121 diocesan bishops meet in council, they have among them men second to none in learning. No king is mentioned in connection with the Council of Hertford. At the synod of Hat- field, seven years later, the names of the bishops present are not given, but the regnal years of four of the kings are stated, in the following order: Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent. When it came to general busi- ness affecting the kingdoms, the king presided, as at Whitby and Nidd. The Greek sense of the importance of united action as between Church and State was no doubt present in Theodore's mind, as contrasted with the Roman fashion of getting rid of the State as much as possible, and acting as an independent au- thority; an imperium in imperio was not Theodore's idea of good practical organisation. Almost immediately after this council, Bisi's health broke down, and Theodore had an opportunity of appointing two bishops in his place, to Dunwich and Elmham ; thus the increase of the episcopate began much sooner than he had expected. And within two years Wini was dead, and Theodore appointed St. Erkenwald, of whom I wish there were time to tell some at least of the pleasant things which might be told of one whose noble shrine 122 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. was a chief glory of this our Church of St. Paul four hundred years ago. And, still in 675, Theodore deposed Winfrid of Mercia, for some unnamed disobedience, and in his place appointed Saxulf. Here at least we might have expected a subdivision, as in East Anglia ; but the time, we must suppose, was not ripe. It has been suggested that Winfrid was deposed because he withstood Theodore's wish to sub- divide the great Mercian bishopric ; but if that had been so, it was surely a very lame con- clusion to put one sole bishop in his place. In 675 and 676 political events led to further changes in the arrangement of dioceses. Ecgfrith of Northumbria attacked Wulfhere of Mercia, and took from him the province of Lindsey, say Lincolnshire. Wulfhere died, and his successor, Ethelred, violently invaded Kent and destroyed Rochester. The bishop, Putta, was from home, and hearing that the place of his see was devastated by the Mercian arms, he did not return, and Saxulf of Mercia gave him episcopal charge of a small portion of Mercian territory, which in the course of time grew into the diocese of Hereford. Theo- dore made Cuichelm bishop of Rochester, but he found himself starved out, and Gebmund was made bishop in his stead. The conquest THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 123 of Lindsey by Ecgfrith led to more serious difficulties, to which we must turn after one more look at Wilfrith at his happiest and best. Eddi's twenty-first chapter is one of the gems of his biography. With Ecgfrith's con- quests, Wilfrith's episcopal rule grew amain. He was diligent in the performance of his duty, and was everywhere beloved. He or- dained large numbers of priests and deacons throughout his wide province. He guided the bark of the Church with discretion through dangerous waves. His own personal life was a life of most careful moderation. In watching and praying, in reading and in fasting, there was no one like him. He kept himself per- fectly pure from boyhood to old age. Every one trusted him. Abbats and abbesses made over to him the ownership of their estates, or left him their heir. Secular princes and noblemen gave him their sons to educate, so that they should when the time of choice came serve God in the ecclesiastical life or serve the king in arms. This admirable prac- tice of bringing them all up in one school, in a way to fit them for either kind of life, may well make those of us who are northerners proud of our earliest school in the north ; especially those of us who belong to the school 124 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. of York, which alone of English schools has lasted from that time to this. Ecgfrith the king, and Etheldreda the queen, loved Wilfrith for his own sake, and earnestly supported him in his work. Etheldreda gave him a district of land with Hexham as its centre, and there he built a church more mag- nificent even than that of Ripon. This church he founded in honour of St. Andrew, in whose church at Rome he had prayed, as we have seen. Near the end of his life, the archangel Michael appeared to him, at a time when he thought that he was dying so he told Acca, his successor at Hexham and blamed him because, while he had built churches in honour of St. Peter and St. Andrew, he had built none in honour of the Virgin Mary. This does not look very like early England being " Mary's dowry," as the modern Romans say ; nor does it look like the Blessed Virgin being regarded as so nearly the one necessary mediator be- tween man and God, that, as Pope Leo XIII says, " as no man goeth to the Father but by the Son, so almost no man goeth to Christ but by His Mother 1 ." 1 Tabkt, Oct. 10, 1891. The Tablet, as a matter of fact, made the Pope say that " no man goeth to Christ, &c. " ; but the translation was corrected in a later number. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 125 Eddi gives us a careful account of this famous church of St. Andrew at Hexham, which Acca afterwards greatly beautified, Acca being a man fond of symbolism and full of ecclesiastical taste. Deep in the ground itself Wilfrith built crypts with stones wonderfully dressed. One of these crypts is still one of the great sights of the noble Abbey Church of a later date, which still stands wanting its nave, and still is well used for divine service ; and of this crypt, in itself so very remarkable, the massive stones are one of the great sights, with their careful hatching with the Roman axe in times long before Wilfrith, and their Roman inscriptions, one with the Emperor Geta's name erased by Caracalla's orders. Above the ground the church was multifold, meaning, I suppose, that it was divided off into parts, as narthex, nave, and sanctuary, and that it had several chapels with altars. It is described, as Ripon was, as being supported on various columns and porticoes. The walls were wondrous long and high, and there were several intramural galleries, carried now up and now down by spiral stairs. All this Wilfrith thought out, and Eddi affirms that they had never heard of any such church being built on this side the Alps. He adds that- 126 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Bishop Acca of blessed memory, who succeeded Wilfrith in the bishopric of Hexham, and was still living when he wrote, decorated this multiple church with precious ornaments of gold and silver, and adorned the altars with purple and silk. Of Acca, and his beautiful Cross, I shall have more to say in Lecture VIII. Here, as at Ripon, we have something else remaining besides the crypt. I cannot doubt that the stone chair, of which I give an illus- tration (fig. 4), comes down from Wilfrith's time. He saw, of course, when he was in Rome, the great chairs of marble and of stone in the churches, and presumably in the Colos- seum. The noble marble throne in S. Gregorio, in his time St. Andrew's, I have spoken of in a former series of lectures 1 . The stone chair of St. Ambrose in Milan, in the centre of the presbytery in S. Ambrogio, is more probably the type which Wilfrith copied. It has a plain interlacing roll of pattern running down the two sides which correspond with the front legs of a chair. The stone chair at Hexham has a triquetral interlacing pattern running along the horizontal upper surface of the back and arms. It is a better pattern than that on St. Ambrose's chair ; but that is 1 Augustine and his Companions) (S.P.C.K.), p. 142. 4. WILFRITH'S CHAIR AT UEXHAM. 5. BEDE'S CHAIR AT JARROVV. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 127 exactly what we should expect, My readers may like to see at the same time the very ancient wooden chair which is known at Jarrow as the chair of the Venerable Bede (% 5)- It is a delightful picture, Wilfrith and Ecgfrith and Etheldreda actively engaged in the church work of the great kingdom of the north. But alas ! the peace, and the happiness, and the work, all were to come to an end. Etheldreda had, as we know, never lived as a wife with her husband. Ecgfrith tried to persuade Wilfrith to influence her in the direction of a change in their relations, but the bishop took the queen's part, and after some years Ecgfrith let her go, and married again. There is nothing to shew that Wilfrith made any objection to this second marriage, and we should much like to know by what legal process Ecgfrith was made clear of Etheldreda and could take another wife. The Council of Hertford had not dealt with this case; its canon was of man's making, and regarded the husband as the only one of the married pair who could make a separation, and here they had in a drastic form the Englishwoman emancipating herself. Certainly Wilfrith and Eddi regarded the new wife as 128 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. lawful, so we must presume that all forms then necessary had been duly gone through. Her name was lurmenburg, and for some unexplained reason she hated the bishop, and set to work to poison the king's mind against him 1 . She pointed out to the king the secular pomp in which Wilfrith lived, and his wealth, and the number of his monasteries, and the magnitude of his buildings, and the innumerable army of attendants that he kept, royally clothed and armed. She brought the king over to her side against Wilfrith, and they plotted to destroy him and seize his property. With this end, they bribed Theodore to come up north and deal with him. That is Eddi's tale ; a very unlikely tale. It seems to me that a fairly reasonable solution of many of the difficulties in Wilfrith 's story is found, if we suppose that Ecgfrith always grudged the great gift of Ripon to Wilfrith by his brother Alchfrith, and took it away as a gift by a forfeited person ; and that Ecgfrith in the same way grudged the great gift of Hexham to Wilfrith by his queen Etheldreda, and took it away as a gift by 1 Eddi says, parenthetically, that after Ecgfrith's death in battle she became a lamb of God, a perfect abbess and mother of a community. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 129 a queen who had of her own accord ceased to have a queen's right to give. Theodore came, picked up three men for bishops, not subjects of the province *, and in Wilfrith's absence consecrated them, alone and contrary to all order, into the several parts of Wilfrith's own bishopric. That again is Eddi's tale. It is not clear what Eddi can mean by tin statement that these three men were picked up elsewhere, and not from among the subjects of the province. One of them, Bosa, was educated under Hilda at Whitby. Another, Eata, was one of the twelve Anglian boys whom Aidan trained; he had been in the monastery of Ripon, and was abbat of Lindis- farne when Theodore selected him for the bishopric of Bernicia. The third, Eadhed, had accompanied Chad from Northumbria when he went to Kent to seek consecration. They were all of them, by early association at least, of the school opposed by Wilfrith. Eddi says they were put into Wilfrith's diocese. He ought to have said that two of these men, who certainly were Northumbrians, were put into Wilfrith's diocese, now divided 1 "Tres episcopos aliunde inventos, et non de subiectis illius provinciae." 1 130 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. into two, Deira and Bernicia : and that the third was put into a new diocese, comprising the province recently won by Ecgfrith from Mercia, namely Lindsey. This was certainly no part of Wilfrith's diocese of Northumbria, nor had he anything to do with it as bishop. When Wilfrith heard what had been done, he went to the king nd the archbishop, and asked them why it was that without any fault of his he was defrauded and robbed of property given to him 1>\ kings for God's work. All through, Wilfrith's complaint always was that he had been robbed of property. ' We ascribe to thee no criminal offence," was their infamous reply, Eddi says ; " but our fixed decrees respecting thee we change not." This makes it clear that his expulsion was part of the decree, and that the decree was the joint act of Church and State. The courtiers laughed at him 1 ; on which he turned upon them and said, " This day year you shall weep bitterly over your own confusion." And so it fell out ; for that day year the corpse of their slain king ^Elfwine 2 1 We may compare the jeers of the courtiers, and the anger of Becket, when that prelate had his famous inter- view with Henry II, 'and declared tint IK \\ould appeal to the Pope. 2 A younger brother of Ecgfrith, and presumably THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 13! was brought into York umi/,/?/, and it seems impossible that Wilfrith can have disregarded this rather critical side of the many-sided question he had to face. Even a man of mild disposition must have felt very angry about it. But a man of mild disposition would never have been in such a scrape. Eddi says that Wilfrith consulted the other English bishops, and that they supported him m the view he took, It seems to me that 136 THEODORE AND WILFBITH. a statement in Wilfrith's petition to Agatho easts doubts upon these statements. See p. 147. My personal belief is that Eddi cannot make a statement of simple fact on such a point. We must have heard of it from other sources if Theodore stood alone among the bishops in England in this highly important matter. The facts point quite the other way. Wil- frith's view was, that he must go to Rome, and let the Pope know what the archbishop he had given was doing in England. There was no other power on earth to whom he could take his case with any sort of propriety. To the Pope, seeing as he saw and feeling as he felt, he could properly take it. While I always have approved of his being roundly punished by the Northumbrian king and Witan for going to a foreign court for justice, I am quite prepared to. think that between that and the alternative of sitting still under his tremendous grievance, a high-spirited man had much to say for himself in going to Rome. It was in this way, by people dis- satisfied with the government at home going elsewhere to stir up opposition, that the Pope's power grew in Europe and in England. Ecgfrith at the height of his power was not very likely to listen to threats from the out- THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 137 side of any temporal interference ; but a good round curse, imposing eternal damnation, was a very different matter. Besides, it was an ecclesiastical matter, vitally affecting an ecclesiastical person, and the Pope was beyond all question the greatest ecclesiastical person- age in the western world. Anyhow, to Rome Wilfrith went. He did not make much of it, even when the curses were obtained. The date of his expulsion was probably 678. It was 686 before he was again recognised as bishop in any pail of Northumbria, and even when he was recognised it was only partially, and it was in detailed violation of the Pope's detailed injunctions. 6. Capital at Hackness, see p. 280. LECTURE V. The hearing of Wilfrith's appeal at Rome. Agatho's full Papal claims. His title of universal bishop. His decision in Wilfrith's case. Reception accorded to his Decision in Northuml'ria. Wilfrith's imprisonment, re- lease, and banishment. Further disregard of the Roman decision, and independent action of Theodore. Net re- sult of Theodore's subdivision of dioceses. The Council of Hatfield ; double Procession of the Holy Ghost. Theodore's reconciliation with Wilfrith. Partial re- storation of Wilfrith. but still in violation of Agatho's deer ON Wilfrith's adventures on his way to Rome we must not dwell. He was driven by storm to the coast of Frisia, thus escaping a plot to waylay him at Etaples, where Winfrith, whom Theodore had expelled from Mercia, was plundered in his stead, by reason of the similarity of name. Eddi, who was nothing if not a partisan, rejoices in the mistake. Wilfrith's enemies incited the Mayor of the Palace to seize him at Quentavic IHKnDORK AND WILFRITH. 139 and spoil his goods. They seized Winfrith instead, took all his property, slew his attendants, and left him stripped naked. They were misled, Kian pagans, and paved the way for Wilbrord, a Ripon monk, who came to Frisia eleven years later, and became Archbishop of Utrecht. Passing on, he was offered by King Dagobert 1 the bishopric of Strassburg, called Streitburg by Eddi. The see became vacant on July 21, 679, by the death of Arbogast. Florentius succeeded, on the refusal of Wilfrith. who was bent on reach- ing Rome. From Strassburg he went on to l'a\ia, wln'iv the Lorn ban! kin-'. Berchtar, instead of destroying him in continuation of th plot at Etaples, treated him well and sent him on to Rome. At Rome he was received with great kindness. His cause was known already, for Theodore had sent to Pope Agatho an account of what had taken place. The decision of the synod held by Agatho was, 1 Dagobert was the Merovingian king of Austrasia, the eastern part of the Frank kingdom. Austrasia had no sea-coast available for passengers from England to the Continent ; they must land in Neustria. It was the Neustrian Mayor of the Palace who intended to despoil Wilfrith. 140 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. roughly speaking, that the right thing had been done, in the increase of the number of bishops, but done wrongly. Wilfrith was to be restored, and the three inserted bishops were to be sent about their business. A council was to be called, and Wilfrith was to choose with their consent other assistant bishops to help him in the work of the great diocese ; and these Theodore was to conse- crate. As far as I can judge, the principle of the decision apart from the important question which I think it raised, between diocesan and assistant bishops was sound and just. Whether Agatho had the right to give a decision at all, is another question ; and to that question history answers "no/' That he had not the power to enforce it became evident. It was never obeyed. Having stated the net result of the appeal to Home, we must now look carefully into the documents, and especially into the petition of Wilfrith to the Apostolic See. The information is given by Eddi in so complete a form that we cannot but understand that he had Wilfrith's own parchments to copy from. There is another professed decision of Agatho about the English Church at this very same time ; but the record comes no one THEODORE AND WILPRITH. 14! knows whence, and it is in most parts a mere slavish copy of the record we are about to consider. I shall pass it by as nut worth attention, at least for our present purpose. So far as controversy is concerned, I think we have Agatho's claim to jurisdiction fully stated in the documents in Eddi. Of the other (professed) council, neither Eddi, nor Bede, nor William of Malmesbury, nor as far as I know any one before Spelman, knows or tells anything at all. Agatho summoned certain bishops and presbyters, more than fifty in all, to meet in the Basilica of the Saviour, called of Constantino. This, as we saw two years ago *, was the old home of the magnificent family of the Laterani, which came to Constantine through his wife Fausta in 307, and was given by him to Pope Silvester. On part of the site Constantine and Silvester built the great basilica, hence called Constantiniana, known now to all the world as the Lateran. It still bears on its front the proud inscription, not- withstanding the fact that the later cult of St. Peter has shifted the centre of gravity to the Vatican, Mother and head of all the churches of this city and of the world. From 1 Aitgusiine and his Companions (S.P.C.K.), pp. 123, 124. 142 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. this church the Cathedral Church of Canter- bury took its dedication under Augustine, to " the Saviour Jesus Christ." Agatho informed the assembly that dissen- sions had arisen in the churches of Britain, a report of which had reached him both by word of mouth and by letter. Andrew the (Cardinal) bishop of Ostia and John the (Cardinal) bishop of Portus, informed the council that they had examined the documents, including letters from Theodore and others, with the help of a committee appointed by the Pope " on the will of whose apostolic authority hangs the ordering of all churches, who is vice-gerent of the blessed Peter, chief of the Apostles, on whom Christ the Lord conferred the keys of binding and loosing." There is no mistake about that claim, nor about the Pope's own words " by our mouth our author the blessed Peter the Apostle, whose ministry we exercise, provides, &c." Nor, on the other hand, is there any doubt about the fact that not all the Pope's claims made the Northumbrian king and council, or the northern bishops, or Theodore the archbishop, pay any heed to the Pope's decree. It is a useful example of a criticism fatal to many of at least the early Papal THKoI>',I;| AM) WII.KKITM. 143 claims. The Popes made tremendous claims, of that there is no manner of doubt. They bore witness manfully to themsrlv* >. in complete default of other witness. And the adherents of the papacy of to-nce. But \\li n you ask of early history the pertiix ni -juestion, -li'l other people bow down before these tremen- dous claims, which would naturally send every one to their knees if they were really believed?" the answer of history here and in plenty of other cases is a very decided "no!" We must bear tan fully in mind the fact that it was Pope Agatho and his representa- tives who took the supremely important step of claiming and using the title of Universal Bishop, or Bishop of the whole World, for the Bishop of Rome, at a General Council. Our own great Gregory, as we have seen ] , declared the use of that title to be in itself pestiferous and profane, and its assumption to betoken the approach of antichrist. It now became a usual title. We must read between the lines of the bold assertions of Agatho and his cardinals the fact that they were actively (attfk ami his Companions^ pp. 15, 159. 144 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. engaged in creating supreme claims. In a later lecture I propose to shew how very differently a Pope wrote to a king of England fifty years later 1 . Agatho was a main mover, also, in the gradual emancipation of the see of Rome from its severe subjection to the Imperial power. He obtained from Constan- tine Pogonatus a reduction (or possibly a remission) of the large sums of money a new bishop of Rome had to pay to the Emperor. All this must be borne in mind ; it amounts to a very heavy discount on Agatho 's extravagant claims. The cardinals reported that the aforesaid most holy Archbishop Theodore had expelled from his see of York Wilfiith, loved of God. That seems to put an end to the important question, was it the king and the Witan, or was it the archbishop, or was it the king and the archbishop, that deposed and expelled Wilfrith, as a matter of legal procedure ? But it is more than possible that the secular power did say the last word, and the Pope and his council preferred to put the responsi- bility on Theodore, a person whom they might hope to touch as being an ecclesiastic. However that might be, they quite passed 1 Lecture VII, p. 231. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 145 over the share of the king in the matter. The cardinals proceeded to say that though Theodore's letters raised a number of points what they were we do not know, except that Wilfrith was described as a fugitive or subterfugeing bishop the committee found that no offence of Wilfrith against the canons was shewn, so that he was not canonically deposed ; nor could the accused prove that he had committed wickednesses for which he could be degraded. I should gath i from this that the case against Wilfrith was based on the latter kind of charge, malpractice of some kind which the secular power could touch, not action contrary to ecclesiastical canons. No offence against canon was shewn; and no crime was proved. They went on to say that Wilfrith had acted with great moderation in not allowing himself to be mixed up with certain seditious disputes. There again we can only guess at the meaning of the com- mittee of enquiry ; but at least we can see that there were complications of which Eddi is careful to say nothing, complications which must have been important to be thus referred to. "Wilfrith," the report concluded, '-when expelled, had informed his fellow-bishops of the merits of the case" it will be seen 146 THEODORE AND WILFRITH, shortly that Wilfrith himself told the Romans that Theodore had other bishops with him when he decided upon his action "and had then come to the Apostolic see, in which Christ the omnipotent Lord founded the princedom (principatum) of the chief priest- hood, who bought the Church with His own Blood, and strengthened it with the authority of the chief (or prince) of the Apostles. Let the authority of the Pope's apostleship declare what must be done in the matter." That was the committee's report and recommendation. Agatho thereupon informed the assembly that Wilfrith was in the ante-room, and desired to present in person his petition. He was admitted, and begged the Pope to receive his petition and have it read. Agatho replied, " let the petition be read in the presence of all"; and John the notary read it to the holy and Apostolic council. We must go to the pith of the petition. And here again we are met by the difficulty that Wilfrith does not say who were the people against whom he complained. I cannot but think that he and the Romans alike were anxious to stick to two principles, not to name the king and queen and Witan, and not to put Theodore in the position of a culprit. ' : Certain invaders THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 147 of my bishopric, with unlawful presumption, finding in me no canonical fault, in council with Theodore (in conventn Theodwi) the most holy archbishop of the Church of the Kentish men, and other bishops (antitititwn) then assembled with him he was therefore not alone among the bishops of England, far from that, in his resolve as to the right course to pursue " planned to invade and robber- like take away my see, which for ten years and more I had ruled, and to seat in it not one bishop only but three, their promotion being uncanonical. The fact that the most holy Archbishop Theodore consecrated three bishops to my see J , in my life- time, without my acquiescence, on his own authority, without the consent of any bishop at all " this seems to contradict the earlier statement in the petition " it is more seemly for me to pass by than to make much of: he was sent to Britain by this most exalted Apostolic see ; I dare not accuse him." Very skilful flattery of the man who was building up the claim of supremacy. The petition then proceeded to 1 This looks as if Wilfrith regarded the conquest of Liiidsey by Ecgfrith as adding that province to his diocese of Northumbria. If that is so, it is an interesting fact. Other indications tell in the same direction. K I 148 THEODORE AND WILFBITH. point out that Wilfrith had made no' dis- turbance, had not attempted to get back his see by any secular force or means, but had merely noted the facts to his brother bishops, and come straight to Rome. Who these brother bishops were is a great puzzle, for he has said before that other bishops were with Theodore, and there were only six bishops in all beside Theodore and Wilfrith. Whatever the Pope and the bishops sitting with him might decree, lie would humbly accept. If he was to receive his former bishopric, he venerated that sentence, and begged that by their synodical sanction the invaders might be driven out of their dioceses. And if it was thought right that other bishops should be put in their place in the diocese over which he ruled, let them at least be such as he could work with peacefully and heartily l . And if it seemed good to the Archbishop and Wilfrith's fellow-bishops that the number of bishops should be increased, let the bishops assembled in synod choose men from the clergy of the Church. This last demand, which practically closes the 1 This, I think, bears out the suggestion on p, 135, that the personnel of the three new bishops was displeasing to Wilfrith on Church grounds. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 149 petition, throws a very valuable light on the election of bishops in early England. The Pope specially praised Wilfrith for having abstained from shewing his resentment <>r ivsorting to secular means, and for having i n -t cad come to receiv tin- canonical assist- ance of the blessed Peter, chief (or prince) of the Apostles. The synod decreed that Wilfrith must ha\<- ;ii:,im the bishopric he had lately held, ami that Theodore must ordain to the episcopate such assistant bishops as Wilfrith might select with the consent of a council he was to call : the three bishops whom Theodore had irre- gularly sent into the episcopate being expelled without ' ; if" or "but." There were two -a \iiii; clauses, referring to something that had been " above ordained/' " the rule above fixed/' XV hat the reference is, I do not know. And then came the cursings and the blessings. " If any one tried to resist the decrees of these synodal statutes, or did not obediently receive them, or, after whatsoever length of time, tried to infringe them in whole or in part, him they decreed by the authority of the blessed Peter, prince of the Apostles, to be smitten ; if he were a bishop, he should be deprived of his episcopal order, and fall under 150 THEODORE AND WILFBITH. an eternal anathema, and similarly if he were a priest, or a deacon, or of an inferior degree of the Church. But if he were clerk, or monk, or laic, even king, let him be cut off from the body and blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ, nor held worthy to behold His terrible advent. But may he who receives these decrees with sincere devotion and perfect satisfaction, see the good things of God in this present life, and hear the words, 1 Come ye, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world/ " Wilfrith and his companions got safely back to Northuinbria. Eddi is our only authority for what happened next, as, indeed, he is for the whole of the episode, Bede's only remark being that Wilfrith went to Rome and was declared by the unanimous opinion of Agatho and a large number of bishops to have been accused unjustly and to be worthy of the bishopric. Here, again, it is clear that definite charges of some very grave kind had been made against Wilfrith. How this was received in Northuinbria Bede does not say. But Eddi tells us, and it makes entirely against the Pope's claims. Wilfrith went peacefully to the king, and humbly shewed THEODORE AND WILFRITH. the written judgement of the Apostolic see, with the consent and subscription of the whole synod, with bulls and seals. The document was afterwards read in the presence of the Witan. When the assembly found that it contained matter unpleasant to tin in. and contrary to their own will, certain of them rejected it with contempt. Nay, more execrable still, Eddi says, they defamed the writing sent from the Apostolic see for the welfare of those who obeyed it, by declaring that it had been obtained by payment. They took it away from him l . Then, by decree of the king and his counsellors, with consent of the bishops who held Wilfrith's bishopric, he was condemned to nine months' imprison- ment as a common person ("without any honour ''). As for Theodore, he does not appear to have been consulted by the North- 1 I have suggested, on tin- Mn nu r tli <>f;i j.liras*- in Eadrner (a se 2^'ocul abject f). that they threw it away with the kitchen refuse, a leaden bull of Boniface the Archdeacon having been found in the present generation in the ancient kitchen midden of Whitby Abbey. Bonil;i<- \VM* Wil- fri th's friend, and in the vacancy which occurred in tin- papacy at this time, his bclla may have been a nee<-^;n -\ attestation of the document. Lessons of Early Enylis/i C/> n / // History, p. 38, where, however, I make the kitchen midden of Whitby be on the sea side of the Abbey buildings. instead of on the land side, as it was. 152 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. umbrian king and wise men ; and so little did he reck of the Pope's f eliminations, that lie proceeded to yet further subdivision of the diocese in question, making Hexham and Lindisfarne into two bishoprics instead of one, and creating a new bishopric in the extreme north, for the province of the Picts. Any more completely contemptuous treat- ment of the whole affair, whether by Theodore, or by the king, or by the Witan, could not well be imagined. The secular power put AVilfrith in prison, instead of restoring him to any particle of his position or property : the ecclesiastical power still further sub- divided the see, instead of driving out the bishops and putting an end to the sub- division. It has been supposed that much turns upon the phrase of Eddi, " they defamed the decree of the Pope and his synod by declaring that it had been obtained by money." At a later time Wilfrith had pressure put upon him to declare that the document was not true, that is, or may be, not genuine. Hence, the modern Roman says, Wilfrith was imprisoned for forgery, not for having appealed to the Pope. But if that was so, it was a very simple matter for Wilfrith's friends we are THEODORE AND WILPRITH. 153 not told that he had many to write to the Pope for a confirmation of his decree. How in the world the Popes ] and the Roman authorities submitted to the contemptuous treatment served out to them, passes my comprehension, except on the natural ex- planation that they had been. a> people say, t iving it on," giving orders as though they luul the power and right to give them, and taking it quite meekly when they found that no one attended to them. That they would lia\v submitted, if the reason of the treatment was that the decree was said to be forged, is |iiite inconceivable. It will be seen, p. 211, that the letter of Pope John VI makes no reference to any idea that his pivi document was a forgery. We may at least argue that if the Roman explanation is correct, forgery was already a thing calculated upon as likely to have occurred at Rome. We had no English law against forgery, so far as is known, at that time, nor any legal penalty of imprisonment for such an act 2 . Further, 1 Agath" to see him 1 . It seems impossible that Eddi of all men could have written this if, as the modern Roman asserts, Wilfrith was only punished for alleged forgery. There was no contempt of St. Peter in that charge. The metrical life of Wilfrith, written at Canterbury about the year 950 by Frithegode, has a reference to the charge against Wilfrith that there was something wrong with the documents 2 . " His opponents took it ill that they must restore their stolen booty. They were driven on by bitter bile. They persuade the king with a false report that the document was obtained by underhand means (furtivis 1 The queen, he adds, took possession of his reliquary the reliquary of a bishop is the origin of the pectoral cross and wore it round her neck, in the house and when driving out. 2 Lines 811-815 ; Raine, i. 137. 156 THEODORE AND WJLFRITH. rebus) ". Here, again, I do not see that forgery is meant. To go 150 years later, without treating Eadmer as an authority on the facts of Wilfrith 's life, we may turn to his life of Wilfrith to see what the view taken in his time was, as to the real meaning of the act of the Council of the North. His expansions of Eddi are sometimes significant. He says l " the king was blinded by his own anger, and distracted from the truth by the flattery of his courtiers : he despised the letters of the Apostolic Pope with swelling pride, scoffed at them, contemptuously flung them away, and declared Wilfrith guilty as a base informer.'' He attributes the im- prisonment to a general and popular feeling, and to a desire on the part of courtiers and nobles to curry favour with the king. I think we may say that the idea of forgery is a modern invention in connection with this case. Whatever the offence was, there was no mistake about the punishment. Wilfrith was taken first to the royal city of Bromnis, a place we have not identified, and was put under the charge of the prefect Osfrith. Here he was kept in a dungeon which the sun rarely reached by day, and where no lamp was 1 Ch. 34 ; Kainc, i. 195. THEODORE AND WILFEITH. 157 lighted at night. In the course of time he received from the king a promise of restoration to a part of his old bishopric, and of large gifts, if he would submit to his sentence, and would elect to declare that the canonical decrees from the Apostolic see were not true 1 . He replied, humbly, l>ut with Confidence in the Apostolical authority, that h< v, mild rather lose his head than confess that. The wife of the prefect was taken ill, and >r<>mr at once restored to life and Osfrith U'-'-v.l the king to relieve him of hi> task of jailor. Ecgfrith in wrath sent \\ illrith to Dunbar, a very Btipong fortivsson the coast of Northmuhria. now reckoned in Scotland. It wa- here that th widow of King Arthur, Vannora, as the Scottish records call her, was imprisoned on Arthur's death, till she was taken to the seat of the Pictish sovereigns at Meigle 2 . The 1 Dewgaret esse vera. See p. 152. 2 Eddi uses the form Dynbaer. whirli closely rein i in U one of the pronunciation of the local porters at the Dun- bar station. That spelling takes us into British times. Arthur's nephew Mordred was the son of a Pictish prin- cess, and that gives some colour to the story or fable of <-u mover's residence at Meigle. The very noble sculp- tured stone called "Vannora's stone," which Is one 158 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. prefect at Dunbar was Tydlin, a more ferocious person than Osfrith. By the king's orders, fetters and handcuffs were made for the bishop ; but though they were made time after time they were always either too small to go on, or so large that they fell off. Clearly the blacksmith, or the jailor, or some one specially concerned, was anxious to avoid the fate of Osfrith's wife. At last the queen, who was residing at Coldingham with Abbess Ebbe, Ecgfrith's aunt, was visited by a demon in the night and terribly flogged. Ebbe found her in the morning all gathered up into a knot, and evidently dying. They begged the king to release Wilfrith and let him go. This he did, and the queen recovered. The king released the bishop under this pressure, but he and his wife gave him no peace. Wilfrith retired into Mercia, and was well received by Berhtwald, nephew of Ethelred of Mercia and sub-king; but among the countless sculptured treasures of Pictish and early Scottish times stored up at Meigle, has on one side a figure in a shortish kilt with two very fine Byzantine lions on each side attacking it. This is said to represent Guinever being done to death by wild beasts, "for na glide that she did." As a matter of fact it is a very Striking representation of Daniel in the den of lions. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 159 EthelrecTs queen was a sister of Ecgfrith, and the bishop was soon expelled. He then went to Centwine, King of Wessex ; but Centwine's queen was a sister of lurmenburg, Ecgfrith's queen, so there again he was turned out. Finally, he got beyond the reach of Christian persecution by retiring to the one English kingdom that remained still pagan. That was of course the South Saxon kingdom. We saw last year 1 how he converted Sussex and the Isle of Wight, and spent there five useful years, from 68 1 to 686. That was all that the Pope's decrees did for him, and no one took the slightest trouble to assert their force. They had indeed proved to be Danaan gifts. Ecgfrith and Theodore meanwhile did as they liked with the Northumbrian bishoprics, exactly as thouglf Pope Agatho had never been heard of. In 68 1, two bishops were added by Theodore. Eata remained at Lin- disfarne, and Tunbercht or Trumbercht was made bishop of Hexham, Bernicia thus being subdivided into two bishoprics. Further, Ecgfrith's successes against the Picts north of the Forth, in the present counties of Fife and Perth, had put him in command of large 1 Conversion oftfw Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), Lecture VI. l6o THEODORE AND WILFKITH. districts occupied by Scotic Christians. An Anglian bishop was appointed to have charge of these districts, and he placed his see on the safe side of the Forth, at Abercorn. Trumwine was selected for this post, and he remained there till Ecgfrith's disastrous defeat and death on the confines of Perthshire and Forfarshire put an end to the Anglian su- premacy. Trumwine retired to Whitby, and died there 1 . In 685, Tunbercht, or Trumbercht, was, for some reason not named, deposed from Hexham, and at a great synod under Theodore at Alnmouth, at which Ecgfrith was present, < uthbert of Lindisfarne was elected bishop in his place. Cuthbert preferred, however, to remain at Lindisfarne ; so they moved Eata to Hexham, and Cuthbert was consecrated at York on March 26, 685, by seven bishops, of whom Theodore was the chief. This does not look like the bishops being on Wilfrith's side in his appeal to Rome. I have already given an illustration of a 1 In my Conversion of the Heptarchy S.P.C.K.\ at page 37, I have made a very unnecessary blunder in a matter on which I really knew all the facts, giving the foundation of Whithorn to this date. Bede clearly puts it to his own later time ; see H. E. v. 23. 7. PECTORAL CROSS OF ST. CUTHBERT. [p. 161. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. l6l relic of this period, connected with one of the three bishops here mentioned, St. Cuth- bert ; namely, the small altar-table found on his breast when his coffin was opened in the early part of this century. I now add an illustration of another of his personal relics, his pectoral cross (figure 7). Some descrip- tion of it will be found on page 279. Of another of the three bishops, Tunbercht, or Trumbercht, it seems very likely that we have the actual tombstone. Last year I gave an example 1 of an Anglian tombstone with the inscription in runes. I now give one with the inscription in English minuscules (figure 8). The stone was found some years ago at Yarm, employed as the weight of a mangle, and was bought for the sum which would re-load the mangle with large stones, namely five shillings. It is now one of the ornaments of the doiter of Durham. The first letter no doubt looks very much like ni, but as a fact it is ra. Even if it were ni it would still suit for our bishop. The inscription runs clearly enough in the six lines which remain. In a line above can be seen portions of letters, almost certainly a p and certainly an r, and I suppose that line was originally pro Tru. 1 Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), p. 205, fig. 6. L j62 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. In that case, the top line of all would run f Orate. On the other hand, it may have been in an English form, such as Gebid fore ; we have several examples left of forms of that kind. The remaining inscription runs, as will be seen, m b e r e h c t f sac f allafsign um Aefter his breodera y s e t a e f .... mberehct f sac f alia signuni aefter his breodora ysetaef [Pray for Trujmberhct f sacerdos f Alia set a monument for (after) his brother. In those early times sacerdos no doubt meant bishop ; if not invariably, still so generally that it would be difficult to claim that here it means priest and not bishop. If it means bishop, no bishop except this one Trumbercht, ex-bishop of Hexham, had a name ending with these letters. The language is said to suit the date of our Trumbercht. The amount of illustrative material re- maining from those times and relating to these three bishops is not exhausted. There is at Abercorn a considerable fragment of the 8. THE TOMBSTONE OF BISHOP TRCMBERCHT. [p. 162. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 163 9. Abercorn. 10. Abercorn. L 2 164 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. shaft of a cross, which must have been on a scale as important as those at Bewcastle and Ruthwell, that is, a great shaft fifteen to eighteen feet high or more. Trumwine was for a few years bishop there. He no doubt planted a great stone cross at this the northernmost part of Angle-land, further north even than Edwin's own burgh, Dun Edin. I feel no doubt that the noble frag- ment which is now placed in great safety in a gallery of the kirk at Abercorn, a part of Lord Hopetoun's gallery, is a piece of Truniwine's cross. I give in figures 9 and 10 & representation of the patterns on two of its sides, from my own drawings. Another side will be found shewn at page 255 ; where also there are some further remarks on the fragment. In order to make our view of the episode of Wilfrith's appeal continuous, I have passed over an important fact of Theodore's ad- ministration. In 680 he held a second council in England, at Heathfield, now Hatfield. The reason was that he had heard of the disturb- ances at Constantinople on account of the heresy of Eutyches, as the Monothelite heresy of which I spoke in my third lecture was now called, and he desired to keep the Churches THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 165 of the English free from taint. He gathered together a very large number of venerable priests and doctors, and found on enquiry that every one of them was sound in the Catholic faith. The proceedings of the council were duly recorded, and Bede gives us con- siderable extracts from the official document. One great interest of this council is, that it was held in preparation for the Oecumenical Council of Constantinople, held in this same year, 680, the Sixth General Council. Just six months before, in March, 680, Agatho had held a council of 125 bishops in Rome with a like purpose, and as Wilfrith was then in Rome on the matter of his appeal, he was present at the council and signed among the other bishops, stating in his subscription that he spoke in the name of all the northern part of Britain and Ireland, and for the islands occupied by Angles, Britons, Scots, and Picts. This Roman council informed the Emperors that they had delayed the communication of their views, because they had expected the presence of Theodore the philosopher, the archbishop of the great island of Britain, and others from that land. Possibly that was why Wilfrith signed for the north part of Britain only. Agatho, in his letter to the l66 THEODORE AND WJLFRITH. Council of Constantinople, expressed regret that the unquiet circumstances of Italy rendered any deep theological study im- possible. Theodore's council was attended by John, the precentor of St. Peter's at Rome. He brought with him the decrees of the synod held in Rome against the Monothelites by Pope Martin in 649, which, as we have seen in a former lecture *, led to Martin's martyrdom. John was charged by Agatho to inform him what the view of the English Church was, and the report was satisfactory. The Council of Hertford declared its accept- ance of the complete doctrine of the Trinity in Unity and the Unity in Trinity, and all else that was of the true faith. It accepted the decrees of the five holy and universal synods Nicaea against Arius, Constantinople against Macedonius, Ephesus against Nes- torius, Chalcedon against Eutyches, and Con- stantinople against Theodorus and the letters of Theodoret and Ibas against Cyril. It accepted, further, the synod held in Rome under Pope Martin. And then, after all these confessions of a true faith, it wound up in this manner: " We glorify God the Father, 1 Page 76. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 167 without beginning; and His only-begotten Son, begotten of the Father before the worlds ; and the Holy Ghost, piweeding from the Father and the Son in an ineffable manner; as the holy Apostles, and prophets, and doctors, whom we mentioned, above, have taught." There, in the baldest way, was the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and from the Son, held by Theodore the Greek, and by all the English Church, and declared to be an Apostolic doctrine, in the year 680 ; and Bede does not call special attention to it, he merely states the fact. It is sufficient to say that the Council of Hatfield was not reciting the Nicene Creed and adding the famous clause "and from the Son." The assembled fathers declared their belief in the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and from the Son, and that declaration was in accordance with the general belief of the Western Church. To hold the belief was one thing, to insert the clause in the Nicene Creed was another and a very different thing. In Charlemagne's time, Pope Leo determinedly held and declared the belief, and at the same time determinedly forbade the insertion in the Creed. There is, however, a real difference between the Churches of the West and the l68 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. East, beyond the question of the insertion of the clause in the Creed. The phrase " proceedeth from the Son " is not used in the New Testament, while the phrase "is sent from the Son" is scriptural. Thus the two Churches could combine on the phrase " pro- ceedeth from the Father through the Son." One more episode of Theodore's life, and in some ways the most pleasing. Whether we are to see in it the amiable desire of a kindly old man to die at peace with those whom he had opposed, sinking all questions of difference of principle, or are to regard it as an evidence of senile decay, or are to believe that it was an endeavour to repair an injustice, however late, I do not feel quite sure. When a man is very ill, is dying, it is sometimes difficult to say whether he loses the sense of proportion or acquires a clear and keen insight. It is certain that not infrequently a man in those circumstances earnestly desires to feel person- ally at peace with some from whom he has differed on what he has considered vital points. We have to be on our guard against assuming that this is an indication that with clearer light he sees the points are small, or Bees that he was wrong. Whatever the motive was in Theodore's case, he made peace with THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 169 Wilfrith, and did what he could to have him restored. Here in London, in the presence of our sainted bishop Erkenwald, he met the man he had so resolutely opposed ; to oppose whom he had gone clean against the Pope. It was eight years since he had consecrated the three bishops into Wilfrith's place. Eight years had Wilfrith been in prison or in exile. There were now several bishops occupying Wilfrith's one enormous see. Theodore was eighty-four years old, Wilfrith was fifty-two. The old man, according to Eddi, humbled himself before the younger. We may well hesitate to receive Eddi's account in its fullness ; but it is certain that Theodore set himself actively to work to recover for Wilfrith at least some part of his former position. My own reading of the tangle is, that in 678 Theodore had acted in a masterful way, and had used to the full the opportunity given him by the personal hostility of Ecgfrith against Wilfrith. He had done what he thought necessary and right in the subdivision of Northumbria, and as Wilfrith opposed his scheme, he had to go under. Besides, there were civil charges against Wilfrith which enabled him to give no heed to him. Wilfrith had endeavoured to get Theodore in turn I7O THEODORE AND WILFRITH. overridden by the Pope. The attempt had proved a ludicrous failure, and Wilfrith had faced the failure in a manly way and betaken himself to the admirable work of converting the one remaining pagan kingdom of England. Theodore had noted his excellent work, and had seen no signs of renewed attempts or at least no sign of successful attempt to bring about the interference of a foreign ecclesiastic. Wilfrith had obtained from Pope Benedict II, towards the end of his time in Sussex, a document keeping alive his claims upon the north, but he had remained quiescent and the document was practically dormant. Theo- dore's own schemes had been very successful ; he could afford to forget and forgive, even to ask to be forgiven as a man, while his policy as an administrator was to stand. Just at that convenient point, Ecgfrith was slain by the Picts. That untied Theodore's hand and tongue. He could now speak quite frankly to Wilfrith, and for the first time. Further, the Northumbrian power was shaken to its foundations by Ecgfrith' s great disaster, and as far as man could see never again would the power of a Northumbrian king be what it had been. And so, at the very first oppor- tunity, as I think the facts recited fairly THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 1 7! shew, he called Wilfrith to him, and they met ; met in London, the natural meeting- place of the rulers of the Church from the north and from the south. " Of all things," Eddi makes Theodore say to Wilfrith, " this most weighs upon my con- science, that I consented to the kings when without delinquency on your part they spoiled you of your own substance, and, to the grief of your people, drove you into exile." Here it is quite clear to me that a secular forfeiture for some alleged offence against the constitu- tion was what in fact happened. He went on to say that he knew he was dying, and he begged Wilfrith to let him declare him his heir, and his successor as archbishop. Wilfrith took all this like a brisk man of business with an eye to the main chance, determined to take the very full of what the dying man could give, and careful not to use one generous word. I will translate Eddi's words, which he puts into Wilfrith's mouth : I suppose Wilfrith had more than once de- scribed the scene in his hearing. " May the Lord and St. Peter give thee remission of what thou hast done against me ; and as thou hast made confession, I will be to thee a friend praying for thee always. And now 172 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. first of all send messengers with letters to thy friends in all parts, that they may know that we are reconciled and that I was an innocent victim of spoliation ; and adjure them in the Lord that they restore to me some part of my substance *, according to the precept of the Apostolic see. Afterwards, if God will, we can discuss in larger numbers who is worthy, with thy consent, to succeed to thine episcopal seat." The archbishop accordingly wrote to Aid- frith, the new King of Northumbria, to Ethelred, King of Mercia, the abbess Elfleda, and others. Eddi makes him adjure Aldfrith to come to terms with Wilfrith, " for the fear of the Lord, and by reason of the precepts of the prelates of the Apostolic see, and for the remission of the soul of Ecgfrith his father." The letter to Ethelred is given in full by Eddi, and he tells us of the practical response made by the two kings. Ethelred, he says, "on account of the authority of the most blessed pontiffs Agatho, Benedict, and Sergius " (Ser- gius was not yet Pope), "canonically and freely received Wilfrith, restored to him many monasteries and lands belonging personally 1 Here again, at this most critical point, the old griev- ance comes up ; his property had been taken. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 173 to him *, held him in the highest honour, and persevered in his friendship to the end of his life." As to King Aldfrith, he, by the advice of the archbishop, invited Wilfrith to go north. He gave him Hexham, which Eata had just then vacated by death, and this he held for a year. John of Beverley then became Bishop of Hexham, and Aldfrith put Wilfrith into the Deiran bishopric, and gave him the monastery of Ripon with its property, accord- ing, as Eddi insists, to the judgement of Agatho and the synod at Rome. The two bishops Bosa of York and Eadhed of Ripon if indeed he was bishop there were driven out, Bosa only to come back again when Wilfrith was again expelled. As a fact, Agatho's judgement was neither now nor at any time carried out, Wilfrith only at most got the bishopric of York as Theodore had limited it in 678. Hexham and Lindisfarne, that is, Bernicia, continued to be separate bishoprics. Eddi keeps on declaring that everything was done in obedience to Agatho's decree. The simple fact is that from first to last it was a mere dead letter, and Aldfrith acted with regard to 1 Here again we are puzzled to know how Wilfrith had been deprived of property in Mercia against the will of the Mercian king. 174 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. it as his father had done. He put Wilfrith into one portion, not the whole, and he turned him out of even that as soon as he saw reason to do so ; just as if no such document had ever existed as this much-vaunted and much- despised papal decree. It may all have been, as Mr. Bivington calls it, "lying and brutal tyranny" ; but at least it was not recognition of the papal claims to supremacy in England. That Mr. Rivington thinks it was recognition makes one wonder what form he imagines that rejection of those claims could have taken. The expulsion of Bosa was the only detail ever carried out that agreed with Agatho's decree, and, as compared with the whole order, that detail was ridiculously small. LECTURE VI. Theodore's death. His organisation of dioceses. His Penitential. His schools. Aldfrith and Wilfrith at variance. Archbishop Brihtwald and the Synod of Ouestraefeld. Wilfrith threatens to appeal to Rome ; is again expelled. The hearing of Wilfrith's second appeal. Decision of the Pope in his favour. THEODORE died on September 19, 690, at the age of eighty-eight, after twenty-two years' work as archbishop. In those twenty-two years he developed the English Church, or- ganised it, and brought its general arrange- ments into a working form which it retained for a long time. He had found, nomin- ally, seven bishoprics in England, but only three bishops. The result of his work was that Northumbria from one had been five, Mercia from one had become five, and East Anglia had become two. He had arranged for the subdivision of Wessex, which took place 176 THEODOKE AND WILFRITH. after his death. There were thus seventeen sees in his time or according to his arrange- ment; and when Henry VIII came to the throne eight hundred and twenty years later, there were only seventeen sees in England 1 . And all this great work of his was done during a time when he and all England were resolutely not carrying out the instructions of the Pope, risking all his curses rather than recognise his interference in English affairs. From fir-st to last, no consultation with the Pope, nor any reference of any question to him, on Theodore's part. It may be well to print in parallel columns the two lists of diocesan sees, including in the earlier list the see of Sherborne, which, according to his arrangement, was to be split off from Wessex when Haedde should die ; this occurred in 705, when Aldhelm became Bishop of Sherborne and Daniel Bishop of Winchester. THEODORE. HENRY VIII, 1. Canterbury. i. Canterbury. 2. London. 2. London. 3. Rochester. 3. Rochester. 1 For details, see Conversion of the Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), under the several kingdoms. 'DOKE AND WILFRITH. 177 THEODORE. HENRY VIII. 4,o. Wessex, Sherborne. 4-6. Winchester. Salisbury. Bath and Wells. 6-io. Lichfield. 7-11. Lichfield. Lindsey. Leicester. Lincoln. Hereford. Hereford. Worcester. 11,12. Worcester. Ihimvicli. Ely. 12. Norwich. Elmham. 13. Chichester. 14. Exeter. I3-I7- York. Lindisfarne. 15-17. York. Durham. Hexham. Carlisle. Ripon (one bishop). Abercom (one bishop). It may be added that while Chichester, like Exeter, has no representative in the list of sees of Theodore's time, the kingdom of Sussex was Christianised by Wilfrith during Theodore's archiepiscopate, and the foundation of the see of Selsey in 709 might almost be credited to his list. Theodore made another, and in some ways a larger, mark upon the Church of England and the Church of the West. His Penitential, M 178 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. or rules for cases of discipline, carried his influence far and wide. It appears that from time to time, as occasion arose, he gave decisions as to what the true practice was in doubtful cases, and as to the amount of penalty to be imposed by the clergy on dis- covery of offences. This latter branch of his work makes exceedingly unpleasant reading ; it amounts to raking in the vilest filth of depraved human nature. The other branch of the work is of real interest in connection with the earliest stages of church practice ; and it is rendered more interesting -by the fact that Theodore frequently makes a com- parison between the practice of the Komans and the practice of the Greeks. His position enabled him to do this with unusual know- ledge ; and in this way the English Church became familiar with Greek practices, from a favourable point of view, and was able to take a larger view than the narrower Romans took To this day there is that advantage on our side, and it is becoming daily more marked. We hold as a Church a position between the Greek and the Latin Churches, not unlike that which the experience of Theodore stamped upon the English Church within a century of its coming into existence. When Con- THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 179 stantinople becomes Christian again we shall hold a balance of even greater importance than now. From a doctrinal point of view, our agreement with the Orthodox Greek Church on a large number of points on which we differ from the modern and mediaeval Roman, is very striking l . One or two examples will shew how the comparison between Greeks and Romans comes out in Theodore's decisions. Under the head of " Those who cannot be ordained " we find this 2 : " If any one has been, through ignorance, ordained before being baptized, those whom that pagan has baptized must be baptized, and he must not be ordained." Theodore gives that as his rule. He appends a note to the effect that it was said a "Roman Pontiff of the apostolic see " had decided other- wise, to the effect that it is not the person who baptizes, but the Holy Spirit, that sup- plies the grace of baptism, and that the sup- posed priest must be baptized and ordained. Or again 3 , " The Greeks, cleric and lay, com- 1 See one of the Church Historical Society's publica- tions, What is the Catholic Church in England ? (S.P.C.K., no. 28) p. 178. 2 I. ix. 12 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 185. 3 I. xii. i, 2. M 2 l8o THEODORE AND WILFRITH. municate every Lord's Day. Let those who for three Lord's Days have not communicated be put out of communion. The Romans, in like manner, communicate those who wish ; but those who do not wish are riot excom- municated." Or again 1 , <; The Romans recon- cile a penitent within the apse ; but the Greeks will not do so." Or again 2 , "The Greeks bless a widow along with a virgin, and elect each an abbess. But the Romans do not veil a widow along with a virgin." "According to the Greeks a presbyter can consecrate a virgin with the holy veil and reconcile a penitent and make the oil for exorcism and the chrism for the sick, if necessary. But according to the Romans only a bishop can do so." Or again 3 , "A woman can make oblations, ac- cording to the Greeks ; according to the Romans not." And once more 4 , "Persons may marry in the third degree of relationship, ac ording to the Greeks, as it is written in the law, in the fifth according to the Romans ; but they do not dissolve a marriage in the fourth degree if it is an accomplished fact. Therefore, let them marry in the fifth degree ; 1 I. xiii. i. 3 II. iii. 7, 8. 8 II. vii. 4. II. xii. 23. THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. l8l in the fourth, if they are married, let them not be separated." This last is an example of Theodore's declared intention to fall in with the Western view in his decisions for the Church of England. Another respect in which Theodore made a mark upon the Church of England must be definitely mentioned, though it has already been referred to. It was owing to his influence that the Anglo-Saxon Church was a learned Church. His school at Canterbury was of the nature of a University, and we trace its influence direct to Jarrow and to York. The school of Canterbury died out in the course of time, but the great school of York went unbroken on, and flourishes still 1 . In this great work of stamping upon the Church of England the love and the character of learn- ing, he was in the main helped by Hadrian, the African who had accompanied him from Rome in the first instance and died in peace and honour forty-one years after his appoint- ment by Pope Vitalian to be Theodore's com- panion. To Theodore the Greek and Hadrian the African the English Church owed its 1 See an article entitled " Our Oldest School," by A. F. Leach, F.S.A., an assistant Charity Commissioner, in the Fortnightly Review for November, 1892. 182 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. learning, which culminated in such men as Bede and Alcuin. I do not know that we trace any of our learning to the Italians, except the art of church song. Theodore is the third and last of the three men who founded and built the Church of Christ among the English folk. The three were Augustine, Aidan, and Theodore ; an Italian, a Scot, and a Greek. To Augustine must be accorded the credit of having con- verted the first English king who became a Christian, and the first English kingdom to come over to Christ. In this thirteen hun- dredth year from the great event, it is natural to make as much as possible of Augustine's work. But still it is necessary to remind ourselves that his royal convert, Ethelbert, had long had a Christian wife, and that Christian ministrations had long been exercised in the capital of Kent, hard by his own palace ; and that Kent was the smallest of the king- doms. But if Augustine's work covered only a very limited area, as is the fact, it must be borne in mind that he had only a very limited time in which to work, say at most eight years. If he had had Theodore's twenty-one years he would have had larger fruit of his labours, so far as man can see. As it was, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 183 his time was short, and the area of his work was small. But he set the whole thing going. Aidan's work and influence covered a vastly larger area. In one way and another a very large proportion of the whole of the English territory was won and taught by the Scotic school. And the work was most timely. It came exactly at the critical point, and it did exactly what was wanted. As between Augus- tine and Aidan, the partisans of the two schools may each maintain the superior claims of his own hero ; but even partisans cannot disregard the claim to honour and gratitude which the saint of the other side unquestionably has upon all English people. Augustine's work has stood from his day to ours ; Canterbury is still Canterbury. Aidan's work has not in that material sense stood ; it made way for other men to enter into his labours, and to make their own permanent impress where his personal mark was fleeting. Theodore is in a category quite separate from that in which history places Augustine and Aidan. His function was quite unlike theirs. His area of work was larger than that of either, larger than that of both put together. And the mark he made was in full proportion deeper. The organisation, the learning, and 384 THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. the discipline, of the English Church were due to him. Its independence of a foreign yoke for such the fatherly care and interest of Rome was becoming in his time, or had become, in other Churches was due to him. The Anglo- Saxon Chronicle says of his death " This year Archbishop Theodore died. Before this the bishops had been Romanish; henceforth they were English. ^Er wearun Rsnianisce biscepas siththan wearun Englisce." If we are asked the question, to which did and does the permanent Church of the English owe the greatest debt? I should reply with some confi- dence, "A very large debt, a debt beyond words, to each of the three ; the largest debt to Theodore, the next largest to Augustine, and the next to Aidan." Others may assign equal honours to Augustine and Aidan, as I have myself done elsewhere 1 . We left Wilfrith acting once more as bishop in Northumbria, Bishop of York ; bishop, that is, of the southern part of Northumbria ; not bishop of the diocese he had once held, that is, not restored to his diocese as the Pope had vainly ordered. Probably the southern part was by that time the more important part, for we gather that York was more and more the 1 National Church, June ; 1897. THEODORE AND WILF1UTU. 185 place of .residence of the kings, and was the place for great ecclesiastical, and perhaps also political, functions for Deira and Bernicia alike. However that might be, York was at least much more important than Hexham, into which Wilfrith had been put temporarily until it was wanted for Eata's successor. Aldfrith had by no means risen with effusion to Theo- dore's proposals for Wilfrith's restoration. He was, by early education and training, of the Scotic school of thought, having been brought up in Ireland according to one ac- count, at lona according to another. He was a patron of churchmen and of learning. Wil- frith surely ought to have been able to get on with a king who gave to Benedict Biscop a con- siderable estate for two silk robes brought from Rome, and another considerable estate for a book on geography l . But I think it is clear that the northerners did not like the man who had dragged in the threats of a foreign church- man, Ecgfrith was dead, but his national policy lived still, and Aldfrith, Biscop, Cuthbert, Bosa, and Eata, were all of one way of think- ing in respect of it ; they preferred Theodore's 1 The Venerable Bede (S.P.C.K.), p. 90. It was Aldfrith to whom, under the name Acircius, Aldhelm addressed his elaborate treatise on the metrical art. 1 86 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. independent and masterful ways in ecclesias- tical arrangements to the claims of servility which the popes so loudly made. Wilfrith certainly saw much of King Aldfrith while he was Bishop of Deira and resided at York and Ripon. It might perhaps have been better if he had seen less of the king, for Eddi tells us that they were continually falling out, friends for a time, and then at daggers drawn. This uncomfortable state of things lasted for six or seven years. At last the king could stand it no longer, and he expelled Wilfrith from North umbria. This would seem to have been an informal expulsion, without spoliation, needing a final ratification and a statement of conditions. Otherwise, we cannot account for the Council of Ouestraefeld, nor for Wilfrith's omission to appeal to Rome. It looks more like a separation for incompatibility of temper than anything more drastic. Eddi names three principal causes of the frequent quarrels between Wilfrith and Aid- frith ; they all came from the bishop's side. First, the old original offence of the spoliation of the Church of St. Peter, either Ripon or York, he does not say which, but I think the context points clearly to Ripon. Lands had been taken away, and not given back; I should THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 187 suppose that means that Ecgfrith resumed, and Oswy and Aldfrith retained, possession of the lands which Ecgfrith and Alchfrith and ^Elf- wine had given to Ripon in the heyday of Wilfrith's career. The next cause was that the monastery given to Wilfrith as his own property was made into a bishop's see. Eddi says, in a rather bewildering way, " the above- mentioned monastery." Canon Raine and other persons of great j udgement and insight make this again refer to Ripon, and regard it as clear evidence that Eadhed had in fact been Bishop of Ripon l . But how that, which had certainly ceased within a year of Wilfrith's return in peace in 686, can have been a run- ning sore for six or seven years, it is very difficult to see. And it seems to me very lame to make two out of the three clearly separate and distinct causes of quarrel, set out by Eddi, refer to one and the same monastery. I feel myself fairly clear that the reference is to Hexham. That was a complete piece of property, like some other parts of the north a separate " shire," with many rights for the owner ; and it was given in its entirety by Queen Etheldreda to Wilfrith. It was used 1 I do not think clearer evidence than that of Bede is needed, see p. 133. 1 88 THEODORE AND WILFJRITH for the bishopric in connection with the spoliation of Wilfrith in 678. It was put under his charge on his return in 686, till he was put into York ; when that event took place, instead of Hexham remaining with him, the separate bishopric of Hexham was con- tinued in the person of John of Beverley. If, as I believe, this was the second sore between Aldfrith and Wilfrith, that Wilfrith was always worrying to get back Hexham as a property and to have the bishopric brought to an end, it is very quaint that this particu- lar bishopric was the only one left for him when they once more let him return to. North- umbria. The third cause was that Wilfrith was compelled ("kept being compelled") to obey the decrees of Theodore, "meaning by that," Eddi says, " not the canonical decrees of his early time amongst us, nor those of his latest times, when he brought all our churches into harmony, but those of his middle time, when discord had arisen amongst us in Britain/' That is, Wilfrith kept worrying the king to upset the whole arrangement for the north, made in 678 and extended in 68 r, and to revert to the state of things which prevailed when Theodore and Ecgfrith dis- placed Chad, and Wilfrith was sole bishop of the THEODORE AND WILFRITH. whole of the North. It is quite clear, therefore, that Wilfrith and all persons concerned knew that the instructions of Agatho had not in any sense been carried out, and that Wilfrith kept on trying to get the king to recognise them, quite without success. That was the English regard for what is now claimed as Papal Supremacy in England in the early Anglo- Saxon times. Eddi tells us that Wilfrith in the end entirely refused to accept the present arrange- ment in any of these respects 1 . When he was expelled, he went to his firm friend, Ethelred of Mercia ; and when Saxulf of Lichfield and Cuthwin of Leicester died in 691, Wilfrith succeeded as Bishop of Leicester. Not a word of reference to Rome about any of these fre- quent translations, nor any hint of yet another appeal to Rome. This see of Leicester he held till 705, when he became once more Bishop of Hexham ; and Leicester was re-united for thirty-two years to Lichfield. Theodore having died on September 19, 690, there was an interregnum for some time. At length, on July i, 692, Brihtwald, Abbat ot Reculver, was chosen archbishop. A long delay took place before his consecration, which was 1 Eddi, c. 45 (ed. Raine). IQO THEODORE AND WILFRITH. only effected on June 29, 693, and Briht- wald was enthroned on the last day of August, three years all but nineteen days after the death of his predecessor. During this vacancy Wilfrith consecrated Oftfor, a Whitby student, to the bishopric of Worcester, and Suidbert to a missionary bishopric in Frisia. It may be worthy of notice that a year or two before the time when the Ripon Wilbrord, trained under Wilfrith, went to Rome to be consecrated for work in Germany, Suidbert was sent to Eng- land for a similar purpose, and, there being no archbishop, Wilfrith himself consecrated him. What other bishops, if any, Wilfrith called in to his help, and by what right he consecrated these persons, history does not tell. We have not, so far as I know, any hint of the reasons for the delay in choosing an arch- bishop and then in consecrating him. I feel sure that there were reasons, and that Wilfrith had a good deal to do with them, and was defeated in his aims and policy. He had cer- tainly not been unwilling to be named as Theodore's successor l . What communications, if any, he may have made to Rome, we can only guess. Anyhow, neither Bede nor any one else suggests that Rome had anything to 1 See p. 172. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 191 do with the choice of Brihtwald, or with his consecration. In the matter of his consecra- tion I am inclined to think that Wilfrith was ready to interfere. Any local knot of that kind was cut by Brihtwald's going to Lyons, and being consecrated there by Archbishop Godwin, the metropolitan bishop of Gaul (Galliarum), as Bede describes him. It was thirty-eight years before next an Archbishop of Canterbury had to be consecrated, and the office was then properly performed by four English bishops Daniel of Winchester, Ing- wald of London, Aldwin of Lichfield, and Eadulf of Rochester, to name them in the order of their own consecration, as Bede is careful to do. As soon as there was an Archbishop of Canterbury again to take the lead, a great council was held on Wilfrith's affairs at Oues- traefeld, probably Austerfield *, near Bawtry, on the border between Northumbria and the present Nottinghamshire. A considerable amount of territory hereabouts usually counted with Northumbria, one ecclesiastical relic of which is found in the connection between the great minster of Southwell and the still greater minster of York. This great council was held 1 Spelled Ouestrefdd in Domesday (Raine). THEODORE AND WILFRITH. spontaneously, by the act of the English Church ; not even Eddi suggests that it was held in any recognition of any external sug- gestion. Eddi tells us that the bishops of nearly all Britain were present. Aldfrith the king was there too. Wilfrith, now Bishop of Leicester in Mercia, was invited to attend under safe conduct, and he came. Eddi, as usual defeating his own partisan end by over- doing the strength of his assertions, tells us that the council sent humbly to beg Wilfrith to deign to be present, promising that if he would not refuse to come they would deal rightly by him in the matter of the old spolia- tion. As soon as he got there, he found that almost everybody was against him. That is valuable testimony from an out-and-out par- tisan to the unpopularity of Wilfrith's anti- national and Komanising policy. They charged him with things they could not prove, and they pressed him with the decrees of Theodore, of which he had already heard far too much. Eddi declares that he answered them with humility, and said he would entirely accept the canonical decrees [of the synod?]. But they shewed their hand further, and he saw that they were impugning the authority of the apostolic see. On that, he reproached his THEODORE AND WILFRITH. TQ3 opponents for having resisted through two and twenty years the papal decrees. This is a very valuable statement ; it shews beyond all manner of question that we are right in our contention of the national assertion of independence, and that the partial restoration of Wilfrith was not in any sense a compliance with the decrees of Rome. He went on to ask, Eddi says, with what face they could dare to put into a second place the apostolic statutes sent to Britain by Pope Agatho, Benedict Pope elect, and Pope Sergius 1 , and prefer the decrees of Theodore made at a time of discord. So Eddi tells us. The council then adjourned. During the adjournment, one of the king's attendants, a devoted friend of Wilfrith from his earliest years, slipped out of the king's tent in dis- guise, and mingling with the crowd got unperceived to the place where Wilfrith was. He told Wil frith there was a plot to take him in. " They would ask him to sign a declara- tion of assent, and would make it cover all they might do ; they would deprive him of all his property in Northumbria and in 1 There are two questionable letters of Sergius in William of Malmesbury, professing to commend Brihtwald to England ^H. and S. iii. 229, 230). N J94 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Mercia, and put it at the disposal of Briht- wald; they would practically make him degrade himself from the episcopal office." Then he slipped away again unperceived. Wilfrith naturally became very cautious about his signature. We might almost think we were speaking of Becket. He desired to hear the judgement of the archbishop before he signed anything. " That judgement, being in conformity with the rules of the Fathers, he held himself bound to accept." At length Wilfrith's opponents said straight out that they would so completely despoil him, that not a fraction of a cottage should remain to him in Northumbria or Mercia. The king and the archbishop pointed out that this was ruthless, and at last it was agreed to leave him Bipon, clearly as an abbey only, not a bishop's seat, on condition that he signed an undertaking (i) to stay quietly there ; (2) not to pass beyond the bounds of the property without the king's leave ; and (3) not to exercise in any way the episcopal office, from which he was to cut himself off. I regard it as certain that if we had a statement on the other side, we should find very strong practical grounds for these very drastic conditions. We may remember, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 195 as a kind of illustration, that William of Normandy and his successors did not allow a bishop to leave the island without their consent, and that the French Republic does not allow bishops to go from one diocese to another for ecclesiastical functions. It was on this ground that the Cardinal Archbishop Lan^nieux of Rheims was served with o a notice, in 1896, that he must not issue his letters of invitation to all the French prelates to come to Rheims at Christmas of the present year to observe the i4Ooth anni- versary of the baptism of Clovis. Of this at least we may be quite certain, that Eddi took the Council of Ouestraefeld to be entirely regardless of the Pope and all his decrees and all his threats. No ingenuity can obscure that. Papal Supremacy in England at that time is all nonsense. WilMth, thus hard pressed, raised his voice and spoke out boldly. " Why do you bid me turn the sword against myself, and deprive myself of the episcopal honour I have worn for all but forty years ? Was it not I that converted the Northumbrians to the true Easter and the true tonsure ? I that intro- duced the practice of a double choir, with reciprocal responsories and antiphons ? N 2 196 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. I that first taught here the Benedictine rule? And now you would make me pass a hurried sentence against myself, all ignorant as my conscience is of any misdeed. On this question that you have newly sprung upon me, namely, the violation of my sacred office, I confidently appeal to the apostolic see ; and let any one who presumes to disregard ray episcopal dignity go with me to judgement there. For the wise Romans ought carefully to know for what fault you wish to degrade me, before I carry out the orders of you in your isolation." When the archbishop and the king heard this, they said, " Now he is guilty. We must condemn him because he elects their judge- ment rather than ours." This at least, whatever may have been the case with Ecgfrith and his imprisonment of Wilfrith, is condemnation for an appeal to a foreign court, quite apart from the merits of the case. I regard it as completely settling the question so unhistorically raised as to the reason of Wilfrith's punishment by Ecgfrith and his Witan. Aldfrith spoke up as sturdily as Ecgfrith did. The power of the king and his council of great churchmen and great laymen was supreme in England. The king THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 197 added, addressing the archbishop, " If you wish, I will, without the slightest hesitation, bring force to bear upon him. My soldiers shall make him declare himself ready now to submit to our judgement." The bishops present said it ought to be borne in mind that he had come under safe conduct. The council then broke up, and Wilfrith returned to Ethelred, who said he would certainly not disturb him in such possessions as he had given him : he would learn from Rome what ought to be done. It is a matter of some surprise that this Northumbrian Council even claimed to deprive Wilfrith of property in Mercia. The dominant party declared Wilfrith and his supporters excommunicate. If one of his abbats or priests was invited to eat with one of the faithful, and blessed the food set before him with the sign of the Cross, it was thrown out of doors as though offered to idols. And if any of them used any vessel, it was washed, as though polluted, before any one else used it. The severity of this latter proceeding does not strike us very forcibly ; but it seems to have meant a good deal in those days. The Britons of whom Aldhelm complained to Geraint were much more thorough-going. 198 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. If any of the Catholic party had used a glass or a mug, the Britons scoured it with sand or ashes to purify it. Wilfribh went to Rome, and was well received by the Pope, who was now John VI. Inasmuch as he had given public notice of his appeal to Rome, Archbishop Brihtwald sent representatives with a statement of the charges against him. It is amusing to note the pleasant and easy terms on which Eddi tells us Wilfrith and his party were at Rome, as compared with the suppliant request of Briht- wald's legates that the most glorious see would accord them a hearing. Brihtwald's messengers were not very important people. Only one of them was even a deacon ; the others had no ecclesiastical position. Had Brihtwald taken the trouble to send one or two ecclesiastics of some rank and experience, they would probably not have been outwitted as his messengers were. It would seem that Brihtwald was quite clear as to the merits of the case, and believed that it only had to be fully stated in a written document to ensure the failure of Wilfrith's appeal. He was not careful to send men of any mark as his messengers to the Bishop of Rome. To have done that might have seemed like allowing THEODORE AND WILFRITH. IQQ that there was properly an appeal to Rome. To send such unimportant people was barely civil. The whole course of the proceedings at Rome has been preserved for us by Eddi, who was present and speaks of Wilfrith's party as " we." First, Wilfrith's petition was read. Eddi preserves it for us. It says not a single word about the one point on which Wilfrith had declared that he would appeal to Rome. It did not even hint at any demand that he should lay aside the episcopal office. It asked that no one should be allowed to interfere with the monasteries and lands which Ethelred of Mercia, and his brother Wulfhere, had given to Wilfrith. It asked, further, that Aldfrith should be required to carry out the decrees of Agatho, the first of which, we remember, was to the effect that Wilfrith was to be reinstated in full episcopal possession of the whole Nor- thumbrian see, without partition. But, the petition skilfully proceeded, if that seemed hard to King Aldfrith, let the Pope say who best would govern the Church of York. But at least the two monasteries of Ripon and Hexham, with all their lands and possessions, ought to be restored to Wilfrith. Those were 20O THEODORE AND WILFRITH. the three prayers of the petition. It ended with a declaration that Wilfrith always shewed, in accordance with the canons, due respect and brotherly charity for Archbishop Brihtwald, and a promise that he would con- tinue to do so ; only let him fulfil towards Wilfrith the well-founded decrees of the most blessed Agatho and his successors. That was what it always came to. We might think we were reading of Becket, who whatever advances the king made, and whatever ar- rangements were proposed, was always ready to say yes, with the perpetually recurring saving clause which neutralised his acqui- escence, " saving our order." Then the charges of Brihtwald were read, that is, I suppose, the statement of the grounds . on which the king and the English bishops at the Council of Austerfield had acted. Eddi describes the accusations as manifold and great. This is quite in accordance with the view I have more than once expressed, that charges of some very serious kind were, as a matter of fact, preferred against Wilfrith, and treated by the English authorities as proved and as completely justifying the deprivation and banishment of the uneasy and un-English prelate. Unfortunately we THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 2OI have not from any one a hint of what they were, with the exception of one of them. With regard to that one, the investigation took a dramatic form. Wilfrith the bishop, with his venerable presbyters and his deacons, came into the honourable presence of the Roman Council, and declared they would obey whatever the apostolic see decreed. The messengers of the holy archbishop came in according to the instruction of the most holy Fathers, and stood there. They were bidden choose one head of their accusation, and state it. They took the first, apparently, which is not usually the strongest, expecting to proceed by degrees. " This is the first head of our accusation, that this present Bishop Wilfrith contumaciously refused and despised, in the face of a synod, the statute decrees of the holy Archbishop Brihtwald of the Church of the Kentishmen and of all Britain, sent forth from the apostolic see." What Eddi means by saying that they said Brihtwald was sent forth from the apostolic see, I cannot imagine. Perhaps he was so much accustomed to write that of Theodore that it slipped un- awares into what professes to be an accurate statement of the words used. Wilfrith replied. " He was present at the 202 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. council," he said, " with his abbats and pres- byters, and his deacons too. One of the bishops came to him and asked, directly from the king and the archbishop, whether he was willing to agree to the decision of the arch- bishop acting alone. To that he replied, * What is the archbishop's decision ? I ought to know that before I promise ; I may not be able to carry it out.' The bishop who had come to him said he didn't know, and the archbishop would not let any of Wilfrith's party know, until Wilfrith had subscribed with his own hand, in presence of the council, a promise to observe the decree. On this Wil- fiith said, 'I never heard of such a thing tying a man down to carry out a decree before he knows what it is, when it may be abso- lutely impossible for him to do what he has undertaken in ignorance of its nature.' But he did undertake, in the presence of the Witan" (the senate, Eddi says, which I suppose means the complete assembly of the Council of the North), "to carry out to the uttermost the archbishop's decree, in all things in which it should be consonant with the statutes, rules, and canonical definitions of the holy Fathers, and" here we have it again, " not in any way conflicting with the decrees of Agatho THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 203 and bis successors." Then he was silent. The synod said : " Wilfrith, bishop beloved of God, hath expounded the force of his defence." Then they took to whispering among them- selves, not letting the parties hear what they said, talking Greek to one another, and seem- ing amused. After a time they addressed the accusers thus : " You are not ignorant, our very dear brethren, of our practice, in accord- ance with our canons, when many charges are brought against clerical persons. If the accusers are not able to prove the first of their charges, we do not allow them to proceed to the others. But because of the honour of the holy archbishop sent by the monarchy of the apostolic see" here again we are quite at loss to conceive on what ground this assumption is made " and from reverence for this most blessed bishop Wilfrith, so long fraudulently despoiled, as it is asserted, God and the holy Peter, chief of the Apostles, revealing and opening the matter to us, we will fully ventilate all the charges for days and months, and carefully and finally settle the whole matter." The synod was then adjourned, and Eddi's confused language leaves us without any clear knowledge that Brihtwald's messengers had 204 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. any further chance given them. He seems to say that the matter was investigated at seventy committee meetings, spread over four months, and that the more it was investigated the clearer became Wilfrith's innocence. The Pope, too, in giving his decision, declared that many meetings had been held to look into the affair, and that those who looked into it had failed to find anything criminal against Wilfrith. There must have been a large mass of subjects under dispute ; charges of some grave constitutional kind. At least no one can say that the reasons which the king and almost all the bishops of England had for their action were of a trumpery nature, dissi- pated the moment an impartial authority or arbitrator looked into them. It cost the very willing Pope and his very willing council seventy committee meetings to get rid of the charges against Wilfrith. The final exculpation of Wilfrith came about in a dramatic manner. It chanced that the decrees of the Roman Council of 125 bishops under Agatho, held against the Monothelites in 680, and signed as we have seen l by Wil- frith, who was then in Rome on his first appeal, were being read in public. When the signa- 1 Lecture V, p. 165. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 205 tures were read out, Wilfrith's name and de- scription was read among the rest, and people asked in surprise, was that this same Wilfrith, some twenty-four years ago ? Yes. his old friend Boniface testified, it was the very same. Then it came out that Agatho had sent him to be reinstated in his bishopric, and here, after all those years, he was again in Rome, never in any real sense reinstated, and now again expelled by the same old enmity. A decision in his favour was at once given, and a letter to that effect was written to the kings of Northumbria and Mercia. This dramatic discovery that Wilfrith was the very man who had signed the decree of Agatho's Council, and that Agatho had tried his case and sent him back to England to be reinstated, is in rather ridiculous conflict with what Eddi has told us in the next pre- vious chapter. There he tells us that before entering at all upon the matters in dispute, before the interview of Wilfrith with the synod of bishops, and before the seventy com- mittee meetings, the Pope had thus addressed his brother bishops : " O holy synod, we must first examine the canons of our predecessors, and consider the documents which were before them when this matter was appealed to Rome 206 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. in past time, and what were the decrees of the thrice-blessed Agatho, and after him of Bene- dict elect, and of my predecessor Sergius. We shall then be better able to judge the present case." Thus they had carefully looked into the whole matter, and the dramatic discovery and final decision looks like a mere coup de theatre. Wilfrith, too, had openly quoted the decree of Agatho. LECTURE VII. Letter of Pope John VI to the kings of Northumbria and Mercia. Its recognition of the autonomy of the English Church in Wilfrith's case. King Aldfrith re- fuses to act on the Pope's letter or make any change in regard to Wilfrith's expulsion. His successor Eadulf takes the same line. Council of Nidd ; declaration of Aldfrith's deathbed instructions. Lay decision that the papal decrees of Agatho should, in accordance with Aldfrith's testament, be carried out. Refusal of bishops ; discussion of details. The decrees never carried out ; Wilfrith made bishop of Hex ham only. His death ; summary of his episcopal life in Northumbria. Pope Paul I and his letter to king Eadbert of Northumbria in a like case of deprivation. Decision of the Church of England that it is autonomous, having no appeal beyond the Archbishop. THE following was the substance of the letter of Pope John to Ethelred of Mercia and Aldfrith of the Deirans and Bernicians. After a compliment to their faith, which he says they received from the preaching of the 2O8 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. chief x of the Apostles, the Pope declares that the inextricable tangle of dissension into which affairs had got themselves was an affliction to himself and the whole church. He sets forth the action of Agatho (he says nothing of Benedict and Sergius) in the matter of Wilfrith's appeal, and from this part of his letter we learn that the Abbess Hilda was one of the most important of Wilfrith's accusers on that occasion. With a hardihood curiously characteristic of Papal utterances, he declares that Archbishop Theodore, by his pontifical acts, obeyed the decree of Rome. We have seen what the decree of Rome was, and we have seen, and to the end shall see, that it was never carried out at all, by Theodore or by any one else. Even in Wil- frith's own complaint it was asserted and truly that for twenty-two years the Pope's decree had been disobeyed. Thus Wilfrith, who of all men knew, directly contradicted the Pope on a matter of fact. So much for the past. Now for the present. The Pope and his council of bishops and priests had exhaustively enquired into the whole matter, and a final conclusion had been come to. The result was that he monished Berchtwald, the 1 Principis. 11. CROSS-SHAFT OF ETHELWOLD. [p. 209. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 209 prelate of the holy church of the Kentishmen, whom by the authority of the chief of the Apostles he had confirmed as archbishop there, his most reverend brother, to call a synod with Bishop Wilfrith ; and, a council having been regularly constituted l , to cause Bishops Bosa and John to come to the synod, and then to hear what both sides have to say, and to consider what the outcome is. Bosa, I may say, was now once again bishop of York, that is, of Deira. John of Beverley was bishop of Hexham. The Pope says nothing about Eadfrith, who had been bishop of Lindisfarne since 698, when he succeeded Cuthbert's successor : why he omits to men- tion him we cannot say. It was Eadfrith who wrote and ornamented the wonderful manuscript known as the Lindisfarne Gospels, and his successor Ethel wold gave the cover, which Bilfrith decorated with gold and silver and precious stones. The shaft of a cross shewn in figure 1 1 claims a special connection with Ethelwold, of which an account is given at p. 293. The council having been called and con- stituted, and Bosa and John being present, if in Archbishop Berchtwald's opinion a con- clusion can be come to, the Pope and all will 1 Celebrato. 210 THEODORE AND WJLFRITH. rejoice. But if no such result follows, he is to give synodical warning that all present themselves before the Apostolic see, that there the matter may have a final end and all may return in peace. There we have a sur- prisingly simple and moderate statement of the Roman position. The National Church was to settle the matter for itself, on full evidence. The Pope leaves it to be clearly understood, as I think, that so long as a con- clusion is arrived at by the national synod, he will be satisfied ; not satisfied only, but glad ; it will be pleasing to him. But if the national synod, in the opinion of the arch- bishop, cannot bring out a clear result, then the whole thing is to go to Rome to be settled ; for settled it must be. If Rome had always kept to that attitude towards England, though it went beyond the rights of Rome to claim that any English case should be taken to Rome, Rome would not be now unavailingly regretting the foolish loss of England. It should be specially noticed that the Pope is very careful to make no demand upon the kings. He treats it as completely an eccle- siastical affair, and Brihtwald is throughout the only person whom he claims directly to affect. He entreats the kings in the name THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. 211 of God to help the business through, and that is all. He urges them to bear in mind what Agatho had decreed, and declares that who- soever, of whatever degree, should despise that, would not escape without the punish- ment of heaven. This closing reference to Agatho's decree is the only hint the Pope gives of the manner in which the tangled dispute should be settled. But for that, if Brihtwald's opinion was that it clearly emerged from the evidence that the case against Wilfrith was sound, Wilfritb must go to the wall. And after all, the reference to Agatho is at best rather obscure. We shall see, later, that the obscurity of Pope John's meaning was the one thing that struck the shrewd men of the north ; and the arch- bishop had to say frankly that the Pope's letter was a maze of words. It is probably unnecessary to point out that neither here, nor in any of the documents I have quoted or summarised, nor indeed anywhere else, is there the faintest hint of any need for as- serting the genuineness of Agatho's decree. The silly suggestion of a charge of forgery is repudiated by this universal and eloquent silence. With the letter of Pope John, duly bulled 212 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. and sealed, Wilfrith came home. He nearly died on the way, and the Archangel Michael appeared to him, and pointed out to him that he had built churches in honour of St. Peter and St. Andrew, but had built none in honour of the holy Mary, ever Virgiu ; he must live to rectify that omission. Arrived in England, he sent his messengers to Archbishop Briht- wald, who offered to mitigate the severity of the former synodal decrees. Eddi says he was compelled by the Apostolical authority, terrified by the writings brought to him, and, trembling, was reconciled to Wilfrith. It is a quaint comment on this, that Agatho's curses had been much more definite and terrible, and those had been faced for years without any one feeling frightened ; and that John was not obeyed, any more than Agatho had been, if it was part of John's instruction that Agatho's decrees were to be carried out. If it was, as I believe it was, his instruction that the English people must do exactly what they thought right in the matter, that instruc- tion they completely fulfilled, and Brihtwald did not need to be terrorised into that sturdy national course. On Ethelred of Mercia the effect of the letters was very striking, accord- ing to Eddi. When he read them, he THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 213 prostrated himself on the ground, and obediently vowed that not one single bit of a letter of all that writing should be by him disobeyed ; nor would he agree with those who should disobey. I have never been able to understand by what right the Northum- brians claimed to interfere with Wilfrith's property in Mercia. That they did so claim was enough in itself to set Ethelred against their action ; and, besides, he had a very high regard for Wilfrith. We have now to consider how King Aldfrith, who was vitally concerned in the matter as no one else was, took the Pope's communication. Wilfrith sent to King Aldfrith two well- known men, Badwin, the presbyter and abbat, and Master Alfrith 1 , with this mes- sage: "Our holy pontiff [Wilfrith] salutes thee with peaceful words, and asks of thee licence to come to thy presence, with letters of salutation of the Apostolic see, and judge- ments concerning his case made by Apostolic authority." The king in reply said nothing harsh or severe, and named a day on which he would give his answer. On the day ap- 1 Magister meant probably one of the subordinate officers of a monastery. The Benedictine Rule gave each monk a Magister. 214 THEODOKE AND WILFKITH. pointed they came, and he made the following reply, in accordance with the advice of his counsellors : " My brothers, both of you held in respect by me, ask for yourselves anything you want, and out of regard to you I will give it. But as to the case of Wilfrith, your lord, from this day forth worry me no more about it. The decision at which the kings, my predecessors, arrived, and afterwards I myself with the archbishop sent by the Apostolic see, and with almost the whole of the English prelates, that decision, I say, as long as I live I will not change, at the bidding of writings from the Apostolic see, as you call them V This determination he fully changed later on, Eddi says, and he very truly grieved over it. No doubt Eddi refers to what Aldfrith was reported to have said on his deathbed, of which we shall hear a good deal. It is quite untrue to suggest that Aldfrith did alter the decision arrived at by his predecessors. It stood, as he said it should, as long as he lived. That was the treatment accorded to Pope John VI and to the re- newed demand for obedience to Pope Agatho. 1 Ut dicitis. I almost wonder that no one has found here again a charge of forgery, and explained Aldfrith's action so. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 215 According to the prophecy of the Pope, Eddi goes on, Aldfrith was struck with a fatal illness. Faithful witnesses testified to what he said on his deathbed. He sent for Elfleda to Driffield, where he lay dying, to give her some final instructions as to his wishes on matters affecting the kingdom. Eddi tells us what he said in the matter of Wilfrith, and we shall have to note it when we speak of the synod at Nidd. Aldfrith died, and* was succeeded by Eadulf, whose claim to the kingdom is not known 1 . Aldfrith, who was himself illegitimate, evidently did not know who would succeed him, and seems to have abstained from naming any one, even his own son. He spoke of his heir, in ad- dressing Elfleda, as " whosoever shall succeed me." That clever lady in her report to the Council at Nidd altered the phrase from " my heir, whosoever shall succeed me," to "my heir, my son." By that time the intermediate heir, Eadulf, had been got rid of, and Ald- fritb/s boy son was king. On the death of Aldfrith, Wilfrith sent from his exile messengers to the new king, Eadulf, and with the messengers his, Wilfrith's, own son *, whatever that may mean. A few lines 1 See page 289. * Cum flio suo proprio. 2l6 THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. later, Eddi speaks of some one else as Eddi's adoptive son. He sent his messengers to the new king as to a friend. The answer must have surprised him. " Persuaded by his counsellors/' Eddi says, "the king austerely and dourly replied, ' By my salvation I swear that if he has not left my kingdom within six days, I will put to death any of his com- panions whom I find/ " Within two months Eadulf himself had been expelled by a con- spiracy, and Osred, the young son of Aldfrith, reigned in his stead, and became the adoptive son of Wilfrith. He was only eight years old. In the first year of Osred 1 s reign, which was still 705, these two vacancies in the throne falling in one and the same year, Brihtwald, whom Eddi here describes as archbishop of the church of the Kentishmen and of nearly all Britain, came from the south, and went, "according to the precept of the Apostolic see," with the king of the northern parts, with all his bishops and abbats and the chief men of all his kingdom, to the synodal place, to inquire into the case of the blessed bishop Wilfrith. They met near the river Nidd, on the east side *, the river that runs by 1 The present village of Nidd is no doubt the site of this synod. It is quite near Ripon, a considerable THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 217 Ripon and Knaresbro' and falls into the Ouse at Nun Monkton. The king was there with his chief men and his three bishops 1 , and the abbats ; Elfleda of Whitby, too, was there, Oswy's daughter, " always the comforter and best adviser of the whole province." Briht- wald the archbishop and Wilfrith the bishop arrived on the same day. The king and the bishops and the chief men took their seats, and the archbishop opened the proceedings. " Let us pray the Lord Jesus Christ to grant us the concord of peace in our hearts through the Holy Ghost. Both I and the blessed Wilfrith have writings of the Apostolic see. We humbly ask that these may be read in your reverend presence." The venerable lords gave permission, and both documents were read from beginning to end. When the reading was finished, there was distance to the west of York, and very far from Heiham and Lindisfarne. That it is described as the synodal place is a further proof that the centre of gravity of im- portance had passed into Deira ; and it is, I think, an evidence of what I have before suggested, that Deira itself had a western division with some constitutional position of its own. 1 The bishopric of the Picts had come to an end, and Lindsey was no longer a Northumbrian province. The three bishops were Bosa of York, John of Hexham, and Eadfrith of Lindisfarne. 21 8 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. silence. Then the layman next in rank to the king, Berechtfrith by name, said to the archbishop, " We need an interpretation : we should like to know what the words we have heard mean." The archbishop replied : " The judgements of the Apostolic see are expressed in a long round of doubtful words. But there is the same meaning in both documents, and what that is I will briefly explain. The Apostolic power, which first to Peter the Apostle was given, that of binding and loosing, hath of its own authority decreed that in the presence of myself, however un- worthy, and of this assembly, the prelates of the churches of this province, leaving their old enmity, be reconciled for good with the blessed bishop Wilfrith. For to these, my fellow bishops, an option is given by the two Apostolic judgements. Either they make perfect peace with Wilfrith, and restore- to him [such] parts of the churches which he formerly ruled, as the wise men shall have settled with me ; or, if they are unwilling to take this, the best course, all must go together to the Apostolic see, and there have the matter settled. But if any one will do neither, he must know that if he be king or layman he is cut off from the body and blood of THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 2ig Christ; and if he be a bishop or a priest that so acts, which is worse still and horrible even to speak of, he is degraded from his Orders. That, in brief, is the judgement of the Apostolic see." That was the net effect. They must agree to some restoration of property to Wilfrith ; to what extent, the archbishop and they would settle. The amount of restoration was not the real point ; there must be some. If they met that with a blank refusal, they would all have to go to Rome. The arch- bishop is not saying what he himself regarded as the alternative; he is only stating what the Pope claimed. It seems to me certain that but for Elfleda's management they would have met it with a blank refusal, and would have stayed quietly at home. Anyhow, not even the most ardent Romaniser can venture to say that there was the slightest idea of attending to the decree of Agatho. It was, as it always had been, a dead letter. And it, not anything else, is the testing point of the claim to supremacy. The bishops resisted. They said, "That which our predecessors long ago, Theodore the archbishop and Ecgfrith the king, determined ; and afterwards at Austerfield we, and almost 22O THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. the whole of the bishops of Britain, in thy most excellent presence, archbishop, decreed ; how can any one alter?" There spoke the unanswerable voice of northern England. And it was final so far as the argument was concerned. The whole thing had been settled long ago; this new papal document had no sort of validity in the presence of the will and decision of two great English moots. Nothing could now do anything for Wilfrith, except some new English evidence which the Council could regard as valid. Such evidence was at once produced, in the form to which the English attached a sacrosanct importance. They could lightly despise the foolish claims of a foreign bishop ; they must bow before the dying words, the most solemn form of testament then known, of their late king. It was from the most blessed Elfleda the abbess that the overpowering evidence came. " Truly in Christ I speak the testament of Aldfrith the king . in the illness of which he died. He vowed a vow to God and St. Peter, saying, c If I live, all the decrees of the Apos- tolic see, which I have refused to obey, I will fulfil towards the blessed Wilfrith the bishop. But if I die, tell my heir, my son, in the name of the Lord, that for the remedy of my soul he THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 221 fulfil the Apostolic judgement concerning Wilfrith the bishop." This is the regular mediaeval proceeding for a death-bed. When she spoke thus, Berechtfrith, who has already been mentioned, pronounced the lay judgement, the king being only about eight years old : " This is the will of the king and his chief men, that in all things we obey the mandates of the Apostolic see and the precepts of Aldfrith the king. For [here we have another proceeding of the mediaeval type] when we were closely besieged at Bamborough, and were sheltering in a narrow place in the rock, we vowed that if God gave to our royal boy l the kingdom of his father, we would fulfil 1 This royal boy, Oared, who nominally presided at the Council of Nidd, and for whose safety this vow, so im- portant to Wilfrith, was taken, became in the end a spoiler of the Church. When Boniface of Mentz (our countryman Winfrid) and five other German bishops and archbishops wrote to Ethelbald of Mercia to entreat him to reform his life which from their statements very much needed reform they declared that the privileges of the churches in England had remained undisturbed and inviolate until the times of Ceolred king of the Mercians and Osred king of the Deirans and Bernicians. Boniface and his colleagues named a second sin of which Ceolred and Osred had been the first to set an example, stupratio et adulterium nonnarum. In another part of their letter they speak of meretrices, sive monasteriaLes sive saeculares (JHaddan and Stubbs, iii. 355). See also 222 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. the Apostolic mandates. As soon as our vow was taken, the hostile forces came over to us ; the gates were opened ; we were free ; and the kingdom was restored." Hereupon the bishops discussed the matter apart. Sometimes they had the archbishop in consultation with them, sometimes Elfleda. The judgement pronounced by the lay men had been that the Apostolic decrees should be fulfilled. Those decrees were, so far as Agatho was con- cerned, that all the bishops should be turned out, and Wilfrith should become bishop of the whole of the Deirans and Bernicians, and then should hold a synod and consider what should be done in the way of subdivision of diocese or appointment of assistant bishops. I suspect that no one concerned had the slightest inten- tion of doing anything like carrying out that decree in any one of its three definite in- j unctions. Brihtwald had given a hint, in his explanation of the Pope's meaning, that the wise men and he would put their gloss upon John's restoration clause, and would say how much must be restored. The discussion apart had, as I suspect, for its sole purpose to assess, Lecture III, p. 93. Bede in his letter to Ecgbert of York speaks of the evil lives of men of position in his day, neque ab ipsis sacratis Deo virginibus abstineant. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 223 as we should say, the damages. The claim was, the whole of Northumbria in its very largest sense, and the expulsion of all the bishops. There was a direct command from Rome to give the whole to Wilfrith. They compromised it for the best abbey in Deira and the best abbey in Bernicia, Ripon and Hexham, with no bishopric at all. Wilfrith took the abbeys like a lamb. That was the ridiculously small outcome of all the papal decrees and threats. That was the way in which the men of Yorkshire and Northumber- land were clever enough to seem to do what the Pope enjoined, while really they did as from the first they had done just what they thought fit ; that, and no more. And there was a good opportunity for a much fuller obedience to the papal decree than at most they seemed to shew. York was Wilfrith's original see. From York he had ruled all the northern land. To York they were bound to restore him, if they were to do as they were told, even though it 'should be only a truncated York they gave him. It may be said that it would have been harsh to turn the Bishop of York out of his place in order to put Wilfrith there. But, if harsh, it was exactly what they had been told to do ; and once had done, as 224 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. I do not doubt, though some do. They did not do it. But, in this very year, death made a vacancy for them at York. Here was an ideal chance for meeting their own convenience and in appearance going much nearer to obe- dience to the Pope. They did not take it. They filled the see of York by translating John of Beverley from Hex ham ; and then at last Wilfrith got the little bishopric of Hex- ham, having already had restored to him the abbey, which had been, many years before, his own private property. In this position, after four more years of life, he died. We have thus this strange record of his episcopal connection with Northumbria l . In 1 The following table will probably be found useful in appreciating the proportion of time spent by Wilfrith in episcopal work in Northumbria. I have in each case stated the amount in years only. It would have been possible to state it in some cases in years and months. A.I>. 664-669. Five years. Bishop, but excluded from episcopal work in Northumbria. 669-678. Nine years. Bishop of all Northumbria. 678-686. Eight years. Under expulsion. 686-691. Five years. Bishop of York ; brief ad- ministration of (i) Hexham, (2) Lindis- farne. 691-705. Fourteen years. Under expulsion. 705-709. Four years. Bishop of Hexham, till his death in 709. That is, he was doing episcopal work in Northumbria for THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. 225 664 he was consecrated to the bishopric of the whole northern kingdom, both Deira and Bernicia, with his seat at York. So, in spite of difficulties, we must interpret the state- ments. For four years he was kept out of it entirely, till in 669 Theodore put him for the first time into possession of his bishopric, which certainly then included the whole of the great province. He held it for nine years, and then was expelled by or under this same Theodore and the same King Ecgfrith. For eight years his only connection with Northum- bria was to be in prison there for nine months, on account of his appeal to Rome. Then, in 686, he was made Bishop of Deira, with his seat at York, having first administered, but only for about a year each, one part and another of Bernicia. The bishopric of Deira he held for about five years, and then he was again expelled, in 691. In 705, after an ex- pulsion lasting fourteen years, he was given the bishopric of Hexham, and Bishop of Hex- ham only he died, in 709. That is, out of forty-five years of episcopal life, he was for nine years Bishop of Northumbria, for five three periods of nine, five, and four years, eighteen in all. He was excluded from such work for three periods of five, eight, and fourteen years, twenty-seven in all. P 226 THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. years Bishop of Deira, and for four years Bishop of Hexham a rapidly diminishing scale of importance. For eighteen years out of forty-five he acted as bishop in the northern kingdom, for twenty-seven years he was under banishment. The only completely successful part of his life in the north was the nine years from 669 to 678, before he invoked the help of the Pope. From the moment of his invoking that help down to the last moment of his life, he never recovered his position. That is the net teaching which history has for us as to the value of the papal attempts to interfere with the autonomy of the English Church in the years between 678 and 709. But a feature even still more remarkable in some ways is the complete submission of the Popes and of the Papal Court to the very cavalier treatment accorded to their fulmina- tions by the kings and archbishops and bishops. As I have already pointed out, it is of great importance that we should look rather to the manner in which papal claims were treated than to the nature of the claims. " I can call spirits from the vasty deep " " but will they come if I do call them ? " A glance at the succession of the Popes during Wilfrith's episcopal life supplies some THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 227 manner of explanation. There were twelve Popes and two anti-popes during Wilfrith's forty-five years 1 . This no doubt greatly interfered with the carrying out of a con- sistent and watchful policy of encroachment. But we must discount that fact. In those times 2 , as more markedly in the middle 1 The list is as follows : Vitalian . . . 657-672 John VI ... 701-705 Adeodatus . . . 672-676 John VII . . . 705-708 Domnus . . 676-678 Sisinnius . . . 708 Agatho . . . . 678-681 Constantino . . 708-715 Leo 11 . . . . 683-683 Benedict II . . 684-685 Antipopea John V ... . 685 686 Conon . . . . 686-687 Theodore . Sep.-Dec. 687 Sergius I . . . 687-701 Paschal. . . . 687-693 2 The permanent officials of the see of Rome not un- frequently appear in history. Boniface of Mentz applied to the Roman chancellery for some of Gregory's letters to England, which the officials could not find. On another occasion he sent to England some of Gregory's letters which he had got from the chancellery, and believed not to have been sent to England before (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 336, 359). Boniface's desire for information gives us a hint which explains the spread of Bede's writings on the continent of Europe. On two occasions, when writing to Archbishop Ecgbert of York, who was a friend and correspondent of Bede, he begs Ecgbert to send him copies of some of Bede's works. " I beseech you to copy and send me some tractates from among the lesser works of the Lector Beda, whom, as we hear, the Divine Grace has gifted with spiritual intellect and P 2 228 THEODOEE AND WILFRITH. ages, and as very clearly now even in the case of a man so independent as Leo XIII, the permanent officials, rather than the Pope, made the policy of Rome. It was the Roman Curia, more even than such men as Roderic Borgia, that wrecked the Papacy in the sixteenth century, and gave the English Church a lesson it cannot forget. And after all allowance is made for the element of dis- has granted as a light in your province ; that we too may enjoy the candle which the Lord has bestowed upon you" (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 359). In another letter he passionately begs the archbishop to give him the joy he lias already given him, by sending some more of Bede's writings ; especially, if he can, those on a lectionary for the year and on the Proverbs of Solomon (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 389). When we find such MSS. in foreign libraries, we find them attributed to Irish scribes, and the hand in which they are written is called Irish. I claim here, as in the case of our abundant sculptured stones in the north of England and south of (modern) Scotland, that the work is Anglo- Saxon or Anglian, not Irish, both in its execution and in its origination in England. When Boniface wrote to Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, to ask his advice on certain points, he told him his eyes were getting weak, and he could not easily read letters which were small and run together. He entreated Daniel to send to him a MS. of six of the prophets, written out by Abbat Winbert in clear and separate letters (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 345)- I feel sure that if this MS. were found at St. Gallen, or had been found at Reichenau or at Mayence, it woulcl be called an Irish MS., written by an Irish scribe. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 229 continuity, I think the fact stands out with remarkable clearness that Rome did not regard it as its business to manage the affairs of the Church of England. When those affairs were brought to Rome by an injured or dissatisfied person, Rome, always very human, would have been more than human if it had declined to accept the position and pronounce its opinion and judgement. But when it had performed that function, it seems to have washed its hands of the whole affair, and left the islanders to fight it out among themselves ; not even caring or daring to make any disturbance when its decision was treated at most as so much waste paper, and on occasion as ground for the imprisonment of the ecclesiastic over whom its unavailing aegis had been cast. The Popes seem at least to have learned wisdom by experience. Pope Paul I, just fifty years after the event we have been discussing, wrote a letter to Eadbert, King of North- umbria, curiously enough on this same question of taking away monastic lands, but in a very different tone and with very different claims. The Romans in England announced four years ago that St. Peter was the primary patron of England. Paul I stands seriously in their 230 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. way, giving to the Apostle Paul an equal share with Peter in the protectorate of England, moved, it may be, by the fact that his own name as Pope was Paul. Agatho and his successors had spoken of Rome as deriving from St. Peter ; Pope Paul states the simple historical fact that its importance rested on Peter and Paul. We have seen that in the times of Ecgfrith and Aid frith Rome was described only as "the see of Peter " ; Pope Paul, having claimed both Peter and Paul, and claimed them without distinction or difference so far as his use of their names went, is careful to speak of " the Apostolic see," that is, as the context shews, the see of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. The earlier Popes, in trying to frighten or awe the English into attending to them, spoke time after time of the prince or chief of the Apostles, Peter. But Pope Paul uses the true phrase, which alone really expresses the view of Catholic times, " the princes (or chiefs) of the Apostles, Peter and Paul." " Abbat Forthred," he writes, " has come to the threshold of your protectors, the blessed princes or chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul. He has told us that a certain abbess had granted to him three monasteries, Stonegrave, Coxwold, and 12. FRAGMENTS OF CROSSES AT BTONEGRAVE. [p. 231. THEODORE AND WILFBITH. 23! Donemouth 1 , and that your excellency has taken them from him and given them to a patrician, your own brother, 'Moll' by name/' This, the Pope said, had greatly troubled him, fcr the king was a good and well-meaning king. He exhorted him, and through the Apostolic see warned him, to obey his own better feelings, and for love of his protector (here in the singular) to restore the monasteries. If he did so, he would prevail against the wiles of his fierce foe, and without doubt obtain eternal life. There was no curse in the alternative case. If Popes had confined themselves to that kind of letter, they would not have lost the Church for which of all Churches they had in mediaeval times the highest regard, the national Church of the English race. I give in Fig. 12 a representation of fragments of 1 Staningagrave, Cuchawalda, Donaemuthe (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 395). Stonegrave (near Malton) is re- markable for fine and abundant remains of early Anglian sculpture, especially a large stone cross quite unique. Coxwold is very near Stonegrave. Jarrow lies at the mouth of a little river called the Done, and Jarrow was on some early occasions called Donamuth. The only objection to this last identification is that Jarrow was too important in the middle of the eighth century to have fallen into the hands of an abbess and to have been bandied about in the way described. 232 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. early Anglian crosses which are preserved in the Church of Stonegrave, one of the places named by the Pope. See also page 234. There came a time, less than forty years after Wilfrith's death in 709, when it was definitely proposed that the relations of the English Church to Rome should be changed. It was proposed that the reference of difficult and disputed matters to Rome, which up to that time had been made by a disappointed individual only, and had been actively re- sented by all in authority, should for the future be made by the chief authorities themselves 1 . Boniface of Mentz, our own countryman Winfrid of Crediton, the Apostle and martyr of Germany, sent to Archbishop Cuthbert a letter describing the acts of a council he had held, and suggesting reforms in the English Church. He was an ardent Romaniser, as a matter of organisation, and at the same time a very frank critic of Popes when he thought they needed or deserved criticism. He brought his German council to declare their complete submission to the Roman Church and their full recognition of the supremacy of St. Peter and his vicar. They agreed to keep the Catholic faith and 1 See also Continuity of Possession (S.P.C.K.), p. 31. THEODORE AND WILFRITH, 233 unity and the submission to the Roman Church ; to be subject to St. Peter and his vicar ; to follow canonically all the precepts of St. Peter, that they might be numbered among the sheep committed to him. And this declaration they sent to the body of St. Peter, the chief of the Apostles. Further, they decreed that if any bishop was unable to amend or correct a matter in his own diocese, he should bring it before the arch- bishop in synod ; and if the archbishop could not correct it, he should always send it faithfully to the Apostolic see and the vicar of St. Peter to be amended. For thus, Boniface wrote, "I think all bishops ere bound to act with regard to their metropolitan, and he to the Roman Pontiff." Such was the example set and the advice suggested to Cuthbert the archbishop and the Church of England. They would have nothing to do with it. On the contrary, they met in synod, and, with this proposal before them \ resolved that if a diocesan bishop had a matter too hard for him, he should bring it 1 That is one view. The other is that the letter came later. If this other view is correct, the fact remains that the English Church would have no appeal beycmcl its Archbishop. 234 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. before the archbishop in synod, and there the archbishop should settle ' li ' The words with which Boniface concluded the resolu- tion were completely omitted. Such is the tale our early history has to tell of the sturdy national independ- ence of the Church of the English, in its first great fight against the encroach- ments of the Papacy, 12 a. Cross at Stonegrave. LECTURE VIII. Ancient crosses and other sculptured atones. Ruth- well. Abercorn. Acca's cross. Art in Wessex. Aid- helm. Bradford-on-Avon. Deerhurst Glastonbury. Dolton. Cuthbert's altar. His pectoral cross. Hack ness. Ripon. Stapleford. Eadulf. Monk wear- mouth. Britford. Ethelwold's cross. LAST year I described at some length the great shaft of Alchfrith's cross at Bewcastle, and gave several illustrations of its ornamenta- tion and runic inscriptions l . I must now say something of the great cross at Ruthwell, in Dumfriesshire, a brief account of which I gave four or five years ago 2 . The south-western part of Scotland was conquered by Ecgfrith, of whom we have heard much in these lectures, and for a few years it was under Anglian rule. After his disastrous defeat and death 1 See Conversion of Oie Heptarchy (S.P.C.K.), pp. 188-213. * Lessons from Early English Church History (S.P.C.K.\ pp. 104-109. 236 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. in 685, the Britons and Picts in that corner of what is now Scotland, as also the Picts in Fife, resumed the native sway, and the Angles were known there no more. There has been no other period in history when a great Anglian cross, covered with Anglian runes, could have been set up in that south-western district of Scotland. Tradition points to its being regarded by the inhabitants as of foreign origin, not native. It was brought, they say, by sea, from distant parts, and was for a time at Priestwood-side, near the sea. It was being brought inland ; but the hauling-gear failed, and the people took that as an indication that it must remain on the spot which it had reached. They put a shed over it, and the place became known as Rood- well. However that may have been, this great monument stood in the ancient church of Ruthwell, and was the object of much local veneration, so that it was not defaced at the Reformation. But at length, on July 21, 1642, the General Assembly of the Church in Scot- land ordered the destruction of the cross, as tending to idolatry. It was thrown down in the church and broken into three or four pieces, and there it remained lying for eighty 13. THE RUTH WELL CROSS. [p. 237. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 237 years or more, when it was turned out into the churchyard. In course of time one large piece of it was lost, but it was found in digging a grave a hundred years ago. The horizontal arms of the cross-head have not as yet been found, but there is practically no doubt what they were like, for the topmost key of the cross-head remains, as also the lower portion. The stone that now does duty for the horizontal arms and the centre was made in 1823, and is of the right shape. There its correctness ends. The ornamentation of two of the sides of the Kuthwell cross is practically identical with that of one side of the Bewcastle cross, as will be seen by comparing the narrower side in Fig. 13 with the east side of the Bewcastle cross in Fig. 3 in last year's lectures (p. 191 of the little book referred to). It is a beautiful piece of ornamentation, repre- senting a conventional trunk or branch of a tree running in graceful curves from bottom to top, passing across and across many times, and each time throwing off a spiral tendril to occupy the semi-ellipse, ending in fruit at which a beast or a bird is nibbling. The whole is drawn and sculptured in a very bold and skilful manner, and the animals and birds 238 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. are full of life. Leaves and seeds and tendrils are thrown off freely in alternate directions, so as completely to occupy the field with ornament. There are inscriptions down the sides, and also across the shaft at one place. There are no examples of interlacing patterns on this cross ; at Bewcastle, as we saw last year, some panels on the shaft are filled with ornament of that character. This is, I think, an evidence that the cross was set up by artists who desired to shake themselves free from the local associations of Anglian and Scotic interlacements, and to look to more classical decoration. We shall see this carried yet further when we come to speak of Acca's cross, pages 257-261. The two other sides of the shaft are divided into panels, as in the Bewcastle example, and there are inscriptions on the borders of the panels, both across the face of the shaft and down the sides. The cross is in two pieces a lower shaft about 12 feet high, very massive, 20 inches by 17 seven feet from the base ; and an upper shaft with a cross-head in one piece, about 5 feet 6 inches high, dowelled into the lower shaft. The main inscriptions are on the lower shaft, but the upper part is covered with THEODORE AND WILFRITH, 239 inscriptions too. This upper part has suffered more from time and accident than the lower, and the inscriptions are much more illegible. I have, however, read enough of the runes to convince me that we have on the upper shaft portions of the second stanza of the poem to which reference will be made later. Also, I have ascertained that the name of Caedmon is actually on the remaining frag- ment of the head of the cross, the topmost key, a point very much disputed until recent times. I dare say it is disputed still by some people. I read the runes which form Csed- mon's name in a manner different from that of earlier investigators; the cross has now been put with great care into the parish kirk, in an annex specially built, and it can be examined very completely and conveniently. My reading of the passage with Ctedmon's name is -|- Kedrtwn mae fauodho, which is said to mean " Caedmon made me." It should be noted that the horizontal arms and the centre of the cross-head are a modern manu- facture, very badly done, the topmost key being the only part that remains of the old head. The inscriptions on those sides of the shaft which are divided into panels, with figure 240 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. subjects in relief on the sunk field, are in Latin, and relate to the subjects represented in sculpture. The inscriptions on the other sides of the shaft, where the foliage scrolls are, consist of runes. In Figs. 14 and 15 I give reproductions of certain parts of the Latin and the English inscriptions. The method of reproduction is as follows : I tied a long piece of paper on the face of the shaft, and rubbed the surface of the paper with a bit of old leather. This marked out the edges of the incised Roman capitals and Anglian runes. I then pencilled the outlines thus marked out, continually referring to the actual letters when anything unusual had to be attended to. When I got home the letters were filled in with ink, and the whole was then photographed on the scale of (roughly) an inch to the foot. Thus all pains have been taken to make the repro- duction at once clear and trustworthy ; the ordinary reader would make out very little from a photograph of the stone itself. This is the method by which all of my outline illustrations are produced, as for instance the intricate piece of interlacing work on the pillar at Stapleford (Fig. 22, page 285). The runic letters vary from z\ to 3 inches tATTVllTRIABA g S ^3=4 14. The Ruthwell Cross. Q 1242 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. in length, and the Latin letters from ij to 2 inches. I have not corrected anything. Thus it will be noticed that the ninth letter across the top of Fig. 14 should be L, not I, and the first word down the left side should be EIVS, not EVS. In the case of the I for L, it may be that the horizontal line has perished ; for it will be seen in other cased that the bottom of the L is very small. This no doubt is due to the passion for orderliness of spacing which shows so remarkably in the shapes of the capitals in the Lindisfarne Gospels, and for a balance between the space occupied by the top and the bottom of a letter. The square C is a case in point here ; in the Gospels, D also is made square. The line across the top of the A has the same purpose. Exam- ples of letters which have partially perished will be found in PEDES and at the bottom of both sides. The eye that is accustomed to runes will easily detect two cases of a partly perished H and N at the bottom of Fig. 15. Taking the Latin inscription first (Fig. 14), it runs as follows, reading across the top, down the right side to the cross-bar, then down the left to the same point, and then across the bottom of the panel: ^Attulit alabastrum unguenti et stuns retro secus pedes eius lacri* THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. 243 mis coepit rigare pedes eius et capillis capitie sui tergebat (St. Luke vii. 37, 38). The funny little T slipped into the lower part of the A will be noticed, as also the liberal spacing in some of the earlier parts, which drove the cutter to crowd his letters at the end. Even so he had not room for the final T. The remainder of the Latin inscription reads down the left side and then down the right : ^Et praeteriens vidit [hominem caecum] a na-tibitate et sa7i[avit eum ab infirmitate] (St. John ix. i). The B for V will be noticed in natibitate. These texts illustrate the subjects sculptured in relief on the panels, which are shewn on the face of the cross in Fig. 13. Of the four panels on that face, these are the second and third from the top. In the upper of the two, the sculpture of which is quite complete, except that, as at Bewcastle, the projecting right hand of the Lord has gone, the long stream of hair will be seen with which the woman is wiping the feet. " She brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears> and did wipe them with the hairs of her head." The panel below this is broken away in ita Q 2 244 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. lower part, about the place where my illus- tration ends, but the words ab infirmitate can be made out at the bottom of the right side, leaving exactly space for seven letters, which therefore are avit eum. " And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from birth." The remaining words, " and He healed him of his infirmity," do not occur in the text. The uppermost panel represents the Salu- tation of Mary and Elisabeth ; the lowest the Annunciation, ingressus angelus being still legible. On the opposite side the subjects are : (i) St. John with the Lamb. (2) Our Lord with His feet on the heads of animals, and the inscription -J- IH2 XPS index aequitatis bestiae et dracones cognoverunt in deserto Sal- valorem rtiundi (" Jesus Christ the righteous J udge. Beasts and dragons knew in the desert the Saviour of the world"). (3) Two figures breaking a circular cake of bread between them, representing Paul and Anthony (the first hermit and the first monk) with the bread which the raven brought, each too humble to break bread for the other ; and the inscription see Paulus et -4(ntonius) freger\\m\t panem in deserto (" Paul and Antony broke bread in THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 245 the desert "). (4) The flight into Egypt, with Maria et 7o(seph.). (5) At the bottom it is possible to see the Crucifixion. Turning now to the runes (Fig. 15), and as before reading across the top and down the right side, we have : Krist wees on rodi hivethrce ther fusee fearran kwomu ceththilce til anurti ic thwt al bih[eald]. Beginning at the top of the left side and reading down, we have : Mith strdu^i giwundad alegdun hice hince limwoerignce gistoddun him [cet his licces heafdum]. " Christ was on the Cross, and there hasten- ing from far came they to the noble prince. I that all beheld." " With missiles wounded they laid Him down limb-weary, they stood at His body's head." When the runic inscriptions were first inter- preted by a learned Dane, he read the whole correctly for the most part, but he misunder- stood throughout one letter, the sixth from the beginning on the cross-bar, and the thir- teenth down the left side *. It is the rune for W, and he read it as if it meant P. This 1 See also the notes on p. 31. H inn rn fix iw HFH fan XI tfXI MF IliF HI W n K HI H W Iff HI Ml M 15. The Ruthwell Cross. THEODORE AND WILFRITH, 247 threw him entirely off the scent. He read the beginning as Kristpason, instead of K rist wees on, and he argued that a Christ-bason must mean a font. In the other case he read giwunda as xi punda, and thus ascertained the weight to be eleven pounds I In 1840 Mr. J. M. Kemble read the runes aright, and shewed that they represented about twenty lines of an old Northumbrian sacred poem, whose existence had not been suspected. In 1842 Mr. Kemble came across a copy of a Report on Anglo-Saxon poems and hymns found in the conventual library at Vercelli in a manuscript of about the year 950, in the Wessex dialect. Embedded in one of these poems, containing 314 lines, he found all the lines which he had read on the Ruthwell cross. They were expanded, and the dialect was a good deal later, but they were all there. By the kindness of my friend Mr. Gollancz, of Christ's College, Cambridge, who has recently been appointed the first University Lecturer in English there, and has done so much work in publishing Anglo-Saxon texts with modern English renderings, I am able to give a free but close rendering of the whole poem. The lines which are represented on the lower shaft of the cross are printed in italics. If I ever 248 THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. again have time to work at the upper shaft, I hope to establish the claim of the cross to parts of another stanza of the beautiful poem. Whether the "Caedmon made me" refers to the poem in its original form as given on the shaft, or to the actual cross itself, that * is, whether Csedmon was the poet or the sculptor, no one can say. The poet Csedmon was singing inspired songs at the time when this cross must have been erected, but we have no information of his having sung such a song as this. I think it will be felt that the simplicity of the earlier part of the poem, down to about line 70, points that as the part most near to the original poem ; and it is from this part alone that the inscriptions on the Cross are taken. THE DREAM OF THE CROSS. List ! a dream of dreams is now my theme. 'Twas midnight when the vision met my gaze ; hushed was the speech of men in silent rest. Methought I there beheld a wondrous tree, borne aloft, all wrapt about with light; never was tree so bright; it was a beacon of molten gold, and gems shone forth therefrom, four below, nigh earth, and five above on the spreading arms ; God's angels, ever-fair, THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. 249 gazed on 't, a gallows-tree, but not of shame ; 10 angels and holy spirits gazed thereon, and men on earth, yea, all this mighty world, a wondrous tree of triumph ! and sin-stained I, wounded with guilt, I saw that glorious tree shining so brightly in its golden gear, its rich adornments ; the staff of sovran might right fittingly was all bedight with gems. But yet, e'en through the gold might I discern the pangs they felt, those sufferers of old, when first the blood o'er its right side streamed forth. 20 I, too, was sore perturbed; the wondrous sight thrilled me with fear: I saw the hastening beacon changing in garb and hue, now damped with wet, and soiled with running blood, now decked with gold. Long lay I there, and long I gazed thereat, and, sad in soul, beheld the Saviour's tree, until I heard how it gave forth a voice ; and these words spake to me that holiest wood : " 'Twas long ago, yet I remember well, how I was hewn adown at the forest's edge, 30 cut from my stem, and strong foes took me thence ; made me a spectacle ; bade me bear their outcasts ; bore me on their shoulders ; set me on a hill ; foes fixed me there. Then saw I mankind's Lord hastening in His might to ascend me there : I dared not then oppose the word of God, 250 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. or bend or break asunder, though I saw earth's bosom quake ; yea, all His foes might I have laid full low, yet stood I firm. Then the young warrior prepared himself 40 'twas God Almighty, resolute and strong ; brave, in the sight of many, He went up U2>on the lofty cross, to save mankind. I trembled in His clasp, yet dared not bow, or fall to earth ; I had to stand tliere firm. A cross they stood me there; I uplifted the great King, tJie Lord of Heaven, and yet I dared not stoop. They pierced me with dark nails : you see the wounds, the open gashes ; I durst harm none of them. They scorned us both together. Stained was I 50 with the blood that streamed forth from His side, when He, as man, had sent His spirit on its way. Many a bitter pang endured I there, upon that mount ; I saw the Lord of Hosts cruelly bestead ; I saw the darkness shroud with covering of clouds the Ruler's corse; day's splendour fled before the shades of night, wan 'neath the welkin. All creation wept ; their King's fall mourned they; Christ was on the Cross. Then men came thither, hastening from afar 60 unto their noble Prince. All this saw I. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 251 Sore pained, I bowed me to the hands of men, humbly, with all my strength. Then took they thence Almighty God, and raised Him from the rack; but me the warriors left, standing forlorn, bespattered all with blood, wounded with s/uifts. Him they laid down, limb-weary ; stood by Ilia head; tfiey looked upon the Lord of Heaven ; and there awhile He rested, harassed by that mighty toil. Then 'gan they make an earthy grave for Him> 70 in the sight of His foes; they wrought it of bright stone; and laid therein the Lord of Victory; then over Him they sang a mournful dirge, sadly, at eventide, when they must leave, with heavy hearts, the Great King resting there, with no great retinue to guard His rest. We, crosses, stood there in our place awhile, weeping, until anon fierce warriors came (the body, life's fair dwelling, was then cold) and therewithal they felled us to the earth, 80 and (dreadful fate!) in a deep pit they hid us; but me the servants of the Lord found there ; with silver and with gold they decked me o'er. Now mayst thou hear, thou dear beloved friend, what deeds of baleful men, what direful griefs, I once endured; but now the time is come, 252 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. and, far and wide, all men throughout the earth, yea, all this great creation, honour me, and pray unto this sign. On me God's Son suffered awhile ; wherefore I firmly now 9 tower high 'neath Heaven, and it is mine to heal each of mankind who stands in awe of me. Of yore was I the cruellest punishment, most loathsome unto men, ere I made clear the way of Life for all who speak the word. Lo, me the Prince of glory, Heaven's Lord, hath glorified above all forest-trees, as He, Almighty God, hath glorified His mother, Mary, above womankind. Now bid I thee, thou dear beloved friend, 100 to tell aright this Vision unto men ; reveal in words, that 'tis tlie Tree of Glory, whereon Almighty God endured dire pangs for mortals' pins, and Adam's old offence. The death He tasted there ; yet in His might the Lord arose again to help mankind ; He thence ascended into Heaven ; He comes into the world again to visit folk ; at Doomsday will He come, the Lord Himself, Almighty God, and angel-hosts with Him, no wielding the power of doom ; He then will judge each man, as he erewhile hath merited, during the fading days of life on earth. Not any one may then be free from fear, when the All-wielding Lord shall speak the word, THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. 253 when He will ask before that multitude, where is the man who in God's name would taste of bitter death, as He did, on the Cross. They then will dread, and little will they know wherewith to make reply to Christ's request. 120 Yet none need there know any touch of fear, who bears within his breast the best of signs : yea, by the Cross, the soul of every man, leaving the track of earth, finds Heaven's realm, if he but yearn to dwell there with the Lord." With blithesome mood, with all my spirit's might, I prayed then to the Cross ; I was alone ; no men were with me there ; my veiy soul was eager for departure ; I had endured too many hours of longing. Life's hope is now 130 that I may seek that Tree of Victory, and, all alone, and oftenest of men, may worthily adore it ; my will is set thereon ; 'tis strong within my heart : for my defence I look but to the Rood. Few mighty friends have I on earth; they have departed hence from the world's joys; they sought the King of Glory ; with the High Father live they now in Heaven ; they dwell in glory; and I, too, day by day, await the hour when this, the Prince's Cross, 140 once seen by me on earth, shall fetch me forth from this poor life, and bring me to that place, where bliss abounds, and all the heavenly joys, 254 THEODORE AND WlLFRITH. where at the feast the Sovran's folk doth sit, where bliss is everlasting. May He then appoint a place, where I may thenceforth dwell in glory, sharing with the Just their joys ! The Lord befriend me. He that suffered once on earth upon the Cross for mankind's sins! He then redeemed us, and gave life to us, 150 a home in Heaven. Hope was then renewed, and bliss and joy, to those who burnt before. The Son came back as Victor from the fight, with mighty triumph ; with Him a multitude, a troop of souls, the mighty Sovran brought into God's kingdom. Joy to angels, joy to all the Saints then dwelling there in glory, in Heaven's heights, when He, their Ruler, came, the Lord Almighty, back unto His realm, We have seen that for one turn there was a bishop at Abercorn, on the south side of the Forth, to minister among the Picts of Fife and the parts between the walls. It is interesting to notice that Bede settles a modern question of pronunciation, the a in Aber. Some Scots pronounce it broad, like ah ; others like the ay in hay. Bede spells it phonetically, Ebber- curnig* We should find it difficult to assign any other period than this for the erection of the cross THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 255 of which FigB.9,io, 1 6, shew a frag- ment 1 . Itmusthave been a monument of great importance, quite ranking with Bewcastle and Ruthwell, for the pattern shews that the one surviving portion is no t nearly the lowest part, and it is eighteen inches across at the base. The stone was taken out of a wall after the publica- tion of Dr. John Stuart's great vol- umes, The Sculp- tured Stones of Scotland, and thus two of the sides not known to him have been revealed, and large part of a fourth side. The 16. Abercorn* 1 See also pp. 162-164. 256 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. shaft is well cared for now, being placed in the ante-room to Lord Hopetoun's pew in the gallery of the kirk of Abercorn. The back of the stone, which I do not shew, is much injured ; it is covered with a two-fold scroll, that is, two scrolls start from the opposite sides and cross and re-cross up the shaft, form- ing ovals as on the face of Acca's cross (Fig. 17). The scroll in Fig. 10 is unlike any other scroll which I know, so much of the effect being produced by large single leaves of very graceful shape and attitude. It reproduces, also, more than the Anglian scrolls usually do, the idea of the various off-shoots being tied on to the main stem, as scrolls in modern metal- work are tied on with stout wire wrapped round them and the main stem. With our early Anglian artists the scroll usually swelled out into the shape of a cornu copiae, from which issued the continuance of the main stem and the off-shoot to form the circular curve ; this latter method is universal in Fig. 9, which shews another edge of this beautiful stone, and is well worth study even in my rough reproduction in bare outline. It will be seen that in Fig. 10 the com- mencement of an upper panel is shewn, with a pattern of diagonal fretwork. This startling THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 257 combination of a purely classical scroll with a pattern which used to be thought purely Celtic is exceedingly unusual. A striking example of it will be found at page 271. The broad face shewn in Fig. 16 has a panel of good rectangular fretwork, a panel of good interlacement of two bands, and a dragon panel. By an unfortunate mistake the dragon is very unworthily represented. The panel when complete had two dragons with their aerpentine bodies involved, the lower half of the panel being no doubt exactly like the upper, the lower dragon being shewn head downwards. Fig. 17 shews one of the three remaining portions of the most beautiful of all the great crosses of Northumbria which still remain to us in whole or in part. It is a portion of the cross which stood at the head of Bishop Acca's grave at Hexham, Acca the intimate com- panion of Wilirith, and his successor in the bishopric which was all that was left to him of the whole vast province once ruled by him. Acca died in 740, and there were set up at the head and foot of his grave two stone crosses of marvellous sculpture 1 , on one of 1 'Duae ciuces lapideae mirabili caelatura decoratae/ Simeon of Durham, an. DCCXL. B 258 THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. which, that which stood at the head, an inscription was cut, stating that he was buried there. The massive fragment shewn 17. Acca's cross. in Fig. 17 was found in excavating in the churchyard at Hexham, along with another piece of a shaft of a cross with a portion of THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 259 the head remaining. At Dilston, near Hex- ham, there was long known to be a stone used as the lintel of a doorway, with sculpture resembling that in Fig. 17. In the course of time these three pieces of Anglian sculpture were brought to Durham by the Reverend W. Greenwell, to whom the archaeological world owes so much, and were placed in the dorter there. The quick eye of my friend Mr. C. C. Hodges, an architect at Hexham, who has photographed all or almost all of the remark- able stones of the North of England l , and has done much else for the archaeology of Hex- ham, discovered that resemblance of ornament meant identity, and saw that the mass shewn in Fig. 1 7 exactly fitted on to the still more massive piece which had served as a lintel. All that is now missing of the shaft of the cross is a piece about four feet long, and this has been made in wood, with the top of the shaft and the portion of the head of the cross set on the top. Thus we have now the cross once more set up, just as it was, wanting the pieces that have not as yet been found. It was, when complete, a monument on the same scale as the other great crosses I have described. One 1 Mr. Hodges will supply copies at moderate prices. His address is Tynedale House, Hexham. R 2 260 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. thing pleased me very much when I saw it all set up. It will be seen that in the lowest of the three great ovals shewn on the left face in Fig. 17, the tendrils interlace so as to form an equal-armed cross. On a former visit I had suggested the theory that this foliage cross was once at the height at which a man's eye would look straight at it, and hazarded the guess that if ever the lower part of the shaft was found, it would prove to be so. The centre of the foliage cross, now that this piece is superposed on the other, is just at the level of my eye. The face and two sides are covered from top to bottom with the beautiful scrolls and bunches of grapes and tendrils shewn in Fig. 17. On the back, it was supposed, the sculpture had all been chiselled off; it was left bare and battered in appearance. But when we came to examine it in all kinds of lights, at all hours of the day, and even, by the very kind permission of Dean Lake, by very powerful lights at night, shewing very deep shades on the battered side, we found to our delight that this was the side on which the inscription had been. Here and there we could read words, in letters i\ inches long. Across the very top of the shaft, A . . A, fol- THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 261 lowed by sanctus huius ecclesiae, evidently "Acca, holy, of this church [bishop]." Two or three feet lower down we read unigeniti fill Dei, as though some profession of Acca's faith was inscribed on his head-cross, con- ceivably in connection with the record that for some unexplained reason he was driven out of his bishopric, and was only received again shortly before his death. If the missing piece is founol in some future excavation, pre- served by centuries of burial in the earth, we may confidently hope to have the key to the whole inscription. The cross which stood at the feet is also, I believe, in existence, under certain secular foundations. When a lease falls in, some of us are prepared to buy the building and pull it down and recover the cross. It is said to be in a continuous piece at least fourteen feet long. That would indeed be a treasure. In Wessex we have evidence, from the first commencement of Christianity, of a special connection with that part of Italy in which we find so much sculptured interlacement on marble slabs, of kin with our earliest Christian art in England ; I mean Lombardy. The West Saxons were not converted by or through the Augustinian mission, but by a separate 262 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. mission, by the ministry of Birinus. This Birinus was consecrated Bishop at Genoa, by the Pope's advice, in 634 ; not, as is usually said, by the Bishop o"f Genoa, but by the Archbishop of Milan, who at that time was living in the city of his southernmost suf- fragan, at Genoa. Birinus, then, with this Lombardic connection, baptised the King of Wessex at the Oxford Dorchester in 635, our Northumbrian Oswald being by chance at the court at the time, fetching his bride, the King's daughter. I do not see why we should have any hesi- tation in supposing that a man like Birinus, treated with special favour at the King's court, would naturally establish at once a cer- tain amount of religious pomp and apparatus ; and that it would be like in style to that to which he had been accustomed in his Italian home, presumably with some blending of the kind of ornament which he found in popular acceptance among his new flock. Indeed, we should be surprised if we learned that he took any other course than this. Thus, without saying that we have in Wessex any actual work done under the order of Birinus, I think we may fairly say that he would give the lirst impulse to Christian art there, that it THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 263 naturally continued for some time at least on the lines on which he started it, and that those lines were such as I have indicated. But we have a significant hint that there may have been also a very different influence at work in Wessex. The West Saxon Kings had still a great deal of hard fighting to do after they became Christian, and it was not for nearly twenty years that they succeeded in dislodging the Britons from the forest land to their west, and occupying up to the Severn. It was the battle of Bradford-on-Avon, in 652, which gave them this additional territory, and it was almost immediately entered upon by one Meildulf, who founded the Monastery of Meldun, or Malmesbury. And this Meildulf was what we should call an Irish monk. Thus we should not be surprised if in some of the earliest decorative work to be found in the dependencies of Malmesbury, there were signs of Hibernian influence. Meildulf was succeeded as Abbat of Malmes- bury by a relative of the West Saxon Kings, Aldhelm, who made such a mark on the studies and the buildings of the West as it was the lot of few to make in any part of England. He built at once, besides the church or churches at Malmesbury, the well-known 264 THEODORE AND WILFEITH. churches of Bradford-on-Avon, Frome, Sher- borne, and Wareham ; superior, as Mr. Green says, quoting Mr. Freeman, to the famous churches Benet Biscop was rearing at this time by the Wear : not superior, the Northum- brian may rejoin, to the churches which Wilfrith was then rearing at Ripon and Hex- ham. Mr. Green adds that Malmesbury and Sherborne were the only churches of that very early time meaning, no doubt, the only large and important churches which the Norman architects spared when the great rebuilding set in. We have two interesting notices of the taste of Aldhelm for artistic decoration, and in each case it is Italian art that is in question. The first concerns an ecclesiastical robe. Aldhelm was visiting Rome as the guest of Pope Sergius I (687-701) ; he had sung the Mass, as was his daily custom ; and in taking off his vestment [William of Malmes- bury says, somewhat to my surprise, " the garment which they call a chasuble " ; it would have seemed more natural to say, "in taking off his chasuble 1 '], thinking that the attendant was ready, he threw it off behind his back. The minister, however, was attending to something at another part of THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 265 the altar, and was not there to receive the chasuble as it went back over Aldhelm's head. There was no one and nothing to catch it. But lo! a ray of the sun, shining clear through the transparent glass of a window, caught the chasuble and held it miraculously suspended in the empty air. " Now this vest- im-nt," William adds, "whether he had taken it with him from England or had only pro- cured it for the occasion we do not know, is with us still " [he finished this work, by the way, the Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, in 1 1 25]. " It is of most delicate material," he continues, " dyed scarlet ; and has black scrolls containing the representations of peacocks." Its length shewed that the Saint was a tall man, and would naturally increase the diffi- culty of throwing it over his head. Here we have at once the birds in scrolls of which we see so much on Anglian stones, and seo something on stones in Lombardy. The other is a case more in point. When Aldhelm returned from Italy, he brought with him a white marble altar, a beautiful piece of stone, 4 ft. long, 2^ ft. broad, ij ft. thick, with a projecting rim, beautifully wrought all round with crosses. The animal which was carrying it up the Alps it 266 THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. must have been a camel, William thinks, for no beast of our regions could carry such a weight, the animal fell, and broke the marble slab in two. Aldhelm, it is unnecessary to say, infused vigour into the animal, so that it picked itself up again, and he miraculously mended the altar, leaving only an irregular mark or cicatrice where the fracture had been. Aldhelm eventually got the altar safe back to England, and gave it to Ina, King of the West Saxons, who bestowed it upon the church of St. Mary at Bruton in Somerset, where it was still to be seen in William's days, a lively proof, as he says, of the holiness of Aldhelm. I suppose there was an irregular seam in the marble, as to the origin of which this story was told. As to the weight which the camel would have to carry, the dimensions I have given, 4 ft. by 2* ft. by ij ft., mean 13^ cubic feet. I asked a practical friend how many cubic feet of marble go to a ton, and he replied " of statuary marble, 13^ ft." So the altar weighed just a ton. It is very interesting to find that the two points relating to Christian art which we are able to connect specially with Aldhelm are scrolls with peacocks, and a slab of white THEODORE AND W1LFR1TH. 267 marble sculptured all round with crosses. This pours a flood of light upon the character of the art of the time, both that in Italy and that introduced into England. The white marble altar, sculptured all round with crosses, given to Bruton church, is a description which applies to the altar of St. Satiro at Milan, the screens composing which I suppose Aldhelm and Birinus both had seen. There is fortu- nately a third point connected with Christian art of the time, which William's life of Ald- helm brings out When Aldhelm died, he was at Doulting in Somerset, some fifty miles from Malmesbury. His body was brought with great pomp to be buried at Malmesbury, and at all the places where the body halted on the way which was every seven miles they put up, immediately after the burial was over, a stone cross, by order of the Bishop of Wor- cester, Ecguin, who buried him. All of these crosses remained perfect in William's time, without any sign of decay in the 416 years which had elapsed. The last of the series of crosses was set in the cloisters of Malmesbury itself. They were called in William's time Biscepstane, Bishop's stones. Here we have an early evidence of the spread of the practice of setting up stone crosses. In speaking of 268 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Aldhelm's death, it is interesting to note that two ecclesiastics whom we thus associate with the introduction and spread of Christian artistic feeling and work, Wilfrith and Aid- helm, died in the same year, 709. And we have not even yet exhausted the hints on early Christian art which we get from Aldhelm's history. King Ethelwulf, about 837, made a shrine for Aldhelm's bones. On the front he placed images of solid silver. On the back he represented the miracles of the saint in raised metalwork. Another account adds that the metalwork was com- posed of sheets of gold. The inscription was in letters of gold, on a crystal pediment. We learn at a later period, in the Danish invasion in the next century, that the shrine was adorned with precious stones. We might almost think we were reading an account of the great altar of Wolvinus at Milan. A massive sculptured slab was found in some restorations of the parish church at Bradford-on-Avon, and has no doubt at one time been the reveal of a doorway. It is now placed, with two or three other stones, in the little Saxon church which stands over against the parish church, and which I should think the large majority of those who can form an THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. 269 opinion believe to be the ecclesiola, the little church, which Aldhelm built here, besides the monastery and larger church, and of which William of Malmesbury says that it was dedicated to St. Laurence and stood in his time. This slab is exactly the right width for the doorway into the north porch, or out of the north porch into the nave ; it is not wide enough for the thickness of the wall at the chancel arch. There is, however, no sign of any such stone being missing in either doorway in the north porch, nor in the door- way on the south side of the nave ; so if it ever belonged to this " little church " it must, I think, have been in the doorway of the south porch, now destroyed. The proper con- clusion, I think, is that it served as the reveal of a doorway in the original Saxon church of Aldhelm's monastery at Bradford, represented now by the parish church, in whose walls it was found, and had nothing to do with the ecclesiola. I shew in figure 1 8 the ornament on the stone, and in figure 19 the ecclesiola itself. The interlacing pattern round the edge of the stone is simple, though I do not know it elsewhere. The sculptured slabs at St. Ab- bondio, Como, have several of them an inter- 270 THEODOKE AND WILFKITH. lacing border as this has. The pattern in the lower half of the stone is, I believe, always ' , 1 8. Bradford-on-Avon. considered to be intensely Irish ; in the east of Scotland it occurs frequently on the so- THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 271 called Pictish stones; I only remember one other example of it in England, and that is on the font at Deerhurst, figure 20. The puzzle at Deerhurst is that you have this " Irish " pattern enclosed within a border of classical scrolls, with flowers and fruit. Now 20. Deerhurst font. if you look at the map, you will see that Deerhurst is on the Severn, about thirty miles to the north-west of Malmesbury, while Brad- ford is about twenty miles to the south of Malmesbury ; and Bruton, to which Ina gave Aldhelm's altar, is about twenty miles further 272 THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. still from Malmesbury. Thus the influence which gave Italian and Irish work to the district south of Malmesbury , may conceivably have extended across the border to a distance not so great. If that is not the explanation of the Deerhurst font, it remains a coincidence which demands an explanation, that tfre two examples on a considerable scale of this most un-English pattern, are found on either side of the great Wessex monastery of Aldhelm, founded by an Irishman. The panel filled with Latin crosses is very pretty. It reminds one at once of the great page in the Durham Cassiodorus, written, as an entry in their early catalogue says, manu Bedae, without authority and probably in error. There is a slab something like it at Clonmacnois. It reminds us, too, that Aid- helm's altar was sculptured all round with crosses. I mentioned that Aldhelm died in Somer- setshire, fifty miles from Malmesbury, and that crosses were put up at each seven miles, remaining complete to William of Malmes- bury 's time. Now Bradford-on-Avon is about 17^ miles from Malmesbury on the map, on the main road into Somersetshire, and, as the line of country lies, that might come to about THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 273 21 miles by road. Thus we 'should expect that one of the crosses would come very near Bradford, at least ; and considering the ecclesiastical importance of the place, we may, I think, fairly make sure that Bradford was one of the resting-places of the Saint's body, and that a cross was set up there. We have at Bradford the fragments of an early cross, both shaft and head. There are curious com- plications in the work, simple as it looks at first. As a fact, I only know one other example of this kind of difficulty and this kind of pattern, and that is on two fragments of crosses now in the Bath Museum, brought there from some country church long ago. Thus here again we have the localisation of types, if we have nothing more. In considering how the Christian art, which I suppose to have been originally Lombardic l , changed its style, and became Dragonesque, like a good deal of the Northumbrian art, we have a very interesting piece of evidence, I think beyond dispute. William of Malmes- bury, writing, say, about the year noo, describes the antiquities of the great church of Glastonbury. He tells us especially of one of the Abbats, Tica, who had fled from 1 See Conversion of the Heptarchy, Lecture VII. S 274 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. Northumbria before the Danes in 754, and brought with him relics of many of the Northumbrian saints, of Bishop Aidan, of Hild, of five Abbats of Wearmouth, and so on. Tica was eventually buried in a tomb which William describes as arte celaturae non ignobilis, with an epitaph which he read, setting forth that the tomb was constructed with marvellous beauty ; as though this Northumbrian Abbat, Tica, had been honoured with a tomb ornamented in the intricate Northumbrian manner, though the place of his burial was Glastonbury. William goes on to say that in the cemetery King Arthur and his wife were buried, between two pyra- mids or obelisks, and that Kenwin was buried with one pyramid ; this last he describes in a later chapter as nobiliter exsculpta. Ani then he comes to this interesting statement : - I would gladly explain what almost no one knows anything about, if I could but make out what is the meaning of those two pyra- mids which stand a few feet from the ancient church. The one which is the loftier and the nearer the church is 26 feet high and has five tiers, or tablets, or storeys tabulatus. It is very ancient, but it has on it things which can be clearly read, though not clearly THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 275 understood 1 . On the upper tablet or storey is a representation imago in pontifical dress ; on the next a representation imago with the pomp of a king, and certain letters. In the third there are names. In the fourth names. In the fifth and lowest an imago, and an inscription. The other pyramid is 18 feet high, and has four tabus- latus, with inscriptions. I would not rashly say what these signify, but I suspect that the bones are contained within, in hollowed stones, of the persons whose names are in- scribed on the outside. Leland saw these pyramids or obelisks. He describes them as greatly perished in his time (about 1545), so that even with the aid of a magnifying glass he could barely make out enough to follow the description of William of Malmesbury. I have traced a portion of one of them down to the end of last century, but I fear it is now wholly lost. The description of these obelisks is very much like some of the great Northumbrian pillars of the early Anglian period, and it seems not very unreasonable to suppose that the Abbat Tica, who had so great a reverence for relics, introduced this method of perpetu- 1 See the note on page 31. S 2 276 THEODORE AND WILFR1TH. ating the memory of those whose relics he very probably placed there, introducing at the same time the Northumbrian style of interlacing ornament, in place of such remains of Aldhelm's style as may have survived in the district. I shew in Fig. 21 a remarkable piece of dragonesque and interlacing work which is used as a font at Dolton, in North Devon, a region which we may connect with that of which we have been speaking. It is in fact nothing but two portions of a very massive shaft of a cross, one of which is hollowed and turned upside down. But we must leave Wessex and return to the north. The altar-slab shewn in Fig. i (page 105) was found on the breast of St. Cuthbert when his coffin was opened in 1 827. It is about 6 in. by 5* in. in size, and consists of a piece of oak one-third of an inch thick, covered all over with a silver plate. A considerable part of the silver has been lost, on both sides. In all probability the piece of oak had been used by itself before St. Cuthbert's time for the purpose of a portable altar, for it bears the inscription INHONOR . . SPETRV t t 21. FRAGMENTS USED AS A FOXT AT DOLTON*, NORTH DEVON. . 270. THEODORE AND WlUKITH. 277 across the top of one sid-, tin- OTOtsei l>cing im dult two of the five found on altars. The letter! are of a very early type, corre- .-pnndingwith tho.se in the I/mdisfarno Gospels; the N has it nember much linger than the other, the O IH diamond-shaped, and tin 8 is like a Z turned round. The Pet must I..- tin- ( heel i'H i'." of i' trofl. On tin- idr which I do not shew th-io is an in-eription on tin- M!V/< Tin- iiiM-ription on the wood iii;tke.s it practically certain that the word was Petros ; 11 those happier da\ was not tin- rivalry caune.l }>y tin- fonlisli cJaims of mediaeval and modern Romans, and it is o^iite unnecessary to imagine that a change of o\vnei>hij, would lead to a change of dedication. The letters on the face shewn in Fig. i have never, f L-li-ve, been read to any one's satisfaction. Mr. .];. whoso very intere t mi/ book ] contains all we know of the 1 Saint Cuthbeti. Durham, 1828. 278 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. opening of the coffin, believed the letters to be part of a Greek phrase in Latin capitals (as no doubt they are), and suggested O HAGIA ET ERASTE . . . . O holy and beloved" [" Trinity/' or "Wisdom," or "Mary," having regard to the inscription on Acca's altar 1 ], I feel no doubt that we must not do violence to the lettering as we find it, and there is no question that the middle word is EC, the Greek preposition for " of," or " out of," or " from." Nor, I think, can Mr. Raine's G or S be maintained. The curved lines like an S are only marks of divisions between words. Of the whole altar and its details it may be said that it is full of Greek feeling and we cannot assign it to western influence. The eye that is not accustomed to pick out the intention of the artist in work distorted or blurred by accident or ill-usage, may need the explanation that the ornament in the central circle within the band of inscription is an equal-armed cross, with a circular centre and semi-circular or horse-shoe extremities to the arms ; and that in the four angles formed by the arms there are pretty patterns of Anglian interlacements of a continuous line. A cross with arms of this shape is the main 1 See page 105. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 279 motive in one of the magnificent pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The cross shewn 1 in Fig. 7 was found attached, by a silken thread twisted with gold, to the neck of St. Cuthbert's body. No doubt the thread had originally been completely covered with the golden tape wrapped round it, that being the method in those times of making gold thread. The cross is made of gold, hollow ; the loop at the top is of very pure gold. It is 2 inches across each way, and weighed when it was found fifteen penny- weights and twelve grains. There is a large garnet in the centre and one at each angle ; and there are twelve small garnets on each arm. When King Aldfrith, of whom we have heard something in these lectures, was dying at Driffield, he sent for Elfleda to receive his last instructions. She was his aunt, abbess of Whitby. Hilda had founded a daughter abbey at Hakanes, the modern Hackness, about thir- teen miles south of Whitby. Here Ethelburga was abtess. If you draw a line on the map from Whitby to Driffield, it passes through Hackness. We can scarcely doubt that Elfleda went first to Hackness, and thence made her 1 Page 161. 280 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. way to Driffield. Eddi informs us that, along with her, the abbess Ethelburga heard what Aldfrith had to say. We know enough of the names of that time to know that this must have been the abbess of Hackness. I have given on page 137 an outline of the ornament on the north capital of the chancel arch in the present church at Hackness. It is clearly a very ancient stone, dating I do not doubt from the times with which we are concerned. But there is at Hackness a much more remarkable relic of those times, namely, three portions of the shaft of one or more crosses, which must have been noble monu- ments, quite comparable with the groat crosses of which I have already spoken. This is very badly placed in the church, in a poor light, and with one of the most important sides almost close to the wall. Thus I am not able to give a representation of it. It is in some ways the most remarkable monument of this character which we have, for it has inscrip- tions not only in Roman capitals and Anglian runes, but also in tree-runes, of which I believe we have no other example in England. The tree-rune is so named because it consists of an upright stroke, like a tree trunk, with one, two, or three branches on the left-hand side, THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 281 and from one to seven or eight on the right. Tree-runes with one branch on the left side, were of the /family ; those with two branches, the h family ; those with three, the t family. The runic alphabet began with /, and seven letters followed, down to but not including h ; these were Frey's family, and one branch on tin- ri^lit slu'wrd the first of them, two the set-nit. 1. tlnvr tin- thinl, and so on. In the same way there were eight in the family of Hagl, h ; and eight in the family of Tyr, t. Thus twenty-four letters were very simply represented by tree-runes. The idea has much in common with that of ogams. Neither tree-runes nor ogams are letters of an alpha- bet ; they are only signs of letters. One piece of the Hackness cross has had Latin inscrip- tions on two opposite sides, and interlacing and foliage work on the other sides. The inscription with which we are most concerned, as belonging to our period, is as follows : OedilLurga beata ad semper te recolant amantes pie deposcant requiem vernantem sempiternam sanctorum pia mater Aposto- lica. The inscription on the opposite face is as follows : . . . etb . . ga semper te ament memores domus tuae te mater amantissima. On another stone, a lower portion of the 282 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. shaft, there are the remains of bird-monsters, and on two opposite faces the inscription in tree-runes and portions of Latin inscriptions : Trecea, ora . . . abbatissa Oedilburga orate pro . . . On another stone are runes and tree-runes and the word ora, and on another side Bugga virgo. Thus it seems clear that in the cemetery at Hackness there was a monument, or there were monuments, of very great interest, com- memorating much-loved abbesses and other ladies. Ladies of these names are well known from the letters of Boniface and Lul, the two Wessex men who played so large a part in the conversion and settlement of the regions of Germany. The language of the inscriptions is very tender and loving : " Blessed Oedil- burga, may they that love ever bear thee in mind, dutifully beg for thee the verdant everlasting repose of the saints pious mother apostolic." " Huaetburga " [for so we may fill the blank, the name being that of Oedilburga's successor] "may thy houses mindful ever love thee, thee O most loving mother/' The words may be taken in various combinations, but the general sense is clear. I have shewn in Fig. 3, page 1 12, a capital which may well have belonged to Wilfrith's THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 283 church at Ripon, and have remarked that nothing else remains except the confessio or crypt. But it may be well to add something to that remark. In Leland's time (about 1545), he saw at Ripon "one- thing" which he "much notid, that was, 3 crossis standing in row at the este end of the chapelle gaith. They were things antiquissimi operis, and monumentes of some notable men buried there, so that of al the old monasterie of Ripon and the toun I saw no likely tokens left after the depopula- tion of the Danes in that place, but only the waulles of our Lady chapelle and the crossis." There is in the vault which was once the famous "Ripon bone-house" the head of an Anglian cross, certainly early, but of such poorly designed and executed sculpture that I feel sure it is not of anything like Wilfrith's date. In the very interesting collection of early sculptured stones in the Hospitium of St. Mary's Abbey, in the Museum grounds at York, there are two inscribed stones from Ripon. One is the circular boss of a very small cross, with the touching little inscrip- tion, salve pro meritis presbyter alme tuis ; the other is a short shaft of a cross, with Adhuse presbyter on it. The name of Adhuse 284 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. is found in the Durham Book of Life ; whether he is the " gentle priest " addressed on the other fragment, we cannot say. Some years ago the then Dean of Ripon sent to me in Cambridge a small fragment of stone which they had found in digging in ^he church- yard. It was the centre and part of the arm of a very small stone cross, beautifully cut, and ornamented in the Anglian style. I saw no reason to doubt its being of the period of Acca. These very small stone crosses I believe to have been inserted in a dowel- hole sunk in the large and prominent body- stone which was laid over the grave of an important man. We have many of the Anglian body- stones still remaining. In some of the very remarkable Scottish or Pict- ish examples in the great collection at Meigle in Forfarshire, the socket-holes for some such purpose as that described are very evident. I give in Fig. 22, as an example of the intricacy upon which our Anglian ancestors ventured, one of the bands of sculpture on the important cylindrical pillar at Stapleford in Nottinghamshire. I call it cylindrical, but it is not quite circular in section, having rather the effect of a square shaft very nearly rounded off into a cylinder. This will I I 286 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. explain the insertion of an area of orna- ment unlike the rest, that, namely, at the left of Fig. 22: it occupies one of the rounded sides. I have put letters to shew which are the corresponding ends of the several interlacing bands, so that the reader may trace the convolutions of each from its beginning to its end. If any one will try to fill a space with this pattern, not copying it but designing it afresh, he will begin to realise the wonderful skill of the early designer. One of the early fragments recently found at St. Saba, in Borne, has this same arrangement of a line alternately acting as diameter and circumference ; but being in Rome, where I know of no example of con- tinuity of line such as we have in so much abundance in England, it is of course super- posed upon a pattern formed of isolated patterns linked together, chiefly quatrefoils with re-entering curvilinear sides. A fact in connection with this Stapleford pillar is so interesting, and, I think, important, that I will mention it. At the upper part of the shaft, where it is cut into four faces (from which the cross head sprang) each filled with ornament, there is on one of the faces a well - sculptured bird. The late Bishop THEODORE AND W1LFRITH. 287 Trollope, who was the antiquary of the county, described this as a Danish bird. I knew that it was not a Danish piece of work, and I got a ladder and examined it. The head of the bird is an ox's or calf s head, and there are horns. There is no doubt at all that it is the emblem of St. Luke. The dedication of the Church is St. Helen, an early dedication, so St. Luke seemed to have no business there. An elderly man, over seventy, had been watching my proceedings, and I called down to him " When is Staple- ford Wake?" "Wake-Sunday," he replied, " is t' last Sunday in October, less that be t' last day, then it's t' last but one." Now that clear definition shews that the village feast is fixed by St. Luke's day. Old St. Luke's day is the 3Oth, and thus " Wake- Sunday " could not be the 3ist, for that week would not include St. Luke's day at all. I then explained to him that the " Danish bird " was St. Luke. " My old father telled me when I were a lad, odd St. Luke's day governs Stapleford Wake." That, I think, throws us back to a time when the early Christian teachers, going there in the autumn, took possession of the place in the name of St. Luke. Although the church came to be 288 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. dedicated to St. Helen, the tradition of St. Luke has never died out. He still governs Stapleford Wake. On pages 215, 21 6, we have seen that Eadulf was King of Northumbria at a crisis in the life of Wilfrith, but only for a very short time. As he is never heard of again, he was no doubt killed very soon after the event de- scribed on pages 221, 222. There is a highly interesting monument still in existence, bearing the name of Eadulf. It was found in 1789 in the ruins of St. Woden's Church, at Alnmouth. It is now in very safe keeping at Alnwick Castle. Alnmouth is fifteen miles from Bamborough, as the crows fly. If Eadulf fled southwards, he must cross the Aln, and it is the first river which would cause any delay. Here, more probably than anywhere else, he would be overtaken and slain. The stone, in its ornamentation, its Koman lettering, its Anglian uncials, and its partial use of runes, is eloquent of the date at which Eadulf died. The letters which can be well made out are . adulfes dh . . . myredah meh wo . . . udwyg meh feg. " The grave of Eadulf . . . Myredah wrought me Hludwig made me," the former probably being the mason and sculptor, the latter the lettercr. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 289 We have, curiously enough, another monu- ment connected with this unknown Eadulf. The continuator of Bede says of the year 740, Aruuine et Eatberctus interempti, " Aruuine and Eatberct were slain." Symeon of Durham, under the same year, says, Arwine filius Eadulfi, ocdsus est. Mr. Plummer reads the continuator's word as Arnuuini, with various spellings in other MSS. ; and Thorpe sug- gested that the mention of Eatberct by the continuator was a mere slip, as Symeon was silent about him, and the Eadbert who is known was king till 758. It is certainly a remarkable comment on these two points that there is at Wensley a portion of a sepulchral slab bearing a cross of very early form, and having in the angles of the cross and below the head, in three lines, in letters unquestion- ably of that early date EAT BER EHT ET AR UINI 11 Eatbert and Aruini." The head of the slab is lost ; no doubt it bore the words Orate pro. It is difficult to resist the con- viction that the continuator was right in naming Eatberct as - well as Aruini; that T 290 THEODORE AND WILFE1TH. some copier of manuscripts has at some early period misread a u as an n\ and that the Wensley stone records the slaughter of two sons of this intruding Eadulf. At page 1 06 I made a suggestion as to the arrangement of baluster shafts at the entrances to the side chapels, or porches, in Wilfrith's churches, and gave a representation (Fig. 2) of the appearance it would present. The ser- pents shewn in that figure are sculptured on two large slabs which are still in situ, one on each side of the doorway as you pass through the thickness of the wall into the church of Monkwear mouth. I much fear that they have now perished, the chemicals in the air having disintegrated the surface of the stone. My drawings and rubbings were made fifteen years ago, when we discussed the pos- sibility of covering them with glass to preserve them. Above this great slab on each side there is a recess. Into this I have fitted, in imagina- tion, two of the baluster shafts the columnae, as I suppose, of Eddi which are preserved in the vestry: there are many like them at Jarrow. They just fit the place. Resting on them, as a capital which they carried, from which the simple semi -circular arch may be 23. DECORATED JAMB OF ARCH, BRITFORD CHURCH. [p. 291. THEODORE AND WILFRITH. 29! supposed to have sprung, I have fitted one of a very remarkable pair of stones of rectan- gular shape in the vestry. They exactly fit the place. Each of them represents a lion of a Romanesque type, in a stone cage as it were ; its body shewing on the broad side, and the head looking out from the narrower end of the cage. I wish some one would have the courage to build a doorway into some small oratory or side chapel on this principle, and with these* details, to let us see what it is like in actual fact. That the jambs of openings in the thickness of a wall were ornamented, is certain. The slab shewn on page 270 must, I think, have been so used. When they built walls of con- crete they would naturally face the openings with dressed stone, and we may take it that the Anglo-Saxon eye craved for the occupation of the surface of stone by raised ornament. There is a beautiful example of a jamb thus ornamented at Britford Church, near Salis- bury, a church of very great interest. In Fig. 23 I reproduce a photograph of the ornamented face of the arch, and in Fig. 24 I shew its details, by the method described on page 240. On page 209 1 mentioned the cross of Ethel- T 2 292 THEODORE AND WILFRITH. wold, and shewed (Fig. n) a shaft which is supposed to have been part of that cross. 24. Ornament on jamb, Britford. Ethel wold was the ninth Bishop of Lindisfarne THEODORE AND W1LFR1TH. 293 (A.D. 724-740), and had been an official under Cuthbert at Melrose. He caused to be made a cross of so much beauty that it was one of the treasures which the monks carried about with them in their wanderings with Cuthbert - body and his book of the Gospels. It event- ually went with them to Durham, and there it was still standing in the cemetery in the time of Symeon of Durham, soon after 1100. Some years ago the delicate and carefully sculptured shaft shewn in Fig. 1 1 was taken out of the walls of St. Oswald's Church in Durham. There is no reason of date or style why it should not be, as tradition makes it, the shaft of Ethelwold's cross. INDEX. Abercorn, the seat of the bishopric of the Picta, 132, 160 ; sculptured stone at, 162, 164, 255. Acca, bishop, beautifies Heiham Church, 126; his altar, 105 ; his memorial crasset, 258. Aelfwine, sub-king, at the dedication of Ripon Church, n I ; killed in battle, 1 30. Agatho, pope, receives Wilfrith's appeal, 139; summons bishops and presbyters to consider it, 141 ; uses title of " universal bishop," 143 ; advances the independence of the papacy, 144; claims Petrine authority over all churches, 142 ; his committee report Wilfrith guiltless, H5 J gives decision in Wilfrith's favour, 149; the decision said to have been obtained by money, 151 ; his decree rejected with scorn in North umbria, t'6. ; his Council at Rome, Wilfrith present, 1 65 ; declares deep theological study impossible in Italy, 106 ; dies, 153 n. ; continued disregard of his decree, 173, 224. Aidan's work, 183. Albert, archbishop of York, head master of the School, 104. Alchfrith, sub-king, his patronage of Wilfrith, 20 ; his dis- appearance, 44. Alcuin, master of the School of York, in charge of the re- building of the Church of York, 105. Aldfrith, king, gives back to Wilfrith Hexham and Ripon, and makes him bishop of part of his old diocese, 1 73 ; he and Wilfrith quarrel, the grounds stated, 186 ; presides at a great Council at Ouestraefeld, 192; con- demns Wilfrith for threatening to appeal to Rome, 196 ; 296 INDEX. proposes violence, 197 ; courteous reception of Wilfrith's messengers, 213 ; his death-bed words, 215, 220. Aldhelm, bishop, visits Rome that he may see the tombs of Peter and Paul, 63 ; on Irish students, 89 ; his chasuble, 264 ; his altar, 265 ; church building, 263 ; memorial crosses, 272 ; shrine, 268. Alfrith, master, Wilfrith's messenger to Aldfrith. 213. Andrew, abbat, offered the archbishopric of Canterbury, 72. cardinal bishop of Ostia, 142. saint, 17. Anglian (or Anglo-Saxon) manuscripts called Irish, 228 n. Anglo-Saxon translation of Bede, omits the chapters on the Scotic Church, 29. Archbishops of Canterbury consecrated by Popes, 85. Augustine's work, 182. Austerfield, see Ouestraefeld. Badwin, abbat, Wilfrith's messenger to Aldfrith, 213. Baptism by a person not baptised, 1 79. Barnack, early church at, 48. Bede, presbyter, his account of the Whitby Conference, 23 ; silence of his summary, 28 ; silences in his account of Wilfrith, 44 ; spread of his writings on the Continent, 227 n. Benedict, abbat, Biscop, visits Rome that he may see the tombs of Peter and Paul, 63 ; accompanies Theodore to England, 86 ; in temporary charge of the School of Canterbury, 88 ; builds Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, 102. pope, said to have supported Agatho's decree, 193. Berechtfrith, the leading layman at the Council of Nidd, 218 ; his vow, 221. Bewcastle Cross, 37, 235. Bishops, in England at the death of Honorius, 7 ; in Wigr- hard's time, 52 ; English-born, 10 ; consecrated in England A. D. 655-668, 8 ; consecrated at Rome, 56 ; at the Council of 'Hertford, 114. Boniface, archbishop of Mentz, a strong papist, advises the English Church, 232 ; remarks on immorality of the times, 221 n. ; asks for Bede's writings, 227 n.\ asks for \Vinbert's clear copy of the prophets, 228 n. archdeacon of Rome, 17. Bosa, bishop, made bishop of York, 1 29 ; his expulsion INDEX. 297 decreed by the pope, 149; not expelled, 159; expelled, 173; later events, 185, 209. Bradford -on -A von, battle at, 263 ; church, 269 ; sculptured stones, 270. Brihtwald, archbishop, 189; delay in appointment, 189; consecrated at Lyons, 191 ; at the Council of Oues- traefeld, ib. ; sends insignificant messengers to pope John VI, 198; receives Wilfrith on his return, 212 ; at Nid.l. 216. Britford, ornamental jamb, 292. British Church, sacred sites recovered by Wilfrith, in ; it>i excommunication of the English, 197. Brix worth, early church at, 48. Bromnis, one of the places of Wilfrith's imprisonment, 156. Chad (Ceadda), bishop, consecrated to the (or a) North- umbrian see, 40 ; said by Eddi (but not by Bede) to be in opposition to Wilfiith, 45; retires, 95; his consecra- tion completed, ib. ; appointed to Lichtield, 96. Clementine Homance, a Judaising forgery, 67 ; makes Jamen supreme over Peter and the rest, 68; makes Peter l>i>hop of Rome, 67. Coinwalch, king, 20. Colman, bishop, called by Eddi metropolitan of York, 44. Communion, frequent, 179; excommunication for neglecting, 1 80. Confessio (crypt), at Ripon, in ; at Hexham, 125. Constans II, emperor, received by Vitalian, 78. Constantino, donation of, 15. Constantinople, Sixth General Council, 165. Council, at Hertford, 113; at Hatfield, 164, 165 ; at Oues- traefeld, i$i ; at Nidd, 216; at Constantinople, 165; at Rome, ib. Coxwold, monastery of, 230. Cross, the Dream of, 248-254. Crosses, see Sculptured stones. Crypts, at Ripon, in ; at Hexham, 125. Cuthbert, archbishop, his correspondence with Boniface of Mentz, 232. bishop, elected to Lindisfarne, 160; his altar, 105, 276; his pectoral cross, 279. Deerhurst, font, 271. Deusdedit, the first English-born archbishop, 9. 298 INDEX. Divorce, the first declaration of the English Church re- specting, 117, 1 1 8. Dolt on, font, 276. Donamuth, monastery of, 231 ; Jarrow so named, 231 n. Dunbar, one of the places of Wilfrith's imprisonment, 156. Eadbert, king, letter of Paul I to, 229. Eadhed, made bishop of Lindsey, 130; of Bipon, 133, 187 ; expelled, 173. Eadulf, king, his stern reception of Wilfrith's message, 216 ; deposed, ib. ; his memorial, 288. Eanbald, archbishop, in charge of the rebuilding of York Minster, 105. Earl's Barton, early church at, 48. Easter controversy, 1 1 . Eata, made bishop of Limlisfarne or Hexham, 132. Ecgbert, king, joins Oswy in sending Wighard to Rome, 57 ; dies, 101. Ecgfrith, king, 101 ; at the dedication of Ripon, in ; loves Wilfrith, 124; hates Wilfrith, 128; invites Theodore to expel Wilfrith, ib.; imprisons Wilfrith, 151; offers terms to Wilfrith, 157 ; releases Wilfrith but persecutes him, 158 ; is killed in battle, 160. Eddi, singer, his Life of Wilfrith, 13; his Petrine attitude, X 5- Elfleda, at the Nidd Council, 217; her important share in the decision, 220. Erkenwald, bishop, 115 ; Theodore and Wilfrith meet at his house, 169. Etaples (Quoentavic), Etheldreda, queen, gives Hexham to Wilfrith, 124; leaves Ecgfrith, 127. Ethelred, king, his reception of John VFs letter, 212. Eugenius, pope, 18 ; his compliance with the Emperor, 76. Forgery, Wilfrith said to be accused of, 152 (see Wilfrith). Forthred, abbat, complains to the pope, 230. Frilhona, the English name of Archbishop Deusdedit. Glastonbury, Saxon memorials at, 274; Tica, abbat of, 273. Gollancz, Mr., his translation of the Dream of the Cross, 248. Gospels, Book of, at St. Andrew's, Rome, 17; at Ripon, 108. Greek inscriptions, 105, 277, 278. INDEX. 299 Greek Church, reply to Leo XIII, 25, 59; understood by England, 178. Greeks, many became popes, 80; tendency to innovation, 82 \ differ from Romans in practice, 178, 180. Hackness, capital at, 137 ; memorials at, 280. Hadrian, abbat, offered the archhi.-hpric of Canterbury, 71 ; appointed to accompany Theodore, 82 ; detained in France, 87 ; master of the School of Canterbury, 88 ; his learning, ib. ; his influence on schools of learning, 181. Id, Council at, 164, 165. 1 1 reford, first bishop of, 122. < ouncil at, 1 1 3. ict given to Wilfrith by Etheldreda, 1 24 ; a great church built there, ih. ; becomes a bishopric, 132 ; an offence to Wilfrith, 187 ; Wilfrith made bishop of, 224. Honorius, pope, condemned as a heretic, 74. Immorality, 92; 221 n. lurmenburg, queen of Ecgfrith, jealous of Wilfrith, 128. James, St., of Jerusalem, made by the Clementine Romance supreme over Peter and the rest, 67. . I arrow, the church built, 103; culled Donamuth, 231 . John VI, pope, receives Wilfrith's appeal, 198; details of the hearing, 199; gives the decision, 204; his letter to the English kings, 207 ; its obscurity, 211, 218. cardinal bishop of Portus, 142. John of Beverley, bishop of Hexham, 173. Leo XIII, pope, 25, 59. Lindsey, made a bishopric, 132. Linus, the first bishop of Rome, 65. Lyons, archbishop of, 19, 191. Mahommedans, their influence on church history, 80. Marriage, 117, 180. Martin, pope, his martyrdom, 76. Moll, brother of Eadbert, 231. Monkwearmouth, the church built, 102 ; its porticup, 106, 291. 3OO INDEX. Monoth elite controversy, 74, 164, 165. Nicaea, Council of, quoted by Wilfrith, 27. Nidd, Council at, 216. Oft for, bishop, consecrated by Wilfrith, 190. Ordination of a person not baptised, 1 79. Osfrith. one of Wilfrith's jailors, 156. Oered, king:, succeeds when a boy, 216 ; nominally presides at the Nidd Council, ib. ; his evil life, 221 n. Oswy, king, at the Whitby Conference, 22 ; sends Chad to be consecrated, 40 ; he and Ecgbert send Wighard to Rome, 57; dies, 100. Ouestraefeld, Council at, despoils Wilfrith, 194. Paul, Saint, a chief source of Rome's importance, 23, 62. I, pope, his letter to Eadbert, 229. Penitential, Theodore's, 177. Peter, Saint, asserted to have taught the true Easter in Rome, 23 ; not bishop of Rome, 65. Peter and Paul, Saints, joint sources of the importance of Rome, 22, 62, 230. Petrine claims, see Clementine Romance, Saints Peter and Paul, Rome. Popes, many were Greeks, 80; rapid succession of, 227. Presbyters, Greek, performed some episcopal functions, 180. Procession of the Holy Ghost, 167. Quoentavic (Staples, on the Canche), the usual port of embarkation for England, 138. Raine, Canon, 13. Reconciliation of penitents, 180. Ripon, a great church built there, 106 ; its splendid evan- geliarium, 108 ; its confessio, in; its dedication, ib. ; for one turn a bishop's see, 187 ; the only property left to Wilfrith by the Council of Oustraefeld, 194; crosses at, 283; capital at, 112. Rome, left the Church of England to itself, 8, 58 ; did not claim supremacy in England, 58 ; Peter and Paul the joint source of its position, 22, 62, 230; origin of Petrine claims, 65 ; steadily opposed by laymen and ecclesiastics in England, 226. Runes on the Ruthwell Cross, 246 ; tree-runes, 280. INDEX. 3OI Kuthwell Cross, description of, 235-248; Latin inscriptions on, 241. Schools of learning, fee Hadrian, Theodore, York. Sculptured stones, in Northamptonshire, 48; at Bewcastle, 37i Monegrave, 231 ; at Monk \veannouth, 290; at Hexham, 258 ; at Yann, 161 ; at Ruthwell, 235 ; at orn, 162, 164, 255 ; wrongly called Irish, 228 . Sergius IV, pope, 193. Singing the Chnrch Services, 47, 91. Stapleford, sculptured pillar at, 284; persistence of early dedication, 287. Stonegrave, monastery of, 230; sculptured stones at, 231, 234- Peter's School, York, 104, 123, 181. Stnhbe, Dr., Bishop of Oxford, 84. Suidbert, bishop, consecrated by Wilfrith, 190. Sussex, the South Saxon kingdom, converted by Wilfrith, '59- Theodore, archbishop, appointed to Canterbury, 72 ; his possible innovations guarded against, 82 ; his earlier life, 84 ; his journey to England, 86 ; his tonsure, 85 ; his learning, 88 ; Irish students, 89 ; his first visitation, 88 ; state of the Church of England on his arrival, 93 ; < 'iiipletes Chad's consecration, 95; puts Wilfrith into the Northumbrian see, 97 ; holds the first Council of the English Church, 113; subdivision of East Anglia, 121 ; deposes Winfrid of Mercia, 122; subdivides Northumbria and excludes Wilfrith, 129; presides at a great Council at Alnmouth, 160; consecrates Cuth- bert, ib. ; amount of subdivision effected by him, 159, 175 ; holds the second Council of the English Church, 164; expected at Rome, 165; reconciled to Wilfrith, 169; writes to Aldfrith and Ethelred in Wilfrith's favour, 172; dies, 175; his organisation, ib. ; his Peni- tential, 177 ; his schools, 181. Tree- runes, 280. Trumberht (or Tunbert), bishop of Hexham, 132 ; deposed, 1 60; his tombstone, 161. Trumwine, bishop of the Picts, at Abercorn, 132. Tuda, bishop of Northumbria, 34. Universal Bishop, title applied to Agatho, 143. 302 INDEX. Vitalian, pope, his letter to the English kings, 57 ; speaks of " Peter and Paul," 62 ; offers th archbishopric of Canterbury to Hadrian, 71 ; to Andrew, 72 ; appoints Theodore, ib. ; his relations with the Greek Church, 77 ; sends Hadrian to take care of Theodore, 82. Wessex, early art in, 261. Whitby, conference at, n, 21; not mentioned in Bede's summary or in the Saxon Chronicle, or in the Anglo- Saxon translation of Bede, 28-30. Wighard, archbishop elect, 54; sent to Rome, 56; dies, 71. "Wilfrith, early life, 14; states the reason for the importance of Rome, 23 ; pleads the practice of Africa, Greece, &c., 24; chosen to be bishop of Northumbria, 35 ; desires to be catholically consecrated, 39 ; consecrated at Com- piegne to the see of York, 42, 44; finds Chad bishop, retires quietly, 46 ; his episcopal work in Mercia, ib. ; early churches and sculptures, 47 ; his love of property, 49 ; put into the Northumbricin see, 98 ; his magnifi- cence, 128; his wealth, 105; restores the Cathedral Church of York, 103 ; builds a church at Ripon, 106 ; dedication ceremony at Ripon, in ; his beautiful life, 123; his school of York, ib. ; builds a church at Hexham, 124; in disfavour with Ecgfrith, 128 ; expelled from Northumbria, 1 29 ; three bishops put in his place, ib., 135 ; appeals to Rome, 136 ; in Frisia, 138 ; offered the archbishopric of Strassburg, 139; at Pavia, ib. ; in Rome, ib. ; charges against him, 145 ; presents his petition and it is read, 146 ; suggests the decision which will satisfy him, 148 ; signs the Acts of Agatho's Council, 165; takes the decision to Northumbria, 150; and is imprisoned for nine months, 151 ; charged with bribery or forgery, 151, 153; at Bromnis, 156; refuses terms offered by Ecgfrith, 157; at Dunbar, ib. ; re- leased, but persecuted, 158; evangelises Sussex, 159; reconciled with Theodore, his conduct, 168; partially restored, 173; he and Aid frith quarrel and he is expelled, 186 ; becomes bishop of Leicester, 189 ; consecrates Oftfor and Suidbert, 190 ; despoiled at Oues- traefeld, 194 ; required to lay down his episcopal office, ib. ; threatens to appeal to Rome again, 196 ; con- demned for threatening to appeal, ib. ; excommunicated, 197 ; appeals to Rome, 198 ; his petition and personal statement, 199; decision in his favour, 204; sends INDEX. 303 letters and messengers to Brihtwald, Ethelrecl, Aldfrith, Eadulf, 212 ; i..n at Council of Nidd, 221 ; becomes bishop of Hexham, and so dies, 224; summary of his episcopal connection with Northumbria, t'6. 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