Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/chaptersofearlyeOObrigrich EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY BRIGHT ^ i> '■' I I .-; ^ "l^'.. Z/'^^'" ' ■'^.^\. Honbon HENRY FROWDE OXFOBD UNIVBBSITY PRESS WABEHOUSB 7 PATERNOSTER ROW CHAPTERS OF lARLY ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY BT WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D. (QJl^^^UC SBaiUS PEOPE830B OP ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY ABTD CANOy OF CHBIST CHUBCH, OZPOBD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M.DCCC.LXXVm [AW TighU reserved iO* ^-J^o^io o V-V o B7 7. 2^/6 •7 PEEFACE. The following Chapters are an expansion of Lectures which have Leen delivered to my Class, while we had Bede's 'History' before us with a view to the Theological Final School. Wishing to connect them, in their present form, with their original purpose, I have retained a few colloquial phrases, and a few local allusions, which seemed natural in addressing a number of Oxford students, of whom several were personally well known, to me. The first or introductory Chapter is devoted to the history of the ancient British Church. The general subject of the rest of the volume is the Age of the Conversion of the Old-English people to Christianity: a great, though com- paratively a brief period, extending but little beyond a century, and closing naturally with the death, in 709, of their greatest native Bishop, himself the evangeliser of those among them who, from a peculiar isolation, were the last to receive the Faith. My obligations to the ' Councils and Ecclesiastical Docu- ments,' edited by the late Mr. Haddan and by Professor Stubbs, will be apparent throughout these pag-es. But I have enjoyed the special advantage of repeatedly consulting the Professor himself, who, with characteristic kindness, found time to read through the larger portion of what follows vi Preface. before it was offered to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press ; to whom also my thanks are due for their ready acceptance of it in order to publication. It is a pleasure to associate this book with the remem- brance of those many attendants at my Lectures, on this and other subjects, who, by their intelligent and sympathetic in|;erest, have again and again rendered me assistance at once more welcome and more effective than at the time they could understand. Cheist Church, Bcc. 20, 1877. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE The beginning of British Christianity unknown. No proof of an Apostolic visit. Story of Lucius. Tertullian on British Christians. First Missions probably from Gaul. St. Alban. British Bishops at Aries. Few traces of British Church. British Church orthodox. St. Ninian. Pelagianism in Britain. Britons appeal to Gallic Church. Mission of German and Lupus. Discussion with Pelagians, German and Lupus at Verulam. The Alleluia Victory. Second visit of German and Lupus, The Saxon Con- quest. Sufferings of Britons. State of the Britons. * Increpa- tions' of Gildas. British Church Ritual. British Colleges and Synods. Missionaries and Saints, Dubricius and David. Flight of British Bishops, What opening for a Mission ? . . . i — 34 CHAPTER n. Gregory the Great. The Church and Slavery. Gregory and the English boys, Gregory becomes Pope. His plans for an English Mission. Ethelbert and Bertha. Augustine and his companions. Misgivings silenced by Gregory. His commendatory letters. The Missionaries in Gaul. They land in Kent. Augustine before Ethelbert. Ethelbert's Reply. Augustine enters Canterbury. Life in Canterbury. Baptism of Ethelbert. | Death of St. Columba. Consecration of Augustine. Foundation of Canter- bury Cathedral. Church of St. Pancras. The Mission recruited from Rome. Gregory's answers to St. Augustine's questions. Question of Miracles. Scheme for Bishoprics. Letters to Ethel- bert and Bertha. Treatment of Pagan Temples. Arrival of Mellitus 36—73 CHAPTER III. First Conference with British Bishops. Question of Easter. Questions of Baptismal Rites and Tonsure. Second Con- ference. Advice of the Hermit. Augustine's terms rejected. viii Contents. PAGE His prediction. Battle of Chester. Mission of the East-Saxons. Bishopric of Rochester. • Church and Realm' in Kent. Liturgical arrangements. Monastery of SS. Peter and Paul. Date of Augustine's death. Archbishopric fixed at Canterbury. Con- secration of Laurence. Character of Augustine. St. Columban. His Celtic tenacity. Second address to Britons fails. Dedication of SS. Peter and Paul's. Death of Ethelbert. Eadbald rejects the Faith. Mellitus expelled from London. Story of Laurence's dream. Conversion of Eadbald. Redwald's compromise. Edwin in exile. His mysterious visitant. Edwin, King of Northumbria. Mellitus Archbishop. Disappointment of early hopes. PauUnus sent to Northmnbria 74 — in- CHAPTER IV. Paulinus at York. Attempt on Edwin's life. Indecision of Edwin. Paulinus prevails with him. Northimibrian Witenagemot. Christianity adopted. Greatness of Edwin. Bishopric of York. Mission-journeys of Paulinus. Estimate of his work. Honorius Archbishop. Christianity in East-Angiia. Sigebert and Felix. Fursey. CadWalla and Penda. Edwin slain at Hatfield. The * Hateful Year.' Flight of Paulinus. James the Deacon. Battle of Heavenfield. Oswald, King of Northumbria. He sends to Hy for a Bishop. Aidan chosen Bishop. Question as to his conse- cration. Aidan arrives in Northimibria. He settles at Lindis- farne. Aidan independent of Rome 112 — 138 CHAPTER V. Character of St. Aidan. Aidan as Bishop. Aidan and Oswald. Aidan's charity and boldness. His ' error ' as to Easter. Church work under Aidan. Mission of Birinus. He preaches in Wessex. Baptism of Kynegila. Birinus, Bishop of Dorchester. Erconbert, King of Kent. The Family of King Anna. Battle of Maserfield. Death of Oswald. Reverence for his sanctity. Anxiety caused by his death. Penda in Northumbria. Conversion of Kenwalch. Kenwalch regains his crown. Learning in Ireland. Agilbert in Wessex. Oswin, King of Deira. Murder of Oswin. Honom-s to his memory. Death of Aidan 139 — 164 CHAPTER VI. Preparations for organisation. Finan, Bishop of Lindisfarne. Paschal Question revived. Baptism of Peada. Mission to Mid- Angles. Baptism of Sigebert the Good. Cedd, Bishop of the East-Saxons. Foundation of Lastingham. Deusdedit, Arch- bishop. Death of Anna. Penda invades Northiunbria. Battle ofWinwidfield. Mercian Bishopric founded. Murder of Sigebert the Good. St. Botulf. Wulfhere, King of Mercia. Agilbert Contents. y± PAGE leaves Wessex. Wini, Bishop of Winchester. South-Saxons still Heathen. Colman, Bishop of Lindisfame. Monasticism in Northumbria. Cuthbert at Melrose. Beginnings of Wilfrid. Wilfrid at Lindisfarne and at Lyons. His first visit to Rome. He returns to Northumbria. Aims of Wilfrid. Paschal Question.. Conference of Whitby. Colman leaves Lindisfame. Review of the Scotic Mission . . » 165 — 204 CHAPTER YII. Tuda at Lindisfame. The ' Yellow Pest.' Apostasy of East- Saxons. Cuthbert, Prior of Melrose. Wilfrid elected to York. Consecration of Wilfrid. His return from Gaul. Consenration of Chad. Third Mission to East-Saxons. Simony of Wini. Wilfrid in Mercia and Kent. Election and death of Wighard. Pope Vitalian's letter. Theodore chosen for Canterbury. Mono- thelite Controversy. Consecration of Theodore. Theodore in Gaul. His arrival at Can terbiu^. Character of Theodore. Re- ception of Theodore 205 — 225 CHAPTER VIII. Theodore and Chad. Question of Chad's Consecration. Chad, Bishop of Lichfield. His piety. Death of Chad. Egfrid, King of Northumbria. Wilfrid's church-building. Grandeur of Wil- fidd's position. School at Canterbury. Monasticism in Kent. Lothere, Bishop of Winchester. Council of Hertford . . 226 — 249 CHAPTER IX. East- Anglian diocese divided. Queen Etheldred. Foundation of Ely. Disorders at Coldingham ; its subsequent ruin. Deposition of Winfrid. Erconwald, Bishop of London. Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury. Heddi, Bishop of Winchester. Foundation erf Abingdon. Mercian Invasion of Kent. Putta at Hereford. Cuthbert, Prior of Lindisfame. He retires to Fame. Hermit- life of Cuthbert. Foundation of Wearmouth. Ceolfrid. Hilda at Whitby. Caedmon 350 — 279 CHAPTER X. Beginning of Wilfrid's troubles, Theodore and Egfrid. Division of Northumbrian diocese. Wilfrid's appeal to Rome. Views of Roman See taken by Wilfrid, and by English Church in general. Seizure of Bishop Winfiid. Wilfrid in Frisia and Lombardy. Council of Rome. Return of Wilfrid. Roman decree rejected by Egfrid. Imprisonment of Wilfrid. Release of Wilfrid. His stay in Mercia. Wilfrid in Sussex. State of South-Saxons. Wilfrid converts them. Wilfrid settled at Selsey . . . 280 — 308 b Contents, CHAPTER XI. PAGE Mercian diocese divided. Saxon Monastery at Glastonbury. «-^_ Mission of John the Precentor. Council of Hatfield. Question of Double Procession. Death of John the Precentor. Death of Hilda. Bishopric at Abercom. Foundation of Jarrow. Bede. Invasion of Ireland. Assembly at Twyford. Cuthbert of Lin- disfame. Egfrid attacks the Picts. Cuthbert at Carlisle. Battle of Dunnechtan. See of Abercom abandoned. Aldfrid, King of Northumbria. Cuthbert's Episcopate. Cuthbert's Visitations. He returns to Fame. Cuthbert's last days. Death of Cuthbert. Death of Easterwine. Benedict's last return from Rome. Cad- walla and Wilfrid. CadwaUa, King of Wessex. Conquest of the Isle of Wight. Conversion of its people. Theodore reconciled to Wilfrid. Wilfrid restored to York. The compromise. John, Bishop of Hexham. Eadbert, Bishop of Lindisfame. End of Benedict Biscop. Cad walla goes to Rome. Baptism and death of Cadwalla. Ine, King of West-Saxons. Death of Theodore . 309 — 363 CHAPTER XII. State of Kingdoms at Theodore's death. Laws of King Ine. Re- newal of Wilfrid's troubles. Questions for Wilfrid. Wilfrid in Mercia. Missions to Frisia. Willibrord. Swidbert, Missionary Bishop. Martyrdom of the Hewalds. Willibrord's Episcopate. Bertwald, Archbishop of Canterbury. Death of Bishop Ercon- wald. Death of King Sebbi. Egwin, Bishop of Worcester. Laws of King Wihtred. The ' Privilege ' of Wihtred. Guthlac ofCrowland. Foundation of Evesham 364 — 391 CHAPTER XIII. Death of Bishop Eadbert. Letter to Pope Sergius. Council of Easterfield. Wilfrid's Second Appeal. Wilfrid again in Mercia. Aldhelm. Aldhelm writes to • Wilfrid's clerks.' Acca. Wilfrid's last journey to Rome. Pope John VI. Council of Rome. De- cision of the Council. Letter of Pope John. Wilfrid at Meaux. Wilfrid welcomed by Ethelred. Aldfrid refuses to receive him. Death of Aldfrid. Council of the Nidd. End of the Cause of Wilfrid . . . i . 392—416 CHAPTER XIV. Aldhelm's letter to Geraint on British Easter and Tonsure. Gradual surrender of Celtic Easter. Daniel, Bishop of Win- chester. Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne. Church-work in Wessex. Death of Aldhelm. Complaint against Bede. Wilfrid's last arrangements. His journey into Mercia. Death of Wilfrid. Retrospect ... ..*.*.. 417 — 435 Contents. XI ADDITIONAL NOTES. A. Christian adoption of Pagan sites B. Bede and Gregory of Tours . C. Theodore and Chad . D. The Council of Hertford E. The Age of St. Aldhelm . F. Growth of a Parochial System PAGE 437 437 440 441 444 445 Table of Principal Events .... Table of Royal and Episcopal Succession, a.d. 597-709 Genealogical Tables ..... Index ....... 447 448 450 453 EKRATA. Page 1 7, line 6, for Apollinarius read Apollinaris ,i 55. note 5, for Agnoctae read Agnoetae „ 163, Une 10, f(yr re-discovered read discovered „ 1 76, first line of note, for Vesica read .^ica „ 178, line I, for Saxwulf read Saxulf „ 252, note 4, for Cratendun read Cratunden \S^ (>!•• THE ^ ^\ UNIVERSITY) EARLY ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY, CHAPTER I. Page 23, note 8, for Nantanleod read Natanleod „ 51, line 14, for June 7 read June 9 IChapters of Early English Church History.'] nortn-westcm i!sia.iiu, me Buui/ucm Lfcuu vx »»iixv/ax xjv»v.. ►^^^^ recently ' pacified ' by the stern hand of Suetonius Paulinus, appealed for its chief, if not its only, support to a single sentence of St. Clement of Rome^, in which Paul is said to 'have come to the boundary of the west,' — a phrase most naturally interpreted of Spain *. Eusebius, it is true, speaks ' * We see tlie light of the Word shined here, but see not who kindled it.' Fuller, Ch. Hist. p. 5. ' Soames favours the notion, and cites Bishop Burgess's positive language in support of it. Angl.-Sax. Ch. p. 22. But, 'our native documents,' says the enthusiastic author of The Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry, ' are silent respecting the alleged arrival of St. Paul in Britain' (p. 60). ' S. Clem. Ep, ad Cor. 5 : In-t rb ripfjia ttjs Svffeus kXOojv. * Lightfoot, Epistles of St. Clement, p. 50; but bethinks for a distinct reason ' that this western journey of St. Paul included a visit to Gaul (2 Tim. iv. 10).' B \v^ OV THE ^ ^\ UNIVERSITYJ EARLY EI^GLISH CHURCH HISTORY, CHAPTEE I. (Introductouy.) When was the Christian Faith first preached in Britain ? The begin- The question is one which it is impossible not to ask, but klJl^" which it is also impossible to answer. Answers, no doubt, have been suggested, with more or less of definiteness and confidence : but they appear to possess no trustworthy founda- tion ^. The pious fancy which led some of our ecclesiastical antiquaries^ to think that St. Paul, between his first and second imprisonments, had made his way to the great north-western island, the southern part of which had been recently ' pacified ' by the stern hand of Suetonius Paulinus, appealed for its chief, if not its only, support to a single sentence of St. Clement of Rome^, in which Paul is said to 'have come to the boundary of the west,' — a phrase most naturally interpreted of Spain *. Eusebius, it is true, speaks ' * We see the light of the Word shined here, but Bee not who kindled it.* Fuller, Ch. Hist. p. 5. ' Soames favours the notion, and cites Bishop Burgess's positive language in support of it. Angl.-Sax. Ch. p. 22. But, ' our native documents,* says the enthusiastic author of The Ecclesiastical Antiquities of the Cymry, ' are silent respecting the alleged arrival of St. Paul in Britain' (p. 60). ^ S. Clem. Ep. ad Cor. 5 : enl rb rtpfm rrjs Svffeus kXOojv. * Lightfoot, Epistles of St. Clement, p. 50 ; but he thinks for a distinct reason ' that this western journey of St. Paul included a visit to Gaul (2 Tim. iv. 10).' B %, t V No Proof of an Apostolic Visit. CHAP, I. as if some of the Twelve or of the Seventy had ' crossed the Ocean to the isles called British ^ ; ' but he is here rhetorically mixing" up the work of all ancient missionaries with that of the original disciples of Christ ; and when in his ' History ' he speaks distinctly, in reliance on Origen, of the mission- fields of the Apostles, he omits Britain altogether 2. Some language of Theodoret, which combines St. Paul with the other Apostles, speaks of them as having evangelized the Britons ; but this must be taken along with his after- statement, that it was ^ after the Apostles' death that the laws of the Crucified penetrated to Persians, Scythians, and the other barbarous nations ^.' The precarious identification of the Pudens and Claudia of St. Paul's last Epistle with the Pudens and the British-born Claudia whose marriage Martial greeted in verses published some twenty years after St. Paul's death*, would prove nothing, were it made good, as to a Church in Britain at that time. In short, we may pass by all attempts at discovery of an apostolic foundation for the British Church ^ : the theories which modern enthusiasm has created are as shadowy as the Greek fiction about Aristobulus, ordained by St. Paul as a bishop for Britain ^, — or the Welsh * Euseb. Dem. Ev. iii. 5, p. 1 1 2. 2 Euseb. H. E. iii. i. See Lingard, Angl.-Sax. Ch. i. 349. ' Theodoret, Gr. AfF. Cur. disp. 9 (Schulze, vol. iv. p. 929). Hilary in Trac^. in Ps. xiv. 3, says tbat ' the Apostles prepared very many habitations for God even in the isles of the ocean ;' but this implies no more than the wide spread of their teaching and influence. So Venantius Fortunatus, in a poem on the Life of St. Martin, b. 3, 1. 494, says that the same 'trumpet ' of St. Paul's written teaching 'rung through the lands of the Briton and of utmost Thule.' See Lingard, i. 355, * See Martial, Epigr. iv. 13. i, ' Claudia, Rufe, meo nubit peregrina Pudenti, &c. ; and xi. 53. i, * Claudia caeruleis cum sit Rufina Britannis Edita,' &c. This latter ep'gram refers to the birth of her children. I am indebted to Professor Edwin Palmer for the observation, that the apparent dates of Martial's life are against the identification in question : he seems not to have come to Rome before a.d. 66, and would hardly have kept back such a poem as iv. 13, by accident or design, till 86. * It is true that Gildas, after describing the process by which Britain became Romnn, says, ' Interea, . . . the Sun of righteousness first imparts His beams, i. e. Christ His precepts, which, although they were languidly received by the inhabitants,' &c. Hist. 6. But Lingard contends that his words are as applicable to any year before the fourth century as to the time of Boadicea's defeat. Angl.-Sax. Ch. i. 347. * Whom the Welsh legends called Arwystli Hem. Story of Lumis. fetory of Bran the Blessed, father of Caractacus, who brought chap. to Britain the faith he had learned in Rome^, — or that beautiful mediaeval romance which brought St. Joseph of Arimathea with twelve companions to Avalon or Glastonbury, and made his staff take root in the earth, and grow into the/ famous Holy Thorn 2. But what are we to say of the narrative which Bede inserts Story of into his Church History^, and which tells how Lucius, a British king, sent to Eleutberus, Bishop of Rome, a letter, entreating * that by his commission he might be made a Christian, and presently obtained the fulfilment of his pious request ; after which the Britons retained the faith, thus received, inviolate and in tranquil peace, until the times of the Emperor Diocle- tian?' This is Bede's statement: looking at it as it stands, and ignoring the pretended reply of Eleutberus to Lucius*, and the later embellishments as to the employment of Fagan and Dyvan^, and Elvan and Medwin®, and, still more, as to the sub- stitution of twenty-eight bishops for twenty-eight flamens"^, and the association of Winchester, Gloucester, and St. Peter's Cornhill, with the name of Lucius or 'Lleuer Mawr^,' and the varieties of statement as to the King's latter days, which, by one story, were spent in a missionary episcopate, and closed by martyrdom, in Switzerland^, — setting aside all this, * See Williams, Eccl. Antiq. of the Cymry, p. 54 ff. * Malmesbury gives the story of Joseph of Arimathea with an ' ut ferunt : ' as he knew it, we find that it presupposed an apostolic visit of St. Philip to the *regio Francorum' (Prol. de Antiq. Glaston. Eccl.). The legend has been gracefully versified by Dean Alford in his BaUad of Glastonbury (Poems, i. 16). But, although Glastonbury was a Christian sanctuary before * Saxon ' times, the tale about St. Joseph is first heard of in * Norman times ' (Soames, p. 23). 8 Bede, i. 4. * Not cited by Geoffrey of Monmouth : first printed in the twelfth year of Henry VIII. See Collier (who believes the general statement), i. 35. ^ See Geoffi-ey of Monmouth, ii. 1. So Malmesbury : see Gale, i. 293. " Named by other Welsh authorities. See the Llandaff account in Monast. Anglic, vi. part 3, p. 1218, and Chronicles of the Ancient British Church, p. 45. Williams (p. 67) tells us that the King sent his request by these two, and the Pope sent his answer by Dy van and Fagan, who were probably sprung from ' royal captives taken to Korae with Caradog.* ' Geoffrey, 1. c. Elmham, in Hist. Monast. S. Aug. Cant. p. 134, speaks of the • abrogation ' of three flamens and the substitution of three archbishops. 8 That is, ♦ Great Light : ' Nennius, 18. (The book ascribed to ' Nennius ' is of the ninth century.) Williams names him Lleirwg. * Usher, Ant. 71. Geofirey says that Lucius died at Gloucester. B 2 4 Terttcllian on British Christians. CHAP. I. as manifestly unhistoric ^, are we to give any credence to as much as we find in Bede? The answer seems to be, that Bede derived the account of Lucius' message to Eleutherus, but not the statement as to its success, from the second of the two Catalogues, so called, of Koman Bishops, in which * Eleutherius ' is said to have received a letter from Lucius, * ut Christianus efficeretur per ejus mandatum^.' The words are assigned by Haddan to the time of Prosper, although the Catalogue containing them was not framed till about a century later, in 530 ^. The statement, then, about Lucius' request is traceable to Rome, and to Rome in the fifth century : the request, if made, was made in the latter part of the second, — the accession of Eleutherus being commonly dated a.d. 177. The lack of earlier authority has induced most modern writers to reject the whole story : even Burton, though habitually moderate in his language, denounces it as a ' fable *.' But he says in the same context, ' Perhaps there was some circumstance about that time, which was favourable to the spreading of the Gospel in Britain : ' and there would be no intrinsic improbability in the supposition that a native prince in *the Roman island' had requested Statement instruction from the Roman Church in Christian belief. And Uan.^ ' ^^ ^^ certain that not many years after the accession of Eleutherus, — probably, indeed, between a.d. 196 and 20 1, — Tertullian ^ exultingly declared ' that places in Britain not yet visited by Romans were subjected to Christ.' We must allow for his fervid readiness to believe any story or rumour which * Of course there may have been actual persons bearing the names of Fagan and the rest, who were afterwards mixed up with the Lucius story. A village near Llandaff is called St. Fagan's ; and four churches within the jurisdiction of Llandaff are called after him, Lucius, Dyvan, and Medwin (Williams, p. 72 ; Chron. Brit. Cli. p. 49). * Anastas. Bibl. tom. i. p. 15, iv. p. ii. ' Haddan's Remains, p. 227. * Burton, Eccl. Hist. ii. 206. Milman says briefly, * The conversion of King Lucius is a legend ;' but he adds that 'Britain gradually received the faith during the second and third centuries.' Lat. Chr. ii. 226. ^ Tertull. adv. Jud.-7. According to Bishop Kaye (On Tertullian, p. 61), the tract 'Against the Jews' was probably written before Tertullian became a Montanist. That event is dated by Dr. Pusey not later than a.d. 201. Haddan dates the tract a.d. 208, the year in which Severus visited Britain (Remains, p. 223) ; yet see Bishop Kaye, p. 50. First Missions probably from GauL 5 enhanced the success of Christianity ; and a high authority chap. i. would explain the word 'inaccessa' as referring simply to Roman movements at that time against a British revolt ^, — but this is rather like explaining it away^. At any rate, there is Tertullian's statement, and he must have had some reason for making it. Indeed, although we are informed by Sulpicius Severus ^ that Christianity was ' somewhat late in crossing the Alps,' and Irenseus seems to have known of no Church in Britain, nor indeed in Northern Gaul*, we can- not reasonably doubt that some Christians did pass over from Gaul to our shores during the second century if not earlier, and planted here and there some settlements of the Church. It was ' almost certainly from Gaul ^ ' — certainly Britain not, as far as we can judge, directly from the East ^ — that e^ngel^ these outposts, so to speak, of the advancing spiritual kingdom ised from were sent forth among the Roman provincials of Britain : and the Church thus formed was ' confined mainly ' (in the face of Tertullian's words, we can hardly say ' exclusively ') to * Romanised nations "^ ' and to the Roman residents, and ' struck, in consequence, but feeble roots in the land ^.' More of this hereafter : at present we pass on, in the all but total dearth of information about the British Church in the third century ^, ' Haddan, 1, c. ^ Bishop Kaye, on Tertullian, p. 94, understands the passage as referring to the farthest extremities of Britain. So Burton, ii. 207, ' parts of the island which had not been visited by the Komans.' So Alb. Butler, for Sept. 16 ; Robertson, Hist. Ch. i. 218 ; Bishop Forbes, Pref. to Arbuthnott Missal, p. iii. ^ Sulp. Sev. ii. 32. He then explains the fact that the first martyrdoms in Gaul were those under M. Aurelius (Euseb. v. i). * Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i. 24. * Haddan's Remains, p. 216. ® The popular notion that the British Easter-rule points to such a directly Eastern origin of the British Church is based on a mistake as to that rule. ^ Haddan, 1. c. * Origen speaks of converted Britons in Hom. 6 in Luc. * The power of our Lord and Saviour is both with those who in Britain are divided from our world,' &c. (Lommatzsch, t. v. p. 106) ; and more rhetorically of a conversion of Britain, in Ezech. Hom. 4 (xiv. 59). Yet^ in Matt. Comment, s. 39, he says that of the Britons, or the Germans who are near the ocean, &c., * plurimi ' have not yet heard the word of the Gospel (iv. 271). These passages were written towards the middle of the third century. * The story of the British -born St. Mellon, first bishop of Rouen in 256, re- presents him as converted from Paganism at Rome. See Usher, Ant. p. 75 ; Tillemont, Mem. iv. 487. ' 6 Si. Aldan. CHAP. 1. to the grand and touching scene which meets us at the opening of the fourth, and in which the heroism of generous self-devoted ness is so beautifully blended with that early- ripened faith, which transfigured a neophyte into a martyr : — * Self-offered victim, for his friend he died. And far the Faith ! ' * St. Alban. The story of St. Alban, as given by Bede 2, is briefly this. During the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian, Alban^ being then a Pag^n, gave shelter to a Christian cleric flying from persecution. He watched his guest's habits, was struck with his perseverance in prayer ' by day and night,' gradually accepted his instructions, embraced the faith, and doubtless was baptized. Some days were spent in this com- panionship : then the ' wicked prince ' heard that the fugitive was in Alban's cottage, and sent soldiers to arrest him. Alban put on his teacher's cloak ^, met the soldiers, gave himself into their hands, declaring himself to be a Christian, and was at once carried before the magistrate, who was then engaged in sacrificing, and who, indignant at his having thus shielded a ' sacrilegious rebel,' ordered him to be dragged up to the images of the gods, and gave him the choice between sacri- ficing and suffering the doom which the fugitive would have incurred. Alban replied that he would not sacrifice. Being asked of what family he was, he answered, ^ What does that matter? As for my religion, I am now a Christian, and * Wordsworth, Eccl. Sonnets, No. 6. ^ Bede, i. 7, and his Marty rology. See Alb. Butler, Lives of Saints, June 22. In the later middle ages the nationality of Alban was forgotten : he was hailed in a rude hymn as ' piothomartyr Anglorum, miles Regis Angelorum.' ^ * Caracalla ; ' here used for that long garment stretching to the feet which the son and successor of Severus brought into fashion, and from which he took his nickname (Spart. Vit. Carac. 9), and which afterwards became a dress of clerics or monks. Jerome says that the high priestly ephod was like a caracalla without a cowl (Ep. 164. 15); but the ephod was a sort of tunic, while the caracalla is usually rendered cope, Ducange in v. Geoffrey names the cleric ' Amphibalus ' (de Gest. Reg. Brit. ii. 3). This is probably a con- fusion between the man and his large cloak ; we find an ' amphibalus ' worn by St. Columba in Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 5 ; and see Gildas, Epist. 2. Later stories made 'Amphibalus' himself suffer martyrdom near Verulam, after baptizing many converts. See Usher, Antiq. pp. 78, 84, on this name, and the legend of the death, as to which, he says, the martyrologists observe ' altum silentium.' Rudbome, Hist. Winton. c. 5. 4, says that he was disembowelled, pierced» and stoned, and his ' cuculla ' preserved at St. Alban's. S^. Alban. \ bound to act as a Christian.' He was asked his name, and chap. i. gave it : was again ordered to sacrifice : answered, in the usual tone of Christian confessors, that the worship of 'demons' would lead to eternal perdition : was scourged by torturers, and, being still stedfast, was led to execution, across the river ^ which ran by the great city of Verulamium ^, where his trial had taken place. A vast crowd followed the prisoner and his guards, so that the magistrate was left with none to wait on him. The bridge being thus thronged, — so the story pro- ceeds, — Alban by prayer obtained a dry passage over the river- bed : the executioner himself, astounded, and inwardly stirred by grace, threw away his sword, and flung himself at Alban's feet, desiring to suffer with, or, if possible, instead of him : meantime Alban and the crowd ascended a beautiful flower- clad eminence ^, where at his prayer a spring of water burst forth to satisfy his thirst. Here he was beheaded : the man who gave the stroke miraculously lost his eyes, and he whose substitute he was received in his turn the death-blow, being thus, in the ancient Church language *, baptized in his own blood. The day was the 22nd of June : the magistrate, overawed by what had happened, ordered the persecution to cease ; but about the same time there were martyred Aaron and Julius, two citizens of ' the City of Legions ^,' — and many others, men and women, in divers places, after they had been * lacerated ' by hideous torments. This is the tale as it stands : * The Coin. ^ Verulamium is mentioned as a municipium by Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 33. Cunobelin had transferred the Trinobantium capital from Verulamium to Camalodunum (Merivale, vi. 225). Under the Romans it became 'a grand municipal city, the fashionable town of the south-east' (Wright's Celt, Roman, and Saxon, p. 123), where 'the chief lines of communication intersected each other' (Merivale, vi. 248). See Turner, Angl. Sax. i. 197. In Nennius, 67, Verulam is called Caer Muncip. ' Afterwards known as Holmhurst. * Tertull. de Bapt. 16 ; St. Cyprian, Ep. 73. 18, 19, &c. Comp. Euseb. vi. 4. ' Although Chester, the seat of the twentieth legion, was so named, as in Bede, ii. 2, yet in this passage Caerleon-on-Usk, or Isca Silurum, the head- quarters of the second legion, is meant (see Merivale, Hist. Rom. vi. 248). So in Liber Landavensis, ed. Rees, p. 27, as to these martyrdoms at ' civitatem Legionum super Huisc dictam;' and Geoflfrey says (vii. 4) that churches of SS. Aaron and Julius existed there. On these two Caerlegions (and Leicester was a third) see Nennius, c. 67 ; Giraldus, vi. 250. 8 S^, A lb an. CHAP. I. if we put aside the three marvellous incidents, as probably an after-growth, and also allow for the inventiveness which, in default of official records, has described the dialogue between Alban and his judge, — is the rest to be accepted, or treated as mythical? There is no evidence that it was known earlier than the first part of the fifth century; but in 429 it was fully believed at Verulamium. In the sixth century it is narrated by Gildas ^, and alluded to in a line of Venantius Fortu- natus 2, quoted by Bede. The time is disputed : Gildas and Bede refer it to the last great persecution which began in 303, while the Saxon Chronicle ^ates it in 283 : if the former date is correct, the difficulty arises as to the possibility of a persecution in Britain while Constantius, whom Eusebius eulogises as most kindly disposed towards Christianity ^ and markedly tolerant of Christians, held authority as Csesar over the island. But, previous to the abdication of Maximian in the May of 305, the benevolent prince who owned the superior authority of a coarse and merciless tyrant, ' implacably ' hostile ' to the name and religion of the Christians *,' might be unable to restrain subordinate local persecutors : and on the whole we may say with Milman, that ^ there seems no reason to doubt ' the historic reality of the British Proto- martyr ^, nor, we may add, of those other Christian suffi^rers whose names are associated with his, and for whom Gildas is the earliest authority^. 1 Gild. Hist. 8. ^ In his poem on Virginity, Miscell. viii. c, 6. He puts Alban after Vincent. ^ Euseb. H. E. viii. 13 ; Vit. C. i. 16. Sozomen, i. 6, says, that under him * it was not thought unlawful for . . . Britons ... to profess Christianity.' Lactantius says that he permitted Christian churches ' to be pulled down, but preserved unhurt that true temple of God which exists in men.' Mort. Pers. 15. This corrects Eusebius' assertion that under him churches were safe, but appears to need some modification as to men. * Gibbon, ii. 267. Compare Smith, App. 4. to Bede, that Constantius could not, and did not, prevent all persecution in Gaul and Spain : ' he dared not refuse to publish the edicts.' ^ Lat. Chr. ii. 226. That the number of the martyrs of Britain" at this time has been exaggerated (e. g. Bede's Martyrology gives 888) is obvious. ^ Martyrologists also name a St. Augulus, bishop, in Augusta, i. e. London (in Bede's Martyrology, Augustus). See Haddan and Stubbs, i. 34. Nothing is known of him. Alb. Butler (Feb. 7) thinks that he suffered soon after Alban. British Bishops at Aries, 9 The restoration of peace to the Christian body was too soon chap. i. followed by the troubles of the Donatist schism, which led to the Council of meeting of the great Council of Aries, in a. d. 314. Its records show, among the bishops present, the names of three from Britain : Eborius of York, Restitutus of London, and Adelphius * de civitate Colonise Londinensium V together with Sacerdos, a presbyter, and Arminius, a deacon. ' Eborius of Eboracum ' is rather suspicious, but the name may be some British name misread 2. But what was the word which has been corrupted into 'Londinensium'? Setting aside the suggestion of ' Carnal odunensium ' (Colchester), one opinion is, that the original reading was ' Lindensium ^,' and then Adelfius would appear as bishop of ' the great Roman city ' of Lincoln. Another would read 'Legionensium*,' and place his see in * the famous city of Caerleon, the camp of the Legion ^/ the great stronghold of Roman power in ' Britannia Secunda,' where even now the amphitheatre and the collection of Roman remains render the little village on the bank of the Usk one o of the most impressive scenes in South "Wales. For the former theory it is urged that Lindum was a colony, and that, as far as we know, Caerleon was not ^. But ^ Lincoln/ says Dean * Mansi, Cone. ii. 476. * Haddan and Stubbs, i. 7. Ivor is an old Biitish name; see Annal. Camb. a. 501, 'Ebur (al. Ywor) episcopus pausat.' Geoffrey mentions an Ivor in his 'History,' ix. 6; see too Giraldus on 'Ivor the Little' (Itin. Camb. i. 6). Eees gives Efrog as the Welsh equivalent to Eburius (Welsh Saints, p, 100). But see also Raine, Fast. Ebor. i. 9. Adelfius and ' Hibemius' are among the signataries of the synodal letter to Pope Silvester. Is Hibemius another form of Eburius ? * Bingham, b..ix. c. 6. s. 20 ; Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 6; Routh, Rell. Sac. iv. 296; Lappenberg, Hist. Eng. (E. Tr.), i. 50; Robertson, i. 218. Compare * Lindocolina ' in Bede, ii. 16. * Stillingfleet, Orig. Brit. p. 78; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 7; Haddan 's Remains, p, 230. See Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 21. Dr. Todd observes that * the Irish Nennius gives the name of Caer Lonin to Caerleon ' (Life of St. Patrick, p. 268). * Merivale, vi. 248. Geoflfrey's imagination endows it, in Arthurian days, with royal palaces, ' ita ut aureis tectorum fastigiis Romam imitare- tur,' vii. 4. Somewhat later, Giraldus wrote, 'Videas hie multa pristinae nobilitatis adhue vestigia et palatia immensa, . . . thermas insignes, teraplorum reliquias, et loca theatralia . . . egregiis muris partim adhue exstantibus (fragments of them are still extant) omnia clausa,' &e. Itin. Camb. i. c. 5 (vol. vi. p. 55). See Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 323; Lappenberg, i. 52. * Hiibner, Inscr. Brit. Chr., praef. p. vii. 10 Few traces of British Church, CHAP. I. Roman- British Church ; little known of it. Merivale, ' is sometimes added to the list of colonies from the name only ^ : ' York has only of late been found to belong to that list ^ : and Caerleon, the traditional home of the martyrs Aaron and Julius, and the traditional seat of the earliest chief bishopric in Wales, appears more naturally to associate itself with the third delegate to Aries than a town within a short distance of York, and in the province^ whose capital was London. During the rest of the ' Roman period/ the Church of Britain shows like a valley wrapt in mists, across which somo fitful lights irregularly gleam. We know nothing of its episcopal succession, very little of its internal life, or of its efforts at self-extension. We read of some of its buildings as having been known to exist at Canterbury, Caerleon, Verulam, and, we may add, on that most interesting spot, then girdled in by waters and known as Ynys-vitryn or Avalon, 'the Glassy Isle ' or ' the Isle of Apples,' our present Glastonbury, where the tall green peak of the Tor of St. Michael looks down on the stately ruins of the great abbey which succeeded to ' the old church ' made originally of twisted wands, and ranking among the oldest sanctuaries in Britain *. Traces of some ecclesiastical Roman work have been discerned here and there, as at Lyminge and at Brixworth ; but amid the number of monuments and other relics of Roman dominion ^, — among which occur not only altars to Roman gods, pro- perly so called, including Rome herself, the manes of the dead, and the Genius of Fortune, but also names of barbaric deities, and tokens of the wide diffusion of the strangely fascinating ^ Merivale, viii. 206. He says that Camalodimum is the only place known to have been a colony in the proper sense. ' See Moberly's note to Bede, iii. i. ' i. e. riavia Caesariensis. Maxima Csesariensis stretched from the Humber to the southern wall of Hadrian or Severus ; Valentia, from thence to the wall of Antoninus. Britannia Prima included all south of Thames and Severn. Britannia Secunda was our Wales. * Haddan and Stubbs, i. 37. For Glastonbury in particular see Soames, Angl.-Sax. Ch. p. 24. Setting aside mere fables, it may be what Malmesbury calls it (de Antiq. Glaston. EccL), * the oldest church, as far as he knew, in England.* ^ See the ' Collection of Homan Inscriptions and Sculptvires ' in Horsley's Britannia Romana, p. 192 ff. British Church orthodox. 11 worship of Mithras ^, — we find but the scantiest gleanings of chap. i. remains that can be identified as Christian, — the Christian monogram, here and there, on a piece of pottery or a tesse- lated pavement, a coin bearing the Alpha and Omega, a grave-stone recording that a ' Christian man ' slept below ^. To some extent, this disappointing lack of evidence may be accounted for by the devastating fury of Saxon heathenism : but it seems impossible to doubt that the Church which has left so few visible marks of its presence and activity was not strong in numbers, or influence, or wealth ^, and that it had not, in fact, 'inherited the land*.' In regard to its relations with the Churches of Europe, we find it adhering to the orthodox side in the great Arian struggle : not only does Constantine, in his extant letter, include the Britons among those who accepted the ruling of the Nicene Council as to the calcu- lation of Easter^, but St. Athanasius ranks the British bishops on the list, although last on the list ^, of those who adhered to the decision of the Sardican Council against those who had libelled his character, by way of striking at the faith which he upheld. Hilary of Poitiers, in 358, congratulated his British brethren on their ' freedom from all contagion of the detestable heresy "^ : ' and in the following year three British Council of bishops took part in the Council of Ariminum. Sulpicius "°^^^"°^- Severus ^ expressly mentions their poverty, which illustrates * E.g. a large altar 'Sancto Mithrae' at Caerleon ; and another to ' Mithras the Sun God,' given by Horsley, No. 42. Horsley gives two inscriptions ' Deo Belatucadro.' "^ See Haddan and Stubbs, i. 39, 162 ; Hiibner, 12, 46. Perhaps some of the Roman-British remains here alluded to belong to a somewhat later period. ' Haddan, Remains, p. 232. * See Palgrave, Engl. Commonwealth, p. 154. ^ Eus. Vit. Con. iii. 19. There is no evidence that any British bishops went to Nicsea. * Ath. Apol. c. Ari. I, Hist. Ari. 28. Lingard (like Collier, i. 69) says, A.-S. Ch. i. 6, that British bishops actually sat at the Sardican Council. But that Council's letter, Apol.c. Ari. 36, reciting the countries there and then represented, names Spain and Gaul, and omits Britain : and Athanasius himself in these two passages speaks of more than 300 or 400 bishops, whereas he reckons the bishops present at Sardica as 170 ; Hist. Ari. 15. ' * Dilectissimus et beatissimus patribus et coepiscopis ' of Germany and of Gaul, • et provinciarum Britanniarum episcopis.' De Synodis. ' Sulp. ii. 41. See Gibbon, iv. 134. He also cites Bingham, b. ix. c. 6, for the opinion that the British Church might have thirty or forty bishops. 12 British Church orthodox. CHAP. I. British orthodoxy. the temporal condition of their Church : unable to pay their own expenses, they would not receive contributions from other prelates, but accepted an allowance from Constantius, * thinking it more consistent with duty to burden the trea- sury than individuals ^.' No doubt, they compromised their brethren at home by being cajoled or harassed into accepting the uncatholic formulaiy which made the name of Ariminum a by- word : but, like the great mass of those who then showed weakness, they appear to have returned to the Nicene posi- tion ; for in '^6^^ Athanasius could reckon the Britons among those who were loyal to the Catholic faith ^. It is evident, therefore, that Gildas, and Bede following him, have greatly exaggerated the influence of Arianism in Britain ^. Eminent doctors of unquestioned orthodoxy, in the period following the Athanasian, speak as if the distant islanders were one in faith with themselves. Chrysostom says that ^even the British isles' — (observe the plural) — 'have felt the power of the Word, for there too churches and altars have been erected : there too, as in the extreme East, or beside the Eaxine, or in the South, men may be heard discussing points in Scripture, with differing voices, but not with differing belief*/ Jerome is not less emphatic : Britain, he affirms, ' worships the same Christ, observes the same rule of truth,' with other Christian countries : more than this, the en- thusiasm for pilgrimages to Palestine had touched even Britons, as well as ^the swarms of the East,' and it seemed opportune to remark that Hhe road to the heavenly hall stood open from Britain as well as from Jerusalem^.' On one occasion we find that a discord had arisen among British Christians, the exact nature of which cannot be learned from * Sulpicius adds, • I have often heard Gavidius our bishop mention this in a tone of censure. But I should regard it quite otherwise ; and I praise the bishops for having been so poor as to have nothing of their own, and for accepting supplies from no others, but only from the treasury, ubi neminem gravabant ; . . . ita in utrisque egregium exemplura.' 2 Ath. Ep. ad Jov. 2. 8 Gild. Hist. 9 ; Bede, i. 8. * Chrys. Quod Chr. sit Deus, I2 ; in princip. Act. 3. I. 5 Jerome, Ep. 146. i ; Ep. 46. 10 ; Ep. 58. 3. The last of these three sentences was written about 395. S^. Ninian. 13 lie rhetorical generalities in which Victricius, bishop of chap. i. louen, tells how, at the request of his 'fellow-bishops' in Britain, he had gone over thither to restore religious peace ^. )ur subject does not include the history of Christianity in Torth Britain : but we hear of Calpurnius, a deacon as well s a ' decurio '' at Nemthur, probably Alcluid or Dunbarton, \rhose father Potitus was a presbyter, and whose son Succat )ecame the great St. Patrick ^ : nor can we forget how the lorthern extremity of England must have profited by the lomeward journey of Ninian, a native of the Cumbrian dis- St. Ninian. rict^, who, having studied at Rome, and received episcopal onsecration from Pope Siricius, returned to Britain *, and es- ablished a missionary bishopric on the promontory now called ^hithern, where he built a church, not, as was usual among 3ritons, of wood, but, in the Roman fashion, of stone, — vhence, as Bede tells us, the place was called the White House, ' Candida Casa ^/ This church became a centre of •eligious light and strength to all the inhabitants of the Roman province of Valentia, between the two ' walls ^ ' of iadrian and Antoninus, so that Ninian was revered in after iges as apostle of ' Britons ' and also of (Southern) ' Picts ^/ ^ Victric. de laude Sanctorum, i (Galland. Bibl. Patr. viii. 228). This oumey would be after a. d. 390. 2 See Todd's St. Patrick, p, 353. ' See Bede, iii. 4 ; A.-S. Chron. a. 565 ; Bp. Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish 5aints, p. 422. * On his way home he became acquainted with, and was profoundly mpressed by, the great missionary bishop of Gaul, — St. Martin of Tours, — and a his memory the * white * church was hallowed ; Bede, 1. c. * Bede, iii. 4. Coinp. v. 21; Hist. Abb. 5. Whithern was also called Rosnat. On the sculptures at Kirkmadrine in Wigtonshire — two stones with ihe Christian monogram, one having also the names of * the priests Viventius iiud Mavorius,' the other of 'Florentius' — see Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 51. ' On the ' wa.lls ' see Burton, Hist. Scotl. i. 21 ff. He ascribes the whole lesign of the great or southern wall to Hadrian. ■^ See the Arbutbnott Missal, p. 369, collect for St. Ninian's Day, Sept. 16 : Deus, qui populos Pictorum et Britonum, per doctrinam Sancti Niniani, episcopi et confessoris tui, ad tuse fidei notitiam convertisti.' So A.-S. Chron. ». 565 : * he had preached baptism to the Southern Picts.' After his death Patrick spoke of the Picts as 'apostate;' Todd, p. 384. St. Ninian died in 4.32. Sacred learning flourished at Whithern through the sixth century : and the see, after an extinction, revived in a Saxon form before 731; Bede, V. 23. ism. 14 Pelagianism in Britain, CHAP. I. Those early years of the fifth century, during which Ninian was in his prime of work, witnessed the origin of a mo- mentous controversy which went far to impair, in the eyes of zealous continental theologians, the reputation of the Pelagian- British Church for simple-hearted orthodoxy. When Pelagius — as his Celtic name of Morgan was Grecised — became ob- noxious by speculations offensive to Christian piety, he was generally known as ' the Briton ^/ and was, indeed, character- ised by Jerome, in his coarse way, as ' that big dog of Albion 2.' It is right to remember that he had, in his own way, ' a zeal for God,' a grave indignation against the inertness of many professing Christians, who pleaded their weakness as an excuse for not striving after sanctity^. But he went astray through an exaggeration of human capacities for moral attainment * ; he over-rated the power of the will, and denied the necessity of internal grace; and he grounded this denial on the re- jection of that view of the Fall, as a source of inherited cor- ruption and debasement, which is technically called the doc- trine of original sin ^. He had left Britain in early life, and does not seem to have returned ; but a bishop, Severianus, who adopted his opinions, had a son named Agricola^, who devoted himself with passionate ardour to the work of spreading the proscribed theory in the country of its author, so that, in Prosper's words, ' enemies of grace took possession of the heresiarch's native soiF.' The British clergy were ^ Augustine, Ep. 186. i. So Bade here calls him, i. 10, and cites Prosper's lines, alluding to hira as nourished by ' aequorei Britanni ' (in one of Prosper's Epigrams). Compare his De Ingratis, i. 13 : — ' Dogma quod antiqui satiatum felle draconis Pestifero vomuit coluber sermone Britannus.' Comp. Prosper, Chron. a. d. 416, 'Pelagius Brito;' Orosius, Apol. 12, 'Britan- nicus noster;' and Marius Mercator, p. 2, 'a Briton.' 2 In Jerem. 1. 3, prsef. The devil, he says, 'latrat per Albinum canem grandem et corpulentura.' The next sentence, ' Habet progeniem Scoticae gentis, de Britannorum vicinia,' probably means, He is said to be of 'the Koman island : ' one might rather suppose him to be of the adjacent ' barbarous island.' Comp. Jerome, prolog, in Jerem. : * stolidissimus, et Scotorum puUibus prcBgravatus.' And see Tillemont, xiii. 562. It is an error to make Jerome refer to Coelestius as Irish. 3 See St. Augustine, de Dono Persev. 53. * See Guizot, Civil, in France, lect. 5 ; Mozley on Doctrine of Predestination, pp. 58-64, 102. ^ Mozley, p. 89. • Bede, i. 17. ' C. CoUatorem, s. 58. Britons appeal to Gallic Church. 15 •enerally faithful to the received doctrines, although a severe chap. i. iterpretation might find a Pelagian leaven in a practical reatise written by a British prelate of this period, named astidius ^. But some laymen of wealth and importance were ttracted by a system which tended to resolve Christianity Qto a philosophy 2, and to explain away those mysterious onouncements, as to transmitted sinfulness and the abso- ite need of grace, which demanded the humiliation of the 3ul. Britain, it seems, had no divines competent to resist ;; and an appeal was therefore made to the Church, one light say the mother-Church, in Gaul, — the Church of lilary and of Martin, — which was both able and ready to ssist out of its abundance the theological poverty of Britain. Vo Gallic bishops were commissioned to visit the island : visit of ut there is a discrepancy between our authorities as to the ^*- G!_erman , . , and Lupus. ircumstances of their appointment. According to Constan- ius of Lyons ^, who wrote some sixty years later, with full ccess to local information, and whose account is copied >y Bede, the prelates, Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of ?royes, were sent over by ' a numerous synod * ' to ' uphold a Britain the belief in Divine grace.' According to Prosper f Aquitaine, the admiring defender of St. Augustine, Celes- ine bishop of Rome is said to have sent German 'as his ' ' Fastidiua, Britannorum episcopus.' Gennadius de Vir. Illustr. 56. )ee Galland. Bibl, Patr. ix. p. xxx. In the nth chapter of his *De Vita )liristiana' Fastidius approves of such a prayer as was made a matter of omplaint against Pelagius (' Thou knowest, Lord, that these hands which I lift p are holy,' &c. ; comp. Jerome, Dial. c. Pelag. iii. 14). See Tillemont, lem. XV. 17, who adds that his language on the effect of the Fall is inadequate : ; is, *omnes suo damnantur exemplo;* c. 13. Stillingfleet defends him, Orig. >rit. p. 200. ' Michelet, Hist. Fr. bk. i. c. 3. That, at the same time, Pelagianism was raised on a basis philosophically ' as well as ' religiously false,' see Mozley, p. 102-104. ' See Constantius' Life of St. German, c. 19, in Surius, de Probatis Sanctorum listoriis, vol. iv. p. 416; Life of St. German (in Lives of English Saints), ». 122. Constantius dedicates this * Life ' to Patiens, bishop of Lyons, who had ften ordered him to write it. Bede copies largely from this part of it, making ome verbal alterations, as * magna ' for ' numerosa synodus,' occasionally adding, >ut usually abbreviating by the omission of some mere verbiage, and requently smoothing out the Latin. * On the conjecture that Hilary of Aries was present, see Life of St. German, . 19a. 16 Mission of German and Lupus, CHAP. I. representative ^,' by wliicli means Celestine ' took pains to keep the Roman island Catholic ^.' Prosper has the advantage over Constantius in being a contemporary writer ^ ; and he actually visited Rome to lodge a complaint before this Pope*. The two statements have been harmonised by supposing that Celestine recommended German to the Council^; or that after the Council had chosen its two envoys, German also 'received the Pope's sanction for his journey ^ ;' or else, that Constantius' statement is true only of Lupus, and that German's commission was simply from Rome'^. But who were German and Lupus? The former was by much the greater personage of the two. If, as is now admitted, the date of this mission is wrongly placed by Bede at a.d. 446, and should rather be 429, German had then been eleven years bishop of his native city. He had seen much of the world ^ ; had studied at Rome, not for the priesthood, but for the bar ; had held the high place of ' duke ' of a wide district ^ ; and had been suddenly, and ^ Prosp. Chron. integr, par. 2, Florentio et Dionyio Coss. (i.e. 429) : 'Ad actionem Palladii diaconi papa Ccelestinus Germanum vice sua mittit.' (Migne, Patr. Lat. ii. 594.) ^ Prosp. c. CoUat. c. 21 (or 41) : *Nec vero segniore cura ab hoc eodem morbo Britannias liberavit, quando quosdam inimicos gratiae solum suae originig occupantes etiam ab illo secreto exclusit Oceani, et ordinate Scotis episcopc (i. e. Palladius) dum Eomanam insulam studet servare catholicara, fecit etiam barbaram Christianam.' Palladius was sent in 431 as bishop to the ' Scott (Irish) who believed in Christ,' (Prosp. Chron.) ; the scattered believers amon§ the Irish ; see Todd's St. Patrick, p. 284. ^ He wrote in support of St. Augustine about 428. The Carmen de Tngratif is dated about 429-430, the Contra Collatorem about 432 ; the Chronicle comes down to 455. * His complaint was against Gallic ' Semi- Pelagians.' See Tillemont, xvi. 14. ' Life of St. German, p. 122 : cp. Fleury, b. 25. c. 15. « Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p. 271 flP. ; Tillemont, xv. 15. ' Lingard, Anglo-Sax. Ch. i. 8. Haddan and Stubbs, i. 17, practically se aside Prosper's statement, except as to the date of 429. But Prosper, i contemporary, must have known whether or no Celestine took action in tht matter ; although, from his point of view, he may have over-estimated sucl action. The Benedictine Life of Gregory the Great simply follows Constantius bk. iii. 4. 2. ® Constantius, i. i. He attended the Gallic schools before he went t( Rome. * Armorica and Nervia, i. e. the first and second Aquitania, the Senonensis Discussion with Pelagians, 17 as it were forcibly, ordained cleric by Amator bishop of chap. i. Auxerre^, and soon afterwards succeeded him at his death, A. D. 418. He had forthwith adopted, with all his heart and without reserve, the strictest standard of episcopal con- duct 2. Lupus was a few years younger, — a friend of Sido- nius Apollinarius, who addresses him in a letter ^ as ' bishop of bishops:' two letters of his are preserved*. The Gallic prelates landed in Britain after a stormy Discomfi- voyage, the perils of which, says Constantius, were averted ^]^^an» by the prayers of German^. * They preached in churches, and even in streets and fields and in the open country ^,' to the great encouragement of the faithful : their teaching was generally accepted^ : at last, however, the Pelagians, who had previously avoided a debate, took the resolution to con- front the foreign bishops^, apparently at Verulam. ' They came forward in all the pride of wealth, and richly attired,' amid a circle of dependants or disciples : a multitude of men, with women and children, assembled to hear the discussion. ' On one side,' says Constantius, ' was Divine authority, on the other was human assurance.' ' On one side,' Bede adds, the first and second Lugdunensis. He retained to the last his 'dignity of countenance;* Constant, ii. lo. ' See the scene described in the English Life of St. German, p. 37, from Constantius, i. 4. ' Tillemont, xv. 13, from Constant, i. 8-10. Austerities did not make Grerman hard : see the beautiful anecdote in Constantius, ii. 9, that when he was seventy, on his journey across the Alps, he fell in with an old lame labourer, on the edge of a torrent crossed by slippery stones, and carried over first the man's burden, and then the man himself. ' Sidon. Ep. vi. i. The letter acciunulates expressions of reverence. In another, Ep. vi. 4, he speaks to Lupus as * apostolatui tuo.' * Sirmond. i. 573; Galland. Bibl. ix. 516; Migne, Patr. Lat. Iviii. 63. In one of these letters he says to Sidonius, ' Gaudeo exui, postquam Ecclesiam induisti.' He lived till 479. ' Constantius, i. 22; Bede, i. 17. The incident is also referred to by Adamnan, Vit. Col. ii. 34. Constantius, however, makes German pour oil on the waves : Bede omits * oleo,' and turns * levi aspergine ' into ' levi aquae spargine.' Dr. Todd thinks it not unlikely that German took with him as his archdeacon PaUadius (St. Patrick, p. 318). ' ' Per trivia, per rura, per devia ;' Constant, i. 23. Bede omits ' per devia.' "* 'Itaque regionis universitas in eorum sententiam prompta transierat;' Const., Bede. This implies that many had, till then, inclined to Pelagianism. " *Diutumameditatione concepta;' Const., Bede. ^ 18 German and Ltcpus at Verulam. CHAP. I. The Alleluia Victory. piety, on the other pride^.' The Pelagians spoke first, with that fluency^ which seems often to have distinguished the advocates of their system. Then the bishops replied, with arguments from ' the Apostles and Evangelists^/ adding their own comments, adducing authorities in support of * weighty propositions,' and urging objections against the whole Pelagian theory. The adversaries, we are told, were reduced to silence: the people exulted in their defeat*. Then follows an account of a blind girl who recovered her sight by aid of German's prayers^, and after the application of a casket of relics which he always wore suspended from his neck^ : after which Bede tells us, still following his Gallic authority, that the bishops visited the tomb of St. Alban, over which, as he had already said, ' a church of admirable workmanship had been reared ' after the close of the persecution. German took away with him a mass of earth, which was imagined still to bear traces of the blood of the martyr'^. Passing by another story of miracles there vouchsafed, connected with German's lameness from an accident, we come to the grand tale of the Alleluia Victory^. A combination of Picts and Saxons menaced the British : German and Lupus encouraged them to ^ Const., ' hinc iides, inde perfidia ; hinc Christus, inde Pelagius auctor.' Bede has, ' bine divina fides . . hinc pietas, inde superbia,* &c. ^ ' Sola nuditate verborum diu inaniter j ' Bede. Comp. S. Aug. Op. imp. c. Julianum, prsef., • nimia loquacitate.' ^ Probably Ps. li. 5 ; Rom. v. 12 ff. ; I Cor. iv. 7, xv. 21 ; Eph. ii. 3, 8 ; Phil. ii. 13 ; i John i. 8, &c. * It is added that the people could hardly keep their hands off them. ^ At first the bishops challenged the Pelagians to ' cure her ; ' but they 'joined the parents in praying that the bishops would do so.' * Constant, i. 24, comp. ib. 10. See Greg. Taron. H. Fr. viii. 15, — dust from St. Martin's grave, in a casket, hung round the neck of Wulfilac. Gregory the Great sent to a Gallic 'patrician' a small cross made from 'St. Peter's chains,' to be worn round the neck ; Ep. iii. 33. ' This is from Constant, i. 25, and it is the first known instance of any acquaintance with the story of St. Alban. Compare, as to the virtue ascribed to such * dust,' Bede, iii. 10. German built a church at Auxerre, and there deposited the dust. Observe the strange * conceit,' that ' a martyr's slaughter still keeps red when the persecutor is pale ' (in death). * Constant, i. 28 ; Bede, i. 20 ; and see Chron. a. 459. The story is not given in the original text of Nennius. Strange to say, Gildas is silent about German ; on this see Life of St. German, p. 159. Possibly he alludes to the 'Victory' in Hist. 18, on a British victory obtained by trusting in God; but this he dates after a.d. 446. The Alleluia Victory. ' 10 resistance, joined them in their march, and in the Lent of chap. i. 430 induced the majority, who were still heathens, — the British clergy having made no impression upon them^, — to accept daily instructions, and to ask for baptism. On Easter ^ Eve the baptisms were administered 2, the great festival was celebrated, in a ' church' formed out of boughs of trees : the British ' host' then advanced, the greater part of it fresh ' from the layer,' ' and under the generalship of the sometime duke of Armorica,' who showed his ability in the disposal of his inferior forces. He drew them up, as if in ambush, under the rocks of a narrow glen, which he had ascertained to lie full in the path of the enemy : as the first ranks of the heathen drew near, expecting an easy triumph, German bade the Britons repeat after him the one sacred, joyous word which they had so lately uttered in their Paschal solemnities ^. Three times he and Lupus intoned it, ' Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia ! ' Their followers, with ' one voice,' made the sound echo through the valley: it rang from cliff to cliff, it struck the invaders with panic, — they fled as if the very skies were crashing over them, and many leapt headlong into the river which intercepted their retreat : the Britons, successful without * striking a blow,' exulted in a ' victory won by faith and clear of blood- shed*.' The scene of this flight is laid by Welsh tradition at Maes-Garmon, * German's Field,' a mile from Mold, in Flint- shire^. He and Lupus returned home, after the island, as * Mr. Pearson, in his Early and Middle Ages of Engl., adds that there is some evidence for a revival of British Paganism in the fifth century. ^ See the form in Forbes's Galilean Liturgies, p. 191. The words at the administration were, ' Baptizo te credentem in nomine Patris, &c., ut habeas vitam aetemam in saecula saeculorum.' ^ See St. Augustine's Easter sermons 'on Alleluia/ 255, 256. • Et ipsum Alleluia quotidie dicimus et quotidie delectamur ... Si rorem sic amatis, fontem ipsum quomodo amabitis ! . . . felix Alleluia in ccelo 1' See Neale, Essays on Liturgiology, p. 65. * It has been thought that the words of Gregory the Great, 'Behold, the tongue of Britain . . . has long ago begun to resound the Hebrew Alleluia in the praises of God,' Moral, in Job. xxvii. 21, may refer to this event : so Usher, Antiq. p. 1 79, who remarks that this work was finished before the mission of Augustine. Bede, ii. 2, and Paul. Diac. refer them to the con- version of Kent ; and they may have been added by Gregory in a revision of the • Morals.* ' Lingard, Anglo-Sax. Ch. i. 11, objects that Saxons would not be likely to C % 20 Second visit of German and Ltipus, CHAP. I. Second visit of German with Severus. Constantius expresses it, had thus been freed from ' foes spiri- tual and corporeal.' A second journey of German to Britain, in order to complete the overthrow of heresy, is referred to A.D. 447: he was attended, this time, by a disciple of Lupus, Severus bishop of Treves^. A few, it was found, had relapsed into Pelagianism : they were reclaimed, and the false teachers expelled from Britain, but settled in places on the continent where they might unlearn their misbelief 2. A miracle, as usual, is recorded in connection with this visit; from that time forth, says a later writer, the Britons never harboured any heresy^; and German's name continued to be held in honour among the people whom he had instructed*, and was attached to various places in Wales and Cornwall^. It is well to repeat the summary of his character, as contained in the Liturgy of his native Church : the ' Missa Sancti Germani' for July 31, — the day on which, as Bede expresses it, he ' migrated to Christ ' in 448, — after mentioning his apostolic activity as extending to Britain, affirmed that penetrate into North Wales. But the description of the scenery points to some such scenery as that of Wales or Derbyshire. The river near Maesgar- mon is the Alyn. The next parish to Mold is Llan-arwow; Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 125. ^ Constantius, ii. 2 ; Bede, i. 21 ; 'Severo, totius sanctitatis viro.' ^ ' That the country might get quit of them, and they of their errors ' — so we might render the words of Constantius. ^ Giraldus Cambrensis, Descr. Camb. i. 18. * See Bp. Jones and Freeman, Hist, of St. David's, p. 257. Nennius* History has various stories about German's proceedings, e. g. his attempt to convert a wicked king of Powys, 31 ; his intercessions for the guilty Vortigem, 50, &c. Of his anti-Pelagian activities it only says that he came to preach, and * multi per eum salvi facti sunt : increduli perierunt ; ' c. 30. Some eminent Welsh bishops are erroneously described as his disciples. ' Life of St. German, p. i. Several ecclesiastical colleges in Wales were said tohave been founded by him. A 'Missa S. Germani,' cited in Bp. Forbes's Pref. to the Arbuthnott Missal, p. lii, and Haddan and Stubbs, i. 696, affirms in its Prsefatio that German, ' sent by Saint Gregory, shone forth as a lantern and pillar to Cornwall, and bloomed like roses and lilies in the meadow of the Church of Aledh ' ( = St. German's). It is probable that in one or other of his visits he did more for the British Church than had any interest for his Gallic biographer. Giraldus traces to his influence several Welsh customs, e. g. giving to the poor the first comer of every loaf, sitting by threes at dinner, asking the blessing of any religious man ; Descr. Camb. i. 18. He is not to be confoimded with a contemporary Germanus, traditionally said to be the first bishop of Man. The Saxon Conquest,. Ql * he so began as to increase, and so contended as to chap. i. conquer ^.' We have heard of his confronting a combination of Picts Saxon with Saxons. That name, for ages so hateful to the repre- sentatives of the British race, had been a sound of terror along the island coast even in the third century 2. Part of that coast, from the Wash to the Thames, had been known as *the Saxon Shore^:' Claudian had depicted * the Saxon' as wafted by winds towards Britain, and sung of a defeat of Saxons in distant Orkney* : but after many raids on their part had harassed Southern Britain and given them a foot- hold on its soil, they appear about the middle of the fifth century as entering on a more regular plan of conquest. It is one thing to form settlements, another to found kingdoms. And this ' series of constant, systematic, successful' occu- pations of British soil was, in the words of the historian of the Norman Conquest, one of the most fearful blows that ever fell on any nation^. In order to appreciate it, we must remember that it descended on a people whom the indignant rhetoric of Gildas depicts as divided against themselves^, * Forbes and Neale, Anc. Gall. Liturgies, p. 152. Among his last words were, * "Well know I what country that is which God promises to His servants.' This was in reference to a dream in which he seemed to see the Lord giving him provision for a journey to his own country; Constant, ii. 19. He died at Ravenna, whither he had gone as an envoy from the Armorican insurgents to Valentinian III. See Life of St. German, p. 258. ^ The Saxons are first mentioned in the second century. For their early con- nection with Britain, see Gibbon, iv. 388, note; ii. 70, note ; iii. 262. ^ Kemble, Sax. in Engl. i. 14, understands the ' Saxon Shore,' in Britain as in Gaul, to mean a part of the country actually held by Saxons. So Smith's note to Gibbon, iii. 265 ; and Palgrave, Engl. Commonwealth, p. 384. But Freeman differs, Norm. Conq. i, 1 1 : so Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 59. * De 4" cons. Honor. 31 : ' Maduerunt Saxone fuso Orcades.' Gibbon admits * some degree of truth ' in this poetical tribute to the elder Theodosius ; iii. 271. For Stilicho's like achievements, see Claudian, de laud. Stil. ii. 253: — • lUius effectum curis . . . ne littore tuto Prospicerem dubiis venturum Saxona ventis.' (This is put into the mouth of Britain.) See Gibbon, iv. 53. For the Saxon inroads under Valentinian I, when Theodosius was employed, see also Am- mianus, xxvi. 4, 5, * Picti Saxonesque Britannos aerumnis vexavere continuis.' ' Freeman, i. 13, 20. ^ Gildas, Hist. 19. The Welsh explained these denunciations by saying that Gildas had a grudge against Arthur for killing his brother ; Giraldus, Descr. i. 2. f2 Sufferings of Britons, CHAP. I. incapable of any noble national life^, abandoned, witbin memory, by their Roman protectors to tbeir Pictish tor- mentors 2, and rather weakened than disciplined by their experience of Roman civilisation^: a people, too, described by the same authority as so prone to cruelty and falsehood that any one who showed any g-entleness or any love of truth was denounced as an enemy of the country, and became a mark for his neig-hbours' darts*. And the blow was struck, at intervals throughout a century, by invaders as ferocious as they were energetic, of whom a contemporary Gallic bishop says that the Saxon pirates were ' the most truculent of all enemies,' and that they made it a point of religion ' to torture their captives rather than to put them to ransom,' and to sacrifice the tenth part of them to their gods^. An idolatry which had its centre in the worship of Woden and of Thunor^ was sure to render its votaries doubly terrible to a Christian population. Hence it is that we have to read of devastations which Gildas"^ cannot narrate without being reminded of the Psalms of the Captivity. In his declamatory verbiage we see, clearly enough, a grim picture of ' flashing swords and crack- ling flame,' of ruined walls, fallen towers, altars shattered, priests and bishops and people slain ' in the midst of the streets,' and corpses clotted with blood and left without buriaP : of the * miserable remnant,' slaughtered in the mountains, or selling themselves as slaves to the invader, or flying beyond sea, or finding a precarious shelter in the * Gild. freq. ; Gibbon, iv. 390. ^ Bede, i. 12; Gibbon, iv. 131, A. d. 409. See too the Saxon Chron. for 418. ' * Desidiosorum,' Gild, praef. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 60. * GUd. 21 ; followed by Bede, i. 14. 'Crudelitas praecipue, et odium veri- tatis,' &c. ^ Sidonius Apollinaris, Ep. viii. 6. See Turner, i. 206 ; Milman, Lat. Cbr. i. 332 ; Lingard, Angl.-Sax. Ch. i. 45. Yet they were not cruel in cold blood. , " See Keuible, Saxons in Engl. i. 335 ff., for these gods, and for Tiw a war-god. ^ Gild. Hist. 24. (Galland. Bibl. xii. 198.) He quotes * Incenderunt igni sanctuarium tuum,' and * Deus, venerunt,' &c. ^ Welsh legends speak of members of the pious * family of Brychan ' who were 'martyred ' by the Heathen, as Cynog at Merthyr Cynog, and Tydvyl, a woman, at the better-known Merthyr Tydvil. See Williams, Eccl. Ant. Cymry, p. 115 ; Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 151. The Saxon Conquest, 23 forests^. He wrote about the middle of the next century, chap. i. and at a time when the ' foreign wars ' appeared to have ceased 2: but must have conversed in his youth with those who had witnessed the devastation in the south-east of what we now call England: and Bede almost transcribes him, although simplifying his turgid phraseology^. Thus we are enabled to feel, as it were, with the British Christians of the age of the conquest, while their brethren in Kent, after the defeat at Crayford, 'fled in terror to London*,' and the native forces, sixteen years later, 'fled from the Angles like fire^;^ while, about the time of the fall of Augustulus, Ella was taking possession of Sussex ; while Anderida — now Pevensey — was being taken, and not a Briton left alive^ ; while the king- dom which was to absorb all the rest was being formed by the victories of Cerdic the West-Saxon, in 508 and 519'''. Then came something like a definite rally of the natives : the name of Arthur, shining through a golden mist of fable, may represent a historic West- British prince, who did much, though in a limited area, ' to break the heathen and uphold the Christ^/ That fight on Badon HilP, in which, according » Gild. 25. ^ He speaks of the present tranquillity, the unexpected recovery of lest British lands, &c., 26. ^ Bede, i. 15. Wendover adds details about the burning of the Scriptures, and heaping earth up to conceal the tombs of martyrs ; Flor. Hist. 19. * Chron. a. 457. * lb. a. 473. ^ lb. a. 491. See Gibbon, ir. 394. Henry of Huntingdon says, 'Locus tantum, quasi nobilissimse urbis, transeuntibus ostenditur desolattis.^ The Eoman walls and towers enclose the ruins of a mediaeval castle, and form a parallelogram of three sides. See Freeman, iii. 401. ' Chron. a. 491. In 508 Cerdic slew the British king Natanleod. The second battle was at Cerdicsford or Charford. Cerdic appears in the Chronicle as an ealdorman from 495 to 519, when he is described as having won the kingdom. ' Tennyson, Idylls of the King, p. 249. ' A genuine record of Arthur would be precious beyond words. . . . Arthur is a real man ; but, whatever were his acts, they could not have been the acts attributed to him in the legends ; * Freeman, v. 584. ' In our Chronicle there is nothing about Arthur ; ' Freeman, Old-Eng. Hist. p. 35. Yet the Chron. names a British king Na)^anleod. We may observe Giraldus Cambrensis* phrase, 'Arturi nostri famosi, ne dicam fabulosi,* Descr. Camb. ii. 2. ^ Annales Cambrise, a. 516. A clause of dubious genuineness in Gildas, 26, • qui prope Sabrinum Ostium habetur,* has led to the identification of Mons Badonicus with a hill above Bath. But Freeman (1. c.) places it at Badbury in Dorset. 24 The Saxon Conquest. CHAP. I. to a vivid Welsh legend, ' Arthur bore the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ three days and three nights on his shoulders, and the Britons were conquerors/ and which the wild ex- aggerations of the History ascribed to Nennius rank as the twelfth of his victories^, may be assigned to some such date as 516, or rather in 520 ^ ; and appears to have been 'followed by a general pause in the English advance^.' But while the tide of Teuton conquest was thus far stayed in the south, a more potent enemy than even Cerdic had of late proved him- self was swooping down on the north ; a new body of Saxons was forming the realm of Essex, destined to include London*, and other invaders of properly Anglian race were taking hold of the eastern district which was to be divided between them as Northfolk and Southfolk^. The first of these invasions, not in order of time but of importance, was the origin of a great history, and is dated in 547. High on the coast of our present Northumberland, towers up a rock which might seem marked out by nature for the stronghold and palace of a conqueror : it had been called Dingueirin, and took the name of Bamborough, or Bebba's burgh, from the wife of a later Anglian prince^, some thirty years after it had been roughly ^ Nenn. 64 : lie says that 840 men, in that one day, fell by the king's single hand. The Historia Britonum is ascribed to ' Nennius,' a disciple of Elbod, and is dated in a.d. 858, But this date is only in one MS., and the shorter prologue which names the author without giving the date is only in iive out of thirty. See Mon. Hist. Brit. i. 63. 2 The Annales Cambriae say 516. Gildas, Hist. 26, seems to say that he is writing in the 44th year from this battle : Bede misunderstood him to reckon it as the 44th year from the first invasion ; i. 16. For the date 520, see Annals of Engl. p. 29 ; Green, Hist, of Engl. People, p. 11 ; Palgrave, Engl. Commonwealth, p. 397. ^ Green, 1. c. See Gildas, Hist. 26. * Erkenwin, the first East-Saxon king, is dated in 526 or 530. Essex was never an independent kingdom ; Palgrave, Anglo-Sax. p. 40. * For the first East- Anglian settlements, as of a.d. 527, see Turner, i. 298. ' We only possess a vague and uncertain indication of the existence of Oifa or Uffa, called the first king of the East Angles.' Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 413; so Anglo-Sax. p. 42. By one account, there was one UflPa who landed in 526, another who founded the kingdom in 571. Ann. Engl. p. 29. It is certain that from the Uffa of 571 the East-Anglian kings were called Ufiingas ; Bede, ii. 15. . " Ethelfrid, according to the * appendix ' to Nennius. See Mon. Hist. Brit, pp 74, 76. The Saxon Conquest, 25 brtified^ by an Anglian chief named Ida, for whose name the chap. i. Welsh bards significantly substituted the title of ' the Flame- jearer 2.' The Britons, who shuddered at that name, as they leard of his progress through Bryneich, Berneth, or Bernicia, ;he region between the Tees^ and the Firth of Forth, — lying lorth of that district of Deifyr, Deur, or Deira, which another A.nglian, Ella, subdued after Ida's death, — would hardly have DeHeved a prophet who should have told them that within ibout eighty years from Ida's arrival, his royal seat would be >ccupied by a far mightier prince, devoted heart and soul to Christianity. A fresh impulse now stirred among the West- Saxons, and Cynric, son of Cerdic, defeated the Britons at Sarum and Barbury * : his successor Ceawlin, after defeating at Wimbledon a young Kentish king named Ethelbert^, acquired our own Oxfordshire country through his brother's victory at Bedford in 571^; and after slaying three British kings at the battle of Dyrham in 577, became master of their three cities, Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath"^. Seven years later he penetrated to the borders of Cheshire, gained a hard-won victory, and took several towns belonging to the Welsh kingdom of Powys^ : and though he advanced no * A.-S. Chr. a. 547, ' At first enclosed by a hedge, afterwards by a wall.' For the later castle see Marmion, ii. 8. ' Turner, Anglo-Sax. i. 302 ; Palgrave, Anglo-Sax. p. 43. Burton says that he seems to have ruled northwards to the Tay ; Hist. Scotl. i. 278. ' Lingard makes the Tees the northern limit of Deira, i. 69. So Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 38. Turner (i. 322) extends it to the Tyne; so Pearson, Hist. Maps, pp. 16, 22, and Annals of Engl. p. 27. Palgrave says that the land between Tees and Tyne, at first neutral, was ultimately included in Deira. Anglo-Sax. p. 43. It must be observed that Reged, a district placed by Pal- grave and Freeman on the north of the Solway, offered fierce resistance to the Angles ; and Elmete, a part of the West Riding, was not conquered until the reign of Edwin. * Sax. Chiron, a. 552, 556; see Gibbon, iv. 391. Barbury Camp is near Swindon. « Chron. 568. * Chron. 571. CuthwulftookBensington, Aylesbury, Eynsham, and Leighton Buzzard. ^ Chron. 577. This victory cut off British communication between Wales and the south-west. ^ See Dr. Guest, The English Conquest of the Severn Valley, p. 8, for the identification of Fethanleagh with Faddiley near Nantwich, and for the de- struction of Pengwem (Shrewsbury) and Uriconium near the Wrekin, by the Saxons. 26 State of the Britofis, CHAP. I. farther northwards, his name must have represented to thd Britons that force and fury of ^ Heathen' aggression which they might now have come to regard as irresistible. Large masses of their race had been simply extirpated^: many had become slaves, or passed into a ' half-servile condition : ' it seemed to be only a question of time when the work of con- quest should be perfected : but there was still a large tract, the whole west, independent of the invader. From the Firth of Clyde to the Dee, the kingdom of Cumbria^ or, in the broad- est sense, Strathclyde^, was purely British : the region which the English gradually came to look upon as ' Wales,' the land of the ' foreigner/ and ' West Wales,' or Devon and Corn- wall and part of Somerset, including the sacred 'Avalon^,' were still, in British eyes, unpolluted by the barbarian's tread. Cornwall had been for many years receiving and > honouring a succession of missionaries from Ireland, including some women, whose pious toil has dotted the county with Gildas on places bearing a saintly name*. But what of the Cymrians theBritons. g^j^g^^Uy ? If wc take the date of Gildas' work, the ' History,' so called, and the Epistle, or Admonition, to be about 564^, we find the condition of the Bi-itons or Cymry, in the middle of the century, to be morally, as well as politically, deplorable. ^ See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 62 ; Freeroan, i. 18. Pearson thinks that many- Britons became rent-payers, ' free by service, * not ceorls or freemen proper ; Hist. Engl. i. 114. Late in the seventh century, Tne's laws recognise a number of free as well as of enthralled ' Welsh.' ^ Freeman, i. 14. It was called the Regio Cambrensis. Its close connection with * Wales' appears in the Life of St. Kentigem. Persecuted at Glasgow, he retires into Wales, until recalled by a truly Christian king of Strathclyde, Rederech or Rhydderc, ' the Generous ; ' Bishop Forbes, Kal. p. 369. Palgrave divides the Regnum Cumbrense into Strathclyde proper, Reged, and Cum- berland with Westmoreland and Lancashire. The capital of the kingdom was Alcluid, or Dunbritton, now Dunbarton. ' The land between the Mendips and the PaiTet became Saxon in 658. * E. g. SS. Petroc, Piran, Eudor, Euodoc, Maddeen, Mawgan, Cwythian, Genny, Cury, Rumon, Levan, and the virgin saints Columb and la. Yet as to Piran see Haddan and Stubbs, i. 164. ^ For Gildas see Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 356; Lappenberg, i. 123; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 156 ; Pearson, Vindic. Ignat. i. 79. He seems to have written in 564, if we interpret a confusedly written sentence in c. 26 as meaning that he wrote in the 44th year after the battle of Badon Hill, which was fought in the year of his own birth. He is called Gildas the Wise, or Badonicus ; see Alb. Butler, Jan. 39. ^ Increpatio7is' of Gildas. 27 rhe vague charges against tLe Britons of the fifth century chap. i. -cappear as detailed indictments against those of the sixth, riie first shock of invasion had awed the nation into repent- ince; but with quieter times the old sins came baek^. The kings' or princes of the purely British districts were 'tyrants' who acted as if almsgiving would compensate for r \ii.'^ sin. One of them, in contempt of his solemn oath, had slain two royal youths close to an altar ^ : another ' thirsted for civil war and spoil ^:^ a third* and a fourth^ were the slaves of sensuality : a fifth, Maelgwyn, chief among British kings, after overthrowing his predecessor had in compunction taken the vows of a monk, and then relapsed into worse than his former excesses^. The clergy were debased by secular and even vicious habits ''j and neglectful of sacred duties, and of pastoral exhortation, and even of the decencies of priestly life: simony was rife among priests and bishops^ (it is evident that a bishopric was still a well-endowed ofiice^): and even those who lived respectably were careless or cowardly in regard to rebuking sin^*^. Gildas may have carried the ve- hement ' increpations,' which characterise his ^ book of * Gild. Hist. 26 ; Bede, i. 22. * Attamen recente adhuc memoria,' &c. Compare St. Patrick's denunciation of Coroticus (Ceredig, who gave his name to Cardigan), who, professing Christianity, had committed unchristian cruelties in Ireland ; Todd, p. 352. ^ Gild. Ep. 2. Constantine of Devon and Cornwall. Yet he became ' St. Constantine/ having 'turned to the Lord in 589;' Ann. Carab., and see Bp. Forbes, Kalendars, p. 312, and Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 244. ^ Aurelius Conanus, of Powys ; Gild. 4. * Vortipor of Demetia, the west part of South Wales ; Gild. 5. » Cuniglas ; Gild. 6. ' King of Gy wuedd or North Wales ; a man of great force, mostly for evil. Gildas reproaches him for his backsliding, 7, 8. He endured patiently a cm«e from Taliessin ; Williams, Eccl. Ant. Cym. p. 1 28. ' Gildas begins this ' increpatio,' ' Britain has priests, but they are foolish.* See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 13, 359. Gildas owns that there are a few good pastors, Increp, (ad Cler.) 24, and that he prefers their lives 'cunctis mundi opibus;' Ep. (ad reg.) 24. ' He speaks of bad men attempting to cover their evil reputation by thus purchasing ecclesiastical dignity. Some, if public opinion condemned them, would travel abroad and return in stately array ; Increp. 2. Columban refers to this language of 'Giltas,' ap. Greg. Ep. ix. 127. ' 'Vos Episcopatum avaritiae gratia . . . cupitis;' Increp. 23; see ib. % ' tam pretiosura qusestum.* *" He cites Eli, ' Quid profuit Heli sacerdoti,' &q , lucr. 3 ; and see ib. 24. 28 British Church Ritual, CHAP. I. Complaints "^^ to a point beyond equitable and discriminating rebuke ; they provoke some incredulity by their very violence ; but they cannot be without some serious foundation. We learn from him incidentally, not only that the hierarchy was regularly organised, that the ' priests ' claimed power to bind and to loose, and that bishops were believed to succeed the Apostles 2, and indeed to sit in the chair of Peter ^ (a sig- nificant phrase when used for any bishop's office), but that the hands of priests and inferior ministers were anointed*, and certain lessons, from the Epistles and from the Acts, were read at ordination^. That the British ritual had a special character, distinct not only from the Roman, but also from the Galilean, has been inferred from a curious document of the eighth century, which traces the Scotic Liturgy through German and Lupus to St. Mark, the Gallic through St. Irenaeus to St. John^. But the statement, which has ^ De excidio Britanniae Liber Querulus. Comp. Bede, i. 22, 'flebilis sermo.' He says that he had refrained for ten years from writing, but in his indignation at the sins of his countr3m[ien could no longer be suppressed. It is divided into the • Historia' and the ' Epistola' (Mon. H. Brit.), which is subdivided into the ' increpatio in reges ' (described by Gallandius, Bibl. Pa.r. xii. 200, as the • Epistola 'proper) and that ' in clerum.' ^ Increp. in Cler. 2, 16, 23, 24. ' * Sedem Petri Apostoli immundis pedibus usurpantes ;' Increp. i. Compare Lib. Landav. p. 18. This way of speaking carries out the old idea that St. Peter was (not the ruler, but) the representative, of the other Apostles, and in them of their successors the bishops. See Transl. of St. Cypr. in Lib. Path. vol. i. p. 150. Gildas also takes Matt. xvi. 18 as ' said to the true priest.' * Gild., Increp. 21, * initiantur sacerdotum vel ministrorum manus.' See Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, i. 141. ^ I Peter i. 3-7, 13-16, 22, 23, ii. 2, 3, 9 ; Acts i. 15 fF. ; I Tim. iii. I flf. ^ lb. 138. The writer affirms that (i) John the Evangelist first sang the • Cursiis Gallorum:' from him it came to Lyons: in time it was enlarged and widely diffused : (2) according to St. Jerome, St. Mark first Sang the 'cursus' now called Scotic, — and after him Gregory Nazianzen (!), then Cassian, and Honoratus of Lerins, and German and Lupus, who preached in Britain and appointed Patrick archbishop in Britain and Ireland, who sang the same course, — as did Comgall and Columban ; ' and if you do not believe us, search in the life of blessed Columban.' Palmer thinks that the writer is not referring to the British Liturgy as such ; that this Liturgy was essentially Gallican ; that, before Patrick's time, Irish Christians had a similar Use ; that for some time after Patrick, the Eoman Use prevailed in Ireland, but that a different Use was introduced from Britain by David, Gildas, and Cadoc ; Orig. Lit. i. 1 78 ff. Bp. Forbes infers from early Irish liturgical remains that, so far British Colleges. 29 some wild errors of detail, really says nothing about the chap. i. original British use, which was apparently identical with the Gallican : nor is it probable that German materially altered the Use which he found in Britain. The peculiarities of the British and Irish — then called Scottish — Churches, in regard to the calculation of Easter and one or two points of cere- monial, will come before us hereafter. One is almost led to think that Gildas' bitter complaints were eflPective; for there is certainly a burst of religious activity in the Welsh Church during the second half of the sixth century, although that activity did not involve any attempt to evangelise the detested Saxons^. Colleges or monasteries did much for study and devotion, — usually bearing the name oi Bangor"^, that is ' high choir or circle,' or eminent community. One of these was the famous Bangor ' Iscoed,' Welsh founded by Dunawd, or Dunod, and his three sons, in the south- andWints east corner of Flintshire, for a community which was said to con- tain more than two thousand monks at the time of its sudden and total desolation ^. Another was the Bangor still known as such, of which Daniel was the first head ^, at once abbot and bishop, a combination not unfrequent in Celtic churches^. Another Bangor was our St. Asaph, or Llan Elwy, said to have been founded under the direction of Kentigem^, the as we can learn, the earliest Liturgy ' used in these islands was Ephesine,* i. e. Gallican ; Preface to Arbuthnott Missal, p. x. ^ Bede, i. 23. ' Qui inter alia . . . ut nunquam genti Saxonum . . . verbum fidei praedicando committerent.' See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 220. ^ There was an Irish ' Bangor,' near Carrickfergus, founded by St. Comgall about 559. Lanigan, Eccl. Hist. Irel. ii. 62. Glastonbury was sometimes called Bangor Wydrin ; Williams, Eccl. Ant. Cym. p. 212. ' Bede, ii. 2. Iscoed = underwood. This house was called also 'the great Bangor in' (the district of) 'Maclor.' See Chron. Anc. Brit. Ch. p. 162; Rees, Welsh Saints, pp. 206, 259. It was said to be occupied by seven classes of monks, each containing 300 men. See Raine, Fast. Ebor. i. 1 3. * He is said to have died in 584 (Annal. Canib.). His house was called 'the great Bangor over Conway ;' Chron. Anc. Brit. Ch. p. 81. He ranks as * one of the three blessed youth-trainers of Britain.' 5 Haddan and Stubbs, i. 142 ; Chron. of Brit. Ch. pp. 83, 127 ; Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p. 27. * According to the legend, a North Welsh king, probably Maelgwyn, gave Kentigern the ground by the Elwy. ' Men of all ages and ranks pressed into " the monastery," to the number of 965.' Bp. Forbes, Kalendars of Scottish Saints, p. 368. 30 Colleges mid Synods, CHAP. I. famous bishop of Glasgow, surnamed Munghu (kind and dear), the teacher and friend of Asaph ^. Another celebrated house, to which a fabulous antiquity was ascribed ^, flourished at Caer Worgorn, and had for its president Illtyd, who is said to have taught his scholars * all the arts ' then current, and from whom the place takes its present name of Llantwit Major. Besides these there were St. Cadoc's^ college at Llancarfan ; — the White House, or Whitland, in Carmarthen- shire, founded by Paulinus or Paul Hen * ; and the great college of Llanbadarn-faur, founded by a Breton named Padarn, the first of a line of bishops that sat within its precinct^, where one of the most venerable churches in the Principality still attracts English visitors from the neighbour- ing Aberystwyth. We also read of Welsh synods: one at Llanddewi-Brefi, in Cardiganshire, which has been erroneously supposed to have renewed the defeat of Pelagianism^: another, * ' They who withstand God's word,' said Asaph, ' envy man's salvation.' ^ It was called Cor Tewdws, as founded by Theodosius I or II (!). See Rees, p. 128. On Iltutus, 'the knight,' 'the excellent master,' see Alb. Butler, l^oy. 6; Smith's Bade, p. 724 ; Rees, p. 180 ; Williams, p. 132. ^ Rees, p. 142; Chron. Anc. Brit. Ch. p. 81 ; Williams, p. 219. Cadoc, or Cattwg, called the Wise, is said to have resigned a princely heritage for the sake of a religious life. * Bangor y Ty-Gwyn. 'Alba Domus,' Girald. Itin. Camb. i. 10. David, and Teilo the second bishop of Llandaff, are said to have studied under Paulinus. The latter's epitaph exists in Carmarthenshire ; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 164 ; Hiibner, p. 29 (' Servator fidei . . cultor pientissimus sequi,' &c.). ' He sat there for twenty-one years, and afterwards returned to Armorica ; thence went to the Franks, among whom he died. See Haddan and Stubbs, i. 145. One of his disciples was Avan, who was bishop of Llanafanfaur ; ib. 146, 166. On that church see Girald. Itin. Camb. i. i. The last bishop of Llan- badarnfaur, Idnerth, was slain by his people (Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 266) in the eighth century. ^ This is obviously a ' reverberation ' of the proceedings of German. (I owe this expression to the present Bishop of St. David's, formerly its historian.) The date sometimes given, 519, is much too early; see it in Mansi, viii. 583, where Giraldus' account is cited — how Daniel and Dubricius induced David to attend the synod, when attempts to convert the Pelagians had failed ; how David, though standing on level ground, made himself heard by the whole assembly ; how the ground beneath him rose into a hill, on which afterwards a church was built in his honour ; how the heresy utterly vanished ; how David succeeds Dubricius as archbishop of all Cambria (having been previously consecrated at Jerusalem), and removes the archbishopric to Menevia. Giraldus (Rolls Series), iii. 399, &c. Missionaries and Saints, 31 which from a similar error was called 'the Synod of Victory^,' chap. i. and is dated by the<^ambrian Annals in 569 ; it was properly the Synod of the Wood of Victory, being held on the site of a defeat of Romans. Canons ' preserved in the north of France, obviously through Brittany,' — the old Armorica now acquiring that name as the refuge of Britons^, — are probably to be assigned to these assemblies : one of these enactments is suggestive, for it fixes the penance of ' a Christian who has acted as guide to the barbarians^.' We find the Welsh Church ^ sending missions to restore the faith among the Irish, and thus repaying the charity which had spread it in Cornwall : among those who crossed the Irish sea on this pious errand was Gildas, who died in Ireland in 570*; and the great Irish-bom missionary St. Columba directed a criminal who professed ; contrition to spend twelve years in penance among the \ Britons^. Finally, among the eminent Cymric bishops® of this period, beside those who have been mentioned, two stand out as typical, Dubricius or Dyfrig, whom the Church of Llandafi*, in its renovated beauty, owns as its first bishop''', — who lived on through twelve years of the seventh century and died in retirement in the sacred isle of Bardsey^: and he * Giraldus, De Vit. Dav. 9 (iii. 401), and Itin. Camb. ii. 4 (vi. 120). He calls it a synod of bishops, abbots, and all the clergy, ' una cum populo.' ^ Among the Britons who became saints of Armorica was Maclovius or • St. Malo ; ' Rees, p. 256. ' Haddan and Stubbs, i. 11 6-1 18. * lb. 115, 156. Malmcsbury ranks him among the holy men who died at Glastonbury, among whom he even reckons St. Patrick. See also Todd's Life of St. Patrick, p. iii. ° Adamnan, Vit. S. Columb. i. 22. * The reverence of the Welsh for their sainted bishops appeared, as other- wise, so in their regarding an oath on a saint's handbell, or pastoral staflF, as more sacred than on the Gospels ; Girald. Itin. Camb. i. 2. ' See Monast. Angl. vi. p. 12 17 ff. ; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 158. The second bishop, after his resignation, was Teliau or Teilo, who, according to the legend, was the pupil of Dyfrig and the friend of David, and, after sitting as bishop at LlandafF. spent some years in Armorica, and then returning, held Menevia with Llandaff (see Lib. Landav. p. 92). The third was Oudoceus, said to have excommunicated King Mouric for perjury and murder, in a synod of all his clergy, including three abbots ; Mon. Angl. vi. 1223. Such synods are repeatedly mentioned in these documents. St. Teilo 's shrine remains near the Sedilia at Llandaff. * Annal. Camb. a. 612. But the Llandaff story was that his body was removed to Llandaff in 1120. In Bardsey, or Ynys Enlli, says Giraldus, 'ut fertur, infinita sanctorum sepulta sunt corpora ; ' Itin. Camb. ii. c. 6. Legend 32 Dudricius a7id David, CHAP. I. whose late and extravagant legend ^ is in such strange contrast to the little that can be ascertained about his life, — the St. David, national saint of Wales, Dewi or David. His time, like that of Dubricius and others, has been antedated, for the sake of connecting him with the days of King Arthur ^ : he seems to have taken part in the synod of Llanddewi, and certainly established an episcopal seat at Mynyw or Menevia, that remotest extremity of South Wales where now the cathedral that bears his name presents so unique and pathetic a com- bination of indefeasible majesty and irreversible decay. He appears to have died in 601^. The stories about a regular Welsh archbishopric, held at first by Dubricius, and then transferred by David to Menevia, are without foundation : the Welsh Church of that age had no metropolitans *, and the tale about St. Sampson of Dol in Brittany, which represented him as having been archbishop at York ^, and then at Menevia, reckoned them as 20,000; Liber Landav. p. 2. It was called the Rome of Wales ; ib. p. I . ^ See it in Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 241 ; Eees, Welsh Saints, p. 194." ^ See Geoffrey, vii. 2, 5 (Dubricius addresses Arthur's army, crowns him, resigns the archbishopric of Caerleon). The author of 'Chronicles of Anc. Brit. Church ' makes Dyfrig, firist, bishop of Llandaff, and secondly, in 490, archbishop of Caerleon; p. 115. See too the uncritical account in Williams, Antiq. of Cymry, p. 130. The Liber Landavensis extends his life from St. German's time to Sunday, Nov. 14, 612. Geoffrey tells how David succeeded Dubricius at Caerleon, and died at Menevia, viii. i ; the early and fictitious date for his death is 544. Montalembert in both cases follows the legend ; see his ' Monks of the West.' The most picturesque story about him is that of the ' Evangelium Imperfectum ; ' that he was copying St. John's Gospel, left his work on hearing the church bell, at his return found the page completed in gold letters, and out of reverence added nothing to the copy. Girald. iii. 393. ^ Annal. Camb. (written some 200 years later). In Giraldus Cambrensis' Life of him (Works, iii. 403), he is said to have had, when dying, a vision of Christ, and to have expired saying, ' Lord, take me up after Thee ! ' A yet later date for his death is 642. He is said to have been succeeded by Teilo (Girald. Itin. Camb. ii. i), or by Cynog, or by Ismael (Lib. Landav. p. 109). * Haddan and Stubbs, i. 148 ; Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 253, The story was that Teilo, on becoming archbishop of Menevia, transferred the primacy to Llandaff; see Rees, p. 243. See, however, his remarks on p. 291. ' Geoffrey, vii. 3 (ix. 8), makes Arthur see with grief the ruin of religion at York, after the Saxons had driven out ' blessed Samson the archbishop.' This fictitious connection of Sampson with York is ignored by Alb. Butler (JiJy 28) ; nor does it appear in the Liber Landavensis. Giraldus makes him twenty-fifth archbishop of St. David's, and tells the story about his removal of the pall to Dol ; Itin. Camb. ii. i. Flight of British Bishops, 33 is a myth of yet later date : the fact being simply that he chap. i. was consecrated in Wales, and thence proceeded to Armorica, and sat in a Council of Paris in 557^. Setting aside such fancies, it is worth while to observe how the situation of St. David's illustrates the fact that these old Celtic bishops valued monastic seclusion even more than facilities for epi- scopal administration^. One of Geoffrey's statements as to the prelates of Teuton- ised Britain may represent some amount of fact. He says^ that when the Saxons drove the British fugitives into Wales and Cornwall, Theon bishop of London, and Thadioc of York, fled into Wales with the ' archbishop ' of Caerleon and their surviving clergy. This he dates in the latter part of the sixth century. It is accepted, so far as Theon and Thadioc are concerned, by Raine and others: the prelates may have held fast to their bishoprics until all seemed lost, although one would have thought that a British bishop's post among the East- Saxons must have been long before vacated by death or captivity. If a bishop of York was found at his station when Ella conquered Deira, he may probably enough have fled a few years afterwards : and we know that in the latter part of the seventh century there was a clear tradition as to the names of ' sacred places abandoned by the British clergy ' when they ' fled from the sword ' of the conquering race*. If this was so, when we think of what the Divine mercy was preparing at this time for a country bereft of pastors and even of flocks, we may observe a new verifica- tion of the devout proverb, that man's necessity is God's ^ Mansi, ix. 747. See Haddan and Stubbs. i. 149, 159. * Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 251. Caerleon, says Giraldus, was 'far more fitted for a metropolitan see than this "angulus remotissimus, terra saxosa, sterilis, infecunda : " it was of set purpose that saints chose such abodes, — much preferring the eremitic to the pastoral life ; ' Itin. Camb. ii. i. 2 Geofirey, viii. 1. Kaine, Fast. Ebor, i, ii, adopts the story, but seems to antedate it. See Stubbs, Kegistrum Sac. Angl. p. 152. The traditional date is 586. * Eddius, Vit. S. Wilfridi, 17. But 'the diocesan divisions, if they had ever existed, had been effaced with the civil landmarks on whose lines they may have been drawn,' so that the ' imperialist traditions' which were so influential over 'the Churches of France,' and brought upon them such an 'infection of court-life and cdlruption, took no hold here.' Stubbs, Ccmst. Hist. i. 320. Comp. ib. 6i. D 34 What opening for a Mission f CHAP. I. Christi- anity ruined in most of South Britain. opportunity. It did^ indeed, seem as if Heathenism had fairly beaten down Christianity in the largest portion of South Britain : the East-Anglians, and the settlers in the Lichfield and Repton district who were called Mercians, as dwelling near the Welsh border or march ^, had been forming them- selves into regular kingdoms : the West-Saxon Ceawlin's defeat at Wodensburg, or Wanborough^ in 591, soon followed by his death, was but the aggrandisement of his revolted nephew^. Ethelbert of Kent held supremacy in Essex and London: on Ella's death, his child Edwin was dispossessed by the king of Bernicia^, Ethelric, who was succeeded within five years by his son, a prince of equal energy, and known by the appellations of ' the Fierce * ' and ' the Devas- tator ^,' that Ethelfrid, properly ^thelfrith, whom Bede de- scribes as, like Benjamin, a ravening wolf, and of whom he says that no other Anglian chief wrought such havoc among the race of Britons ^. Every one of these rulers and nations was bound by habit and tradition to the old Teutonic Paganism ; it might even seem that all their antecedents had hardened them in antipathy to the religion of the Cross : was it to be expected, under these conditions, that the ministers of that religion could appeal to such a nation and be heard ? Yes, it was the hope and the faith of the greatest Christian of that time : and to his action, in the strength of such hope and faith, we owe the beginnings of our English Christianity. * Green, p. 1 5 : see Palgrave, Anglo-Sax. p. 45 ; Freeman, i. 26 ; Pearson, i. 106. The Mid-Anglians, as far as they are distinct from the Mercians, dwelt eastwards towards Leicester. ^ Sax. Chr. and Florence. Hen. Hvmtingdon's account of the battle of Wodensburgh, * God gave the victory to the Britons,' is explained by the fact that Britons, and even Scots, were allied with Ceolric against Ceawlin. See Palgrave, p. 404. 3 Chr., Flor. * Hen. Hunt. a. 593. ^ 'Flesaur,' in Nennius,= Devastator. " Bede, i. 34 ; Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 428. - CHAPTEE II. * Gregory our father V wLo * sent us baptism ^ ; ' such were Greg >ry the terms of simple and grateful affection in which the early English Christians spoke of that greatest and most loveable ^ of Roman bishops, whose pontificate extended from 590 to 604. The fatherly title was signally appropriate to a character so rich in tenderness and so profuse in energetic charity. He who, unlike 'other pontiffs,' spent yet more on the poor than on the building of churches^; he who once debarred himself from celebrating the Eucharist, because a poor man had been starved to death in a great scarcity^; he whose correspondence with distant friends overflows with such vivid consciousness of a oneness which no distance could affect ® ; he whose thoughtful and discriminating sympathy gave directions that a sick cleric was not to lose his stipend"', forbade a prelate in bad health to keep fast or vigil ^, remitted the Church's claim on the property of three orphans^, and provided bedding for the pilgrims of Mount Sinai ^^ and a yearly allowance of wheat and beans for a man with bad eyesight ^^, was just th%.man to unite this natural and genial ^ Council of Cloveslio, a.d. 747 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 368. ^ S. Chr. a. 565. Compare Aldhelm, de Laude Virginitatis, 55 : ' Gre- gorius . . . paedagogus noster, noster, inquam, qui nostris parentibus . . . rege- nerantis gratiae normam tradidit.' ' See Robertson's Growth of the Papal Power, p. 115: 'Gregory stands in the foremost rank of Popes who have contributed to the exaltation of their see . . . He is the only one of those Popes whose memory we can regard with much affection.' * Paul the Deacon's Life of Greg. c. 16. ** John the Deacon's Life of Greg. ii. 29. See Gibbon, v. 36a. * Greg. Ep. i. 66 ; iii. 48, 54 ; vi. 60 ; viii. 2 ; xii. i. ' Ep. ii. 9. « Ep. xi. 33. ® Ep. iii. 21. Compare a remission of money due from an old man, if found to be poor, Ep. xii. 9. w Ep. xi. I. " Ep. i. 67. D 2 36 . The Church and Slavery. CHAP. II. kindness with that Christian love for souls, so fervent as an emotion and so vigorous as a motive, which betokens and crowns the genuine pastor. Story of We all know the immortal story of the origin of his interest boys. ^^ ^ ^^ ^^^ heathen ancestors, and therefore of that work which he did for England, and which made Bede say with such loving emphasis, 'Though he be not an apostle to others, yet he is to us, for the seal of his apostleship are we in the Lord ^/ It was either shortly before 578, when he went as the Pope's confi- dential agent ^ to Constantinople, or soon after his return in 585 (his earliest biographer, Paul the Deacon, places it in the latter period^), that Gregory, passing through the Roman market, saw some * boys exposed for sale. The traffic in slaves was rife at this time, and indeed long afterwards : the spirit of that creed which acknowledged all to be one in God and in Christ had not yet undermined the inveterate usage which treated human beings as capable, under certain circum- stances, of becoming lawful property; canons of councils had freely owned the right of Christian laymen, even of clergy or monks, to possess bondsmen ^ : to emancipate one's slave was an act of beneficence, but beyond that point Church teaching did not go. Gregory was among those Church teachers who did much to abate the evils of slavery, and in that sense to prepare for its extinction ^ : he, as Pope, sold sacred vessels to * Bede, ii. i. So in the coronation office of king Ethelred : ' Sanctae Mariae ac beati Petri Sanctique Gregorii Anglorum Apostoli . . . meritis.' Maskell, Mon. Rit. iii. 35. ^ ' Apocrisiarius.' Benedict I. was Pope 574-578, Pelagius II. 578-590. Gregory was at Constantinople from 578 to 585, under Pelagius. ^ Paul, c. 19, 'apostolico Pelagio.' John, i. 22, gives the earlier date; *ad Benedictum.' So Bromton, X Script. 726, Thorn, ib. 1757, and the Bene- dictine biographers, b. i. 4. 5. Gregory became a monk cir. 575, deacon in 577, abbot in 585, pope on Sept. 3, 590, not 591, as Bede would say, dating his accession (i. 23) in the tenth year of the Emperor Maurice, which began August 1 3, 59 1 . Gregory's predecessor, Pelagius II. died Feb. 8, 590, and the day of his own accession was Sept. 3, which fell on a Sunday in 590. The Saxon Chronicle dates the accession in 592. For the year 590 see the Bene- dictine life, L'Art de verifier, iii. 277, &o. It is adopted by Gibbon, Clinton, Milman, Kobertson. * Thorn says three. ' E. g. Council of Agde, c. 7, 56 ; first of Orleans, c. 3. Comp. Greg. Ep. v. 34- * See Milman, Lat, Chr. ii. 47, 52 ; Hist. Jews, iii. 48. On the three ways in which Christianity acted in this direction, see Lecky, Europ. Morals, ii. 70. Gregory and the English boys, 37 ransom captives ^, and in an act of manumission declared that, chap. ii. * since the Redeemer had become incarnate to set men free, it was a good thing to restore to their natural freedom those whom the law of nations had deprived of it 2.' Let us try to picture him, with his ruddy face, scanty darkish hair, kindly look, and beautiful hands ^, as he stands still, attracted by the sad sight of those helpless lads, whose white skin * and golden hair were proof enough of their Northern parentage, and were associated with a beauty of face which their unhappy con- dition would make all the more touching. He who, in after years, used to take pains with the teaching of his young choristers^, was moved to the very soul with pity for the slave boys : he asked from what country they came. The slave-owner — probably a Jew ^ — answered, * From Britain : the people there have these fair complexions.' Then came the question, as from Gregory's full heart, ' Are they heathens or Christians ^ ? ' « Heathens.' He sighed, as a servant of Christ might well sigh : ' Alas ! that such bright faces should be in the power of the prince of darkness— that with outward forms so lovely, the mind within should be sick^ and empty of grace ! How do you call their nation ? ' ' Angles.' Then, * See Ep. vii. 13, 38. Compare St. Ambrose, de Offic. Ministr. ii. 28, and Acacius in Soc. vii. 21. * Ep. vi. 12. Comp. Greg. Reg. Pastoral, iii. 5 : masters are to be admon- ished ' ut naturae suae, qua sequaliter simt cum servis conditi, memoriam non amittant.' See the expressions of Old-English feeling on this point in Pref. to Chron. of Abingdon, vol. ii. p. Hi. ' John the Deacon's Life of Greg. iv. 84. From Ep. xi. 44 he would seem to have been stout, until the gout brought him low. * Paul the Deac. 17: ' Lactei corporis, . . . capillos praecipui candoris,' — shining sunny hair. John the Deacon, ' corpore candidos, forma pulcherrimos, vultu venustos, capillorimi quoque nitore perspicuos.' Bede, earlier than both, has, ' candidi corporis et venusti vultus, capillorum quoque forma egregia ;' ii. i. ' Joan, Diac. ii. 6. « Milman, Hist. Jews, iii. 48. Cp. Greg. Ep. ix. 36, that Jews bought Christian slaves from Gaul, and a Jew explained to him that the magistrates ordered them to buy slaves. In Ep. iii. 38 he exhorts a prefect to set free slaves bought by a Jew. ' Ethel werd, in his Chronicle, ii. i, gives a corrupt version of this colloquy, making Gregory address the young Angles, who answer that no one has opened their ears to Christianity : whereupon he asks, * Quisnam . . . lapidum fundar mentum ex harundine ponit V ' Paul. Diac. Bede omits ' aegram.' 38 Gregory becomes Pope. CHAP. II. with that fondness for playing on the sound of a name, with a serious thought under the playfulness ^, which we see in Eusebius^, and also in Bede himself^, he replied^ ' 'Tis well, — they have Angels' faces ; it were meet they should be fellow-heirs with Angels in heaven. What is their native province ? ' ' Deira ; ' we might translate, Yorkshire, — for the southern of the two Northumbrian realms may for practical purposes be identified with the land between the Tees and Humber: and Gregory's ear, catching its name, suggested the comment, ' They must be rescued de ira Dei.^ One more question : who was their king ? ^ Aella *.' ' Alleluia, praise to God the Maker, ought to be sung in those parts.' He passed on, and saw the boys no more; but the thought of their nation's spiritual need impelled him to wring from the Pope — either Benedict I. or Pelagius II. — a permission to go and preach to the Angles. But this was not to be ; the Romans beset the Pope with outcries, demanding the recall of Gregory ^ ; and Gregory was recalled, and obeyed. A few years— perhaps only two or three — elapsed, and he himself occupied the see, being then just fifty years old ^. He was at once immersed in business of all kinds; troubles caused by Donatism in Africa, a schism in Istria on the question of the ' Three Articles,' heresy vexing Eastern Christendom, practical corruptions tainting the Gallic Church, pestilence in Home, Lombards even encamping before its walls, vexations connected with the see of Ravenna and other Churches, a dispute with the Emperor Maurice, a more famous controversy with John bishop of Constantinople as to the title of QEcumenical Patriarch "^ : he had also literary work, the composition of his ^ 'Rhetorice ethimologizans,' Thorn, in X Script. 1757. 2 Euseb. V. 24, Irenceus : vi. 41, Macar : vii. 10, Macrianus : vii. 31, Manes. Two of these passages are quotations. ^ Bede, ii. 15, Felix. So in his Life of St. Felix of Nola, c. i : 'nomiuis sui mysterium factis exsequens.' So Columban in his letter to Gregory, * Tua Vigilantia;' Greg. Ep. ix. 127. * Ella died in 588. He appears as 'Alia' in Chaucer's 'Man of Law's Tale.' ^ John puts their outcry into a jingle : * Petrura offendisti, Romam de- struxisti, quia Gregorium dimiaisti ;' i. 23. * He was probably bom in 540; Bened. Life, i. i. 6. ^ Ep. V. 18, 20. His plans for an E7iglish Mission, * 39 Pastoral Care, the compilation of his Sacramentary, and other chap. n. such designs to be carried out, beside his preaching and other pastoral duties. Yet we may well believe that he never lost the remembrance of those ' bright faces ' of the Yorkshire lads in the slave-market : and at last, in 595, he took some steps towards an English mission by ordering the steward of his churches estates in Gaul to spend some of their proceeds in purchasing boys of seventeen or eighteen, of English birth, that they might receive a Christian education ^. But immedi- ately afterwards he resolved on more direct action. He had, in 575, founded a monastery, dedicated to St. Andrew, on his own estate on the Coelian hill, and had lived there as monk and as abbot 2. He still retained the abbatial care for this long-loved home, within whose precincts he had been so happy, but had also, we must confess it, on one occasion shown towards a monk who had broken the rule a relentless severity, such as was the effect of monastic rigorism pre- vailing over his natural benignity^. In the monastery the officer next to the abbot was called the ' prsepositus ' or provost *. Gregory in one passage says that an abbot's negli- gence must be remedied by means of a vigilant 'prsepositus^: ' we hear of one Pretiosus as his ' prsepositus ' at the time just referred to ^ : and at the period which we have reached the office was held by Augustine, who had once been a pupil of Felix bishop of Messana'^. Gregory selected him^, and sever,al * Epist. vi. 7, to Candidus. Cp. Hardwick, Ch. Hist., M. Ages, p. iii, on a similar scheme as carried out by St. Anskar. 2 John the Deacon, i. 6 : cp. Paul, c. 4. The site of the monastery was * in clivo Scauri.' ' There exist no documents from which we may learn what were the peculiar enactments ' of the rule established in Gregory's monastery, nor • the points wherein it differed from other rules.' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 199. ^ Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 104, gives the story as the most signal case of such austerity, or rather pitiless harshness, on the part of Gregory. See it in John the Deacon, i. 15, 16. * So in Benedict. Reg. 65. ' Prsepositi ' appear in the Life of St. Columba, Adamn. i. 30, 31. In Columban's Rule, c. 10, penance is assigned to a monk who says to the prgepositus, ' Tu non judicabis causam meam, sed noster abbas,' &c. Boisil was ' praepositus ' of Melrose under Eata as abbot ; Bede, iv. 27, V. 9, The word ' prior' would best express ' praepositus.' ' Ep. V. 6. ^ John, 1. c. ' See Greg. Ep. xiv. 17, ' alumno tuo.* Felix calls him ' consodalis.' ' Augustine was afterwards (by Leo III.) described as holding the ofl&ce of Kent. 40 . "^ Ethelbert and Bertha, CHAP. II. others of the house, to undertake a mission to the English. Mission of Probably, with his ' wonderful capacity for business, his wide, Augustine ."^ . . ,,1.1 j, j.i and his various, and minute supervision ^, which seemed to sweep the ions'^*^" whole area of Christendom, from the oppression practised on African Churches to a local feud in Jerusalem and the griev- ances of a priest of Lycaonia ^, and which caused one of his biographers to call him an 'Argus full of eyes^/ he had pro- cured information as to the state of the English which showed that the native district of the ' angel- faced ' boys was no State of promising mission-field while Ethelfrid ruled over it, and on the other hand that the part of Britain most accessible from the continent was precisely that which seemed to offer an * open door.' For Ethelbert, properly ^thelberht *, king of the Jutish realm of Kent, who now, after thirty years of royalty, stood preeminent ^ among the Saxon or Anglian princes, might be supposed likely to give a favourable hearing to preachers of the religion professed by his wife. Bertha, daughter of a former Frankish king, Charibert of Paris, had been long before espoused by Ethelbert on the express condition that she should be free to worship as a Christian, under the guid- ance of a Frankish bishop, Liudhard ^. This condition had been observed : Liudhard resided in Kent, and while ' Bertha had made no attempt to convert ' her Pagan husband '^, he had never disturbed his wife in regard to her Christian duties. This, probably, the Pope had learned ; and he himself declares that he had been informed of a desire on the part of the English for Christian instruction, and reprobates the neglect of gyncellm, or companion in the cell or private room, to Gregory ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 539 ; and cp. can. 22 and 23 of fourth Council of Toledo, Mansi, x. 626. See Fleury, b. 25. c. 5 (Oxford ed. vol. iii, p. 13). ^ Kobertson, ii. 371 ; cp. Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 112. ^ Ep. i. 77 ; vii. 32 ; vi. 66. ^ John, ii. 55. * Albert, as Dean Stanley observes (Mem. Cant. p. 31), is but this name abbreviated (Ethelbert = Adalbert), ^ On the Bretwaldaship see Bede, ii. 5. Cp. the somewhat differing views in Kemble, Sax. in Engl. ii. 11, and Freeman, i. 543. * • Quam ea conditione a parentibus acceperat,' &c. ; Bede, i. 25. See Greg. Turon. Hist. Fr, iv, 26, ' filiam quae postea in Cantiam, virmn accipiens, est deducta,' Charibert died in 567. ■^ Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i, 23. Augustine and his companions. . 41 the Gallic bishops to impart it ^. He could, indeed, have had chap. n. but an imperfect idea of the complexities of the political con- dition of Britain, or of the difficulties which it would offer to a missionary: yet had he known more, he would still have acted in faith, and sent forth his agents in the all-sustaining Name. And so, apparently in the opening of 596, they went Misgivings forth, obedient and hopeful, and 'got through some small g^*^^^*'*' part of their journey.' So Bede tells us 2; in fact, they had reached Provence, and probably rested in that illustrious monastery which for nearly two centuries had made the name of the isle of Lerins^ sacred and venerable to all who had heard of its discipline and its devotion, and of the light of sacred learning there kept alive in a country dark with spreading ignorance, and darker yet with stormy crime. Stephen abbot of Lerins, as well as Protasius bishop of Aix and the 'patrician' or provincial governor* Arigius, wel- comed the strangers heartily. But they also heard more than they had dreamt of as to the hard fierce nature of the Saxons, and began to realise the obstacle involved in their ignorance of the Saxon tongue^. With somewhat of the weakness shown by St. Mark after he landed in Pamphylia^, they began to think they had undertaken more than they could compass, and, doubtless, to long for the hallowed quiet of their old home on the Coelian. ' Struck with a sluggish * Greg. Ep. vi. 58, 59. ' Bede, i. 23. He dates their journey in the fourteenth year of Maurice, which began August 13, 595. Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 3, Robertson, ii. 387, and Moberly (on Bede, 1. c.) think that they set out in 595. But Gregory's letter sent back with Augustine is dated on July 23 in that fourteenth year ; i. e. in 596. It is not likely that the voyage to Provence, a short sojourn there, and Augustine's return voyage, would occupy more time than between the early spring and the middle of July of that year. The Benedictines date the first journey in 596 : so does Smith, on Bede, 1. c. : so Lingaxd, A.-S. Ch. i. 21. ' See Tillemont, xii. 473 ; Fleury, b. 24. c. 58 ; Sirmond. Op. i. 1029. 'From the isle of Lerins came forth the greatest saints and scholars of the time;' Kitchin, Hist. France, i. 65. * See Greg. Op. ii. 493, and Kitchin, i. 85. On the Constantinian use of the word, see Gibbon, ii. 309, Gregory thanks Arigius for his kindness, Ep. vi. 57. ^ Life of St. Augustine (Lives of Engl. Saints), p. 74. ' Acts xiii. 13. 42 Misgivings silenced by Gregory. CHAP. II. timorousness,' so Bede phrases it, ' they thought of returning home, and after taking counsel together, determined that this was the safer course^.' But as Fuller fairly remarks,, their shrinking was not unnatural, although it were easy to call them cowards^ ; and a modern historian of the Saxons fully recognises the extreme onerousness of their task^. ^No sooner said than done,' Bede continues : ' they send back Augustine, who according to Gregory's plan was to be ordained their bishop if they should be welcomed by the English, and commission him to induce Gregory by humble supplication to excuse them from a journey so fall of perils, of toils, of uncertainties.' Gregory They might, one would think, have known Gregory better. to^proceed. When Augustinc reached Rome, and presented their request to the Pope, it was refused : Gregory, on July ^3, 596, sent a letter to them by Augustine*, to this purpose: — It were better not to begin a good work than to begin it and turn back from it^ : you have undertaken this work by the Lord's help, — carry it out with activity and fervour, knowing that much labour wins all the greater reward. It is beautiful to see the wise gentleness^ with which he treats his ' dearest sons :' * Bede, i. 23. 2 Fuller, Ch. Hist. p. 52. ^ Kemble, ii. 357. He calls the mission-journey of Aiigustine and his com- panions ' heroic' If this phrase is too strong, Haddan's representation of their fears as groundless is far from fair (Remains, p. 305). Gocelin, in order to save St. Augustine's honour, assumes that he 'was not able to resist' their urgency; Vit. Maj. Aug. c. i. s. 6. (cir. 1080.) * Ep. vi. 51 ; Bede, 1. c. Here we may remark on the reckoning by ' indictions,' which appears in this and other papal letters given by Bede. Early in the fourth century arose the custom of arranging years in periods of fifteen ; each year in such a series was reckoned as 'indiction i, 2,' &c. But the reckonings varied according to the commencement of these periods. The oldest or ' Constantinopolitan ' scheme took Sept. i for its starting-point. The * Caesarean,' so called, began from Sept. 24. Two later schemes, the Roman and the French, do not concern the readers of Bede. Gregory was the first pope who reckoned by indictions, and he employed the Constantinopolitan (Bened. Edd. in Ep. i. i). Cf. Nicolas, Chron. Hist. p. 6. ^ See Greg. Reg. Past. iii. 34 ; it were more tolerable ' recti viam non arri- pere, quam arrepta post tergum redire.' ' Yet Pearson says that he wrote ' sternly,' Hist. Engl. i. 122; and Hook, while blaming Augustine, says that Gregory ' was unable even to understand his feelings,' Archbishops, i. 51. Gocelin remarks beautifully that the timorous request 'might have troubled the high-souled Gregory's charity, as if his His commendatory letters. 43 an inferior man would have vented his annoyance in harsh chap. ii. rebukes, which would have by no means upheld ' the feeble knees,'— but Gregory knew better. There is something Pauline in the delicacy with which he hopes that 'in the eternal Country he may see the fruit of their labour and share in the reward, as he had wished to share the work.' Other evidence of his tact is given by his appointment of Augustine to be their abbot ; no longer a mere prior, but the father and director, who would be able in future, authoritatively and on the spot^ to repress any deliberation or common action such as had ' sent him back ' to Rome. Gregory also wrote, at the same time, letters in behalf of the missionaries to the bishops of Lyons, Tours ^, Marseilles, Aries, Vienne, Autun, Aix, and to abbot Stephen, who had sent to him, by Augustine, certain * spoons and. round dishes 2' for the use of poor folks in Rome. The letter to Etherius of Lyons is given by Bede, but with a mistaken address, Aries being put for Lyons. The Pope also State of commended the monks to Theodoric II. and Theodebert II., ^*"^* the boy-kings of Burgundy and Austrasia^, and to their grandmother, the widow of the Austrasian Sigebert I., famous in early French history alike for royal energy and tyrannous vindictiveness under the name of Queen Brunehaut, properly Brunhild*. We must pause here a moment ; for Gregory's confidential letters to this princess, whom he once praises for bringing up her son well, and in other letters exhorts to suppress ecclesiastical abuses^, have formed a diflSculty somewhat analogous to his repulsive laudation of the odious tyrant Phocas^. But Brunhild's worst deeds, the undertaking were frustrated — nisi speraret in nomine Domini, in quo sua ccepta ciedebat feliciter perfici.' ^ See Ep. vi. 52-56. 2 ' Cochleares et circulos,' Ep. vi. 56. ' Ep. vi. 58. They v^rere the sons of Childebert, under whom the two realms had been united. For Burgundy see Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 59, 71, 84. For Austrasia, Oster-rik, the Eastern realm, see ib. 72, 81, 84; Guizot, Hist. Fr. c. 8. * Ep. vi. 59. Fredegarius speaks of the evils and bloodshed ' a Brunichildis consilio in Francia facta,' Hist. Fr. Epit. 59. He calls her a second Jezebel, Chron. 36. But see Ruinart's note to his Chron. 42. On Brunhild see Kitchin, i. 89. 5 Ep. vi. 5; ix. II, 109; xi. 63; xiii. 6. • Ep. xiii. 31. 44 The Missionaries in Gaul. CHAP. II. result of pride and power^ were done at a later time^ : and her vigorous zeal for E/oman organisation^ as against barbaric licence, the capacity which she had shown for wise and beneficent government, and also her munificence to the Church, might well win the esteem of the great pontiff who had once himself been Praetor of Rome. ' Strengthened ^ ' by these and similar letters, Augustine resumed his undertaking, and helped his companions to nerve their Wills to their great task. They travelled by Marseilles to Aix, Aries, Vienne, Lyons, to the Burgundian court at Chalons^, and thence to Autun. The journey would be rich in elevating and inspiriting remembrances, especially when it brought them to the scene of the martyrdom of Pothinus and of the labours of Irenseus. Thence, in the advancing autumn, they proceeded to Reims, the capital of Austrasia ; visited Tours, where its historian-bishop had died in the year preceding ; and, as we infer from a later letter of Gregory^, were well received at Paris by the ruler of Neustria. That ruler was no other than the atrocious Fredegond, then acting as regent for her son Chlotair II. and drawing near to the outwardly tranquil conclusion of a life which had been 'a calendar of crimes^.' The missionaries wintered in Gaul"^; and soon after Easter — which fell in 597 on April 14 — they crossed the Channel ; and thus, after all these preliminary experiences, came face to face with their real work. Where did they land ? we ask. The answer is ready. If 1 The murder of Chilperic in 584 is ascribed to her by Fredegarius, Hist. Fr. Epit. 93, bat by others to Fredegond. It was in 606 that she procured the murder of St. Desiderius of Vienne ; in 612 she put to death Theodebert. Her own terrible death took place in 613. ^ Guizot, Hist. France, c. 8 ; Kitchin, i. 89. ^ *Roboratus,' Bede, i. 25. * The residence of Theodoric of Burgundy. See Smith's Bede, p. 680. » Ep. xi. 61. ® Kitchin, i. 88. Chlotair became king in his infancy, A. D. 584 ; Frede- gond died in 597. ^ A story current in the eleventh century described them as encountering, in a town of Anjou, rude insxilts such as men like them in those days might easily provoke by their grave aspect and strange attire. Women, says Gocelin, were foremost in this barbarous inhospitality, driving them away like so many * wolves,' with wild outcries, and not allowing them even to sleep under an elm. Vit. Maj. Aug. c. i. s. 10. They land in Kent, 45 you stand at the end of the cliffs of Ramsgate, and look chap. n. across Pegwell Bay, where now the coast-line stretches sea- Landing of wards far outside of the old water-mark, a farm-house called ° Ebbsfleet is visible among fields ^. That was the traditional landing-place of Hengest ^ : it was the actual landing-place of Augustine. The river Stour there expanded into an estuary; so that the ' Isle of Thanet ' was then really an island ^, owing to the breadth of the stream between Richborough, then the ancient Roman town of Rutupiae, to the south, and Reculver, the Roman Regulbium, to the north, on the mouth of the Thames. After thus touching British ground, Augustine sent a message to King Ethelbert to this effect, ' that they were come from Rome with the best of all messages, and that if he would accept it, he would undoubtedly ensure himself an everlasting kingdom.' Ethelbert answered at once kindly and cautiously; he would not hastily commit himself. Let the strangers abide in the isle of Thanet *, until he could see what to do with them : their wants should be well supplied. ' Some Meeting days after, he came into the isle,' prepared to give them an gliielbert. audience: but, as a Teuton, he believed in 'witch-lore^/ dreaded the power of spells^, and thought that the foreign priests might employ such craft to mislead him, if he received them under a roof. He stipulated, therefore, that they should address him in the open air, and the meeting was thus arranged ^ : — Ethelbert and his attendant thanes ^ took their seats, and saw some forty men advancing, with a lofty 1 Dean Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury, p. 29. Thorn caUs the landing- place Retesborough, X Script. 1 759. 2 ' Heopwines fleot,' Sax. Chr. a. 449. * Fleet ' = harbour. * See Pearson's Hist. Maps of Engl. p. 2. * *l8le of Beacons.' See the map of the isle, prefixed to Elmham*8 History of St. Augustine's. 5 Kemble, i. 428 ; Turner, iii. 135. ^ Bede, i. 25. Cp. iv. 27, 'per incantationes ;' Theodore's Penitential, i. 15 ; Egbert's, i. 6 ; Council of Clovesho, c. 3 ; of Chelsea, c. 3. ' • According to tradition, at Richborough ; ' English Life of St. Augustine, p. 93. * St. Augustine's Cross ' was long shown there. Another traditional site was on some high ground above Minster. « 'Comitibus,' his personal companions, 'gesiths' (properly, 'fellow- travellers'), who acted as his * thanes,' ministri. See Kemble, i. 168 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 149 ; Lappenberg, ii. 317; Freeman, Growth of Engl. Constit. r p. 50. Compare Bede, iii. 22 ; iv. 22 ; v. 5. 46 Augustine before Ethelbert, CHAP. II. silver cross ^ borne up in front, and beside tbis a board, on which was painted the figure of the Crucified 2. He must have seen some such emblems of Christianity belonging to his wife or to her chaplain, but he had never perhaps beheld their faith represented with such ritual solemnity; and Gregory's well-known opinion of the value of sacred paintings^, as impressing religious truths on the mind, was probably Augustine's reason for employing one in this momentous conference. A procession, too, was associated with choral supplications, and Gregory had instituted a ' sevenfold litany,' or procession, to implore the Divine succour during a pesti- lence*; on this occasion, therefore, his emissaries, as they approached, ^ sang litanies, entreating the Lord for their own salvation and that of those to whom they came.' The chant, although in a strange tongue, must have brought to the rud« listeners a sense of spiritual power : and Augustine's majestic person, towering up above all his companions'^, was certain to contribute to the imposing eifect of the scene. The king bade his visitors sit down, and Augustine spokeij assisted by a * In later times, ' on donna le nom de Croix k toutes les processions ;' L'A rt de verifier, ii. 5. ^ Gocelin, Vit. Maj. S. Aug. s. 16 : 'imaginem Domini Salvatoris, formose atque aurose in tabula depictam.' • Wise pomp,' remarks Haddan, Remains, p. 305. Compare Wordsworth, Eccl. Sonnets, No. 14 : — 'The Cross preceding Him who floats in air, The pictured Saviour.* ' Greg, Ep. ix. 52, that paintings of Christ are not to be worshipped, but to be used as stimidants to devout affection. * Ilium adoramus quem per imaginem aut natum, aut passura, sed et in throno sedentem recordamur.' So in Ep. ix. 105, to a bishop who had broken some pictures which had been • adored : ' ' Your duty was et illas servare, et ab earum adoratu populum prohibere.' And similarly Ep. xi. 13, dwelling on the usefulness of sacred paintings to those who cannot read, but absolutely forbidding them to be ' adored.' * Joan. Diac. i. 42. * Litany' is here used as = procession. * Let the litany of clergy start from St. John Baptist's,' &c. See Palmer, Orig. Lit. i. 271, and the note to Greg. Op. iv. 1284. In Ep. xi. 51 Gregory exhorts the Sicilian bishops to have litanies on Wednesdays and Fridays, in order to obtain pro- tection against barbarian invaders. " If we can at all rely on the traditional account in Gocelin, Vit. Aug. 49, professing to come from an old man whose grandfather Augustine had con- verted and baptized. * Staturam proceram et arduam, adeo ut a scapulis populo supereminereb.' In this he resembled St. Columba : see Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. I. Ethelbert's Reply. 47 Gallic interpreter ^. He told, said a Saxon homilist long after, chap. n. ' how the tender-hearted Jesus by His own throes,' — and here, doubtless, he pointed to the cross and the painting, — had redeemed the sinful world, and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers 2. Bede says simply, that ' he preached to them the word of life ;* and Ethelbert's answer was nearly * what a king should have said on such an occasion ^.' * Fair words and promises are these ; but seeing they are new and doubtful, I cannot give in to them, and give up what I with all the English race have so long observed. But since you have come a long way from a strange country, in order — as I think I clearly see — to make known to us what you believe to be best and truest, we"^ do not mean to do you any harm, but rather will treat you kindly, and take care that you have all that you need ; and we shall not hinder you from bringing over any of our people to your own belief.' One thing this royal answer lacked, — a promise to hear their preaching again : but they had got as much as at first they could hope for in what Montalembert ^ calls the ' sincere and truly liberal ' speech of a king evidently desirous to do justice, and to weigh his words in order fully to make them good. Ethelbert might be trusted to give them another opportunity ^ : meantime, he promised them a house in the * metropolis,' as Bede loftily calls it, of his empire, the old Roman town of Durovernum, which had become ' the Burgh of the men of Kent,' and from which, in the words of an old English rhythm, f were now to come ' to Angle-kin Christianity and bliss, for God and for the world '^.' ^ Thither let us follow them, as they take the Roman road J&ifrMice across the downs to the top of the present St. Martin's hill, Jerbury!^ * He was to procure some such, Greg. Ep. vi. 58. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 11 ; Churton's Early Eng. Ch. p. 39. ' Stanley, p. 34. See the rendering in Freeman's Old-Engl. Hist. p. 47. * Observe the plural, * Nolumus molesti esse vobis.' The king unites his thanes with him in this announcement. 5 Monks of the West (Life of St. Augustine). * Elmham ascribes it to Bertha's influence that her husband's mind was favourably disposed towards Augustine's preaching. Hist. Mon. S. Aug. p. 209. ' Chronicle, a. loii. 48 Augustine enters Canterbury. CHAP. 11. and look forth, first on a little Roman-British chapel on the slopes below them, and then on the wood- built city further down, the Canterbury of Ethelbert. That little oratory was St. Martin's, where Bertha and Liudhard had for many years worshipped, and probably prayed for such a day as was now dawning. We, as we look back to its sunrise, may well enter into Dean Stanley's remark, that the view from the present church of St. Martin is in this sense 'one of the most inspiriting that can be found in all the world \' Let any one visit that venerable building, where the lines of Roman brick seem to assert its continuity with Bertha's place of prayer, and then ascend to the brow of the hill, and recall that day in the Ascension week of 597 when Augustine first beheld the future seat of his archbishopric. He would take possession of Canterbury for Christ. The cross was again uplifted by the cross-bearer, and with it ' the likeness of the great King, our Lord^:' and the brethren accompanied their abbot in solemn order down the hill, chanting a pathetic antiphon belonging to the Rogation days, which they had probably heard in the previous spring on their arrival in Provence^, and which long remained in the Rogation services of the Church of Lyons*, uniting the urgent intercessions of 'the man of desires ' for the ruined sanctuary of Judah ^ with the characteristic watchword of Paschal joy in the Kingdom of Christ. ' We beseech Thee, O Lord, for Thy great mercy, let Thine anger and wrath be turned away from this city, and from Thy holy house, for we have sinned. Alleluia ! ' With such a combination of humility ^ and thankfulness was inaugu- rated the foundation of the English Church properly so called. ' Stanley, p. 54. =* Bede, i. -25. ' The institution of Rogations, or processional supplications in time of dis- tress, had been invested with new solemnity by Mamertus of Vienne before the Ascension-day of 468 ; see Greg. Turon. H. Fr. ii. 34. Thence the observance spread. Augustine would have heard how St. Csesarius had recommended it : and he made it an institution in the English Church (Council of Clovesho, p. 747). * Martene, de Ant. Eccl. Eit. iii. 529. The Rogations before Ascension were not then observ-^ed at Rome : they were a Gallic * use.' ' Daniel ix. 16. ® Gocelin says, ' Bene addiderant, " Quoniam peccavimus," qui ex Christi caritate aliena peccata, quasi propria, venerant . . . abluere.' Vit. Maj. S. Aug. c. ii. s. 19. Life in Canterbury . 40 If we follow the missionaries, in imagination, into Canter- chap. n. bury, and over the ground now called St. Alphage Lane, almost under the shadow of the vast metropolitan church, we are near the ' Stable-gate,' where, in close vicinity to a heathen temple, they were to make their temporary home ^. There they dwelt, as Bede says 2, ' after the primitive Church Life of the model, giving themselves to frequent prayers, watchings, aHesTn' and fastings : preaching to all who were within their reach. Canter- disregarding all worldly things as matters with which they ^'^* had nothing to do, accepting from those whom they taught just what seemed necessary for livelihood, living themselves altogether in accordance with what they taught, and with hearts prepared to suffer every adversity, or even to die, for that truth which they preached. What need to say more ? * he proceeds significantly : ' some believed and were bap- tized ^, admiring the simplicity of their blameless life, and the sweetness of their heavenly teaching.' It is the first of several beautiful summaries, given by the single-hearted and thoroughly pious historian *, of the results produced by ' the argument of a pious life,' the evidence derived from self-devo- tion and consistency. Doubtless there were among them hearers not a few who were ' feeling after God : ' the serene brightness, the mysterious majesty, the unimaginable tender- ness of the new faith had a fascinating power which became irresistible in connection with such signal purity and single- heartedness as the lives of its preachers displayed. They wpre daily to be seen moving to and fro between the Stable-gate and ^ Elmham, Hist. Mon. S. Aug. p. 91 : — • Mansio signatur, quae Stabelgate notatur.' Thorn (X Script. 1759) describes the place as ' in the parish of St. Alphege, over against the King's Street, on the north.* 3 Bede, i. 26. ' • You,* wrote Alcuin to the Kentish people, ' are the origin of the salvation of the Engli-sh, the beginning of prosperity,' &c. Ep. 59. * See Bede, iii. 5, on Aidan : ' Quod non aliter quam vivebat cum stiis, ipse docebat.' lb. iii. 17 : ' Industriam faciendi simul et docendi mandata ccelestia.' Again, Fursey wrought on many souls ' et exemplo virtutis et incitamento sermonis,' iii. 19 : Tuda 'et verbo cunctos docebat et opere,* iii. 26 : and so ()f Cuthbert in iv. 27, ' verbo praedicationis simul et opere virtutis.' Cp. Ep. ad Egbert, 2, • et operatione et doctrina . . . Neutra enim haec virtus sine altera rite potest impleri,' &c. E 50 Baptism of Ethelbert. CHAP. II. St. Martin's ^, where they sang the Psalms, prayed, celebrated Baptism of mass 2, preached, baptized. According to the usual story ^, Ethelbert. ^j^-^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^^ ^£ ^^ Canterbury tradition, the Whitsun- eve which followed on their entrance into Canterbury, that is, the 1st of June, beheld the most signal of their successes in the baptism of Ethelbert ^. Whenever it took place *, — and it must have taken place during this summer, or at least in the early autumn, — it was an event standing by itself ^ ; for no royal conversion that we read of^ could in all its cir- cumstances, and with regard both to moral reality or to grandeur of result, come up to that which led the Kentish Bretwalda to profess the Christian faith with a triple ' I believe,' and descend as a proselyte into ' the salutary laver,' i^at, in the words actually used, ' he might be born again into the new infancy of true innocence,' and be ' strengthened by the clear shining of the Holy Spirit '^.^ His example told naturally upon his subjects : ' day after day more people came together^ to hear the Word, and, forsaking heathen * Gocelin makes ' the blessed prelate Letard ' attend at St. Martin's when the Eoman teachers, superior to him as gold to silver, * ibidem quae Dei sunt age- bant ; ' Vit. Maj. i. s. 20. ^ * Missas facere,' a phrase which appears first in St. Ambrose, Ep. xx. 4, * Missam facere coepi ; dum oflFero,' «&;c. ; but here it miglit have its original meaning of performing the dismissal of catechumens before the oblation. In the first canon of the Council of Valencia, A.D, 546 (Mansi, viii. 620), *Missa catechumenorum ' is so used, and in conjunction with the bringing in of the gifts. From this dismissal, as the dividing line between the two parts of the Liturgy, the whole derived a name convenient from its brevity, but possessing no other merit. ^ Elmham, Hist. Monast. S. Aug. p. 137 :' In die Pentecostes . . . Ethelbertus baptizatus est.' So Thorn, X Script. 1759. * The forms used would be those of the Gregorian Sacramentary, Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 62. See especially the Benedictio Fontis. ' 'Illuxit dies,' exclaims Gocelin, * Anglis et Angelis solemnissimus ; ' s. 22. From the verses in Elmham, p. 91, it might be inferred that the King's baptism was only a month before Augustine's consecration. ^ Contrast it, e. g. with that of Chlodwig. ' Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 157, 65, 89. * One would like to think that there is some truth in the story which Gocelin professes to have gained from tradition (see above, p. 46). A youth mingles in the throng in order to gratify a scornful curiosity. Augustine gazes fixedly at him, and says to his attendant, ' Bring that young man to me.' The youth, overawed, clasps the Saint's feet; all his pride and levity give place to faith : Augustine embraces, instructs, baptizes, solemnly blesses him. Vit. Maj. 49. Death of St. Columba, 5i rites, to embrace the faith, and so attach themselves to the chap. ii. unity of Christ's holy Church. It is said that the king so far encouraged their conversion as on the one hand to compel no man to become a Christian ^, and on the other to show a closer affection to those who believed, as being heirs with him of the heavenly kingdom. For he had learned from his teachers that the service of Christ ought to be voluntary, not compulsory.' They had learned this lesson from their teacher : Gregory had written, some years before, ' He who is brought to the font by coercion, instead of persuasion, is but too likely to relapse '^' So ends the first scene of this great drama : nor can Death of we fail to be interested in the coincidence, that on the C<>1"°^^*« Sunday morning next after that Pentecost, i. e. on June y, 597 3, the noblest missionary career ever accomplished in Britain came to its end in the distant monastery of Icolm- kill*. While Augustine was building up the first Church of Englishmen, Columba was, in his own words, ' entering on the way of his fathers ^,' and leaving to his disciples the glory of an apostolic example, and the impulse which was destined to take up the work of the Augustinian mission itself, in the northern English realms, and to succeed where * See Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 28. In this Ethelbert towers above various royal promoters of Christianity, such as Harold Blaatand of Denmark and the two Olafs, and Eric IX. of Sweden among the Finns. Even Stephen of Hun- gary, who began like him, was provoked by Pagan rebellion to banish or enslave those who climg to the old worship. The result, says Hard wick, Ch. Hist., M. Ages, p. 139, was ' a terrible revulsion at his death in favour of the Pagan creed.' ^ Greg. Ep. i. 47. Cp. i. 10, 35, ix. 6, xiii. 12, specially against coercion of Jews, or interference with their worship. Yet Gregory was not thoroughly consistent : in Ep. iv. 26 he suggests that Sardinian rustics obstinate in Paganism should be heavily burdened. ^ See Reeves's Adamnan, p. 310. * Dr. Reeves (p. 259) supposes lona to be a corruption of loMa, the adjectival form of lou, la, Hy, ' Hii ' (Bede) or Y, meaning, ' The island,' and length- ened into I-colum-kill, the island of Columba of the Church, a name given him for his early piety. ' Adamnan, Vit. Col. iii. 23. Columba was bom in Donegal, a.d. 521; founded a monastery at Derry in 546; was ordained priest probably in 551 ; came over to Hy in 563 (not, as Bede says, 565; Lanigan, ii. 158; Reeves, p. Ixxv). E % 52 Consecration of Augustine. Consecra- tion of Augustine. that mission had seemed to fail, or at any rate where its energy had been arrested. One can hardly read the history of the Christianising of our forefathers, with its unexpected disappointments and its unexpected triumphs, — its tale of lights kindled and then quenched, and again ' relumed ' quo minime reris, of instruments changed with startling sudden- ness, and hopes realised in forms far out of calculation,— and not remember how St. Paul was at one time forbidden to preach in ' Asia \' and how baffling to sanguine hearts must have been his detention under Felix. These mysterious *^ chains and sequences,' to use Origen's phrase^, in the Divine action upon men or nations, ought assuredly to teach us two things — an awe of the plan that so far transcends its agents, and a patient assurance that it will fulfil itself in its time ^. The next step, for Augustine, was to obtain episcopal con- secration. For this, 'according to Gregory's directions,' he was to apply to that Gallic hierarchy which the Pope could not but regard as having been apathetic and inert with re- ference to the evangelisation of the heathens of Britain *. To Gaul, and to the principal church in South Gaul, that of Aries, — which had made good its precedence among Gallic bishoprics^, and could boast of such prelates as the younger Hilary and as Csesarius, — Augustine repaired in the autumn. * Acts xvi. 6 ; cp. xix. lo. * Orig. 0. Cels. iv. 8. ' • Lord ! who Thy thousand years dost wait To work the thousandth part Of Thy vast plan, for us create With zeal a patient heart.' Newman's Verses, p. 156. * Greg. Ep. vi. 58, 'sed aacerdotes e vicino negligere,' &c. lb. 59. ' See Fleury, b. 23. c. 45, compared with Gregory's words, referred to below. Zosimus favoured Aries ; other popes, as Leo, did not, until Symmachus made its bishop his vicar ; Bened. Edd. note on Greg. Ep. v. 53, where Gregory, following ancient custom, grants a pall to the bishop of Aries. On the civil grandeur of Aries as the residence of the Gallic Prefect, see Life of St. German, p. 187. The Benedictine biographers of Gregory (Vit. Greg. iii. 3. 3), after observing that the city of Aries had been made the civil capital of Gaul, add, • Ab ea dignitate politica primatus ecclesiasticus initium duxisse videtur : ' yet the bishops of the province in 450 had asserted the primacy of the see on the ground that it was founded by the apostolic Trophimus; Leo, Ep. 65. Foundation of Canterbury Cathedral, 63 He was consecrated by the archbishop Vergilius ^, and by other chap. ii. Frankish prelates, on the i6th of November, to be himself ' Archbishop of the English.' Hastening home, he found, to his joy, a multitude of new proselytes : and on Christmas Day, as Gregory, in a letter glowing with thankfulness, informed his brother patriarch Eulogius of Alexandria ^, more than ten thousand Kentish men were baptized, — many of whom, no doubt, may be reckoned as rather conformists to their king's new religion than genuine believers in its truth ^. Established as bishop in Canterbury, Augustine received from Ethelbert the gift of his own palace * : and the king, according to tra- dition, actually withdrew from his capital to Reculver ^. Near Founda- the palace stood a desecrated church, built ' by the old handiwork Canterbury of Roman Christians ^ : ' Augustine, with the royal sanction, Cathedral. reclaimed it, and re-dedicated it, in imitation of the Lateran basilica at Rome, ' in the na,me of the Holy Saviour, Jesus Christ our God and Lord"^.' This was the beginning of our original and metropolitan ' Christ Church,' the mother-church of English Christianity. In restoring the old fabric, Augus- tine enlarged it into stately proportions, and modelled its arrangements from the Vatican basilica of St. Peter. The * Bede mi8;fcakenly says, by Etherius, whom, further on, he treats as predecessor of Vergilius at Aries, i. 28. Etherius was archbishop of Lyons, contemporary of Vergilius of Aries. Vergilius had been abbot of Autun ; Greg. Tut. H. Fr. ix. 23. He died an old man, while reclining on his couch and saying his office; Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 312. Bede's mistake is in- geniously accounted for by Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 369 : Nothelm, who copied Roman documents for Bede, copied one letter (out of a series of commendatory letters) to Etherius, of 596, another to Vergilius, of 601, and Bede supposed both to have been written to the bishop of Aries. ^ Greg. Ep. viii. 30. Gocelin says they were baptized in the Swale : if so, it was the passage so called between Sheppey and the mainland. 3 See Bede, ii. 5. * See Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 156, » See Stanley, pp. 39, 45. * Bede, i. 33 : ' antiquo Romanorum fidelium opere factam fuisse didicerat.' Cp. his reference to the Roman fountain at Carlisle, Vit. Cuthb. 27. ■^ Elfric, on coming to the archbishopric in 995, was told by the oldest men whom he could consult that Augustine hallowed the minster in Christ's name and St. Mary's, on the mass-day of SS. Primus and Felicianus, i. e. June 9; Chronicle, a. 995. King Wihtred's • Privilege to Churches' describes it as ' the Church of the Saviour j' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 240. For the service of dedication see Muratori, Lit. Rom. i. 613. 54 Church of St. Pancras. CHAP. II. nave had aisles ^, and towers on the north and south : east- ward of the ' choir of the singers ' there was, as in the present church, a lofty ascent, required by the construction of a crypt * such as the E-omans call a Confession.' The account extant speaks of two apses, at the eastern and western ends, each with its altar : in the western, against the wall^ stood the episcopal throne, and some way to the east of it was an altar which is distinguished from ' the great altar ' at the east end, . but which it is thought, from its nearness to the cathedra, may have been the original altar, as was the ease in St. Peter's 2. Augustine had a general license from Ethelbert to restore for Christian use any old British churches : and one such, which had long been Paganised, and which stood between the wall of Canterbury and St. Martin's, was hallowed by him in memory of the Koman boy-martyr St. Pancras, whose family had once owned the ground on the Coelian, where St. Andrew's monastery stood ^. Those who visit St. Augustine's College may see, somewhat eastward of its precinct, an old brick arch, which has been supposed to be a relic of this building. While establisbing the conventual life in connection with ' Christ Church,' Augustine planned the erection of another monastery*, chiefly in order to secure holy ground for his own grave ^, which must necessarily lie ^ See the description cited and conunented on in Willis's Hist, of Cant. Cath. p. 9 ff. On the ancient St. Peter's see Fergusson, Hist. Architect, i. 365 : it had two aisles on each side of the nave ; the walls rose to a great height above the pillars ; the sanctuary was ' small and contracted,' but projected like a transept either way on each side of the apse. ^ Willis, p. 29. At this altar in the western apse the priest celebrated in the ' basilican* manner, ' having his face turned towards the people,' who stood below him looking westward. ^ For St. Pancras, see Alb. Butler for May 12. Elmham associates the memory of the boy-martyr with the impression produced by the English boys in the forum on Gregory, then abbot of the monastery which he had founded *ad clirum Scauri de patrimonio S. Paneratii ;' Hist. Mon. Aug. p. 80. * Bede, i. 33 : 'in qua et ipsius . . . et omnium episcoporum Dorovernensium, simul et regum Cantiae, poni corpora possent.' " See Stanley, p. 39, and Hardwick's Preface to Elmham, p. iv. The planning or ' fundatio ' of the monastery was in 598, the ' dotatio' in 605, says Elmham, p. 81, but on the authority of untrustworthy ' charters.' Elmham says that Augustine chose there ' locum sepulturae, removed from the noise of the world, ut sic exiret cum passo Domino extra portam ; * p. 82. The Mission recruited from Rome, 55 outside the city wall. The site chosen was that on which chap. n. stands the present ' St. Augustine's.' But now the archbishop found reason to send to Gregory Messen- an account of his proceedings, with a statement of some points fo Gr^egl>ry. on which he desired instructions from Rome. We had better consider these matters in connection with Gregory's replies to Augustine. The bearers of the letter were Laurence, a priest, and Peter, a monk ^. They set forth, it would seem, in the spring of 598 : but here comes one of the difficulties of the narrative. Bede says that the Pope replied 'without delay : ' but the replies are expressly dated in the summer of 601. There was, then, a delay of some three years : how are we to explain it ? Partly, perhaps, by the necessity of finding recruits for the English mission, partly by the press of anxiety and business which, coupled with fits of painful illness ^, weighed heavily even on such a spirit as the great Pope's, and made his office a daily burden. If the ' swords of the Lombards ^ ' were sheathed in a truce, there were urgent Church affairs in Gaul ^ to be dealt with, and Gregory was interested, now in a theological controversy which grew out of the Eutychian ^, now in the proceedings of a high judicial officer sent to Rome from Constantinople ^. These are but specimens of his cares : yet still it remains somewhat surpris- ing that he did not find the men he wanted and answer the questions proposed until the 22nd of June, 601. The men selected were four '^, Mellitus, Justus, Paulinus, Mission of and Rufinianus. Of these, the first three became eminent in ^^^ three our Church history ; the third being the most eminent of all. others. Several letters were entrusted to them. * Bade, i. 27. * Reversusque Britanniam misit continue Romam Laurentium. .... Nee mora . . . responsa recipit.' "^ See Greg. Ep. x. 35. * For nearly two years I have had to keep my bed, suffering such pain from gout that I could hardly get up even for three hours, on festivals, to celebrate the solemnities of masses. ... I am compelled to exclaim, " Bring my soul out of prison ! " ' Cp. xi, 30, 44 ; xiii. 22. ' Ep. vii. 26. In ix. 43 he thanks the Lombard Queen for promoting this truce. In 599 the Lombards became orthodox; Milman, ii, 137. * Ep. ix. 106-116. ^ Ep. X. 39 ; on the Agnoctae. * Ep. x. 51. ' Thorn says that Nathanael, afterwards abbot of SS. Peter and Paul, came with them; X Script. 1769. 56 Gregory s Answers CHAP. II. The longest was the reply to Augustine's various queries ^. Letters of Qf these, the first had referred to the division of the eontri- Gregory. ^ ' butions of the faithful for Church purposes, and to the arrangement of Augustine's own life in relation to his clergy. Reply to Gregory answers : The best scheme of distribution is that tin?s ques- which the Roman see is wont to recommend, a fourfold ^ par- tions. tition between the bishop, the clergy, the poor, and the needful repair of churches. But for Augustine himself, no separate provision will be necessary : he, as a monk, will continue to live in community with his clergy ^, and thus far perpetuate the life of those early Christians, of whom none said that what he possessed was his own ^. Clerks in minor orders ^ might marry and live outside the bishop's household, receiving their due stipends ; but care must be taken that their lives be spent under ecclesiastical rule, consecrated by devotional offices, and kept pure from all things unlawful. The second question grew out of Augustine's observation of peculiarities in the Gallic ritual. ' Why, seeing that the faith is one, are ^ Ep. xi. 64; Bede, i. 27. St, Boniface (Ep. 40) asked Archbishop Nothehn, in 736, to send him a copy of this letter, because the registrars of the Roman Church said that it was not to be found in their ' scrinium.' On Gregory's ' large-minded sagacity ' shown in it, see Pearson, Hist. Engl. i. 123. ^ So Gelasius I. had ordered; Ep. 9. 27, in Mansi, viii. 45. A Council of Braga, in 563, had made a triple division, not mentioning the poor; Mansi, ix. 778 : yet the next Council of Braga forbade the bishop to receive the third part of the offerings, ib. ix. 839. But this prohibition is cancelled in 4th Toledo, c. 33. See on the old division Bingham, b. v. c. 6. s. 3. On Gregory's direction see Kemble, ii. 502 : * This was . . . the legitimate substitute for the old mode of distribution, which the apostles and their successors had adopted.' ^ Compare Bede, iv. 27; S. Aug. Serm. 353. * Comp. Sozomen, vi. 31, on the clergy of the church of Rhinocurura. ' He calls them ' extra sacros ordines,' meaning the ostiary, lector, exorcist, acolyth, those below the subdiaconate (cf . Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 408) ; for this order, although confessedly not of apostolic institution, had come to be regarded as sacred in a sense in which those of readers or acolyths were not. In imposing celibacy on subdeacons, Ep. i. 44, Gregory was following Leo the Great; see his Ep. 14. 4. The loth canon of Ancyra had allowed deacons to marry, if at their ordination they had stipulated for it ; but not otherwise. See Routh, ReU. Sac. iv. 189, that there are no cases in antiquity of bishops, presbyters, or deacons who married after their ordination, ' nisi diaconi de hac re prius cavissent.' But at the time of the Council of Chalcedon (can. 14) the limited permission as to deacons was obsolete, and subdeacons also were bound to celibacy. The 2 7th ' Apostolic ' canon must be later than that of Ancyra. to Augustine s Questions, 67 tliere different customs in different Churches, and one custom chap. u. of masses in the holy Roman Church, another in that of Gaul?' In Southern and Central Gaul he had noticed the number of Liturgical collects in the mass, the numerous variations of the Preface, the invocation of the Holy Spirit on the elements, the solemn episcopal blessing pronounced after the breaking of the Bread, and before * the Peace ' and the Communion ^. Gregory, who was deeply interested in liturgical questions, and had revised and re-edited the ' Sacramentary ' of his predecessor Gelasius ^, and brought the Eucharistic ceremonial to what he considered an elaborate perfection, was at the same time far from being a pedant or a bigot on such points : he advised, on the con- trary, a wise eclecticism. Let Augustine ' collect into a sort of bundle ' the best usages of Rome, of Gaul, or of other Churclies, whatever he had found to be most pious, religious, righteous, and most likely to be pleasing to God, and so form a ritual for the English Christians, who were as yet young in faith, and could become accustomed to whatever was given them. There was no need to stick blindly to the Roman observances as such. ' For we ought not to love things for the sake of persons, but persons for the sake of things ^.' Again, Augus- tine had asked how theft from a church was to be punished. Distinguish the motives, says Gregory: make allowance for the temptations of poverty; let there be a scale of penalties fairly adjusted ; let charity be the motive and the regulating principle of your discipline * : when you punish, still regard the offender as a son. What is thus stolen must be replaced; * See Muratori, Lit. Rom. Vet. ii. 517 ff.; Neale and Forbes, Gallican Liturgies, p. 32 ff. The 'Gothic' (rather, Celtic) Liturgy is that which was used in Southern Gaul, the ' Gallic,' distinctive!}' so called, in Central. See Wilberforce on H. Eucharist, p. 48. On the episcopal benedictions in question see Maskell's ' Ancient Liturgy,' p. 1 10. That they were not originally in the Gregorian Sacramentary, see Muratori, Lit. Rom. i. 80. ^ John the Deacon, ii. 17. See Pahner, Orig. Lit. i. 113'; Muratori, i. 63. * See Ep. i. 43 : * Where the faith is one, differences of custom do no harm to Holy Church.' In ix. 1 2 he defends himself for having introduced Alleluia out of the Paschal season, and the Kyrie and the Lord's Prayer presently after the Canon. He says he is willing to imitate his inferiors (the Church of Constantinople) in what is good. * He mentions fines and beatings as penalties. An old Irish canon ascribed to St. Patrick had specified, as one among three penalties, the amputation of hand or foot. Mansi, vi. 519. 58 Gregory s Answers CHAP. TT. but (observe his indomitable fair-mindedness) never let a churcli receive more compensation than the amount of the robbery. *— ^The fourth and fifth questions related to marriage. Might two men marry tvt^o sisters not near akin to them ? It was strange that such a question should have been put. Gregory despatched it by a brief affirmative. It was stranger yet, on the other hand, that Augustine should have asked whether a man might marry his stepmother : Gregory's negative answer alluded to Herod and the Baptist. Converts must know that for a Christian to contract such an union is a deadly sin : those English who had contracted it while heathens ^ are to treat it as null, but are not to be debarred from communion if they abandon it. As to the matrimonial degrees, the Roman secular law allowed the marriage of first cousins j but on natural and on religious grounds, Gregory declared against it^. Persons nearer akin than the third degree (i. e. that beyond first cousins) ought not to marry ^. — The sixth and seventh questions recurred to the subject of Church order. Might one bishop consecrate a bishop-elect if other prelates were not within reach? Gregory's answer shows that he thought such consecrations spiritually valid*. ^ As Eadbald did afterwards; Bede, ii. 5. It was regarded by heathen Teutons as more than permissible : see Kemble, ii. 407 ; Haddan's Remains, p. 311. It had been forbidden, together with the marriage of a widower with his wife's sister, &c., by the third Council of Paris in 557 ; Mansi, ix. 745. See also Council of Auxerre, ib. ix. 914 ; Council of Epaon, c. 30, ib. viii. 563. ^ It was disapproved, says St, Augustine, by Christian public opinion, although not forbidden by God's law, and before it was forbidden by man's ; Civ. Dei, xv. 16. See Council of Epaon, in 517, can. 30, Mansi, viii. 563, forbidding union with a * consohrina,' as incestuous. So 3rd Orleans, c. 9. Compare Gibbon, v. 299. ^ In the last year of Gregory's life, a bishop asked him to explain the rumour that he had thus sanctioned, for the English converts, marriages within the fourth degree. Were not marriages up to the seventh degree unlawful? Gregory answered in effect. It is well known in Rome that my permission referred only to the early days of the English mission : when its converts are ripened in faith, I intend that they shall not be allowed to marry within the sixth degree ; Ep. xiv. 1 7. Giraldus denounces the Welsh for maiTying within it ; Descr. Camb. ii. 5. * If we compare (i) the varying language of the canons ordering a plurality of consecrators, e.g. Apostolic can. i, two or three; ist Aries, seven, or at least three, besides the metropolitan; Nicene 4, all com- provincials, if possible, — if not, three at least, liaving the written consent of to Angus tineas Questions. 59 * In the English Church, while you are its only bishop, you chap. u. cannot consecrate save in the absence of other bishops. For when bishops shall come over from Gaul, they will attend the consecration as witnesses^/ (It is observable that Gregory here ignores the British Celtic bishops, to whom the next question in part refers.) But it would be well to station new bishops in such places as would allow of their assembling for a con- secration_, so that ultimately three or four bishops might attend in every such case ; or, as the true text probably runs, so that there may be nothing to prevent the assembling of other pastors, whose presence is very useful, for the conse- cration of a new bishop^. He alludes to the ordinary social custom whereby married persons were invited to a wedding, to sympathise with the parties concerned : similarly, he says, at a consecration, such persons should meet as might rejoice in the elevation of the new bishop, or pray to God for his preservation. Again, Augustine had asked, ' How ought I to deal with the bishops of Gaul and Britain ? ' The question as to the former may seem to show some ignorance, possibly a touch of self-importance. Gregory answered decisively, that, as bishop of the English, Augustine could have no manner of jurisdiction in Gaul. Should he visit that country, he might the others ; 2nd Aries, 5, the metropolitan or three comprovincials ; with (2) the cases in which a consecration by two bishops, or even by one only was held valid, although irregular, — e. g. the case of Siderius of Palaebisca, recognised as a bishop by St. Athanasius, and of Evagrius, recognised by Eome and Alexandria — see Bingham, b. ii. c. 11. s. 5 — we must infer that though the rule in question was very ancient, and even Novatian, in the third century, took care to observe it (Eus. vi. 43), yet it was intended to guard against disorderly and clandestine consecrations, and its observance was not deemed a ' sine qua non' for the conferring of the episcopal character. Gregory's illustration from a wedding-party is significant on this point. In the Scotic Churches consecration by one bishop was not unfrequent : see Lanigan, ii. 1 28 ; Todd's Life of St. Patrick, p. 4. Palmer, who denies the validity of such con- secrations save in absolute necessity, cites Habertus that in ' ancient MSS. ' the reading is, ' Nisi cum episcopis,' instead of ' nisi sine episcopis.' On the Church, ii. 321. But this would make no sense. ^ So in the Benedictine Gregory, • illi . . . adsistent.' In Bede's text the sense is, • For when do bishops come from Gaul to be present at a bishop's consecration?' ('qui . . . adsistant ? '). ^ * Quatenus nulla sit necessitas ut in ordinatione . . . convenire non possint,* &c., as in Bened. Greg. Bede's text seems partially corrupt, ' quatenus .... ut . . . facile debeant convenire.' 60 Gregory s Answers CHAP. II. give brotherly counsel to the bishop of Aries, who had re- ceived the ' pall ' from Gregory's predecessor, and must not be interfered with in his (metropolitan) authority : the Pope had directed him to confer with Augustine^, and Augustine might do a good work by ' persuading ' the Gallic bishops to correct abuses, and setting them a good example ; but more than this he could not have a right to do. Here we must ask, What was the pall, and what did it indicate ? The ancient garment called himation, square-shaped and blanket- like, which was worn over the tunic in ancient Greece, may be identified with the 'pallium/ or cloak, which Tertullian commends as more convenient than the toga^. Such a habit might be of plain or of rich materials : the coarse ' pallium ^ ' of philosophers was retained by scholars who became Christians, and adopted by Christian ascetics : Alexandrian bishops in the fifth century wore a white woollen scarf round the neck, called an omophorion*, apparently a diminished pallium: the original shape, that of a cloak, is thought to have been used in the West in the fifth century^. But a rich form of this ^ Ep. xi. 68 ; Bede, i. 28. It is dated on the same day as the rest. It directs Vergilius to avail himself of the help of ' our common brother Augustine,' if he should visit Aries, for the correction of * offences of priests or others.* For, says Gregory significantly, ' it often happens that those who are at a distance are the first to understand what has to be set right.' ^ Tertull. de Pallio, 5. It was a loose garment, which might be so worn as to leave the breast or arm bare, or to conceal the whole person (hence ' palliate '). See the catacomb painting found in the cemetery of St. Callistus, in which a man clad in the pallium, but with shoulder and breast bare, extends his hands towards bread and fish on a tripod. Northcote and Brownlow, Roma Sotter- ranea, p. 267, Plate 14. ^ Also called rpi^cmv, Soc. iii. I. It was worn by Justin (Euseb. iv. ii) and Heraclas (Euseb. vi. 19). Nepotian, a presbyter, wore it until his last moments ; Jerome, Ep. 60. 13. Salvian describes a monk's usual appearance by ' palliatima ;' Gub. Dei, viii. 4. The first Council of Orleans uses ' pallium accepisse ' as equivalent to monastic profession, c. 21 ; Mansi, viii. 155. * See the story of Theophilus of Alexandria in Fleury, b. 21. c. 3. Symeon of Thessalonica describes the omophorion as encircling the shoulders before and behind ; De Templo et Missa, ap. Goar, Euchol. p. 2 20. That it was worn about the neck appears from Liberatus' account of the ' paU of St. Mark,' Breviar. 20. All Eastern bishops now wear it : they lay it aside at the Gospel, and resume it before communion; see Goar, 147, 305. Cp. Neale, Introd. East. Ch. i. 312. ^ Life of St. German, p. 244. The word is also used for a woman's cloak, Greg. Tiu". H. Fr. iii. 29, and for a silk cloak for men, Bede, Hist. Abb. 8, and in Adamn. Vit. Col. iii. i as an equivalent for 'peplum' and 'sagum,' to Augustine s Questions, 6i garment became part of the Imperial attire, and was granted chap. n. by emperors, as a mark of honour, to patriarchs^ : then the popes began, originally in the emperor's name^ or by his desire, to * allow the use of the pall ^ to certain bishops, — to those who represented the ' Apostolic see,' or to some metropo- litans, or to other prelates of influence and distinction^. In Gregory's time it was thus variously granted : his language shows that it was splendid, and somewhat cumbrous * : the wearer was to guard against self-complacency ^ : it was not to be worn except during mass ^. Although in several cases it was an accompaniment of metropolitan dignity, it did not become a necessary badge of that dignity until a later stage in the development of Papalism"^. Now to return to the letter ; Gregory says of the British bishops, in contrast to the Gallic, that they are all committed to the care and authority of Augustine. Herein he was asserting a claim which those bishops, as we shall see ere long, would not admit. They recognised the primacy or precedency of Eome, but did not deem themselves under subjection to its supremacy^. Gregory relied on the 'apostolic^ prerogatives of the see of Peter * Collier, i. i6o ; Eobertson, Hist. Ch. iv. 133, and Growth of Papal Power, p. 121. In 796, Charles the Great sends some of his dalmatics ' vel palliis' to English bishops ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 497. "^ See Greg. Ep. i. 28, ix. 11. Pope Vigilius would not grant the pall to the archbishop of Aries until he gained the emperor's consent. ' Note of Bened. Edit, on Ep. ix. 11. Gregory sends it to the bishop of Corinth ; Ep. v. 57. * Ep. iii. 56 ; V. 53 ; vi. 9. His own pall was mediocre ; John Deac. iv. 84. * Ep. iv. I ; V. II ; ix. 125. * Ep. iii. 56 ; v. 56. (An exception admitted in one case : the bishop of Ravenna may wear his pall in four annual processions.) Alcuin exhorts the archbishop of York not to wear his pall save when attended by deacons ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 503. ' See Robertson, Hist. Ch. iv. 133. ^ lingard contests this, and says that Gregory had evidently no expectation that the British bishops would assert independence ; A.-S. Ch. i. 380. But Gregory, after the manner of Popes, would take for granted that a claim made in the name of St. Peter would succeed. Lingard puts a manifest force on some words of Gildas, Increp. ad Cler. 2 ; and argues as to earlier times as if the burden of proof did not lie with those who hold that the British Church was from the first subject to Rome. He assumes also that the influence of the Roman see over Gaul would imply a parallel influence over Britain ; p. 375. (He misinterprets the famous passage in St. Irenaeus, iii. 3.) He does not dwell on the Council of Aries : as to which, see Collier, i. 63. 62 Gregory s Answers CHAP, ij, throughout the West, not to speak of Eastern Christendom. Had he been reminded that the eighth canon of the Council of Ephesus had forbidden any bishop to assume power over any province that had not originally been under his juris- diction^, and that Britain was properly outside the Roman patriarchate^, he would doubtless have fallen back on the inherent supremacy of his see. Vehement as were his protests against the adoption by another patriarch, or the application to himself, of the title of Universal Bishop^, he always acted on that theory respecting his own office which had been gradually developing itself from the early part of the fifth century, and was to develope itself yet more in after- times. Pope after Pope 'never retracting, but adopting and uniformly improving upon the pretensions of their prede- cessors*.' This system Gregory inherited, believed in it firmly, acted on it persistently^: his virtues, in fact, recom- mended and fortified what was in itself, and as judged by the light of genuine Catholic tradition, nothing better than a gradual corruption, by excess, of the ecclesiastical polity of the first ages. It would be most unjust to compare him to a Gre- gory VII. or Innocent III., to Pius IV. or to Pius IX. ; yet the line which he took was preparing the way for such successors, and formed an element in the process by which an indefinite * ' That none of the bishops shall take possession of a province that was not from the first and originally under his hand or that of his predecessors, and that if any one has taken possession of such, or has subjected it to himself by force, he shall restore it, in order that the rules of the fathers may not be transgressed, and the arrogance of (secular) authority may not come in unawares under the pretence of priestly action, and we may not by degrees and unconsciously lose the liberty which our Lord Jesus Christ, the liberator of all men, gave us by His own blood. Therefore it is the pleasure of the Holy CEcumenical Synod that to each province be preserved pure and inviolate the rights belonging to it from the beginning/ &c. Mansi, iii, 1469. ^ The Roman patriarchate, properly speaking, included the ten provinces which were civilly under the Vicarius Urbis, i. e. Italy south of the ' Italic dioecese,' with the three adjacent islands ; the churches of this region being called * suburbicary.' Thus Africa, Spain, Gaul, and Britain were not originally vathin the Roman 'patriarchate.' See Bingham, b. ix. c. i. s. 9 fF. ; Palmer, Orig, Lit. ii. 260 ff. ; Bp. Wordsworth, Theoph. Anglic. p. 134; Reichel, See of Rome, p. 12. ' Greg. Ep. v. 18, 19, 20, 43; vii. 31, 33 ; viii.-30. He calls the title proud, rash, foolish, wicked, blasphemous, anti-christian. * Hussey's Rise of the Papal Power, p. 149. ^ E,eichel, p. 18. to Augustine s Questions, 63 precedency and a limited patriarchate were, in effect, to be chap. ii. superseded by a claim to dominion at once oecumenic in its scope and autocratic in its character. The result to the English Church was, that it became more and more dependent on Rome. While Gregory was perfectly in his rights in occupying the ground which British bishops had abandoned ; while gratitude for the sending of Augustine, and again after- wards for the appointment of Theodore, — the results of which tended to obscure the amount of non-Roman mission-work done among the English, — naturally led the English Church, when organised, to lean to Rome as colonists look to a mother- country, without raising questions as to what the Roman Church might in strictness claim on account of these great services ^ ; a yet stronger tie to Rome was formed by that current and growingly dominant exaggeration of a primacy into supremacy, under the influence of which it seemed a religious duty to regard the chair of St. Peter as the one centre of unity, and, more than that, as the permanent seat of decisive authority, for the whole Church of Christ. We may say of Augustine's questions, taken altogether, and including some which referred to matters of ceremonial purity, that they illustrate his monastic inexperience of pastoral administration, and also, perhaps, indicate a certain want of elevation of character. They are hardly, at any rate, the questions which a great mind would have found it ne- cessary to refer to a distant superior ; in fact, some of them give the notion of a mind cramped by long seclusion, and somewhat helpless when set to act in a wide sphere. Other questions may occur to us, as naturally arising in presence of spiritual interests and requirements so vast and so absorbing : but Augustine does not propound them. One feels a sort of chill, a sensation akin to disappointment, in reading of his ' difficulties ^.' A letter of which Bede^ gives a fragment, and which was * See Bp. Wordsworth, Theoph. Anglic, p. 140. ^ In the Benedictine text of Gregory, the questions are broken up into eleven ; and there is also a request for relics of St. Sixtus, which is probably an after-addition. ' Bade, i. 31. The entire letter is in Ep. xi. 28. It begins, 'Gloria in excelsis .... quia granum frumenti mortuum est cadens in terram, ne solum 64 Question of Miracles. CHAP. II. proba])ly sent at this time, althougli the original date is lost ^, mirade^^ was intended, in great part, as a warning against spiritual elation. It brings us in front of a question which mediaeval narratives perforce suggest. Gregory had heard from Au- gustine's messengers that miracles had been wrought by his means among the English. Now^ of the mediaeval stories of miracles the great bulk may be summarily dismissed, — not merely, nor indeed mainly, because of the contrast which so many of them present, by their grotesqueness, or puerility, or matter-of-course profusion, to the ' signs ^ recorded in Scripture^, but because the interval between the alleged occurrence and the account of it is usually long enough to allow of a rank upgrowth of legend, encouraged by the fixed preconception of the age, that miracles must always attend upon, and attest, high sanctity. Such an interval, for instance, is found in the case of the marvels connected with St. Alban. But in other cases we have something like contemporary evidence ; yet, even here, deductions must be made for that craving after wonders^ which would not think of sifting testimony*, if not also for that strange mixture of belief regnaret in ccelo Who can describe the joy that has arisen in the hearts of all the faithful here, quod gens Angloruin .... sanclae fidei luce perfusa est?' * See Benedict. Edd. : ' In the Collection of Paul the Deacon . . . there is added. Data die Kalend. Januar.' ^ Take, for instance, the legends of St. Teilo and St. Oudoceus, as given in the Liber Landavensis. 8 See the judicious remarks of Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. loi ff. Sometimes an ordinary, or at least a clearly natural occurrence, is not embellished by miraculous adjuncts, but simply assumed to be supernatural : as when Cuthbert, suffering from a swollen knee, and lying in the open air, is advised ■ by a horseman in white to apply a poultice of wheaten flour boiled in milk, which proves efficacious, whereupon * he perceived that it was an angel.' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 2. See too the stories about animals, as the two otters in Vit. Cuthb. lo. Comp. Chr. Kemembr. Jan. 1852, p. 83: 'Bede regarded as miraculous, and called a miracle, what we neither regard nor call so.' See also Newman's Essay on Ecclesiastical Miracles, s. 5. i : ' Grant that upon prayer . . . deliverances are effected, . . . and there will be no need of analyzing the causes, whether supernatural or natural, to which they are to be referred.' Comp. Hardwick, Ch. Hist., M. Ages, p. 113. * It must, however, be remembered that Bede is often careful to mention his informant and attest his credibility, e.g. Vit. Cuthb. 5, 36 ; H. E. iii. 13, 19; iv. 25, 31, 32; V. 2, 3, 4, 6, 13. Lingard says, 'Bede relates several wonderful events, but not one mi his own knowledge;' A.-S. Ch. ii. 103. Question of Miracles. 65 nd untruthfulness which tempted men, — especially if any chap. n. ilfish end could be served, — to promote a cause by inventing •esh samples of that supernatural vindication, which they ever doubted it to have received in times and circumstances arallel to their own. Allowing for all this, and bearing in lind what Arnold ^ calls the ' d, priori probability in favour of he miracles of the Gospel, which cannot be said to exist a favour of those of later history,' so that the two sets of tatements are by no means to be accepted or rejected ogether ; ' able to judge freely of the miraculous stories of 3ede and other historians, it will not follow that a reasonable nind will exercise no belief, in religious matters, except such IS it dares not withhold.' It ' will, as a general rule,' looking dmply at ^ the evidence of the case,' ' disbelieve ' those jtories. 'But with regard to some miracles, there is no strong h priori improbability in their occurrence, but rather the contrary; as, for instance, where the first missionaries of the Gospel in a barbarous country ^ are said to have been assisted by a manifestation of the spirit of power ; and if the evidence appears to warrant^ our 'belief,' we may 'readily and gladly yield it, . . . most thankful to find sufficient grounds for believing that not only at the beginning of the Gospel, but in ages long afterwards, believing prayer has received extraordinary answers. . . Yet again, if the gift of faith, . . . of the faith which removes mountains, has been given to any in later times in remarkable measure, the mighty works which such faith may have wrought cannot be incredible in themselves to those who remember our Lord's promise : and if it appears from satisfactory evidence that they were wrought actually, we shall believe them, and believe with joy ^.' The extract is long, but it is only the chief part of a most suggestive context ; and perhaps it may bear upon the case before us. Augustine was not the man, we may well think, to impose on Gregory by an account which was a * Lect. on Mod. Hist. p. 133. ^ See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 100. ' Arnold adds, ' If we think that, supposing the miracle to be true, it gives the seal of God's approbation to oill the belief of him who performed it, this la manifestly a most hasty and imtenable inference.' F 66 Question of Miracles, CHAP. II. fraud. Some things evidently did happen, in relation to his converts, which he took to be miraculous : what they were, we know not : but if, at such a time, and amid such a work, be received some signal answers to prayer, that can be no difficulty to believers in the Gospel^. Gregory's warning, at once tender and thoughtful, has the true Gospel mark upon it. He reminds his ' dearest brother ' that Christ bade the Seventy rejoice, not in their power over the spirits, but rather that their names were written in heaven ; that the grace which is open to all is better than the gifts entrusted to a few, and ought to be the subject of a deeper joy than could be caused by any individual endowment ^ ; that sucb gifts carried with them a special temptation to spiritual self- confidence, and that their possessor should make them an occasion for self-scrutiny and deepened penitence, and regard them as, in effect, bestowed not on himself, but on those for whose benefit they had been given. *I have a sure hope,' he proceeds, in a part of the letter which Bede omits, *that your sins are already forgiven, and that you are a chosen instrument for bringing others to the same mercy ^.' Fcheme for A third letter, dated on the 22nd of June *, informed * Augustine that he would receive witb it a pall, to be used only in the celebration of mass. This was, for him, a token of archiepiscopal jurisdiction ; but in the exercise of that jurisdiction, Gregory seems to have thought of him as seated permanently in London^. For he contemplates, with a sanguine hopefulness as to the probable extent of the missionary successes, the formation of twelve dioceses to be. subject to Augustine as metropolitan, ' so that the bishop of London' — meaning evidently the successor of Augustine — ■ ^ See Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christian Belief, E. Tr. p. 332. ' Comp. Greg. Dial, i. 1 2 : ' Vitae vera sestimatio in virtute est operum, non in ostensione signorum ; ' and ib. iii. 1 7, that spiritual miracles transcend physical. ^ ' If,* he concludes, ' there is joy in heaven over one penitent, what must there be over a penitent nation ! Let us then say, let us all say, Gloria in excel sis ! ' * Bede, i. 29 ; Greg. Ep. xi. 65. ^ Thus it was not Gregory, but Ethelbert, and Augustine as acting with Ethelbert, who constituted the metropolitan see of Canterbury. See Bp. Wordsworth, Theophilus Anglicanus, p. 147. Sclieme for Bishoprics, 67 * might in future be always consecrated by his own synod ' of chap. n. suffragans, over whom he was to preside as archbishop. ^^^'^ (°^ , . , p Ar 1 organisa- Further, Augustine was to consecrate a bishop for York, — tion of here Gregory^s thoughts went back to Deira, — and if that ^^urch city and the parts near it should receive the word of God, that bishop should also consecrate twelve suffragans ^, and act as their metropolitan ; for Gregory intended, if he lived (he did not then think he should live much longer 2), to send him also a pall. Augustine, for his life, was in this case to be supreme over the northern metropolitan; 'we will that he should be subject to your control : ' but after Augustine's death the metropolitans of London and York were to be independent of each other, acting in concert^, and taking precedence according to seniority. Gregory reiterated his intention to place all the bishops in Britain under Augustine's personal supervision : ' that from the tongue and life of your Holiness they may receive the rule of believing rightly and living well.' The scheme drawn out, symmetrical and theore- tically satisfactory as it was, has remained a paper-scheme only : the fair vision of twelve bishops under Augustine^ and twelve more under a bishop sent by him to York, was never realised. Canterbury, of which Gregory took no account, remained the seat of the archbishopric, for the sufficient reason that London, as we shall see presently, could not for long years be regarded as, in any real sense, Christian. The Augustinian mission did not succeed in planting more than two bishoprics ; and the districts dependent on York have not even yet approached to Gregory's ideal. Beside the pall, Gregory sent a supply of ' sacred vessels *,' Gregory's altar-cloths ^, and church-furniture, with vestments ^ for ^ ^ 'The parts near it' would, in Gregory's mind, include a large part of Scotland. See Freeman, iv. 349. 2 See Ep. xi. 33, * Me proximum morti video.' ' ' Communi consilio et concordi action e quaeque sunt pro Christi zelo agenda,' &c. * See Greg. Ep. i. 68, ' in argento calicos duos.' " See Ep. i. 68, where 'pallia' is thus used. Gregory of Tours speaks of the altar and the oblations being covered 'pallio serico ;' H. Fr. vii. 22. ^ See Ep. vii. 40, ' duo oraria : ' Dial. i. 9, * episcopus . . . elevatis manibus extenso vestimento.' F a 68 Letters to Ethelbert and Bertha. CHAP. II, priests and clerics, relics of the Apostles and martyrs ^, and also a great number of manuscripts. The monastic chronicler^ recites a long list of these 'first-fruits of the books of the whole Church of England,' including a ' Gregorian Bible ' in two volumes, two copies of the Gospels^, two Psalters, a book on the Apostles' lives and deaths, a Passionary or Martyrology, an exposition of the Epistles and Gospels for several Sundays, all adorned with silver or jewels, and carefully preserved in St. Augustine's Abbey. But we cannot be sure that all these treasured volumes, some of which were kept close to the high altar itself, were veritable ' libri Gregoriani.' To the same date belong two letters which Gregory ad- dressed to Ethelbert and Bertha. He exhorts the former *, as 'set over the English race,' with 'kings and peoples subject to him,' to follow the example of the first Christian Emperor : and he particularly advises him to put down idolatry, and to destroy its temples ^. In the letter to Bertha ^, some gentle rebuke for her apparent tardiness '^ in the good work is blended with the assurance that what she had at last done has made the Romans pray for her long life, and excited interest even in Constantinople. Let her take Helena, the mother of Con- stantine, for a model, and make up for past neglect by greater zeal in support of the mission. Commendatory letters were * See Ep. iii. 19, 331 viii. 35. One of these 'relics' sent to Augustine, and by him given to SS. Peter and Paul's, aspired to higher antiquity, as being part of 'Aaron's rod ;' Elmham, p. 102. * Elmham, Hist. Monast. S. Aug. pp. 96-99 (see Introd. p. xxv). ' Two MSS. still extant have been supposed to be these ' Textus Evangeli- orum.' One is in the Bodleian ; the beginning and end are lost. It lies open at Mark xv. 28, et adimpleta est scribtura quae digit . . But, on the authority of the present Bodleian Librarian, it may be confidently dated some fifty years later, i. e. • circ. 650-700.' Another, in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is thought by Hardwick to be probably a * veritable relic of St. Gregory's benefaction ; ' Pref. to Elmham, p. xxvi. * Bede, i. 32 ; Ep. xi. 66. The letter contains an expression of his belief that 'the end of the world was approaching.' If the troubles that are to herald it should occur in Ethelbert's country, let him not be disturbed by them. ' 'Fanorum aedificia.' Couip. Bede, i. 30 ; ii. 13, 15 ; iii. 30. * Ep. xi. 29 : not in Bede. This letter is not dated, but is evidently a com- panion letter to the former. ^ * Jamdudum . . . debuistis . . . Nee tardum . . . debuit esse nee difficile . . . Agite ut . . . possitis quod neglectum est reparare.* Treatment of Pagan Temples, 69 also addressed to eleven Gallic bishops ^ and to Theodoric, chap. ii. Theodebert, Chlotair, and Brunhild. One of these letters requested the archbishop of Lyons to see that nothing should delay the journey of the four monks through that part of Gaul 2. Some weeks passed away: Gregory received no tidings from them, and became anxious about their safety. He had also time to reconsider his advice given to Ethelbert in favour of the destruction of Pagan temples. On this subject Treatment two views were open : in the fourth centuiy many temples tempos!* were overthrown by the zeal of individual Christians, and some acts of this sort in the reign of Constantius provoked unsparing reprisals in that of Julian ^. As Paganism grew weaker in the latter years of that century, these attacks were renewed by St. Martin in Gaul *, by Marcellus of Apamea in Syria ^, by Theophilus at Alexandria ^. Bishops in Africa petitioned the Emperor that such temples as were not among the ornamental buildings of cities might be utterly destroyed"^ : those in Rome itself, according to Jerome, were ' covered with dust and cobwebs ' in 403 ^ ; but we may allow for his characteristic exaggeration, and his own words show that these old fortresses of idolatry had not been levelled to the ground when the whole system of Pagan worship was put under the ban of imperial law in 392, several years after the closing of temples had been enforced in part of the empire^. Gradually the temples fell into ruin, or were pulled down under authority, or converted into Christian churches, as was sometimes the case, St. Augustine tells » Ep. xi. 55-62. ^ Ep. xi. 56. This letter has a special interest. Gregory tells the archbishop that as yet he has searched in vain for the writings of St. Irenseus (i. e. the Greek original), or for the record of his death. ' See the case of Mark of Arethusa, Soz. v. lo ; Theod. iii. 7. * Sulp. Sev., Vit. Mart. 13, — the story of the ancient temple and its adjacent pine-tree. ^ Theodoret, v, 21. Marcellus had the support of the prefect. * Soc. V. 16. Theophilus acted under special orders from Theodosius. ' Cod. Afiic. 58 ; Mansi, iii. 766. * Jerome, Ep. 107. i. He says that the destruction of the great temple at Gaza was continually expected ; ib. 2. » See Robertson, Hist. Ch. i. 393 ff. 70 Treatment of Pagan Temples, CHAP. II. us, in Africa ^. And to this lattor treatment of them Gre- gory, on reflection, now decidedly inclined 2. ' They ought by no means,' so he wrote in a letter to Mellitus ^, ' to be de- stroyed : ' Mellitus was to tell Augustine, when he saw him, that Gregory desired them, if solidly built, to be cleansed and hallowed for Christian worship. The people might be the more ready to attend that worship if it were solemnised in places which they had formerly frequented ; and as they had also been wont to hold sacrificial feasts *, it would be wise to provide them with some other enjoyments by way of compensation. On the day of the dedication, or on the festivals of those saints whose relics are there deposited, let the converts make themselves ' tabernacles ' with boughs of trees ^ around the temples now turned into churches, and there kill oxen, no longer in ' sacrifice to devils,' but as the materials of their meal, and with thanks to the Giver of all things ^. For, he pro- ceeds, with a true insight into the need of patient training and much tolerance for such rude proselytes, ' you cannot cut off everything at once from rough natures : he who would climb to a height must ascend step by step, he cannot jump the whole way"^.' Some pleasures permitted to the * Aug. Ep. 47. ' Vel in honorem.Dei veri convertuntur.' ^ It had been already carried out as to a temple at Novara in the early part of the sixth century; see Ennodius, Dictio 2, and Carm. ii. 11 : — 'Perdidit antiquum quis relligione sacellum, Numinibus pulsis quod bene numen habet?' So also in the case of the Roman temple of Romulus or Remus, dedicated in 527 by Felix IV. to SS. Cosmas and Damian. And a few years after Gregory's death it was carried out in regard to the Pantheon, which became a church of St. Mary ad Martyres, or, as Bede, who refers to this act of Boniface IV., describes it, ' Sanctae Dei genetricis et omnium martyrum Christi ; ' ii. 4, ^ Bede, i. 30. Miliuan, ii. 233, misrepresents this. * Comp. Greg. Turon. Vit. Patr. 6. 2. '^ Trees were often directly associated with idolatry. See the story of St. Martin cutting down the pine-tree ; and the custom of hanging up skulls of slain animals on a pear-tree in Auxerre, Constantius' Vit. S. Germ. i. 2. See below. ^ Gregory's kind heart took pleasure in helping the poor to enjoy themselves. See his Ep. i. 56 : he bids a subdeacon furnish to some poor people, on the occasion of dedicating a monastic oratory, 200 lambs, 100 hens, 30 amphorae of wine, — ' and charge it in your accounts.' ^ See Stanley, Memor. Cant. p. 50. Gregory adds a theory of the origin of the Levitical sacrifices as a Divine accommodation to habits formed in Egypt. See Taylor, Words and Places, p. 332-6, that of the places called ' Holy ' (as Holy Treatment of Pagan Temples. 71 English country folk, in connection with places familiar from chap, n, their earliest remembrances, and now associated with their new belief, might be really helpful : the ' outward enjoyment ' might open their hearts to a deeper and a spiritual joy. A wise and a hopeful policy, if the old scenes and the old usages could be thus effectually cleared of heathen taint. Probably St. Martin, and others who felt and acted like him, would have demurred to the possibility of such a clearing : and the intense tenacity of Heathen customs in mediaeval Europe might be urged in support of their severer view ^. If the old idol-fanes were left, if any likeness of the old Pagan feastings were tolerated or encouraged, would any Christian benediction prevent a revival of the heathenish spirit ? would not ^ the cask retain its odour/ — would not the ejected fiend return to his old house ? Experience had proved this to be too possible in regard to the ' merry-makings ^ ' which African ' bishops had endeavoured to Christianise^ but which St. Augustine had found it necessary, in the interests of Chris- tian morality, to condemn. Yet the * condescension,' the 'economy/ which Gregory here recommended, and which his namesake of Neocaesarea in the third century had carried out exactly in the same method ^, and apparently with great Hill in Kent) or bearing such names as Godstow, ' many were probably the sites of an ancient Pagan cultus, to which,' by Gregory's advice, ' a Christian import was given.' * To take sixth-century documents only, — Councils of that age had forbidden the eating of idol-meats, and the swearing by the heads of animals (Orleans, in 533 and 541); the worshipping or making vows at rocks or under trees (Tours, Auxerre) ; the Pagan revelries on New Year's Day, the use of lots made of wood or bread (Auxerre). See Mansi, viii. 838 ; ix. 116, 803, 911 . Heathen usages as to idol-sacrifices, eating of such sacrifices, divinations, auspices, auguries, lots, amulets, spells, eating horse-flesh, cutting of the body (like Baal- priests), vows or worship at fountains or trees or stones, heathenish observation of dreams, heathen rites on Thursday or on January i , shouting in order ' to defend oneself during an eclipse, ' placing a daughter on a roof or above a furnace to cure fever,' had to be denounced by various English penitentials and canons. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 190, 364, 424, 458 ; Johnson's E. Can. i. 378, 415, 513: compare Bede's own statement in iv. 27. The most com- pendious account of such customs as existing in Germany in the eighth century is the 'indiculus . . . paganiarum' in the Concilium Liptinense' of St. Boniface. 2 * Lsetitise.' Aug. Ep. 29. ' Gregory Thaumaturgus allowed the common ])eople after their conversion ♦ to enjoy themselves at the memorials of the holy martyrs, hoping that they would in time advance to a graver and more regular life, while even the f.dth 72 Treatment of Pagan Temples. CHAP. II. success, might seem, to bold and ardent minds, a natural result of that Christian considerateness and hopefulness which were inseparable from the true missionary character. Such persons would say that children must be fed with milk, that spiritual education must be gradual, that the ' spoils of the strong man ' might in a true sense be * divided,' that the Faith might be trusted to transform whatever it touched^. . And if in some cases this policy of adaptation failed, if much of what made up European life was only superficially Chris- tianised, and religion suflPered from the unguarded borrowing of notions or customs really foreign to its spirit ^, in other cases the 'deadly pottage' was made harmless, the leaven pervaded and assimilated the lump : forms of beauty, once bound up, inextricably as it might seem, with idolatry and its attendant sensuality, were gradually detached, and, so to speak, baptized ^ : words once suggestive of Paganism lost by degrees their evil significance, as we, for instance, may remember whenever we name the days of the week ^ : and in was guiding them to that result ; which has, in fact, been already accomplished in the case of the majority, all their enjoyment having been transferred from bodily pleasure to the spiritual kind of joy.' Greg. Nys. Vit. Greg. Thaumat, 27 (Galland. Biblioth. Patr. iii. 466). * So St. Patrick, finding three pillar-stones which were connected with Irish paganism, did not overthrow them, but inscribed on them the names, Jesus, Soter, Salvator ; Todd, p. 500. He baptized a king of Munster near a stone of this sort, which was thenceforth called Patrick's Stone ; ib. p. 129. One of the boldest acts ever done on this principle is recorded of St, Barbatus of Benevento, who melted down a golden image of a viper which the half-heathen inhabitants had venerated, and made a paten and chalice out of it. See Baring Gould, Lives of Saints, Feb. 19. A Pictish well, said to have baleful powers, was said to have been made holy by Columba's blessing and touch ; Adamnan, Vit. Col. ii. II. ^ E. g. the traces of polytheism in the * worship ' of saints ; the tendency to an idolatrous use of images ; old heathen spells retained with Christ's Name inserted into them (Kemble, i. 365) ; the old divination by lots disguised as *8ortes sanctorum' (Council of Agde, c. 42); Pagan superstitions linked to Christian holy-tides, as the eves of St. John Baptist and All Saints. On the Pagan element in Irish superstitions, see Todd, p. 500. Kemble denounces th^ whole mediaeval conception of Satan as heathenish, including apparently not only its materialism, but the very idea of 'a deceiver or persecutor of men ; ' i. 383 ; an idea to which Scripture is committed. ^ See the noble passage in Abp. Trench's Huls. Lect. p. 121, ed. 3. * See Taylor's Words and Places, p. 320 ; Trench, Study of Words, p. 93. Bede says, DeTemporum Katione, 15, 'people now call the Paschal time after Arrival of Mellitus, 73 ways which Tertullian, for instance, would never have dreamed chap. ii. of, Christianity ' inherited the earth ' by the boldness with which it claimed and took possession ^. This letter of Gregory to Mellitus was the last of hfs gifts to the English mission ^ : and the arrival of Mellitus and his companions in Britain, which probably took place about the end of 6oi, seems to open a new chapter in the history of the newly-founded Church. The staff of the mission was now complete : the next few years would show what it could effect in the region subject to the immediate rule, or to the less definite supremacy, of the king who, after cautious delibera- tion, had so heartily adopted at once the hopes and the obligations which were involved in the reception of its creed. the goddess Eostre, consueto antiquae observationis vocabulo gaudia novae Bolemnitatis vocantes.' So Keinble, i. 376. But this is only one theory ; another refers simply to * ostre,' to rise. Compare, however, Yule, the mid- winter feast, turned into a synonym for Christmas ; and on the change of the midsummer festival of Balder into the holyday of St. John Baptist, see Thorpe's Glossary, letter W. * • Christianity, always ready to a'pply and hallow every legacy of the "past.* Lappenberg, i. 53. * Bede says, ii. i, that Gregory died in 605, having held 'the see of the Eoman and apostolic church thirteen years, six months, ten days.' According to this, he came to the see in 591 ; but the true year seems to be 590 (see above), and, adopting the same reckoning of the years of his pontificate, we gain 604 as that of his death. So L'Art de verifier, iii. 278, and the Benedictine Life, Greg. Op. iv. 304, and Alb. Butler, March 12. John the Deacon says that a story was current in the English Churches to the effect that Gregory, remem- bering an instance of Trajan's justice and kindness, prayed for the deliverance of his soul from hell ; ii. 44. He asserts that Gregory did not pray, but only wept ; and that the result was that Trajan's soul was — not translated to paradise, but — simply ' ab infemi solummodo cruciatibus liberata.' The Bene - dictine 'Life' sets aside the story, including Johns modification of it, as a fable. First con ference with British Bishops. CHAPTER III. One of Augustine's first acts, if not the very first, after the arrival of the four new missionaries, was to act upon that sentence in Gregory's answers to his questions, which en- couraged him to form relations with the British bishops and their Church. Ethelbert could in some ways promote his wish to confer with them personally, and to request their co-operation for the mission. Bitter as was their animosity against the Saxon name and race, they would at all events ~ distinguish between heathen Saxons close to their border and the distant Brefcwalda who had so recently become a ■ convert to the faith^. By some means or other, they were induced to agree to meet Augustine, in 602, or perhaps 603, 'at a place still called Augustine's Oak, on the confines of the Hwiccians and the West- Saxons 2.' The Hwiccians dwelt along the south bank of the Severn, so as to include Gloucester, Malmesbury, Bath, and Cirencester, in their district, as Bede knew it in his time^: but in Augustine's time this district was mainly West-Saxon *, the battle of * Palgrave infers from Bede's words, 'adjutorio usus,' that they were actually under the authority of Ethelbert ; p. 454. But Bede's account of the Bretwaldas in ii. 5 rather implies that Edwin was the first who gained a regular supremacy over the Britons. ^ Bede, ii. 2. To hold a meeting under an oak was in conformity with old Gothic usage. ' Very many of the trysting-places of the English courts were marked in like manner by the oak, the beech, or the elm ; ' Palgrave, Eng. Comm. pp. 1 39, clviii. Oaks were taken as boundary-marks, as the Shire-oak, near Leeds. See also Stevenson's Chron. Abingd. ii. p. xlii. In one list of boundaries, Chr. Ab. i. 26, the ' Foul Oak ' occurs, so called from the Pagan worship once connected with it. ' For the province of the Hwiccas see Bede, iv. 13, 23. It was conterminous with the mediaeval bishopric of Worcester; Palgrave, p. 116 : the counties of 'Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick;' Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. pp. 39, 82. * See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 40. Conference with British Bishops. 75 Dyrham having* pushed the Britons westward ; and Augustine chap. hi. therefore had to pass through a long tract of West-Saxon territory under the rule of the ' ceaseless fighter ^ ' Ceolwulf. The place described as ' Augustine's Oak ' was evidently open ground somewhat south of the Severn ; Aust or Austcliff, near the Channel, and nearly opposite to Chepstow, has been supposed to represent the spot, but seems to be almost too far west to suit the description. However, the scene must be laid somewhere in that direction : and we may imagine the feelings with which the Welsh prelates, doubtless provided with assurance of safety, crossed the frontier into the land of the Saxon ' robbers ' to confer with a ' bishop of the English ' who derived his authority from Rome. We cannot identify these bishops. David, apparently, had died a year or two before; Dubricius seems to have been alre§,dy a recluse in Bardsey ; Teilo was now bishop of Llandaff, if he had not been succeeded by Oudoceus. Only the bishops of South Wales — i. e. of Gwent ^, Morgan wg, or Dyfed — would be invited, as representing what Bede calls ' the nearest British province.' If there was a successor of David at Menevia ^ he would pro- bably accompany the successor of Dubricius. Caerleon was evidently merged in Llandaff: but there is some reason to think that there were bishoprics at Llanafanfaur, at Margam, and perhaps at Weeg in Herefordshire ^ The fresh recollection ^ Sax. Chron. a. 597. * Gwent is represented by Monmouth shire and Brecknockshire, Morganwg did not exactly coincide with Glamorganshire ; Girald. ed, Dimock, vi. 246 : part of the latter was called Grower. Dyfed or Demetia is Pembrokeshire with part of Caermarthenshire. In later days, says Giraldus, Wales was divided into Venedotia, Deheubarth including Demetia, and Powys ; Descr. Camb. i. 2. Of these, Venedotia or Gwynedd comprised Carnarvonshire, Anglesey, most part of Merionethshire, part of Denbigh and Flint : it was founded by Cunedda 80 late as 449. Powys, or Mathrav.al, included parts of Flint and Denbigh, part of Merioneth, and also of Shropshire, all Montgomery, part of Radnor and Brecknock. Deheubarth, or Dinefawr, comprised the six southern counties. See Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 20. He defines Morganwg as Glamorganshire and part of Monmouthshire. See Lappenberg, i. 120. ' Cynog, or Cynauc, is said to have succeeded him ; for the other two accounts, see Bp. Jones and Freeman, p. 248. The Annal. Camb. date the death of Bishop Cynauc in 606. ♦ Jones and Freeman, p. 266 ; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 148, iii. 41. If these latter bishoprics existed, they would be for Herefordshire and Glamorganshire. Llanafanfaur was in Brecknock. re Paschal question. Question of Easter, of a national synod, holden at Caerleon in the year of David'^s death i, would render the prelates specially indisposed to any compromise of their independence, or any surrender of their usages. It was probably with some amount of jealous sus- picion that they met the Roman strangers at 'the Oak.' Augustine, says Bede, 'began to try to persuade them by brotherly admonitions to hold Catholic peace with himself, and to undertake in conjunction with him the work of preaching the gospel to the heathen, for the Lord's sake.' This was very well, the Britons might remark ; but what was meant by Catholic peace ? It appeared that there were some matters in which the Britons were not at one with the rest of the Church. What were they? The first and chief point of difference was as to the mode of reckoning Easter. The Paschal question is not attractive to the reader of Eusebius ; it is profoundly wearisome to the reader of Bede^. The original form of it was simple. It being agreed on all hands that there must be a yearly festival in memorial of the Redemption, as effected by the Passion and Resurrection of Christ ; that a fast of some un- defined duration should precede it; and that this Christian Passover, thus preceded by a fast, should to some extent be regulated by the season of the Jewish Passover ; — the question arose ^, 'To what extent? Shall we conclude the fast^ and begin the festival, on that fourteenth day of the moon on * Annal. Camb. a. 6oi. * Especially when one is forced to see the absence of a due sense of proportion in his treatment of the subject ; when he associates with these disputes such phrases as ' viis ad ingressum regni iUius ' and ' spiritalis gratiam lucis,' ii. 2 ; and again, ' Movit haec quaestio sensus et corda multorum timentiura ne forte accepto Christianitatis vocabulo, in vacuum currerent aut cucurrissent,' iii. 25 ; and Egbert's success in winning over the monks of Hy to ' the true Easter ' just before his own death is described as his 'seeing the day of the Lord,' &c., V. 22. Contrast Socrates, v. 22. But see below, p, 81. ^ See Eus. v. 23, 24. He uses the phrases, to ' close the fast,' to 'keep the feast of the Passover of salvation,' and to ' celebrate the mystery of the Lord's Resurrection,' to describe one and the same thing. See Luthardt, St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel, E. Tr. p. 1 56. Polycrates, the representative of the Quartodecimans, insists repeatedly on the duty of adhering to (jrjpHv) 'the fourteenth.' See Eus. v. 24. Our popular use of 'Easter' instead of ♦ Pasch,' — which was the popular term in Scotland, — obscures to some extent the bearings of the question. Question of Easter, ^ 77 which the Jews were to kill their Passover, on whatever day chap. m. of the week it may fall ? or shall we take as our fixed point that first day of the week on which the Lord rose again?' The majority of Churches took the latter alternative : the Church of Ephesus, and those dependent on it in the province of Asia, took the former, and were therefore afterwards called Quartodecimans. Fresh complications arose in the third century, in connection with a question whether the festival should be always kept after the vernal equinox ^ : and difi'erent canons or ' cycles ' were proposed, in order to ascertain for a number of years the true beginning of the ' first lunar ' or the ' Paschal ' month 2. Thus Hippolytus made such a cycle, or table, for sixteen years ^ : Dionysius of Alexandria for eight*: Anatolius of Laodicea for nineteen^. The Nicene Council reaffirmed the maxim upheld against the Quartodeci- mans, — that the festival should always be on a Sunday; and further directed, that if the fourteenth should fall on a Sunday, then Easter should be deferred to the Sunday after; and that Easter Sunday should always follow the equinox, — in the calculation of which, it seems, they gave preference to the Alexandrian reckoning, which placed it on March 21, over * Hefele, Councils, i. 317, E. Tr. The Jews Lad always determined the 14th as falling after the equinox until the fall of Jerusalem ; afterwards they some- times kept it before the equinox. 2 Hefele, Councils, i. 318, E. Tr. Diet. Chr. Antiq.i. 591:, 'The use of cycles arose out of the necessity, when lunar months were in use, of linking together in some manner the changes of the moon and the sun.' King, Ch. Hist. Irel. i. 195 : * In order to determine on what days the full moons will occur incoming years, dijfferent cycles or periods of so many years have been invented after the expiration of which the new and full moons were found to fall again on the same days as before.' ' Euseb. vi. 22. See it in Galland. Bibl. Patr. iii. 516 if. It was inscribed on the marble chair of the statue of Hippolytus, on the right side of which was a table of Paschal full moons, on the left, of Easter Sundays, calculated accord- ing to a cycle of sixteen years. It began from the first year of Alexander Severus. Hippolytus would defer the Paschal festival for a week not only if the fourteenth, but ' also if the fifteenth moon fell on a Sunday' (Bucher. in Gall, p. 520). See his canon reduced to the form of that of Victorius, ib. p. 522 ; and see Hefele, i. 318 ; Diet. Chr. Antiq. i. 592. * Euseb. vii. 20. ' Hefele, i. 320. He adds, ' The completion of this cycle of nineteen years is attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea.' 78 , Question of Easter. CHAP. III. the Roman, wliicli placed it on March 1 8 ^. However, the Roman Church adhered to its own way in this matter; and the result was that between a. d. 325 and 343 the Roman Easter fell six times on a diflPerent day from the Alexandrian 2. In 344 the Sardican Council attempted a settlement, which was not in effect observed. Two successive archbishops of Alexandria, Theophilus and Cyril, framed Paschal tables based on the nineteen years' cycle : and although Rome for some time used the cycle of eighty-four years ^ which had super- seded that of sixteen, and was ' a little improved by Sulpicius Severus,' 'it has been conjectured/ says Hefele, that Pope Hilary adopted the better scheme which had been framed by Victorius of Limoges*, an abbot at Rome, in 456-7 ; and finally, in 527, one still more accurate, and completely in accordance with Alexandrian calculations, was proposed by Dionysius Exiguus, and accepted by Rome and Italy ^, while the Victorian cycle ' long held its ground in Gaul,' and the old cycle of eighty-four years was retained by the British and Irish Churches®. But the mere retention of an old-fashioned cycle was not the main ground of offence, which consisted in the circumstance that the insular Celts departed in fact from a Nicene rule"^, by allowing the fourteenth of the moon to be Easter Day, i/'it fell on a Sunday^; whereas in that case they * See Hefele, i. 325-327. The preference given by the Council to the Alexandrian reckoning is inferred from Leo the Great, Ep. 121. 2 Hefele, i. 328. See Smith's Bede, p. 697. ' Hefele, 1. c, ; Diet. Chr. Ant. i. 592. See Lanigan, Eccl. Hist, Ireland, ii. 374. Owing to these differences the Roman Easter in 387 was on March 21, the Alexandrian on April 25 ; in 444 the Roman rule would place Easter on March 26, the Alexandrian on April 23, and Leo adopted for the time the Alex- andrian calculation : so in a.d. 455. * For Victorius of Aquitaine's cycle of 532 years, found by multiplying the lunar cycle of 19 years by the solar of 28, see Prideaux, Connection, ii. 255 ; Smith's Bede, p. 700; Lanigan, ii. 377; Hefele, i. 330. The cycle began with A.D. 28 : see Mabillon, Ann. Benedict, i. 431. * Hefele, i. 330; Prideaux, ii. 257; Smith's Bede, p. 701; Haddan and Stubbs, i, 152. The revision of the Victorian table by Dionysius 'transferred to him most of the merit which belonged to Victorius ;' Diet, Chr. Ant, i. 594. * Diet. Chr. Antiq. 1. c. ; Hefele, i. 330 ; Lanigan, ii. 384. For Gaul see fourth Council of Orleans, a.d. 541, can. i, Mansi, ix. 113; Greg. Turon. Hist. Fr. V. 17, implies that most of the Gauls kept Easter in 577 according to Victorius : cp. ib. x. 23 ; and see Columbanin Greg. Ep. ix. 127. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, i. 153. See Bede, ii. 19, * quod in Nicaena synodo,* &c. ' As Bede says, they observed Easter 'a quarta decima usque ad vicesi- Question of Easter, 79 ought to have deferred Easter till the twenty-first. According chap. m. to the orthodox reckoning ^, the fifteenth was the first day of the moon which could be Easter Sunday; this method, starting at the fifteenth, and going on to the twenty-first, kept clear of the Jewish day; whereas the Celtic did not keep clear of it^. That is, the Celtic calculation was objectionable as adhering to a discredited cycle for the Paschal moons, but distinctly offensive as including the fourteenth within the days on which Easter Sunday might fall. But, as we see at once, the Britons were not really Quartodecimans, inasmuch as they made a point of keeping Easter on a Sunday^; and their own claim to derive their traditional method from the Churches of Asia, and so from St. John himself, was without foundation. This, it may be added, annihilates an argument which has been often advanced in favour of a directly Oriental origin for the ancient British Church *. It appears also that the Britons relied on the authority of a Paschal canon ascribed to Ana- tolius, but now admitted to be a forgery, and ^perhaps designed to support ' the Celtic rule ^. Another difference, but vaguely alluded to in Bede's account of the conference, consisted in this, that the Britons did not mam lunam,' i. e. would include the fourteenth moon among those which might belong to Easter Sunday, and from it onwards to the twentieth. Cp. Bede, ii. 4, iii. 3, 17, 25, 28. Lanigan says that Sulpicius found that by a mistake in the Roman reckoning of the days of the moon, the fourteenth moon was called the sixteenth : he restored to it the name of fourteenth, and directed that as it was really the same day as the sixteenth of the unrevised cycle, Easter Sunday might fall on it. This rule was adopted by the Irish and British. * In the fifth century, the Latins would not allow even the fifteenth to be kept as Easter Sunday. (See Bede, v. 21.) Their Paschal limits began with the sixteenth ; Lanigan, ii. 375, 378 ; Diet. Chr. Ant. i. 594. By one reading the account of the third order of Irish saints says that some of them kept Easter on the fourteenth moon (as did those of the first and second order), others on the sixteenth. See Todd's St. Patrick, p. 89. 2 Prideaux, ii. 258. See Bede, v. 21. ' So says Bede of the ' Scots,' who agreed with the Britons : iii. 4, ' Quern tamen et antea non semper in luna quarta decima, cum Judseis, ut quidam rebantur,' &c. lb. iii. 17, 25. Nor had the earlier British Christians been Quartodecimans. See Enseb. V. C. iii. 19 ; Soc. v. 22 ; and the subscriptions of the three British bishops to the Council of Aries. * Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 51 ; Lanigan, ii. 385 ; Haddan's Remains, p. 215. 5 Diet. Chr. Ant. i. 594. See this 'canon' in Galland. Bibl. Patr. iii. 545. According to it, in nineteen years Easter Sunday fell three times on the four- teenth moon. 80 Baptismal Rites, and Tonsure. CHAP. III. « Baptismal Kites. Tonsure. perform the ministry of baptizing fully according to the Roman manner ^.* If we ask in what respect they fell short, we are left without any certain answer. If they did not use trine immersion^, this need not have been a serious difficulty to the ' disciples ' of a Pope who not only admitted that either trine or single immersion might have an orthodox significance, but advised the Spanish Church, under the circumstances of its own position in regard to Arianism, to retain the latter use^. Possibly the Britons did not practise that unction of the crown of the head which usually came between the baptism and the confirmation*; or they may have omitted some other ceremonies which formed part of the Roman rite ^. A third peculiarity, not mentioned here by Bede, although he has enough to tell us about it in other passages^, related to the visible appearance of the Celtic clergy. To cut the hair short was an ascetic fashion, which gradually extended itself to all ecclesiastics "^ ; it was supposed to carry out St. Paul's hint in i Cor. xi. 14, to serve as a protest against eflPeminate luxuriousness, and to represent separation from worldly pleasures^, and special dedication to the service of God. By degrees, an actual ' tonsure ' came into use ; and late in the fifth century^ it took the 'coronal' form, the top of the head being shaved close, and a circle or crown of hair left to grow around it. This fashion obtained in Gaul and in Italy. * ' Compleatis,' Bede, ii. 2. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, i. 153 ; Haddan's Remains, p. 320. 3 Greg. Ep. i. 43. ♦ Muratori, Lit. Eom. ii. 157. The unction of Confirmation was on the forehead ; ib.i. 571 ; Innocent I. Ep. i. 3. " Hussey's Bede, p. 78. • Bede, iii. 26 ; iv. i ; v. 21, 22. ' See Bingham, b. vi. 4. 16 ; vii. 3. 6, that anciently the crown of the head was not shaved, but the hair was kept short. He cites Jerome in Ezech. 1. 13 to this effect, and Salvian de Gub. Dei, viii. 4, * recisis comarum fluentium jubis.' See also Greg. Turon. de Mirac. S. Mart. iii. 15, ' humiliatis capiilis.' Mabillon owns that in Benedict's time ' monachis ad cutem resecti non erant;' Ann. Bened. i. 53. Yet some ancient ascetics shaved the head bare ; Soc. iii. i. 8 Lingard, A.-S; Ch. i. 54. ' Smith's Bede, p. 712; Lanigan, iii. 68. In 633, the fourth Council of Toledo, c. 41, ordered all clerics to shave the whole of the top of the head, and leave below ' solam circuli coronam,' — not like the ' lectors ' in Gallicia, who wore long hair like laics, and shaved a small circle on the top of the head only. Conference with Britons. 81 But the Celtic clergy exhibited a semicircle of hair on the chap. hi. front of the head^, so that their continental brethren, on inspecting them from behind, were scandalised by finding 'the seeming crown lopped off^' The Roman tonsure was, of course, traced up to St. Peter ^ ; and its wearers, or at any rate the more zealous among them, were pleased to attribute the rival fashion to Simon Magus*. If these various dis- putes seem more or less trivial, let us remember that when the Church was still fighting against masses of heathenism, such points of external uniformity might ' well have appeared, even to the strongest and most spiritual minds, far graver than charity can allow them to be in our time ^.' To return to the conference. Bede tells us ^ that * after a long discussion/ in which the British delegates 'refused to comply with the prayers, or the exhortations, or the re- proaches of Augustine and his companions, but preferred their own traditions to all the Churches which throughout the world were at unity with each other in Christ,' Augustine proposed to appeal to God for a sign that might 'declare which tradition was to be followed, and by what path men were to hasten to enter His kingdom.' The criterion which he proposed was, ' Let a sick man be brought forward, and let the party whose prayers shall avail for his cure be ac- cepted as having the right faith and practice.' The Britons, though reluctantly, agreed : a blind man of English race * Mansi, x. 630. The portrait of Gregory the Great shows the coronal tonsure. As the Irish themselves expressed it, • one tonsure from ear to ear ; ' Todd's Life of St. Patrick, p. 487. Patrick was called the Tailcend, or ' Shaven- head ;' p. 411. 2 * Decurtatam ; ' Bede, v. 21. See this represented as on the head of St. Mummolinus of Noyon, who had been a monk of Luxeuil ; Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 529. » Aldhelm supposes St. Peter to have had three reasons for instituting it ; Ep. to King Geraint. Gregory of Tours says that Peter ' caput desuper tonderis instituit' in order to teach humility; De Glor. Mart. i. 28 ; and see Maskell, Men. Kit. iii. p. Ixxxv. * Bede, V. 21 : 'Tonsuram earn quam magum/enwi^ habuisse Simonem,' &c. Aldhelm gives this as ' the opinion of very many.' But it was also traced up to ' thfe swineherd of Laeghaire, the Pagan king who resisted Patrick ; ' Reeves's Adamn. p. 350. * Goldwin Smith, Irish Hist, and Irish Character, p. 29. * Bede, ii. a : ♦ Qui cum longa disputatione habita,' &c. G 82 Second Conference. CHAP. m. was brought forward : * tlie British priests ' failed to cure hiin, but Augustine prayed, the blind man received his sight, and the Britons owned that it was the true way of righteousness whicdi Augustine taught, but added that they could not give up their old customs without the consent of their brethren : they therefore requested that a second synod might be held, in which a larger number would be present. This part of the story reads very like an 'interpolation^' into the original narrative. Bede, no doubt, reported faithfully what was in his time the Canterbury tradition ^ : but the incident of the miracle might have become embodied in that tradition in the course of a century or more ; and the Britons are represented as acting with such inconsistency as they would hardly have Second shown, especially when we read what follows. The second n erence. jjjgg^jjjg ^^g j^gj^j . geven British bishops, ' as is related ^,' — so Bede with his usual caution tells us, — resolved on attend- ing. These would include the prelates of Llanbadarn, Bangor, and Llan Elwy or St. Asaph, beside those of South Wales*. They were accompanied by many most learned men, especially from the great monastery of Bangor Iscoed ^, then under the rule of Abbot Dunod^ whom Bede calls Advice of Dinoot. The deputies repaired beforehand to a hermit ^ tke Hermit. ^ ^ ^ Hook, i. 68. It appears that the delegates to the second conference knew nothing, or else thought nothing, of the story of the blind man, ^ Lingard observes that the Abbot Albinus of Canterbury, who was Bede's informant about Kentish Church affairs, derived his account partly from documents, partly fr o m * seniorum traditione ' (Bede, Praef.), and that this • traditio/ at the distance of more than a hundred years, must have received embellishments ; A.-S. Ch. i. 68. ' ' Ut perhibent.' Cp. i. 25, 'fertur;* ii. i, 'dicunt;' ii. 5, *ut vulgo fertur;' ii. 12, ' ut ferunt;* ii. 16, ' perhibetur ; ' iii. 2,5, 'fertur;' iii. 12, *ferunt;* iii. 14, 16, 'fertur;' iv. 13, 'ferunt;' iv. 14, ' perhibentur ; * iv. 19, /ferunt,' ' sunt qui dicant ; ' iv. 23, 30, ' ferunt,' &c. * In these days, Giraldus suggests, Wales extended to the Severn ; Itin. Carab. ii. i. Williams thinks some of these bishops were ' chorepiscopi,' not diocesans ; Eccl. Ant. Cym. p. 209. 5 Lingard thinks that some southern Bangor has here been mistaken for Bangor Iscoed. • The hermit-life was much honoured in Wales ; compare the retirement of Dubricius to Bardsey. King Tewdric (see below) gave up his realm to his son Mouric, ' et vitam heremitalem in rupibus Dindyrn coepit discere ; ' Monast. Angl. vi. 1222. See Girald. Descr. Camb. i. 18: 'Heremitas .... abstinentiae majoris, magisque spirituales, alibi nou videas.' See Williams, Eccl. Ant. Cjm. p. 232. Advice of the Hermit, 83 famed for prudence and holiness, and asked whether he would chap. m. advise them to give up their own traditions at Augustine's request, or not. The response was, ' If he be a man of God, follow him.' ' But how shall we ascertain that ? ' ' Our Lord,' replied the hermit, 'spoke of Himself as meek and lowly in heart. If Augustine shows that temper, you may believe that he has learned of Christ, and taken up His yoke, and is offering it to you. But if he is harsh and proud, it is clear that he is not from God : we are not to care for his words.' * But how is this to be discerned ? ' The oracle gave a precise answer : ' Manage ^ so that he shall come to the meeting-place before you. If, when you approach, he rises to meet you, be sure that he is a servant of Christ, and listen to him obediently. If he does not rise up, but treats you con- temptuously, — you are the more numerous body, and can show contempt in your turn ^ ! ' Some grains of fact may lie in this anecdote ; yet the Britons would hardly have made so much depend on so little. But, if they consulted any such adviser, or agreed to apply so purely personal a test, it is clear, on Bede's own showing, as, indeed, it would be clear apart from this incident in the story, that they did not deem themselves bound to accept the exhortations of a bishop sent from Rome, and thus far a representative of Rome ^, as such. They treated the question as open : Shall we adopt his ways, or shall we not? They came, as they had resolved, to the meeting, after Augustine had taken his seat. He continued sitting*: he probably thought that he myst assert his * * Procurate ut ipse prior,' &c. * • Et ipse spematur a vobis.' ^ Lingard argues that the subjects of Papal authority and British inde- pendence did not come into consideration ; Angl.-S. Ch. i. 380. This is futile. The British delegates could not fail to know that Augustine did come to them as specially empowered from Rome. And their reverence for Rome did not, in their view, commit them to obedience to its emissary. But it must have done so, had it included a beliefs in Papal supremacy. See Collier, i. 178; Martineau, Ch, Hist. p. 57. * ' Sederet in sella,' Bede. ' Romano more in sella residens,' Bromton. Various explanations of * this apparent discourtesy' are offered in the English •Life of St. Augustine,' p. 229. After all, the writer pleads that at worst it was but ' an excusable negligence,' and blames the British bishops for ' taking such a trifle so much to heart.' Elmham boldly contends that it would not have been ' decens ut tarn feros et erroneos . . . assurgendo inflaret,' after G % 84 Augustine s terms rejected. CHAP. III. dignity as archbisliop, and did so in a manner as deficient in tact as in courtesy. According to Bede, the Britons at once showed temper, ^ charged him with pride, and made a point of contradicting all that he said.' He intended, no doubt, to speak with calmness and moderation: 'You go against our custom, or rather that of the Universal Churchy on many points : but if you are willing to yield on these three ^, to keep Easter at its right time, to perform baptism according to the manner of the holy Roman and apostolic^ Church, and to join with us in preaching the word of the Lord to the English, — we will quietly bear with your other practices, Failure of however contrary to our own.' A speech so worded would ierence. seem magisterial to the sensitive and suspicious auditors. We are told that they said to each other^ ' If just now he would not rise to greet us, he will be yet more overbearing if we begin to obey him ; ' and that thereupon they gave their decisive answer, 'We will do none of these things which you require^ nor will we have you as our archbishop ^.' Not having granted them a second conference ; p, 105. A reference to ' plectiles sellae ' is in Greg. Ep. xii. 19. * Pearson goes so far as to say that 'fresh from the large-minded concessions of Gregory, Augustine made up his mind to great concessions, but he felt that three points were too important to be sacrificed;' Hist. Engl. i. 125. One of the points waived was evidently the tonsure. ^ This phrase (op. Bede, ii. I, iii. 29) has not the sense of ' the one Catholic and Apostolic Church ' of the Creed, but refers to the distinctive claim of Eome among Western Churches to be of apostolic foundation. Cp. the phrase 'apostolicus papa,' Bede, iv. i, v. 19 ; and see Bede ii. 7. ^ The speech ascribed to Dunod, disowning the supremacy of the Pope, or, as it is expressed, of ' him whom ye call Pope and Father (Daad) of fathers,' and describing the British Church as under the government of the * Esgob Kaerllion,' is spurious, * drawn up by some mediaeval Welsh antiquary, and probably enough suggested by Bede's account of the matter,' as ' it truly represents the feeling of the then British Church towards Rome;' Haddan and Stubbs, i. 149. It was first edited by Spelman, and accepted by Stillingfleet; ii. 536, and Bramhall, i. 162, &c. See it in Migne, Patrol. Lat. Ixxx. 22, and, in Welsh and Latin, in Smith's Bede, p. 716. Geoffrey makes Dunod say that they owed no subjection to Augustine, for they had an archbishop of their own, — and that they would not bestow their preaching on their enemies; viii. 4 (xi. 12). The LlandaflF story (see Usher, Antiq. p. 46), that Oudoceus of Llandafi" sub- mitted to the authority of Augustine, is a gross fiction ; see Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 274. He observes that at the conference there was no question between the archbishop of the English and a British metropolitan ; which would show that the archbishopric of Caerleon was extinct, 'if indeed it had ever been finnly established ;' ib. p. 291. His prediction. fe till this moment, as far as Bede's tale goes, had the archi- chap. nr. episcopal pretensions of Augustine been mooted ; but the Britons must at any rate have been aware from the first that he claimed that rank among the English, and must have presumed that his proposals would involve their recognition of it, in case they agreed to work with him. He had not been faultless in his conduct of the matter : but even in the vehement words which at last broke from him ^, one sees that what stirred him to grief and anger was not so much their defiance of his authority, as their refusal to aid in his mis- sionary enterprise. * If you will not accept peace with brethren, you will have to accept war from enemies : if you will not preach the way of life to the English, you will be punished with death by English hands.' These words have met with very opposite treatment, in consequence of a tragedy which happened some years after Augustine's death, probably in A. D. 613^. Ethelfrid the ' Fierce' or the ^ Destroyer,' who, ten years earlier, had utterly broken the aggressive power of the Argyllshire Scots at Degsastone^, turned his arms against the Britons, and besieged the northern City of Le- gions, i. e. Chester. The inhabitants risked a battle : just Battle of before it began, Ethelfrid saw, ' standing apart in a place of ^"®^^- comparative security,' a large body of British priests, includ- ing a number of monks from the neighbouring monastery of Bangor Iscoed, who, after a three days' fast, had come under the escort of Brocmail*, king of Powys, to pray for the * ' Fertur minitans praedixisse/ Bede. * In the anguish of disappointment,' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 71. Milner (Hist, Ch. cent. 6. c. i) charges him with * ambitious encroachment,* but believes also that he was acting ' jfrora charitable views.' 2 Annal. Camb. a. 613. This date, rather than 605, or 607 (the two read- ings of Sax. Chron.), is adopted in Annals of Engl. p. 30 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 41 ; and Guest, Engl. Conq. of Severn VaUey, p. 25. « Bede, i. 34 ; S. Chron. a. 603. The kingdom of the Scots of Dalriada, then held by Aidan, seventh of the line, had been founded 100 years before, by Fergus Mor, son of Ere ; but their original immigration into North Britain cannot be dated. See Palgrave, p. 421. 'Degsastan' has been supposed to be Dalston near Carlisle, or Dawston near Jedburgh, or Dalton near Richmond ; Pearson inclines to Theekstone, north of Ripon. * Or Brochtcel; Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 208. According to the Ann. Cambr., he survived till 662, But of the three British chiefs who fell in the battle, Pr, Guest considers one to have been his grandson ; 1. c. 86 Battle of Chester, CHAP. m. success of their countrymen. * If,' said the stem Northumbrian, ' they are crying to their God against us, then are they fight- ing against us by curses, though not with arms. Attack them first ! ' It was done, and only fifty escaped ; Brocmail having fled without striking a blow for those who had been entrusted to his protection. Such was ' the battle of Cair Legion, wherein the holy men were slain,' as it was described in Irish records^ ; ' the battle of the orchard of Bangor 2/ as the Welsh sometimes called it, from the subsequent destruction of that great house with all its literary treasures: the remains of Bangor Is- coed exhibited, centuries later, a mass of ruined walls and cloisters, and the rubbish of two gates of the town, called Porth Kleis and Porth Wgan, a mile apart ^. Chester was taken *, and apparently destroyed : but the slaughter of the ecclesiastics was regarded by their countrymen as the most tragic feature of the event ^, by Bede and the Saxon Chronicler as a fulfilment of Augustine's ' prophecy : ' and Bede so far forgets his better nature as to apply the word nefanda to the patriotic British host ^. On the other hand, some moderns, hostile to Augustine's memory, have imagined "^ that he him- * Tighemach ; O'Connor, Rer. Hib. Scr. ii. 182. ^ Eees, Welsh Saints, p. 293. ^ Malmesb. Gest. Reg. i. 3 ; and Vaughan, ap. Camden, 1. 666. * See Palgrave, p. 455 : ' The capture of the City of Legions was long lamented by the Britons.' But about the same time, they had a triumph over Ceolwulf of Wessex in the battle of Tintern, when the royal hermit Tewdric, once king of Morganwg and ever victorious in war, left his cell at ' the cry of his people,' and secured their victory at the cost of his own life, for one of the foemen turned round in his flight and wounded him with a spear. According to the legend, the dying hermit-king was borne in a wain to a place near the Severn, where he bade his attendants depart, and expired alone ; Mon. Anglic, vi, 1223: Turner, i. 334. 5 See Scott's lines, written for an old Welsh air, ' The Monks' March : '— 'Woe to Brocmail's feeble hand, Woe to Olfrid's bloody brand, Woe to Saxon cruelty, miserere, DomineJ* * So * gentis perfidse,* * perfidi.' "^ A 'charge too absurd to merit any serious notice;* Milner, cent. 6. c. i. *An abominable calumny of some writers;' Lanigan, ii. 379. 'A crowd of modem writers have re-echoed the calumny;' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 72. 'A preposterous libel;' Haddan's Remains, p. 316. To deny it was, in 1673, and at Oxford, to incur suspicion of Popery! (see Ant. Wood's Life, p. 191). Writirg thirty years later, Inett says, ' I wiUingly yield to the side of charity ;' Mission to the East-Saxons, 87 self, in revenge for the obstinacy of Welsh bishops, had chap. iir. induced the Northumbrian ' Destroyer ' to slaughter the Welsh priests: whereas the battle took place, according to Bode, ' long ' after his own death, which was not later than 605 ; — and even if it had been fought in his lifetime, he had as little interest with the heathen Ethelfrid^ as he had heart for so atrocious a suggestion. He returned home in bitter disappointment. Whether he visited any other parts of Saxon Britain, endeavouring to do what he could for their heathen inhabitants, we cannot tell : the stories which ascribe to him some such journeys have no sufficient authority ^. But he found a prospect opening before Bishopric him among the East-Saxons, whose king, Sigebert I., or ° ^" **"' Sabert, was Ethelbert's nephew as well as vassal, being the son of his sister Ricula. Mellitus was sent to London, and converted Sabert : in consequence, he was made bishop of London in the beginning of 604 ^, and Ethelbert and Sabert were both concerned in the erection of a cathedral church on the site of the present St. Paul's, which had been formerly occupied by a Roman camp. The story that a temple of Diana had stood there * is at least doubtful : but an altar of Diana, discovered near the spot not very many years since, may have belonged to the prsetorium^. It was afterwards Orig. Angl. i. 35. Geoffrey of Monmouth had suggested it, by the absurd fiction that Ethelfrid was provoked by the disregard shown to Augustine. * How could such a 'prophecy hardly fail to hasten its own fulfilment?* Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 234. ^ E.g. Thorn says, X Script. 1760, that he • sowed the seed of God's word everywhere throughout the whole land of the English,' always ' pedes sine vehiculo : ' and Gocelin, in his longer Life of Augustine, 37 fi"., makes him work miracles at York, e. g. on a leper, — inflict a grotesque punishment on some Dorsetshire rustics who had fastened fishes' tails to his and his brethren's garments (s. 41), — and even visit Colman * king of Ireland,' and baptize the future Irish saint Livinus (s. 48 ; cp. Vit. S. Livini, Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxxix. 871, 873). These stories grew up out of a desire to make Augustine apostle of all England, not merely of a small part of it. Cp. the legend in Thomas of Ely (Angl. Sac. i. 594), that he founded a church in Cratunden, * a mile from the present city' of Ely; and the weird story of the ' dead alive* excommunicate and excommunicator, told by Bromton with a prefatory reference to Augus- tine's preaching in Oxfordshire ; X Script. 736. 3 Bede, ii. 3. ♦ See Dugdale's Hist, of St. Paul's, p. 2, on the structure ' called Diana's Chambers, and the ox-heads digged up ' in the time of Edward I. 5 Milman, Annals of St. Paul's, p. 5. of Roches- ter. 88 Bishopric of Rochester, CHAP. III. believed that Sabert had also been the founder of a monastery of St. Peter which was called ' the West Minster,' on ' Thorney * Island, a place then 'terrible' from its desolate aspect as a mass of marsh and brushwood ^. Augustine, when he con- secrated Mellitus, may have indulged in expectations of suc- cessful mission-work in the great city and its neighbourhood : but his hopes were not to be speedily realised. In no part of England was there so much tenacity of heathenism, so much resistance to the new faith, as in the 'emporium of many nations ^,' and generally in the East-Saxon realm. Three con- siderable efforts were necessary before the church of London or the parts adjacent could be considered as firmly restored upon its Saxon basis : and it might seem that Augustine soon became conscious of some of the difficulties that lay in the path of the new bishop. Bishopric Matters were easier in regard to that district of Kent^ which was dependent on the little city of Rochester, or Hrof's Castle, which in British times had been called Durobrivse, from the ' swift stream ' of the Medway. There Ethelbert built a church, which, in fond remembrance of his Roman monastery, Augustine dedicated in honour of St. Andrew. The Bretwalda was bounteous in his gifts to this church ^, as to that of London ; and Justus was con- * See Stanley's Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. lo ; Freeman, Norm. Conq. ii. 500. Thorn ascribes the foundation to ' a citizen of London at the suggestion of Ethelbert;' X Script. 1768. This was a tradition which in Malmesbury became mixed up with a wild story about a dedication of the church by St. Peter himself; Gest. Pont. p. I41. So Ailred of Rievaulx, in X Script. 385. A ' West Minster' did exist, as a church of some importance, long before the Confessor's great foundation ; Freeman, i. 504, Bede's silence would not disprove the tradition, for he might not think it necessary to mention a foundation which was not connected with the bishopric. The traditional tomb of Sabert is to the south of the altar in the present church. ^ Bede, ii. 3. Cp. Tacitus, Ann. xiv. 33, ' Londinium . . . copia negotiatorum . . . maxime cekbre.' * The commercial fame of London dates from the early days of Roman dominion ;' Freeman, iv. 279. ^ It has been thought that there was a sub-king of West Kent. Yet see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 171. Malmesbury describes Rochester as a town of narrow area, but, from its high position above a very swift river, not easily accessible to foes ; Gest. Pontif. p. 133. * See the ' Charter of Ethelbert to the church of Rochester,' Kemble, Cod. Diplom. A. S. i. I. It is subsequent to the death of Augustine. The King ' Church and Realm ' in Kent. fi9 secrated as bishop of the new diocese, which for ages held chap. m. a specially close relation of dependence on the arch -diocese of Canterbury, — the successors of Justus being, beyond all other suffragans, under the control of, and expected to do episcopal work for, the successors of Augustine ^. The grants made by Ethelbert to churches, and his re- cognition of the status of bishops and clergy within his dominions, led naturally to the promulgation of certain enactments under the sanction of his Witan; that is, the assembly of the freemen of his kingdom, — which was practically the assembly of the great officers and the ' king's thegns,' — bearing the title of the Assembly of the Wise, or Witenagemot^. Thus Bede tells us that Ethelbert introduced Church re- among the English, ' with the counsel of the Wise Men, v^J^^^ ^ judicial decrees after the Roman model, which, written out in the English tongue, are extant and are observed to this day. . . . Among which he first laid down the mode of satisfaction to be made by any one who should take away by theft anything belonging to the church, or the bishop, or the other orders; inasmuch as his intention was to afford pro- tection to those whose persons and whose teaching he had accepted I' Accordingly, among the extant Laws of Ethel- bert *, and indeed first among them, stands a brief ordinance fixing a scale of payments — such as the Saxon law called hoU ^ addresses the Apostle : ' To thee, Saint Andrew, and to thy church which is established in the city Hrofihrevi, where Justus, bishop, is seen to preside, I deliver a small portion of my land.' The exact limits are stated in Saxon. Kemble does not doubt its authenticity: but there is a diflBculty as to the date; see below. The Rochester tradition said that Ethelbert gave to the church some land thence called Priestfield, south of the city, and other land towards the north ; Angl. Sacra, i. 333. ^ The archbishop had the appointment to this bishopric until a.d. 1148. On this ' dependent ' position of Rochester, see Freeman, iv. 369. * See Freeman, i. 100 ; Kemble, ii. 194 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 119. ^ Bede, ii. 5 : * Qui intar csetera bona,' &c. See Palgrave, Engl. Common- wealth, p. 44 ; Haddan's Remains, p. 306. * Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. i ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 42. Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 45, doubts the integrity of the text of the compilation made by Bishop Emulf in the twelfth century. ^ The word means compensation or atonement (bettering) due to an injured party. See Thorpe's Glossary, and his Ancient Laws, pp. 17, 28, 45 (Ine's laws), 71, &c. 90 Liturgical Arrangements, CHAP. III. — for wrong done to ecclesiastical property as such ; in case of property, ov feoh^ of God and the Church, the satisfaction to be thus made was twelve-fold ; for a bishop's property^ eleven- fold ; for a priest's, nine ; for a deacon's, six ; for an inferior cleric's^ three. For violation of t\\Q frith^ i.e. the peace or privileges^ of a church or of a monastery ^, a two-fold ' bot ' was exacted. Here then we have definite proof of the recognition of Christianity and the Church by the 'Par- liament/ so to speak, of the first English Christian king. Liturgical Augustine's life was now drawing to a close. In regard to ments' ^^^ general arrangements for the new English Church, he seems to have made but little use of Gregory^s suggestion to be eclectic as to liturgical practices. He established the Roman Liturgy on the whole as a matter of course, but apparently inserted in it the Gallic ' benedictio populi ' already mentioned ^ ; and also introduced the Gallic ' Rogations ' before the Ascension ^, and possibly some other matters *. We learn from a letter of Alcuin to Eanbald archbishop of York, in the end of the eighth century, that there were then in use some large sacramentaries representing an old Use, which did not ^ Compare Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 9 (Alfred), and his Glossary, ' frith ' and * grith.' At Beverley and at Hexham the seat of him who claimed the 'peace ' or privilege of sanctuary was called the Frith-stool. Compare the ' Peace of St. Oswiu' at Tynemouth. See also Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 37 ; Stevenson, Pref. to Chron. of Abingdon, p. xlviii; and Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 273. As to British churches, Giraldus says (Descr. Camb. i. 18) that the chief of them offered ' peace ' (often abused) ' quantum armeiita mane ad pascua exire, et vespere redire possunt : ' see too Haddan and Stubbs, i. 227. For Gaul, compare first Council of Orange in 449, c. 5 ; Mansi, vi. 437, and first of Orleans, in 511, c. 1, ib. viii. 350 ; and Gregory of Tours, Hist. Fr. v. 14, on his own refusal to give up Meroveus : also ib. ix. 3, 38. See also Gregory the Great, Ep. x. 50 ; and generally, Bingham, b. viii. c. 1 1 (vol. ii. p. 565), and Gothofred, Codex Theodos. t. iii. p. 400, on Theodosius II.'s law of a. d. 431, ' Pateant summi Dei templa timentibus,' &c. ^ Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 295 : comp. Egbert's Pontifical, p. 58 ff. ' Council of Clovesho, A. D. 747, c. 16, ' secundum morem priorum nostrorum.' The Litany on St. Mark's day was adopted from the Eoman Church by that Council. * Archd. Freeman (Princ. of Div. Serv. i. 246) conjectures that certain pe- culiarities in the Old-English daily offices as compared with the Roman were originally brought in by Augustine from the South Gallic rites, as probably con- structed by Cassian on an Eastern model. But it is not on the whole a likely conjecture. The Council of Clovesho, c. 15, prescribes adherence to the Roman form for the canonical hours. Some peculiarities of the Old-English Ordinal are traced by Maskell to the Celtic Church ; Mon. Ritual, iii. pp. cxi, 200, 208. Mo7iastery of SS, Peter and Paul, 91 entirely agree with the Iloman\ That Augustine never thought chap. m. of a vernacular Liturgy for the English was indeed an error, but under the circumstances 'natural and pardonable^.' We may reject the notion that some words of St. Boniface, and some other words of his contemporary Pope Zacharias ^, refer to definite synodical resolutions arrived at by the first arch- bishop and his two suffragans on questions of matrimonial degrees and the form of administering baptism : tiie passages in question refer to the ' synod ' of London or the synod of the province, i. e. the provincial episcopate of southern England, which was ' founded ' by Augustine, or ' governed ' by Au- gustine, and his successors, as the authority for the regulations in question. Augustine would of course take counsel on many points of ecclesiastical administration with his two suffragans of London and Rochester ; but no formulated results of such conferences are now extant. His interest in the last year of Monastery his episcopate was much taken up, we may assume, by the peter and progress of his new monastery outside the walls of Canterbury*. Paul- He saw the walls of the church rise higher and higher, but was not permitted to witness its completion. He could, how- ever, make all the essential arrangements for the foundation and constitution of the house : by his exhortation, says Bede ^, Ethelbert built the church, and enriched it with divers gifts ; and he selected his old companion Peter to be the first abbot ^ * Alcuin, Op, i. 231. ' Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 31. Lappenberg strangely imagines that the converts heard the Liturg>' in their Germanic dialect; i. 168. 3 Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 51. * Elmham, p. iii, says that at Christmas, 605, Ethelbert, in a council of clergy and laity, confirmed and enlarged the grants to this monastery. He then gives the so-called second charter, reciting the boundaries of the property. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 55. Elmham iJfecoraes rhapsodical : ' Eja, vere nostra Augustea regia ! ' ' Bede, i. 33 : ' Fecit autem ... in quo, ejus hortatu,' &c. * A document called a ' bulla,' or * privilegium sub bulla plumbea,' profe.'^sing to come from Augustine, and exhorting his successors to ' ordain ' the abbots of this monastery, but not to claim authority over them, — to treat them as colleagues in the Lord's work, — is clearly an ' Augustinian ' invention ; see it in Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 6 ; Elmham, p. 119. Such 'privilegia' were, at this period and later, often granted by bishops, e. g. St. Landry's, or Landeric's. to St. Denis (Mansi, xi. 61) : but the language of the Augustinian charter betrays it. Corap. a privilegium of Bertfrid of Amiens to Corbey, (ib. 107), and one of 92 Date of Augustine s Death, CHAP. III. of this house of SS. Peter and Paul, a choice which, according to the monastic documents, was confirmed by the royal nomination ^. The last year of Augustine's life must have been either 604 or 605. For the earlier date, — in the absence of any help from Bede or the Saxon Chronicle, — is cited the alleged charter of Ethelbert to the Church of Rochester, which is dated April 38, 604, and ignores Augustine, referring to his successor as the bishop of Canterbury : but this would place Augustine's death earlier than the May of that year, whereas he died on the 26th of a May ^. Later authorities differ : the chronicles of St. Augustine's Abbey (i. e. SS. Peter and Paul's) give 605, an earlier annalist ^ 604 : and there is a difference as to whether the day of his death was a Tuesday or a Wednesday, May %6 being a Tuesday in 604, a Wednesday in 605. Probability would point to 605, as allowing more time for the arrangements of Augustine and Ethelbert in regard to London and Rocliester, after the return of the former from his conferences at Augustine's Oak *. One act which the archbishop performed ' while yet in health,' but shortly before his end, — his last public act, — was the conse- cration of Laurence to be his future successor ^. It was an act, strictly speaking, which the ancient canons forbade : his own great namesake ^ had been ill at ease on observing that the text of a Nicene canon "^ seemed to tell against the consecra- tion of a bishop as coadjutor and future successor by the actual bishop of the see; — but, fairly interpreted, the words did not Marculf (ib. 113). On such privilegia see Guizot, Civil, in Fr,, lect. 15. He gives the usual formula. ^ The (spurious) charter of Ethelbert, ranked as 'third,' uses remarkable language : 'Cum consilio . . . Augustini . . . Petrum elegi, eisque . . . abbatem praeposui.' Elmham, p. 114. 2 See the epitaph in Bede, ii. 3 : ' Septimo Kal. Junii ' (May 26). 3 Florence of Worcester. Thorn says, c. i. 1 1 (X Script. 1 765), tliat Augustine's death has been erroneously placed by many in 613, and that he died 605. Smith adopts 605, and says that the chronology from which Thorn took his computation clearly points to a Wednesday as the day of the week, and to 605 as the year (p. 81). See the * Chronoldgia ' in X Script. 2229. * Hussey decides for 605, Haddan and Stubbs for 604. ^ Bede, ii. 4 : * Successit Augustino . . . quern ipse idcirco adhuc vivens or- dinaverat.' ^ St. Augustine, Ep. 213. ' Nic. Can. 8 : tVo /i^ Iv ry w6\u bvo eniffKoiroi Siatv, Archbishopric fixed at Canterbury, 93 condemn such a proceeding, which had been resorted to in chap. m. several cases before Augustine of Hippo was thus raised to the episcopate ^. However, exceptions were recognised in regard to such rules as were embodied in a canon of the Council of Antioch in 341, prohibiting the consecration of a future successor by a living bishop ^. St. Athanasius (who, indeed, did not recognise that council) had thus consecrated his friend Peter ^ ; and, what seemed more to the purpose, the majority of the * Latins ' in Jerome's time* held that St. Peter, as bishop of Rome, had consecrated Clement to succeed him ; — so that Bede expressly describes Augustine as having followed the example of the chief of the Apostles. But why did he not Arch- pass on the archiepiscopate to Mellitus ? The question is fixed aV^ twofold. Why did he ignore Gregory's evident intention Canter- that the metropolitan see should be fixed in London ? Clearly because, being better acquainted than the Pope could be with the local circumstances among which, perhaps, the difficulties of mission work among the inhabitants of London would hold a certain place, he deemed himself free to act on his own judgment, which, no doubt, coincided with his personal feeling ; for his affections had become closely entwined with the church and the monasteries of Canterbury, and he naturally wished the archiepiscopate to be permanent in that beloved home ^. His resolution has determined the history of the Church of England as depending on the see of Canterbury. ' But why not transfer Mellitus to Canterbury, or else, leaving him to his London work, summon Justus to the greater Kentish see ? ' If the question presented itself to Augustine, * Bingham, b. ii. c. 13. s. 4 (vol. i. p. i77)' ' Mansi, ii. 131 7. A later canon, called the 76th Apostolic, had forbidflen a bishop to consecrate a relative to succeed him. ' Chronicon Acephalum : * Five days before his death he ordained (conse- crated) Peter.' * Jerome, de Vir. Illustr. 15 : comp. Comm. in Esai. b. 15. Kuffinus sug- gested a modified view, that Linus and Clement were both bishops at Rome before Peter's death. To this Bede refers in Hist. Abb. 6. ' See the letter of Kenulf king of Mercia to Leo III., stating that Gregory- had intended London to be metropolitical, but that because Augustine died and was buried in Canterbury, it seemed good to the Witan (nostrae gentia sapientibus) that the * metropolitanus honor' should abide there. Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 522. 94 Consecration of Laurence, CHAP. III. he probably answered it by considering that episcopa translations were technically, at any rate, discouraged b^ Church law^ ; and that he saw a man well qualified for th« archbishopric among those who had been his original com panions, — whose hearts he had comforted and inspirited b^ the letter brought from Gregory, who had travelled with hin through Frankish districts, had stood by his side when h( first confronted Ethelbert, and had raised their voices ii the litany along the slope of St. Martin's hill. This frienc was Laurence. On his head the feeble hands of Augustine were laid, and Augustine's voice uttered the solemn prayers of benediction with which the prelates of Latin Christendom were set apart for their work 2. Laurence was now qualified tc preside over the ' Church of the English; ' and although Augus- tine's last days may have been partly saddened by the thought that this Church had not ' broken forth on the right hand and the left,' with anything like the amplitude and vigoui of self-extension which the joyful Christmastide of 597 bad seemed to promise, he would take comfort in hoping that those who came after him would ' see the glory of the Lord revealed in some richer spiritual conquests, and some stronger and broader consolidation of the ChurcVs organic unity. It was in fact the latter work, rather than the former, which was reserved for the see of Canterbury, — and that after some sixty years had passed. The work of Augustine died, as we have seen, in the last week of May, ugus me. ^^^ probably in 605 ; and his body was temporarily laid ' outside, but close to ^,' the yet unfinished church of his new monastery. The brief period allotted to him for work as a missionary bishop should modify any unkindly estimate of the amount of work that was done. He had at any rate laid the foundation ' nobly * : ' he had converted a typical English monarch ; he had baptized multitudes of Kentish proselytes ; he had secured a formal and public acceptance, by a national ^ See Bingham, b. vi. c. 4. b. 6. * See Muratori, Lit. Eom. ii. 357. ^ Bede, ii. 3. See Gocelin's Hist. Minor, 39 : 'Regnas, Augustine, Augastis saeculi nomine et dignitate sublimior. ... In monasterio . . . reconditur pretiosissimum corpus ejus festive cum jubilo.' * Bede, ii. 4, ' nobiliter jacta.' Character of Augustine. 95 ssembly, of Christian obligations, and of the Church as an chap, iii. •rganised institution ; he had planted an offshoot of the Centish Church in London ; he had rooted in Canterbury a uture centre for any amount of Church extension ; he had iefinitely connected the reviving Christianity in Britain vith the theological culture and ecclesiastical discipline of ihe continental Western Church. Briefly, he had made the )eginning, opened the door, formed the precedents : later nissionaries in England, who had other opportunities, whose mccesses covered a wider area, were, consciously or not, 3arrying on the impulse first given by the Gregorian mission, md therefore, in some effective sense, by him whom an ancient English Council \ when appointing a festival in his honour, iescribed as having brought to the English people 'the knowledge of their heavenly country/ So much as to what he did. As to what he was in himself, it cannot be said that he was a man of genius, or of signal insight into human nature, or of any such qualities as exercise a commanding power over men's admiration, or an attractive influence on generations of human hearts. He was not a Boniface, not an Anskar, not a Xavier, not a Martyn. His monastic training, carried on probably until he was past middle life, had tended to stiffen his mind and narrow his range of thought ; something of smallness, something of self-consciousness, some want of consideration for unfamiliar points of view and different forms of experience, may be discerned in him without injustice, and thus explained without any ungenerous forget- fulness of the better side of the monastic character. Whatever were his shortcomings, Augustine of Canterbury was a good man, a devout and laborious Christian worker, who could, and did, face threatening difficulties and accept serious risks in loyalty to a sacred call ; a missionary whose daily conduct was a recommendation of his preaching, who could impress and convince men of various classes in a Teutonic people that had little in common with his Italian antecedents ; who, as archbishop, did his duty, as he read it, with all his might, if not without mistakes or failures, such as we may be tempted * Council of Clovesho, c. 17; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 368. 96 S^, Columban. CHAP. III. to judge more harshly than they merit ; who, acting thus, accomplished more than appears at first sight, in that he originated so much, of the work which was to make England Christian. Laurence ' Laurence began his archiepiscopate with strenuous efforts bishop. ^^ extend the foundations of the Church, and took pains to carry up its fabric to the due height, by the frequent utterance of holy exhortation, and the continual example of Oyertures pious conduct.' Such is Bede's eulogy^. It was part of Church Laurence^s plan to make a fresh attempt in the direction of co-operation and union with the Celtic bishops and Churches. He had, at first, some hope that the Irish might be more amenable than the Britons. But he became in some way aware of the resolute Celticism, in regard to Paschal observance, of the great Irish-born abbot and missionary Columban. Columban, who had now for about fifteen years ^ been presiding over three monasteries in the wild country of the Vosges, and in spite of the exacting severities of a rule far more onerous than Benedict's ^, had exercised a strong moral and spiritual fascination over many earnest souls that recognised in him a true zealot for Christian strictness, whose passion it was, as the historian of French civilisation expresses it, to cast the Divine fire abroad on every side, 'without troubling himself about the conflagration*.' With all his intense Christian devotion^, the Irishman's 'perfervidum ingenium ' made itself apparent in his conduct. He had denounced the Gallican Easter cycle, that of Victorius, as ridiculous in the eyes of scholarly Irishmen ^, and had upheld ^ Bede, ii. 4. ' Laurentius . . . strenuissime fundamenta ecclesise,' &c. ^ Columban was bom about 540, and came into Gaul, in order to preach the Gospel to heathen tribes on the continent, about 590. He settled in Burgundy among the pine-forests of the Vosges ; disciples gathered round him ; he founded three monasteries in succession, at Anegray, Luxeuil, and Fontenay, See Lanigan, ii. 261 ; Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 286 ; Maclear, Apostles of Med. Eur. p. 59 ; Haddan's Remains, p. 269 ; King, Ch. Irel. i. 249. ^ See the Rule (in Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxx. 216), c. 10. The elaborate rules of penance embodied in ' Penitentials ' originated in 'the overstrained and indiscreet zeal of Cummian and Columbanus; ' Haddan's Remains, p. 267 ; see ib. 278. * Guizot, Civil, in Fr., lect. 16. 5 See his tenth ' Instruction ' and fifth * Carmen.* ' Colimib. Ep. I. He says that Victorius transgressed the rule that Easter His Celtic tenacity, 97 the reckoning which included ' the fourteenth of the moon ' chap. m. among the days on which Easter Sunday could be kept^. This he did in a letter to Pope Gregory ; and about the time when Mellitus and his companions were passing through Gaul, he excused himself from attending a Gallic synod by a letter ^ in which he claimed the authority of all the Western Churches for not extending the Paschal limits beyond the twentieth of the moon, and upheld the cycle of eighty-four years as representing the mind of venerated writers, and contrasting with the ' doubtful and indefinite language of Victorius ^ ; ' while at the same time he was content to deprecate intolerance, to ask ' leave to dwell silently in these woods beside the bones of his seventeen departed brethren,' and to ' pray that Gaul might find room for all,' of whatever race, who were on their road to the heavenly kingdom*. But it was obvious that Columban would not depart in any particular from the Irish usages on this point. Laurence may have learned from some Gallic bishops, or from a personal visit to the abbot of Luxueil, how strong was his resolve against any conformity to their practice : and the tenacity of the Irish Churchmen's adherence to Celtic rules was painfully brought home to the archbishop when an Irish could not precede the equinox, and that by admitting the twenty-first moon within the limits, a Pascha tenebrosum was introduced, because the twenty- first moon rises after midnight. He opposes to Victorius the authority of Anatolius and Jerome. This Ep. ranks as Greg. Ep. ix. 127. Compare Greg. Turon., H. Fr. x. 23: 'In cyclo Victor luna decima quinta Pascha scripsit fieri; sed ne Christiani, ut Judaei, sub hac luna haec solemnia celebrarent, addidit. Latini autem luna vigesima secunda,' &c. * He says that the plea for excluding the fourteenth, ' cum Judasis Pa»scha facere non debemus,' was 'once urged by Bishop Victor, but no one of the Easterns (!) Buum recepit commentum.' We must, he insists, keep Easter from the fotirteenth to the twentieth inclusive, not from the fifteenth to the twenty-first. ^ Columb. Ep. 2 : ' Patribus vel fratribus episcopis, presbyteris . . . Columba peccator.' ' • Victorium nuper dubie scribentem, et ubi necesse erat, nihil definientem . . . who wrote under Hilarus, 103 years after the times of St. Martin.' Hia chronology is faulty. * * Ut mihi liceat ... in his silvis silere et vivere juxta ossa .... as up to this time we have been free to live among you twelve years. . . Capiat nos simul, oro, GaUia,' &c. See Milman, ii. 288; Maclear, p. 64; King, i. 294. H 98 Second address to Britons fails. CHAP. III. bishop, Dagan of Inverdaoile ^, having come to Canterbury 2, for the purpose, as we may suppose, of conferring with the three bishops^, was apparently so much irritated by what passed in the discussion that he flatly refused to eat with them, or even to eat in the same place in which they were taking their meal. Laurence wrote, in his own name and in those of his two suff^ragans^ to their ' most dear lords and brothers, the bishops and abbots throughout all Scotia,' i. e. Ireland. Only part of the letter is given by Bede : but he tells us that in the rest Laurence entreated them to be at one in ' Catholic observance ' with the Church throughout the world. Another letter to the like effect was sent to the British bishops*, evidently in order that Laurence might discharge his conscience, and be able to feel that he had done all he could to promote unity. * How much good he got from it/ says Bede with something of condensed bitterness, ' even our present times can show,' — for he well knew how in the days of his own elder contemporary, Aldhelm bishop of Sherborne, the British priests beyond the Severn used to cleanse elaborately the plates or cups from which Saxons had fed, after throwing the remnants of their food to dogs and swine ^ : how, at the time at which his History was written, the Britons 'regarded the Christianity of the English as a thing of nought ^.' In effect, the Southern Irish gave up their Paschal reckonings in deference to Papal exhorta- tions, to the opinion of some of their own leading men, e. g. St. Cummian, and to evidence obtained as to the prevalence of the ' Catholic Easter,' not only at Bome, but in other leading Churches, — about a.d. 634"^: the influence of the ^ Lanigan, ii. 365. Inverdaoile was in Wexford. Dagan died Sept. 13, 640. ^ Bede, ii. 4. *Ad nos veniens' seems to imply a visit to Canterbury. 'Nee in eodem hospitio quo vescebamur,' (a 'lodging' in 'Christ Church'). ' See Lanigan, ii. 367. He adds that on this supposition, Dagan could not have intended all along ' to keep up no sort of communion with them.' He also quotes the appellation prcBplacidam, given to this prelate. * Bede, ii. 4 : ' Misit idem Laurentius . . . etiam Brettonum sacerdotibus.' 5 Aldhelm, Ep. 1. * Bede, ii. 20; cp. v. 22. ' Lanigan, ii. 389. King dates the Synod of the Field of Lene in 630, and distinguishes it from the Synod of the White Field; Ch. Ifel. i. 171. He Dedication of SS, Peter and Pauts, 99 monastery of Hy upheld those reckonings longer in the chap. m. north of Ireland until 704: and Hy itself, in 716, adopted the ' Catholic Easter \' The Welsh did not yield until long after Bede's death; — the North Welsh, under the influence of Elbod bishop of Bangor, in 755 or 768 ; the South Welsh under strong pressure in 777 ^. The ecclesiastical society at Canterbury sustained a loss at the close of 607, when the abbot Peter, sent by Ethelbert as an envoy to Graul, was drowned in the bay of Ambleteuse ; his body was recovered, and buried in St. Mary's church at Boulogne ^. John, one of ^ the Forty,' succeeded him : and in the same year, 608, Bishop Mellitus went to Rome to consult Mellitus at Pope Boniface IV. on the affairs of the English mission, and ^^^' was honourably received in a Roman synod held on Feb. ^7, 610, the decrees of which he subscribed *. The Pope sent back with him a letter to Ethelbert, and others to Laurence and his clergy ^ : and after his return he was probably present Dedication at the long-delayed dedication of the monastery church of pg^/^nd SS. Peter and Paul outside the east wall of Canterbury. Paul's. Laurence performed the ceremony, and then transferred the remains of Augustine, with all honour, to a grave in the northern porch of the church^. The monastery, as it grew in resources, became a conspicuous specimen of monastic exemption from diocesan rule : it was called ' the Roman Chapel in England,' as being immediately subject to the Pope"''. Its community carried on a tradition of jealous gives the substance of Cummian's letter in defence of his adoption of the Boman Easter ; ib. 154. See the original in Usher's • Sylloge,' Ep. 11. * Bede, v. 22. Dunchad was then abbot. " Mon. Hist. Brit. pp. 834, 843 ; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 204. ^ Bede, i. 33; Elmham, p. ia6. * * Confinnaret,' Bede, ii. 4, i.e. 'assent to.' ^ Bede, 1. c. : 'Una cum epistolis,' &c. But the letter beginning *Dum Chris- tianitatis vestrse,' Mabnesb. Pont. p. 46, Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 65, professing to grant the king's request that a regular community of monks might be estab- lished in the cathedral monastery, looks like an 'Augustinian' invention, meant to establish the seniority of that community over the former. Cf. Elmham, p. 85. Elmham says that Mellitus brought home this letter after a second journey in 61 5 ; p. 134. A letter or bull ascribed to Boniface, in Elmham, p. 129, is spurious. * Bede, ii. 2 : * Mox vero,' &c. ^ * Life of St. Augustine,' p. 133. See Elmham, pp. 386, 392, 404 (Eugeniua III. said that the monastery was 'beati Petri juris,' &c.). An earlier Pope, H % 100 Death of Ethelberf, Death of Ethelbert. CHAP. III. independence as regards the archbishop ^, and a sort of standing- feud with their neighbours of the metropolitan cathedral. The aged Bretwalda, when he witnessed the removal of Bertha's coflSn as well as Augustine's to the minster newly- dedicated, may well have felt that his life's work was done. Yet he lived three years longer, probably saddened in his last days by apprehensions as to the fortunes of the Church under his son Eadbald, who, according to the Chronicle, had been baptized, but, according to the higher authority of Bede, 'had refused to receive the faith of Christ ^ :' — if this phrase is to be taken literally, it implies that Eadbald had held aloof from Christianity while his father was reigning as a Christian monarch. That reign came to a close on the 24th of February, in 616. Ethelbert had reigned, says Bede, fifty-six years: but in assigning to him twenty-one years of Christian life, the historian^ is inconsistent with his own date of 597 for the arrival of Augustine. Etbelbert was buried in St. Martin's porch within the church of SS. Peter and Paul*. 'Eadbald, on assuming the government, did much harm to the Church, which was still in its tender growth.' He would have none of the new lore : he would cleave to the old worship : and he followed an old Teutonic rule^ by uniting himself to his father's Eadbald refuses Chris- tianity, Adeodatus, forbade any 'sacerdos' (bishop) to exercise authority in the monastery, prseter sedem apostolicam, it being specially under the jurisdiction of Rome ; p. 247. Guizot says of the Frankish monasteries that Fulda was the first to be placed under the direct jurisdiction of Rome ; Civil, in Fr. lect. 15. ^ See above, and Hard wick's Introduction to Elmham's Hist. Monast. S. Aug. For the story of the monk of St. Medard, who on his death-bed confessed that he had forged bulls of exemption in favour of St. Augustine's and other monasteries, see Palgrave, Eng. Comm. p. ccxi. See the spurious deeds in Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 67-70, and cp. Freeman, iv. 408. "^ See Elmham, p. 87, for a sample of animosity on the side of the cathedral monks; and cf. ib. 317 for Archbishop Cuthbert's successful scheme for ensuring his own burial in the cathedral. After Bregwin's similar burial the Augustinians were on the point of having recoui*se to arms j ib. 328. 3 Bede, ii. 5. * In the south part of the church, Elmham, p. 132. Bertha too was buried in this same * porch.' Against the story of his having been buried at Reoulver, see Stanley, Mem. Cant. p. 46. ' See above, p. 58, on this custom. The Council of Agde,in 506, had included those who married their stepmothers among the incestuous who were never to be absolved 'nisi cum adulterium separatione sajiaverint ; ' c. 61 ; Mansi, viii. 335. Eadbald rejects the Faith, ^ •..♦:•'! v . •.« >j^j widow, the successor of Bertha. We can Well' uiidei^tand* chap; iijf. * how, as Bede tells us, those who under Ethelbert had ac- quiesced, without conviction, in the creed which he adopted, — had ' accepted the laws of faith and chastity ^ either for fear or for the sake of favour ' (although indeed Ethelbert had never imposed Christianity on any of his subjects), took occasion to resume their heathenism under a king who, as they would express it, was not the dupe of the shavelings from Rome. 'Eadbald was troubled with fits of madness, and by the attacks of an unclean spirit :' such is Bede's statement, and in these moods, as they probably were, of wild excitement the Christian subjects of Eadbald would deem that they beheld a corrective visitation. But Eadbald appeared obstinate : and to add to the anxieties of Laurence, Mellitus was just now exposed to an equally trying reverse of his former prosperity. Sabert was just dead : the East- Saxon realm was left to his three sons, named Sseward, Sexred, and Sigebert. Although ' in their father's lifetime they had seemed to give up a little of their idolatry 2/ they now openly resumed it. One day they came into St. Paul's church, while the bishop was administering the Holy Communion^. ' Why do you not,' they rudely asked him, 'give us also a share in the white bread*, which you used to give to our father Saba 5, and which you still continue * Compare St. Boniface's bitter complaints about those whom he had taken for sheep and who proved to be goats ; Ep. 22. See ib. 27, on ' false Christians.' ^ 'Aliquantulimi intermisisse ; ' Bede, ii. 5. ' Bede says, * after the solemnities of masses had been finished : ' meaning, the mass which he was celebrating, and which was then considered to be in one sense finished by the celebrant's communion. 'Censebantur sollemnia missarum consummata priusquam communio, saltem laicis, distribueretur ; ' Ruinart, Prsef. ad Greg. Turon. s. 46. Cp. first Council of Orleans, c. 26, Mansi, viii. 355, that the ' missse solennitas ' was • completed ' when the bishop gave the benediction ; Mellitus might have done this before the princes came in. The use of * missae ' for a single celebration occurs in the wild tale of Mamertinus' dream in Constantius, Vit. Germ. i. 16, and in Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 40, iii. 17, 23, &c. It refers apparently to the dismissal of (i) catechumens, (2) the faithful. * Hook, i. 97, * slips in' (see Haddan's Remains, p. 301) a mention of ' wine.' Of course, ' both kinds ' were administered ; but ' something in the bread . . attracted the eye of the heathen princes.' And they would naturally look at Mellitus, not at his deacon who would be administering the chalice. ' A familiar abbreviation of Sebert. Comp. Ehnham, p. 338 :♦ It is a Saxon fashion nomina trausformare .... syncopando, ut pro Thoma Tomme .... pro Johsuiue Jcuiki* ]02' '"' ' ** *^" ' "'Mdlitus expelled from London, ' \ >\'^\ ..*)•"':;,'; > ^\^ ' ., ^ "^ CHAP. inf. 'to g-ive to tlie' people in the church?^ 'If,' answered Mel- litus with calm dignity, ' you are willing to be washed in that font of salvation ^ in which your father was washed, then you may also partake of the holy bread of which he used to par- take : but if you despise the laver of life, you cannot possibly receive the bread of life.' They answered, 'We will not go into that font^ for we know not what need we have of it : but for all that, we choose to eat of that bread.' It was sheer barbaric curiosity, combined with the self-will of young princes suddenly left to their own guidance. They could not brook any curb on their caprices : and when Mellitus ' re- peatedly and earnestly ' set before them the necessity of baptism as a pre-requisite for * communion in the most holy oblation 2,' they cut him short in senseless wrath, saying, ' If you will not give lis our way in so small a matter, you shall not remain in our province : ' and ' they commanded him, and all who belonged to him, to leave their kingdom.' Thus it was that for adhering to the principle that religious privileges implied religious obligations, and were not to be had without them, — for refusing to degrade his religion by imparting its holiest -treasures to outsiders who would not qualify themselves for such reception by the one indispensable initiatory rite, — Mellitus lost his church and bishopric, and submitted to see his work abruptly arrested : and from that day, for nearly forty years, London and Essex were lost to Christianity. The expelled bishop hastened to Canterbury, whither Laurence had summoned Justus from Rochester; and the three prelates held a sorrowful consultation, and resolved unanimously to abandon the mission. It was an access of such faint-heartedness as was only too natural, when all around seemed hopelessly dark : but the resolution was ' Comp. Bede, ii. 14, * lavacrum sanctae regenerationis ; ' iii. 2 1, ' fidei fonte ;' iii. 23, 'lavacri salutaris;' iv. 16, v. 19, 'fonte Salvatoris ; ' v. 6, 'salutari fonte . . . vitali unda.' * Comp. Bede, iii. 2, 'victimam sacrse oblationis;' iv. 14, 'sacrificiis cceles- tibus . . . de sacrificio Dominicae oblationis particuiam ;' iv. 22, 'oblationem hostise salutaris . . . victimas sacrse oblationis;' iv. 28, v. 10, *sacrificium victimse salutaris.' Compare Gildas, Epist. 2, •sacrificii ccelestis sedem,* and Increp. in Cler. 2, 'manus . . . sacrosanctis Chris ti sacrificiis extea- suri.' Story of Laurences dream, 103 couched in religious language, and reference perhaps was chap. m. made to cases in which primitive bishops had fled during persecution, — although, as yet, persecution, properly so called, had not begun. ' Better/ they said, ' return to Italy, and there serve God in freedom, than stay here where no good is to be done, among barbarians who have revolted from the faith.' Accordingly, Mellitus and Justus crossed the Channel, and took up their abode in Graul, intending to await events. Laurence was to follow : on the night before his intended departure, he caused his bed to be prepared within the church of SS. Peter and Paul. After praying long, with tears, for his flock, he lay down, and slept. Bede then reports what he had received from his informants^, that in the dead of night St. Peter appeared to him, scourged him, and sternly asked him why he was forsaking the sheep whom he himself had entrusted to his care (a phrase which obviously refers to the origination of the mission from a successor of St. Peter), and reminded him of his own example, who for the sake of Christ's little ones endured afflictions, and finally the death of the cross, at the hand of unbelievers. Next morning Laurence hastened to Eadbald, ' drew aside his garment,' and showed the actual marks of nocturnal castigation. ' Who has dared,' asked the king, 'to inflict such blows on a man of your rank ? ' Laurence told what had happened : Eadbald <- was deeply awed, cast away his idols, 'renounced his un- lawful marriage, embraced the faith of Christ, and after receiving baptism, took pains to promote in all things, to the utmost of his power, the interests of the Church/ It has been suggested that this story of the appearance of St. Peter and the scourging is probably the legendary exaggeration of a dream, in which Laurence imagined himself to receive such discipline from his heavenly visitor 2, and after which in compunction he inflicted it on himself^; that he may * The story is referred to by Alcuin in his letter of remonstrance to arch- bishop Ethelhejird ; see Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 519; and in Laurence's epitaph, Elmham, p. 149, — 'Pro populo Christi scapulas dorsumque dedisti.' 2 Hook, i. 89. 3 This suggestion is Churton's ; Early Engl. Church, pp. 53, 54. 104 Conversion of Eadbald, CHAP. III. have succeeded in producing a salutary effect on Eadbald by the mere recital of his dream, — perhaps also by the visible tokens of his penance ; and that there is therefore no necessity for imputing to him a fraud ^, such as, doubtless, a lax casuistry has often miscalled ' pious/ in forgetfulness of the condemnation of 'lying for God.' As it stands, the story reads like an imitation of what a writer of the second century affirms to have happened to Natalius, who had been a confessor, and having become a ' bishop ' among heretics, was scourged all night long by angels, and showed his bruises next day to the orthodox Roman bishop and Church 2. There is, at any rate, no doubt that an impression was made on Eadbald, which produced a conversion of the most genuine and practical kind, such as Bede has described in words already quoted, and in a sentence a little further on : ' He was studious in giving himself up to the Divine precepts.' He sent into Gaul to summon home the two fugitive bishops ; they however, somewhat unaccountably, delayed their return for about a year. Eadbald could uphold Justus, as his father had done, at Rochester ; but he was not, like his father, supreme over Essex. The young kings who had expelled Mellitus were soon afterwards^ slain in battle by the West-Saxons : and whatever Sigebert the Little, their successor*, may have done or wished to do in the matter, we are expressly told that ' the Londoners would not receive Mellitus back as their bishop, preferring to be under their own idolatrous high priests,' — that ' the common people, after * This is, however, the view of Lappenberg, i. 143, and apparently of Mihnan, ii. 235 ; and Hard wick thinks it ' difl&cult entirely to acquit ' Laurence ; Ch. H. Mid. Ages, p. 9. ^ The author of the Little Labyrinth (Hippolytus) in Euseb. v. 28. Compare Jerome's strange story of his having been rapt * in spirit ' before the Divine Judge (while his body seemed stiffened in death from the effects of fever), and scourged for his love of heathen literature. 'Liventes fateor me habuisse scapulas;' Ep. 22. 30. And the story in Adanrn. Vit. S. Columb. iii. 5, that * quadara nocte in ecstasi mentis ' Colvimba was * struck with a whip ' by an angel, and retained the mark through life. ^ Bede, ii. 5 : ' Sed non multo tempore,' &c. * Bede, iii. 22. He was son of Sseward, and had a long reign. His son Sighere afterwards reigned over part of the kingdom, under Mercia : and his brother Sebbi, joint-king with Sighere, was eminent for his piety. See Florence's Appendix, Mon. H. Br. p. 637. So Elmham, p. 236. Redwald's compromise. 105 having been stirred up to the crime ' of apostasy, ^ could not chap. hi. be corrected and reclaimed to the faith,' — and that ' Eadbald had not power enough to restore the prelate to his church in the teeth of heathens saying him nay ^^ The year after Eadbald's accession, — ^the year of this obsti- nate rejection of the faith by the greatest of English cities, — was marked by an event which, in its ultimate results, was a momentous gain to English Christianity. The East- Redwald Anglians of Norfolk and Suffolk were now ruled by a king Anglia." named Redwald^, grandson of that Uffa from whom the dynasty took the name of UflSngas. He is reckoned as fourth of the ^ Bretwaldas ^.' He had visited Kent, apparently in Ethelbert's time, and had accepted baptism ; but on his return home, his Pagan wife and 'certain perverse teachers,' appealing to his lingering superstitions or to his political self-interest, drew him into a compromise which Bede likens to the mixed worship of the old Samaritans *, who ' feared the Lord and served their own gods.' He had ' in the same (heathen) fane an altar for Christ's sacrifice/ and a smaller one for the worship of idols ^ : — it was a combination essentially resem- bling the attempt of many in that age to keep terms with both religions by attending indiscriminately the churches and the old heathen temples ^, or the subsequent expedient of a Norwegian king who, while signing the cross over his cup, told his people that it meant the hammer of Thor"^. Redwald had a consciousness of the claims of Christianity, but he durst * Bede, ii. 6 : * Mellitum vero Lundonienses episcopum recipere noluerunt . . . Non enim tanta erat ei,' &c. And ib. ii. 5, fin. : ' Nee, licet auctoribus perditis,' &c. ^ Bede, ii. 15 : 'Et quidem pater ejus Reduald,' &c. ^ Bede, ii. 5; Chron. a. 827. * 2 Kings xvii. 33. ' • In eodem fano et altare ad sacrificium Christi, et arulam ad victimas daemoniorum.' King Aldwulf of East-Anglia, when a boy, saw this 'fane.' Bede, ii. 15. * Gregory, Ep. ix. 11 : see too ib. viii. 18. Compare Willibald's Vit. S. Bonifacii, c. 8, that some of the Hessian converts would not receive Christian teachers ' integre,' but sacrificed to trees or fountains, some 'clanculo,' some openly (Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxxix. 619). So the Magyars, who had conformed to Christianity, often kept up the worship of their god Isten within the forests or beside the fountains. ' Hacon. See the story in Maclear's Apostles of Mediaeval Europe, p. 177. of Edwin. 106 Edwin in exile. CHAP. III. not admit them without reserve, and in their exclusive abso- luteness ; — he fancied that he could treat his baptismal creed as one form of religion with which older forms might be associated ^ : or perhaps he persuaded himself that, in excep- tional circumstances, the baptized king of heathen subjects might reasonably accommodate himself, to a certain extent, to the religious prejudices of his people. Be this as it may, Redwald, in the beginning of 617, was still harbouring at his court an exiled Northumbrian prince, whose name of Edwin should not be uttered by any Englishman without grateful respect, although his early life gave little promise of such a Early life career as in fact awaited him. The son of the Northumbrian Ella whose name had been played with by Gregory as sugges- tive of Alleluia, Edwin, as a child 2, had been despoiled of his royal inheritance by Ethelric, the father of Ethelfrid, — had been sheltered, according to a Welsh tradition, by king Cadvan of North Wales ^, — had certainly at some time fled into Mercia *, and thence into the more remote East-Anglia. Thither, however, Ethelfrid^s hate pursued him : Redwald received message after message, offering ' a large sum of money for the slaughter of Edwin : ' at last, threats of war were com- bined with the promises, and Redwald, allured or alarmed, gave consent. It was then, according to the famous and impressive story ^, that a friend of Edwin entered the exile's bedchamber, called him out, told him what the king had promised to do with him, and offered to conduct him, that very night, out of the province, and out of the reach of ^ Pearson calls this ' the first authentic mention of a process of development which purified and rationalised Odinism during several centuries,' and ' irradiated it with gleams of love and hopefulness from Christianity' (Hist. Engl. i. 127, 155), as the bright and beloved Balder was invested with some attributes of • the White Christ ; ' see Kemble, i. 369. ^ Edwin was bom in 585, three years before his father's death. Then Ethelric, the Bernician, seized Deira, and Edwin's troubles began, in 588. ' So Lappenberg, i. 145. But wovild he not, in that case, have been bred up a Christian % See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 75. The Welsh story was that Cadvan, who became king in 603, 'hazarded a war with the persecutor of Edwin, which ended in the battle of Chester ;' Lappenberg, i. 145. * He married a Mercian princess; Bede, ii. 14. 5 See it exquisitely told by Bede, ii. 12, 'Quod ubi fidissimus quidam,' &c. ; and the rendering in Freeman's Old-Engl. Hist. p. 52. His mysterious visitant, 107 Ethelfrid or Redwald ^. Edwin declined the offer, not thank- chap. hi. lessly, but, according to Bede's representation, partly from a scruple of honour, partly from moody hopelessness. He would not be the first to break friendship with Redwald, who as yet had never wronged him ; if he was to die, let his death come by Redwald's hand rather than by any less noble. What new refuge could he find after nearly thirty years of wander- ing ? His friend retired, leaving him seated on a stone out- side the palace, and distracted by ^ many a tide of thought ' as to what he should do, or whither he should go. When he had spent a long time in silent distress, he seemed to see, in the dead stillness of night, a man approaching him whose face and garb were alike strange, and who, after greeting him, asked why he was sitting there, alone and sorrowful, while every one else was taking repose. ' What matters it to you,' asked Edwin impatiently, recovering from a momentary dread, ' whether I pass the night within doors or here ? ' ' Do not think/ rejoined the stranger, ' that I am unaware of the reason of your sleep- lessness and anxiety. 1 know who you are, and what you are now afraid of. But tell me what you would give as a reward to any one who could deliver you from your peril.' ' I would give all I could.' * What if he could also assure you that you should crush your foes and become a king, and a mightier king than your forefathers, or even than all who have been beforetime kings of the Angles ? ' Again Edwin promised to requite such service as it merited. ' But,' said the stranger, ' what if he whose predictions should have been thus made good were able to give you better counsel for your Kfe and safety than any of your kindred ever heard of ? would you then follow his guidance ? ' Edwin promised that he would do so absolutely. The stranger laid his hand on Edwin's head, saying, ' When this token is given you, remember our conversation, and fulfil your promise:' and instantly, as Bede heard the story, he disappeared. Edwin was still sitting on the stone seat, gladdened by the encouraging words, but much perplexed as to their mysterious speaker ^, when his friend returned with ^ . • Si ego vis, hac ipsa nocte/ &c. * Bede says he knew him to be a spirit, meaning, as the story must have run when first told (Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 54), one of the gods, or of the • elves.' 108 Edwin King of Northumbria. Battle of Retford. CHAP. III. a glad countenance. ' E-ise up, and go to bed without fear. The king told his wife of his resolution against you, and she told him that it was nowise meet for a great king to sell for gold a good friend in distress, or rather for love of gain to ruin that which was more precious than all ornaments, his honour. This has changed his mind again.' It was true : Redwald had determined not only to protect Edwin, but to anticipate the threatened attack of Ethelfrid. He gathered all his forces, marched rapidly northward, and giving the ' Destroyer ' no time to make full preparations, met him on the borders of Mercia, on the east bank of the Idle, probably at Idleton near Retford ^, and, as we infer from a calculation of Bede, before the nth of April in 617 2. Here Ethelfrid was defeated and slain : a popular gaying commemorated the day when ' The river Idle was stained with blood of Angles ^ : ' and Edwin, the hunted and all but betrayed fugitive, became at once the sovereign of the whole Northumbrian region, uniting his hereditary Deira to Bernicia. He ' drove out the ^thelings, sons of Ethelfrid */ says the Saxon Chronicle ; and we must mark three names, — Eanfrid, Oswald, and Oswy, — one destined to a brief and shameful elevation, the two others to a high rank among Old-English monarchs, and one of these to the purest form of royal glory — but all three at present cast aside into the gloom of a common ruin. To all appearance, Edwin was simply another mighty prince of the Northumbrian line, with something of the terrible energy of Ethelfrid, as the Christian Britons of Loidis ^ would feel to their cost, when in revenge for the poisoning of his nephew Edwin King of North um bria. * See Pearson, Hist. Engl, i. 127. ' For Edwin was baptized on April 1 1, 62 7, in the eleventh year of his reign ; Bede, ii. 14. See below, p. 118. ^ Hen. Hunt. ii. a. 617. On this battle see Palgrave, E. Com. 428. * Eanfrid, Oswald, Oswy, Oslac, Oswudu, Oslaf, Offa, — all Edwin's nephews, for Acha his sister had married Ethelfrid ; Bede, iii. 6. * See Bede, ii. 14, iii. 24, for Loidis ; it was a district dependent on the Cumbrian British realm, and embracing the lowest portion of the valleys of the Calder, the Aire, and the Wharf; Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, p. i ; Pal- grave, Engl. Comm. p. 435. The name of course survives in Leeds. Elmete, a forest, was properly the west part of Loidis ; see Murray's Yorkshire, p. 345. Bede mentions it in ii. 14. Mellitus Archbishop. 109 Hereric, the father of the future St. Hilda, Edwin expelled chap. hi. their king Cerdic, and annexed Loidis to Deira ^. Two years after the battle of Retford, Laurence died, the and of February, 619, having added, as it would seem, to the churches of Canterbury a * martyrium ' to the south of the cathedral, in honour of * the Four Crowned Brothers,' Roman martyrs in the time of Diocletian 2. He was suc- ceeded by Mellitus, whose character, as we have already seen, was that of a man faithful in his stewardship of sacred ordinances, although in a great trial of patience he despaired of the English mission. He exhibited, as arch- bishop, a truly pastoral zeal; which, as in Gregory's case, overcame the painful infirmity of the gout from which he suffered. As Bede expresses it^, his mind^ if not his feet, * could walk healthily, leaping over all earthly considerations^ ever winging its way upward to love and follow after things heavenly : noble in birth, nobler still in loftiness of spirit, — a true man of God, enkindled with the fire of Divine love,' which, says Bede, was manifest in him when he caused him- self to be carried towards a conflagration that was laying waste a large part of Canterbury, and occupied himself in prayer while a number of strong men were vainly struggling to quench it; whereupon the wind shifted round to the north, and the rest of the city — including the cathedral and the episcopal house — was saved. This incident, and the dedica- tion of a church of St. Mary, built by Eadbald within the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, are all that we know of the archiepiscopate of Mellitus*. He died on the 24th of April, 624, and Justus of Rochester was removed to Canterbury^, the circumstances requiring this technical departure from old canons. Boniface V. speedily sent him a pall, and authorised him to consecrate, single-handed^, a new bishop for Rochester, ^ Compare the App. to Nennius, and Bede, iv. 23 ; Lappenberg, i. 149. ' Bede, ii. 7. For these martyrs see Alb. Butler, Nov. 8. ' lb. * Erat autem Mellitus corporis quidem infirmitate, id est, podagra gravatus, sed mentis gressibus sanis' (qu. sanusi). * lb. On this church of St. Mary see Elmham, p. 144. It stood at the east of the abbey church, but was afterwards annexed to it, and called *the church in the crypts.' * Bede, ii. 8. * Cui statim successit,' &c. * The permission, indeed, was general : ' Exigente opportunitate.' This Pope sat from 619 to 625. 1 10 Disappointment of early hopes. CHAP. III. — the person selected being Romanus. This letter contains an allusion to the disappointment of those more brilliant hopes which had been centered in the Gregorian mission. The Pope consoled Justus by observing that what had been done was a pledge that in due time all would be done. The slow progress was a trial of ' patience and endurance^ : ' let it be borne in faith, and with a humble confidence that the actual consolidation of Christianity in Kent would promote its extension among the neighbouring realms. Justus may - well have needed this encouragement at the end of those twenty-three years of experience ; the programme drawn out by Gregory in one of the letters brought by himself and his companions appeared still to be so far from fulfilment : outside Kent, not a single kingdom had been secured for Christianity, and one had been lost. If hopes had been entertained as to East-Anglia, they had been blighted. The native bishops and clergy had repelled successive overtures. One bright spot there was, which of itself suggested a coming revival of prosperity; for Eadbald^ who had once been such a cause of despondency, was now, as it were, a second Ethel- bert. He who had refused baptism, and emphasised his opposition to Christianity by contracting a marriage which it abhorred, was now, as Boniface had written after reading a letter from him^ on the occasion of the accession of Justus, a signal example of ' a real conversion and of an unquestion- able faith.' With him the archbishops and their clergy could work cordially: at his bidding churches rose up; — one such has already been mentioned, and another is still substantially extant, and has lately after long desecration been restored to its high purpose, — that most venerable church of St. Mary, which, attached to a far older Roman lighthouse, crowns the southern cliff within the limits of the castle of Dover ^. * • Laudabili patientia redemptionem gentia illius expectatis . . . Salvati ergo estis spe patientiae et tolerantise virtute .... quatenus .... consummati opens vobis merces,' &c. He quotes Matt. x. 22, xxviii. 20. Compare a despondent letter of St. Boniface, Ep. 22, asking some nuns to pray for him that he might not die * omnino sine fructu Evangelii sterilis,' and receive * ultionem infructuosi laboris.' Cp. Vit. S. Anskar. ii. 24. ^ The pope, by some mistake, calls him ^^/ieZwald. , 3 Freeman, iii. 535. ^ Paulinus sent to Northumbrian ill Eadbald also built a church at Folkestone, and his daughter chap. hi. Eanswithj who founded there a religious society, is still remembered as the local saint ^. But it is with the King's sister Ethelburga, whom her family called by the fond name of Tata, ' the darling,' that our history is now concerned. It must have been very soon after the receipt of the Pope's Marriage letter that envoys from Edwin of Northumbria presented ^^^a to themselves to Eadbald. In the name of their master they Edwin, isked for Ethelburga's hand^. Eadbald answered like a Christian, and more uncompromisingly than his own Frankish g-randfather had replied to Ethelbert. ' I cannot give my lister to a heathen: my religion forbids it^.' The answer thus returned produced a second request from Edwin : if only be might obtain the Kentish princess, he would give to her and her attendants full liberty of worship, — and, more than that, he would himself be willing to adopt her faith, if kvise men, after examining it, should pronounce it better than lis own. We can easily see how Justus would exhort Eadbald to accept this offer. What if this were the opening )f a door, the first beginning of new. successes which should verify the assurances of Boniface, the long-hoped-for oppor- junity which might fulfil Gregory's aspirations by setting Deira free from ' the ire of God ? ' Eadbald took his resolution : Consecra- Edwin's terms were accepted, and Paulinus, one of the three p°^j^ companions of Justus in 60 1, was consecrated by him to the episcopate, on the 21st of July, 625, in order that he might :>e to Ethelburga in her Northern home what Liudhard had )een to her mother in the still heathen Kent. We have now •cached another landmark : the mission of Paulinus was the irst onward step that had been taken since Mellitus addressed .he East-Saxons : and it soon proved to be, what that attempt vas not, a great event for Christianity. ^ See Dugdale, Mon. Anglic, i. 451, that Eanswith chose this place as * a vnlgi requentatione remotum,' and her father built there a church of St. Peter, about ..D. 630. See also Alb. Butler, Sept. 12. ^ Bede, ii. 9. He writes her name ' -^Edilbergae.' * Bede amplifies the refusal: 'Ne fides et sacramenta coelestis Regis con- ortio profanarentur regis, qui veri Dei cultus esset prorsus ignarus.' Cp. ii. .5, and ' fidei sacramenta' in ii. 9, 15 ; iii. i, 30; iv. 14. CHAPTER IV. Paullnus It was, then, in the late summer of 625 that Edvvin of Northumbria received his bride from Kent. He had been previously married to Cwenburga, 'the daughter of Cearl king of the Mercians \^ and she had left him two sons, Osfrid and Eadfrid. He himself was just forty years old 2. He treated his new wife's chaplain with respect, and never interfered with their religious practices ; but he showed no disposition to fulfil the second part of his promise by institut- ing an examination of their creed. Paulinus lived in the Northumbrian court, for some months, without any apparent prospect of doing anything as a missionary. His personal appearance must have given an impression of grave dignity: a few words of Bede have pictured it from the description transmitted by one who had reason to remember it well. He was ' tall, with a slight stoop, black hair, a thin face, an aquiline nose, an aspect at once venerable and awe-striking ^.' He had with him as his confidential attendant a deacon named James, who was alive in Bede's own childhood, and whom he justly describes as ' a man of great zeal and fame in Christ's Church*.' Paulinus made some attempts to win over the heathens of Deira ; but in all these he failed. As Fuller in his quaint way words it, ' Seeing he could not be happy to gain, he would be careful to save ^.' * If the god * Bede, ii. 14. ^ For he was forty-eight when he died in 633 ; Bede, ii. 20. ' Bede, ii. 16. An old man whom Paulinus had baptized near Southwell gave this account to Deda abbot of Parteney, who related it to Bede. See Wordsworth's Eccl. Sonnets, No. 15 : — 'Mark him, of shoulders curved, and stature tall. Black hair, and vivid eye, and meagre cheek,' &c. * See Bede, ii. 16, 20 ; iii. 25 ; iv. 2. * Fuller, Ch. Hist. p. 72. Compare Bede, ii. 9, 'Laboravit multum,' &c. Attempt on Edwin's life. 113 of this world had blinded the eyes ' of the Yorkshire folk, he chap. iv. could at least, by daily exhortations, do his best to guard the queen's attendants from the contagion of Yorkshire heathenism. So passed the winter: on the 19th of April, Easter-eve in 6%6^ Edwin, then living at a royal country- house near Stamford-bridge, had a narrow escape from sudden death ^ : a West- Saxon named Eomer, sent as an envoy by the West- Saxon prince Cwichelm, who was then reigning under his father Kynegils 2, struck at Edwin with a two-edged and poisoned dagger ; Lilla, the king's most trusted personal retainer^, rushed forward to receive the blow, but Edwin himself was wounded through the body of this devoted servant. On that same *most holy night of the Lord's Passover,' Ethelburga bore a daughter; Edwin thanked his gods in the hearing of Paulinus, who thereupon assured him that he had been praying for this happy event. The king. Baptism of well pleased, promised that if he should succeed in his meditated vengeance on Wessex, he would take Christ for his Lord : in earnest of which, he at once gave over the infant to Paulinus to be dedicated to Christ. Accordingly, at Pentecost *, she was brought to baptism, being the first of the He cites 2 Cor. iv. 4. St. Anskar for a while was able to eflfect very little for Denmark ; see Hardwick, M. Ages, p. in. ^ Bede, ii. 9 : 'juxta amnem Deruventionem ' (Derwent, the white or clear water, a tributary of the Ouse). The * villa regalis ' was probably at Aldby. * There stood a royal house of the Northumbrian kings, the apparent site of which ... a mound surrounded by a fosse, still looks down on a picturesque point of the course of the river ; ' Freeman, iii. 354. For other * villse ' see Bede, ii. 14; iii. 17, 22 ; v. 4. ^ Kynegils began to reign in 61 1 : he and his son Cwichelm fought against the Britons at ' Beaudune * in 614, and slew 2046 : see Florence and the Chronicle. ' ' Minister,' here used as equivalent to ' miles : ' ' alium de militibus.* We have 'ministri ' in ii. 13 : 'ministri' attend Edwin on his progresses, ii. 16. Oswald has a 'minister * charged to look after the poor, iii. 6. Oswin sits at the hearth * cum ministris,' iii. 14. Benedict Biscop was a ' minister ' of Oswy, Hist. Abb. I, and Easterwine of Egfrid, ib. 7. Alfred and the Chronicle call Lilla a thane, a title variously explained as ' servant' and as ' warrior.' See Kemble, i. 180 ; Freeman, i. 86 ; Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. ccclxxvi ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 124, 136, 155. In ' Caedmon's ' paraphrase the angels are called thanes of God. Compare the offices of ' bower-thane ' (cubicularius), dish-thane, rede-thane. •Ministri' often subscribe royal charters; see Cod. Dipl. ii. 13, 29, 74, &c. One, by Egbert, is signed by eight • ministri ; ' ib. i. 320. * * On the holy day of Pentecost,' Bede : but he means, of course, the eve, a solemn time for baptisms : so S. Chron. Whitsun-eve, that year, fell on I 114 Indecision of Edwin. CHAP. IV. Northumbrian race wlio received it, with eleven ^ others of her household. The little Eanfled was reserved for a high place among the Christian princesses of England^. Her father, when his wound was cured, descended like a 'Destroyer^ on Wessex, slew five of its sub-kings^, and returned triumphant : but he still deferred full performance of his promise, although he absented himself from idolatrous observances. A man of thoughtful *, cautious temperament, trained by his early misfortunes in reticence and vigilance, with nothing of the enthusiast about him, — a man of middle life, whose impulsiveness, if he had ever had any, was extinct, — hating the notion of taking a false step, determined not to be hurried in any grave matter, — can we not easily imagine what Edwin was in those eventful months, during which, no doubt, Ethelburga felt the sore sickness of hope deferred? She was urged by a letter from the Pope ^ to use all her influence in behalf of her husband's conversion : the letter had been delayed, if we are to take Bedels words literally ^, on its journey to Britain, for Boniface had died in the October of 61^3 and was therefore near the end of his life when he thus wrote, reminding Ethelburga of the text about 'the un- believing husband,^ and in a companion letter exhorting Edwin to forsake the senseless worship of idols, the ' follies of Pagan temples, the deceitful flatteries of auguries,' and to June 7. Compare the Gregorian collects and mass after Whitsun-eve baptism, Muratori, ii. 88; and Bede, v. 7. ^ One form of the Chron. ' twelve.* ^ See Bede, ii. 20; iii. 15, 24, 25 ; v. 19. ^ On these five sub-kings, as indicating the lack of unity in Wessex, see Palgrave, p. 405 ; comp. Freeman, i. 26. Yet these under-kings were probably ^thelings of the blood of Cerdic ; Freeman, i. 97. * 'Thoughtful Edwin ; ' Wordsworth, Eccl. Sonnets, No. 15. ^ Bede, ii. ii. Boniface says in this letter that he has heard with grief that Edwin ' up to that time has delayed to listen to the preachers : ' and this suggests a difficulty, in that Ethelburga could not have reached York until the end of July, and the tidings of Edwin's ' delays ' could hardly have reached Rome before the end of October, when Boniface was dead. Could ' Boniface,' in the address of the letters, be a scribe's error for ' Honorius ' 1 * 'Quo tempore . . . accepit,' Bede, ii. 10. It is observable that Boniface is represented as speaking of 'the preachers,' without naming Paulinus. He sends Ethelburga a silver miiTor and a gilt ivory comb, and to Edwin a soldier's shirt of proof (so Churton, E. E. Ch. p. 59, renders * camisia ') ornamented with gold, and a camp-cloak of Ancyran fashion, — all these as ' blessings of their protector St. Peter.* Paulinus prevails with him, 115 secure eternal life by confessing the undivided Trinity. The chap. iv. latter epistle expressly suggests the breaking to pieces of idols as a demonstration of their impotence. ' You, who have received a living spirit from the Lord, are assuredly superior ' to things ' framed by your own subjects.' These arguments were perhaps no longer apposite ; Edwin was in an untenable half-way position, neither an idolater nor a believer ; his difficulty consisted in the humiliation demanded by Chris- tianity ; it was hard for the self-reliant Teuton ' to bow down and receive the mystery of the life-giving Cross ^.' Paulinus, whenever he had opportunity, argued, pleaded, exhorted : still the king was undetermined, and used ' often to sit for hours in silence ^,' pondering the great alternative. At last, during one of these moods, Paulinus drew near, laid his right hand on his head, and asked, 'Do you recognise this sign?' The allusion to words and gestures which had either formed part of a dream, and had as such been com- municated, in some way unexplained, to Paulinus^, or had been really employed by an unknown visitant with whom Paulinus w^as acquainted'^, or who may have been Paulinus himself^, struck home at once, and told on Edwin decisively. Trembling with awe, as if in the presence of one who could read his secret history, he was about to throw himself at the bishop's feet. Paulinus was master of the situation ; he raised him up, and in a tone of friendly confidence referred to what had been done for him, and what he was pledged to do in return. ' See, you have escaped those perils ; — see, you have been elevated to this kingship : delay no longer to embrace the faith and the precepts of Him who wrought Conversion that deliverance, and who granted that exaltation.' * I will do so,^ said Edwin : * but I will first confer with my chief friends and counsellors, so that, if they are willing, they may become Christians also.' Paulinus assented : Edwin assembled * Bede, ii. 12. ^ Bede, ii. 9, ' saepe diu solus residens : ' and ib. 12, ' horis competentibus iolitarius.' ' Lingard (Hist. E. i. 83) and Turner (Angl.-Sax. i. 356) suppose that Edwin had had a dream, and that Paulinus had heard of it. * Churton thinks that the strange visitor was a Christian who had accom- panied Redwald from Kent ; E. E. Ch. p. 56. ' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 75 ; Hook, i. 103 ; Raine, Fast. Eb. i. 38. I % 116 Northumbrian Witenagemot. CHAP. IV, his 'Witan^,' near Godmundingaliam, now Goodmanham, some twenty -three miles from York ; it was probably about the close of 626, or very early in 627. Witena- At this memorable gathering he asked his * wise men ' Goodman- individually what they thought of the new faith, which now ham. for more than a year had been impersonated in Paulinus, the bishop^ there present. The chief Pagan priest, whom Bede calls Coifi^, answered with a frank avowal of self- interest which showed a nature of coarse mould : ' The old worship seems to me worth nothing : no man has practised it more than I, and yet many fare better, and have more favour at your hand. If the gods had any power, they would rather help me, who have served them more than others. Let us then see what this new lore is good for ; if it is better than the old, let us straightway follow it.' Far different, and indescribably suggestive and pathetic, was the speech of a thane ^, who expressed in a vivid simile that bewilderment as to the mystery of life which weighed heaviest on the worthiest of the heathen ; ' I will tell you, O King, what methinks man's life is like. Sometimes, when your hall is lit up for supper on a wild winter's evening, and warmed by a fire in the midst ^, a sparrow flies in by one door, takes shelter for a moment in the warmth, and then flies out again by ^ See Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 126. Godmundigaham has been explained as the place under the mund or protection of the gods ; Taylor's Words and Places, P- 335 ; but also (Murray's Yorkshire, p. 131) as the home of the sons of God- mund. It is near Weighton, which means * sacred enclosure.' ^ This has been called a Celtic name for a pontiff; and Palgrave infers that Druidism had won its way in Deira; Engl. Commonw. p. 155. But it is answered that Coifi is an equivalent to the Saxon Coefig, and means 'the active one.' Collier's version of this speech is a curious specimen of his humour, and also of his utter want of the sense of congruity; i. 196. ^ See Wordsworth's Eccl. Sonnets, No. 16: — * Man's life is like a sparrow, mighty king,' &c. Cp. Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 29 ; Milman, ii. 238 ; Freeman's Old-Engl. History, p. 57. The speaker is called by Bede one of the * optimates : ' Alfred renders, Ealdorman. We find ' optimatibus ' in iii. 30. As to the winter banquets see Bede's * Cuculus ; ' — Hiems says, • Sunt et convivia laeta, Est requies dulcis, calidus est ignis in aede,' * ' While you are sitting at supper cum ducibus ac ministris tuis.' The • dux ' appears in Bede, iii. 24 (three Mercian duces), iv. 13 ; andiv. 15 (two of Sussex), and iv. 26. It seems to be here equivalent to Ealdorman. So Alfred, * with thine ealdorman and thanes.' See Kemble, ii. 1 25 ff. Christianity adopted. 117 another door, and is lost in the stormy darkness. No one in chap. iv. the hall sees the bird before it enters, nor after it has gone forth ; it is only seen while it hovers near the fire. Even so, I ween, as to this brief span of our life in this world ^; what has gone before it, what will come after it, — of this we know nothing. If the strange teacher can tell us, by all means let him be heard.' The words struck home to the listeners^ hearts, as fraught with a solemn and urgent reality; and just then, at the right moment, the chief priest proposed thatPaulinus should set forth his doctrine. Paulinus, of course, welcomed and used the opportunity ; and Coifi, as if lifted up by the power of the discourse into a higher strain of feeling, spoke out : ' Now I understand what the truth is : I have long known that it was not with us ; but now I see it shining out clearly in this teaching. Let us destroy those useless temples and altars, and give them up to the curse and the flame ! ' Then, at last, Edwin, as king, publicly accepted the Gospel, and asked Coifi who should begin the work of desecrating the altars and temples of idolatry. ' That will I do,' was the prompt answer : 'who could more fittingly destroy, as a lesson for all, what once I reverenced in my folly ? ' It was unlawful for a high priest to bear arms, or to ride except on a mare ; therefore Coifi emphasised his resolution by calling for arms and a horse, and, thus equipped, he rode straight at the vene- rated temple of Goodmanham, hurled his spear against it, and bade his companions set fire to the building together with its surrounding sacred precinct ^. Thus did Northumbria, by a national act, accept Christianity. The king caused a little Baptism of wooden chapel to be hastily reared at York, on part of the ground now covered by the glorious Minster ; and within its walls he went through the training of a catechumen^, and * * The Northern nations . . . demanded immortality,' and hence ' they took Christianity to their hearts ;' Merivale, Conversion of Northern Nations, p. 130. He gives a free version of this speech, and proceeds to dwell on the ' intense realisation of another life * which characterised the converted Teutons. ^ * Cum omnibus septis suis ' — the whole rcfievos or * frith-geard ; ' Thorpe's Glossary; also called 'healh-tun,' Chron. Abingd. ii. 483. Here Bede shows his fondness for Vergilian quotation : ' Quas ipse sacraverat aras.' Cp. -^n. ii. 502. See too Bede, ii. 12 ; iv. 26. ^ 'Cum catechizaretur.* Bede, ii. 14; cp. iii. i, 7 > ^- ^' See too Greg. Ep. viii. 23. 118 Greatness of Edwin. CHAP. IV. received baptism on Easter-eve ^^ April ii, 627. His nobles were baptized with him ; and among the neophytes was his grand-niece Hilda, the future abbess of Whitby ^. Many of the people followed his example. It was the birth-day of the Northumbrian Church. The realm of Edwin, stretching from the Humber to the Forth, and including ' Edwin's burgh ^ ' on its northern frontier, the wide-spread over-lordship which he exercised throughout all the kingdoms save that of Kent, and even over the Britons of Strathclyde, the Isle of Man^ and that of Mona*, which after his conquest of it was called Anglesey, may represent to us the great political importance of the baptism of the fifth ^Wielder of Britain.' So effective was the ' peace ^ ' established under his government that, according to a proverb still current in Bede's time, a woman with her infant could walk unharmed from sea to sea. At every clear spring along the high roads, he set up posts with brazen drinking cups ; and no man durst use them for any other purpose, — so greatly was he feared or loved. He loved state and kingly display : not only in battle, but in times of peace, wherever Edwin was on a progress, a banner-staff with a tuft of feathers — ^ the standard,' says Bede, ' called by the Romans Tufa ® ' — was borne before him and gave warning of his approach. Such was Edwin as a monarch and suzerain ; as ^ * Die sancto Paschae ' means here the eve. The Cambrian Annals say, * Run Alius Urbgen baptizavit eum.' So the ' Appendix ' to Nennius, * Si quia scire voluerit, quis eos baptizaverit, Rum map Urbgen baptizavit eos.' This seems to be a Welsh fiction, possibly based on some confusion between Paulinus and Paul H^n, the Welsh founder of Whitland. Urien of Reged had been slain forty years before this event : even if his son were then alive and were a priest, Paulinus would never have yielded to him the privilege of baptizing Edwin. See Haddan's Remains, p. 263. ^ Bede, iv. 23. ^ Freeman, i. 35; Burton, i. 281; Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 19. Its old name was (not Eiddin, but) Agned. * * Mevanias insulas,' Bede, ii. 5, 9. See Lappenberg, i. 149. Aberfraw in Anglesey was the capital of Gwynedd. ^ Bede, ii. 16. See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 180 ; 'The peace, as it was called, the primitive alliance for mutual good behaviour . . . was from the beginning of monarchy under the protection of the king,' and it was in later days that the • national peace of which he was the guardian ' became, in a personal sense, "his peace. ^ See Ducange in v. Bishopric of York, 119 a convert, he was thoroughly true to his tardily-formed con- chap. iv. victions. He established Paulinus as bishop of York, and Paulinus * began to build a larger and more ' august church of stone, York?' ^ square in form, in a space enclosing the wooden one ^ in which he had kept his first Easter, and listened to the ' Alleluias ' then heard at last in the realm and royal city of 'Ella.' This new church was to be dedicated to St. Peter ; but Edwin did not live to see its walls raised to their full height, — and its non-completion during his reign was symbolic of much that he saw begun and not finished in the work of Chris- tianising his kingdom. There was, indeed, a great impulse given, a great ardour excited : not only were royal baptisms solemnised ^, as when Edwin's sons by his former wife entered the 'laver,' and when children of Ethelburga followed, — of whom two died while still clad in their white christening-garments -^ — but the people crowded eagerly to hear the bishop, and to present themselves as candidates for reception into his fold. In one Baptisms in of his missionary journeys, he was occupied for thirty-six days, from morning to night, at the royal ' vill ' of Yevering under the Cheviots, in the work of catechising '*, examining, and baptizing, or as Bede says, 'instructing the people, who flocked to him from all the villages and places, in the word of Christ's salvation, and washing them, when instructed ^, with the laver of remission in the river * Bede, ii. 14 : ' Mox autera ut baptisma,' &c. See Chron. of Anc. Brit. Church, p. 137. This wooden sanctuary was carefully preserved, and enriched with splendid altars and vessels, by Archbishop Albert ; Raine, i. 104. See the plan of the ancient Eboracum in Freeman, iv. 202. '^ Bede, ii. 14. Osfrid and Eadfrid; also Osfrid's child Yffi, and Osric the first-cousin of Edwin; cp. ib. iii. i. ' ' Albati.' Cp. Bede, v. 7, Cadwalla fell sick ' in albis adhuc positus.' On the white garments of the new-baptized see Bingham, b, xii. c. 4. a. i (vol. iv. 3. 43). Gregory alludes to a ' biiTiis albus ' as put on just after baptism ; Ep. X. 6. See too ib. viii. i and 23, on his supplying such garments for poor !OEverts. For the death, 'in albis,' of the infant son of Chlodwig, see Greg. Fur. H. Fr. ii. 29 ; and cp. Vit. Anskar. c. 24. * On the varying duration of the period of catechising, see Bingham, b. x. !. I. S. 5. * In utter defiance of this expression Whitaker says, 'There were no )pportunities of previous instruction ; ' Loidis and Elmete, p. 300. Compare, m the combination of instruction and baptism, Bede, iii. i, 'catechizati et. 120 Mission-journeys of Paulinus. CHAP. IV. Glen^ which flowed close by/ Another place in the same Ber- nician district, not mentioned by Bede, preserves the tradition of a similar visit in its name of Pallinsbiirn, where a lake, probably used for baptism, lies some three miles off the and in Tweed. But, as bishop of York, Paulinus naturally speni ®^^^" most of his time in Deira : the scenes of the Glen were re- produced to some extent at that tranquil and beautiful spoi where the Swale glides, soft and shallow, beside the higt wooded bank that represents the Roman camp of Caractonium. just above the existing Catterick-bridge. In these general baptisms, as in other ministrations, Paulinus would be * served by his deacon James 2, who afterwards laboured many yean in the neighbourhood of Catterick. Yorkshire traditions bring Paulinus to Dewsbury and to Easingwold : but il we ask whether he raised any permanent memorials of thest circuits, the answer must be that neither church nor altar, noi even a cross such as might mark a service-station, was erectec during his episcopate in Bernicia ^ ; while as to Deira, no1 only were there no baptisteries, but Bede mentions as excep- tional a (wooden) 'basilica,' with a stone altar, near a roya ' vill ' at Campodonum, a place which Alfred's version namcf Donafeld, and which may be reasonably identified with Don caster*, although Tanfield near Ripon, and Slack neai baptismatis gratia recreati;' iii. 22, 'in verbo fidei et ministerio baptizandi; iii. 26, * prsedicandi, baptizandi ; ' iv. 1 6, ' instructos . . . ac . . . ablutos.' * The Glen appears in the Arthurian legend, in connection with the first o the * twelve * battles. Nennius, 64. ^ Cp. Bede, iii. 20, Thomas, 'the deacon of Felix. For the ancient clos' relation of the deacon to his bishop sea S. Athan. de Fuga, 24 ; and the stor^ of St. Laurence. So Const. Apost. ii. 44 : ' Let the deacon be the ear, eye, anc mouth of the bishop.' Cp. Bingham, b. ii. c. 20. s. 16-18 (i. 302). 5 Bede, iii. 2 ; ii. 14. The cross which Camden heard of as having one- existed at Dewsbury, with the inscription ' Hie Paulinus prsedicavit et cele bravit,' must have been of later date : an imitation of it, in form of a Saxo: wheel-cross, was accidentally destroyed in 181 2 ; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmett p. 299. There was another cross near Easingwold in the reign of Edward 3 Eaine, i. 42. Near Easingwold, too, is Brafferton, where local tradition saj that Paulinus baptized ; Murray's Yorkshire, p. 230. The erection of crosse at preaching-stations is said to have been a practice of St. Kentigem, who di 80, we are told, at Crosthwaite on Derwentwater (Bp. Forbes, Kalendars p. 368). * See Hunter's Deanery of Doncaster, i. 5. One argument for Doncaster i that this church was burned after the Pagans had slain Edwin at Hatfield, Estimate of his work, 121 Huddersfield, have been suggested; this latter place being chap. iv. jaid to represent a station called CamJodz^num ', which can- lot, however, be identified with the Cam/>odonum of Bede. Such, for the six years of his Northumbrian episcopate, ;vas the work of Paulinus, — a work of foundation, not properly )f construction. He had, it seems, but few clergy : he could Paulinus' io little else than travel about, planting wherever he best ^^^ ' 30uld, in the hope that he might afterwards be enabled to water : and we may best judge of his capacity for organising i church by what he did in the way of preparing for its organisation. 'The labours of this great missionary must have been prodigious 2.' He has been blamed for appealing to temporal motives, by promising earthly prosperity as the reward of conversion ; but it is remarkable that in his recorded words to Edwin, when he reminded him of ' the token,' his assurances as to the future take a purely spiritual form ^. Within certain limits, he might not unreasonably believe that ' the promise of the life that now is ' might be included among the topics of a missionary sermon ; but to say that his converts were ' encouraged ' by him to test ' the merits of a religious scheme by the temporal advantages which followed its reception * ' is a grave unfairness to his memory, and to the evidence furnished by Bede. That solemn setting forth of ' the way of salvation ' through the Cross, that emphatic warn- ing as to a choice made in time for all eternity, that assiduous indefatigable * catechising ' and ' preaching of the word of God,' came, we must needs think, from the heart of a man 'whose whole mind was set on bringing the Northumbrian people to the recognition of the truth ^,' and characterised an episcopate which, though short in itself, endeared his name for ages to their memory. few miles east of Doncaster. Wbitaker, Loidis, p. 152, also decides for Doncaster. So Churton, p. 62, * See Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, pp. 374, 376. At Slack an altar of Fortune was 'found erect and on its base.' Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 10, places Cambodunum at Elland. 2 Raine, Fast. Ebor. i. 42. ' Bede, ii. 12 : * A perpetuis malorum tormentis te liberabit, et aetemi secura regni in caelis faciet esse participem.' * Hook, i. 107, 117. Correct by Raine, i. 45. * Bede, ii. 9 : • Ipse potius toto animo intendens.' 1 22 Honor tus A rchbishop. CHAP. IV. But he was not content to work for them alone. Very soon Paulinus at after the baptism of Edwin, he had not only thought, but acted, in behalf of their neighbours in the district of Lindsey^, just south of the Humber. He preached in the old Roman hill-town of Lincoln ^ ; and its reeve, or ^ prefect ' as Bede calls him ^, ' Blaecca by name, became a convert, and began to build 'a stone church of noble workmanship,' the roofless walls of which were standing in Bede's own day. In this church, represented now by one that is corruptly named St. PauVs, and stands near the cathedral on the platform of that * sovereign hill/ an important ceremony took place, probably at some time in 638 ^. Justus had died in the preceding November ^, his last days cheered by the happy tidings from the North. His successor elect was Honorius, whom Bede calls one of the ' disciples of Pope Gregory ^ ' — a phrase which naturally means that he belonged in some sense to the same class as Augustine and his three successors, as having per- sonally received instruction from the great Pope, so that he was, as Bede further tells us, ' a man who had received the highest training in things ecclesiastical.' But who was to consecrate Honorius? Romanus of Rochester, sent by Justus on Church business to Rome, had met with the same death by drowning, in the Mediterranean^, as befell the abbot Peter He conse- of Canterbury in the British Channel. To Paulinus, there - Honorius. ^^^'^i 3S the only English bishop, Honorius repaired: they met at Lincoln, and here the fifth archbishop of Canterbury was consecrated by the sole ministry of the first of a new line of bishops of York. It may here be mentioned that at some time during his episcopate, Paulinus visited Nottinghamshire, ^ Lindsey occurs in Bede, Prsef. ; ii. 16; iii. ii, 27; iv. 3, 12. "^ Bede, ii. 16. See Freeman, iv. 212. ^ On the burgh-reeve see Lappenberg, ii. 328, 352 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist, i. 93; Kemble, ii, 172. * So Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 73, 82. We want twenty -two years for the episcopates of two East- Anglian bisHops before the consecration of a third by Honorius, who himself died in 653 (Bede, iii. 20) ; and, so far, 631 might serve as the latest possible date of his own consecration. ^ Nov. £o ; Bede, ii. 18. For the date of 627, see Chronicle. ® Bede, ii. 20 ; v. 19, 20. Hist. Abb. 3. "^ Bede, 1. c. : ' Sublimiter institutua.' • Bede, ii. 20. Christianity in East-Anglia, 123 ind baptized a multitude of people, at midday, in the Trent, chap. iv. near a town whose uncouth Saxon name of Tiovulfingacestir ^ Baptlsmsin has been interpreted to mean ' the town where hands were laid on the people with great diligence ' (i. e. in confirmation ifter baptism) , and which is usually identified with Southwell, tvhere the minster of St. Mary, for ages connected with the see of York, has always claimed Paulinus as its founder 2. It ieems also that he visited the southern Cumbria, and left a tradition of his having preached and ofiiciated at Whalley ^. His royal convert was also active in extending Christianity Conversion beyond the Northumbrian border. Edwin's old protector, Anglia" Redwald of East- Anglia, had been succeeded by a son named Eorpwald ; and Edwin made the best return for old kindness 3y ' persuading Eorpwald, with his province, to embrace the Taith *.' But the Pagan antipathy of the East- Anglian nobles, ivhich had contributed to produce the ' Samaritan ' policy of Redwald, was fiercely aroused against a new king who was ar more resolute in his new religion. One of these men, lamed Ricbert, inflicted on him a death which was virtually I martyrdom, in the year of his conversion, 627 or 628 ^. For :hree years afterwards, East- Anglia was again heathen : and Edwin must have grieved over this failure of his efforts in jehalf of the land where he had once found refuge. But again, mexpectedly, ' the day broke.' Eorpwald's half-brother ^, Sigebert Sigebert, had formerly been driven by his step-father Bed- Lelmed. vald into Gaul. The family quarrel and the exile were over- 'uled for good of the truest kind. During his sojourn among ihe Franks, Sigebert was ' instructed in the mysteries of faith ; ' ^ Bede, ii. i6; Dickinson's Antiq. of Nottinghamshire, i. 95. See above, ). 112. The place was the Koman Ad Pontem. James, as usual, attended Paulinus on this occasion. ' Kaine, i. 43 ; Dugdale, Mon. Angl. vi. 131 2. 2 Raine, i. 42 ; Whitaker, Hist, of Whalley, p. 33. * Bede, ii. 15. ' There is a difficulty as to these dates. The Chronicle dates Eorpwald's )aptism in 632, and the coming of Felix in 636. So Florence of Worcester. ?ut (see above) by tracing back twenty-two years before the year 653, in which lonorius died, we reach 631 for the coming of Felix (and therefore for the ccession of Sigebert) and must go back three years further for Eorpwald's •aptism and death. ® Florence, Append. : ' Frater ex parte matris.' For him see Bede, ii. 15 ; ii. 18. 124 Sigebert and Felix, Felix bishop of Dunwich. and moreover, in some of the Church schools of the country ^, acquired whatever learning- they could impart, and a genuine intelligent sense of its value. He now returned to be king ol the East-Anglians : and as a man ' thoroughly Christian and very learned, a good man and religious/ — so Bede sketches his character ^^ — he made it his first object to carry out the work which his brother had begun at the cost of his life : and just then, by one of those coincidences which betoken a far- reaching providential order, there arrived at Canterbury a bishop named Felix, from that Burgundian territory, bounded by the Rhone and Saone and the Alps ^, which had now for nearly a century been subject to the Franks. Felix had been strongly moved to preach the Gospel to English heathens, and Honorius, after hearing his wish, recommended him to go into East-Anglia. Sigebert at once recognised him as the very man he needed for his object. King and bishop accepted each other : Felix, settled at Dunwich, then a city on the Suffolk coast, now annihilated by the ocean*, began in 631 an episcopate of seventeen years, so full of ' happiness ' for the * The ancient fame of the Gallo-Roman schools, as of Lyons, Autun, Mar seilles, had been to some extent revived by the Frankish ecclesiastical and monastic schools, in which the literature of the age was studied together witli theology, as at Clermont, where Gregory of Tours was educated, Vienne, where Bishop Desiderius, to the disgust of Gregory the Great, gave lessons in gram- mar, and also at Treves and Poitiers, where youths were trained in ' liberal and 'secular' studies of all kinds. See Smith's Bede, p. 723. Guizot, Civil, in Fr. lect. 16, mentions as the most flourishing cathedral schools in France, from the sixth to the middle of the eighth century, those of Poitiers, Paris. Le Mans, Bourges, Clermont, Vienne, Chalons, Aries, Gap. These schools he says, superseded the great civil schools. Monastic schools were alsc numerous. Sigebert was in Gaul during the brilliant opening of the reign o: Dagobert I. as sole king of the Franks ; see Fredegar, Chr. 58. 2 Bede, ii. 15 ;. iii. 18. ' See Freeman, Hist. Essays, pp. 172, 201 ; Gibbon, iv. 356. The namt .was derived from the burgs or castles built by this race ; Fredegar, Fragm. 2 Chlodwig took his wife Clotilda from Burgundy; his sons conquered it in 534 Greg. Tur. Hist. Fr. iii. 11. It accepted the Catholic faith, having beer previously Arian, and became one of the Merwing kingdoms ; but in 628 W was united to the others under Dagobert I. See Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 59, 85 Guizot, H. Fr., i. c. 7. * Under the Conqueror, Dunwich, though no longer an episcopal city, hac 236 burgesses and 100 poor ; and it was prosperous under Henry II. Spelmar heard that it was reported to have had fifty churches. When Camden pub lished his 'Britannia' (vol. i. p. 448) in 1607, it lay 'in solitude and desola tion,' the greater part being submerged. Fursey. 125 jause of Christianity that Bede might well describe his work chap. iv. ;dth an allusion to the good omen of his name ^. ' He ielivered all that province,' adds Bede, 'from longstanding mrighteousness and unhappiness : ' as ' a pious cultivator of 3he spiritual field,' he ' found abundant fruit in a believing jeople : ' and an important feature of this mission, as it was of :he Kentish, was the combination of education with religion 3y means of a school such as Sigebert had seen abroad, and IS by this time existed at Canterbury in connection with the ^ouse of SS. Peter and Paul. This school, for which Felix provided teachers * after the model of Kent,' was probably ittached to the primitive East- Anglian cathedral 2. It must iiave been about two years after the coming of Felix that Sigebert ' honourably received ^ ' an Irish monk famous for learning and holiness, named Fursey, who had come over with two brotliers of his, and two priests *, into East-Anglia, and there taking up his accustomed work of preaching the Gospel, did much, by example and by exhortation, for the conversion of anbelievers, and the confirmation of Christians in faith and love. Receiving a piece of ground within a * camp ' called Cnobheresburg, now Burgh Castle, in Suffolk, he built what Bede calls a ' noble monastery,' where he used to tell how, years before, he had seemed, in a trance, to see visions of the Dther world ^, such as were afterwards related by Drythelm * * Sacramentum sui nominis.' So in Bede's Life of St. Felix of Nola, c. i, ' Felix nominis sui mysterium factis exsequens.' Churton says that in no part >f England was Christianity more favourably introduced ; E. E. Ch. p. 63. ^ee Bentham, Hist. Ch. of Ely, p. 13. ^ See Churton, p. 63. Smith, in zeal against Oxford antiquaries, argues that ihis school miglit have been at Cambridge, but concludes that, if it was not, it noA most probably at Dunwich, or else at Seham ; App. to Bede, No. 14. ^ Bede, iii. 19. For St. Fursey 's life see Lanigan, ii. 449. * His brothers Fullan and Ultan (of whom the latter lived as a hermit in East-Anglia), and two priests, Gobban and Dicul. For the other Dicul of Bosham, see Bede, iv. 13. ^ When Bede wrote, an old monk was still living at Jarrow, who had heard Tom a 'very veracious' monk that he had heard Fursey, in East-Anglia, tell lis marvellous tale, and that while he told it, though it was in a hard frost and le was sitting in a thin garment, ' quasi in media asstatis caumate sudaverit.' Mabillon, disbelieving many stories of visions as imaginary or even invented to jerve as apologues, does not deny that some, as Fursey's, were ' veras aut vere jreditas ;' Ann. Ben. i. 548. Fursey died in Gaul, in 654. 126 Cadwallon and Penda, CHAP. IV. of Melrose ^, and by the monk of Wenlock who told his story to St. Boniface^, and might be deemed anticipations of the sterner parts of the ' Divine Comedy.' It was probably under Fursey's influence that Sigebert ere long set the bad pre- cedent of abandoning his royal duties while in fall vigour of life, and retiring into a cell which he had made for himself on the site of Bury St. Edmunds ^. But while the Church was being quietly built up in East- Anglia, it was on the verge of a terrible catastrophe in the North. Cadwallon, or Cadwalla, king of Gwynedd *, or North Wales, had, some years before, invaded Northumbria, in requital of the * devastating^ fury of Ethelfrid. Edwin had defeated him near Morpeth, driven him into Wales, and besieged him in the isle of Priestholm^ near Anglesey. He found refuge in Ireland, and thence returned, and in his thirst for vengeance allied himself, Briton and Christian as he was, with a Saxon prince who combined in his own person the fiercest energy of a Teuton warrior with the sternest resistance to the progress of the new creed : who, succeeding to power at fifty years old^_, was for thirty years the prop and the sword of Heathenism, and also came near to reducing the various kingdoms to a monarchy centered in the youngest of them alP. This was Penda 'the Strenuous^,' king of the Mercians, whose name was long a terror to the inmates of cell and minster in every Christianised district. There is a sort of weird grandeur in the career of one who in his time slew five kings, and might seem as irresistible as destiny. He had begun to reign in 636, on the death of Edwin's father-in-law ' Bede, v. 12. Compare Gregory's Dialogues, iv. 36. 2 Bonif. Ep. 20. ^ Bede, iii. i8. The example was followed by Kenred of Mercia and Offa of Essex, and others not in their prime. * * Catguollaun, king of Guenedotia ; ' App. Nenn. See Palgrave,p. 453. He was son of Cadvan (Angl. Sac. ii. p. xxxii). ^ Ann. Camb. a. 629, calling the island Glannauc. 'The British Triads characterise Edwin as one of the three plagues which befell the Isle of Anglesey;' Turner, i. 364. ^ So the Chronicle, a. 626. '' Freeman, i. 36. * So Hen. Hunt, calls him, from Bede's * viro strenuissimo,' ii. 20. On his character and reign see Lappenberg, i. 164. Edwin slain at Hatfield. 127 ^eorl : in 6:^8 he had encountered at Cirencester the West- chap. iv. ^axon king Kynegils with his son and sub-king Cwichelm the prince who had sought Edwin's life), and after a day of xhausting but indecisive conflict, had made a treaty with hem, implying a cession of West-Saxon land^ : and now, in rder to humble Northumbria, he joined forces with Cad- v^allon, and attacked Edwin at Heathfield or Hatfield 2, in outh-east Yorkshire, on the 12th of October, 6'^'>i' Here nded the glorious course of the great Edwin. After seeing Battle of is son Osfrid fall^, he was himself slain, and ' his whole ^^™^ "• rmy destroyed or dispersed^.' The victorious confederates lade ' a very great slaughter throughout the church and ation of the Northumbrians,' one of them, as Bede remarks, eing a Pagan, and the other, because a barbarian (i. e. a iriton), 'more cruel than a Pagan/ The Mercians burned he royal mansion and church at ' Campodonum : ' but its Itar, being of stone, escaped the fire, and was preserved in )ede's time at a monastery in the wood of Elmete ^. But it Devasta- ; of the Welsh king that we read, ' He spared neither women Northum- or children, but put them to torturing deaths, raging for a bria. >ng time through all the country, and resolving that he ould be the man to exterminate the whole English race ithin the bounds of Britain^ : ' nor did he, though a Chris- an in profession, show any respect to the Christian relig'ion hich had grown up among them. However, two princes of 16 Northumbrian line secured for a while a precarious and * Chron. a. 628; Hen. Hunt. a. 628. Wessex was just then weak, after Iwin's invasion. * See Hunter's Deanery of Doncaster, i. 152. The scene of the battle was obably west of Hatfield church. The country is flat for miles. The Welsh lied the place Meiceren ; Ann. Camb. Alb. Butler places ' St. Edwin, King d Martyr,' on Oct. 4. ' * Juvenis bellicosus,' son of Cwenburga, and father of the child Yffi. is brother Eadfrid threw himself on Penda's mercy, and was afterwards t to death by him *in spite of his oath.' * Bede, ii. 20. Geoffrey says that a king of the Orkneys, Edwin's ally, fell :h him and Osirid ; ix. 5 (xii. 8). ' Bede, ii. 14. This monastery of abbot Thrydwulf was ' probably on the site the existing parish church of Leeds ;' Murray's Yorkshire, p. 345. ■' 'Erasurum se esse.' Comp. Geoffrey, ix. 6 (xii. 9), 'abradere.' His idea was ])urge ' Lloegria,' our present England, of its foreign invaders. Comp. Bede, I, ' tragica caede dilaceraret,' &c. 128 The 'Hateful Year! CHAP. IV. shameful royalty: Edwin's cousin Osric^ was regarded as Eanfrid king in Deira; and the sons of Ethelfrid returned from their exile, and the eldest, Eanfrid, became king in Bemicia. Both kings had been baptized, the former by Paulinus^, the latter among the Scots ^ : but both, in order to gain Penda's favour, and the support of those Northumbrians who clung to Paganism, disowned their Christian belief* : and both were slain by the Christian Cad walla. Osric, while ^rashly besieging the Britons in York^ during the summer of 634 was cut off by an unexpected sally: and in the autumn Eanfrid, with still greater folly, came to Cadwallon ' to su( for peace, and met with a similar doom.' Flushed with these successes, Cadwallon vaunted himself as irresistible^, anc ravaged Northumbria ' not like a conquering king, but lik( a raging tyrant.' This year which followed the battle o Hatfield was even in Bede's time ' hateful to all good men"^. It was the year of foreign tyranny, exercised by a jfiercc conqueror who deemed himself irresistible ; it was also th< year of two kings'* apostasy, and, it must be added, the yea in which the Northumbrian Church was abandoned by it chief pastor. Paulinus may well have been bowed down b^ the shock of seeing Edwin's head brought to York^, and knowing the misery which had come on the whole kingdom He thought that it was a case for ' flying from persecution ; and this, as it would seem, without any such sufficiency clergy in the bishop's absence as, in St. Augustine's carefull; formed opinion, would alone justify a chief pastor's flight- ^ Son of Elfric, the brother of Ella. ^ Bede, iii. i. ^ Eanfrid had become, during his exile, the father of Talorgan, affcerwarc king of the Picts ; Robertson, Scotl. under Early Kings, i. 12 ; ii. 185. * ' Anathematizando prodidit ' is Bede's phrase. ^ ' In oppido municipio ;' Bede means York. ® Bede, iii. i : * Copiis quibus nihil resistere posse jactabat.* ^ Bede, iii. i : * Infaustus . . . exosus usque hodie pennanet.' It was n< reckoned by the reigns of the two apostates, but of their saintly successor. C iii. 9, ' adnumerato etiam illo anno, quern feralis impietas . . . et apostas .... detestabilem fecerunt.' ^ Bede, ii. 20 : * Adlatum est autem caput,' &c. The body was also recovere and afterwards buried at Whitby; iii. 24. ^ S. Aug. Ep. 228. See Fleury, b. 25. c. 25; Newman, Ch. of the Fathei Flight of Paulmus. 129 But he persuaded himself that he had a primary duty to the chap. iv. widowed queen whom he liad escorted to Northumbria, although a brave thane ^ named Bass was at hand to guard her return. He set sail with her, and with her younger son Flight of and daughter, Wuscfrea and Eanfled, and Yffi, the infant ^*^1^"^«- son of her stepson Osfrid ^ : ' he took with him a large golden cross ^, and a golden chalice hallowed for the service of the altar ^,' which were long shown in the church of Canterbury ; and the fugitive party, under the care of Bass, arrived safely in Kent, where Paulinus accepted from Honorius and Ead- bald the long-vacant see of Rochester. It was not till the following autumn that he received a pall, intended for him as archbishop of York^ ; it came too late for him, but with a similar one for archbishop Honorius from his namesake, the first Pope of that name, whose letter to the archbishop of Canterbury, evidently the duplicate of one addressed to Paulinus, and dated on June ii, 634, empowered the sur- viving metropolitan in case of a vacancy to consecrate a successor, ^so that their churches might suffer no loss®.' Another letter then received must have been read with mournful interest : it exhorted the Pope's ' most excellent son, Edwin king of the English,' to persevere in the pious course which he had begun '^. "We may here observe that p. 238. Augustine also allowed a bishop to fly if his flock fled, or if he had no lock left. Malmesbury describes Paulinus as expelled from his see by foes ; 3rest. Pont. p. 134 (Rolls Series). * He is called ' miles.' * He and Wuscfrea were afterwards, says Bede, sent by Ethelburga, for fear >f (her brother) Eadbald and of Oswald, to the court of her friend the Frankish ting. Dagobert, where they died in their childhood. ' St. Willibrord used to carry with him on his journeys a golden cross ; Vit. 30. * See the prayer ' ad calicem beuedicendum ' in St. Gregory's Sacramentary ; Murat. Lit. Rom. ii. 186. ^ So that it is a mistake to call him archbi.shop. Egbert, who was bishop of fork in Bede's last days, became the first archbishop in 735. Wilfrid has )ften been called 'archbishop,' but quite erroneously : so too Bede's epitaph in Durham cathedral miscalls John of Beverley ' archbishop.' * Bede, ii. 18. The strange thing is that the Pope assumes that, but for this )ermission, an archbishop elect would have to travel to Rome for consecration ; » if he could not, like Augustine, seek it in Gaul. ' Bede, ii. 17. He advises Edwin to have the writings of Pope Gregory requently read to him. Edwin, it seems, had asked for a paU for Paulinus as veil as for Honorius : * Ea quae a nobis pro vestris sacerdotibus,' &c. K 130 James the Deacon, CHAP. IV, when Paulinus settled down to his tranquil work at Rochester, Ethelbm-ga founded a convent at Lyminge, where to the west of the existing church, which contains much Roman brick- work, are the excavated remains of an original ' basilica of St. Mary,' belonging to the Roman period ' ; where the place of her burial is marked by a modern tablet on the south wall of the church^, and her name of endearment is still per- petuated in a neighbouring common called ' Tatta's Leas^.' The Northumbrian Christians were 'cast down, but not destroyed.' They had lost their bishop, but they had still with them one who, though not even a priest, did a true pastor's work among them, keeping the fire of faith alive in those dark days, and, as Bede expresses it*, ' taking away great spoil from the old enemy by teaching and baptizing.' This James the was Jamcs the Deacon, otherwise known as the Chanter, from his skill in Roman church music ^; a really noble instance, in the third rank of the ministry, of courageous stedfastness under exceptional trial, and simple fidelity to a sacred trust. His name was attached in Bede's time to the ' township ' near Catterick, which was his centre of opera- tions®. It was within Deira, but neaa^ the Bernician frontier: and after the renegade kings of Deira and Bernicia had fallen in the summer and autumn, James would hear with wonder and thankfulness that a younger brother of Eanfrid was preparing, in the character of a Christian prince, to make a stand for the independence of Northumbria. This was he who for ages was honoured throughout the North- country, ^ Haddan and Stubbs, i. 38 ; Murray's Kent and Sussex, p. 1 54. ' ' The burial-place of St. Ethelburga the Queen, Foundress of this Church and first Abbess of Lyminge.' ^ I owe this information to the kindness of the Rev. R. C, Jenkins, rector of Lyminge. * St. Ethelbui-ga's Well ' is to the east of the church. * Bede, ii. 20 : ' Reliquerat autem in ecclesia sua,' &c. ' On the ecclesiastical chant as brought from Rome, see Smith's Bede, p. 719, We must connect with James's name those of Stephen Eddi, John the arch- chanter (Bede, iv. 18), and Maban the chanter of Hexham (v. 20). ® Akeburgh, a farm not far from Catterick, — on the site of a village, — is supposed to be ' Jacobsburgh.' See Churton, p. 63 ; Raine, i. 44 (although the place is not mentioned in Domesday ; Murray's Yorkshire, p. 284). At the neighbouring church of Hauxwell is a cross, on which the inscription could once be read, • Haec est crux Sti Gacobi ; ' Hiibner, p. 68. Battle of Heavenfield, 131 md far beyond it, as Saint Oswald. When the Christians chap. iv. or whom he was to fight remembered that he was the heir Oswald. )f the ^ fierce ' Pagan Ethelfnd ^, they would also hail him as he nephew of Edwin, whose sister had been the wife of her )rother's early foe^. * With an army small in number, but Battie of brtified by faith in Christ/ he took up his position within a geld. ew miles of Hagulstad or Hexham^, on a rising ground* to he north of the Roman wall ^, where now stands the humble ;hapel of ' St. Oswald's,' commanding a wide view. The ime was apparently at the close of 634^. The winter norning had just dawned "^ when Oswald caused a cross ^ of vood to be hastily made, and a hole to be dug for it n the earth, and held it up with his own hands while his nen heaped the soil around it. Then, when the symbol )f their faith stood firmly fixed, and pointing heaven- wards, he raised his voice, and bade his soldiers kneel with lim, and * entreat the true and living God, who knew how * 'Hie ut rosa de spinis effloruit;* Sim. Dunelm. de Dunelm. Eccl. i. i X Script, i). He came with twelve companions ; Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. i. 2 See p. 108. ^ Also called Hestaldesige ; Sim. Dunelm. a. 797 ; or Hestoldesham, from the rook Hestild ; Richard of Hexh. in X Script. 289. * * Ad locum ejusdem sanctae crucis a%cendeTe* Bede, iii. 2. ^ On the great Roman wall from the Tyne to the Solway, see Burton, Hist. Icotl. i. 21 ff. He holds that it was substantially completed under Hadrian, lear St. Oswald's the track of the wall clearly exhibits the northern foss, the ne of the stations and forts, the southern vallum-line. A fragment of the /all, some thirty yards long, stands not far oflF. * See Bede, iii. i, 2. There is some difficulty about the date. Cadwallon, ccording to Bede, tyrannised over Northumbria for an entire year from October, 33. * After this,' Osric having been slain in the summer of 634, 'at length' lanfrid met a like fate. The year from Oct. 633, to Oct. 634, was ' the year bhorred,' afterwards reckoned as a regnal year of Oswald. His victory cannot rell have taken place &e/ore December, 634 : Bede does not say how soon it )llowed on 'the slaughter of his brother Eanfrid;' iii. i. He reigned eight ears, without counting the ' annus infaustus ;' Bede, iii. 9 ; A.-S. Chr. a. 634 ; nd he was slain August 5, 642 ; therefore the eight years must begin within .D. 634. The Chron. dates his accession in that year, but modem writers ave usually dated it in 635 (e. g. Lingard and Freeman), ' The day before, Oswald dreamed that Columba appeared to him and remised him victory. This he afterwards told to abbot Seghine ; Adamn. V. ol. i. I. ^ This was the only cross, as far as Bede could learn, that had been set up 1 Bemicia. He tells us that splinters of it had a healing virtue on men and itde. K % 132 Oswald King of Northumbrian CHAP. IV. just was their cause, to defend them from the proud and fierce enemy.' They charged Cadwallon's greatly superior force ; and their onset was overpowering. Far away he fled, down the slope into the valley, till he reached the Denisburn, as Bede calls it, probably a brook near Dilston^, eastward of Hexham : and there, in the words of a long-remembered saying alluding to the carnage amid which his fierce life ended, ' Cad walla's slaughter checked the Denis' flow.'' This was the battle of ' Heavenfield,' for that significant name had already belonged to the place : the Welsh called it, in their accounts, ' Catisgual,' the battle below the wall 2. Few fields of conflict should be more interesting to English- men than this which witnessed not only the death-blow to Welsh schemes of reconquest, but the definitive triumph of the Christian cause in Northumbria. Heavenfield had fully made up for Hatfield : for Oswald, now king of the reunited Bernicia and Deira, was to Christians all that Edwin had been, and more : in reading of him, we think instinctively of Alfred. Strength and sweetness were united in a character which almost represents the ideal of Christian royalty. He was now about thirty years old ^, in the prime and glow of a pure and noble manhood : he was granted to his country in her extreme need for some eight years, in which he signally * fulfilled a long time.' On the one hand, so able a captain and ruler that he extended the area of a Bretwalda's supre- Oswald, King of Northum- bria. * 'Caedes Cedwallse Denisi cursus coercuit.' Hen. Hunt. iii. Smith, p. 720, supposes the Denisburn to be the Erringburn, north of St. Oswald's and of the Wall, and places the scene of the battle in that neighbourhood, e. g. near Hal- lington or Bingfield. But see Bruce's Hist, of the Wall, p. 142, that a charter of the thirteenth century describes twenty acres of land as between Denisburn and Divelin (Dilston). Oswald would cross the Wall-line. "Ann. Camb. (dating it wrongly in 631) 'Cantscaul;' App. Nenn. ' Catscaul, cum magna clade exercitus sui.' Geoffrey follows Bede as to the name, but, in order to magnify Cadwallon, says that it was Penda, acting as his general, whom Oswald defeated. On the death of Cadwallon, see Lappenberg, i. 156. He had fought, it was said, in fourteen battles and sixty skirmishes: he was succeeded by his son Cadwalader, called ' the Blessed,' who died in ' the plague' (Nennius, Mon. H. Brit. p. 76). See Eees, Welsh Saints, p. 301 ; Haddan and Stubbs, 165. ' Bede, iii. 9. Tradition describes him as tall, with a rather long face and a very thin beard ; Hist. Transl. S. Cuthb. 6, in Bede's Works, \d. 409 (Giles). He sends to Hy for a Bishop. 133 maey until it even included the Picts and Scots*, — on the chap. iv. other hand, as devout as if he lived in a cloister, thinking little of half a night spent in devotion 2, and accustomed from such habits to keep his palms instinctively turned upward, even while sitting on his throne ; thus * wont, while guiding a temporal kingdom, to labour and pray rather for an eternal one^ ; ' withal, as generous and affectionate as he was pious, ' kind and beneficent to the poor and to strangers,' humble of mind and tender of heart, amid all that might have ' lifted him up to arrogance*,' Oswald was altogether a prince of men, one born to attract a general enthusiasm of admiration, reverence, and love. His first object was to restore the national Christianity; and for this, he needed a bishop. He naturally applied to IcolmkiU. the ' elders ' of that Northern Celtic Church which had been for years his religious home. Of these elders the prin- cipal^ were the community of Hy or IcolmkiU, where Seghine was then ruling, as fifth abbot ^, and, although only a presbyter, was exercising, by what Bede calls ' an unusual arrangement,' a supreme jurisdiction over all that province, the bishops not excepted '^. The explanation of this anomaly lay in the extraordinary reverence ^ paid to the great Founder- Abbot and missionary saint, in whom the Church of 'Alba' felt herself, as it were, impersonated, and who was in some * Bede, iii. 6 : * Denique omnes nationes,* &c. So that Oswald anticipated the over-lordship of such a ' Basileus ' of Britain as Athelstane or Edgar. See Freeman, i. 547. 'Totius Britanniae imperator,' Adamnan, i. i. ' Bede, ill. 12: ' Denique ferunt quia a tempore matutinae laudis saepius ad diem usque in orationibus perstiterit.* Comp. ' matutinae laudis,' iv. 7. ' Bede, 1. c. : *Nec mirandum,* &c. * Bede, iii. 6 : * Quo regni culmine sublimatus, nihilominus, quod mirum est . . . semper humilis,' &c. Comp. Oswin ; Bede, iii. 14. * Bede does not refer merely to these monks ; Lanigan, ii. 419. * Baithen succeeded Columba ; after him came, it is thought (Grub, Eccl. Hist. Scotl. i. 70), Laisrean ; then Virgnous or Fergna ; then, in 623, Seghine. Bede warmly praises the successors of Columba for their strict, pure, and holy lives; iii. 4. For 'Segenus,' see also Bede, ii. 19. ^ Bede, iii. 4 : ' Cujus juri et omnis provincia, et ipsi etiam episcopi, ordine inusitato, debeant esse subjecti, juxta exemplum primi doctoris illius, qui non episcopus. Bed presbyter exstitit et monachus.' So A.-S. Chr. a. 565. » See Lanigan, ii. 249 ff . ; Grub, i. 69, 137; Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p. 10 ff. The primacy passed, in effect, from Hy to Dunkeld in the middle of the ninth century; Reeves's Adamnan, p. 297. 134 Aidan chosen Bishop, CHAP. IV. sense regarded as still living in his successors. There were in ' Alba * no diocesan limits ^ ; the centre of unity was the monastery of Hy, and the idea of local authority was concentrated in its abbot, the * coarb ' or ' heir ' of ' Columb- cille 2.' From lona, then, we are told, a bishop ^, whom Scotch tradition has called Gorman, was sent into Northumbria, but his first experience of its rude indocile heathens drove him home again in hopeless disgust *. ' It is of no use,' he told the assembled monks, ' to attempt to convert such people as they are.' A voice was raised in gentle remonstrance : * Did you not, then, forget the Apostle's maxim about milk for babes? Did you not deal too rigidly with those untaught minds, and expect too much, and too soon, as the fruit of teaching too high for them to follow?' All eyes were fixed Mission of on the speaker, a monk named Aidan ^ : all said at once that Northum- ^e was the right man ^. ^ And so,' says Bede, ' ordaining him, ^"^- they sent him forth to preach ' to the Northumbrians ; a phrase which, taken in connection with the ' unusual arrange- ment,' has raised a question on which we must for a moment pause. These monks and their abbot were simple presbyters ; did they, then, profess to * ordain ' Aidan as bishop ? We may answer with certainty that they did not. First, the phrase ' ordaining ' is used elsewhere for ' causing to be ordained '^.' ' See The Book of Deer, ed. Stuart, pp. cii, cxxvi. ^ See Reeves's Adamnan, p. 364 ; Todd's St. Patrick, p. 156 ; Book of Deer, p. evii. ' See Bede, iii. 5 : * Cum . . . rex . . . postulasset antistitem, . , . missus fuerit primo alius,' &c. * The community had had two ' Saxon ' members, Generens and Pilu, in Columba's time ; Adamn. iii. 10, 22. On this see Grub, i. 60, that in them, as far as we know, ' Columba offered the first-fruits of the English nation to God ; ' and Lanigan, ii. 1 74. ^ We find this name borne by a monk of Hy in Columba's time, Adamn. iii. 6, and by the Scottish king whom Ethelfrid defeated, Bede, i. 34. So too Adamnan speaks of Colimiba's 'ordaining' Aidan to be king, Vit. Col. iii. 5. This Aidan died in 606. We also find a Welsh bishop Aidan in the Llandaff records, Monast. Anglic, vi. 1225. * 'That he was worthy of the episcopate, because he had in an eminent degree the grace of discretion, which is the mother of virtues.' ' Compare Greg. Turon. H. F. viii. 22, where ' ordinaturum ' is used of a king : and Rudbome, Hist. Maj. Winton. c. 3 (Wharton, Angl. Sac. i. 191), that Kenwalch, king of the West-Saxons, ' ordinavit in episcopum Agilbertimi.' And see Reichel, See of Rome, p. 133, for Otto 111,'s decree, 'Sylvestrum Question as to his consecration, 135 Secondly, Bede's language about Aidan's ecclesiastical po- chap. iv. sition shows that he, a Latin monk, accustomed to a strict system of episcopal administration, never doubted that Aidan had validly ' received the rank or degree of a bishop -^ : ' he speaks of him just as he speaks of other prelates indisputably consecrated ; he tells us that Aidan was revered by archbishop Honorius and by bishop Felix 2. Thirdly, the very point of the anomalous ' arrangement,' in Bede's view, is that ' even bishops ' were subject to the abbot of Hy ; and these bishops would of course perform the functions of their order, such as the consecration of new bishops^. Fourthly, Columba him^ self is recorded to have honoured bishops as invested with peculiar prerogatives : on one occasion, when a bishop came to Hy, and attempted in his humility to pass himself off as a simple presbyter, Columba discovered his episcopal character when they were just about to join in consecrating the Eucharist, and desired him, for the honour of the episcopate, to ' break the bread alone in the manner of a bishop *.' On papam elegimus et . . . ordinavimus.' And Renaudot, Lit. Orient, i. 381, that Eutychius once uses ' ordained ' for ' caused to be ordained.' * *Accepto gradu episcopatus,' Bede, iii. 5. Moreover, Bede calls him a 'pontifex ' in iii. 3, 6, 1 7, an ' antistes ' in iii. 14, 15, 16. See too Bede's language about his successor Finan, iii. 17, 21, 25; and Cedd who was consecrated by Finan, * accept© gradu episcopatus,' iii. 22 ; and Colman who * succeeded Finan in the bishopric/ iii. 25, and 'held the pontificate,' iii. 26. See Bp. Russell, Hist. Ch. Scotl. i. 32. Bede has no doubt that those whom they ordained were really ' sacerdotes,' iii. 5, 26. 2 Bede, iii. 25. ' More than one bishop, then, — probably, according to Irish usage, many more, — dwelt in the 'province' of Alba; Lanigan, ii. 253. Reeves says that there were at all times bishops resident at Hy or some dependent church, subject to the abbot's monastic jurisdiction ; Adamnan, p. 340. * The stranger being asked by Columba ' Christi Corpus ex more conficere,' called Columba to him, ' ut simul quasi duo presbjrteri Dominicum panem frangerent' (Maskell, Mon. Rit. iii. 215). Columba approached the altar, looked at him, and said, ' Benedicat te Christus, frater ; hunc solus episcopus episcopali ritu frange panem ; nunc scimus quod sis episcopus. Quare hucusque te occultare conatus ee, ut tibi a nobis debita non redderetur veneratio?' Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 44. The stranger's name was Cronan, from Munster. Lanigan, ii. 179, thinks that the ' episcopalis ritus ' was the benediction given by bishops only, 'after the breaking of the Host,' in Galilean and other Churches. Or it may have been simply that he 'solus panem fregit ;' Reeves, p. 86. See also the story of the ordination of Columba, indicating ' that the distinction between bishops and priests was well understood in Ireland ;' Lanigan, 136 Aldan arrives in Norihiimbria, CHAP. IV. the whole, therefore, if there was not at* that time a resident bishop in Hy\ as in St. Brig-id's convent at Kildare, in St. Martin's at Tours, and in St. Denis^ near Paris "^j we may be sure that the ministrations of one or more of the non- diocesan Scotic prelates would be employed by abbot Seghine when a ' bishop ' was to be sent to king Oswald. Arrival of So it was that in the summer of 6'^^ ^, just ten years after St. Aldan. Paulinus came to Northumbria, his successor arrived from a quarter which he himself would have regarded with no friendly feeling", — with something of mistrust, and even of resentment, on account of the obstinacy, as he would call it, with which, in his own experience, the Irish Church, — the mother Church of Columba's monastery and its dependencies, — had rejected the ' Catholic ' Easter-rules, and adhered to their own ' erroneous observance^.' Aidan, however, though a true son of his national Church^, was of very different temper from Dagan, and even, on this point, from Columban : and we shall see that, although he retained his own usages, he disarmed the suspicion or the hostility which Celtic fashions too commonly aroused. In another respect he indicated, at the very outset of his Northumbrian work, a love for Celtic ways as distinct from Roman. He did not establish himself in the capital of the kingdom, although York had been the seat, not only of Paulinus in Edwin's time, but of an ancient British episcopate. It was not the mode of Celtic bishops to ii. 1 30 ; and that of the ordination of Aedh the Black, see Todd's Life of St. Patrick, p. 8, and Reeves, p. 69. 1 Lanigan, ii. 253 ; Grub, i. 139. * Lanigan, ii. 254 ; Russell, i. 26; Grant, Bamp. Lect. p. 330; Todd's Life of St. Patrick, pp. 12, 22. Todd also refers to the bishop of Aquino as under the abbot of Monte Cassino, and to the position of a bishop or resident in the monastery of Mount Sinai ; p. 67. ^ Some time must be allowed for (i) Oswald's first request to the Scots, (2) the unsuccessful experiment, (3) the second request. Aidan could hardly arrive before the middle of 635. He died August 31, 651, after the seventeenth year of his episcopate had begun ; see Bede, iii. 1 7. The statement in Bede, iii. 26, that the year of the Whitby conference, i.e. 664, was the thirtieth year of the Scotic mission in Northumbria, may be a lax reckoning from the accession of Oswald at the end of 634. Simeon of Dm-ham gives the date 635 ; de Dun. Eccl. i. 2. * See Bede, ii. 19, as to Pope Honorius' letter to the Irish : ♦ Quos in observatione sancti Paschse errare compererat.' ' ' He was son of Lugair, and of the same lineage as St. Brigid ; ' Reeves's Adamnan, p. 374; see Bp. Forbes, Kalendars, p. 269. He settles at Lindisfarne. 137 regard practical and administrative convenience in the se- chap. iv. lection of their seats : we have already observed how David chose the remote and lonely Menevia, doubtless for the sake of ascetic seclusion ^. Aidan carried with him the perpetual Lindis- remembrance of his old home in what was emphatically *™®' termed * The Island ^ : ^ and he found an irresistible attraction in the resemblance between Hy and Lindisfarne ^^ a place which Bede describes as ' twice a day contiguous to the main- land of Northumbria, and twice a day like an island enclosed in the sea, according to the ebb and flow of the tide ^ : ' a description which is now somewhat less accurate, for the path which can be traversed about low water from Beal is over sands 'at best very wet and plashy*.' No sacred spot in Britain is worthier of a reverential visit than this ' Holy Island ' of Aidan and his successors ^. As you stand on its beach, or look around from the little eminence that seems to guard the ruins of its monastery ^, you see that beside its general likeness to Hy, and its facilities for devotional re- tirement, it had a more material advantage in its nearness to the royal fortress-rock of Bamborough, which rises up majestically to the south. Here, then, the new bishop estab- lished his head quarters ; here was all that he could call his own, — the ground on which he built his humble church, ind a few adjacent fields '^. In entering on liis episcopate, he * Bp. Jones and Freeman, Hist. St. David's, pp. 237, 251. And see Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 349, ' that remote bishopric whither Saint David had fled Srom the face of man.' ^ That is, the recess formed by the river Lindis. The Britons called it Medcaut ; the Iiish, Metgoet. Nennius says that Urien of Reged was -.reacherously slain while besieging some Anglian princes in the island ; App. ' Bede, ill. 3. See Camden, Brit. ii. 1502, that the westem point is joined X) the main part * by a very small strip of land ; towards the south it has \ small town, with a church and castle,' &c. Comp. Marraion, c. 2 : — •For, with the flow and ebb, its style Varies from continent to isle.' ^ee Raine, i. 19: 'Twice a day did a belt of living water encircle that little sanctuary; and when it was ungirt, there were the quicksand and the shoal.' * Murray's Durham and Northumberland, p. 226 ; Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 2. ' 'Locus cunctis in Britannia venerabilior ; ' Alcuin to Ethelred, Ep. 12; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 493. « This little hiU must have reminded Aidan of the eminences in Hy called •the Great Fort' and 'the Angels' Mount,' favourite seats of Columba ; Adamn. i. 30, ii. 4, iii. 16. ' Bede, iii. 1 7 : ' Utpote nil propria possessionis,' &o. 138 Aidan independent of Rome, CHAP. IV. neither sought nor received any sanction from Rome or Canterbury; he was a missionary bishop sent from the neighbouring Scotic Church, at the request of the Northum- brian king : this was his position, and he would never have admitted the principle that all episcopal jurisdiction must be derived from Rome^, or that a Pope had a right to make an English archbishop supreme over 'all the bishops of Britain 2.' Yet Rome acknowledges him as a canonised bishop ^. Our next period, then, will be characterised by another great missionary effort, carried on in the north by St. Aidan of Lindisfarne. * Collier, i. 203. ^ Gregory, ap. Bade, i. 37. 7. ' See Alb. Butler, Aug. 31. CHAPTER V. The Scotic mission to King Oswald's people would engage Character listorioal interest by the wide area of its operation, affect- ^i^j^n. ag, as it did, not only the Northumbrian realm extending rom Edinburgh to the H umber, but also, ultimately, the •reat midland district, and even the country of the East- >axons. But it has also a yet stronger and more personal ttractiveness in the wonderful beauty of character which lade ' the path ' of its chief * a shining light,' — which acted ike a spell on the rough Northcountry-men whose language e had to learn after his arrival, — which made him so effective converter of souls, because so potent a winner of hearts, — /^hich proved too much for anti- Scotic prejudices, national r ecclesiastical, and through various lines of testimony^ npressed itself on the English-born Church-historian as irtually a model of Christian excellence. Let us put to- •ether what Bede takes such evident delight^ in telling us 3 to what Aidan was, and how he lived and worked in forthumbria. ' A man,' he begins, ' of the utmost gentleness, piety, and loderation ^ : ' and in subsequent passages he tells us that idan was earnest in promoting peace and charity, purity and umility, was superior to anger and avarice, despised pride ad vainglory; was a conspicuous example of entire un- orldliness, strictly temperate in all his habits, sedulous in 3udy and devotion, full of tenderness for all sufferers, and of ghteous sternness towards powerful offenders * : that he ^ * Quantum ab eis qui ilium novere didicimus ; ' Bede, iii. 1 7. ' • His virtues,' says Dean Hook, ' were such as compel the reluctant Imiration'of the candid Bede,' (i. 120). This is not candid towards Bede, hose tribute of admiration for Aidan's character, recurring in several chapters, unequivocally hearty: on its 'earnestness and eloquence,' see Burton, Hist. ;otl. i. 269. ' Bede, iii. 3. * Coinp. Bede, iii. 5, 17. 140 Aidan as Bishop, CHAP. V. ^ took pains to fulfil diligently the works of faith, piety, and love, according to the usual manner of all holy men V and. in a word, to ' omit not one of all the duties prescribed in the evangelical, apostolical, or prophetical Scriptures, but to per- form them to the utmost of his power 2.' No wonder, then that his doctrine was thus recommended by the absolute consistency of what he did with what he taught^. As foi his daily life in Lindisfarne, it was that of a monk ^, govemec by rules and habits which he brought with him from Hy He obtained fellow- workers from his old country^, whose spirit was as his spirit: he formed a school of English boys twelve in number ^, who were trained up in holy ways undei his own eye, that they might in due time preach to their owi countrymen ^, — and among whom one was afterwards famous as St. Chad ^. Occasionally Aidan would retire for devotiona solitude to the chief islet of the Fame group, lying off Bam- borough, on which, in Bede's time, ' it was usual to point oui the spot where he was wont to sit alone ^/ We find also tha^ he brought in the practice of fasting on all Wednesdays an( Fridays until 3 p.m. except during ' the fifty days of Easter ^^. In his actual mission work, he travelled on foot, unless com pelled by necessity to ride : we shall see ere long what h< did with a horse, which was a royal gift intended to facilitat * Bede, iii. 25 : 'Opera tamen fidei . . . diligenter exsequi curavit.' ^ Bede, iii. 17 : ' Qui, ut breviter raulta comprehendam,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 5 : ' Cujus doctrinam,' &c. Compare i. 26, on Augustine and hi companions, and iv. 28, on Cuthbert. * Bede, iii. 3 ; iv. 27. All the bishops of the line which began with him wer monks until 1072 ; Simeon of Durham, de Dunelm. Eccl. i. 2. * Bede, iii. 3. Ireland is meant. * Twelve was regarded as a sacred number. St. Finnian of Clonard ha twelve principal students; Reeves's Adamnan, p. 301. ' Bede, iii. 26. So when St. Anskar began his work in Denmark, he bega to form such a school of twelve or more Danish boys * who might be educate for God's service;' Vit. S. Anskar. 8 (Pertz, Mon. Germ. H. ii. 696). It : needless to refer to the practice of Bishops Selwyn and Patteson. * Bede, iii. 28. ' Bede, iii. 16. This is called the 'House Island,' about a mile and a ha from the shore. See it described in Bede, iv. 28; Vit. Cuthb. 17. Comj Adamnan, iii. 8, that Columba one day, in Hy, ' remotiorem . . , locum aptun que ad orationem in saltibus qusesivit.' '" Bede, iii. 5. Cp. Adamn. i. 26. Aldan and Oswald. 141 :hese journeys ^. This habit of walking enabled him easily to chap. v. ium aside and endeavour to enter into conversation with any me whom he met, rich or poor, — to win him over, if a heathen, X) encourage and exhort him, if a believer. While he and his jompanions travelled, they used to 'meditate' on texts of Scripture, or recite psalms : ' this was ' their ' daily work ^.' Vidan was happy indeed in having an Oswald for his king : .nd in the early days of his episcopate, Oswald was often to )e seen employing that knowledge of the Scottish or Irish ongue which he owed to his exile in interpreting the mis- ionary addresses of the bishop — a sight which Bede might veil call 'truly beautiful^.' In this, as in other matters, )swald showed a depth and fervour of personal piety which ve do not find in Edwin, and which reminds us of Alfred or 5t. Louis. He and Aidan worked together as Sigebert did ray *,' for he had ' a church and a bedchamber ' near the royal city' of Bamborough ^. We hear of his sharing the ing's forenoon meal on a certain Easter Sunday, when 'a * Bede, iii. 5, 14. While travelling, Aidan, as a monk, wore sandals ; his arments consisted of a thick woollen 'cuculla' or 'cape,' or in winter an imphibalus,' and below it a shirt, • tunica.' See Reeves's Adamnan, p. 356. "he front of his head showed the Irish tonsure ; behind, the long hair flowed own; see Maclear, Apost. Mediaev. Eur. p. 57. ' Bede, iii. 5 : ' In tantum autem,' &c. Bede contrasts this with ' the uggishness of his own ' time.' So Adamnan says, Columba * never could pass single hour without employing himself in prayer, or reading, or writing, or )me other work ;' Vit. Col. prajf. 2. ' Bede, iii. 3 : ' Ubi pulcherrimo,' &c, Comp. Rich. Hexham, X Script. 290 : The race of the Bemicians was converted in 634 by the preaching of the saints swald . . . and Aidan.' So Simeon of Durham, ib. i : * Rex, utique Regis temi minister devotus, adsistere, et fidus interpres fidei ducibus suis et inistris ministrare solebat verba salutis.' As Churton says, E. E. Ch. p. 72, is *a striking instance of the care of Providence turning the misfortunes of is youth to a means of blessing.' A much later case of a king interpreting a missionary's sermons was that of Gottschalk, king of the Wends in the eleventh jntury; Hardwick, M. Ages, p. 128. * Bede, iii. 5 : ' Et si forte evenisset,' &c. * Bede, iii. 17: * In hac enim habens ecclesiam,' &c. 142 AidarCs charity and boldness, CHAP. V. silver dish full of royal dainties was set before them on the board, and they were just about to stretch out their hands to bless the bread ^ : ' then enters a thane, ' whose charge it was to relieve the poor, and informs Oswald that a great crowd of poor folk, assembled from all the country-side, were sitting in the streets begging some alms from the king : Oswald orders the contents of the dish to be carried to them, and the dish itself to be broken and divided for their benefit.' On this Aidan seizes the king's right hand, and says, ' May this hand never decay ^ 1 ' In his dealings with the rich, Aidan showed his superiority to ' fear or favour : ' he never with- held a rebuke deserved by misdoings of theirs, but always administered it with the authority befitting a bishop^. li a thane came to Lindisfarne, he was hospitably entertained, but got none of those money-presents which, in the Eastern Church, and afterwards in the Gallican, were euphemisti- cally called ' blessings *,' and being professedly tokens oJ good-will from ecclesiastics, were often little else than bribes to secure the interest of a powerful layman, or even payments regarded as his due. If a rich man offered money to Aidan. it went promptly to the poor^, whose sufferings were ever in th€ thought of this true ' cherisher of the needy and father of th( wretched ® : ' or else it was disposed of, as Gregory himseli might have disposed of such gifts, in ransoming those whc had been unjustly sold into slavery, many of whom, wher thus delivered, became Aidan's pupils, and were ultimately * Literally, this implies that tlie king was to join with the prelate in this benediction. ^ The hand, Bede adds, was kept in a silver casket in St. Peter's church, Bamborough, and remained there, to his days, undecayed ; iii. 6. Simeon o Durham (twelfth century) says that Swardebrand, a monk of that church, wh( had 'recently' died, declared that he had often seen this 'right hand, undecayed; Dun. Ecc. i. 2. Malmesbury expresses some doubt as to thi marvel; Gest. Reg. i. 3. Oswald is called in Nennius 'Oswald Llauigwyn, the 'white,' or perhaps the 'fair hand.' See Green, Hist. Eng. People, p 23. 3 Bede, iii. 5, 17. * 'Eulogiae,' Fleury, b. 27. c. 12 ; Ducange in v. No. 5. ^ Bede, iii. 5 : ' Sed ea potius quae sibi a divitibus,' &c. Comp. iii. 26 : ' S quid enim pecuniae,' &c. * Bede, iii. 14: 'Erat enim multum misericors,* &c. : ib. 5, 17. Compar Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 46. His 'error' as to Easter. 143 )romoted by him to the priesthood ^. One thing alone Bede chap. v. !Ould not approve in Aidan, — the inevitable Celtic error about he Paschal reckoning*. On this point Aidan's ' zeal was not ully according to knowledge ^ : ' so Bede expresses himself, )ut takes off the edge of this gentle censure by suggesting in >ne passage that Aidan might be ignorant of the true reckon- ng^, and by telling us in another that those in Northumbria vho knew it were tolerant of his observance, because they mderstood 'that he was unable to deviate from the custom )f those who had sent him ; so that he was deservedly loved )y those who differed from him about the Pasch,' and •espected even by such dignified representatives of ' Catholic )bservance ' as archbishop Honorius and bishop Felix *. And kfter all, says Bede, ' he did not^ as some have thought, keep he feast, in Jewish fashion, on the fourteenth moon on any veekday^, but always on a Sunday, from the fourteenth to he twentieth ; that is, if the fourteenth were on a Sunday, he vould make that his Easter Sunday, and so on until the twentieth ^; whereas, according to Catholic rules, he should n that case have deferred the festival until the next Sunday, he twenty-first. He would always, says Bede, * celebrate ^ he ' Pasch ' on a Sunday, ' because, with the Holy Church, he relieved the Lord's resurrection to have taken place on the irst day of the week, and hoped that our resurrection would n truth take place on the same day of the week"^, now ^ Bede, iii. 5 : ' Denique raultos,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 3 : ' Zelum Dei, quamvis non plene secundum scientiam,' for 16 kept Easter Sunday * from the fourteenth to the twentieth moon.' ^ Bede, iii. 17 : 'Quod autem Pascha,* &c. Cp. iii. 4. * Bede, iii. 25 : ' Hsec autem dissonantia,' &c. ' Pascha contra morem eorum [ui ipsum miserant facere non potuit.' Cp. iii. 17. * ♦ In qualibet feria,' Bede, iii. 1 7. * So that the seven days on one of which, if it were a Sunday, Easter might le celebrated, were, for Aidan and the Celtic Churches, * fourteenth moon — wentieth ; ' for the Roman and other Churches, ' fifteenth moon— twenty- first.' ^ Bede, iii. 17: * In quo tamen hoc adprobo,' &c. The British Christians bought that the Last Day would be a Sunday; Williams, Eccl. Ant. Cym. p. 299. )ome early Christians believed that the Lord would return in the night of the ;Teat Easter vigil. So Lactantius, Div. Instit. vii. 19 : ' Hsec est nox quae lobis propter adventum Regis ac Dei nostri pervigilio celebratur : cujus noctis luplex ratio est, quod in ea et vitam turn recepit cum passus est, et postea •rbis terrae regnum recepturus est.' 'l44 Church work under At dan. CHAP. V. called the Lord*s Bay.' ' His keeping the Pasch out of its time I do not approve nor commend. But this I do approve of, that what he kept in thought, reverenced, and preached, in the celebration of his Paschal festival, was just wliat we do, that is, the redemption of mankind through the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension into heaven of the Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.' In other words, the root of the matter was found in him. Such was he whom a living historian, with no ecclesiastical prepossessions, frankly calls ' the illustrious ^ ' St. Aidan. Being such as he was, he did great things for the good cause in Northumbria, as a planter or a restorer of cor- porate Christian life. Churches, doubtless mostly of wood 2, ' were built in various places : the people flocked together with gladness to hear the Word : possessions and pieces of ground for founding monasteries were bestowed by the king's gift : English children were taught, by Irish preceptors, the rudiments of learning, together with more advanced studies and the observance of regular discipline ^.' To some extent, assuredly, Aidan was entering into another man's labours, having found the soil prepared by Paulinus. But he left behind him a stronger impression of spirituality and saint- liness than we are led to associate with his predecessor: we * Burton, Hist. Scotl. i. 269, 297. * See below, on the wooden church of Finan at Lindisfarne. For notices of primitive Irish churches built of wood or earth, see Reeves's Adamnan, p. 1 77. When, in the twelfth century, Malachy archbishop of Armagh began to build at Bangor a church of stone, the natives wondered, ' quod in terra ilia necdum ejusmodi sedificia invenirentur.' An opponent exclaimed against the innovation : * Scoti sumus, non Galli . . . Quid opus erat opere tam superiluo, tarn superbo ? ' S. Bernard, de Yit. Malach. 28. See Lanigan, Eccl. Hist. Irel. iv. 392. But several priniitive Irish churches were of stone (Petrie, Eccl. Arch. p. 127 ff.) and several ' Saxon ' ones of wood ; compare the wooden church of Dulting, where St. Aldhelm died ; that at Wilton, superseded in 1065 by a stone church (Freeman, iii. 509) ; and the wooden chapel, built before the Conquest, outside the east gate at Shrewsbury, in which, in 1080, Ordericus Vitalis as a boy served mass, and instead of which his father began to build a church of stone, the nucleus of a great abbey (Ord. Vit. v. 14, xiii, 45 ; Freeman, iv. 1095). The little old wooden church of Greensted, in Essex, is the sole representative of this class of churches. 8 Bede, iii. 3, ' Construebantur ergo,' &c.; Stubbs, Constitutional History, i. 125. Church-work under Aidan, 145 find that men believed his prayers to have special efficacy ^, chap. v. and resorted to him, as to a second Colimiba, for such intercessory help. And he was manifestly happier than Paulinus, in that he was able to obtain a large supply of * devoted ^ ' clergy ; and although he had his own heavy sorrows and serious anxieties ^, his work, in an episcopate of sixteen yeai*s*, encountered no such shock as that which followed the day of Hatfield. The religion which he taught was essentially identical with that which prevailed at Canter- bury or Dunwich, where his name was held in honour. Mass was celebrated at Lindisfarne on Sundays and holy-days^, certainly with no splendour of visible surroundings, and probably with rites differing in some measure (not, of course, as to the essentials of the service) from those of the Gregorian Liturgy which Augustine had brought into Kent, and cognate to the Gallican use which Felix, perhaps, had intro- duced into East-Anglia : but the usual language about ' the mysteries of the sacred Eucharist^' was as familiar to a disciple of Hy or of Lindisfarne as to the churchmen of Gaul or Italy. Much importance was attached by Celtic monks to acts of benediction "^ : and we find that Aidan was wont to consecrate land designed for sacred purposes by an elaborate process of fastings and prayers, performed for days beforehand on the spot ^. The Scotic conventual rule was severer than that of Benedict ^ : and heinous offences were visited with * Bede, iii. 15. Comp. Adamn. Vit. Col. ii. 12, *sociia ut pro eis Dominum Sanctus exoraret, inclamantibus,' and ib. i. 50. » 'Magna devotione,' Bede, iii. 3. ' Bede, iii. 9, 14, 16. * Bede, iii. 17. ' In Columba'a time there was not a daily celebration at Hy ; Adamnan. iii. II, 1 2. It seems also that at Lindisfarne, at the close of the seventh century, mass was only on Sundays ; Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 44. So, according to the Chronicle of Abingdon, it was on Sundays and chief festivals that the monks of its first monastery assembled for mass ; Chron. Ab. ii. 273. « See the description of Columba ' standing before the altar, and consecrating the sacred oblation,' Adamn. iii. 17; and ib. i. 40, * the pure mysteries of the Bacred oblation.' Cp. iii. 12. ^ See Adamnan, fi-equently, especially the simple and touching anecdotes in i- 3. 9; "• 31; and iii. 23. ' Bede, iii. 23. » This may be inferred from the rule of Columban ; Columba's was probably milder, Reeves's Adamn. p. 355 : but see Adamnan, i. 31, ii. 4, on the strict obedience required by Coltunba, and Reeves's Adamnan, p. 343. L Wessex. 146 Mission of Birinus. CHAP. V prolonged penances like those of antiquity ^. The whole system had a rude and homely simplicity: it took no heed of sacred art, was untouched by the influence of the con- tinental Church atmosphere, and kept its followers aloof from what might be called ecclesiastical civilisation. Birinus in From a very different quarter, and in thie year before Aidan's arrival ^, came another great awakening, with which we in Oxfordshire are specially concerned : for this district was then^ West-Saxon, and the apostle of Wessex was Birinus. His origin is not ascertained * ; the statement that he was a Roman may be only a conjecture^. He went to Pope Honorius^ and solemnly promised before him ^ ' that he would scatter the seeds of the holy faith in those furthest inland territories of the English, which no teacher as yet had visited.' Honorius sent him for episcopal consecration to Asterius archbishop of Milan, who resided at Genoa '^. Thus it was that, in 634, Birinus landed in Hampshire^, and soon found that this most Saxon realm of Wessex contained heathenism so dark and intense ^ as to call for the immediate help of a missionary. These people were as truly sitting * in the shadow of death ' as any in parts more distant : * See Adamnan, i. 22 ; ii. 39. * The Chronicle dates it in 634. ^ And until the Mercian king OflEa won the battle of Bensington in 777 ; A.-S. Chron. See Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 82. * Malmesb. G. Pont. p. 157. ^ Bromton says that ' fama suavissimae opinionis sancti Birini presbyteri de civitate Eomana nati' reached Pope Honorius ; X Script. 755. ® 'Illo prsesente,' Bede, iii. 7. Cp. Malmesb. p. 158. "^ He was not bishop of Genoa, as Bede says, but of Milan, a.d. 628-638. He died at Genoa on the 4th of June, and was buried * in sede S. Syri ; * TJgheUi, Italia Sacra, iv. 92. Birinus was thus made a 'regionary' or missionary bisbop, and left free to choose his own centre of operations, — as had been Ninian's case, and as was the case with Swidbert, Boniface (at first), Amandus, &c. (Maclear, Ap. Med. Eur. p. 77, &c.) Milner suggests that at Genoa Birinus could learn Saxon from • Franks who frequented that mart ;' Hist. Winch, i. 67. 8 Bromton gives a story of a miracle connected with a pallula or corporal, 'Corpusque Dominicum in eadem involutum,' which, he says, Honorius had given to Birinus, and which he carried *collo suspensum.' See Milner, 1. c. * ' Paganissimos.' See Chron. Abingd. vol. ii. p. vi. On his landing, said the legend given by Bromton, he preached the faith for three days ; among his audience were many who had been converted by Augustine. He preaches in Wessex, 147 why should he neglect them, and go further in search of chap. v. others ? Taking his discovery as a call to alter his original purpose, Birinus went about Wessex, preaching with such persuasive energy that he soon won a royal convert. Kyne- Conversion gils ^ had reigned for twenty-four years : he was probably ^^^ ^^^' weary of strife and bloodshed : he had, in his time, slain thousands of Britons, had seen his realm overrun by Edwin, had made terms, at some cost, with Penda. He listened to the foreign teacher ^ : Woden and Thunor ^ and Tiu, the gods of war and storm and death, lost their hold upon him : he felt the strong ' drawing ' of the Gospel, and asked to be prepared for admission into the Church. Birinus had suc- ceeded speedily in a work which had kept Paulinus under suspense : Kynegils was more prompt than Edwin, and seemingly not less sincere. And observe another coincidence. The successor of Edwin, now Bretwalda, was desirous of being a friend to the West- Saxon princes ; Kynegils was asked to give his daughter in marriage as wife to Oswald. He consented : and, according to our chronology, it was at some time — probably late — in 6'^^^ towards the end of Oswald's first year of royalty, that he himself came into Wessex to take home his bride. Her father was just ready for baptism ; and it was agreed that he should then become a Christian, before the Christian Oswald became his son-in-law. And now we Baptism of are brought very near home ; for the place selected was that ^^ ^* same Dorchester, so familiar to us at Oxford, where the venerable abbey church of SS. Peter and Paul now occupies the traditional spot that witnessed the Christianising of the dynasty which grew into the royal line of England. It is easy to realise the scene : the Saxon Dorcic *, retaining traces of the Roman Dorocina, and guarded, southwards, by the embankment still called the Dykes, and beyond them by the * See Chron. a. 6ii. * Chum Knob, a hill near Chilton in Berkshire, is * traditionally said to be the spot where Birinus' preached to Kynegils. See Murray's Handbook to Berks, &c., p. 74. ^ On the worship of Thunor or Thor in England, see Kemble, i. 346. * ♦ Civitatem quae vocatur Dorcic ;' Bede, iii. 7. * The old home of Birinus by the winding Thames;' Freeman, iv. 419 : once * Caer Dauri.' L 2 148 Baptism of Kynegils, CHAP. V. Birinus at Dor- chester. twin clumps of 'the mighty hill fort of Sinodiin^' whence Britons had in Roman days been dislodged by Aulas Plautius 2. Briton and Roman have passed away from the Thames valley : there are kings here now, representing Ida the Flamebearer, and Cerdic the founder of a realm which is to absorb the rest : but the Kingdom here ' evidently set forth ' is that which ' is not from this world.' There, in white pontificals, with at- tendant clergy on either side, stands its foreign representative, deriving his commission from the mighty Roman Church, and his episcopate from the great see of St. Ambrose : a font, large enough for immersion, is solemnly hallowed ; the war-worn royal convert steps into it, and is baptized ; and ' as he comes forth from the laver,' he is * lifted up,' according to the usual rite ^, by the future son-in-law who now acts as his sponsor *, and who invests, for us, that river-side with the noble associations that attend the name of our truest royal saint. It is natural, especially in Oxford, to dwell thus on an event hardly second in interest — when one considers the destinies of Wessex — to the baptism of Ethelbert himself. Its immediate consequence was the first organisation of a West- Saxon Church. Oswald and Kynegils, united in a triple relation, political, domestic, and religious, concurred in estab- blishing Birinus as bishop of Dorchester. From this act may be said to have proceeded the episcopates of Winchester, of Lincoln, and of Oxford. The village which we can so easily visit, and which has so long a history to redeem its present insignificance, thus holds a real place in the annals of the Church of England. From ' Dorcic ' Birinus went up and down among the West-Saxons, that is, from Dorset to Buckinghamshire, from Surrey to the Severn, preaching, * Fre«nan, 1. c. : comp. iii. 543. * See Mr. James Parker's paper in the Proceedings of the Oxford Architect, and Hist. Soc. for Mich. Term, 1862. ' 'Eumque de lavacro exeuntem suscepisse,' comp. Bede, iii. 22, iv. 13 ; and Greg. Turon. H. Fr. vii. 22: ' Eo quod filium ejus de sacro lavacro suscepissem.' So ib. V. 19: 'Filio meo . . . quern de lavacro regenerationis excepi,' and x. 28. So in Gregorian Sacramentary, Muratori, Lit. Kom. ii. 157: *Eo tenente in- fantem a quo suscipiendus eat.' The phrase is as old as TertuUian : • Ter mer- gitamur .... Inde suscepti,' &c. ; De Cor. Mil. 3. * ' Pulcherrimo prorsus et Deo digno consortio ; ' Bede, iii. 7. Birinus Bishop of Dorchester. 149 catechising, baptizing, ' calling many people to the Lord by chap. v. his pious labours,' and 'building and dedicating churches.' This is Bede's summary of a work as to which he could get no detailed information, but which must have had its own incidents and characteristics, its own experiences of hope and anxiety, of partial failure compensated by general advance, which, if preserved to us, might have made the conversion of Wessex as living a fact to us as that of Northumbria. As it is, we cannot recover a single feature in those missionary journeys of Birinus: but it is reasonable to think that al- though Oxford as yet was not, he would come up the valley to the junction of the two rivers, find there some few ceorls ready to hear the Name of Christ, and perhaps deposit * seeds' which, a century later, produced in St. Frideswide's humble foundation * the nucleus ' of the priory and the cathedral, and in another sense of the city and the university^. But one success Birinus had, which must have been specially welcome ; Cwichelm, the son of Kynegils, followed his father's example within the year : it was just ten years since he had sent Eomer with the poisoned dagger to slay Edwin. He was baptized at Dor- chester in 67^ ; * and that same year he died^.' His name is perpetuated in ' Cwichelm's hlsew,' or 'hill,' now Cuckhamsley, a height crowned by trees at the summit of the Berkshire range, which we may see from the Wantage road, beyond the turn to Cumnor^. His son Cuthred, who like him was a sub-king under Kynegils, was baptized in 639 by Birinus, who took him for his godson*. We do not hear of any relations being as yet formed between the mission in Wessex and the see of Canterbury. The archbishop does not seem to have had any communication with Birinus, who was doing so effectively the work which * Parker on Hist. Oxf. p. 26. 2 Chron. a. 636. ^ Parker on Hist. Oxf. p. 15. In 1006, says the Chronicle, the Danes made good their boast that they would reach Cwichelm's • hlsew,' and get to their ships again. See Freeman, i. 329. A 'hlaew' (see Taylor's Words and Places, p. 212) frequently perpetuated the memory of celebrated personages; Chron. Abingd. ii. 483, and ' Oslafeshlau ' in Cod. Dipl. i. 283. * Chron. a. 639. Another case in which the bishop who baptized acted also as godfather is Cadwalla's in 689; and see Greg. Tur, H. Fr. v. 23. 150 Erconbert King of Kent. CHAP. V. Canterbury had never essayed. In Kent all was tranquil and Erconbert hopeful. Eadbald, whose genuine conversion had suffered no Ke^.^ relapse, was succeeded in 640 by his son Erconbert, whose Christianity was more definitely aggressive upon Heathenism^. He was the first English king who used his royal authority for the utter destruction of idols, and the enforcement of the Lenten fast ; and he appointed fitting penalties for disobedience to this law. He married Sexburga, the eldest daughter of Anna king of the East-Anglians 2, who had succeeded to that throne in 6ofi under strangely tragical circumstances^. Egric, who had become king on Sigebert's abdication, was menaced with invasion by Penda. His people, knowing themselves to be no match for the Mercians, and remembering the ex- king's former renown as a leader, besought him to come forth from his cell and aid them in the fight. He refused : where- upon, hoping that his mere presence might inspirit the national forces*, they actually dragged him to the battle-field. There he stood, but, 'not unmindful of his profession^,' or as we may think, in his overstrained scrupulosity, he would hold nothing but a wand. He and Egric were both slain, and the Anra King East-Anglians utterly routed. Anna, now chosen king, was AnoUan^ SOU of Eni and nephew of Redwald, and 'a very good man,' says Bede, 'and the parent of very good children,' and 'happy in a good and holy progeny;' 'a man,' as he elsewhere says, 'truly religious, and altogether excellent in mind and conduct^,' In fact, he is chiefly remarkable on account of the zeal for monasticism shown personally by princesses of his house. * At that time there were not many monasteries among the English, and therefore many used to go over from Britain to the monasteries of the Franks * Bede, iii. 8 : * Hie primus regum Anglorum,' &c, " Bede, 1. c. : * Cujus regis filia major,' &c. Properly, Sexburh, ' Bede, iii. 18. For the date, see Hussey's note. * • Sperantes minus animos militum trepidare ; ' Bede, 1. c. " Yet, in the preceding century, Irish ecclesiastics had occasionally taken part in warfare ; Reeves's Adamnan, p. Ixxvii. Gregory of Tours censures two Frankish bishops, Salonius and Sagittarius, for doing so ; H. Fr. iv. 43 : and lb. V. 21, 'tanquam unus ex laicis accincti arma,* &c. For two fighting bishops of Sherborne, see Chron. a. 845, 871 (in the Danish wars). 8 Bede, iii. 18, 7; iv. 19. Tlie Family of King Anna. 151 or Gaul ^, for the sake of monastic life, — and also to send chap. v. their daughters to the same to be instructed and united to their Heavenly Bridegroom, especially at Brige,' or Brie, where a ' noble abbess ' named Fara had built a convent, and at Gale, or Chelles, near Paris, and Andilegum, or Andely, near Rouen. Such is Bede's statement 2. Anna's sister-in-law Hereswid ^ herself became a nun at Ghelles : her sister, the famous St. Hilda, spent a year in East-Anglia with the hope of 'imitating her example.' Anna's step- daughter, Ssethred *, actually did so. Anna himself had four daughters : Sexburga, wife of Erconbert, who after surviving her husband, and even acting as regent, became abbess of a convent which she had founded in the Isle of Sheppey, and afterwards first a simple nun and then abbess at Ely^; Ethelberga, who became abbess of Brie ^ ; a third whose enthusiasm for conventual life had important results in Northumbrian Ghurch history, and whose name still stands in our calendar as St. Etheldred '^, the foundress of the famous church of Ely ; and a fourth, Witberga, who lived as a recluse at Dereham^. Ercongota, daughter of Erconbert and Sexburga, became a nun at Brie, and is named in the Chronicle as a * For monasteries founded in Gaul early in the sixth century, see Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 293, 295, 305, 310. Among those who resorted to them was St. Botulf. ' Bede, iii. 8 : * Nam eo tempore/ &c. Fara, or Burgundofara, had been • dedicated ' in her infancy by Columban, against her father's wish. She per- sisted in refusing to be married : she fled to a church, and said she would rather die on its floor than consent. Her father yielded : she founded a monastery (famous as Faremoutier) on some land of his in Brie, near Meaux. One of her nuns, Wilsinda, was a Saxon. She died about 655 (Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 293, 304, 356, 434). The convent of St. George at Chelles was founded by Queen Clotilda, ib. i. iii, as was that of Andely, ib. i. 123. ' Compare Bede, iv. 23. Hereswid, says Bede, was mother of king Aldwulf ; and in the appendix to Florence she accordingly appears as wife of Anna's brother and successor Ethelhere, father of Aldwulf. Thomas of Ely is wrong in calling Aldwulf son of Anna ; Act. SS. Ben. ii. 744. * Bede, iii. 8. * Saetrudis,' Ann. Bened. i. 434. She preceded Jlthelberga as abbess. ' See Bede, iv. 19. ' Sancta Sexburga,' Florence, a. 640. * See Bede's account of ' Aedilberg,' iii. 8. 7 Bede, iv. 19. Tho. El. Vit. S. Eth., Ann. SS. Ben. ii. 739.. ' Act. SS. Bened. ii. 740 ; Chron. a, 797. 152 Battle of Maser field, CHAP. V. ' wondrous person/ because of a vision related by Bede, in which she was described as 'that golden coin which had come thither out of Kent^.' Her sister Ermenild, after being queen of the Mercians, followed the family custom, received the veil under her mother at Sheppey, and succeeded her at Ely 2. Erconbert had been reigning two years in Kent, and Anna six years in East-Anglia, when a dire calamity befell the Northumbrian realm and Church. Like that 'tender-hearted' and blameless king of Judah, of whom his life reminds us, Battle of Oswald fell in battle with the heathen. He was involved in a * war with Penda and ' the South-humbrians^:' he had, it appears, reconquered the district of Lindsey from the Mercian : but on the 5th of August, 642, he encountered his enemy at a place named Maserfield *, which the Cambrian Annals call Cocboy, and which may be Coedway, near the Shropshire town which still commemorates Oswald in its name of Oswestry^. It was, in a certain sense, another Hatfield. The saintly suc- cessor of Edwin, 'hemmed in by armed foes,' as Bede expresses it, 'ended his life with words of prayer for his own soldiers: as they say in a proverb, "O God, have mercy on the souls, said Oswald falling to the ground ^." ' Another saying, probably the fragment of a ballad, is preserved in a later chronicle : 'The field of Mesafeld was whitened with the bones of the saints'^.' Oswald was only in his thirty-eighth year. The ferocious Mercian who had thus added his name to a growing list of princely victims exposed the head and arms of the slain * Bede, iii. 8 : ' Aureum illud numisma quod eo de Cantia venerat.' * Act. SS. Ben. ii. 756. It may be well to remember that Erconbert h&d a brother, Ermenred, as well, as a sister, St. Eanswith. Ermenred, who was a sub-king, had two sons, Ethelred and Ethelbert, for whose story see below, p. 238, and four daughters, Ermenburga or Domneva, wife of Merewald sub- king of the West-Mercians, another Ermenburga, Ermengith, and Etheldrith {Florence, App.,,Mon. H. B. p. 635). ' Chron. a. 643. Tighernach wrongly dates it in 639, just as he dates the defeat of Ed4vin in 631, and Oswald's victory over • Cathlon ' in 632. * Bede, iii. 9. » 'Id est, Oswaldi arborem,' Giraldus, Itin. Camb. ii. 12. In Welsh, Cross- Oswald. « Bede, iii. 12 ; cp. iv. 14. See Chxirton, E. E. Ch. p. 75. ' Hen. Hunt. 1. 3; Mon. H. B. p. 721, Death of Oswald. 153 Bretwalda on wooden stakes ^ : but they were rescued the chap. v. next year, and carried into North umbria. The hands were placed in a silver box, at St. Peter's church on the summit of the rock of Bamborough ^ : the head was interred by Aidan — one can well imagine with what an anguish of sorrow — at Lindisfarne, — and removed in 875 within the coffin of St. Cuthbert ^ : hence the common representation of that saint, — visible, for instance, on the north side of the steeple of St. Mary's in Oxford, — as holding the head of St. Oswald in his hands. About thirty years after the battle of Maserfield, his niece Osthryd *, then wife to a son and successor of Penda, removed ' the bones of her uncle ' to the great Lincolnshire monastery of Bardney; where the Mercian monks afterwards told^ how, in their 'long-standing animosity' against the Northumbrian who had once * got the dominion over them,' they refused to harbour his remains, ' although they knew him to be a saint,' and so left the wain which had arrived with them in the evening to stand outside their doors, with a covering spread over it : how, all that night, they saw a pillar of light blazing heavenward above the wain, conspicuous to nearly all the province of Lindsey^: how in the morning they eagerly threw open the gate, carried in the bones with all reverence, washed them, placed them in a chest, and hung up over it the gold and purple banner which had waved in battle before the holy king ^. We cannot wonder that, in such an age, the * Bede, iii. 12: • Porro caput et manus,' &c. Bede tells this as if by an after-thought. * Bede, iii. 6 ; Sim. Dunelm. on a. 774 ; Mon. H. B. p. 664. ' Malmesb. Gest. Pontif. 1. iii. fin., p. 275, says that when (in 1104) the tomb of Cuthbert was opened in Durham cathedral, ' the head of Oswald, king and martyr, was found between his arms.' * She was killed by Mercian nobles, a. 697 ; Bede, v. 24. " Bede, iii. 11. Florence says that Ethelred, king of the Mercians, Os- thryd's husband, * had himself built ' this monastery, in which he afterwards became monk and abbot (on a. 716). Tradition said that it contained 300 monks; Mon. Anglic, i. 628. When the house, after long desolation, was restored in the eleventh century, it was dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, and * St. Oswald, king and martyr ; ' ib. * An abbess, Ethelhild, surviving when Bede wrote, told queen Osthryda that she had seen this light, ' ad caelum usque altam.' ' In 909, says the Chronicle, St. Oswald's body was removed from Bardney into Mercia (properly so called). So Florence, a. 909. It was interred at Gloucester. See Alb. Butler, Aug. 5 j Monast. Angl. vi. 82. 154 Reverence for his sanctity. Import- ance of North um- bria. very spot where he had fallen seemed 'greener and fairer' than the ground adjacent, or that wondrous virtues were ascribed to its dust, to that of the floor on which had been poured out the water used in washing the relics, or to a splinter of the stake to which the head had been affixed^ ; that a little boy in Bardney monastery was said to have been cured of the fen-country ague by sitting close to the saint's tomb 2; that a Northumbrian community of monks in Sussex believed an epidemic to have been stayed by the intercession of that ' king, beloved of God/ whose dying prayer might be available for men of his race, though dwelling far from home^; or that a great missionary, Willibrord archbishop of the Frisians, spoke of miracles wrought even in that distant province in presence of some relics of St. Oswald*. The collect assigned, in the Sarum rite, for the 5th of August, referred to ' the joyous and blessed gladness ' which had been associated with that day by his ' passion : ' and when we remember the issues at stake in his contest with Penda, we may think it not too much to say with a foreign historian of ancient England^, that as 'his life was distinguished at once by activity and by a spirit of fervid Christian beneficence, so his Christian merits and his martyrdom rendered him a hero of the Christian world.' The history of the Church in Northumbria during the larger part of the seventh century is conspicuously the back- bone of the history of the Church in England. It is striking to see how the region which was first to come before St. Gregory's thoughts in regard to an English mission, and yet, for nearly thirty years, was inaccessible to missionary attempts, no sooner in any sense accepted Christianity than it concentrated into itself the chief interest of the great ^ Bede, iii. 10, 11, 13. The last anecdote was told by Willibrord, who had put the splinter into water which he gave to a plague-stricken Irish scholar. ^ Bede, iii. 12. This was told to Bede by a monk, when the boy had grown up into a youth still living in the monastery. 3 ' Pro suae gentis advenis,' Bede, iv. 14. There is a vision of SS. Peter and Paul in this story, and an order to celebrate St. Oswald's anniversary by Mass and Communion. Acca, bishop of Hexham, is Bede's authority here. The monastery was Wilfrid's, at Selsey. * Bede, iii. 13:' Denique reven ntissimus,' &c. * Lappenberg, i. 161. Anxiety caused by his death, 155 drama of national conversion : this being due, no doubt, in chap. v. part, to the relative scantiness of our information as to other districts, but also largely to the force and impressiveness of the characters that walk the Northumbrian stage. We cannot help making Northumbria the main line of our subject, towards which any record of Church life in Kent, or Wessex, or elsewhere, may naturally radiate. And thus, the tragedy of Maserfield must have sent a thrill of grief and alarm through every Christian realm, whatever might be its political bearing towards the kingdom which had lost Oswald. We can imagine how the tidings would be received in Kent : how Paulinus, safe in Rochester, and Ethel burga in her minster at Lyminge\ would think of Hatfield, and pray for the soul of another Edwin : how in East-Anglia, both king and bishop would feel renewed mis- givings at a fresh victory of the arms that had struck down Sigebert and Egric : how among our own Oxfordshire valleys, as yet outside the Mercian limits, priests and converts would tremble for new-built churches, and mourn for the generous over-lord who had come among them as sponsor for their king. Why was such a prop of the cause removed ? Did it mean that, after all, the work would be undone, that a heathen tempest would spread from ' the Wall ' to the Channel, and root out the worship of Christ wherever it had been planted ? Such questions might be a trial to faith in many a South-country Church settlement : what must the blow have been to Christians in Bernicia and Deira? We may say, in Bernicia and in Deira ; for, to add to the Oswy difficulties and perils of the crisis, the two realms, so thoroughly Bermcia. welded together by a hero who united the royal blood of both, were soon again to be shaken apart ; Oswiu, or Oswy, the younger brother of Oswald, now about thirty years old, succeeding to the royalty of Bernicia, but failing to establish his hold on Deira, which had a strong leaning to the house of Ella, and in 643, according to Bede's reckoning 2, * It is interesting to observe that the little church of Paddles worth, occupying the highest ground in Kent, 642 feet above the sea, was of old a dependency of Lyminge, and is dedicated to St. Oswald. ' Bede says, tii. 14, that Oswin reigned between eight and nine years : now. 156 Penda in Northumbria, CHAP. V. acknowledged the royal claims of Oswin, son of the unhappy Osric. Oswy was fain to agree to this partition : indeed, during his first year he had enough work in keeping the lands beyond the Tyne, whither Penda, now more than sixty, but as energetic and as ruthless as after the battle of Hatfield, had penetrated as if he meant to destroy Northumbrian inde- pendence by the one stroke of taking Bamborough^. We seem to see the grim invader first trying to storm the city, then pulling down the wooden huts of neighbouring hamlets, piling the materials ^ in a huge mass close to the wall, and finally taking advantage of a south-west wind to set the Aidan and timber on fire. And then Bede shows us the figure of Aidan in his place of 'retreat' on the Fame island, nearly two miles ofi": he looks up, and sees fire and smoke carried by the wind high above the city wall, which was evidently of timber : he lifts up his eyes and hands in supplication ^ : 'See, Lord, what harm Penda is doing ! ' Immediately the wind shifts, drives back the flames, scorching some of Penda's men and scaring all of them, ' so that they gave up attacking a city which they understood to be divinely protected.' In efiect, Penda did give up, soon afterwards, the attempt to conquer Northumbria: he annexed Lindsey to Mercia, and Church history is concerned in his next attack on Wessex, where the eldest of the three royal proselytes of Birinus survived his sponsor and son-in-law about a year, dying in 643, the thirty-second year of his reign ^. Cwichelm, as we have seen, had died before his father ; and the crown passed, not to his son Cuthred, but, as was often the case in Old- Kenwalch. English kingdoms, to his brother^ Kenwalch or Coinwalch, the second son of Kynegils, probably a man of ripe years and full strength, but firmly set against the creed of his he died in August, 651. The date of 644, given by the Chronicler for his ac- cession, is therefore a year too late. * Bede, iii. 16 : * Urbem regiam quae ex Bebbse quondam reginae vocabulo cognominatur.' 2 ' Trabium, tignorum, parietum virgeorum, et tecti fenei,' &c. ^ * Fertur,' says Bede, on this. * A.-S. Chron. * See Freeman, i. 107, that minors were often passed by in favour of uncles. Conversion of Kenwalck. 157 father and brother ^. We can understand how he would chap. v. speak with bitter scorn of the new lore that the foreign priests had brought in to turn the sons of Woden into weaklings : he would have nought to do with Birinus, who had wrought scathe enough to the house of Cerdic by womanish words and outlandish rites. Those must have been anxious days at Dorchester. But ere long Kenwalch, in the pride of newly- acquired kingship, was bold enough to divorce the sister of Penda, whom he had wedded, no doubt, for political con- siderations, and to take another wife ^, Penda seized the occasion, marched straight into Wessex, and drove out Ken- walch in 645. So it was, as Bede comments, that the prince ^who had refused to receive the faith and mysteries of the heavenly kingdom, not long afterwards lost the power even of the earthly kingdom ^ : ' but he was to furnish another instance of the old rhyming Greek proverb, ' Tribulation, education*.* He found shelter in East-Anglia: and while living ' for three years in exile, he understood and accepted the belief of the truth ^.' He saw in Anna's household a royal family simply and thoroughly Christian, believing ab- solutely in the new faith, and living pure and worthy lives under its influence. Felix, no doubt, found opportunities of touching and opening the heart of the discrowned fugitive : and no episcopal work that he had done since he came to Sigebert would be more utterly * happy ' than the baptizing of Kenwalch in 646^. The convert may have been present, Death of with Anna, at the deathbed of the bishop, whose labours as ■^®^' an evangelizer, an educator, and a Church ruler, were closed on the 8th of March, 647 '^. St. Felix, as he was fittingly called in after-ages, was buried in his own city of Dunwich^: and it is interesting to find the memory of the apostle of East- Anglia preserved in the name not only of Felixstowe to * Bede, iii. 7 : • Defuucto autem et rege,' &c. ^ Sexburga, who reigned after him; Chron. a. 672. ' 'Qui et fidem et sacramenta,' &c. ; Bede, iii. 7. See p. iii. * Ilad^/xara, naO^fmra, Herod. 1. 207. * Bede, iii. 7 : * Apud quern triennio ezsulans,' &c. * Chronicle, and Florence. "^ See Bede, ii. 15 ; iii. 20. « Ultimately transferred to Eamaey; Mahn. G. Pontif. p. I47' 158 Kenwalch regains his crown. CHAP. V. the south-east of Ipswich, but in that of a Yorkshire village, far away in the north, Feliskirk, near Thirsk. His deacon Thomas^ a native of the ' Gyrvian ' or ' Fen ' district, was chosen to fill his place, and was consecrated by Honorius of Canterbury: he ranks second of native English bishops, the first being the Kentishman ^ Ithamar, whom Honorius had consecrated in 644 to succeed Paulinus, when the latter had been laid to rest in ' the sacristy of St. Andrew, which king Ethelbert had built from its foundation in the city of Hrof2.' Restora- In 648, Kenwalch was enabled, mainly by the help of his Kenwalch. nephew Cathred, to return into Wessex. Once more a king, he did not fall back from the promises made at his East- Anglian baptism. He showed his gratitude to Cuthred by giving him three thousand hydes ^— each hyde being, in idea, an amount of land sufficient for one family — about Ashdown in Berkshire, east of Cwichelm's-law, the scene of the defeat of the Danes by Ethelred and Alfred in 871. He showed his religious thankfulness by promoting the completion of a church which Kynegils is said to have designed* at Win- ^ 'But,' says Bede, 'equal to his predecessors in conduct and learning;' iii. 14. This is paraphrased by Malmesbury, Gest. Pontif. p. 135, 'in quo nihil perfectae sanctitatis . . . nihil elegantice Romanse .... minus desiderares.' * Bede, iii. 14. ' Secretarium ' sometimes means a room or building used for ecclesiastical business ; here, and in iii. 26, it has the sense of vestry or sacristy. Paulinus had been bishop nineteen years, two months, twenty-one days. According to the Glastonbury traditions, he had visited that sacred place, and it was he who covered the church of wreathed osiers with wood and lead ; Malmesb. de Antiq. Glaston. in Gale, i. 300. But this is probably a legend. Churches are dedicated to his memory at Crayford and Paul's Cray in Kent. ^ Chron. a. 648. See Kemble, i. 92, 487 if., Stubbs, Const. Hist, i. 74, on 'the vexed question of its extent.' Bede uses ' familia * to express it : e. g. Thanet is of 600 familiae, i. 25 ; Hilda's land at Whitby is of 10 familise, iii. 24 ; her former property on the Wear had been of one, iv. 22 ; Sussex contains 7000, iv. 13 ; Selsey, 87, ib. ; the Isle of Wight, 1200, iv. 16 ; Stamford, 10, v. 19 ; Ripon, 30, ib. ; Wearmouth, 70, Hist. Abb. 4 ; Jarrow, 40, ib. 6. Another Latin equivalent is 'cassatus,' a 'housed' or married man; Kemble, i. 92. * According to a Winchester tradition unknown to Bede and the Chronicle. (The latter speaks of the church as built by Kenwalch.) See Rudbome, Hist. Maj. Wint. c. i (Angl. Sac. i. 189). In Annal. Winton. (ib. i. 288) Kynegils is said to have made Kenwalch swear by his soul, before St. Birinus, that he would build a church for the bishopric in Winchester. Allowing for local legends, if a church was hallowed in 648, it must have been planned and begun before the death of Kynegils, not during the first years of his son. Learning in Ireland, 169 Chester : it was hallowed by Birinus, after the restoration of chap. v. Kenwalch, in honour of SS. Peter and Paul. This event, setting aside the legendary notices ^ of a British church at Winchester, profaned by the West-Saxons under Cerdic, is the opening of the history of one of the most venerable of English cathedrals. Birinus lived two years longer, and died peacefully at Dorchester ^^ on the 3rd of December, 650 ; and his body lay in his own church until it was removed to Winchester by his fourth successor Heddi. His first successor was a Frank named Agilbert, who had been consecrated, apparently, in Gaul ^, ' but had lived a long time in Ireland for the sake of studying the Scriptures *.' Ireland was then Irish pre-eminently a land of contrasts : amid a series of ' battles, burnings, slaughters®,' which darken year after year in its native records, there flourished a passionate love of learning ^, and a generous eagerness to impart its benefits, ' without money and without price,' to foreigners who came in search of them. What Bede says of English-born students in Ireland at a slightly later time "^ is probably true of all who, during this period, resorted to Irish teachers ; * they went the round of the cells of different masters, and the Irish readily gave * See Rudbome (a Winchester monk of the fifteenth century) : he begins with king Lucius, as founder of the church ; teUs how, after the Diocletian persecution, a second but smaller church was built in honour of *St. Amphibalus,' and took the name of the Vetus Coenobium ; how Cerdic turned it into a temple of Dagon J how Kynegils destroyed the temple, and assigned lands for a third church. So Geofirey speaks of the British church of Amphibalus 'intra Gayntoniam,' ii. 5. Milner adopts this account of Lucius's cathedral. ^ Bede, iii. 7 : * Ubi . . . migravit ad Dominum.' ^ He was probably a * vacant ' bishop ((rxoX^, The priests, ' being well qualified for their work by learning and by character, were willingly heard; and day by day many of the nobles and of the lowest people renounced the filth ^ of idolatry, and were washed in the fountain of faith 2.' But they also ventured into Mercia proper ; and its old king, while for himself he held fast to his old gods, was yet so far softened by age as to oficr no oppo- sition to their preaching, and also shrewd enough to note some cases of Christian profession discredited by inconsistent practice, and honest enough to fling at them a few words of contemptuous disgust ^. ' The mean wretches, who have put their faith in this new God, and then will not trouble them- selves to obey him!' This speech, the only one recorded of Penda, betokens a healthy vein of thoroughness, which would incline him to respect Christian belief when represented by men who lived up to their creed. Another very important step taken by the Northumbrian Second Church at this time was the second mission to the East- JJe^gast^^ Saxons. It was thirty-six years after the expulsion of Saxons. Mellitns when Sigebert the Good*, as he is called, successor of that Sigebert the Little who had succeeded his father and uncles in 617, paid one of his ' frequent' visits to his friend king Oswy, and profited by his host's exhortations as Sabert had done by those of Ethelbert, as Eorpwald by those of Edwin. The passage in which Bede summarises the Northumbrian king's pleading against idolatry is one of the finest in his book : it reads like a combination of some well- known arguments of Isaiah with those grand words into which Tacitus compresses the case for Monotheism^. Surely, said Oswy, Sigebert would understand that a God could not be made out of wood and stone, the remnants of which were * Cp. Bede, iii. i ; and iii. 30, ' in perfidiee sordibus.' 2 Bede, iii. 21; cp. iv. 16, 'fonte Salvatoris ablutos.' 3 Bede, iii. 21 : ' Quin potius odio habebat,' &c. * Bede, iii. 23 : * Erat enim rex,' &c. This Sigebert IH. was descended from a brother of Sabert. See Florence, App., Mon. H. B. p. 629. ' Isa. xliv. 10 ff.; Tac. Hist. v. 51, ♦ Judsei mente sola unumque Deum intelligunt,' &o. 170 Baptism of Sigebert the Good, CHAP. TL burned, or fashioned into household vessels, or even thrown away, trodden under foot, and turned into earth. Surely * He alone could be thought of as God, who was incompre- hensible in majesty, invisible to human eyes, almig-hty, eternal, the Creator and Ruler and righteous Judge of the universe, whose eternal abode was not in poor perishable metal, but in heaven, where eternal rewards were in store for all those who would learn and do their Maker's will.' Such ideas, * frequently inculcated with the earnestness of a friend or even a brother,' told fully upon Sigebert : he consulted with the ' friends^ who had accompanied him to the north, took his own resolution, advised them to join with him ; and after they had all ^ assented to the faith,' he and they were bap- tized at the same place and by the same hands as Peada, and apparently in the autumn of the same yea^ ^S'^- Like Peada, Sigebert asked for a supply of Christian teachers, to convert and baptize his people : and Oswy summoned^ Cedd from his work among the Mid- Angles, and sent him to preach to the East-Saxons, in company with another priest. They traversed that kingdom, and ' gathered together a large Church : ' and ere long, probably in 654, Cedd ' happened to return home and visit Lindisfarne to converse with bishop Pinan, who, on learning how the work of the Gospel had prospered with him, made him bishop for the race of the East- Saxons, having called in two other bishops to assist him in administering the ordination.' These prelates must have been Scoto-Celtic, — a fact which gives special significance to Cedd, Bede's next words : * Cedd, having received the degree of theELt^ the episcopate, returned to his province, and fulfilling with Saxons. greater authority the work which he had begun, made churches in different places.' It would have been impossible for Bede to write thus, had he suspected that there was the slightest real flaw in the episcopal character of Finan or of the two other Scotic consecrators, although he knew the two latter to be subject to the authority of the abbot of Hy, as primate of the Scottish Church : and from this one passage ^ * * Clamavit ad se ; ' Bede, iii. 22 ; so in iii. 23 and iv. 14. 2 Bishop Russell uses it ' to expose the absurdity of those writers who imagine that the monks of lona were hostile to episcopacy,' and to warrant 'the conclusion Cedd Bishop of the East-Saxons, 171 we might confidently infer that actual bishops had been chap. vi. employed, in Scotland, to confer the episcopate on Aidan and Finan. Let us now follow Cedd in his mission-circuits among the East-Saxons. ' He built churches, and ordained presbyters and deacons to assist him in preaching and in baptizing, especially in that city which in the Saxon tongue is called Ythancaestir, but also in that which is called Tilaburg; the former of these places is on the bank of the river Pent, the latter on that of the Thames.' In this sentence of Bede's we observe, first, a foreshadowing of the parochial system, — which, however, grew up very gradually in England, and was by no means thoroughly established in Northumbria in the last years of Bede's own life^: and secondly, the absence of the name of London, which is probably to be explained by the fact that the great city was * fluctuating between the condition of an independent commonwealth and that of a dependency of the Mercian kings 2.' Strictly speaking, therefore, Cedd seems not to have been bishop of London^: and of the two places named by Bede as centres of his mission work, Ythancaestir appears to have a precedence over Tilbury. It has been identified with Bradwell-on-the-sea, at the mouth of the Blackwater, formerly called the Pent, or with the Roman Othonse*, somewhat further east, but long ago absorbed by the ocean. Tilbury, which is familiarly associated with the Spanish Armada, would have the ad- vantage of being near the mouth of the Thames. At each of these two places Cedd established not only a body of clergy, but also a * swarm of servants of Christ^,' or monks : whom that Aidan, Finan, and Colman were consecrated by bishops ; ' Hist. Ch. Sc. i. 34. So Grub, Eccl. Hist. Sc. i. 155. See above, p. 135. ^ Bede, Ep. ad Egb. 3 : ' Necessarium satis est, ut plures tibi sacri opens adjutores adsciscas, presbyteros videlicet ordinando . . . qui in singulis viculis praedicando . . . adsistant.' That the system had no founder, but grew up naturally out of the relation of the priests to townships, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 227. ^ Freeman, i. 23. Palgrave, E. C. p. 414: 'Strictly speaking, we have no proof that London ever formed part of the early Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.' 3 Malmesbury, indeed, calls him so, De Gest. Pont. p. 142 ; and so Florence, a. 621. * Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 2. * Bede, iii. 22 : *fe,mulorum Christ!,' used technically. 172 Foundation of Las ting ham, CHAP. VI. he taught to observe * the discipline of the regular lif§»' — that is, the monastic system of the Scotic Church, — ' as far as their untrained minds could receive it,' — a phrase which is suggestive of some such austerity as we know to have characterised the rule of Columban. Yet, stern as this dis- cipline may have been, the East- Saxon monks heartily loved their bishop : witness the touching story ^ of thirty brethren of ' his monastery,' — probably that of Ythancsester, — who, on hearing of his death and burial in Northumbria, came all the way to his Yorkshire monastery in order to live or die beside his grave, and in fact did all die there of the then raging pestilence, save one little boy, long afterwards ' useful in the Church.' Thus, for some years, all went well in Essex: Christianity regained its hold on the people, or, as Bede phrases it, ' the teaching of the heavenly life received a daily increase, to the joy of the king and amid the sympathy of his subjects 2.' But Cedd could not be satisfied without periodical visits to his native North-country, in order to preach to his own folk^ : and one of his three brothers, a priest named Cselin, comes before us as chaplain to Ethelwald * the son of Oswald, whom his uncle Oswy permitted to act as sub-king in Deira. This prince exhibits a strange combination of his father's devout habits with a mean jealousy which impelled him into a shameful treason ^ : but the religious side of his nature comes out in his relations with Cedd, who was intro- duced to him by Caelin, and to whom, ' seeing him to be a holy and wise man, and approved in conduct,' he offered a piece of land for the building of a monastery, whither he himself might come * to pray and to hear the Word, and where he might eventually be buried. For,' says Bede^, 'he * Bede, iii. 23 : 'Cum ergo episcopum defunctum,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 2a: ' Cumque tempore non pauco,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 23 : ' Solebat autem idem vir Domini,' &c. * Bede gives the name its rougli North-country form, Oidilwald. Caelin 'used to minister the Word and the " sacramenta fidei " ' to him and to his house- hold (familise). * Sacramenta fidei ' means the mysteries of the faith ; e. g. iii. I. * This union of a certain kind or amount of piety with an utter want of nobleness of character reminds us, in some measure, of Henry III. * * Nam et seipsum,' &c. Cp. iii. 24, ' supplicandum,' Deusdedit, Archbishop, 173 sincerely believed that he would be greatly helped by the chap. vi. daily prayers of those who would serve the Lord in that place.* The site being left to Cedd's choice, he fixed upon a wild spot Founda- under the Pickering hills ^, where, says Bede, ' there seemed to Lasthitr- have been more haunts of robbers and lairs of wild beasts bam. than dwellings of men 2.* This place was Lastingham, where Cedd, after the custom of Lindisfarne, began by hallowing the ground on which the building was to be erected : he asked leave of Ethelwald to spend a whole Lent there, ' fasting on all week days until evening, when he took an q^^, a morsel of bread, and a little milk and water. For he said that this was the usage of those from whom he had learned the rule of regular discipline.' When ten days of this Lent still remained, he was summoned to the king ; but his brother Kynibil, who was also ' his presbyter ^,' completed the series of prayers and fasts, and a monastery after the Scotic type was founded at Lastingham, — the first church being built of wood. Such was the tenor of Cedd's episcopal life. It began when the see of Canterbury was vacant by the death of Honorius, which is dated by Bede on the 30th of September, 6^7^ * : and the vacancy continued until the !z6th of March, ^^^i when a signal testimony was borne by king Erconbert and his advisers, and by the clergy and monks of Canterbury, to the reality of that Church-work of Birinus with which Canterbury had had no concern whatever. A Wessex man called Fritonas, the first ' Saxon ' successor of Augustine, was con- secrated ^ by Ithamar of Rochester alone, without the assist- ance of Bertgils, or Boniface as he called himself, who had succeeded Thomas at Dunwich in 652, and who, as a born Kentishman ^, would feel a special interest in the consecration * * In inontibus arduis ac remotis ; ' Bede, iii. 23. ' Bede applies the words of Isaiah xxxv. 7 : 'In the habitation of dragons . . . shall be grass with reeds and rushes,' — * that is, the fruit of good works should spring up in the place where formerly beasts had their haunts, or men lived like beasts.' Comp. Bede, iv. 3, and Praef. 3 Compare ' presbyter suus ' in iii. 14. * Bede, iii, 20 : • Et ipse quoque Honorius,' &c. ' Bede, iii. 20 : ' Electus est. . . Deusdedit, de gente Ocddentalium Saxonum.' Elmham gives his original Saxon name. H. Mon. S. Aug. p. 192. * Bede, 1. c. : * de provincia Cantuariorum.' 174 Death of Anna, Death of Anna. of an archbishop : but perhaps the journey from the distant sea-port in Suffolk was too inconvenient at that time. Fri- tonas imitated Bertgils by adopting the name of Deusdedit ^, which had been borne by a Pope from 615 to 618 ^^ and which, while intended as an equivalent for ' Theodore,' somewhat reminds us, by its very awkwardness, of that singular anticipa- tion of Puritanic names which we find in the ancient African Church^. Under Deusdedit, as under Honorius, the arch- bishopric continued to be little else than a high dignity shut up within a narrow area : it had no practical effect on the general life and work of the Church : it was like a great force lying dormant until the epoch that was to wake it into energy. The year of Cedd's consecration, also distinguished by the vacancy of Canterbury, was tragically marked by another, and the last, of Penda's fatal victories. Anna had mortally offended him by sheltering Kenwalch : and he now fell on the East-Anglians 'like a wolf on timorous sheep, so that Anna and his host were devoured by his sword in a moment, and scarcely a man of them survived.' Such is the vivid account of Henry of Huntingdon*. The conqueror allowed Ethelhere^ Anna's brother, to reign as his vassal, and employed him, in some way unexplained, to give occa- sion for another Mercian invasion of Northumbria in the following year, 6^^ ^. Oswy had done his utmost to propitiate Penda : beside the double alliance between their houses ^, ' he ^ An Irish missionary in Picardy, named Fricor, * changed his name into Adrian, as more pleasing to his auditors ; ' Lanigan, ii. 442. So Willibrord became * Clement,' and Winfrid • Boniface.' ^ Also by an archbishop of Milan in Gregory's time ; Greg. Ep. xiii. 30. ' Adeodatus, son of St. Augustine ; Quodvultdeus, in the conference of Carthage; Deogratias, bishop of Carthage. We also meet with a deacon Donadeus in Numidia in the time of Gregory the Great ; Ep. x. 8. * Hen. Hunt, i, 2. a. 654. See Bede, iii. 18 : 'Anna . . . qui et ipse . . . ab eodem pagano Mercioriun duce . . . occisus est.' ^ Bede, iii. 24 : 'In quibus ^dilheri, . . . auctor ipse belli,' &c. • Thus— Penda Oswy I L ' I Peada Kyniburga Alchfled I Alchfnd Penda invades Northumbrian 175 had placed another son, Egfrid, as a hostage in the hands of chap, vi, the Mercian queen Kynwise^;' he now offered to purchase peace with a gift of royal ornaments, * greater than can he believed 2.' All was in vain : Penda was resolved, this time, to make sure work : having again crossed the Northumbrian border, he would not turn back, as in ^^^^t ^^ ^4^> until he had annihilated Northumbria as a kingdom, or, as Bede says, had ' exterminated the whole people, small and great.' His Battle of host is described in terms which remind us of the Syrian gg^^ Benhadad's : thirty chiefs of princely rank ^ were serving under his banner ; and Oswy's much smaller force was dimi- nished by the desertion of Ethelwald, who, through some per- sonal grudge, was alienated from ' his uncle and his country *,' and stained his father's memory by ^ acting as guide to the invaders,' although, at the last moment, either compunction ^ or cowardice restrained him from giving them his aid. Thus the odds which Oswy had to face appeared indeed desperate. He had recourse to his religion : ' If the Pagan will not accept our gifts, let us offer them to Him who will — the Lord our God^:' and vowed that if he should be victorious, he would dedicate his daughter Elfled, a babe of a year old, to the monastic life ''j and give twelve pieces of land for building * Bede, iii. 24 : ' Nam alius filius ejus Ecgfrid,' &c. * * Innumera et majora quam credi potest ornamenta regia,' &c. ' • Triginta legiones ducibus nobilissimus instructam . . . Duces regii triginta ;' Bede. Nennius says they were Britons. Compare i Kings xx. 16, on the thirty-two kings who helped Benhadad. - * * Contra patriam et patruum suum,' Bede. ' See Lingard, H. E. i. 96. Bede takes the unfavourable view, * eventum . . . tuto in loco exspectabat.* Lappenberg thinks that this withdrawal of Ethelwald contributed to Oswy's victory; i. 166. ^ • Si Paganus, inquit, nescit accipere nostra donaria, offeramus ei qui novit, Domino Deo nostro.' ^ The special case of Samuel's dedication had come to be deemed a precedent. The second Council of Toledo in 531 had so far guarded the free agency of persons devoted in childhood to tlie ' clericatus ofl&cium,' as to excuse them from • sacratos ordines ' if at eighteen they expressed a desire to marry. But the Benedictine movement encouraged parents to offer their young children for monastic life, wrapping their little hands ' in palla altaris ' (Eeg. Bened. 59) ; and a feeling grew up which gained expression in c. 49 of the fourth Council of Toledo, A.D. 633, 'Monachum aut patema devotio aut propria professio facit: quid quid horum fuerit, alligatum tenebit/ no regard being had to the impos- sibility of ascertaining in childhood any real aptitudes for an avowedly 176 Battle of Winwidfield. CHAP. VI. as many religious houses. ' Relying on Christ as their Leader^,' he and his son Alchfrid awaited the great crisis at a place described by Bede as ' in the region of Loidis, near the river Winwsed,' by Florence of Worcester as Winwsedfield, and by Welsh records ^ as the Field of Gai. The Winwsed has been often identified with the Broad Aire ^, but is more probably the little river Went^ anciently Wynt, a few miles south of the former \ The armies met, on the 15th of November; and the many were scattered before the few. The terrible old man, who had slain so many, was himself smitten down at last : and the same fate befell nearly all his auxiliaries ^, including Ethelhere the East- Anglian ^. Again we recall the story of Hebrew warfare : the Winwsed, swollen by autumnal rains, was to Penda's host what the Kishon of old was to Sisera's ; it swept away * many more in their flight than the sword had destroyed while fighting.' Hence arose the proverb which handed down the names of the five kings whom Penda had slain, in connection with his own final overthrow : ' In - Winwed stream was avenged the slaughter of Anna, the slaughter of the kings Sigebert and Egric, the slaughter of the kings Oswald and Edwin '^.' It was a great day for the independence of the kingdoms, and a still greater for their Christianity. On the one hand, 'the plains of Yorkshire witnessed the emancipation of England ^ ; ' on the other hand, * Penda fell, and with him fell Paganism ^.' Since the battle exceptional life. Thus Vesica, a boy of three, was bred up in the religious house of Barking (Bede, iv. 8) ; Bede was ' given to abbot Benedict ' at seven ; and Odelirius dedicated bis son Ordericus Vitalis at ten, and his son Benedict at five, to monastic life (Ord. Vital, v. 14, xiii. 45). ^ ' Perparvum . . . habens exercitum, sed Christo duce confisus.' ^ Nennius and the Annales Canabriae. ^ Camden, ii. 861. * See Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete, p. 3. He observes that the river 'Are ' had been so called from British times, and that the common called Winmore is five mUes from it, and is really the moor of whins. 5 The account in Neimius, which seems partly legendary, says that one of the British kings, Catgabail, escaped, and so got the discreditable name of Catgnommedd, or ' Would-not-fight ; ' Mon. H. Br. p. 76. * He was succeeded by his brother Ethelwald, and he by Ethelhere's son Aldwulf (Florence). ^ Hen. Hunt. 1. 2 ; Mon. H. Br, p. 717. « Turner, i. 374. ^ Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 244. Compare Freeman, i. 36 ; and the somewhat less decided language of Kemble, i. 150. Mercian Bishopric founded. 177 1%. of Winwidfield, no secular power in Britain has formally chap. vi. disowned the faith of Christ. Oswy lost no time in advancing the cause of that faith, not Diuma only by the punctual fulfilment of his vow as to the twelve ji^ercia'^ monasteries, and the consignment of the infant Elfled to the care of Hilda at Hartlepool ^ but by effectually promoting the extension of Christianity throughout Mercia. He retained in his own hands the government of Mercia proper ^ : but the South Mercians, whom Bede describes as separated by the Trent from the North Mercians, and who were the same as those elsewhere called the Mid- Angles ^, were placed as before under the viceroyalty of Peada *, who obtained a bishop for all the Mercians^ in the ^Scot' Diuma, already mentioned as one of the four priests sent home with him by Finan in 653. The consecration of Diuma must be dated at the beginning of 6^6 ; and immediately afterwards, according to tradition, Peada and Oswy ^ began a monastery to the glory of Christ and St. Peter ^ ' at a place called Medeshamstede, ' the dwelling-place in the meadows,' where in the tenth century the town that had grown up around this ' first resting-place of Christianity in central England ' acquired the name of St. Peter's Borough. But Peada, if, as is probable, he had a ' share in the act '^,' could do no more than plan this foundation, and select its first abbot in the person of a monk named ' Bede, iii. 24 : * Tunc rex Osuiu, juxta quod Domino voverat,' &c. The monastic communities then founded were to 'practise the heavenly warfare instead of the earthly, and to pray for the eternal peace of that nation.' ^ Bede, iii. 21 : * Ipso autem oociso,' &c., and iii. 24 : * Idem autem rex . . . Merciorum genti . . . praefuit.' This is implied in Bede's words, iii. 21, *Cum Osuiu . . . regnum ejus acciperet,' &c., and iii, 24, 'Quo tempore doravit,' &c. The Chronicle says, Peada became king of the Mercians ; but this must mean, of the South Mercians. See Palgrave, p. cclxxvii. ^ Compare Bede, iii. 21, ' Mediterraneorum Anglorum,' and iii. 24, 'Australiutn Merciorum ;' and Cod. Diplom. i. 96, Ethelbald ' king not only of the Mercians, but of all the provinces which are named generally South-Angles.' * Bede, iii. 24 : ' Quo tempore donavit praefato Peadae,' &c. * For, says Bede, iii. 21, the paucity of bishops rendered it necessary that one prelate should be set over ' duobus populis.' * This is from a later addition to the Chronicle. A good deal of such matter was inserted for the honour of the abbey of Peterborough. See Bede, iv. 6, for Medeshamsted in the country of the Gyrvians (Fen-men). See Smith's note in loc. and Monast. Angl. i. 344. ' Stubbs on Foundation of Peterborough, p. 7 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 100. N 178 Murder of Sigebert the Good. CHAP. VI. Saxwulf, rich^ high-born, devout, and widely esteemed, whom Death of Bede calls the builder of the monastery ^. A mysterious ^^ ^' crime soon blighted the hopes associated with the noble- spirited Peada. He was murdered, 'as they say, by the treachery of his own wife,' the Northumbrian princess Alch- fled 2, in the Easter-tide of (i^6 ^, or, according to the Chronicle, in 6^*]. The event was one of the numerous tragedies which had warned the Saxon and Anglian converts that neither the adoption of Christianity as a creed, nor the most consistent Christian goodness, were any security against misfortune and Murder of violent death *. And one more warning of this sort was given the^Good ^bout the same time in Essex. Bishop Cedd had excommuni- cated a retainer and kinsman of Sigebert for obstinately adhering to an unlawful marriage. The king, disregarding the sentence^, accepted an invitation to the offender's hoase, but met with Cedd on his return. Trembling, he leapt from his horse, and knelt to the bishop for pardon : but Cedd exhibited all the austerity of Columban. Touching the king with a wand which he held^ he predicted that Sigebert would die in the very house where he had been feasting with a reprobate man. And, in effect, this man and his brother murdered Sigebert, and when questioned, gave no other reason for the deed than that he had become too ready to pardon and spare his enemies ^ ; a significant indi- cation of the irreconcileable opposition between the Christian and the heathen-Saxon character. ' The new lore/ it would be said, ' has made the king womanish, too mild to rule over men.' Sigebert the Good was succeeded by his brother Swidhelm '^ , who was baptized by Cedd himself at Rendles- ^ ' Constructor et abbas,' &c. ; Bede, iv. 6. " Bede, iii. 24: *Sed idem Peada . . . proditione, ut dicunt, conjugis suae.' Bede was not likely to have a prejudice against Alchfled. Florence adopts the story. ^ So it is usually dated. It happened, says Bede, 'proximo vere* after Oswy had given Peada ' regnum australium Merciorum ;' which he did, it seems, upon the death of Penda in November, 655. * Compare Edwin, Oswald, Eorpwald, Sigebert the Lesimed, Oswin, Anna. * No one was to visit him or eat with him ; Bede, iii. 22. * Bede, 1. c. : • Quod ille nimium suis parcere soleret inimicis, et factas ab eis injurias mox obsecrantibus placida mente demitteret.' They were * comites.' ■^ Sigebert's son Selred lived to be king for many years from 709. S^. Bohdf, 179 ham in Suffolk. This royal baptism exhibited the bishops chap. vi. of Essex and of East-Anglia as on brotherly terms; and Ethelwold, the East-Anglian king^, brother and successor of Ethelhere, acted as sponsor to the East-Saxon, and * received him as he came up out of the holy font.' It was about two years since the East-Anglian Christians had heard with interest of the foundation of a monastery on the Gallic model among their neighbours the northern Gyrvians of South Lincolnshire. The founder was Botulf ; the place, Ikanho, is usually identified with ' Botulf 's town ' or Boston, or with the neighbouring village of St. Botulf. The foundation is dated in 654^, and king Anna's suc- cessor Ethelhere is said to have used influence in its favour with a certain ^ South- Anglian ' king, or rather sub-king, called Ethelmund, whose sisters Botulf had met in Gaul, and who had some of Botulf's kinsmen in his service. Botulf asked simply to have a piece of unoccupied land given to him : his request was granted, and he chose Ikanho because it was desolate. Monks gathered around him, to whom he gave a Rule compiled from ' old and new ' authorities : the fame of his learning and piety was wide-spread when, about 670, Ceolfrid, afterwards abbot of Jarrow, paid him a visit ^. The death of Peada did not arrest the mission-work in South Mercia : Diuma ' in a short time won not a few to the Lord, and died among the Mid-Angles in the country called Infeppingum,' — a district which cannot now be identified. He Cellach was succeeded by another ' Scottish ' or Irish pyiest, named ^^ ^^_ Cellach, who, like Diuma and like Cedd, was consecrated cia»s. by Finan. But ' when three years had elapsed from the Revolt of slaughter of king Penda */ that is, at earliest, at the close wuKhere of 658, three Mercian chiefs revolted against the direct ^^s- government exercised by Oswy over their country. Observe the irrepressible and manful sympathy which the North- umbrian Bede here indicates for a patriotic movement against * He ' persuaded him to believe ; ' Act. SS. Ben. ii. 744. 2 Chronicle and Florence. See the Life of St. Botulf in Act. SS. Bened. saec. iii. i". 4, and Alb. Butler, June 17. ' Anon. Hist, of Abbots of Jarrow, in Bede's Works, vi, 417. * ' Completis autem tribus annis,' &c. ; Bede, iii. 24. But the Chronicle dates Wulf here's accession in 657, Florence in 659. N 2, 180 Wulfhere King of Mercia, CHAP. VI. Northumbrian supremacy. ' They drove out the ealdormen of a king who was none of theirs, and bravely regained at once their boundaries and their freedom : they lifted up, as king, Wulfhere, son of Penda, a young man whom they had been guarding in concealment : and thus being free, with a king of their own, they rejoiced to serve Christ the true King^.' This is one of the noblest sentences in Bede's History, and is the more impressive, because we have no evidence that Oswy had played the tyrant over Mercia ; what was done, and what Bede thus describes, was done purely for the sake of national independence. Thus chosen as a national monarch, Wulfhere reigned vigorously^ for seventeen years : he is described as 'the first king of the Mercians who re- ceived the faith and the laver of holy regeneration ^,' Peada having been only under-king of part of Mercia. Wulfhere established his supremacy over the East-Saxons, and re- conquered Lindsey from Northumbria. He married Ermen- ild, daughter of Erconbert of Kent; their daughter Wer- burga became a directress of Mercian nunneries, and the minster of Chester grew up around her shrine*. One of Wulfhere's brothers, named Merewald, ruled Hecana or Herefordshire^ as under-king, married Ermenburga the niece of Erconbert, and became the father of St. Mildred and two other daughters, and of Merewin, a boy of remarkable piety ®. The king is credited with carrying out the intentions of his brother as to Medeshamstede ; though the details of the ^ Bede, iii. 24 : 'Fines suos fortiter,' &c. Mark the word 'levato;' and see Kemble, i. 154. Compare the lifting-up of Alaric on a shield, Gibbon, iv. 31. So the Neustrians proclaimed Sigebert in 575, 'impositum super clypeo;' Greg. Tur. iv. 52. So the Spanish Visi Goths inaugurated the leader of their host ; Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 1 29. ^ He inherited his father's courage (virtutis) ; Hen. Hunt. • A vigorous and active ruler ; ' Green, Hist. E, P. p. 30. ' Florence, a. 675. * For St. Werburh, or Werburga, see Alb. Butler, Feb. 3. • Kemble, i. 150; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 171. Florence identifies the Hecanas with the Magesetas, or Maegsetan (M. H. B. 621), whom Kemble treats as a portion of them, i. 80. ® Florence. Ermenburga, or Domneva, was daughter of the Kentish sub- king Ermenred, a son of Eadbald, and sister of the princes Ethelred and Ethelbert, slain by Thunor. Of her daughters, Mildred became abbess of Minster, Milburga of Wenlock : another daughter was Mildgith. A gilbert leaves Wessex. 181 Consecration of the minster and the speeches ascribed to chap. vi. Wulfhere ^ are hardly more trustworthy than the later and Medes- calumnious legend which represented him as killing his two sons for turning Christians, and then, in penitence, building the abbey of ' Burgh 2.' We do know that, in 659, he estab- lished Trumhere, abbot of Gilling, in the Mercian bishopric, when Cellach, probably in disgust at the separation of Mercia from Northumbria, had ' abandoned the episcopal office,' and returned to Hy, and thence to Ireland ^. Trumhere, though an Englishman, was of Scotic consecration like his pre- decessor * ; and so apparently was Jaruman, who succeeded him in 662. Another abandonment of a bishopric took place in 660, Agilbert under circumstances which give it considerable importance. ^J^gx. Agilbert had been successful as bishop of the West- Saxons in all respects but one. It was from him probably that Kenwalch learned to be zealous for the ' Catholic Easter ^.' But Agilbert had not acquired the Saxon tongue; and Kenwalch, who knew no other, became ^ weary of his foreign dialect^, and clandestinely introduced into the province another bishop who spoke Saxon, named Wini, — who himself also had been ordained in Gaul : and dividing the province into two dioceses' — here, as in other passages, Bede uses ' parochia ' in this its older sense '^ — ' he assigned to Wini an * See them as insertions in Chron. a. 657. Kemble, ii. 242, says that this forgery * throws no well-grounded doubt upon the fact.' ^ This myth was set forth in stained glass along the western cloister of Peterborough abbey; Mon. Anglic, i. 377. See the strange descriptive verses, one couplet being, •Wulfhere in woodness his sword out drew, And both his sons anon he slew.* ^ Bede, iii. 2 1 : ' Keversus est ad insulam Hii, ubi plurimorum caput et arcem Scotti habuere ccenobium ;' and iii. 24, ' vivens ad Scottiam rediit.' * Bede, iii. 24 : * de natione quidem Anglorum,* &c. 5 See Eddi, Vit. Wilfr. 7. * Bede, iii. 7 ; * Tandem rex, qui Saxonum tantura linguam noverat, pertaesus barbarse loquelae,' &c. Milner understands this of a mere foreign pronunciation. Hist. Winch, i. 73 ; but Bede implies more. ' 'In duas parochias.' Comp. Bede, v. 18 : *in duas parochias ... ad civitatis Ventanae parochiam.' See the second decree of the Council of Hertford, Bede, iv. 5 ; and Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 29 ; Ep. Egb. 8. For irapoiKia as the aggregate of Christians dwelling in one place or district under the care of a single chief pastor, see Euseb. i. i, ii. 24, iv. 15, &c. ; Bingham, b. ix. 2. i. 182 ' Wini Bishop of Winchester, CHAP. VI. episcopal seat in the city of Winchester,* where a minster had been hallowed twelve years before by Birinus. ' Whereupon Agilbert, being highly offended that the king should do this without consulting him, returned into Gaul, and having ac- cepted the bishopric of the city of Paris, died there an old man and full of days.' This sentence gives an inaccurate im- pression ; for we find Agilbert four years afterwards in North- umbria, and Bede speaks of him on that occasion as bishop of the West-Saxons ^ ; and^ moreover, the see of Paris in 660 and for some time afterwards was filled by Chrodobert ^, and two bishops intervened between him and Agilbert ^ : so that the latter's accession must be referred to a later period. The inconsiderate arbitrariness of Kenwalch, in this transaction, is what might be expected in a prince whose impatient temper had not been subdued by his sufferings or his conversion, and whose sense of royal power had been enhanced by his recent military success in driving the Britons beyond the river Parret *. It will appear that his choice of Wini was less fortunate than his former choice of Agilbert; and though Winchester may have been a more desirable seat for a West- Saxon bishopric than a little town so near the Mercian frontier as Dorchester then was, it cannot be said that the old home of West- Saxon royalty has reason to be proud of its first bishop. Kenwalch had soon enough on his hands to make him forget ecclesiastical complications ; for in 661^ Wulfhere invaded Wessex, and laid waste the Berkshire country as far * Bede, iii. 25, v. 19. Eddi calls him at that time ' transmarinus episcopus,' but this may mean only a bishop of foreign birth and consecration. ^ Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 470, on a document signed by him in 663 : and he had been bishop when Chlodwig II. died in 656 ; ib. i. 439. ^ Sigebrand and Importunus ; Mabillon, i. 478. The former was murdered in 664. The latter witnessed a ' privilegium ' for a nunnery at Soissons, June 26, 666 ; ib. 482. Dubois, therefore, must be wrong in dating AgUbert's accession to the see of Paris in 664, immediately on his return to Gaul after the conference of Whitby ; Hist. Eccl. Paris, i. 204. We are told that, in 680, he and the bishop of Reims were employed by Ebroin to lure a rival into his power ; Fredeg. Chron. continuat. 97. He is said to have died on Oct. 11 (on which day he was venerated), in 680. * Chron. a. 658 on the battle of Pen. See Freeman's Old-Engl. Hist. p. 65. ^ See Chron. a. 661, and Florence. Henry of Huntingdon says that Wulfhere 'traversed his enemy's land with a great host,' and conquered Wight. Ethel- werd, ii. 7, transfers the victory at Ashdown to Kenwalch. South-Saxons still Heathen, 183 as Ashdown ; and the death of Cuthred, the lord of that ohap. vi. territory, which is assigned to the same year, probably took place in this Mercian border-war. Wulfhere also got posses- sion of a Hampshire district occupied by the Meanvaras ^, and made the important conquest of the Isle of Wight ^, which Conquest had belonged to Wessex ever since Cerdic subdued it in 530. L Wuif- Both these acquisitions he handed over to Ethelwalch, king ^^re. of the South-Saxons 3, who had been baptized in Mercia, ' by the persuasion and in the presence of Wulfhere,' and had then become Wulfhere's godson. His wife Eaba was already a Christian: she came from the Hwiccian country, which included Worcestershire^ Gloucestershire, and Somersetshire north of Avon * : and its rulers, Eanhere and his brother Eanfrid, Eaba's father, had become ' Christians with their people.' But the king and queen of the South- Saxons could produce no effect on the Paganism of their kingdom^, which had never been evangelised from Kent or from Wessex, and was detained by marshes and by the forest of Anderida in a peculiarly barbaric isolation ^. One man of its race, named Damian, had indeed not only become a Christian, but had succeeded Ithamar as bishop of Rochester in 6^6 "^ : but, speaking generally of the realm of Sussex, its time, in a Christian sense, was yet to come ; and to come from that distant North-country to which our story now returns. ^ The Meanvaras' district ran from Southampton Water to the South Downs. See Camden, Britan. i. 146 : ' Their country is now divided into three hundreds . . . Meanborow, Eastmean, Weastmean.' They were Jutes; Pearson, Hist. Engl. i. 106. * Chron. 1. c. ; Lappenberg, i. 248. ' See Bede, iv. 13 : 'Erat autem rex,' &c. 'His policy was to establish a counterpoise to the West-Saxon kingdom ;' Milner, Hist. Winch, i. 74. * See Stubbs on the Cath. of Worcester, p. i . Comp. his Const. Hist. i. 159, and Kemble, i. 149, on the long continuance of a special kingship of the Hwiccas. ^ Bede, iv. 13: 'Cseterum tota provincia Australium Saxonum Divini nominis et fidei erat ignara.' In their 'hearts paganism found its last en- trenchmen^firHardwick, Ch. Hist. M. Ages, p. 11. ' Rocks and woods had made it * inexpugnabilis ;' Eddi, Vit. Wilfr. 40; Lappenberg, i. 106. In, the reign of Alfred, the ' Andread-weald ' was more than a hundred miles long, and thirty broad ; Chron. a. 893. The name of Andred is significant ; 'the land without dwellings.' The Weald of Kent and Sussex is the remains of this forest ; Taylor's Words and Places, p. 360. ' Bede, iii. 20. Damian was consecrated by archbishop Deusdedit. 184 Colman Bishop of Lindisfarne, CHAP. VI. Finan died, after a ten years' episcopate, in this year 66 1 ; Colman of and was succeeded by Colman ^, also of Irish extraction and farne.^ Scotic ordination 2, and also a man of simple and austere piety, and of an ' innate prudence ' which won Oswy's regard ^ ; but not destined to a peaceful and successful episcopate, such as Finan's on the whole had been. A change, in fact, was coming over the mind of the great ecclesiastical province which looked to Lindisfarne as its centre. Deliverance from the terrors and anxieties which Penda's name had aroused, and which passed away at his death, had given the Northumbrian Church a time of ^ refreshing ' and of spiritual revival. There was, all around, a stirring of ecclesiastical life, which, however, in its more vigorous growths, was not likely to be content with the somewhat narrow and homely type represented by the Scotic traditions of Lindisfarne. True, there was a strong attach- ment in many minds to those traditions ; and many persons of high as well as of low birth actually went over to settle in Ireland, for the sake of monastic self-devotion, or of theological study*. Among these English students were two young men of ' eorl-kin,' Ethelhun and Egbert, the latter of whom, having edified the Irish by his teaching and his example, and persuaded the monks of Hy to adopt the Catholic Easter, died a few years before Bede wrote his work^. Colman might think that such an appreciation of Irish learning and sanctity promised well. Moreover, there were in North umbria monasteries newly founded, in which the rules and practices of Aidan were held sacred and all-sufficient : the six in Bernicia and the six in Deira which commemorated the day of Winwidfield ; the house at Gilling, a monument of royal penitence, — another at Tyne- mouth, where the monks had to contend with the dogged- * Bede, iii. 25 : ' Defuncto autem Finano,' &c. The name was common among Irishmen of that period; Lanigan, iii. 2. Several instances occur in Tigbernach. A St. Colman was the first bishop of Cloyne. ^ Bede says that Colman had been appointed (destinatus) from Hy ; iv. 4. But he also indicates that he had come originally from Ireland ; iii. 26. ' Bede, iii. 26 : ' Multum namque eumdem,' &c. * See above, p. 159. Northumbrians would probably resort first to Bangor in Ulster, and to the sacred city of Armagh, a third part of which was occupied by ' Saxon ' students ; M«^ee, Hist. Irel. i. 49. 5 Bede, iii. 4, 27 ; iv. 3 ; v. 9, 32. Monasticism in Northumbrian 185 ness of half-Christianised rustics who complained that ' old chap. vi. rites had been taken away, and that no one knew how to ob- serve the new ones^;' Heiu's religious house near Tadcaster, and her earlier foundation at Hartlepool ^ ; and, more famous Founda- by far, that community which Hilda had planted in 657-8 on whitby. an estate of ten hydes or ' families ' ^ at Strenseshalch, ' the bay of the light-house' as Bede translates its name^ which we had better designate by its familiar Danish name of Whitby. In this house, as, in the first instance, at Kildare^, and after- wards at Coldingham, Barking, Wimbome, and Repton, and in some great houses on the Continent ^, the nuns and monks formed a ' double foundation, a lady abbess being set over both, the former always taking precedence "^ : ' and Hilda, whom all that knew her called ' Mother,' taught the inmates ' to practise thoroughly all virtues, but especially peace and love : so that after the pattern of the primitive Church, no one there was rich and no one was poor, but all had all things in common, for nothing seemed to be the property of any individuaP.' Further north, a little nunnery was established about this time, on the banks of the Derwent, at a place which takes its name of Eb- chester from the foundress, a half-sister of Oswald and of Oswy^, well known to us in Oxford from the title of one of our churches, — that Ebba who afterwards founded a double convent at Coldingham, close to the promontory still called St. Abb's Head. If we look beyond the present Border into a country then strictly English ^^, we are attracted by a religious house organised on the Lindisfarne model, and situated in a valley which the genius of Scott has made peerless throughout ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 3. See Stevenson's Chrou. of Abingdon, vol. ii. p. xxxiv, ^ The cemetery of this ancient monastery was discovered in a field called Cross Close in 1833 ; Hiibner, p. 69. ' Bede, iii. 24 : ' Quae post bieimium comparata possessione,' &c. lb. iv. 23 : * Cum ergo aliquot annos . . . contigit eam suscipere etiam construendum,' &c. * * Sinus Fari/ iii. 25. * Streonesheal,' Chron. a. 680. ' Haddan's Remains, p. 277 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 225 ; Todd's St. Patrick, p. 12. Kildare was the sanctuary of St. Bridget. * At Autim, Brie, R^miremont, Laudun, Fontevrault, &c. See Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. pp. 315, 382, &c. ; Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 219; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 225. For Repton, see Monast. Anglic, vi. 429. ^ Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 252. 8 Bede, iv. 23 (the chapter on St. Hilda). * Bede, iv. 19 ; V. C. 10. " See Freeman, i. 35, 122, on Lothian. _ 186 Cuthbert at Melrose. CHAP. VI. Britain. On the upper road from Dry burgh to Melrose there Melrose, ig a point where one looks down on a wooded projection of land, almost encircled by the Tweed ^. This is Old Melrose, to the east of its younger and world-renowned namesake ; but it is memorable as the site of a humble monastery where, in 66 1, holy men prayed and taught, and one young monk was unconsciously preparing for a life which made him the great popular saint of Northern England. Eata, of whom we shall hear much, was abbot : he had been one of those twelve boys whom Aidan, in the early days of his episcopate, had received from their parents to be ' instructed in Christ^,' and through life he was true to his old training, being, as Bede describes him, ' the gentlest and simplest man in the world ^.' Under him, acting as ' propositus ' or prior^ was Boisil, whom Bede calls ' a priest of great virtues and of a prophetic spirit,' and whose name is still perpetuated in the little town of St. Boswell's. Cuthbert. About ten years before, in the beginning of the winter of 651*, there had come to Melrose a robust youth ^, with a servant who held his horse and spear® when he had dismounted in order to pray in the church. His name was Cuthbert. From his eighth year he had lived in the house of a widow named Kenspid, whom he used to call ' mother.' As a younger boy, he had been remarkable for high spirits, and had excelled in all bodily exercises'^ : the solitary hours spent in tending ^ 'Quod Tuidi fluminis circumflexu maxima ex parte clauditur;' Bede, v. 12. Scott's description of the western site in ' The Eve of St. John,' •Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose,' might apply still better to the eastern. ^ Bede, iii. 26. ^ Bede, iv. 27. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 5, 6. This ' Life ' was compiled with special care, and before publication submitted to friends of St. Cuthbert, and finally read and examined for two days by the Lindisfame community, under bishop Eadfrid. The Anon. Vit. Cuthb. in Bede's Works, vi. 358, was also written under Eadfrid. The legend of his Irish birth is Irish. ' • Adolescens,' Bede, V. C. 4; 'robustus corpore,' 6; 'of full age,' Vit. An. * Bede, V. C. 6. The Anon. Vit. says he had once served ' in castris contra hostem.' ' ' He took pleasure in jokes and noisiness . . . delighted to share in the sports of other boys. . . . Sometimes, when the rest were tired out, he, unwearied, would ask in the joyous tone of a conqueror whether any others had a mind to contend further with him.' He excelled his equals in age, and even some of his seniors, in leaping, running, wrestling, ' seu quolibet alio mem- brorum siuuamiae.' Yet even in those days, a little boy of about three once Beginnings of Wilfrid. 187 iheep, on the hills beside the Leader, had opened his mind to chap. vi. serious thought ; and a dream, which he took to be a vision, MJcurring on the night of Aidan's death, had determined him :o enter a monastery^. The fame of Boisil drew him to Melrose : and Boisil, standing at the gate as he came near, >aid to others who were present, 'Behold a servant of the Lord 2 1 ' He soon surpassed all the brethren in studies, vigils, )rayers, still more in manual work: only, we are told, he could not endure so much abstinence from food,' lest the strength required for labour should be diminished^. When Eata received from Alchfrid, who had succeeded the traitor Ethelwald as sub-king of Deira, an estate of thirty or forty lydes at Ripon, for the erection of a monastery, Cuthbert was imong the bi*ethren sent to colonise the new settlement, and ippointed to act as hospitaller * : but at the time of Colman's irrival the monks had just given up their abode, rather than iccept, at Alchfrid's bidding, the continental Easter rule and )ther Roman usages ^ : and Cuthbert was again at Melrose, attending to the precepts and the example of Boisil ^.' And this brings us to the name of him who concentrated Wilfrid, md intensified, by his energy and influence, the preference for Catholic ' over ' Scotic ' usages, — to the splendid name of W^ilfrid. Born in 634 ^, — that is, in the ' year of apostasy,' —the son of a Northumbrian thane, he began, at thirteen )r fourteen ^, ' to think of forsaking his paternal fields, and to )urst out crying, and calling Cuthbert • bishop,' told him that he ought not to )lay among children, Cuthbert, as ' bonae indolis puer,' was struck with this itrange warning, and, caressing the child affectionately, went home, and became rom that day 'steadier, animoque adolescentior.' Bede, V. C. i. (The boys, according to the Anon. Vit., were playint* at • standing on their heads.') 1 Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 4 ; Sim. Dun. de Eccl. Dun. c. 3, and Hist, de S. Cuthb. n X Script. 2, 67. It was August 31, 651. He thought he saw angels carry- ng a holy soul into heaven * as in a globe of fire ; ' Anon. Vit. ' Next morning le gave over the sheep to their owners ; ' Sim. Dun. "^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 6, ^ lb. : * Non autem tantam escarum valebat subire continentiam.' * lb. 7. Comp. Bede, E. H. iii. 25, v. 19. On monastic hospitality see ieeves's Adamnan, p. 345. ^ Bede, v. 19 : ' Optione data maluerunt loco cedere.' Vit. Cuthb. 8 : ' Eata um Cuthberto . . . domum repulsus est.' « Vit. Cuthb. 8 ; comp. H. E. iv. 27. ' Florence, a. 634 : * Sanctus Wilfridus nascitur.' " Eddius, Vit. Wilfr. 2 : 'In his thirteenth year, in corde suo cogitabat,' CO. Bede says, in his fourteenth year, v. 19. Fridegodus and Eadmer saj he 188 Wilfrid at Lindisfarne, CHAP. VI. seek for heavenly gifts.' In spite of a stepmother's un- kindness, he was well equipped with all that could enable him to make a good appearance at the court of Oswy ^, and his father bade him God-speed. He stood in the presence of Queen Eanfled, — a handsome boy of quick intellect and graceful bearing, — introduced to her by nobles on whom he had waited at his father's table ; and besought her to promote his desire of ' serving God,' — the phrase then used, with an unhappy restriction of meaning, for monastic life ^. One of the king's ' companions',^ seized with paralysis, was preparing to become a monk at Lindisfarne : and under his care, and as his attendant, Wilfrid entered that monastery, where, although he did not receive the Scotic tonsure'*, he acquired all that he could learn of the Scotic discipline, learned by heart the Psalter in Jerome's more correct or ' Galilean recension ^,' and was ' loved by the other boys as a brother, by the seniors,' and doubtless by Aidan, ' as a son ^.' Some three years afterwards, having a strong desire to visit Rome, to gain the blessing of the successor of St. Peter, and to study monastic rules of a better type than the Scotic"^, Wilfrid, by his father's advice, and with the frank assent of the bishop and monks of Lindisfarne^, obtained a letter of commendation from Eanfled had passed his fourteenth year. Stephen Eddi, or Haedde, was Wilfrid's attendant in after years. Fridegodus wrote a metrical Life of him by desire of archbishop Odo ; Eadmer, in St. Anselm's time. See Act. SS. Bened. ssec. iii. i. 169 ff. ^ See Turner, Angi.-Sax. iii. 16. 2 Comp. Bede, Prsef., i. 23, iv. 7, v. i, 9, 15, 24; Hist. Abb. i, 15, &c. 2 A gesith, or comes, named Cudda. Eddius calls him Wilfrid's ' dominus.* * * Adhuc laicus capite,' Edd. ' ' Citissime,' says Bede. * Secundum Hieronymi emendationem,' Edd. 3. This translation was made at Bethlehem, from the Septuagint Version according to the 'Hexaplar' text, in 389. It became current in Gaul and elsewhere before it was accepted in Italy. The ' Eoman Psalter ' was Jerome's earlier and cursory revision of the old Italic version, made in 383. It was used at Canterbury after the ' Gallic Psalter ' was received in other English churches ; and is still in use in St. Peter's at Rome. See Waterland on Ath. Creed, c. 4 ; Vallarsi, Vit. Hieron. c. 20. Jerome's version from the Hebrew was never in public use. ^ Edd. 2. ' Bede says nothing of his desire for the Pope's blessing. Nor are we told how, at Lindisfarne, he learned to think that there were better rules abroad. * Bede, v. 19 : * Quod cum fratribus,' &c. This speaks well for Finan's generosity, if the lad's somewhat premature discontent with Lindisfarne customs were made known to him : and Wilfrid, at seventeen or eighteen, was not likely to be too modest in such a matter. and at Lyons. 189 to her cousin King Erconbert, who was just the man to chap. vi. appreciate the brilliant gifts, the intent studiousness, and the religious fervour of the young Northumbrian. After about a year's delay, which Wilfrid employed in observing the Church usages of Canterbury, Erconbert found a suitable Benedict fellow-traveller for him in one whose name is as closely •'^^^°°P- bound up as Wilfrid's with Northumbrian Church history, and who was to make himself a name as an ecclesiastical traveller^, a founder of monasteries, and a promoter of religious art. This was Benedict Biscop, also called, as a patronymic, *Baducing2,' a nobly-born Northumbrian of twenty-five, who had given up his rank as a ' king's thane,' and the goodly estate which he had received from Oswy, in order, says Bede, * to take service under the true King.' The two companions set out for Rome towards the end of 6^'>^^ soon after the death of archbishop Honorius : and Eddi gives us' a brilliant picture of the youth of nineteen, ' pleasant in address to all, sagacious in mind, strong in body, swift of foot, ready for every good work, with a face that in its unclouded cheerfulness betokened a blessed mind^.' Such was Wilfrid when he reached Lyons, and was introduced to ' Dalfinus,' as both our writers call its archbishop, confusing the prelate Aunemund with his brother Dalfinus, count of Lyons ^. Benedict, impatient to be at Rome, left Wilfrid at Lyons, where he spent some little time with the archbishop, who was * charmed with his beautiful countenance, his prudence in speech, his quickness in action, his steadiness and maturity of thought ^' loaded him with presents, and offered, if he would remain, to give him the * He made six visits to Rome, — ^five of them being directly from Britain, — in 653, 665, 667, 671, 679, 685. "^ Edd. 3. See Moberly's Bede, p. 370. For Benedict Biscop, see Bede, iv. 18, V. 19; Hist. Abb. i {the passage). See Alb. Butler, Jan. 12. We find • Beda ' and ' Biscop ' ranking sixth and seventh from Woden in the genealogy of the kings of the Lindisfari ; Mon. H. Brit. p. 431. Moberly suggests that Beda is equivalent to Badoc ; Introd. p. xii. ' Edd. 3,4: ' . . tristia ora nunquam contraxit.' The archbishop saw * in facie Serena quod benedictam mentera gerebat.' * See Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 425, 44 j : 'Nullus in vetustis Lugdunensium antistitum indicibus Dalfino locus est.' Aunemund had signed a royal diploma for the inamunity of the abbey of St. Denis from episcopal control, June 22, 653. » Bede, v. 19. 190 His first visit to Rome, CHAP. VI. government of a district and the hand of his niece\ and to treat him always as an adopted son. Wilfrid appears to have accepted the adoption 2, but he gratefully declined the other proposals, urging the purpose for which he had left his native land. The prelate could not but acquiesce, and sent him on to Rome with a guide and all necessaries, only entreating that he would 'remember to travel home by way of Lyons.' Wilfrid reached Rome probably in the spring of 654, and spent several months in daily visits to the sacred places^, and in study of the Gospels, and of the received Paschal calculations, and of other Church rules which he could not have learned in Britain, under the tuition of the archdeacon Boniface, who, before his departure, presented him to the newly-elected Pope Eugenius I. Wilfrid, in his later career, must often have remembered how the pontiff ' laid his hand on his head, and blessed him with a prayer*.' Returning, with a store of relics, to Lyons, he stayed three years with his kind host the archbishop, studied under learned ecclesiastics, and received the crown-like Roman tonsure^. The prelate's wish to make him his heir was defeated in the September of 658 by his own tragical death ^, which Eddi, and Bede simply following him, lay at the door of Queen Bathildis, properly Baldechildis, the widow of * That 18, the daughter of Count Dalfinus. ^ Eddi speaks of Wilfrid's 'father, the archbishop/ 5. This illustrates his own allusion to a ' son' of Wilfrid, 18, 57, i.e. not a mere disciple or spiritual child, but one whom he Had solemnly adopted (for it seems that the Eadwald who was 'agnomine filius episcopi,' and lived as a monk at Ripon, c. 18, was the bishop's ' own son' of c. 57. So Raine, i. 57). ^ Eddi says that he entered an oratory of St. Andrew, and invoked the Apostle. So Eadmer, 9; and Rich, of Hexham, X Script. 290, says that he prayed to be set free * de ingenii sui tarditate et linguae suae rusticitate.' * Eddi, 5. Eugenius, whom Hefele calls intelligent and orthodox, was elected under imperial pressure, while Pope St. Martin was still alive in exile, Sept. 8, 654 ; but * St. Martin consented ' afterwards * to this election ' (L'Art de vt^rifier, &c. iii. 284; Hefele, Hist. Councils, b. xvi. c. I. s. 309). Eugenius survived Martin, dying in June, 657. ' 'Crines summo de vertice passes .... recidit ;' Frideg. * Mabillon, in Ann. Bened. i. 443, quotes a statement that Count Dalfinus was executed on a false charge of treason brought against him by the nobles, and Aunemund was afterwards arrested by three ' duces ' sent from the palace, who refused him a hearing and put him to death. This he thinks not improbable. Aunemund was honoured by his Church on Sept. 29. He returns to Northumbrian 191 Chlodwig or Clovis II. Here is a difficulty; for while Eddi chap. vi. 3ompares her to Jezebel ^, the Church has canonised her for recorded acts of piety, charity, and humility ^ : and her 3haracter has suggested that the execution of the archbishop Dn a charge of disaffection may have been ordered by Ebroin, it the beginning of his career as Mayor of the Palace for her infant son Chlotair III.^ Wilfrid attended his benefactor uO the scene of death, and even stripped off his cloak in order to suffer with him. ' Who is that fair youth ? ' asked the royal officers charged with the execution. ' A foreigner,' they were bold, * from the Angles in Britain : ' whereupon they com- manded their men to spare his life. Wilfrid then returned bo Northumbria, apparently at the end of 658. He soon became intimate with Alchfrid, who had learned from his friend Kenwalch of Wessex * ' to love and follow the Catholic Church rules ^.' He treated Wilfrid with profound respect ^, ind asked him, ' for God's sake and St. Peter's,' to stay with bim in Deira. They became, we are told, as closely Founda- anited as David and Jonathan : and Alchfrid gave Wilfrid ^j'^ ^ land for building a monastery at Stamford near York, and Qot long afterwards put him in possession of the house at 1 ' Malevola regina . . . sicut . . . Jezebel ; * Edd. 6. He adds that nine bishops ivere slaughtered. ^ See the Paris Breviary, Jan. 30. During her husband's life, she * com- nended to him the poor and the churches ;' while regent, she ' annulled simoniacal ordinations,' forbade the selling of Christians as slaves, ransomed many at her >wn cost, restored monastic discipline ; and, after she retired to the nunnery srhich she had virtually refounded at Chelles, she there exhibited great humility md tenderness. See Alb. Butler, Jan. 30 ; Mabillon, i. 438. It is interesting -o remember that she herself came to Gaul as a 'Saxon' slave-girl from Britain, probably from Wessex. She was said to be nobly bom. » See Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 443. He traces the accusation made by Eddi to his ignorance as a ' foreigner * who was not then a companion of Wilfrid. Chlodwigdied, set. 25, Sept. 5, 656. Mabillon, i. 438, infers from certain docu- nents that Ebroin became Mayor of the Palace immediately afterwards, if not a ittle before. Others date his accession to ofl&ce, on the death of his predecessor Erchinoald, as late as 659 (L'Art de verifier, v. 411) ; which would overthrow Mabillon's theory. But the Continuator of Fredegarius makes the deaths of the king and Erchinoald take place 'eodem tempore;' c. 92. Erchinoald timself was incapable of any cruelty to bishops; Fredeg. 84. * Edd. 7. • Bede, v. 19 : 'At ille Brittaniam veniens,' &c. " The enthusiastic Eddi says that he prostrated himself before Wilfrid ind asked a blessing from him, for he seemed to him to speak like an angel of G^od; 7. 192 Aims of Wilfrid, CHAP. VI. Ripon ^, lately vacated by the monks of Melrose. This may be dated in the same year, 66 1^ in which Colman succeeded Finan. Thus began Wilfrid's connection with a place which for so many years he loved better than any other, and within which at last he found a grave. His life at Ripon was happy. His charities endeared him to the poor, whose needs, at all times, moved his generous heart. He won the respect and affection of all classes. Men spoke of the abbot of Ripon as humble and tranquil, occupied in devotion and in almsgiving, benignant, sober, modest, merciful. His discourses were ' clear and lucid ^.' Yet he was not yet a presbyter. He received priest's orders at Alchfrid's request, from Agilbert the ex-bishop of Dorchester, who was then visiting Northumbria, and who scrupled not to ordain in the diocese of Lindisfarne without consulting Colman, because, although he had long studied under Irish Church- teachers, he practically regarded the Scotic hierarchy as contumacious, or even schismatical. Aims of This, at least, was Wilfrid's view, as we may infer from his Wilfrid, subsequent conduct. In fact, he looked down on the old Northumbrian Church manship, and on that Northumbrian episcopate which had fostered his boyish aspirations, and given him the best training that it could, as if the latter had no claim on his reverence, or even on his forbearance, and as if the former needed a thoroughgoing renovation. The Scotic error on the Paschal question did but represent, and did not exhaust, the defects of Scotic Christianity. It seemed to him generally a poor, coarse, unsightly plant, such as might be expected to grow up in a corner, apart from all genial and expansive influences. It was his mission to educate his native Church,— to refine, enrich, develope it, by contact with the culture and the stateliness of Canterbury, of Lyons, — above all, of majestic Rome. He was right on the general merits of that question which seems to have occupied so inordinate a share of his thoughts ; and right also, beyond doubt, in think- ing that Scotic ways were too rude and too narrow to be per- manently the ways for an English Church, with its continental associations and its great prospects of future self-extension. 1 Eddi, 8 ; Bede, v. 19. 2 jj^di, 9. Paschal Question, 193 He had a real work to do for his countrymen : but in his way chap. vi. of rushing into it, and of going through with it, he exhibited the two faults of imperiousness and egotism. It seems as if his stay in Rome had infected him with the Roman love of domination : and with all his high qualities and many virtues was blended a self-complacent consciousness not only of abilities and force of character, but of exertions and sacrifices made for religion or the Church. So stood matters in Northumbria when the disputes be- tween the Scotic and anti-Scotic parties came inevitably to a head, in the early weeks of 664. Colman had the advantage, as he would consider it, of the presence of Bishop Cedd, then on a visit to Lastingham : and Hilda, already looked up to as a wise woman who could give 'good rede' to princes as to common folk ^, would be but the most prominent of several heads of convents who were prepared to stand by the customs of Lindisfarne. King Oswy inclined to the same side : his queen, as we know, supported the other, which was repre- sented by Alchfrid, Romanus, James the Deacon, Bishop Agilbert and his priest Agatho^, — above all, by abbot Wilfrid. Ronan, the vehement Irish opponent of Irish traditions in Finan's time, seems to have been absent ; but Colman must have grieved to see another Irishman of higher dignity and more impressive character included in the same ranks. This was Tuda, who had been consecrated a bishop in South Ireland, and * according to the custom' which now obtained in those parts, conformed to the ^ Catholic ' usages. He had lately come into Northumbria, and had been helpful in setting forth Christianity, as Bede says emphatically, ' both by word and work 3.' To end the strife, a regular conference was arranged, — Bede calls it a ' synod,' but it was a gathering of ' all the orders in the Church system,' as Eddi phrases it ^. The place chosen was Hilda's new monastery, elevated on that * Bede, iv. 23 : 'Tantae autem erat ipsa prudeatiae,' &c. " One specimen of Eddi's heedlessness is his calling this Agatho * pope,' by confusion with the subsequent pope of that name. He also calls Colm:vn •metropolitan bishop of York ;' Vit. Wilf. 10. ' Bede, iii. 26 : ' Venerat autem,' &c. * Eddi, 10. See the 'Synodus Pharensis' in Maixai, xi. 67. Kemble treats it as a Witenagemot, ii. 239, 243. O 194 Conference of Whitby, CHAP. VI. proud sea- ward height which is now crowned by the ruined ^f w?T^ church of a monastery founded two centuries after her * minster had been laid desolate. The time was in the first half of 664 ; most likely in Lent, for the promoters might wish to secure uniformity of observance in regard to the coming Easter, which, by Catholic rules^ fell on April 21. Moreover, some time is required for events which happened between the conference and the autumn. King Oswy opened the proceedings by urging the benefits of uniformity of custom among those who were united in faith, and stating tersely the question for discussion : Of the two different traditions, which was the truer? He called on Colman to describe his usage and its origin. Paschal Before Colman answers, let us remember that the Paschal i^ues ion. qygg^jQjj^ ^g ^^ ^j^gj^ gtood, was twofold, (i) How many years must elapse before the Paschal full moon, and Easter Day as the Sunday after it, will recur on the same day ? How can we settle for any given year the day on which that moon should fall, and therefore the right day of Easter^? This question was answered by the adoption of cycles : and the Scotic and British Churches retained an old cycle of eighty- four years which Rome had used, but which she had cast off 2, adopting, finally, that of Dionysius Exiguus^, according to which the lunar cycle for nineteen years ^, multiplied by the solar cycle for twenty-eight years ^, showed on what day in each year, during successive periods of five hundred and thirty- ^ See Moberly's Bede, p. 195 ; Hefele, Councils, E. Tr. i. p. 326. 2 Prideaux, ii. 255, 256; Diet. Chr. Ant. i. 592, 594; above, p. 78. ^ See Bede, v. 21. The epithet was assumed by him in humility. * In the nineteen years' cycle, the number of any given year was called the Golden Number, because ma.rked with letters of gold in ancient calendars. At the end of the nineteen years * the various aspects of the moon are within an hour the same as they were on the same days of the month nineteen years before ; ' Nicolas, Chron. of Hist. p. 24. ^ At the expiration of the twenty- eight years 'the days of the months return again to the same days of the week .... and the same order of leap-years and of Dominical letters returns ' (i. e. there being seven letters, A — G, used to mark the seven days of the week, the first day of the year being reckoned as A, — if the year begins on Sunday, then A is the Sunday letter, — if on Monday, G, &c.). * The cycles of the sun and moon, multiplied together, form a third, which is called the Paschal Cycle ; ' Nicolas, 1. c. Conference of Whitby, 195 two years, the Paschal full moon would fall, and therefore chap. vi. what day would be Easter Sunday. (%) On what day of the Paschal month, or as it was expressed, * on which moon,' being a Sunday (for on that point all were agreed), may Easter be kept ? That is, if the Sunday after the full moon should be ' the fourteenth moon,' may that be Easter Sunday, or must Easter in that case be on the Sunday following, the twenty-first, so that ' the fifteenth moon ' must be treated as the first possible day for Easter? Here, as we have seen, lay the point which called out the strongest feeling. The Celtic Churches included ^ the fourteenth moon ' within the number of possible Easter Sundays : the other Churches insisted on excluding it, urging the authority of the Nicene Council on the duty of keeping clear of the Jewish day ^. In other words, Easter Sunday among the Scots might fall on any ' moon ' from the fourteenth to the twentieth inclusive : at Rome, or in Gallic Churches, or at Canterbury or Dunwich, it might fall on any moon from the fifteenth to the twenty- first, but not earlier; and to keep this rule was to observe the ' Catholic Easter.' Now let us hear Colman, to whom Eddi gives credit for intrepidity. 'My usage is that which I learned from the elders who sent me hither, and which, we read 2, is traced up to St. John. I dare not change it, and I have no mind to change it. We hold it as an inspired tradition that the fourteenth moon, being Sunday, is to be kept as Easter Day. Let the other side state their opinion.' Cedd interpreted his speech into Saxon ; and Oswy then called on Agilbert, who desired that his ' disciple ' Wilfrid might state their case on his behalf. ' He can better explain in the English tongue what we hold than I can by an interpreter,' meaning by Cedd, who acted 'as a very watchful interpreter for both parties ^.' 1 Constantine's letter after the Council shows that the Council had decided that Easter should never be kept at the time at which the Jews were keeping their Passover : therefore, if the fourteenth should fall on a Sunday, Easter was not to be celebrated on that Sunday, but a week later ; Hefele, Councils, i. 325, E. Tr. ; above, p. 78. 2 'Legitur,' Bede. Fridegod (whose metrical version of the conference ia incredibly abject in point of taste) makes Colman mention Polycarp. ' 'Interpres in eo concilio vigilantissimus ; * Bede, iii. 25. O % 196 Conference of Whitby. CHAP. VI. Thereupon Oswy ordered Wilfrid to speak ; and the young: abbot desired nothing better. He rose, confident in his cause, and in his power to do it justice. He began by dilating on the wide prevalence of the Catholic Easter, which he had found in Gaul, in Italy, and at Rome, where Peter and Paul had taught and suffered ; and which he had ascertained to be observed in Africa, Asia, Egypt, Greece, — in fact throughout Christendom \ 'save only' — and here flashed out his scornful intolerance for what, to him, was mere local perversity — ' save only among these persons ' — pointing to the bishop of Lindislarne and his clergy — ' and their partners in obstinacy, the Picts and Britons ; who, belonging to some parts only of two remote islands ^, are making these foolish efforts to fight against the whole world.' If Bede gives the sense of Wilfrid's speech, his last words had been rather insulting than conciliator}^ : and Colman is represented as answering with quiet dignity, though with very inaccurate knowledge, ' I wonder that you should call us foolish for following the rule of the Apostle who reclined on the Lord's breast ^.' Wilfrid's answer was a combination of good sense, unhistoric assumptions, and a decisive home-thrust. ' Granting for a moment,' he said in effect, ' that your custom does come from St. John; it was far from being folly on his part to adhere to Mosaic observances, while St. Paul himself found it necessary to avoid giving scandal to Jewish Christians *. Thus it was that John began his Paschal celebration on the evening of the fourteenth of Nisan, whether that was a Saturday evening or no. Peter, however, acted differently. Taking the Lord's ' Cumraian similarly argues, How can we say, * Roma errat, Hierosolyma errat, Alexandria errat, Antiochia errat ' (he refers to these again as 'Apostolic Sees,' and ignores Constantinople), ' totus mundus errat, — soli tantum Scoti et Britones rectum sapiunt ? ' Usher, Sylloge, p. 21. * * Britonum Scotorumque particula, qui sunt paene extremi,' &c. ; Cummian, l.c. ^ Comp. the Pseudo-Anatolius, Can. Pasch. 10 (Galland. iii. 548): 'The bishops of Asia received tlieir rule from a teacher not to be gainsaid, John, . . . who lay on the Lord's breast.' * Bede makes Wilfrid cite St. Paul's conduct in circumcising Timothy, sacrificing in the Temple, and shaving his head at Corinth. On this last point, Wilfrid departs from the Vulgate of Acts xviii. 18. Confer e7tce of Whitby. 197 Day as his fixed point, on account of the Eosurrection, he chap. vi. agreed with John in not celebrating the Lord's Pasch before the rising of the fourteenth moon at evening, and if tliat were on a Saturday, would then begin his Easter, as we do now ^ : but if the Lord's Day were to fall not on the morrow of the fourteenth moon, but on the sixteenth or seventeenth, or any other day up to the twenty-first, he waited for that day.' Wilfrid spoke, evidently with the Roman archdea43on's lessons full in his mind, and with a confidence as to St. Peter's Paschal practice which showed that he could be as credulous on one side as his opponents on the other ; — but he was on stronger ground when he pointed out that the Scotic practice could appeal to neither Apostle for its authority. It differed from the old Ephesine or Quartodeciman tradition, because it restricted the Paschal festival to the Lord's Day 2. It differed from the Petrine or Roman usage, and even in principle from the Mosaic rules, because it allowed the thirteenth moon to be Easter Eve, and the morning of the fourteenth to be Easter Sunday morning : whereas Easter Eve ought not to be earlier than the fourteenth evening ^, nor Easter Sunday morning than the morning of the fifteenth. The Scots, he urged, began their reckoning too early, and ended it a day too early : they let in, at the outset, the thirteenth moon; they left out, at the close, the twenty-first *. They agreed, — said Wilfrid, in a pithy summary of his case, — neither with John nor Peter, neither with Law nor Gospel. Colman replied by appealing to ' Anatolius' Paschal Canon ^,' in which it was ruled that * Meaning that such a Saturday evening would correspond to Holy Saturday, as observed by the Church's commencement of Easter rites on that vigil. * As Bede says of Aidan, the Scots and Britons had neither a right to claim St John, nor the discredit of adhering to ' Quartodecimanism.' St. John, and the Quartodecimans after him, took no account of the first day of the week ; but the Celtic Churches would not celebrate Pasch on any other day. ' * Ita ut tertia decima luna ad vesperara saepius Pascha incipiatis, cujus neque Lex ullam fecit mentionem, neque auctor et dator Evangelii Dominua in ea, sed in quarta decima vel vetus pascha manducavit ad vesperam, veZ Novi Testamenti sacramenta .... tradidit.' * * Item lunam vicesimam primam quam Lex maxima celebrandam commen- davit, a celebratione vestri Paschae funditus eliminatis,' &c. Cp. v. 21. * See the canon, erroneously (Diet. Chr. Ant. art. * Easter ') said to be 198 Conference of Whitby, CHAP. VI. the Paschal limits should be ' the fourteenth and twentieth moons : ' so that a ' fourteenth moon/ if a Sunday, might he Easter Sunday, and a ' twenty-first moon ' might not. He also asked whether it were credible that Columba and his successors, men eminent for sanctity and for miracles, had been allowed to go wrong in such a matter. To this Wilfrid replied, ' Anatolius was indeed a holy and learned man ; but why quote him, if you do not really follow him ? He framed the cycle of nineteen years : the whole Church keeps to it, except you ! And as to the fourteenth and twentieth moons, you do not observe that he used the Egyptian reckoning, and treated the fourteenth moon at evening as really the fifteenth just begun ^ : and if he assigned the twentieth as an Easter Sunday, he did so as considering that its evening began the twenty-first. You do not apprehend this peculiarity of reckoning : that is the reason why you sometimes keep your a Latin version of that of Anatolius, in Galland. Bibl. iii, 545 ff. It contains, says Bucherius, several 'paradoxes' or errors, e.g. * Paschae Dominicam luna xiv. nuUo scrupulo indicit, in quo cum Quartadecimanis . . . facit, etsi id illi perpetuum non sit : ' in its nineteen years, Easter falls thrice on the * fourteenth moon,' on April I, March 29, April 4. ' Prseterea, eamdem Paschatis Domini- cam a xiii. luna saltern exeunte in xx. duntaxat diffundit : tametsi Scriptura et cum ea Alexandrini ... in xxi. aperte propagent,' &c. ; ib. 551. As to the necessity of keeping Easter always on a Sunday, this canon is emphatic; • Better to put oflF Easter on account of the Lord's Day, until the twentieth moon, than to keep it before the Lord's Day on account of the fourteenth ; ' c. 1 1 . It distinctly denies that Easter can be kept so late as the twenty-first moon, c. 8, and marks the fourteenth as the earliest possible day for it. Petavius (Animadv. in Epiphan. p. 193) censures Ruffinus for so abbreviating a sentence of Anatolius' Greek (preserved by Euseb.) as to make him allow Easter to be kept in the 'beginning of the first month,' i. e. on the fourteenth moon; and traces the Celtic error to this mistranslation. * ' Ille sic in Pascha Dominico,* &c. Wilfrid means, ' In principle Anatolius was with us ; an evening which you would reckon as the fourteenth he would include in the first hours of the fifteenth, and bo on.' In the 'Anatolian' canon, c. 8, we find, ' Omnis dies in lunse computatione, non eodem numero quo mane initiatur, ad vesperam finitur : quia dies qu» mane in lun4 . . . xiii. annumeratur, eadem ad vesperum xiv. invenitur.' Petavius says that Wilfrid ascribes to Anatolius * opinionem quam ne somniavit quidem unquam,' as if Anatolius would have called that day only ' the fourteenth ' which had a full moon before its sunset, — otherwise he would call it the thirteenth ; wliereas the Irish called that the fourteenth and kept it as Paschal, which was followed by a full moon in the ensuing night. * The spurious canon of Anatolius, given in Bucherius, was perhaps designed to support the cause of the British Christians ; ' Diet. Chr. Ant., art. ' Easter.' Conference of Whitby. 199 Easter even on the thirteenth moon before the full moon. chap. vi. As for Columba and his successors, and the signs which, according to you, attested their holiness — I will not quote the text, " Many shall say to Me in that day," &c., for I doubt not that they were beloved by Him whom they served with pious intention, although with rustic simplicity. If they kept Easter wrongly, it was because they knew no better ; there- fore they took little harm by it ^. If a " Catholic reckoner " had shown them the right way, I feel sure that they would have taken it ; for in other matters they lived up to their knowledge. But you have not the excuse of ignorance in your resistance to the decrees made, under Scriptural warrant^, by the Apostolic See, — I might say by the Universal Church, whose authority must needs outweigh that of a few men, however holy, in a corner of a distant island. If your Columba — let me say ours too, if he was Christ's — was a saint and a wonder- worker, ought he to be preferred to the blessed chief of Apostles ? ' — and here, with what a look and in what a tone we can well imagine, Wilfrid thundered out the text, ' Thou art Peter,' and left its echoes undisturbed by further speech. His argument had been, on the whole, well adapted to the audience. True, he had treated the bishop of the North- umbrian Church with a dictatorial roughness which must have been highly offensive, especially to those Lindisfarne ecclesiastics who remembered him as a precocious boy, and might think that, as such, he had been but too kindly treated. True also, he had spoken of the glorious saint of Hy with a superb indulgence which could hardly be less irritating. True, again, that he had, in good faith, said far more than could be verified as to St. Peter's own observance, and had spoken as if Rome's existing Paschal system had been her tradition from the first, — which ' was a great mistake ^,' for she had altered * * Our elders,' says Cummian, ' simply and faithfully observed quod optimum in diebus suis esse noverunt.' 2 • Wilfrid here assumes grounds which he had no claim to. . . If the Paschal day were to be followed by what we read in the Gospel, it would follow that Easter could never be celebrated earlier than on the sixteenth day, as had been the case at Rome;' Lanigan, iii. 67. What a contp*8t between Wilfrid's dogmatism and the language of Socrates (v. 22) ! » Lanigan, iii. ^4. 200 Conference of Whitby, CHAP. VI. her cycle, and had also altered her Paschal limits, which once began with the sixteenth of the moon ^. But there was no one present who could expose the weak points of his pleading : it had one strong point,— the utter inability of the Scotic Church to prove itself heir to the Ephesine tradition ^ : and the appeal to the majesty of the first Apostle was more impressive to King Oswy than any array of proofs and authorities. He asked Colman whether those words were really spoken by Christ to St. Peter? 'Certainly.' ^Did He ever give the like power to your Columba?' 'Never.' ' You both agree, then, that this was said principally to Peter, and that to him our Lord gave the keys of the kingdom of heaven ? ' ' Yes/ they both said, ' assuredly.' Then said the king, with a quiet smile ^, but with an underlying seriousness which it is somewhat difficult for us to appreciate, with our knowledge of the dimensions of the controversy, ' And I say to you both, that this is that doorkeeper whom I do not choose to gainsay; but as far as I know and am able, I desire in all things to obey his rulings, lest haply when I come to the doors of the kingdom, I may find none to unbar them, if he is adverse to me who is proved to hold the keys.' Close of the Such was the close of the Whitby conference. Bede inti- ence. mates that ' there was also no small debate on the question of the tonsure * ; ' but he has spared us its details. Enough that on the points of difference between the Scotic and non-Scotic systems, the king and the majority of the assembly pronounced against the former. Cedd himself, who had listened to both sides with so much attention, abandoned the Cohtian's usages of Lindisfarne. To Colman the mortification must needs have been intense. He himself had no thought of adopting the foreign customs : he would be true to Hy and to North Ireland. His Irish monks stood by him, and so did some thirty Northumbrians who had become members of the same com- munity ^. The bishop announced his intention of going to consult with his own people in Ireland as to his future course. » Lanigan, ii. 375, 384, 390. * lb. ii. 386 : * On this point Wilfrid had greatly the advantage of Colman.' ' Eddi. * Bede, iii. 26 : ' Nam et de hoc quaestio non minima erat,' ' Bede, iv. 4. The ' Petrine * argument did not move them. Colman leaves Lindisfarne. 201 This would be well understood to be an abdication. But lie chap. vi. made a parting* request to Oswy ^, which touchingly indicates the generosity and teuderness of his nature. There were some brethren in his monastery who had no mind to leave their homes for his sake, or for the sake of old customs. Be it so,— let them remain; but would the king set over them, as abbot, a Lindisfarne man who had been among bishop Aidan's first pupils, and was now abbot of Melrose, — Eata ? He would be to the remnant of the Lindisfarne monks a gentle and congenial superior. Oswy readily granted this request : and Eata became abbot of Lindisfarne, without resigning the charge of Melrose ^. Colman quitted the Holy Island with his little company, and took with him some of the bones of Aidan, ordering the rest to be buried in the sacristy ^. He paid a visit to Hy, where the tale he had to tell must have been sorely trying to the then abbot, Cumine the White * : and thence he went to the island of Inisboffin ^, off the coast of Mayo, where he built a monastery. But after a while, as Bede tells us with a touch of sarcastic humour, 'the brethren could not agree, inasmuch as the Irishmen used to leave the monastery when harvest-work had to be done, and roam about in places well known to them, but would return with the winter, and propose to share with the Englishmen what the latter had gathered in ^.' So Col- man removed his Northumbrian monks to a small property which he purchased in Mayo itself: and the house thus founded was in Bede's time a large monastery, exclusively occupied by Englishmen, who lived under ' canonical rules,' and observed those very usages against which their founder had vainly striven in 664. Colman himself spent the rest of his life on his distant isle, and died in 6"]^ '^. * Bede, iii. 26 : 'Quod aiunt Colmanum abiturum,' &c. ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 16. Yet it was irregular for an abbot to preside over two monasteries ; Council of Chalons (about 650), c. 12. ^ Bede, iii. 26, 'in secretario; * above, p. 158. * He sat from 657 to 669 ; Lanigan, iii. 36. See Adamn. iii. 5. * • Inisboufinde, id est, insula vitulae albae ;' Bede, iv. 4. Cf. Tighemach : * Navigatio Colmani episcopi, cum reliquis Scotorum, ad insulam Vaccae Albae, in qua ftindavit ecclesiam.' • • Eo quod Scotti,' &c. ; Bede, iv. 4. ^ Tighernach : ' Colmannus ' (Columbanus, Ulster Ann.) ' episcopus insulse Vaccae Albae . . obiit.* 202 Review of CHAP. VI. His departure from Northumbria marks an epoeli, which Review of we may pause to take note of in its manifold siguificance. It Mission, was the end of the Scotic ascendancy, the triumph of the ' Catholic Easter ' and of other Continental Church usages, the opening of a free communication with Latin Christianity properly so called. It brought new facilities and opportunities, made room for new precedents, held up new models of excel- lence. There was good in this, and also some evil. The Latinising process gave system and order, and organised and concentrated force, and a certain magnificence which could symbolise devotion, and teach great lessons through the imagination, and overawe rough natures as by the visible presence of a kingdom supreme over lord and ceorl alike. In its train came all that in that age could educate, or soften, or form taste, or train the sense of beauty: it founded schools as well as convents, enlisted painting and architecture, though still of a rude and stern type, in the service of religion, and in various ways acted as an elevating and civilising power. That the Latin tone and spirit also fostered superstition and spiritual despotism, and that the tightening of links to Rome had some ill effects on English Church freedom, are positions which mediaeval history sets far above all doubt. But the reader of Bede can hardly look forward, at this point, without soon looking backward under the spell of that noble and loving testimony which the Northumbrian historian records in honour of the first three bishops of Lindisfarne, and of the clergy or monks who imbibed their spirit of single-hearted goodness, of pure unworldliness, of devotion to sacred duty ^. ^ The very place which they governed ' spoke of these virtues by its appearance : there were, beside the wooden church, only just so many buildings as were absolutely necessary for the community life. The monastery had no money, but only cattle. Gifts of money glided through the hands of Finan or Colman, as through Aidan's ^, straight into the hands of the poor. No need was there for guest- houses to entertain noble visitors : such persons, if they did visit Lindisfarne, came but for prayer and sermon, and were ^ *Quantae autem parsimonise,' &c. ; Bede, iii. 26. * See Bede, iii. 5 : ^ Ea potius quae sibi a divitibus/ &c. ; and iii, 14. the S CO tic Mission, 203 content with the brethren's simple and daily food ^ This was chap, vi, the case with Oswy himself, as with Oswald : * he would come with five or six thanes, and depart when prayer in the church was over.' The effect produced on the people of Northumbria might be seen in the glad welcome given to any cleric or monk : if he were on a journey, people ran up to him and ' bent their heads in joyful expectation of being " signed " by his hand or blessed by his lips, — and then listened earnestly to his words of exhortation. And on Sundays they vied with each other in hastening to church, or to monasteries, not for the sake of getting a meal, but to hear God's word : and if a priest happened to come into a township, the inhabitants would speedily assemble, and beg to hear from him the word of life.' For ' well they knew that he was come for the sake of souls, to preach, baptize, and visit the sick,' — that is, on one of those mission circuits which supplied to some extent the lack of parochial organisation. They knew that the thing farthest from a priest's thoughts was, what he could get out of them ^. Indeed, the bishops and clergy of that generation were so clear of all suspicion of self-seeking, so free from ' that pest of avarice,' that except under compulsion they could not be got to receive lands for building monasteries. 'But enough of this,' Bede concludes : and we can ' read between the lines ' 6f his panegyric a mournful and indignant reflection on the contrast presented by the monks or clergy of his own time. Here lies the point of his emphasis ^, ' For then the whole anxiety of those teachers was, not how to serve the world, but how to serve God : their whole care was to provide, not for the belly, but for the heart. That was the reason why, at that time, the religious habit was held in such veneration.' ' The custom of not willingly accepting endow- ments was preserved in Northumbrian churches for some * Bede, iii. 26 : ' Nam neque ad susceptionem potentium saeculi,' &c. ^ Compare the title of 'the three blessed visitors' given to St. David, St. Padam, St. Teilo, because they taught without accepting any reward, even in food, Rees' Welsh Saints, p. 197 ; Williams, Eccl. Antiq. of Cymry, p. 133. 3 ' Tota enim fuit tunc solicitudo . . . tempore illo .... aliquanto post haec tempore;' Bede, iii. 26. Compare another passage, iii. 5, 'nostii temporis segnitia;' iv. 27, 'Erat quippe moris eo tempore,' &c. ; and iv. 3, 'Non enim ad otium, ut quidam, sed ad laborem, se monasteiium intrare signabat.' 204 Review of the Scotic Mission, cH.vp.vr. time afterwards^.' He means to saj, 'We are living in a changed world : the fine gold is become dim : secularity has tainted and enfeebled the Church.' It was the last effort of Bede for his Church when he wrote the memorable letter to Egbert, then a young bishop of York, afterwards its first archbishop, entreating him to correct abuses which had crept into monasteries, to raise the tone of the clergy, to restore pious habits among the people ^. And so we bid farewell to that old Scotic Church of North- umbria. It could not but pass away, for it could not provide what Northumbria then needed : it had but a temporary mission, but that mission it fulfilled with a rare simplicity of purpose. It brought religion straight home to men's hearts by sheer power of love and self-sacrifice : it held up before them, in the unconscious goodness and nobleness of its re- presentatives, the moral evidence for Christianity. It made them feel what it was to be taught and cared for, in the life spiritual, by pastors who before all things were the disciples and ministers of Christ, — whose chief and type was a St. Aidan. ' A like cugtom existed in the old Irish Clmrch, and was traced up to St. Patrick : ' but the munificence of tribes and princes was not to be restrained ;' M«Gee, Hist. Irel. i. 134. "^ Ep, ad Egbert. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, &(5. There is a melancholy emphasis in the concluding words of the letter. Bede has urged Egbert to contend against the prevalence of avarice : • Cseterum si de ebiietate, . . . et caeteris hujusmodi contagionibus, pari ratione tractare voluerimus, epistolae modus in immensum extenderetur.' His was the bitter experience of one who, personally loyal to a high and pure standard, lives to see it ignored by a generation which has succumbed to degrading influences, by a Church that has fallen from its first love. CHAPTER VII. The vacant see of Lindisfarne was filled up, probably in the Tuda at early summer of 664, by the appointment of Tuda ^. It was farne'r the obvious choice to make ; and Northumbrian churchmen might look forward hopefully, in the phrase used at the ac- cession of a new prelate, to ' many years ^ ' under one who had been virtually acting as coadjutor-bishop, who would be welcome to many as of the same race with the three former bishops, and also unexceptionable to the most fastidious orthodoxy on the questions of ' Catholic Pasch ' and ' crown- like tonsure.' But, as often befell in the chequered history of newly-planted Churches, these hopes were soon disappointed by an event which justifies us in placing our survey of the Celtic episcopate of Lindisfarne after the retirement of his predecessor. The bishop, ^ a good man and a religious, governed the Church but a very short time ^.' There swept The Yellow over the island, in this year, one of those fierce pestilences which gave to the word ' mortality ' so terrible a signifi- cance in the records of that age. It was about a century since the plague which we connect with Justinian's reign had slain its thousands all over Europe, had raged in Britain and in Ireland*, and had repeatedly, in the days of the pious Frankish king Gontran, been made an occasion for * Bede, iii. 26 : ' Suscepit pro illo pontificatmn,* &c. * The custom was probably older than the ofl&ce which embodies it in Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 443. * Bede, 1. c. : ' Permodico tempore ecclesiam regens.' * Gibbon, v. 253. Comp. Ann. Camb. a. 537, ' Mortalitas in Brittannia et in Hibemia fuit.' lb. a. 547, ' Mortalitas magna.* Tighemach mentions three pestilences in he sixth century. See Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 243. Kiiig Maelgwyn died of this plague. It returned in Teilo's time, whereupon he retired into Armorica : and it carried off a Cornish king^ Geraint. 206 The ' Yellow Pest: CHAP. VII. ' Rogations ' and public fasts \ In our islands it was known as the Yellow Pest, from the ghastly yellow hue of its victims' bodies ^ : and now, before reappearing in Ireland, it visited Britain soon after a solar eclipse in May^. Its coming was unexpected * : it smote down high and low, not sparing the king of the Kentishmen, nor the archbishop of Canterbury himself. Both died on the same day, July 14^. Erconbert was succeeded by his son Egbert: but the seat of Augustine remained vacant for four years. It seems that Damian bishop of Bochester succumbed at the same time to the epidemic : and his seat was long un- filled ^. When in its onward sweep the pest entered the North-country, it 'hurried Tuda out of this world,' and he was buried in a monastery called Psegnalsech"^ , — supposed to be Finchale, — or, in the Chronicle, Wagele, — ^perhaps Whalley. , It seems also that we must refer to the October of this year the death of Bishop Cedd ^, who, after returning home from Whitby as a conformist to the 'Catholic Easter,' had revisited Lastingham ' in the time of the mortality ^,' and there died. ^ Greg. Turon. H. Fr. ix. 21 ; x. 30. "^ * Flavos et exsangues,' Lib. Landav. p. loi. It is there added, in legendary style, that the pest seemed to float along like a pillar of watery cloud, ox- like showers traversing a glen. Those who tried to cure patients died themselves. Giraldus speaks of the 'Yellow Pest,' *quam et physici ictericiam dicunt passionem,' Itin. Camb. ii. i. ^ See Bede, iii. 27:* Facta erat,' &c. He dates the eclipse on May 3 : but it was on May 1 ; see Usher, Antiq. p. 491. So the Irish annalists. They also say that ' the mortality came to Ireland ' on Aug. i. Tighernach gives the right year, 664 ; see O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Scr, ii. 203-4 5 *^6 Ulster Annals say 663 (ib. iv. 55) ; and the Chronicon Scotorum, 660, — but the latter is * four years in arrear ' at this period (Introd. p. xlv). The pest broke out in Fothairt, co. Wexford. It carried off Ethelhun, but spared his companion Egbert, for whose prayer and vow see Bede, iii. 27. * Innumerabiles mortui sunt,' Ulster Ann. Adamnan ascribes the immunity of the * plebs Pictorum et Scotorum Britannise ' to St. Columba's intercession ; Vit. Col. ii. 46. * 'Subita,' Bede; see v. 24, ' Et pestilentia venit.' ^ Beda, iv. i : ' Eodem mense ac die.' Tighernach names five Irish kings, and several prelates, including four abbots of (Irish) Bangor, as its victims. * Bede, iv. 2, end. ' Bede, iii. 27 : • Qua plaga praefatus,* &c. See Smith's note. ' So Stubbs, Registnma, p. 2. The apostasy of some of the East-Saxons was probably subsequent to the bishop's death, and they were reclaimed in 665. * Bede, iii. 23 : ' Qui cum annis multis,' &c. Apostasy of East-Saxons, 207 He was buried outside the wooden church which he had chap. vii. raised on the ground that he and his brother had hallowed : another brother, Chad, succeeded him as abbot. His East- Saxons were differently affected by the scourge of the Yellow Pest. Some who were ruled, under the over-lordship of Wulfhere, then extending over all Essex, by Sebbi, brother of Sigebert the Little, stood the trial of their faith and patience, and * clung with great devotion to the creed which they had received ^.* In the other division of the small king- Apostasy dom, where Sebbi's nephew Sighere reigned, the sudden gax^s' affliction — as was often the case on those ages'^ — had the effect of throwing the people back on their old worship, as if they were smitten for having deserted it, or as if they had expected the Cross to be a safeguard against suffering. * Sighere, and very many of the people or the earls, loving this life, and not seeking another, or even not believing it to exist, began to restore the Pagan temples which had been forsaken, and to worship images, as if by means of these they could be shielded from the mortality 3.' In the valley of the Tweed also, some, in whose minds ' the seed had no deepness of earth/ ' neglected the mysteries of faith which they had re- ceived,' and tried to obtain relief from the disease by heathenish * spells or amulets*.' At Melrose Cuthbert himself caught the infection : he recovered, although for the rest of his life * Bede, iii. 30. Sighere had a son and successor, Offa. ' See Robertson, Hist. Ch. iii. 477. Compare Adamnan, Vit. Col. ii. 32; the Pictish ' magi,' seeing a newly-baptized boy dying of sudden illness, began to mock at his parents, and ' Christianorum, tanquam infirmiori, Deo derogare.' ' Bede, iii. 30 : 'Nam et ipse rex,' &c. These relapses were common enough, especially among the Frisians : e. g. see the anonymous Life of St. Boniface, ii. 20, * Olim . . converses sed . . . iterura quosdam eorum ad pristinum gentili- tatis errorem devolutos.' Councils take cognizance of such cases, e.g. fifth Orleans, c. 15, a convert returning ' ad immolata dsemonibus sumenda ;' Mansi, xi. 115. See also Greg. Ep. viii. i, as to Corsicans. Comp. Maclear, Ap. of Med. Europe, p. 146, on heathen reactions; and Alb. Butler, Nov. 21. * Bede, iv. 27, and Vit. Cuthb. 9, 'per incantationes et alligaturas,' or ' fylacteria.' Comp. the prohibition of phylacteries and ligatures by a German Council in 745, Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxxix. 812; and on the rumour that they were used even in Rome, ib. 747, and St. Boniface's Ep. to Cuthbert, c. 2. Compare the Report of the Central African Mission for 1876, p. 10 : 'One old chief . . . could not bring himself at the last moment to abandon his amulets, in which, he said, his fathers had trusted from time immemorial j and so, for a time, his admission was deferred.* 208 Cuthbert, Prior of Melrose, Cuthbert, Prior of Melrose. CHAP. VII. he felt some effects of his illness : but Boisil, his beloved prior, died, after tranquilly spending the last week of his life in reading* St. John's Gospel with Cuthbert^, who suc- ceeded to his office, and added to its duties, after Boisil's example, the work of an evangelist throughout the adjacent country. To sustain the rude people in their faith, or reclaim them to it, he would go out, on foot or on horseback ^, and sometimes be absent from the monastery for weeks together, penetrating into the wildest valleys, climbing steep hill-sides, and thus finding access to poor hamlets which other teachers had shrunk from visiting, through ' horror ' of their dreary situation, or distaste for their ' poverty and rusticity ^.' Not such was this 'true man of God/ as Bede repeatedly calls him. He attracted those ' shepherdless sheep ' by the fasci- nation of his presence and his words. ^ So great was his skill in speaking, so intense his eagerness to make his persuasions successful, such a glow lighted up his angelic face *, that no one of those present dared to hide from Cuthbert the secrets of his heart : all revealed openly, by confession, what they had done, for in truth they supposed that he must needs be aware of those very deeds of theirs ; and after confession they wiped away their sins at his bidding, by worthy fruits ^ See the beautiful account in Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 8 : ' As I have but seven days to live,' said Boisil, 'learn all you can from me.' 'What can we get through in seven days ? * 'St. John's Gospel : I have a codex in seven quarto sheets : we can take one each day.' They read it through in that time, * quia solum in ea (lectione) fidei quae per dilectionem operatur simplicitatem, non autem quaestionum profunda, tractabant.' (Bede's own death-bed was to exhibit a scene somewhat like this, and quite as touching.) Simeon of Durham says (De Dun. Eccl. i. 5, in X Script, p. 2) that a ' codex ' in which Cuthbert used to read under Boisil's teaching was still extant in Durham monastery, 'prisca novitate ac decore mirabilis.' For Boisil, see Alb. Butler, Feb. 23. ^ So Bede, iv. 27 ; Vit. Cuthb. 9 (identical passages on the whole). See the story in Vit. Cuthb. 12: ' Cum prsedicaturus . . . de monasterio exiret, uno comite puero.' ^ Bede, iv. 27 : 'In viculis qui in arduis asperisque montibus,' &c. Cp. Scott, 'Where . . . Eildon slopes to the plain.' * ' Tale vultus angelici lumen,' Bede. 'Erat aspectu angelicus,' Anon. Vit. The beauty was probably in the expression ; for at the exhumation of his skeleton in 1827 he was found to have had a prominent narrow foieheiwi, a singularly-shaped nose, and a deeply-indented chin. The skeleton measured 5 ft. 8 in. from the crown of the skull to the ancle-joints ; Raine's St. Cuthbert, p. 2I3ff. Wilfrid elected to York, 209 of repentance ^/ finding the best enforcement of his exhorta- chap. vii. tions in the generous charity which brought him among them rather than into more attractive places 2, in the un- tiring energy with which he ' devoted himself to this pious labour,' above all in his personal example, — in himself^. Such was his life at Melrose for several years *. But we must return from the work of a young saint to the Wilfrid ecclesiastical politics of a kingdom. Who was to be the bishop ^is^op of of Northumbria ? It seems that the Witan were assembled York. to decide the point, which, as may be inferred from later instances ^, fell within the province of the national assembly, including, as it did, the leading ecclesiastics. Alchfrid, as sub- king of Deira, would contribute much to the decision arrived at in favour of Wilfrid. ' There is no one of our race better and worthier than Wilfrid the presbyter and abbot.' He was then about thirty years old : his biographer dwells fondly on his ability in preaching, his discriminating treatment of different characters, his 'marvellous memory,' his devotion, his beneficence to the afflicted^. Wilfrid, then, was to be bishop : but, probably at his desire, and certainly with good reason, it was resolved to replace the bishopric at York. He was to preside in the minster ' that Edwin and Oswald had erected'^.' But who was to consecrate him? Deusdedit, and probably Damian, were dead : Cedd was still alive at the time, but he would have the disadvantage, in Wilfrid^s eye, of Scotic consecration : and the same drawback existed in regard to Jaruman of Mercia. Wini would be objectionable * ' Et confessa dignis, ut imperabat, pcenitentiae fructibus abstergerent.' ^ ' Solebat autem ea maxime loca peragrare,' &c. ^ • Verbo praedicationis simul et opere virtutis.* Compare Bede, i. 26, iii. 5, &c. See also Bede, Ep. ad Egb. i ; above, p. 49. * 'Per aliquot annos,' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 9; 'multos annos,' 16. Thia precludes Simeon of Durbam's reckoning, to the effect that in the fourteenth year after his first coming to Melrose, i. e. in A. D. 664, he was transferred to Lindisfame; De Dun. Eccl. i. 6. * See Kemble, ii. 221, referring to cases in the Chronicle and in Florence ; e. g. Oskytel was made archbishop of York by the favour of king Eadred and all his Witan ; Chron. a. 971 . Comp. Greg. Turon. H. Fr. ix. 21, ' Charimerem referendarium cum consensu civium regalis decrevit auctoritas fieri sacenlotem.' * Eddi adds, in words which resemble our Quinquagesima Collect, ' et illam supereminentem omnibus donis caritatem, sine qua omnia virtus nihil est;' c. n. ■^ Raine, Fast. Ebor. i. 62. P 210 Consecration of Wilfrid, CHAP. VII. as the supplanter, in effect, of Agilbert. There remained Boniface of Dunwich, who had been consecrated by archbishop Honorius^; but Wilfrid would wish to have the canonical three consecrators ; and his own strong predilection for the country where he had spent some years, and learned so much, would be an additional motive for requesting to be consecrated in Gaul. It- was so arranged : he went over to that country, and was consecrated at Compiegne, in Neustria, probably in the beginning of 66^ ^. The place was a royal ' villa,' where ' the wild Chlotair^' had died, and where the treasures of Dago- bert I. had been kept : it now belonged to the young ' Faineant ' Consecra- king, Chlotair III. The ceremony was performed with un- Wilfrid in ^^ual magnificence^ as if the Frankish hierarchy wished to Gaul. do special honour to the disciple of Aunemund and the champion of the Catholic Easter. Twelve prelates officiated, including Agilbert, who had returned to his native country after the conference * : and ' after their custom they lifted Wilfrid up in a golden seat, and carried him with their own hands, assisted by no one else,' in a choral procession to the altar where he was to be consecrated ^. This singular custom * Eddi makes Wilfrid say to the kings, ' It is not my place to accuse any one ; but there are many bishops in Britain who are either Quartodecimans, as the Britons and Scots, or have been ordained by them.' According to Bede, he had virtually urged, at Whitby, that the Britons and Scots were not really Quartodecimans. Eddi is simply using the term loosely, in the temper of a partisan. Malmesbury does the same, Gest. Pontif. p. 211. ^ So Mabillon, Ann. Benedict, i. 478. Bede says that he died after forty-five years of episcopate ; v. 19. He died, we know, in 709 : if the day was in October (see Raine, i. 76), the literal construction of the reckoning places the consecration in the early autunm of 664 ; but as this crowds a good deal into that season, and causes some difficulty in regard to after events, we may perhaps suppose Bede to reckon from Wilfrid's election. The fixed points are, that he cannot have been elected before the autumn of 664 : that in some sense he had full forty-five years of episcopate : that he returned to Northumbria three years before the late summer of 669, and that Chad, during that period, held the see of York : comp. Bede, v. 19 ; Eddi, 14. If Wilfrid went into Gaul towards the close of 664, he must have stayed there until the spring of 666. The consecration would be deferred until a large nimiber of bishops could assemble : and some other circumstances, now imknown, may have contributed to keep Wilfrid in Gaul for more than a year. 3 Carlyle, Fr. Rev. i. 28 ; see Greg. Turon. H. Fr. iv. 21. * He was not yet, as Bede thought (iii. 28 ; v. 19), bishop of Paris. See above, p. 182. 5 Eddi, 12; Mahnesb. G. Pontif. p. 215. His return from Gaul, 211 was known to Gregory the Great, who presented to Gregory of chap. vn. Tours ' a golden chair ' for use in his church ^. Wilfrid was thoroughly at home amid such splendour and such observance ; and he was tempted to protract his enjoyment of Prankish church life ^ or otherwise detained by circumstances in Gaul, long after the time at which he was expected to appear in Northumbria. At last, in the spring of 666^ he sailed for Britain, with a hundred and twenty attendants. A wind drove them on the Sussex coast : and then came a scene of excitement and peril to be remembered for the sake of a later chapter in his history, perhaps the best chapter of all. The Sussex barbarians rushed down to seize on the distressed vessel, and to despoil and capture all on board. Wilfrid tried to buy them off: they answered^ like true ' wreckers V 'All is ours that the sea throws up I ' A pagan priest, standing on a high mound, tried to 'bind the strangers' hands' by magic* : one of Wilfrid's company slew him with a stone from a sling ^ : in the fight that followed, the bishop and his clerks prayed, while their companions did valiantly, losing only five men : at last the tide floated the vessel off, and it made Sandwich in safety. Wilfrid was soon again at home, but found that he had Wilfrid's been far too long absent ^. The defeated party, while con- '® ^'^' forming to the Catholic Easter, disliked his general line, and thought, perhaps, that his rule would be too high-handed. While he lingered in Gaul, they rallied, and represented to Oswy that the Church could not await the leisure of a bishop who did not come home to begin his work"^. They had thought of one who would be fitter for the bishopric : ' a ' Bened. Vit. Greg. M. iii. 3. 8. * Malmesb. p. 211 : 'Moras nectente.' ' On this barbarous ' right of wreck,' which on many a coast long survived the introduction of Christianity, see Freeman, Norm. Conq. iii. 223. * Comp. Bede, iv. 22, for ' litteras solutoriaa de qualibus fabulse ferunt.' ' • He fell back on the sands, like Goliath ; ' Eddi, 13. * Bede excuses him, as if he tarried no longer than the 'ordination' required, in iii. 28; in v. 19 he omits 'propter ordinationem.' It does not seem possible to reconcile the former statement with Bede's other marks of time. ' See Raine, i. 48 : ' They commented . . . upon the injury which North- umbria was sustaining by Wilfrid's prolonged and unaccountable absence.' P 'i 21^ Consecration of Chad, CHAP. VII. holy man, grave in character, sufficiently instructed in Scrip- ture, diligent in acting up to Scripture precepts ^ : ' a man of prayer, study, humility, purity, voluntary poverty ^: who had been one of Aidan's original ' twelve boys ^,' and then, as a youth, had lived in Ireland under monastic dis- cipline *. This was Chad, abbot of Lastingham, and brother of the East-Saxon bishop. Was not such a man the fittest occupant of Aidan's seat ? Oswy assented to this view : Alch- frid would doubtless have stood out against it on behalf of his absent friend, but that just at this time he fell under his father's displeasure, who compelled him to give up his in- tention of accompanying Benedict Biscop on his second journey to Rome ^ ; and it would seem that Bede's brief unexplained statement, naming Alchfrid with Ethelwald and the Mercians among the various enemies of Oswy ^, refers to some rebellious movement of Alchfrid after this time, which led to his being Chad con- disinherited and ' disappearing from history "^Z So it was for York. ^^^ Chad was elected bishop, and went into the south for consecration, attended by the king's chaplain, Eadhed, after- wards bishop of Lindsey, and ultimately of Ripon ^. They had expected to find a successor appointed to Deusdedit ^, but were disappointed. Whatever may have been the case with Widfridj Chad seems to have forgotten that Boniface of Dun- wich was available ^^, for he repaired to Wini of Winchester, who thereupon took the first step towards restoring com- munion between the Welsh and English Churches ^^, while * Bede, iii. 28 : ' Virum sanctum, modestum moribus,' &c. ^ Bede, iv. 3 : ' Namque inter plura continentise,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 28 : * Erat enim de discipulis,' &c. * Bede, iv. 3. Chad and Egbert had been * adolescentes ' in Ireland together. Now Egbert was bom in 639; see Bede, iii. 27. If Chad was about his age, he would be only twenty-six at this time, — below the age for a bishop. Probably he was some years older than Egbert. * Bede, Hist. Abb. 2 : *Quem cum pater ejus,' &c. * Bede, iii, 14 : ' Et a filio quoque suo Alchfrido.' ^ See Stubbs on Cathedral of Worcester, p. 2. * Comp. Bede, iii. 28; iv. 12. ^ Bede does not imply that they were unaware of Deusdedit's death simply ; * invenerunt . . . et necdum alium,' &c. ^" And so does Bede himself, when he says, iv. 28, that there was then no canonicaUy ordained bishop in Britain except Wini : yet Boniface sat from 652 to 669; iii. 20; iv. 5. " Churton, E. Engl. Ch. p. 82. Consecration of Chad. 213 at the same time he showed himself careful to observe the re- chap. vii. quirement of the three consecrators, by obtaining the co- operation^ of *two bishops of British race,' most probably from Cornwall 2, who, it need not be said, were maintainers of the Celtic Easter, — and who therefore, by laying- their hands on the head of the new Northumbrian bishop, unintentionally supplied the party which resented his appointment with an argument against the ' regularity ' of his consecration ^. In other respects, the combination of agents in the scene then witnessed by the Church-people of Winchester was specially interesting and appropriate. A prelate consecrated in Gaul joins with himself two prelates of a different rite, representing the old Church of Alban and Restitutus, of Dubricius and David, in the consecration of one who had sat as a boy at Aidan's feet, and had but very lately, it would seem, given up the British and Scotic observances,— and who was to shine forth, in a brief but beautiful episcopate, as one of the truest and purest saints of ancient England. The date of this event must be dated in the latter part Chad of 66^, or the beginning of 666 *. Chad returned to North- York^ ^ umbria, and was installed as bishop of York ^. ' He began at once ^ to devote himself to the maintenance of ecclesiastical truth and purity; to practise humility and continence; to give attention to reading ; to go about among towns, country districts, cottages, townships, castles, in order to preach the * •Adsumptisin societatem ordinationis ;* Bede, iii. 28. Bede knew nothing of the artificial theory which would make the presiding bishop the sole agent in the conveyance of the episcopal character : against it see Lee on English Ordinations, p. 230. Comp. Hincmar, Op. ii. 408, Ep, to Hincmar of Laon : •Tuum est autem cum aliis mecum ordinare episcopmn, et litteris canonicis quas ordinatus ab ordinatoribus suis jubetur accipere, post me in tuo loco subscribere.' See also Vit. S. Anskar. 12. * Haddan and Stubbs, 1. 124. ^ * Ceaddam . . . inordinate ordinavit; ' Eadmer, Vit. Wilf. i. 18. * Bede allows Chad only three years of episcopate at York ; which, taken by itself, would date his consecration in 666, for his rule at York certainly ended about August, 669. Bede may have misapprehended Eddi, who reckons the three years from Wilfrid's return to Northumbria; c. 14. ** Bede, v. 19 : ' Quo adhuc in transmarinis partibus,' &c. * Bede, iii. 28 : • Consecratus ergo,' &c. In this chapter, as in one sentence of i. 29, in ii. 8, 16, iii. 7, &c., we have ' consecrari.' Bede's more usual phrase jj0 the general term ' ordinari;' i. 27; ii. 3, 9 ; iii. 5, 20, &c. 214 Third mission to East-Saxons. CHAP, VII. gospel^ not on horseback, but, after the manner of the Apostles, on foot. For he was one of the pupils of Aidan, and took pains to train his hearers to the same conduct and character, after Aidan's example and that of his own brother Cedd^.' Meantime Wilfrid bore the trial of finding the see thus filled with a moderation which could hardly have been expected even from a less high-spirited man. It was his best policy to accept facts, and to bide his time^. He did so, and resumed his place as abbot of Ripon ^, where among his monks was Ceolfrid, whose name was to be so closely linked to those of Benedict Biscop and of Bede. If Wilfrid could not fully appreciate the work which bishops of Scotic consecration had done for Christianity in South Britain, he must at least have rejoiced to hear, in the course of this year 66^^ that a bishop of that class had once more been the instrument in a reconversion of East-Saxons. It was doubtless Sebbi, faithful himself, with his own subjects, to Christianity, who induced his over-lord Wulfhere to send Jaruman to preach Third to Sigherc and his people. This was the third mission to to^EaX Essex. Jaruman, attended by priests, one of whom lived to tell Saxons. the story to Bede *, ' went about the whole district,' and brought back the wanderers into the right way : ' so that they abandoned or destroyed their fanes and altars^, reopened the churches, and gladly acknowledged that Name of Christ which they had disowned, desiring rather to die with the assurance of rising again in Him than to live amid idols in the filth of ^ Comp. Bede, iii. 5 : ' Discurrere .... pedum incessu vectus,' &c. ^ Fridegod expresses this in a better-sounding line than usual : •Spe meliore manet latebris contectus in illis,' See Bichard of Hexham, 'placido vultu et hilari pectore : ' Eddi and Malmesbury, * humiliter.' 5 There is no sort of authority for saying that he might and ought to have ' entered on the duties of his bishopric at Lindisfame,' leaving Chad to be bishop of York (Diet. Chr. Biogr. i. 429). He was himself consecrated for York (Eddi, 12; Malmesb. Pontif. p. 211 ; Diet. Chr. B. i. 427, 'Wilfrid was thereupon raised to the see of York ') ; there was then no thought of dividing the diocese of Northumbria. Chad was placed in the see to which Wilfrid had been elected, and had all Northumbria under his jurisdiction. * Bede, iii. 30 : ' Juxta quod mihi presbyter, qui comes itineris illi et co- operator verbi exstiterat, referebat ; erat enim religiosus et bonus vir.' ^ * Arisque :' comp. 'arulam/ contrasted with the Christian ' altare,' iu Bede, ii. 15. Simony of Wini, 215 disbelief; ' words which intimate that the deadly sickness chap. vii. which had scared them back to idolatry was still raging, and therefore that Jaruman and his priests had faced its perils while winning back souls to Christ with equal prudence^ and energy. London is not mentioned in this account, but its citizens had either retained their faith — which may have been acquired through Cedd's work, even if he did not es- tablish himself among them— or were among those who now regained it : and we hear of the see of London as associated, in 66() or thereabouts, with a grave scandal. Kenwalch of Wessex, with all his sincerity and zeal, his admiration for men of learning, his orthodoxy on the Paschal question, and his helpful kindness to such a man as Benedict Biscop^, was not, apparently, an easy prince for bishops to deal with. He had quarrelled with Agilbert about dialect ; he now, for what cause we know not, constrained Wini to leave his kingdom. The bishop took refuge in Mercia, and, as Bede says with stern laconic plainness, 'bought with a price the see of the city of London from King Wulfhere ^.' Simony had long been a sore and a disgrace in the Gallic Church^, within whose limits Wini had been consecrated: but we know no more than what Bede thus tells us of the circumstances under which Wini got possession of the see of Mellitus. If Jaruman was, as doubtless he was, like-minded to the Wilfrid in bishops of Lindisfame, any such unhallowed trafficking be- ®'^"*' tween his king and Wini must have grieved him to the heart. He survived his good work in Essex for about two years, dying in 667. Wulfhere did not appoint a successor, * * Multa agens sollertia,' Bede. 2 Bede, Hist. Abb. 4, says that Benedict ' had more than once been assisted by his friendship and benefits.' ^ * Emit pretio,' Bede, iii. 7. * Simoniacal sale of the dignities of the Church existed to the most deplorable extent among the Anglo-Saxons ; ' Palgrave, Engl, Comm. p. 1 74, referring to this case. * Gregory of Tours says of the first part of the sixth century, 'Jam tunc germen illud iniquum coeperat fructificare, ut sacerdotium aut venderetur a regibus, aut compararetur a clericis ; ' Vit. Patr. 6. 3. See second Council of Orleans, a. 533, c. 3. And, very late in his own life, in 591, he tells us that one Eusebius procured the see of Paris * datis multis muneribus ; ' H. Fr. x. 26. Compare Gregory the Great, Ep. v. 53; ix. 106, 109. Much later, in 650, the Council of Chalons had had to forbid taking money for ordinations; Mansi, x. 1192. 216 Wilfrid in Mercia and Kent. CHAP. VII. but requested Wilfrid from time to time to discliarge episcopal functions in Mercia^, and gave him several pieces of land for the foundation of monasteries, — one of which, that at Oundle, happened to be long afterwards the scene of its founder's death. Wulfhere ultimately gave him a * place' at Lichfield, where he might establish himself as bishop; but Wilfrid^s heart clung to Northumbria, and he would not permanently bind himself to a Midland diocese. He ^yilfrid in would only administer it during the vacancy. Another such sphere of duty provided for him during these years was Kent. Invited by Egbert, he ordained in that kingdom many priests and not a few deacons 2. It is interesting to combine the facts, that one of these priests was Putta, a man who had a special skill in chanting, acquired from ' disciples of Pope Gregory ^ ; ' and that in Kent Wilfrid found, and closely attached to himself, Stephen, called Hsedde or Eddi, who afterwards became a noted choir-master in Northumbria, and the enthusiastic follower and biographer of Wilfrid*, — with another well-trained chanter, called iEona^. His brilliant attractiveness and lively versatile intelligence drew round him men of all classes, including 'masons, and artificers of nearly every sort ^,' who afterwards accompanied him into Northumbria. He made use of all opportunities : he could throw himself into various interests, and, in a sense, be 'all things to all men.' Within the precincts of the cathedral monastery at Canterbury, or at SS. Peter and Paul's, which lost its abbot Nathanael by death in 66"] , he studied minutely the Benedictine Rule, which he was afterwards the first to propagate throughout the North-country"^. It might have been expected that the Kentish king would ^ Eddi, 14, 15. Bede does not seem to be aware of this ; see iv. 3. ^ Eddi, 14; Bede, iv. 2, 'Ipse etiain in Cantia,' &c. ^ Bede, iv. a, end. Compare the phrase as used in v. 20, Maban the chanter • had been taught by successors of the disciples of Pope Gregory.' * Bede, iv. 2 : 'Sed et sonos cantandi,' &c. ^ Eddi says simply, ' Cum oantoribus ^dde et .^Eona ; ' 14. ® Eddi, 14:' Csementariis, omnisque psene artis ministerio.' ■^ Eddi's words are, ' In regionem suam revertens cum Regula Benedicti;' 14. So in 45. Wilfrid says that ' nullus prior ibi (in Northumbria) invexU ' the Benedictine Rule ; Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 305. Election and death of Wighard. 217 think him the very man for the vacant archbishopric. But cjhap. vii. policy, perhaps, prevented such a step, which might have been distasteful to some in Kent, and also to some in Northumbria. Egbert consulted with Oswy the ' Bretwalda,' Wighard and in some way or other the opinion of *the Church ofcanter- the English race' in general was ascertained. The result ^^ry. was the election of Wighard, 'one of Deusdedit's clergy/ — ' a good man and fit for the episcopate, very well instructed in ecclesiastical discipline and learning by Roman disciples of Pope Gregory ^,' still surviving in Kent. It was resolved that he should go to Rome, and be consecrated at that fountain-head, 'that he might be able to ordain Catholic prelates for the Churches of the English throughout all Britain.' Wighard set forth in 66"]^ and arrived safely in Rome, with royal letters, and gifts, and gold and silver vessels not a few 2. But after his interview with Pope His death Vitalian, he and nearly all of his companions were cut off by an outbreak of pestilence. Thereupon Vitalian wrote to Oswy a letter ^, which Bede Vitalian's for the most part transcribes, and which has led to some different opinions as to his relations with the English kings and churches. He returned thanks for the gifts sent, as for offerings to St. Peter, and repaid them, in the Roman fashion, by relics*. He exhorted Oswy to follow the rule of St. Peter as to Easter and all other matters ^. He expressed his great sorrow for the removal of Wighard from ' the light of this world,' and intimated that he had been honourably * Comp. Bede, iii. 29, iv. i ; Hist. Abb. 3. ^ Bede, iv. i : ' Missis pariter apostolico papse donariis,' &c. Oswy under- stood, says Bede, that the Eoman Church was Catholic and Apostolic ; iii. 29. The Chronicle gives the date. * Bede, iii. 29. He uses ' Saxon um * as equivalent to ' Anglorum.' * Including a cross, with a golden key made out of the chains of SS. Peter and Paul, for Queen Eanfled. Cp. S. Greg. Ep. xiii. 42. 5 A passage belonging to this letter, omitted by Bede, but discovered by Usher, insists on the duty of keeping Easter according to the apostolical rule of the 318 fathers (of Nicaea) and the reckoning of the holy Cyril and Dionysius : and adds that the Apostolic See has not received the ' rule of Victor,' i.e. Vic- torius of Aquitaine ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 112. This rule had been adopted by the fourth Council of Orleans in 541 ; see above, p. 78. Gr^ory of Tours calls Viotorius ' Victor' in H. Fr. x, 23. 218 Pope Vitalians letter, CHAP. VII. buried * at the threshold of the Apostles/ He informed Oswy that he had not as yet been able to find a fit man for the archbishopric 'according to the tenor of your letter,' owing to the great distance of Canterbury from Rome, which^ it seems, deterred some from accepting the ofiice : but when he could find such a person, he would send him with due instructions, in order that by his oral teaching and by the Divine oracles he ' might eradicate the tares from the whole of the island ; ' alluding, of course, to the Celtic Easter. What is meant by ' the tenor of Oswy's letter ' ? Vitalian's phrase would imply that it had contained, first, a request to consecrate Wighard, the recognised archbishop elect, and then a distinct commission to find some other person, if any- thing should happen to Wighard^. But such further pro- vision is not likely to have been made by Oswy or by Egbert ^ : Bede, in his two references to the royal letter ^, does not say that it was actually made : he says that the pope described Theodore as the teacher whom Benedict Biscop's native land had earnestly sought for * ; and when the arch- bishop who was at last sent was passing through Gaul, his messengers described him to Egbert as the bishop who had been 'asked for^.' It has accordingly been suspected that, in the first instance, a Pope who had had ten years' experience® would know how to infer the commission from the request, with no other warrant than the pretensions of his see. The subsequent words of the messengers just referred to might be simply an echo of this papal inference''^. Hadrian. It must be owned that Vitalian took great pains, and ^ Lingard, A.-S, Ch. i. 75, treats this as * certain.' ^ Kemble, ii. 366. ^ Bede, ill, 29, iv. i. * 'Quern sedula qusesierat;' Hist, Abb. 3. * ' Quern petierant ; ' iv. i . Bede describes Vitalian as taking counsel, ' ne, legatariis obeuntibus, legatio religiosa fidelium fructu competente careret ;' Hist. Abb. 3. * Vitalian became Pope July 30, 657. ' Kemble, ii. 366, and Martineau, Ch. Hist. p. 85, suggest that Oswy and Egbert may have written again, leaving the case absolutely in the Pope's hands. Churton, E. E. Ch. p. 75, asserts it. But for this, according to the Chronicle, there would not be time. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 112. Theodore chosen for Canterbury, 219 ultimately made a very wise choice ^. At first he thought chap. vn. of Hadrian, an African by race, and abbot of a monastery not far from Naples, a man equally * active and prudent, con- versant with Scripture and all ecclesiastical rules,' and, which was then a rare attainment, *a Greek as well as a Latin scholar 2.' Vitalian sent for him, and bade him accept the appointment and go to Britain. * I am unworthy of it,' said Hadrian ^ : * but I can point out another better qualified by age and by learning.' He named Andrew, a monk from a neighbouring nunnery, where he apparently acted as chaplain. But Andrew, though deemed by all his friends to be worthy of the episcopate, was weighed down by feeble health : and Vitalian again pressed Hadrian to consent, but he begged a respite, -saying, 'If I had time, I might find a suitable person.' ' There was at that time in Rome a monk, whom Hadrian Theodore, knew, and whose name was Theodore.' Hadrian might be called a fellow-countryman of St. Cyprian and St. Augustine. Theodore was, in the same sense, a fellow-townsman of St. Paul, ' bom at Tarsus, a city in Cilicia/ * well trained alike in secular and in sacred learning, familiar both with Latin and Greek literature*, of high character and of venerable age, being sixty-six years old.' It was in the November of 66"] that Hadrian presented him to Vitalian, as one able and willing, despite his years, to undertake the momentous charge of the see of Canterbury. Vitalian consented to send him to Britain, but on condition that Hadrian should accompany him — partly because he had already for several causes visited Gaul, and therefore knew most of the journey which Theodore would have to take, and had 'men of his own' * Haddan's Remains, p. 319. 'Habito de his consilio, qusesivit sedulus/ Bede, V. I. 'Inito consilio,' Hist. Abb. 3. ^ 'Grsecae pariter et Latinse linguae peritissimus ; ' Bede, iv. i. Comp. v. 23, on Tobias as a pupil of Hadrian : ' Unde . . . ita Graecam quoque cum Latina didicit linguam,' &c. ; and Hist. Abb. 3 : ' strenuissimo et prudentissimo Adriano.* ^ ' How edifying,' says Alban Butler (Life of Theodore, Sept. 19), ' was this contention, not to obtain, but to shun such a dignity ! ' * So Hist. Abb. 3 : * Sseculari simul et ecclesiastica philosophia praedituoi virum, et hoc in utraque lingua, Graeca scilicet et Latina.* 220 Monothelite Controversy. CHAP. VII. sufficient to form an escort ; partly ' in order that, by acting as his fellow-labourer in teaching", he might keep careful watch to prevent Theodore from, introducing anything contrary to faith, after the manner of the Greeks, into the Church over which he was to preside/ This somewhat mysterious allusion is cleared up when we remember that the Monothelite con- troversy, which Archbishop Trench has described as often underrated by modern students, but as really a contest ' for life and death ^ to the Church^, because it involved the reality of our Lords willing self-sacrifice, had been troubling Christendom for more than thirty years : that Pope Martin I., nearly twenty years before, had affirmed the doctrine of Two Wills in the One Christ, corresponding to His Two Natures ^, and four or five years later had suffered, in that cause, the most brutal injustice, ending in exile and death ^, at the hands of a heretical Eastern Emperor, who had quite recently inflicted his presence upon Rome, constrained Vitalian to do him all outward honour, and ' plundered the churches of their precious ornaments*.' Vitalian had no mind to be a confessor or martyr ; but he wished to bar out the imperial heresy wherever he could do so without personal risk. He had no reason, however, to be apprehensive of such tendencies in Hadrian's nominee ^. Learned and aged as he was, Theodore had never taken holy orders, which, according to Roman reckoning, included the subdiaconate. To this office, then, he was promoted : but as his head was shaven quite bald, after the fashion styled St. Paul's tonsure^, he had, as Bede gravely * Trench's Huls. Lect. p. 214. For an account of Monothelitism, see Robertson, Hist. Ch. ii. 420. 'Although,' says Hard wick, M. Ages, p. 69, ' the human element in Christ was not verbally denied, it was reduced to a mere passive organ of His Godhead.' See Wilberforce on the Incarnation, p. 211, ed. I ; Bp, Forbes on the Nicene Creed, p. 204. ^ First Lateran Council, October, 649. ^ See the account in Mansi, x. 860, and Alb. Butler for Nov. 12, * See Robertson, ii. 433. Constans II. was at this time in Sicily. Hefele says that Pope and Emperor took part in ' a double system of dissimulation ; ' Councils, s. 311. ^ Theodore's Orientalism was shown, not on dogmatic points, but in the ' Draconian ' severity of his penitential rules ; see Stevenson's Chron. of Abingdon, ii. p. Iviii. * ' The Greek monks,' says MabiUon, Ann. Bened. i, 493, ' were at that time entirely shaven, in imitation, as they thought, of St. James the Lord's brother, Consecration of Theodore. 221 tells us, to * wait four months, until his hair should be grown chap. vii. again, and be fit to receive the coronal tonsure ^.' The four months came to an end about the middle of March, 668, and Theodore's head could then assume the aspect to which the zealots for B/oman ceremonial, — Bede himself, we must say, included, — attached such importance : he was presented, at Consecra- last, to Vitalian, who consecrated him with his own hands, x^eodore praying, in the Roman form 2, that ' whatever of excellence for Canter- had of old time been symbolised by the gold and gems and "^' varied colours of the Aaronic vestments might shine forth,' in this new member of the Christian high priesthood, 'through brightness of character and of action : ' that in him ' might abound constancy of faith, purity of love, sincerity in following after peace : ' that the Most High * Author of all dignities might give him the episcopal chair to rule His church and people,' and 'might be Himself his authority, his firmness, and his power.' This memorable consecration 3, which was to furnish a new stock for the transmission of the episcopate to the English Church through distant generations, took place on the :26th of March, the fifth Sunday in Lent, 668. Yet two months more were spent by Theodore in Rome. At length, on the 27th of May, he set forth with Hadrian, and with an Englishman signally fitted to assist him on his journey. This was Benedict Biscop, who, having made his second visit to Rome in 66^^ and after a few months retired to the isle of Lerins, and taken the tonsure and vows of a monk, had revisited Rome in 66^]^ and was now requested by Vitalian, who appreciated his religious earnestness and energy, to lay aside the pilgrimage which he had undertaken for Christ's sake to the tombs of the Apostles, and ' with an and of the apostle Paul.' See Smith's Bede, pp. 705, 71 5, on Germanus, patriarch of Constantinople at a later date, who had the whole of his head shaven. ^ Bede, iv. i : ' Donee ei coma cresceret, quo in coronam tonderi posset.' " Greg. Sacram., Muratori, Lit. Rom. Vet.ii. 357. The preceding words are very remarkable : ' Illius namque sacerdotii anterioris habitus, nostras mentis ornatus est : et pontificalem gloriam non jam nobis honor commendat vestium, sed splendor animarum.' This had been the Gelasian form a himdred years before Gregory; Murat. i. 625. 3 There is an alleged letter of Vitalian to Theodore, ignored by Bede, given in Mansi, xi. 24, confirming all grants of power given to his predecessors, and in them to himself. 222 Theodore in Gaul. CHAP. VII. eye to a yet higher advantage,' return homewards as guide and interpreter to his country's long-desired archbishop i. ' Benedict did as he was commanded.' But further delays had to be endured when the party arrived at Aries. Ebroin, ' the last great mayor of the palace of Neustria and Burgundy^,' to whom, as we have seen, has been attributed the execution of archbishop Aunemund^, and who scrupled at no extremi- ties in support of Merovingian royalty as against ' the wild anarchy of the chiefs*,' imagined apparently that the travellers were politically dangerous, and obliged the archbishop of Aries to detain^ them until his pleasure should be known. When in the autumn they were allowed to depart, Theodore * proceeded to Paris, where Agilbert, now settled there as bishop, entertained him kindly and for a considerable time. Mean- while Hadrian paid visits to old friends, Emmo archbishop of Sens, and Faro the aged bishop of Meaux : as monk and abbot, he would be specially attracted towards prelates one of whom had given charters to monasteries^, and the other had built a ' suburban monastery' where any foreigners were welcome guests '^. These long visits were not causeless loiter- ings : ' winter was at hand, and obliged them to remain quiet wherever they could ^.' But when King Egbert was informed by trusty messengers that his archbishop was now in the realm of the Franks, he sent his reeve ^ Redfrid to bring him home. Ebroin gave his licence in regard to Theodore, but detained Hadrian for some time longer, suspecting that he was an envoy from the new Emperor Constantino IV. to ' the kings of Britain,' hostile to the dynasty which he both served and ruled ^^. When Theodore, escorted by Redfrid, 1 Bede, Hist. Abb. 3. 2 Guizot, Hist. Fr. c. 9. ^ See his after-proceedings in regard to Bishop Leodegar or St. Leger, October, 678. We shall see further on how he acted in regard to Wilfrid. * Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 95. * Bede, iv. i. « Mabillon, Ann. Bened. i. 448, 450. ■^ Mabillon, i. 343. Faro, or Burgundofaro, died about 672 ; ib. 509. 8 Bede, iv. i : ' Coegerat enim eos imminens hiems,' &c. 5 ' Praefectuni.' Comp. iii. 14, 'prsefectum suum Ediluinum,' the slayer of St. Oswin ; and Ep. Egb. 7; Vit.Cuthb. 15. ^<* Bede, iv. i : ' Legationem aliquam imperatoris,' &c. • When he had His arrival at Canterbury. 223 arrived at Quentavic, or Etaples, in Ponthieu, another and chap. vii. a fifth delay was caused by an illness which attacked him : * but as soon as he had begun to get better/ he crossed the Channel, and so 'arrived at his church/ as Bede says with reference to these long trials of English patience, 'in the second year of his consecration.' That was a great day in Canterbury, the second Sunday Arrival of after Pentecost, May ay, 669^, when 'the grand old man,' ®^ °^®* as Dean Hook calls him, took his seat on the throne of Augustine, at the western end of the ' Basilica of the Holy Saviour Christ.' It was seventy-two years after the arrival of the first archbishop : and now the seventh, though far on in life, had twenty-one years reserved for his wonderful energies as a ruler and organiser, which brought, says Bede, ' such an amount of spiritual benefit to the Churches of the English as they had never before received 2.' One of his first acts was to commit the vacant abbacy of SS. Peter and Paul to Benedict Biscop^, who held it for two years, until Hadrian, who had arrived in Britain soon after Theodore, was made abbot, and so provided, according to the special directions of ' the apostolic lord * ' at Theodore's departure, 'with a place in the diocese of Canterbury where he could live conveniently with his own attendants,' and, we must add, keep watch over the ' Greek ' archbishop's orthodoxy. As soon as Hadrian arrived, Theodore took him as his Visitation companion and ' fellow-labourer ' in a general visitation of ^^^.g ®^ what was now to be deemed his province, in order ' to con- secrate bishops in fitting places,' and 'disseminate the rule ascertained that Hadrian did not hold, and never had held, any such com- mission, he let him go free,' &c. Constantine IV., • the Bearded' (see Gibbon, vi. 76), had succeeded his father Constans in September, 668. ^ Bede, iv. 2 : * Pervenit autem Theodorus,' &c. See Hook, Archbishops, i. 151- "^ Bede, v. 8 : * Ut enim breviter dicam,' &c. ^ Bede, Hist. Abb. 3. Elmbam ignores this passage, when he says that Benedict Biscop was not abbot of St. Augustine's ; p. 204. He adds that Hadrian received the abbacy from Theodore, not as archbishop, but as l^ate of the Pope ; a very * Augustinian ' touch. * Bede, iv. i. ' Domnus apostolicus,' i.e. 'my lord the successor of the apostle,' was a common title for the Pope. See Muratori, Lit. Rom, ii. 431, 224 Character of Theodore. CHAP. VII. of right living and the Catholic mode of celebrating Easter ^' The archbishop was thoroughly bent on doing his work, and, for that end, putting in force his authority. He had, it must be owned, something of the autocrat about him : but he had been specially appointed to a task which would require the energies of a resolute and commanding will. He had to make himself felt as the rightful chief pastor of the several English Churches, and to mould and compress them into unity under a more than merely nominal head. He probably felt that, at his years, he must work hard at this task, during what might remain to him of the ' twelve hours ' of his day : he had less time than a younger man for gently feeling his way, and gradually developing his plans. He was conscious of the gifts of a born ruler : one does not think of him as of a saint, or a man who, because he ^ loved,' in St. Augustine's exquisite phrase, could ' do whatever he liked ^^ — whose administrative success was the fruit of a genial nature, that gained obedience by the mere fact of evoking sympathy. This man of Tarsus was not like him whose heart was so tenderly ' enlarged^ ' towards all who were under his authority: and the idea of discipline and obedience had received in the Continental Church-system so ample a development, the hierarchy was so much regarded as an organ of governmental action, and so little, comparatively, as a presentation to man- kind of a Divine Pastor in His various operations of love, — that one expects to find in the character of a bishop brought up in it a certain hard authoritativeness, which reminds one of the old Roman magistracy rather than of St. Chrysostom or St. Paul. But whatever Theodore was, whether we think him deficient or not in some characteristics of a shepherd of souls, we must recognise in him a man of vast practical ability, and sincere determination to do his best for the Church. And not only can we appreciate what he did for England during an unexpectedly long episcopate, but we can understand how at its commencement he 'was received as a public blessing * Bede, iv. 2 : ' Ritum paschae . . . disseminabat . . . ordinabat locis oppor- tunis episcopos,' &c. ^ ' Dilige, et quod vis fac ; ' In Epist. Joan, tract. 7. 8. ^ 2 Cor. vi. II. Reception of Theodore, 225 by the kings and people, and was the first archbishop, Bede ch^p- ^n. says, to whom all England submitted^.' Great stress was naturally laid on his having been sent directly from Rome, and consecrated by the Pope's own hands and voice ^ : but this advantage was enhanced by the force of his own per- sonality, so that, on all accounts, his arrival forms an epoch ^. * Johnson, Engl. Can. i. 86 ; coinp. Bede, iv. 2 : ' Isque primus erat in archiepiscopis cni omnis Anglorum ecclesia manus dare consentiret.* ' See Bede, iv. 5 : * Ab apostolica sede destinatus.* So Eddi, 15, * Unde emissus venerat ; ' ib. 29, ' Ulic ab apostolica sede olim directi . . . ab hac apostolica sede directus est.' So ib. 42, * A qua missus erat ; ' ib. 52, ' Ex hac apostolica sede mandate' ' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 77. Bede says of his first years, ' Never were there happier times since the Angles came to Britain.' Q and Chad, CHAPTER VIII. When Theodore began his visitation, probably about mid- summer in 669, there were but three English bishoprics not vacant; and of these, one, that of Dunwich, was vacated by the death of Boniface in that same year ^. In his place Theodore consecrated Bisi, ' a man,* says Bede, ' of much holiness and religion.' The see of Rochester was filled by Putta, whom Wilfrid had ordained priest : but this appointment was not altogether successful, for Putta, though a skilful Church musician, had no aptitude for ' mundane ' affairs, and could Theodore not stand up against exceptional difficulties^. Proceeding to the North-country, he found that ' for three years ' Chad had been 'ruling the church of York' in a manner which Bede calls 'sublime^.' But nothing escaped the keen eye of the archbishop * : from his rigidly Roman point of view, he noted a flaw in Chad's episcopal position. 'You have not been consecrated in a regular manner^; ^ — he referred, apparently, to what might be represented as the intrusion of Chad into a see for which provision had been already made by Wilfrid's Frankish consecration, and also to the fact that two of Chad's consecrators were Britons, observers of the non-Catholic Easter, and as such condemned by 'the statutes of the Apostolic see,' which Theodore carried with him, Wilfrid's biographer cannot but admire Chad as 'an admirable teacher,' and more as * a true servant of God, and a very meek man®,' although he probably exaggerates his ^ For Boniface became bishop in 652, and sat seventeen years; Bede, iv. 5. 2 Bede, iv. 2, 1 2. ^ Bede, v. 19, in sense of ' excellent ; ' so v. 19. * • Perlustrans omnia,' Bede, iv. 2. ' ' Non fuisse rite ordinatum,' ib. * Eddi, 14, 15. A writer in Diet. Chr. Biogr. (art. 'Ceadda') thinks that Theodore and Chad, 227 self-humiliation. According to Bede's simple account, Chad chap. vm. answered in a very humble voice ^, ' If you are persuaded that I received the episcopate in an irregular manner, I willingly retire from the office ; for I never thought myself worthy of it ^ : indeed, it was only for obedience' sake, when commanded to undertake it, that I consented, though un- worthy/ The command that he referred to must have been that of Oswy and the other authorities concerned. It is to be observed that according to this representation of his words, he did not confess, as a matter of personal conviction, that he had done wrong ^, or allowed himself to be wrongly con- secrated ; he simply announced that if Theodore felt sure of this, he would not defend his position. Theodore was touched and softened * by this utter want of self-assertion. ' No,' he said ; ' you are not bound to resign the bishopric' But Chad, it seems, insisted on retiring to his monastery at Lastingham ^, and left York accordingly, whereupon Wilfrid naturally took possession of the see. But very shortly after- wards an arrangement suggested itself, which might secure for the Church the episcopal services of Chad as well as of Wilfrid. The Mercian king desired Theodore to supply him and his people with a bishop ^. Theodore instantly saw his way. ' He refused to consecrate a new bishop for the Mercians, the objection was a mere * pretext,' devised to get rid of Chad and make room for Wilfrid. This is not at all required by the facts. * 'Voce humillima,' Bede, iv. 2. ^ This partly reminds us of the famous speech ascribed by a ' legend ' to St. Wulstan of Worcester, which was possibly modelled upon it. See Freeman, iv. 376. ' As Eddi would represent it, ' Peccatum . . . poenitentia humili secundum judicium episcoporiun confessus emendavit.* There were no other bishops in Yoi-k, at the time, beside Theodore and perhaps Wilfrid, who of course had returned from Kent to Northumbria. * Malmesbmy wrongly ascribes this feeling, not to Theodore, but to Wilfrid. ^ Bede, iv. 3, v. 19. I follow Raine's order of events : it seems most likely that the ' consummating ' of Chad's consecration took place, not, as Eadmer says, before his retirement to Lastingham, but when he was summoned back to be bishop of the Mercians. See Fast. Ebor. i. 51. All happened, evidently, within a few weeks. Richard of Hexham says that Chad was 'deposed, and returned to Lastingham.' ^ Bede, iv. 3. Eddi says that Wulfhere had previously given Wilfrid a sort of commission to find another bishop for Mercia ; 15. This does not agree with Bede ; and we cannot rely on Eddi's accuracy. 228 Question of ChacCs consecration. CHAP. VIII. but asked King Oswy to give them Chad \' — an expression which implies that the Northumbrian king^s consent was necessary for the settlement of one of his subjects as bishop of a ' South-humbrian' Church. Chad had so many associations with former Church- work in Mercia, as the brother of Cedd, and as connected with Lindisfarne, that he would be specially fitted to succeed Jaruman : and any irregularities in his consecration might be corrected by Theodore himself. This was done : ' Theodore completed his consecration afresh, in. the Catholic manner.' What does this imply? Eddi tells us that ' the bishops fully consecrated Chad through all ttie ecclesiastical grades ^.' If the latter statement were literally accepted, it would imply that not only Chad's consecration, but his previous ordination, must have been regarded as null on the ground of the ' schismatic ' character of the prelates who performed them. Undoubtedly great authorities had pronounced such consecration or ordination to be void 2. But this was not universally ruled ^, and Wini at least was no schismatic: so that a real reiteration of Chad^s orders, in- cluding the episcopate, would have constituted one of those peremptory judgments which ignored the distinction so obvious to all modern churchmen, between what is irregular and what is invalid *. If, however, we simply follow Bede's account, and illustrate it by an extant decision ascribed to Theodore^, we ^ Eddi, 15. Eadmer follows Bede, Malmesbury follows Eddi. ' As to schismatics, the natural sense of the Nicene Council's decisions respecting Novatians (can. 8) and Meletians (Ep. Synod, in Soc. i. 9) points in this direction. See Morinus, De Sacr. Ordin. par. 3. p. 120 ; Routh, Scr. Op. i. 416. Bingham, indeed, interprets the two decisions differently, b. iv. c. 7. s. 7, and s. 8 ; and Tillemont, vi. 678, 814, understands both as referring, not to re- ordination, but to a reconciliatory benediction. ' See Bingham, iv. 7. 7, 8, that there was no uniform rule in the ancient Church as to this question ; e. g. the Donatist bishops were not reconsecrated, nor were those who had been consecrated by the heretical Bonosus, nor who came over from Macedonianism. He suggests that the ' benedictio impositae manus,' ordered by the first Council of Orleans in 511 (Mansi, viii. 353) in case of converted Arian clerics, ' perhaps does not mean a new ordination, but only a reconciliatory imposition of hands.' But see Hefele on the other side, Coun- cils, b. 13. s. 224. * E.g. the re-ordination of priests ordained by Pope Formosusj Milman, Lat. Chr. iii. 242. ® Theodore's Penitential, ii. 9. i (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 197) : • Those who have been ordained by bishops of Scots and Britons, or are not Catholic in the Chad bishop of Lichfield. 229 may suppose that the archbishop intended simply to add chap. vm. whatever forms might have been omitted, to supply canonical defects, and then to rehabilitate Chad for all purposes of episcopal jurisdiction. If Theodore was over-punctilious in this matter, his next act exhibits him in a very pleasing and kindly light. He had evidently taken a strong liking to Chad : and hearing that it had been the latter's habit ^ to go about his diocese on foot, he 'ordered him to ride whenever he had a longer circuit than usual before him.' Chad objected, out of ' zealous love of pious labour,' and probably with remembrances of his old master Aidan. But the archbishop, in this as in graver matters, was masterful when he met with any resistance : and he saw that Chad's notions of humility and mortification were imperilling his practical efficiency. ' You shall ride,' he said ; and with his own aged hands he lifted Chad bodily on horseback, ' because,' says Bede with charming simplicity, ' he had ascertained him to be a holy man.' It must have been in the September of 669 ^ that Chad Chad thus resumed episcopal work, and settled himself in that Lk;hfield. same Lichfield where Wulfhere had once desired to establish Wilfrid, but where no Mercian bishop, as yet, had ' held bis see.' There he found, or built, a church of St. Mary, to the east of the site now occupied by ' the fair cathedral ^;' and also, near it, erected a house to be his dwelling ' when he was not at work in the ministry of the Word*.' Seven or eight brethren used to share at such times his studies and devotions : but outside the walls was to be seen, en- gaged in manual labour, a man who had a remarkable history of his own. This was Ouini, or Owin, who had been matter of Pasch and tonsure, have not been united to the Church, sed iterum a catholico episcopo manus impositione confirmentur.' Now these words describe a case beyond Chad's. Bede evidently regards Chad as having been a real bishop during his govemroent of the church of York. Compare the Roman legend about Kentigem, that the Pope supplied certain defects in his consecration, the omission of rites required by the canons (Rees s Welsh Saints, p. 263). See Hook, i. 155 ^ Bede, iv. 2 ; compare iii. 28, * Non equitando,' &c. ^ For Chad held the Mercian see two and a half years ; and he died in March, 672. 3 Marmion, vi. 36. * At * Chadstowe,' now Stowe, at the end of ' the Pool.' 230 Chad bishop of Lichfield. CHAP. viTi. born and bred in East-Anglia, and bad come tbence to Northumbria, in 660, as steward of the household to the princess Etheldred, when she married Egfrid son of Oswy^. The enthusiastic devotion of the East-Anglian court had taken hold of its trusted servant. One day he had appeared in a rustic dress, with axe and hatchet, like a common woodman, at the door of Lastingham. He had quitted his high office, 'left all that he had^,' and begged for admission into the monastery. Study was not in his line, but he offered to devote himself to field-work : and he ultimately followed his abbot and bishop to Lichfield. Wulfhere also endowed the bishopric with fifty ' hydes ' of land for a monastery ' in a place called Ad Barvse, that is, At the Grove, in the province of Lindsey/ supposed to be Barrow in Lincolnshire, where * traces ' of Chad's discipline existed when Bede wrote ^. The work of so large a diocese, even with the aid of a horse, must have tasked all his energies. Bede tells us much of his profound religious awe, on the authority of Trumbert, a monk 'who had been brought up in his monastery and under his rule,' and who was ' one of those who instructed ' the future historian 'in the Scriptures*.' According to his account, Chad represented, very markedly, that type of piety which distinguished the great ascetics and the most earnest of the early Teutonic Christians, and fixed their thoughts with such intensity on the awful side of their religion. ' He was ever subject to the fear of the Lord, and in all his actions mindful of his end^.^ Everything which seemed to * The date is given by Florence, and agrees with Thomas of Ely's account of St. Etheldred. ' Owin ' may possibly have had the administration of the Isle of Ely; Vit. Etheldr. c. 8, in Act. SS. Benedict, ii. 745. Thomas calls Owin a worthy 'custos et provisor' to Etheldred. He is said to have lived at Winford, near Hadenham ; Bentham, Hist, of Ely, p. 51. The monumental inscription upon his tomb, '>J< Lucem tuam Ovino da, Deus, et requiem. Amen,' is * perhaps one of the most venerable monuments of Saxon antiquity ; ' Palgrave, p. ccciii. ' It long served as a horse block,' but is now in the north aisle of Ely Cathedral. ^ * Pura intentione supernse retributionis,' says Bede, iv. 3. ^ ' In quo usque hodie instituta ab ipso regularis vitas vestigia permanent ; ' Bede, 1. c. * Bede, 1. c. : 'Namque inter plura,' &c. ^ A quotation from Ecclus, vii. 40. His piety, 231 him a voice from God was taken as a loud call to self- cHAr.vni. scrutiny and contrition, a warning to prepare for the stroke that was still withheld^. If a high wind swept across the moors at Lastingham, — or, we may add, around the little cathedral at Lichfield, — he at once gave up his reading, and implored the Divine mercy for mankind. If it increased, he would shut his book, and prostrate himself in prayer. If it rose to a storm, with rain or thunder and lightning, he would repair to the church, and give himself 'with a fixed mind ' to prayer and the recitation of psalms, until the weather cleared up. If questioned about this, he would quote the Psalmist's words, ' The Lord thundered out of heaven/ and urge the duty of preparing by a serious repentance for * that tremendous time when the heavens and earth should be on fire 2, and the Lord would come in the clouds with great power and majesty, to judge the quick and the dead.' Yet with all this dread of Divine judgments, Chad, in his own words, had 'a continual love and desire of the heavenly rewards ^ : ' and ' it was no wonder,' says Bede, ' if he rejoiced to behold the day of death, or rather the day of the Lord, see- ing he had so anxiously prepared for it until it actually came ^.^ It came by an access of the often-recurring pestilence, which had proved fatal to many members of the church of Lichfield before it attacked the bishop himself^. It was said that Owin^, at his work in the fields, near the ' mansion,' heard a sweet sound, as of angelic melody, come from the south-east and gradually reach and fill the oratory where Chad was, until after half-an-hour it rose again heavenward. While pondering ^ 'Discussis penetralibus cordis nostri .... solliciti ne unquam percuti mereamur.' * ' Ccelis ac terns ardentibus,' alluding to 2 Peter iii. 12. ' To him, as to Bede, there was no diflBculty in harmonising such texts as Heb. X. 31 and i John iv. 8. Compare the account of Bede's own death : • He sang the sentence, " Horrendum est incidere in manus Dei viventis," but also quoted, " Nee mori timeo, quia bonum Deum habemus." ' * Bede, iv. 3 : ' Non autera minmi, si diem mortis, vel potius diem Domini, &c. Comp. Bede, iv. 24, on Caedmon. ' lb.: 'Supervenit namque clades/ &c. * Bede does not say through whom this came to him. He considers Owin to have been ' dignus cui Dominus specialiter sua revelaret arcana, dignus cui fidem narranti audientes accommodarent.' 232 Death of Chad. CHAP. VIII. what it might mean, he saw Chad open the window of the oratory, and clap his hands, as he was wont to do by way of summoning any one who was outside. He entered : the bishop bade him call the seven brethren, who were in the minster, and come with them. All came : he bade them ' cherish love and peace among each other, and towards all the faithful,' and adhere to all the rules of discipline which they had learned of him or seen him observe, or found in the acts or sayings of the fathers who preceded him. ' My time is very near : that loveable guest ^ who used to visit our brethren has come to me to-day. Go back to the church, and bid the brethren commend to the Lord my departure, and also remember to prepare for their own, — the hour of which they know not.' And then, the story proceeds, after they had received his blessing and departed in great sorrow, he told Owin privately that the voices which he had heard were those of ' angels come to summon him to those heavenly rewards which he had ever loved and longed for, and that they would return in seven days and take him thither with them.* He was speedily taken ill, and on the seventh day, Tuesday the 2nd of March, 672, after receiving his last Communion, he closed an episcopate which, alike in Northumbria and in Mercia, deserved the epithet of ^most glorious^,' and procured for the name of St. Chad of Lichfield a high place among the saints of his country. He was buried in St. Mary's church, but after- wards removed to the later church of St. Peter ^ : and he was succeeded by one who had longed served him as deacon, a ' good and modest man ' named Winfrid *. The desirableness of treating his Mercian life as a unity has led us to anticipate the order of events. Changes had taken place in Northumbria, in Wessex, and in Kent, while Death of Chad was at work in Mercia and in Lindsey. Oswy's reign, ^^^' which Bede significantly cha,racterises as ' most laborious ^,' * Meaning, the angel of death. ^ ' Gloriosissime,' applied to his Mercian episcopate ; Bede, iv. 3. ^ Bede describes his shrine as 'a wooden structure in the form of a small house, and covered with tapestry ; ' iv. 3. * Bede, iv. 3 : ' In cujus locum,' &c. ^ Bede, iii. 14 ; cp. iv. 5. Egfrid king of Northumbria. 233 was drawing near its end when he * gave ' Chad to Wulfhere. chap, vm. He was then in his fifty-eighth year, ' weighed down,' says Bede, ' by illness,^ but not thinking it fatal, and making plans, in case he should get better, for gratifying his late- grown admiration for Roman usages by going to Rome, and ending his days among its ' sacred places : ' he even begged Wilfrid to be ready to act as his guide, and promised him ' no small gift of money.' This was not to be. He died on the 15th of February, 670, and was buried in the minster of Whitby, where also the bones of Edwin were deposited ^. His crown passed to his son Egfrid, who was now twenty- five 2, and whom Bede in one passage describes as ^ most pious ^' on account of his friendship for Benedict Biscop, while Eddi dilates on his religious excellence, his gentleness among his own people, his bravery and success in war, — for instance in his campaign against the Pictish leader Bernhaeth, when he ' filled two rivers with the corpses of the dead * ; ' and, we may add, in another campaign with Wulfhere, by which he re- covered Lindsey ^. At the beginning of his reign he lived on friendly terms with Wilfrid, who was then at the height of his prosperity and popularity. We seem to see him going Wilfrid about his diocese with the energy of one born to ' repair the York^ ^ breaches' and ' build the old waste places ^ : ' at York he * shuddered '^ ' to see his cathedral fallen into a miserable dilapidation, which implies some negligence on the part of ^ Elmham, Hist, Mon, Ang. p. i88. Elmham gives a charter of 'Oswy king of Kent* in favour of • St. Peter's,' Canterbury, dated July, 674! He explains the title as meaning 'over-lord ; ' p. 226. ^ See Bede, iv. 26, that in 684 he was in his fortieth year. ' Hist. Abb. i. * Eddi, 19; adding that the pursuers thus actually crossed the river 'siccis pedibus.' Malmesbury, ' Flumina cursu intercepto subsisterent.' ' Eddi, 20; Bede, iv. 12 : 'Superato . . . et fugato Wulfhere.' Malmes- bury, • Partem provinciarum Northanimbrorum regi cesserit ; * G. P. p. 219. * This was a duty prescribed to bishops; e.g. 4th of Toledo, c. 36 (a.d. 633): 'Episcopum per cunctas dioeceses parochiasque suas per singulos annos ire oportet, ut exquirat quo una quseque basilica in reparatione sui indigeat ; ' Mansi, x, 629. "^ 'Horruit spiritus ejus,' Eddi, 16. The windows, says Malmesbury, had been covered with thin linen or trellis- work ; Pontif, 3. p. 217. Fridegod says, ' Humida contrito stillabant assere tecta pluviae quacunque vagantur . . .* See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. 1. 263. Some stones in the crypt of York may belong to this old church. 234 Wilfrids church-building. CHAP. VIII. Chad ; for otherwise Wilfrid would not have found the roofs decaying, the windows devoid of glass, and the inner walls blotched with rain and haunted by birds. He repaired the roofs, covered them with lead, glazed the windows, cleaned the walls with lime, decked the altar with new furniture, and obtained new property for the church. At his beloved Ripon he reared ' a basilica of polished stone, towering to a great height, with pillars of varied form and arched vaults and winding cloisters^;' and invited the king, his brother Alfwin, and a number of sub-kings, reeves, and abbots to attend the dedication. On such a day he was truly in his element ; and we may imagine the interest with which the function of which he was the centre would be watched by a little boy, then being trained up in the monastery, afterwards the great missionary archbishop Willibrord 2. The service began with psalms and prayers ^ ; the altar, vested in purple and cloth of gold, was elaborately blessed, the paten and chalice hallowed, the Eucharist celebrated : then Wilfrid, in front of the altar, with his face towards the people *, recited a list of the lands recently or previously bestowed upon him ^, and also of the sanctuaries once held by the British Church. Then came a public feast, kept up with barbaric extravagance for three days and nights, — a strange concession, we may think, to the coarse tastes of the Yorkshiremen. Wilfrid added to his other 'gifts for the adornment of God^s house ' a large golden cross ^, and a copy of the Gospels in four volumes, written in letters of gold on richly coloured parchment, all contained in a case ^ wrought with gold and jewels, — a treasure long ^ Eddi, 17 ; and Malraesbury, G. Pontif. p. 217, • Porticuum inflexu.' ^ Act. SS. Bened. saec. iii. i. 603. - Eddi recognises emphatically the people's part in the function. The persons iovited, he says, ' convenerunt, consecrantes . . . dedicantes , . . populique communicantes omnia canonice compleverunt.' For the dedication ceremonies, comp. Muratori, Lit. Rom. ii. 185, 467 ; Egbert's Pontifical, p. 27. * * Stans . . . ante altare, conversus ad populum,' Eddi. ' ' Quas reges . . . illi dederunt,' Eddi names four districts, one being near the Ribble. Two of them are otherwise named in the extract from Peter of Blois, quoted in Mon. Anglic, ii. 133. * Wilfrid's epitaph at Ripon, Bede, v. 19 : 'Sublime crucis radiante metallo . . . trophteum.' "[ ' Bibliothecam,' Eddi. So the epitaph, Bede, 1. c, ' Ac thecara,' &o. Wilfrids church-building. 235 preserved in Ripon minster. At Hexham ^, also, on land given chap. vm. by the pious Queen Etheldred, he built, in honour of St. Andrew, a church of great length and height, with ' manifold columns and porches, a complication of ascending and descend- ing passages ^.' And at this day, the visitor who looks round the exquisite minster of Hexham will find nothing worthier of his attention than the small crypt of Roman masonry, with two Roman inscriptions built up in its walls, on the western side of the transept : descending into it, he enters the only remaining part of Wilfrid's church, * the building deep under- ground formed of admirably carved stone,' which Eddi includes in his description of a structure that, as far as he knew, had no equal ' on this side of the Alps.' The bishop also exerted him- self for the improvement of Divine service : he set Eddi and iEona to carry on the special work of teaching Church-song, or, as Eddi makes him express it^, of 'training choirs to sing responsively, according to the custom of the primitive Church.' But if Wilfrid was munificent as a church builder, and active as a promoter of choral worship, he was also in- defatigable as a chief pastor : he is depicted as riding about incessantly to baptize and confirm*, holding ordinations^, * Richard of Hexham, de Hagust. Eccl. 3. The property had come to Etheldred as a marriage gift ; ib. 7. * Eddi, 22. Richard of Hexham expands this description: ' Parietes . . . columnis sufFultos, et tribus tabulatis distinctos, . . . erexit. Ipsos . . . et capitella columnarum . . . et arcum sanctuarii, historiis et imaginibus, et variis caelaturarum figuris ex lapide prominentibus, et picturarum et colorum grata varietate .... decoravit. Ipsum quoque corpus ecclesiaB appenticiis et porticibus undique circumcinxit.' In the stone staircases and ' deambulatoria ' and winding passages up and down, many men could stand without being seen by any one in the church. The cloisters had oratories and altars of their own. The minster was enriched with splendid ' ornaments,' vestments, and books : and the 'court' (atrium) was surrounded by a strong thick wall. Altogether, this minster * surpassed all the nine monasteries ' of which Wil- frid was • father and patron,' and 'all others in England ;' X Script. 290. ' Eddi, 45. See Benedict. Greg. Op. iii. 649. Comp. Joan. Diac. Vit. Greg, ii. 6, on Gregory's compilation of antiphons and his ' schola cantorum.' * Eddi, 18. On that Eadwald of Ripon, who was apparently revived from a death-like swoon after his prayers, and then baptized, and claimed for ' God's service,' see above, p. 190. ' ' Omnibus locis presbyteros et diaconos sibi adjuvantes ordinabat;' Eddi, 2 r. Here we see the growth of a parochial system : so in Bede, v. 4, 5, we find bishop John dedicating churches built by two ' counts.' Yet in 734 Bede had to exhort bishop Egbert to ordain priests for the several villages; Ep. ad Egb. 3, 236 Grandeur of Wilfrids position. CHAP. VIII. forming new cliurcli settlements, and amid all this whirl of activities retaining his habits of ascetic devotion. Of these we are told that neither in summer nor in winter did he drink more at his meal than the contents of one small cup ^, and that he persisted in washing his whole body in cold water before going to bed, until, when he was quite an old man, the Pope directed him to abstain from so severe a dis- cipline 2. At the same time, no austerity of manner was discernible in him : he made himself ' dear and loveable ' to people of all races ^, and his gracious geniality, the outcome of a genuinely kind heart, was like sunshine to all who felt its presence. ' Abstinence,' in him, did not generate ' pride,' — so says his biographer with much significance. He was the typical man of Church and realm ; the king admired and relied on him ; the queen confided to him her longings for a monastic life, which her husband at last reluctantly permitted her to gratify by taking the veil from Wilfrid's hands in Ebba's convent at Coldingham ; abbots and abbesses made him their heir or their trustee, and nobles committed their sons to the great prelate who had been a thane's firstborn, that under his eye they might be prepared for ' God's service, if they chose it,' or if, when grown up, they preferred a secular life, might be ' presented as soldiers to the king *.' He played an important part in Frankish politics by inviting Dagobert, the young heir of Austrasia, from his place of refuge in Ireland, and sending him over in princely state, to ascend the throne of his father ^. This is the picture of Wilfrid in the splendours of a well-deserved ascendancy : we shall see ere long how the unique brilliancy of his position contributed to provoke a great vicissitude, which did but bring into fuller light the real nobleness of a princely and Christian soul. Benedict The Companion of his first journey in Gaul had, as we have iscop. seen, made three visits to E-ome, before the year 671, when he resigned the abbacy of Canterbury, again repaired to the ^ Eddi, 21, ' Parvissima phiala.' "^ Malmesbury. The water, of course, was blessed. 3 Eddi, 21. * Eddi, 21. They were his gesiths or retainers ; Stubbs, i. 150. ^ Eddi, 28. School at Canterbury. 237 * threshold of the Apostles,' and ' brought back not a few chap. vm. books of sacred learning of all kinds, which he had either bought or received as gifts from friends ^' Returning by Vienne, he there took possession of other books which friends in that district had at his request procured for him. When he was again in Northumbria, he conversed with the king, went through the whole story of his life, ' did not conceal ' his monastic fervour, explained all that he had learned at Rome or elsewhere on matters monastic or ecclesiastical, and exhibited his store of manuscripts and of relics ; altogether impressing Egfrid so strongly that he received a royal grant of seventy hydes whereon he raised a monastery in honour of ' the first pastor of the Church,' — a design executed, some time later, at Wearmouth. Such a zeal for ecclesiastical literature as Benedict Biscop School at had was united in his successor Hadrian, and in Theodore bury, himself, who was popularly called 'the Philosopher,' with a love of learning much wider in its range, and kindred to that spirit which had made the great Alexandrian teachers employ the existing curriculum of secular studies as distinctly capable of serving the cause of Divine truth 2. Hadrian, with the archbishop's hearty approval, founded "at Canterbury a school in which religious training was combined with all other learning accessible at the time. As we have seen, Canter- bury had a school in the early days of the archbishopric, which served as a model for that of Felix at Dunwich ^ : but now * a crowd of pupils was assembled *,' and ^ streams of sound learning ' of all sorts, sacred and secular, * flowed daily for the watering of their minds ; ' so that Hadrian, and even the archbishop in person, — so marvellous was the old man's versatility and energy, — ^even delivered to their hearers the rules of ecclesiastical arithmetic ' (i. e. for the calculation of Church seasons), 'of astronomy, of music, and even of medicine^, side by side with the volumes of sacred letters ^/ Among these hearers were John, famous as ' St. John of Beverley,' » Bede, Hist. Abb. 4. * Euseb. vi. 18; Greg. Thaumat. Panegyr. in Origenem. Comp. Aug. de doctr. Chr. ii. 40 ; Sociates, iii. 16. ' Bede, iii. 17; above, p. 125. * Bede, iv. 2. ^ Bede, v. 3. • • Apicum.' Cp. Bede, Ep. ad Egb. i, and iii. 8. 238 Monasticism in Kent, CHAP. VIII. bishop successively of Hexham and York ; Aldhelm, after- wards abbot of Malmesbury and bishop of Sherborne ; Oftfor bishop of Worcester \ Tobias of Rochester 2, Albinus, the successor of Hadrian, who understood Greek fairly, and Latin thoroughly, and ' by whose exhortation mainly Bede was led to undertake his great work ^ : ' and, when Bede wrote, there were others living who had studied under Hadrian, and who ' knew Greek and Latin as well as they knew their own tongue wherein they were born*.' This great school became the prototype of the yet more famous school of York in the next century, which, when presided over by Albert, afterwards archbishop, dealt with grammar, rhetoric, metre, astronomy, physics, — and out of which arose the illustrious Alcuin ^. Monasti- Monasticism, also, received some impulse in Kent at this Kent." time. Egbert, in the year of Theodore's arrival, had given the royal abode at Reculver, whither Ethelbert had retired when he settled Augustine at Canterbury, ^ to Bass, the mass-priest, to build a minster,' — so says the Chronicle. And in or about the next year, a tragedy of royal jealousy and apprehension produced a remarkable penitential foundation : Egbert, we are told ^, was so far swayed by a thane bearing the ominous name of Thunor as not effectively to forbid the murder of his young cousins Ethelred and Ethelbert, sons of his uncle Ermenred, and brothers of Ermenburga or Domneva, the pious wife of the pious Merewald, son of Penda and sub-king of the West- Mercians. Legend was diffuse on the circumstances which struck Egbert with compunction : the result was visible in the erection of the nunnery of Minster, in Thanet, on land "^ given by the king to Ermenburga as a ' wer-gild ' or satis- faction for her brothers^ innocent blood. Theodore consecrated her as abbess^, and she was succeeded by her daughter ^ Bede, iv. 23. ^ Bede, v. 23. ^ Bede, v. 20, and Praef. * Bede, iv. 2. ' See Alcuin, de Pontif. Ebor. 1431 fF. ; Raine, i. loi. ® For the legend, • to which,' says Lappenberg. i. 246, * history will not refuse a space,' see Simeon of Durham, in Mon. Hist. Br. p. 645 ; Elmham, p. 192. "^ As much land, said the story, as 'cerva sua domestica uno posset per- currere impetu ' (Elmham, p. 207). Thunor tried to stop the hind, and the earth swallowed him ! The spot was called ' Thunor's leap.' 8 Thorn says that Mildred was the first abbess; X Script. 1907. L other e bishop of Winchester. - 239 Mildred, who became conspicuous among the female saints chap. viii. of the Old -English calendar^. It was in the same year 670 that Theodore went, for a Lothere much more important function, to the West-Saxon capital. qJ^^-Jj, There had been no bishop of Winchester or Dorchester since cheater, the departure of Wini in 666 ; and Kenwalch, regretting his breach with Agilbert, sent messengers to request him to return. But Agilbert, now bishop of Paris, naturally answered that he was bound to his present charge 2. ' However,' said he, ' there is my nephew Lothere, a presbyter, whom I think very well fitted to be a bishop : if the king will receive him to my old place, I am willing that he should go.' The proposal was accepted : a West-Saxon ' gemot,' which Bede, with a lax use of the term, refers to as a ^synod^,' received Lothere with all honour ; and the archbishop consecrated him in his own church *, which five years before had been the scene of Chad's very different consecration. Kenwalch closed his chequered, but on the whole very honourable life, two years afterwards ; and his widow Sexburga, a woman of remarkable talents, succeeded in maintaining herself as queen regnant for a year ^, until in 674, Escwin, according to the Chronicle, became king of Wessex, or, properly speaking, became chief among those petty kings whom Bede represents as dividing Wessex between them for ' about ten years ' after the death of Kenwalch ^. Another change of rulers took place in Kent, when Egbert Death of died in the July of 6']'^, and was succeeded by his brother ^ ®^ * * Every one, for instance, who passes up ' Brasenoselane ' traverses ground belonging of old to a church named after the canonised granddaughter of Penda. For St. Mildred see Alban Butler, Feb. 20. Her father Merewald founded a convent at Leominster; her sister Milburga became abbess of Wenlock. =» Bede, iii. 7. ' ' Ex synodica sanctione.' * According to canon, e. g. fourth Council of Orleans, c. 5. ' Chron. a. 672 ; Malmesbury, Gr. Reg. i. * Bede, iv. 12 : * Acceperunt sub-reguli regnum gentis,' &c. SeeStubbs, Const. Hist. i. 171. The Chronicler, Florence, and Ethelwerd call Escwin king of the West-Saxons. He was of another branch of the house of Cerdic. These confusions in Wessex may, perhaps, be traced to the fact that Kenwalch, in 652, had been engaged in ' civil war' at Bradford-on-Avon ; Ethelwerd, ii. 7. ^ Bede, iv. 5. Part of the realm had been seized by Swebhard, after the death 240 Council of Hertford, CHAP. VIII. Lothere, tlie third month of whose reign was distinguishec by an event which forms a landmark ; for Theodore, alread} secure in his majestic supremacy, and practically independeni Council of of royal support, held the first English provincial Council, or ^"^ ' the 24th of September, at Hertford, a place probably choser as fairly accessible, being on the border of South-east Mercia and of Essex. Provincial The synod of a province, according to Nicene rules ^, ex- ^^° * pressing, as they did, the mind of the whole Church upon the subject, was a necessary part of its organisation. It was to meet twice a year, and to settle all disputes, and generally all matters, which affected the province as a unity. A similar provision was made by one of the 'Apostolical" canons, which referred to the synods thus held ' the doctrines of religion, and the ecclesiastical disputes which may arise ; ' and * the Council of the Dedication ' at Antioch, in 341, repeatedly enforces the supreme judicial authority of a provincial synod, when fully constituted under the presidency of the metro- politan 2. The Council of Chalcedon ^ found that the holding of 'the provincial synods prescribed by rules' had been neglected, and ordered that they should be duly held twice a year, for the purpose of setting right whatever needed correction. Since the date of that Council, Western synods had frequently upheld the institution : a bishop duly cited, said the second Council of Aries, must attend the synod, or if too ill to come, must send a deputy ^ : the last canon of Agde in 506 ordered that synods should be duly held according to of Oswy ; he, — at the suggestion, it is said, of Theodore, — ^gave lands to St. Mildred's abbey; Elmham, p. 231. See Bede, v. 8. ^ Nicene can. 5. Compare Euseb. Vit. Const, i. 51, as to Licinius' sup- pression of synods : "AAAws ^hp ov Bwarbv rcL fieydXa twv OKfmJtarojv ij 810L avvodctiv KaropQuaaaBai. Compare Bingham, b. ii. c. i6. s. 16, 17. On the importance attached by the French Protestants to their synods, as 'the corner-stone of their interior constitution,' see Guizot, Hist. Fr. c. 47. * Apost. can. 38; Antioch, can. 3, 4, 6, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22. ' Chalced. 19. * Mansi, vii. 880. Compare Council of Tarragona, a. 516, c. 6, ib. viii. 542 ; Council of Epaon, in Burgvmdy, c. i, ib. viii. 559; second of Tours, c. i, ib. ix. 792 ; second of Macon, c. 20, ib. ix. 957. One Spanish Council (Emerita) in 666 recognises ' the king's order ' to hold a synod. Council of Hertford, 241 the constitutions of the fathers ^ : the second Council of Lyons chap. viii. ordered that bishops of the same province should settle their differences before their metropolitan and comprovincials ^. The British Church, as we have seen, had kept up its synods even when driven within the Welsh border ^ : the Frankish bishops were duly convened according to precedent * : the Church of Spain was equally observant of the rule ^. It was simply necessary that the new English Church, as soon as it could be organised and consolidated, should have its pro- vincial synods : Gregory had, long before this time, taken for granted that, as soon as possible, there would be this system at work, in the southern parts of Teutonic Britain, and also, in due time, in the northern. He had spoken of a ' synod ' of the province of London ^, and virtually of a synod of the province of York. As yet there was but one province, which included north and south under Canterbury. And Wini did not appear at the Council : one would fain accept the story that he resigned his see in penitence in 6']%'^, At any rate, Theodore had only four suffragans present in person, with delegates sent to represent Wilfrid. One does not see why Wilfrid did not make the journey : but there is also something not easy to explain in the order in which the prelates are named, — Bisi, Wilfrid by his own delegates, Putta^, Lothere (called Leutherius), and Winfrid. Wilfrid was considerably senior in consecration to all, Theodore included ; but Bisi may have been older than his fellow-suffragans^. * Agd. 71 ; Mansi, viii. 336. ^ Mansi, ix. 787. ' Above, p. 30. * See fifth C. of Paris, c. 11 ; Mansi, x. 542. ^ See fourth C. of Toledo, c. 3 ; Mansi, x. 617. * Bede, i. 29: 'QuatenusLundoniensis civitatisepiscopus semper in poaterum a synodo propria debeat consecrari.' ' Erconwald, the next bishop of London, was consecrated in 675 j and Rudborne, Hist, Maj. Wint. (Angl. Sac. i. 192), says that three years before Wini died, he resigned his see in contrition for his simoniacal acquisition of it, and spent his last years as a monk at Winchester. ' He is the only one of the sufiragans who is named after his see, which is called ' the Castle of the Kentish-men which is named Hrofescaestir.* The rest take national titles, such as * of the East-Angles, of the Northmnbrians.' See, on this, Freeman, ii. 589. » See Bede, iv. 5, fin., on Biai's 'gravissima infinnitate.' And Wilfrid R 242 Council of Hertford. CHAP. VIII. Bede makes it clear that the prelates alone formed the synod : it was a 'Council of bishops/ — and no other persons were constituent members of it : this was the ancient Catholic constitution of synods ^. But it was quite in accordance with thateonstitution that 'many Church teachers' who were not bishops, but who ' both loved and understood the canonical statutes of the fathers/ should be present, — as Malchion had been present at the first Council of Antioch 2, and Athanasius at the Council of Nicsea. Theodore would be sure to observe whatever solemn forms were usual on the Continent at the opening* of a synod ^. We may presume that the bishops and ' teachers ' prayed silently for a while, and that then one bishop prayed aloud. The members then sat down, two on each side the archbishop, together with the representatives of Wilfrid. Our account of the proceedings was drawn up by Theodore, and written out, as in his name, by ' Titillus the notary ' or scribe. The solemn commencement, ' In the Name of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ/ was a natural one *, and we find bishops sometimes appending ' in the name of Christ ' to their own signatures ^. The next words, ' The same our Lord Jesus Christ reigning for ever and governing His Church,' were an amplification of a form used in the third Council of Braga in 57^ ^j and contrast strikingly with the date from a regnal year found in canons of King Reccared's reign and in others of the Spanish synods'^. Theodore began^ as he himself says, by requesting his beloved brethren, for the fear and love of the ranked, it is supposed , as bishop de fado of York from 669. But Putta was apparently a little senior in consecration to Bisi ; see Stubbs^ Registrum, p. 3. * Potter on Ch. Government, p. 225 ; Pusey on Councils, pp. 34, 51. ' Euseb. vii. 29. ' See fourth C. of Toledo, c. 4, for an account of the forms prescribed by that Council in 633 ; Mansi, x. 617. 'None of the laity attended the Council of Herudford ; ' Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 171. * Council of Osca or Huesca, 598, begins, ' In nomine D. n. J. C. ; ' Mansi, X. 481. Comp. Council of Barcelona, ib., 'Cum duce D. J. C. ; ' second of Seville, 619, 'In nomine Domini et Salvatoris nostri J. C,,' ib. 557. ° E.g. Mansi, x. 478, Council of Toledo in 597. * Mansi, ix. 836. Compare Council of Clovesho in 747, and see Kemble-. Cod. Dipl. i. 142, 146, 164, 177, 182, &c. ' Mansi, x. 471, 477, 481, 531, 614. Council of Hertford, 243 common Redeemer, to join him in taking counsel together^ chap. vnr. on behalf of their faith, that ' whatever had been decreed and defined by holy and approved fathers^ might be inviolably observed by all.' One might have expected that here, as in the case of other Councils^, would have followed some dogmatic statement of faith : but Theodore goes on to say that he added * other observations tending to the preservation of charity and of the unity of the Church/ After this prefatory address, he asked each of the members of the synod, in order, whether he agreed to keep the ancient and canonical decrees of the fathers. They all answered in the affirmative ; they would do so 'by all means,' 'most willingly/ 'with all their hearts.' Thereupon Theodore at once produced the book of canons referred to; it was the collection of ancient canons made by Dionysius Exiguus in the opening of the sixth century *, beginning with the 'Apostolic canons,' and then exhibiting those of Nicaea, Ancyra, Neociesarea, Gangra, Antioch, Lao- dicea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, Sardica, and the African code. In this series Theodore ^had marked' ten points, occurring 'in different places,' as specially necessary to be observed by the English Church. These were taken up and considered, in the following form : Theodore calls them ' capitula,' heads, or as it is sometimes rendered, articles. (i) 'That we all keep the holy day of Easter together, on the Sunday after the fourteenth moon of the first month ' (i. e. so as to exclude the fourteenth moon from the list of possible Easter Sundays). This was the Antiochene Council's rule, can. I, referring to the Nicene resolution^. (2) ' That no bishop shall invade the " parish ® " (or diocese) * * TractemuB,' i.e. treat of, consider. See Mansi, ill. 892 : 'Quoniam igitur universa fuisse arbitror tractata,' &c. ^ ' Probabilibus.' So in Lateran I. c. 18 : ' Probabiles ecclesiae patres.* 3 E. g. Toledo IV. c. i, Mansi, x. 615 ; Toledo VI. c. i, ib. 66 r. * See the Ballerini, de Antiq. Collect. Can. part 3. c. i. s. 2. 9. This collection, they say, ib. s. 2. 6, excels in the translation of the Greek canons, in its order, in its titles, ' necnon ipsa omnium documentorum sinceritate.' Theodore would naturally bring it with him from Rome. See also Smith's Bede, p. 148. ' So in several provincial Councils, as Orleans IV. a. 541. ' The ancient or ' Eusebian ' sense of vapoiKia, ' the body of Christians It 2 244 Council of Hertford. CHAP. VIII. of another, but shall be content with governing the people entrusted to himself.' This was from the fourteenth and thirty-sixth Apostolic canons, the thirteenth of Antioch, the forty-eighth of the African code ^. (The fifteenth Nicene and first Sardican, adduced by Johnson, refer to the removal of a bishop from one see to another.) (3) 'That whatever monasteries have been consecrated to God, it shall not be lawful for any bishop to disturb them in any matter, nor to take away by force any part of their property.' This is an amplification of the twenty-fourth of Chalcedon, which does not expressly refer to such encroach- ments on the part of a bishop, but only places under censure those who permit the secularisation of monasteries once dedicated by the consent of the bishop. That Council indeed strongly asserted the jurisdiction of bishops over monasteries *, which during the last two centuries, through the growth of the monastic system, had been restrained by canons^ and often ceded by * exemptions ' or charters of privilege. dwelling within a certain area under one bishop' (see above, p. 181), naturally passed into that of 'the area within which they dwelt,' i.e. what we call a diocese ; see Suicer in v. and Sclater's Orig. Draught of Prim. Church, p. 3a. Compare Bede, iii. 7, iv. 13, v. 18 ; Vit. Cuthb. 29, 33 ; Ep. to Egb. 8. We find this use also in Wihtred's Privilege to Kentish churches, Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 239; in can. 25 of Council of Clovesho, ib. 371 ; in the Legatine Synod of 787, ib. 449 ; in king Kenulf s letter to Leo III., ib. 522 ; in Gregory III.'b Ep. 10, to St. Boniface, Mansi, xii. 285 ; in Boniface's to Archbishop Cuth- bert, c. i; frequently in Hincmar; in a grant of King Ethelred, in loia, to 'Hrofenis parrochiae episcopus,' Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. ccxxiv., &c. Yet 'parochia' is used for our 'parish' by Council of Agde, c. 21 ; of Epaon, c. 7, 25 ; Vaison, II. i ; Orleans III. c. 15 ; Toledo IV. c. 74; Chalons, C.5. ^ So in inferior Councils, as Orleans III. a. 538, c. 15. ^ Can. 4. ' All that time, no exception to episcopal rule was claimed by any appeal to the Pope ; ' Life of St. German, p. 65. ' E.g. Tours II. a. 567; and, stringently, Toledo IV. c. 51, Mansi, x. 631, rebuking bishops who set monks to work for them like slaves, and almost turn the monasteries into possessions of their own. The Council limits a bishop's right in a monastery to (i) exhorting monks to holy living, (a) instituting abbots, &c., (3) correcting breaches of the rule. See, too, Gregory the Great's Roman Council forbidding episcopal encroachments ; e. g. no bishop shall take away any of the revenue, property, or documents of a monastery or of the cells and * vills ' which belong to it ; Mansi, x. 486. The Council of Rouen distinctly recognises the bishop's duty of inquiring into the internal state of monasteries and nunneries; ib. z. 1201. Council of Hertford, 245 (4) • That the monks themselves ^ do not roam from place chap. vm. to place, that is, from monastery to monastery, except by the permission of their own abbot, but remain in that obedience which at the time of their conversion they promised.' This is based on the fourth and twenty-third canons of Chalcedon, which were framed to guard against disorderly interference in public affairs, ecclesiastical and civil, on the part of monks, such as those violent Eutychian partizans who had behaved like a ^ gang of robbers ' at the second Council of Ephesus. ' Conversion ' here means forsaking of a secular life ^. (5) 'That no cleric shall leave his own bishop and roam about anywhere at his pleasure, nor, if he comes anywhere, be received without the commendatory letters of his prelate. And if, when once received, he refuses to return when sum- moned, both the receiver and the person who has been- received shall incur excommunication.* This is made up from the fifteenth and thirty-fourth Apostolic canons, the third and seventh Antiochene, the forty-first and forty-second Laodicene, twenty-third of Chalcedon, one-hundred-and-fifth African^. Commendatory letters of this sort, called ' systaticae,' were natural and befitting guarantees of the cleric's character *. (6) ' That foreign bishops and clergy be content with the hospitality freely offered them, and that no one of them be allowed to perform any sacerdotal office without permission of the bishop in whose diocese {parochia) he is known to be.' This is based on the thirteenth Antiochene, and eleventh Sardican. ^ ' Ipsi.' The other reading is ' episcopi.* This is defended by Todd, Life of St. Patrick, p. 49. ^ In Council of Gerona, c. 8, it is used for the entrance into clerical life ; Mansi, viii. 549. So in Aries IV. c. i, 2 ; ib. viii. 626. Compare Greg. Turon. H. Fr. viii. 15, and especially de Mirac. S. Mart. iii. 15, ' converti decrevit, scilicet, ut humiliatis capitis . . . deserviret antistiti.' Gregory the Great uses it for entrance into a monastery; Ep. iii. 40, 65. ' Compare Council of Reims, a. 624, c. 12 : 'Quod si sine epistolis (sui pontificis) profectus fuerit manifestis, nuUo modo recipiatur ; ' Mansi, x. 596. So Council of Agde, c. 38 ; ib. viii. 331, and of Epaon, c, 6 ; ib. viii. 560. Theo- dulf, a deacon of Paris, was often excommunicated by his bishop, because he delayed to return 'ad ecclesiam suam in qua . . . ordinatus fuerat ;' Greg. Turon. H. Fr. X. 14. ♦ See Bingham, b. ii. c. 4. s. 5 (vol. i. p. 100). He distinguishes the ' com- mendatoriae' given to clergy when about to travel (among others) from the * dimissorise ' given to clergy who wished to settle in another diocese. This canon clearly refers to the former class. -246 Council of Hertford. CHAP. VIII. (7) ' That the synod be assembled twice in the year.' This was altered in discussion, on account of ' divers hindrances ' to two meetings, exactly as the Nicene provision for two such meetings, before Lent and in the autumn, or the Antio- ehene specifying the third week after Easter and October, had been altered for Africa by the Council of Hippo into a yearly meeting ^. The resolution stood thus, ' That we meet '>once a year on the ist of August, in the place which is called Clofeshoch,' — a place not now to be identified, but perhaps near London, at any rate in Mercia or in a dependency of Mercia^. Councils did meet there in 716, 742, and — the most important case — in 747. (8) ^That no bishop shall set himself above another out of ambition, but all shall acknowledge the time and the order of their consecration.' This is based on the eighty-sixth of the African code ^. {9) This was one of Theodore's favourite points, ' That as the number of the faithful increases, the bishops be increased in number.' Theodore did not extract this literally from his book : he inferred from certain African canons *, restraining an irregular multiplication of bishoprics, and also from the sixth Sardican eanon of like purport, that an increase, made regularly and for good reasons, was desirable ^. In his native Cilicia, there were seventeen dioceses, mostly large ^ : and his provincial visitation had convinced him of the necessity of '* Mansi, iii. 919 : comp. another form of it, Cod. Afr. 18, ib. 719. So the second of Orleans in 533, and three others following it, prescribe one meeting : the third of Toledo allows one to suffice because of distance and poverty; Mansi, ix. 997. The fourth of Toledo names May 18 as the day. * See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 122, setting aside the conjectures of ClifF-at- Hoo, Abingdon, Tewkesbury. Abingdon, from its old name of ' Sheovesham,' is favoured in Chr. Remembr., July, i860, p. 8, where it is remarked that it 'lay central to Mercia and Wessex.' But would Sheovesham be otherwise written Clovesho ? Milman follows Kemble in preferring Tewkesbury, which is too remote. Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 39, would place * Clofeshoch ' somewhere , fin West Mercia : ' Oslow, the name which best represents the original, is near .Clonford,.and not far from Staflford.' ' See Mansi, iii. 786. * Afric. 53, 56, 98 ; Mansi, iii. 744, 749, 803. ' It is suggested with great probability by Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 122, that this plan for dividing the 'parochiae' or dioceses was mistaken for an intro- duction of the ' parochial ' system, such as Elmham attributes to Theodore. * Bingham, b. ix. c. 3. s. 16. Council of Hertford, 247 dividing the too large diocese of Lichfield and the enormous chap. viii. diocese of York. But although his proposition seems to us undeniably right, and Bode in his later years urged the same idea on Bishop Egbert ^ long after the Northumbrian diocese of dT^ had been divided, Theodore could not carry his sufiragans with him 2; it may be that Wilfrid*s deputies spoke out what they knew that their master would feel : and this opposition, successful at the time, though overborne after- wards, accounts for much of the difiiculties that followed. The Council record is significant of a purpose only deferred, not surrendered : * On this pointy for the time^ we said nothing/ (lo) *As to marriages, that no one be allowed to have any but a lawful marriage. Let no one commit incest ^, let no one leave his own wife, except, as the holy Gospel teaches, because of fornication. But if any one shall send away his own wife who has been united to him in lawful matrimony (i. e. in the excepted case), if he is minded to be rightly a Christian, let him not join himself to any other, but remain in that state, or else be reconciled to his own wife.' In Theodore's Peni- tential * severe penance is imposed on a husband who having found his wife to be unfaithful, continues to live with her, as if the exception constituted an obligation to put her away. Far severer penance is assigned to one who marries another woman after putting away his wife ; but this refers to the case of divorce not justified by that exception. There is a diflBculty in another passage of the Penitential, which allows ^ the husband of a faithless wife not only to put her * *Qids non videat quanto sit melius tam enorme pondus ecclesiastici re^minis in plures . . . dividi, quam unum sub fasce quern portare non possit opprimi ? ' He cites Gregory's programme as to twelve bishops under a metro- politan of York ; Ep. to Egb. 5. » Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 86. ' For canons of that period against incest, see Council of Reims, 8. a. 624, Mansi, x. 595 ; and Paris, V. c. 14. a. 615, ib. x. 542 (which forbids, inter alia, marriage of first cousins). * Poenit. i. 14. 4, 7 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 188. The Penitential professes to represent Theodore's answers to questions about penance and other points of discipline, as they came to the knowledge of a 'disciple of the Humbrians* (Northumbrians?) mainly through the mediimi of a priest named Eoda. ' Pcenit. ii. 12. 5 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 199. In this answer the divorced 248 Council of Hertford. CHAP. VIII. away, but to marry another, as if the exception covered both a divorce and a re-marriage. This cannot properly be re- conciled with the Hertford ' capitulum/ which makes it, apparently, a Christian duty for the injured husband, after putting away the faithless wife, to abstain from a new marriage : for it cannot refer to the case of a man who has causelessly, i. e. without justification on the score of her mis- conduct, put away his wife, — such a person having, by that act, offended already against Christ's express command. All that can be said is, that if this passage in the Penitential came from Theodore's lips, he had adopted, when he so spoke, a less stringent view than he had urged and carried in the synod. Nine resolutions, then, were passed, — one having been for the time withdrawn. Theodore was a thorough man of business: he would not go by understandings and vaguely expressed agreements : he would have everything set down definitely, and accepted formally: there should be no mistake as to what was or was not passed ; no loophole left whereby, in after days, any ' occasion of contention ' should be caused by any one who had sat in the synod. , There stood the record, fairly written out by the secretary: according to the orderly continental usage, each member must sign it with his own hand. They did so, probably in such words as, ' I, A. bishop of the Church of — , have subscribed ^ : ' and Wilfrid's dele- gates would each sign as ^ in the place of my lord Wilfrid ^.' adulteress herself, if penitent, is allowed after five years to marry another man. The question of re-marrying in the excepted case of the wife's adultery was undecided in the ancient Church. St. Augustine personally held it wrong for an injured husband, who had put away his faithless wife, to marry again ; but did not think the act expressly forbidden by Scripture, nor punishable by the Church. It was tolerated, though the Church (first Council of Aries, lo), dissuaded from it. On the one side were laws of the empire, and ecclesiastical practice, permitting such re-marriage ; on the other side, the opinions of some great Church writers more or less strongly given against it. See Bingham, b. xxii. c. 2. 8. 12 (vol. vii. p. 300). He cites Epiphanius, Haer. 59. 4, that 6 OtTos \6yos does not censure such re-marriage, d\\cL diafiaffrd^ei Sioi rh daOeves. * E.g. Toledo IV. Mansi, x. 641. Sometimes the form was, 'Hsec statuta definiens subscripsi ; ' Toledo VII. ib. x. 770. We find the form, 'Relegi et Bubscripsi,' in Council of Epaon, ib. viii. 564. * E.g. in the third Council of Toledo, a. 589: ' Galanus . . agens vicem Council of Hertford, " 249 And, as a final guarantee of the stability of the resolutions, chap, viu it was enacted, as was often the case in continental synods ^, that any bishop who should ever ' attempt to contravene or infringe ' the decrees then subscribed, should incur * separation from all sacerdotal office and from the fellowship of his brethren.' * May the grace of God,' Theodore concluded, * keep us in safety, living in the unity of His holy Church.' So ended the Council of Hertford, a memorable assembly in the annals of the English Church, — hardly less so in those of the English people. For while it gave expression and con- solidation to the idea of ecclesiastical unity, it was also ' the first of all national gatherings ^ ' for such legislation as should affect the whole land of the English, the precursor of the Witenagemots and the Parliaments of the one indivisible imperial realm. Theodore may thus far take no mean place among the men who helped to make England. domini mei Fructuosi episcopi subscripsi ; ' Mansi, ix. 1002. So Toledo V. ib. X. 657, &c. Or 'presbyter' or ' diaconus episcopi,' Toledo VIII. ib. x. 1223. ^ E. g. Orleans III. c. 33, denounces any (bishops) who neglect to observe the decrees ; Mansi, ix. 20 : Orleans IV., * Si quis transgredi tentaverit ; ' ib. ix. 119 : Braga III., ' transgressus ;' ib. ix. 841. * Green, Hist. Engl. People, p. 30. Comp. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 163. CHAPTEE IX. East- It miglit well seem that in the case of Archbishop Theodore, diocese*^ even a temporary check was to be followed by an advance, divided. with hardly sufficient interval to allow of a sense of dis- appointment. As we have seen, he had not carried his point about the partition of dioceses, when he proposed it to the Council : it was considered, but the decision was deferred. Yet Bisi of Dunwich, on his return home, began to feel the pressure of infirmities ^, increased by the exertion of a double journey, and resolved to resign his bishopric. Theodore seized the opportunity: and, doubtless with the consent of the East- Anglian king Aldwulf, the son of Ethelhere and the nephew of Anna 2, he created a new diocese dependent on Elmham, otlierwise called North Elmham, and situated about the centre of our present Norfolk ^. Badwin was consecrated for this new see, while Acci was placed in the chair of St. Felix. It was the terrible irruption of the Northmen, two centuries later, which in its results annulled this partition ; so that after Dunwich had been permanently abandoned, and the line of bishops of Elmham had continued until after the Conquest*, the single East- Anglian bishopric was trans- ferred to Thetford in 1075, and fixed at Norwich in 1094. * Bede, iv. 5 : * Quo adhuc superstite,' &c. 2 Not his son, as Thomas of Ely thought, Vit. Etheldr. c. 7, Act. SS. Bened. ii. 744. Aldwulf 's mother was Hereswid, Bede, iv. 23, so that on her side he was the nephew of Hilda. He succeeded his uncle Ethelwold in 663, and reigned until 713. For his personal recollection of king Redwald's *&num,' see Bede, ii. 15. His daughter Redburge, or EJburge (or Egburge, Act. SS. Bened iii. 279), became abbess of Repton; Tho. Eli. 1. c. Two others, Ethelburga and Hwaetburga, became abbesses of Hackness. 8 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 1 26. * There was, indeed, no East-Anglian bishop from the martyrdom of king Edmund in 870 to the appointment of Ethelwulf as bishop of Elmham in 956. Queen Etheldred. 251 But the attention of East- Anglian Churchmen was pro- chap, ix, bably attracted, in this year ^"J^j^ with at least equal liveliness of interest, by an event which had all the charm of eccle- siastical romance, while it inaugurated an important monastic undertaking, and had the effect, early in the twelfth century, of restoring another episcopate to the eastern part of England. We must remember that Etheldred ^, the daughter of the Etheldred devout king Anna, and the sister and aunt of several royal * ^' nuns, had become the reluctant wife, first of Tonbert the chief of the Southern Gyrvians or * fen-countrymen,^ who inhabited South Cambridgeshire, and afterwards of Egfrid of North- umbria. The jointure or 'morning-gift^' which she had received from her first husband was no other than the isle of Ely, which Bede describes as a district of ' six hundred hydes ^, like an island, surrounded either by marshes or waters, whence it took its name from the abundance of eels which are caught in those marshes : ' which the historian of the Conquest describes as ' strictly an island ' in the ages before those drainage works ^ which have changed the course of the rivers and altered the face of the country*.' Etheldred led a de- vout life during the five years of her widowhood : and after » See Bede, iv. 19, and Thomas of Ely's Life of St. Etheldred in Act. SS. Bened. ii. 740, and epitomised in Angl. Sac. i. 597. Etheldred was born about 630 at Ermynge, now Ixning, in Suffolk, and married to Tonbert in 652, two years before her father's death. Tonbert died in 655 : and she married Egfrid in 660. " Lappenberg, ii. 338 ; Turner, iii. 71. Hexham, as we have seen, was her jointure from Egfrid. ' As usual, he calls them 'familiae.' Kemble, Cod. Dipl. iii. p. xxx, connects it with the root of 'higan, familia.' Bede, iv. 19 : 'Est auteni Elge,' &c. He had previously described the isle as * imdique aquis ac paludibus circum- data.' See Bentham's Hist, of Ch. of Ely, pp. 47, 79. Thomas of Ely describes it as 'locuB diflBcultate adeundi et arboribus hinc inde circumdatus, habens aquas de supercilio collis tenues, sed irriguas ; ' Vit. S. Etheldr. c. 8, in Act. SS. Ben. ii. 745 : and in his prefatory account of Ely, quoted by Wharton, Angl. Sac. i. xli, this twelfth -century chronicler celebrates the quietness and security of this ' famous isle,' its rich soil, its pleasant gardens and woods, its facilities for sport ('ferarum venatione'), its abundance of cattle and fish : 'Sunt in gremio insulae duodecim ecclesiae cum villis campestribus et modicis in- sularius.' Malmesbury says (G. Pont. p. 322) that the surprise of visitors at the abundance of fish was an amusement to the natives. * Freeman, iv. 462 : see his map there. 252 Foundation of Ely. CHAP. IX. her second marriage, she lived twelve years in Egfrid's house, before she succeeded in extorting his consent to her retire- ment to the monastery of his aunt Ebba at Coldingham. At last, in 6"]%^ she was permitted to take the veil there from the hands of Wilfrid, to whom this unhealthy aversion for her wedded life as such, — for against Egfrid personally she had no complaint, — appeared a token of high sanctity^. After she had spent about a year in the house which reared its lofty buildings near the promontory which still bears the name of its foundress 2, her husband^s longing to regain her, stimulated by the advice of his thanes, who doubtless regarded his previous concession as a weakness, brought him within a short distance of Coldingham. Etheldred had but just time to fly southwards : and legends grew up as to the marvels which had secured her escape and waited on her journey^. At last she found herself safe amid the fens and streams of her own domain ; and there, after some deliberation as to the choice of a site, she fixed upon ' an elevation which in that part of Britain passes for a considerable hill *,' and there founded a double monastery after the model of Whitby and Coldingham ^, the precursor of the great abbey which has left us ' the most stately and varied ^ ' of our cathedral churches. * Bede, iv. 19, quite agrees with Wilfirid. See too Thomas of Ely, c. 9. Contrast St. Columba forbidding a wife to think of going into a nunnery, and citing Rom. vii. 2, Matt. xix. 6 ; Adamnan, ii. 41. Gregory himself declared that ' the dissolution of marriage religionis causa, though allowed by human law, was forbidden by Divine,' quoting Matt. xix. 6 ; Ep. xi. 45. ^ '^^dificia sublimiter erecta,' Bede, iv. 25. ' See Thomas of Ely, c. 11. Etheldred appears in these tales as sheltered for a week by waters miraculously rising up around a hill called Coldbert's Head ; and as halting near the Humber, where her staff, fixed in the ground while she slept, grew into the largest ash-tree in the neighbourhood of • Ethel dredsto we.' See Bentham, Ch. of Ely, p. 52; Handbook to Eastern Cathedrals, pp. 195, 229, on the sculptures representing the life of Etheldred, in the octagon of Ely Cathedral. * Freeman, i. 273. She at first thought of a place called Cratendun, where, according to an Ely legend, a church had been built by St. Augustine and destroyed by Penda ; comp. Thomas's preface in Angl. Sac. i. p. xlii, and his •Vita,' c. 15, in Act. SS. Bened. ii. 754. ' ' Viros et mulieres in eodem simul monasterio . . . et in ecclesia diutius servatum ; ' Tho. Eli. 1 5 . The whole isle was devoted to the purposes of the com- munity; ib. * Freeman, i. 274. Foundation of Ely, 253 At last she was happy, in the life which represented her ideal, chap. ix. and she enjoyed the support of her cousin King Aldwulf, and the counsel and spiritual aid of her chaplain Huna ^, — and, ere long, the companionship of her elder sister Sexburga, the ex-queen of Kent ^. * It is said ' that during her six years' abbacy ' she never wore linen, but always wool : ' that she seldom used a warm bath except on the eves of the three great festivals, among which it is curious to find the Epiphany taking the place of Christmas ^ : and that on those occasions she would first wash, or cause her attendants to wash, the feet of the nuns. Moreover, it was reported that she seldom took more than one meal a day, except on the greater solem- nities, or under some pressing necessity: and that she never failed, when in fair health, to stay in the church, intent on prayer, from the matin service*, which was then said soon after midnight, until dawn. One vivid little touch in Bedels picture ^ combines the early habits of the young East- Anglian princess with the last illness of the abbess-queen, which was caused by the recurring pestilence, but was also accompanied by a huge and painful tumour under the jaw. ' This ailment plfeases me well,' she would say : ' in my young days, * Tho. Eli. c. 15. After her death Huna became a hermit on an islet afterwarda called Hun-ey. According to Thomas, Wilfrid alone exercised episcopal authority in Ely, and hallowed Etheldred as abbess. See Bentham, p. 56, that Ely was exempted from the jurisdiction of the East- Anglian bishop. ' Tho. Eli. c. 18 : 'Sed et sanctonim genetrix Sexburga,' &c. ' * Paschae, Pentecostes, Epiphaniae ;' Bede, iv. 19. In Bele's Ep. to Egbert, c. 9, the chief days are named as the Nativity, the Epiphany, and Easter, Pentecost being omitted. The Epiphany occurs as a pre-eminent holy-day in the Life of Cuthbert, c. 11. * 'Synaxeos.' This word, originally used for (i) a Church meeting for worship, and specifically (2) for the Eucharistic celebration, had come to mean (3) the Divine Ofl&ce for the canonical hours ; see Ducange in v. ; Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 10. Cp. Columban, '&Qg. Coen. 7 ; Bonif. Ep. 29. ' Septem igitur sinaxes sancti patres canendas conatituerunt,' Thorpe's Anc. Laws, p. 328. For references to the matin oflBce, see Bede, iii. 12; iv, 7 ; v. 9. Thomas of Ely says that all the inmates of the monastery were taught * to love Divine worship, et decorem domus Dei tota observantia custodire;' Vit. Etheldr. 15. ' Bede, iv. 19 : • Ferunt autem quia cum praefato tuniore,' &c. He teUs the story of the operation performed by her physician Kynifrid : she died with the incision still ' gaping.' Thomas of Ely says that she used to tell the postulants for admission, 'illam esse veram vitara quae praesentis vitae emeretur incom- mode ;' c. 15. 254 Disorders at Coldingham : CHAP. IX. Colding- ham, I wore heavy necklaces of gold and pearls; — now, in their place, I have to carry this hot red swelling : fit penance for my former vanity, if it may but avail ! ' She died in 679 ^, and was succeeded as abbess by Sexburga. Her stay at Coldingham had probably been subsequent to that visit which Cuthbert, we are told, paid to Ebba, when, ' staying there some days, he exhibited, both in action and in word, that way of righteousness which he preached ^i ' and it was, to all appearance, prior to that grave moral deterioration of this community which by degrees infected all the officials except the abbess ; beginning with mere frivolity and a passion for ' fine garments,' — a frequent infirmity among the inmates of Saxon cloisters ^, — but proceeding, as Bede intimates, in other cases, to 'wickedness' sufficient to discredit the system of double convents^. It is the first instance of monastic corruption which Bede has to record : in his later life he knew of much deflection from the received conventual standard ^, but he mentions none which can match the degeneracy at Coldingham. A priest named iEdgils ^, then a ^ See Alb. Butler, June 23. Florence gives the same date, ' 9 Cal. July.' There is apparently a mistake in the text of Tho. Eli. ' 9 Cal. JuniV (May 24). Sexburga in 695 caused her sister's remains to be re-interred in a white marble coffin brought from the desolate little city of Grantchester or Cambridge ; Bede, iv. 19. The abbacy was held in succession, after Etheldred, by Sexburga, her daughter Ermenild, late queen of Mercia, and her granddaughter Werburga. It was in Edgar's time that the whole jurisdiction within the bounds of the isle of Ely was granted to ' St. Etheldred,' that is, to her church ; Palgrave, p. 165. Comp. Hist. Eli. i. 4 (Gale, Script, i. 465). Her name became popularised as * Audrey,' and a place near Ely was called Aldreth ; see Freeman, iv. 463. ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 10. It was during this visit that he went down one night to the sea, went into it up to his neck, and continued singing psalms till daybreak, then came out, knelt down, and said his prayers, whereupon * two quadrupeds which are commonly called otters ' came up out of the water, fawned upon him, warmed his feet with their breath, and dried them with their hair, — then, when he had blessed them, 'patrias relapsa sunt sub undas.* A monk, watching the scene from a cliff, was so awed that he could scarcely totter home, and implored Cuthbert's pardon. ' Did you then act the spy on me ? Well, I forgive you, if you will tell no one of it while I live.' ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 450, 473, 500; Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 230; also ib. iii. 265, for St. Edith's defence of her splendid clothing; Turner, iii. 47. See Aldhelm, de Laud. Virginitatis, 55-58, and Boniface's Ep. to Cuthbert, c. 9- * Bede, iv. 25, *a malitia inhabitantium,' referring to Vulg. Ps. cvi. 34. « Bede, Ep. to Egbert, 6. * Bede, iv. 25, * Quae mihi cuncta,* &c. its subsequent ruin, 255 monk of the house, lived to tell him how an Irish-born in- chap. ix. mate ^, devoted to penitential asceticism, was one day return- ing' to Coldingham, after an excursion, with a brother-monk, when, looking at the monastery from afar, he predicted that a fire would consume it, and on being afterwards questioned by the abbess, reluctantly told her that he had learned this from a vision 2, but that the doom would not be accomplished in her days : how, after the community was informed of this strange prophecy, some amendment was observable, which, when Ebba was gone, gave place to the old sins, and worse. And so, Bede tells us, with his habitual awe-struck recog- nition of Divine judgments ^, 'while they said, "Peace and safety," the convent was burnt to the ground through some person's carelessness, but,' as *all who knew the case could well perceive,' by 'a heavy vengeance from heaven^.' And now let us turn southward, and place ourselves, in Mercia, imagination, among the Churchmen of Kent attached more or less closely to the archbishop, and thus informed as to eccle- siastical affairs in the southern and central kingdoms. They * His name was Adamnan. He had committed • sceleris aliquid ' in his youth, and when he came to himself had consulted a priest of his own race, asking for penance : ' he was strong, and could even fast a whole week.' ' Do so for three days,' said the adviser, 'and th«n I will return and tell you what more to do.' He never returned, being called away into Ireland. Adamnan, left to himself, took to fasting on all but two days of the week, Sunday and Thursday; Bede, iv. 25. So did St. Adamnan of Hy; Reeves's Adamn. p. Ivii. Bede mentions a priest named Hsemgils who, when he wrote, was an old man living on bread and water, as a hermit in Ireland ; v. 12. In the Life of St. Guthlac by Felix, c. 32, an English attendant on bishop Heddi says 'inter Scottorum se populos habitasse et illic pseudo-anachoretas . . vidisse,' together with truly devout men ; Act. SS. Bened. iii. 278. " An unknown person, he said, stood by him during his nightly devotions, and told him that he alone in the whole community was in earnest about his soul. ' The cells made for prayer or study were turned into places for revelry, conversation, or other allurements.' ' • Lest, while we are yielding to the allurements of the flesh, repentina Ejus ira nos corripiat.' Comp. Bede, v. 13, 14, and Epist. 15, Bed. Op. i. 214. * It is said that on account of these scandals at Coldingham, Cuthbert, when bishop of Lindisfarne, with full 'consent of men and women,' excluded all women ' from the threshold ' of his monastic cathedral (see Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 215), and that a separate church was built on the island ' in campi viventis planitie,' thence called the Green Kirk. De Dun, Eccl. ii. 7, X Script. 16 ; cp. Ann. SS. Ben. ii. 878 • Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 215. 256 Deposition of Winfrid. CHAP. IX. would hear a good deal about the state of the Church in Mercia. King Wulfhere, after losing Lindsey in his war with Egfrid^, and gaining some dearly-bought advantage over Escwin, then king of a part of Wessex, in the battle of Beadanhead or Bedwin^, ended his noble life in 675 ^^ leaving the Church firmly settled in the Midlands : and his son Kenred, being a boy, was passed over in favour of his father's brother Ethelred *, another of those sons of the great Pagan whom Christianity had made so effectually its own. The vacancy of the Mercian throne was contemporaneous with the vacancy of the Mercian bishopric : Winfrid was deposed by Theodore for some ' disobedience ^,' which is not explained by Bede, but has been supposed to mean resistance to a par- tition of the great diocese of Lichfield. Gentle as Winfrid was by nature, he may perhaps have thought himself bound by reverence for Chad's memory to retain Chad's diocese as he had received it. Whether Theodore went through the form of a synodical trial and sentence, we know not; he would be somewhat too likely to disregard such restrictions on his authority®: but Winfrid made no resistance, uttered * Bede, iv. 12 ; see above, p. 180. Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 218, says that he had to ' yield pai-t of his provinces' to Egfrid. ^ Chron. 675. See above, p. 239. On the result of the battle, op. Hen. Hunt., Mon. H. Brit. p. 718. ^ On his reign see Smith's Bede, p. 746 ; Lappenberg, i. 1 78. His chief fault was the unworthy transaction with bishop Wini ; but against this are to be set his exertions for Christianity, not only within his own realm, but in regaixi to the South-Saxon king. 'Christi nomen ubique locorum regni sui prsedicare jussit ;' Florence, a. 675. ' Christian itatem vix in regno suo palpitantem . . . enixissime juvit;* Malmesb. G. Reg. i. 4. He was buried at Lichfield. After his death his wife Ermenild took the veil at Sheppey, and his daughter Werburga at Ely. * See Freeman, i. 107. So among the Picts, ' the law of primogeniture was only partially recognised ; ' Robertson, Scotland under Early Kings, i- 34. ^ Bede, iv. 6 : ' Per meritum cujusdam inobedientiae.* Malmesbury says that he was expelled from Lichfield by king Ethelred * quia Egfridi partium fuerat' (G. Pontif. p. 221) ; but this w^uld place the expulsion in 679, whereas Saxulf succeeded to Lichfield * not long after ' the Council of Hertford (Bede, iv. 6), and probably in 675 (Stubbs, Registr. p. 3). 'He was unbuxum in Bom poynt ; ' Trevisa's transl. of Polychron. b. i. c. 55. « He acted ' pro placito ; ' Malmesb. Gest. Pontif. p. 6. See Collier, i. 239. Bingham says that even if a metropolitan could depose a suflfragan by his sole Erconwaldy Bishop of London, 257 no appeal. He retired to the monastery of Barrow, which ohap. ix. seems to have been under his own personal jurisdiction : and after some experiences on the continent, which, as we shall see, were almost grotesquely unfortunate, he ended his life, under the peaceful roof of his own convent, ' in all holy con- versation ^.' He was succeeded by Saxulf, the abbot, and, in a sense, the founder of Medeshamstede ^ who, after having, as the monastic chronicler, Hugh the White, assures us, * given birth to several dependent monasteries,' left the parent house in the care of a monk named Cuthbald^. * At that time also,' writes Bede, ' Theodore appointed Erconwald Erconwald to be bishop, in the city of London, for the East- London. Saxons *.' In after days, when this prelate was honoured as a saint, it was said that, when a little boy, he had heard Mellitus preach in London^. Bede has much to tell us of the ' two noble monasteries ' that he founded, before his epi- scopate, for himself and for his sister Ethelburga^, — one at Chertsey in Surrey, the other at Barking in Essex. The former was raised by the help of Frithwold, a Mercian sub- king "^ : the latter, like Whitby and others, was a double foundation, having a separate area for the monks apart from the nuns' building, and even a separate chapel, or oratory, for authority, the act was subject to revision by the synod ; b. ii. c. i6. s. i6. * Occasionally he ventured to transgress the strict letter of the canons ; ' Lin- gard, A.-S. Ch. 1. 78. * Bede, iv. 6 : ' Depositus vero Vynfrid,' &c. ^ ' Constructor et abbas,' Bede, 1. c. ' He had founded a monastery * cum heremiticis cellulis * at a place called Ancarig, afterwards Thorney, in Cambridgeshire. See Hugo Cand. in Sparke, Scr. Van), pp. 6-8 ; Sprott's Chron. ed. Heame,p. 172 ; Monast. Angl. ii. 571, 593- * Bede, 1. c. Alb. Butler, April 30 ; Tanner, Not. Mon. on Chertsey. Cp. Milman, Ann. St. Paul's, p. 11. 5 Dugdale, Hist. St. Paul's, p. 289. * For '^dilburge,* as Bede writes her name, see Alb. Butler, Oct. 11. ' Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 143. See Monast. Angl. i. 426 ; Frithwald is called ' Surrianorum subregulus Regis Wlfarii.' A description of the boundaries of Chertsey abbey-land traces them from ' the mouth of the Way to the eels' ditch, to the old military way, to the great willow, ... to the sweet well, the old spinney, the holm-oak, the three hills, . . . the march-brook, the three trees,' &c. Ethelburga was succeeded by Hildilith, a friend of Aldhelm ; comp. Bede, iv. 10; Aldh. de Laud. Virgin, i. Tanner dates the foundation of Chertsey, from its register, in 666. S 258 Aldhelm, CHAP. IX. each order ^. Of Barking Bede tell us, on the authority of a memoir of contemporary date, some eight remarkable stories, several of which refer to the ravages of the Yellow Pest, and some belong to the class of instances of mysterious conscious- ness, or prevision, shortly preceding death 2. When Bede wrote^ men believed that the horse-litter^ in which, when infirm, Erconwald used to go about his diocese, was invested with wonder-working efficacy : a belief which could not have grown up unless the bishop had endeared himself to his people by true pastoral and self-sacrificing activity, such as would go far to consolidate the fabric of Church life on ground that had once seemed to offer no sure foundation. AlcUielm. Another event of 675 would call forth eager interest in the precincts of the ecclesiastical school in Canterbury. One of the students, Aldhelm*, a youth of princely West-Saxon blood ^, who had shown a pre-eminent faculty for acquiring all the lore of the time, — Greek as well as Latin, and even Hebrew, — together with music and metrical rules ^, and had * Bede, iv, 7 : • Cujus radius lucis,' &c. Comp. Mabillon, Ann. Benedict, i. 397- ^ One story is of a vision, at dawn, of a radiant human body wrapt in linen, and borne up by cords brighter than gold out of the chamber reserved for dying sisters, — shortly before the death of Ethelburga ; Bede, iv. 9. In this passage we find the word ' pausare,' ' to go to rest ' in death ; comp. Bede, v. 8. In Adamn. Vit. Col. iii. 23 the word is applied to the remains of the dead, * in quo . . . sancti pausant ossa.' The chamber of the dying is re- ferred to in Bede, iv. 24. ^ Bede, iv. 6 : ' Etenim usque hodie,' &c. * Alb. Butler, May 25 ; Turner, Angl.-Sax. iii. 400. ® Faricius, abbot of Abingdon, who wrote his Life (Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxxix. 65), makes him the nephew of king Ine' — a manifest anachronism, as Malmesbury observes, — who adds that Aldb elm's father Kenten was a kinsman, not a brother, of Ine; Gest. Pontif. p. 332. See Elmham, p. 267, * Aldhelm needs not to have his lineage supported by falsehoods.' Kemble (ii. 373) describes him as ' closely connected with the royal family of Wessex.' ® Bede calls him a man most learned * aU round, ... a wonder of erudition in liberal as well as in sacred literature;' v. 18. See his Epist. 4, to bishop Heddi, on the study of metre and of calculations ; his work ' De Septenario, et de Metris,' &c. ; his frequent quotations from Latin poets. Faricius says that he could speak and write Greek ; Vit. Aldh. c. i. See Milner, Hist. Winch, p. 82. His reading, in fact, exceeded his literary discretion and good taste. We must not wonder at his believing that St. Clement of Rome wrote the 'Itinerarium Petri,' that Pope Sylvester bound a pestilent serpent, or that Constantine was healed of leprosy by being baptized ; De Laud. Virg. 25. Abbot of Malmesbury, 259 astonished even sucli a teacher as Hadrian by his aptitudes chap. ix. and attainments ^ had returned into Wessex, and become a member of a small community under the teaching and government of an Irish monk named Mailduf^, — probably Moeldubh, — 'in erudition a philosopher/ who had been attracted by the beauty of the woods around a place called Bladon or Ingelbome, had obtained leave to build a hut beneath the walls of its old castle ^, and had there lived by monastic rule, and taken pupils for his subsistence*. He brought with him all the culture for which Irish scholars were then famous ^ : a monastic society grew up around him, and the settlement became known as * Mailduf 's burgh,' or Malmesbury. Aldhelm had returned to Canterbury^, but his second sojourn there was broken off by bad health, as we learn from his own letter to Hadrian, 'the revered preceptor of his childhood '^.' He returned to his studies under Mailduf, was ordained priest by Bishop Lothere ^, and in 675, on Mailduf's resignation, became abbot. Better days now dawned on the poor and hard-working community. They had hardly been able to secure daily bread: but 'the re- nown of their new superior put an end to these straits^,' and a crowd of new brethren bore witness to his attractive- ness as an instructor and a spiritual guide. It is probable enough that one or another great landowner came forward to assist the brotherhood ^^. The lowly chapel of Mailduf was * Malmesb. p. 333. Aldhelm refers to Theodore as having personally given instructions; Ep. 3. * Bade, V. 18; Malmesb. p. 334; Lanigan, iii. 100. An Irishman 'ignoti nominis' reminded Aldhelm, 'You were bred up under a certain holy man of our race ;' Ep. 5. See Newman on University Education, p. 31. ' 'Nemoris amoenitate . . . captus ; ' Malm. p. 334; Mon. Angl. 1. 253, 257. * ' Deficientibusque necessariis, scholares in discipula tum accepit,' &c. ; Malm. p. 334. « See Aldh. Ep. 3. * • Iterum Cantiae studuit ; ' Malm. p. 334. ' Aldh. Ep. 7. In Ep. 3 he alludes to him as ' urbanitate enucleata ineffa- biliter praedito.' * Faricius, c. i. The grant of land at Malmesbury by Lothere is a manifest forgery ; Monast. Angl. i. 257. * Malmesb. G. P. p. 345 : ' Correxit nobilitas Aldelmi victualium inopiara.* ^ Mahnesb. G. P. p. 349. The charter ascribed to Kenfrid is very grandi- loquent, and bespeaks a later time. That of King Ethelred is much simpler (Cod. Dipl. i. 27). But both may be spurious, and yet the tradition of some S % 260 Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, CHAP. IX. superseded by ' a more august church in honour of the Lord the Saviour, and of the first apostles Peter and Paul i.' One incident of his earlier days at Malmesbury brings him more livingly before us than all the panegyrics on his sanctity or his manifold acquirements, or on that style which to us appears so full of turgid afiectations ^, although to William of Malmesbury it seemed to combine the several excellencies of English, Greek, and Latin ^. The anecdote was derived from no less an authority than Alfred the Great *. It seems that the rude West- Saxons of the district were wont to hasten home after hearing mass, without waiting for the sermon, — sometimes, indeed, to neglect church altogether^. Aldhelm, who had learned to sing, and to compose ballads, while a student at Canterbury, saw his way to making use of that talent. He took his station on the bridge, which led from the little town into the country, and confronted the passers-by ^, who were intent on their marketings, but, like all Saxons, were fascinated by music '^, and stopped when he began a lively song^. * Having done this more than once. such grants may be trustworthy. One in wliich Baldred, in August 688, gives ' some land to Abbot Aldhehn,' is referred by Kemble to Cadwalla's reign ; Cod. Dipl. i. 32. * Malmesb. G. P. p. 345. He afterwards built two other churches within the precinct, St. Mary's and St. Michael's; Malm. p. 361. He adds that ' tota majoris ecclesiae fabrica * subsisted to his own time, surpassing aU other ancient English churches in size and beauty. ^ E. g. Ep. 3, or the De Laudibus Virginitatis, c. 2, 12, 32. Of that work Malmesbury says, ' Nihil dulcius, nihil splendidius ; ' G. Keg. i. 2. His pedantry frequently takes a classical form : he talks, e. g. of the ' dura Parcarum quies,' and calls St. Athanasius a ' sacred flamen.' He is fond of Greek words, as doxa, Sophia, kata, — and of alliteration ; Ep. 3. ' Language that rivals Armado or Holofemes, or Euphues; ' Haddan's Kemains, p. 267. See Turner, Angl.- Sax. iii. 403, *a series of bombastic amplifications;' and Lingard, A.-S. Cb. ii. 152. ^ Malmesb. G. P. p. 344. Bede calls Aldhelm 'sermone nitidus,' v. 18 ; praise to which he himself is far better entitled. See Lingard, ii. 153, * Malmesbury, p. 336, referring to Alfred's Handbook, ib. 333. Comp, Faricius, c. i : he gives it with some variations. 5 So Faricius. ^ According to Faricius, he met them as they were flocking into the town ; according to Malmesbury (or rather, Alfred), when they were hastening home * statim cantatis missis.' ' See the story of Csedmon, below. Cp. Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 155. ® This song was long afterwards popularly current ; Malmesb. p. 336. Heddi, Bishop of Winchester, 261 and gathered a crowd of listeners,' he glided from such chap. ix. minstrelsy into a strain that brought in sacred words, and brought home serious thoughts. This 'blameless guile ^' proved effective, where ecclesiastical censures 'would have done no good whatever 2;' and his Pauline versatility was rewarded by a manifest increase of religious earnestness in his congregations. His bishop Loth ere died in the year following his own Wessex. appointment to the abbacy^: and Theodore, in London, and doubtless with Erconwald's assistance, consecrated Heddi, who, says Bede, was qualified for episcopal duties rather by an innate love of goodness than by any book-learning *, but who evidently appreciated the abilities and the character of the scholar-abbot, for we find Aldhelm writing to him as to his 'peculiar patron,' and dilating on the diflficulties of Roman law, of prosody, arithmetical calculations, astronomy, and astrology^. The West-Saxon realm was just now in a somewhat chaotic state: there seem to have been several sub-kings, — one of them, Escwin^, more potent than the rest, but no one acknowledged by all, until by degrees * Christian Year, Fifth Sunday after Trinity. ^ ' Profecto profecisset nihil,' Mahnsb. p. 336. ^ See Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 16, for a charter dated on Nov. 6 in this year 676, and ascribed to ' Osric, king, ' i. e. sub-king, of the Hwiccas. He is made to say that when first the Gospel doctrines were brought home to him after his baptism, he had confined himself to the erection of a ' pontifical chair : ' but that he has ' now ' resolved to found * ccenobialia loca ' for men and for women, and grants to abbess Bertana land near the city called Hat Bathu (i.e. Bath, called Hata-Bathum in Chron. a. 972). But the document exhibits the signatures of both Lothere and his successor Heddi, whereas Heddi was not consecrated in Lo there's lifetime; Bede, iv. 12. Osric might be sub-king as early as 676 : he was so, certainly, about 690 (Bede, iv. 23), and apparently in 68 1 , when he is said to have founded the monastery of Gloucester. The diffi- culty caused by Florence's mention of Oshere as sub-king in 679 might be got over : he probably antedated O.shere. But the matter of the document would seem to show that, if genuine, it must be ascribed to a later year. * Bede, v. 18 : 'Bonus quippe erat,' &c. On this Malmesbury says, 'Non parvo moveor scrupulo, quippe qui legerim ejus formales epistolas non nimis indocte compositas;' G. P. p. 159. See the Unes addressed to him, and ascribed to Theodore, 'Te nunc, sancte speculator,' &c., in Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 203. * Aldh. Ep. 4. On the study of Roman law at this period, see Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. p. viii. Cp. Eddi, 42, on Wilfrid. * ' Nearest to the royal stock,' says Malmesbury, G. Reg. i. 2. 262 Fotmdaiion of Abingdon. CHAP. IX. Kentwin^, a brother of Kenwalch, establislied his sovereignty, and, although an elderly man, displayed on one occasion the warlike energy of his house by ' driving the Britons to the sea 2.' His name is of some interest to us in this Thames valley, in connection with the original foundation of the great abbey of St. Mary of Abingdon. For it was in the first year of his reign that Hean ^, the nephew of the sub-king Cissa, obtained from his uncle a grant of land for a monastery amid the ' Bagley-wood ' of that period, on a spot called Abben's hill*, a name transferred some twenty years later to Seukesham^, when,, after many delays^, the design was ^ Comp. Bede, iv. 12, with Chron. 676, which makes Kentwin succeed to Escwin. Some verses ascribed to Aldhelm describe a church founded by Bugge, daughter of Kentwin (prob. lect.) during the reign of Ine. 2 Chron. 682. • Victoriosus et vehemens,' Hen. Hunt. M. H. B. p. 718. ^ Chron. Abingd. vol. ii. pp. vii. 269. Hean is said to have been stirred by a sermon on ' the camel and the needle's eye.' This seems an imitation of the story about St. Antony. The land granted by Cissa was a piece of the public ^ ' folcland ; ' ib. pp. xii, 497. Hean's sister Cilia actually founded a nunnery at a place called Helenstow : it was afterwards removed to Wytham ; vol. i. P-8. * 'A little beyond the vill called Sunningwell, between two very lovely streams which enclose the spot quasi quemdam sinum ; ' Chron. Abingd. i. 3. In other words, ' near Bayworth ; ' ib. ii. 268. See Tanner, Not. Mon. p. 10, ' two miles nearer Oxford than the present ' Abingdon, ' near Bayworth, or Chilswell,' where ChilsweU. farm now stands, on old property of the abbey, below Hen-wood (qu. Hean's ?) The tale of an Irish (or British) monk *Abben,' who dwelt on the 'mount' as an abbot, is a mere legend: 'Abingdon' is derived from Abba, an early settler in Berkshire ; Chron. Abb. ii. p. v. In the legendary story there figures ' a hermit who dwelt in Cumnor Wood ; ' ib. p. 270. ^ Or ' Sheovesham.* The Chronicle describes Seukesham as ' civitas famosa, . . divitiis plena,' surrounded by broad green meadows, where were found traces of British Christianity, and among them a black cross, which no one could profane by perjury * sine periculo vitse,' &c. ; i. 6, 7 J and which became the palladium of the abbey. ^ See Stevenson's Chron. Abingd. i. 9, for the alleged charter of king Ine, dated 699, marked as spurious by Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 53, but supposed by Stevenson to be reducible into component parts, which, taken separately, present no difficulties ; Chr. Ab. ii. 496. The transactions, in his view, were as follows : Cissa grants some lands to Hean for monastic purposes ; Cad walla, when king of Wessex, grants some twenty * hydes,' which, according to the fragment of his charter, he had measured 'partim equitando, partim navigando ; ' Ine finds that Hean has not complied with the conditions of Cissa's grant, revokes it, and ' restores the land to the commonwealth.' Hean then promises that there shall be no further delay, takes the vows of a monk, and appoints an unnamed person as bis abbot : thereupon Ine renews the grant. But within Mercian Invasion of Kent, 263 carried out on tliat ground near the river where we still see chap. ix. some scanty remains of the once stately monastery which made the new 'Abbendun/ our Abingdon, ecclesiastically and historically important. Heddi must have come into the valley — at what time, we know not, but probably soon after his consecration — when he removed the bones of St. Birinus from Dorchester to Winchester^, in token that the West-Saxon capital was now the one seat of the West-Saxon prelacy, — and withal deprived Dorchester of cathedral rank. Kent itself was now to feel the sharp edge of an invader's Ethelred sword. King Lothere had given some offence to Ethelred ^ ; Kentf^ or, perhaps, Penda's son was fired with the passion of a conqueror. He came down on the weaker kingdom at the head of a hostile force, and laid waste not only towns or villages, but 'churches and monasteries,, without respect to piety or the fear of God ^.' Even in Canterbury some alarm well may have been felt for the archiepiscopal church, and for the monastery of St. Peter, which had recently obtained a ^privilege' from Pope Adeodatus, denouncing spiritual censures against all who should disturb it*. But Rochester was actually destroyed. Its bishop, Putta, was just then absent: but on hearing of the disaster, he lost all heart. ' His church had been stripped of all its property, and laid desolate.' The simple-minded, inactive man had no spirit or energy for such a crisis. He withdrew into Mercia, — into the very country whence the ravagers had come, — attracted, perhaps, by the known kindness and muni- ficence of Bishop Saxulf, who gave him a church, and a small piece of land^, at Hereford. Here Putta dwelt, exercising five years, Hean, with his abbot's consent, cancels this arrangement, and is absolved from his vows, a.d. 699. The actual establishment of the monastery took place some years later, during Aldhelm's episcopate. The Abingdon Chronicler did injustice to Ine's motives, vol. i. p. 9. ^ Bede, iii. 7. "^ See Malmesb. G. P. p. 135. ' Bede, iv. 12. He dates this in 676. Lothere, says Hen. Hunt., * divertit se a conspectu ejus.' * Elmham, p. 245. Another privilege, professing to come from Pope Agatho, May 15, 675, is 'of questionable authenticity;' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 124. ^ 'Agelli non grandis,' Bede, iv. 12. The name of Hereford, 'the ford of 264 Putta at Hereford. CHAP. IX. Cuthbert prior of Lindis- fame. his ministry in quietness, and, according to Bede, visiting other churches when called upon to give instructions in ecclesiastical music. This does not point to the regular formation of a bishopric; yet Putta's name heads the list of bishops of Hereford. From the first, of course, he would not refuse to perform episcopal functions in the surrounding district of Hecana\ as a deputy for Saxulf ^ ; and he might easily pass from this position into that of a recognised chief pastor of the country. In that tran- quil home beside the Wye, where now the venerable ca- thedral and its dependent buildings give a special charm to the Hereford ' precinct/ Putta spent the rest of his life, ' never thinking at all ' of a return to Rochester, where his successor Cwichelm found it impossible, for lack of means, to maintain himself, and resigned in 678, when Theodore consecrated Gebmund^. Once more let us look northwards. The year of Ethelred's raid in Kent, and Putta's settlement at Hereford, was marked in Northumbria by an event of importance in the life of one who was gradually becoming the typical saint of that realm. Cuthbert had been removed by his abbot Eata from Melrose to Lindisfarne, *that he might there also teach the rule of monastic perfection with the authority of a prior, and set it forth by a virtuous example*.' He improved the discipline of the monastery by a compilation of new rules ^, drawn up at Eata's desire : and it was now his task to over- come the repugnance with which the monks regarded what they deemed an additional burden. Thus he had to face an opposition, on the part of daily and hourly associates, the army,' records the passing of Saxon forces over the river 'to harry the Welsh borders; ' Taylor's Words and Places, p. 268. ^ Pearson's Hist. Maps, p. 25. ^ See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 130. ^ Bede, iv. 12. * Bede, iv. 27; Vit. Cuthb. 16; De Mirac. S. Cuthb. 14; Vit. Anon. 1. 3 (Bede, vol. vi. p. 368). This cannot have been as early as 664, as Eaine supposes (St. Cuthbert, p. 17 ST.), following Simeon. ^ The author of the Anonymous Life says, ' Et nobis regularem vitam primum componens constituit, quam usque hodie cum Regula Benedict! ob* servamus.' See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 217. Cuihderij Prior of Lindisfarne. 265 which, as Bede hints, extended to some bodily ill-treatment ^ ; chap. ix. which would have certainly worn out one less firm, or exasperated one less loving, but which could not even ruffle his brow or sharpen his tones, and gradually yielded to the sweet power of his 'modest patience.' 'When, in dis- cussions, he was harassed by insulting language, he would suddenly rise, break up the meeting, and go out with a calm face ^ and a quiet mind : on the very next day, as if he had met with no gainsaying whatever, he would repeat again the same exhortations, until, by degrees, he brought them round to what he desired.' His daily conduct was a lesson of devotion : sometimes he spent three or four nights together in vigil and prayer, without ever lying down : he was either alone in some retired place, or making something with his hands ^, while he recited psalms *, by way of keeping off sleepiness, or going about the island to see that all was well. If any of the monks complained of being disturbed in their nightly or noonday slumber, he would say pleasantly, 'J am never annoyed by being aroused to do or think of something useful ^.' When he celebrated, ' it was rather his * 'Quae vel animo vel corpori adversa ingerebantur ; ' Bede, V. C. i6. ^ ' Placido vultu.' Further on, * inter tristia . . . faciem praetendens hilarem.' * A difficult antagonist : he would not dispute j he would not quaiTel ; but he would be obeyed; ' Christ. Remembr. No. 75. p. 69. What he looked like may be gathered from incidental descriptions, and from the account of the discovery of his skeleton in 1827 (see Raine's St, Cuthbert, p. 183; above, p. 208). His height was about five feet ten inches, his head rather small, his hands (see Bede, iv. 31) large and broad. ' Compare the ancient monks' habit of ' twisting ropes ' (Coteler. Eccl. Gr. Mon. i. 340) or weaving palm-leaves into baskets ; Sozomen, vi. 29. * References to the devotional use of the Psalter are frequent in Bede. Thus, the monks of Hexham used to keep vigil with • plurima psalmorum laude,' at • Heavenfield,' on the night before the anniversary of St. Oswald's death ; Bede, iii. 2. Psalms were said for the soul of Hilda ; iv. 23 : cp. v. 14. The Hewalds were constantly occupied in psalms and prayers; v. 10. For Cuthbert's psalmody see Vit. Cuthb. 5, 34. Psalms were sung in Benedict Biscop's cell during his last illness ; Hist. Abb. 9. Bede spent a large part of his last days ' in psalmorum cantu ; ' Cuthbert's letter to Cuthwin. The custom was carried to excess when, e. g. Ceolfrid and his companions recited the whole Psalter twice a day, beside the psalms of the hours, on their Rome- ward journey ; Hist. Abb. 16 : or when the English-born Willehad almost always sang * one psalter ' a day, sometimes even two or three ; Vit. S. Will. 9. Compare Bede, iii. 27, on the amoimt of Egbert's psalmody. 5 Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 16 : *Nemo . . . mihi molestiam facit me excitando de 266 Cuthbert^ Prior of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, hermit on Farne. CHAP. IX. heart than his voice that was uplifted ' at the Siirsum corda : nor could he ever complete the service without tears ^. As an administrator of discipline, his zeal for what was right became sternness towards all who were doing wrong: but honest confession awakened all his sympathy, and the penitent would be drawn into better ways by a renewed experience of such tenderness united to such sanctity^. He used garments neither over-neat nor slovenly; and his proscription of rich colours became a tradition among the Lindisfarne monks ^. As at Melrose, he found work to do among the country people, and by his frequent visits, as his custom was, he stirred up many to seek after a heavenly reward. Stories were told, as in his earlier life, about wonderful effects from his prayers *. Altogether, he seemed to be eminently the man for the place ; yet after several years thus spent, he took a step which must seem strange to us, though to the men of his time it appeared to be the very crown of contemplative and ascetic perfection. In 676^, when he was about forty-five, he gave up his duties as prior of Lindisfarne, in order to live as a ^ recluse ' on the neighbouring islet of Fame, which Aidan had used for his periodical retirements. His biographers regarded him as * having thus chosen the better part ^ ; ' — as if he had not somno,' &c. It was usual for monks to sleep for awhile before or after the matin service ; comp. Bede, iv. 24 ; v. 9. St. Liudger used to sleep, after the ' psalmody ' of noctums, in a ' solar ' of the church of Utrecht ; Vit. Liudg. 16. ^ Bede, V. C. 16. The celebration was still, as in Aidan 's time, confined to Sundays; ib. 44. ^ Bede, V. C. 16: 'Erat zelo justitise fervidus,' &c. ^ Bede, V. C. 16: • Vestimentis utebatur communibus,' &c. * Bede, \^. C. 15. '^ Simeon, de Dun. Eccl. i. 7, 9 (X Script. 4, 5) gives this date. It appears, indeed, that Simeon antedates his coming to Lindisfarne by some years ; but he may be right as to the time of his resignation, as having taken place in 676, and in the third year before the consecration of Eata, which was late in 678. Bede assigns to him, vaguely, * many ' years of priorship both at Melrose and at Lindisfarne ; V. C. 16, 17. ^ So Sim. Dunelm. : • pater dulcissime, sedebas cum Maria secus pedes Domini, optimam partem eUgens.' (Comp. Life of St. Deicolus, 16, Act. SS. Ben. ii. 108, much to the same purport.) Bede (Vit. Cuth. 17) considers that he was thereby advancing ' de virtute in virtutem.* Before retiring to Fame he spent some time in * a secluded place in the outskirts of the monastery ' (• cellae ') of Lindisfarne; Bede, V. C. 17 ; words which do not bear out the opinion that this, his j&rst essay at hermit-life, was made in a cave bearing his He retires to Fame. 267 proved his own signal capacities for that union of service chap. ix. and of devotion which he had enjoyed while dwelling in a community. The unhealthy extravagance into which the ecclesiastical mind of that age was led, on such subjects, by the accumulating influences of its hagiology, mingles with the good sense which such a writer as Bede exhibits on other matters. No one, apparently, remonstrated with Cuthbert: every one thought he was doing the very thing which would make him still more pleasing to God. He himself, however, was accustomed after his retirement to warn his friends against an exaggerated estimate of his hermit-life, and to extol as truly admirable the life of obedient monks in a community ^. It was for his own special profit, as he viewed it, that he determined to live in solitude : and accordingly, he took up his abode in an island which had never before been regularly inhabited 2, and constructed for himself a round hut roofed with logs and straw : its wall, made of huge stones and turf, rose externally above a man's height, but internally was sunk much deeper, ' so that the pious inhabitant might see nothing but the sky^.' The cottage, as Bede once calls it*, had two compartments, one of which served as an oratory ^ : name near Howbum ; Raine's St. Cuthbert, p. 20. Probably it was in some remote part of Holy Island, such as that to which his successor retired for Lenten devotions ; Bede, V. C. 42. Irish monasteries sometimes had 'diserts ' or places for solitary devotion : there was one such, near the shore, in Hy ; Keeves's Adamnan, p. 366. * * Ne conversationem ejus quasi singulariter excelsam mirarentur .... "Sed jure," inquit, "est coenobitarum vita mirabilis . . . quorum plurimos novi meam parvitatem longe . . . anteire;"' Bede, V. C. 22. ^ See Eaine's St. Cuthbert, p. 20 ff. ; Murray's Durham and Northumber- land, p. 212. It is not a 'little sandbank' (Green, H. Engl. P.p. 32), but a • rocky isle,' Kingsley, Hermits, p. 290 ; see Bede, iv. 28. It was believed to be haunted by fiends, who retired at his arrival ; ib. ^ Bede, V. C. 16 : • Quatenus . . . plus incola nil . . . praeter coelum posset intueri.* Or, as in iv. 28, ' coelum tantum . . . cujus introitum sitiebat,' &c. * 'Casula,' Bede, Vit. Cuth. 27. In c. 18, * tuguriunculum ; ' elsewhere 'niansio' or 'monasterium;' op. iv. 28, 'mansionem angustam.' ° In Vit. Cuthb. 46 Bede speaks of its walls as ' tabulis minus diligenter coaptatis compositi.' It looked southwards : he afterwards erected a cross outside it, and placed under the turf, to the north of it, a sarcophagus given him by the abbot Cudda. On the site stands a chapel probably 700 years old, fitted up for service which is performed ' about twice a year ;* Murray's Durham and Northumberland, p. 213. 268 Hermit-life of CuthberL CHAP. IX. and one window, which looked to the west. In the centre, with the help of Lindisfarne monks, he dug a pit, which next morning appeared like a well full of water, — of water, it was thought, miraculously produced from the hard rock ^. A larger hut, for visitors^, was built at the landing-place, looking towards Lindisfarne, with a spring of water near at hand. Cuthbert, at first, used to leave his cell in order to greet his brethren, and wash their feet with warm water ^, a service which they sedulously returned. They brought him supplies of bread, until, in order not to burden the monastery, he made them bring him some instruments of husbandry, and some grain: — wheat, when sown, did not come up, but in the next year barley answered better*. To his brethren these visits must have been landmarks in their life ^ : but other friends came to see him, as Herbert * The water never failed, and never ' flooded the pavement ; ' Vit, Cuthb. l8 ; cp. iv. 28. * 'Major domus,' Vit. Cuthb. 17. He had himself been hospitaller at Eipon. There was such an office at Lindisfarne ; Bede, iv. 31 ; cp. Vit. Cuthb. 44. Some Irish monasteries also had • guest-houses,' as at Armagh ; see Keeves's Adamnan, pp. 157, 361. ^ Cp. Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. 4. He very seldom took off his leathern buskins. Bede says that he kept them one year, from Easter to Easter, save for the solemn feet-washing on Maundy Thursday; Vit. Cuthb. 18. * ' Adferte, rogo, hordeum, si forte vel illud fructum facere possit ; ' Vit Cuthb. 19. He had promised them that if he could not grow com for his own food he would return to Lindisfarne : Bede, iv. 28, 'Si mihi Divina gratia,' &c. * According to Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 8, he used to tell them that if he were on a rock in the midst of the ocean, hidden from aU men's view, he should still not think himself free from the snares of the world and the love of money. And Bede (Vit. Cuthb. 27) tells a striking story, which Cuthbert himself told in a sermon at Carlisle. One Christmas Day, some Lindisfarne monks came over to Fame, and begged him to leave his cell, and spend the ' solemn and joyful day * with them in the guest-house. He consented: and they all sat down to their Christmas dinner, in the midst of which, as if stirred by an inward impulse, he began to talk of watchfulness against trials. The monks thought there was a time for all things. * Do let us spend this day in gladness : it is our Lord's birthday.' ' Well,' said he, ' let us do so.' Presently, while they were enjoying themselves 'epulis et fabulis,' he was again moved to speak of preparing for trials. The poor monks became a little impatient ; they tliought the advice good, but inopportune. • We have more than enough days for fast and vigil : to-day let us rejoice in the Lord, in memory of the great joy for all people.' * Very well,' he said. But when, once more, the irrepressible warn- ing broke from his lips, they felt that it meant something, and said, ' Let us do as you say.' He declared afterwards that he knew no more than they did of Hermit-life of Cuthbert, 269 the hermit of the isle on Derwentwater, who paid him a chap. ix. yearly visit to enjoy his 'salutary instructions^.' And be- side these, from distant parts of Britain came strangers to tell him of their private troubles, ' and no man took home with him the sorrow that he brought/ Cuthbert knew well how to cheer the afflicted with thoughts of heaven, or of the fleetingness of earthly evil or good : he could ' describe to the tempted the various lures which might ensnare a soul destitute of love for God or for the brethren, but which a soul strong in perfect faith could pass through like a spider's web ^ : ^ ' his speech, seasoned with salt, was wont to instruct the ignorant, reconcile those who were at variance, and make all feel that nothing was to be preferred to the love of Christ^.' True it is, that the account of those nine years in Fame cannot stop here: solitude acted on Cuthbert's nerves and imagination as it had done on those of other hermits*, and conjured up phantoms of visible fiendish assault; and as time went on in that wild and grim retreat ^^ the morbid element in his devotion became stronger ; he would not come forth on the arrival of visitors, he would but look at them through the window ; at last he even kept this closed, save when his blessing was ex- pressly besought ^. Enough of this : yet let us remember, in order to do justice to a phenomenon which to us may bear a fanatical aspect, that the hermit-life of Cuthbert was to the rude minds around him an impressive repre- sentation of spiritual power, and was largely overruled for the comfort of many a sore heart which would not otherwise any approacliing trotible ; but when they returned home, they found one of their brethren dead of the pestilence, which raged for nearly a year afterwards, carrying off the majority of that 'noble society.' 'And now, brethren,' Cuthbert concluded, ' do you also be watchful in prayer, that if any tribula- tion should come upon you, it may find you ready to meet it.' * Bede, V. C. 28 ; cp. Bede, iv. 29. 2 Bede, V. C. 22. ' Anon. Vit. Bed. Op. vi. 372. * See St. Athanasius, Life of Antony, c. 9 : ^v b roiros (v9ifs irenXTjpojfjifvos {powTaaias Xcovruv, apKTocv . . . , and for St. Gutblac, below, c. xii. ' Compare Bede, v. i, for the sounds which a dweller on Fame would often hear, ' fragore procellarum ac ferventis oceani.' « Bede, V. C. 18, end. 270 Foundation of Wearmouth. CHAP. IX. have come under his ministiy. Nor did it impair his gentle- ness, his lowliness, his habitual brightness of countenance and temper 1. Still, when all this is said, we must still think that he was less truly a saint while dwelling in Fame than when, at Lindisfarne or at Melrose, he ' lived according to Holy Scripture, leading the contemplative within the active life^.' Wear- Passing on, in imagination, further south, we reach that niout . domain, situated on the north bank of the Wear^, which King Egfrid had granted to Benedict Biscop on his return from his fourth visit to Rome. As the grant was made out of the king's private property, there was no need of any legal process to convert a piece of the national 'folk- land' into 'bookland' to be held under charter*: the land was simply transferred as bookland from Egfrid to Benedict, with the injunction to raise on it a monastery in honour of St. Peter. The foundation is dated in 674 ^ : a year later, Benedict made a special journey to Gaul in order to obtain skilled masons, such as he could not find nearer home, for the erection of the abbey church. In this he was aided by a friend, an abbot named Torthelm ^ : the church, ' built of stone after the Roman fashion, which the founder always loved '^,' rose with great rapidity : when it was nearly finished, he sent for Prankish glaziers, who not only glazed the * Anon. Vit. C. : 'Omni hora hilaris et Isetus;' Bed. Op. vi. 372. So Athanasius says of Antony, that the gladness of his soul kept his countenance cheerful ; Vit. Ant. 67. Compare the account of Cuthbert taming the eider- ducks. Raine describes one of the garments in which his bones were found wrapt as having eider-ducks depicted on it; St. Cuthbert, p. 194. On his fondness for these animals see Kingsley, Hermits, p. 295. ^ Anon. Vit. C. : ' Vivens ibi quoque secundum Sanctam Scripturam, con- templativam vitam in actuali agens.' . ^ See Svirtees, Hist, and Antiq. of Durham, ii. 2. * • De suo largitus ; ' Bede, Hist. Abb. 4. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 240 ; if a royal founder did not thus 'give a parcel out of his own bocland,' he had * to convert, with consent of the witan,' a part ' of the national folcland into an estate of perpetual inheritance.' Cp. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 76. ' Bookland * was land thus held by ' book ' or charter, « Bede, Hist. Abb. 4. ' Anon. Hist. Abb. ; Bed. Op. vi. 418. ^ 'Lapideam . . . juxta Romanorum quem semper amabat morem ; ' Bede, Hist. Abb. 5. Cp. Bede, iii. 45 v. 21. See Eeeves's Adamnan, p. 177. Foundation of Wearmoutk, 271 windows of the church ^, cloisters, and refectory, and made chap. ix. lamps and vessels for the church, but taught their craft to the Northumbrians 2, and so far contributed to English civilisation. All the furniture and vestments ' which Benedict could not procure at home, he took care to purchase abroad ^.' It must have been a stirring time at Wearmouth while the works were in progress, and new products of foreign art were continually coming in. So energetic, and so well served, was Benedict, that he found it possible to roof in the church, and to open it with all solemnity*, in a year from the foundation. The rule for the brethren was framed by Benedict, probably from that of Lerins, but certainly with reference to whatever seemed best in the customs of all those seventeen ' very ancient ' monasteries which he had visited during his travels^. The system of his great name- sake, as we infer from words of his own, was highly esteemed by him, but was not adopted indiscriminately or in the mass. In these and all his labours he had a 'most active coadjutor' Ceolfrid. in Ceolfrid ^, whose history was only less interesting than his own. , It was in some sense like his own : for Ceolfrid also was nobly born, and had been piously trained'^, and at eighteen had entered the monastery of Gilling^, then ruled by his kinsman Tunbert, afterwards for a short time * Above, p. 234 ; cp. Greg. Tur. de Glor. Mart. i. 59. 2 Bede, Hist. Abb. 5. See Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 328. ' ' De transmarinis regionibus advectare religiosus emptor curabat ;' Bede, l.c. * ' Missarum inibi solemnia celebrari videres ; ' Bede, 1. c. * Anon. Hist. Abb., Bed. Op. vi. 418 ; Bede, Hist. Abb. 9 ; Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 208. So St. Boniface sent Sturmi to visit tbe great monasteries of Italy, in order to study their rules and * traditions,' with a view to the new founda- tion of Fulda; Vit. S. Sturmi, 14; Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. ii. 371. * Anon. Hist. Abb., Bed. Op. vi. 416; Bede, Hist. Abb. 6. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 392 ; Alb. Butler, Sept. 25. ' His father, a ' comes,* had one day prepared a rich banquet for Oswy : a call to arms prevented the royal visit, and then ' iUe, gratias divinae dispensa- tioni referens,' assembled all the poor, sick, and wanderers within reach, set them down to the meal which had awaited * the earthly king,' and with his wife waited on * the heavenly King in His lowly ones ; ' Anon. Hist. Abb. * The former superior, Kynefrid, went to Ireland 'for the purpose of studying the Scriptures and seeing the Lord more freely in tears and prayers ; ' Anon. Hist. 1. c. See above, p. 159. 272 Ceo If rid, CHAP. IX. bishop of Hexham. With him Ceolfrid afterwards went tc Ripon, and entered the monastery of Wilfrid, who ordained him priest, at the age of twenty-seven, in 669. He then travelled into Kent, in order to study the monastic discipline of the great Gregorian houses : and also visited the abbot Botulf at Ikanho, by way of enlarging and varying his experience of such institutions. Yet, when he returned to Ripon, he undertook the homely oflSce of baker to the monastery ' ; and, while heating the oven and preparing the loaves, used mentally to go over, and perfect himself in, ' the ceremonial acts of the priesthood.' He was soon, how- ever, elevated to the priorship, and Benedict obtained Wil- frid's leave to transfer him to the same office at Wearmouth. At first he had some trouble with high-born monks, who had been attracted to the new house by the secular rank once belonging to its founder, or by the royal patronage lavished on his undertaking, but who 'could not endure regular discipline^.' So vexatious was their bearing, that Ceolfrid even threw up a task which they seemed to render hopeless, and went back to Ripon as to a home. But he was induced by Benedict to return, and thenceforward his character developed a stedfast energy and soundness of judgment which through a long period of monastic rule were united with a simplicity and affectionateness, a ready sympathy, and a fervour of devotion, which commanded the love of the whole society 3. Another of the first inmates ^ Anon. Hist. : ' Siquidem tempore non pauco pistons officium tenens,' &c. Different handicrafts were practised by the monks ; see Bede, v. 14, on the wicked monk who was skilful as a carpenter. St. Columba had a Saxon as baker at Hy ; Adamn. Vit. Col. iii. 10 ; and see ib. iii. 12, on ' diversa opera.' Cp. St. Boniface, Ep. 69 : * Stirme in coquina sit, Bemardus . . . sedificet do- munculas vestras.' St. Sturmi, remembering the rule that *artes diversse' should be practised in a monastery, set some of his monks to make a new channel for the river Fulda ; Vit. Sturm. 20. ^ Anon. Hist. : ' Nam et invidias quorumdam nobilium/ &c. Cp. Bede, Hist. Abb. 9, where Benedict warns his monks against choosing an abbot for the sake of his noble blood. ^ Bede, Hist. Abb. 12, 13 : 'Tndustrius per omnia . . . acutus ingenio, acta impiger, maturus animo, religionis zelo fervens . . . Incomparabilem orandi psallendique sollertiam . . . mirabilem et coercendi improbos fervorem, et modestiam consolandi infirmos' (here 'modestiam' seems to mean gentleness), &c. ; and ib. 14, * nutritoris tutorisque . . , spiritualis . . . libertatis et pacis.* Hilda at Whitby. 273 )f Wearmouth stands out in Bede's pages as a very attractive chap. ix. figure : we see a young man of twenty-four, strong and Easter- handsome, with * a sweet voice and a cheerful temper,' taking pleasure in sharing the commonest labours with his fellow - monks, at work in kitchen or garden or bakehouse, threshing or winnowing, or milking the cattle^, — who yet, like his cousin the founder-abbot, had been a ' king's thane ^ : ' his name was Easterwine. A third brother, who, like these Sigfrid. two, attained to the highest dignity in the house, was a deacon named Sigfrid, who is described as 'preeminently intent on Scriptural studies,' but amid them had to bear the burden of weak health, so that, as Bede quaintly ex- presses it, 'his eflPorts to keep innocency of heart were carried on under pressure of an incurable affection of the lungs ^.' Let us go southward again, and observe the condition of Hilda at that already famous convent which had been the scene of the ^ ^ * Conference, and which looked down in its pride of place over the ' Lighthouse Bay.' In Hilda, the royal grand-niece of the great Edwin, we see the old Teutonic type of a woman of wise ' rede' and mighty influence, a Veleda * or an Alioruna, softened and transfigured into ' the Mother ' whose advice was sought by princes, and who ' held out to many at a distance an example of the works of light ^/ Hers had been a career signally conspicuous and widely efiective. Born three years before the fall of Ethelfrid, — baptized at York by Paulinus, at thirteen, — bent on joining her sister. Queen Hereswid, in a The Anon. Hist. Abb. speaks of him as 'acer ingenio, strenuus actu . . . flagrans amore simul et timore Divine,' &c. * Bede, Hist, Abb. 7 : ' Ventilate cum eis et triturare, oves vitulasque mul- gere, in pistrino, in coquino, in cunctis monasterii operibus, jocundus et obediena gauderet exerceri.* ^ 'Minister.' See above, p. 113. ' Hist. Abb. 8 : ' Irremediabili pulmonmn vitio.' Anon. Hist. Abb. * Tacitus, Germ. 6. * The name of Hild was that of a Saxon war-goddess ; also nearly synonymous with Fate;' Stevenson, Chron. of Abingdon, ii. p. xxxviii. Cp. Merivale, Conversion of Northern Nations, p. 150. So Wilson, Prehistoric Aun. of Scotl. ii. 387 : • In an ancient poem in the Icelandic Saga, Hilda, the Scandinavian goddess of war and victory, is introduced with her weird sisters, the Valkyries,' &c. ' Bede, iv. 23 : 'Tantae autem erat ipsa prudentiae,' &c. . . . 'Cujus vita . . . multis bene vivere volentibus exempla operum lucis prsebuit.' T 274 Hilda at Whitby, CHAP. IX. Frankish convent, and only recalled, by Aidan's express sum- mons, to Northumbria, — for one year a nun in a small cell on the north, of the Wear, — then abbess of Hartlepool ^ in suc- cession to Heiu, — then foundress and abbess of Whitby in 6^"]^ she was sixty years old when, in 674, she began to suffer from recurring attacks of fever, and ' for six years ceased not to labour under the same disease, but in all that time never omitted to give thanks in her own person to her Maker, and publicly as well as privately to teach the flock committed to her charge to serve the Lord obediently while they had health, and under adversity or bodily infirmity to be faithful in rendering thanks to Him^/ A noble woman, we may well say, — strong and wise, true-hearted and firm of purpose, with warm affections and clear discernment, using her great capacities for rule and guidance in the true spirit of a mother in Israel, — in some sense a mediseval Mere Angelique : one sees how she had largely succeeded where Ebba had ultimately failed, impressing her own mind on the double community which bowed to her as its head, establishing a tradition of unanimity and unselfishness ^, and, as Bede says, * making her monks give so much time to the study of Scripture, and so much heed to the practice of good works *,' that bishops came to think of her house as the best place for supplying competent * ordinands,^ and five of the brethren^, whom * Bede mentioES several Northumbrian religious houses of lower rank, as Abercorn, Carlisle, Tynemouth, Hartlepool, Gilling, Hackness, Coquet Island, Watton, Derawood or Beverley, a place near the Dacre, and one in Elmete. ^ Bede, iv. 23 : 'Percussa etenim febribus,' &c. The discipline of bodily affliction is a favourite theme with Bede : cp. ii. 7; iv. 9, 19, 31 ; Vit. Cuthb. 28, 37 ; Hist. Abb. 9 ; where also he says that Benedict Biscop during a long illness took care 'in dolore semper Auctori gratias referre,' &c. He re- peatedly refers to medical treatment, e.g. iv. 19; v. 3; V. C. 23, 30, 37, 45. He mentions various kinds of ordinary disease, as fever, paralysis, tumour, aflfection of lungs, pleurisy, dysentery, diarrhoea. * Bede, iv. 23: 'Maxime pacis et caritatis custodiam docuit, ita ut, in exemplum primitivae ecclesiae, nullus ibi dives, nuUus esset egens, omnibus essent omnia communia,* &c. * Bede, 1. c. • Tan turn lectioni Divinarum Scripturarum,' &c. Higden, Polychron. b. 5. c. 19, calls her • sancta, prudens, litterata.' ^ Bosa bishop of York, ^tla of Dorchester, Oftfor of Worcester, John of Hexham, Wilfrid II. of York. Ccedmon, 211 Bede enumerates, ' all of them persons of signal worth and chap. ix. holiness/ attained the episcopal dignity. But there was one Caedmon. inhabitant of the monastery whom his brethren venerated for a gift which they ascribed to special inspiration ; although they could not have imagined the unique place which he was to hold, through all generations of their race, as the father of English poetry. Rude warlike ballads were doubtless current among the Angles who came with Ida, and the Saxons who came with Cerdic, — songs of the great deeds of ancestors, such as might form, when mingled with lays of lighter mood, ' the salt of the feast ^ ' alike to eorl and ceorl : but something greater announced its presence, perhaps before Oswy's death, certainly during Hilda's abbacy, under circumstances as unpromising as ever attended a literary epoch. To know what it was, we must take a glimpse of the life of common herdsmen 2 in a Northumbrian farm-stead, which stood on part of the abbey property. One of these rustic labourers, a man well on in years, bore the name of Csedmon. He was behindhand with his fellows through inability to sing ^ : and whenever he made one of a * beer-party*,' at which it was expected that ' for mirth-sake ' each in turn should play the * gleeman,' he could not see the harp being passed round towards him without starting up from the unfinished meal, and going home shamefast ^. One evening he had thus left his mates, and gone, not to his own dwelling, but to the cattle- shed which for that night was under his charge. There he lay down and slept, and in his dream some person stood by him, and greeted him by name. ' Caedmon, sing me something.' ' Lord Lytton's 'Harold,' p. 29. See Turner, iii. 58; Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 3QO ; and Freeman, v. 587, who more than once remarks (i. 389, i"' 733) tl^a-t there are fragments of old ballads in Henry of Huntingdon: see the sayings recorded by him as to great battles, e. g. of Heavenfield, Maser- field, and Winwidfield. Compare the story of the Frisian Bernlef, who was much loved because . . . ' antiquorum actus regumque certamina bene noverat psallendo promere;' Vit. S. Liudg. ii. i. 2 For an Old- English description of their duties, see Turner, ii. 546. ^ See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 154 : 'To chant the songs of gleemen to the harp was an acquirement common even to the lowest classes.' * So King Alfred translates convivium. Cp. Turner, iii. 31. ' Bede, iv. 24 : * Surgebat a media coena, et egressus ad suam domum repedabat.' T 2 276 Ccedmon. CHAP. IX. He ttouglit that he answered^ * I cannot" sing : that is why I came away from the party.' ' However, you have got to sing to me ^ ! ' ' What must I sing ? ' ' Sing of the creation.' And so, in his sleep, these verses came to him : ^ he sang, in praise of God the Maker 2/ — ' Now should we praise the Guaxdian of the heaven-reahn. The Maker's might and His mind -thought, Works of the glorious Father, as He of each wonder. Eternal Lord, created the beginning^. He erst shaped for children of men Heaven as a roof, — the holy Creator : Then the middle world did mankind's Guardian, Eternal Lord, afterwards create. Earth for men. Lord Almighty.' On waking, he retained in memory what he had seemed to sing in his dream, and presently added other words to the same purport. He then told his bailiff, or ^ tun-reeve*,' what had happened, or, as Bede says, ' what a gift he had received : ' and was by him straightway conducted to the abbess, who, * in the presence of many learned men/ heard his story. All agreed that it was a Divine boon bestowed on the herdsman : they then read to him a portion of Scripture, and bade him turn it into poetry if he could. He went off with his task, and '■ next morning produced the passage excellently versified : ' whereupon ' the Mother ^ ' persuaded him to become a monk, solemnly received him into the community, and ordered that he should be instructed in the whole course of sacred history. He listened attentively to all that he was thus taught, and * ruminating it over, like a clean animal, turned it into most sweet verse : ' and then his teachers were his hearers while ' he sang to them of the creation of the world, the origin of mankind, the whole history of Genesis, the Exodus, the ^ 'Attamen mihi cantare habes.' Cp. Bede, iii. 22, 'in ipfea domo mori habes;' and also i v. 14, ' exspectare habes ; ' iv. 24, • neque enim mori adhuc habes,' ^ See the original Northumbrian text in Sweet's Anglo-Saxon "Reader, p. 195. Bede's Latin professedly gives the sense, rather than the exact order of the words. See Lingard's version of Alfred's text, ii. 408 ; and Turner, iii, 266. ' Bede renders 'cum sit seternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor exstitit.' * Kemble, ii, 176. A 'tiin, enclosure, farm, vill, or manor.' See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 82, for the wider sense. ^ Bede, iv. 24 : ' Unde mox abbatissa,' &c. Ccedmon, 277 entrance into Canaan, other events of Scripture history, the chap. ix. Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, the coming of the Holy Spirit, the preaching" of the Apostles^. Many a poem also did he make about the awful future Judgment, the terrible punishment in hell, the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom, the judgments and the benefits of God : in all which, his aim was to draw men away from the love of wickedness, and to stir them up to the love and diligent practice of well-doing. For he was a man very religious, and humbly obedient to the discipline of the rules, but kindled with fervent and zealous indignation against those who chose to be disobedient.' As to ' frivolous ' songs, we are assured that Csedmon could not compose any such. All his works were the outflow of a pious mind, and were often found effective as stimulants to * On the * Metrical Paraplirase,' now extant under the name of Csedraon, see Diet. ofChr. Biography, art. ' Caedmon.' Thorpe, in his edition of it (1832), inclined to regard it as generally authentic. It has, however, characteristics which do not suit the Whitby poet. Its author certainly drew materials from other sources beside the Scripture history. His picture of hell as a place of alternate cold and heat seems taken from such * visions ' as Drythehn's, Bede, v. 12. The sin of the rebel angels consisted in endeavouring to detlirone tLe Son of the Creator, who is confusedly described as a child borne on the bosoms of holy angels. After his fall, Lucifer appears as tightly chained down, but sends an inferior fiend to beguile Adam and Eve ; the messenger twines himself, in form of a * worm,' round the swart tree of knowledge, and announces himself as God's angel, sent from the east to bid them eat of the fruit. Adam spurns the suggestion, and calls him no angel : Eve yields, and sees far into heaven, God in the south-east, His angels around Him with feathery wings. The fiend bids her avert God's anger from Adam by persuading him to eat : * I will not wite him for reproaching me.' She argues all day : at last Adam yields : the fiend laughs and plays, &c. Lamech kills Cain. Noah's three sons have four wives, Percoba, 011a, Olliva, Ollivani. The • sons of God * in Gen. vi. I are the race of Seth. In Part II. the harrowing of hell by Christ is described : with thunder, at the dawn of Easter-day, hell-gates are broken ; Christ enters; Eve first, and then Adam (reminding Him of Mary, 'Thou from my daughter wast bom ') plead with Him, and are released. Moreover (2) the author of the Paraphrase must have really known war, when 'the fowls sang amid the dark-shafts ', and ' men saw the grim war-mo^e, the hard hand- play.' This could not have come from a Whitby cowherd. There are very noble passages in the poem : in the first pair, while unfallen, ' was burning love of the Lord ; * ' Mickle wonder that God eternal would ever bear that so many a • thane ' were misled by the lies ' of Satan ; ' Let us turn thither where He sits . . . the Sa^dour Lord, in that dear home,' &c. The poem begins with words in the same tone as the undoubted fragment, but not identical with it : and ends with the fiends' words to Satan, * Thus be now in evil : good erst thou wouldest not.' 278 Ccednton, CHAP. IX. piety, to ' contempt for the world, and craving for heavenly- life.' How long" he lived as a monk in Whitby, we know not. But it is natural to connect this account of the outburst of his poetic powers with the exquisite narrative of his happy death, which probably happened not long afterwards. With all his own vividness and pathos, Bede makes us see the old man in the fortnight of his last illness, which does not confine him to his bed. One evening he asks the attendant to prepare for his reception in the out-building assigned to the sick and dying ^ : the man wonders, but takes Caedmon thither before midnight. After some pleasant talk to the other patients, he asks, ' Have you the HouseP within?' meaning the Holy Eucharist, reserved (in one kind only) for the sick. They answer, ' What need have you of the Housel ? you have not got to die just yet ^, — you talk too cheerily for that.' ' How- ever,^ he rejoins, ' bring me the Housel.' He takes it into his hand *, and asks whether they are all kindly disposed to- wards him ^. They reply, ' Surely, and we pray you to be so towards us.' ' Dear children,' such is the sweet answer, * I am friendly disposed towards all God's servants^.' He then * fortifies himself with the heavenly viaticum '^,' and asks how soon the brethren would be 'awakened for nocturnal lauds ^.' ^ Cp. Bede, iv. 9. ' Alfred's rendering of Bede's • Eucharistiam,' husde from • hostia.' The chalice was not in this case reserved. Compare the story of Serapion in Euseb. vi. 44 ; and Bede, iv. 14, ' particulam.' ' • Neque enim mori adhuc habes.* * The ancient practice of receiving the Eucharist into the hands (e. g. Cyril Hier., Cat. Myst. 5. 21 ; and see Bingham, b. xv. c. 5. s. 6) was still retained in the case of men. Cp. Greg. Turon. H. Fr, x. 8. * 'Had they all a mild mood towards him ? ' 'Yes, they were all blithe of mood,' &c. Cp. Hist. Abb. 13, on Ceolfrid's farewell. * * God's men,' Alfred. On the Old-English custom of choosing a lord, or becoming the ' man ' of a superior or lord who was to give protection in return for fealty, see Freeman, i. 118. Stubbs, i. 79. ' Cp. Bede, iv. 14, 'viatico Dominici Corpus et Sanguinis;' iv. 23, 'viatico sacrosanctse communionis ; ' and v. 14, * sine viatico salutis.' ' AKred inserts, ' to teach God's folk.' ' Nocturn lauds ' mean matins : cp. Vit. Cuthb. 40, ' noctumae psalmodise ; ' and Hist. Trans. Cuthb., Bed. Op. vi. 414. Bede refers to the time 'matutinge laudis,' iii. 12; and to the 'psal- mody matutinae laudis,' iv. 7, in a way which shows that at this period lauds were the last part of matins. So Hist. Abb. 7. So in the ' Excerptions * Ccsdmon. 279 ' It will not be long-/ they say. ' Good ; then let us wait for chap. ix. that hour/ He signs himself with the cross, lies back on the pillow, falls asleep, and so ' in stillness ' passes away : his last words harmonising with all that he had uttered ' in praise of his Creator.' Such was the death of the poet-monk of Whitby : read the account of Bede's own last moments, written by an eye-witness and prefixed to his History, and you will find the two scenes very similar in form, and altogether identical in spirit. Of Bede also it might be said, as he has said in express words of Csedmon, and also implicitly of Aidan, Hilda, Chad, and others, that * he closed his life with a beautiful and tranquil end ^.' ascribed to Egbert, but of later date (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 415), no service intervenes between the nocturnal synaxis (matins or matin lauds) and prime (No. 28, Johnson, Engl. Can. i. 189). Compare, on the antiquity of this close union between the noctums and the day-break * praises,' Archdeacon Free- man, Princ. of Div. Service, i. 10. * Bede, iv. 24: •TJnde et pulchro vitam suam fine conclusit . . . tranquilla morte mundum relinquens.' CHAPTER X. Wilfrid's To pass from the convent-life of Wearmouth or of trou es. "vV^hi^^jy f^ tihe personal troubles and public dissensions wbicb constitute the great ' cause of Bishop Wilfrid/ is as if one were suddenly transported from the margin of a land-locked harbour to a rough coast lashed by a rising sea. That the sea, so to speak, would rise, — that, sooner or later, Wilfrid's splendid prosperity would be interrupted, must have been evident to him, one would think, ever since he placed the veil Alienation on the head of Queen Etheldred. Her husband knew well, ofEgfnd. ^^^ could not be expected to forget, who it 'was that had upheld her, with the whole force of his spiritual influence, in a resolution the reverse of wife-like ^, and at whose feet she had sealed it by pronouncing those new vows which were to nullify the old in her estimation. To that step, indeed, a consent had been wrung from him by what he would regard as her impracticable and unnatural obstinacy ^ : the marriage had, under the peculiar circumstances, been declared void, and * Thomas of Ely unintentionally makes the case worse for Wilfrid, saying that he ' dissimulavit, provide atque prudenter,' as if agreeing with the king, and promised to persuade the queen to abandon her purpose ; ' veritus ne, sicut contigit, ob rem hujuscemodi offensum ilium haberet. Et dum circa talia, ut sestimabatur, sanctus pontifex reginam alioqui intenderet . . . egit vir beatus sua industria, ut potius divortium qusereret,' &c. ; Vit. Etheldr. 9 ; Act. SS. Bened. ii. 747. Eadmer implies that Wilfrid made no such insincere promise ; Vit, Wilf 30 ; Act. SS. Bened. iii. 208. So Bede, iv. 19. 2 Thomas represents him as objecting strongly to a separation from a beloved wife, but at last yielding to her importunities, ' licet invitus, tamen earn dimisit invincibilem ; ' Act. SS. Ben. ii. 749. A maiden espoused to Sigebert II. of Austrasia, on arriving at his court, * concealed her purpose ' for a week, and then took the veil ' within closed doors : ' the king (afterwards canonised, but a * Faineant ') ' gave her over to the Lord.' She had acted, we are expressly told, ' by the advice ' of St. Gall ; Vit. S. Galli, i. ; Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. ii. 12. Trickeries devised for a monastic interest were not then deemed unworthy of religion. Beginning of WilfricTs troubles, 281 Egfrid had been allowed to contract another : but he was not chap. x. the less alienated from the prelate who had so systematically- thwarted him in regard to his domestic comfort. He would utter that complaint often enough heard afterwards, and in his case at any rate not unjust, that the Church had come between wife and husband : and his new queen, Ermenburga, from a personal dislike^ to her predecessor's confidential guide, appears to have stimulated the irritation of Egfrid by appeal- ing to his susceptibilities as a prince. Wilfrid's magnificent position, his ' secular glory and riches,^ the number of monas- teries under his obedience^, the stately buildings which he had reared, the ' host ' of attendants, nobly born and nurtured, who appeared in his halls, arrayed like the king's thanes in the palace^, — these things were easily represented as unbe- fitting any one ecclesiastic, and as proving that he ought not to hold a bishopric coextensive with the kingdom. We seem to hear the first mutterings of a storm that after- Scheme of wards assailed the proud elevation of a mitred chancellor or a partition, prince-bishop : and it so happened that these royal jealousies were excited just when Theodore was bent on carrying out his scheme of diocesan partition. That scheme he pursued from motives of a public character; in regard to Northumbria, it involved the abatement of Wilfrid's ecclesiastical great- ness*: but Theodore's misfortune and fault consisted not * Richard of Hexham is very plain-spoken : * In cujus corde Sathanas contra . . . episcopum odiorum et invidiae fomenta conflans;* De stat. Hagust, Eccl. c. 7, X Script. 294. So Eadmer, 31 : * Per hanc igitur diabolus,' &c. ' Richard of Hexham, ib. c. 5, calls him ' the father of nine monasteries,* and says that many abbots and abbesses ' commended their houses to his keeping, others named him their successor.' ' Eddi, 24 : ' Enumerans ei . . . Wilfridi . . . omnem gloriam saecularem et divitias, necnon coenobiorum multitudinem . . . sodalium exercitum re- galibus vestimentis et armis omatum.' Eadmer, 31, makes her say to Egfrid, ' Your whole kingdom is bis bishopric. What if in time of war, he should keep back his men from fighting on your side?' Malmesb. G. P. p. 219: * Conflavit ergo pontifici regina invidiam, quod tot abbates, tot abbatias, haberet, quod aureis et argenteis vasis sibi ministrari faceret, quod " clientum turba," nitore vestium superbiens, illius latus obambularet.' He had just before intimated that some jealousy of this sort had existed earlier, and had been allayed by Etheldred, ' sanitate consilii.' See Stubbs, Const. Hist- i. 150. * Lappenberg suggests that he may have feared that Wilfrid was laying the foundations of an independent archbishopric (such as St. Gregory had contem- plated) ; 1. 182. 282 Theodore and Eg/rid, CHAP. X, Theodore in North- umbria. simplj in aiming at this as a step necessary for the general good of the Church, but in associating himself with the animosities of a court as instrumental towards his object, and in neglecting such considerations of order and justice as would have checked the march of his own high-handed^ absolutism. We are in some difficulty as to the facts, be- tween the open partisanship of the biographer and the dis- appointing reticence of the historian : Bede had evidently a strong reluctance to go into the subject^, and it is one of the very few cases in which he has laid himself open to the charge of keeping back what he must have known. He says so little in the way of explanation, that he does not help us to know whether or when Eddi says too much, — although we may be sure that he does say too much when he imputes to Theodore the coarse guilt of taking a bribe from Egfrid^. However, as far as we can make out anything, it seems that in 678 Egfrid invited Theodore to revisit Northumbria; that they di8cussed the division of the Northumbrian diocese, and Theodore allowed himself to be persuaded that Wilfrid's co- operation or assent was not to be hoped for, and must be dispensed with; and that, acting on this assumption, he summoned more than one bishop * to support him in the pro- ceedings which he meditated, but did not communicate with the bishop most directly concerned. An assembly, partly * 'He carried it with a high hand towards the bishops ;' Johnson, Engl. Can. i. 87. ^ See Raine, Fast. Ebor. i. 81. In his last work, Bede lets fall words which might suggest that he supposed selfish motives to have promptel Wilfrid. * Cum antistes dictante amore pecuniae majoreni populi partem ... in nomen sui praesulatus assumpserit ;' Ep. to Egb. 4. He had also strong personal ties to one of the bishops who were more or less opposed to Wilfrid, ' St. Jolm of Beverley;' a fervent admiration for others, as Bosa, Eata, and St. Cuthbert ; and a high esteem for the scholarly king Aldfirld. That he knew Wilfrid personally appears from iv. 19. See too Ep, 3. * Eiidi refers to Balak and Balaam, 24. Malmesbury, G. Pontif. p. 220, follows him in this imputation, ' xeniorum obtentu ;' which naturally excites Elmham's wrath ; Mon. S. Aug. p. 276. Malmesbury, however, elsewhere ranks Theodore and Wilfrid together as * those two eyes of Britain ; ' G. Pontif. p. 6. Fridegod says that the king and queen deceived Theodore, * veri doctorem, justi quoque pcene sequacem ;' Act. SS. Bened. iii. 184. * Wilfrid says, ' in conventu Theodori . . . aliorumque tunc temporis an- tistitum cum eo convenientium ; ' Eddi, 29. Who these prelates were we know not. Division of Northumbrian diocese. 283 secular and partly ecclesiastical, was convened ; and in Wil- chap. x. frid's absence it was resolved to form, out of his over-large J^jJ^^^g" f diocese, two other bishoprics for Bernicia and Deira, and York, another for the district of Lindsey, lately recovered from Mercia. But this plan would have left Wilfrid in possession of the see of York^ and the charge of part, probably the larger part, of Deira ^. According to the combined statements of "Wilfrid and Eddi, the suffragan bishops did not concur in the consecration 2, and Theodore, without their assistance, con- secrated Bosa, a monk of Whitby, a man, says Bede, ' of great holiness and humility ^/ Eata the devout and gentle-hearted abbot of Lindisfarne ; and Eadhed, who had accompanied Chad on his journey to the south for consecration *. The elevation of these three to the episcopate took place in Wilfrid's own cathedral at York ^ : he could not but receive tidings of such an event, and could not but repair to the court ^, and ask why his diocese was to be thus cut up against his will. The answer of the king and the archbishop was, ' We find no fault in you, but we have thought good to do this, and we shall abide by it''.' Theodore, not to say Egfrid, had committed himself by thus acting without Wilfrid's knowledge. It could not be said that the division of the diocese had been proposed to Wilfrid, and he had deliberately set himself against it. Theodore had taken for granted that he would do so ; and by this premature judgment had damaged his own case, and exhibited that fatal indifference to equity which so often besets a rigid disciplinarian invested with hierarchical supremacy, and resolute to ignore the rights of subordinates, * So Malmesbury, G. Pontif. p. 220. Theodore maintained 'sufficere tantos sumptus tantaeque dioecesis circuitum quattuor episcopis.' 2 Wilfrid says, 'absque consensu cujuslibet episcopi . . . ordinaret ;' Eddi, 29 : and Eddi, * solus ordinavit ; ' 24. Can it be that the suffragans, whoever they were, declined, when it came to the point, to follow Theodore 1 Or did they merely abstain from taking part in the new consecrations ? ' Bede, v. 3 ; iv. 23. * Eddi permits himself to describe these three Northumbrian ecclesiastics as • non de subjectis illius parochiae ; ' 24. ' Bede, iv. 21, 'Eboraci.' * Eddi, 24 : ' Regem et archiepiscopum . . . cum omni populo.' Eadmer says he came to the palace 'hilari corde, alacri vultu ; ' 31. ' Malmesbury is reminded of Juvenal : * Sic volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas;' G. P. p. 220. 284 Wilfrid's appeal to Rome. CHAP. X. and even the requirements of fair dealing, for the sake of a policy beneficial to the Church ^. Wilfrid Thus hardly used, — we must needs say, thus unjustly Rome!^ *° treated, — Wilfrid took a step which, in Britain, was new, and which also was such as Chad would never have taken. He had too high a spirit to succumb, and had no hope of obtain- ing better terms^ or a reconsideration of the case, by appealing to a provincial synod under the presidency of Theodore^. He looked, as if by instinct, to that great Church for which from early years he had entertained so profound a reverence : he recalled his own visit to Rome, which had been crowned by the special blessing of the then Pope ; it occurred to him that wrongs done at home could be set right by means of an appeal to the 'Apostolic See,' from which Theodore himself had derived his mission : and ' after taking counsel,' says Eddi, ' with his fellow-bishops,' he declared in their presence that he did thus make appeal ^. The announce- ment which he had made required his instant departure for Italy, and seems to have been treated, at once, as involving the forfeiture of all his rights in the see of York. The design of setting up three prelates to work in Northumbria along ^ The partition, says Martineau, though * desirable, could only be lawfully and canonically effected with the consent of Wilfrid ; and it is a serious charge against Theodore . . . that, under the pretence of effecting what was un- questionably a good thing for the Church, he stooped to gratify the enmity of Egfrid and Ermenburga against Wilfrid by assisting in the persecution of that prelate ; ' Ch. Hist. Engl. p. 93. So Malmesbury says, ' Et hsec quidem recte dicta possent videri, si eum . . . vel non emnino spoliatum dejiceret, vel saltern cum consensu ejus ageret; ' G. P. p. 220. "^ Raine, i. 78 : 'I cannot blame him,' &c. ^ Eddi, 24: *Ciun consilio coepiscoporum suorum.' Wilfrid, in Eddi, 29: * Consacerdotes meos . . . episcopos tantummodo protestatus.' According to Eddi, — who compares the appeal to St. Paul's appeal fi-om the Jews to Caesar (!) — it was then that Wilfiid, ' turning away from the royal tribunal, said to the flatterers who were laughing merrily, " On the anniversary of this day on which you are now spitefully laughing at my condemnation, you will be weeping bitterly amid your own confusion,'" which was fulfilled at the burial of Alfwin — see below. It is probable that Wilfrid was mistaken as to the mind of these suffragans ; and that Eddi wrongly inferred, from the fact of the protestation in their presence, that they had encouraged Wilfrid to appeal. If they did encourage it, they seem to have repented of having done so ; for we do not find that any bishop supported Wilfrid's cause between his expulsion and his restoration. Wilfrid's appeal to Rome, 285 with him, and of reserving to him the first place and the chap. x. church of the royal city, was now altered into a plan for His entire superseding him altogether. Thus Bosa was appointed to fro^OTlh- preside over the whole of Deira, as bishop of York : Eata was umbria. to superintend all Bernicia from his own church of Lindis- fame, or from Wilfrid's minster of Hexham : while Eadhed ^ became the first bishop of Lindsey, then once more attached to Northumbrian. It was at this time that Theodore hallowed Finan's church at Lindisfarne in honour of St. Peter ^, with a view, no doubt, to the exhibition of his metropolitical authority within the former stronghold of ' schismatic ' Celticism, as well as to the due performance of such dedication-ceremonies as would probably have been omitted by a Celtic bishop *. Such were the circumstances under which took place the Aspects of first appeal to Rome against the action of English Church "^ ^^^^* * authority. What are we to say of this appeal ? No doubt, it contrasts very pointedly with the action taken by the African hierarchy in the latter years of the great Augustine's life, when, ignoring the Sardican Council's resolutions ^ which empowered the Roman bishop in certain cases to appoint a new trial, and relying on the genuine Nicene canon ^ which ordered ecclesiastical causes to be terminated in the respective provincial synods, they declined to acknowledge a ' trans- marine' sentence pronounced by Rome, in regard to cases • Bede, iv. 1 2 : • Et hunc primum eadem provincia proprium accepit prae- sulem.' ^ Lindsey was Northumbrian under Edwin and Oswald, was conquered by Penda, regained by Oswy, reconquered by Wulfhere, again recovered by Egfrid before 675, and again conquered by Ethek-ed in 679. ^ Bede, iii. 25 : 'Quam tempore sequenti . . . Theodorus in honore beati apostoli Petri dedioavit.' See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 385. * Walafrid Strabo, in his Life of St. Gall, speaks of Columban as dedicating a church, with holy water and chrism and processional psalmody ; Act. SS. Bened. ii. 233. The older 'Life' omits the chrism. ' Sardic. can. 3-5 ; Mansi, iii. 7. The bishop of Kome was to order a fresh hearing before (i) the bishops of the next province to that in which the case had arisen, and then, if the complainant should be still dissatisfied, (2) before those bishops with presbjrters delegated from Rome. These provisions were quoted by the agents of Rome as Nicene. The African bishops ascertained that they were not in the genuine text of the Nicene canons : and the Council of Sardica, as such, they did not recognise ; Fleury, b. 24. c. 6. ^ Nic. can. 5. See their final letter, Mansi, iv. 516. 286 Viezvs of Roman See taken by Wilfrid, CHAP. X. which had arisen in Africa ^. At the same time, it must be remembered, first, that the principle of appeal from a pro- vincial episcopate to a patriarch or quasi-patriarch had been admitted, as to the East, by the (Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon^: and next, that the relations in which the African Church stood towards Rome in 436 were not those in which the English Church stood towards Rome in 678. During that interval, the first see in Christendom, the one ' Apostolic See ' in the West, had grown mightily in all the elements of command : and even if Wilfrid had admitted the principle of the African Council, he might have pleaded that a Church so recently founded as the English, and so recently consolidated by a metropolitan sent from Rome direct, the successor of that first English archbishop whom Rome, in the person of the sainted Gregory, had sent to plant the faith among English heathens, might naturally and rightly look to Rome for guidance, and that guidance implied supervision, to be exercised on appeal : and further, that whereas causes were decided in Africa with all due ecclesiastical forms, the very rudiments of ecclesiastical justice were ignored by the recent partition of a diocese in the bishop's absence, and without his consent^, and his actual deprivation after he had spoken of applying to Rome for remedy. But Wilfrid would not have admitted the African principle. He stood at a marked distance from the old Patristic position, strictly so called, in regard to the ' See of Peter.' Whatever respect he may have felt for the great names of the Gallican Church, he would have disapproved of the conduct of Hilary of Aries in reference to the appeal of Celidonius from a Gallic Council *, and would have regarded the conduct of Leo the Great as simply a just assertion of * Mansi, iv. 515; Fleury, b. 24. c. 35; Robertson, Hist. Ch. ii. 237, and Growth of Papal Power, p. 90; Hussey on Rise of Papal Power, p. 47. I may refer to my History of the Church, &c., p. 301. 2 Chalc. can. 9, directing a bishop or cleric who had a complaint against his metropolitan to appeal to the exarch of the diocese (aggregate of provinces), or to the see of Constantinople. 3 Theodore might have remembered Cod. Afric. c. 56, 98, which expressly forbade this. Mansi, iii. 747, 803. * See Robertson, ii. 239. and by English Church in general, 287 authority: and the law obtained by Leo from Valentinian III., chap. x. commanding all Western Churches to obey the ' Pope of the eternal city ^,' would to his mind express the legitimate sub- jection of the hierarchy to its divinely appointed chief. But not so thought the great body of English clergy and laity at this time. They stood, indeed, in different degrees of obligation to the Roman Church. She was directly the mother-Church to Kent, and also to Wessex^, and in- directly to East-Anglia ^ ; in a limited sense, considering the retreat of Paulinus, to Northumbria ; in a technical but ineffective sense, considering the failure of Mellitus, to Essex, including London : in no sense at all, to wide-spreading Mercia. In so far as the several dioceses had been welded together in subordination to Canterbury, they were debtors through Canterbury to its spiritual parent; and they had all concurred in accepting Theodore as a special gift from the hands of Rome. They all, though, probably not all with equal definiteness of conception, acknowledged in Rome a peculiar pre-eminence, a special heritage of apostolic grace ; to all of them the See of Peter was a title of august and sacred import, and they were too simple to analyse its significance, or to test its grounds. But, with all this, they had not, as a body, in 678, any clear notion that gratitude or reverence could bind them to recognise a systematic interference on Rome's part in their domestic Church matters *, by virtue of which any national Church decision might at any time be nullified by a court of appeal sitting far beyond the Alps. The aversion to 'outlandish' authority, keen and strong in the insular mind even through the later Middle Ages, was now, in Northumbria, even scornfully incredulous as to any practical exercise of such authority: and, as far as we know, Benedict Biscop, with all that enthusiasm for Roman sanc- tities which repeated visits to Rome had fostered, never thought, on his return from the fifth of those visits, or after- wards, of taking Wilfrid's part in this quarrel. As for ^ Hussey, p. 63 ; Robertson, ii. 24 * Above, p. 146. ' Above, p. 124. * See Freeman, i. 33. 288 Seizure of Bishop Winfrid, CHAP. X. Theodore himself, he was duly conscious of the value of his Papal appointment, but he was not minded to be a mere Roman legate, nor willing to let his administration be over- ruled by Papal intervention on appeal. The increased stringency of his acts after that appeal is one of the most significant facts in this portion of the story ^. Ebroin. And now let us follow the dauntless and indefatigable appellant. His biographer assures us^ that his foes, in their eagerness to arrest his course, had requested Ebroin, as mayor of the palace for the Prankish king of Neustria and Burgundy, — the feeble Theodoric III., — to seize on Wilfrid if he passed through that kingdom, and either send him into exile, or kill his attendants and strip him of his property. It is curious that the same formidable minister should have checked Theodore's journey through Gaul, and set men in wait to fall upon Wilfrid. But, in fact, Ebroin had his own reasons, quite independent of English disputes, for hostility towards the man who, in the days of his splendour and wealth at York, had materially contributed to the ele- vation of the young king of Austrasia, Dagobert II., lately at war with Theodoric about frontiers. And Ebroin 's hatred was deadly: it was in the October of this very year 678 that he put to death his old rival Leodegar, or St. Leger, Seizure of bishop of Autun ^. But on this occasion he missed his ^^ " * blow : his emissaries did catch and despoil an English bishop, whose name was identical with Wilfrid's except in a single letter, — Wilfrid, the deposed prelate of Lichfield, then travelling, for his misfortune, in Neustria. He was cruelly maltreated, and some of his attendants were actually slain*. Wilfrid had not landed in Gaul : he had proceeded to Prieseland, the land beyond the Zuyder Zee, the inhabitants ^ Nor did he, as we shall see, take any steps towards conforming to the Papal judgment in favour of Wilfrid until six years after it was made known to him. ^ Eddi, 25 : * Prsemiserunt nuntios ... ad Efruinum impium ducera.' ' See Alb. Butler, Oct. 2 ; Fredegar. Contin. 96 ; Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 94. * Eddi, 25, calls him Witlfrid : ' Omni pecunia spoliatus, multisque ex sociis suis occisis, misere ad extremum sanctum episcopum nudum reliquerunt . . . errore bono unius syllabse seducti.' So Malmesbury : ' Luit ergo ille ambi- guitatem vocabuli;' G. P. p. 221. Fridegod, ' tantum monogrammate lusus.' Wilfrid in Frisia, 289 of which dwelt nearer to Britain than Saxons or Angles chap. x. or Jutes had dwelt while still on the mainland, and are ^^j^^^^ ^^ named hy Bede as first among six nations akin to the English, and 'corruptly called Germans' hy the Britons^. Adalgis, the Frisian king, received the English prelate with all honour 2, and was rewarded by hearing the Gospel from his lips. And here, perhaps more brightly than at any earlier period of his life, shone out the true Christian greatness of Wilfrid. He was far too earnest in the cause of religion not to make every other purpose give way to a good oppor- tunity of missionary work, such as he found among the Frisians. He preached, with the king's license, every day ^, Conversion expounding the main doctrines of Christianity, — the Holy Sf f^.^^^ Trinity, ' the one baptism for remission of sins, and eternal life, after death, in resurrection *.' As the year's fishing was unusually successful, and the autumn brought an abun- dant harvest, the simple-hearted people ascribed these bless- ings to the God whom Wilfrid served; and before winter set in he had, after due instruction, baptized many of the commonalty, and most of their chiefs. Then a striking scene followed. Ebroin sent to Adalgis, promising with an oath, in written words, to give him ' a bushel full of golden solidi ' for Wilfrid's person or for Wilfrid's head ^. The letter was read to the king at a feast, probably the great midwinter feast, in the presence of Wilfrid and his companions. He listened to the end, took the scroll into his hands, tore it deliberately to pieces, and flung them into the fire burning * Bede, V. 9. See Freeman, i. 21. 'In mythical genealogies, Saxo and Friso are brothers;' Pearson, Hist. Engl. i. 105. We read of a young soldier being sold as a slave to a Frisian in London, Bede, iv. 22. ^ Malmesb. 1. c, : • Ejectus a patria, dilectus in Frisia.' ' Eddi, 25. On the great historical importance, to a large portion of the Continent, of this sojourn of Wilfrid in Frieseland, see Lappenberg, i. 181. * Eddi, 25. A definite instruction in Christian doctrine, a systematic ' de- livery of the Creed,* was in ancient times held essential to all Christian pro- selytism. Compare St. Augustine, de Catechizandis Rudibus, s. 52 ; and Alcuin, Ep. 28 (a.d. 796), on such orderly teaching before baptism. See Neale's Essays on Liturgiology, p. 146. Comp. Grant's Bamp. Lect. p. 272. ^ Eddi, 26. A golden 'solidus' was then = forty silver denarii ; in the next century it was lowered to the value of twelve. See Ducange. U 290 Wilfrid in Frisia^ CHAP. X. before him. Then, turning' to the startled messengers of the powerful Frank, he spoke out his indignation^. 'Tell your lord what I now say : So miy the Maker of all things tear in pieces and utterly consume the life and kingdom of one who is forsworn to his God, and keeps not the covenant into which he has entered ! ' 'It was thus decreed ' to Wilfrid to be the first of the long line of English mis- sionaries ^. He ' spent the winter happily,' as Bede ex- presses it, ' with the new people of God ^ : ' but the impression then made on the Frisian mind must have been to a great extent superficial, for about ten years later we find that a devoted missionary 'preached for two years to the same nation without seeing any fruit of all his toil among his barbarian hearers * : ' when, shortly afterwards, Willibrord and Wulframn began to work among them, they found a great ignorance of the first principles of Christianity; and to the close of the century. Pagan reaction was periodical in Frisia^, As was often the case in these wholesale con- versions, the seed had at first sprung up rapidly, ' lecause it had no depth of earth.' In the spring of 679 Wilfrid resumed his journey, and * See the words in Eddi, 26 : ' Sic rerum Creator regnum et vitam in Deo sue perjurantis, pactumque initum non custodientis, scindens destruafc, et con- sumens in favillam divellat.' ^ L;ippenberg, i. 181. Among the English missionaries of the succeeding period were Willibrord, Albert, Liufwin, Marchelm (Vit. S. Liudgeri, i. 10, 13). ^ Bede, v. 19: 'Cum nova Dei plebe feliciter exigens.' Comp. Eddi, 26; 'Populum multum Pomino lucratus.' * Bede, v. 9. His name was Wictbert. « Alcuin, Vit. S. Willibr. i. 6 ; Vit. S. Wulfr. 3 ; Act. SS. Bened. iii. 607, 358 ; Vit. S. Liudgeri, 3 : * In diebus Radbodi . . . gens Ula ... in errors infidelitatis erat excsecata.' Alb. Butler says (Nov. 7) that ' the seeds sown by Wilfrid must have been almost rooted out before St. Willibrord's airival in 690 or 69 [ .' More than sixty years afterwards, St. Boniface met his death while evangelising the Frisians, ' the majority of whom were still Pagans ; ' Guizot, Hist. Fr. c. 9 : he had to ' drive away Pagan rites,* and baptized ' multa millia hominum ' before he was mart3rred ; V illibald, Vit. S. Bonif. c. 11. Comp. Bonif Ep. 90. Yet later, in 772, Willehad the Northumbrian (Vit. Will. c. i) heard that the Frisians, 'hactenus pagani,' began to desire baptism; and on arriving in Frisia, was well received by St. Boniface's converts, but narrowly escaped with life from their Pagan countrymen. Again, Liudger had to destroy 'various idolatries' in Frisia; Vit. Liudg. i. 14: but afterwards he was twice driven away, when Widukind ' evertit Frisones a via Dei,* and in Lombardy, 291 was warmly welcomed in Austrasia by his former client chap. x. Dagobert, who in gratitude urged him to accept the see of Strasburg ^, and, failing in this, did his best for his benefactor by loading him with presents, and sending him on south- wards under the guidance of a Frankish bishop named Deodatus. Crossing the Alps, he descended into Lombardy, Wilfrid ia and was kindly received at Pavia by King Pertharit 2, a prince ^ * who, like his father, professed the Catholic faith, and was altogether a very different personage from the Lombards who had kept St. Gregory in such alarm. He had had many troublous experiences, extending from his exile in 662 to his restoration in 671. He told Wilfrid that he had received overtures from Britain to the effect that if he would detain ' the runaway bishop ' on his journey, he should receive * very great gifts ; ' and had answered by referring to those early days when he, too, was a fugitive from the usurper Grimoald, and found shelter in Pannonia with the Khan of the Avars. ' He, a Pagan, swore by his idol to befriend me, and answered Grimoald's offers of a bushel of golden solidi by saying, " May the gods cut my life asunder, if I thus for- swear myself to them." How much more am I, who know the true God, bound not to ruin my soul, were it to gain the whole world ^!' The good king sent Wilfrid on, with and at honour and due guidance, to Rome, where he arrived about the middle of 679. Twenty-five years had passed since he visited the ' Eternal City ' in the buoyancy of his enthusiastic youth, studied its ecclesiastical rules under Boniface, prayed habitually in its sanctuaries, and bowed his head for the benediction of Eugenius I. The present Pope was Agatho, who had come to the see in the summer of 678 : a prelate much loved for his kind-heartedness and geniality *. To him * 'The greatest see in his realm,' at ' Streitburg ; ' Eddi, 28. ^ Or Bertarid. Eddi calls him Berchter king of Campania, by a mistake. When he died in 686, he * carried with him the regrets of his subjects, who e hearts he had won by his gentle and wise rule.' See I'Art de verifier, &c., iv. 385. ' Juhtitise tenax, mitis per omnia et suavis;' Paul. Diac. Gest. Lang. v. 33, 37. In 673, he built a monastery on the scene of a former escape. " Eddi, 28. He had been once on the point of taking shelter in Britain. The wife of his son Cunibert was an Englishwoman. * Anastas. Vit. Pontif. i. 135; Mansi, xi. 165. He was a Sicilian. He U 2, 292 Council of Rome, CHAP. X. Council of fifty bishops. Theodore had sent a monk named Kenwald, with documents stating" his view of Wilfrid's case : so that ' the dissension,' as Eddi says, 'was not unknown to Agatho.' Wilfrid had an audience of the Pope, and placed a written statement of the case in his hands : and some time afterwards, a Council of fifty bishops, with presbyters in attendance, was held by Agatho for the formal consideration of the matter^. The scene was that illustrious 'basilica of Our Saviour in the Lateran,' the true cathedral church of Rome, the 'mother and headj' in its own proud though inaccurate estima- tion, 'of all churches,' the prototype of the metropolitan church of Canterbury. It was distinguished among Roman churches by the name of ' the Constantinian,' and had been originally erected by the great imperial convert in the latter years of his reign ^. Like his other and grander basilica of St. Peter, it had five aisles: but the baptistery of St. John, from which it gradually acquired the name that has popularly superseded its august dedication, was a work of the fifth century ^. The church, for all its unique dignity, had associations which to a thoughtful prelate would speak as forcibly of ecclesiastical troubles as of ec- clesiastical majesty and strength. For the chapel of St. John the Evangelist was a memorial of Pope Hilary's narrow escape from the ' Robbers' Council ' at Ephesus * : died Jan. lo, 682. By one account, he came to the see, not in 678, but in 679. Capgrave says of him, ' He kissed a misel' (leper) 'and mad him hool ; ' Chronicle, p. 97. 1 In Mansi, xi. 1 79, is an account of a Roman Council of sixteen bishops, held in October, 679, on episcopal dissensions in Britain, but without express reference to Wilfrid, — on the number of the bishoprics, which were to be twelve with the archbishopric, — on the conduct of the clergy, — and for a Council of bishops, kings, princes, &c. in 'all Saxony,' to be held by Theodore. But ' Eddius, Bede, and William of Malmesbm-y know nothing of this Council ' (Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 135), which professes to have sent John the Precentor to Britain, with the canons of the Council of 649. It rests on one MS. of Spelinan's ; it suits neither the time before nor after Wilfrid's arrival : and it reads as if concocted in the interest of Canterbury. ^ Fergusson, Hist. Archit. i. 369 ; cp. 362. Martin I. describes the Con- stantinian church as 'juxta episcopium,' Ep. 15, Mansi, x. 851. See Alb, Butler, Nov. 9, ' Dedication of the Church of Our Saviour.' ^ Hemans, Hist, and Monimi. Eome, p. 658. * Hemana, 1. c. Council of Ro7ne. 293 and only twenty-six years had elapsed since Pope Martin had chap. x. been dragged from the basilica by two imperial agents, and carried away from Rome for maintaining, at a Council held on that same spot, the doctrine which the Byzantine court had proscribed ^. The present Council, like the former, met in the * secretarium ' of the church, the chamber which served as the place for meetings of the bishop and clergy, and the transaction of ecclesiastical business 2. Wilfrid, at first, was kept waiting outside the doors, as was usual in regard to petitioners or appellants. Agatho began by stating the business : they were met to consider a dissension which had arisen in the Churches of Britain. The bishops of Ostia and of Portus Bomanus then said^ that they had read the memorials presented on both sides, — those which had come from Theodore and others* 'against a certain bishop who, as they assert, has fled privily away, and, as they suppose, has come hither,' and the counter memorial embodying the appeal of the ' bishop of the holy church of York :' and that they found Wilfrid to have committed no offence which would canonically require his degradation, and to have 'observed moderation * Mansi, x. 849; Hefele, Hist. Councils, b. 16. c. i. s. 309; Milman, ii. 325- " • Secjretarium * was a Koman law-term for the justice-room of a magistrate (compare the ' secretum ' which Paul of Samosata made for himself, Euseb. vii. 30), as in Act. Scill. Mart., * in secretario Carthaginis ; ' comp. Act. Procons. S. Cypr., ' Carthagine in secretario.' Ecclesiastically, the word has two senses : (i) a room where bishops received the greetings of their people (' salutatorium,' Greg. Ep. v. 56), transacted business, held meetings of clergy, or sat in synod : the second Council of Aries forbade deacons to sit in the secretarium with the priests. So the Coimcil of Hippo in 393 met ' in secretario basillcae Pacis,' Mansi, iii. 732 ; other Councils, at Carthage, in the secretarium of the basilica Bestituta, ib. ; or of that of Faustus, ib. 699 ; the second of Seville in that of the Holy Jerusalem Church, ib. x. 557 : compare the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 448, ib. vi. 651. Hence, the sittings of the first Lateran Council are called ' secretarii ; ' and see Pope Zacharias, ' praeterito secretario,' Migne, Patr. Lat, Ixxxix. 833. Compare Greg. Ep. i. 19, and Benedict, note there, and Ep. iii. 56. The 'lesser secretarium' was (2) a vestry or sacristy, 'which the Greeks call Biaconicon ;' Council of Agde, c. 66, Mansi, viii. 336 : so in Bede, ii. i. Gregory is buried 'ante secretarium;' and iii. 14, Paulinus is buried 'in secretario Sancti Andreas ; ' and iii. 26, the ' secretarium ' of Lindisfame. ' Malmesbury, G. P. p. 226, abbreviates their speech, as given by Eddi, 30. * Including, apparently, Hilda; Eddi, 52. Malmesbury reckons her among the enemies of Wilfrid ; G. Pontif. p. 240. 294 Council of Rome, CHAP. X. by not mixing" himself up in any factious strife ^' Agatho then ordered that Wilfrid should be admitted into the *secretarium,' with the petition which he was said to have brought. He entered accordingly, and desired that his petition should be read. ' John, the Notary, read it to the Council.' Its purport was as follows. Wilfrid, a humble and unworthy bishop of Saxony 2, had by Divine guidance come to this ' apostolical summit,' as to a fortified place and tower of strength, from whence the rule of the canons was communicated to all the Churches. The Pope would know, from his private interview with -Wilfrid, and from the memorial already presented^, that 'certain invaders of his bishopric, not one only, but three,' had, ' at a meeting* of Archbishop Theodore and other prelates/ presumed to take away the see which he had held for more than ten years, and uncanonically to promote themselves to be bishops 'in his own church ' during his lifetime ; and that Theodore had consecrated them without his assent, and even ' without the assent of any bishop.' It was not for him to ask why this was done : he would refrain from accusing one who had been sent* from that apostolical see. It would appear that he had been expelled without having been convicted of any canonical fault : yet, after such treatment, he had raised no seditious contention, but had invoked the assistance of Rome, and ' simply called the comprovincial bishops to bear witness ' to the proceeding. He would accept any decision from the Council. If he were replaced in his old see, let the in- vaders be synodically ejected^. If, again, it was resolved ^ • Neque secundum sanctorum canonum subtilitatem convictum de aliquibus facinoribus, et ideo non canonice dejectum reperimus, potius autem et modestiam hunc tenuisse.' * ' Saxonia' was sometimes used for what we should call England. So Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. i, 9, ii. 46: cp. Reeves's Adanman, p. xlv, and 'Four Masters,' a. 684. So Huaetbert of Wearmoutb writing to Gregory II. ; Bede's Hist. Abb. 14. Boniface speaks of ' Saxony -beyond-Sea ;' Ep. 49 : cp. S. Greg. Ep. xi. 64. Kenulf of Mercia says that Augustine ' ecclesiis praefuit Saxonise ; ' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 522. ' 'Quae viva voce personaliter intimavi, et per satisfactionem petitionia scriptis narrantibus obtuli.' * 'Directus.' So in Andrew's speech. See above, p. 225. ' • De pristinis parochiis ecclesise.' Here ' parochiae ' is used somewhat Council of Rome, 295 to have more bishops in Northumbria, let them at least chap. x. be chosen from the clergy of his church by a provincial synod ^, so that he, Wilfrid, might 'serve God with them in peaceful unity.' We must pause a moment to observe that this statement does not dwell on what, no doubt, was prominent in Theodore's, — the fact that the subject of a division of dioceses had been mooted yeirs before at the synod of Hertford, and had been acted upon in East-Anglia. It might also be inferred from Wilfrid's paper that Theodore's first notion had been to take from him even York itself: and, certainly, that Bosa, Eata, and Eadhed were aliens, and personally unfit for the episcopate, — which was the re- verse of the fact. After a few eulogistic words from Agatho Decision on the moderation of the appellant^s conduct, the Council ^^ wlifrid. pronounced its decision. Let us carefully observe what this came to. Wilfrid was to be reinstated in his original diocese, that is, the diocese as it stood before the divi- sion^. The bishops who had been irregularly promoted were, ' as a matter of course,' to be expelled. But, when this was done, he was, with consent of a council to be assembled at York, ' to choose bishops as assistants ^, with whom he could live peaceably,' and who were to be con- secrated by Theodore. The advantages of diocesan sub- division were thus to be secured, but without the sacrifice of due order : Theodore's work was to be undone, that it might be done over again in a better way. The usual penalties were then denounced against all who should 'at- tempt to resist this sentence, or not receive it obediently, or, after a time, attempt to infringe it in whole or part.' Such a person, if bishop, priest, or deacon, was to be deprived and put under anathema : if clerk (i. e. in any order below the diaconate) or monk, or layman of any rank, or kingy he laxly, as if to mean, 'from those newly-erected bishoprics which originally and properly formed parts of the diocese of York.' * * Et si rursus in eadem parochia, cui praefui, praesules adhibere provident, saltern tales eUgant . . . .' Again, ' Si placuerit archiepiscopo et coepiscopis meis ut augeatur numerus episcoporum,' &c. ^ ' Episcopatum, quem nuper habuit, recipiat.* ' 'Adjutores.' Compare Bade, Ep. to Egb. 5. 296 Another Council at Rome. CHAP. X. Council of 125 bishops. was to be excluded from the Holy Communion. On the other hand, whosoever should sincerely accept and help to carry out the decision, might well hope to 'be Divinely rewarded for that obedience which God prefers to all sacri- fices/ Such was the issue of the Roman Council. Wilfrid in- dulged himself by staying in Rome until the spring of 680. To him it was doubtless a time of intense refreshment : and on the following Easter Tuesday, March 27, 680, the Pope gave him a token of support which must have yet further inspirited so devoted a client of Rome. A large Council of a hundred and twenty-five prelates met on that day to provide materials for the expected conference at Constantinople on the question of Monothelitism ^. Wilfrid ' having been ac- quitted,' as the Council-record says 2, 'on matters certain and uncertain/ i. e. on charges definite and indefinite, sat in this assembly as bishop of York, and professed the orthodox doctrine of the ' Two Wills and Operations ' in the one Christ in behalf of 'all the northern part of Britain and Ireland, and the islands, which were inhabited by the nations of the Angles and Britons, and also of the Scots and Picts : ' and was even described in the catalogue as representative of the ' synod ' or episcopal college of Britain ^ : the secretary of the Council having apparently supposed that his testimony to the orthodoxy of the insular Churches was given in the character of their accredited 'delegate^.' He signed the synodal letter addressed to the Emperor Constantino and his two sons *, and containing a long dogmatic statement : and he thus committed himself to the assertion, that the Council had 'expected that Theodore, archbishop of the great island of Britain, and philosopher, would attend, * Mansi, xi. 185 ; Hefele, b. 16. s. 313. Compare the Council of Milan held in 679 against Monothelitism ; Mansi, xi. 173. 2 Eddi, 51 ; Bede, v, 19; as Haddan and Stubbs read (iii. 140), omitting the comma placed after * parte ' by Smith and Hussey, and inserting ' que * after ' insulis.' ^ Mansi, xi. 306. What Wilfrid really meant to say was, ' I can assure you that in those countries there is no heresy on this point.' * Mansi, xi. 285. Return of Wilfrid, 297 with others who still tarried in Britain ^' But they came chap. x. not. At last Wilfrid tore himself away from the holy places of Rome. He had spent many days in farewell visits to churches, and had obtained many relics, with an exact register of the saints to whom they were ascribed, — together with many other things ' for the adornment of the house of God ^.^ His Wilfrid in passage through Italy was like a triumph : but on entering the Frankish territory he experienced a painful shock. Dago- bert of Austrasia had been murdered at the preceding Christmas by a conspiracy of ' dukes^' and of some prelates whom Ebroin had intruded into sees, and whose position was menaced by the young king ^. Eddi tells us that one of these bishops endeavoured to intercept Wilfrid, and repre- sented the slain prince as having played the part of Eeho- boam by despising the bishops and laying burdens on his people. Wilfrid appears to have given a softer answer than the case merited ^ but one which had the effect of shaming the Frankish prelate by its very gentleness. ' Woe to me, a sinner ! ' he rejoined : * thou art more righteous than I.' Wilfrid pursued his journey until he once more found him- Return to self at home. And then came the shock of a supreme dis- bria. appointment. He had, in fact, been too much elated by his success at the Roman Council to estimate the situation as it would present itself in Northumbria. To begin with, it is not easy for brilliant and fervid natures to understand the resisting force inherent in those who are strangers to their enthusiasm. Wilfrid fancied, it seems, that ^the Apostolic * Mansi, xi. 294 ; Hefele, s. 314. This expectation shows that Wilfrid was not formally regarded by the Council as delegate for his own Church ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 141. * * More suo, says Eddi, 32.* Thomas of Ely says that he brought a privi- legium for the monastery of Ely, according to Etheldred's request ; Vit. S. Eth. 19. He brought one for Ripon and Hexham; Eddi, 49. ^ Mabillon, Ann. SS. Bened. iv. praef. p. cxlv. This prince is identified with the * St. Dagobert, king and martyr,' who was venerated at Stenay. * *It was for your good, not your harm, that I exalted him;' Eddi, 32. Eadmer amplifies this, as if the chief of the regicides had drawn his sword against Wilfrid and menaced him with death ; 37. 298 Roman decree rejected by Egfrid. CHAP. X. See ' would be practically as potent a name to his country- men as it had been through long years to himself. Again, he forgot, or did not suflBciently consider, that the settlement against which he could now use that name with all distinct- ness and authority was one in which many interests were now bound up, to which the king of the Northumbrians and the archbishop of ' all Britain ' were alike committed, and which, if now assailed, would call out national feeling, both civil and ecclesiastical, in its defence. The Roman decree, duly drawn up, with its leaden ' bullae ' and its ' apostolic ' seal, was in his eyes * a banner of victory : ' he never reflected that to others it might be a provocation and an insult. The first step which he took was to show himself to his monks who had been wearying for his return, and, as Eddi expresses it, ' crying out to the Lord with tears ; ' the next was to visit King Egfrid, offer him a greeting of peace, and exhibit his treasured document, which he afterwards showed to the as- sembled Witan\ It is not difficult to imagine his amaze- ment when the reading of the decree was interrupted by angry dissent on the part of ' some persons present,' and then by an anticipation of that bitter complaint which re- curred so often in later days ^ : ' The writings have been bought, — the " doom " was corruptly obtained ! * The line taken by Egfrid ' and his counsellors,' if we may believe Eddi, — and we have no other informant, — was signally unworthy, yet not impolitic as an expedient for the time. They did not touch the broad question of E/Ome''s right to receive the ap- peal : they assumed that Wilfrid had got a verdict by bribing the tribunal, and dealt with him accordingly, — but never took any measures for ascertaining at Rome what would be its decision apart from such influence as he, by hypothesis, had used. Eddi affirms that the prelates ' who held posses- sion of his bishopric' acquiesced in the resolution to 'im- prison him for nine months without any token of respect ^.' * Eddi, 33 : ' Omnibus principibus . . . necnon servis Dei.* 2 On the venality of the Papal court in later days, see Milman, v. 381 ; Freeman, v. 724. « Eddi, 33. Imprisonment of Wilfrid. 299 Accordingly, everything was taken from him save the clothes which he wore. Ermenburga, firmly believing in the virtue of his reliquary ^, appropriated it to herself, hung it up be- side her in her carriage when she drove out, and kept it in her bedroom like a talisman. Egfrid swore ' by his own sal- vation ' that none of Wilfrid's friends should visit him in his captivity: they were allowed one parting interview, in which the undaunted bishop reminded them of Israel's thraldom in Egypt, of the trials of Moses and the prophets, of the suffer- ings of the Divine Chief Shepherd, of the great ' teacher's ^ ex- hortations in Heb. xii. 1,5^. He then passed into the custody of Osfrid, the reeve ^ or governor of Brunanburgh, a place famous in the tenth century as the scene of Athelstane's great victory, but of which the identification is uncertain ^, There, at the setting in of the winter, Wilfrid was immersed in a cell which was seldom lighted by sunshine, and never by a lamp. Darkness, however, had no terrors for Wilfrid : he sang his Psalms as regularly as if he had been in one of his own minsters, and the guards are said to have been awestruck by an appearance of light within the dungeon ^. The im- prisonment was meant as a menace : Egfrid offered to give him back part of his old bishopric, and some other gifts, if he would submit to royal authority, and disclaim the genuineness of the document brought from Rome. ' I would rather lose * ' Chrismariutn,' properly a vessel containing the hallowed chrism, had come to be used for a * theca reliquiarum ; ' see Ducange. He cites Greg. Turon. de Mirac. S. Mart. iv. 32, where the name is applied to a small case or box con- taining dust from St. Martin's tomb. Gregory's parents carried relics about their persons; de Gl. Mart. i. 84. St. Gall carried with him a 'little case* of relics, and made his prayers before it; Vit. S. Gall. When a pagan attempted to behead St. Willehad, the blow swerved aside on the leather band of the case of relics which * in collo suspensam habebat ; ' Vit. S. Will. 4. Tiie fashion became very general. William the Conqueror wore a reliquary round his neck at Senlac ; Freeman, iii. 263. * Eddi, 34. The speech begins, • Be mindful, and tell my brethren, of the days of old, how we read,' &c. 3 Cp. Bede, ii. 16. See Kemble, ii. 172, that probably ' the burhgerefa was essentially a royal officer, charged with the maintenance and defence of a fortress.' * See Turner, ii. 185 ; Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 154 ; Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 39- ' Eddi, 35. • Absentem diem lux agebat aemula,' Malmesb. CHAP. X. 300 Release of Wilfrid, CHAP. X. my head/ was the answer. But Osfrid, believing that his wife's recovery from a death-like stupor was due to some holy water poured by Wilfrid into her mouth ^, entreated Egfrid, with adjurations, 'not to compel him any longer to afflict the holy and innocent bishop to his own perdition : ' and the king transferred Wilfrid to Dunbar, where the reeve Tidlin was a man of 'sterner stuff ^Z But while the king and queen were visiting Coldingham, Ermenburga fell ill one night, and in the morning seemed to be dying of convul- sions^. The abbess Ebba*, remembering how Wilfrid had officiated in her church at Etheldred's profession, took ad- vantage of her nephew's anxiety to reprove him for his injustice. If he wished his wife to recover, he must either restore Wilfrid to his bishopric, — which would be best, — or let him go whither he would. Egfrid yielded to his aunt's exhortations, released Wilfrid, gave him back his reliquary, allowed him to depart with his friends, when they had been re-assembled : ' and the queen was healed.' This is the tale as told by Eddi. We know him well enough by this time to be mistrustful of his details, even when they do not assume a miraculous form. If he persuaded himself, also, that Egfrid repented of what he had done, the facts hardly bear out such a view. But his diffuseness is only the exaggeration of facts which Bede astonishes us by all but passing over ; he ignores altogether this visit of Wilfrid to Northumbria, in his professed account of Wilfrid's life ^ ; while in the course of his History he just says that » Eddi, 36. ^ Eddi has another marvel to tell : Tidlin caused iron chains to be made ; they were tried on Wilfrid's hands, but proved to be either too tight or too loose; 37. ^ Eddi, 38 : * Contractis membris simul in unum stricte alligatam.' Malmes- bury says, ' Coepit aliena facere, insana dicere.' * She is said to have died August 25, 683 (Alb. Butler). The Chronicle's date of 679 for the burning of Coldingham is too early; for it was burnt after her death (Bede, iv. 25), and this account of Eddi represents her as alive in 681, — let alone the received date of her death. Eadmer carelessly calls her the king's mother, c. 42, from a mistake as to ' mater ' in Eddi. ' Bede, v. 19: 'Post haec re versus Brittaniam, provinciam Australium Saxonum . . . convertit.' His stay in Mercia, 301 on account of the king's enmity he could not be received chap. x. n his country or diocese ^.' Nor does he say anything ibout the next event in Wilfrid's story, — his second sojourn n Mercia, which apparently began in the spring of 68 1. 3erthwald, the nephew of King Ethelred, an ealdorman )r sub-king, whom Eddi calls a prefect, asked Wilfrid o accept some of his own land for the building of a nonastery. ' Abide with me, for the Lord^s sake ! ' Wilfrid v\ras only too glad to comply: a sojourn in Mercia was for aim a renewal of pleasant memories, centering in the kindly beneficence of Wulf here ^ : he ' thanked God, who had given tiim some solace of rest ; ' and set to work to build ' a little monastery, which monks of his still held ' when Eddi wrote ^. But again his troubles returned. There had been a fierce feud between Mercian and Northumbrian royalties : Lindsey had again been conquered by the Mercians*, and bishop Eadhed had been fain to flee into Deira, where he ' became bishop of the church of E-ipon^,' that is, if we take the words literally, had a diocese made for him out of York, with Ripon, as at present, for its see. Egfrid had crossed the Mercian border, and been defeated by Ethelred, in 679, near the Trent ^ ; and Alfwin, Egfrid's brother, a youth of eighteen, apparently sub-king of Deira, and much loved in both king- doms, had fallen. It was exactly a year after Wilfrid's expul- sion when the corpse of Alfwin was brought into York amid the wild wailings of the people, who ' wept bitterly, and tore their garments and their hair '^.' Peace had been made, when ' Bede, iv. 1 3, ' parochia.' a Eddi, 14. 8 Eddi, 39. * * Integritate regni recepta,' says Malmesburj of the Mercian king ; G. P. p. 220; Bede, iv. 12, * recepisset.' " Bede, iii. 28 : • Hrypensis ecclesise prsestd factus est.' More express than iv. 12 : 'Hrypensi ecclesiae praefecit.' So Florence, App. in M. H. B. p. 625. * The possible see of Ripon,' Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 6. ^ Bede, iv. 21. Malmesbury says quaintly, that Ethelred attacked Egfrid in battle, ' and admonished him to return home ; ' G. Reg. i. 4. The scene of the battle is said to have been at Elford on the Trent, in Staffordshire ; Coxe'a Wendover, i. 170. Tighemach calls Alfwin 'Almuine.* ' Eddi, 24. He adds that Egfrid thenceforward • usque ad mortem sin© 302 Wilfrid in Sussex. CHAP. X. a protracted war seemed inevitable, by the * salutary exbor- tations of Theodore, which wholly quenched the fire of a great periP,' and induced the Northumbrian king to be content with a wer-gild, or pecuniary satisfaction ^^ for his brother's blood. But one of the fruits of this peace "^ was Wilfrid's compulsory removal from Mercia: Ethelred, and his wife Osthryd *, Egfrid's sister, commanded Berth wald to send him away at a day's notice. Leaving his monks behind him, and taking with him several priests, as Eappa, Padda, Burghelm, and Oiddi, together with other attendants who were in his service ^, Wilfrid travelled across the border into Wessex : but ere long the vindictive hatred of Ermenburga dispossessed him, for her sister, being Kentwin's wife, per- suaded the king to banish him from the realm ^. And then, as Bede says, tranquilly resuming his story, ' Wilfrid turned aside to the province of the South- Saxons'^,' whose king Ethelwalch gave him a solemn assurance of protection ^. Wilfrid the And now we come to the most beautiful chapter in his life : Sussex ° ^^^ which furnishes the best example of the remark, that his victoria regnabat.' For the adventures of one of Alfwin's ' thanes,' named Imma, who had been in Etheldred's service, see Bede, iv. 22. He was taken prisoner, but his brother Tunna, an abbot, deeming him to be dead, took care to say mass often for his soul. Bede was told by some who heard it, — so he tells us, — from Imma himself, that his chains repeatedly fell oflP, — most frequently (as he ascertained by subsequent conversation with Tunna) at the time when the masses were said. The chapter indicates, moroever, the current belief in purgatory. * Bede, iv. 21. Compare Gregory of Tours, Hist. Fr. ix. 20. 2 'Malta.' See Stubbs, Const Hist. i. 52, 82, 161; Thorpe's Anc. Laws. p. 79> Glossary, in v. Compare, on the principle of such compensation, Tacitus, Germ. 21. See Gibbon, i v. 367; and Robertson, Scotl. under Early Kings, ii. 286. He refers to this intervention of Theodore, and gives various scales of • wer-gilds,' English and foreign. See above, p. 238. ^ It lasted above fifty years. See Chronicle, a. 737. ' Multo exinde tempore,' Hen. Hunt. * See Bede, iii. 11 ; iv. 21. She was, long afterwards, murdered by Mercian nobles; Bede, v. 24 ; Chronicle, a. 697. ' Bede, iv. 13. The Chronicler erroneously says that 'Eoppa' was sent by Wilfrid and Wulfhere to preach in the Isle of Wight in 661. * Eddi, 39. ■^ Bede, iv. 13 : 'Siquidem divertens ad provinciam,* &c. ^ Eddi, 40 : ' That none of his enemies should terrify him by the threat of the sword, nor make void the promise by greatness of gifts.' State of the South-Saxons, 303 character was ever noblest in adversity ^, — the strongest title chap. x. which it can show to the aureole of pure saintship. That little South-Saxon realm, traditionally one of the oldest of the kingdoms, was by far the most insignificant. It is simply omitted in Florence of Worcester's dynastic tables, as if after the great things which Ella and his three sons had done from their landing at Kynor in 477 ^ to the de- struction of Anderida in 491, a spell had stiffened the South- Saxons into the utter negation of all stirring national life. Fenced in by the huge dim forest of the Andred- weald, which extended its arms into Kent and Hampshire ^, and into which the first Saxon invaders drove ^ some of the Welsh ^' or by Romney Marsh eastward, the people seemed to be inacces- sible to the influences which were swaying their neighbours hither and thither, and, in particular, were unconscious of the great spiritual movement which had formed Kent and Wessex into districts of Christendom. Twenty years before, their king Ethelwalch, who, as we have seen^ had become a Chris- tian and married a Christian wife, increased his dominion by receiving the Isle of Wight, and a strip of Hampshire called Meon, as a grant from his godfather Wulf here ^. He seems to have invited into his realm some six Irish monks, Dicul being their abbot ^, who built themselves a very small monas- tery at Bosham '^, near ' Cissa's-caster,^ the Saxon town, called after one of Ella's sons, on the site of the Roman Regnum. They dwelt there, unregarded by the heathens around them, holding their ' little Christian fortress,' but gaining no ground whatever. ' Not one of the country people cared to imitate their humble and poor life ' of devout ' service, nor so much * Eaine, i. 6i. But Churton is not warranted in suggesting that his * pros- perity had gone near to quench ' his ' zeal for the cause of God ; ' E. E. Ch. p. 91. ' Cymenes-ora (Chronicle, a. 477) is Kynor on Bracklesham Bay, near Wittering. ^ See Pearson, Hist. Maps, p. 5 ; Camden, i. 195, * Chronicle, a. 477. * See above, p. 183. * Bede, iv. 13. See Murray's Handbook for Kent and Sussex, p. 339 ; and Stephens's Memorials of Chichester, p. 7. But Dicul's little monastery was not * one of the waifs and strays of the early British Church.' We meet with a Dicul, an Irish priest, in Bede, iii. 19. ^ See Freeman, iii. 222, 304 State of the South-Saxons, CHAP. X. as to listen to their preaching'.' It seemed a hopeless case; Irish zeal had done wonderful things in other mission-fields, on the Continent and in Britain ^, — it fell flat and dead on the as yet unimpressible barbarians of Sussex. Dicul and his brethren had to live on amid the woods, bearing the burden of apparent failure, and keeping up by their presence and their devotions what seemed a fruitless testimony for God. Theirs was the position assigned in those ages to several faithful labourers ^, who worked and waited, not really in vain, just before the time appointed for other men's success. This was the condition of Sussex, * wholly ignorant of the Divine Name, and of the faith,' when Wilfrid found refuge within its frontier in 68 1. With what thoughts must he have entered its woodlands, or looked forth on the sea from its coast! Fifteen years before, he had narrowly escaped with his life, and the lives of nearly all his companions, from the ferocity of Sussex wreckers urged on by their Pagan priest. He now came once more among the people, shielded from actual peril by their king's patronage, but otherwise devoid of adventitious claims on their respect. Some of them may have heard that he was an exile, under the ban of his own king and Witan. If he was to do them any good, to bring any light into their darkness, he must do so by his own missionary capacities : and we have seen how he put off the prosecution of his appeal in order to be a missionary among the Frisians. As Bede well says, although he was shut out from his own diocese, 'he could not be restrained from the ministry of evangelising*.' He began in a fashion which may be called Pauline : he seized a temporal emergency as a spiritual opportunity. A long drought had produced sore famine : so great was the despair produced by exhaustion, that men would go by forties and fifties to some cliff or beach, and with joined hands leap or ^ Bede, iv. 1 3 : * Sed provincialium nuUus,' &c. * See Haddan's Remains, p. 268 ; Goldwin Smith, Irish Hist. p. 27. ^ Palladius in Ireland, according to one tradition, Todd's St. Patrick, p. 280 ff. ; and Wictbert in Frisia, Bede, v. 9. * Bede, iv. 13 : 'Non tamen ab evangelizandi potuit ministerio cohiberi.' In this part of Wilfrid's life, Bede for exceeds Eddi in vividness and fulness. Wilfrid converts them, 305 rush into the sea ^ The people were so truly barbaric that chap. x. they were ignorant of fishing except for eels, although the sea and rivers abounded with fish. Wilfrid's versatility was equal to the occasion. He had always, it seems^ taken interest in handicrafts : he bade his attendants collect nets used in eel-fishing, and cast them into the sea ^ : presently they hauled in three hundred fish of different sorts, which they divided into three parts, — for the poor, lor the lenders of the nets, and for themselves. 'By which good service,' writes Bede ^, ' the prelate turned their hearts powerfully to love him, — and they were the readier to listen hopefully to his preaching about heavenly benefits, after they had through his agency received temporal good *.' ' The hour' was indeed ' come, and the man.' ' The dull hard stone ' of their hearts was melted : they gathered round the stranger who had lifted them out of their physical misery, and gratitude and confi- dence towards Wilfrid became faith — however rudimentary — in his Lord. He spent some months in a regular course of instruction ^ ; and with such effect that ealdormen and thanes set the example of receiving baptism from his hand, and his four priests, then or afterwards, baptized the rest of the people. No doubt, as in other multitudinous conver- sions, there were some which were conversions only in name ; and if we can rely on Eddi, the delight with which the king surveyed the good work led him to use direct pressure on those who would otherwise have held aloof ^. On the day of the great general baptism, we are told that the long- delayed rain *fell gently and copiously, the parched earth began to recover its freshness and verdure, the year came round again glad and fruitful.' 'And so, having cast off ^ This Bede tells as a report, — • ferunt.' ^ St. Gall, on the Lake of Constance, was wont ' squamigero gregi insidias componere : * see the legend about the water-spirit who tried to damage bis nets, Vit. S. Galli ; Pertz, Mon. Germ, Hist. ii. 7. ^ • Quo beneficio multum antistes cor omnium in suum convertit amorem.' * Bede, iv. 13. * Above, p. 289. Cp. Bede, ii. 14; iii. 17; iv. 16; v. 6. • Eddi, 40 : ' Alii vero coacti regis imperio.' Milman, ii. 265, exaggerates this seriously, as if it referred to * the South-Saxons ' in general ; which would absolutely stultify the narrative of Bede. ' Bede becomes almost poetical: ' Rediit viridantibus arvis annus Isetus et frugifer.' See Alcuin, de Pont. Eccl. Ebor. 595. X 306 Wilfrid settled at Selsey. CHAP. X. their old superstition and renounced their idolatry ^, the heart and the flesh of the people rejoiced in turning to the living God, understanding that He who is the true God had en- riched them by His heavenly grace with both inward and outward blessings^.' Thus, at last, the dew came upon that 'fleece' which had been dry in the midst of the watered ground. It came with the beginnings of civilisation^, to accompany and recom- mend it: some 'promise of the life that now is,' some ini- tiation into the arts which improve its condition, assisted the announcement of 'that which was to come.' Wilfrid was now ' the Apostle of the South-Saxons : ' and he became their first resident bishop. Ethelwalch made over to him a royal 'vill,' his own place of abode*, and added to it a domain of eighty-seven hydes consisting of Selsey, ' the Isle of the Sea-calf/ as Bede calls the seal : it was, in fact^ a peninsula joined on the west to the mainland by a strip of ground about a sling's throw across ^. Here the bishop was to establish a home for himself and his fellow-exiles, and a centre for missionary and episcopal work. The minster arose — doubtless, amid many pensive recollections of E,ipon and Hexham — on a spot which has since then been submerged by the encroachments of the Channel, and is supposed to have ^ • Exsufflata ; ' alluding to the old custom of spitting as if in abhorrence of the Evil One, at the time of renouncing him and his works. See Bingham, b. xi. c. 7. s. 5; Palmer, Orig. Lit. ii. 177. In the Eastern Church this custom still continues ; in the Ofl&ce for making a Catechumen we find, * Hast thou renounced Satan?' 'I have renounced him.' 'Breathe out then (l/i0i/- crjaov) and spit at him.' Goar, Euchologion, p. 358. In Bede, v. 6, is a reference to the similar custom of breathing on the catechumen's face at the first exorcism : ' Exsufflante illo in faciem meam.' So the Gelasian Sacra- mentary, Murat. Lit. Eom. i. 593 : ' Exsuflflas in faciem ejus.' ^ Bede, iv. 12 : 'Sicque abjecta,' &c. Cp. Ps. Ixxxiv. 2. ^ See Raine, i. 70. John Eliot * found it absolutely necessary to do what he called carrying on civility with religion ; ' Miss Yonge, Pioneers and Founders, p. 16. Price 'wisely qualified himself to act as a physician' before going to Rangoon ; ib. 142. In Wilfrid's case, the humane use of ordinary knowledge opened the door to Christian preaching. * Eddi, 40. Compare Ethelbert's proceedings at Canterbury. 'Propriam mansionem,' Malmesb. G. P. p. 232. * See Bede, iv. 13 : ' Quo tempore,* &c. • Such a place is called, by the Latins, a peninsula; by the Greeks, a cherronesos.' Malmesbury calls it 'insula circumflua ponto,' G. Reg. i. 6. Wilfrid settled at Selsey, 307 been about a mile eastward of the present church ^. He began chap. x. his episcopate with a characteristic act of Christian kindness. The king" had given him two hundred and fifty persons, living on the estate, ' as bondsmen and bondswomen : he saved them all, by baptizing them, from slavery to the devil, and by granting them their liberty, set them free from the yoke of slavery to man 2.' He set his faithful priest Eappa over the monastery: and Bede tells us how the pestilence made its way into the Selsey peninsula^, and carried away many of Wilfrid's attendants, and also of his new converts ; one of these being a boy who, on the 5th of August, had a dream which shortly preceded his death, and in consequence of which that day was observed by masses in memory of King Oswald in ' all the oratories ' of this Northumbrian colony at Selsey, — no other member of which, beside the boy, was at that time * hurried out of the world/ — ' and also in many other places */ And here let us leave Wilfrid among his South- Saxons. * In Camden's time it was visible at low water ; Britann. i. 199. See Murray's Kent and Sussex, p. 327. ^ Bede, iv. 13 : 'Et quoniam illi rex,' &c. Kemble, Sax. Engl. i. 211. On such manumission of slaves, see Lecky, Europ. Morals, ii. 74. Cp. Council of Celchyth (Chelsea) in 816, c. 10 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 583. ^ It wrought great havoc in monasteries, as at Lastingham, Bede, iii. 23 ; Lichfield, ib. iv. 3 ; Barking, ib. iv. 7, 8 ; Ely, ib. iv. 19; Wearmouth, Hist. Abb. 8 ; Lindisfame and Carlisle, Vit, Cuthb. 27. * Bede, iv. 14. This ' puerulus,' an inmate of the monastery, and a boy of great simplicity, gentleness, piety, was taken ill of the plague, and was lying in bed alone, at 7 a m. on the second of three days which had been appointed for a * tiiduanum jejunium,' when he seemed to see ' the blessed princes of tha Apostles,' Peter and Paul, who, as Bede heard the story, told him that he would die in grace on that very day, but ' had to wait ' until mass (missse) had been celebrated, that he might receive the viaticum : and that all the other patients would recover. This had been granted to the prayers of the king Oswald, beloved of God, who, in dying, prayed for all his nation, and therefore for them. The boy described the two appearances as having faces 'ra)st pleasant and fair ; ' one was shorn like a cleric, one had a Ions beard. Eoppa looked in his ' annale,' and found that it was the anniversary of Oswald's death. He ordered ' missas fieri,' and all to communicate, and a particle of the oblation to be carried to the sick boy ; after which aU the monks went to their morn'ng meal (prandium). The boy died that day. It is easy to see how the story grew into this detailed form. The hour assigned to the vision falls in with the fact that 9 a.m. was the usual hour for the celebration; Bede, iv. 22; Orleans III. c. 14 ; Mansi, ix. 16 ; Greg. Turon. Vit. Patr. viii. 11. See Scudamore, Notit. Euch. p. 34, Bede's informant, bishop Acca, had heard the story from monks of Selsey. X a 308 Wilfrid settled at Selsey. CHAP. X The strange restraint which had checked Bede's hand in that part of his narrative which should have described Wilfrid's sufferings is removed when he has to write, not of the mag- nificent prelate who seemed rather the first than the second man in Northumbria, but of the exile who knew so well how to make his own misfortunes * turn out for the furtherance of the Gospel.' Tor five years he exercised in those parts the office of the episcopate, both by words and by deeds, de- servedly honoured by alP : ' with the little cathedral of Selsey instead of York, with the poor simple neophytes of Sussex instead of the Northumbrian Church in its stately organi- sation, with Ethelwalch and Ebba — a happy exchange — in- stead of Egfrid and Ermenburga : his troubles settling down into the quietness of an ' apostleship,' which might for a while seclude the man whose name had been heard through Europe, but which, in the general estimate of his life, may be truly said to constitute its crown. * Bede, iv. 13 : * Nam ipse illis in partibus,' &c. CHAPTEE XI. It has been natural to treat the first series of Wilfrid's troubles as one subject, and to pursue it without interruption: it is time now to look at the progress of the Church in various kingdoms since the division of his diocese in 678. We meet, in the first instance, with a statement by Florence of Worcester ^, which assigns to 679 a five-fold partition of the Mercian diocese, the effect of which was to establish Bosel as bishop of Worcester, Cuthwin of Lichfield, Saxulf of Leicester, Ethelwin of ' Siddenacester,' and ^tla of Dor- chester. This, it is said, was done by Theodore at the request of Ethelred, who was himself prompted by Oshere, ' king ' of the Hwiccas. But the statement requires ' analysis and criticism 2.' Let us see what can be made good. As to Worcester, Bede tells us ^ that several years after this, when ' In the appendix to his Chronicle, Mon. H. Brit. p. 622. Oshere, the alleged promoter of the partition, is referred to in a charter of 734-737 as having induced Ethelred to give lands to two nuns; Cod. Dipl. i. 98. If Florence is correct, Osric must be dated after Oshere, for Osric was in office about 690; Bede, iv. 23. On the other hand, the evidence prepond«rates in favour of assigning the earlier date to Osric (see below as to the foundation at Gloucester, not to speak of the questionable charter of 676 as to Bath), and placing the accession of Oshere shortly before 693, when he granted land at 'Penitanham ' to abbess Cutswid ; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 41. Oshere was dead in 706, when his son Ethelward gave a charter as ' subregulus ; ' Cod. Dipl. i. 64. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 1 28. Florence, says Sir T. D. Hardy, * is very good original authority as far as the see of Worcester is concerned ; ' Mon. H. Brit. p. 122. Still, the date of his death is 11 18. ^ Bede, iv. 23 : ' De medio nunc dicamus.' He implies, by 'paulo ante' further on, that Bosel had not a long episcopate. Florence dates its termination (when, as Bede says, he resigned on account of illness) in 691. Probably, while bishop, he lived with monks around him, even if his cathedral * family ' was not composed entirely of monks ; Stubbs, Cath. of Wore. p. 7. His church was called St. Peter's; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 35 ; Green, Hist. Wore. p. 16. 310 Mercian Diocese divided. CHAP. XI. Osric was ' king,' or sub-king, of the Hwiccian district, of which Worcester was the capital, Bosel was the bishop of that province, having been appointed when Talfrid, once a monk of Whitby, had been elected, and then had died before he could receive consecration ^, — a circumstance which appears in the narrative of Florence. This enables us to believe that the bishopric of Worcester — a city which had a British name as Cair Guoeirangon 2, and which, says Florence, ' exceeded many other cities in the height and stateliness of its walls ' — may be traced back to a time somewhat near 679. Leicester was also made a bishopric for the Mid- Angles ; but Cuthwin ^, not Saxulf, was its first prelate, as Florence himself intimates in his catalogue of bishops : Saxulf retained his seat at Lich- field. We have heard how Eadhed was sent from North- umbria to preside over Lindsey: when Lindsey became again Mercian, Ethelwin, who had spent some time in Ireland as a student of theology*, was established as bishop of Sidnacester, commonly identified with Stow, a village between Gains- borough and Lincoln^. Florence does not mention Hereford: Putta, we know, had settled there, and his presence, as that of a bishop who had been obliged to quit Rochester, would prepare for the erection of a regular bishopric. The chief difficulty is about Dorchester. Florence evidently got his ^ Bede, iv. 23. ^ Nennius, 67. Also written • Guoranegon.' Ethelred's charter of 691-2 speaks of * Weogorna;' Ethelbald's charter of 716 of 'Uigranceastre ; ' another of his, of 'Wigorna;' bishop Mildred's, in 774, of' Weogemacestre' (Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 35, 80, 108, 152); the Chronicle of 992, of ' Wigemaceastre.' • The chieftain of " Hwiccas " had as much authority in his good city of Worcester as the king of Essex had in London ; ' Palgrave, Angl.-Sax. p. 46. The Merciap capital was Tarn worth. ^ See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 129; Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 624. There was no regular succession at Leicester until 737; Godwin, De Praesul. p. 280. * Bede, iii. 27: 'Erant inter hos,' &c. Ethelwin was of noble 'Anglian' blood, and had come home from Ireland 'beneinstructus;' his brother Ethelhun had died there of the pestilence. Ethelwin ruled the church of Lindsey ' multo tempore nobilissime,' and was succeeded by Edgar; Bede, iv. 12. * * Stow, the ancient Sidnacester ; ' Ereeman, ii. 48. See Camden, Britan. i. 572 : he observes that Eadnoth IL, bishop of Dorchester, Leicester, and Sidnacester, in the eleventh century, built * the church of Our Lady in Stow ; ' and that it was commonly believed ' in those parts that Stow was the mother church to Lincoln.' Mercian Diocese divided, 311 account of iEtla from a brief statement of Bede ^, that iEtla, chap. xi. a monk of Whitby, became bishop of Dorchester, — to which statement he added one of his own, that Dorchester was treated, in 679, as a Mercian bishopric for 'South Anglia^.' Now, in no other passage does Bede tell us of a see of Dor- chester, distinct from that of Winchester, while Heddi pre- sided over the latter church: and, beside this, we do not know that the district which was ecclesiastically dependent on Dorchester had at this period become Mercian ^, or, indeed, that it became Mercian before the battle of Bensington in 777*. It has been suggested that the statement of Florence is incorrect, and that Bede's is to be explained by identifying ^tla with Heddi ^. Against this latter suggestion it is to be urged, that Bede could not have confounded one of the scholarly disciples of Hilda with a prelate whom he repeatedly names Heddi, and expressly describes as not learned^. On the whole it seems not unlikely that, in the weakened and dis- tracted condition of Wessex, Ethelred might have repeated the policy of Wulfhere by invading Wessex on the north, annexing Oxfordshire to Mercia, and installing ^tla, as a Mercian bishop, in the church of Birinus. Very likely Florence erred in assigning all these arrangements to one time, and to Oshere what was mther due to a predecessor in the Hwiccian sub-kingship ^, Osric, the nephew of Ethelred, and apparently the son of Alchfrid of Northumbria. But it is probable that Theodore, encouraged by his success in Northumbria, would be eager to carry out his scheme in the * Bede, iv. 23: 'De secundo (^tla) breviter intiraandum,' &c. * Kemble, i. 80. The term ' South-Anglian ' had, however, a wider application. Thus in Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 96, 100 : ' Ethelbald, king not only of the Mercians, but of all the provinces which are called by the general name of South- Angles ; ' where the lani^y the sixth in 638^, the eighth in 6^'^^'^^ the eleventh in 675^— a precedent due to the ignorance which existed in 589, among Spanish prelates, as to the true text of the Creed, and to the ' firm footing^' already obtained in that Church for what was * Mansi, xi. 290. "^ Swete, Doctrine of Procession, p. 190. It is also to be observed that Gregory of Tours, a typical Frankish Churchman, had inserted ' et FUio ' into the doctrinal confession in the prologue of his Hist. Eccl. Francorum. ' S. Aug. de Trin. xv. s. 29 : ' Ideo enim addidi ' (as to the Father) 'princi- paliter, quia et de FUio Spiritus Sanctus procedere reperitur . . . Sic ergo eum genuit, ut etiam de illo Donum commune procederet, et Spiritus Sanctus Spiritus esset amborum.* lb. iv. s. 29, after saying that mission from the Father implies procession from the Father, he adds, *Nec possumus dicere quod Spiritus Sanctus et a Filio non procedat, neque enim frustra idem Spiritus et Patris et Filii Spiritus dicitur.' This is in a passage in which the Father is owned to be the •Principle* of the Godhead. So ib. v. s. 15: 'Patrem et Filium principium esse Spiritus Sancti.* So, a century later, Ferrandus of Carthage, Ep. 4 (Galland. Bibl. xi. 355), 'Catholici . . de Patre et Filio Spiritum Sanctum procedere sentiunt ;' and Ep. 7, • Proprium Spiritfts Sancti de utroque procedere.' * Mansi, ix. 978, 'et a Filio,' in the 'Tome ;' ib. 985, *et Filio/ in the 3rd canon. 5 Ib. X. 615, 'etFilio.' * Ib. X. 662, ' Filioque.' ' Ib. X. 1 2 10, 'Filioque.* ^ Ib. xi. 133, 'ab utrisque;' but a later sentence appears to explain 'pro- cessisse ' by ' missus.* ^ Swete, p. 170. Death of John the Precentor. 321 originally a gloss intended to strike at Visigothic Arianism chap. xi. by emphasising the doctrine of a coequal and consubstantial Son. So ended the Council of Hatfield, without any reference to the case of the great prelate who a few months before had answered at Rome for the orthodoxy of the English bishops, and who in this very autumn was experiencing in North- umbria the full bitterness of an aggravated wrong. At Hatfield, every one seems to have ignored his name, though no one can have forgotten it ^. The Roman Precentor must have heard of the story ; one would think that he must have been at Rome when judgment was given on the appeal. But it did not lie in his commission to enter on such matters: and if any suffragan bishop had been minded to pronounce the name of Wilfrid, he would have been summarily put down by the autocratic president. Shortly after the Council, John set forth on his return, duly provided with an authen- ticated copy of the proceedings 2. But he never again saw his abbey of St. Martin ; he never again * ruled the choir ' above the grave of the chief Apostle. He fell sick in Gaul, and died ; and his promise to the good monks of Tours that he would stay with them on his homeward journey was ful- filled in strangely mournful fashion by their solemn reception and interment of his corpse ^. The document in his charge was forwarded to Rome, and gave much content to the Pope and ' to all who heard it read,' as a proof of ' the Catholic belief of the English people*.' Agatho was at this time engaged in watching, by correspondence, the proceedings of the great Council, reckoned as the Sixth CEcumenical ^, which had assembled under the personal presidency of the Emperor * The Peterborough forger, whose account of the proceedings occurs in the Chronicle for 675, makes the Witan assemble at Hatfield to receive irom Wilfrid a privilege sent by Agatho in favour of the abbey of Medeshamstede, whereupon king Ethelred ratifies and enlarges all former grants, and the act is attested by Theodore, and by Wilfrid, * archbishop of York.' ^ Bede, iv. 1 8 : ' Datumque illi exemplar.' * Bede, 1. c. : * Verum ille patriam revertens,' &c. * Bede, 1. c. : • Exemplum catholicae fidei Anglorum . . . gratantiasime exceptum.' ^ See Mansi, xi. 207. Y 322 Death of Hilda, CHAP. XI. on the 7tli of November, and continued its sessions until the September of 68i. Death of During those November days a life was ebbing out, which had for years represented in Northumbria the unity of the Church of Egfrid and Wilfrid with the Church of Edwin and Paulinus. A long and weary illness had broken down the strength of the great abbess of Whitby: yet she persisted in doing what work she could ^ until, in the seventh year of her infirmity, in the night of the 1 7th of November, 680, * when her pain had struck inward,' as Bede expresses it, she felt that her hour was at last come. It was 'about the cock-crowing^ when she sent for *the viaticum of the most Holy Communion,' received it with the 'handmaids of Christ ' belonging to the monastery, uttered her last admonitions to 'live in evangelical peace with each other, and indeed with all, and while uttering them looked cheer- fully on death, or rather, if I may use the Lord's words, passed from death unto life^." Bede then describes a 'beautiful harmony of events, whereby, while some were beholding her departure from this life^, others were being made cognizant of her entrance into the perpetnal life of souls.' Thirteen miles from Whitby, and three miles to the west of Scarborough, lies Hackness, where in that very year Hilda had founded a dependent house, under the govern- ment of Frigyd. Among its inmates was Begu*, a nun of more than thirty years' standing, who in her dream that night saw Hilda's soul 'guided by angels to the threshold of eternal light ^,' and thereupon aroused the prioress, who assembled the other nuns in the church, and bade' them ^ Bede, iv. 23 : 'In quo toto tempore nunquam . . . gregem . . . docere praeter- mittebat,' &c. 2 lb. 'Septimo ergo,' &c. St. John v. 24. Cp. Bede, Hist. Abb. 11.] ' lb. • Pulchraque renim Concordia,' &c. * Bede clearly distinguishes her from Heiu, with whom she has been some- times identified. She may also be distinguished from St. Bega, the Irish-bom virgin who founded a religious house in Cumberland, and whose name is perpetuated in 'St. Bees,' Cp. Alb. Butler, Sept. 6. The Aberdeen Breviary has a legend for Oct. 31, which makes Bega come from Ireland, found a nunnery under Aidan and Oswald, and afterwards yield the abbacy to Hilda. Here, again, she is confounded with Heiu. 5 Cp. Vit. Cuthb. 4, 34. Bishopric at Abercorn, 323 * say prayers and psalms ^ for the soul of the Mother.' In chap, xi, the morning arrived some monks from Whitby to announce the great bereavement. 'We know it already/ said the inmates of Haekness : and they then, on inquiry, ascertained that the hour of Begu's dream had been the hour of Hilda's death 2. Hilda was succeeded in the abbacy by the princess- nun Elfled, who had been given into her charge as a mere infant before the foundation of Whitby, and just after the victory of Winwidfield ^. We do not find in the account of the synod of Hatfield any mention of the subject which was adjourned from that of Hertford, but had been to a considerable extent presented during the interval in the form of an accomplished fact. In the year after the Council, however, a fresh opportunity for diocesan subdivision presented itself to Theodore. Eata gave up Hexham to Tunbert, — whom we have met with as the kinsman, and for a time the monastic superior, of Ceolfrid, — and retained for himself his own Lindisfarne *. And a Bishopric new see was established on the northern frontier of the \q^^^ ^^' realm, in a monastery at Abercorn on the Firth of Forth, west of the present Queensferry. The place is described by Bede, in his first book, as ' about two miles ' to the east of * a spot called in the Pictish language Peanfahel,' whence the last wall built by the Britons ' took its course westwards^;' in the fourth book, as within the territory of the English, but near the arm of the sea which divides their lands from those of the Picts®. Egfrid's previous successes over the * Compare Bede, iii. 2, on the psalms said at Heavenfield. for the soul of St. Oswald. And so in the Life of St. Amatus, 19 : ' Canite psalmos, quoniam jam mater nostra nos relinquit ;' Ann. SS. Ben. ii. 1 33. ^ Bede adds that at Whitby one of the younger sisters, who loved the Mother ' with intense affection,' being in a distant part of the convent reserved for novices, had a similar dream at the same hour, and told it to her com- panions before the rest of the community knew of the death. But this seems inconsistent with Bede's account of Hilda's last Communion. ' Bede, iii. 24. See a letter of hers, Bonifac. Ep. 112. * Bede, iv. 12 : ' Qui etiam post tres abscessionis Vilfridi annos,' &c. ' Bede, i. 1 2 : ' Incipit autem duorum ferme milliimi spatio a monasterio Aebbercurnig,' &c. On 'Peanfahel' see Burton, i. 186, and Robertson, Scotl. under Early Kings, ii. 380. The latter considers the Picts to have been not Cymrian, but Gaelic Celts, akin to the Irish Picts or Cruitbnech. " Bede, iv. 26 : cp. 12. Florence, confounding these 'Picts' with the people Y % S24 Foundation of J arrow. CHAP. XT. Picts had seemed to confirm the Northumbrian supremacy; and it was natural to employ a religious house within a short distance of their own territory ^ as a base of missionary operations among them, and perhaps as a centre of episcopal supervision for part of Lothian ^ ; and Trumwine was con- secrated for this outpost of the English Church. Founda- And while that Church was thus * lengthening her cords ' Jarrow. northwards, the great monastic work of Benedict Biscop was developing itself into a new foundation on the south bank of the Tyne. There lay a domain of forty hydes, situate on the ' Gyrwy,' literally a marsh (as we see in the name of the Gyrvians of Cambridgeshire), but here denoting the 'Slake' or smooth^ bay, where the king's ships were wont to ride at anchor. The old word lives in that name of Jarrow which is for ever illustrious from its association with Bede. This estate was given to Benedict by Egfrid, very soon after his return home with John the Precentor, that is, apparently, in the autumn of 680 *. The king ' saw that his former grants had been well and profitably bestowed^: ' of Galloway, and neglecting Bede's mention of Abercorn, makes Trum- wine bishop of Candida Casa: see his Catalogue of Bishops, Mon. H. Br. p. 626. * The proper 'Pictland' included at least the whole of Eastern Scotland from the Firth of Forth northwards, and certainly a considerable portion of the north Highlands, bordering westward on the territory of the Dalriads or Scots from Ireland ; Burton, i. 183 : cp. Kobertson, ii. 371. But some of the Picts, in the latter days of the Eoman dominion, settled south of the Firth ; Palgrave, p. 417. The great Northumbrian kings deprived them of this territory: they regained it in 685. Robertson explains the ' terram Pictorum qui Niduari vocantur ' in Bede's Vit. Cuthb. 1 1, as the neighbourhood of Abemethy, ii. 383, where a Pictish king Nechtan, probably he of Bede, v. 21, dedicated a church. ' It seems probable that advantage would be taken of this new foundation to relieve Lindisfarne of part of its charge in Lothian. The ' Historia de S. Cuthberto,' after narrating the appointment of Cuthbert to the see of Lindis- farne, marks the northern boundary of the diocese as a line from Lammermoor to Eskmouth ; X Script. 69. ' I. e. the ' sleek ' bay. * Wira . . . qui . . naves serena invectas aura placidi ostii excipit gremio ;' Malmesb. G. Reg. i. 3 ; Scr. post Bed. p. 21. On Jarrow see Surtees' Hist, and Antiq. of Durham, ii. 66. * 'Eight years,* says the Anon. Hist. (Bed. Op. vi. 419), 'after they had begun to found' Wearmouth; this reckoning begins from Benedict's return home in 672. ' Bede, Hist. Abb. 6 : ' Quia bene se ac fructuose dona^se conspexit.' Foundation of J arrow. 325 he could reasonably hope that the new endowment would be chap. xi. equally satisfactory, but could never have foreseen the glory which was to rest upon it. Visit the place as it is, and on your way to the ancient church^ (now excellently cared for) you see only a crowd of mean cottages occupied by pitmen, and enveloped in a murky atmosphere : strange contrast to the appearance which it must have presented when, *a year after 2' the land had been obtained, that is, in the autumn of 681, the buildings actually necessary for conventual life^ were so far completed that twenty-two inmates of Wearmouth, ' ten of them being already tonsured, and twelve still awaiting the privilege of the tonsure *,' were conducted by Ceolfrid as their abbot to take possession of their new home at Jarrow. This house 'of St. Paul' was to be united with St. Peter's at Wearmouth in ' the brotherly fellowship of the first Apostles,' so that the two should be virtually 'one monastery^ of SS. Peter and Paul situated in two places,' the inmates of both being bound together by 'a common and perpetual affection and intimacy,' and rendered as inseparable as the body and the head of a living man. The building of the abbey church was not so speedy as had been the case at Wearmouth : it was not begun ® until the third year from the foundation of the monastery; ^ ' Where we may still see the massive walls and narrow windows of the choir in which he (Bede) worshipped ;' Freeman, iv. 298 : so v. 899. Near the town of Jarrow is 'Bede's fountain,' which even in the eighteenth century was believed to have ' healing properties ;' Giles's Bede, i. p. c. ^ So Bede, 1. c. In Anon. Hist. Abb., ' locum primis autumni abscessum ' may be corrected to ' locum priore autumno concessura.' ' Anon. Hist. Abb. * * Tonsurae adhuc gratiam exspectantibus ; ' Anon. Hist. Abb. Bede is less exact : ' Monks in number about seventeen.' ' By no means all of them were able to chant, still less to read in church, or to recite antiphons or responsories ; but they made rapid progress, through their monastic zeal, and the example of their abbot's assiduity.' ' Bede, Hist. Abb. 12: ' Sicut rectius dicere possimius, in duobus locis posito uni monasterio beatorum . . . Petri et Pauli.' See ib. 6, 'ut sicut corpus a capite,' &c. ; and v. 24, 'Monasterii . . . quod est ad Viuraemuda et Ingyruum.' Alcuin, in 793, writes * fratribus Wirensis ecclesiae et Gyrvensis,* as forming one ' congregatio ; ' Ep. 13. ^ See Anon. Hist. Abb. The work began at the spot where Egfrid himself bad fixed on the site for the altar. 326 Bede. CHAP. XI. but in spite of the small number of workmen employed, it was finished in the second year from the commencement : so that, according to an ancient inscription once visible on the wall of Jarrow church, on the 34th of April 'in the fifteenth year ofEgfrid's reign,' and 'the fourth of Ceolfrid's abbacy,' — that is, in 684^, — the 'dedication of the basilica Bede. of St. Paul w^as solemnized.' Among the twelve unton- sured monastic colonists was a little boy of about eight, who had been bom, in 673 2, on the lands which very shortly afterwards were granted to Benedict Biscop for the foundation of Wearmouth abbey. The child Beda (a namesake of an ancient prince of Lindsey, who, curiously enough, is said to have had a son called Biscop ^, which reminds us of Benedict's own patronymid) was 'given* by the care of his kinsfolk to Abbot Benedict,' when he was 'seven years old, to be educated.' From that day forward he lived under monastic rule as a member of the community, being taken by Ceolfrid to Jarrow about a year after he had been received at "Wear- mouth. There lay before him, at that date, some fifty-four years ^, which were to be almost eventless in regard to his personal history, and unmarked by anything which could associate him with what may be called the political history of his Church. We seem to be looking, not on a landscape of grand and varied outline, but on some rich level land watered by soft streams and reposing in broad sunlight. ^ Egfrid's fourteenth year ended in the February of 684. See a facsimile of the inscription in Annals of Engl. p. 34. ^ Bede was in his fifty-ninth year (so he tells us) when he wrote the precious little autobiography which follows the epitome of events in v. 24. Now that epitome, like the History proper (see v. 23, end), ends in a.d. 731. And there is no reason to think that the. autobiography was written a year later. If, then, he had completed fifty-eight years in 731, he was born in 673. So Mabillon in his ' Elogium,' in Smith's Bede, p. 799. So Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 189. See too Moberly's Bede, p. xiii. The ' anonymous presbyter's ' Life of Bede wrongly assigns the year 677. So Sim. Dun. de Dun. Eccl. i. 8. ' Florence, App. in Mon. Hist. Brit. p. 631. See Moberly, p. xii. * * Datus sum ;' Bede, v. 24. For the routine of a boy's life in a monastery, see Turner, iii. 18. Comp. the anonymous presbyter's Life of Bede, Bed. Op. i. p. cxlvii. Boniface, according to Alb. Butler, June 5, was thirteen when he entered the monastery of Exeter : about seven according to Mabillon. ^ He died on the afternoon of Wednesday, the eve of the Ascension, May 25, 735. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 196. Bede. 327 There is monotony, but it is the monotony of tranquil, regular, chap. xi. and nobly fruitful work. Ever since the lad began his Scriptural studies under the care of Trumbert, a monk who had been trained by Chad ^, and other such instructors, he showed the true spirit of a Christian scholar. He studied with unremitting industry and with the dutiful single- heartedness of -one who knew that he had to form himself into a teacher, — that this was the path in which he was appointed to walk, the sphere in which he was to work for the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men. He has no literary ambition, although he enjoys his work as keenly as a poet or an original thinker might rejoice in the out- pouring of verse or the construction of theory : ' I ever found it sweet,' he says, looking back upon those years of happy labour, 'to learn, or to teach, or to write ^.' In one sense, it is true, he ' is original in nothing ^ ; ' but looking at him as a literary phenomenon rising up all at once in a remote corner of the England of his time, he is one of the most original personages in history. And he is more, — he is one of the most admirable and loveable. Our first truly national scholar and author, the father of our history, the man in whom our 'literature strikes its roots, in whom,' although he never saw foreign countries, 'the whole learning of his age seemed to be summed up*/ the 'adapter of the sacred lore of the' ancient 'Church to the peculiar wants of his ^ Bede, iv. 3 : ' Sicut frater quidam de eis qui me in Scripturis erudiebant,' &c. During these boyish studies, he fell in with the work of a * chronographus haeresiarches ' of the fourth century ; Ep. to Plegwin. ^ Bede, v. 24 : • Semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere, dulce habui.' See his De Locis Sanctis, 20 : * Non otio lascivi corporis,' &c. See Alcuin, Ep. 13: 'Recogitate nobilissimum nostri temporis Bedam .... quale habuit in juventute discendi studium.' ' Chr. Remembrancer, No. 52, p. 344 (April, 1846). * See Turner, iii. 408, and the noble passage in Green's Hist, of Engl. People, pp. 36-38. Aldhelm, of course, preceded him as a scholar, but he has no permanent connection with English literature. See the minute references to classical writers in Bede'a • De Orthographia,' where also it appears that he had studied Greek. Compare the * De retract. Act./ and the ' De Arte Metrica ' and * De Tropis.' Chronological points had a great attraction for him, espe- cially as bearing on the question of Easter. His erudition did not, indeed, preserve him from some errors then current. His style is remarkably free from the pedantic affectations which disfigure that of Aldhelm. 328 Bede, ' . CHAP. XI. nation ^/ conspicuous, as a narrator, for honest carefulness.^ and by the vivid sympathy which makes incident or stor} so luminous under his touch, Bede is throughout the mai of patriotic feeling, who loves old English songs ^, and hates^ whatever enfeebles his country or degrades the national life*; — the man of warm heart, whose affections go out tc brethren and pupils, who is spoken of as a ' dear father ' and a ' most beloved master ^,' — and the man of thoroughly pious soul, who ' shudders ' when ignorantly charged with heresy ^, calls sin by its right name in monks or prelates ^ , and lives in the thought of Divine judgment and Divine mercy ^ : who de- scribes himself through life as ' rejoicing to serve the Supreme Loving-kindness ^,' and, student as he is, comes regularly to the daily offices ^^, and is supposed to have said in his sweet way that the angels must not find him absent ^^ : who closes his History with a thanksgiving to the ' good Jesus ' for the * Chr. Remembr* 1. c. ^ 'An extremely honest narrator, with a strong sagacity for finding historical truth;' Burton, Hist. Scotl. i. 68. Cp. Diet. Chr. Biogr., art. Bede. For his honesty as to Biblical difficulties, e.g. that of the 'second Cainan,' see his comment on Luke iii. 36, his Prolog, in Exp. Act., and his Ep. to Plegwin. ^ * Erat doctus in nostris canninibus ; ' Cuthbert's accounj; of his death, Bed. Op. i. p. clxiv. He wrote Latin hymns, and knew the Ambrosian hymns ; De Art. Metr. 24. His own hymns are poor. * Ep. to Egbert, 6, 7. ' See Cuthbert, as above. Cp. the end of Bede's De Arte Metrica : ' Haec tibi, dulcissime fili . . . Cuthberte,' &c. * Ep. 3, to Plegwin (A. D. 707). This charge meant that he had denied the Incarnation to have taken place in the sixth age of the world. ' Ep. to Egb. 2, 3, &c. ' See above, p. 315. Afflictions, in Bede's eyes, were often 'grace- tokens.' See Hist. Abb. 9, ' Divina utrumque pietas temporali aegritudine prostravit in lectum ; ' cp. iv. 9, and his sixth Ep. See Cuthbert. ^ ' Supemae pietati.' See his list of his works, v. 24. Among his last words were, ' Bene mihi pius Judex vitam meam prsevidit.' • I never saw or heard of any one who was so diligent in rendering thanks to the living God;' Cuthbert. ^" 'Quotidianam cantandi in ecclesia curam;' Bede, v. 34. See Smith's Bede, p. 796. Cp. Bed. Hom. 8; Hist, Abb. 13. " See Alcuin, Ep. 219 (Op. ed. Fyoben. i. 282) : ' Fertur dixisse Bedam, "Scio angelos visitare canonicas . . . quid si ibi me non inveniunt, inter fratres? Nonne dicere habent, Ubi est Beda ? " ' Quoted in Haddan and Stubbs, iii 471. Bede. 329 * sweet draught ' of Divine knowledge, and a prayer to be chap. xi. brought safe to the Divine Fountain of all wisdom ^ ; who in his last hours combines a loving trust in God and a ' desire to be with Christ ^ with a sense of the awfulness of the ' need-fare ' and the Doom 2; who spends his last minutes of working power in dictating an English version of St. John's Gospel ^, calls his work ' finished ' when the last sentence has been written, and passes away with his head resting on a pupil's hands, with his eyes fixed on his wonted place of devotion, with the ' Gloria ' to the Trinity as the last utterance of his lips *. * A truly blessed man,' we may well say with the eye witness to whom we owe this record : a man 'venerable' and dear to all generations of English Christianity, a ' candle/ in the words of the great St. Boniface^, ^ which the Lord lighted up' in Northumbria, and which has burned with a calm lustre through the centuries that have canonised his name. The year of the completion of the minster of Jarrow was Invasion of marked by trouble and anxiety among Northumbrian Church- men. Their king, excited by dreams of conquest, resolved to make an expedition against Ireland ^, a country, says Bede, which had ever been 'friendly to the English''',' and ^ • Teque deprecor, bone Jesu,* &c. ; Bede, v. 24. Cp. the verses in De loc. Sanct. 19, and Vit. Cuthb. 42 ; Horn. 4, 9, 18, 42, end. Even when treating of the changes of the moon, he cannot help alluding to * illam vitam . . . beatis- simam, quando erit lux lunse sicut lux soils ; ' De Temp. Eat. 43. ' Cuthbert, as above. * The need-fare. Death's stem " must-go ;" ' Green, p. 38. He repeated both Heb. x. 31 and Phil. i. 23. ' Cp. Ep. to Egb. 3, on his English versions of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer given to ' mauy unlearned priests.' * * Cum Spiritum Sanctum nominasset, spiritum e corpore exhalavit ulti- mum ; ' Cuthbert. * Ep. 38. He is speaking of Bede's ' treatises.' * Bede, in iv. 26, calls it both ' Hibemiam ' and * Scottiam ; ' cp. ii. 4, and iii. 19, on Fursey's life 'in Scottia.' So Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. 2, 'Columba . . . de Scotia ad Britanniam . . . enavigavit,' and in mauy other passages. See Burton, Hist. Scotl. i. 201 ; and Wilson, Prehist. Ann. Scotl. ii. 169, that 'for nearly seven centuries' from 'the close of the third, the name of Scotia continued to indicate Hibemia.' ' Bede, 1. c. : * Gentera innoxiam et nationi Anglorum semper amicissimam.* Lanigan (iii. 90) thinks that Egfrid might have been jealous of * the shelter granted by the Irish to his brother Aldfrid ;' see below. 330 Invasion of Ireland, CHAP. XI. had furnished homes of study and devotion to many of all ranks among the Northumbrian people ^. The most eminent of these English residents was Egbert^ whom Bede describes with such admiration as a 'priest beloved of God' and 'to be named with all honour ^/ one who lived in great humility, gentleness, continence, simplicity, righteousness, and did much good both by his persuasive teaching and the con- sistency of his life ^. This eminent man earnestly dissuaded Egfrid from his unrighteous design of ' attacking Ire- land, which was doing him no hurt : ' but ambition silenced Egfrid's conscience, and he sent his ealdorman Bert*, at the head of a strong force, into Ireland, in June, 684. ' Miserably,' says Bede, was the land wasted ; ' not even churches nor monasteries ' were spared* The scene of these unprovoked and sacrilegious ravages is laid by the Irish chronicles in the rich 'plain of Bregh^,' the present East Meath. The natives, failing to repel the invasion, had recourse to a weapon which suited the wilder side of Celtic religion : they ' called down vengeance from Heaven ' on the invaders ' by long-continued imprecations ^.' ' And although,'' continues Bede, 'those who curse cannot possess 184, 271 : and Bede, i. i, on ' codices ' from Ireland. Cp. Aldhelm, Ep. 3, that English students ' flock to Ireland in troops.^ See below, p. 375. ^ Bede, v. 9, 'Eo tempore venerabilis,' &c., and v. 22. See also iii. 4, * At tunc veniente,' &c., and iv. 3, ♦ Convenit autem.' On this ' favourite of Bede,' see Burton, Hist, Sc. i. 275. ^ Cp. Bede, iii. 27, ' Duxit autem vitam in magna humilitate,' &c., and v. 22, 'Qui quoniam et doctor suavissimus,' &c. * Bede, iv. 26 ; in v. 24, Berctred (or Brectrid, Ulster Ann.). Cp. Chron. a. 684, 'and Briht his ealdorman.' This ^dux' was slain by the Picts in 698. ' Chron. Scotorum, p. 107; but the date, 681, is wrong. The Ulster Annals give the right year. Tighernach (giving a wrong date, 685) says, 'The Saxons wasted the field of Bregh and many churches, in mense Junii.' The Four Masters say, ' And they took away many captives and much spoil ; ' (O'Conor, Her. Hib. Scr. iv. 63). For this 'plain,' see Adamnan, Vit. Col. i. 38, ii. 39, and Reeves, p. xlv. ' Imprecation was freely employed against enemies by Irish saints, as by Columba himself; Adamnan, Vit. Col. ii, 22. See Reeves's remarks, App. to Pref. p. Ixxvii. It appears also in legends about St. Patrick (Todd, pp. 423, 433) and St. Bridget (ib. 25), and in the story of St. Ruadan cursing the royal hill of Tara for the orime of the Arch-king Dermid ; M*^Gee, Hist, Iiel. i. 30. See too Reeves, p. liy. Assembly at Twyford, 331 the kingdom of God, yet it has been believed that those chap. xi. who were thus cursed in requital of their impiety did quickly pay the penalty of their guilt under the avenging hand of the Lord.' We shall presently understand this allusion. In the early part of the year, Theodore, for some reason unexplained, had thought fit to depose Tunbert from the see of Hexham ^. Who was to succeed him ? The question was speedily answered by Egfrid : he thought of Cuthbert, still an anchorite on Fame. After this intention had be- come notorious, Cuthbert met the royal abbess of Whitby, by appointment, on an island at the mouth of the river Coquet, which was occupied by a large monastic community^. During their conversation, he was said to have predicted to Elfled^ that her brother would have but one more year of life *, and that his successor would be found amid the isles of the sea; alluding, as it was thought, to 'Aldfrid, who was said to be a son of her father, and was then dwelling far from home, in the isles of the Irish, for the sake of learning.' Cuthbert then returned to Fame ; and in the autumn a Synod of numerous assembly, or as Bede calls it, a synod, — clearly ^^ °^ * a mixed body of ecclesiastics and laics, — met at Twyford, or Alnmouth, on a spot called afterwards the Church Hill, under the presidency of the indefatigable archbishop^, as representing the Church, and of Egfrid as the head of the nation. Cuthbert was unanimionsly chosen bishop : many envoys were sent to Fame to announce the election, but the hermit sat secure and inaccessible in his cell. ' At last the king himself^,' with bishop Trumwine of Abercorn, and a numberof monks and 'powerful men, 'proceeded to Bamborough, ^ Bede only mentions this incidentally ; iv. 28. " Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 24. Elfled believed that she had been cured of an infirmity in the limbs by putting on a linen girdle sent by Cuthbert ; ib. 23. ^ Believing in his prophetic powers, she adjured him, says Bede, • by that awful and adorable name of the Heavenly Kirig and His angels.' * He quoted Eccles. xi. 8, and Ps. xc. 9, in proof of the short diu*ation of even a long life. 5 Bede, iv. 28 j Vit. Cuthb. 24; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 165. « Bede, iv. 28. 332 Cuthbert, Bishop of Lindis/arne, CHAP. XI. crossed the ' Fairway' strait, and landed on Fame, where they were met by many of the Lindisfarne brethren. Cuthbert could no longer keep himself in seclusion. His visitors, we are told, even knelt at his feet, ' adjuring him by the Lord, with tears,' to accept the election. At last, with tears in his own eyes, he yielded, went with them to Twyford, and, although very reluctantly, 'bowed his neck to the yoke of the episcopate^.' The consecration was deferred until the spring; but during the interval Cuthbert spent some time with Eata at Melrose, and on his return visited a thane of Egfrid, and was believed to have cured the deathlike illness of his servant 2. So it was, that on Easter Day, March 26, 685, Theodore, Cuthbert with six other bishops, consecrated Cuthbert in St. Peter^s Lindis- minster at York ^. He had been elected for Hexham : but fame. ^^^ q£ deference to his love for Lindisfarne, the gentle Eata, his old superior, returned to Hexham, and Cuthbert was now not only, as Boisil had predicted*, a bishop, but bishop of that revered church in which he had been so active a prior. Before he quitted York, the king, in Theodore's presence, gave to Cuthbert the land ' from the wall of St. Peter's to the great gate westwards^ and to the city wall southwards/ together with the village of Crayke as a halting-place in his journej^s to and from York^, and the far more valuable possession — one which seemed to herald the future princedom of his successors in lordly Durham — of the old Roman city of ' Lugubalia ' or Carlisle ®, which had been conquered from the * * Ad suscipiendum . . . officium coUum submittere compellitur ; ' Bede, s iv. 28 ; Vit. Cuthb. 24. 2 Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 25 ; Anon. Vit. 3 Bede, iv. 28 : 'In ipsa solemnitate paschali,' &c. Cp. Rich, of Hexh., Hagulst. Eccl. 10; X Script. 295. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 8. ' Crayke would be a convenient halting-place to one travelling from the north, before entering the Forest of Galtres, which lay between it and York, and covered nearly 100,000 acres. Cuthbert is said (X Script. 69) to have estab- lished an abbot and monks at Crayke, which within this century continued to be part of the diocese of Durham. St. Cuthbert's remains, in their 'wander- ings,' halted for four months *in sua quondam villa . . . Creca;' Bed. Op. vi. 392- * Sim. Dunelm. de Dun. Eccl. i. 9 (X Script. 5). A charter as to these grants Egfrid attacks the Picts. 333 Britons of Cumbria, together with a territory of fifteen miles chap. xi. around, — and afterwards the district of Cartmel in Lancashire, with the Britons belonging to it as serfs ^. And so the shepherd youth of Lammermuir, the scholar of Boisil, the evangelist of Tweedside, the prior of Melrose and Lindisfarne, the hermit of Fame, began his short career as a bishop. The first weeks of his episcopate were clouded by a public anxiety, which was soon to be justified by a national disaster. Egfrid, remembering how, fifteen years before, he had crushed the Picts' revolt, determined to invade their country, then governed by a king named Bruide^. His 'friends,' and Cuthbert with them, urgently remonstrated ^, but in vain. As when the Irish expedition was in question, so in this more perilous venture in which he was personally to take the chief part, he was deaf to the best counsels. He would go, and he went *. Then fell on many a thoughtful North- umbrian the shadow of a great dread. Was the king blinded as by a doom ? Were the curses of the wronged Irish working their effect by leading him to his destruction ? It was just Cuthbert then that the bishop of Lindisfarne made a journey to his * ^ '« e. new domain of Carlisle, whither Ermenburga had repaired to pass the time of suspense in a nunnery governed by her sister ^. The day after Cuthbert 's arrival was Saturday, the (Wilkins, i. 55; Smith's Bede, p. 782) is clearly spurious; it exhibits the names of Cedd and Chad. Lugubalia (Bede, iv. 29 ; Nennius, 45) was also called Caer Luadiit, or Ligualid, or Lualid (Nennius, 67), and afterwards ♦ Luei; ^ The Hist, de S. Cuthb. (X Script. 69) says that Cuthbert entrusted this property to abbot Kineferth. See Robertson, Scotl. under Early Kings, i. 1 7 ; Palgrave, Engl. Comm. pp. 436, cccxi ; Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 6. ' This was Bruide, or Bruidi, Mac Bill, who had become king in 672, and died in 693 (Robertson, ii. 185). Nennius (Mon. H. Brit. p. 74) calls him Birdei, the cousin of Egfrid: see above, p. 128. Another Bruide, king of the Picts, had died in 641 ; the more famous Bruide Mac Malcon, St. Columba's convert (Bede, iii. 4; Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 37, ii. 35, 42), had reigned (one of his strongholds being probably near Inverness) from ^54 to 584 (Reeves's Adamnan, p. 151). Tlie name has been derived from an implement used by the Picts, while Pagans, for puncturing the skin (Wilson, Prehistoric Ann. of Scotl. ii. 172). ' Bede, iv. 26 : ' Siquidem anno post hunc proximo.' * 'Bellum Ecfridi,' Adamn. Vit. Col. ii. 46. ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 27; Anon. Vit. Cuthb,, Bed. Op. vi. 377. When Bede 334 Cuthbert at Carlisle,. CHAP. XI. 2oth of May: at 3 p. m. the townsfolk, headed by Paga^ their reeve, and delighted to receive the saintly bishop as their lord, were showing him their walk, on which, just then^ ' the sun shone fair 2/ and conducting him to a fountain within the city, 'the wondrous work of Roman hands ^.' Cuthbert was attended by several of his clergy. Suddenly, while leaning on his staff, he seemed to go through strong mental agitation. His face, usually so bright and sweet, became sad and downcast; after a while he looked up, gazed on the sky, which had rapidly darkened, groaned deeply, and muttered as to himself, ' Perhaps even now the contest is decided ^ ! ' A presbyter, standing close beside him^ asked what he meant ^. He answered evasively by a general reference to the changing weather, and then to the inscrutable judg- ments of God. But he straightway returned to the convent, saw the queen in private, and said to her, * Set off early on Monday for York ^, lest haply the king may have fallen : — it is not lawful to drive on the Lord's Day'^. I have to go tomorrow to a neighbouring monastery, in order to dedicate its church ; and will follow you after the service wrote, there was a monastery near the little river Dacre, near Penrith ; Bede, iv. 32. * The anonymous biographer gives this name, and the hour. * Lay of the Last Minstrel, vi. 11. ^ Comp. Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 208, on the Roman 'triclinium lapideis fornicibus concameratura,' existing in his time at Carlisle. * So Bede. The anonymous Life, less probably, makes him refer explicitly to the war. • 0, o, o ! existimo enim perpetratum esse bellum.* ^ Anon. Vit. 'Quid factum esset ;' Bede, 'Unde scis V ® ' The royal city,' Bede. ■^ 'Dominicorumdiealaboreterrenocessandumest;'Greg, Ep. xiii. i. Various Prankish canons of the sixth century forbade all Sunday labour : e. g. Council of Auxerre, c. 16, ' Non licet die Dominico boves jungere ; ' Mansi, ix. 913 : so Council of Chalons as to rural work; ib. x. 1193. The Council of Narbonne allowed for cases of necessity; c. 4. The third Council of Orleans condemned Sabbatarian notions as to the unlawfulness of Sunday travelling, but forbade rural work on Sundays as detaining men from church ; Mansi, ix. 19. Gregory of Tours tells us that some men at Limoges were killed by lightning for doing * public work' on Sunday; H. Fr. x. 30. Theodore's Penitential saj'^s, 'Greeks and Eomans do not go " in curru" on the Lord's Day, except to church;' ii. 8. i ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 196; cp. ib. 226, 332. The Council of Clovesho for- bade Sunday travelling save in necessity, c. 14 ; ib. 367 : and the Laws of Northumbrian Priests, no. 55, forbid it whether in a wain, or on a horse, or with a burden ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 420 ; Johnson, Engl. Can. i. 380, Battle of Dunnechtan, 335 is completed.' His Sunday sermon was on the necessity of chap. xi. being prepared for any tribulation, and was understood to refer to a return of the pestilence ^. On the Monday there arrived a man ' who had escaped from the war,' and brought tidings such as filled Edinburgh with terror and anguish after the day of Flodden. Egfrid and his host had crossed the Firth, had even crossed the Tay, and destroyed two forts, one of which probably stood at the mouth of the Almond ^ : the native forces, by feigned retreats ^, had lured them into Battle a defile at Dunnechtan *, or Nechtansmere ^, identified as nechtan. Dunnichen near Forfar^. There the king had fallen, with nearly all his men, on the very day, and at the very hour, when Cuthbert was standing by the Carlisle fountain like one who saw what he durst not reveal '^. This battle of Dunnechtan may well rank in our memories with such decisive conflicts as those of Retford, of Heaven- field, and of Winwidfield ^. It marks an epoch, it closes a period, — the period of the great Northumbrian kings. It was long ere the crown of Edwin and Oswald resumed the majesty of their wide over-lordship. From that fatal after- noon in the May of 685, ' the hope and force of the Anglian kingdom ' — so Bede says, recurring to a favourite poet — * He told the story of the monka visiting him on Christmas Day,— of his forebodings, — of the outbreak of the pest. ^ Robertson, i. 12. ' Bede, iv. 26 : • Simulantibus fugam hostibus in angustias inaccessorum montium.* The Chronicle says the place was near ' the North Sea.' * Tighernach. He gives the day of week and month, but a wrong year, 686. The Ulster Annals are again yight as to the date. ' Reeves's Adamnan, p. 186. Sim. Dunelm. calls it * Nechtansmere, quod est Stagnum Nechtani;' de Dun. Eccl. i. 9 : Nennius, Lin-garan, 'the lake of the heron ; ' Mon. H. Brit. 74. ' This lake foi-merly occupied the place of Dunnichen Moss;' Reeves, p. 187. More than one Pictish king had been called Nechtan : one had died in 621 ; Reeves, p. 373. Far the adoption of the Catholic usages by a later king Nechtan, see Bede, v. 21. « Burton, Hist, Sc. i. 282. ' Eadmer exhibits monastic bitterness of an extreme type in his story of the vision of Egfrid's perdition seen by Wilfrid while saying mass at this same hour; Act. SS. Bened. iii. 218. 8 See Wilson, Prehistoric Ann. of Scotl. ii. 180; Burton, Hist. Scotl. i. 282; Robertson, Scotl. under Early Kings, i. 12. Nennius says, the English never again took tribute from the Picts. 336 See of Abercorn abandoned, CHAP. XI. 'began to retreat like an ebbing tide^.' The Picts not^ only shook off the Northumbrian supremacy, but regained some hold upon Lothian ^ : the Dalriad Scots, and ' some of the Britons, recovered their independence,' which they still enjoyed when Bede wrote thus, about 731. The old Northumbrian glory returned for a while after his death, when Eadbert made himself lord of Picts and Scots, and was attended by his Pictish vassal-king, Unnust or Angus, when he received the submission of the capital of Strathclyde ^. This was seventy-one years after the over- throw of Egfrid's host. Many^of his followers were made captives, or had to flee for their lives : and flight was the only course for a small band of nuns whom Cuthbert after- wards settled in an English township *, and for bishop Trum- wine and his monks, who abandoned Abercorn, and with it their hopes of mission-work in ' Pictland.' ' He com- mended them to his friends in different monasteries, wherever he best could; and he chose his own abode' in the great house of Whitby, where, ' with a few of his companions, he spent many years in monastic strictness, leading a life useful not to himself only, but to many others^.' The corpse of the self-willed king received honourable burial in Hy6 at the hands of abbot Adamnan, the biographer of St. Columba'^, who would remember how Egfrid's saintly ^ Bede, iv. 26 : * Ex quo tempore spes coepit et virtus regni Anglorura fluere, ac retro sublapsa referri' (^n. ii. 169). Cp. Bede, ii. 12 (^n. iv. 2), ii. 13 (iEn. ii. 502). ' We may infer as much from the break-up of the establishment at Abercorn, and the peril and confusion which spread south of the Firth. Bede's sentence, ' Nam et Picti terram,' &c., must surely mean that * the Picts regained their land which the English had held, and the Scots in Britain and some of the British regained freedom;' not, that the Scots in Britain, like the English, had held Pictish territory. Cp. Bede, iii. 6, • Denique omnes,' &c. ^ I. e. of Alcluid or Dunbarton ; Sim. Dunelm. de Gest. Reg. Angl. a. 756 (Mon. H. Br. p. 662). See Palgrave, pp. 437, 470 ; Robertson, i. 18. Before this, the Northumbrians had been strong enough to re-establish, in an English form, St. Ninian's see of Whithem ; Bede, v. 23 ; cp. Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 7. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 30. * Bede, iv. 26 : 'Eosque ubicunque poterat,* &c. * Sim. Dunelm., Dun. Eccl. i. 9. See Reeves's Adamnan, p. 232. ' Adamnan was born about 624, became abbot in 679, and died in 704. See Reeves, pp. xl, xliv, Ivii. Aldfridy King of Northumbria. 337 uncle had sent to the island community for a bishop. Egfrid's chap. xi. widow was driven by the shock of her bereavement into monastic life, and Eddi accordingly describes her as having been changed from a ' Jezebel into a perfect abbess^ from a she-wolf into a lamb^.' The anticipations of Cuthbert were fulfilled. Egfrid^s Aldfrid the natural brother 2, Aldfrid, — who must, of course, be carefully ^f j^^o^th/ distinguished ^ from his legitimate elder brother Alchfrid, the umbria. friend and pupil of Wilfrid, and the sub-king of Deira, — was called to the vacant throne. He had been living as a recluse student in the ' islands ' or ' regions of the Scots,' — as Bede expresses it * ; a phrase which would include, with Ireland itself, some of the smaller isles occupied by men of Irish race, and known as seats of learning and piety ^. Bede calls him a man ' most learned in the Scriptures and in knowledge of all sorts ^ : ' and tells us that he bargained with Benedict Biscop to give him eight hydes of land for the monastery of Jarrow, in exchange for a splendid manuscript of ' The Cos- mosgraphers,' which Benedict had bought at Rome"^. We know that Adamnan himself calls him his ' friend,' and visited him in 686 in order to regain the sixty Irish captives » Eddi, 24. 2 Bede, iv. 26 : ' Qui frater ejus, et fUius Osuiu i-egis, esse dicebatur.' De Mirac. S. Cuthb. 21 : 'Et nethus in regni Irater successit honorem.' And so, Vit. Cuthb. 24 : ' Frater ejus nothus.' ^ Lappenberg, i. 187. Turner confounds them, i. 388. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 24; De Mirac. S. Cuthb. 21. The Irish said that Ald- frid's mother was Fina, or Fiona, a princess of Meath, and called him Flann Fina ; Tighemach, a. 704 ; Inisfallen Ann. Bede says that a love of sacred learning was the cause of his sojourn among the Irish. Malmesbury, Gest. Keg. i. 3, says confidently that a party of nobles having deemed Aldfrid, though the elder son, unworthy to reign, he retired to Ireland. " So Lanigan, iii. 96. Among these island-sanctuaries were Arranmore, InisboflBn, Iniscattery in the mouth of the Shannon, &c. But the Anon. Vit. Cuthb. says that Aldfrid was then at Hy, b. 3. " Bede, iv. 26; v. 12. He was, in effect, called 'The Wise.' Aldhelm in- scribes one of his works to him under the name of Acircius, after a firiendship of twenty years (Lib. de Septenario). ^ Bede, Hiat. Abb. 12. Aldfrid's grant of land was 'near the river Fresh.' Benedict had ' settled the terms ' of this purchase, but he died before it could be carried out : it was Ceolfrid who placed the coveted manuscript in the hands of the scholar-king. Z 338 Cuthberfs Episcopate, CHAP. XI. carried away by Bert, — ^all of whom were given up by Aldfrid^ : and that, two years later, he received a second visit from Adamnan, accepted from him the work ' On the Holy Places/ which he had compiled from the accounts of the pilgrim- bishop Arculf, and with royal munificence distributed copies of it to men of lower degree 2. He repeatedly listened to Drythelm's account of his ' visions ' of the unseen world, and procured his admission into the monastery of Melrose^. Aldfrid seems also to have had a taste for rich attire ; for we find him, 'in conjunction with his counsellors/ buying of Benedict Biscop 'two cloaks, all of silk, and of exquisite workmanship,' for land of three hydes on the south bank of the Wear, — a purchase effected soon after his accession *. This prince, the first of our literary kings, was a man of practical vigour, and well able to ' restore, though within narrower limits, the humbled state of the realm ^.' Cuthbert The northern part of that realm, on which the blow fell heaviest, might well seem to have received in its necessity an opportune gift in the ministry of a bishop such as Cuthbert, ' great in his humility, glorious in the reality of his faith and the ardour of his charity ^.' His personal habits of asceticism were unaltered : he ' continued stedfastly,' says his anonj^^mous biographer, 'to be the same man that he had been before ''Z with the same lowliness of heart, the same intensity of de- votion. His voice while celebrating was still low, still broken by tears ; the grace of ' compunction,' as Bede calls it, ' kept his mind fixed on things heavenly; above all things there glowed within him the fire of Divine love ^.' His tenacious * See Vit. Col. ii. 46, and Reeves, pp. xlv, 187; Lanigan,iii. 96 ; Haddan and Stubbs, ii. 109. Tighemach dates this (captivos reduxit) in 687 ; Ulster Ann. rightly, in" 686; , ^ This was the ' legatio' of Bede, v. 15. One of these copies was used by Bede, v. 16. His own ' De locis Sanctis ' is an epitome. ^ Bede, v. 1 2 : ' Narrabat autem,* &c. Drythelm was supposed to have ac- tually died and returned to life. Bede is carefiil to say that, whea he became a monk, he was crowned with the tonsure. * Bede, Hist. Abb. 8 : ' duo pallia holoserica.' ' Bede, iv. 26 : ' destructumque regni statum,' &c. * Chr. Remembr., Jan. 1852, p. 78. ^ 'Idem etiam constantissime perseverat, qui prius fuerat;* Anon. Vit. b. 4. He still retained his ordinary plain dress. * Bede, iv. 28. ' The holy corporaa: cloth, wherewith he covered the chalice Cuthberts Episcopate, 339 memory ' supplied the place of books ^ ; * the canons of the chap. xi. Church, the lives of the Saints, were habitually present to his mind. As a preacher he was ' clear and plain, full of dignity and of gentleness ; he used to dwell on the providential office of the law 2,' the doctrines of the Gospel, the obligations of the Christian life ; * addressing to different minds the exhor- tations which they severally needed 3, as knowing beforehand what tcf say, and to whom, and when, and how to say it.' He had, says Bede with characteristic emphasis, ' that qualification which is above all others helpful to a teacher, for whenever he bade any person to do a thing, he showed the way by doing it himself*.' Always genial and friendlike to all who came to pour out to him their troubles, as he had been during his hermit-life, he 'deemed' — the words are very memorable — ' that to advise and comfort the weak was equivalent to an act of prayer ^,' for he had in full measure ' that most excellent gift of charity, without which,' says the anonymous writer, ' all virtue is nothing ^.' But in these private interviews he was strict in 'recalling to godly sorrow all who indulged in any unholy joy '^.' It need not be said that he exhibited all active beneficence, giving food to the hungry and clothes to those who were shivering with cold ; welcoming strangers, ransom- ing captives — doubtless out of the hands of the Picts, — pro- tecting widows and orphans, rescuing the poor from the oppressor ^, and showing how little his habits as a recluse had when he used to say mass,' was preserved, and long afterwards inserted into the banner which hung over his shrine. This corporal was- actually displayed on the top of a spear, at the battle of Neville's Cross, in 1 346. Etheldred was said to have given Cuthbert somfe vestments. * Anon. Vit. " * Ministerio legis,' ib, 3 ' Unumquemque diversa admonens exhortatione,' ib. Bede's * Life ' tells us how on one occasion, while prior of Melrose, he urged his hearers to be * atten- tive and watchful while the mysteries of the heavenly kingdom were being preached; * c. 13. * Bede, iv. 28 : ' Et quod maxime doctores juvare solet,' &c. See above, p. 49. Comp. Vit. S. Sturmi, 14: 'In omni disciplina .... prius semetipsum exer- cere curavit.' ^ Bede, iv. 28 : • Hoc ipsum quoque orationis loco ducens,' &c. * Anon. Vit. : * Et illam supereminentem caritatem, sine qua omnis victus nihil est.' Comp. Eddi, 11. ■^ ' Male gaudentes,' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 26. « Comp. Bede, Vit. Cuthb. iv. 26 ; Vit. Anon. Z % 340 Cuthberis Visitations, CHAP. XI. unfitted him for the work of a bishop in the face of the world. He went about his diocese with the energy of a younger man, reviving, doubtless, many of his old remembrances while he traversed the wild moor or penetrated the outlying glen. In one woodland place the inhabitants of neighbouring hamlets had assembled to receive confirmation at his hands, had spread tents ^, in default of a churchy for the bishop and his clergy, and cut down boughs of trees for their own shelter. For two days they all remained on the spot, until Cuthbert had finished his ministrations ^. It was told afterwards that on this very occasion some women carried ^ a youth wasted with fever, on a rude pallet, to the entrance of the wood, and Cuthbert, being asked to give him a blessing, caused him to be brought near, prayed over him, and blessed him, — where- upon the lad arose, took food, thanked God, and returned to the women who were waiting for him. The pestilence had nearly depopulated some parts of the country; Cuthbert did his best to console the survivors, and in one place on asking whether there were any one else whom he could visit, had his attention directed to a poor woman who was weeping bit- terly; she had lost one son, and held in her arms another who seemed to be dying. Cuthbert went up to her, kissed and blessed the boy, and assured the mother that he would recover, and that no one else of her household would die of the plague. He did recover, and bore witness long after- wards to the fulfilment of the prediction^. Cuthbert made another journey to Carlisle, partly to ordain priests, and partly to give the monastic habit to Ermenburga and to other women, — and also, as we infer from a later writer, to establish schools •^. It was then that his dear friend Herbert, ^ Comp. WiUib. Vit. S. Bonifac. s. 36 : • Suorum tantum stipatus clientum numero, erexit tentoria.' ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 32. The Anon. Vit. says that this was while he was going from Hexham to ' Vel.* But he had no episcopal relations to Hexham. Perhaps he had been on a visit to Eata. ^ ♦ In grabato ; ' Bede, 1. c. ; Anon. Vit. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 33. The author of the Anon. Vit. says that this story was told him by Tidi, the presbyter to whom Cuthbert put the question, and that the place was ' Medilpong.' The plague-struck boy was ' swollen all over.' Cp. Adamn. ii. 46. " Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 38 ; Hist. S. Cuthb., X Script. 69. He returns to Fame. 34i the hermit-priest of Derwentwater, came to meet him, and chap. xi. asked him to pray that they might both die at the same time, which, we are told, came to pass^. This visit took place in 686, when Cuthbert was looking forward to his end, which, he felt sure, could not be far off'^ : it is probable that his excessive austerities had prematurely worn out his once robust frame, and entailed a proportionate loss upon his Church. In order to prepare for the last hour by an interval Cuthbert of undisturbed devotion ^, he resolved to return to Fame, to parne, 'devote himself, undisturbed, to prayer and psalmody,' and to *burn away the thorns of worldly care ^.' He made one farewell circuit of the diocese, visiting the dwellings of the faithful, and giving them needful exhortations. He also went to see Elfled at one of the dependencies of her convent, and, although it was not in his diocese, consecmted a newly- finished church. It is specially said of him, on this occasion, that he was physically wearied by his functions, — ^and also that he retained his playful humour^. We also find him at 'the mouth of the Tyne,' where the abbess Verca enter- tained him 'magnificently^.' It was almost immediately ' Bede, iv. 29 ; see Woi-dsworth's ' Inscriptions,' No. xv, * for the' spot where the hermitage stood on St. Herbert's Island, Derwentwater : ' '. . . Though here the hermit numbered his last day Far from St. Cuthbert his beloved friend, Those holy men died both at the same hour.' * * Divino admonitus oraculo ; ' Bede, iv. 28 ; so Vit. Cuthb. 35, ' A sample of the morbid pietism fostered by the monastic spirit is in the Anonymous Life, where Cuthbert's retirement from episcopal work is described as a 'forsaking of secular honour^ (Op. vi. 379). Yet Cuthbert's object, apart from the means which he took to attain it, was the same which bishop Zachary Pearce of Rochester had in view, when he vainly sought permission to resign his see in 1763. Some pious bishops before Cuthbert's time, as Dubricius, Magloire of Dol, and Araulf of Metz, had resigned their sees in advanced life for the sake of religious retirement, and Licinius of Angers had been restrained by his colleagues from doing so : but Cuthbert, to the last, was regarded as bishop of Lindis&rne. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 34, 36. The allusion, of course, is to Matt. xiii. 22. 5 lb. 34. He is at table, a good deal tired : his fe>ce changes colour, hig knife drops on the board. Elfled asks him what he had seen. He tries to turn it off : * Did you think I could go on eating all day ? ' Then comes an instance of a vision coincident with a death. * Ih. 35. After rising from hia noonday repose, he snid he was thirsty, and asked for drink. They asked whether he would have wine or beer. He chose water. Then comes a story of the water being afterwards tasted by the attendant, 342 Cuthberis last days, CHAP. XI. after the Christmas of 686 that he returned to his solitary islet; and at the end of February his last illness came on. Herefrid, abbot of Lindisfarne ^, — who was probably ap- pointed to the office when Cuthbert ceased to reside there, — had been visiting the bishop for three days ^ ; on a Thursday morning he gave the usual signal of his presence near the cell, and Cuthbert came to the window^ received his greeting in silence with 'a sigh,' and on being asked whether his indisposition — an old familiar ailment — had com-e upon him in the night, replied quietly, ' Yes, I have been ill ^.' ' Give me your blessing,' said Herefrid ; ' it is time to put to sea.' Cuthbert bade him go, but added precise instructions as to his own burial *. Herefrid asked whether some of the monks who had accompanied him from Lindisfarne might not stay behind to take care of the bishop^. Cuthbert refused to allow it: they departed, and the wild winds of the first week of March prevented them for five days from revisiting Farne. "When they could do so, they saw a sad sight. In the guest-house, instead of in his cell, they found Cuthbert sitting on a couch, his face ghastly iwith exhaustion. Herefrid warmed some wine which he had brought, induced him to taste it, applied warm water to his foot, which had a bad ulcer of long standing ; and then sat down beside him and uttered some words of sympathy. ' Why did you forbid any one to attend upon you?' *It was God's will,^ said Cuthbert simply, 'that I should sufi'er some distress without human help at hand. I .became worse as soon as you had departed ; and ' ©t visa est ei aqua quasi in s^porem vini cpnveysa.' In Raine's St. Cuthbert, p. 1 6, her monastery is placed at Tiningham, on tjie Scottish • Tine,' north of Dunbar. But the * Tina ' of Bede, v. 2i, is the *Tyne.' See p. 163. ' See Vit. Cuthb. prsef. and c, 8, 23. ^Ib.37. ^ * Etiara, languor me tetigit, nocte hac' , Cp. * Etiam ' ,in Bede, v. 6. * His body was to be wrapt in linen, which had been sent by abbess "Verca : he wQuldjnot wear it while alive, but had kept it for his shroud, A ' sarcophagus' given by abbot Cudda would be fo^nd u^ider the turf, north of the oratory : he was to be buried in it, &c. On the use of the ' sindon ',or linen shroud, com- pare Bede, iv. 9, and the account of Wilfrid's burial, Eddi,^3, and of Columba's, Adamn. iii. 23. St. Boniface gave special directions about the 'linteum ' which was to be his shroud ; Willib. Vit. Bonif. s. 33. ^ Several of the L'ndisfarne monks were ' skilful physicians ; ' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 45 ; so Anon. Vit. \xy Bed. Op. vi. 381. Cp. Vit. Cuthb. 37. Ciithberfs last days. 343 so I left my cell in order that any of you, when coming to see me, chap, xl might find me here : and here for five days and nights I have continued without moving.' Turning up his couch, he showed five onions, one of them nearly half eaten : he had had nothing else^. He dropped some mysterious allusions to persecutions on the part of enemies 2. Herefrid durst not say more than 'Will you not now have some attendants?' He consented; some of the monks who had had occasion to go over to Bamborough, and had returned, were appointed to nurse him ; among them were ' Bede the elder,' who had always attended on his person, and Walstod, who, though himself suffering from ailment, was deemed specially fit to hear his last words. Herefrid came and went : and after consulting with the community, reported to Cuthbert their earnest wish to bury him in Lindisfarne. He answered, with a strange disparagement of his 'active life,' that he had wished to rest on the islet ' where he had fought his poor fight for the Lord;' and he feared that if he were to be buried in Lindisfarne, the monastery would be troubled by fugitives, or criminals seeking sanctuary beside his grave ^. At last, however, he yielded, on condition that he might be interred in ' the inmost part of the church.' They ' thanked him on bended knees for this permission and counsel,' and then went home, but paid him other visits. At last, on the morning of Tuesday the 1 9th of March, Herefrid and others carried him — for he was now too feeble to walk — back to his cell. Walstod went in with him^, no one else for years had done so. Six hours passed away: at three in the afternoon Herefrid found him lying down in a corner of the oratory, opposite to the altar ; and sitting down beside him, begged for his farewell message as a ' legacy ' to the brethren ^. Very * * As often as my mouth became very dry and parohed, haec gustando me refrigerare ac recreare curavi.' ^ He had never, he said, been so much 'persecuted ' as in those five days. ' On the privilege of sanctuary see above, p. 90. * They asked him to let one of them go in to wait on him. He gazed round on all, and fixed his eyes on the invalid brother, saying, ' Let Walstod come in with me ; ' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 38. It is added that, fi:om that moment, Walstod (Pallistod, Anon. Vit.) was fi:ee of his infirmity. ^ • Quem hsereditarium sermonem, quod ultimum " Vale," firatribus relin- queret]' V. C. 39. 344 Death of Cuthbert, CHAP. XI. faintly, and ' at intervals,' tlie voice which had held such sway over its hearers uttered a few sentences inculcating ' Divine charity,' linanimity, agreement with ' other servants of Christ,' hospitality to strangers, avoidance of self-righteousness, strictness in ahstaining from communion with those who ' swerved from Catholic unity, either by observing Easter out of its time, or by living perversely.' 'Remember that I had rather you took up my bones, and left your home to dwell wherever God may provide, than put a yoke on your own necks by consenting to schismatics in their iniquity ^ ! ' They were to study and observe the rules of the monastic fathers, and those which they had received through his ministry: 'for I know that although in my lifetime some have despised me^, after my death it' will be seen that my teaching is not to be despised.' So, according to Bede, the abbot' reported these last words of Cuthbert : but doubtless he received them with some amplification of the original^. Cuthbert passed the' evening in 'tranquil expectation of future bliss,' and con- tinued his prayers until paist midnight. Then, 'when the usual time of nocturn-prayer was come,' he received from Herefrid ' the communion of the Lord's Body a;nd Blood, to strengthen him for his departure*,' and 'with eyes gazing heavenward, and hands lifted high above his head^, he breathed his last in a sitting posture, and passed aiway, without a groan, into the life of the fathers^,' in the first Death of Cuthbert. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 39. It would seem from this that there was some remnant of a Scotic party still existing in Northumbria. The words, it is said, were remembered by bishop Eardulf when he resolved on removing the body ; Hist. Transl. S. Cuthb. c. 2 (Bed. Op. vi. 387) ; Sim. Dun. de Dun. Eccl. ii. 6. ^ Could this be an aUusion to those in Northumbria whose ideal of ecclesi- astical excellence was Wilfrid ? ^ « fjaec et his similia.' * It is certain that he received Communion in both kinds, and clearly not during mass. So Bede, de Mirac. S. Cuthb. c. 36 : 'Residens antistes ad altar Pocula degustat vitre, Christique supinvmi Sanguine munit iter.' So Guthlac 'munivit se Communione Corporis et Sanguinis Christi,' both kinds being kept ready on the altar ; Act. SS. Bened. iii. 281. ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 39 ; Anon. Vit. Cp. Bede, iv. 28 : ' mortis, vel vitae magis,' &c. * Anon. Vit. He was probably about fifty-six, for he was just grown up when he came to Melrose in 651. See above, p. 186. Death of Cuthbert. 345 hours of Wednesday, the 2oth of March, 687. The corpse chap. xr. was carried to Lindisfame, duly washed*, and arrayed in priestly vestments and shoes ; the head was wrapt in a handkerchief; 'oblates,' or bread, as if prepared for the Eucharist 2, were placed upon the breast, and a linen sheet ^, rubbed with wax, was folded round the body, which was then laid in a stone coffin on the right hand of the altar in St. Peter's church, — there to remain until the terror of the Northmen's invasion impelled the monks of Lindisfame, in 875, to begin that series of ' the wanderings of St. Cuth- bert ' which ended, in 999, with his final interment * Where his cathedral, huge and vast, Looks down upon the Wear*.' So lived, so died, the great popular saint of the North- country^. It is next to impossible to abridge the story of his death®; and as in the case of St. Chad, it has seemed desirable to preserve unbroken the continuity of his last two years. But we must now again take up the thread of events preceding the year 687. Benedict Biscop had made a sixth and last journey to Easterwine Rome in 685. The kindly and single-hearted Easterwine mout?'^ had. been appointed by him coadjutor-abbot of Wearmouth in * Anon. Vit. : 'Toto corpore lavato, capite sudario circumdato/ &c. * 'Offletes;' see Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 292. ' When the cofiin of Cuthbert was opened at Durham in 1 104, * it was found to have been wrapped in a cerecloth of linen, probably the same which the saint had received from the abbess Verca ; ' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 76. * ' Marmion,' ii. 14. See Hist. Transl. S. Cuthb. c. 2, in Bed. Op. vi. 387 ; Handbook of Northern Cathedrals, ii. 231. ' Bede's Life of Cuthbert was written after very careful investigation and * accurate examination' of surviving eye-witnesses. When finished, it was submitted to the criticism of Herefrid and others ; and, thus amended, was presented to the bishops and monks of Lindisfame, and read during two days by the elders of the community, who foimd nothing to correct, but mentioned to Bede ' alia multa, nee minora his quae scripsimus.' These incidents, bow- ever, he refrained from inserting in his book ; Praef. V. C. The anonymous Life, written earlier, during Aldfrid's reign, has very Kttle about Cuthbert's death. * Bede devotes a chapter, v. i, to his successor in the hermit life, Ethel wald, a priest bred up at Ripon, who dwelt on Fame for twelve years, and died in 699. The third occupant of Fame was Felgeld, who lived there many years ; Vit. Cuthb. 46. 346 Death of Easierwine, CHAP. XI. the ninth year from its foundation — i. e. in 682 ^. ' When thus made a ruler/ according to the advice of ' the Wise Man^ he ' did not lift himself up : ' he still shared the common meals, and slept in the common dormitory: he was as ready as ever to take part in manual work with the monks, to handle plough or hammer or winnowing-fan. If he had to rebuke, he did not shrink from his duty : but ^ from his inborn affectionateness he preferred to admonish his brethren not to do wrong,' — an admonition the more telling because it was felt that to break rule was to sadden the bright face of the good abbot ^. His death, caused by the pestilence, par- took of his life's serenity. He was ill for just a week, but did not remove into a private sleeping room until the third day: on the seventh he came out, sat down in the open air, sent for all the monks, and ' in his loving fashion * ' gave to each the kiss of peace, while they were weeping and mourning for the loss of ^such a father.' He died in the course of the next night, March 7, 686, aged only thirty -six, and having spent twelve years in the monastery. Ceolfrid Benedict had not yet returned. When he arrived at Wearmouth, he found ^ that Sigfrid had been elected, accord- ing to the right of choice secured to the community^, to succeed Easterwine. At Jarrow the deadly epidemic swept away ' all who could read, or preach, or chant antiphons and responsories, except the abbot Ceolfrid and one little boy, who had been bred up and taught by him '^.' In his distress, the abbot told his young companion that they would now go through the psalmody without antiphons ^, at all the Hours ^ Bede, Hist. Abb. 6, 7. ^ Ecclus. xxxii. i. Bede adfis that he was *imtis, aflPabilis, benignus om- nibus.* ^ *Ne qui peccare ,veliet, et limpidissimam vultus ejus lucem nubilo sibi suae inquietudinis abscondere ; ' Hist. Abb. 7. * ' More naturae misericordis.' ^ Hist. Abb. 8 : * Verum inter laeta,' &c. Sigfrid seems never to have been ordained priest. Anon. Hist. Abb., * abbas et diaconus.' « Hist. Abb. 9. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 208. ' Hist. Anon. Abb., Bed. Op. vi. 421. ^ * An antiphon, in the original sense of the word, was the intercalation of some fragment or verse between the verses of the Psalms which were being then sung.' See Neale, Comm. on Psalms, i. 35 ff. He describes the abbre- and Bede. Benedicis last return from Rome. 347 except vespers and matins. They did so for a week, and then chap. xi. Ceolfrid, whose tears had often interrupted (the ' maimed rite,' resumed the use of antiphons ; and the services were thence- forward recited in full by the two voices, ' until Ceolfrid could train up or procure competent associates in the Divine work.' The boy here referred to, and described as having grown up to be a priest in the house, and written an account of Ceol- frid's administration, could be no other than Bede himself, then about thirteen years old ^. He would take a keen interest in Benedict's new store of gifts from Rome, especially a series of paintings for Jarrow, representing types and anti- types, which were ranged on opposite sides of the church^, so that the scenes of the journey to Moriah and of the Brazen Serpent confronted those of the Way of Sorrows and the Crucifixion, and 'the harmony of the Old and New Testa- ments' was vividly represented to those who entered the church. Other paintings from the Gospel history were hung round the chapel of the Virgin in ' the greater monastery ' at Wearmouth ^. We cannot but remark that not only Benedict, but Cuth- bert also, a typical saint, was -content to ignore the claims of Wilfrid. The consecration and the episcopate of Cuthbert were totally inconsistei^t with the expressed will of Rome : yet Cuthbert never seems to have given a thought to that part of the question. Perhaps he assumed what North- Wilfrid umbrian authorities had thought fit to assert, that the decree church of produced by Wilfrid was unfairly obtained. But, anyhow, Northum- the Northumbrian Church went on its w«y, doing its work, as if Wilfrid had never appealed, or as if his appeal was a nullity. Cuthbert was installed at Lindisfarne, Eata resumed his throne in Wilfrid's own Hexham, Eadhed appeared as viating process by which the antiphon was recited only before and after the psalm, then only a part before the psalm, and the whole after it ; ' and then came the last step, the binding several psalms under one antiphon.' In the Venite, according to the Roman jise, ' the Invitatory, which is simply an antiphon, is repeated, not indeed after every verse, but nine times.' A ' double' feast, as is well known, means one in which the antiphons are said entire both before and after the psalms. On antiphons op. Greg. Tur. viii. 31. * See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 190. ^ Bede, Hist. Abb. 8 : ' Proxima super invicem regione.' 8 Bede, 1. c. 348 Cadwalla and Wilfrid, CHAP. XI. bishop in his still dearer church of Ripon. And no one said a word for him who had once had all Northumbria at his feet, and who was now completing in Sussex the conversion of the kingdoms. He did not neglect his own cause : he obtained from Pope Benedict II., who held the see for ten months from the June of 684, a recognition of his innocence and his rights ^ : and he procured for himself the friendship of a princely exile who might well seem destined to become a Cadwalla power, and whose story reads like a startling romance. This in Sussex. ^^^^ Cadwalla, the descendant of a younger branch of the West-Saxon dynasty 2, but apparently connected by blood with the British race^, and at this period leading a wild outlaw life amid the forests of Sussex, in consequence of the jealousy of the West-Saxon king Kentwin. Wilfrid be- friended him by gifts, and gained a certain hold on his affections. The connection thus formed was probably less confidential and intimate than Eddi would represent it * : but Wilfrid thought he saw in the young untamed barbarian the rough material of future nobleness, — a force that might be guided, and a heart that might be won. He hoped to train, soften, and Christianise this strong ardent nature ^ : but one ^ Eddi, 49, ' et electo Benedicto ; ' ib. 51, * electus Benedictus.' Probably he wrote while still 'elect,' as in a letter in Mansi, xi. 1085. ^ He was the son of Kenbert, great-grandson of the warlike West-Saxon king Ceawlin, who had 'taken many British towns and numberless spoils.' Malmesbury says he was ' expelled from Wessex by a faction of the chief men ; ' G. Pontif. p. 233. 2 His name, clearly British, led the Welsh writers to claim him as a British king, and identify him with Cadwalader ' the Blessed,' son of that Cadwallon who was slain at Heavenfieli See Brut y Tywysogion, or Chronicle of Princes of Wales, Mon. Brit. Hist. p. 841. So Greoffrey says (b. 9) that 'Cad- walader,' in consequence of femine and pestilence, went over to Armorica, was miraculously forbidden to return, went to Rome, and there died (the link between this myth and the real history of Cadwalla), having sent his son Ivor and nephew Im to attack the English in Britain, &c. And see Angl. Sac. ii. p. xxxi; and Ehnham, p. 254. See Rees, Welsh Saints, p. 300, on this confusion. In fact, Cadwalader, whom the Welsh regarded as a saint, died of the plague of 664. * He says that they became to each other as fe,ther and gon ; Eddi, 41 . Malmesbury says that Wilfrid gave him both horses and money ; Gest, Pontif. p. 233. ^ To ' the new nations the ministry of Christianity was ' mainly ' to lay hold on fresh and impetuous natures ... to train and educate and apply to high Cadwalla, King of Wessex. 349 would think he must have felt a shock when Cadwalla, ' be- chap. xi. g-iuning to contend for the realm ' of Wessex ^, not only gathered around him a band of ' broken men ' resembling in some sort the garrison of Adullam, but attacked and slew the bishop's own royal patron Ethelwalch, as an ally of Kentwin, and therefore an obstacle in his path. He then wasted Sussex ' with cruel ravages/ until the two earls whom Wilfrid had converted, Berchtun and Andhun, combined to drive him out 2. In 685 ^, the death of Kentwin was immediately Cadwalla followed by Cad walla's accession to the throne : he used his ^^est^ new power to avenge himself on Sussex, which he conquered ^, Saxons. slaying Berchtun : and one cannot but ask whether the apostle of Sussex was passive in such a crisis, or whether his influence was used in vain. Cadwalla, with his brother, who was called Mul, ' the half-breed,' and who is described as a handsome and attractive youth ^, made a raid on Kent, which was in an unsettled condition owing to the recent death of king Lothere ^ while under treatment for wounds received in battle with South-Saxon auxiliaries of his revolted nephew Eadric, who then reigned a year and a half, and on dying'' ends the force of powerful wills and masculine characters ; ' Dean Church, Influences of Christianity, p. iii. * Chronicle, a. 685. * Bede, iv. 15 : ' Saeva caede . . . mox expulsus est a ducibus regis,' &c. ' So Florence. It has been said that Kentwin resigned the crown and became a monk (see a poem, not by Alcuin, in Alcuin. Op. ii. 549), and that he named Cadwalla his heir (Malm. Pontif. p. 352). The poem referred to, ' On the basilica built by Bugge, daughter of a king of England' (Kentwin), is ascribed to Aldhelm. It was written in Ine's days. It describes the ' sacellum ' which Bugge erected, its dedication-day, its rich altar-cloths, its golden chalice and silver paten, its cross and thurible, its choral psalmody, &c. * Bede, 1. c. Hence, in Thorn (X Script. 1770), he is called king of * • Laudabilis et gratiosus, terribilis viribus, et decorus aspectu, . . . amabilis . . . clarissimuB ; ' Hen. Hunt. 1. 4. Bromton calls him 'Wolf,' X Script. 741. See Lappenberg, i, 260, • Bede, iv. 26: 'Quo videlicet anno,' &c. Lothere died Feb. 6, 685. Among the • Dooms ' ascribed to him and to Eadric is a reference to the practice of giving evidence at the altar ; Thorpe, Anc. Laws, p. 15. ■^ Elmham says, he fell in battle with Cadwalla and Mul ; Hist. Mon. Aug. p. 252. He had long harassed his uncle; Malmesb. G. Beg. i. i (Script, post Bed, p. II). He reigned 'without the love and respect of the Kentishmen;* Bromton, X Script. 741 ; but in 686 he gave some land to SS. Peter and Paul's 350 Conquest of the Isle of Wight CHAP. XI. left the realm in confusion. But the third campaign of Cad- Conquest walla had more important results. He resolved to recover WiJht ^ ^^ ^^^ ^^ Wight, which, as we have seen, had been con- quered by Wulfhere and given to Ethelwalch ^. He would again people it with West- Saxons : and, although he was not yet baptized^, and must therefore have been a cause of anxiety to the West-Saxon clergy who looked back to the days of Kenwalch, he vowed that if he were victorious, he would devote a fourth part of the isle and of the spoils to the God The of his friend Wilfrid^. The conquest was marked by a of Arwald P^^^^^ic tragedy: two young brothers of the island sub-king Arwald had fled to the mainland, hidden themselves at Stone- ham* on the Itchen, and had there been betrayed to Cad- walla, who doomed them, as a matter of course, to death. A West- Saxon abbot, Kynibert, living in a monastery at the neighbouring Reedford or Redbridge ^, took courage to ' re- pair to his king, who was then being cured of wounds in- flicted on him while fighting in the island,' and begged that if the youths must die, they might first be instructed in Christianity and baptized ®. Cad walla made no objection to this request ; and the abbot, ^ after teaching them the word of truth, and washing them in the font of salvation, assured them of being received into the heavenly kingdom ; so that when the slaughterer came, they gladly underwent temporal death, as a passage to life eternal ^.' These ' martyred brothers of King Arwald, crowned by the special grace of God,' and in Canterbury, ' adjoining that which king Lotharius of holy memory is known to have given to blessed Peter;' Cod. Dipl. i. 31. * See above, p. i§3. 2 'Necdum regeneratus, ut ferunt, in Christo;' Bede, iv. 16. ' Bede, iv. 16. On this see Malmesb. G. Reg. i. 2, ' Etsi approbamus affectum, iraprobamus exemplum;' and Elmham, p. 253 : both quote Ecclus. xxxiv. 24, Vulg. The Chronicle says that he gave to Medeshamstede * Hoge, which is in an island called Heabvu*-eahg,' in the times of abbot Egbald. But he was not abbot until about 709 ; Monast. Angl. i. 346. Cad walla appears to have witnessed a grant of land to Malmesbury, made in 688 ; Cod. Dipl. i. 32. And see above, p. 262. * * Ad Lapidem/ Bede, 1. c. ^ See on this event Lappenberg, i. 260. * ' Fidei sacramentis imbui,' Bede, 1. c. Cp. the same phrase in Bede, ii. 15. * Sacramenta ' here means mysterious truths. ' Bede, iv. 16 : 'Ubi silentio prsetereundum,' &c. Conversion of its people, 351 long commemorated on the 2ist of August^, on whicli day in chap. xi. 686 they were put to death, should be remembered as ' the first fruits of all people of that isle who were saved through faith.' Christianity made its way into the Isle by means of Cadwalla's promise : "Wilfrid received three hundred hydes of its land, and assigned them to Bernwin, his nephew and one of his clergy, giving him also a priest named Hiddila, who might administer the word and the laver of life to all who wished to be saved 2.' So passed away the old Teutonic idolatry, so came in the new faith of the world's ' Healer/ as the professed religion of the last English district that had remained in the darkness which had begun to retreat before Augustine^ and which was now expelled from its insular haunts by Wilfrid ^. And when this work of his had been done in the far south, his severance from the north came to an end. Theodore was Theodore too great and good a man to be untouched by admiration for Jo^^f/(!.^^ the mission- work which Wilfrid had done in exile : and as he was now a very old man, his rigorous and imperious nature had naturally been softened by years. Nor could he, we may well think, be wholly free from compunction when he recalled the events of 678 *. He made overtures for a reconciliation ; and Wilfrid met him by appointment in London, in the house of bishop Erconwald. Eddi puts into the archbishop's mouth ^ ^ * Lappenberg, i. 260. The term • martyr ' was thus laxly applied to Kenelm of Mercia, Ethelbert of East-Anglia, and ' Edward the Martyr,' all cruelly slain. ^ Bede, iv. 16 : 'Quod ita solvit,* &c. ^ Thus, says Henry of Huntingdon, 'universae regionum partes Christ! lumine et gratia fruebantur ; ' Mon. Hist. ]6r. p. 718. * See Smith's Bede, p. 754 : also Raine, i. 71 ; and by him correct Dean Hook's arbitrary dogmatism, to the effect that Theodore ' had nothing to regret,' therefore did regret nothing, but thought that Wilfrid had been punished enough, &c. ; i. 175. ° Eddi, 42. ' holy bishop, I have sinned against thee, by consenting to the act of the kings who, without any sin on thy part, despoiled thee of thine own property ... I confess to the Lord and to St. Peter the Apostle.' It is curious to see how Eddi speaks of the spoliation, when we should expect him rather to speak of the uncanonical encroachment and deprivation. Malmesbury says, G. Pontif. p. 233, that Theodore confessed all his sins to the two bishops. Fridegod puts into Theodore's mouth three lines of regret and sympathy : • Poenitet, en, fill,' &c. 352 Theodore reconciled to 'Wilfrid. CHAP. XI. words of self-humiliation which need not be literally accepted ; but it is clear that he said what was equivalent to regret for Wilfrid's sufferings, and to a desire to promote his restoration. We are even told that he proposed to recommend him for the succession to his own see ^, which in the course of nature would soon be vacant ; and that Wilfrid, naturally enough, preferred to return, if possible, to Northumbria. Theodore then wrote to King Aldfrid, referring, says Eddi, to the decision of Pope Agatho^ and the later declaration of Pope Benedict in Wilfrid's behalf, and exhorting him, 'for the redemption of his brother Egfrid's soul,' to come to terms with Wilfrid. He wrote similarly to the abbess Elfled, who probably inherited Hilda's feelings against Wilfrid ^ : and Eddi preserves for us a letter in which the aged archbishop, in a tone of pathetic pleading, entreated Ethelred of Mercia to be the ' patron ' of an oppressed bishop who, ' deprived for a long time of his own property, had laboured much in the Lord among the heathen.' ' Do therefore, my son, my son, in regard to that holy man, as I have besought thee ; and if thou wilt obey thy father, who is not long for this world, it will greatly avail for thy salvation.' The letter contained also a request that, although such a journey might seem too long, Ethelred would visit Theodore; ' let mine eyes see thy pleasant face, and my soul bless thee before I die ^.' Ethelred, we are then assured, ' received Wilfrid willingly' into his kingdom, while he was on his way homewards, and restored to him the monasteries and lands which he had possessed in Mercia ; and Aldfrid himself ' invited Wilfrid to his court, according to the archbishop's injunction ^.' Once more, therefore, Wilfrid returned to his native ^ As Eddi words it, * ut in sedem meam . . . superstitem et haeredem vivens te constituam.' Malmesbury, ' Rogo te . . . ut . . . sedem arcliiepiscopatus mei subeas,' &c. (G. Pontif. p. 233). Malmesbury gives no warrant for his recent editor's statement (p. 512) that this took place at Theodore's deathbed. (!) Eadmer puts into Wilfrid's mouth a grotesquely insincere compliment : ' 1 think you treated me in that way with the intention that I should be exercised in patience . . . and thus reach perfection ; ' Vit. Wilf 50. ^ This seems to be implied in Eddi's words, 'Nam ad ^Ifledam/ &e. Later, we find Elfled taking part with Wilfrid ; Eddi, 58. 3 Eddi, 42. * Eddi, 43. Wilfrid restored to York, 353 country, probably in the autumn of 686 ^. But on what ohap. xi. terms did he return ? Let us remember that, according to the Wilfrid Roman decree, the subdivision of the original diocese of York North- was to be annulled, and Wilfrid was to be reinstated in that un^^ria. diocese^ as it had existed before 678; that done, a new Council was to be held in Northumbria, with the assent of which he was to choose new bishops, who were thereupon to be con- secrated by Theodore. What was actually done appears to be this : — Wilfrid, on arriving in the North-country, found the new see of Hexham vacant by the recent death of Eata 2. He was thereupon put in possession of that church ; and after a certain interval, Bosa being compelled or induced to retire from York, and Eadhed to give up Ripon, Wilfrid regained both the cathedral church for which he had been consecrated, and the minster which he had ruled as abbot ^. Thus, as Regains Bede says, in his curt reference to these events, * he recovered P^^ ^^ ^^^ •^ ' , ' ^ former his own sec*:/ but was it the centre, as before, of a diocese bishopric, coextensive with the kingdom? It was not, for the diocese of Lindisfame retained its distinct existence : Cuthbert was regarded as legitimate bishop of Lindisfarne, in flat dis- regard of the Roman decree, until his death in the March of 687, some months after the return of Wilfrid, who then took charge, as we should say, of that diocese, and ' kept' it until, a year afterwards, Eadbert was consecrated, as * Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 1 72. * Eata died, says Bede, v. 2, in the beginning of the reign of Aldfrid. He had been (i) abbot of Mebose, (2) of Melrose and Lindisfame, (3) bishop of Hexham and Lindisfarne, (4) of Lindisfame only when Tunbert became bishop of Hexham in 681, (5) again of Hexham only in 685. ^ Eddi, 43, says that Aldfrid (i) bestowed on Wilfrid the monastery of Hexham, and (a) * post intervallum temporis,' according to the decree of Pope Agatho and his synod, ' his own see in York, and the monastery at Eipon, expulsis de eo alienis episcopis.' * Bede, v. 19 : * Et secnndo anno Aldfridi (i. e. between May, 686, and May, 687) . . . sedem suam . . . recepit.' The Chronicler and Florence appear to confound Wilfrid's first restoration in 686 with his second in 705 : that is, they ignore the latter, and thus are led to say that he received the see of Hexham in 686. There is inconsistency in their statements as to the length of John's episcopate, which they make to begin in 685 (see below). Florence says that Bosa died in 686, and John succeeded him at York. This ante-dating of Bosa'a death arose from a misapprehension of Bede's words in v. 3, which refer in fact to A.D. 705. Bosa was alive in 704 ; Eddi, 53 ; Smith's Bede, p. 759. Aa 354 The Compromise, CHAP. XI. Bede expressly says, * in place of Cuthbert ^.* This occupancy or administration of the most northern of the bishoprics appears to have had a parallel in Wilfrid's relation to Hexham until the consecration of John for that bishopric ; an event which, if the Chronicler's reckoning of the duration of his episcopate be accepted, together with the date of his death 2, must be placed on the 25th of August, 687, about five months after the death of Cuthbert. Certainly, during that interval, Wilfrid must be regarded as the one chief pastor of Northumbria ; but while he was undoubtedly bishop of York, and, as such, ' ordinary ' of the Church in Deira, it appears that he was only the * administrator ' of Hexham and Lindisfame, probably with the understanding that he should approve of the selection of prelates for those two churches, but without any prospect of a provincial Council to be held for their appointment. Lindsey was treated as out of the question, being no longer within the Northumbrian realm. Thus, on the whole, we see that Wilfrid was content to accept an arrangement which fell short of the strict requirements of Rome^. Those months during which he discharged episcopal functions in the diocese of Aidan and of Cuthbert were marked by some distress or peril to the Lindisfame community, which Bede, in his prose Life of Cuthbert, describes mys- * Bede, iv. 29 : * Episcopatum . . . uno anno servabat . . . Vilfrid, donee eligeretur qui pro Cudbercto antistea ordinari deberet.' This one phrase shows clearly that the Roman decree was not really obeyed. ^ Bede himself says, v. 6, that he * continued in episcopata' thirty-three years, and that he died in 721. This might be understood to mean that he retired to his monastery after thirty-three years of actire episcopal work. But the Chronicle is more precise : * In 721 the holy bishop John died; he was bishop thirty-three years, eight months, thirteen days.' Florence says that he died on the 7th of May, 721. Therefore he was consecrated on August 25, 687 (see Stubbs. Regiatr. p. 4 ; Eaine, i. 86), and not in 685. In other words, John was Tiot bishop of Hexham when Wilfrid returned, and did not retire to make room for him, as Richard of Hexham (X Script. 296) and Elmham (EQst. Mon. Aug. p. 280) say, and as Smith supposed, p. 754, and Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 140. Smith adds the suggestion that Cuthbert retired to make room for Wilfrid ; Bede's account of the matter disposes of this entirely, iv. 28. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 171. * Yet Rome had maintained that the ecclesiastical divisions ought not to vary with the political. See Newman's ed. of Fleury, vol. i. p. 51. John, BisJiop of Hexham, 556 teriously as a * breeze of trial ' under which many of the chap. xi. brethren were minded to ' leave their home rather than dwell there at such risk of expulsion^;' — in his metrical work on the Miracles of St. Cuthbert he gives a little more information, or at least helps us to infer that what he there refers to as a * north wind shaking the roofs of Lindisfarne 2 ' may have been some threatened descent of the Picts. Wilfrid, as we have seen, parted with the charge of Hexham Jobn in the late summer of the year after his return. On Sunday ;^ex^ui. the 25th of August, 687, a bishop was consecrated for that 'goodliest of Transalpine churches,' who was to become the object of greater reverence than any northern saint except Cuthbert ^, and to be invoked as a patron by ' the glorious Athelstane ' on his way to the field of Brunanburgh *. This was John, famous as ' St. John of Beverley ' from ' the monastery which he founded in Deira-wood ^,' and to which he at last retired to die. He was sent, while a youth, to the eccle- siastical school of Canterbury, where he received from Theo- dore himself instructions in theology ^, and also some maxims in medicine, which, when a bishop, he remembered and ap- plied ■'. He afterwards entered the monastery of Whitby ^ : and Bede reckons him among the five monks of that house whose merits raised them to the episcopate. Some traits of character which Bede mentions giv« us a very pleasing ' Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 40 : ' Tentationis aura,' &c., and ' repsUendi ac destru- endi assent.* It was, he says, foreshown by the circumstance, that at the moment of Cuthbert's death the monks then in Fame, and also the Ldndisfame com- munity, were singing in their noctums the Psalm, * Deus, repulisti nos.* ^ De Mirac. Cuthb. s. 37.: * aquilo niveis confisus in armis.* ' See Raine, i. 90. * Ailred,in X Script. 357 : * Audiems . . . hsec . . . rex, " Magnus est,*' inquit, " iste Johannes." ' He prayed at the shrine, and gave the privil^e of sanctuary to the minster of Beverley. ^ Bede, v. 2 : • Monasterii quod vocatur Inderauuda, id est, In Silva Dero- rum.' This wood extended 'from Driffield to Beverley;' Pearson's Hist. Maps, p. 6. * Ann. Bened. iii. 434 (life by Folcard). ^ Bede, v. 3 : 'I remember that archbishop Theodore used to say that it was very dangerous to bleed a person when both the moon is waxing and the tide is rising.* * Bede, iv. 23. A a 2 356 E adder t, Bishop of Lindisfarne, CHAP. XI. Eadbert of Lindis- farne. impression of his genial kindness towards young* men under his authority^ : while, as bishop of Hexham, he showed his love for devotional retirement after the fashion of Aidan and Chad, by providing himself with a house, surrounded by a belt of wood and an earthwork, and adjoining a cemetery of St. Michael, a mile and a half from Hexham, and on the north bank of the Tyne ^. Here he used to spend such time, especially in Lent, as he could secure for prayer and study, and would ' keep with him, for charity, some poor man afflicted by special sickness or need.' The fervent affection which Bede shows for his memory is explained by the fact that he received deacon's and priest's orders from his hands, in the years 69 1-:^ and 702-3^. And the successor of Cuthbert was a man of the same pious simplicity. Eadbert, says Bede, was consecrated a year after Cuthbert's death, i. e. about Easter in 688 * : ' a man remark- able for his knowledge of Scripture and his observance of Divine precepts, and particularly for almsgiving : insomuch that according to the law (i.e. of Moses) he gave to the poor a tenth part not only of animals, but of all fruits of the earth, and even of his clothes ^.' . He restored tranquillity to the ^ See the beautiful story of Herebald in Bede, v. 6. The young cleric, riding with some young laymen in attendance on the bishop, is tempted, against the latter's wish, to join them in a gallop : he is thrown, and fractures his skull : the bishop spends the night alone in prayer for him, visits him in the morning, and asks, ' Do you know who is speaking to you ? ' ' Yes, you are my beloved bishop.' John calls a physician to attend to him. ' Bede, v. 2 : ' Est mansio quaedam secretior,' &c. Eichard of Hexham calls the place Emeshow (Eagles' hill), and believes the * oratory ' of St. Michael to have been begun by Wilfrid; X Script. 291. Probably the statement in Ann. SS. Bened. iii. p. 436, that John was *a hermit' at Hameshalg, is a mere exaggeration of Bede's statement. 2 Bede, v. 24 : ' Nonodecimo autem,' &c. * Bede, iv. 29 : ' Ordinatus est autem.' ^^ The • tithe ' thus set apart was not • tithe in its modem sense,' in that it went to the poor ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 227. In Theodore's Penitential we find, ' No one is compelled to give tithes to a presbyter,' and again, the poor are not to be coerced in regard to tithes, nor can tithes be lawfully given save to the poor, and to strangers, and, by laymen, to their churches ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 191, 203. Sec, also, Kemble, ii. 503, that this shows what were the legitimate uses of tithe. Later, Bede speaks of a tribute to the bishop as generally enforced; Ep. to Egb. 4. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 183. Tithe, in Or. Tur. vi. 6, seems to be for the poor. End of Benedict Biscop. 357 agitated community of his island^; and improved the cathedral chap. xi. church of thatched oak which Finan had reared, and Theodore had dedicated to St. Peter, by removing^ the reeds from the roof and covering both it and the walls with lead ^. He too, like John, was wont to retire for devotion to a secluded pro- jection of land * enclosed by the waves of the sea,' and there pass a great part of Lent, and of the forty days before Christmas^. We seem to get a glimpse of his inward life when we read that he used to pray against a sudden death, and desired to pass away after a long illness ; — and such an end, says Bede, was granted to him *. Such an end too was appointed, in the first year of his End of episcopate, first to the acting abbot of Wearmouth, and then ^^.^'^ to its venerable founder. Sigfrid was a chronic invalid ; and Benedict, the indefatigable traveller, was for three years affected by what we should call a creeping palsy ^. Yet while his lower limbs were motionless, he ceased not to * praise God and exhort the brethren.' He bade them observe the rule which he had compiled with such care and after such varied experience ; urged them to keep entire the library which he had brought from Rome ; but above all things insisted on the duty of choosing an abbot not for the sake of high birth, but purely for personal merits. ' I tell you of a truth,' he said, *that of two evils I should much prefer that this monastery should become a wilderness for ever, than that my brother by blood, who, we know, does not walk in the way of truth ^y should succeed me here as abbot.' He exhorted them always to choose out the fittest man from their own com- munity, according to the rule of ' the great abbot Benedict,' ^ Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 40. To this relief from perils Bede applies the words of Ps. cxlvii. 2, 3. ' Bede, iii. 25 : ' Sed episcopus loci ipsius Eadberet,' &e. * Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 42. Comp. Greg. Tur. Hist. Fr. viii. 43. * Bede, V. C. 43 : ' Ut non repentina morte, sed longa'excoctus segritudine, transiret e corpore.' 5 Bede, Hist. Abb. 9. * • Fratrem . . . inopia cordis a se longissime distantem ; ' Anon. Hist. Abb. Benedict was thus strongly opposed to the notion of treating abbacies as ' family benefices;' see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 224. In the old Scotic monasteries ' the abbatial succession came to be confined to members of the clan of the founder; ' Stuart, Pref. to 'Book of Deer,' p. cviii; Reeves, Adamn. p. 335. 358 End of Benedict Biscop. CHAP. XI. and according to the provisions of the letter of privilege belonging to their house; and to 'present the person so chosen to the bishop for benediction^.' Very touching is Bede's account of this long decline of Benedict Biscop. His nights were often wearisome from sleeplessness ; he would then ' call to him a reader, and desire to hear the account of Job's patience, or some other passage of Scripture, which might alleviate his depression ; ' and at each canonical hour he summoned some monks, and joined his voice to theirs in the antiphonal psalmody. He and Sigfrid had a farewell meeting, the latter being carried on a couch into Benedict's cell : the old friends were assisted to take a tender embrace of each other ^ ; Sigfrid was laid down beside Benedict with his head on the same pillow, and their attendants had to bring their faces together for the last kiss. ' After taking counsel with Sigfrid and the whole brotherhood,' Benedict sent for Ceolfrid the abbot of Jarrow, and, with the approval of all, made him abbot of both monasteries, on the 12th af May, 688 ^. Sigfrid died on the %%\A of August: Benedict lived on into the next year, and passed away early in the morning of the i ath of January, 689, while the monks assembled in church were singing ^ JDeus^ quis similis^ T and those who kept watch in his chamber, after hearing the Gospels read by a priest throughout the long wintry night, looked at his face for the last time in life, shortly after his last Communion. He was about sixty years old. Cadwalla That year of Ceolfrid's accession to the abbacy of both Rome? houses, or of the one twofold house, was marked in Wessex ^ Comp. Faricius, Vita S. Aldhelmi, c. 2, speaking of Aldhelm's care to secure free and worthy elections : ' Jam tunc enim ambitio monachorum in- oleverat : jam non ut pastor per ostium, sed ut fur aliunde, volebat mercenarius intrare,' &c. Cp. Theodore's Penit. b. 2. c. 6. 5. 2. ^ * Nee tantum habuereviriumut propius posita ora ad osculandum se alteru- trum conjungere possent, sed et hoc fraterno compleverunt officio.' Bede calls it 'a lamentable sight;' Hist. Abb. 10. ^ The Anon. Hist, gives this date, 'the third year of king Aldfrid, the eighth from the foundation of St. Paul's monastery.* The third year of Aldfrid began May 20, 687, — reckoning from Egfrid's death. * Bede dwells on the leading idea of this Psalm (our 83rd), that ' the foes of the Christian name ' will be baffled and routed in their attempts to destroy the Church and every faithful soul; Hist. Abb. 11. Cadwalla goes to Rome, 359 by the strange end of a brief reign, which had blazed ' like a chap. xi. meteor ' in ' the troubled air ' of the south. Gad walla's brother Mul, in the course of a fierce raid in Kent, had fallen with twelve adherents into the hands of a foe whom he despised as womanish^. They suddenly beset the house wherein he was, and burned it with all whom it contained^. Cadwalla avenged him by another irruption into Kent ^ : but this was the last of his wars. He had now, at last, resolved to be baptized ; and the intensity of his nature, combined with that extreme form of local religiousness which he may well have imbibed from Wilfrid, made him resolve on going a long way for the cleansing ' laver/ even to the shrine of the chief Apostle. According to Bede's conjecture, he had a hope that he should die soon after his baptism, and so secure his salva- tion *. So it was that Pope Sergius I., who had come to the see on December 15, 687, saw in the following year this remarkable catechumen at his feet ^. He who, for all his admiration of a missionary bishop, had in his own person, and beyond all other English princes of his time, represented the wild Teutonic thirst for slaughter and conquest, who had borne the banner of Wessex through so many battles against the defenders of their own soil, who had dipped his hands in the blood of a Christian king and earl, of crowds of Christians in Kent and Sussex, and of the two royal boys whom he allowed to be christened before he slew them, — who, himself * ' Nam cum hostes effoeminatos duceret,' &c. ; Hen. Hunt. ' Chronicle, a. 687; Florence, a. ^87; Bromton, X Script. 741. Elmham says that Mul has been erroneously ranked by ' some persons ' in the list of Kentish kings, and that his ashes were buried in St. Augustine's ' juxta reges Cantise prsecedentes.' According to Henry of Huntingdon he had * deserved and brought down on himself the curses ' of Kentish monks. ' Chronicle, 1. c. * Bede, v. 7 : ' Simul etiam sperans,' &c. Elmham imagined that both ' Cad- walader king of the Britons ' and Cadwalla king of the West-Saxons went to Rome, and died there, on the same day ! p. 2 70. The Abingdon Chronicler (i. 4) puts into Cadwalla's mouth a penitential confession, ' Creator creaturarum Deus, miserere mei super omnes homines miseri,' &c., and adds that he resolved to be baptized ' cum majori solemnitate, although the sacrament has not the less efficacy in itself propter personas baptizantium.' See above, p. 263. ' The Chronicle dates Cadwalla's journey in 688 : compare Bede's date, ' the third year of Aldfrid.' Cadwalla, then, staid at Rome some months, for he died there in the spring of 689 ; see below. He probably went through a course of instruction. 360 Baptism and death of Cadwalla. CHAP. XI. as yet unpledged to Christ, had thought to secure His • favour for invasion by promising to give part of its spoils to Wilfrid, — this prince got the benefit of a corrupt tone of thought'among contemporary Christians, and bought, far too cheaply, even at such hands as Bede's ^, the honours of Chris- tian piety by receiving baptism under the name of Peter, and from the hands and under the sponsorship of Peter's successor^, His death, on Easter Eve, April lo, 689. His own anticipation was fulfilled : he was taken ill during Easter-week, while he still wore his white baptismal garment ^, and died on the 20th of April. A convert of such rank and renown was naturally honoured with a burial in St. Peter's : and Bede preserves the tumid verses in which the writer of his epitaph celebrated his abandonment of his kingdom, his ' wondrous faith^' his reverence for Peter and for Peter's see, and his speedy removal to' a heavenly kingdom, and to the fellowship of ' the sheep of Christ,' after the ' cleansing grace ' had renewed his soul, and he had partaken of light at the source of its world-wide difiusion *. According to the few words in prose which the visitor to St. Peter's would read immediately below this intensely Roman panegyric, Cadwalla was about thirty years Ine king of age. He was succeeded on his abdication — for his journey Saxons. ^^ Rome, as Bede says, was equivalent to an abdication — by Ini, or Ine, often called Ina, descended from a younger son of Cadwalla's ancestor Ceawlin ^ : whose accession suggests to ^ Bede, v. 7 : * Devotionis ipsius .... studium religionis.' It never occurred to Bede (and that it did not, is a fact of painful significance) that Cadwalla's manifest duty was to receive baptism from his own West-Saxon bishop, and then to remain at home and govern his people like a just man and a Christian. ^ The epitaph calls Sergius ' ipse pater Fonte renascentis.' We may assume that the Chronicle is right in saying, ' He received baptism from the pope.' So St. Birinus was both the baptizer and the godfather of Cuthred ; see above, p. 149. ' * In albis adhue positus.' Although the metrical epitaph says, 'quem . . gratia . . . Protinus albatum vexit in arce poll,' and again, ' candidus,' he cannot have strictly retained the ' whites ' until the day of his death, which was outside the Paschal octave. Aldhelm, • de Badl. sedif.,' says he was taken ill ' 'post albas.' See above, p. 119. * ' Splendificumque jubar . . . carperet . . . Ex quo vivificus fulgor ubique fluit.' ^ See the Genealogies in App. to Florence, Mon. Hist. Brit. 633, 641. Ine there appears as son of Kenred the • sub-regulus,' and great-grandson of Cutha, Ine, King of West-Saxons, 361 Bede the mention, not of his ' laws ' or of his ecclesiastical chap. xi. benefactions, but of his own abdication and departure to * the Apostles' threshold/ in the hope, as a dominant superstition taught even Bede to say, that the saints might give him all the friendlier welcome in heaven. But, in 688, according to Bede's reckoning^, thirty-seven years lay between the accession of Ine and that journey which he undertook when his wife, by a strange symbolic lesson, had taught him that this world's glory would pass away 2. His first act, it seems ^, was to renew the war against Kent ; it lasted until the people, weakened by previous invasions and intestine divisions, were glad to make terms with him by a * wer-gild ' for the death of Mul. There is a difference of reckoning as to the accession of their next king Wihtred, the legitimate representative of the ' ^scingas ' or descendants of iEsc son of Hengist *. He was the brother of the slain Eadric ; but he did not for some few years succeed in mak- ing good his claim to the whole realm of Kent^. And while the secular affairs of the ancient realm were in this who was son of Ctitliwine, the younger brother of Cadwalla's great-grand- father Cutha. He had a brother Ingels, and two sisters reputed as saints, Cuthburga and Cwenburga. The fiction that he was Cadwalla's nephew is connected with the Welsh tale about ' Cadwalader ' and his nephew ' Ini.' See above, p. 348. * Bede dates Ine's abdication in 725 : the Chronicle dates it in 728. ^ Malm. G. Keg. i. in Script, p. Bedam, p. 15. ' ^ Malm. ib. p. 14 : see Elmham, p. 264. Bromton dates this later, X Script. 758 ; as the Chronicle dates the peace in 694. The wer-gild in this case is variously described ; see Palgrave, p. 408. * He was son of Egbert, and great-grandson of Eadbald. ^ According to the Chronicle, a. 694, he succeeded in 694, and reigned thirty- three winters, having been joint king with Webheard (Swebhard) in 692. But his death is dated in 725, as if he had only reigned thirty-one years. Bede says, iv. 26, that after Lothere's death, Eadric reigned for a year and a half, i.e. until August, 686 : 'quo defuncto, reges d^Aii vel extemi* ravaged Kent for some time, ' donee legitimus rex Victred, id est filius Ecgberti, being estab- lished in the kingdom, delivered his people, by his piety and his activity, jfrom external invasion.' Bede says that Wihtred and Swebhard were reigning in Kent in 692 (v. 8) : and that in 725 Wihtred died after a reign of thirty- four and a half years (v. 23) — reckoned, of course, so as to begin before his sole kingship. Hen. Hunt, says, 'he held the kingdom of Kent thirty-two years, nobiliter et pacifice. He went to meet Ine with pacific entreaty, and persuaded him to accept a fine for Mul's death.' Later, he assigns to Wihtred nearly thirty-four years. Theodore. 362 Death of Theodore. CHAP. XI. confusion, it was bereft of its great ecclesiastical head. Death of Theodore was eighty-eight years old in the year after Cad walla's baptism. He had already, it seems, approved of the publication, by some South-English cleric, of certain answers given by himself, mostly to a presbyter called Eoda, to questions on points of penitential discipline ^. Hence the collection of these answers is called Theodore's Penitential. But it contains some statements of opinion which cannot well have come from Theodore ^. On the whole, and with some exceptions, it is characterised by austerity, and a disposition to provide by express and detailed rule for all varieties of cases. It exhibits that knowledge of Greek customs as differ- ing more or less from Roman, which we should expect from a native of Tarsus ^. It also shows, here and there, a certain loftiness and insight which well become the character of the great primate*. And it points to something like a settled system of parochial church life ^, as if Theodore had en- deavoured to establish such a system in the Kentish church, and had largely succeeded. Theodore died on the 19th of September, 690^. It was ^ See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 173 fF. and 2<)3. The compiler or editor describes himself as a * discipulus Umbrensium,' and says that Eoda is ' reported ' to have obtained the greater number of these rules, or statements of opinion, from Theodore himself, in answer to his inquiries. From the ' Dialogue of Egbert ' we learn that Theodore established the observance of a fast during the twelve days before Christmas ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 413. ^ E. g. b. I. c. 5. s. 6, — the opinion that a person baptized by a heretic who did not believe rightly in the Trinity ought to be baptized again. The compiler says, 'Hoc Theodorum dixisse non credimus;* but he refers to the Nicene Council by mistake for the Council of Aries. See too b. i. c. 9. s. 12. In b. 2. c. 12. s. 5 the husband of a faithless wife is allowed to divorce her and take another. See above, p. 247. ' See b. I, c. II. s. I ; c. 12. s. i, 3-; b. 2. c. 2,s. 14; c. 3. s, 2, 7, 8; c. 4. s. 4; c. 8; c. 12. s. 6, 8. * E. g. ' True conversion can take place at the last hour, quia Dominus non solum temporis, sed et cordis inspector est ; ' b. i.e. 8. s. 5. ' Confessio autem soli Deo agatur licebit, si necesse est. (Et hoc necessarium in quibusdam codicibus non est ') ; b. I. c. 1 2. s. 7. ' Foolish and impracticable vows are to be broken ;' b. I. c. 14. s. 6. 'De mortuo autem Dei solius est notitia;' b. 2. c. 14. s. 2. • The sick may take food at any hour ;' b. 2. c. 14. s. 13. " E. g. b. 2. c. I. s. I ; c. 2. s, 7, and on laics paying tithe 'suas ad ecclesias,' c. 14, s. 10. Cp. Bede, v. 4, 1 2. Willibrord planted this system in Frisia ; Alcuin, Vit. Willibr. i. 11. See above, p. 235. « Bede, v. 8. Death of Theodore. 363 said that he had long before foretold the age at which he chap. xi. would die, as having had it impressed on him in a dream. He was buried in the monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, and within the church itself^ because the northern porch, the burial-place of his predecessors, was now full ^. On his tomb was engraven an epitaph of thirty-four verses, of which Bede gives us, as sufficient specimens, the first four and the last four, and surpasses all that they may have said by the simple testimony, * In his episcopate the English Churches received more spiritual benefit than they could ever gain before his time.' ^ Bede, ii. 3. Elraham, p. 286. CHAPTER XII. Burial of The burial-day of such a prelate as Theodore must always be an epoch in the history of a Church. It is not hard to enter into the thoughts of the high ecclesiastics who pre- ceded the corpse, as it was borne, for the first time at the interment of any archbishop, through the northern porch, now full of sacred remains, into the actual church of St. Peter ; — who looked down, at the close of the rite, into that open grave, dug where the inner wall of the nave just ran between it and the sepulchre of Augustine. There stood the venerable Hadrian, in his place as abbot of the minster which thus asserted its high privilege ; he who had es- caped the burden of the archbishopric by recommending the stronger man who had just laid it down; he who, as companion, adviser, and fellow-teacher, had not a little aided him to bear it. And near the grave there would be a few prelates who had been suffragans to the first effective metro- politan : Gebmund of Rochester, we may be sure, attended, and probably Erconwald of London, infirm as he was, and Heddi of the great West- Saxon diocese, unless the war be- tween Kent and Wessex had prevented his coming. Since Wilfrid had returned to York, there had been no bishop in Sussex. By one account, Tyrhtel was now bishop of Hereford \ Cuthwin of Leicester was apparently dead ; Saxulf was probably failing : Bosel of Worcester was doubtless detained at home by infirmities which disabled him for » Mon. H. Brit. p. 538. State of the Kingdoms, 365 his work. Acci and Badwin would hardly travel from chap. xii. Dunwich and Elmham, nor Ethelwin from Sidnacester, nor Wilfrid, John, and Eadbert from the North. The bishops actually present at these memorable obsequies would feel that ' a prince and a great man ' was indeed gone from them : they might occasionally have fretted under his abso- lutism, but they could not fail to appreciate the blank caused by his departure. All would have a sense of a void which could not be filled; the Church was inevitably the weaker and poorer for the loss of that majestic character, with its dominating will and its rare faculties for govern- ment. Whenever any difficulty or emergency might arise, it would be the harder to confront without Archbishop Theodore. For the present, the bark of the Church appeared to be in smooth waters. The kings were friendly, on the whole, to the episcopate : if uncertainty still hung over the future of the throne of Ethelbert, Sebbi of Essex was a man of exceptional piety, of whom it was even said that he would have been fitter for a bishopric than for a kingdom ^ : Aldwulf of East- Anglia was he who had aided in the foundation of Ely: Ethelred of Mercia possessed a large measure of that per- sonal religiousness which distinguished so remarkably the offspring of the ' strenuous ' Pagan Penda : and Wessex and Sussex had exchanged Cadwalla, with his fierce passions and inconsistent impulses, for a king who deserves the name of great ^, and who in one of the early years of his reign ^ Ine's Laws. * Bede, iv. 1 1 : * Unde multis visum et saepe dictum est, quia talis ammi virum, episcopum magis quam regem ordinari deceret.' ' Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 69. 'As a warrior Ina was equal, as a legislator he was superior, to the most celebrated of his predecessors;' Lingard, H. E. i. 135. 'Whether he came to the throne by Cadwalla's adoption or by- election of the great men, . . is unknown to us;* Schmid, Die Gesetze des Angelsachsen, p. xxxvi. ' From the time when he first appears on the stage of history until in the fulness of his prosperity he put on the pilgrim's dress, and died in obscurity and poverty at Rome, his conduct is everywhere pure, noble, disinterested ; ' Stevenson, Pref. to Abingd. Chron. ii. p. xi. ' See Johnson, Engl. Canons, i. 1 29. He would date these Laws in 693 : see too his editor's note. Lingard, H. E. i. 135, adopts this date. Haddanand Stubbs, iii. 214, say, 'probably A.D. 690.' Erconwald seems to have died in 693 (ib. ai8) : and it is hardly probable that he would be able, from his infir- 366 Laivs of King Ine. CHAP. XII. convened a West- Saxon Witenagemot whicli enacted what are called the ' Dooms ' or Laws ' of Ine ^.' At this assembly not only Heddi of Winchester, but Erconwald of London was present; both are spoken of similarly as Ine's bishops, and this would suggest that Ine had succeeded^ for the time, in establishing his supremacy over London, which was generally connected by some such ties with Mercia rather than with Wessex^. 'A great number of ' monastic ' servants of God' were present at this gathering: among them, we may be tolerably sure, Aldhelm of Malmesbury had his place. The * right laws ' there enaf Berghamstede in 696. ' Stubbs, Registr. p. 3. Another account would give hira only eleven years ; Ub. Butler, April 30. Another prolongs his life to 697 ; see Dugdale, Hist. it. Paul's, p. 215. It was said that the clergy of St. Paul's and the monks of iJhertsey contended as to the place of his burial. The mediaeval account Dugdale, Hist. St. Paul's, p. 290) which commits the blunder of calling London metropolitan church, gives a lively picture of the quarrel : the Londoners jrcibly carry oflF the corpse from Barking, despite the cry of the Chertsey lonks, ' He was our abbot ! ' The rain having swollen the river which they aust pass, the monks intei^ret it as a Divine warning. The Londoners oggedly answer, ' We will go through an armed host, we will besiege strong ities, ere we lose our patron 1' A disciple of Erconwald preaches charity, and uggests prayer for a sign : the waters divide, the weather clears up, the corpse i borne in triumph to St. Paul's. He was buried at first in the nave of his hurch ; in the later cathedral his shrine was in the Lady Chapel. See )ugdale, p. 74. The epitaph cc«itained several Hctions. * Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 144. 5 Florence, Mon. H. Brit. p. 637. He was therefore the brother of Sigebert lie Little, and a kinsman of Sigebert the Good. See a grant, by ' Hodilredus arens Sebbi,' to the abbess of * Beddanhaam,' witnessed by Sebbi, Erconwald, nd Wilfrid, in Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 39. 380 Death of King Sebbi. CHAP. XII. he was attacked by an illness which seemed the signal of approaching death. He had been through all those years a devout Christian : at the beginning of his reign, he and those East- Saxons who were under him, in contrast with his nephew and colleague Sighere, had held fast the faith under the trial of pestilence ^ : ever since, he had been a man of prayer and almsdeeds, and would even have followed the perilous example of Sigebert the Learned, and given up his crown in order to become a monk, had not his wife steadily refused her consent to such a separation ^. But now, at last, when he said to her, ' Let us even at this close of our wedded life devote ourselves to God's service •"^, when we can no longer enjoy, or rather serve, the world,' she yielded reluctantly to his desire. He ' took the habit ' accordingly before the bishop, and brought with him a large sum to be spent on the poor, reserving nothing for himself. His sickness increased, and brought with it that dread of the last enemy which has often been permitted to burden the spirit of a faithful servant of God. But, as it was with Johnson, with the Mere Angelique, with Maria Theresa, with Charles Wesley, so was it with Sebbi when the supreme moment really drew near. He had begged Waldhere to visit him at his palace in London. ' What if he were to say^ or even by gesture express, in the agony of death, something unworthy of his character * ? Would the bishop promise to come, when the hour had arrived, and assist him in his last struggle^ allowing no one else, save two of his attendant thanes, to be present ? ' Waldhere willingly undertook to do so : soon afterwards, the old man had a dream which persuaded him that he should have a quiet departure^; and he died on the afternoon of the third day afterwards, ' as if gently falling asleep.' He was buried in ^ See above, p. 207 : cp, p. 365. ^ Bede, iv. 1 1 : ' Erat enim religiosis actibus,' &c. In Ireland, Aodh king of Leinster had died as abbot and bishop of Kildare in 638 : and Finnachta the Festive, arch-king, ' became a cleric ' for a year in 688 (Four Mast., Tigher- nach). ^ Again we observe the unhealthy restriction of this phrase, see p. 367. * ' Personae,' meaning, of his character as a king. ' He seemed to see three men in bright clothing approach him. One sat down before his bed, and said to the others who were still standing, and who Egwin, Bishop of Worcester, 381 :he church of St. Paul, and succeeded by his two sons Sighard chap. xn. ind Swefred^. A few months, perhaps, before the death of the ' bishoplike Egwin king,' Oftfor of Worcester died about the end of 693 2, and Worcester. vvas succeeded by a prelate whom Bede, to the surprise of W^illiam of Malmesbury ^, passes by in silence, but who was ifterwards venerated as St. Egwin. He was of princely birth *, md, like Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop, had at an early age cenounced all secular prospects, and in due time entered the (priesthood. His biographer tells us that he had much work bo do in reclaiming the people of his diocese from heathenish )bservances and heathenish license. They would retain some practices which were essentially idolatrous ; and they would lot conform to Christian rules of purity. He 'spoke to :hem repeatedly,' and usually in tones of stern rebuke^. The obstinate natures which his admonitions could not bend ivere the more embittered against him : we are told that he .vas accused^ before King Ethelred, and deprived of his )ishopric, and also denounced to the Pope, and that he thereupon repaired to Rome"^, was received with special isked as to Sebbi's condition, that his sonl * would depart on the third day, vithout any pain, and amid a great splendour of light.' ^ Swefred, or, properly, Swebred, gave lands at Twickenham to bishop Wald- lere, June 13, 704; Cod. Dipl. i. 59, The charter begins, * Quamvis solus ;ermo suflBceret ad testimonium, attamen pro cautela futurorum temporum,' fcc. It attests the dependency of Essex on Mercia : ' Cum licentia ^delredi egis . . . donare decrevimus.' It was executed after Ethelred had been succeeded by Kenred, who witnesses it. * Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 232. ' Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 296. * See his 'Life' in Ann. SS. Bened. iii. 331, and in Chron. Abbatise de Evesham (Rolls Series), p. 3 ff. " Usually, we infer from his * Life,' c. 1 3, he was ' pleasant in speech.' ' The common people, *eum paullatim conjecturis et adinventionibus et umoribus malis diffamans .... ab episcopatu eum expulit. Permisit potestas )rimatis, et admisit hoc excitatus contra eum livor regius ; ' Chrou. Evesh. J. 5- ^ Here comes in the wild legend of his having loaded his feet as in penitence 'because he did not deny that he was a sinner in God's sight ') with chains, he key of which he flung into the Avon : when he reached Rome, his servants >ought a large fish for food, and within it the key appeared. The Pope heard )f this, and, when he saw Egwin, asked absolution and blessing from him,^ nstead of imparting them to him, &c. The Pope is called Constantino ; but ^oubtantine was not Pope until 708, when Egwin went to Rome with king Wihtred. 382 Laws of King Wikh^ed. CHAP. XII. honour, acquitted of all blame^ and sent home with the apostolic benediction : after which he was restored to his see, and became godfather to the king's children. This story seems to have grown out of his journey to Rome at a later period. The war between Wessex and Kent was concluded, as we have seen, by an agreement on the part of the Kentish-men to make pecuniary satisfaction for the death of MuP. This is dated in the year after Bertwald's arrival ; and two years later, on the 6th of August ^, in * the fifth year of King Wihtredj and the ninth indiction/ that is, in 696, — Wihtred's regnal year being reckoned from an earlier date than the Laws of death or fall of Swebhard, — a Kentish Witenagemot was held at a ' place called Berghamstyde,' — not the Berkhampstead in Hertfordshire, which would be Mercian, but Bersted near Maidstone^. Bertwald, ^ high bishop of Britain,' as he is loftily styled, was present, with Gebmund of Rochester, * and every degree of the province spoke in accord with the obedient people.' Among the ' Dooms ' then enacted were several affecting the Church. It was to be ' free of impost * : ' but it is probable that already its lands were not excused from contributing to the repairs of roads and fortifications, and to the military service of the realm ^. Kenred. Of the story of the chains Malmesbury asks, * Credendumne putatur quod tradit antiquitas V G. Pontif. p. 297. * See above, p. 361. ^ So 'E-ugem * is explained, Johnson, Engl. Gan. i. 142 ; Schmid, p. 15. ^ Johnson, i. 142 ; Kemble, ii. 207 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 238. * * Impost ' would here mean the land-tax, estimated in produce or stock, and often paid in cattle or grain ; Churton, E. E. Ch. p. 122. Ethelward of Hwiccia in 706 refers to it as * vectigal ; ' Cod. Dipl. i. 64. Another reading, however, would mean ' freedom in jurisdiction and revenue;' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 233- " The • trinoda necessitas,' or ' onus inevitabile,' consisted of the ' bryg-bot,' the *burh-bot,' and the 'fyrd;' Lingard, H. E. i. 320, and A.-S. Ch. i. 241 ff. ; Kemble, i. 301 ; Freeman, i, 92 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 76. To this apparently Ethelbert II. of Kent, in a charter of 732, alludes, as a claim which was * general on all church lands in Kent ; ' and OfFa of Mercia says of it expressly * quod omni populo necesse est agere, atque ab eo opere nullum excusatum esse;' cp. Cod. Dipl. i. 92, 204. At first, in Northumbria (and generally, Lingard thinks) lands devoted 'to pious purposes were most likely relieved from all burdens whatsoever; ' Kemble, i. 302. Whitby was thus exempt from ' militia terrestris ; ' as some monastic lands in ancient Scotland were to be free till the day of judgment from tribute or custom, or even from maintenance of the Laws of King Wihtred. 383 The clergy were to pray for the king, and to * revere him chap. xii. without command, of their free will,' i. e. pray for him, as a matter of course, in the ordinary Church service^. The ^ mundbyrd 2,' or penalty for violating the Church's protec- tion, was to be the same as that for violating the king's. Unchastity was to be ecclesiastically punished. A priest who allowed of it, or ^neglected to baptize a sick person, or was so drunk that he could not do it' — a significant provision ^ — was to desist from his ministry until the bishop should judge his case. A tonsured man seeking for hos- pitality here or there was to have it once ; not oftener, unless his rovings were licensed*. Emancipation of slaves^ at the altar was recognised. Servile labour between sunset on Saturday and sunset on Sunday^ was prohibited. 'Offerings to devils ' were to be punished by forfeiture of goods, and such a fine as would have been required to save a man from the pillory"^, had it been in use, or, on another theory, to loosen the grasp of the avenger of blood ^. To eat flesh on a fast-day, national fabric; Stuart, Book of Deer, p. Ixxxdi. It was immunity of this sort which led to the scandal of pseudo-monasteries held by laymen pretending to be abbots ; Bede, Ep. to Egb. 7. His indignant censure of this abuse was written at a time when a reaction was setting in against over-indulgence to monasteries ; not only was care taken not to free them from the ' necessitas,' but St. Boniface found reason to complain of the 'forced service in royal building works,* required from English monks in his time ; Ep. to Outhb, c. 11. Such services or burdens, together with * vectigalia,' were remitted by Ethel- bald's charter of 749 (Cod. Bipl. i. 119), and Uhtred's of 767 (ib. 144) ; cp. Offa's of 774 (ib. 151). See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 241. The legates in 787 were content to provide against unjust or excessive exactions from 'God's :!hurches ; ' Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 455. * Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 175. * ^ Properly, the 'holding out of the hand,* as of a patron in defence of a client; see Robertson, Sfcotl. under Early Kings, ii. 452. Cp. Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 181. Here it is used for the penalty of violating this protection. On jhe privilege of sanctuary, see above, p. 90. ^ Cp. Theodore's Penitential, i. i ; Boniface, Ep. to Outhb. 10. Drunkenness ^as already a national vice. * See fifth canon of Hertford, above, p. 245. ^ See above, p. 307. * Literally, Sunday eve and Monday eve. So Ine's Laws, 3. Comp. Malmes- )ury, G. Pontif. p. 439, for a story of a woman blamed by her neighbours for spinning after sunset on Satvu:day. See above, p. 334. ' Heals-fang : Johnson, i. 147 ; Thorpe, Glossary to Ancient Laws. * Robertson, Scot!, under Early Kings, ii. 288. 384 The 'Privilege' of Wihtred. CHAP. xn. or to give it to dependents, was penal. A bishop, lik( ' the king, was excused from oath in giving evidence i. h priest, if accused, was to clear himself by saying, in his sacrec vestments, before the altar, ' I say the truth in Christ, I lit not;' a deacon might do the same. Inferior clerics, anc laymen, were to clear themselves by oath at the altar. The privileges of a communicant were recognised, as in the laws of Ine. Tobias It would seem that soon after this assembly bishop Rochester. Grebmund of Rochester died 2, and was succeeded by Tobias, one of the many prelates^ whom Bertwald consecrated, and one of the scholarly ecclesiastics who had been trained in the great school of Canterbury; ^a man,' says Bede, 'of multi- farious learning, in the Latin, Greek, and Saxon tongues.' Privilege He held the see of Rochester until 1'x6. He was present at of Wihtred . . * another Kentish Witenagemot held at Baccanceld* or Bap- child, near Sittingbourne, when Wihtred forbade ' any layman to usurp or appropriate what had been given to the Lord and confirmed with the cross of Christ, and dedicated : ' sacrilege of this sort was described as a ' stripping of the Living God, or rending of His coat and His heritage.' In the Name of God Almighty, and all Saints, the king commanded all his successors and all laics of his realm not to take possession of any monastery which he or his predecessors had given over to Christ, the Holy Apostles, and the Virgin Mother. Whenever an abbacy ^ should become vacant, it was for the bishop of the diocese ^ to give ' counsel and consent ' for a good election, and to bless the person elected. In the archi- * • His word, or testimonj^, like that of the king, was conclusive in itself, and did not require to be supported by the oaths of dbmpurgators ; ' Palgrave, Engl. Comm. p. 164. "^ See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 241. 2 Bede, v. 8. For Tobias, see also Bede, v. 23. * Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 238. ' In this genuine form of the charter (see Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 241) nothing is here said about the vacancy of a bishopric ; as if that was also to be filled up by free election. But this is found in the version given by Wilkins, ^- 57> *Ut quando . . . defungitur, episcopus,' &c. Cp. Chron. 694. Lingard says, 'Under Theodore and his immediate successors the appointment of bishops was generally made in the national synods ; ' Angl.-Sax. Ch. i. 91. ® See Bede, Ep. to Egb. 8 : *Tui namque est officii/ &c. ^" Ul THE ■'^/•-^ University' Wthtreds Privilege, \C^ ^ ^^ .^ ^^/) episcopal diocese, the archbishop's sanction was to he neces- ciBi*rlii. sary for any abbatial appointment. All these matters were to be exempt from secular authority, and subjected to the metropolitan's control. For greater security, a list of the monasteries was appended : St. Peter's or Upminster, i. e. SS. Peter and Paul in Canterbury, Reculver, South minster, Dover, Folkestone, Lyminge ^, Sheppey, and Hoe. By South- minster was meant Minster in Thanet, where the royal abbess Mildred was still presiding ^ : she signed the document first among five abbesses. * A further liberty, so the king was made to say, was added ^,' by a grant of entire immunity from all burdens greater and lesser *, and all exactions on the part of kings or earls, to Christ Church in Canterbury, and to the church of Rochester, and to ' the other above-named churches of God:' but with a salvo that such exemption should not be turned into a bad precedent. Any violator of this grant, whether king or bishop, or abbot, or thane, or any human power, was to be excommunicated, and to forfeit pardon in this world and the next, unless he should have made full satisfaction to the bishop ^ : and the charter itself was to be carefully preserved in the ' Church of the Saviour,' the metro- politan church of Canterbury, as a record and a safeguard for all churches 'in this Kent.' The date of this Privilege of Wihtred seems to fall within the last years of the seventh century. Of these years there is not much more to be said. Wilfrid continued at Leicester; he did not neglect his own cause, for we find that he made application to Pope Sergius, and re- ceived from him a letter confirmatory of the previous Roman decrees ^ : but for any practical effect of such a document he * See Wihtred's grants to the basilica of St. Mary at Lyminge, Cod. Dipl. i. 50, 54. On Dover and Folkestone see above, p. 110. "^ She 'died towards the close of the seventh century;' Alban Butler, Feb. 20. ' ' Adhuc addiraus majorem libertatera.' * 'Ab omnibus difficultatibus saecularium servitutum . . . ab operibus, majoribus minoribusve gravitatibus,' &c. See above, p. 382. ' Menaces of spiritual punishment were often — not always — added as sanctions to charters. Sometimes what is denounced is 'separation from communion of the Body and Blood of Christ,' e. g. Cod. Dipl. i. 30. Another form is, 'Let him know that he will answer for it to Christ; ' ib. i. 35 ; cp. L 8a, 84, 90. * Eddi, 49. C C 386 Guthlac CHAP. xir. could scarcely hope until some change had passed over the mind of King Aldfrid. He was safe and tranquil under the shadow of the throne of Ethelred : but he must have sorrowed deeply with that prince when the fierce Mercian nobles in Guthlac of 5^7 put to death his Northumbrian queen Osthryd ^. In that same year there began that strange and intensely mediaeval saintship which made the name of Guthlac of Crowland as fascinating to Mercian piety as Cuthbert^s had been to Northumbrian. We hear ^ of the boy as bom to a Mercian earl of royal descent, named Penwald, and his wife Tette, baptized after a ^ tribe ' called Guthlacings, — the original name, as borne by him, signifying Battle-sport ^ : he is described as growing out of childhood without any taint of childish perversity, gentle, sweet-tempered, dutiful, as if * irradiated by spiritual light : ' in early youth the warlike temper wakes up in him, — he is fired with emulation at the thought of 'ancient heroes/ — he becomes the captain of a fierce band, carrying fire and sword through the lands of his enemies, but even then restoring to the plundered a third part of the spoil. Nine years of this foraying life suffice him * : he begins to see what life and what death means : he thinks of ' the woeful ends ' of mighty princes, estimates the vanity of earthly glory, trembles at the thought of * the inevitable end.* These musings come into his mind by night ^, and in the morning he bids his comrades find another leader. Their remonstrances are vain : he enters the monastery of men and women, — ruled, like Whitby, by an abbess, named Elfrida, — which had for some time existed in the royal town of Repton^. This took place * Bede, v. 24 ; Chron. a. 697. ^ Act. SS. Bened. iii. 265 ; Life of St. Guthlac by Felix of Jarrow, written in the middle of the eighth century, and evidently after the model of Aldhelm's grandiloquent periods, and with much of the conventionalism of hagiology. ' Kingsley's Hermits, p. 304. * Laking ' is an old North-country word for * playing.' * He spent some time ' in exile ' among the Welsh ; Felix, 20. ^ Felix says, ' He remembered to have heard the words, Ne in hieme vel Sabbato fuga vestra fiat ; ' c. 1 1. * 'Bipadum,' Felix, — 'Hreopandun, Repandune,' &c. Elfrida was suc- ceeded by ' Egburga,' daughter of the East- Anglian king Aldwulf, who sent of Crow land, 387^ in 697, when he was only twenty-four years old. He at first chap. xir. offended his brother-monks by never tasting any strong drink ^ * save in time of Communion ; ' but his frank, modest, and affectionate disposition disarmed all animosity; and he on his part set himself to imitate the several excellences of the other inmates of the house, and, as his biographer touchingly says, * the gentleness of all.' After two years spent at Repton^, he resolved to adopt the hermit-life ; and for that purpose, * with the leave of his elders,' took his journey towards the vast fens which, ' beginning from the bank& of the Granta ^ ' or Cam, spread northwards in a dreary succession of ponds and marshes and ' black wandering streams*,' amid which, here and there, islets uplifted their dark masses of wood, ' forests of fir and oak, ash and poplar, hazel and yew.' Arriving in this desolate region, Guthlac asked some of the inhabitants whether they knew of any islet which was uninhabited. One of them, Tatwin by name, said that he knew of one in the remoter parts of the fen, which many had endeavoured to occupy, but had been driven away by ' monsters of the wilder- ness, and awesome shapes of divers kinds.' Guthlac begged Tatwin to show him the spot, and thereupon was conducted in a fishing-boat to an islet in the marshlands crossed by the Welland and the Nen. This was Crowland ^, a name which to Guthlac a leaden sarcophagus and a shroud; Act. SS. Ben. iii. 379 ; Angl. Sac. i. 595. * He took up this ride of ' total abstinence ' from the day on which he received ' the apostolic tonsure;' ^ 'Psalmis, canticis, bymnis, orationibus, moribusque ecclesiasticis per biennium imbutus ; ' Felix, 13. * Felix, 14: 'Est in mediterraneorum Anglorum Britannise partibus inunensae magnitudinis acerrima palus/ &c. See this copied by Orderic, iv. 16. Compare Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 321, that the fens were more than a hundred miles in length. See Turner, i. 32a flf. * Kingsley's Hermits, p. 301 ; a very vivid description. Compare Felix : * Nigris fusis vaporibus et laticibus,' * umbrosa solitudinis nemora,' ' nubilosos . . . eremi lucos,' *loca spinosa,' 'stagnosa paludis ligustria/ 'densaa arun- dinum compagines.' Henry of Huntingdon describes the fens more pleas- antly : * Palus ilia latissima et visu decora, multis fluviis . . . irrigata, multis lacubus . . . depicta, multis etiam silvis et insulis florid* et amoena ; ' Hist. 1. V. ; Mon. H. Br. p. 747 ; followed by Bromton, X Script. 868. This was « after the industry and wisdom of the monks . . . had been at work to . . . cultivate the wilderness ; ' Kingsley, p. 302. ' Croyland is a corruption. It is properly Cruland ('Crudeland, oaenoaa C C 2 388 Guthlac CHAP. XII. Guthlac has made famous, for he took it as his abode, ori a summer day when probably it wore its least repulsive aspect, — on the feast of St. Bartholomew^ in 699. He practised all the austerities which belonged^ as of course, to the life of an anchorite ; and they combined with the wisp- fires, and wild sounds of winter nights among the fens, and probably with intermittent attacks of marsh fever 2, to call up those hideous fancies of fiendish visitation and onslaught which read in Guthlac's life like an exaggeration of the ' trials of St. Antony^.' Whatever were his illusions, he preserved his faith, courage, and cheerfulness : the hagiologist indicates that he could repel with promptness, perhaps with humour, fantastic temptations to impossible feats of abstinence * : like Culhbert, he was Mn league' with the fowls of the air; the wild birds, and even the fishes of the marsh, would eat from his hand ; swallows came to sit on his arms and his bosom, and it was when his friend, an abbot named Wilfrid ^, who often visited him, expressed surprise at this familiarity, that terra,' Felix, 4i\ and hence Crowland. See Freeman, iii. 597. It is described in one spurious charter as enclosed within four, in another within five ' waters ; ' Rer. Angl. Script, i. 3, 9. ' In sanctuary of the four rivers ; ' Kingsley, p. 306. In the isle was a mound which had once been dug into by men eager to find treasure : ' in cujus latere velut cisterna inesse videbatur ; ' Felix, 16. ' After his first visit to the isle, he returned to Repton to say farewell to his companions, for he had left them ' insalutatos.' He repaired to Crowland after a short sojourn with them, taking two boys with him. Felix is not quite distinct as to the St. Bartholomew's day in question, whether it was the occasion of his first visit, or of his regular occupation of Crowland. His sister Pega took up her abode ' as a recluse in another part of the fens, four leagues off to the west ; ' Alb. Butler, April 11. Bishop Heddi visited Crowland, and ordained Guthlac priest; Felix, 32. 2 Kingsley, Hermits, p. 303. See Churton, E. E. Ch. p. 140. ' ' Erant enim adspectu truces, forma terribiles dentibus equinis .... trucibus oculis . . . gutture flammivomo .... immensis vagitibus,' &c. ; Felix, 19; comp. 12. The fiends, we are told, tossed him into the muddy streams, dragged him through thorny thickets, &c. On one occasion, says Felix gravely (c. 20), they came in the form and with the speech of Britons (Welshmen). Palgrave quotes this (p. 463) in proof of the extent of the British element still left in the population. * The suggestion was to fast rigidly for six days. Guthlac rose and sang out, ' Let mine enemies be turned backward ! ' and then quietly ate his daily meal of barley-bread ; Felix, 18. ^ Felix, 16, 25. of Crowland. 389 Gutlilac uttered the memorably beautiful answer, ' Have you chap. xn. not read that he who is joined to God with a pure spirit finds all things uniting themselves to him in God ^ ? ' We cannot wonder that, as in Cuthbert's case, the solitude of the devout hermit was broken by crowds of visitors of all kinds ^, ' abbots, brethren, earls, the rich, the sick, the poor, not only from the neighbouring districts of Mercia, but from the remoter parts of Britain,' — who came to tell him of their troubles, and never came without finding relief^. So that, like Cuthbert on Fame, the inmate of Crowland was exercising a true ministry of con- solation, and doing a work of wide effect, which showed that the superstitious form impressed by circumstances upon his devotion had not dulled his moral insight nor chilled his discriminating sympathy. But it must be remembered that what we, perhaps, should look upon as the redeeming point in a grave mistake was to Guthlac a mere incident in a life which, in its physical conditions, was far more terrible than that of the old Egyptian solitaries *, and which in fact could not be protracted beyond fifteen years ^. But so to live, and so to die, appeared to the men of his time, under the influence of a false ideal, to be the summit of Christian attainment. And while in that southernmost corner of Lincolnshire a * ' Nonne legisti quia qui Deo puro spiritu copulabitur, omn'a sibi in Deo conjunguntur ? ' Felix, 25. Cornp. Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 21. 2 Felix, 31. ' E.g. 'Nullum taedium sine exhortatione, nulla maestitia sine consolatione, nulla anximonia sine consilio ab illo reversa est.' Felix had evidently been reading Bade (Vit. Cuthb. 22), whose memory he naturally cherished. He tells u8 that Guthlac supported all that he said by authority of Scripture 532: and calls him * alacer, efficax, in discernendis causis.' ' Nothing staid in his mind but charity, peace, pity, forgiveness. No one ever saw him angry . . . excited . . . sorrowful,' &c. ; 38. Cp. Athan. Vit. Ant. 14. * See Kingsley's Hermits, pp. 130-134. ^ See Kingsley, p. 306 ; and on 'the vast longevity of many of the fathers of the desert, p. 134. Paul is said to have lived 113 years, Antony 165, Elias of Antinous no (Soz. vi. 28), &c. Guthlac died, aged foi-ty-seven, on April 11, 714, and was succeeded in his solitude by Cissa, a convert from Paganism; Florence, a. 714. One of the strangest things in the story is that a cleric named Beccelin, having come to live as Guthlac's servant, and being about to shave him as usual, was sorely tempted to cut his throat, ' ut . . . locum ipsius postea cum magna regum principumque venerantia habiturus foret.' Guthlac bade him 'spit out the venom' of this wicked thought; he fell on his knees and confessed all ; Felix, 21. 390 Foundation of Evesham. CHAP. XII. Mercian hermit was thus attracting the homage which in Founda- after days expressed itself by the foundation of a great Evesham, monastery, described by its inmates as ' the holy sanctuary of St. Guthlac ' under the protection of St. Mary and St. Bar- tholomew ^, a Mercian bishop was designing and establishing a religious house which became one of the greatest in the Midlands, at a place which was to be associated with a crisis in English secular history 2. It was a wild and lonely spot rising abruptly above the Avon, and covered with thorny thickets, but marked by a small church of ancient, probably of British, construction ^. Here Eoves, one of Bishop Egwin's herdsmen, professed to have seen an appearance of the Virgin^; and accordingly at ' Eoves-ham ^ ' arose a minster in her honour. Although its early history is marred by fiction and forged documents, one interesting detail may probably be received as authentic. Some eight miles from Evesham, at Alcester, was a royal estate ^, inhabited by persons who dis- liked Egwin and his preaching, and devised an ingenious • expedient for ridding themselves of both"^. In the neigh- bouring wood many ^ blacksmiths' carried on their trade. 1 See the alleged charter of Bertulf, in the false Ingulf, E,er. Angl. Script, i. 14; Cod. Dipl. ii. 41. See Kingsley, Hermits, p. 307. "^ The battle of Evesham was fought on August 4, 1265. ^ Malmesbury, G. Pontif. p. 296. * Ann. SS. Bened. iii.335 ; Chron. Evesh. p. 9 ; Monast. Angl. ii. i. She was said to have appeared to Eoves as brighter than the sun, holding a book and singing heavenly songs with two other virgins ; he told his master what he had seen, and Egwin on a subsequent morning, attended by three companions, went barefoot to the place and saw a similar vision. Egwin was said to have first obtained an old monastery at Fladbury, and to have exchanged it for Stratford. But the documents are marked as spurious ; Cod. Dipl. i. 36. ^ Originally ' Eoves-holm,' Jiolm being any ground surrounded or washed by a river. The British name was Hethbo. See Tindal's History of Evesham, p. 2. The Mercians had called it Hethomme and Cronuchomme: Egwin, according to the legend, had there flung the key of his chains into the river, and afterwards obtained the place from the king, as pastm-e-ground for monks, Florence dates the foundation a few years after Egwin's consecration ; Tanner dates it 701. See Cod. Dipl. i. 64. * 'Eegale mansum . . . nemoribus consitvma, fluminibus . . . et rivulis circum- datum, necnon muris et turribus vallatum.' A Council had been held there, ' non multo prius,' which had confirmed the immunities of Evesham ; Chron. Evesh. p. 25. But the story of this Oouncil of 709 is very doubtful. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 279-283 : cp. Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 209. ' Ann. SS. Bened. iii. 336 ; Chron. Evesh. p. 25. Foundation of Evesham, 391 One day, while Egwin was pleading with his untoward chap. xii. audience, there rose up such a din of hammers^ and anvils that he was ' fain to depart with tingling ears.' Passing over a story of the miraculous removal of this hindrance, we may see a not improbable intimation of the resistance which still, in outlying parts, was offered to Christianity by the adherents of the defeated Paganism. And now we must resume consideration of the case of Wilfrid, the last stage of which commences with the second year of the eighth century. * 'Prae concussione, immo confusione, malleorum et incudum adhuc tin- niebant ambae aures ejus,' &c. ; Chron. Evesh. p. 26. See Green, Hist. Engl. People, p. 31. CHAPTEE XIII. Ever since the second expulsion of Wilfrid, a monotonous tranquillity had reigned in the Church of Northumhria. Ecclesiastical interests were sedulously cared for by Kin^ Aldfrid: ecclesiastical life was surrounded with all that could give it security and honour. Bishop Eadbert of Death of Lindisfarne had died, after some weeks' illness, on the 6th. Eadbert. 0^ May^ ^98 ^ having caused the tomb of Cuthbert to be opened on the aoth of March, when the saint's body was found ' entire as if he were still living, and his joints still flexible as if he were but asleep^.' Part of the grave- clothes were brought to Eadbert, who 'kissed them as if they still covered the father's body,' and ordered a new shroud to be folded round it. He himself was ere long laid in the same grave, but under the saint's coffin. He was succeeded by Eadfrid, the prelate to whom, along with his monks, Bede, many years later, inscribed his Life of St. Cuthbert^. The community to which Bede himself belonged flourished under the presidency of Ceolfrid, who, • 1 Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 42, 43. 2 Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 42 ; Vit. Anon., Bed. Op. vi. 380. ^ In the dedication preface Bede reminds Eadfrid that he had promised to enrol his name, after his death, among those of pei'sons to be prayed for at Lindisfarne : and in pledge of such future enrolment had ordered Guthfrid, the 'mansionarius' or sacristan, to place his name, during his life, in the 'white book * of the community. This prelate had written out with his own hand, * in honour of St. Cuthbert' (i.e. for Cuthbert's use), a copy of the Gospels, which was adorned by his successor's orders with gold and jewels, and ultimately preserved at Durham; Simeon, Dunelm. Eccl. ii. 12, and Hist. Transl. S. Cuthb. (Bed. Op. vi. 391). He also, early in his episcopate, repaired the time-worn oratory of Cuthbert in Fame ; Bede, Vit. Cuthb. 46. Godwin, De Prsesul. p. 722, calls him Egbert, and confounds him with the Egbert, bishop of York, to whom Bede wrote his memorable letter. Letter of Pope Sergius. 393 as we have seen, had united the abbacy of Wearmouth to chap. xm. that of Jarrow : and we find him sending some monks to Rome in the year 700 ^, with a gift or ' blessing ' for Pope Sergius, intended, no doubt, to recommend the petition which they were to make for a new letter of privilege, like that which had been received from Pope Agatho. Sergius complied Pope Ser- with the request of Ceolfrid : and also entrusted to one of the ^e(flfrid. messengers a letter 2, in which he informed the abbot that certain questions of an ecclesiastical kind^ had arisen, which could not be settled without a long inquiry: that therefore he must needs confer with men of literary acquirements ; and that he desired Ceolfrid to send to Rome, at once, 'the religious servant of God,' — here, in a manuscript exhibiting the letter, 'N.' occurs instead of a name, — 'belonging to his monastery,' in full confidence that, after the matters in hand should have been settled, he would return home in safety, by the Lord^s favour and Ceolfrid's prayers. Malmes- bury's version of this letter contains the name of Bede, and adds the designation of 'presbyterum.' But Bede the historian never did visit Rome, — never, indeed, went beyond Northumbria*: nor was he ordained priest until 701-2^. Yet he may, nevertheless, have been recommended to Sergius * See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 412, referring to Bede, De Temp. Ratione, c. 47, which shows that the monks, on Christmas Day of 700, reckoned then as the first day of 701, were in St. Mary Major's, and there saw a waxen tablet recording, ' From the Passion of our Lord there are 668 years.* ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 248. ' ' Ecclesiasticarum causarum capitulis.' * Comp. Bede, v. 24: 'Qui natus suscepi.' 'It is certain from his Epitome that he never left his native soil;' Smith's Bede, p. 799. He adds that it might be rejoined that a very short stay in Rome would not necessarily be inconsistent with the Epitome. * The MS. Cotton in the British Museum, referred to the tenth century, gives the passage thus : ' Religiosum famulum Dei N. venerabilis monasterii tui . . . dirigere.' Bede's name ' is inserted in the margin ' (Giles's Bede, i. p. Ixix.). ' N.,' for ' nomen,' shows that the copyist had before him an acci- dental blank where the name should have been. Malmesbury, G. Regum, 1. i, quotes the letter thus : * Religiosum Dei famulum Bedam, venerabilis monasterii tui presbyterum.' Giles suggests that this last word might have been ' inno- cently' inserted by Malmesbury, since Bede afterwards became a priest ; or it might be 'a mistake on the part of the Pope,' Diet. Chr. Biogr. i. 301. Lingard's suggestion that 'the elder Bede,' not the historian, was meant, seems very improbable ; A.-S. Ch. ii. 413. 394 Council of Easter field, CHAP. XIII. by the Wearmouth monks, as an eminently promising scholar : the title of ' presbyter ' may have been a mistake or a gloss : the invitation was not improbably sent for him, and his non-compliance may have been simply caused by the Pope^s speedy death. The privilege was duly exhibited before the Northumbrian Witan, and confirmed by the signatures of the king and the bishops. Whatever the questions were to which the Pope's letter alludes, it is evident that about tlie beginning of the eighth century an uneasy feeling was stirring in the minds of Northumbrian Churchmen, and of others in other districts, as to the position of Wilfrid; Council of accordingly, Aldfrid resolved to assemble a general * synod ' Easterfield. ^^ which the wholc English Church should be repre- sented. It was held, in 70:^, at a place which Eddi calls by the two names of ' Onestrefelda ' and ' jEdswinapathe ^.' Easterfield, or Edwinspath, must have been somewhere ia Yorkshire : perhaps at Austerfield near Bawtry ^, which would be a convenient place for persons arriving from the south. Among the latter was Archbishop Bertwald : and nearly all his suffragans are said to have attended him. Wilfrid was ' respectfully ' invited to appear, in order that ' according to the canonical statutes' whatever had been wrong might be set right. He came accordingly, attended by several abbots of his monasteries. On his arrival, Eddi tells us, there was 'much altercation,' mainly caused by prelates, and by abbots who from 'avaricious motives' were opposed to any scheme of agreement. The king himself, we are assured, was practically on that side. Accusations were brought up against Wilfrid, which Eddi declares to be false. At last the point at issue was clearly raised. Would Wilfrid comply with the regulations of Theodore? According to such light as we have on the matter, this demand meant. Would he submit to such a partition of the old diocese of York as had been devised by Theodore in despite of his remonstrances? To yield to this demand, absolutelv, would have been to give up the position in which he had been placed by the Roman Council : a position of manifest ^ Eddi, 45. Compare 'Edwinscliff' in Clironicle, a. 761. "^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 254. Council of Easterfield, 395 advantage fix)m his point of view. He therefore answered chap. xm. with a quab'fication : ' Yes, I am willing to comply with those regulations — according to the rule of the canons;' meaning, virtually, so far as they could be brought into harmony with the decree of the CounciP. This saving clause, like Thomas of Canterbury's 'Saving my order ^,' was clearly calculated to exasperate his opponents: they would regard it as nullifying any verbal concession. And 'Wilfrid further damaged his case by indulging in what his panegyrist acknowledges to have been an outburst of sharp reproaches ; ' Here you have been for two and twenty years contentiously standing out against the Apostolic authority. With what front can you still prefer any ordinances of Archbishop Theodore, framed in time of discord between prelates, to the salutary decrees of Pope Agatho, Pope Benedict, and Pope Sergius^?' The Council, apparently, adjourned at this point ; and Wilfrid retired to take counsel with his friends. He then received two visitors in succession. One of the king^s thanes, who when a boy had, like other ^ earl- born' lads, been bred up in the house of the great bishop of York, and was warmly attached to him, emerged in disguise from the king's tent, and 'mingling like an un- known person with the soldiers who surrounded it,' found his way to his old patron, and said, 'They want to induce you to promise in writing that you will submit to whatever they shall determine. And what they determine will be this; that you should resign into the archbishop's hands whatever you have held, — bishopric or monastery, in North- umbria or in Mercia, — to be disposed of at his will.' Having given this information, the friendly thane departed as secretly * Eadmer makes him say, * You accuse me because I do not receive those decrees of Theodore, quas ipse non auctoritate canonica, sed discordia dictante composuit;' c. 53. ' See Milman, Lat. Chr. v. 47. ' 'Wilfridus igitur non ideo sibi injuriam illatam existimabat, quod epi- scopatus suus in plures divideretur,' but that bishops had been exercising jurisdiction in it in virtue of Theodore's arbitrary decree. 'Pontifices enim Romani decemebant dioecesim illam tam longe lateque extensam in plures esse partiendam, non tamen mera apostolica auctoritate, sed concilio rite congregate, depositis iis qui in Vilfridi absentia in episcopos contra canones ordinarentur ; ' Smith's Bede, p. 755. 396 Council of Easter field, CHAP. xm. as he had come ^. Presently afterwards a bishop entered, commissioned by Aldfrid and Bretwald to urge Wilfrid to promise, beforehand, that he would adhere to any decision of the archbishop. Wilfrid answered as any one in his position would have answered : ' I must first know what that decision will be like.' ' / do not know, for my part,' said the envoy: 'nor will the archbishop give any information until he is assured under your hand that you will abide by what he says.' 'I never before heard,' said Wilfrid, 'of any attempt to bind a man to obey a judgment not yet given, before he knew what it would be. He might find that it ordered what was impossible.' But he came to the Council when it again assembled, and promised that he would heartily accept the archbishop's decision, if it were found to be agreeable to the canons and statutes of the Fathers, and not inconsistent with the judgments of the three Popes who had pronounced their decisions in the cause ^. Again the qualification seems to have stirred up fresh bitterness : it was proposed by the king and the archbishop, — so, at least, Eddi informs us^, — that Wilfrid should give up all his houses, so that he would not, in that case, have had 'even a little bit of a single dwelling' in Northumbria or in Mercia. But others, hearing this, were disgusted at such relentless severity: it would be 'impious' to strip a person of such well-known eminence, ' famous through all the nations around,' of all his property, ' without convicting him of any capital crime.^ At last his adversaries modified their proposal, but in terms which showed not only the jealousy, but the alarm which Wilfrid's manifold ability and energy had inspired : — Let him have his monastery of St. Peter at Ripon, with all that pertained to it, — but on this condition, to which his written assent was required, that he should not without the king's leave go beyond the precincts of the monastery, nor perform any episcopal* act, — * This we learn from Eddi, 45. * This we learn from Wilfrid himself; Eddi, 51. Eadmer says, 54, that they caught up his words and said, ♦ One canonical rule is that disobedient persons should be put down.' 3 Eddi, 45. * • Sacerdotalis officii' luust have this sense. Eadmer says that he was WilfricCs second appeal, 397 a condition which, as Eddi expresses it, would amount to chap. xiii. a self-deprivation. The spirit of Wilfrid took fire at such a suggestion. He broke forth into an indignant recital of his services to religion in Korthumbria ^. ' Was it not I who laboured, before any one else took the work in hand, to root out the evil plant of Scotic usages? Was it not I who converted all Northumbria to the true Easter and the crown-shaped tonsure, who established antiphonal chanting, who organised the monastic life according to the Rule of the holy father Benedict, which no one before me had brought in 2? And now, after nearly forty years spent in the episcopate ^, you ask me, in effect, to condemn myself, when I know of no crime that can be charged against me : I am to resign my office, on account of this question that has but lately come up. No, indeed ! I appeal to the Apostolic Wilfrid's See : whosoever would wish to depose me, let him meet ^p^^ me, as I this day challenge him to meet me, at that tribunal.' One seems to hear the raised tone*, to see the proud and wrathful look, with which the indomitable man, at sixty-eight, confronted and defied his opponents, secular and hierarchical. They were, however, neither abashed nor overawed. The new appeal was a new offence : ' He is all the more blameable,' said the king and the archbishop, 'in that he has chosen to be judged at Rome rather than by us.' Aldfrid even added a proposal to have Wilfrid put under arrest^, that he might be effectually compelled to be content with home-authorities ' for one while.' But this was too much for the other bishops : they agreed to the sentence advised to accept these terms, and use the opportunity of a contemplative life. But he well knew the source whence this counsel emanated, and answered that the ' gift of counsel ' had in it nothing of duplicity. All this is Eadmer's invention ; it is what he thought likely to have been said. ' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 141 ; Milman, ii. 269; Raine, i. 73. " ' Of his noble apostolic labours, bis conversion of the heathen, his culti- vation of arts and letters, his stately buildings, his monasteries, he said nothing; ' Milman, ii. 269. On the Benedictine Rule see above, p. 216. ^ If he was consecrated early in 665, he had been a bishop, by this time, for thirty-seven years. * • Intrepida voce elevata ; ' Eddi. ' Fecit ille quod erat constantissimi praesulis ; ' Smith's Bede, p. 756. ' * Si praecipis, pater, opprimam eum per violentiam ; ' Malmesb. Pontif. p. 235. 398 Wilfrid again in Mercia. CHAP. xiii. of deposition from episcopal dignity, but they would not violate the safe-conduct without which, as they said, Wilfrid would not have ventured to come to Easterfield. Let him go without hindrance : ' and let us, too, go quietly to our own homes.' 'After this conversation the fruitless Council^ was dissolved.' Wilfrid in Wilfrid returned into Mercia, and reported, to Ethelred Mercia. ^\^\^ the bishops had said at Easterfield, ' against Ethelred's own directions,' as Eddi tells us, alluding to some letter which the Mercian king had apparently written on his behalf. 'And what do you mean to do,' asked Wilfrid, 'as to the lands which I hold in your kingdam ^ ? ' 'I mean, said Ethelred, 'to add no new trouble to your trouble. I will keep those lands for you until I can send messengers, or a letter, with you to Rome, to ask for instructions as to my conduct.' Far different was the conduct of some who, as Eddi says^, usurped possession of Wilfrid's inheritance. One is loth to think that Bosa or John would personally go to such extremities as are described : but we are told that the usurpers treated Wilfrid and the members of his monastic communities as excommunicate. If any of them, at the request of a layman, were to bless food with the sign of the cross, it was to be flung away as if it had been an offering to idols : even the sacred vessels used by them at Communion * were to be washed, before others might handle them without incurring ceremonial pollution. In this state of public opinion, when a deep and persis- tent antipathy ^ was making itself felt against the exile and the appellant, there was some reason to expect that the pressure might be too great for the fidelity of some of his monks or clerics, — that they might be scared into forsaking as hope- less the cause of ' a man forbid.' It was therefore an act of • ' Inutile concilium ; ' Eddi, 46. ^ He said nothing, Smith observes, about any bishopric as belonging to him in Mercia. 8 Eddi, 47. * ' Vasa Dei quibus nostri vescebantur.' ' The existence of such a feeling is sufficient proof that, in Northumbria at any rate, there was a powerful mass of opinion which, in a practical sense, might be called anti-Papal. In other districts the feeling was different. Aldhelm. 399 opportune generosity when the man who stood highest in chap. xm. ecclesiastical reputation throughout the English Churches, Aldhelm. the unrivalled scholar, — the admired writer, — the popular and venerated abbot, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, interposed to in- spirit and exhort the adherents of Wilfrid. We have already seen how Aldhelm had succeeded to the abbacy at Malmes- bury; his administration was brilliantly successful : the com- munity which had grown out of a little knot of scholars gathering round a foreign teacher beneath the walls of an old fortress had 'broken forth on the right hand and ott the left,' for Aldhelm had been enabled to found another monastery at Frome, and another yet at Bradford-on-Avon ^, and the little church which he reared at the latter place has been identified with one that has survived to our own day. King Ine had given several pieces of land for the augmen- tation of Aldhelm's monastery at Malmesbury ^ : there had been *a rush along all roads,' as William of Malmesbury expresses it, ' to Aldhelm ^ : ' and among his disciples was Pecthelm, who afterwards held the restored bishopric of St. Ninian at Whithern or Candida Casa*. He was a friend and correspondent of the scholarly king of Northumbria ; and Artwil, the scholarly son of an Irish king, submitted to Aldhelm all his literary compositions, which were not few in number ^. The fame of the learned West-Saxon abbot had reached the ears of Pope Sergius, who invited him to Rome ®, * Faricius, Vit. Aldh. c. 2 ; Malmesb. G. Pontif. p. 346. When he wrote the church of Frome was still standing, and so, he says, was the ' ecclesiola ' of St. Laurence at Bradford ; but the monasteries had perished. Aldhelm also (ib. p. 363) built a church near Wareham in Dorset, which in the twelfth century still existed, unroofed, save for a prominence just above the altar : within its precinct, it was said, rain never fell. Aldhelm was on terms of religious friendship with several nuns, to whom he dedicated his ' De Laudibus Vir- ginitatis.' See too his Epist. 2, to a 'sister.' ' Kemble admits this charter, which belongs to 701 ; Cod. Dipl. i. 55. The Mercian sub-king Berthwald, who had been so friendly to Wilfrid, gave a piece of land on the Teme to Aldhelm's monastery; and Ethelred attested the grant in a * synod' held at Burford, July 30, 685 ; Cod. Dipl. i. 30. . ' * Currebatur ad Aldelmum totis semitis ; ' Malmesb. G. Pontif, p. 349. * Malmesb. p. 257. Bede knew Pecthelm : see v. 13, 18, 23. He lived as ' deacon or monk ' under Aldhelm as bishop. ^ Malmesb. p. 336. « So says Faricius : * Huic . . . Sergius adserverat quia . . . de eo persaepe 400 Aldhelm. CHAP. XIII. allowed Mm to celebrate in the Lateran basilica ^ and sent him home with a letter of privilege for his monasteries 2, a store of relics, and a massive altar of white marble, which he gave to King Ine, who placed it in the royal ' vicus ' of Braton ^. Traditions spoke of the rapturous joy with which Aldhelm's return was welcomed, when monks met him with cross and thurible and processional chant, and laymen ex- pressed their delight by dancing or by other 'gestures of the body *.' He was, we cannot doubt, the most popular of monks or priests : his scholars loved him passionately, as their *most loving teacher of pure learning^;' and he well deserved their affection by the tender thoughtful interest with which he watched over their progress 6, and after they had left him still exhorted them, in extant letters, to avoid youthful follies, such as daily drinking-bouts, protracted feastings, or any excess in amusements ^, — to prefer the study of Scripture to immoral specimens of heathen poetry, — to keep clear of all sensuality, and to be simple in dress and habits, — and in all secular studies to keep in view sacred knowledge as the end to which all other lore should minister ^. audierat ; ' c. 2. Malmesbuiy says he went in order to get 'privileges' for his monasteries, but before setting out, built a church at Wareham, the roofless walls of which still existed. Among Aldhelm's verses are some in honour of SS. Peter and Paul, composed while he ' was entering their church at Eome.' He invokes them both. * Faricius has a tale of wonder about his chasuble being supported on a sunbeam. Then comes another, about his clearing the Pope, by miracle, from a calumny. Comp. Mahnesb. p. 365, that the chasuble, preserved in the abbey, showed ' the saint to have been a tall man,' as did his relics. * Malmesb. p. 367. ' Malmesb. p. 373. He inclines to think that a camel bore this ' moles' to the foot of the Alps ; but there the beast of burden, camel or not, stimibled ; the altar was broken, but miraculously put together again, &c. It was extant ' ad hanc diem.' * Malmesb. p. 373. ' * Mi amantissime purae institutionis prseceptor ; ' Epist. 6, Ethelwald to Aldhelm. * ' Ab ipsis tenerrimae cunabulis infantiae fovendo, amando,' &c, ; Ep. 6. ^ Ep. 10, Aldh. to Ethelwald. He mentions 'equitandi vagatione culpabili,* with 'conviviis usu frequentiore ac prolixiore inlioneste superfluis,' the latter a coarse Saxon habit : see above, p. 234. * Ep. 13, to Witfrid, going to study in Ireland. Aldhelm writes to ' Wilfrid^ s clerks! 401 He himself had practised, in this matter, what he taught ^ : chap. xm. his literary activity never chilled or suspended his devo- tions : when he concludes his book on Metres with a pious aspiration 'that abundance of things perishable may not prove to be poverty in the world to come,' one seems to see into his mind 2, and to understand the moral and spiritual force exercised by one who is enthusiastically described in his capacity as a scholar, and as a teacher and con- troversialist, in the words of his Malmesbury biographer, — 'wonderful in each of his qualities, and peerless in them all 3.' Such was the man who now wrote ' to the clerks of Bishop Wilfrid *,' entreating them not to be ' scandalised ' by the raging storm that had broken over the Church, even if some of them had to share their prelate's lot in expulsion from home and compulsory wanderings abroad. Let them not be thankless to one who had lovingly trained them up from early childhood to opening manhood : let them cling to him, as bees cling to their monarch ^ through all weathers : let them remember the scorn and derision which would be poured out on laymen who forsook a kind lord in his ad- versity: 'and what, then,' he proceeds, 'will be said of you, if you leave a bishop who nourished and brought you up, alone in his exile ? ' The persons addressed appear to have responded to the ex- hortation ^. Solemn prayers and fasts, on the part of all Wil- frid's monastic communities, preceded his departure. Among Acca. those who accompanied him was a man in several respects like-minded to himself, and who lived to do good service to the Northumbrian Church, and, indirectly at least, to the ecclesiastical literature of England. This was Acca, after- wards for some twenty-three years bishop of Hexham. He * So Malmesbury says generally of him, p. 358. Compare Lingard, 1. c. ' See too the pious little Epist. 2. ^ Malmesb. p. 349. He says that Aldhelm was like lightning in confuting adversaries, but soft as nectar in his instructions to pupils. * Epist. II ; Malmesb. p. 338 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 254. ' A iingt-bee, according to Aldhelm : 'Eex earum spissis sodalium agminibus vallatuB,' &c. * Eddi calls Wilfrid ' optimum caput vitse nostrse ; ' 65. Dd 402 Acca. CHAP. xm. had been 'trained up from boyhood among the clergy of Bosa ^,' but attached himself to Wilfrid * in the hope of a better plan of life 2.' He was thoroughly imbued with Wilfrid's love of ecclesiastical magnificence; and when he had the opportu- nity, he distinguished himself in the adornment and enrich- ment of churches, in the collection of theological books, in the organisation of a school of Church music, — ' for he him- self was a very skilful chanter.' His own learning was con- siderable, his orthodoxy exact, his observance of all ecclesiastical rules punctilious. But our chief reason for gratitude to his memory is his practical encouragement of the labours of Bede. While he was yet an abbot, not a bishop, he requested Bede to collect, as from ' a flowering paradise,' the best thoughts of the Fathers on the beginning of Genesis, for the sake of those who had not access to the originals^. To him also Bede addressed a tract on the Temple of Solomon, which seems to have been written when Acca had some troubles to endure ^ ; and an allegorical exposition of the First Book of Samuel which Acca had requested him to undertake ^. Some questions which Acca propounded as to the ' stations ' of the Israelites in their wanderings, and as to the myste- rious text, ' They shall be shut up in prison, and after many days shall be visited,' diverted Bede for a while from the work on the Book of Samuel^. And Acca's influence was eflPectual in regard to Bede's writings on the New Testament : we find that Bede sent him, for transcription, a work on the Apocalypse : and he then wrote to Bede, exhorting him to compile a Patristic commentary on St. Luke. Bede sent him, by way of instalment, a work on the Acts "^ : after read- ing which, as we learn from a very interesting letter of * See Bede's account of him, v. 20 : * Strenuissimus, et coram Deo et hominibus magnificus . . cantator peritissimus . . in litteris Sanctis doctissimus, in catholicae fidei confessione castissimus, in ecclesiasticse institutionis regulis sollertissimus.' ' Utpote qui a pueritia in clero . . . Bosae,' &c. ^ He may have accompanied Wilfrid into Sussex : but this is not proved by the reference to him in iv. 14, and he is not mentioned in iv. 13. ' Bed. Op. i. (Giles), p. 169. * Tb. i. 171. 5 lb. i, igg. « lb. i. ip8 ff. ' Bede, i. 184; xii.j. ;, Wilfrids last journey- to Rome, 403 Acca, prefixed to the ' Exposition of St. Luke's Gospel ^,' chap. xiii» Acca, both in conversation and by letters, urged him to com- ment on that Gospel, and replied, not without playfulness 2, and with several allusions to great Fathers, to his excuses for not attempting such a task. The urgency, so affectionate and so delicate in its tone, was irresistible : and Bede at once set to work, 'dictating,' as he says, 'to himself, and wiiting from his own dictation ^.' , Acca, with many other brethren, pressed him further to write on the Gospel of St. Mark, — a work not accomplished until after a long interval *. It is worth while to glance at these occasions on which Bede, as commentator on Scripture, introduces his readers to Acca as to ' the dearest and most loving of prelates that live on the earth,' his * most beloved and truly blessed lord 5.' Such a companion as this — so loyal, sympathetic, and intelligent — must have been indeed a solace to Wilfrid, on this his third journey to ' the Apostles' threshold.' Twenty- five ^ years had passed since his former appeal : and now, after many disappointments and troubles, and after a period of tranquillity which had seemed likely to be permanent, the work had to be done all over again; — although the prece- dent of Agatho's decision would be morally certain to sway the counsels of Rome, yet the treatment of that decision by English authorities might easily be repeated in regard to a new sentence. But Wilfrid's heart did not fail him : Wilfrid's he went forth, to all appearance, with the same cheerful ^"^^^ courage as on the previous occasion : his journey across the * Bede, x. 265. The bishop begins, * Eeverendissimo in Christo fratri et consacerdoti Bedae presbytero.' " Bede had quoted the proverb, ' Why put fish into thie sea 1 ' Acca replies, * Juxta comicum, Nihil sit dictum quod non sit dictum prius : ' and urges the claim of charity. He desires Bede to prefix his letter to the Exposition when completed, in order to show that he had written it ' non ob aliam quam condescensionis fratemae gratiara.' 5 Bede, i. 179; x. 268: 'Mox lectis tuae dulcissimae sanctitatis paginulis, injuncti me operis labori supposui in quo . . . ipse mihi dictator simul notarius et librarius exsisterem.' * Bede, i. 177; x. 3. " Bede, vii. 369, Introd. to Samuel; and i. 184, Ep. 10. * He probably set forth late in 703, and wintered in Friaia. D d 2 404 Pope John VL CHAP. XIII. continent was made on foot ^ in spite of his seventy years, and included a visit, which must have been full of interest, to Archbishop Willibrord in Frisia, when the conversation often turned on the wonderful things which, according to Willibrord, had been wrought in that province by contact with relics of the holy king Oswald. The archbishop also told a story of his own sojourn in Ireland, about the reco- very of an Irish student from the pestilence, after drinking water into which Willibrord had dipped a splinter of the oaken stake on which Oswald's head had been fixed : the sick man, he assured his hearers, not only regained health, but passed from his former irreligiousness to a thoroughness of Christian devotion^. Pope John In due time Wilfrid and his companions found themselves once more at Rome, probably in the early part of 704. The existing Pope was John VI. who had been consecrated in the October of 701 ^. He gave Wilfrid a speedy audience. The bishop presented to him^ as he had pre- sented to Agatho, a written memorial ; and said that he had come to ' the most glorious See as to a mother's bosom *,* and not for the purpose of accusing any one^ but in order to meet any charges that might be brought against him in the presence of the Homan Council. If they were true, he would confess them to be true; if they were false, he was ready to refute them. The Pope received the peti- tioners kindly, — the account unites Wilfrid closely with his attendant priests and deacons ; and they enjoyed some days of repose in a lodging freely provided for them. Meanwhile certain envoys from the archbishop of Canterbury arrived with written charges against Wilfrid. It is surprising to find that only one of them was a cleric^, and that he was only a deacon. They, like Wilfrid, craved a hearing : and ' ' Pedestri gressu ; ' Eddi, 48. ^ Bede, iii. 13. See above, p. 154. * On the virhies of this Pope, as a peace-maker and a ransomer of captives, see Milman, ii. 336. He died Jan. 9, 705. ♦ Eddi, 48. ' ' Unus diaconus, et alii omnes sine aliquo ecclesiasticse dignitatis gradu ; * Eddi, 51. Bede gives a fairly full account of these proceedings, v. 19. Council of Rome, 405 John assembled a Synod of the neighbouring bishops together chap. xin. Koman Synod. with their attendant clergy. Wilfrid's memorial was read. I^"^» It addressed Pope John by that epithet of ' universal ' which, a little more than a century before, had been rejected and reprobated by the greatest of his predecessors ^. In substance it was to this effect. 'Once more, I invoke your See. I doubt not that you will adhere to the decisions of your pre- decessors ; for myself, I accept whatever you may command. I come hither, because disturbances have arisen in Britain on the part of those who, contrary to the decree of Pope Agatho, took possession of my bishopric, my monasteries, my lands. I now ask that what was ordered by Agatho, by Benedict, and by Sergius, may be confirmed. But I am ready to meet any charges against me : let me have my accusers face to face. I also ask that Ethelred king of the Mercians may be commanded, for the comfort of my life ^, to protect my monasteries in his realm from disturbance, — as indeed he desires to do, — in accordance with the direc- tions of former Popes. And I earnestly beg that King Ald- frid may be adjured ^ to comply with the decisions of Pope Agatho and his Council : or, if that should seem too much, let the see of York be disposed of as you will, — but at least let me have Ripon and Hexham. And I promise to show all brotherly charity, and all due reverence, to Archbishop Bertwald, if he will treat me according to the decrees of your predecessors V The memorial having been read, Wilfrid and his companions were allowed to return to their lodging. Bertwald's envoys were then admitted, and their paper of accusations was read. They also were bidden to retire, with the promise of a regular hearing at a future time. Pope John then told the Council that it was necessary to go through the documents on both sides. This was agreed to : a second sitting took place, in which the accused and the accusers met, and each charge was taken separately. The first was, * Wilfrid contumaciously * See above, p. 62. " • De vitse nostrae solatio imperare dignemini ; ' Eddi, 49. ' ' Obsecretis.' * Malmesbury, G. P. p. 236, abbreviates this. 406 Council of Rome. CHAP. XIII. refused to comply with the synodieal decree of Bertwald, who was sent from this Apostolic see^,' a clause in which one of Theodore^s strong points was ingeniously transferred to Bertwald. Wilfrid then rose, and gave his account of what had passed at Easterfield : it was accepted by the Council. * And then, smiling at ns, and concealing many things, they began to talk in Greek among themselves 2,' — so Eddi ex- presses it, — 'and afterwards said to the accusers,' — one can imagine the smooth Italian politeness barely hiding a quiet sneer, — 'You are well aware, dear brethren, that according to the canons, when the accusers of a cleric fail to prove the first point of their charge, they are not allowed to go on to the rest. However, out of respect to the archbishop sent from this Apostolic see, and to Bishop Wilfrid here present, we will go thoroughly into the whole case, spending days or months, if need be, in bringing it to a conclusion.' The Council again adjourned : and, strange as it seems, devoted no less than seventy sittings, during four months, to a full investigation. At last, the record of Wilfrid's presence and testimony at the Roman Council of Easter Tuesday in 680 on the subject of Monothelitism was publicly read, ' in the Roman fashion, before all the people ' who were present at the last of the seventy sittings, and we are told that 'all the wise citizens of Rome were astonished when they heard it read.' When the reader's voiee stopped, all began to ask each other, 'Who is this Bishop Wilfrid^?' And then Boniface, 'a. counsellor of the Pope,' and Sisinnius*, with others, who had seen Wilfrid at Rome in 679-680, declared that the appellant now present was the same Wilfrid whom^ Agatho had acquitted and sent home, and * Bertwald is here styled 'bishop of tlie Kentishmen and of the whole of Britain!' Eddi, 51. ^ * Inter se Grsecizantes,' &c. ; :Eddi. 5 Bede, v. 19 : 'Quod ubi lectum est,' &c. * They are named in that account of a smaller Council which does not men- tion Wilfrid, and is probably an invention. See above, p. 292. ^ Eddi. As Bede puts it, • who after a thorough investigation and hearing of both sides was found by Pope Agatho to have been unrighteously expelled from his see, and was held by him in such esteem that he ordered him to take his seat in a Coimcil of bishops ... as a man of pure faith and upright Decision of the Council, 407 who now, unhappily, had been again compelled to leave his chap. xm. own see after an episcopate of about forty years; what was to be said of the men who had dared to present false documents, as containing accusations against him, in that venerable presence ? Did not they deserve to wear out their lives in a dungeon? 'And the Romans affirmed, "You say the truth." ' Here, perhaps, we may suppose Eddi to have indulged in amplification ; but the next words, in which Pope John declared Wilfrid to be innocent, must be substantially genuine. ' We find ^ after full inquiry, that Decision no crime is proved against Bishop Wilfrid. Let him be gl^^^ acquitted by authority of the Prince of the Apostles, who has power to bind and loose from hidden offences. What Agatho, Benedict, and Sergius decreed concerning him, our humility, with consent of the Synod, has resolved to affirm, by writings sent to the kings and the archbishop.' Accordingly John wrote a letter to Ethelred and Aldfrid. Pope Agatho, he said, had considered the charges against Wilfrid, and had rejected them. His successors had followed his judgment: Theodore himself had not, to all appearance, resisted, — had sent no new accusation, — had rather, according to his own language, obeyed the Papal decree. So much for the past. As to the present, the accusers had not proved their case against Wilfrid: rather, he had refuted them. The Council had gone minutely into the question. But How modi- the archbishop of Canterbury and Bishop Wilfrid ought p^pg john. to meet face to face : the former therefore was now or- dered to assemble a Synod together with Wilfrid, and then to summon the Bishops Bosa and John, and hear both sides. If the result should be a synodical determination of the contest, the Pope would be well pleased : failing this ^, let the parties be admonished to repair together to Rome, character.' Bede corrects Eddi's 'forty years and more' to 'nearly forty years.' ^ Eddi, 51. ' They all said, together with the Pontiff, that a man of such high position o . . ought by no means to be condemned, but to return home with honour, entirely acquitted of all charges ; ' Bede. ^ Here Eddi probably wrote, • moneat ut commonitionibus suis quaequae pro- desse suis partibus possunt unaquseque consideret, et ad hancsedem,' &c., nearly as in Smith's Bede, p. 758. ' 408 Letter of Pope John, CHAP. XIII. that tlie case might be finally settled in a larger Council. Whosoever should delay to come, or ('which is to be abhorred') refuse to come, would incur deprivation. The kings were then exhorted to promote peace, and to re- member the decision which several Popes had given as with one mouth: and so they were commended to the Divine keeping. Truly a characteristic document, one is disposed to say, was this letter of Pope John. He felt himself to be in a difficulty. On the one hand, he and his Council had come to the same conclusion with former Popes, and that was a conclusion in favour of Wilfrid. On the other hand, experience had shown that a Roman decree was by no means sure to be all-powerful with English kings and their ecclesiastical advisers. It would not be wise to utter too stringent a mandate : it would be scandalous to sacrifice Wilfrid, or compromise Papal consistency and authority. Therefore, while the kings' attention is solemnly called to the Papal judgments, and Theodore's tardy reconciliation with Wilfrid is magnified into a dutiful acceptance of those judgments, the Pope's letter does not imperatively demand the carrying- out of the decree by a reinstatement of Wilfrid. The dignity of Rome is saved, yet a loophole is provided for something short of simple obedience. That policy of delay, in which the Roman court became afterwards so skilful, is resorted to : on the pretext that Bertwald and Wilfrid ought personally to confront each other, the matter is referred to a Synod in England, and Bertwald is soothed by the commission to hold such a Synod. It is hoped that by this means the quarrel may be made up : if not, another and ' a larger Council ' at Rome can be summoned to efiect that settlement which, by hypothesis, a four months' inquiry at Rome and a national Council in Britain would have failed to effect : thus time is gained, and the English authorities are not alienated by severity. By this time, not only had John VI. found it desirable to write cautiously to Aldfrid, but Wilfrid himself had be- come weary, and perhaps for the first time despondent. He wished to give up the cause, and to end his days beside Wilfrid at Meaux, 409 the throne of St. Peter ^. But its occupant, and the other chap. xm. bishops, urged him to return home and finish the busi- ness, which could not be left in its present condition. He set forth accordingly, taking a last farewell of the sacred city, and carrying with him, *as his custom was,' a store of relics duly catalogued, and vestments of silk and purple for churches, — together with the letters for the kings and the metropolitan : and also, probably, a letter, still extant^, in which Pope John informed the English clergy that those of their body who had lately visited E-ome had, after due deliberation, on the vigil of St. Gregory, laid aside the * flowing laic garb,' and adopted close cassocks^ after the Roman fashion, — an ex- ample which they were exhorted, 'by apostolic authority,' to imitate. The homeward journey was very trying to the aged bishop*. Wilfrid at He became very ill, and after travelling on horseback as long ®*"^* as he could, was carried on a litter into Meaux, amid the wailing prayers ^ of his attendants, who thought that they were about to lose him while yet in a strange land. For four days and nights he lay as in a stupor, never tasting food or drink, and giving no token of life save by a faint breathing and by the animal warmth in his worn-out frame ®. At last, on the fifth morning, while the watchers around his bed were weeping and reciting psalms, he raised himself up like one waking from sleep, and asked, ' Where is Acca the presbyter?^ Acca came in, found him better and able to sit up, thanked God, and afterwards"^, when the rest were gone out, heard from Wilfrid that he had in his trance seen St. Michael, who had told him that he should live four years longer^. The story of the apparition is one of those imaginations which ' Eddi, 53. " Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 264. ' *Talares tunicas.' * Eddi, 54. ' • Mserentium, ad Dominumque clamantium ; ' Eddi. • Eddi; Bede, v. 19 says, *halitu pertenui.' ' Bede characteristically adds, ' They sat down together for a space, ac de supernis judidis trepidi, began to talk a little,' &c. ' Bede reckons these ' four years ' from his restoration. 410 Wilfrid welcomed by Ethelred. CHAP. XIII. degrade the sacred names introduced : the prolongation of Wilfrid's life is not only ascribed to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, but the Archangel is made to remind the great church-builder that he had ' never reared any house for St. Mary,' and that 'he had to amend this' defect^. That some such dream was described by Wilfrid to Acca, who told it to Eddi, is not to be doubted: it would fall in with Wilfrid's conceptions on such a subject. The bishop, Eddi then adds, washed his face and hands in the sight of his delighted followers, and, ' like Jonathan, felt his eyes to be enlightened after taking some food;' after a few days he resumed his journey, landed in Kent, and sent some of his clerks to confer with Bertwald. We are informed that the archbishop was overawed by the Pope's letter to him 2, which is not extant ; and that he ' promised to mitigate the harsh decrees formerly passed in the Synod.' Attended by a number of ' his abbots,' Wilfrid passed by London, and entered Mercia, meaning to v-present himself to King Ethelred. But Ethelred was king no longer. He was the abbot of Bardney; he had resigned his crown after reigning twenty-nine years ^, and had retired to the monastery in Lindsey which he and his murdered Northumbrian wife had ' greatly loved, reverenced, and adorned*.' One thinks of the ex-king, the son of Penda, gazing at the tomb of his father's sainted victim, where the banner of gold and purple, or the shreds that might remain of it, still bore witness to Oswald's majesty. And here, under the roof of this royal abbey, Wilfrid was fain to meet Ethelred. The old men embraced, and wept for joy: Ethelred, on seeing the papal letter, — a duplicate, of course, of the one addressed to Aldfrid conjointly with himself, — looked on its ' bulls ' and seals very differently from Egfrid on a former occasion. He bowed to the very ground after hearing the letter read, and Ethelred abbot of Bardney. * Eddi, 55. Bede omits this. ^ Eddi says, 55, * per nuntios suos scriptis directis,' as if the Pope's letter had been entrusted to Bertwald's envoys ; while it appears from Eddi, 51, 53, that it was entrusted to Wilfrid. But from c. 58 we leam that the envoys had one copy, and Wilfrid brought another. 2 See Chronicle, a. 704; Florence, a. 716. Ethelred had resigned before June 13, 704; Cod. Dipl. i. 60. * Bede, iii. 11 : 'Ut monasteriura nobile,' &c. See above, p. 153. Aid/rid refuses to receive him, 411 promised that he would do his best to procure compliance chap. xiii. with its directions. He kept his word by summoning his Kenred nephew Kenred ^, who had succeeded him on his abdication, MerciL and who assured him that he also would ' obey the precepts of the Apostolic See.' During a short stay in the Mercian realm, Wilfrid probably met Edgar, then bishop of Lindsey^, and would hear that in the neighbouring realm of East-Anglia the see of Elmham was held by Nothbert^ and that of Dunwich perhaps by Albert *, while the foundation of his friend Queen Etheldred was under the care of Ermenild, the widow of Wulfhere, or possibly of her daughter Werburga, who had been active during her uncle Ethelred's reign in founding nunneries at Trentham, Hanbury, and Weedon^. Before leaving Lindsey, Wilfrid, by Ethelred's advice, sent an abbot named Badwin and a ^ teacher^' called Alfrid to apprise the Northumbrian king of his return, and to ask leave for Wilfrid to como to him with the Apostolic letter of greeting, and with the Apostolic decisions in the cause. Aldfrid gave them a courteous reception, and appointed a day for his definite answer. But when, on that day, they Obstinacy again appeared before him, he, by advice of his counsellors, ° spoke thus : ' Venerable brothers both, ask of me whatever you want for yourselves, and I will give it you. But, from this day forth, never ask of me anything for Wilfrid your lord. For what my predecessors '^^ and the archbishop, * He wa-s son of Wulfhere, and brother of St. Werburga. He confirmed a grant of land at Twickenham to bishop Waldhere ; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 60. Bede tells a terrible story (v. 13, told him by bishop Pecthelm) respecting a thane in Kenred's service whom the young king often admonished to amend his conduct, but who always answered that he had time enough before him. He died in despair, and Malmesbury sees in this a main cause of Kenred's resolution to go to Rome and turn monk ; G. Reg. i. 4. "^ See Bede, iv. 12. He signs, as bishop, a charter of Ethelward, 'sub- regulus ' of the Hwiccas, in favour of Egwin's new monastery, in 706 ; Cod. Dipl. i. 65. ^ Florence, App., Mon. H. Brit. p. 618. He signs the same charter. * He was bishop when Bede wrote ; v. 23 : the date of his accession is unknown. Florence calls him iEscul£ * Cp. Alb. Butler, Feb. 3. See, above, p. iSo. * Comp. Bede, iv. 5 : ' Magistris ecclesise pluribus.' ' What predecessors could he mean ? 412 Death of Aldfrid. \ CHAP. XIII. with their advisers, determined, and what I myself wi the archbishop^ and nearly all the bishops of the nati have decided upon, this I am resolved never, while live, to alter for any alleged writings from the Aposto see ^.' It was afterwards said that Aldfrid, on his death-be regretted his treatment of Wilfrid, and exhorted his futu successor to obey the Pope's decree. His sister Elfled cited by Eddi^ as an authority, among other * eye-witnesses for the king's ' repentance,' and for this speech, which includ6 a promise on his own part, if his life should be spared. Edc considers that Aldfrid ' the Wise ' knew his illness to be ' Death of stroke of Apostolical power.' He did not recover : for som Aldfnd. ^^yg j^g ^gg speechless, and on the 14th of December, 705 he died at Driffield, ' the field of Deira,' an ancient town i: the East Riding. For eight weeks the kingdom was in th hands of Eadwulf, who is ignored by the Chronicle : and hi usurpation was the first specimen of several feeble and ignobL kingships, which caused men to look upon the close o: Aldfrid's nineteen years as a disastrous epoch for North- umbria ^. Wilfrid had ventured to return to Ripon ^ before he sent messengers to Eadwulf, who repelled them with an ' austere ' reply, swearing by his salvation that unless Wilfrid left his realm within six days, any of his companions found Osred king in it should be put to death. But in February, a successful umbria. ' conspiracy overthrew Eadwulf and enthroned Osred, son of Aldfrid, a boy of eight, in the first year of whose reign "^ * Again the phrase, ' ab apostolica sede emisso,' is applied without propriety to Bertwald. ^ * Propter apostolicse sedis, ut dicitis, scripta.' Dr. Hook's mistranslation, 'from the apostolic see, as you call it^ i. 191, is a serious misrepresentation. 3 Eddi, 57. * Bede and the Chronicle give the year ; the Chronicle gives the day and place, * Bede, Ep. to Egbert, 7. Boniface, Ep. 62, tells king Ethelbald of Mercia that the privileges of Northumbrian churches remained inviolate until the time of king Osred. * Eddi says, * cum filio suo proprio veniens de Khypis; ' 57. On this it has been asked, Was Wilfrid ever married ? Kemble supposes that he had been ii. 444. But see above, p. 190. ' It was a bad reign ; see Boniface, Ep. 62. He was a profligate youth, Council of the Nidd. 413 mother Council was called to settle the * cause of Wilfrid ' in chap. xin. the manner suggested by Pope John. The place of this issembly was somewhere on the river Nidd^, which flows ^rom the north-west by Knaresborough, not far to the south >f Ripon. This Council of the Nidd was not, like that of Easterfield, ^/*"?J?^^^ I representation of all the English Churches. Bertwald was bhe only Southern prelate present : he and Wilfrid arrived on bhe same day. The boy-king and his earls appeared with the three Northumbrian bishops, Bosa, John, and Eadfrid, and^ 3ertain abbots, and the abbess Elfled, * ever the comforter ind best counsellor of the whole province *.' The archbishop was in a difierent mood from that in which he had seconded Aldfrid's rigorous line of conduct towards Wilfrid. He rose and spoke in tones like those of a peacemaker : ' Let us pray to our Lord, that He would by His Holy Spirit infuse into our hearts the spirit of concord.' Then, speaking as Theodore RTould never have condescended to speak, in the deferential style of one who was not certain of his own authority in Northumbria, Bertwald said that he and Bishop Wilfrid had 3ertain letters directed to him from the Apostolic see, which they wished the Council to hear; and the document, of which, it appears, there were two copies, was read accord- ingly. Bertfrid, the chief ealdorman, said to the archbishop, ' We should like to hear it translated into our own language.' Bertwald answered by remarking — a true remark for many m age — on the periphrastic lengthiness of the Papal style ^, ind added that he could give the sense of the letter in few ivords. The Apostolic see, which had power to bind and to oose, had ordered that in his presence the bishops of North- mibria should be reconciled to Bishop Wilfrid. They must )hoose one of two courses. Either let them make peace with Wilfrid, and restore, as the Witan should decide together vith the archbishop, ' those parts of the churches which md was killed in battle, when only nineteen, at Windermere ; Hen. Hunt, in vion. H. Br. p. 724. Bede records his violent death, v. 22. ^ Bede, v. 19, * juxta fluvium Nidd.' Eddi adds, • ab Oriente ; ' 58. 2 Eddi. 58. * * Longo circuitu et ambagibus verborum ; ' Eddi, 58. 414 Council of the Nidd, CHAP. XIII. "Wilfrid himself once ruled;' or else let all the parties con- cerned meet at Rome, to have the affair settled by a greater Council. To refuse both these courses would be to incur deposition : a layman so offending would incur excommunica- tion ' from the Body and Blood of Christ.' The three bishops, ^ who evidently regarded the archbishop as a deserter, boldly asked, ' How can any one have power to change what our predecessors, and Theodore, and King Egfrid ordained, and what afterwards, in the field called Easterfield, we and nearly , all the bishops of Britain decreed, with King Aldfrid, and in your presence, O Archbishop?' The tide, however, had turned against them. Elfled declared that Aldfrid had in his last days expressed his intentions in favour of Wilfrid ^ with the solemnity of a vow as to himself, of an injunction as to his heir : and Bertfrid, speaking for the king and the ealdor- men, announced their mind to the same purpose. He told what had lately happened : when besieged in Bamborough by Eadwulf, and shut up within the limits of a rocky fortress, he and his fellow-earls had vowed that if ' their royal boy ' should gain his father's kingdom, they would adhere to the decisions of Borne about Wilfrid : straightway the besiegers had come over to their side, and sworn friendship towards them, — the gates of the city had been thrown open, they had been delivered from their distress, — their royal boy was king. The three bishops saw that it was a time for peaceful settle- Final com- ment, on such terms as could be accepted. They conferred promise. ^^\\^ Bertwald, and then with Elfled: and the result — the end of the whole weary controversy — was another com- promise. For all the big words about obedience to Papal mandates, the mandates of Agatho, of Benedict, and of Sergius were not obeyed : the liberty of decision conceded by John VI. to a Northumbrian Sjrnod was used in such a manner as Wilfrid himself had in some sense foreseen, when he intimated that his full claim might be more than Northumbrian autho- rities would grant. Bede says indeed, in one place, that he was * received again to the prelacy of his own church ^ ; ' but * * In hia last hours he was disturbed by the apprehension ; ' Turner, i. 392. ^ Bede, v. 19. So Eadmer, who wishes to make it appear that Wilfrid simply triumphed. - End of the Cause of Wilfrid. 415 in another he explains that this church was Hexham, and chap. xiii. that when Wilfrid * after his long exile ' was restored to this bishopric^, John, on the death of Bosa^, was placed in the see of York ^. So that, in fact, the second compromise was less favourable than the first : Wilfrid, in 686, became bishop of York, though with a diminished diocese : in 706 he had to be content with the see of Hexham and the minster of Ripon, — clearly, in the first instance, with Ripon only, until Bosa's death, which soon followed, opened the way for an arrangement. Wilfrid had thus to abandon his claim on the ancient see of the royal city, the mother-church of North- umbria ; he had to acquiesce in the translation of John from Hexbam to York, and to take possession of Hexham as John's successor. He recovered, however, all his domains and monas- teries, in Northumbria and in Mercia. The arrangements made in the Council were sealed by a solemn Eucharist, at which the four prelates of Northumbria exchanged the kiss of peace, and shared in the Bread of unity. And so, writer Eddi, 'they returned to their own homes in the peace of Christ : ' and the once fiery and imperial spirit of Wilfrid, bent and chastened by age and troubles, was content with the prospect of quiet and peace in exchange for the hope of triumphant ascendency. But, from a purely Roman point of view, the settlement was somewhat of an impotent conclusion : an ardent supporter of Roman claims would be disappointed at such a result of reiterated Papal decisions, although he might console himself by the reflection that if Wilfrid had not, in effect, secured all that he had once hoped for, his protracted cause had at least familiarised his fellow- Churchmen with the thought of appeals to the Apostolic * Bede, v. 3. He plainly refers to tte second exile. * Bosa's death, as we have seen, was erroneously ante-dated by Florence. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 171 ; ajid Smith's Bede, p. 759, ' Bosa ante annum 705 non obiit.' ^ It was as bishop of York that John visited the nunnery of Watton, and prayed over a sick nun ; Bede, v. 3 : and dedicated a church on the estate of an earl named Puch, two miles from Beverley (v. 4), and another church founded by earl Addi in the neighbourhood (v. 5) — indications of the growth of that parochial system * which needed no foundation ; ' Stubbs, Const. Hist, i. 227. See above, p., 235. 416 End of the Cause of Wilfrid, CHAP. xm. See. His pertinacity had not led to any immediate and brilliant success : but it had formed a precedent which might, under favourable auspices, be productive of greater things hereafter ^. ^ On the * system of appeals to Kome,' as having begun with Anselm, see Dean Church's Life of St. Ansehn, p. 223. CHAPTEE XIY. We must now, once more, turn back from the continuous story of Wilfrid's contests and troubles to the quiet develop- ment of Church life and work in the southern districts, and particularly among the West-Saxons. We have seen some- thing of Aldhelm's unrivalled celebrity and influence: and the interest of ecclesiastical annals, as regards the ordinary progress of the English Church, centres at this point in him. Of him probably Bertvvald thought, when he urged on the Wessex authorities the partition of their great diocese — a step which Heddi seems to have regarded with disfavour, and to have hindered during his own lifetime. The difficulty was so serious that in 704, the year of Wilfrid's sojourn at Rome, a provincial Council in its yearly meeting threatened to suspend communion with Wessex, if there were further delay in the appointment of another bishop, at least, for that kingdom^. But in the following year, 705 2, we find a number of English bishops ^ taking part in a Synod which was held, apparently, within the bounds of Wessex, and which resolved to remonstrate with the neighbouring British clergy and laity on their obnoxious Easter-rule. Who so fit ^ Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 267, 275 : the letter of bishop Waldhere. This throws a doubt on a quotation by Rudbome of a ' decree of Hieodore,' to the eflTect that the diocese was not to be divided in Heddi's Ufetime j Angl. Sac. i. 193 ; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 126. ^ Faricius says, indeed, in 706 ; but this would not suit the notes of time for the episcopate of Aldhelm. Probably he was misled by a record coimecting this synod with the first year of the Northumbrian Osied, whose right to his feither's crown would in some sense be traced to the end of 705. See Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 268. " Aldhelm, Ep. i : ' Ex tota peene Britannia innmnerabilis Dei sacerdotum caterva confluxit.' It was not, then, as Faricius says, a mere West-Saxon synod. E e 418 AldheMs letter to Geraint CHAP. XIV. as the abbot of Malmesbury, tbe foremost scbolar in all the Aldhelm's English Churches, to undertake such a task? To him, GeSnt accordingly, it was committed ^: and he wrote, at once, what is reckoned as the first of his letters 2, and is addressed, in highly respectful terms, to ^ the most glorious lord, swaying the sceptre of the Western realm, whom the writer em- braces with brotherly charity, — to King Geruntius, and at the same time to all God's priests^ dwelling in Domnonia.' This potentate was the British king Geraint, who appears in the Chronicle for 710 as defeated by Ine and Nun his kinsman : the realm which he governed was Dyfnaint *, that is, Devonshire and Cornwall, the ' West Wales ' of English speech, which still maintained its Celtic independence, and only by degrees gave place to the advance of the Saxon. Geraint, indeed, held part of Somersetshire, until Ine built Taunton as a frontier fortress ^. To this prince, then, Aldhelm wrote, in effect as follows. ' I am commissioned by a large Council of bishops to call your attention to four points which are faulty in regard to the clergy of your nation. First, your priests are said to be contentious : they do not live in harmony with each other. They ought to remember the sayings of Scrip- ture in praise of concord. Secondly, there has been a rumour, widely spread, to the effect that certain priests and clerics in your province obstinately refuse the tonsure of St. Peter, on the ground of adherence to the tradition of their predecessors. As for the tonsure which they use, it is, according to the opinion of most persons**, traceable to Simon, the inventor of art-magic : and this I take to be the case, because the Clementine books testify to his machinations, as a sorcerer, * ' Jubente synodo,' Bede, v. 18. Aldhelm refers in 'De Laud. Virgin.' 2. to a ' pontificale conciliabulum ' which he had attended. ^ See it in Migne, Patr. Lat. Ixxxix. 87; Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 268. ' As we have seen, two of Chad's consecrators were probably from this part of the British Church. See Haddan and Stubbs, i. 150, * Probably ' the dark valleys,' e.g. of Dartmoor. Strictly, Dyfnaint would be distinguished from Cemau, or Cornwall. Geraint might be considered a successor of Arthur; and a Geraint was celebrated as a commander under * the blameless king.' ^ Soon after his victory, See Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 70. ® ' Secundum plurimorum opinionem.' on British Easter and Tonsure. 419 against St. Peter. We, bearing testimony, according to chap. xiv. Scripture, concerning our tonsure, assert, that St. Peter ap- pointed it for several reasons^; — but we see an indication of it in the ancient Nazarites, and it seems to be a symbol both of royalty and priesthood, so that the heads of clerics illustrate St. Peter's own saying, " Ye are ... a royal priest- hood'-^." But, thirdly, there is another and a more cruel mischief to souls, in that your priests do not follow the rule of the Nicene Council as to Easter. That rule prescribed the use of a cycle of nineteen years ^, and made the fifteenth moon the beginning of the Paschal " calculation/' and the twenty-first moon the end of it,' (i. e. the possible Easter Sundays were those from the fifteenth to the twenty-first moon inclusive). 'But your priests, following the canon of Anatolius *, or rather that of Sulpicius Severus, keep Easter with the Jews on the fourteenth moon : whereas the Roman pontiffs have not sanctioned either canon, nor that of Victorius, which embraces five hundred and thirty-two years. For there was an old sect of heretics called Tessareskaidecaditse, who were excommunicated for keeping the fourteenth moon with the Jews as the time for the Paschal festival. Fourthly, the priests of the Demetians ^ (i.e. the people of our present ^ Three are then given : (i) to represent the crown of thorns ; (2) to distinguish the old from the new priesthood; (3) 'that Peter and his suc- cessors might bear ridiculosum gannaturae ludibrium in populo Romano, quia et eorum barones et hostes exercitu superatos sub corona vendere solebant.' ' It would almost seem as if Aldhelm thought that i Pet. ii. 9 was addressed to the clergy as such. ' He adds, 'composed of an ogdoad and a hendecadas;' see Bede, De Temporibus, c. 1 1 : ' Cyclum decennovenalem propter xiv. lunas paschales Nicaena Synodus instituit, eo quod ad eundem anni Solaris diem unaquaeque luna per xix. annos - . . redeat . . ; ' ' Octo enim anni lunares totidem annos solares duobus tantum diebus transcendunt, quorum alter ad explementum occurrit hendecadis/ &c. ; and his verses ' De Ratione Temporum.' On the nineteen years' cycle, see also Ceolfrid (in eflfect, Bede) in Bede, v. 21. * See Bede, iii. 3, * aestimans, &c. . . . Anatolii scripta secutam ; ' and iii. 25, where Colman argues that Anatolius reckoned from ' the fourteenth,' and Wilfrid replies that he framed a cycle of nineteen years which Colman ignored, and that he regarded the fourteenth evening as the beginning of the fifteenth moon. ** Demetia is here used for Deheubarth or South Wales ; Palgrave, p. 457; Pearson's Hist. Maps, p. 22 ; although in a stricter sense it meant the south- western part, Pembrokeshire and the parts next to it, otherwise called Dyfed ; E e 2 420 Aldhelnis letter to Geraint CHAP. XIV. South Wales), who dwell beyond the Severn, will not even pray with a Saxon in church, nor eat with him at table. On the contrary, they throw to dogs and swine the remains of his meal, and insist on cleansing with sand or ashes ^ the dishes or bowls from which he has eaten and drunk. They refuse us the kiss of peace ; they even refuse us an ordinary greeting. If any of our people, that is, of Catholics, go to dwell among them 2, they put them under penance for forty days. This is like those heretics who called themselves "the Pure 3." Alas! it is like the Pharisees who incurred the " woe " for cleansing the outside of cup and platter, and for indulging in a spirit of self-righteous intolerance. I entreat you, "do not superciliously and doggedly refuse to obey the decrees of St. Peter, nor in tyrannous pertinacity spurn the tradition of the Roman Church for the sake of the statutes of your own forefathers." It was to Peter that the Keys were given : who then can hope to enter the gate of paradise, if in this world he despises the statutes of Peter's Church? But perhaps some one, proud of his knowledge of Scripture, will say, " I sincerely believe both Testaments, and will freely proclaim to the people the true faith as to the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Passion, the Resurrection." But " faith without works is dead : " faith, if it is Catholic, is inseparable from charity, or else it profits nothing ; good works are profitless outside the Catholic Church, even if they include strict observance of coenobitic discipline or even the severest asceticism of the anchorite : in one word, it is idle to boast of true belief, unless one follows the rule of St. Peter.' It must be owned that this letter does not raise our opinion of Aldhelm. It is superior to many of his remains in point of style, that is, it is comparatively free from the extravagant see Lappenberg, i. 120; Haddan and Stubbs, i. 144; Jones and Freeman's Hist. St. David's, p. 237. Giraldus, in Descr. Camb. i. 2, calls Demetia a portion of Deheubarth containing seven 'centrevs.' * 'Aut harenosis sabulorum glareis, aut fulvis favillarum cineribus.' ' The West-Saxons who settled beyond the river Parret, and further west- ward, called themselves Defosgetas, dwellers in Dyfnaint, — whence 'Devonshire men.* ' Novatians, the 'Cathari;' Nicene Can. 8. on British Easter and Tonsure, 421 and often ludicrous grandiloquence ' which, being a cha- chap, xiv, racteristic of one so greatly admired and honoured, did much to pervert the taste of those who looked to him as a model, especially of the charter- writers of the ninth century 2. We have more serious matter in this letter to King Geraint. The absurdity of Aldhelm's remarks on the tonsure is dis- appointing; but the unfairness (shown also by Eddi) of confounding the Britons with Quartodecimans, the virtual identification of faith like St. Peter's with conformity to all the decrees or observances of Rome ^, the conspicuous lack of a sense of proportion in matters ecclesiastical or religious, — these things awaken a stronger feeling than that of mere disappointment. If so good a man and so well-read a student could sink into such petty narrowness, what must have been the effect of Latin rigorism on the rank and file of Latinised clergy? The calm assumption that the British Church was not Catholic is in full accord with the apparent unconsciousness of any provocations on the ' Saxon ^ side which had stirred the resentful Celtic nature to such coarse demonstrations as are here denounced, or as, in the Irish bishop Dagan's case, had shocked the first successor of Augustine *. The intense antipathy of the British to the English Church, described by Bede as a virtual non-recognition of its Christianity ^, was of course connected with the bitter recollections of the English conquest, the humiliating experiences of English ascendancy. After all such allowances, it was doubtless excessive and unchristian-like: it must have been fostered by the continuous neglect or refusal of all responsibility in regard to the evangelisation of the * Saxons ' while yet * See above, p. 260. ' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 152, 404, says that Boniface showed traces of this bad habit, but that it hardly reappears afterwards until in the ninth century it was * revived in all its extravagance ' by charter-writers. ' Aldhelm undoubtedly treats Rome as the centre of unity and the standard of doctrine and discipline. He puts into sonorous form the argument with which Oswy closed the Whitby conference. * Above, p. 98. " Bede, ii. 20. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 61 : 'In their estimation the Saxons were . . . the children of robbers . . possessing the fruit of their fathers' crimes, and therefore still lying under the maledictions formerly pro- nounced by the British bishops against the invaders.* 422 Gradual surrender CHAP. XIV. heathen : but we have Aldhelm's word for the existence, among- these remoter Welsh, of the theological learning and the monastic self-devotion which had distinguished the Church of Padarn and Illtyd, of Dubricius and David. The effect of Aldhelm's exhortations was confined, says Bede, to those Britons who were 'subject to the West-Saxons^/ that is, who dwelt on ground which was no longer British, outside the proper limits of Dyfnaint: the inhabitants of Wales did not accept the 'Catholic Easter' until "JSS-llli ^^^ finally, it seems, till 809 — when according to Welsh records 'their Easter was altered' first in North Wales, then, after much resistance, in South Wales, by the counsel ^of Elbod, a man of God,' who is also described as ' archbishop of Gwynedd^j' while, so far as Dyfnaint itself was concerned, there was no surrender of the national ' Pasc ' until after the foundation of the Saxon bishopric of Crediton in the early part of the tenth century^. However, it pleased Malmesbury to say, 'The Britons even to this day owe their correction to Aldhelm*.' The Celtic persistency had given way in more than one quarter when Aldhelm was thus employed against its south-western strongholds. The North- ern Irish had followed, about 704, the example set by the Southern Irish after the Council of the White Field in 634 : they had yielded to the influence of Adamnan ^, who * Bede, v. 18. These were the ' nonnulla pars de Brettonibus ' to whom Bede refers in v. 15. See Lingard, 1. c. Faricius imagined that his hero's arguments ' converted the prelates and a countless multitude ; * c. 2. The laws of Ine treat Welshmen as subjects, though of a lower class; s. 23, 24, 32, 46: see Freeman, Hist. Cath. Ch. of Wells, p. 18. ^ See Ann. Camb., and Brut, in Mon. Hist. Br. pp. 834, 843, and another form in Haddan and Stubbs, i. 204, and Ann. Menev. in Angl. Sac. ii. 648, See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 62. According to Bees, Welsh Saints, p. 66, North Wales adopted the Catholic Easter soon after Elbod became bishop of Bangor in 755. The South Welsh resisted until 777: and when Elbod died in 809 they returned for a time to their old rule. For Elbod or Elfod, as probably bishop of Bangor, and as not proved to be a metropolitan, although clearly not under a metropolitan, see Jones and Freeman, Hist. St. David's, p. 258. ^ Haddan and Stubbs, i. 676. * Malmesb. Gest. Pontif. p. 361. He adds, 'Although, in their ingrained wickedness, they ignore the man and set at nought the book.' ^ See Bede, v. 15 : ♦ Navigavit Hibemiam, et prsedicans eis,' &c. of Celtic Easter. 423 had candidly examined the subject, and come to the conclusion chap. xiv. that the Roman system was correct, but, abbot of Hy as he was, had failed to carry his own monks along with him, and even in North Ireland those who were specially under the sway of Hy stood out against the arguments of its head ^ But after several years, they were 'brought round' by his influence 'from their ancestral errors.' The Pictish Church was persuaded or constrained by its king Nechtan or Naiton ^ to yield to the representations of Abbot Ceolfrid in a letter which Bede himself may well have penned 3, five years after the letter of Aldhelm to Geraint : and even the stubbornness of St. Columba's own monastery was broken down by the persuasions of that ' most sweet teacher ' the priest Egbert, six years later yet, in 716*. The obstacle to the partition of the West- Saxon diocese was removed in 705, on the 7th of July^, or more pro- bably earlier, by the death of Heddi, after an episcopate of nearly thirty years. Then, at last, the partition took West- place : but it was not an equal one ^, for Winchester re- ^i'^^L tained only Hampshire and Surrey, while the other parts divided. * Adamnan was in Ireland in 686 ; on his return to Hy, he vainly en- deavoured to establish there the ' Catholic ' Easter. He revisited Ireland in 692, and again in 697 ; then remained there seven years, and 'taught nearly all of those who were free from the authority of the monks of Hy to observe the legitimate time of Easter;' Bede, v. 15. Whether the English-bom St. Gerald of Mayo lived thus early, and was his host, is uncertain. He had the satisfac- tion of celebrating the * true * Easter of 704 in Ireland, returned to Hy, and died on Sept. 23, 704; so that, as Bede expresses it, he was spared •a more serious contest, at the return of Easter, with those who would not follow him to the truth.* See Lanigan, iii. 150; Reeves's Adamnan, p. Ivi. ^ He afterwards 'drove the non-conforming Columbian monks past his frontier ;' so Reeves, p. 184 (i.e. monks dependent on Hy). ' Bede, v. 21. The letter is a repository of the Roman topics of argument as to ' Pasch ' and tonsure. * Bede, v. 22. See above, p. 99. 5 See Alb. Butler. But this day is too late, if Aldhelm died in the fifth year of his episcopate ; Malmesb. p. 385. It is probable that after the threat of suspension of communion at a synod of 704, there was an agreement that the division should take place as soon as the now aged bishop had passed away. » See Malmesb. Gest. Pontif. p. 375. Hen. Hunt, says that Winchester retained 'the part eastward from the wood' (Selwood Forest). 424 Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, CHAP. XIV. of Wessex — Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, Berkshire, and part if not the whole of Somerset — were annexed to the new see, which was established at Sherborne. For Winchester a bishop was found who is best known to us through his correspondence J)aniel with the great St. Boniface. This was Daniel, who was still bishop of 1 jyijjg when Bede wrote ^ : it was he who overcame the repug- ter. nance of the Isle of Wight to West- Saxon dominion sufficiently for the regular annexation of its church to his bishopric, and who promoted the revival of the South- Saxon bishopric of Selsey^. He gave most opportune encouragement to the mission-schemes of Winfrid, afterwards known as Boniface, who at the time of his consecration for Winchester was living as a young* monk of twenty-five in a Hampshire monastery called Nutscelle ^, where under the abbot Winbert he studied the ' tripartite ' sense * of Scripture, together with grammar and metres, and while he attended diligently to his portion of manual labour and to all the details of Benedictine observ- ance, was making himself eminent as a teacher, kindling enthusiasm for sacred knowledge in the minds of his auditors, every day learning by heart something from the Scriptures, or from the * acts ' of those martyrs whom he was one day gloriously to join, and uniformly cordial and helpful to all who came under his influence, whether poor or rich, whether Boniface in thrall or free ^. Daniel discerned in him a ' vessel for honour,' Fnsia. g^jj^ gave him, on his second journey into Frisia, a letter of commendation to any kings, dukes, bishops, abbots, presby- ters, and 'spiritual sons,' asking them to show hospitality after the manner of the patriarchs to the religious presbyter Winfrid ^. A letter written long afterwards by Boniface to Daniel informs us that the latter in old age became blind "^ : ^ Bede, v. i8. He supplied Bede with some documents, and survived him ten years. ^ Bede, iv. i6 ; v. i8. This revival was after 709. ' Willibald, Vit. S. Bonifac. c. 7. See Maclear, Apostles of Med. Eur. p. 1 10 ; Milman, Lat. Chr. ii. 295. Winbert 'left behind him' a MS. of the Prophets in ' clear and distinct letters j ' Bonif. Ep. 12. * The threefold spiritual sense, moral, allegorical, and ' anagogical.' » WilUbald, c. 3. * Bonif. Ep. I. This was in 718. ' Bonif. Ep. 12. He retired to Malmesbury (his old home ?). Daniel, Bishop of Winchester, 425 and two letters from Daniel ^ give us an insigtt into his chap. xiv. mind and character, showing how he could advise and com- fort. He urged Boniface not to be disheartened by his diffi- culties, not to attempt an impracticable separation of all the bad from all the good, a complete avoidance of all contact with false teachers ; but here he carries his principle of tole- ration to the point of sanctioning, or imagining Scripture to sanction, a temporary simulation ^. More interesting, — in- deed, specially interesting, — is the other letter, in which Daniel suggests topics for missionary argument against poly- theism, intended to draw the polytheist by a Socratic process into difficulties^, and at the same time insists that these points are to be advanced with all gentleness, and to be fol- lowed up by indirect contrasts between Christianity and Pagan * superstition/ But, it must be owned, Daniel again provokes criticism by recommending Boniface not only to insist on the argument, as we now call it, from Christendom, — from the world-wide spread of the Gospel, — ^but to point out that Christians enjoy the temporal blessing of ' lands fruitful in corn, wine, and oil,' while Heathenism is confined to cli- mates of ' perpetual winter * ' — a perilous exaggeration of ' the promise of the life that now is/ This was the prelate, then, who in the autumn of 705 suc- ceeded Heddi at Winchester. For Sherborne there could be but Aldhelm one choice : all orders, including a multitude of the people ^, sherbome. turned at once to Aldhelm, * who was specially recommended by the very fact that he showed reluctance to accept the * Bonif. Ep. 13, 14. Of these letters, Ep. 13 was written several years after Ep. 14, i.e. when Boniface was archbishop. * Following Jerome, he treats St. Peter's conduct in Gal. ii. 1 2 as right, and compares it to the conduct of St. Paul in Acts xxi. 26, &c. He seems not to see the diflFerence between any kind of ' simulation * or even of pretending (fingendi) and such an ' economy ' as is free of insincerity. ' E.g. 'Since the gods had a beginning, what of the world? If it had a beginning, who made it? Not the gods, who were confessedly not eternal. If it was eternal, who ruled it before the gods ? How was the first god produced ? Will any more come into being ? How do they know what god is the mightiest ? Valde cavendum est ne in potiorem quis offendat. Do they expect temporal or eternal happiness ? Do the gods need their sacrifices ? ' &c. * ' Frigore semper rigentes terras.' ' Faricius, c, 3. * Omnia aetatis et ordinis conflatur sententia ; ' Malmesb. G. P. p. 375. The 'people' were active in this election. 426 Aldhelm, Bishop of Sherborne, CHAP. XIV. promotion ^.' He was, of course, present at the Witenagemot ; we picture him according- to a pupil's description, as a tall man with white hair and sparkling eyes 2. He endeavoured to de- cline the great oflSce. ' I am too old, I need rest.' Instantly, and by acclamation, came the reply: ^ The older, the wiser and the fitter ^ ! ' He still held out as long as he could without unseemliness; but 'as he had not been drawn on by ambition, so neither did he draw back in disobedience : in each respect he observed the mean *.' He yielded, and was conducted to Canterbury for consecration. With what recollections must he have trod the precinct of Christ Church, and visited his old master Hadrian, still living and officiating as abbot in St. Peter's ! After his consecration, the archbishop detained him for some time in order to get the benefit of his counsels ^. When he took possession of his new bishopric, he built a church at Sherborne, which Malmesbury tells us that he himself had seen ^. The little town, he says elsewhere, was ' not an agreeable place ; it had neither a good situation nor a large population; it was surprising, it was almost dis- graceful, that it should have retained an episcopal see for so many ages '^,' — in fact, through twenty-seven episcopates, of which the most noteworthy was that of Asser, the Welsh counsellor and biographer of Alfred, and the last was Her- man's, who after uniting Sherborne to the younger bishopric of Uamsbury ^, removed his see to Old Sarum, in obedience to the Council of 1075. Aldhelm wished to resign the head- * Faricius, c. 3. ^ See Ethelwald in Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 164. ' Malmesbury, p. 376. * • Servavit modum,* Faricius. " Malmesbury ; who brings in here a story of Aldhelm's visiting Dover, and finding some sailors at work in landing a store of books. Attracted by one, which includes both Testaments, he turns over the leaves and begins to bargain for it : they abuse him for trying to beat down the price of their property. He only smiles ; they row off, are caught in a storm, and cry out to him for pardon; he signs the cross and rows to their vessel; they make the shore safely, and offer to give him the book : he insists on paying for it, — and it is preserved at Malmesbury as a specimen of antiquity; p. 377. Faricius tells this tale rather differently, and dates it earlier. * * Ecclesiam quam ego quoque vidi mirifice construxit.' ' Malmesb. p. 175. Cp. Stubbs, Registr. p, 165. * Founded for Wiltshire, to relieve Sherborne, in 909. Church work in Wessex, 427 ship of Malmesbury and its dependent monasteries ; but his chap. xiv. monks could not brook such a loss^. They rejected the notion of having" any other ' president ^ ' in his lifetime. His Church object had been to secure desirable appointments ; and when w^ex he yielded to his monks' affectionate resistance, he took care to guard their right of free election by a document which is said to have been duly signed and attested at Wimborne in the presence of Ine and Daniel, and afterwards confirmed by a Council on the Nodder. But this deed is at least of doubtful authenticity ^. That he possessed a great influence, in things ecclesiastical, over Ine, may be taken for granted. It was probably through his influence that the foundation of the monastery of Abingdon, long interrupted by the de- lays and inconsistencies of Hean, was finally accomplished "*, by the renewed co-operation between him and his sovereign. And although the document which represents Ine as granting endowments to abbot Hemgils and his monks, in 'the old city which is called Glastingea,' and which professes to have been executed in the ancient ' wooden church ' of that sacred isle, has been condemned as spurious, — being dated in 704. yet referring to the counsel of Aldhelm as bishop ^, — and al- though the Glastonbury- tradition cannot convince us that Ine gave splendid gifts to that church, such as a chapel en- riched with gold and silver 6, yet it is far from unlikely that he bestowed upon it some gifts which were afterwards ex- aggerated, or even that he enlarged and adorned the struc- ture which had been raised by Saxon hands in connection * Faricins, Malmesbury. ^ * Patronum.' ^ Kemble rejects it, Cod. Dipl. i. 6i. Another 'charter of Ine,' exempting West-Saxon monasteries from taxation, is dated in 704, and therefore is in- consistent with the date of Aldhelm's episcopate, while it refers to him as a prelate ; ib. i. 57. * See Stevenson, Chron. Abingd. ii. p. xiii. He adds, 'Aldhelm must have been conscious that, in promoting this object, he was promoting the interests of civilisation as weU as those of Christianity,' &c. * See this Parvum Privilegium Regis Inse in Malmesb. de Antiq. Glast. Eccl. (XV Script, p. 309) and Cod. Dipl. i. 58. The Magnum Privilegium, which is clearly spurious, is in Mahnesb. (XV Script, p. 311) and Cod. Dipl. i. 85 : it is dated in 725. ^ XV Script, p. 310. In Gest. Pontif., p. 196, Malmesbury says that Ine ' primus . . . monasterium sedificavit ' (relying on the * Privileges '). 428 Death of Aldhelm, CHAP. XIV. with the primitive wooden church ^. Whether he did any- thing" in the way of founding a church at Wells must be, at least, extremely uncertain : that he planted a bishopric at Congresbury, afterwards removed to Wells, is a story with- out real groundwork ^. Activity of Aldhelm^s ascetic habits had probably made him prema- Aldhelm. ^^j,gjy ^^^ 5^^ jjg abated none of them, while he discharged his new duties indefatigably, visiting every part of his dio- cese, and preaching by night as well as by day ^. This labour wore him out in four years : the spring of 709 was the last of his life. He was at Dulting in Somerset, when his last His death, hour drew nigh. He assembled a number of clergy, monks, and laics, enforced on them the observance of the bond of charity, and after commending his flock to the Divine care, desired to be carried into the little wooden church * of the village, and there, seated on a stone, breathed his last, on the :z5th of May, 709 ^. He was buried, by his own desire, in St. Michael's church at Malmesbury 6, and succeeded by Foi-there, a man of much theological learning, who was still living when Bede wrote ''. We draw towards the end : this year is the last of the great period which we are reviewing. Wilfrid had passed some quiet years — between three and four — in the bishopric of Hexham, with leisure for looking back, as from a well-loved home and refuge, on the storms and the splendours of the past. It was during this interval, in 707^, that some monks of the ^ Freeman, Old-Engl. Hist. p. 70. "^ See Freeman, Hist. Cath. Ch. Wells, p. 13. ^ Malmesb. G. P. p. 382 : he uses ' dioeceses' for parts of the diocese. * Afterwards rebuilt of stone by a monk of Glastonbury. ' SeeFaricius, c. 3 ; Malmesb. p. 383. ' The distance was fifty miles : a great crowd attended the corpse, each thinking himself ' beatiorem qui propior esset,' and glad to see, if not to touch, the bier on which the form and face, imdefaced by decay, were visible. Stone crosses were afterwards set up at every seven miles of the road, which long stood uninjured, and were called ' Bishopstones ; ' Malmesb. pp. 384, 385. He tells us that bishop Egwin came to Dulting to conduct the funeral. ^ Bede, v. 18 : * Quo defuncto,' &c. See him in Cod. Dipl. i. 73. ' Bede, Ep. 3, to Plegwin; cp, Giles's Bede, i. p. exxxv, for this date. Bede in the letter refers to his Opusculum de Temporibus as published five years before. This tract ends in the fifth year of Tiberius III., i. e. 701-2. Hence we infer that the Wilfrid referred to in the letter was ' St. Wilfrid,' not Complaint against Bede, 429 countryside ^, in his presence and over their cups, spoke of chap. xiv. Bede as ' a heretic' Plegwin, one of the monks of Hexham, Complaint hearing this, sent a messenger to inform Bede, who at first ^^^^ * turned pale with horror,' then, on inquiring, found that the reason was ' that he had denied that the Saviour had come in the sixth age of the world.' On reflection, he con- cluded^ that this was a misapprehension of what he had said, five years before, in his tract ' On Times,' wherein he had preferred the shorter or Hebrew chronology of Genesis, according to which Christ must have come when five thousand years were not completed^. He desired Plegwin to cause this letter to be read* before their ^most reverend father and lord Wilfrid, that as he was present when I was senselessly assailed, he may hear, and judge for himself, how little I deserved it/ The incident is curious, as a proof of the extent of interest in questions of Scriptural chronology which was felt at this time even by the ' rustic^ monks of the North. Often, no doubt, with Acca by his side, the bishop would 'walk about' the precinct of that basilica which Eddi has called superior to all churches north of Wilfrid's beloved Italy. Once, when going out of Hexham on some occasion, he was struck with an illness of the same kind as that which had prostrated him on his approach to Meaux. The tidings brought a number of his abbots, and of the hermits de- pendent on his monasteries, to pray with his monks as he lay unconscious : the aim of their prayers being that he might at least have a return of consciousness, which would enable him to dispose of his monasteries and his property ^. He did Wilfrid 11. (bishop of York, 718-732), as Smith (App. to Bede, p. 802) and Raine (i. 93) assert. * 'Eusticis.' See his Life of St. Felix, o. 8: 'Rusticus, non rustice, sed docte ac fideliter agens.' ' * Cogitare gedulus ccepi, unde hsec in me calumnia devolveretm*.' ^ Nor, indeed, four thousand ; De Tempor. 22. Bede solemnly professes his belief that Christ came in the sixth age, but says that an age has not a fixed number of years. He cites Jerome in behalf of the Hebrew text ; Ep. 3. * By a certain David, who on the occasion referred to, when some other • brother ' vilitied Bede, spoke in his favour, but could not explain what he had meant. * Eddi, 59 : 'Ne nos . . . sine abbatibus relinqueret.* 430 Wilfrid's last arrangements. CHAP. XIV. recover, not only consciousness, but a measure of health, and lived a year and a half longer, — the illness having happened, Wilfrid's it would appear, in the spring of 708. In the following year, ^* ^" when at Ripon, he caused his ' hoard ' to be opened in the ments. presence of two abbots and six monks of proved fidelity^. They gazed on the shining store of gold and silver and jewels: he bade his treasurer divide it into four parts. Then said the bishop, ' Dearest brothers, you know that I have long thought of making yet another visit to the see of St. Peter, where I have so often been delivered from troubles, and there, if God so willed, to end my life. I meant to offer gifts, from the best part of this treasure, at the churches of St. Mary and St. Paul at Rome. But should God provide for me other- wise, — as often happens to old men,— and my last day should come sooner, then I charge you to send my gifts to those churches. Of the three other parts, give one to the poor of my flock, ' for the redemption of my soul ^ : ' let the abbots of Hexham and Ripon share another between them, so that they may purchase the favour of kings and bishops ^. But as to the last part,' — one may imagine the old man's eyes be- dimmed as he proceeded, — ' distribute it, according to each man's proportion, among those who have suffered long exiles with me, and to whom I have given no lands : let it go to maintaining them when I am gone.^ The tender and noble heart, unchilled by age, felt warmly for the possible needs of adherents so loyal and loving as those who had stood by him through all troubles : he could not bear to think that they should want when they had no longer the comfort of his presence and protection. Soon afterwards he announced that he had appointed one of these true companions, his own kins- man Tatbert, to preside over the minster of Ripon after his death. This was spoken to his confidants : he then ordered * Eddi, 60. See Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 270. * A common phrase in ancient charters; see Kemble, Cod. Dipl. i. 73, 82, 90, 108. Bede, in his preface to his Life of Cuthbert, asks that prayers may be made for him at Lindisfarne after his death, 'for the redemption of his soul.* • Redemption,' in such phrases, was not used in its strict sense ; the phrase is equivalent to 'pro remedio animae ;' Cod. Dipl. i. i, 16, 26, 41, 55, &c. 3 Contrast Aidan in Bede, iii. 5 : ' Nullam potentibus sseculi pecuniam . . . imquam dare solebat.' But * old times were changed.' His journey into Mercia. 431 the bell ^ to be rung, and ' the whole family ^ of Ripon ' obeyed chap. xiv. its summons. He entered the chapter-house, sat down, and said : ' Our brother Celin, sometime prior, wishes to adopt the hermit-life ; and I will not detain him. Do you all keep to your rule, until, if God wills, I return to you. But these two abbots of ours, Tibba and JEbba, have come hither from the Mercian king Ceolred, with an invitation for me to speak to him on the affairs of our houses in Mercia, and have per- suaded me to go. When I return, I will bring with me the person fittest for the presidency of this house : but if anything else should happen to me through my infirmities, then I bid you all to accept as abbot whomsoever these who sit by me, Tibba and JEbba, Tatbert, Hadufrid, and Alchfrid, shall present to you,' — meaning, of course, that Tatbert himself should be so presented. All the monks bowed to the ground, promised obedience, received his benison, ' and, as a body, saw his face no more.' He proceeded into Mercia : King Wilfrid la Kenred had, in the spring of that same year, imitated, in part, ^®'^*^^*- the example of Cadwalla by resigning his crown and going to Rome, accompanied by Offa, the young, handsome, and popular East- Saxon king, son of Sighere^, — and, according ^ On the use of bells in ancient monasteries, see Wilson's Prehistoric Ann. of Scotl. ii. 162. Comp. Adamn. Vit. Col. i. 8, ' Cloccam pulsa;' and iii. 23, ' Media nocte pulsata personante clocca.* So Vit. Sturm. 24 : Sturmi, dying, orders * omnes gloggas pariter moveri.' Eddi calls it ' signum.' * So again Eddi, 23, on the ' familia ' of Hexham ; ib. 63, on that of Ripon ; again, 65, 'Abbates cum omni famiUa.' So Bede, v. 2, on the 'familia' of bishop John. So the community of Hy was regarded as a * familia ; ' Reeves's Adamnan, p. 342 : comp. ib. 304 : the term was also applied to all the Columbian communities as forming one bodyj ib. 162. So too Vit. S. Sturmi, 13, as to the ' familia ' of Fulda. 3 Chronicle, a. 709; Lappenberg, i. 223. Bede, v. 19, caUs Offa 'juvenis amantissimae aetatis et venustatis, totaeque suae genti ad tenenda servandaque regni sceptra exoptatissimus. . . Qui . . reliquit uxorem . . . et patriam propter Christum,* &c. Even Bede could not see that Offa, in the prime of strength, would have more truly acted * propter Christum * by doing the royal duty laid upon him. See the striking anecdote of the Emperor Henry II. being received by an abbot at Verdun into his community, and then com- manded, in virtue of monastic obedience, to ret\im to the government confided to him by God ; Dunham's Germ. Empire, ii. 138. Hen. Hunt, is enthusiastic : ♦ O Deus bone, quae et qualia diademata eis reddes ! ' Elmham, p. 236, says that Offa acted by advice of Ethelred's sister Kineswith, or Kyneswide, a nun at Caistor. He was succeeded by Selred, son of Sigebert tlie Good. 432 Death of Wilfrid. CHAP. XIV. to an inferior authority, by Egwin of Worcester, who wished to procure from Pope Constantine a ' privilege ' for Eve- sham \ Kenred had been succeeded by Ceolred, son of Ethelred, a prince who appears in history as warring with Ine^, in the legend of St. Guthlac as persecuting the future King Ethelbald ^, and in the wild and hideous ' vision ' of a Wenlock recluse as a lost reprobate*. In his realm Wilfrid found all honourable reception: the monasteries which he was anxious to visit were all in good order : he went about among them, ' increasing their livelihood by domains, or gladdening their hearts with money ^.' Once, while riding along with Tatbert, he recounted from memory all the events of his past life. Nothing was forgotten : every bit of property which he had given, or now willed to give, to his abbots, was duly specified : he named his beloved Acca as the future abbot of Hexham. That ride must have been a memorable one to the future abbot of Ripon : he must have listened to an autobiography of almost matchless interest, — the whole splendid exciting story, beginning with the boy's presentation to Queen Eanfled, and passing through scenes so varied and so eventful as no other prelate of that age could have claimed as portions of his experience. At last Wilfrid reached his minster of St. Andrew at Oundle, Death of where another illness ere long warned him that the hour Wilfrid, ^^g g^^ jgg^ come; he uttered a few parting admonitions, ' leaned back his head upon the pillow, and went to his rest * Ann. SS. Bened. ill. 334 ; Chron. Evesli. p. 10. The extant 'privilege of Constantine' is called by Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 281, ' spuriovis.' Egwin could not have set off before June if he buried Aldhelm. * Chronicle, a. 71 5. He is mentioned as a benefactor to the church of St. Mary at Evesham ; Chron. Evesh. p. 72. ' Ann. SS. Bened. iii. 279. * Boniface, Ep. 20. In Ep. 62 Boniface denounces him and king Osred for * adulterium nonnarum,' and adds, with a terrible positiveness, that he died at a feast, mad, and impenitent. See Lappenberg, i. 2 24. Henry of Huntingdon calls him ' avitae virtutis hseres.' ' Eddi, 62. The legend of St. Egwin (Chron. Evesh. p. 11) makes Wilfrid take part in the dedication of the minster of Evesham in this very year, after the return of Egwin, and by order of a synod ; but this is incredible. He may have become acquainted, then or in 704-5, with the Mercian ealdorman Frio- dored, ' a man full of the missionary spirit ' (Stubbs, on Found, of Peterborough, p. 10), the founder of a church at Bredou. Death of Wilfrid, 433 without groan or murmur/ just at the moment when the chap. xiv. monks in choir were chanting the sublime inspiriting verse, ' Thou shalt send forth Thy Spirit, and they shall be created, and Thou shalt renew the face of the earth,' on a Thursday^, and probably in October, — the year being doubtless 709. He was buried in his best-loved church, the minster of Ripon, after an elaborate and solemn preparation of the corpse 2, and a processional funeral-journey. Hardly any one refrained from weeping while, amid the loud chant of the monastic choir, the great bishop was borne to his grave on the south side of the altar. He was in his seventy-sixth year ; and had been 'forty-five years a bishop^,' reckoning, probably, from his election in the early autumn of 664. So passed away the ' St. Wilfrid ' of our forefathers * ; Close of a man by no means free from faults or weaknesses, — a p^^^^* man whose public conduct had some results prejudicial to his native Church, and who does not rise entirely superior to the influences of power and high state, — but after all one who worthily concludes the most 'brilliant period^' of our ancient ecclesiastical history. After his death, a genera- tion of lesser men succeeds : there is hardly any striking or impressive character among those who appear in the public * Tatbert used to keep all Thursdays, in memorial of his death, as if they were Sundays, with a feast, 'in epulis;' Eddi, 62. October 12 was the day always kept in his honour ; but it could hardly be the day of his death, for in 709 it fell on a Saturday. Probably the true day was October 3 (a Thursday in 709), for 'the obituary of the church of Durham fixes' his 'depositio' on that day; see Raine, i. 81. To date his death earlier than the autumn of that year would disturb our notes of time, for he could not be said to have completed forty-five years of episcopacy in April of 709, nor would this give time for Ceolred's message after his accession and for the Mercian sojourn : and yet the Martyrologiimx Poeticum of Bede dates his death April 24, and so Smith's Bede, p. 759, and Alb. Butler on Oct. 12. * An abbot named Bacula spread a linen cloth (sindonem suam) on the ground, and upon it the corpse was washed and arrayed. Comp. Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. 48. ' Eddi, 63, says forty-six. Bede, v. 19, 'post quadraginta et quinque annos accepti episcopatus.' Eadmer says, c. 6r, in the seventy-fifth year of his life and forty-fifth of his episcopate : Eadmer begins by dating his birth in 634; c. I. * ' In many respects the star of the Anglo-Saxon Church ; ' Raine, i. 77. * See Freeman, i. 29. Ff 434 Retrospect, CH IP. XIV. life of the Church ^ until Egbert of York establishes and adorns the Northern archbishopric, and his successor Albert carries on the glory of its theological school. Corruptions of various kinds become rife in monasteries : the vivid inten- sity of religious faith, the fresh enthusiasm of devotion, which marked the earlier time, die out piteously among clerks and laics : a lofty and holy soul like Bede's finds itself left to look on a deteriorated clergy, and a people practically relapsing towards indifference^: one can conceive of him as taking refuge from contemporary decadence amid the noble forms which he perpetuates in his History. A great age, in short, expires with Wilfrid : and it is but fitting that the death of the Apostle of Sussex and of Wight should terminate the story of the extension of Hhe Vine' through the land, as, amid many vicissitudes, ' room was made for it,' — the stoiy of a work more solidly and healthily accomplished ^ than in other lands and by other agents, the work of our national Conversion. Conclusion. And whatever else we remember or forget as to this great religious movement to which our own debt is so incalculable, let us bear in mind two things that shine out in those who responded most readily to its touch, whose lives were the best monuments of its power. One is, the simple loyal thorough- ness, the unreserved ' perfectness of heart,' with which, having accepted the Faith as the explanation of man's destiny, they accepted withal the practical obligations which were proposed to them as arising out of it, or even seemed to think only of how they could do most in order to attain holiness and salvation. The other is that passion for ' winning souls,' for ^ For St. Boniface does not count as one of the great churchmen living and working in England, and Bede hardly ever left his cloister. * See his Ep. to Egbert; and on the general apathy as to learning, his Explan. Apocal. prsef. ^ * In no part of the world did Christianity make its way in a more honour- able manner; ' Freeman, i. 28. 'Nowhere else did Christianity make a deeper or more lasting impression;' Kemble, ii. 363, — and see the whole striking passage. * Scarcely was Christianity presented to the Anglo-Saxons . . . when they embraced it with singular fidelity and singleness of heart. ... In a single century England became known .to Christendom as a fountain of light;' Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 220, 219. Compare also Dean Church's summary in his * Beginnings of the Middle Ages,' p. 67. Retrospect 435 spreading the new-found light among their heathen country- chap. xiv. men or their Teutonic kinsmen abroad, which passed on through those first generations of English Christians the ' fiery torch ' of missionary ardour. It is the typical laymen of the several kingdoms who most conspicuously illustrate these true conditions of Church life. We think not only of the noble earnestness of Ethelbert, of the heroic sanctity of Oswald, of the sweet humility of Oswin, but of the genuine conversions of Eadbald and Kenwalch, of the thoughtful co-operation of Edwin and Sigebert the Learned with Paulinus and with Felix, of the family piety of the court of Anna, of Edwin * persuading' Eorpwald, of Oswy discoursing to Sige- bert the Good, of the wonderful outburst of Christian en- thusiasm among the children and grandchildren of Penda. To say this is not to idealise, to ignore any tokens of super- stition or of ' zeal not according to knowledge,' or to think lightly of some accretions on primitive Christianity which our fathers received along with it, and which grew in bulk and tenacity after their time. All this allowed for, the Conversion is among the magnalia Dei, No words could be more appropriate for the close of such a survey than those in which one of the most gifted writers of our time concludes a lecture on ' Christianity and the Teutonic Races.' ' Those ancient and far distant ages ... we may, we ought to leave far behind, in what we hope to achieve. But, in our eagerness for improvement, it concerns us to be on our guard against the temptation of thinking that we can have the fruit or the flower, and yet destroy the root : that we may retain the high view of human nature which has grown with the growth of Christian nations, and discard that revelation of Divine love and human destiny of which that view forms a part or a consequence : that we may retain the moral energy, and yet make light of the faith that pro- duced it. . . . It concerns us that we do not despise our birth- right, and cast away our heritage of gifts and of powers, which we may lose, but not recover^.' ^ Dean Church, Influences of Christianity, p. 139. ADDITIONAL NOTES. NOTE A. Christian adoption of Pagan Sites. Since these pages were sent to the press, I have seen the following passage in one of Mr. Tozer's notes to his recently published edition of Dr. Finlay's * History of Greece.' It occurs in vol. i. p. 424 : — * The adaptation of Pagan beliefs and ceremonies to Christian use must not wholly be attributed to superstition and priestcraft. Even in the Catacombs we find numerous Pagan emblems used as a means of symbolizing Christian truth. Nor was it unjustifiable at a later period to facilitate in this maimer the transition from an old to a new religion — for instance, in building Christian churches on the sites of Pagan temples. The extent to which this took place is shown by M. Petit de Julleville in a paper entitled, Sur Vemplacement et le vocable des ^glises Chretiennes en Grece, in the Archives des Missions, deuxifeme s6rie, vol. v. According to this writer (p. 525) more than eighty churches in Attica were built on sites of ancient temples, and the names of their dedication usually recall the names of those temples. . . . Athena becomes Haghia Sophia,' &c. NOTE B. Bede and Gregory of Tours. A COMPARISON between the ' Ecclesiastical Histories ' of Bede and Gregory of Tours would illustrate what has been said as to the first age of English Christianity. The books have naturally not a little in common. Gregory's * faculty of story-telling ' (see Green, 438 Bede and Gregory of Tours. Hist. Engl. People, p. 38) is not far inferior to Bede's : take, for instance, the escape of young Attains and the faithful cook Leo (H. Fr. iii. 15), the adventures of a priest buried alive amid a *foetor letalis' (iv. 12), the murder of Chlodomir's two boys by their fierce uncle (iii. 18), and of bishop Prsetextatus 'while he leaned upon a form ' during the Easter service in Eouen cathedral, and none of his clergy durst answer his cry for aid (viii, 31). "We seem almost to see the townsmen of beleaguered Orleans, alternately praying and looking out for relief (ii. 7) ; or to hear the terrible 'Yua!' of Chlotair in his death-agony (iv. 21). Some beautiful and solemn touches occur at intervals in the narrative : the descrip- tion of Nicetius of Lyons as showing such love to all men ' ut in ejus pectore ipse Dominus, qui est vera caritas, cerneretur' (iv. 36), and the expansion of Ps. xlix. 1 7 in regard to the man of ill-gotten gains who died with an outside show of penitence, * nihil exinde secum aliud portans nisi animse detrimentum' (vi. 28), are just what might have come from Bede himself. "When we read that bishop Salvius, if constrained to accept money, * forthwith made it over to the poor* (vii. i), we cannot but think of St. Aidan : when we hear of * the common saying, " If a man has to pass between Pagan altars and God's church, there is no harm in his paying respect to both" ' (v. 44), we are reminded of the compromise of Redwald of East-Anglia. Both writers give us much information about ecclesiastical usages, such as the clerical tonsure (Gregory even mentions the British tonsure, x. 9), the nocturnal or 'matin' service, the frequent psalmody, the 'reception' of the neophyte ' from the font ' by his godfather ; about the estates or other property of churches, the infliction of spiritual censures, the ap- pointment of bishops, the holding of synods, the life of ' recluses,* the veneration of relics, and so on. Both narrate 'miracles' wrought at saintly shrines (compare, e.g. Greg. iv. 19 with his Yit. Patr. c. 2, where he tells us that he himself, when a youth, had been cured of a fever at the tomb of St. Illidius), and dreams which are accepted as visions (e. g. Greg. v. 14, vi. 29). The description of Heaven in the ' vision ' of Greg. vii. i surpasses that of Paradise in the story of Drythelm (Bede, v. 12). Both writers seem prone to treat ordinary events as supernatural (cp. Greg. x. 25). The Paschal question, on which the later historian is so exuberant, is not unnoticed by the earlier (Greg. v. 17, x. 23). Each records a case of episcopal appeal to Rome; but that in Greg. V. 21 is made with royal permission. Other resemblances Bede and Gregory of Tours. 439 might be mentioned ; but, in spite of all, the moral difference between the two books is even startling. The atmosphere, so to speak, of Gregory's is as heavy and lurid as that of Bede's is luminous and pure. The contrast lies not merely, — it may be said, not mainly, — in the exceptional wickedness of Frankish royalty in the sixth century, and the remarkable excellence of English royalty in the seventh. It is the ecclesiastics of the two neighbour countries who are so unlike each other. Bede has to tell us of one prelate who 'purchased' a see (iii. 7); in Gregory's pages we meet with two bishops who carry arms, and are men of rapine and blood (v. 21) ; another who assaults his archdeacon, on suspicion of fraud, in church on a Christmas morning (iv. 44); another who perse- cutes, even to death, the friends of his holy predecessor (iv. 36) ; another who asks, ' Because I have taken orders, am I therefore to forego my revenge ? ' (viii. 39) ; another who drinks himself into epilepsy, and orders a priest to be shut up in a tomb in order to extract from him his own title-deeds (iv. 12); together with clerics who plot against the reputation or the life of a bishop (v. 50, vi. 36), or are chosen by the worst of all queens to despatch a young king with poisoned daggers, and are only afraid that the task will be found 'difficult' (viii. 29). Allowing for inevitable exag- gerations, — although we may believe Gregory's protest that he has set down nothing in malice (iv. 13), — and bearing in mind the multitude of office-bearers necessarily belonging to a long- settled Church in a wide region, we must suppose that ' the Gallo-Roman bishops who crowded round' the proselyte of St. Bemigius (Kitchin, Hist. Fr. i. 74), condoning his brutality for the sake of his orthodoxy, and hoping to train him into Christian kingliness, became gradually infected by the barbarism which made them potentates, and bequeathed to their successors a tradition of vio- lence or of laxity. And so we can understand how the pedantic tyrant Chilperic, who shocked Gregory by Sabellianising, and made episcopal faults the chief topics of his sarcasm, ' would frequently say' that the churches had impoverished the ' fiscus,' and that ' the bishops alone really reigned' (Greg. vi. 46; cp. v. 45). A hierarchy thus secularised might well be apathetic about missions, and indifferent to the disgrace of simony: it was but natural that its members should now be accused of treasonable conspiracy, and now be abhorred as agents of royal extortion (ib. V. 19, iii. 36). Perhaps the saddest indication of its lowered moral tone is given by Gregory himself, who, good man as he was, 440 Theodore and Chad, hating the bloody quarrel of princes, and ready to withstand a king in the cause of justice (ib. v. prol. and 19), could pause in his recital of the crimes of Chlodwig to observe that * God increased his dominion, because he walked before Him with an upright heart ' (ii. 40). Of course, the greater the corporate deterioration, the more honour is due to those individual prelates or clerics whose genuine piety was the salt of the Prankish Church, and who, doubtless, made a better use of such a memory as St. Martin's than by representing him as a formidable tutelary power, to be pro- pitiated by savage warriors who did not, in any practical sense, know or fear God (cp. Greg. iii. 28, iv. 2, 16, &c. on the 'virtus consueta beati Martini'). It is matter of thankfulness that the English Church and nation have had no such period in their history. After the age of the Conversion, when missionary ardour had no more scope, religion in England — Bede himself being the witness — lost much of its fruitfulness and its power. But it never fell so low as in Gaul under the Merwings; and that, because, when addressing our fathers, it escaped the trial of a corrupting support, and relied, in the main, on its own Divine vitality. NOTE C. Theodore and Chad. There is a remarkable coincidence between Theodore's phrase * confirmentur,' quoted on p. 229, and the language of the Nicene- Council as to bishops and priests ordained by the schismatic bishop Meletius (Socrates, i. 9.) 'Those who have been appointed by him are to be admitted to communion' (on their return to the Church) ' after having been confirmed (/Se/Satco^eVra?) with a more sacred ordination {fivariKcoTepa x^tpoTovia).^ This sentence has been sometimes interpreted as Theodore's sentence is interpreted in the text: and the word ^e^aicodevras, of itself, might refer only to an act of benediction, rehabilitating the recipients for the canonical exercise of their ministry. But, taken with the accompanying words, it refers most naturally to an act ejusdem generis with their former schismatical 'appointment,' i.e. to an ordination 'more sacred ' because performed by a Catholic bishop : as Yalesius says, ' Cum prseter consensum ipsius ordinati fuissent, vult Synodus ut ante omnia ab episcopo Alexandrino ordinentur.' But it does not seem strictly necessary to impose this sense on Theodore's ' con- The Council of Hertford, 441 firmentur ;' the preceding clause, 'adunati ecclesise non sunt,' may be taken as referring it to an act which would 'establish' the persons in question as thenceforth legitimate ministers of the Church. And the next rule in the Penitential employs the same verb in a somewhat similar sense : churches hallowed by Scotic or British bishops are to be sprinked with holy water, * et aliqua collectione confirmentur : ' words which point to a completion of what was lacking to their previous consecration (see above, p. 285), and do not imply that it was treated as simply null. (Compare the rule as to a removed church, in Theodore's Penitential, b. 2. I. I.) Theodore adds significantly, 'And if any one of their race . . . has doubts as to his own baptism, let him be baptized : ' he does not say, 'conditionally,' as St. Boniface afterwards said (Concil. Liptin. c. 28). About a year after Theodore's death, the Council in Trullo, can. 84, ordered baptism to be administered in such doubtful cases, as it seems, unconditionally, according to Cod. Afric. 72. NOTE D. The Council of Heetfoed. It is interesting to compare the third canon of Hertford, as to monasteries, with canons of the Council of Clovesho in 747. In the interval there had grown up — in consequence of the privileges attached to monastic property — the gross abuse denounced in Bede's letter to Egbert, c. 7. A king's thane or reeve would procure lands chartered as for monastic uses, build on them a so-called monastery, fill it with worthless monks (of whom Bede says, * Wasps can make combs but not honey '), and preside over it as ' abbot,' without abandoning his secular habits : his wife would often do the like, and figure as 'abbess' of a mock nunnery. The Council of Clovesho did not venture absolutely to proscribe this flagrant perversion of the conventual idea, but ordered the bishops to mitigate its evils by visiting these houses and exhorting the inmates (can. 5). The same Council also deplores the decay of studiousness in real monasteries (c. 7): and intimates that some abbots were wont to treat their monks as slaves, not as sons (c. 4). Worldliness had evidently infected many convents : there had sprung up (as previously at Coldingham) a love of ' pompous ' and * parti- coloured ' dress : gleemen and harpers were entertained 442 The Council of Hertford. within the precincts : monks would drink freely before Terce, and even constrain others ' intemperanter bibere.' It may be observed that while Theodore was proposing that bishops should not ' disturb monasteries in any respect/ he forgot the danger of such disturbance on the part of kings : compare Haddan and Stubbs, iii. 394, on the seizure of three Northumbrian monasteries, one of them at Coxwold, by king Eadbert, in 757 ; and see Clovesh. c. 29. The fourth canon of Hertford undoubtedly refers to monks : the reading ' episcopi ' is, as Smith calls it, * most absurd.' Compare Clovesh. c. 29, that no monks or nuns shall live in the houses of laymen, ' sed repetant monasteria,' &c. The sixteenth Nicene canon is not named by Johnson, nor by Haddan and Stubbs, among the sources of the fifth canon of Hertford. But although it does not refer to cases of aimless wandering (' passim quolibet,' Hertf.) it may have been in Theodore's thoughts, as forbidding clerics to 'depart from their church in a random way, without regard to the fear of God or to ecclesiastical rule.' Of the difficulty caused by a comparison between the tenth canon of Hertford and a passage in Theodore's Penitential, Johnson says that ' perhaps there he speaks of what may be done without direct sin, here of what best becomes a Christian ..." si recte Chris- tianus esse voluerit," if he will be a right good Christian.' But this is to strain the word ' recte.' See Engl. Canons, i. 94. One omission in these canons may surprise us. Provisions are made as to episcopal jurisdiction, precedency, and unity of action : a proposal is made, but deferred, as to increase of the episcopate : but nothing is said as to episcopal election. Yet Theodore could not be ignorant of the standing law of the Church on this matter ; and it might have been thought desirable to take the first opportu- nity of formally- incorporating it in the legislation of the English Church. The Cyprianic requirement of the ' suffragium plebis ' or * populi' (Cypr. Ep. 55. 7 ; 59. 7) and the Nicene sanction of ' the people's choice' (Soc. i. 9) had received in the Western Church a terse and pointed expression from Pope Celestine I. in his letter to the bishops of the provinces of Vienne and Narbonne. * Nullus invitis detur ejpiscopus : cleri, plebis, et ordinis' (i.e. the magistracy) * consensus et desiderium requiratur' (Celest. Ep. 2. 5 ; Mansi, iv. 466. A. D. 428). This maxim took hold of the ecclesiastical mind, and is cited by Gallic Councils, as Orleans V. a.d. 549, The Cozcncil of Hertford. 443 can. 1 1, which also guards against any forcing of the consent of ' the citizens or clerics ' on the part of * powerful persons/ and (can. lo) recognises three conditions of a legitimate accession to the episcopate : (i) the king's will, (2) election by clergy and people, according to * ancient canons/ (3) consecration by the metropolitan, or his deputy, with the comprovincials (Mansi, ix. 131) ; and Paris III. circ. A.D, 557, can. 8, which amplifies the formula thus, ' Nul- lus civibus invitis ordinetur episcopus ; ' and after reciting the fact that in some respects the old custom has been neglected and the decrees of canons have been violated, orders that no * command of the sovereign, nor any other condition,' shall ' bring in ' a bishop with- out (i) an election by peoplo and clergy, expressing their 'fullest will,' (2) the *wiir of the metropolitan and comprovincials: and further, that any one who * shall have presumed to enter upon this high office in virtue of a royal appointment ' shall be disowned by the comprovincials as a person 'unduly ordained' (Mansi, ix. 746). Bede does not give us very full information as to the several ap- pointments of bishops. In some of the earlier cases, it is probable that the affair was left in the hands of the king and the archbishop, as when Honorius consecrated Thomas for Dunwich, or Deusdedit consecrated Damian for Rochester. Kenwalch was likely enough to dispense with canonical forms in regard to Agilbert, and he must have done so in regard to Wini (Bede, iii. 7). Bede attributes the appointment of Wilfrid to Alchfrid, and that of Chad to Oswy, whom he describes on that occasion as * imitating the activity of his son;' yet we know from Eddi (Vit. Wilfr. 11) that Wilfrid was elected by the Northumbrian Witan, and may infer that this was also the case with Chad, as with the three prelates consecrated in 678 for parts of the diocese which Wilfrid had ruled, and, according to Bede's plain statement, with Cuthbert (iv. 28) and Oftfor (iv. 23). The same plan would be followed in other districts. Faricius, as we have seen, emphasises the point in regard to Ald- helm. In such elections the clerical voice was represented by that of the high ecclesiastics present among the ' Witan,' who acted together with those of the ' freemen ' who attended that assembly (see Freeman, Norm. Conq. i. 100). It need hardly be said that Bede's application of the term * synodus' to a Witenagemot (iv. 28, v. 19 ; cp. iii. 7, end) proves nothing against the essentially episcopal character of the synods of Hertford and Hatfield. They were composed of bishops : the ' magistri ' or * doctores ' who also attended them were simply 444 The Age of St. Aldkelm, advisers, and their * votum ' was merely * consultativum/ not ' decisi- vum/ They were no more constituent members of the synod than Athanasius was of the Nicene Council, or than Thomas Aquinas would have been of the Council of Lyons, had he lived to attend it. (See Hefele, Councils, Introd. 4. 1 1). No laymen appear to have had anything to do with the synods of Hertford and Hatfield : although we find king Ethelbald of Mercia ' presiding,' like a Con- stantine Pogonatus, at the Council of Clovesho in 742, and present with his ealdormen and ' duces ' at the greater Council of Clovesho in 747, at which many clerics were present, and were consulted. It should be remembered that laymen might even be asked to sign the doctrinal canons of a Council, in token of their assent, without being at all regarded as members of the Council, or authors of its decrees; — as at the second Council of Orange, a. D. 529 (Mansi, viii. 718). The ' synod' of "Whitby was rather a conference than a regular ecclesiastical council; but the persons named by Bede as present were all clerical, e:^cept Oswy, Alchfrid, and the abbess Hilda (iii. 25). It may be observed, that the African rule as to one yearly synod referred, not to a provincial synod, but to the ' general council for Africa.' NOTE E. The Age of St. Aldhelm. In p. 259, 1 have given the received date of 675 for Aldhelm's appointment as abbot of Malmesbury. It may not improbably rest on some better basis than the forged charter of bishop Lothere : there may have been an old tradition in the monastery that Aldhelm had ruled it thirty-three years when he died in 709 (Malmesb. Gest. Pont. p. 385). William of Malmesbury cannot have been unaware of the difiiculties attaching to this date : for he cites Aldhelm's letter, describing Hadrian as the preceptor of his * simple child- hood ' (' rudis inf antics '). Now Hadrian became abbot of Canter- bury in 671 (Bede, Hist. Abb. 3). On Malmesbury's showing, therefore, ' infantise ' must have been used very laxly, and with a sort of exaggerative modesty, by Aldhelm : and if he was, in fact, a youth of sixteen or seventeen in 671, he must have been ordained priest by Lothere, according to Malmesbury's date, when he was Growth of a Parochial System. 445 much below the canonical age, although Malmesbury rejects that supposition. The bishop might think the case exceptional. The difficulty, in fact, is one which reappears on a comparison of Aldhelm's language about his * infantia ' with Ethelwald's allusion to his ' white hair,' in verses written before he became a bishop : for these verses (see Lingard, A.-S. Ch. ii. i88) were appended to a letter addressed *sacrosancto abbati Aldhelmo:' and although Aldhelm retained the abbacy until his death, he would have been addressed, after 705, as bishop. That his ordination to the pres- byterate preceded his appointment to the abbacy, is affirmed both by Faricius (c. i) and Malmesbury (p. 347). NOTE F. Growth of a Parochial System. Bede tells us that Paulinus built no church in Bernicia, and in Deira only those of York and Campodonum ; but that he built one at Lincoln, doubtless through the munificence of Blsecca, (Cp. Bede, ii. 14, 16; iii. 2.) Under Aidan 'churches were reared in different places ' (iii. 3) : some of these were adjacent to the royal ' villse,' as at Bamborough (iii. 1 7). Birinus * built and dedicated ' churches in "Wessex (iii. 7) : Cedd * built churches in different parts ' of Essex (iii. 2 2). This latter passage is the first which associates church building with anything like a settled local ministry, for Bede adds, * presbyteros et diaconos ordinavit.' But Aidan and Birinus had probably done the like. The lack of district churches was largely supplied by the missionary activity of monks, as we learn from the early life of St. Cuthbert (iv. 27). We are not told whether Chad left any churches behind him as the result of his evangelical journeys through towns, country-sides, townships, and 'castles^' in Yorkshire (Bede, iii. 28), but Wilfrid 'ordained pres- byters and deacons in different places to assist him in his work ' (Eddi, 21), and doubtless supplied them with churches for their ministrations. His energy as a founder of basilicas would not exhaust itself in great works, like that at Hexham or Ripon. The sites of his smaller churches would usually be the central points of the several 'vici' or townships (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 227). Bede expressly observes that ' among the mountains ' no church could * Fortified towns. 446 Growth of a Parochial System. be found to receive Cuthbert when he was making his rounds of visitation (Vit. Cuthb, 32). In two instances 'comites' build churches, and ask bishop John to consecrate them ; Bede v. 4, 5 (at ' South Burton and North Burton ;' Lingard, A.-S. Ch. i. 157) : and in such cases a rule would be observed like that which was laid down in 541 by the fourth Council of Orleans, c. 33 : ' Si quis in agro sue aut habet aut postulat habere dioecesim ' (here ' dicecesis ' means a district church, — comp. Council of Epaon, c. 8, * presbyter qui dioe- cesim tenet') * primum et terras ei deputet sufficienter, et clericos qui ibidem sua officia impleant' (Mansi, ix. 119). In other words, something like an endowment was necessary. Once more, when Drythelm awakes out of his trance (or, as Bede would say, returns to life), he goes at once * ad villulse oratorium' (Bede, v. 1 2). Galilean synods indicate a disposition to watch with some jea- lousy the use made of these outlying hamlet churches; we find them forbidding any citizen to keep the great festivals in a ' villa ' unless he is known to be in bad health (Orleans I. c. 25, a. 512), and ordering every cleric who officiates in the * oratorium ' of a ' villula ' to keep the great feasts with his bishop in the city (Auvergne I. c. 15). Compare Council of Agde, c. 21, which also distinguishes these * oratoria ' as external both to ' civitates ' and to * parochise.' In Bede's last days, we learn from an often-quoted passage, Ep. to Egb. 3, many of the smaller townships of York- shire were still without any resident clergy. But, as has been already observed, Theodore's Penitential, irrespectively of any ' capitula ' wrongly ascribed to him, supposes such a ministry to be at work. TABLE OF PRINCIPAL EVENTS. Martyrdom of St. Alban . British bishops at Aries . British bishops at Ariminum First Mission of St. German Second Mission of St. German • Arrival of St. Augustine ; baptism of Ethelbert Arrival of Mellitus ; death of St. David . Conference at Augustine's Oak Sees of London and Rochester founded . Death of St. Augustine Battle of Chester .... Mellitus driven from London ; Eadbald converted Edwin king of Northumbria St. Paulinus sent to Northumbria Edwin baptized .... St. Felix in East-Anglia . Battle of Hatfield ; death of Edwin Battle of Heavenfield ; St. Oswald king ; St. Birinus in Wessex St. Aidan at Lindisfarne ; baptism of Kynegils Battle of Maserfield ; Oswy king of Bernicia Conversion of Kenwalch . Agilbert bishop of Dorchester ; deaths of Oswin and Aidan Peada baptized ; Mission to Mid-Angles ; second Mission to Essex Cedd bishop of East-Saxons ; Wilfrid at Rome Battle of Winwidfield ...... Diuma bishop of Mercia ; foundation of Peterborough Agilbert's quarrel with Kenwalch ..... Colman succeeds Finan at Lindisfarne ; Wilfrid at Ripon Conference of Whitby ; pestilence ; Wilfrid elected bishop Consecrations of Wilfrid and Chad ; third Mission to Essex Theodore consecrated for Canterbury .... Arrival of Theodore ; Wilfrid bishop of York ; Chad at Lichfield Hadrian founds School of Canterbury .... Death of St. Chad ...... Council of Hertford ; division of East-Anglian diocese ; St. EthelJred at Ely ; birth of Bede ...... Benedict Biscop founds Wearmouth monastery . Cuthbert retires to Fame ...... First troubles of Wilfrid ; division of his diocese ; his appeal ; his mission work in Frisia ...... A. D. 304 314 359 429 447 697 601 602 604 60.5 613 616 617 625 627 631 633 634 635 642 646 651 653 654 655 656 660 661 664 665 668 669 671 672 673 674 676 678 448 Table of Royal and Episcopal Succession. A, D. Council at Rome on his case . . . . . '679 Division of Mercian diocese ..... about 679 Return and sufferings of Wilfrid ; Council of Hatfield ; death of Hilda . 680 Wilfrid evangelises Sussex ; monasteries of Jarrow and Gloucester and see of Abercom founded . . . . . .681 Cuthbert consecrated ....... 685 Mission to Isle of Wight ; restoration of Wilfrid . . . .686 Death of St. Cuthbert . . . . . . .687 Cadwalla's journey to Rome . . . . . .688 Death of Benedict Biscop ....... 689 Death of Theodore ; Willibrord goes to Frisia .... 690 Renewed troubles of Wilfrid ; he is expelled ; acts as bishop at Leicester 691 Bertwald archbishop . , . . . . '693 Witenagemot of Berghamstyde ...... 696 Guthlac at Crowland ....... 699 Council of Easterfi eld ; Wilfrid's second appeal .... 702 Council at Rome on his case . . . . . . 704 West-Saxon diocese divided ; St. Aldhelm bishop of Sherborne . . 705 Council of the Nidd ; close of Wilfrid's case .... 706 Deaths of SS. Aldhehn and Wilfrid . . . . .709 TABLE OF ROYAL AND EPISCOPAL SUCCESSION. ^'^' 597-709- T. I. Kent:— 4. Essex : — Ethelbert . • . [565] Sabert Eadbald . . 616 Saeward, Sexred, Sigebert 616 Ei'conbert . 640 Sigebert the Little about 617 Egbert . . 664 Sigebert the Good . before 653 Lothere • 673 Swidhehu . . about 657 Eadric . . 685 Sebbi and Sighere . . 664 Wihtred . . 690-1 Sighard and Swefred . 694 Ofia . . . before 709 2. Sussex:— 5. Northumbria : — Ethelwalch Ethelfrid . . . [593] Edwin . . . .617 3. "Wessex : — [Eanfrid in Bemicia ; Os- ricinDeira . . 633] Ceolwulf • 597 Oswald .... 634 Kynegils . 611 Oswy in Bemicia ; Oswin Kenwalch . . 643 in Deira . . . 642 Sexburga . . 672 Oswy sole king . .651 Escwin (part of \^ 7'essex) 674 Egfrid .... 670 Kentwin . 676 Aldfrid . . . .685 Cadwalla . . 685 [Eadwulf . . . 705] Ine . 688 Osred . . . .706 Table of Royal and Episcopal Stucession, 449 A.D. 6. East-Anglia : — 7, Mercia:— Redwald [593] Cearl Eorpwald 617 Penda . 626 Sigebert the Learned 631 [Mercia under Oswy 655] Egric . 634 Wulfhere 658-9 Anna . . . , 636 Ethelred 675 Ethelhere 654 Kenred . 704 Ethelwold . 655 Ceolred . 7og Aldwulf 663 « jr n. [Sees in order of foundation as English bishoprics.] I. Canterb\iry: — Augustine Laurence Mellitus Justus . Honorius Deusdedit Theodore Bertwald 2. London : — Mellitus [Cedd, in Essex Wini . Erconwald . Waldhere Ingwald Bochester Justus . Romanus • Paulinus , Ithamar Damian . Putta . Cwichelm Gebmund Tobias . York :— Paulinus Chad . . . . "Wilfrid, consecrated 665, in possession Wilfrid again Bosa again . John Dunwich : — Felix . Thomas . 597 605 619 624 627 65.S 668 693 604 654] 666 675 693 704? 604 624 633 644 655 669 676 678 693 625 665 669 678 686 691 706 631 647^ Boniface 6«;» Bisi , 669 Acci . • 673 Albert ? 675 + 731' 6. Lindisfarne : — Aidan . . 635 Finan . 651 Colman . 66i Tudft . 664 Eata . 678 Cuthbert 685 F^dbert 688 Eadfrid . 698 7. Dorchester or "Winchester : — Birinus (Dorchester) • 635 Agilbert (Dorchester) . 650 ^^ Wini (Winchester) . 664 Lothere (Dorchester) . 670 Heddi (Winchester) . 676 ^tla (Dorchester) about 679 ? Daniel (Winchester) 705 8. Ijichfield [the seat of the first four Mercian bishops not ascertained] : — Diuma CeUach . Trumhere Jaruman Chad . Winfrid Saxulf . Hedda . 9. Elnxham : — Badwin . Nothbert 10. Hereford: — Putta . Tyrhtel . 656 658 659 662 669 672 691 . 673 693 + 706 676 688 * The date of his accession is unknown. See Stubbs, Registr. Sac. p. 5, He may have been bishop in 709. ^ Birinus died in Dec., 650. 450 Table of Royal and Episcopal Succession. A.D. 11. Hexham : — Worcester (continued) — Eata (also holding Lin- Oftfor . . . . 692 disfame) . . 678 Egwin .... 693-4 Trumbert . 681 Eata . . . 685 14. Leicester :— John . 687 Cuthwin 680 Wilfrid . . . 706 [See administered by Wil- frid .... 691] 12. Sidnacester (for Lindsey) : — Eadhed . . 678 15. Selsey:— Ethelwin . . 680 Wilfrid . . . . 681-2 Edgar . . before 706 16. Sherborne : — 13- Worcester : — Aldhelm 705 Bosel . . 680 Forthere 709 This list includes two bishoprics whose existence at Wilfrid's death might be regarded as temporarily suspended, Leicester and Selsey, but excludes the ephemeral and extinct see of Abercom, and — if it can be regarded as con- stituted in 679 for Eadhed — that of Ripon, and also passes over the brief adxninistration, by Wilfrid, of Hexham in 686, and of Lindisfarne in 687. GENEALOGICAL TABLES. 1. Ermenric I Ettelbert to. Bertha Ethelburga m. Edwin Eadbald Ricula (mother of Sabert) Ennenred St. Eanswith Erconbert m. Sexburga Ermenburga Etheked Ethelbert Egbert Ermenild Ercongota Lothere (Domneva) m. Merewald I Eadric TO. Wulfhere Wihtred. Genealogical Tables. 451 n. Sledda 1 m. Ricula Sabert 1 Sexbald ? 1 SsBward Sexred Sigebert H -. Sigebert the Little Sebbi 1 1 Sigebert the Good Swid'l Sighere Sighard Swefred lelm ra. Eanfrid Ethelfrid w. i. Bebba I 2. Acha St. Oswald Ethelwald Oswy I 1 1 1 Alchfrid Alchfled Osthryd Egjfrid TO. Kyniburga to. Peada to. Ethelred Osric Oswald Osbere ? Kyniburga St. Ebba Alfwin Elfled Aldfrid Osred IV. Unnamed Hereric TO. Beorhtswith J . Ella I Yffi L_ Acha Edwin m. i. Cwenburga j 2. Ethelburga Osfrid Eadfrid Wuscfrea Eanfled TO. Oswy St. Hilda Hereswid Yffi. Elfric I Oeonc St. Oswin Gg2 452 Genealogical Tables, V. \ Tytil Eedwald Eorpwald Eni 1 r Anna 1 Ethelhere m. Hereswid I- Ethelwold Sexburga Ethelberga m. Erconbert St. Etheldred m. I. Tunbert 2. Egfrid St. Witburga Aldwulf VI. Pen da m. Kynwise I 1 1 ^ 1 1 1 1 Peada Wu If here Ethelred Merewald Mercelin Kineswith Kyniburga m. Alchfled I | w. Domneva m. Alchfrid I r~^ 1 ' 1 f—* 1 1 1 Kenred St.Werburga Berthwald Ceolred St. Mildred Milburga Mildgith Merewin Of the somewhat confused West-Saxon genealogy, it may be enoiigh to say that Florence (see Mon. Hist. Br. p. 633) represents Cutha, the grandfather of Kynegils, as the elder brother of Ceawlin, from whose sons Cutha and Cuthwin descended Cad walla and Ine. But see Lappenberg's table. Insignificant names have been omitted. INDEX. A. Aaron, martyr, 7, 10. Abercom, see of, 323, 336. Abingdon, monastery of, 262, 427. Acca, bishop, 401, 409, 432. Acci (^cci, -^cca, Acce), bishop, 250, 365,. 378. Adalgis, king, 287. Adamnan, abbot, 336, 422. Adamnan, monk, 255. Adda, priest, 168. Adelphius, bishop, 9. Adeodatus, pope, 263.. -^bba, abbot, 431, .(Edgils, 254. ^ona, 216, 235. iEscingas, the, 361. -^sica, 176. ^tla, bishop, 311, 378. Agatho, pope, 291, 314. Agatho, priest, 193. Agilbert (x^gelbyrht), bishop,i59, 181, 192, 222, 239. Aidan, St. (^dan), mission of, 134 ; character of, 139, 204; death of, 164. Aileran, 'the Wise,' 160. Alban, St., 6. Albert, bishop, 41 1 . Albinus, abbot, 82, 238. Alcester, 390. Alchfled, 168, 178. Alchfrid (Alchfrith), sub-king, 168, 176, 187, 191, 209, 212, 311. Aldby, 113. Aldfrid, king, 337, 352, 411. Aldhehn. St. (Ealdhelm), 98, 258, 399, 418, 444 ; death of, 428. Aldwulf, king, 105, 250, 365. Alfrid, 411. Alfwin (vElfuini, ^Ifwine), 234, 301. * Alleluia Victory,' story of the, 18. Alnraouth, 331. Alric, bishop, 378. •Amphibalus, St.,' 6, 159, Anatolius, 77, 79, 197, 419. Anderida, 23, 188, 303. Andhun, 349. Andrew, monk, 219. Angles, race of, 24. Anna, king, 150, 156, 174. Antiphons, 346. Arigius, 41. Ariminum, Council of, British bishops at, II. Aristobulus, 2, Aries, Council of, 9; see of, 52. Arminius, deacon, 9. Armorica, 31. Arthur, king, 23. Artwil, Irish prince, 399. Arwald, king, brothers of, 350. Asaph, St., 30,, 82. Ashdown, 158, 183. Asterius, archbishop of Milan, 146. Athanasius, St., 12, 93. Augustine, St., mission of, 39 ; conse- cration of, 52; death and character of, 94. Augustine's, St., foundation of, 91, 99. Aunemund, archbishop of Lyons, 1 89, 222. Aust, 75. Avalon, isle of, 3, 10, 26, 312. B,' Baccanceld, 384. Badon Hill, battle of, 23. Bad win, abbot, 411. Badwin (Badwini, Bedwin), bishop, 250, 365. Bamborough, 24, 137, 14 r, 153, 156, 164, 414. Bangors, the, 29, 85. Baptism, rites of, 19, 50, 79, 306. Bardney, monastery of, 153, 410. Bardsey, isle of, 31. Barking, convent of, 257. Barrow, monastery of, 230, 257. 454 Index, Bass, priest, 238, 377. Bass, thane, 1 29. Bath, 261. Bathildis, St. (Baldhild), 190. Beadenhead, battle of, 256. Bede (Baeda), survey of life of, -326.' Bede ' the elder,' 348. Begu, 322. Benedict Biscop, St., 189, 221, 270, 314, 324, 357. Benedict I., pope, 38. Benedict II , pope, 348. Benedictine Ride, the, 216, 397. Beorwald, 378. Berchtun, 349. Berghamstyde, 382. Bemhaeth, 233. Bemicia, 25, 155. Bert (Beret, Briht), 330. Bertfrid, 413. Bertha, queen, 40, 48, 68, 100. Berth wald, 301. Bertwald (Berctwald, Brihtwald), archbishop, 377, 382, 394, 405, 413. Betti, priest, 168, Birinus, St., 146, 159. Bishops, consecration of, 58 ; election of, 442. Bisi, bishop, 226, 241, 250. Blaecca, 122. Boisil, 187, 208. Boniface, archdeacon, 1 90. Boniface (Bertgils), bishop, 173, aio, 226. Boni&ce IV., pope, 99. Boniface V., pope, 109. Boniface, Roman counsellor, 406. Boniface, St., 91, 314, 424. Books, 'first-fruits' of, in English Church, 68. Bosa, bishop, 283, 285, 353, 37o> 4^5- Bosel, bishop, 309, 364, 371. Bosham, 303. *B6ts,'89, 367. Botulf, St., 179, 272. Bradford-on-Avon, 239, 399. Bran, legend of, 3. Bregh, plain of, 330. Bridget, St. (Brigid), 136, 185. Brie, 151. British Church, origin of, unknown, i ; weakness of, 10; decay of, 27; saints of, 31. Brixworth, lo. Brocmail (Brocmael), king, 85. Bruide, Pictish king, 333. Brunanburgh, 299. Brunhild (Brunichildis), 43. Burghelm, priest, 302. Burgundians, 124. Cadoc, St., 30. Gadvan, king, 106. Cadwalader, 'the Blessed,' 132, 348. Cadwalla, king, 348, 359. Cadwallon, king, 126, 128, 132. Csedmon, 275. Cselin, 172. Caerleoni on Uak, 7, 9, 75. CaerWorgom, 30. Camin, 160. Campodonum, 120. Canterbury, arrival of missionaries at, 48 ; see of, founded, 53. Carlisle, 332. Carthagh, 160. Cartmel, 333. Catterick, 120, 130. Cearl. (Ceorl), 112, 127. Ceawlin, king, 25, 360. Cedd, bishop, 170, 178, 193, 206. Celestine, pope, 15, 442. Celin, prior, 431. Cellach (Ceollach), bishop, 179, 181. Ceolfrid, 214, 271, 314, 325, 358,423. Ceolred, king, 432. Cerdic, British king, 109. Cerdic, "West-Saxon, 23, 183. Chad, St. (Ceadda), 207, 212, 226; death of, 231. Charibert, king, 40. Chelles, 151. Chertsey, monastery of, 257, 379. Chester, battle of, 85 ; minster of, 180. Chlotair II., 44. Chlotair III., 210. Chrysostom, St., testimony of, 12. Church, closely allied with State, 366. • Church-shot,' 367. Cirencester, 127. Claudia, 2. Clement of Rome, St., words of, I. Clonard, 160. Clovesho, 246. Cnobheresburgh, 125. Coi6, 116. Coldingham, 185, 25^, 254, 300. Colman, bishop, 184, 195, 200. Columba, St., 31, 51, 133, 199. Columban, St., 96. Compi^gne, 210. Constantine, British king, 26. Constantine, emperor, 11. Constantine, pope, 432. Constantius, emperor, 8. Constantius of Lyons, 15. Cornwall, bishops of, 213 ; Irish mis- sions to, 26. Councils, provincial, 240. Crayke, 332. Index, 455 Creditor!, 314, 423. Crowland, 387. Cumbria, 26. Cummian, 98, 160. Cuthbald, 257. Cuthbert, St. (Cuthberht), 186, 308, 264, 331 ; death of, 342. Cuthred, 149, 158, 183. Cuthwin, bishop, 310, 364. Cwenburga (Cwenburh), 112. Cwichelm, bishop, 264. Cwichebn, king, 113, 127, 149. Cycles, 77, 194. D. Dagan, bishop, 98. Dagobert II., 236, 288, 291, 297. Da&nus, 189. Dalriada, 85, 336. Damian, bishop, 183, 206. Daninonia, 313, 418. Daniel, bishop of Bangor, 29. Daniel, bishop of Winchester, 424. David, St., 32. Deda, abbot, 112. Degsastone, battle of, 85. Deheubarth, 75. Deira, 25, 38, 155. Demetians, 75, 419. Deodatus, bishop, 291. Dereham. 151. Deusdedit (Frithonas), archbishop, 174, 206. Dewsbury, 120. Dicul, abbot, 303. Dioceses, Gregory's scheme of, 66 ; Theodore's plan for increase of, 246, Dionysius Exiguus, 78, 194, 243. Diuma, bishop, 168, 177. Domneva, 238. Doncaster, 120. Dorchester, 147, 263,311. 'Double Procession,' the, 319. Dover, no, 385. Driflfield, 412. Drythelm, 126, 338. Dubricius, St. (Dyfrig), 31. Diilting, 428. Dunbar, 300. Dunnechtan, battle of, 335, Dunod, 29, 82. Dunwich, see founded at, 124. Dyfiiaint, kingdom of, 418. Dyrham, battle of, 25, 75. Dyvan, St., 3. E. Eaba, 183. Eadbald, king, 100, no, 150. Eadbert, bishop, 356, 392. Eadfrid, bishop, 392, 413. Eadhed (Eadhaed), bishop, 283, 301, 353, 368. Eadric, king, 349. Eadwulf, 412. Eanfled, 114, 129, 167, 188. Eanfrid of Bemicia, 128. Eanfrid of Hwiccia, 183. Eanhere, 183. Eanswith, St., in. Eappa, priest, 302, 307. Easingwold, 120. East-Anglia, conversion of, 1 24. £ast-Saxous, three missions to, 89, 170, 214. Easter, question of, 76, 97, 143, 167, 194, 243, 419. Easterfield, Council of, 394. Easterwine (Eosterwini), abbot, 273, 345. Eata, bishop, 186, 201, 264, 283, 332, 353. Ebba, St. (^bbe), 185, 236, 255, 300. Ebbsfleet, 45. Eborius, bishop, 9. Ebroin, 191, 222, 288. Eddi(iEddi,H8edde), 216,235,282, 300. Edgar, bishop, 411. Edwine (Eadwine), king, 106; bap- tism of, n8 ; death of, 127. Egbert, bishop, Bede's letter to, 204. Egbert (Ecgbert, Ecgbriht), king, 206, 216, 238, Egbert, priest, 184, 330, 372, 423. Egfrid (Ecgfrid, Egferth), king, 233 ; hostile to Wilfrid, 291 ; death of, 335. Egric (Ecgric), king, 150. Egwin, St. (Ecgwin), 381, 390, 432. Elbod, bishop, 99, 422. Elfled (Rifled), 175, 323, 331, 341, 352. 413. Elfrida, abbess, 386. Ella (^lle), king of Deira, 25, 38. Ella, South-Saxon, 23. Elmete, 108, 127. Elmham, see of, 250. Elvan, St., 3. Ely, 251. Emmo, archbishop, 222. Eoda, 362. Eorpwald, king, 123. Erconbert (Earconberct, Erconberht), king, 150, 189, 206. Ercongota (Earcongutae), 151. Erconwald, St. (Earconwald, Erken- wald), 257, 351, 379. Ermenburga (Irminburg, Eorraen- burh), queen of Northumbria, 281, 299, 302, 333. Ermenburga (Domneva), 180. Ermenild (Eormengilda), queen, 152, 180, 411. 456 Judex. Ermenred (Eormenred), 238. Erneshow, 356. Escwin (jEscwine), 239, 256. Ethelberga (^dilberg), 151. Ethelbert (^thelberht, ^thelbriht), king, 25, 34, 40 ; conversion of, 50 ; death of, 100. Ethelbert, prince, 238. Ethelburga, queen, iii, 129. Etheldred, St. (^dilthryd, ^thel- dryht), 151, 230, 235, 251, Ethelfrid (^dilfrid,^thelfrith), king, 34, 85, 106. Ethelhere (yEdilheri), king, 174. Ethelbun (Edilhun), 184. Ethelmund, sub-king, 179. Etheb-ed (^diked, ^theked), king, 256, 263, 301, 371, 410. Ethelred, prince, 238. Ethelric, 34, 106. Ethel walch, king, 183, 303, 349. Ethel wald (Oidilwald), 172, 175. Ethel ward, sub-king, 379. Ethelwin, bishop, 310, 365. Ethel win, reeve, 162. Ethelwold, king, 1 79. Etherius, archbishop of Lyons, 43. Eugenius I., pope, 190. Eumer, 113. Eusebius, on Britain^ i. Evesham, 390. Exeter, 313. F. ^agan, St., 3. Fara, 151. Fame, 140, 156, 266. Faro, bishop, 222. Fastidius, bishop, 15. Feliskirk, 158. Felix of Jarrow, 388. Felix, St., 124, 157. Felixstowe, 157. Finan, bishop, 166, 168, 170. Folkestone, m. Forthere, bishop, 428. y Fredegond, 44. Frigyd, 322. Frisians, missions to, 289, 373. / Frith,' the, of a church, 90. Frith wold, 257. Frome, 399. Fursey, St., 125. G. Gateshead, 163. Gaul, Britain evangelised from, 5 ; corrupt clergy of, 439; schools of, 124. Gebmund, bishop, 264, 364, 379. - Geraint, king, 418* German, St., 16. Gildas, 8, 22, 26, 31. Gilling, 162, 181, 271. Glastonbury, 3, 10, 158, 312, 427. Gloucester, 25, 312. Godmundingham, 116. Gods of Saxons, 22, 147. Godwin, archbishop of Lyons, 378. Gregory, St., character of, 35 ; sends Augustine, 39 ; his ' Answers,' 56. Grimoald, 291. Guthlac, St., 386. Gwent, 75. Gwynedd, 75, 126. Gyrvians, 158, 251. H. Hackness, 322. Hadrian, abbot, 219, 223, 237, 320, 364. 44.4. Hanbury, 411. Hartlepool, 163, 177, 185. Hatfield, battle of, 127. Hatfield, Council of, 316. Hean, 262, 427. Heavenfield, battle of, 131. Hecana, 180, 264. Hedda, bishop, 371. Heddi (Hsedde), bishop, 261, 311, 313, 417.423- Heiu, abbess, 164, 185. Hemgils, 313, Herbert, St., 340. Hereford, 263, Herefrid, 342. Hereric, 109. Hereswid (Hereswith), 151, 273. Hermit-life, the, 82, 255, 269, 387, 431. Hertford, Council of, 240. Hewalds, the, martyrs, 375. Hexham, church of, 235, 355, 429. Hiddila, priest, 351. Hilary, St., on British Church, 1 1 . Hilda, St. (Hild), 109, 118, 163, 177, 185, 273, 322. Honorius, archbishop, 122, 143, 158, 165, 173. Honorius I., pope, 129, 146. •Housel,' the, 278, 367. Huna, 253. Hunwald, 162. Hwiccians, 74, 183, 310, 373. Hy, 133, 137, 336, 423- 'Hyde' (hid), the, 158. Ida, king, 25. Idolatry forbidden, 150, 383. Ikanho, 179, 272. Index. 46? nityd, St., 30. Imma, thane, 302. Indictions, the, 42, 317. Ine, king, 360, 427 ; laws of, 366. Inisboffin (Iniabofinde), 201. Ireland, schools of, 159, 330, 374, 399 invasion of, 330. Irenaeus, St., 5. Ithamar, bishop, 158, 173. James the Deacon, 112, 120, 130, 166. Jarrow, foundation of, 324. Jaruman, bishop, 181, 214. Jerome, St., testimony of, 12. John, abbot, 99. John VI., pope, 404. John the Precentor, 314. John, St., of Beverley, 237, 355, 415. Joseph of Arimathea, legend of, 3. Julius, martyr, 7. Justus, archbishop, 88, 109. Kenred, king, 411, 431. Kenspid, 186. Kentigem, St., 29. Kentwin, king, 262, 302, 348. Kenwalch (Coinwalch, Cenwalh),king, 156, 181, 215, 239. Kenwald (Coinwald), 292. Kineswith, nun, 168, 431. Kynegils, king, 113, 127, 147, 156. Kynibert, 350. Kynibil, 173. Kyniburga (Cyneburh), 168. Kyniburga the younger, 312, Kynwise, queen, 1 75, Lastingham, 173, 230. Lateran, church of the, 292. Laurence, archbishop, 94, 96, 103, 109. Leicester, see of, 310, 371. Leominster, convent of, 239, Lerins, isle of, 41, 221. Lichfield, 216,229, Lilla, 113. Lincoln, 9, 122. Lindisfame, 137, 166, 202, 264, 285, 342, 357. Lindsey, 122, 153, 156, 180, 256, 283, 285, 301, 354- Liturgy, British and Scotic, 28 ; Galilean, 57 ; Gregorian, 57, 90, H5- H Liudhard, bishop, 40. Llanafanfaur, 75. Llanbadam, 30. Llancarfan, 30. Llandaff, 31. 75« Llanddewi, 30. Loidis, 108, 176. London, British bishopric of, 9, 33; English, 89, 93 ; intended to be an archbishopric, 67. Lothere, bishop, 239, 259, 261, Lothere, king, 240. Lucius, king, story of, 3. Lupus, bishop, 16. j Lyminge, 10, 130, 155, 385. M. Maelgwyn, king, 27. Maes-Garmon, 19. Magic, 45, 207, 211. MaUduf, 259. Malmesbury, 259, 399. Margam, 75. Marriage, rules on, 58, 247. Martin I., pope, 220, 314. Martin's, St., at Canterbury, 48, Maserfield, battle of, 152. Maximian, 8. Mayo, 201. Meanvaras, the, 183, 303. Medeshamstede (Peterborough), foun- dation of, 177. Med win, St., 3. MellituB, archbishop, 55, 73, 89, loi, 109. Melrose, 186, 207. Menevia, 32, 137. Mercia, 34, 180. Merewald, sub-king, 180, 238. Merewin, 180. Milburga, 239. Mildred, St., 180, 239, 385. Minster, convent of, 238, 385. Miracles, accounts of, 64. * Missa,' meaning of, 50. Missionaries, English, 290, 372. Monasticism, growth of English, 184; severity of Scotic, 96, 145, 172. Monothelites, 220, 296, 318. Morgan wg, 75. Mul, 349, 359. *Mund-byrd,' the, 383, N. Nadder, Council of the, 427, Nathanael, abbot, 216. Nechtan, king, 423. Nennius, 24. Nicene Council, the, 77* Nidd, synod of the, 413. h 458 Index. Ninian, St., 13, 399. Northumbria, importance of, 154. Northumbrian students in Ireland, I59> 330. Nothbert, bishop, 411. Nutscelle, 424. O. * Oak, Augustine's,' 74. Offa, king, 431. Oftfor, bishop, 238, 371, 379. Oiddi, priest, 302. Origen, in Britain, 5. Osfrid, son of Edwin, 127. Osfrid, reeve, 299. Oahere, sub-king, 261,309, 311, 379. Osred, king, 412.^ Osric, king of Deira, 128. Osric, sub-king, 261, 309, 311, 372. Osthryd, queen, 153, 302, 386. Oswald, St., character of, 132 ; death of, 152, 307. Oswald, Mercian prince, 312. Oswin, St., 156, 160. Oswy (Oswiu), king, accession of, 155 ; death of, 233. Oudoceus, bishop, 75. Oundle, 216, 432. Owin, 229. Oxfordshire, 146, 311. P. Padda, priest, 302.^ Psegnalsech, 206. Pagan customs, 71. Paintings, sacred, 46, 315, 347. Pall, the, 60. Pallinsbum, 120. Pancras, St., 54. Parochial system, growth of, 235, 362, 415. 445- Parteney, 112. Paul Hen, 30. Pauliuus, St., mission of, 1 1 1 ; flight of, 129. Peada, sub-king, 167, 177. Pecthelm, bishop, 399. Pegwell Bay, 45. Pelagianism, 15. Pelagius II., pope, 38. Penance, 31, 146, 255. Penda, king, 126; death of , 176. ' Penitential,' Theodore's, 247, 362. Penwald, earl, 386. Pertharit (Bertarid), king, 291. Pestilence, 'the yellow,' 206, 231, 253, 269, 307, 340- Peter, abbot, 91, 99. Picts, the, 22, 233, 333. Pippin, 374. Plegwin, monk, 429. Powys, kingdom of, 25, 85. Priestholm, 126. * Privilegia,' 91. Prosper, 15. Protasius, bishop, 41. Provinces in Roman Britain, 10. Pudens, 2. Putta, bishop, 216, 226, 263. Q. Quartodecimans, 77, 197, 419. R. Radbod, 373. Reculver, 45, 53, 238, 377. Redfrid, reeve, 222. Redwald, king, 105. Regionary bishops, 146. Rendlesham, 178. Repton, 34, 386. Restitutus, bishop, 9. Retford, battle near, 108. Ricbert, 123. Ricula, sister of Ethelbert, 87. Ripon, 187, 192, 234, 301, 348, 353, 368, 433. Rochester, foundation of see of, 88. Rogations, 48, 90. Romanus, bishop, no, 122. Rome, Councils of, 292, 296, 405 ; position of see of, 62, 286. Ronan, 166. Rufinianus, 55. S. Sabert, king, 89, loi. Sacerdos, presbyter, 9. Ssethred, 151. Saeward (Seward), king, loi, 379. Sampson, St., 32. Sanctuary, privilege of, 90, 343, 367. Sardica, Council of, 11, 78. Saxons, name of, 21. Saxulf, bishop, 178, 257, 263, 310, 364, 371. Schools, at Canterbury, 125, 237; at Dunwich, 125; at Lindisfame, 140. Scotic episcopate, the, 134. 'Scotic Mission,' review of the, 202. Sebbi, king, 207, 214, 365, 379. Seghine, abbot, 133, 160. Selsey, 306. Sergius, I., pope, 359, 375, 385. 393, 399- Severus, bishop, 20. Sexburga (Sexburh), queen of Kent, i5o» 253. Index. 459 Sexburga, queen of Wessex, 239. Sexred, loi. Sheppey, 151. Sherborne, see of, founded, 424. Sidnacester, 310. Sidonius Apollinaris, 17, 22. Sigebert, son of Sabert, 10 1. Sigebei-t the Good, king, 169, 178. Sigebert the Learned, king, 123, 150. Sigebert the Little, king, 104, 169. Sigfrid, abbot, 273, 346, 358. Sighard, king, 381. Sighere, king, 207, 214. Simony, 27, 215. Sisinnius, 406. Slavery, 36, 307. South Mercians, the, 177. Southwell, 123. Stamford, 191. Stephen, abbot, 41. Strathclyde, 26, 123. Sulpicius Severus, 5, 11, 78, 419. Sunday, observance of, 334, 367, 383. Sussex, conversion of, 304. Swebhard, king, 361, 377. Swefred, king, 381. Swidbert, bishop, 375, Swidhelm, king, 178. * Synod,' lax use of, 239, 366. Synods, Welsh, 30. T. Tadcaster, 164, 185. Tatbert, 430. Teilo, bishop, 75. Temples, Pagan, treatment of, 69. Tertullian, on Britain, 4, Tewdric, king, 88. Thadioc, bishop, 33. 'Thanes' (thegns), 113. Thanet, Isle of, 45, 238. Theodebert IL, 43. Theodore, archbishop, appointed, 219 ; character of, 224, 229, 362, 365. Theodoret, on Britain, 2. Theodoric II., 43. Theodoric III., 288. Theon, bishop, 33. Thomas, bishop, 158, 173. Thunor, thane, 238. Tibba, abbot, 431. Tidlin, 300. Tilbury, 171. Titillus, 242. Tobias, bishop, 238, 384. Tonbert, 251. Tonsure, question as to, 80, 200, 220, 418. Torthelm, abbot, 270. Tours, 315. Trentham, 411. *Trinoda necessitas,' the, 382. Trumbert, 230, 327. Trumhere, bishop, 181. Trumwine, bishop, 324, 331, 336. Tuda, bishop, 193, 205. Tunbert, bishop, 2^71, 323, 331. Twyford, 'synod' of, 331. Tynemouth, 163, 184. Tyrhtel, bishop, 364, 378. U. Utrecht, 374. Utta, abbot, 163. Vatican, church of the, 53. Venantius Fortunatus, 8. Verca, abbess, 341, 345. Vergilius, archbishop of Aries, 53. Verulam, 7, 17. Victorius, cycle of, 78, 96, 217, 419. Victricius, visit of, 13. Vitalian, pope, 217. - W. Waldhere, bishop, 379. Wales, name of, 26; bishoprics of, 75- Walstod, 343. Wanborough, battle of, 34. Wareham, 399. Wearmouth, foundation of, 270. Weedon, 411. Weeg, 75. Wenlock, 239. Werburga, St. (Werburh), 180, 411. 'Wer-gilds,' 238, 302. Wessex, conversion of, 146. Westminster, 88. Whalley, 123, 206. Whitby (Streanseshalch), monastery of, 185, 273; conference at, 194. Whithem, 13, 399. Whitland, 30. Wictbert, 373. Wighard, 217. Wight, Isle of, 183, 303, 350. Wihtred, king, 361; 'Privilege' of, 384. Wilfaresdun, 162. Wilfrid, abbot, 388. Wilfrid, St. (Wilfnth), early life of, 187; consecration of, 210; first troubles of, 280; second troubles of, 367; death of, 432. 460 Index. Willibrord, St., 154, 234, 373. Wimbledon, battle of, 25, Winchester, church of, 158, 182. Winfrid, bishop, 232, 257, 288. Wini, bishop, 181, 212, 215, 241. Winwidfield, battle of, 1 76. Witburga, St. (Wihtburh), 151. Witenagemot, the, 89, 366. Worcester, bishopric of, 310, 371. Wulfhere, king, 180, 214, 216, 227, 233. 256. Wulframn, bishop, 373. Wuscfrea, 129. y. Yevering, 119. Yffi, 129. Ynys-vitryn, 10, 313. York, British bishopric of, 9, 33 ; English, 119; church of, 119, 235. Ythancsestir, 171. UNIVEESITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. 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